10101	----	[Illustration: ] A LITTLE BOY LOST By W. H. Hudson Illustrated by A. D. M'Cormick CONTENTS _CHAPTER_ I THE HOME ON THE GREAT PLAIN, II THE SPOONBILL AND THE CLOUD, III CHASING A FLYING FIGURE, IV MARTIN IS FOUND BY A DEAF OLD MAN, V THE PEOPLE OF THE MIRAGE, VI MARTIN MEETS WITH SAVAGES, VII ALONE IN THE GREAT FOREST, VIII THE FLOWER AND THE SERPENT, IX THE BLACK PEOPLE OF THE SKY, X A TROOP OF WILD HORSES, XI THE LADY OF THE HILLS, XII THE LITTLE PEOPLE UNDERGROUND, XIII THE GREAT BLUE WATER, XIV THE WONDERS OF THE HILLS, XV MARTIN'S EYES ARE OPENED, XVI THE PEOPLE OF THE MIST, XVII THE OLD MAN OF THE SEA, XVIII MARTIN PLAYS WITH THE WAVES, CHAPTER I THE HOME ON THE GREAT PLAIN Some like to be one thing, some another. There is so much to be done, so many different things to do, so many trades! Shepherds, soldiers, sailors, ploughmen, carters--one could go on all day naming without getting to the end of them. For myself, boy and man, I have been many things, working for a living, and sometimes doing things just for pleasure; but somehow, whatever I did, it never seemed quite the right and proper thing to do--it never quite satisfied me. I always wanted to do something else--I wanted to be a carpenter. It seemed to me that to stand among wood-shavings and sawdust, making things at a bench with bright beautiful tools out of nice-smelling wood, was the cleanest, healthiest, prettiest work that any man can do. Now all this has nothing, or very little, to do with my story: I only spoke of it because I had to begin somehow, and it struck me that I would make a start that way. And for another reason, too. _His father was a carpenter_. I mean Martin's father--Martin, the Little Boy Lost. His father's name was John, and he was a very good man and a good carpenter, and he loved to do his carpentering better than anything else; in fact as much as I should have loved it if I had been taught that trade. He lived in a seaside town, named Southampton, where there is a great harbour, where he saw great ships coming and going to and from all parts of the world. Now, no strong, brave man can live in a place like that, seeing the ships and often talking to the people who voyaged in them about the distant lands where they had been, without wishing to go and see those distant countries for himself. When it is winter in England, and it rains and rains, and the east wind blows, and it is grey and cold and the trees are bare, who does not think how nice it would be to fly away like the summer birds to some distant country where the sky is always blue and the sun shines bright and warm every day? And so it came to pass that John, at last, when he was an old man, sold his shop, and went abroad. They went to a country many thousands of miles away--for you must know that Mrs. John went too; and when the sea voyage ended, they travelled many days and weeks in a wagon until they came to the place where they wanted to live; and there, in that lonely country, they built a house, and made a garden, and planted an orchard. It was a desert, and they had no neighbours, but they were happy enough because they had as much land as they wanted, and the weather was always bright and beautiful; John, too, had his carpenter's tools to work with when he felt inclined; and, best of all, they had little Martin to love and think about. But how about Martin himself? You might think that with no other child to prattle to and play with or even to see, it was too lonely a home for him. Not a bit of it! No child could have been happier. He did not want for company; his playfellows were the dogs and cats and chickens, and any creature in and about the house. But most of all he loved the little shy creatures that lived in the sunshine among the flowers--the small birds and butterflies, and little beasties and creeping things he was accustomed to see outside the gate among the tall, wild sunflowers. There were acres of these plants, and they were taller than Martin, and covered with flowers no bigger than marigolds, and here among the sunflowers he used to spend most of the day, as happy as possible. He had other amusements too. Whenever John went to his carpenter's shop--for the old man still dearly loved his carpentering--Martin would run in to keep him company. One thing he liked to do was to pick up the longest wood-shavings, to wind them round his neck and arms and legs, and then he would laugh and dance with delight, happy as a young Indian in his ornaments. A wood-shaving may seem a poor plaything to a child with all the toyshops in London to pick and choose from, but it is really very curious and pretty. Bright and smooth to the touch, pencilled with delicate wavy lines, while in its spiral shape it reminds one of winding plants, and tendrils by means of which vines and creepers support themselves, and flowers with curling petals, and curled leaves and sea-shells and many other pretty natural objects. One day Martin ran into the house looking very flushed and joyous, holding up his pinafore with something heavy in it. "What have you got now?" cried his father and mother in a breath, getting up to peep at his treasure, for Martin was always fetching in the most curious out-of-the-way things to show them. "My pretty shaving," said Martin proudly. [Illustration: ] When they looked they were amazed and horrified to see a spotted green snake coiled comfortably up in the pinafore. It didn't appear to like being looked at by them, for it raised its curious heart-shaped head and flicked its little red, forked tongue at them. His mother gave a great scream, and dropped the jug she had in her hand upon the floor, while John rushed off to get a big stick. "Drop it, Martin--drop the wicked snake before it stings you, and I'll soon kill it." Martin stared, surprised at the fuss they were making; then, still tightly holding the ends of his pinafore, he turned and ran out of the room and away as fast as he could go. Away went his father after him, stick in hand, and out of the gate into the thicket of tall wild sunflowers where Martin had vanished from sight. After hunting about for some time, he found the little run-away sitting on the ground among the weeds. "Where's the snake?" he cried. "Gone!" said Martin, waving his little hand around. "I let it go and you mustn't look for it." John picked the child up in his arms and marched back to the room and popped him down on the floor, then gave him a good scolding. "It's a mercy the poisonous thing didn't sting you," he said. "You're a naughty little boy to play with snakes, because they're dangerous bad things, and you die if they bite you. And now you must go straight to bed; that's the only punishment that has any effect on such a harebrained little butterfly." Martin, puckering up his face for a cry, crept away to his little room. It was very hard to have to go to bed in the daytime when he was not sleepy, and when the birds and butterflies were out in the sunshine having such a good time. "It's not a bit of use scolding him--I found that out long ago," said Mrs. John, shaking her head. "Do you know, John, I can't help thinking sometimes that he's not our child at all." "Whose child do you think he is, then?" said John, who had a cup of water in his hand, for the chase after Martin had made him hot, and he wanted cooling. "I don't know--but I once had a very curious dream." "People often do have curious dreams," said wise old John. "But this was a very curious one, and I remember saying to myself, if this doesn't mean something that is going to happen, then dreams don't count for much." "No more they do," said John. "It was in England, just when we were getting ready for the voyage, and it was autumn, when the birds were leaving us. I dreamed that I went out alone and walked by the sea, and stood watching a great number of swallows flying by and out over the sea--flying away to some distant land. By-and-by I noticed one bird coming down lower and lower as if he wanted to alight, and I watched it, and it came down straight to me, and at last flew right into my bosom. I put my hand on it, and looking close saw that it was a martin, all pure white on its throat and breast, and with a white patch on its back. Then I woke up, and it was because of that dream that I named our child Martin instead of John as you wished to do. Now, when I watch swallows flying about, coming and going round the house, I sometimes think that Martin came to us like that one in the dream, and that some day he will fly away from us. When he gets bigger, I mean." "When he gets littler," you mean, said John with a laugh. "No, no, he's too big for a swallow--a Michaelmas goose would be nothing to him for size. But here I am listening to your silly dreams instead of watering the melons and cucumbers!" And out he went to his garden, but in a minute he put his head in at the door and said, "You may go and tell him to get up if you like. Poor little fellow! Only make him promise not to go chumming with spotted snakes any more, and not to bring them into the house, because somehow they disagree with me." [Illustration: ] CHAPTER II THE SPOONBILL AND THE CLOUD As Martin grew in years and strength, his age being now about seven, his rambles began to extend beyond the waste grounds outside of the fenced orchard and gate. These waste grounds were a wilderness of weeds: here were the sunflowers that Martin liked best; the wild cock's-comb, flaunting great crimson tufts; the yellow flowering mustard, taller than the tallest man; giant thistle, and wild pumpkin with spotted leaves; the huge hairy fox-gloves with yellow bells; feathery fennel, and the big grey-green thorn-apples, with prickly burs full of bright red seed, and long white wax-like flowers, that bloomed only in the evening. He could never get high enough on anything to see over the tops of these plants; but at last he found his way through them, and discovered on their further side a wide grassy plain with scarcely a tree on it, stretching away into the blue distance. On this vast plain he gazed with wonderment and delight. Behind the orchard and weedy waste the ground sloped down to a stream of running water, full of tall rushes with dark green polished stems, and yellow water-lilies. All along the moist banks grew other flowers that were never seen in the dry ground above--the blue star, and scarlet and white verbenas; and sweet-peas of all colours; and the delicate red vinegar flower, and angel's hair, and the small fragrant lilies called Mary's-tears, and tall scattered flags, flaunting their yellow blossoms high above the meadow grass. Every day Martin ran down to the stream to gather flowers and shells; for many curious water-snails were found there with brown purple-striped shells; and he also liked to watch the small birds that build their nests in the rushes. There were three of these small birds that did not appear to know that Martin loved them; for no sooner would he present himself at the stream than forth they would flutter in a great state of mind. One, the prettiest, was a tiny, green-backed little creature, with a crimson crest and a velvet-black band across a bright yellow breast: this one had a soft, low, complaining voice, clear as a silver bell. The second was a brisk little grey and black fellow, with a loud, indignant chuck, and a broad tail which he incessantly opened and shut, like a Spanish lady playing with her fan. The third was a shy, mysterious little brown bird, peering out of the clustering leaves, and making a sound like the soft ticking of a clock. They were like three little men, an Italian, a Dutchman, and a Hindoo, talking together, each in his own language, and yet well able to understand each other. Martin could not make out what they said, but suspected that they were talking about him; and he feared that their remarks were not always of a friendly nature. At length he made the discovery that the water of the stream was perpetually running away. If he dropped a leaf on the surface it would hasten down stream, and toss about and fret impatiently against anything that stood in its way, until, making its escape, it would quickly hurry out of sight. Whither did this rippling, running water go? He was anxious to find out. At length, losing all fear and fired with the sight of many new and pretty things he found while following it, he ran along the banks until, miles from home, he came to a great lake he could hardly see across, it was so broad. It was a wonderful place, full of birds; not small, fretful creatures flitting in and out of the rushes, but great majestic birds that took very little notice of him. Far out on the blue surface of the water floated numbers of wild fowl, and chief among them for grace and beauty was the swan, pure white with black head and neck and crimson bill. There also were stately flamingoes, stalking along knee-deep in the water, which was shallow; and nearer to the shore were flocks of rose-coloured spoonbills and solitary big grey herons standing motionless; also groups of white egrets, and a great multitude of glossy ibises, with dark green and purple plumage and long sickle-like beaks. The sight of this water with its beds of rushes and tall flowering reeds, and its great company of birds, filled Martin with delight; and other joys were soon to follow. Throwing off his shoes, he dashed with a shout into the water, frightening a number of ibises; up they flew, each bird uttering a cry repeated many times, that sounded just like his old father's laugh when he laughed loud and heartily. Then what was Martin's amazement to hear his own shout and this chorus of bird ha, ha, ha's, repeated by hundreds of voices all over the lake. At first he thought that the other birds were mocking the ibises; but presently he shouted again, and again his shouts were repeated by dozens of voices. This delighted him so much that he spent the whole day shouting himself hoarse at the waterside. When he related his wonderful experience at home, and heard from his father that the sounds he had heard were only echoes from the beds of rushes, he was not a bit wiser than before, so that the echoes remained to him a continual wonder and source of never-failing pleasure. Every day he would take some noisy instrument to the lake to startle the echoes; a whistle his father made him served for a time; after that he marched up and down the banks, rattling a tin canister with pebbles in it; then he got a large frying-pan from the kitchen, and beat on it with a stick every day for about a fortnight. When he grew tired of all these sounds, and began casting about for some new thing to wake the echoes with, he all at once remembered his father's gun--just what he wanted, for it was the noisiest thing in the world. Watching his opportunity, he got secretly into the room where it was kept loaded, and succeeded in carrying it out of the house without being seen; then, full of joyful anticipations, he ran as fast as the heavy gun would let him to his favourite haunt. When he arrived at the lake three or four spoonbills--those beautiful, tall, rose-coloured birds--were standing on the bank, quietly dozing in the hot sunshine. They did not fly away at his approach, for the birds were now so accustomed to Martin and his harmless noises that they took very little notice of him. He knelt on one knee and pointed the gun at them. [Illustration: ] "Now, birdies, you don't know what a fright I'm going to give you--off you go!" he cried, and pulled the trigger. The roar of the loud report travelled all over the wide lake, creating a great commotion among the feathered people, and they rose up with a general scream into the air. All this was of no benefit to Martin, the recoil of the gun having sent him flying over, his heels in the air; and before he recovered himself the echoes were silent, and all the frightened birds were settling on the water again. But there, just before him, lay one of the spoonbills, beating its great rose-coloured wings against the ground. Martin ran to it, full of keen distress, but was powerless to help; its life's blood was fast running away from the shot wounds it had received in its side, staining the grass with crimson. Presently it closed its beautiful ruby-coloured eyes and the quivering wings grew still. Then Martin sat down on the grass by its side and began to cry, Oh, that great bird, half as tall as himself, and so many times more lovely and strong and beautiful in its life--he had killed it, and it would never fly again! He raised it up very tenderly in his arms and kissed it--kissed its pale green head and rosy wings; then out of his arms it tumbled back again on to the grass. "Oh, poor bird," he cried suddenly, "open your wings and fly away!" But it was dead. Then Martin got up and stared all round him at the wide landscape, and everything looked strange and dim and sorrowful. A shadow passed over the lake, and a murmur came up out of the rushes that was like a voice saying something that he could not understand. A great cry of pain rose from his heart and died to a whisper on his lips; he was awed into silence. Sinking down upon the grass again, he hid his face against the rosy-breasted bird and began to sob. How warm the dead bird felt against his cheek--oh, so warm--and it could not live and fly about with the others. At length he sat up and knew the reason of that change that had come over the earth. A dark cloud had sprung up in the south-west, far off as yet, and near the horizon; but its fringe already touched and obscured the low-hanging sun, and a shadow flew far and vast before it. Over the lake flew that great shadow: the waters looked cold and still, reflecting as in a polished glass the motionless rushes, the glassy bank, and Martin, sitting on it, still clasping in his arms the dead rose-coloured bird. Swifter and vaster, following close upon the flying shadow, came the mighty cloud, changing from black to slaty grey; and then, as the sun broke forth again under its lower edge, it was all flushed with a brilliant rose colour. But what a marvellous thing it was, when the cloud covered a third of the wide heavens, almost touching the horizon on either side with its wing-like extremities; Martin, gazing steadily at it, saw that in its form it was like an immense spoonbill flying through the air! He would gladly have run away then to hide himself from its sight, but he dared not stir, for it was now directly above him; so, lying down on the grass and hiding his face against the dead bird, he waited in fear and trembling. [Illustration: ] He heard the rushing sound of the mighty wings: the wind they created smote on the waters in a hurricane, so that the reeds were beaten flat on the surface, and a great cry of terror went up from all the wild birds. It passed, and when Martin raised his bowed head and looked again, the sun, just about to touch the horizon with its great red globe, shone out, shedding a rich radiance over the earth and water; while far off, on the opposite side of the heavens, the great cloud-bird was rapidly fading out of sight. CHAPTER III CHASING A FLYING FIGURE After what had happened Martin could never visit the waterside and look at the great birds wading and swimming there without a feeling that was like a sudden coldness in the blood of his veins. The rosy spoonbill he had killed and cried over and the great bird-cloud that had frightened him were never forgotten. He grew tired of shouting to the echoes: he discovered that there were even more wonderful things than the marsh echoes in the world, and that the world was bigger than he had thought it. When spring with its moist verdure and frail, sweet-smelling flowers had gone; when the great plain began to turn to a rusty-brown colour, and the dry hard earth was full of cracks, and the days grew longer and the heat greater, there came an appearance of water that quivered and glittered and danced before his wondering sight, and would lead him miles from home every day in his vain efforts to find out what it was. He could talk of nothing else, and asked endless questions about it, and they told him that this strange thing was nothing but the Mirage, but of course that was not telling him enough, so that he was left to puzzle his little boy-brains over this new mystery, just as they had puzzled before over the mystery of the echoes. Now this Mirage was a glittering whiteness that looked just like water, always shining and dancing before him and all round him, on the dry level plain where there was no water. It was never quiet, but perpetually quivering and running into wavelets that threw up crests and jets of sprays as from a fountain, and showers of brilliant drops that flashed like molten silver in the sunlight before they broke and vanished, only to be renewed again. It appeared every day when the sun was high and the air hot, and it was often called _The False Water_. And false it was, since it always flew before him as he ran, so that although he often seemed to be getting nearer to it he could never quite overtake it. But Martin had a very determined spirit for a small boy, and although this appearance of water mocked his efforts a hundred times every day with its vanishing brightness and beauty, he would not give up the pursuit. Now one day when there was not a cloud on the great hot whitey-blue sky, nor a breath of air stirring, when it was all silent, for not even a grass-hopper creaked in the dead, yellow, motionless grass, the whole level earth began to shine and sparkle like a lake of silvery water, as Martin had never seen it shine before. He had wandered far away from home--never had he been so far--and still he ran and ran and ran, and still that whiteness quivered and glittered and flew on before him; and ever it looked more temptingly near, urging him to fresh exertions. At length, tired out and overcome with heat, he sat down to rest, and feeling very much hurt at the way he had been deceived and led on, he shed one little tear. There was no mistake about that tear; he felt it running like a small spider down his cheek, and finally he saw it fall. It fell on to a blade of yellow grass and ran down the blade, then stopped so as to gather itself into a little round drop before touching the ground. Just then, out of the roots of the grass beneath it, crept a tiny dusty black beetle and began drinking the drop, waving its little horns up and down like donkey's ears, apparently very much pleased at its good fortune in finding water and having a good drink in such a dry, thirsty place. Probably it took the tear for a drop of rain just fallen out of the sky. "You _are_ a funny little thing!" exclaimed Martin, feeling now less like crying than laughing. The wee beetle, satisfied and refreshed, climbed up the grass-blade, and when it reached the tip lifted its dusty black wing-cases just enough to throw out a pair of fine gauzy wings that had been neatly folded up beneath them, and flew away. [Illustration: ] Martin, following its flight, had his eyes quite dazzled by the intense glitter of the False Water, which now seemed to be only a few yards from him: but the strangest thing was that in it there appeared a form--a bright beautiful form that vanished when he gazed steadily at it. Again he got up and began running harder than ever after the flying mocking Mirage, and every time he stopped he fancied that he could see the figure again, sometimes like a pale blue shadow on the brightness; sometimes shining with its own excessive light, and sometimes only seen in outline, like a figure graved on glass, and always vanishing when looked at steadily. Perhaps that white water-like glitter of the Mirage was like a looking-glass, and he was only chasing his own reflection. I cannot say, but there it was, always before him, a face as of a beautiful boy, with tumbled hair and laughing lips, its figure clothed in a fluttering dress of lights and shadows. It also seemed to beckon to him with its hand, and encourage him to run on after it with its bright merry glances. [Illustration: ] At length when it was past the hour of noon, Martin sat down under a small bush that gave just shade enough to cover him and none to spare. It was only a little spot of shade like an island in a sea of heat and brightness. He was too hot and tired to run more, too tired even to keep his eyes open, and so, propping his back against the stem of the small bush, he closed his tired hot eyes. CHAPTER IV MARTIN IS FOUND BY A DEAF OLD MAN Martin kept his eyes shut for only about a minute, as he thought; but he must have been asleep some time, for when he opened them the False Water had vanished, and the sun, looking very large and crimson, was just about to set. He started up, feeling very thirsty and hungry and bewildered; for he was far, far from home, and lost on the great plain. Presently he spied a man coming towards him on horseback. A very funny-looking old man he proved to be, with a face wrinkled and tanned by sun and wind, until it resembled a piece of ancient shoe-leather left lying for years on some neglected spot of ground. A Brazil nut is not darker nor more wrinkled than was the old man's face. His long matted beard and hair had once been white, but the sun out of doors and the smoke in his smoky hut had given them a yellowish tinge, so that they looked like dry dead grass. He wore big jack-boots, patched all over, and full of cracks and holes; and a great pea-jacket, rusty and ragged, fastened with horn buttons big as saucers. His old brimless hat looked like a dilapidated tea-cosy on his head, and to prevent it from being carried off by the wind it was kept on with an old flannel shirtsleeve tied under his chin. His saddle, too, like his clothes, was old and full of rents, with wisps of hair and straw-stuffing sticking out in various places, and his feet were thrust into a pair of big stirrups made of pieces of wood and rusty iron tied together with string and wire. [Illustration: ] "Boy, what may you being a doing of here?" bawled this old man at the top of his voice: for he was as deaf as a post, and like a good many deaf people thought it necessary to speak very loud to make himself heard. "Playing," answered Martin innocently. But he could not make the old man hear until he stood up on tip-toe and shouted out his answer as loud as he could. "Playing," exclaimed the old man. "Well, I never in all my life! When there ain't a house 'cepting my own for leagues and leagues, and he says he's playing! What may you be now?" he shouted again. "A little boy," screamed Martin. "I knowed that afore I axed," said the other. Then he slapped his legs and held up his hands with astonishment, and at last began to chuckle. "Will you come home along o' me?" he shouted. "Will you give me something to eat?" asked Martin in return. "Haw, haw, haw," guffawed the old fellow. It was a tremendous laugh, so loud and hollow, it astonished and almost frightened Martin to hear it. "Well I never!" he said. "He ain't no fool, neither. Now, old Jacob, just you take your time and think a bit afore you makes your answer to that." This curious old man, whose name was Jacob, had lived so long by himself that he always thought out loud--louder than other people talk: for, being deaf, he could not hear himself, and never had a suspicion that he could be heard by others. "He's lost, that's what he is," continued old Jacob aloud to himself. "And what's more, he's been and gone and forgot all about his own home, and all he wants is summat to eat. I'll take him and keep him, that's what I'll do: for he's a stray lamb, and belongs to him that finds him, like any other lamb I finds. I'll make him believe I'm his old dad; for he's little and will believe most anything you tells him. I'll learn him to do things about the house--to boil the kettle, and cook the wittels, and gather the firewood, and mend the clothes, and do the washing, and draw the water, and milk the cow, and dig the potatoes, and mind the sheep and--and--and that's what I'll learn him. Then, Jacob, you can sit down and smoke your pipe, 'cos you'll have some one to do your work for you." Martin stood quietly listening to all this, not quite understanding the old man's kind intentions. Then old Jacob, promising to give him something to eat, pulled him up on to his horse, and started home at a gallop. Soon they arrived at a mud hovel, thatched with rushes, the roof sloping down so low that one could almost step on to it; it was surrounded with a ditch, and had a potato patch and a sheep enclosure; for old Jacob was a shepherd, and had a flock of sheep. There were several big dogs, and when Martin got down from the horse, they began jumping round him, barking with delight, as if they knew him, half-smothering him with their rough caresses. Jacob led him into the hut, which looked extremely dirty and neglected, and had only one room. In the corners against the walls were piles of sheep-skins that had a strong and rather unpleasant smell: the thatch above was covered with dusty cobwebs, hanging like old rags, and the clay floor was littered with bones, sticks, and other rubbish. The only nice thing to see was a teakettle singing and steaming away merrily on the fire in the grate. Old Jacob set about preparing the evening meal; and soon they sat down at a small deal table to a supper of cold mutton and potatoes, and tea which did not taste very nice, as it was sweetened with moist black sugar. Martin was too hungry to turn up his nose at anything, and while he ate and drank the old man chuckled and talked aloud to himself about his good fortune in finding the little boy to do his work for him. After supper he cleared the table, and put two mugs of tea on it, and then got out his clay pipe and tobacco. "Now, little boy," he cried, "let's have a jolly evening together. Your very good health, little boy," and here he jingled his mug against Martin's, and took a sip of tea. "Would you like to hear a song, little boy?" he said, after finishing his pipe. "No," said Martin, who was getting sleepy; but Jacob took no to mean yes, and so he stood up on his legs and sang this song:-- "My name is Jacob, that's my name; And tho' I'm old, the old man's game-- The air it is so good, d'ye see: And on the plain my flock I keep, And sing all day to please my sheep, And never lose them like Bo-Peep, Becos the ways of them are known to me." "When winter comes and winds do blow, Unto my sheep so good I go-- I'm always good to them, d'ye see-- Ho, sheep, say I, both ram, both ewe, I've sung you songs all summer through, Now lend to me a skin or two, To keep the cold and wet from out o' me." This song, accompanied with loud raps on the table, was bellowed forth in a dreadfully discordant voice; and very soon all the dogs rushed into the room and began to bark and howl most dismally, which seemed to please the old man greatly, for to him it was a kind of applause. But the noise was too much for Martin; so he stopped up his ears, and only removed his fingers from them when the performance was over. After the song the old man offered to dance, for he had not yet had amusement enough. "Boy, can you play on this?" he shouted, holding up a frying-pan and a big stick to beat it with. Of course Martin could play on _that_ instrument: he had often enough played on one like it to startle the echoes on the lake, in other days. And so, when he had been lifted on to the table, he took the frying-pan by the handle, and began vigorously beating on it with the stick. He did not mind the noise now since he was helping to make it. Meanwhile old Jacob began flinging his arms and legs about in all directions, looking like a scarecrow made to tumble about by means of springs and wires. He pounded the clay floor with his ponderous old boots until the room was filled with a cloud of dust; then in his excitement he kicked over chairs, pots, kettles, and whatever came in his way, while he kept on revolving round the table in a kind of crazy fandango. Martin thought it fine fun, and screamed with laughter, and beat his gong louder than ever; then to make matters worse old Jacob at intervals uttered whoops and yells, which the dogs answered with long howls from the door, until the din was something tremendous. [Illustration: ] At length they both grew tired, and then after resting and sipping some more cold tea, prepared to go to bed. Some sheep-skins were piled up in a corner for Martin to sleep on, and old Jacob covered him with a horse-rug, and tucked him in very carefully. Then the kind old man withdrew to his own bed on the opposite side of the room. About midnight Martin was wakened by loud horrible noises in the room, and started up on bed trembling with fear. The sounds came from the old man's nose, and resembled a succession of blasts on a ram's horn, which, on account of its roughness and twisted shape, makes a very bad trumpet. As soon as Martin discovered the cause of the noise he crept out of bed and tried to waken the old snorer by shouting at him, tugging at his arms and legs, and finally pulling his beard. He refused to wake. Then Martin had a bright idea, and groping his way to the bucket of cold water standing beside the fire-place, he managed to raise it up in his arms, and poured it over the sleeper. The snoring changed to a series of loud choking snorts, then ceased. Martin, well pleased at the success of his experiment, was about to return to his bed when old Jacob struggled up to a sitting posture. "Hullo, wake up, little boy!" he shouted. "My bed's all full o' water--goodness knows where it comes from." "I poured it over you to wake you up. Don't you know you were making a noise with your nose?" cried Martin at the top of his voice. "You--you--you throwed it over me! You--O you most wicked little villain you! You throwed it over me, did you!" and here he poured out such a torrent of abusive words that Martin was horrified and cried out, "O what a naughty, wicked, bad old man you are!" It was too dark for old Jacob to see him, but he knew his way about the room, and taking up the wet rug that served him for covering he groped his way to Martin's bed and began pounding it with the rug, thinking the naughty little boy was there. "You little rascal you--I hope you like that!--and that!--and that!" he shouted, pounding away. "I'll learn you to throw water over your poor old dad! And such a--a affectionate father as I've been too, giving him sich nice wittels--and--and singing and dancing to him to teach him music. Perhaps you'd like a little more, you takes it so quietly? Well, then, take that!--and that!--and that! Why, how's this--the young warmint ain't here arter all! Well, I'm blowed if that don't beat everythink! What did he go and chuck that water over me for? What a walloping I'll give him in the morning when it's light! and now, boy, you may go and sleep on my bed, 'cos it's wet, d'ye see; and I'll sleep on yourn, 'cos it's dry." Then he got into Martin's bed, and muttered and grumbled himself to sleep. Martin came out from under the table, and after dressing himself with great secrecy crept to the door to make his escape. It was locked and the key taken away. But he was determined to make his escape somehow, and not wait to be whipped; so, by and by, he drew the little deal table close against the wall, and getting on to it began picking the rushes one by one out of the lower part of the thatch. After working for half-an-hour, like a mouse eating his way out of a soft wooden box, he began to see the light coming through the hole, and in another half hour it was large enough for him to creep through. When he had got out, he slipped down to the ground, where the dogs were lying. They seemed very glad to see him, and began pressing round to lick his face; but he pushed them off, and ran away over the plain as fast as he could. The stars were shining, but it was very dark and silent; only in moist places, where the grass grew tall, he heard the crickets strumming sadly on their little harps. At length, tired with running, he coiled himself in a large tussock of dry grass and went to sleep, just as if he had been accustomed to sleep out of doors all his life. CHAPTER V THE PEOPLE OF THE MIRAGE In that remote land where Martin was born, with its bright warm climate and rich soil, no person need go very long hungry--not even a small boy alone and lost on the great grassy plain. For there is a little useful plant in that place, with small leaves like clover leaves and a pretty yellow flower, which bears a wholesome sweet root, about as big as a pigeon's egg and of a pearly white colour. It is so well known to the settlers' children in that desert country that they are always wandering off to the plain to look for it, just as the children in a town are always running off with their halfpence to the sweet-stuff shop. This pretty white root is watery, so that it satisfies both hunger and thirst at the same time. Now when Martin woke next morning, he found a great many of the little three-leaved plants growing close to the spot where he had slept, and they supplied him with a nice sweet breakfast. After he had eaten enough and had amused himself by rolling over and over several times on the grass, he started once more on his travels, going towards the sunrise as fast as he could run. He could run well for a small boy, but he got tired at last and sat down to rest. Then he jumped up and went on again at a trot: this pace he kept up very steadily, only pausing from time to time to watch a flock of small white birds that followed him all the morning out of curiosity. At length he began to feel so hot and tired that he could only walk. Still he kept on; he could see no flowers nor anything pretty in that place--why should he stay in it? He would go on, and on, and on, in spite of the heat, until he came to something. But it grew hotter as the day advanced, and the ground about him more dry and barren and desolate, until at last he came to ground where there was scarcely a blade of grass: it was a great, barren, level plain, covered with a slight crust of salt crystals that glittered in the sun so brightly that it dazzled and pained his eyesight. Here were no sweet watery roots for refreshment, and no berries; nor could Martin find a bush to give him a little shade and protection from the burning noonday sun. He saw one large dark object in the distance, and mistaking it for a bush covered with thick foliage he ran towards it; but suddenly it started up, when he was near, and waving its great grey and white wings like sails, fled across the plain. It was an ostrich! Now this hot, shadeless plain seemed to be the very home and dwelling-place of the False Water. It sparkled and danced all round him so close that there only appeared to be a small space of dry ground for him to walk on; only he was always exactly in the centre of the dry spot; for as he advanced, the glittering whiteness, that looked so like shiny water, flew mockingly before his steps. But he hoped to get to it at last, as every time he flagged in the chase the mysterious figure of the day before appeared again to lure him still further on. At length, unable to move another step, Martin sat right down on the bare ground: it was like sitting on the floor of a heated oven, but there was no help for it, he was so tired. The air was so thick and heavy that he could hardly breathe, even with his mouth wide open like a little gasping bird; and the sky looked like metal, heated to a white heat, and so low down as to make him fancy that if he were to throw up his hands he would touch it and burn his fingers. And the Mirage--oh, how it glistened and quivered here where he had sat down, half blinding him with its brightness! Now that he could no longer run after it, nor even walk, it came to him, breaking round and over him in a thousand fantastic shapes, filling the air with a million white flakes that whirled about as if driven by a furious wind, although not a breath was stirring. They looked like whitest snow-flakes, yet stung his cheeks like sparks of fire. Not only did he see and feel, he could even _hear_ it now: his ears were filled with a humming sound, growing louder and louder every minute, like the noise made by a large colony of bumble-bees when a person carelessly treads on their nest, and they are angered and thrown into a great commotion and swarm out to defend their home. Very soon out of this confused murmur louder, clearer sounds began to rise; and these could be distinguished as the notes of numberless musical instruments, and voices of people singing, talking, and laughing. Then, all at once, there appeared running and skipping over the ground towards him a great company of girls--scores and hundreds of them scattered over the plain, exceeding in loveliness all lovely things that he had ever beheld. Their faces were whiter than lilies, and their loose, fluttering hair looked like a mist of pale shining gold; and their skirts, that rustled as they ran, were also shining like the wings of dragon-flies, and were touched with brown reflections and changing, beautiful tints, such as are seen on soap-bubbles. Each of them carried a silver pitcher, and as they ran and skipped along they dipped their fingers in and sprinkled the desert with water. The bright drops they scattered fell all around in a grateful shower, and flew up again from the heated earth in the form of a white mist touched with rainbow colours, filling the air with a refreshing coolness. At Martin's side there grew a small plant, its grey-green leaves lying wilted on the ground, and one of the girls paused to water it, and as she sprinkled the drops on it she sang:-- "Little weed, little weed, In such need, Must you pain, ask in vain, Die for rain, Never bloom, never seed, Little weed? O, no, no, you shall not die, From the sky With my pitcher down I fly. Drink the rain, grow again, Bloom and seed, Little weed." Martin held up his hot little hands to catch some of the falling drops; then the girl, raising her pitcher, poured a stream of cool water right into his face, and laughing at what she had done, went away with a hop, skip, and jump after her companions. The girls with pitchers had all gone, and were succeeded by troops of boys, just as beautiful, many of them singing and some playing on wind and stringed instruments; and some were running, others quietly walking, and still others riding on various animals--ostriches, sheep, goats, fawns, and small donkeys, all pure white. One boy was riding on a ram, and as he came by, strum-strumming on a little silver-stringed banjo, he sang a very curious song, which made Martin prick up his ears to listen. It was about a speckled snake that lived far away on a piece of waste ground; how day after day he sought for his lost playmate--the little boy that had left him; how he glided this way and that on his smooth, bright belly, winding in and out among the tall wild sunflowers; how he listened for the dear footsteps--listened with his green leaf-shaped, little head raised high among the leaves. But his playmate was far away and came no more to feed him from his basin of bread and milk, and caress his cold, smooth coils with his warm, soft, little hand. Close after the boy on the ram marched four other little boys on foot, holding up long silver trumpets in readiness to blow. One of them stopped, and putting his trumpet down close to Martin's ear, puffed out his little, round cheeks, and blew a blast that made him jump. Laughing at the joke, they passed on, and were succeeded by others and still others, singing, shouting, twanging their instruments, and some of them stopping for a few moments to look at Martin or play some pretty little trick on him. But now all at once Martin ceased to listen or even look at them, for something new and different was coming, something strange which made him curious and afraid at the same time. It was a sound, very deep and solemn, of men's voices singing together a song that was like a dirge and coming nearer and nearer, and it was like the coming of a storm with wind and rain and thunder. Soon he could see them marching through the great crowd of people--old men moving in a slow procession, and they had pale dark faces and their hair and long beards were whiter than snow, and their long flowing robes were of the silvery dark colour of a rain-cloud. Then he saw that the leaders of the procession were followed by others who carried a couch of mother-o'-pearl resting on their shoulders, that on the couch reposed a pale sweet-looking youth dressed in silk clothes of a delicate rose-colour. He also wore crimson shoes, and a tight-fitting apple-green skull cap, which made his head look very small. His eyes were ruby-red, and he had a long slender nose like a snipe's bill, only broad and flattened at the tip. And then Martin saw that he was wounded, for he had one white hand pressed to his side and it was stained with blood, and drops of blood were trickling through his fingers. He was troubled at the sight, and he gazed at him, and listened to the words of that solemn song the old men were singing but could not understand them. Not because he was a child, for no person, however aged and wise and filled with all learning he might be, could have understood that strange song about Wonderful Life and Wonderful Death. Yet there was something in it too which any one who heard it, man or child, could understand; and he understood it, and it went into his heart to make it so heavy and sad that he could have put his little face down on the ground and cried as he had never cried before. But he did not put his face down and cry, for just then the wounded youth looked down on him as they carried him past and smiled a very sweet smile: then Martin felt that he loved him above all the bright and beautiful beings that had passed before him. Then, when he was gone from sight; when the solemn sound of the voices began to grow fainter in the distance like the sound of a storm when it passes away, his heaviness of heart and sorrow left him, and he began to listen to the shouts and cries and clanging of noisy instruments of music swiftly coming nearer and nearer; and then all round and past him came a vast company of youths and maidens singing and playing and shouting and dancing as they moved onwards. They were the most beautiful beings he had ever seen in their shining dresses, some all in white, others in amber-colour, others in sky-blue, and some in still other lovely colours. "The Queen! the Queen!" they were shouting. "Stand up, little boy, and bow to the Queen." "The Queen! Kneel to the Queen, little boy," cried others. Then many others in the company began crying out together, "The Queen! lie down flat on the ground, little boy." "The Queen! Shut your eyes and open your mouth, little boy." "The Queen! Run away as fast as you can, little boy." "Stand on your head to the Queen, little boy!" "Crow like a cock and bark like a dog, little boy!" Trying to obey all these conflicting commands at one and the same time, poor Martin made strange noises and tumbled about this way and that and set them all laughing at him. "The Queen wishes to speak to you--stand up, little boy," said one of the brightest beings, touching Martin on the cheek. There before him, surrounded by all that beautiful company, stood the horses that drew her--great milk-white horses impatiently pawing the dusty ground with their hoofs and proudly champing their gold bridles, tossing the white froth from their mouths. But when he lifted his eyes timidly to the majestic being seated in her chariot before him he was dazzled and overcome with the sight. Her face had a brightness that was like that of the Mirage at noon, and the eyes that gazed on him were like two great opals; she appeared clothed in a white shining mist, and her hair spread wide on her shoulders looked white--whiter than a lamb's fleece, and powdered with fine gold that sparkled and quivered and ran through it like sparks of yellow fire: and on her head she wore a crown that was like a diamond seen by candle-light, or like a dewdrop in the sun, and every moment it changed its colour, and by turns was a red flame, then a green, then a yellow, then a violet. [Illustration: ] "Child, you have followed me far," said the Queen, "and now you are rewarded, for you have looked on my face and I have refreshed you; and the Sun, my father, will never more hurt you for my sake." "He is a naughty boy and unworthy of your goodness," spoke one of the bright beings standing near. "He killed the spoonbill." "He cried for the poor slain bird," replied the Queen. "He will never remember it without grief, and I forgive him." "He went away from his home and thinks no more of his poor old father and mother, who cry for him and are seeking for him on the great plain," continued the voice. "I forgive him," returned the Queen. "He is such a little wanderer--he could not always rest at home." "He emptied a bucketful of water over good old Jacob, who found him and took him in and fed him, and sang to him, and danced to him, and was a second father to him." At that there was great laughter; even the Queen laughed when she said that she forgave him that too. And Martin when he remembered old Jacob, and saw that they only made a joke of it, laughed with them. But the accusing voice still went on: "And when the good old shepherd went to sleep a second time, then the naughty little boy climbed on the table and picked a hole in the thatch and got out and ran away." Another burst of laughter followed; then a youth in a shining, violet-coloured dress suddenly began twanging on his instrument and wildly capering about in imitation of old Jacob's dancing, and while he played and danced he sang-- "Ho, sheep whose ways are known to me, Both ewe and lamb And horned ram Wherever can that Martin be? All day for him I ride Over the plains so wide, And on my horn I blow, Just to let him know That Jacob's on his track, And soon will have him back, I look and look all day, And when I'm home I say: He isn't like a mole To dig himself a hole; Them little legs he's got They can't go far, trot, trot, They can't go far, run run, Oh no, it is his fun; I'm sure he's near, He must be here A-skulking round the house Just like a little mouse. I'll get a mouse-trap in a minute, And bait with cheese that's smelly To bring him helter-skelly-- That little empty belly, And then I'll have him in it. Where have he hid, That little kid, That good old Jacob was so kind to? And when a rest I am inclined to Who'll boil the cow and dig the kittles And milk the stockings, darn the wittles? Who mugs of tea Will drink with me? When round and round I pound the ground With boots of cowhide, boots of thunder, Who'll help to make the noise, I wonder? Who'll join the row Of loud bow-wow With din of tin and copper clatter With bang and whang of pan and platter? O when I find Him fast I'll bind And upside down I'll hold him; And when a-home I gallop late-o I'll give him no more cold potato, But cuff him, box him, bang him, scold him, And drench him with a pail of water, And fill his mouth with wool and mortar, Because he don't do things he oughter, But does the things he ought not to, Then tell me true, Both ram and ewe, Wherever have that Martin got to? For Jacob's old and deaf and dim And never knowed the ways of him." "I forgive him everything," said the Queen very graciously, when the song ended, at which they all laughed. "And now let two of you speak and each bestow a gift on him. He deserves to be rewarded for running so far after us." Then one of those bright beautiful beings came forward and cried out: "He loves wandering; let him have his will and be a wanderer all his days on the face of the earth." "Well spoken!" cried the Queen. "A wanderer he is to be," said another: "let the sea do him no harm--that is my gift." "So be it," said the Queen; "and to your two gifts I shall add a third. Let all men love him. Go now, Martin, you are well equipped, and satisfy your heart with the sight of all the strange and beautiful things the world contains." "Kneel and thank the Queen for her gifts," said a voice to Martin. He dropped on to his knees, but could speak no word; when he raised his eyes again the whole glorious company had vanished. [Illustration: ] The air was cool and fragrant, the earth moist as if a shower had just fallen. He got up and slowly walked onward until near sunset, thinking of nothing but the beautiful people of the Mirage. He had left the barren salt plain behind by now; the earth was covered with yellow grass, and he found and ate some sweet roots and berries. Then feeling very tired, he stretched himself out on his back and began to wonder if what he had seen was nothing but a dream. Yes, it was surely a dream, but then--in his life dreams and realities were so mixed--how was he always to know one from the other? Which was most strange, the Mirage that glittered and quivered round him and flew mockingly before him, or the people of the Mirage he had seen? If you are lying quite still with your eyes shut and some one comes softly up and stands over you, somehow you know it, and open your eyes to see who it is. Just in that way Martin knew that some one had come and was standing over him. Still he kept his eyes shut, feeling sure that it was one of those bright and beautiful beings he had lately seen, perhaps the Queen herself, and that the sight of her shining countenance would dazzle his eyes. Then all at once he thought that it might be old Jacob, who would punish him for running away. He opened his eyes very quickly then. What do you think he saw? An ostrich--that same big ostrich he had seen and startled early in the day! It was standing over him, staring down with its great vacant eyes. Gradually its head came lower and lower down, until at last it made a sudden peck at a metal button on his jacket, and gave such a vigorous tug at it that Martin was almost lifted off the ground. He screamed and gave a jump; but it was nothing to the jump the ostrich gave when he discovered that the button belonged to a living boy. He jumped six feet high into the air and came down with a great flop; then feeling rather ashamed of himself for being frightened at such an insignificant thing as Martin, he stalked majestically away, glancing back, first over one shoulder then the other, and kicking up his heels behind him in a somewhat disdainful manner. Martin laughed, and in the middle of his laugh he fell asleep. CHAPTER VI MARTIN MEETS WITH SAVAGES When, on waking next morning, Martin took his first peep over the grass, there, directly before him, loomed the great blue hills, or Sierras as they are called in that country. He had often seen them, long ago in his distant home on clear mornings, when they had appeared like a blue cloud on the horizon. He had even wished to get to them, to tread their beautiful blue summits that looked as if they would be soft to his feet--softer than the moist springy turf on the plain; but he wished it only as one wishes to get to some far-off impossible place--a white cloud, for instance, or the blue sky itself. Now all at once he unexpectedly found himself near them, and the sight fired him with a new desire. The level plain had nothing half so enchanting as the cloud-like blue airy hills, and very soon he was up on his feet and hurrying towards them. In spite of hurrying he did not seem to get any nearer; still it was pleasant to be always going on and on, knowing that he would get to them at last. He had now left the drier plains behind; the earth was clothed with green and yellow grass easy to the feet, and during the day he found many sweet roots to refresh him. He also found quantities of cam-berries, a round fruit a little less than a cherry in size, bright yellow in colour, and each berry inside a green case or sheath shaped like a heart. They were very sweet. At night he slept once more in the long grass, and when daylight returned he travelled on, feeling very happy there alone--happy to think that he would get to the beautiful hills at last. But only in the early morning would they look distinct and near; later in the day, when the sun grew hot, they would seem further off, like a cloud resting on the earth, which made him think sometimes that they moved on as he went towards them. On the third day he came to a high piece of ground; and when he got to the top and looked over to the other side he saw a broad green valley with a stream of water running in it: on one hand the valley with its gleaming water stretched away as far as he could see, or until it lost itself in the distant haze; but on the other hand, on looking up the valley, there appeared a great forest, looking blue in the distance; and this was the first forest Martin had ever seen. Close by, down in the green valley before him, there was something else to attract his attention, and this was a large group of men and horses. No sooner had he caught sight of them than he set off at a run towards them, greatly excited; and as he drew near they all rose up from the grass where they had been sitting or lying to stare at him, filled with wonder at the sight of that small boy alone in the desert. There were about twenty men and women, and several children; the men were very big and tall, and were dressed only in robes made of the skins of some wild animal; they had broad, flat faces, and dark copper-coloured skins, and their long black hair hung down loose on their backs. These strange, rude-looking people were savages, and are supposed to be cruel and wicked, and to take pleasure in torturing and killing any lost or stray person that falls into their hands; but indeed it is not so, as you shall shortly find. Poor ignorant little Martin, who had never read a book in his life, having always refused to learn his letters, knew nothing about savages, and feared them no more than he had feared old Jacob, or the small spotted snake, the very sight of which had made grown-up people scream and run away. So he marched boldly up and stared at them, and they in turn stared at him out of their great, dark, savage eyes. [Illustration: ] They had just been eating their supper of deer's flesh, roasted on the coals, and after a time one of the savages, as an experiment, took up a bone of meat and offered it to him. Being very hungry he gladly took it, and began gnawing the meat off the bone. When he had satisfied his hunger, he began to look round him, still stared at by the others. Then one of the women, who had a good-humoured face, caught him up, and seating him on her knees, tried to talk to him. "Melu-melumia quiltahou papa shani cha silmata," she spoke, gazing very earnestly into his face. They had all been talking among themselves while he was eating; but he did not know that savages had a language of their own different from ours, and so thought that they had only been amusing themselves with a kind of nonsense talk, which meant nothing. Now when the woman addressed this funny kind of talk to him, he answered her in her own way, as he imagined, readily enough: "Hey diddle-diddle, the cat's in the fiddle, fe fo fi fum, chumpty-chumpty-chum, with bings on her ringers, and tells on her boes." They all listened with grave attention, as if he had said something very important. Then the woman continued: "Huanatopa ana ana quiltahou." To which Martin answered, "Theophilus Thistle, the thistle-sifter, sifted a sieve of unsifted thistles; and if Theophilus--oh, I won't say any more!" Then she said, "Quira-holata silhoa mari changa changa." "Cock-a-doodle-do!" cried Martin, getting tired and impatient. "Baa, baa, black sheep, bow, wow, wow; goosey, goosey gander; see-saw, Mary Daw; chick-a-dee-dee, will you listen to me. And now let me go!" But she held him fast and kept on talking her nonsense language to him, until becoming vexed he caught hold of her hair and pulled it. She only laughed and tossed him up into the air and caught him again, just as he might have tossed and caught a small kitten. At length she released him, for now they were all beginning to lie down by the fire to sleep, as it was getting dark; Martin being very tired settled himself down among them, and as one of the women threw a skin over him he slept very comfortably. Next morning the hills looked nearer than ever just across the river; but little he cared for hills now, and when the little savage children went out to hunt for berries and sweet roots he followed and spent the day agreeably enough in their company. On the afternoon of the second day his new playfellows all threw off their little skin cloaks and plunged into the stream to bathe; and Martin, seeing how much they seemed to enjoy being in the water, undressed himself and went in after them. The water was not too deep in that place, and as it was rare fun splashing about and trying to keep his legs in the swift current and clambering over slippery rocks, he went out some distance from the bank. All at once he discovered that the others had left him, and looking back he saw that they were all scrambling out on to the bank and fighting over his clothes. Back he dashed in haste to rescue his property, but by the time he reached the spot they had finished dividing the spoil, and jumping up they ran away and scattered in all directions, one wearing his jacket, another his knickerbockers, another his shirt and one sock, another his cap and shoes, and the last the one remaining sock only. In vain he pursued and called after them; and at last he was compelled to follow them unclothed to the camping ground, where he presented himself crying piteously; but the women who had been so kind to him would not help him now, and only laughed to see how white his skin looked by contrast with the dark copper-coloured skins of the other children. At length one of them compassionately gave him a small soft-furred skin of some wild animal, and fastened it on him like a cloak; and this he was compelled to wear with shame and grief, feeling very strange and uncomfortable in it. But the feeling of discomfort in that new savage dress was nothing to the sense of injury that stung him, and in his secret heart he was determined not to lose his own clothes. When the children went out next day he followed them, watching and waiting for a chance to recover anything that belonged to him; and at last, seeing the little boy who wore his cap off his guard, he made a sudden rush, and snatching it off the young savage's head, put it firmly upon his own. But the little savage now regarded that cap as his very own: he had taken it by force or stratagem, and had worn it on his head since the day before, and that made it his property; and so at Martin he went, and they fought stoutly together, and being nearly of a size, he could not conquer the little white boy. Then he cried out to the others to help him, and they came and overthrew Martin, and deprived him not only of his cap, but of his little skin cloak as well, and then punished him until he screamed aloud with pain. Leaving him crying on the ground, they ran back to the camp. He followed shortly afterwards, but got no sympathy, for, as a rule, grown-up savages do not trouble themselves very much about these little matters: they leave their children to settle their own disputes. During the rest of that day Martin sulked by himself behind a great tussock of grass, refusing to eat with the others, and when one of the women went to him and offered him a piece of meat he struck it vindictively out of her hand. She only laughed a little and left him. Now when the sun was setting, and he was beginning to feel very cold and miserable in his nakedness, the men were seen returning from the hunt; but instead of riding slowly to the camp as on other days, they came riding furiously and shouting. The moment they were seen and their shouts heard the women jumped up and began hastily packing the skins and all their belongings into bundles; and in less than ten minutes the whole company was mounted on horseback and ready for flight. One of the men picked Martin up and placed him on the horse's back before him, and then they all started at a swift canter up the valley towards that great blue forest in the distance. In about an hour they came to it: it was then quite dark, the sky powdered with numberless stars; but when they got among the trees the blue, dusky sky and brilliant stars disappeared from sight, as if a black cloud had come over them, so dark was it in the forest. For the trees were very tall and mingled their branches overhead; but they had got into a narrow path known to them, and moving slowly in single file, they kept on for about two hours longer, then stopped and dismounted under the great trees, and lying down all close together, went to sleep. Martin, lying among them, crept under the edge of one of the large skin robes and, feeling warm, he soon fell fast asleep and did not wake till daylight. [Illustration: ] CHAPTER VII ALONE IN THE GREAT FOREST Imagine to yourself one accustomed to live in the great treeless plain, accustomed to open his eyes each morning to the wide blue sky and the brilliant sunlight, now for the first time opening them in that vast gloomy forest, where neither wind nor sunlight came, and no sound was heard, and twilight lasted all day long! All round him were trees with straight, tall grey trunks, and behind and beyond them yet other trees--trees everywhere that stood motionless like pillars of stone supporting the dim green roof of foliage far above. It was like a vast gloomy prison in which he had been shut, and he longed to make his escape to where he could see the rising sun and feel the fanning wind on his cheeks. He looked round at the others: they were all stretched on the ground still in a deep sleep, and it frightened him a little to look at their great, broad, dark faces framed in masses of black hair. He felt that he hated them, for they had treated him badly: the children had taken his clothes, compelling him to go naked, and had beaten and bruised him, and he had not been pitied and helped by their elders. By and by, very quietly and cautiously he crept away from among them, and made his escape into the gloomy wood. On one side the forest shadows looked less dark than the other, and on that side he went, for it was the side on which the sun rose, and the direction he had been travelling when he first met with the savages. On and on he went, over the thick bed of dark decaying leaves, which made no rustling sound, looking like a little white ghost of a boy in that great gloomy wood. But he came to no open place, nor did he find anything to eat when hunger pressed him; for there were no sweet roots and berries there, nor any plant that he had ever seen before. It was all strange and gloomy, and very silent. Not a leaf trembled; for if one had trembled near him he would have heard it whisper in that profound stillness that made him hold his breath to listen. But sometimes at long intervals the silence would be broken by a sound that made him start and stand still and wonder what had caused it. For the rare sounds in the forest were unlike any sounds he had heard before. Three or four times during the day a burst of loud, hollow, confused laughter sounded high up among the trees; but he saw nothing, although most likely the creature that had laughed saw him plainly enough from its hiding-place in the deep shadows as it ran up the trunks of the trees. [Illustration: ] At length he came to a river about thirty or forty yards wide; and this was the same river that he had bathed in many leagues further down in the open valley. It is called by the savages Co-viota-co-chamanga, which means that it runs partly in the dark and partly in the light. Here it was in the dark. The trees grew thick and tall on its banks, and their wide branches met and intermingled above its waters that flowed on without a ripple, black to the eye as a river of ink. How strange it seemed when, holding on to a twig, he bent over and saw himself reflected--a white, naked child with a scared face--in that black mirror! Overcome by thirst, he ventured to creep down and dip his hand in the stream, and was astonished to see that the black water looked as clear as crystal in his hollow hand. After quenching his thirst he went on, following the river now, for it had made him turn aside; but after walking for an hour or more he came to a great tree that had fallen across the stream, and climbing on to the slippery trunk, he crept cautiously over and then went gladly on in the old direction. Now, after he had crossed the river and walked a long distance, he came to a more open part; but though it was nice to feel the sunshine on him again, the underwood and grass and creepers trailing over the ground made it difficult and tiring to walk, and in this place a curious thing happened. Picking his way through the tangled herbage, an animal his footsteps had startled scuttled away in great fear, and as it went he caught a glimpse of it. It was a kind of weasel, but very large--larger than a big tom-cat, and all over as black as the blackest cat. Looking down he discovered that this strange animal had been feasting on eggs. The eggs were nearly as large as fowls', of a deep green colour, with polished shells. There had been about a dozen in the nest, which was only a small hollow in the ground lined with dry grass, but most of them had been broken, and the contents devoured by the weasel. Only two remained entire, and these he took, and tempted by his hunger, soon broke the shells at the small end and sucked them clean. They were raw, but never had eggs, boiled, fried, or poached, tasted so nice before! He had just finished his meal, and was wishing that a third egg had remained in the ruined nest, when a slight sound like the buzzing of an insect made him look round, and there, within a few feet of him, was the big black weasel once more, looking strangely bold and savage-tempered. It kept staring fixedly at Martin out of its small, wicked, beady black eyes, and snarling so as to show its white sharp teeth; and very white they looked by contrast with the black lips, and nose, and hair. Martin stared back at it, but it kept moving and coming nearer, now sitting straight up, then dropping its fore-feet and gathering its legs in a bunch as if about to spring, and finally stretching itself straight out towards him again, its round flat head and long smooth body making it look like a great black snake crawling towards him. And all the time it kept on snarling and clicking its sharp teeth and uttering its low, buzzing growl. Martin grew more and more afraid, it looked so strong and angry, so unspeakably fierce. The creature looked as if he was speaking to Martin, saying something very easy to understand, and very dreadful to hear. This is what it seemed to be saying:-- "Ha, you came on me unawares, and startled me away from the nest I found! You have eaten the last two eggs; and I found them, and they were mine! Must I go hungry for you--starveling, robber! A miserable little boy alone and lost in the forest, naked, all scratched and bleeding with thorns, with no courage in his heart, no strength in his hands! Look at me! I am not weak, but strong and black and fierce; I live here--this is my home; I fear nothing; I am like a serpent, and like brass and tempered steel--nothing can bruise or break me: my teeth are like fine daggers; when I strike them into the flesh of any creature I never loose my hold till I have sucked out all the blood in his heart. But you, weak little wretch, I hate you! I thirst for your blood for stealing my food from me! What can you do to save yourself? Down, down on the ground, chicken-heart, where I can get hold of you! You shall pay me for the eggs with your life! I shall hold you fast by the throat, and drink and drink until I see your glassy eyes close, and your cheeks turn whiter than ashes, and I feel your heart flutter like a leaf in your bosom! Down, down!" It was terrible to watch him and seem to hear such words. He was nearer now--scarcely a yard away, still with his beady glaring eyes fixed on Martin's face: and Martin was powerless to fly from him--powerless even to stir a step or to lift a hand. His heart jumped so that it choked him, his hair stood up on his head, and he trembled so that he was ready to fall. And at last, when about to fall to the ground, in the extremity of his terror, he uttered a great scream of despair; and the sudden scream so startled the weasel, that he jumped up and scuttled away as fast as he could through the creepers and bushes, making a great rustling over the dead leaves and twigs; and Martin, recovering his strength, listened to that retreating sound as it passed away into the deep shadows, until it ceased altogether. CHAPTER VIII THE FLOWER AND THE SERPENT His escape from the horrible black animal made Martin quite happy, in spite of hunger and fatigue, and he pushed on as bravely as ever. But it was slow going and very difficult, even painful in places, on account of the rough thorny undergrowth, where he had to push and crawl through the close bushes, and tread on ground littered with old dead prickly leaves and dead thorny twigs. After going on for about an hour in this way, he came to a stream, a branch of the river he had left, and much shallower, so that he could easily cross from side to side, and he could also see the bright pebbles under the clear swift current. The stream appeared to run from the east, the way he wished to travel towards the hills, so that he could keep by it, which he wras glad enough to do, as it was nice to get a drink of water whenever he felt thirsty, and to refresh his tired and sore little feet in the stream. Following this water he came before very long to a place in the forest where there was little or no underwood, but only low trees and bushes scattered about, and all the ground moist and very green and fresh like a water-meadow. It was indeed pleasant to feel his feet on the soft carpet of grass, and stooping, he put his hands down on it, and finally lying down he rolled on it so as to have the nice sensation of the warm soft grass all over his body. So agreeable was it lying and rolling about in that open green place with the sweet sunshine on him, that he felt no inclination to get up and travel on. It was so sweet to rest after all his strivings and sufferings in that great dark forest! So sweet was it that he pretty soon fell asleep, and no doubt slept a long time, for when he woke, the sun, which had been over his head, was now far down in the west. It was very still, and the air warm and fragrant at that hour, with the sun shining through the higher branches of the trees on the green turf where he was lying. How green it was--the grass, the trees, every tiny blade and every leaf was like a piece of emerald green glass with the sun shining through it! So wonderful did it seem to him--the intense greenness, the brilliant sunbeams that shone into his eyes, and seemed to fill him with brightness, and the stillness of the forest, that he sat up and stared about him. What did it mean--that brightness and stillness? Then, at a little distance away, he caught sight of something on a tree of a shining golden yellow colour. Jumping up he ran to the tree, and found that it was half overgrown with a very beautiful climbing plant, with leaves divided like the fingers of a hand, and large flowers and fruit, both green and ripe. The ripe fruit was as big as a duck's egg, and the same shape, and of a shining yellow colour. Reaching up his hand he began to feel the smooth lovely fruit, when, being very ripe, it came off its stem into his hand. It smelt very nice, and then, in his hunger, he bit through the smooth rind with his teeth, and it tasted as nice as it looked. He quickly ate it, and then pulled another and ate that, and then another, and still others, until he could eat no more. He had not had so delicious a meal for many a long day. Not until he had eaten his fill did Martin begin to look closely at the flowers on the plant. It was the passion-flower, and he had never seen it before, and now that he looked well at it he thought it the loveliest and strangest flower he had ever beheld; not brilliant and shining, jewel-like, in the sun, like the scarlet verbena of the plains, or some yellow flower, but pale and misty, the petals being of a dim greenish cream-colour, with a large blue circle in the centre; and the blue, too, was misty like the blue haze in the distance on a summer day. To see and admire it better he reached out his hand and tried to pluck one of the flowers; then in an instant he dropped his hand, as if he had been pricked by a thorn. But there was no thorn and nothing to hurt him; he dropped his hand only because he felt that he had hurt the flower. Moving a step back he stared at it, and the flower seemed like a thing alive that looked back at him, and asked him why he had hurt it. "O, poor flower!" said Martin, and, coming closer he touched it gently with his finger-tips; and then, standing on tiptoe, he touched its petals with his lips, just as his mother had often and often kissed his little hand when he had bruised it or pricked it with a thorn. Then, while still standing by the plant, on bringing his eyes down to the ground he spied a great snake lying coiled up on a bed of moss on the sunny side of the same tree where the plant was growing. He remembered the dear little snake he had once made a friend of, and he did not feel afraid, for he thought that all snakes must be friendly towards him, although this was a very big one, thicker than his arm and of a different colour. It was a pale olive-green, like the half-dry moss it was lying on, with a pattern of black and brown mottling along its back. It was lying coiled round and round, with its flat arrow-shaped head resting on its coils, and its round bright eyes fixed on Martin's face. The sun shining on its eyes made them glint like polished jewels or pieces of glass, and when Martin moved nearer and stood still, or when he drew back and went to this side or that, those brilliant glinting eyes were still on his face, and it began to trouble him, until at last he covered his face with his hands. Then he opened his fingers enough to peep through them, and still those glittering eyes were fixed on him. [Illustration: ] Martin wondered if the snake was vexed with him for coming there, and why it watched him so steadily with those shining eyes. "Will you please look some other way?" he said at last, but the snake would not, and so he turned from it, and then it seemed to him that everything was alive and watching him in the same intent way--the passion-flowers, the green leaves, the grass, the trees, the wide sky, the great shining sun. He listened, and there was no sound in the wood, not even the hum of a fly or wild bee, and it was so still that not a leaf moved. Finally he moved away from that spot, but treading very softly, and holding his breath to listen, for it seemed to him that the forest had something to tell him, and that if he listened he would hear the leaves speaking to him. And by-and-by he did hear a sound: it came from a spot about a hundred yards away, and was like the sound of a person crying. Then came low sobs which rose and fell and then ceased, and after a silent interval began again. Perhaps it was a child, lost there in the forest like himself. Going softly to the spot he discovered that the sobbing sounds came from the other side of a low tree with widespread branches, a kind of acacia with thin loose foliage, but he could not see through it, and so he went round the tree to look, and startled a dove which flew off with a loud clatter of its wings. When the dove had flown away it was again very silent. What was he to do? He was too tired now to walk much farther, and the sun was getting low, so that all the ground was in shadow. He went on a little way looking for some nice shelter where he could pass the night, but could not find one. At length, when the sun had set and the dark was coming, he came upon an old half-dead tree, where there was a hollow at the roots, lined with half dry moss, very soft to his foot, and it seemed a nice place to sleep in. But he had no choice, for he was afraid of going further in the dark among the trees; and so, creeping into the hollow among the old roots, he curled himself up as comfortably as he could, and soon began to get very drowsy, in spite of having no covering to keep him warm. But although very tired and sleepy, he did not go quite to sleep, for he had never been all alone in a wood by night before, and it was different from the open plain where he could see all round, even at night, and where he had feared nothing. Here the trees looked strange and made strange black shadows, and he thought that the strange people of the wood were perhaps now roaming about and would find him there. He did not want them to find him fast asleep; it was better to be awake, so that when they came he could jump up and run away and hide himself from them. Once or twice a slight rustling sound made him start and think that at last some one was coming to him, stealing softly so as to catch him unawares, but he could see nothing moving, and when he held his breath to listen there was no sound. [Illustration: ] Then all at once, just when he had almost dropped off, a great cry sounded at a distance, and made him start up wide awake again. "O look! look! look!" cried the voice in a tone so deep and strange and powerful that no one could have heard it without terror, for it seemed to be uttered by some forest monster twenty times bigger than an ordinary man. In a moment an answer came from another part of the wood. "What's that?" cried the answering voice; and then another voice cried, and then others far and near, all shouting "What's that?" and for only answer the first voice shouted once more, "O look! look! look!" Poor Martin, trembling with fright, crouched lower down in his mossy bed, thinking that the awful people of the forest must have seen him, and would be upon him in a few moments. But though he stared with wide-open eyes into the gloom he could see nothing but the trees, standing silent and motionless, and no sound of approaching footsteps could he hear. After that it was silent again for a while, and he began to hope that they had given up looking for him; when suddenly, close by, sounded a loud startling "Who's that?" and he gave himself up for lost. For he was too terrified to jump up and run away, as he had thought to do: he could only lie still, his teeth chattering, his hair standing up on his head. "Who's that?" exclaimed the terrible voice once more, and then he saw a big black shape drop down from the tree above and settle on a dead branch a few feet above his hiding-place. It was a bird--a great owl, for now he could see it, sharply outlined against the clear starry sky; and the bird had seen and was peering curiously at him. And now all his fear was gone, for he could not be afraid of an owl; he had been accustomed to see owls all his life, only they were small, and this owl of the forest was as big as an eagle, and had a round head and ears like a cat, and great cat-like eyes that shone in the dark. The owl kept staring at Martin for some time, swaying his body this way and that, and lowering then raising his head so as to get a better view. And Martin, on his side, stared back at the owl, and at last he exclaimed, "O what a great big owl you are! Please say _Who's that_? again." But before the owl said anything Martin was fast asleep in his mossy bed. CHAPTER IX THE BLACK PEOPLE OF THE SKY Whether or not the great owl went on shouting _O look! look! look_! and asking _What's that_? and _Who's that_? all night, Martin did not know. He was fast asleep until the morning sun shone on his face and woke him, and as he had no clothes and shoes to put on he was soon up and out. First he took a drink of water, then, feeling very hungry he went back to the place where he had found the ripe fruit and made a very good breakfast. After that he set out once more through the wood towards sunrise, still following the stream. Before long the wood became still more open, and at last to his great joy he found that he had got clear of it, and was once more on the great open plain. And now the hills were once more in sight--those great blue hills where he wished to be, looking nearer and larger than before, but they still looked blue like great banks of cloud and were a long distance away. But he was determined to get to them, to climb up their steep sides, and by and by when he found the stream bent away to the south, he left it so as to go on straight as he could to the hills. Away from the water-side the ground was higher, and very flat and covered with dry yellow grass. Over this yellow plain he walked for hours, resting at times, but finding no water and no sweet roots to quench his thirst, until he was too tired to walk any further, and so he sat down on the dry grass under that wide blue sky. There was not a cloud on it--nothing but the great globe of the sun above him; and there was no wind and no motion in the yellow grass blades, and no sight or sound of any living creature. Martin lying on his back gazed up at the blue sky, keeping his eyes from the sun, which was too bright for them, and after a time he did see something moving--a small black spot no bigger than a fly moving in a circle. But he knew it was something big, but at so great a height from the earth as to look like a fly. And then he caught sight of a second black speck, then another and another, until he could make out a dozen or twenty, or more, all moving in wide circles at that vast height. Martin thought they must be the black people of the sky; he wondered why they were black and not white, like white birds, or blue, and of other brilliant colours like the people of the Mirage. Now it was impossible for Martin to lie like that, following those small black spots on the hot blue sky as they wheeled round and round continuously, without giving his eyes a little rest by shutting them at intervals. By-and-by he kept them shut a little too long; he fell asleep, and when he woke he didn't wake fully in a moment; he remained lying motionless just as before, with eyes still closed, but the lids just raised enough to enable him to see about him. And the sight that met his eyes was very curious. He was no longer alone in that solitary place. There were people all round him, dozens and scores of little black men about two feet in height, of a very singular appearance. They had bald heads and thin hatchet faces, wrinkled and warty, and long noses; and they all wore black silk clothes--coat, waistcoat and knickerbockers, but without shoes and stockings; their thin black legs and feet were bare; nor did they have anything on their bald heads. They were gathered round Martin in a circle, but a very wide circle quite twenty to thirty feet away from him, and some were walking about, others standing alone or in groups, talking together, and all looking at Martin. Only one who appeared to be the most important person of the company kept inside the circle, and whenever one or more of the others came forward a few steps he held up his hand and begged them to go back a little. "We must not be in a hurry," he said. "We must wait." "Wait for what?" asked one. "For what may happen," said the important one. "I must ask you again to leave it to me to decide when it is time to begin." Then he strutted up and down in the open space, turning now towards his fellows and again to Martin, moving his head about to get a better sight of his face. Then, putting his hand down between his coat and waistcoat he drew out a knife with a long shining blade, and holding it from him looked attentively at it. By and by he breathed gently on the bright blade, then pulling out a black silk pocket handkerchief wiped off the stain of his breath, and turning the blade about made it glitter in the sun. Then he put it back under his coat and resumed his walk up and down. "We are getting very hungry," said one of the others at length. "Very hungry indeed!" cried another. "Some of us have not tasted food these three days." "It certainly does seem hard," said yet another, "to see our dinner before us and not be allowed to touch it." "Not so fast, my friends, I beg," exclaimed the man with the knife. "I have already explained the case, and I do think you are a little unfair in pressing me as you do." Thus rebuked they consulted together, then one of them spoke. "If, sir, you consider us unfair, or that we have not full confidence in you, would it not be as well to get some other person to take your place?" "Yes, I am ready to do that," returned the important one promptly; and here, drawing forth the knife once more, he held it out towards them. But instead of coming forward to take it they all recoiled some steps, showing considerable alarm. And then they all began protesting that they were not complaining of him, that they were satisfied with their choice, and could not have put the matter in abler hands. "I am pleased at your good opinion," said the important one. "I may tell you that I am no chicken. I first saw the light in September, 1739, and, as you know, we are now within seven months and thirteen days of the end of the first decade of the second half of the nineteenth century. You may infer from this that I have had a pretty extensive experience, and I promise you that when I come to cut the body up you will not be able to say that I have made an unfair distribution, or that any one has been left without his portion." [Illustration: ] All murmured approval, and then one of the company asked if he would be allowed to bespeak the liver for his share. "No, sir, certainly not," replied the other. "Such matters must be left to my discretion entirely, and I must also remind you that there is such a thing as the _carver's privilege_, and it is possible that in this instance he may think fit to retain the liver for his own consumption." After thus asserting himself he began to examine the blade of his knife which he still held in his hand, and to breathe gently on it, and wipe it with his handkerchief to make it shine brighter in the sun. Finally, raising his arm, he flourished it and then made two or three stabs and lunges in the air, then walking on tiptoe he adyanced to Martin lying so still on the yellow grass in the midst of that black-robed company, the hot sun shining on his naked white body. The others all immediately pressed forward, craning their necks and looking highly excited: they were expecting great things; but when the man with a knife had got quite close to Martin he was seized with fear and made two or three long jumps back to where the others were; and then, recovering from his alarm, he quietly put back the knife under his coat. "We really thought you were going to begin," said one of the crowd. "Oh no; no indeed; not just yet," said the other. "It is very disappointing," remarked one. The man with the knife turned on him and replied with dignity, "I am really surprised at such a remark after all I have said on the subject. I do wish you would consider the circumstances of the case. They are peculiar, for this person--this Martin--is not an ordinary person. We have been keeping our eyes on him for some time past, and have witnessed some remarkable actions on his part, to put it mildly. Let us keep in mind the boldness, the resource, the dangerous violence he has displayed on so many occasions since he took to his present vagabond way of life." "It appears to me," said one of the others, "that if Martin is dead we need not concern ourselves about his character and desperate deeds in the past." "_If_ he is dead!" exclaimed the other sharply. "That is the very point,--_is_ he dead? Can you confidently say that he is not in a sound sleep, or in a dead faint, or shamming and ready at the first touch of the knife to leap up and seize his assailant--I mean his carver--by the throat and perhaps murder him as he once murdered a spoonbill?" "That would be very dreadful," said one. "But surely," said another, "there are means of telling whether a person is dead or not? One simple and effectual method, which I have heard, is to place a hand over the heart to feel if it still beats." "Yes, I know, I have also heard of that plan. Very simple, as you say; but who is to try it? I invite the person who makes the suggestion to put it in practice." "With pleasure," said the other, coming forward with a tripping gait and an air of not being in the least afraid. But on coming near the supposed corpse he paused to look round at the others, then pulling out his black silk handkerchief he wiped his black wrinkled forehead and bald head. "Whew!" he exclaimed, "it's very hot to-day." "I don't find it so," said the man with the knife. "It is sometimes a matter of nerves." It was not a very nice remark, but it had the effect of bracing the other up, and moving forward a little more he began anxiously scrutinizing Martin's face. The others now began to press forward, but were warned by the man with a knife not to come too near. Then the bold person who had undertaken to feel Martin's heart doubled back the silk sleeve of his coat, and after some further preparation extended his arm and made two or three preliminary passes with his trembling hand at a distance of a foot or so from the breast of the corpse. Then he approached it a little nearer, but before it came to the touching point a sudden fear made him start back. "What is it? What did you see?" cried the others. "I'm not sure there wasn't a twitch of the eyelid," he replied. "Never mind the eyelid--feel his heart," said one. "That's all very well," he returned, "but how would you like it yourself? Will _you_ come and do it?" "No, no!" they all cried. "You have undertaken this, and must go through with it." Thus encouraged, he once more turned to the corpse, and again anxiously began to examine the face. Now Martin had been watching them through the slits of his not quite closed eyes all the time, and listening to their talk. Being hungry himself he could not help feeling for them, and not thinking that it would hurt him to be cut up in pieces and devoured, he had begun to wish that they would really begin on him. He was both amused and annoyed at their nervousness, and at last opening wide his eyes very suddenly he cried, "Feel my heart!" It was as if a gun had been fired among them; for a moment they were struck still with terror, and then all together turned and fled, going away with three very long hops, and then opening wide their great wings they launched themselves on the air. For they were not little black men in black silk clothes as it had seemed, but vultures--those great, high-soaring, black-plumaged birds which he had watched circling in the sky, looking no bigger than bees or flies at that vast distance above the earth. And when he was watching them they were watching him, and after he had fallen asleep they continued moving round and round in the sky for hours, and seeing him lying so still on the plain they at last imagined that he was dead, and one by one they closed or half-closed their wings and dropped, gliding downwards, growing larger in appearance as they neared the ground, until the small black spots no bigger than flies were seen to be great black birds as big as turkeys. But you see Martin was not dead after all, and so they had to go away without their dinner. CHAPTER X A TROOP OF WILD HORSES It seemed so lonely to Martin when the vultures had gone up out of sight in the sky, so silent and solitary on that immense level plain, that he could not help wishing them back for the sake of company. They were an amusing people when they were walking round him, conversing together, and trying without coming too near to discover whether he was dead or only sleeping. All that day it was just as lonely, for though he went on as far as he could before night, he was still on that great level plain of dry yellow grass which appeared to have no end, and the blue hills looked no nearer than when he had started in the morning. He was hungry and thirsty that evening, and very cold too when he nestled down on the ground with nothing to cover him but the little heap of dry grass he had gathered for his bed. It was better next day, for after walking two or three hours he came to the end of that yellow plain to higher ground, where the earth was sandy and barren, with a few scattered bushes growing on it--dark, prickly bushes like butcher's broom. When he got to the highest part of this barren ground he saw a green valley beyond, stretching away as far as he could see on either hand. But it was nice to see a green place again, and going down into the valley he managed to find some sweet roots to stay his hunger and thirst; then, after a rest, he went on again, and when he got to the top of the high ground beyond the valley, he saw another valley before him, just like the one he had left behind. Again he rested in that green place, and then slowly went up the high land beyond, where it was barren and sandy with the dark stiff prickly bushes growing here and there, and when he got to the top he looked down, and behold! there was yet another green valley stretching away to the right and left as far as he could see. Would they never end--these high barren ridges and the long green valleys between! When he toiled slowly up out of this last green resting-place it was growing late in the day, and he was very tired. Then he came to the top of another ridge like the others, only higher and more barren, and when he could see the country beyond, lo! another valley, greener and broader than those he had left behind, and a river flowing in it, looking like a band of silver lying along the green earth--a river too broad for him to cross, stretching away north and south as far as he could see. How then should he ever be able to get to the hills, still far, far away beyond that water? Martin stared at the scene before him for some time; then, feeling very tired and weak, he sat down on the sandy ground beside a scanty dark bush. Tears came to his eyes: he felt them running down his cheeks; and all at once he remembered how long before when his wandering began, he had dropped a tear, and a small dusty beetle had refreshed himself by drinking it. He bent down and let a tear drop, and watched it as it sank into the ground, but no small beetle came out to drink it, and he felt more lonely and miserable than ever. He began to think of all the queer creatures and people he had met in the desert, and to wish for them. Some of them had not been very kind to him, but he did not remember that now, it was so sad to be quite alone in the world without even a small beetle to visit him. He remembered the beautiful people of the Mirage and the black people of the sky; and the ostrich, and old Jacob, and the savages, and the serpent, and the black weasel in the forest. He stood up and stared all round to see if anything was coming, but he could see nothing and hear nothing. By-and-by, in that deep silence, there was a sound; it seemed to come from a great distance, it was so faint. Then it grew louder and nearer; and far away he saw a little cloud of dust, and then, even through the dust, dark forms coming swiftly towards him. The sound he heard was like a long halloo, a cry like the cry of a man, but wild and shrill, like a bird's cry; and whenever that cry was uttered, it was followed by a strange confused noise as of the neighing of many horses. They were, in truth, horses that were coming swiftly towards him--a herd of sixty or seventy wild horses. He could see and hear them only too plainly now, looking very terrible in their strength and speed, and the flowing black manes that covered them like a black cloud, as they came thundering on, intending perhaps to sweep over him and trample him to death with their iron-hard hoofs. All at once, when they were within fifty yards of Martin, the long, shrill, wild cry went up again, and the horses swerved to one side, and went sweeping round him in a wide circle. Then, as they galloped by, he caught sight of the strangest-looking being he had ever seen, a man, on the back of one of the horses; naked and hairy, he looked like a baboon as he crouched, doubled up, gripping the shoulders and neck of the horse with his knees, clinging with his hands to the mane, and craning his neck like a flying bird. It was this strange rider who had uttered the long piercing man-and-bird-like cries; and now changing his voice to a whinnying sound the horses came to a stop, and gathering together in a crowd they stood tossing their manes and staring at Martin with their wild, startled eyes. In another moment the wild rider came bounding out from among them, and moving now erect, now on all fours, came sideling up to Martin, flinging his arms and legs about, wagging his head, grimacing and uttering whinnying and other curious noises. Never had Martin looked upon so strange a man! He was long and lean so that you could have counted his ribs, and he was stark naked, except for the hair of his head and face, which half covered him. His skin was of a yellowish brown colour, and the hair the colour of old dead grass; and it was coarse and tangled, falling over his shoulders and back and covering his forehead like a thatch, his big brown nose standing out beneath it like a beak. The face was covered with the beard which was tangled too, and grew down to his waist, After staring at Martin for some time with his big, yellow, goat-like eyes, he pranced up to him and began to sniff round him, then touched him with his nose on his face, arms, and shoulders. [Illustration: ] "Who are you?" said Martin in astonishment. For only answer the other squealed and whinnied, grimacing and kicking his legs up at the same time. Then the horses advanced to them, and gathering round in a close crowd began touching Martin with their noses. He liked it--the softness of their sensitive skins, which were like velvet, and putting up his hands he began to stroke their noses. Then one by one, after smelling him, and being touched by his hand, they turned away, and going down into the valley were soon scattered about, most of them grazing, some rolling, others lying stretched out on the grass as if to sleep; while the young foals in the troop, leaving their dams, began playing about and challenging one another to run a race. Martin, following and watching them, almost wished that he too could go on four legs to join them in their games. He trusted those wild horses, but he was still puzzled by that strange man, who had also left him now and was going quietly round on all fours, smelling at the grass. By-and-by he found something to his liking in a small patch of tender green clover, which he began nosing and tearing it up with his teeth, then turning his head round he stared back at Martin, his jaws working vigorously all the time, the stems and leaves of the clover he was eating sticking out from his mouth and hanging about his beard. All at once he jumped up, and flying back at Martin, snatched him up from the ground, carried him to the clover patch, and set him upon it, face down, on all fours; then when Martin sat up he grasped him by the head and forced it down until his nose was on the grass so as to make him smell it and know that it was good. But smell it he would not, and finally the other seized him roughly again and, opening his mouth, forced a bunch of grass into it. [Illustration: ] "It's grass, and I sha'n't eat it!" screamed Martin, crying with anger at being so treated, and spewing the green stuff out of his mouth. Then the man released him, and, withdrawing a space of two or three yards, sat down on his haunches, and, planting his bony elbows on his knees, thrust his great brown fingers in his tangled hair, and stared at Martin with his big yellow goat's eyes for a long time. Suddenly a wild excited look came into his eyes, and, leaping up with a shrill cry, which caused all the horses to look round at him, he once more snatched Martin up, and holding him firmly gripped to his ribby side by his arm, bounded off to where a mare was standing giving suck to her young foal. With a vigorous kick he sent the foal away, and forced Martin to take his place, and, to make it easier for him, pressed the teat into his mouth. Martin was not accustomed to feed in that way, and he not only refused to suck, but continued to cry with indignation at such treatment, and to struggle with all his little might to free himself. His striving was all in vain; and by-and-by the man, seeing that he would not suck, had a fresh idea, and, gripping Martin more firmly than ever, with one hand forced and held his mouth open, and with the other drew a stream of milk into it. After choking and spluttering and crying more than ever for a while, Martin began to grow quiet, and to swallow the milk with some satisfaction, for he was very hungry and thirsty, and it tasted very good. By-and-by, when no more milk could be drawn from the teats, he was taken to a second mare, from which the foal was kicked away with as little ceremony as the first one, and then he had as much more milk as he wanted, and began to like being fed in this amusing way. Of what happened after that Martin did not know much, except that the man seemed very happy after feeding him. He set Martin on the back of a horse, then jumped and danced round him, making funny chuckling noises, after which he rolled horse-like on the grass, his arms and legs up in the air, and finally, pulling Martin down, he made him roll too. But the little fellow was too tired to keep his eyes any longer open, and when he next opened them it was morning, and he found himself lying wedged in between a mare and her young foal lying side by side close together. There too was the wild man, coiled up like a sleeping dog, his head pillowed on the foal's neck, and the hair of his great shaggy beard thrown like a blanket over Martin. He very soon grew accustomed to the new strange manner of life, and even liked it. Those big, noble-looking wild horses, with their shining coats, brown and bay and black and sorrel and chestnut, and their black manes and tails that swept the grass when they moved, were so friendly to him that he could not help loving them. As he went about among them when they grazed, every horse he approached would raise his head and touch his face and arms with his nose. "O you dear horse!" Martin would exclaim, rubbing the warm, velvet-soft, sensitive nose with his hand. He soon discovered that they were just as fond of play as he was, and that he too was to take part in their games. Having fed as long as they wanted that morning, they all at once began to gather together, coming at a gallop, neighing shrilly; then the wild man, catching Martin up, leaped upon the back of one of the horses, and away went the whole troop at a furious pace to the great open dry plain, where Martin had met with them on the previous day. Now it was very terrifying for him at first to be in the midst of that flying crowd, as the animals went tearing over the plain, which seemed to shake beneath their thundering hoofs, while their human leader cheered them on with his shrill, repeated cries. But in a little while he too caught the excitement, and, losing all his fear, was as wildly happy as the others, crying out at the top of his voice in imitation of the wild man. After an hour's run they returned to the valley, and then Martin, without being compelled to do so, rolled about on the grass, and went after the young foals when they came out to challenge one another to a game. He tried to do as they did, prancing and throwing up his heels and snorting, but when they ran from him they soon left him hopelessly behind. Meanwhile the wild man kept watch over him, feeding him with mare's milk, and inviting him from time to time to smell and taste the tender grass. Best of all was, when they went for another run in the evening, and when Martin was no longer held with a tight grip against the man's side, but was taught or allowed to hold on, clinging with his legs to the man's body and clasping him round the neck with his arms, his fingers tightly holding on to the great shaggy beard. Three days passed in this way, and if his time had been much longer with the wild horses he would have become one of the troop, and would perhaps have eaten grass too, and forgotten his human speech, or that he was a little boy born to a very different kind of life. But it was not to be, and in the end he was separated from the troop by accident. At the end of the third day, when the sun was setting, and all the horses were scattered about in the valley, quietly grazing, something disturbed them. It might have been a sight or sound of some feared object, or perhaps the wind had brought the smell of their enemies and hunters from a great distance to their nostrils. Suddenly they were all in a wild commotion, galloping from all sides toward their leader, and he, picking Martin up, was quickly on a horse, and off they went full speed, but not towards the plain where they were accustomed to go for their runs. Now they fled in the opposite direction down to the river: into it they went, into that wide, deep, dangerous current, leaping from the bank, each horse, as he fell into the water with a tremendous splash, disappearing from sight; but in another moment the head and upper part of the neck was seen to rise above the surface, until the whole lot were in, and appeared to Martin like a troop of horses' heads swimming without bodies over the river. He, clinging to the neck and beard of the wild man, had the upper half of his body out of the cold, rushing water, and in this way they all got safely across and up the opposite bank. No sooner were they out, than, without even pausing to shake the water from their skins, they set off at full speed across the valley towards the distant hills. Now on this side, at a distance of a mile or so from the river, there were vast reed-beds standing on low land, dried to a hard crust by the summer heat, and right into the reeds the horses rushed and struggled to force their way through. The reeds were dead and dry, so tall that they rose high above the horses' heads, and growing so close together that it was hard to struggle through them. Then when they were in the midst of this difficult place, the dry crust that covered the low ground began to yield to the heavy hoofs, and the horses, sinking to their knees, were thrown down and plunged about in the most desperate way, and in the midst of this confusion Martin was struck and thrown from his place, falling amongst the reeds. Luckily he was not trampled upon, but he was left behind, and then what a dreadful situation was his, when the whole troop had at last succeeded in fighting their way through, and had gone away leaving him in that dark, solitary place! He listened until the sound of heavy hoofs and the long cries of the man had died away in the distance; then the silence and darkness terrified him, and he struggled to get out, but the reeds grew so close together that before he had pushed a dozen yards through them he sank down, unable to do more. The air was hot and close and still down there on the ground, but by leaning his head back, and staring straight up he could see the pale night sky sprinkled with stars in the openings between the dry leaves and spikes of the reeds. Poor Martin could do nothing but gaze up at the little he could see of the sky in that close, black place, until his neck ached with the strain; but at last, to make him hope, he heard a sound--the now familiar long shrill cry of the wild man. Then, as it came nearer, the sound of tramping hoofs and neighing of the horses was heard, and the cries and hoof-beats grew louder and then fainter in turns, and sounded now on this side, now on that, and he knew that they were looking for him. "I'm here, I'm here," he cried; "oh, dear horses, come and take me away!" But they could not hear him, and at last the sound of their neighing and the wild long cries died away altogether, and Martin was left alone in that black silent place. CHAPTER XI THE LADY OF THE HILLS No escape was possible for poor little Martin so long as it was dark, and there he had to stay all night, but morning brought him comfort; for now he could see the reed-stems that hemmed him in all round, and by using his hands to bend them from him on either side he could push through them. By-and-by the sunlight touched the tops of the tall plants, and working his way towards the side from which the light came he soon made his escape from that prison, and came into a place where he could walk without trouble, and could see the earth and sky again. Further on, in a grassy part of the valley, he found some sweet roots wrhich greatly refreshed him, and at last, leaving the valley, he came out on a high grassy plain, and saw the hills before him looking very much nearer than he had ever seen them look before. Up till now they had appeared like masses of dark blue banked up cloud resting on the earth, now he could see that they were indeed stone--blue stone piled up in huge cliffs and crags high above the green world; he could see the roughness of the heaped up rocks, the fissures and crevices in the sides of the hills, and here and there the patches of green colour where trees and bushes had taken root. How wonderful it seemed to Martin that evening standing there in the wide green plain, the level sun at his back shining on his naked body, making him look like a statue of a small boy carved in whitest marble or alabaster. Then, to make the sight he gazed on still more enchanting, just as the sun went down the colour of the hills changed from stone blue to a purple that was like the purple of ripe plums and grapes, only more beautiful and bright. In a few minutes the purple colour faded away and the hills grew shadowy and dark. It was too late in the day, and he was too tired to walk further. He was very hungry and thirsty too, and so when he had found a few small white partridge-berries and had made a poor supper on them, he gathered some dry grass into a little heap, and lying down in it, was soon in a sound sleep. It was not until the late afternoon next day that Martin at last got to the foot of the hill, or mountain, and looking up he saw it like a great wall of stone above him, with trees and bushes and trailing vines growing out of the crevices and on the narrow ledges of the rock. Going some distance he came to a place where he could ascend, and here he began slowly walking upwards. At first he could hardly contain his delight where everything looked new and strange, and here he found some very beautiful flowers; but as he toiled on he grew more tired and hungry at every step, and then, to make matters worse, his legs began to pain so that he could hardly lift them. It was a curious pain which he had never felt in his sturdy little legs before in all his wanderings. Then a cloud came over the sun, and a sharp wind sprang up that made him shiver with cold: then followed a shower of rain; and now Martin, feeling sore and miserable, crept into a cavity beneath a pile of overhanging rocks for shelter. He was out of the rain there, but the wind blew in on him until it made his teeth chatter with cold. He began to think of his mother, and of all the comforts of his lost home--the bread and milk when he was hungry, the warm clothing, and the soft little bed with its snowy white coverlid in which he had slept so sweetly every night. "O mother, mother!" he cried, but his mother was too far off to hear his piteous cry. When the shower was over he crept out of his shelter again, and with his little feet already bleeding from the sharp rocks, tried to climb on. In one spot he found some small, creeping, myrtle plants covered with ripe white berries, and although they had a very pungent taste he ate his fill of them, he was so very hungry. Then feeling that he could climb no higher, he began to look round for a dry, sheltered spot to pass the night in. In a little while he came to a great, smooth, flat stone that looked like a floor in a room, and was about forty yards wide: nothing grew on it except some small tufts of grey lichen; but on the further side, at the foot of a steep, rocky precipice, there was a thick bed of tall green and yellow ferns, and among the ferns he hoped to find a place to lie down in. Very slowly he limped across the open space, crying with the pain he felt at every step; but when he reached the bed of ferns he all at once saw, sitting among the tall fronds on a stone, a strange-looking woman in a green dress, who was gazing very steadily at him with eyes full of love and compassion. At her side there crouched a big yellow beast, covered all over with black, eye-like spots, with a big round head, and looking just like a cat, but a hundred times larger than the biggest cat he had ever seen. The animal rose up with a low sound like a growl, and glared at Martin with its wide, yellow, fiery eyes, which so terrified him that he dared not move another step until the womaan, speaking very gently to him, told him not to fear. She caressed the great beast, making him lie down again; then coming forward and taking Martin by the hand, she drew him up to her knees. [Illustration: ] "What is your name, poor little suffering child?" she asked, bending down to him, and speaking softly. "Martin--what's yours?" he returned, still half sobbing, and rubbing his eyes with his little fists. "I am called the Lady of the Hills, and I live here alone in the mountain. Tell me, why do you cry, Martin?" "Because I'm so cold, and--and my legs hurt so, and--and because I want to go back to my mother. She's over there," said he, with another sob, pointing vaguely to the great plain beneath their feet, extending far, far away into the blue distance, where the crimson sun was now setting. "I will be your mother, and you shall live with me here on the mountain," she said, caressing his little cold hands with hers. "Will you call me mother?" "You are _not_ my mother," he returned warmly. "I don't want to call you mother." "When I love you so much, dear child?" she pleaded, bending down until her lips were close to his averted face. "How that great spotted cat stares at me!" he suddenly said. "Do you think it will kill me?" "No, no, he only wants to play with you. Will you not even look at me, Martin?" He still resisted her, but her hand felt very warm and comforting--it was such a large, warm, protecting hand. So pleasant did it feel that after a little while he began to move his hand up her beautiful, soft, white arm until it touched her hair. For her hair was unbound and loose; it was dark, and finer than the finest spun silk, and fell all over her shoulders and down her back to the stone she sat on. He let his fingers stray in and out among it; and it felt like the soft, warm down that lines a little bird's nest to his skin. Finally, he touched her neck and allowed his hand to rest there, it was such a soft, warm neck. At length, but reluctantly, for his little rebellious heart was not yet wholly subdued, he raised his eyes to her face. Oh, how beautiful she was! Her love and eager desire to win him had flushed her clear olive skin with rich red colour; out of her sweet red lips, half parted, came her warm breath on his cheek, more fragrant than wild flowers; and her large dark eyes were gazing down into his with such a tenderness in them that Martin, seeing it, felt a strange little shudder pass through him, and scarcely knew whether to think it pleasant or painful. "Dear child, I love you so much," she spoke, "will you not call me mother?" Dropping his eyes and with trembling lips, feeling a little ashamed at being conquered at last, he whispered "Mother." She raised him in her arms and pressed him to her bosom, wrapping her hair like a warm mantle round him; and in less than one minute, overcome by fatigue, he fell fast asleep in her arms. CHAPTER XII THE LITTLE PEOPLE UNDERGROUND When he awoke Martin found himself lying on a soft downy bed in a dim stone chamber, and feeling silky hair over his cheek and neck and arms, he knew that he was still with his new strange mother, the beautiful Lady of the Mountain. She, seeing him awake, took him up in her arms, and holding him against her bosom, carried him through a long winding stone passage, and out into the bright morning sunlight. There by a small spring of clearest water that gushed from the rock she washed his scratched and bruised skin, and rubbed it with sweet-smelling unguents, and gave him food and drink. The great spotted beast sat by them all the time, purring like a cat, and at intervals he tried to entice Martin to leave the woman's lap and play with him. But she would not let him out of her arms: all day she nursed and fondled him as if he had been a helpless babe instead of the sturdy little run-away and adventurer he had proved himself to be. She also made him tell her the story of how he had got lost and of all the wonderful things that had happened to him in his wanderings in the wilderness--the people of the Mirage, and old Jacob and the savages, the great forest, the serpent, the owl, the wild horses and wild man, and the black people of the sky. But it was of the Mirage and the procession of lovely beings about which he spoke most and questioned her. "Do you think it was all a dream?" he kept asking her, "the Queen and all those people?" She was vexed at the question, and turning her face away, refused to answer him. For though at all other times, and when he spoke of other things, she was gentle and loving in her manner, the moment he spoke of the Queen of the Mirage and the gifts she had bestowed on him, she became impatient, and rebuked him for saying such foolish things. At length she spoke and told him that it was a dream, a very very idle dream, a dream that was not worth dreaming; that he must never speak of it again, never think of it, but forget it, just as he had forgotten all the other vain silly dreams he had ever had. And having said this much a little sharply, she smiled again and fondled him, and promised that when he next slept he should have a good dream, one worth the dreaming, and worth remembering and talking about. She held him away from her, seating him on her knees, to look at his face, and said, "For oh, dear little Martin, you are lovely and sweet to look at, and you are mine, my own sweet child, and so long as you live with me on the hills, and love me and eall me mother, you shall be happy, and everything you see, sleeping and waking, shall seem strange and beautiful." It was quite true that he was sweet to look at, very pretty with his rosy-white skin deepening to red on his cheeks; and his hair curling all over his head was of a bright golden chestnut colour; and his eyes were a very bright blue, and looked keen and straight at you just like a bird's eyes, that seem to be thinking of nothing, and yet seeing everything. After this Martin was eager to go to sleep at once and have the promised dream, but his very eagerness kept him wide awake all day, and even after going to bed in that dim chamber in the heart of the hill, it was a long time before he dropped off. But he did not know that he had fallen asleep: it seemed to him that he was very wide awake, and that he heard a voice speaking in the chamber, and that he started up to listen to it. "Do you not know that there are things just as strange underground as above it?" said the voice. Martin could not see the speaker, but he answered quite boldly: "No--there's nothing underground except earth and worms and roots. I've seen it when they've been digging." "Oh, but there is!" said the voice. "You can see for yourself. All you've got to do is to find a path leading down, and to follow it. There's a path over there just in front of you; you can see the opening from where you are lying." He looked, and sure enough there _was_ an opening, and a dim passage running down through the solid rock. Up he jumped, fired at the prospect of seeing new and wonderful things, and without looking any more to see who had spoken to him, he ran over to it. The passage had a smooth floor of stone, and sloped downward into the earth, and went round and round in an immense spiral; but the circles were so wide that Martin scarcely knew that he was not travelling in a straight line. Have you by chance ever seen a buzzard, or stork, or vulture, or some other great bird, soaring upwards into the sky in wide circles, each circle taking it higher above the earth, until it looked like a mere black speck in the vast blue heavens, and at length disappeared altogether? Just in that way, going round and round in just such wide circles, lightly running all the time, with never a pause to rest, and without feeling in the least tired, Martin went on, only down and down and further down, instead of up and up like the soaring bird, until he was as far under the mountain as ever any buzzard or crane or eagle soared above it. Thus running he came at last out of the passage to an open room or space so wide that, look which way he would, he could see no end to it. The stone roof of this place was held up by huge stone pillars standing scattered about like groups of great rough-barked trees, many times bigger round than hogsheads. Here and there in the roof, or the stone overhead, were immense black caverns which almost frightened him to gaze up at them, they were so vast and black. And no light or sun or moon came down into that deep part of the earth: the light was from big fires, and they were fires of smithies burning all about him, sending up great flames and clouds of black smoke, which rose and floated upwards through those big black caverns in the roof. Crowds of people were gathered around the smithies, all very busy heating metal and hammering on anvils like blacksmiths. Never had he seen so many people, nor ever had he seen such busy men as these, rushing about here and there shouting and colliding with one another, bringing and carrying huge loads in baskets on their backs, and altogether the sight of them, and the racket and the smoke and dust, and the blazing fires, was almost too much for Martin; and for a moment or two he was tempted to turn and run back into the passage through which he had come. But the strangeness of it all kept him there, and then he began to look more closely at the people, for these were the little men that live under the earth, and they were unlike anything he had seen on its surface. They were very stout, strong-looking little men, dressed in coarse dark clothes, covered with dust and grime, and they had dark faces, and long hair, and rough, unkempt beards; they had very long arms and big hands, like baboons, and there was not one among them who looked taller than Martin himself. After looking at them he did not feel at all afraid of them; he only wanted very much to know who they were, and what they were doing, and why they were so excited and noisy over their work. So he thrust himself among them, going to the smithies where they were in crowds, and peering curiously at them. Then he began to notice that his coming among them created a great commotion, for no sooner would he appear than all work would be instantly suspended; down would go their baskets and loads of wood, their hammers and implements of all kinds, and they would stare and point at him, all jabbering together, so that the noise was as if a thousand cockatoos and parrots and paroquets were all screaming at once. What it was all about he could not tell, as he could not make out what they said; he could only see, and plainly enough, that his presence astonished and upset them, for as he went about among them they fell back before him, crowding together, and all staring and pointing at him. But at length he began to make out what they were saying; they were all exclaiming and talking about him. "Look at him! look at him!" they cried. "Who is he? What, Martin--this Martin? Never. No, no, no! Yes, yes, yes! Martin himself--Martin with nothing on! Not a shred--not a thread! Impossible--it cannot be! Nothing so strange has ever happened! _Naked_--do you say that Martin is naked? Oh, dreadful--from the crown of his head to his toes, naked as he was born! No clothes--no clothes--oh no, it can't be Martin. It is, it is!" And so on and on, until Martin could not endure it longer, for he had been naked for days and days, and had ceased to think about it, and in fact did not know that he was naked. And now hearing their remarks, and seeing how they were disturbed, he looked down at himself and saw that it was indeed so--that he had nothing on, and he grew ashamed and frightened, and thought he would run and hide himself from them in some hole in the ground. But there was no place to hide in, for now they had gathered all round him in a vast crowd, so that whichever way he turned there before him they appeared--hundreds and hundreds of dark, excited faces, hundreds of grimy hands all pointing at him. Then, all at once, he caught sight of an old rag of a garment lying on the ground among the ashes and cinders, and he thought he would cover himself with it, and picking it hastily up was just going to put it round him when a great roar of "No!" burst out from the crowd; he was almost deafened with the sound, so that he stood trembling with the old dirty rag of cloth in his hand. Then one of the little men came up to him, and snatching the rag from his hand, flung it angrily down upon the floor; then as if afraid of remaining so near Martin, he backed away into the crowd again. Just then Martin heard a very low voice close to his ear speaking to him, but when he looked round he could see no person near him. He knew it was the same voice which had spoken to him in the cave where he slept, and had told him to go down into that place underground. [Illustration: ] "Do not fear," said the gentle voice to Martin. "Say to the little men that you have lost your clothes, and ask them for something to put on." Then Martin, who had covered his face with his hands to shut out the sight of the angry crowd, took courage, and looking at them, said, half sobbing, "O, Little Men, I've lost my clothes--won't you give me something to put on?" This speech had a wonderful effect: instantly there was a mighty rush, all the Little Men hurrying away in all directions, shouting and tumbling over each other in their haste to get away, and by-and-by it looked to Martin as if they were having a great struggle or contest over something. They were all struggling to get possession of a small closed basket, and it was like a game of football with hundreds of persons all playing, all fighting for possession of the ball. At length one of them succeeded in getting hold of the basket and escaping from all the others who opposed him, and running to Martin he threw it down at his feet, and lifting the lid displayed to his sight a bundle of the most beautiful clothes ever seen by child or man. With a glad cry Martin pulled them out, but the next moment a very important-looking Little Man, with a great white beard, sprang forward and snatched them out of his hand. "No, no," he shouted. "These are not fit for Martin to wear! They will soil!" Saying which, he flung them down on that dusty floor with its litter of cinders and dirt, and began to trample on them as if in a great passion. Then he snatched them up again and shook them, and all could see that they were unsoiled and just as bright and beautiful as before. Then Martin tried to take them from him, but the other would not let him. "Never shall Martin wear such poor clothes," shouted the old man. "They will not even keep out the wet," and with that he thrust them into a great tub of water, and jumping in began treading them down with his feet. But when he pulled them out again and shook them before their faces, all saw that they were as dry and bright as before. "Give them to me!" cried Martin, thinking that it was all right now. "Never shall Martin wear such poor clothes--they will not resist fire," cried the old man, and into the flames he flung them. Martin now gave up all hopes of possessing them, and was ready to burst into tears at their loss, when out of the fire they were pulled again, and it was seen that the flames had not injured or tarnished them in the least. Once more Martin put out his arms and this time he was allowed to take those beautiful clothes, and then just as he clasped them to him with a cry of delight he woke! His head was lying on his new mother's arm, and she was awake watching him. "O, mother, what a nice dream I had! O such pretty clothes--why did I wake so soon?" She laughed and touched his arms, showing him that they were still clasping that beautiful suit of clothes to his breast--the very clothes of his wonderful dream! CHAPTER XIII THE GREAT BLUE WATER There was not in all that land, nor perhaps in all the wide world, a happier little boy than Martin, when after waking from his sleep and dream he dressed himself for the first time in that new suit, and went out from the cave into the morning sunlight. He then felt the comfort of such clothes, for they were softer than the finest, softest down or silk to his skin, and kept him warm when it was cold, and cool when it was hot, and dry when it rained on him, and the earth could not soil them, nor the thorns tear them; and above everything they were the most beautiful clothes ever seen. Their colour was a deep moss green, or so it looked at a little distance, or when seen in the shade, but in the sunshine it sparkled as if small, shining, many-coloured beads had been sewn in the cloth; only there were no beads; it was only the shining threads that made it sparkle so, like clean sand in the sun. When you looked closely at the cloth, you could see the lovely pattern woven in it--small leaf and flower, the leaves like moss leaves, and the flowers like the pimpernel, but not half so big, and they were yellow and red and blue and violet in colour. But there were many, many things besides the lovely clothes to make him contented and happy. First, the beautiful woman of the hills who loved and cherished him and made him call her by the sweet name of "mother" so many times every day that he well nigh forgot she was not his real mother. Then there was the great stony hill-side on which he now lived for a playground, where he could wander all day among the rocks, overgrown with creepers and strange sweet-smelling flowers he had never seen on the plain below. The birds and butterflies he saw there were different from those he had always seen; so were the snakes which he often found sleepily coiled up on the rocks, and the little swift lizards. Even the water looked strange and more beautiful than the water in the plain, for here it gushed out of the living rock, sparkling like crystal in the sun, and was always cold when he dipped his hands in it even on the hottest days. Perhaps the most wonderful thing was the immense distance he could see, when he looked away from the hillside across the plain and saw the great dark forest where he had been, and the earth stretching far, far away beyond. Then there was his playmate, the great yellow-spotted cat, who followed him about and was always ready for a frolic, playing in a very curious way. Whenever Martin would prepare to take a running leap, or a swift run down a slope, the animal, stealing quietly up behind, would put out a claw from his big soft foot--a great white claw as big as an owl's beak--and pull him suddenly back. At last Martin would lose his temper, and picking up a stick would turn on his playmate; and away the animal would fly, pretending to be afraid, and going over bushes and big stones with tremendous leaps to disappear from sight on the mountain side. But very soon he would steal secretly back by some other way to spring upon Martin unawares and roll him over and over on the ground, growling as if angry, and making believe to worry him with his great white teeth, although never really hurting him in the least. He played with Martin just as a cat plays with its kitten when it pretends to punish it. Whenever Martin began to show the least sign of weariness the Lady of the Hills would call him to her. Then, lying back among the ferns, she would unbind her long silky tresses to let him play with them, for this was always a delight to him. Then she would gather her hair up again and dress it with yellow flowers and glossy dark green leaves to make herself look more lovely than ever. At other times, taking him on her shoulders, she would bound nimbly as a wild goat up the steepest places, springing from crag to crag, and dancing gaily along the narrow ledges of rock, where it made him dizzy to look down. Then when the sun was near setting, when long shadows from rocks and trees began to creep over the mountain, and he had eaten the fruits and honey and other wild delicacies she provided, she would make him lie on her bosom. Playing with her loose hair and listening to her singing as she rocked herself on a stone, he would presently fall asleep. In the morning on waking he would always find himself lying still clasped to her breast in that great dim cavern; and almost always when he woke he would find her crying. Sometimes on opening his eyes he would find her asleep, but with traces of tears on her face, showing that she had been awake and crying. One afternoon, seeing him tired of play and hard to amuse, she took him in her arms and carried him right up the side of the mountain, where it grew so steep that even the big cat could not follow them. Finally she brought him out on the extreme summit, and looking round he seemed to see the whole world spread out beneath him. Below, half-way down, there were some wild cattle feeding on the mountain side, and they looked at that distance no bigger than mice. Looking eastwards he beheld just beyond the plain a vast expanse of blue water extending leagues and leagues away until it faded into the blue sky. He shouted with joy when he saw it, and could not take his eyes from this wonderful world of water. "Take me there--take me there!" he cried. She only shook her head and tried to laugh him out of such a wish; but by-and-by when she attempted to carry him back down the mountain he refused to move from the spot; nor would he speak to her nor look up into her pleading face, but kept his eyes fixed on that distant blue ocean which had so enchanted him. For it seemed to Martin the most wonderful thing he had ever beheld. At length it began to grow cold on the summit; then with gentle caressing words she made him turn and look to the opposite side of the heavens, where the sun was just setting behind a great mass of clouds--dark purple and crimson, rising into peaks that were like hills of rose-coloured pearl, and all the heavens beyond them a pale primrose-coloured flame. Filled with wonder at all this rich and varied colour he forgot the ocean for a moment, and uttered an exclamation of delight. "Do you know, dear Martin," said she, "what we should find there, where it all looks so bright and beautiful, if I had wings and could fly with you, clinging to my bosom like a little bat clinging to its mother when she flies abroad in the twilight?" "What?" asked Martin. "Only dark dark clouds full of rain and cutting hail and thunder and lightning. That is how it is with the sea, Martin: it makes you love it when you see it at a distance; but oh, it is cruel and treacherous, and when it has once got you in its power then it is more terrible than the thunder and lightning in the cloud. Do you remember, when you first came to me, naked, shivering with cold, with your little bare feet blistered and bleeding from the sharp stones, how I comforted you with my love, and you found it warm and pleasant lying on my breast? The sea will not comfort you in that way; it will clasp you to a cold, cold breast, and kiss you with bitter salt lips, and carry you down where it is always dark, where you will never never see the blue sky and sunshine and flowers again." Martin shivered and nestled closer to her; and then while the shadows of evening were gathering round them, she sat rocking herself to and fro on a stone, murmuring many tender, sweet words to him, until the music of her voice and the warmth of her bosom made him sleep. CHAPTER XIV THE WONDERS OF THE HILLS Now, although Martin had gone very comfortably to sleep in her arms and found it sweet to be watched over so tenderly, he was not the happy little boy he had been before the sight of the distant ocean. And she knew it, and was troubled in her mind, and anxious to do something to make him forget that great blue water. She could do many things, and above all she could show him new and wonderful things in the hills where she wished to keep him always with her. To caress him, to feed and watch over him by day, and hold him in her arms when he slept at night--all that was less to him than the sight of something new and strange; she knew this well, and therefore determined to satisfy his desire and make his life so full that he would always be more than contented with it. In the morning he went out on the hillside, wandering listlessly among the rocks, and when the big cat found him there and tried to tempt him to a game he refused to play, for he had not yet got over his disappointment, and could think of nothing but the sea. But the cat did not know that anything was the matter with him, and was more determined to play than ever; crouching now here, now there among the stones and bushes, he would spring out upon Martin and pull him down with its big paws, and this so enraged him that picking up a stick he struck furiously at his tormentor. But the cat was too quick for him; he dodged the blows, then knocked the stick out of his hand, and finally Martin, to escape from him, crept into a crevice in a rock where the cat could not reach him, and refused to come out even when the Lady of the Hills came to look for him and begged him to come to her. When at last, compelled by hunger, he returned to her, he was silent and sullen and would not be caressed. He saw no more of the cat, and when next day he asked her where it was, she said that it had gone from them and would return no more--that she had sent it away because it had vexed him. This made Martin sulk, and he would have gone away and hidden himself from her had she not caught him up in her arms. He struggled to free himself, but could not, and she then carried him away a long distance down the mountain-side until they came to a small dell, green with creepers and bushes, with a deep carpet of dry moss on the ground, and here she sat down and began to talk to him. "The cat was a very beautiful beast with his spotted hide," she said; "and you liked to play with him sometimes, but in a little while you will be glad that he has gone from you." He asked her why. "Because though he was fond of you and liked to follow you about and play with you, he is very fierce and powerful, and all the other beasts are afraid of him. So long as he was with us they would not come, but now he has gone they will come to you and let you go to them." "Where are they?" said Martin, his curiosity greatly excited. "Let us wait here," she said, "and perhaps we shall see one by-and-by." So they waited and were silent, and as nothing came and nothing happened, Martin sitting on the mossy ground began to feel a strange drowsiness stealing over him. He rubbed his eyes and looked round; he wanted to keep very wide awake and alert, so as not to miss the sight of anything that might come. He was vexed with himself for feeling drowsy, and wondered why it was; then listening to the low continuous hum of the bees, he concluded that it was that low, soft, humming sound that made him sleepy. He began to look at the bees, and saw that they were unlike other wild bees he knew, that they were like humble-bees in shape but much smaller, and were all of a golden brown colour: they were in scores and hundreds coming and going, and had their home or nest in the rock a few feet above his head. He got up, and climbing from his mother's knee to her shoulder, and standing on it, he looked into the crevice into which the bees were streaming, and saw their nest full of clusters of small round objects that looked like white berries. Then he came down and told her what he had seen, and wanted to know all about it, and when she answered that the little round fruit-like objects he had seen were cells full of purple honey that tasted sweet and salt, he wanted her to get him some. "Not now--not to-day," she replied, "for now you love me and are contented to be with me, and you are my own darling child. When you are naughty, and try to grieve me all you can, and would like to go away and never see me more, you shall taste the purple honey." He looked up into her face wondering and troubled at her words, and she smiled down so sweetly on his upturned face, looking very beautiful and tender, that it almost made him cry to think how wilful and passionate he had been, and climbing on to her knees he put his little face against her cheek. [Illustration: ] Then, while he was still caressing her, light tripping steps were heard over the stony path, and through the bushes came two beautiful wild animals--a doe with her fawn! Martin had often seen the wild deer on the plains, but always at a great distance and running; now that he had them standing before him he could see just what they were like, and of all the four-footed creatures he had ever looked on they were undoubtedly the most lovely. They were of a slim shape, and of a very bright reddish fawn-colour, the young one with dappled sides; and both had large trumpet-like ears, which they held up as if listening, while they gazed fixedly at Martin's face with their large, dark, soft eyes. Enchanted with the sight of them, he slipped down from his mother's lap, and stretched out his arms towards them, and the doe, coming a little nearer, timidly smelt at his hand, then licked it with her long, pink tongue. In a few minutes the doe and fawn went away and they saw them no more; but they left Martin with a heart filled with happy excitement; and they were but the first of many strange and beautiful wild animals he was now made acquainted with, so that for days he could think of nothing else and wished for nothing better. But one day when she had taken him a good way up on the hillside, Martin suddenly recognized a huge rocky precipice before him as the one up which she had taken him, and from the top of which he had seen the great blue water. Instantly he demanded to be taken up again, and when she refused he rebelled against her, and was first passionate and then sullen. Finding that he would not listen to anything she could say, she sat down on a rock and left him to himself. He could not climb up that precipice, and so he rambled away to some distance, thinking to hide himself from her, because he thought her unreasonable and unkind not to allow him to see the blue water once more. But presently he caught sight of a snake lying motionless on a bed of moss at the foot of a rock, with the sun on it, lighting up its polished scales so that they shone like gems or coloured glass. Resting his elbows on the stone and holding his face between his hands he fell to watching the snake, for though it seemed fast asleep in the sun its gem-like eyes were wide open. All at once he felt his mother's hand on his head: "Martin," she said, "would you like to know what the snake feels when it lies with eyes open in the bright hot sun? Shall I make you feel just how he feels?" "Yes," said Martin eagerly, forgetting his quarrel with her; then taking him up in her strong arms she walked rapidly away, and brought him to that very spot where he had seen the doe and fawn. She sat him down, and instantly his ears were filled with the murmur of the bees; and in a moment she put her hand in the crevice and pulled out a cluster of white cells, and gave them to Martin. Breaking one of the cells he saw that it was full of thick honey, of a violet colour, and tasting it he found it was like very sweet honey in which a little salt had been mixed. He liked it and he didn't like it; still, it was not the same in all the cells; in some it was scarcely salt at all; and he began to suck the honey of cell after cell, trying to find one that was not salt; and by and by he dropped the cluster of cells from his hand, and stooping to pick it up forgot to do so, and laying his head down and stretching himself out on the mossy ground looked up into his mother's face with drowsy, happy eyes. How sweet it seemed, lying there in the sun, with the sun shining right into his eyes, and filling his whole being with its delicious heat! He wished for nothing now--not even for the sight of new wonderful things; he forgot the blue water, the strange, beautiful wild animals, and his only thought, if he had a thought, was that it was very nice to lie there, not sleeping, but feeling the sun in him, and seeing it above him; and seeing all things--the blue sky, the grey rocks and green bushes and moss, and the woman in her green dress and her loose black hair--and hearing, too, the soft, low, continuous murmur of the yellow bees. For hours he lay there in that drowsy condition, his mother keeping watch over him, and when it passed off, and he got up again, his temper appeared changed: he was more gentle and affectionate with his mother, and obeyed her every wish. And when in his rambles on the hill he found a snake lying in the sun he would steal softly near it and watch it steadily for a long time, half wishing to taste that strange purple honey again, so that he might lie again in the sun, feeling what the snake feels. But there were more wonderful things yet for Martin to see and know in the hills, so that in a little while he ceased to have that desire. CHAPTER XV MARTIN'S EYES ARE OPENED [Illustration: ] One morning when they went up into a wild rocky place very high up on the hillside a number of big birds were seen coming over the mountain at a great height in the air, travelling in a northerly direction. They were big hawks almost as big as eagles, with very broad rounded wings, and instead of travelling straight like other birds they moved in wide circles, so that they progressed very slowly. They sat down on a stone to watch the birds, and whenever one flying lower than the others came pretty near them Martin gazed delightedly at it, and wished it would come still nearer so that he might see it better. Then the woman stood up on the stone, and, gazing skywards and throwing up her arms, she uttered a long call, and the birds began to come lower and lower down, still sweeping round in wide circles, and by and by one came quite down and pitched on a stone a few yards from them. Then another came and lighted on another stone, then another, and others followed, until they were all round him in scores, sitting on the rocks, great brown birds with black bars on their wings and tails, and buff-coloured breasts with rust-red spots and stripes. It was a wonderful sight, those eagle-like hawks, with their blue hooked beaks and deep-set dark piercing eyes, sitting in numbers on the rocks, and others and still others dropping down from the sky to increase the gathering. Then the woman sat down by Martin's side, and after a while one of the hawks spread his great wings and rose up into the air to resume his flight. After an interval of a minute or so another rose, then another, but it was an hour before they were all gone. "O the dear birds--they are all gone!" cried Martin. "Mother, where are they going?" She told him of a far-away land in the south, from which, when autumn comes, the birds migrate north to a warmer country hundreds of leagues away, and that birds of all kinds were now travelling north, and would be travelling through the sky above them for many days to come. Martin looked up at the sky, and said he could see no birds now that the buzzards were all gone. "I can see them," she returned, looking up and glancing about the sky. "O mother, I wish I could see them!" he cried. "Why can't I see them when you can?" "Because your eyes are not like mine. Look, can you see this?" and she held up a small stone phial which she took from her bosom. He took it in his hand and unstopped and smelt at it. "Is it honey? Can I taste it?" he asked. She laughed. "It is better than honey, but you can't eat it!" she said. "Do you remember how the honey made you feel like a snake? This would make you see what I see if I put some of it on your eyes." He begged her to do so, and she consenting poured a little into the palm of her hand. It was thick and white as milk; then taking some on her finger tip, she made him hold his eyes wide open while she rubbed it on the eye-balls. It made his eyes smart, and everything at first looked like a blue mist when he tried to see; then slowly the mist faded away and the air had a new marvellous clearness, and when he looked away over the plain beneath them he shouted for joy, so far could he see and so distinct did distant objects appear. At one point where nothing but the grey haze that obscured the distance had been visible, a herd of wild cattle now appeared, scattered about, some grazing, others lying down ruminating, and in the midst of the herd a very noble-looking, tawny-coloured bull was standing. "O mother, do you see that bull?" cried Martin in delight. "Yes, I see him," she returned. "Sometimes he brings his herd to feed on the hillside, and when I see him here another time I shall take you to him, and put you on his back. But look now at the sky, Martin." He looked up, and was astonished to see numbers of great birds flying north, where no birds had appeared before. They were miles high, and invisible to ordinary sight, but he could see them so distinctly, their shape and colours, that all the birds he knew were easily recognized. There were swans, shining white, with black heads and necks, flying in wedge-shaped flocks, and rose-coloured spoonbills, and flamingoes with scarlet wings tipped with black, and ibises, and ducks of different colours, and many other birds, both water and land, appeared, flock after flock, all flying as fast as their wings could bear them towards the north. He continued watching them until it was past noon, and then he saw fewer and fewer, only very big birds, appearing; and then these were seen less and less until there were none. Then he turned his eyes on the plain and tried to find the herd of wild cattle, but they were no longer visible; it was as he had seen it in the morning with the pale blue haze over all the distant earth. He was told that the power to see all distant things with a vision equal to his mother's was now exhausted, and when he grieved at the loss she comforted him with the promise that it would be renewed at some other time. [Illustration: ] Now one day when they were out together Martin was greatly surprised and disturbed at a change in his mother. When he spoke to her she was silent; and byand-by, drawing a little away, he looked at her with a fear which increased to a kind of terror, so strangely altered did she seem, standing motionless, gazing fixedly with wide-open eyes at the plain beneath them, her whole face white and drawn with a look of rage. He had an impulse to fly from her and hide himself in some hole in the rocks from the sight of that pale, wrathful face, but when he looked round him he was afraid to move from her, for the hill itself seemed changed, and now looked black and angry even as she did. The ground he stood on, the grey old stones covered with silvery-white and yellow lichen and pretty flowery, creeping plants, so beautiful to look at in the bright sunlight a few moments ago, now were covered with a dull mist which appeared to be rising from them, making the air around them dark and strange. And the air, too, had become sultry and close, and the sky was growing dark above them. Then suddenly remembering all her love and kindness he flew to her, and clinging to her dress sobbed out, "O mother, mother, what is it?" She put her hand on him, then drew him up to her side, with his feet on the stone she was standing by. "Would you like to see what I see, Martin?" she asked, and taking the phial from her bosom she rubbed the white thick liquid on his eye-balls, and in a little while, when the mistiness passed off, she pointed with her hand and told him to look there. He looked, and as on the former occasion, all distant things were clearly visible, for although that mist and blackness given off by the hill had wrapped them round so that they seemed to be standing in the midst of a black cloud, yet away on the plain beneath the sun was shining brightly, and all that was there could be seen by him. Where he had once seen a herd of wild cattle he now saw mounted men, to the number of about a dozen, slowly riding towards the hill, and though they were miles away he could see them very distinctly. They were dark, black-bearded men, strangely dressed, some with fawn-coloured cloaks with broad stripes, others in a scarlet uniform, and they wore cone-shaped scarlet caps. Some carried lances, others carbines; and they all wore swords--he could see the steel scabbards shining in the sun. As he watched them they drew rein and some of them got off their horses, and they stood for some time as if talking excitedly, pointing towards the hill and using emphatic gestures. What were they talking about so excitedly? thought Martin. He wanted to know, and he would have asked her, but when he looked up at her she was still gazing fixedly at them with the same pale face and terrible stern expression, and he could but dimly see her face in that black cloud which had closed around them. He trembled with fear and could only murmur, "Mother! mother!" Then her arm was put round him, and she drew him close against her side, and at that moment--O how terrible it was!--the black cloud and the whole universe was lit up with a sudden flash that seemed to blind and scorch him, and the hill and the world was shaken and seemed to be shattered by an awful thunder crash. It was more than he could endure: he ceased to feel or know anything, and was like one dead, and when he came to himself and opened his eyes he was lying in her lap with her face smiling very tenderly, bending over him. "O, poor little Martin," she said, "what a poor, weak little boy you are to lose your senses at the lightning and thunder! I was angry when I saw them coming to the hill, for they are wicked, cruel men, stained with blood, and I made the storm to drive them away. They are gone, and the storm is over now, and it is late--come, let us go to our cave;" and she took him up and carried him in her arms. CHAPTER XVI THE PEOPLE OF THE MIST When Martin first came to the hills it was at the end of the long, hot, dry summer of that distant land: it was autumn now, and the autumn was like a second summer, only not so hot and dry as the first. But sometimes at this season a wet mist came up from the sea by night and spread over all the country, covering it like a cloud; to a soaring bird looking down from the sky it must have appeared like another sea of a pale or pearly grey colour, with the hills rising like islands from it. When the sun rose in the morning, if the sky was clear so that it could shine, then the sea-fog would drift and break up and melt away or float up in the form of thin white clouds. Now, whenever this sea-mist was out over the world the Lady of the Hills, without coming out of her chamber, knew of it, and she would prevent Martin from leaving the bed and going out. He loved to be out on the hill-side, to watch the sun come up, and she would say to him, "You cannot see the sun because of the mist; and it is cold and wet on the hill; wait until the mist has gone and then you shall go out." But now a new idea came into her mind. She had succeeded in making him happy during the last few days; but she wished to do more--she wished to make him fear and hate the sea so that he would never grow discontented with his life on the hills nor wish to leave her. So now, one morning, when the mist was out over the land, she said to Martin when he woke, "Get up and go out on to the hill and see the mist; and when you feel its coldness and taste its salt on your lips, and see how it dims and saddens the earth, you will know better than to wish for that great water it comes from." So Martin got up and went out on the hill, and it was as she had said: there was no blue sky above, no wide green earth before him: the mist had blotted all out; he could hardly see the rocks and bushes a dozen yards from him; the leaves and flowers were heavy laden with the grey wet; and it felt clammy and cold on his face, and he tasted its salt on his lips. It seemed thickest and darkest when he looked down and lightest when he looked up, and the lightness led him to climb up among the dripping, slippery rocks; and slipping and stumbling he went on and on, the light increasing as he went, until at last to his delight he got above the mist. There was an immense crag there which stood boldly up on the hillside, and on to this he managed to climb, and standing on it he looked down upon that vast moving sea of grey mist that covered the earth, and saw the sun, a large crimson disc, rising from it. It was a great thing to see, and made him cry out aloud for joy: and then as the sun rose higher into the pure, blue sky the grey mist changed to silvery white, and the white changed in places to shining gold: and it drifted faster and faster away before the sun, and began to break up, and when a cloud of mist swept by the rock on which he stood it beat like a fine rain upon his face, and covered his bright clothes with a grey beady moisture. Now, looking abroad over the earth, it appeared to Martin that the thousands and tens and hundreds of thousands of fragments of mist, had the shapes of men, and were like an innumerable multitude of gigantic men with shining white faces and shining golden hair and long cloud-like robes of a pearly grey colour, that trailed on the earth as they moved. They were like a vast army covering the whole earth, all with their faces set towards the west, all moving swiftly and smoothly on towards the west. And he saw that every one held his robes to his breast with his left hand, and that in his right hand, raised to the level of his head, he carried a strange object. This object was a shell--a big sea-shell of a golden yellow colour with curved pink lips; and very soon one of the mist people came near him, and as he passed by the rock he held the shell to Martin's ear, and it sounded in his ear--a low, deep murmur as of waves breaking on a long shingled beach, and Martin knew, though no word was spoken to him, that it was the sound of the sea, and tears of delight came to his eyes, and at the same time his heart was sick and sad with longing for the sea. [Illustration: ] Again and again, until the whole vast multitude of the mist people had gone by, a shell was held to his ear; and when they were all gone, when he had watched them fade like a white cloud over the plain, and float away and disappear in the blue sky, he sat down on the rock and cried with the desire that was in him. When his mother found him with traces of tears on his cheeks; and he was silent when she spoke to him, and had a strange look in his eyes as if they were gazing at some distant object, she was angrier than ever with the sea, for she knew that the thought of it had returned to him and that it would be harder than ever to keep him. One morning on waking he found her still asleep, although the traces of tears on her cheeks showed that she had been awake and crying during the night. "Ah, now I know why she cries every morning," thought Martin; "it is because I must go away and leave her here alone on the hills." He was out of her arms and dressed in a very few moments, moving very softly lest she should wake; but though he knew that if she awoke she would not let him go, he could not leave her without saying goodbye. And so coming near he stooped over her and very gently kissed her soft cheek and sweet mouth and murmured, "Good-bye, sweet mother." Then, very cautiously, like a shy, little wild animal he stole out of the cavern. Once outside, in the early morning light, he started running as fast as he could, jumping from stone to stone in the rough places, and scrambling through the dew-laden bushes and creepers, until, hot and panting, he arrived down at the very foot of the hill. Then it was easier walking, and he went on a little until he heard a voice crying, "Martin! Martin!" and, looking back, he saw the Lady of the Hills standing on a great stone near the foot of the mountain, gazing sadly after him. "Martin, oh, my child, come back to me," she called, stretching out her arms towards him. "Oh, Martin, I cannot leave the hills to follow you and shield you from harm and save you from death, Where will you go? Oh me, what shall I do without you?" For a little while he stood still, listening with tears in his eyes to her words, and wavering in his mind; but very soon he thought of the great blue water once more and could not go back, but began to run again, and went on and on for a long distance before stopping to rest. Then he looked back, but he could no longer see her form standing there on the stone. All that day he journeyed on towards the ocean over a great plain. There was no trees and no rocks nor hills, only grass on the level earth, in some places so tall that the spikes, looking like great white ostrich plumes, waved high above his head. But it was easy walking, as the grass grew in tussocks or bunches, and underneath the ground was bare and smooth so that he could walk easily between the bunches. He wondered that he did not get to the sea, but it was still far off, and so the long summer day wore to an end, and he was so tired that he could scarcely lift his legs to walk. Then, as he went slowly on in the fading light, where the grass was short and the evening primroses were opening and filling the desert air with their sweet perfume, he all at once saw a little grey old man not above six inches in height standing on the ground right before him, and staring fixedly at him with great, round, yellow eyes. [Illustration: ] "You bad boy!" exclaimed this curious, little, old man; whereupon Martin stopped in his walk and stood still, gazing in the greatest surprise at him. "You bad boy!" repeated the strange little man. The more Martin stared at him the harder he stared back at Martin, always with the same unbending severity in his small, round, grey face. He began to feel a little afraid, and was almost inclined to run away; then he thought it would be funny to run from such a very small man as this, so he stared bravely back once more and cried out, "Go away!" "You bad boy!" answered the little grey man without moving. "Perhaps he's deaf, just like that other old man," said Martin to himself, and throwing out his arms he shouted at the top of his voice, "Go away!" And away with a scream he went, for it was only a little grey burrowing owl after all! Martin laughed a little at his own foolishness in mistaking that common bird he was accustomed to see every day for a little old man. By-and-by, feeling very tired, he sat down to rest, and just where he sat grew a plant with long white flowers like tall thin goblets in shape. Sitting on the grass he could see right into one of the flower-tubes, and presently he noticed a little, old, grey, shrivelled woman in it, very, very small, for she was not longer than the nail of his little finger. She wore a grey shawl that dragged behind her, and kept getting under her feet and tripping her up. She was most active, whisking about this way and that inside the flower; and at intervals she turned to stare at Martin, who kept getting nearer and nearer to watch her until his face nearly touched the flower; and whenever she looked at him she wore an exceedingly severe expression on her small dried-up countenance. It seemed to Martin that she was very angry with him for some reason. Then she would turn her back on him, and tumble about in the tube of the flower, and gathering up the ends of her shawl in her arms begin dusting with great energy; then hurrying out once more she would shake the dust from her big, funny shawl in his eyes. At last he carefully raised a hand and was just going to take hold of the queer, little, old dame with his forefinger and thumb when up she flew. It was only a small, grey, twilight moth! Very much puzzled and confused, and perhaps a little frightened at these curious deceptions, he laid himself down on the grass and shut his eyes so as to go to sleep; but no sooner had he shut his eyes than he heard a soft, soft little voice calling, "Martin! Martin!" He started up and listened. It was only a field cricket singing in the grass. But often as he lay down and closed his eyes the small voice called again, plainly as possible, and oh so sadly, "Martin! Martin!" It made him remember his beautiful mother, now perhaps crying alone in the cave on the mountain, no little Martin resting on her bosom, and he cried to think of it. And still the small voice went on, calling, "Martin! Martin!" sadder than ever, until, unable to endure it longer, he jumped up and ran away a good distance, and at last, too tired to go any further, he crept into a tussock of tall grass and went to sleep. CHAPTER XVII THE OLD MAN OF THE SEA Next day Martin journeyed on in the old way, jumping up and taking a good long run, then dropping into a trot, then a walk, and finally sitting down to rest. Then up again and another run, and so on. But although feeling hungry and thirsty, he was so full of the thought of the great blue water he was going to see, so eager to look upon it at last after wishing for it so long, that he hardly gave himself any time to hunt for food. Nor did he think of his mother of the hills, alone to-day, and grieving at his loss, so excited was he at the prospect of what lay before him. A little past noon he began to hear a low murmuring sound that seemed in the earth beneath him, and all about him, and in the air above him; but he did not know that it was the sound of the sea. At length he came to a place where the earth rose up in long ridges of yellow sand, on which nothing grew but scattered tufts of stiff, yellow grass. As he toiled over the loose sand, sometimes sinking ankle-deep in it, the curious deep murmuring sound he had heard for so long grew louder and louder, until it was like the sound of a mighty wind in a wood, but deeper and hoarser, rising and falling, and at intervals broken by great throbs, as of thunder echoed and re-echoed among the distant hills. At length he had toiled over the last ridge of sand; and then all at once the world--his world of solid earth at all events--came to an abrupt end; for no more ground on which to set a foot was before him, but only the ocean--that ocean which he had wanted so badly, and had loved at a distance more than the plains and hills, and all they contained to delight him! How wide, how vast it was, stretching away to where it melted into the low sky, its immense grey-blue surface broken into ten thousand thousand waves, lit with white crests that came in sight and vanished like lightning flashes! How tremendous, how terrible it was in its agitation--O the world had nothing to compare with it, nothing to hold his heart after it; and it was well that the earth was silent, that it only gazed upon it with the sun and moon and stars, listening day and night for ever to the great voice of the sea! Only by lying flat on his chest could Martin look down over the edge of the awful cliff, which is one of the highest in the world; and then the sight of the sea swirling and beating at the foot of that stupendous black precipice, sending up great clouds of spray in its fury, made him shudder, it was so awful to look upon. But he could not stir from that spot; there he stayed lying flat on his chest, gazing and gazing, feeling neither hunger nor thirst, forgetful of the beautiful woman he had called mother, and of everything besides. And as he gazed, little by little, that great tumult of the waves grew less; they no longer lifted themselves up, wave following wave, to beat upon the cliff, and make it tremble; but sank lower and lower; and at last drew off from the precipice, leaving at its foot a long narrow strip of sand and shingle exposed to sight. A solemn calm fell upon the waste of waters; only near the shore it continued to move a little, rising and falling like the chest of a sleeping giant, while along the margin small waves continued to form and break in white foam on the shingle with a perpetual low, moaning sound. Further out it was quite calm, its surface everywhere flushed with changing violet, green, and rosy tints: in a little while these lovely colours faded as from a sunset cloud, and it was all deep dark blue: for the sun had gone, and the shadows of evening were over land and sea. Then Martin, his little heart filled with a great awe and a great joy, crept away a few yards from the edge of the cliff and coiled himself up to sleep in a hollow in the soft warm sand. On the following morning, after satisfying his hunger and thirst with some roots which he had not to go very far to find, he returned to watch the sea once more, and there he remained, never removing his eyes from the wonderful scene until the sun was directly over his head; then, when the sea was calm once more, he got up and started to walk along the cliff. Keeping close to the edge, occasionally stopping to lie down on his chest and peer over, he went on and on for hours, until the afternoon tide once more covered the strip of shingled beach, and the waves rising high began to beat with a sound like thunder against the tremendous cliff, making the earth tremble under him. At length he came to a spot where there was a great gap in the line of the cliff, where in past times a portion of it had tumbled down, and the stupendous masses of rock had rolled far out into the sea, and now formed islands of black jagged rock, standing high above the water. Here among the rocks the sea boiled and roared its loudest, churning its waters into masses of white froth. Here a fresh wonder met his sight: a number of big animals unlike any creature he had ever seen before were lying prone on the rocks just out of the reach of the waves that beat round them. At first they looked like cows, then he saw that they had neither horns nor legs, that their heads were like dog's but without ears, and that they had two great flapper-shaped feet on their chests with which they walked or crawled upon the rocks whenever a wave broke on them, causing them to move a little higher. [Illustration: ] They were sea-lions, a very big sort of seal, but Martin had never heard of such a creature, and being anxious to look more closely at them he went into the gap, and began cautiously climbing down over the broken masses of rock and clay until he got quite near the sea. Lying there on a flat rock he became absorbed in watching these strange dog-headed legless cattle of the sea; for he now had them near, and they could see him, and occasionally one would lift its head and gaze earnestly at him out of large dark eyes that were soft and beautiful like the eyes of the doe that came to him on the hills. O how glad he was to know that the sea, the mighty waters roaring so loud as if in wrath, had its big beasts too for him to love, like the hills and plains with their cattle and deer and horses! But the tide was still rising, and very soon the biggest waves began to come quite over the rocks, rolling the big beasts over and even washing them off, and it angered them when the waves struck them, and they roared aloud, and by and by they began to go away, some disappearing beneath the water, others with heads above the surface swimming away out into the open sea, until all were gone. Martin was sorry to lose them, but the sight of the sea tumbling and foaming on the rocks still held him there, until all the rocks but one had been covered by the waters, and this one was a great black jagged rock close to the shore, not above twenty or thirty yards from him. Against this mass of rock the waves continued to dash themselves with a mighty noise, sending up a cloud of white foam and spray at every blow. The sight and sound fascinated him. The sea appeared to be talking, whispering, and murmuring, and crying out aloud to him in such a manner that he actually began trying to make out what it was saying. Then up would come a great green wave rushing and moaning, to dash itself to pieces right before his face; and each time it broke against the rock, and rose high up it took a fantastic shape that began to look more and more the shape of a man. Yes, it was unmistakably like a monstrous grey old man, with a vast snow-white beard, and a world of disordered white hair floating over and around its head. At all events it was white for a moment, then it looked green--a great green beard which the old man took with his two hands and twisted just as a washerwoman twists a blanket or counterpane, so as to wring the water out of it. Martin stared at this strange uncouth visitor from the sea; while he in turn, leaning over the rock, stared back into Martin's face with his immense fishy eyes. Every time a fresh wave broke over him, lifting up his hair and garments, which were of brown seaweed and all rags and tatters, it seemed to annoy him somewhat; but he never stirred; and when the wave retired he would wring the water out once more and blow a cloud of sea-spray from his beard. At length, holding out his mighty arms towards Martin, he opened his great, cod-fish mouth, and burst into a hoarse laugh, which sounded like the deep laughter-like cries of the big, black-backed gulls. Still, Martin did not feel at all afraid of him, for he looked good-natured and friendly. "Who are you?" shouted Martin at last. "Who be I?" returned the man-shaped monster in a hoarse, sea-like voice. "Ho, ho, ho,--now I calls that a good un! Why, little Martin, that I've knowed all along, I be Bill. Leastways, that's what they called me afore: but I got promotion, and in consekence I'm called the Old Man of the Sea." "And how did you know I was Martin?" "How did I know as you was Martin? Why, bless your innocent heart, I knowed it all along of course. How d'ye think I wouldn't know that? Why, I no sooner saw you there among them rocks than I says to myself, 'Hullo,' says I, bless my eyes if that ain't Martin looking at my cows, as I calls 'em. Of course I knowed as you was Martin." "And what made you go and live in the sea, Old--Bill?" questioned Martin, "and why did you grow so big?" [Illustration: ] "Ho, ho, ho!" laughed the giant, blowing a great cloud of spray from his lips. "I don't mind telling you that. You see, Martin, I ain't pressed for time. Them blessed bells is nothing to me now, not being in the foc'sle trying to git a bit of a snooze. Well, to begin, I were born longer ago than I can tell in a old town by the sea, and my father he were a sailor man, and was drowned when I were very small; then my mother she died just becoz every man that belonged to her was drowned. For those as lives by the sea, Martin, mostly dies in the sea. Being a orphan I were brought up by Granny. I were very small then, and used to go and play all day in the marshes, and I loved the cows and water-rats and all the little beasties, same as you, Martin. When I were a bit growed Granny says to me one day, 'Bill, you go to sea and be a sailor-boy,' she says, 'becoz I've had a dream,' she says, 'and it's wrote that you'll never git drowned.' For you see, Martin, my Granny were a wise woman. So to the sea I goes, and boy and man, I was on a many voyages to Turkey and Injy and the Cape and the West Coast and Ameriky, and all round the world forty times over. Many and many's the time I was shipwrecked and overboard, but I never got drowned. At last, when I were gitting a old man, and not much use by reason of the rheumatiz and stiffness in the jints, there was a mutiny in our ship when we was off the Cape; and the captain and mate they was killed. Then comes my turn, becoz I went again the men, d'ye see, and they wasn't a-going for to pardon me that. So out they had me on deck and began to talk about how they'd finish me--rope, knife, or bullet. 'Mates,' says I 'shoot me if you like and I'll dies comforbly; or run a knife into me, which is better still; or string me up to the yard-arm, which is the most comforble thing I know. But don't you go and put me into the sea,' says I, 'becoz it's wrote that I ain't never going to git drowned, and you'll have all your trouble for nothing,' says I. That made 'em larf a most tremenjous larf. 'Old Bill,' says they, 'will have his little joke.' Then they brings up some iron stowed in the hold, and with ropes and chains they ties well-nigh half a ton of it to my legs and arms, then lowers me over the side. Down I wrent, in course, which made 'em larf louder than afore; and I were fathoms and fathoms under water afore I stopped hearing them larf. At last I comes down to the bottom of the sea, and glad I were to git there, becoz now I couldn't go no further. There I lies doubled up like a old sea-sarpint along of the rocks, but warm and comforble like. Last of all, the ropes and chains they got busted off becoz of my growing so big and strong down there, and up I comes to blow like a grampus, for I were full of water by reason that it had soaked into me. So that's how I got to be the Old Man of the Sea, hundreds and hundreds of years ago." "And do you like to be always in the sea, Old Bill?" asked Martin. "Ho, ho, ho!" laughed the monster. "That's a good un, little Martin! Do I like it? Well, it's better than being a sailor man in a ship, I can tell 'ee. That were a hard life, with nothing good except perhaps the baccy. I were very fond of baccy once before the sea put out my pipe. Likewise of rum. Many's the time I've been picked up on shore that drunk, Martin, you wouldn't believe it, I were that fond of rum. Sometimes, down here, when I remember how good it tasted, I open my mouth wide and takes down a big gulp of sea water, enough to fill a hogshead; then I comes up and blows it all out again just like a old grampus." And having said this, he opened his vast cavernous mouth and roared out his hoarse ho, ho, ho! louder than before, and at the same time he rose up higher above the water and the black rock he had been leaning on, until he stood like a stupendous tower above Martin--a man-shaped tower of water and spray, and white froth and brown seaweed. Then he slowly fell backwards out upon the sea, and falling upon the sea caused so mighty a wave that it went high over the black rock and washed the face of the cliff, sweeping Martin back among the rocks. When the great wave retired, and Martin, half-choked with water and half-dazed, struggled on to his feet, he saw that it was night, and a cloudy, black sky was above, and the black sea beneath him. He had not seen the light fade, and had perhaps fallen asleep and seen and talked with that old sea monster in a dream. But now he could not escape from his position down in the gap, just above the roaring waves. There he had to stay, sheltered in a cavity in the rock, and lying there, half sleeping and half waking, he had that great voice of the sea in his ears all night. CHAPTER XVIII MARTIN PLAYS WITH THE WAVES After a night spent in the roar of the sea, a drenched and bruised prisoner among the rocks, it was nice to see the dawn again. No sooner was it light than Martin set about trying to make his escape. He had been washed by that big wave into a deep cleft among the rocks and masses of hard clay, and shut in there he could not see the water nor anything excepting a patch of sky above him. Now he began climbing over the stones and crawling and forcing himself through crevices and other small openings, making a little progress, for he was sore from his bruises and very weak from his long fast, and at intervals, tired and beaten, he would drop down crying with pain and misery. But Martin was by nature a very resolute little boy, and after two or three minutes' rest his tears would cease, and he would be up struggling on determinedly as before. He was like some little wild animal when it finds itself captive in a cage or box or room, who tries without ceasing to find a way out. There may be no way, but it will not give up trying to find one. And at last, after so much trying, Martin's efforts were rewarded: he succeeded in getting into the steep passage by which he had come down to the sea on the previous day, and in the end got to the top of the cliff once more. It was a great relief, and after resting a little while he began to feel glad and happy at the sight before him: there was the glorious sea again, not as he had seen it before, its wide surface roughened by the wind and flecked with foam; for now the water was smooth, but not still; it rose and fell in vast rollers, or long waves that were like ridges, wave following wave in a very grand and ordered manner. And as he gazed, the clouds broke and floated away, and the sky grew clear and bright, and then all at once the great red sun came up out of the waters! But it was impossible for him to stay there longer when there was nothing to eat; his extreme hunger compelled him to get up and leave the cliff and the sandy hills behind it; and then for an hour or two he walked feebly about searching for sweet roots, but finding none. It would have gone hard with him then if he had not seen some low, dark-looking bushes at a distance on the dry, yellow plain, and gone to them. They looked like yew-bushes, and when he got to them he found that they were thickly covered with small berries; on some bushes they were purple-black, on others crimson, but all were ripe, and many small birds were there feasting on them. The berries were pleasant to the taste, and he feasted with the little birds on them until his hunger was satisfied; and then, with his mouth and fingers stained purple with the juice, he went to sleep in the shade of one of the bushes. There, too, he spent the whole of that day and the night, hearing the low murmur of the sea when waking, and when morning came he was strong and happy once more, and, after filling himself with the fruit, set off to the sea again. Arrived at the cliff, he began walking along the edge, and in about an hour's time came to the end of it, for there it sloped down to the water, and before him, far as he could see, there was a wide, shingled beach with low sand-hills behind it. With a shout of joy he ran down to the margin, and the rest of that day he spent dabbling in the water, gathering beautiful shells and seaweed and strangely-painted pebbles into heaps, then going on and on again, still picking up more beautiful riffraff on the margin, only to leave, it all behind him at last. Never had he spent a happier day, and when it came to an end he found a sheltered spot not far from the sea, so that when he woke in the night he would still hear the deep, low murmur of the waves on the beach. Many happy days he spent in the same way, with no living thing to keep him company, except the little white and grey sanderlings that piped so shrill and clear as they flitted along the margin before him; and the great sea-gulls that uttered hoarse, laughter-like cries as they soared and hovered above his head. "Oh, happy birds!" exclaimed Martin, clapping his hands, and shouting in answer to their cries. Every day Martin grew more familiar with the sea, and loved it more, and it was his companion and playmate. He was bolder than the little restless sanderlings that ran and flitted before the advancing waves, and so never got their pretty white and grey plumage wet: often he would turn to meet the coming wave, and let it break round and rush past him, and then in a moment he would be standing knee-deep in the midst of a great sheet of dazzling white foam, until with a long hiss as it fled back, drawing the round pebbles with it, it would be gone, and he would laugh and shout with glee. What a grand old play-fellow the sea was! And it loved him, like the big spotted cat of the hills, and only pretended to be angry with him when it wanted to play, and would do him no harm. And still he was not satisfied, but grew bolder and bolder, putting himself in its power and trusting to its mercy. He could play better with his clothes off; and one day, chasing a great receding wave as far as it would go, he stood up bravely to encounter the succeeding wave, but it was greater than the last, and lifting him in its great green arms it carried him high up till it broke with a mighty roar on the beach; then instead of leaving him stranded there it rushed back still bearing him in its arms out into the deep. Further and further from the shore it carried him, until he became terrified, and throwing out his little arms towards the land, he cried aloud, "Mother! Mother!" He was not calling to his own mother far away on the great plain; he had forgotten her. Now he only thought of the beautiful woman of the Hills, who was so strong, and loved him and made him call her "Mother"; and to her he cried in his need for help. Now he remembered her warm, protecting bosom, and how she had cried every night at the fear of losing him; how when he ran from her she followed him, calling to him to return. Ah, how cold was the sea's bosom, how bitter its lips! Struggling still with the great wave, struggling in vain, blinded and half-choked with salt water, he was driven violently against a great black object tumbling about in the surf, and with all the strength of his little hands he clung to it. The water rolled over him, and beat against him, but he would not lose his hold; and at last there came a bigger wave and lifted him up and cast him right on to the object he was clinging to. It was as if some enormous monster of the sea had caught him up and put him in that place, just as the Lady of the Hills had often snatched him up from the edge of some perilous precipice to set him down in a safe place. There he lay exhausted, stretched out at full length, so tossed about on the billows that he had a sensation of being in a swing; but the sea grew quiet at last, and when he looked up it was dark, the stars glittering in the dim blue vault above, and the smooth, black water reflecting them all round him, so that he seemed to be floating suspended between two vast, starry skies, one immeasurably far above, the other below him. All night, with only the twinkling, trembling stars for company, he lay there, naked, wet, and cold, thirsty with the bitter taste of sea-salt in his mouth, never daring to stir, listening to the continual lapping sound of the water. Morning dawned at last; the sea was green once more, the sky blue, and beautiful with the young, fresh light. He was lying on an old raft of black, water-logged spars and planks lashed together with chains and rotting ropes. But alas! there was no shore in sight, for all night long he had been drifting, drifting further and further away from land. A strange habitation for Martin, the child of the plain, was that old raft! It had been made by shipwrecked mariners, long, long ago, and had floated about the sea until it had become of the sea, like a half-submerged floating island; brown and many-coloured seaweeds had attached themselves to it; strange creatures, half plant and half animal, grew on it; and little shell-fish and numberless slimy, creeping things of the sea made it their dwelling-place. It was about as big as the floor of a large room, all rough, black, and slippery, with the seaweed floating like ragged hair many yards long around it, and right in the middle of the raft there was a large hole where the wood had rotted away. Now, it was very curious that when Martin looked over the side of the raft he could see down into the clear, green water a few fathoms only; but when he crept to the edge of the hole and looked into the water there, he was able to see ten times further down. Looking in this hole, he saw far down a strange, fish-shaped creature, striped like a zebra, with long spines on its back, moving about to and fro. It disappeared, and then, very much further down, something moved, first like a shadow, then like a great, dark form; and as it came up higher it took the shape of a man, but dim and vast like a man-shaped cloud or shadow that floated in the green translucent water. The shoulders and head appeared; then it changed its position and the face was towards him with the vast eyes, that had a dim, greyish light in them, gazing up into his. Martin trembled as he gazed, not exactly with fear, but with excitement, because he recognized in this huge water-monster under him that Old Man of the Sea who had appeared and talked to him in his dream when he fell asleep among the rocks. Could it be, although he was asleep at the time, that the Old Man really had appeared before him, and that his eyes had been open just enough to see him? By-and-by the cloud-like face disappeared, and did not return though he watched for it a long time. Then sitting on the black, rotten wood and brown seaweed he gazed over the ocean, a vast green, sunlit expanse with no shore and no living thing upon it. But after a while he began to think that there was some living thing in it, which was always near him though he could not see what it was. From time to time the surface of the sea was broken just as if some huge fish had risen to the surface and then sunk again without showing itself. It was something very big, judging from the commotion it made in the water; and at last he did see it or a part of it--a vast brown object which looked like a gigantic man's shoulder, but it might have been the back of a whale. It was no sooner seen than gone, but in a very short time after its appearance cries as of birds were heard at a great distance. The cries came from various directions, growing louder and louder, and before long Martin saw many birds flying towards him. On arrival they began to soar and circle round above him, all screaming excitedly. They were white birds with long wings and long sharp beaks, and were very much like gulls, except that they had an easier and swifter flight. Martin rejoiced at seeing them, for he had been in the greatest terror at the strangeness and loneliness of the sea now that there was no land in sight. Sitting on the black raft he was constantly thinking of the warning words his mother of the hills had spoken --that the sea would kiss him with cold salt lips and take him down into the depths where he would never see the light again. O how strange the sea was to him now, how lonely, how terrible! But birds that with their wings could range over the whole world were of the land, and now seemed to bring the land near him with their white forms and wild cries. How could they help him? He did not know, he did not ask; but he was not alone now that they had come to him, and his terror was less. And still more birds kept coming; and as the morning wore on the crowd of birds increased until they were in hundreds, then in thousands, perpetually wheeling and swooping and rising and hovering over him in a great white cloud. And they were of many kinds, mostly white, some grey, others sooty brown or mottled, and some wholly black. Then in the midst of the crowrd of birds he saw one of great size wheeling about like a king or giant among the others, with wings of amazing length, wild eyes of a glittering yellow, and a yellow beak half as long as Martin's arm, with a huge vulture-like hook at the end. Now when this mighty bird swooped close down over his head, fanning him with its immense wings, Martin again began to be alarmed at its formidable appearance; and as more and more birds came, with more of the big kind, and the wild outcry they made increased, his fear and astonishment grew; then all at once these feelings rose to extreme terror and amazement at the sight of a new bird-like creature a thousand times bigger than the largest one in the circling crowd above, coming swiftly towards him. He saw that it was not flying but swimming or gliding over the surface of the sea; and its body was black, and above the body were many immense white wings of various shapes, which stood up like a white cloud. Overcome with terror he fell flat on the raft, hiding his face in the brown seaweed that covered it; then in a few minutes the sea became agitated and rocked him in his raft, and a wave came over him which almost swept him into the sea. At the same time the outcry of the birds were redoubled until he was nearly deafened by their screams, and the screams seemed to shape themselves into words. "Martin! Martin!" the birds seemed to be screaming. "Look up, Martin, look up, look up!" The whole air above and about him seemed to be full of the cries, and every cry said to him, "Martin! Martin! lookup! lookup!" [Illustration: ] Although dazed with the awful din and almost fainting with terror and weakness, he could not resist the command. Pressing his hands on the raft he at last struggled up to his knees, and saw that the feared bird-like monster had passed him by: he saw that it was a ship with a black hull, its white sails spread, and that the motion of the water and the wave that swept over him had been created by the ship as it came close to the raft. It was now rapidly gliding from him, but still very near, and he saw a crowd of strange-looking rough men, with sun-browned faces and long hair and shaggy beards, leaning over the bulwarks staring at him. They had seen with astonishment the corpse, as they thought, of a little naked white boy lying on the old black raft, with a multitude of sea-birds gathered to feed on him; now when they saw him get up on his knees and look at them, they uttered a great cry, and began rushing excitedly hither and thither, to pull at ropes and lower a boat. Martin did not know what they were doing; he only knew that they were men in a ship, but he was now too weak and worn-out to look at or think of more than one thing at a time, and what he was looking at now was the birds. For no sooner had he looked up and seen the ship than their wild cries ceased, and they rose up and up like a white cloud to scatter far and wide over sky and sea. For some moments he continued watching them, listening to their changed voices, which now had a very soft and pleasant sound, as if they were satisfied and happy. It made him happy to hear them, and he lifted his hands up and smiled; then, relieved of his terror and overcome with weariness, he closed his eyes and dropped once more full length upon his bed of wet seaweed. At that the men stared into each other's face, a very strange startled look coming into their eyes. And no wonder! For long, long months, running to years, they had been cruising in those lonely desolate seas, thousands of miles from home, seeing no land nor any green thing, nor dear face of woman or child: and now by some strange chance a child had come to them, and even while they were making all haste to rescue it, putting their arms out to take it from the sea, its life had seemingly been snatched from them! But he was only sleeping. [Illustration: ] NOTE _When I arranged with Mr. Hudson for the publication of an American Edition of_ A Little Boy Lost, _I asked him to write a special foreword to his American readers. He replied with a characteristic letter, and, taking him at his word. I am printing it on the following pages_. ALFRED A. KNOPF. _Dear Mr. Knopf_: Your request for a Foreword to insert in the American reprint of the little book worries me. A critic on this side has said that my Prefaces to reprints of my earlier works are of the nature of parting kicks, and I have no desire just now to kick this poor innocent. That evil-tempered old woman, Mother Nature, in one of her worst tantrums, has been inflicting so many cuffs and blows on me that she has left me no energy or disposition to kick anything--even myself. The trouble is that I know so little about it. Did I write this book? What then made me do it? In reading a volume of Fors Clavigera I once came upon a passage which sounded well but left me in a mist, and it relieved me to find a footnote to it in which the author says: "This passage was written many years ago and what I was thinking about at the time has quite escaped my memory. At all events, though I let it stand, I can find no meaning in it now." Little men may admire but must not try to imitate these gestures of the giants. And as a result of a little quiet thinking it over I seem able to recover the idea I had in my mind when I composed this child's story and found a title for it in Blake. Something too of the semi-wild spirit of the child hero in the lines: "Naught loves another as itself.... And, father, how can I love you Or any of my brothers more? I love you like the little birds That pick up crumbs about the door." There nature is, after picking up the crumbs to fly away. A long time ago I formed a small collection of children's books of the early years of the nineteenth century; and looking through them, wishing that some of them had fallen into my hands when I was a child I recalled the books I had read at that time--especially two or three. Like any normal child I delighted in such stories as the Swiss Family Robinson, but they were not the books I prized most; they omitted the very quality I liked best--the little thrills that nature itself gave me, which half frightened and fascinated at the same time, the wonder and mystery of it all. Once in a while I got a book with something of this rare element in it, contained perhaps in some perfectly absurd narrative of animals taking human shape or using human speech, with such like transformations and vagaries; they could never be too extravagant, fantastic and incredible, so long as they expressed anything of the feeling I myself experienced when out of sight and sound of my fellow beings, whether out on the great level plain, with a glitter of illusory water all round me, or among the shadowy trees with their bird and insect sounds, or by the waterside and bed of tall dark bullrushes murmuring in the wind. These ancient memories put it in my mind to write a book which, I imagined, would have suited my peculiar taste of that early period, the impossible story to be founded on my own childish impressions and adventures, with a few dreams and fancies thrown in and two or three native legends and myths, such as the one of the Lady of the Hills, the incarnate spirit of the rocky Sierras on the great plains, about which I heard from my gaucho comrades when on the spot--the strange woman seldom viewed by human eyes who is jealous of man's presence and is able to create sudden violent tempests to frighten them from her sacred haunts. That's the story of my story, and to the question in your publisher's practical mind, I'm sorry to have to say I don't know. I have no way of finding out, since children are not accustomed to write to authors to tell them what they think of their books. And after all these excuses it just occurs to me that children do not read forewords and introductions; they have to be addressed to adults who do not read children's books, so that in any case it would be thrown away. Still if a foreword you must have, and from me, I think you will have to get it out of this letter. I remain, Yours cordially, W. H. HUDSON. November 14,1917. 
11237	----	[Illustration] THE PEARL BOX. CONTAINING ONE HUNDRED BEAUTIFUL STORIES FOR YOUNG PEOPLE. BY A PASTOR. Transcribers Note: There are many, but not one hundred, stories in this volume. PREFACE. In preparing this volume of stories for young readers, the writer has had in view their instruction, by presenting to them their station in a familiar and instructive story. Each story contains a moral, and teaches principles by which the youth should be governed in their private, social and public relations in life. In the perusal of these stories, we hope to accomplish our great object, of aiding young persons to pursue the peaceful and pleasant path of duty--to render them more useful in the world, and to grow wiser and happier in the path of life. THE PEARL BOX. * * * * * THE DYING BOY. A little boy, by the name of Bertie, was taken very ill, and for sometime continued to grow weaker until he died. A few hours before his death he revived up, and his first request was to be bathed in the river; but his mother persuaded him to be sponged only, as the river water would be too cold for his weak frame. After his mother had sponged him with water, he desired to be dressed; when his mother dressed him in his green coat and white collar, and seated him at the table with all his books and worldly treasures around him. As he sat there, one would have thought that he was about to commence a course of study; and yet in the marble paleness of his features, and in the listless and languid eye, there was evidence that life in the boy was like an expiring taper, flickering in the socket. He soon asked to go out in his little carriage. His grandfather, whom he very much loved, placed him in it, and carefully avoiding every stone, drew him to a spot commanding the entire landscape. The tide was up and the sun was shining on the deep blue waters, and bathing the distant mountains and the green meadows in liquid gold. The gardens and orchards around were gay in the rich crimson blossoms of the apple tree; the air was filled with the sweet fragrance of flowers, and the birds were singing beautifully, when little Bertie looked for the last time on the scenes of earth. He could not remain long, and was soon taken back to the little parlor, where he sat on the sofa, resting his elbows on the table. It was not long before the little boy died. But he was very happy. Among his last words were these, addressed to his little sister three years old: "Well, Emmie, very ill--me going to Jesus." "Oh, mamma, Emmie loves her Saviour." * * * * * THE BOY AND THE GOLD ROBIN. A bright eyed boy was sleeping upon a bank of blossoming clover. The cool breeze lifted the curls from his brow, and fanned with downy wings his quiet slumbers, while he lay under the refreshing shade of a large maple tree. The birds sang to him during his happy hours of sleep. By and by he awoke, and a beautiful gold robin sat on the spray, and sung a song of joy. The boy reached out his hands to secure the prize, but the robin spread his golden wings and soared away. He looked after it with a longing gaze, and when it disappeared from his sight, he wept aloud. At this moment, a form of light approached, and took the hands of the child and pointed upwards; and he saw the bird soaring in freedom, and the sun shining upon its burnished plumes. Then the shining one said: "Do you love that beautiful bird?" In the midst of his tears the child replied, "Oh, yes." "Then," said the angel, "shall it not wing its flight from flower to flower and be happy, rather than to dwell in a prison with thee?" Then the streams and flowering vales of Elysium, that breathe the pure air of freedom, spake: "Wouldst thou bring her back to thee, and make her a prisoner? Dry up thy tears, and let thy song be, 'Stay not here, but speed thy flight, O bright one, and snuff the mellow air of freedom.' God made the birds to be happy in their short existence, and ought we to deprive them of their own elements of happiness, and take from them the freedom which they enjoy?" * * * * * THE WAY TO OVERCOME EVIL. A little girl, by the name of Sarah Dean, was taught the precepts of the Bible by her mother. One day she came to her mother very much delighted, to show her some plums that a friend had given her. The mother said to her: "Your friend was very kind, and has given you a great many." "Yes," replied Sarah. "she was, and she gave me more than these, but I have given some away." The mother asked to whom she had given them; when the child replied: "I gave them to a girl that pushes me off the path, and makes faces at me." Upon being asked why she gave them to her, she answered: "Because I thought that should make her know that I wished to be kind to her, and perhaps she will not be unkind and rude to me again." This was true. The rude girl was afterwards very good to Sarah, and felt very sorry that she had treated her unkindly. How truly did the little girl obey the command, "_overcome evil with good_." * * * * * HARRIET AND HER SQUIRREL. It was on a Sabbath eve, when at a friend's house, we were all sitting in the piazza, conversing about the efforts which were being made for the poor heathen, and the number of Testaments which were being sent to them. "Father," said little Harriet, "do the little heathen children wish to learn to read the New Testament?" "O yes, my child, many of them do," said the father. "But have they all got Testaments if they did know how to read?" "No, my love; few of them have ever heard about the Testament, about God, or about Jesus Christ." "Will half a dollar buy one?" said Harriet. "O yes, my child." "Then," said Harriet, "may I sell anything I have, if I can get the money?" Her father told her she might. Now, every child has some favorite toy. Harriet's was a beautiful tame _gray_ squirrel. It would eat from her hands, attend her in her rambles, and sleep on her pillow. She called its name Jenny. It was taken sick, and the little girl nursed it with care, but it at last died in her lap. Little Harriet wept sadly about it, and her father tried to console her, and told her not to feel so. "Ah," said she, "you know, father, you told me that I might sell anything I had to buy a Testament for the heathen children, and I was going to sell my pretty squirrel to Mr. Smith, who said he would give me half a dollar for it; but now my Jenny is dead." The Father then put a silver dollar into Harriet's hand, and she dried her tears, rejoicing that Jenny's death would be the means of his little daughter having two or three Testaments instead of one. * * * * * THE REWARD. A teacher in a Sabbath School promised to supply all the children in his class with a catechism, who had none. One of the little girls went home from the school after the books were given out, and said: "Mamma, if I had told a lie to-day, I would have got a catechism." "I think that very strange, Eliza; for the Sabbath School is no place for lies, and if you could be so wicked, I know your teacher would not have rewarded you for it." "Mother," said Eliza, "I tell nothing but the truth; and now I will explain it. "You know I went to school this morning with the other girls. They told me on the way how their mother had bought each of them a new catechism on last market day, and they said, if I once saw how pretty their books were, I would not look at my old one any more. Our teacher asked us all, when we went in, if we had any catechisms, and those who said they had not, received one from the teacher as a present. Jane, after all she told me, by the way, denied that she had any, and Lizzy did the same. But when he asked me, I told him I had one at home; but if I had said no, I would have got a new one." Her mother then told her that she should be rewarded for not telling a lie by giving her a new book and a new Bible. * * * * * ANECDOTES. A poor Arabian of the desert was one day asked, how he came to be assured that there was a God. "In the same way," he replied, "that I am enabled to tell by a print impressed on the sand, whether it was a man or beast that passed that way." THANKFULNESS.--Walking along Bishopgate street one morning, I saw two men standing as if amazed at something that had happened. "Pray, gentlemen," said I, "what is the matter?" One of them informed me that a genteelly dressed man had hastily come up to him, and tapping him on the shoulder, had said: "Sir, did you ever thank God for your reason?" "No," said I, "not particularly." "Well," said he, "do it now, for I have lost mine;" when he marched off with great speed. HONESTY.--An honest boy, whose sister was sick and the family in want, found a wallet containing fifty dollars. The temptation was great to use the money; but he resolved to find the owner. He did so; when the owner, learning the circumstances of the family, gave the fifty dollars for their comfort. He took the boy to live with him. That boy is a prosperous merchant in Ohio. THE BOY AND HIS MARBLES.--One Sunday a lady called to her little boy, who was shooting marbles on the pavement, to come into the house. "Don't you know you shouldn't be out there, my son? Go into the back yard if you want to play marbles; it is Sunday." "Yes, mother; but aint it Sunday in the back yard?" * * * * * THE BOY AND THE DEW DROPS. A little boy who had been out early in the morning playing on the lawn before his father's house, while the dew drops lay on the grass, was soon after seen returning to the spot, and finding them all gone, he sat down to weep. His father asked him why he wept. "Because," said he, "the beautiful dew drops are gone." His father tried to soothe him, but he continued weeping. Just then a cloud passed over, and on the cloud the beautiful rainbow had cast its arch. "There, see, my son," said the father, "there are all your dew drops; the sun has taken them up only to set them forth in greater brightness in the sky." "O father, dear father, why pass they away, The dew drops that sparkled at dawning of day, That glittered like stars in the light of the moon; Oh, why are the dew drops dissolving so soon? Does the sun in his wrath chase their brightness away, As if nothing that's lovely might live for a day? The moonlight is faded, the flowers still remain, But the dew drops have shrunk to their petals again." "My child," said the father, "look up to the skies; Behold that bright rainbow, those beautiful dyes, There, there are the dew drops in glory reset, 'Mid the jewels of heaven they are glittering yet. Oh, are we not taught by each beautiful ray To mourn not earth's fair things, though passing away? For though youth of its beauty and brightness be riven, All that withers on earth blooms more sweetly in heaven. Look up," sad the father, "look up to the skies---- Hope sits on the wings of those beautiful dyes." * * * * * LETTICE AND MYRA. A SCENE IN LONDON. My young readers may have heard about the poor people in London. The following story is a specimen of the hardships of many young girls, in that famous city. "Two young women occupied one small room of about ten feet by eight. They were left orphans, and were obliged to take care of themselves. Many of the articles of furniture left them had been disposed of to supply the calls of urgent want. In the room was an old four post bedstead, with curtains almost worn out, one mattrass with two small pillows, a bolster that was almost flat, three old blankets and cotton sheets, of coarse description, three rush-bottom chairs, an old claw table, a chest of draws, with a few battered band-boxes on the top of it, a miserable bit of carpet before the fire-place, a wooden box for coals, a little tin fender, and an old poker. What there was, however, was kept clean, the floor and yellow paint was clean, and the washing tub which sat in one corner of the room. "It was a bitter cold night, the wind blew and shook the window, when a young girl of about eighteen sat by the tallow candle, which burned in a tin candlestick, at 12 o'clock at night, finishing a piece of work with the needle which she was to return next morning. Her name was Lettice Arnold. She was naturally of a cheerful, hopeful temper, and though work and disappointment had faded the bright colors of hope, still hope buoyed up her spirits. "Her sister Myra was delicate, and lay on the mattrass on that night, tossing about with suffering, unable to rest. At last Lettice says to her:---- "'Poor Myra, can't you get to sleep?' "'It is so cold,' was the reply; 'and when will you have done and come to bed?' "'One quarter of an hour more, Myra, and I shall have finished my work, and then I will throw my clothes over your feet, and I hope you will be a little warmer.' "Myra sighed, and lifted up her head, and leaning upon her arm watched the progress of her sister as she plied the needle to her work. "'How slowly,' said Myra, 'you do get along. It is one o'clock, and you have not finished yet.' "'I cannot work fast, Myra, and neatly too; my hands are not so delicate and nimble as yours,' and smiling a little, she added: 'Such swelled clumsy things, I cannot get over the ground nimbly and well at the same time. You, are a fine race horse, and I a drudging pony. But I shall soon be through.' "Myra once more uttered a sigh and cried: "'Oh, my feet are dreadful cold.' "'Take this bit of flannel,' said Lettice, 'and let me wrap them up.' "'Nay, you will want it,' she replied. "'Oh, I have only five minutes to sit up, and I can wrap this piece of carpet round mine,' said Lettice. "And she laid down her work and went to the bed and wrapped her sister's icy feet in the flannel, and then sat down and finished her task. How glad was Lettice to creep to the mattress and to lay her aching limbs upon it. A hard bed and scanty covering in a cold night are keenly felt. She soon fell asleep, while her sister tossed and murmured on account of the cold. "Lettice awoke and drew her over little pillow from under her head, and put it under her sister's and tried every way to make her sister comfortable, and she partly succeeded; and at last Myra, the delicate suffering creature, fell asleep, and Lettice slumbered like a child." How thankful ought we to be for kind parents, a comfortable home, and a good fire in a cold night. I will tell you in my next story what Lettice did with her work. * * * * * LETTICE TAKING HOME THE WORK. Early in the morning, before it was light, and while the twilight gleamed through the curtainless windows, Lettice was up dressing herself by the aid of the light which gleamed from the street lamp into the window. She combed her hair with modest neatness, then opened the draw with much precaution, lest she should disturb poor Myra, who still slumbered on the hard mattrass--drew out a shawl and began to fold it as if to put it on. "Alas!" said Lettice, "this will not do--it is thread-bare, time-worn, and has given way in two places." She turned it, and unfolded it, but it would not do. It was so shabby that she was actually ashamed to be seen with it in the street. She put it aside and took the liberty of borrowing Myra's, who was now asleep. She knew Myra would be awful cold when she got up, and would need it. But she must go with the work that morning. She thought first of preparing the fire, so that Myra, when she arose, would only have to light the match; but as she went to the box for coal, she saw, with terror, how low the little store of fuel was, and she said to herself, "we must have a bushel of coal to-day--better to do without meat than fire such weather as this." But she was cheered with the reflection that she should receive a little more for her work that day than what she had from other places. It had been ordered by a benevolent lady who had been to some trouble in getting the poor woman supplied with needle work so that they should receive the full price. She had worked for private customers before, and always received more pay from them than from the shops in London, where they would beat down the poor to the last penny. Poor Lettice went to the old band-box and took out a shabby old bonnet--she looked at it, and sighed, when she thought of the appearance she must make; for she was going to Mrs. Danvers, and her work was some very nice linen for a young lady about to be married. Just at this moment she thought of the contrast between all the fine things that young lady was to have, and her own destitution. But her disposition was such as not to cause her to think hard of others who had plenty while she was poor. She was contented to receive her pay from the wealthy, for her daily needle work. She felt that what they had was not taken from her, and if she could gain in her little way by receiving her just earnings from the general prosperity of others, she would not complain. And as the thought of the increased pay came into her mind, which she was to receive that day, she brightened up, shook the bonnet, pulled out the ribbons, and made it look as tidy as possible, thinking to herself that after buying some fuel she might possibly buy a bit of ribbon and make it look a little more spruce, when she got her money. Lettice now put on her bonnet, and Myra's shawl, and looking into the little three-penny glass which hung on the wall, she thought she might look quite tidy after all. The young lady for whom she made the linen lived about twenty miles from town, but she had come in about this time, and was to set off home at nine o'clock that very morning. The linen was to have been sent in the night before, but Lettice had found it impossible to finish it. This was why she was obliged to start so early in the morning. She now goes to the bed to tell Myra about the fire, and that she had borrowed her shawl, but Myra was sound asleep, so she did not disturb her, but stepped lightly over the floor and down stairs, for it was getting late, and she must be gone. Read the next story, and you will be deeply interested in the result. * * * * * LETTICE AND CATHERINE, OR THE UNEXPECTED MEETING. I must tell you who were Lettice and Myra. They were the daughters of a clergyman, who held the little vicarage of Castle Rising. But misfortune, which sometimes meets the wise and good, reduced the family to poor circumstances. After the parents' decease, Lettice and Myra located in London, for the purpose of doing needle work for a living. We said in the last story, that Lettice had entered the street and was on her way with the work she had finished for the young lady. It was a cold morning, the snow blew, and the street was slippery. She could scarcely stand--her face was cold, and her hands so numbed that she could scarcely hold the parcel she carried. The snow beat upon her poor bonnet, but she comforted herself with the idea that she might be supposed to have a better bonnet at home. She cheerfully trudged along, and at last entered Grosvenor Square, where the lamps were just dying away before the splendid houses, while the wind rushed down the Park colder than ever. A few boys were about the only people yet to be seen about, and they laughed at her as she held her bonnet down with one hand, to prevent its giving way before the wind, while she carried her bundle and kept her shawl from flying up with the other. At last she entered Green Street, and came to the house of the kind lady who had furnished her and many others with work; raised the knocker, and gave one humble knock at the door. She had never been at the house before, but she had sometimes had to go to other genteel houses where she had been met with incivility by the domestics. But "like master, like man," is a stale old proverb, and full of truth. The servant came to the door. He was a grave old man about fifty. His countenance was full of kind meaning, and his manners so gentle, that before hearing her errand, observing how cold she looked, bade her come in and warm herself at the hall stove. "I have come," said Lettice, "with the young lady's work--I had not time to come last night, but I hope I have not put her to any inconvenience--I started before light this morning.' "Well, my dear, I hope not," said the servant, "but it was a pity you could not get it done last night. Mrs. Danvers likes to have people exact to the moment. However, I dare say it will be all right." As Reynolds, the servant-man, entered the drawing-room, Lettice heard a voice, "Is it come at last?" And the young lady, who thus enquired, was Catherine Melvin, who was then making an early breakfast before a noble blazing fire. "Has the woman brought her bill?" asked Mrs. Danvers. "I will go and ask," said the servant. "Stay, ask her to come up. I should like to enquire how she is getting along, this cold weather." Reynolds obeyed, and soon Lettice found herself in a warm, comfortable breakfast room. "Good morning," said Mrs. Danvers. "I am sorry you have had such a cold walk this morning. I am sorry you could not come last night. This young lady is just leaving, and there is barely time to put up the things." Catherine (for this was the young lady's name) had her back turned to the door quietly continuing her breakfast, but when the gentle voice of Lettice replied: "Indeed, madam, I beg your pardon, I did my very best"--Catherine started, looked up and rose hastily from her chair; Lettice, advancing a few steps, exclaimed--"Catherine." And Catherine exclaimed: "It is--it is you!" and coming forward and taking her by the hand, she gazed with astonishment at the wan face and miserable attire of the work-woman. "You," she kept repeating. "Lettice! Lettice Arnold! Good Heavens! Where is your father? your mother? your sister?" "Gone," said the poor girl, "all gone but poor Myra!" "And where is she? And you, dear Lettice, how have you come to this?" Such was the unexpected meeting of these two persons, who were once children of the same village of Castle Rising. Lettice had been working for her schoolmate, Catherine Melvin. The result was a happy one, and it was not long before, by the kindness of Catherine, that the two orphan girls were situated pleasantly in life. But as you will wish to know how all this came about, I will give you the circumstances in another story. * * * * * THE EXPLANATION. Lettice's father was a man of education, a scholar, a gentleman, and had much power in preaching. He received one hundred and ten pounds per year for his services. Her father's illness was long and painful, and the family were dependant on others for assistance. "We at last closed his eyes," said Lettice, "in deep sorrow." He used to say to himself, "It is a rough road, but it leads to a good place." After his funeral, the expenses exhausted all that was left of their money--only a few pounds were left when the furniture was sold, and "we were obliged," said Lettice, "to give up the dear little parsonage. It was a sweet little place. The house was covered all over with honeysuckles and jessamines; and there was the flower garden in which I used to work, and which made me so hale and strong, and aunt Montague used to say I was worth a whole bundle of fine ladies. "It was a sad day when we parted from it. My poor mother! How she kept looking back, striving not to cry, and poor Myra was drowned in tears. "Then we afterwards came to London. A person whom we knew in the village had a son who, was employed in one of the great linen warehouses, and he promised to try to get us needlework. So we came to London, took a small lodging, and furnished it with the remnant of our furniture. Here we worked fourteen hours a day apiece, and we could only gain between three and four shillings each. At last mother died, and then all went; she died and had a pauper's funeral." From this room the orphan girl removed soon after their mother's deceased, and located among the poor of Marylebone street, where Mrs. Danvers accidently met with the two sisters, in one of her visits among the poor, and for whom she obtained the work which led to the unexpected meeting related in the previous story. * * * * * JONAS AND HIS HORSE. A horse is a noble animal, and is made for the service of man. No one who has tender feelings can bear to see the horse abused. It is wicked for any one to do so. A horse has a good memory, and he will never forget a kind master. Jonas Carter is one of those boys who likes to take care of a horse. His father gave Jonas the whole care of an excellent animal which he purchased for his own use. Every morning he would go into the stable to feed and water him. As all the horses in the neighborhood had names, Jonas gave one to his, and called him Major. Every time he went into the stable to take care of him, Major would whine and paw, as if his best friend was coming to see him. Jonas kept him very clean and nice, so that he was always ready for use at any time of day. At night he made up his bed of straw, and kept the stable warm in winter and cool in summer. Major soon found that he was in the hands of a kind master, and being well fed, and well cleansed, he would often show how proud and nice he was, by playing with Jonas in the yard. His young master would often let him loose in the yard, and when Jonas started to go in, the horse, Major, would follow him to the door, and when he turned him into the pasture, no one could so well catch him as Jonas; for every time he took him from the pasture, Jonas would give him some oats; so when he saw his master coming for him, he remembered the oats, and would come directly to him. Some horses are very difficult to bridle, but it was not so with Major. When Jonas came with the bridle, Major would hold his head down, and take in his bitts, and appear as docile as a lamb. He well knew that Jonas never drove him hard, but always used him kindly. Jonas was not a selfish boy; he was willing to let his friends ride a short distance; and in the picture, you will see him talking with one of his young friends about his horse. Now, children, you may be sure that a dumb animal will remember his kind master; and if ever you own a horse, or drive one which belongs to another, be sure and treat him kindly. And you will find this rule to work well among yourselves. Be kind to each other, and to all whom you meet with, and it will help you along the pleasant path of life, and secure to you many friends. [Illustration] * * * * * EDWARD AND ELLEN. Edward Ford owned a snug little cottage with a small farm situated about a mile from the village. When he was married to Ellen G----, who was said to be one of the best girls in the village, he took her to his nice little home, where he had every thing around very pleasant and comfortable. Ellen was very industrious and remarkable for her prudence and neatness. She spun and churned, and tended her poultry, and would often carry her butter and eggs herself to market, which greatly added to their comfort. She had a beautiful little girl, and they gave her the name of Lily. Things glided smoothly on until Lily was sixteen. Edward was very fond of the violin and of reading books that were not very useful, and as he was very fond of music, he spent a great deal more time in making music and playing the violin than what his wife thought profitable. Ellen loved music, and was willing to have him read profitable books, but all this while she thought he might be patching up the fences and improving the shed for the better comfort of the cattle. Still she would not complain, hoping all the time that he would see the necessity of being a little more industrious. The winter came, and all through its dreary months he was unable to work, as he was sick. And although Ellen worked hard, yet her husband required so much of her attention, that all her efforts availed not much to keep poverty out of their cottage. When the spring came, Ellen's husband was able to be about again, and she began to hope that Edward would be more industrious, and they would be able by strict economy to repair the loss occasioned by his winter's illness, which had put them so far behind-hand. Edward had become lazy or disheartened. Affairs about the house continued to grow worse; his farm was ill worked or neglected, and by the fall, his horse and oxen had to go for necessary expenses. Ellen still kept her cows, but it was now very little help she received from her husband. He had been formerly one of the most temperate of men, but now he spent his days from home; and here lay Ellen's deepest sorrow. He was often at the village tavern, wasting in senseless riot the time, health and means that God had given him for other purposes. Ellen felt sad, and in the next story you will see a painful scene in the life of * * * * * LILY FORD. It was now in the latter part of December--two days more and comes the season of "Merry Christmas." Ellen thought of the dreary prospect before her. As she was thinking over her condition, and how she should manage affairs so as to make home comfortable, the door opened, and in came Edward earlier than usual, a sober man. With a grateful heart Ellen set about preparing the supper, and made all the evening as pleasant as she could for him. The next morning earlier than usual Edward was preparing to go out. The weather was bitter cold, and the wood pile was very low. She did not like to ask Edward to split some wood the evening before, as she did not wish to vex him. Of late he had harshly refused her simple requests. She, however, ventured this morning to ask him to split a few logs, and he replied: "Why did you not ask me when you saw me doing nothing all last evening? You must get along the best way you can until night. I have engaged to work for Squire Davis, and I shall be late unless I go at once." "To work! Have you?" said Ellen, in a pleased and grateful tone. "Yes; so don't detain me. I am to have a dollar and a half a day as long as I choose to work." "How very fortunate!" said Ellen. After he was gone, Ellen busied herself in making things comfortable for the children. It was market day, and she must carry her heavy basket to the village for the different families who depended upon her for their supply of fresh butter and eggs. A year ago she had a neat little wagon and a good horse to drive. There was something in the mind of Ellen; what it was she could not tell--a kind of sad presentiment of something--as she was preparing to go to market. I shall tell you in the next story what it was. You will see that Ellen was very kind to her husband and tried every way to make him happy. * * * * * THE MARKET DAY. Mrs. Ford had three little children--Lily, Hetty, and a dear little babe. As she was now going to market, she told Lily, her oldest daughter, to take good care of the baby. Lily promised to do so. It was a very cold day. For a time the children got along very well; but soon the wood was all burned, not a stick or chip remained; as their father had gone away in the morning without splitting any, so they were obliged to do the best they could. The baby began to look as if it was cold, and Lily said: "Come, Hetty, we will go out and see if together we cannot roll in one of those great logs." Hetty was eleven years old. Lily put the baby in the cradle and then went out with Hetty to roll in the log. They rolled it up to the step, and got it part way into the door, but, alas! they could not get it further. There it stuck in the doorway, and the door was wide open; the wind and snow beat in from without, and the fire gradually settled away in its embers. Something must now be done. Hetty put on her cloak and hood and set out for her mother; for she told them if anything happened to be sure and come for her. Hetty soon found her mother at the village store, and without stopping to warm herself, she said: "O mother, come home, for little Eddy is sick, and Lily says it is the croup, and that he is dying. The fire is all out, and the room is full of snow, because the big log we tried to roll in stuck fast in the doorway." Hetty and her mother hastened home; and as they were crossing the street there was her husband just entering the tavern. She told him about little Eddy, and he promised to go for a physician and to come home immediately; and by the time they had gone half way home, Edward, her husband, joined them. They hurried along, and as they came near the cottage there stood two of the cows, and under the shed was the third, the old "spotted cow," which Hetty thought was in the pond when she left home. To their surprise the log was rolled away from the door, and as Mrs. Ford opened the door with a trembling hand, fearing her baby was dead, there was a young man sitting by a good fire, which he had made while Hetty was gone, with little Eddy folded in his arms. The anxious mother bent over her baby as he lay in the stranger's arms, and seeing his eyes closed, she whispered: "Is he dead?" "He is not, he only sleeps," replied the stranger. This young man came into the house in time to save the baby from the cold chills of death. He was ever after a friend to the family--a means of Edward's reformation, so that with some assistance the mortgage on the farm was paid off, and the farm re-stocked. This stranger became the husband of Lily, the eldest daughter. * * * * * MELLY, ANNA AND SUSY. There is nothing more pleasant than to see brothers and sisters, lovely in their lives, and in all their plays kind and obliging to each other. Mrs. Jones' three little children were always noted for their good behaviour by all the people in the village, and the school teacher said they were the prettiest behaved children she ever saw, and this was saying much in their praise, for her scholars were noted for very good behavior and promptness in their recitations. Mrs. Jones kept her children under a good discipline, but she always gave them time and opportunities for their pleasant plays. She would not allow them to associate with vicious children, because "evil communications corrupt good manners," and she knew her children were as liable to fall into bad habits as any others. There were a few vicious boys in the village where she lived who always took delight in teasing and vexing the other children, and sometimes these boys would try some method to break up the children's play. One afternoon, there being no school, Mrs. Jones gave her little children permission to go into the lower back-room and spend awhile in play. Away they jumped and skipped along down stairs to the play room, with merry hearts and smiling faces. They had not been there a long time before they heard a very singular noise, which they did not know what to make of. But they soon forgot it, and continued playing with the same cheerfulness; very soon again they heard the same noise, which sounded like somebody's voice. The children began to be a little frightened, and while little Susy stretches her hand out to take hold of the post, and is in the act of running away. Melly and Anna put their fingers to their lips, and listened again to know what the noise could mean. Soon the noise was repeated, and away they flew to heir mother's arms in such a tremor that she felt at the moment alarmed herself. They told their mother what had happened, and all that night the children could not sleep. It was ascertained the next day that one of the bad boys crept along in the back part of the yard where the children were playing, and by an unnatural sound of his voice made the noise that so alarmed the three little children. Susy, who was the youngest, did not forget it for some time; and all of them were afraid to go alone into the lower room for many weeks. This was very wrong in the bad boy; he might have injured the children at play so they would never have recovered from it. I have known young children to be so frightened as never to forget the impression all their life-time. How much better for the boy to have been like these good children, and joined with them in their pleasant pastimes. Never do any thing that will give sorrow and pain to others, but live and act towards each other while in youth, so as to enable you to review your life with pleasure, and to meet with the approbation of your Heavenly Father. * * * * * ARTHUR AND HIS APPLE TREE. One summer day little William was sitting in the garden chair beside his mother, under the shade of a large cherry tree which stood on the grass plot in front of the house. He was reading in a little book. After he had been reading some time, he looked, up to his mother and said: "Mother, will you tell me what is the meaning of 'you must return good for evil?'" His mother replied: "I will tell you a story that will explain it. "I knew a little boy," she said, "whose name was Arthur Scott; he lived with his grandmamma, who loved him very much, and who wished that he might grow up to be a good man. Little Arthur had a garden of his own, and in it grew an apple tree, which was then very small, but to his great joy had upon it two fine rosy-cheeked apples, the first ones it had produced. Arthur wished to taste of them very much to know if they were sweet or sour; but he was not a selfish boy, and he says to his grandmother one morning: "I think I shall leave my apples on the tree till my birthday, then papa and mamma and sister Fanny will come and see me, and we will eat them together." "'A very good thought," said his grandmother; "and you shall gather them yourself.' "It seemed a long time for him to wait; but the birthday came at last, and in the morning as soon as he was dressed he ran into his garden to gather his apples; but lo! they were gone. A naughty boy who saw them hanging on the tree, had climbed over the garden wall and stolen them. "Arthur felt very sorry about losing his apples, and he began to cry, but he soon wiped his eyes, and said to his grandmother: "'It is hard to lose my nice apples, but it was much worse for that naughty boy to commit so great a sin as to steal them. I am sure God must be very angry with him; and I will go and kneel down and ask God to forgive him.' "So he went and prayed for the boy who had stolen his apples. Now, William, do you not think that was returning good for evil?" "O, yes," said William; "and I thank you, mother, for your pretty story. I now understand what my new book means." Little Arthur grew to be a man, and always bore a good name. * * * * * THE MOTHERLESS BIRDS. There were two men who were neighbors to each other, living in a distant country were they had to labor hard for the support of their families. One of them was greatly troubled to know who would take care of his children if he should die. But the other man was not so troubled, and was always very cheerful, saying to his neighbor: "Never distrust Providence." One day as the sorrowful man was laboring in the fields, sad and cast down, he saw some little birds enter a bush, go out and then return again. He went towards the bush, and saw two nests side by side, and in both nests some little birds, newly hatched and still without feathers. He saw the old birds go in a number of times, and they carried in their bills food to give their little ones. At one time, as one of the mothers returned with her beak full, a large vulture seized her and carried her away; and the poor mother, struggling vainly under its talons, uttered piercing cries. He thought the little young birds must certainly die, as they had now no mother to take care of them. He felt so bad about them that he did not sleep any that night. The next day, on returning to the fields, he said to himself: "I will see the little ones of this poor mother; some without doubt have already perished." He went up to the bush, and saw that the little ones in both nests were all alive and well. He was very much surprised at this, and he hid himself behind the bush to see what would happen. After a little time he heard a crying of the birds, and soon the second mother came flying into the bush with her beak full of food, and distributed it all among the little birds in both nests. He now saw that the orphan birds were as well provided for as when their own mother was living. In the evening, he related the whole story to his neighbor, and said to him: "I will never distress myself again about who will take care of my children, if I should die before them." His neighbor replied: "Let us always believe, hope, love, and pursue our course in peace. If you die before me, I will take cure of your children, and if I die before you, you will be a father to mine; and if we are both taken away before our children are able to provide for themselves, there is a Father in heaven." * * * * * STORY ABOUT A ROBBER. I will tell you a true story about a robber. A gentleman was once travelling through a very unfrequented road, along in a chaise, in the latter part of the day. There was no house nor a sign of a human being there. It was a very lonely road. Presently at a sudden turn in the road, directly towards his horse's head, a man came out of the woods. The gentleman was convinced by his appearance that he came for no good purpose. He immediately stopped his horse, and asked the stranger to get in and ride. The man hesitated a moment, and then stepped into the chaise. The gentleman commenced talking with him about the loneliness of the road, and observed that it would be an admirable place for a robbery if any one was so disposed. He proceeded to speak of robbery and criminals, and how he thought they should be sought out and instructed, and if possible reformed; and that we ought to try to convert and reform them; and then he began to tell him what course he should take with a man who should attempt to rob him. He told him that he should give him all his money first, and then began to talk kindly to him, and show the evil consequences of his course of life. He then said: "Yes, I would die on the spot rather than to injure a hair on his head." They soon came to another road, when the man, who had silently listened to all the gentleman had said, desired to get out, saying that his home lay in that direction. The gentleman stopped his horse, and the man got out, took his adviser by the hand, saying: "I thank you, sir, for this ride and for all you have said to me; I shall never forget any part of it. When I met you, it was my intention to rob you. I could easily have done so, but your kind act and kind words put better thoughts into my heart. I think I never shall be guilty of the crime you have saved me from committing this afternoon. I thank God for having met you; you have made me a better man." * * * * * GOOD COMPANIONS. One day, says a Persian poet, I saw a bunch of roses, and in the midst of them grew a tuft of grass. "How," I cried to the grass, "does a poor plant like you dare to be found in the company of roses?" And I ran to tear away the tuft, when the grass replied: "Spare me! It is true, I am not a rose; but you will perceive from my perfume that I have been among the roses." This is a very pretty fable for young people. It makes us recollect one of the proverbs of Solomon: "He that walketh with wise men shall be wise; but a companion of fools shall be destroyed," Young people like to have companions, and it is proper that they should have them. If we had no one to associate with, we should be unhappy. We need friends that we may confide in, and that we may tell them what we feel and what we think. But we must take care as to the choice of friends; for just as the grass in the fable imbibed the scent of the roses, so we become like those with whom we associate. * * * * * BERTIE'S BOX. A very little boy by the name of "Bertie," kept a box in which he deposited his little treasures. After he died his mother took the key and opened it. It was full of all sorts of things. There were specimens of stones, and shells, and moss, and grass, and dried flowers. There were, also, curious flies, found dead; but they were not destroyed by him, as he would never sacrifice a short sunny existence for self gratification. There were a number of books and small ornamental toys which had been given him--a drawing slate with pencils, colored chalks, a small box of colors, some little plates which he had colored, in his own untaught style--a commenced copy of the hymn, "I know that my Redeemer liveth" an unfinished letter to his grandpapa, and some torn leaves which he had found with passages of scripture upon them--a copy of the "lines on the death of an only son." Also a number of sketches of missionary stations, chapels and schools, which he had cut out and colored. His mother once asked him why he cut them out, saying, that there might be some reading on the back of the pieces worth saving. "Oh no, mamma," he replied, "I looked carefully at the backs first." In the box was a purse containing three shillings. Such were the treasures which this little lamb had left when he died; And as you will be pleased to know what was done with the box of treasures, I will tell you. "The thought struck me," says his mother, "that after he was gone, I should not know what to do with Bertie's box of treasures; I therefore asked him what I should do with them." He replied, "Oh, give half to God and half to the children, and be sure to divide them fairly." The money in the box was devoted to the purchase of the Bible--and a collecting box made in the form of a Bible; for, said he, "when my friends come and give money to the children, then hold Bertie's box for Bertie's share." This is a good example for all children. Your little treasures may serve a good purpose when you die. * * * * * THE CHILD AND FLOWER. The Atheist in his garden stood, At twilight's pensive hour, His little daughter by his side, was gazing on a flower. "Oh, pick that little blossom, Pa," The little prattler said, "It is the fairest one that blooms Within that lonely bed." The father plucked the chosen flower, And gave it to his child; With parted lips and sparkling eye, She seized the gift and smiled. "O Pa--who made this pretty flower, This little violet blue; Who gave it such a fragrant smell, And such a lovely hue?" A change came o'er the father's brow, His eye grew strangely wild, New thoughts within him had been stirred By that sweet, artless child. The truth flashed on the father's mind, The truth in all its power; "There is a God, my child," said he, "Who made that little flower." * * * * * ANNE CLEAVELAND. Anne was the daughter of a wealthy farmer. She had a good New England school education, and was well bred and well taught at home in the virtues and manners that constitute domestic social life. Her father died a year before her marriage. He left a will dividing his property equally between his son and daughter, giving to the son the homestead with all its accumulated riches, and to the daughter the largest share of the personal property amounting to 6 or 7000 dollars. This little fortune became at Anne's marriage the property of her husband. It would seem that the property of a woman received from her father should be her's. But the laws of a barbarous age fixed it otherwise. Anne married John Warren, who was the youngest child, daintly bred by his parents. He opened a dry good store in a small town in the vicinity of B----, where he invested Annie's property. He was a farmer, and did not think of the qualifications necessary to a successful merchant. For five or six years he went on tolerably, living _genteelly_ and _recklessly_, expecting that every year's gain would make up the excess of the past. When sixteen years of their married life had passed, they were living in a single room in the crowded street of R----. Every penny of the inheritance was gone--three children had died--three survived; a girl of fifteen years, whom the mother was educating to be a teacher--a boy of twelve who was living at home, and Jessy, a pale, delicate, little struggler for life, three years old. Mrs. W---- was much changed in these sixteen years. Her round blooming cheek was pale and sunken, her dark chestnut hair had become thin and gray, her bright eyes, over-tasked by use and watching, were faded, and her whole person shrunken. Yet she had gained a great victory. Yes, it was a precious pearl. And you will wish to know what it was. It was a gentle submission and resignation--a patience under all her afflictions. But learn a lesson. Take care to whom you give your hand in marriage. * * * * * THE ORPHANS' VOYAGE. Two little orphan boys, whose parents died in a foreign land, were put on board a vessel to be taken home to their relatives and friends. On a bitter cold night, when the north-east winds sang through the shrouds of the vessel, the little boys were crouched on the deck behind a bale of goods, to sleep for the night. The eldest boy wrapt around his younger brother his little cloak, to shield him from the surf and sleet, and then drew him close to his side and said to him, "the night will not be long, and as the wind blows we shall the sooner reach our home and see the peet fire glow." So he tried to cheer his little brother, and told him to go to sleep and forget the cold night and think about the morning that would come. They both soon sank to sleep on the cold deck, huddled close to each other, and locked close in each other's arms. The steerage passengers were all down below, snugly stowed away in their warm berths, and forgot all about the cold wind and the frost. When the morning came the land appeared, and the passengers began to pace the deck, and as the vessel moved along they tried some well known spot to trace. Only the orphans did not stir, Of all this bustling train; They reached _their home_ this very night, They will not stir again! The winter's breath proved kind to them, And ended all their pain. But in their deep and freezing sleep, Clasped rigid to each other, In dreams they cried, "the bright morn breaks, Home! home! is hear, my brother; The angel death has been our friend, We come! dear father, mother!" * * * * * LOOK UP. A little boy went to sea with his father to learn to be a sailor. One day his father said to him, "Come, my boy, you will never be a sailor if you don't learn to climb." The boy was very ambitious, and soon scrambled up to top of the rigging; but when he saw at what a height he was he began to be frightened, and called out, "Oh father, I shall fall, what shall I do?" "Look up--look up, my son," said his father; "if you look down you will be giddy; but if you keep looking up to the flag at the top of the mast you will descend safely." The boy followed his father's advice, and soon came down to the deck of the vessel in safety. You may learn from this story, to look up to Jesus, as the highest example, and as the Saviour of mankind. * * * * * THE FLOWER THAT LOOKS UP. "What beautiful things flowers are," said one of the party of little girls who were arranging the flowers they had gathered in the pleasant fields. "Which flower would you rather be like, Helen?" "Just as if there would be any choice," said Laura. "I like the Rose. I should like to be the queen of flowers, or none." Laura was naturally very proud. "For my part" observed Helen, "I should like to resemble the _Rhododendron_; when any one touches it, or shakes it roughly, it scatters a shower of honey dew from its roseate cups, teaching us to shower blessings upon our enemies. Oh, who does not wish to be as meek as this flower? It is very difficult, I know," said Helen; "but we are taught to possess a meek and lowly spirit." "It is difficult, I know," said Lucy, "if we trust to our own strength. It is only when my father looks at me in his kind manner, that I have any control of myself. What a pity it is that we cannot always remember that the eye of our Heavenly Father is upon us." "I wish I could," said Helen. "Now, Clara, we are waiting for you," said Laura. Clara smiled; and immediately chose the pale woodbine, or convolvulus, which so carelessly winds in and out among the bushes--this is an emblem of loving tenderness. "Now what says Lucy?" exclaimed Helen. "I think I can guess," said Clara; "either a violet, or a heart's ease. Am I right?" "Not quite," said Lucy, "although both the flowers you have mentioned, are great favorites of mine. But I think I should like to resemble the daisy, most, because it is always looking upward." Certainly Lucy made a wise choice. What more do we require for happiness, than to be able, let the cloud be ever so dark, to look upward with trusting faith in God. * * * * * MY EARLY DAYS. My father's house was indeed a pleasant home; and father was the supreme guide of his own household. He was gentle, but he could he firm and resolute when the case demanded. Mother was the sunshine of our little garden of love; her talents and energy gave her influence; and united to a man like father, she was all that is loveable in the character of woman. [Illustration] But the dear old home, where I grew from infancy to boyhood, and from boyhood to youth, I shall never forget. It was a large house on the slope of a hill, just high enough to overlook several miles of our level country, and smooth enough with its soft grassy carpet for us to roll down from the summit to the foot of the hill. At the back of the house was another hill, where we used to roll under the shade of the old elm, and where Miles and I would sit whole afternoons and fly the kite, each taking turns in bolding the string. This was a happy place for us, and especially in the spring time, when the happy looking cows grazed along the pathway which winds around the elm to the stream where Kate and I used to sail my little boat. All summer long this place was vocal with the songs of birds, which built their nests in safety among the tall trees of the grove in the rear of the farm. We had also the music of the running brook, and the pleasant hum of my father's cotton mill, which brought us in our daily bread. Haying time was always a happy season for us boys. Father's two horses, "_Dick_" and "_Bonny_" would take off the farm as large a load of hay as any in the village. Years past on, and we were a happy band of brothers and sisters. After Kate, came the twins, Margaret and Herbert, and last of all came the youngest darling, blue eyed Dora. We had a happy childhood. Our station in the world was high enough to enable us to have all the harmless pleasures and studies that were useful and actually necessary to boys and girls of our station. Father always thought that it was better in early youth not to force the boys to too hard study, and mother loved best to see Kate and Margaret using the fingers in fabricating garments, than in playing the harp. We were free, happy, roving children on father's farm, unchained by the forms of fashionable life. We had no costly dresses to spoil, and were permitted to play in the green fields without a servant's eye, and to bathe in the clear shallow stream without fear of drowning. As I have said before, these were happy days; and when I think of them gone, I often express my regret that we did not improve them more for the cultivation of the mind and the affections. In the next story you will see that there were some passing clouds in our early summer days. * * * * * MARGARET AND HERBERT. In a large family there are often diversity of character and varieties of mood and temper, which bring some clouds of sorrow. In our little Eden of innocence there were storms now and then. Miles was a little wild and head-strong from his babyhood, and Margaret, though very beautiful, was often wilful and vain. For five years the twins had grown up together the same in beauty and health One day an accident befel Herbert, and the dear child rose from his bed of sickness a pale and crippled boy. His twin sister grew up tall and blooming. The twins loved each other very much, and it was a pleasant sight to see how the deformed boy was cherished and protected by his sister Margaret. She would often leave us in the midst of our plays to go and sit by Herbert, who could not share with us in them. We had our yearly festivals, our cowslip gatherings, our blackberry huntings, our hay makings, and all the delights so pleasant to country children. Our five birthdays were each signalized by simple presents and evening parties, in the garden or the house, as the season permitted. Herbert and Margaret's birthdays came in the sunny time of May, when there were double rejoicings to be made. They were always set up in their chairs in the bower, decorated with flowers and crowned with wreaths. I now think of Margaret smiling under her brilliant garland, while poor Herbert looked up to her with his pale sweet face. I heard him once say to her when we had all gone away to pluck flowers: "How beautiful you are to-day, Margaret, with your rosy checks and brown hair." "But that does not make me any better or prettier than you, because I am strong and you are not, or that my cheeks are red and your's are pale." Miles was just carrying little Dora over the steeping stones at the brook, when Herbert cried: "O, if I could only run and leap like Miles; but I am very helpless." To which Margaret replied: "Never mind, brother; I will love you and take care of you all your life," and she said these words with a sister's love, as she put her arms around the neck of her helpless brother. She loved him the more, and aimed to please him by reading books to him which were his delight. This was a pleasant sight, and the brothers always admired Margaret for her attention to their helpless brother. * * * * * THE BIT OF GARDEN. Young children like to have a small piece of land for a garden which they can call their own. And it is very pleasant to dig the ground, sow the seed, and watch the little green plants which peep out of the earth, and to see the beautiful buds and fresh blossoms. Every boy and girl has a bit of garden, and we are told in the good book to take good care of it, and see that the weeds of vice do not spread over it, and to be sure and have it covered with plants of goodness. This garden is the HEART. Such things as anger, sloth, lying and cheating, are noxious weeds. But if you are active and industrious, and keep cultivating this little garden, and keep out all the bad weeds, God will help you to make a good garden, full of pleasant plants, and flowers of virtue. I have seen some gardens which look very bad, covered with briars and weeds, the grass growing in the paths, and the knotty weeds choking the few puny flowers that are drooping and dying out. Every thing seems to say--"How idle the owner of this garden is." But I have seen other gardens where there were scarcely any weeds. The walks look tidy, the flowers in blossom, the trees are laden with fruit, and every thing says, "How busy the owner is." Happy are you, dear children, if you are working earnestly in the garden of your hearts. Your garden will be clean, pleasant, and fruitful--a credit and comfort to you all your days. * * * * * REMEMBER THE CAKE. I will tell you an anecdote about Mrs. Hannah More, when she was eighty years old. A widow and her little boy paid a visit to Mrs. More, at Barley Wood. When they were about to leave, Mrs. M. stooped to kiss the little boy, not as a mere compliment, as old maids usually kiss children, but she took his smiling face between her two hands, and looked upon it a moment as a mother would, then kissed it fondly more than once. "Now when you are a man, my child, will you remember me?" The little boy had just been eating some cake which she gave him, and he, instead of giving her any answer, glanced his eyes on the remnants of the cake which lay on the table. "Well," said Mrs. M., "you will remember the cake at Barley Wood, wont you?" "Yes," said the boy, "It was nice cake, and you are _so kind_ that I will remember both." "That is right," she replied, "I like to have the young remember me for _being kin_--then you will remember old Mrs. Hannah More?" "Always, ma'am, I'll try to remember you always." "What a good child" said she, after his mother was gone, "and of good stock; that child will be as true as steel. It was so much more natural that the child should remember the cake than an old woman, that I love his sincerity." She died on the 7th of Sept., 1833, aged eighty-eight. She was buried in Wrighton churchyard, beneath an old tree which is still flourishing. * * * * * BENNY'S FIRST DRAWING. You have perhaps heard of Benjamin West, the celebrated artist. I will tell you about his first effort in drawing. One of his sisters who had been married some time, came with her babe to spend a few days at her father's. When the child was asleep in the cradle, Mrs. West invited her daughter to gather flowers in the garden, and told Benjamin to take care of the little child while they were gone; and gave him a fan to flap away the flies from his little charge. After some time the child appeared to smile in its sleep, and it attracted young Benney's attention, he was so pleased with the smiling, sleeping babe, that he thought he would see what he could do at drawing a portrait of it. He was only in his seventh year; he got some paper, pens, and some red and black ink, and commenced his work, and soon drew the picture of the babe. Hearing his mother and sister coming in from the garden, he hid his picture; but his mother seeing he was confused; asked him what he was about, and requested him to show her the paper. He obeyed, and entreated her not to be angry. Mrs. West, after looking some time, with much pleasure, said to her daughter, "I declare, he has made a likeness of _little Sally_," and kissed him with evident satisfaction. This gave him much encouragement, and he would often draw pictures of flowers which she held in her hand. Here the instinct of his great genius was first awakened. This circumstance occurred in the midst of a Pennsylvania forest, a hundred and four years ago. At the age of eighteen he was fairly established in the city of Philadelphia as an artist. * * * * * THE GREY OLD COTTAGE. In the valley between "Longbrigg" and "Highclose," in the fertile little dale on the left; stands an old cottage, which is truly "a nest in a green place." The sun shines on the diamond paned windows all through the long afternoons of a summer's day. It is very large and roomy. Around it is a trim little garden with pleasant flower borders under the low windows. From the cottage is a bright lookout into a distant scene of much variety. Some years ago it was more desolate, as it was so isolated from the world. Now the children's voices blend with the song of the wood birds, and they have a garden there of dandelions, daisies, and flowers. The roof and walls are now covered with stone crop and moss, and traveller's joy, which gives it a variety of color. The currant bushes are pruned, and the long rose brandies are trimmed, and present a blooming appearance. This house, with forty acres of land, some rocky and sterile, and some rich meadow and peat, formed the possessions of the Prestons in Westmoreland. For two hundred years this land had been theirs. Mr. Preston and his wife were industrious and respectable people. They had two children, Martha and John. The sister eight years older than her brother and acted a motherly part towards him. As her mother had to go to market, to see to the cows and dairy, and to look after the sheep on the fell; Martha took most of the care of little Johnny. It is said that a very active mother does not _always_ make a very active daughter, and that is because she does things herself, and has but little patience with the awkward and slow efforts of a learner. Mrs. Preston said that Martha was too long in going to market with the butter, and she made the bread too thick, and did not press all the water out of the butter, and she folded up the fleeces the wrong way, and therefore she did all herself. Hence Martha was left to take the whole care of Johnny, and to roam about in the woods. When she was about fifteen her mother died, so that Martha was left her mother's place in the house, which she filled beyond the expectation of all the neighbors. Her father died when Johnny was sixteen, and his last advice to his daughter was, to take care of her brother, to look after his worldly affairs, and above all to bear his soul in prayer to heaven, where he hoped to meet the household once more. The share of her father's property when he died, was eighty pounds. Here Martha spent her days, frugal, industrious and benevolent. And it is said, there will not be a. grave in Grasmere churchyard, more decked with flowers, more visited with respect, regret, and tears, and faithful trust, than that of Martha Preston when she dies. In the next story you will be interested in what happened at the Grey Cottage. * * * * * THE BOY FOUND IN THE SNOW. One winter's night when the evening had shut in very early, owing to the black snow clouds that hung close around the horizon, Martha sat looking into the fire. Her old sheep dog, Fly, lay at her feet. The cows were foddered for the night, and the sheep were penned up in the yard. Fly was a faithful dog, and for some reason, this evening, he was very restless. Why he pricked up his ears, and went snuffing to the door, and pacing about the room, was more than Martha could tell. "Lie down. Fly,--good dog--lie down," she said; but Fly would not mind her, which was an unusual thing. She was certain something was the matter, and she felt she must go up to the fell; and with the foresight common to the Dale's people, who knew what mountain storms are, she took under her cloak a small vial of gin, which was kept in case of any accident, and set out with the dog Fly. The snow fell fast, the wind blew, and the drifts lay thick. She had great confidence in Fly, that if any thing was the matter he would find it out. He ran straight up the little steep path which led through the woods. On she followed, her cloak white with snow, until she came, into the more open ground, where she lost sight of Fly and for a time stood bewildered, until he should return and guide her. The birds and beasts had gone to rest, and the stillness of the moors was awful. It was night, and dark. Suddenly she heard a child's feeble voice, and in an instant she pressed on towards the spot from which the sound came; soon she heard Fly's loud howl for aid. At last she reached the spot, and found a little boy half asleep, a kind of drowsiness which precedes death. He could not speak; he could only moan. She moistened his lips with the gin, and poured a little down his throat. She then raised him up and carried him a short distance down the hill; then she stopped to rest awhile; and then she got as far as the woods, where the winds were not so cold. Again she gave him a few drops from her vial, and now he was able to walk a few steps; then Martha, put up a fervent prayer to God for assistance, as she dragged the lost boy to her cottage. She now laid him down to the warm fire, while Fly snuffed around him in great joy. She took off his wet clothes, and wrapped him in her woollen cloak. He soon recovered and was able to tell his story. [Illustration] His father had sent him up to the fells for a sheep that was missing. The dog left him, and night and snow came on, and he got lost on the fells. The family had lately come to live near Rydal, and the boy did not know all the landmarks. Martha took the best of care of the boy till the morning, when his mother came, with a grateful heart towards God for the means which had guided Martha to her lost boy. * * * * * THE BROTHER AND SISTER. (In three Stories.) THE PARTING SCENE. In one of our western cities was a poor woman, in the garret of a lonely house, who was very sick, and near dying. She had two children, a brother and sister, who knelt beside her bed to catch her dying words. "Annie, my daughter," said the mother, "soon, and your young brother will have no earthly friend but you; will you, my daughter, be to him a faithful sister?" "Yes, mother, _I will_," said the daughter, as she wiped away her tears. And then she laid her hand upon the head of her son, and said, "Be a good boy, Willy, and mind your sister; she is but three years older than yourself, but as far as her knowledge goes, she will be a guide for you; and she and you have a Father in Heaven who will never leave you. Will you promise to do as she wishes?" Willy raised his eyes to his mother, and bowed his head in token of assent, and then burst into tears. The mother was a Christian, and putting her arm around the neck of Willy, and with the other hand clasping her daughter, she calmly said to them, "Weep not, dear children, you will find friends; God is the father of the fatherless. Keep in mind that his eye is upon you; be honest and virtuous, faithful and believing, and all things will work together for your good." The dying mother could say no more; her breath grew short, and stretching out her arms, she cried, "My dear children, I must leave you: let me kiss you--God bless and keep----" Her arms fell from around them, the words died away on her lips, and her weary soul departed. After the funeral of this mother, the moon shone brightly into the desolate chamber, and revealed a beautiful scene, that of a sister's love. Anna sat near the window, and little Willy lay his weary head in her lap. They were now without father or mother. Sleep had stolen upon the weary eyes of Willy. Anna smoothed back the dark hair, which hung over his brow, then carefully raised his slender frame in her arms and laid him upon his bed. Then seating herself beside him she thought of her mother's last request to take care of Willy. "Yes," she exclaimed, "I must begin to-morrow. I will go out and try to get some work, for poor Willy must remain at school. Dear boy," she exclaimed, "I will never see him suffer." You will, in the next story, find ANNA SEEKING EMPLOYMENT. It was a wearisome day to poor Anna, as she walked from square to square, calling at the houses for employment. Some received her kindly, and patronised her themselves, and promised to interest their friends in her behalf, while others, alleging that she could not earn as much as a woman, endeavored to beat her down a few shillings in her price. But among all, Anna found means of subsistence for many months. But soon her constitution began to grow weak, and her friends thought it best for Willy to give up his school awhile, and to obtain some place as errand boy, and for Anna to pursue a more active life. Soon Anna found herself in a new home, doing the work of a family which devolved on her. She kept a diary, and she would often go away in her own little room and scribble a few lines in her book. Here is an extract from her writings:---- "To-day I am very tired and yet but very little has been accomplished. I know I could do well enough if I was allowed to regulate my work, or if there was only order in the arrangement. There is certainly a great want of system in this family; I am never allowed to finish one piece of work before I am called off to another, and then blamed because I did not do the first in time. "One wants me to put the dough in the pants, and before I get my hands clean, another calls me to go and get some wood; another tells me to go to the store for some thread; another cries out, Anna! Anna! and away I am sent to the third story after a book. Do they think a girl like me is never tired? Ah, me! I must seek another place. I love little children, and I think I should do for a child's nurse; I will advertise." And she did advertise, and it was not long before she was answered by a request to call at Number 4, Elm street, at three o'clock on Wednesday. In the next story we shall find ANNA WITH A PLEASANT HOME. Anna, having obtained leave of her mistress, soon found herself at the door of Mrs. West. The servant girl came to the door, and Anna followed her into the sitting-room, where every thing was nicely arranged. Soon a gentle looking lady came into the room, with a babe in her arms, and asking her, in a pleasant voice, "if she was the girl who advertised? You look hardly strong enough to handle such a boy as this," said she, as she placed on her lap a plump, black-eyed little fellow of eight months old. "Let me see if you can lift him easily." Anna gave the little fellow a hug and a kiss, and then playfully tossed him up a few times, but he was so heavy that she soon placed him on her knee, saying, "I am not used to holding children, but think I shall soon get accustomed to it." The lady agreed to have Anna come and enter upon her duties the next week. Weeks rolled away, and Anna's face looked joyous, for peace was in her heart. She loved her mistress because she was so thoughtful and would not even let her carry the babe half so much as she wished, but would tell her to amuse him on the floor. Mrs. West would often bring her work and sit with Anna in the nursery, and talk with her about her mother and Willy. Oh, how Anna loved Mrs. West! Willy was now learning a trade with an honest carpenter, who gave him permission to visit his sister once a week, and many happy hours did they pass together in the nursery with the little pet Charley. As the summer months came on, Mrs. West prepared to visit her mother, who lived a few miles in the country. Anna went with her. Charley was now old enough to go into the woods and run about, while Anna gathered flowers, chased butterflies, and amused him with infant stories. Little Charley would often fall asleep to the sweet tones of Anna's voice, and then she would take him up and bear him to the house. Three years passed away, and Charley needed no other nurse than his mother, and Anna's heart ached at the thought of leaving Mrs. West and little Charley. She had been so happy there that she dreaded to go out among strangers to look for a new place. Mrs. West made arrangements for Anna to live with her parents, who in a short time made her their adopted child. It was a beautiful country home, and she became as a dear child to Mr. and Mrs. Warren. * * * * * THE GLOW WORM. On a summer's evening about half an hour after bed time, as three little brothers lay talking together they heard a gentle footstep on the stairs. It was their sister Lucy. "Are you asleep," she asked. "No, we are not asleep," cried the boys. "I have brought something to show you" said Lucy, and going into the darkest corner of the room, she opened her hand and the boys saw something sparkle like a diamond or a star. "What is it," cried little Frank, jumping out of bed and running to look. Lucy held out her hand, but told him not to touch it. "Oh, it moves! It moves!" said he "It must be something alive." "Ah!" said John, "it is a glow worm. I saw one last summer on a bank in Sand Lee." "Take care," said Frank, "that it does not burn the counterpane." The two elder brothers laughed; but Lucy reminded them that they would most likely have fallen into the same mistake, if they had not been taught that the glow worm's light, though it shines so brightly, does not burn. To convince Frank she told him to hold out his hand. The little boy felt afraid, but as he knew that Lucy never deceived him, he put out his hand, and soon, to his great delight, the harmless glow worm lay in his hand. Lucy promised to tell him something about the glow worm another time. Frank went back to his bed, and Lucy bid her brothers good night, promising to put the prize under a glass on the lawn. So night after night, for weeks, the three boys saw the twinkling light of the glow worm on the dewy grass. One evening they began to quarrel about it, and none but little Frank was willing to give up his claim to it. It grieved him to hear his brothers quarrelling and saying unkind words to each other; and he also thought that the poor glow worm ought not to be kept a prisoner under the glass, instead of flying over the green turf or mossy bank. But when he tried to bring John and Robert to the same opinion, they would not hear to him. So Lucy, who was a kind sister, when she found that the pleasure she had procured for them was the occasion of their naughty conduct, sat down by the window and told them to remember that God, who made the glow worm and caused its light to shine, could see them in their chamber, and hear every sinful word. John and Robert felt the force of their sister's words, and settled their quarrel without delay, and they gave Frank permission to go early in the morning and let the imprisoned glow worm creep away. * * * * * EMILY'S MORNING RAMBLE. In the suburbs of the city of B. stands the beautiful residence of Mr. James. It was a rural spot, as it was surrounded with all the beauties of nature. There were rippling streams, and winding paths through the green fields and woods, sunny hills and mossy rocks. Emily, the only daughter of Mr. J., had all these pleasant scenes to enjoy, and every thing to make her home happy. Her father owned a noble pair of grays and a very fine carriage, and she had the pleasure of riding with her father whenever she chose. But Emily did not live altogether for her own happiness; she was accustomed to go and see the people in the neighborhood of her home, and if any were poor or sick she would always try to benefit them. Her mother had to put up many a bundle of nice things for her to take to some poor family in need. She was also fond of the works of nature, and would frequently spend an hour in walking alone in the shady rural places in her town. One day, as the beautiful spring had just unfolded its loveliness, Emily thought she would walk out and breathe the delicious air. With a heart laden with good thoughts and with a quick step she passed along the gravelled street and by the cultivated grounds and fine houses, until she reached the green turf and wooded slopes, and here paused awhile under the large old trees, and thought of the wisdom, goodness, and love of God in giving us such a beautiful earth. On her route, where the river curved around the foot of a gentle sloping hill in the shadows of old forest trees, was made a rural cemetery; so pleasant were its quiet paths and its cool shades in summer, that the living loved to wander there. Friends came there to plant flowers upon the graves of dear ones they had lost. Through a low ivy covered gateway of stone, Emily entered the quiet place. There were no massive railings, and lofty monuments, and no costly devices, but God had made this place very beautiful--flowers were blooming along the well trodden paths, and around the last resting places of the dead. Here and there arose a simple shaft or a light column, and the graves of the household were bordered by a green hedge or surrounded by shadowing trees. As Emily passed through the familiar walks, she came suddenly to a grave in the remote corner of the cemetery, beside which sat a solitary mourner. A small white slab lay upon the centre of the green mound and at its head grew a rose bush in bloom, bending, till its weight of white buds and blossoms touched the long bright grass upon the grave. Emily attracted by its simply beauty, and drawing near, she stooped down and read upon the marble slab, "Dear Mina." Her young eyes filled instantly with tears, for she knew that it was the darling child of a lady who to her was a stranger. As she turned away from the spot she met a lady approaching, who passed her and kneeled down beside the grave. She thought she would speak to the lady, and with tender sympathy she asked, "Was it your child?" The lady, who was deep in thought, looked up at the sound of Emily's earnest voice, and answered, softly, "yes; 'Dear Mina' was my only child." This interview led Emily to an acquaintance with the sorrowing mother, which caused her never to forget her morning ramble. She was a good woman, and at the decease of Emily's mother became her Christian companion and instructor. * * * * * I doubt whether he will find the way to heaven who desires to go there alone: all heavenly hearts are charitable: enlightened souls cannot but diffuse their rays. I will, if I can, do something for others and for heaven, not to merit by it, but to express my gratitude. Though I cannot do what I would, I will labor to do what I can.--_Feltham_. * * * * * FLYING THE KITE. Flying the kite is a pleasant amusement for boys, and when we see the kites flying high in the air, we are always reminded of a kite whose history we heard when a little child, and which we give our readers. Shortly after the close of the Revolutionary war, there was a little boy whose parents had left their home and friends in England, on account of their sympathy with the struggle of freedom for their rights in America. Their first home was in Norfolk, Va. This little boy was very much delighted with the American eagle, and he determined to make a kite as much like his favorite bird as he could. He had a friend who was a painter and gilder, and a person of great ingenuity. Together they contrived a beautiful kite representing an eagle of gigantic size. It was painted and gilded in the most beautiful manner, and a small but very brilliant lantern was attached to it just below the breast. They kept their secret very carefully, never suffering any one to enter the room while it was making. On a dark, cloudy, windy night, the kite was flown. Its mechanism was so perfect that it sailed very beautifully. The lantern illuminated every part, and it made a very brilliant appearance. Crowds of people thronged the streets, wondering what the strange visitor was. Some were alarmed, and thought it was an omen of fearful events. Great was their admiration when they discovered that the wonderful bird was the ingenious contrivance of a little boy; and they could scarcely be convinced that what looked so much like a real bird was only an ingenious combination of sticks and painted paper. * * * * * THE HAPPY FAMILY. There are a great many novel sights in the streets of London, for the cheap entertainment of the people. The family circle of different animals and birds is an admirable illustration of the peace which should pervade among families. The proprietor of this little menagerie calls it, "The Happy Family." The house in which they are kept is a simple constructed cage. It is a large square hen-coop, placed on a low hand-cart which a man draws about from one street to another, and gets a few pennys a day from those who stop to look at the domestic happiness of his family. Perhaps the first thing you will see, is a large cat, washing her face, with a number of large rats nestling around her, like kittens, whilst others are climbing up her back and playing with her whiskers. In another corner of the room a dove and a hawk are sitting on the head of a dog which is resting across the neck of a rabbit. The floor is covered with the oddest social circles imaginable--weazles and Guinea pigs, and peeping chickens, are putting their noses together, caressingly. The perches above are covered with birds whose natural antipathies have been subdued into mutual affection by the law of kindness. The grave owl is sitting upright, and meditating in the sun, with a keen-sighted sparrow perched between his ears trying to open the eyes of the sleepy owl with its sharp bill. Children stop to look at this scene, and Mr. Burritt thinks they may carry away lessons which will do them good. They will think on it on their way to school, and at home too, when any thing crosses their will in family or on the play ground. * * * * * STORY ABOUT AN INDIAN. A poor sick man might go to the door of some rich person's house and ask relief for himself and not be able to obtain admittance; but if he brought in his hand a paper written by the son of the master of the house, whom he had met with in a distant land, and in his name asked for the relief, his request would be granted for the sake of the master's son. Now we all need friends and every one tries to get and keep a few friends. Children will love a little dog, or a lamb, or a dove, or a bird. The little boy will talk to his top, and the little girl will talk to her doll, which shows that they want a friend; and if the top and doll could talk and love them, they would feel happier. Some years ago there was an Indian in the State of Maine, who for his very good conduct had a large farm given him by the State. He built his little house on his land, and there lived. The white people about did not treat him so kindly as they ought. His only child was taken sick and died, and none of the whites went to comfort him, or to assist him in burying his little child. Soon after, he went to the white people, and said to them--"When white man's child die, Indian may be sorry--he help bury him--when my child die, no one speak to me--I make his grave alone. I can no live here, for I have no friend to love me." The poor Indian gave up his farm, dug up the body of his child, and carried it with him 200 miles through the forest, to join the Canada Indians. The Indian loved his child, and he wanted friends. So you children will need a friend to look to every day. When we are sick, in distress, or about to die, we want a friend in whom we may trust and be happy. * * * * * Wherefore did God create passions within us, pleasures round about us, but that these, rightly tempered, are the very ingredients of virtue.--_Milton_. * * * * * GATHER THE FLOWERS. Two little girls went into the fields to gather flowers. Buttercups, violets, and many other blossoms were in abundance. One of the girls was pleased with every thing, and began to pick such flowers as came in her way. In a short time she collected a great quantity of flowers, and though some of them were not very handsome, yet they made a very beautiful bunch. The other child was more dainty and determined to get her none but those which were very beautiful. The buttercups were all of one color and did not strike her fancy--the blue violets were too common, and so the little pair wandered on through the fields till they were about to return home. By this time the dainty child, seeing that her sister had a fine collection of flowers while she had none, began to think it best to pick such as she could get. But now the flowers were scarce; not even a dandelion nor a flower was to be found. The little girl at length begged of her sister a single dandelion, and thus they returned home. The children told their story, and their mother addressed them thus "My dear children, let this event teach you a lesson. Jane has acted the wisest part. Content with such flowers as came in her way, and not aiming at what was beyond her reach, she has been successful in her pursuit. But Laura wanted something more beautiful than could be found, collected nothing from the field, and was finally obliged to beg a simple flower from her sister. So it is, children, in passing through life--gather what is good and pleasant along your path, and you will, day by day, collect enough to make you contented and happy. But if you scorn those blessings which are common, and reach after those which are more rare and difficult to be obtained, you will meet with frequent difficulties, and at last be dependant on others. So gather the flowers as you go along the pathway of life." * * * * * Think not all is well within when all is well without; or that thy being pleased is a sign that God is pleased: but suspect every thing that is prosperous, unless it promotes piety, and charity, and humility.--_Taylor_. * * * * * God hath given to man a short time here upon earth, and yet upon this short time eternity depends.--_Taylor_. * * * * * JANE AND HER LESSONS. It is a mark of a good scholar to be prompt and studious. Such were the habits of little Jane Sumner. She was the youngest of three sisters and from her first being able to read, she was very fond of reading; and at school her teacher became much interested in little Jane on account of her interest in study, and the promptness she manifested in reciting her lessons. Jane had a quiet little home and was allowed considerable time for study, although she hid to devote some time in assisting her mother about house. There was a very fine garden attached to Mrs. Sumner's residence, where she took much pleasure in cultivating the flowers. In the centre of the garden was built a summer house all covered over with grape vine. The broad leaves of the vine made a refreshing shade to it, and thereby shielded the warm sun from persons under it. This little summer house Jane frequently occupied for her study. In the picture you see her with book in hand getting her lesson. She arose very early in the morning, and by this means gained much time. Up in the morning early, By daylights earliest ray, With our books prepared to study The lessons of the day. Little Jane, for her industry and good scholarship, obtained quite a number of "rewards of merit," which her school mates said she justly deserved. There is one of them with these lines: For conduct good and lessons learned, Your teacher can commend; Good scholarship has richly earned This tribute from your friend. On one day, she came running home very much pleased with her card, which her teacher gave herself and her little sister Emma, for their good conduct and attention to their studies. The card contained these lines: See, Father! mother, see! To my sister and me, Has our teacher given a card, To show that we have studied hard. To you we think it must be pleasant, To see us both with such a present. Every good boy and girl will be rewarded, and all such as are studious, and respectful to their teachers, will always get a reward. * * * * * God never allowed any man to do nothing. How miserable is the condition of those men who spend their time as if it were _given_ them, and not lent.--_Bishop Hall_. * * * * * HARVEST SONG. Now the golden ear wants the reaper's hand, Banish every fear, plenty fills the land. Joyful raise songs of praise, Goodness, goodness, crowns our days. Yet again swell the strain, He who feeds the birds that fly, Will our daily wants supply. CHORUS---- As the manna lay, on the desert ground, So from day to day, mercies flow around. As a father's love gives his children bread, So our God above grants, and we are fed. * * * * * Think in the morning what thou hast to do this day, and at night what thou hast done; and do nothing upon which thou mayst not boldly ask God's blessing; nor nothing for which thou shalt need to ask his pardon.--_Anon_. * * * * * TELLING SECRETS. There is a company of girls met together, and what can they be talking about. Hark! "Now I will tell you something, if you'll promise never to tell," says Jane. "I will, certainly," replied Anne. "And will you promise _never_ to tell a single living creature as long as you live?" The same reply is given, "_I will never tell_." Now Jane tells the secret, and what is it? It turns out to be just nothing at all, and there is no good reason why every body should'nt know it. It is this--"Lizzy Smith is going to have a new bonnet, trimmed with pink ribbon and flowers inside." Anna thinks no more of her solemn promise, and the first school-mate she meets, she opens the secret, with a solemn injunction for her not to tell. By and by the secret is all out among the girls--the promises are all broken. Now, children, remember your word--keep it true, and never make a promise which you do not intend to keep, and always avoid telling foolish secrets. * * * * * AGNES AND THE MOUSE. One brilliant Christmas day, two little girls were walking towards a neighboring village, when they observed a little creature walking about the road. "Surely," said Mary, "it is a large mouse;" and it did not seem to be afraid, so they thought from its tameness, it must be hungry. "Poor little thing," said Agnes, "I wish I had something to give you." She took a few almonds from her pocket and went gently along towards the mouse and put it close by its side. The mouse began to nibble, and soon finished it. Agnes then put down two or three more, and left the mouse to eat its Christmas dinner. I think you would have enjoyed seeing the mouse eating the almonds. I hope you will always be kind to poor dumb animals. I have seen children who were cruel to dumb animals. This is very wrong, and such children will never be respected, nor can thy expect to be befriended. * * * * * THE TWO ROBINS. A few summers ago I was sitting on a garden seat, beneath a fruit tree, where the works of nature looked very beautiful. Very soon I heard a strange noise among the highest branches of the tree over my head. The sound was very curious, and I began to look for the cause. I shook one of the lower branches within my reach, and very soon I discovered two birds engaged in fighting; and they seemed to gradually descend towards the ground. They came down lower and lower, tumbling over one another, and fighting with each other. They soon reached the lowest branch, and at last came to the ground very near me. It was with some difficulty that I parted them; and when I held one of them in each of my hands, they tried to get away, not because they were afraid of me but because they would resume the conflict. They were two young robins, and I never before thought that the robin had such a bad spirit in its breast. Lest they should get to fighting again, I let one go, and kept the other housed up for several days, so that they would not have much chance of coming together again. Now, children, these two little robins woke in the morning very cheerful, and appeared very happy as they sat on the branch of the tree, singing their morning songs. But how soon they changed their notes. You would have been sorry to have seen the birds trying to hurt each other. If children quarrel, or in any degree show an unkind temper, they appear very unlovely and, forget that God, who made them, and gives them many blessings, disapproves of their conduct. Never quarrel, but remember how pleasant it is for children to love each other, and to try to do each other good. * * * * * Every hour is worth at least a good thought, a good wish, a good endeavor.--_Clarendon_. * * * * * THE PLEASANT SAIL. Down by the sea-coast is the pleasant town of Saco, Where Mr. Aimes has resided for many years. Once a year he had all his little nephews and nieces visit him. It was their holiday, and they would think and talk about the visit for a long time previous to going there. Their uncle took much pleasure in making them happy as possible while they were with him. He owned a pleasure sail boat which he always kept in good order. On this occasion he had it all clean and prepared for the young friends, as he knew they lotted much on having a sail. As his boat was small, he took part of them at a time and went out with them himself, a short distance, and sailed around the island, and returned. In the picture you see them just going out, with their uncle at the helm, while three of the nephews are on the beach enjoying the scene. But I must tell you children to be very careful when you go on the water to sail. There are some things which it is necessary for you to know, as a great many accidents occur on the water for the want of right management. When you go to sail, be sure and have persons with you who understand all about a boat, and how to manage in the time of a squall. Always keep your seats in the boat, and not be running about in it. Never get to rocking a boat in the water. A great many people have lost their lives by so doing. Sailing on the water may be very pleasant and agreeable to you if you go with those who understand all about the harbor, and are skilled in guiding the boat on the dangerous sea. [Illustration] * * * * * THE SAILOR BOY. Yarmouth is the principal trade sea-port town in the county of Norfolk. Fishermen reside in the towns and villages around, and among the number was a poor man and his wife; they had an only son, and when ten years old his father died. The poor widow, in the death of her husband, lost the means of support. After some time she said to her boy, "Johnny, I do not see how I shall support you." "Then, mother, I will go to sea," he replied. His mother was loth to part with Johnny, for he was a good son and was very kind to her. But she at last consented on his going to sea. John began to make preparations. One day he went down to the beach hoping to find a chance among some of the captains to sail. He went to the owner of one and asked if he wanted a boy. "No," he abruptly replied "I have boys enough." He tried a second but without success. John now began to weep. After some time he saw on the quay the captain of a trading vessel to St. Petersburg, and John asked him if "a boy was wanted." "Oh, yes," said the captain, "but I never take a boy or a man without a character." John had a Testament among his things, which he took out and said to the captain, "I suppose this won't do." The captain took it, and on opening the first page, saw written, "_John Read, given as a reward for his good behaviour and diligence in learning, at the Sabbath School_." The captain said, "Yes, my boy, this will do; I would rather have this recommendation than any other," adding, "you may go on board directly." John's heart leaped for joy, as, with his bundle under his arm, he jumped on board the vessel. The vessel was soon under weigh, and for some time the sky was bright, and the wind was fair. When they reached the Baltic Sea a storm came on, the wind raged furiously, all hands were employed to save the vessel. But the storm increased, and the captain thought all would be lost. While things were in this state the little sailor boy was missing. One of the crew told the captain he was down in the cabin. When sent for he came up with his Testament in his hand and asked the captain if he might read. His request was granted. He then knelt down and rend the sixtieth and sixty-first Psalms. While he was reading the wind began to abate, (the storms in the Baltic abate as suddenly as they come on.) The captain was much moved, and said he believed the boy's reading was heard in Heaven. * * * * * THE BRACELET; OR, HONESTY REWARDED. At St. Petersburgh, the birth day of any of the royal family is observed as a time of great festivity, by all kinds of diversions. When the vessel in which John Read shipped arrived, he was allowed to go on shore to see the sport on that occasion. In one of the sleighs was a lady, who at the moment of passing him lost a bracelet from her arm, which fell on the snow. John hastened forward to pick it up, at the same time calling after the lady, who was beyond the sound of his voice. He then put the bracelet into his pocket, and when he had seen enough of the sport, went back to the ship. John told the captain all about it, showing him the prize which he had found. "Well, Jack," said the captain "you are fortunate enough--these are all diamonds of great value--when we get to the next port I will sell it for you." "But," said John, "It's not mine, it belongs to the lady, and I cannot sell it." The captain replied, "O, you cannot find the lady, and you picked it up. It is your own." But John persisted it was not his. "Nonsense, my boy," said the captain, "it belongs to you." John then replied "But if we have another storm in the Baltic," (see story preceding.) "Ah, me," said the Captain, "I forgot all about that, Jack. I will go on shore with you to-morrow and try to find the owner." They did so; and after much trouble, found it belonged to a nobleman's lady, and as a reward for the boy's honesty, she gave him eighty pounds English money. John's next difficulty was what to do with it. The captain advised him to lay it out in hides, which would be valuable in England. He did so, and on arriving at Hull, they brought one hundred and fifty pounds. John had not forgotten his mother. The captain gave him leave of absence for a time, and taking a portion of his money with him, he started for his native village. When he arrived there, he made his way to her house with a beating heart. Each object told him it was home, and brought bygone days to his mind. On coming to the house he saw it was closed. He thought she might be dead; and as he slowly opened the gate and walked up the path and looked about, his heart was ready to break. A neighbor seeing him, said, "Ah, John, is that you?" and quickly told him that his mother still lived--but as she had no means of support, she had gone to the poor-house. John went to the place, found his mother, and soon made her comfortable in her own cottage. The sailor boy afterwards became mate of the same vessel in which he first left the quay at Yarmouth. * * * * * NO PAY--NO WORK. "Little boy, will you help a poor old man up the hill with this load?" said an old man, who was drawing a hand-cart with a bag of corn for the mill. "I can't," said the boy, "I am in a hurry to be at school." As the old man sat on the stone, resting himself he thought of his youthful days, and of his friends now in the grave; the tears began to fall, when John Wilson came along, and said,--"shall I help you up the hill with your load sir?" The old man brushed his eyes with his coat sleeve, and replied, "I should be glad to have you." He arose and took the tongue of his cart, while John pushed behind. When they ascended the top of the hill, the old man thanked the lad for his kindness. In consequence of this John was ten minutes too late at school. It was unusual for him to be late, as he was known to be punctual and prompt; but as he said nothing to the teacher about the cause of his being late, he was marked for not being in season. After school, Hanson, the first boy, said to John, "I suppose you stopped to help old Stevenson up the hill with his corn." "Yes," replied John, "the old man was tired and I thought I would give him a lift." "Well, did you get your pay for it?" said Hanson, "for I don't work for nothing." "Nor do I," said John; "I didn't help him, expecting pay." "Well, why did you do it? You knew you would be late to school." "Because I thought I _ought_ to help the poor old man," said John. "Well," replied Hanson "if you will work for nothing, you may. _No pay, no work_, is my motto." "To _be kind and obliging_, is mine," said John. Here, children, is a good example. John did not perform this act of kindness for nothing. He had the approbation of a good conscience--the pleasure of doing good to the old man--and the respect and gratitude of his friends. Even the small act of benevolence is like giving a cup of cold water to the needy, which will not pass unnoticed. Does any body work for nothing when he does good? Think of this, and do likewise. * * * * * THE TREE THAT NEVER FADES. "Mary," said George, "next summer I will not have a garden. Our pretty tree is dying, and I won't love another tree as long as I live. I will have a bird next summer, and that will stay all winter." George, don't you remember my beautiful canary bird? It died in the middle of the summer, and we planted bright flowers in the ground where we buried it. My bird did not live as long as the tree." "Well, I don't see as we can love anything. Dear little brother died before the bird, and I loved him better than any bird, or tree, or flower. Oh! I wish we could have something to love that wouldn't die." The day passed. During the school hours, George and Mary had almost forgot that their tree was dying; but at evening, as they drew their chairs to the table where their mother was sitting, and began to arrange the seeds they had been gathering, the remembrance of the tree came upon them. "Mother," said Mary, "you may give these seeds to cousin John; I never want another garden." "Yes," added George, pushing the papers in which he had carefully folded them towards his mother, "you may give them all away. If I could find some seeds of a tree that would never fade, I should like then to have a garden. I wonder, mother, if there ever was such a garden?" "Yes, George, I have read of a garden where the trees never die." "A _real_ garden, mother?" "Yes, my son. In the middle of the garden, I have been told, there runs a pure river of water, clear as chrystal, and on each side of the river is the _tree of life_,--a tree that never fades. That garden is _heaven_. There you may love and love for ever. There will be no death--no fading there. Let your treasure be in the tree of life, and you will have something to which your young hearts can cling, without fear, and without disappointment. Love the Saviour here, and he will prepare you to dwell in those green pastures, and beside those still waters." * * * * * Every neglected opportunity draws after it an irreparable loss, which will go into eternity with you.---_Doddridge_. * * * * * YOUNG USHER. You have read of that remarkable man, Mr. Usher, who was Archbishop of Armagh. I will tell you something about his early childhood. He was born in Dublin, in the year 1580, and when a little boy he was fond of reading. He lived with his two aunts who were born blind, and who acquired much knowledge of the Scriptures by hearing others read the Scriptures and other good books. At seven years of age he was sent to school in Dublin; at the end of five years he was superior in study to any of his school fellows, and was thought fully qualified to enter the college at Dublin. While he was at college he learned to play at cards, and he was so much taken up with this amusement that both his learning and piety were much endangered. He saw the evil tendency of playing cards, and at once relinquished the practice entirely. When he was nine years old, he heard a sermon preached which made a deep impression on his mind. From that time he was accustomed to habits of devotion. He loved to pray, and felt that he could not sleep quietly without first commending himself to the care of his Heavenly father for protection. When he was fourteen years old, he began to think about partaking of the Lord's supper. He thought this act to be a very solemn and important one, and required a thorough preparation. On the afternoon previous to the communion, he would retire to some private place for self examination and prayer. When he was but sixteen years of age, he obtained such a knowledge of chronology as to have commenced the annals of the Old and New Testaments, which were published many years after, and are now a general standard of reference. When his father died, he being the eldest son, the paternal estate was left to him to manage. But as he feared it would occupy to much of his time and attention, he gave it entirely to his brother and sisters, reserving only enough for his books and college expenses. At the age of twenty he entered the ministry, and seven years after was chosen a professor in the University of Dublin. In 1640, he visited England at the time of the commencement of the rebellion; all his goods were seized by the popish party, except some furniture in his house, and his library at Drogheda, which was afterwards sent to London. He bore his loss with submission, but he never returned to Ireland. He had many trials to endure on account of the troublous times in England, (it being the time of civil wars.) In 1646 he received a kind invitation from the Countess of Peterborough to reside in one of her houses, which proposal he accepted and lived in one of them till his death, in 1665. By the direction of Cromwell he was buried in Westminster Abbey. * * * * * A GOOD ACT FOR ANOTHER. A man was going from Norwich to New London with a loaded team; on attempting to ascend a hill where an Indian lived he found his team could not draw the load. He went for the Indian to assist him. After he had got up the hill he asked the Indian what was to pay. The Indian told him to do as much for some body else. Some time afterward the Indian wanted a canoe. He went up Shetucket river, found a tree, and made him one. When he had finished it he could not get it to the river; accordingly he went to a man and offered to pay him if he would go and draw it to the river for him. The man set about it immediately, and after getting it to the river, the Indian offered to pay him. "No," said the man; "don't you recollect, so long ago, helping a man with a team up the hill by the side of your house?" "Yes." "Well, I am the man; take your canoe and go home." * * * * * A BOY REPROVED BY A BIRD. The sparrows often build their nests under the eaves of houses and barns. A young lad saw one of the sparrows conveying materials for her nest, which she was building under the eaves of a cottage adjoining his father's house. He was told not to disturb it. But birds eggs form a temptation to many boys. At a favorable opportunity the lad climbed up to the roof of the cottage and carried away the nest with the eggs in it. Among the materials of which the nest was composed was a piece of paper with some printed verses on it. The boy pulled it out and found it to be a page of one of Dr. Watts' hymns, which had been picked up in the yard by the poor bird for strengthening her nest. The boy unfolded the paper and read:---- "Why should I deprive my neighbor Of his goods against his will? Hands were made for honest labor, Not to plunder nor to steal." The lad says, in his after years, "I never forgot the lesson presented to me by that leaf of paper which had been fixed to the nest of the poor sparrow." Let young people remember that when they do wrong they will get reproved, and it may be by the means of a bird. * * * * * THE ECHO. Little Charles knew nothing about an echo. As he was playing by himself in the field, he cried out, "Ho, hop!" and immediately a voice from the woods near by answered, "ho, hop!" Being surprised at this, he called out, "who be you?" The voice answered, "who be you." Charles thought this very strange, and cried out "you're a stupid fellow," and "stupid fellow," was the reply from the woods. Charles began to be much displeased, and called several abusive names, and every name he called, came back to him. "I never met with such insolence," said he, "but I'll revenge myself;" and he ran up and down among the trees, trying to find the supposed offender, but he could see no one. Vexed and disappointed, he hastened home and told his mother that a bad boy had hidden in the woods and called him all sorts of names. His mother smiled and shook her head. "Now you have been angry at yourself, Charles, for you must know that you heard nothing but your own words repeated. As you have seen your own face reflected in the water, so you have now heard your own voice echoed." Had Charles spoke kind words he would have heard kind words in return. It is often true that the behavior we meet with from others, is but an echo of our own. If we speak kind words we shall have kind words in return. * * * * * LIZZY AND HER DOG. I wish to relate to you a very affecting story about a good girl who died when she was thirteen years old. She was an interesting young girl, and possessed great intellectual powers. She was also very fond of the works of nature, especially of flowers, and would often say, "How good God is to make these beautiful flowers for us to enjoy." Soon it was very evident to her friends that disease was preying on her delicate constitution. She bore all her sickness with calm submission, and when she died she appeared to all who knew her to be prepared for heaven. While she was sick, her parents did every thing to make her comfortable and happy. They had a dog which Lizzy set a great deal by, and with him she used to play in the house and in the garden. When Lizzy was so sick that she could not play with him, he would come and lay himself down at her bed side, and appeared to be very sad on her account. When she died [and] was buried, the dog followed with the parents in the funeral, to the grave-yard where Lizzy was laid away. One day, about five months afterwards, I went with her father to see the grave of Lizzy. As we went into the grave-yard, we walked slowly along, reading the names of persons buried there, while the dog followed us. We soon missed the dog, supposing he had wandered into some other part of the cemetery. But when we came within a few yards of Lizzy's grave we saw him sitting at its head, leaning against the stone which was erected in memory of the lovely daughter. It was a very affecting scene--the attachment of the dog, as well as the power of his memory. Dogs are faithful creatures, and we can never bear to see them abused. Be kind to them and they will be kind to you. * * * * * JULIA'S SUNSET WALK. It was a beautiful June day, just at the sun's setting, when Julia Eastworth went to visit the resting place of a dear grandmother. While she was in the grave-yard, meditating on the loss of one of her best earthly friends, she saw a lady dressed in mourning busily engaged in doing something near a rose bush that grew at the foot of a little mound, at a short distance from where she stood. Julia walked along and came near where she was, and laid her hand gently upon the woman and said, "Madam, is this your little mound?" "Oh, no, my child; it is my dear Elise's grave." "And is it long since you laid her here ma'am?" said Julia. "Only a few weeks," was the reply; "there were buds on this rose bush when I brought it here." "And was it her's?" asked Julia, as she stooped down to inhale the rich fragrance of the beautiful flower. "Yes, my child, it was a dear treasure to her. My Elise was a good child, she was my Idol, but my Heavenly Father has seen best to remove her from me. I only cared to live that I might be useful to her in giving her such instructions as might be a blessing to her. I almost adored her, but she is gone from me, and I am alone. I know she is happy, because she was good." "And have you always lived here in our town?" asked Julia. "Oh, no! I am from Italy. When my child was but two years old, I left my native shores, and with my only relative, my father, followed my young husband, who is an American, to his own land. We settled in the State of Virginia, and a short time ago he died and left me with a charge to take care of our dear Elsie. She had her father's hair and complexion, and inherited his delicate constitution, We were poor, and I labored hard, but I cared not, if I could only make my child comfortable and happy. She was not like me; her mind was full of thoughts of beauty; she would often talk of things with which I could not sympathize; the world seemed to her to be full of voices, and she would often say, 'How beautiful _heaven_ must be.' Her nature was purer and gentler than mine, and I felt that she was a fit companion of the angels. But she is now gone to be with them, and I hope soon to meet her." Julia bid the lady good bye, and went towards her home. As she walked slowly along, she thought to herself, "Elsie with the angels!" and she dwelt upon the theme till her mother, seeing her rather different in her conduct, asked her the cause, when she replied, "Oh, mother! I want to dwell with the angels." * * * * * FLORA AND HER PORTRAIT. "And was there never a portrait of your beautiful child," said Anne Jones, to a lady whom she met at the grave where her child had been lain a few weeks. "Oh, yes! but I may never have it," replied the woman as she stood weeping at the grave. Anna did not understand the mother's tears, but in a few moments she became calm, and continued to explain. "Not many weeks before my child's illness, as we were walking together in the city, an artist observed my daughter and followed us to our humble home. He praised her countenance to me, and said her beauty was rare. In all his life he had never seen face to compare with it, nor an eye so full of soul, and begged to have me consent to his drawing her portrait. After many urgent entreaties, my dear child consented. For several mornings I went with Flora to the artist's room, though I could ill afford the time, for our daily bread was to be earned. When he was finishing the picture, Flora went alone. One day she returned, and flinging into my lap her little green purse, she said: 'The picture does not need me any more, and I am very glad, for my head aches badly. They say the portrait is very like me, mother.' "I resolved to go and see it the day following, but when the time came that I first looked upon it, my dear child began to fade in my arms, until she died. And here she is buried. Since then I go to the artist's room to see her portrait, and there, full of life and beauty, she stands before me, and I have permission to see it every day. "But I am about to leave this country for our native land. My aged father has long wished to return to his own country, and we shall soon sail with our friends for Italy. I must leave the dear child here. But if I can purchase the picture of the artist, I shall be happy. We are poor; but by the sale of some little articles, we have raised money enough to buy the picture, at the price which the artist demands for a similar picture. "When I went to buy it, you know not how I felt, when the artist, notwithstanding all my pleadings, denied my request. His apology was, that he had taken it for some purpose of his own; some great exhibition of paintings; what, I could not fully comprehend. He would not sell it. Day after day I have been to him, but in vain. And now the time of our departure will soon come, and duty demands that I must go with my father, and I must leave my dear Flora, and portrait too." She then laid her face upon the grave and wept. Anna's eyes were filled with tears, and for some moments she did not speak. At last she thought--"I know the artist." And then touching the mother, who was almost insensible, she said, "Madam, it may be that I can do something for you; describe to me the picture. I think I must have seen it at this same artist's room." The mother then gave the description, and after Anna had gathered from the mother all needful information, her name, and residence, and time of sailing, then giving her own address, and speaking to her words of consolation and hope, she arose and left the stranger at the grave of her child. The next story will tell you how the picture was obtained. * * * * * THE PORTRAIT OF FLORA PURCHASED. Anna started for her home, and when she had arrived, she slowly ascended to her room, flung herself upon her couch, and buried her face among its cushions. "Edgar," (for that was the artist's name, and Anna knew him,) "Edgar is cold hearted." She did not meet the family at tea that evening, but when her mother came to inquire if she was ill, she related all the sad story of the childless mother, and asked what could be done. The next morning, Anna and her father went to see the artist. He was not in attendance, but one to whom they were well known brought forward the picture, at Anna's request, and which she had before seen. While they were looking at it, the artist came in. "Pardon me, sir," said Anna's father, "for examining your beautiful picture during your absence, but my daughter has a very earnest desire to possess it. Is it for sale?" Edgar replied, "I have painted this picture for the coming artist's exhibition, and, therefore, I have made no design as to its disposal, but it would be an honor to me to have you and Miss Anna its purchasers. I would wish, however, previously to its being given up, that it might be exhibited, according to my intention, at the rooms, which open on Monday next." Mr. H. hesitated: the vessel, which was to carry away the sorrowing mother, was to sail in a little more than two weeks: they must have the picture at that time, if ever; and he said to the artist, "I am aware that this is a beautiful painting, and I will pay you your price, but I must be allowed to take it at the expiration often days, if at all." Edgar reflected a few moments, and being well aware that, in the mansion of Mr. Hastings, his elegant picture would be seen by persons of the most accomplished manners, and of excellent taste, concluded to sell the picture. The bargain was made and Anna and her father departed, leaving the artist somewhat elated at the thought of having Mr. H. the owner of his picture. That night Edgar dreamed that Flora, who had been buried a few weeks, and of whose image his picture was the exact resemblance, stood before him, pleading him to have pity on her lonely mother: he dreamed her hand clasped his, and he awoke trembling. He raised himself upon his elbow, and pressed to his lips some flowers which were left on his table, and then rejoiced that the ocean would soon be between him and the wearisome old woman who had so long annoyed him about the picture. The Monday morning came and with it the portrait of Flora, which had been admired at the exhibition rooms the previous week. A simple frame had been prepared for it, and for a few moments Anna gazed on the picture, and with a love for the buried stranger, looked for the last time into the deep dark eyes which beamed on the canvass. The ship Viola, bound for the port of Naples, lay at the wharf, the passengers were all hurrying on board, the flags were flying, and all wore the joyous aspect of a vessel outward bound. A carriage drawn by a pair of horses came down to the vessel. Mr. Hastings and Anna alighted, and were followed by a servant, who took the safely cased portrait in his arms, and accompanied them on board the ship. They soon met the mother of Flora, and Anna took the picture and presented it to her, and promised to care for the rose buds which bloomed at Flora's grave. Mr. H. received from the gallant captain a promise to take special charge of the Italian widow, and her aged father, and to care for the valued picture of Flora. Thanks and farewells closed the scene, when Anna, with her father, returned home. There she found a note from Edgar, the artist, requesting permission to call on Anna that evening. She wrote a reply, saying that a previous engagement would forbid her complying with his request, at the same time enclosing a check for $200, saying, "My father requests me to forward this check to you in payment for the portrait of _Flora Revere_." * * * * * THE SAINT'S REST. We've no abiding city here: This may distress the worldling's mind, But should not cost the saint a tear, Who hopes a better rest to find, We've no abiding city here; We seek a city out of sight. Zion its name; the Lord is there; It shines with everlasting light. Hush, my soul, nor dare repine; The time my God appoints is best; While here to do his will be mine, And his to fix my time of rest. * * * * * A GOOD MOTHER. Mrs. Savage was the eldest sister of Matthew Henry. When she was a child she had a great many advantages for the improvement of her mind. When only seven years of age, she could translate the Hebrew language, and when ten years old, she could write out her father's sermons. She possessed a very amiable disposition, and was very kind and benevolent to all who needed the comforts of life. She was a Christian, and when she became a mother she began the work of educating her children herself. She had a large family of nine children, and as she had treasured up in her memory many hymns and verses which she had learned when a child, she was able to teach the same to her children. She was so kind and affectionate that every body loved her. Her children took much pleasure in hearing their mother repeat to them the hymns and texts of Scripture which she had learned. [Illustration] Some children are very careless, and indifferent to their parents' advice; such ones will regret it in their riper years. But Mrs. Savage's little boys and girls loved their mother, and were very obedient to her commands. When evening came, before they retired to bed she would call her little children around her (as you see in the picture,) and they would kneel down and say their evening prayer. A pleasant sight, indeed, to see our dear children remembering their Creator in the days of their youth. Mrs. S. was "useful, beloved, meek, humble, and charitable." She lived a happy, cheerful life; she was an ornament to her Christian profession, a "good mother." She died suddenly at the good old age of eighty-eight. * * * * * MOTHER'S LAST LESSON. "Will you please teach me my verse, mamma, and then kiss me and bid me good night," said little Roger, as he opened the door and peeped into the chamber of his sick mother. "I am very sleepy, but no one has heard me say my prayers." Mrs. L. was very ill, and her friends believed her to be dying. She sat propped up with pillows and struggling for breath, her eyes were growing dim, and her strength was failing very fast. She was a widow, and little Roger was her only darling child. He had been in the habit of coming into her room every night, and sitting in her lap, or kneeling by her side, while she repeated some Scripture passages to him, or related a story of wise and good people. She always loved to hear Roger's verse and prayer. "Hush! hush!" said the lady who was watching beside the couch. "Your dear mamma is too ill to hear you to night." And as she said this, she came forward and laid her hand gently upon his arm as if she would lead him from the room. "I cannot go to bed to night," said the little boy, "without saying my prayers--I cannot." Roger's dying mother heard his voice, and his sobs, and although she had been nearly insensible to everything around her, yet she requested the attendant lady to bring the boy and lay him near her side. Her request was granted, and the child's rosy cheek nestled in the bosom of his dying mother. "Now you may repeat this verse after me," said his mother, "and never forget it: 'When my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up.'" The child repeated it three times--then he kissed the pale cheek of his mother, and went quietly to his little couch. The next morning he sought as usual for his mother, but she was now cold and motionless. She died soon after little Roger retired to his bed. That was her last lesson to her darling boy---he did not forget it. He has grown to be a man and occupies a high post of honor in Massachusetts. I never can look upon him without thinking about the faith so beautifully exhibited by his dying mother. It was a good lesson. * * * * * THE GOLDEN CROWN. A teacher once asked a child, "If you had a golden crown, what would you do with it?" The child replied, "I would give it to my father to keep till I was a man." He asked another. "I would buy a coach and horses with it," was the reply. He asked a third. "Oh," said the little girl to whom he spoke, "I would do with it the same as the people in heaven do with their crowns. I would cast it at the Saviour's feet." * * * * * EARLY AT SCHOOL. One Sabbath evening a teacher was walking up and down in the porch before his house, in one of the South Sea Islands. The sun was setting behind the waves of the ocean, and the labors of the day were over. In that cool, quiet hour, the teacher was in prayer, asking a blessing on his people, his scholars, and himself. As he heard the leaves of the Mimosa tree rustling, he thought the breeze was springing up--and continued his walk. Again he heard the leaves rattle, and he felt sure that it could not be the wind. So he pushed aside the long leafy branches of the trees, and passed beneath. And what did he find there? Three little boys. Two were fast asleep in each other's arms, but the third was awake. "What are you doing there, my children?" asked the teacher. "We have come to sleep here," said the boy. "And why do you sleep here; have you no home?" "Oh, yes," said the lad, "but if we sleep here, we are sure to be ready when the school bell rings in the morning." "And do your parents know about it?" "Mine do," said the lad, "but these little boys have no parents; they are orphans." You know the nights in the South Sea Islands are not cold and damp like ours, but as the teacher thought a heavy rain would fall in the night, he roused the orphans, and led the three little boys into the large porch of the house where they might rest in safety. He was happy to find that they were some of his scholars, and that they loved their school. What would these little Islanders think if they could look from their distant homes into some of our schools and see how many late comers there are! * * * * * THE PLUM BOYS. Two boys were one day on their way from school, and as they were passing a cornfield, in which there were some plum trees, full of nice, ripe fruit, Henry said to Thomas, "Let us jump over and get some plums. Nobody will see us, and we can scud along through the corn and come out on the other side." Thomas said, "I cannot. It is wrong to do so. I would rather not have the plums than to steal them, and I think I will run along home." "You are a coward," said Henry, "I always knew you were a coward, and if you don't want any plums you may go without them, but I shall have some very quick." Just as Henry was climbing the fence, the owner of the field rose up from the other side of the wall, and Henry jumped back and ran away. Thomas had no reason to be afraid, so he stood still, and the owner of the field, who had heard the conversation between the boys, told him that he was very glad to see that he was not willing to be a thief. He then told Thomas that he might step over the fence and help himself to as many plums as he wished. The boy was pleased with the invitation, and soon filled his pockets with plums which he could call his own. Honesty will always get its reward. * * * * * THE FIRST DOLLAR. I will tell you an affecting story about a young lad by the name of Emerson Terry, who lived in Hartford, Ct. He was very kind to the poor, and could never see the sufferings of his fellow beings without making an effort for their relief. Here is one instance of his kindness and liberality: While he resided in Bristol, his father, Dr. Terry, took little Emerson with him to ride into Hartford that he might see the city. Emerson had one dollar, and it was the first dollar he ever earned. He took the dollar with him, thinking to buy something with it in the city. While they were riding along on the way, they overtook a poor fugitive slave seeking his freedom in the North. Mr. Terry kindly took the wayfaring man into his carriage when the poor man related to him his sufferings and poverty, and also his trust in God. Young Emerson's heart was touched, when, of his own accord, he drew out his _first_ and _only_ dollar and gave it to the poor fugitive. When he returned home he told his mother what he had done, with a satisfaction that indicated his pleasure in being able to relieve a suffering stranger. How noble was this act. He felt willing to forego the pleasure of spending his dollar for himself, for any pleasing toys that he might help a poor wanderer on the earth. When he was fifteen years of age, he was drowned in the Connecticut river. He was beloved and respected by a large circle of acquaintance. He was noted for his kind disposition, tender feelings, and lovely spirit. He sleeps in peace, and we all hope to meet him in heaven. * * * * * THE SHEPHERD AND HIS BIBLE. A poor shepherd, living among the Alps, the father of a large family, for whose wants he provided with great difficulty, purchased an old Bible from a dealer in old cloths and furniture. On Sunday evening, as he was turning over the leaves, he noticed several of them were pasted together. He immediately began to separate the pasted leaves with great care. Inside of these leaves he found carefully enclosed a bank bill of five hundred dollars. On the margin of one of the pages was written these words: "I gathered together money with very great difficulty, but having no natural heirs but those who have absolutely need of nothing, I make thee, whosoever shall read this Bible, my natural heir." We cannot promise our young friends that they will find money in the leaves of their Bibles, but you may be assured that if you study its pages, and follow its precepts, you will find wisdom, which is better than silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. * * * * * REVELATION OF GOD'S HOLY WORD. Ye favored lands, rejoice Where God reveals his word: We are not left to nature's voice To bid us know the Lord. His statutes and commands Are set before our eyes; He puts the gospel in our hands, Where our salvation lies. His laws are just and pure, His truth without deceit; His promise is for ever sure, And his rewards are great. * * * * * PLEASANT PLAY. There are many plays in which children may amuse themselves so as to benefit both the mind and body. Exercise is very essential to the health, and all children should accustom themselves to such exercise as will give elasticity too all the muscles of the body. Some children often play too hard, and others, before they get through playing, get to quarrelling. Children never appear so badly as when they quarrel with each other. Joseph and William, Jane and little Susan, are out in the garden playing "hide and seek," around the summer house. William became a little contrary, because everything in the play did not suit him, and declared he would run away. Children should never let anger rise in their bosoms because of some small mistake on the part of others. They should always overlook all mistakes, forgive all injuries, and learn to love each other when at play, as well as when at school. Good children will play together, without getting angry, and it is a pretty sight to see such children all happy in each other's society and enjoying their pleasant pastimes with cheerful and happy hearts. Our evil actions spring like trees, From small and hidden seeds; We think, or wish some wicked thing, And then do wicked deeds. Whoever dares to tell a lie, Whoever steals a pin, Whoever strikes an angry blow, Has done a deed of sin. * * * * * GEORGE AND HIS GUINEA. Little George Ames went with his aunt to attend a missionary meeting. After the minister had ended his sermon, as he sat in the pew he whispered to his aunt, saying, "I wish you would lend me a guinea and I will give it to you again when we get home." His aunt asked him what he wanted of his guinea; he told her he wished to put it in the box when it came round, to assist in sending the gospel to the heathen children. She replied, "a guinea is a great deal of money, George; you had better ask your mother, first." As George's mother lived very near the church, he went home immediately, and said, "Mother, will you let me have my guinea to give to the mission?" George's mother saw that he was very much interested for the heathen children, and says to him, "supposing you give half of it." "No," said George, "I want to give it all." "Well, my dear, you will remember you cannot give it and have it too." She then gave him a one pound note, and a shilling. But George said he would rather have a guinea. "Why," said his mother, "what difference can it make? it is just the same amount." "Yes," said George, "but that one pound will seem so much for a little boy to give. If I had a guinea, I could put it in between two half-pence and nobody would know anything about it." His mother was pleased with his proposal, and George having got his guinea returned to the church and put it in the box as he intended. Little George is now dead, and there is no danger of his being puffed up by what he has done. You may learn from this act of George, how to do some good to poor heathen children. You should be willing to deny yourselves some pleasures in order that you may benefit others. And if you do good out of a pure motive you will be blessed in the deed. * * * * * THE JEW AND HIS DAUGHTER. A Jew came to this country from London, many years ago, and brought with him all his property. He had a lovely daughter of seventeen; with her he settled in a charming retreat on the fruitful banks of the Ohio, in the Western part of Virginia. He had buried his wife before he left Europe, and he knew no comfort but the company of his beloved daughter. She possessed an amiable disposition, and was well educated; she could speak several languages, and her manner pleased all who knew her. Being a Jew, he brought up his daughter in the strictest principles of his faith. It was not long after that his daughter was taken sick. The rose faded from her cheek, her strength failed, and it was certain that she could not live long. Her father was deeply affected. He tried to talk with her, but could seldom speak without weeping. He spared no expense to have her get well. One day he was walking in the wood near his house when he was sent for by his dying daughter. With a heavy heart he entered the door of her room, and he saw that he was now to take the last farewell of his daughter. "My father," said the child, "do you love me?" "Yes," he replied, "you know that I love you." "I know, father, you have ever loved me. You have been a kind father, and I tenderly love you. Grant me my dying request." "What is it, my child? ask what you will, though it take every farthing of my property, it shall be granted. I _will grant_ your request." "My dear father, I now beg of you never again to speak lightly of Jesus of Nazareth; I know that he is a Saviour, and that he has made himself known to me, since I have been sick, even for the salvation of my soul. I entreat you to obtain a Testament that tells of him and that you may bestow on him the love that was formerly _mine_." She now ceased speaking, her father left the room, when her soul took its flight to God who gave it. After her decease the parent purchased a Testament and read about Jesus of Nazareth, and is now a devoted Christian. Good children may be made blessings to their parents and friends. * * * * * ANECDOTES. TRUE BENIFICENCE.--Mark Antony, when very much depressed, and at the ebb of his fortune, cried out, "I have lost all, except what I have given away." WASHINGTON AND THE SOLDIER.--A British soldier said, "It was once in my power to shoot Gen. Washington." "Why, then," said an American, "did you not do it?" "Because," he replied, "the death of Washington would not have been for our benefit, for we depended upon him to treat our prisoners kindly." YES AND NO.--John Randolph, in one of his letters to a young relative, says: "You must expect unreasonable requests to be preferred to you every day of your life; and you must endeavor to say _no_ with as much facility and kindness as you would say _yes_." OSCEOLA.--It is said that the name of Osceola was given to that famous chief by an old lady in a frontier village, who had newly arrived in the country, and had never seen an Indian. When she seen him she burst forth in utter astonishment--"Oh see! Oh la! What a curious looking man!" SIGISMOND.--This Emperor was once reproached by some courtiers for being favorable to his foes--to whom he replied, "Do I not effectually destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?" * * * * * CHINESE PROVERBS. What is told in the ear is often heard a hundred miles. Riches come better after poverty, than poverty after riches. Who aims at excellence will be above medirocity; who aims at medirocity will fall short of it. No remedies can revive old age and faded flowers. A truly great man never puts away the simplicity of a child. He who toils with pain will eat with pleasure. A wise man forgets old grudges. * * * * * Those that dare lose a day are dangerously prodigal; those that dare misspend it, desperate.--_Bishop Hall_. Truth enters into the heart of man when it is empty, and clean and still; but when the mind is shaken with passion as with a storm, you can never hear the voice of the charmer, though he charm never so wisely. * * * * * COMFORT AND SOBRIETY. Let me here give you a few maxims to commit to memory:---- Avoid and shun the sources of misery. Be sure not to _indulge_ your appetite. Strong drink excites a person to do wrong. Remember you are never out of temptation. A _life of virtue and temperence_ will secure to you money and time; will give you health, and prosperity, peace, character, respect, and usefulness. PLEDGE. Our hands and our hearts we give To the temperance pledge, declaring That long as on earth we live, All its bountiful blessings sharing, We will taste not and touch not the bowl That burns with intoxication, And will lend our assistance to roll The temperance ball through the nation. * * * * * THE TRUSTY DOG. I am glad to introduce to you, the noble dog whose picture is before you. He was an old and tried friend of mine, and I could tell you a great many things about him. He was more trust-worthy than many a little child that I have known; for though circumstances have thrown me in the way of many beautiful children, some of the little ones with whom I have met, were not so truthful and trusty as they ought to have been. [Illustration: "Erie," the trusty dog.] But I must not forget the work I commenced; and run off into telling you stories of bad children rather than of the good dog. I know that you are already interested in this noble fellow, by this fine portrait of him. Hasn't he a beautiful face. It is as kind and good natured a dog as you ever saw. Now you want to know his name; and, perhaps some of you are feeling curious by this time, to know what he is doing with that great basket which he holds in his mouth, I will first tell you his name, and then come to the question of the basket. His name was "Erie." Mayhap you never knew a dog by this name. It is very peculiar to call a dog "Erie," but, as this was an extraordinary wise dog, he deserved a name somewhat different from ordinary dogs. Now I will proceed to my story which is true, and may be believed as well as wondered at. "Erie" had great many wonderful tricks. He seemed to understand what was said to him, and would obey promptly any person in whom he had confidence, when they told him to do anything which was in his power to do. You could trust him to carry any article which he could hold in his mouth, He would take it to any place you might name, where he was accustomed to go, and give to the person you told him to give it to, and never to any other, under any circumstances. If he could not find the person to whom the article was sent, he would surely return it to you with a knowing look which seemed to say, "I tried to do my errand but couldn't." He was usually very good natured, but on such occasions, when he was entrusted with the care of anything; he did not like to be interfered with, and if any one attempted to touch anything which he held in his mouth he would growl at them in a most ferocious manner, as if he would say, "Take care, this is not yours, and I shall treat you harshly if you undertake to carry off what belongs to another." His master used to love hunting very much, and "Erie" almost always went with him. At such times he was very fond of carrying the game bag in his mouth. There was a closet in the house where his master kept his guns powder, flasks, and all things necessary for hunting. One day Mr. A. left for [the] woods with his gun, while the dog was absent from home. He had gone about a mile, when he thought of his powder flask which in the haste of leaving home he had forgotten. He turned back regretting that he had taken so many unnecessary steps, when his eye fell upon "Erie" running toward him with great speed holding the powder flask in his mouth. The dog had returned home and finding his master gone, had examined the closet, the door of which had been left ajar, and found the gun gone while the flask was left; he seemed to know this ought not to be, and seizing the flask in his mouth he pursued his master and carried him the important article. Mr. A. taught him to carry meat home from the market, and he was never known to eat it, or allow any other dog to take it from him. This was very convenient for the family. Often when Mr. A. was in haste, he would write a note telling the butcher what meat to send him for his dinner. This note he would put into the bottom of the meat basket, and give the basket to "Erie," telling him which market he was to go to, and reminding him to be sure and come back quickly. In a few moments the dog would return with the dinner as safely as a child could have done. One day as he was going home from the market, the basket was heavy, having in it a large piece of meat. "Erie" grew very tired and set the basket down on the pavement to rest his mouth a moment. At this moment a large black dog was passing, who, smelling the meat, thought he would like a piece for his own dinner; so walking up to the basket he attempted to thrust his nose in and help himself. "Erie" gave one of his ferocious warning growls, which said as plain as words, "Take care, take care." At first the other dog retreated a little, but being very hungry he again approached the basket. "Erie" seemed really to reason about the matter. He knew that the other dog was determined to steal the meat which was especially entrusted to _his_ care. It was as if he thought to himself, "Now if I stop to fight with this dog, some other dog may come and run away with my meat, my only safety is flight," so seizing up the basket he fled as fast as his legs could carry him toward home. The large dog pursued him a little way, but "Erie" out-ran him and reached home in safety, As soon as he had deposited the basket in the hands of his mistress, he turned and ran down street again as fast as he could, in search of the thieving dog, whose dishonesty he seemed to think he must punish. After searching a long time he found him playing with a number of other dogs, and I never saw a dog take a worse whipping than "Erie" gave him. Now my dear children as you read this story, ask yourselves if you are as honest and trustworthy as this noble dog was. You know that you may be much better than he; for God has made you wiser and given you power to do much, more than any animal. * * * * * THE UNCERTAINTY OF LIFE. Josiah Martin was a young man of whom any mother might have been proud. He was an only child, and had been the support of his widowed mother for five years; though at the time when we first knew him he was not twenty. And this was not all. He was so frugal, and industrious, that he was able, besides providing for himself and mother, to contribute largely toward the support of his aunt Eleanor and her daughter, who were very poor, and without his help, might have suffered oftentimes for want of the necessaries of life. In return for his care, he had a wealth of love bestowed upon him by mother, aunt and cousin, who often said, and often felt in their hearts, that Josiah was as good a boy as ever lived. He enjoyed perfect health, and had naturally a merry heart, so that every day of his life, he was as happy as the birds. He expected to continue so, through many long years: and never thought of dying until he got to be an old man. One pleasant summer morning, he rose early and prepared to leave home to be absent a week. He had agreed to go and help Mr. Brown about harvesting, and the farm being five miles from where his mother lived, he could not come home before Saturday night. He bade his mother an affectionate good morning, and started cheerily on his way. The road ran by aunt Eleanor's door, so he thought he would just peep in, and see how she was and tell her that he should not see her again for several days. The old lady did not seem as well as usual, and "wished heartily," she said, that Josiah wasn't going away. "Why, I shall be back," said he "in six days, and can come sooner, if any of you need me." "You should not speak so positive about it," said aunt Eleanor, "you may never come back again." "Oh fye, auntie, you've got the blues this morning! I shall be back just as sure as Saturday night comes." "Don't be too certain my boy; life and death are not in our hands; you may be called any hour." [Illustration] "Now auntie, don't get gloomy about such a hale stout boy as I am; who never saw a sick day in his life, and don't know what pain is. Why see how strong I am," and laughingly he bent down, and lifting his cousin with one arm and his great dog with the other, he tripped lightly over the threshold. "There, auntie," he cried, "I could carry off your whole establishment, almost as easy as Samson did the gates of Gaza." Though the old lady smiled at the moment the cloud came back again to her face, and through the open door she watched him as long as her misty eyes could distinguish him in the distance. As merry, as strong, and as full of life as ever, the young man went to his work that morning. Arrived at the harvest field, he took off his coat and went in among the laborers, saying that he thought he could outwork them all that day, he felt so vigorous. The sun was exceeding hot, the air sultry and close, and the laborers, in spite of their determination and strength, grew very weary when the sun was high in the heavens. About eleven o'clock, a boy came from the house and brought them a jug of cold water. Josiah took it first, and drank of it until they all called to him to stop. He did not heed them, but being very thirsty, drank until he was satisfied; then stooped to set the jug on the ground, and fell down beside it a corpse. Thus suddenly, in the prime of his young life, was he called into eternity. In a moment from perfect health, he passed to death. I seem to hear you saying, little reader, "This was very sudden; but surely such unexpected deaths are rare, I shall not die in that way." That you cannot tell, you must go in the time that God appoints, it may be before another sunset. But whether it be sooner or later that you are called home to heaven, would you not love to leave with your friends the memory of as good a life as this of which you have been reading. On the neat white slab that shows where Josiah sleeps it says, "Here lies a good boy, who blessed the world while he lived in it." Go ye little readers and do likewise. * * * * * 'Tis well to walk with a cheerful heart Wherever our fortunes call, With a friendly glance, an open hand, And a gentle word for all. Since life is a thorny and difficult path Where toil is the portion of man, We all should endeavor, while passing along, To make it us smooth as we can. * * * * * THE FIRST DECEPTION. When I was a boy, and attended school, I was like a great many other boys, more inclined to play and read story books than I was to study my lessons; it was a rule at our school to carry a book home every night and study the lesson for the following day; but I would avoid this by some deception, and of course the next morning my recitation would be very imperfect. One morning I awoke quite early, and I remembered that we were to have a very difficult lesson on that morning, and I had neglected it that I might join in a game of foot-ball. It was too late then to commit it to memory, and I felt ashamed to go to school without it, for I knew that I should be punished, and be obliged to remain in at recess to make up the lesson. I did not want to play truant, for I was fearful of detection, so I went to my father and feigned headache, and plead that I might remain at home that day. The wish was granted, and for a moment I felt relieved, but at breakfast or dinner, I was not allowed to eat anything; I was obliged to remain in doors all day, although the sun was shining brightly out of doors, and with a conscience restless and reproving me all the time, I passed a wretched day. My father, always kind and attentive to his children, would lay his hand upon my head and pity me, so that my heart ached when I thought how wickedly I was deceiving him. The day passed, and I went to my bed, but I could not sleep. I had told my father a lie, and the thought of it lay like a weight upon my heart. I slept a little, but it was a troubled and unhappy sleep. When I arose in the morning, I went to my father, and with tearful eyes confessed my deception. He was surprised and grieved. I stood before him with my head hung down, feeling thoroughly ashamed. I asked forgiveness of him and it was granted. I was then told to go to school and tell the teacher of my fault, and promise never to attempt such a wrong again. I have grown a man since then, but the memory of that error is still fresh in my mind. It was the last time I ever attempted to deceive my father. I have no father or mother now, but the lesson which that day I learned, will guard me through life from any attempt at deceiving those to whom I am indebted for kindness and love. If any little boy should read this story, let him be mindful and avoid all temptations, which, if yielded to, will cause him in after years many bitter pangs and hearty remorse. 
11595	----	Images of the original pages are available through the Florida Board of Education, Division of Colleges and Universities, PALMM Project, 2001. (Preservation and Access for American and British Children's Literature, 1850-1869.) See http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/dl/UF00001797.jpg or http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/dl/UF00001797.pdf Project Gutenberg has another version of this book with some differences in the stories and illustrations. See 11237.txt, 11237.zip, 11237-h.htm, and 11237-h.zip, found at http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/1/1/2/3/11237/ THE PEARL BOX Containing One Hundred Beautiful Stories for Young People. BY A PASTOR. 1851. [Illustration] PREFACE. In preparing this volume of stories for young readers, the writer has had in view their instruction, by presenting to them the duties of their station in a familiar and instructive story. Each story contains a moral, and teaches principles by which the youth should be governed in their private, social and public relations in life. In the perusal of these stories, we hope to accomplish our great object, of aiding young persons to pursue the peaceful and pleasant path of duty--to render them more useful in the world, and to grow wiser and happier in the path of life. THE DYING BOY. A little boy, by the name of Bertie, was taken very ill, and for sometime continued to grow weaker until he died. A few hours before his death he revived up, and his first request was, to be bathed in the river; but his mother persuaded him to be sponged only, as the river water would be too cold for his weak frame. After his mother had sponged him with water, he desired to be dressed; when his mother dressed him in his green coat and white collar, and seated him at the table with all his books and worldly treasures around him. As he sat there, one would have thought that he was about to commence a course of study; and yet in the marble paleness of his features, and in the listless and languid eye, there was evidence that life in the boy was like an expiring taper, flickering in the socket. He soon asked to go out in his little carriage. His grandfather, whom he very much loved, placed him in it, and carefully avoiding every stone, drew him to a spot commanding the entire landscape. The tide was up, and the sun was shining on the deep blue waters, and bathing the distant mountains and the green meadows in liquid gold. The gardens and orchards around were gay in the rich crimson blossoms of the apple tree; the air was filled with the sweet fragrance of flowers, and the birds were singing beautifully, when little Bertie looked for the last time on the scenes of earth. He could not remain long, and was soon taken back to the little parlor, where he sat on the sofa, resting his elbows on the table. It was not long before the little boy died. But he was very happy. Among his last words were these, addressed to his little sister three years old: "Well, Emmie, very ill--me going to Jesus." "Oh, mamma, Emmie loves her Saviour." THE BOY AND THE GOLD ROBIN. A bright eyed boy was sleeping upon a bank of blossoming clover. The cool breeze lifted the curls from his brow, and fanned with downy wings his quiet slumbers, while he lay under the refreshing shade of a large maple tree. The birds sang to him during his happy hours of sleep. By and by he awoke, and a beautiful gold robin sat on the spray, and sung a song of joy. The boy reached out his hands to secure the prize, but the robin spread his golden wings and soared away. He looked after it with a longing gaze, and when it disappeared from his sight, he wept aloud. At this moment, a form of light approached, and took the hands of the child and pointed upwards; and he saw the bird soaring in freedom and the sun shining upon its burnished plumes. Then the shining one said; "Do you love that beautiful bird?" In the midst of his tears the child replied, "Oh, yes." "Then," said the angel, "shall it not wing its flight from flower to flower and be happy, rather than to dwell in a prison with thee?" Then the streams and flowering vales of Elysium, that breathe the pure air of freedom, spake: "Wouldst thou bring her back to thee, and make her a prisoner? Dry up thy tears, and let thy song be, 'Stay not here, but speed thy flight, O bright one, and snuff the mellow air of freedom.' God made the birds to be happy in their short existence, and ought we to deprive them of their own elements of happiness, and take from them the freedom which they enjoy?" THE WAY TO OVERCOME EVIL. A little girl, by the name of Sarah Dean, was taught the precepts of the Bible by her mother. One day she came to her mother very much delighted, to show her some plums that a friend had given her. The mother said to her: "Your friend was very kind, and has given you a great many." "Yes," replied Sarah, "she was, and she gave me more than these, but I have given some away." The mother asked to whom she had given them; when the child replied: "I gave them to a girl that pushes me off the path, and makes faces at me." Upon being asked why she gave them to her, she answered: "Because I thought that would make her know that I wished to be kind to her, and perhaps she will not be unkind and rude to me again." This was true. The rude girl was afterwards very good to Sarah, and felt very sorry that she had treated her unkindly. How truly did the little girl obey the command, "_overcome evil with good_." HARRIET AND HER SQUIRREL. It was on a Sabbath eve, when at a friend's house, we were all sitting in the piazza, conversing about the efforts which were being made for the poor heathen, and the number of Testaments which were being sent to them. "Father," said little Harriet, "do the little heathen children wish to learn to read the New Testament?" "O yes, my child, many of them do," said the father. "But have they all got Testaments if they did know how to read?" "No, my love; few of them have ever heard about the Testament, about God, or about Jesus Christ." "Will half a dollar buy one?" said Harriet. "O yes, my child." "Then," said Harriet, "may I sell anything I have, if I can get the money?" Her father told her she might. Now, every child has some favorite toy. Harriet's was a beautiful tame _gray_ squirrel. It would eat from her hands, attend her in her rambles, and sleep on her pillow. She called its name Jenny. It was taken sick, and the little girl nursed it with care, but it at last died in her lap. Little Harriet wept sadly about it, and her father tried to console her, and told her not to feel so. "Ah," said she, "you know, father, you told me that I might sell anything I had to buy a Testament for the heathen children, and I was going to sell my pretty squirrel to Mr. Smith, who said he would give me half a dollar for it; but now my Jenny is dead." The Father then put a silver dollar into Harriet's hand, and she dried her tears, rejoicing that Jenny's death would be the means of his little daughter having two or three Testaments instead of one. THE REWARD. A teacher in a Sabbath School promised to supply all the children in his class with a catechism, who had none. One of the little girls went home from the school after the books were given out and said:-- "Mamma, if I had told a lie to-day, I would have got a catechism." "I think that very strange, Eliza; for the Sabbath School is no place for lies, and if you could be so wicked, I know your teacher would not have rewarded you for it." "Mother," said Eliza, "I tell nothing but the truth; and now I will explain it. "You know I went to school this morning with the other girls. They told me on the way how their mother had bought each of them a new catechism on last market day, and they said, if I once saw how pretty their books were I would not look at my old one any more. Our teacher asked us all, when we went in, if we had any catechisms, and those who said they had not, received one from the teacher as a present. Jane, after all she told me, by the way, denied that she had any, and Lizzy did the same. But when he asked me, I told him I had one at home; but if I had said no, I would have got a new one." Her mother then told her that she should be rewarded for not telling a lie by giving her a new book and a new Bible. ANECDOTES. A poor Arabian of the desert was one day asked, how he came to be assured that there was a God. "In the same way," he replied, "that I am enabled to tell by a print impressed on the sand, whether it was a man or beast that passed that way." * * * * * THANKFULNESS.--Walking along Bishopgate street one morning, I saw two men standing as if amazed at something that had happened. "Pray, gentlemen," said I, "what is the matter?" One of them informed me that a genteelly dressed man had hastily come up to him, and tapping him on the shoulder, had said: "Sir, did you ever thank God for your reason?" "No," said I, "not particularly." "Well," said he, "do it now, for I have lost mine;" when he marched off with great speed. * * * * * HONESTY.--An honest boy, whose sister was sick and the family in want, found a wallet containing fifty dollars. The temptation was great to use the money; but he resolved to find the owner. He did so; when the owner, learning the circumstances of the family, gave the fifty dollars for their comfort. He took the boy to live with him. That boy is a prosperous merchant in Ohio. * * * * * THE BOY AND HIS MARBLES.--One Sunday a lady called to her little boy, who was shooting marbles on the pavement, to come into the house. "Don't you know you shouldn't be out there, my son? Go into the back yard, if you want to play marbles; it is Sunday." "Yes, mother; but aint it Sunday in the back yard?" THE BOY AND THE DEW DROPS. A little boy who had been out early in the morning playing on the lawn before his father's house, while the dew drops lay on the grass, was soon after seen returning to the spot, and finding them all gone, he sat down to weep. His father asked him why he wept. "Because," said he, "the beautiful dew drops are gone." His father tried to soothe him, but he continued weeping. Just then a cloud passed ever, and on the cloud the beautiful rainbow had cast its arch. "There, see, my son," said the father, "there are all your dew drops; the sun has taken them up only to set them forth in greater brightness in the sky." "O father, dear father, why pass they away, The dew drops that sparkled at dawning of day, That glittered like stars in the light of the moon; Oh, why are the dew drops dissolving so soon? Does the sun in his wrath chase their brightness away, As if nothing that's lovely might live for a day? The moonlight is faded, the flowers still remain, But the dew drops have shrunk to their petals again." "My child," said the father, "look up to the skies, Behold that bright rainbow, those beautiful dyes, There, there are the dew drops in glory reset, Mid the jewels of heaven, they are glittering yet. Oh, are we not taught by each beautiful ray To mourn not earth's fair things, though passing away; For though youth of its beauty and brightness be riven, All that withers on earth blooms more sweetly in heaven. Look up," said the father, "look up to the skies, Hope sits on the wings of those beautiful dyes." LETTICE AND MYRA. A SCENE IN LONDON. My young readers may have heard about the poor people in London. The following story is a specimen of the hardships of many young girls in that famous city. "Two young women occupied one small room of about ten feet by eight. They were left orphans, and were obliged to take care of themselves. Many of the articles of furniture left them had been disposed of to supply the calls of urgent want. In the room was an old four post bedstead, with curtains almost worn out, one mattress with two small pillows, a bolster that was almost flat, three old blankets and cotton sheets, of coarse description, three rush-bottom chairs, an old claw table, a chest of draws with a few battered band-boxes on the top of it, a miserable bit of carpet before the fire-place, a wooden box for coals, a little tin fender and an old poker. What there was, however, was kept clean, the floor and yellow paint was clean, and the washing tub which sat in one corner of the room. "It was a bitter cold night, the wind blew and shook the window, when a young girl of about eighteen sat by the tallow candle, which burned in a tin candlestick, at 12 o'clock at night, finishing a piece of work with the needle which she was to return next morning. Her name was Lettice Arnold. She was naturally of a cheerful, hopeful temper, and though work and disappointment had faded the bright colors of hope, still hope buoyed up her spirits. "Her sister Myra was delicate, and lay on the mattress on that night, tossing about with suffering, unable to rest. At last Lettice says to her:-- "'Poor Myra, can't you get to sleep?' "'It is so cold,' was the reply; 'and when will you have done and come to bed?' "'One quarter of an hour more, Myra, and I shall have finished my work, and then I will throw my clothes over your feet, and I hope you will be a little warmer.' "Myra sighed, and lifted up her head, and leaning upon her arm watched the progress of her sister as she plied the needle to her work. "'How slowly,' said Myra, 'you do get along. It is one o'clock, and you have not finished yet.' "'I cannot work fast, Myra, and neatly too; my hands are not so delicate and nimble as yours.' and smiling a little, she added: 'Such swelled clumsy things, I cannot get over the ground nimbly and well at the same time. You are a fine race horse, and I a drudging pony. But I shall soon be through.' "Myra once more uttered a sigh and cried: "'Oh, my feet are dreadful cold.' "'Take this bit of flannel,' said Lettice, 'and let me wrap them up.' "'Nay, you will want it,' she replied. "'Oh, I have only five minutes to sit up, and I can wrap this piece of carpet round mine,' said Lettice. "And she laid down her work and went to the bed, and wrapped her sister's icy feet in the flannel, and then sat down and finished her task. How glad was Lettice to creep to the mattress and to lay her aching limbs upon it. A hard bed and scanty covering in a cold night are keenly felt. She soon fell asleep, while her sister tossed and murmured on account of the cold. "Lettice awoke and drew her own little pillow from under her head, and put it under her sister's, and tried every way to make her sister comfortable, and she partly succeeded; and at last Myra, the delicate suffering creature, fell asleep, and Lettice slumbered like a child." How thankful ought we to be for kind parents, a comfortable home, and a good fire in a cold night. I will tell you in the next story what Lettice did with her work. LETTICE TAKING HOME THE WORK. Early in the morning, before it was light, and while the twilight gleamed through the curtainless windows, Lettice was up, dressing herself by the aid of the light which gleamed from the street lamp into the window. She combed her hair with modest neatness, then opened the draw with much precaution, lest she should disturb poor Myra, who still slumbered on the hard mattress--drew out a shawl and began to fold it as if to put it on. "Alas!" said Lettice, "this will not do--it is threadbare, timeworn, and has given way in two places." She turned it, and unfolded it, but it would not do. It was so shabby that she was actually ashamed to be seen with it in the street. She put it aside, and took the liberty of borrowing Myra's, who was now asleep. She knew Myra would be awful cold when she got up, and would need it. But she must go with the work that morning. She thought first of preparing the fire, so that Myra, when she arose, would only have to light the match; but as she went to the box for coal she saw, with terror, how low the little store of fuel was, and she said to herself, "we must have a bushel of coal to-day--better do without meat than fire such weather as this." But she was cheered with the reflection that she should receive a little more for her work that day than what she had from other places. It had been ordered by a benevolent lady who had been to some trouble in getting the poor women supplied with needle work so that they should receive the full price. She had worked for private customers before, and always received more pay from them than from the shops in London, where they would beat down the poor to the last penny. Poor Lettice went to the old band-box and took out a shabby old bonnet--she looked at it, and sighed, when she thought of the appearance she must make; for she was going to Mrs. Danvers, and her work was some very nice linen for a young lady about to be married. Just at this moment she thought of the contrast, between all the fine things which that young lady was to have, and her own destitution. But her disposition was such as not to cause her to think hard of others who had plenty while she was poor. She was contented to receive her pay from the wealthy, for her daily needle work. She felt that what they had, was not taken from her, and if she could gain in her little way by receiving her just earnings from the general prosperity of others, she would not complain. And as the thought of the increased pay came into her mind, which she was to receive that day, she brightened up, shook the bonnet, pulled out the ribbons and made it look as tidy as possible, thinking to herself that after buying some fuel she might possibly buy a bit of ribbon and make it look a little more spruce, when she got her money. Lettice now put on her bonnet, and Myra's shawl, and looking into the little three-penny glass which hung on the wall she thought she might look quite tidy after all. The young lady for whom she made the linen lived about twenty miles from town, but she had come in about this time, and was to set off home at nine o'clock that very morning. The linen was to have been sent in the night before, but Lettice had found it impossible to finish it. This was why she was obliged to start so early in the morning. She now goes to the bed to tell Myra about the fire, and that she had borrowed her shawl, but Myra was sound asleep, so she did not disturb her, but stepped lightly over the floor and down stairs, for it was getting late and she must be gone. Read the next story and you will be deeply interested in the result. LETTICE AND CATHERINE, OR THE UNEXPECTED MEETING. I must tell you who were Lettice and Myra. They were the daughters of a clergyman, who held the little vicarage of Castle Rising. But misfortune, which sometimes meets the wise and good, reduced the family to poor circumstances. After the parents' decease, Lettice and Myra located in London, for the purpose of doing needlework for a living. We said in the last story, that Lettice had entered the street and was on her way with the work she had finished for the young lady. It was a cold morning, the snow blew, and the street was slippery. She could scarcely stand--her face was cold, and her hands so numbed that she could scarcely hold the parcel she carried. The snow beat upon her poor bonnet, but she comforted herself with the idea that she might be supposed to have a better bonnet at home. She cheerfully trudged along, and at last entered Grosvenor Square, where the lamps were just dying away before the splendid houses, while the wind rushed down the Park colder than ever. A few boys were about the only people yet to be seen about, and they laughed at her as she held her bonnet down with one hand, to prevent its giving way before the wind, while she carried her bundle and kept her shawl from flying up with the other. At last she entered Green street, and came to the house of the kind lady who had furnished her and many others with work; raised the knocker, and gave one humble knock at the door. She had never been at the house before, but she had sometimes had to go to other genteel houses where she had been met with incivility by the domestics. But "like master, like man," is a stale old proverb and full of truth. The servant came to the door. He was a grave old man about fifty. His countenance was full of kind meaning, and his manners so gentle, that before hearing her errand, observing how cold she looked, bade her come in and warm herself at the hall stove. "I have come," said Lettice, "with the young lady's work--I had not time to come last night, but I hope I have not put her to any inconvenience--I started before light this morning." "Well, my dear, I hope not," said the servant, "but it was a pity you could not get it done last night. Mrs. Danvers likes to have people exact to the moment. However, I dare say it will be all right." As Reynolds, the servant-man, entered the drawing room, Lettice heard a voice, "Is it come at last!" And the young lady, who thus inquired, was Catherine Melvin, who was then making an early breakfast before a noble blazing fire. "Has the woman brought her bill," asked Mrs. Danvers. "I will go and ask," said the servant. "Stay, ask her to come up. I should like to inquire how she is getting along this cold weather." Reynolds obeyed, and soon Lettice found herself in a warm, comfortable breakfast room. "Good morning," said Mrs. Danvers. "I am sorry you have had such a cold walk this morning. I am sorry you could not come last night. This young lady is just leaving, and there is barely time to put up the things." Catherine (for this was the young lady's name,) had her back turned to the door quietly continuing her breakfast, but when the gentle voice of Lettice replied: "Indeed, madam, I beg your pardon, I did my very best"--Catherine started, looked up, and rose hastily from her chair--Lettice, advancing a few steps, exclaimed "Catherine." And Catherine exclaimed--"It is--it is you!" and coming forward and taking her by the hand, she gazed with astonishment at the wan face and the miserable attire of the work-woman. "You," she kept repeating. "Lettice! Lettice Arnold! Good Heavens! Where is your father? your mother? your sister?" "Gone," said the poor girl, "all gone but poor Myra!" "And where is she? And you, dear Lettice, how have you come to this?" Such was the unexpected meeting of these two persons, who were once children of the same village of Castle Rising. Lettice had been working for her school-mate, Catherine Melvin. The result was a happy one, and it was not long before, by the kindness of Catherine, that the two orphan girls were situated pleasantly in life. But as you will wish to know how all this came about, I will give you the circumstances in another story. THE EXPLANATION. Lettice's father was a man of education, a scholar, a gentleman, and had much power in preaching. He received one hundred and ten pounds per year for his services. Her father's illness was long and painful, and the family were dependant on others for assistance. "We at last closed his eyes," said Lettice, "in deep sorrow." He used to say to himself, "It is a rough road, but it leads to a good place." After his funeral, the expenses exhausted all that was left of their money--only a few pounds were left when the furniture was sold, and "we were obliged," said Lettice, "to give up the dear little parsonage. It was a sweet little place. The house was covered all over with honeysuckles and jessamines; and there was the flower garden in which I used to work, and which made me so hale and strong, and aunt Montague used to say I was worth a whole bundle of fine ladies. "It was a sad day when we parted from it. My poor mother! How she kept looking back, striving not to cry, and poor Myra was drowned in tears. "Then we afterwards came to London. A person whom we knew in the village had a son who was employed in one of the great linen warehouses, and he promised to try to get us needlework. So we came to London, took a small lodging, and furnished it with the remnant of our furniture. Here we worked fourteen hours a day apiece, and we could only gain between three and four shillings each. At last mother died, and then all went; she died, and had a pauper's funeral." From this room the orphan girls removed soon after their mother's decease, and located among the poor of Marylebone street, where Mrs. Danvers accidentally met with the two sisters, in one of her visits among the poor, and for whom she obtained the work which led to the unexpected meeting related in the previous story. [Illustration] JONAS AND HIS HORSE. A horse is a noble animal, and is made for the service of man. No one who has tender feelings can bear to see the horse abused. It is wicked for any one to do so. A horse has a good memory, and he will never forget a kind master. Jonas Carter is one of those boys who likes to take care of a horse. His father gave Jonas the whole care of an excellent animal which he purchased for his own use. Every morning he would go into the stable to feed and water him. As all the horses in the neighborhood had names, Jonas gave one to his, and called him Major. Every time he went into the stable to take care of him, Major would whine and paw, as if his best friend was coming to see him. Jonas kept him very clean and nice, so that he was always ready for use at any time of day. At night he made up his bed of straw, and kept the stable warm in winter and cool in summer. Major soon found that he was in the hands of a kind master, and being well fed, and well cleansed, he would often show how proud and nice he was, by playing with Jonas in the yard. His young master would often let him loose in the yard, and when Jonas started to go in, the horse, Major, would follow him to the door, and when he turned him into the pasture, no one could so well catch him as Jonas; for every time he took him from the pasture, Jonas would give him some oats; so when he saw his master coming for him, he remembered the oats, and would come directly to him. Some horses are very difficult to bridle, but it was not so with Major. When Jonas came with the bridle, Major would hold his head down, and take in his bitts, and appear as docile as a lamb. He well knew that Jonas never drove him hard, but always used him kindly. Jonas was not a selfish boy; he was willing to let his friends ride a short distance; and in the picture, you will see him talking with one of his young friends about his horse. Now, children, you may be sure that a dumb animal will remember his kind master; and if ever you own a horse, or drive one which belongs to another, be sure and treat him kindly. And you will find this rule to work well among yourselves. Be kind to each other, and to all whom you meet with, and it will help you along the pleasant path of life, and secure to you many friends. EDWARD AND ELLEN. Edward Ford owned a snug little cottage with a small farm situated about a mile from the village. When he was married to Ellen G----, who was said to be one of the best girls in the village, he took her to his nice little home, where he had every thing around very pleasant and comfortable. Ellen was very industrious and remarkable for her prudence and neatness. She spun and churned, and tended her poultry, and would often carry her butter and eggs herself to market, which greatly added to their comfort. She had a beautiful-little girl, and they gave her the name of Lily. Things glided smoothly on until Lily was sixteen. Edward was very fond of the violin and of reading books that were not very useful, and as he was very fond of music, he spent a great deal more time in making music and playing the violin than what his wife thought profitable. Ellen loved music, and was willing to have him read profitable books, but all this while she thought he might be patching up the fences and improving the shed for the better comfort of the cattle. Still she would not complain, hoping all the time that he would see the necessity of being a little more industrious. The winter came, and all through its dreary months he was unable to work, as he was sick. And although Ellen worked hard, yet her husband required so much of her attention, that all her efforts availed not much to keep poverty out of their cottage. When the spring came, Ellen's husband was able to be about again, and she began to hope that Edward would be more industrious, and they would be able by strict economy to repair the loss occasioned by his winter's illness, which had put them so far behindhand. Edward had become lazy or disheartened. Affairs about house continued to grow worse; his farm was ill worked or neglected, and by the fall, his horse and oxen had to go for necessary expenses. Ellen still kept her cows, but it was now very little help she received from her husband. He had been formerly one of the most temperate of men, but now he spent his days from home; and here lay Ellen's deepest sorrow. He was often at the village tavern, wasting in senseless riot the time, health and means that God had given him for other purposes. Ellen felt sad, and in the next story you will see a painful scene in the life of LILY FORD. It was now in the latter part of December--two days more and comes the season of "Merry Christmas." Ellen thought of the dreary prospect before her. As she was thinking over her condition, and how she should manage affairs so as to make home comfortable, the door opened, and in came Edward earlier than usual, a sober man. With a grateful heart Ellen sat about preparing the supper, and made all the evening as pleasant as she could for him. The next morning earlier than usual Edward was preparing to go out. The weather was bitter cold, and the wood pile was very low. She did not like to ask Edward to split some wood the evening before, as she did not wish to vex him. Of late he had harshly refused her simple requests. She, however, ventured this morning to ask him to split a few logs, and he replied: "Why did you not ask me when you saw me doing nothing all last evening? You must get along the best way you can until night. I have engaged to work for Squire Davis, and I shall be late unless I go at once." "To work! Have you?" said Ellen, in a pleased and grateful tone. "Yes; so don't detain me. I am to have a dollar and a half a day as long as I choose to work." "How very fortunate!" said Ellen. After he was gone, Ellen busied herself in making things comfortable for the children. It was market day, and she must carry her heavy basket to the village for the different families who depended upon her for their supply of fresh butter and eggs. A year ago she had a neat little-wagon and a good horse to drive. There was something in the mind of Ellen, what it was she could not tell, a kind of sad presentiment of something, as she was preparing to go to market. I shall tell you in the next story what it was. You will see that Ellen was very kind to her husband, and tried every way to make him happy. THE MARKET DAY. Mrs. Ford had three little children, Lily, Hetty, and a dear little babe. As she was now going to market, she told Lily, her oldest daughter, to take good care of the baby. Lily promised to do so. It was a very cold day. For a time the children got along very well; but soon the wood was all burned, not a stick or chip remained; as their father had gone away in the morning without splitting any, so they were obliged to do the best they could. The baby began to look as if it was cold, and Lily said: "Come, Hetty, we will go out and see if together we cannot roll in one of those great logs." Hetty was eleven years old. Lily put the baby in the cradle and then went out with Hetty to roll in the log. They rolled it up to the step, and got it part way into the door, but, alas! they could not get it further. There it stuck in the doorway, and the door was wide open; the wind and snow beat in from without, and the fire gradually settled away in its embers. Something must now be done. Hetty put on her cloak and hood and set out for her mother; for she told them if anything happened to be sure and come for her. Hetty soon found her mother at the village store, and without stopping to warm herself, she said: "O mother, come home, for little Eddy is sick, and Lily says it is the croup, and that he is dying. The fire is all out, and the room is full of snow, because the big log we tried to roll in stuck fast in the doorway." Hetty and her mother hastened home: and as they were crossing the street, there was her husband just entering the tavern. She told him about little Eddy, and he promised to go for a physician, and to come home immediately; and by the time they had gone half way home, Edward, her husband, joined them. They hurried along, and as they came near the cottage there stood two of the cows, and under the shed was the third, the old "spotted cow," which Hetty thought was in the pond when she left home. To their surprise the log was rolled away from the door, and as Mrs. Ford opened the door with a trembling hand, fearing her baby was dead, there was a young man sitting by a good fire, which he had made while Hetty was gone, with little Eddy folded in his arms. The anxious mother bent over her baby as he lay in the stranger's arms, and seeing his eyes closed, she whispered: "Is he dead?" "He is not, he only sleeps," replied the stranger. This young man came into the house in time to save the baby from the cold chills of death. He was ever after a friend to the family--a means of Edward's reformation, so that with some assistance the mortgage on the farm was paid off, and the farm re-stocked. This stranger became the husband of Lily, the eldest daughter. THE TWO MAMMAS. FOR HENRY AND EDWARD. 'Tis strange to talk of two mammas! Well, come and sit by me, And I will try to tell you how So strange a thing can be. Years since you had a dear mamma, So gentle, good and mild, Her Father God looked down from heaven, And loved his humble child. Thy first mamma died on board of the vessel which took her from Burmah. At parting-- ----She kissed her little boys With white and quivering lip; And while the tears were falling fast, They bore her to the ship. And Abby, Pwen, and Enna went-- Oh! it was sad to be Thus parted--three upon the land, And three upon the sea. Thy first mamma was buried on a distant rocky isle, where none but strangers rest. The vessel passed on her voyage, and-- At length they reached a distant shore, A beautiful bright land, And crowds of pitying strangers came, And took them by the hand. And Abby found a pleasant home, And Pwen and Enna too; But poor papa's sad thoughts turned back To Burmah and to you. He told me of his darling boys, Poor orphans far away, With no mamma to kiss their lips, Or teach them how to pray. And would I be their new mamma, And join the little band Of those who, for the Saviour's sake, Dwell in a heathen land? Much do I love my darling boys, And much do they love me; Our Heavenly Father sent me here, Your new mamma to be. And if I closely follow Him, And hold your little hands, I hope to lead you up to heaven, To join the angel bands. Then with papa and both mammas, And her who went before, And Christ, who loves you more than all, Ye'll dwell for ever more. MRS. JUDSON. [Illustration] MELLY, ANNA AND SUSY. There is nothing more pleasant than to see brothers and sisters, lovely in their lives, and in all their plays kind and obliging to each other. Mrs. Jones' three little children were always noted for their good behavior by all the people in the village, and the school teacher said they were the prettiest behaved children she ever saw, and this was saying much in their praise, for her scholars were noted for very good behavior and promptness in their recitations. Mrs. Jones kept her children under a good discipline, but she always gave them time and opportunities for their pleasant plays. She would not allow them to associate with vicious children, because "evil communications corrupt good manners," and she knew her children were as liable to fall into bad habits as any others. There were a few vicious boys in the village where she lived who always took delight in teasing and vexing the other children, and sometimes these boys would try some method to break up the children's play. One afternoon, there being no school, Mrs. Jones gave her little children permission to go into the lower back-room and spend awhile in play. Away they jumped and skipped along down stairs to the play room, with merry hearts and smiling faces. They had not been there a long time before they heard a very singular noise, which they did not know what to make of. But they soon forgot it, and continued playing with the same cheerfulness; very soon again they heard the same noise, which sounded like somebody's voice. The children began to be a little frightened, and you will see them in the picture standing "stock still," while little Susy stretches her hand out to take hold of the post, and is in the act of running away. Molly and Anna put their fingers to their lips, and listened again to know what the noise could mean. Soon the noise was repeated, and away they flew to their mother's arms in such a tremor that she felt at the moment alarmed herself. They told their mother what had happened, and all that night the children could not sleep. It was ascertained the next day that one of the bad boys crept along in the back part of the yard where the children were playing, and by an unnatural sound of his voice made the noise that so alarmed the three little children. Susy, who was the youngest, did not forget it for sometime; and all of them were afraid to go alone into the lower room for many weeks. This was very wrong in the bad boy; he might have injured the children at play so they would never have recovered from it. I have known young children to be so frightened as never to forget the impression all their life-time. How much better for the boy to have been like these good children, and joined with them in their pleasant pastimes. Never do any thing that will give sorrow and pain to others, but live and act towards each other while in youth, so as to enable you to review your life with pleasure, and to meet with the approbation of your Heavenly Father. ARTHUR AND HIS APPLE TREE. One summer day little William was sitting in the garden chair beside his mother, under the shade of a large cherry tree which stood on the grass plot in front of the house. He was reading in a little book. After he had been reading sometime, he looked up to his mother, and said: "Mother, will you tell me what is the meaning of 'you must return good for evil?'" His mother replied: "I will tell you a story that will explain it. "I knew a little boy," she said, "whose name was Arthur Scott; he lived with his grandmamma, who loved him very much, and who wished that he might grow up to be a good man. Little Arthur had a garden of his own, and in it grew an apple tree, which was then very small, but to his great joy had upon it two fine rosy-cheeked apples, the first ones it had produced. Arthur wished to taste of them very much to know if they were sweet or sour; but he was not a selfish boy, and he says to his grandmother one morning: "'I think I shall leave my apples on the tree till my birthday, then papa and mamma and sister Fanny will come and see me, and we will eat them together.' "'A very good thought,' said his grandmother; 'and you shall gather them yourself.' "It seemed a long time for him to wait; but the birthday came at last, and in the morning as soon as he was dressed he ran into his garden to gather his apples; but lo! they were gone. A naughty boy who saw them hanging on the tree, had climbed over the garden wall and stolen them. "Arthur felt very sorry about losing his apples, and he began to cry, but he soon wiped his eyes, and said to his grandmother: "'It is hard to lose my nice apples, but it was much worse for that naughty boy to commit so great a sin as to steal them. I am sure God must be very angry with him; and I will go and kneel down and ask God to forgive him.' "So he went and prayed for the boy who had stolen his apples. Now, William, do you not think that was returning good for evil?" "O, yes," said William; "and I thank you, mother, for your pretty story. I now understand what my new book means." Little Arthur grew to be a man, and always bore a good name. [Illustration] THE MOTHERLESS BIRDS. There were two men who were neighbors to each other, living in a distant country where they had to labor hard for the support of their families. One of them was greatly troubled to know who would take care of his children if he should die. But the other man was not so troubled, and was always very cheerful, saying to his neighbor: "Never distrust Providence." One day as the sorrowful man was laboring in the fields, sad and cast down, he saw some little birds enter a bush, go out and then return again. He went towards the bush, and saw two nests side by side, and in both nests some little birds, newly hatched and still without feathers. He saw the old birds go in a number of times, and they carried in their bills food to give their little ones. At one time, as one of the mothers returned with her beak full, a large vulture seized her and carried her away; and the poor mother, struggling vainly under its talons, uttered piercing cries. He thought the little young birds must certainly die, as they had now no mother to take care of them. He felt so bad about them that he did not sleep any that night. The next day, on returning to the fields, he said to himself: "I will see the little ones of this poor mother, some without doubt have already perished." He went up to the bush, and saw that the little ones in both nests were all alive and well. He was very much surprised at this, and he hid himself behind the bush to see what would happen. After a little time he heard a crying of the birds, and soon the second mother came flying into the bush with her beak full of food, and distributed it all among the little birds in both nests. He now saw that the orphan birds were as well provided for as when their own mother was living. In the evening he related the whole story to his neighbor, and said to him: "I will never distress myself again about who will take care of my children, if I should die before them." His neighbor replied: "Let us always believe, hope, love, and pursue our course in peace. If you die before me, I take care of your children, and if I die before you, you will be a father to mine; and if we are both taken away before our children are able to provide for themselves, there is a Father in heaven." STORY ABOUT A ROBBER. I will tell you a true story about a robber. A gentleman was once travelling through a very unfrequented road, alone in a chaise, in the latter part of the day. There was no house nor a sign of a human being there. It was a very lonely road. Presently at a sudden turn in the road, directly towards his horse's head, a man came out of the woods. The gentleman was convinced by his appearance that he came for no good purpose. He immediately stopped his horse, and asked the stranger to get in and ride. The man hesitated a moment, and then stepped into the chaise. The gentleman commenced talking with him about the loneliness of the road, and observed that it would be an admirable place for a robbery if any one was so disposed. He proceeded to speak of robbery and criminals, and how he thought they should be sought out and instructed, and if possible reformed; and that we ought to try to convert and reform them; and then he began to tell him what course he should take with a man who should attempt to rob him. He told him that he should give him all his money first, and then begin to talk kindly to him, and show the evil consequences of his course of life. He then said: "Yes, I would die on the spot rather than to injure a hair of his head." They soon came to another road, when the man, who had silently listened to all the gentleman had said, desired to get out, saying that his home lay in that direction. The gentleman stopped his horse, and the man got out, took his adviser by the hand, saying: "I thank you, sir, for this ride and for all you have said to me; I shall never forget any part of it. When I met you, it was my intention to rob you. I could easily have done so, but your kind act and your kind words put better thoughts into my heart. I think I never shall be guilty of the crime you have saved me from committing this afternoon. I thank God for having met you; you have made me a better man." GOOD COMPANIONS. One day, says a Persian poet, I saw a bunch of roses, and in the midst of them grew a tuft of grass. "How," I cried to the grass, "does a poor plant like you dare to be found in the company of roses?" And I ran to tear away the tuft, when the grass replied: "Spare me! It is true, I am not a rose; but you will perceive from my perfume that I have been among the roses." This is a very pretty fable for young people. It makes us recollect one of the proverbs of Solomon: "He that walketh with wise men shall be wise; but a companion of fools shall be destroyed." Young people like to have companions, and it is proper that they should have them. If we had no one to associate with, we should be unhappy. We need friends that we may confide in, and that we may tell them what we feel and what we think. But we must take care as to the choice of friends; for just as the grass in the fable imbibed the scent of the roses, so we become like those with whom we associate. BERTIE'S BOX. A very little boy by the name of "Bertie," kept a box in which he deposited his little treasures. After he died his mother took the key and opened it. It was full of all sorts of things. There were specimens of stones, and shells, and moss, and grass, and dried flowers. There were, also, curious flies, found dead; but they were not destroyed by him, as he would never sacrifice a short sunny existence for self gratification. There were a number of books and small ornamental toys which had been given him--a drawing slate with pencils, colored chalks, a small box of colors, some little plates which he had colored in his own untaught style--a commenced copy of the hymn, "I know that my Redeemer liveth"--an unfinished letter to his grandpapa, and some torn leaves which he had found with passages of scripture upon them--a copy of the "lines on the death of an only son." Also a number of sketches of missionary stations, chapels and schools, which he had cut out and colored. His mother once asked him why he cut them out, saying, that there might be some reading on the back of the pieces worth saving. "Oh no, mamma," he replied, "I looked carefully at the backs first." In the box was a purse containing three shillings. Such were the treasures which this little lamb had left when he died. And as you will be pleased to know what was done with the box of treasures, I will tell you. "The thought struck me," says his mother, "that after he was gone, I should not know what to do with Bertie's Box of treasures; I therefore asked him what I should do with them." He replied, "Oh, give half to God and half to the children, and be sure to divide them fairly." The money in the box was devoted to the purchase of the Bible--and a collecting box made in the form of a Bible; for, said he, "when my friends come and give money to the children, then hold Bertie's box for Bertie's share." This is a good example for all children. Your little treasures may serve a good purpose when you die. THE CHILD AND FLOWER. The Atheist in his garden stood, At twilight's pensive hour, His little daughter by his side, Was gazing on a flower. "Oh, pick that little blossom, Pa," The little prattler said, "It is the fairest one that blooms Within that lowly bed." The father plucked the chosen flower, And gave it to his child; With parted lips and sparkling eye, She seized the gift and smiled. "O Pa--who made this pretty flower, This little violet blue; Who gave it such a fragrant smell, And such a lovely hue?" A change came o'er the father's brow, His eye grew strangely wild, New thoughts within him had been stirred By that sweet artless child. The truth flashed on the father's mind, The truth in all its power, "There is a God, my child," said he, "Who made that little flower." ANNE CLEAVELAND. Anne was the daughter of a wealthy farmer. She had a good New England school education, and was well bred and well taught at home in the virtues and manners that constitute domestic social life. Her father died a year before her marriage. He left a will dividing his property equally between his son and daughter, giving to the son the homestead with all its accumulated riches, and to the daughter the largest share of the personal property, amounting to 6 or 7000 dollars. This little fortune became at Anne's marriage the property of her husband. It would seem that the property of a woman received from her father should be her's. But the laws of a barbarous age fix it otherwise. Anne married John Warren, who was the youngest child, daintily bred by his parents. He opened a dry goods store in a small town in the vicinity of B----, where he invested Anne's property. He was a farmer, and did not think of the qualifications necessary to a successful merchant. For five or six years he went on tolerably, living _genteelly_ and _recklessly_, expecting that every year's gain would make up the excess of the past. When sixteen years of their married life had passed, they were living in a single room in the crowded street of R----. Every penny of the inheritance was gone--three children had died--three survived; a girl of fifteen years, whom the mother was educating to be a teacher--boy of twelve who was living at home, and Jessy, a pale, delicate, little struggler for life, three years old. Mrs. W---- was much changed in these sixteen years. Her round blooming cheek was pale and sunken, her dark chestnut hair had become thin and gray, her bright eyes, over-tasked by use and watching, were faded, and her whole person shrunken. Yet she had gained a great victory. Yes, it was a precious pearl. And you will wish to know what it was. It was a gentle submission and resignation--a patience under all her afflictions. But learn a lesson. Take care to whom you give your hand in marriage. THE ORPHAN'S VOYAGE. Two little orphan boys, whose parents died in a foreign land, were put on board a vessel to be taken home to their relatives and friends. On a bitter cold night, when the north-east winds sang through the shrouds of the vessel, the little boys were crouched on deck behind a bale of goods, to sleep for the night. The eldest boy wrapt around his younger brother his little cloak, to shield him from the surf and sleet, and then drew him close to his side and said to him, "the night will not be long, and as the wind blows we shall the sooner reach our home and see the peet fire glow." So he tried to cheer his little brother, and told him to go to sleep and forget the cold night and think about the morning that would come. They both soon sank to sleep on the cold deck, huddled close to each other, and locked close in each other's arms. The steerage passengers were all down below, snugly stowed away in their warm berths, and forgot all about the cold wind and the frost. When the morning came the land appeared, and the passengers began to pace the deck, and as the vessel moved along they tried some well known spot to trace. Only the orphans do not stir, Of all this bustling train; They reached _their home_, this very night, They will not stir again! The winter's breath proved kind to them, And ended all their pain. But in their deep and freezing sleep, Clasped rigid to each other, In dreams they cried, "the bright morn breaks, Home! home! is here, my brother. The angel death, has been our friend, We come! dear father, mother!" LOOK UP. A little boy went to sea with his father to learn to be a sailor. One day, his father said to him, "Come, my boy, you will never be a sailor if you don't learn to climb." The boy was very ambitious, and soon scrambled up to the top of the rigging; but when he saw at what a height he was he began to be frightened, and called out, "Oh, father, I shall fall, what shall I do?" "Look up--look up, my son," said his father; "if you look down you will be giddy; but if you keep looking up to the flag at the top of the mast you will descend safely." The boy followed his father's advice, and soon came down to the deck of the vessel in safety. You may learn from this story, to look up to Jesus, as the highest example, and as the Saviour of mankind. [Illustration] THE FLOWER THAT LOOKS UP. "What beautiful things flowers are," said one of the party of little girls who were arranging the flowers they had gathered in the pleasant fields. "Which flower would you rather be like, Helen?" "Just as if there would be any choice," said Laura. "I like the Rose. I should like to be queen of flowers, or none." Laura was naturally very proud. For my part, observed Helen, I should like to resemble the _Rhododendron_; when any one touches it, or shakes it roughly, it scatters a shower of honey dew from its roseate cups, teaching us to shower blessings upon our enemies. Oh, who does not wish to be as meek as this flower? It is very difficult, I know, said Helen; but we are taught to possess a meek and lowly spirit. "It is difficult, I know," said Lucy, "if we trust to our own strength. It is only when my father looks at me in his kind manner, that I have any control of myself. What a pity it is that we cannot always remember that the eye of our Heavenly Father is upon us." "I wish I could," said Helen. "Now, Clara, we are waiting for you," said Laura. Clara smiled; and immediately chose the pale woodbine, or convolvulus, which so carelessly winds in and out among the bushes--this is an emblem of loving tenderness. "Now what says Lucy?" exclaimed Helen. "I think I can guess," said Clara; "either a violet, or a heart's ease. Am I right?" "Not quite," said Lucy, "although both the flowers you have mentioned, are great favorites of mine. But I think I should like to resemble the daisy, most, because it is always looking upward." Certainly Lucy made a wise choice. What more do we require for happiness, than to be able, let the cloud be ever so dark, to look upward with trusting faith in God. [Illustration] THE WAYSIDE FLOWER. There's a moral, my child, In the wayside flower; There's an emblem of life In its short-lived hour. It smiles in the sunshine And weeps in the shower, And the footstep falls On the wayside flower. Now see, my dear child, In the wayside flower, The joys and the sorrows Of life's passing hour. The footsteps of Time Hasten on in its power; And soon we must fall Like the wayside flower. Yet know, my dear child, That the wayside flower Will revive in its season And bloom its brief hour; That again we shall blossom In beauty and power, Where the foot never falls On the wayside flower. [Illustration] THE FARMER. The Farmer ploughs and sows his seed, 'Tis all that he can do; He cannot make the dry seed grow, Nor give it rain and dew. God sends the sunshine, dew and rain, And covers it with snow; Then let us thank Him for the gift,-- To Him our bread we owe. Whene'er we view the waving grain, Or eat our daily food, Let grateful thoughts to God arise, Praise Him, for He is good. The youthful mind is like a field; Our teachers sow the seed; But when instruction's work is done, There's something more we need. Then let us pray that God may add His blessing to their toil; Then our young minds and hearts will prove A rich, productive soil. [Illustration] MAY-DAY. All hail the bright, the rosy morn, The first of blushing May, While fragrant flowers the fields adorn. And Nature smiles so gay. Oh, what a joyous festival To all the young and fair, Who love to rove through verdant fields And breathe the balmy air. With rosy checks, and laughing eyes, They hie to Nature's bowers, While birds trill forth their sweetest lay, To pluck the fairest flowers. Now some have strayed to sit beneath A grove of maples grey, To twine their flowers into a wreath, Or cull a sweet bouquet. While one small group is seated round A florid, mossy knoll, And laughing lisp that they have found The sweetest flowers of all. With bouquets sweet, and garlands gay, They homeward then repair, In haste to join without delay The pic-nic or the fair. For times are not as they were wont To be in years gone by, When on the rural village green They reared the May-pole high; While gathered round a merry group Of youths and maidens gay, To crown some rosy rustic maid The smiling Queen of May. THE FLOWERS OF THE FIELD. MATT. VI. 28. Behold the lilies of the field, In thousand colors drest; They toil not, neither do they spin, Yet God the flowers hath blest. Then toil not for the things of earth, But seek your God to please; For Solomon, in all his pride, Was not arrayed like these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass And flowers, that fade and die, Will he not much more care for you, And all your wants supply? Why will ye, O ye faithless ones, Distrust your Father's care? Are ye not better than the flowers? Will he not hear your prayer? Your Father knoweth what ye need; Fear not, but watch and pray; And let your light shine more and more Unto the perfect day. MY EARLY DAYS. (SEE FRONTISPIECE.) My father's house was indeed a pleasant home; and father was the supreme guide of his own household. He was gentle, but he could be firm and resolute when the case demanded. Mother was the sunshine of our little garden of love; her talents and energy gave her influence; and united to a man like father, she was all that is lovable in the character of woman. But the dear old home, where I grew from infancy to boyhood, and from boyhood to youth, I shall never forget. It was a large house on the slope of a hill, just high enough to overlook several miles of our level country, and smooth enough with its soft grassy carpet for us to roll down from the summit to the foot of the hill. At the back of the house was another hill, where we used to roll under the shade of the old elm, and where Miles and I would sit whole afternoons and fly the kite, each taking turns in holding the string. This was a happy place for us, and especially in the spring time, when the happy looking cows grazed along the pathway which winds around the elm to the stream where Kate and I used to sail my little boat. All summer long this place was vocal with the songs of birds, which built their nests in safety among the tall trees of the grove in the rear of the farm. We had also the music of the running brook, and the pleasant hum of my father's cotton mill, which brought us in our daily bread. Haying time was always a happy season for us boys. Father's two horses, "_Dick_" and "_Bony_" would take off the farm as large a load of hay as any in the village. Years past on, and we were a happy band of brothers and sisters. After Kate, came the twins, Margaret and Herbert, and last of all came the youngest darling, blue eyed Dora. We had a happy childhood. Our station in the world was high enough to enable us to have all the harmless pleasures and studies that were useful and actually necessary to boys and girls of our station. Father always thought that it was better in early youth not to force the boys to too hard study, and mother loved best to see Kate and Margaret using the fingers in fabricating garments, than in playing the harp. We were free, happy, roving children on father's farm, unchained by the forms of fashionable life. We had no costly dresses to spoil, and were permitted to play in the green fields without a servant's eye, and to bathe in the clear shallow stream without fear of drowning. As I have said before, these were happy days; and when I think of them gone, I often express my regret that we did not improve them more for the cultivation of the mind and the affections. In the next story you will see that there were some passing clouds in our early summer days. MARGARET AND HERBERT. In a large family there are often diversity of character and varieties of mood and temper, which bring some clouds of sorrow. In our little Eden of innocence there were storms now and then. Miles was a little wild and headstrong from his babyhood, and Margaret, though very beautiful, was often wilful and vain. For five years the twins had grown up together the same in beauty and health. One day an accident befell Herbert, and the dear child rose from his bed of sickness a pale and crippled boy. His twin sister grew up tall and blooming. The twins loved each other very much, and it was a pleasant sight to see how the deformed boy was cherished and protected by his sister Margaret. She would often leave us in the midst of our plays to go and sit by Herbert, who could not share with us in them. We had our yearly festivals, our cowslip gatherings, our blackberry huntings, our hay makings, and all the delights so pleasant to country children. Our five birthdays were each signalized by simple presents and evening parties, in the garden or the house, as the season permitted. Herbert and Margaret's birthdays came in the sunny time of May, when there were double rejoicings to be made. They were always set up in their chairs in the bower, decorated with flowers and crowned with wreaths. I now think of Margaret smiling under her brilliant garland, while poor Herbert looked up to her with his pale sweet face. I heard him once say to her when we had all gone away to pluck flowers: "How beautiful you are to-day, Margaret, with your rosy cheeks and brown hair." "But that does not make me any better or prettier than you, because I am strong and you are not, or that my cheeks are red and yours are pale." Miles was just carrying little Dora over the steeping stones at the brook, when Herbert cried: "O, if I could only run and leap like Miles; but I am very helpless." To which Margaret replied: "Never mind, brother; I will love you and take care of you all your life," and she said these words with a sister's love, as she put her arms around the neck of her helpless brother. She loved him the more, and aimed to please him by reading books to him which were his delight. This was a pleasant sight, and the brothers always admired Margaret for her attention to their helpless brother. THE BIT OF GARDEN. Young children like to have a small piece of land for a garden which they can call their own. And it is very pleasant to dig the ground, sow the seed, and watch the little green plants which peep out of the earth, and to see the beautiful buds and fresh blossoms. Every boy and girl has a bit of garden, and we are told in the good book to take good care of it, and see that the weeds of vice do not spread over it, and to be sure and have it covered over with plants of goodness. This garden is the HEART. Such things as anger, sloth, lying and cheating, are noxious weeds. But if you are active and industrious, and keep cultivating this little garden, and keep out all the bad weeds, God will help you to make a good garden, full of pleasant plants, and flowers of virtue. I have seen some gardens which look very bad, covered with briars and weeds, the grass growing in the paths, and the knotty weeds choking the few puny flowers that are drooping and dying out. Every thing seems to say--"How idle the owner of this garden is." But I have seen other gardens where there were scarcely any weeds. The walks look tidy, the flowers in blossom, the trees are laden with fruit, and every thing says, "How busy the owner is." Happy are you, dear children, if you are working earnestly in the garden of your hearts. Your garden will be clean, pleasant, and fruitful--a credit and comfort to you all your days. REMEMBER THE CAKE. I will tell you an anecdote about Mrs. Hannah More, when she was eighty years old. A widow and her little son paid a visit to Mrs. More, at Barley Wood. When they were about to leave, Mrs. M. stooped to kiss the little boy, not as a mere compliment, as old maidens usually kiss children, but she took his smiling face between her two hands, and looked upon it a moment as a mother would, then kissed it fondly more than once. "Now when you are a man, my child, will you remember me?" The little boy had just been eating some cake which she gave him, and he, instead of giving her any answer, glanced his eyes on the remnants of the cake which lay on the table. "Well," said Mrs. M., "you will remember the cake at Barley Wood, wont you?" "Yes," said the boy, "It was nice cake, and you are _so kind_ that I will remember both." "That is right," she replied, "I like to have the young remember me for _being kind_--then you will remember old Mrs. Hannah More?" "Always, ma'am, I'll try to remember you always." "What a good child," said she, after his mother was gone, "and of good stock; that child will be true as steel. It was so much more natural that the child should remember the cake than an old woman, that I love his sincerity." She died on the 7th of Sept., 1833, aged eighty-eight. She was buried in Wrighton churchyard, beneath an old tree which is still flourishing. BENNY'S FIRST DRAWING. You have perhaps heard of Benjamin West, the celebrated artist. I will tell you about his first effort in drawing. One of his sisters, who had been married some time, came with her babe to spend a few days at her father's. When the child was asleep in the cradle, Mrs. West invited her daughter to gather flowers in the garden, and told Benjamin to take care of the little child while they were gone; and gave him a fan to flap away the flies from his little charge. After some time the child appeared to smile in its sleep, and it attracted young Benny's attention. He was so pleased with the smiling, sleeping, babe that he thought he would see what he could do at drawing a portrait of it. He was only in his seventh year; he got some paper, pens, and some red and black ink, and commenced his work, and soon drew the picture of the babe. Hearing his mother and sister coming in from the garden, he hid his picture; but his mother seeing he was confused, asked him what he was about, and requested him to show her the paper. He obeyed, and entreated her not to be angry. Mrs. West, after looking some time, with much pleasure, said to her daughter, "I declare, he has made a likeness of _little Sally_," and kissed him with evident satisfaction. This gave him much encouragement, and he would often draw pictures of flowers which she held in her hand. Here the instinct of his great genius was first awakened. This circumstance occurred in the midst of a Pennsylvania forest, a hundred and four years ago. At the age of eighteen he was fairly established in the city of Philadelphia as an artist. [Illustration] THE GREY OLD COTTAGE. In the valley between "Longbrigg" and "Highclose," in the fertile little dale on the left, stands an old cottage, which is truly "a nest in a green place." The sun shines on the diamond paned windows all through the long afternoons of a summer's day. It is very large and roomy. Around it is a trim little garden with pleasant flower borders under the low windows. From the cottage is a bright lookout into a distant scene of much variety. Some years ago it was more desolate, as it was so isolated from the world. Now the children's voices blend with the song of the wood birds, and they have a garden there of dandelions, daisies, and flowers. The roof and walls are now covered with stone crop and moss, and traveller's joy, which gives it a variety of color. The currant bushes are pruned, and the long rose branches are trimmed, and present a blooming appearance. This house, with forty acres of land, some rocky and sterile, and some rich meadow and peat, formed the possessions of the Prestons in Westmoreland. For two hundred years this land had been theirs. Mr. Preston and his wife were industrious and respectable people. They had two children, Martha and John. The sister was eight years older than her brother and acted a motherly part towards him. As her mother had to go to market, to see to the cows and dairy, and to look after the sheep on the fell, Martha took most of the care of little Johnny. It is said that a very active mother does not _always_ make a very active daughter, and that is because she does things herself, and has but little patience with the awkward and slow efforts of a learner. Mrs. Preston said that Martha was too long in going to market with the butter, and she made the bread too thick, and did not press all the water out of the butter, and she folded up the fleeces the wrong way, and therefore she did all herself. Hence Martha was left to take the whole care of Johnny, and to roam about in the woods. When she was about fifteen her mother died, so that Martha was left her mother's place in the house, which she filled beyond the expectation of all the neighbors. Her father died when Johnny was sixteen, and his last advice to his daughter was, to take care of her brother, to look after his worldly affairs, and above all to bear his soul in prayer to heaven, where he hoped to meet the household once more. The share of her father's property when he died, was eighty pounds. Here Martha spent her days, frugal, industrious and benevolent. And it is said, there will not be a grave in Grasmere churchyard, more decked with flowers, more visited with respect, regret, and tears, and faithful trust, than that of Martha Preston when she dies. In the next story you will be interested in what happened at the Grey Cottage. THE BOY FOUND IN THE SNOW. One winter's night when the evening had shut in very early, owing to the black snow clouds that hung close around the horizon, Martha sat looking into the fire. Her old sheep dog, Fly, lay at her feet. The cows were foddered for the night, and the sheep were penned up in the yard. Fly was a faithful dog, and for some reason, this evening, he was very restless. Why he pricked up his ears, and went snuffing to the door, and pacing about the room, was more than Martha could tell. "Lie down, Fly,--good dog--lie down," she said; but Fly would not mind her, which was an unusual thing. She was certain something was the matter, and she felt she must go up to the fell; and with the foresight common to the Dale's people, who knew what mountain storms are, she took under her cloak a small vial of gin, which was kept in case of any accident, and set out with the dog Fly. The snow fell fast, the wind blew, and the drifts lay thick. She had great confidence in Fly, that if any thing was the matter he would find it out. He ran straight up the little steep path which led through the woods. On she followed, her cloak white with snow, until she came into the more open ground, where she lost sight of Fly, and for a time stood bewildered, until he should return and guide her. The birds and beasts had gone to rest, and the stillness of the moors was awful. It was night, and dark. Suddenly she heard a child's feeble voice, and in an instant she pressed on towards the spot from which the sound came; soon she heard Fly's loud howl for aid. At last she reached the spot, and found a little boy half asleep, a kind of drowsiness which precedes death. He could not speak; he could only moan. She moistened his lips with the gin, and poured a little down his throat. She then raised him up and carried him a short distance down the hill; then she stopped to rest awhile; and then she got as far as the woods, where the winds were not so cold. Again she gave him a few drops from her vial, and now he was able to walk a few steps; then Martha put up a fervent prayer to God for assistance, as she dragged the lost boy to her cottage. She now laid him down to the warm fire, while Fly snuffed around him in great joy. She took off his wet clothes, and wrapped him in her woollen cloak. He soon recovered and was able to tell his story. His father had sent him up to the fells for a sheep that was missing. The dog left him, and night and snow came on, and he got lost on the fells. The family had lately come to live near Rydal, and the lad did not know all the landmarks. Martha took the best of care of the boy till the morning, when his mother came, with a grateful heart towards God for the means which had guided Martha to her lost boy. THE BROTHER AND SISTER. (_In three Stories._) THE PARTING SCENE. In one of our western cities was a poor woman, in the garret of a lonely house, who was very sick, and near dying. She had two children, a brother and sister, who knelt beside her bed to catch her dying words. "Annie, my daughter," said the mother, "soon, and your young brother will have no earthly friend but you; will you, my daughter, be to him a faithful sister?" "Yes, mother, _I will_" said the daughter, as she wiped away her tears. And then she laid her hand upon the head of her son, and said, "Be a good boy, Willy, and mind your sister; she is but three years older than yourself, but as far as her knowledge goes, she will be a guide for you; and she and you have a Father in Heaven who will never leave you. Will you promise to do as she wishes?" Willy raised his eyes to his mother, and bowed his head in token of assent, and then burst into tears. The mother was a Christian, and putting her arm around the neck of Willy, and with the other hand clasping her daughter, she calmly said to them, "Weep not, dear children, you will find friends; God is the father of the fatherless. Keep in mind that his eye is upon you; be honest and virtuous, faithful and believing, and all things will work together for your good." The dying mother could say no more; her breath grew short, and stretching out her arms, she cried, "My dear children, I must leave you: let me kiss you--God bless and keep--" Her arms fell from around them, the words died away on her lips, and her weary soul departed. After the funeral of this mother, the moon shone brightly into the desolate chamber, and revealed a beautiful scene, that of a sister's love. Anna sat near the window, and little Willy lay his weary head in her lap. They were now without father or mother. Sleep had stolen upon the weary eyes of Willy. Anna smoothed back the dark hair which hung over his brow, then carefully raised his slender frame in her arms and laid him upon his bed. Then seating herself beside him she thought of her mother's last request to take care of Willy. "Yes," she exclaimed, "I must begin to-morrow. I will go out and try to get some work, for poor Willy must remain at school. Dear boy," she exclaimed, "I will never see him suffer." You will, in the next story, find ANNA SEEKING EMPLOYMENT. It was a wearisome day to poor Anna, as she walked from square to square, calling at the houses for employment. Some received her kindly, and patronised her themselves, and promised to interest their friends in her behalf, while others, alleging that she could not earn as much as a woman, endeavored to beat her down a few shillings in her price. But among all, Anna found means of subsistence for many months. But soon her constitution began to grow weak, and her friends thought it best for Willy to give up his school awhile, and to obtain some place as errand boy, and for Anna to pursue a more active life. Soon Anna found herself in a new home, doing the work of a family which devolved on her. She kept a diary, and she would often go away in her own little room, and scribble a few lines in her book. Here is an extract from her writings:-- "To-day I am very tired, and yet but very little has been accomplished. I know I could do well enough if I was allowed to regulate my work, or if there was only order in the arrangement. There is certainly a great want of system in this family; I am never allowed to finish one piece of work before I am called off to another, and then blamed because I did not do the first in time. "One wants me to put the dough in the pans, and before I get my hands clean, another calls me to go and get some wood; another tells me to go to the store for some thread; another cries out, Anna! Anna! and away I am sent to the third story after a book. Do they think a girl like me is never tired? Ah, me! I must seek another place. I love little children, and I think I should do for a child's nurse; I will advertise." And she did advertise, and it was not long before she was answered by a request to call at Number 4, Elm street, at three o'clock on Wednesday. In the next story we shall find ANNA WITH A PLEASANT HOME. Anna, having obtained leave of her mistress, soon found herself at the door of Mrs. West. The servant girl came to the door, and Anna followed her into the sitting-room, where every thing was nicely arranged. Soon a gentle looking lady came into the room, with a babe in her arms, and asked her, in a pleasant voice, "if she was the girl who advertised? You look hardly strong enough to handle such a boy as this," said she, as she placed on her lap a plump, black-eyed little fellow of eight months old. "Let me see if you can lift him easily." Anna gave the little fellow a hug and a kiss, and then playfully tossed him up a few times, but he was so heavy that she soon placed him on her knee, saying, "I am not used to holding children, but think I shall soon get accustomed to it." The lady agreed to have Anna come and enter upon her duties the next week. Weeks rolled away, and Anna's face looked joyous, for peace was in her heart. She loved her mistress because she was so thoughtful and would not even let her carry the babe half so much as she wished, but would tell her to amuse him on the floor. Mrs. West would often bring her work and sit with Anna in the nursery, and talk with her about her mother and Willy. Oh, how Anna loved Mrs. West! Willy was now learning a trade with an honest carpenter, who gave him permission to visit his sister once a week, and many happy hours did they pass together in the nursery with the little pet Charley. As the summer months came on, Mrs. West prepared to visit her mother, who lived a few miles in the country. Anna went with her. Charley was now old enough to go into the woods and run about, while Anna gathered flowers, chased butterflies, and amused him with infant stories. Little Charley would often fall asleep to the sweet tones of Anna's voice, and then she would take him up and bear him to the house. Three years passed away, and Charley needed no other nurse than his mother, and Anna's heart ached at the thought of leaving Mrs. West and little Charley. She had been so happy there that she dreaded to go out among strangers to look for a new place. Mrs. West made arrangements for Anna to live with her parents, who in a short time made her their adopted child. It was a beautiful country home, and she became as a dear child to Mr. and Mrs. Warren. THE GLOW WORM. On a summer's evening, about half an hour after bed time, as three little brothers lay talking together they heard a gentle footstep on the stairs. It was their sister Lucy. "Are you asleep," she asked. "No, we are not asleep," cried the boys. "I have brought something to show you," said Lucy, and going into the darkest corner of the room, she opened her hand and the boys saw something sparkle like a diamond or a star. "What is it," cried little Frank, jumping out of bed and running to look. Lucy held out her hand, but told him not to touch it. "Oh, it moves! It moves!" said he. "It must be something alive." "Ah!" said John, "it is a glow worm. I saw one last summer on a bank in Sand Lee." "Take care," said Frank, "that it does not burn the counterpane." The two elder brothers laughed; but Lucy reminded them that they would most likely have fallen into the same mistake, if they had not been taught that the glow worm's light, though it shines so brightly, does not burn. To convince Frank she told him to hold out his hand. The little boy felt afraid, but as he knew that Lucy never deceived him, he put out his hand, and soon, to his great delight, the harmless glow worm lay in his hand. Lucy promised to tell him something about the glow worm another time. Frank went back to his bed, and Lucy bid her brothers good night, promising to put the prize under a glass on the lawn. So night after night, for weeks, the three boys saw the twinkling light of the glow worm on the dewy grass. One evening they began to quarrel about it, and none but little Frank was willing to give up his claim to it. It grieved him to hear his brothers quarrelling and saying unkind words to each other; and he also thought that the poor glow worm ought not to be kept a prisoner under the glass, instead of flying over the green turf or the mossy bank. But when he tried to bring John and Robert to the same opinion, they would not hear to him. So Lucy, who was a kind sister, when she found that the pleasure she had procured for them was the occasion of their naughty conduct, sat down by the window and told them to remember that God, who made the glow worm and caused its light to shine, could see them in their chamber, and hear every sinful word. John and Robert felt the force of their sister's words, and settled their quarrel without delay, and they gave Frank permission to go early in the morning and let the imprisoned glow worm creep away. EMILY'S MORNING RAMBLE. In the suburbs of the city of B. stands the beautiful residence of Mr. James. It was a rural spot, as it was surrounded with all the beauties of nature. There were rippling streams, and winding paths through the green fields and woods, sunny hills and mossy rocks. Emily, the only daughter of Mr. J., had all these pleasant scenes to enjoy, and every thing to make her home happy. Her father owned a noble pair of grays and a very fine carriage, and she had the pleasure of riding with her father whenever she chose. But Emily did not live altogether for her own happiness; she was accustomed to go and see the people in the neighborhood of her home, and if any were poor or sick she would always try to benefit them. Her mother had to put up many a bundle of nice things for her to take to some poor family in need. She was also fond of the works of nature, and would frequently spend an hour in walking alone in the shady and rural places in her town. One day, as the beautiful spring had just unfolded its loveliness, Emily thought she would walk out and breathe the delicious air. With a heart laden with good thoughts and with a quick step she passed along the gravelled street and by the cultivated grounds and fine houses, until she reached the green turf and wooded slopes, and here paused awhile under the large old trees, and thought of the wisdom, goodness, and love of God in giving us such a beautiful earth. On her route, where the river curved around the foot of a gentle sloping hill in the shadows of old forest trees, was made a rural cemetery; so pleasant were its quiet paths and its cool shades in summer, that the living loved to wander there. Friends came there to plant flowers upon the graves of dear ones they had lost. Through a low ivy covered gateway of stone, Emily entered the quiet place. There were no massive railings, and lofty monuments, and no costly devices, but God had made this place very beautiful--flowers were blooming along the well trodden paths, and around the last resting places of the dead. Here and there arose a simple shaft or a light column, and the graves of the household were bordered by a green hedge or surrounded by shadowing trees. As Emily passed through the familiar walks, she came suddenly to a grave in the remote corner of the cemetery, beside which sat a solitary mourner. A small white slab lay upon the centre of the green mound and at its head grew a rose bush in bloom, bending, till its weight of white buds and blossoms touched the long bright grass upon the grave. Emily was attracted by its simple beauty, and drawing near, she stooped down and read upon the marble slab, "Dear Mina." Her young eyes filled instantly with tears, for she knew that it was the darling child of a lady who to her was a stranger. As she turned away from the spot she met a lady approaching, who passed her and kneeled down beside the grave. She thought she would speak to the lady, and with tender sympathy she asked, "Was it your child?" The lady, who was deep in thought, looked up at the sound of Emily's earnest voice, and answered, softly, "Yes; 'Dear Mina' was my only child." This interview led Emily to an acquaintance with the sorrowing mother, which caused her never to forget her morning ramble. She was a good woman, and at the decease of Emily's mother became her Christian companion and instructor. * * * * * I doubt whether he will find the way to heaven who desires to go there alone: all heavenly hearts are charitable: enlightened souls cannot but diffuse their rays. I will, if I can, do something for others and for heaven; not to merit by it, but to express my gratitude. Though I cannot do what I would, I will labor to do what I can.--_Feltham_. [Illustration] FLYING THE KITE. Flying the kite is a pleasant amusement for boys, and when we see the kites flying high in the air, we are always reminded of a kite whose history we heard when a little child, and which we give our readers. Shortly after the close of the Revolutionary war, there was a little boy whose parents had left their home and friends in England on account of their sympathy with the struggle of freedom for their rights in America. Their first home was in Norfolk, Va. This little boy was very much delighted with the American eagle, and he determined to make a kite as much like his favorite bird as he could. He had a friend who was a painter and gilder, and a person of great ingenuity. Together they contrived a beautiful kite, representing an eagle of gigantic size. It was painted and gilded in the most beautiful manner, and a small but very brilliant lantern was attached to it just below the breast. They kept their secret very carefully, never suffering any one to enter the room while it was making. On a dark, cloudy, windy night, the kite was flown. Its mechanism was so perfect that it sailed very beautifully. The lantern illuminated every part, and it made a very brilliant appearance. Crowds of people thronged the streets, wondering what the strange visitor was. Some were alarmed, and thought it was an omen of fearful events. Great was their admiration when they discovered that the wonderful bird was the ingenious contrivance of a little boy; and they could scarcely be convinced that what looked so much like a real bird was only an ingenious combination of sticks and painted paper. THE HAPPY FAMILY. There are a great many novel sights in the streets of London, for the cheap entertainment of the people. The family circle of different animals and birds is an admirable illustration of the peace which should pervade among families. The proprietor of this novel menagerie calls it, "The Happy Family." The house in which they are kept is a simple constructed cage. It is a large square hen-coop, placed on a low hand-cart, which a man draws about from one street to another, and gets a few pennys a day from those who stop to look at the domestic happiness of his family. Perhaps the first thing you will see, is a large cat, washing her face, with a number of large rats nestling around her, like kittens, whilst others are climbing up her back and playing with her whiskers. In another corner of the room a dove and a hawk are setting on the head of a dog which is resting across the neck of a rabbit. The floor is covered with the oddest social circles imaginable--weazles and Guinea pigs, and peeping chickens, are putting their noses together, caressingly. The perches above are covered with birds whose natural antipathies have been subdued into mutual affection by the law of kindness. The grave owl is sitting upright, and meditating in the sun, with a keen-sighted sparrow perched between his ears trying to open the eyes of the sleepy owl with its sharp bill. Children stop to look at this scene, and Mr. Burritt thinks they may carry away lessons which will do them good. They will think on it on their way to school, and at home too, when any thing crosses their will in family or on the play ground. STORY ABOUT AN INDIAN. A poor sick man might go to the door of some rich person's house and ask relief for himself and not be able to obtain admittance; but if he brought in his hand a paper written by the son of the master of the house, whom he had met with in a distant land, and in his name asked for the relief, his request would be granted for the sake of the master's son. Now we all need friends and every one tries to get and keep a few friends. Children will love a little dog, or a lamb, or a dove, or a bird. The little boy will talk to his top, and the little girl will talk to her doll, which shows that they want a friend; and if the top and the doll could talk and love them, they would feel happier. Some years ago there was an Indian in the State of Maine, who for his very good conduct had a large farm given him by the State. He built his little house on his land, and there lived. The white people about him did not treat him so kindly as they ought. His only child was taken sick and died, and none of the whites went to comfort him, or to assist him in burying his little child. Soon after, he went to the white people, and said to them--"When white man's child die, Indian may be sorry--he help bury him--when my child die, no one speak to me--I make his grave alone. I can no live here, for I have no friend to love me." The poor Indian gave up his farm, dug up the body of his child, and carried it with him 200 miles through the forest, to join the Canada Indians. The Indian loved his child, and he wanted friends. So you children will need a friend to look to every day. When we are sick, in distress, or about to die, we want a friend in whom we may trust and be happy. * * * * * Wherefore did God create passions within us, pleasures round about us, but that these, rightly tempered, are the very ingredients of virtue.--_Milton_. GATHER THE FLOWERS. Two little girls went into the fields to gather flowers. Buttercups, violets, and many other blossoms were in abundance. One of the girls was pleased with every thing, and began to pick such flowers as came in her way. In a short time she collected a great quantity of flowers, and though some of them were not very handsome, yet they made a very beautiful bunch. The other child was more dainty and determined to get her none but those which were very beautiful. The buttercups were all of one color and did not strike her fancy--the blue violets were too common, and so the little pair wandered on through the fields till they were about to return home. By this time the dainty child, seeing that her sister had a fine collection of flowers while she had none, began to think it best to pick such as she could get. But now the flowers were scarce; not even a dandelion nor a flower was to be found. The little girl at length begged of her sister a single dandelion, and thus they returned home. The children told their story, and their mother addressed them thus--"My dear children, let this event teach you a lesson. Jane has acted the wisest part. Content with such flowers as came in her way, and not aiming at what was beyond her reach, she has been successful in her pursuit. But Laura wanted something more beautiful than could be found, collected nothing from the field, and was finally obliged to beg a simple flower from her sister. So it is, children, in passing through life--gather what is good and pleasant along your path, and you will, day by day, collect enough to make you contented and happy. But if you scorn those blessings which are common, and reach after those which are more rare and difficult to be obtained, you will meet with frequent difficulties, and at last be dependant on others. So gather the flowers as you go along the pathway of life." * * * * * Think not all is well within when all is well without; or that thy being pleased is a sign that God is pleased: but suspect every thing that is prosperous, unless it promotes piety, and charity, and humility.--_Taylor_. * * * * * God hath given to man a short time here upon earth, and yet upon this short time eternity depends.--_Taylor_. [Illustration] JANE AND HER LESSONS. It is a mark of a good scholar to be prompt and studious. Such were the habits of little Jane Sumner. She was the youngest of three sisters, and from her first being able to read, she was very fond of reading; and at school her teacher became much interested in little Jane on account of her interest in study, and the promptness she manifested in reciting her lessons. Jane had a quiet little home and was allowed considerable time for study, although she had to devote some time in assisting her mother about house. There was a very fine garden attached to Mrs. Sumner's residence, where she took much pleasure in cultivating the flowers. In the centre of the garden was built a summer house all covered over with grape vine. The broad leaves of the vine made a refreshing shade to it, and thereby shielded the warm sun from persons under it. This little summer house Jane frequently occupied for her study. In the picture you see her with book in hand getting her lesson. She arose very early in the morning, and by this means gained much time. Up in the morning early, By daylight's earliest ray, With our books prepared to study The lessons of the day. Little Jane, for her industry and good scholarship, obtained quite a number of "rewards of merit," which her schoolmates said she justly deserved. There is one of them with these lines: For conduct good and lessons learned, Your teacher can commend; Good scholarship has richly earned This tribute from your friend. On one day, she came running home very much pleased with her card, which her teacher gave herself and her little sister Emma, for their good conduct and attention to their studies. The card contained these lines: See, Father! mother, see! To my sister and me, Has our teacher given a card, To show that we have studied hard. To you we think it must be pleasant, To see us both with such a present. Every good boy and girl will be rewarded, and all such as are studious, and respectful to their teachers, will always get a reward. * * * * * God never allowed any man to do nothing. How miserable is the condition of those men who spend their time as if it were _given_ them, and not lent.--_Bishop Hall_. HARVEST SONG. Now the golden ear wants the reaper's hand, Banish every fear, plenty fills the land. Joyful raise songs of praise, Goodness, goodness, crowns our days. Yet again swell the strain, He who feeds the birds that fly, Will our daily wants supply. CHORUS-- As the manna lay, on the desert ground, So from day to day, mercies flow around. As a father's love gives his children bread, So our God above grants, and we are fed. * * * * * Think in the morning what thou hast to do this day, and at night what thou hast done; and do nothing upon which thou mayest not boldly ask God's blessing; nor nothing for which thou shalt need to ask his pardon.--_Anon_. TELLING SECRETS. There is a company of girls met together, and what can they be talking about. Hark! "Now I will tell you something, if you'll promise never to tell," says Jane. "I will, certainly," replied Anne. "And will you promise _never_ to tell a single living creature as long as you live?" The same reply is given, "_I will never tell_." Now Jane tells the secret, and what is it? It turns out to be just nothing at all, and there is no good reason why every body should'nt know it. It is this--"Lizzy Smith is going to have a new bonnet, trimmed with pink ribbon and flowers inside." Anna thinks no more of her solemn promise, and the first school-mate she meets, she opens the secret, with a solemn injunction for her not to tell. By and by the secret is all out among the girls--the promises are all broken. Now, children, remember your word--keep it true, and never make a promise which you do not intend to keep, and always avoid telling foolish secrets. AGNES AND THE MOUSE. One brilliant Christmas day, two little girls were walking towards a neighboring village, when they observed a little creature walking about the road. "Surely," said Mary, "it is a large mouse;" and it did not seem to be afraid, so they thought from its tameness, it must be hungry. "Poor little thing," said Agnes, "I wish I had something to give you." She took a few almonds from her pocket and went gently along towards the mouse and put it close by its side. The mouse began to nibble, and soon finished it. Agnes then put down two or three more, and left the mouse to eat its Christmas dinner. I think you would have enjoyed seeing the mouse eating the almonds. I hope you will always be kind to poor dumb animals. I have seen children who were cruel to dumb animals. This is very wrong, and such children will never be respected, nor can they expect to be befriended. THE TWO ROBINS. A few summers ago I was sitting on a garden seat, beneath a fruit tree, where the works of nature look very beautiful. Very soon I heard a strange noise among the highest branches of the tree over my head. The sound was very curious, and I began to look for the cause. I shook one of the lower branches within my reach, and very soon I discovered two birds engaged in fighting; and they seemed to gradually descend towards the ground. They came down lower and lower, tumbling over one another, and fighting with each other. They soon reached the lowest branch, and at last came to the ground very near me. It was with some difficulty that I parted them; and when I held one of them in each of my hands, they tried to get away, not because they were afraid of me but because they would resume the conflict. They were two young robins, and I never before thought that the robin had such a bad spirit in its breast. Lest they should get to fighting again, I let one go, and kept the other housed up for several days, so that they would not have much chance of coming together again. Now, children, these two little robins woke in the morning very cheerful, and appeared very happy as they sat on the branch of the tree, singing their morning songs. But how soon they changed their notes. You would have been sorry to have seen the birds trying to hurt each other. If children quarrel, or in any degree show an unkind temper, they appear very unlovely, and forget that God, who made them, and gives them many blessings, disapproves of their conduct. Never quarrel, but remember how pleasant it is for children to love each other, and to try to do each other good. * * * * * Every hour is worth at least a good thought, a good wish, a good endeavor.--_Clarendon_. [Illustration] THE PLEASANT SAIL. Down by the sea-coast is the pleasant town of Saco, where Mr. Aimes has resided for many years. Once a year he had all his little nephews and nieces visit him. It was their holiday, and they would think and talk about the visit for a long time previous to going there. Their uncle took much pleasure in making them happy as possible while they were with him. He owned a pleasure sail boat which he always kept in good order. On this occasion he had it all clean and prepared for the young friends, as he knew they lotted much on having a sail. As his boat was small, he took part of them at a time and went out with them himself, a short distance, and sailed around the island, and returned. In the picture you see them just going out, with their uncle at the helm, while three of the nephews are on the beach enjoying the scene. But I must tell you children to be very careful when you go on the water to sail. There are some things which it is necessary for you to know, as a great many accidents occur on the water for the want of right management. When you go to sail, be sure and have persons with you who understand all about a boat, and how to manage in the time of a squall. Always keep your seats in the boat, and not be running about in it. Never get to rocking a boat in the water. A great many people have lost their lives by so doing. Sailing on the water may be very pleasant and agreeable to you if you go with those who understand all about the harbor, and are skilled in guiding the boat on the dangerous sea. THE SAILOR BOY. Yarmouth is the principal trade seaport town in the county of Norfolk. Fishermen reside in the towns and villages around, and among the number was a poor man and his wife; they had an only son, and when ten years old his father died. The poor widow, in the death of her husband, lost the means of support. After some time she said to her boy, "Johnny, I do not see how I shall support you." "Then, mother, I will go to sea," he replied. His mother was loth to part with Johnny, for he was a good son and was very kind to her. But she at last consented on his going to sea. John began to make preparations. One day he went down to the beach hoping to find a chance among some of the captains to sail. He went to the owner of one and asked if he wanted a boy. "No," he abruptly replied, "I have boys enough." He tried a second but without success. John now began to weep. After some time he saw on the quay the captain of a trading vessel to St. Petersburg, and John asked him if "a boy was wanted." "Oh, yes," said the captain, "but I never take a boy or a man without a character." John had a Testament among his things, which he took out and said to the captain, "I suppose this won't do." The captain took it, and on opening the first page, saw written, "_John Read, given as a reward for his good behavior and diligence in learning, at the Sabbath School_." The captain said, "Yes, my boy, this will do; I would rather have this recommendation than any other," adding, "you may go on board directly." John's heart leaped for joy, as, with his bundle under his arm, he jumped on board the vessel. The vessel was soon under weigh, and for some time the sky was bright, and the wind was fair. When they reached the Baltic Sea a storm came on, the wind raged furiously, all hands were employed to save the vessel. But the storm increased, and the captain thought all would be lost. While things were in this state the little sailor boy was missing. One of the crew told the captain he was down in the cabin. When sent for he came up with his Testament in his hand and asked the captain if he might read. His request was granted. He then knelt down and read the sixtieth and sixty-first Psalms. While he was reading the wind began to abate, (the storms in the Baltic abate as suddenly as they come on.) The captain was much moved, and said he believed the boy's reading was heard in Heaven. THE BRACELET; OR, HONESTY REWARDED. At St. Petersburg, the birth day of any of the royal family is observed as a time of great festivity, by all kinds of diversions. When the vessel in which John Read shipped arrived, he was allowed to go on shore to see the sport on that occasion. In one of the sleighs was a lady, who at the moment of passing him lost a bracelet from her arm, which fell on the snow. John hastened forward to pick it up, at the same time calling after the lady, who was beyond the sound of his voice. He then put the bracelet into his pocket, and when he had seen enough of the sport, went back to the ship. John told the captain all about it, showing him the prize which he had found. "Well, Jack," said the captain, "you are fortunate enough--these are all diamonds of great value--when we get to the next port I will sell it for you." "But," said John, "It's not mine, it belongs to the lady, and I cannot sell it." The captain replied "O, you cannot find the lady, and you picked it up. It is your own." But John persisted it was not his. "Nonsense, my boy," said the captain, "it belongs to you." John then replied--"But if we have another storm in the Baltic," (see story preceding.) "Ah me," said the Captain, "I forgot all about that, Jack. I will go on shore with you to-morrow and try to find the owner." They did so; and after much trouble, found it belonged to a nobleman's, lady, and as a reward for the boy's honesty, she gave him eighty pounds English money. John's next difficulty was what to do with it. The captain advised him to lay it out in hides, which would be valuable in England. He did so, and on arriving at Hull, they brought one hundred and fifty pounds. John had not forgotten his mother. The captain gave him leave of absence for a time, and taking a portion of his money with him, he started for his native village. When he arrived there, he made his way to her house with a beating heart. Each object told him it was home, and brought bygone days to his mind. On coming to the house he saw it was closed. He thought she might be dead; and as he slowly opened the gate and walked up the path and looked about, his heart was ready to break. A neighbor seeing him, said, "Ah, John, is that you?" and quickly told him that his mother still lived--but as she had no means of support, she had gone to the poor house. John went to the place, found his mother, and soon made her comfortable in her own cottage. The sailor boy afterwards became mate of the same vessel in which he first left the quay at Yarmouth. NO PAY--NO WORK. "Little boy, will you help a poor old man up the hill with this load?" said an old man, who was drawing a hand cart with a bag of corn for the mill. "I can't," said the boy, "I am in a hurry to be at school." As the old man sat on the stone, resting himself, he thought of his youthful days, and of his friends now in the grave; the tears began to fall, when John Wilson came along, and said,--"Shall I help you up the hill with your load, sir?" The old man brushed his eyes with his coat sleeve, and replied, "I should be glad to have you." He arose and took the tongue of his cart, while John pushed behind. When they ascended the top of the hill, the old man thanked the lad for his kindness. In consequence of this John was ten minutes too late at school. It was unusual for him to be late, as he was known to be punctual and prompt; but as he said nothing to the teacher about the cause of his being late, he was marked for not being in season. After school, Hanson, the first boy, said to John, "I suppose you stopped to help old Stevenson up the hill with his corn." "Yes," replied John, "the old man was tired and I thought I would give him a lift." "Well, did you get your pay for it?" said Hanson, "for I don't work for nothing." "Nor do I," said John; "I didn't help him, expecting pay." "Well, why did you do it? You knew you would be late to school." "Because I thought I _ought_ to help the poor old man," said John. "Well," replied Hanson, "if you will work for nothing, you may. _No pay, no work_, is my motto." "To _be kind and obliging_, is mine," said John. Here, children, is a good example. John did not perform this act of kindness for nothing. He had the approbation of a good conscience--the pleasure of doing good to the old man--and the respect and gratitude of his friends. Even the small act of benevolence is like giving a cup of cold water to the needy, which will not pass unnoticed. Does any body work for nothing when he does good? Think of this, and do likewise. THE TREE THAT NEVER FADES. "Mary," said George, "next summer I will not have a garden. Our pretty tree is dying, and I won't love another tree as long as I live. I will have a bird next summer, and that will stay all winter." "George, don't you remember my beautiful canary bird? It died in the middle of the summer, and we planted bright flowers in the ground where we buried it. My bird did not live as long as the tree." "Well, I don't see as we can love anything. Dear little brother died before the bird, and I loved him better than any bird, or tree or flower. Oh! I wish we could have something to love that wouldn't die." The day passed. During the school hours, George and Mary had almost forgotten that their tree was dying; but at evening, as they drew their chairs to the table where their mother was sitting, and began to arrange the seeds they had been gathering, the remembrance of the tree came upon them. "Mother," said Mary, "you may give these seeds to cousin John; I never want another garden." "Yes," added George, pushing the papers in which he had carefully folded them towards his mother, "you may give them all away. If I could find some seeds of a tree that would never fade, I should like then to have a garden. I wonder, mother, if there ever was such a garden?" "Yes, George, I have read of a garden where the trees never die." "A _real_ garden, mother?" "Yes, my son. In the middle of the garden, I have been told, there runs a pure river of water, clear as crystal, and on each side of the river is the _tree of life_,--a tree that never fades. That garden is _heaven_. There you may love and love for ever. There will be no death--no fading there. Let your treasure be in the tree of life, and you will have something to which your young hearts can cling, without fear, and without disappointment. Love the Saviour here, and he will prepare you to dwell in those green pastures, and beside those still waters." * * * * * Every neglected opportunity draws after it an irreparable loss, which will go into eternity with you.--_Doddridge_. [Illustration] YOUNG USHER. You gave read of that remarkable man, Mr. Usher, who was Archbishop of Armagh. I will tell you something about his early childhood. He was born in Dublin, in the year 1580, and when a little boy he was fond of reading. He lived with his two aunts who were born blind, and who acquired much knowledge of the Scriptures by hearing others read the Scriptures and other good books. At seven years of age he was sent to school in Dublin; at the end of five years he was superior in study to any of his school fellows, and was thought fully qualified to enter the college at Dublin. While he was at college he learned to play at cards, and he was so much taken up with this amusement that both his learning and piety were much endangered. He saw the evil tendency of playing at cards, and at once relinquished the practice entirely. When he was nine years old, he heard a sermon preached which made a deep impression on his mind. From that time he was accustomed to habits of devotion. He loved to pray, and he felt that he could not sleep quietly without first commending himself to the care of his Heavenly Father for protection. You see him in the picture kneeling by his bed side, alone with God. When he was fourteen years old, he began to think about partaking of the Lord's supper. He thought this act to be a very solemn and important one, and required a thorough preparation. On the afternoon previous to the communion, he would retire to some private place for self examination and prayer. When he was but sixteen years of age, he obtained such a knowledge of chronology as to have commenced the annals of the Old and New Testaments, which were published many years after, and are now a general standard of reference. When his father died, he being the eldest son, the paternal estate was left to him to manage. But as he feared that it would occupy too much of his time and attention, he gave it entirely to his brother and sisters, reserving only enough for his books and college expenses. At the age of twenty he entered the ministry, and seven years after was chosen a professor in the University of Dublin. In 1640, he visited England at the time of the commencement of the rebellion; all his goods were seized by the popish party, except some furniture in his house, and his library at Drogheda, which was afterwards sent to London. He bore his loss with submission, but he never returned to Ireland. He had many trials to endure on account of the troublous times in England, (it being the time of the civil wars.) In 1646 he received a kind invitation from the Countess of Peterborough to reside in one of her houses, which proposal he accepted and lived in one of them till his death, in 1665. By the direction of Cromwell he was buried in Westminster Abby. A GOOD ACT FOR ANOTHER. A man was going from Norwich to New London with a loaded team; on attempting to ascend a hill where an Indian lived he found his team could not draw the load. He went for the Indian to assist him. After he had got up the hill he asked the Indian what was to pay. The Indian told him to do as much for somebody else. Some time afterward the Indian wanted a canoe. He went up Shetucket river, found a tree, and made him one. When he had finished it he could not get it to the river; accordingly he went to a man and offered to pay him if he would go and draw it to the river for him. The man set about it immediately, and after getting it to the river, the Indian offered to pay him. "No," said the man; "don't you recollect, so long ago, helping a man with a team up the hill by the side of your house?" "Yes." "Well, I am the man; take your canoe and go home." A BOY REPROVED BY A BIRD. The sparrows often build their nests under the eaves of houses and barns. A young lad saw one of the sparrows conveying materials for her nest, which she was building under the eaves of a cottage adjoining his father's house. He was told not to disturb it. But birds' eggs form a temptation to many boys. At a favorable opportunity the lad climbed up to the roof of the cottage and carried away the nest with the eggs in it. Among the materials of which the nest was composed was a piece of paper with some printed verses on it. The boy pulled it out and found it to be a page of one of Dr. Watts' hymns, which had been picked up in the yard by the poor bird for strengthening her nest. The boy unfolded the paper and read:-- "Why should I deprive my neighbor Of his goods against his will? Hands were made for honest labor. Not to plunder nor to steal." The lad says, in his after years, "I never forgot the lesson presented to me by that leaf of paper which had been fixed to the nest of the poor sparrow." Let young people remember that when they do wrong they will get reproved, and it may be by the means of a bird. THE ECHO. Little Charles knew nothing about an echo. As he was playing by himself in the field, he cried out, "Ho, hop!" and immediately a voice from the woods near by answered, "ho, hop!" Being surprised at this, he called out, "who be you?" The voice answered, "who be you?" Charles thought this very strange, and cried out "you're a stupid fellow," and "stupid fellow," was the reply from the woods. Charles began to be much displeased, and called several abusive names, and every name he called, came back to him. "I never met with such insolence," said he, "but I'll revenge myself;" and he ran up and down among the trees, trying to find the supposed offender, but he could see no one. Vexed and disappointed, he hastened home and told his mother that a bad boy had hidden in the woods and called him all sorts of names. His mother smiled and shook her head. "Now you have been angry at yourself, Charles, for you must know that you heard nothing but your own words repeated. As you have seen your own face reflected in the water, so you have now heard your own voice echoed." Had Charles spoke kind words he would have heard kind words in return. It is often true that the behavior we meet with from others, is but an echo of our own. If we speak kind words we shall have kind words in return. [Illustration] LIZZY AND HER DOG. I wish to relate to you a very affecting story about a good girl who died when she was thirteen years old. She was an interesting young girl, and possessed great intellectual powers. She was also very fond of the works of nature, especially of flowers, and would often say, "How good God is to make these beautiful flowers for us to enjoy." Soon it was very evident to her friends that disease was preying on her delicate constitution. She bore all her sickness with calm submission, and when she died she appeared to all who knew her to be prepared for heaven. While she was sick, her parents did every thing to make her comfortable and happy. They had a dog which Lizzy set a great deal by, and with him she used to play in the house and in the garden. When Lizzy was so sick that she could not play with him, he would come and lay himself down at her bed side, and appeared to be very sad on her account. When she died and was buried, the dog followed with the parents in the funeral, to the grave yard where Lizzy was laid away. One day, about five months afterwards, I went with her father to see the grave of Lizzy. As we went into the grave yard, we walked slowly along, reading the names of persons buried there, while the dog followed us. We soon missed the dog, supposing he had wandered into some other part of the cemetery. But when we came within a few yards of Lizzy's grave we saw him sitting at its head, leaning against the stone which was erected in memory of the lovely daughter. It was a very affecting scene--the attachment of the dog, as well as the power of his memory. Dogs are faithful creatures, and we can never bear to see them abused. Be kind to them and they will be kind to you. JULIA'S SUNSET WALK. It was a beautiful June day, just at the sun's setting, when Julia Easworth went to visit the resting place of a dear grandmother. While she was in the grave-yard, meditating on the loss of one of her best earthly friends, she saw a lady dressed in mourning busily engaged in doing something near a rose bush that grew at the foot of a little mound, at a short distance from where she stood. Julia walked along and came near where she was, and laid her hand gently upon the woman and said, "Madam, is this your little mound?" "Oh, no, my child; it is my dear Elise's grave." "And is it long since you laid her here, ma'am," said Julia. "Only a few weeks," was the reply; "there were buds on this rose bush when I brought it here." "And was it her's," asked Julia, as she stooped down to inhale the rich fragrance of the beautiful flower. "Yes, my child, it was a dear treasure to her. My Elise was a good child, she was my Idol, but my Heavenly Father has seen best to remove her from me. I only cared to live that I might be useful to her in giving her such instructions as might be a blessing to her. I almost adored her, but she is gone from me, and I am alone. I know she is happy, because she was good." "And have you always lived here in our town," asked Julia. "Oh, no! I am from Italy. When my child was but two years old, I left my native shores, and with my only relative, my father, followed my young husband, who is an American, to his own land. We settled in the State of Virginia, and a short time ago he died and left me with a charge to take care of our dear Elise. She had her father's hair and complexion, and inherited his delicate constitution. We were poor and I labored hard, but I cared not, if I could only make my child comfortable and happy. She was not like me--her mind was full of thoughts of beauty--she would often talk of things with which I could not sympathize--the world seemed to her to be full of voices, and she would often say 'How beautiful _heaven_ must be.' Her nature was purer and gentler than mine, and I felt that she was a fit companion of the angels. But she is now gone to be with them, and I hope soon to meet her." Julia bid the lady good bye and went towards her home. As she walked slowly along, she thought to herself, "Elise with the angels!" and she dwelt on the theme till her mother, seeing her rather different in her conduct, asked her the cause, when she replied, "Oh, mother! I want to dwell with the angels." FLORA AND HER PORTRAIT. "And was there never a portrait of your beautiful child," said Anne Jones to a lady whom she met at the grave where her child had been lain a few weeks. "Oh, yes! but I may never have it," replied the woman, as she stood weeping at the grave. Anna did not understand the mother's tears, but in a few moments she became calm, and continued to explain. "Not many weeks before my child's illness, as we were walking together in the city, an artist observed my daughter and followed us to our humble home. He praised her countenance to me, and said her beauty was rare. In all his life he had never seen face to compare with it, nor an eye so full of soul--and begged to have me consent to his drawing her portrait. After many urgent entreaties, my dear child consented. For several mornings I went with Flora to the artist's room, though I could ill afford the time, for our daily bread was to be earned. When he was finishing the picture, Flora went alone. One day she returned, and flinging into my lap her little green purse, she said:--'The picture does not need me any more, and I am very glad, for my head aches badly. They say the portrait is very like me, mother.' "I resolved to go and see it the day following, but when the time came that I first looked upon it, my dear child began to fade in my arms, until she died. And here she is buried. Since then I go to the artist's room to see her portrait, and there, full of life and beauty, she stands before me, and I have permission to see it every day. "But I am about to leave this country for our native land. My aged father has long wished to return to his own country, and we shall soon sail with our friends for Italy. I must leave the dear child here. But if I can purchase the picture of the artist, I shall be happy. We are poor; but by the sale of some little articles, we have raised money enough to buy the picture, at the price which the artist demands for a similar picture. "When I went to buy it, you know not how I felt, when the artist, notwithstanding all my pleadings, denied my request. His apology was, that he had taken it for some purpose of his own--some great exhibition of paintings--what, I could not fully comprehend. He would not sell it. Day after day I have been to him, but in vain. And now the time of our departure will soon come, and duty demands that I must go with my father, and I must leave my dear Flora, and portrait too." She then laid her face upon the grave and wept. Anna's eyes were filled with tears, and for some moments she did not speak. At last she thought--"I know the artist." And then touching the mother, who was almost insensible, she said, "Madam, it may be that I can do something for you--describe to me the picture. I think I must have seen it at this same artist's room." The mother then gave the description, and after Anna had gathered from the mother all needful information, her name, and residence, and time of sailing, then giving her own address, and speaking to her words of consolation and hope, she arose and left the stranger at the grave of her child. The next story will tell you how the picture was obtained. THE PORTRAIT OF FLORA PURCHASED. Anna started for her home, and when she had arrived, she slowly ascended to her room, flung herself upon her couch, and buried her face in its cushions. "Edgar," (for that was the artist's name, and Anna knew him,) "Edgar is cold hearted." She did not meet the family at tea that evening, but when her mother came to inquire if she was ill, she related all the sad story of the childless mother, and asked what could be done. The next morning, Anna and her father went to see the artist. He was not in attendance, but one to whom they were well known brought forward the picture, at Anna's request, and which she had before seen. While they were looking at it, the artist came in. "Pardon me, sir," said Anna's father, "for examining your beautiful picture during your absence, but my daughter has a very earnest desire to possess it. Is it for sale?" Edgar replied, "I have painted this picture for the coming artist's exhibition, and, therefore, I have made no design as to its disposal, but it would be an honor to me to have you and Miss Anna its purchasers. I would wish, however, previously to its being given up, that it might be exhibited, according to my intention, at the rooms, which open on Monday next." Mr. H. hesitated--the vessel, which was to carry away the sorrowing mother, was to sail in a little more than two weeks--they must have the picture at that time, if ever; and he said to the artist, "I am aware that this is a beautiful painting, and I will pay you your price, but I must be allowed to take it at the expiration of ten days, if at all." Edgar reflected a few moments, and being well aware that, in the mansion of Mr. Hastings, his elegant picture would be seen by persons of the most accomplished manners, and of excellent taste, concluded to sell the picture. The bargain was made and Anna and her father departed, leaving the artist somewhat elated at the thought of having Mr. H. the owner of his picture. That night Edgar dreamed that Flora, who had been buried a few weeks, and of whose image his picture was the exact resemblance, stood before him, pleading him to have pity on her lonely mother--he dreamed her hand clasped his, and he awoke trembling. He raised himself upon his elbow, and pressed to his lips some flowers which were left on his table, and then rejoiced that the ocean would soon lie between him and the wearisome old woman who had so long annoyed him about the picture. The Monday morning came, and with it the portrait of Flora, which had been admired at the exhibition rooms the previous week. A simple frame had been prepared for it, and for a few moments Anna gazed on the picture, and with a love for the buried stranger, looked for the last time into the deep dark eyes which beamed on the canvas. The ship Viola, bound for the port of Naples, lay at the wharf, the passengers were all hurrying on board, the flags were flying, and all wore the joyous aspect of a vessel outward bound. A carriage drawn by a pair of horses came down to the vessel. Mr. Hastings and Anna alighted, and were followed by a servant, who took the safely cased portrait in his arms, and accompanied them on board the ship. They soon met the mother of Flora, and Anna took the picture and presented it to her, and promised to care for the rose buds which bloomed at Flora's grave. Mr. H received from the gallant captain a promise to take special charge of the Italian widow, and her aged father, and to care for the valued picture of Flora. Thanks and farewells closed the scene, when Anna, with her father, returned home. There she found a note from Edgar, the artist, requesting permission to call on Anna that evening. She wrote a reply, saying that a previous engagement would forbid her complying with his request, at the same time enclosing a check for $200, saying, "My father requests me to forward this check to you, in payment for the portrait of _Flora Revere_" THE SAINT'S REST. We've no abiding city here: This may distress the worldling's mind, But should not cost the saint a tear, Who hopes a better rest to find. We've no abiding city here; We seek a city out of sight, Zion its name: the Lord is there: It shines with everlasting light. Hush, my soul, nor dare repine; The time my God appoints is best; While here to do his will be mine, And his to fix my time of rest. [Illustration] A GOOD MOTHER. Mrs. Savage was the eldest sister of Matthew Henry. When she was a child she had a great many advantages for the improvement of her mind. When only seven years of age, she could translate the Hebrew language, and when ten years old, she would write out her father's sermons. She possessed a very amiable disposition, and was very kind and benevolent to all who needed the comforts of life. She was a Christian, and when she became a mother she began the work of educating her children herself. She had a large family of nine children, and as she had treasured up in her memory many hymns and verses which she had learned when a child, she was able to teach the same to her children. She was so kind and affectionate that every body loved her. Her children took much pleasure in hearing their mother repeat to them the hymns and texts of Scripture which she had learned. Some children are very careless, and indifferent to their parents' advice; such ones will regret it in their riper years. But Mrs. Savage's little boys and girls loved their mother, and were very obedient to her commands. When evening came, before they retired to bed she would call her little children around her (as you see in the picture,) and they would kneel down and say their evening prayer. A pleasant sight, indeed, to see our dear children remembering their Creator in the days of their youth. Mrs. S. was "useful, beloved, meek, humble, and charitable." She lived a happy, cheerful life; she was an ornament to her Christian profession, a "good mother." She died suddenly at the good old age of eighty-eight. MOTHER'S LAST LESSON. "Will you please teach me my verse, mamma, and then kiss me and bid me good night," said little Roger, as he opened the door and peeped into the chamber of his sick mother. "I am very sleepy, but no one has heard me say my prayers." Mrs. L. was very ill, and her friends believed her to be dying. She sat propped up with pillows and struggling for breath, her eyes were growing dim, and her strength was failing very fast. She was a widow, and little Roger was her only darling child. He had been in the habit of coming into her room every night, and sitting in her lap, or kneeling by her side, while she repeated some Scripture passages to him or related a story of wise and good people. She always loved to hear Roger's verse and prayer. "Hush! hush!" said the lady who was watching beside the couch. "Your dear mamma is too ill to hear you to night." And as she said this, she came forward and laid her hand gently upon his arm as if she would lead him from the room. "I cannot go to bed to night," said the little boy, "without saying my prayers--I cannot." Roger's dying mother heard his voice, and his sobs, and although she had been nearly insensible to everything around her, yet she requested the attendant lady to bring the boy and lay him near her side. Her request was granted, and the child's rosy cheek nestled in the bosom of his dying mother. "Now you may repeat this verse after me," said his mother, "and never forget it: 'When my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up.'" The child repeated it three times--then he kissed the pale cheek of his mother, and went quietly to his little couch. The next morning he sought as usual for his mother, but she was now cold and motionless. She died soon after little Roger retired to his bed. That was her last lesson to her darling boy--he did not forget it. He has grown to be a man and occupies a high post of honor in Massachusetts. I never can look upon him without thinking about the faith so beautifully exhibited by his dying mother. It was a good lesson. THE GOLDEN CROWN. A teacher once asked a child, "If you had a golden crown, what would you do with it?" The child replied, "I would give it to my father to keep till I was a man." He asked another. "I would buy a coach and horses with it," was the reply. He asked a third. "Oh," said the little girl to whom he spoke, "I would do with it the same as the people in heaven do with their crowns. I would cast it at the Saviour's feet." EARLY AT SCHOOL. One Sabbath evening a teacher was walking up and down in the porch before his house, in one of the South Sea Islands. The sun was setting behind the waves of the ocean, and the labors of the day were over. In that cool, quiet hour, the teacher was in prayer, asking a blessing on his people, his scholars, and himself. As he heard the leaves of the Mimosa tree rustling, he thought the breeze was springing up--and continued his walk. Again he heard the leaves rattle, and he felt sure that it could not be the wind. So he pushed aside the long leafy branches of the trees, and passed beneath. And what did he find there? Three little boys. Two were fast asleep in each other's arms, but the third was awake. "What are you doing there, my children?" asked the teacher. "We have come to sleep here," said the boy. "And why do you sleep here; have you no home?" "Oh, yes," said the lad, "but if we sleep here, we are sure to be ready when the school bell rings in the morning." "And do your parents know about it?" "Mine do," said the lad, "but these little boys have no parents; they are orphans." You know the nights in the South Sea Islands are not cold and damp like ours, but as the teacher thought a heavy rain would fall in the night, he roused the orphans, and led the three little boys into the large porch of the house, where they might rest in safety. He was happy to find that they were some of his scholars, and that they loved their school. What would these little Islanders think if they could look from their distant homes into some of our schools and see how many late comers there are! THE PLUM BOYS. Two boys were one day on their way from school, and as they were passing a cornfield, in which there were some plum trees, full of nice ripe fruit, Henry said to Thomas, "Let us jump over and get some plums. Nobody will see us, and we can scud along through the corn and come out on the other side." Thomas said, "I cannot. It is wrong to do so. I would rather not have the plums, than to steal them, and I think I will run along home." "You are a coward," said Henry, "I always knew you were a coward, and if you don't want any plums you may go without them, but I shall have some very quick." Just as Henry was climbing the fence, the owner of the field rose up from the other side of the wall, and Henry jumped back, and ran away. Thomas had no reason to be afraid, so he stood still, and the owner of the field, who had heard the conversation between the boys, told him that he was very glad to see that he was not willing to be a thief. He then told Thomas that he might step over the fence and help himself to as many plums as he wished. The boy was pleased with the invitation, and soon filled his pockets with plums which he could call his own. Honesty will always get its reward. [Illustration] GEORGE AND HIS DOG. George had a large and noble dog. With hair as soft as silk; A few black spots upon his back, The rest as white as milk. And many a happy hour they had, In dull or shining weather; For, in the house, or in the fields, They always were together. The faithful creature knew full well When Master wished to ride; And he would kneel down on the grass, While Georgy climbed his side They both were playing in the field. When all at once they saw A little squirrel on a stump, With an acorn in his paw The dog still looked with eager eye, And George could plainly see, It was as much as he could do To let the squirrel be. The timid creature would have feared The dog so bold and strong, But he seemed to know the little boy Would let him do no wrong. He felt a spirit of pure love Around the gentle boy, As if good angels, hovering there, Watched over him in joy. And true it is that angels oft Good little George have led; They're with him in his happy play. They guard his little bed; They keep his heart so kind and true, They make his eye so mild, For dearly do the angels love, A gentle little child. THE FIRST DOLLAR. I will tell you an affecting story about a young lad by the name of Emerson Terry, who lived in Hartford, Ct. He was very kind to the poor, and could never see the suffering of his fellow beings without making an effort for their relief. Here is one instance of his kindness and liberality. While he resided in Bristol, his father, Dr. Terry, took little Emerson with him to ride into Hartford that he might see the city. Emerson had one dollar, and it was the first dollar he ever earned. He took the dollar with him, thinking to buy something with it in the city. While they were riding along on the way, they overtook a poor fugitive slave seeking his freedom in the North. Mr. Terry kindly took the wayfaring man into his carriage when the poor man related to him his sufferings and poverty, and also his trust in God. Young Emerson's heart was touched, when, of his own accord, he drew out his _first_ and _only_ dollar and gave it to the poor fugitive. When he returned home he told his mother what he had done, with a satisfaction that indicated his pleasure in being able to relieve a suffering stranger. How noble was this act. He felt willing to forego the pleasure of spending his dollar for himself, for any pleasing toys, that he might help a poor wanderer on the earth. When he was fifteen years of age, he was drowned in the Connecticut River. He was beloved and respected by a large circle of acquaintance. He was noted for his kind disposition, tender feelings, and lovely spirit. He sleeps in peace, and we all hope to meet him in heaven. THE SHEPHERD AND HIS BIBLE. A poor shepherd, living among the Alps, the father of a large family, for whose wants he provided with great difficulty, purchased an old Bible from a dealer in old cloths and furniture. On Sunday evening, as he was turning over the leaves, he noticed several of them were pasted together. He immediately began to separate the pasted leaves with great care. Inside of these leaves he found carefully enclosed a bank bill of five hundred dollars. On the margin of one of the pages was written these words: "I gathered together money with very great difficulty, but having no natural heirs but those who have absolutely need of nothing, I make thee, whosoever shall read this Bible, my natural heir." We cannot promise our young friends that they will find money in the leaves of their Bibles, but you may be assured that if you study its pages, and follow its precepts, you will find wisdom, which is better than silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. REVELATION OF GOD'S HOLY WORD. Ye favored lands, rejoice, Where God reveals his word: We are not left to nature's voice To bid us know the Lord. His statutes and commands Are set before our eyes; He puts the gospel in our hands, Where our salvation lies. His laws are just and pure, His truth without deceit; His promise is for ever sure, And his rewards are great. [Illustration] PLEASANT PLAY. There are many plays in which children may amuse themselves so as to benefit both the mind and body. Exercise is very essential to the health, and all children should accustom themselves to such exercise as will give elasticity to all the muscles of the body. Some children often play too hard, and others, before they get through playing, get to quarrelling. Children never appear so badly as when they quarrel with each other. Joseph and William, Jane and little Susan, are out in the garden playing "hide and seek," around the summer house, as you see in the picture. William became a little contrary, because every thing in the play did not suit him, and declared he would run away. And you see how cross he looks at Jane, as he turns round to run away. Children should never let anger rise in their bosoms because of some small mistake on the part of others. They should always overlook all mistakes, forgive all injuries, and learn to love each other when at play, as well as when at school. Good children will play together, without getting angry, and it is a pretty sight to see such children all happy in each other's society, and enjoying their pleasant pastimes, with cheerful and happy hearts. Our evil actions spring like trees, From small and hidden seeds; We think, or wish some wicked thing, And then do wicked deeds. Whoever dares to tell a lie, Whoever steals a pin, Whoever strikes an angry blow, Has done a deed of sin. GEORGE AND HIS GUINEA. Little George Ames went with his Aunt to attend a missionary meeting. After the minister had ended his sermon, as he sat in the pew he whispered to his aunt, saying, "I wish you would lend me a guinea and I will give it to you again when we get home." His aunt asked him what he wanted of his guinea; he told her he wished to put it in the box when it came round, to assist in sending the gospel to the heathen children. She replied, "a guinea is a great deal of money, George; you had better ask your mother, first." As George's mother lived very near the church, he went home immediately, and said, "Mother, will you let me have my guinea to give to the mission." George's mother saw that he was very much interested for the heathen children, and says to him, "supposing you give half of it." "No," said George, "I want to give it all." "Well, my dear, you will remember you cannot give it and have it too." She then gave him a one pound note, and a shilling. But George said he would rather have a guinea. "Why," said his mother, "what difference can it make? it is just the same amount." "Yes," said George, "but that one pound will seem so much for a little boy to give. If I had a guinea, I could put it in between two half-pence and nobody would know any thing about it." His mother was pleased with his proposal, and George having got his guinea returned to the church and put it in the box as he intended. Little George is now dead, and there is no danger of his being puffed up by what he has done. You may learn from this act of George, how to do some good to poor heathen children. You should be willing to deny yourselves some pleasures in order that you may benefit others. And if you do good out of a pure motive you will be blessed in the deed. THE JEW AND HIS DAUGHTER. A Jew came to this country from London, many years ago, and brought with him all his property. He had a lovely daughter of seventeen; with her he settled in a charming retreat on the fruitful banks of the Ohio, in the Western part of Virginia. He had buried his wife before he left Europe, and he knew no comfort but the company of his beloved daughter. She possessed an amiable disposition, and was well educated; she could speak several languages, and her manners pleased all who knew her. Being a Jew, he brought up his daughter in the strictest principles of his faith. It was not long after that his daughter was taken sick. The rose faded from her cheek, her strength failed, and it was certain that she could not live long. Her father was deeply affected. He tried to talk with her, but could seldom speak without weeping. He spared no expense to have her get well. One day he was walking in the wood near his house when he was sent for by his dying daughter. With a heavy heart he entered the door of her room, and he saw that he was now to take the last farewell of his daughter. "My father," said the child, "do you love me?" "Yes," he replied, "you know that I love you." "I know, father, you have ever loved me. You have been a kind father, and I tenderly love you. Grant me my dying request." "What is it, my child? ask what you will, though it take every farthing of my property, it shall be granted. I _will grant_ your request." "My dear father, I now beg of you never again to speak lightly of Jesus of Nazareth; I know that he is a Saviour, and that he has made himself known to me, since I have been sick, even for the salvation of my soul. I entreat you to obtain a Testament that tells of him and that you may bestow on him the love that was formerly _mine_." She now ceased speaking, her father left the room, when her soul took its flight to God who gave it. After her decease the parent purchased a Testament and read about Jesus of Nazareth, and is now a devoted Christian. Good children may be made blessings to their parents and friends. ANECDOTES. TRUE BENEFICENCE.--Mark Antony, when very much depressed, and at the ebb of his fortune, cried out, "I have lost all, except what I have given away." WASHINGTON AND THE SOLDIER.--A British soldier said, "It was once in my power to shoot Gen. Washington." "Why, then," said an American, "did you not do it?" "Because," he replied, "the death of Washington would not have been for our benefit, for we depended upon him to treat our prisoners kindly." YES AND NO.--John Randolph, in one of his letters to a young relative, says: "You must expect unreasonable requests to be preferred to you every day of your life; and you must endeavor to say _no_ with as much facility and kindness as you would say _yes_." OSCEOLA.--It is said that the name of Osceola was given to that famous chief by an old lady in a frontier village, who had newly arrived in the country, and had never seen an Indian. When she saw him she burst forth in utter astonishment--"Oh see! Oh la! What a curious looking man!" SIGISMOND.--This Emperor was once reproached by some courtiers for being favorable to his foes--to whom he replied, "Do I not effectually destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?" CHINESE PROVERBS. What is told in the ear is often heard a hundred miles. Riches come better after poverty, than poverty after riches. Who aims at excellence will be above mediocrity; who aims at mediocrity will fall short of it. No remedies can revive old age and faded flowers. A truly great man never puts away the simplicity of a child. He who toils with pain will eat with pleasure. A wise man forgets old grudges. * * * * * Those that dare lose a day are dangerously prodigal; those that dare mis-spend it, desperate.--_Bishop Hall_. Truth enters into the heart of man when it is empty, and clean and still: but when the mind is shaken with passion as with a storm, you can never hear the voice of the charmer, though he charm never so wisely. [Illustration] COMFORT AND SOBRIETY. In the picture you see a true emblem of a temperate and virtuous life. Let me here give you a few maxims to commit to memory:-- Avoid and shun the sources of misery. Be sure not to _indulge_ your appetite. Strong drink excites a person to do wrong. Remember you are never out of temptation. _A life_ of _virtue_ and _temperance_ will secure to you money and time; will give you health, and prosperity, peace, character, respect, and usefulness. PLEDGE. Our hands and our hearts we give To the temperance pledge, declaring, That long as on earth we live, All its bountiful blessings sharing, We will taste not and touch not the bowl That burns with intoxication, And will lend our assistance to roll The temperance ball through the nation. 
11304	----	Project by Jon Ingram THE LAKE BY GEORGE MOORE 1921 LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN ÉPÎTRE DÉDICATOIRE _17 Août, 1905._ MON CHER DUJARDIN, Il se trouve que je suis à Paris en train de corriger mes épreuves au moment où vous donnez les dernières retouches au manuscrit de 'La Source du Fleuve Chrétien,' un beau titre--si beau que je n'ai pu m'empêcher de le 'chipper' pour le livre de Ralph Elles, un personnage de mon roman qui ne parait pas, mais dont on entend beaucoup parler. Pour vous dédommager de mon larcin, je me propose de vous dédier 'Le Lac.' Il y a bien des raisons pour que je désire voir votre nom sur la première page d'un livre de moi; la meilleure est, peut-être, parceque vous êtes mon ami depuis 'Les Confessions d'un Jeune Anglais' qui ont paru dans votre jolie _Revue Indépendante;_ et, depuis cette bienheureuse année, nous avons causé littérature et musique, combien de fois! Combien d'heures nous avons passés ensemble, causant, toujours causant, dans votre belle maison de Fontainebleau, si française avec sa terrasse en pierre et son jardin avec ses gazons maigres et ses allées sablonneuses qui serpentent parmi les grands arbres forestiers. C'est dans ce jardin à l'orée de la forêt et dans la forêt même, parmi la mélancolie de lat nature primitive, et à Valvins ou demeurait notre vieil ami Mallarmé, triste et charmant bonhomme, comme le pays du reste (n'est-ce-pas que cette tristesse croit depuis qu'il s'en est allé?) que vous m'avez entendu raconter 'Le Lac.' A Valvins, la Seine coule silencieusement tout le long des berges plates et graciles, avec des peupliers alignés; comme ils sont tristes au printemps, ces peupliers, surtout avant qu'ils ne deviennent verts, quand ils sont rougeâtres, posés contre un ciel gris, des ombres immobiles et ternes dans les eaux, dix fois tristes quand les hirondelles volent bas! Pour expliquer la tristesse de ce beau pays parsemé de châteaux vides, hanté par le souvenir des fêtes d'autrefois, il faudrait tout un orchestre. Je l'entends d'abord sur les violons; plus tard on ajouterait d'autres instruments, des cors sans doute; mais pour rendre la tristesse de mon pauvre pays là bas il ne faut drait pas tout cela. Je l'entends très bien sur une seule flute placée dans une île entourée des eaux d'un lac, le joueur assis sur les vagues ruines d'un réduit gallois ou bien Normand. Mais, cher ami, vous êtes Normand et peut-être bien que ce sent vos ancêtres qui out pillé mon pays; c'est une raison de plus pour que je vous offre ce roman. Acceptez-le sans le connaître davantage et n'essayez pas de le lire; ne vous donnez pas la peine d'apprendre l'anglais pour lire 'Le Lac'; que le lac ne soit jamais traversé par vous! Et parce que vous allez rester fatalement sur le bord de 'mon lac' j'ai un double plaisir à vous le dédier. Lorsqu'on dédie un livre, on prévoit l'heure où l'ami le prend, jette un coup d'oeil et dit: 'Pourquoi m'a-t-il dédié une niaiserie pareille?' Toutes les choses de l'esprit, sauf les plus grandes, deviennent niaiseries tôt ou tard. Votre ignorance de ma langue m'épargne cette heure fatale. Pour vous, mon livre sera toujours une belle et noble chose. Il ne peut jamais devenir pour vous banal comme une épouse. II sera pour vous une vierge, mieux qu'une vierge, il sera pour vous une demi-vierge. Chaque fois que vous l'ouvrirez, vous penserez à des années écoulées, au jardin où les rossignols chantent, a la forêt où rien ne se passe sauf la chute des feuilles, à nos promenades à Valvins pour voir le cher bonhomme; vous penserez à votre jeunesse et peut-être un peu à la mienne. Mais je veux que vous lisiez cette dédicace, et c'est pour cela que je l'ai écrite en français, dans un français qui vous est très familier, le mien. Si je l'écrivais en anglais et le faisais traduire dans le langage à la dernière mode de Paris, vous ne retrouveriez pas les accents barbares de votre vieil ami. Ils sont barbares, je le conçois, mais il y a des chiens qui sont laids et que l'on finit par aimer. Une poignée de mains, GEORGES MOORE. PREFACE The concern of this preface is with the mistake that was made when 'The Lake' was excluded from the volume entitled 'The Untilled Field,' reducing it to too slight dimensions, for bulk counts; and 'The Lake,' too, in being published in a separate volume lost a great deal in range and power, and criticism was baffled by the division of stories written at the same time and coming out of the same happy inspiration, one that could hardly fail to beget stories in the mind of anybody prone to narrative--the return of a man to his native land, to its people, to memories hidden for years, forgotten, but which rose suddenly out of the darkness, like water out of the earth when a spring is tapped. Some chance words passing between John Eglinton and me as we returned home one evening from Professor Dowden's were enough. He spoke, or I spoke, of a volume of Irish stories; Tourguéniev's name was mentioned, and next morning--if not the next morning, certainly not later than a few mornings after--I was writing 'Homesickness,' while the story of 'The Exile' was taking shape in my mind. 'The Exile' was followed by a series of four stories, a sort of village odyssey. 'A Letter to Rome' is as good as these and as typical of my country. 'So on He Fares' is the one that, perhaps, out of the whole volume I like the best, always excepting 'The Lake,' which, alas, was not included, but which belongs so strictly to the aforesaid stories that my memory includes it in the volume. In expressing preferences I am transgressing an established rule of literary conduct, which ordains that an author must always speak of his own work with downcast eyes, excusing its existence on the ground of his own incapacity. All the same an author's preferences interest his readers, and having transgressed by telling that these Irish stories lie very near to my heart, I will proceed a little further into literary sin, confessing that my reason for liking 'The Lake' is related to the very great difficulty of the telling, for the one vital event in the priest's life befell him before the story opens, and to keep the story in the key in which it was conceived, it was necessary to recount the priest's life during the course of his walk by the shores of a lake, weaving his memories continually, without losing sight, however, of the long, winding, mere-like lake, wooded to its shores, with hills appearing and disappearing into mist and distance. The difficulty overcome is a joy to the artist, for in his conquest over the material he draws nigh to his idea, and in this book mine was the essential rather than the daily life of the priest, and as I read for this edition I seemed to hear it. The drama passes within the priest's soul; it is tied and untied by the flux and reflux of sentiments, inherent in and proper to his nature, and the weaving of a story out of the soul substance without ever seeking the aid of external circumstance seems to me a little triumph. It may be that I heard what none other will hear, not through his own fault but through mine, and it may be that all ears are not tuned, or are too indifferent or indolent to listen; it is easier to hear 'Esther Waters' and to watch her struggles for her child's life than to hear the mysterious warble, soft as lake water, that abides in the heart. But I think there will always be a few who will agree with me that there is as much life in 'The Lake,' as there is in 'Esther Waters'--a different kind of life, not so wide a life, perhaps, but what counts in art is not width but depth. Artists, it is said, are not good judges of their own works, and for that reason, and other reasons, maybe, it is considered to be unbecoming for a writer to praise himself. So to make atonement for the sins I have committed in this preface, I will confess to very little admiration for 'Evelyn Innes' and 'Sister Teresa.' The writing of 'Evelyn Innes' and 'Sister Teresa' was useful to me inasmuch that if I had not written them I could not have written 'The Lake' or 'The Brook Kerith.' It seems ungrateful, therefore, to refuse to allow two of my most successful books into the canon merely because they do not correspond with my æstheticism. But a writer's æstheticism is his all; he cannot surrender it, for his art is dependent upon it, and the single concession he can make is that if an overwhelming demand should arise for these books when he is among the gone--a storm before which the reed must bend--the publisher shall be permitted to print 'Evelyn Innes' and 'Sister Teresa' from the original editions, it being, however, clearly understood that they are offered to the public only as apocrypha. But this permission must not be understood to extend to certain books on which my name appears--viz., 'Mike Fletcher,' 'Vain Fortune,' Parnell and His Island'; to some plays, 'Martin Luther,' 'The Strike at Arlingford,' 'The Bending of the Boughs'; to a couple of volumes of verse entitled 'Pagan Poems' and 'Flowers of Passion'--all these books, if they are ever reprinted again, should be issued as the work of a disciple--Amico Moorini I put forward as a suggestion. G.M. I It was one of those enticing days at the beginning of May when white clouds are drawn about the earth like curtains. The lake lay like a mirror that somebody had breathed upon, the brown islands showing through the mist faintly, with gray shadows falling into the water, blurred at the edges. The ducks were talking in the reeds, the reeds themselves were talking, and the water lapping softly about the smooth limestone shingle. But there was an impulse in the gentle day, and, turning from the sandy spit, Father Oliver walked to and fro along the disused cart-track about the edge of the wood, asking himself if he were going home, knowing very well that he could not bring himself to interview his parishioners that morning. On a sudden resolve to escape from anyone that might be seeking him, he went into the wood and lay down on the warm grass, and admired the thickly-tasselled branches of the tall larches swinging above him. At a little distance among the juniper-bushes, between the lake and the wood, a bird uttered a cry like two stones clinked sharply together, and getting up he followed the bird, trying to catch sight of it, but always failing to do so; it seemed to range in a circle about certain trees, and he hadn't gone very far when he heard it behind him. A stonechat he was sure it must be, and he wandered on till he came to a great silver fir, and thought that he spied a pigeon's nest among the multitudinous branches. The nest, if it were one, was about sixty feet from the ground, perhaps more than that; and, remembering that the great fir had grown out of a single seed, it seemed to him not at all wonderful that people had once worshipped trees, so mysterious is their life, so remote from ours. And he stood a long time looking up, hardly able to resist the temptation to climb the tree--not to rob the nest like a boy, but to admire the two gray eggs which he would find lying on some bare twigs. At the edge of the wood there were some chestnuts and sycamores. He noticed that the large-patterned leaf of the sycamores, hanging out from a longer stem, was darker than the chestnut leaf. There were some elms close by, and their half-opened leaves, dainty and frail, reminded him of clouds of butterflies. He could think of nothing else. White, cotton-like clouds unfolded above the blossoming trees; patches of blue appeared and disappeared; and he wandered on again, beguiled this time by many errant scents and wilful little breezes. Very soon he came upon some fields, and as he walked through the ferns the young rabbits ran from under his feet, and he thought of the delicious meals that the fox would snap up. He had to pick his way, for thorn-bushes and hazels were springing up everywhere. Derrinrush, the great headland stretching nearly a mile into the lake, said to be one of the original forests, was extending inland. He remembered it as a deep, religious wood, with its own particular smell of reeds and rushes. It went further back than the island castles, further back than the Druids; and was among Father Oliver's earliest recollections. Himself and his brother James used to go there when they were boys to cut hazel stems, to make fishing-rods; and one had only to turn over the dead leaves to discover the chips scattered circlewise in the open spaces where the coopers sat in the days gone by making hoops for barrels. But iron hoops were now used instead of hazel, and the coopers worked there no more. In the old days he and his brother James used to follow the wood-ranger, asking him questions about the wild creatures of the wood--badgers, marten cats, and otters. And one day they took home a nest of young hawks. He did not neglect to feed them, but they had eaten each other, nevertheless. He forgot what became of the last one. A thick yellow smell hung on the still air. 'A fox,' he said, and he trailed the animal through the hazel-bushes till he came to a rough shore, covered with juniper-bushes and tussocked grass, the extreme point of the headland, whence he could see the mountains--the pale southern mountains mingling with the white sky, and the western mountains, much nearer, showing in bold relief. The beautiful motion and variety of the hills delighted him, and there was as much various colour as there were many dips and curves, for the hills were not far enough away to dwindle to one blue tint; they were blue, but the pink heather showed through the blue, and the clouds continued to fold and unfold, so that neither the colour nor the lines were ever the same. The retreating and advancing of the great masses and the delicate illumination of the crests could be watched without weariness. It was like listening to music. Slieve Cairn showing straight as a bull's back against the white sky, a cloud filling the gap between Slieve Cairn and Slieve Louan, a quaint little hill like a hunchback going down a road. Slieve Louan was followed by a great boulder-like hill turned sideways, the top indented like a crater, and the priest likened the long, low profile of the next hill to a reptile raising itself on its forepaws. He stood at gaze, bewitched by the play of light and shadow among the slopes; and when he turned towards the lake again, he was surprised to see a yacht by Castle Island. A random breeze just sprung up had borne her so far, and now she lay becalmed, carrying, without doubt, a pleasure-party, inspired by some vague interest in ruins, and a very real interest in lunch; or the yacht's destination might be Kilronan Abbey, and the priest wondered if there were water enough in the strait to let her through in this season of the year. The sails flapped in the puffing breeze, and he began to calculate her tonnage, certain that if he had such a boat he would not be sailing her on a lake, but on the bright sea, out of sight of land, in the middle of a great circle of water. As if stung by a sudden sense of the sea, of its perfume and its freedom, he imagined the filling of the sails and the rattle of the ropes, and how a fair wind would carry him as far as the cove of Cork before morning. The run from Cork to Liverpool would be slower, but the wind might veer a little, and in four-and-twenty hours the Welsh mountains would begin to show above the horizon. But he would not land anywhere on the Welsh coast. There was nothing to see in Wales but castles, and he was weary of castles, and longed to see the cathedrals of York and Salisbury; for he had often seen them in pictures, and had more than once thought of a walking tour through England. Better still if the yacht were to land him somewhere on the French coast. England was, after all, only an island like Ireland--- a little larger, but still an island--and he thought he would like a continent to roam in. The French cathedrals were more beautiful than the English, and it would be pleasant to wander in the French country in happy-go-lucky fashion, resting when he was tired, walking when it pleased him, taking an interest in whatever might strike his fancy. It seemed to him that his desire was to be freed for a while from everything he had ever seen, and from everything he had ever heard. He merely wanted to wander, admiring everything there was to admire as he went. He didn't want to learn anything, only to admire. He was weary of argument, religious and political. It wasn't that he was indifferent to his country's welfare, but every mind requires rest, and he wished himself away in a foreign country, distracted every moment by new things, learning the language out of a volume of songs, and hearing music, any music, French or German--any music but Irish music. He sighed, and wondered why he sighed. Was it because he feared that if he once went away he might never come back? This lake was beautiful, but he was tired of its low gray shores; he was tired of those mountains, melancholy as Irish melodies, and as beautiful. He felt suddenly that he didn't want to see a lake or a mountain for two months at least, and that his longing for a change was legitimate and most natural. It pleased him to remember that everyone likes to get out of his native country for a while, and he had only been out of sight of this lake in the years he spent in Maynooth. On leaving he had pleaded that he might be sent to live among the mountains by Kilronan Abbey, at the north end of the lake, but when Father Conway died he was moved round to the western shore; and every day since he walked by the lake, for there was nowhere else to walk, unless up and down the lawn under the sycamores, imitating Father Peter, whose wont it was to walk there, reading his breviary, stopping from time to time to speak to a parishioner in the road below; he too used to read his breviary under the sycamores; but for one reason or another he walked there no longer, and every afternoon now found him standing at the end of this sandy spit, looking across the lake towards Tinnick, where he was born, and where his sisters lived. He couldn't see the walls of the convent to-day, there was too much mist about; and he liked to see them; for whenever he saw them he began to think of his sister Eliza, and he liked to think of her--she was his favourite sister. They were nearly the same age, and had played together; and his eyes dwelt in memory on the dark corner under the stairs where they used to play. He could even see their toys through the years, and the tall clock which used to tell them that it was time to put them aside. Eliza was only eighteen months older than he; they were the red-haired ones, and though they were as different in mind as it was possible to be, he seemed nearer Eliza than anyone else. In what this affinity consisted he couldn't say, but he had always felt himself of the same flesh and blood. Neither his father nor mother had inspired this sense of affinity; and his sister Mary and his brothers seemed to him merely people whom he had known always--not more than that; whereas Eliza was quite different, and perhaps it was this very mutuality, which he could not define, that had decided their vocations. No doubt there is a moment in every man's life when something happens to turn him into the road which he is destined to follow; for all that it would be superficial to think that the fate of one's life is dependent upon accident. The accident that turns one into the road is only the means which Providence takes to procure the working out of certain ends. Accidents are many: life is as full of accidents as a fire is full of sparks, and any spark is enough to set fire to the train. The train escapes a thousand, but at last a spark lights it, and this spark always seems to us the only one that could have done it. We cannot imagine how the same result could have been obtained otherwise. But other ways would have been found; for Nature is full of resource, and if Eliza had not been by to fire the idea hidden in him, something else would. She was the means, but only the means, for no man escapes his vocation, and the priesthood was his. A vocation always finds a way out. But was he sure if it hadn't been for Eliza that he wouldn't have married Annie McGrath? He didn't think he would have married Annie, but he might have married another. All the same, Annie was a good, comfortable girl, a girl that everybody was sure would make a good wife for any man, and at that time many people were thinking that he should marry Annie. On looking back he couldn't honestly say that a stray thought of Annie hadn't found its way into his mind; but not into his heart--there is a difference. At that time he was what is known as a growing lad; he was seventeen. His father was then dead two years, and his mother looked to him, he being the eldest, to take charge of the shop, for at that time it was almost settled that James was to go to America. They had two or three nice grass farms just beyond the town: Patsy was going to have them; and his sisters' fortunes were in the bank, and very good fortunes they were. They had a hundred pounds apiece and should have married well. Eliza could have married whomever she pleased. Mary could have married, too, and to this day he couldn't tell why she hadn't married. The chances his sister Mary had missed rose up in his mind--why, he did not know; and a little bored by these memories, he suddenly became absorbed in the little bleat of a blackcap perched on a bush, the only one amid a bed of flags and rushes; 'an alder-bush,' he said. 'His mate is sitting on her eggs, and there are some wood-gatherers about; that's what's worrying the little fellow.' The bird continued to utter its troubled bleat, and the priest walked on, thinking how different was its evensong. He meditated an excursion to hear it, and then, without his being aware of any transition, his thoughts returned to his sister Mary, and to the time when he had once indulged in hopes that the mills along the river-side might be rebuilt and Tinnick restored to its former commercial prosperity. He was not certain if he had ever really believed that he might set these mills going, or if he had, he encouraged an illusion, knowing it to be one. He was only certain of this, that when he was a boy and saw no life ahead of him except that of a Tinnick shopman, he used to feel that if he remained at home he must have the excitement of adventure. The beautiful river, with its lime-trees, appealed to his imagination; the rebuilding of the mills and the reorganization of trade, if he succeeded in reorganizing trade, would mean spending his mornings on the wharves by the river-side, and in those days his one desire was to escape from the shop. He looked upon the shop as a prison. In those days he liked dreaming, and it was pleasant to dream of giving back to Tinnick its trade of former days; but when his mother asked him what steps he intended to take to get the necessary capital, he lost his temper with her. He must have known that he could never make enough money in the shop to set the mills working! He must have known that he would never take his father's place at the desk by the dusty window! But if he shrank from an avowal it was because he had no other proposal to make. His mother understood him, though the others didn't, and seeing his inability to say what kind of work he would put his hand to, she had spoken of Annie McGrath. She didn't say he should marry Annie--she was a clever woman in her way--she merely said that Annie's relations in America could afford to supply sufficient capital to start one of the mills. But he never wanted to marry Annie, and couldn't do else but snap when the subject was mentioned, and many's the time he told his mother that if the mills were to pay it would be necessary to start business on a large scale. He was an impracticable lad and even now he couldn't help smiling when he thought of the abruptness with which he would go down to the river-side to seek a new argument wherewith to confute his mother, to return happy when he had found one, and sit watching for an opportunity to raise the question again. No, it wasn't because Annie's relations weren't rich enough that he hadn't wanted to marry her. And to account for his prejudice against marriage, he must suppose that some notion of the priesthood was stirring in him at the time, for one day, as he sat looking at Annie across the tea-table, he couldn't help thinking that it would be hard to live alongside of her year in and year out. Although a good and a pleasant girl, Annie was a bit tiresome to listen to, and she wasn't one of those who improve with age. As he sat looking at her, he seemed to understand, as he had never understood before, that if he married her all that had happened in the years back would happen again--more children scrambling about the counter, with a shopman (himself) by the dusty window putting his pen behind his ear, just as his father did when he came forward to serve some country woman with half a pound of tea or a hank of onions. And as these thoughts were passing through his mind, he remembered hearing his mother say that Annie's sister was thinking of starting dressmaking in the High Street. 'It would be nice if Eliza were to join her,' his mother added casually. Eliza laid aside the skirt she was turning, raised her eyes and stared at mother, as if she were surprised mother could say anything so stupid. 'I'm going to be a nun,' she said, and, just as if she didn't wish to answer any questions, went on sewing. Well might they be surprised, for not one of them suspected Eliza of religious inclinations. She wasn't more pious than another, and when they asked her if she were joking, she looked at them as if she thought the question very stupid, and they didn't ask her any more. She wasn't more than fifteen at the time, yet she spoke out of her own mind. At the time they thought she had been thinking on the matter--considering her future. A child of fifteen doesn't consider, but a child of fifteen may _know_, and after he had seen the look which greeted his mother's remarks, and heard Eliza's simple answer, 'I've decided to be a nun,' he never doubted that what she said was true. From that day she became for him a different being; and when she told him, feeling, perhaps, that he sympathized with her more than the others did, that one day she would be Reverend Mother of the Tinnick Convent, he felt convinced that she knew what she was saying--how she knew he could not say. His childhood had been a slumber, with occasional awakenings or half awakenings, and Eliza's announcement that she intended to enter the religious life was the first real awakening; and this awakening first took the form of an acute interest in Eliza's character, and, persuaded that she or her prototype had already existed, he searched the lives of the saints for an account of her, finding many partial portraits of her; certain typical traits in the lives of three or four saints reminded him of Eliza, but there was no complete portrait. The strangest part of the business was that he traced his vocation to his search for Eliza in the lives of the saints. Everything that happened afterwards was the emotional sequence of taking down the books from the shelf. He didn't exaggerate; it was possible his life might have taken a different turn, for up to that time he had only read books of adventure--stories about robbers and pirates. As if by magic, his interest in such stories passed clean out of his mind, or was exchanged for an extraordinary enthusiasm for saints, who by renouncement of animal life had contrived to steal up to the last bounds, whence they could see into the eternal life that lies beyond the grave. Once this power was admitted, what interest could we find in the feeble ambitions of temporal life, whose scope is limited to three score and ten years? And who could doubt that saints attained the eternal life, which is God, while still living in the temporal flesh? For did not the miracles of the saints prove that they were no longer subject to natural laws? Ancient Ireland, perhaps, more than any other country, understood the supremacy of spirit over matter, and strove to escape through mortifications from the prison of the flesh. Without doubt great numbers in Ireland had fled from the torment of actual life into the wilderness. If the shore and the islands on this lake were dotted with fortress castles, it was the Welsh and the Normans who built them, and the priest remembered how his mind took fire when he first heard of the hermit who lived in Church Island, and how disappointed he was when he heard that Church Island was ten miles away, at the other end of the lake. For he could not row himself so far; distance and danger compelled him to consider the islands facing Tinnick--two large islands covered with brushwood, ugly brown patches--ugly as their names, Horse Island and Hog Island, whereas Castle Island had always seemed to him a suitable island for a hermitage, far more so than Castle Hag. Castle Hag was too small and bleak to engage the attention of a sixth-century hermit. But there were trees on Castle Island, and out of the ruins of the castle a comfortable sheiling could be built, and the ground thus freed from the ruins of the Welshman's castle might be cultivated. He remembered commandeering the fisherman's boat, and rowing himself out, taking a tape to measure, and how, after much application of the tape, he had satisfied himself that there was enough arable land in the island for a garden; he had walked down the island certain that a quarter of an acre could grow enough vegetables to support a hermit, and that a goat would be able to pick a living among the bushes and the tussocked grass: even a hermit might have a goat, and he didn't think he could live without milk. He must have been a long time measuring out his garden, for when he returned to his boat the appearance of the lake frightened him; it was full of blustering waves, and it wasn't likely he'd ever forget his struggle to get the boat back to Tinnick. He left it where he had found it, at the mouth of the river by the fisherman's hut, and returned home thinking how he would have to import a little hay occasionally for the goat. Nor would this be all; he would have to go on shore every Sunday to hear Mass, unless he built a chapel. The hermit of Church Island had an oratory in which he said Mass! But if he left his island every Sunday his hermitage would be a mockery. For the moment he couldn't see how he was to build a chapel--a sheiling, perhaps; a chapel was out of the question, he feared. He would have to have vestments and a chalice, and, immersed in the difficulty of obtaining these, he walked home, taking the path along the river from habit, not because he wished to consider afresh the problems of the ruined mills. The dream of restoring Tinnick to its commerce of former days was forgotten, and he walked on, thinking of his chalice, until he heard somebody call him. It was Eliza, and as they leaned over the parapet of the bridge, he could not keep himself from telling her that he had rowed out to Castle Island, never thinking that she would reprove him, and sternly, for taking the fisherman's boat without asking leave. It was no use to argue with Eliza that the fisherman didn't want his boat, the day being too rough for fishing. What did she know about fishing? She had asked very sharply what brought him out to Castle Island on such a day. There was no use saying he didn't know; he never was able to keep a secret from Eliza, and feeling that he must confide in somebody, he told her he was tired of living at home, and was thinking of building a sheiling on the island. Eliza didn't understand, and she understood still less when he spoke of a beehive hut, such as the ancient hermits of Ireland lived in. She was entirely without imagination; but what surprised him still more than her lack of sympathy with his dream-project was her inability to understand an idea so inherent in Christianity as the hermitage, for at that time Eliza's mind was made up to enter the religious life. He waited a long time for her answer, but the only answer she made was that in the early centuries a man was either a bandit or a hermit. This wasn't true: life was peaceful in Ireland in the sixth and seventh centuries; even if it weren't, she ought to have understood that change of circumstance cannot alter an idea so inherent in man as the hermitage, and when he asked her if she intended to found a new Order, or to go out to Patagonia to teach the Indians, she laughed, saying she was much more interested in a laundry than in the Indians. Her plea that the Tinnick Convent was always in straits for money did not appeal to him then any more than it did to-day. 'The officers in Tinnick have to send their washing to Dublin. A fine reason for entering a convent,' he answered. But quite unmoved by the sarcasm, she replied that a woman can do nothing unless she be a member of a congregation. He shrank from Eliza's mind as from the touch of something coarse, and his suggestion that the object of the religious life is meditation did not embarrass her in the very least, and he remembered well how she had said: 'Putting aside for the moment the important question whether there may or may not be hermits in the twentieth century, tell me, Oliver, are you thinking of marrying Annie McGrath? You know she has rich relations in America, and you might get them to supply the capital to set the mills going. The mills would be a great advantage. Annie has a good headpiece, and would be able to take the shop off your hands, leaving you free to look after the mills.' 'The mills, Eliza! there are other things in the world beside those mills!' 'A hermitage on Castle Island?' Eliza could be very impertinent when she liked. If she had no concern in what was being said, she looked round, displaying an irritating curiosity in every passer-by, and true to herself she had drawn his attention to the ducks on the river while he was telling her of the great change that had come over him. He had felt like boxing her ears. But the moment he began to speak of taking Orders she forgot all about the ducks; her eyes were fixed upon him, she listened to his every word, and when he finished speaking, she reminded him there had always been a priest in the family. All her wits were awake. He was the one of the family who had shown most aptitude for learning, and their cousin the Bishop would be able to help him. What she would like would be to see him parish priest of Tinnick. The parish was one of the best in the diocese. Not a doubt of it, she was thinking at that moment of the advantage this arrangement would be to her when she was directing the affairs of the convent. If there was no other, there was at least one woman in Ireland who was interested in things. He had never met anybody less interested in opinions or in ideas than Eliza. They had walked home together in silence, at all events not saying much, and that very evening she left the room immediately after supper. And soon after they heard sounds of trunks being dragged along the passage; furniture was being moved, and when she came downstairs she just said she was going to sleep with Mary. 'Oliver is going to have my room. He must have a room to himself on account of his studies.' On that she gathered up her sewing, and left him to explain. He felt that it was rather sly of her to go away like that, leaving all the explanation to him. She wanted him to be a priest, and was full of little tricks. There was no time for thinking it over. There was only just time to prepare for the examination. He worked hard, for his work interested him, especially the Latin language; but what interested him far more than his aptitude for learning whatever he made up his mind to learn was the discovery of a religious vocation in himself. Eliza feared that his interest in hermits sprang from a boyish taste for adventure rather than from religious feeling, but no sooner had he begun his studies for the priesthood, than he found himself overtaken and overpowered by an extraordinary religious fervour and by a desire for prayer and discipline. Never had a boy left home more zealous, more desirous to excel in piety and to strive for the honour and glory of the Church. An expression of anger, almost of hatred, passed over Father Oliver's face, and he turned from the lake and walked a few yards rapidly, hoping to escape from memories of his folly; for he had made a great fool of himself, no doubt. But, after all, he preferred his enthusiasms, however exaggerated they might seem to him now, to the commonplace--he could not call it wisdom--of those whom he had taken into his confidence. It was foolish of him, no doubt, to have told how he used to go out in a boat and measure the ground about Castle Island, thinking to build himself a beehive hut out of the ruins. He knew too little of the world at that time; he had no idea how incapable the students were of understanding anything outside the narrow interests of an ecclesiastical career. Anyhow, he had had the satisfaction of having beaten them in all the examinations; and if he had cared to go in for advancement, he could have easily got ahead of them all, for he had better brains and better interest than any of them. When he last saw that ignorant brute Peter Fahy, Fahy asked him if he still put pebbles in his shoes. It was to Fahy he had confided the cause of his lameness, and Fahy had told on him; he was ridiculously innocent in those days, and he could still see them gathered about him, pretending not to believe that he kept a cat-o'-nine-tails in his room, and scourged himself at night. It was Tom Bryan who said that he wouldn't mind betting a couple of shillings that Gogarty's whip wouldn't draw a squeal from a pig on the roadside. The answer to that was: 'A touch will make a pig squeal: you should have said an ass!' But at the moment he couldn't think of an answer. No doubt everyone looked on him as a ninny, and they persuaded him to prove to them that his whip was a real whip by letting Tom Bryan do the whipping for him. Tom Bryan was a rough fellow, who ought to have been driving a plough; a ploughman's life was too peaceful an occupation for him--a drover's life would have suited him best, prodding his cattle along the road with a goad; it was said that was how he maintained his authority in the parish. The remembrance of the day he bared his back to that fellow was still a bitter one. With a gentle smile he had handed the whip to Tom Bryan, the very smile which he imagined the hermits of old time used to wear. The first blow had so stunned him that he couldn't cry out, and this blow was followed by a second which sent the blood flaming through his veins, and then by another which brought all the blood into one point in his body. He seemed to lose consciousness of everything but three inches of back. Nine blows he bore without wincing; the tenth overcame his fortitude, and he had reeled away from Tom Bryan. Tom had exchanged the whip he had given him for a great leather belt; that was why he had been hurt so grievously--hurt till the pain seemed to reach his very heart. Tom had belted him with all his strength; and half a dozen of Tom's pals were waiting outside the door, and they came into the room, their wide mouths agrin, asking him how he liked it. But they were unready for the pain his face expressed, and in the midst of his agony he noticed that already they foresaw consequences, and he heard them reprove Tom Bryan, their intention being to dissociate themselves from him. Cowards! cowards! cowards! They tried to help him on with his shirt, but he had been too badly beaten, and Tom Bryan came up in the evening to ask him not to tell on him. He promised, and he wouldn't have told if he could have helped it. But some explanation had to be forthcoming--he couldn't lie on his back. The doctor was sent for.... And next day he was told the President wished to see him. The President was Eliza over again; hermits and hermitages were all very well in the early centuries, but religion had advanced, and nowadays a steadfast piety was more suited to modern requirements than pebbles in the shoes. If it had been possible to leave for America that day he thought he would have gone. But he couldn't leave Maynooth because he had been fool enough to bare his back to Tom Bryan. He couldn't return home to tell such a story as that. All Tinnick would be laughing at him, and Eliza, what would she think of him? He wasn't such a fool as the Maynooth students thought him, and he realized at once that he must stay in Maynooth and live down remembrance of his folly. So, as the saying goes, he took the bit between his teeth. The necessity of living down his first folly, of creating a new idea of himself in the minds of the students, forced him to apply all his intelligence to his studies, and he made extraordinary progress in the first years. The recollection of the ease with which he outdistanced his fellow-students was as pleasant as the breezes about the lake, and his thoughts dwelt on the opinion which he knew was entertained, that for many years no one at Maynooth had shown such aptitude for scholarship. He only had to look at a book to know more about it than his fellow-students would know if they were to spend days over it. He won honours. He could have won greater honours, but his conscience reminded him that the gifts he received from God were not bestowed upon him for the mere purpose of humiliating his fellow-students. He often felt then that if certain talents had been given to him, they were given to him to use for the greater glory of God rather than for his own glorification; and his feeling was that there was nothing more hateful in God's sight than intellectual, unless perhaps spiritual, pride, and his object during his last years at Maynooth was to exhibit himself to the least advantage. It is strange how an idea enters the soul and remakes it, and when he left Maynooth he used his influence with his cousin, the Bishop, to get himself appointed to the poorest parish in Connaught. Eliza had to dissemble, but he knew that in her heart she was furious with him. We are all extraordinarily different one from another, and if we seem most different from those whom we are most like, it is because we know nothing at all about strangers. He had gone to Kilronan in spite of Eliza, in spite of everyone, their cousin the Bishop included. He had been very happy in Bridget Clery's cottage, so happy that he didn't know himself why he ever consented to leave Kilronan. No, it was not because he was too happy there. He had to a certain extent outgrown his very delicate conscience. II A breeze rose, the forest murmured, a bird sang, and the sails of the yacht filled. The priest stood watching her pass behind a rocky headland, knowing now that her destination was Kilronan Abbey. But was there water enough in the strait at this season of the year? Hardly enough to float a boat of her size. If she stuck, the picnic-party would get into the small boat, and, thus lightened, the yacht might be floated into the other arm of the lake. 'A pleasant day indeed for a sail,' and in imagination he followed the yacht down the lake, past its different castles, Castle Carra and Castle Burke and Church Island, the island on which Marban--Marban, the famous hermit poet, had lived. It seemed to him strange that he had never thought of visiting the ruined church when he lived close by at the northern end of the lake. His time used to be entirely taken up with attending to the wants of his poor people, and the first year he spent in Garranard he had thought only of the possibility of inducing the Government to build a bridge across the strait. That bridge was badly wanted. All the western side of the lake was cut off from railway communication. Tinnick was the terminus, but to get to Tinnick one had to go round the lake, either by. the northern or the southern end, and it was always a question which was the longer road--round by Kilronan Abbey or by the Bridge of Keel. Many people said the southern road was shorter, but the difference wasn't more than a mile, if that, and Father Oliver preferred the northern road; for it took him by his curate's house, and he could always stop there and give his horse a feed and a rest; and he liked to revisit the abbey in which he had said Mass for so long, and in which Mass had always been said for a thousand years, even since Cromwell had unroofed it, the celebrant sheltered by an arch, the congregation kneeling under the open sky, whether it rained or snowed. The roofing of the abbey and the bridging of the strait were the two things that the parish was really interested in. He tried when he was in Kilronan to obtain the Archbishop's consent and collaboration; Moran was trying now: he did not know that he was succeeding any better; and Father Oliver reflected a while on the peculiar temperament of their diocesan, and jumping down from the rock on which he had been sitting, he wandered along the sunny shore, thinking of the many letters he had addressed to the Board of Works on the subject of the bridge. The Board believed, or pretended to believe, that the parish could not afford the bridge; as well might it be urged that a cripple could not afford crutches. Without doubt a public meeting should be held; and in some little indignation Father Oliver began to think that public opinion should be roused and organized. It was for him to do this: he was the people's natural leader; but for many months he had done nothing in the matter. Why, he didn't know himself. Perhaps he needed a holiday; perhaps he no longer believed the Government susceptible to public opinion; perhaps he had lost faith in the people themselves! The people were the same always; the people never change, only individuals change. And at the end of the sandy spit, where some pines had grown and seeded, he stood looking across the silvery lake wondering if his parishioners had begun to notice the change that had come over him since Nora Glynn left the parish, and as her name came into his mind he was startled out of his reverie by the sound of voices, and turning from the lake, he saw two wood-gatherers coming down a little path through the juniper-bushes. He often hid himself in the woods when he saw somebody coming, but he couldn't do so now without betraying his intention, and he stayed where he was. The women passed on, bent under their loads. Whether they saw him or not he couldn't tell; they passed near enough for him to recognize them, and he remembered that they were in church the day he alluded to Nora in his sermon. A hundred yards further on the women unburdened and sat down to rest a while, and Father Oliver began to consider what their conversation might be. His habit of wandering away by himself had no doubt been noticed, and once it was noticed it would become a topic of conversation. 'And what they do be saying now is, "That he has never been the same man since he preached against the schoolmistress, for what should he be doing by the lake if he wasn't afraid that she made away with herself?" And perhaps they are right,' he said, and walked up the shore, hoping that as soon as he was out of sight the women would forget to tell when they returned home that they had seen him walking by the lake. All the morning he had been trying to keep Nora Glynn out of his mind, but now, as he rambled, he could not put back the memory of the day he met her for the first time, nearly two years ago, for to-day was the fifteenth of May; it was about that time a little later in the year; it must have been in June, for the day was very hot, and he had been riding fast, not wishing to keep Catherine's dinner waiting, and as he pushed his bicycle through the gate, he saw the great cheery man, Father Peter, with a face like an apple, walking up and down under the sycamores reading his breviary. It must have been in June, for the mowers were in the field opposite, in the field known as the priest's field, though Father Peter had never rented it. There had never been such weather in Ireland before, and the day he rode his bicycle over to see Father Peter seemed to him the hottest day of all. But he had heard of the new schoolmistress's musical talents, and despite the heat of the day had ridden over, so anxious was he to hear if Father Peter were satisfied with her in all other respects. 'We shall be able to talk better in the shade of the sycamores,' Father Peter said, and on this they crossed the lawn, but not many steps were taken back and forth before Father Peter began to throw out hints that he didn't think Miss Glynn was altogether suited to the parish. 'But if you're satisfied with her discipline,' Father Oliver jerked out, and it was all he could do to check himself from further snaps at the parish priest, a great burly man who could not tell a minor from a major chord, yet was venting the opinion that good singing distracted the attention of the congregation at their prayers. He would have liked to ask him if he was to understand that bad singing tended to a devotional mood, but wishing to remain on good terms with his superior, he said nothing and waited for Father Peter to state his case against the new schoolmistress, which he seemed to think could be done by speaking of the danger of young unmarried women in the parish. It was when they came to the break in the trees that Father Peter nudged him and said under his breath: 'Here is the young woman herself coming across the fields.' He looked that way and saw a small, thin girl coming towards the stile. She hopped over it as if she enjoyed the little jump into the road. Father Peter called to her and engaged her in conversation; and he continued to talk to her of indifferent things, no doubt with the view to giving him an opportunity of observing her. But they saw her with different eyes: whereas Father Peter descried in her one that might become a mischief in the parish, he could discover no dangerous beauty in her, merely a crumpled little face that nobody would notice were it not for the eyes and forehead. The forehead was broad and well shapen and promised an intelligence that the eyes were quick to confirm; round, gray, intelligent eyes, smiling, welcoming eyes. Her accent caressed the ear, it was a very sweet one, only faintly Irish, and she talked easily and correctly, like one who enjoyed talking, laughing gaily, taking, he was afraid, undue pleasure in Father Peter's rough sallies, without heeding that he was trying to entrap her into some slight indiscretion of speech that he could make use of afterwards, for he must needs justify himself to himself if he decided to dismiss her. As he had been asked to notice her he remarked her shining brown hair. It frizzled like a furze-bush about her tiny face, and curled over her forehead. Her white even teeth showed prettily between her lips. She was not without points, but notwithstanding these it could not be said that she deserved the adjective pretty; and he was already convinced that it was not good looks that prejudiced her in Father Peter's eyes. Nor was the excuse that her singing attracted too much attention an honest one. What Father Peter did not like about the girl was her independent mind, which displayed itself in every gesture, in the way she hopped over the stile, and the manner with which she toyed with her parasol--a parasol that seemed a little out of keeping with her position, it is true. A very fine parasol it was; a blue silk parasol. Her independence betrayed itself in her voice: she talked to the parish priest with due respect, but her independent mind informed every sentence, even the smallest, and that was why she was going to be dismissed from her post. It was shameful that a grave injustice should be done to a girl who was admittedly competent in the fulfilment of all her duties, and he had not tried to conceal his opinion from Father Peter during dinner and after dinner, leaving him somewhat earlier than usual, for nothing affronted him more than injustice, especially ecclesiastical injustice. As he rode his bicycle down the lonely road to Bridget's cottage, the thought passed through his mind that if Nora Glynn were a stupid, intelligent woman no objection would have been raised against her. 'An independent mind is very objectionable to the ecclesiastic,' he said to himself as he leaped off his bicycle.... 'Nora Glynn. How well suited the name is to her. There is a smack in the name. Glynn, Nora Glynn,' he repeated, and it seemed to him that the name belonged exclusively to her. A few days after this first meeting he met her about two miles from Garranard; he was on his bicycle, she was on hers, and they both leaped instinctively from their machines. What impressed him this time far more than her looks was her happy, original mind. While walking beside her he caught himself thinking that he had never seen a really happy face before. But she was going to be sent away because she was happy and wore her soul in her face. They had seemed unable to get away from each other, so much had they to say. He mentioned his brother James, who was doing well in America and would perhaps one day send them the price of a harmonium. She told him she couldn't play on the wheezy old thing at Garranard, and at the moment he clean forgot that the new harmonium would avail her little, since Father Peter was going to get rid of her; he only remembered it as he got on his bicycle, and he returned home ready to espouse her cause against anybody. She must write to the Archbishop, and if he wouldn't do anything she must write to the papers. Influence must be brought to bear, and Father Peter must be prevented from perpetrating a gross injustice. He felt that it would be impossible for him to remain Father Peter's curate if the schoolmistress were sent away for no fault of hers, merely because she wore a happy face. What Father Peter would have done if he had lived no one would ever know. He might have dismissed her; even so the injustice would have been slight compared with what had happened to her; and the memory of the wrong that had been done to her put such a pain into his heart that he seemed to lose sight of everything, till a fish leaping in the languid lake awoke him, and he walked on, absorbed in the memory of his mistake, his thoughts swinging back to the day he had met her on the roadside, and to the events that succeeded their meeting. Father Peter was taken ill, two days after he was dead, before the end of the week he was in his coffin; and it was left to him to turn Nora Glynn out of the parish. No doubt other men had committed faults as grave as his; but they had the strength to leave the matter in the hands of God, to say: 'I can do nothing, I must put myself in the hands of God; let him judge. He is all wise.' He hadn't their force of character. He believed as firmly as they did, but, for some reason which he couldn't explain to himself, he was unable to leave the matter in God's hands, and was always thinking how he could get news of her. If it hadn't been for that woman, for that detestable Mrs. O'Mara, who was the cause of so much evil-speaking in the parish!... And with his heart full of hatred so black that it surprised him, he asked himself if he could forgive that woman. God might, he couldn't. And he fell to thinking how Mrs. O'Mara had long been a curse upon the parish. Father Peter was more than once compelled to speak about her from the altar, and to make plain that the stories she set going were untrue. Father Peter had warned him, but warnings are no good; he had listened to her convinced at the time that it was wrong and foolish to listen to scandalmongers, but unable to resist that beguiling tongue, for Mrs. O'Mara had a beguiling tongue--fool that he was, that he had been. There was no use going over the wretched story again; he was weary of going over it, and he tried to put it out of his mind. But it wouldn't be put out of his mind, and in spite of himself he began to recall the events of the fatal day. He had been out all the morning, walking about with an engineer who was sent down by the Board of Works to consider the possibility of building the bridge, and had just come in to rest. Catherine had brought him a cup of tea; he was sitting by the window, almost too tired to drink it. The door was flung open. If Catherine had only asked him if he were at home to visitors, he would have said he wasn't at home to Mrs. O'Mara, but he wasn't asked; the door was flung open, and he found himself face to face with the parish magpie. And before he could bless himself she began to talk to him about the bridge, saying that she knew all about the engineer, how he had gotten his appointment, and what his qualifications were. It is easy to say one shouldn't listen to such gossips, but it is hard to shut one's ears or to let what one hears with one ear out the other ear, for she might be bringing him information that might be of use to him. So he listened, and when the bridge, and the advantage of it, had been discussed, she told him she had been staying at the convent. She had tales to tell about all the nuns and about all the pupils. She told him that half the Catholic families in Ireland had promised to send their daughters to Tinnick if Eliza succeeded in finding somebody who could teach music and singing. But Eliza didn't think there was anyone in the country qualified for the post but Nora Glynn. If Mrs. O'Mara could be believed, Eliza said that she could offer Nora Glynn more money than she was earning in Garranard. Until then he had only half listened to Mrs. O'Mara's chatter, for he disliked the woman--her chatter amused him only as the chatter of a bird might; but when he heard that his sister was trying to get his schoolmistress away from him he had flared up. 'Oh, but I don't think that your schoolmistress would suit a convent school. I shouldn't like my daughter--' 'What do you mean?' Her face changed expression, and in her nasty mincing manner she began to throw out hints that Nora Glynn would not suit the nuns. He could see that she was concealing something--there was something at the back of her mind. Women of her sort want to be persuaded; their bits of scandal must be dragged from them by force; they are the unwilling victims who would say nothing if they could help it. She had said enough to oblige him to ask her to speak out, and she began to throw out hints about a man whom Nora used to meet on the hillside (she wouldn't give the man's name, she was too clever for that). She would only say that Nora had been seen on the hillside walking in lonely places with a man. Truly a detestable woman! His thoughts strayed from her for a moment, for it gave him pleasure to recollect that he had defended his schoolmistress. Didn't he say: 'Now, then, Mrs. O'Mara, if you have anything definite to say, say it, but I won't listen to vague charges.' 'Charges--who is making charges?' she asked, and he had unfortunately called her a liar. In the middle of the row she dropped a phrase: 'Anyhow, her appearance is against her.' And it was true that Nora Glynn's appearance had changed in the last few months. Seeing that her words had a certain effect, Mrs. O'Mara quieted down; and while he stood wondering if it could possibly be true that Nora had deceived them, that she had been living in sin all these months, he suddenly heard Mrs. O'Mara saying that he was lacking in experience--which was quite true, but her way of saying it had roused the devil in him. Who was she that she should come telling him that he lacked experience? To be sure, he wasn't an old midwife, and that's what Mrs. O'Mara looked like, sitting before him. He had lost control of himself, saying, 'Now, will you get out of this house, you old scandalmonger, or I'll take you by the shoulders and put you out!' And he had thrown the front-door open. What a look she gave him as she passed out! At that moment the clock struck three and he remembered suddenly that the children were coming out of school at that moment. It would have been better if he had waited. But he couldn't wait: he'd have gone mad if he had waited; and he recalled how he had jumped into the road, squeezed through the stile, and run across the field. 'Why all this hurry?' he had asked himself. She was locking up the desks; the children went by him, curtseying, and he had to wait till the last one was past the door. Nora must have guessed his errand, for her face noticeably hardened. 'I've seen Mrs. O'Mara,' he blurted out, 'and she tells me that you've been seen walking with some man on the hillside in lonely places.... Don't deny it if it is true.' 'I'm not going to deny anything that is true.' How brave she was! Her courage attracted him and softened his heart. But everything was true, alas! Everything. She told him that her plans were to steal out of the parish without saying a word to anyone, for she was determined not to disgrace him or the parish. She was thinking of him in all her trouble, and everything might have ended well if he had not asked her who the man was. She would not say, nor give any reasons why she wouldn't do so. Only this, that if the man had deserted her she didn't want anybody to bring him back, if he could be brought back; if the man were dead it were better to say nothing about him. 'But if it were his fault?' 'I don't see that that would make any difference.' They went out of the school-house talking in quite a friendly way. There was a little drizzle in the air, and, opening her umbrella, she said, 'I'm afraid you'll get wet.' 'Get wet, get wet! what matter?' he had answered impatiently, for the remark annoyed him. By the hawthorn-bush he began to tell her again that it would relieve his mind to know who the man was. She tried to get away from him, but he wouldn't let her go; and catching her by the arm he besought her, saying that it would relieve his mind. How many times had he said that? But he wasn't able to persuade her, notwithstanding his insistence that as a priest of the parish he had a right to know. No doubt she had some very deep reason for keeping her secret, or perhaps his authoritative manner was the cause of her silence. However this might be, any words would have been better than 'it would relieve my mind to know who the man was.' 'Stupid, stupid, stupid!' he muttered to himself, and he wandered from the cart-track into the wood. It was impossible to say now why he had wished to press her secret from her. It would be unpleasant for him, as priest of the parish, to know that the man was living in the parish; but it would be still more unpleasant if he knew who the man was. Nora's seducer could be none other than one of the young soldiers who had taken the fishing-lodge at the head of the lake. Mrs. O'Mara had hinted that Nora had been seen with one of them on the hill, and he thought how on a day like this she might have been led away among the ferns. At that moment there came out of the thicket a floating ball of thistle-down. 'It bloweth where it listeth,' he said. 'Soldier or shepherd, what matter now she is gone?' and rising to his feet and coming down the sloping lawn, overflowing with the shade of the larches, he climbed through the hawthorns growing out of a crumbled wall, and once at the edge of the lake, he stood waiting for nothing seemingly but to hear the tiresome clanking call of the stonechat, and he compared its reiterated call with the words 'atonement,' 'forgiveness,' 'death,' 'calamity,' words always clanking in his heart, for she might be lying at the bottom of the lake, and some day a white phantom would rise from the water and claim him. His thoughts broke away, and he re-lived in memory the very agony of mind he had endured when he went home after her admission that she was with child. All that night, all next day, and for how many days? Would the time ever come when he could think of her without a pain in his heart? It is said that time brings forgetfulness. Does it? On Saturday morning he had sat at his window, asking himself if he should go down to see her or if he should send for her. There were confessions in the afternoon, and expecting that she would come to confess to him, he had not sent for her. One never knows; perhaps it was her absence from confession that had angered him. His temper took a different turn that evening. All night he had lain awake; he must have been a little mad that night, for he could only think of the loss of a soul to God, and of God's love of chastity. All night long he had repeated with variations that it were better that all which our eyes see--this earth and the stars that are in being--should perish utterly, be crushed into dust, rather than a mortal sin should be committed; in an extraordinary lucidity of mind he continued to ponder on God's anger and his own responsibility towards God, and feeling all the while that there are times when we lose control of our minds, when we are a little mad. He foresaw his danger, but he could not do else than rise from his bed and begin to prepare his sermon, for he had to preach, and he could only preach on chastity and the displeasure sins against chastity cause to God. He could think but of this one thing, the displeasure God must feel against Nora and the seducer who had robbed her of the virtue God prized most in her. He must have said things that he would not have said at any other time. His brain was on fire that morning, and words rose to his lips--he knew not whence nor how they came, and he had no idea now of what he had said. He only knew that she left the church during his sermon; at what moment he did not know, nor did he know that she had left the parish till next day, when the children came up to tell him there was no schoolmistress. And from that day to this no news of her, nor any way of getting news of her. His thoughts went to the hawthorn-trees, for he could not think of her any more for the moment, and it relieved his mind to examine the green pips that were beginning to appear among the leaves. 'The hawthorns will be in flower in another week,' he said; and he began to wonder at the beautiful order of the spring. The pear and the cherry were the first; these were followed by the apple, and after the apple came the lilac, the chestnut, and the laburnum. The forest trees, too, had their order. The ash was still leafless, but it was shedding its catkins, and in another fifteen days its light foliage would be dancing in the breeze. The oak was last of all. At that moment a swallow flitted from stone to stone, too tired to fly far, and he wondered whence it had come. A cuckoo called from a distant hill; it, too, had been away and had come back. His eyes dwelt on the lake, refined and wistful, with reflections of islands and reeds, mysteriously still. Rose-coloured clouds descended, revealing many new and beautiful mountain forms, every pass and every crest distinguishable. It was the hour when the cormorants come home to roost, and he saw three black specks flying low about the glittering surface; rising from the water, they alighted with a flutter of wings on the corner wall of what remained of Castle Hag, 'and they will sleep there till morning,' he said, as he toiled up a little path, twisting through ferns and thorn-bushes. At the top of the hill was his house, the house Father Peter had built. Its appearance displeased him, and he stood for a long time watching the evening darkening, and the yacht being towed home, her sails lowered, the sailors in the rowing-boat. 'They will be well tired before they get her back to Tinnick;' and he turned and entered his house abruptly. III Catherine's curiosity was a worry. As if he knew why he hadn't come home to his dinner! If she'd just finish putting the plates on the table and leave him. Of course, there had been callers. One man, the man he especially wished to see, had driven ten miles to see him. It was most unfortunate, but it couldn't be helped; he had felt that morning that he couldn't stay indoors--the business of the parish had somehow got upon his nerves, but not because he had been working hard. He had done but little work since she left the parish. Now was that story going to begin again? If it did, he should go out of his mind; and he looked round the room, thinking how a lonely evening breeds thoughts of discontent. Most of the furniture in the room was Father Peter's. Father Peter had left his curate his furniture, but the pretty mahogany bookcase and the engravings upon the walls were Father Oliver's own taste; he had bought them at an auction, and there were times when these purchases pleased him. But now he was thinking that Father Peter must have known to whom the parish would go at his death, for he could not have meant all his furniture to be taken out of the house--'there would be no room for it in Bridget Clery's cottage;' and Father Oliver sat thinking of the evenings he used to spend with Father Peter. How often during those evenings Father Peter must have said to himself, 'One day, Gogarty, you will be sitting in my chair and sleeping in my bed.' And Father Oliver pondered on his affection for the dead man. There were no differences of opinion, only one--the neglected garden at the back of the house; and, smiling sadly, Father Oliver remembered how he used to reprove the parish priest. 'I'm afraid I'm too big and too fat and too fond of my pipe and my glass of whisky to care much about carnations. But if you get the parish when I'm gone, I'm sure you'll grow some beauties, and you'll put a bunch on my grave sometimes, Gogarty.' The very ring of the dead man's voice seemed to sound through the lonely room, and, sitting in Father Peter's chair, with the light of Father Peter's lamp shining on his face and hand, Father Oliver's thoughts flowed on. It seemed to him that he had not understood and appreciated Father Peter's kindliness, and he recalled his perfect good nature. 'Death reveals many things to us,' he said; and he lifted his head to listen, for the silence in the house and about the house reminded him of the silence of the dead, and he began to consider what his own span of life might be. He might live as long as Father Peter (Father Peter was fifty-five when he died); if so, twenty-one years of existence by the lake's side awaited him, and these years seemed to him empty like a desert--yes, and as sterile. 'Twenty-one years wondering what became of her, and every evening like this evening--the same loneliness.' He sat watching the hands of his clock, and a peaceful meditation about a certain carnation that unfortunately burst its calyx was interrupted by a sudden thought. Whence the thought came he could not tell, nor what had put it into his head, but it had occurred to him suddenly that 'if Father Peter had lived a few weeks longer he would have found means of exchanging Nora Glynn for another schoolmistress, more suitable to the requirements of the parish. If Father Peter had lived he would have done her a grievous wrong. He wouldn't have allowed her to suffer, but he would have done her a wrong all the same.' And it were better that a man should meet his death than he should do a wrong to another. But he wasn't contemplating his own death nor Nora's when this end to the difficulty occurred to him. Our inherent hypocrisy is so great that it is difficult to know what one does think. He surely did not think it well that Father Peter had died, his friend, his benefactor, the man in whose house he was living? Of course not. Then it was strange he could not keep the thought out of his mind that Father Peter's death had saved the parish from a great scandal, for if Nora had been dismissed he might have found himself obliged to leave the parish. Again he turned on himself and asked how such thoughts could come into his mind. True, the coming of a thought into the consciousness is often unexpected, but if the thought were not latent in the mind, it would not arise out of the mind; and if Father Peter knew the base thoughts he indulged in--yes, indulged in, for he could not put them quite out of his mind--he feared very much that the gift of all this furniture might--No, he was judging Father Peter ill: Father Peter was incapable of a mean regret. But who was he, he'd like to be told, that he should set himself up as Father Peter's judge? The evil he had foreseen had happened. If Father Peter felt that Nora Glynn was not the kind of schoolmistress the parish required, should he not send her away? The need of the parish, of the many, before the one. Moreover, Father Peter was under no obligation whatsoever to Nora Glynn. She had been sent down by the School Board subject to his approval. 'But my case is quite different. I chose her; I decided that she was to remain.' And he asked himself if his decision had come about gradually. No, he had never hesitated, but dismissed Father Peter's prejudices as unworthy.... The church needed some good music. But did he think of the church? Hardly at all. His first consideration was his personal pleasure, and he wished that the best choir in the diocese should be in his church, and Nora Glynn enabled him to gratify his vanity. He made her his friend, taking pleasure in her smiles, and in the fact that he had only to express a desire for it to be fulfilled. After school, tired though she might be, she was always willing to meet him in the church for choir practice. She would herself propose to decorate the altar for feast-days. How many times had they walked round the garden together gathering flowers for the altar! And it was strange that she could decorate so well without knowing much about flowers or having much natural taste for flowers. Feeling he was doing her an injustice, he admitted that she had made much progress under his guidance in her knowledge of flowers. 'But how did he treat her in the end, despite all her kindnesses? Shamefully, shamefully, shamefully!' and getting up from his chair Father Oliver walked across the room, and when he turned he drew his hand across his eyes. The clock struck twelve. 'I shall be awake at dawn,' he said, 'with all this story running in my head,' and he stopped on the threshold of his bedroom, frightened at the sight of his bed. But he had reached the stint of his sufferings, and that morning lay awake, hardly annoyed at all by the black-birds' whistling, contentedly going over the mistakes he had made--a little surprised, however, that the remembrance of them did not cause him more pain. At last he fell asleep, and when his housekeeper knocked at his door and he heard her saying that it was past eight, he leaped out of bed cheerily, and sang a stave of song as he shaved himself, gashing his chin, however, for he could not keep his attention fixed on his chin, but must peep over the top of the glass, whence he could see his garden, and think how next year he would contrive a better arrangement of colour. It was difficult to stop the bleeding, and he knew that Catherine would grumble at the state he left the towels in (he should not have used his bath-towel); but these were minor matters. He was happier than he had been for many a day. The sight of strawberries on his breakfast-table pleased him; the man who drove ten miles to see him yesterday called, and he shared his strawberries with him in abundant spirit. The sunlight was exciting, the lake called him, and it was pleasant to stride along, talking of the bridge (at last there seemed some prospect of getting one). The intelligence of this new inspector filled him with hope, and he expatiated in the advantages of the bridge and many other things. Nor did his humour seem to depend entirely on the companionship of his visitor. It endured long after his visitor had left him, and very soon he began to think that his desire to go away for a long holiday was a passing indisposition of mind rather than a need. His holiday could be postponed to the end of the year; there would be more leisure then, and he would be better able to enjoy his holiday than he would be now. His changing mind interested him, and he watched it like a vane, unable to understand how it was that, notwithstanding his restlessness, he could not bring himself to go away. Something seemed to keep him back, and he was not certain that the reason he stayed was because the Government had not yet sent a formal promise to build the bridge. He could think of no other reason for delaying in Garranard; he certainly wanted change. And then Nora's name came into his mind, and he meditated for a moment, seeing the colour of her hair and the vanishing expression of her eyes. Sometimes he could see her hand, the very texture of its skin, and the line of the thumb and the forefinger. A cat had once scratched her hand, and she had told him about it. That was about two months before Mrs. O'Mara had come to tell him that shocking story, two months before he had gone down to his church and spoken about Nora in such a way that she had gone out of the parish. But was he going to begin the story over again? He picked up a book, but did not read many sentences before he was once more asking himself if she had gone down to the lake, and if it were her spell that kept him in Garranard. 'The wretchedness of it all,' he cried, and fell to thinking that Nora's spirit haunted the lake, and that his punishment was to be kept a prisoner always. His imagination ran riot. Perhaps he would have to seek her out, follow her all over the world, a sort of Wandering Jew, trying to make atonement, and would never get any rest until this atonement was made. And the wrong that he had done her seemed the only reality. It was his elbow companion in the evening as he sat smoking his pipe, and every morning he stood at the end of a sandy spit seeing nothing, hearing nothing but her. One day he was startled by a footstep, and turned expecting to see Nora. But it was only Christy, the boy who worked in his garden. 'Your reverence, the postman overlooked this letter in the morning. It was stuck at the bottom of the bag. He hopes the delay won't make any difference.' _From Father O'Grady to Father Oliver Gogarty._ '_June_ 1, 19--. 'DEAR FATHER GOGARTY, 'I am writing to ask you if you know anything about a young woman called Nora Glynn. She tells me that she was schoolmistress in your parish and organist in your church, and that you thought very highly of her until one day a tale-bearer, Mrs. O'Mara by name, went to your house and told you that your schoolmistress was going to have a baby. It appears that at first you refused to believe her, and that you ran down to the school to ask Miss Glynn herself if the story you had heard about her was a true one. She admitted it, but on her refusal to tell you who was the father of the child you lost your temper; and the following Sunday you alluded to her so plainly in your sermon about chastity that there was nothing for her but to leave the parish. 'There is no reason why I should disbelieve Miss Glynn's story; I am an Irish priest like yourself, sir. I have worked in London among the poor for forty years, and Miss Glynn's story is, to my certain knowledge, not an uncommon one; it is, I am sorry to say, most probable; it is what would happen to any schoolmistress in Ireland in similar circumstances. The ordinary course is to find out the man and to force him to marry the girl; if this fails, to drive the woman out of the parish, it being better to sacrifice one affected sheep than that the whole flock should be contaminated. I am an old man; Miss Glynn tells me that you are a young man. I can therefore speak quite frankly. I believe the practice to which I have alluded is inhuman and unchristian, and has brought about the ruin of many an Irish girl. I have been able to rescue some from the streets, and, touched by their stories, I have written frequently to the priest of the parish pointing out to him that his responsibility is not merely local, and does not end as soon as the woman has passed the boundary of his parish. I would ask you what you think your feelings would be if I were writing to you now to tell you that, after some months of degraded life, Miss Glynn had thrown herself from one of the bridges into the river? That might very well have been the story I had to write to you; fortunately for you, it is another story. 'Miss Glynn is a woman of strong character, and does not give way easily; her strength of will has enabled her to succeed where another woman might have failed. She is now living with one of my parishioners, a Mrs. Dent, of 24, Harold Street, who has taken a great liking to her, and helped her through her most trying time, when she had very little money and was alone and friendless in London. Mrs. Dent recommended her to some people in the country who would look after her child. She allowed her to pay her rent by giving lessons to her daughter on the piano. One thing led to another; the lady who lived on the drawing-room floor took lessons, and Miss Glynn is earning now, on an average, thirty shillings per week, which little income will be increased if I can appoint her to the post of organist in my church, my organist having been obliged to leave me on account of her health. It was while talking to Mrs. Dent on this very subject that I first heard Miss Glynn's name mentioned. 'Mrs. Dent was enthusiastic about her, but I could see that she knew little about her lodger's antecedents, except that she came from Ireland. She was anxious that I should engage her at once, declaring that I could find no one like her, and she asked me to see her that evening. I went, and the young woman impressed me very favourably. She came to my church and played for me. I could see that she was an excellent musician, and there seemed to be no reason why I should not engage her. I should probably have done so without asking any further questions--for I do not care to inquire too closely into a woman's past, once I am satisfied that she wishes to lead an honourable life--but Miss Glynn volunteered to tell me what her past had been, saying it was better I should hear it from her than from another. When she had told me her sad story, I reminded her of the anxiety that her disappearance from the parish would cause you. She shook her head, saying you did not care what might happen to her. I assured her that such a thing was not the case, and begged of her to allow me to write to you; but I did not obtain her consent until she began to see that if she withheld it any longer we might think she was concealing some important fact. Moreover, I impressed upon her that it was right that I should hear your story, not because I disbelieved hers--I take it for granted the facts are correctly stated--but in the event of your being able to say something which would put a different complexion upon them. 'Yours very sincerely, 'MICHAEL O'GRADY.' IV After reading Father O'Grady's letter he looked round, fearing lest someone should speak to him. Christy was already some distance away; there was nobody else in sight; and feeling he was safe from interruption, he went towards the wood, thinking of the good priest who had saved her (in saving her Father O'Grady had saved him), and of the waste of despair into which he would have drifted certainly if the news had been that she had killed herself. He stood appalled, looking into the green wood, aware of the mysterious life in the branches; and then lay down to watch the insect life among the grass--a beetle pursuing its little or great destiny. But he was too exalted to remain lying down; the wood seemed to beckon him, and he asked if the madness of the woods had overtaken him. Further on he came upon a chorus of finches singing in some hawthorn-trees, and in Derrinrush he stopped to listen to the silence that had suddenly fallen. A shadow floated by; he looked up: a hawk was passing overhead, ready to attack rat or mouse moving among the young birches and firs that were springing up in the clearance. The light was violent, and the priest shaded his eyes. His feet sank in sand, he tripped over tufts of rough grass, and was glad to get out of this part of the wood into the shade of large trees. Trees always interested him, and he began to think of their great roots seeking the darkness, and of their branches lifting themselves in love towards the light. He and these trees were one, for there is but one life, one mother, one elemental substance out of which all has come. That was it, and his thoughts paused. Only in union is there happiness, and for many weary months he had been isolated, thrown out; but to-day he had been drawn suddenly into the general life, he had become again part of the general harmony, and that was why he was so happy. No better explanation was forthcoming, and he did not think that a better one was required--at least, not to-day. He noticed with pleasure that he no longer tried to pass behind a thicket nor into one when he met poor wood-gatherers bent under their heavy loads. He even stopped to speak to a woman out with her children; the three were breaking sticks across their knees, and he encouraged them to talk to him. But without his being aware of it, his thoughts hearkened back, and when it came to his turn to answer he could not answer. He had been thinking of Nora, and, ashamed of his absentmindedness, he left them tying up their bundles and went towards the shore, stopping many times to admire the pale arch of evening sky with never a wind in it, nor any sound but the cries of swallows in full pursuit. 'A rememberable evening,' he said, and there was such a lightness in his feet that he believed, or very nearly, that there were wings on his shoulders which he only had to open to float away whither he might wish to go. His brain overflowed with thankfulness and dreams of her forgiveness, and at midnight he sat in his study still thinking, still immersed in his happiness; and hearing moths flying about the burning lamp he rescued one for sheer love of her, and later in the evening the illusion of her presence was so intense that he started up from his chair and looked round for her. Had he not felt her breath upon his cheek? Her very perfume had floated past! There ... it had gone by again! No, it was not she--only the syringa breathing in the window. _From Father Oliver Gogarty to Father O'Grady._ 'GARRANARD, BOHOLA, '_June_ 2, 19--. 'DEAR FATHER O'GRADY, 'Miss Glynn's disappearance caused me, as you rightly surmise, the gravest anxiety, and it is no exaggeration to say that whenever her name was mentioned, my tongue seemed to thicken and I could not speak. 'I wish I could find words to thank you for what you have done. I am still under the influence of the emotion that your letter caused me, and can only say that Miss Glynn has told her story truthfully. As to your reproofs, I accept them, they are merited; and I thank you for your kind advice. I am glad that it comes from an Irishman, and I would give much to take you by the hand and to thank you again and again.' Getting up, he walked out of the room, feeling in a way that a calmer and more judicious letter would be preferable. But he must answer Father O'Grady, and at once; the letter would have to go. And in this resolve he walked out of his house into his garden, and stood there wondering at the flower-life growing so peacefully, free from pain. The tall Madonna lilies flourished like sculpture about the porch, and he admired their tall stems and leaves and carven blossoms, thinking how they would die without strife, without complaint. The briar filled the air with a sweet, apple-like smell; and far away the lake shone in the moonlight, just as it had a thousand years ago when the raiders returned to their fortresses pursued by enemies. He could just distinguish Castle Island, and he wondered what this lake reminded him of: it wound in and out of gray shores and headlands, fading into dim pearl-coloured distance, and he compared it to a shroud, and then to a ghost, but neither comparison pleased him. It was like something, but the image he sought eluded him. At last he remembered how in a dream he had seen Nora carried from the lake; and now, standing among the scent of the flowers, he said: 'She has always been associated with the lake in my thoughts, yet she escaped the lake. Every man,' he continued, 'has a lake in his heart.' He had not sought the phrase, it had come suddenly into his mind. Yes, 'Every man has a lake in his heart,' he repeated, and returned to the house like one dazed, to sit stupefied until his thoughts took fire again, and going to his writing-table he drew a sheet of paper towards him, feeling that he must write to Nora. At last he picked up the pen. _From Father Oliver Gogarty to Miss Nora Glynn._ 'GAHRANARD, BOHOLA, '_June_ 2, 19--. 'DEAR MISS GLYNN, 'I must write to thank you for your kindness in asking Father O'Grady to send me a letter. It appears that you were afraid I might be anxious about you, and I have been very anxious. I have suffered a great deal since you left, and it is a great relief to my mind to hear that you are safe and well. I can understand how loath you were to allow Father O'Grady to write to me; he doesn't say in his letter that you have forgiven me, but I hope that your permission to him to relieve my anxiety by a letter implies your forgiveness. Father O'Grady writes very kindly; it appears that everybody is kind except me. But I am thinking of myself again, of the ruin that it would have been if any of the terrible things that have happened to others had happened to you. But I cannot think of these things now; I am happy in thinking that you are safe.' The evening post was lost, but if he were to walk to Bohola he would catch the morning mail, and his letter would be in her hands the day after to-morrow. It was just three miles to Bohola, and the walk there, he thought, would calm the extraordinary spiritual elation that news of Nora had kindled in his brain. The darkness of the night and the almost round moon high in the southern horizon suited his mood. Once he was startled by a faint sigh coming from a horse looking over a hedge, and the hedgerows were full of mysterious little cracklings. Something white ran across the road. 'The white belly of a stoat,' he thought; and he walked on, wondering what its quest might be. The road led him through a heavy wood, and when he came out at the other end he stopped to gaze at the stars, for already a grayness seemed to have come into the night. The road dipped and turned, twisting through gray fields full of furze-bushes, leading to a great hill, on the other side of which was Bohola. When he entered the village he wondered at the stillness of its street. 'The dawn is like white ashes,' he said, as he dropped his letters into the box; and he was glad to get away from the shadowy houses into the country road. The daisies and the dandelions were still tightly shut, and in the hedgerow a half-awakened chaffinch hopped from twig to twig, too sleepy to chirrup. A streak of green appeared in the east, and the death-like stillness was broken by cock-crows. He could hear them far away in the country and close by, and when he entered his village a little bantam walked up the road shrilling and clapping his wings, advancing to the fight. The priest admired his courage, and allowed him to peck at his knees. Close by Tom Mulhare's dorking was crowing hoarsely, 'A hoarse bass,' said the priest, and at the end of the village he heard a bird crowing an octave higher, and from the direction he guessed it must be Catherine Murphy's bird. Another cock, and then another. He listened, judging their voices to range over nearly three octaves. The morning was so pure, the air so delicious, and its touch so exquisite on the cheek, that he could not bear even to think of a close bedroom and the heat of a feather bed. He went into his garden, and walking up and down he appreciated the beauty of every flower, none seeming to him as beautiful as the anemones, and he thought of Nora Glynn living in a grimy London lodging, whereas he was here amid many flowers--anemones blue, scarlet, and purple, their heads bent down on their stalks. New ones were pushing up to replace the ones that had blown and scattered the evening before. The gentians were not yet open, and he thought how they would look in a few hours--bluer than the mid-day sky. He passed through the wicket, and stood on the hill-top watching the mists sinking lower. The dawn light strengthened--the sky filled with pale tints of emerald, mauve, and rose. A cormorant opened his wings and flew down the lake, his fellows followed soon after; but Father Oliver stood on the hill-top waiting for daybreak. At last a red ball appeared behind a reddish cloud; its colour changed to the colour of flame, paled again, and at four flared up like a rose-coloured balloon. The day had begun, and he turned towards his house. But he couldn't sleep; the house was repellent, and he waited among the thorn-bushes and ferns. Of what use to lie in one's bed when sleep is far and will not be beckoned? and his brain being clear as day he went away to the woods and watersides, saying: 'Life is orientated like a temple; there are in every existence days when life streams down the nave, striking the forehead of the God.' And during his long life Father Oliver always looked back upon the morning when he invaded the pantry and cut large slices of bread, taking the butter out of the old red crock, with a little happy sadness in his heart. He wrapped the slices in paper and wandered without thought for whither he was going, watching the birds in the branches, interested in everything. He was fortunate enough to catch sight of an otter asleep on a rock, and towards evening he came upon a wild-duck's nest in the sedge; many of the ducklings had broken their shells; these struggled after the duck; but there were two prisoners, two that could not escape from their shells, and, seeing their lives would be lost if he did not come to their aid, he picked the shells away and took them to the water's edge, for he had heard Catherine say that one could almost see little ducks growing when they had had a drop of water. The old duck swam about uttering a whistling sound, her cry that her ducklings were to join her. And thinking of the lives he had saved, he felt a sudden regret that he had not come upon the nest earlier, when Christy brought him Father O'Grady's letter. The yacht appeared between the islands, her sails filled with wind, and he began to dream how she might cast anchor outside the reeds. A sailor might draw a pinnace alongside, and he imagined a woman being helped into it and rowed to the landing-place. But the yacht did not cast anchor; her helm was put up, her boom went over, and she went away on another tack. He was glad of his dream, though it lasted but a moment, and when he looked up a great gull was watching him. The bird had come so near that he could see the small round head and the black eyes; as soon as he stirred it wheeled and floated away. Many other little adventures happened before the day ended. A rabbit crawled by him screaming, for he could run no longer, and lay waiting for the weasel that appeared out of the furze. What was to be done? Save it and let the weasel go supperless? At eight the moon rose over Tinnick, and it was a great sight to see the yellow mass rising above the faint shores; and while he stood watching the moon an idea occurred to him that held him breathless. His sister had written to him some days ago asking if he could recommend a music-mistress to her. It was through his sister that he might get Nora back to her country, and it was through his sister that he might make atonement for the wrong he had done. The letter must be carefully worded, for nuns understood so little, so estranged were they from the world. As for his sister Mary, she would not understand at all--she would oppose him; but Eliza was a practical woman, and he had confidence in her good sense. He entered the house, and, waving Catherine aside, who reminded him that he had had nothing to eat since his dinner the day before, he went to his writing-table and began his letter. _From Father Oliver Gogarty to the Mother Abbess, Tinnick Convent._ 'GARRANARD, BOHOLA, '_June 3_, 19--. 'MY DEAR ELIZA, 'I hope you will forgive me for having delayed so long to answer your letter, but I could not think at the moment of anybody whom I could recommend as music-mistress, and I laid the letter aside, hoping that an idea would come to me. Well, an idea has come to me. I do not think you will find--' The priest stopped, and after thinking a while he laid down his pen and got up. The sentence he had been about to write was, 'I do not think you will find anyone better than Miss Glynn.' But he would have to send Father O'Grady's letter to his sister, and even with Father O'Grady's letter and all that he might add of an explanation, she would hardly be able to understand; and Eliza might show the letter to Mary, who was prejudiced. Father Oliver walked up and down the room thinking.... A personal interview would be better than the letter, for in a personal interview he would be able to answer his sister's objections, and instead of the long letter he had intended to write he wrote a short note, adding that he had not seen them for a long time, and would drive over to-morrow afternoon. V The southern road was the shorter, but he wanted to see Moran and to hear when he proposed to begin to roof the abbey. Father Oliver thought, moreover, that he would like to see the abbey for a last time in its green mantle of centuries. The distance was much the same--a couple of miles shorter by the southern road, no doubt, but what are a couple of miles to an old roadster? Moreover, the horse would rest in Jimmy Maguire's stable whilst he and Moran rambled about the ruin. An hour's rest would compensate the horse for the two extra miles. He tapped the glass; there was no danger of rain. For thirty days there had been no change--only a few showers, just enough to keep the country going; and he fell asleep thinking of the drive round the lake from Garranard to Tinnick in the sunlight and from Tinnick to Garranard in the moonlight. He was out of bed an hour before his usual time, calling to Catherine for hot water. His shaving, always disagreeable, sometimes painful, was a joyous little labour on this day. Stropping his razor, he sang from sheer joy of living. Catherine had never seen him spring on the car with so light a step. And away went the old gray pulling at the bridle, little thinking of the twenty-five Irish miles that lay before him. The day was the same as yesterday, the meadows drying up for want of rain; and there was a thirsty chirruping of small birds in the hedgerows. Everywhere he saw rooks gaping on the low walls that divided the fields. The farmers were complaining; but they were always complaining--everyone was complaining. He had complained of the dilatoriness of the Board of Works, and now for the first time in his life he sympathized a little with the Board. If it had built the bridge he would not be enjoying this long drive; it would be built by-and-by; he couldn't feel as if he wished to be robbed of one half-hour of the long day in front of him; and he liked to think it would not end for him till nine o'clock. 'These summer days are endless,' he said. After passing the strait the lake widened out. On the side the priest was driving the shore was empty and barren. On the other side there were pleasant woods and interspaces and castles. Castle Carra appeared, a great ivy-grown ruin showing among thorn-bushes and ash-trees, at the end of a headland. In bygone times the castle must have extended to the water's edge, for on every side fragments of arches and old walls were discovered hidden away in the thickets. Father Oliver knew the headland well and every part of the old fortress. Many a time he had climbed up the bare wall of the banqueting-hall to where a breach revealed a secret staircase built between the walls, and followed the staircase to a long straight passage, and down another staircase, in the hope of finding matchlock pistols. Many a time he had wandered in the dungeons, and listened to old stories of oubliettes. The moat which once cut the neck of land was now dry and overgrown; the gateway remained, but it was sinking--the earth claimed it. There were the ruins of a great house a little way inland, to which no doubt the descendants of the chieftain retired on the decline of brigandage; and the rough hunting life of its semi-chieftains was figured by the gigantic stone fox on a pillar in the middle of the courtyard and the great hounds on either side of the gateway. Castle Carra must have been the strongest castle in the district of Tyrawley, and it was built maybe by the Welsh who invaded Ireland in the thirteenth century, perhaps by William Barrett himself, who built certainl y the castle on the island opposite to Father Oliver's house. William Fion (i.e., the Fair) Barrett landed somewhere on the west coast, and no doubt came up through the great gaps between Slieve Cairn and Slieve Louan--it was not likely that he la nded on the east coast; he could hardly have marched his horde across Ireland--and Father Oliver imagined the Welshmen standing on the very hill on which his house now stood, and Fion telling his followers to build a castle on each island. Patsy Murphy, w ho knew more about the history of the country than anybody, thought that Castle Carra was of later date, and spoke of the Stantons, a fierce tribe. Over yonder was the famous causeway, and the gross tragedy that was enacted there he yesterday heard from the wood-cutter, William's party of Welshmen were followed by other Welshmen--the Cusacks, the Petits, and the Brownes; and these in time fell out with the Barretts, and a great battle fought, the Battle of Moyne, in 1281, in which William Barrett was killed. But in spite of their defeat, the Barretts held the upper hand of the country for many a long year, and the priest began to smile, thinking of the odd story the old woodman had told him about the Barretts' steward, Sgnorach bhuid bhearrtha, 'saving your reverence's presence,' the old man said, and, unable to translate the words into English fit for the priest's ears, he explained that they meant a glutton and a lewd fellow. The Barretts sent Sgnorach bhuid bhearrtha to collect rents from the Lynotts, another group of Welshmen, but the Lynotts killed him and threw his body into a well, called ever afterwards Tobar na Sgornaighe (the Well of the Glutton), near the townland of Moygawnagh, Barony of Tyrawley. To avenge the murder of their steward, the Barretts assembled an armed force, and, having defeated the Lynotts and captured many of them, they offered their prisoners two forms of mutilation: they were either to be blinded or castrated. After taking counsel with their wise men, the Lynotts chose blindness; for blind men could have sons, and these would doubtless one day revenge the humiliation that was being passed upon them. A horrible story it was, for when their eyes were thrust out with needles they were led to a causeway, and those who crossed the stepping-stones without stumbling were taken back; and the priest thought of the assembled horde laughing as the poor blind men fell into the water. The story rambled on, the Lynotts plotting how they could be revenged on the Barretts, telling lamely but telling how the Lynotts, in the course of generations, came into their revenge. 'A badly told story,' said the priest, 'with one good incident in it,' and, instead of trying to remember how victory came to the Lynotts, Father Oli ver's eyes strayed over the landscape, taking pleasure in the play of light along sides and crests of the hills. The road followed the shore of the lake, sometimes turning inland to avoid a hill or a bit of bog, but returning back again to the shore, finding its way through the fields, if they could be called fields--a little grass and some hazel-bushes growing here and there between the rocks. Under a rocky headland, lying within embaying shores, was Church Island, some seven or eight acres, a handsome wooded island, the largest in the lake, with the ruins of a church hidden among the tall trees, only an arch of it remaining, but the paved path leading from the church to the hermit's cell could be followed. The hermit who used this paved path fourteen hundred years ago was a poet; and Father Oliver knew that Marban loved 'the shieling that no one knew save his God, the ash-tree on the hither side, the hazel-bush beyond it, its lintel of honeysuckle, the wood shedding its mast upon fat swine;' and on this sweet day he found it pleasanter to think of Ireland's hermits than of Ireland's savage chieftains always at war, striving against each other along the shores of this lake, and from island to island. His thoughts lingered in the seventh and eighth centuries, when the arts were fostered in monasteries--the arts of gold-work and illuminated missals--'Ireland's halcyon days,' he said; a deep peace brooded, and under the guidance of the monks Ireland was the centre of learning when England was in barbarism. The first renaissance was the Irish, centuries before a gleam showed in Italy or in France. But in the middle of the eighth century the Danes arrived to pillage the country, and no sooner were they driven out than the English came to continue the work of destruction, and never since has it ceased.' Father Oliver fell to thinking if God were reserving the bright destiny for Ireland which he withheld a thousand years ago, and looked out for the abbey that Roderick, King of Connaught, built in the twelfth century. It stood on a knoll, and in the distance, almost hidden in bulrushes, was the last arm of the lake. 'How admirable! how admirable!' he said. Kilronan Abbey seemed to bid him remember the things that he could never forget; and, touched by the beauty of the legended ruins, his doubts return ed to him regarding the right of the present to lay hands on these great wrecks of Ireland's past. He was no longer sure that he did not side with the Archbishop, who was against the restoration--for entirely insufficient reasons, it was true. 'Put a roof,' Father Oliver said, 'on the abbey, and it will look like any other church, and another link will be broken. "Which is the better--a great memory or some trifling comfort?"' A few moments after the car turned the corner and he caught sight of Father Moran, 'out for his morning's walk,' he said; and he compared Moran's walk up and down the highroad with his own rambles along the lake shores and through the pleasant woods of Carnecun. For seven years Father Oliver had walked up and down that road, for there was nowhere else for him to walk; he walked that road till he hated it, but he did not think that he had suffered from the loneliness of the parish as much as Moran. He had been happier than Moran in Bridget Clery's cottage--a great idea enabled him to forget every discomfort; and 'we are never lonely as long as our idea is with us,' he ejaculated. 'But Moran is a plain man, without ideas, enthusiasms, or exaltations. He does riot care for reading, or for a flower garden, only for drink. Drink gives him dreams, and man must dream,' he said. He knew that his curate was pledged to cure himself, and believed he was succeeding; but, all the same, it was terrible to think that the temptation might overpower him at any moment, and that he might st agger helpless through the village--a very shocking example to everybody. The people were prone enough in that direction, and for a priest to give scandal instead of setting a good example was about as bad as anything that could happen in the parish. But what was he to do? There was no hard-and-fast rule about anything, and Father Oliver felt that Moran must have his chance. 'I was beginning to think we were never going to see you again;' and Father Moran held out a long, hard hand to Father Oliver. 'You'll put up your horse? Christy, will you take his reverence's horse? You'll stay and have some dinner with me?' 'I can't stay more than half an hour. I'm on my way to Tinnick; I've business with my sister, and it will take me some time.' 'You have plenty of time.' 'No, I haven't? I ought to have taken the other road; I'm late as it is.' 'But you will come into the house, if only for a few minutes.' Father Oliver had taught Bridget Clery cleanliness; at least, he had persuaded her to keep the f owls out of the kitchen, and he had put a paling in front of the house and made a little garden--an unassuming one, it is true, but a pleasant spot of colour in the summer-time--and he wondered how it was that Father Moran was not ashamed of its neglected state, nor of the widow's kitchen. These things were, after all, immaterial. What was important was that he should find no faintest trace of whisky in Moran's room. It was a great relief to him not to notice any, and no doubt that was why Moran insisted on bringing him into the house. The specifications were a pretext. He had to glance at them, however. 'No doubt if the abbey is to be roofed at all the best roof is the one you propose.' 'Then you side with the Archbishop?' 'Perhaps I do in a way, but for different reasons. I know very well that the people won't kneel in the rain. Is it really true that he opposes the roofing of the abbey on account of the legend? I have heard the legend, but there are many variants. Let's go to the abbey and you'll tell the story on the way.' 'You see, he'll only allow a portion of the abbey to be roofed.' 'You don't mean that he is so senile and superstitious as that? Then the reason of his opposition really is that he believes his death to be implicit in the roofing of Kilronan.' 'Yes; he thinks that;' and the priests turned out of the main road. 'How beautiful it looks!' and Father Oliver stopped to admire. The abbey stood on one of the lower slopes, on a knoll overlooking rich water-meadows, formerly abbatial lands. 'The legend says that the abbey shall be roofed when a De Stanton is Abbot, and the McEvillys were originally De Stantons; they changed their name in the fifteenth century on account of a violation of sanctuary committed by them. A roof shall be put on those walls, the legend says, when a De Stanton is again Abbot of Kilronan, and the Abbot shall be slain on the highroad.' 'And to save himself from a violent death, he will only allow you to roof a part of the abbey. Now, what reason does he give for such an extraordinary decision?' 'Are Bishops ever expected to have reasons?' The priests laughed, and Father Oliver said: 'We might appeal to Rome.' 'A lot of good that would do us. Haven't we all heard the Archbishop say that any of his priests who appeals to Rome against him will get the worst of it?' 'I wonder that he dares to defy popular opinion in this way.' 'What popular opinion is there to defy? Wasn't Patsy Donovan saying to me only yesterday that the Archbishop was a brave man to be letting any roof at all on the abbey? And Patsy is the best-educated man in this part of the country.' 'People will believe anything.' 'Yes, indeed.' And the priests stopped at the grave of Seaghan na Soggarth, or 'John of the Priests,' and Father Oliver told Father Moran how a young priest, who had lost his way in the mountains, had fallen in with Seaghan na Soggarth. Seaghan offered to put him into the right road, but instead of doing so he led him to his house, and closed the door on him, and left him there tied hand and foot. Seaghan's sister, who still clung to religion, loosed the priest, and he fled, passing Seaghan, who was on his way to fetch the soldiers. Seaghan followed after, and on they went like hare and hound till they got to the abbey. There the priest, who could run no further, turned on his foe, and they fought until the priest got hold of Seaghan's knife and killed him with it. 'But you know the story. Why am I telling it to you?' 'I only know that the priest killed Seaghan. Is there any more of it?' 'Yes, there is more.' And Father Oliver went on to tell it, though he did not feel that Father Moran would be interested in the legend; he would not believe that it had been prophesied that an ash-tree should grow out of the buried head, and that one of the branches should take root and pierce Seaghan's heart. And he was right in suspecting his curate's lack of sympathy. Father Moran at once objected that the ash-tree had not yet sent down a branch to pierce the priest-killer's heart. 'Not yet; but this branch nearly touches the ground, and there's no saying that it won't take root in a few years.' 'But his heart is there no longer.' 'Well, no,' said Father Oliver, 'it isn't; but if one is to argue that way, no one would listen to a story at all.' Father Moran held his peace for a little while, and then he began talking about the penal times, telling how religion in Ireland was another form of love of country, and that, if Catholics were intolerant to every form of heresy, it was because they instinctively felt that the questioning of any dogma would mean some slight subsidence from the idea of nationality that held the people together. Like the ancient Jews, the Irish believed that the faith of their forefathers could bring them into their ultimate inheritance; this was why a proselytizer was hated so intensely. 'More opinions,' Father Oliver said to himself. 'I wonder he can't admire that ash-tree, and be interested in the story, which is quaint and interesting, without trying to draw an historical parallel between the Irish and the Jews. Anyhow, thinking is better than drinking,' and he jumped on his car. The last thing he heard was Moran's voice saying, 'He who betrays his religion betrays his country.' 'Confound the fellow, bothering me with his preaching on this fine summer's day! Much better if he did what he was told, and made up his mind to put the small green slates on the abbey, and not those coarse blue things which will make the abbey look like a common barn.' Then, shading his eyes with his hand, he peered through the sun haze, following the shapes of the fields. The corn was six inches high, and the potatoes were coming into blossom. True, there had been a scarcity of water, but they had had a good summer, thanks be to God, and he thought he had never seen the country looking so beautiful. And he loved this country, this poor Western plain with shapely mountains enclosing the horizon. Ponies were feeding between the whins, and they raised their shaggy heads to watch the car passing. In the distance cattle were grazing, whisking the flies away. How beautiful was everything--the white clouds hanging in the blue sky, and the trees! There were some trees, but not many--only a few pines. He caught glimpses of the lake through the stems; tears rose to his eyes, and he attributed his happiness to his native land and to the thought that he was living in it. Only a few days ago he wished to leave it--no, not for ever, but for a time; and as his old car jogged through the ruts he wondered how it was that he had ever wished to leave Ireland, even for a single minute. 'Now, Christy, which do you reckon to be the shorter road?' 'The shorter road, your reverence, is the Joycetown road, but I doubt if we can get the car through it.' 'How is that?' And the boy answered that since the Big House had been burnt the road hadn't been kept in repair. 'But,' said Father Oliver, 'the Big House was burnt seventy years ago.' 'Well, your reverence, you see, it was a good road then, but the last time I heard of a car going that way was last February.' 'And if a car got through in February, why can't we get through on the first of June?' 'Well, your reverence, there was the storm, and I do be hearing that the trees that fell across the road then haven't been removed yet.' 'I think we might try the road, for all that, for though if we have to walk the greater part of it, there will be a saving in the end.' 'That's true, your reverence, if we can get the car through; but if we can't we may have to come all the way back again.' 'Well, Christy, we'll have to risk that. Now, will you be turning the horse up the road? And I'll stop at the Big House--I've never been inside it. I'd like to see what it is like.' Joycetown House was the last link between the present time and the past. In the beginning of the century a duellist lived there; the terror of the countryside he, for he was never known to miss his man. For the slightest offence, real or imaginary, he sent seconds demanding redress. No more than his ancestors, who had doubtless lived on the islands, in Castle Island and Castle Hag, could he live without fighting. But when he completed his round dozen, a priest said, 'If we don't put a stop to his fighting, there won't be a gentleman left in the country,' and wrote to him to that effect. The story runs how Joyce, knowing the feeling of the country was against him, tried to keep the peace. But the blood fever came on him again, and he called out his nearest neighbour, Browne of the Neale, the only friend he had in the world. Browne lived at Neale House, just over the border, in County Galway, so the gentlemen arranged to fight in a certain field near the mearing. It was Browne of Neale who was the first to arrive. Joyce, having to come a dozen miles, was a few minutes late. As soon as his gig was seen, the people, who were in hiding, came out, and they put themselves between him and Browne, telling him up to his face there was to be no fighting that day! And the priest, who was at the head of them, said the same; but Joyce, who knew his countrymen, paid no heed, but stood up in the gig, and, looking round him, said, 'Now, boys, which is it to be? The Mayo cock or the Galway cock?' No sooner did he speak these words than they began to cheer him, and in spite of all the priest could say they carried him into the field in which he shot Browne of the Neale. 'A queer people, the queerest in the world,' Father Oliver thought, as he pulled a thorn-bush out of the doorway and stood looking round. There were some rough chimney-pieces high up in the grass-grown walls, but beyond these really nothing to be seen, and he wandered out seeking traces of terraces along the hillside. On meeting a countryman out with his dogs he tried to inquire about the state of the road. 'I wouldn't be saying, your reverence, that you mightn't get the car through by keeping close to the wall; but Christy mustn't let the horse out of a walk.' The countryman said he would go a piece of the road with them, and tell Christy the spots he'd have to look out for. 'But your work?' 'There's no work doing now to speak of, your reverence.' The three of them together just managed to remove a fallen tree, which seemed the most serious obstacle, and the countryman said once they were over the top of the hill they would be all right; the road wasn't so bad after that. Half a mile further on Father Oliver found himself in sight of the main road, and of the cottage that his sister Mary had lived in before she joined Eliza in the convent. To have persuaded Mary to take this step proved Eliza's superiority more completely than anything else she had done, so Father Oliver often said, adding that he didn't know what mightn't have happened to poor Mary if she had remained in the world. For her life up to the time she entered the convent was little else than a series of failures. She was a shop-assistant, but standing behind the counter gave her varicose veins; and she went to Dublin as nursery-governess. Father Oliver had heard of musical studies: she used to play the guitar. But the instrument was not popular in Dublin, so she gave it up, and returned to Tinnick with the intention of starting a rabbit and poultry farm. Who put this idea into her head was her secret, and when he received Eliza's letter telling him of this last experiment, he remembered throwing up his hands. Of course, it could only end in failure, in a loss of money; and when he read that she was going to take the pretty cottage on the road to Tinnick, he had become suddenly sad. 'Why should she have selected that cottage, the only pretty one in the county? Wouldn't any other do just as well for her foolish experiment?' VI The flowered cottage on the road to Tinnick stood in the midst of trees, on a knoll some few feet above the roadway, and Father Oliver, when he was a boy, often walked out by himself from Tinnick to see the hollyhocks and the sunflowers; they overtopped the palings, the sunflowers looking like saucy country girls and the hollyhocks like grand ladies, delicate and refined, in pink muslin dresses. He used to stand by the gate looking into the garden, delighted by its luxuriance, for there were clumps of sweet pea and beds of red carnations and roses everywhere, and he always remembered the violets and pansies he saw before he went away to Maynooth. He never remembered seeing the garden in bloom again. He was seven years at Maynooth, and when he came home for his vacations it was too late or too early in the season. He was interested in other things; and during his curacy at Kilronan he rarely went to Tinnick, and when he did, he took the other road, so that he might see Father Peter. He was practically certain that the last time he saw the garden in bloom was just before he went to Maynooth. However this might be, it was certain he would never see it in bloom again. Mary had left the cottage a ruin, and it was sad to think of the clean thick thatch and the whitewashed walls covered with creeper and China roses, for now the thatch was black and mouldy; and of all the flowers only a few stocks survived; the rose-trees were gone--the rabbits had eaten them. Weeds overtopped the currant and gooseberry bushes; here and there was a trace of box edging. 'But soon,' he said, 'all traces will be gone, the roof will fall in, and the garden will become part of the waste.' His eyes roved over the country into which he was going--almost a waste; a meagre black soil, with here and there a thorn-bush and a peasant's cabin. Father Oliver knew every potato field and every wood, and he waited for the elms that lined the roadway a mile ahead of him, a long, pleasant avenue that he knew well, showing above the high wall that encircled a nobleman's domain. Somewhere in the middle of that park was a great white house with pillars, and the story he had heard from his mother, and that roused his childish imaginations, was that Lord Carra was hated by the town of Tinnick, for he cared nothing for Ireland and was said to be a man of loose living, in love with his friend's wife, who came to Tinnick for visits, sometimes with, sometimes without, her husband. It may have been his Lordship's absenteeism, as well as the scandal the lady gave, that had prompted a priest to speak against Lord Carra from the altar, if not directly, indirectly. 'Both are among the gone,' Father Oliver said to himself. 'No one speaks of them now; myself hasn't given them a thought this many a year--' His memories broke off suddenly, for a tree had fallen, carrying a large portion of the wall with it, but without revealing the house, only a wooded prospect through which a river glided. 'The Lord's mistress must have walked many a time by the banks of that river,' he said. But why was he thinking of her again? Was it the ugly cottage that put thoughts of her into his mind? for she had done nothing to alleviate the lives of the poor, who lived without cleanliness and without light, like animals in a den. Or did his thoughts run on that woman, whom he had never seen, because Tinnick was against her and the priest had spoken slightingly of the friends that Lord Carra brought from England? The cause of his thoughts might be that he was going to offer Nora Glynn to his sister as music-mistress. But what connection between Nora Glynn and this dead woman? None. But he was going to propose Nora Glynn to Eliza, and the best line of argument would be that Nora would cost less than anyone as highly qualified as she. Nuns were always anxious to get things cheap, but he must not let them get Nora too cheap. But the question of price wouldn't arise between him and Eliza. Eliza would see that the wrong he did to Nora was preying on his conscience, and that he'd never be happy until he had made atonement--that was the light in which she would view the matter, so it would be better to let things take their natural course and to avoid making plans. The more he thought of what he should say to Eliza, the less likely was he to speak effectively; and feeling that he had better rely on the inspiration of the moment, he sought distraction from his errand by noting the beauty of the hillside. He had always liked the way the road dipped and then ascended steeply to the principal street in the town. There were some pretty houses in the dip--houses with narrow doorways and long windows, built, no doubt, in the beginning of the nineteenth century--and his ambition was once to live in one of these houses. The bridge was an eighteenth-century bridge, with a foaming weir on the left, and on the right there was a sentimental walk under linden-trees, and there were usually some boys seated on the parapet fishing. He would have liked to stop the car, so remote did the ruined mills seem--so like things of long ago that time had mercifully weaned from the stress and struggle of life. At the corner of the main street was the house in which he was born. The business had passed into other hands, but the old name--'Gogarty's Drapery Stores'--remained. Across the way were the butcher and the grocer, and a little higher up the inn at which the commercial travellers lodged. He recalled their numerous leather trunks, and for a moment stood a child again, seeing them drive away on post-cars. A few more shops had been added--very few--and then the town dwindled quickly, slated roofs giving way to thatched cottages, and of the same miserable kind that was wont to provoke his antipathy when he was a boy. This sinful dislike of poverty he overcame in early manhood. A high religious enthusiasm enabled him to overcome it, but his instinctive dislike of the lowly life--intellectual lowliness as well as physical--gathered within these cottages, seemed to have returned again. He asked himself if he were wanting in natural compassion, and if all that he had of goodness in him were a debt he owed to the Church. It was in patience rather than in pity maybe that he was lacking; and pursuing this idea, he recalled the hopes he entertained when he railed off a strip of ground in front of Bridget Clery's house. But that strip of garden had inspired no spirit of emulation. Eliza was perhaps more patient than he, and he began to wonder if she had any definite aim in view, and if the spectacle of the convent, with its show of nuns walking under the trees, would eventually awaken some desire of refinement in the people, if the money their farms now yielded would produce some sort of improvement in their cottages, the removal of those dreadfully heavy smells, and a longing for colour that would find expression in the planting of flowers. They gave their money willingly enough for the adornment of their chapel, for stained glass, incense, candles, and for music, and were it not for the services of the Church he didn't know into what barbarism the people mightn't have fallen: the tones of the organ sustaining clear voices of nuns singing a Mass by Mozart must sooner or later inspire belief in the friendliness of pure air and the beauty of flowers. Flowers are the only beautiful things within the reach of these poor people. Roses all may have, and it was pleasant to think that there is nothing more entirely natural or charming in the life of man than his love of flowers: it preceded his love of music; no doubt an appreciation of something better in the way of art than a jig played on the pipes would follow close on the purification of the home. Nora Glynn was beautiful, and her personality was winning and charming, her playing delightful, and her singing might have inspired the people to cultivate beauty. But she was going to the convent. The convent had gotten her. It was a pity. Mrs. O'Mara's scandalous stories, insinuating lies, had angered him till he could bear with her no longer, and he had put her out the door. He didn't believe that Eliza had ever said she could give Nora more than she was earning in Garranard. It mattered very little if she had, for it had so fallen out that she was going to get her. He begrudged them Nora. But Eliza was going to get her, and he'd have to make the best terms he could. But he could not constrain his thoughts to the present moment. They would go back to the fateful afternoon when he ran across the fields to ask Nora if what Mrs. O'Mara had said of her were true. If he had only waited! If she had come to him to confession on Saturday, as he expected she would! If something had prevented him from preaching on Sunday! A bad cold might have prevented him from speaking, and she might have gone away for a while, and, when her baby was born, she might have come back. It could have been easily arranged. But fate had ordered her life otherwise, and here he was in the Tinnick Convent, hoping to make her some poor amends for the wrong he had done her. Would Eliza help him?--that was the question he asked himself as he crossed the beeswaxed floor and stood looking at the late afternoon sunlight glancing through the trees, falling across the green sward. 'How do you do, Oliver?' His face lighted up, but it changed expression and became gray again. He had expected to see Eliza, tall and thin, with yellow eyebrows and pale eyes. Hers was a good, clearly-cut face, like his own, whereas Mary's was quite different. Yet a family likeness stared through Mary's heavy white face. Her eyes were smaller than his, and she already began to raise them and lower them, and to look at him askance, in just the way he hated. Somehow or other she always contrived to make him feel uncomfortable, and the present occasion was no exception. She was already reproving him, hoping he was not disappointed at seeing her, and he had to explain that he expected to see Eliza, and that was why he looked surprised. She must not confuse surprise with disappointment. He was very glad to see her. 'I know I am not as interesting as Eliza,' she began, 'but I thought you might like to see me, and if I hadn't come at once I shouldn't have had an opportunity of seeing you alone.' 'She has something to confide,' Father Oliver said to himself, and he hoped that her confidences might be cut short by the timely arrival of Eliza. 'Eliza is engaged at present. She told Sister Agatha to tell you that she would be with you presently. I met Sister Agatha in the passage, and said I would take the message myself. I suppose I oughtn't to have done so, but if I hadn't I shouldn't have had an opportunity of speaking with you.' 'Why is that?' 'I don't think she likes me to see you alone.' 'My dear Mary!' 'You don't know, Oliver, what it is to live in a convent, and your own sister the head of it.' 'I should have thought, Mary, that it was especially pleasant, and that you were especially fortunate. And as for thinking that Eliza is not wishing you to see me alone, I am sure--' 'You are sure I'm mistaken.' 'What reason could she have?' 'Eliza doesn't wish the affairs of the convent discussed. You know, I suppose, that the building of the new wing has put a burden of debt on the convent.' 'I know that; so why should Eliza--' 'Eliza tries to prevent my seeing any of the visitors. Now, do you think that quite right and fair towards one's sister?' Father Oliver tried to prevent himself from smiling, but he sympathized so entirely with Eliza's efforts to prevent Mary from discussing the affairs of the convent that he could hardly keep down the smile that rose to his lips. He could see Eliza's annoyance on coming into the parlour and finding Mary detailing all the gossip and confiding her own special woes, for the most part imaginary, to a visitor. Nor would Mary refrain from touching on the Reverend Mother's shortcomings. He was so much amused that he might have smiled if it had not suddenly come to his mind that Mary might leave the convent and insist on living with him; and a little scared he began to think of what he could say to pacify her, remembering in the midst of his confusion and embarrassment that Mary was professed last year, and therefore could not leave the convent; and this knowledge filled him with such joy that he could not keep back the words, but must remind his sister that she had had ample opportunity of considering if she were suited to the religious life. 'You see, Mary, you should have thought of all this before you were professed.' 'I shan't take my final vows till next year.' 'But, my dear Mary, once a woman has taken the black veil ... it is the same thing, you know.' 'Not quite, otherwise there would be no meaning in the delay.' 'You don't mean to say that you're thinking of leaving the convent, Mary?' 'Not exactly, but it is very hard on me, Oliver. I was thinking of writing to you, but I hoped that you would come to see us. You have been a long time now without coming.' 'Well, Mary--' 'Eliza loves ruling everybody, and just because I am her sister she is harder on me than anyone else. Only the other day she was furious with me because I stopped at confession a few minutes longer than usual. "I think," she said, "you might spare Father Higgins your silly scruples." Now, how is one to stop in a convent if one's own sister interferes in one's confessions?' 'Well, Mary, what are you thinking of doing?' 'There are some French nuns who have just come over and want to open a school, and are looking for Irish subjects. I was thinking they'd like to have me. You see, I wouldn't have to go through the novitiate again, for they want an experienced person to teach them English and to mind the school for them. It is really a mistake to be under one's own sister.' At that moment the door opened and Eliza came in, apologizing for having kept her brother so long waiting. 'You see, my dear Oliver, I've had two mothers here this morning, and you know what parents are. I suppose Mary has told you about our difficulties. Now, do you mean to say that you have found a person who will suit us?... It is really very kind of you.' 'I can't say for certain, Eliza. Of course, it is difficult for me to know exactly what you want, but, so far as I know, I think the person I have in my mind will suit you.' 'But has she a diploma from the Academy? We must have a certificate.' 'I think she'll suit you, but we'll talk about her presently. Don't you think we might go into the garden?' 'Yes, it will be pleasanter in the garden. And you, Mary--you've had your little chat with Oliver.' 'I was just going, Eliza. If I'd known that Oliver wanted to speak privately to you, I'd have gone sooner.' 'No, no, I assure you, Mary.' Mary held out her hand to her brother, saying: 'I suppose I shall not see you again, unless, perhaps, you're stopping the night with Father Higgins. It would be nice if you could do that. You could say Mass for us in the morning.' Father Oliver shook his head. 'I'm afraid I must get back to-night.' 'Well, then, good-bye.' And Mary went out of the room regretfully, like one who knows that the moment her back is turned all her faults will become the subject of conversation. 'I hear from Mary that some French nuns are coming over, and want to open a school. I hope that won't interfere with yours, Eliza; you spent a great deal of money upon the new wing.' 'It will interfere very much indeed; but I'm trying to get some of the nuns to come here, and I hope the Bishop will not permit a new foundation. It's very hard upon us Irish women if we are to be eaten out of house and home by pious foreigners. I'm in correspondence with the Bishop about it. As for Mary--' 'You surely don't think she's going to leave?' 'No, I don't suppose she'll leave; it would be easier for me if she did, but it would give rise to any amount of talk. And where would she go if she did leave, unless she lived with you?' 'My house is too small; besides, she didn't speak of leaving, only that she hadn't yet taken her final vows. I explained that no one will distinguish between the black veil and final vows. Am I not right?' 'I think those vows will take a great weight off your mind, Oliver. I wish I could say as much for myself.' The Reverend Mother opened a glass door, and brother and sister stood for some time admiring the flower vases that lined the terrace. 'I can't get her to water the geraniums.' 'If you'll tell me where I can get a can--' 'You'll excuse me, Reverend Mother.' It was the Sister in charge of the laundry, and, seeing her crippled arm, Father Oliver remembered that her dress had become entangled in the machinery. He didn't know, however, that the fault lay with Mary, who was told off to watch the machinery and to stop it instantly in case of necessity. 'She can't keep her attention fixed on anything, not even on her prayers, and what she calls piety I should call idleness. It's terrible to have to do with stupid women, and the convent is so full of them that I often wonder what is the good of having a convent at all.' 'But, Eliza, you don't regret--' 'No, of course I don't regret. I should do just the same again. But don't let us waste our time talking about vocations. I hear enough of that here. I want you to tell me about the music-mistress; that's what interests me.' And when Father Oliver had told her the whole story and showed her Father O'Grady's letter, she said: 'You know I always thought you were a little hard on Miss Glynn. Father O'Grady's letter convinces me that you were.' 'My dear Eliza, I don't want advice; I've suffered enough.' 'Oliver dear, forgive me.' And the nun put out her hand to detain him. 'Well, don't say again, Eliza, that you always thought. It's irritating, and it does no good.' 'Her story is known, but she could live in the convent; that would shelter her from any sort of criticism. I don't see why she shouldn't take the habit of one of the postulants, but--' The priest waited for his sister to speak, and after waiting a little while he asked her what she was going to say. 'I was going to ask you,' said the nun, waking from her reverie, 'if you have written to Miss Glynn.' 'Yes, I wrote to her.' 'And she's willing to come back?' 'I haven't spoken to her about that. It didn't occur to me until afterwards, but I can write at once if you consent.' 'I may be wrong, Oliver, but I don't think she'll care to leave London and come back here, where she is known.' 'But, Eliza, a girl likes to live in her own country. Mind you, I am responsible. I drove her out of her country among strangers. She's living among Protestants.' 'I don't think that will trouble her very much.' 'I don't know why you say that, Eliza. Do you think that a woman cannot repent? that because she happens to have sinned once--' 'No; I suppose there are repentant sinners, but I think we most often go on as we begin. Now, you see, Father O'Grady says that she's getting on very well in London, and we like to live among those who appreciate us.' 'Well, Eliza, of course, if you start with the theory that no one can repent--' 'I didn't say that, Oliver. But she wouldn't tell you who the man was. She seems a person of character--I mean, she doesn't seem to be lacking in strength of character.' 'She's certainly a most excellent musician. You'll find no one like her, and you may be able to get her very cheap. And if your school doesn't pay--' A shade passed across the Reverend Mother's face. 'There's no doubt that the new wing has cost us a great deal of money.' 'Then there are the French nuns--' 'My dear Oliver, if you wish me to engage Miss Glynn as music-mistress I'll do so. There's no use speaking to me about the French nuns. I'll engage her because you ask me, but I cannot pay her as much as those who have diplomas. How much do you think she'd come for?' 'I don't know what she's earning in London, but I suppose you can pay her an average wage. You could pay her according to results.' 'What you say is quite true, Oliver.' The priest and the nun continued their walk up and down in front of the unfinished building. 'But you don't know, Oliver, if she's willing to leave London. You'll have to write and find out.' 'Very well, Eliza, I'll write. You'll be able to offer her as much as she was earning in my parish as schoolmistress. That's fifty pounds a year.' 'It's more than we can afford, Oliver, but if you wish it.' 'I do wish it, Eliza. Thank you. You've taken a great weight off my mind.' They passed into the house, and, stopping in front of the writing-table, the nun looked to see if there were paper and envelopes in the blotter. 'You'll find everything you want, even sealing-wax,' she said. 'Now I'll leave you.' _From Father Oliver Gogarty to Miss Nora Glynn._ 'TINNICK CONVENT, '_June 4, 19--_. 'DEAR MISS GLYNN, 'I take it for granted that you received the letter I sent you two days ago, telling you how much I appreciated your kindness in asking Father O'Grady to write to tell me that you were quite safe and getting on well. Since writing that letter I feel more keenly than ever that I owe you reparation, for it was through an error of judgment on my part that you are now an exile from your own country. Everyone is agreed that I have committed an error of judgment. My sister, the Mother Superior of this convent from where I am writing, is of that opinion. The moment I mentioned your name she began, "I always thought that--" and I begged of her to spare me advice on the subject, saying that it was not for advice that I came to her, but to ask her to help me to make atonement, which she could do by engaging you to teach music in her convent. You see, I had heard that my sister was in a difficulty. The new wing is nearly completed, and she could get the best families in Ireland to send their daughters to be educated in her convent if she could provide sufficient musical instruction. I thought you might like to live in your own country, now that your thoughts have again turned towards God, and I can imagine the unpleasantness it must be to a Catholic to live in a Protestant country. I told my sister this, and she answered that if you wish to come over here, and if Father O'Grady advises it, she will take you as music-mistress. You will live in the convent. You can enter it, if you wish, as a postulant, or if you should remain an extern teacher the salary they will give you will be fifty pounds a year. I know you can make more than that in London, but you can live more cheaply here, and you will be among friends. 'I shall be glad to hear from you on this subject. 'Very sincerely yours, 'OLIVER GOGARTY, P.P.' When he looked up, the darkness under the trees surprised him, and the geraniums so faintly red on the terrace, and his sister passing up and down like a phantom. 'Eliza.' He heard her beads drop, and out of a loose sleeve a slim hand took the letter. There was not enough light in the room to read by, and she remained outside, leaning against the glass door. 'You haven't written exactly the letter I should have written, but, then, we're quite different. I should have written a cold and more business-like letter.' His face changed expression, and she added: 'I'm sorry if I'm unsympathetic, Oliver.' The touch of her hand and the look in her eyes surprised him, for Eliza was not demonstrative, and he wondered what had called forth this sudden betrayal of feeling. He expected her to ask him not to send the letter, but instead of doing so she said: 'If the letter were written otherwise it wouldn't be like yourself, Oliver. Send it, and if she leaves London and comes back here, I will think better of her. It will be proof that she has repented. I see you'll not have an easy mind until you make atonement. You exaggerate, I think; but everyone for himself in a matter like this.' 'Thank you, Eliza. You always understand.' 'Not always. I failed to understand when you wanted to set up a hermitage on Castle Island.' 'Yes, you did; you have better sense than I. Yet I feel we are more alike than the others. You have counted for a great deal in my life, Eliza. Do you remember saying that you intended to be Reverend Mother? And now you are Reverend Mother.' 'I don't think I said "I intended." But I felt that if I became a nun, one day or another I should be Reverend Mother; one knows most often than not what is going to happen--one's own fate, I mean.' 'I wonder if Mary knows?' 'If she does, I wish she'd tell us.' 'We'll have time to walk round the garden once more. You have no idea what a pleasure it is for me to see you--to talk with you like this.' And, talking of Mary, they walked slowly, forgetful of everything but each other. A bell rang. 'I must be going; it will be late before I get home.' 'Which way are you going? Round by Kilronan or across the Bridge of Keel?' 'I came by Kilronan. I think I'll take the other way. There will be a moon to-night.' Brother and sister entered the convent. 'You'll enjoy the drive?' 'Yes.' And he fell to thinking of the drive home by the southern road, the mountains unfolding their many aspects in the gray moonlight, and melting away in misty perspectives. VII _From Miss Nora Glynn to Father Oliver Gogarty._ '4, WILSON STREET, LONDON, '_June_ 8, 19--, 'FATHER GOGARTY, 'I did not answer your first letter because the letters that came into my mind to write, however they might begin, soon turned to bitterness, and I felt that writing bitter letters would not help me to forget the past. But your second letter with its proposal that I should return to Ireland to teach music in a convent school forces me to break silence, and it makes me regret that I gave Father O'Grady permission to write to you; he asked me so often, and his kindness is so winning, that I could not refuse him anything. He said you would certainly have begun to see that you had done me a wrong, and I often answered that I saw no reason why I should trouble to soothe your conscience. I do not wish to return to Ireland; I am, as Father O'Grady told you, earning my own living, my work interests me, and very soon I shall have forgotten Ireland. That is the best thing that can happen, that I should forget Ireland, and that you should forget the wrong you did me. Put the whole thing, and me, out of your mind; and now, good-bye, Father Gogarty. 'NORA GLYNN.' 'Good heavens! how she hates me, and she'll hate me till her dying day. She'll never forget. And this is the end of it, a bitter, unforgiving letter.' He sat down to think, and it seemed to him that she wouldn't have written this letter if she had known the agony of mind he had been through. But of this he wasn't sure. No, no; he could not believe her spiteful. And he walked up and down the room, trying to quell the bitterness rising up within him. No other priest would have taken the trouble; they would have just forgotten all about it, and gone about congratulating themselves on their wise administration. But he had acted rightly, Father O'Grady had approved of what he had done; and this was his reward. She'll never come back, and will never forgive him; and ever since writing to her he had indulged in dreams of her return to Ireland, thinking how pleasant it would be to go down to the lake in the mornings, and stand at the end of the sandy spit looking across the lake towards Tinnick, full of the thought that she was there with his sisters earning her living. She wouldn't be in his parish, but they'd have been friends, neighbours, and he'd have accepted the loss of his organist as his punishment. Eva Maguire was no good; there would never be any music worth listening to in his parish again. Such sternness as her letter betrayed was not characteristic of her; she didn't understand, and never would. Catherine's step awoke him; the awaking was painful, and he couldn't collect his thoughts enough to answer Catherine; and feeling that he must appear to her daft, he tried to speak, but his speech was only babble. 'You haven't read your other letter, your reverence.' He recognized the handwriting; it was from Father O'Grady. _From Father O'Grady to Father Oliver Gogarty._ '_June_ 8, 19--. 'MY DEAR FATHER GOGARTY, 'I was very glad to hear that Miss Glynn told her story truthfully; for if she exaggerated or indulged in equivocation, it would be a great disappointment to me and to her friends, and would put me in a very difficult position, for I should have to tell certain friends of mine, to whom I recommended her, that she was not all that we imagined her to be. But all's well that ends well; and you will be glad to hear that I have appointed her organist in my church. It remains, therefore, only for me to thank you for your manly letter, acknowledging the mistake you have made. 'I can imagine the anxiety it must have caused you, and the great relief it must have been to you to get my letter. Although Miss Glynn spoke with bitterness, she did not try to persuade me that you were naturally hard-hearted or cruel. The impression that her story left on my mind was that your allusions to her in your sermon were unpremeditated. Your letter is proof that I was not mistaken, and I am sure the lesson you have received will bear fruit. I trust that you will use your influence to restrain other priests from similar violence. It is only by gentleness and kindness that we can do good. I shall be glad to see you if you ever come to London. 'I am, sir, 'Very sincerely yours, 'MICHAEL O'GRADY.' 'All's well that ends well. So that's how he views it! A different point of view.' And feeling that he was betraying himself to Catherine, he put both letters into his pocket and went out of the house. But he had not gone many yards when he met a parishioner with a long story to tell, happily not a sick call, only a dispute about land. So he invented an excuse postponing his intervention until the morrow, and when he returned home tired with roaming, he stopped on his door-step. 'The matter is over now, her letter is final,' he said. But he awoke in a different mood next morning; everything appeared to him in a different light, and he wondered, surprised to find that he could forget so easily; and taking her letter out of his pocket, he read it again. 'It's a hard letter, but she's a wise woman. Much better for us both to forget each other. "Good-bye, Father Gogarty," she said; "Good-bye, Nora Glynn," say I.' And he walked about his garden tending his flowers, wondering at his light-heartedness. She thought of her own interests, and would get on very well in London, and Father O'Grady had been lucky too. Nora was an excellent organist. But if he went to London he would meet her. A meeting could hardly be avoided--and after that letter! Perhaps it would be wiser if he didn't go to London. What excuse? O'Grady would write again. He had been so kind. In any case he must answer his letter, and that was vexatious. But was he obliged to answer it? O'Grady wouldn't misunderstand his silence. But there had been misunderstandings enough; and before he had walked the garden's length half a dozen conclusive reasons for writing occurred to him. First of all Father O'Grady's kindness in writing to ask him to stay with him, added to which the fact that Nora would, of course, tell Father O'Grady she had been invited to teach in the convent; her vanity would certainly urge her to do this, and Heaven only knows what account she would give of his proposal. There would be his letter, but she mightn't show it. So perhaps on the whole it would be better that he should write telling O'Grady what had happened. And after his dinner as he sat thinking, a letter came into his mind; the first sentences formulated themselves so suddenly that he was compelled to go to his writing-table. _From Father Oliver Gogarty to Father O'Grady._ 'GARRANARD, BOHOLA, '_June_ 12, 19--. 'DEAR FATHER O'GRADY, 'I enclose a letter which I received three days ago from Miss Nora Glynn, and I think you will agree with me that the letter is a harsh one, and that, all things considered, it would have been better if she had stinted herself to saying that I had committed an error of judgment which she forgave. She did not, however, choose to do this. As regards my sister's invitation to her to come over here to teach, she was, of course, quite right to consider her own interests. She can make more money in London than she could in Ireland. I forgot that she couldn't bring her baby with her, remembering only that my eldest sister is Mother Abbess in the Tinnick Convent--a very superior woman, if I may venture to praise my own sister. The convent was very poor at one time, but she has made the school a success, and, hearing that she wanted someone who would teach music and singing, I proposed to her that she should engage Miss Glynn, with whose story she was already acquainted. She did not think that Miss Glynn would return to Ireland; and in this opinion she showed her good judgment. She was always a wonderful judge of character. But she could see that I was anxious to atone for any wrong that I might have done Miss Glynn, and after some hesitation she consented, saying: "Well, Oliver, if you wish it." 'Miss Glynn did not accept the proposal, and I suppose that the episode now ends so far as I am concerned. She has fallen into good hands; she is making her living, thanks to your kindness. But I dare not think what might not have happened if she had not met you. Perhaps when you have time you will write again; I shall be glad to hear if she succeeds in improving your choir. My conscience is now at rest; there is a term, though it may not be at the parish boundary, when our responsibility ceases. 'Thanking you again, and hoping one of these days to have the pleasure of making your acquaintance, 'I am very truly yours, 'OLIVER GOGARTY.' _From Father O'Grady to Father Oliver Gogarty._ '_June_ 18, 19--. 'DEAR FATHER GOGARTY, 'Thank you for sending me Miss Glynn's letter, and I agree with you when you describe it as harsh; but I understand it in a way. Miss Glynn came over to London almost penniless, and expecting the birth of her illegitimate child. She suffered all that a woman suffers in such circumstances. I do not want to harass you unnecessarily by going over it all again, but I do wish you to forgive her somewhat intemperate letter. I'll speak to her about it, and I am sure she will write to you in a more kindly spirit later on; meanwhile, rest assured that she is doing well, and not forgetful of the past. I shall try to keep a watchful eye over her, seeing that she attends to her duties every month; there is no better safeguard. But in truth I have no fear for her, and am unable to understand how she could have been guilty of so grave a sin, especially in Ireland. She seems here most circumspect, even strict, in her manner. She is an excellent musician, and has improved my choir. I have been tempted to comply with her request and spend some more money upon the singing.... 'While writing these lines I was interrupted. My servant brought me a letter from Miss Glynn, telling me that a great chance had come her way. It appears that Mr. Walter Poole, the father of one of her pupils, has offered her the post of secretaryship, and she would like to put into practice the shorthand and typewriting that she has been learning for the last six months. Her duties, she says, will be of a twofold nature: she will help Mr. Poole with his literary work and she will also give music lessons to his daughter Edith. Mr. Poole lives in Berkshire, and wants her to come down at once, which means she will have to leave me in the lurch. "You will be without an organist," she writes, "and will have to put up with Miss Ellen McGowan until you can get a better. She may improve--I hope and think she will; and I'm sorry to give trouble to one who has been so kind to me, but, you see, I have a child to look after, and it is difficult to make both ends meet on less than three pounds a week. More money I cannot hope to earn in my present circumstances; I am therefore going down to Berkshire to-morrow, so I shall not see you again for some time. Write and tell me you are not angry with me." 'On receiving this letter, I went round to Miss Glynn's lodgings, and found her in the midst of her packing. We talked a long while, and very often it seemed to me that I was going to persuade her, but when it came to the point she shook her head. Offer her more money I could not, but I promised to raise her wages to two pounds a week next year if it were possible to do so. I don't think it is the money; I think it is change that tempts her. Well, it tempts us all, and though I am much disappointed at losing her, I cannot be angry with her, for I cannot forget that I often want change myself, and the longing to get out of London is sometimes almost irresistible. I do not know your part of the country, but I do know what an Irish lake is like, and I often long to see one again. And very often, I suppose, you would wish to exchange the romantic solitude of your parish for the hurly-burly of a town, and for its thick, impure air you would be willing--for a time only, of course--to change the breezes of your mountain-tops. 'Very truly yours, 'MICHAEL O'GRADY.' _From Father Oliver Gogarty to Father O'Grady._ 'GARRANARD, BOHOLA, '_June_ 22, 19--. 'DEAR FATHER O'GRADY, 'No sooner had I begun to feel easier in my conscience and to dream that my responsibilities were at an end than your letter comes, and I am thrown back into all my late anxieties regarding Nora Glynn's future, for which I am and shall always be responsible. 'It was my words that drove her out of Ireland into a great English city in which some dreadful fate of misery and death might have befallen her if you had not met her. But God is good, and he sent you to her, and everything seems to have happened for the best. She was in your hands, and I felt safe. But now she has taken her life into her own hands again, thinking she can manage it without anybody's help! 'The story you tell seems simple enough, but it doesn't sound all right. Why should she go away to Berkshire to help Mr. Walter Poole with his literature without giving you longer notice? It seems strange to write to one who has taken all the trouble you have to find her work--"I have discovered a post that suits me better and am going away to-morrow." Of course she has her child to think of. But have you made inquiries? I suppose you must have done. You would not let her go away to a man of whom you know nothing. She says that he is the father of one of her pupils. But she doesn't know him, yet she is going to live in his house to help him with his literature. Have you inquired, dear Father O'Grady, what this man's writings are, if he is a Catholic or a Protestant? I should not like Miss Nora Glynn to go into a Protestant household, where she would hear words of disrespect for the religion she has been brought up in. 'As I write I ask myself if there is a Catholic chapel within walking distance; and if there isn't, will he undertake to send her to Mass every Sunday? I hope you have made all these inquiries, and if you have not made them, will you make them at once and write to me and relieve my anxiety? You are aware of the responsibilities I have incurred and will appreciate the anxiety that I feel. 'Yours very sincerely, 'OLIVER GOGARTY.' It seemed to Father Oliver so necessary that Father O'Grady should get his letter as soon as possible that he walked to Bohola; but soon after dropping the letter in the box he began to think that he might have written more judiciously, and on his way home he remembered that he had told Father O'Grady, and very explicitly, that he should have made inquiries regarding Mr. Walter Poole's literature before he allowed Nora Glynn to go down to Berkshire to help him with his literary work. Of course he hoped, and it was only natural that he should hope, that Father O'Grady had made all reasonable inquiries; but it seemed to him now that he had expressed himself somewhat peremptorily. Father O'Grady was an old man--how old he did not know--but himself was a young man, and he did not know in what humour Father O'Grady might read his letter. If the humour wasn't propitious he might understand it as an impertinence. It vexed him that he had shown so much agitation, and he stopped to think. But it was so natural that he should be concerned about Nora Glynn. All the same, his anxiety might strike Father O'Grady as exaggerated. A temperate letter, he reflected, is always better; and the evening was spent in writing another letter to Father O'Grady, a much longer one, in which he thanked Father O'Grady for asking him to come to see him if he should ever find himself in London. 'Of course,' he wrote, 'I shall be only too pleased to call on you, and no doubt we shall have a great deal to talk about--two Irishmen always have; and when I feel the need of change imminent, I will try to go to London, and do you, Father O'Grady, when you need a change, come to Ireland. You write: "I do not know your part of the country, but I know what an Irish lake is like, and I often long to see one again." Well, come and see my lake; it's very beautiful. Woods extend down to the very shores with mountain peaks uplifting behind the woods, and on many islands there are ruins of the castles of old time. Not far from my house it narrows into a strait, and after passing this strait it widens out into what might almost be called another lake. We are trying to persuade the Government to build a bridge, but it is difficult to get anything done. My predecessor and myself have been in correspondence on this subject with the Board of Works; it often seems as if success were about to come, but it slips away, and everything has to be begun again. I should like to show you Kilronan Abbey, an old abbey unroofed by Cromwell. The people have gone there for centuries, kneeling in the snow and rain. We are sadly in need of subscription. Perhaps one of these days you will be able to help us; but I shall write again on this subject, and as soon as I can get a photograph of the abbey I will send it. 'Yours very sincerely, 'OLIVER GOGARTY.' 'Now, what will Father O'Grady answer to all this?' he said under his breath as he folded up his letter. 'A worthy soul, an excellent soul, there's no doubt about that.' And he began to feel sorry for Father O'Grady. But his sorrow was suddenly suspended. If he went to London he wouldn't be likely to see her. 'Another change,' he said; 'things are never the same for long. A week ago I knew where she was; I could see her in her surroundings. Berkshire is not very far from London. But who is Mr. Poole?' And he sat thinking. A few days after he picked up a letter from his table from Father O'Grady, a long garrulous letter, four pages about Kilronan Abbey, Irish London, convent schools--topics interesting enough in themselves, but lacking in immediate interest. The letter contained only three lines about her. That Mr. Poole explained everything to her, and that she liked her work. The letter dropped from his hand; the hand that had held the letter fell upon his knee, and Father Oliver sat looking through the room. Awaking suddenly, he tried to remember what he had been thinking about, for he had been thinking a long while; but he could not recall his thoughts, and went to his writing-table and began a long letter telling Father O'Grady about Kilronan Abbey and enclosing photographs. And then, feeling compelled to bring himself into as complete union as possible with his correspondent, he sat, pen in hand, uncertain if he should speak of Nora at all. The temptation was by him, and he found excuse in the thought that after all she was the link; without her he would not have known Father O'Grady. And so convinced was he of this that when he mentioned her he did so on account of a supposed obligation to sympathize once again with Father O'Grady's loss of his organist. His letter rambled on about the Masses Nora used to play best and the pieces she used to sing. A few days after he caught sight of her handwriting on his breakfast-table, and he sat reading the letter, to Catherine's annoyance, who said the rashers were getting cold. _From Miss Nora Glynn to Father Oliver Gogarty._ 'BEECHWOOD HALL, BERKSHIRE, '_July_ 20, 19--. 'DEAR FATHER GOGARTY, 'One is not always in a mood to give credit to others for good intentions, especially when one returns home at the close of day disappointed, and I wrote a hard, perhaps a cruel, letter; but I'm feeling differently now. The truth is that your letter arrived at an unfortunate moment when things were going badly with me.' 'I'm forgiven,' Father Oliver cried--'I'm forgiven;' and his joy was so great that the rest of the letter seemed unnecessary, but he continued to read: 'Father O'Grady has no doubt told you that I have given up my post of organist in his church, Mr. Poole having engaged me to teach his daughter music and to act as his secretary. In a little letter which I received about a fortnight ago from him he told me he had written to you, and it appears that you have recovered from your scruples of conscience, and have forgotten the wrong you did me; but if I know you at all, you are deceiving yourself. You will never forget the wrong you did me. But I shall forget. I am not sure that it has not already passed out of my mind. This will seem contradictory, for didn't I say that I couldn't forget your cruelty in my first letter? I wonder if I meant it when I wrote, "Put the whole thing and me out of your mind...." I suppose I did at the time, and yet I doubt it. Does anyone want to be forgotten utterly? 'I should have written to you before, but we have been busy. Mr. Poole's book has been promised by the end of the year. It's all in type, but he is never satisfied. To-day he has gone to London to seek information about the altars of the early Israelites. It's a wonderful book, but I cannot write about it to-day; the sun is shining, the country is looking lovely, and my pupil is begging me to finish my letter and go out with her. 'Very sincerely yours, 'NORA GLYNN.' 'So forgiveness has come at last,' he said; and as he walked along the shore he fell to thinking that very soon all her life in Garranard would be forgotten. 'She seems interested in her work,' he muttered; and his mind wandered over the past, trying to arrive at a conclusion, if there was or was not a fundamental seriousness in her character, inclining on the whole to think there was, for if she was not serious fundamentally, she would not have been chosen by Mr. Poole for his secretary. 'My little schoolmistress, the secretary of a great scholar! How very extraordinary! But why is it extraordinary? When will she write again?' And every night he wished for the dawn, and every morning he asked if there were any letters for him. 'No, your reverence, no letters this morning;' and when Catherine handed him some envelopes they only contained bills or uninteresting letters from the parishioners or letters from the Board of Works about the bridge in which he could no longer feel any interest whatever. At last he began to think he had said something to offend her, and to find out if this were so he would have to write to Father O'Grady telling him that Miss Glynn had written saying she had forgiven him. Her forgiveness had brought great relief; but Miss Glynn said in her letter that she was alone in Berkshire, Mr. Poole having gone to London to seek information regarding the altars of the early Israelites. _From Father O'Grady to Father Oliver Gogarty._ '_August_ 1, 19--. 'DEAR FATHER GOGARTY, 'I am sorry I cannot give you the information you require regarding the nature of Mr. Poole's writings, and if I may venture to advise you, I will say that I do not think any good will come to her by your inquiry into the matter. She is one of those women who resent all control; and, if I may judge from a letter she wrote to me the other day, she is bent now on educating herself regardless of the conclusions to which her studies may lead her. I shall pray for her, and that God may watch over and guide her is my hope. I am sure it is yours too. She is in God's hands, and we can do nothing to help her. I am convinced of that, and it would be well for you to put her utterly out of your mind. 'I am, very truly yours, 'MICHAEL O'GRADY.' 'Put her utterly out of my mind,' Father Oliver cried aloud; 'now what does he mean by that?' And he asked himself if this piece of advice was Father O'Grady's attempt to get even with him for having told him that he should have informed himself regarding Mr. Poole's theological opinions before permitting her to go down to Berkshire. It did not seem to him that Father O'Grady would stoop to such meanness, but there seemed to be no other explanation, and he fell to thinking of what manner of man was Father O'Grady--an old man he knew him to be, and from the tone of his letters he had judged him a clever man, experienced in the human weakness and conscience. But this last letter! In what light was he to read it? Did O'Grady fail to understand that there is no more intimate association than that of an author and his secretary. If we are to believe at all in spiritual influences--and who denies them?--can we minimize these? On his way to the writing-table he stopped. Mr. Poole's age--what was it? He imagined him about sixty. 'It is at that age,' he said, 'that men begin to think about the altars of the early Israelites,' and praying at intervals that he might be seventy, he wrote a short note thanking Father O'Grady for his advice and promising to bear it in mind. He did not expect to get an answer, nor did he wish for an answer; for he had begun to feel that he and Father O'Grady had drifted apart, and had no further need one for the other. 'Are there no letters this morning?' he asked Catherine. 'None, sir. You haven't had one from London for a long time.' He turned away. 'An intolerable woman--intolerable! I shall be obliged to make a change soon,' he said, turning away so that Catherine should not see the annoyance that he felt on his face. _From Father Oliver Gogarty to Miss Nora Glynn._ 'GARRANARD, BOHOLA, '_August_ 6, 19--. 'DEAR MISS GLYNN, 'You said in your very kind letter, which I received a fortnight ago, and which I answered hastily, that on some future occasion you would perhaps tell me about the book Mr. Poole is writing. I wonder if this occasion will ever arise, and, if so, if it be near or far--near, I hope, for interested as I naturally am in your welfare, I have begun to feel some anxiety regarding this book. On the day that--' 'Father O'Grady, your reverence.' Father Oliver laid his letter aside, and then hid it in the blotter, regretting his haste and his fumbling hands, which perhaps had put the thought into O'Grady's mind that the letter was to Nora. And so he came forward faintly embarrassed to meet a small pale man, whom he judged to be seventy or thereabouts, coming forward nimbly, bent a little, with a long, thin arm and bony hand extended in a formal languor of welcome. A little disappointing was the first moment, but it passed away quickly, and when his visitor was seated Father Oliver noticed a large nose rising out of the pallor and on either side of it dim blue eyes and some long white locks. 'You're surprised to see me,' Father O'Grady said in a low, winning voice. 'Of course you're surprised--how could it be otherwise? but I hope you're glad.' 'Very glad,' Father Oliver answered. 'Glad, very glad,' he repeated; and begged his visitor to allow him to help him off with his overcoat. 'How pleasant,' Father O'Grady said, as soon as he was back in the armchair, as if he felt that the duty fell upon him to find a conversation that would help them across the first five minutes--'how pleasant it is to see a turf fire again! The turf burns gently, mildly, a much pleasanter fire than coal; the two races express themselves in their fires.' 'Oh, we're fiery enough over here,' Father Oliver returned; and the priests laughed. 'I did not feel that I was really in Ireland,' Father O'Grady continued, 'till I saw the turf blazing and falling into white ash. You see I haven't been in Ireland for many years.' Father Oliver threw some more sods of turf into the grate, saying: 'I'm glad, Father O'Grady, that you enjoy the fire, and I'm indeed glad to see you. I was just thinking--' 'Of me?' Father O'Grady asked, raising his Catholic eyes. The interruption was a happy one, for Father Oliver would have found himself embarrassed to finish the sentence he had begun. For he would not have liked to have admitted that he had just begun a letter to Nora Glynn, to say, 'There it is on the table.' Father O'Grady's interruption gave him time to revise his sentence. 'Yes, I was thinking of you, Father O'Grady. Wondering if I might dare to write to you again.' 'But why should you be in doubt?' Father O'Grady asked; and then, remembering a certain asperity in Father Oliver's last letter, he thought it prudent to change the conversation. 'Well, here I am and unexpected, but, apparently, welcome.' 'Very welcome,' Father Oliver murmured. 'I'm glad of that,' the old man answered; 'and now to my story.' And he told how a variety of little incidents had come about, enabling him to spend his vacation in Ireland. 'A holiday is necessary for every man. And, after all, it is as easy to go from London to Ireland as it is to go to Margate, and much more agreeable. But I believe you are unacquainted with London, and Margate is doubtless unknown to you. Well, I don't know that you've missed much;' and he began to tell of the month he had spent wandering in the old country, and how full of memories he had found it--all sorts of ideas and associations new and old. 'Maybe it was you that beguiled me to Ireland; if so, I ought to thank you for a very pleasant month's holiday. Now I'm on my way home, and finding that I could fit in the railway journey I went to Tinnick, and I couldn't go to Tinnick without driving over to Garranard.' 'I should think not, indeed,' Father Oliver answered quickly. 'It was very good of you to think of me, to undertake the journey to Tinnick and the long drive from Tinnick over here.' 'One should never be praised for doing what is agreeable to one to do. I liked you from your letters; you're like your letters, Father Oliver--at least I think you are.' 'I'm certain you're like yours,' Father Oliver returned, 'only I imagined you to speak slower.' 'A mumbling old man,' Father O'Grady interjected. 'You know I don't mean that,' Father Oliver replied, and there was a trace of emotion in his voice. 'It was really very good of you to drive over from Tinnick. You say that you only undertook the journey because it pleased you to do so. If that philosophy were accepted, there would be no difference between a good and an evil action; all would be attributed to selfishness.' He was about to add: 'This visit is a kindness that I did not expect, and one which I certainly did not deserve;' but to speak these words would necessitate an apology for the rudeness he felt he was guilty of in his last letter, and the fact that he knew that Father O'Grady had come to talk to him about Nora increased his nervousness. But their talk continued in commonplace and it seemed impossible to lift it out of the rut. Father O'Grady complimented Father Oliver on his house and Oliver answered that it was Peter Conway that built it, and while praising its comfort, he enlarged on the improvements that had been made in the houses occupied by priests. 'Yes, indeed,' Father O'Grady answered, 'the average Irish priest lived in my time in a cottage not far removed from those the peasants lived in. All the same, there was many a fine scholar among them. Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Catullus, Cicero in the bookcases. Do you ever turn to these books? Do you like reading Latin?' And Father Oliver replied that sometimes he took down his Virgil. 'I look into them all sometimes,' he added. 'And you still read Latin, classical Latin, easily?' Father O'Grady inquired. 'Fairly,' Father Oliver replied; 'I read without turning to the dictionary, though I often come to words I have never seen or have forgotten the meaning of. I read on. The Latin poets are more useful than the English to me.' 'More useful?' Father O'Grady repeated. 'More useful,' Father Oliver rejoined, 'if your object is a new point of view, and one wants that sometimes, living alone in the silent country. One sometimes feels frightened sitting by the fire all alone listening to the wind. I said just now that I was thinking of you. I often think of you, Father O'Grady, and envy you your busy parish. If I ever find myself in London I shall go for long tram drives, and however sordid the district I shall view the dim congregation of houses with pleasure and rejoice in the hub of the streets.' 'You would soon weary of London, I promise you that, Father Oliver.' 'A promise for which it would be an affectation to thank you,' Father Oliver answered. And Father O'Grady spoke of the miles and miles of docks. 'The great murky Thames,' he said, 'wearies, but it is very wonderful. Ah, Landor's "Hellenics" in the original Latin: how did that book come here?' 'A question I've often asked myself,' Father Oliver returned. 'A most intellectual volume it is to find in the house of an Irish priest. Books travel, and my predecessor, Father Peter, is the last man in the world who would have cared to spend an hour on anything so literary as Landor. He used to read the newspaper--all the newspapers he could get hold of.' Father Peter's personality did not detain them long, and feeling somewhat ashamed of their inability to talk naturally, without thinking of what they were to say next, Father O'Grady ventured to doubt if Horace would approve of Landor's Latin and of the works written in comparatively modern times. Buchanan, for instance. At last the conversation became so trite and wearisome that Father O'Grady began to feel unable to continue it any longer. 'You've a nice garden, Father Oliver.' 'You'd like to see my garden?' Father Oliver asked, very much relieved at having escaped from Buchanan so easily. And the two priests went out, each hoping that the other would break the ice; and to encourage Father Oliver to break it, Father O'Grady mentioned that he was going back that evening to Tinnick--a remark that was intended to remind Father Oliver that the time was passing by. Father Oliver knew that the time for speaking of her was passing by, but he could not bring himself to speak, and instead he tried to persuade Father O'Grady to stay to dinner, but he could not be persuaded; and they walked to and fro, talking about their different parishes, Father O'Grady asking Father Oliver questions about his school and his church. And when Father O'Grady had contributed a great deal of unnecessary information, he questioned Father O'Grady about his parish, and gained much information regarding the difficulties that a Catholic priest met with in London, till religion became as wearisome as the Latin language. At last it suddenly struck Father Oliver that if he allowed the talk to continue regarding the difficulties of the Catholic priest in London, Father O'Grady might speak of girls that had been driven out of Ireland by the priests, to become prostitutes in London. A talk on this subject would be too painful, and to escape from it he spoke of the beauty of the trees about the garden and the flowers in the garden, calling Father O'Grady's attention to the chrysanthemums, and, not willing to be outdone in horticulture, the London priest began to talk about the Japanese mallow in his garden, Father Oliver listening indifferently, saying, when it came to him to make a remark, that the time had come to put in the bulbs. 'Miss Glynn was very fond of flowers,' he said Suddenly, 'and she helped me with my garden; it was she who told me to plant roses in that corner, and to cover the wall with rambling robin. Was it not a very pretty idea to cover that end of the garden with rambling roses?' 'It was indeed. She is a woman of great taste in music and in many other things. She must have regretted your garden.' 'Why do you think she regretted my garden?' Father Oliver asked. 'Because she always regretted that mine wasn't larger. She helped me with my garden;' and feeling that they had at last got into a conversation that was full of interest for them both, Father Oliver said: 'Shall we go into the house? We shall be able to talk more agreeably by the fireside.' 'I should like to get back to that turf fire; for it is the last that I shall probably see. Let us get back to it.' 'I'm quite agreeable to return to the fire. Catherine will bring in the tea presently.' And as soon as they were back in the parlour, Father Oliver said: 'Father O'Grady, that is your chair. It was very good of you to take the trouble to drive over.' 'I wished to make my correspondent's acquaintance,' Father O'Grady murmured; 'and there is much that it is difficult to put down on paper without creating a wrong impression, whereas in talk one is present to rectify any mistakes one may drop into. I am thinking now of the last subject dealt with in our correspondence, that I should have informed myself regarding Mr. Poole's writing before I consented to allow Nora Glynn to accept the post of secretary.' 'You must forgive me, Father O'Grady,' Father Oliver cried. 'There is nothing to forgive, Father Oliver; but this criticism surprised me, for you have known Miss Nora Glynn longer than I have, and it seems strange that you should have forgotten already her steadfastness. Nothing that I could have said would have availed, and it seems to me that you were mistaken in asking me to urge Miss Glynn to decline the chance of improving her circumstances. I could not compel Miss Glynn even if I had wished to compel her. But we have discussed that question; let it pass.' 'All the same,' Father Oliver interjected, 'if one sees a woman going into danger, surely one may warn her. A word of warning dropped casually is sometimes effective.' 'But it is fatal to insist,' Father O'Grady remarked; 'and one should not try to bar the way--that is my experience at least.' 'Well, your experiences are longer than mine, Father O'Grady, I submit. The mistake I made will certainly not be repeated. But since hearing from you I've heard from Miss Glynn, and the remarks she makes in her letters about Mr. Poole's literary work, unless indeed he be a Catholic, alarm me.' 'Biblical criticism is not a Catholic characteristic,' Father O'Grady answered. 'So Miss Glynn has written to you?' 'Yes, but nothing definite about Mr. Poole's work--nothing definite. Do you know anything, Father O'Grady, about this man's writing? What is his reputation in the literary world?' 'I've heard a great deal about him,' Father O'Grady answered. 'I've made inquiries and have read some of Mr. Poole's books, and have seen them reviewed in the newspapers; I've heard his opinions discussed, and his opinions are anti-Christian, inasmuch as he denies the divinity of our Lord.' 'Could anybody be more anti-Christian than that?' Father Oliver asked. 'Yes, very much more,' Father O'Grady replied. 'There have always been people, and their number is increasing, who say that Christianity is not only untruthful but, what is worse, a great evil, having set men one against the other, creating wars innumerable. Millions have owed their deaths to tortures they have received because they differed regarding some trifling passage in Scripture. There can be no doubt of that, but it is equally true that Christianity has enabled many more millions to live as much from a practical point of view as from a spiritual. If Christianity had not been a necessity it would not have triumphed;' and Father O'Grady continued to speak of Mr. Poole's historical accounts of the history of the rise and influence of Christianity till Father Oliver interrupted him, crying out: 'And it is with that man her life will henceforth be passed, reading the books he reads and writes, and, what is worse, listening to his insidious conversation, to his subtle sophistries, for, no doubt, he is an eloquent and agreeable talker.' 'You think, then,' Father O'Grady said, 'that a Christian forfeits his faith if he inquires?' 'No, if I thought that I should cease to be a Christian. She is not inquiring the matter out of her own account; she is an enforced listener, and hears only one side. Every day a plausible account is being poured into her ears, and her circumstances are such as would tempt her to give a willing ear to Mr. Poole's beliefs that God has not revealed his existence, and that we are free to live as we please, nature being our only guide. I cannot imagine a young woman living in a more dangerous atmosphere than this. 'All you tell me, Father O'Grady, frightens me. I discovered my suspicions to you in my letters, but I can express myself better in talking than on paper--far better. It is only now that I realize how wrongly I acted towards this young woman. I was frightened in a measure before, but the reality of my guilt has never appeared so distinctly to me till now. You have revealed it to me, and I'm thinking now of what account I could give to God were I to die to-morrow. "Thou hast caused a soul to be lost," he would say. "The sins of the flesh are transitory like the flesh, the sins of the faith are deeper," may be God's judgment. Father O'Grady, I'm frightened, frightened; my fear is great, and at this moment I feel like a man on his deathbed. My agony is worse, for I'm in good health and can see clearly, whereas the dying man understands little. The senses numb as death approaches.' 'Have you spoken of the mistake you made in confession, Father Oliver?' 'No, why should I?' he answered, 'for none here would understand me. But I'll confess to you. You may have been sent to hear me. Who knows? Who can say?' and he dropped on his knees crying: 'Can I be forgiven if that soul be lost to God? Tell me if such a sin can be forgiven?' 'We must not fall into the sin of despair,' Father O'Grady answered. And he murmured the Latin formula _Absolve te_, etc., making the sign of the cross over the head of his penitent. For a while after the priests knelt together in prayer, and it was with a feeling that his burden had been lifted from him that Father Oliver rose from his knees, and, subdued in body and mind, stood looking through the room, conscious of the green grass showing through his window, lighted by a last ray of the setting sun. It was the wanness of this light that put the thought into his mind that it would soon be time to send round to the stables for his visitor's car. His visitor! That small, frail man sitting in his armchair would soon be gone, carrying with him this, Father Oliver's, confession. What had he confessed? Already he had forgotten, and both men stood face to face thinking of words wherewith they might break the silence. 'I do not know,' Father O'Grady said, 'that I altogether share your fear that an anti-Christian atmosphere necessarily implies that the Catholic who comes into it will lose her faith, else faith would not be a pure gift from God. God doesn't overload his creatures unbearably, nor does he put any stress upon them from which they cannot extricate themselves. I could cite many instances of men and women whose faith has been strengthened by hostile criticism; the very arguments that have been urged against their faith have forced them to discover other arguments, and in this way they have been strengthened in their Catholic convictions.' And to Father Oliver's question if he discerned any other influence except an intellectual influence in Mr. Poole, he answered that he had not considered this side of the question. 'I don't know what manner of man he is in his body,' said Father Oliver, 'but his mind is more dangerous. An intellectual influence is always more dangerous than a sensual influence, and the sins of faith are worse than the sins of the flesh. I never thought of him as a possible seducer. But there may be that danger too. I still think, Father O'Grady, that you might have warned Nora of her danger. Forgive me; I'm sure you did all that was necessary. You do forgive me?' The men's eyes met, and Father O'Grady said, as if he wished to change the subject: 'You were born at Tinnick, were you not?' 'Yes, I was born in Tinnick,' Father Oliver repeated mechanically, almost as if he had not heard the question. 'And your sisters are nuns?' 'Yes, yes.' 'Tell me how it all came about.' 'How all what came about?' Father Oliver asked, for he was a little dazed and troubled in his mind, and was, therefore, easily led to relate the story of the shop in Tinnick, his very early religious enthusiasms, and how he remembered himself always as a pious lad. On looking into the years gone by, he said that he saw himself more often than not by his bedside rapt in innocent little prayers. And afterwards at school he had been considered a pious lad. He rambled on, telling his story almost unconsciously, getting more thoughtful as he advanced into it, relating carefully the absurd episode of the hermitage in which, to emulate the piety of the old time, he chose Castle Island as a suitable spot for him to live in. Father O'Grady listened, seriously moved by the story; and Father Oliver continued it, telling how Eliza, coming to see the priest in him, gave up her room to him as soon as their cousin the Bishop was consulted. And it was at this point of the narrative that Father O'Grady put a question. 'Was no attempt,' he asked, 'made to marry you to some girl with a big fortune?' And Father Oliver told of his liking for Annie McGrath and of his aversion for marriage, acquiescing that aversion might be too strong a word; indifference would more truthfully represent him. 'I wasn't interested in Annie McGrath nor in any woman as far as I can remember until this unfortunate conduct of mine awakened an interest in Nora Glynn. And it would be strange, indeed, if it hadn't awakened an interest in me,' he muttered to himself. Father O'Grady suppressed the words that rose up in his mind, 'Now I'm beginning to understand.' And Father Oliver continued, like one talking to himself: 'I'm thinking that I was singularly free from all temptations of the sensual life, especially those represented by womankind. I was ordained early, when I was twenty-two, and as soon as I began to hear confessions, the things that surprised me the most were the stories relating to those passionate attachments that men experience for women and women for men--attachments which sometimes are so intense that if the sufferer cannot obtain relief by the acquiescence of the object of their affections, he, if it be he, she, if it be she, cannot refrain from suicide. There have been cases of men and women going mad because their love was not reciprocated, and I used to listen to these stories wonderingly, unable to understand, bored by the relation.' If Father Oliver had looked up at that moment, Father O'Grady's eyes would have told him that he had revealed himself, and that perhaps Father O'Grady now knew more about him than he knew himself. But without withdrawing his eyes from the fire he continued talking till Catherine's step was heard outside. 'She's coming to lay the cloth for our tea,' Father Oliver said. And Father O'Grady answered: 'I shall be glad of a cup of tea.' 'Must you really go after tea?' Father Oliver asked; and again he begged Father O'Grady to stay for dinner. But Father O'Grady, as if he felt that the object of his visit had been accomplished, spoke of the drive back to Tinnick and of the convenience of the branch line of railway. It was a convenience certainly, but it was also an inconvenience, owing to the fact that the trains run from Tinnick sometimes missed the mail train; and this led Father Oliver to speak of the work he was striving to accomplish, the roofing of Kilronan Abbey, and many other things, and the time passed without their feeling it till the car came round to take Father O'Grady away. 'He goes as a dream goes,' Father Oliver said, and a few minutes afterwards he was sitting alone by his turf fire, asking himself in what dreams differed from reality. For like a dream Father O'Grady had come and he had gone, never to return. 'But does anything return?' he asked himself, and he looked round his room, wondering why the chairs and tables did not speak to him, and why life was not different from what it was. He could hear Catherine at work in the kitchen preparing his dinner, she would bring it to him as she had done yesterday, he would eat it, he would sit up smoking his pipe for a while, and about eleven o'clock go to his bed. He would lie down in it, and rise and say Mass and see his parishioners. All these things he had done many times before, and he would go on doing them till the day of his death--Until the day of my death,' he repeated, 'never seeing her again, never seeing him. Why did he come here?' And he was surprised that he could find no answer to any of the questions that he put to himself. 'Nothing will happen again in my life--nothing of any interest. This is the end! And if I did go to London, of what should I speak to him? It will be better to try to forget it all, and return, if I can, to the man I was before I knew her;' and he stood stock still, thinking that without this memory he would not be himself. Father O'Grady's coming had been a pleasure to him, for they had talked together; he had confessed to him; had been shriven. At that moment he caught sight of a newspaper upon his table. '_Illustrated England_,' he muttered, his thoughts half away; and he fell to wondering how it had come into the house. 'Father O'Grady must have left it,' he said, and began to unroll the paper. But while unrolling it he stopped. Half his mind was still away, and he sat for fully ten minutes lost in sad sensations, and it was the newspaper slipping from his hand that awoke him. The first thing that caught his eye on opening the paper was an interview with Mr. Walter Poole, embellished with many photographs of Beechwood Hall. 'Did O'Grady leave this paper here for me to read,' he asked himself, 'or did he forget to take it away with him? We talked of so many things that he may have forgotten it, forgotten even to mention it. How very strange!' The lodge gates and the long drive, winding between different woods, ascending gradually to the hilltop on which Beechwood Hall was placed by an early eighteenth-century architect, seemed to the priest to be described with too much unction by the representative of _Illustrated England_. To the journalist Beechwood Hall stood on its hill, a sign and symbol of the spacious leisure of the eighteenth century and the long tradition that it represented, one that had not even begun to drop into decadence till 1850, a tradition that still existed, despite the fact that democracy was finding its way into the agricultural parts of England. The journalist was impressed, perhaps unduly impressed, by the noble hall and the quiet passages that seemed to preserve a memory of the many generations that had passed through them on different errands, now all hushed in the family vault. Father Oliver looked down the column rapidly, and it was not until the footman who admitted the journalist was dismissed by the butler, who himself conducted the journalist to the library, that Father Oliver said: 'We have at last arrived at the castle of learning in which the great Mr. Poole sits sharpening the pen which is to slay Christianity. But Christianity will escape Mr. Poole's pen. It, has outlived many such attacks in the past. We shall see, however, what kind of nib he uses, fine or blunt?' The journalist followed the butler down the long library overlooking green sward to a quiet nook, if he might venture to speak of Mr. Walter Poole's study as a quiet nook. It seemed to surprise him that Mr. Walter Poole should rise from his writing-table and come forward to meet him, and he expressed his gratitude to Mr. Walter Poole, whose time was of great importance, for receiving him. And after all this unction came a flattering description of Mr. Walter Poole himself. He was, in the interviewer's words, a young man, tall and clean-shaven, with a high nose which goes well with an eye-glass. The chin is long and drops straight; his hair is mustard-coloured and glossy, and it curls very prettily about the broad, well-shapen forehead. He is reserved at first, and this lends a charm to the promise, which is very soon granted you, of making the acquaintance with the thoughts and ideas which have interested Mr. Walter Poole since boyhood--in fine, which have given him his character. If he seems at first sight to conceal himself from you, it is from shyness, or because he is reluctant to throw open his mind to the casual curious. Why should he not keep his mind for his own enjoyment and for the enjoyment of his friends, treating it like his pleasure grounds or park? His books are not written for the many but for the few, and he does not desire a larger audience than those with whom he is in natural communion from the first, and this without any faintest appearance of affectation. 'I suppose it isn't fair,' the priest said, 'to judge a man through his interviewer; but if this interviewer doesn't misrepresent Mr. Walter Poole, Mr. Walter Poole is what is commonly known as a very superior person. He would appear from this paper,' the priest said, 'to be a man between thirty and forty, not many years older than myself.' The priest's thoughts floated away back into the past, and, returning suddenly with a little start to the present, he continued reading the interview, learning from it that Mr. Walter Poole's conversation was usually gentle, like a quiet river, and very often, like a quiet river, it rushed rapidly when Mr. Walter Poole became interested in his subject. 'How very superior all this is,' the priest said. 'The river of thought in him,' the interviewer continued, 'is deep or shallow, according to the need of the moment. If, for instance, Mr. Walter Poole is asked if he be altogether sure that it is wise to disturb people in their belief in the traditions and symbols that have held sway for centuries, he will answer quickly that if truth lies behind the symbols and traditions, it will be in the interest of the symbols and traditions to inquire out the truth, for blind belief--in other words, faith--is hardly a merit, or if it be a merit it is a merit that cannot be denied to the savages who adore idols. But the civilized man is interested in his history, and the Bible deserves scientific recognition, for it has a history certainly and is a history. "We are justified, therefore," Mr. Walter Poole pleaded, "in seeking out the facts, and the search is conducted as much in the interests of theology as of science; for though history owes nothing to theology, it cannot be denied that theology owes a great deal to history."' 'He must have thought himself very clever when he made that remark to the interviewer,' the priest muttered; and he walked up and down his room, thinking of Nora Glynn living in this unchristian atmosphere. He picked up the paper again and continued reading, for he would have to write to Nora about Father O'Grady's visit and about the interview in _Illustrated England_. The interviewer inquired if Mr. Walter Poole was returning to Palestine, and Mr. Walter Poole replied that there were many places that he would like to revisit, Galilee, for instance, a country that St. Paul never seemed to have visited, which, to say the least, was strange. Whereupon a long talk began about Paul and Jesus, Mr. Walter Poole maintaining that Paul's teaching was identical with that of Jesus, and that Peter was a clown despised by Paul and Jesus. 'How very superior,' Father Oliver muttered--how very superior.' He read that Mr. Walter Poole was convinced that the three Synoptic Gospels were written towards the close of the first century; and one of the reasons he gave for this attribution was as in Matthew, chapter xxvii., verse 7, 'And they took counsel, and bought with them (the thirty pieces of silver) the potter's field, to bury strangers in. Wherefore that field was called, The field of blood, unto this day'--a passage which showed that the Gospel could not have been written till fifty or sixty years after the death of Jesus. 'England must be falling into atheism if newspapers dare to print such interviews,' Father Oliver said; and he threw the paper aside angrily. 'And it was I,' he continued, dropping into his armchair, 'that drove her into this atheistical country. I am responsible, I alone.' _From Father Oliver Gogarty to Miss Glynn._ 'GARRANARD, BOHOLA, '_August_ 10, 19--. 'DEAR Miss Glynn, 'I have a piece of news for you. Father O'Grady has been here, and left me a few hours ago. Catherine threw open the door, saying, "Father O'Grady, your reverence," and the small, frail man whom you know so well walked into the room, surprising me, who was altogether taken aback by the unexpectedness of his visit. 'He was the last person in the world I expected at that moment to meet, yet it was natural that an Irish priest, on the mission in England, would like to spend his holidays in Ireland, and still more natural that, finding himself in Ireland, Father O'Grady should come to see me. He drove over from Tinnick, and we talked about you. He did not seem on the whole as anxious for your spiritual safety as I am, which is only what one might expect, for it was not he that drove you out of a Catholic country into a Protestant one. He tried to allay my fears, saying that I must not let remorse of conscience get hold of me, and he encouraged me to believe that my responsibility had long ago ended. It was pleasant to hear these things said, and I believed him in a way; but he left by accident or design a copy of _Illustrated England_ on my table. I am sufficiently broad-minded to believe that it is better to be a good Protestant than a bad Catholic; but Mr. Walter Poole is neither Catholic nor Protestant, but an agnostic, which is only a polite word for an atheist. Week in and week out you will hear every argument that may be used against our holy religion. It is true that you have the advantage of being born a Catholic, and were well instructed in your religion; and no doubt you will accept with caution his statements, particularly that very insidious statement that Jesus lays no claim to divinity in the three Synoptic Gospels, and that these were not written by the apostles themselves, but by Greeks sixty, seventy, or perhaps eighty years after his death. I do not say he will try to undermine your faith, but how can he do otherwise if he believe in what he writes? However careful he may be to avoid blasphemy in your presence, the fact remains that you are living in an essentially unchristian atmosphere, and little by little the poison which you are taking in will accumulate, and you will find that you have been influenced without knowing when or how. 'If you lose your faith, I am responsible for it; and I am not exaggerating when I say the thought that I may have lost a soul to God is always before me. I can imagine no greater responsibility than this, and there seems to be no way of escaping from it. Father O'Grady says that you have passed out of our care, that all we can do is to pray for you. But I would like to do something more, and if you happen upon some passages in the books you are reading that seem in contradiction to the doctrines taught by the Catholic Church, I hope you will not conclude that the Church is without an answer. The Church has an answer ready for every single thing that may be said against her doctrines. I am not qualified to undertake the defence of the Church against anyone. I quite recognize my own deficiency in this matter, but even I may be able to explain away some doubts that may arise. If so, I beg of you not to hesitate to write to me. If I cannot do so myself, I may be able to put you in the way of finding out the best Catholic opinion on matters of doctrine. 'Very sincerely yours, 'OLIVER GOGARTY.' _From Miss Nora Glynn to Father Oliver Gogarty._ 'BEECHWOOD HALL, BERKSHIRE, '_August_ 15, 19--. 'I am sorry indeed that I am causing you so much trouble of conscience. You must try to put it out of your mind that you are responsible for me. The idea is too absurd. When I was in your parish I was interested in you, and that was why I tried to improve the choir and took trouble to decorate the altar. Have you forgotten how anxious I was that you should write the history of the lake and its castles? Why don't you write it and send it to me? I shall be interested in it, though for the moment I have hardly time to think of anything but Jewish history. Within the next few weeks, for certain, the last chapter of Mr. Poole's book will be passed for press, and then we shall go abroad and shall visit all the great men in Europe. Some are in Amsterdam, some are in Paris, some live in Switzerland. I wish I understood French a little better. Isn't it all like a dream? Do you know, I can hardly believe I ever was in forlorn Garranard teaching little barefooted children their Catechism and their A, B, C. 'Good-bye, Father Gogarty. We go abroad next week. I lie awake thinking of this trip--the places I shall see and the people I shall meet. 'Very sincerely yours, 'NORA GLYNN.' It seemed to him that her letter gave very little idea of her. Some can express themselves on paper, and are more real in the words they write than in the words they speak. But hardly anything of his idea of her transpired in that letter--only in her desire of new ideas and new people. She was interested in everything--in his projected book about the raiders faring forth from the island castles, and now in the source of the Christian River; and he began to meditate a destructive criticism of Mr. Poole's ideas in a letter addressed to the editor of _Illustrated England_, losing heart suddenly, he knew not why, feeling the task to be beyond him. Perhaps it would be better not to write to Nora again. _From Father Oliver Gogarty to Miss Nora Glynn._ 'GARRANARD, BOHOLA, '_August_ 22, 19--. 'DEAR MISS GLYNN, 'I gather from your letter that religion has ceased to interest you, except as a subject for argument, and I will not begin to argue with you, but will put instead a simple question to you: In what faith do you intend to bring up your child? and what will be your answer when your child asks: "Who made me?" Mr. Poole may be a learned man, but all the learning in the world will not tell you what answer to make to your child's questions; only the Church can do that. 'I have thought a great deal about the danger that your post of secretary to Mr. Poole involves and am not sure that the state of indifference is not the worst state of all. One day you will find that indifference has passed into unbelief, and you will write to me (if we continue to write to each other) in such a way that I shall understand that you have come to regard our holy religion as a tale fit only for childhood's ears. I write this to you, because I have been suddenly impelled to write, and it seems to me that in writing to you in this simple way I am doing better than if I spent hours in argument. You will not always think as you do now; the world will not always interest you as much as it does now. I will say no more on this point but will break off abruptly to tell you that I think you are right when you say that we all want change. I feel I have lived too long by the side of this lake, and I am thinking of going to London....' The room darkened gradually, and, going to the window, he longed for something to break the silence, and was glad when the rain pattered among the leaves. The trees stood stark against the sky, in a green that seemed unnatural. The sheep moved as if in fear towards the sycamores, and from all sides came the lowing of cattle. A flash drove him back from the window. He thought he was blinded. The thunder rattled; it was as if a God had taken the mountains in his arms and was shaking them together. Crash followed crash; the rain came down; it was as if the rivers of heaven had been opened suddenly. Once he thought the storm was over; but the thunder crashed again, the rain began to thicken; there was another flash and another crash, and the pour began again. But all the while the storm was wearing itself out, and he began to wonder if a sullen day, ending in this apocalypse, would pass into a cheerful evening. It seemed as if it would, for some blue was showing between the clouds drifting westward, threatening every moment to blot out the blue, but the clouds continued to brighten at the edges. 'The beginning of the sunset,' the priest said; and he went out on his lawn and stood watching the swallows in the shining air, their dipping, swerving flight showing against a background of dappled clouds. He had never known so extraordinary a change; and he walked to and fro in the freshened air, thinking that Nora's health might not have withstood the strain of trudging from street to street, teaching the piano at two shillings an hour, returning home late at night to a poky little lodging, eating any food a landlady might choose to give her. As a music teacher she would have had great difficulty in supporting herself and her baby, and it pleased him to imagine the child as very like her mother; and returning to the house, he added this paragraph: 'I was interrupted while writing this letter by a sudden darkening of the light, and when I went to the window the sky seemed to have sunk close to the earth, and there was a dreadful silence underneath it. I was driven back by a flash of lightning, and the thunder was terrifying. A most extraordinary storm lasting for no more than an hour, if that, and then dispersing into a fine evening. It was a pleasure to see the change--the lake shrouded in mist, with ducks talking softly in the reeds, and swallows high up, advancing in groups like dancers on a background of dappled clouds. 'I have come back to my letter to ask if you would like me to go to see your baby? Father O'Grady and I will go together if I go to London, and I will write to you about it. You will be glad, no doubt, to hear that the child is going on well. 'Very sincerely yours, 'OLIVER GOGARTY.' _From Father Oliver Gogarty to Miss Nora Glynn._ 'GARRANARD, BOHOLA, '_September_ 4, 19--. 'Forgive me, my dear friend, but I am compelled to write to apologize for the introduction of my troubles of conscience and my anxiety for your spiritual welfare into my last letter. You found a way out of difficulties--difficulties into which I plunged you. But we will say no more on that point: enough has been said. You have created a life for yourself. You have shown yourself to be a strong woman in more ways than one, and are entitled to judge whether your work and the ideas you live among are likely to prove prejudicial to your faith and morals. By a virtue of forgiveness which I admire and thank you for, you write telling me of the literary work you are engaged upon. If I had thought before writing the letter I am now apologizing for, I could not have failed to see that you write to me because you would relieve my loneliness as far as you are able. But I did not think: I yielded to my mood, and see now that my letters are disgracefully egotistical, and very often absurd; for have I not begged of you to remember that since God will hold me responsible for your soul, it would be well that you should live a life of virtue and renunciation, so that I shall be saved the humiliation of looking down from above upon you in hell? 'Loneliness begets sleeplessness, and sleeplessness begets a sort of madness. I suffer from nightmare, and I cannot find words to tell you how terrible are the visions one sees at dawn. It is not so much that one sees unpleasant and ugly things--life is not always pretty or agreeable, that we know--but when one lies between sleeping and waking, life itself is shown in mean aspects, and it is whispered that one has been duped till now; that now, and for the first time, one knows the truth. You remember how the wind wails about the hilltop on which I live. The wailing of wind has something to do with my condition of mind; one cannot sit from eight o'clock in the evening till twelve at night staring at the lamp, hearing the wind, and remain perfectly sane. 'But why am I writing about myself? I want to escape from myself, and your letters enable me to do so. The names of the cities you are going to visit transport me in imagination, and last night I sat a long while wondering why I could not summon courage to go abroad. Something holds me back. I think if I once left Garranard, I should never return to the lake and its island. I hope you haven't forgotten Marban, the hermit who lived at the end of the lake in Church Island. I visited his island yesterday. I should have liked to have rowed myself through the strait and along the shores, seeing Castle Cara and Castle Burke as I passed; but Church Island is nearly eight miles from here, and I don't know if I should have been man enough to pull the fisherman's boat so far, so I put the gray horse into the shafts and went round by road. 'Church Island lies in a bay under a rocky shore, and the farmer who cuts the grass there in the summer-time has a boat to bring away the hay. It was delightful to step into it, and as the oars chimed I said to myself, "I have Marban's poem in my pocket--and will read it walking up the little path leading from his cell to his church." The lake was like a sheet of blue glass, and the island lay yellow and red in it. As we rowed, seeking a landing-place under the tall trees that grow along the shores, the smell of autumn leaves mingled with the freshness of the water. We rowed up a beautiful little inlet overhung with bushes. The quay is at the end of it, and on getting out of the boat, I asked the boatman to point out to me what remained of Marban's Church. He led me across the island--a large one, the largest in the lake--not less than seven acres or nine, and no doubt some parts of it were once cultivated by Marban. Of his church, however, very little remains--only one piece of wall, and we had great difficulty in seeing it, for it is now surrounded by a dense thicket. The little pathway leading from his cell to the church still exists; it is almost the same as he left it--a little overgrown, that is all. 'Marban was no ordinary hermit; he was a sympathetic naturalist, a true poet, and his brother who came to see him, and whose visit gave rise to the colloquy, was a king. I hope I am not wronging Marban, but the island is so beautiful that I cannot but think that he was attracted by its beauty and went there because he loved Nature as well as God. His poem is full of charming observations of nature, of birds and beasts and trees, and it proves how very false the belief is that primitive man had no eyes to see the beauties of the forest and felt no interest in the habits of animals or of birds, but regarded them merely as food. It pleases me to think of the hermit sitting under the walls of his church or by his cell writing the poem which has given me so much pleasure, including in it all the little lives that cams to visit him--the birds and the beasts--enumerating them as carefully as Wordsworth would, and loving them as tenderly. Marban! Could one find a more beautiful name for a hermit? Guaire is the brother's name. Marban and King Guaire. Now, imagine the two brothers meeting for a poetic disputation regarding the value of life, and each speaking from his different point of view! True that Guaire's point of view is only just indicated--he listens to his brother, for a hermit's view of life is more his own than a king's. It pleases me to think that the day the twain met to discourse of life and its mission was the counterpart of the day I spent on the island. My day was full of drifting cloud and sunshine, and the lake lay like a mirror reflecting the red shadow of the island. So you will understand that the reasons Marban gave for living there in preference to living the life of the world seemed valid, and I could not help peering into the bushes, trying to find a rowan-tree--for he speaks of one. The rowan is the mountain-ash. I found several. One tree was covered with red berries, and I broke off a branch and brought it home, thinking that perchance it might have come down to us from one planted by Marban's hand. Of blackthorns there are plenty. The adjective he uses is "dusky." Could he have chosen a more appropriate one? I thought, too, of "the clutch of eggs, the honey and the mast" that God sent him, of "the sweet apples and red whortleberries," and of his dish of "strawberries of good taste and colour." 'It is hard to give in an English translation an idea of the richness of the verse, heavily rhymed and winningly alliterated, but you will see that he enumerates the natural objects with skill. The eternal summer--the same in his day as in ours--he speaks of as "a coloured mantle," and he mentions "the fragrance of the woods." And seeing the crisp leaves--for the summer was waning--I repeated his phrase, "the summer's coloured mantle," and remembered: "Swarms of bees and chafers, the little musicians of the world-- A gentle chorus." "The wren," he says, "is an active songster among the hazel boughs. Beautifully hooded birds, wood-peckers, fair white birds, herons, sea-gulls, come to visit me." There is no mournful music in his island; and as for loneliness, there is no such thing in "My lowly little abode, hidden in a mane of green-barked yew-tree. Near is an apple-tree, Big like a hostel; A pretty bush thick as a fist of hazel-nuts, a choice spring and water fit for a Prince to drink. Round it tame swine lie down, Wild swine, grazing deer, A badger's brood, A peaceful troop, a heavy host of denizens of the soil A-trysting at my house. To meet them foxes come. How delightful!" 'The island is about a hundred yards from the shore, and I wondered how the animals crossed from the mainland as I sat under the porch of the ruined church. I suppose the water was shallower than it is now. But why and how the foxes came to meet the wild swine is a matter of little moment; suffice it that he lived in this island aware of its loneliness, "without the din of strife, grateful to the Prince who giveth every good to me in my bower." To which Guaire answered: '"I would give my glorious kingship With my share of our father's heritage,-- To the hour of my death let me forfeit it, So that I may be in thy company, O Marban." 'There are many such beautiful poems in early Irish. I know of another, and I'll send it to you one of these days. In it is a monk who tells how he and his cat sit together, himself puzzling out some literary or historical problem, the cat thinking of hunting mice, and how the catching of each is difficult and requires much patience. 'Ireland attained certainly to a high degree of civilization in the seventh and eighth centuries, and if the Danes had not come, Ireland might have anticipated Italy. The poems I have in mind are the first written in Europe since classical times, and though Italy and France be searched, none will be found to match them. 'I write these things to you because I wish you to remember that, when religion is represented as hard and austere, it is the fault of those who administer religion, and not of religion itself. Religion in Ireland in the seventh and eighth centuries was clearly a homely thing, full of tender joy and hope, and the inspiration not only of poems, but of many churches and much ornament of all kinds, illuminated missals, carven porches. If Ireland had been left to herselfif it had not been for the invasion of the Danes, and the still worse invasion of the English--there is no saying what high place she might not have taken in the history of the world. But I am afraid the halcyon light that paused and passed on in those centuries will never return. We have gotten the after-glow, and the past should incite us; and I am much obliged to you for reminding me that the history of the lake and its castles would make a book. I will try to write this book, and while writing will look forward to the day when I shall send you a copy of the work, if God gives me strength and patience to complete it. Little is ever completed in Ireland.... But I mustn't begin to doubt before I begin the work, and while you and Mr. Poole are studying dry texts, trying to prove that the things that men have believed and loved for centuries are false, I shall be engaged in writing a sympathetic history--the history of natural things and natural love. 'Very sincerely yours, 'OLIVER GOGARTY.' _From Miss Nora Glynn to Father Oliver Gogarty._ 'ANTWERP, '_September_ 3, 19--. 'DEAR FATHER GOGARTY, 'You are a very human person after all, and it was very kind of you to think about my baby and kind of you to write to me about her. My baby is a little girl, and she has reddish hair like mine, and if ever you see her I think you will see me in her. The address of the woman who is looking after her is Mrs. Cust, 25, Henry Street, Guildford. Do go to see her and write me a long letter, telling me what you think of her. I am sure a trip to London will do you a great deal of good. Pack up your portmanteau, Father Gogarty, and go to London at once. Promise me that you will, and write to me about your impressions of London and Father O'Grady, and when you are tired of London come abroad. We are going on to Munich, that is all I know, but I will write again. 'Very sincerely yours, 'NORA GLYNN.' Father Oliver sat wondering, and then, waking up suddenly, he went about his business, asking himself if she really meant all she said, for why should she wish him to go abroad, for his health or in the hope of meeting him--where? In Munich! 'A riddle, a riddle, which'--he reflected a moment--'which my experience of life is not sufficient to solve.' On his way to Derrinrush he was met by a man hurrying towards him. 'Sure it is I that am in luck this day, meeting your reverence on the road, for we shall be spared half a mile if you have the sacred elements about you.' So much the peasant blurted out between the gasps, and when his breath came easier the priest learnt that Catherine, the man's wife, was dying. 'Me brother's run for the doctor, but I, being the speedier, came for yourself, and if your reverence has the sacred elements about you, we'll go along together by a short cut over the hill.' 'I'm afraid I have not got the oil and there's nothing for it but to go back to the house.' 'Then I'm afeard that Catherine will be too late to get the Sacrament. But she is a good woman, sorra better, and maybe don't need the oil,' which indeed proved to be a fact, for when they reached the cabin they found the doctor there before them, who rising from his chair by the bedside, said, 'The woman is out of danger, if she ever was in any.' 'All the same,' cried the peasant, 'Catherine wouldn't refuse the Sacrament.' 'But if she be in no danger, of what use would the Sacrament be to her?' the doctor asked; the peasant answering, 'Faith, you must have been a Protestant before you were a Catholic to be talking like that,' and Father Oliver hesitated, and left the cabin sorrowed by the unseemliness of the wrangle. He was not, however, many yards down the road when the dispute regarding the efficacy of the Sacrament administered out of due time was wiped out by a memory of something Nora had told him of herself: she had announced to the monitresses, who were discussing their ambitions, that hers was to be the secretary of a man of letters. 'So it would seem that she had an instinct of her destiny from the beginning, just as I had of mine. But had I? Her path took an odd turn round by Garranard. But she has reached her goal, or nearly. The end may be marriage--with whom? Poole most likely. Be that as it may, she will pass on to middle age; we shall grow older and seas and continents will divide our graves. Why did she come to Garranard?' _From Father Oliver Gogarty to Miss Nora Glynn._ '_September_ 10, 19--. 'DEAR MISS GLYNN, 'I received your letter this morning, written from Antwerp, and it has set me thinking that Mr. Poole's interests in scholarship must have procured for him many acquaintances among Dutch scholars, men with whom he has been in correspondence. You will meet them and hear them pour their vast erudition across dinner-tables. Rubens' great picture, "The Descent from the Cross," is in Antwerp; you will go to see it, and in Munich Mr. Poole will treat you to the works of Wagner and Mozart. You are very happy; everything has gone well with you, and it would ill befit me, who brought so much unhappiness upon you, to complain that you are too happy, too much intent on the things of this world. Yet, if you will allow me to speak candidly, I will tell you what I really think. You are changing; the woman I once knew hardly corresponds with the woman who writes to me. In reading the letters of the English Nora, I perceive many traces here and there of the Irish Nora, for the Irish Nora was not without a sense of duty, of kindness towards others, but the English Nora seems bent upon a life of pleasure, intellectual and worldly adventures. She delights in foreign travel, and no doubt places feelings above ideas, and regards our instincts as our sovereign guides. Now, when we find ourselves delighting to this extent in the visible, we may be sure that our lives have wandered far away from spiritual things. There is ever a divorce between the world of sense and the world of spirit, and the question of how much love we may expend upon external things will always arise, and will always be a cause of perplexity to those who do not choose to abandon themselves to the general drift of sensual life. This question is as difficult as the cognate question of what are our duties toward ourselves and our duties toward others. And your letters raise all these questions. I ponder them in my walks by the lake in the afternoon. In the evening in my house on the hilltop I sit thinking, seeing in imagination the country where I have been born and where I have always lived--the lake winding in and out of headlands, the highroad shaded by sycamores at one spot, a little further on wandering like a gray thread among barren lands, with here and there a village; and I make application of all the suggestions your letters contain to my own case. Every house in Garranard I know, and I see each gable end and each doorway as I sit thinking, and all the faces of my parishioners. I see lights springing up far and near. Wherever there is a light there is a poor family. 'Upon these people I am dependent for my daily bread, and they are dependent upon me for spiritual consolation. I baptize them, I marry them, and I bury them. How they think of me, I know not. I suppose they hardly think at all. When they return home at night they have little time for thinking; their bodies are too fatigued with the labour of the fields. But as I sit thinking of them, I regret to say that my fear often is that I shall never see any human beings but them; and I dream of long rambles in the French country, resting at towns, reading in libraries. A voice whispers, "You could do very well with a little of her life, but you will never know any other life but your present one." A great bitterness comes up, a little madness gathers behind the eyes; I walk about the room and then I sit down, stunned by the sudden conviction that life is, after all, a very squalid thing--something that I would like to kick like an old hat down a road. 'The conflict going on within me goes on within every man, but without this conflict life would be superficial; we shouldn't know the deeper life. Duty has its rewards as well as its pain, and the knowledge that I am passing through a time of probationship sustains me. I know I shall come out of it all a stronger man. 'OLIVER GOGARTY.' After posting his letter he walked home, congratulating himself that he had made it plain to her that he was not a man she could dupe. Her letter was written plainly, and the more he thought of her letter the clearer did it seem that it was inspired by Poole. But what could Poole's reason be for wishing him to leave Ireland, to go abroad? It was certain that if Poole were in love with Nora he would do all in his power to keep a poor priest (was it thus they spoke of him?) in Ireland. Poole might wish to make a fool of him, but what was her reason for advising him to go abroad? Revenge was too strong a word. In the course of the evening it suddenly struck him that, after all, she might have written her letter with a view of inducing him to come to Rome. She was so capricious that it was not impossible that she had written quite sincerely, and wished him out there with her. She was so many-sided, and he fell to thinking of her character, without being able to arrive at any clear estimate of it, with this result, however--that he could not drive out the belief that she had written him an insincere letter. Or did she wish to revenge herself? The thought brought him to his feet, for he could never forget how deeply he had wronged her--it was through his fault that she had become Mr. Poole's secretary--maybe his mistress. If he had not preached that sermon, she would be teaching the choir in his parish. But, good heavens! what use was there in going over all that again? He walked to the window and stood there watching the still autumn weather--a dull leaden sky, without a ray of light upon the grass, or a wind in the trees--thinking that these gray days deprived him of all courage. And then he remembered suddenly how a villager's horse coming from market had tripped and fallen by the roadside. Would that he, too, might fall by the roadside, so weary was he. 'If I could only make known my suffering, she would take pity on me; but no one knows another's suffering.' He walked from his window sighing, and a moment after stopped in front of his writing-table. Perhaps it was the writing-table that put the thought into his mind that she might like to read a description of an Irish autumn. _From Father Oliver Gogarty to Miss Nora Glynn._ 'GARRANARD, BOHOLA, '_September_. 'You know the wind is hardly ever at rest about the hilltop on which my house stands. Even in summer the wind sighs, a long, gentle little sigh, sometimes not unpleasant to hear. You used to speak of an Æolian harp, and say that I should place one on my window-sill. A doleful instrument it must be--loud wailing sound in winter-time, and in the summer a little sigh. But in these autumn days an Æolian harp would be mute. There is not wind enough to-day on the hillside to cause the faintest vibration. Yesterday I went for a long walk in the woods, and I can find no words that would convey an idea of the stillness. It is easy to speak of a tomb, but it was more than that. The dead are dead, and somnambulism is more mysterious than death. The season seemed to stand on the edge of a precipice, will-less, like a sleep-walker. Now and then the sound of a falling leaf caught my ear, and I shall always remember how a crow, flying high overhead towards the mountains, uttered an ominous "caw"; another crow answered, and there was silence again. The branches dropped, and the leaves hung out at the end of long stems. One could not help pitying the trees, though one knew one's pity was vain. 'As I wandered in Derrinrush, I came suddenly upon some blood-red beech-trees, and the hollow was full of blood-red leaves. You have been to Derrinrush: you know how mystic and melancholy the wood is, full of hazels and Druid stones. After wandering a long while I turned into a path. It led me to a rough western shore, and in front of me stood a great Scotch fir. The trunk has divided, and the two crowns showed against the leaden sky. It has two birch-trees on either side, and their graceful stems and faint foliage, pale like gold, made me think of dancers with sequins in their hair and sleeves. There seemed to be nothing but silence in the wood, silence, and leaves ready to fall. I had not spoken to anyone for a fortnight--I mean I had no conversation with anyone--and my loneliness helped me to perceive the loneliness of the wood, and the absence of birds made me feel it. The lake is never without gulls, but I didn't see one yesterday. "The swallows are gone," I said; "the wild geese will soon be here," and I remembered their doleful cry as I scrambled under some blackthorn bushes, glad to get out of the wood into the fields. Though I knew the field I was in well, I didn't remember the young sycamores growing in one corner of it. Yesterday I could not but notice them, for they seemed to be like children dying of consumption in a hospital ward--girls of twelve or thirteen. You will think the comparison far-fetched and unhealthy, one that could only come out of a morbidly excited imagination. Well, I cannot help that; like you, I must write as I feel. 'Suddenly I heard the sound of an axe, and I can find no words to tell you how impressive its sound was in the still autumn day. "How soon will the tree fall?" I thought; and, desirous of seeing it fall, I walked on, guided by the sound, till I saw at the end of the glade--whom do you think? Do you remember an old man called Patsy Murphy? He had once been a very good carpenter, and had made and saved money. But he is now ninety-five, and I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw him trying to cut down a larch. What his object could be in felling the tree I could not tell, and, feeling some curiosity, I walked forward. He continued to chip away pieces of the bark till his strength failed him, and he had to sit down to rest. Seeing me, he took off his hat--you know the tall hat he wears--a hat given him twenty or thirty years ago by whom? Patsy Murphy's mind is beginning to wander. He tells stories as long as you will listen to him, and it appears now that his daughter-in-law turned him out of his house--the house he had built himself, and that he had lived in for half a century. This, however, is not the greatest wrong she had done him. He could forgive her this wrong, but he cannot forgive her stealing of his sword. "There never was a Murphy," he said, "who hadn't a sword." Whether this sword is an imagination of Patsy's fading brain, I cannot say; perhaps he had some old sword and lost it. The tale he tells to-day differs wholly from the tale he told yesterday and the tale he will tell to-morrow. He told me once he had been obliged to give up all his savings to his son. I went to interview the son, determined to sift the matter to the bottom, and discovered that Patsy had still one hundred and twenty pounds in the bank. Ten pounds had been taken out for--I needn't trouble you with further details. Sufficient has been said to enable you to understand how affecting it was to meet this old man in the red and yellow woods, at the end of a breathless autumn day, trying to fell a young larch. He talked so rapidly, and one story flowed so easily into another, that it was a long time before I could get in a word. At last I was able to get out of him that the Colonel had given him leave to build a house on the shore, where he would be out of everybody's way. "All my old friends are gone, the Colonel's father and his mother. God be merciful to her! she was a good woman, the very best. And all I want now is time to think of them that's gone.... Didn't I know the Colonel's grandfather and his grandmother? They're all buried in the cemetery yonder in Kiltoon, and on a fine evenin' I do like to be sittin' on a stone by the lake, thinking of them all." 'It was at once touching and impressive to see this old man, weak as a child, the only trembling thing in a moveless day, telling these wanderings of an almost insane brain. You will say, "But what matter? They may not be true in fact, but they are his truth, they are himself, they are his age." His ninety-five years are represented in his confused talk, half recollection, half complaints about the present. He knew my father and mother, too, and, peering into my face, he caught sight of a gray hair, and I heard him mutter: '"Ah! they grow gray quicker now than they used to." 'As I walked home in the darkening light, I bethought myself of the few years left to me to live, though I am still a young man, that in a few years, which would pass like a dream, I should be as frail as Patsy Murphy, who is ninety-five. "Why should I not live as long?" I asked myself, losing my teeth one by one and my wits.' '_September_. 'I was interrupted in my description of the melancholy season, and I don't know how I should have finished that letter if I had not been interrupted. The truth is that the season was but a pretext. I did not dare to write asking you to forgive me for having returned your letter. I do not do so now. I will merely say that I returned the letter because it annoyed me, and, shameful as the admission may be, I admit that I returned it because I wished to annoy you. I said to myself, "If this be so--if, in return for kind thought--Why shouldn't she suffer? I suffer." One isn't--one cannot be--held responsible for every base thought that enters the mind. How long the mind shall entertain a thought before responsibility is incurred I am not ready to say. One's mood changes. A storm gathers, rages for a while, and disperses; but the traces of the storm remain after the storm has passed away. I am thinking now that perhaps, after all, you were sincere when you asked me to leave Garranard and take my holiday in Rome, and the baseness of which for a moment I deemed you capable was the creation of my own soul. I don't mean that my mind, my soul, is always base. At times we are more or less unworthy. Our tempers are part of ourselves? I have been pondering this question lately. Which self is the true self--the peaceful or the choleric? My wretched temper aggravated my disappointment, and my failure to write the history of the lake and its castles no doubt contributed to produce the nervous depression from which I am suffering. But this is not all; it seems to me that I may point out that your--I hardly know what word to use: "irrelevancy" does not express my meaning; "inconsequences" is nearer, yet it isn't the word I want--well, your inconsequences perplex and distract my thoughts. If you will look through the letter you sent me last you will find that you have written many things that might annoy a man living in the conditions in which I live. You follow the current of your mood, but the transitions you omit, and the reader is left hopelessly conjecturing....' She seemed so strange, so inconclusive. There seemed to be at least two, if not three, different women in the letters she had written to him, and he sat wondering how a woman with cheeks like hers, and a voice like hers, and laughter like hers, could take an interest in such arid studies. Her very name, Nora Glynn, seemed so unlike the woman who would accompany Mr. Poole into National Libraries, and sit by him surrounded by learned tomes. Moreover a mistress does not read Hebrew in a National Library with her paramour. But what did he know about such women? He had heard of them supping in fashionable restaurants covered with diamonds, and he thought of them with painted faces and dyed hair, and he was sure that Nora did not dye her hair or paint her face. No, she was not Poole's mistress. It was only his ignorance of life that could have led him to think of anything so absurd.... And then, weary of thinking and debating with himself, he took down a book that was lent some months ago, a monograph on a learned woman, a learned philosophical writer and translator of exegetical works from the German. Like Nora, she came from the middle classes, and, like Nora, she transgressed, how often he did not know, but with another woman's husband certainly. A critical writer and exponent of serious literature. Taste for learned studies did not preclude abstinence from those sins which in his ignorance of life he had associated with worldlings! Of course, St. Augustine was such a one. But is a man's truth also woman's truth? Apparently it is, and if he could believe the book he had been reading, Nora might very well be Poole's mistress. Therewith the question came up again, demanding answer: Why did she write declining any correspondence with him, and three weeks afterwards write another letter inveigling him, tempting him, bringing him to this last pitch of unhappiness? Was the letter he returned to her prompted by Mr. Poole and by a spirit of revenge? Three days after he took up his pen and added this paragraph to his unfinished letter: 'I laid aside my pen, fearing I should ask what are your relations with Mr. Poole. I have tried to keep myself from putting this question to you, but the torture of doubt overcomes me, and even if you should never write to me again, I must ask it. Remember that I am responsible to God for the life you lead. Had it not been for me, you would never have known Poole. You must grant to every man his point of view, and, as a Christian, I cannot put my responsibility out of mind. If you lose your soul, I am responsible for it. Should you write that your relations with Mr. Poole are not innocent, I shall not be relieved of my responsibility, but it will be a relief to me to know the truth. I shall pray for you, and you will repent your sins if you are living in sin. Forgive me the question I am putting to you. I have no right to do so whatever. Whatever right I had over you when you were in my parish has passed from me. I exceeded that right, but that is the old story. Maybe I am repeating my very fault again. It is not unlikely, for what do we do all through our lives but to repeat ourselves? You have forgiven me, and, having forgiven me once, maybe you will forgive me again. However this may be, do not delay writing, for every day will be an agony till I hear from you. At the end of an autumn day, when the dusk is sinking into the room, one lacks courage to live. Religion seems to desert one, and I am thinking of the leaves falling, falling in Derrinrush. All night long they will be falling, like my hopes. Forgive me this miserable letter. But if I didn't write it, I should not be able to get through the evening. Write to me. A letter from Italy will cheer me and help me to live. All my letters are not like this one. Not very long ago I wrote to you about a hermit who never wearied of life, though he lived upon an island in this lake. Did you receive that letter? I wonder. It is still following you about maybe. It was a pleasant letter, and I should be sorry if you did not get it. Write to me about Italy--about sunshine, about statues and pictures. 'Ever sincerely yours, 'OLIVER GOGARTY.' _From Father Oliver Gogarty to Miss Nora Glynn._ 'GARRANARD, BOHOLA, '_October_ 20, 19--. 'DEAR MISS GLYNN, 'I wrote last week apologizing for troubling you again with a letter, pleading that the melancholy of autumn and the falling of the leaf forced me to write to someone. I wrote asking for a letter, saying that a letter about Italian sunshine would help me to live. I am afraid my letter must have seemed exaggerated. One writes out of a mood. The mood passes, but when it is with one, one is the victim of it. And this letter is written to say I have recovered somewhat from my depression of spirits.... I have found consolation in a book, and I feel that I must send it to you, for even you may one day feel depressed and lonely. Did you ever read "The Imitation of Christ"? There is no book more soothing to the spirit than it; and on the very first page I found some lines which apply marvellously well to your case: '"If thou didst know the whole Bible outwardly, and the sayings of all the philosophers, what would it all profit thee without charity and the grace of God?" 'Over the page the saint says: "Every man naturally desireth to know; but what doth knowledge avail without the fear of God?" '"Truly, a lowly rustic that serveth God is better than a proud philosopher who pondereth the course of the stars and neglecteth himself." '"He that knoweth himself becometh vile to himself, and taketh no delight in the praises of men." '"If I knew all things that are in the world, and were not in charity, what would it profit me in the sight of God, who will judge according to deeds?" '"Cease from overweening desire of knowledge, because many distractions are found there, and much delusion." 'I might go on quoting till I reached the end, for on every page I note something that I would have you read. But why quote when I can send you the book? You have lost interest in the sentimental side of religion, but your loss is only momentary. You will never find anyone who will understand you better than this book. You are engaged now in the vain pursuit of knowledge, but some day, when you are weary of knowledge, you will turn to it. I do not ask you to read it now, but promise me that you will keep it. It will be a great consolation to me to know that it is by you. 'Very sincerely yours, 'OLIVER GOGARTY, P.P.' _From Father Oliver Gogarty to Miss Nora Glynn._ 'GARRANARD, BOHOLA, '_November_ 3, 19--. 'DEAR MISS GLYNN, 'I sent you--I think it must be a fortnight ago--a copy of "The Imitation of Christ." The copy I sent is one of the original Elizabethan edition, a somewhat rare book and difficult to obtain. I sent you this copy in order to make sure that you would keep it; the English is better than the English of our modern translations. You must not think that I feel hurt because you did not write to thank me at once for having sent you the book. My reason for writing is merely because I should like to know if it reached you. If you have not received it, I think it would be better to make inquiries at once in the post. It would be a pity that a copy of the original Elizabethan edition should be lost. Just write a little short note saying that you have received it. 'Very sincerely yours, 'OLIVER GOGARTY, P.P.' IX 'The Imitation' dropped on his knees, and he wondered if the spiritual impulse it had awakened in him was exhausted, or if the continual splashing of the rain on the pane had got upon his nerves. 'But it isn't raining in Italy,' he said, getting up from his chair; 'and I am weary of the rain, of myself--I am weary of everything.' And going to the window, he tried to take ant interest in the weather, asking himself if it would clear up about 3 o'clock. It cleared usually late in the afternoon for a short while, and he would be able to go out for half an hour. But where should he go? He foresaw his walk from end to end before he began it: the descent of the hill, the cart-track and the old ruts full of water, the dead reeds on the shore soaking, the dripping trees. But he knew that about 3 o'clock the clouds would lift, and the sunset begin in the gaps in the mountains. He might go as far as the little fields between Derrinrush and the plantations, and from there he could watch the sunset. But the sunset would soon be over, and he would have to return home, for a long evening without a book. Terrible! And he began to feel that he must have an occupation--his book! To write the story of the island castles would pass the time, and wondering how he might write it, whether from oral tradition or from the books and manuscripts which he might find in national libraries, he went out about 3 o'clock and wandered down the old cart-track, getting his feet very wet, till he came to the pine-wood, into which he went, and stood looking across the lake, wondering if he should go out to Castle Island in a boat--there was no boat, but he might borrow one somewhere--and examine what remained of the castle. But he knew every heap of old stones, every brown bush, and the thick ivy that twined round the last corner wall. Castle Hag had an interest Castle Island had not. The cormorants roosted there; and they must be hungry, for the lake had been too windy for fishing this long while. A great gust whirled past, and he stood watching the clouds drifting overhead--the same thick vapour drifting and going out. For nearly a month he was waiting for a space of blue sky, and a great sadness fell upon him, a sick longing for a change; but if he yielded to this longing he would never return to Garranard. There seemed to be no way out of the difficulty--at least, he could see none. A last ray lit up a distant hillside, his shadow floated on the wet sand. The evening darkened rapidly, and he walked in a vague diffused light, inexpressibly sad to find Moran waiting for him at the end of an old cart-track, where the hawthorns grew out of a tumbled wall. He would keep Moran for supper. Moran was a human being, and-- 'I've come to see you, Gogarty; I don't know if I'm welcome.' 'It's joking you are. You'll stay and have some supper with me?' 'Indeed I will, if you give me some drink, for it's drink that I'm after, and not eating. I'd better get the truth out at once and have done with it. I've felt the craving coming on me for the last few days--you know what I mean--and now it's got me by the throat. I must have drink. Come along, Gogarty, and give me some, and then I'll say good-bye to you for ever.' 'Now what are you saying?' 'Don't stand arguing with me, for you can't understand, Gogarty--no one can; I can't myself. But it doesn't matter what anybody understands--I'm done for.' 'We'll have a bit of supper together. It will pass from you.' 'Ah, you little know;' and the priests walked up the hill in silence. 'Gogarty, there's no use talking; I'm done for. Let me go.' 'Come in, will you?' and he took him by the arm. 'Come in. I'm a bigger man than you, Moran; come in!' 'I'm done for,' Father Moran said again. Father Oliver made a sign of silence, and when they were in the parlour, and the door shut behind them, he said: 'You mustn't talk like that, and Catherine within a step of you.' 'I've told you, Gogarty, I'm done for, and I've just come here to bid you good-bye; but before we part I'd like to hear you say that I haven't been wanting in my duties--that in all the rest, as far as you know, I've been as good a man as another.' 'In all but one thing I know no better man, and I'll not hear that there's no hope.' 'Better waste no time talking. Just let me hear you say again that I've been a good man in everything but one thing.' 'Yes, indeed;' and the priests grasped hands. And Catherine came into the room to ask if Father Moran was stopping to supper. Father Oliver answered hurriedly: 'Yes, yes, he's staying. Bring in supper as soon as you can;' and she went away, to come back soon after with the cloth. And while she laid it the priests sat looking at each other, not daring to speak, hoping that Catherine did not suspect from their silence and manner that anything was wrong. She seemed to be a long while laying the cloth and bringing in the food; it seemed to them as if she was delaying on purpose. At last the door was closed, and they were alone. 'Now, Moran, sit down and eat a bit, won't you?' 'I can't eat anything. Give me some whisky; that is what I want. Give me some whisky, and I will go away and you'll never see me again. Just a glass to keep me going, and I will go straight out of your parish, so that none of the disgrace will fall upon you; or--what do you think? You could put me up here; no one need know I'm here. All I want are a few bottles of whisky.' 'You mean that I should put you up here and let you get drunk?' 'You know what I mean well enough. I'm like that. And it's well for you who don't want whisky. But if it hadn't been for whisky I should have been in a mad-house long ago. Now, just tell me if you'll give me drink. If you will, I'll stay and talk with you, for I know you're lonely; if not, I'll just be off with myself.' 'Moran, you'll be better when you've had something to eat. It will pass from you. I will give you a glass of beer.' 'A glass of beer! Ah, if I could tell you the truth! We've all our troubles, Gogarty--trouble that none knows but God. I haven't been watching you--I've been too tormented about myself to think much of anyone else--but now and then I've caught sight of a thought passing across your mind. We all suffer, you like another, and when the ache becomes too great to be borne we drink. Whisky is the remedy; there's none better. We drink and forget, and that is the great thing. There are times, Gogarty, when one doesn't want to think, when one's afraid, aren't there?--when one wants to forget that one's alive. You've had that feeling, Gogarty. We all have it. And now I must be off. I must forget everything. I want to drink and to feel the miles passing under my feet.' And on that he got up from the fire. 'Come, Moran, I won't hear you speak like that.' 'Let me go. It's no use; I'm done for;' and Father Oliver saw his eyes light up. 'I'll not keep you against your will, but I'll go a piece of the road with you.' 'I'd sooner you didn't come, Gogarty.' Without answering, Father Oliver caught up his hat and followed Father Moran out of the house. They walked without speaking, and when they got to the gate Father Oliver began to wonder which way his unhappy curate would choose for escape. 'Now why does he take the southern road?' And a moment after he guessed that Moran was making for Michael Garvey's public-house, 'and after drinking there,' he said to himself, 'he'll go on to Tinnick.' After a couple of miles, however, Moran turned into a by-road leading through the mountains, and they walked on without saying a word. And they walked mile after mile through the worn mountain road. 'You've come far enough, Gogarty; go back. Regan's public-house is outside of your parish.' 'If it's outside my parish, it's only the other side of the boundary; and you said, Moran, that you wouldn't touch whisky till to-morrow morning.' The priests walked on again, and Father Oliver fell to thinking now what might be the end of this adventure. He could see there was no hope of persuading Father Moran from the bottle of whisky. 'What time do you be making it, Gogarty?' 'It isn't ten o'clock yet.' 'Then I'll walk up and down till the stroke of twelve ... I'll keep my promise to you.' 'But they'll all be in bed by twelve. What will you do then?' Father Moran didn't give Father Gogarty an answer, but started off again, and this time he was walking very fast; and when they got as far as Regan's public-house Father Oliver took his friend by the arm, reminding him again of his promise. 'You promised not to disgrace the parish.' 'I said that.... Well, if it's walking your heart is set upon, you shall have your bellyful of it.' And he was off again like a man walking for a wager. But Father Oliver, who wouldn't be out-walked, kept pace with him, and they went striding along, walking without speaking. Full of ruts and broken stones, the road straggled through the hills, and Father Oliver wondered what would happen when they got to the top of the hill. For the sea lay beyond the hill. The road bent round a shoulder of the hill, and when Father Oliver saw the long road before him his heart began to fail him, and a cry of despair rose to his lips; but at that moment Moran stopped. 'You've saved me, Gogarty.' He did not notice that Father Gogarty was breathless, almost fainting, and he began talking hurriedly, telling Father Oliver how he had committed himself to the resolution of breaking into a run as soon as they got to the top of the hill. 'My throat was on fire then, but now all the fire is out of it; your prayer has been answered. But what's the matter, Gogarty? You're not speaking.' 'What you say is wonderful indeed, Moran, for I was praying for you. I prayed as long as I had breath; one can't pray without breath or speak. We'll talk of this presently.' The priests turned back, walking very slowly. 'I feel no more wish to drink whisky than I do to drink bog-water. But I'm a bit hot, and I think I'd like a drink, and a drink of water will do me first-rate. Now look here, Gogarty: a miracle has happened, and we should thank God for it. Shall we kneel down?' The road was very wet, and they thought it would do as well if they leant over the little wall and said some prayers together. 'I've conquered the devil; I know it. But I've been through a terrible time, Gogarty. It's all lifted from me now. I'm sorry I've brought you out for such a walk as this.' 'Never mind the walk, Moran, so long as the temptation has passed from you--that's the principal thing.' To speak of ordinary things was impossible, for they believed in the miracle, and, thanking God for this act of grace, they walked on until they reached Father Oliver's gate. 'I believe you're right, Moran; I believe that a miracle has happened. You'll go home straight, won't you?' Father Moran grasped Father Oliver's hand. 'Indeed I will.' And Father Oliver stood by his gate looking down the road, and he didn't open it and go through until Father Moran had passed out of sight. Pushing it open, he walked up the gravel path, saying to himself, 'A miracle, without doubt. Moran called it a miracle and it seems like one, but will it last? Moran believes himself cured, that is certain;' and Father Oliver thought how his curate had gripped his hand, and felt sure that the grip meant, 'You've done me a great service, one I can never repay.' It was a pleasure to think that Moran would always think well of him. 'Yes, Moran will always think well of me,' he repeated as he groped his way into the dark and lonely house in search of a box of matches. When his lamp was lighted he threw himself into his armchair so that he might ponder better on what had happened. 'I've been a good friend to him, and it's a great support to a man to think that he's been a good friend to another, that he kept him in the straight path, saved him from himself. Saved himself from himself,' he repeated;' can anybody be saved from himself?' and he began to wonder if Moran would conquer in the end and take pride in his conquest over himself. There was no sound, only an occasional spit of the lamp, and in the silence Father Oliver asked if it were the end of man's life to trample upon self or to encourage self. 'Nora,' he said, 'would answer that self is all we have, and to destroy it and put in its place conventions and prejudices is to put man's work above God's. But Nora would not answer in these words till she had spoken with Mr. Walter Poole.' The name brought a tightening about his heart, and when Father Oliver stumbled to his feet--he had walked many miles, and was tired--he began to think he must tell Nora of the miracle that had happened about a mile--he thought it was just a mile--beyond Patsy Regan's public-house. The miracle would impress her, and he looked round the room. It was then he caught sight of a letter--her letter. The envelope and foreign stamp told him that before he read the address--her writing! His hand trembled and his cheek paled, for she was telling him the very things he had longed to know. She was in love with Poole! she was not only in love with him--she was his mistress! The room seemed to tumble about him, and he grasped the end of the chimney-piece. And then, feeling that he must get out into the open air, he thought of Moran. He began to feel he must speak to him. He couldn't remember exactly what he had to say to him, but there was something on his mind which he must speak to Moran about. It seemed to him that he must go away with Moran to some public-house far away and drink. Hadn't Moran said that there were times when we all wanted drink? He tried to collect his thoughts.... Something had gone wrong, but he couldn't remember what had gone wrong or where he was. It seemed to him that somebody had lost her soul. He must seek it. It was his duty. Being a priest, he must go forth and find the soul, and bring it back to God. He remembered no more until he found himself in the midst of a great wood, standing in an open space; about him were dripping trees, and a ghostly sky overhead, and no sound but that of falling leaves. Large leaves floated down, and each interested him till it reached the wet earth. And then he began to wonder why he was in the wood at night, and why he should be waiting there, looking at the glimmering sky, seeing the oak-leaves falling, remembering suddenly that he was looking for her soul, for her lost soul, and that something had told him he would find the soul he was seeking in the wood; so he was drawn from glade to glade through the underwoods, and through places so thickly overgrown that it seemed impossible to pass through. And then the thorn-bushes gave way before him, for he was no longer alone. She had descended from the trees into his arms, white and cold, and every moment the wood grew dimmer; but when he expected it to disappear, when he thought he was going to escape for ever with her, an opening in the trees discovered the lake, and in fear he turned back into the wood, seeking out paths where there was little light. Once he was within the wood, the mist seemed to incorporate again; she descended again into his arms, and this time he would have lifted the veil and looked into her face, but she seemed to forbid him to recognize her under penalty of loss. His desire overcame him, and he put out his hand to lift the veil. As he did so his eyes opened, he saw the wet wood, the shining sky, and she sitting by a stone waiting for him. A little later she came to meet him from behind the hawthorns that grew along the cart-track--a tall woman with a little bend in her walk. He wondered why he was so foolish as to disobey her, and besought her to return to him, and they roamed again in the paths that led round the rocks overgrown with briars, by the great oak-tree where the leaves were falling. And wandering they went, smiling gently on each other, till she began to tell him that he must abide by the shores of the lake--why, he could not understand, for the wood was much more beautiful, and he was more alone with her in the wood than by the lake. The sympathy was so complete that words were not needed, but they had begun in his ears. He strove to apprehend the dim words sounding in his ears. Not her words, surely, for there was a roughness in the voice, and presently he heard somebody asking him why he was about this time of night, and very slowly he began to understand that one of his parishioners was by him, asking him whither he was going. 'You'll be catching your death at this hour of the night, Father Oliver.' And the man told Father Oliver he was on his way to a fair, and for a short-cut he had come through the wood. And Father Oliver listened, thinking all the while that he must have been dreaming, for he could remember nothing. 'Now, your reverence, we're at your own door, and the door is open. When you went out you forgot to close it.' The priest didn't answer. 'I hope no harm will come to your reverence; and you'll be lucky if you haven't caught your death.' X He stopped in his undressing to ponder how Moran had come to tell him that he was going away on a drinking-bout, and all their long walk together to within a mile of Regan's public-house returned to him bit by bit, how Moran knelt down by the roadside to drink bog-water, which he said would take the thirst from him as well as whisky; and after bidding Moran good-night he had fallen into his armchair. It was not till he rose to his feet to go to bed that he had caught sight of the letter. Nora wrote--he could not remember exactly what she wrote, and threw himself into bed. After sleeping for many hours, his eyes at last opened, and he awoke wondering, asking himself where he was. Even the familiar room surprised him. And once more he began the process of picking his way back, but he couldn't recall what had happened from the time he left his house in search of Moran till he was overtaken by Alec in the wood. In some semi-conscious state he must have wandered off to Derrinrush. He must have wandered a long while--two hours, maybe more --through the familiar paths, but unaware that he was choosing them. To escape from the effort of remembrance he was glad to listen to Catherine, who was telling him that Alec was at the door, come up from the village to inquire how the priest was. She waited to hear Father Oliver's account of himself, but not having a story prepared, he pretended he was too tired to speak; and as he lay back in his chair he composed a little story, telling how he had been for a long walk with Father Moran, and, coming back in the dark, had missed his way on the outskirts of the wood. She began to raise some objections, but he said she was not to excite herself, and went out to see Alec, who, not being a quick-witted fellow, was easily persuaded into an acceptance of a very modified version of the incident, and Father Oliver lay back in his chair wondering if he had succeeded in deceiving Catherine. It would seem that he had, for when she came to visit him again from her kitchen she spoke of something quite different, which surprised him, for she was a very observant woman of inexhaustible curiosity. But this time, however, he had managed to keep his secret from her, and, dismissing her, he thought of Nora's letter. _From Miss Nora Glynn to Father Oliver Gogarty._ 'RAPALLO, ITALY, '_December_ 12, 19--. 'DEAR FATHER GOGARTY, 'I received "The Imitation" to-day and your two letters, one asking me if I had got the book. We had left Munich without giving instructions about our letters, so please accept my apologies and my best thanks. The Elizabethan translation, as you point out, is beautiful English, and I am glad to have the book; it will remind me of you, and I will keep it by me even if I do not read it very often. I passed the book over to Mr. Poole; he read it for a few minutes, and then returned it to me. "A worthy man, no doubt," he said, "but prone to taking things for granted. 'The Imitation,'" he continued, "reminds me of a flower growing in the shade of a cloister, dying for lack of sun, and this is surely not the right kind of reading for you or your friend Father Oliver." I feel sure you want a change. Change of scene brings a change of mind. Why don't you come to Italy? Italy is the place for you. Italy is your proper mind. Mr. Poole says that Italy is every man's proper mind, and you're evidently thinking of Italy, for you ask for a description of where I am staying, saying that a ray of Italian sunlight will cheer you. Come to Italy. You can come here without danger of meeting us. We are leaving at the end of the month. 'But I could go on chattering page after page, telling you about gardens and orange-trees (the orange-trees are the best part of the decoration; even now the great fruit hangs in the green leaves); and when I had described Italy, and you had described all the castles and the islands, we could turn back and discuss our religious differences. But I doubt if any good would come of this correspondence. You see, I have got my work to do, and you have got yours, and, notwithstanding all you say, I do not believe you to be unable to write the history of the lake and its castles. Your letters prove that you can, only your mind is unhinged by fears for my spiritual safety, and depressed by the Irish climate. It is very depressing, I know. I remember how you used to attribute the history of Ireland to the climate: a beautiful climate in a way, without extremes of heat and cold, as you said once, without an accent upon it. But you are not the ordinary Irishman; there is enough vitality in you to resist the languor of the climate. Your mood will pass away.... Your letter about the hermit that lived on Church Island is most beautiful. You have struck the right note--the wistful Irish note--and if you can write a book in that strain I am sure it will meet with great success. Go on with your book, and don't write to me any more--at least, not for the present. I have got too much to do, and cannot attend to a lengthy correspondence. We are going to Paris, and are looking forward to spending a great deal of time reading in the National Library. Some day we may meet, or take up this correspondence again. At present I feel that it is better for you and better for me that it should cease. But you will not think hardly of me because I write you this. I am writing in your own interests, dear Father Gogarty. 'Very sincerely yours, 'NORA GLYNN.' He read the letter slowly, pondering every sentence and every word, and when he had finished it his hand dropped upon his knee; and when the letter fell upon the hearthrug he did not stoop to pick it up, but sat looking into the fire, convinced that everything was over and done. There was nothing to look forward to; his life would drag on from day to day, from week to week, month to month, year to year, till at last he would be taken away to the grave. The grave is dreamless! But there might be a long time before he reached it, living for years without seeing or even hearing from her, for she would weary of writing to him. He began to dream of a hunt, the quarry hearing with dying ears the horns calling to each other in the distance, and cast in his chair, his arms hanging like dead arms, his senses mercifully benumbed, he lay, how long he knew not, but it must have been a long time. Catherine came into the room with some spoons in her hands, and asked him what was the matter, and, jumping up, he answered her rudely, for her curiosity annoyed him. It was irritating to have to wait for her to leave the room, but he did not dare to begin thinking while she was there. The door closed at last; he was alone again, and his thoughts fixed themselves at once on the end of her letter, on the words, 'Go on with your book, and don't write to me any more--at least, not for the present. I have too much to do, and cannot attend to a lengthy correspondence.' The evident cruelty of her words surprised him. There was nothing like this in any of her other letters. She intended these words as a _coup de grâce_. There was little mercy in them, for they left him living; he still lived--in a way. There was no use trying to misunderstand her words. To do so would be foolish, even if it were possible for him to deceive himself, and the rest of her letter mattered nothing to him. The two little sentences with which she dismissed him were his sole concern; they were the keys to the whole of this correspondence which had beguiled him. Fool that he had been not to see it! Alas! we see only what we want to see. He wandered about the lake, trying to bring himself to hate her. He even stopped in his walks to address insulting words to her. Words of common abuse came to his tongue readily, but there was an unconquerable tenderness in his heart always; and one day the thought went by that it was nobler of her to make him suffer than to have meekly forgiven him, as many women would have done, because he was a priest. He stopped affrighted, and began to wonder if this were the first time her easy forgiveness of his mistake had seemed suspicious. No, he felt sure that some sort of shadow of disappointment had passed at the back of his mind when he read her first letter, and after having lain for months at the back of his mind, this idea had come to the surface. An extraordinary perversion, truly, which he could only account for by the fact that he had always looked upon her as being more like what the primitive woman must have been than anybody else in the world; and the first instinct of the primitive woman would be to revenge any slight on her sexual pride. He had misread her character, and in this new reading he found a temporary consolation. As he sat thinking of her he heard a mouse gnawing under the boards, and every night after the mouse came to gnaw. 'The teeth of regret are the same; my life is being gnawed away. Never shall I see her.' It seemed impossible that life would close on him without his seeing her face or hearing her voice again, and he began to think how it would be if they were to meet on the other side. For he believed in heaven, and that was a good thing. Without such belief there would be nothing for him to do but to go down to the lake and make an end of himself. But believing as he did in heaven and the holy Catholic Church to be the surest way of getting there, he had a great deal to be thankful for. Poole's possession of her was but temporary, a few years at most, whereas his possession of her, if he were so fortunate as to gain heaven, and by his prayers to bring her back to the true fold, would endure for ever and ever. The wisest thing, therefore, for him to do would be to enter a Trappist monastery. But our Lord says that in heaven there is neither marriage nor giving in marriage, and what would heaven be to him without Nora? No more than a union of souls, and he wanted her body as well as her soul. He must pray. He knew the feeling well--a sort of mental giddiness, a delirium in the brain; and it increased rapidly, urging him to fall on his knees. If he resisted, it was because he was ashamed and feared to pray to God to reserve Nora for him. But the whirl in his brain soon deprived him of all power of resistance, and, looking round the room hurriedly to assure himself he was not watched, he fell on his knees and burst into extemporary prayer: '_O my God, whatever punishment there is to be borne, let me bear it. She sinned, no doubt, and her sins must be atoned for. Let me bear the punishment that thou, in thine infinite wisdom, must adjudge to her, poor sinful woman that she is, poor woman persecuted by men, persecuted by me. O my God, remember that I lent a willing ear to scandalmongers, that I went down that day to the school and lost my temper with her, that I spoke against her in my church. All the sins that have been committed are my sins; let me bear the punishment. O my Lord Jesus Christ, do thou intercede with thy Father and ask him to heap all the punishment on my head. Oh, dear Lord Jesus, if I had only thought of thee when I went down to the school, if I had remembered thy words, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone," I should have been spared this anguish. If I had remembered thy words, she might have gone to Dublin and had her baby there, and come back to the parish. O my God, the fault is mine; all the faults that have been committed can be traced back to me, therefore I beseech of thee, I call upon thee, to let me bear all the punishment that she has earned by her sins, poor erring creature that she is. O my God, do this for me; remember that I served thee well for many years when I lived among the poor folk in the mountains. For all these years I ask this thing of thee, that thou wilt let me bear her punishment. Is it too much I am asking of thee, O my God, is it too much?'_ When he rose from his knees, bells seemed to be ringing in his head, and he began to wonder if another miracle had befallen him, for it was as if someone had laid hands on him and forced him on his knees. But to ask the Almighty to extend his protection to him rather than to Mr. Poole, who was a Protestant, seemed not a little gross. Father Oliver experienced a shyness that he had never known before, and he hoped the Almighty would not be offended at the familiarity of the language, or the intimate nature of the request, for to ask for Nora's body as well as her soul did not seem altogether seemly. It was queer to think like that. Perhaps his brain was giving way. And he pushed the plates aside; he could not eat any dinner, nor could he take any interest in his garden. The dahlias were over, the chrysanthemums were beginning. Never had the country seemed so still: dead birds in the woods, and the sounds of leaves, and the fitful December sunlight on the strands--these were his distractions when he went out for a walk, and when he came in he often thought it would be well if he did not live to see another day, so heavy did the days seem, so uneventful, and in these languid autumn days the desire to write to Nora crept nearer, until it always seemed about him like some familiar animal. _From Father Oliver Gogarty to Miss Nora Glynn._ 'GARRANARD, BOHOLA, '_December_ 30, 19--. 'DEAR MISS GLYNN, 'I should have written to you before, but I lacked courage. Do you remember saying that the loneliness of the country sometimes forced you to kneel down to pray that you might die? I think the loneliness that overcame you was the loneliness that comes at the end of an autumn day when the dusk gathers in the room. It seems to steal all one's courage away, and one looks up from one's work in despair, asking of what value is one's life. The world goes on just the same, grinding our souls away. Nobody seems to care; nothing seems to make any difference. 'Human life is a very lonely thing, and for that it is perhaps religious. But there are days when religion fails us, when we lack courage, lonesomeness being our national failing. We were always lonesome, hundreds of years ago as much as to-day. You know it, you have been through it and will sympathize. A caged bird simply beats its wings and dies, but a human being does not die of loneliness, even when he prays for death. You have experienced it all, and will know what I feel when I tell you that I spend my time watching the rain, thinking of sunshine, picture-galleries, and libraries. 'But you were right to bid me go on with the book I spoke to you about. If I had gone away, as you first suggested, I should have been unhappy; I should have thought continually of the poor people I left behind; my abandonment of them would have preyed on my mind, for the conviction is dead in me that I should have been able to return to them; we mayn't return to places where we have been unhappy. I might have been able to get a parish in England or a chaplaincy, but I should have always looked upon the desertion of my poor people as a moral delinquency. A quiet conscience is, after all, a great possession, and for the sake of a quiet conscience I will remain here, and you will be able to understand my scruple when you think how helpless my people are, and how essential is the kindly guidance of the priest. 'Without a leader, the people are helpless; they wander like sheep on a mountain-side, falling over rocks or dying amid snowdrifts. Sometimes the shepherd grows weary of watching, and the question comes, Has a man no duty towards himself? And then one begins to wonder what is one's duty and what is duty--if duty is something more than the opinions of others, something more than a convention which we would not like to hear called into question, because we feel instinctively that it is well for everyone to continue in the rut, for, after all, a rut means a road, and roads are necessary. If one lets one's self go on thinking, one very soon finds that wrong and right are indistinguishable, so perhaps it is better to follow the rut if one can. But the rut is beset with difficulties; there are big holes on either side. Sometimes the road ends nowhere, and one gets lost in spite of one's self. But why am I writing all these things to you?' Why, indeed? If he were to send this letter she would show it to Mr. Poole, and they would laugh over it together. 'Poor priesty!' they would say, and the paper was crumpled and thrown into the fire. 'My life is unendurable, and it will grow worse,' he said, and fell to thinking how he would grow old, getting every day more like an old stereotyped plate, the Mass and the rosary at the end of his tongue, and nothing in his heart. He had seen many priests like this. Could he fall into such miserable decadence? Could such obedience to rule be any man's duty? But where should he go? It mattered little whither he went, for he would never see her any more, and she was, after all, the only real thing in the world for him. So did he continue to suffer like an animal, mutely, instinctively, mourning his life away, forgetful of everything but his grief; unmindful of his food, and unable to sleep when he lay down, or to distinguish between familiar things--the birds about his house, the boys and girls he had baptized. Very often he had to think a moment before he knew which was Mary and which was Bridget, which was Patsy and which was Mike, and very often Catherine was in the parlour many minutes before he noticed her presence. She stood watching him, wondering of what he was thinking, for he sat in his chair, getting weaker and thinner; and soon he began to look haggard as an old man or one about to die. He seemed to grow feebler in mind; his attention wandered away every few minutes from the book he was reading. Catherine noticed the change, and, thinking that a little chat would be of help, she often came up from her kitchen to tell him the gossip of the parish; but he could not listen to her, her garrulousness seemed to him more than ever tiresome, and he kept a book by him, an old copy of 'Ivanhoe,' which he pretended he was reading when he heard her step. Father Moran came to discuss the business of the parish with him and insisted on relieving Father Oliver of a great deal of it, saying that he wanted a rest, and he often urged Father Oliver to go away for a holiday. He was kind, but his talk was wearisome, and Father Oliver thought he would prefer to read about the fabulous Rowena than to hear any more about the Archbishop. But when Father Moran left Rowena bored him, and so completely that he could not remember at what point he had left off reading, and his thoughts wandered from the tournament to some phrase he had made use of in writing to Nora, or, it might be, some phrase of hers that would suddenly spring into his mind. He sought no longer to discover her character from her letters, nor did he criticize the many contradictions which had perplexed him: it seemed to him that he accepted her now, as the phrase goes, 'as she was,' thinking of her as he might of some supernatural being whom he had offended, and who had revenged herself. Her wickedness became in his eyes an added grace, and from the rack on which he lay he admired his executioner. Even her liking for Mr. Poole became submerged in a tide of suffering, and of longing, and weakness of spirit. He no longer had any strength to question her liking for the minor prophets: there were discrepancies in everyone, and no doubt there were in him as well as in her. He had once been very different from what he was to-day. Once he was an ardent student in Maynooth, he had been an energetic curate; and now what was he? Worse still, what was he becoming? And he allowed his thoughts to dwell on the fact that every day she was receding from him. He, too, was receding. All things were receding--becoming dimmer. He piled the grate up with turf, and when the blaze came leaned over it, warming his hands, asking himself why she liked Mr. Poole rather than him. For he no longer tried to conceal from himself the fact that he loved her. He had played the hypocrite long enough; he had spoken about her soul, but it was herself that he wanted. This admission brought some little relief, but he felt that the relief would only be temporary. Alas! it was surrender. It was worse than surrender--it was abandonment. He could sink no deeper. But he could; we can all sink deeper. Now what would the end be? There is an end to everything; there must be an end even to humiliation, to self-abasement. It was Moran over again. Moran was ashamed of his vice, but he had to accept it, and Father Oliver thought how much it must have cost his curate to come to tell him that he wanted to lie drunk for some days in an outhouse in order to escape for a few days from the agony of living. 'That is what he called it, and I, too, would escape from it.' His thoughts turned suddenly to a poem written by a peasant in County Cork a hundred years ago to a woman who inspired a passion that wrecked his mind altogether in the end. And he wondered if madness would be the end of his suffering, or if he would go down to the lake and find rest in it. 'Oh, succour me, dear one, give me a kiss from thy mouth, And lift me up to thee from death, Or bid them make for me a narrow bed, a coffin of boards, In the dark neighbourhood of the worm and his friends. My life is not life but death, my voice is no voice but a wind, There is no colour in me, nor life, nor richness, nor health; But in tears and sorrow and weakness, without music, without sport, without power, I go into captivity and woe, and in the pain of my love of thee.' XI _From Father Oliver Gogarty to Miss Nora Glynn._ 'GARRANARD, BOHOLA, '_March_ 12, 19--. 'A long time has passed without your hearing from me, and I am sure you must have said more than once: "Well, that priest has more sense than I gave him credit for. He took the hint. He understood that it would be useless for us to continue to write long letters to each other about remorse of conscience and Mr. Poole's criticism of the Bible." But the sight of my handwriting will call into question the opinion you have formed of my good sense, and you will say: "Here he is, beginning it all over again." No, I am not. I am a little ashamed of my former letters, and am writing to tell you so. My letters, if I write any, will be quite different in the future, thanks to your candour. Your letter from Rapallo cured me; like a surgeon's knife, it took out the ulcer that was eating my life away. The expression will seem exaggerated, I know; but let it remain. You no doubt felt that I was in ignorance of my own state of feelings regarding you, and you wrote just such a letter as would force me to look into my heart and to discover who I really was. You felt that you could help me to some knowledge of myself by telling me about yourself. 'The shock on reading your confession--for I look upon your Rapallo letter as one--was very great, for on reading it I felt that a good deal that I had written to you about the salvation of your soul was inspired, not by any pure fear that I had done anything that might lose a soul to God, but by pure selfishness. I did not dare to write boldly that I loved yourself, and would always love you; I wore a mask and a disguise, and in order to come to terms with myself I feel it necessary to confess to you; otherwise all the suffering I have endured would be wasted. 'But this is not all my confession; worse still remains. I have discovered that when I spoke against you in church, and said things that caused you to leave the parish, I did not do so, as I thought, because I believed that the morality of my parish must be maintained at any cost. I know now that jealousy--yes, sensual jealousy--prompted me. And when I went to my sisters to ask them to appoint you to the post of music-teacher in their school, I did not do so for their sake, but for my own, because I wished to have you back in the parish. But I do not wish you to think that when I wrote about atonement I wrote what I knew to be untrue. I did not; the truth was hidden from me. Nor did I wish to get you back to the parish in order that I might gratify my passion. All these things were very vague, and I didn't understand myself until now. I never had any experience of life till I met you. And is it not curious that one should know so little of one's self, for I might have gone down to my grave without knowing how false I was at heart, if I had not been stricken down with a great illness. 'One day, Catherine told me that the lake was frozen over, and, as I had been within doors a long while, she advised me to go out and see the boys sliding on the ice. Her advice put an idea into my head, that I might take out my skates and skate recklessly without trying to avoid the deeper portions where the ice was likely to be thin, for I was weary of life, and knowing that I could not go back upon the past, and that no one would ever love me, I wished to bring my suffering to an end. You will wonder why I did not think of the sufferings that I might have earned for myself in the next world. I had suffered so much that I could think of nothing but the present moment. God was good, and he saved me, for as I stood irresolute before a piece of ice which I knew wouldn't bear me, I felt a great sickness creeping over me. I returned home, and for several days the doctor could not say whether I would live or die. You remember Catherine, my servant? She told me that the only answer the doctor would give her was that if I were not better within a certain time there would be no hope of my recovery. At the end of the week he came into my room. Catherine was waiting outside, and I hear that she fell on her knees to thank God when the doctor said: "Yes, he is a little better; if there's no relapse he'll live." 'After a severe illness one is alone with one's self, the whole of one's life sings in one's head like a song, and listening to it, I learned that it was jealousy that prompted me to speak against you, and not any real care for the morality of my parish. I discovered, too, that my moral ideas were not my own. They were borrowed from others, and badly assimilated. I remembered, too, how at Maynooth the tradition was always to despise women, and in order to convince myself I used to exaggerate this view, and say things that made my fellow-students look at me askance, if not with suspicion. But while dozing through long convalescent hours many things hitherto obscure to me became clear, and it seems now to me to be clearly wrong to withhold our sympathy from any side of life. It seems to me that it is only by our sympathy we can do any good at all. God gave us our human nature; we may misuse and degrade our nature, but we must never forget that it came originally from God. 'What I am saying may not be in accordance with current theology, but I am not thinking of theology, but of the things that were revealed to me during my sickness. It was through my fault that you met Mr. Walter Poole, and I must pray to God that he will bring you back to the fold. I shall pray for you both. I wish you all happiness, and I thank you for the many kind things you have said, for the good advice you have given me. You are quite right: I want a change. You advise me to go to Italy, and you are right to advise me to go there, for my heart yearns for Italy. But I dare not go; for I still feel that if I left my parish I should never return to it; and if I were to go away and not return a great scandal would be caused, and I am more than ever resolved not to do anything to grieve the poor people, who have been very good to me, and whose interests I have neglected this long while. 'I send this letter to Beechwood Hall, where you will find it on your return. As I have already said, you need not answer it; no good will come by answering it. In years to come, perhaps, when we are both different, we may meet again. 'OLIVER GOGARTY.' _From Miss Nora Glynn to Father Oliver Gogarty._ 'IMPERIAL HOTEL, CAIRO, EGYPT, '_May_ 5, 19--. 'DEAR FATHER GOGARTY, 'By the address on the top of this sheet of paper you will see that I have travelled a long way since you last heard from me, and ever since your letter has been following me about from hotel to hotel. It is lucky that it has caught me up in Egypt, for we are going East to visit countries where the postal service has not yet been introduced. We leave here to-morrow. If your letter had been a day later it would have missed me; it would have remained here unclaimed--unless, indeed, we come back this way, which is not likely. You see what a near thing it was; and as I have much to say to you, I should be sorry not to have had an opportunity of writing. 'Your last letter put many thoughts into my head, and made me anxious to explain many things which I feel sure you do not know about my conduct since I left London, and the letters I have written to you. Has it not often seemed strange to you that we go through life without ever being able to reveal the soul that is in us? Is it because we are ashamed, or is it that we do not know ourselves? It is certainly a hard task to learn the truth about ourselves, and I appreciate the courage your last letter shows; you have faced the truth, and having learned it, you write it to me in all simplicity. I like you better now, Oliver Gogarty, than I ever did before, and I always liked you. But it seems to me that to allow you to confess yourself without confessing myself, without revealing the woman's soul in me as you have revealed the man's soul in yourself, would be unworthy. 'Our destinies got somehow entangled, there was a wrench, the knot was broken, and the thread was wound upon another spool. The unravelling of the piece must have perplexed you, and you must have wondered why the shape and the pattern should have passed suddenly away into thread again, and then, after a lapse of time, why the weaving should have begun again. 'You must have wondered why I wrote to you, and you must have wondered why I forgave you for the wrong you did me. I guessed that our friendship when I was in the parish was a little more than the platonic friendship that you thought it was, so when you turned against me, and were unkind, I found an excuse for you. When my hatred was bitterest, I knew somehow, at the back of my mind--for I only allowed myself to think of it occasionally--that you acted from--there is but one word--jealousy (not a pretty word from your point of view); and it must have shocked you, as a man and as a priest, to find that the woman whom you thought so much of, and whose society gave you so much pleasure (I know the times we passed together were as pleasant to you as they were to me), should suddenly without warning appear in a totally different light, and in a light which must have seemed to you mean and sordid. The discovery that I was going to have a baby threw me suddenly down from the pedestal on which you had placed me; your idol was broken, and your feelings--for you are one of those men who feel deeply--got the better of you, and you indulged in a few incautious words in your church. 'I thought of these things sometimes, not often, I admit, in the little London lodging where I lived till my baby was born, seeing my gown in front getting shorter, and telling lies to good Mrs. Dent about the husband whom I said was abroad, whom I was expecting to return. That was a miserable time, but we won't talk of it any more. When Father O'Grady showed me the letter that you wrote him, I forgave you in a way. A woman forgives a man the wrongs he does when these wrongs are prompted by jealousy, for, after all, a woman is never really satisfied if a man is not a little jealous. His jealousy may prove inconvenient, and she may learn to hate it and think it an ugly thing and a crooked thing, but, from her point of view, love would not be complete without it. 'I smiled, of course, when I got your letter telling me that you had been to your sisters to ask them if they would take me as a schoolmistress in the convent, and I walked about smiling, thinking of your long innocent drive round the lake. I can see it all, dear man that you are, thinking you could settle everything, and that I would return to Ireland to teach barefooted little children their Catechism and their A, B, C. How often has the phrase been used in our letters! It was a pretty idea of yours to go to your sisters; you did not know then that you cared for me--you only thought of atonement. I suppose we must always be deceived. Mr. Poole says self-deception is the very law of life. We live enveloped in self-deception as in a film; now and again the film breaks like a cloud and the light shines through. We veil our eyes, for we do not like the light. It is really very difficult to tell the truth, Father Gogarty; I find it difficult now to tell you why I wrote all these letters. Because I liked you? Yes, and a little bit because I wished you to suffer; I don't think I shall ever get nearer the truth than that. But when I asked you to meet us abroad, I did so in good faith, for you are a clever man, and Mr. Poole's studies would please you. At the back of my mind I suppose I thought to meet him would do you good; I thought, perhaps, that he might redeem you from some conventions and prejudices. I don't like priests; the priest was the only thing about you I never liked. Was it in some vain, proselytizing idea that I invited you? Candidly, I don't know, and I don't think I ever shall. We know so very little about this world that it seems to me waste of time to think about the next. My notion is that the wisest plan is to follow the mood of the moment, with an object more or less definite in view.... Nothing is worth more than that. I am at the present moment genuinely interested in culture, and therefore I did not like at all the book you sent me, "The Imitation," and I wrote to tell you to put it by, to come abroad and see pictures and statues in a beautiful country where people do not drink horrid porter, but nice wine, and where Sacraments are left to the old people who have nothing else to interest them. I suppose it was a cruel, callous letter, but I did not mean it so; I merely wanted to give you a glimpse of my new life and my new point of view. As for this letter, Heaven knows how you will take it--whether you will hate me for it or like me; but since you wrote quite frankly to me, confessing yourself from end to end, I feel bound to tell you everything I know about myself--and since I left Ireland I have learned a great deal about myself and about life. Perhaps I should have gone on writing to you if Mr. Poole had not one day said that no good would come of this long correspondence; he suspected I was a disturbing influence, and, as you were determined to live in Ireland, he said it were better that you should live in conventions and prejudices, without them your life would be impossible. 'Then came your last letter, and it showed me how right Mr. Poole was. Nothing remains now but to beg your forgiveness for having disturbed your life. The disturbance is, perhaps, only a passing one. You may recover your ideas--the ideas that are necessary to you--or you may go on discovering the truth, and in the end may perhaps find a way whereby you may leave your parish without causing scandal. To be quite truthful, that is what I hope will happen. However this may be, I hope if we ever meet again it will not be till you have ceased to be a priest. But all this is a long way ahead. We are going East, and shall not be back for many months; we are going to visit the buried cities in Turkestan. I do not know if you have ever heard about these cities. They were buried in sand somewhere about a thousand years ago, and some parts have been disinterred lately. Vaults were broken into in search of treasure. Gold and precious stones were discovered, but far more valuable than the gold and silver, so says Mr. Poole, are certain papyri now being deciphered by the learned professors of Berlin. 'You know the name of Mr. Poole's book, "The Source of the Christian River"? He had not suspected that its source went further back than Palestine, but now he says that some papyri may be found that will take it far back into Central Asia. 'I am going with him on this quest. It sounds a little absurd, doesn't it? my going in quest of the Christian river? But if one thinks for a moment, one thing is as absurd as another. Do you know, I find it difficult to take life seriously, and I walk about the streets thinking of you, Father Gogarty, and the smile that will come over your face, half angry, half pleased, when you read that your schoolmistress is going to Central Asia in quest of the Christian river. What will you be doing all this time? You say that you cannot leave your parish because you fear to give scandal; you fear to pain the poor people, who have been good to you and who have given you money, and your scruple is a noble one; I appreciate and respect it. But we must not think entirely of our duties to others; we must think of our duties to ourselves. Each one must try to realize himself--I mean that we must try to bring the gifts that Nature gave us to fruition. Nature has given you many gifts: I wonder what will become of you? 'Very sincerely yours, 'NORA GLYNN.' 'Good God, how I love that woman!' the priest said, awaking from his reverie, for the clock told him that he had sat for nearly three-quarters of an hour, her letter in his hand, after having read it. And lying back in his armchair, his hands clasped, his eyes fixed on the window, listening to the birds singing in the vine--it was already in leaf, and the shadows of the leaves danced across the carpet--he sought to define that sense of delight--he could find no other words for it--which she exhaled unconsciously as a flower exhales its perfume, that joy of life which she scattered with as little premeditation as the birds scattered their songs. But though he was constantly seeking some new form of expression of her charm, he always came back to the words 'sense of delight.' Sometimes he added that sense of delight which we experience when we go out of the house on an April morning and find everything growing about us, the sky wilful and blue, and the clouds going by, saying, 'Be happy, as we are.' She was so different from every other woman. All other women were plain instincts, come into the world for the accomplishment of things that women had accomplished for thousands of years. Other women think as their mothers thought, and as their daughters will think, expressing the thoughts of the countless generations behind and in front of them. But this woman was moved merely by impulses; and what is more inexplicable than an impulse? What is the spring but an impulse? and this woman was mysterious, evanescent as its breath, with the same irresponsible seduction. He was certain that she was at last clear to him, though she might become dark to him again. One day she had come to gather flowers, and while arranging her posy she said casually: 'You are a ruler in this parish; you direct it, the administration of the parish is your business, and I am the little amusement that you turn to when your business is done.' He had not known how to answer her. In this way her remarks often covered him with confusion. She just thought as she pleased, and spoke as she pleased, and he returned to his idea that she was more like the primitive woman than anybody else. Pondering on her words for the hundredth time, they seemed to him stranger than ever. That any human being should admit that she was but the delight of another's life seemed at first only extraordinary, but if one considered her words, it seemed to signify knowledge--latent, no doubt--that her beauty was part of the great agency. Her words implied that she was aware of her mission. It was her unconscious self that spoke, and it was that which gave significance to her words. His thoughts melted into nothingness, and when he awoke from his reverie he was thinking that Nora Glynn had come into his life like a fountain, shedding living water upon it, awakening it. And taking pleasure in the simile, he said, 'A fountain better than anything else expresses this natural woman,' controlled, no doubt, by a law, but one hidden from him. 'A fountain springs out of earth into air; it sings a tune that cannot be caught and written down in notes; the rising and falling water is full of iridescent colour, and to the wilting roses the fountain must seem not a natural thing, but a spirit, and I too think of her as a spirit.' And his thoughts falling away again he became vaguely but intensely conscious of all the beauty and grace and the enchantment of the senses that appeared to him in the name of Nora Glynn. At that moment Catherine came into the room. 'No, not now,' he said; and he went into the garden and through the wicket at the other end, thinking tenderly how he had gone out last year on a day just like the present day, trying to keep thoughts of her out of his mind. The same fifteenth of May! But last year the sky was low and full of cotton-like clouds; and he remembered how the lake warbled about the smooth limestone shingle, and how the ducks talked in the reeds, how the reeds themselves seemed to be talking. This year the clouds lifted; there was more blue in the sky, less mist upon the water, and it was this day last year that sorrow began to lap about his heart like soft lakewater. He thought then that he was grieving deeply, but since last year he had learned all that a man could know of grief. For last year he was able to take an interest in the spring, to watch for the hawthorn-bloom; but this year he did not trouble to look their way. What matter whether they bloomed a week earlier or a week later? As a matter of fact they were late, the frost having thrown them back, and there would be no flowers till June. How beautifully the tasselled branches of the larches swayed, throwing shadows on the long May grass! 'And they are not less beautiful this year, though they are less interesting to me,' he said. He wandered through the woods, over the country, noting the different signs of spring, for, in spite of his sorrow, he could not but admire the slender spring. He could not tell why, perhaps because he had always associated Nora with the gaiety of the spring-time. She was thin like the spring, and her laughter was blithe like the spring. She seemed to him like a spirit, and isn't the spring like a spirit? She was there in the cow-parsley just coming up, and the sight of the campions between the white spangles reminded him of the pink flowers she wore in her hat. The underwood was full of bluebells, but her eyes were not blue. The aspens were still brown, but in a month the dull green leaves, silvery underneath, would be fluttering at the end of their long stems. And the continual agitation of the aspen-leaf seemed to him rather foolish, reminding him of a weak-minded woman clamouring for sympathy always. The aspen was an untidy tree; he was not sure that he liked the tree, and if one is in doubt whether one likes or dislikes, the chances are that one dislikes. Who would think of asking himself if he liked beech-trees, or larches, or willows? A little later he stood lost in admiration of a line of willows all a-row in front of a stream; they seemed to him like girls curtseying, and the delicacy of the green and yellow buds induced him to meditate on the mysteries that common things disclose. Seeing a bird disappear into a hole in the wall, he climbed up. The bird pecked at him, for she was hatching. 'A starling,' he said. In the field behind his house, under the old hawthorn-tree, an amiable-looking donkey had given birth to a foal, and he watched the little thing, no bigger than a sheep, covered with long gray hair ... There were some parishioners he would be sorry to part with, and there was Catherine. If he went away he would never see her again, nor those who lived in the village. All this present reality would fade, his old church, surrounded with gravestones and stunted Scotch firs, would become like a dream, every year losing a little in colour and outline. He was going, he did not know when, but he was going. For a long time the feeling had been gathering in him that he was going, and her letter increased that feeling. He would go just as soon as a reputable way of leaving his parish was revealed to him. By the help of his reason he could not hope to find out the way. Nothing seemed more impossible than that a way should be found for him to leave his parish without giving scandal; but however impossible things may seem to us, nothing is impossible to Nature. He must put his confidence in Nature; he must listen to her. She would tell him. And he lay all the afternoon listening to the reeds and the ducks talking together in the lake. Very often the wood was like a harp; a breeze touched the strings, and every now and then the murmur seemed about to break into a little tune, and as if in emulation, or because he remembered his part in the music, a blackbird, perched near to his mate, whose nest was in the hawthorns growing out of the tumbled wall, began to sing a joyful lay in a rich round contralto, soft and deep as velvet. 'All nature,' he said, 'is talking or singing. This is talking and singing time. But my heart can speak to no one, and I seek places where no one will come.' And he began to ask if God would answer his prayer if he prayed that he might die. The sunlit grass, already long and almost ready for the scythe, was swept by shadows of the larches, those long, shelving boughs hung with green tassels, moving mysteriously above him. Birds came and went, each on its special errand. Never was Nature more inveigling, more restful. He shut his eyes, shapes passed, dreams filled the interspaces. Little thoughts began. Why had he never brought her here? A memory of her walking under these larches would be delightful. The murmur of the boughs dissipated his dreams or changed them, or brought new ones; his consciousness grew fainter, and he could not remember what his last thoughts were when he opened his eyes. And then he wandered out of the wood, into the sunlit country, along the dusty road, trying to take an interest in everyone whom he met. It was fairday. He met drovers and chatted to them about the cattle; he heard a wonderful story about a heifer that one of them had sold, and that found her way back home again, twenty-five miles, and a little further on a man came across the fields towards him with a sheep-dog at his heels, a beautiful bitch who showed her teeth prettily when she was spoken to; she had long gold hair, and it was easy to see that she liked to be admired. 'They're all alike, the feminine sex,' the priest thought. 'She's as pretty as Nora, and acts very much the same.' He walked on again, stopping to speak with everybody, glad to listen to every story. One was of a man who lived by poaching. He hadn't slept in a bed for years, but lay down in the mountains and the woods. He trapped rabbits and beat people; sometimes he enticed boys far away, and then turned upon them savagely. Well, the police had caught him again, and this time he wouldn't get off with less than five years. Listening to Mike Mulroy's talk, Father Oliver forgot his own grief. A little further on they came upon a cart filled with pigs. The cart broke down suddenly, and the pigs escaped in all directions, and the efforts of a great number of country people were directed to collecting them. Father Oliver joined in the chase, and it proved a difficult one, owing to the density of the wood that the pigs had taken refuge in. At last he saw them driven along the road, for it had been found impossible to mend the cart, and at this moment Father Oliver began to think that he would like to be a pig-driver, or better still, a poacher like Carmody. A wandering mood was upon him. Anything were better than to return to his parish, and the thought of the confessions he would have to hear on Saturday night and of the Mass he would have to say on Sunday was bitter indeed, for he had ceased to believe in these things. To say Mass, believing the Mass to be but a mummery, was detestable. To remain in his parish meant a constant degradation of himself. When a parishioner sent to ask him to attend a sick call, he could barely bring himself to anoint the dying man. Some way out of the dilemma must be found, and stopping suddenly so that he might think more clearly, he asked himself why he did not wander out of the parish instead of following the path which led him back to the lake? thinking that it was because it is hard to break with habits, convictions, prejudices. The beautiful evening did not engage his thoughts, and he barely listened to the cuckoo, and altogether forgot to notice the bluebells, campions, and cow-parsley; and it was not till he stood on the hilltop overlooking the lake that he began to recover his self-possession. 'The hills,' he said, 'are turned hither and thither, not all seen in profile, and that is why they are so beautiful.' The sunlit crests and the shadow-filled valleys roused him. In the sky a lake was forming, the very image and likeness of the lake under the hill. One glittered like silver, the other like gold, and so wonderful was this celestial lake that he began to think of immortals, of an assembly of goddesses waiting for their gods, or a goddess waiting on an island for some mortal, sending bird messengers to him. A sort of pagan enchantment was put upon him, and he rose up from the ferns to see an evening as fair as Nora and as fragrant. He tried to think of the colour of her eyes, which were fervid and oracular, and of her hands, which were long and curved, with fragile fingers, of her breath, which was sweet, and her white, even teeth. The evening was like her, as subtle and as persuasive, and the sensation of her presence became so clear that he shut his eyes, feeling her about him--as near to him as if she lay in his arms, just as he had felt her that night in the wood, but then she was colder and more remote. He walked along the foreshore feeling like an instrument that had been tuned. His perception seemed to have been indefinitely increased, and it seemed to him as if he were in communion with the stones in the earth and the clouds in heaven; it seemed to him as if the past and the future had become one. The moment was one of extraordinary sweetness; never might such a moment happen in his life again. And he watched the earth and sky enfolded in one tender harmony of rose and blue--blue fading to gray, and the lake afloat amid vague shores, receding like a dream through sleep. XII _From Father Oliver Gogarty to Miss Nora Glynn._ 'GARRANARD, BOHOLA, '_June_ 18, 19--. 'Thoughts are rising up in my mind, and I am eager to write them down quickly, and with as little consideration as possible. Perhaps my thoughts will seem trivial when I have written them, but the emotion that inspired them was very wonderful and overpowering. I am, as it were, propelled to my writing-table. I must write: my emotion must find expression. Even if I were sure you would not get this letter for months, I should write it. I believe if I knew you would never get it, I should write. But if I send it to Beechwood Hall it will be forwarded, I suppose, for you will not remain whole months without hearing from Europe.... In any case, you will get this letter on your return, and it will ease my heart to write it. Above all things, I would have you know that the report that I was drowned while bathing is not true, for a report to this effect will certainly find its way into the local papers, and in these days, once a piece of news gets reported, it flies along from newspaper to newspaper, and newspapers have a knack of straying into our hands when they contain a disagreeable item of news. 'You will remember how the interview with Mr. Poole, published in _Illustrated England_, came into my hands. That was the first number of _Illustrated England_ I had seen. Father O'Grady brought it here and left it upon the table, and only the fate that is over us knows why. In the same way, a paper containing a report of my supposed drowning may reach you when you return to England, and, as I do not want you to think that I have gone out of this life, I am writing to tell you that the report of my death is untrue, or, to speak more exactly, it will not be true, if my arms and legs can make it a false report. These lines will set you wondering if I have taken leave of my senses. Read on, and my sanity will become manifest. Some day next month I intend to swim across the lake, and you will, I think, appreciate this adventure. You praised my decision not to leave my parish because of the pain it would give the poor people. You said that you liked me better for it, and it is just because my resolve has not wavered that I have decided to swim across the lake. Only in this way can I quit my parish without leaving a scandalous name behind me. Moreover, the means whereby I was enlightened are so strange that I find it difficult to believe that Providence is not on my side. 'Have not men always believed in bird augury from the beginning of time? and have not prognostications a knack of coming true? I feel sure that you would think as I do if what had happened to me happened to you. Yet when you read this letter you will say, "No sooner has he disentangled himself from one superstition than he drops into another!" However this may be, I cannot get it out of my head that the strangely ill-fated bird that came out of the wood last February was sent for a purpose. But I have not told you about that bird. In my last letter my mind was occupied by other things, and there was no reason why I should have mentioned it, for it seemed at the time merely a curious accident--no more curious than the hundred and one accidents that happen every day. I believe these things are called coincidences. But to the story. The day I went out skating there was a shooting-party in Derrinrush, and at the close of day, in the dusk, a bird got up from the sedge, and one of the shooters, mistaking it for a woodcock, fired, wounding the bird. 'We watched it till we saw it fall on the shore of Castle Island, and, thinking that it would linger there for days, dying by inches, I started off with the intention of saving it from a lingering death, but a shot had done that. One pellet would have been enough, for the bird was but a heap of skin and feathers, not to be wondered at, its legs being tied together with a piece of stout string, twisted and tied so that it would last for years. And this strangely ill-fated curlew set me thinking if it were a tame bird escaped from captivity, but tame birds lose quickly their instinct of finding food. "It must have been freed yesterday or the day before," I said to myself, and in pondering how far a bird might fly in the night, this curlew came to occupy a sort of symbolic relation towards my past and my future life, and it was in thinking of it that the idea occurred to me that, if I could cross the lake on the ice, I might swim it in the summer-time when the weather was warm, having, of course, hidden a bundle of clothes amid the rocks on the Joycetown side. My clerical clothes will be found on this side, and the assumption will be, of course, that I swam out too far. 'This way of escape seemed at first fantastic and unreal, but it has come to seem to me the only practical way out of my difficulty. In no other way can I leave the parish without giving pain to the poor people, who have been very good to me. And you, who appreciated my scruples on this point, will, I am sure, understand the great pain it would give my sisters if I were to leave the Church. It would give them so much pain that I shrink from trying to imagine it. They would look upon themselves as disgraced, and the whole family. My disappearance from the parish would ever do them harm--Eliza's school would suffer for sure. This may seem an exaggeration, but certainly Eliza would never quite get over it. If this way of escape had not been revealed to me, I don't think I ever should have found courage to leave, and if I didn't leave I should die. Life is so ordered that a trace remains of every act, but the trace is not always discovered, and I trust you implicitly. You will never show this letter to anyone; you will never tell anyone. 'The Church would allow me, no doubt, to pick up a living as best I could, and would not interfere with me till I said something or wrote something that the Church thought would lessen its power; then the cry of unfrocked priest would be raised against me, and calumny, the great ecclesiastical weapon, would be used. I do not know what my future life will be: my past has been so beset with misfortune that, once I reach the other side, I shall never look back. I cannot find words to tell you of the impatience with which I wait the summer-time, the fifteenth of July, when the moon will be full. I cannot think what would have happened to me if I had stayed at home the afternoon that the curlew was shot; something would have happened, for we cannot go on always sacrificing ourselves. We can sacrifice ourselves for a time, but we cannot sacrifice ourselves all our life long, unless we begin to take pleasure in the immolation of self, and then it is no longer sacrifice. Something must have happened, or I should have gone mad. 'I had suffered so much in the parish. I think the places in which we have suffered become distasteful to us, and the instinct to wander takes us. A migratory bird goes, or dies of home-sickness; home is not always where we are born--it is among ideas that are dear to us: and it is exile to live among people who do not share our ideas. Something must have happened to me. I can think of nothing except suicide or what did happen, for I could never have made up my mind to give pain to the poor people and to leave a scandalous name behind; still less could I continue to administer Sacraments that I ceased to believe in. I can imagine nothing more shameful than the life of a man who continues his administrations after he has ceased to believe in them, especially a Catholic priest, so precise and explicit are the Roman Sacraments. A very abject life it is to murmur _Absolve te_ over the heads of parishioners, and to place wafers on their tongues, when we have ceased to believe that we have power to forgive sins and to turn biscuits into God. A layman may have doubts, and continue to live his life as before, without troubling to take the world into his confidence, but a priest may not. The priest is a paid agent and the money an unbelieving priest receives, if he be not inconceivably hardened in sin, must be hateful to him, and his conscience can leave him no rest. 'At first I used to suspect my conversion, and began to think it unseemly that a man should cease to believe that we must renounce this life in order to gain another, without much preliminary study of the Scriptures; I began to look upon myself as a somewhat superficial person whose religious beliefs yielded before the charm of a pretty face and winsome personality, but this view of the question no longer seems superficial. I believe now that the superficial ones are those who think that it is only in the Scriptures that we may discover whether we have a right to live. Our belief in books rather than in Nature is one of humanity's most curious characteristics, and a very irreligious one, it seems to me; and I am glad to think that it was your sunny face that raised up my crushed instincts, that brought me back to life, and ever since you have been associated in my mind with the sun and the spring-tide. 'One day in the beginning of March, coming back from a long walk on the hills, I heard the bleat of the lamb and the impatient cawing of the rook that could not put its nest together in the windy branches, and as I stopped to listen it seemed to me that something passed by in the dusk: the spring-tide itself seemed to be fleeting across the tillage towards the scant fields. As the spring-tide advanced I discovered a new likeness to you in the daffodil; it is so shapely a flower. I should be puzzled to give a reason, but it reminds me of antiquity, and you were always a thing divorced from the Christian ideal. While mourning you, my poor instincts discovered you in the wind-shaken trees, and in the gaiety of the sun, and the flowers that May gives us. I shall be gone at the end of July, when the carnations are in bloom, but were I here I am certain many of them would remind me of you. There have been saints who have loved Nature, but I always wondered how it was so, for Nature is like a woman. I might have read the Scriptures again and again, and all the arguments that Mr. Poole can put forward, without my faith being in the least shaken. When the brain alone thinks, the thinking is very thin and impoverished. It seems to me that the best thinking is done when the whole man thinks, the flesh and the brain together, and for the whole man to think the whole man must live; and the life I have lived hitherto has been a thin life, for my body lived only. And not even all my body. My mind and body were separated: neither were of any use to me. I owe everything to you. My case cannot be defined merely as that of a priest who gave up his religion because a pretty woman came by. He who says that does not try to understand; he merely contents himself with uttering facile commonplace. What he has to learn is the great oneness in Nature. There is but one element, and we but one of its many manifestations. If this were not so, why should your whiteness and colour and gaiety remind me always of the spring-time? 'My pen is running fast, I hardly know what I am writing, but it seems to me that I am beginning to see much clearer. The mists are dissolving, and life emerges like the world at daybreak. I am thinking now of an old decrepit house with sagging roof and lichen-covered walls, and all the doors and windows nailed up. Every generation nailed up a door or a window till all were nailed up. In the dusty twilight creatures wilt and pray. About the house the sound of shutters creaking on rusty hinges never ceases. Your hand touched one, and the shutters fell, and I found myself looking upon the splendid sun shining on hills and fields, wooded prospects with rivers winding through the great green expanses. At first I dared not look, and withdrew into the shadow tremblingly; but the light drew me forth again, and now I look upon the world without fear. I am going to leave that decrepit dusty house and mix with my fellows, and maybe blow a horn on the hillside to call comrades together. My hands and eyes are eager to know what I have become possessed of. I owe to you my liberation from prejudices and conventions. Ideas are passed on. We learn more from each other than from books. I was unconsciously affected by your example. You dared to stretch out both hands to life and grasp it; you accepted the spontaneous natural living wisdom of your instincts when I was rolled up like a dormouse in the dead wisdom of codes and formulas, dogmas and opinions. I never told you how I became a priest. I did not know until quite lately. I think I began to suspect my vocation when you left the parish. 'I remember walking by the lake just this time last year, with the story of my life singing in my head, and you in the background beating the time. You know, we had a shop in Tinnick, and I had seen my father standing before a high desk by a dusty window year after year, selling half-pounds of tea, hanks of onions, and farm implements, and felt that if I married my cousin, Annie McGrath, our lives would reproduce those of my father and mother in every detail. I couldn't undertake the job, and for that began to believe I had a vocation for the priesthood; but I can see now that it was not piety that sent me to Maynooth, but a certain spirit of adventure, a dislike of the commonplace, of the prosaic--that is to say, of the repetition of the same things. I was interested in myself, in my own soul, and I did not want to accept something that was outside of myself, such as the life of a shopman behind a counter, or that of a clerk of the petty sessions, or the habit of a policeman. These were the careers that were open to me, and when I was hesitating, wondering if I should be able to buy up the old mills and revive the trade in Tinnick, my sister Eliza reminded me that there had always been a priest in the family. The priesthood seemed to offer opportunities of realizing myself, of preserving the spirit within me. It offered no such opportunities to me. I might as well have become a policeman, and all that I have learned since is that everyone must try to cling to his own soul; that is the only binding law. If we are here for anything, it is surely for that. 'But one does not free one's self from habits and ideas, that have grown almost inveterate, without much pain and struggle; one falls back many times, and there are always good reasons for following the rut. We believe that the rutted way leads us somewhere: it leads us nowhere, the rutted way is only a seeming; for each man received his truth in the womb. You say in your letter that our destinies got entangled, and that the piece that was being woven ran out into thread, and was rewound upon another spool. It seemed to you and it seemed to me that there is no pattern; we think there is none because Nature's pattern is undistinguishable to our eyes, her looms are so vast, but sometimes even our little sight can follow a design here and there. And does it not seem to you that, after all, there was some design in what has happened? You came and released me from conventions, just as the spring releases the world from winter rust. 'A strange idea has come into my mind, and I cannot help smiling at the topsyturvydom of Nature, or what seems to be topsyturvydom. You, who began by living in your instincts, are now wandering beyond Palestine in search of scrolls; and I, who began my life in scrolls, am now going to try to pick up the lost thread of my instincts in some great commercial town, in London or New York. My life for a long time will be that of some poor clerk or some hack journalist, picking up thirty shillings a week when he is in luck. I imagine myself in a threadbare suit of clothes edging my way along the pavement, nearing a great building, and making my way to my desk, and, when the day's work is done, returning home along the same pavement to a room high up among the rafters, close to the sky, in some cheap quarter. 'I do not doubt my ability to pick up a living--it will be a shameful thing indeed if I cannot; for the poor curlew with its legs tied together managed to live somehow, and cannot I do as much? And I have taken care that no fetters shall be placed upon my legs or chain about my neck. Anything may happen--life is full of possibilities--but my first concern must be how I may earn my living. To earn one's living is an obligation that can only be dispensed with at one's own great risk. What may happen afterwards, Heaven knows! I may meet you, or I may meet another woman, or I may remain unmarried. I do not intend to allow myself to think of these things; my thoughts are set on one thing only--how to get to New York, and how I shall pick up a living when I get there. Again I thank you for what you have done for me, for the liberation you have brought me of body and mind. I need not have added the words "body and mind," for these are not two things, but one thing. And that is the lesson I have learned. Good-bye. 'OLIVER GOGARTY.' XIII It would be a full moon on the fifteenth of July, and every night he went out on the hillside to watch the horned moon swelling to a disc. And on the fifteenth, the day he had settled for his departure, as he sat thinking how he would go down to the lake in a few hours, a letter started to his mind which, as well as he could remember, was written in a foolish, vainglorious mood--a stupid letter that must have made him appear a fool in her eyes. Had he not said something about--The thought eluded him; he could only remember the general tone of his letter, and in it he seemed to consider Nora as a sort of medicine--a cure for religion. He should have written her a simple little letter, telling her that he was leaving Ireland because he had suffered a great deal, and would write to her from New York, whereas he had written her the letter of a booby. And feeling he must do something to rectify his mistake, he went to his writing-table, but he had hardly put the pen to the paper when he heard a step on the gravel outside his door. 'Father Moran, your reverence.' 'I see that I'm interrupting you. You're writing.' 'No, I assure you.' 'But you've got a pen in your hand.' 'It can wait--a matter of no importance. Sit down.' 'Now, you'll tell me if I'm in the way?' 'My good man, why are you talking like that? Why should you be in the way?' 'Well, if you're sure you've nothing to do, may I stay to supper?' 'To supper?' 'But I see that I'm in the way.' 'No; I tell you you're not in the way. And you're going to stay to supper.' Father Oliver flung himself between Father Moran and the door; Father Moran allowed himself to be led back to the armchair. Father Oliver took the chair opposite him, for he couldn't send Moran away; he mustn't do anything that would give rise to suspicion. 'You're quite sure I'm not in the way--I'm not interfering with any plans?' 'Quite sure. I'm glad you have come this evening.' 'Are you? Well, I had to come.' 'You had to come!' 'Yes, I had to come; I had to come to see if anything had happened. You needn't look at me like that; I haven't been drinking, and I haven't gone out of my mind. I can only tell you that I had to come to see you this evening.' 'And you don't know why?' 'No, I don't; I can't tell you exactly why I've come. As I was reading my breviary, walking up and down the road in front of the house, I felt that I must see you. I never felt anything like it in my life before. I had to come.' 'And you didn't expect to find me?' 'Well, I didn't. How did you guess that?' 'You'd have hardly come all that way to find me sitting here in this armchair.' 'That's right. It wasn't sitting in that chair I expected to see you; I didn't expect to see you at all--at least, I don't think I did. You see, it was all very queer, for it was as if somebody had got me by the shoulders. It was as if I were being pushed every yard of the road. Something was running in my mind that I shouldn't see you again, or if I did see you that it would be for the last time. You seemed to me as if you were going away on a long journey.' 'Was it dying or dead you saw me?' 'That I can't say. If I said any more I shouldn't be telling the truth. No, it wasn't the same feeling when I came to tell you I couldn't put up with the loneliness any more--the night I came here roaring for drink. I was thinking of myself then, and that you might save me or do something for me--give me drink or cure me. I don't know which thought it was that was running in my head, but I had to come to you all the same, just as I had to come to you to-day. I say it was different, because then I was on my own business; but this time it seemed to me that I was on yours. One good turn deserves another, as they say; and something was beating in my head that I could help you, serve as a stay; so I had to come. Where should I be now if it were not for you? I can see you're thinking that it was only nonsense that was running in my head, but you won't be saying it was nonsense that brought me the night I came like a madman roaring for drink. If there was a miracle that night, why shouldn't there be a miracle to-night? And if a miracle ever happened in the world, it happened that night, I'm thinking. Do you remember the dark gray clouds tearing across the sky, and we walking side by side, I trying to get away from you? I was that mad that I might have thrown you into the bog-hole if the craving had not passed from me. And it was just lifted from me as one might take the cap off one's head. You remember the prayer we said, leaning over the bit of wall looking across the bog? There was no lonesomeness that night coming home, Gogarty, though a curlew might have felt a bit.' 'A curlew!' 'Well, there were curlews and plovers about, and a starving ass picking grass between the road and the bog-hole. That night will be ever in my mind. Where would I be now if it hadn't been that you kept on with me and brought me back, cured? It wouldn't be a cassock that would be on my back, but some old rag of a coat. There's nothing in this world, Gogarty, more unlucky than a suspended priest. I think I can see myself in the streets, hanging about some public-house, holding horses attached to a cab-rank.' 'Lord of Heaven, Moran! what are you coming here to talk to me in this way for? The night you're speaking of was bad enough, but your memory of it is worse. Nothing of what you're saying would have happened; a man like you would be always able to pick up a living.' 'And where would I be picking up a living if it weren't on a cab-rank, or you either?' 'Well, 'tis melancholy enough you are this evening.' 'And all for nothing, for there you are, sitting in your old chair. I see I've made a fool of myself.' 'That doesn't matter. You see, if one didn't do what one felt like doing, one would have remorse of conscience for ever after.' 'I suppose so. It was very kind of you, Moran, to come all this way.' 'What is it but a step? Three miles--' 'And a half.' Moved by a febrile impatience, which he could not control, Father Oliver got up from his chair. 'Now, Moran, isn't it strange? I wonder how it was that you should have come to tell me that you were going off to drink somewhere. You said you were going to lie up in a public-house and drink for days, and yet you didn't think of giving up the priesthood.' 'What are you saying, Gogarty? Don't you know well enough I'd have been suspended? Didn't I tell you that drink had taken that power over me that, if roaring hell were open, and I sitting on the brink of it and a table beside me with whisky on it, I should fill myself a glass?' 'And knowing you were going down to hell?' 'Yes, that night nothing would have stopped me. But, talking of hell, I heard a good story yesterday. Pat Carabine was telling his flock last Sunday of the tortures of the damned, and having said all he could about devils and pitchforks and caldrons, he came to a sudden pause--a blank look came into his face, and, looking round the church and seeing the sunlight streaming through the door, his thoughts went off at a tangent. "Now, boys," he said, "if this fine weather continues, I hope you'll be all out in the bog next Tuesday bringing home my turf."' Father Oliver laughed, but his laughter did not satisfy Father Moran, and he told how on another occasion Father Pat had finished his sermon on hell by telling his parishioners that the devil was the landlord of hell. 'And I leave yourself to imagine the groaning that was heard in the church that morning, for weren't they all small tenants? But I'm afraid my visit has upset you, Gogarty.' 'How is that?' 'You don't seem to enjoy a laugh like you used to.' 'Well, I was thinking at that moment that I've heard you say that, even though you gave way to drink, you never had any doubts about the reality of the hell that awaited you for your sins.' 'That's the way it is, Gogarty, one believes, but one doesn't act up to one's belief. Human nature is inconsistent. Nothing is queerer than human nature, and will you be surprised if I tell you that I believe I was a better priest when I was drinking than I am now that I'm sober? I was saying that human nature is very queer; and it used to seem queer to myself. I looked upon drink as a sort of blackmail I paid to the devil so that he might let me be a good priest in everything else. That's the way it was with me, and there was more sense in the idea than you'd be thinking, for when the drunken fit was over I used to pray as I have never prayed since. If there was not a bit of wickedness in the world, there would be no goodness. And as for faith, drink never does any harm to one's faith whatsoever; there's only one thing that takes a man's faith from him, and that is woman. You remember the expulsions at Maynooth, and you know what they were for. Well, that sin is a bad one, but I don't think it affects a man's faith any more than drink does. It is woman that kills the faith in men.' 'I think you're right: woman is the danger. The Church dreads her. Woman is life.' 'I don't quite understand you.' Catherine came into the room to lay the cloth, and Father Oliver asked Father Moran to come out into the garden. It was now nearing its prime. In a few days more the carnations would be all in bloom, and Father Oliver pondered that very soon it would begin to look neglected. 'In a year or two it will have drifted back to the original wilderness, to briar and weed,' he said to himself; and he dwelt on his love of this tiny plot of ground, with a wide path running down the centre, flower borders on each side, and a narrow path round the garden beside the hedge. The potato ridges, and the runners, and the cabbages came in the middle. Gooseberry-bushes and currant-bushes grew thickly, there were little apple-trees here and there, and in one corner the two large apple-trees under which he sat and smoked his pipe in the evenings. 'You're very snug here, smoking your pipe under your apple-trees.' 'Yes, in a way; but I think I was happier where you are.' 'The past is always pleasant to look upon.' 'You think so?' The priests walked to the end of the garden, and, leaning on the wicket, Father Moran said: 'We've had queer weather lately--dull heavy weather. See how low the swallows are flying. When I came up the drive, the gravel space in front of the house was covered with them, the old birds feeding the young ones.' 'And you were noticing these things, and believing that Providence had sent you here to bid me good-bye.' 'Isn't it when the nerves are on a stretch that we notice little things that don't concern us at all?' 'Yes, Moran; you are right. I've never known you as wise as you are this evening.' Catherine appeared in the kitchen door. She had come to tell them their supper was ready. During the meal the conversation turned on the roofing of the abbey and the price of timber, and when the tablecloth had been removed the conversation swayed between the price of building materials and the Archbishop's fear lest he should meet a violent death, as it had been prophesied if he allowed a roof to be put upon Kilronan. 'You know I don't altogether blame him, and I don't think anyone does at the bottom of his heart, for what has been foretold generally comes to pass sooner or later.' 'The Archbishop is a good Catholic who believes in everything the Church teaches--in the Divinity of our Lord, the Immaculate Conception, and the Pope's indulgences. And why should he be disbelieving in that which has been prophesied for generations about the Abbot of Kilronan?' 'Don't you believe in these things?' 'Does anyone know exactly what he believes? Does the Archbishop really believe every day of the year and every hour of every day that the Abbot of Kilronan will be slain on the highroad when a De Stanton is again Abbot?' Father Oliver was thinking of the slip of the tongue he had been guilty of before supper, when he said that the Church looks upon woman as the real danger, because she is the life of the world. He shouldn't have made that remark, for it might be remembered against him, and he fell to thinking of something to say that would explain it away. 'Well, Moran, we've had a pleasant evening; we've talked a good deal, and you've said many pleasant things and many wise ones. We've never had a talk that I enjoyed more, and I shall not forget it easily.' 'How is that?' 'Didn't you say that it isn't drink that destroys a man's faith, but woman? And you said rightly, for woman is life.' 'I was just about to ask you what you meant, when Catherine came in and interrupted us.' 'Love of woman means estrangement from the Church, because you have to protect her and her children.' 'Yes, that is so; that's how it works out. Now you won't be thinking me a fool for having come to see you this evening, Gogarty? One never knows when one's impulses are true and when they're false. If I hadn't come the night when the drink craving was upon me, I shouldn't have been here now.' 'You did quite right to come, Moran; we've talked of a great many things.' 'I've never talked so plainly to anyone before; I wonder what made me talk as I've been talking. We never talked like this before, did we, Gogarty? And I wouldn't have talked to another as I've talked to you. I shall never forget what I owe to you.' 'You said you were going to leave the parish.' 'I don't think I thought of anything except to burn myself up with drink. I wanted to forget, and I saw myself walking ahead day after day, drinking at every public-house.' 'And just because I saved you, you thought you would come to save me?' 'There was something of that in it. Gad! it's very queer; there's no saying where things will begin and end. Pass me the tobacco, will you?' Father Moran began to fill his pipe, and when he had finished filling it, he said: 'Now I must be going, and don't be trying to keep me; I've stopped long enough. If I were sent for a purpose--' 'But you don't believe seriously, Moran, that you were sent for a purpose?' Moran didn't answer, and his silence irritated Father Oliver, and, determined to probe his curate's conscience, he said: 'Aren't you satisfied now that it was only an idea of your own? You thought to find me gone, and here I am sitting before you.' After waiting for some time for Moran to speak, he said: 'You haven't answered me.' 'What should I be answering?' 'Do you still think you were sent for a purpose?' 'Well, I do.' 'You do?' The priests stood looking at each other for a while. 'Can't you give a reason?' 'No; I can give no reason. It's a feeling. I know I haven't reason on my side. There you are before me.' 'It's very queer.' He would have liked to have called back Moran. It seemed a pity to let him go without having probed this matter to the bottom. He hadn't asked him if he had any idea in his mind about the future, as to what was going to happen; but it was too late now. 'Why did he come here disturbing me with his beliefs,' he cried out, 'poisoning my will?' for he had already begun to fear that Moran's visit might come between him and his project. The wind sighed a little louder, and Father Oliver said: 'I wouldn't be minding his coming here to warn me, though he did say that it wasn't of his own will that he came, but something from the outside that kept pushing him along the road--I wouldn't be minding all that if this wind hadn't risen. But the omen may be a double one.' At that moment the wind shook the trees about the house, and he fell to thinking that if he had started to swim the lake that night he would be now somewhere between Castle Island and the Joycetown shore, in the deepest and windiest part of the lake. 'And pretty well tired I'd be at the time. If I'd started to-night a corpse would be floating about by now.' The wind grew louder. Father Oliver imagined the waves slapping in his face, and then he imagined them slapping about the face of a corpse drifting towards the Joycetown shore. XIV There was little sleep in him that night, and turning on his pillow, he sought sleep vainly, getting up at last when the dawn looked through the curtains. A wind was shaking the apple-trees, and he went back to bed, thinking that if it did not drop suddenly he would not be able to swim across the lake that evening. The hours passed between sleeping and waking, thinking of the newspaper articles he would write when he got to America, and dreaming of a fight between himself and an otter on the shore of Castle Island. Awaking with a cry, he sat up, afraid to seek sleep again lest he might dream of drowning men. 'A dream robs a man of all courage,' and then falling back on his pillow, he said, 'Whatever my dreams may be I shall go. Anything were better than to remain taking money from the poor people, playing the part of a hypocrite.' And telling Catherine that he could not look through her accounts that morning, he went out of the house to see what the lake was like. 'Boisterous enough; it would take a good swimmer to get across to-day. Maybe the wind will drop in the afternoon.' The wind continued to rise, and next day he could only see white waves, tossing trees, and clouds tumbling over the mountains. He sat alone in his study staring at the lamp, the wind often awaking him from his reverie; and one night he remembered suddenly that it was no longer possible for him to cross the lake that month, even if the wind should cease, for he required not only a calm, but a moonlight night. And going out of the house, he walked about the hilltop, about the old thorn-bush, his hands clasped behind his back. He stood watching the moon setting high above the south-western horizon. But the lake--where was it? Had he not known that a lake was there, he would hardly have been able to discover one. All faint traces of one had disappeared, every shape was lost in blue shadow, and he wondered if his desire to go had gone with the lake. 'The lake will return,' he said, and next night he was on the hillside waiting for the lake to reappear. And every night it emerged from the shadow, growing clearer, till he could follow its winding shores. 'In a few days, if this weather lasts, I shall be swimming out there.' The thought crossed his mind that if the wind should rise again about the time of the full moon he would not be able to cross that year, for in September the water would be too cold for so long a swim. 'But it isn't likely,' he said; 'the weather seems settled.' And the same close, blue weather that had prevailed before the storm returned, the same diffused sunlight. 'There is nothing so depressing,' the priest said, 'as seeing swallows flying a few feet from the ground.' It was about eight o'clock--the day had begun to droop in his garden--that he walked up and down the beds admiring his carnations. Every now and again the swallows collected into groups of some six or seven, and fled round the gables of his house shrieking. 'This is their dinner-hour; the moths are about.' He wondered on, thinking Nora lacking; for she had never appreciated that beautiful flower Miss Shifner. But her ear was finer than his; she found her delight in music. A thought broke through his memories. He had forgotten to tell her he would write if he succeeded in crossing the lake, and if he didn't write she would never know whether he was living or dead. Perhaps it would be better so. After hesitating a moment, the desire to write to her took strong hold upon him, and he sought an excuse for writing. If he didn't write, she might think that he remained in Garranard. She knew nothing of Moran's visit, nor of the rising of the wind, nor of the waning of the moon; and he must write to her about these things, for if he were drowned she would think that God had willed it. But if he believed in God's intervention, he should stay in his parish and pray that grace might be given to him. 'God doesn't bother himself about such trifles as my staying or my going,' he muttered as he hastened towards his house, overcome by an immense joy. For he was happy only when he was thinking of her, or doing something connected with her, and to tell her of the fatality that seemed to pursue him would occupy an evening. _From Father Oliver Gogarty to Miss Nora Glynn._ 'GARRANARD, BOHOLA, '_July_ 25, 19--. 'You will be surprised to hear from me so soon again, but I forgot to say in my last letter that, if I succeeded in crossing the lake, I would write to you from New York. And since then many things have happened, strange and significant coincidences.' And when he had related the circumstance of Father Moran's visit and the storm, he sought to excuse his half-beliefs that these were part of God's providence sent to warn him against leaving his parish. 'Only time can rid us of ideas that have been implanted in us in our youth, and that have grown up in our flesh and in our mind. A sudden influence may impel us to tear them up and cast them aside, but the seed is in us always, and it grows again. "One year's seed, seven years' weed." And behind imported Palestinian supernature, if I may be permitted to drop into Mr. Poole's style, or what I imagine to be his style, there is the home belief in fairies, spirits, and ghosts, and the reading of omens. Who amongst us does not remember the old nurse who told him stories of magic and witchcraft? Nor can it be denied that things happen that seem in contradiction to all we know of Nature's laws. Moreover, these unusual occurrences have a knack of happening to men at the moment of their setting out on some irrevocable enterprise. 'You who are so sympathetic will understand how my will has been affected by Father Moran's visit. Had you heard him tell how he was propelled, as it were, out of his house towards me, you, too, would believe that he was a messenger. He stopped on his threshold to try to find a reason for coming to see me; he couldn't find any, and he walked on, feeling that something had happened. He must have thought himself a fool when he found me sitting here in the thick flesh. But what he said did not seem nonsense to me; it seemed like some immortal wisdom come from another world. Remember that I was on the point of going. Nor is this all. If nothing else had happened, I might have looked upon Father Moran's visit as a coincidence. But why should the wind rise? So far as I can make out, it began to rise between eleven and twelve, at the very time I should have been swimming between Castle Island and the Joycetown shore. I know that belief in signs and omens and prognostics can be laughed at; nothing is more ridiculous than the belief that man's fate is governed by the flight of birds, yet men have believed in bird augury from the beginning of the world. 'I wrote to you about a curlew (I can still see it in the air, its beautifully shapen body and wings, its long beak, and its trailing legs; it staggered a little in its flight when the shot was fired, but it had strength enough to reach Castle Island: it then toppled over, falling dead on the shore); and I ask you if it is wonderful that I should have been impressed? Such a thing was never heard of before--a wild bird with its legs tied together! 'At first I believed that this bird was sent to warn me from going, but it was that bird that put the idea into my head how I might escape from the parish without giving scandal. Life is so strange that one doesn't know what to think. Of what use are signs and omens if the interpretation is always obscure? They merely wring the will out of us; and well we may ask, Who would care for his life if he knew he was going to lose it on the morrow? And what mother would love her children if she were certain they would fall into evil ways, or if she believed the soothsayers who told her that her children would oppose her ideas? She might love them independent of their opposition, but how could she love them if she knew they were only born to do wrong? Volumes have been written on the subject of predestination and freewill, and the truth is that it is as impossible to believe in one as in the other. Nevertheless, prognostications have a knack of coming true, and if I am drowned crossing the lake you will be convinced of the truth of omens. Perhaps I should not write you these things, but the truth is, I cannot help myself; there is no power of resistance in me. I do not know if I am well or ill; my brain is on fire, and I go on thinking and thinking, trying to arrive at some rational belief, but never succeeding. Sometimes I think of myself as a fly on a window-pane, crawling and buzzing, and crawling and buzzing again, and so on and so on.... 'You are one of those who seem to have been born without much interest in religion or fear of the here-after, and in a way I am like you, but with a difference: I acquiesced in early childhood, and accepted traditional beliefs, and tried to find happiness in the familiar rather than in the unknown. Whether I should have found the familiar enough if I hadn't met you, I shall never know. I've thought a good deal on this subject, and it has come to seem to me that we are too much in the habit of thinking of the intellect and the flesh as separate things, whereas they are but one thing. I could write a great deal on this subject, but I stop, as it were, on the threshold of my thought, for this is no time for philosophical writing. I am all a-tremble, and though my brain is working quickly, my thoughts are not mature and deliberate. My brain reminds me at times of the skies that followed Father Moran's visit--skies restlessly flowing, always different and always the same. These last days are merciless days, and I have to write to you in order to get some respite from purposeless thinking. Sometimes I stop in my walk to ask myself who I am and what I am, and where I am going. Will you be shocked to hear that, when I awoke and heard the wind howling, I nearly got out of bed to pray to God, to thank him for having sent Moran to warn me from crossing the lake? I think I did say a prayer, thanking him for his mercy. Then I felt that I should pray to him for grace that I might remain at home and be a good priest always, but that prayer I couldn't formulate, and I suffered a great deal. I know that such vacillations between belief and unbelief are neither profitable nor admirable; I know that to pray to God to thank him for having saved me from death while in mortal sin, and yet to find myself unable to pray to him to do his will, is illogical, and I confess that my fear is now lest old beliefs will claim me before the time comes. A poor, weak, tried mortal man am I, but being what I am, I cannot be different. I am calm enough now, and it seems as if my sufferings were at an end; but to-morrow some new fear will rise up like mist, and I shall be enveloped. What an awful thing it would be if I should find myself without will on the fifteenth, or the sixteenth, or the seventeenth of August! If the wind should rise again, and the lake be windy while the moon is full, my chance for leaving here this summer will be at an end. The water will be too cold in September. 'And now you know all, and if you don't get a letter from New York, understand that what appears in the newspapers is true--that I was drowned whilst bathing. I needn't apologize for this long letter; you will understand that the writing of it has taken me out of myself, and that is a great gain. There is no one else to whom I can write, and it pleases me to know this. I am sorry for my sisters in the convent; they will believe me dead. I have a brother in America, the one who sent the harmonium that you used to play on so beautifully. He will believe in my death, unless we meet in America, and that is not likely. I look forward to writing to you from New York. 'OLIVER GOGARTY.' Two evenings were passed pleasantly on the composition and the copying of this letter, and, not daring to entrust it to the postboy, he took it himself to Bohola; and he measured the time carefully, so as to get there a few minutes before the postmistress sealed up the bag. He delayed in the office till she sealed it, and returned home, following the letter in imagination to Dublin, across the Channel to Beechwood Hall. The servant in charge would redirect it. His thoughts were at ramble, and they followed the steamer down the Mediterranean. It would lie in the post-office at Jerusalem or some frontier town, or maybe a dragoman attached to some Turkish caravansary would take charge of it, and it might reach Nora by caravan. She might read it in the waste. Or maybe it would have been better if he had written 'Not to be forwarded' on the envelope. But the servant at Beechwood Hall would know what to do, and he returned home smiling, unable to believe in himself or in anything else, so extraordinary did it seem to him that he should be writing to Nora Glynn, who was going in search of the Christian river, while he was planning a journey westward. A few days more, and the day of departure was almost at hand; but it seemed a very long time coming. What he needed was a material occupation, and he spent hours in his garden watering and weeding, and at gaze in front of a bed of fiery-cross. Was its scarlet not finer than Lady Hindlip? Lady Hindlip, like fiery-cross, is scentless, and not so hardy. No white carnation compares with Shiela; but her calyx often bursts, and he considered the claims of an old pink-flaked clove carnation, striped like a French brocade. But it straggled a little in growth, and he decided that for hardiness he must give the verdict to Raby Castle. True that everyone grows Raby Castle, but no carnation is so hardy or flowers so freely. As he stood admiring her great trusses of bloom among the tea-roses, he remembered suddenly that it was his love of flowers that had brought him to Garranard, and if he hadn't come to this parish, he wouldn't have known her. And if he hadn't known her, he wouldn't have been himself. And which self did he think the worthier, his present or his dead self? His brain would not cease thinking; his bodily life seemed to have dissipated, and he seemed to himself to be no more than a mind, and, glad to interest himself in the business of the parish, he listened with greater attention than he had ever listened before to the complaints that were brought to him--to the man who had failed to give up a piece of land that he had promised to include in his daughter's fortune, and to Patsy Murphy, who had come to tell him that his house had been broken into while he was away in Tinnick. The old man had spent the winter in Tinnick with some relations, for the house that the Colonel had given him permission to build at the edge of the lake proved too cold for a winter residence. Patsy seemed to have grown older since the autumn; he seemed like a doll out of which the sawdust was running, a poor shaking thing--a large head afloat on a weak neck. Tresses of white hair hung on his shoulders, and his watery eyes were red and restless like a ferret's. He opened his mouth, and there were two teeth on either side like tusks. Gray stubble covered his face, and he wore a brown suit, the trousers retained about his pot-belly--all that remained of his body--by a scarf. There was some limp linen and a red muffler about his throat. He spoke of his age--he was ninety-five--and the priest said he was a fine-looking, hearty man for his years. There wasn't a doubt but he'd pass the hundred. Patsy was inclined to believe he would go to one hundred and one; for he had been told in a vision he would go as far as that. 'You see, living in the house alone, the brain empties and the vision comes.' That was how he explained his belief as he flopped along by the priest's side, his head shaking and his tongue going, telling tales of all kinds, half-remembered things: how the Gormleys and the Actons had driven the Colonel out of the country, and dispersed all his family with their goings-on. That was why they didn't want him--he knew too much about them. One of his tales was how they had frightened the Colonel's mother by tying a lame hare by a horsehair to the knocker of the hall door. Whenever the hare moved a rapping was heard at the front-door. But nobody could discover the horsehair, and the rapping was attributed to a family ghost. He seemed to have forgotten his sword, and was now inclined to talk of his fists, and he stopped the priest in the middle of the road to tell a long tale how once, in Liverpool, someone had spoken against the Colonel, and, holding up his clenched fist, he said that no one ever escaped alive from the fist of Patsy Murphy. It was a trial to Father Oliver to hear him, for he could not help thinking that to become like him it was only necessary to live as long as he. But it was difficult to get rid of the old fellow, who followed the priest as far as the village, and would have followed him further if Mrs. Egan were not standing there waiting for Father Oliver--a delicate-featured woman with a thin aquiline nose, who was still good-looking, though her age was apparent. She was forty-five, or perhaps fifty, and she held her daughter's baby in her coarse peasant hands. Since the birth of the child a dispute had been raging between the two mothers-in-law: the whole village was talking, and wondering what was going to happen next. Mrs. Egan's daughter had married a soldier, a Protestant, some two years ago, a man called Rean. Father Oliver always found him a straightforward fellow, who, although he would not give up his own religion, never tried to interfere with his wife's; he always said that if Mary liked she could bring up her children Catholics. But hitherto they were not blessed with children, and Mary was jeered at more than once, the people saying that her barrenness was a punishment sent by God. At last a child was given them, and all would have gone well if Rean's mother had not come to Garranard for her daughter-in-law's confinement. Being a black Protestant, she wouldn't hear of the child being brought up a Catholic or even baptized in a Catholic Church. The child was now a week old and Rean was fairly distracted, for neither his own mother nor his mother-in-law would give way; each was trying to outdo the other. Mrs. Rean watched Mrs. Egan, and Mrs. Egan watched Mrs. Rean, and the poor mother lay all day with the baby at her breast, listening to the two of them quarrelling. 'She's gone behind the hedge for a minute, your reverence, so I whipped the child out of me daughter's bed; and if your reverence would only hurry up we could have the poor cratur baptized in the Holy Faith. Only there's no time to be lost; she do be watchin' every stir, your reverence.' 'Very well, Mrs. Egan: I'll be waiting for you up at the chapel.' 'A strange rusticity of mind,' he said to himself as he wended his way along the village street, and at the chapel gate a smile gathered about his lips, for he couldn't help thinking how Mrs. Rean the elder would rage when the child was brought back to her a Catholic. So this was going to be his last priestly act, the baptism of the child, the saving of the child to the Holy Faith. He told Mike to get the things ready, and turned into the sacristy to put on his surplice. The familiar presses gave out a pleasant odour, and the vestments which he might never wear again interested him, and he stood seemingly lost in thought. 'But I mustn't keep the child waiting,' he said, waking up suddenly; and coming out of the sacristy, he found twenty villagers collected round the font, come up from the cottages to see the child baptized in the holy religion. 'Where's the child, Mrs. Egan?' The group began talking suddenly, trying to make plain to him what had happened. 'Now, if you all talk together, I shall never understand.' 'Will you leave off pushing me?' said one. 'Wasn't it I that saw Patsy? Will your reverence listen to me?' said Mrs. Egan. 'It was just as I was telling your reverence, if they'd be letting me alone. Your reverence had only just turned in the chapel gate when Mrs. Rean ran from behind the hedge, and, getting in front of me who was going to the chapel with the baby in me arms, she said: "Now I'll be damned if I'll have that child christened a Catholic!" and didn't she snatch the child and run away, taking a short-cut across the fields to the minister's.' 'Patsy Kivel has gone after her, and he'll catch up on her, surely, and she with six ditches forninst her.' 'If he doesn't itself, maybe the minister isn't there, and then she'll be bet.' 'All I'm hopin' is that the poor child won't come to any harm between them; but isn't she a fearful terrible woman, and may the curse of the Son of God be on her for stealin' away a poor child the like of that!' 'I'd cut the livers out of the likes of them.' 'Now will you mind what you're sayin', and the priest listenin' to you?' 'Your reverence, will the child be always a Protestant? Hasn't the holy water of the Church more power in it than the water they have? Don't they only throw it at the child?' 'Now, Mrs. Egan--' 'Ah, your reverence, you're going to say that I shouldn't have given the child to her, and I wouldn't if I hadn't trod on a stone and fallen against the wall, and got afeard the child might be hurt.' 'Well, well,' said Father Oliver, 'you see there's no child--' 'But you'll be waitin' a minute for the sake of the poor child, your reverence? Patsy will be comin' back in a minute.' On that Mrs. Egan went to the chapel door and stood there, so that she might catch the first glimpse of him as he came across the fields. And it was about ten minutes after, when the priest and his parishioners were talking of other things, that Mrs. Egan began to wave her arm, crying out that somebody should hurry. 'Will you make haste, and his reverence waitin' here this half-hour to baptize the innocent child! He'll be here in less than a minute now, your reverence. Will you have patience, and the poor child will be safe?' The child was snatched from Patsy, and so violently that the infant began to cry, and Mrs. Egan didn't know if it was a hurt it had received, for the panting Patsy was unable to answer her. 'The child's all right,' he blurted out at last. 'She said I might take it and welcome, now it was a Protestant.' 'Ah, sure, you great thickhead of a boy! weren't you quick enough for her?' 'Now, what are you talkin' about? Hadn't she half a mile start of me, and the minister at the door just as I was gettin' over the last bit of a wall!' 'And didn't you go in after them?' 'What would I be doin', going into a Protestant church?' Patsy's sense of his responsibility was discussed violently until Father Oliver said: 'Now, I can't be waiting any longer. Do you want me to baptize the child or not?' 'It would be safer, wouldn't it?' said Mrs. Egan. 'It would,' said Father Oliver; 'the parson mightn't have said the words while he was pouring the water.' And, going towards the font with the child, Father Oliver took a cup of water, but, having regard for the child's cries, he was a little sparing with it. 'Now don't be sparin' with the water, your reverence, and don't be a mindin' its noise; it's twicest the quantity of holy water it'll be wanting, and it half an hour a Protestant.' It was at that moment Mrs. Rean appeared in the doorway, and Patsy Kivel, who didn't care to enter the Protestant church, rushed to put her out of his. 'You can do what you like now with the child; it's a Protestant, for all your tricks.' 'Go along, you old heretic bitch!' 'Now, Patsy, will you behave yourself when you're standing in the Church of God! Be leaving the woman alone,' said Father Oliver; but before he got to the door to separate the two, Mrs. Rean was running down the chapel yard followed by the crowd of disputants, and he heard the quarrel growing fainter in the village street. Rose-coloured clouds had just begun to appear midway in the pale sky--a beautiful sky, all gray and rose--and all this babble about baptism seemed strangely out of his mind. 'And to think that men are still seeking scrolls in Turkestan to prove--' The sentence did not finish itself in his mind; a ray of western light falling across the altar steps in the stillness of the church awakened a remembrance in him of the music that Nora's hands drew from the harmonium, and, leaning against the Communion-rails, he allowed the music to absorb him. He could hear it so distinctly in his mind that he refrained from going up into the gallery and playing it, for in his playing he would perceive how much he had forgotten, how imperfect was his memory. It were better to lose himself in the emotion of the memory of the music; it was in his blood, and he could see her hands playing it, and the music was coloured with the memory of her hair and her eyes. His teeth clenched a little as if in pain, and then he feared the enchantment would soon pass away; but the music preserved it longer than he had expected, and it might have lasted still longer if he had not become aware that someone was standing in the doorway. The feeling suddenly came over him that he was not alone; it was borne in upon him--he knew not how, neither by sight nor sound--through some exceptional sense. And turning towards the sunlit doorway, he saw a poor man standing there, not daring to disturb the priest, thinking, no doubt, that he was engaged in prayer. The poor man was Pat Kearney. So the priest was a little overcome, for that Pat Kearney should come to him at such a time was portentous. 'It is strange, certainly, coincidence after coincidence,' he said; and he stood looking at Pat as if he didn't know him, till the poor man was frightened and began to wonder, for no one had ever looked at him with such interest, not even the neighbour whom he had asked to marry him three weeks ago. And this Pat Kearney, who was a short, thick-set man, sinking into years, began to wonder what new misfortune had tracked him down. His teeth were worn and yellow as Indian meal, and his rough, ill-shaven cheeks and pale eyes reminded the priest of the country in which Pat lived, and of the four acres of land at the end of the boreen that Pat was digging these many years. He had come to ask Father Oliver if he would marry him for a pound, but, as Father Oliver didn't answer him, he fell to thinking that it was his clothes that the priest was admiring, 'for hadn't his reverence given him the clothes himself? And if it weren't for the self-same clothes, he wouldn't have the pound in his pocket to give the priest to marry him,' 'It was yourself, your reverence--' 'Yes, I remember very well.' Pat had come to tell him that there was work to be had in Tinnick, but that he didn't dare to show himself in Tinnick for lack of clothes, and he stood humbly before the priest in a pair of corduroy trousers that hardly covered his nakedness. And it was as Father Oliver stood examining and pitying his parishioner's poverty it had occurred to him that, if he were to buy two suits of clothes in Tinnick and give one to Pat Kearney, he might wrap the other one in a bundle, and place it on the rocks on the Joycetown side. It was not likely that the shopman in Tinnick would remember, after three months, that he had sold two suits to the priest; but should he remember this, the explanation would be that he had bought them for Pat Kearney. Now, looking at this poor man who had come to ask him if he would marry him for a pound, the priest was lost in wonder. 'So you're going to be married, Pat?' And Pat, who hadn't spoken to anyone since the woman whose potatoes he was digging said she'd as soon marry him as another, began to chatter, and to ramble in his chatter. There was so much to tell that he did not know how to tell it. There was his rent and the woman's holding, for now they would have nine acres of land, money would be required to stock it, and he didn't know if the bank would lend him the money. Perhaps the priest would help him to get it. 'But why did you come to me to marry you? Aren't you two miles nearer to Father Moran than you are to me?' Pat hesitated, not liking to say that he would be hard set to get round Father Moran. So he began to talk of the Egans and the Reans. For hadn't he heard, as he came up the street, that Mrs. Rean had stolen the child from Mrs. Egan, and had had it baptized by the minister? And he hoped to obtain the priest's sympathy by saying: 'What a terrible thing it was that the police should allow a black Protestant to steal a Catholic child, and its mother a Catholic and all her people before her!' 'When Mrs. Rean snatched the child, it hadn't been baptized, and was neither a Catholic nor a Protestant,' the priest said maliciously. Pat Kearney, whose theological knowledge did not extend very far, remained silent, and the priest was glad of his silence, for he was thinking that in a few minutes he would catch sight of the square whitewashed school-house on the hillside by the pine-wood, and the thought came into his mind that he would like to see again the place where he and Nora once stood talking together. But a long field lay between his house and the school-house, and what would it avail him to see the empty room? He looked, instead, for the hawthorn-bush by which he and Nora had lingered, and it was a sad pleasure to think how she had gone up the road after bidding him good-bye. But Pat Kearney began to talk again of how he could get an advance from the bank. 'I can back no bill for you, Pat, but I'll give you a letter to Father Moran telling him that you can't afford to pay more than a pound.' Nora's letters were in the drawer of his writing-table; he unlocked it, and put the packet into his pocket, and when he had scribbled a little note to Father Moran, he said: 'Now take this and be off with you; I've other business to attend to besides you;' and he called to Catherine for his towels. 'Now, is it out bathing you're going, your reverence? You won't be swimming out to Castle Island, and forgetting that you have confessions at seven?' 'I shall be back in time,' he answered testily, and soon after he began to regret his irritation; for he would never see Catherine again, saying to himself that it was a pity he had answered her testily. But he couldn't go back. Moran might call. Catherine might send Moran after him, saying his reverence had gone down to bathe, or any parishioner, however unwarranted his errand, might try to see him out. 'And all errands will be unwarranted to-day,' he said as he hurried along the shore, thinking of the different paths round the rocks and through the blackthorn-bushes. His mind was on the big wood; there he could baffle anybody following him, for while his pursuer would be going round one way he would be coming back the other. But it would be lonely in the big wood; and as he hurried down the old cart-track he thought how he might while away an hour among the ferns in the little spare fields at the end of the plantation, watching the sunset, for hours would have to pass before the moon rose, and the time would pass slowly under the melancholy hazel-thickets into which the sun had not looked for thousands of years. A wood had always been there. The Welshmen had felled trees in it to build rafts and boats to reach their island castles. Bears and wolves had been slain in it; and thinking how it was still a refuge for foxes, martens and badgers and hawks, he made his way along the shore through the rough fields. He ran a little, and after waiting a while ran on again. On reaching the edge of the wood, he hid himself behind a bush, and did not dare to move, lest there might be somebody about. It was not till he made sure there was no one that he stooped under the blackthorns, and followed a trail, thinking the animal, probably a badger, had its den under the old stones; and to pass the time he sought for a den, but could find none. A small bird, a wren, was picking among the moss; every now and then it fluttered a little way, stopped, and picked again. 'Now what instinct guided its search for worms?' he asked, and getting up, he followed the bird, but it escaped into a thicket. There were only hazel-stems in the interspace he had chosen to hide himself in, but there were thickets nearly all about it, and it took some time to find a path through these. After a time one was found, and by noticing everything he tried to pass the time away and make himself secure against being surprised. The path soon came to an end, and he walked round to the other side of the wood, to see if the bushes were thick enough to prevent anyone from coming upon him suddenly from that side; and when all searches were finished he came back, thinking of what his future life would be without Nora. But he must not think of her, he must learn to forget her; for the time being at least, his consideration must be of himself in his present circumstances, and he felt that if he did not fix his thoughts on external things, his courage--or should he say his will?--would desert him. It did not need much courage to swim across the lake, much more to leave the parish, and once on the other side he must go any whither, no whither, for he couldn't return to Catherine in a frieze coat and a pair of corduroy trousers. Her face when she saw him! But of what use thinking of these things? He was going; everything was settled. If he could only restrain his thoughts--they were as wild as bees. Standing by a hazel-stem, his hand upon a bough, he fell to thinking what his life would be, and very soon becoming implicated in a dream, he lost consciousness of time and place, and was borne away as by a current; he floated down his future life, seeing his garret room more clearly than he had ever seen it--his bed, his washhand-stand, and the little table on which he did his writing. No doubt most of it would be done in the office, but some of it would be done at home; and at nightfall he would descend from his garret like a bat from the eaves. Journalists flutter like bats about newspaper offices. The bats haunt the same eaves, but the journalist drifts from city to city, from county to county, busying himself with ideas that were not his yesterday, and will not be his to-morrow. An interview with a statesman is followed by a review of a book, and the day after he may be thousands of miles away, describing a great flood or a railway accident. The journalist has no time to make friends, and he lives in no place long enough to know it intimately; passing acquaintance and exterior aspects of things are his share of the world. And it was in quest of such vagrancy of ideas and affections that he was going. At that moment a sudden sound in the wood startled him from his reverie, and he peered, a scared expression on his face, certain that the noise he had heard was Father Moran's footstep. It was but a hare lolloping through the underwood, and wondering at the disappointment he felt, he asked if he were disappointed that Moran had not come again to stop him. He didn't think he was, only the course of his life had been so long dependent on a single act of will that a hope had begun in his mind that some outward event might decide his fate for him. Last month he was full of courage, his nerves were like iron; to-day he was a poor vacillating creature, walking in a hazel-wood, uncertain lest delay had taken the savour out of his adventure, his attention distracted by the sounds of the wood, by the snapping of a dry twig, by a leaf falling through the branches. 'Time is passing,' he said, 'and I must decide whether I go to America to write newspaper articles, or stay at home to say Mass--a simple matter, surely.' The ordinary newspaper article he thought he could do as well as another--in fact, he knew he could. But could he hope that in time his mind would widen and deepen sufficiently to enable him to write something worth writing, something that might win her admiration? Perhaps, when he had shed all his opinions. Many had gone already, more would follow, and one day he would be as free as she was. She had been a great intellectual stimulus, and soon he began to wonder how it was that all the paraphernalia of religion interested him no longer, how he seemed to have suddenly outgrown the things belonging to the ages of faith, and the subtle question, if passion were essential to the growth of the mind, arose. For it seemed to him that his mind had grown, though he had not read the Scriptures, and he doubted if the reading of the Scriptures would have taught him as much as Nora's beauty. 'After all,' he said, 'woman's beauty is more important to the world than a scroll.' He had begun to love and to put his trust in what was natural, spontaneous, instinctive, and might succeed in New York better than he expected. But he would not like to think that it was hope of literary success that tempted him from Garranard. He would like to think that in leaving his poor people he was serving their best interests, and this was surely the case. For hadn't he begun to feel that what they needed was a really efficient priest, one who would look after their temporal interests? In Ireland the priest is a temporal as well as a spiritual need. Who else would take an interest in this forlorn Garranard and its people, the reeds and rushes of existence? He had striven to get the Government to build a bridge, but had lost patience; he had wearied of the task. Certain priests he knew would not have wearied of it; they would have gone on heckling the Government and the different Boards until the building of the bridge could no longer be resisted. His failure to get this bridge was typical, and it proved beyond doubt that he was right in thinking he had no aptitude for the temporal direction of his parish. But a curate had once lived in Bridget Clery's cottage who had served his people excellently well, had intrigued successfully, and forced the Government to build houses and advance money for drainage and other useful works. And this curate had served his people in many capacities--as scrivener, land-valuer, surveyor, and engineer. It was not till he came to Garranard that he seemed to get out of touch with practical affairs, and he began to wonder if it was the comfortable house he lived in, if it were the wine he drank, the cigars he smoked, that had produced this degeneracy, if it were degeneracy. Or was it that he had worn out a certain side of his nature in Bridget Clery's cottage? It might well be that. Many a man has mistaken a passing tendency for a vocation. We all write poetry in the beginning of our lives; but most of us leave off writing poetry after some years, unless the instinct is very deep or one is a fool. It might well be that his philanthropic instincts were exhausted; and it might well be that this was not the case, for one never gets at the root of one's nature. The only thing he was sure of was that he had changed a great deal, and, he thought, for the better. He seemed to himself a much more real person than he was a year ago, being now in full possession of his soul, and surely the possession of one's soul is a great reality. By the soul he meant a special way of feeling and seeing. But the soul is more than that--it is a light; and this inner light, faint at first, had not been blown out. If he had blown it out, as many priests had done, he would not have experienced any qualms of conscience. The other priests in the diocese experienced none when they drove erring women out of their parishes, and the reason of this was that they followed a light from without, deliberately shutting out the light of the soul. The question interested him, and he pondered it a long while, finding himself at last forced to conclude that there is no moral law except one's own conscience, and that the moral obligation of every man is to separate the personal conscience from the impersonal conscience. By the impersonal conscience he meant the opinions of others, traditional beliefs, and the rest; and thinking of these things he wandered round the Druid stones, and when his thoughts returned to Nora's special case he seemed to understand that if any other priest had acted as he had acted he would have acted rightly, for in driving a sinful woman out of the parish he would be giving expression to the moral law as he understood it and as Garranard understood it. This primitive code of morals was all Garranard could understand in its present civilization, and any code is better than no code. Of course, if the priest were a transgressor himself he could not administer the law. Happily, that was a circumstance that did not arise often. So it was said; but what did he know of the souls of the priests with whom he dined, smoked pipes, and played cards? And he stopped, surprised, for it had never occurred to him that all a man knows of his fellow is whether he be clean or dirty, short or tall, thin or stout. 'Even the soul of Moran is obscure to me,' he said--'obscure as this wood;' and at that moment the mystery of the wood seemed to deepen, and he stood for a long while looking through the twilight of the hazels. Very likely many of the priests he knew had been tempted by women: some had resisted temptation, and some had sinned and repented. There might be a priest who had sinned and lived for years in sin; even so if he didn't leave his parish, if he didn't become an apostate priest, faith would return to him in the end. But the apostate priest is anathema in the eyes of the Church; the doctrine always has been that a sin matters little if the sinner repent. Father Oliver suddenly saw himself years hence, still in Garranard, administering the Sacraments, and faith returning like an incoming tide, covering the weedy shore, lapping round the high rock of doubt. If he desired faith, all he had to do was to go on saying Mass, hearing confessions, baptizing the young, burying the old, and in twenty years--maybe it would take thirty--when his hair was white and his skin shrivelled, he would be again a good priest, beloved by his parishioners, and carried in the fulness of time by them to the green churchyard where Father Peter lay near the green pines. Only the other day, coming home from his after-noon's walk, he stopped to admire his house. The long shadow of its familiar trees awakened an extraordinary love in him, and when he crossed the threshold and sat down in his armchair, his love for his house had surprised him, and he sat like one enchanted by his own fireside, lost in admiration of the old mahogany bookcase with the inlaid panels, that he had bought at an auction. How sombre and quaint it looked, furnished with his books that he had had bound in Dublin, and what pleasure it always was to him to see a ray lighting up the parchment bindings! He had hung some engravings on his walls, and these had become very dear to him; and there were some spoons, bought at an auction some time ago--old, worn Georgian spoons--that his hands were accustomed to the use of; there was an old tea-service, with flowers painted inside the cups, and he was leaving these things; why? He sought for a reason for his leaving them. If he were going away to join Nora in America he could understand his going. But he would never see her again--at least, it was not probable that he would. He was not following her, but an idea, an abstraction, an opinion; he was separating himself, and for ever, from his native land and his past life, and his quest was, alas! not her, but--He was following what? Life? Yes; but what is life? Do we find life in adventure or by our own fireside? For all he knew he might be flying from the very thing he thought he was following. His thoughts zigzagged, and, almost unaware of his thoughts, he compared life to a flower--to a flower that yields up its perfume only after long cultivation--and then to a wine that gains its fragrance only after it has been lying in the same cellar for many years, and he started up convinced that he must return home at once. But he had not taken many steps before he stopped: 'No, no, I cannot stay here year after year! I cannot stay here till I die, seeing that lake always. I couldn't bear it. I am going. It matters little to me whether life is to be found at home or abroad, in adventure or in habits and customs. One thing matters--do I stay or go?' He turned into the woods and walked aimlessly, trying to escape from his thoughts, and to do so he admired the pattern of the leaves, the flight of the birds, and he stopped by the old stones that may have been Druid altars; and he came back an hour after, walking slowly through the hazel-stems, thinking that the law of change is the law of life. At that moment the cormorants were coming down the glittering lake to their roost. With a flutter of wings they perched on the old castle, and his mind continued to formulate arguments, and the last always seemed the best. At half-past seven he was thinking that life is gained by escaping from the past rather than by trying to retain it; he had begun to feel more and more sure that tradition is but dead flesh which we must cut off if we would live.... But just at this spot, an hour ago, he had acquiesced in the belief that if a priest continued to administer the Sacraments faith would return to him; and no doubt the Sacraments would bring about some sort of religious stupor, but not that sensible, passionate faith which he had once possessed, and which did not meet with the approval of his superiors at Maynooth. He had said that in flying from the monotony of tradition he would find only another monotony, and a worse one--that of adventure; and no doubt the journalist's life is made up of fugitive interests. But every man has, or should have, an intimate life as well as an external life; and in losing interest in religion he had lost the intimate life which the priesthood had once given him. The Mass was a mere Latin formula, and the vestments and the chalice, the Host itself, a sort of fetishism--that is to say, a symbolism from which life had departed, shells retaining hardly a murmur of the ancient ecstasy. It was therefore his fate to go in quest of--what? Not of adventure. He liked better to think that his quest was the personal life--that intimate exaltation that comes to him who has striven to be himself, and nothing but himself. The life he was going to might lead him even to a new faith. Religious forms arise and die. The Catholic Church had come to the end of its thread; the spool seemed pretty well empty, and he sat down so that he might think better what the new faith might be. What would be its first principle? he asked himself, and not finding any answer to this question, he began to think of his life in America. He would begin as a mere recorder of passing events. But why should he assume that he would not rise higher? And if he remained to the end of his day a humble reporter, he would still have the supreme satisfaction of knowing that he had not resigned himself body and soul to the life of the pool, to a frog-like acquiescence in the stagnant pool. His hand held back a hazel-branch, and he stood staring at the lake. The wild ducks rose in great flocks out of the reeds and went away to feed in the fields, and their departure was followed by a long interval, during which no single thought crossed his mind--at least, none that he could remember. No doubt his tired mind had fallen into lethargy, from which a sudden fear had roughly awakened him. What if some countryman, seeking his goats among the rocks, had come upon the bundle and taken it home! And at once he imagined himself climbing up the rocks naked. Pat Kearney's cabin was close by, but Pat had no clothes except those on his back, and would have to go round the lake to Garranard; and the priest thought how he would sit naked in Kearney's cottage hour after hour. 'If anyone comes to the cabin I shall have to hold the door to. There is a comic side to every adventure,' he said, 'and a more absurd one it would be difficult to imagine.' The day had begun in a ridiculous adventure--the baptism of the poor child, baptized first a Protestant, then a Catholic. And he laughed a little, and then he sighed. 'Is the whole thing a fairy-tale, a piece of midsummer madness, I wonder? No matter, I can't stay here, so why should I trouble to discover a reason for my going? In America I shall be living a life in agreement with God's instincts. My quest is life.' And, remembering some words in her last letter, his heart cried out that his love must bring her back to him eventually, though Poole were to take her to the end of the earth, and at once he was carried quickly beyond the light of common sense into a dim happy world where all things came and went or were transformed in obedience to his unexpressed will. Whether the sun were curtained by leafage or by silken folds he did not know--only this: that she was coming towards him, borne lightly as a ball of thistle-down. He perceived the colour of her hair, and eyes, and hands, and of the pale dress she wore; but her presence seemed revealed to him through the exaltation of some sense latent or non-existent in him in his waking moods. His delight was of the understanding, for they neither touched hands nor spoke. A little surprise rose to the surface of his rapture--surprise at the fact that he experienced no pang of jealousy. She had said that true love could not exist without jealousy! But was she right in this? It seemed to him that we begin to love when we cease to judge. If she were different she wouldn't be herself, and it was herself he loved--the mystery of her sunny, singing nature. There is no judgment where there is perfect sympathy, and he understood that it would be as vain for him to lament that her eyebrows were fair as to lament or reprove her conduct. Continuing the same train of thought, he remembered that, though she was young to-day, she would pass into middle, maybe old age; that the day would come when her hair would be less bright, her figure would lose its willowness; but these changes would not lessen his love for her. Should he not welcome change? Thinking that perhaps fruit-time is better than blossom-time, he foresaw a deeper love awaiting him, and a tenderness that he could not feel to-day might be his in years to come. Nor could habit blunt his perceptions or intimacy unravel the mystery of her sunny nature. So the bourne could never be reached; for when everything had been said, something would remain unspoken. The two rhythms out of which the music of life is made, intimacy and adventure, would meet, would merge, and become one; and she, who was to-day an adventure, would become in the end the home of his affections. A great bird swooped out of the branches above him, startling him, and he cried out: 'An owl--only an owl!' The wood was quiet and dark, and in fear he groped his way to the old stones; for one thing still remained to be done before he left--he must burn her letters. He burnt them one by one, shielding the flame with his hand lest it should attract some passer-by, and when the last was burnt he feared no longer anything. His wonder was why he had hesitated, why his mind had been torn by doubt. At the back of his mind he had always known he was going. Had he not written saying he was going, and wasn't that enough? And he thought for a moment of what her opinion of him would be if he stayed in Garranard. In a cowardly moment he hoped that something would happen to save him from the ultimate decision, and now doubt was overcome. A yellow disc appeared, cutting the flat sky sharply, and he laid his priest's clothes in the middle of a patch of white sand where they could be easily seen. Placing the Roman collar upon the top, and, stepping from stone to stone, he stood on the last one as on a pedestal, tall and gray in the moonlight--buttocks hard as a faun's, and dimpled like a faun's when he draws himself up before plunging after a nymph. When he emerged he was among the reeds, shaking the water from his face and hair. The night was so warm that it was like swimming in a bath, and when he had swum a quarter of a mile he turned over on his back to see the moon shining. Then he turned over to see how near he was to the island. 'Too near,' he thought, for he had started before his time. But he might delay a little on the island, and he walked up the shore, his blood in happy circulation, his flesh and brain a-tingle, a little captivated by the vigour of his muscles, and ready and anxious to plunge into the water on the other side, to tire himself if he could, in the mile and a half of gray lake that lay between him and shore. There were lights in every cottage window; the villagers would be about the roads for an hour or more, and it would be well to delay on the island, and he chose a high rock to sit upon. His hand ran the water off his hard thighs, and then off his long, thin arms, and he watched the laggard moon rising slowly in the dusky night, like a duck from the marshes. Supporting himself with one arm, he let himself down the rock and dabbled his foot in the water, and the splashing of the water reminded him of little Philip Rean, who had been baptized twice that morning notwithstanding his loud protest. And now one of his baptizers was baptized, and in a few minutes would plunge again into the beneficent flood. The night was so still and warm that it was happiness to be naked, and he thought he could sit for hours on that rock without feeling cold, watching the red moon rolling up through the trees round Tinnick; and when the moon turned from red to gold he wondered how it was that the mere brightening of the moon could put such joy into a man's heart. Derrinrush was the nearest shore, and far away in the wood he heard a fox bark. 'On the trail of some rabbit,' he thought, and again he admired the great gold moon rising heavily through the dusky sky, and the lake formless and spectral beneath it. Catherine no doubt had begun to feel agitated; she would be walking about at midnight, too scared to go to sleep. He was sorry for her; perhaps she would be the only one who would prefer to hear he was in America and doing well than at the bottom of the lake. Eliza would regret in a way, as much as her administration of the convent would allow her; Mary would pray for him--so would Eliza, for the matter of that; and their prayers would come easily, thinking him dead. Poor women! if only for their peace of mind he would undertake the second half of the crossing. A long mile of water lay between him and Joycetown, but there was a courage he had never felt before in his heart, and a strength he had never felt before in his limbs. Once he stood up in the water, sorry that the crossing was not longer. 'Perhaps I shall have had enough of it before I get there;' and he turned on his side and swam half a mile before changing his stroke. He changed it and got on his back because he was beginning to feel cold and tired, and soon after he began to think that it would be about as much as he could do to reach the shore. A little later he was swimming frog-fashion, but the change did not seem to rest him, and seeing the shore still a long way off he began to think that perhaps after all he would find his end in the lake. His mind set on it, however, that the lake should be foiled, he struggled on, and when the water shallowed he felt he had come to the end of his strength. 'Another hundred yards would have done for me,' he said, and he was so cold that he could not think, and sought his clothes vaguely, sitting down to rest from time to time among the rocks. He didn't know for certain if he would find them, and if he didn't he must die of cold. So the rough shirt was very welcome when he discovered it, and so were the woollen socks. As soon as he was dressed he thought that he felt nearly strong enough to climb up the rocks, but he was not as strong as he thought, and it took him a long time to get to the top. But at the top the sward was pleasant--it was the sward of the terrace of the old house; and lying at length, fearful lest sleep might overtake him, he looked across the lake. 'A queer dusky night,' he said, 'with hardly a star, and that great moon pouring silver down the lake.' 'I shall never see that lake again, but I shall never forget it,' and as he dozed in the train, in a corner of an empty carriage, the spectral light of the lake awoke him, and when he arrived at Cork it seemed to him that he was being engulfed in the deep pool by the Joycetown shore. On the deck of the steamer he heard the lake's warble above the violence of the waves. 'There is a lake in every man's heart,' he said, 'and he listens to its monotonous whisper year by year, more and more attentive till at last he ungirds.' THE END 
14108	----	Proofreading Team Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 14108-h.htm or 14108-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/4/1/0/14108/14108-h/14108-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/4/1/0/14108/14108-h.zip) IN THE CATSKILLS Selections from the Writings of John Burroughs With Illustrations from Photographs by Clifton Johnson Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company The Riverside Press Cambridge 1910 [Illustration: A DISTANT VIEW OF SLIDE MOUNTAIN The highest of the Catskills (Chapter VI)] CONTENTS INTRODUCTION I. THE SNOW-WALKERS II. A WHITE DAY AND A RED FOX III. PHASES OF FARM LIFE IV. IN THE HEMLOCKS V. BIRDS'-NESTS VI. THE HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS VII. SPECKLED TROUT VIII. A BED OF BOUGHS ILLUSTRATIONS A DISTANT VIEW OF SLIDE MOUNTAIN (Frontispiece) THE FOX-HUNTER AND HIS HOUND AT THE HEADWATERS OF THE DELAWARE Overlooking Mr. Burroughs's boyhood home FINDING A BIRD'S-NEST THE WITTENBERG FROM WOODLAND VALLEY A TROUT STREAM THE BEAVERKILL SOME PEOPLE OF THE CATSKILLS INTRODUCTION The eight essays in this volume all deal with the home region of their author; for not only did Mr. Burroughs begin life in the Catskills, and dwell among them until early manhood, but, as he himself declares, he has never taken root anywhere else. Their delectable heights and valleys have engaged his deepest affections as far as locality is concerned, and however widely he journeys and whatever charms he discovers in nature elsewhere, still the loveliness of those pastoral boyhood uplands is unsurpassed. The ancestral farm is in Roxbury among the western Catskills, where the mountains are comparatively gentle in type and always graceful in contour. Cultivated fields and sunny pastures cling to their mighty slopes far up toward the summits, there are patches of woodland including frequent groves of sugar maples, and there are apple orchards and winding roadways, and endless lines of rude stone fences, and scattered dwellings. In every hollow runs a clear trout brook, with its pools and swift shallows and silvery falls. Birds and other wild creatures abound; for the stony earth and the ledges that crop out along the hillsides, the thickets and forest patches, the sheltered glens and windy heights offer great variety in domicile to animal life. The creatures of the outdoor world are much in evidence, and at no time do their numbers impress one more than when in winter one sees the hand-writing of their tracks on the snow. The work on the farm and the workers are genuinely rustic, but not nearly so primitive as in the times that Mr. Burroughs most enjoys recalling. Oxen are of the past, the mowing-machine goes over the fields where formerly he labored with his scythe, stacks at which the cattle pull in the winter time are a rarity, and the gray old barns have given place to modern red ones. It is a dairy country, and on every farm is found a large herd of cows; but the milk goes to the creameries. The women, however, still share in the milking, and there is much of unaffected simplicity in the ways of the household. On days when work is not pushing, the men are likely to go hunting or fishing, and they are always alert to observe chances to take advantage of those little gratuities which nature in the remoter rural regions is constantly offering, both in the matter of game and in that of herbs and roots, berries and nuts. Mr. Burroughs's old home has continued in the family, and the house and its surroundings have in many ways continued essentially unaltered ever since he can remember. What is most important--the wide-reaching view down the vales and across to the ridges that rise height on height until they blend with the sky in the ethereal distance, is just what it always has been. That the Catskills have proved an inspiration to Mr. Burroughs cannot be doubted. Possibly we should never have had him as a nature writer at all, had he spent his impressible youthful years in a less favored locality. It is, however, a curious fact that the town which produced this lover of nature also produced one other man of national fame, who was as different from him as could well be imagined. I refer to Jay Gould. He was born in the same town and in the same part of the town, went to the same school, saw the same scenes, was a farm boy like Burroughs, and had practically the same experiences. Indeed, the two were a good deal together. But how different their later lives! It seems easy to grant that environment helped make the one; but what effect, if any, did that beautiful Catskill country have on the other? There are two seasons of the year when Mr. Burroughs is particularly fond of getting back to his old home. The first is in sap-time, when maple sugar is being made in the little shack on the borders of the rock-maple grove. The second is in midsummer, when haying is in progress. Both occasions have exceptional power for arousing pleasant memories of the past, though such memories have also their touch of sadness. In his early years he helped materially in the farm work while on these visits; but latterly he gives his time to rambling and contemplation. He once said to me, in speaking of a neighbor: "That man hasn't a lazy bone in his body. But I have lots of 'em--lots of 'em." This affirmation is not to be interpreted too literally. He has made a business success in raising small fruits, and his literary output has been by no means meagre. I might also mention that in youth he was something of a champion at swinging the scythe, and few could mow as much in the course of a day. But certainly labor is no fetich of his, and he has a real genius for loafing. In another man his leisurely rambling with its pauses to rest on rock or grassy bank or fallen tree, his mind meanwhile absolutely free from the feeling that he ought to be up and doing, might be shiftlessness. But how else could he have acquired his delightful intimacy with the woods and fields and streams, and with wild life in all its moods? Surely most of our hustling, untiring workers would be better off if they had some of this same ability to cast aside care and responsibility and get back to Nature--the good mother of us all. CLIFTON JOHNSON. Hadley, Mass., 1910. NOTE.--The pictures in this volume were all made in the Catskills and are the results of several trips to the regions described in the essays. IN THE CATSKILLS I THE SNOW-WALKERS He who marvels at the beauty of the world in summer will find equal cause for wonder and admiration in winter. It is true the pomp and the pageantry are swept away, but the essential elements remain,--the day and the night, the mountain and the valley, the elemental play and succession and the perpetual presence of the infinite sky. In winter the stars seem to have rekindled their fires, the moon achieves a fuller triumph, and the heavens wear a look of a more exalted simplicity. Summer is more wooing and seductive, more versatile and human, appeals to the affections and the sentiments, and fosters inquiry and the art impulse. Winter is of a more heroic cast, and addresses the intellect. The severe studies and disciplines come easier in winter. One imposes larger tasks upon himself, and is less tolerant of his own weaknesses. The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone and sinew to Literature, summer the tissues and blood. The simplicity of winter has a deep moral. The return of nature, after such a career of splendor and prodigality, to habits so simple and austere, is not lost either upon the head or the heart. It is the philosopher coming back from the banquet and the wine to a cup of water and a crust of bread. And then this beautiful masquerade of the elements,--the novel disguises our nearest friends put on! Here is another rain and another dew, water that will not flow, nor spill, nor receive the taint of an unclean vessel. And if we see truly, the same old beneficence and willingness to serve lurk beneath all. Look up at the miracle of the falling snow,--the air a dizzy maze of whirling, eddying flakes, noiselessly transforming the world, the exquisite crystals dropping in ditch and gutter, and disguising in the same suit of spotless livery all objects upon which they fall. How novel and fine the first drifts! The old, dilapidated fence is suddenly set off with the most fantastic ruffles, scalloped and fluted after an unheard-of fashion! Looking down a long line of decrepit stone wall, in the trimming of which the wind had fairly run riot, I saw, as for the first time, what a severe yet master artist old Winter is. Ah, a severe artist! How stern the woods look, dark and cold and as rigid against the horizon as iron! All life and action upon the snow have an added emphasis and significance. Every expression is underscored. Summer has few finer pictures than this winter one of the farmer foddering his cattle from a stack upon the clean snow,--the movement, the sharply defined figures, the great green flakes of hay, the long file of patient cows, the advance just arriving and pressing eagerly for the choicest morsels, and the bounty and providence it suggests. Or the chopper in the woods,--the prostrate tree, the white new chips scattered about, his easy triumph over the cold, his coat hanging to a limb, and the clear, sharp ring of his axe. The woods are rigid and tense, keyed up by the frost, and resound like a stringed instrument. Or the road-breakers, sallying forth with oxen and sleds in the still, white world, the day after the storm, to restore the lost track and demolish the beleaguering drifts. All sounds are sharper in winter; the air transmits better. At night I hear more distinctly the steady roar of the North Mountain. In summer it is a sort of complacent purr, as the breezes stroke down its sides; but in winter always the same low, sullen growl. A severe artist! No longer the canvas and the pigments, but the marble and the chisel. When the nights are calm and the moon full, I go out to gaze upon the wonderful purity of the moonlight and the snow. The air is full of latent fire, and the cold warms me--after a different fashion from that of the kitchen stove. The world lies about me in a "trance of snow." The clouds are pearly and iridescent, and seem the farthest possible remove from the condition of a storm,--the ghosts of clouds, the indwelling beauty freed from all dross. I see the hills, bulging with great drifts, lift themselves up cold and white against the sky, the black lines of fences here and there obliterated by the depth of the snow. Presently a fox barks away up next the mountain, and I imagine I can almost see him sitting there, in his furs, upon the illuminated surface, and looking down in my direction. As I listen, one answers him from behind the woods in the valley. What a wild winter sound, wild and weird, up among the ghostly hills! Since the wolf has ceased to howl upon these mountains, and the panther to scream, there is nothing to be compared with it. So wild! I get up in the middle of the night to hear it. It is refreshing to the ear, and one delights to know that such wild creatures are among us. At this season Nature makes the most of every throb of life that can withstand her severity. How heartily she indorses this fox! In what bold relief stand out the lives of all walkers of the snow! The snow is a great tell-tale, and blabs as effectually as it obliterates. I go into the woods, and know all that has happened. I cross the fields, and if only a mouse has visited his neighbor, the fact is chronicled. The red fox is the only species that abounds in my locality; the little gray fox seems to prefer a more rocky and precipitous country, and a less rigorous climate; the cross fox is occasionally seen, and there are traditions of the silver gray among the oldest hunters. But the red fox is the sportsman's prize, and the only fur-bearer worthy of note in these mountains.[1] I go out in the morning, after a fresh fall of snow, and see at all points where he has crossed the road. Here he has leisurely passed within rifle-range of the house, evidently reconnoitring the premises with an eye to the hen-roost. That clear, sharp track,--there is no mistaking it for the clumsy footprint of a little dog. All his wildness and agility are photographed in it. Here he has taken fright, or suddenly recollected an engagement, and in long, graceful leaps, barely touching the fence, has gone careering up the hill as fleet as the wind. [Footnote 1: A spur of the Catskills.] The wild, buoyant creature, how beautiful he is! I had often seen his dead carcass, and at a distance had witnessed the hounds drive him across the upper fields; but the thrill and excitement of meeting him in his wild freedom in the woods were unknown to me till, one cold winter day, drawn thither by the baying of a hound, I stood near the summit of the mountain, waiting a renewal of the sound, that I might determine the course of the dog and choose my position,--stimulated by the ambition of all young Nimrods to bag some notable game. Long I waited, and patiently, till, chilled and benumbed, I was about to turn back, when, hearing a slight noise, I looked up and beheld a most superb fox, loping along with inimitable grace and ease, evidently disturbed, but not pursued by the hound, and so absorbed in his private meditations that he failed to see me, though I stood transfixed with amazement and admiration, not ten yards distant. I took his measure at a glance,--a large male, with dark legs, and massive tail tipped with white,--a most magnificent creature; but so astonished and fascinated was I by this sudden appearance and matchless beauty, that not till I had caught the last glimpse of him, as he disappeared over a knoll, did I awake to my duty as a sportsman, and realize what an opportunity to distinguish myself I had unconsciously let slip. I clutched my gun, half angrily, as if it was to blame, and went home out of humor with myself and all fox-kind. But I have since thought better of the experience, and concluded that I bagged the game after all, the best part of it, and fleeced Reynard of something more valuable than his fur, without his knowledge. This is thoroughly a winter sound,--this voice of the hound upon the mountain,--and one that is music to many ears. The long trumpet-like bay, heard for a mile or more,--now faintly back in the deep recesses of the mountain,--now distinct, but still faint, as the hound comes over some prominent point and the wind favors,--anon entirely lost in the gully,--then breaking out again much nearer, and growing more and more pronounced as the dog approaches, till, when he comes around the brow of the mountain, directly above you, the barking is loud and sharp. On he goes along the northern spur, his voice rising and sinking as the wind and the lay of the ground modify it, till lost to hearing. The fox usually keeps half a mile ahead, regulating his speed by that of the hound, occasionally pausing a moment to divert himself with a mouse, or to contemplate the landscape, or to listen for his pursuer. If the hound press him too closely, he leads off from mountain to mountain, and so generally escapes the hunter; but if the pursuit be slow, he plays about some ridge or peak, and falls a prey, though not an easy one, to the experienced sportsman. A most spirited and exciting chase occurs when the farm-dog gets close upon one in the open field, as sometimes happens in the early morning. The fox relies so confidently upon his superior speed, that I imagine he half tempts the dog to the race. But if the dog be a smart one, and their course lies down-hill, over smooth ground, Reynard must put his best foot forward, and then sometimes suffer the ignominy of being run over by his pursuer, who, however, is quite unable to pick him up, owing to the speed. But when they mount the hill, or enter the woods, the superior nimbleness and agility of the fox tell at once, and he easily leaves the dog far in his rear. For a cur less than his own size he manifests little fear, especially if the two meet alone, remote from the house. In such cases, I have seen first one turn tail, then the other. A novel spectacle often occurs in summer, when the female has young. You are rambling on the mountain, accompanied by your dog, when you are startled by that wild, half-threatening squall, and in a moment perceive your dog, with inverted tail, and shame and confusion in his looks, sneaking toward you, the old fox but a few rods in his rear. You speak to him sharply, when he bristles up, turns about, and, barking, starts off vigorously, as if to wipe out the dishonor; but in a moment comes sneaking back more abashed than ever, and owns himself unworthy to be called a dog. The fox fairly shames him out of the woods. The secret of the matter is her sex, though her conduct, for the honor of the fox be it said, seems to be prompted only by solicitude for the safety of her young. One of the most notable features of the fox is his large and massive tail. Seen running on the snow at a distance, his tail is quite as conspicuous as his body; and, so far from appearing a burden, seems to contribute to his lightness and buoyancy. It softens the outline of his movements, and repeats or continues to the eye the ease and poise of his carriage. But, pursued by the hound on a wet, thawy day, it often becomes so heavy and bedraggled as to prove a serious inconvenience, and compels him to take refuge in his den. He is very loath to do this; both his pride and the traditions of his race stimulate him to run it out, and win by fair superiority of wind and speed; and only a wound or a heavy and moppish tail will drive him to avoid the issue in this manner. To learn his surpassing shrewdness and cunning, attempt to take him with a trap. Rogue that he is, he always suspects some trick, and one must be more of a fox than he is himself to overreach him. At first sight it would appear easy enough. With apparent indifference he crosses your path, or walks in your footsteps in the field, or travels along the beaten highway, or lingers in the vicinity of stacks and remote barns. Carry the carcass of a pig, or a fowl, or a dog, to a distant field in midwinter, and in a few nights his tracks cover the snow about it. The inexperienced country youth, misled by this seeming carelessness of Reynard, suddenly conceives a project to enrich himself with fur, and wonders that the idea has not occurred to him before, and to others. I knew a youthful yeoman of this kind, who imagined he had found a mine of wealth on discovering on a remote side-hill, between two woods, a dead porker, upon which it appeared all the foxes of the neighborhood had nightly banqueted. The clouds were burdened with snow; and as the first flakes commenced to eddy down, he set out, trap and broom in hand, already counting over in imagination the silver quarters he would receive for his first fox-skin. With the utmost care, and with a palpitating heart, he removed enough of the trodden snow to allow the trap to sink below the surface. Then, carefully sifting the light element over it and sweeping his tracks full, he quickly withdrew, laughing exultingly over the little surprise he had prepared for the cunning rogue. The elements conspired to aid him, and the falling snow rapidly obliterated all vestiges of his work. The next morning at dawn he was on his way to bring in his fur. The snow had done its work effectually, and, he believed, had kept his secret well. Arrived in sight of the locality, he strained his vision to make out his prize lodged against the fence at the foot of the hill. Approaching nearer, the surface was unbroken, and doubt usurped the place of certainty in his mind. A slight mound marked the site of the porker, but there was no footprint near it. Looking up the hill, he saw where Reynard had walked leisurely down toward his wonted bacon till within a few yards of it, when he had wheeled, and with prodigious strides disappeared in the woods. The young trapper saw at a glance what a comment this was upon his skill in the art, and, indignantly exhuming the iron, he walked home with it, the stream of silver quarters suddenly setting in another direction. The successful trapper commences in the fall, or before the first deep snow. In a field not too remote, with an old axe he cuts a small place, say ten inches by fourteen, in the frozen ground, and removes the earth to the depth of three or four inches, then fills the cavity with dry ashes, in which are placed bits of roasted cheese. Reynard is very suspicious at first, and gives the place a wide berth. It looks like design, and he will see how the thing behaves before he approaches too near. But the cheese is savory and the cold severe. He ventures a little closer every night, until he can reach and pick a piece from the surface. Emboldened by success, like other mortals, he presently digs freely among the ashes, and, finding a fresh supply of the delectable morsels every night, is soon thrown off his guard and his suspicions quite lulled. After a week of baiting in this manner, and on the eve of a light fall of snow, the trapper carefully conceals his trap in the bed, first smoking it thoroughly with hemlock boughs to kill or neutralize the smell of the iron. If the weather favors and the proper precautions have been taken, he may succeed, though the chances are still greatly against him. Reynard is usually caught very lightly, seldom more than the ends of his toes being between the jaws. He sometimes works so cautiously as to spring the trap without injury even to his toes, or may remove the cheese night after night without even springing it. I knew an old trapper who, on finding himself outwitted in this manner, tied a bit of cheese to the pan, and next morning had poor Reynard by the jaw. The trap is not fastened, but only encumbered with a clog, and is all the more sure in its hold by yielding to every effort of the animal to extricate himself. When Reynard sees his captor approaching, he would fain drop into a mouse-hole to render himself invisible. He crouches to the ground and remains perfectly motionless until he perceives himself discovered, when he makes one desperate and final effort to escape, but ceases all struggling as you come up, and behaves in a manner that stamps him a very timid warrior,--cowering to the earth with a mingled look of shame, guilt, and abject fear. A young farmer told me of tracing one with his trap to the border of a wood, where he discovered the cunning rogue trying to hide by embracing a small tree. Most animals, when taken in a trap, show fight; but Reynard has more faith in the nimbleness of his feet than in the terror of his teeth. Entering the woods, the number and variety of the tracks contrast strongly with the rigid, frozen aspect of things. Warm jets of life still shoot and play amid this snowy desolation. Fox-tracks are far less numerous than in the fields; but those of hares, skunks, partridges, squirrels, and mice abound. The mice tracks are very pretty, and look like a sort of fantastic stitching on the coverlid of the snow. One is curious to know what brings these tiny creatures from their retreats; they do not seem to be in quest of food, but rather to be traveling about for pleasure or sociability, though always going post-haste, and linking stump with stump and tree with tree by fine, hurried strides. That is when they travel openly; but they have hidden passages and winding galleries under the snow, which undoubtedly are their main avenues of communication. Here and there these passages rise so near the surface as to be covered by only a frail arch of snow, and a slight ridge betrays their course to the eye. I know him well. He is known to the farmer as the "deer mouse," to the naturalist as the white-footed mouse,--a very beautiful creature, nocturnal in his habits, with large ears, and large, fine eyes, full of a wild, harmless look. He is daintily marked, with white feet and a white belly. When disturbed by day he is very easily captured, having none of the cunning or viciousness of the common Old World mouse. It is he who, high in the hollow trunk of some tree, lays by a store of beechnuts for winter use. Every nut is carefully shelled, and the cavity that serves as storehouse lined with grass and leaves. The wood-chopper frequently squanders this precious store. I have seen half a peck taken from one tree, as clean and white as if put up by the most delicate hands,--as they were. How long it must have taken the little creature to collect this quantity, to hull them one by one, and convey them up to his fifth-story chamber! He is not confined to the woods, but is quite as common in the fields, particularly in the fall, amid the corn and potatoes. When routed by the plow, I have seen the old one take flight with half a dozen young hanging to her teats, and with such reckless speed that some of the young would lose their hold and fly off amid the weeds. Taking refuge in a stump with the rest of her family, the anxious mother would presently come back and hunt up the missing ones. The snow-walkers are mostly night-walkers also, and the record they leave upon the snow is the main clew one has to their life and doings. The hare is nocturnal in its habits, and though a very lively creature at night, with regular courses and run-ways through the wood, is entirely quiet by day. Timid as he is, he makes little effort to conceal himself, usually squatting beside a log, stump, or tree, and seeming to avoid rocks and ledges where he might be partially housed from the cold and the snow, but where also--and this consideration undoubtedly determines his choice--he would be more apt to fall a prey to his enemies. In this, as well as in many other respects, he differs from the rabbit proper: he never burrows in the ground, or takes refuge in a den or hole, when pursued. If caught in the open fields, he is much confused and easily overtaken by the dog; but in the woods, he leaves him at a bound. In summer, when first disturbed, he beats the ground violently with his feet, by which means he would express to you his surprise or displeasure; it is a dumb way he has of scolding. After leaping a few yards, he pauses an instant, as if to determine the degree of danger, and then hurries away with a much lighter tread. His feet are like great pads, and his track has little of the sharp, articulated expression of Reynard's, or of animals that climb or dig. Yet it is very pretty like all the rest, and tells its own tale. There is nothing bold or vicious or vulpine in it, and his timid, harmless character is published at every leap. He abounds in dense woods, preferring localities filled with a small undergrowth of beech and birch, upon the bark of which he feeds. Nature is rather partial to him, and matches his extreme local habits and character with a suit that corresponds with his surroundings,--reddish gray in summer and white in winter. The sharp-rayed track of the partridge adds another figure to this fantastic embroidery upon the winter snow. Her course is a clear, strong line, sometimes quite wayward, but generally very direct, steering for the densest, most impenetrable places,--leading you over logs and through brush, alert and expectant, till, suddenly, she bursts up a few yards from you, and goes humming through the trees,--the complete triumph of endurance and vigor. Hardy native bird, may your tracks never be fewer, or your visits to the birch-tree less frequent! The squirrel tracks--sharp, nervous, and wiry--have their histories also. But how rarely we see squirrels in winter! The naturalists say they are mostly torpid; yet evidently that little pocket-faced depredator, the chipmunk, was not carrying buckwheat for so many days to his hole for nothing: was he anticipating a state of torpidity, or providing against the demands of a very active appetite? Red and gray squirrels are more or less active all winter, though very shy, and, I am inclined to think, partially nocturnal in their habits. Here a gray one has just passed,--came down that tree and went up this; there he dug for a beechnut, and left the burr on the snow. How did he know where to dig? During an unusually severe winter I have known him to make long journeys to a barn, in a remote field, where wheat was stored. How did he know there was wheat there? In attempting to return, the adventurous creature was frequently run down and caught in the deep snow. His home is in the trunk of some old birch or maple, with an entrance far up amid the branches. In the spring he builds himself a summer-house of small leafy twigs in the top of a neighboring beech, where the young are reared and much of the time is passed. But the safer retreat in the maple is not abandoned, and both old and young resort thither in the fall, or when danger threatens. Whether this temporary residence amid the branches is for elegance or pleasure, or for sanitary reasons or domestic convenience, the naturalist has forgotten to mention. The elegant creature, so cleanly in its habits, so graceful in its carriage, so nimble and daring in its movements, excites feelings of admiration akin to those awakened by the birds and the fairer forms of nature. His passage through the trees is almost a flight. Indeed, the flying squirrel has little or no advantage over him, and in speed and nimbleness cannot compare with him at all. If he miss his footing and fall, he is sure to catch on the next branch; if the connection be broken, he leaps recklessly for the nearest spray or limb, and secures his hold, even if it be by the aid of his teeth. His career of frolic and festivity begins in the fall, after the birds have left us and the holiday spirit of nature has commenced to subside. How absorbing the pastime of the sportsman who goes to the woods in the still October morning in quest of him! You step lightly across the threshold of the forest, and sit down upon the first log or rock to await the signals. It is so still that the ear suddenly seems to have acquired new powers, and there is no movement to confuse the eye. Presently you hear the rustling of a branch, and see it sway or spring as the squirrel leaps from or to it; or else you hear a disturbance in the dry leaves, and mark one running upon the ground. He has probably seen the intruder, and, not liking his stealthy movements, desires to avoid a nearer acquaintance. Now he mounts a stump to see if the way is clear, then pauses a moment at the foot of a tree to take his bearings, his tail, as he skims along, undulating behind him, and adding to the easy grace and dignity of his movements. Or else you are first advised of his proximity by the dropping of a false nut, or the fragments of the shucks rattling upon the leaves. Or, again, after contemplating you awhile unobserved, and making up his mind that you are not dangerous, he strikes an attitude on a branch, and commences to quack and bark, with an accompanying movement of his tail. Late in the afternoon, when the same stillness reigns, the same scenes are repeated. There is a black variety, quite rare, but mating freely with the gray, from which he seems to be distinguished only in color. The track of the red squirrel may be known by its smaller size. He is more common and less dignified than the gray, and oftener guilty of petty larceny about the barns and grain-fields. He is most abundant in old barkpeelings, and low, dilapidated hemlocks, from which he makes excursions to the fields and orchards, spinning along the tops of the fences, which afford not only convenient lines of communication, but a safe retreat if danger threatens. He loves to linger about the orchard; and, sitting upright on the topmost stone in the wall, or on the tallest stake in the fence, chipping up an apple for the seeds, his tail conforming to the curve of his back, his paws shifting and turning the apple, he is a pretty sight, and his bright, pert appearance atones for all the mischief he does. At home, in the woods, he is the most frolicsome and loquacious. The appearance of anything unusual, if, after contemplating it a moment, he concludes it not dangerous, excites his unbounded mirth and ridicule, and he snickers and chatters, hardly able to contain himself; now darting up the trunk of a tree and squealing in derision, then hopping into position on a limb and dancing to the music of his own cackle, and all for your special benefit. There is something very human in this apparent mirth and mockery of the squirrels. It seems to be a sort of ironical laughter, and implies self-conscious pride and exultation in the laugher. "What a ridiculous thing you are, to be sure!" he seems to say; "how clumsy and awkward, and what a poor show for a tail! Look at me, look at me!"--and he capers about in his best style. Again, he would seem to tease you and provoke your attention; then suddenly assumes a tone of good-natured, childlike defiance and derision. That pretty little imp, the chipmunk, will sit on the stone above his den and defy you, as plainly as if he said so, to catch him before he can get into his hole if you can. You hurl a stone at him, and "No you didn't!" comes up from the depth of his retreat. In February another track appears upon the snow, slender and delicate, about a third larger than that of the gray squirrel, indicating no haste or speed, but, on the contrary, denoting the most imperturbable ease and leisure, the footprints so close together that the trail appears like a chain of curiously carved links. Sir _Mephitis mephitica_, or, in plain English, the skunk, has awakened from his six weeks' nap, and come out into society again. He is a nocturnal traveler, very bold and impudent, coming quite up to the barn and outbuildings, and sometimes taking up his quarters for the season under the haymow. There is no such word as hurry in his dictionary, as you may see by his path upon the snow. He has a very sneaking, insinuating way, and goes creeping about the fields and woods, never once in a perceptible degree altering his gait, and, if a fence crosses his course, steers for a break or opening to avoid climbing. He is too indolent even to dig his own hole, but appropriates that of a woodchuck, or hunts out a crevice in the rocks, from which he extends his rambling in all directions, preferring damp, thawy weather. He has very little discretion or cunning, and holds a trap in utter contempt, stepping into it as soon as beside it, relying implicitly for defense against all forms of danger upon the unsavory punishment he is capable of inflicting. He is quite indifferent to both man and beast, and will not hurry himself to get out of the way of either. Walking through the summer fields at twilight, I have come near stepping upon him, and was much the more disturbed of the two. When attacked in the open field he confounds the plans of his enemies by the unheard-of tactics of exposing his rear rather than his front. "Come if you dare," he says, and his attitude makes even the farm-dog pause. After a few encounters of this kind, and if you entertain the usual hostility towards him, your mode of attack will speedily resolve itself into moving about him in a circle, the radius of which will be the exact distance at which you can hurl a stone with accuracy and effect. He has a secret to keep and knows it, and is careful not to betray himself until he can do so with the most telling effect. I have known him to preserve his serenity even when caught in a steel trap, and look the very picture of injured innocence, manoeuvring carefully and deliberately to extricate his foot from the grasp of the naughty jaws. Do not by any means take pity on him, and lend a helping hand! How pretty his face and head! How fine and delicate his teeth, like a weasel's or a cat's! When about a third grown, he looks so well that one covets him for a pet. He is quite precocious, however and capable, even at this tender age, of making a very strong appeal to your sense of smell. No animal is more cleanly in his habits than he. He is not an awkward boy who cuts his own face with his whip; and neither his flesh nor his fur hints the weapon with which he is armed. The most silent creature known to me, he makes no sound, so far as I have observed, save a diffuse, impatient noise, like that produced by beating your hand with a whisk-broom, when the farm-dog has discovered his retreat in the stone fence. He renders himself obnoxious to the farmer by his partiality for hens' eggs and young poultry. He is a confirmed epicure, and at plundering hen-roosts an expert. Not the full-grown fowls are his victims, but the youngest and most tender. At night Mother Hen receives under her maternal wings a dozen newly hatched chickens, and with much pride and satisfaction feels them all safely tucked away in her feathers. In the morning she is walking about disconsolately, attended by only two or three of all that pretty brood. What has happened? Where are they gone? That pickpocket, Sir Mephitis, could solve the mystery. Quietly has he approached, under cover of darkness, and one by one relieved her of her precious charge. Look closely and you will see their little yellow legs and beaks, or part of a mangled form, lying about on the ground. Or, before the hen has hatched, he may find her out, and, by the same sleight of hand, remove every egg, leaving only the empty blood-stained shells to witness against him. The birds, especially the ground-builders, suffer in like manner from his plundering propensities. The secretion upon which he relies for defense, and which is the chief source of his unpopularity, while it affords good reasons against cultivating him as a pet, and mars his attractiveness as game, is by no means the greatest indignity that can be offered to a nose. It is a rank, living smell, and has none of the sickening qualities of disease or putrefaction. Indeed, I think a good smeller will enjoy its most refined intensity. It approaches the sublime, and makes the nose tingle. It is tonic and bracing, and, I can readily believe, has rare medicinal qualities. I do not recommend its use as eyewater, though an old farmer assures me it has undoubted virtues when thus applied. Hearing, one night, a disturbance among his hens, he rushed suddenly out to catch the thief, when Sir Mephitis, taken by surprise, and no doubt much annoyed at being interrupted, discharged the vials of his wrath full in the farmer's face, and with such admirable effect that, for a few moments, he was completely blinded, and powerless to revenge himself upon the rogue, who embraced the opportunity to make good his escape; but he declared that afterwards his eyes felt as if purged by fire, and his sight was much clearer. In March that brief summary of a bear, the raccoon, comes out of his den in the ledges, and leaves his sharp digitigrade track upon the snow,--traveling not unfrequently in pairs,--a lean, hungry couple, bent on pillage and plunder. They have an unenviable time of it,--feasting in the summer and fall, hibernating in winter, and starving in spring. In April I have found the young of the previous year creeping about the fields, so reduced by starvation as to be quite helpless, and offering no resistance to my taking them up by the tail and carrying them home. The old ones also become very much emaciated, and come boldly up to the barn or other outbuildings in quest of food. I remember, one morning in early spring, of hearing old Cuff, the farm-dog, barking vociferously before it was yet light. When we got up we discovered him, at the foot of an ash-tree standing about thirty rods from the house, looking up at some gray object in the leafless branches, and by his manners and his voice evincing great impatience that we were so tardy in coming to his assistance. Arrived on the spot, we saw in the tree a coon of unusual size. One bold climber proposed to go up and shake him down. This was what old Cuff wanted, and he fairly bounded with delight as he saw his young master shinning up the tree. Approaching within eight or ten feet of the coon, he seized the branch to which it clung and shook long and fiercely. But the coon was in no danger of losing its hold, and, when the climber paused to renew his hold, it turned toward him with a growl, and showed very clearly a purpose to advance to the attack. This caused his pursuer to descend to the ground with all speed. When the coon was finally brought down with a gun, he fought the dog, which was a large, powerful animal, with great fury, returning bite for bite for some moments; and after a quarter of an hour had elapsed and his unequal antagonist had shaken him as a terrier does a rat, making his teeth meet through the small of his back, the coon still showed fight. They are very tenacious of life, and like the badger will always whip a dog of their own size and weight. A woodchuck can bite severely, having teeth that cut like chisels, but a coon has agility and power of limb as well. They are considered game only in the fall, or towards the close of summer, when they become fat and their flesh sweet. At this time, cooning in the remote interior is a famous pastime. As this animal is entirely nocturnal in its habits, it is hunted only at night. A piece of corn on some remote side-hill near the mountain, or between two pieces of woods, is most apt to be frequented by them. While the corn is yet green they pull the ears down like hogs, and, tearing open the sheathing of husks, eat the tender, succulent kernels, bruising and destroying much more than they devour. Sometimes their ravages are a matter of serious concern to the farmer. But every such neighborhood has its coon-dog, and the boys and young men dearly love the sport. The party sets out about eight or nine o'clock of a dark, moonless night, and stealthily approaches the cornfield. The dog knows his business, and when he is put into a patch of corn and told to "hunt them up" he makes a thorough search, and will not be misled by any other scent. You hear him rattling through the corn, hither and yon, with great speed. The coons prick up their ears, and leave on the opposite side of the field. In the stillness you may sometimes hear a single stone rattle on the wall as they hurry toward the woods. If the dog finds nothing, he comes back to his master in a short time, and says in his dumb way, "No coon there." But if he strikes a trail, you presently hear a louder rattling on the stone wall, and then a hurried bark as he enters the woods, followed in a few minutes by loud and repeated barking as he reaches the foot of the tree in which the coon has taken refuge. Then follows a pellmell rush of the cooning party up the hill, into the woods, through the brush and the darkness, falling over prostrate trees, pitching into gullies and hollows, losing hats and tearing clothes, till finally, guided by the baying of the faithful dog, the tree is reached. The first thing now in order is to kindle a fire, and, if its light reveals the coon, to shoot him; if not, to fell the tree with an axe. If this happens to be too great a sacrifice of timber and of strength, to sit down at the foot of the tree till morning. But with March our interest in these phases of animal life, which winter has so emphasized and brought out, begins to decline. Vague rumors are afloat in the air of a great and coming change. We are eager for Winter to be gone, since he, too, is fugitive and cannot keep his place. Invisible hands deface his icy statuary; his chisel has lost its cunning. The drifts, so pure and exquisite, are now earth-stained and weather-worn,--the flutes and scallops, and fine, firm lines, all gone; and what was a grace and an ornament to the hills is now a disfiguration. Like worn and unwashed linen appear the remains of that spotless robe with which he clothed the world as his bride. But he will not abdicate without a struggle. Day after day he rallies his scattered forces, and night after night pitches his white tents on the hills, and would fain regain his lost ground; but the young prince in every encounter prevails. Slowly and reluctantly the gray old hero retreats up the mountain, till finally the south rain comes in earnest, and in a night he is dead. II A WHITE DAY AND A RED FOX The day was indeed white, as white as three feet of snow and a cloudless St. Valentine's sun could make it. The eye could not look forth without blinking, or veiling itself with tears. The patch of plowed ground on the top of the hill, where the wind had blown the snow away, was as welcome to it as water to a parched tongue. It was the one refreshing oasis in this desert of dazzling light. I sat down upon it to let the eye bathe and revel in it. It took away the smart like a poultice. For so gentle and on the whole so beneficent an element, the snow asserts itself very proudly. It takes the world quickly and entirely to itself. It makes no concessions or compromises, but rules despotically. It baffles and bewilders the eye, and it returns the sun glare for glare. Its coming in our winter climate is the hand of mercy to the earth and to everything in its bosom, but it is a barrier and an embargo to everything that moves above. We toiled up the long steep hill, where only an occasional mullein-stalk or other tall weed stood above the snow. Near the top the hill was girded with a bank of snow that blotted out the stone wall and every vestige of the earth beneath. These hills wear this belt till May, and sometimes the plow pauses beside them. From the top of the ridge an immense landscape in immaculate white stretches before us. Miles upon miles of farms, smoothed and padded by the stainless element, hang upon the sides of the mountains, or repose across the long sloping hills. The fences or stone walls show like half-obliterated black lines. I turn my back to the sun, or shade my eyes with my hand. Every object or movement in the landscape is sharply revealed; one could see a fox half a league. The farmer foddering his cattle, or drawing manure afield, or leading his horse to water; the pedestrian crossing the hill below; the children wending their way toward the distant schoolhouse,--the eye cannot help but note them: they are black specks upon square miles of luminous white. What a multitude of sins this unstinted charity of the snow covers! How it flatters the ground! Yonder sterile field might be a garden, and you would never suspect that that gentle slope with its pretty dimples and curves was not the smoothest of meadows, yet it is paved with rocks and stone. But what is that black speck creeping across that cleared field near the top of the mountain at the head of the valley, three quarters of a mile away? It is like a fly moving across an illuminated surface. A distant mellow bay floats to us, and we know it is the hound. He picked up the trail of the fox half an hour since, where he had crossed the ridge early in the morning, and now he has routed him and Reynard is steering for the Big Mountain. We press on and attain the shoulder of the range, where we strike a trail two or three days old of some former hunters, which leads us into the woods along the side of the mountain. We are on the first plateau before the summit; the snow partly supports us, but when it gives way and we sound it with our legs, we find it up to our hips. Here we enter a white world indeed. It is like some conjurer's trick. The very trees have turned to snow. The smallest branch is like a cluster of great white antlers. The eye is bewildered by the soft fleecy labyrinth before it. On the lower ranges the forests were entirely bare, but now we perceive the summit of every mountain about us runs up into a kind of arctic region where the trees are loaded with snow. The beginning of this colder zone is sharply marked all around the horizon; the line runs as level as the shore line of a lake or sea; indeed, a warmer aerial sea fills all the valleys, sub-merging the lower peaks, and making white islands of all the higher ones. The branches bend with the rime. The winds have not shaken it down. It adheres to them like a growth. On examination I find the branches coated with ice, from which shoot slender spikes and needles that penetrate and hold the cord of snow. It is a new kind of foliage wrought by the frost and the clouds, and it obscures the sky, and fills the vistas of the woods nearly as much as the myriad leaves of summer. The sun blazes, the sky is without a cloud or a film, yet we walk in a soft white shade. A gentle breeze was blowing on the open crest of the mountain, but one could carry a lighted candle through these snow-curtained and snow-canopied chambers. How shall we see the fox if the hound drives him through this white obscurity? But we listen in vain for the voice of the dog and press on. Hares' tracks were numerous. Their great soft pads had left their imprint everywhere, sometimes showing a clear leap of ten feet. They had regular circuits which we crossed at intervals. The woods were well suited to them, low and dense, and, as we saw, liable at times to wear a livery whiter than their own. The mice, too, how thick their tracks were, that of the white-footed mouse being most abundant; but occasionally there was a much finer track, with strides or leaps scarcely more than an inch apart. This is perhaps the little shrew-mouse of the woods, the body not more than an inch and a half long, the smallest mole or mouse kind known to me. Once, while encamping in the woods, one of these tiny shrews got into an empty pail standing in camp, and died before morning, either from the cold, or in despair of ever getting out of the pail. At one point, around a small sugar maple, the mice-tracks are unusually thick. It is doubtless their granary; they have beech-nuts stored there, I'll warrant. There are two entrances to the cavity of the tree,--one at the base, and one seven or eight feet up. At the upper one, which is only just the size of a mouse, a squirrel has been trying to break in. He has cut and chiseled the solid wood to the depth of nearly an inch, and his chips strew the snow all about. He knows what is in there, and the mice know that he knows; hence their apparent consternation. They have rushed wildly about over the snow, and, I doubt not, have given the piratical red squirrel a piece of their minds. A few yards away the mice have a hole down into the snow, which perhaps leads to some snug den under the ground. Hither they may have been slyly removing their stores while the squirrel was at work with his back turned. One more night and he will effect an entrance: what a good joke upon him if he finds the cavity empty! These native mice are very provident, and, I imagine, have to take many precautions to prevent their winter stores being plundered by the squirrels, who live, as it were, from hand to mouth. We see several fresh fox-tracks, and wish for the hound, but there are no tidings of him. After half an hour's floundering and cautiously picking our way through the woods, we emerge into a cleared field that stretches up from the valley below, and just laps over the back of the mountain. It is a broad belt of white that drops down and down till it joins other fields that sweep along the base of the mountain, a mile away. To the east, through a deep defile in the mountains, a landscape in an adjoining county lifts itself up, like a bank of white and gray clouds. When the experienced fox-hunter comes out upon such an eminence as this, he always scrutinizes the fields closely that lie beneath him, and it many times happens that his sharp eye detects Reynard asleep upon a rock or a stone wall, in which case, if he be armed with a rifle and his dog be not near, the poor creature never wakens from his slumber. The fox nearly always takes his nap in the open fields, along the sides of the ridges, or under the mountain, where he can look down upon the busy farms beneath and hear their many sounds, the barking of dogs, the lowing of cattle, the cackling of hens, the voices of men and boys, or the sound of travel upon the highway. It is on that side, too, that he keeps the sharpest lookout, and the appearance of the hunter above and behind him is always a surprise. [Illustration: THE FOX-HUNTER AND HIS HOUND] We pause here, and, with alert ears turned toward the Big Mountain in front of us, listen for the dog. But not a sound is heard. A flock of snow buntings pass high above us, uttering their contented twitter, and their white forms seen against the intense blue give the impression of large snowflakes drifting across the sky. I hear a purple finch, too, and the feeble lisp of the redpoll. A shrike (the first I have seen this season) finds occasion to come this way also. He alights on the tip of a dry limb, and from his perch can see into the valley on both sides of the mountain. He is prowling about for chickadees, no doubt, a troop of which I saw coming through the wood. When pursued by the shrike, the chickadee has been seen to take refuge in a squirrel-hole in a tree. Hark! Is that the hound, or doth expectation mock the eager ear? With open mouths and bated breaths we listen. Yes, it is old "Singer;" he is bringing the fox over the top of the range toward Butt End, the _Ultima Thule_ of the hunters' tramps in this section. In a moment or two the dog is lost to hearing again. We wait for his second turn; then for his third. "He is playing about the summit," says my companion. "Let us go there," say I, and we are off. More dense snow-hung woods beyond the clearing where we begin our ascent of the Big Mountain,--a chief that carries the range up several hundred feet higher than the part we have thus far traversed. We are occasionally to our hips in the snow, but for the most part the older stratum, a foot or so down, bears us; up and up we go into the dim, muffled solitudes, our hats and coats powdered like millers'. A half-hour's heavy tramping brings us to the broad, level summit, and to where the fox and hound have crossed and recrossed many times. As we are walking along discussing the matter, we suddenly hear the dog coming straight on to us. The woods are so choked with snow that we do not hear him till he breaks up from under the mountain within a hundred yards of us. "We have turned the fox!" we both exclaim, much put out. Sure enough, we have. The dog appears in sight, is puzzled a moment, then turns sharply to the left, and is lost to eye and to ear as quickly as if he had plunged into a cave. The woods are, indeed, a kind of cave,--a cave of alabaster, with the sun shining upon it. We take up positions and wait. These old hunters know exactly where to stand. "If the fox comes back," said my companion, "he will cross up there or down here," indicating two points not twenty rods asunder. We stood so that each commanded one of the runways indicated. How light it was, though the sun was hidden! Every branch and twig beamed in the sun like a lamp. A downy woodpecker below me kept up a great fuss and clatter,--all for my benefit, I suspected. All about me were great, soft mounds, where the rocks lay buried. It was a cemetery of drift boulders. There! that is the hound. Does his voice come across the valley from the spur off against us, or is it on our side down under the mountain? After an interval, just as I am thinking the dog is going away from us along the opposite range, his voice comes up astonishingly near. A mass of snow falls from a branch, and makes one start; but it is not the fox. Then through the white vista below me I catch a glimpse of something red or yellow, yellowish red or reddish yellow; it emerges from the lower ground, and, with an easy, jaunty air, draws near. I am ready and just in the mood to make a good shot. The fox stops just out of range and listens for the hound. He looks as bright as an autumn leaf upon the spotless surface. Then he starts on, but he is not coming to me, he is going to the other man. Oh, foolish fox, you are going straight into the jaws of death! My comrade stands just there beside that tree. I would gladly have given Reynard the wink, or signaled to him, if I could. It did seem a pity to shoot him, now he was out of my reach. I cringe for him, when crack goes the gun! The fox squalls, picks himself up, and plunges over the brink of the mountain. The hunter has not missed his aim, but the oil in his gun, he says, has weakened the strength of his powder. The hound, hearing the report, comes like a whirlwind and is off in hot pursuit. Both fox and dog now bleed,--the dog at his heels, the fox from his wounds. In a few minutes there came up from under the mountain that long, peculiar bark which the hound always makes when he has run the fox in, or when something new and extraordinary has happened. In this instance he said plainly enough, "The race is up, the coward has taken to his hole, ho-o-o-le." Plunging down in the direction of the sound, the snow literally to our waists, we were soon at the spot, a great ledge thatched over with three or four feet of snow. The dog was alternately licking his heels and whining and berating the fox. The opening into which the latter had fled was partially closed, and, as I scraped out and cleared away the snow, I thought of the familiar saying, that so far as the sun shines in, the snow will blow in. The fox, I suspect, has always his house of refuge, or knows at once where to flee to if hard pressed. This place proved to be a large vertical seam in the rock, into which the dog, on a little encouragement from his master, made his way. I thrust my head into the ledge's mouth, and in the dim light watched the dog. He progressed slowly and cautiously till only his bleeding heels were visible. Here some obstacle impeded him a few moments, when he entirely disappeared and was presently face to face with the fox and engaged in mortal combat with him. It is a fierce encounter there beneath the rocks, the fox silent, the dog very vociferous. But after a time the superior weight and strength of the latter prevails and the fox is brought to light nearly dead. Reynard winks and eyes me suspiciously, as I stroke his head and praise his heroic defense; but the hunter quickly and mercifully puts an end to his fast-ebbing life. His canine teeth seem unusually large and formidable, and the dog bears the marks of them in many deep gashes upon his face and nose. His pelt is quickly stripped off, revealing his lean, sinewy form. The fox was not as poor in flesh as I expected to see him, though I'll warrant he had tasted very little food for days, perhaps for weeks. How his great activity and endurance can be kept up, on the spare diet he must of necessity be confined to, is a mystery. Snow, snow everywhere, for weeks and for months, and intense cold, and no henroost accessible, and no carcass of sheep or pig in the neighborhood! The hunter, tramping miles and leagues through his haunts, rarely sees any sign of his having caught anything. Rarely, though, in the course of many winters, he may have seen evidence of his having surprised a rabbit or a partridge in the woods. He no doubt at this season lives largely upon the memory (or the fat) of the many good dinners he had in the plentiful summer and fall. As we crossed the mountain on our return, we saw at one point blood-stains upon the snow, and as the fox-tracks were very thick on and about it, we concluded that a couple of males had had an encounter there, and a pretty sharp one. Reynard goes a-wooing in February, and it is to be presumed that, like other dogs, he is a jealous lover. A crow had alighted and examined the blood-stains, and now, if he will look a little farther along, upon a flat rock he will find the flesh he was looking for. Our hound's nose was so blunted now, speaking without metaphor, that he would not look at another trail, but hurried home to rest upon his laurels. III PHASES OF FARM LIFE I have thought that a good test of civilization, perhaps one of the best, is country life. Where country life is safe and enjoyable, where many of the conveniences and appliances of the town are joined to the large freedom and large benefits of the country, a high state of civilization prevails. Is there any proper country life in Spain, in Mexico, in the South American States? Man has always dwelt in cities, but he has not always in the same sense been a dweller in the country. Rude and barbarous people build cities. Hence, paradoxical as it may seem, the city is older than the country. Truly, man made the city, and after he became sufficiently civilized, not afraid of solitude, and knew on what terms to live with nature, God promoted him to life in the country. The necessities of defense, the fear of enemies, built the first city, built Athens, Rome, Carthage, Paris. The weaker the law, the stronger the city. After Cain slew Abel he went out and built a city, and murder or the fear of murder, robbery or the fear of robbery, have built most of the cities since. Penetrate into the heart of Africa, and you will find the people, or tribes, all living in villages or little cities. You step from the jungle or the forest into the town; there is no country. The best and most hopeful feature in any people is undoubtedly the instinct that leads them to the country and to take root there, and not that which sends them flocking to the town and its distractions. The lighter the snow, the more it drifts; and the more frivolous the people, the more they are blown by one wind or another into towns and cities. The only notable exception I recall to city life preceding country life is furnished by the ancient Germans, of whom Tacitus says that they had no cities or contiguous settlements. "They dwell scattered and separate, as a spring, a meadow, or a grove may chance to invite them. Their villages are laid out, not like ours [the Romans] in rows of adjoining buildings, but every one surrounds his house with a vacant space, either by way of security, or against fire, or through ignorance of the art of building." These ancient Germans were indeed true countrymen. Little wonder that they overran the empire of the city-loving Romans, and finally sacked Rome itself. How hairy and hardy and virile they were! In the same way is the more fresh and vigorous blood of the country always making eruptions into the city. The Goths and Vandals from the woods and the farms,--what would Rome do without them, after all? The city rapidly uses men up; families run out, man becomes sophisticated and feeble. A fresh stream of humanity is always setting from the country into the city; a stream not so fresh flows back again into the country, a stream for the most part of jaded and pale humanity. It is arterial blood when it flows in, and venous blood when it comes back. A nation always begins to rot first in its great cities, is indeed perhaps always rotting there, and is saved only by the antiseptic virtues of fresh supplies of country blood. * * * * * But it is not of country life in general that I am to speak, but of some phases of farm life, and of farm life in my native State. Many of the early settlers of New York were from New England, Connecticut perhaps sending out the most. My own ancestors were from the latter State. The Connecticut emigrant usually made his first stop in our river counties, Putnam, Dutchess, or Columbia. If he failed to find his place there, he made another flight to Orange, to Delaware, or to Schoharie County, where he generally stuck. But the State early had one element introduced into its rural and farm life not found farther east, namely, the Holland Dutch. These gave features more or less picturesque to the country that are not observable in New England. The Dutch took root at various points along the Hudson, and about Albany and in the Mohawk valley, and remnants of their rural and domestic architecture may still be seen in these sections of the State. A Dutch barn became proverbial. "As broad as a Dutch barn" was a phrase that, when applied to the person of a man or woman, left room for little more to be said. The main feature of these barns was their enormous expansion of roof. It was a comfort to look at them, they suggested such shelter and protection. The eaves were very low and the ridge-pole very high. Long rafters and short posts gave them a quaint, short-waisted, grandmotherly look. They were nearly square, and stood very broad upon the ground. Their form was doubtless suggested by the damper climate of the Old World, where the grain and hay, instead of being packed in deep solid mows, used to be spread upon poles and exposed to the currents of air under the roof. Surface and not cubic capacity is more important in these matters in Holland than in this country. Our farmers have found that, in a climate where there is so much weather as with us, the less roof you have the better. Roofs will leak, and cured hay will keep sweet in a mow of any depth and size in our dry atmosphere. The Dutch barn was the most picturesque barn that has been built, especially when thatched with straw, as they nearly all were, and forming one side of an inclosure of lower roofs or sheds also covered with straw, beneath which the cattle took refuge from the winter storms. Its immense, unpainted gable, cut with holes for the swallows, was like a section of a respectable-sized hill, and its roof like its slope. Its great doors always had a hood projecting over them, and the doors themselves were divided horizontally into upper and lower halves; the upper halves very frequently being left open, through which you caught a glimpse of the mows of hay, or the twinkle of flails when the grain was being threshed. The old Dutch farmhouses, too, were always pleasing to look upon. They were low, often made of stone, with deep window-jambs and great family fireplaces. The outside door, like that of the barn, was always divided into upper and lower halves. When the weather permitted, the upper half could stand open, giving light and air without the cold draught over the floor where the children were playing that our wide-swung doors admit. This feature of the Dutch house and barn certainly merits preservation in our modern buildings. The large, unpainted timber barns that succeeded the first Yankee settlers' log stables were also picturesque, especially when a lean-to for the cow-stable was added, and the roof carried down with a long sweep over it; or when the barn was flanked by an open shed with a hayloft above it, where the hens cackled and hid their nests, and from the open window of which the hay was always hanging. Then the great timbers of these barns and the Dutch barn, hewn from maple or birch or oak trees from the primitive woods, and put in place by the combined strength of all the brawny arms in the neighborhood when the barn was raised,--timbers strong enough and heavy enough for docks and quays, and that have absorbed the odors of the hay and grain until they look ripe and mellow and full of the pleasing sentiment of the great, sturdy, bountiful interior! The "big beam" has become smooth and polished from the hay that has been pitched over it, and the sweaty, sturdy forms that have crossed it. One feels that he would like a piece of furniture--a chair, or a table, or a writing-desk, a bedstead, or a wainscoting--made from these long-seasoned, long-tried, richly toned timbers of the old barn. But the smart-painted, natty barn that follows the humbler structure, with its glazed windows, its ornamented ventilator and gilded weather vane,--who cares to contemplate it? The wise human eye loves modesty and humility; loves plain, simple structures; loves the unpainted barn that took no thought of itself, or the dwelling that looks inward and not outward; is offended when the farm-buildings get above their business and aspire to be something on their own account, suggesting, not cattle and crops and plain living, but the vanities of the town and the pride of dress and equipage. Indeed, the picturesque in human affairs and occupations is always born of love and humility, as it is in art or literature; and it quickly takes to itself wings and flies away at the advent of pride, or any selfish or unworthy motive. The more directly the farm savors of the farmer, the more the fields and buildings are redolent of human care and toil, without any thought of the passer-by, the more we delight in the contemplation of it. It is unquestionably true that farm life and farm scenes in this country are less picturesque than they were fifty or one hundred years ago. This is owing partly to the advent of machinery, which enables the farmer to do so much of his work by proxy, and hence removes him farther from the soil, and partly to the growing distaste for the occupation among our people. The old settlers--our fathers and grandfathers--loved the farm, and had no thoughts above it; but the later generations are looking to the town and its fashions, and only waiting for a chance to flee thither. Then pioneer life is always more or less picturesque; there is no room for vain and foolish thoughts; it is a hard battle, and the people have no time to think about appearances. When my grandfather and grandmother came into the country where they reared their family and passed their days, they cut a road through the woods and brought all their worldly gear on a sled drawn by a yoke of oxen. Their neighbors helped them build a house of logs, with a roof of black-ash bark and a floor of hewn white-ash plank. A great stone chimney and fireplace--the mortar of red clay--gave light and warmth, and cooked the meat and baked the bread, when there was any to cook or to bake. Here they lived and reared their family, and found life sweet. Their unworthy descendant, yielding to the inherited love of the soil, flees the city and its artificial ways, and gets a few acres in the country, where he proposes to engage in the pursuit supposed to be free to every American citizen,--the pursuit of happiness. The humble old farmhouse is discarded, and a smart, modern country-house put up. Walks and roads are made and graveled; trees and hedges are planted; the rustic old barn is rehabilitated; and, after it is all fixed, the uneasy proprietor stands off and looks, and calculates by how much he has missed the picturesque, at which he aimed. Our new houses undoubtedly have greater comforts and conveniences than the old; and, if we could keep our pride and vanity in abeyance and forget that all the world is looking on, they might have beauty also. The man that forgets himself, he is the man we like; and the dwelling that forgets itself, in its purpose to shelter and protect its inmates and make them feel at home in it, is the dwelling that fills the eye. When you see one of the great cathedrals, you know that it was not pride that animated these builders, but fear and worship; but when you see the house of the rich farmer, or of the millionaire from the city, you see the pride of money and the insolence of social power. Machinery, I say, has taken away some of the picturesque features of farm life. How much soever we may admire machinery and the faculty of mechanical invention, there is no machine like a man; and the work done directly by his hands, the things made or fashioned by them, have a virtue and a quality that cannot be imparted by machinery. The line of mowers in the meadows, with the straight swaths behind them, is more picturesque than the "Clipper" or "Buckeye" mower, with its team and driver. So are the flails of the threshers, chasing each other through the air, more pleasing to the eye and the ear than the machine, with its uproar, its choking clouds of dust, and its general hurly-burly. Sometimes the threshing was done in the open air, upon a broad rock, or a smooth, dry plat of greensward; and it is occasionally done there yet, especially the threshing of the buckwheat crop, by a farmer who has not a good barn floor, or who cannot afford to hire the machine. The flail makes a louder _thud_ in the fields than you would imagine; and in the splendid October weather it is a pleasing spectacle to behold the gathering of the ruddy crop, and three or four lithe figures beating out the grain with their flails in some sheltered nook, or some grassy lane lined with cedars. When there are three flails beating together, it makes lively music; and when there are four, they follow each other so fast that it is a continuous roll of sound, and it requires a very steady stroke not to hit or get hit by the others. There is just room and time to get your blow in, and that is all. When one flail is upon the straw, another has just left it, another is halfway down, and the fourth is high and straight in the air. It is like a swiftly revolving wheel that delivers four blows at each revolution. Threshing, like mowing, goes much easier in company than when alone; yet many a farmer or laborer spends nearly all the late fall and winter days shut in the barn, pounding doggedly upon the endless sheaves of oats and rye. When the farmers made "bees," as they did a generation or two ago much more than they do now, a picturesque element was added. There was the stone bee, the husking bee, the "raising," the "moving," etc. When the carpenters had got the timbers of the house or the barn ready, and the foundation was prepared, then the neighbors for miles about were invited to come to the "raisin'." The afternoon was the time chosen. The forenoon was occupied by the carpenter and the farm hands in putting the sills and "sleepers" in place ("sleepers," what a good name for those rude hewn timbers that lie under the floor in the darkness and silence!). When the hands arrived, the great beams and posts and joists and braces were carried to their place on the platform, and the first "bent," as it was called, was put together and pinned by oak pins that the boys brought. Then pike poles were distributed, the men, fifteen or twenty of them, arranged in a line abreast of the bent; the boss carpenter steadied and guided the corner post and gave the word of command,--"Take holt, boys!" "Now, set her up!" "Up with her!" "Up she goes!" When it gets shoulder high, it becomes heavy, and there is a pause. The pikes are brought into requisition; every man gets a good hold and braces himself, and waits for the words. "All together now!" shouts the captain; "Heave her up!" "He-o-he!" (heave-all,--heave), "he-o-he," at the top of his voice, every man doing his best. Slowly the great timbers go up; louder grows the word of command, till the bent is up. Then it is plumbed and stay-lathed, and another is put together and raised in the same way, till they are all up. Then comes the putting on the great plates,--timbers that run lengthwise of the building and match the sills below. Then, if there is time, the putting up of the rafters. In every neighborhood there was always some man who was especially useful at "raisin's." He was bold and strong and quick. He helped guide and superintend the work. He was the first one up on the bent, catching a pin or a brace and putting it in place. He walked the lofty and perilous plate with the great beetle in hand, put the pins in the holes, and, swinging the heavy instrument through the air, drove the pins home. He was as much at home up there as a squirrel. Now that balloon frames are mainly used for houses, and lighter sawed timbers for barns, the old-fashioned raising is rarely witnessed. Then the moving was an event, too. A farmer had a barn to move, or wanted to build a new house on the site of the old one, and the latter must be drawn to one side. Now this work is done with pulleys and rollers by a few men and a horse; then the building was drawn by sheer bovine strength. Every man that had a yoke of cattle in the country round about was invited to assist. The barn or house was pried up and great runners, cut in the woods, placed under it, and under the runners were placed skids. To these runners it was securely chained and pinned; then the cattle--stags, steers, and oxen, in two long lines, one at each runner--were hitched fast, and, while men and boys aided with great levers, the word to go was given. Slowly the two lines of bulky cattle straightened and settled into their bows; the big chains that wrapped the runners tightened, a dozen or more "gads" were flourished, a dozen or more lusty throats urged their teams at the top of their voices, when there was a creak or a groan as the building stirred. Then the drivers redoubled their efforts; there was a perfect Babel of discordant sounds; the oxen bent to the work, their eyes bulged, their nostrils distended; the lookers-on cheered, and away went the old house or barn as nimbly as a boy on a hand-sled. Not always, however; sometimes the chains would break, or one runner strike a rock, or bury itself in the earth. There were generally enough mishaps or delays to make it interesting. In the section of the State of which I write, flax used to be grown, and cloth for shirts and trousers, and towels and sheets, woven from it. It was no laughing matter for the farm-boy to break in his shirt or trousers, those days. The hair shirts in which the old monks used to mortify the flesh could not have been much before them in this mortifying particular. But after the bits of shives and sticks were subdued, and the knots humbled by use and the washboard, they were good garments. If you lost your hold in a tree and your shirt caught on a knot or limb, it would save you. But when has any one seen a crackle, or a swingling-knife, or a hetchel, or a distaff, and where can one get some tow for strings or for gun-wadding, or some swingling-tow for a bonfire? The quill-wheel, and the spinning-wheel, and the loom are heard no more among us. The last I knew of a certain hetchel, it was nailed up behind the old sheep that did the churning; and when he was disposed to shirk or hang back and stop the machine, it was always ready to spur him up in no uncertain manner. The old loom became a hen-roost in an out-building; and the crackle upon which the flax was broken,--where, oh, where is it? When the produce of the farm was taken a long distance to market,--that was an event, too; the carrying away of the butter in the fall, for instance, to the river, a journey that occupied both ways four days. Then the family marketing was done in a few groceries. Some cloth, new caps and boots for the boys, and a dress, or a shawl, or a cloak for the girls were brought back, besides news and adventure, and strange tidings of the distant world. The farmer was days in getting ready to start; food was prepared and put in a box to stand him on the journey, so as to lessen the hotel expenses, and oats were put up for the horses. The butter was loaded up overnight, and in the cold November morning, long before it was light, he was up and off. I seem to hear the wagon yet, its slow rattle over the frozen ground diminishing in the distance. On the fourth day toward night all grew expectant of his return, but it was usually dark before his wagon was heard coming down the hill, or his voice from before the door summoning a light. When the boys got big enough, one after the other accompanied him each year, until all had made the famous journey and seen the great river and the steamboats, and the thousand and one marvels of the far-away town. When it came my turn to go, I was in a great state of excitement for a week beforehand, for fear my clothes would not be ready, or else that it would be too cold, or else that the world would come to an end before the time fixed for starting. The day previous I roamed the woods in quest of game to supply my bill of fare on the way, and was lucky enough to shoot a partridge and an owl, though the latter I did not take. Perched high on a "spring-board" I made the journey, and saw more sights and wonders than I have ever seen on a journey since, or ever expect to again. But now all this is changed. The railroad has found its way through or near every settlement, and marvels and wonders are cheap. Still, the essential charm of the farm remains and always will remain: the care of crops, and of cattle, and of orchards, bees, and fowls; the clearing and improving of the ground; the building of barns and houses; the direct contact with the soil and with the elements; the watching of the clouds and of the weather; the privacies with nature, with bird, beast, and plant; and the close acquaintance with the heart and virtue of the world. The farmer should be the true naturalist; the book in which it is all written is open before him night and day, and how sweet and wholesome all his knowledge is! The predominant feature of farm life in New York, as in other States, is always given by some local industry of one kind or another. In many of the high, cold counties in the eastern centre of the State, this ruling industry is hop-growing; in the western, it is grain and fruit growing; in sections along the Hudson, it is small-fruit growing, as berries, currants, grapes; in other counties, it is milk and butter; in others, quarrying flagging-stone. I recently visited a section of Ulster County, where everybody seemed getting out hoop-poles and making hoops. The only talk was of hoops, hoops! Every team that went by had a load or was going for a load of hoops. The principal fuel was hoop-shavings or discarded hoop-poles. No man had any money until he sold his hoops. When a farmer went to town to get some grain, or a pair of boots, or a dress for his wife, he took a load of hoops. People stole hoops and poached for hoops, and bought, and sold, and speculated in hoops. If there was a corner, it was in hoops; big hoops, little hoops, hoops for kegs, and firkins, and barrels, and hogsheads, and pipes; hickory hoops, birch hoops, ash hoops, chestnut hoops, hoops enough to go around the world. Another place it was shingle, shingle; everybody was shaving hemlock shingle. In most of the eastern counties of the State, the interest and profit of the farm revolve about the cow. The dairy is the one great matter,--for milk, when milk can be shipped to the New York market, and for butter when it cannot. Great barns and stables and milking-sheds, and immense meadows and cattle on a thousand hills, are the prominent agricultural features of these sections of the country. Good grass and good water are the two indispensables to successful dairying. And the two generally go together. Where there are plenty of copious cold springs, there is no dearth of grass. When the cattle are compelled to browse upon weeds and various wild growths, the milk and butter will betray it in the flavor. Tender, juicy grass, the ruddy blossoming clover, or the fragrant, well-cured hay, make the delicious milk and the sweet butter. Then there is a charm about a natural pastoral country that belongs to no other. Go through Orange County in May and see the vivid emerald of the smooth fields and hills. It is a new experience of the beauty and effectiveness of simple grass. And this grass has rare virtues, too, and imparts a flavor to the milk and butter that has made them famous. Along all the sources of the Delaware the land flows with milk, if not with honey. The grass is excellent, except in times of protracted drought, and then the browsings in the beech and birch woods are a good substitute. Butter is the staple product. Every housewife is or wants to be a famous butter-maker, and Delaware County butter rivals that of Orange in market. Delaware is a high, cool grazing country. The farms lie tilted up against the sides of the mountain or lapping over the hills, striped or checked with stone walls, and presenting to the eye long stretches of pasture and meadow land, alternating with plowed fields and patches of waving grain. Few of their features are picturesque; they are bare, broad, and simple. The farmhouse gets itself a coat of white paint, and green blinds to the windows, and the barn and wagon-house a coat of red paint with white trimmings, as soon as possible. A penstock flows by the doorway, rows of tin pans sun themselves in the yard, and the great wheel of the churning-machine flanks the milk-house, or rattles behind it. The winters are severe, the snow deep. The principal fuel is still wood,--beech, birch, and maple. It is hauled off the mountain in great logs when the first November or December snows come, and cut up and piled in the wood-houses and under a shed. Here the axe still rules the winter, and it may be heard all day and every day upon the wood-pile, or echoing through the frost-bound wood, the coat of the chopper hanging to a limb, and his white chips strewing the snow. Many cattle need much hay; hence in dairy sections haying is the period of "storm and stress" in the farmer's year. To get the hay in, in good condition, and before the grass gets too ripe, is a great matter. All the energies and resources of the farm are bent to this purpose. It is a thirty or forty days' war, in which the farmer and his "hands" are pitted against the heat and the rain and the legions of timothy and clover. Everything about it has the urge, the hurry, the excitement of a battle. Outside help is procured; men flock in from adjoining counties, where the ruling industry is something else and is less imperative; coopers, blacksmiths, and laborers of various kinds drop their tools, and take down their scythes and go in quest of a job in haying. Every man is expected to pitch his endeavors in a little higher key than at any other kind of work. The wages are extra, and the work must correspond. The men are in the meadow by half-past four or five in the morning, and mow an hour or two before breakfast. A good mower is proud of his skill. He does not "lop in," and his "pointing out" is perfect, and you can hardly see the ribs of his swath. He stands up to his grass and strikes level and sure. He will turn a double down through the stoutest grass, and when the hay is raked away you will not find a spear left standing. The Americans are--or were--the best mowers. A foreigner could never quite give the masterly touch. The hayfield has its code. One man must not take another's swath unless he expects to be crowded. Each expects to take his turn leading the band. The scythe may be so whetted as to ring out a saucy challenge to the rest. It is not good manners to mow up too close to your neighbor, unless you are trying to keep out of the way of the man behind you. Many a race has been brought on by some one being a little indiscreet in this respect. Two men may mow all day together under the impression that each is trying to put the other through. The one that leads strikes out briskly, and the other, not to be outdone, follows close. Thus the blood of each is soon up; a little heat begets more heat, and it is fairly a race before long. It is a great ignominy to be mowed out of your swath. Hay-gathering is clean, manly work all through. Young fellows work in haying who do not do another stroke on the farm the whole year. It is a gymnasium in the meadows and under the summer sky. How full of pictures, too!--the smooth slopes dotted with cocks with lengthening shadows; the great, broad-backed, soft-cheeked loads, moving along the lanes and brushing under the trees; the unfinished stacks with forkfuls of hay being handed up its sides to the builder, and when finished the shape of a great pear, with a pole in the top for the stem. Maybe in the fall and winter the calves and yearlings will hover around it and gnaw its base until it overhangs them and shelters them from the storm. Or the farmer will "fodder" his cows there,--one of the most picturesque scenes to be witnessed on the farm,--twenty or thirty or forty milchers filing along toward the stack in the field, or clustered about it, waiting the promised bite. In great, green flakes the hay is rolled off, and distributed about in small heaps upon the unspotted snow. After the cattle have eaten, the birds--snow buntings and red-polls--come and pick up the crumbs, the seeds of the grasses and weeds. At night the fox and the owl come for mice. What a beautiful path the cows make through the snow to the stack or to the spring under the hill!--always more or less wayward, but broad and firm, and carved and indented by a multitude of rounded hoofs. In fact, the cow is the true pathfinder and path-maker. She has the leisurely, deliberate movement that insures an easy and a safe way. Follow her trail through the woods, and you have the best, if not the shortest, course. How she beats down the brush and briers and wears away even the roots of the trees! A herd of cows left to themselves fall naturally into single file, and a hundred or more hoofs are not long in smoothing and compacting almost any surface. Indeed, all the ways and doings of cattle are pleasant to look upon, whether grazing in the pasture or browsing in the woods, or ruminating under the trees, or feeding in the stall, or reposing upon the knolls. There is virtue in the cow; she is full of goodness; a wholesome odor exhales from her; the whole landscape looks out of her soft eyes; the quality and the aroma of miles of meadow and pasture lands are in her presence and products. I had rather have the care of cattle than be the keeper of the great seal of the nation. Where the cow is, there is Arcadia; so far as her influence prevails, there is contentment, humility, and sweet, homely life. Blessed is he whose youth was passed upon the farm, and if it was a dairy farm, his memories will be all the more fragrant. The driving of the cows to and from the pasture, every day and every season for years,--how much of summer and of nature he got into him on these journeys! What rambles and excursions did this errand furnish the excuse for! The birds and birds'-nests, the berries, the squirrels, the woodchucks, the beech woods with their treasures into which the cows loved so to wander and to browse, the fragrant wintergreens and a hundred nameless adventures, all strung upon that brief journey of half a mile to and from the remote pastures. Sometimes a cow or two will be missing when the herd is brought home at night; then to hunt them up is another adventure. My grandfather went out one night to look up an absentee from the yard, when he heard something in the brush, and out stepped a bear into the path before him. Every Sunday morning the cows were salted. The farm-boy would take a pail with three or four quarts of coarse salt, and, followed by the eager herd, go to the field and deposit the salt in handfuls upon smooth stones and rocks and upon clean places on the turf. If you want to know how good salt is, see a cow eat it. She gives the true saline smack. How she dwells upon it, and gnaws the sward and licks the stones where it has been deposited! The cow is the most delightful feeder among animals. It makes one's mouth water to see her eat pumpkins, and to see her at a pile of apples is distracting. How she sweeps off the delectable grass! The sound of her grazing is appetizing; the grass betrays all its sweetness and succulency in parting under her sickle. The region of which I write abounds in sheep also. Sheep love high, cool, breezy lands. Their range is generally much above that of cattle. Their sharp noses will find picking where a cow would fare poorly indeed. Hence most farmers utilize their high, wild, and mountain lands by keeping a small flock of sheep. But they are the outlaws of the farm and are seldom within bounds. They make many lively expeditions for the farm-boy,--driving them out of mischief, hunting them up in the mountains, or salting them on the breezy hills. Then there is the annual sheep-washing, when on a warm day in May or early June the whole herd is driven a mile or more to a suitable pool in the creek, and one by one doused and washed and rinsed in the water. We used to wash below an old grist-mill, and it was a pleasing spectacle,--the mill, the dam, the overhanging rocks and trees, the round, deep pool, and the huddled and frightened sheep. One of the features of farm life peculiar to this country, and one of the most picturesque of them all, is sugar-making in the maple woods in spring. This is the first work of the season, and to the boys is more play than work. In the Old World, and in more simple and imaginative times, how such an occupation as this would have got into literature, and how many legends and associations would have clustered around it! It is woodsy, and savors of the trees; it is an encampment among the maples. Before the bud swells, before the grass springs, before the plow is started, comes the sugar harvest. It is the sequel of the bitter frost; a sap-run is the sweet good-by of winter. It denotes a certain equipoise of the season; the heat of the day fully balances the frost of the night. In New York and New England, the time of the sap hovers about the vernal equinox, beginning a week or ten days before, and continuing a week or ten days after. As the days and nights get equal, the heat and cold get equal, and the sap mounts. A day that brings the bees out of the hive will bring the sap out of the maple-tree. It is the fruit of the equal marriage of the sun and the frost. When the frost is all out of the ground, and all the snow gone from its surface, the flow stops. The thermometer must not rise above 38° or 40° by day, or sink below 24° or 25° at night, with wind in the northwest; a relaxing south wind, and the run is over for the present. Sugar weather is crisp weather. How the tin buckets glisten in the gray woods; how the robins laugh; how the nuthatches call; how lightly the thin blue smoke rises among the trees! The squirrels are out of their dens; the migrating water-fowls are streaming northward; the sheep and cattle look wistfully toward the bare fields; the tide of the season, in fact, is just beginning to rise. Sap-letting does not seem to be an exhaustive process to the trees, as the trees of a sugar-bush appear to be as thrifty and as long-lived as other trees. They come to have a maternal, large-waisted look, from the wounds of the axe or the auger, and that is about all. In my sugar-making days, the sap was carried to the boiling-place in pails by the aid of a neck-yoke and stored in hogsheads, and boiled or evaporated in immense kettles or caldrons set in huge stone arches; now, the hogshead goes to the trees hauled upon a sled by a team, and the sap is evaporated in broad, shallow, sheet-iron pans,--a great saving of fuel and of labor. Many a farmer sits up all night boiling his sap, when the run has been an extra good one, and a lonely vigil he has of it amid the silent trees and beside his wild hearth. If he has a sap-house, as is now so common, he may make himself fairly comfortable; and if a companion, he may have a good time or a glorious wake. Maple sugar in its perfection is rarely seen, perhaps never seen, in the market. When made in large quantities and indifferently, it is dark and coarse; but when made in small quantities--that is, quickly from the first run of sap and properly treated--it has a wild delicacy of flavor that no other sweet can match. What you smell in freshly cut maple-wood, or taste in the blossom of the tree, is in it. It is then, indeed, the distilled essence of the tree. Made into syrup, it is white and clear as clover-honey; and crystallized into sugar, it is as pure as the wax. The way to attain this result is to evaporate the sap under cover in an enameled kettle; when reduced about twelve times, allow it to settle half a day or more; then clarify with milk or the white of an egg. The product is virgin syrup, or sugar worthy the table of the gods. Perhaps the most heavy and laborious work of the farm in the section of the State of which I write is fence-building. But it is not unproductive labor, as in the South or West, for the fence is of stone, and the capacity of the soil for grass or grain is, of course, increased by its construction. It is killing two birds with one stone: a fence is had, the best in the world, while the available area of the field is enlarged. In fact, if there are ever sermons in stones, it is when they are built into a stone wall,--turning your hindrances into helps, shielding your crops behind the obstacles to your husbandry, making the enemies of the plow stand guard over its products. This is the kind of farming worth imitating. A stone wall with a good rock bottom will stand as long as a man lasts. Its only enemy is the frost, and it works so gently that it is not till after many years that its effect is perceptible. An old farmer will walk with you through his fields and say, "This wall I built at such and such a time, or the first year I came on the farm, or when I owned such and such a span of horses," indicating a period thirty, forty, or fifty years back. "This other, we built the summer so and so worked for me," and he relates some incident, or mishap, or comical adventures that the memory calls up. Every line of fence has a history; the mark of his plow or his crowbar is upon the stones; the sweat of his early manhood put them in place; in fact, the long black line covered with lichens and in places tottering to the fall revives long-gone scenes and events in the life of the farm. The time for fence-building is usually between seed-time and harvest, May and June; or in the fall after the crops are gathered. The work has its picturesque features,--the prying of rocks; supple forms climbing or swinging from the end of the great levers; or the blasting of the rocks with powder, the hauling of them into position with oxen or horses, or with both; the picking of the stone from the greensward; the bending, athletic forms of the wall-layers; the snug new fence creeping slowly up the hill or across the field, absorbing the wind-row of loose stones; and, when the work is done, much ground reclaimed to the plow and the grass, and a strong barrier erected. It is a common complaint that the farm and farm life are not appreciated by our people. We long for the more elegant pursuits, or the ways and fashions of the town. But the farmer has the most sane and natural occupation, and ought to find life sweeter, if less highly seasoned, than any other. He alone, strictly speaking, has a home. How can a man take root and thrive without land? He writes his history upon his field. How many ties, how many resources, he has,--his friendships with his cattle, his team, his dog, his trees, the satisfaction in his growing crops, in his improved fields; his intimacy with nature, with bird and beast, and with the quickening elemental forces; his cooperations with the clouds, the sun, the seasons, heat, wind, rain, frost! Nothing will take the various social distempers which the city and artificial life breed out of a man like farming, like direct and loving contact with the soil. It draws out the poison. It humbles him, teaches him patience and reverence, and restores the proper tone to his system. Cling to the farm, make much of it, put yourself into it, bestow your heart and your brain upon it, so that it shall savor of you and radiate your virtue after your day's work is done! "Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks, and look well to thy herds. "For riches are not forever; and doth the crown endure to every generation? "The hay appeareth, and the tender grass showeth itself, and herbs of the mountains are gathered. "The lambs are for thy clothing, and the goats are the price of the field. "And thou shalt have goat's milk enough for thy food, for the food of thy household, and for the maintenance for thy maidens." IV IN THE HEMLOCKS Most people receive with incredulity a statement of the number of birds that annually visit our climate. Very few even are aware of half the number that spend the summer in their own immediate vicinity. We little suspect, when we walk in the woods, whose privacy we are intruding upon,--what rare and elegant visitants from Mexico, from Central and South America, and from the islands of the sea, are holding their reunions in the branches over our heads, or pursuing their pleasure on the ground before us. I recall the altogether admirable and shining family which Thoreau dreamed he saw in the upper chambers of Spaulding's woods, which Spaulding did not know lived there, and which were not put out when Spaulding, whistling, drove his team through their lower halls. They did not go into society in the village; they were quite well; they had sons and daughters; they neither wove nor spun; there was a sound as of suppressed hilarity. I take it for granted that the forester was only saying a pretty thing of the birds, though I have observed that it does sometimes annoy them when Spaulding's cart rumbles through their house. Generally, however, they are as unconscious of Spaulding as Spaulding is of them. Walking the other day in an old hemlock wood, I counted over forty varieties of these summer visitants, many of them common to other woods in the vicinity, but quite a number peculiar to these ancient solitudes, and not a few that are rare in any locality. It is quite unusual to find so large a number abiding in one forest,--and that not a large one,--most of them nesting and spending the summer there. Many of those I observed commonly pass this season much farther north. But the geographical distribution of birds is rather a climatical one. The same temperature, though under different parallels, usually attracts the same birds; difference in altitude being equivalent to the difference in latitude. A given height above the sea-level under the parallel of thirty degrees may have the same climate as places under that of thirty-five degrees, and similar flora and fauna. At the headwaters of the Delaware, where I write, the latitude is that of Boston, but the region has a much greater elevation, and hence a climate that compares better with the northern part of the State and of New England. Half a day's drive to the southeast brings me down into quite a different temperature, with an older geological formation, different forest timber, and different birds,--even with different mammals. Neither the little gray rabbit nor the little gray fox is found in my locality, but the great northern hare and the red fox are. In the last century a colony of beavers dwelt here, though the oldest inhabitant cannot now point to even the traditional site of their dams. The ancient hemlocks, whither I propose to take the reader, are rich in many things besides birds. Indeed, their wealth in this respect is owing mainly, no doubt, to their rank vegetable growths, their fruitful swamps, and their dark, sheltered retreats. [Illustration: AT THE HEADWATERS OF THE DELAWARE Overlooking Mr. Burroughs's boyhood home] Their history is of an heroic cast. Ravished and torn by the tanner in his thirst for bark, preyed upon by the lumberman, assaulted and beaten back by the settler, still their spirit has never been broken, their energies never paralyzed. Not many years ago a public highway passed through them, but it was at no time a tolerable road; trees fell across it, mud and limbs choked it up, till finally travelers took the hint and went around; and now, walking along its deserted course, I see only the footprints of coons, foxes, and squirrels. Nature loves such woods, and places her own seal upon them. Here she shows me what can be done with ferns and mosses and lichens. The soil is marrowy and full of innumerable forests. Standing in these fragrant aisles, I feel the strength of the vegetable kingdom, and am awed by the deep and inscrutable processes of life going on so silently about me. No hostile forms with axe or spud now visit these solitudes. The cows have half-hidden ways through them, and know where the best browsing is to be had. In spring, the farmer repairs to their bordering of maples to make sugar; in July and August, women and boys from all the country about penetrate the old Barkpeelings for raspberries and blackberries; and I know a youth who wonderingly follows their languid stream casting for trout. In like spirit, alert and buoyant, on this bright June morning go I also to reap my harvest,--pursuing a sweet more delectable than sugar, fruit more savory than berries, and game for another palate than that tickled by trout. June, of all the months, the student of ornithology can least afford to lose. Most birds are nesting then, and in full song and plumage. And what is a bird without its song? Do we not wait for the stranger to speak? It seems to me that I do not know a bird till I have heard its voice; then I come nearer it at once, and it possesses a human interest to me. I have met the gray-cheeked thrush in the woods, and held him in my hand; still I do not know him. The silence of the cedar-bird throws a mystery about him which neither his good looks nor his petty larcenies in cherry time can dispel. A bird's song contains a clew to its life, and establishes a sympathy, an understanding, between itself and the listener. I descend a steep hill, and approach the hemlocks through a large sugar-bush. When twenty rods distant, I hear all along the line of the forest the incessant warble of the red-eyed vireo, cheerful and happy as the merry whistle of a schoolboy. He is one of our most common and widely distributed birds. Approach any forest at any hour of the day, in any kind of weather, from May to August, in any of the Middle or Eastern districts, and the chances are that the first note you hear will be his. Rain or shine, before noon or after, in the deep forest or in the village grove,--when it is too hot for the thrushes or too cold and windy for the warblers,--it is never out of time or place for this little minstrel to indulge his cheerful strain. In the deep wilds of the Adirondacks, where few birds are seen and fewer heard, his note was almost constantly in my ear. Always busy, making it a point never to suspend for one moment his occupation to indulge his musical taste, his lay is that of industry and contentment. There is nothing plaintive or especially musical in his performance, but the sentiment expressed is eminently that of cheerfulness. Indeed, the songs of most birds have some human significance, which, I think, is the source of the delight we take in them. The song of the bobolink to me expresses hilarity; the song sparrow's, faith; the bluebird's, love; the catbird's, pride; the white-eyed flycatcher's, self-consciousness; that of the hermit thrush, spiritual serenity: while there is something military in the call of the robin. The red-eye is classed among the flycatchers by some writers, but is much more of a worm-eater, and has few of the traits or habits of the _Muscicapa_ or the true _Sylvia_. He resembles somewhat the warbling vireo, and the two birds are often confounded by careless observers. Both warble in the same cheerful strain, but the latter more continuously and rapidly. The red-eye is a larger, slimmer bird, with a faint bluish crown, and a light line over the eye. His movements are peculiar. You may see him hopping among the limbs, exploring the under side of the leaves, peering to the right and left, now flitting a few feet, now hopping as many, and warbling incessantly, occasionally in a subdued tone, which sounds from a very indefinite distance. When he has found a worm to his liking, he turns lengthwise of the limb and bruises its head with his beak before devouring it. As I enter the woods the slate-colored snowbird starts up before me and chirps sharply. His protest when thus disturbed is almost metallic in its sharpness. He breeds here, and is not esteemed a snowbird at all, as he disappears at the near approach of winter, and returns again in spring, like the song sparrow, and is not in any way associated with the cold and the snow. So different are the habits of birds in different localities. Even the crow does not winter here, and is seldom seen after December or before March. The snowbird, or "black chipping-bird," as it is known among the farmers, is the finest architect of any of the ground-builders known to me. The site of its nest is usually some low bank by the roadside, near a wood. In a slight excavation, with a partially concealed entrance, the exquisite structure is placed. Horse and cow hair are plentifully used, imparting to the interior of the nest great symmetry and firmness as well as softness. Passing down through the maple arches, barely pausing to observe the antics of a trio of squirrels,--two gray ones and a black one,--I cross an ancient brush fence and am fairly within the old hemlocks, and in one of the most primitive, undisturbed nooks. In the deep moss I tread as with muffled feet, and the pupils of my eyes dilate in the dim, almost religious light. The irreverent red squirrels, however, run and snicker at my approach, or mock the solitude with their ridiculous chattering and frisking. This nook is the chosen haunt of the winter wren. This is the only place and these the only woods in which I find him in this vicinity. His voice fills these dim aisles, as if aided by some marvelous sounding-board. Indeed, his song is very strong for so small a bird, and unites in a remarkable degree brilliancy and plaintiveness. I think of a tremulous vibrating tongue of silver. You may know it is the song of a wren, from its gushing lyrical character; but you must needs look sharp to see the little minstrel, especially while in the act of singing. He is nearly the color of the ground and the leaves; he never ascends the tall trees, but keeps low, flitting from stump to stump and from root to root, dodging in and out of his hiding-places, and watching all intruders with a suspicious eye. He has a very pert, almost comical look. His tail stands more than perpendicular: it points straight toward his head. He is the least ostentatious singer I know of. He does not strike an attitude, and lift up his head in preparation, and, as it were, clear his throat; but sits there on a log and pours out his music, looking straight before him, or even down at the ground. As a songster, he has but few superiors. I do not hear him after the first week in July. While sitting on this soft-cushioned log, tasting the pungent acidulous wood-sorrel, the blossoms of which, large and pink-veined, rise everywhere above the moss, a rufous-colored bird flies quickly past, and, alighting on a low limb a few rods off, salutes me with "Whew! Whew!" or "Whoit! Whoit!" almost as you would whistle for your dog. I see by his impulsive, graceful movements, and his dimly speckled breast, that it is a thrush. Presently he utters a few soft, mellow, flute-like notes, one of the most simple expressions of melody to be heard, and scuds away, and I see it is the veery, or Wilson's thrush. He is the least of the thrushes in size, being about that of the common bluebird, and he may be distinguished from his relatives by the dimness of the spots upon his breast. The wood thrush has very clear, distinct oval spots on a white ground; in the hermit, the spots run more into lines, on a ground of a faint bluish white; in the veery, the marks are almost obsolete, and a few rods off his breast presents only a dull yellowish appearance. To get a good view of him you have only to sit down in his haunts, as in such cases he seems equally anxious to get a good view of you. From those tall hemlocks proceeds a very fine insect-like warble, and occasionally I see a spray tremble, or catch the flit of a wing. I watch and watch till my head grows dizzy and my neck is in danger of permanent displacement, and still do not get a good view. Presently the bird darts, or, as it seems, falls down a few feet in pursuit of a fly or a moth, and I see the whole of it, but in the dim light am undecided. It is for such emergencies that I have brought my gun. A bird in the hand is worth half a dozen in the bush, even for ornithological purposes; and no sure and rapid progress can be made in the study without taking life, without procuring specimens. This bird is a warbler, plainly enough, from his habits and manner; but what kind of warbler? Look on him and name him: a deep orange or flame-colored throat and breast; the same color showing also in a line over the eye and in his crown; back variegated black and white. The female is less marked and brilliant. The orange-throated warbler would seem to be his right name, his characteristic cognomen; but no, he is doomed to wear the name of some discoverer, perhaps the first who rifled his nest or robbed him of his mate,--Blackburn; hence Blackburnian warbler. The _burn_ seems appropriate enough, for in these dark evergreens his throat and breast show like flame. He has a very fine warble, suggesting that of the redstart, but not especially musical. I find him in no other woods in this vicinity. I am attracted by another warble in the same locality, and experience a like difficulty in getting a good view of the author of it. It is quite a noticeable strain, sharp and sibilant, and sounds well amid the old trees. In the upland woods of beech and maple it is a more familiar sound than in these solitudes. On taking the bird in hand, one cannot help exclaiming, "How beautiful!" So tiny and elegant, the smallest of the warblers; a delicate blue back, with a slight bronze-colored triangular spot between the shoulders; upper mandible black; lower mandible yellow as gold; throat yellow, becoming a dark bronze on the breast. Blue yellow-back he is called, though the yellow is much nearer a bronze. He is remarkably delicate and beautiful,--the handsomest as he is the smallest of the warblers known to me. It is never without surprise that I find amid these rugged, savage aspects of nature creatures so fairy and delicate. But such is the law. Go to the sea or climb the mountain, and with the ruggedest and the savagest you will find likewise the fairest and the most delicate. The greatness and the minuteness of nature pass all understanding. Ever since I entered the woods, even while listening to the lesser songsters, or contemplating the silent forms about me, a strain has reached my ears from out the depths of the forest that to me is the finest sound in nature,--the song of the hermit thrush. I often hear him thus a long way off, sometimes over a quarter of a mile away, when only the stronger and more perfect parts of his music reach me; and through the general chorus of wrens and warblers I detect this sound rising pure and serene, as if a spirit from some remote height were slowly chanting a divine accompaniment. This song appeals to the sentiment of the beautiful in me, and suggests a serene religious beatitude as no other sound in nature does. It is perhaps more of an evening than a morning hymn, though I hear it at all hours of the day. It is very simple, and I can hardly tell the secret of its charm. "O spheral, spheral!" he seems to say; "O holy, holy! O clear away, clear away! O clear up, clear up!" interspersed with the finest trills and the most delicate preludes. It is not a proud, gorgeous strain, like the tanager's or the grosbeak's; suggests no passion or emotion,--nothing personal,--but seems to be the voice of that calm, sweet solemnity one attains to in his best moments. It realizes a peace and a deep, solemn joy that only the finest souls may know. A few nights ago I ascended a mountain to see the world by moonlight, and when near the summit the hermit commenced his evening hymn a few rods from me. Listening to this strain on the lone mountain, with the full moon just rounded from the horizon, the pomp of your cities and the pride of your civilization seemed trivial and cheap. I have seldom known two of these birds to be singing at the same time in the same locality, rivaling each other, like the wood thrush or the veery. Shooting one from a tree, I have observed another take up the strain from almost the identical perch in less than ten minutes afterward. Later in the day, when I had penetrated the heart of the old Barkpeeling, I came suddenly upon one singing from a low stump, and for a wonder he did not seem alarmed, but lifted up his divine voice as if his privacy was undisturbed. I open his beak and find the inside yellow as gold. I was prepared to find it inlaid with pearls and diamonds, or to see an angel issue from it. He is not much in the books. Indeed, I am acquainted with scarcely any writer on ornithology whose head is not muddled on the subject of our three prevailing song-thrushes, confounding either their figures or their songs. A writer in the "Atlantic"[1] gravely tells us the wood thrush is sometimes called the hermit, and then, after describing the song of the hermit with great beauty and correctness, coolly ascribes it to the veery! The new Cyclopædia, fresh from the study of Audubon, says the hermit's song consists of a single plaintive note, and that the veery's resembles that of the wood thrush! The hermit thrush may be easily identified by his color; his back being a clear olive-brown becoming rufous on his rump and tail. A quill from his wing placed beside one from his tail on a dark ground presents quite a marked contrast. [Footnote 1: For December, 1858.] I walk along the old road, and note the tracks in the thin layer of mud. When do these creatures travel here? I have never yet chanced to meet one. Here a partridge has set its foot; there, a woodcock; here, a squirrel or mink; there, a skunk; there, a fox. What a clear, nervous track reynard makes! how easy to distinguish it from that of a little dog,--it is so sharply cut and defined! A dog's track is coarse and clumsy beside it. There is as much wildness in the track of an animal as in its voice. Is a deer's track like a sheep's or a goat's? What winged-footed fleetness and agility may be inferred from the sharp, braided track of the gray squirrel upon the new snow! Ah! in nature is the best discipline. How wood-life sharpens the senses, giving a new power to the eye, the ear, the nose! And are not the rarest and most exquisite songsters wood-birds? Everywhere in these solitudes I am greeted with the pensive, almost pathetic note of the wood pewee. The pewees are the true flycatchers, and are easily identified. They are very characteristic birds, have strong family traits and pugnacious dispositions. They are the least attractive or elegant birds of our fields or forests. Sharp-shouldered, big-headed, short-legged, of no particular color, of little elegance in flight or movement, with a disagreeable flirt of the tail, always quarreling with their neighbors and with one another, no birds are so little calculated to excite pleasurable emotions in the beholder, or to become objects of human interest and affection. The kingbird is the best dressed member of the family, but he is a braggart; and, though always snubbing his neighbors, is an arrant coward, and shows the white feather at the slightest display of pluck in his antagonist. I have seen him turn tail to a swallow, and have known the little pewee in question to whip him beautifully. From the great-crested to the little green flycatcher, their ways and general habits are the same. Slow in flying from point to point, they yet have a wonderful quickness, and snap up the fleetest insects with little apparent effort. There is a constant play of quick, nervous movements underneath their outer show of calmness and stolidity. They do not scour the limbs and trees like the warblers, but, perched upon the middle branches, wait, like true hunters, for the game to come along. There is often a very audible snap of the beak as they seize their prey. The wood pewee, the prevailing species in this locality, arrests your attention by his sweet, pathetic cry. There is room for it also in the deep woods, as well as for the more prolonged and elevated strains. Its relative, the phoebe-bird, builds an exquisite nest of moss on the side of some shelving cliff or overhanging rock. The other day, passing by a ledge near the top of a mountain in a singularly desolate locality, my eye rested upon one of these structures, looking precisely as if it grew there, so in keeping was it with the mossy character of the rock, and I have had a growing affection for the bird ever since. The rock seemed to love the nest and to claim it as its own. I said, what a lesson in architecture is here! Here is a house that was built, but with such loving care and such beautiful adaptation of the means to the end, that it looks like a product of nature. The same wise economy is noticeable in the nests of all birds. No bird could paint its house white or red, or add aught for show. At one point in the grayest, most shaggy part of the woods, I come suddenly upon a brood of screech owls, full grown, sitting together upon a dry, moss-draped limb, but a few feet from the ground. I pause within four or five yards of them and am looking about me, when my eye lights upon these gray, motionless figures. They sit perfectly upright, some with their backs and some with their breasts toward me, but every head turned squarely in my direction. Their eyes are closed to a mere black line; through this crack they are watching me, evidently thinking themselves unobserved. The spectacle is weird and grotesque, and suggests something impish and uncanny. It is a new effect, the night side of the woods by daylight. After observing them a moment I take a single step toward them, when, quick as thought, their eyes fly wide open, their attitude is changed, they bend, some this way, some that, and, instinct with life and motion, stare wildly around them. Another step, and they all take flight but one, which stoops low on the branch, and with the look of a frightened cat regards me for a few seconds over its shoulder. They fly swiftly and softly, and disperse through the trees. I shoot one, which is of a tawny red tint, like that figured by Wilson. It is a singular fact that the plumage of these owls presents two totally distinct phases, which "have no relation to sex, age, or season," one being an ashen gray, the other a bright rufous. Coming to a drier and less mossy place in the woods, I am amused with the golden-crowned thrush,--which, however, is no thrush at all, but a warbler. He walks on the ground ahead of me with such an easy, gliding motion, and with such an unconscious, preoccupied air, jerking his head like a hen or a partridge, now hurrying, now slackening his pace, that I pause to observe him. I sit down, he pauses to observe me, and extends his pretty ramblings on all sides, apparently very much engrossed with his own affairs, but never losing sight of me. But few of the birds are walkers, most being hoppers, like the robin. Satisfied that I have no hostile intentions, the pretty pedestrian mounts a limb a few feet from the ground, and gives me the benefit of one of his musical performances, a sort of accelerating chant. Commencing in a very low key, which makes him seem at a very uncertain distance, he grows louder and louder till his body quakes and his chant runs into a shriek, ringing in my ear with a peculiar sharpness. This lay may be represented thus: "Teacher, _teacher_, TEACHER, *TEACHER*, _*TEACHER!*_"--the accent on the first syllable and each word uttered with increased force and shrillness. No writer with whom I am acquainted gives him credit for more musical ability than is displayed in this strain. Yet in this the half is not told. He has a far rarer song, which he reserves for some nymph whom he meets in the air. Mounting by easy flights to the top of the tallest tree, he launches into the air with a sort of suspended, hovering flight, like certain of the finches, and bursts into a perfect ecstasy of song,--clear, ringing, copious, rivaling the goldfinch's in vivacity, and the linnet's in melody. This strain is one of the rarest bits of bird melody to be heard, and is oftenest indulged in late in the afternoon or after sundown. Over the woods, hid from view, the ecstatic singer warbles his finest strain. In this song you instantly detect his relationship to the water-wagtail,--erroneously called water-thrush,--whose song is likewise a sudden burst, full and ringing, and with a tone of youthful joyousness in it, as if the bird had just had some unexpected good fortune. For nearly two years this strain of the pretty walker was little more than a disembodied voice to me, and I was puzzled by it as Thoreau by his mysterious night-warbler, which, by the way, I suspect was no new bird at all, but one he was otherwise familiar with. The little bird himself seems disposed to keep the matter a secret, and improves every opportunity to repeat before you his shrill, accelerating lay, as if this were quite enough and all he laid claim to. Still, I trust I am betraying no confidence in making the matter public here. I think this is preeminently his love-song, as I hear it oftenest about the mating season. I have caught half-suppressed bursts of it from two males chasing each other with fearful speed through the forest. Turning to the left from the old road, I wander over soft logs and gray yielding debris, across the little trout brook, until I emerge in the overgrown Barkpeeling,--pausing now and then on the way to admire a small, solitary white flower which rises above the moss, with radical, heart-shaped leaves, and a blossom precisely like the liverwort except in color, but which is not put down in my botany,--or to observe the ferns, of which I count six varieties, some gigantic ones nearly shoulder-high. At the foot of a rough, scraggy yellow birch, on a bank of club-moss, so richly inlaid with partridge-berry and curious shining leaves--with here and there in the bordering a spire of the false wintergreen strung with faint pink flowers and exhaling the breath of a May orchard--that it looks too costly a couch for such an idler, I recline to note what transpires. The sun is just past the meridian, and the afternoon chorus is not yet in full tune. Most birds sing with the greatest spirit and vivacity in the forenoon, though there are occasional bursts later in the day in which nearly all voices join; while it is not till the twilight that the full power and solemnity of the thrush's hymn is felt. My attention is soon arrested by a pair of hummingbirds, the ruby-throated, disporting themselves in a low bush a few yards from me. The female takes shelter amid the branches, and squeaks exultingly as the male, circling above, dives down as if to dislodge her. Seeing me, he drops like a feather on a slender twig, and in a moment both are gone. Then, as if by a preconcerted signal, the throats are all atune. I lie on my back with eyes half closed, and analyze the chorus of warblers, thrushes, finches, and flycatchers; while, soaring above all, a little withdrawn and alone rises the divine contralto of the hermit. That richly modulated warble proceeding from the top of yonder birch, and which unpracticed ears would mistake for the voice of the scarlet tanager, comes from that rare visitant, the rose-breasted grosbeak. It is a strong, vivacious strain, a bright noonday song, full of health and assurance, indicating fine talents in the performer, but not genius. As I come up under the tree he casts his eye down at me, but continues his song. This bird is said to be quite common in the Northwest, but he is rare in the Eastern districts. His beak is disproportionately large and heavy, like a huge nose, which slightly mars his good looks; but Nature has made it up to him in a blush rose upon his breast, and the most delicate of pink linings to the under side of his wings. His back is variegated black and white, and when flying low the white shows conspicuously. If he passed over your head, you would note the delicate flush under his wings. That bit of bright scarlet on yonder dead hemlock, glowing like a live coal against the dark background, seeming almost too brilliant for the severe northern climate, is his relative, the scarlet tanager. I occasionally meet him in the deep hemlocks, and know no stronger contrast in nature. I almost fear he will kindle the dry limb on which he alights. He is quite a solitary bird, and in this section seems to prefer the high, remote woods, even going quite to the mountain's top. Indeed, the event of my last visit to the mountain was meeting one of these brilliant creatures near the summit, in full song. The breeze carried the notes far and wide. He seemed to enjoy the elevation, and I imagined his song had more scope and freedom than usual. When he had flown far down the mountain-side, the breeze still brought me his finest notes. In plumage he is the most brilliant bird we have. The bluebird is not entirely blue; nor will the indigo-bird bear a close inspection, nor the goldfinch, nor the summer redbird. But the tanager loses nothing by a near view; the deep scarlet of his body and the black of his wings and tail are quite perfect. This is his holiday suit; in the fall he becomes a dull yellowish green,--the color of the female the whole season. One of the leading songsters in this choir of the old Barkpeeling is the purple finch or linnet. He sits somewhat apart, usually on a dead hemlock, and warbles most exquisitely. He is one of our finest songsters, and stands at the head of the finches, as the hermit at the head of the thrushes. His song approaches an ecstasy, and, with the exception of the winter wren's, is the most rapid and copious strain to be heard in these woods. It is quite destitute of the trills and the liquid, silvery, bubbling notes that characterize the wren's; but there runs through it a round, richly modulated whistle, very sweet and very pleasing. The call of the robin is brought in at a certain point with marked effect, and, throughout, the variety is so great and the strain so rapid that the impression is as of two or three birds singing at the same time. He is not common here, and I only find him in these or similar woods. His color is peculiar, and looks as if it might have been imparted by dipping a brown bird in diluted pokeberry juice. Two or three more dippings would have made the purple complete. The female is the color of the song sparrow, a little larger, with heavier beak, and tail much more forked. In a little opening quite free from brush and trees, I step down to bathe my hands in the brook, when a small, light slate-colored bird flutters out of the bank, not three feet from my head, as I stoop down, and, as if severely lamed or injured, flutters through the grass and into the nearest bush. As I do not follow, but remain near the nest, she _chips_ sharply, which brings the male, and I see it is the speckled Canada warbler. I find no authority in the books for this bird to build upon the ground, yet here is the nest, made chiefly of dry grass, set in a slight excavation in the bank not two feet from the water, and looking a little perilous to anything but ducklings or sandpipers. There are two young birds and one little speckled egg just pipped. But how is this? what mystery is here? One nestling is much larger than the other, monopolizes most of the nest, and lifts its open mouth far above that of its companion, though obviously both are of the same age, not more than a day old. Ah! I see; the old trick of the cow bunting, with a stinging human significance. Taking the interloper by the nape of the neck, I deliberately drop it into the water, but not without a pang, as I see its naked form, convulsed with chills, float downstream. Cruel? So is Nature cruel. I take one life to save two. In less than two days this pot-bellied intruder would have caused the death of the two rightful occupants of the nest; so I step in and turn things into their proper channel again. It is a singular freak of nature, this instinct which prompts one bird to lay its eggs in the nests of others, and thus shirk the responsibility of rearing its own young. The cow buntings always resort to this cunning trick; and when one reflects upon their numbers, it is evident that these little tragedies are quite frequent. In Europe the parallel case is that of the cuckoo, and occasionally our own cuckoo imposes upon a robin or a thrush in the same manner. The cow bunting seems to have no conscience about the matter, and, so far as I have observed, invariably selects the nest of a bird smaller than itself. Its egg is usually the first to hatch; its young overreaches all the rest when food is brought; it grows with great rapidity, spreads and fills the nest, and the starved and crowded occupants soon perish, when the parent bird removes their dead bodies, giving its whole energy and care to the foster-child. The warblers and smaller flycatchers are generally the sufferers, though I sometimes see the slate-colored snowbird unconsciously duped in like manner; and the other day, in a tall tree in the woods, I discovered the black-throated green-backed warbler devoting itself to this dusky, overgrown foundling. An old farmer to whom I pointed out the fact was much surprised that such things should happen in his woods without his knowledge. These birds may be seen prowling through all parts of the woods at this season, watching for an opportunity to steal their egg into some nest. One day while sitting on a log I saw one moving by short flights through the trees and gradually nearing the ground. Its movements were hurried and stealthy. About fifty yards from me it disappeared behind some low brush, and had evidently alighted upon the ground. After waiting a few moments I cautiously walked in the direction. When about halfway I accidentally made a slight noise, when the bird flew up, and seeing me, hurried off out of the woods. Arrived at the place, I found a simple nest of dry grass and leaves partially concealed under a prostrate branch. I took it to be the nest of a sparrow. There were three eggs in the nest, and one lying about a foot below it as if it had been rolled out, as of course it had. It suggested the thought that perhaps, when the cowbird finds the full complement of eggs in a nest, it throws out one and deposits its own instead. I revisited the nest a few days afterward and found an egg again cast out, but none had been put in its place. The nest had been abandoned by its owner and the eggs were stale. In all cases where I have found this egg, I have observed both male and female of the cowbird lingering near, the former uttering his peculiar liquid, glassy note from the tops of the trees. In July, the young which have been reared in the same neighborhood, and which are now of a dull fawn color, begin to collect in small flocks, which grow to be quite large in autumn. The speckled Canada is a very superior warbler, having a lively, animated strain, reminding you of certain parts of the canary's, though quite broken and incomplete; the bird, the while, hopping amid the branches with increased liveliness, and indulging in fine sibilant chirps, too happy to keep silent. His manners are quite marked. He has a habit of courtesying when he discovers you which is very pretty. In form he is an elegant bird, somewhat slender, his back of a bluish lead-color becoming nearly black on his crown: the under part of his body, from his throat down, is of a light, delicate yellow, with a belt of black dots across his breast. He has a fine eye, surrounded by a light yellow ring. The parent birds are much disturbed by my presence, and keep up a loud emphatic chirping, which attracts the attention of their sympathetic neighbors, and one after another they come to see what has happened. The chestnut-sided and the Blackburnian come in company. The black and yellow warbler pauses a moment and hastens away; the Maryland yellow-throat peeps shyly from the lower bushes and utters his "Fip! fip!" in sympathy; the wood pewee comes straight to the tree overhead, and the red-eyed vireo lingers and lingers, eying me with a curious, innocent look, evidently much puzzled. But all disappear again, one by one, apparently without a word of condolence or encouragement to the distressed pair. I have often noticed among birds this show of sympathy,--if indeed it be sympathy, and not merely curiosity, or desire to be forewarned of the approach of a common danger. An hour afterward I approach the place, find all still, and the mother bird upon the nest. As I draw near she seems to sit closer, her eyes growing large with an inexpressibly wild, beautiful look. She keeps her place till I am within two paces of her, when she flutters away as at first. In the brief interval the remaining egg has hatched, and the two little nestlings lift their heads without being jostled or overreached by any strange bedfellow. A week afterward and they were flown away,--so brief is the infancy of birds. And the wonder is that they escape, even for this short time, the skunks and minks and muskrats that abound here, and that have a decided partiality for such tidbits. I pass on through the old Barkpeeling, now threading an obscure cow-path or an overgrown wood-road; now clambering over soft and decayed logs, or forcing my way through a network of briers and hazels; now entering a perfect bower of wild cherry, beech, and soft maple; now emerging into a little grassy lane, golden with buttercups or white with daisies, or wading waist-deep in the red raspberry-bushes. Whir! whir! whir! and a brood of half-grown partridges start up like an explosion, a few paces from me, and, scattering, disappear in the bushes on all sides. Let me sit down here behind the screen of ferns and briers, and hear this wild hen of the woods call together her brood. At what an early age the partridge flies! Nature seems to concentrate her energies on the wing, making the safety of the bird a point to be looked after first; and while the body is covered with down, and no signs of feathers are visible, the wing-quills sprout and unfold, and in an incredibly short time the young make fair headway in flying. The same rapid development of wing may be observed in chickens and turkeys, but not in water-fowls, nor in birds that are safely housed in the nest till full-fledged. The other day, by a brook, I came suddenly upon a young sandpiper, a most beautiful creature, enveloped in a soft gray down, swift and nimble and apparently a week or two old, but with no signs of plumage either of body or wing. And it needed none, for it escaped me by taking to the water as readily as if it had flown with wings. Hark! there arises over there in the brush a soft, persuasive cooing, a sound so subtle and wild and unobtrusive that it requires the most alert and watchful ear to hear it. How gentle and solicitous and full of yearning love! It is the voice of the mother hen. Presently a faint timid "Yeap!" which almost eludes the ear, is heard in various directions,--the young responding. As no danger seems near, the cooing of the parent bird is soon a very audible clucking call, and the young move cautiously in the direction. Let me step never so carefully from my hiding-place, and all sounds instantly cease, and I search in vain for either parent or young. The partridge is one of our most native and characteristic birds. The woods seem good to be in where I find him. He gives a habitable air to the forest, and one feels as if the rightful occupant was really at home. The woods where I do not find him seem to want something, as if suffering from some neglect of Nature. And then he is such a splendid success, so hardy and vigorous. I think he enjoys the cold and the snow. His wings seem to rustle with more fervency in midwinter. If the snow falls very fast, and promises a heavy storm, he will complacently sit down and allow himself to be snowed under. Approaching him at such times, he suddenly bursts out of the snow at your feet, scattering the flakes in all directions, and goes humming away through the woods like a bombshell,--a picture of native spirit and success. His drum is one of the most welcome and beautiful sounds of spring. Scarcely have the trees expanded their buds, when, in the still April mornings, or toward nightfall, you hear the hum of his devoted wings. He selects not, as you would predict, a dry and resinous log, but a decayed and crumbling one, seeming to give the preference to old oak-logs that are partly blended with the soil. If a log to his taste cannot be found, he sets up his altar on a rock, which becomes resonant beneath his fervent blows. Who has seen the partridge drum? It is the next thing to catching a weasel asleep, though by much caution and tact it may be done. He does not hug the log, but stands very erect, expands his ruff, gives two introductory blows, pauses half a second, and then resumes, striking faster and faster till the sound becomes a continuous, unbroken whir, the whole lasting less than half a minute. The tips of his wings barely brush the log, so that the sound is produced rather by the force of the blows upon the air and upon his own body as in flying. One log will be used for many years, though not by the same drummer. It seems to be a sort of temple and held in great respect. The bird always approaches on foot, and leaves it in the same quiet manner, unless rudely disturbed. He is very cunning, though his wit is not profound. It is difficult to approach him by stealth; you will try many times before succeeding; but seem to pass by him in a great hurry, making all the noise possible, and with plumage furled he stands as immovable as a knot, allowing you a good view, and a good shot if you are a sportsman. Passing along one of the old Barkpeelers' roads which wander aimlessly about, I am attracted by a singularly brilliant and emphatic warble, proceeding from the low bushes, and quickly suggesting the voice of the Maryland yellow-throat. Presently the singer hops up on a dry twig, and gives me a good view: lead-colored head and neck, becoming nearly black on the breast; clear olive-green back, and yellow belly. From his habit of keeping near the ground, even hopping upon it occasionally, I know him to be a ground warbler; from his dark breast the ornithologist has added the expletive mourning, hence the mourning ground warbler. Of this bird both Wilson and Audubon confessed their comparative ignorance, neither ever having seen its nest or become acquainted with its haunts and general habits. Its song is quite striking and novel, though its voice at once suggests the class of warblers to which it belongs. It is very shy and wary, flying but a few feet at a time, and studiously concealing itself from your view. I discover but one pair here. The female has food in her beak, but carefully avoids betraying the locality of her nest. The ground warblers all have one notable feature,--very beautiful legs, as white and delicate as if they had always worn silk stockings and satin slippers. High tree warblers have dark brown or black legs and more brilliant plumage, but less musical ability. The chestnut-sided belongs to the latter class. He is quite common in these woods, as in all the woods about. He is one of the rarest and handsomest of the warblers; his white breast and throat, chestnut sides, and yellow crown show conspicuously. Last year I found the nest of one in an uplying beech wood, in a low bush near the roadside, where cows passed and browsed daily. Things went on smoothly till the cow bunting stole her egg into it, when other mishaps followed, and the nest was soon empty. A characteristic attitude of the male during this season is a slight drooping of the wings, and tail a little elevated, which gives him a very smart, bantam-like appearance. His song is fine and hurried, and not much of itself, but has its place in the general chorus. A far sweeter strain, falling on the ear with the true sylvan cadence, is that of the black-throated green-backed warbler, whom I meet at various points. He has no superiors among the true _Sylvia_. His song is very plain and simple, but remarkably pure and tender, and might be indicated by straight lines, thus, ---- ---- \/¯¯; the first two marks representing two sweet, silvery notes, in the same pitch of voice, and quite unaccented; the latter marks, the concluding notes, wherein the tone and inflection are changed. The throat and breast of the male are a rich black like velvet, his face yellow, and his back a yellowish green. Beyond the Barkpeeling, where the woods are mingled hemlock, beech, and birch, the languid midsummer note of the black-throated blue-back falls on my ear. "Twea, twea, twea-e-e!" in the upward slide, and with the peculiar _z-ing_ of summer insects, but not destitute of a certain plaintive cadence. It is one of the most languid, unhurried sounds in all the woods. I feel like reclining upon the dry leaves at once. Audubon says he has never heard his love-song; but this is all the love-song he has, and he is evidently a very plain hero with his little brown mistress. He assumes few attitudes, and is not a bold and striking gymnast, like many of his kindred. He has a preference for dense woods of beech and maple, moves slowly amid the lower branches and smaller growths, keeping from eight to ten feet from the ground, and repeating now and then his listless, indolent strain. His back and crown are dark blue; his throat and breast, black; his belly, pure white; and he has a white spot on each wing. Here and there I meet the black and white creeping warbler, whose fine strain reminds me of hair-wire. It is unquestionably the finest bird-song to be heard. Few insect strains will compare with it in this respect; while it has none of the harsh, brassy character of the latter, being very delicate and tender. That sharp, uninterrupted, but still continued warble, which, before one has learned to discriminate closely, he is apt to confound with the red-eyed vireo's, is that of the solitary warbling vireo,--a bird slightly larger, much rarer, and with a louder, less cheerful and happy strain. I see him hopping along lengthwise of the limbs, and note the orange tinge of his breast and sides and the white circle around his eye. But the declining sun and the deepening shadows admonish me that this ramble must be brought to a close, even though only the leading characters in this chorus of forty songsters have been described, and only a small portion of the venerable old woods explored. In a secluded swampy corner of the old Barkpeeling, where I find the great purple orchis in bloom, and where the foot of man or beast seems never to have trod, I linger long, contemplating the wonderful display of lichens and mosses that overrun both the smaller and the larger growths. Every bush and branch and sprig is dressed up in the most rich and fantastic of liveries; and, crowning all, the long bearded moss festoons the branches or sways gracefully from the limbs. Every twig looks a century old, though green leaves tip the end of it. A young yellow birch has a venerable, patriarchal look, and seems ill at ease under such premature honors. A decayed hemlock is draped as if by hands for some solemn festival. Mounting toward the upland again, I pause reverently as the hush and stillness of twilight come upon the woods. It is the sweetest, ripest hour of the day. And as the hermit's evening hymn goes up from the deep solitude below me, I experience that serene exaltation of sentiment of which music, literature, and religion are but the faint types and symbols. 1865. V BIRDS'-NESTS How alert and vigilant the birds are, even when absorbed in building their nests! In an open space in the woods I see a pair of cedar-birds collecting moss from the top of a dead tree. Following the direction in which they fly, I soon discover the nest placed in the fork of a small soft maple, which stands amid a thick growth of wild cherry-trees and young beeches. Carefully concealing myself beneath it, without any fear that the workmen will hit me with a chip or let fall a tool, I await the return of the busy pair. Presently I hear the well-known note, and the female sweeps down and settles unsuspectingly into the half-finished structure. Hardly have her wings rested before her eye has penetrated my screen, and with a hurried movement of alarm she darts away. In a moment the male, with a tuft of wool in his beak (for there is a sheep pasture near), joins her, and the two reconnoitre the premises from the surrounding bushes. With their beaks still loaded, they move around with a frightened look, and refuse to approach the nest till I have moved off and lain down behind a log. Then one of them ventures to alight upon the nest, but, still suspecting all is not right, quickly darts away again. Then they both together come, and after much peeping and spying about, and apparently much anxious consultation, cautiously proceed to work. In less than half an hour it would seem that wool enough has been brought to supply the whole family, real and prospective, with socks, if needles and fingers could be found fine enough to knit it up. In less than a week the female has begun to deposit her eggs,--four of them in as many days,--white tinged with purple, with black spots on the larger end. After two weeks of incubation the young are out. Excepting the American goldfinch, this bird builds later in the spring than any other,--its nest, in our northern climate, seldom being undertaken till July. As with the goldfinch, the reason is, probably, that suitable food for the young cannot be had at an earlier period. [Illustration: FINDING A BIRD'S-NEST] Like most of our common species, as the robin, sparrow, bluebird, pewee, wren, etc., this bird sometimes seeks wild, remote localities in which to rear its young; at others, takes up its abode near that of man. I knew a pair of cedar-birds, one season, to build in an apple-tree, the branches of which rubbed against the house. For a day or two before the first straw was laid, I noticed the pair carefully exploring every branch of the tree, the female taking the lead, the male following her with an anxious note and look. It was evident that the wife was to have her choice this time; and, like one who thoroughly knew her mind, she was proceeding to take it. Finally the site was chosen upon a high branch, extending over one low wing of the house. Mutual congratulations and caresses followed, when both birds flew away in quest of building material. That most freely used is a sort of cotton-bearing plant which grows in old wornout fields. The nest is large for the size of the bird, and very soft. It is in every respect a first-class domicile. On another occasion, while walking or rather sauntering in the woods (for I have discovered that one cannot run and read the book of nature), my attention was arrested by a dull hammering, evidently but a few rods off. I said to myself, "Some one is building a house." From what I had previously seen, I suspected the builder to be a red-headed woodpecker in the top of a dead oak stub near by. Moving cautiously in that direction, I perceived a round hole, about the size of that made by an inch-and-a-half auger, near the top of the decayed trunk, and the white chips of the workman strewing the ground beneath. When but a few paces from the tree, my foot pressed upon a dry twig, which gave forth a very slight snap. Instantly the hammering ceased, and a scarlet head appeared at the door. Though I remained perfectly motionless, forbearing even to wink till my eyes smarted, the bird refused to go on with his work, but flew quietly off to a neighboring tree. What surprised me was, that, amid his busy occupation down in the heart of the old tree, he should have been so alert and watchful as to catch the slightest sound from without. The woodpeckers all build in about the same manner, excavating the trunk or branch of a decayed tree and depositing the eggs on the fine fragments of wood at the bottom of the cavity. Though the nest is not especially an artistic work,--requiring strength rather than skill,--yet the eggs and the young of few other birds are so completely housed from the elements, or protected from their natural enemies, the jays, crows, hawks, and owls. A tree with a natural cavity is never selected, but one which has been dead just long enough to have become soft and brittle throughout. The bird goes in horizontally for a few inches, making a hole perfectly round and smooth and adapted to his size, then turns downward, gradually enlarging the hole, as he proceeds, to the depth of ten, fifteen, twenty inches, according to the softness of the tree and the urgency of the mother bird to deposit her eggs. While excavating, male and female work alternately. After one has been engaged fifteen or twenty minutes, drilling and carrying out chips, it ascends to an upper limb, utters a loud call or two, when its mate soon appears, and, alighting near it on the branch, the pair chatter and caress a moment, then the fresh one enters the cavity and the other flies away. A few days since I climbed up to the nest of the downy woodpecker, in the decayed top of a sugar maple. For better protection against driving rains, the hole, which was rather more than an inch in diameter, was made immediately beneath a branch which stretched out almost horizontally from the main stem. It appeared merely a deeper shadow upon the dark and mottled surface of the bark with which the branches were covered, and could not be detected by the eye until one was within a few feet of it. The young chirped vociferously as I approached the nest, thinking it was the old one with food; but the clamor suddenly ceased as I put my hand on that part of the trunk in which they were concealed, the unusual jarring and rustling alarming them into silence. The cavity, which was about fifteen inches deep, was gourd-shaped, and was wrought out with great skill and regularity. The walls were quite smooth and clean and new. I shall never forget the circumstance of observing a pair of yellow-bellied woodpeckers--the most rare and secluded, and, next to the red-headed, the most beautiful species found in our woods--breeding in an old, truncated beech in the Beaverkill Mountains, an offshoot of the Catskills. We had been traveling, three of us, all day in search of a trout lake, which lay far in among the mountains, had twice lost our course in the trackless forest, and, weary and hungry, had sat down to rest upon a decayed log. The chattering of the young, and the passing to and fro of the parent birds, soon arrested my attention. The entrance to the nest was on the east side of the tree, about twenty-five feet from the ground. At intervals of scarcely a minute, the old birds, one after the other, would alight upon the edge of the hole with a grub or worm in their beaks; then each in turn would make a bow or two, cast an eye quickly around, and by a single movement place itself in the neck of the passage. Here it would pause a moment, as if to determine in which expectant mouth to place the morsel, and then disappear within. In about half a minute, during which time the chattering of the young gradually subsided, the bird would again emerge, but this time bearing in its beak the ordure of one of the helpless family. Flying away very slowly with head lowered and extended, as if anxious to hold the offensive object as far from its plumage as possible, the bird dropped the unsavory morsel in the course of a few yards, and, alighting on a tree, wiped its bill on the bark and moss. This seems to be the order all day,--carrying in and carrying out. I watched the birds for an hour, while my companions were taking their turn in exploring the lay of the land around us, and noted no variation in the programme. It would be curious to know if the young are fed and waited upon in regular order, and how, amid the darkness and the crowded state of the apartment, the matter is so neatly managed. But ornithologists are all silent upon the subject. This practice of the birds is not so uncommon as it might at first seem. It is indeed almost an invariable rule among all land birds. With woodpeckers and kindred species, and with birds that burrow in the ground, as bank swallows, king-fishers, etc., it is a necessity. The accumulation of the excrement in the nest would prove most fatal to the young. But even among birds that neither bore nor mine, but which build a shallow nest on the branch of a tree or upon the ground, as the robin, the finches, the buntings, etc., the ordure of the young is removed to a distance by the parent bird. When the robin is seen going away from its brood with a slow, heavy flight, entirely different from its manner a moment before on approaching the nest with a cherry or worm, it is certain to be engaged in this office. One may observe the social sparrow, when feeding its young, pause a moment after the worm has been given and hop around on the brink of the nest observing the movements within. The instinct of cleanliness no doubt prompts the action in all cases, though the disposition to secrecy or concealment may not be unmixed with it. The swallows form an exception to the rule, the excrement being voided by the young over the brink of the nest. They form an exception, also, to the rule of secrecy, aiming not so much to conceal the nest as to render it inaccessible. Other exceptions are the pigeons, hawks, and water-fowls. But to return. Having a good chance to note the color and markings of the woodpeckers as they passed in and out at the opening of the nest, I saw that Audubon had made a mistake in figuring or describing the female of this species with the red spot upon the head. I have seen a number of pairs of them, and in no instance have I seen the mother bird marked with red. The male was in full plumage, and I reluctantly shot him for a specimen. Passing by the place again next day, I paused a moment to note how matters stood. I confess it was not without some compunctions that I heard the cries of the young birds, and saw the widowed mother, her cares now doubled, hastening to and fro in the solitary woods. She would occasionally pause expectantly on the trunk of a tree and utter a loud call. It usually happens, when the male of any species is killed during the breeding season, that the female soon procures another mate. There are, most likely, always a few unmated birds of both sexes within a given range, and through these the broken links may be restored. Audubon or Wilson, I forget which, tells of a pair of fish hawks, or ospreys, that built their nest in an ancient oak. The male was so zealous in the defense of the young that he actually attacked with beak and claw a person who attempted to climb into his nest, putting his face and eyes in great jeopardy. Arming himself with a heavy club, the climber felled the gallant bird to the ground and killed him. In the course of a few days the female had procured another mate. But naturally enough the stepfather showed none of the spirit and pluck in defense of the brood that had been displayed by the original parent. When danger was nigh he was seen afar off, sailing around in placid unconcern. It is generally known that when either the wild turkey or domestic turkey begins to lay, and afterwards to sit and rear the brood, she secludes herself from the male, who then, very sensibly, herds with others of his sex, and betakes himself to haunts of his own till male and female, old and young, meet again on common ground, late in the fall. But rob the sitting bird of her eggs, or destroy her tender young, and she immediately sets out in quest of a male, who is no laggard when he hears her call. The same is true of ducks and other aquatic fowls. The propagating instinct is strong, and surmounts all ordinary difficulties. No doubt the widowhood I had caused in the case of the woodpeckers was of short duration, and chance brought, or the widow drummed up, some forlorn male, who was not dismayed by the prospect of having a large family of half-grown birds on his hands at the outset. I have seen a fine cock robin paying assiduous addresses to a female bird as late as the middle of July; and I have no doubt that his intentions were honorable. I watched the pair for half an hour. The hen, I took it, was in the market for the second time that season; but the cock, from his bright, unfaded plumage, looked like a new arrival. The hen resented every advance of the male. In vain he strutted around her and displayed his fine feathers; every now and then she would make at him in a most spiteful manner. He followed her to the ground, poured into her ear a fine, half-suppressed warble, offered her a worm, flew back to the tree again with a great spread of plumage, hopped around her on the branches, chirruped, chattered, flew gallantly at an intruder, and was back in an instant at her side. No use,--she cut him short at every turn. The _dénouement_ I cannot relate, as the artful bird, followed by her ardent suitor, soon flew away beyond my sight. It may not be rash to conclude, however, that she held out no longer than was prudent. On the whole, there seems to be a system of Women's Rights prevailing among the birds, which, contemplated from the standpoint of the male, is quite admirable. In almost all cases of joint interest, the female bird is the most active. She determines the site of the nest, and is usually the most absorbed in its construction. Generally, she is more vigilant in caring for the young, and manifests the most concern when danger threatens. Hour after hour I have seen the mother of a brood of blue grosbeaks pass from the nearest meadow to the tree that held her nest, with a cricket or grasshopper in her bill, while her better-dressed half was singing serenely on a distant tree or pursuing his pleasure amid the branches. Yet among the majority of our song-birds the male is most conspicuous both by his color and manners and by his song, and is to that extent a shield to the female. It is thought that the female is humbler clad for her better concealment during incubation. But this is not satisfactory, as in some cases she is relieved from time to time by the male. In the case of the domestic dove, for instance, promptly at midday the cock is found upon the nest. I should say that the dull or neutral tints of the female were a provision of nature for her greater safety at all times, as her life is far more precious to the species than that of the male. The indispensable office of the male reduces itself to little more than a moment of time, while that of his mate extends over days and weeks, if not months.[1] [Footnote 1: A recent English writer upon this subject presents an array of facts and considerations that do not support this view. He says that, with very few exceptions, it is the rule that, when both sexes are of strikingly gay and conspicuous colors, the nest is such as to conceal the sitting bird; while, whenever there is a striking contrast of colors, the male being gay and conspicuous, the female dull and obscure, the nest is open and the sitting bird exposed to view. The exceptions to this rule among European birds appear to be very few. Among our own birds, the cuckoos and blue jays build open nests, without presenting any noticeable difference in the coloring of the two sexes. The same is true of the pewees, the kingbird, and the sparrows, while the common bluebird, the oriole, and orchard starling afford examples the other way.] In migrating northward, the males precede the females by eight or ten days; returning in the fall, the females and young precede the males by about the same time. After the woodpeckers have abandoned their nests, or rather chambers, which they do after the first season, their cousins, the nuthatches, chickadees, and brown creepers, fall heir to them. These birds, especially the creepers and nuthatches, have many of the habits of the _Picidæ_, but lack their powers of bill, and so are unable to excavate a nest for themselves. Their habitation, therefore, is always second-hand. But each species carries in some soft material of various kinds, or, in other words, furnishes the tenement to its liking. The chickadee arranges in the bottom of the cavity a little mat of a light felt-like substance, which looks as if it came from the hatter's, but which is probably the work of numerous worms or caterpillars. On this soft lining the female deposits six speckled eggs. I recently discovered one of these nests in a most interesting situation. The tree containing it, a variety of the wild cherry, stood upon the brink of the bald summit of a high mountain. Gray, time-worn rocks lay piled loosely about, or overtoppled the just visible byways of the red fox. The trees had a half-scared look, and that indescribable wildness which lurks about the tops of all remote mountains possessed the place. Standing there, I looked down upon the back of the red-tailed hawk as he flew out over the earth beneath me. Following him, my eye also took in farms and settlements and villages and other mountain ranges that grew blue in the distance. The parent birds attracted my attention by appearing with food in their beaks, and by seeming much put out. Yet so wary were they of revealing the locality of their brood, or even of the precise tree that held them, that I lurked around over an hour without gaining a point on them. Finally a bright and curious boy who accompanied me secreted himself under a low, projecting rock close to the tree in which we supposed the nest to be, while I moved off around the mountain-side. It was not long before the youth had their secret. The tree, which was low and wide-branching, and overrun with lichens, appeared at a cursory glance to contain not one dry or decayed limb. Yet there was one a few feet long, in which, when my eyes were piloted thither, I detected a small round orifice. As my weight began to shake the branches, the consternation of both old and young was great. The stump of a limb that held the nest was about three inches thick, and at the bottom of the tunnel was excavated quite to the bark. With my thumb I broke in the thin wall, and the young, which were full-fledged, looked out upon the world for the first time. Presently one of them, with a significant chirp, as much as to say, "It is time we were out of this," began to climb up toward the proper entrance. Placing himself in the hole, he looked around without manifesting any surprise at the grand scene that lay spread out before him. He was taking his bearings, and determining how far he could trust the power of his untried wings to take him out of harm's way. After a moment's pause, with a loud chirrup, he launched out and made tolerable headway. The others rapidly followed. Each one, as it started upward, from a sudden impulse, contemptuously saluted the abandoned nest with its excrement. Though generally regular in their habits and instincts, yet the birds sometimes seem as whimsical and capricious as superior beings. One is not safe, for instance, in making any absolute assertion as to their place or mode of building. Ground-builders often get up into a bush, and tree-builders sometimes get upon the ground or into a tussock of grass. The song sparrow, which is a ground builder, has been known to build in the knothole of a fence rail; and a chimney swallow once got tired of soot and smoke, and fastened its nest on a rafter in a hay barn. A friend tells me of a pair of barn swallows which, taking a fanciful turn, saddled their nest in the loop of a rope that was pendent from a peg in the peak, and liked it so well that they repeated the experiment next year. I have known the social sparrow, or "hairbird," to build under a shed, in a tuft of hay that hung down, through the loose flooring, from the mow above. It usually contents itself with half a dozen stalks of dry grass and a few long hairs from a cow's tail loosely arranged on the branch of an apple-tree. The rough-winged swallow builds in the wall and in old stone-heaps, and I have seen the robin build in similar localities. Others have found its nest in old, abandoned wells. The house wren will build in anything that has an accessible cavity, from an old boot to a bombshell. A pair of them once persisted in building their nest in the top of a certain pump-tree, getting in through the opening above the handle. The pump being in daily use, the nest was destroyed more than a score of times. This jealous little wretch has the wise forethought, when the box in which he builds contains two compartments, to fill up one of them, so as to avoid the risk of troublesome neighbors. The less skillful builders sometimes depart from their usual habit, and take up with the abandoned nest of some other species. The blue jay now and then lays in an old crow's nest or cuckoo's nest. The crow blackbird, seized with a fit of indolence, drops its eggs in the cavity of a decayed branch. I heard of a cuckoo that dispossessed a robin of its nest; of another that set a blue jay adrift. Large, loose structures, like the nests of the osprey and certain of the herons, have been found with half a dozen nests of the blackbirds set in the outer edges, like so many parasites, or, as Audubon says, like the retainers about the rude court of a feudal baron. The same birds breeding in a southern climate construct far less elaborate nests than when breeding in a northern climate. Certain species of water-fowl, that abandon their eggs to the sand and the sun in the warmer zones, build a nest and sit in the usual way in Labrador. In Georgia, the Baltimore oriole places its nest upon the north side of the tree; in the Middle and Eastern States, it fixes it upon the south or east side, and makes it much thicker and warmer. I have seen one from the South that had some kind of coarse reed or sedge woven into it, giving it an open-work appearance, like a basket. Very few species use the same material uniformly. I have seen the nest of the robin quite destitute of mud. In one instance it was composed mainly of long black horse-hairs, arranged in a circular manner, with a lining of fine yellow grass; the whole presenting quite a novel appearance. In another case the nest was chiefly constructed of a species of rock moss. The nest for the second brood during the same season is often a mere makeshift. The haste of the female to deposit her eggs as the season advances seems very great, and the structure is apt to be prematurely finished. I was recently reminded of this fact by happening, about the last of July, to meet with several nests of the wood or bush sparrow in a remote blackberry field. The nests with eggs were far less elaborate and compact than the earlier nests, from which the young had flown. Day after day, as I go to a certain piece of woods, I observe a male indigo-bird sitting on precisely the same part of a high branch, and singing in his most vivacious style. As I approach he ceases to sing, and, flirting his tail right and left with marked emphasis, chirps sharply. In a low bush near by, I come upon the object of his solicitude,--a thick, compact nest composed largely of dry leaves and fine grass, in which a plain brown bird is sitting upon four pale blue eggs. The wonder is that a bird will leave the apparent security of the treetops to place its nest in the way of the many dangers that walk and crawl upon the ground. There, far up out of reach, sings the bird; here, not three feet from the ground, are its eggs or helpless young. The truth is, birds are the greatest enemies of birds, and it is with reference to this fact that many of the smaller species build. Perhaps the greatest proportion of birds breed along highways. I have known the ruffed grouse to come out of a dense wood and make its nest at the root of a tree within ten paces of the road, where, no doubt, hawks and crows, as well as skunks and foxes, would be less likely to find it out. Traversing remote mountain-roads through dense woods, I have repeatedly seen the veery, or Wilson's thrush, sitting upon her nest, so near me that I could almost take her from it by stretching out my hand. Birds of prey show none of this confidence in man, and, when locating their nests, avoid rather than seek his haunts. In a certain locality in the interior of New York, I know, every season, where I am sure to find a nest or two of the slate-colored snowbird. It is under the brink of a low mossy bank, so near the highway that it could be reached from a passing vehicle with a whip. Every horse or wagon or foot passenger disturbs the sitting bird. She awaits the near approach of the sound of feet or wheels, and then darts quickly across the road, barely clearing the ground, and disappears amid the bushes on the opposite side. In the trees that line one of the main streets and fashionable drives leading out of Washington city and less than half a mile from the boundary, I have counted the nests of five different species at one time, and that without any very close scrutiny of the foliage, while, in many acres of woodland half a mile off, I searched in vain for a single nest. Among the five, the nest that interested me most was that of the blue grosbeak. Here this bird, which, according to Audubon's observations in Louisiana, is shy and recluse, affecting remote marshes and the borders of large ponds of stagnant water, had placed its nest in the lowest twig of the lowest branch of a large sycamore, immediately over a great thoroughfare, and so near the ground that a person standing in a cart or sitting on a horse could have reached it with his hand. The nest was composed mainly of fragments of newspaper and stalks of grass, and, though so low, was remarkably well concealed by one of the peculiar clusters of twigs and leaves which characterize this tree. The nest contained young when I discovered it, and, though the parent birds were much annoyed by my loitering about beneath the tree, they paid little attention to the stream of vehicles that was constantly passing. It was a wonder to me when the birds could have built it, for they are much shyer when building than at other times. No doubt they worked mostly in the morning, having the early hours all to themselves. Another pair of blue grosbeaks built in a grave-yard within the city limits. The nest was placed in a low bush, and the male continued to sing at intervals till the young were ready to fly. The song of this bird is a rapid, intricate warble, like that of the indigo-bird, though stronger and louder. Indeed, these two birds so much resemble each other in color, form, manner, voice, and general habits that, were it not for the difference in size,--the grosbeak being nearly as large again as the indigo-bird,--it would be a hard matter to tell them apart. The females of both species are clad in the same reddish-brown suits. So are the young the first season. Of course in the deep, primitive woods, also, are nests; but how rarely we find them! The simple art of the bird consists in choosing common, neutral-tinted material, as moss, dry leaves, twigs, and various odds and ends, and placing the structure on a convenient branch, where it blends in color with its surroundings; but how consummate is this art, and how skillfully is the nest concealed! We occasionally light upon it, but who, unaided by the movements of the bird, could find it out? During the present season I went to the woods nearly every day for a fortnight without making any discoveries of this kind, till one day, paying them a farewell visit, I chanced to come upon several nests. A black and white creeping warbler suddenly became much alarmed as I approached a crumbling old stump in a dense part of the forest. He alighted upon it, chirped sharply, ran up and down its sides, and finally left it with much reluctance. The nest, which contained three young birds nearly fledged, was placed upon the ground, at the foot of the stump, and in such a position that the color of the young harmonized perfectly with the bits of bark, sticks, etc., lying about. My eye rested upon them for the second time before I made them out. They hugged the nest very closely, but as I put down my hand they all scampered off with loud cries for help, which caused the parent birds to place themselves almost within my reach. The nest was merely a little dry grass arranged in a thick bed of dry leaves. This was amid a thick undergrowth. Moving on into a passage of large stately hemlocks, with only here and there a small beech or maple rising up into the perennial twilight, I paused to make out a note which was entirely new to me. It is still in my ear. Though unmistakably a bird note, it yet suggested the bleating of a tiny lambkin. Presently the birds appeared,--a pair of the solitary vireo. They came flitting from point to point, alighting only for a moment at a time, the male silent, but the female uttering this strange, tender note. It was a rendering into some new sylvan dialect of the human sentiment of maidenly love. It was really pathetic in its sweetness and childlike confidence and joy. I soon discovered that the pair were building a nest upon a low branch a few yards from me. The male flew cautiously to the spot and adjusted something, and the twain moved on, the female calling to her mate at intervals, _love-e, love-e_, with a cadence and tenderness in the tone that rang in the ear long afterward. The nest was suspended to the fork of a small branch, as is usual with the vireos, plentifully lined with lichens, and bound and rebound with masses of coarse spider-webs. There was no attempt at concealment except in the neutral tints, which made it look like a natural growth of the dim, gray woods. Continuing my random walk, I next paused in a low part of the woods, where the larger trees began to give place to a thick second-growth that covered an old Barkpeeling. I was standing by a large maple, when a small bird darted quickly away from it, as if it might have come out of a hole near its base. As the bird paused a few yards from me, and began to chirp uneasily, my curiosity was at once excited. When I saw it was the female mourning ground warbler, and remembered that the nest of this bird had not yet been seen by any naturalist,--that not even Dr. Brewer had ever seen the eggs,--I felt that here was something worth looking for. So I carefully began the search, exploring inch by inch the ground, the base and roots of the tree, and the various shrubby growths about it, till, finding nothing and fearing I might really put my foot in it, I bethought me to withdraw to a distance and after some delay return again, and, thus forewarned, note the exact point from which the bird flew. This I did, and, returning, had little difficulty in discovering the nest. It was placed but a few feet from the maple-tree, in a bunch of ferns, and about six inches from the ground. It was quite a massive nest, composed entirely of the stalks and leaves of dry grass, with an inner lining of fine, dark brown roots. The eggs, three in number, were of light flesh-color, uniformly specked with fine brown specks. The cavity of the nest was so deep that the back of the sitting bird sank below the edge. In the top of a tall tree, a short distance farther on, I saw the nest of the red-tailed hawk,--a large mass of twigs and dry sticks. The young had flown, but still lingered in the vicinity, and, as I approached, the mother bird flew about over me, squealing in a very angry, savage manner. Tufts of the hair and other indigestible material of the common meadow mouse lay around on the ground beneath the nest. As I was about leaving the woods, my hat almost brushed the nest of the red-eyed vireo, which hung basket-like on the end of a low, drooping branch of the beech. I should never have seen it had the bird kept her place. It contained three eggs of the bird's own, and one of the cow bunting. The strange egg was only just perceptibly larger than the others, yet three days after, when I looked into the nest again and found all but one egg hatched, the young interloper was at least four times as large as either of the others, and with such a superabundance of bowels as to almost smother his bedfellows beneath them. That the intruder should fare the same as the rightful occupants, and thrive with them, was more than ordinary potluck; but that it alone should thrive, devouring, as it were, all the rest, is one of those freaks of Nature in which she would seem to discourage the homely virtues of prudence and honesty. Weeds and parasites have the odds greatly against them, yet they wage a very successful war nevertheless. The woods hold not such another gem as the nest of the hummingbird. The finding of one is an event to date from. It is the next best thing to finding an eagle's nest. I have met with but two, both by chance. One was placed on the horizontal branch of a chestnut-tree, with a solitary green leaf, forming a complete canopy, about an inch and a half above it. The repeated spiteful dartings of the bird past my ears, as I stood under the tree, caused me to suspect that I was intruding upon some one's privacy; and, following it with my eye, I soon saw the nest, which was in process of construction. Adopting my usual tactics of secreting myself near by, I had the satisfaction of seeing the tiny artist at work. It was the female, unassisted by her mate. At intervals of two or three minutes she would appear with a small tuft of some cottony substance in her beak, dart a few times through and around the tree, and alighting quickly in the nest, arrange the material she had brought, using her breast as a model. The other nest I discovered in a dense forest on the side of a mountain. The sitting bird was disturbed as I passed beneath her. The whirring of her wings arrested my attention, when, after a short pause, I had the good luck to see, through an opening in the leaves, the bird return to her nest, which appeared like a mere wart or excrescence on a small branch. The hummingbird, unlike all others, does not alight upon the nest, but flies into it. She enters it as quick as a flash, but as light as any feather. Two eggs are the complement. They are perfectly white, and so frail that only a woman's fingers may touch them. Incubation lasts about ten days. In a week the young have flown. The only nest like the hummingbird's, and comparable to it in neatness and symmetry, is that of the blue-gray gnatcatcher. This is often saddled upon the limb in the same manner, though it is generally more or less pendent; it is deep and soft, composed mostly of some vegetable down covered all over with delicate tree-lichens, and, except that it is much larger, appears almost identical with the nest of the hummingbird. But the nest of nests, the ideal nest, after we have left the deep woods, is unquestionably that of the Baltimore oriole. It is the only perfectly pensile nest we have. The nest of the orchard oriole is indeed mainly so, but this bird generally builds lower and shallower, more after the manner of the vireos. The Baltimore oriole loves to attach its nest to the swaying branches of the tallest elms, making no attempt at concealment, but satisfied if the position be high and the branch pendent. This nest would seem to cost more time and skill than any other bird structure. A peculiar flax-like substance seems to be always sought after and always found. The nest when completed assumes the form of a large, suspended gourd. The walls are thin but firm, and proof against the most driving rain. The mouth is hemmed or overhanded with horse-hair, and the sides are usually sewed through and through with the same. Not particular as to the matter of secrecy, the bird is not particular as to material, so that it be of the nature of strings or threads. A lady friend once told me that, while working by an open window, one of these birds approached during her momentary absence, and, seizing a skein of some kind of thread or yarn, made off with it to its half-finished nest. But the perverse yarn caught fast in the branches, and, in the bird's effort to extricate it, got hopelessly tangled. She tugged away at it all day, but was finally obliged to content herself with a few detached portions. The fluttering strings were an eyesore to her ever after, and, passing and repassing, she would give them a spiteful jerk, as much as to say, "There is that confounded yarn that gave me so much trouble." From Pennsylvania, Vincent Barnard (to whom I am indebted for other curious facts) sent me this interesting story of an oriole. He says a friend of his curious in such things, on observing the bird beginning to build, hung out near the prospective nest skeins of many-colored zephyr yarn, which the eager artist readily appropriated. He managed it so that the bird used nearly equal quantities of various high, bright colors. The nest was made unusually deep and capacious, and it may be questioned if such a thing of beauty was ever before woven by the cunning of a bird. Nuttall, by far the most genial of American ornithologists, relates the following:-- "A female (oriole), which I observed attentively, carried off to her nest a piece of lamp-wick ten or twelve feet long. This long string and many other shorter ones were left hanging out for about a week before both the ends were wattled into the sides of the nest. Some other little birds, making use of similar materials, at times twitched these flowing ends, and generally brought out the busy Baltimore from her occupation in great anger. "I may perhaps claim indulgence for adding a little more of the biography of this particular bird, as a representative also of the instincts of her race. She completed the nest in about a week's time, without any aid from her mate, who indeed appeared but seldom in her company and was now become nearly silent. For fibrous materials she broke, hackled, and gathered the flax of the asclepias and hibiscus stalks, tearing off long strings and flying with them to the scene of her labors. She appeared very eager and hasty in her pursuits, and collected her materials without fear or restraint while three men were working in the neighboring walks and many persons visiting the garden. Her courage and perseverance were indeed truly admirable. If watched too narrowly, she saluted with her usual scolding, _tshrr, tshrr, tshrr_, seeing no reason, probably, why she should be interrupted in her indispensable occupation. "Though the males were now comparatively silent on the arrival of their busy mates, I could not help observing this female and a second, continually vociferating, apparently in strife. At last she was observed to attack this _second_ female very fiercely, who slyly intruded herself at times into the same tree where she was building. These contests were angry and often repeated. To account for this animosity, I now recollected that _two_ fine males had been killed in our vicinity, and I therefore concluded the intruder to be left without a mate; yet she had gained the affections of the consort of the busy female, and thus the cause of their jealous quarrel became apparent. Having obtained the confidence of her faithless paramour, the _second_ female began preparing to weave a nest in an adjoining elm by tying together certain pendent twigs as a foundation. The male now associated chiefly with the intruder, whom he even assisted in her labor, yet did not wholly forget his first partner, who called on him one evening in a low, affectionate tone, which was answered in the same strain. While they were thus engaged in friendly whispers, suddenly appeared the rival, and a violent _rencontre_ ensued, so that one of the females appeared to be greatly agitated, and fluttered with spreading wings as if considerably hurt. The male, though prudently neutral in the contest, showed his culpable partiality by flying off with his paramour, and for the rest of the evening left the tree to his pugnacious consort. Cares of another kind, more imperious and tender, at length reconciled, or at least terminated, these disputes with the jealous females; and by the aid of the neighboring bachelors, who are never wanting among these and other birds, peace was at length completely restored by the restitution of the quiet and happy condition of monogamy." Let me not forget to mention the nest under the mountain ledge, the nest of the common pewee,--a modest mossy structure, with four pearl-white eggs,--looking out upon some wild scene and over-hung by beetling crags. After all has been said about the elaborate, high-hung structures, few nests perhaps awaken more pleasant emotions in the mind of the beholder than this of the pewee,--the gray, silent rocks, with caverns and dens where the fox and the wolf lurk, and just out of their reach, in a little niche, as if it grew there, the mossy tenement! Nearly every high projecting rock in my range has one of these nests. Following a trout stream up a wild mountain gorge, not long since, I counted five in the distance of a mile, all within easy reach, but safe from the minks and the skunks, and well housed from the storms. In my native town I know a pine and oak clad hill, round-topped, with a bold, precipitous front extending halfway around it. Near the top, and along this front or side, there crops out a ledge of rocks unusually high and cavernous. One immense layer projects many feet, allowing a person or many persons, standing upright, to move freely beneath it. There is a delicious spring of water there, and plenty of wild, cool air. The floor is of loose stone, now trod by sheep and foxes, once by the Indian and the wolf. How I have delighted from boyhood to spend a summer day in this retreat, or take refuge there from a sudden shower! Always the freshness and coolness, and always the delicate mossy nest of the phoebe-bird! The bird keeps her place till you are within a few feet of her, when she flits to a near branch, and, with many oscillations of her tail, observes you anxiously. Since the country has become settled, this pewee has fallen into the strange practice of occasionally placing its nest under a bridge, hay-shed, or other artificial structure, where it is subject to all kinds of interruptions and annoyances. When placed thus, the nest is larger and coarser. I know a hay-loft beneath which a pair has regularly placed its nest for several successive seasons. Arranged along on a single pole, which sags down a few inches from the flooring it was intended to help support, are three of these structures, marking the number of years the birds have nested there. The foundation is of mud with a superstructure of moss, elaborately lined with hair and feathers. Nothing can be more perfect and exquisite than the interior of one of these nests, yet a new one is built every season. Three broods, however, are frequently reared in it. The pewees, as a class, are the best architects we have. The kingbird builds a nest altogether admirable, using various soft cotton and woolen substances, and sparing neither time nor material to make it substantial and warm. The green-crested pewee builds its nest in many instances wholly of the blossoms of the white oak. The wood pewee builds a neat, compact, socket-shaped nest of moss and lichens on a horizontal branch. There is never a loose end or shred about it. The sitting bird is largely visible above the rim. She moves her head freely about and seems entirely at her ease,--a circumstance which I have never observed in any other species. The nest of the great-crested flycatcher is seldom free from snake skins, three or four being sometimes woven into it. About the thinnest, shallowest nest, for its situation, that can be found is that of the turtle-dove. A few sticks and straws are carelessly thrown together, hardly sufficient to prevent the eggs from falling through or rolling off. The nest of the passenger pigeon is equally hasty and insufficient, and the squabs often fall to the ground and perish. The other extreme among our common birds is furnished by the ferruginous thrush, which collects together a mass of material that would fill a half-bushel measure; or by the fish hawk, which adds to and repairs its nest year after year, till the whole would make a cart-load. One of the rarest of nests is that of the eagle, because the eagle is one of the rarest of birds. Indeed, so seldom is the eagle seen that its presence always seems accidental. It appears as if merely pausing on the way, while bound for some distant unknown region. One September, while a youth, I saw the ring-tailed eagle, the young of the golden eagle, an immense, dusky bird, the sight of which filled me with awe. It lingered about the hills for two days. Some young cattle, a two-year-old colt, and half a dozen sheep were at pasture on a high ridge that led up to the mountain, and in plain view of the house. On the second day this dusky monarch was seen flying about above them. Presently he began to hover over them, after the manner of a hawk watching for mice. He then with extended legs let himself slowly down upon them, actually grappling the backs of the young cattle, and frightening the creatures so that they rushed about the field in great consternation; and finally, as he grew bolder and more frequent in his descents, the whole herd broke over the fence and came tearing down to the house "like mad." It did not seem to be an assault with intent to kill, but was perhaps a stratagem resorted to in order to separate the herd and expose the lambs, which hugged the cattle very closely. When he occasionally alighted upon the oaks that stood near, the branch could be seen to sway and bend beneath him. Finally, as a rifleman started out in pursuit of him, he launched into the air, set his wings, and sailed away southward. A few years afterward, in January, another eagle passed through the same locality, alighting in a field near some dead animal, but tarried briefly. So much by way of identification. The golden eagle is common to the northern parts of both hemispheres, and places its eyrie on high precipitous rocks. A pair built on an inaccessible shelf of rock along the Hudson for eight successive years. A squad of Revolutionary soldiers, also, as related by Audubon, found a nest along this river, and had an adventure with the bird that came near costing one of their number his life. His comrades let him down by a rope to secure the eggs or young, when he was attacked by the female eagle with such fury that he was obliged to defend himself with his knife. In doing so, by a misstroke, he nearly severed the rope that held him, and was drawn up by a single strand from his perilous position. The bald eagle, also, builds on high rocks, according to Audubon, though Wilson describes the nest of one which he saw near Great Egg Harbor, in the top of a large yellow pine. It was a vast pile of sticks, sods, sedge, grass, reeds, etc., five or six feet high by four broad, and with little or no concavity. It had been used for many years, and he was told that the eagles made it a sort of home or lodging-place in all seasons. The eagle in all cases uses one nest, with more or less repair, for several years. Many of our common birds do the same. The birds may be divided, with respect to this and kindred points, into five general classes. First, those that repair or appropriate the last year's nest, as the wren, swallow, bluebird, great-crested flycatcher, owls, eagles, fish hawk, and a few others. Secondly, those that build anew each season, though frequently rearing more than one brood in the same nest. Of these the phoebe-bird is a well-known example. Thirdly, those that build a new nest for each brood, which includes by far the greatest number of species. Fourthly, a limited number that make no nest of their own, but appropriate the abandoned nests of other birds. Finally, those who use no nest at all, but deposit their eggs in the sand, which is the case with a large number of aquatic fowls. 1866. VI THE HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS On looking at the southern and more distant Catskills from the Hudson River on the east, or on looking at them from the west from some point of vantage in Delaware County, you see, amid the group of mountains, one that looks like the back and shoulders of a gigantic horse. The horse has got his head down grazing; the shoulders are high, and the descent from them down his neck very steep; if he were to lift up his head, one sees that it would be carried far above all other peaks, and that the noble beast might gaze straight to his peers in the Adirondacks or the White Mountains. But the lowered head never comes up; some spell or enchantment keeps it down there amid the mighty herd; and the high round shoulders and the smooth strong back of the steed are alone visible. The peak to which I refer is Slide Mountain, the highest of the Catskills by some two hundred feet, and probably the most inaccessible; certainly the hardest to get a view of, it is hedged about so completely by other peaks,--the greatest mountain of them all, and apparently the least willing to be seen; only at a distance of thirty or forty miles is it seen to stand up above all other peaks. It takes its name from a landslide which occurred many years ago down its steep northern side, or down the neck of the grazing steed. The mane of spruce and balsam fir was stripped away for many hundred feet, leaving a long gray streak visible from afar. Slide Mountain is the centre and the chief of the southern Catskills. Streams flow from its base, and from the base of its subordinates, to all points of the compass,--the Rondout and the Neversink to the south; the Beaverkill to the west; the Esopus to the north; and several lesser streams to the east. With its summit as the centre, a radius of ten miles would include within the circle described but very little cultivated land; only a few poor, wild farms in some of the numerous valleys. The soil is poor, a mixture of gravel and clay, and is subject to slides. It lies in the valleys in ridges and small hillocks, as if dumped there from a huge cart. The tops of the southern Catskills are all capped with a kind of conglomerate, or "pudden stone,"--a rock of cemented quartz pebbles which underlies the coal measures. This rock disintegrates under the action of the elements, and the sand and gravel which result are carried into the valleys and make up the most of the soil. From the northern Catskills, so far as I know them, this rock has been swept clean. Low down in the valleys the old red sandstone crops out, and, as you go west into Delaware County, in many places it alone remains and makes up most of the soil, all the superincumbent rock having been carried away. Slide Mountain had been a summons and a challenge to me for many years. I had fished every stream that it nourished, and had camped in the wilderness on all sides of it, and whenever I had caught a glimpse of its summit I had promised myself to set foot there before another season should pass. But the seasons came and went, and my feet got no nimbler, and Slide Mountain no lower, until finally, one July, seconded by an energetic friend, we thought to bring Slide to terms by approaching him through the mountains on the east. With a farmer's son for guide we struck in by way of Weaver Hollow, and, after a long and desperate climb, contented ourselves with the Wittenberg, instead of Slide. The view from the Wittenberg is in many respects more striking, as you are perched immediately above a broader and more distant sweep of country, and are only about two hundred feet lower. You are here on the eastern brink of the southern Catskills, and the earth falls away at your feet and curves down through an immense stretch of forest till it joins the plain of Shokan, and thence sweeps away to the Hudson and beyond. Slide is southwest of you, six or seven miles distant, but is visible only when you climb into a treetop. I climbed and saluted him, and promised to call next time. We passed the night on the Wittenberg, sleeping on the moss, between two decayed logs, with balsam boughs thrust into the ground and meeting and forming a canopy over us. In coming off the mountain in the morning we ran upon a huge porcupine, and I learned for the first time that the tail of a porcupine goes with a spring like a trap. It seems to be a set-lock; and you no sooner touch with the weight of a hair one of the quills than the tail leaps up in a most surprising manner, and the laugh is not on your side. The beast cantered along the path in my front, and I threw myself upon him, shielded by my roll of blankets. He submitted quietly to the indignity, and lay very still under my blankets, with his broad tail pressed close to the ground. This I proceeded to investigate, but had not fairly made a beginning when it went off like a trap, and my hand and wrist were full of quills. This caused me to let up on the creature, when it lumbered away till it tumbled down a precipice. The quills were quickly removed from my hand, when we gave chase. When we came up to him, he had wedged himself in between the rocks so that he presented only a back bristling with quills, with the tail lying in ambush below. He had chosen his position well, and seemed to defy us. After amusing ourselves by repeatedly springing his tail and receiving the quills in a rotten stick, we made a slip-noose out of a spruce root, and, after much manoeuvring, got it over his head and led him forth. In what a peevish, injured tone the creature did complain of our unfair tactics! He protested and protested, and whimpered and scolded like some infirm old man tormented by boys. His game after we led him forth was to keep himself as much as possible in the shape of a ball, but with two sticks and the cord we finally threw him over on his back and exposed his quill-less and vulnerable under side, when he fairly surrendered and seemed to say, "Now you may do with me as you like." His great chisel-like teeth, which are quite as formidable as those of the woodchuck, he does not appear to use at all in his defense, but relies entirely upon his quills, and when those fail him, he is done for. [Illustration: THE WITTENBERG FROM WOODLAND VALLEY] After amusing ourselves with him awhile longer, we released him and went on our way. The trail to which we had committed ourselves led us down into Woodland Valley, a retreat which so took my eye by its fine trout brook, its superb mountain scenery, and its sweet seclusion, that I marked it for my own, and promised myself a return to it at no distant day. This promise I kept, and pitched my tent there twice during that season. Both occasions were a sort of laying siege to Slide, but we only skirmished with him at a distance; the actual assault was not undertaken. But the following year, reinforced by two other brave climbers, we determined upon the assault, and upon making it from this the most difficult side. The regular way is by Big Ingin Valley, where the climb is comparatively easy, and where it is often made by women. But from Woodland Valley only men may essay the ascent. Larkins is the upper inhabitant, and from our camping-ground near his clearing we set out early one June morning. One would think nothing could be easier to find than a big mountain, especially when one is encamped upon a stream which he knows springs out of its very loins. But for some reason or other we had got an idea that Slide Mountain was a very slippery customer and must be approached cautiously. We had tried from several points in the valley to get a view of it, but were not quite sure we had seen its very head. When on the Wittenberg, a neighboring peak, the year before, I had caught a brief glimpse of it only by climbing a dead tree and craning up for a moment from its topmost branch. It would seem as if the mountain had taken every precaution to shut itself off from a near view. It was a shy mountain, and we were about to stalk it through six or seven miles of primitive woods, and we seemed to have some unreasonable fear that it might elude us. We had been told of parties who had essayed the ascent from this side, and had returned baffled and bewildered. In a tangle of primitive woods, the very bigness of the mountain baffles one. It is all mountain; whichever way you turn--and one turns sometimes in such cases before he knows it--the foot finds a steep and rugged ascent. The eye is of little service; one must be sure of his bearings and push boldly on and up. One is not unlike a flea upon a great shaggy beast, looking for the animal's head; or even like a much smaller and much less nimble creature,--he may waste his time and steps, and think he has reached the head when he is only upon the rump. Hence I questioned our host, who had several times made the ascent, closely. Larkins laid his old felt hat upon the table, and, placing one hand upon one side of it and the other upon the other, said: "There Slide lies, between the two forks of the stream, just as my hat lies between my two hands. David will go with you to the forks, and then you will push right on up." But Larkins was not right, though he had traversed all those mountains many times over. The peak we were about to set out for did not lie between the forks, but exactly at the head of one of them; the beginnings of the stream are in the very path of the slide, as we afterward found. We broke camp early in the morning, and with our blankets strapped to our backs and rations in our pockets for two days, set out along an ancient and in places an obliterated bark road that followed and crossed and recrossed the stream. The morning was bright and warm, but the wind was fitful and petulant, and I predicted rain. What a forest solitude our obstructed and dilapidated wood-road led us through! five miles of primitive woods before we came to the forks, three miles before we came to the "burnt shanty," a name merely,--no shanty there now for twenty-five years past. The ravages of the barkpeelers were still visible, now in a space thickly strewn with the soft and decayed trunks of hemlock-trees, and overgrown with wild cherry, then in huge mossy logs scattered through the beech and maple woods. Some of these logs were so soft and mossy that one could sit or recline upon them as upon a sofa. But the prettiest thing was the stream soliloquizing in such musical tones there amid the moss-covered rocks and boulders. How clean it looked, what purity! Civilization corrupts the streams as it corrupts the Indian; only in such remote woods can you now see a brook in all its original freshness and beauty. Only the sea and the mountain forest brook are pure; all between is contaminated more or less by the work of man. An ideal trout brook was this, now hurrying, now loitering, now deepening around a great boulder, now gliding evenly over a pavement of green-gray stone and pebbles; no sediment or stain of any kind, but white and sparkling as snow-water, and nearly as cool. Indeed, the water of all this Catskill region is the best in the world. For the first few days, one feels as if he could almost live on the water alone; he cannot drink enough of it. In this particular it is indeed the good Bible land, "a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills." Near the forks we caught, or thought we caught, through an opening, a glimpse of Slide. Was it Slide? was it the head, or the rump, or the shoulder of the shaggy monster we were in quest of? At the forks there was a bewildering maze of underbrush and great trees, and the way did not seem at all certain; nor was David, who was then at the end of his reckoning, able to reassure us. But in assaulting a mountain, as in assaulting a fort, boldness is the watchword. We pressed forward, following a line of blazed trees for nearly a mile, then, turning to the left, began the ascent of the mountain. It was steep, hard climbing. We saw numerous marks of both bears and deer; but no birds, save at long intervals the winter wren flitting here and there, and darting under logs and rubbish like a mouse. Occasionally its gushing, lyrical song would break the silence. After we had climbed an hour or two, the clouds began to gather, and presently the rain began to come down. This was discouraging; but we put our backs up against trees and rocks, and waited for the shower to pass. "They were wet with the showers of the mountain, and embraced the rocks for want of shelter," as they did in Job's time. But the shower was light and brief, and we were soon under way again. Three hours from the forks brought us out on the broad level back of the mountain upon which Slide, considered as an isolated peak, is reared. After a time we entered a dense growth of spruce which covered a slight depression in the table of the mountain. The moss was deep, the ground spongy, the light dim, the air hushed. The transition from the open, leafy woods to this dim, silent, weird grove was very marked. It was like the passage from the street into the temple. Here we paused awhile and ate our lunch, and refreshed ourselves with water gathered from a little well sunk in the moss. The quiet and repose of this spruce grove proved to be the calm that goes before the storm. As we passed out of it, we came plump upon the almost perpendicular battlements of Slide. The mountain rose like a huge, rock-bound fortress from this plain-like expanse. It was ledge upon ledge, precipice upon precipice, up which and over which we made our way slowly and with great labor, now pulling ourselves up by our hands, then cautiously finding niches for our feet and zigzagging right and left from shelf to shelf. This northern side of the mountain was thickly covered with moss and lichens, like the north side of a tree. This made it soft to the foot, and broke many a slip and fall. Everywhere a stunted growth of yellow birch, mountain-ash, and spruce and fir opposed our progress. The ascent at such an angle with a roll of blankets on your back is not unlike climbing a tree: every limb resists your progress and pushes you back; so that when we at last reached the summit, after twelve or fifteen hundred feet of this sort of work, the fight was about all out of the best of us. It was then nearly two o'clock, so that we had been about seven hours in coming seven miles. Here on the top of the mountain we overtook spring, which had been gone from the valley nearly a month. Red clover was opening in the valley below, and wild strawberries just ripening; on the summit the yellow birch was just hanging out its catkins, and the claytonia, or spring-beauty, was in bloom. The leaf-buds of the trees were just bursting, making a faint mist of green, which, as the eye swept downward, gradually deepened until it became a dense, massive cloud in the valleys. At the foot of the mountain the clintonia, or northern green lily, and the low shadbush were showing their berries, but long before the top was reached they were found in bloom. I had never before stood amid blooming claytonia, a flower of April, and looked down upon a field that held ripening strawberries. Every thousand feet elevation seemed to make about ten days' difference in the vegetation, so that the season was a month or more later on the top of the mountain than at its base. A very pretty flower which we began to meet with well up on the mountain-side was the painted trillium, the petals white, veined with pink. The low, stunted growth of spruce and fir which clothes the top of Slide has been cut away over a small space on the highest point, laying open the view on nearly all sides. Here we sat down and enjoyed our triumph. We saw the world as the hawk or the balloonist sees it when he is three thousand feet in the air. How soft and flowing all the outlines of the hills and mountains beneath us looked! The forests dropped down and undulated away over them, covering them like a carpet. To the east we looked over the near-by Wittenberg range to the Hudson and beyond; to the south, Peak-o'-Moose, with its sharp crest, and Table Mountain, with its long level top, were the two conspicuous objects; in the west, Mt. Graham and Double Top, about three thousand eight hundred feet each, arrested the eye; while in our front to the north we looked over the top of Panther Mountain to the multitudinous peaks of the northern Catskills. All was mountain and forest on every hand. Civilization seemed to have done little more than to have scratched this rough, shaggy surface of the earth here and there. In any such view, the wild, the aboriginal, the geographical greatly predominate. The works of man dwindle, and the original features of the huge globe come out. Every single object or point is dwarfed; the valley of the Hudson is only a wrinkle in the earth's surface. You discover with a feeling of surprise that the great thing is the earth itself, which stretches away on every hand so far beyond your ken. The Arabs believe that the mountains steady the earth and hold it together; but they have only to get on the top of a high one to see how insignificant mountains are, and how adequate the earth looks to get along without them. To the imaginative Oriental people, mountains seemed to mean much more than they do to us. They were sacred; they were the abodes of their divinities. They offered their sacrifices upon them. In the Bible, mountains are used as a symbol of that which is great and holy. Jerusalem is spoken of as a holy mountain. The Syrians were beaten by the Children of Israel because, said they, "their gods are gods of the hills; therefore were they stronger than we." It was on Mount Horeb that God appeared to Moses in the burning bush, and on Sinai that He delivered to him the law. Josephus says that the Hebrew shepherds never pasture their flocks on Sinai, believing it to be the abode of Jehovah. The solitude of mountain-tops is peculiarly impressive, and it is certainly easier to believe the Deity appeared in a burning bush there than in the valley below. When the clouds of heaven, too, come down and envelop the top of the mountain,--how such a circumstance must have impressed the old God-fearing Hebrews! Moses knew well how to surround the law with the pomp and circumstance that would inspire the deepest awe and reverence. But when the clouds came down and enveloped us on Slide Mountain, the grandeur, the solemnity, were gone in a twinkling; the portentous-looking clouds proved to be nothing but base fog that wet us and extinguished the world for us. How tame, and prosy, and humdrum the scene instantly became! But when the fog lifted, and we looked from under it as from under a just-raised lid, and the eye plunged again like an escaped bird into those vast gulfs of space that opened at our feet, the feeling of grandeur and solemnity quickly came back. The first want we felt on the top of Slide, after we had got some rest, was a want of water. Several of us cast about, right and left, but no sign of water was found. But water must be had, so we all started off deliberately to hunt it up. We had not gone many hundred yards before we chanced upon an ice-cave beneath some rocks,--vast masses of ice, with crystal pools of water near. This was good luck, indeed, and put a new and a brighter face on the situation. Slide Mountain enjoys a distinction which no other mountain in the State, so far as is known, does,--it has a thrush peculiar to itself. This thrush was discovered and described by Eugene P. Bicknell, of New York, in 1880, and has been named Bicknell's thrush. A better name would have been Slide Mountain thrush, as the bird so far has been found only on this mountain.[1] I did not see or hear it upon the Wittenberg, which is only a few miles distant, and only two hundred feet lower. In its appearance to the eye among the trees, one would not distinguish it from the gray-cheeked thrush of Baird, or the olive-backed thrush, but its song is totally different. The moment I heard it I said, "There is a new bird, a new thrush," for the quality of all thrush songs is the same. A moment more, and I knew it was Bicknell's thrush. The song is in a minor key, finer, more attenuated, and more under the breath than that of any other thrush. It seemed as if the bird was blowing in a delicate, slender, golden tube, so fine and yet so flute-like and resonant the song appeared. At times it was like a musical whisper of great sweetness and power. The birds were numerous about the summit, but we saw them nowhere else. No other thrush was seen, though a few times during our stay I caught a mere echo of the hermit's song far down the mountain-side. A bird I was not prepared to see or to hear was the black-poll warbler, a bird usually found much farther north, but here it was, amid the balsam firs, uttering its simple, lisping song. [Footnote 1: Bicknell's thrush turns out to be the more southern form of the gray-cheeked thrush, and is found on the higher mountains of New York and New England.] The rocks on the tops of these mountains are quite sure to attract one's attention, even if he have no eye for such things. They are masses of light reddish conglomerate, composed of round wave-worn quartz pebbles. Every pebble has been shaped and polished upon some ancient seacoast, probably the Devonian. The rock disintegrates where it is most exposed to the weather, and forms a loose sandy and pebbly soil. These rocks form the floor of the coal formation, but in the Catskill region only the floor remains; the superstructure has never existed, or has been swept away; hence one would look for a coal mine here over his head in the air, rather than under his feet. This rock did not have to climb up here as we did; the mountain stooped and took it upon its back in the bottom of the old seas, and then got lifted up again. This happened so long ago that the memory of the oldest inhabitants of these parts yields no clew to the time. A pleasant task we had in reflooring and reroofing the log-hut with balsam boughs against the night. Plenty of small balsams grew all about, and we soon had a huge pile of their branches in the old hut. What a transformation, this fresh green carpet and our fragrant bed, like the deep-furred robe of some huge animal, wrought in that dingy interior! Two or three things disturbed our sleep. A cup of strong beef-tea taken for supper disturbed mine; then the porcupines kept up such a grunting and chattering near our heads, just on the other side of the log, that sleep was difficult. In my wakeful mood I was a good deal annoyed by a little rabbit that kept whipping in at our dilapidated door and nibbling at our bread and hardtack. He persisted even after the gray of the morning appeared. Then about four o'clock it began gently to rain. I think I heard the first drop that fell. My companions were all in sound sleep. The rain increased, and gradually the sleepers awoke. It was like the tread of an advancing enemy which every ear had been expecting. The roof over us was of the poorest, and we had no confidence in it. It was made of the thin bark of spruce and balsam, and was full of hollows and depressions. Presently these hollows got full of water, when there was a simultaneous downpour of bigger and lesser rills upon the sleepers beneath. Said sleepers, as one man, sprang up, each taking his blanket with him; but by the time some of the party had got themselves stowed away under the adjacent rock, the rain ceased. It was little more than the dissolving of the nightcap of fog which so often hangs about these heights. With the first appearance of the dawn I had heard the new thrush in the scattered trees near the hut,--a strain as fine as if blown upon a fairy flute, a suppressed musical whisper from out the tops of the dark spruces. Probably never did there go up from the top of a great mountain a smaller song to greet the day, albeit it was of the purest harmony. It seemed to have in a more marked degree the quality of interior reverberation than any other thrush song I had ever heard. Would the altitude or the situation account for its minor key? Loudness would avail little in such a place. Sounds are not far heard on a mountain-top; they are lost in the abyss of vacant air. But amid these low, dense, dark spruces, which make a sort of canopied privacy of every square rod of ground, what could be more in keeping than this delicate musical whisper? It was but the soft hum of the balsams, interpreted and embodied in a bird's voice. It was the plan of two of our companions to go from Slide over into the head of the Rondout, and thence out to the railroad at the little village of Shokan, an unknown way to them, involving nearly an all-day pull the first day through a pathless wilderness. We ascended to the topmost floor of the tower, and from my knowledge of the topography of the country I pointed out to them their course, and where the valley of the Rondout must lie. The vast stretch of woods, when it came into view from under the foot of Slide, seemed from our point of view very uniform. It swept away to the southeast, rising gently toward the ridge that separates Lone Mountain from Peak-o'-Moose, and presented a comparatively easy problem. As a clew to the course, the line where the dark belt or saddle-cloth of spruce, which covered the top of the ridge they were to skirt, ended, and the deciduous woods began, a sharp, well-defined line was pointed out as the course to be followed. It led straight to the top of the broad level-backed ridge which connected two higher peaks, and immediately behind which lay the headwaters of the Rondout. Having studied the map thoroughly, and possessed themselves of the points, they rolled up their blankets about nine o'clock, and were off, my friend and I purposing to spend yet another day and night on Slide. As our friends plunged down into that fearful abyss, we shouted to them the old classic caution, "Be bold, be bold, _be not too_ bold." It required courage to make such a leap into the unknown, as I knew those young men were making, and it required prudence. A faint heart or a bewildered head, and serious consequences might have resulted. The theory of a thing is so much easier than the practice! The theory is in the air, the practice is in the woods; the eye, the thought, travel easily where the foot halts and stumbles. However, our friends made the theory and the fact coincide; they kept the dividing line between the spruce and the birches, and passed over the ridge into the valley safely; but they were torn and bruised and wet by the showers, and made the last few miles of their journey on will and pluck alone, their last pound of positive strength having been exhausted in making the descent through the chaos of rocks and logs into the head of the valley. In such emergencies one overdraws his account; he travels on the credit of the strength he expects to gain when he gets his dinner and some sleep. Unless one has made such a trip himself (and I have several times in my life), he can form but a faint idea what it is like,--what a trial it is to the body, and what a trial it is to the mind. You are fighting a battle with an enemy in ambush. How those miles and leagues which your feet must compass lie hidden there in that wilderness; how they seem to multiply themselves; how they are fortified with logs, and rocks, and fallen trees; how they take refuge in deep gullies, and skulk behind unexpected eminences! Your body not only feels the fatigue of the battle, your mind feels the strain of the undertaking; you may miss your mark; the mountains may outmanoeuvre you. All that day, whenever I looked upon that treacherous wilderness, I thought with misgivings of those two friends groping their way there, and would have given much to know how it fared with them. Their concern was probably less than my own, because they were more ignorant of what was before them. Then there was just a slight shadow of a fear in my mind that I might have been in error about some points of the geography I had pointed out to them. But all was well, and the victory was won according to the campaign which I had planned. When we saluted our friends upon their own doorstep a week afterward, the wounds were nearly healed and the rents all mended. When one is on a mountain-top, he spends most of the time in looking at the show he has been at such pains to see. About every hour we would ascend the rude lookout to take a fresh observation. With a glass I could see my native hills forty miles away to the northwest. I was now upon the back of the horse, yea, upon the highest point of his shoulders, which had so many times attracted my attention as a boy. We could look along his balsam-covered back to his rump, from which the eye glanced away down into the forests of the Neversink, and on the other hand plump down into the gulf where his head was grazing or drinking. During the day there was a grand procession of thunderclouds filing along over the northern Catskills, and letting down veils of rain and enveloping them. From such an elevation one has the same view of the clouds that he does from the prairie or the ocean. They do not seem to rest across and to be upborne by the hills, but they emerge out of the dim west, thin and vague, and grow and stand up as they get nearer and roll by him, on a level but invisible highway, huge chariots of wind and storm. In the afternoon a thick cloud threatened us, but it proved to be the condensation of vapor that announces a cold wave. There was soon a marked fall in the temperature, and as night drew near it became pretty certain that we were going to have a cold time of it. The wind rose, the vapor above us thickened and came nearer, until it began to drive across the summit in slender wraiths, which curled over the brink and shut out the view. We became very diligent in getting in our night wood, and in gathering more boughs to calk up the openings in the hut. The wood we scraped together was a sorry lot, roots and stumps and branches of decayed spruce, such as we could collect without an axe, and some rags and tags of birch bark. The fire was built in one corner of the shanty, the smoke finding easy egress through large openings on the east side and in the roof over it. We doubled up the bed, making it thicker and more nest-like, and as darkness set in, stowed ourselves into it beneath our blankets. The searching wind found out every crevice about our heads and shoulders, and it was icy cold. Yet we fell asleep, and had slept about an hour when my companion sprang up in an unwonted state of excitement for so placid a man. His excitement was occasioned by the sudden discovery that what appeared to be a bar of ice was fast taking the place of his backbone. His teeth chattered, and he was convulsed with ague. I advised him to replenish the fire, and to wrap himself in his blanket and cut the liveliest capers he was capable of in so circumscribed a place. This he promptly did, and the thought of his wild and desperate dance there in the dim light, his tall form, his blanket flapping, his teeth chattering, the porcupines outside marking time with their squeals and grunts, still provokes a smile, though it was a serious enough matter at the time. After a while, the warmth came back to him, but he dared not trust himself again to the boughs; he fought the cold all night as one might fight a besieging foe. By carefully husbanding the fuel, the beleaguering enemy was kept at bay till morning came; but when morning did come, even the huge root he had used as a chair was consumed. Rolled in my blanket beneath a foot or more of balsam boughs, I had got some fairly good sleep, and was most of the time oblivious of the melancholy vigil of my friend. As we had but a few morsels of food left, and had been on rather short rations the day before, hunger was added to his other discomforts. At that time a letter was on the way to him from his wife, which contained this prophetic sentence: "I hope thee is not suffering with cold and hunger on some lone mountain-top." Mr. Bicknell's thrush struck up again at the first signs of dawn, notwithstanding the cold. I could hear his penetrating and melodious whisper as I lay buried beneath the boughs. Presently I arose and invited my friend to turn in for a brief nap, while I gathered some wood and set the coffee brewing. With a brisk, roaring fire on, I left for the spring to fetch some water, and to make my toilet. The leaves of the mountain goldenrod, which everywhere covered the ground in the opening, were covered with frozen particles of vapor, and the scene, shut in by fog, was chill and dreary enough. We were now not long in squaring an account with Slide, and making ready to leave. Round pellets of snow began to fall, and we came off the mountain on the 10th of June in a November storm and temperature. Our purpose was to return by the same valley we had come. A well-defined trail led off the summit to the north; to this we committed ourselves. In a few minutes we emerged at the head of the slide that had given the mountain its name. This was the path made by visitors to the scene; when it ended, the track of the avalanche began; no bigger than your hand, apparently, had it been at first, but it rapidly grew, until it became several rods in width. It dropped down from our feet straight as an arrow until it was lost in the fog, and looked perilously steep. The dark forms of the spruce were clinging to the edge of it, as if reaching out to their fellows to save them. We hesitated on the brink, but finally cautiously began the descent. The rock was quite naked and slippery, and only on the margin of the slide were there any boulders to stay the foot, or bushy growths to aid the hand. As we paused, after some minutes, to select our course, one of the finest surprises of the trip awaited us: the fog in our front was swiftly whirled up by the breeze, like the drop-curtain at the theatre, only much more rapidly, and in a twinkling the vast gulf opened before us. It was so sudden as to be almost bewildering. The world opened like a book, and there were the pictures; the spaces were without a film, the forests and mountains looked surprisingly near; in the heart of the northern Catskills a wild valley was seen flooded with sunlight. Then the curtain ran down again, and nothing was left but the gray strip of rock to which we clung, plunging down into the obscurity. Down and down we made our way. Then the fog lifted again. It was Jack and his beanstalk renewed; new wonders, new views, awaited us every few moments, till at last the whole valley below us stood in the clear sunshine. We passed down a precipice, and there was a rill of water, the beginning of the creek that wound through the valley below; farther on, in a deep depression, lay the remains of an old snow-bank; Winter had made his last stand here, and April flowers were springing up almost amid his very bones. We did not find a palace, and a hungry giant, and a princess, at the end of our beanstalk, but we found a humble roof and the hospitable heart of Mrs. Larkins, which answered our purpose better. And we were in the mood, too, to have undertaken an eating-bout with any giant Jack ever discovered. Of all the retreats I have found amid the Catskills, there is no other that possesses quite so many charms for me as this valley, wherein stands Larkins's humble dwelling; it is so wild, so quiet, and has such superb mountain views. In coming up the valley, you have apparently reached the head of civilization a mile or more lower down; here the rude little houses end, and you turn to the left into the woods. Presently you emerge into a clearing again, and before you rises the rugged and indented crest of Panther Mountain, and near at hand, on a low plateau, rises the humble roof of Larkins,--you get a picture of the Panther and of the homestead at one glance. Above the house hangs a high, bold cliff covered with forest, with a broad fringe of blackened and blasted tree-trunks, where the cackling of the great pileated woodpecker may be heard; on the left a dense forest sweeps up to the sharp spruce-covered cone of the Wittenberg, nearly four thousand feet high, while at the head of the valley rises Slide over all. From a meadow just back of Larkins's barn, a view may be had of all these mountains, while the terraced side of Cross Mountain bounds the view immediately to the east. Running from the top of Panther toward Slide one sees a gigantic wall of rock, crowned with a dark line of fir. The forest abruptly ends, and in its stead rises the face of this colossal rocky escarpment, like some barrier built by the mountain gods. Eagles might nest here. It breaks the monotony of the world of woods very impressively. I delight in sitting on a rock in one of these upper fields, and seeing the sun go down behind Panther. The rapid-flowing brook below me fills all the valley with a soft murmur. There is no breeze, but the great atmospheric tide flows slowly in toward the cooling forest; one can see it by the motes in the air illuminated by the setting sun: presently, as the air cools a little, the tide turns and flows slowly out. The long, winding valley up to the foot of Slide, five miles of primitive woods, how wild and cool it looks, its one voice the murmur of the creek! On the Wittenberg the sunshine lingers long; now it stands up like an island in a sea of shadows, then slowly sinks beneath the wave. The evening call of a robin or a veery at his vespers makes a marked impression on the silence and the solitude. The following day my friend and I pitched our tent in the woods beside the stream where I had pitched it twice before, and passed several delightful days, with trout in abundance and wild strawberries at intervals. Mrs. Larkins's cream-pot, butter-jar, and bread-box were within easy reach. Near the camp was an unusually large spring, of icy coldness, which served as our refrigerator. Trout or milk immersed in this spring in a tin pail would keep sweet four or five days. One night some creature, probably a lynx or a raccoon, came and lifted the stone from the pail that held the trout and took out a fine string of them, and ate them up on the spot, leaving only the string and one head. In August bears come down to an ancient and now brushy bark-peeling near by for blackberries. But the creature that most infests these backwoods is the porcupine. He is as stupid and indifferent as the skunk; his broad, blunt nose points a witless head. They are great gnawers, and will gnaw your house down if you do not look out. Of a summer evening they will walk coolly into your open door if not prevented. The most annoying animal to the camper-out in this region, and the one he needs to be most on the lookout for, is the cow. Backwoods cows and young cattle seem always to be famished for salt, and they will fairly lick the fisherman's clothes off his back, and his tent and equipage out of existence, if you give them a chance. On one occasion some wood-ranging heifers and steers that had been hovering around our camp for some days made a raid upon it when we were absent. The tent was shut and everything snugged up, but they ran their long tongues under the tent, and, tasting something savory, hooked out John Stuart Mill's "Essays on Religion," which one of us had brought along, thinking to read in the woods. They mouthed the volume around a good deal, but its logic was too tough for them, and they contented themselves with devouring the paper in which it was wrapped. If the cattle had not been surprised at just that point, it is probable the tent would have gone down before their eager curiosity and thirst for salt. The raid which Larkins's dog made upon our camp was amusing rather than annoying. He was a very friendly and intelligent shepherd dog, probably a collie. Hardly had we sat down to our first lunch in camp before he called on us. But as he was disposed to be too friendly, and to claim too large a share of the lunch, we rather gave him the cold shoulder. He did not come again; but a few evenings afterward, as we sauntered over to the house on some trifling errand, the dog suddenly conceived a bright little project. He seemed to say to himself, on seeing us, "There come both of them now, just as I have been hoping they would; now, while they are away, I will run quickly over and know what they have got that a dog can eat." My companion saw the dog get up on our arrival, and go quickly in the direction of our camp, and he said something in the cur's manner suggested to him the object of his hurried departure. He called my attention to the fact, and we hastened back. On cautiously nearing camp, the dog was seen amid the pails in the shallow water of the creek investigating them. He had uncovered the butter, and was about to taste it, when we shouted, and he made quick steps for home, with a very "kill-sheep" look. When we again met him at the house next day, he could not look us in the face, but sneaked off, utterly crest-fallen. This was a clear case of reasoning on the part of the dog, and afterward a clear case of a sense of guilt from wrong-doing. The dog will probably be a man before any other animal. VII SPECKLED TROUT I The legend of the wary trout, hinted at in the last sketch, is to be further illustrated in this and some following chapters. We shall get at more of the meaning of those dark water-lines, and I hope, also, not entirely miss the significance of the gold and silver spots and the glancing iridescent hues. The trout is dark and obscure above, but behind this foil there are wondrous tints that reward the believing eye. Those who seek him in his wild remote haunts are quite sure to get the full force of the sombre and uninviting aspects,--the wet, the cold, the toil, the broken rest, and the huge, savage, uncompromising nature,--but the true angler sees farther than these, and is never thwarted of his legitimate reward by them. I have been a seeker of trout from my boyhood, and on all the expeditions in which this fish has been the ostensible purpose I have brought home more game than my creel showed. In fact, in my mature years I find I got more of nature into me, more of the woods, the wild, nearer to bird and beast, while threading my native streams for trout, than in almost any other way. It furnished a good excuse to go forth; it pitched one in the right key; it sent one through the fat and marrowy places of field and wood. Then the fisherman has a harmless, preoccupied look; he is a kind of vagrant that nothing fears. He blends himself with the trees and the shadows. All his approaches are gentle and indirect. He times himself to the meandering, soliloquizing stream; its impulse bears him along. At the foot of the waterfall he sits sequestered and hidden in its volume of sound. The birds know he has no designs upon them, and the animals see that his mind is in the creek. His enthusiasm anneals him, and makes him pliable to the scenes and influences he moves among. Then what acquaintance he makes with the stream! He addresses himself to it as a lover to his mistress; he wooes it and stays with it till he knows its most hidden secrets. It runs through his thoughts not less than through its banks there; he feels the fret and thrust of every bar and boulder. Where it deepens, his purpose deepens; where it is shallow, he is indifferent. He knows how to interpret its every glance and dimple; its beauty haunts him for days. [Illustration: A TROUT STREAM] I am sure I run no risk of overpraising the charm and attractiveness of a well-fed trout stream, every drop of water in it as bright and pure as if the nymphs had brought it all the way from its source in crystal goblets, and as cool as if it had been hatched beneath a glacier. When the heated and soiled and jaded refugee from the city first sees one, he feels as if he would like to turn it into his bosom and let it flow through him a few hours, it suggests such healing freshness and newness. How his roily thoughts would run clear; how the sediment would go downstream! Could he ever have an impure or an unwholesome wish afterward? The next best thing he can do is to tramp along its banks and surrender himself to its influence. If he reads it intently enough, he will, in a measure, be taking it into his mind and heart, and experiencing its salutary ministrations. Trout streams coursed through every valley my boyhood knew. I crossed them, and was often lured and detained by them, on my way to and from school. We bathed in them during the long summer noons, and felt for the trout under their banks. A holiday was a holiday indeed that brought permission to go fishing over on Rose's Brook, or up Hardscrabble, or in Meeker's Hollow; all-day trips, from morning till night, through meadows and pastures and beechen woods, wherever the shy, limpid stream led. What an appetite it developed! a hunger that was fierce and aboriginal, and that the wild strawberries we plucked as we crossed the hill teased rather than allayed. When but a few hours could be had, gained perhaps by doing some piece of work about the farm or garden in half the allotted time, the little creek that headed in the paternal domain was handy; when half a day was at one's disposal, there were the hemlocks, less than a mile distant, with their loitering, meditative, log-impeded stream and their dusky, fragrant depths. Alert and wide-eyed, one picked his way along, startled now and then by the sudden bursting-up of the partridge, or by the whistling wings of the "dropping snipe," pressing through the brush and the briers, or finding an easy passage over the trunk of a prostrate tree, carefully letting his hook down through some tangle into a still pool, or standing in some high, sombre avenue and watching his line float in and out amid the moss-covered boulders. In my first essayings I used to go to the edge of these hemlocks, seldom dipping into them beyond the first pool where the stream swept under the roots of two large trees. From this point I could look back into the sunlit fields where the cattle were grazing; beyond, all was gloom and mystery; the trout were black, and to my young imagination the silence and the shadows were blacker. But gradually I yielded to the fascination and penetrated the woods farther and farther on each expedition, till the heart of the mystery was fairly plucked out. During the second or third year of my piscatorial experience I went through them, and through the pasture and meadow beyond, and through another strip of hemlocks, to where the little stream joined the main creek of the valley. In June, when my trout fever ran pretty high, and an auspicious day arrived, I would make a trip to a stream a couple of miles distant, that came down out of a comparatively new settlement. It was a rapid mountain brook presenting many difficult problems to the young angler, but a very enticing stream for all that, with its two saw-mill dams, its pretty cascades, its high, shelving rocks sheltering the mossy nests of the phoebe-bird, and its general wild and forbidding aspects. But a meadow brook was always a favorite. The trout like meadows; doubtless their food is more abundant there, and, usually, the good hiding-places are more numerous. As soon as you strike a meadow the character of the creek changes: it goes slower and lies deeper; it tarries to enjoy the high, cool banks and to half hide beneath them; it loves the willows, or rather the willows love it and shelter it from the sun; its spring runs are kept cool by the overhanging grass, and the heavy turf that faces its open banks is not cut away by the sharp hoofs of the grazing cattle. Then there are the bobolinks and the starlings and the meadowlarks, always interested spectators of the angler; there are also the marsh marigolds, the buttercups, or the spotted lilies, and the good angler is always an interested spectator of them. In fact, the patches of meadow land that lie in the angler's course are like the happy experiences in his own life, or like the fine passages in the poem he is reading; the pasture oftener contains the shallow and monotonous places. In the small streams the cattle scare the fish, and soil their element and break down their retreats under the banks. Woodland alternates the best with meadow: the creek loves to burrow under the roots of a great tree, to scoop out a pool after leaping over the prostrate trunk of one, and to pause at the foot of a ledge of moss-covered rocks, with ice-cold water dripping down. How straight the current goes for the rock! Note its corrugated, muscular appearance; it strikes and glances off, but accumulates, deepens with well-defined eddies above and to one side; on the edge of these the trout lurk and spring upon their prey. The angler learns that it is generally some obstacle or hindrance that makes a deep place in the creek, as in a brave life; and his ideal brook is one that lies in deep, well-defined banks, yet makes many a shift from right to left, meets with many rebuffs and adventures, hurled back upon itself by rocks, waylaid by snags and trees, tripped up by precipices, but sooner or later reposing under meadow banks, deepening and eddying beneath bridges, or prosperous and strong in some level stretch of cultivated land with great elms shading it here and there. But I early learned that from almost any stream in a trout country the true angler could take trout, and that the great secret was this, that, whatever bait you used, worm, grasshopper, grub, or fly, there was one thing you must always put upon your hook, namely, your heart: when you bait your hook with your heart the fish always bite; they will jump clear from the water after it; they will dispute with each other over it; it is a morsel they love above everything else. With such bait I have seen the born angler (my grandfather was one) take a noble string of trout from the most unpromising waters, and on the most unpromising day. He used his hook so coyly and tenderly, he approached the fish with such address and insinuation, he divined the exact spot where they lay: if they were not eager, he humored them and seemed to steal by them; if they were playful and coquettish, he would suit his mood to theirs; if they were frank and sincere, he met them halfway; he was so patient and considerate, so entirely devoted to pleasing the critical trout, and so successful in his efforts,--surely his heart was upon his hook, and it was a tender, unctuous heart, too, as that of every angler is. How nicely he would measure the distance! how dexterously he would avoid an overhanging limb or bush and drop the line exactly in the right spot! Of course there was a pulse of feeling and sympathy to the extremity of that line. If your heart is a stone, however, or an empty husk, there is no use to put it upon your hook; it will not tempt the fish; the bait must be quick and fresh. Indeed, a certain quality of youth is indispensable to the successful angler, a certain unworldliness and readiness to invest yourself in an enterprise that doesn't pay in the current coin. Not only is the angler, like the poet, born and not made, as Walton says, but there is a deal of the poet in him, and he is to be judged no more harshly; he is the victim of his genius: those wild streams, how they haunt him! he will play truant to dull care, and flee to them; their waters impart somewhat of their own perpetual youth to him. My grandfather when he was eighty years old would take down his pole as eagerly as any boy, and step off with wonderful elasticity toward the beloved streams; it used to try my young legs a good deal to follow him, specially on the return trip. And no poet was ever more innocent of worldly success or ambition. For, to paraphrase Tennyson,-- "Lusty trout to him were scrip and share, And babbling waters more than cent for cent." He laid up treasures, but they were not in this world. In fact, though the kindest of husbands, I fear he was not what the country people call a "good provider," except in providing trout in their season, though it is doubtful if there was always fat in the house to fry them in. But he could tell you they were worse off than that at Valley Forge, and that trout, or any other fish, were good roasted in the ashes under the coals. He had the Walton requisite of loving quietness and contemplation, and was devout withal. Indeed, in many ways he was akin to those Galilee fishermen who were called to be fishers of men. How he read the Book and pored over it, even at times, I suspect, nodding over it, and laying it down only to take up his rod, over which, unless the trout were very dilatory and the journey very fatiguing, he never nodded! II The Delaware is one of our minor rivers, but it is a stream beloved of the trout. Nearly all its remote branches head in mountain springs, and its collected waters, even when warmed by the summer sun, are as sweet and wholesome as dew swept from the grass. The Hudson wins from it two streams that are fathered by the mountains from whose loins most of its beginnings issue, namely, the Rondout and the Esopus. These swell a more illustrious current than the Delaware, but the Rondout, one of the finest trout streams in the world, makes an uncanny alliance before it reaches its destination, namely, with the malarious Wallkill. In the same nest of mountains from which they start are born the Neversink and the Beaverkill, streams of wondrous beauty that flow south and west into the Delaware. From my native hills I could catch glimpses of the mountains in whose laps these creeks were cradled, but it was not till after many years, and after dwelling in a country where trout are not found, that I returned to pay my respects to them as an angler. My first acquaintance with the Neversink was made in company with some friends in 1869. We passed up the valley of the Big Ingin, marveling at its copious ice-cold springs, and its immense sweep of heavy-timbered mountain-sides. Crossing the range at its head, we struck the Neversink quite unexpectedly about the middle of the afternoon, at a point where it was a good-sized trout stream. It proved to be one of those black mountain brooks born of innumerable ice-cold springs, nourished in the shade, and shod, as it were, with thick-matted moss, that every camper-out remembers. The fish are as black as the stream and very wild. They dart from beneath the fringed rocks, or dive with the hook into the dusky depths,--an integral part of the silence and the shadows. The spell of the moss is over all. The fisherman's tread is noiseless, as he leaps from stone to stone and from ledge to ledge along the bed of the stream. How cool it is! He looks up the dark, silent defile, hears the solitary voice of the water, sees the decayed trunks of fallen trees bridging the stream, and all he has dreamed, when a boy, of the haunts of beasts of prey--the crouching feline tribes, especially if it be near nightfall and the gloom already deepening in the woods--comes freshly to mind, and he presses on, wary and alert, and speaking to his companions in low tones. After an hour or so the trout became less abundant, and with nearly a hundred of the black sprites in our baskets we turned back. Here and there I saw the abandoned nests of the pigeons, sometimes half a dozen in one tree. In a yellow birch which the floods had uprooted, a number of nests were still in place, little shelves or platforms of twigs loosely arranged, and affording little or no protection to the eggs or the young birds against inclement weather. Before we had reached our companions the rain set in again and forced us to take shelter under a balsam. When it slackened we moved on and soon came up with Aaron, who had caught his first trout, and, considerably drenched, was making his way toward camp, which one of the party had gone forward to build. After traveling less than a mile, we saw a smoke struggling up through the dripping trees, and in a few moments were all standing round a blazing fire. But the rain now commenced again, and fairly poured down through the trees, rendering the prospect of cooking and eating our supper there in the woods, and of passing the night on the ground without tent or cover of any kind, rather disheartening. We had been told of a bark shanty a couple of miles farther down the creek, and thitherward we speedily took up our line of march. When we were on the point of discontinuing the search, thinking we had been misinformed or had passed it by, we came in sight of a bark-peeling, in the midst of which a small log house lifted its naked rafters toward the now breaking sky. It had neither floor nor roof, and was less inviting on first sight than the open woods. But a board partition was still standing, out of which we built a rude porch on the east side of the house, large enough for us all to sleep under if well packed, and eat under if we stood up. There was plenty of well-seasoned timber lying about, and a fire was soon burning in front of our quarters that made the scene social and picturesque, especially when the frying-pans were brought into requisition, and the coffee, in charge of Aaron, who was an artist in this line, mingled its aroma with the wild-wood air. At dusk a balsam was felled, and the tips of the branches used to make a bed, which was more fragrant than soft; hemlock is better, because its needles are finer and its branches more elastic. There was a spirt or two of rain during the night, but not enough to find out the leaks in our roof. It took the shower or series of showers of the next day to do that. They commenced about two o'clock in the afternoon. The forenoon had been fine, and we had brought into camp nearly three hundred trout; but before they were half dressed, or the first panfuls fried, the rain set in. First came short, sharp dashes, then a gleam of treacherous sunshine, followed by more and heavier dashes. The wind was in the southwest, and to rain seemed the easiest thing in the world. From fitful dashes to a steady pour the transition was natural. We stood huddled together, stark and grim, under our cover, like hens under a cart. The fire fought bravely for a time, and retaliated with sparks and spiteful tongues of flame; but gradually its spirit was broken, only a heavy body of coal and half-consumed logs in the centre holding out against all odds. The simmering fish were soon floating about in a yellow liquid that did not look in the least appetizing. Point after point gave way in our cover, till standing between the drops was no longer possible. The water coursed down the underside of the boards, and dripped in our necks and formed puddles on our hat-brims. We shifted our guns and traps and viands, till there was no longer any choice of position, when the loaves and the fishes, the salt and the sugar, the pork and the butter, shared the same watery fate. The fire was gasping its last. Little rivulets coursed about it, and bore away the quenched but steaming coals on their bosoms. The spring run in the rear of our camp swelled so rapidly that part of the trout that had been hastily left lying on its banks again found themselves quite at home. For over two hours the floods came down. About four o'clock Orville, who had not yet come from the day's sport, appeared. To say Orville was wet is not much; he was better than that,--he had been washed and rinsed in at least half a dozen waters, and the trout that he bore dangling at the end of a string hardly knew that they had been out of their proper element. But he brought welcome news. He had been two or three miles down the creek, and had seen a log building,--whether house or stable he did not know, but it had the appearance of having a good roof, which was inducement enough for us instantly to leave our present quarters. Our course lay along an old wood-road, and much of the time we were to our knees in water. The woods were literally flooded everywhere. Every little rill and springlet ran like a mill-tail, while the main stream rushed and roared, foaming, leaping, lashing, its volume increased fifty-fold. The water was not roily, but of a rich coffee-color, from the leachings of the woods. No more trout for the next three days! we thought, as we looked upon the rampant stream. After we had labored and floundered along for about an hour, the road turned to the left, and in a little stumpy clearing near the creek a gable uprose on our view. It did not prove to be just such a place as poets love to contemplate. It required a greater effort of the imagination than any of us were then capable of to believe it had ever been a favorite resort of wood-nymphs or sylvan deities. It savored rather of the equine and the bovine. The bark-men had kept their teams there, horses on the one side and oxen on the other, and no Hercules had ever done duty in cleansing the stables. But there was a dry loft overhead with some straw, where we might get some sleep, in spite of the rain and the midges; a double layer of boards, standing at a very acute angle, would keep off the former, while the mingled refuse hay and muck beneath would nurse a smoke that would prove a thorough protection against the latter. And then, when Jim, the two-handed, mounting the trunk of a prostrate maple near by, had severed it thrice with easy and familiar stroke, and, rolling the logs in front of the shanty, had kindled a fire, which, getting the better of the dampness, soon cast a bright glow over all, shedding warmth and light even into the dingy stable, I consented to unsling my knapsack and accept the situation. The rain had ceased, and the sun shone out behind the woods. We had trout sufficient for present needs; and after my first meal in an ox-stall, I strolled out on the rude log bridge to watch the angry Neversink rush by. Its waters fell quite as rapidly as they rose, and before sundown it looked as if we might have fishing again on the morrow. We had better sleep that night than either night before, though there were two disturbing causes,--the smoke in the early part of it, and the cold in the latter. The "no-see-ems" left in disgust; and, though disgusted myself, I swallowed the smoke as best I could, and hugged my pallet of straw the closer. But the day dawned bright, and a plunge in the Neversink set me all right again. The creek, to our surprise and gratification, was only a little higher than before the rain, and some of the finest trout we had yet seen we caught that morning near camp. We tarried yet another day and night at the old stable, but taking our meals outside squatted on the ground, which had now become quite dry. Part of the day I spent strolling about the woods, looking up old acquaintances among the birds, and, as always, half expectant of making some new ones. Curiously enough, the most abundant species were among those I had found rare in most other localities, namely, the small water-wagtail, the mourning ground warbler, and the yellow-bellied woodpecker. The latter seems to be the prevailing woodpecker through the woods of this region. That night the midges, those motes that sting, held high carnival. We learned afterward, in the settlement below and from the barkpeelers, that it was the worst night ever experienced in that valley. We had done no fishing during the day, but had anticipated some fine sport about sundown. Accordingly Aaron and I started off between six and seven o'clock, one going upstream and the other down. The scene was charming. The sun shot up great spokes of light from behind the woods, and beauty, like a presence, pervaded the atmosphere. But torment, multiplied as the sands of the seashore, lurked in every tangle and thicket. In a thoughtless moment I removed my shoes and socks, and waded in the water to secure a fine trout that had accidentally slipped from my string and was helplessly floating with the current. This caused some delay and gave the gnats time to accumulate. Before I had got one foot half dressed I was enveloped in a black mist that settled upon my hands and neck and face, filling my ears with infinitesimal pipings and covering my flesh with infinitesimal bitings. I thought I should have to flee to the friendly fumes of the old stable, with "one stocking off and one stocking on;" but I got my shoe on at last, though not without many amusing interruptions and digressions. In a few moments after this adventure I was in rapid retreat toward camp. Just as I reached the path leading from the shanty to the creek, my companion in the same ignoble flight reached it also, his hat broken and rumpled, and his sanguine countenance looking more sanguinary than I had ever before seen it, and his speech, also, in the highest degree inflammatory. His face and forehead were as blotched and swollen as if he had just run his head into a hornets' nest, and his manner as precipitate as if the whole swarm was still at his back. No smoke or smudge which we ourselves could endure was sufficient in the earlier part of that evening to prevent serious annoyance from the same cause; but later a respite was granted us. About ten o'clock, as we stood round our camp-fire, we were startled by a brief but striking display of the aurora borealis. My imagination had already been excited by talk of legends and of weird shapes and appearances, and when, on looking up toward the sky, I saw those pale, phantasmal waves of magnetic light chasing each other across the little opening above our heads, and at first sight seeming barely to clear the treetops, I was as vividly impressed as if I had caught a glimpse of a veritable spectre of the Neversink. The sky shook and trembled like a great white curtain. After we had climbed to our loft and had lain down to sleep, another adventure befell us. This time a new and uninviting customer appeared upon the scene, the _genius loci_ of the old stable, namely, the "fretful porcupine." We had seen the marks and work of these animals about the shanty, and had been careful each night to hang our traps, guns, etc., beyond their reach, but of the prickly night-walker himself we feared we should not get a view. We had lain down some half hour, and I was just on the threshold of sleep, ready, as it were, to pass through the open door into the land of dreams, when I heard outside somewhere that curious sound,--a sound which I had heard every night I spent in these woods, not only on this but on former expeditions, and which I had settled in my mind as proceeding from the porcupine, since I knew the sounds our other common animals were likely to make,--a sound that might be either a gnawing on some hard, dry substance, or a grating of teeth, or a shrill grunting. Orville heard it also, and, raising up on his elbow, asked, "What is that?" "What the hunters call a 'porcupig,'" said I. "Sure?" "Entirely so." "Why does he make that noise?" "It is a way he has of cursing our fire," I replied. "I heard him last night also." "Where do you suppose he is?" inquired my companion, showing a disposition to look him up. "Not far off, perhaps fifteen or twenty yards from our fire, where the shadows begin to deepen." Orville slipped into his trousers, felt for my gun, and in a moment had disappeared down through the scuttle hole. I had no disposition to follow him, but was rather annoyed than otherwise at the disturbance. Getting the direction of the sound, he went picking his way over the rough, uneven ground, and, when he got where the light failed him, poking every doubtful object with the end of his gun. Presently he poked a light grayish object, like a large round stone, which surprised him by moving off. On this hint he fired, making an incurable wound in the "porcupig," which, nevertheless, tried harder than ever to escape. I lay listening, when, close on the heels of the report of the gun, came excited shouts for a revolver. Snatching up my Smith and Wesson, I hastened, shoeless and hatless, to the scene of action, wondering what was up. I found my companion struggling to detain, with the end of the gun, an uncertain object that was trying to crawl off into the darkness. "Look out!" said Orville, as he saw my bare feet, "the quills are lying thick around here." And so they were; he had blown or beaten them nearly all off the poor creature's back, and was in a fair way completely to disable my gun, the ramrod of which was already broken and splintered clubbing his victim. But a couple of shots from the revolver, sighted by a lighted match, at the head of the animal, quickly settled him. He proved to be an unusually large Canada porcupine,--an old patriarch, gray and venerable, with spines three inches long, and weighing, I should say, twenty pounds. The build of this animal is much like that of the woodchuck, that is, heavy and pouchy. The nose is blunter than that of the woodchuck, the limbs stronger, and the tail broader and heavier. Indeed, the latter appendage is quite club-like, and the animal can, no doubt, deal a smart blow with it. An old hunter with whom I talked thought it aided them in climbing. They are inveterate gnawers, and spend much of their time in trees gnawing the bark. In winter one will take up its abode in a hemlock, and continue there till the tree is quite denuded. The carcass emitted a peculiar, offensive odor, and, though very fat, was not in the least inviting as game. If it is part of the economy of nature for one animal to prey upon some other beneath it, then the poor devil has indeed a mouthful that makes a meal off the porcupine. Panthers and lynxes have essayed it, but have invariably left off at the first course, and have afterwards been found dead, or nearly so, with their heads puffed up like a pincushion, and the quills protruding on all sides. A dog that understands the business will manoeuvre round the porcupine till he gets an opportunity to throw it over on its back, when he fastens on its quilless underbody. Aaron was puzzled to know how long-parted friends could embrace, when it was suggested that the quills could be depressed or elevated at pleasure. The next morning boded rain; but we had become thoroughly sated with the delights of our present quarters, outside and in, and packed up our traps to leave. Before we had reached the clearing, three miles below, the rain set in, keeping up a lazy, monotonous drizzle till the afternoon. The clearing was quite a recent one, made mostly by barkpeelers, who followed their calling in the mountains round about in summer, and worked in their shops making shingle in winter. The Biscuit Brook came in here from the west,--a fine, rapid trout stream six or eight miles in length, with plenty of deer in the mountains about its head. On its banks we found the house of an old woodman, to whom we had been directed for information about the section we proposed to traverse. "Is the way very difficult," we inquired, "across from the Neversink into the head of the Beaverkill?" "Not to me; I could go it the darkest night ever was. And I can direct you so you can find the way without any trouble. You go down the Neversink about a mile, when you come to Highfall Brook, the first stream that comes down on the right. Follow up it to Jim Reed's shanty, about three miles. Then cross the stream, and on the left bank, pretty well up on the side of the mountain, you will find a wood-road, which was made by a fellow below here who stole some ash logs off the top of the ridge last winter and drew them out on the snow. When the road first begins to tilt over the mountain, strike down to your left, and you can reach the Beaverkill before sundown." As it was then after two o'clock, and as the distance was six or eight of these terrible hunters' miles, we concluded to take a whole day to it, and wait till next morning. The Beaverkill flowed west, the Neversink south, and I had a mortal dread of getting entangled amid the mountains and valleys that lie in either angle. Besides, I was glad of another and final opportunity to pay my respects to the finny tribes of the Neversink. At this point it was one of the finest trout streams I had ever beheld. It was so sparkling, its bed so free from sediment or impurities of any kind, that it had a new look, as if it had just come from the hand of its Creator. I tramped along its margin upward of a mile that afternoon, part of the time wading to my knees, and casting my hook, baited only with a trout's fin, to the opposite bank. Trout are real cannibals, and make no bones, and break none either, in lunching on each other. A friend of mine had several in his spring, when one day a large female trout gulped down one of her male friends, nearly one third her own size, and went around for two days with the tail of her liege lord protruding from her mouth! A fish's eye will do for bait, though the anal fin is better. One of the natives here told me that when he wished to catch large trout (and I judged he never fished for any other,--I never do), he used for bait the bullhead, or dart, a little fish an inch and a half or two inches long, that rests on the pebbles near shore and darts quickly, when disturbed, from point to point. "Put that on your hook," said he, "and if there is a big fish in the creek, he is bound to have it." But the darts were not easily found; the big fish, I concluded, had cleaned them all out; and, then, it was easy enough to supply our wants with a fin. Declining the hospitable offers of the settlers, we spread our blankets that night in a dilapidated shingle-shop on the banks of the Biscuit Brook, first flooring the damp ground with the new shingle that lay piled in one corner. The place had a great-throated chimney with a tremendous expanse of fireplace within, that cried "More!" at every morsel of wood we gave it. But I must hasten over this part of the ground, nor let the delicious flavor of the milk we had that morning for breakfast, and that was so delectable after four days of fish, linger on my tongue; nor yet tarry to set down the talk of that honest, weather-worn passer-by who paused before our door, and every moment on the point of resuming his way, yet stood for an hour and recited his adventures hunting deer and bears on these mountains. Having replenished our stock of bread and salt pork at the house of one of the settlers, midday found us at Reed's shanty,--one of those temporary structures erected by the bark jobber to lodge and board his "hands" near their work. Jim not being at home, we could gain no information from the "women folks" about the way, nor from the men who had just come in to dinner; so we pushed on, as near as we could, according to the instructions we had previously received. Crossing the creek, we forced our way up the side of the mountain, through a perfect _cheval-de-frise_ of fallen and peeled hemlocks, and, entering the dense woods above, began to look anxiously about for the wood-road. My companions at first could see no trace of it; but knowing that a casual wood-road cut in winter, when there was likely to be two or three feet of snow on the ground, would present only the slightest indications to the eye in summer, I looked a little closer, and could make out a mark or two here and there. The larger trees had been avoided, and the axe used only on the small saplings and underbrush, which had been lopped off a couple of feet from the ground. By being constantly on the alert, we followed it till near the top of the mountain; but, when looking to see it "tilt" over the other side, it disappeared altogether. Some stumps of the black cherry were found, and a solitary pair of snow-shoes was hanging high and dry on a branch, but no further trace of human hands could we see. While we were resting here a couple of hermit thrushes, one of them with some sad defect in his vocal powers which barred him from uttering more than a few notes of his song, gave voice to the solitude of the place. This was the second instance in which I have observed a song-bird with apparently some organic defect in its instrument. The other case was that of a bobolink, which, hover in mid-air and inflate its throat as it might, could only force out a few incoherent notes. But the bird in each case presented this striking contrast to human examples of the kind, that it was apparently just as proud of itself, and just as well satisfied with its performance, as were its more successful rivals. After deliberating some time over a pocket compass which I carried, we decided upon our course, and held on to the west. The descent was very gradual. Traces of bear and deer were noted at different points, but not a live animal was seen. About four o'clock we reached the bank of a stream flowing west. Hail to the Beaverkill! and we pushed on along its banks. The trout were plenty, and rose quickly to the hook; but we held on our way, designing to go into camp about six o'clock. Many inviting places, first on one bank, then on the other, made us linger, till finally we reached a smooth, dry place overshadowed by balsam and hemlock, where the creek bent around a little flat, which was so entirely to our fancy that we unslung our knapsacks at once. While my companions were cutting wood and making other preparations for the night, it fell to my lot, as the most successful angler, to provide the trout for supper and breakfast. How shall I describe that wild, beautiful stream, with features so like those of all other mountain streams? And yet, as I saw it in the deep twilight of those woods on that June afternoon, with its steady, even flow, and its tranquil, many-voiced murmur, it made an impression upon my mind distinct and peculiar, fraught in an eminent degree with the charm of seclusion and remoteness. The solitude was perfect, and I felt that strangeness and insignificance which the civilized man must always feel when opposing himself to such a vast scene of silence and wildness. The trout were quite black, like all wood trout, and took the bait eagerly. I followed the stream till the deepening shadows warned me to turn back. As I neared camp, the fire shone far through the trees, dispelling the gathering gloom, but blinding my eyes to all obstacles at my feet. I was seriously disturbed on arriving to find that one of my companions had cut an ugly gash in his shin with the axe while felling a tree. As we did not carry a fifth wheel, it was not just the time or place to have any of our members crippled, and I had bodings of evil. But, thanks to the healing virtues of the balsam which must have adhered to the blade of the axe, and double thanks to the court-plaster with which Orville had supplied himself before leaving home, the wounded leg, by being favored that night and the next day, gave us little trouble. [Illustration: THE BEAVERKILL] That night we had our first fair and square camping out,--that is, sleeping on the ground with no shelter over us but the trees,--and it was in many respects the pleasantest night we spent in the woods. The weather was perfect and the place was perfect, and for the first time we were exempt from the midges and smoke; and then we appreciated the clean new page we had to work on. Nothing is so acceptable to the camper-out as a pure article in the way of woods and waters. Any admixture of human relics mars the spirit of the scene. Yet I am willing to confess that, before we were through those woods, the marks of an axe in a tree were a welcome sight. On resuming our march next day we followed the right bank of the Beaverkill, in order to strike a stream which flowed in from the north, and which was the outlet of Balsam Lake, the objective point of that day's march. The distance to the lake from our camp could not have been over six or seven miles; yet, traveling as we did, without path or guide, climbing up banks, plunging into ravines, making detours around swampy places, and forcing our way through woods choked up with much fallen and decayed timber, it seemed at least twice that distance, and the mid-afternoon sun was shining when we emerged into what is called the "Quaker Clearing," ground that I had been over nine years before, and that lies about two miles south of the lake. From this point we had a well-worn path that led us up a sharp rise of ground, then through level woods till we saw the bright gleam of the water through the trees. I am always struck, on approaching these little mountain lakes, with the extensive preparation that is made for them in the conformation of the ground. I am thinking of a depression, or natural basin, in the side of the mountain or on its top, the brink of which I shall reach after a little steep climbing; but instead of that, after I have accomplished the ascent, I find a broad sweep of level or gently undulating woodland that brings me after a half hour or so to the lake, which lies in this vast lap like a drop of water in the palm of a man's hand. Balsam Lake was oval-shaped, scarcely more than half a mile long and a quarter of a mile wide, but presented a charming picture, with a group of dark gray hemlocks filling the valley about its head, and the mountains rising above and beyond. We found a bough house in good repair, also a dug-out and paddle and several floats of logs. In the dug-out I was soon creeping along the shady side of the lake, where the trout were incessantly jumping for a species of black fly, that, sheltered from the slight breeze, were dancing in swarms just above the surface of the water. The gnats were there in swarms also, and did their best toward balancing the accounts by preying upon me while I preyed upon the trout which preyed upon the flies. But by dint of keeping my hands, face, and neck constantly wet, I am convinced that the balance of blood was on my side. The trout jumped most within a foot or two of shore, where the water was only a few inches deep. The shallowness of the water, perhaps, accounted for the inability of the fish to do more than lift their heads above the surface. They came up mouths wide open, and dropped back again in the most impotent manner. Where there is any depth of water, a trout will jump several feet into the air; and where there is a solid, unbroken sheet or column, they will scale falls and dams fifteen feet high. We had the very cream and flower of our trout-fishing at this lake. For the first time we could use the fly to advantage; and then the contrast between laborious tramping along shore, on the one hand, and sitting in one end of a dug-out and casting your line right and left with no fear of entanglement in brush or branch, while you were gently propelled along, on the other, was of the most pleasing character. There were two varieties of trout in the lake,--what it seems proper to call silver trout and golden trout; the former were the slimmer, and seemed to keep apart from the latter. Starting from the outlet and working round on the eastern side toward the head, we invariably caught these first. They glanced in the sun like bars of silver. Their sides and bellies were indeed as white as new silver. As we neared the head, and especially as we came near a space occupied by some kind of watergrass that grew in the deeper part of the lake, the other variety would begin to take the hook, their bellies a bright gold color, which became a deep orange on their fins; and as we returned to the place of departure with the bottom of the boat strewn with these bright forms intermingled, it was a sight not soon to be forgotten. It pleased my eye so, that I would fain linger over them, arranging them in rows and studying the various hues and tints. They were of nearly a uniform size, rarely one over ten or under eight inches in length, and it seemed as if the hues of all the precious metals and stones were reflected from their sides. The flesh was deep salmon-color; that of brook trout is generally much lighter. Some hunters and fishers from the valley of the Mill Brook, whom we met here, told us the trout were much larger in the lake, though far less numerous than they used to be. Brook trout do not grow large till they become scarce. It is only in streams that have been long and much fished that I have caught them as much as sixteen inches in length. The "porcupigs" were numerous about the lake, and not at all shy. One night the heat became so intolerable in our oven-shaped bough house that I was obliged to withdraw from under its cover and lie down a little to one side. Just at daybreak, as I lay rolled in my blanket, something awoke me. Lifting up my head, there was a porcupine with his forepaws on my hips. He was apparently as much surprised as I was; and to my inquiry as to what he at that moment might be looking for, he did not pause to reply, but hitting me a slap with his tail which left three or four quills in my blanket, he scampered off down the hill into the brush. Being an observer of the birds, of course every curious incident connected with them fell under my notice. Hence, as we stood about our camp-fire one afternoon looking out over the lake, I was the only one to see a little commotion in the water, half hidden by the near branches, as of some tiny swimmer struggling to reach the shore. Rushing to its rescue in the canoe, I found a yellow-rumped warbler, quite exhausted, clinging to a twig that hung down into the water. I brought the drenched and helpless thing to camp, and, putting it into a basket, hung it up to dry. An hour or two afterward I heard it fluttering in its prison, and, cautiously lifting the lid to get a better glimpse of the lucky captive, it darted out and was gone in a twinkling. How came it in the water? That was my wonder, and I can only guess that it was a young bird that had never before flown over a pond of water, and, seeing the clouds and blue sky so perfect down there, thought it was a vast opening or gateway into another summer land, perhaps a short cut to the tropics, and so got itself into trouble. How my eye was delighted also with the redbird that alighted for a moment on a dry branch above the lake, just where a ray of light from the setting sun fell full upon it! A mere crimson point, and yet how it offset that dark, sombre background! * * * * * I have thus run over some of the features of an ordinary trouting excursion to the woods. People inexperienced in such matters, sitting in their rooms and thinking of these things, of all the poets have sung and romancers written, are apt to get sadly taken in when they attempt to realize their dreams. They expect to enter a sylvan paradise of trout, cool retreats, laughing brooks, picturesque views, and balsamic couches, instead of which they find hunger, rain, smoke, toil, gnats, mosquitoes, dirt, broken rest, vulgar guides, and salt pork; and they are very apt not to see where the fun comes in. But he who goes in a right spirit will not be disappointed, and will find the taste of this kind of life better, though bitterer, than the writers have described. VIII A BED OF BOUGHS When Aaron came again to camp and tramp with me, or, as he wrote, "to eat locusts and wild honey with me in the wilderness," it was past the middle of August, and the festival of the season neared its close. We were belated guests, but perhaps all the more eager on that account, especially as the country was suffering from a terrible drought, and the only promise of anything fresh or tonic or cool was in primitive woods and mountain passes. "Now, my friend," said I, "we can go to Canada, or to the Maine woods, or to the Adirondacks, and thus have a whole loaf and a big loaf of this bread which you know as well as I will have heavy streaks in it, and will not be uniformly sweet; or we can seek nearer woods, and content ourselves with one week instead of four, with the prospect of a keen relish to the last. Four sylvan weeks sound well, but the poetry is mainly confined to the first one. We can take another slice or two of the Catskills, can we not, without being sated with kills and dividing ridges?" "Anywhere," replied Aaron, "so that we have a good tramp and plenty of primitive woods. No doubt we should find good browsing on Peakamoose, and trout enough in the streams at its base." So without further ado we made ready, and in due time found ourselves, with our packs on our backs, entering upon a pass in the mountains that led to the valley of the Rondout. The scenery was wild and desolate in the extreme, the mountains on either hand looking as if they had been swept by a tornado of stone. Stone avalanches hung suspended on their sides, or had shot down into the chasm below. It was a kind of Alpine scenery, where crushed and broken boulders covered the earth instead of snow. In the depressions in the mountains the rocky fragments seemed to have accumulated, and to have formed what might be called stone glaciers that were creeping slowly down. Two hours' march brought us into heavy timber where the stone cataclysm had not reached, and before long the soft voice of the Rondout was heard in the gulf below us. We paused at a spring run, and I followed it a few yards down its mountain stairway, carpeted with black moss, and had my first glimpse of the unknown stream. I stood upon rocks and looked many feet down into a still, sunlit pool and saw the trout disporting themselves in the transparent water, and I was ready to encamp at once; but my companion, who had not been tempted by the view, insisted upon holding to our original purpose, which was to go farther up the stream. We passed a clearing with three or four houses and a saw-mill. The dam of the latter was filled with such clear water that it seemed very shallow, and not ten or twelve feet deep, as it really was. The fish were as conspicuous as if they had been in a pail. Two miles farther up we suited ourselves and went into camp. If there ever was a stream cradled in the rocks, detained lovingly by them, held and fondled in a rocky lap or tossed in rocky arms, that stream is the Rondout. Its course for several miles from its head is over the stratified rock, and into this it has worn a channel that presents most striking and peculiar features. Now it comes silently along on the top of the rock, spread out and flowing over that thick, dark green moss that is found only in the coldest streams; then drawn into a narrow canal only four or five feet wide, through which it shoots, black and rigid, to be presently caught in a deep basin with shelving, overhanging rocks, beneath which the phoebe-bird builds in security, and upon which the fisherman stands and casts his twenty or thirty feet of line without fear of being thwarted by the brush; then into a black, well-like pool, ten or fifteen feet deep, with a smooth, circular wall of rock on one side worn by the water through long ages; or else into a deep, oblong pocket, into which and out of which the water glides without a ripple. The surface rock is a coarse sandstone superincumbent upon a lighter-colored conglomerate that looks like Shawangunk grits, and when this latter is reached by the water it seems to be rapidly disintegrated by it, thus forming the deep excavations alluded to. My eyes had never before beheld such beauty in a mountain stream. The water was almost as transparent as the air,--was, indeed, like liquid air; and as it lay in these wells and pits enveloped in shadow, or lit up by a chance ray of the vertical sun, it was a perpetual feast to the eye,--so cool, so deep, so pure; every reach and pool like a vast spring. You lay down and drank or dipped the water up in your cup, and found it just the right degree of refreshing coldness. One is never prepared for the clearness of the water in these streams. It is always a surprise. See them every year for a dozen years, and yet, when you first come upon one, you will utter an exclamation. I saw nothing like it in the Adirondacks, nor in Canada. Absolutely without stain or hint of impurity, it seems to magnify like a lens, so that the bed of the stream and the fish in it appear deceptively near. It is rare to find even a trout stream that is not a little "off color," as they say of diamonds, but the waters in the section of which I am writing have the genuine ray; it is the undimmed and untarnished diamond. If I were a trout, I should ascend every stream till I found the Rondout. It is the ideal brook. What homes these fish have, what retreats under the rocks, what paved or flagged courts and areas, what crystal depths where no net or snare can reach them!--no mud, no sediment, but here and there in the clefts and seams of the rock patches of white gravel,--spawning-beds ready-made. The finishing touch is given by the moss with which the rock is everywhere carpeted. Even in the narrow grooves or channels where the water runs the swiftest, the green lining is unbroken. It sweeps down under the stream and up again on the other side, like some firmly woven texture. It softens every outline and cushions every stone. At a certain depth in the great basins and wells it of course ceases, and only the smooth-swept flagging of the place-rock is visible. The trees are kept well back from the margin of the stream by the want of soil, and the large ones unite their branches far above it, thus forming a high winding gallery, along which the fisherman passes and makes his long casts with scarcely an interruption from branch or twig. In a few places he makes no cast, but sees from his rocky perch the water twenty feet below him, and drops his hook into it as into a well. We made camp at a bend in the creek where there was a large surface of mossy rock uncovered by the shrunken stream,--a clean, free space left for us in the wilderness that was faultless as a kitchen and dining-room, and a marvel of beauty as a lounging-room, or an open court, or what you will. An obsolete wood or bark road conducted us to it, and disappeared up the hill in the woods beyond. A loose boulder lay in the middle, and on the edge next the stream were three or four large natural wash-basins scooped out of the rock, and ever filled ready for use. Our lair we carved out of the thick brush under a large birch on the bank. Here we planted our flag of smoke and feathered our nest with balsam and hemlock boughs and ferns, and laughed at your four walls and pillows of down. Wherever one encamps in the woods, there is home, and every object and feature about the place take on a new interest and assume a near and friendly relation to one. We were at the head of the best fishing. There was an old bark-clearing not far off which afforded us a daily dessert of most delicious blackberries,--an important item in the woods,--and then all the features of the place--a sort of cave above ground--were of the right kind. There was not a mosquito, or gnat, or other pest in the woods, the cool nights having already cut them off. The trout were sufficiently abundant, and afforded us a few hours' sport daily to supply our wants. The only drawback was, that they were out of season, and only palatable to a woodman's keen appetite. What is this about trout spawning in October and November, and in some cases not till March? These trout had all spawned in August, every one of them. The coldness and purity of the water evidently made them that much earlier. The game laws of the State protect the fish after September 1, proceeding upon the theory that its spawning season is later than that,--as it is in many cases, but not in all, as we found out. The fish are small in these streams, seldom weighing over a few ounces. Occasionally a large one is seen of a pound or pound and a half weight. I remember one such, as black as night, that ran under a black rock. But I remember much more distinctly a still larger one that I caught and lost one eventful day. I had him on my hook ten minutes, and actually got my thumb in his mouth, and yet he escaped. It was only the over-eagerness of the sportsman. I imagined I could hold him by the teeth. The place where I struck him was a deep well-hole, and I was perched upon a log that spanned it ten or twelve feet above the water. The situation was all the more interesting because I saw no possible way to land my fish. I could not lead him ashore, and my frail tackle could not be trusted to lift him sheer from that pit to my precarious perch. What should I do? call for help? but no help was near. I had a revolver in my pocket and might have shot him through and through, but that novel proceeding did not occur to me until it was too late. I would have taken a Sam Patch leap into the water, and have wrestled with my antagonist in his own element, but I knew the slack, thus sure to occur, would probably free him; so I peered down upon the beautiful creature and enjoyed my triumph as far as it went. He was caught very lightly through his upper jaw, and I expected every struggle and somersault would break the hold. Presently I saw a place in the rocks where I thought it possible, with such an incentive, to get down within reach of the water: by careful manoeuvring I slipped my pole behind me and got hold of the line, which I cut and wound around my finger; then I made my way toward the end of the log and the place in the rocks, leading my fish along much exhausted on the top of the water. By an effort worthy the occasion I got down within reach of the fish, and, as I have already confessed, thrust my thumb into his mouth and pinched his cheek; he made a spring and was free from my hand and the hook at the same time; for a moment he lay panting on the top of the water, then, recovering himself slowly, made his way down through the clear, cruel element beyond all hope of recapture. My blind impulse to follow and try to seize him was very strong, but I kept my hold and peered and peered long after the fish was lost to view, then looked my mortification in the face and laughed a bitter laugh. "But, hang it! I had all the fun of catching the fish, and only miss the pleasure of eating him, which at this time would not be great." "The fun, I take it," said my soldier, "is in triumphing, and not in being beaten at the last." "Well, have it so; but I would not exchange those ten or fifteen minutes with that trout for the tame two hours you have spent in catching that string of thirty. To _see_ a big fish after days of small fry is an event; to have a jump from one is a glimpse of the sportsman's paradise; and to hook one, and actually have him under your control for ten minutes,--why, that is paradise itself as long as it lasts." One day I went down to the house of a settler a mile below, and engaged the good dame to make us a couple of loaves of bread, and in the evening we went down after them. How elastic and exhilarating the walk was through the cool, transparent shadows! The sun was gilding the mountains, and its yellow light seemed to be reflected through all the woods. At one point we looked through and along a valley of deep shadow upon a broad sweep of mountain quite near and densely clothed with woods, flooded from base to summit by the setting sun. It was a wild, memorable scene. What power and effectiveness in Nature, I thought, and how rarely an artist catches her touch! Looking down upon or squarely into a mountain covered with a heavy growth of birch and maple, and shone upon by the sun, is a sight peculiarly agreeable to me. How closely the swelling umbrageous heads of the trees fit together, and how the eye revels in the flowing and easy uniformity, while the mind feels the ruggedness and terrible power beneath! As we came back, the light yet lingered on the top of Slide Mountain. "'The last that parleys with the setting sun,'" said I, quoting Wordsworth. "That line is almost Shakespearean," said my companion. "It suggests that great hand at least, though it has not the grit and virility of the more primitive bard. What triumph and fresh morning power in Shakespeare's lines that will occur to us at sunrise to-morrow!-- "'And jocund day Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.' "Or in this:-- "'Full many a glorious morning have I seen Flatter the mountain tops with sovran eye.' "There is savage, perennial beauty there, the quality that Wordsworth and nearly all the modern poets lack." "But Wordsworth is the poet of the mountains," said I, "and of lonely peaks. True, he does not express the power and aboriginal grace there is in them, nor toy with them and pluck them up by the hair of their heads, as Shakespeare does. There is something in Peakamoose yonder, as we see it from this point, cutting the blue vault with its dark, serrated edge, not in the bard of Grasmere; but he expresses the feeling of loneliness and insignificance that the cultivated man has in the presence of mountains, and the burden of solemn emotion they give rise to. Then there is something much more wild and merciless, much more remote from human interests and ends, in our long, high, wooded ranges than is expressed by the peaks and scarred groups of the lake country of Britain. These mountains we behold and cross are not picturesque,--they are wild and inhuman as the sea. In them you are in a maze, in a weltering world of woods; you can see neither the earth nor the sky, but a confusion of the growth and decay of centuries, and must traverse them by your compass or your science of woodcraft,--a rift through the trees giving one a glimpse of the opposite range or of the valley beneath, and he is more at sea than ever; one does not know his own farm or settlement when framed in these mountain treetops; all look alike unfamiliar." Not the least of the charm of camping out is your camp-fire at night. What an artist! What pictures are boldly thrown or faintly outlined upon the canvas of the night! Every object, every attitude of your companion is striking and memorable. You see effects and groups every moment that you would give money to be able to carry away with you in enduring form. How the shadows leap, and skulk, and hover about! Light and darkness are in perpetual tilt and warfare, with first the one unhorsed, then the other. The friendly and cheering fire, what acquaintance we make with it! We had almost forgotten there was such an element, we had so long known only its dark offspring, heat. Now we see the wild beauty uncaged and note its manner and temper. How surely it creates its own draught and sets the currents going, as force and enthusiasm always will! It carves itself a chimney out of the fluid and houseless air. A friend, a ministering angel, in subjection; a fiend, a fury, a monster, ready to devour the world, if ungoverned. By day it burrows in the ashes and sleeps; at night it comes forth and sits upon its throne of rude logs, and rules the camp, a sovereign queen. Near camp stood a tall, ragged yellow birch, its partially cast-off bark hanging in crisp sheets or dense rolls. "That tree needs the barber," we said, "and shall have a call from him to-night." So after dark I touched a match into it, and we saw the flames creep up and wax in fury until the whole tree and its main branches stood wrapped in a sheet of roaring flame. It was a wild and striking spectacle, and must have advertised our camp to every nocturnal creature in the forest. What does the camper think about when lounging around the fire at night? Not much,--of the sport of the day, of the big fish he lost and might have saved, of the distant settlement, of to-morrow's plans. An owl hoots off in the mountain and he thinks of him; if a wolf were to howl or a panther to scream, he would think of him the rest of the night. As it is, things flicker and hover through his mind, and he hardly knows whether it is the past or the present that possesses him. Certain it is, he feels the hush and solitude of the great forest, and, whether he will or not, all his musings are in some way cast upon that huge background of the night. Unless he is an old camper-out, there will be an undercurrent of dread or half fear. My companion said he could not help but feel all the time that there ought to be a sentinel out there pacing up and down. One seems to require less sleep in the woods, as if the ground and the untempered air rested and refreshed him sooner. The balsam and the hemlock heal his aches very quickly. If one is awakened often during the night, as he invariably is, he does not feel that sediment of sleep in his mind next day that he does when the same interruption occurs at home; the boughs have drawn it all out of him. And it is wonderful how rarely any of the housed and tender white man's colds or influenzas come through these open doors and windows of the woods. It is our partial isolation from Nature that is dangerous; throw yourself unreservedly upon her and she rarely betrays you. If one takes anything to the woods to read, he seldom reads it; it does not taste good with such primitive air. There are very few camp poems that I know of, poems that would be at home with one on such an expedition; there is plenty that is weird and spectral, as in Poe, but little that is woody and wild as this scene is. I recall a Canadian poem by the late C.D. Shanly--the only one, I believe, the author ever wrote--that fits well the distended pupil of the mind's eye about the camp-fire at night. It was printed many years ago in the "Atlantic Monthly," and is called "The Walker of the Snow;" it begins thus:-- "'Speed on, speed on, good master; The camp lies far away; We must cross the haunted valley Before the close of day.'" "That has a Canadian sound," said Aaron; "give us more of it." "'How the snow-blight came upon me I will tell you as we go,-- The blight of the shadow hunter Who walks the midnight snow.'" And so on. The intent seems to be to personify the fearful cold that overtakes and benumbs the traveler in the great Canadian forests in winter. This stanza brings out the silence or desolation of the scene very effectively,--a scene without sound or motion:-- "'Save the wailing of the moose-bird With a plaintive note and low; And the skating of the red leaf Upon the frozen snow.' "The rest of the poem runs thus:-- "'And said I, Though dark is falling, And far the camp must be, Yet my heart it would be lightsome If I had but company. "'And then I sang and shouted, Keeping measure as I sped, To the harp-twang of the snow-shoe As it sprang beneath my tread. "'Nor far into the valley Had I dipped upon my way, When a dusky figure joined me In a capuchin of gray, "'Bending upon the snow-shoes With a long and limber stride; And I hailed the dusky stranger, As we traveled side by side. "'But no token of communion Gave he by word or look, And the fear-chill fell upon me At the crossing of the brook. "'For I saw by the sickly moonlight, As I followed, bending low, That the walking of the stranger Left no foot-marks on the snow. "'Then the fear-chill gathered o'er me, Like a shroud around me cast, As I sank upon the snow-drift Where the shadow hunter passed. "'And the otter-trappers found me, Before the break of day, With my dark hair blanched and whitened As the snow in which I lay. "'But they spoke not as they raised me; For they knew that in the night I had seen the shadow hunter And had withered in his sight. "'Sancta Maria speed us! The sun is fallen low: Before us lies the valley Of the Walker of the Snow!'" "Ah!" exclaimed my companion. "Let us pile on more of those dry birch-logs; I feel both the 'fear-chill' and the 'cold-chill' creeping over me. How far is it to the valley of the Neversink?" "About three or four hours' march, the man said." "I hope we have no haunted valleys to cross?" "None," said I, "but we pass an old log cabin about which there hangs a ghostly superstition. At a certain hour in the night, during the time the bark is loose on the hemlock, a female form is said to steal from it and grope its way into the wilderness. The tradition runs that her lover, who was a bark-peeler and wielded the spud, was killed by his rival, who felled a tree upon him while they were at work. The girl, who helped her mother cook for the 'hands,' was crazed by the shock, and that night stole forth into the woods and was never seen or heard of more. There are old hunters who aver that her cry may still be heard at night at the head of the valley whenever a tree falls in the stillness of the forest." "Well, I heard a tree fall not ten minutes ago," said Aaron; "a distant, rushing sound with a subdued crash at the end of it, and the only answering cry I heard was the shrill voice of the screech owl off yonder against the mountain. But maybe it was not an owl," said he after a moment; "let us help the legend along by believing it was the voice of the lost maiden." "By the way," continued he, "do you remember the pretty creature we saw seven years ago in the shanty on the West Branch, who was really helping her mother cook for the hands, a slip of a girl twelve or thirteen years old, with eyes as beautiful and bewitching as the waters that flowed by her cabin? I was wrapped in admiration till she spoke; then how the spell was broken! Such a voice! It was like the sound of pots and pans when you expected to hear a lute." The next day we bade farewell to the Rondout, and set out to cross the mountain to the east branch of the Neversink. "We shall find tame waters compared with these, I fear,--a shriveled stream brawling along over loose stones, with few pools or deep places." Our course was along the trail of the bark-men who had pursued the doomed hemlock to the last tree at the head of the valley. As we passed along, a red steer stepped out of the bushes into the road ahead of us, where the sunshine fell full upon him, and, with a half-scared, beautiful look, begged alms of salt. We passed the Haunted Shanty; but both it and the legend about it looked very tame at ten o'clock in the morning. After the road had faded out, we took to the bed of the stream to avoid the gauntlet of the underbrush, skipping up the mountain from boulder to boulder. Up and up we went, with frequent pauses and copious quaffing of the cold water. My soldier declared a "haunted valley" would be a godsend; anything but endless dragging of one's self up such an Alpine stairway. The winter wren, common all through the woods, peeped and scolded at us as we sat blowing near the summit, and the oven-bird, not quite sure as to what manner of creatures we were, hopped down a limb to within a few feet of us and had a good look, then darted off into the woods to tell the news. I also noted the Canada warbler, the chestnut-sided warbler, and the black-throated blue-back,--the latter most abundant of all. Up these mountain brooks, too, goes the belted kingfisher, swooping around through the woods when he spies the fisherman, then wheeling into the open space of the stream and literally making a "blue streak" down under the branches. At last the stream which had been our guide was lost under the rocks, and before long the top was gained. These mountains are horse-shaped. There is always a broad, smooth back, more or less depressed, which the hunter aims to bestride; rising rapidly from this is pretty sure to be a rough, curving ridge that carries the forest up to some highest peak. We were lucky in hitting the saddle, but we could see a little to the south the sharp, steep neck of the steed sweeping up toward the sky with an erect mane of balsam fir. These mountains are steed-like in other respects: any timid and vacillating course with them is sure to get you into trouble. One must strike out boldly, and not be disturbed by the curveting and shying; the valley you want lies squarely behind them, but farther off than you think, and if you do not go for it resolutely, you will get bewildered and the mountain will play you a trick. I may say that Aaron and I kept a tight rein and a good pace till we struck a water-course on the other side, and that we clattered down it with no want of decision till it emptied into a larger stream which we knew must be the East Branch. An abandoned fishpole lay on the stones, marking the farthest point reached by some fisherman. According to our reckoning, we were five or six miles above the settlement, with a good depth of primitive woods all about us. We kept on down the stream, now and then pausing at a likely place to take some trout for dinner, and with an eye out for a good camping-ground. Many of the trout were full of ripe spawn, and a few had spawned, the season with them being a little later than on the stream we had left, perhaps because the water was less cold. Neither had the creek here any such eventful and startling career. It led, indeed, quite a humdrum sort of life under the roots and fallen treetops and among the loose stones. At rare intervals it beamed upon us from some still reach or dark cover, and won from us our best attention in return. The day was quite spent before we had pitched our air-woven tent and prepared our dinner, and we gathered boughs for our bed in the gloaming. Breakfast had to be caught in the morning and was not served early, so that it was nine o'clock before we were in motion. A little bird, the red-eyed vireo, warbled most cheerily in the trees above our camp, and, as Aaron said, "gave us a good send-off." We kept down the stream, following the inevitable bark road. My companion had refused to look at another "dividing ridge" that had neither path nor way, and henceforth I must keep to the open road or travel alone. Two hours' tramp brought us to an old clearing with some rude, tumble-down log buildings that many years before had been occupied by the bark and lumber men. The prospect for trout was so good in the stream hereabouts, and the scene so peaceful and inviting, shone upon by the dreamy August sun, that we concluded to tarry here until the next day. It was a page of pioneer history opened to quite unexpectedly. A dim footpath led us a few yards to a superb spring, in which a trout from the near creek had taken up his abode. We took possession of what had been a shingle-shop, attracted by its huge fireplace. We floored it with balsam boughs, hung its walls with our "traps," and sent the smoke curling again from its disused chimney. The most musical and startling sound we heard in the woods greeted our ears that evening about sundown as we sat on a log in front of our quarters,--the sound of slow, measured pounding in the valley below us. We did not know how near we were to human habitations, and the report of the lumberman's mallet, like the hammering of a great woodpecker, was music to the ear and news to the mind. The air was still and dense, and the silence such as alone broods over these little openings in the primitive woods. My soldier started as if he had heard a signal-gun. The sound, coming so far through the forest, sweeping over those great wind-harps of trees, became wild and legendary, though probably made by a lumberman driving a wedge or working about his mill. We expected a friendly visit from porcupines that night, as we saw where they had freshly gnawed all about us; hence, when a red squirrel came and looked in upon us very early in the morning and awoke us by his snickering and giggling, my comrade cried out, "There is your porcupig." How the frisking red rogue seemed to enjoy what he had found! He looked in at the door and snickered, then in at the window, then peeked down from between the rafters and cachinnated till his sides must have ached; then struck an attitude upon the chimney, and fairly squealed with mirth and ridicule. In fact, he grew so obstreperous, and so disturbed our repose, that we had to "shoo" him away with one of our boots. He declared most plainly that he had never before seen so preposterous a figure as we cut lying there in the corner of that old shanty. The morning boded rain, the week to which we had limited ourselves drew near its close, and we concluded to finish our holiday worthily by a good square tramp to the railroad station, twenty-three miles distant, as it proved. Two miles brought us to stumpy fields, and to the house of the upper inhabitant. They told us there was a short cut across the mountain, but my soldier shook his head. "Better twenty miles of Europe," said he, getting Tennyson a little mixed, "than one of Cathay, or Slide Mountain either." Drops of the much-needed rain began to come down, and I hesitated in front of the woodshed. "Sprinkling weather always comes to some bad end," said Aaron, with a reminiscence of an old couplet in his mind, and so it proved, for it did not get beyond a sprinkle, and the sun shone out before noon. In the next woods I picked up from the middle of the road the tail and one hind leg of one of our native rats, the first I had ever seen except in a museum. An owl or fox had doubtless left it the night before. It was evident the fragments had once formed part of a very elegant and slender creature. The fur that remained (for it was not hair) was tipped with red. My reader doubtless knows that the common rat is an importation, and that there is a native American rat, usually found much farther south than the locality of which I am writing, that lives in the woods,--a sylvan rat, very wild and nocturnal in his habits, and seldom seen even by hunters or woodmen. Its eyes are large and fine, and its form slender. It looks like only a far-off undegenerate cousin of the filthy creature that has come to us from the long-peopled Old World. Some creature ran between my feet and the fire toward morning, the last night we slept in the woods, and I have little doubt it was one of these wood-rats. The people in these back settlements are almost as shy and furtive as the animals. Even the men look a little scared when you stop them by your questions. The children dart behind their parents when you look at them. As we sat on a bridge resting,--for our packs still weighed fifteen or twenty pounds each,--two women passed us with pails on their arms, going for blackberries. They filed by with their eyes down like two abashed nuns. [Illustration: SOME PEOPLE OF THE CATSKILLS] In due time we found an old road, to which we had been directed, that led over the mountain to the West Branch. It was a hard pull, sweetened by blackberries and a fine prospect. The snowbird was common along the way, and a solitary wild pigeon shot through the woods in front of us, recalling the nests we had seen on the East Branch,--little scaffoldings of twigs scattered all through the trees. It was nearly noon when we struck the West Branch, and the sun was scalding hot. We knew that two and three pound trout had been taken there, and yet we wet not a line in its waters. The scene was primitive, and carried one back to the days of his grandfather, stumpy fields, log fences, log houses and barns. A boy twelve or thirteen years old came out of a house ahead of us eating a piece of bread and butter. We soon overtook him and held converse with him. He knew the land well, and what there was in the woods and the waters. He had walked out to the railroad station, fourteen miles distant, to see the cars, and back the same day. I asked him about the flies and mosquitoes, etc. He said they were all gone except the "blunder-heads;" there were some of them left yet. "What are blunder-heads?" I inquired, sniffing new game. "The pesky little fly that gets into your eye when you are a-fishing." Ah, yes! I knew him well. We had got acquainted some days before, and I thanked the boy for the name. It is an insect that hovers before your eye as you thread the streams, and you are forever vaguely brushing at it under the delusion that it is a little spider suspended from your hat-brim; and just as you want to see clearest, into your eye it goes, head and ears, and is caught between the lids. You miss your cast, but you catch a "blunder-head." We paused under a bridge at the mouth of Biscuit Brook and ate our lunch, and I can recommend it to be as good a wayside inn as the pedestrian need look for. Better bread and milk than we had there I never expect to find. The milk was indeed so good that Aaron went down to the little log house under the hill a mile farther on and asked for more; and being told they had no cow, he lingered five minutes on the doorstone with his sooty pail in his hand, putting idle questions about the way and distance to the mother while he refreshed himself with the sight of a well-dressed and comely-looking young girl, her daughter. "I got no milk," said he, hurrying on after me, "but I got something better, only I cannot divide it." "I know what it is," replied I; "I heard her voice." "Yes, and it was a good one, too. The sweetest sound I ever heard," he went on, "was a girl's voice after I had been four years in the army, and, by Jove! if I didn't experience something of the same pleasure in hearing this young girl speak after a week in the woods. She had evidently been out in the world and was home on a visit. It was a different look she gave me from that of the natives. This is better than fishing for trout," said he. "You drop in at the next house." But the next house looked too unpromising. "There is no milk there," said I, "unless they keep a goat." "But could we not," said my facetious companion, "go it on that?" A couple of miles beyond I stopped at a house that enjoyed the distinction of being clapboarded, and had the good fortune to find both the milk and the young lady. A mother and her daughter were again the only occupants save a babe in the cradle, which the young woman quickly took occasion to disclaim. "It has not opened its dear eyes before since its mother left. Come to aunty," and she put out her hands. The daughter filled my pail and the mother replenished our stock of bread. They asked me to sit and cool myself, and seemed glad of a stranger to talk with. They had come from an adjoining county five years before, and had carved their little clearing out of the solid woods. "The men folks," the mother said, "came on ahead and built the house right among the big trees," pointing to the stumps near the door. One no sooner sets out with his pack upon his back to tramp through the land than all objects and persons by the way have a new and curious interest to him. The tone of his entire being is not a little elevated, and all his perceptions and susceptibilities quickened. I feel that some such statement is necessary to justify the interest that I felt in this backwoods maiden. A slightly pale face it was, strong and well arched, with a tender, wistful expression not easy to forget. I had surely seen that face many times before in towns and cities, and in other lands, but I hardly expected to meet it here amid the stumps. What were the agencies that had given it its fine lines and its gracious intelligence amid these simple, primitive scenes? What did my heroine read, or think? or what were her unfulfilled destinies? She wore a sprig of prince's pine in her hair, which gave a touch peculiarly welcome. "Pretty lonely," she said, in answer to my inquiry; "only an occasional fisherman in summer, and in winter--nobody at all." And the little new schoolhouse in the woods farther on, with its half-dozen scholars and the girlish face of the teacher seen through the open door,--nothing less than the exhilaration of a journey on foot could have made it seem the interesting object it was. Two of the little girls had been to the spring after a pail of water, and came struggling out of the woods into the road with it as we passed. They set down their pail and regarded us with a half-curious, half-alarmed look. "What is your teacher's name?" asked one of us. "Miss Lucinde Josephine--" began the red-haired one, then hesitated, bewildered, when the bright, dark-eyed one cut her short with "Miss Simms," and taking hold of the pail said, "Come on." "Are there any scholars from above here?" I inquired. "Yes, Bobbie and Matie," and they hastened toward the door. We once more stopped under a bridge for refreshments, and took our time, knowing the train would not go on without us. By four o'clock we were across the mountain, having passed from the water-shed of the Delaware into that of the Hudson. The next eight miles we had a down grade but a rough road, and during the last half of it we had blisters on the bottoms of our feet. It is one of the rewards of the pedestrian that, however tired he may be, he is always more or less refreshed by his journey. His physical tenement has taken an airing. His respiration has been deepened, his circulation quickened. A good draught has carried off the fumes and the vapors. One's quality is intensified; the color strikes in. At noon that day I was much fatigued; at night I was leg-weary and footsore, but a fresh, hardy feeling had taken possession of me that lasted for weeks. 
22420	----	[Illustration: FROM THE WIGWAM OF THE GREAT SPIRIT (page 2)] THE BOOK OF NATURE MYTHS BY FLORENCE HOLBROOK PRINCIPAL OF FORESTVILLE SCHOOL, CHICAGO [Illustration: Publishers Stamp] HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON · NEW YORK · CHICAGO · DALLAS SAN FRANCISCO The Riverside Press Cambridge Children's Room COPYRIGHT 1902 BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS PRINTED IN THE U.S.A PREFACE. In preparing the Book of Nature Myths the desire has been to make a second reader which would be adapted to the child's interest, ability, and progress. The subject-matter is of permanent value, culled from the folk-lore of the primitive races; the vocabulary, based upon that of the Hiawatha Primer, is increased gradually, and the new words and phrases will add to the child's power of expression. The naïve explanations of the phenomena of nature given by the primitive races appeal to the child's wonder about the same phenomena, and he is pleased and interested. These myths will gratify the child's desire for complete stories, and their intrinsic merit makes them valuable for oral reproduction. The stories have been adapted to youthful minds from myths contained in the works of many students of folk-lore whose scholarship is undisputed. Special acknowledgment is due Miss Eva March Tappan for her valuable assistance in the final revision of the text. CONTENTS. PAGE THE STORY OF THE FIRST HUMMING-BIRD. Part I. The Great Fire-mountain 1 Part II. The Frolic of the Flames 4 Part III. The Bird of Flame 7 THE STORY OF THE FIRST BUTTERFLIES 10 THE STORY OF THE FIRST WOODPECKER 13 WHY THE WOODPECKER'S HEAD IS RED 15 WHY THE CAT ALWAYS FALLS UPON HER FEET 19 WHY THE SWALLOW'S TAIL IS FORKED 23 WHY THE WHITE HARES HAVE BLACK EARS 28 WHY THE MAGPIE'S NEST IS NOT WELL BUILT 31 WHY THE RAVEN'S FEATHERS ARE BLACK 34 HOW FIRE WAS BROUGHT TO THE INDIANS. Part I. Seizing the Firebrand 36 Part II. The Firebrand in the Forest 40 Part III. The Firebrand in the Pond 41 HOW THE QUAIL BECAME A SNIPE 43 WHY THE SERPENT SHEDS HIS SKIN 47 WHY THE DOVE IS TIMID 50 WHY THE PARROT REPEATS THE WORDS OF MEN 52 THE STORY OF THE FIRST MOCKING-BIRD 56 WHY THE TAIL OF THE FOX HAS A WHITE TIP 60 THE STORY OF THE FIRST FROGS 64 WHY THE RABBIT IS TIMID 68 WHY THE PEETWEET CRIES FOR RAIN 70 WHY THE BEAR HAS A SHORT TAIL 72 WHY THE WREN FLIES CLOSE TO THE EARTH 76 WHY THE HOOFS OF THE DEER ARE SPLIT 79 THE STORY OF THE FIRST GRASSHOPPER 83 THE STORY OF THE ORIOLE 86 WHY THE PEACOCK'S TAIL HAS A HUNDRED EYES 89 THE STORY OF THE BEES AND THE FLIES 93 THE STORY OF THE FIRST MOLES 96 THE STORY OF THE FIRST ANTS 98 THE FACE OF THE MANITO 103 THE STORY OF THE FIRST DIAMONDS 107 THE STORY OF THE FIRST PEARLS 111 THE STORY OF THE FIRST EMERALDS 114 WHY THE EVERGREEN TREES NEVER LOSE THEIR LEAVES 118 WHY THE ASPEN LEAVES TREMBLE 122 HOW THE BLOSSOMS CAME TO THE HEATHER 125 HOW FLAX WAS GIVEN TO MEN 128 WHY THE JUNIPER HAS BERRIES 133 WHY THE SEA IS SALT 135 THE STORY OF THE FIRST WHITEFISH 138 WAS IT THE FIRST TURTLE? 142 WHY THE CROCODILE HAS A WIDE MOUTH 145 THE STORY OF THE PICTURE ON THE VASE 150 WHY THE WATER IN RIVERS IS NEVER STILL 155 HOW THE RAVEN HELPED MEN 160 THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND SKY 165 HOW SUMMER CAME TO THE EARTH. Part I. 169 Part II. 172 THE STORY OF THE FIRST SNOWDROPS 175 WHY THE FACE OF THE MOON IS WHITE 179 WHY ALL MEN LOVE THE MOON 184 WHY THERE IS A HARE IN THE MOON 188 THE CHILDREN IN THE MOON 193 WHY THERE IS A MAN IN THE MOON 197 THE TWIN STARS 200 THE LANTERN AND THE FAN 204 VOCABULARY 211 THE BOOK OF NATURE MYTHS. THE STORY OF THE FIRST HUMMING-BIRD. PART I. THE GREAT FIRE-MOUNTAIN. Long, long ago, when the earth was very young, two hunters were traveling through the forest. They had been on the track of a deer for many days, and they were now far away from the village where they lived. The sun went down and night came on. It was dark and gloomy, but over in the western sky there came a bright light. "It is the moon," said one. "No," said the other. "We have watched many and many a night to see the great, round moon rise above the trees. That is not the moon. Is it the northern lights?" "No, the northern lights are not like this, and it is not a comet. What can it be?" It is no wonder that the hunters were afraid, for the flames flared red over the sky like a wigwam on fire. Thick, blue smoke floated above the flames and hid the shining stars. "Do the flames and smoke come from the wigwam of the Great Spirit?" asked one. "I fear that he is angry with his children, and that the flames are his fiery war-clubs," whispered the other. No sleep came to their eyes. All night long they watched and wondered, and waited in terror for the morning. When morning came, the two hunters were still watching the sky. Little by little they saw that there was a high mountain in the west where the light had been, and above the mountain floated a dark blue smoke. "Come," said one, "we will go and see what it is." They walked and walked till they came close to the mountain, and then they saw fire shining through the seams of the rocks. "It is a mountain of fire," one whispered. "Shall we go on?" "We will," said the other, and they went higher and higher up the mountain. At last they stood upon its highest point. "Now we know the secret," they cried. "Our people will be glad when they hear this." Swiftly they went home through the forest to their own village. "We have found a wonder," they cried. "We have found the home of the Fire Spirit. We know where she keeps her flames to help the Great Spirit and his children. It is a mountain of fire. Blue smoke rises above it night and day, for its heart is a fiery sea, and on the sea the red flames leap and dance. Come with us to the wonderful mountain of fire." The people of the village had been cold in the winter nights, and they cried, "O brothers, your words are good. We will move our lodges to the foot of the magic mountain. We can light our wigwam fires from its flames, and we shall not fear that we shall perish in the long, cold nights of winter." So the Indians went to live at the foot of the fire-mountain, and when the cold nights came, they said, "We are not cold, for the Spirit of Fire is our good friend, and she keeps her people from perishing." PART II. THE FROLIC OF THE FLAMES. For many and many a moon the people of the village lived at the foot of the great fire-mountain. On summer evenings, the children watched the light, and when a child asked, "Father, what makes it?" the father said, "That is the home of the Great Spirit of Fire, who is our good friend." Then all in the little village went to sleep and lay safely on their beds till the coming of the morning. But one night when all the people in the village were asleep, the flames in the mountain had a great frolic. They danced upon the sea of fire as warriors dance the war-dance. They seized great rocks and threw them at the sky. The smoke above them hid the stars; the mountain throbbed and trembled. Higher and still higher sprang the dancing flames. At last, they leaped clear above the highest point of the mountain and started down it in a river of red fire. Then the gentle Spirit of Fire called, "Come back, my flames, come back again! The people in the village will not know that you are in a frolic, and they will be afraid." [Illustration] The flames did not heed her words, and the river of fire ran on and on, straight down the mountain. The flowers in its pathway perished. It leaped upon great trees and bore them to the earth. It drove the birds from their nests, and they fluttered about in the thick smoke. It hunted the wild creatures of the forest from the thickets where they hid, and they fled before it in terror. At last, one of the warriors in the village awoke. The thick smoke was in his nostrils. In his ears was the war-cry of the flames. He sprang to the door of his lodge and saw the fiery river leaping down the mountain. "My people, my people," he cried, "the flames are upon us!" With cries of fear the people in the village fled far away into the forest, and the flames feasted upon the homes they loved. The two hunters went to look upon the mountain, and when they came back, they said sadly, "There are no flowers on the mountain. Not a bird-song did we hear. Not a living creature did we see. It is all dark and gloomy. We know the fire is there, for the blue smoke still floats up to the sky, but the mountain will never again be our friend." PART III. THE BIRD OF FLAME When the Great Spirit saw the work of the flames, he was very angry. "The fires of this mountain must perish," he said. "No longer shall its red flames light the midnight sky." The mountain trembled with fear at the angry words of the Great Spirit. "O father of all fire and light," cried the Fire Spirit, "I know that the flames have been cruel. They killed the beautiful flowers and drove your children from their homes, but for many, many moons they heeded my words and were good and gentle. They drove the frost and cold of winter from the wigwams of the village. The little children laughed to see their red light in the sky. The hearts of your people will be sad, if the flames must perish from the earth." The Great Spirit listened to the words of the gentle Spirit of Fire, but he answered, "The fires must perish. They have been cruel to my people, and the little children will fear them now; but because the children once loved them, the beautiful colors of the flames shall still live to make glad the hearts of all who look upon them." Then the Great Spirit struck the mountain with his magic war-club. The smoke above it faded away; its fires grew cold and dead. In its dark and gloomy heart only one little flame still trembled. It looked like a star. How beautiful it was! The Great Spirit looked upon the little flame. He saw that it was beautiful and gentle, and he loved it. "The fires of the mountain must perish," he said, "but you little, gentle flame, shall have wings and fly far away from the cruel fires, and all my children will love you as I do." Swiftly the little thing rose above the mountain and flew away in the sunshine. The light of the flames was still on its head; their marvelous colors were on its wings. [Illustration] So from the mountain's heart of fire sprang the first humming-bird. It is the bird of flame, for it has all the beauty of the colors of the flame, but it is gentle, and every child in all the earth loves it and is glad to see it fluttering over the flowers. THE STORY OF THE FIRST BUTTERFLIES. The Great Spirit thought, "By and by I will make men, but first I will make a home for them. It shall be very bright and beautiful. There shall be mountains and prairies and forests, and about it all shall be the blue waters of the sea." As the Great Spirit had thought, so he did. He gave the earth a soft cloak of green. He made the prairies beautiful with flowers. The forests were bright with birds of many colors, and the sea was the home of wonderful sea-creatures. "My children will love the prairies, the forests, and the seas," he thought, "but the mountains look dark and cold. They are very dear to me, but how shall I make my children go to them and so learn to love them?" Long the Great Spirit thought about the mountains. At last, he made many little shining stones. Some were red, some blue, some green, some yellow, and some were shining with all the lovely colors of the beautiful rainbow. "All my children will love what is beautiful," he thought, "and if I hide the bright stones in the seams of the rocks of the mountains, men will come to find them, and they will learn to love my mountains." When the stones were made and the Great Spirit looked upon their beauty, he said, "I will not hide you all away in the seams of the rocks. Some of you shall be out in the sunshine, so that the little children who cannot go to the mountains shall see your colors." Then the southwind came by, and as he went, he sang softly of forests flecked with light and shadow, of birds and their nests in the leafy trees. He sang of long summer days and the music of waters beating upon the shore. He sang of the moonlight and the starlight. All the wonders of the night, all the beauty of the morning, were in his song. "Dear southwind," said the Great Spirit "here are some beautiful things for you to bear away with, you to your summer home. You will love them, and all the little children will love them." At these words of the Great Spirit, all the stones before him stirred with life and lifted themselves on many-colored wings. They fluttered away in the sunshine, and the southwind sang to them as they went. [Illustration] So it was that the first butterflies came from a beautiful thought of the Great Spirit, and in their wings were all the colors of the shining stones that he did not wish to hide away. THE STORY OF THE FIRST WOODPECKER. In the days of long ago the Great Spirit came down from the sky and talked with men. Once as he went up and down the earth, he came to the wigwam of a woman. He went into the wigwam and sat down by the fire, but he looked like an old man, and the woman did not know who he was. "I have fasted for many days," said the Great Spirit to the woman. "Will you give me some food?" The woman made a very little cake and put it on the fire. "You can have this cake," she said, "if you will wait for it to bake." "I will wait," he said. When the cake was baked, the woman stood and looked at it. She thought, "It is very large. I thought it was small. I will not give him so large a cake as that." So she put it away and made a small one. "If you will wait, I will give you this when it is baked," she said, and the Great Spirit said, "I will wait." When that cake was baked, it was larger than the first one. "It is so large that I will keep it for a feast," she thought. So she said to her guest, "I will not give you this cake, but if you will wait, I will make you another one." "I will wait," said the Great Spirit again. Then the woman made another cake. It was still smaller than the others had been at first, but when she went to the fire for it, she found it the largest of all. She did not know that the Great Spirit's magic had made each cake larger, and she thought, "This is a marvel, but I will not give away the largest cake of all." So she said to her guest, "I have no food for you. Go to the forest and look there for your food. You can find it in the bark of the trees, if you will." The Great Spirit was angry when he heard the words of the woman. He rose up from where he sat and threw back his cloak. "A woman must be good and gentle," he said, "and you are cruel. You shall no longer be a woman and live in a wigwam. You shall go out into the forest and hunt for your food in the bark of trees." The Great Spirit stamped his foot on the earth, and the woman grew smaller and smaller. Wings started from her body and feathers grew upon her. With a loud cry she rose from the earth and flew away to the forest. And to this day all woodpeckers live in the forest and hunt for their food in the bark of trees. WHY THE WOODPECKER'S HEAD IS RED. One day the woodpecker said to the Great Spirit, "Men do not like me. I wish they did." The Great Spirit said, "If you wish men to love you, you must be good to them and help them. Then they will call you their friend." "How can a little bird help a man?" asked the woodpecker. "If one wishes to help, the day will come when he can help," said the Great Spirit. The day did come, and this story shows how a little bird helped a strong warrior. There was once a cruel magician who lived in a gloomy wigwam beside the Black-Sea-Water. He did not like flowers, and they did not blossom in his pathway. He did not like birds, and they did not sing in the trees above him. The breath of his nostrils was fatal to all life. North, south, east, and west he blew the deadly fever that killed the women and the little children. "Can I help them?" thought a brave warrior, and he said, "I will find the magician, and see if death will not come to him as he has made it come to others. I will go straightway to his home." For many days the brave warrior was in his canoe traveling across the Black-Sea-Water. At last he saw the gloomy wigwam of the cruel magician. He shot an arrow at the door and called, "Come out, O coward! You have killed women and children with your fatal breath, but you cannot kill a warrior. Come out and fight, if you are not afraid." The cruel magician laughed loud and long. "One breath of fever," he said, "and you will fall to the earth." The warrior shot again, and then the magician was angry. He did not laugh, but he came straight out of his gloomy lodge, and as he came, he blew the fever all about him. Then was seen the greatest fight that the sun had ever looked upon. The brave warrior shot his flint-tipped arrows, but the magician had on his magic cloak, and the arrows could not wound him. He blew from his nostrils the deadly breath of fever, but the heart of the warrior was so strong that the fever could not kill him. At last the brave warrior had but three arrows in his quiver. "What shall I do?" he said sadly. "My arrows are good and my aim is good, but no arrow can go through the magic cloak." "Come on, come on," called the magician. "You are the man who wished to fight. Come on." Then a woodpecker in a tree above the brave warrior said softly, "Aim your arrow at his head, O warrior! Do not shoot at his heart, but at the crest of feathers on his head. He can be wounded there, but not in his heart." The warrior was not so proud that he could not listen to a little bird. The magician bent to lift a stone, and an arrow flew from the warrior's bow. It buzzed and stung like a wasp. It came so close to the crest of feathers that the magician trembled with terror. Before he could run, another arrow came, and this one struck him right on his crest. His heart grew cold with fear. "Death has struck me," he cried. "Your cruel life is over," said the warrior. "People shall no longer fear your fatal breath." Then he said to the woodpecker, "Little bird, you have been a good friend to me, and I will do all that I can for you." He put some of the red blood of the magician upon the little creature's head. It made the crest of feathers there as red as flame. "Whenever a man looks upon you," said the warrior, "he will say, 'That bird is our friend. He helped to kill the cruel magician.'" The little woodpecker was very proud of his red crest because it showed that he was the friend of man, and all his children to this day are as proud as he was. [Illustration] WHY THE CAT ALWAYS FALLS UPON HER FEET. Some magicians are cruel, but others are gentle and good to all the creatures of the earth. One of these good magicians was one day traveling in a great forest. The sun rose high in the heavens, and he lay down at the foot of a tree. Soft, green moss grew all about him. The sun shining through the leaves made flecks of light and shadow upon the earth. He heard the song of the bird and the lazy buzz of the wasp. The wind rustled the leafy boughs above him. All the music of the forest lulled him to slumber, and he closed his eyes. As the magician lay asleep, a great serpent came softly from the thicket. It lifted high its shining crest and saw the man at the foot of the tree. "I will kill him!" it hissed. "I could have eaten that cat last night if he had not called, 'Watch, little cat, watch!' I will kill him, I will kill him!" Closer and closer the deadly serpent moved. The magician stirred in his sleep. "Watch, little cat, watch!" he said softly. The serpent drew back, but the magician's eyes were shut, and it went closer. It hissed its war-cry. The sleeping magician did not move. The serpent was upon him--no, far up in the high branches of the tree above his head the little cat lay hidden. She had seen the serpent when it came from the thicket. [Illustration: SHE LEAPED DOWN UPON THE SERPENT] She watched it as it went closer and closer to the sleeping man, and she heard it hiss its war-cry. The little cat's body quivered with anger and with fear, for she was so little and the serpent was so big. "The magician was very good to me," she thought, and she leaped down upon the serpent. Oh, how angry the serpent was! It hissed, and the flames shot from its eyes. It struck wildly at the brave little cat, but now the cat had no fear. Again and again she leaped upon the serpent's head, and at last the creature lay dead beside the sleeping man whom it had wished to kill. When the magician awoke, the little cat lay on the earth, and not far away was the dead serpent. He knew at once what the cat had done, and he said, "Little cat, what can I do to show you honor for your brave fight? Your eyes are quick to see, and your ears are quick to hear. You can run very swiftly. I know what I can do for you. You shall be known over the earth as the friend of man, and you shall always have a home in the home of man. And one thing more, little cat: you leaped from the high tree to kill the deadly serpent, and now as long as you live, you shall leap where you will, and you shall always fall upon your feet." WHY THE SWALLOW'S TAIL IS FORKED. This is the story of how the swallow's tail came to be forked. One day the Great Spirit asked all the animals that he had made to come to his lodge. Those that could fly came first: the robin, the bluebird, the owl, the butterfly, the wasp, and the firefly. Behind them came the chicken, fluttering its wings and trying hard to keep up. Then came the deer, the squirrel, the serpent, the cat, and the rabbit. Last of all came the bear, the beaver, and the hedgehog. Every one traveled as swiftly as he could, for each wished to hear the words of the Great Spirit. "I have called you together," said the Great Spirit, "because I often hear you scold and fret. What do you wish me to do for you? How can I help you?" "I do not like to hunt so long for my food," said the bear. "I do not like to build nests," said the bluebird. "I do not like to live in the water," said the beaver. "And I do not like to live in a tree," said the squirrel. At last man stood erect before the Great Spirit and said, "O Great Father, the serpent feasts upon my blood. Will you not give him some other food?" "And why?" asked the Great Spirit. "Because I am the first of all the creatures you have made," answered man proudly. Then every animal in the lodge was angry to hear the words of man. The squirrel chattered, the wasp buzzed, the owl hooted, and the serpent hissed. "Hush, be still," said the Great Spirit. "You are, O man, the first of my creatures, but I am the father of all. Each one has his rights, and the serpent must have his food. Mosquito, you are a great traveler. Now fly away and find what creature's blood is best for the serpent. Do you all come back in a year and a day." The animals straightway went to their homes. Some went to the river, some to the forest, and some to the prairie, to wait for the day when they must meet at the lodge of the Great Spirit. The mosquito traveled over the earth and stung every creature that he met to find whose blood was the best for the serpent. On his way back to the lodge of the Great Spirit he looked up into the sky, and there was the swallow. "Good-day, swallow," called the mosquito. "I am glad to see you, my friend," sang the swallow. "Are you going to the lodge of the Great Spirit? And have you found out whose blood is best for the serpent?" "The blood of man," answered the mosquito. The mosquito did not like man, but the swallow had always been his friend. "What can I do to help man?" he thought. "Oh, I know what I can do." Then he asked the mosquito, "Whose blood did you say?" "Man's blood," said the mosquito; "that is best." "_This_ is best," said the swallow, and he tore out the mosquito's tongue. The mosquito buzzed angrily and went quickly to the Great Spirit. "All the animals are here," said the Great Spirit. "They are waiting to hear whose blood is best for the serpent." The mosquito tried to answer, "The blood of man," but he could not say a word. He could make no sound but "Kss-ksss-ksssss!" "What do you say?" "Kss-ksss-ksssss!" buzzed the mosquito angrily. All the creatures wondered. Then said the swallow:-- "Great Father, the mosquito is timid and cannot answer you. I met him before we came, and he told me whose blood it was." "Then let us know at once," said the Great Spirit. [Illustration] "It is the blood of the frog," answered the swallow quickly. "Is it not so, friend mosquito?" "Kss-ksss-ksssss!" hissed the angry mosquito. "The serpent shall have the frog's blood," said the Great Spirit. "Man shall be his food no longer." Now the serpent was angry with the swallow, for he did not like frog's blood. As the swallow flew near him, he seized him by the tail and tore away a little of it. This is why the swallow's tail is forked, and it is why man always looks upon the swallow as his friend. WHY THE WHITE HARES HAVE BLACK EARS. In the forest there is a beautiful spirit. All the beasts and all the birds are dear to him, and he likes to have them gentle and good. One morning he saw some of his little white hares fighting one another, and each trying to seize the best of the food. "Oh, my selfish little hares," he said sadly, "why do you fight and try to seize the best of everything for yourselves? Why do you not live in love together?" "Tell us a story and we will be good," cried the hares. Then the spirit of the forest was glad. "I will tell you a story of how you first came to live on the green earth with the other animals," he said, "and why it is that you are white, and the other hares are not." Then the little hares came close about the spirit of the forest, and sat very still to hear the story. "Away up above the stars," the gentle spirit began, "the sky children were all together one snowy day. They threw snowflakes at one another, and some of the snowflakes fell from the sky. They came down swiftly between the stars and among the branches of the trees. At last they lay on the green earth. They were the first that had ever come to the earth, and no one knew what they were. The swallow asked, 'What are they?' and the butterfly answered, 'I do not know.' The spirit of the sky was listening, and he said, 'We call them snowflakes.' "'I never heard of snowflakes. Are they birds or beasts?' asked the butterfly. "'They are snowflakes,' answered the spirit of the sky, 'but they are magic snowflakes. Watch them closely.' "The swallow and the butterfly watched. Every snowflake showed two bright eyes, then two long ears, then some soft feet, and there were the whitest, softest little hares that were ever seen." "Were we the little white hares?" asked the listeners. "You were the little white hares," answered the spirit, "and if you are gentle and good, you will always be white." The hares were not gentle and good; they were fretful, and before long they were scolding and fighting again. The gentle spirit was angry. "I must get a firebrand and beat them with it," he said, "for they must learn to be good." So the hares were beaten with the firebrand till their ears were black as night. Their bodies were still white, but if the spirit hears them scolding and fighting again, it may be that we shall see their bodies as black as their ears. WHY THE MAGPIE'S NEST IS NOT WELL BUILT. A long time ago all the birds met together to talk about building nests. "Every Indian has a wigwam," said the robin, "and every bird needs a home." "Indians have no feathers," said the owl, "and so they are cold without wigwams. We have feathers." "I keep warm by flying swiftly," said the swallow. "And I keep warm by fluttering my wings," said the humming-bird. "By and by we shall have our little ones," said the robin. "They will have no feathers on their wings, so they cannot fly or flutter; and they will be cold. How shall we keep them warm if we have no nests?" Then all the birds said, "We will build nests so that our little ones will be warm." The birds went to work. One brought twigs, one brought moss, and one brought leaves. They sang together merrily, for they thought of the little ones that would some time come to live in the warm nests. Now the magpie was lazy, and she sat still and watched the others at their work. "Come and build your nest in the reeds and rushes," cried one bird, but the magpie said "No." "My nest is on the branch of a tree," called another, "and it rocks like a child's cradle. Come and build beside it," but the magpie said "No." Before long all the birds but the magpie had their nests built. The magpie cried, "I do not know how to build a nest. Will you not help me?" The other birds were sorry for her and answered, "We will teach you." The black-bird said, "Put the twigs on this bough;" the robin said, "Put the leaves between the twigs;" and the humming-bird said, "Put this soft green moss over it all." [Illustration] "I do not know how," cried the magpie. "We are teaching you," said the other birds. But the magpie was lazy, and she thought, "If I do not learn, they will build a nest for me." The other birds talked together. "She does not wish to learn," they said, "and we will not help her any longer." So they went away from her. Then the magpie was sorry. "Come back," she called, "and I will learn." But by this time the other birds had eggs in their nests, and they were busy taking care of them, and had no time to teach the lazy magpie. This is why the magpie's nest is not well built. WHY THE RAVEN'S FEATHERS ARE BLACK. Long, long ago the raven's feathers were white as snow. He was a beautiful bird, but the other birds did not like him because he was a thief. When they saw him coming, they would hide away the things that they cared for most, but in some marvelous way he always found them and took them to his nest in the pine-tree. One morning the raven heard a little bird singing merrily in a thicket. The leaves of the trees were dark green, and the little bird's yellow feathers looked like sunshine among them. "I will have that bird," said the raven, and he seized the trembling little thing. The yellow bird fluttered and cried, "Help, help! Will no one come and help me!" The other birds happened to be far away, and not one heard her cries. "The raven will kill me," she called. "Help, help!" Now hidden in the bark of a tree was a wood-worm. "I am only a wood-worm," he said to himself, "and I cannot fly like a bird, but the yellow bird has been good to me, and I will do what I can to help her." When the sun set, the raven went to sleep. Then the wood-worm made his way softly up the pine-tree to the raven's nest, and bound his feet together with grass and pieces of birch-bark. "Fly away," whispered the wood-worm softly to the little yellow bird, "and come to see me by and by. I must teach the raven not to be cruel to the other birds." The little yellow bird flew away, and the wood-worm brought twigs, and moss, and birch-bark, and grass, and put them around the tree. Then he set them all on fire. Up the great pine-tree went the flames, leaping from bough to bough. "Fire! fire!" cried the raven. "Come and help me! My nest is on fire!" The other birds were not sorry to see him flutter. "He is a thief," said they. "Let him be in the fire." By and by the fire burned the grass and the pieces of birch-bark that fastened his feet together, and the raven flew away. He was not burned, but he could no longer be proud of his shining white feathers, for the smoke had made every one of them as black as night. HOW FIRE WAS BROUGHT TO THE INDIANS. PART I. SEIZING THE FIREBRAND. Oh, it was so cold! The wind blew the leaves about on the ground. The frost spirit hid on the north side of every tree, and stung every animal of the forest that came near. Then the snow fell till the ground was white. Through the snowflakes one could see the sun, but the sun looked cold, for it was not a clear, bright yellow. It was almost as white as the moon. The Indians drew their cloaks more and more closely around them, for they had no fire. "How shall we get fire?" they asked, but no one answered. All the fire on earth was in the wigwam of two old women who did not like the Indians. "They shall not have it," said the old women, and they watched night and day so that no one could get a firebrand. At last a young Indian said to the others, "No man can get fire. Let us ask the animals to help us." "What beast or what bird can get fire when the two old women are watching it?" the others cried. "The bear might get it." "No, he cannot run swiftly." "The deer can run." "His antlers would not go through the door of the wigwam." "The raven can go through the door." "It was smoke that made the raven's feathers black, and now he always keeps away from the fire." "The serpent has not been in the smoke." "No, but he is not our friend, and he will not do anything for us." "Then I will ask the wolf," said the young man. "He can run, he has no antlers, and he has not been in the smoke." So the young man went to the wolf and called, "Friend wolf, if you will get us a firebrand, I will give you some food every day." "I will get it," said the wolf. "Go to the home of the old women and hide behind a tree; and when you hear me cough three times, give a loud war-cry." Close by the village of the Indians was a pond. In the pond was a frog, and near the pond lived a squirrel, a bat, a bear, and a deer. The wolf cried, "Frog, hide in the rushes across the pond. Squirrel, go to the bushes beside the path that runs from the pond to the wigwam of the two old women. Bat, go into the shadow and sleep if you like, but do not close both eyes. Bear, do not stir from behind this great rock till you are told. Deer, keep still as a mountain till something happens." The wolf then went to the wigwam of the two old women. He coughed at the door, and at last they said, "Wolf, you may come in to the fire." [Illustration] The wolf went into the wigwam. He coughed three times, and the Indian gave a war-cry. The two old women ran out quickly into the forest to see what had happened, and the wolf ran away with a firebrand from the fire. PART II. THE FIREBRAND IN THE FOREST. When the two women saw that the wolf had the firebrand, they were very angry, and straightway they ran after him. "Catch it and run!" cried the wolf, and he threw it to the deer. The deer caught it and ran. "Catch it and run!" cried the deer, and he threw it to the bear. The bear caught it and ran. "Catch it and fly!" cried the bear, and he threw it to the bat. The bat caught it and flew. "Catch it and run!" cried the bat, and he threw it to the squirrel. The squirrel caught it and ran. "Oh, serpent," called the two old women, "you are no friend to the Indians. Help us. Get the firebrand away from the squirrel." As the squirrel ran swiftly over the ground, the serpent sprang up and tried to seize the firebrand. He did not get it, but the smoke went into the squirrel's nostrils and made him cough. He would not let go of the firebrand, but ran and ran till he could throw it to the frog. When the frog was running away with it, then the squirrel for the first time thought of himself, and he found that his beautiful bushy tail was no longer straight, for the fire had curled it up over his back. "Do not be sorry," called the young Indian across the pond. "Whenever an Indian boy sees a squirrel with his tail curled up over his back, he will throw him a nut." PART III. THE FIREBRAND IN THE POND. All this time the firebrand was burning, and the frog was going to the pond as fast as he could. The old women were running after him, and when he came to the water, one of them caught him by the tail. "I have caught him!" she called. "Do not let him go!" cried the other. "No, I will not," said the first; but she did let him go, for the little frog tore himself away and dived into the water. His tail was still in the woman's hand, but the firebrand was safe, and he made his way swiftly across the pond. "Here it is," said the frog. "Where?" asked the young Indian. Then the frog coughed, and out of his mouth came the firebrand. It was small, for it had been burning all this time, but it set fire to the leaves and twigs, and soon the Indians were warm again. They sang and they danced about the flames. At first the frog was sad, because he was sorry to lose his tail; but before long he was as merry as the people who were dancing, for the young Indian said, "Little frog, you have been a good friend to us, and as long as we live on the earth, we will never throw a stone at a frog that has no tail." HOW THE QUAIL BECAME A SNIPE. "It is lonely living in this great tree far away from the other birds," said the owl to herself. "I will get some one to come and live with me. The quail has many children, and I will ask her for one of them." The owl went to the quail and said, "Will you let me have one of your children to come and live with me?" "Live with you? No," answered the quail. "I would as soon let my child live with the serpent. You are hidden in the tree all day long, and when it is dark, you come down like a thief and catch little animals that are fast asleep in their nests. You shall never have one of my children." "I _will_ have one," thought the owl. She waited till the night had come. It was dark and gloomy, for the moon was not to be seen, and not a star twinkled in the sky. Not a leaf stirred, and not a ripple was on the pond. The owl crept up to the quail's home as softly as she could. The young birds were chattering together, and she listened to their talk. "My mother is gone a long time," said one. "It is lonely, and I am afraid." "What is there to be afraid of?" asked another. "You are a little coward. Shut your eyes and go to sleep. See me! I am not afraid, if it is dark and gloomy. Oh, oh!" cried the boaster, for the owl had seized him and was carrying him away from home and his little brothers. When the mother quail came home, she asked, "Where is your brother?" The little quails did not know. All they could say was that something had seized him in the darkness and taken him away. "It crept up to the nest in the dark," said one. "And oh, mother, never, never go away from us again!" cried another. "Do not leave us at home all alone." "But, my dear little ones," the mother said, "how could you have any food if I never went away from our home?" The mother quail was very sad, and she would have been still more sorrowful if she had known what was happening to her little son far away in the owl's nest. The cruel owl had pulled and pulled on the quail's bill and legs, till they were so long that his mother would not have known him. One night the mole came to the quail and said, "Your little son is in the owl's nest." "How do you know?" asked the quail. "I cannot see very well," answered the mole, "but I heard him call, and I know that he is there." "How shall I get him away from the owl?" the quail asked the mole. "The owl crept up to your home in the dark," said the mole, "but you must go to her nest at sunrise when the light shines in her eyes and she cannot see you." At sunrise the quail crept up to the owl's nest and carried away her dear little son to his old home. As the light grew brighter, she saw what had happened to him. His bill and his legs were so long that he did not look like her son. "He is not like our brother," said the other little quails. "That is because the cruel owl that carried him away has pulled his bill and his legs," answered the mother sorrowfully. "You must be very good to him." But the other little quails were not good to him. They laughed at him, and the quail with the long bill and legs was never again merry and glad with them. Before long he ran away and hid among the great reeds that stand in the water and on the shores of the pond. "I will not be called quail," he said to himself, "for quails never have long bills and legs. I will have a new name, and it shall be snipe. I like the sound of that name." So it was that the bird whose name was once quail came to be called snipe. His children live among the reeds of the pond, and they, too, are called snipes. WHY THE SERPENT SHEDS HIS SKIN. The serpent is the grandfather of the owl, and once upon a time if the owl needed help, she would say, "My grandfather will come and help me," but now he never comes to her. This story tells why. When the owl carried away the little quail, she went to the serpent and said, "Grandfather, you will not tell the quail that I have her son, will you?" "No," answered the serpent, "I will keep your secret. I will not whisper it to any one." So when the mother quail asked all the animals, "Can you tell me who has carried away my little son?" the serpent answered, "I have been sound asleep. How could I know?" After the quail had become a snipe and had gone to live in the marsh among the reeds, the cruel owl looked everywhere for him, and at last she saw him standing beside a great stone in the water. She went to the serpent and said, "Grandfather, will you do something for me?" "I will," hissed the serpent softly, "What is it?" "Only to take a drink of water," answered the owl. "Come and drink all the water in the marsh, and then I can catch the quail that I made into a snipe." The serpent drank and drank, but still there was water in the marsh. "Why do you not drink faster?" cried the owl. "I shall never get the snipe." The serpent drank till he could drink no more, and still the water stood in the marsh. The owl could not see well by day, and the serpent could not see above the reeds and rushes, so they did not know that the water from the pond was coming into the marsh faster than the serpent could drink it. Still the serpent drank, and at last his skin burst. "Oh," he cried, "my skin has burst. Help me to fasten it together." "My skin never bursts," said the owl. "If you will drink the water from the marsh, I will help you, but I will not fasten any skin together till I get that snipe." The serpent had done all that he could to help the owl, and now he was angry. He was afraid, too, for he did not know what would happen to him, and he lay on the ground trembling and quivering. It was not long before his old skin fell off, and then he saw that under it was a beautiful new one, all bright and shining. He sheds his old skin every year now, but never again has he done anything to help the owl. [Illustration] WHY THE DOVE IS TIMID. A spirit called the manito always watches over the Indians. He is glad when they are brave, but if they are cowardly, he is angry. One day when the manito was walking under the pine-trees, he heard a cry of terror in the forest. "What is that?" said he. "Can it be that any of my Indian children are afraid?" As he stood listening, an Indian boy came running from the thicket, crying in fear. "What are you afraid of?" asked the manito. "My mother told me to go into the forest with my bow and arrows and shoot some animal for food," said the boy. "That is what all Indian boys must do," said the manito. "Why do you not do as she said?" "Oh, the great bear is in the forest, and I am afraid of him!" "Afraid of Hoots?" asked the manito. "An Indian boy must never be afraid." "But Hoots will eat me, I know he will," cried the boy. "Boo-hoo, boo-hoo!" "A boy must be brave," said the manito, "and I will not have a coward among my Indians. You are too timid ever to be a warrior, and so you shall be a bird. Whenever Indian boys look at you, they will say, 'There is the boy who was afraid of Hoots.'" The boy's cloak of deerskin fell off, and feathers came out all over his body. His feet were no longer like a boy's feet, they were like the feet of a bird. His bow and arrows fell upon the grass, for he had no longer any hands with which to hold them. He tried to call to his mother, but the only sound he could make was "Hoo, hoo!" "Now you are a dove," said the manito, "and a dove you shall be as long as you live. You shall always be known as the most timid of birds." Again the dove that had once been a boy tried to call, but he only said, "Hoo, hoo!" "That is the only sound you will ever make," said the manito, "and when the other boys hear it, they will say, 'Listen! He was afraid of Hoots, the bear, and that is why he says Hoo, hoo!'" WHY THE PARROT REPEATS THE WORDS OF MEN. In the olden times when the earth was young, all the birds knew the language of men and could talk with them. Everybody liked the parrot, because he always told things as they were, and they called him the bird that tells the truth. This bird that always told the truth lived with a man who was a thief, and one night the man killed another man's ox and hid its flesh. When the other man came to look for it in the morning, he asked the thief, "Have you seen my ox?" "No, I have not seen it," said the man. "Is that the truth?" the owner asked. "Yes, it is. I have not seen the ox," repeated the man. "Ask the parrot," said one of the villagers. "He always tells the truth." "O bird of truth," said they to the parrot, "did this man kill an ox and hide its flesh?" "Yes, he did," answered the parrot. The thief knew well that the villagers would punish him the next day, if he could not make them think that the parrot did not always tell the truth. "I have it," he said to himself at last. "I know what I can do." When night came he put a great jar over the parrot. Then he poured water upon the jar and struck it many times with a tough piece of oak. This he did half the night. Then he went to bed and was soon fast asleep. In the morning the men came to punish him. "How do you know that I killed the ox?" he asked. "Because the bird of truth says that you did," they answered. "The bird of truth!" he cried. "That parrot is no bird of truth. He will not tell the truth even about what happened last night. Ask him if the moon was shining." "Did the moon shine last night?" the men asked. "No," answered the parrot. "There was no moon, for the rain fell, and there was a great storm in the heavens. I heard the thunder half the night." "This bird has always told the truth before," said the villagers, "but there was no storm last night and the moon was bright. What shall we do to punish the parrot?" they asked the thief. "I think we will no longer let him live in our homes," answered the thief. "Yes," said the others, "he must fly away to the forest, and even when there is a storm, he can no longer come to our homes, because we know now that he is a bird of a lying tongue." [Illustration: "THIS BIRD HAS ALWAYS TOLD THE TRUTH"] So the parrot flew away sorrowfully into the lonely forest. He met a mocking-bird and told him what had happened. "Why did you not repeat men's words as I do?" asked the mocking-bird. "Men always think their own words are good." "But the man's words were not true," said the parrot. "That is nothing," replied the mocking-bird, laughing. "Say what they say, and they will think you are a wonderful bird." "Yes, I see," said the parrot thoughtfully, "and I will never again be punished for telling the truth. I will only repeat the words of others." THE STORY OF THE FIRST MOCKING-BIRD. Far away in the forest there once lived the most cruel man on all the earth. He did not like the Indians, and he said to himself, "Some day I will be ruler of them all." Then he thought, "There are many brave warriors among the Indians, and I must first put them to death." He was cunning as well as cruel, and he soon found a way to kill the warriors. He built some wigwams and made fires before them as if people lived in each one. One day a hunter on his way home heard a baby crying in one of the wigwams. He went in, but he never came out again. Another day a hunter heard a child laughing. He went in, but he never came out again. So it was day after day. One hunter heard a woman talking, and went to see who it was; another heard a man calling to people in the other wigwams, and went to see who they were; and no one who once went into a wigwam ever came out. One young brave had heard the voices, but he feared there was magic about them, and so he had never gone into the wigwams; but when he saw that his friends did not come back, he went to the wigwams and called, "Where are all the people that I have heard talk and laugh?" "Talk and laugh," said the cunning man mockingly. "Where are they? Do you know?" cried the brave, and the cunning man called, "Do you know?" and laughed. "Whose voices have I heard?" "Have I heard?" mocked the cunning man. "I heard a baby cry." "Cry," said the cunning man. "Who is with you?" "You." Then the young brave was angry. He ran into the first wigwam, and there he found the man who had cried like a baby and talked in a voice like a woman's and made all the other sounds. The brave caught him by the leg and threw him down upon the earth. "It was you who cried and talked and laughed," he said. "I heard your voice and now you are going to be punished for killing our braves. Where is my brother, and where are our friends?" "How do I know?" cried the man. "Ask the sun or the moon or the fire if you will, but do not ask me;" and all the time he was trying to pull the young brave into the flames. "I will ask the fire," said the brave. "Fire, you are a good friend to us Indians. What has this cruel man done with our warriors?" The fire had no voice, so it could not answer, but it sprang as far away from the hunter as it could, and there where the flames had been he saw two stone arrowheads. "I know who owned the two arrowheads," said the brave. "You have thrown my friends into your fire. Now I will do to you what you have done to them." He threw the cunning man into the fire. His head burst into two pieces, and from between them a bird flew forth. Its voice was loud and clear, but it had no song of its own. It could only mock the songs of other birds, and that is why it is called the mocking-bird. WHY THE TAIL OF THE FOX HAS A WHITE TIP. "I must have a boy to watch my sheep and my cows," thought an old woman, and so she went out to look for a boy. She looked first in the fields and then in the forest, but nowhere could she find a boy. As she was walking down the path to her home, she met a bear. "Where are you going?" asked the bear. "I am looking for a boy to watch my cows and my sheep," she answered. "Will you have me?" "Yes, if you know how to call my animals gently." "Ugh, ugh," called the bear. He tried to call softly, but he had always growled before, and now he could do nothing but growl. "No, no," said the old woman, "your voice is too loud. Every cow in the field would run, and every sheep would hide, if you should growl like that. I will not have you." Then the old woman went on till she met a wolf. "Where are you going, grandmother?" he asked. "I am looking for a boy to watch my cows and my sheep," she answered. "Will you have me?" asked the wolf. "Yes," she said, "if you know how to call my animals gently." "Ho-y, ho-y," called the wolf. "Your voice is too high," said the old woman. "My cows and my sheep would tremble whenever they heard it. I will not have you." Then the old woman went on till she met a fox. "I am so glad to meet you," said the fox. "Where are you going this bright morning?" "I am going home now," she said, "for I cannot find a boy to watch my cows and my sheep. The bear growls and the wolf calls in too high a voice. I do not know what I can do, for I am too old to watch cows and sheep." "Oh, no," said the cunning fox, "you are not old, but any one as beautiful as you must not watch sheep in the fields. I shall be very glad to do the work for you if you will let me." "I know that my sheep will like you," said she. "And I know that I shall like them dearly," said the fox. "Can you call them gently, Mr. Fox?" she asked. "Del-dal-halow, del-dal-halow," called the fox, in so gentle a voice that it was like a whisper. "That is good, Mr. Fox," said the old woman. "Come home with me, and I will take you to the fields where my animals go." Each day one of the cows or one of the sheep was gone when the fox came home at night. "Mr. Fox, where is my cow?" the old woman would ask, or, "Mr. Fox, where is my sheep?" and the fox would answer with a sorrowful look, "The bear came out of the woods, and he has eaten it," or, "The wolf came running through the fields, and he has eaten it." The old woman was sorry to lose her sheep and her cows, but she thought, "Mr. Fox must be even more sorry than I. I will go out to the field and carry him a drink of cream." [Illustration] She went to the field, and there stood the fox with the body of a sheep, for it was he who had killed and eaten every one that was gone. When he saw the old woman coming, he started to run away. "You cruel, cunning fox!" she cried. She had nothing to throw at him but the cream, so she threw that. It struck the tip of his tail, and from that day to this, the tip of the fox's tail has been as white as cream. THE STORY OF THE FIRST FROG. Once upon a time there was a man who had two children, a boy and a girl, whom he treated cruelly. The boy and the girl talked together one day, and the boy, Wah-wah-hoo, said to his sister, "Dear little sister, are you happy with our father?" "No," answered the girl, whose name was Hah-hah. "He scolds me and beats me, and I can never please him." "He was angry with me this morning," said the boy, "and he beat me till the blood came. See there!" "Let us run away," said Hah-hah. "The beasts and the birds will be good to us. They really love us, and we can be very happy together." That night the two children ran away from their cruel father. They went far into the forest, and at last they found a wigwam in which no one lived. When the father found that Wah-wah-hoo and his sister were gone, he was very unhappy. He went out into the forest to see if he could find them. "If they would only come again," he said aloud, "I would do everything I could to please them." "Do you think he tells the truth?" asked the wolf. "I do not know," answered the mosquito. "He never treated them well when they were with him." "Wolf," called the father, "will you tell me where my children are?" Wah-wah-hoo had once told the wolf when a man was coming to shoot him, and so the wolf would not tell where they were. "Mosquito," said the father, "where are my children?" Hah-hah had once helped the mosquito to go home when the wind was too strong for him, and so the mosquito would not tell. For a long time Wah-wah-hoo and his sister were really happy in the forest, for there was no one to scold them and to beat them, but at last there was a cold, cold winter. All the earth was covered with snow. The animals had gone, and Wah-wah-hoo could find no food. Death came and bore away the gentle Hah-hah. Wah-wah-hoo sat alone in the gloomy wigwam wailing for his sister. Then in his sadness he threw himself down from a high mountain and was killed. All this time the father had been looking for his children, and at last he saw his son lying at the foot of the mountain. Then he too wailed and cried aloud, for he was really sorry that he had treated them so cruelly. He was a magician, and he could make his son live, but he could not make him a boy again. "You shall be a frog," said he, "and you shall make your home in the marsh with the reeds and the rushes. There you shall wail as loud as you will for your sister, and once every moon I will come and wail for her with you. I was cruel to you and to her, and so I must live alone in my gloomy wigwam." Every summer night one can hear the frog in the marsh wailing for his dear sister Hah-hah. Sometimes a louder voice is heard, and that is the voice of the father wailing because he was so cruel. [Illustration] WHY THE RABBIT IS TIMID. One night the moon looked down from the sky upon the people on the earth and said to herself, "How sorrowful they look! I wish I knew what troubles them. The stars and I are never sad, and I do not see why men should be troubled." She listened closely, and she heard the people say, "How happy we should be if death never came to us. Death is always before us." The path of the moon lies across the sky, and she could not leave it to go to the earth, but she called the white rabbit and said, "Rabbit, should you be afraid to go down to the earth?" "No," answered the rabbit, "I am not afraid." "The people on the earth are troubled because death is before them. Now will you go to them and whisper, 'The moon dies every night. You can see it go down into the darkness, but when another night comes, then the moon rises again,'--can you remember to tell them that?" "Yes," said the rabbit, "I will remember." "Say this," said the moon: "'The moon dies, but the moon rises again, and so will you.'" The rabbit was so glad to go to the earth that he danced and leaped and sprang and frolicked, but when he tried to tell the people what the moon had said, he could not remember, and he said, "The moon says that she dies and will not rise again, and so you will die and will not rise again." The moon saw that the people were still troubled, and she called the rabbit and asked what he had said to them. "I said that as you die and do not rise, so they too will die and not rise," said the rabbit. "You did not try to remember, and you must be punished," said the moon, and she fired an arrow tipped with flint at the rabbit. The arrow struck the rabbit's lip and split it. From that time every rabbit has had a split lip. The rabbit was afraid of the moon, and he was afraid of the people on the earth. He had been brave before, but now he is the most timid of animals, for he is afraid of everything and everybody. WHY THE PEETWEET CRIES FOR RAIN. "Come to me, every bird that flies," said the Great Father. "There is work to be done that only my birds can do." The birds were happy that they could do something to please the Great Father, for they remembered how good he had always been to them. They flew to him eagerly to ask what they should do for him. "O Great Father," they sang all together, "tell us what we can do for you." "The waters that I have made know not where to go," said the Father. "Some should go to the seas, some should go to the lakes in the hollows among the mountains, and some should make rivers that will dance over the rocks and through the fields on their way to the sea." "And can even as small a bird as I show them where to go?" asked the sparrow eagerly. "Yes," said the Father, "even my little humming-bird can help me." Every bird that flies had come to the Father, but the peetweet had come last because he was lazy. "I do not really wish to fly all over the earth," said he, "to show the waters where to go." "Oh, I wish I were a bird," said a butterfly. "I should be so glad to do something for the Father." But the peetweet went on, "I should think the lakes could find their way into the hollows of the mountains by themselves." The Father heard the lazy peetweet, and he said, "Do you not wish to show the waters where to go?" "They never showed me where to go," said the lazy bird. "I am not thirsty. Let whoever is thirsty and needs the water help the lakes and rivers." The other birds all stood still in wonder. "He will be punished," they whispered. "Yes, he must be punished," said the Father sadly. Then said he to the lazy peetweet, "Never again shall you drink of the water that is in river or lake. When you are thirsty, you must look for a hollow in the rock where the rain has fallen, and there only shall you drink." That is why the peetweet flies over river and lake, but ever cries eagerly, "Peet-weet, peet-weet!" for that is his word for "Rain, rain!" WHY THE BEAR HAS A SHORT TAIL. One cold morning when the fox was coming up the road with some fish, he met the bear. "Good-morning, Mr. Fox," said the bear. "Good-morning, Mr. Bear," said the fox. "The morning is brighter because I have met you." "Those are very good fish, Mr. Fox," said the bear. "I have not eaten such fish for many a day. Where do you find them?" "I have been fishing, Mr. Bear," answered the fox. "If I could catch such fish as those, I should like to go fishing, but I do not know how to fish." "It would be very easy for you to learn, Mr. Bear," said the fox. "You are so big and strong that you can do anything." "Will you teach me, Mr. Fox?" asked the bear. "I would not tell everybody, but you are such a good friend that I will teach you. Come to this pond, and I will show you how to fish through the ice." So the fox and the bear went to the frozen pond, and the fox showed the bear how to make a hole in the ice. "That is easy for you," said the fox, "but many an animal could not have made that hole. Now comes the secret. You must put your tail down into the water and keep it there. That is not easy, and not every animal could do it, for the water is very cold; but you are a learned animal, Mr. Bear, and you know that the secret of catching fish is to keep your tail in the water a long time. Then when you pull it up, you will pull with it as many fish as I have." The bear put his tail down into the water, and the fox went away. The sun rose high in the heavens, and still the bear sat with his tail through the hole in the ice. Sunset came, but still the bear sat with his tail through the hole in the ice, for he thought, "When an animal is really learned, he will not fear a little cold." It began to be dark, and the bear said, "Now I will pull the fish out of the water. How good they will be!" He pulled and pulled, but not a fish came out. Worse than that, not all of his tail came out, for the end of it was frozen fast to the ice. [Illustration] He went slowly down the road, growling angrily, "I wish I could find that fox;" but the cunning fox was curled up in his warm nest, and whenever he thought of the bear he laughed. WHY THE WREN FLIES CLOSE TO THE EARTH. One day when the birds were all together, one of them said, "I have been watching men, and I saw that they had a king. Let us too have a king." "Why?" asked the others. "Oh, I do not know, but men have one." "Which bird shall it be? How shall we choose a king?" "Let us choose the bird that flies farthest," said one. "No, the bird that flies most swiftly." "The most beautiful bird." "The bird that sings best." "The strongest bird." The owl sat a little way off on a great oak-tree. He said nothing, but he looked so wise that all the birds cried, "Let us ask the owl to choose for us." "The bird that flies highest should be our king," said the owl with a wiser look than before, and the others said, "Yes, we will choose the bird that flies highest." The wren is very small, but she cried even more eagerly than the others, "Let us choose the bird that flies highest," for she said to herself, "They think the owl is wise, but I am wiser than he, and I know which bird can fly highest." Then the birds tried their wings. They flew high, high up above the earth, but one by one they had to come back to their homes. It was soon seen which could fly highest, for when all the others had come back, there was the eagle rising higher and higher. "The eagle is our king," cried the birds on the earth, and the eagle gave a loud cry of happiness. But look! A little bird had been hidden in the feathers on the eagle's back, and when the eagle had gone as high as he could, the wren flew up from his back still higher. "Now which bird is king?" cried the wren. "The one that flew highest should be king, and I flew highest." The eagle was angry, but not a word did he say, and the two birds came down to the earth together. "I am the king," said the wren, "for I flew higher than the eagle." The other birds did not know which of the two to choose. At last they went to the oak-tree and asked the owl. He looked to the east, the west, the south, and the north, and then he said, "The wren did not fly at all, for she was carried on the eagle's back. The eagle is king, for he not only flew highest, but carried the wren on his back." "Good, good!" cried the other birds. "The owl is the wisest bird that flies. We will do as he says, and the eagle shall be our king." The wren crept away. She thought she was wise before, but now she is really wise, for she always flies close to the earth, and never tries to do what she cannot. WHY THE HOOFS OF THE DEER ARE SPLIT. The manito of the Indians taught them how to do many things. He told them how to build wigwams, and how to hunt and to fish. He showed them how to make jars in which to keep food and water. When little children came to be with them, it was the manito who said, "See, this is the way to make soft, warm cradles for the babies." The good spirit often comes down from his happy home in the sky to watch the Indians at their work. When each man does as well as he can, the manito is pleased, but if an Indian is lazy or wicked, the spirit is angry, and the Indian is always punished in one way or another. One day when the manito was walking in the forest, he said to himself, "Everything is good and happy. The green leaves are whispering merrily together, the waves are lapping on the shore and laughing, the squirrels are chattering and laying up their food for winter. Everything loves me, and the colors of the flowers are brighter when I lay my hand upon them." Then the manito heard a strange sound. "I have not often heard that," said he. "I do not like it. Some one in the forest has wicked thoughts in his heart." Beside a great rock he saw a man with a knife. "What are you doing with the knife?" asked the manito. "I am throwing it away," answered the man. "Tell me the truth," said the manito. "I am sharpening it," replied the man. "That is strange," said the manito, "You have food in your wigwam. Why should you sharpen a knife?" The man could not help telling the truth to the manito, and so he answered, but greatly against his will, "I am sharpening the knife to kill the wicked animals." "Which animal is wicked?" asked the manito. "Which one does you harm?" [Illustration: THE KNIFE ONLY WENT IN DEEPER] "Not one does me harm," said the man, "but I do not like them. I will make them afraid of me, and I will kill them." "You are a cruel, wicked man," said the manito. "The animals have done you no harm, and you do not need them for food. You shall no longer be a man. You shall be a deer, and be afraid of every man in the forest." The knife fell from the man's hand and struck his foot. He leaped and stamped, but the knife only went in deeper. He cried aloud, but his voice sounded strange. His hands were no longer hands, but feet. Antlers grew from his head, and his whole body was not that of a man, but that of a deer. He runs in the forest as he will, but whenever he sees a man, he is afraid. His hoofs are split because the knife that he had made so sharp fell upon his foot when he was a man; and whenever he looks at them, he has to remember that it was his own wickedness which made him a deer. THE STORY OF THE FIRST GRASSHOPPER. In a country that is far away there once lived a young man called Tithonus. He was strong and beautiful. Light of heart and light of foot, he hunted the deer or danced and sang the livelong day. Every one who saw him loved him, but the one that loved him most was a goddess named Aurora. Every goddess had her own work, but the work of Aurora was most beautiful of all, for she was the goddess of the morning. It was she who went out to meet the sun and to light up his pathway. She watched over the flowers, and whenever they saw her coming, their colors grew brighter. She loved everything beautiful, and that is why she loved Tithonus. "Many a year have I roamed through this country," she said to herself, "but never have I seen such bright blue eyes as those. O fairest of youths," she cried, "who are you? Some name should be yours that sounds like the wind in the pine trees, or like the song of a bird among the first blossoms." The young man fell upon his knees before her. "I know well," said he, "that you are no maiden of the earth. You are a goddess come down to us from the skies. I am but a hunter, and I roam through the forest looking for deer." "Come with me, fairest of hunters," said Aurora. "Come with me to the home of my father. You shall live among my brothers and hunt with them, or go with me at the first brightness of the morning to carry light and gladness to the flowers." So it was that Tithonus went away from his own country and his own home to live in the home of Aurora. For a long time they were happy together, but one day Aurora said, "Tithonus, I am a goddess, and so I am immortal, but some day death will bear you away from me. I will ask the father of the gods that you too may be immortal." Then Aurora went to the king of the gods and begged that he would make Tithonus immortal. "Sometimes people are not pleased even when I have given them what they ask," replied the king, "so think well before you speak." "I have only one wish," said Aurora, "and it is that Tithonus, the fairest of youths, shall be immortal." "You have your wish," said the king of the gods, and again Tithonus and Aurora roamed happily together through forest and field. One day Tithonus asked, "My Aurora, why is it that I cannot look straight into your eyes as once I did?" Another day he said, "My Aurora, why is it that I cannot put my hand in yours as once I did?" Then the goddess wept sorrowfully. "The king of the gods gave me what I asked for," she wailed, "and I begged that you should be immortal. I did not remember to ask that you should be always young." Everyday Tithonus grew older and smaller. "I am no longer happy in your father's home," he said, "with your brothers who are as beautiful and as strong as I was when I first saw you. Let me go back to my own country. Let me be a bird or an insect and live in the fields where we first roamed together. Let me go, dearest goddess." "You shall do as you will," replied Aurora sadly. "You shall be a grasshopper, and whenever I hear the grasshopper's clear, merry song, I shall remember the happy days when we were together." THE STORY OF THE ORIOLE. The king of the north once said to himself, "I am master of the country of ice and snow, but what is that if I cannot be ruler of the land of sunshine and flowers? I am no king if I fear the king of the south. The northwind shall bear my icy breath. Bird and beast shall quiver and tremble with cold. I myself will call in the voice of the thunder, and this ruler of the south, his king of summer, shall yield to my power." The land of the south was ever bright and sunny, but all at once the sky grew dark, and the sun hid himself in fear. Black storm-clouds came from the north. An icy wind blew over the mountains. It wrestled with the trees of the southland, and even the oaks could not stand against its power. Their roots were tough and strong, but they had to yield, and the fallen trees lay on the earth and wailed in sorrow as the cruel storm-wind and rain beat upon them. The thunder growled in the hollows of the mountains, and in the fearful gloom came the white fire of the forked lightning, flaring through the clouds. "We shall perish," cried the animals of the sunny south. "The arrows of the lightning are aimed at us. O dear ruler of the southland, must we yield to the cruel master of the north?" "My king," said a little buzzing voice, "may I go out and fight the wicked master of the storm-wind?" The thunder was still for a moment, and a mocking laugh was heard from among the clouds, for it was a little hornet that had asked to go out and meet the power of the ruler of the north. "Dear king, may I go?" repeated the hornet. "Yes, you may go," said the king of the south, and the little insect went out alone, and bravely stung the master of the storm-wind. The king of the north struck at him with a war-club, but the hornet only flew above his head and stung him again. The hornet was too small to be struck by the arrows of the lightning. He stung again and again, and at last the king of the north went back to his own country, and drove before him the thunder and lightning and rain and the black storm-clouds and the icy wind. "Brave little hornet," said the king of the south, "tell me what I can do for you. You shall have whatever you ask." Then said the little hornet, "My king, on all the earth no one loves me. I do not wish to harm people, but they fear my sting, and they will not let me live beside their homes. Will you make men love me?" "Little hornet," said the king gently, "you shall no longer be a stinging insect feared by men. You shall be a bright and happy oriole, and when men see you, they will say, 'See the beautiful oriole. I shall be glad if he will build his nest on our trees.'" So the hornet is now an oriole, a bird that is loved by every one. His nest looks like that of a hornet because he learned how to build his home before he became an oriole. WHY THE PEACOCK'S TAIL HAS A HUNDRED EYES. Juno, queen of the gods, had the fairest cow that any one ever saw. She was creamy white, and her eyes were of as soft and bright a blue as those of any maiden in the world. Juno and the king of the gods often played tricks on each other, and Juno knew well that the king would try to get her cow. There was a watchman named Argus, and one would think that he could see all that was going on in the world, for he had a hundred eyes, and no one had ever seen them all asleep at once, so Queen Juno gave to Argus the work of watching the white cow. The king of the gods knew what she had done, and he laughed to himself and said, "I will play a trick on Juno, and I will have the white cow." He sent for Mercury and whispered in his ear, "Mercury, go to the green field where Argus watches the cream-white cow and get her for me." Mercury was always happy when he could play a trick on any one, and he set out gladly for the field where Argus watched the cream-white cow with every one of his hundred eyes. Now Mercury could tell merry stories of all that was done in the world. He could sing, too, and the music of his voice had lulled many a god to sleep. Argus knew that, but he had been alone a long time, and he thought, "What harm is there in listening to his merry chatter? I have a hundred eyes, and even if half of them were asleep, the others could easily keep watch of one cow." So he gladly hailed Mercury and said, "I have been alone in this field a long, long time, but you have roamed about as you would. Will you not sing to me, and tell me what has happened in the world? You would be glad to hear stories and music if you had nothing to do but watch a cow, even if it was the cow of a queen." So Mercury sang and told stories. Some of the songs were merry, and some were sad. The watchman closed one eye, then another and another, but there were two eyes that would not close for all the sad songs and all the merry ones. Then Mercury drew forth a hollow reed that he had brought from the river and began to play on it. It was a magic reed, and as he played, one could hear the water rippling gently on the shore and the breath of the wind in the pine-trees; one could see the lilies bending their heads as the dusk came on, and the stars twinkling softly in the summer sky. It is no wonder that Argus closed one eye and then the other. Every one of his hundred eyes was fast asleep, and Mercury went away to the king of the gods with the cream-white cow. [Illustration] Juno had so often played tricks on the king that he was happy because he had played this one on her, but Juno was angry, and she said to Argus, "You are a strange watchman. You have a hundred eyes, and you could not keep even one of them from falling asleep. My peacock is wiser than you, for he knows when any one is looking at him. I will put every one of your eyes in the tail of the peacock." And to-day, whoever looks at the peacock can count in his tail the hundred eyes that once belonged to Argus. THE STORY OF THE BEES AND THE FLIES. There were once two tribes of little people who lived near together. They were not at all alike, for one of the tribes looked for food and carried it away to put it up safely for winter, while the other played and sang and danced all day long. "Come and play with us," said the lazy people, but the busy workers answered, "No, come and work with us. Winter will soon be here. Snow and ice will be everywhere, and if we do not put up food now we shall have none for the cold, stormy days." So the busy people brought honey from the flowers, but the lazy people kept on playing. They laughed together and whispered to one another, "See those busy workers! They will have food for two tribes, and they will give us some. Let us go and dance." While the summer lasted, one tribe worked and the other played. When winter came, the busy workers were sorry for their friends and said, "Let us give them some of our honey." So the people who played had as much food as if they, too, had brought honey from the flowers. Another summer was coming, and the workers said, "If we should make our home near the lilies that give us honey, it would be easier to get our food." So the workers flew away, but the lazy people played and danced as they had done before while their friends were near, for they thought, "Oh, they will come back and bring us some honey." By and by the cold came, but the lazy people had nothing to eat, and the workers did not come with food. The manito had said to them, "Dear little workers, you shall no longer walk from flower to flower. I will give you wings, and you shall be bees. Whenever men hear a gentle humming, they will say, 'Those are the busy bees, and their wings were given them because they were wise and good.'" [Illustration] To the other tribe the manito said, "You shall be flies, and you, too, shall have wings; but while the workers fly from flower to flower and eat the yellow honey, you shall have for your food only what has been thrown away. When men hear your buzzing, they will say, 'It is good that the flies have wings, because we can drive them away from us the more quickly.'" THE STORY OF THE FIRST MOLES. A rich man and a poor man once owned a field together. The rich man owned the northern half, and the poor man owned the southern half. Each man sowed his ground with seed. The warm days came, the gentle rain fell, and the seed in the poor man's half of the field sprang up and put forth leaves. The seed in the rich man's half all died in the ground. The rich man was selfish and wicked. He said, "The southern half of the field is mine," but the poor man replied, "No, the southern half is mine, for that is where I sowed my seed." The rich man had a son who was as wicked as himself. This boy whispered, "Father, tell him to come in the morning. I know how we can keep the land." So the rich man said, "Come in the morning, and we shall soon see whose land this is." At night the rich man and his son pulled up some bushes that grew beside the field, and the son hid in the hole where their roots had been. Morning came, and many people went to the field with the rich man. The poor man was sorrowful, for he feared that he would lose his ground. "Now we shall see," said the rich man boastfully, and he called aloud, "Whose ground is this?" "This is the ground of the rich man," answered a voice from the hole. "How shall I ever get food for my children!" cried the poor man. Then another voice was heard. It was that of the spirit of the fields, and it said, "The southern half of the field is the poor man's, and the northern half shall be his too." The rich man would have run away, but the voice called, "Wait. Look where the bushes once stood. The boy in the hole and his wicked father shall hide in the darkness as long as they live, and never again shall they see the light of the sun." This is the story of the first moles, and this is why the mole never comes to the light of day. THE STORY OF THE FIRST ANTS. "This jar is full of smoked flesh," said one voice. "This has fish, this is full of honey, and that one is almost running over with oil," said another voice. "We shall have all that we need to eat for many days to come." These are the words that a villager coming home from his work heard his mother and his sister say. "They have often played tricks on me," he said to himself, "and now I will play one on them." So he went into the house and said, "Mother, I have found that I have a wonderful sense of smell, and by its help I can find whatever is hidden away." "That is a marvelous story," cried the sister. "If you can tell me what is in these jars," said his mother, "I shall think you are really a magician. What is it now?" "This is flesh, this fish, this honey, and this jar is full of oil," said the man. "I never heard of such a marvel in all my life," cried the mother; and in the morning she called her friends and said, "Only think what a wonderful sense of smell my son has! He told me what was in these jars when they were closed." It was not long before the people all through the country heard of the wonderful man, and one day word came that the king wished to see him at once. The man was afraid, for he did not know what would happen to him, and he was still more afraid when the king said, "A pearl is lost that I had in my hand last night. They say you can find things that are lost. Find my pearl, or your head will he lost." The poor man went out into the forest. "Oh, how I wish I had not tried to play tricks," he wailed. "Then this sharp sorrow, this dire trouble, would not have come upon me." "Please, please do not tell the king," said two voices in the shadow of the trees. "Who are you?" asked the man. "Oh, you must know us well," said a man coming out into the light. "My name is Sharp, and that man behind the tree is named Dire, but please do not tell the king. We will give you the pearl; here it is. You called our names, and we saw that you knew us. Oh, I wish I had not been a thief!" The man gave the pearl to the king, and went home wishing that no one would ever talk to him again of his sense of smell. In three days word came from the queen that he must come to her at once. She thought his power was only a trick, and to catch him she had put a cat into a bag and the bag into a box. When the man came, she asked sharply, "What is in this box? Tell me the truth, or off will go your head." [Illustration: A WONDERFUL SENSE OF SMELL] "What shall I do?" thought the man, "Dire death is upon me." He did not remember that he was before the queen, and he repeated half aloud an old saying, "The bagged cat soon dies." "What is that?" cried the queen. "The bagged cat soon dies," repeated the man in great terror. "You are a marvelous man," said the queen. "There is really a bag in the box and a cat in the bag, but no one besides myself knew it." "He is not a man; he is a god," cried the people, "and he must be in the sky and live among the gods;" so they threw him up to the sky. His hand was full of earth, and when the earth fell back, it was no longer earth, but a handful of ants. Ants have a wonderful sense of smell, and it is because they fell from the hand of this man who was thrown up into the sky to live among the gods. THE FACE OF THE MANITO. Many years ago the manito of the Indians lived in the sun. Every morning the wise men of the tribe went to the top of a mountain, and as the sun rose in the east, they sang, "We praise thee, O sun! From thee come fire and light. Be good to us, be good to us." After the warm days of the summer had come, the sun was so bright that the Indians said to their wise men, "When you go to the mountain top, ask the manito to show us his face in a softer, gentler light." Then the wise men went to the mountain top, and this is what they said: "O great manito, we are but children before you, and we have no power to bear the brightness of your face. Look down upon us here on the earth with a gentler, softer light, that we may ever gaze upon you and show you all love and all honor." The bright sun moved slowly toward the south. The people were afraid that the manito was angry with them, but when the moon rose they were no longer sad, for from the moon the loving face of the manito was looking down upon them. Night after night the people gazed at the gentle face, but at last a night came when the moon was not seen in the sky. The wise men went sorrowfully to the mountain top. "O manito," they said, "we are never happy when we cannot gaze into your face. Will you not show it to your children?" The moon did not rise, and the people were sad, but when morning came, there was the loving face of the manito showing clearly in the rocks at the top of the mountain. Again they were happy, but when dark clouds hid the gentle face, the wise men went to the foot of the mountain and called sadly, "O manito, we can no longer see your face." The clouds grew darker and fell like a cloak over the mountain, the trees trembled in the wind, the forked lightning shot across the sky, and the thunder called aloud. "It is the anger of the manito," cried the people. "The heavens are falling," they whispered, and they hid their faces in fear. Morning came, the storm had gone, and the sky was clear. Tremblingly the people looked up toward the mountain top for the face of the manito. It was not there, but after they had long gazed in sorrow, a wise man cried, "There it is, where no cloud will hide it from us." In the storm the rocks had fallen from the mountain top. They were halfway down the mountain side, and in them could be seen the face of the manito. Then the people cried, "Praise to the good manito! His loving face will look down upon us from the mountain side forever-more." For a long time all went well, but at last trouble came, for they heard that a great tribe were on the war-path coming to kill them. "Help us, dear manito," they cried but there was no help. The warriors came nearer and nearer. Their war-cry was heard, "O manito," called the people, "help us, help us!" A voice from the mountain answered, "My children, be not afraid." The war-cry was still, and when the people looked, for the warriors, they were nowhere to be seen. The people gazed all around, and at last one of the wise men cried, "There they are, there they are!" They were at the foot of the mountain, but the people no longer feared them, for now they were not warriors but rocks. To keep from harm those whom he loved, the manito had made the warriors into stone. They stood at the foot of the mountain, and to-day, if you should go to that far-away country, you could see the rocks that were once warriors, and above them, halfway up the mountain side, you could see the face of the manito. THE STORY OF THE FIRST DIAMONDS. The chief of an Indian tribe had two sons whom he loved very dearly. This chief was at war with another tribe, and one dark night two of his enemies crept softly through the trees till they came to where the two boys lay sound asleep. The warriors caught the younger boy up gently, and carried him far away from his home and his friends. When the chief woke, he cried, "Where is my son? My enemies have been here and have stolen him." All the Indians in the tribe started out in search of the boy. They roamed the forest through and through, but the stolen child could not be found. The chief mourned for his son, and when the time of his death drew near, he said to his wife, "Moneta, my tribe shall have no chief until my boy is found and taken from our enemies. Let our oldest son go forth in search of his brother, and until he has brought back the little one, do you rule my people." Moneta ruled the people wisely and kindly. When the older son was a man she said to him, "My son, go forth and search for your brother, whom I have mourned these many years. Every day I shall watch for you, and every night I shall build a fire on the mountain top." "Do not mourn, mother," said the young man. "You will not build the fire many nights on the mountain top, for I shall soon find my brother and bring him back to you." He went forth bravely, but he did not come back. His mother went every night to the mountain top, and when she was so old that she could no longer walk, the young men of the tribe bore her up the mountain side in their strong arms, so that with her own trembling hand she could light the fire. One night there was a great storm. Even the brave warriors were afraid, but Moneta had no fear, for out of the storm a gentle voice had come to her that said, "Moneta, your sons are coming home to you." [Illustration] "Once more I must build the fire on the mountain top," she cried. The young men trembled with fear, but they bore her to the top of the mountain. "Leave me here alone," she said. "I hear a voice. It is the voice of my son, and he is calling, 'Mother, mother.' Come to me, come, my boys." Coming slowly up the mountain in the storm was the older son. The younger had died on the road home, and he lay dead in the arms of his brother. In the morning the men of the tribe went to the mountain top in search of Moneta and her sons. They were nowhere to be seen, but where the tears of the lonely mother had fallen, there was a brightness that had never been seen before. The tears were shining in the sunlight as if each one of them was itself a little sun. Indeed, they were no longer tears, but diamonds. The dearest thing in all the world is the tear of mother-love, and that is why the tears were made into diamonds, the stones that are brightest and clearest of all the stones on the earth. THE STORY OF THE FIRST PEARLS. There was once a man named Runoia, and when he walked along the pathways of the forest, the children would say shyly to one another, "Look, there is the man who always hears music." It was really true that wherever he went he could hear sweet music. There are some kinds of music that every one can hear, but Runoia heard sweet sounds where others heard nothing. When the lilies sang their evening song to the stars, he could hear it, and when the mother tree whispered "Good-night" to the little green leaves, he heard the music of her whisper, though other men heard not a sound. He was sorry for those other men, and he said to himself, "I will make a harp, and then even if they cannot hear all the kinds of music, they will hear the sweet voice of the harp." This must have been a magic harp, for if one else touched it, no sound was heard, but when Runoia touched the strings, the trees bent down their branches to listen, the little blossoms put their heads out shyly, and even the wind was hushed. All kinds of beasts and birds came about him as he played, and the sun and the moon stood still in the heavens to hear the wonderful music. All these beautiful things happened whenever Runoia touched the strings. Sometimes Runoia's music was sad. Then the sun and the moon hid their faces behind the clouds, the wind sang mournfully, and the lilies bent low their snow-white blossoms. One day Runoia roamed far away till he came to the shores of the great sea. The sun had set, darkness hid the sky and the water, not a star was to be seen. Not a sound was heard but the wailing of the sea. No friend was near. "I have no friends," he said. He laid his hand upon his harp, and of themselves the strings gave forth sweet sounds, at first softly and shyly. Then the sounds grew louder, and soon the world was full of music, such as even Runoia had never heard before, for it was the music of the gods. "It is really true," he said to himself softly. "My harp is giving me music to drive away my sadness." [Illustration] He listened, and the harp played more and more sweetly. "He who has a harp has one true friend. He who loves music is loved by the gods," so the harp sang to him. Tears came into Runoia's eyes, but they were tears of happiness, not of sadness, for he was no longer lonely. A gentle voice called, "Runoia, come to the home of the gods." As darkness fell over the sea, Runoia's friends went to look for him. He was gone, but where he had stood listening happily to the music of the gods, there on the fair white sand was the harp, and all around it lay beautiful pearls, shining softly in the moonlight, for every tear of happiness was now a pearl. THE STORY OF THE FIRST EMERALDS. In the days of long ago there was a time when there were no emeralds on the earth. Men knew where to find other precious stones. They could get pearls and diamonds, but no one had ever seen an emerald, because the emeralds were hidden away in the bed of the sea, far down below the waves. The king of India had many precious things, and he was always eager to get others. One day a stranger stood before his door, and when the king came out he cried, "O king, you have much that is precious. Do you wish to have the most beautiful thing in earth, air, or water?" "Yes, in truth," said the king. "What is it?" "It is a vase made of an emerald stone," answered the stranger. "And what is an emerald stone?" asked the king. "It is a stone that no one on earth has ever seen," said the stranger. "It is greener than the waves of the sea or the leaves of the forest." "Where is the wonderful vase?" cried the king eagerly. "Where the waves of the sea never roll," was the answer, but when the king was about to ask where that was, the stranger had gone. The king asked his three wise men where it was that the waves of the sea never rolled. One said, "In the forest;" another said, "On the mountain;" and the last said, "In the sea where the water is deepest." The king thought a long time about these answers of the wise men. At last he said: "If the emerald vase had been in the forest or on the mountain, it would have been found long before now. I think it is in the deepest water of the sea." This king of India was a great magician. He went to the sea, and there he sang many a magical song, for he said to himself, "I have no diver who can go to the bed of the sea, but often magic will do what a diver cannot." The king of the world under the water owned the beautiful vase, but when he heard the songs, he knew that he must give it up. "Take it," he said to the spirits that live in the deepest water. "Bear it to the king of India. The spirits of the air will try to take it from you, but see that it goes safely to the king whose magic has called it from the sea." The spirits of the sea rose from the waves bearing the precious vase. "It is ours, it is ours," cried the spirits of the air. "The king of India shall never have it." The spirits of the air and the spirits of the water fought together. "What a fearful storm!" cried the people on the earth. "See how the lightning shoots across the sky, and hear the thunder roll from mountain to mountain!" They hid themselves in terror, but it was no storm, it was only the spirits fighting for the emerald vase. One of the spirits of the air bore it at last far up above the top of the highest mountain. "It is mine," he cried. "Never," said a spirit of the water, and he caught it and threw it angrily against the rocky top of the mountain. It fell in hundreds of pieces. There was no vase like it in the east or the west, the north or the south, and so the king of India never had an emerald vase; but from the pieces of the vase that was thrown against the mountain came all the emeralds that are now on the earth. WHY THE EVERGREEN TREES NEVER LOSE THEIR LEAVES. Winter was coming, and the birds had flown far to the south, where the air was warm and they could find berries to eat. One little bird had broken its wing and could not fly with the others. It was alone in the cold world of frost and snow. The forest looked warm, and it made its way to the trees as well as it could, to ask for help. First it came to a birch-tree. "Beautiful birch-tree," it said, "my wing is broken, and my friends have flown away. May I live among your branches till they come back to me?" "No, indeed," answered the birch-tree, drawing her fair green leaves away. "We of the great forest have our own birds to help. I can do nothing for you." "The birch is not very strong," said the little bird to itself, "and it might be that she could not hold me easily. I will ask the oak." So the bird said, "Great oak-tree, you are so strong, will you not let me live on your boughs till my friends come back in the springtime?" "In the springtime!" cried the oak. "That is a long way off. How do I know what you might do in all that time? Birds are always looking for something to eat, and you might even eat up some of my acorns." "It may be that the willow will be kind to me," thought the bird, and it said, "Gentle willow, my wing is broken, and I could not fly to the south with the other birds. May I live on your branches till the springtime?" The willow did not look gentle then, for she drew herself up proudly and said, "Indeed, I do not know you, and we willows never talk to people whom we do not know. Very likely there are trees somewhere that will take in strange birds. Leave me at once." The poor little bird did not know what to do. Its wing was not yet strong, but it began to fly away as well as it could. Before it had gone far, a voice was heard. "Little bird," it said, "where are you going?" "Indeed, I do not know," answered the bird sadly. "I am very cold." "Come right here, then," said the friendly spruce-tree, for it was her voice that had called. "You shall live on my warmest branch all winter if you choose." "Will you really let me?" asked the little bird eagerly. "Indeed, I will," answered the kind-hearted spruce-tree. "If your friends have flown away, it is time for the trees to help you. Here is the branch where my leaves are thickest and softest." "My branches are not very thick," said the friendly pine-tree, "but I am big and strong, and I can keep the north wind from you and the spruce." "I can help too," said a little juniper-tree. "I can give you berries all winter long, and every bird knows that juniper berries are good." [Illustration] So the spruce gave the lonely little bird a home, the pine kept the cold north wind away from it, and the juniper gave it berries to eat. The other trees looked on and talked together wisely. "I would not have strange birds on my boughs," said the birch. "I shall not give my acorns away for any one," said the oak. "I never have anything to do with strangers," said the willow, and the three trees drew their leaves closely about them. In the morning all those shining green leaves lay on the ground, for a cold north wind had come in the night, and every leaf that it touched fell from the tree. "May I touch every leaf in the forest?" asked the wind in its frolic. "No," said the frost king. "The trees that have been kind to the little bird with the broken wing may keep their leaves." This is why the leaves of the spruce, the pine, and the juniper are always green. WHY THE ASPEN LEAVES TREMBLE. "It is very strange," whispered one reed to another, "that the queen bee never guides her swarm to the aspen-tree." "Indeed, it _is_ strange," said the other. "The oak and the willow often have swarms, but I never saw one on the aspen. What can be the reason?" "The queen bee cannot bear the aspen," said the first. "Very likely she has some good reason for despising it. I do not think that an insect as wise as she would despise a tree without any reason. Many wicked things happen that no one knows." The reeds did not think that any one could hear what they said, but both the willow and the aspen heard every word. The aspen was so angry that it trembled from root to tip. "I'll soon see why that proud queen bee despises me," it said. "She shall guide a swarm to my branches or"-- "Oh, I would not care for what those reeds say," the willow-tree broke in. "They are the greatest chatterers in the world. They are always whispering together, and they always have something unkind to say." The aspen-tree was too angry to be still, and it called out to the reeds, "You are only lazy whisperers. I do not care what you say. I despise both you and your queen bee. The honey that those bees make is not good to eat. I would not have it a anywhere near me." "Hush, hush," whispered the willow timidly. "The reeds will repeat every word that you say." "I do not care if they do," said the aspen. "I despise both them and the bees." The reeds did whisper the angry words of the aspen to the queen bee, and she said, "I was going to guide my swarm to the aspen, but now I will drive the tree out of the forest. Come, my bees, come." Then the bees flew by hundreds upon the aspen. They stung every leaf and every twig through and through. The tree was driven from the forest, over the prairie, over the river, over the fields; and still the angry bees flew after it and stung it again and again. When they had come to the rocky places, they left it and flew back to the land of flowers. The aspen never came back. Its bright green leaves had grown white through fear, and from that day to this they have trembled as they did when the bees were stinging them and driving the tree from the forest. HOW THE BLOSSOMS CAME TO THE HEATHER. Only a little while after the earth was made, the trees and plants came to live on it. They were happy and contented. The lily was glad because her flowers were white. The rose was glad because her flowers were red. The violet was happy because, however shyly she might hide herself away, some one would come to look for her and praise her fragrance. The daisy was happiest of all because every child in the world loved her. The trees and plants chose homes for themselves. The oak said, "I will live in the broad fields and by the roads, and travelers may sit in my shadow." "I shall be contented on the waters of the pond," said the water-lily. "And I am contented in the sunny fields," said the daisy. "My fragrance shall rise from beside some mossy stone," said the violet. Each plant chose its home where it would be most happy and contented. There was one little plant, however, that had not said a word and had not chosen a home. This plant was the heather. She had not the sweet fragrance of the violet, and the children did not love her as they did the daisy. The reason was that no blossoms had been given to her, and she was too shy to ask for any. "I wish there was some one who would be glad to see me," she said; but she was a brave little plant, and she did her best to be contented and to look bright and green. One day she heard the mountain say, "Dear plants, will you not come to my rocks and cover them with your brightness and beauty? In the winter they are cold, and in the summer they are stung by the sunshine. Will you not come and cover them?" "I cannot leave the pond," cried the water-lily. "I cannot leave the moss," said the violet. "I cannot leave the green fields," said the daisy. The little heather was really trembling with eagerness. "If the great, beautiful mountain would only let me come!" she thought, and at last she whispered very softly and shyly, "Please, dear mountain, will you let me come? I have not any blossoms like the others, but I will try to keep the wind and the sun away from you." "Let you?" cried the mountain. "I shall be contented and happy if a dear little plant like you will only come to me." The heather soon covered the rocky mountain side with her bright green, and the mountain called proudly to the other plants, "See how beautiful my little heather is!" The others replied, "Yes, she is bright and green, but she has no blossoms." Then a sweet, gentle voice was heard saying, "Blossoms you shall have, little heather. You shall have many and many a flower, because you have loved the lonely mountain, and have done all that you could to please him and make him happy." Even before the sweet voice was still, the little heather was bright with many blossoms, and blossoms she has had from that day to this. HOW FLAX WAS GIVEN TO MEN. "You have been on the mountain a long time," said the wife of the hunter. "Yes, wife, and I have seen the most marvelous sight in all the world," replied the hunter. "What was that?" "I came to a place on the mountain where I had been many and many a time before, but a great hole had been made in the rock, and through the hole I saw--oh, wife, it was indeed a wonderful sight!" "But what was it, my hunter?" "There was a great hall, all shining and sparkling with precious stones. There were diamonds and pearls and emeralds, more than we could put into our little house, and among all the beautiful colors sat a woman who was fairer than they. Her maidens were around her, and the hall was as bright with their beauty as it was with the stones. One was playing on a harp, one was singing, and others were dancing as lightly and merrily as a sunbeam on a blossom. The woman was even more beautiful than the maidens, and, wife, as soon as I saw her I thought that she was no mortal woman." "Did you not fall on your knees and ask her to be good to us?" "Yes, wife, and straightway she said: 'Rise, my friend. I have a gift for you. Choose what you will to carry to your wife as a gift from Holda.'" "Did you choose pearls or diamonds?" "I looked about the place, and it was all so sparkling that I closed my eyes. 'Choose your gift,' she said. I looked into her face, and then I knew that it was indeed the goddess Holda, queen of the sky. When I looked at her, I could not think of precious stones, for her eyes were more sparkling than diamonds, and I said: 'O goddess Holda, there is no gift in all your magic hall that I would so gladly bear away to my home as the little blue flower in your lily-white hand.'" "Well!" cried the wife, "and when you might have had half the pearls and emeralds in the place, you chose a little faded blue flower! I did think you were a wiser man." "The goddess said I had chosen well," said the hunter. "She gave me the flower and the seed of it, and she said, 'When the springtime comes, plant the seed, and in the summer I myself will come and teach you what to do with the plant.'" In the spring the little seeds were put into the ground. Soon the green leaves came up; then many little blue flowers, as blue as the sky, lifted up their heads in the warm sunshine of summer. No one on the earth knew how to spin or to weave, but on the brightest, sunniest day of the summer, the goddess Holda came down from the mountain to the little house. [Illustration: "SHE GAVE ME THE FLOWER"] "Can you spin flax?" she asked of the wife. "Indeed, no," said the wife. "Can you weave linen?" "Indeed, no." "Then I will teach you how to spin and to weave," said the good goddess. "The little blue flower is the flax. It is my own flower, and I love the sight of it." So the goddess sat in the home of the hunter and his wife and taught them how to spin flax and weave linen. When the wife saw the piece of linen on the grass, growing whiter and whiter the longer the sun shone upon it, she said to her husband, "Indeed, my hunter, the linen is fairer than the pearls, and I should rather have the beautiful white thing that is on the grass in the sunshine than all the diamonds in the hall of the goddess." WHY THE JUNIPER HAS BERRIES. Three cranberries once lived together in a meadow. They were sisters, but they did not look alike, for one was white, and one was red, and one was green. Winter came, and the wind blew cold. "I wish we lived nearer the wigwam," said the white cranberry timidly. "I am afraid that Hoots, the bear, will come. What should we do?" "The women in the wigwam are afraid as well as we," the red cranberry said. "I heard them say they wished the men would come back from the hunt." "We might hide in the woods," the green cranberry whispered. "But the bear will come down the path through the woods," replied the white cranberry. "I think our own meadow is the best place," the red cranberry said. "I shall not go away from the meadow. I shall hide here in the moss." "I am so white," the white cranberry wailed, "that I know Hoots would see me. I shall hide in the hominy. That is as white as I." "I cannot hide in the hominy," said the green cranberry, "but I have a good friend in the woods. I am going to ask the juniper-tree to hide me. Will you not go with me?" But the red cranberry thought it best to stay in the moss, and the white cranberry thought it best to hide in the hominy, so the green cranberry had to go alone to the friendly juniper-tree. By and by a growling was heard, and soon Hoots himself came in sight. He walked over and over the red cranberry that lay hidden in the moss. Then he went to the wigwam. There stood the hominy, and in it was the white cranberry, trembling so she could not keep still. "Ugh, ugh, what good hominy!" said Hoots, and in the twinkling of an eye he had eaten it up, white cranberry and all. Now the red cranberry was dead, and the white cranberry was dead, but the little green cranberry that went to the juniper-tree had hidden away in the thick branches, and Hoots did not find her. She was so happy with the kind-hearted tree that she never left it, and that is the reason why the juniper-tree has berries. WHY THE SEA IS SALT. Frothi, king of the Northland, owned some magic millstones. Other millstones grind corn, but these would grind out whatever the owner wished, if he knew how to move them. Frothi tried and tried, but they would not stir. "Oh, if I could only move the millstones," he cried, "I would grind out so many good things for my people. They should all be happy and rich." One day King Frothi was told that two strange women were begging at the gate to see him. "Let them come in," he said, and the were brought before him. "We have come from a land that is far away," they said. "What can I do for you?" asked the king. "We have come to do something for you," answered the women. "There is only one thing that I wish for," said the king, "and that is to make the magic millstones grind, but you cannot do that." "Why not?" asked the women. "That is just what we have come to do. That is why we stood at your gate and begged to speak to you." Then the king was a happy man indeed. "Bring in the millstones," he called. "Quick, quick! Do not wait." The millstones were brought in, and the women asked, "What shall we grind for you?" "Grind gold and happiness and rest for my people," cried the king gladly. The women touched the magic millstones, and how they did grind! "Gold and happiness and rest for the people," said the women to one another. "Those are good wishes." The gold was so bright and yellow that King Frothi could not bear to let it go out of his sight. "Grind more," he said to the women. "Grind faster. Why did you come to my gate if you did not wish to grind?" "We are so weary," said the women. "Will you not let us rest?" "You may rest for as long a time as it needs to say 'Frothi,'" cried the king, "and no longer. Now you have rested. Grind away. No one should be weary who is grinding out yellow gold." "He is a wicked king," said the women. "We will grind for him no more. Mill, grind out hundreds and hundreds of strong warriors to fight Frothi and punish him for his cruel words." The millstones ground faster and faster. Hundreds of warriors sprang out, and they killed Frothi and all his men. "Now I shall be king," cried the strongest of the warriors. He put the two women and the magic millstones on a ship to go to a far-away land. "Grind, grind," he called to the women. "But we are so weary. Please let us rest," they begged. "Rest? No. Grind on, grind on. Grind salt, if you can grind nothing else." Night came and the weary women were still grinding. "Will you not let us rest?" they asked. "No," cried the cruel warrior. "Keep grinding, even if the ship goes to the bottom of the sea." The women ground, and it was not long before the ship really did go to the bottom, and carried the cruel warrior with it. There at the bottom of the sea are the two millstones still grinding salt, for there is no one to say that they must grind no longer. That is why the sea is salt. THE STORY OF THE FIRST WHITEFISH. One day a crane was sitting on a rock far out in the water, when he heard a voice say, "Grandfather Crane, Grandfather Crane, please come and carry us across the lake." It was the voice of a child, and when the crane had come to the shore, he saw two little boys holding each other's hands and crying bitterly. "Why do you cry?" asked the crane, "and why do you wish to go across the lake, away from your home and friends?" "We have no friends," said the little boys, crying more bitterly than ever. "We have no father and no mother, and a cruel witch troubles us. She tries all the time to do us harm, and we are going to run away where she can never find us." "I will carry you over the lake," said the crane. "Hold on well, but do not touch the back of my head, for if you do, you will fall into the water and go to the bottom of the lake. Will you obey me?" "Yes, indeed, we will obey," they said. "We will not touch your head. But please come quickly and go as fast as you can. We surely heard the voice of the witch in the woods." It really was the witch, and she was saying over and over to herself, "I will catch them, and I will punish them so that they will never run away from me again. They will obey me after I have caught them." The crane bore the two little boys gently to the other shore, and when he came back, there stood the witch. "Dear, gentle crane," she said, "you are so good to every one. Will you carry me over the lake? My two dear children are lost in the woods, and I have cried bitterly for them all day long." [Illustration] The spirit of the lake had told the crane to carry across the lake every one that asked to be taken over; so he said, "Yes, I will carry you across. Hold on well, but do not touch the back of my head, for if you do, you will fall into the water and go to the bottom of the lake. Will you obey me?" "Yes, indeed, I will," said the witch; but she thought, "He would not be so timid about letting me touch the back of his head if he were not afraid of my magic. I will put my hand on his head, and then he will always be in my power." So when they were far out over the lake, she put her hand on the crane's head, and before she could say "Oh!" she was at the bottom of the lake. "You shall never live in the light again," said the crane, "for you have done no good on earth. You shall be a whitefish, and you shall be food for the Indians as long as they eat fish." WAS IT THE FIRST TURTLE? Once upon a time there was a great fight between two tribes of Indians. It was so fierce that the river ran red with blood, and the war-cries were so loud and angry that the animals of the forest ran away in terror. The warriors fought all day long, and when it began to grow dark, all the men on one side had been killed but two warriors, one of whom was known as Turtle. In those days there were no such animals as turtles in the ponds and rivers, and no one knew why he was called by that name. At last Turtle's friend was struck by an arrow and fell to the ground. "Now yield!" cried the enemies. "Friend," said Turtle, "are you dead?" "No," said his friend. "Then I will fight on," said Turtle, and he called out, "Give life again to the warriors whom you have killed with your wicked arrows, and then I will yield, but never before. Come on, cowards that you are! You are afraid of me. You do not dare to come!" Then his enemies said, "We will all shoot our arrows at once, and some one of them will be sure to kill him." They made ready to fire, but Turtle, too, made ready. He had two thick shields, and he put one over his back and one over his breast. Then he called to his fierce enemies, "Are you not ready? Come on, fierce warriors! Shoot your arrows through my breast if you can." The warriors all shot, but not an arrow struck Turtle, for the two shields covered his breast and his back, and whenever an arrow buzzed through the air, he drew in his head and his arms between the shields, and so he was not harmed. "Why do you not aim at me?" he cried. "Are you shooting at the mountain, or at the sun and the moon? Good fighters you are, indeed! Try again." His enemies shot once more, and this time an arrow killed the wounded friend as he lay on the ground. When Turtle cried, "Friend, are you living?" there was no answer. "My friend is dead," said Turtle. "I will fight no more." "He has yielded," cried his enemies. "He has not," said Turtle, and with one great leap he sprang into the river. His enemies did not dare to spring after him. "Those long arms of his would pull us to the bottom," they said; "but we will watch till he comes up, and then we shall be sure of him." They were not so sure as they thought, for he did not come up, and all that they could see in the water was a strange creature unlike anything that had been there before. "It has arms and a head," said one. "And it pulls them out of sight just as Turtle did," said another. "It has a shield over its back and one over its breast, as Turtle had," said the first. Then all the warriors were so eager to watch the strange animal that they no longer remembered the fight. They crowded up to the shore of the river. "It is not Turtle," cried one. "It _is_ Turtle," declared another. "It is so like him that I do not care to go into the water as long as it is in sight," said still another. "But if this is not Turtle, where is he?" they all asked, and not one of the wise men of their tribe could answer. WHY THE CROCODILE HAS A WIDE MOUTH. "Come to my kingdom whenever you will," said the goddess of the water to the king of the land. "My waves will be calm, and my animals will be gentle. They will be as good to your children as if they were my own. Nothing in all my kingdom will do you harm." The goddess went back to her home in the sea, and the king walked to the shore of the river and stood gazing upon the beautiful water. Beside him walked his youngest son. "Father," asked the boy, "would the goddess be angry if I went into the water to swim?" "No," answered the father. "She says that nothing in all her wide kingdom will do us harm. The water-animals will be kind, and the waves will be calm." The boy went into the water. He could swim as easily as a fish, and he went from shore to shore, sometimes talking with the fishes, sometimes getting a bright piece of stone to carry to his father. Suddenly something caught him by the foot and dragged him down, down, through the deep, dark water. "Oh, father!" he cried, but his father had gone away from the shore, and the strange creature, whatever it was, dragged the boy down to the very bottom of the river. The river was full of sorrow for what the creature had done, and it lifted the boy gently and bore him to the feet of the goddess. His eyes were closed and his face was white, for he was dead. Great tears came from the eyes of the goddess when she looked at him. "I did not think any of my animals would do such a cruel thing," she said. "His father shall never know it, for the boy shall not remember what has happened." Then she laid her warm hand upon his head, and whispered some words of magic into his ear. "Open your eyes," she called, and soon they were wide open. "You went in to swim," said the goddess. "Did the water please you?" "Yes, surely." "Were the water-animals kind to you?" "Yes, surely," answered the boy, for the magic words had kept him from remembering anything about the strange creature that had dragged him to the bottom of the river. The boy went home to his father, and as soon as he was out of sight, the goddess called to the water-animals, "Come one, come all, come little, come great." "It is the voice of the goddess," said the water-animals, and they all began to swim toward her as fast as they could. When they were together before her, she said, "One of you has been cruel and wicked. One of you has dragged to the bottom of the river the son of my friend, the king of the land, but I have carried him safely to shore, and now he is in his home. When he comes again, will you watch over him wherever in the wide, wide water he may wish to go?" "Yes!" "Yes!" "Yes!" cried the water-animals. "Water," asked the goddess, "will you be calm and still when the son of my friend is my guest?" "Gladly," answered the water. Suddenly the goddess caught sight of the crocodile hiding behind the other animals. "Will you be kind to the boy and keep harm away from him?" she asked. [Illustration: "THE MOUTH THAT WILL NOT OPEN MUST BE MADE TO OPEN"] Now it was the crocodile that had dragged the boy to the bottom of the river. He wished to say, "Yes," but he did not dare to open his mouth for fear of saying, "I did it, I did it," so he said not a word. The goddess cried, "Did you drag the king's son to the bottom of the river?" Still the crocodile dared not open his mouth for fear of saying, "I did it, I did it." Then the goddess was angry. She drew her long sword, and saying, "The mouth that will not open when it should must be made to open," she struck the crocodile's mouth with the sword. "Oh, look!" cried the other animals. The crocodile's mouth had opened; there was no question about _that_, for it had split open so far that he was afraid he should never be able to keep it closed. THE STORY OF THE PICTURE ON THE VASE. On some of the beautiful vases that are made in Japan there is a picture of a goddess changing a dragon into an island. When the children of Japan say, "Mother, tell us a story about the picture," this is what the mother says:-- "Long, long ago there was a goddess of the sea who loved the people of Japan. She often came out of the water at sunset, and while all the bright colors were in the sky, she would sit on a high rock that overlooked the water and tell stories to the children. Such wonderful stories as they were! She used to tell them all about the strange fishes that swim in and out among the rocks and the mosses, and about the fair maidens that live deep down in the sea far under the waves. The children would ask, 'Are there no children in the sea? Why do they never come out to play with us?' The goddess would answer, 'Some time they will come, if you only keep on wishing for them. What children really wish for they will surely have some day.' "Then the goddess would sing to the children, and her voice was so sweet that the evening star would stand still in the sky to listen to her song. 'Please show us how the water rises and falls,' the children would beg, and she would hold up a magic stone that she had and say, 'Water, rise!' Then the waves would come in faster and faster all about the rock. When she laid down the stone and said, 'Water, fall!' the waves would be still, and the water would roll back quickly to the deep sea. She was goddess of the storm as well as of the sea, and sometimes the children would say, 'Dear goddess, please make us a storm.' She never said no to what they asked, and so the rain would fall, the lightning flare, and the thunder roll. The rain would fall all about them, but the goddess did not let it come near them. They were never afraid of the lightning, for it was far above their heads, and they knew that the goddess would not let it come down. "Those were happy times, but there is something more to tell that is not pleasant. One of the goddess's sea-animals was a dragon, that often used to play in the water near the shore. The children never thought of being afraid of any of the sea-animals, but one day the cruel dragon seized a little child in his mouth, and in a moment he had eaten it. There was sadness over the land of Japan. There were tears and sorrowful wailing. 'O goddess,' the people cried, 'come to us! Punish the wicked dragon!' [Illustration] "The goddess was angry that one of her creatures should have dared to harm the little child, and she called aloud, 'Dragon, come to me.' The dragon came in a moment, for he did not dare to stay away. Then said the goddess, 'You shall never again play merrily in the water with the happy sea-animals. You shall be a rocky island. There shall be trees and plants on you, and before many years have gone, people will no longer remember that you were once an animal.' "The dragon found that he could no longer move about as he had done, for he was changing into rock. Trees and plants grew on his back. He was an island, and when people looked at it, they said, 'That island was once a wicked dragon.' The children of the sea and the children of the land often went to the island, and there they had very happy times together." This is the story that the mothers tell to their children when they look at the vases and see the picture of the goddess changing a dragon into an island. But when the children say, "Mother, where is the island? Cannot we go to it and play with the sea-children?" the mother answers, "Oh, this was all a long, long time ago, and no one can tell now where the island was." WHY THE WATER IN RIVERS IS NEVER STILL. All kinds of strange things came to pass in the days of long ago, but perhaps the strangest of all was that the nurses who cared for little children were not women, but brooks and rivers. The children and the brooks ran about together, and the brooks and rivers never said, "It is time to go to bed," for they liked to play as well as the children, and perhaps a little better. Sometimes the brooks ran first and the children followed. Sometimes the children ran first and the brooks followed. Of course, if any animal came near that would hurt the children, the brook or river in whose care they were left flowed quickly around them, so that they stood on an island and were safe from all harm. Two little boys lived in those days who were sons of the king. When the children were old enough to run about, the king called the rivers and brooks to come before him. They came gladly, for they felt sure that something pleasant would happen, and they waited so quietly that no one would have thought they were so full of frolic. "I have called you," said the king, "to give you the care of my two little sons. They like so well to run about that one nurse will not be enough to care for them, and of course it will be pleasanter for them to have many playmates. So I felt that it would be better to ask every river and every brook to see that they are not hurt or lost." "We shall have the king's sons for our playmates!" whispered the rivers. "Nothing so pleasant ever happened to us before." But the king went on, "If you keep my boys safely and well, and follow them so closely that they are not lost, then I will give you whatever gift you wish; but if I find that you have forgotten them one moment and they are lost or hurt, then you will be punished as no river was ever punished before." The rivers and even the most frolicsome little brooks were again quiet for a moment. Then they all cried together, "O king, we will be good. There were never better nurses than we will be to your sons." At first all went well, and the playmates had the merriest times that could be thought of. Then came a day when the sunshine was very warm, but the boys ran faster and farther than boys had ever run in the world before, and even the brooks could not keep up with them. The rivers had never been weary before, but when this warm day came, one river after another had some reason for being quiet. One complained, "I have followed the boys farther than any other river." "Perhaps you have," said another, "but I have been up and down and round and round till I have forgotten how it seems to be quiet." Another declared, "I have run about long enough, and I shall run no more." A little brook said, "If I were a great river, perhaps I could run farther," and a great river replied, "If I were a little brook, of course I could run farther." So they talked, and the day passed. Night came before they knew it, and they could not find the boys. "Where are my sons?" cried the king. "Indeed, we do not know," answered the brooks and rivers in great fear, and each one looked at the others. "You have lost my children," said the king, "and if you do not find them, you shall be punished. Go and search for them." "Please help us," the rivers begged of the trees and plants, and everything that had life began to search for the lost boys. "Perhaps they are under ground," thought the trees, and they sent their roots down into the earth. "Perhaps they are in the east," cried one animal, and he went to the east. "They may be on the mountain," said one plant, and so it climbed to the very top of the mountain. "They may be in the village," said another, and so that one crept up close to the homes of men. Many years passed. The king was almost broken-hearted, but he knew it was of no use to search longer, so he called very sadly, "Search no longer. Let each plant and animal make its home where it is. The little plant that has crept up the mountain shall live on the mountain top, and the roots of the trees shall stay under ground. The rivers"--Then the king stopped, and the rivers trembled. They knew that they would be punished, but what would the punishment be? The king looked at them. "As for you, rivers and brooks," he declared, "it was your work to watch my boys. The plants and trees shall find rest and live happily in their homes, but you shall ever search for my lost boys, and you shall never have a home." So from that day to this the rivers have gone on looking for the lost children. They never stop, and some of them are so troubled that they flow first one way and then the other. HOW THE RAVEN HELPED MEN. The raven and the eagle were cousins, and they were almost always friendly, but whenever they talked together about men, they quarreled. "Men are lazy," declared the eagle. "There is no use in trying to help them. The more one does for them, the less they do for themselves." "You fly so high," said the raven, "that you cannot see how hard men work. I think that we birds, who know so much more than they, ought to help them." "They do not work," cried the eagle. "What have they to do, I should like to know? They walk about on the ground, and their food grows close by their nests. If they had to fly through the air as we do, and get their food wherever they could, they might talk about working hard." "That is just why we ought to help them," replied the raven. "They cannot mount up into the air as we do. They cannot see anything very well unless it is near them, and if they had to run and catch their food, they would surely die of hunger. They are poor, weak creatures, and there is not a humming-bird that does not know many things that they never heard of." "You are a poor, weak bird, if you think you can teach men. When they feel hunger, they will eat, and they do not know how to do anything else. Just look at them! They ought to be going to sleep, and they do not know enough to do even that." "How can they know that it is night, when they have no sun and no moon to tell them when it is day and when it is night?" "They would not go to sleep even if they had two moons," said the eagle; "and you are no true cousin of mine if you do not let them alone." So the two birds quarreled. Almost every time they met, they quarreled about men, and at last, whenever the eagle began to mount into the air, the raven went near the earth. Now the eagle had a pretty daughter. She and the raven were good friends, and they never quarreled about men. One day the pretty daughter said, "Cousin Raven, are you too weak to fly as high as you used to do?" "I never was less weak," declared the raven. "Almost every day you keep on the ground. Can you not mount into the air?" "Of course I can," answered the raven. "There are some strange things in my father's lodge," said the pretty daughter, "and I do not know what they are. They are not good to eat, and I do not see what else they are good for. Will you come and see them?" "I will go wherever you ask me," declared the raven. The eagle's lodge was far up on the top of a high mountain, but the two birds were soon there, and the pretty daughter showed the raven the strange things. He knew what they were, and he said to himself, "Men shall have them, and by and by they will be no less wise than the birds." Then he asked, "Has your father a magic cloak?" [Illustration] "Yes," answered the pretty daughter. "May I put it on?" "Yes, surely." When the raven had once put on the magic cloak, he seized the strange things and put them under it. Then he called, "I will come again soon, my pretty little cousin, and tell you all about the people on the earth." The things under his cloak were strange indeed, for one was the sun, and one was the moon. There were hundreds of bright stars, and there were brooks and rivers and waterfalls. Best of all, there was the precious gift of fire. The raven put the sun high up in the heavens, and fastened the moon and stars in their places. He let the brooks run down the sides of the mountains, and he hid the fire away in the rocks. After a while men found all these precious gifts. They knew when it was night and when it was day, and they learned how to use fire. They cannot mount into the air like the eagle, but in some things they are almost as wise as the birds. THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND THE SKY. The sky used to be very close to the earth, and of course the earth had no sunshine. Trees did not grow, flowers did not blossom, and water was not clear and bright. The earth did not know that there was any other way of living, and so she did not complain. By and by the sky and the earth had a son who was called the Shining One. When he was small, he had a dream, and he told it to the earth. "Mother Earth," he said, "I had a dream, and it was that the sky was far up above us. There was a bright light, and it made you more radiant than I ever saw you. What could the light have been?" "I do not know, my Shining One," she answered, "for there is nothing but the earth and the sky." After a long, long time, the Shining One was fully grown. Then he said to the sky, "Father Sky, will you not go higher up, that there may be light and warmth on the earth?" "There is no 'higher up,'" declared the sky. "There is only just here." Then the Shining One raised the sky till he rested on the mountain peaks. "Oh! oh!" cried the sky. "They hurt. The peaks are sharp and rough. You are an unkind, cruel son." "In my dreams you were still higher up," replied the Shining One, and he raised the sky still higher. "Oh! oh!" complained the sky, "I can hardly see the peaks. I will stay on the rough rocks." "You were far above the rocks in my dream," replied the Shining One. Then when the sky was raised far above the earth and no longer touched even the peaks, a great change came over the earth. She, too, had thought the Shining One unkind, and she had said, "Shining One, it was only a dream. Why should you change the sky and the earth? Why not let them stay as they were before you had the dream?" "O Mother Earth," he said, "I wish you could see the radiant change that has come to pass. The air is full of light and warmth and fragrance. You yourself are more beautiful than you were even in my dream. Listen and hear the song of the birds. See the flowers blossoming in every field, and even covering the rough peaks of the mountains. Should you be glad if I had let all things stay as they were? Was I unkind to make you so much more lovely than you were?" Before the earth could answer, the sky began to complain. "You have spread over earth a new cloak of green, and of course she is beautiful with all her flowers and birds, but here am I, raised far above the mountain peaks. I have no cloak, nor have I flowers and birds. Shining One, give me a cloak." "That will I do, and most gladly," replied the Shining One, and he spread a soft cloak of dark blue over the sky, and in it many a star sparkled and twinkled. "That is very well in the night," said the heavens, "but it is not good in the daytime, it is too gloomy. Give me another cloak for the day." Then the Shining One spread a light blue cloak over the sky for the daytime, and at last the sky was as beautiful as the earth. Now both sky and earth were contented. "I did not know that the earth was so radiant," said the sky. "I did not know that the sky was so beautiful," said the earth. "I will send a message to tell her how lovely she is," thought the sky, and he dropped down a gentle little rain. "I, too, will send a message," thought the earth, "and the clouds shall carry it for me." That is why there is often a light cloud rising from the earth in the morning. It is carrying a good-morning message from the beautiful earth to the sky. HOW SUMMER CAME TO THE EARTH. PART I. There was once a boy on the earth who was old enough to have a bow and arrows, but who had never seen a summer. He had no idea how it would look to have leaves on the trees, for he had never seen any such things. As for the songs of birds, he may have heard them in his dreams, but he never heard them when he was not asleep. If any one had asked, "Do you not like to walk on the soft grass?" he would have answered, "What is grass? I never saw any." The reason why this boy had never heard of summer was because there had never been a summer on the earth. Far to the north the earth was covered with thick ice, and even farther south, where the boy lived, the ground was rarely free from ice and snow. The boy's father was called the fisher. He taught his little son to hunt, and made him a bow like his own, only smaller. The boy was proud of his arrows, and was always happy when he went out to hunt. He had often shot a lynx, and once or twice he had shot a wolverine. Sometimes it chanced that he found nothing to shoot, and then he was not happy, for he realized how cold it was. His fingers ached, and his feet ached, and the end of his nose ached. "Oh, if I could only carry the wigwam fire about with me!" he cried, for he had no idea of any other warmth than that which came from the fire. Now it chanced that Adjidaumo, the squirrel, was on a tree over the boy's head, and he heard this cry. He dropped a piece of ice upon the end of the boy's little red nose, and the boy bent his bow. Then he realized who it was, and he cried, "O Adjidaumo, you are warm. You have no fingers to ache with the cold. I am warm just twice a day, once in the morning and once at night." "Boys do not know much," replied Adjidaumo, dancing lightly on the topmost bough. "The end of _my_ nose is warm, and I have no fingers like yours to be cold, but if I had chanced to have any, I have an idea that would have kept them warm." "What is an idea?" asked the boy. "An idea is something that is better than a fire," replied the squirrel, "for you can carry an idea about with you, and you have to leave the fire at home. A lynx has an idea sometimes, and a wolverine has one sometimes, but a squirrel has one twice as often as a boy." The poor boy was too cold to be angry, and he begged, "Adjidaumo, if there is any way for me to keep warm, will you not tell me what it is? A lynx would be more kind to me than you are, and I am sure a wolverine would tell me." Adjidaumo had rarely been cold, but when he realized how cold the boy was, he was sorry for him, and he said, "All you have to do is to go home and cry. When your father says, 'Why do you cry?' answer nothing but 'Boo-hoo, boo-hoo, boo-hoo! Get me summer, get me summer!'" Now this boy rarely cried, but his hands and feet were so very cold that he thought he would do as the squirrel had told him, and he started for home. As soon as he reached the wigwam, he threw himself down upon the ground and cried. He cried so hard that his tears made a river that ran out of the wigwam door. It was a frozen river, of course, but when the fisher saw it, he knew it was made of the tears of his little son. "What are you crying for?" he asked, but all the boy answered was "Boo-hoo, boo-hoo! Get me summer, father, get me summer!" "Summer," repeated the fisher thoughtfully. "It is not easy to get summer, but I will find it if I can." PART II. The fisher made a great feast for the animals that he thought could help him to find summer. The otter, the lynx, the badger, and the wolverine came. After they had eaten, the hunter told them what he wished to do, and they all set out to find summer. For many days they traveled, and at last they came to a high mountain upon whose summit the sky seemed to rest. "That is where summer is," declared the badger. "All we have to do is to climb to the summit and take it from the heavens." So they all climbed and climbed, till it seemed as if they would never reach the top. After a long time they were on the very highest summit, but the heavens were above them. "We cannot reach it," said the fisher. "Let us try," said the lynx. "I will try first," said the otter. So the otter sprang up with all his might, but he could not touch the heavens. He rolled down the side of the mountain, and then he ran home. The badger tried, and the beaver tried, and the lynx tried, but not one of them could leap far enough to reach the heavens. "Now I will try," said the wolverine. "I am not going to climb away up here for nothing." The fisher watched most eagerly, for he thought, "There's my boy at home crying, and what shall I do if I cannot get the summer for him?" The wolverine leaped farther than any wolverine ever leaped before, and he went where no animal on the earth had ever been before, for he went straight through the floor of the heavens. Of course the fisher followed, and there they were in a more lovely place than any one on the earth had ever dreamed of, for they were in the land of summer, and summer had never come to the earth. The soft, warm air went down through the hole in the floor and spread over the earth. Birds flew down, singing happily as they flew, and all kinds of flowers that are on the earth to-day made their way through the hole as fast as they could, for they knew all about the little boy in the wigwam who was wishing that summer would come. Now there were people in the heavens, and when they found that summer was going down to the earth through the hole in the floor, they cried out to the Great Spirit, "Take summer away from him, take it away from him!" and they shot their arrows at the fisher and the wolverine. The wolverine dropped through the hole, but the fisher was not quick enough, and he could not get away. The Great Spirit said, "The heavens have the summer all the year, but the earth shall have summer half the year. I shall close the hole in the floor so the fisher cannot go down to earth again, but I will make him into a fish and give him a place in the heavens." When the Indians look up at the sky, they see a fish in the stars, and they say, "That is the good fisher who gave us the beautiful summer." THE STORY OF THE FIRST SNOWDROPS. An old man sat alone in his house. It Was full of shadows; it was dark and gloomy. The old man cared nothing for the shadows or the darkness, for he was thinking of all the mighty deeds that he had done. "There is no one else in the world," he muttered, "who has done such deeds as I," and he counted them over aloud. A sound outside of the house interrupted him. "What can it be?" he said to himself. "How dares anything interrupt me? I have told all things to be still. It sounds like the rippling of waters, and I have told the waters to be quiet in their beds. There it is again. It is like the singing of birds, and I have sent the birds far away to the south." Some one opened the door and came in. It was a youth with sunny curls and rosy face. "Who said you might come in?" muttered the old man. "Did not you?" asked the youth, with a merry little laugh. "I am really afraid that I came without asking. You see, every one is glad to see me and"-- "I am not," interrupted the old man. "I have heard rumors of your great deeds," said the youth, "and I came to see whether the tales are true." "The deeds are more true than the tales," muttered the old man, "for the tales are never great enough. No one can count the wonderful things I have done." "And what are they?" asked the young man gravely, but with a merry little twinkle in his eyes that would have made one think of the waves sparkling in the sunlight. "Let us see whether you or I can tell the greatest tale." "I can breathe upon a river and turn it to ice," said the old man. "I can breathe upon the ice and turn it to a river," said the youth. "I can say to water, 'Stand still,' and it will not dare to stir." "I can say, 'Stand no longer,' and it will go running and chattering down the mountain side." "I shake my white head," said the old man, "and snow covers the earth." "I shake my curls," said the young man, "and the air sparkles with sunshine. In a moment the snow is gone." "I say to the birds, 'Sing no more. Leave me,' and they spread their wings and fly far away." "I say, 'Little birds, come back,' and in a moment they are back again and singing their sweetest songs to me." "No one can count the leaves," said the old man, "but whether I shake the trees with my icy touch, or whether I turn my cold breath upon them, they fall to the ground with fear and trembling. Are there any rumors of my deeds as great as that?" The young man answered gravely, but with a laugh in his voice, "I never saw any leaves falling to the ground, for when I appear, they are all fair and green and trembling with the gladness of my coming." So the two talked all night long. As morning came near, the old man appeared weary, but the youth grew merrier. The sunlight brightened, and the youth turned to the open door. The trees were full of birds, and when they saw him, they sang, "O beautiful spring! glad are we to look again upon your face." "My own dear birds!" cried spring. He turned to say good-by, but the old man was gone, and where he had stood were only snowflakes. But were they snowflakes? He looked again. They were little white snowdrops, the first flowers of spring, the only flowers that can remember the winter. WHY THE FACE OF THE MOON IS WHITE. An Indian chief had a fair young daughter. One day the wind came to him and said, "Great chief, I love your daughter, and she loves me. Will you give her to me to be my wife?" "No," answered the chief. The next day the maiden herself went to the chief and said, "Father, I love the wind. Will you let me go with him to his lodge and be his wife?" "No," declared the chief, "I will not. When the wind was a child, he often came into my wigwam through some tiny hole, and try as I would to make my fire, he always put it out. He knows neither how to fight nor how to hunt, and you shall not be his wife." Then the chief hid his daughter in a thick grove of dark spruces. "The wind might see her in a pine," he thought, "but he will never catch sight of her in a grove of spruces." Now the wind could make himself invisible if he chose, and all the time that the chief was talking, the wind was close beside him listening to every word. When the next night came, the wind ran round and round the grove of spruces until he discovered a tiny place where he could get in. When he came out, the maiden was with him. He did not dare to go near the Indians to live, for he was afraid that the chief would come and take her away from him; so he built a new lodge far to the north-ward. To that lodge he carried the maiden, and she became his wife. Neither the wind nor his young wife had thought that the chief could ever find them, but he searched and searched, and at last he came to their lodge. The wind hid his wife and made himself invisible, but the father struck all about with his great war-club, and a hard blow fell upon the head of the wind. He knew no more of what the chief was doing. When he came to himself, he discovered that his wife was gone, and he set out in search of her. He roamed about wildly in the forest, and at last he saw her in a canoe with her father on the Big-Sea-Water. "Come with me," he called. She became as white as snow, but she could not see the wind, because after the blow upon his head he had forgotten how to make himself visible. He was so angry with the chief that he blew with all his might upon the tiny canoe. "Let it tip over," he thought. "I can carry my wife safely to land." The canoe did tip over, and both the chief and his daughter fell into the water. "Come, dear wife," cried the wind. "Here is my hand." He did not remember that he was invisible, and that she could not see his hand. That is why she fell down, down, through the deep water to the bottom of the lake. The chief, too, lost his life, for the wind did not try to help him. When the wind discovered that his wife was gone from him, he became almost wild with sorrow. "The wind never blew so sadly before," said the people in the wigwams. [Illustration: "HERE IS MY HAND"] The Great Spirit was sorry that the chief's daughter had fallen into the water and lost her life, and the next night he bore her up to the stars and gave her a home in the moon. There she lives again, but her face is white, as it was when she fell from the canoe. On moonlight nights she always looks down upon the earth, searching for the wind, for she does not know that he is invisible. The wind does not know that far away in the moon is the white face of his lost wife, and so he roams through the forest and wanders about the rocks and the mountains, but never thinks of looking up to the moon. WHY ALL MEN LOVE THE MOON. Thunder and Lightning were going to give a feast. It was to be a most delightful banquet, for all the good things that could be imagined were to be brought from every corner of the world. For many days before the feast these good things were coming. The birds flew up with what they could find in the cold air of the north and the warm air of the south. The fishes came from the east and from the west with what they could find in the cold water or in the warm water. As for what grew on the earth, there was no end to the luxuries that came every morning and every evening. Squirrels brought nuts, crows brought corn, the ants brought sweet things of many kinds. Food that was rich and rare came from India and Japan. The butterflies and the humming-birds were to arrange the flowers, the peacocks and the orioles promised to help make the place beautiful, and the waves and the brooks agreed to make their most charming music. Thunder and Lightning were talking about whom to invite, and they questioned whether to ask the sun, the moon, and the wind. These three were children of the star mother. "The star mother has been so kind to us that I suppose we ought to invite her children," said Thunder. "The moon is charming, but the sun and the wind are rough and wild. If I were the star mother, I would keep them in a corner all day, and they should stay there all night, too, if they did not promise to be gentle," said Lightning. "We must invite them," replied Thunder, with what sounded much like a little growl, "but it would be delightful if they would agree to stay away, all but the moon." That is why the sun and wind were invited as well as the moon. When the invitation came, the two brothers said to their little sister, "You are too small to go to a feast, but perhaps they asked you because they were going to ask us." "Star mother, I think I will stay at home," said the moon tearfully. "No, little moon," replied the star mother; "go to the feast with the other children." So the three children went to the feast, and the star mother waited for them to come home. When they came, she asked, "What did you bring for me?" The hands of the sun were full of good things, but he said, "I brought only what I am going to eat myself," and he sat down in a corner with his back to the others, and went on eating. "Did you bring anything for me?" she asked the wind. "I brought some good things halfway home, and then I was weary of carrying them," answered the wind, "so I have eaten them." "I should never have imagined that you would be so selfish," said the star mother sadly, and she asked the little moon, "My daughter, did you bring anything for me?" "Yes, star mother," answered the little moon, and she gave her mother more good things than any one had ever seen in their home before. There were rare luxuries that the fishes and the birds had brought. There were rich colors that the peacocks and orioles had promised, and there was even some of the charming music that the waves and brooks had agreed to make. The star mother praised the little maiden. Then she looked at her two boys. She was sad, for she knew that they must be punished for their selfishness. "Sun," said she, "you wish to turn your back on all, and your punishment shall be that when the warm days of summer have come, all men will turn their backs on you." To the wind she said, "Wind, you thought of no one but yourself. When the storm is coming and you are afraid and fly before it, no one shall think of you. All men shall close their doors against you and fasten them." Then to her little daughter she said, "My little moon, you were unselfish and thoughtful. You shall always be bright and beautiful, and men shall love you and praise you whenever they look upon your gentle, kindly face." This is why men hide from the sun and the wind, but never from the moon. WHY THERE IS A HARE IN THE MOON. Many strange things happened long ago, and one of them was that a hare, a monkey, and a fox agreed to live together. They talked about their plan a long time. Then the hare said, "I promise to help the monkey and the fox." The monkey declared, "I promise to help the fox and the hare." The fox said, "I promise to help the hare and the monkey." They shook hands, or rather shook paws. There was something else to which they agreed, and that was that they would kill no living creature. The manito was much pleased when he heard of this plan, but he said to himself, "I should like to make sure that what I have heard is true, and that they are really gentle and kind to others as well as to themselves. I will go to the forest and see how they behave toward strangers." The manito appeared before the three animals, but they thought he was a hunter. "May I come into your lodge and rest?" he asked. "I am very weary." All three came toward him and gave him a welcome. "Come into our lodge," they said. "We have agreed to help one another, so we will help one another to help you." "I have been hungry all day," said the manito, "but I should rather have such a welcome than food." "But if you are hungry, you must have food," declared the three animals. "If there were anything in our lodge that you would care to eat, you might have part of it or all of it, but there is nothing here that you would like." Then said the monkey, "I have a plan. I will go out into the forest and find you some food." When the monkey came back, he said, "I found a tree with some fruit on it. I climbed it and shook it, and here is the fruit. There was only a little of it, for fruit was scarce." "Will you not eat part of it yourself?" asked the manito. "No," answered the monkey. "I had rather see you eat it, for I think you are more hungry than I." The manito wished to know whether the fox and the hare would behave as unselfishly toward him, and he said, "My good friends, the fruit was indeed welcome, but I am still hungry." Then the fox said, "I will go out into the forest and see what I can find for you." When the fox came back, he said, "I shook the trees, but no more fruit fell. I could not climb the trees, for my paws are not made for climbing, but I searched on the ground, and at last I found some hominy that a traveler had left, and I have brought you that." The manito had soon eaten the hominy. He wished to know whether the hare would behave as kindly as the others, and before long he said, "My good friends, the hominy was indeed welcome, but I am still hungry." Then the hare said, "I will gladly go out into the forest and search for food." He was gone a long time, but when he came back, he brought no food. "I am very hungry," said the manito. "Stranger," said the hare, "if you will build a fire beside the rock, I can give you some food." The manito built a fire, and the hare said, "Now I will spring from the top of the rock upon the fire. I have heard that men eat flesh, that is taken from the fire, and I will give you my own." The hare sprang from the rock, but the manito caught him in his hands before the flame could touch him, and said, "Dear, unselfish little hare, the monkey and the fox have welcomed me and searched the forest through to find me food, but you have done more, for you have given me yourself. I will take the gift, little hare, and I will carry you in my arms up to the moon, so that every one on the earth may see you and hear the tale of your kindness and unselfishness." [Illustration] The Indians can see a hare in the moon, and this is the story that they tell their children about it. THE CHILDREN IN THE MOON. They had no idea where they came from. All they knew was that they lived on the hill, and that the old man of the hill called them Jack and Jill. They had plenty of berries to eat, and when night came, they had soft beds of fir to sleep on. There were all kinds of animals on the hill, and they were friendly to the two children. They could have had a most delightful time playing all day long if it had not been for having to carry water. Every morning, just as soon as the first rays of the sun could be seen from their home, they heard the voice of the old man of the hill calling, "Jack! Jill! Take your pail and get some water." Whenever they were having an especially pleasant game with some of the animals, they heard the same call, "Take your pail and get some water." It is no wonder that Jack awoke one night when no one called and said, "Jill, did he say we must get some water?" "I suppose so," answered Jill sleepily, and they went out with the pail. The moon was shining down through the trees, and they imagined that she was nearer than ever before. The forest was not half so lonely with her gentle face looking down upon them. Soon they felt happier than at first, and they played little games together, running from tree to tree. "We have spilled half the water," said Jill. "There's plenty left," said Jack, "if half _is_ spilled." "Do you suppose there are any children who play games whenever they like and do not have to carry water?" "Plenty of them," declared Jack. "Jack and Jill Went up the hill To get a pail of water," sang a voice so clear that it seemed close at hand, and so soft that it seemed far away. Jack started, fell, and rolled down the hillside, and Jill came tumbling after. As for the water, what was left was spilled before Jack had rolled over once; and before he had rolled over twice, the same voice sang,-- "Jack fell down And broke his crown, And Jill came tumbling after." "It is about us," cried Jill. "I have not broken any crown," said Jack. "It is the crown of your head," declared Jill. "Oh!" said Jack; "but where's the water?" "It has gone tumbling down the hill," answered the same voice. "How can water go tumbling?" cried Jill. "_We_ tumbled." "Water tumbles too," replied the voice, "especially when it is frozen." "Oh!" said Jack. "Oh!" said Jill. "The stream is frozen," called the voice. "What stream?" asked the children together. "The stream that goes down the hill," answered the voice. "Did you not know that you were bringing water to keep the stream full?" "No, indeed," said the children. "The old man of the hill is only a rock, and what you thought his voice was only the water flowing around it." [Illustration] "Oh!" cried Jack. "Oh!" cried Jill. "The stream is frozen," said the voice, "and the earth has a cloak of snow and ice." "Who are you?" asked Jill shyly. "Do you really not know? What a strange child you are! I am the moon, of course. Very pleasant people live with me, and I have come to invite you both to go home with me. Will you come?" The children looked up through the trees, and there was the gentle face of the moon, looking more gentle and kind than ever. "Come," said she, and they went very willingly. They have lived in the moon many years, but they never again carried a pail of water for a stream. "That is the work of the clouds and the sun," says the moon. WHY THERE IS A MAN IN THE MOON. "Goodman," said the goodwife, "you must go out into the forest and gather sticks for the fire. To-morrow will be Sunday, and we have no wood to burn." "Yes, goodwife," answered the goodman, "I will go to the forest." He did go to the forest, but he sat on a mossy rock and fished till it was dark, and so he brought home no wood. "The goodwife shall not know it," he thought. "I will go to the forest to-morrow morning and gather sticks." When morning came, he crept softly out of the house when it was hardly light, and went to the forest. Soon he had as many sticks as he could carry, and he was starting for home when a voice called sternly, "Put those sticks down." He looked to the right, to the left, before him, behind him, and over his head. There was no one to be seen. "Put those sticks down," said the voice again. "Please, I do not dare to put them down," replied the goodman, trembling with fear. "They are to burn, and my wife cannot cook the dinner without them." "You will have no dinner to-day," said the voice. "The goodwife will not know that I did not gather them last night, and she will let me have some dinner. I am almost sure she will," the goodman replied. "You must not gather sticks to-day," said the voice more sternly than ever. "It is Sunday. Put them down." "Indeed, Mr. Voice, I dare not," whispered the goodman; and afar off he thought he heard his wife calling, "Goodman, where are you? There is no wood to burn." "Will you put them down, or will you carry them forever?" cried the voice angrily. "Truly, I cannot put them down, for I dare not go home without them," answered the goodman, shaking with fear from head to foot. "The goodwife would not like it." "Then carry them forever," said the voice. "You care not for Sunday, and you shall never have another Sunday." The goodman could not tell how it came about, but he felt himself being lifted, up, up, up, sticks and all, till he was in the moon. "Here you shall stay," said the voice sternly. "You will not keep Sunday, and here you need not. This is the moon, and so it is always the moon's day, or Monday, and Monday it shall be with you always. Whenever any one looks up at the moon, he will say, 'See the man with the sticks on his back. He was taken to the moon because he gathered wood on Sunday.'" "Oh dear, oh dear," cried the goodman, "what will the goodwife say?" THE TWIN STARS. In front of the little house was a pine-tree, and every night at the time when the children went to bed, a bright star appeared over the top of the tree and looked in at the window. The children were brother and sister. They were twins, and so they always had each other to play with. "Now go to sleep," the mother would say when she had kissed them good-night, but it was hard to go to sleep when such a beautiful, radiant thing was shining in at the window of the little house. "What do you suppose is in the star?" asked the sister. "I think there are daisies and honey and violets and butterflies and bluebirds," answered the brother. "And I think there are roses and robins and berries and humming-birds," said the sister. "There must be trees and grass too, and I am sure there are pearls and diamonds." "I can almost see them now," declared the sister. "I wish we could really see them. To-morrow let us go and find the star." When morning came, the star was gone, but they said, "It was just behind the pine-tree, and so it must be on the blue mountain." The blue mountain was a long way off, but it looked near, and the twins thought they could walk to it in an hour. All day long they walked. They went through the lonely woods, they crossed brooks, they climbed hills, and still they could not find the radiant star that had looked in at their window. The hour had come when their mother always put them to bed and kissed them and said good-night, but now they had no mother, no good-night kiss, and no bed. They were tired and sleepy. They heard strange sounds in the forest, and they were frightened. "I am so tired," the sister whispered. "I am afraid a bear will come. I wish we could see the star." The sky had grown dark, and a star could be seen here and there, but it was not their star. They went on till they could go no farther. "We will lie down on the grass," said the brother, "and cover ourselves up with leaves, and go to sleep." Tired as they were, they did not have time to go to sleep before they heard a bear calling "Ugh! Ugh!" in the woods. They sprang up and ran out of the woods, and just before they came to the bottom of the hill, they saw right in front of them a beautiful little lake. They were not frightened any more, for there in the water was something radiant and shining. "It is our own star," said they, "and it has come down to us." They never thought of looking up into the sky over their heads. It was enough for them that the star was in the water and so near them. But was it calling them? They thought so. "Come," cried the brother, "take my hand, and we will go to the star." Then the spirit of the skies lifted them up gently and carried them away on a beautiful cloud. The father and mother sat alone in the little house one evening, looking sadly out of the window through which the twins had looked. "There is the star that they loved," the mother said. "I have often listened to them while they talked of it. It is rising over the pine-tree in front of the house." They sat and watched the star. It was brighter and more radiant than ever, and in it the father and mother saw the faces of their lost children. "Oh, take us too, good spirit of the skies!" they cried. The spirit heard them, and when the next evening came, close beside the star there was another star. In that were the father and mother, and at last they and the children were all very happy to be together again. THE LANTERN AND THE FAN. In a Japanese village there once lived a man who had two sons. When the sons were grown up, each brought home a wife from another village a long distance away. The father was greatly pleased with his two daughters-in-law, and for many months they all lived very happily together. At last the two young wives asked to go home to visit their friends. Among the Japanese the sons and the sons' wives must always obey the father, so the two wives said, "Father-in-law, it is a long, long time since we have seen our friends. May we go to our old home and visit them?" The father-in-law answered, "No." After many months they asked again, and again he answered, "No." Once more they asked. The father-in-law thought, "They care nothing for me, or they would not wish to leave me, but I have a plan, and I can soon know whether they love their father-in-law or not." Then he said to the older of the two wives, "You may go if you wish, but you must never come back unless you bring me fire wrapped in paper." To the younger he said, "You may go if you wish, but you must never come back unless you bring me wind wrapped in paper." The father-in-law thought, "Now I shall find out. If they care for me, they will search the country through till they find paper that will hold fire and wind." The two young wives were so glad to visit their old friends that for almost a month they forgot all about the gifts that they were to carry to their father-in-law. At last, when it was time to go home, they were greatly troubled about what they must carry with them, and they asked a wise man where to find the strange things. "Paper that will hold fire and wind!" he cried. "There is no such paper in Japan." The two women asked one wise man after another, and every one declared, "There is no such paper in Japan." What should they do? They feared they would never see their home again. They were so sad that they left their friends and wandered a long distance into the forest. Great tears fell from their eyes. "I do not let people cry in my woods," said a voice. "My trees do not grow well in salt water." The poor wives were so sorrowful that they forgot to be afraid, and the older one said, "Can we help crying? Unless I can carry to my father-in-law fire wrapped in paper, I can never go home." "And I," wailed the younger, "unless I can carry wind wrapped in paper, I can never go home. None of the wise men ever heard of such things. What shall we do?" "It is easy enough to wrap fire in paper," answered the voice. "Here is a piece of paper. Now watch." They watched, and the strangest thing in all the world happened right before their eyes. There was no one to be seen, but a piece of paper appeared on the ground and folded itself into a Japanese lantern. "Now put a candle inside," said the voice, "and you have paper holding fire. What more could you ask?" Then the older woman was happy, but the younger was still sad. She saw now that fire could be carried in paper, but surely no one could carry wind. "O dear voice," she cried, "can any one carry wind in paper?" "That is much easier than to carry fire," replied the voice, "for wind does not burn holes. Watch." They watched eagerly. Another piece of paper came all by itself and lay on the ground between them. There was a picture on it of a tree covered with white blossoms. Two women stood under the tree, gathering the blossoms. "The two women are yourselves," said the voice, "and the blossoms are the gifts that the father-in-law will give you when you go home." "But I cannot go home," the younger wailed, "for I cannot carry wind wrapped in paper." "Here is the paper, and there is always plenty of wind. Why not take them?" "Indeed, I do not know how," the younger woman answered sorrowfully. "This way, of course," said the voice. Some long, light twigs flew to the paper. It folded itself, over, under, together. It opened and closed, and it waved itself before the tearful face of the younger woman. "Does not the wind come to your face?" asked the voice, "and is it not the fan that has brought it? The lantern carries fire wrapped in paper, and the fan carries wind wrapped in paper." Then, indeed, the two young women were happy, and when they came to the home of their father-in-law, he was as glad as they. He gave them beautiful gifts of gold and silver, and he said, "No one ever had such marvels before as the lantern and the fan, but in my home there are two more precious things than these, and they are my two dear daughters." VOCABULARY OF THE BOOK OF NATURE MYTHS. NOTE.--This vocabulary is supplementary to that of THE HIAWATHA PRIMER. Nouns and verbs which are inflected regularly are entered under but one form. _Pages 1-4_ first humming-bird ago know flames last people _Pages 4-7_ again fled _Pages 7-9_ grew _Pages 10-12_ butterflies stones some would men could beauty life _Pages 13-15_ woodpecker man cake put bake large small _Pages 15-19_ magician fever breath shot fight ever wound head crest another blood _Pages 19-23_ serpent hissed cat shut quick always fall _Pages 23-28_ swallow tail forked animals year meet mosquito whose tore tongue _Pages 28-31_ hares snowflakes feet firebrand _Pages 31-34_ magpie time home warm brought merrily sorry eggs busy taking care well _Pages 34-36_ raven thief happened wood-worm only himself pieces _Pages 36-40_ more gone get let any wolf pond near bat rain quickly _Pages 40, 41_ catch caught tried curled throw _Pages 41, 42_ fast hand soon _Pages 43-46_ quail snipe never crept carrying pulled bill legs mole _Pages 47-49_ sheds grandfather marsh drink drank burst done off _Pages 50-52_ dove manito brave crying Hoots too known most _Pages 52-56_ parrot repeats truth ox owner yes villagers punish next think jar even storm thunder mocking-bird replied _Pages 56-59_ cunning baby voices owned own mock _Pages 60-64_ fox sheep cows fields growl should Mr. eaten cream _Pages 64-67_ girl whom treated sister happy please covered really _Pages 68-70_ troubles lies remember dies lip split _Pages 70-72_ peetweet flies eagerly lakes hollows thirsty _Pages 72-75_ short fish such easy ice frozen hole worse slowly angrily wish _Pages 76-78_ wren king choose which wise than eagle wisest _Pages 79-82_ often does wicked strange knife sharpen harm _Pages 83-86_ grasshopper country Tithonus goddess Aurora begged speak roamed fairest immortal _Pages 86-89_ oriole power ruler master yield clouds lightning may hornet _Pages 89-93_ peacock Juno queen world played tricks Argus hundred Mercury belonged _Pages 93-95_ bees tribes while honey _Pages 96-98_ rich poor sowed ground seed mine _Pages 98-102_ ants full almost house sense smell pearl lost dire named bag box bagged _Pages 103-106_ face after top gaze side far-away _Pages 107-110_ diamonds chief enemies stolen search mourned wife Moneta mother tears indeed _Pages 111-114_ Runoia shyly true sweet kinds harp touched strings wailing _Pages 114-117_ emeralds vase precious air India roll waves deepest _Pages 118-122_ flown berries broken might spring willow spruce juniper _Pages 122-125_ aspen guides swarm reason despise both anywhere places _Pages 125-128_ heather plants contented violet fragrance daisy chose _Pages 128-132_ flax sight hall sparkling gift spin weave linen Holda _Pages 133-135_ cranberries meadow cranberry woods hominy _Pages 135-138_ salt Frothi millstones grind gate rest weary ship else bottom _Pages 138-141_ crane hold bitterly witch obey surely taken _Pages 142-145_ Turtle fierce dare ready sure shields breast arms just declared _Pages 145-150_ crocodile wide mouth kingdom calm swim suddenly dragged open anything carried sword able _Pages 150-154_ Japan picture changing dragon island mean used tell moment _Pages 155-159_ pass perhaps brooks better followed course hurt left enough felt pleasant quiet playmates forgotten complained _Pages 160-164_ cousins quarreled less hard ought mount hunger weak pretty daughter _Pages 165-168_ dream radiant raised peaks rough unkind stay spread message dropped _Pages 169-172_ idea rarely lynx twice wolverine chanced realized fingers arched end nose boo-hoo _Pages 172-175_ otter badger summit climb reach floor _Pages 175-179_ snowdrop deeds muttered counted outside interrupted rumors whether tales gravely turn shake appear _Pages 179-184_ tiny neither grove invisible discovered became blow fell deep try fallen _Pages 184-188_ delightful imagined corner luxuries arrange promised agreed charming suppose stay invite invitation bring _Pages 188-193_ monkey plan shook rather paws something part behave toward fruit welcome hungry _Pages 193-197_ hill Jack Jill plenty pail especially game spilled tumbling crown _Pages 197-200_ gather sticks to-morrow Sunday dinner burn sternly cook to-day Monday _Pages 200-204_ front window twins kissed tired way hour frightened grown ourselves _Pages 204-209_ fan lantern distance law months wives since visit unless wrapped paper folded under 
27951	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 27951-h.htm or 27951-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/7/9/5/27951/27951-h/27951-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/7/9/5/27951/27951-h.zip) POLICEMAN BLUEJAY by LAURA BANCROFT Author of The Twinkle Tales, Etc. With Illustrations by Maginel Wright Enright [Frontispiece: "GO, BOTH OF YOU, AND JOIN THE BIRD THAT WARNED YOU"] Chicago The Reilly & Britton Co. Publishers Copyright, 1907 by The Reilly & Britton Co. The Lakeside Press R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company Chicago To the Children I MUST admit that the great success of the "TWINKLE TALES" has astonished me as much as it has delighted the solemn-eyed, hard working publishers. Therefore I have been encouraged to write a new "TWINKLE BOOK," hoping with all my heart that my little friends will find it worthy to occupy a place beside the others on their pet bookshelves. And because the children seem to especially love the story of "Bandit Jim Crow," and bird-life is sure to appeal alike to their hearts and their imaginations, I have again written about birds. The tale is fantastical, and intended to amuse rather than instruct; yet many of the traits of the feathered folk, herein described, are in strict accordance with natural history teachings and will serve to acquaint my readers with the habits of birds in their wildwood homes. At the same time my birds do unexpected things, because I have written a fairy tale and not a natural history. The question is often asked me whether Twinkle and Chubbins were asleep or awake when they encountered these wonderful adventures; and it grieves me to reflect that the modern child has been deprived of fairy tales to such an extent that it does not know--as I did when a girl-- that in a fairy story it does not matter whether one is awake or not. You must accept it as you would a fragrant breeze that cools your brow, a draught of sweet water, or the delicious flavor of a strawberry, and be grateful for the pleasure it brings you, without stopping to question too closely its source. For my part I am glad if my stories serve to while away a pleasant hour before bedtime or keep one contented on a rainy day. In this way they are sure to be useful, and if a little tenderness for the helpless animals and birds is acquired with the amusement, the value of the tales will be doubled. LAURA BANCROFT. LIST OF CHAPTERS I LITTLE ONES IN TROUBLE II POLICEMAN BLUEJAY III THE CHILD-LARKS IV AN AFTERNOON RECEPTION V THE ORIOLE'S STORY VI A MERRY ADVENTURE VII THE BLUEJAY'S STORY VIII MRS. HOOTAWAY IX THE DESTROYERS X IN THE EAGLE'S NEST XI THE ORPHANS XII THE GUARDIAN XIII THE KING BIRD XIV A REAL FAIRYLAND XV THE LAKE OF DRY WATER XVI THE BEAUTY DANCE XVII THE QUEEN BEE XVIII GOOD NEWS XIX THE REBELS XX THE BATTLE XXI THE TINGLE-BERRIES XXII THE TRANSFORMATION LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS "GO, BOTH OF YOU, AND JOIN THE BIRD THAT WARNED YOU" THE MAN STOLE THE EGGS FROM THE NEST THE TRIAL OF THE SHRIKE "PEEP! PEEP! PEEP!" CRIED THE BABY GOLDFINCHES SAILING ON THE DRY WATER IN THE HONEY PALACE THE BATTLE "IT'S ALMOST DARK. LET'S GO HOME" [CHAPTER I] _Little Ones in Trouble_ "SEEMS to me, Chub," said Twinkle, "that we're lost." "Seems to me, Twink," said Chubbins, "that it isn't _we_ that's lost. It's the path." "It was here a minute ago," declared Twinkle. "But it isn't here now," replied the boy. "That's true," said the girl. It really _was_ queer. They had followed the straight path into the great forest, and had only stopped for a moment to sit down and rest, with the basket between them and their backs to a big tree. Twinkle winked just twice, because she usually took a nap in the afternoon, and Chubbins merely closed his eyes a second to find out if he could see that long streak of sunshine through his pink eyelids. Yet during this second, which happened while Twinkle was winking, the path had run away and left them without any guide or any notion which way they ought to go. Another strange thing was that when they jumped up to look around them the nearest trees began sliding away, in a circle, leaving the little girl and boy in a clear space. And the trees continued moving back and back, farther and farther, until all their trunks were jammed tight together, and not even a mouse could have crept between them. They made a solid ring around Twinkle and Chubbins, who stood looking at this transformation with wondering eyes. "It's a trap," said Chubbins; "and we're in it." "It looks that way," replied Twinkle, thoughtfully. "Isn't it lucky, Chub, we have the basket with us? If it wasn't for that, we might starve to death in our prison." "Oh, well," replied the little fellow, "the basket won't last long. There's plenty of starve in the bottom of it, Twinkle, any way you can fix it." "That's so; unless we can get out. Whatever do you suppose made the trees behave that way, Chubbins? "Don't know," said the boy. Just then a queer creature dropped from a tree into the ring and began moving slowly toward them. It was flat in shape, like a big turtle; only it hadn't a turtle's hard shell. Instead, its body was covered with sharp prickers, like rose thorns, and it had two small red eyes that looked cruel and wicked. The children could not see how many legs it had, but they must have been very short, because the creature moved so slowly over the ground. When it had drawn near to them it said, in a pleading tone that sounded soft and rather musical: "Little girl, pick me up in your arms, and pet me!" Twinkle shrank back. "My! I couldn't _think_ of doing such a thing," she answered. Then the creature said: "Little boy, please pick me up in your arms, and pet me!" "Go 'way!" shouted Chubbins. "I wouldn't touch you for anything." The creature turned its red eyes first upon one and then upon the other. "Listen, my dears," it continued; "I was once a beautiful maiden, but a cruel tuxix transformed me into this awful shape, and so must I remain until some child willingly takes me in its arms and pets me. Then, and not till then, will I be restored to my proper form." "Don't believe it! Don't believe it!" cried a high, clear voice, and both the boy and the girl looked quickly around to see who had spoken. But no one besides themselves was in sight, and they only noticed a thick branch of one of the trees slightly swaying its leaves. "What is a tuxix?" asked Twinkle, who was beginning to feel sorry for the poor creature. "It is a magician, a sorcerer, a wizard, and a witch all rolled into one," was the answer; "and you can imagine what a dreadful thing that would be." "Be careful!" cried the clear voice, again. "It is the tuxix herself who is talking to you. Don't believe a word you hear!" At this the red eyes of the creature flashed fire with anger, and it tried to turn its clumsy body around to find the speaker. Twinkle and Chubbins looked too, but only heard a flutter and a mocking laugh coming from the trees. "If I get my eye on that bird, it will never speak again," exclaimed the creature, in a voice of fury very different from the sweet tones it had at first used; and perhaps it was this fact that induced the children to believe the warning was from a friend, and they would do well to heed it. "Whether you are the tuxix or not," said Twinkle, "I never will touch you. You may be sure of that." "Nor I," declared Chubbins, stoutly, as he came closer to the girl and grasped her hand in his own. At this the horrid thing bristled all its sharp prickers in anger, and said: "Then, if I cannot conquer you in one way, I will in another. Go, both of you, and join the bird that warned you, and live in the air and the trees until you repent your stubbornness and promise to become my slaves. The tuxix has spoken, and her magical powers are at work. Go!" In an instant Twinkle saw Chubbins shoot through the air and disappear among the leaves of one of the tall trees. As he went he seemed to grow very small, and to change in shape. "Wait!" she cried. "I'm coming, too!" She was afraid of losing Chubbins, so she flew after him, feeling rather queer herself, and a moment after was safe in the tall tree, clinging with her toes to a branch and looking in amazement at the boy who sat beside her. Chubbins had been transformed into a pretty little bird--all, that is, except his head, which was Chubbins' own head reduced in size to fit the bird body. It still had upon it the straw hat, which had also grown small in size, and the sight that met Twinkle's eyes was so funny that she laughed merrily, and her laugh was like the sweet warbling of a skylark. Chubbins looked at her and saw almost what she saw; for Twinkle was a bird too, except for her head, with its checked sunbonnet, which had grown small enough to fit the pretty, glossy-feathered body of a lark. Both of them had to cling fast to the branch with their toes, for their arms and hands were now wings. The toes were long and sharp pointed, so that they could be used in the place of fingers. "My!" exclaimed Twinkle; "you're a queer sight, Chubbins!" "So are you," answered the boy. "That mean old thing must have 'witched us." "Yes, we're 'chanted," said Twinkle. "And now, what are we going to do about it? We can't go home, for our folks would be scared nearly into fits. And we don't know the way home, either." "That's so," said Chubbins, fluttering his little wings to keep from falling, for he had nearly lost his balance. "What shall we do?" she continued. "Why, fly around and be gay and happy," said a clear and merry voice beside them. "That's what birds are expected to do!" [CHAPTER II] _The Forest Guardian_ Twinkle and Chubbins twisted their heads around on their little feathered necks and saw perched beside them a big bird of a most beautiful blue color. At first they were a bit frightened, for the newcomer seemed of giant size beside their little lark bodies, and he was, moreover, quite fierce in appearance, having a crest of feathers that came to a point above his head, and a strong beak and sharp talons. But Twinkle looked full into the shrewd, bright eye, and found it good humored and twinkling; so she plucked up courage and asked: "Were you speaking to us?" "Very likely," replied the blue bird, in a cheerful tone. "There's no one else around to speak to." "And was it you who warned us against that dreadful creature below in the forest?" she continued. "It was." "Then," said Twinkle, "we are very much obliged to you." "Don't mention it," said the other. "I'm the forest policeman-- Policeman Bluejay, you know--and it's my duty to look after everyone who is in trouble." "We're in trouble, all right," said Chubbins, sorrowfully. "Well, it might have been worse," remarked Policeman Bluejay, making a chuckling sound in his throat that Twinkle thought was meant for a laugh. "If you had ever touched the old tuxix she would have transformed you into toads or lizards. That is an old trick of hers, to get children into her power and then change them into things as loathsome as herself." "I wouldn't have touched her, anyhow," said Twinkle. "Nor I!" cried Chubbins, in his shrill, bird-like voice. "She wasn't nice." "Still, it was good of you to warn us," Twinkle added, sweetly. The Bluejay looked upon the fluttering little things with kind approval. Then he laughed outright. "What has happened to your heads?" he asked. "Nothing, 'cept they're smaller," replied Chubbins. "But birds shouldn't have human heads," retorted the bluejay. "I suppose the old tuxix did that so the birds would not admit you into their society, for you are neither all bird nor all human. But never mind; I'll explain your case, and you may be sure all the birds of the forest will be kind to you." "Must we stay like this always?" asked Twinkle, anxiously. "I really can't say," answered the policeman. "There is said to be a way to break every enchantment, if one knows what it is. The trouble in these cases is to discover what the charm may be that will restore you to your natural shapes. But just now you must make up your minds to live in our forest for a time, and to be as happy as you can under the circumstances." "Well, we'll try," said Chubbins, with a sigh. "That's right," exclaimed Policeman Bluejay, nodding his crest in approval. "The first thing you must have is a house; so, if you will fly with me, I will try to find you one." "I--I'm afraid!" said Twinkle, nervously. "The larks," declared the bluejay, "are almost the strongest and best flyers we have. You two children have now become skylarks, and may soar so high in the air that you can scarcely see the earth below you. For that reason you need have no fear whatever. Be bold and brave, and all will be well." He spoke in such a kindly and confident voice that both Twinkle and Chubbins gained courage; and when the policeman added: "Come on!" and flew straight as an arrow into the air above the tree-tops, the two little skylarks with their girl and boy heads followed swiftly after him, and had no trouble in going just as fast as their conductor. It was quite a pleasant and interesting experience, to dart through the air and be in no danger of falling. When they rested on their outstretched wings they floated as lightly as bubbles, and soon a joyous thrill took possession of them and they began to understand why it is that the free, wild birds are always so happy in their native state. The forest was everywhere under them, for it was of vast extent. Presently the bluejay swooped downward and alighted near the top of a tall maple tree that had many thick branches. In a second Twinkle and Chubbins were beside him, their little hearts beating fast in their glossy bosoms from the excitement of their rapid flight. Just in front of them, firmly fastened to a crotch of a limb, was a neatly built nest of a gray color, lined inside with some soft substance that was as smooth as satin. "Here," said their thoughtful friend, "is the nest that Niddie Thrush and Daisy Thrush built for themselves a year ago. They have now gone to live in a wood across the big river, so you are welcome to their old home. It is almost as good as new, and there is no rent to pay." "It's awfully small!" said Chubbins. "Chut-chut!" twittered Policeman Bluejay. "Remember you are not children now, but skylarks, and that this is a thrush's nest. Try it, and you are sure to find it will fit you exactly." So Twinkle and Chubbins flew into the "house" and nestled their bodies against its soft lining and found that their friend was right. When they were cuddled together, with their slender legs tucked into the feathers of their breasts, they just filled the nest to the brim, and no more room was necessary. "Now, I'll mark the nest for you, so that everyone will know you claim it," said the policeman; and with his bill he pecked a row of small dots in the bark of the limb, just beside the nest. "I hope you will be very happy here, and this afternoon I will bring some friends to meet you. So now good-bye until I see you again." "Wait!" cried Chubbins. "What are we going to eat?" "Eat!" answered the bluejay, as if surprised. "Why, you may feast upon all the good things the forest offers--grubs, beetles, worms, and butterfly-eggs." "Ugh!" gasped Chubbins. "It makes me sick to just think of it." "What!" "You see," said Twinkle, "we are not _all_ birds, Mr. Bluejay, as you are; and that makes a big difference. We have no bills to pick up the things that birds like to eat, and we do not care for the same sort of food, either." "What _do_ you care for?" asked the policeman, in a puzzled voice. "Why, cake and sandwitches, and pickles, and cheese, such as we had in our basket. We couldn't _eat_ any live things, you see, because we are not used to it." The bluejay became thoughtful. "I understand your objection," he said, "and perhaps you are right, not having good bird sense because the brains in your heads are still human brains. Let me see: what can I do to help you?" The children did not speak, but watched him anxiously. "Where did you leave your basket?" he finally asked. "In the place where the old witch 'chanted us." "Then," said the officer of the forest, "I must try to get it for you." "It is too big and heavy for a bird to carry," suggested Twinkle. "Sure enough. Of course. That's a fact." He turned his crested head upward, trying to think of a way, and saw a black speck moving across the sky. "Wait a minute! I'll be back," he called, and darted upward like a flash. The children watched him mount into the sky toward the black speck, and heard his voice crying out in sharp, quick notes. And before long Policeman Bluejay attracted the other bird's attention, causing it to pause in its flight and sink slowly downward until the two drew close together. Then it was seen that the other bird was a great eagle, strong and sharp-eyed, and with broad wings that spread at least six feet from tip to tip. "Good day, friend eagle," said the bluejay; "I hope you are in no hurry, for I want to ask you to do me a great favor." "What is it?" asked the eagle, in a big, deep voice. "Please go to a part of the forest with me and carry a basket to some friends of mine. I'll show you the way. It is too heavy for me to lift, but with your great strength you can do it easily." "It will give me pleasure to so favor you," replied the eagle, politely; so Policeman Bluejay led the way and the eagle followed with such mighty strokes of its wings that the air was sent whirling in little eddies behind him, as the water is churned by a steamer's paddles. It was not very long before they reached the clearing in the forest. The horrid tuxix had wriggled her evil body away, to soothe her disappointment by some other wicked act; but the basket stood as the children had left it. The eagle seized the handle in his stout beak and found it was no trouble at all for him to fly into the air and carry the basket with him. "This way, please--this way!" chirped the bluejay; and the eagle bore the precious burden safely to the maple tree, and hung it upon a limb just above the nest. As he approached he made such a fierce fluttering that Twinkle and Chubbins were dreadfully scared and flew out of their nest, hopping from limb to limb until they were well out of the monstrous bird's way. But when they saw the basket, and realized the eagle's kindly act, they flew toward him and thanked him very earnestly for his assistance. "Goodness me!" exclaimed the eagle, turning his head first on one side and then on the other, that both his bright eyes might observe the child-larks; "what curious creatures have you here, my good policeman?" "Why, it is another trick of old Hautau, the tuxix. She found two children in the forest and enchanted them. She wanted to make them toads, but they wouldn't touch her, so she couldn't. Then she got herself into a fine rage and made the little dears half birds and half children, as you see them. I was in a tree near by, and saw the whole thing. Because I was sorry for the innocent victims I befriended them, and as this basket belongs to them I have asked you to fetch it to their nest." "I am glad to be of service," replied the eagle. "If ever you need me, and I am anywhere around," he continued, addressing the larks, "just call me, and I will come at once." "Thank you," said Twinkle, gratefully. "We're much obliged," added Chubbins. Then the eagle flew away, and when he was gone Policeman Bluejay also bade them good-bye. "I'll be back this afternoon, without fail," he said. "Just now I must go and look over the forest, and make sure none of the birds have been in mischief during my absence. Do not go very far from your nest, for a time, or you may get lost. The forest is a big place; but when you are more used to it and to your new condition you can be more bold in venturing abroad." "We won't leave this tree," promised Twinkle, in an earnest voice. And Chubbins chimed in with, "That's right; we won't leave this tree until you come back." "Good-bye," said the policeman. "Good-bye," responded Twinkle and Chubbins. So the bluejay darted away and was soon lost to sight, and Twinkle and Chubbins were left alone to seriously consider the great misfortune that had overtaken them. [CHAPTER III] _The Child-Larks_ "Folks will be worried about us, Twink," said Chubbins. "'Course they will," Twinkle replied. "They'll wonder what has become of us, and try to find us." "But they won't look in the tree-tops." "No." "Nor think to ask the birds where we are." "Why should they?" enquired Twinkle. "They can't talk to the birds, Chub." "Why not? We talk to them, don't we? And they talk to us. At least, the p'liceman and the eagle did." "That's true," answered Twinkle, "and I don't understand it a bit. I must ask Mr. Bluejay to 'splain it to us." "What's the use of a p'liceman in the forest?" asked Chubbins, after a moment's thought. "I suppose," she replied, "that he has to keep the birds from being naughty. Some birds are just awful mischiefs, Chub. There's the magpies, you know, that steal; and the crows that fight; and the jackdaws that are saucy, and lots of others that get into trouble. Seems to me P'liceman Bluejay's a pretty busy bird, if he looks after things as he ought." "Prob'ly he's got his hands full," said Chubbins. "Not that; for he hasn't any hands, any more than we have. Perhaps you ought to say he's got his wings full," suggested Twinkle. "That reminds me I'm hungry," chirped the boy-lark. "Well, we've got the basket," she replied. "But how can we eat cake and things, witched up as we are?" "Haven't we mouths and teeth, just the same as ever?" "Yes, but we haven't any hands, and there's a cloth tied over the top of the basket." "Dear me!" exclaimed Twinkle; "I hadn't thought of that." They flew together to the basket and perched upon the edge of it. It seemed astonishingly big to them, now that they were so small; but Chubbins remarked that this fact was a pleasant one, for instead of eating all the good things the basket contained at one meal, as they had at first intended, it would furnish them with food for many days to come. But how to get into the basket was the thing to be considered just now. They fluttered around on every side of it, and finally found a small place where the cloth was loose. In a minute Chubbins began clawing at it with his little feet, and Twinkle helped him; so that gradually they managed to pull the cloth away far enough for one of them to crawl through the opening. Then the other followed, and because the big basket was not quite full there was exactly room for them to stand underneath the cloth and walk around on top of a row of cookies that lay next to a row of sandwiches. The cookies seemed enormous. One was lying flat, and Chubbins declared it seemed as big around as the dining-table at home. "All the better for us," said Twinkle, bending her head down to nibble at the edge of the cookie. "If we're going to be birds," said Chubbins, who was also busily eating as best he could, "we ought to be reg'lar birds, and have bills to peck with. This being half one thing and half another doesn't suit me at all." "The witch wasn't trying to suit us," replied Twinkle; "she was trying to get us into trouble." "Well, she did it, all right," he said. It was not so hard to eat as they had feared, for their slender necks enabled them to bend their heads low. Chubbins' hat fell off, a minute later, and he wondered how he was going to get it on his head again. "Can't you stand on one foot, and use the other foot like a hand?" asked Twinkle. "I don't know," said he. "The storks stand on one leg," continued the girl. "I've seen 'em in pictures." So Chubbins tried it, and found he could balance his little body on one leg very nicely. For if he toppled either way he had but to spread his wings and tail feathers and so keep himself from falling. He picked up his hat with the claws of his other foot and managed to put it on by ducking his head. This gave the boy-lark a new idea. He broke off a piece of the cookie and held it in his claw while he ate it; and seeing his success Twinkle followed his example, and after a few attempts found she could eat very comfortably in that way. Having had their luncheon--and it amazed Chubbins to see how very little was required to satisfy their hunger--the bird-children crept out of the basket and flew down to the twig beside their nest. "Hello!" cried a strange voice. "Newcomers, eh?" They were so startled that they fluttered a moment to keep from tumbling off the limb. Then Twinkle saw a furry red head sticking out of a small hollow in the trunk of the tree. The head had two round black eyes, an inquisitive nose, a wide mouth with sharp teeth and whiskers like those of a cat. It seemed as big as the moon to the shy little child-larks, until it occurred to the girl that the strange creature must be a squirrel. "You--you scared us!" she said, timidly. "You scared _me,_ at first," returned the squirrel, in a comic tone. "Dear me! how came you birds to have children's heads?" "That isn't the way to put it," remarked Chubbins, staring back into the eyes of the squirrel. "You should ask how we children happened to have birds' bodies." "Very well; put the conundrum that way, if you like," said the squirrel. "What is the answer?" "We are enchanted," replied Twinkle. "Ah. The tuxix?" "Yes. We were caught in the forest, and she bewitched us." "That is too bad," said their new acquaintance. "She is a very wicked old creature, for a fact, and loves to get folks into trouble. Are you going to live here?" "Yes," answered the girl. "Policeman Bluejay gave us this nest." "Then it's all right; for Policeman Bluejay rules the feathered tribes of this forest about as he likes. Have you seen him in full uniform yet?" "No," they replied, "unless his feathers are his uniform." "Well, he's too proud of his office to be satisfied with feathers, I can tell you. When some folks get a little authority they want all the world to know about it, and a bold uniform covers many a faint heart. But as I'm your nearest neighbor I'll introduce myself. My name's Wisk." "My name is Twinkle." "And mine's Chubbins." "Pleased to make your acquaintance," said the squirrel, nodding. "I live in the second flat." "How's that?" asked the boy. "Why, the second hollow, you know. There's a 'possum living in the hollow down below, who is carrying four babies around in her pocket; and Mrs. Hootaway, the gray owl, lives in the hollow above--the one you can see far over your heads. So I'm the second flat tenant." "I see," said Twinkle. "Early in the morning the 'possum comes growling home to go to bed; late at night the owl hoots and keeps folks awake; but I'm very quiet and well behaved, and you'll find me a good neighbor," continued Wisk. "I'm sure of that," said Chubbins. As if to prove his friendship the squirrel now darted out of the hollow and sat upon a limb beside the children, holding his bushy tail straight up so that it stood above his head like a big plume in a soldier's helmet. "Are you hungry?" asked the girl. "Not very. I cannot get much food until the nuts are ripe, you know, and my last winter's supply was gone long ago. But I manage to find some bits to eat, here and there." "Do you like cookies?" she asked. "I really do not know," answered Wisk. "Where do they grow?" "In baskets. I'll get you a piece, and you can try it." So Twinkle flew up and crept into her basket again, quickly returning with a bit of cookie in her claw. It was not much more than a crumb, but nevertheless it was all that she could carry. The squirrel seized the morsel in his paws, examined it gravely, and then took a nibble. An instant later it was gone. "That is very good, indeed!" he declared. "Where do these baskets of cookies grow?" "They don't grow anywhere," replied Twinkle, with a laugh. "The baskets come from the grocery store, and my mama makes the cookies." "Oh; they're human food, then." "Yes; would you like some more?" "Not just now," said Wisk. "I don't want to rob you, and it is foolish to eat more than one needs, just because the food tastes good. But if I get very hungry, perhaps I'll ask you for another bite." "Do," said the girl. "You are welcome to what we have, as long as it lasts." "That is very kind of you," returned the squirrel. They sat and talked for an hour, and Wisk told them stories of the forest, and of the many queer animals and birds that lived there. It was all very interesting to the children, and they listened eagerly until they heard a rushing sound in the air that sent Wisk scurrying back into his hole. [CHAPTER IV] _An Afternoon Reception_ Twinkle and Chubbins stretched their little necks to see what was coming, and a moment later beheld one of the most gorgeous sights the forest affords--a procession of all the bright-hued birds that live among the trees or seek them for shelter. They flew in pairs, one after the other, and at the head of the procession was their good friend Policeman Bluejay, wearing a policeman's helmet upon his head and having a policeman's club tucked underneath his left wing. The helmet was black and glossy and had a big number "1" on the front of it, and a strap that passed under the wearer's bill and held it firmly in place. The club was fastened around the policeman's wing with a cord, so that it could not get away when he was flying. The birds were of many sizes and of various colorings. Some were much larger than the bluejay, but none seemed so proud or masterful, and all deferred meekly to the commands of the acknowledged guardian of the forest. One by one the pretty creatures alighted upon the limbs of the tree, and the first thing they all did was to arrange their feathers properly after their rapid flight. Then the bluejay, who sat next to the child-larks, proceeded to introduce the guests he had brought to call upon the newest inhabitants of his domain. "This is Mr. and Mrs. Robin Redbreast, one of our most aristocratic families," said he, swinging his club around in a circle until Chubbins ducked his head for fear it might hit him. "You are welcome to our forest," chirped Robin, in a sedate and dignified tone. "And here is Mr. Goldfinch and his charming bride," continued the policeman. "Ah, it is a pleasure to meet you," the goldfinch murmured, eyeing the child-larks curiously, but trying to be so polite that they would not notice his staring. "Henny Wren and Jenny Wren," proceeded the policeman. Twinkle and Chubbins both bowed politely. "Well, well!" croaked a raven, in a hoarse voice, "am I to wait all day while you introduce those miserable little insignificant grub-eaters?" "Be quiet!" cried Policeman Bluejay, sternly. "I won't," snapped the raven. It happened so quickly that the children saw nothing before they heard the thump of the club against the raven's head. "Caw--waw--waw--waw! Murder! Help!" screamed the big bird, and flew away from the tree as swiftly as his ragged wings would carry him. "Let him go," said a sweet brown mocking-bird. "The rowdy is always disturbing our social gatherings, and no one will miss him if he doesn't come back." "He is not fit for polite society," added a nuthatcher, pruning her scarlet wings complacently. So the policeman tucked the club under his wing again and proceeded with the introductions, the pewees and the linnets being next presented to the strangers, and then the comical little chicadees, the orioles, bobolinks, thrushes, starlings and whippoorwills, the latter appearing sleepy because, they explained, they had been out late the night before. These smaller birds all sat in rows on the limbs beside Twinkle and Chubbins; but seated upon the stouter limbs facing them were rows of bigger birds who made the child-larks nervous by the sharp glances from their round, bright eyes. Here were blackbirds, cuckoos, magpies, grosbeaks and wood-pigeons, all nearly as big and fierce-looking as Policeman Bluejay himself, and some so rugged and strong that it seemed strange they would submit to the orders of the officer of the law. But the policeman kept a sharp watch upon these birds, to see that they attempted no mischievous pranks, and they must have been afraid of him because they behaved very well after the saucy raven had left them. Even the chattering magpies tried to restrain their busy tongues, and the blackbirds indulged in no worse pranks than to suddenly spread their wings and try to push the pigeons off the branch. Several beautiful humming-birds were poised in the air above this gathering, their bodies being motionless but their tiny wings fluttering so swiftly that neither Twinkle nor Chubbins could see them at all. Policeman Bluejay, having finally introduced all the company to the child-larks, began to relate the story of their adventures, telling the birds how the wicked tuxix had transformed them into the remarkable shapes they now possessed. "For the honor of our race," he said, "we must each and every one guard these little strangers carefully, and see that they come to no harm in our forest. You must all pledge yourselves to befriend them on all occasions, and if any one dares to break his promise he must fight with me to the death--and you know very well what that means." "We do," said a magpie, with a shrill laugh. "You'll treat us as you did Jim Crow. Eh?" The policeman did not notice this remark, but the other birds all looked grave and thoughtful, and began in turn to promise that they would take care to befriend the child-larks at all times. This ceremony having been completed, the birds began to converse in a more friendly and easy tone, so that Twinkle and Chubbins soon ceased to be afraid of them, and enjoyed very much their society and friendly chatter. [CHAPTER V] _The Oriole's Story_ "We are really very happy in this forest," said an oriole that sat next to Twinkle, "and we would have no fears at all did not the men with guns, who are called hunters, come here now and then to murder us. They are terribly wild and ferocious creatures, who have no hearts at all." "Oh, they _must_ have hearts," said Twinkle, "else they couldn't live. For one's heart has to beat to keep a person alive, you know." "Perhaps it's their gizzards that beat," replied the oriole, reflectively, "for they are certainly heartless and very wicked. A cousin of mine, Susie Oriole, had a very brave and handsome husband. They built a pretty nest together and Susie laid four eggs in it that were so perfect that she was very proud of them. "The eggs were nearly ready to hatch when a great man appeared in the forest and discovered Susie's nest. Her brave husband fought desperately to protect their home, but the cruel man shot him, and he fell to the ground dead. Even then Susie would not leave her pretty eggs, and when the man climbed the tree to get them she screamed and tried to peck out his eyes. Usually we orioles are very timid, you know; so you can well understand how terrified Susie was to fight against this giant foe. But he had a club in his hand, with which he dealt my poor cousin such a dreadful blow that she was sent whirling through the air and sank half unconscious into a bush a few yards away. "After this the man stole the eggs from the nest, and also picked up the dead body of Susie's husband and carried it away with him. Susie recovered somewhat from the blow she had received, and when she saw her eggs and her poor dead husband being taken away, she managed to flutter along after the man and followed him until he came to the edge of the forest. There he had a horse tied to a tree, and he mounted upon the beast's back and rode away through the open country. Susie followed him, just far enough away to keep the man in sight, without being noticed herself. "By and bye he came to a big house, which he entered, closing the door behind him. Susie flew into a tree beside the house and waited sorrowfully but in patience for a chance to find her precious ones again. "The days passed drearily away, one after another, but in about a week my cousin noticed that one of the windows of the house had been left open. So she boldly left her tree and flew in at the window, and luckily none of the people who lived in the house happened to be in the room. "Imagine Susie's surprise when she saw around the sides of the room many birds sitting silently upon limbs cut from trees, and among them her own husband, as proud and beautiful as he had ever been before the cruel man had killed him! She quickly flew to the limb and perched beside her loved one. "'Oh, my darling!' she cried, 'how glad I am to have found you again, and to see you alive and well when I had mourned you as dead. Come with me at once, and we will return to our old home in the forest.' "But the bird remained motionless and made no reply to her loving words. She thrust her bill beside his and tried to kiss him, but he did not respond to the caress and his body was stiff and cold. "Then Susie uttered a cry of grief, and understood the truth. Her husband was indeed dead, but had been stuffed and mounted upon the limb to appear as he had in life. Small wires had been pushed through his legs to make his poor body stand up straight, and to Susie's horror she discovered that his eyes were only bits of glass! All the other birds in the room were stuffed in the same way. They looked as if they were alive, at the first glance; but each body was cold and every voice mute. They were mere mockeries of the beautiful birds that this heartless and cruel man had deprived of their joyous lives. "Susie's loving heart was nearly bursting with pain as she slowly fluttered toward the open window by which she had entered. But on her way a new anguish overtook her, for she noticed a big glass case against the wall in which were arranged clusters of eggs stolen from birds of almost every kind. Yes; there were her own lovely eggs, scarcely an inch from her face, but separated from her by a stout glass that could not be broken, although she madly dashed her body against it again and again. "Finally, realizing her helplessness, poor Susie left the room by the open window and flew back to the forest, where she told us all the terrible thing she had seen. No one was able to comfort her, for her loving heart was broken; and after that she would often fly away to the house to peer through the window at her eggs and her beautiful husband. "One day she did not return, and after waiting for her nearly two weeks we sent the bluejay to see what had become of her. Our policeman found the house, and also found the window of the room open. "He boldly entered, and discovered Susie and her husband sitting side by side upon the dried limb, their bodies both stiff and dead. The man had caught the poor wife at last, and the lovers were reunited in death. "Also Policeman Bluejay found his grandfather's mummy in this room, and the stuffed mummies of many other friends he had known in the forest. So he was very sorrowful when he returned to us, and from that time we have feared the heartless men more than ever." "It's a sad story," sighed Twinkle, "and I've no doubt it is a true one. But all men are not so bad, I'm sure." "All men who enter the forest are," answered the oriole, positively. "For they only come here to murder and destroy those who are helpless before their power, but have never harmed them in the least. If God loves the birds, as I am sure He does, why do you suppose He made their ferocious enemies, the men?" Twinkle did not reply, but she felt a little ashamed. [CHAPTER VI] _A Merry Adventure_ "Talking about men," said the cuckoo, in a harsh but not very unpleasant voice, "reminds me of a funny adventure I once had myself. I was sitting in my nest one day, at the time when I was quite young, when suddenly a man appeared before me. You must know that this nest, which was rather carelessly built by my mother, was in a thick evergreen tree, and not very high from the ground; so that I found the man's eyes staring squarely into my own. "Most of you, my dears, have seen men; but this was the strangest sort of man you can imagine. There was white hair upon his face, so long that it hung down to his middle, and over his eyes were round plates of glass that glittered very curiously. I was so astonished at seeing the queer creature that I sat still and stared, and this was my undoing. For suddenly there came a rapid 'whish!' through the air, and a network of cords fell all around and over me. Then, indeed, I spread my wings and attempted to fly; but it was too late. I struggled in the net without avail, and soon gave up the conflict in breathless despair. "My captor did not intend to kill me, however. Instead, he tried to soothe my fright, and carried me very gently for many, many miles, until we came to a village of houses. Here, at the very top of a high house, the man lived in one little room. It was all littered with tools and bits of wood, and on a broad shelf were several queer things that went 'tick-tock! tick-tock!' every minute. I was thrust, gently enough, into a wooden cage, where I lay upon the bottom more dead than alive because the ticking things at first scared me dreadfully and I was in constant terror lest I should be tortured or killed. But the glass-eyed old man brought me dainty things to eat, and plenty of fresh water to relieve my thirst, and by the next day my heart had stopped going pitty-pat and I was calm enough to stand up in my cage and look around me. "My white-whiskered captor sat at a bench with his coat off and his bald head bare, while he worked away busily putting little wheels and springs together, and fitting them into a case of wood. When one of them was finished it would sing 'tick-tock! tick-tock!' just like the other queer things on the shelf, and this constant ticking so interested me that I raised my head and called: "'Cuck-oo! cuck-oo!'" "'That's it!' cried the old man, delightedly. 'That's what I wanted to hear. It's the real cuckoo at last, and not a bit like those cheap imitations.' "I didn't understand at first what he meant, but he worked at his bench all day, and finally brought to my cage a bird made out of wood, that was carved and painted to look just as I was. It seemed so natural that I flapped my wings and called 'cuck-oo' to it, and the man pressed a little bellows at the bottom of the bird and made it say 'cuck-oo!' in return. But that cry was so false and unreal that I just shouted with laughter, and the glass-eyed old man shook his head sadly and said: 'That will never do. That will never do in the world.' "So all the next day he worked hard trying to make his wooden bird say 'cuck-oo!' in the proper way; and at last it really spoke quite naturally, so that it startled even me when I heard it. This seemed to please my captor very much; so he put it inside one of the ticking things on the shelf, and by-and-by a door opened and the wooden bird jumped out and cried 'Cuck-oo! Cuck-oo! Cuck-oo!' and then jumped back again and the door closed with a snap. "'Bravo!' cried old white-hair; but I was rather annoyed, for I thought the wooden bird was impudent in trying to ape the ways of live cuckoos. I shouted back a challenge to it, but there was no reply. An hour later, and every hour, it repeated the performance, but jumped behind the door when I offered to fight it. "The next day the man was absent from the room, and I had nothing to eat. So I became angry and uneasy. I scratched away at the wooden bars of my cage and tried to twist them with my beak, and at last one of them, to my great joy, came loose, and I was able to squeeze myself out of the cage. "But then I was no better off than before, because the windows and the door of the room were fast shut. I grew more cross and ill-tempered than before, when I discovered this, and to add to my annoyance that miserable wooden bird would every once in awhile jump out and yell 'Cuck-oo!' and then bounce back into its house again, without daring to argue with me. "This at last made me frantic with rage, and I resolved to be revenged. The next time the wooden bird made its appearance I new upon it in a flash and knocked it off the little platform before it had uttered its cry more than twice. It fell upon the floor and broke one of its wings; but in an instant I dashed myself upon it and bit and scratched the impudent thing until there was not a bit of paint left upon it. Its head came off, too, and so did its legs and the other wing, and before I was done with it no one ever would have known it was once a clever imitation of myself. Finding that I was victorious I cried 'Cuck-oo!' in triumph, and just then the little door of the ticking thing opened and the platform where the wooden bird had stood came out of it and remained for a time motionless. I quickly flew up and perched upon it, and shouted 'Cuck-oo!' again, in great glee. As I did so, to my amazement the platform on which I stood leaped backward, carrying me with it, and the next instant the door closed with a snap and I found myself in darkness. "Wildly I fluttered my wings; but it was of no use. I was in a prison much worse than the cage, and so small that I could hardly turn around in it. I was about to die of terror and despair when I chanced to remember that at certain times the door would open to push out the bird and allow it to say 'Cuck-oo!' before it shut again. So, the next time it opened in this way, I would be able to make my escape. "Very patiently I waited in the dark little hole, listening to the steady 'tick-tock!' of the machinery behind me and trying not to be nervous. After awhile I heard the old man come into the room and exclaim sorrowfully because his captive cuckoo had escaped from its cage. He could not imagine what had become of me, and I kept still and laughed to myself to think how I would presently surprise him. "It seemed an age before I finally heard the click that opened the door in front of me. Then the platform on which I sat sprang out, and I fluttered my wings and yelled 'Cuck-oo! Cuck-oo!' as loud as I could. The old man was standing right in front of me, his mouth wide open with astonishment at the wonderfully natural performance of his wooden bird, as he thought me. He shouted 'Bravo!' again, and clapped his hands; and at that I flew straight into his face, and clawed his white hair with all my might, and screamed as loud as I could. "He screamed, too, being taken by surprise, and tumbled over backward so that he sat down upon the floor with a loud bump. I flew to the work-bench, and then the truth dawned upon him that I was not the wooden bird but the real one. "'Good gracious!' said he, 'I've left the window open. The rascal will escape!' "I glanced at the window and saw that it was indeed wide open. The sight filled me with triumphant joy. Before the old man could get upon his feet and reach the window I had perched upon the sill, and with one parting cry of 'Cuck-oo!' I spread my wings and flew straight into the air. "Well, I never went back to enquire if he enjoyed the trick I had played upon him, but I've laughed many a time when I thought of the old fellow's comic expression when a real cuckoo instead of a painted one flew out of his ticking machine." As the cuckoo ended his tale the other birds joined in a chorus of shrill laughter; but Chubbins said to them, gravely: "He was a smart man, though, to make a cuckoo-clock. I saw one myself, one time, and it was a wonderful thing. The cuckoo told what time it was every hour." "Was it made of wood?" asked the bluejay. "I don't know that," replied the boy-lark; "but of course it wasn't a real bird." "It only shows," remarked the bobolink, "how greatly those humans admire us birds. They make pictures of us, and love to keep us in cages so they can hear us sing, and they even wear us in their bonnets after we are dead." "I think that is a dreadful thing," said the goldfinch, with a shudder. "But it only proves that men are our greatest enemies." "Don't forget the women," said Twinkle. "It's the women that wear birds in their hats." "Mankind," said Robin Redbreast, gravely, "is the most destructive and bloodthirsty of all the brute creation. They not only kill for food, but through vanity and a desire for personal adornment. I have even heard it said that they kill for amusement, being unable to restrain their murderous desires. In this they are more cruel than the serpents." "There is some excuse for the poor things," observed the bluejay, "for nature created them dependent upon the animals and birds and fishes. Having neither fur nor feathers to protect their poor skinny bodies, they wear clothing made of the fleece of sheep, and skins of seals and beavers and otters and even the humble muskrats. They cover their feet and their hands with skins of beasts; they sleep upon the feathers of birds; their food is the flesh of beasts and birds and fishes. No created thing is so dependent upon others as man; therefore he is the greatest destroyer in the world. But he is not alone in his murderous, despoiling instinct. While you rail at man, my friends, do not forget that birds are themselves the greatest enemies of birds." "Nonsense!" cried the magpie, indignantly. "Perhaps the less you say about this matter the better," declared the bluejay, swinging his club in a suggestive manner, and looking sharply at the magpie. "It's a slander," said the blackbird. "I'm sure you can't accuse _me_ of injuring birds in any way." "If you are all innocent, why are we obliged to have a policeman?" enquired the little wren, in a nervous voice. "Tell me," said Twinkle, appealing to the bluejay; "are the big birds really naughty to the little ones?" "Why, it is the same with us as it is with men," replied the policeman. "There are good ones and bad ones among us, and the bad ones have to be watched. Men destroy us wantonly; other animals and the sly serpents prey upon us and our eggs for food; but these are open enemies, and we know how we may best avoid them. Our most dangerous foes are those bandits of our own race who, instead of protecting their brethren, steal our eggs and murder our young. They are not always the biggest birds, by any means, that do these things. The crow family is known to be treacherous, and the shrike is rightly called the 'butcher-bird,' but there are many others that we have reason to suspect feed upon their own race." "How dreadful!" exclaimed the girl-lark. The birds all seemed restless and uneasy at this conversation, and looked upon one another with suspicious glances. But the bluejay soothed them by saying: "After all, I suppose we imagine more evil than really exists, and sometimes accuse our neighbors wrongfully. But the mother birds know how often their nests have been robbed in their absence, and if they suspect some neighbor of the crime instead of a prowling animal it is but natural, since many birds cannot be trusted. There are laws in the forest, of course; but the guilty ones are often able to escape. I'll tell you of a little tragedy that happened only last week, which will prove how apt we are to be mistaken." [CHAPTER VII] _The Bluejay's Story_ "There is no more faithful mother in the forest than the blue titmouse, which is a cousin to the chickadee," continued the policeman, "and this spring Tom Titmouse and his wife Nancy set up housekeeping in a little hollow in an elm-tree about half a mile north of this spot. Of course, the first thing Nancy did was to lay six beautiful eggs--white with brown spots all over them--in the nest. Tom was as proud of these eggs as was Nancy, and as the nest was hidden in a safe place they flew away together to hunt for caterpillars, and had no thought of danger. But on their return an hour later what was their sorrow to find the nest empty, and every pretty egg gone. On the ground underneath the tree were scattered a few bits of shell; but the robber was nowhere to be seen. "Tom Titmouse was very indignant at this dreadful crime, and came to me at once to complain of the matter; but of course I had no idea who had done the deed. I questioned all the birds who have ever been known to slyly steal eggs, and every one denied the robbery. So Nancy Titmouse saw she must lay more eggs, and before long had another six speckled beauties in the bottom of her nest. "They were more careful now about leaving home; but the danger seemed past. One bright, sunny morning they ventured to fly to the brook to drink and bathe themselves, and on their return found their home despoiled for a second time. Not an egg was left to them out of the six, and while Nancy wept and wailed Tom looked sharply around him and saw a solitary shrike sitting on a limb not far away." "What's a shrike?" asked Chubbins. "It is a bird that looks a good deal like that mocking-bird sitting next you; but it bears a bad character in the forest and has earned the vile name of 'butcher-bird.' I admit that I am always obliged to keep an eye upon the shrike, for I expect it to get into mischief at any time. Well, Tom Titmouse naturally thought the shrike had eaten Nancy's eggs, so he came to me and ordered me to arrest the robber. But the shrike pleaded his innocence, and I had no proof against him. "Again Nancy, with true motherly courage and perseverance, laid her eggs in the nest; and now they were never left alone for a single minute. Either she or Tom was always at home, and for my part I watched the shrike carefully and found he did not fly near the nest of the titmice at all. "The result of our care was that one fine day the eggs hatched out, and six skinny little titmice, with big heads and small bodies, were nestling against Nancy's breast. The mother thought they were beautiful, you may be sure, and many birds gathered around to congratulate her and Tom, and the brown thrush sang a splendid song of welcome to the little ones. "When the children got a little stronger it did not seem necessary to guard the nest so closely, and the six appetites required a good many insects and butterfly-eggs to satisfy them. So Tom and Nancy both flew away to search for food, and when they came back they found, to their horror, that their six little ones had been stolen, and the nest was bare and cold. Nancy nearly fainted with sorrow, and her cries were pitiful and heart-rending; but Tom Titmouse was dreadfully angry, and came to me demanding vengeance. "'If you are any good at all as a policeman,' said he, 'you will discover and punish the murderer of my babies.' "So I looked all around and finally discovered, not far from the nest of the titmice, four of their children, all dead and each one impaled upon the thorn of a bush that grew close to the ground. Then I decided it was indeed the shrike, for he has a habit of doing just this thing; killing more than he can eat and sticking the rest of his murdered victims on thorns until he finds time to come back and devour them. "I was also angry, by that time; so I flew to the shrike's nest and found him all scratched and torn and his feathers plucked in many places. "'What has happened to you?' I asked. "'I had a fight with a weasel last night,' answered the shrike, 'and both of us are rather used up, today.' "'Still,' said I, sternly, 'you had strength enough to kill the six little titmice, and to eat two of them.' "'I never did,' said he, earnestly; 'my wings are too stiff to fly.' "'Do not lie about it, I beg of you,' said I; 'for we have found four of the dead titmice stuck on the thorns of a bush, and your people have been known to do such things before.' "At this the shrike looked worried. "'Really,' said he, 'I cannot understand it. But I assure you I am innocent.' "Nevertheless, I arrested him, and made him fly with me to the Judgment Tree, where all the birds had congregated. He was really stiff and sore, and I could see it hurt him to fly; but my duty was plain. We selected a jury of twelve birds, and Judge Bullfinch took his seat on a bough, and then the trial began. "Tom Titmouse accused the shrike of murder, and so did Nancy, who had nearly cried her eyes out. I also gave my evidence. But the prisoner insisted strongly that he was innocent, and claimed he had not left his nest since his fight with the weasel, and so was guiltless of the crime. "But no one had any sympathy for him, or believed what he said; for it is often the case that when one has earned a bad character he is thought capable of any wickedness. So the jury declared him guilty, and the judge condemned him to die at sundown. We were all to fall upon the prisoner together, and tear him into bits with bill and claw; but while we waited for the sun to sink Will Sparrow flew up to the Judgment Tree and said: "'Hello! What's going on here?' "'We are just about to execute a criminal,' replied the judge. "'What has he been doing?' asked Will, eyeing the shrike curiously. "'He killed the titmice children this morning, and ate two of them, and stuck the other four upon a thorn bush,' explained the judge. "'Oh, no; the shrike did not do that!' cried Will Sparrow. 'I saw the crime committed with my own eyes, and it was the cunning weasel--the one that lives in the pine stump--that did the dreadful murder.' "At this all the birds set up an excited chatter, and the shrike again screamed that he was innocent. So the judge said, gravely: 'Will Sparrow always speaks the truth. Release the prisoner, for we have misjudged him. We must exact our vengeance upon the weasel.' "So we all flew swiftly to the pine stump, which we knew well, and when we arrived we found the weasel sitting at the edge of his hole and laughing at us. "'That is the very weasel I fought with,' said the shrike. 'You can see where I tore the fur from his head and back with my sharp beak.' "'So you did,' answered the weasel; 'and in return I killed the little tomtits.' "'Did you stick them on the thorns?' asked Judge Bullfinch. "'Yes,' said the weasel. 'I hoped you would accuse the shrike of the murder, and kill him to satisfy my vengeance.' "'We nearly fell into the trap,' returned the judge; 'but Will Sparrow saw your act and reported it just in time to save the shrike's life. But tell me, did you also eat Nancy Titmouse's eggs?' "'Of course,' confessed the weasel, 'and they were very good, indeed.' "Hearing this, Tom Titmouse became so excited that he made a furious dash at the weasel, who slipped within his hole and escaped. "'I condemn you to death!' cried the judge. "'That's all right,' answered the weasel, sticking just the tip of his nose out of the hole. 'But you've got to catch me before you can kill me. Run home, my pretty birds. You're no match for a weasel!' "Then he was gone from sight, and we knew he was hidden safely in the stump, where we could not follow him, for the weasel's body is slim and slender. But I have not lived in the forest all my life without learning something, and I whispered a plan to Judge Bullfinch that met with his approval. He sent messengers at once for the ivory-billed woodpeckers, and soon four of those big birds appeared and agreed to help us. They began tearing away at the stump with their strong beaks, and the splinters flew in every direction. It was not yet dark when the cunning weasel was dragged from his hole and was at the mercy of the birds he had so cruelly offended. We fell upon him in a flash, and he was dead almost instantly." "What became of the shrike?" asked Twinkle. "He left the forest the next day," answered Policeman Bluejay. "For although he was innocent of this crime, he was still a butcher-bird, and he knew our people had no confidence in him." "It was lucky Will Sparrow came in time," said the girl-lark. "But all these stories must have made you hungry, so I'd like to invite my guests to have some refreshments." The birds seemed much surprised by this invitation, and even Policeman Bluejay wondered what she was going to do. But Twinkle whispered to Chubbins, and both the bird-children flew into their basket and returned with their claws full of cookie. They repeated the journey many times, distributing bits of the rare food to all of the birds who had visited them, and each one ate the morsel eagerly and declared that it was very good. "Now," said the policeman, when the feast was over, "let us all go to the brook and have a drink of its clear, sweet water." So they flew away, a large and merry band of all sizes and colors; and the child-larks joined them, skimming the air as lightly and joyously as any of their new friends. It did not take them long to reach a sparkling brook that wound its way through the forest, and all the feathered people drank their fill standing upon the low bank or upon stones that rose above the level of the water. At first the children were afraid they might fall into the brook; but presently they gained courage, and when they saw the thrush and bullfinch plunge in and bathe themselves in the cool water Chubbins decided to follow their example, and afterward Twinkle also joined them. The birds now bade the child-larks good-bye and promised to call upon them again, and soon all had flown away except the bluejay, who said he would see Twinkle and Chubbins safe home again, so that they would not get lost. They thanked him for this kindness, and when they had once more settled upon the limb beside their nest the bluejay also bade them good night and darted away for one last look through the forest to see that all was orderly for the night. [CHAPTER VIII] _Mrs. Hootaway_ As the child-larks sat side by side upon their limb, with the soft gray nest near at hand, the twilight fell and a shadow began to grow and deepen throughout the forest. "Twink," said Chubbins, gravely, "how do you like it?" "Well," replied the girl, "it isn't so bad in the daytime, but it's worse at night. That bunch of grass mixed up with the stems of leaves, that they call a nest, isn't much like my pretty white bed at home, Chubbins." "Nor mine," he agreed. "And, Twink, how ever can we say our prayers when we haven't any hands to hold up together?" "Prayers, Chub," said the girl, "are more in our hearts than in our hands. It isn't what we _do_ that counts; it's what we feel. But the most that bothers me is what the folks at home will think, when we don't come back." "They'll hunt for us," Chubbins suggested; "and they may come under this tree, and call to us." "If they do," said Twinkle, "we'll fly right down to them." "I advise you not to fly much, in the night," said a cheery voice beside them, and Wisk the squirrel stuck his head out of the hollow where he lived. "You've had quite a party here today," he continued, "and they behaved pretty well while the policeman was around. But some of them might not be so friendly if you met them alone." "Would any bird hurt us?" asked the girl, in surprise. "Why, I've seen a magpie meet a thrush, and fly away alone," replied Wisk. "And the wrens and chickadees avoid the cuckoo as much as possible, because they are fond of being alive. But the policeman keeps the big birds all in order when he is around, and he makes them all afraid to disobey the laws. He's a wonderful fellow, that Policeman Bluejay, and even we squirrels are glad he is in the forest." "Why?" asked Chubbins. "Well, we also fear some of the birds," answered Wisk. "The lady in the third flat, for instance, Mrs. Hootaway, is said to like a squirrel for a midnight meal now and then, when mice and beetles are scarce. It is almost her hour for wakening, so I must be careful to keep near home." "Tut--tut--tut!" cried a harsh voice from above. "What scandal is this you are talking, Mr. Wisk?" The squirrel was gone in a flash; but a moment later he put out his head again and turned one bright eye toward the upper part of the tree. There, on a perch outside her hollow, sat the gray owl, pruning her feathers. It was nearly dark by this time, and through the dusk Mrs. Hootaway's yellow eyes could be seen gleaming bright and wide open. "What nonsense are you putting into the heads of these little innocents?" continued the owl, in a scolding tone. "No nonsense at all," said Wisk, in reply. "The child-larks are safe enough from you, because they are under the protection of Policeman Bluejay, and he would have a fine revenge if you dared to hurt them. But my case is different. The laws of the birds do not protect squirrels, and when you're abroad, my dear Mrs. Hootaway, I prefer to remain snugly at home." "To be sure," remarked the owl, with a laugh. "You are timid and suspicious by nature, my dear Wisk, and you forget that although I have known you for a long time I have never yet eaten you." "That is my fault, and not yours," retorted the squirrel. "Well, I'm not after you tonight, neighbor, nor after birds, either. I know where there are seven fat mice to be had, and until they are all gone you may cease to worry." "I'm glad to hear that," replied Wisk. "I wish there were seven hundred mice to feed your appetite. But I'm not going to run into danger recklessly, nevertheless, and it is my bed-time. So good night, Mrs. Hootaway; and good night, little child-larks." The owl did not reply, but Twinkle and Chubbins called good night to the friendly squirrel, and then they hopped into their nest and cuddled down close together. The moon was now rising over the trees and flooding the gloom of the forest with its subdued silver radiance. The children were not sleepy; their new life was too strange and wonderful for them to be able to close their eyes at once. So they were rather pleased when the gray owl settled on the branch beside their nest and began to talk to them. "I'm used to slanders, my dears," she said, in a pleasanter tone than she had used before, "so I don't mind much what neighbor Wisk says to me. But I do not wish you to think ill of the owl family, and so I must assure you that we are as gentle and kindly as any feathered creatures in the forest--not excepting the Birds of Paradise." "I am sure of that," replied Twinkle, earnestly. "You are too soft and fluffy and pretty to be bad." "It isn't the prettiness," said the gray owl, evidently pleased by the compliment. "It is the nature of owls to be kind and sympathetic. Those who do not know us very well say harsh things about us, because we fly in the night, when most other birds are asleep, and sleep in the daytime when most other birds are awake." "Why do you do that?" asked Chubbins. "Because the strong light hurts our eyes. But, although we are abroad in the night, we seek only our natural prey, and obey the Great Law of the forest more than some others do." "What is the Great Law?" enquired Twinkle, curiously. "Love. It is the moral law that is above all laws made by living creatures. The whole forest is ruled by love more than it is by fear. You may think this is strange when you remember that some animals eat birds, and some birds eat animals, and the dreadful creeping things eat us both; but nevertheless we are so close to Nature here that love and tenderness for our kind influences us even more than it does mankind-- the careless and unthinking race from which you came. The residents of the forest are good parents, helpful neighbors, and faithful friends. What better than this could be said of us?" "Nothing, I'm sure, if it is true," replied the girl. "Over in the Land of Paradise," continued the owl, thoughtfully, "the birds are not obliged to take life in order to live themselves; so they call us savage and fierce. But I believe our natures are as kindly as those of the Birds of Paradise." "Where is this Land of Paradise you speak of?" asked Twinkle. "Directly in the center of our forest. It is a magical spot, protected from intrusion not by any wall or barred gates, but by a strong wind that blows all birds away from that magnificent country except the Birds of Paradise themselves. There is a legend that man once lived there, but for some unknown crime was driven away. But the birds have always been allowed to inhabit the place because they did no harm." "I'd like to see it," said Chubbins. "So would I," confessed the gray owl, with a sigh; "but there is no use of my attempting to get into the Paradise of Birds, because the wind would blow me back. But now it is getting quite dark, and I must be off to seek my food. Mrs. 'Possum and I have agreed to hunt together, tonight." "Who is Mrs. 'Possum?" the girl asked. "An animal living in the lowest hollow of this tree," answered the owl. "She is a good-natured creature, and hunts by night, as I do. She is slow, but, being near the ground, she can spy a mouse much quicker than I can, and then she calls to me to catch it. So between us we get plenty of game and are helpful to each other. The only drawback is that Mrs. 'Possum has four children, which she carries in her pouch wherever she goes, and they have to be fed as well as their mother. So the 'possums have five mouths to my one, and it keeps us busy to supply them all." "It's very kind of you to help her," remarked Twinkle. "Oh, she helps me, too," returned the owl, cheerfully. "But now good night, my dears. You will probably be sound asleep when I get home again." Off flew Mrs. Hootaway with these words, and her wings moved so noiselessly that she seemed to fade away into the darkness like a ghost. The child-larks sat looking at the silver moon for a time; but presently Twinkle's eyelids drooped and she fell fast asleep, and Chubbins was not long in following her example. [CHAPTER IX] _The Destroyers_ A loud shouting and a bang that echoed like a clap of thunder through the forest awoke the bird-children from their dreams. Opening their eyes with a start they saw that the gray dawn was breaking and a sort of morning twilight made all objects in the forest distinct, yet not so brilliant as the approaching daylight would. Shadows still lay among the bushes and the thickest branches; but between the trees the spaces were clearly visible. The children, rudely awakened by the riot of noise in their ears, could distinguish the barking of dogs, the shouts of men calling to the brutes, and the scream of an animal in deep distress. Immediately after, there was a whirl overhead and the gray owl settled on the limb beside their nest. "They've got her!" she exclaimed, in a trembling, terrified voice. "The men have shot Mrs. 'Possum dead, and the dogs are now tearing her four babies limb from limb!" "Where are they?" whispered Twinkle, her little heart beating as violently as if the dread destroyers had always been her mortal enemies. "Just below us. Isn't it dreadful? We had such a nice night together, and Mrs. 'Possum was so sweet and loving in caring for her little ones and feeding them! And, just as we were nearly home again, the dogs sprang upon my friend and the men shot her dead. We had not even suspected, until then, that our foes were in the forest." Twinkle and Chubbins craned their necks over the edge of the nest and looked down. On the ground stood a man and a boy, and two great dogs were growling fiercely and tearing some bloody, revolting object with their cruel jaws. "Look out!" cried the voice of Wisk, the squirrel. "He's aiming at you--look out!" They ducked their heads again, just as the gun roared and flamed fire beneath them. "Oh-h-h!" wailed Mrs. Hootaway, fluttering violently beside them. "They struck me that time--the bullet is in my heart. Good-bye, my dears. Remember that--all--is love; all is--love!" Her voice died away to a whisper, and she toppled from the limb. Twinkle and Chubbins tried to save their dying friend from falling, but the gray owl was so much bigger than they that they could not support the weight of her body. Slowly she sank to the ground and fell upon the earth with a dull sound that was dreadful to hear. Instantly Twinkle darted from the nest and swooped downward, alighting on the ground beside the owl's quivering body. A big dog came bounding toward her. The man was reloading his gun, a few paces away. "Call off your dog!" shouted Twinkle, wildly excited. "How dare you shoot the poor, harmless birds? Call off your dog, I say!" But, even as she spoke, the words sounded in her own ears strange and unnatural, and more like the chirping of a bird than the language of men. The hunter either did not hear her or he did not understand her, and the dog snarled and bared its wicked teeth as it sprang greedily upon the child-lark. Twinkle was too terrified to move. She glared upon the approaching monster helplessly, and it had almost reached her when a black object fell from the skies with the swiftness of a lightning streak and struck the dog's back, tearing the flesh with its powerful talons and driving a stout, merciless beak straight through the skull of the savage brute. The dog, already dead, straightened out and twitched convulsively. The man shouted angrily and sprang upon the huge bird that had slain his pet, at the same time swinging his gun like a club. "Quick!" said the eagle to Twinkle, "mount with me as swiftly as you can." With the words he rose into the air and Twinkle darted after him, while Chubbins, seeing their flight from his nest, joined them just in time to escape a shot from the boy's deadly gun. The inquisitive squirrel, however, had stuck his head out to see what was happening, and one of the leaden bullets buried itself in his breast. Chubbins saw him fall back into his hollow and heard his agonized scream; but he could not stay to help his poor friend. An instant later he had joined the eagle and Twinkle, and was flying as hard and swift as his wonderful lark wings could carry him up, up into the blue sky. The sunshine touched them now, while below the tragic forest still lay buried in gloom. "We are quite safe here, for I am sure no shot from a gun could reach us," said the eagle. "So let us rest upon our wings for a while. How lucky it was that I happened to be around in time to rescue you, my little friends." "I am very grateful, indeed," answered Twinkle, holding her wings outstretched so that she floated lightly in the air beside her rescuer. "If you had been an instant later, the dog would have killed me." "Very true," returned the eagle. "I saw your danger while I was in the air, and determined to act quickly, although I might myself have been shot by the man had his gun been loaded. But I have noticed that a bold action is often successful because it causes surprise, and the foe does not know what to do." "I'm 'shamed of those people," said Chubbins, indignantly. "What right had they to come to the forest and kill the pretty owl, and the dear little squirrel, and the poor mama 'possum and her babies?" "They had the right of power," said the eagle, calmly. "It would be a beautiful world were there no destroyers of life in it; but the earth and air and water would then soon become so crowded that there would not be room for them all to exist. Don't blame the men." "But they are cruel," said Twinkle, "and kill innocent, harmless birds and animals, instead of the wicked ones that could be better spared." "Cruelty is man's nature," answered the eagle. "Of all created things, men, tigers and snakes are known to be the most cruel. From them we expect no mercy. But now, what shall be our next movement? I suppose it will be best for you to keep away from the forest until the men are gone. Would you like to visit my home, and meet my wife and children?" "Yes, indeed!" cried Twinkle; "if you will be kind enough to let us." "It will be a great pleasure to me," said the eagle. "Follow me closely, please." He began flying again, and they kept at his side. By and by they noticed a bright, rosy glow coming from a portion of the forest beneath them. "What is that?" asked Chubbins. "It is the place called the Paradise of Birds," answered their conductor. "It is said to be the most beautiful place in all the world, but no one except the Birds of Paradise are allowed to live there. Those favored birds sometimes enter our part of the forest, but we are never allowed to enter theirs." "I'd like to see that place," said Twinkle. "Well, you two child-larks are different from all other birds," remarked the eagle, "and for that reason perhaps you would be allowed to visit the paradise that is forbidden the rest of us. If ever I meet one of the beautiful birds that live there, I will ask it to grant you the privilege." "Do!" said Twinkle and Chubbins, in one eager breath. They flew for a long time, high in the air, but neither of the bird-children seemed to tire in the least. They could not go quite as fast as the eagle, however, who moderated his speed so that they could keep up with him. [CHAPTER X] _In the Eagle's Nest_ Gradually the forest passed out of sight and only bleak, rugged mountains were below them. One peak rose higher than the others, and faced the sea, and to this point the great eagle directed their flight. On a crag that jutted out from the mountain was the eagle's nest, made of rude sticks of wood gathered from the forest. Sitting beside the nest was Mrs. Eagle, larger and more pompous even than her husband, while squatting upon the edge of the nest were two half-grown eaglets with enormous claws and heads, but rather skinny bodies that were covered with loose and ragged feathers. Neither the nest nor the eaglets appeared to be very clean, and a disagreeable smell hung over the place. "This is funny," said Mrs. Eagle, looking at the child-larks with surprise. "Usually you kill your game before you bring it home, Jonathan; but today it seems our dinner has flown to us willingly." "They're for us!" cried one of the eaglets, making a quick dash to seize Twinkle, who darted out of his reach. "One for each of us!" screamed the other eaglet, rushing at Chubbins. "Peace--be quiet!" said the eagle, sternly. "Cannot you tell friends from food, you foolish youngsters? These are two little friends of mine whom I have invited to visit us; so you must treat them in a civil manner." "Why not eat them?" asked one of the eaglets, looking at the child-larks with hungry eyes. "Because I forbid you. They are my guests, and must be protected and well treated. And even if this were not so, the larks are too small to satisfy your hunger, you little gluttons." "Jonathan," said Mrs. Eagle, coldly, "do not reproach our offspring for their hunger. We sent you out this morning to procure a supply of food, and we expected you to bring us home something good to eat, instead of these useless little creatures." The eagle seemed annoyed at being scolded in this manner. "I had an adventure in the forest," he said, "and came near being shot and killed by a man. That is the reason I came home so soon." Twinkle and Chubbins were standing together at the edge of the crag when one of the eaglets suddenly spread out his wide, stiff wings and pushed them over the precipice. They recovered themselves before they had fallen far, and flew to the ledge again just in time to see the father eagle cuff his naughty son very soundly. But the mother only laughed in her harsh voice and said: "It is so early in the day, Jonathan, that I advise you to go again in search of food. Our sweet darlings will not be comforted until they have eaten." "Very well," answered the eagle. "I am sorry you cannot treat my guests more politely, for they are all unaccustomed to such rudeness. But I see that it will be better for me to take them away with me at once." "Do," said Mrs. Eagle; and the eaglets cried: "Better let us eat 'em, daddy. They are not very big, but they're better than no breakfast at all." "You're dis'greeable things!" said Twinkle, indignantly; "and I don't like you a bit. So _there!"_ "Come on, Twink," said Chubbins. "Let's go away." "I will take you back to the forest," the eagle declared, and at once rose into the air. Twinkle and Chubbins followed him, and soon the nest on the crag was left far behind and they could no longer hear the hoot of the savage young ones. For a time the eagle flew in silence. Then he said: "You must forgive my family for not being more hospitable. You must know that they live a very lonely life, and have no society because every living thing fears them. But I go abroad more and see more of the world, so I know very well how guests ought to be treated." "You have been very kind to us, Mr. Eagle," replied the girl-lark, "and you saved my life when the dog would have killed me. I don't blame you any for what your family did. My mama says lots of people show off better abroad than they do at home, and that's your case exactly. If I were you I wouldn't take any more visitors to my nest." "I do not intend to," answered the eagle. "But I am glad that you think well of me personally, if you do not of my family, and I assure you it has been a real pleasure to me to assist you. Were you like ordinary birds, you would be beneath my notice; but I am wise enough to understand that you are very unusual and wonderful little creatures, and if at any time I can serve you further, you have but to call me, and I will do what I can for you." "Thank you very much," replied Twinkle, who realized that the great bird had acted more gently toward them than it is the nature of his wild race to do. They had just reached the edge of the forest again when they saw a bird approaching them at a great speed, and soon it came near enough for them to see that it was Policeman Bluejay. He wore his official helmet and carried his club, and as soon as he came beside them he said: "Thank goodness I've found you at last. I've been hunting for you an hour, and began to fear you had met with some misfortune." "We've been with the eagle," said the girl. "He saved our lives and carried us away from where the dreadful men were." "We have had sad doings in the forest today--very sad, indeed," declared the bluejay, in a grave voice. "The hunters did even more damage than usual. They killed Jolly Joe, the brown bear, and Sam Fox, and Mrs. 'Possum and her babies, and Wisk the squirrel; so that the animals are all in mourning for their friends. But our birds suffered greatly, also. Mrs. Hootaway is dead, and three pigeons belonging to a highly respected family; but the saddest of all is the murder of Mr. and Mrs. Goldfinch, both of whom were killed by the same shot. You may remember, my dears, that they were at your reception yesterday, and as gay and happy as any of the company present. In their nest are now five little children, too young and weak to fly, and there is no one to feed them or look after them." "Oh, that is dreadful!" exclaimed Twinkle. "Can't Chubbins and I do something for the little goldfinches?" "Why, that is why I was so anxious to find you," answered Policeman Bluejay. "You haven't laid any eggs yet, and have no one to depend upon you. So I hoped you would adopt the goldfinch babies." "We will," said Chubbins, promptly. "We can feed them out of our basket." "Oh, yes," chimed in the girl. "We couldn't catch grubs for them, you know." "It won't be necessary," observed the policeman, with a sly wink at the eagle. "They're too young yet to know grubs from grub." [CHAPTER XI] _The Orphans_ The eagle now bade them good-bye and flew away in search of prey, while the bluejay and the child-larks directed their flight toward that part of the great forest where they lived. "Are you sure the men have gone?" asked Chubbins. "Yes," replied the policeman; "they left the forest as soon as they had shot Jolly Joe, for the brown bear was so heavy that they had to carry him on a pole resting across their shoulders. I hope they won't come again very soon." "Did they take Mrs. Hootaway with them?" asked Twinkle. "Yes; she will probably be stuffed, poor thing!" Presently they passed near the rosy glow that lighted up the center of the forest with its soft radiance, and the girl said: "That is the Paradise Land, where the Birds of Paradise live. The eagle has promised to ask one of those birds to let us visit their country." "Oh, I can do better than that, if you wish to visit the Paradise," responded the bluejay; "for the Guardian of the Entrance is a special friend of mine, and will do whatever I ask him to." "Will he, really?" asked the girl, in delight. "To be sure. Some day I will take you over there, and then you will see what powerful friends Policeman Bluejay has." "I'd like that," declared Twinkle. Their swift flight enabled them to cover the remaining distance very rapidly, and soon they were at home again. They first flew to the nest of the goldfinches, which was in a tree not far from the maple where the lark-children lived. There they found the tiny birds, who were yet so new that they were helpless indeed. Mrs. Redbreast was sitting by the nest when they arrived, and she said: "The poor orphans are still hungry, although I have fed them all the insects I could find near. But I am glad that you have come, for it is time I was at home looking after my own little ones." "Chubbins and I have 'dopted the goldfinches," said Twinkle, "so we will look after them now. But it was very nice of you, Mrs. Redbreast, to take take care of them until we arrived." "Well, I like to be neighborly," returned the pretty bird; "and as long as cruel men enter our forest no mother can tell how soon her own little ones will be orphaned and left helpless." "That is true," said the policeman, nodding gravely. So Mrs. Redbreast flew away and now Chubbins looked curiously into the nest, where several fluffy heads were eagerly lifted with their bills as wide open as they could possibly stretch. "They must be just _awful_ hungry, Twink," said the boy. "Oh, they're always like that," observed Policeman Bluejay, calmly. "When anyone is around they open their mouths to be fed, whether they are hungry or not. It's the way with birdlets." "What shall we feed them?" asked Twinkle. "Oh, anything at all; they are not particular," said the bluejay, and then he flew away and left the child-larks to their new and interesting task. "I'll be the father, and you be the mother," said Chubbins. "All right," answered Twinkle. "Peep! peep! peep!" said the tiny goldfinches. "I wonder if the luncheon in our basket would agree with them," remarked the girl, looking at the open mouths reflectively as she perched her own brown body upon the edge of the deep nest. "Might try it," suggested the boy. "The cop says they're not particular, and what's good enough for us ought to be good enough for them." So they flew to where the basket hung among the thick leaves of the tree, which had served to prevent the men from discovering it, and crept underneath the cloth that covered it. "Which do you think they'd like best," asked Chubbins, "the pickles or the cheese?" "Neither one," Twinkle replied. "The sandwiches will be best for them. Wait; I'll pick out some of the meat that is between the slices of bread. They'll be sure to like that." "Of course," agreed Chubbins, promptly. "They'll think it's bugs." So each one dragged out a big piece of meat from a sandwich, and by holding it fast in one claw they managed to fly with the burden to the nest of the goldfinch babies. "Don't give it to 'em all at once," cautioned the girl. "It would choke 'em." "I know," said Chubbins. He tore off a tiny bit of the meat and dropped it into one of the wide-open bills. Instantly it was gone and the mouth was open again for more. They tried to divide the dinner equally among them, but they all looked so alike and were so ravenous to eat everything that was dropped into their bills that it was hard work to keep track of which had been fed and which had not. But the child-larks were positive that each one had had enough to keep it from starving, because there was a big bunch in front of each little breast that was a certain proof of a full crop. The next task of the guardians was to give the birdlets drink; so Twinkle and Chubbins flew to the brook and by hunting around a while they found an acorn-cup that had fallen from one of the oak trees. This they filled with water, and then Twinkle, who was a trifle larger than the boy-lark, clutched the cup firmly with her toes and flew back to the orphans without spilling more than a few drops. They managed to pour some of the water into each open mouth, and then Twinkle said: "There! they won't die of either hunger or thirst in a hurry, Chub. So now we can feed ourselves." "Their mouths are still open," returned the boy, doubtfully. "It must be a habit they have," she answered. "Wouldn't you think they'd get tired stretching their bills that way?" "Peep! peep! peep!" cried the baby goldfinches. "You see," said the boy, with a wise look, "they don't know any better. I had a dog once that howled every time we shut him up. But if we let him alone he stopped howling. We'll go and get something to eat and let these beggars alone a while. Perhaps they'll shut their mouths by the time we get back again." "Maybe," replied Twinkle. They got their own luncheon from the basket, and afterward perched on the tree near the nest of the little goldfinches. They did not feel at all comfortable in their old nest in the maple, because they could not forget the tragic deaths of the inhabitants of the three hollows in the tree--the three "flats" as poor Wisk had merrily called them. During the afternoon several of the birds came to call upon the orphans, and they all nodded approval when they found the child-larks watching over the little ones. Twinkle questioned some of the mothers anxiously about that trick the babies had of keeping their bills open and crying for food, but she was told to pay no attention to such actions. Nevertheless, the pleadings of the orphans, who were really stuffed full of food, made the child-larks so nervous that they hailed with delight the arrival of Policeman Bluejay in the early evening. The busy officer had brought with him Mrs. Chaffinch, a widow whose husband had been killed a few days before by a savage wildcat. Mrs. Chaffinch declared she would be delighted to become a mother to the little goldfinches, and rear them properly. She had always had good success in bringing up her own children, she claimed, and the goldfinches were first cousins to the chaffinches, so she was sure to understand their ways perfectly. Twinkle did not want to give up her charges at first, as she had become interested in them; but Chubbins heaved a sigh of relief and declared he was glad the "restless little beggars" had a mother that knew more about them than he did. The bluejay hinted that he considered the widow's experience would enable her to do more for the baby goldfinches than could a child-lark who had never yet laid an egg, and so Twinkle was forced to yield to his superior judgment. Mrs. Chaffinch settled herself in a motherly manner upon the nest, and the two bird-children bade her good-night and returned to their own maple tree, where they had a rather wakeful night, because Chubbins thoughtlessly suggested that the place might be haunted by the ghosts of the gray owl, Wisk, and Mrs. 'Possum. But either the poor things had no ghosts or they were too polite to bother the little child-larks. [CHAPTER XII] _The Guardian_ The next morning ushered in a glorious day, sunny and bright. The sky was a clear blue, and only a slight breeze ruffled the leaves of the trees. Even before Twinkle and Chubbins were awake the birds were calling merrily to one another throughout the forest, and the chipmonks chirped in their own brisk, businesslike way as they scuttled from tree to tree. While the child-larks were finishing their breakfast Policeman Bluejay came to them, his feathers looking fresh and glossy and all his gorgeous colorings appearing especially beautiful in the sunshine. "Today will be a rare day to visit the Paradise," he said; "so I have come to escort you to the Guardian of the Entrance, who I am sure will arrange for you to enter that wonderful country." "It is very kind of you to remember our wish," said Twinkle. "We are all ready." So they flew above the tree-tops and began their journey toward the center of the forest. "Where's your p'liceman's hat and club?" Chubbins asked the bluejay. "Why, I left them at home," was the reply. "I'm not on official duty today, you know, and the Guardian does not like to see anything that looks like a weapon. In his country there are no such things as quarrels or fighting, or naughtiness of any sort; for as they have everything they want there is nothing to quarrel over or fight for. The Birds of Paradise have laws, I understand; but they obey them because they are told to, and not because they are forced to. It would be a bad country for a policeman to live in." "But a good place for everyone else," said Twinkle. "Perhaps so," agreed the policeman, reluctantly. "But I sometimes think the goody-goody places would get awful tiresome to live in, after a time. Here in our part of the forest there is a little excitement, for the biggest birds only obey our laws through fear of punishment, and I understand it is just the same in the world of men. But in the Birds' Paradise there lives but one race, every member of which is quite particular not to annoy any of his fellows in any way. That is why they will admit no disturbing element into their country. If you are admitted, my dears, you must be very careful not to offend any one that you meet." "We'll try to be good," promised Chubbins. "I would not dare to take any of my own people there," continued the bluejay, flying swiftly along as they talked together; "but you two are different, and more like the fairy Birds of Paradise themselves than like our forest birds. That is the reason I feel sure the Guardian will admit you." "I'm naughty sometimes, and so is Chubbins," said Twinkle, honestly. "But we try not to be any naughtier than we can help." "I am sure you will behave very nicely," replied the bluejay. After a time the rosy glow appeared reflected in the blue sky, and as they flew toward it the soft and delightful radiance seemed to grow and deepen in intensity. It did not dazzle their eyes in the least, but as the light penetrated the forest and its furthest rays fell upon the group, they experienced a queer sense of elation and light-hearted joy. But now the breeze freshened and grew more strong, pressing against their feathered breasts so gently yet powerfully that they soon discovered they were not advancing at all, but simply fluttering in the air. "Drop down to the ground," whispered the bluejay; and they obeyed his injunction and found that close to the earth the wind was not so strong. "That is a secret I learned some time ago," said their friend. "Most birds who seek to enter the Paradise try to beat against the wind, and are therefore always driven back; but there is just one way to approach the Guardian near enough to converse with him. After that it depends entirely upon his good-will whether you get any farther." The wind still blew so strongly that it nearly took their breath away, but by creeping steadily over the ground they were able to proceed slowly, and after a time the pressure of the wind grew less and less, until it suddenly ceased altogether. Then they stopped to rest and to catch their breaths, but before this happened Twinkle and Chubbins both uttered exclamations of amazement at the sight that met their eyes. Before them was a grove composed of stately trees not made of wood, but having trunks of polished gold and silver and leaves of exquisite metallic colorings. Beneath the trees was a mass of brilliant flowers, exceedingly rare and curious in form, and as our little friends looked upon them these flowers suddenly began a chant of greeting and then sang a song so sweet and musical that the lark-children were entranced and listened in rapt delight. When the song ended the flowers all nodded their heads in a pretty way, and Twinkle drew a long breath and murmured: "Isn't it odd to hear flowers sing? I'm sure the birds themselves cannot beat that music." "They won't try," replied the policeman, "for Birds of Paradise do not sing." "How strange!" exclaimed the girl. "The land they live in is so full of music that they do not need to," continued the bluejay. "But before us is the entrance, leading through the limbs of that great golden tree you see at the left. Fly swiftly with me, and perch upon the middle branch." With these words he darted toward the tree, and Twinkle and Chubbins followed. In a few seconds they alighted upon the branch and found themselves face to face with the first Bird of Paradise they had yet seen. He possessed a graceful carriage and a most attractive form, being in size about as large as a common pigeon. His eyes were shrewd but gentle in expression and his pose as he stood regarding the newcomers was dignified and impressive. But the children had little time to note these things because their wondering eyes were riveted upon the bird's magnificent plumage. The feathers lay so smoothly against his body that they seemed to present a solid surface, and in color they were a glistening emerald green upon the neck and wings, shading down on the breast to a softer green and then to a pure white. The main wing-feathers were white, tipped with vivid scarlet, and the white feathers of his crest were also tipped with specks of flame. But his tail feathers were the most beautiful of all his gay uniform. They spread out in the shape of a fan, and every other feather was brilliant green and its alternate feather snow white. "How lovely!" cried Twinkle, and the bird bowed its head and with a merry glance from its eyes responded: "Your admiration highly honors me, little stranger." "This," said Policeman Bluejay, "is the important official called the Guardian of the Entrance of Paradise. Sir Guardian, permit me to introduce to you two children of men who have been magically transformed into skylarks against their will. They are not quite birds, because their heads retain the human shape; but whatever form they may bear, their natures are sweet and innocent and I deem them worthy to associate for a brief time with your splendid and regal race. Therefore I have brought them here to commend them to your hospitality and good-will, and I hope you will receive them as your guests." "What are your names, little strangers?" asked the Guardian. "Mama calls me Twinkle," said the girl. "I'm Chubbins," said the boy. The Guardian looked attentively at the bluejay. "You know our regulations," said he; "no birds of the forest are admitted to our Paradise." "I know," replied the policeman. "I will await my little friends here. It is pleasure enough for me to have just this glimpse of your beautiful fairyland." The Guardian nodded his approval of this speech. "Very well," he answered, "you shall remain and visit with me. If all forest birds were like you, my friend, there would be little danger in admitting them into our society. But they are not, and the laws must be regarded. As for the child-larks, I will send them first to the King, in charge of the Royal Messenger, whom I will now summon." He tossed his head upward with an abrupt motion, and in the tree-top a chime of golden bells rang musically in the air. The flowers beneath them caught up the refrain, and sang it softly until another bird came darting through the air and alighted on the golden limb beside the Guardian. The newcomer was differently garbed from the other. His plumage was orange and white, the crest and wing-feathers being tipped with bright blue. Nor was he so large as the Guardian, nor so dignified in demeanor. Indeed, his expression was rather merry and roguish, and as he saw the strangers he gave a short, sharp whistle of surprise. "My dear Ephel," said the Guardian, "oblige me by escorting these child-larks to the presence of his Majesty the King." "I am delighted to obey your request," answered Ephel the Messenger, brightly. Then, turning to Twinkle and Chubbins, he added: "I trust you will find my society agreeable during our flight to the royal monarch of Paradise." Twinkle was too much embarrassed by this politeness to answer at once, but Chubbins said "Sure thing!" in a matter-of-fact voice, and the Messenger nodded gaily and continued: "Then we will go, if it pleases you." He spread his wings in a flash of color and sped away into the Paradise, and the children eagerly followed him. [CHAPTER XIII] _The King Bird_ More and more magnificence was unfolded as they advanced into this veritable fairyland of the birds. Vines of silver climbed up the golden trunks of trees and mingled their twining threads with the brilliant leaves. And now upon the trees appeared jewelled blossoms that sparkled most exquisitely in the rosy-hued radiance that, in this favored spot, had taken the place of sunshine. There were beds of plants with wide-spreading leaves that changed color constantly, one hue slowly melting into another and no two leaves on the same plant having the same color at the same time. Yet in spite of the vivid coloring that prevailed everywhere, each combination seemed in perfect harmony and served to delight the senses. Bushes that emitted a grateful fragrance bore upon slender branches little bells that at times tinkled in the perfumed breeze and played sweet melodies, while here and there were clusters of fountain-lilies that shot sprays of crystal water high into the air. When the water fell back again and the drops struck against the broad leaves of the plants, they produced a melodious sound that was so delightful that Twinkle thought she could listen to it for hours. Their guide flew silently on, and the two children were so much amazed by their surroundings that they had no words for questions or even remarks. The scene was ever shifting and becoming more and more lovely and fascinating, and the paradise was more extensive than they had thought it. By and bye Ephel the Messenger approached the central part, where was a great arbor thickly covered with masses of pure white flowers. Some of these were large, like chrysanthemums and mammoth white double roses, while among them were twined smaller and more delicate blossoms, like the bells of lilies-of-the-valley. Ephel entered the arch of the arbor and flew on, for it was of great extent and continually enlarged from the point of entrance, so that at last the child-larks found themselves in a lofty circular chamber banked on sides and roof with solid masses of the snow-white flowers, which filled the air with a sweet and agreeable perfume. The floor was also a mass of white blossoms, so that the place resembled the inside of a huge cornucopia. But the eyes of the little strangers were not directed so much to the arbor itself as to the group of splendid birds that occupied the flower-chamber and perched upon a wide-spreading bush of filigree gold that rose from the middle of the floor and spread its dainty branches in every direction. On the lower branches sat many birds of marvellous colorings, some having blue the predominant tint in their feathers, and others green, or scarlet, or brilliant yellows. In strong contrast with these were a few modest-looking birds with soft brown feathers covering their graceful forms, that sat silently upon the lowest and most retired branch of the golden bush; but still greater was the contrast of all present with the magnificence of the one occupying the topmost branch. This gorgeous creature, whose splendor dominated the white bower, at once won the children's attention, and they had no doubt they were gazing upon the King Bird of Paradise. The feathers of his head and neck were so fine that they looked like a covering of velvet. These seemed to be, at first, of a delicate lavender color, but the children observed that they shone with a different tint at every movement the King made. The body feathers, also as glossy as velvet, were of a rich royal purple, shading to lavender and then to white upon his breast. His wing plumes were white, tipped with specks of lustrous gold. But by far the most astonishing part of the King's plumage was that which consisted of the dainty, fern-like plumes that rose from his body and tail and spread in graceful and bewildering curves both right and left, until his form seemed to be standing in a feathery bower of resplendent beauty. All the colors of the rainbow were seen in these delicate feathers, and against the white background of the arch this monarch of the feathered world appeared more royally magnificent than any words can describe. Both Twinkle and Chubbins gasped with amazement and delight as, at the command of Ephel, they alighted upon a lowly branch of the golden bush and bowed their heads before the ruler of the birds' fairyland. "Ah, whom have we here?" asked the King, in a soft voice, as he strutted and proudly turned himself upon his perch. "Strangers, your Majesty," answered the Messenger. "They are sent to you by the Guardian of the Entrance because they are gentle and innocent, and are neither birds nor mortals, but a part of both." "They are certainly very curious," remarked the King, staring at the human heads upon the lark bodies. "May I ask you, little strangers, how you happen to exist in your present form?" Twinkle, tossing her head to throw back a straggling lock of hair that had fallen across her eyes, began in her sweet voice to tell the story of their enchantment, and not only the King but all the Birds of Paradise present listened intently to her words. When she had finished the King exclaimed: "Indeed, my dear child-larks, you are worthy to be our guests in fairyland. So it will please me if you will be as happy and comfortable as possible, and enjoy your stay with us as much as you can. My people will delight to honor and amuse you, and Ephel shall continue to guide you wherever you go." "Thank you," returned Twinkle, earnestly; and Chubbins added, in his blunt way: "Much obliged." "But, before you go," continued his Majesty, "tell me what you think of my royal person. Am I not beautiful?" "You are, indeed," replied Twinkle; "only--" "Only what?" asked the King, as she hesitated. "Only I'm sorry you are so vain, and strut around so, and want everyone to see how beautiful you are." "Why should I not? Is not vanity one of the great virtues?" asked the King, in a surprised voice. "My mama says people ought not to think themselves nice, or pretty," said the child. "With us, to be vain is a fault, and we are taught to be modest and unassuming." "How remarkable!" exclaimed the King. "And how very thoughtless your mother must be. Here we think that if God creates us beautiful it is a sin not to glory in His work, and make everyone acknowledge the kindly skill of the Supreme Maker's hand. Should I try to make others think, or should I myself think, that I am not most gracefully formed and most gorgeously clothed, I would be guilty of the sin of not appreciating the favor of God, and deserve to be punished." Twinkle was amazed, but could find no words to contradict this astonishing idea. "I had not thought of it in that way," she answered. "Perhaps I am wrong, your Majesty; and certainly you are very beautiful." "Think it over," said the King, graciously. "Learn to be grateful for every good thing that is yours, and proud that you have been selected by Nature for adornment. Only in this way may such rare favors be deserved. And now the royal Messenger will show you the sights of our Paradise, and try to entertain you pleasantly while you are our guests." He turned aside, with these words, and fluttered his waving feathers so that their changing tints might dazzle the eyes of all observers. But immediately afterward he paused and cried out: "Dear me! One of my wing plumes is disarranged. Help me, you ladies!" At once the small brown birds on the lower branches, who had been modestly quiet because they had no gay plumage, flew up to the King and with their bills skillfully dressed his feathers, putting the wing plume into its place again and arranging it properly, while the other birds looked on with evident interest. As the lark-children turned away to follow the Messenger Chubbins remarked: "I'm glad _I_ haven't got all those giddy feathers." "Why?" asked Twinkle, who had been rather awed by the King's splendor. "Because it would take all my time to keep 'em smooth," answered the boy. "The poor King can't do much more than admire himself, so he don't get time to have fun." [CHAPTER XIV] _A Real Fairyland_ As they left the royal arbor of white flowers the Messenger turned to the left and guided his guests through several bright and charming avenues to a grove of trees that had bright blue bark and yellow leaves. Scattered about among the branches were blossoms of a delicate pink color, shaped like a cup and resembling somewhat the flower of the morning-glory. "Are you hungry?" asked Ephel. "Oh, I could eat something, I guess," said Chubbins. The Messenger flew to one of the trees and alighted upon a branch where three of the pink, cup-shaped flowers grew in a row. The children followed him, and sitting one before each blossom they looked within the cups and found them filled with an unknown substance that both looked and smelled delicious and appetizing. "It is royal amal," said their guide, busily pecking at his cup with his bill. "Help yourselves, little ones. You will find it very nice indeed." "Well," said Twinkle, "I'd be glad to eat it if I could. But it wouldn't do Chubbins and me a bit of good to stick our noses into these cups." Ephel turned to look at them. "True," he remarked; "it was very careless of me to forget that you have no bills. How are you accustomed to eat?" "Why, with spoons, and knives and forks," said the girl. "You have but to ask for what you need," declared the royal Messenger. Twinkle hesitated, scarcely knowing what to say. At last she spoke boldly: "I wish Chub and I had spoons." Hardly had the words left her lips when two tiny golden spoons appeared in the flower-cups. Twinkle seized the spoon before her in one claw and dipped up a portion of the strange food, which resembled charlotte russe in appearance. When she tasted it she found it delicious; so she eagerly ate all that the blossom contained. When she looked around for Chubbins she found he was gone. He had emptied his cup and carried the golden spoon to another blossom on a higher limb, where the girl discovered him eating as fast as he could dip up the food. "Let us go to another tree," said Ephel. "There are many excellent things to eat, and a variety of food is much more agreeable than feasting upon one kind." "All right," called Chubbins, who had succeeded in emptying the second cup. As they flew on Twinkle said to the guide: "I should think the blossoms would all be emptied in a little while." "Oh, they fill up again in a few moments," replied Ephel. "Should we go back even now, I think we would find them all ready to eat again. But here are the conona bushes. Let us taste these favorite morsels." The bushes on which they now rested had willow-green branches with silver balls growing thickly upon them. Ephel tapped lightly upon one of the balls with his bill and at once it opened by means of a hinge in the center, the two halves of the ball lying flat, like plates. On one side Twinkle found tiny round pellets of cake, each one just big enough to make a mouthful for a bird. On the other side was a thick substance that looked like jelly. "The proper thing to do," said their guide, "is to roll one of the pellets in the jelly, and then eat it." He showed Twinkle how to do this, and as she had brought her golden spoon with her it was easy enough. Ephel opened a ball for Chubbins and then one for himself, and the children thought this food even nicer than the first they had eaten. "Now we will have some fruit," declared the Messenger. He escorted his charges to an orchard where grew many strange and beautiful trees hanging full of fruits that were all unknown to the lark-children. They were of many odd shapes and all superbly colored, some gleaming like silver and gold and others being cherry-red or vivid blue or royal purple in shade. A few resembled grapes and peaches and cherries; but they had flavors not only varied and delicious but altogether different from the fruits that grow outside of the Birds' Paradise. Another queer thing was, that as fast as the children ate one fruit, another appeared in its place, and they hopped from branch to branch and tree to tree, trying this one and that, until Chubbins exclaimed: "Really, Twink, I can't eat another mouthful." "I'm afraid we've both been stuffing ourselves, Chub," the girl replied. "But these things taste so good it is hard to stop at the right time." "Would you like to drink?" asked Ephel. "If you please," Twinkle answered. "Then follow me," said the guide. He led them through lovely vistas of wonderful trees, down beautiful winding avenues that excited their admiration, and past clusters of flowering plants with leaves as big as umbrellas and as bright as a painter's palette. The Paradise seemed to have been laid out according to one exquisite, symmetrical plan, and although the avenues or paths between the trees and plants led in every direction, the ground beneath them was everywhere thickly covered with a carpet of magnificent flowers or richly tinted ferns and grasses. This was because the birds never walked upon the ground, but always flew through the air. Often, as they passed by, the flowers would greet them with sweet songs or choruses and the plants would play delightful music by rubbing or striking their leaves against one another, so that the children's ears were constantly filled with harmony, while their eyes were feasted on the bewildering masses of rich color, and each breath they drew was fragrant with the delicious odors of the blossoms that abounded on every side. "Of all the fairylands I've ever heard of or read about," said Twinkle, "this certainly is the best." "It's just a peach of a fairyland," commented Chubbins, approvingly. "Here is the nectar tree," presently remarked the royal Messenger, and he paused to allow them to observe it. The tree was all of silver--silver trunk and branches and leaves--and from the end of each leaf or branch dripped sparkling drops of a pink-tinted liquid. These glistened brightly as they fell through the air and lost themselves in a bed of silver moss that covered all the ground beneath the tree. Ephel flew to a branch and held his mouth open so that a drop from above fell into it. Twinkle and Chubbins followed his example, and found the pink liquid very delightful to drink. It seemed to quench their thirst and refresh them at the same time, and when they flew from the queer dripping tree they were as light-hearted and gay as any two children so highly favored could possibly have felt. "Haven't you any water in your paradise?" asked the little girl-lark. "Yes, of course," Ephel answered. "The fountain-lilies supply what water we wish to drink, and the Lustrous Lake is large enough for us all to bathe in. Besides these, we have also the Lake of Dry Water, for you must know that the Lustrous Lake is composed of wet water." "I thought all water was wet," said Chubbins. "It may be so in your country," replied the Royal Messenger, "but in our Paradise we have both dry and wet water. Would you like to visit these lakes?" "If you please," said Twinkle. [CHAPTER XV] _The Lake of Dry Water_ They flew through the jewelled gardens for quite a way, emerging at last from among the trees to find before them a pretty sheet of water of a greenish hue. Upon the shore were rushes that when swayed by the breeze sang soft strains of music. "This," announced their guide, "is the Lake of Dry Water." "It _looks_ wet, all right," said Chubbins, in a tone of doubt. "But it isn't," declared Ephel. "Watch me, if you please." He hovered over the lake a moment and then dove downward and disappeared beneath the surface. When he came up again he shook the drops of water from his plumage and then flew back to rejoin his guests. "Look at me," he said. "My feathers are not even damp." They looked, and saw that he spoke truly. Then Chubbins decided to try a bath in the dry water, and also plunged into the lake. When he came to the surface he floated there for a time, and ducked his head again and again; but when he came back to the others not a hair of his head nor a feather of his little brown body was in the least moist. "That's fine water," said the boy-lark. "I suppose you Birds of Paradise bathe here all the time." "No," answered Ephel; "for only wet water is cleansing and refreshing. We always take our daily baths in the Lustrous Lake. But here we usually sail and disport ourselves, for it is a comfort not to get wet when you want to play in the water." "How do you sail?" asked Twinkle, with interest. "I will show you," replied their guide. He flew to a tall tree near, that had broad, curling leaves, and plucked a leaf with his bill. The breeze caught it at once and wafted it to the lake, so that it fell gently upon the water. "Get aboard, please," called Ephel, and alighted upon the broad surface of the floating leaf. Twinkle and Chubbins followed, one sitting in front of their guide and one behind him. Then Ephel spread out his wings of white and orange, and the breeze pushed gently against them and sent the queer boat gliding over the surface of the dry water. "Sometimes, when the wind is strong," said the Royal Messenger, "these frail craft upset, and then we are dumped into the water. But we never mind that, because the water is dry and we are not obliged to dress our feathers again." "It is very convenient," observed Twinkle, who was enjoying the sail. "Could one be drowned in this lake?" "I suppose an animal, like man, could, for it is as impossible to breathe beneath dry water as it is beneath wet. But only birds live here, and they cannot drown, because as soon as they come to the surface they fly into the air." "I see," said Twinkle, musingly. They sailed way across the lake, and because the wind was gentle they did not upset once. On reaching the farther shore they abandoned the leaf-boat and again took wing and resumed their flight through the avenues. There was a great variety of scenery in the Paradise, and wherever they went something new and different was sure to meet their view. At one place the avenue was carpeted with big pansies of every color one could imagine, some of them, indeed, having several colors blended together upon their petals. As they passed over the pansies Twinkle heard a chorus of joyous laughter, and looking downward, she perceived that the pansies all had faces, and the faces resembled those of happy children. "Wait a minute," she cried to Chubbins and the guide, and then she flew downward until she could see the faces more plainly. They smiled and nodded to the girl-lark, and laughed their merry laughter; but when she spoke to them Twinkle found they were unable to answer a single word. Many of the faces were exceedingly beautiful; but others were bold and saucy, and a few looked at her with eyes twinkling with mischief. They seemed very gay and contented in their paradise, so Twinkle merely kissed one lovely face that smiled upon her and then flew away to rejoin her companions. [CHAPTER XVI] _The Beauty Dance_ Before long they came to another and larger sheet of water, and this Twinkle decided was the most beautiful lake she had ever seen. Its waters were mostly deep blue in color, although they had a changeable effect and constantly shifted from one hue to another. Little waves rippled all over its surface, and the edges of the waves were glistening jewels which, as they scattered in spray and fell into the bosom of the lake, glinted and sparkled with a thousand flashing lights. Here were no rushes upon the shore, but instead of them banks of gorgeous flowers grew far down to the water's edge, so that the last ones dipped their petals into the lake itself. Nestling upon this bank of flowers the Royal Messenger turned to his companions and said: "Here let us rest for a time, while I call the friendly fishes to entertain you." He ended his speech with a peculiar warble, and at its sound a score of fishes thrust their heads above the surface of the water. Some of them were gold-fish and some silver-fish, but others had opal tints that were very pretty. Their faces were jolly in expression and their eyes, Chubbins thought, must be diamonds, because they sparkled so brightly. Swimming softly here and there in the lovely waters of the Lustrous Lake, the fishes sang this song: "We are the fishes of the lake; Our lives are very deep; We're always active when awake And quiet when asleep. "We get our fins from Finland, From books we get out tales; Our eyes they come from Eyerland And weighty are our scales. "We love to flop and twist and turn Whenever 'tis our whim. Yet social etiquette we learn Because we're in the swim. "Our beds, though damp, are always made; We need no fires to warm us; When we swim out we're not afraid, For autos cannot harm us. "We're independent little fish And never use umbrellas. We do exactly as we wish And live like jolly fellows." As the fishes concluded their song they leaped high into the air and then plunged under the water and disappeared, and it was hard to tell which sparkled most brilliantly, their gold and silver bodies or the spray of jewels they scattered about them as they leaped. "If you should dive into this lake," said Ephel the Messenger, "your feathers would be dripping wet when you came out again. It is here we Birds of Paradise bathe each morning, after which we visit the Gleaming Glade to perform our Beauty Dance." "I should like to see that glade," said Twinkle, who was determined to let nothing escape her that she could possibly see. "You shall," answered Ephel, promptly. "We will fly there at once." So he led the way and presently they entered a thicker grove of trees than any they had before noticed. The trunks were so close together that the birds could only pass between then in single file, but as they proceeded in this fashion it was not long before they came to a circular space which the child-lark knew at once must be the Gleaming Glade. The floor was of polished gold, and so bright that as they stood upon it they saw their forms reflected as in a mirror. The trees surrounding them were also of gold, being beautifully engraved with many attractive designs and set with rows of brilliant diamonds. The leaves of the trees, however, were of burnished silver, and bore so high a gloss that each one served as a looking-glass, reproducing the images of those standing in the glade thousands of times, whichever way they chanced to turn. The gleam of these mirror-like leaves was exceedingly brilliant, but Ephel said this radiance was much stronger in the morning, when the rosy glow of the atmosphere was not so powerful. "Then," said he, "the King Bird and all the Nobility of Paradise, who rejoice in the most brilliant plumage, come here from their bath and dance upon the golden floor the Beauty Dance, which keeps their blood warm until the feathers have all dried. While they dance they can admire their reflections in the mirrors, which adds greatly to their pleasure." "Don't they have music to dance by?" asked Chubbins. "Of course," the Messenger replied. "There is a regular orchestra that plays exquisite music for the dance; but the musicians are the female Birds of Paradise, who, because their plumage is a modest brown, are not allowed to take part in the Beauty Dance." "I think the brown birds with the soft gray breasts are just as pretty as the gaily clothed ones," said Twinkle. "The male birds are too bright, and tire my eyes." Ephel did not like this speech, for he was very proud of his own gorgeous coloring; but he was too polite to argue with his guest, so he let the remark pass. "You have now witnessed the most attractive scenes in our favored land," he said; "but there are some curious sights in the suburbs that might serve to interest you." "Oh! have you suburbs, too?" she asked. "Yes, indeed. We do not like to come into too close contact with the coarse, outer world, so we have placed the flying things that are not birds midway between our Paradise and the great forest. They serve us when we need them, and are under our laws and regulations; but they are so highly favored by being permitted to occupy the outer edge of our glorious Paradise that they willingly obey their masters. After all, they live happy lives, and their habits, as I have said, may amuse you. "Who are they?" enquired Chubbins. "Come with me, and you shall see for yourselves." They flew away from the grove of the Gleaming Glade and Ephel led them by pleasant routes into a large garden with many pretty flowers in it. Mostly it was filled with hollyhocks--yellow, white, scarlet and purple. [CHAPTER XVII] _The Queen Bee_ As they approached they heard a low, humming sound, which grew louder as they advanced and aroused their curiosity. "What is it?" asked Twinkle, at last. Ephel answered: "It is the suburb devoted to the bees." "But bees are not birds!" exclaimed Twinkle. "No; as I have told you, the suburbs contain flying things that cannot be called birds, and so are unable to live in our part of the Paradise. But because they have wings, and love all the flowers and fruits as we do ourselves, we have taken them under our protection." Ephel perched upon a low bush, and when the child-larks had settled beside him he uttered a peculiar, shrill whistle. The humming sound grew louder, then, and presently hundreds of great bees rose above the flower tops and hovered in the air. But none of them approached the bush except one monstrous bumble-bee that had a body striped with black and gold, and this one sailed slowly toward the visitors and alighted gracefully upon a branch in front of them. The bee was all bristling with fine hairs and was nearly half as big as Twinkle herself; so the girl shrank back in alarm, and cried: "Oh-h-h! I'm afraid it will sting me!" "How ridiculous!" answered the bee, laughing in a small but merry voice. "Our stings are only for our enemies, and we have no enemies in this Paradise; so we do not use our stingers at all. In fact, I'd almost forgotten I had one, until you spoke." The words were a little mumbled, as if the insect had something in its mouth, but otherwise they were quite easy to understand. "Permit me to introduce her Majesty the Queen Bee," said their guide. "These, your highness, are some little child-larks who are guests of our King. I have brought them to visit you." "They are very welcome," returned the Queen Bee. "Are you fond of honey?" she asked, turning to the children. "Sometimes," replied Chubbins; "but we've just eaten, and we're chock full now." "You see," the Queen remarked, "my people are all as busy as bees gathering the honey from every flower." "What do you do with it?" asked Twinkle. "Oh, we eat part of it, and store up the rest for a rainy day." "Does it ever rain here?" enquired Chubbins. "Sometimes, at night, when we are all asleep, so as to refresh and moisten the flowers, and help them to grow." "But if it rains at night, there can't be any rainy days," remarked Twinkle; "so I can't see the use of saving your honey." "Nor can I," responded the Queen, laughing again in her pleasant way. "Out in the world people usually rob us of our stores, and so keep us busy getting more. But here there are not even robbers, so that the honey has been accumulating until we hardly know what to do with it. We have built a village of honeycombs, and I have just had my people make me a splendid palace of honey. But it is our way to gather the sweet stuff, whether we need it or not, so we have to act according to our natures. I think of building a mountain of honey next." "I'd like to see that honey palace," said Twinkle. "Then come with me," answered the Queen Bee, "for it will give me pleasure to show it to you." "Shall we go?" asked the girl-lark, turning to Ephel. "Of course," he returned. "It is quite a wonderful sight, and may interest you." So they all flew away, the Queen Bee taking the lead, and passed directly over the bed of flowers with its swarm of buzzing, busy bees. "They remind me of a verse from 'Father Goose,'" said Twinkle, looking curiously but half fearfully at the hundreds of big insects. "What is the verse?" asked the Queen. "Why, it goes this way," answered the girl: "'A bumble-bee was buzzing on a yellow hollyhock When came along a turtle, who at the bee did mock, Saying "Prithee, Mr. Bumble, why make that horrid noise? It's really distracting, and every one annoys." "'"I'm sorry," said, quite humble, the busy droning bee, "The noise is just my bumble, and natural, you see. And if I didn't buzz so I'm sure that you'll agree I'd only be a big fly, and not a bumble-bee."'" "That is quite true," said the bee, "and describes our case exactly. But you should know that we are not named 'bumblebees' by rights, but 'Humble Bees.' The latter is our proper name." "But why 'humble?'" asked Twinkle. "Because we are common, work-a-day people, I suppose, and not very aristocratic," was the reply. "I've never heard why they changed our name to 'bumble,' but since you recited that verse I imagine it is on account of the noise our wings make." They had now passed over the flower beds and approached a remarkable village, where the houses were all formed of golden-yellow honey-combs. There were many pretty shapes among these houses, and some were large and many stories in height while others were small and had but one story. Some had spires and minarets reaching up into the air, and all were laid out into streets just like a real village. But in the center stood a great honey-comb building with so many gables and roofs and peaks and towers that it was easy to guess it was the Queen Bee's palace, of which she had spoken. They flew in at a second-story window and found themselves in a big room with a floor as smooth as glass. Yet it was composed of man six-sided cells filled with honey, which could be seen through the transparent covering. The walls and roof were of the same material, and at the end of the room was a throne shaped likewise of the honey cells, like everything else. On a bench along the wall sat several fat and sleepy-looking bumble-bees, who scarcely woke up when their queen entered. "Those are the drones," she said to her visitors. "It is useless to chide them for their laziness, because they are too stupid to pay attention to even a good scolding. Don't mind them in any way." After examining the beautiful throne-room, they visited the sleeping chambers, of which there were many, and afterward the parlors and dining-room and the work-rooms. In these last were many bees building the six-sided pockets or cells for storing the honey in, or piling them up in readiness for the return of those who were gathering honey from the flowers. "We are not really honey-bees," remarked the Queen; "but gathering honey is our chief business, after all, and we manage to find a lot of it." "Won't your houses melt when it rains?" asked Twinkle. "No, for the comb of the honey is pure wax," the Queen Bee replied. "Water does not melt it at all." "Where do you get all the wax?" Chubbins enquired. "From the flowers, of course. It grows on the stamens, and is a fine dust called pollen, until we manufacture it into wax. Each of my bees carries two sacks, one in front of him, to put the honey in, and one behind to put the wax in." "That's funny," said the boy-lark. "I suppose it may be, to you," answered the Queen, "but to us it is a very natural thing." [CHAPTER XVIII] _Good News_ Ephel and the children now bade the good-natured Queen Bee good-bye, and thanked her for her kindness. The Messenger led them far away to another place that he called a "suburb," and as they emerged from a thick cluster of trees into a second flower garden they found the air filled with a great assemblage of butterflies, they being both large and small in size and colored in almost every conceivable manner. Twinkle and Chubbins had seen many beautiful butterflies, but never such magnificent ones as these, nor so many together at one time. Some of them had wings fully as large as those of the Royal Messenger himself, even when he spread them to their limit, and the markings of these big butterfly wings were more exquisite than those found upon the tail-feathers of the proudest peacocks. The butterflies paid no attention to their visitors, but continued to flutter aimlessly from flower to flower. Chubbins asked one of them a question, but got no reply. "Can't they talk?" he enquired of Ephel. "Yes," said the Messenger, "they all know how to talk, but when they speak they say nothing that is important. They are brainless, silly creatures, for the most part, and are only interesting because they are beautiful to look at. The King likes to watch the flashes of color as they fly about, and so he permits them to live in this place. They are very happy here, in their way, for there is no one to chase them or to stick pins through them when they are caught." Just then a chime of bells tinkled far away in the distance, and the Royal Messenger listened intently and then said: "It is my summons to his Majesty the King. We must return at once to the palace." So they flew into the air again and proceeded to cross the lovely gardens and pass through the avenues of jewelled trees and the fragrant orchards and groves until they came at last to the royal bower of white flowers. The child-larks entered with their guide and found the gorgeous King Bird of Paradise still strutting on his perch on the golden bush and enjoying the admiring glances of his courtiers and the ladies of his family. He turned as the children entered and addressed his Messenger, saying: "Well, my dear Ephel, have you shown the strangers all the sights of our lovely land?" "Most of them, your Majesty," replied Ephel. "What do you think of us now?" asked the King, turning his eyes upon the lark-children. "It must be the prettiest place in all the world!" cried Twinkle, with real enthusiasm. His Majesty seemed much pleased. "I am very sorry you cannot live here always," he said. "I'm not," declared Chubbins. "It's too pretty. I'd get tired of it soon." "He means," said Twinkle, hastily, for she feared the blunt remark would displease the kindly King, "that he isn't really a bird, but a boy who has been forced to wear a bird's body. And your Majesty is wise enough to understand that the sort of life you lead in your fairy paradise would be very different from the life that boys generally lead." "Of course," replied the King. "A boy's life must be a dreadful one." "It suits me, all right," said Chubbins. The King looked at him attentively. "Would you really prefer to resume your old shape, and cease to be a bird?" he asked. "Yes, if I could," Chubbins replied. "Then I will tell you how to do it," said the King. "Since you told me your strange story I have talked with my Royal Necromancer, who knows a good deal about magic, and especially about that same tuxix who wickedly transformed you in the forest. And the Royal Necromancer tells me that if you can find a tingle-berry, and eat it, you will resume your natural form again. For it is the one antidote in all the world for the charm the tuxix worked upon you." "What _is_ a tingle-berry?" asked Twinkle, anxiously, for this information interested her as much as it did Chubbins. "I do not know," said the King, "for it is a common forest berry, and never grows in our paradise. But doubtless you will have little trouble in finding the bush of the tingle-berry when you return to the outside world." The children were both eager to go at once and seek the tingle-berry; but they could not be so impolite as to run away just then, for the King announced that he had prepared an entertainment in their honor. So they sat on a branch of the golden bush beside their friend Ephel, while at a nod from the King a flock of the beautiful Birds of Paradise flew into the bower and proceeded to execute a most delightful and bewildering set of aerial evolutions. They flew swiftly in circles, spirals, triangles, and solid squares, and all the time that they performed sweet music was played by some unseen band. It almost dazzled the eyes of the child-larks to watch this brilliant flashing of the colored wings of the birds, but the evolutions only lasted for a few minutes, and then the birds flew out again in regular ranks. Then the little brown lady-birds danced gracefully upon the carpet, their dainty feet merely touching the tips of the lovely flowers. Afterward the flowers themselves took part, and sang a delightful chorus, and when this was finished the King said they would now indulge in some refreshment. Instantly a row of bell-shaped blossoms appeared upon the golden bush, one for each bird present, and all were filled with a delicious ice that was as cold and refreshing as if it had just been taken from a freezer. Twinkle and Chubbins asked for spoons, and received them quickly; but the others all ate the ices with their bills. The King seemed to enjoy his as much as any one, and Twinkle noticed that as fast as a blossom was emptied of its contents it disappeared from the branch. The child-larks now thanked the beautiful but vain King very earnestly for all his kindness to them, and especially for telling them about the tingle-berries; and when all the good-byes had been exchanged Ephel flew with them back to the tree where they had left the Guardian of the Entrance and their faithful comrade, Policeman Bluejay. [CHAPTER XIX] _The Rebels_ They were warmly greeted by the bluejay, who asked: "Did you enjoy the wonderful Paradise?" "Very much, indeed," cried Twinkle. "But we were sorry you could not be with us." "Never mind that," returned the policeman, cheerfully. "I have feasted my eyes upon all the beauties visible from this tree, and my good friend the Guardian has talked to me and given me much good advice that will surely be useful to me in the future. So I have been quite contented while you were gone." The children now gave their thanks to Ephel for his care of them and polite attention, and the Royal Messenger said he was pleased that the King had permitted him to serve them. They also thanked the green-robed Guardian of the Entrance, and then, accompanied by Policeman Bluejay, they quitted the golden tree and began their journey back to the forest. It was no trouble at all to return. The wind caught their wings and blew against them strongly, so that they had but to sail before the breeze and speed along until they were deep in the forest again. Then the wind moderated, and presently died away altogether, so that they were forced to begin flying in order to continue their journey home. It was now the middle of the afternoon, and the policeman said: "I hope all has been quiet and orderly during my absence. There are so many disturbing elements among the forest birds that I always worry when they are left alone for many hours at a time." "I'm sure they have behaved themselves," returned Twinkle. "They fear your power so much that the evil-minded birds do not dare to offend you by being naughty." "That is true," said the policeman. "They know very well that I will not stand any nonsense, and will always insist that the laws be obeyed." They were now approaching that part of the forest where they lived, and as the policeman concluded his speech they were surprised to hear a great flutter of wings among the trees, and presently a flock of big black rooks flew toward them. At the head of the band was a saucy-looking fellow who wore upon his head a policeman's helmet, and carried under his wing a club. Policeman Bluejay gave a cry of anger as he saw this, and dashed forward to meet the rooks. "What does this mean, you rascal?" he demanded, in a fierce voice. "Easy there, my fine dandy," replied the rook, with a hoarse laugh. "Don't get saucy, or I'll give you a rap on the head!" The rooks behind him shrieked with delight at this impudent speech, and that made the mock policeman strut more absurdly than ever. The bluejay was not only astonished at this rebellion but he was terribly angry as well. "That is my policeman's helmet and club," he said sternly. "Where did you get them?" "At your nest, of course," retorted the other. "We made up our minds that we have had a miserable bluejay for a policeman long enough; so the rooks elected me in your place, and I'm going to make you birds stand around and obey orders, I can tell you! If you do as I command, you'll get along all right; if you don't, I'll pound you with your own club until you obey." Again the rooks screamed in an admiring chorus of delight, and when the bluejay observed their great numbers, and that they were all as large as he was, and some even larger and stronger, he decided not to risk an open fight with them just then, but to take time to think over what had best be done. "I will call the other birds to a meeting," he said to the rook, "and let them decide between us." "That won't do any good," was the reply. "We rooks have decided the matter already. We mean to rule the forest, after this, and if any one, or all of the birds, dare to oppose us, we'll fight until we force them to serve us. Now, then, what do you intend to do about it?" "I'll think it over," said Policeman Bluejay. "Oho! oho! He's afraid! He's a coward!" yelled the rooks; and one of them added: "Stand up and fight, if you dare!" "I'll fight your false policeman, or any one of you at a time," replied the bluejay. "No, you won't; you'll fight us all together, or not at all," they answered. The bluejay knew it would be foolish to do that, so he turned away and whispered to the lark-children: "Follow me, and fly as swiftly as you can." Like a flash he darted high into the air, with Twinkle and Chubbins right behind him, and before the rooks could recover from their surprise the three were far away. Then the big black birds gave chase, uttering screams of rage; but they could not fly so swiftly as the bluejay and the larks, and were soon obliged to abandon the pursuit. When at last he knew that they had escaped the rooks, Policeman Bluejay entered the forest again and went among the birds to call them all to a meeting. They obeyed the summons without delay, and were very indignant when they heard of the rebellion of the rooks and the insults that had been heaped upon their regularly elected officer. Judge Bullfinch arrived with his head bandaged with soft feathers, for he had met the rook policeman and, when he remonstrated, had been severely pounded by the wicked bird's club. "But what can we do?" he asked. "The rooks are a very powerful tribe, and the magpies and cuckoos and blackbirds are liable to side with them, if they seem to be stronger than we are." "We might get all our people together and fall upon them in a great army, and so defeat them," suggested an oriole. "The trouble with that plan," decided the judge, "is that we can only depend upon the smaller birds. The big birds might desert us, and in that case we would be badly beaten." "Perhaps it will be better to submit to the rooks," said a little chickadee, anxiously. "We are neither warriors nor prizefighters, and if we obey our new rulers they may leave us in peace." "No, indeed!" cried a linnet. "If we submit to them they will think we are afraid, and will treat us cruelly. I know the nature of these rooks, and believe they can only be kept from wickedness by a power stronger than their own." "Hear me, good friends," said the bluejay, who had been silent because he was seriously thinking; "I have a plan for subduing these rebels, and it is one that I am sure will succeed. But I must make a long journey to accomplish my purpose. Go now quietly to your nests; but meet me at the Judgment Tree at daybreak to-morrow morning. Also be sure to ask every friendly bird of the forest to be present, for we must insist upon preserving our liberty, or else be forever slaves to these rooks." With these words he rose into the air and sped swiftly upon his errand. The other birds looked after him earnestly. "I think it will be well for us to follow his advice," said Judge Bullfinch, after a pause. "The bluejay is an able bird, and has had much experience. Besides, we have ever found him just and honorable since the time we made him our policeman, so I feel that we may depend upon him in this emergency." "Why, it is all we can do," replied a robin; and this remark was so true that the birds quietly dispersed and returned to their nests to await the important meeting the next morning. [CHAPTER XX] _The Battle_ Twinkle and Chubbins flew slowly home to their nests in the maple tree, pausing to ask every bird they met where tingle-berries grew. But none of them could tell. "I'm sorry we did not ask Policeman Bluejay," said Chubbins. "I intended to ask him, but we hadn't time," replied Twinkle. "But he will be back to-morrow morning." "I wonder what he's going to do," remarked the boy. "Don't know, Chub; but it'll be the right thing, whatever it is. You may be sure of that." They visited the nest of the baby goldfinches, and found the Widow Chaffinch still caring for the orphans in her motherly way. The little ones seemed to be as hungry as ever, but the widow assured the lark-children that all five had just been fed. "Did you ever hear of a tingle-berry?" asked Twinkle. "Yes; it seems to me I have heard of that berry," was the reply. "If I remember rightly my grandmother once told me of the tingle-berries, and warned me never to eat one. But I am quite certain the things do not grow in our forest, for I have never seen one that I can recollect." "Where do they grow, then?" enquired Chubbins. "I can't say exactly where; but if they are not in the forest, they must grow in the open country." The child-larks now returned to their own nest, and sat snuggled up in it during the evening, talking over the day's experiences and the wonderful things they had seen in the fairy-like Paradise of the Birds. So much sight-seeing had made them tired, so when it grew dark they fell fast asleep, and did not waken until the sun was peeping over the edge of the trees. "Good gracious!" exclaimed the girl, "we shall be late at the meeting at the Judgment Tree. Let's hurry, Chub." They ate a hasty breakfast from the contents of their basket, and after flying to the brook for a drink and a dip in the cool water they hurried toward the Judgment Tree. There they found a vast assemblage of birds. They were so numerous, indeed, that Twinkle was surprised to find that so many of them inhabited the forest. But a still greater surprise was in store for her, for immediately she discovered sitting upon the biggest branch of the tree twenty-two bluejays, all in a row. They were large, splendidly plumaged birds, with keen eyes and sharp bills, and at their head was the children's old friend, the policeman. "These are my cousins," he said to the child-larks, proudly, "and I have brought them from another forest, where they live, to assist me. I am not afraid of the foolish rooks now, and in a moment we shall fly away to give them battle." The forest birds were all in a flutter of delight at the prompt arrival of the powerful bluejays, and when the word of command was given they all left the tree and flew swiftly to meet the rooks. First came the ranks of the twenty-two bluejays, with the policeman at their head. Then followed many magpies and cuckoos, who were too clever to side with the naughty rooks when they saw the powerful birds the bluejay had summoned to his assistance. After these flew the smaller birds, of all descriptions, and they were so many and at the same time so angry that they were likely to prove stubborn foes in a fight. This vast army came upon the rooks in an open space in the forest. Without waiting for any words or explanations from the rebels, the soldierly bluejays fell upon their enemies instantly, fighting fiercely with bill and claw, while the other birds fluttered in the rear, awaiting their time to join in the affray. Policeman Bluejay singled out the rook which had stolen his helmet and club, and dashed upon him so furiously that the black rebel was amazed, and proved an easy victim to the other's superior powers. He threw down the club and helmet at once; but the bluejay was not satisfied with that, and attacked the thief again and again, until the air was full of black feathers torn from the rook's body. After all, the battle did not last long; for the rooks soon screamed for mercy, and found themselves badly plucked and torn by the time their assailants finally decided they had been punished enough. Like all blustering, evil-disposed people, when they found themselves conquered they whined and humbled themselves before the victors and declared they would never again rebel against Policeman Bluejay, the regularly appointed guardian of the Law of the Forest. And I am told that after this day the rooks, who are not rightly forest birds, betook themselves to the nearest villages and farm houses, and contented themselves with plaguing mankind, who could not revenge themselves as easily as the birds did. After the fight Policeman Bluejay thanked his cousins and sent them home again, and then the birds all surrounded the policeman and cheered him gratefully for his cleverness and bravery, so that he was the hero of the hour. Judge Bullfinch tried to make a fine speech, but the birds were too excited to listen to his words, and he soon found himself without an audience. Of course, Twinkle and Chubbins took no part in the fight, but they had hovered in the background to watch it, and were therefore as proud of their friend as any of the forest birds could be. [CHAPTER XXI] _The Tingle-Berries_ When the excitement of the morning had subsided and the forest was quiet again, Policeman Bluejay came to the nest of the child-larks, wearing his official helmet and club. You may be sure that one of the first things Twinkle asked him was if he knew where tingle-berries grew. "Of course," he replied, promptly. "They grow over at the north edge of the forest, in the open country. But you must never eat them, my dear friend, because they are very bad for birds." "But the Royal Necromancer of the King Bird of Paradise says the tingle-berries will restore us to our proper forms," explained the girl. "Oh; did he say that? Then he probably knows," said the bluejay, "and I will help you to find the berries. We birds always avoid them, for they give us severe pains in our stomachs." "That's bad," observed Chubbins, uneasily. "Well," said Twinkle, "I'd be willing to have a pain or two, just to be myself again." "So would I, if it comes to that," agreed the boy. "But I'd rather have found a way to be myself without getting the pain." "There is usually but one thing that will overcome an enchantment," remarked the bluejay, seriously; "and if it is a tingle-berry that will destroy the charm which the old tuxix put upon you, then nothing else will answer the same purpose. The Royal Necromancer is very wise, and you may depend upon what he says. But it is late, at this season, for tingle-berries. They do not grow at all times of the year, and we may not be able to find any upon the bushes." "Cannot we go at once and find out?" asked Twinkle, anxiously. "To be sure. It will grieve me to lose you, my little friends, but I want to do what will give you the most happiness. Come with me, please." They flew away through the forest, and by and by came upon the open country to the north, leaving all the trees behind them. "Why, this is the place we entered the forest, that day we got 'chanted!" cried Twinkle. "So it is," said Chubbins. "I believe we could find our way home from here, Twink." "But we can't go home like we are," replied the girl-lark. "What would our folks say, to find us with birds' bodies?" "They'd yell and run," declared the boy. "Then," said she, "we must find the tingle-berries." The bluejay flew with them to some bushes which he said were the kind the tingle-berries grew upon, but they were all bare and not a single berry could be found. "There must be more not far away," said the policeman, encouragingly. "Let us look about us." They found several clumps of the bushes, to be sure; but unfortunately no berries were now growing upon them, and at each failure the children grew more and more sad and despondent. "If we have to wait until the bushes bear again," Twinkle remarked, "it will be nearly a year, and I'm sure we can't live in the forest all winter." "Why not?" asked the policeman. "The food in our basket would all be gone, and then we would starve to death," was the reply. "We can't eat bugs and worms, you know." "I'd rather die!" declared Chubbins, mournfully. The bluejay became very thoughtful. "If we could find some of the tingle bushes growing near the shade of the forest," he said at last, "there might still be some berries remaining on them. Out here in the bright sunshine the berries soon wither and drop off and disappear." "Then let us look near the trees," suggested Twinkle. They searched for a long time unsuccessfully. It was growing late, and they were almost in despair, when a sharp cry from Policeman Bluejay drew the child-larks to his side. "What is it?" enquired the girl, trembling with nervous excitement. "Why," said the policeman, "here is a bush at last, and on it are exactly two ripe tingle-berries!" [CHAPTER XXII] _The Transformation_ They looked earnestly at the bush, and saw that their friend spoke truly. Upon a high limb was one plump, red berry, looking much like a cranberry, while lower down grew another but smaller berry, which appeared to be partially withered. "Good!" the lark-children cried, joyfully; and the next moment Chubbins added: "You eat the big berry, Twink." "Why?" she asked, hesitating. "It looks as if it had more stomach-ache in it," he replied. "I'm not afraid of that," said she. "But do you suppose the little berry will be enough for you? One side of it is withered, you see." "That won't matter," returned the boy-lark. "The Royal Necromancer said to eat one berry. He didn't say a little or a big one, you know, or whether it should be plump or withered." "That is true," said the girl-lark. "Shall I eat mine now?" "The sooner the better," Chubbins replied. "Don't forget me, little friend, when you are a human again," said Policeman Bluejay, sadly. "I shall never forget you," Twinkle answered, "nor any part of all your kindness to us. We shall be friends forever." That seemed to please the handsome blue bird, and Twinkle was so eager that she could not wait to say more. She plucked the big, plump berry, put it in her mouth with her little claw, and ate it as soon as possible. In a moment she said: "Ouch! Oo-oo-oo!" But it did not hurt so badly, after all. Her form quickly changed and grew larger; and while Chubbins and Policeman Bluejay watched her anxiously she became a girl again, and the bird's body with its soft gray feathers completely disappeared. As she felt herself changing she called: "Good-bye!" to the bluejay; but even then he could hardly understand her words. "Good-bye!" he answered, and to Twinkle's ears it sounded like "Chir-r-rip-chee-wee!" "How did it feel?" asked Chubbins; but she looked at him queerly, as if his language was strange to her, and seemed to be half frightened. "Guess I'll have to eat my berry," he said, with a laugh, and proceeded to pluck and eat it, as Twinkle had done. He yelled once or twice at the cramp the fruit gave him, but as soon as the pain ceased he began to grow and change in the same way his little comrade had. But not entirely. For although he got his human body and legs back again, all in their natural size, his wings remained as they were, and it startled him to find that the magic power had passed and he was still partly a bird. "What's the matter?" asked Twinkle. "Is anything wrong?" enquired the bluejay. The boy understood them both, although they could not now understand each other. He said to Twinkle: "I guess the berry wasn't quite big enough." Then he repeated the same thing in the bird language to Policeman Bluejay, and it sounded to Twinkle like: "Pir-r-r-r--eep--cheep--tweet!" "What in the world can you do?" asked the girl, quite distressed. "It will be just dreadful if you have to stay like that." The tears came to Chubbins' eyes. He tried to restrain them, but could not. He flapped his little wings dolefully and said: "I wish I was either one thing or the other! I'd rather be a child-lark again, and nest in a tree, than to go home to the folks in this way." Policeman Bluejay had seen his dilemma at the first, and his sharp eyes had been roving over all the bushes that were within the range of his vision. Suddenly he uttered a chirp of delight and dashed away, speedily returning with another tingle-berry in his bill. "It's the very last one there is!" said he to Chubbins. "But it is all that I want," cried the boy, brightening at once; and then, regardless of any pain, he ate the berry as greedily as if he was fond of a stomache-ache. The second berry had a good effect in one way, for Chubbins' wings quickly became arms, and he was now as perfectly formed as he had been before he met with the cruel tuxix. But he gave a groan, every once in a while, and Twinkle suspected that two berries were twice as powerful as one, and made a pain that lasted twice as long. As the boy and girl looked around they were astonished to find their basket standing on the ground beside them. On a limb of the first tree of the forest sat silently regarding them a big blue bird that they knew must be Policeman Bluejay, although somehow or other he had lost his glossy black helmet and the club he had carried underneath his wing. "It's almost dark," said Twinkle, yawning. "Let's go home, Chub." "All right." He picked up the basket, and for a few minutes they walked along in silence. Then the boy asked: "Don't your legs feel heavy, Twink?" "Yes," said she; "do yours?" "Awful," said he. * * * * * * L. FRANK BAUM'S New Oz Book IS VERY OZZY The author of THE WIZARD OF OZ and FATHER GOOSE has answered thousands of his little readers' letters by writing OZMA OF OZ This new story tells "more about Dorothy," as well as the famous characters of the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman and the Cowardly Lion and something of several new creations equally delightful, including Tiktok, the machine man, the Yellow Hen, the Nome King and the Hungry Tiger. The former characters are beloved by multitudes of children and their parents and the new ones, being thoroughly Baumesque, will find their places in the hearts of all. ILLUSTRATED BY JOHN R. NEILL Forty-one full-page colored pictures; twenty-two half pages in color and fifty black and white text pictures; special end sheets; title page; copyright page, book plate, dedication page and table of contents. 8vo, 280 pages. Extra cloth binding, side and back stamping in four colors. Uniform in size with The Land of Oz and John Dough and the Cherub. Price, - - $1.25 THE LAND OF OZ BY L. FRANK BAUM A SEQUEL TO THE WIZARD OF OZ The Land of Oz gives an account of the further adventures of the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman, and introduces Jack Pumpkinhead, the Animated Saw-Horse, the Highly Magnified Woggle-Bug, the Gump and many other delightful characters. Nearly 150 black and white illustrations and 16 full-page pictures in colors by JOHN R. NEILL 6vo, 300 pages. Uniform in size with Ozma of Oz. Handsomely bound in cloth, stamped in three colors. Price, $1.25. * * * * * * JOHN DOUGH AND THE CHERUB BY L. FRANK BAUM A whimsical tale portraying the exciting adventures of the Gingerbread Man and his comrade, Chick the Cherub, in the "Palace of Romance," "The Land of the Mifkets," "Hiland and Loland," etc. The book is delightfully pictured by John R. Neill, illustrator of OZMA OF OZ and THE LAND OF OZ. 40 full-page colored pictures; 20 colored pictorial chapter headings; 100 black and white text pictures; special end sheets; title page, copyright page, etc. 8vo, 300 pages. Extra cloth binding, side and back stamping in three colors. Price, $1.25. THE TWINKLE TALES SIX CHARMING NEW STORIES FOR CHILDREN BY LAURA BANCROFT Miss Bancroft has a delightful vein of humor of the quaint, sparkling variety which readily appeals to children of all ages. Several critics who have read _The Twinkle Tales_ favorably compare Miss Bancroft's stories to Mr. Baum's works. For this series the clever artist, _Maginel Wright Enright_ has made over one hundred special drawings admirably illustrating the text. The pictures, all full page, are beautifully reproduced in many colors, each book containing fifteen pictures and a decorated title page. The bindings are of imported vellum stamped in four colors with striking designs. _The Twinkle Tales_ are entertaining to read; splendidly illustrated; beautiful in appearance; perfectly printed on fine paper; excellently well bound. Price 50 cents per volume. 
28552	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original lovely illustrations. See 28552-h.htm or 28552-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/8/5/5/28552/28552-h/28552-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/8/5/5/28552/28552-h.zip) TWINKLE AND CHUBBINS Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland by LAURA BANCROFT Illustrated by Maginal Wright Enright Publishers The Reilly & Britton Co. Chicago Copyright, 1911 by The Reilly & Britton Co. CONTENTS PAGE I Mr. Woodchuck.................9 II Bandit Jim Crow..............69 III Prarie-Dog Town.............133 IV Prince Mud-Turtle...........195 V Twinkle's Enchantment.......257 VI Sugar-Loaf Mountain.........321 List of Chapters PAGE I The Trap............................11 II Mr. Woodchuck Captures a Girl.......18 III Mr. Woodchuck Scolds Tinkle.........26 IV Mrs. Woodchuck and Her Family ......35 V Mr. Woodchuck Argues the Question...43 VI Twinkle is Taken to the Judge.......50 VII Twinkle is Condemned................56 VIII Twinkle Remembers...................66 Chapter I The Trap "THERE'S a woodchuck over on the side hill that is eating my clover," said Twinkle's father, who was a farmer. "Why don't you set a trap for it?" asked Twinkle's mother. "I believe I will," answered the man. So, when the midday dinner was over, the farmer went to the barn and got a steel trap, and carried it over to the clover-field on the hillside. Twinkle wanted very much to go with him, but she had to help mamma wash the dishes and put them away, and then brush up the dining-room and put it in order. But when the work was done, and she had all the rest of the afternoon to herself, she decided to go over to the woodchuck's hole and see how papa had set the trap, and also discover if the woodchuck had yet been caught. So the little girl took her blue-and-white sun-bonnet, and climbed over the garden fence and ran across the corn-field and through the rye until she came to the red-clover patch on the hill. She knew perfectly well where the woodchuck's hole was, for she had looked at it curiously many times; so she approached it carefully and found the trap set just in front of the hole. If the woodchuck stepped on it, when he came out, it would grab his leg and hold him fast; and there was a chain fastened to the trap, and also to a stout post driven into the ground, so that when the woodchuck was caught he couldn't run away with the trap. But although the day was bright and sunshiny, and just the kind of day woodchucks like, the clover-eater had not yet walked out of his hole to get caught in the trap. So Twinkle lay down in the clover-field, half hidden by a small bank in front of the woodchuck's hole, and began to watch for the little animal to come out. Her eyes could see right into the hole, which seemed to slant upward into the hill instead of downward; but of course she couldn't see very far in, because the hole wasn't straight, and grew black a little way from the opening. It was somewhat wearisome, waiting and watching so long, and the warm sun and the soft chirp of the crickets that hopped through the clover made Twinkle drowsy. She didn't intend to go to sleep, because then she might miss the woodchuck; but there was no harm in closing her eyes just one little minute; so she allowed the long lashes to droop over her pretty pink cheeks--just because they felt so heavy, and there was no way to prop them up. Then, with a start, she opened her eyes again, and saw the trap and the woodchuck hole just as they were before. Not quite, though, come to look carefully. The hole seemed to be bigger than at first; yes, strange as it might seem, the hole was growing bigger every minute! She watched it with much surprise, and then looked at the trap, which remained the same size it had always been. And when she turned her eyes upon the hole once more it had not only become very big and high, but a stone arch appeared over it, and a fine, polished front door now shut it off from the outside world. She could even read a name upon the silver door-plate, and the name was this: Mister Woodchuck Chapter II Mister Woodchuck Captures a Girl "WELL, I declare!" whispered Twinkle to herself; "how could all that have happened?" On each side of the door was a little green bench, big enough for two to sit upon, and between the benches was a doorstep of white marble, with a mat lying on it. On one side Twinkle saw an electric door-bell. While she gazed at this astonishing sight a sound of rapid footsteps was heard, and a large Jack-Rabbit, almost as big as herself, and dressed in a messenger-boy's uniform, ran up to the woodchuck's front door and rang the bell. Almost at once the door opened inward, and a curious personage stepped out. Twinkle saw at a glance that it was the woodchuck himself,--but what a big and queer woodchuck it was! He wore a swallow-tailed coat, with a waistcoat of white satin and fancy knee-breeches, and upon his feet were shoes with silver buckles. On his head was perched a tall silk hat that made him look just as high as Twinkle's father, and in one paw he held a gold-headed cane. Also he wore big spectacles over his eyes, which made him look more dignified than any other woodchuck Twinkle had ever seen. When this person opened the door and saw the Jack-Rabbit messenger-boy, he cried out: "Well, what do you mean by ringing my bell so violently? I suppose you're half an hour late, and trying to make me think you're in a hurry." The Jack-Rabbit took a telegram from its pocket and handed it to the woodchuck without a word in reply. At once the woodchuck tore open the envelope and read the telegram carefully. "Thank you. There's no answer," he said; and in an instant the Jack-Rabbit had whisked away and was gone. "Well, well," said the woodchuck, as if to himself, "the foolish farmer has set a trap for me, it seems, and my friends have sent a telegram to warn me. Let's see--where is the thing?" He soon discovered the trap, and seizing hold of the chain he pulled the peg out of the ground and threw the whole thing far away into the field. "I must give that farmer a sound scolding," he muttered, "for he's becoming so impudent lately that soon he will think he owns the whole country." But now his eyes fell upon Twinkle, who lay in the clover staring up at him; and the woodchuck gave a laugh and grabbed her fast by one arm. "Oh ho!" he exclaimed; "you're spying upon me, are you?" "I'm just waiting to see you get caught in the trap," said the girl, standing up because the big creature pulled upon her arm. She wasn't much frightened, strange to say, because this woodchuck had a good-humored way about him that gave her confidence. "You would have to wait a long time for that," he said, with a laugh that was a sort of low chuckle. "Instead of seeing me caught, you've got caught yourself. That's turning the tables, sure enough; isn't it?" "I suppose it is," said Twinkle, regretfully. "Am I a prisoner?" "You might call it that; and then, again, you mightn't," answered the woodchuck. "To tell you the truth, I hardly know what to do with you. But come inside, and we'll talk it over. We musn't be seen out here in the fields." Still holding fast to her arm, the woodchuck led her through the door, which he carefully closed and locked. Then they passed through a kind of hallway, into which opened several handsomely furnished rooms, and out again into a beautiful garden at the back, all filled with flowers and brightly colored plants, and with a pretty fountain playing in the middle. A high stone wall was built around the garden, shutting it off from all the rest of the world. The woodchuck led his prisoner to a bench beside the fountain, and told her to sit down and make herself comfortable. Chapter III Mister Woodchuck Scolds Twinkle TWINKLE was much pleased with her surroundings, and soon discovered several gold-fishes swimming in the water at the foot of the fountain. "Well, how does it strike you?" asked the woodchuck, strutting up and down the gravel walk before her and swinging his gold-headed cane rather gracefully. "It seems like a dream," said Twinkle. "To be sure," he answered, nodding. "You'd no business to fall asleep in the clover." "Did I?" she asked, rather startled at the suggestion. "It stands to reason you did," he replied. "You don't for a moment think this is real, do you?" "It _seems_ real," she answered. "Aren't you the woodchuck?" "_Mister_ Woodchuck, if you please. Address me properly, young lady, or you'll make me angry." "Well, then, aren't you Mister Woodchuck?" "At present I am; but when you wake up, I won't be," he said. "Then you think I'm dreaming?" "You must figure that out for yourself," said Mister Woodchuck. "What do you suppose made me dream?" "I don't know." "Do you think it's something I've eaten?" she asked anxiously. "I hardly think so. This isn't any nightmare, you know, because there's nothing at all horrible about it so far. You've probably been reading some of those creepy, sensational story-books." "I haven't read a book in a long time," said Twinkle. "Dreams," remarked Mister Woodchuck, thoughtfully, "are not always to be accounted for. But this conversation is all wrong. When one is dreaming one doesn't talk about it, or even know it's a dream. So let's speak of something else." "It's very pleasant in this garden," said Twinkle. "I don't mind being here a bit." "But you can't stay here," replied Mister Woodchuck, "and you ought to be very uncomfortable in my presence. You see, you're one of the deadliest enemies of my race. All you human beings live for or think of is how to torture and destroy woodchucks." "Oh, no!" she answered. "We have many more important things than that to think of. But when a woodchuck gets eating our clover and the vegetables, and spoils a lot, we just have to do something to stop it. That's why my papa set the trap." "You're selfish," said Mister Woodchuck, "and you're cruel to poor little animals that can't help themselves, and have to eat what they can find, or starve. There's enough for all of us growing in the broad fields." Twinkle felt a little ashamed. "We have to sell the clover and the vegetables to earn our living," she explained; "and if the animals eat them up we can't sell them." "We don't eat enough to rob you," said the woodchuck, "and the land belonged to the wild creatures long before you people came here and began to farm. And really, there is no reason why you should be so cruel. It hurts dreadfully to be caught in a trap, and an animal captured in that way sometimes has to suffer for many hours before the man comes to kill it. We don't mind the killing so much. Death doesn't last but an instant. But every minute of suffering seems to be an hour." "That's true," said Twinkle, feeling sorry and repentant. "I'll ask papa never to set another trap." "That will be some help," returned Mister Woodchuck, more cheerfully, "and I hope you'll not forget the promise when you wake up. But that isn't enough to settle the account for all our past sufferings, I assure you; so I am trying to think of a suitable way to punish you for the past wickedness of your father, and of all other men that have set traps." "Why, if you feel that way," said the little girl, "you're just as bad as we are!" "How's that?" asked Mister Woodchuck, pausing in his walk to look at her. "It's as naughty to want revenge as it is to be selfish and cruel," she said. "I believe you are right about that," answered the animal, taking off his silk hat and rubbing the fur smooth with his elbow. "But woodchucks are not perfect, any more than men are, so you'll have to take us as you find us. And now I'll call my family, and exhibit you to them. The children, especially, will enjoy seeing the wild human girl I've had the luck to capture." "Wild!" she cried, indignantly. "If you're not wild now, you will be before you wake up," he said. Chapter IV Mrs. Woodchuck and Her Family BUT Mister Woodchuck had no need to call his family, for just as he spoke a chatter of voices was heard and Mrs. Woodchuck came walking down a path of the garden with several young woodchucks following after her. The lady animal was very fussily dressed, with puffs and ruffles and laces all over her silk gown, and perched upon her head was a broad white hat with long ostrich plumes. She was exceedingly fat, even for a woodchuck, and her head fitted close to her body, without any neck whatever to separate them. Although it was shady in the garden, she held a lace parasol over her head, and her walk was so mincing and airy that Twinkle almost laughed in her face. The young woodchucks were of several sizes and kinds. One little woodchuck girl rolled before her a doll's baby-cab, in which lay a woodchuck doll made of cloth, in quite a perfect imitation of a real woodchuck. It was stuffed with something soft to make it round and fat, and its eyes were two glass beads sewn upon the face. A big boy woodchuck wore knickerbockers and a Tam o' Shanter cap and rolled a hoop; and there were several smaller boy and girl woodchucks, dressed quite as absurdly, who followed after their mother in a long train. "My dear," said Mister Woodchuck to his wife, "here is a human creature that I captured just outside our front door." "Huh!" sneered the lady woodchuck, looking at Twinkle in a very haughty way; "why will you bring such an animal into our garden, Leander? It makes me shiver just to look at the horrid thing!" "Oh, mommer!" yelled one of the children, "see how skinny the beast is!" "Hasn't any hair on its face at all," said another, "or on its paws!" "And no sign of a tail!" cried the little woodchuck girl with the doll. "Yes, it's a very strange and remarkable creature," said the mother. "Don't touch it, my precious darlings. It might bite." "You needn't worry," said Twinkle, rather provoked at these speeches. "I wouldn't bite a dirty, greasy woodchuck on any account!" "Whoo! did you hear what she called us, mommer? She says we're greasy and dirty!" shouted the children, and some of them grabbed pebbles from the path in their paws, as if to throw them at Twinkle. "Tut, tut! don't be cruel," said Mister Woodchuck. "Remember the poor creature is a prisoner, and isn't used to good society; and besides that, she's dreaming." "Really?" exclaimed Mrs. Woodchuck, looking at the girl curiously. "To be sure," he answered. "Otherwise she wouldn't see us dressed in such fancy clothes, nor would we be bigger than she is. The whole thing is unnatural, my dear, as you must admit." "But _we_'re not dreaming; are we, Daddy?" anxiously asked the boy with the hoop. "Certainly not," Mister Woodchuck answered; "so this is a fine opportunity for you to study one of those human animals who have always been our worst enemies. You will notice they are very curiously made. Aside from their lack of hair in any place except the top of the head, their paws are formed in a strange manner. Those long slits in them make what are called fingers, and their claws are flat and dull--not at all sharp and strong like ours." "I think the beast is ugly," said Mrs. Woodchuck. "It would give me the shivers to touch its skinny flesh." "I'm glad of that," said Twinkle, indignantly. "You wouldn't have _all_ the shivers, I can tell you! And you're a disagreeable, ign'rant creature! If you had any manners at all, you'd treat strangers more politely." "Just listen to the thing!" said Mrs. Woodchuck, in a horrified tone. "Isn't it wild, though!" Chapter V Mr. Woodchuck Argues the Question "REALLY," Mister Woodchuck said to his wife, "you should be more considerate of the little human's feelings. She is quite intelligent and tame, for one of her kind, and has a tender heart, I am sure." "I don't see anything intelligent about her," said the girl woodchuck. "I guess I've been to school as much as you have," said Twinkle. "School! Why, what's that?" "Don't you know what school is?" cried Twinkle, much amused. "We don't have school here," said Mister Woodchuck, as if proud of the fact. "Don't you know any geography?" asked the child. "We haven't any use for it," said Mister Woodchuck; "for we never get far from home, and don't care a rap what state bounds Florida on the south. We don't travel much, and studying geography would be time wasted." "But don't you study arithmetic?" she asked; "don't you know how to do sums?" "Why should we?" he returned. "The thing that bothers you humans most, and that's money, is not used by us woodchucks. So we don't need to figure and do sums." "I don't see how you get along without money," said Twinkle, wonderingly. "You must have to buy all your fine clothes." "You know very well that woodchucks don't wear clothes, under ordinary circumstances," Mister Woodchuck replied. "It's only because you are dreaming that you see us dressed in this way." "Perhaps that's true," said Twinkle. "But don't talk to me about not being intelligent, or not knowing things. If you haven't any schools it's certain I know more than your whole family put together!" "About some things, perhaps," acknowledged Mister Woodchuck. "But tell me: do you know which kind of red clover is the best to eat?" "No," she said. "Or how to dig a hole in the ground to live in, with different rooms and passages, so that it slants up hill and the rain won't come in and drown you?" "No," said Twinkle. "And could you tell, on the second day of February (which is woodchuck day, you know), whether it's going to be warm weather, or cold, during the next six weeks?" "I don't believe I could," replied the girl. "Then," said Mister Woodchuck, "there are some things that we know that you don't; and although a woodchuck might not be of much account in one of your schoolrooms, you must forgive me for saying that I think you'd make a mighty poor woodchuck." "I think so, too!" said Twinkle, laughing. "And now, little human," he resumed, after looking at his watch, "it's nearly time for you to wake up; so if we intend to punish you for all the misery your people has inflicted on the woodchucks, we won't have a minute to spare." "Don't be in a hurry," said Twinkle. "I can wait." "She's trying to get out of it," exclaimed Mrs. Woodchuck, scornfully. "Don't you let her, Leander." "Certainly not, my dear," he replied; "but I haven't decided how to punish her." "Take her to Judge Stoneyheart," said Mrs. Woodchuck. "He will know what to do with her." Chapter VI Twinkle is Taken to the Judge AT this the woodchuck children all hooted with joy, crying: "Take her, Daddy! Take her to old Stoneyheart! Oh, my! won't he give it to her, though!" "Who is Judge Stoneyheart?" asked Twinkle, a little uneasily. "A highly respected and aged woodchuck who is cousin to my wife's grandfather," was the reply. "We consider him the wisest and most intelligent of our race; but, while he is very just in all things, the judge never shows any mercy to evil-doers." "I haven't done anything wrong," said the girl. "But your father has, and much wrong is done us by the other farmers around here. They fight my people without mercy, and kill every woodchuck they can possibly catch." Twinkle was silent, for she knew this to be true. "For my part," continued Mister Woodchuck, "I'm very soft-hearted, and wouldn't even step on an ant if I could help it. Also I am sure you have a kind disposition. But you are a human, and I am a woodchuck; so I think I will take you to old Stoneyheart and let him decide your fate." "Hooray!" yelled the young woodchucks, and away they ran through the paths of the garden, followed slowly by their fat mother, who held the lace parasol over her head as if she feared she would be sunstruck. Twinkle was glad to see them go. She didn't care much for the woodchuck children, they were so wild and ill-mannered, and their mother was even more disagreeable than they were. As for Mister Woodchuck, she did not object to him so much; in fact, she rather liked to talk to him, for his words were polite and his eyes pleasant and kindly. "Now, my dear," he said, "as we are about to leave this garden, where you have been quite secure, I must try to prevent your running away when we are outside the wall. I hope it won't hurt your feelings to become a real prisoner for a few minutes." Then Mister Woodchuck drew from his pocket a leather collar, very much like a dog-collar, Twinkle thought, and proceeded to buckle it around the girl's neck. To the collar was attached a fine chain about six feet long, and the other end of the chain Mister Woodchuck held in his hand. "Now, then," said he, "please come along quietly, and don't make a fuss." He led her to the end of the garden and opened a wooden gate in the wall, through which they passed. Outside the garden the ground was nothing but hard, baked earth, without any grass or other green thing growing upon it, or any tree or shrub to shade it from the hot sun. And not far away stood a round mound, also of baked earth, which Twinkle at once decided to be a house, because it had a door and some windows in it. There was no living thing in sight--not even a woodchuck--and Twinkle didn't care much for the baked-clay scenery. Mister Woodchuck, holding fast to the chain, led his prisoner across the barren space to the round mound, where he paused to rap softly upon the door. Chapter VII Twinkle is Condemned "COME in!" called a voice. Mister Woodchuck pushed open the door and entered, drawing Tinkle after him by the chain. In the middle of the room sat a woodchuck whose hair was grizzled with old age. He wore big spectacles upon his nose, and a round knitted cap, with a tassel dangling from the top, upon his head. His only garment was an old and faded dressing-gown. When they entered, the old woodchuck was busy playing a game with a number of baked-clay dominoes, which he shuffled and arranged upon a baked-mud table; nor did he look up for a long time, but continued to match the dominoes and to study their arrangement with intense interest. Finally, however, he finished the game, and then he raised his head and looked sharply at his visitors. "Good afternoon, Judge," said Mister Woodchuck, taking off his silk hat and bowing respectfully. The judge did not answer him, but continued to stare at Twinkle. "I have called to ask your advice," continued Mister Woodchuck. "By good chance I have been able to capture one of those fierce humans that are the greatest enemies of peaceful woodchucks." The judge nodded his gray head wisely, but still answered nothing. "But now that I've captured the creature, I don't know what to do with her," went on Mister Woodchuck; "although I believe, of course, she should be punished in some way, and made to feel as unhappy as her people have made us feel. Yet I realize that it's a dreadful thing to hurt any living creature, and as far as I'm concerned I'm quite willing to forgive her." With these words he wiped his face with a red silk handkerchief, as if really distressed. "She's dreaming," said the judge, in a sharp, quick voice. "Am I?" asked Twinkle. "Of course. You were probably lying on the wrong side when you went to sleep." "Oh!" she said. "I wondered what made it." "Very disagreeable dream, isn't it?" continued the judge. "Not so very," she answered. "It's interesting to see and hear woodchucks in their own homes, and Mister Woodchuck has shown me how cruel it is for us to set traps for you." "Good!" said the judge. "But some dreams are easily forgotten, so I'll teach you a lesson you'll be likely to remember. You shall be caught in a trap yourself." "Me!" cried Twinkle, in dismay. "Yes, you. When you find how dreadfully it hurts you'll bear the traps in mind forever afterward. People don't remember dreams unless the dreams are unusually horrible. But I guess you'll remember this one." He got up and opened a mud cupboard, from which he took a big steel trap. Twinkle could see that it was just like the trap papa had set to catch the woodchucks, only it seemed much bigger and stronger. The judge got a mallet and with it pounded a stake into the mud floor. Then he fastened the chain of the trap to the stake, and afterward opened the iron jaws of the cruel-looking thing and set them with a lever, so that the slightest touch would spring the trap and make the strong jaws snap together. "Now, little girl," said he, "you must step in the trap and get caught." "Why, it would break my leg!" cried Twinkle. "Did your father care whether a woodchuck got its leg broken or not?" asked the judge. "No," she answered, beginning to be greatly frightened. "Step!" cried the judge, sternly. "It will hurt awfully," said Mister Woodchuck; "but that can't be helped. Traps are cruel things, at the best." Twinkle was now trembling with nervousness and fear. "Step!" called the judge, again. "Dear me!" said Mister Woodchuck, just then, as he looked earnestly into Twinkle's face, "I believe she's going to wake up!" "That's too bad," said the judge. "No, I'm glad of it," replied Mister Woodchuck. And just then the girl gave a start and opened her eyes. She was lying in the clover, and before her was the opening of the woodchuck's hole, with the trap still set before it. Chapter VIII Twinkle Remembers "PAPA," said Twinkle, when supper was over and she was nestled snugly in his lap, "I wish you wouldn't set any more traps for the woodchucks." "Why not, my darling?" he asked in surprise. "They're cruel," she answered. "It must hurt the poor animals dreadfully to be caught in them." "I suppose it does," said her father, thoughtfully. "But if I don't trap the woodchucks they eat our clover and vegetables." "Never mind that," said Twinkle, earnestly. "Let's divide with them. God made the woodchucks, you know, just as He made us, and they can't plant and grow things as we do; so they have to take what they can get, or starve to death. And surely, papa, there's enough to eat in this big and beautiful world, for all of God's creatures." Papa whistled softly, although his face was grave; and then he bent down and kissed his little girl's forehead. "I won't set any more traps, dear," he said. And that evening, after Twinkle had been tucked snugly away in bed, her father walked slowly through the sweet-smelling fields to the woodchuck's hole; there lay the trap, showing plainly in the bright moonlight. He picked it up and carried it back to the barn. It was never used again. THE END BANDIT JIM CROW BANDIT JIM CROW List of Chapters PAGE I Jim Crow Becomes a Pet.....................73 II Jim Crow Runs Away.........................81 III Jim Crow Finds a New Home..................86 IV Jim Crow Becomes a Robber..................97 V Jim Crow Meets Policeman Blue Jay.........105 VI Jim Crow Fools the Policeman..............113 VII Jim Crow is Punished......................121 VIII Jim Crow has Time to Repent His Sins......129 Chapter I Jim Crow Becomes a Pet ONE day, when Twinkle's father was in the corn-field, he shot his gun at a flock of crows that were busy digging up, with their long bills, the kernels of corn he had planted. But Twinkle's father didn't aim very straight, for the birds screamed at the bang of the gun and quickly flew away--all except one young crow that fluttered its wings, but couldn't rise into the air, and so began to run along the ground in an effort to escape. The man chased the young crow, and caught it; and then he found that one of the little lead bullets had broken the right wing, although the bird seemed not to be hurt in any other way. It struggled hard, and tried to peck the hands that held it; but it was too young to hurt any one, so Twinkle's father decided he would carry it home to his little girl. "Here's a pet for you, Twinkle," he said, as he came into the house. "It can't fly, because its wing is broken; but don't let it get too near your eyes, or it may peck at them. It's very wild and fierce, you know." Twinkle was delighted with her pet, and at once got her mother to bandage the broken wing, so that it would heal quickly. The crow had jet black feathers, but there was a pretty purplish and violet gloss, or sheen, on its back and wings, and its eyes were bright and had a knowing look in them. They were hazel-brown in color, and the bird had a queer way of turning his head on one side to look at Twinkle with his right eye, and then twisting it the other side that he might see her with his left eye. She often wondered if she looked the same to both eyes, or if each one made her seem different. She named her pet "Jim Crow" because papa said that all crows were called Jim, although he never could find out the reason. But the name seemed to fit her pet as well as any, so Twinkle never bothered about the reason. Having no cage to keep him in, and fearing he would run away, the girl tied a strong cord around one of Jim Crow's legs, and the other end of the cord she fastened to the round of a chair--or to the table-leg--when they were in the house. The crow would run all around, as far as the string would let him go; but he couldn't get away. And when they went out of doors Twinkle held the end of the cord in her hand, as one leads a dog, and Jim Crow would run along in front of her, and then stop and wait. And when she came near he'd run on again, screaming "Caw! Caw!" at the top of his shrill little voice. He soon came to know he belonged to Twinkle, and would often lie in her lap or perch upon her shoulder. And whenever she entered the room where he was he would say, "Caw--caw!" to her, in pleading tones, until she picked him up or took some notice of him. It was wonderful how quickly a bird that had always lived wild and free seemed to become tame and gentle. Twinkle's father said that was because he was so young, and because his broken wing kept him from flying in the air and rejoining his fellows. But Jim Crow wasn't as tame as he seemed, and he had a very wicked and ungrateful disposition, as you will presently learn. For a few weeks, however, he was as nice a pet as any little girl could wish for. He got into mischief occasionally, and caused mamma some annoyance when he waded into a pan of milk or jumped upon the dinner table and ate up papa's pumpkin pie before Twinkle could stop him. But all pets are more or less trouble, at times, so Jim Crow escaped with a few severe scoldings from mamma, which never seemed to worry him in the least or make him a bit unhappy. Chapter II Jim Crow Runs Away AT last Jim got so tame that Twinkle took the cord off his leg and let him go free, wherever he pleased. So he wandered all over the house and out into the yard, where he chased the ducks and bothered the pigs and made himself generally disliked. He had a way of perching upon the back of old Tom, papa's favorite horse, and chattering away in Tom's ear until the horse plunged and pranced in his stall to get rid of his unwelcome visitor. Twinkle always kept the bandage on the wounded wing, for she didn't know whether it was well yet, or not, and she thought it was better to be on the safe side. But the truth was, that Jim Crow's wing had healed long ago, and was now as strong as ever; and, as the weeks passed by, and he grew big and fat, a great longing came into his wild heart to fly again-- far, far up into the air and away to the lands where there were forests of trees and brooks of running water. He didn't ever expect to rejoin his family again. They were far enough away by this time. And he didn't care much to associate with other crows. All he wanted was to be free, and do exactly as he pleased, and not have some one cuffing him a dozen times a day because he was doing wrong. So one morning, before Twinkle was up, or even awake, Jim Crow pecked at the bandage on his wing until he got the end unfastened, and then it wasn't long before the entire strip of cloth was loosened and fell to the ground. Now Jim fluttered his feathers, and pruned them with his long bill where they had been pressed together, and presently he knew that the wing which had been injured was exactly as strong and well as the other one. He could fly away whenever he pleased. The crow had been well fed by Twinkle and her mamma, and was in splendid health. But he was not at all grateful. With the knowledge of his freedom a fierce, cruel joy crept into his heart, and he resumed the wild nature that crows are born with and never lay aside as long as they live. Having forgotten in an instant that he had ever been tame, and the pet of a gentle little girl, Jim Crow had no thought of saying good-bye to Twinkle. Instead, he decided he would do something that would make these foolish humans remember him for a long time. So he dashed into a group of young chickens that had only been hatched a day or two before, and killed seven of them with his strong, curved claws and his wicked black beak. When the mother hen flew at him he pecked at her eyes; and then, screaming a defiance to all the world, Jim Crow flew into the air and sailed away to a new life in another part of the world. Chapter III Jim Crow Finds a New Home I'LL not try to tell you of all the awful things this bad crow did during the next few days, on his long journey toward the South. Twinkle almost cried when she found her pet gone; and she really did cry when she saw the poor murdered chickens. But mamma said she was very glad to have Jim Crow run away, and papa scowled angrily and declared he was sorry he had not killed the cruel bird when he shot at it in the corn-field. In the mean time the runaway crow flew through the country, and when he was hungry he would stop at a farm-house and rob a hen's nest and eat the eggs. It was his knowledge of farm-houses that made him so bold; but the farmers shot at the thieving bird once or twice, and this frightened Jim Crow so badly that he decided to keep away from the farms and find a living in some less dangerous way. And one day he came to a fine forest, where there were big and little trees of all kinds, with several streams of water running through the woods. "Here," said Jim Crow, "I will make my home; for surely this is the finest place I am ever likely to find." There were plenty of birds in this forest, for Jim could hear them singing and twittering everywhere among the trees; and their nests hung suspended from branches, or nestled in a fork made by two limbs, in almost every direction he might look. And the birds were of many kinds, too: robins, thrushes, bullfinches, mocking-birds, wrens, yellowtails and skylarks. Even tiny humming-birds fluttered around the wild flowers that grew in the glades; and in the waters of the brooks waded long-legged herons, while kingfishers sat upon overhanging branches and waited patiently to seize any careless fish that might swim too near them. Jim Crow decided this must be a real paradise for birds, because it was far away from the houses of men. So he made up his mind to get acquainted with the inhabitants of the forest as soon as possible, and let them know who he was, and that he must be treated with proper respect. In a big fir-tree, whose branches reached nearly to the ground, he saw a large gathering of the birds, who sat chattering and gossiping pleasantly together. So he flew down and joined them. "Good morning, folks," he said; and his voice sounded to them like a harsh croak, because it had become much deeper in tone since he had grown to his full size. The birds looked at him curiously, and one or two fluttered their wings in a timid and nervous way; but none of them, little or big, thought best to make any reply. "Well," said Jim Crow, gruffly, "what's the matter with you fellows? Haven't you got tongues? You seemed to talk fast enough a minute ago." "Excuse me," replied a bullfinch, in a dignified voice; "we haven't the honor of your acquaintance. You are a stranger." "My name's Jim Crow," he answered, "and I won't be a stranger long, because I'm going to live here." They all looked grave at this speech, and a little thrush hopped from one branch to another, and remarked: "We haven't any crows here at all. If you want to find your own folks you must go to some other place." "What do I care about my own folks?" asked Jim, with a laugh that made the little thrush shudder. "I prefer to live alone." "Haven't you a mate?" asked a robin, speaking in a very polite tone. "No; and I don't want any," said Jim Crow. "I'm going to live all by myself. There's plenty of room in this forest, I guess." "Certainly," replied the bullfinch. "There is plenty of room for you here if you behave yourself and obey the laws." "Who's going to make me?" he asked, angrily. "Any decent person, even if he's a crow, is bound to respect the law," answered the bullfinch, calmly. Jim Crow was a little ashamed, for he didn't wish to acknowledge he wasn't decent. So he said: "What are your laws?" "The same as those in all other forests. You must respect the nests and the property of all other birds, and not interfere with them when they're hunting for food. And you must warn your fellow-birds whenever there is danger, and assist them to protect their young from prowling beasts. If you obey these laws, and do not steal from or interfere with your neighbors, you have a right to a nest in our forest." "To be quite frank with you, though," said the robin, "we prefer your room to your company." "I'm going to stay," said the crow. "I guess I'm as good as the rest of you; so you fellows just mind your own business and I'll mind mine." With these words he left them, and when he had mounted to a position above the trees he saw that one tall, slim pine was higher than all the rest, and that at its very top was a big deserted nest. Chapter IV Jim Crow Becomes a Robber IT looked like a crow's nest to Jim, so he flew toward the pine tree and lit upon a branch close by. One glance told him that at some time it really must have been the home of birds of his kind, who for some reason had abandoned it long ago. The nest was large and bulky, being made of strong sticks woven together with fine roots and grasses. It was rough outside, but smooth inside, and when Jim Crow had kicked out the dead leaves and twigs that had fallen into it, he decided it was nearly as good as new, and plenty good enough for a solitary crow like him to live in. So with his bill he made a mark on the nest, that every bird might know it belonged to him, and felt that at last he had found a home. During the next few days he made several attempts to get acquainted with the other birds, but they were cold and distant, though very polite to him; and none of them seemed to care for his society. No bird ever came near his nest, but he often flew down to the lower trees and perched upon one or another of them, so gradually the birds of the forest got used to seeing him around, and paid very little attention to his actions. One day Mrs. Wren missed two brown eggs from her nest, and her little heart was nearly broken with grief. It took the mocking bird and the bullfinch a whole afternoon to comfort her, while Mr. Wren hopped around in nearly as much distress as his wife. No animals had been seen in the forest who would do this evil thing, so no one could imagine who the thief might be. Such an outrage was almost unknown in this pleasant forest, and it made all the birds nervous and fearful. A few days later a still greater horror came upon them, for the helpless young children of Mrs. Linnet were seized one morning from their nest, while their parents were absent in search of food, and were carried away bodily. Mr. Linnet declared that on his way back to his nest he had seen a big black monster leaving it, but had been too frightened to notice just what the creature looked like. But the lark, who had been up very early that morning, stated that he had seen no one near that part of the forest except Jim Crow, who had flown swiftly to his nest in the tall pine-tree. This was enough to make all the birds look upon Jim Crow with grave suspicion, and Robin Redbreast called a secret meeting of all the birds to discuss the question and decide what must be done to preserve their nests from the robber. Jim Crow was so much bigger and fiercer than any of the others that none dared accuse him openly or venture to quarrel with him; but they had a good friend living not far away who was not afraid of Jim Crow or any one else, so they finally decided to send for him and ask his assistance. The starling undertook to be the messenger, and as soon as the meeting was over he flew away upon his errand. "What were all you folks talking about?" asked the crow, flying down and alighting upon a limb near to those who had not yet left the place of meeting. "We were talking about you," said the thrush, boldly; "and you wouldn't care at all to know what we said, Mister Jim Crow." Jim looked a trifle guilty and ashamed at hearing this, but knowing they were all afraid of him he burst out into a rude laugh. "Caw! caw! caw!" he chuckled hoarsely; "what do I care what you say about me? But don't you get saucy, my pretty thrush, or your friends will miss you some fine morning, and never see you again." This awful threat made them all silent, for they remembered the fate of poor Mrs. Linnet's children, and very few of the birds now had any doubt but that Jim Crow knew more about the death of those helpless little ones than he cared to tell. Finding they would not talk with him, the crow flew back to his tree, where he sat sullenly perched upon a branch near his nest. And they were very glad to get rid of him so easily. Chapter V Jim Crow Meets Policeman Blue Jay NEXT morning Jim Crow woke up hungry, and as he sat lazily in his big nest, he remembered that he had seen four pretty brown eggs, speckled with white, in the nest of the oriole that lived at the edge of the forest. "Those eggs will taste very good for breakfast," he thought. "I'll go at once and get them; and if old Mammy Oriole makes a fuss, I'll eat her, too." He hopped out of his nest and on to a branch, and the first thing his sharp eye saw was a big and strange bird sitting upon the tree just opposite him and looking steadily in his direction. Never having lived among other birds until now, the crow did not know what kind of bird this was, but as he faced the new-comer he had a sort of shiver in his heart that warned him to beware an enemy. Indeed, it was none other than the Blue Jay that had appeared so suddenly, and he had arrived that morning because the starling had told him of the thefts that had taken place, and the Blue Jay is well known as the policeman of the forest and a terror to all evil-doers. In size he was nearly as big as Jim Crow himself, and he had a large crest of feathers on the top of his head that made him look even more fierce--especially when he ruffled them up. His body was purplish blue color on the back and purplish gray below, and there was a collar of black feathers running all around his neck. But his wings and tail were a beautiful rich blue, as delightful in color as the sky on a fine May morning; so in personal appearance Policeman Blue Jay was much handsomer than Jim Crow. But it was the sharp, stout beak that most alarmed the crow, and had Jim been wiser he would have known that before him was the most deadly foe of his race, and that the greatest pleasure a Blue Jay finds in life is to fight with and punish a crow. But Jim was not very wise; and so he imagined, after his first terror had passed away, that he could bully this bird as he had the others, and make it fear him. "Well, what are you doing here?" he called out, in his crossest voice, for he was anxious to get away and rob the oriole's nest. The Blue Jay gave a scornful, chattering laugh as he answered: "That's none of your business, Jim Crow." "Take care!" warned the crow; "you'll be sorry if you don't treat me with proper respect." The Blue Jay winked solemnly, in a way that would have been very comical to any observer other than the angry crow. "Don't hurt me--please don't!" he said, fluttering on the branch as if greatly frightened. "My mother would feel dreadful bad if anything happened to me." "Well, then, behave yourself," returned the crow, strutting proudly along a limb and flopping his broad wings in an impressive manner. For he was foolish enough to think he had made the other afraid. But no sooner had he taken flight and soared into the air than the Blue Jay darted at him like an arrow from a bow, and before Jim Crow could turn to defend himself the bill of his enemy struck him full in the breast. Then, with a shriek of shrill laughter, the policeman darted away and disappeared in the forest, leaving the crow to whirl around in the air once or twice and then sink slowly down, with some of his own torn feathers floating near him as witnesses to his defeat. The attack had dazed and astonished him beyond measure; but he found he was not much hurt, after all. Crows are tougher than most birds. Jim managed to reach one of the brooks, where he bathed his breast in the cool water, and soon he felt much refreshed and more like his old self again. But he decided not to go to the oriole's nest that morning, but to search for grabs and beetles amongst the mosses beneath the oak-trees. Chapter VI Jim Crow Fools the Policeman FROM that time on Policeman Blue Jay made his home in the forest, keeping a sharp eye upon the actions of Jim Crow. And one day he flew away to the southward and returned with Mrs. Blue Jay, who was even more beautiful than her mate. Together they built a fine nest in a tree that stood near to the crow's tall pine, and soon after they had settled down to housekeeping Mrs. Blue Jay began to lay eggs of a pretty brown color mottled with darker brown specks. Had Jim Crow known what was best for him he would have flown away from this forest and found himself a new home. Within a short flight were many bits of woodland where a crow might get a good living and not be bothered by blue jays. But Jim was obstinate and foolish, and had made up his mind that he never would again be happy until he had been revenged upon his enemy. He dared no longer rob the nests so boldly as he had before, so he became sly and cunning. He soon found out that the Blue Jay could not fly as high as he could, nor as fast; so, if he kept a sharp lookout for the approach of his foe, he had no trouble in escaping. But if he went near to the nests of the smaller birds, there was the blue policeman standing guard, and ready and anxious to fight at a moment's notice. It was really no place for a robber at all, unless the robber was clever. One day Jim Crow discovered a chalkpit among the rocks at the north of the forest, just beyond the edge of trees. The chalk was soft and in some places crumbled to a fine powder, so that when he had rolled himself for a few minutes in the dust all his feathers became as white as snow. This fact gave to Jim Crow a bright idea. No longer black, but white as a dove, he flew away to the forest and passed right by Policeman Blue Jay, who only noticed that a big white bird had flown amongst the trees, and did not suspect it was the thieving crow in a clever disguise. Jim found a robin's nest that was not protected, both the robin and his wife being away in search of food. So he ate up the eggs and kicked the nest to pieces and then flew away again, passing the Blue Jay a second time all unnoticed. When he reached a brook he washed all the chalk away from his feathers and then returned to his nest as black as ever. All the birds were angry and dismayed when they found what had happened, but none could imagine who had robbed the robins. Mrs. Robin, who was not easily discouraged, built another nest and laid more eggs in it; but the next day a second nest in the forest was robbed, and then another and another, until the birds complained that Policeman Blue Jay did not protect them at all. "I can't understand it in the least," said the policeman, "for I have watched carefully, and I know Jim Crow has never dared to come near to your trees." "Then some one else is the robber," declared the thrush fussily. "The only stranger I have noticed around here is a big white bird," replied the Blue Jay, "and white birds never rob nests or eat eggs, as you all know very well." So they were no nearer the truth than before, and the thefts continued; for each day Jim Crow would make himself white in the chalk-pit, fly into the forest and destroy the precious eggs of some innocent little bird, and afterward wash himself in some far-away brook, and return to his nest chuckling with glee to think he had fooled the Blue Jay so nicely. But the Blue Jay, although stupid and unsuspecting at first, presently began to get a little wisdom. He remembered that all this trouble had commenced when the strange white bird first arrived in the forest; and although it was doubtless true that white birds never eat eggs and have honest reputations, he decided to watch this stranger and make sure that it was innocent of the frightful crimes that had so aroused the dwellers in the forest. Chapter VII Jim Crow is Punished SO one day Policeman Blue Jay hid himself in some thick bushes until he saw the big white bird fly by, and then he followed quietly after it, flitting from tree to tree and keeping out of sight as much as possible, until at last he saw the white bird alight near a bullfinch's nest and eat up all the eggs it contained. Then, ruffling his crest angrily, Policeman Blue Jay flew to attack the big white robber, and was astonished to find he could not catch it. For the white bird flew higher into the air than he could, and also flew much faster, so that it soon escaped and passed out of sight. "It must be a white crow," thought the Blue Jay; "for only a crow can beat me at flying, and some of that race are said to be white, although I have never seen one." So he called together all the birds, and told them what he had seen, and they all agreed to hide themselves the next day and lie in wait for the thief. By this time Jim Crow thought himself perfectly safe, and success had made him as bold as he was wicked. Therefore he suspected nothing when, after rolling himself in the chalk, he flew down the next day into the forest to feast upon birds' eggs. He soon came to a pretty nest, and was just about to rob it, when a chorus of shrill cries arose on every side of him and hundreds, of birds--so many that they quite filled the air-- flew straight at the white one, pecking him with their bills and striking him with their wings; for anger had made even the most timid of the little birds fierce, and there were so many of them that they gave each other courage. Jim Crow tried to escape, but whichever way he might fly his foes clustered all around him, getting in his way so that he could not use his big wings properly. And all the time they were pecking at him and fighting him as hard as they could. Also, the chalk was brushed from his feathers, by degrees, and soon the birds were able to recognize their old enemy the crow, and then, indeed, they became more furious than ever. Policeman Blue Jay was especially angry at the deception practiced upon him, and if he could have got at the crow just then he would have killed it instantly. But the little birds were all in his way, so he was forced to hold aloof. Filled with terror and smarting with pain, Jim Crow had only one thought: to get to the shelter of his nest in the pine-tree. In some way he managed to do this, and to sink exhausted into the hollow of his nest. But many of his enemies followed him, and although the thick feathers of his back and wings protected his body, Jim's head and eyes were at the mercy of the sharp bills of the vengeful birds. When at last they left him, thinking he had been sufficiently punished, Jim Crow was as nearly dead as a bird could be. But crows are tough, and this one was unlucky enough to remain alive. For when his wounds had healed he had become totally blind, and day after day he sat in his nest, helpless and alone, and dared not leave it. Chapter VIII Jim Crow Has Time to Repent His Sins "WHERE are you going, my dear?" asked the Blue Jay of his wife. "I'm going to carry some grubs to Jim Crow," she answered. "I'll be back in a minute." "Jim Crow is a robber and a murderer!" said the policeman, harshly. "I know," she replied, in a sweet voice; "but he is blind." "Well, fly along," said her husband; "but hurry back again." And the robin-redbreast and his wife filled a cup-shaped flower with water from the brook, and then carried it in their bills to the pine-tree, without spilling a drop. "Where are you going?" asked the oriole, as they passed. "We're just taking some water to Jim Crow," replied Mrs. Robin. "He's a thief and a scoundrel!" cried the oriole, indignantly. "That is true." said Mrs. Robin, in a soft, pitiful voice; "but he is blind." "Let me help you." exclaimed the oriole. "I'll carry this side of the cup, so it can't tip." So Jim Crow, blind and helpless, sat in his nest day after day and week after week, while the little birds he had so cruelly wronged brought him food and water and cared for him as generously as they could. And I wonder what his thoughts were--don't you? PRAIRIE-DOG TOWN PRARIE-DOG TOWN List of Chapters PAGE I The Picnic...........................137 II Prairie-Dog Town.....................145 III Mr. Bowko, the Mayor.................150 IV Presto Digi, the Magician............158 V The Home of the Puff-Pudgys..........166 VI Teenty and Weenty....................174 VII The Mayor Gives a Luncheon...........181 VIII On Top of the Earth Again............189 Chapter I The Picnic ON the great western prairies of Dakota is a little town called Edgeley, because it is on the edge of civilization--a very big word which means some folks have found a better way to live than other folks. The Edgeley people have a good way to live, for there are almost seventeen wooden houses there, and among them is a school-house, a church, a store and a blacksmith-shop. If people walked out their front doors they were upon the little street; if they walked out the back doors they were on the broad prairies. That was why Twinkle, who was a farmer's little girl, lived so near the town that she could easily walk to school. She was a pretty, rosy-cheeked little thing, with long, fluffy hair, and big round eyes that everybody smiled into when they saw them. It was hard to keep that fluffy hair from getting tangled; so mamma used to tie it in the back with a big, broad ribbon. And Twinkle wore calico slips for school days and gingham dresses when she wanted to "dress up" or look especially nice. And to keep the sun from spotting her face with freckles, she wore sunbonnets made of the same goods as her dresses. Twinkle's best chum was a little boy called Chubbins, who was the only child of the tired-faced school-teacher. Chubbins was about as old as Twinkle; but he wasn't so tall and slender for his age as she was, being short and rather fat. The hair on his little round head was cut close, and he usually wore a shirt-waist and "knickers," with a wide straw hat on the back of his head. Chubbins's face was very solemn. He never said many words when grown folks were around, but he could talk fast enough when he and Twinkle were playing together alone. Well, one Saturday the school had a picnic, and Twinkle and Chubbins both went. On the Dakota prairies there are no shade-trees at all, and very little water except what they they get by boring deep holes in the ground; so you may wonder where the people could possibly have a picnic. But about three miles from the town a little stream of water (which they called a "river," but we would call only a brook) ran slow and muddy across the prairie; and where the road crossed it a flat bridge had been built. If you climbed down the banks of the river you would find a nice shady place under the wooden bridge; and so here it was that the picnics were held. All the village went to the picnic, and they started bright and early in the morning, with horses and farm-wagons, and baskets full of good things to eat, and soon arrived at the bridge. There was room enough in its shade for all to be comfortable; so they unhitched the horses and carried the baskets to the river bank, and began to laugh and be as merry as they could. Twinkle and Chubbins, however, didn't care much for the shade of the bridge. This was a strange place to them, so they decided to explore it and see if it was any different from any other part of the prairie. Without telling anybody where they were going, they took hold of hands and trotted across the bridge and away into the plains on the other side. The ground here wasn't flat, but had long rolls to it, like big waves on the ocean, so that as soon as the little girl and boy had climbed over the top of the first wave, or hill, those by the river lost sight of them. They saw nothing but grass in the first hollow, but there was another hill just beyond, so they kept going, and climbed over that too. And now they found, lying in the second hollow, one of the most curious sights that the western prairies afford. "What is it?" asked Chubbins, wonderingly. "Why, it's a Prairie-Dog Town," said Twinkle. Chapter II Prarie-Dog Town LYING in every direction, and quite filling the little hollow, were round mounds of earth, each one having a hole in the center. The mounds were about two feet high and as big around as a wash-tub, and the edges of the holes were pounded hard and smooth by the pattering feet of the little creatures that lived within. "Isn't it funny!" said Chubbins, staring at the mounds. "Awful," replied Twinkle, staring too. "Do you know, Chub, there are an'mals living in every single one of those holes?" "What kind?" asked Chubbins. "Well, they're something like squirrels, only they _aren't_ squirrels," she explained. "They're prairie-dogs." "Don't like dogs," said the boy, looking a bit uneasy. "Oh, they're not dogs at all," said Twinkle; "they're soft and fluffy, and gentle." "Do they bark?" he asked. "Yes; but they don't bite." "How d' you know, Twink?" "Papa has told me about them, lots of times. He says they're so shy that they run into their holes when anybody's around; but if you keep quiet and watch, they'll stick their heads out in a few minutes." "Let's watch," said Chubbins. "All right," she agreed. Very near to some of the mounds was a raised bank, covered with soft grass; so the children stole softly up to this bank and lay down upon it in such a way that their heads just stuck over the top of it, while their bodies were hidden from the eyes of any of the folks of Prairie-Dog Town. "Are you comferble, Chub?" asked the little girl. "Yes." "Then lie still and don't talk, and keep your eyes open, and perhaps the an'mals will stick their heads up." "All right," says Chubbins. So they kept quiet and waited, and it seemed a long time to both the boy and the girl before a soft, furry head popped out of a near-by hole, and two big, gentle brown eyes looked at them curiously. Chapter III Mr. Bowko, the Mayor "DEAR me!" said the prairie-dog, speaking almost in a whisper; "here are some of those queer humans from the village." "Let me see! Let me see!" cried two shrill little voices, and the wee heads of two small creatures popped out of the hole and fixed their bright eyes upon the heads of Twinkle and Chubbins. "Go down at once!" said the mother prairie-dog. "Do you want to get hurt, you naughty little things?" "Oh, they won't get hurt," said another deeper voice, and the children turned their eyes toward a second mound, on top of which sat a plump prairie-dog whose reddish fur was tipped with white on the end of each hair. He seemed to be quite old, or at least well along in years, and he had a wise and thoughtful look on his face. "They're humans," said the mother. "True enough; but they're only human children, and wouldn't hurt your little ones for the world," the old one said. "That's so!" called Twinkle. "All we want, is to get acquainted." "Why, in that case," replied the old prairie-dog, "you are very welcome in our town, and we're glad to see you." "Thank you," said Twinkle, gratefully. It didn't occur to her just then that it was wonderful to be talking to the little prairie-dogs just as if they were people. It seemed very natural they should speak with each other and be friendly. As if attracted by the sound of voices, little heads began to pop out of the other mounds--one here and one there--until the town was alive with the pretty creatures, all squatting near the edges of their holes and eyeing Chubbins and Twinkle with grave and curious looks. "Let me introduce myself," said the old one that had first proved friendly. "My name is Bowko, and I'm the Mayor and High Chief of Prairie-Dog Town." "Don't you have a king?" asked Twinkle. "Not in this town," he answered. "There seems to be no place for kings in this free United States. And a Mayor and High Chief is just as good as a king, any day." "I think so, too," answered the girl. "Better!" declared Chubbins. The Mayor smiled, as if pleased. "I see you've been properly brought up," he continued; "and now let me introduce to you some of my fellow-citizens. This," pointing with one little paw to the hole where the mother and her two children were sitting, "is Mrs. Puff-Pudgy and her family--Teenty and Weenty. Mr. Puff-Pudgy, I regret to say, was recently chased out of town for saying his prayers backwards." "How could he?" asked Chubbins, much surprised. "He was always contrary," answered the Mayor, with a sigh, "and wouldn't do things the same way that others did. His good wife, Mrs. Puff-Pudgy, had to scold him all day long; so we finally made him leave the town, and I don't know where he's gone to." "Won't he be sorry not to have his little children any more?" asked Twinkle, regretfully. "I suppose so; but if people are contrary, and won't behave, they must take the consequences. This is Mr. Chuckledorf," continued the Mayor, and a very fat prairie-dog bowed to them most politely; "and here is Mrs. Fuzcum; and Mrs. Chatterby; and Mr. Sneezeley, and Doctor Dosem." All these folks bowed gravely and politely, and Chubbins and Twinkle bobbed their heads in return until their necks ached, for it seemed as if the Mayor would never get through introducing the hundreds of prairie-dogs that were squatting around. "I'll never be able to tell one from the other," whispered the girl; "'cause they all look exactly alike." "Some of 'em's fatter," observed Chubbins; "but I don't know which." Chapter IV Presto Digi, the Magician "AND now, if you like, we will be pleased to have you visit some of our houses," said Mr. Bowko, the Mayor, in a friendly tone. "But we can't!" exclaimed Twinkle. "We're too big," and she got up and sat down upon the bank, to show him how big she really was when compared with the prairie-dogs. "Oh, that doesn't matter in the least," the Mayor replied. "I'll have Presto Digi, our magician, reduce you to our size." "Can he?" asked Twinkle, doubtfully. "Our magician can do anything," declared the Mayor. Then he sat up and put both his front paws to his mouth and made a curious sound that was something like a bark and something like a whistle, but not exactly like either one. Then everybody waited in silence until a queer old prairie-dog slowly put his head out of a big mound near the center of the village. "Good morning, Mr. Presto Digi," said the Mayor. "Morning!" answered the magician, blinking his eyes as if he had just awakened from sleep. Twinkle nearly laughed at this scrawny, skinny personage; but by good fortune, for she didn't wish to offend him, she kept her face straight and did not even smile. "We have two guests here, this morning," continued the Mayor, addressing the magician, "who are a little too large to get into our houses. So, as they are invited to stay to luncheon, it would please us all if you would kindly reduce them to fit our underground rooms." "Is _that_ all you want?" asked Mr. Presto Digi, bobbing his head at the children. "It seems to me a great deal," answered Twinkle. "I'm afraid you never could do it." "Wow!" said the magician, in a scornful voice that was almost a bark. "I can do that with one paw. Come here to me, and don't step on any of our mounds while you're so big and clumsy." So Twinkle and Chubbins got up and walked slowly toward the magician, taking great care where they stepped. Teenty and Weenty were frightened, and ducked their heads with little squeals as the big children passed their mound; but they bobbed up again the next moment, being curious to see what would happen. When the boy and girl stopped before Mr. Presto Digi's mound, he began waving one of his thin, scraggy paws and at the same time made a gurgling noise that was deep down in his throat. And his eyes rolled and twisted around in a very odd way. Neither Twinkle nor Chubbins felt any effect from the magic, nor any different from ordinary; but they knew they were growing smaller, because their eyes were getting closer to the magician. "Is that enough?" asked Mr. Presto, after a while. "Just a little more, please," replied the Mayor; "I don't want them to bump their heads against the doorways." So the magician again waved his paw and chuckled and gurgled and blinked, until Twinkle suddenly found she had to look up at him as he squatted on his mound. "Stop!" she screamed; "if you keep on, we won't be anything at all!" "You're just about the right size," said the Mayor, looking them over with much pleasure, and when the girl turned around she found Mr. Bowko and Mrs. Puff-Pudgy standing beside her, and she could easily see that Chubbins was no bigger than they, and she was no bigger than Chubbins. "Kindly follow me," said Mrs. Puff-Pudgy, "for my little darlings are anxious to make your acquaintance, and as I was the first to discover you, you are to be my guests first of all, and afterward go to the Mayor's to luncheon." Chapter V The Home of the Puff-Pudgys SO Twinkle and Chubbins, still holding hands, trotted along to the Puff-Pudgy mound, and it was strange how rough the ground now seemed to their tiny feet. They climbed up the slope of the mound rather clumsily, and when they came to the hole it seemed to them as big as a well. Then they saw that it wasn't a deep hole, but a sort of tunnel leading down hill into the mound, and Twinkle knew if they were careful they were not likely to slip or tumble down. Mrs. Puff-Pudgy popped into the hole like a flash, for she was used to it, and waited just below the opening to guide them. So, Twinkle slipped down to the floor of the tunnel and Chubbins followed close after her, and then they began to go downward. "It's a little dark right here," said Mrs. Puff-Pudgy; "but I've ordered the maid to light the candles for you, so you'll see well enough when you're in the rooms." "Thank you," said Twinkle, walking along the hall and feeling her way by keeping her hand upon the smooth sides of the passage. "I hope you won't go to any trouble, or put on airs, just because we've come to visit you." "If I do," replied Mrs. Puffy-Pudgy, "it's because I know the right way to treat company. We've always belonged to the 'four hundred,' you know. Some folks never know what to do, or how to do it, but that isn't the way with the Puff-Pudgys. Hi! you, Teenty and Weenty--get out of here and behave yourselves! You'll soon have a good look at our visitors." And now they came into a room so comfortable and even splendid that Twinkle's eyes opened wide with amazement. It was big, and of a round shape, and on the walls were painted very handsome portraits of different prairie-dogs of the Puff-Pudgy family. The furniture was made of white clay, baked hard in the sun and decorated with paints made from blue clay and red clay and yellow clay. This gave it a gorgeous appearance. There was a round table in the middle of the room, and several comfortable chairs and sofas. Around the walls were little brackets with candles in them, lighting the place very pleasantly. "Sit down, please," said Mrs. Puff-Pudgy. "You'll want to rest a minute before I show you around." So Twinkle and Chubbins sat upon the pretty clay chairs, and Teenty and Weenty sat opposite them and stared with their mischievous round eyes as hard as they could. "What nice furniture," exclaimed the girl. "Yes," replied Mrs. Puff-Pudgy, looking up at the picture of a sad-faced prairie-dog; "Mr. Puff-Pudgy made it all himself. He was very handy at such things. It's a shame he turned out so obstinate." "Did he build the house too?" "Why, he dug it out, if that's what you mean. But I advised him how to do it, so I deserve some credit for it myself. Next to the Mayor's, it's the best house in town, which accounts for our high social standing. Weenty! take your paw out of your mouth. You're biting your claws again." "I'm not!" said Weenty. "And now," continued Mrs. Puff-Pudgy, "if you are rested, I'll show you through the rest of our house." So, they got up and followed her, and she led the children through an archway into the dining-room. Here was a cupboard full of the cunningest little dishes Twinkle had ever seen. They were all made of clay, baked hard in the sun, and were of graceful shapes, and nearly as smooth and perfect as our own dishes. Chapter VI Teenty and Weenty ALL around the sides of the dining-room were pockets, or bins, in the wall; and these were full of those things the prairie-dogs are most fond of eating. Clover-seeds filled one bin, and sweet roots another; dried mulberry leaves--that must have come from a long distance--were in another bin, and even kernels of yellow field corn were heaped in one place. The Puff-Pudgys were surely in no danger of starving for some time to come. "Teenty! Put back that grain of wheat," commanded the mother, in a severe voice. Instead of obeying, Teenty put the wheat in his mouth and ate it as quickly as possible. "The little dears are _so_ restless," Mrs. Puff-Pudgy said to Twinkle, "that it's hard to manage them." "They don't behave," remarked Chubbins, staring hard at the children. "No, they have a share of their father's obstinate nature," replied Mrs. Puff-Pudgy. "Excuse me a minute and I'll cuff them; It'll do them good." But before their mother could reach them, the children found trouble of their own. Teenty sprang at Weenty and began to fight, because his brother had pinched him, and Weenty fought back with all his might and main. They scratched with their claws and bit with their teeth, and rolled over and over upon the floor, bumping into the wall and upsetting the chairs, and snarling and growling all the while like two puppies. Mrs. Puff-Pudgy sat down and watched them, but did not interfere. "Won't they hurt themselves?" asked Twinkle, anxiously. "Perhaps so," said the mother; "but if they do, it will punish them for being so naughty. I always let them fight it out, because they are so sore for a day or two afterward that they have to keep quiet, and then I get a little rest." Weenty set up a great howling, just then, and Teenty drew away from his defeated brother and looked at him closely. The fur on both of them was badly mussed up, and Weenty had a long scratch on his nose, that must have hurt him, or he wouldn't have howled so. Teenty's left eye was closed tight, but if it hurt him he bore the pain in silence. Mrs. Puff-Pudgy now pushed them both into a little room and shut them up, saying they must stay there until bedtime; and then she led Twinkle and Chubbins into the kitchen and showed them a pool of clear water, in a big clay basin, that had been caught during the last rain and saved for drinking purposes. The children drank of it, and found it cool and refreshing. Then they saw the bedrooms, and learned that the beds of prairie-dogs were nothing more than round hollows made in heaps of clay. These animals always curl themselves up when they sleep, and the round hollows just fitted their bodies; so, no doubt, they found them very comfortable. There were several bedrooms, for the Puff-Pudgy house was really very large. It was also very cool and pleasant, being all underground and not a bit damp. After they had admired everything in a way that made Mrs. Puff-Pudgy very proud and happy, their hostess took one of the lighted candles from a bracket and said she would now escort them to the house of the Honorable Mr. Bowko, the Mayor. Chapter VII The Mayor Gives a Luncheon "DON'T we have to go upstairs and out of doors?" asked Twinkle. "Oh, no," replied the prairie-dog, "we have halls connecting all the different houses of importance. Just follow me, and you can't get lost." They might easily have been lost without their guide, the little girl thought, after they had gone through several winding passages. They turned this way and that, in quite a bewildering manner, and there were so many underground tunnels going in every direction that it was a wonder Mrs. Puff-Pudgy knew which way to go. "You ought to have sign-posts," said Chubbins, who had once been in a city. "Why, as for that, every one in the town knows which way to go," answered their guide; "and it isn't often we have visitors. Last week a gray owl stopped with us for a couple of days, and we had a fine ball in her honor. But you are the first humans that have ever been entertained in our town, so it's quite an event with us." A few minutes later she said: "Here we are, at the Mayor's house," and as they passed under a broad archway she blew out her candle, because the Mayor's house was so brilliantly lighted. "Welcome!" said Mr. Bowko, greeting the children with polite bows. "You are just in time, for luncheon is about ready and my guests are waiting for you." He led them at once into a big dining-room that was so magnificently painted with colored clays that the walls were as bright as a June rainbow. "How pretty!" cried Twinkle, clapping her hands together in delight. "I'm glad you like it," said the Mayor, much pleased. "Some people, who are lacking in good taste, think it's a little overdone, but a Mayor's house should be gorgeous, I think, so as to be a credit to the community. My grandfather, who designed and painted this house, was a very fine artist. But luncheon is ready, so pray be seated." They sat down on little clay chairs that were placed at the round table. The Mayor sat on one side of Twinkle and Mrs. Puff-Pudgy on the other, and Chubbins was between the skinny old magician and Mr. Sneezeley. Also, in other chairs sat Dr. Dosem, and Mrs. Chatterby, and Mrs. Fuzcum, and several others. It was a large company, indeed, which showed that the Mayor considered this a very important occasion. They were waited upon by several sleek prairie-dog maids in white aprons and white caps, who looked neat and respectable, and were very graceful in their motions. Neither Twinkle nor Chubbins was very hungry, but they were curious to know what kind of food the prairie-dogs ate, so they watched carefully when the different dishes were passed around. Only grains and vegetables were used, for prairie-dogs do not eat meat. There was a milk-weed soup at first; and then yellow corn, boiled and sliced thin. Afterward they had a salad of thistle leaves, and some bread made of barley. The dessert was a dish of the sweet, dark honey made by prairie-bees, and some cakes flavored with sweet and spicy roots that only prairie-dogs know how to find. The children tasted of several dishes, just to show their politeness; but they couldn't eat much. Chubbins spent most of his time watching Mr. Presto Digi, who ate up everything that was near him and seemed to be as hungry after the luncheon as he had been before. Mrs. Puff-Pudgy talked so much about the social standing and dignity of the Puff-Pudgys that she couldn't find time to eat much, although she asked for the recipe of the milk-weed soup. But most of the others present paid strict attention to the meal and ate with very good appetites. Chapter VIII On Top of the Earth Again AFTERWARD they all went into the big drawing-room, where Mrs. Fuzcum sang a song for them in a very shrill voice, and Mr. Sneezeley and Mrs. Chatterby danced a graceful minuet that was much admired by all present. "We ought to be going home," said Twinkle, after this entertainment was over. "I'm afraid our folks will worry about us." "We regret to part with you," replied the Mayor; "but, if you really think you ought to go, we will not be so impolite as to urge you to stay." "You'll find we have excellent manners," added Mrs. Puff-Pudgy. "I want to get big again," said Chubbins. "Very well; please step this way," said the Mayor. So they all followed him through a long passage until they began to go upward, as if climbing a hill. And then a gleam of daylight showed just ahead of them, and a few more steps brought them to the hole in the middle of the mound. The Mayor and Mrs. Puff-Pudgy jumped up first, and then they helped Twinkle and Chubbins to scramble out. The strong sunlight made them blink their eyes for a time, but when they were able to look around they found one or more heads of prairie-dogs sticking from every mound. "Now, Mr. Presto Digi," said the Mayor, when all the party were standing on the ground, "please enlarge our friends to their natural sizes again." "That is very easy," said the magician, with a sigh. "I really wish, Mr. Mayor, that you would find something for me to do that is difficult." "I will, some time," promised the Mayor. "Just now, this is all I can require of you." So the magician waved his paw and gurgled, much in the same way he had done before, and Twinkle and Chubbins began to grow, and swell out until they were as large as ever, and the prairie-dogs again seemed very small beside them. "Good-bye," said the little girl, "and thank you all, very much, for your kindness to us." "Good-bye!" answered a chorus of small voices, and then all the prairie-dogs popped into their holes and quickly disappeared. Twinkle and Chubbins found they were sitting on the green bank again, at the edge of Prairie-Dog Town. "Do you think we've been asleep, Chub?" asked the girl. "'Course not," replied Chubbins, with a big yawn. "It's easy 'nough to know that, Twink, 'cause I'm sleepy now!" THE END PRINCE MUD-TURTLE PRINCE MUD-TURTLE List of Chapters PAGE I Twinkle Captures the Turtle.....................199 II Twinkle Discovers the Turtle can Talk...........207 III The Turtle Tells of the Corrugated Giant........214 IV Prince Turtle Remembers His Magic...............223 V Twinkle Promises to be Brave....................232 VI Twinkle Meets the Corrugated Giant..............239 VII Prince Mud-Turtle Becomes Prince Melga..........244 VIII Twinkle Receives a Medal........................250 Chapter I Twinkle Captures the Turtle ONE hot summer day Twinkle went down into the meadow to where the brook ran tinkling over its stones or rushed and whirled around the curves of the banks or floated lazily through the more wide and shallow parts. It wasn't much of a brook, to tell the facts, for there were many places where an active child could leap across it. But it was the only brook for miles around, and to Twinkle it was a never-ending source of delight. Nothing amused or refreshed the little girl more than to go wading on the pebbly bottom and let the little waves wash around her slim ankles. There was one place, just below the pasture lot, where it was deeper; and here there were real fishes swimming about, such as "horned aces" and "chubs" and "shiners"; and once in a while you could catch a mud-turtle under the edges of the flat stones or in hollows beneath the banks. The deep part was not very big, being merely a pool, but Twinkle never waded in it, because the water would come quite up to her waist, and then she would be sure to get her skirts wet, which would mean a good scolding from mamma. To-day she climbed the fence in the lane, just where the rickety wooden bridge crossed the brook, and at once sat down upon the grassy bank and took off her shoes and stockings. Then, wearing her sun-bonnet to shield her face from the sun, she stepped softly into the brook and stood watching the cool water rush by her legs. It was very nice and pleasant; but Twinkle never could stand still for very long, so she began to wade slowly down the stream, keeping in the middle of the brook, and being able to see through the clear water all the best places to put her feet. Pretty soon she had to duck her head to pass under the fence that separated the meadow from the pasture lot; but she got through all right, and then kept on down the stream, until she came close to the deep pool. She couldn't wade through this, as I have explained; so she got on dry land and crept on her hands and knees up to the edge of the bank, so as not to scare the fishes, if any were swimming in the pool. By good luck there were several fishes in the pool to-day, and they didn't seem to notice that Twinkle was looking at them, so quiet had she been. One little fellow shone like silver when the sunshine caught his glossy sides, and the little girl watched him wiggling here and there with much delight. There was also a big, mud-colored fish that lay a long time upon the bottom without moving anything except his fins and the tip of his tail, and Twinkle also discovered a group of several small fishes not over an inch long, that always swam together in a bunch, as if they belonged to one family. The girl watched these little creatures long and earnestly. The pool was all of the world these simple fishes would ever know. They were born here, and would die here, without ever getting away from the place, or even knowing there was a much bigger world outside of it. After a time the child noticed that the water had become a little muddy near the edge of the bank where she lay, and as it slowly grew clear again she saw a beautiful turtle lying just under her head and against the side of the bank. It was a little bigger around than a silver dollar, and instead of its shell being of a dull brown color, like that of all other mud-turtles she had seen, this one's back was streaked with brilliant patches of yellow and red. "I must get that lovely turtle!" thought Twinkle; and as the water was shallow where it lay she suddenly plunged in her hand, grabbed the turtle, and flung it out of the water on to the bank, where it fell upon its back, wiggling its four fat legs desperately in an attempt to turn over. Chapter II Twinkle Discovers the Turtle Can Talk AT this sudden commotion in their water, the fishes darted away and disappeared in a flash. But Twinkle didn't mind that, for all her interest was now centered in the struggling turtle. She knelt upon the grass and bent over to watch it, and just then she thought she heard a small voice say: "It's no use; I can't do it!" and then the turtle drew its head and legs between the shells and remained still. "Good gracious!" said Twinkle, much astonished. Then, addressing the turtle, she asked: "Did you say anything, a minute ago?" There was no reply. The turtle lay as quiet as if it were dead. Twinkle thought she must have been mistaken; so she picked up the turtle and held it in the palm of her hand while she got into the water again and waded slowly back to where she had left her shoes and stockings. When she got home she put the mud-turtle in a tub which her papa had made by sawing a barrel in two. Then she put a little water into the tub and blocked it up by putting a brick under one side, so that the turtle could either stay in the water or crawl up the inclined bottom of the tub to where it was dry, whichever he pleased. She did this because mamma said that turtles sometimes liked to stay in the water and sometimes on land, and Twinkle's turtle could now take his choice. He couldn't climb up the steep sides of the tub and so get away, and the little girl thoughtfully placed crumbs of bread and fine bits of meat, where the turtle could get them whenever he felt hungry. After that, Twinkle often sat for hours watching the turtle, which would crawl around the bottom of the tub, and swim in the little pool of water and eat the food placed before him in an eager and amusing way. At times she took him in her hand and examined him closely, and then the mud-turtle would put out its little head and look at her with its bright eyes as curiously as the girl looked at him. She had owned her turtle just a week, when she came to the tub one afternoon and held him in her hand, intending to feed her pet some scraps of meat she had brought with her. But as soon as the turtle put out its head it said to her, in a small but distinct voice: "Good morning, Twinkle." She was so surprised that the meat dropped from her hand, and she nearly dropped the turtle, too. But she managed to control her astonishment, and asked, in a voice that trembled a little: "Can you talk?" "To be sure," replied the turtle; "but only on every seventh day--which of course is every Saturday. On other days I cannot talk at all." "Then I really must have heard you speak when I caught you; didn't I?" "I believe you did. I was so startled at being captured that I spoke before I thought, which is a bad habit to get into. But afterward I resolved not to answer when you questioned me, for I didn't know you then, and feared it would be unwise to trust you with my secret. Even now I must ask you not to tell any one that you have a turtle that knows how to talk." Chapter III The Turtle Tells of the Corrugated Giant "WHY, it's wonderful!" said Twinkle, who had listened eagerly to the turtle's speech. "It would be wonderful, indeed, if I were but a simple turtle," was the reply. "But aren't you a turtle?" "Of course, so far as my outward appearance goes, I'm a common little mud-turtle," it answered; "and I think you will agree with me that it was rather clever in the Corrugated Giant to transform me into such a creature." "What's a Corrulated Giant?" asked Twinkle, with breathless interest. "The Corrugated Giant is a monster that is full of deep wrinkles, because he has no bones inside him to hold his flesh up properly," said the turtle. "I hated this giant, who is both wicked and cruel, I assure you; and this giant hated me in return. So, when one day I tried to destroy him, the monster transformed me into the helpless little being you see before you." "But who were you before you were transformed?" asked the girl. "A fairy prince named Melga, the seventh son of the fairy Queen Flutterlight, who rules all the fairies in the north part of this land." "And how long have you been a turtle?" "Fourteen years," replied the creature, with a deep sigh. "At least, I think it is fourteen years; but of course when one is swimming around in brooks and grubbing in the mud for food, one is apt to lose all track of time." "I should think so, indeed," said Twinkle. "But, according to that, you're older than I am." "Much older," declared the turtle. "I had lived about four hundred years before the Corrugated Giant turned me into a turtle." "Was your head gray?" she asked; "and did you have white whiskers?" "No, indeed!" said the turtle. "Fairies are always young and beautiful in appearance, no matter how many years they have lived. And, as they never die, they're bound to get pretty old sometimes, as a matter of course." "Of course!" agreed Twinkle. "Mama has told me about the fairies. But must you always be a mud-turtle?" "That will depend on whether you are willing to help me or not," was the answer. "Why, it sounds just like a fairy tale in a book!" cried the little girl. "Yes," replied the turtle, "these things have been happening ever since there were fairies, and you might expect some of our adventures would get into books. But are you willing to help me? That is the important thing just now." "I'll do anything I can," said Twinkle. "Then," said the turtle, "I may expect to get back to my own form again in a reasonably short time. But you must be brave, and not shrink from such a little thing as danger." That made Twinkle look solemn. "Of course I don't want to get hurt," she said. "My mama and papa would go di_struc_ted if anything happened to me." "Something will happen, _sure,_" declared the turtle; "but nothing that happens will hurt you in the least if you do exactly as I tell you." "I won't have to fight that Carbolated Giant, will I?" Twinkle asked doubtfully. "He isn't carbolated; he's corrugated. No, you won't have to fight at all. When the proper time comes I'll do the fighting myself. But you may have to come with me to the Black Mountains, in order to set me free." "Is it far?" she asked. "Yes; but it won't take us long to go there," answered the turtle. "Now, I'll tell you what to do and, if you follow my advice no one will ever know you've been mixed up with fairies and strange adventures." "And Collerated Giants," she added. "Corrugated," he corrected. "It is too late, this Saturday, to start upon our journey, so we must wait another week. But next Saturday morning do you come to me bright and early, as soon as you've had breakfast, and then I'll tell you what to do." "All right," said Twinkle; "I won't forget." "In the mean time, do give me a little clean water now and then. I'm a mud-turtle, sure enough; but I'm also a fairy prince, and I must say I prefer clean water." "I'll attend to it," promised the girl. "Now put me down and run away," continued the turtle. "It will take me all the week to think over my plans, and decide exactly what we are to do." Chapter IV Prince Turtle Remembers His Magic TWINKLE was as nervous as she could be during all the week that followed this strange conversation with Prince Turtle. Every day, as soon as school was out, she would run to the tub to see if the turtle was still safe--for she worried lest it should run away or disappear in some strange manner. And during school hours it was such hard work to keep her mind on her lessons that teacher scolded her more than once. The fairy imprisoned in the turtle's form had nothing to say to her during this week, because he would not be allowed to talk again until Saturday; so the most that Twinkle could do to show her interest in the Prince was to give him the choicest food she could get and supply him with plenty of fresh, clean water. At last the day of her adventure arrived, and as soon as she could get away from the breakfast table Twinkle ran out to the tub. There was her fairy turtle, safe as could be, and as she leaned over the tub he put out his head and called "Good morning!" in his small, shrill voice. "Good morning," she replied. "Are you still willing and ready to assist me?" asked the turtle. "To be sure," said Twinkle. "Then take me in your hand," said he. So she picked him out of the tub and placed him upon her hand. And the turtle said: "Now pay strict attention, and do exactly as I tell you, and all will be well. In the first place, we want to get to the Black Mountains; so you must repeat after me these words: '_Uller; aller; iller; oller!_'" "Uller; aller; iller; oller!" said Twinkle. The next minute it seemed as though a gale of wind had struck her. It blew so strongly against her eyes that she could not see; so she covered her face with one arm while with the other hand she held fast to the turtle. Her skirts fluttered so wildly that it seemed as if they would tear themselves from her body, and her sun-bonnet, not being properly fastened, was gone in a minute. But it didn't last long, fortunately. After a few moments the wind stopped, and she found she could breathe again. Then she looked around her and drew another long breath, for instead of being in the back yard at home she stood on the side of a beautiful mountain, and spread before her were the loveliest green valleys she had ever beheld. "Well, we're here," said the turtle, in a voice that sounded as if he were well pleased. "I thought I hadn't forgotten my fairy wisdom." "Where are we?" asked the child. "In the Black Mountains, of course," was the reply. "We've come a good way, but it didn't take us long to arrive, did it?" "No, indeed," she answered, still gazing down the mountain side at the flower-strewn grass-land of the valleys. "This," said the turtle, sticking his little head out of the shell as far as it would go, "is the realm of the fairies, where I used to dwell. Those beautiful palaces you see yonder are inhabited by Queen Flutterlight and my people, and that grim castle at your left, standing on the side of the mountain, is where the Corrugated Giant lives." "I don't see anything!" exclaimed Twinkle; "that is, nothing but the valleys and the flowers and grass." "True; I had forgotten that these things are invisible to your mortal eyes. But it is necessary that you should see all clearly, if you are going to rescue me from this terrible form and restore me to my natural shape. Now, put me down upon the ground, for I must search for a particular plant whose leaf has a magic virtue." So Twinkle put him down, and the little turtle began running around here and there, looking carefully at the different plants that grew amongst the grass on the mountain side. But his legs were so short and his shell-covered body so heavy, that he couldn't move very fast; so presently he called for her to pick him up again, and hold him close to the ground while she walked among the plants. She did this, and after what seemed a long search the turtle suddenly cried out: "Stop! Here it is! This is the plant I want." "Which--this?" asked the girl, touching a broad green leaf. "Yes. Pluck the leaf from the stem and rub your eyelids with it." She obeyed, and having rubbed her lids well with the leaf, she again opened her eyes and beheld the real Fairyland. Chapter V Twinkle Promises to Be Brave IN the center of the valley was a great cluster of palaces that appeared to be built of crystal and silver and mother-of-pearl, and golden filigree-work. So dainty and beautiful were these fairy dwellings that Twinkle had no doubt for an instant but that she gazed upon fairyland. She could almost see, from the far mountain upon which she stood, the airy, gauze-winged forms of the fairies themselves, floating gently amidst their pretty palaces and moving gracefully along the jeweled streets. But another sight now attracted her attention--a big, gray, ugly looking castle standing frowning on the mountain side at her left. It overlooked the lovely city of palaces like a dark cloud on the edge of a blue sky, and the girl could not help giving a shudder as she saw it. All around the castle was a high fence of iron spikes. "That fence is enchanted," said the turtle, as if he knew she was looking at it; "and no fairy can pass it, because the power to prevent it has been given to the giant. But a mortal has never been forbidden to pass the fence, for no one ever supposed that a mortal would come here or be able to see it. That is the reason I have brought you to this place, and the reason why you alone are able to help me." "Gracious!" cried Twinkle; "must I meet the Carbonated Giant?" "He's corrugated," said the turtle. "I know he's something dreadful," she wailed, "because he's so hard to pronounce." "You will surely have to meet him," declared the turtle; "but do not fear, I will protect you from all harm." "Well, a Corralated Giant's a mighty big person," said the girl, doubtfully, "and a mud-turtle isn't much of a fighter. I guess I'll go home." "That is impossible," declared the turtle. "You are too far from home ever to get back without my help, so you may as well be good and obedient." "What must I do?" she asked. "We will wait until it is nearly noon, when the giant will put his pot on the fire to boil his dinner. We can tell the right time by watching the smoke come out of his chimney. Then you must march straight up to the castle and into the kitchen where the giant is at work, and throw me quickly into the boiling kettle. That is all that you will be required to do." "I never could do it!" declared Twinkle. "Why not?" "You'd be scalded to death, and then I'd be a murderer!" "Nonsense!" said the turtle, peevishly. "I know what I'm doing, and if you obey me I'll not be scalded but an instant; for then I'll resume my own form. Remember that I'm a fairy, and fairies can't be killed so easily as you seem to think." "Won't it hurt you?" she inquired. "Only for a moment; but the reward will be so great that I won't mind an instant's pain. Will you do this favor for me?" "I'll try," replied Twinkle, gravely. "Then I will be very grateful," said Prince Turtle, "and agree to afterward send you home safe and sound, and as quickly as you came." Chapter VI Twinkle Meets the Corrugated Giant "AND now, while we are waiting," continued the fairy turtle, "I want to find a certain flower that has wonderful powers to protect mortals from any injury. Not that I fear I shall be unable to take care of you, but it's just as well to be on the safe side." "Better," said Twinkle, earnestly. "Where's the flower?" "We'll hunt for it," replied the turtle. So holding him in her hand in such a way that he could see all the flowers that grew, the girl began wandering over the mountain side, and everything was so beautiful around her that she would have been quite contented and happy had not the gray castle been before her to remind her constantly that she must face the terrible giant who lived within it. They found the flower at last--a pretty pink blossom that looked like a double daisy, but must have been something else, because a daisy has no magic power that I ever heard of. And when it was found, the turtle told her to pick the flower and pin it fast to the front of her dress; which she did. By that time the smoke began to roll out of the giant's chimney in big black clouds; so the fairy turtle said the giant must be getting dinner, and the pot would surely be boiling by the time they got to the castle. Twinkle couldn't help being a little afraid to approach the giant's stronghold, but she tried to be brave, and so stepped along briskly until she came to the fence of iron spikes. "You must squeeze through between two of the spikes," said the turtle. She didn't think it could possibly be done; but to her surprise it was quite easy, and she managed to squeeze through the fence without even tearing her dress. Then she walked up a great driveway, which was lined with white skulls of many sheep which the giant had eaten, to the front door of the castle, which stood ajar. "Go in," said the turtle; so she boldly entered and passed down a high arched hall toward a room in the rear. "This is the kitchen," said the turtle, "Enter quickly, go straight to the kettle, and throw me into the boiling water." Twinkle entered quickly enough, but then she stopped short with a cry of amazement; for there before her stood the ugly giant, blowing the fire with an immense pair of bellows. Chapter VII Prince Mud-Turtle Becomes Prince Melga THE giant was as big around as ten men, and as tall as two; but, having no bones, he seemed pushed together, so that his skin wrinkled up like the sides of an accordeon, or a photograph camera, even his face being so wrinkled that his nose stuck out between two folds of flesh and his eyes from between two more. In one end of the kitchen was the great fireplace, above which hung an iron kettle with a big iron spoon in it. And at the other end was a table set for dinner. As the giant was standing between the kettle and Twinkle, she could not do as the turtle had commanded, and throw him into the pot. So she hesitated, wondering how to obey the fairy. Just then the giant happened to turn around and see her. "By the whiskers of Gammarog--who was one of my ancestors that was killed by Jack the Giant-Killer!" he cried, but in a very mild voice for so big a person. "Whom have we here?" "I'm Twinkle," said the girl, drawing a long breath. "Then, to pay you for your folly in entering my castle, I will make you my slave, and some day, if you're not good, I'll feed you to my seventeen-headed dog. I never eat little girls myself. I prefer mutton." Twinkle's heart almost stopped beating when she heard these awful words. All she could do was to stand still and look imploringly at the giant. But she held the fairy mud-turtle clasped tight in her hand, so that the monster couldn't see it. "Well, what are you staring at?" shouted the Corrugated Giant, angrily. "Blow up that fire this instant, slave!" He stood aside for her to pass, and Twinkle ran at once to the fireplace. The pot was now before her, and within easy reach, and it was bubbling hot. In an instant she reached out her hand and tossed the turtle into the boiling water; and then, with a cry of horror at her own action, she drew back to see what would happen. The turtle was a fairy, all right; and he had known very well the best way to break the enchantment his enemy had put upon him. For no sooner had Twinkle tossed him into the boiling pot than a great hissing was heard, and a cloud of steam hid for an instant the fireplace. Then, as it cleared away, a handsome young prince stepped forward, fully armed; for the turtle was again a fairy, and the kettle had changed into a strong shield which he bore upon his left arm, and the iron spoon was now a long and glittering sword. Chapter VIII Twinkle Receives a Medal THE giant gave a roar like that of a baby bull when he saw Prince Melga standing before him, and in a twinkling he had caught up a big club that stood near and began whirling it over his head. But before it could descend, the prince ran at him and stuck his sword as far as it would go into the corrugated body of the giant. Again the monster roared and tried to fight; but the sword had hurt him badly, and the prince pushed it into the evil creature again and again, until the end came, and his corrugated enemy rolled over upon the floor quite dead. Then the fairy turned to Twinkle, and kneeling before her he kissed her hand. "Thank you very much," he said, in a sweet voice, "for setting me free. You are a very brave little girl!" "I'm not so sure about that," she answered. "I was dreadfully scared!" Now he took her hand and led her from the castle; and she didn't have to squeeze through the fence again, because the fairy had only to utter a magic word and the gate flew open. And when they turned to look back, the castle of the Corrugated Giant, with all that it had contained, had vanished from sight, never to be seen again by either mortal or fairy eyes. For that was sure to happen whenever the giant was dead. The prince led Twinkle into the valley where the fairy palaces stood, and told all his people, when they crowded around to welcome him, how kind the little girl had been to him, and how her courage had enabled him to defeat the giant and to regain his proper form. And all the fairies praised Twinkle with kind words, and the lovely Queen Flutterlight, who seemed altogether too young to be the mother of the handsome prince, gave to the child a golden medal with a tiny mud-turtle engraved upon one side of it. Then, after a fine feast had been prepared, and the little girl had eaten all she could of the fairy sweetmeats, she told Prince Melga she would like to go home again. "Very well," said he. "Don't forget me, Twinkle, although we probably shall never meet again. I'll send you home quite as safely as you came; but as your eyes have been rubbed with the magic maita-leaf, you will doubtless always see many strange sights that are hidden from other mortals." "I don't mind," said Twinkle. Then she bade good-bye to the fairies, and the prince spoke a magic word. There was another rush of wind, and when it had passed Twinkle found herself once more in the back yard at home. As she sat upon the grass rubbing her eyes and wondering at the strange adventure that had befallen her, mamma came out upon the back porch and said: "Your turtle has crawled out of the tub and run away." "Yes," said Twinkle, "I know; and I'm glad of it!" But she kept her secret to herself. THE END TWINKLE'S ENCHANTMENT TWINKLE'S ENCHANTMENT List of Chapters PAGE I Twinkle Enters the Big Gulch............261 II The Rolling Stone.......................269 III Some Queer Acquaintances................277 IV The Dancing Bear........................288 V The Cave of the Waterfall...............298 VI Prince Nimble...........................306 VII The Grasshoppers' Hop...................312 Chapter I Twinkle Enters the Big Gulch ONE afternoon Twinkle decided to go into the big gulch and pick some blueberries for papa's supper. She had on her blue gingham dress and her blue sun-bonnet, and there were stout shoes upon her feet. So she took her tin pail and started out. "Be back in time for supper," called mamma from the kitchen porch. "'Course," said Twinkle, as she trotted away. "I'm not hungry now, but I'll be hungry 'nough when supper-time comes. 'Course I'll be back!" The side of the gulch was but a little way from the house. It was like a big ditch, only the sides were not too steep to crawl down; and in the middle of the gulch were rolling hills and deep gullies, all covered with wild bushes and vines and a few flowering plants--very rare in this part of the country. Twinkle hadn't lived very long in this section of Dakota, for her father had just bought the new farm that lay beside the gulch. So the big ditch was a great delight to her, and she loved to wander through it and pick the berries and flowers that never grew on the plains above. To-day she crept carefully down the path back of the house and soon reached the bottom of the gulch. Then she began to search for the berries; but all were gone in the places where she had picked them before; so she found she must go further along. She sat down to rest for a time, and by and by she happened to look up at the other side and saw a big cluster of bushes hanging full of ripe blueberries--just about half way up the opposite bank. She had never gone so far before, but if she wanted the berries for papa's supper she knew she must climb up the slope and get them; so she rose to her feet and began to walk in that direction. It was all new to the little girl, and seemed to her like a beautiful fairyland; but she had no idea that the gulch was enchanted. Soon a beetle crawled across her path, and as she stopped to let it go by, she heard it say: "Look out for the line of enchantment! You'll soon cross it, if you don't watch out." "What line of enchantment?" asked Twinkle. "It's almost under your nose," replied the little creature. "I don't see anything at all," she said, after looking closely. "Of course you don't," said the beetle. "It isn't a mark, you know, that any one can see with their eyes; but it's a line of enchantment, just the same, and whoever steps over it is sure to see strange things and have strange adventures." "I don't mind that," said Twinkle. "Well, I don't mind if you don't," returned the beetle, and by that time he had crept across the path and disappeared underneath a big rock. Twinkle went on, without being at all afraid. If the beetle spoke truly, and there really was an invisible line that divided the common, real world from an enchanted country, she was very eager to cross it, as any little girl might well be. And then it occurred to her that she must have crossed the enchanted line before she met the beetle, for otherwise she wouldn't have understood his language, or known what he was talking about. Children don't talk with beetles in the real world, as Twinkle knew very well, and she was walking along soberly, thinking this over, when suddenly a voice cried out to her: "Be careful!" Chapter II The Rolling Stone OF course Twinkle stopped then, and looked around to see who had spoken. But no one was anywhere in sight. So she started on again. "Look out, or you'll step on me!" cried the voice a second time. She looked at her feet very carefully. There was nothing near them but a big round stone that was about the size of her head, and a prickly thistle that she never would step on if she could possibly help it. "Who's talking?" she asked. "Why, _I'm_ talking," answered the voice. "Who do you suppose it is?" "I don't know," said Twinkle. "I just can't see anybody at all." "Then you must be blind," said the voice. "I'm the Rolling Stone, and I'm about two inches from your left toes." "The Rolling Stone!" "That's it. That's me. I'm the Rolling Stone that gathers no moss." "You can't be," said Twinkle, sitting down in the path and looking carefully at the stone. "Why not?" "Because you don't roll," she said. "You're a stone, of course; I can see that, all right. But you're not rolling." "How silly!" replied the Stone. "I don't have to roll every minute to be a Rolling Stone, do I?" "Of course you do," answered Twinkle. "If you don't roll you're just a common, _still_ stone." "Well, I declare!" exclaimed the Stone; "you don't seem to understand anything. You're a Talking Girl, are you not?" "To be sure I am," said Twinkle. "But you don't talk every minute, do you?" "Mama says I do," she answered. "But you don't. You're sometimes quiet, aren't you?" "'Course I am." "That's the way with me. Sometimes I roll, and so I'm called the Rolling Stone. Sometimes you talk, and so you're the Talking Girl." "No; I'm Twinkle," she said. "That doesn't sound like a name," remarked the Stone. "It's what papa calls me, anyway," explained the girl. Then, thinking she had lingered long enough, she added: "I'm going up the hill to pick those berries. Since you can roll, suppose you go with me." "What! Up hill?" exclaimed the Stone. "Why not?" asked Twinkle. "Who ever heard of a stone rolling up hill? It's unnatural!" "Any stone can roll down hill," said the child. "If you can't roll up hill, you're no better than a common cobble-stone." "Oh, I can roll up hill if I have to," declared the Stone, peevishly. "But it's hard work, and nearly breaks my back." "I can't see that you have any back," said Twinkle. "Why, I'm all back," replied the Stone. "When _your_ back aches, it's only a part of you. But when _my_ back aches, it's all of me except the middle." "The middle ache is the worst of all," said Twinkle, solemnly. "Well, if you don't want to go," she added, jumping up, "I'll say good-bye." "Anything to be sociable," said the Stone, sighing deeply. "I'll go along and keep you company. But it's lots easier to roll down than it is to roll up, I assure you!" "Why, you're a reg'lar grumbler!" exclaimed Twinkle. "That's because I lead a hard life," returned the Stone, dismally. "But don't let us quarrel; it is so seldom I get a chance to talk with one of my own standing in society." "You can't have any standing, without feet," declared Twinkle, shaking her head at the Stone. "One can have _under_standing, at least," was the answer; "and understanding is the best standing any person can have." "Perhaps that is true," said the child, thoughtfully; "but I'm glad I have legs, just the same." Chapter III Some Queer Acquaintances "WAIT a minute!" implored a small voice, and the girl noticed a yellow butterfly that had just settled down upon the stone. "Aren't you the child from the farm?" "To be sure," she answered, much amused to hear the butterfly speak. "Then can you tell me if your mother expects to churn to-day," said the pretty creature, slowly folding and unfolding its dainty wings. "Why do you want to know?" "If she churns to-day, I'll fly over to the house and try to steal some butter. But if your mother isn't going to churn, I'll fly down into the gulch and rob a bees' nest I know of." "Why do you rob and steal?" inquired Twinkle. "It's the only way I can get my living," said the butterfly. "Nobody ever gives me anything, and so I have to take what I want." "Do you like butter?" "Of course I do! That's why we are called butterflies, you know. I prefer butter to anything else, and I have heard that in some countries the children always leave a little dish of butter on the window-sill, so that we may help ourselves whenever we are hungry. I wish I had been born in such a country." "Mother won't churn until Saturday," said Twinkle. "I know, 'cause I've got to help her, and I just hate butter-making!" "Then I won't go to the farm to-day," replied the butterfly. "Good-bye, little girl. If you think of it, leave a dish of butter around where I can get at it." "All right," said Twinkle, and the butterfly waved its wings and fluttered through the air into the gulch below. Then the girl started up the hill and the Stone rolled slowly beside her, groaning and grumbling because the ground was so rough. Presently she noticed running across the path a tiny Book, not much bigger than a postage-stamp. It had two slender legs, like those of a bumble-bee, and upon these it ran so fast that all the leaves fluttered wildly, the covers being half open. "What's that?" asked Twinkle, looking after the book in surprise. "That is a little Learning," answered the Stone. "Look out for it, for they say it's a dangerous thing." "It's gone already," said Twinkle. "Let it go. Nobody wants it, that I know of. Just help me over this bump, will you?" So she rolled the Stone over the little hillock, and just as she did so her attention was attracted by a curious noise that sounded like "Pop! pop! pop!" "What's that?" she inquired, hesitating to advance. "Only a weasel," answered the Stone. "Stand still a minute, and you'll see him. Whenever he thinks he's alone, and there's no one to hear, 'pop' goes the weasel." Sure enough, a little animal soon crossed their path, making the funny noise at every step. But as soon as he saw that Twinkle was staring at him he stopped popping and rushed into a bunch of tall grass and hid himself. And now they were almost at the berry-bushes, and Twinkle trotted so fast that the Rolling Stone had hard work to keep up with her. But when she got to the bushes she found a flock of strange birds sitting upon them and eating up the berries as fast as they could. The birds were not much bigger than robins, and were covered with a soft, velvety skin instead of with feathers, and they had merry black eyes and long, slender beaks curving downward from their noses, which gave to their faces a saucy expression. The lack of usual feathers might not have surprised Twinkle so much had she not noticed upon the tail of each bird one single, solitary feather of great length, which was certainly a remarkable thing. "I know what they are," she said, nodding her head wisely; "they're birds of a feather." At this the birds burst into a chorus of laughter, and one of them said: "Perhaps you think that's why we flock together." "Well, isn't that the reason?" she asked. "Not a bit of it," declared the bird. "The reason we flock together is because we're too proud to mix with common birds, who have feathers all over them." "I should think you'd be ashamed, 'cause you're so naked," she returned. "The fact is, Twinkle," said another bird, as he pecked at a blueberry and swallowed it, "the common things in this world don't amount to much. There are millions of birds on earth, but only a few of us that have but one feather. In my opinion, if you had but one hair upon your head you'd be much prettier." "I'd be more 'strord'nary, I'm sure," said Twinkle, using the biggest word she could think of. "There's no accounting for tastes," remarked the Rolling Stone, which had just arrived at Twinkle's side after a hard roll up the path. "For my part, I haven't either hair or feathers, and I'm glad of it." The birds laughed again, at this, and as they had eaten all the berries they cared for, they now flew into the air and disappeared. Chapter IV The Dancing Bear "REALLY," said Twinkle, as she began picking the berries and putting them into her pail, "I didn't know so many things could talk." "It's because you are in the part of the gulch that's enchanted," answered the Rolling Stone. "When you get home again, you'll think this is all a dream." "I wonder if it isn't!" she suddenly cried, stopping to look around, and then feeling of herself carefully. "It's usually the way in all the fairy stories that papa reads to me. I don't remember going to sleep any time; but perhaps I did, after all." "Don't let it worry you," said the Stone, making a queer noise that Twinkle thought was meant for a laugh. "If you wake up, you'll be sorry you didn't dream longer; and if you find you haven't been asleep, this will be a wonderful adventure." "That's true enough," the girl answered, and again began filling her pail with the berries. "When I tell mama all this, she won't believe a word of it. And papa will laugh and pinch my cheek, and say I'm like Alice in Wonderland, or Dorothy in the Land of Oz." Just then she noticed something big and black coming around the bushes from the other side, and her heart beat a good deal faster when she saw before her a great bear standing upon his rear legs beside her. He had a little red cap on his head that was kept in place by a band of rubber elastic. His eyes were small, but round and sparkling, and there seemed to be a smile upon his face, for his white teeth showed in two long rows. "Don't be afraid," called out the Rolling Stone; "it's only the Dancing Bear." "Why should the child be afraid?" asked the bear, speaking in a low, soft tone that reminded her of the purring of a kitten. "No one ever heard of a Dancing Bear hurting anybody. We're about the most harmless things in the world." "Are you really a Dancing Bear?" asked Twinkle, curiously. "I am, my dear," he replied, bowing low and then folding his arms proudly as he leaned against a big rock that was near. "I wish there was some one here who could tell you what a fine dancer I am. It wouldn't be modest for me to praise myself, you know." "I s'pose not," said Twinkle. "But if you're a Dancing Bear, why don't you dance?" "There it is again!" cried the Rolling Stone. "This girl Twinkle wants to keep everybody moving. She wouldn't believe, at first, that I was a Rolling Stone, because I was lying quiet just then. And now she won't believe you're a Dancing Bear, because you don't eternally keep dancing." "Well, there's some sense in that, after all," declared the Bear. "I'm only a Dancing Bear while I'm dancing, to speak the exact truth; and you're only a Rolling Stone while you're rolling." "I beg to disagree with you," returned the Stone, in a cold voice. "Well, don't let us quarrel, on any account," said the Bear. "I invite you both to come to my cave and see me dance. Then Twinkle will be sure I'm a Dancing Bear." "I haven't filled my pail yet," said the little girl, "and I've got to get enough berries for papa's supper." "I'll help you," replied the Bear, politely; and at once he began to pick berries and to put them into Twinkle's pail. His big paws looked very clumsy and awkward, but it was astonishing how many blueberries the bear could pick with them. Twinkle had hard work to keep up with him, and almost before she realized how fast they had worked, the little pail was full and overflowing with fine, plump berries. "And now," said the Bear, "I will show you the way to my cave." He took her hand in his soft paw and began leading her along the side of the steep hill, while the Stone rolled busily along just behind them. But they had not gone far before Twinkle's foot slipped, and in trying to save herself from falling she pushed hard against the Stone and tumbled it from the pathway. "Now you've done it!" growled the Stone, excitedly, as it whirled around. "Here I go, for I've lost my balance and I can't help myself!" Even as he spoke the big round stone was flying down the side of the gulch, bumping against the hillocks and bits of rock--sometimes leaping into the air and then clinging close to the ground, but going faster and faster every minute. "Dear me," said Twinkle, looking after it; "I'm afraid the Rolling Stone will get hurt." "No danger of that," replied the Bear. "It's as hard as a rock, and not a thing in the gulch could hurt it a bit. But our friend would have to roll a long time to get back here again, so we won't wait. Come along, my dear." He held out his paw again, and Twinkle took it with one of her hands while she carried the pail with the other, and so managed to get over the rough ground very easily. Chapter V The Cave of the Waterfall BEFORE long they came to the entrance to the cave, and as it looked dark and gloomy from without Twinkle drew back and said she guessed she wouldn't go in. "But it's quite light inside," said the bear, "and there's a pretty waterfall there, too. Don't be afraid, Twinkle; I'll take good care of you." So the girl plucked up courage and permitted him to lead her into the cave; and then she was glad she had come, instead of being a 'fraid-cat. For the place was big and roomy, and there were many cracks in the roof, that admitted plenty of light and air. Around the side walls were several pairs of big ears, which seemed to have been carved out of the rock. These astonished the little girl. "What are the ears for?" she asked. "Don't walls have ears where you live?" returned the Bear, as if surprised. "I've heard they do," she answered, "but I've never seen any before." At the back of the cave was a little, tinkling waterfall, that splashed into a pool beneath with a sound that was very like music. Near this was a square slab of rock, a little raised above the level of the floor. "Kindly take a seat, my dear," said the bear, "and I'll try to amuse you, and at the same time prove that I can dance." So to the music of the waterfall the bear began dancing. He climbed upon the flat stone, made a graceful bow to Twinkle, and then balanced himself first upon one foot and then upon the other, and swung slowly around in a circle, and then back again. "How do you like it?" he asked. "I don't care much for it," said Twinkle. "I believe I could do better myself." "But you are not a bear," he answered. "Girls ought to dance better than bears, you know. But not every bear can dance. If I had a hand-organ to make the music, instead of this waterfall, I might do better." "Then I wish you had one," said the girl. The Bear began dancing again, and this time he moved more rapidly and shuffled his feet in quite a funny manner. He almost fell off the slab once or twice, so anxious was he to prove he could dance. And once he tripped over his own foot, which made Twinkle laugh. Just as he was finishing his dance a strange voice cried out: "For bear!" and a green monkey sprang into the cave and threw a big rock at the performer. It knocked the bear off the slab, and he fell into the pool of water at the foot of the waterfall, and was dripping wet when he scrambled out again. The Dancing Bear gave a big growl and ran as fast as he could after the monkey, finally chasing him out of the cave. Twinkle picked up her pail of berries and followed, and when she got into the sunshine again on the side of the hill she saw the monkey and the bear hugging each other tight, and growling and chattering in a way that showed they were angry with each other and not on pleasant terms. "You _will_ throw rocks at me, will you?" shouted the Bear. "I will if I get the chance," replied the monkey. "Wasn't that a fine, straight shot? and didn't you go plump into the water, though?" and he shrieked with laughter. Just then they fell over in a heap, and began rolling down the hill. "Let go!" yelled the Bear. "Let go, yourself!" screamed the monkey. But neither of them did let go, so they rolled faster and faster down the hill, and the last that Twinkle saw of them they were bounding among the bushes at the very bottom of the big gulch. Chapter VI Prince Nimble "GOOD gracious!" said the little girl, looking around her; "I'm as good as lost in this strange place, and I don't know in what direction to go to get home again." So she sat down on the grass and tried to think which way she had come, and which way she ought to return in order to get across the gulch to the farm-house. "If the Rolling Stone was here, he might tell me," she said aloud. "But I'm all alone." "Oh, no, you're not," piped a small, sweet voice. "I'm here, and I know much more than the Rolling Stone does." Twinkle looked this way and then that, very carefully, in order to see who had spoken, and at last she discovered a pretty grasshopper perched upon a long blade of grass nearby. "Did I hear you speak?" she inquired. "Yes," replied the grasshopper. "I'm Prince Nimble, the hoppiest hopper in Hoptown." "Where is that?" asked the child. "Why, Hoptown is near the bottom of the gulch, in that thick patch of grass you see yonder. It's on your way home, so I'd be pleased to have you visit it." "Won't I step on some of you?" she asked. "Not if you are careful," replied Prince Nimble. "Grasshoppers don't often get stepped on. We're pretty active, you know." "All right," said Twinkle. "I'd like to see a grasshopper village." "Then follow me, and I'll guide you," said Nimble, and at once he leaped from the blade of grass and landed at least six feet away. Twinkle got up and followed, keeping her eye on the pretty Prince, who leaped so fast that she had to trot to keep up with him. Nimble would wait on some clump of grass or bit of rock until the girl came up, and then away he'd go again. "How far is it?" Twinkle once asked him. "About a mile and a half," was the answer; "we'll soon be there, for you are as good as a mile, and I'm good for the half-mile." "How do you figure that out?" asked Twinkle. "Why, I've always heard that a miss is as good as a mile, and you're a miss, are you not?" "Not yet," she answered; "I'm only a little girl. But papa will be sure to miss me if I don't get home to supper." Chapter VII The Grasshoppers' Hop TWINKLE now began to fear she wouldn't get home to supper, for the sun started to sink into the big prairie, and in the golden glow it left behind, the girl beheld most beautiful palaces and castles suspended in the air just above the hollow in which she stood. Splendid banners floated from the peaks and spires of these magnificent buildings, and all the windows seemed of silver and all the roofs of gold. "What city is that?" she asked, standing still, in amazement. "That isn't any city," replied the grasshopper. "They are only Castles in the Air--very pretty to look at, but out of everybody's reach. Come along, my little friend; we're almost at Hoptown." So Twinkle walked on, and before long Prince Nimble paused on the stem of a hollyhock and said: "Now, sit down carefully, right where you are, and you will be able to watch my people. It is the night of our regular hop--if you listen you can hear the orchestra tuning up." She sat down, as he bade her, and tried to listen, but only heard a low whirr and rattle like the noise of a beetle's wings. "That's the drummer," said Prince Nimble. "He is very clever, indeed." "Good gracious! It's night," said Twinkle, with a start. "I ought to be at home and in bed this very minute!" "Never mind," said the grasshopper; "you can sleep any time, but this is our annual ball, and it's a great privilege to witness it." Suddenly the grass all around them became brilliantly lighted, as if from a thousand tiny electric lamps. Twinkle looked closely, and saw that a vast number of fireflies had formed a circle around them, and were illuminating the scene of the ball. In the center of the circle were assembled hundreds of grasshoppers, of all sizes. The small ones were of a delicate green color, and the middle-sized ones of a deeper green, while the biggest ones were a yellowish brown. But the members of the orchestra interested Twinkle more than anything else. They were seated upon the broad top of a big toadstool at one side, and the musicians were all beetles and big-bugs. A fat water-beetle played a bass fiddle as big and fat as himself, and two pretty ladybugs played the violins. A scarab, brightly colored with scarlet and black, tooted upon a long horn, and a sand-beetle made the sound of a drum with its wings. Then there was a coleopto, making shrill sounds like a flute--only of course Twinkle didn't know the names of these beetles, and thought they were all just "bugs." When the orchestra began to play, the music was more pleasing than you might suppose; anyway, the grasshoppers liked it, for they commenced at once to dance. The antics of the grasshoppers made Twinkle laugh more than once, for the way they danced was to hop around in a circle, and jump over each other, and then a lady grasshopper and a gentleman grasshopper would take hold of hands and stand on their long rear legs and swing partners until it made the girl dizzy just to watch them. Sometimes two of them would leap at once, and knock against each other in the air, and then go tumbling to the ground, where the other dancers tripped over them. She saw Prince Nimble dancing away with the others, and his partner was a lovely green grasshopper with sparkling black eyes and wings that were like velvet. They didn't bump into as many of the others as some did, and Twinkle thought they danced very gracefully indeed. And now, while the merriment was at its height, and waiter-grasshoppers were passing around refreshments that looked like grass seeds covered with thick molasses, a big cat suddenly jumped into the circle. At once all the lights went out, for the fire-flies fled in every direction; but in the darkness Twinkle thought she could still hear the drone of the big bass fiddle and the flute-like trill of the ladybugs. The next thing Twinkle knew, some one was shaking her shoulder. * * * "Wake up, dear," said her mother's voice. "It's nearly supper-time, and papa's waiting for you. And I see you haven't picked a single blueberry." "Why, I picked 'em, all right," replied Twinkle, sitting up and first rubbing her eyes and then looking gravely at her empty tin pail. "They were all in the pail a few minutes ago. I wonder whatever became of them!" THE END SUGAR-LOAF MOUNTAIN SUGAR-LOAF MOUNTAIN List of Chapters I The Golden Key........................325 II Through the Tunnel....................333 III Sugar-Loaf City.......................340 IV To the King's Palace..................348 V Princess Sakareen.....................357 VI The Royal Chariot.....................365 VII Twinkle Gets Thirsty..................372 VIII After the Runaway.....................381 Chapter I The Golden Key TWINKLE had come to visit her old friend Chubbins, whose mother was now teaching school in a little town at the foot of the Ozark Mountains, in Arkansas. Twinkle's own home was in Dakota, so the mountains that now towered around her made her open her eyes in wonder. Near by--so near, in fact, that she thought she might almost reach out her arm and touch it--was Sugar-Loaf Mountain, round and high and big. And a little to the south was Backbone Mountain, and still farther along a peak called Crystal Mountain. The very next day after her arrival Twinkle asked Chubbins to take her to see the mountain; and so the boy, who was about her own age, got his mother to fill for them a basket of good things to eat, and away they started, hand in hand, to explore the mountain-side. It was farther to Sugar-Loaf Mountain than Twinkle had thought, and by the time they reached the foot of the great mound, the rocky sides of which were covered with bushes and small trees, they were both rather tired by the walk. "Let's eat something," suggested Chubbins. "I'm willing," said Twinkle. So they climbed up a little way, to where some big rocks lay flat upon the mountain, and sat themselves down upon a slab of rock while they rested and ate some of the sandwiches and cake. "Why do they call it 'Sugar-Loaf'?" asked the girl, looking far up to the top of the mountain. "I don't know," replied Chubbins. "It's a queer name," said Twinkle, thoughtfully. "That's so," agreed the boy. "They might as well have called it 'gingerbread' or 'rock-salt,' or 'tea-biscuit.' They call mountains funny names, don't they?" "Seems as if they do," said Twinkle. They had been sitting upon the edge of one big flat rock, with their feet resting against another that was almost as large. These rocks appeared to have been there for ages,--as if some big giants in olden days had tossed them carelessly down and then gone away and left them. Yet as the children pushed their feet against this one, the heavy mass suddenly began to tremble and then slide downward. "Look out!" cried the girl, frightened to see the slab of rock move. "We'll fall and get hurt!" But they clung to the rock upon which they sat and met with no harm whatever. Nor did the big slab of stone below them move very far from its original position. It merely slid downward a few feet, and when they looked at the place where it had been they discovered what seemed to be a small iron door, built into the solid stone underneath, and now shown to their view by the moving of the upper rock. "Why, it's a door!" exclaimed Twinkle. Chubbins got down upon his knees and examined the door carefully. There was a ring in it that seemed to be a handle, and he caught hold of it and pulled as hard as he could. But it wouldn't move. "It's locked, Twink," he said. "What do you'spose is under it?" she asked. "Maybe it's a treasure!" answered Chubbins, his eyes big with interest. "Well, Chub, we can't get it, anyway," said the practical Twinkle; "so let's climb the mountain." She got down from her seat and approached the door, and as she did so she struck a small bit of rock with her foot and sent it tumbling down the hill. Then she stopped short with a cry of wonder, for under the stone she had kicked away was a little hole in the rock, and within this they saw a small golden key. "Perhaps," she said, eagerly, as she stooped to pick up the key, "this will unlock the iron door." "Let's try it!" cried the boy. Chapter II Through the Tunnel THEY examined the door carefully, and at last found near the center of it a small hole. Twinkle put the golden key into this and found that it fitted exactly. But it took all of Chubbins's strength to turn the key in the rusty lock. Yet finally it did turn, and they heard the noise of bolts shooting back, so they both took hold of the ring, and pulling hard together, managed to raise the iron door on its hinges. All they saw was a dark tunnel, with stone steps leading down into the mountain. "No treasure here," said the little girl. "P'raps it's farther in," replied Chubbins. "Shall we go down?" "Won't it be dangerous?" she asked. "Don't know," said Chubbins, honestly. "It's been years and years since this door was opened. You can see for yourself. That rock must have covered it up a long time." "There must be _something_ inside," she declared, "or there wouldn't be any door, or any steps." "That's so," answered Chubbins. "I'll go down and see. You wait." "No; I'll go too," said Twinkle. "I'd be just as scared waiting outside as I would be in. And I 'in bigger than you are, Chub." "You're taller, but you're only a month older, Twink; so don't you put on airs. And I'm the strongest." "We'll both go," she decided; "and then if we find the treasure we'll divide." "All right; come on!" Forgetting their basket, which they left upon the rocks, they crept through the little doorway and down the steps. There were only seven steps in all, and then came a narrow but level tunnel that led straight into the mountain-side. It was dark a few feet from the door, but the children resolved to go on. Taking hold of hands, so as not to get separated, and feeling the sides of the passage to guide them, they walked a long way into the black tunnel. Twinkle was just about to say they'd better go back, when the passage suddenly turned, and far ahead of them shone a faint light. This encouraged them, and they went on faster, hoping they would soon come to the treasure. "Keep it up, Twink," said the boy. "It's no use going home yet." "We must be almost in the middle of Sugar-Loaf Mountain," she answered. "Oh, no; it's an awful big mountain," said he. "But we've come quite a way, haven't we?" "I guess mama'd scold, if she knew where we are." "Mamas," said Chubbins, "shouldn't know everything, 'cause they'd only worry. And if we don't get hurt I can't see as there's any harm done." "But we mustn't be naughty, Chub." "The only thing that's naughty," he replied, "is doing what you're told not to do. And no one told us not to go into the middle of Sugar-Loaf Mountain." Just then they came to another curve in their path, and saw a bright light ahead. It looked to the children just like daylight; so they ran along and soon passed through a low arch and came out into-- Well! the scene before them was so strange that it nearly took away their breath, and they stood perfectly still and stared as hard as their big eyes could possibly stare. Chapter III Sugaf-Loaf City SUGAR-LOAF Mountain was hollow inside, for the children stood facing a great dome that rose so far above their heads that it seemed almost as high as the sky. And underneath this dome lay spread out the loveliest city imaginable. There were streets of houses, and buildings with round domes, and slender, delicate spires reaching far up into the air, and turrets beautifully ornamented with carvings. And all these were white as the driven snow and sparkling in every part like millions of diamonds--for all were built of pure loaf-sugar! The pavements of the streets were also loaf-sugar, and the trees and bushes and flowers were likewise sugar; but these last were not all white, because all sugar is not white, and they showed many bright colors of red sugar and blue sugar and yellow, purple and green sugar, all contrasting most prettily with the sparkling white buildings and the great white dome overhead. This alone might well astonish the eyes of children from the outside world, but it was by no means all that Twinkle and Chubbins beheld in that first curious look at Sugar-Loaf City. For the city was inhabited by many people--men, women and children--who walked along the streets just as briskly as we do; only all were made of sugar. There were several different kinds of these sugar people. Some, who strutted proudly along, were evidently of pure loaf-sugar, and these were of a most respectable appearance. Others seemed to be made of a light brown sugar, and were more humble in their manners and seemed to hurry along as if they had business to attend to. Then there were some of sugar so dark in color that Twinkle suspected it was maple-sugar, and these folks seemed of less account than any of the others, being servants, drivers of carriages, and beggars and idlers. Carts and carriages moved along the streets, and were mostly made of brown sugar. The horses that drew them were either pressed sugar or maple-sugar. In fact, everything that existed in this wonderful city was made of some kind of sugar. Where the light, which made all this place so bright and beautiful, came from, Twinkle could not imagine. There was no sun, nor were there any electric lights that could be seen; but it was fully as bright as day and everything showed with great plainness. While the children, who stood just inside the archway through which they had entered, were looking at the wonders of Sugar-Loaf City, a file of sugar soldiers suddenly came around a corner at a swift trot. "Halt!" cried the Captain. He wore a red sugar jacket and a red sugar cap, and the soldiers were dressed in the same manner as their Captain, but without the officer's yellow sugar shoulder-straps. At the command, the sugar soldiers came to a stop, and all pointed their sugar muskets at Twinkle and Chubbins. "Surrender!" said the Captain to them. "Surrender, or I'll--I'll--" He hesitated. "What will you do?" said Twinkle. "I don't know what, but something very dreadful," replied the Captain. "But of course you'll surrender." "I suppose we'll have to," answered the girl. "That's right. I'll just take you to the king, and let him decide what to do," he added pleasantly. So the soldiers surrounded the two children, shouldered arms, and marched away down the street, Twinkle and Chubbins walking slowly, so the candy folks would not have to run; for the tallest soldiers were only as high as their shoulders. "This is a great event," remarked the Captain, as he walked beside them with as much dignity as he could muster. "It was really good of you to come and be arrested, for I haven't had any excitement in a long time. The people here are such good sugar that they seldom do anything wrong." Chapter IV To the King's Palace "WHAT, allow me to ask, is your grade of sugar?" inquired the Captain, with much politeness. "You do not seem to be the best loaf, but I suppose that of course you are solid." "Solid what?" asked Chubbins. "Solid sugar," replied the Captain. "We're not sugar at all," explained Twinkle. "We're just meat." "Meat! And what is that?" "Haven't you any meat in your city?" "No," he replied, shaking his head. "Well, I can't explain exactly what meat is," she said; "but it isn't sugar, anyway." At this the Captain looked solemn. "It isn't any of my business, after all," he told them. "The king must decide about you, for that's _his_ business. But since you are not made of sugar you must excuse me if I decline to converse with you any longer. It is beneath my dignity." "Oh, that's all right," said Twinkle. "Where we came from," said Chubbins, "meat costs more a pound than sugar does; so I guess we're just as good as you are." But the Captain made no reply to this statement, and before long they stopped in front of a big sugar building, while a crowd of sugar people quickly gathered. "Stand back!" cried the Captain, and the sugar soldiers formed a row between the children and the sugar citizens, and kept the crowd from getting too near. Then the Captain led Twinkle and Chubbins through a high sugar gateway and up a broad sugar walk to the entrance of the building. "Must be the king's castle," said Chubbins. "The king's palace," corrected the Captain, stiffly. "What's the difference?" asked Twinkle. But the sugar officer did not care to explain. Brown sugar servants in plum-colored sugar coats stood at the entrance to the palace, and their eyes stuck out like lozenges from their sugar faces when they saw the strangers the Captain was escorting. But every one bowed low, and stood aside for them to pass, and they walked through beautiful halls and reception rooms where the sugar was cut into panels and scrolls and carved to represent all kinds of fruit and flowers. "Isn't it sweet!" said Twinkle. "Sure it is," answered Chubbins. And now they were ushered into a magnificent room, where a stout little sugar man was sitting near the window playing upon a fiddle, while a group of sugar men and women stood before him in respectful attitudes and listened to the music. Twinkle knew at once that the fiddler was the king, because he had a sugar crown upon his head. His Majesty was made of very white and sparkling cut loaf-sugar, and his clothing was formed of the same pure material. The only color about him was the pink sugar in his cheeks and the brown sugar in his eyes. His fiddle was also of white sugar, and the strings were of spun sugar and had an excellent tone. When the king saw the strange children enter the room he jumped up and exclaimed: "Bless my beets! What have we here?" "Mortals, Most Granular and Solidified Majesty," answered the Captain, bowing so low that his forehead touched the floor. "They came in by the ancient tunnel." "Well, I declare," said the king. "I thought that tunnel had been stopped up for good and all." "The stone above the door slipped," said Twinkle, "so we came down to see what we could find." "You must never do it again," said his Majesty, sternly. "This is our own kingdom, a peaceful and retired nation of extra refined and substantial citizens, and we don't wish to mix with mortals, or any other folks." "We'll go back, pretty soon," said Twinkle. "Now, that's very nice of you," declared the king, "and I appreciate your kindness. Are you extra refined, my dear?" "I hope so," said the girl, a little doubtfully. "Then there's no harm in our being friendly while you're here. And as you've promised to go back to your own world soon, I have no objection to showing you around the town. You'd like to see how we live, wouldn't you?" "Very much," said Twinkle. "Order my chariot, Captain Brittle," said his Majesty; and the Captain again made one of his lowly bows and strutted from the room to execute the command. The king now introduced Chubbins and Twinkle to the sugar ladies and gentlemen who were present, and all of them treated the children very respectfully. Chapter V Princess Sakareen "SAY, play us a tune," said Chubbins to the king. His Majesty didn't seem to like being addressed so bluntly, but he was very fond of playing the fiddle, so he graciously obeyed the request and played a pretty and pathetic ballad upon the spun sugar strings. Then, begging to be excused for a few minutes while the chariot was being made ready, the king left them and went into another room. This gave the children a chance to talk freely with the sugar people, and Chubbins said to one man, who looked very smooth on the outside: "I s'pose you're one of the big men of this place, aren't you?" The man looked frightened for a moment, and then took the boy's arm and led him into a corner of the room. "You ask me an embarrassing question," he whispered, looking around to make sure that no one overheard. "Although I pose as one of the nobility, I am, as a matter of fact, a great fraud!" "How's that?" asked Chubbins. "Have you noticed how smooth I am?" inquired the sugar man. "Yes," replied the boy. "Why is it?" "Why, I'm frosted, that's the reason. No one here suspects it, and I'm considered very respectable; but the truth is, I'm just coated over with frosting, and not solid sugar at all." "What's inside you?" asked Chubbins. "That," answered the man, "I do not know. I've never dared to find out. For if I broke my frosting to see what I'm stuffed with, every one else would see too, and I would be disgraced and ruined." "Perhaps you're cake," suggested the boy. "Perhaps so," answered the man, sadly. "Please keep my secret, for only those who are solid loaf-sugar are of any account in this country, and at present I am received in the best society, as you see." "Oh, I won't tell," said Chubbins. During this time Twinkle had been talking with a sugar lady, in another part of the room. This lady seemed to be of the purest loaf-sugar, for she sparkled most beautifully, and Twinkle thought she was quite the prettiest person to look at that she had yet seen. "Are you related to the king?" she asked. "No, indeed," answered the sugar lady, "although I'm considered one of the very highest quality. But I'll tell you a secret, my dear." She took Twinkle's hand and led her across to a sugar sofa, where they both sat down. "No one," resumed the sugar lady, "has ever suspected the truth; but I'm only a sham, and it worries me dreadfully." "I don't understand what you mean," said Twinkle. "Your sugar seems as pure and sparkling as that of the king." "Things are not always what they seem," sighed the sugar lady. "What you see of me, on the outside, is all right; but the fact is, _I'm hollow!_" "Dear me!" exclaimed Twinkle, in surprise. "How do you know it?" "I can feel it," answered the lady, impressively. "If you weighed me you'd find I'm not as heavy as the solid ones, and Tor a long time I Ve realized the bitter truth that I'm hollow. It makes me very unhappy, but I don't dare confide my secret to anyone here, because it would disgrace me forever." "I wouldn't worry," said the child. "They'll never know the difference." "Not unless I should break," replied the sugar lady. "But if that happened, all the world could see that I'm hollow, and instead of being welcomed in good society I'd become an outcast. It's even more respectable to be made of brown sugar, than to be hollow; don't you think so?" "I'm a stranger here," said Twinkle; "so I can't judge. But if I were you, I wouldn't worry unless I got broke; and you may be wrong, after all, and as sound as a brick!" Chapter VI The Royal Chariot JUST then the king came back to the room and said: "The chariot is at the door; and, as there are three seats, I'll take Lord Cloy and Princess Sakareen with us." So the children followed the king to the door of the palace, where stood a beautiful white and yellow sugar chariot, drawn by six handsome sugar horses with spun sugar tails and manes, and driven by a brown sugar coachman in a blue sugar livery. The king got in first, and the others followed. Then the children discovered that Lord Cloy was the frosted man and Princess Sakareen was the sugar lady who had told Twinkle that she was hollow. There was quite a crowd of sugar people at the gates to watch the departure of the royal party, and a few soldiers and policemen were also present to keep order. Twinkle sat beside the king, and Chubbins sat on the same seat with the Princess Sakareen, while Lord Cloy was obliged to sit with the coachman. When all were ready the driver cracked a sugar whip (but didn't break it), and away the chariot dashed over a road paved with blocks of cut loaf-sugar. The air was cool and pleasant, but there was a sweet smell to the breeze that was peculiar to this strange country. Sugar birds flew here and there, singing sweet songs, and a few sugar dogs ran out to bark at the king's chariot as it whirled along. "Haven't you any automobiles in your country?" asked the girl. "No," answered the king. "Anything that requires heat to make it go is avoided here, because heat would melt us and ruin our bodies in a few minutes. Automobiles would be dangerous in Sugar-Loaf City." "They're dangerous enough anywhere," she said. "What do you feed to your horses?" "They eat a fine quality of barley-sugar that grows in our fields," answered the king. "You'll see it presently, for we will drive out to my country villa, which is near the edge of the dome, opposite to where you came in." First, however, they rode all about the city, and the king pointed out the public buildings, and the theaters, and the churches, and a number of small but pretty public parks. And there was a high tower near the center that rose half-way to the dome, it was so tall. "Aren't you afraid the roof will cave in some time, and ruin your city?" Twinkle asked the king. "Oh, no," he answered. "We never think of such a thing. Isn't there a dome over the place where you live?" "Yes," said Twinkle; "but it's the sky." "Do you ever fear it will cave in?" inquired the king. "No, indeed!" she replied, with a laugh at the idea. "Well, it's the same way with us," returned his Majesty. "Domes are the strongest things in all the world." Chapter VII Twinkle Gets Thirsty AFTER they had seen the sights of the city the carriage turned into a broad highway that led into the country, and soon they began to pass fields of sugar corn and gardens of sugar cabbages and sugar beets and sugar potatoes. There were also orchards of sugar plums and sugar apples and vineyards of sugar grapes. All the trees were sugar, and even the grass was sugar, while sugar grasshoppers hopped about in it. Indeed, Chubbins decided that not a speck of anything beneath the dome of Sugar-Loaf Mountain was anything but pure sugar--unless the inside of the frosted man proved to be of a different material. By and by they reached a pretty villa, where they all left the carriage and followed the sugar king into the sugar house. Refreshments had been ordered in advance, over the sugar telephone, so that the dining table was already laid and all they had to do was to sit in the pretty sugar chairs and be waited upon by maple-sugar attendants. There were sandwiches and salads and fruits and many other sugar things to eat, served on sugar plates; and the children found that some were flavored with winter-green and raspberry and lemon, so that they were almost as good as candies. At each plate was a glass made of crystal sugar and filled with thick sugar syrup, and this seemed to be the only thing to drink. After eating so much sugar the children naturally became thirsty, and when the king asked Twinkle if she would like anything else she answered promptly: "Yes, I'd like a drink of water." At once a murmur of horror arose from the sugar people present, and the king pushed back his chair as if greatly disturbed. "Water!" he exclaimed, in amazement. "Sure," replied Chubbins. "I want some, too. We're thirsty." The king shuddered. "Nothing in the world," said he gravely, "is so dangerous as water. It melts sugar in no time, and to drink it would destroy you instantly." "We're not made of sugar," said Twinkle. "In our country we drink all the water we want." "It may be true," returned the king; "but I am thankful to say there is no drop of water in all this favored country. But we have syrup, which is much better for your health. It fills up the spaces inside you, and hardens and makes you solid." "It makes me thirstier than ever," said the girl. "But if you have no water we must try to get along until we get home again." When the luncheon was over, they entered the carriage again and were driven back towards the city. On the way the six sugar horses became restless, and pranced around in so lively a manner that the sugar coachman could scarcely hold them in. And when they had nearly reached the palace a part of the harness broke, and without warning all six horses dashed madly away. The chariot smashed against a high wall of sugar and broke into many pieces, the sugar people, as well as Twinkle and Chubbins, being thrown out and scattered in all directions. The little girl was not at all hurt, nor was Chubbins, who landed on top the wall and had to climb down again. But the king had broken one of the points off his crown, and sat upon the ground gazing sorrowfully at his wrecked chariot. And Lord Cloy, the frosted man, had smashed one of his feet, and everybody could now see that underneath the frosting was a material very like marshmallow--a discovery that was sure to condemn him as unfit for the society of the solid sugar-loaf aristocracy of the country. But perhaps the most serious accident of all had befallen Princess Sakareen, whose left leg had broken short off at the knee. Twinkle ran up to her as soon as she could, and found the Princess smiling happily and gazing at the part of the broken leg which she had picked up. "See here, Twinkle," she cried; "it's as solid as the king himself! I'm not hollow at all. It was only my imagination." "I'm glad of that," answered Twinkle; "but what will you do with a broken leg?" "Oh, that's easily mended," said the Princess, "All I must do is to put a little syrup on the broken parts, and stick them together, and then sit in the breeze until it hardens. I'll be all right in an hour from now." It pleased Twinkle to hear this, for she liked the pretty sugar princess. Chapter VIII After the Runaway NOW the king came up to them, saying: "I hope you are not injured." "We are all right," said Twinkle; "but I'm getting dreadful thirsty, so if your Majesty has no objection I guess we'll go home." "No objection at all," answered the king. Chubbins had been calmly filling his pockets with broken spokes and other bits of the wrecked chariot; but feeling nearly as thirsty as Twinkle, he was glad to learn they were about to start for home. They exchanged good-byes with all their sugar friends, and thanked the sugar king for his royal entertainment. Then Captain Brittle and his soldiers escorted the children to the archway through which they had entered Sugar-Loaf City. They had little trouble in going back, although the tunnel was so dark in places that they had to feel their way. But finally daylight could be seen ahead, and a few minutes later they scrambled up the stone steps and squeezed through the little doorway. There was their basket, just as they had left it, and the afternoon sun was shining softly over the familiar worldly landscape, which they were both rejoiced to see again. Chubbins closed the iron door, and as soon as he did so the bolts shot into place, locking it securely. "Where's the key?" asked Twinkle. "I put it into my pocket," said Chubbins, "but it must have dropped out when I tumbled from the king's chariot." "That's too bad," said Twinkle; "for now no one can ever get to the sugar city again. The door is locked, and the key is on the other side." "Never mind," said the boy. "We've seen the inside of Sugar-Loaf Mountain once, and that'll do us all our lives. Come on, Twink. Let's go home and get a drink!" 
29433	----	NATURE BY R. W. EMERSON A subtle chain of countless rings The next unto the farthest brings; The eye reads omens where it goes, And speaks all languages the rose; And, striving to be man, the worm Mounts through all the spires of form. NEW EDITION BOSTON & CAMBRIDGE: JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY M DCCC XLIX. Entered, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1849 By JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. BOSTON: THURSTON, TORRY AND COMPANY, 31 Devonshire Street. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER I. NATURE 8 CHAPTER II. COMMODITY 10 CHAPTER III. BEAUTY 13 CHAPTER IV. LANGUAGE 23 CHAPTER V. DISCIPLINE 34 CHAPTER VI. IDEALISM 45 CHAPTER VII. SPIRIT 59 CHAPTER VIII. PROSPECTS 64 INTRODUCTION. OUR age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship. Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth. In like manner, nature is already, in its forms and tendencies, describing its own design. Let us interrogate the great apparition, that shines so peacefully around us. Let us inquire, to what end is nature? All science has one aim, namely, to find a theory of nature. We have theories of races and of functions, but scarcely yet a remote approach to an idea of creation. We are now so far from the road to truth, that religious teachers dispute and hate each other, and speculative men are esteemed unsound and frivolous. But to a sound judgment, the most abstract truth is the most practical. Whenever a true theory appears, it will be its own evidence. Its test is, that it will explain all phenomena. Now many are thought not only unexplained but inexplicable; as language, sleep, madness, dreams, beasts, sex. Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the NOT ME, that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, NATURE. In enumerating the values of nature and casting up their sum, I shall use the word in both senses;--in its common and in its philosophical import. In inquiries so general as our present one, the inaccuracy is not material; no confusion of thought will occur. _Nature_, in the common sense, refers to essences unchanged by man; space, the air, the river, the leaf. _Art_ is applied to the mixture of his will with the same things, as in a house, a canal, a statue, a picture. But his operations taken together are so insignificant, a little chipping, baking, patching, and washing, that in an impression so grand as that of the world on the human mind, they do not vary the result. NATURE. CHAPTER I. TO go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile. The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood. When we speak of nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most poetical sense in the mind. We mean the integrity of impression made by manifold natural objects. It is this which distinguishes the stick of timber of the wood-cutter, from the tree of the poet. The charming landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet. This is the best part of these men's farms, yet to this their warranty-deeds give no title. To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. Nature says,--he is my creature, and maugre all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me. Not the sun or the summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight. Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good health, the air is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life,--no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground,--my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,--all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, --master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature. The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them. The waving of the boughs in the storm, is new to me and old. It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. Its effect is like that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me, when I deemed I was thinking justly or doing right. Yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight, does not reside in nature, but in man, or in a harmony of both. It is necessary to use these pleasures with great temperance. For, nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread with melancholy today. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. To a man laboring under calamity, the heat of his own fire hath sadness in it. Then, there is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him who has just lost by death a dear friend. The sky is less grand as it shuts down over less worth in the population. CHAPTER II. COMMODITY. WHOEVER considers the final cause of the world, will discern a multitude of uses that result. They all admit of being thrown into one of the following classes; Commodity; Beauty; Language; and Discipline. Under the general name of Commodity, I rank all those advantages which our senses owe to nature. This, of course, is a benefit which is temporary and mediate, not ultimate, like its service to the soul. Yet although low, it is perfect in its kind, and is the only use of nature which all men apprehend. The misery of man appears like childish petulance, when we explore the steady and prodigal provision that has been made for his support and delight on this green ball which floats him through the heavens. What angels invented these splendid ornaments, these rich conveniences, this ocean of air above, this ocean of water beneath, this firmament of earth between? this zodiac of lights, this tent of dropping clouds, this striped coat of climates, this fourfold year? Beasts, fire, water, stones, and corn serve him. The field is at once his floor, his work-yard, his play-ground, his garden, and his bed. "More servants wait on man Than he'll take notice of."-- Nature, in its ministry to man, is not only the material, but is also the process and the result. All the parts incessantly work into each other's hands for the profit of man. The wind sows the seed; the sun evaporates the sea; the wind blows the vapor to the field; the ice, on the other side of the planet, condenses rain on this; the rain feeds the plant; the plant feeds the animal; and thus the endless circulations of the divine charity nourish man. The useful arts are reproductions or new combinations by the wit of man, of the same natural benefactors. He no longer waits for favoring gales, but by means of steam, he realizes the fable of Aeolus's bag, and carries the two and thirty winds in the boiler of his boat. To diminish friction, he paves the road with iron bars, and, mounting a coach with a ship-load of men, animals, and merchandise behind him, he darts through the country, from town to town, like an eagle or a swallow through the air. By the aggregate of these aids, how is the face of the world changed, from the era of Noah to that of Napoleon! The private poor man hath cities, ships, canals, bridges, built for him. He goes to the post-office, and the human race run on his errands; to the book-shop, and the human race read and write of all that happens, for him; to the court-house, and nations repair his wrongs. He sets his house upon the road, and the human race go forth every morning, and shovel out the snow, and cut a path for him. But there is no need of specifying particulars in this class of uses. The catalogue is endless, and the examples so obvious, that I shall leave them to the reader's reflection, with the general remark, that this mercenary benefit is one which has respect to a farther good. A man is fed, not that he may be fed, but that he may work. CHAPTER III. BEAUTY. A NOBLER want of man is served by nature, namely, the love of Beauty. The ancient Greeks called the world _kosmos_, beauty. Such is the constitution of all things, or such the plastic power of the human eye, that the primary forms, as the sky, the mountain, the tree, the animal, give us a delight _in and for themselves_; a pleasure arising from outline, color, motion, and grouping. This seems partly owing to the eye itself. The eye is the best of artists. By the mutual action of its structure and of the laws of light, perspective is produced, which integrates every mass of objects, of what character soever, into a well colored and shaded globe, so that where the particular objects are mean and unaffecting, the landscape which they compose, is round and symmetrical. And as the eye is the best composer, so light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make beautiful. And the stimulus it affords to the sense, and a sort of infinitude which it hath, like space and time, make all matter gay. Even the corpse has its own beauty. But besides this general grace diffused over nature, almost all the individual forms are agreeable to the eye, as is proved by our endless imitations of some of them, as the acorn, the grape, the pine-cone, the wheat-ear, the egg, the wings and forms of most birds, the lion's claw, the serpent, the butterfly, sea-shells, flames, clouds, buds, leaves, and the forms of many trees, as the palm. For better consideration, we may distribute the aspects of Beauty in a threefold manner. 1. First, the simple perception of natural forms is a delight. The influence of the forms and actions in nature, is so needful to man, that, in its lowest functions, it seems to lie on the confines of commodity and beauty. To the body and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and restores their tone. The tradesman, the attorney comes out of the din and craft of the street, and sees the sky and the woods, and is a man again. In their eternal calm, he finds himself. The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough. But in other hours, Nature satisfies by its loveliness, and without any mixture of corporeal benefit. I see the spectacle of morning from the hill-top over against my house, from day-break to sun-rise, with emotions which an angel might share. The long slender bars of cloud float like fishes in the sea of crimson light. From the earth, as a shore, I look out into that silent sea. I seem to partake its rapid transformations: the active enchantment reaches my dust, and I dilate and conspire with the morning wind. How does Nature deify us with a few and cheap elements! Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. The dawn is my Assyria; the sun-set and moon-rise my Paphos, and unimaginable realms of faerie; broad noon shall be my England of the senses and the understanding; the night shall be my Germany of mystic philosophy and dreams. Not less excellent, except for our less susceptibility in the afternoon, was the charm, last evening, of a January sunset. The western clouds divided and subdivided themselves into pink flakes modulated with tints of unspeakable softness; and the air had so much life and sweetness, that it was a pain to come within doors. What was it that nature would say? Was there no meaning in the live repose of the valley behind the mill, and which Homer or Shakspeare could not reform for me in words? The leafless trees become spires of flame in the sunset, with the blue east for their back-ground, and the stars of the dead calices of flowers, and every withered stem and stubble rimed with frost, contribute something to the mute music. The inhabitants of cities suppose that the country landscape is pleasant only half the year. I please myself with the graces of the winter scenery, and believe that we are as much touched by it as by the genial influences of summer. To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty, and in the same field, it beholds, every hour, a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again. The heavens change every moment, and reflect their glory or gloom on the plains beneath. The state of the crop in the surrounding farms alters the expression of the earth from week to week. The succession of native plants in the pastures and roadsides, which makes the silent clock by which time tells the summer hours, will make even the divisions of the day sensible to a keen observer. The tribes of birds and insects, like the plants punctual to their time, follow each other, and the year has room for all. By water-courses, the variety is greater. In July, the blue pontederia or pickerel-weed blooms in large beds in the shallow parts of our pleasant river, and swarms with yellow butterflies in continual motion. Art cannot rival this pomp of purple and gold. Indeed the river is a perpetual gala, and boasts each month a new ornament. But this beauty of Nature which is seen and felt as beauty, is the least part. The shows of day, the dewy morning, the rainbow, mountains, orchards in blossom, stars, moonlight, shadows in still water, and the like, if too eagerly hunted, become shows merely, and mock us with their unreality. Go out of the house to see the moon, and 't is mere tinsel; it will not please as when its light shines upon your necessary journey. The beauty that shimmers in the yellow afternoons of October, who ever could clutch it? Go forth to find it, and it is gone: 't is only a mirage as you look from the windows of diligence. 2. The presence of a higher, namely, of the spiritual element is essential to its perfection. The high and divine beauty which can be loved without effeminacy, is that which is found in combination with the human will. Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue. Every natural action is graceful. Every heroic act is also decent, and causes the place and the bystanders to shine. We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it. Every rational creature has all nature for his dowry and estate. It is his, if he will. He may divest himself of it; he may creep into a corner, and abdicate his kingdom, as most men do, but he is entitled to the world by his constitution. In proportion to the energy of his thought and will, he takes up the world into himself. "All those things for which men plough, build, or sail, obey virtue;" said Sallust. "The winds and waves," said Gibbon, "are always on the side of the ablest navigators." So are the sun and moon and all the stars of heaven. When a noble act is done,--perchance in a scene of great natural beauty; when Leonidas and his three hundred martyrs consume one day in dying, and the sun and moon come each and look at them once in the steep defile of Thermopylae; when Arnold Winkelried, in the high Alps, under the shadow of the avalanche, gathers in his side a sheaf of Austrian spears to break the line for his comrades; are not these heroes entitled to add the beauty of the scene to the beauty of the deed? When the bark of Columbus nears the shore of America;--before it, the beach lined with savages, fleeing out of all their huts of cane; the sea behind; and the purple mountains of the Indian Archipelago around, can we separate the man from the living picture? Does not the New World clothe his form with her palm-groves and savannahs as fit drapery? Ever does natural beauty steal in like air, and envelope great actions. When Sir Harry Vane was dragged up the Tower-hill, sitting on a sled, to suffer death, as the champion of the English laws, one of the multitude cried out to him, "You never sate on so glorious a seat." Charles II., to intimidate the citizens of London, caused the patriot Lord Russel to be drawn in an open coach, through the principal streets of the city, on his way to the scaffold. "But," his biographer says, "the multitude imagined they saw liberty and virtue sitting by his side." In private places, among sordid objects, an act of truth or heroism seems at once to draw to itself the sky as its temple, the sun as its candle. Nature stretcheth out her arms to embrace man, only let his thoughts be of equal greatness. Willingly does she follow his steps with the rose and the violet, and bend her lines of grandeur and grace to the decoration of her darling child. Only let his thoughts be of equal scope, and the frame will suit the picture. A virtuous man is in unison with her works, and makes the central figure of the visible sphere. Homer, Pindar, Socrates, Phocion, associate themselves fitly in our memory with the geography and climate of Greece. The visible heavens and earth sympathize with Jesus. And in common life, whosoever has seen a person of powerful character and happy genius, will have remarked how easily he took all things along with him,--the persons, the opinions, and the day, and nature became ancillary to a man. 3. There is still another aspect under which the beauty of the world may be viewed, namely, as it becomes an object of the intellect. Beside the relation of things to virtue, they have a relation to thought. The intellect searches out the absolute order of things as they stand in the mind of God, and without the colors of affection. The intellectual and the active powers seem to succeed each other, and the exclusive activity of the one, generates the exclusive activity of the other. There is something unfriendly in each to the other, but they are like the alternate periods of feeding and working in animals; each prepares and will be followed by the other. Therefore does beauty, which, in relation to actions, as we have seen, comes unsought, and comes because it is unsought, remain for the apprehension and pursuit of the intellect; and then again, in its turn, of the active power. Nothing divine dies. All good is eternally reproductive. The beauty of nature reforms itself in the mind, and not for barren contemplation, but for new creation. All men are in some degree impressed by the face of the world; some men even to delight. This love of beauty is Taste. Others have the same love in such excess, that, not content with admiring, they seek to embody it in new forms. The creation of beauty is Art. The production of a work of art throws a light upon the mystery of humanity. A work of art is an abstract or epitome of the world. It is the result or expression of nature, in miniature. For, although the works of nature are innumerable and all different, the result or the expression of them all is similar and single. Nature is a sea of forms radically alike and even unique. A leaf, a sun-beam, a landscape, the ocean, make an analogous impression on the mind. What is common to them all,--that perfectness and harmony, is beauty. The standard of beauty is the entire circuit of natural forms,--the totality of nature; which the Italians expressed by defining beauty "il piu nell' uno." Nothing is quite beautiful alone: nothing but is beautiful in the whole. A single object is only so far beautiful as it suggests this universal grace. The poet, the painter, the sculptor, the musician, the architect, seek each to concentrate this radiance of the world on one point, and each in his several work to satisfy the love of beauty which stimulates him to produce. Thus is Art, a nature passed through the alembic of man. Thus in art, does nature work through the will of a man filled with the beauty of her first works. The world thus exists to the soul to satisfy the desire of beauty. This element I call an ultimate end. No reason can be asked or given why the soul seeks beauty. Beauty, in its largest and profoundest sense, is one expression for the universe. God is the all-fair. Truth, and goodness, and beauty, are but different faces of the same All. But beauty in nature is not ultimate. It is the herald of inward and eternal beauty, and is not alone a solid and satisfactory good. It must stand as a part, and not as yet the last or highest expression of the final cause of Nature. CHAPTER IV. LANGUAGE. LANGUAGE is a third use which Nature subserves to man. Nature is the vehicle, and threefold degree. 1. Words are signs of natural facts. 2. Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts. 3. Nature is the symbol of spirit. 1. Words are signs of natural facts. The use of natural history is to give us aid in supernatural history: the use of the outer creation, to give us language for the beings and changes of the inward creation. Every word which is used to express a moral or intellectual fact, if traced to its root, is found to be borrowed from some material appearance. _Right_ means _straight_; _wrong_ means _twisted_. _Spirit_ primarily means _wind_; _transgression_, the crossing of a _line_; _supercilious_, the _raising of the eyebrow_. We say the _heart_ to express emotion, the _head_ to denote thought; and _thought_ and _emotion_ are words borrowed from sensible things, and now appropriated to spiritual nature. Most of the process by which this transformation is made, is hidden from us in the remote time when language was framed; but the same tendency may be daily observed in children. Children and savages use only nouns or names of things, which they convert into verbs, and apply to analogous mental acts. 2. But this origin of all words that convey a spiritual import,--so conspicuous a fact in the history of language,--is our least debt to nature. It is not words only that are emblematic; it is things which are emblematic. Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture. An enraged man is a lion, a cunning man is a fox, a firm man is a rock, a learned man is a torch. A lamb is innocence; a snake is subtle spite; flowers express to us the delicate affections. Light and darkness are our familiar expression for knowledge and ignorance; and heat for love. Visible distance behind and before us, is respectively our image of memory and hope. Who looks upon a river in a meditative hour, and is not reminded of the flux of all things? Throw a stone into the stream, and the circles that propagate themselves are the beautiful type of all influence. Man is conscious of a universal soul within or behind his individual life, wherein, as in a firmament, the natures of Justice, Truth, Love, Freedom, arise and shine. This universal soul, he calls Reason: it is not mine, or thine, or his, but we are its; we are its property and men. And the blue sky in which the private earth is buried, the sky with its eternal calm, and full of everlasting orbs, is the type of Reason. That which, intellectually considered, we call Reason, considered in relation to nature, we call Spirit. Spirit is the Creator. Spirit hath life in itself. And man in all ages and countries, embodies it in his language, as the FATHER. It is easily seen that there is nothing lucky or capricious in these analogies, but that they are constant, and pervade nature. These are not the dreams of a few poets, here and there, but man is an analogist, and studies relations in all objects. He is placed in the centre of beings, and a ray of relation passes from every other being to him. And neither can man be understood without these objects, nor these objects without man. All the facts in natural history taken by themselves, have no value, but are barren, like a single sex. But marry it to human history, and it is full of life. Whole Floras, all Linnaeus' and Buffon's volumes, are dry catalogues of facts; but the most trivial of these facts, the habit of a plant, the organs, or work, or noise of an insect, applied to the illustration of a fact in intellectual philosophy, or, in any way associated to human nature, affects us in the most lively and agreeable manner. The seed of a plant,--to what affecting analogies in the nature of man, is that little fruit made use of, in all discourse, up to the voice of Paul, who calls the human corpse a seed,--"It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body." The motion of the earth round its axis, and round the sun, makes the day, and the year. These are certain amounts of brute light and heat. But is there no intent of an analogy between man's life and the seasons? And do the seasons gain no grandeur or pathos from that analogy? The instincts of the ant are very unimportant, considered as the ant's; but the moment a ray of relation is seen to extend from it to man, and the little drudge is seen to be a monitor, a little body with a mighty heart, then all its habits, even that said to be recently observed, that it never sleeps, become sublime. Because of this radical correspondence between visible things and human thoughts, savages, who have only what is necessary, converse in figures. As we go back in history, language becomes more picturesque, until its infancy, when it is all poetry; or all spiritual facts are represented by natural symbols. The same symbols are found to make the original elements of all languages. It has moreover been observed, that the idioms of all languages approach each other in passages of the greatest eloquence and power. And as this is the first language, so is it the last. This immediate dependence of language upon nature, this conversion of an outward phenomenon into a type of somewhat in human life, never loses its power to affect us. It is this which gives that piquancy to the conversation of a strong-natured farmer or back-woodsman, which all men relish. A man's power to connect his thought with its proper symbol, and so to utter it, depends on the simplicity of his character, that is, upon his love of truth, and his desire to communicate it without loss. The corruption of man is followed by the corruption of language. When simplicity of character and the sovereignty of ideas is broken up by the prevalence of secondary desires, the desire of riches, of pleasure, of power, and of praise,--and duplicity and falsehood take place of simplicity and truth, the power over nature as an interpreter of the will, is in a degree lost; new imagery ceases to be created, and old words are perverted to stand for things which are not; a paper currency is employed, when there is no bullion in the vaults. In due time, the fraud is manifest, and words lose all power to stimulate the understanding or the affections. Hundreds of writers may be found in every long-civilized nation, who for a short time believe, and make others believe, that they see and utter truths, who do not of themselves clothe one thought in its natural garment, but who feed unconsciously on the language created by the primary writers of the country, those, namely, who hold primarily on nature. But wise men pierce this rotten diction and fasten words again to visible things; so that picturesque language is at once a commanding certificate that he who employs it, is a man in alliance with truth and God. The moment our discourse rises above the ground line of familiar facts, and is inflamed with passion or exalted by thought, it clothes itself in images. A man conversing in earnest, if he watch his intellectual processes, will find that a material image, more or less luminous, arises in his mind, cotemporaneous with every thought, which furnishes the vestment of the thought. Hence, good writing and brilliant discourse are perpetual allegories. This imagery is spontaneous. It is the blending of experience with the present action of the mind. It is proper creation. It is the working of the Original Cause through the instruments he has already made. These facts may suggest the advantage which the country-life possesses for a powerful mind, over the artificial and curtailed life of cities. We know more from nature than we can at will communicate. Its light flows into the mind evermore, and we forget its presence. The poet, the orator, bred in the woods, whose senses have been nourished by their fair and appeasing changes, year after year, without design and without heed,--shall not lose their lesson altogether, in the roar of cities or the broil of politics. Long hereafter, amidst agitation and terror in national councils,--in the hour of revolution,--these solemn images shall reappear in their morning lustre, as fit symbols and words of the thoughts which the passing events shall awaken. At the call of a noble sentiment, again the woods wave, the pines murmur, the river rolls and shines, and the cattle low upon the mountains, as he saw and heard them in his infancy. And with these forms, the spells of persuasion, the keys of power are put into his hands. 3. We are thus assisted by natural objects in the expression of particular meanings. But how great a language to convey such pepper-corn informations! Did it need such noble races of creatures, this profusion of forms, this host of orbs in heaven, to furnish man with the dictionary and grammar of his municipal speech? Whilst we use this grand cipher to expedite the affairs of our pot and kettle, we feel that we have not yet put it to its use, neither are able. We are like travellers using the cinders of a volcano to roast their eggs. Whilst we see that it always stands ready to clothe what we would say, we cannot avoid the question, whether the characters are not significant of themselves. Have mountains, and waves, and skies, no significance but what we consciously give them, when we employ them as emblems of our thoughts? The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind. The laws of moral nature answer to those of matter as face to face in a glass. "The visible world and the relation of its parts, is the dial plate of the invisible." The axioms of physics translate the laws of ethics. Thus, "the whole is greater than its part;" "reaction is equal to action;" "the smallest weight may be made to lift the greatest, the difference of weight being compensated by time;" and many the like propositions, which have an ethical as well as physical sense. These propositions have a much more extensive and universal sense when applied to human life, than when confined to technical use. In like manner, the memorable words of history, and the proverbs of nations, consist usually of a natural fact, selected as a picture or parable of a moral truth. Thus; A rolling stone gathers no moss; A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush; A cripple in the right way, will beat a racer in the wrong; Make hay while the sun shines; 'T is hard to carry a full cup even; Vinegar is the son of wine; The last ounce broke the camel's back; Long-lived trees make roots first; --and the like. In their primary sense these are trivial facts, but we repeat them for the value of their analogical import. What is true of proverbs, is true of all fables, parables, and allegories. This relation between the mind and matter is not fancied by some poet, but stands in the will of God, and so is free to be known by all men. It appears to men, or it does not appear. When in fortunate hours we ponder this miracle, the wise man doubts, if, at all other times, he is not blind and deaf; --"Can these things be, And overcome us like a summer's cloud, Without our special wonder?" for the universe becomes transparent, and the light of higher laws than its own, shines through it. It is the standing problem which has exercised the wonder and the study of every fine genius since the world began; from the era of the Egyptians and the Brahmins, to that of Pythagoras, of Plato, of Bacon, of Leibnitz, of Swedenborg. There sits the Sphinx at the road-side, and from age to age, as each prophet comes by, he tries his fortune at reading her riddle. There seems to be a necessity in spirit to manifest itself in material forms; and day and night, river and storm, beast and bird, acid and alkali, preexist in necessary Ideas in the mind of God, and are what they are by virtue of preceding affections, in the world of spirit. A Fact is the end or last issue of spirit. The visible creation is the terminus or the circumference of the invisible world. "Material objects," said a French philosopher, "are necessarily kinds of _scoriae_ of the substantial thoughts of the Creator, which must always preserve an exact relation to their first origin; in other words, visible nature must have a spiritual and moral side." This doctrine is abstruse, and though the images of "garment," "scoriae," "mirror," &c., may stimulate the fancy, we must summon the aid of subtler and more vital expositors to make it plain. "Every scripture is to be interpreted by the same spirit which gave it forth," --is the fundamental law of criticism. A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and of virtue, will purge the eyes to understand her text. By degrees we may come to know the primitive sense of the permanent objects of nature, so that the world shall be to us an open book, and every form significant of its hidden life and final cause. A new interest surprises us, whilst, under the view now suggested, we contemplate the fearful extent and multitude of objects; since "every object rightly seen, unlocks a new faculty of the soul." That which was unconscious truth, becomes, when interpreted and defined in an object, a part of the domain of knowledge,--a new weapon in the magazine of power. CHAPTER V. DISCIPLINE. IN view of the significance of nature, we arrive at once at a new fact, that nature is a discipline. This use of the world includes the preceding uses, as parts of itself. Space, time, society, labor, climate, food, locomotion, the animals, the mechanical forces, give us sincerest lessons, day by day, whose meaning is unlimited. They educate both the Understanding and the Reason. Every property of matter is a school for the understanding, --its solidity or resistance, its inertia, its extension, its figure, its divisibility. The understanding adds, divides, combines, measures, and finds nutriment and room for its activity in this worthy scene. Meantime, Reason transfers all these lessons into its own world of thought, by perceiving the analogy that marries Matter and Mind. 1. Nature is a discipline of the understanding in intellectual truths. Our dealing with sensible objects is a constant exercise in the necessary lessons of difference, of likeness, of order, of being and seeming, of progressive arrangement; of ascent from particular to general; of combination to one end of manifold forces. Proportioned to the importance of the organ to be formed, is the extreme care with which its tuition is provided,--a care pretermitted in no single case. What tedious training, day after day, year after year, never ending, to form the common sense; what continual reproduction of annoyances, inconveniences, dilemmas; what rejoicing over us of little men; what disputing of prices, what reckonings of interest, --and all to form the Hand of the mind;--to instruct us that "good thoughts are no better than good dreams, unless they be executed!" The same good office is performed by Property and its filial systems of debt and credit. Debt, grinding debt, whose iron face the widow, the orphan, and the sons of genius fear and hate;--debt, which consumes so much time, which so cripples and disheartens a great spirit with cares that seem so base, is a preceptor whose lessons cannot be forgone, and is needed most by those who suffer from it most. Moreover, property, which has been well compared to snow, --"if it fall level to-day, it will be blown into drifts to-morrow,"--is the surface action of internal machinery, like the index on the face of a clock. Whilst now it is the gymnastics of the understanding, it is hiving in the foresight of the spirit, experience in profounder laws. The whole character and fortune of the individual are affected by the least inequalities in the culture of the understanding; for example, in the perception of differences. Therefore is Space, and therefore Time, that man may know that things are not huddled and lumped, but sundered and individual. A bell and a plough have each their use, and neither can do the office of the other. Water is good to drink, coal to burn, wool to wear; but wool cannot be drunk, nor water spun, nor coal eaten. The wise man shows his wisdom in separation, in gradation, and his scale of creatures and of merits is as wide as nature. The foolish have no range in their scale, but suppose every man is as every other man. What is not good they call the worst, and what is not hateful, they call the best. In like manner, what good heed, nature forms in us! She pardons no mistakes. Her yea is yea, and her nay, nay. The first steps in Agriculture, Astronomy, Zoölogy, (those first steps which the farmer, the hunter, and the sailor take,) teach that nature's dice are always loaded; that in her heaps and rubbish are concealed sure and useful results. How calmly and genially the mind apprehends one after another the laws of physics! What noble emotions dilate the mortal as he enters into the counsels of the creation, and feels by knowledge the privilege to BE! His insight refines him. The beauty of nature shines in his own breast. Man is greater that he can see this, and the universe less, because Time and Space relations vanish as laws are known. Here again we are impressed and even daunted by the immense Universe to be explored. "What we know, is a point to what we do not know." Open any recent journal of science, and weigh the problems suggested concerning Light, Heat, Electricity, Magnetism, Physiology, Geology, and judge whether the interest of natural science is likely to be soon exhausted. Passing by many particulars of the discipline of nature, we must not omit to specify two. The exercise of the Will or the lesson of power is taught in every event. From the child's successive possession of his several senses up to the hour when he saith, "Thy will be done!" he is learning the secret, that he can reduce under his will, not only particular events, but great classes, nay the whole series of events, and so conform all facts to his character. Nature is thoroughly mediate. It is made to serve. It receives the dominion of man as meekly as the ass on which the Saviour rode. It offers all its kingdoms to man as the raw material which he may mould into what is useful. Man is never weary of working it up. He forges the subtile and delicate air into wise and melodious words, and gives them wing as angels of persuasion and command. One after another, his victorious thought comes up with and reduces all things, until the world becomes, at last, only a realized will,--the double of the man. 2. Sensible objects conform to the premonitions of Reason and reflect the conscience. All things are moral; and in their boundless changes have an unceasing reference to spiritual nature. Therefore is nature glorious with form, color, and motion, that every globe in the remotest heaven; every chemical change from the rudest crystal up to the laws of life; every change of vegetation from the first principle of growth in the eye of a leaf, to the tropical forest and antediluvian coal-mine; every animal function from the sponge up to Hercules, shall hint or thunder to man the laws of right and wrong, and echo the Ten Commandments. Therefore is nature ever the ally of Religion: lends all her pomp and riches to the religious sentiment. Prophet and priest, David, Isaiah, Jesus, have drawn deeply from this source. This ethical character so penetrates the bone and marrow of nature, as to seem the end for which it was made. Whatever private purpose is answered by any member or part, this is its public and universal function, and is never omitted. Nothing in nature is exhausted in its first use. When a thing has served an end to the uttermost, it is wholly new for an ulterior service. In God, every end is converted into a new means. Thus the use of commodity, regarded by itself, is mean and squalid. But it is to the mind an education in the doctrine of Use, namely, that a thing is good only so far as it serves; that a conspiring of parts and efforts to the production of an end, is essential to any being. The first and gross manifestation of this truth, is our inevitable and hated training in values and wants, in corn and meat. It has already been illustrated, that every natural process is a version of a moral sentence. The moral law lies at the centre of nature and radiates to the circumference. It is the pith and marrow of every substance, every relation, and every process. All things with which we deal, preach to us. What is a farm but a mute gospel? The chaff and the wheat, weeds and plants, blight, rain, insects, sun,--it is a sacred emblem from the first furrow of spring to the last stack which the snow of winter overtakes in the fields. But the sailor, the shepherd, the miner, the merchant, in their several resorts, have each an experience precisely parallel, and leading to the same conclusion: because all organizations are radically alike. Nor can it be doubted that this moral sentiment which thus scents the air, grows in the grain, and impregnates the waters of the world, is caught by man and sinks into his soul. The moral influence of nature upon every individual is that amount of truth which it illustrates to him. Who can estimate this? Who can guess how much firmness the sea-beaten rock has taught the fisherman? how much tranquillity has been reflected to man from the azure sky, over whose unspotted deeps the winds forevermore drive flocks of stormy clouds, and leave no wrinkle or stain? how much industry and providence and affection we have caught from the pantomime of brutes? What a searching preacher of self-command is the varying phenomenon of Health! Herein is especially apprehended the unity of Nature,--the unity in variety,--which meets us everywhere. All the endless variety of things make an identical impression. Xenophanes complained in his old age, that, look where he would, all things hastened back to Unity. He was weary of seeing the same entity in the tedious variety of forms. The fable of Proteus has a cordial truth. A leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole. Each particle is a microcosm, and faithfully renders the likeness of the world. Not only resemblances exist in things whose analogy is obvious, as when we detect the type of the human hand in the flipper of the fossil saurus, but also in objects wherein there is great superficial unlikeness. Thus architecture is called "frozen music," by De Stael and Goethe. Vitruvius thought an architect should be a musician. "A Gothic church," said Coleridge, "is a petrified religion." Michael Angelo maintained, that, to an architect, a knowledge of anatomy is essential. In Haydn's oratorios, the notes present to the imagination not only motions, as, of the snake, the stag, and the elephant, but colors also; as the green grass. The law of harmonic sounds reappears in the harmonic colors. The granite is differenced in its laws only by the more or less of heat, from the river that wears it away. The river, as it flows, resembles the air that flows over it; the air resembles the light which traverses it with more subtile currents; the light resembles the heat which rides with it through Space. Each creature is only a modification of the other; the likeness in them is more than the difference, and their radical law is one and the same. A rule of one art, or a law of one organization, holds true throughout nature. So intimate is this Unity, that, it is easily seen, it lies under the undermost garment of nature, and betrays its source in Universal Spirit. For, it pervades Thought also. Every universal truth which we express in words, implies or supposes every other truth. _Omne verum vero consonat_. It is like a great circle on a sphere, comprising all possible circles; which, however, may be drawn, and comprise it, in like manner. Every such truth is the absolute Ens seen from one side. But it has innumerable sides. The central Unity is still more conspicuous in actions. Words are finite organs of the infinite mind. They cannot cover the dimensions of what is in truth. They break, chop, and impoverish it. An action is the perfection and publication of thought. A right action seems to fill the eye, and to be related to all nature. "The wise man, in doing one thing, does all; or, in the one thing he does rightly, he sees the likeness of all which is done rightly." Words and actions are not the attributes of brute nature. They introduce us to the human form, of which all other organizations appear to be degradations. When this appears among so many that surround it, the spirit prefers it to all others. It says, 'From such as this, have I drawn joy and knowledge; in such as this, have I found and beheld myself; I will speak to it; it can speak again; it can yield me thought already formed and alive.' In fact, the eye,--the mind,--is always accompanied by these forms, male and female; and these are incomparably the richest informations of the power and order that lie at the heart of things. Unfortunately, every one of them bears the marks as of some injury; is marred and superficially defective. Nevertheless, far different from the deaf and dumb nature around them, these all rest like fountain-pipes on the unfathomed sea of thought and virtue whereto they alone, of all organizations, are the entrances. It were a pleasant inquiry to follow into detail their ministry to our education, but where would it stop? We are associated in adolescent and adult life with some friends, who, like skies and waters, are coextensive with our idea; who, answering each to a certain affection of the soul, satisfy our desire on that side; whom we lack power to put at such focal distance from us, that we can mend or even analyze them. We cannot choose but love them. When much intercourse with a friend has supplied us with a standard of excellence, and has increased our respect for the resources of God who thus sends a real person to outgo our ideal; when he has, moreover, become an object of thought, and, whilst his character retains all its unconscious effect, is converted in the mind into solid and sweet wisdom,--it is a sign to us that his office is closing, and he is commonly withdrawn from our sight in a short time. CHAPTER VI. IDEALISM. THUS is the unspeakable but intelligible and practicable meaning of the world conveyed to man, the immortal pupil, in every object of sense. To this one end of Discipline, all parts of nature conspire. A noble doubt perpetually suggests itself, whether this end be not the Final Cause of the Universe; and whether nature outwardly exists. It is a sufficient account of that Appearance we call the World, that God will teach a human mind, and so makes it the receiver of a certain number of congruent sensations, which we call sun and moon, man and woman, house and trade. In my utter impotence to test the authenticity of the report of my senses, to know whether the impressions they make on me correspond with outlying objects, what difference does it make, whether Orion is up there in heaven, or some god paints the image in the firmament of the soul? The relations of parts and the end of the whole remaining the same, what is the difference, whether land and sea interact, and worlds revolve and intermingle without number or end,--deep yawning under deep, and galaxy balancing galaxy, throughout absolute space,--or, whether, without relations of time and space, the same appearances are inscribed in the constant faith of man? Whether nature enjoy a substantial existence without, or is only in the apocalypse of the mind, it is alike useful and alike venerable to me. Be it what it may, it is ideal to me, so long as I cannot try the accuracy of my senses. The frivolous make themselves merry with the Ideal theory, if its consequences were burlesque; as if it affected the stability of nature. It surely does not. God never jests with us, and will not compromise the end of nature, by permitting any inconsequence in its procession. Any distrust of the permanence of laws, would paralyze the faculties of man. Their permanence is sacredly respected, and his faith therein is perfect. The wheels and springs of man are all set to the hypothesis of the permanence of nature. We are not built like a ship to be tossed, but like a house to stand. It is a natural consequence of this structure, that, so long as the active powers predominate over the reflective, we resist with indignation any hint that nature is more short-lived or mutable than spirit. The broker, the wheelwright, the carpenter, the toll-man, are much displeased at the intimation. But whilst we acquiesce entirely in the permanence of natural laws, the question of the absolute existence of nature still remains open. It is the uniform effect of culture on the human mind, not to shake our faith in the stability of particular phenomena, as of heat, water, azote; but to lead us to regard nature as a phenomenon, not a substance; to attribute necessary existence to spirit; to esteem nature as an accident and an effect. To the senses and the unrenewed understanding, belongs a sort of instinctive belief in the absolute existence of nature. In their view, man and nature are indissolubly joined. Things are ultimates, and they never look beyond their sphere. The presence of Reason mars this faith. The first effort of thought tends to relax this despotism of the senses, which binds us to nature as if we were a part of it, and shows us nature aloof, and, as it were, afloat. Until this higher agency intervened, the animal eye sees, with wonderful accuracy, sharp outlines and colored surfaces. When the eye of Reason opens, to outline and surface are at once added, grace and expression. These proceed from imagination and affection, and abate somewhat of the angular distinctness of objects. If the Reason be stimulated to more earnest vision, outlines and surfaces become transparent, and are no longer seen; causes and spirits are seen through them. The best moments of life are these delicious awakenings of the higher powers, and the reverential withdrawing of nature before its God. Let us proceed to indicate the effects of culture. 1. Our first institution in the Ideal philosophy is a hint from nature herself. Nature is made to conspire with spirit to emancipate us. Certain mechanical changes, a small alteration in our local position apprizes us of a dualism. We are strangely affected by seeing the shore from a moving ship, from a balloon, or through the tints of an unusual sky. The least change in our point of view, gives the whole world a pictorial air. A man who seldom rides, needs only to get into a coach and traverse his own town, to turn the street into a puppet-show. The men, the women,--talking, running, bartering, fighting,--the earnest mechanic, the lounger, the beggar, the boys, the dogs, are unrealized at once, or, at least, wholly detached from all relation to the observer, and seen as apparent, not substantial beings. What new thoughts are suggested by seeing a face of country quite familiar, in the rapid movement of the rail-road car! Nay, the most wonted objects, (make a very slight change in the point of vision,) please us most. In a camera obscura, the butcher's cart, and the figure of one of our own family amuse us. So a portrait of a well-known face gratifies us. Turn the eyes upside down, by looking at the landscape through your legs, and how agreeable is the picture, though you have seen it any time these twenty years! In these cases, by mechanical means, is suggested the difference between the observer and the spectacle,--between man and nature. Hence arises a pleasure mixed with awe; I may say, a low degree of the sublime is felt from the fact, probably, that man is hereby apprized, that, whilst the world is a spectacle, something in himself is stable. 2. In a higher manner, the poet communicates the same pleasure. By a few strokes he delineates, as on air, the sun, the mountain, the camp, the city, the hero, the maiden, not different from what we know them, but only lifted from the ground and afloat before the eye. He unfixes the land and the sea, makes them revolve around the axis of his primary thought, and disposes them anew. Possessed himself by a heroic passion, he uses matter as symbols of it. The sensual man conforms thoughts to things; the poet conforms things to his thoughts. The one esteems nature as rooted and fast; the other, as fluid, and impresses his being thereon. To him, the refractory world is ductile and flexible; he invests dust and stones with humanity, and makes them the words of the Reason. The Imagination may be defined to be, the use which the Reason makes of the material world. Shakspeare possesses the power of subordinating nature for the purposes of expression, beyond all poets. His imperial muse tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to hand, and uses it to embody any caprice of thought that is upper-most in his mind. The remotest spaces of nature are visited, and the farthest sundered things are brought together, by a subtle spiritual connection. We are made aware that magnitude of material things is relative, and all objects shrink and expand to serve the passion of the poet. Thus, in his sonnets, the lays of birds, the scents and dyes of flowers, he finds to be the _shadow_ of his beloved; time, which keeps her from him, is his _chest_; the suspicion she has awakened, is her _ornament_; The ornament of beauty is Suspect, A crow which flies in heaven's sweetest air. His passion is not the fruit of chance; it swells, as he speaks, to a city, or a state. No, it was builded far from accident; It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls Under the brow of thralling discontent; It fears not policy, that heretic, That works on leases of short numbered hours, But all alone stands hugely politic. In the strength of his constancy, the Pyramids seem to him recent and transitory. The freshness of youth and love dazzles him with its resemblance to morning. Take those lips away Which so sweetly were forsworn; And those eyes,--the break of day, Lights that do mislead the morn. The wild beauty of this hyperbole, I may say, in passing, it would not be easy to match in literature. This transfiguration which all material objects undergo through the passion of the poet,--this power which he exerts to dwarf the great, to magnify the small,--might be illustrated by a thousand examples from his Plays. I have before me the Tempest, and will cite only these few lines. ARIEL. The strong based promontory Have I made shake, and by the spurs plucked up The pine and cedar. Prospero calls for music to soothe the frantic Alonzo, and his companions; A solemn air, and the best comforter To an unsettled fancy, cure thy brains Now useless, boiled within thy skull. Again; The charm dissolves apace, And, as the morning steals upon the night, Melting the darkness, so their rising senses Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle Their clearer reason. Their understanding Begins to swell: and the approaching tide Will shortly fill the reasonable shores That now lie foul and muddy. The perception of real affinities between events, (that is to say, of _ideal_ affinities, for those only are real,) enables the poet thus to make free with the most imposing forms and phenomena of the world, and to assert the predominance of the soul. 3. Whilst thus the poet animates nature with his own thoughts, he differs from the philosopher only herein, that the one proposes Beauty as his main end; the other Truth. But the philosopher, not less than the poet, postpones the apparent order and relations of things to the empire of thought. "The problem of philosophy," according to Plato, "is, for all that exists conditionally, to find a ground unconditioned and absolute." It proceeds on the faith that a law determines all phenomena, which being known, the phenomena can be predicted. That law, when in the mind, is an idea. Its beauty is infinite. The true philosopher and the true poet are one, and a beauty, which is truth, and a truth, which is beauty, is the aim of both. Is not the charm of one of Plato's or Aristotle's definitions, strictly like that of the Antigone of Sophocles? It is, in both cases, that a spiritual life has been imparted to nature; that the solid seeming block of matter has been pervaded and dissolved by a thought; that this feeble human being has penetrated the vast masses of nature with an informing soul, and recognised itself in their harmony, that is, seized their law. In physics, when this is attained, the memory disburthens itself of its cumbrous catalogues of particulars, and carries centuries of observation in a single formula. Thus even in physics, the material is degraded before the spiritual. The astronomer, the geometer, rely on their irrefragable analysis, and disdain the results of observation. The sublime remark of Euler on his law of arches, "This will be found contrary to all experience, yet is true;" had already transferred nature into the mind, and left matter like an outcast corpse. 4. Intellectual science has been observed to beget invariably a doubt of the existence of matter. Turgot said, "He that has never doubted the existence of matter, may be assured he has no aptitude for metaphysical inquiries." It fastens the attention upon immortal necessary uncreated natures, that is, upon Ideas; and in their presence, we feel that the outward circumstance is a dream and a shade. Whilst we wait in this Olympus of gods, we think of nature as an appendix to the soul. We ascend into their region, and know that these are the thoughts of the Supreme Being. "These are they who were set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When he prepared the heavens, they were there; when he established the clouds above, when he strengthened the fountains of the deep. Then they were by him, as one brought up with him. Of them took he counsel." Their influence is proportionate. As objects of science, they are accessible to few men. Yet all men are capable of being raised by piety or by passion, into their region. And no man touches these divine natures, without becoming, in some degree, himself divine. Like a new soul, they renew the body. We become physically nimble and lightsome; we tread on air; life is no longer irksome, and we think it will never be so. No man fears age or misfortune or death, in their serene company, for he is transported out of the district of change. Whilst we behold unveiled the nature of Justice and Truth, we learn the difference between the absolute and the conditional or relative. We apprehend the absolute. As it were, for the first time, _we exist_. We become immortal, for we learn that time and space are relations of matter; that, with a perception of truth, or a virtuous will, they have no affinity. 5. Finally, religion and ethics, which may be fitly called,--the practice of ideas, or the introduction of ideas into life,--have an analogous effect with all lower culture, in degrading nature and suggesting its dependence on spirit. Ethics and religion differ herein; that the one is the system of human duties commencing from man; the other, from God. Religion includes the personality of God; Ethics does not. They are one to our present design. They both put nature under foot. The first and last lesson of religion is, "The things that are seen, are temporal; the things that are unseen, are eternal." It puts an affront upon nature. It does that for the unschooled, which philosophy does for Berkeley and Viasa. The uniform language that may be heard in the churches of the most ignorant sects, is, --"Contemn the unsubstantial shows of the world; they are vanities, dreams, shadows, unrealities; seek the realities of religion." The devotee flouts nature. Some theosophists have arrived at a certain hostility and indignation towards matter, as the Manichean and Plotinus. They distrusted in themselves any looking back to these flesh-pots of Egypt. Plotinus was ashamed of his body. In short, they might all say of matter, what Michael Angelo said of external beauty, "it is the frail and weary weed, in which God dresses the soul, which he has called into time." It appears that motion, poetry, physical and intellectual science, and religion, all tend to affect our convictions of the reality of the external world. But I own there is something ungrateful in expanding too curiously the particulars of the general proposition, that all culture tends to imbue us with idealism. I have no hostility to nature, but a child's love to it. I expand and live in the warm day like corn and melons. Let us speak her fair. I do not wish to fling stones at my beautiful mother, nor soil my gentle nest. I only wish to indicate the true position of nature in regard to man, wherein to establish man, all right education tends; as the ground which to attain is the object of human life, that is, of man's connection with nature. Culture inverts the vulgar views of nature, and brings the mind to call that apparent, which it uses to call real, and that real, which it uses to call visionary. Children, it is true, believe in the external world. The belief that it appears only, is an afterthought, but with culture, this faith will as surely arise on the mind as did the first. The advantage of the ideal theory over the popular faith, is this, that it presents the world in precisely that view which is most desirable to the mind. It is, in fact, the view which Reason, both speculative and practical, that is, philosophy and virtue, take. For, seen in the light of thought, the world always is phenomenal; and virtue subordinates it to the mind. Idealism sees the world in God. It beholds the whole circle of persons and things, of actions and events, of country and religion, not as painfully accumulated, atom after atom, act after act, in an aged creeping Past, but as one vast picture, which God paints on the instant eternity, for the contemplation of the soul. Therefore the soul holds itself off from a too trivial and microscopic study of the universal tablet. It respects the end too much, to immerse itself in the means. It sees something more important in Christianity, than the scandals of ecclesiastical history, or the niceties of criticism; and, very incurious concerning persons or miracles, and not at all disturbed by chasms of historical evidence, it accepts from God the phenomenon, as it finds it, as the pure and awful form of religion in the world. It is not hot and passionate at the appearance of what it calls its own good or bad fortune, at the union or opposition of other persons. No man is its enemy. It accepts whatsoever befalls, as part of its lesson. It is a watcher more than a doer, and it is a doer, only that it may the better watch. CHAPTER VII. SPIRIT. IT is essential to a true theory of nature and of man, that it should contain somewhat progressive. Uses that are exhausted or that may be, and facts that end in the statement, cannot be all that is true of this brave lodging wherein man is harbored, and wherein all his faculties find appropriate and endless exercise. And all the uses of nature admit of being summed in one, which yields the activity of man an infinite scope. Through all its kingdoms, to the suburbs and outskirts of things, it is faithful to the cause whence it had its origin. It always speaks of Spirit. It suggests the absolute. It is a perpetual effect. It is a great shadow pointing always to the sun behind us. The aspect of nature is devout. Like the figure of Jesus, she stands with bended head, and hands folded upon the breast. The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship. Of that ineffable essence which we call Spirit, he that thinks most, will say least. We can foresee God in the coarse, and, as it were, distant phenomena of matter; but when we try to define and describe himself, both language and thought desert us, and we are as helpless as fools and savages. That essence refuses to be recorded in propositions, but when man has worshipped him intellectually, the noblest ministry of nature is to stand as the apparition of God. It is the organ through which the universal spirit speaks to the individual, and strives to lead back the individual to it. When we consider Spirit, we see that the views already presented do not include the whole circumference of man. We must add some related thoughts. Three problems are put by nature to the mind; What is matter? Whence is it? and Whereto? The first of these questions only, the ideal theory answers. Idealism saith: matter is a phenomenon, not a substance. Idealism acquaints us with the total disparity between the evidence of our own being, and the evidence of the world's being. The one is perfect; the other, incapable of any assurance; the mind is a part of the nature of things; the world is a divine dream, from which we may presently awake to the glories and certainties of day. Idealism is a hypothesis to account for nature by other principles than those of carpentry and chemistry. Yet, if it only deny the existence of matter, it does not satisfy the demands of the spirit. It leaves God out of me. It leaves me in the splendid labyrinth of my perceptions, to wander without end. Then the heart resists it, because it balks the affections in denying substantive being to men and women. Nature is so pervaded with human life, that there is something of humanity in all, and in every particular. But this theory makes nature foreign to me, and does not account for that consanguinity which we acknowledge to it. Let it stand, then, in the present state of our knowledge, merely as a useful introductory hypothesis, serving to apprize us of the eternal distinction between the soul and the world. But when, following the invisible steps of thought, we come to inquire, Whence is matter? and Whereto? many truths arise to us out of the recesses of consciousness. We learn that the highest is present to the soul of man, that the dread universal essence, which is not wisdom, or love, or beauty, or power, but all in one, and each entirely, is that for which all things exist, and that by which they are; that spirit creates; that behind nature, throughout nature, spirit is present; one and not compound, it does not act upon us from without, that is, in space and time, but spiritually, or through ourselves: therefore, that spirit, that is, the Supreme Being, does not build up nature around us, but puts it forth through us, as the life of the tree puts forth new branches and leaves through the pores of the old. As a plant upon the earth, so a man rests upon the bosom of God; he is nourished by unfailing fountains, and draws, at his need, inexhaustible power. Who can set bounds to the possibilities of man? Once inhale the upper air, being admitted to behold the absolute natures of justice and truth, and we learn that man has access to the entire mind of the Creator, is himself the creator in the finite. This view, which admonishes me where the sources of wisdom and power lie, and points to virtue as to "The golden key Which opes the palace of eternity," carries upon its face the highest certificate of truth, because it animates me to create my own world through the purification of my soul. The world proceeds from the same spirit as the body of man. It is a remoter and inferior incarnation of God, a projection of God in the unconscious. But it differs from the body in one important respect. It is not, like that, now subjected to the human will. Its serene order is inviolable by us. It is, therefore, to us, the present expositor of the divine mind. It is a fixed point whereby we may measure our departure. As we degenerate, the contrast between us and our house is more evident. We are as much strangers in nature, as we are aliens from God. We do not understand the notes of birds. The fox and the deer run away from us; the bear and tiger rend us. We do not know the uses of more than a few plants, as corn and the apple, the potato and the vine. Is not the landscape, every glimpse of which hath a grandeur, a face of him? Yet this may show us what discord is between man and nature, for you cannot freely admire a noble landscape, if laborers are digging in the field hard by. The poet finds something ridiculous in his delight, until he is out of the sight of men. CHAPTER VIII. PROSPECTS. IN inquiries respecting the laws of the world and the frame of things, the highest reason is always the truest. That which seems faintly possible--it is so refined, is often faint and dim because it is deepest seated in the mind among the eternal verities. Empirical science is apt to cloud the sight, and, by the very knowledge of functions and processes, to bereave the student of the manly contemplation of the whole. The savant becomes unpoetic. But the best read naturalist who lends an entire and devout attention to truth, will see that there remains much to learn of his relation to the world, and that it is not to be learned by any addition or subtraction or other comparison of known quantities, but is arrived at by untaught sallies of the spirit, by a continual self-recovery, and by entire humility. He will perceive that there are far more excellent qualities in the student than preciseness and infallibility; that a guess is often more fruitful than an indisputable affirmation, and that a dream may let us deeper into the secret of nature than a hundred concerted experiments. For, the problems to be solved are precisely those which the physiologist and the naturalist omit to state. It is not so pertinent to man to know all the individuals of the animal kingdom, as it is to know whence and whereto is this tyrannizing unity in his constitution, which evermore separates and classifies things, endeavoring to reduce the most diverse to one form. When I behold a rich landscape, it is less to my purpose to recite correctly the order and superposition of the strata, than to know why all thought of multitude is lost in a tranquil sense of unity. I cannot greatly honor minuteness in details, so long as there is no hint to explain the relation between things and thoughts; no ray upon the _metaphysics_ of conchology, of botany, of the arts, to show the relation of the forms of flowers, shells, animals, architecture, to the mind, and build science upon ideas. In a cabinet of natural history, we become sensible of a certain occult recognition and sympathy in regard to the most unwieldly and eccentric forms of beast, fish, and insect. The American who has been confined, in his own country, to the sight of buildings designed after foreign models, is surprised on entering York Minster or St. Peter's at Rome, by the feeling that these structures are imitations also,--faint copies of an invisible archetype. Nor has science sufficient humanity, so long as the naturalist overlooks that wonderful congruity which subsists between man and the world; of which he is lord, not because he is the most subtile inhabitant, but because he is its head and heart, and finds something of himself in every great and small thing, in every mountain stratum, in every new law of color, fact of astronomy, or atmospheric influence which observation or analysis lay open. A perception of this mystery inspires the muse of George Herbert, the beautiful psalmist of the seventeenth century. The following lines are part of his little poem on Man. "Man is all symmetry, Full of proportions, one limb to another, And to all the world besides. Each part may call the farthest, brother; For head with foot hath private amity, And both with moons and tides. "Nothing hath got so far But man hath caught and kept it as his prey; His eyes dismount the highest star; He is in little all the sphere. Herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they Find their acquaintance there. "For us, the winds do blow, The earth doth rest, heaven move, and fountains flow; Nothing we see, but means our good, As our delight, or as our treasure; The whole is either our cupboard of food, Or cabinet of pleasure. "The stars have us to bed: Night draws the curtain; which the sun withdraws. Music and light attend our head. All things unto our flesh are kind, In their descent and being; to our mind, In their ascent and cause. "More servants wait on man Than he'll take notice of. In every path, He treads down that which doth befriend him When sickness makes him pale and wan. Oh mighty love! Man is one world, and hath Another to attend him." The perception of this class of truths makes the attraction which draws men to science, but the end is lost sight of in attention to the means. In view of this half-sight of science, we accept the sentence of Plato, that, "poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history." Every surmise and vaticination of the mind is entitled to a certain respect, and we learn to prefer imperfect theories, and sentences, which contain glimpses of truth, to digested systems which have no one valuable suggestion. A wise writer will feel that the ends of study and composition are best answered by announcing undiscovered regions of thought, and so communicating, through hope, new activity to the torpid spirit. I shall therefore conclude this essay with some traditions of man and nature, which a certain poet sang to me; and which, as they have always been in the world, and perhaps reappear to every bard, may be both history and prophecy. 'The foundations of man are not in matter, but in spirit. But the element of spirit is eternity. To it, therefore, the longest series of events, the oldest chronologies are young and recent. In the cycle of the universal man, from whom the known individuals proceed, centuries are points, and all history is but the epoch of one degradation. 'We distrust and deny inwardly our sympathy with nature. We own and disown our relation to it, by turns. We are, like Nebuchadnezzar, dethroned, bereft of reason, and eating grass like an ox. But who can set limits to the remedial force of spirit? 'A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams. Now, the world would be insane and rabid, if these disorganizations should last for hundreds of years. It is kept in check by death and infancy. Infancy is the perpetual Messiah, which comes into the arms of fallen men, and pleads with them to return to paradise. 'Man is the dwarf of himself. Once he was permeated and dissolved by spirit. He filled nature with his overflowing currents. Out from him sprang the sun and moon; from man, the sun; from woman, the moon. The laws of his mind, the periods of his actions externized themselves into day and night, into the year and the seasons. But, having made for himself this huge shell, his waters retired; he no longer fills the veins and veinlets; he is shrunk to a drop. He sees, that the structure still fits him, but fits him colossally. Say, rather, once it fitted him, now it corresponds to him from far and on high. He adores timidly his own work. Now is man the follower of the sun, and woman the follower of the moon. Yet sometimes he starts in his slumber, and wonders at himself and his house, and muses strangely at the resemblance betwixt him and it. He perceives that if his law is still paramount, if still he have elemental power, if his word is sterling yet in nature, it is not conscious power, it is not inferior but superior to his will. It is Instinct.' Thus my Orphic poet sang. At present, man applies to nature but half his force. He works on the world with his understanding alone. He lives in it, and masters it by a penny-wisdom; and he that works most in it, is but a half-man, and whilst his arms are strong and his digestion good, his mind is imbruted, and he is a selfish savage. His relation to nature, his power over it, is through the understanding; as by manure; the economic use of fire, wind, water, and the mariner's needle; steam, coal, chemical agriculture; the repairs of the human body by the dentist and the surgeon. This is such a resumption of power, as if a banished king should buy his territories inch by inch, instead of vaulting at once into his throne. Meantime, in the thick darkness, there are not wanting gleams of a better light,--occasional examples of the action of man upon nature with his entire force,--with reason as well as understanding. Such examples are; the traditions of miracles in the earliest antiquity of all nations; the history of Jesus Christ; the achievements of a principle, as in religious and political revolutions, and in the abolition of the Slave-trade; the miracles of enthusiasm, as those reported of Swedenborg, Hohenlohe, and the Shakers; many obscure and yet contested facts, now arranged under the name of Animal Magnetism; prayer; eloquence; self-healing; and the wisdom of children. These are examples of Reason's momentary grasp of the sceptre; the exertions of a power which exists not in time or space, but an instantaneous in-streaming causing power. The difference between the actual and the ideal force of man is happily figured by the schoolmen, in saying, that the knowledge of man is an evening knowledge, _vespertina cognitio_, but that of God is a morning knowledge, _matutina cognitio_. The problem of restoring to the world original and eternal beauty, is solved by the redemption of the soul. The ruin or the blank, that we see when we look at nature, is in our own eye. The axis of vision is not coincident with the axis of things, and so they appear not transparent but opake. The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself. He cannot be a naturalist, until he satisfies all the demands of the spirit. Love is as much its demand, as perception. Indeed, neither can be perfect without the other. In the uttermost meaning of the words, thought is devout, and devotion is thought. Deep calls unto deep. But in actual life, the marriage is not celebrated. There are innocent men who worship God after the tradition of their fathers, but their sense of duty has not yet extended to the use of all their faculties. And there are patient naturalists, but they freeze their subject under the wintry light of the understanding. Is not prayer also a study of truth,--a sally of the soul into the unfound infinite? No man ever prayed heartily, without learning something. But when a faithful thinker, resolute to detach every object from personal relations, and see it in the light of thought, shall, at the same time, kindle science with the fire of the holiest affections, then will God go forth anew into the creation. It will not need, when the mind is prepared for study, to search for objects. The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common. What is a day? What is a year? What is summer? What is woman? What is a child? What is sleep? To our blindness, these things seem unaffecting. We make fables to hide the baldness of the fact and conform it, as we say, to the higher law of the mind. But when the fact is seen under the light of an idea, the gaudy fable fades and shrivels. We behold the real higher law. To the wise, therefore, a fact is true poetry, and the most beautiful of fables. These wonders are brought to our own door. You also are a man. Man and woman, and their social life, poverty, labor, sleep, fear, fortune, are known to you. Learn that none of these things is superficial, but that each phenomenon has its roots in the faculties and affections of the mind. Whilst the abstract question occupies your intellect, nature brings it in the concrete to be solved by your hands. It were a wise inquiry for the closet, to compare, point by point, especially at remarkable crises in life, our daily history, with the rise and progress of ideas in the mind. So shall we come to look at the world with new eyes. It shall answer the endless inquiry of the intellect,--What is truth? and of the affections,--What is good? by yielding itself passive to the educated Will. Then shall come to pass what my poet said; 'Nature is not fixed but fluid. Spirit alters, moulds, makes it. The immobility or bruteness of nature, is the absence of spirit; to pure spirit, it is fluid, it is volatile, it is obedient. Every spirit builds itself a house; and beyond its house a world; and beyond its world, a heaven. Know then, that the world exists for you. For you is the phenomenon perfect. What we are, that only can we see. All that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have and can do. Adam called his house, heaven and earth; Caesar called his house, Rome; you perhaps call yours, a cobler's trade; a hundred acres of ploughed land; or a scholar's garret. Yet line for line and point for point, your dominion is as great as theirs, though without fine names. Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit. So fast will disagreeable appearances, swine, spiders, snakes, pests, madhouses, prisons, enemies, vanish; they are temporary and shall be no more seen. The sordor and filths of nature, the sun shall dry up, and the wind exhale. As when the summer comes from the south; the snow-banks melt, and the face of the earth becomes green before it, so shall the advancing spirit create its ornaments along its path, and carry with it the beauty it visits, and the song which enchants it; it shall draw beautiful faces, warm hearts, wise discourse, and heroic acts, around its way, until evil is no more seen. The kingdom of man over nature, which cometh not with observation,--a dominion such as now is beyond his dream of God,--he shall enter without more wonder than the blind man feels who is gradually restored to perfect sight.' 
30800	----	NATURE MYTHS AND STORIES FOR LITTLE CHILDREN by FLORA J. COOKE Chicago. _A. Flanagan, Publisher._ NATURE MYTHS AND STORIES FOR LITTLE CHILDREN BY FLORA J. COOKE of the Cook County Normal School Chicago REVISED EDITION CHICAGO A. FLANAGAN, PUBLISHER. COPYRIGHT 1895 BY FLORA J. COOKE. PREFACE. Feeling the great need of stories founded upon good literature, which are within the comprehension of little children, I have written the following stories, hoping that they may suggest to primary teachers the great wealth of material within our reach. Many teachers, who firmly believe that reading should be something more than mere _word-getting_ while the child's _reading habit_ is forming, are practically helpless without the use of a printing press. We will all agree that myths and fables are usually beautiful truths clothed in fancy, and the dress is almost always simple and transparent. Who can study these myths and not feel that nature has a new language for him, and that though the tales may be thousands of years old, they are quite as true as they were in the days of Homer. If the trees and the flowers, the clouds and the wind, all tell wonderful stories to the child he has sources of happiness of which no power can deprive him. And when we consider that here, too, is the key which unlocks so much of the best in art and literature, we feel that we cannot rank too highly the importance of the myth in the primary schoolroom. For instance the child has been observing, reading, and writing about the sun, the moon, the direction of the wind, the trees, the flowers, or the forces that are acting around him. He has had the songs, poems, and pictures connected with these lessons to further enhance his thought, interest, and observation. He is now given a beautiful myth. He is not expected to interpret it. It is presented for the same purpose that a good picture is placed before him. He feels its beauty, but does not analyze it. If, through his observation or something in his experience, he _does see a meaning_ in the story he has entered a new world of life and beauty. Then comes the question to every thoughtful teacher, "Can the repetition of words necessary to the growth of the child's vocabulary be obtained in this way?" This may be accomplished if the teacher in planning her year's work, sees a close relation between the science, literature, and number work, so that the same words are always recurring, and the interest in each line of work is constant and ever increasing. The following stories are suggested in the standard books of mythology and poetry, and have been tested and found to be very helpful in the first and third grades. A full list of myths, history stories and fairy tales for the children in the different grades can be found in Emily J. Rice's Course of Study in History and Literature, which can be obtained of A. Flanagan, No. 262 Wabash avenue, Chicago. [Illustration] CONTENTS. ANIMAL STORIES:-- Donkey and the Salt } 59 Fox and the Stork } _Adapted from Æesop_ 91 Grateful Foxes 43 _Adapted from Edwin Arnold's Poem. Permission of Chas. Scribners' Sons._ How the Spark of Fire Was Saved 79 _Adapted from John Vance Cheney's Poem._ How the Chipmunk Got the Stripes on Its Back 89 _Adapted from Edwin Arnold's Poem._ An Indian Story of the Mole 77 BIRD STORIES:-- An Indian Story of the Robin 26 _Adapted from Whittier's Poem, "How the Robin Came."_ How the Robin's Breast Became Red 24 The Red-headed Woodpecker 29 _Adapted from Phoebe Cary's Poem._ CLOUD STORIES:-- Palace of Alkinoös 36 _Adapted from the Odyssey._ Swan Maidens 54 FLOWER STORIES:-- Clytie 9 Golden-rod and Aster 13 INSECT STORIES:-- Arachne 19 Aurora and Tithonus 22 King Solomon and the Ants 18 _Adapted from Whittier's Poem._ King Solomon and the Bee 16 _Adapted from Saxe's Poem._ MINERALOGY STORIES:-- Sisyphus 33 The Story of the Pudding Stone 31 SUN MYTHS:-- Balder 83 Persephone 48 _Adapted from "Story of Persephone," told by Helen Ericson, class of 1895, Cook County, (Ill.), Normal School._ Phaethon 39 TREE STORIES:-- Daphne 74 Fairy Story 66 Philemon and Baucis 71 Poplar Tree 56 The Secret of Fire 61 MISCELLANEOUS STORIES:-- Hermes 97 Iris' Bridge 101 Prometheus 92 CLYTIE. Clytie was a beautiful little water nymph who lived in a cave at the bottom of the sea. The walls of the cave were covered with pearls and shells. The floor was made of sand as white as snow. There were many chairs of amber with soft mossy cushions. On each side of the cave-opening was a great forest of coral. Back of the cave were Clytie's gardens. Here were the sea anemones, starfish and all kinds of seaweed. In the garden grotto were her horses. These were the gentlest goldfish and turtles. The ocean fairies loved Clytie and wove her dresses of softest green sea lace. With all these treasures Clytie should have been happy, but she was not. She had once heard a mermaid sing of a glorious light which shone on the top of the water. She could think of nothing else, but longed day and night to know more of the wonderful light. No ocean fairy dared take her to it, and she was afraid to go alone. One day she was taking her usual ride in her shell carriage. The water was warm and the turtles went so slowly that Clytie soon fell asleep. On and on they went, straight towards the light, until they came to an island. [Illustration] As the waves dashed the carriage against the shore Clytie awoke. She climbed out of the shell and sat down upon a large rock. She had never seen the trees and flowers. She had never heard the birds chirping or the forest winds sighing. She had never known the perfume of the flowers or seen the dew on the grass. In wonder, she saw a little boy and girl near her and heard them say, "Here it comes! Here it comes!" As she looked away in the east she saw the glorious light that she had so longed for. In its midst, in a golden chariot, sat a wonderful king. The king smiled and instantly the birds began to sing, the plants unfolded their buds, and even the old sea looked happy. Clytie sat on the rock all day long and wished that she might be like the great kind king. She wept when he entered the land of the sunset and she could see him no longer. She went home, but she could scarcely wait until the morning. Very early the next day her swiftest goldfish carried her to the rock. After this, she came every day, wishing more and more to be like the great kind king. One evening as she was ready to go home, she found that she could not move her feet. She leaned out over the sea and knew that she had her wish. Instead of a water nymph a beautiful sunflower looked back at her from the water. Her yellow hair had become golden petals, her green lace dress had turned into leaves and stems, and her little feet had become roots which fastened her to the ground. The good king the next day sent her into many countries, into dry and sandy places, that the people might be made happy by looking at her bright face, so like his own. [Illustration] GOLDEN-ROD AND ASTER. Golden Hair and Blue Eyes lived at the foot of a great hill. On the top of this hill in a little hut lived a strange, wise woman. It was said that she could change people into anything she wished. She looked so grim and severe that people were afraid to go near her. One summer day the two little girls at the foot of the hill thought they would like to do something to make everybody happy. [Illustration] "I know," said Golden Hair, "Let us go and ask the woman on the hill about it. She is very wise and can surely tell us just what to do." "Oh, yes," said Blue Eyes, and away they started at once. It was a warm day and a long walk to the top of the hill. The little girls stopped many times to rest under the oak trees which shaded their pathway. They could find no flowers, but they made a basket of oak leaves and filled it with berries for the wise woman. They fed the fish in the brook and talked to the squirrels and the birds. They walked on and on in the rocky path. After a while the sun went down. The birds stopped singing. The squirrels went to bed. The trees fell asleep. Even the wind was resting. Oh, how still and cool it was on the hillside! The moon and stars came out. The frogs and toads awoke. The night music began. The beetles and fireflies flew away to a party. But the tired little children climbed on towards the hilltop. At last they reached it. There at the gate was the strange, old woman, looking even more stern than usual. The little girls were frightened. They clung close together while brave Golden Hair said, "we know you are wise and we came to see if you would tell us how to make everyone happy." "Please let us stay together," said timid Blue Eyes. As she opened the gate for the children, the wise woman was seen to smile in the moonlight. The two little girls were never seen again at the foot of the hill. The next morning all over the hillside people saw beautiful, waving golden-rod and purple asters growing. It has been said that these two bright flowers, which grow side by side, could tell the secret, if they would, of what became of the two little girls on that moonlight summer night. [Illustration] THE WISE KING AND THE BEE. Long ago there lived in the East the greatest king in the world. It was believed that no one could ask him a question which he could not answer. Wise men came from far and near, but they were never able to puzzle King Solomon. He knew all the trees and plants. He understood the beasts, fowls and creeping things almost as well as he did people. The fame of his knowledge spread into all lands. In the south, the great Queen of Sheba heard of the wonderful wisdom of Solomon and said, "I shall test his power for myself." She picked some clover blossoms from the field and bade a great artist make for her, in wax, flowers, buds and leaves exactly like them. She was much pleased when they were finished, for she herself could see no difference in the two bunches. She carried them to the king and said, "Choose, Oh wise king, which are the real flowers?" At first King Solomon was puzzled, but soon he saw a bee buzzing at the window. "Ah," said he, "here is one come to help me in my choice. Throw open the window for my friend." Then the Queen of Sheba bowed her head and said: "You are indeed a wise king, but I begin to understand your wisdom. I thank you for this lesson." [Illustration] KING SOLOMON AND THE ANTS. One morning the Queen of Sheba started back to her home in the south. King Solomon and all his court went with her to the gates of the city. It was a glorious sight. The king and queen rode upon white horses. The purple and scarlet coverings of their followers glittered with silver and gold. The king looked down and saw an ant hill in the path before them. "See yonder little people," he said, "do you hear what they are saying as they run about so wildly? "They say, 'Here comes the king, men call wise, and good and great. 'He will trample us under his cruel feet.'" "They should be proud to die under the feet of such a king," said the queen. "How dare they complain?" "Not so, Great Queen," replied the king. He turned his horse aside and all his followers did the same. When the great company had passed there was the ant hill unharmed in the path. The Queen said, "Happy indeed, must be your people, wise king. I shall remember the lesson. "He only is noble and great who cares for the helpless and weak." ARACHNE. Arachne was a beautiful maiden and the most wonderful weaver that ever lived. Her father was famed throughout the land for his great skill in coloring. He dyed Arachne's wools in all the colors of the rainbow. People came from miles around to see and admire her work. They all agreed that Queen Athena must have been her teacher. Arachne proudly said that she had never been taught to weave. She said that she would be glad to weave with Athena to see which had the greater skill. In vain her father told her that perhaps Athena, unseen, guided her hand. Arachne would not listen and would thank no one for her gift, believing only in herself. One day as she was boasting of her skill an old woman came to her. She kindly advised her to accept her rare gift humbly. "Be thankful that you are so fortunate, Arachne," said she. "You may give great happiness to others by your beautiful work. "Queen Athena longs to help you. "But I warn you. She can do no more for you until you grow unselfish and kind." Arachne scorned this advice and said again that nothing would please her so much as to weave with Athena. "If I fail," she said, "I will gladly take the punishment, but Athena is afraid to weave with me." Then the old woman threw aside her cloak and said, "Athena is here. "Come, foolish girl, you shall try your skill with hers." Both went quickly to work and for hours their shuttles flew swiftly in and out. Athena, as usual, used the sky for her loom and in it she wove a picture too beautiful to describe. If you wish to know more about it look at the western sky when the sun is setting. Arachne's work, though her colors were in harmony and her weaving wonderfully fine, was full of spite and selfishness. When the work was finished Arachne lifted her eyes to Athena's work. Instantly she knew that she had failed. Ashamed and miserable she tried to hang herself in her web. Athena saw her and said in pity, "No, you shall not die; live and do the work for which you are best fitted. "You shall be the mother of a great race which shall be called spiders. "You and your children shall be among the greatest spinners and weavers on earth." As she spoke, Arachne became smaller and smaller until she was scarcely larger than a fly. [Illustration] From that day to this Arachne and her family have been faithful spinners, but they do their work so quietly and in such dark places, that very few people know what marvelous weavers they are. AURORA AND TITHONUS. The beautiful youth, Tithonus, loved Aurora, the queen of the dawn. He was the first one to greet her each day as she drew back the purple curtains of the east. He made his bed on the green grass in the meadow that he might not miss her coming. Aurora grew to expect his welcome and to love the youth dearly. One morning when she came Tithonus was not in his usual place. As she looked anxiously around she saw him with pale face and closed eyes lying upon the ground. She darted down to earth and carried his almost lifeless body to Zeus. She begged the great king to promise that Tithonus should never die. But alas, in her haste, she forgot to ask that he might forever remain young. Therefore he grew old and bent, and could no longer walk. In misery, he begged to go back to the cool grass in the meadow where he had been so happy. Aurora in pity said, "you shall go, my Tithonus. To make you happy is my dearest wish. "You shall be free from all care. "You shall not be a man, lest you be compelled to work for your food in your old age. "You shall be a grasshopper, free to dance in the meadow grass all the long summer days. "I have prepared a dress for you, which shall protect you well." Then she gave Tithonus the wonderful grasshopper coat of mail which had been unknown on earth until this time. She tinted it a soft green so that he might not be noticed in the grass. Tithonus went that day to live in the meadow and there, any summer day, you may find him and his family hopping merrily about in the sunshine. [Illustration] HOW THE ROBIN'S BREAST BECAME RED. Long ago in the far North, where it is very cold, there was only one fire. A hunter and his little son took care of this fire and kept it burning day and night. They knew that if the fire went out the people would freeze and the white bear would have the Northland all to himself. One day the hunter became ill and his son had the work to do. For many days and nights he bravely took care of his father and kept the fire burning. The white bear was always hiding near, watching the fire. He longed to put it out, but he did not dare, for he feared the hunter's arrows. When he saw how tired and sleepy the little boy was, he came closer to the fire and laughed to himself. One night the poor boy could endure the fatigue no longer and fell fast asleep. The white bear ran as fast as he could and jumped upon the fire with his wet feet, and rolled upon it. At last, he thought it was all out and went happily away to his cave. A gray robin was flying near and saw what the white bear was doing. She waited until the bear went away. Then she flew down and searched with her sharp little eyes until she found a tiny live coal. This she fanned patiently with her wings for a long time. Her little breast was scorched red, but she did not stop until a fine red flame blazed up from the ashes. Then she flew away to every hut in the Northland. Wherever she touched the ground a fire began to burn. Soon instead of one little fire the whole north country was lighted up. The white bear went further back into his cave in the iceberg and growled terribly. He knew that there was now no hope that he would ever have the Northland all to himself. This is the reason that the people in the north country love the robin, and are never tired of telling their children how its breast became red. [Illustration] AN INDIAN STORY OF THE ROBIN. When an Indian boy was eleven years old, he was sent into a forest far away from his home. He had to stay there all alone and fast for seven days and nights. The Indians thought that at this time a spirit came into the youth which helped him to become a great chief and warrior. The spirit also told the boy what his name should be in the tribe. Once there was a fierce Indian war chief who had only one son. The little boy was not strong, but his father loved him more than anything else on earth. When this boy was eleven years old, the chief went out into the forest and built a small lodge for him to stay in. In it he placed a mat of reeds which his good squaw had woven with great care. By the side of the mat he laid a bow, some arrows and his own great tomahawk. Next he painted pictures upon the trees along the path leading from the wigwam to the lodge. He did this that the little boy might easily find his way home. When everything was ready he sadly sent his son away into the forest. He missed him so much that he went every morning to look at him. Each day he asked him if the spirit had not come to him. Each day the little boy shook his head without opening his eyes. On the fifth day his son said to him, "Father, take me home or I shall die. No spirit will come to me." The old chiefs pride was greater than his pity and he said, "No, my son, you must not be a coward. You shall be as wise as a fox and as strong as a bear. "Better that you should die than that boy and squaw should cry 'Shame' upon your father's son. "Be patient, I will come in two days and bring you food." The sixth day came and the little boy lay upon the mat white and still. On the seventh, when the chief came with the sun's first rays, his son was not in the lodge nor about it. Above the door sat a bird with brown coat and red breast, which until this time had been unknown to man. Sadly the chief listened to the bird and understood its message. "Mourn me not, great chief," it sang. "I was once your son. "I am happy now and free. "I am the friend of man and shall always live near him and be his companion. "I shall bring the tidings of spring. "When the maple buds shoot and the wild flowers come, every child in the land shall know my voice. "I shall teach how much better it is to sing than to slay. "Chief, listen, chief, Be more gentle; be more loving. Chief, teach it, chief, Be not fierce, oh, be not cruel; Love each other! Love each other!" THE RED-HEADED WOODPECKER. There was an old woman who lived on a hill. You never heard of any one smaller or neater than she was. She always wore a black dress and a large white apron with big bows behind. On her head was the queerest little red bonnet that you ever saw. It is a sad thing to tell, but this woman had grown very selfish as the years went by. People said this was because she lived alone and thought of nobody but herself. One morning as she was baking cakes, a tired, hungry man came to her door. "My good woman," said he, "will you give me one of your cakes? I am very hungry. I have no money to pay for it, but whatever you first wish for you shall have." The old woman looked at her cakes and thought that they were too large to give away. She broke off a small bit of dough and put it into the oven to bake. When it was done she thought this one was too nice and brown for a beggar. She baked a smaller one and then a smaller one, but each one was as nice and brown as the first. At last she took a piece of dough only as big as the head of a pin; yet even this, when it was baked, looked as fine and large as the others. So the old woman put all the cakes on the shelf and offered the stranger a dry crust of bread. The poor man only looked at her and before she could wink her eye he was gone. She had done wrong and of course she was unhappy. "Oh, I wish I were a bird!" said she, "I would fly to him with the largest cake on the shelf." As she spoke she felt herself growing smaller and smaller until the wind whisked her up the chimney. She was no longer an old woman but a bird as she had wished to be. She still wore her black dress and red bonnet. She still seemed to have the large white apron with the big bows behind. Because from that day she pecked her food from the hard wood of a tree, people named this bird the red-headed wood-pecker. THE STORY OF THE PUDDING STONE. Once upon a time a family of giants lived upon the high mountains in the West. One day the mother giant was called away from home. She arose early in the morning and made ready the bread and butter for the little giants to eat while she was gone. When she had finished her work it was not yet time to start upon her journey. She said to herself, "My children are the best children in the world and they shall have a treat. I have many plums left from the Christmas feast. I will make them a plum pudding for a surprise. The good woman brought together the plums which it had taken her many days to prepare with the help of all her children. Indeed she had emptied several mountain lakes to get water enough to wash them all. She now mixed these wonderful plums into a pudding and put it into an oven to bake. The mixing took so long that she had to hurry, and she quite forgot to say anything about the pudding to the little giants. She had intended to tell them about it just before she left them. It was afternoon when the giant children found the pudding. It was badly burned upon the top by that time. They had already eaten the bread and butter and were not hungry. One little giant said to the others, "Let us make balls of the pudding and see who can throw the farthest." You know that giants are very strong, and away went the pudding up into the air. The little giants made little balls and the older giants threw pieces as big as a house. Many pieces went over the mountains and fell down into the valley beyond. Indeed this wonderful pudding was scattered for miles over the whole land, for the giants did not stop throwing as long as there was any pudding left in the pan. When the sun had shone upon it many days and dried and hardened it, people called it pudding stone. You may find it to-day thrown all over the land, full of the plums which the good woman washed with the waters of many lakes. STORY OF SISYPHUS. Little White Cloud was the Ocean's daughter. The Ocean loved her, and wished always to keep her near him. One day, when her father was asleep, White Cloud went out to walk alone. The Sun saw her and said, "Come, White Cloud, I am your king, I will give you a ride upon my bright rays." White Cloud had often longed for this very thing, so she went gladly, and soon found herself among the fleecy clouds in the sky. When the Ocean awoke he called his little daughter. She did not answer. He called again and again, louder and still louder, until the people said, "Listen, it is thundering!" But the Ocean only heard the echo of his own voice from the shore. He rushed high up on the beach and moaned aloud. He ran into all the caves but White Cloud could not be found. Every one had loved White Cloud, so by this time all the water was white with the crests of the weeping sea nymphs. A great giant was sitting upon the shore near the sea. His name was Sisyphus. He felt sorry for the Ocean and said, "Listen, friend Ocean, I often watch you carrying the great ships and wish that I, too, had a great work to do. "You see how dry it is on this side of the mountain. Few people come this way. You are not even now as lonely as I, yet I want to help you. Promise me that you will put a spring upon this mountain side, where all the tired and thirsty people may drink, and I'll tell you where White Cloud is." [Illustration] The Ocean said, "I cannot put a spring upon the mountain, but if you will follow my son, River, he will take you to a spring where he was born." The giant told the Ocean how the Sun ran away with White Cloud. The Sun heard him and was angry. He placed Sisyphus in the sea saying, "You are far too strong to sit idly here upon the shore. You say you want a great work to do; you shall have it. You shall forever use your strength to push these stones upon the shore, and they shall forever roll back upon you." The giant began his work at once, and has worked faithfully every day since that time. Many people do not yet know what his work is. Do you? Do you know what Sisyphus is making? [Illustration] THE PALACE OF ALKINOÖS. On a high plain covered with flowers once lived good King Alkinoös and his gentle people, the Phaiakians. They were great sailors and went about in silver ships without rudders or sails. These wonderful ships went slowly or very fast just as the sailors wished. For many years the Phaiakians were peaceful and happy. Though they were as brave as they were gentle, they hated war. Far below the Phaiakians, in a valley, lived a people larger, darker, fiercer than themselves. These dark people cared for nothing so much as war and conquest. When they saw the silver ships with the golden prows, they wanted them for their own. They armed themselves and made ready for a great battle. To be sure of victory, they borrowed the thunder and lightning from Zeus. The day came and all was ready for the dark people to advance. They reached the land of the Phaiakians in the morning and King Alkinoös came forward to meet them. They soon saw that he alone was more powerful than their entire army. He was dressed in armor so bright that it dazzled their eyes to look at it. It was covered with millions of golden arrows tipped with diamonds. The king showed the frightened people how he could shoot the arrows in all directions at the same time. The dark people trembled with fear, but King Alkinoös smiled at them, and then he and his people sailed slowly away toward the West. On and on they went, until they came to a great silver sea. Here they stopped and built a palace for their king. This palace was made of silver and gold and precious stones. Its towers were rose color and shone with a wonderful light. Its steps were of pure gold. On each side of the silver gates were huge dogs which guarded the palace. There were boys in the halls dressed in white, holding burning torches. There were girls weaving wonderful curtains and painting pictures upon the walls. There were mountains and fountains, and rivers and lakes. There were singing birds and flower gardens, and little children everywhere. Even to this day, the great king often sits in his palace in the West when his day's work is done. He loves to see the people glide about upon the silver sea, in their ships without rudders or sails. The fierce, dark people still go to war. They seldom let the gentle king see them fighting. Yet often after a brave battle, Alkinoös comes out of his palace and smiles brightly upon them. The dark people blush and seem to smile at the king. You must find out how much good these dark people do and how the King of the Phaiakians helps them in their work, if you wish to understand their friendship. [Illustration] PHAETHON. Phaethon was the son of Helios, who drove the chariot of the sun. He lived with his mother, the gentle Clymene, in a beautiful valley in the east. One day when Phaethon was telling his companions about his father, the sky king, they laughed and said, "How do you know that Helios is your father? You have never seen him. If, as you say, he cannot safely come nearer to the earth, why do you not sometimes go to his land." Phaethon answered, "My father's throne is far away from this valley. My mother has promised that when I am stronger, I shall go to my father's palace. I often watch his golden chariot roll by in its path and think perhaps some day I shall drive the glorious horses of the sun. "I shall go now to my mother, and ask her how much longer I must wait." When Phaethon told his mother what his companions had said she answered, "Go, my child, ask Great Helios if you are his son. If you are worthy to be the son of Helios you will be given strength and courage for the journey." Phaethon gladly and bravely climbed the unused path which led to the palace of the sun. At last he came in sight of the throne. He had never seen anything so beautiful. On one side were standing the days, months and the old years. On the other side were the seasons; Spring, covered with flowers; Summer, with her baskets of fruit and grain; Autumn, in a many-colored dress; and Young Winter, with a crown of icicles. As Phaethon came nearer to the throne, the light was greater than his eyes could bear. Its wonderful colors dazzled him. Helios saw the brave youth and knew that it was Phaethon, his son. He took his glittering crown from his head and went forward to meet him. Phaethon cried, "Great Helios, if you are my father give me and others proof that it is so." Helios took him in his arms and kissed him. "You are indeed my son," he said. "I will put an end to your doubts. Ask any gift you will, and it shall be yours." Phaethon had always had one wish in his heart and said, "O, my father, let me drive the wonderful golden chariot of the sun for just one day." Helios shook his head sadly and said, "That is the one thing which you must not ask to do. "You are my son, and I love you. For your own sake, I cannot let you do this. You have neither the strength nor the wisdom for the great work. "The first part of the way is very steep and rugged. In the middle part, even I dare not look below at the far stretching earth, and the last part is full of terrible dangers." Phaethon would not listen, but threw his arms around his father's neck and begged to go. Helios said at last, "If you persist, foolish boy, you shall have your wish, for I cannot break my promise. I beg of you choose more wisely. Ask the most precious thing on earth or in the sky, and you shall have it." Already Dawn had drawn back the purple curtains of the morning and the Hours were harnessing the horses to the chariot. The stars and moon were retiring for the day. The chariot glittered with jewels which sent the light in all directions. Phaethon looked upon it with delight and longed impatiently for the great joy of driving it. Helios said, "O, my dear son, go not too high or you will scorch the dwelling of heaven, nor too low, lest you set the world on fire. "Keep the middle path; that is best, and do not use the whip; rather, hold the horses in." Phaethon was too happy to hear what his father was saying. He leapt into the golden chariot and stood erect as the fiery horses sprang forth from the eastern gates of Day. They soon missed the strong steady hand of their master. Up, up they went, far into the sky, above the stars, and then plunged downward toward the earth. The clouds smoked, the mountain tops caught fire, many rivers dried up and whole countries became deserts. Great cities were burning, and even Poseidon cried out in terror from the sea. Then the people on earth learned with what great wisdom the path of the sun was planned. Helios saw that the whole world would soon be on fire, and cried to father Zeus to save the earth from the flames. Zeus searched all the heavens for clouds and hurled his thunderbolts from the sky. Phaethon fell from the chariot, down, down into a clear river. The naiads cooled his burning brow, and gently sang him to sleep. His sisters came to the banks of the river and wept. That they might be always near Phaethon, Zeus, in pity changed them into poplar trees, and their tears became clear amber as they fell into the water. At last the tired horses became quiet, and the great car rolled slowly back into its old path. But the deserts and barren mountain tops still tell the story of the day Phaethon tried to drive the chariot of the sun. THE GRATEFUL FOXES. It was springtime in Japan, and the blossoms hung thick on the cherry trees. Butterflies and dragon flies fluttered over the golden colza flowers in the fields. The rice birds chirped merrily. Everything seemed to say, "How good it is to live in days like these." A beautiful princess, O Haru San, sat on the bank of a stream gaily pulling the lilies. All the maidens of her court were with her. Along the river bank came a troop of noisy, laughing boys, carrying a young cub fox. They were trying to decide who should have its skin and who its liver. At a safe distance from them, in a bamboo thicket, father fox and mother fox sat looking sadly after their little cub. The princess' heart was filled with pity, and she said: "Boys, pray loose the little fox. See his parents weeping in the rocks." The boys shook their heads. "We shall sell the fox's skin," they said. "The liver, too, if well powdered, will be used to cure fevers in the fall." "Listen," cried O Haru San, "It is springtime, and everything rejoices. How can you kill such a small soft beast? "See, here is twice your price; take it all," and she drew copper money and silver money from her girdle. The boys placed the little frightened animal in her lap and ran away, pleased to be so rich. The cub felt the touch of her soft hand, and trembled no longer. She loosened carefully the knot and noose and string. She stroked the red fur smooth again, and bound up the little bleeding leg. She offered it rice and fish to eat, but the black eyes plainly said, "This is very nice, but I hear my parents grieving near yonder beanstraw stack. I long to go and comfort them." She set the little fox gently on the ground, and, forgetting its wounded leg, it leaped through the bushes at one happy bound. The two old foxes gravely looked it over neck and breast. They licked it from its bushy tail to its smooth, brown crown. Then, sitting up on their haunches, they gave two sharp barks of gratitude. That was their way of saying, "We send you thanks, sweet maid." As she walked home by the river side, all the world seemed more beautiful to O Haru San. * * * * * The summer time came and the blossoms upon the cherry trees became rich, ripe fruit. But there was no joy in the emperor's house. His daughter, the gentle O Haru San, was ill. She grew paler and weaker each day. Physicians came from far and near, and shook their wise heads gravely. When the emperor's magician saw her, he said, "No one can heal such sickness. A charm falls upon her every night which steals away her strength. He alone can break the spell, who, with sleepless eyes, can watch beside her bedside until sunrise." Gray haired nurses sat by her until morning, but a deep sleep fell upon them at midnight. Next fourscore maidens of the court, who loved her well, kept bright lights burning all the night, yet they, too, fell asleep. Five counselors of state watched with her father at the bedside. Though they propped their eyes open with their fingers, yet in the middle of the night slumber overcame them. All believed that the gentle maid must die. The emperor was in despair, but Ito, a brave soldier, said, "I shall not sleep; let me one night guard the sweet O Haru San." Her father led him to the chamber. Just at midnight Ito felt his eyes grow heavy. He rose and held his sword above his head. "Rather will I die than sleep," he said. Then came a great struggle. Often his head nodded, but by his love and strength Ito conquered sleep. Suddenly he heard a voice which said, "Grate foxes' livers in the princess' rice broth and all her ills will disappear." The next morning the hunters searched far and near for foxes. They knew that to the emperor a fox was worth its weight in gold. All day and night they were in the woods without food or rest. At last they came sadly back to their homes. They brought no fox. "All the foxes know," they said, "and have hidden themselves away." The emperor in grief and anger cried, "Must my child perish? Shall a princess die for the lack of one poor fox? "She was never willing that one should be slain and this is her reward." Ito said, "I will get the fox." He started out with knife and net to seek it. At the entrance of the town he met a woman dressed in strange garments. Very small and stooped she seemed to Ito. She carried a jar in her arms. She bowed low before Ito, and said, "What you seek is in the jar. I have brought it from afar." "Here is gold," said Ito. "What is the price?" The woman pulled the blue hood farther over her face and said, "Another time will do, I can wait. Hasten now to the princess." Gladly Ito obeyed. They made the broth in a bowl of beaten gold and fed it to O Haru San. Immediately she was well and all was joy in the emperor's house. The emperor said, "Ito, is she, who brought this blessing, paid?" Ito answered, "Yonder she waits at the entrance of the town." The emperor himself in his great joy went with Ito to meet her. But they found only a dog-fox dead. Around his neck they read this message, "This is my husband here. "For his child he gives his liver to the princess, dear. I, his very lowly wife, have brought it." [Illustration] PERSEPHONE. Demeter had the care of all the plants, fruits and grains in the world. She taught the people how to plow the fields and plant the seeds. She helped them gather in their harvests. They loved the kind earth-mother and gladly obeyed her. They also loved her daughter, the beautiful Persephone. Persephone wandered all day in the meadows among the flowers. Wherever she went the birds, singing merrily, flocked after her. The people said, "Where Persephone is, there is the warm sunshine. "Flowers bloom when she smiles. "Listen to her voice; it is like a bird's song." Demeter wished always to have her child near her. One day Persephone went alone into a meadow near the sea. She had made a wreath for her hair, and gathered all the flowers that her apron could hold. Far away across the meadow she saw a white flower gleaming. She ran to it and found that it was a narcissus, but far more beautiful than any she had ever seen. On a single stem were a hundred blossoms. She tried to pick it, but the stem would not break. With all her strength she grasped it, and slowly it came up by the roots. It left a great opening in the earth which grew larger and larger. Persephone heard a rumbling like thunder under her feet. Then she saw four black horses coming toward her from the opening. Behind them was a chariot made of gold and precious stones. In it sat a dark, stern man. It was Hades. He had come up from his land of darkness, and was shading his eyes with his hands. He saw Persephone, beautiful with flowers, and instantly caught her in his arms and placed her in the chariot beside him. The flowers fell from her apron. "Oh! my pretty flowers," she cried, "I have lost them all." Then she saw the stern face of Hades. Frightened, she stretched out her hands to kind Apollo who was driving his chariot overhead. She called to her mother for help. Hades drove straight toward his dark underground home. The horses seemed to fly. As they left the light, Hades tried to comfort Persephone. He told her of the wonders of his kingdom. He had gold and silver and all kinds of precious stones. Persephone saw gems glittering on every side as they went along, but she did not care for them. Hades told her how lonely he was, and that he wished her to be his queen and share all his riches. Persephone did not want to be a queen. She longed only for her mother and the bright sunshine. Soon they came to the land of Hades. It seemed very dark and dismal to Persephone, and very cold, too. A feast was ready for her, but she would not eat. She knew that any one who ate in Hades' home could never return to earth again. She was very unhappy, though Hades tried in many ways to please her. Everything on the earth was unhappy, too. One by one the flowers hung their heads and said, "We cannot bloom, for Persephone has gone." The trees dropped their leaves and moaned, "Persephone has gone, gone." The birds flew away and said, "We cannot sing for Persephone has gone." Demeter was more miserable than any one else. She had heard Persephone call her, and had gone straight home. She searched all the earth for her child. She asked every one she met these questions, "Have you seen Persephone? Where is Persephone?" The only answer she ever received was, "Gone, gone, Persephone is gone!" Demeter became a wrinkled old woman. No one would have known that she was the kind mother who had always smiled on the people. Nothing grew on the earth and all was dreary and barren. Demeter said that she would do nothing until Persephone returned to her. It was useless for the people to plow the soil. It was useless to plant the seeds. Nothing could grow without the help of Demeter. All the people were idle and sad. When Demeter found no one on earth who could tell her about Persephone, she looked up toward the sky. There she saw Apollo in his bright chariot. He was not driving as high in the sky as he was wont to do. Often he gathered dark mists about him so that none saw him for many days. Demeter knew that he must know about Persephone, for he could see all things on earth and in the sky. Apollo told Demeter that Hades had carried Persephone away and that she was with him in his underground home. Demeter hastened to the great father Zeus, who could do all things. She asked him to send to Hades for her daughter. Zeus called Hermes. He bade him go as swiftly as the wind to the home of Hades. Hermes whispered to everything on the way that he was going for Persephone so that all might be ready to welcome her back. He soon arrived in the kingdom and gave Hades the message from Zeus. He told about the barren earth and of how Demeter was mourning for her child. He said she would not let anything grow until Persephone came back. The people must starve if she did not soon return. Then Persephone wept bitterly, for that very day she had eaten a pomegranate and swallowed six of its seeds. Hades pitied her and said that she need only stay with him one month for each seed she had eaten. Joy gave her wings, and as swiftly as Hermes himself, Persephone flew up into the sunshine. Apollo saw her and rose higher and higher into the sky. A gentle breeze came rustling from the southeast, and whispered something to everything he met. Suddenly the flowers sprang up; the birds flocked together and sang; the trees put on bright green leaves. Everything, great and small, began to say in his own language, "Be happy for Persephone has come! Persephone has come!" Demeter saw these changes and was puzzled. "Can the earth be ungrateful? Does she so soon forget Persephone?" she cried. It was not long however before her own face became beautiful and happy, for she held again her beloved child in her arms. When Demeter found that Persephone could stay with her only half the year, she brought out the choicest treasures from her storehouse and while Persephone stayed, the world was filled with beauty and joy. When she had gone, Demeter covered the rivers and lakes, and spread a soft white blanket over the sleeping earth. Then she, too, fell asleep and dreamed such pleasant dreams that she did not awake until she felt Persephone's warm kiss on her forehead. [Illustration] THE SWAN MAIDENS. A long, long time ago there was born in the east a wonderful king. He was called "The King of the Golden Sword." Every day he came in his golden chariot scattering heat, light and happiness among his people. Every day he passed from his palace in the east far over to his throne in the west. He never missed a day for he wanted to see that everyone had a full share of his gifts. Throughout the kingdom the birds sang and the flowers bloomed. The sky was full of beautiful pictures which were constantly changing. The king had many daughters who were called swan maidens. They were as graceful as swans and usually wore white featherlike dresses. The swan maidens loved their good father and each one longed to help him in his work. Sometimes the king saw that the grass was brown or the buds were not coming out. Then he called the swan maidens to him and said, "My children, this must not be. There is nothing more beautiful in the kingdom than the green grass and the trees. They need your care." Gladly each maiden changed her dress and set out at once on her journey. Often they could not all work upon the grass and the buds. Some of them ran off to play with the stones in the brook. The best ones went down to feed the roots and worms, and worked out of sight. When their tasks were finished they always hurried back to their father, the king. They went so noiselessly and swiftly that for a long time their way of travelling was a mystery. In the fall, the king called the bravest swan maidens to him. He told them they must go away for a long time. The swan maidens wrapped themselves in white, feathery blankets and came softly down to the shivering flowers. Gently they placed a white spread on the earth and left no small seed uncovered. At last, when the king smiled and their work was done, they stole away so softly and happily that no one missed them. [Illustration] THE POPLAR TREE. One night, just at sunset, an old man found the pot of gold which lies under the end of the rainbow. His home was far beyond the dark forest, through which he was passing. The pot of gold was heavy, and he soon began to look for a safe place in which to hide it until morning. A poplar tree stood near the path stretching its branches straight out from the trunk. That was the way the poplar trees grew in those days. "Ah," said the man, "This tree is the very place in which to conceal my treasure. "The trees are all asleep, I see, and these leaves are large and thick." He carefully placed the pot of gold in the tree, and hurried home to tell of his good fortune. Very early the next morning, Iris, the rainbow messenger, missed the precious pot of gold. She hastened to Zeus and told him of the loss. Zeus immediately sent Hermes in search of it. Hermes soon came to the forest where it was hidden. [Illustration] He awakened the trees, and asked them if they had seen the pot of gold. They shook their heads sleepily, and murmured something which Hermes could not understand. Then Zeus himself spoke to them. "Hold your arms high above your heads," he said, "that I may see that all are awake." Up went the arms, but alas, down to the ground came the pot of gold. The poplar tree was more surprised than any one else. He was a very honest tree and for a moment hung his head in grief and shame. Then again he stretched his arms high above his head, and said, "Forgive me, great father; hereafter I shall stand in this way that you may know that I hide nothing from the sun, my king." At first the poplar tree was much laughed at. He was often told that he looked like a great umbrella which a storm had turned inside out. But as years went by every small poplar was taught to grow as fearless, straight and open hearted as himself, and the whole poplar family became respected and loved for its uprightness and strength. [Illustration] THE DONKEY AND THE SALT. One time a merchant went to the seashore for a load of salt. There were many hills and streams to cross on the journey. As the path was narrow and rocky, the man made his donkey carry the salt in large bags upon his back. It was a warm day, and the donkey did not like his heavy load. He hung down his head and went as slowly as he could. After a while they came to a stream which had only a foot bridge over it. The donkey went through the water, splash! splash! splash! In the middle of the stream was a large stone which he did not see. He stumbled and fell, and the water ran over the bags of salt. Soon the donkey was glad that he had fallen, for he found his load much lighter. They came to another stream, but the donkey did not stumble this time. He lay down in the middle of the brook. He was a wise donkey. This time he lost so much salt that his master was angry, for he was obliged to go back to the seashore for another load. As they were walking along, the merchant laughed to himself. He thought he knew a way to cure the donkey of this trick. When they came to the seashore, he filled the bags with sponges, and started for home. The donkey thought, "What a light load I have," and trotted gaily along over the rough road. Again they came to the brook. "Ah!" thought the donkey, "I will make my load still lighter." He lay down in the middle of the brook. This time he found his load so heavy that he could scarcely rise. His master kindly helped him, but the donkey was not happy. The water ran down his sides and made him more miserable. "Oh," thought he, "I will never lie down in the water again." Once more his master led him back to the seashore. He filled the bags with salt. The donkey was wiser now and carried the salt safely home. THE SECRET OF FIRE. A TREE STORY. One summer night a great army of pine trees settled down in a quiet valley to rest. They were a tall, dark, grave-looking company. They held their heads high in the air, for they were the only trees in the world who knew the wonderful secret of fire. High above this valley, on the hillside, lived a little company of oaks. They were young, brave, and strong-hearted. When they saw the great band of pines marching into the valley, the tallest one said: "Let us make them divide the gift of fire with us." "No," said the oldest, wisest oak, "we must not risk, foolishly, the lives of our acorns. We could do nothing against so many." All the acorns had been listening to what the tree said. Each one longed to help in finding out the great secret. One of them became so excited that he fell from the limb, down upon the hard ground. He did not stop at the foot of the tree, but rolled over and over, far down into the valley. Here a brook picked him up and hurried him away; but as he stopped to rest by a stone, he heard his good friend, the wind, talking to a pine tree. "What is the secret of fire which the pine trees know?" asked the wind. "Don't you think it is selfish to keep it all to yourselves?" The pine tree loved the wind and answered: "Great wind, it is, indeed, a wonderful secret; you must never tell it." Then she whispered it to the wind. The little acorn went on and on down the stream. He came to an old log, which was the home of a large family of squirrels. The mother squirrel was very sad. The last flood had brought her and her children far away from her old forest home. Her family had all been saved, but food was scarce and winter was near. The acorn felt very sorry for her and said: "I am too small to do you much good alone. If you will carry me back to my home, I will show you a forest with plenty of nuts. You can take your family there in the fall." This the squirrel was very glad to do. As they went along the acorn called to all the elms, maples, willows and hickories to meet that night on the hilltop. "Come to the hill across from the great blue mountains," he said. "There you will learn the secret of fire." By evening they were all there, in great companies, ready for war on the pines. When the squirrel came to the forest and saw all the nuts she was much pleased. She offered to carry the acorn to the very top of the tallest tree. The trees were all glad of this, for every one wanted to hear what he said. When the acorn began to speak, even the wind stopped whispering and listened. "Friends," he said, "there must be no battle. The pine trees have only the same gift of fire that you have. To every tree that stretches out its arms the glorious sun gives this gift. But it was in this way that the pine trees learned the secret of getting the fire from the wood: They saw an old Indian chief with two curious pieces of wood. One was round and smooth, the other was sharp-pointed. With all his strength he was rubbing them together. Soon he had worn a groove in the round stick. He rubbed faster and faster, and there in the groove was a tiny spark of fire. Then the Indian blew his breath upon the spark and a little yellow flame leaped up. All the pine trees saw it. 'See, it is fire!' they said." When the great company of trees had heard the acorn's story they shook their heads in doubt. Then the acorn said: "This is the true secret of fire. If you do not believe it why do you not try it for yourselves." They took this advice and all the trees learned that what he had said was true. They were so happy that they spent the whole night in singing and dancing. In the morning, when they saw the great blue mountains and the beautiful valley, many of them settled down upon the hillside for life. The pines looked up and saw hundreds of trees with their shining arms. They were so frightened that they climbed high up on the mountain side. There they stayed a long, long time. [Illustration] They grew sad and lonely, and often sighed and wished for their old home and comforts. But they were brave and strong-hearted, and helped each other. At last, some of them came down into the valley again. Through suffering they had grown strong and unselfish. They gave their best trees to the people and their fairest to the children at Christmas time. Indeed, there is not a tree in the world to-day more loved than the pine tree, who first had the secret of fire. [Illustration] A FAIRY STORY. Some fairies once lived in a dark glen in a pine forest. They were real fairies, many of them not higher than a pin. Their greatest treasure was a magic cap which had been in the fairy family for many generations. The most wonderful thing about the cap was that it fitted exactly any one who wore it. When one fairy put it on, he and all the others became invisible. A stupid race of giants lived among the mountains near them. They wanted the fairy cap more than anything else in the world. One warm day when the elves were away from home, a giant came into the glen. He was seeking just such a cool place for his afternoon nap. He was so large and the glen so small that when he lay down he almost filled the valley. The music of a fairy brook soon lulled him to sleep. Perhaps you have heard how a giant snores, and how his breath comes in great puffs. The giant was snoring and puffing when the fairies came towards home. They heard the strange sound and thought a great storm was brewing. "There has never been such a wind in the glen," said the fairy queen. "We will not go down into it. We must seek shelter for to-night on this hillside." Just then they came to the giant's ear. "Here is a fine cavern," the queen said, and she stopped and waved her wand. A fairy hastened forward to carry the cap to a safe place in the cave, for that was always their first care. Just then the giant awoke. He raised his great head. Oh, how miserable the fairies were! They wept and moaned until even the dull ear of the giant heard them. It was a sound like the tolling of tiny silver bells. He listened and understood what the wee voice of the prisoner in his ear was saying. He was the wisest and most kind-hearted of all the giants. He helped the little creature gently out into his hand, and looked at him in wonder. He had never before seen a fairy. In vain the brave little fellow tried to conceal the precious cap. The giant saw the wonderful star and knew at once that he had the treasure cap of the elves. He set the fairy carefully upon the ground, and shouted for joy as he found that the cap exactly fitted his own great head. The poor fairies could no longer see him, but they heard a sound like thunder, as he hurried over the stones towards his home. They were now afraid to move about while the sun shone. They crept under leaves and into shells and cried bitterly. By sundown every plant in the glen was wet with their tears. The sharp eyes of the eagle on the mountain top saw them and a great pity filled his heart. "I must help the fairies," he said, "otherwise I should not be worthy to be called the 'king of birds'." He went directly to the home of the giants and demanded the cap, but they refused to give it up. [Illustration] All that an eagle could do, he did, but as the giants wore the invisible cap he could not see them. He could only hear their great voices. He knew however that the giants were proud of their great size and strength, and liked, above all things, to be seen. He was sure that they would not wear the cap in battle, and he did not lose hope. One day they carefully placed it under a large stone on the mountain side below them. The keen eye of the eagle was watching. He flew fearlessly to the spot as soon as the giants had left it. He lifted the stone in his great talons, and was soon flying away with the cap to the fairy glen. The giants saw him, and knew at once what he was doing. They began a fierce attack upon him. The air was filled with flying arrows and sharp rocks. Drops of blood fell on the mountain side, and many feathers fluttered down, but the brave eagle was soon out of their reach. He did not stop until the cap was safe in the fairy queen's lap. There was great rejoicing among the fairies that day. They had a feast in the eagle's honor, and healed his wounds with fairy magic. On the mountain side, wherever the blood and feathers fell, there sprang up trees with featherlike leaves and blood-red berries. All the giants, fairies, plants and animals knew why they grew. The unselfish love in the eagle's blood could not die, but lived again in the beautiful trees. But people who did not know how they came there, called them mountain ash trees. [Illustration] PHILEMON AND BAUCIS. On a high hill in Greece, long ago, lived Philemon and Baucis. They had always been poor but never unhappy. At the time of this story the people in the valley below them were very busy. Zeus, their king, had sent word that he was about to visit them. Hermes, his messenger, was to come with him. The people were getting ready great feasts, and making everything beautiful for their coming. For miles out of the city, men were watching for the golden chariot and white horses of the king. One night, just at dark, two beggars came into the valley. They stopped at every house and asked for food and a place to sleep. But the people were too busy or too tired to attend to their needs. Footsore and weary, at last they climbed the hill to the hut of Philemon and Baucis. These good people had eaten scarcely anything for several days that they might have food to offer the king. When they saw the strangers, Philemon said, "Surely these men need food more than the king." Baucis spread her one white table cloth upon the table. She brought out bacon and herbs, wild honey and milk. She set these before the strangers with all the good dishes that she had. Then a wonderful thing happened. The dishes which the strangers touched turned to gold. The milk in the pitcher became rich nectar. Philemon and Baucis dropped upon their knees. They knew that their guests could be no other than Zeus and Hermes. Zeus raised his hand and said, "Arise, good people, ask what you will and it shall be yours." Philemon and Baucis cried in one voice: "Grant, oh Zeus, that one of us may not outlive the other, but that both may die in the same instant." This had long been the wish in each heart, and the fear of being left alone in the world was the one trouble of their old age. Zeus smiled and changed their rude hut into a beautiful castle, and granted them many years of happy life. One morning the people in the valley noticed that the castle had disappeared. They hurried to the spot and found growing in its place two beautiful trees, an oak and a linden. No trace of the good couple could be found. Many years after, however, a traveller lying under the trees heard them whispering to each other. He lay very still and soon learned that in them Philemon and Baucis still lived, happy and contented, and protected by Zeus from all harm. [Illustration] DAPHNE. Daphne was the daughter of the River Peneus. She was a beautiful child and her father loved her more than anything else in the world. Her home was in a cave which he had cut for her in a great white cliff. The walls of the cave were of marble. From the roof hung crystal chandeliers which Peneus' servants had made. On the floor was a soft green carpet woven by the water fairies. Peneus brought his most beautiful pebbles to Daphne's cave every night. He sang songs to her in the evenings and told her stories of his travels. She visited with him the great island which he was building in the sea. When the morning star shone in the sky it was Daphne who awakened the birds and flowers. With her golden hair flying behind her, she sped into the forest. Everything awoke when they felt the touch of her rosy fingers, and smiled as they saw her happy face. The trees and the forest animals were her playfellows, and she had no wish for other friends. She learned their ways, and the deer could not run more swiftly than she, nor the birds sing more sweetly. One day as she was running over the stones near the cave, King Apollo saw her. "Ah, little maid," said he, "You are very beautiful. Your feet are too tender for the hard rocky earth. "Come, you shall live with me in my palace in the sky." But Daphne fled from him. She did not want to leave her beautiful earth home. Fear gave her wings, and faster and faster she flew. Her hair streamed behind her like a cloud of golden light. Apollo followed more swiftly than the wind. "Stop and listen," he cried; "I am not a foe, foolish girl. It is Apollo who follows you. I shall carry you to a home more beautiful than anything you have ever seen." She felt his breath upon her hair, and saw his hand as he stretched it forth to seize her. "Father, save me from Apollo," she cried. "Let the earth enclose me." Peneus heard her voice and instantly her feet became fastened in the soil like roots. A soft bark covered her body and her beautiful hair became the leaves of the laurel tree. Apollo sadly gathered some of the leaves and wove them into a wreath. He laid his hand upon the tree and said, "I would have made you happy, but you would not listen to me. "At least you shall be my tree. Your leaves shall be ever green, and heroes shall be crowned with them in sign of victory." [Illustration] AN INDIAN STORY OF THE MOLE. An Indian once saw a squirrel sunning himself in a tree top. The squirrel saw the hunter and leaped upon a passing cloud. He had escaped into Cloudland before an arrow could reach him. The Indian set a trap for him hoping that he would soon return to the tree for food. The sun happened to be coming that way and was caught in the trap. Suddenly, in the middle of the day, it became dark. The Indian was frightened and said, "Ah me, what have I done, I have surely caught the sun in my trap." He sent many animals up to set it free, but all were instantly burned to ashes. At last the mole said, "Let me try, I shall bore through the ground of the sky and gnaw off the cords which hold the trap." He did this, but just as he loosened the last cord the sun sprang forth and the bright light shone full in his eyes. The poor mole dropped to the earth and though his friends were able to save his life, he was blind. "You need not pity me," he said, "I prefer to live underground, where really there is no use for eyes." All the moles were so proud of this hero mole that they tried to be like him in every way. They, too, went to live in a dark hole in the earth. Their eyes, which they did not need to use, became so small that they were entirely hidden by their fur. Indeed it is now so hard to find them that many people think the entire mole family is blind. [Illustration] HOW THE SPARK OF FIRE WAS SAVED. Long ago when fire was first brought to earth, it was given into the care of two beldams at the end of the world. The Cahroc Indians knew where it was hidden. They needed fire and were always planning ways to get it. They went at last to the wise coyote. "That is simple enough," said he, "I will show you a way to get it. Fire is a great blessing and should be free to all people." The coyote knew every inch of the road to the beldams' hut. Along the path leading to it, he stationed beasts, the strongest and best runners nearer the hut and the weaker ones farther off. Nearest the guarded den, he placed one of the sinewy Cahroc men. Then he walked boldly up to the door of the hut and knocked. The beldams, not fearing a coyote in the least, invited him in. They were often lonely, living so near the end of the world. When the coyote had rested before the fire for some time, he said, "The Cahroc nation need fire. Could you not give them one small spark? You would never miss it. Here it is of no use." The beldams answered, "We do not love it, but we dare not give it away. We must guard it while we live." The coyote had expected them to say this. He sprang to the window, and instantly outside were heard such sounds, that the beldams rushed out to see what the frightful noise could be. Each animal in the line was sounding the watch-word of fire in his own way. The wild horse neighed, the mountain lion roared, the gray wolf howled, the serpent hissed, the buffalo bellowed, and every small animal did its part equally well. Indeed, it is no wonder that the beldams were frightened nearly to death. The Cahroc man brought water and told them not to fear for themselves. The coyote seized a half-burned brand and was off in an instant. The beldams sprang after him and followed him closely over hill and valley. Faster than the wind they flew. They were stronger than he, and though he put all his wild-wood nerve to the strain, they steadily gained. Soon the race must end! But Puma, the monstrous cat, was watching, and leaped up just in time to save the brand. Each animal was in its place and the good fire passed on. It came at last to the Cahroc nation, and was afterwards free to all people under the sun. There were only two mishaps in all the race. As the squirrel turned a corner of stumps and bowlders, his beautiful tail caught fire, and a brown track was burned up over his back to his shoulders, and the curl has remained in his tail to this day. The frog had a harder fate. He was the last one in the line of beasts. When the brand reached him it was smaller than the smallest coal in the grate. He seized it carefully and jumped forward as fast as he could, but the hand of the foremost beldam caught him and held him fast. How his heart beat! His eyeballs bulged out of his head, and he has looked ever since much in the same scared way. He did not lose his courage, however. He swallowed the coal and sprang into the water. Sad to tell, the beldam still held in her hand his special pride and care, his tail. Henceforth only the tadpoles could wear tails. The frog sought a log and sat down upon it to think. "I did my duty, even if I lost my beauty," he thought; "that is enough for a frog. This spark must be saved." After much choking he spat the swallowed spark well into the bark. The gift came, in this way, to all men; for, in even the wettest weather, if you rub two sticks together, fire is sure to come. Because we know how the frog hurt his throat that day, we like to listen to his hoarse voice when we hear him singing to his children in the spring. BALDER. The people in the North once believed that high above the clouds was the beautiful plain of Asgard. Odin, ruler of Asgard, mighty Thor, and many other heroes lived on the plain. Their homes were great castles, splendid with silver and gold. In the middle of the plain, and apart from the other dwellings, stood a pure white palace. Nothing that was not fair and good had ever dared to enter it. It was the home of Balder. Because of his great beauty and wisdom, he was called "Balder the beautiful," and "Balder the good." Everything loved him. The dull rocks and the gray old mountains met him with a smile. The flowers opened, the birds sang and the water sparkled when they saw his face. One night he dreamed that he must soon leave Asgard and all the things that he loved. The next night he dreamed that he was living in the gloomy underground world. The third night, when the same terrible dream came to him, he was greatly troubled. He told Odin, his father, and Frigga, his mother, about it. Odin, in great fear, called together his wisest heroes. They shook their heads but could do nothing to help him. Frigga cried, "It shall not be! I, his mother, will save him." She went straight way to Heimdal, who guarded the rainbow bridge. Bifrost, which was the name of the bridge, was the only path which led from Asgard to the earth. Heimdal allowed only those who lived in the plain to pass over it. All feared Heimdal, yet they loved him. He could see to the ends of the world. He could hear the wool growing on the sheep's back, and knew when each grass blade broke into the sunshine. Heimdal loved Balder and when he heard what troubled Frigga, pitied her. He gave her his swift black horse and showed her the way to the ends of the earth. For nine days and nights she traveled without food or rest. She asked everything she met to promise not to harm Balder. Animals, flowers, trees, water, air, fire, everything she asked gladly gave the promise. They smiled in wonder at the question. Who could wish to hurt the gentle Balder? Alas, the mistletoe did not promise. Frigga saw it growing high up on an oak tree. It seemed too small and weak to do any harm. She did not ask it to promise. On the tenth day of her journey, she came back again to Asgard. She told the sorrowing Odin and his friends what she had done. In their joy they found a new way to do Balder honor. He stood in their midst while the most skillful heroes hurled their arrows at him. At first, they threw only small twigs and pebbles. Everything, however, had soon proved itself true to its promise. Then the heroes lost all fear of harming him and threw their warlike weapons. Balder stood unharmed and smiling among them. Each day they met on the plain and in this sport proved the love of all things for him. The blind Höder was the only one in Asgard who could not join in the game. He was Balder's brother and loved him very dearly. Höder was not unhappy, but always cheered and shouted as gaily as the others. One day as he stood alone, Loki saw him. Loki was a mischief maker. His jokes were often cruel; indeed, most of the unhappiness in Asgard was caused by Loki's unkindness. "Höder, why do you not do Balder honor?" asked Loki. "I am blind," Höder answered, "and besides I have nothing to throw." "Here is my arrow," said Loki. "Take it; I will guide your hands." Alas, the cruel Loki had made the arrow of mistletoe. He knew that this was the only way in which Balder could be harmed. He longed to see the surprise of the heroes when Balder should at last be wounded. Away flew the arrow. Balder, the beautiful, fell lifeless to the ground. Then all Asgard was dark with sorrow. Strong heroes wept and would not be comforted. The earth grew cold, white and still. The water would not flow, and the seeds refused to grow. The birds were silent. No flowers breathed their perfumes into the air. There was not a smile in all the world. Odin said, "This cannot be. "Balder shall return. I, myself, will go and bring him from Hela's dark regions." But Frigga had already sent a messenger to the spirit world to beg Queen Hela to release Balder. While waiting for the messenger to return, the heroes were not idle. For twelve days and nights they worked as only love can make men work. They did not pause for food nor rest. They built a great funeral pyre, and no one was too small to help in the work of love. They found Balder's ship upon the seashore. They brought great logs from the forest and bound them upon the deck. Upon these they placed his beautiful white horse, his dogs, his shining armor, and many things which he had loved on earth. When it was finished, they raised the sails, set the ship on fire and pushed it out upon the sea. They sang and wept all night until at sunrise the sails fell. They watched the flames die down and the waves wash over the sinking ship. As they turned sadly from the shore, they met the messenger from Hela's regions. "Rejoice," he said, "Hela says, 'If everything living and lifeless weep for Balder, he may return to us.'" There was great happiness in Asgard that day. "Surely," they thought, "everything in the world will weep for Balder." They had forgotten the cruel Loki. He sat with dry eyes though rocks and trees, birds and flowers, wind and clouds were shedding tears. When Odin found that Balder could not return to life, his anger and grief were terrible to see. In fear, Loki hid himself deep in the earth under a mountain. Frigga knew that he was conquered, and she patiently waited for the time when Balder should again be allowed to bring gladness to the earth, and fill all the heavens with the glory of his smile. [Illustration] HOW THE CHIPMUNK GOT THE STRIPES ON ITS BACK. Do you all know the little striped chipmunk which lives in our woods? He has a cousin in far off India called the geloori. It is said the stripes came on the back of the geloori in a wonderful way. One day the great Shiva saw a little gray chipmunk on the seashore. He was dipping his bushy tail into the sea, and shaking out the water on the shore. Twenty times a minute he dipped it into the ocean. In wonder, Shiva said, "What are you doing, little foolish, gray, geloori? Why do you tire yourself with such hard labor?" The geloori answered, "I cannot stop, great Shiva. "The storm blew down the palm tree, where I built my nest. "See! the tree has fallen seaward, and the nest lies in the water; my wife and pretty children are in it; I fear that it will float away. Therefore all day and all night I must dip the water from the sea. "I hope soon to bale it dry. "I must save my darlings even if I spoil my tail." Shiva stooped and with his great hand stroked the little squirrel. On the geloori's soft fur from his nose to the end of his tail, there came four green stripes! They were the marks of Shiva's fingers, placed there as signs of love. Shiva raised his hand, and the water rolled back from the shore. Safe among the rocks and seaweeds, the palm tree lay on dry land. The little squirrel hastened to it; his tail was now high in the air. He found his wife and children dry and well in their house of woven grass-blades. As they sang their welcomes to him, the geloori noticed with delight that each smooth little back was striped with marks of Shiva's fingers. This sign of love is still to be seen upon the back of chipmunks. That is the reason why in India, good men never kill them. A man who loves both children and chipmunks says, when he tells this story, "Perhaps our squirrels, though Shiva never stroked them, would be grateful if we left them, unharmed, to play in the maples in our woods." THE FOX AND THE STORK. A fox met a stork and invited him to dinner. "With all my heart, friend," said the stork. When they arrived at the home of the fox and dinner was served, he was not so happy. The fox had fine hot soup, but he served it in shallow plates. The poor stork could only stand by and watch the fox eat. The fox seemed to think that it was a very good joke. The next day the stork met the fox and invited him to dinner. The stork brought out fine hot soup in a high narrow necked bottle, but the fox could not see the joke at all. The stork said, "Friend fox, enjoy your dinner. I hope that the soup is as well flavored as yours was yesterday." As he said this he poured out half of the soup into a bowl and set it before the fox. The cunning old fox felt so ashamed that he has never looked anyone straight in the face since that day. PROMETHEUS. Greece is far away to the east over a great ocean. It is a very small country with high mountains in every part of it. The people who lived there long ago could not easily go from one place to another. Some of the mountains reached above the clouds and made great walls around their homes. Men sometimes lived all their lives near the sea and never saw it. These people who were shut up in the little valley of Greece did many wonderful things. As they could not go far from their homes they had time to see how beautiful the things around them were. Perhaps they looked at the sky so much that they wished to have everything on earth just as beautiful. They gave their children work to do which made them strong and graceful. Some of the Greeks carved statues from the marble in the mountains. Some built great temples of it. Some painted pictures, while others made gardens more beautiful than pictures. Others wrote books. Many of the stories you like were written by the poets who lived in Greece long ago. In all these ways the Greeks showed their love for their country and made it a better place in which to live. Though they were so wise they had many thoughts which seem strange to us. They believed that long before they were born a race of giants had lived among the mountains. At one time the giants grew angry with Zeus, their king, and wished to take his throne away from him. There was a wise giant, named Prometheus, who begged them not to attempt to do this. He tried to show them how foolish they were. They would not listen to him. Zeus lived upon Mount Olympus, the highest mountain in Greece. The giants brought great rocks to this mountain and piled them up, higher and higher, until they reached the sky. Zeus waited until the giants had finished their work and were ready for battle. Then he put out his hand and touched the great mound. Instantly it fell over into the sea. Prometheus and his brother were now the only people on earth. They were so lonely that Zeus told them to model some people from clay. Prometheus made animals and men and Epimetheus, his brother, gave them gifts of courage, swiftness and strength. To some he gave feathers and wings, to others fur and claws, and to others a hard shelly covering. When he came to man he had no covering left. Zeus said, "I will clothe man," and that is the reason his covering is so delicate and beautiful. Prometheus' people could not breathe. Zeus sent him to Æolus, the god of the winds, for help. Æolus sent his strong son, North Wind, back with Prometheus. When North Wind saw the people of clay he whistled with surprise. He blew his breath upon them. They turned as white as snow and began to breathe. They were a cold people, however, and Prometheus did not love them. He went to Æolus again and this time South Wind and the zephyrs came with him. South Wind brought the people green grass and flowers and birds. The zephyrs showed them how to laugh and cry and sing and dance. But the people were stupid. They lived like ants in dark caves. Prometheus saw that there was only one thing which would help them. That was _fire_. Fire was the most precious thing Zeus had, and he kept it ever burning around his throne. When Prometheus asked for fire Zeus was angry. "I have already given too much to your people," he said. "Let them now help themselves." Prometheus was sad, indeed. He loved his people more than he did himself. At last he said: "They shall have the fire. I will pay for it with my life." He went straight to Zeus' throne and filled a ferule with it, and carried it to his people. Then the people began to be wise. He taught them to cook, and to build houses, and to sail their ships upon the ocean. He showed them how to get rich ores from the mountains and prepare them for use. They learned how to plow and to reap and to store up their food for the winter. Zeus was angry with Prometheus. He chained him to a rock on the top of a high mountain. He sent a great bird each day to torment him. Zeus said that he must stay there until he repented and returned the fire to heaven. There Prometheus stayed and suffered for many burning summers and long, cold winters. Sometimes he grew faint-hearted and wished to be free. Then he looked down and saw how the fire was helping the people and how happy they were, and he grew strong again. After many, many years, a Greek hero who was sailing over the mountain in a golden cup, saw Prometheus. It was Hercules. He shot the bird with a golden arrow, unbound the chains and set the wise Prometheus free. [Illustration] HERMES. Æolus was the father of all the winds, great and small. Long ago, they all lived happily together in a dark cave near the sea. On holidays, North Wind, South Wind, East Wind and West Wind and their faithful sisters, came home and told of their travels. The whirlwinds performed their most wonderful feats, and the zephyrs sang their sweetest songs. These holidays, however, did not come often. There were no idle children in the family of Æolus. They swept and dusted the whole world. They carried water over all the earth. They helped push the great ships across the ocean. The smaller winds scattered the seeds and sprinkled the flowers, and did many other things which you may find out for yourselves. Indeed, they were so busy that Æolus was often left alone in his dark home for several days at a time. He was glad when one summer morning a baby came to the cave. The baby's name was Hermes, but Æolus called him "Little Mischief," because he was so little and so full of tricks. Zeus was Hermes' father and his mother was the beautiful Queen Maia. She was often called "Star of Spring," because people thought that wherever she stepped flowers sprang from under the snow. Æolus loved Hermes dearly. He taught him many secrets which only the winds know. Hermes was a wise baby and understood all that Æolus told him. When he was only two days old he could run and whistle as well as North Wind. One day while he was very young he climbed out of his cradle and ran down to the seashore. There he found an old tortoise shell. He picked it up and put a row of holes along each edge of the shell. Through these holes he wove some reeds which he found upon the seashore. Then he blew softly upon the reeds. The birds heard such wonderful music that they stopped to listen. The leaves on the trees began to dance, and nodded to the flowers to keep still. The waves on the shore caught the tune and have been singing it ever since. Hermes had invented the lyre and brought a new kind of music into the world. He soon tired of his lyre and went back to his cradle in the cave. As he lay there he could see a beautiful blue meadow with many white cows upon it. Hermes knew that the cows belonged to his brother, King Apollo. "What fun," thought he, "I will go and make the cows run." Off he ran after them until he was tired and out of breath. Then he drove them all backward into a cave, and fastened them in. King Apollo soon missed the cows and searched all the meadow for them. He traced them to the cave, but when he came closer to it, he found that all the tracks led from the opening, not into it. Near the cave he saw an old man who told him that he had seen the cows. He said that with them he had seen a baby with wings on his cap and heels. Apollo knew at once that the baby was his brother, Hermes. He went straight to the cave of Æolus. There was Hermes in his cradle playing with the shell just like any other baby. Apollo was angry and commanded him to stop laughing and crowing and tell him where the white cows were. Hermes only picked up the shell and breathed softly upon it. Apollo forgot his anger and everything but the beautiful music. He took Hermes in his arms and kissed him and begged him to teach him his secret. Hermes was glad to be so easily forgiven. He gave Apollo the lyre and taught him many ways to play upon it. Apollo was soon able to make even sweeter music than Hermes, and he afterwards became the god of music. He was so thankful to Hermes for his gift that he gave him a wonderful rod called the caduceus. Whatever Hermes touched with the rod became wise, loving and unselfish. One time he saw two hissing serpents about to spring at each other in fury. He touched them with the caduceus. Instantly they twined themselves lovingly around the rod and never again left it. Apollo also gave Hermes charge over all the cows in the blue meadow. Hermes loved the cows and often took them with him on his journeys. He was a wild youth and a great traveler, and so it happens that in nearly all the countries of the world Hermes and his white cows have been seen. IRIS' BRIDGE. In the sky where the amber tints are seen on the clouds, Iris was born. She loved her home and all the beautiful things around her. Perhaps she sailed in the moon's silver boat and knew why the stars kept twinkling. Perhaps she feasted on sunshine and dew, and slept on the soft white clouds. More than anything in her sky-home, Iris loved her grandfather, the stern old ocean. When he was merry, and drove his white horses over the water, she was happy. When he was troubled, and the sky grew dark and sad, she quietly slipped her hand into his. Instantly he smiled, and became gentle again. He longed always to keep her with him, but the Sun said: "No, Iris belongs to both ocean and sky. "Let her be the messenger between heaven and earth." They placed golden wings upon her shoulders and made her a bridge of beautiful colors. One end of the bridge they rested in the sky, but the other Iris could fasten to the earth with a pot of gold. This was the way Iris' path was made: The earth gave the tints of her fairest flowers, the sea brought great ribbons of silvery mist, the wind was the shuttle, the sky was the loom and the Sun himself was the weaver. It is no wonder that the most beautiful thing in all the world is Iris' bridge, the rainbow. [Illustration] 
33178	----	THE HOLY EARTH BY L. H. BAILEY NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1916 Copyright, 1915, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Published September, 1915 Contents Page First, The Statement: Pages 1-16 In the beginning 5 The earth is good 7 It is kindly 10 The earth is holy 14 Second, The Consequences: Pages 17-171 The habit of destruction 18 The new hold 22 The brotherhood relation 30 The farmer's relation 32 The underlying training of a people 39 The neighbor's access to the earth 42 The subdividing of the land 48 A new map 55 The public program 61 The honest day's work 66 The group reaction 70 The spiritual contact with nature 75 The struggle for existence: war 80 The daily fare 90 The admiration of good materials 103 The keeping of the beautiful earth 115 The tones of industry 120 The threatened literature 124 The separate soul 130 The element of separateness in society 136 The democratic basis in agriculture 139 The background spaces.--The forest 150 A forest background for a reformatory 156 The background spaces.--The open fields 164 The background spaces.--The ancestral sea 167 THE HOLY EARTH THE HOLY EARTH First, the Statement So bountiful hath been the earth and so securely have we drawn from it our substance, that we have taken it all for granted as if it were only a gift, and with little care or conscious thought of the consequences of our use of it; nor have we very much considered the essential relation that we bear to it as living parts in the vast creation. It is good to think of ourselves--of this teeming, tense, and aspiring human race--as a helpful and contributing part in the plan of a cosmos, and as participators in some far-reaching destiny. The idea of responsibility is much asserted of late, but we relate it mostly to the attitude of persons in the realm of conventional conduct, which we have come to regard as very exclusively the realm of morals; and we have established certain formalities that satisfy the conscience. But there is some deeper relation than all this, which we must recognize and the consequences of which we must practise. There is a directer and more personal obligation than that which expends itself in loyalty to the manifold organizations and social requirements of the present day. There is a more fundamental co-operation in the scheme of things than that which deals with the proprieties or which centres about the selfishness too often expressed in the salvation of one's soul. We can be only onlookers on that part of the cosmos that we call the far heavens, but it is possible to co-operate in the processes on the surface of the sphere. This co-operation may be conscious and definite, and also useful to the earth; that is, it may be real. What means this contact with our natural situation, this relationship to the earth to which we are born, and what signify this new exploration and conquest of the planet and these accumulating prophecies of science? Does the mothership of the earth have any real meaning to us? All this does not imply a relation only with material and physical things, nor any effort to substitute a nature religion. Our relation with the planet must be raised into the realm of spirit; we cannot be fully useful otherwise. We must find a way to maintain the emotions in the abounding commercial civilization. There are two kinds of materials,--those of the native earth and the idols of one's hands. The latter are much in evidence in modern life, with the conquests of engineering, mechanics, architecture, and all the rest. We visualize them everywhere, and particularly in the great centres of population. The tendency is to be removed farther and farther from the everlasting backgrounds. Our religion is detached. We come out of the earth and we have a right to the use of the materials; and there is no danger of crass materialism if we recognize the original materials as divine and if we understand our proper relation to the creation, for then will gross selfishness in the use of them be removed. This will necessarily mean a better conception of property and of one's obligation in the use of it. We shall conceive of the earth, which is the common habitation, as inviolable. One does not act rightly toward one's fellows if one does not know how to act rightly toward the earth. Nor does this close regard for the mother earth imply any loss of mysticism or of exaltation: quite the contrary. Science but increases the mystery of the unknown and enlarges the boundaries of the spiritual vision. To feel that one is a useful and co-operating part in nature is to give one kinship, and to open the mind to the great resources and the high enthusiasms. Here arise the fundamental common relations. Here arise also the great emotions and conceptions of sublimity and grandeur, of majesty and awe, the uplift of vast desires,--when one contemplates the earth and the universe and desires to take them into the soul and to express oneself in their terms; and here also the responsible practices of life take root. So much are we now involved in problems of human groups, so persistent are the portrayals of our social afflictions, and so well do we magnify our woes by insisting on them, so much in sheer weariness do we provide antidotes to soothe our feelings and to cause us to forget by means of many empty diversions, that we may neglect to express ourselves in simple free personal joy and to separate the obligation of the individual from the irresponsibilities of the mass. _In the beginning_ It suits my purpose to quote the first sentence in the Hebrew Scripture: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. This is a statement of tremendous reach, introducing the cosmos; for it sets forth in the fewest words the elemental fact that the formation of the created earth lies above and before man, and that therefore it is not man's but God's. Man finds himself upon it, with many other creatures, all parts in some system which, since it is beyond man and superior to him, is divine. Yet the planet was not at once complete when life had appeared upon it. The whirling earth goes through many vicissitudes; the conditions on its fruitful surface are ever-changing; and the forms of life must meet the new conditions: so does the creation continue, and every day sees the genesis in process. All life contends, sometimes ferociously but more often bloodlessly and benignly, and the contention results in momentary equilibrium, one set of contestants balancing another; but every change in the outward conditions destroys the equation and a new status results. Of all the disturbing living factors, man is the greatest. He sets mighty changes going, destroying forests, upturning the sleeping prairies, flooding the deserts, deflecting the courses of the rivers, building great cities. He operates consciously and increasingly with plan aforethought; and therefore he carries heavy responsibility. This responsibility is recognized in the Hebrew Scripture, from which I have quoted; and I quote it again because I know of no other Scripture that states it so well. Man is given the image of the creator, even when formed from the dust of the earth, so complete is his power and so real his dominion: And God blessed them: and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. One cannot receive all these privileges without bearing the obligation to react and to partake, to keep, to cherish, and to co-operate. We have assumed that there is no obligation to an inanimate thing, as we consider the earth to be: but man should respect the conditions in which he is placed; the earth yields the living creature; man is a living creature; science constantly narrows the gulf between the animate and the inanimate, between the organized and the inorganized; evolution derives the creatures from the earth; the creation is one creation. I must accept all or reject all. _The earth is good_ It is good to live. We talk of death and of lifelessness, but we know only of life. Even our prophecies of death are prophecies of more life. We know no better world: whatever else there may be is of things hoped for, not of things seen. The objects are here, not hidden nor far to seek: And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. These good things are the present things and the living things. The account is silent on the things that were not created, the chaos, the darkness, the abyss. Plato, in the "Republic," reasoned that the works of the creator must be good because the creator is good. This goodness is in the essence of things; and we sadly need to make it a part in our philosophy of life. The earth is the scene of our life, and probably the very source of it. The heaven, so far as human beings know, is the source only of death; in fact, we have peopled it with the dead. We have built our philosophy on the dead. We seem to have overlooked the goodness of the earth in the establishing of our affairs, and even in our philosophies. It is reserved as a theme for preachers and for poets. And yet, the goodness of the planet is the basic fact in our existence. I am not speaking of good in an abstract way, in the sense in which some of us suppose the creator to have expressed himself as pleased or satisfied with his work. The earth is good in itself, and its products are good in themselves. The earth sustains all things. It satisfies. It matters not whether this satisfaction is the result of adaptation in the process of evolution; the fact remains that the creation is good. To the common man the earth propounds no system of philosophy or of theology. The man makes his own personal contact, deals with the facts as they are or as he conceives them to be, and is not swept into any system. He has no right to assume a bad or evil earth, although it is difficult to cast off the hindrance of centuries of teaching. When he is properly educated he will get a new resource from his relationships. It may be difficult to demonstrate this goodness. In the nature of things we must assume it, although we know that we could not subsist on a sphere of the opposite qualities. The important consideration is that we appreciate it, and this not in any sentimental and impersonal way. To every bird the air is good; and a man knows it is good if he is worth being a man. To every fish the water is good. To every beast its food is good, and its time of sleep is good. The creatures experience that life is good. Every man in his heart knows that there is goodness and wholeness in the rain, in the wind, the soil, the sea, the glory of sunrise, in the trees, and in the sustenance that we derive from the planet. When we grasp the significance of this situation, we shall forever supplant the religion of fear with a religion of consent. We are so accustomed to these essentials--to the rain, the wind, the soil, the sea, the sunrise, the trees, the sustenance--that we may not include them in the categories of the good things, and we endeavor to satisfy ourselves with many small and trivial and exotic gratifications; and when these gratifications fail or pall, we find ourselves helpless and resourceless. The joy of sound sleep, the relish of a sufficient meal of plain and wholesome food, the desire to do a good day's work and the recompense when at night we are tired from the doing of it, the exhilaration of fresh air, the exercise of the natural powers, the mastery of a situation or a problem,--these and many others like them are fundamental satisfactions, beyond all pampering and all toys, and they are of the essence of goodness. I think we should teach all children how good are the common necessities, and how very good are the things that are made in the beginning. _It is kindly_ We hear much about man being at the mercy of nature, and the literalist will contend that there can be no holy relation under such conditions. But so is man at the mercy of God. It is a blasphemous practice that speaks of the hostility of the earth, as if the earth were full of menaces and cataclysms. The old fear of nature, that peopled the earth and sky with imps and demons, and that gave a future state to Satan, yet possesses the minds of men, only that we may have ceased to personify and to demonize our fears, although we still persistently contrast what we call the evil and the good. Still do we attempt to propitiate and appease the adversaries. Still do we carry the ban of the early philosophy that assumed materials and "the flesh" to be evil, and that found a way of escape only in renunciation and asceticism. Nature cannot be antagonistic to man, seeing that man is a product of nature. We should find vast joy in the fellowship, something like the joy of Pan. We should feel the relief when we no longer apologize for the creator because of the things that are made. It is true that there are devastations of flood and fire and frost, scourge of disease, and appalling convulsions of earthquake and eruption. But man prospers; and we know that the catastrophes are greatly fewer than the accepted bounties. We have no choice but to abide. No growth comes from hostility. It would undoubtedly be a poor human race if all the pathway had been plain and easy. The contest with nature is wholesome, particularly when pursued in sympathy and for mastery. It is worthy a being created in God's image. The earth is perhaps a stern earth, but it is a kindly earth. Most of our difficulty with the earth lies in the effort to do what perhaps ought not to be done. Not even all the land is fit to be farmed. A good part of agriculture is to learn how to adapt one's work to nature, to fit the crop-scheme to the climate and to the soil and the facilities. To live in right relation with his natural conditions is one of the first lessons that a wise farmer or any other wise man learns. We are at pains to stress the importance of conduct; very well: conduct toward the earth is an essential part of it. Nor need we be afraid of any fact that makes one fact more or less in the sum of contacts between the earth and the earth-born children. All "higher criticism" adds to the faith rather than subtracts from it, and strengthens the bond between. The earth and its products are very real. Our outlook has been drawn very largely from the abstract. Not being yet prepared to understand the conditions of nature, man considered the earth to be inhospitable, and he looked to the supernatural for relief; and relief was heaven. Our pictures of heaven are of the opposites of daily experience,--of release, of peace, of joy uninterrupted. The hunting-grounds are happy and the satisfaction has no end. The habit of thought has been set by this conception, and it colors our dealings with the human questions and to much extent it controls our practice. But we begin to understand that the best dealing with problems on earth is to found it on the facts of earth. This is the contribution of natural science, however abstract, to human welfare. Heaven is to be a real consequence of life on earth; and we do not lessen the hope of heaven by increasing our affection for the earth, but rather do we strengthen it. Men now forget the old images of heaven, that they are mere sojourners and wanderers lingering for deliverance, pilgrims in a strange land. Waiting for this rescue, with posture and formula and phrase, we have overlooked the essential goodness and quickness of the earth and the immanence of God. This feeling that we are pilgrims in a vale of tears has been enhanced by the wide-spread belief in the sudden ending of the world, by collision or some other impending disaster, and in the common apprehension of doom; and lately by speculations as to the aridation and death of the planet, to which all of us have given more or less credence. But most of these notions are now considered to be fantastic, and we are increasingly confident that the earth is not growing old in a human sense, that its atmosphere and its water are held by the attraction of its mass, and that the sphere is at all events so permanent as to make little difference in our philosophy and no difference in our good behavior. I am again impressed with the first record in Genesis in which some mighty prophet-poet began his account with the creation of the physical universe. So do we forget the old-time importance given to mere personal salvation, which was permission to live in heaven, and we think more of our present situation, which is the situation of obligation and of service; and he who loses his life shall save it. We begin to foresee the vast religion of a better social order. _The earth is holy_ Verily, then, the earth is divine, because man did not make it. We are here, part in the creation. We cannot escape. We are under obligation to take part and to do our best, living with each other and with all the creatures. We may not know the full plan, but that does not alter the relation. When once we set ourselves to the pleasure of our dominion, reverently and hopefully, and assume all its responsibilities, we shall have a new hold on life. We shall put our dominion into the realm of morals. It is now in the realm of trade. This will be very personal morals, but it will also be national and racial morals. More iniquity follows the improper and greedy division of the resources and privileges of the earth than any other form of sinfulness. If God created the earth, so is the earth hallowed; and if it is hallowed, so must we deal with it devotedly and with care that we do not despoil it, and mindful of our relations to all beings that live on it. We are to consider it religiously: Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. The sacredness to us of the earth is intrinsic and inherent. It lies in our necessary relationship and in the duty imposed upon us to have dominion, and to exercise ourselves even against our own interests. We may not waste that which is not ours. To live in sincere relations with the company of created things and with conscious regard for the support of all men now and yet to come, must be of the essence of righteousness. This is a larger and more original relation than the modern attitude of appreciation and admiration of nature. In the days of the patriarchs and prophets, nature and man shared in the condemnation and likewise in the redemption. The ground was cursed for Adam's sin. Paul wrote that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain, and that it waiteth for the revealing. Isaiah proclaimed the redemption of the wilderness and the solitary place with the redemption of man, when they shall rejoice and blossom as the rose, and when the glowing sand shall become a pool and the thirsty ground springs of water. The usual objects have their moral significance. An oak-tree is to us a moral object because it lives its life regularly and fulfils its destiny. In the wind and in the stars, in forest and by the shore, there is spiritual refreshment: And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. I do not mean all this, for our modern world, in any vague or abstract way. If the earth is holy, then the things that grow out of the earth are also holy. They do not belong to man to do with them as he will. Dominion does not carry personal ownership. There are many generations of folk yet to come after us, who will have equal right with us to the products of the globe. It would seem that a divine obligation rests on every soul. Are we to make righteous use of the vast accumulation of knowledge of the planet? If so, we must have a new formulation. The partition of the earth among the millions who live on it is necessarily a question of morals; and a society that is founded on an unmoral partition and use cannot itself be righteous and whole. Second, the Consequences I have now stated my purpose; and the remainder of the little book will make some simple applications of it and draw some inferences therefrom. There is nothing here that need alarm the timid, albeit we enter a disputed field, a field of opinion rather than of demonstration; and if the reader goes with me, I trust that we may have a pleasant journey. It is to be a journey of recognition, not of protest. It is needful that we do not forget. We are not to enter into a course of reasoning with those whom we meet on the way, or to pause to debate the definitions and analyses made in books, or to deny any of the satisfactions of tradition. We shall be ready for impressions; and possibly we shall be able to find some of the old truths in unfrequented places. _The habit of destruction_ The first observation that must be apparent to all men is that our dominion has been mostly destructive. We have been greatly engaged in digging up the stored resources, and in destroying vast products of the earth for some small kernel that we can apply to our necessities or add to our enjoyments. We excavate the best of the coal and cast away the remainder; blast the minerals and metals from underneath the crust, and leave the earth raw and sore; we box the pines for turpentine and abandon the growths of limitless years to fire and devastation; sweep the forests with the besom of destruction; pull the fish from the rivers and ponds without making any adequate provision for renewal; exterminate whole races of animals; choke the streams with refuse and dross; rob the land of its available stores, denuding the surface, exposing great areas to erosion. Nor do we exercise the care and thrift of good housekeepers. We do not clean up our work or leave the earth in order. The remnants and accumulation of mining-camps are left to ruin and decay; the deserted phosphate excavations are ragged, barren, and unfilled; vast areas of forested lands are left in brush and waste, unthoughtful of the future, unmindful of the years that must be consumed to reduce the refuse to mould and to cover the surface respectably, uncharitable to those who must clear away the wastes and put the place in order; and so thoughtless are we with these natural resources that even the establishments that manufacture them--the mills, the factories of many kinds--are likely to be offensive objects in the landscape, unclean, unkempt, displaying the unconcern of the owners to the obligation that the use of the materials imposes and to the sensibilities of the community for the way in which they handle them. The burden of proof seems always to have been rested on those who partake little in the benefits, although we know that these non-partakers have been real owners of the resources; and yet so undeveloped has been the public conscience in these matters that the blame--if blame there be--cannot be laid on one group more than on the other. Strange it is, however, that we should not have insisted at least that those who appropriate the accumulations of the earth should complete their work, cleaning up the remainders, leaving the areas wholesome, inoffensive, and safe. How many and many are the years required to grow a forest and to fill the pockets of the rocks, and how satisfying are the landscapes, and yet how desperately soon may men reduce it all to ruin and to emptiness, and how slatternly may they violate the scenery! All this habit of destructiveness is uneconomic in the best sense, unsocial, unmoral. Society now begins to demand a constructive process. With care and with regard for other men, we must produce the food and the other supplies in regularity and sufficiency; and we must clean up after our work, that the earth may not be depleted, scarred, or repulsive. Yet there is even a more defenseless devastation than all this. It is the organized destructiveness of those who would make military domination the major premise in the constitution of society, accompanying desolation with viciousness and violence, ravaging the holy earth, disrespecting the works of the creator, looking toward extirpation, confessing thereby that they do not know how to live in co-operation with their fellows; in such situations, every new implement of destruction adds to the guilt. In times past we were moved by religious fanaticism, even to the point of waging wars. To-day we are moved by impulses of trade, and we find ourselves plunged into a war of commercial frenzy; and as it has behind it vaster resources and more command of natural forces, so is it the most ferocious and wasteful that the race has experienced, exceeding in its havoc the cataclysms of earthquake and volcano. Certainly we have not yet learned how to withstand the prosperity and the privileges that we have gained by the discoveries of science; and certainly the morals of commerce has not given us freedom or mastery. Rivalry that leads to arms is a natural fruit of unrestrained rivalry in trade. Man has dominion, but he has no commission to devastate: And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. Verily, so bountiful hath been the earth and so securely have we drawn from it our substance, that we have taken it all for granted as if it were only a gift, and with little care or conscious thought of the consequences of our use of it. _The new hold_ We may distinguish three stages in our relation to the planet, the collecting stage, the mining stage, and the producing stage. These overlap and perhaps are nowhere distinct, and yet it serves a purpose to contrast them. At first man sweeps the earth to see what he may gather,--game, wood, fruits, fish, fur, feathers, shells on the shore. A certain social and moral life arises out of this relation, seen well in the woodsmen and the fishers--in whom it best persists to the present day--strong, dogmatic, superstitious folk. Then man begins to go beneath the surface to see what he can find,--iron and precious stones, the gold of Ophir, coal, and many curious treasures. This develops the exploiting faculties, and leads men into the uttermost parts. In both these stages the elements of waste and disregard have been heavy. Finally, we begin to enter the productive stage, whereby we secure supplies by controlling the conditions under which they grow, wasting little, harming not. Farming has been very much a mining process, the utilizing of fertility easily at hand and the moving-on to lands unspoiled of quick potash and nitrogen. Now it begins to be really productive and constructive, with a range of responsible and permanent morals. We rear the domestic animals with precision. We raise crops, when we will, almost to a nicety. We plant fish in lakes and streams to some extent but chiefly to provide more game rather than more human food, for in this range we are yet mostly in the collecting or hunter stage. If the older stages were strongly expressed in the character of the people, so will this new stage be expressed; and so is it that we are escaping the primitive and should be coming into a new character. We shall find our rootage in the soil. This new character, this clearer sense of relationship with the earth, should express itself in all the people and not exclusively in farming people and their like. It should be a popular character--or a national character if we would limit the discussion to one people--and not a class character. Now, here lies a difficulty and here is a reason for writing this book: the population of the earth is increasing, the relative population of farmers is decreasing, people are herding in cities, we have a city mind, and relatively fewer people are brought into touch with the earth in any real way. So is it incumbent on us to take special pains--now that we see the new time--that all the people, or as many of them as possible, shall have contact with the earth and that the earth righteousness shall be abundantly taught. I hasten to say that I am not thinking of any back-to-the-farm movement to bring about the results we seek. Necessarily, the proportion of farmers will decrease. Not so many are needed, relatively, to produce the requisite supplies from the earth. Agriculture makes a great contribution to human progress by releasing men for the manufactures and the trades. In proportion as the ratio of farmers decreases is it important that we provide them the best of opportunities and encouragement: they must be better and better men. And if we are to secure our moral connection with the planet to a large extent through them, we can see that they bear a relation to society in general that we have overlooked. Even the farming itself is changing radically in character. It ceases to be an occupation to gain sustenance and becomes a business. We apply to it the general attitudes of commerce. We must be alert to see that it does not lose its capacity for spiritual contact. How we may achieve a more wide-spread contact with the earth on the part of all the people without making them farmers, I shall endeavor to suggest as I proceed; in fact, this is my theme. Dominion means mastery; we may make the surface of the earth much what we will; we can govern the way in which we shall contemplate it. We are probably near something like a stable occupancy. It is not to be expected that there will be vast shifting of cities as the contest for the mastery of the earth proceeds,--probably nothing like the loss of Tyre and Carthage, and of the commercial glory of Venice. In fact, we shall have a progressive occupancy. The greater the population, the greater will be the demands on the planet; and, moreover, every new man will make more demands than his father made, for he will want more to satisfy him. We are to take from the earth much more than we have ever taken before, but it will be taken in a new way and with better intentions. It will be seen, therefore, that we are not here dealing narrowly with an occupation but with something very fundamental to our life on the planet. We are not to look for our permanent civilization to rest on any species of robber-economy. No flurry of coal-mining, or gold-fever, or rubber-collecting in the tropics, or excitement of prospecting for new finds or even locating new lands, no ravishing of the earth or monopolistic control of its bounties, will build a stable society. So is much of our economic and social fabric transitory. It is not by accident that a very distinct form of society is developing in the great farming regions of the Mississippi Valley and in other comparable places; the exploiting and promoting occupancy of those lands is passing and a stable progressive development appears. We have been obsessed of the passion to cover everything at once, to skin the earth, to pass on, even when there was no necessity for so doing. It is a vast pity that this should ever have been the policy of government in giving away great tracts of land by lottery, as if our fingers would burn if we held the lands inviolate until needed by the natural process of settlement. The people should be kept on their lands long enough to learn how to use them. But very well: we have run with the wind, we have staked the lands; now we shall be real farmers and real conquerors. Not all lands are equally good for farming, and some lands will never be good for farming; but whether in Iowa, or New England, or old Asia, farming land may develop character in the people. My reader must not infer that we have arrived at a permanent agriculture, although we begin now to see the importance of a permanent land occupancy. Probably we have not yet evolved a satisfying husbandry that will maintain itself century by century, without loss and without the ransacking of the ends of the earth for fertilizer materials to make good our deficiencies. All the more is it important that the problem be elevated into the realm of statesmanship and of morals. Neither must he infer that the resources of the earth are to be locked up beyond contact and use (for the contact and use will be morally regulated). But no system of brilliant exploitation, and no accidental scratching of the surface of the earth, and no easy appropriation of stored materials can suffice us in the good days to come. City, country, this class and that class, all fall and merge before the common necessity. It is often said that the farmer is our financial mainstay; so in the good process of time will he be a moral mainstay, for ultimately finance and social morals must coincide. The gifts are to be used for service and for satisfaction, and not for wealth. Very great wealth introduces too many intermediaries, too great indirectness, too much that is extrinsic, too frequent hindrances and superficialities. It builds a wall about the man, and too often does he receive his impressions of the needs of the world from satellites and sycophants. It is significant that great wealth, if it contributes much to social service, usually accomplishes the result by endowing others to work. The gift of the products of the earth was "for meat": nothing was said about riches. Yet the very appropriation or use of natural resources may be the means of directing the mind of the people back to the native situations. We have the opportunity to make the forthcoming development of water-power, for example, such an agency for wholesome training. Whenever we can appropriate without despoliation or loss, or without a damaging monopoly, we tie the people to the backgrounds. In the background is the countryman; and how is the countryman to make use of the rain and the abounding soil, and the varied wonder of plant and animal amidst which he lives, that he may arrive at kinship? We are teaching him how to bring some of these things under the dominion of his hands, how to measure and to weigh and to judge. This will give him the essential physical mastery. But beyond this, how shall he take them into himself, how shall he make them to be of his spirit, how shall he complete his dominion? How shall he become the man that his natural position requires of him? This will come slowly, ah, yes!--slowly. The people--the great striving self-absorbed throng of the people--they do not know what we mean when we talk like this, they hear only so many fine words. The naturist knows that the time will come slowly,--not yet are we ready for fulfilment; he knows that we cannot regulate the cosmos, or even the natural history of the people, by enactments. Slowly: by removing handicaps here and there; by selection of the folk in a natural process, to eliminate the unresponsive; by teaching, by suggestion; by a public recognition of the problem, even though not one of us sees the end of it. I hope my reader now sees where I am leading him. He sees that I am not thinking merely of instructing the young in the names and habits of birds and flowers and other pleasant knowledge, although this works strongly toward the desired end; nor of any movement merely to have gardens, or to own farms, although this is desirable provided one is qualified to own a farm; nor of rhapsodies on the beauties of nature. Nor am I thinking of any new plan or any novel kind of institution or any new agency; rather shall we do better to escape some of the excessive institutionalism and organization. We are so accustomed to think in terms of organized politics and education and religion and philanthropies that when we detach ourselves we are said to lack definiteness. It is the personal satisfaction in the earth to which we are born, and the quickened responsibility, the whole relation, broadly developed, of the man and of all men,--it is this attitude that we are to discuss. The years pass and they grow into centuries. We see more clearly. We are to take a new hold. _The brotherhood relation_ A constructive and careful handling of the resources of the earth is impossible except on a basis of large co-operation and of association for mutual welfare. The great inventions and discoveries of recent time have extensive social significance. Yet we have other relations than with the physical and static materials. We are parts in a living sensitive creation. The theme of evolution has overturned our attitude toward this creation. The living creation is not exclusively man-centred: it is bio-centric. We perceive the essential continuity in nature, arising from within rather than from without, the forms of life proceeding upwardly and onwardly in something very like a mighty plan of sequence, man being one part in the process. We have genetic relation with all living things, and our aristocracy is the aristocracy of nature. We can claim no gross superiority and no isolated self-importance. The creation, and not man, is the norm. Even now do we begin to guide our practises and our speech by our studies of what we still call the lower creation. We gain a good perspective on ourselves. If we are parts in the evolution, and if the universe, or even the earth, is not made merely as a footstool, or as a theatre for man, so do we lose our cosmic selfishness and we find our place in the plan of things. We are emancipated from ignorance and superstition and small philosophies. The present wide-spread growth of the feeling of brotherhood would have been impossible in a self-centred creation: the way has been prepared by the discussion of evolution, which is the major biological contribution to human welfare and progress. This is the philosophy of the oneness in nature and the unity in living things. _The farmer's relation_ The surface of the earth is particularly within the care of the farmer. He keeps it for his own sustenance and gain, but his gain is also the gain of all the rest of us. At the best, he accumulates little to himself. The successful farmer is the one who produces more than he needs for his support; and the overplus he does not keep; and, moreover, his own needs are easily satisfied. It is of the utmost consequence that the man next the earth shall lead a fair and simple life; for in riotous living he might halt many good supplies that now go to his fellows. It is a public duty so to train the farmer that he shall appreciate his guardianship. He is engaged in a quasi-public business. He really does not even own his land. He does not take his land with him, but only the personal development that he gains from it. He cannot annihilate his land, as another might destroy all his belongings. He is the agent or the representative of society to guard and to subdue the surface of the earth; and he is the agent of the divinity that made it. He must exercise his dominion with due regard to all these obligations. He is a trustee. The productiveness of the earth must increase from generation to generation: this also is his obligation. He must handle all his materials, remembering man and remembering God. A man cannot be a good farmer unless he is a religious man. If the farmer is engaged in a quasi-public business, shall we undertake to regulate him? This relationship carries a vast significance to the social order, and it must color our attitude toward the man on the land. We are now in that epoch of social development when we desire to regulate by law everything that is regulatable and the other things besides. It is recently proposed that the Congress shall pass a law regulating the cropping scheme of the farmer for the protection of soil fertility. This follows the precedent of the regulation, by enactment, of trusts and public utilities. It is fortunate that such a law cannot be passed, and could not be enforced if it were passed; but this and related proposals are crude expressions of the growing feeling that the farmer owes an obligation to society, and that this obligation must be enforced and the tiller of the soil be held to account. We shall produce a much better and safer man when we make him self-controlling by developing his sense of responsibility than when we regulate him by exterior enactments. In the realm of control of the farming occupation we shall invoke other than legal means, and perhaps these means will be suggestive for other situations. These means may be somewhat indefinite in the law-book sense, but they may attain to a better human result. We shall reach the question by surer ways than the crudities of legislation. We shall reach the man, in this field, rather than his business. We have begun it by accepting it as one part of our duty to the race to provide liberally at public expense for the special education of the man on the land. This is the reason, even if we have not formulated it to ourselves, why society is willing to go farther in the education of the farming people than in the popular education of other ranges of the people. This, of course, is the fundamental way; and if there are any governments that attempt to safeguard this range directly by laws rather than by education, then they have not arrived at a long view of the situation. We invoke regulatory law for the control of the corporate activities; but we must not forget the other kinds of activities contributing to the making of society, nor attempt to apply to them the same methods of correction. Into this secular and more or less technical education we are now to introduce the element of moral obligation, that the man may understand his peculiar contribution and responsibility to society; but this result cannot be attained until the farmer and every one of us recognize the holiness of the earth. The farmer and every one of us: every citizen should be put right toward the planet, should be quicked to his relationship to his natural background. The whole body of public sentiment should be sympathetic with the man who works and administers the land for us; and this requires understanding. We have heard much about the "marginal man," but the first concern of society should be for the bottom man. If this philosophy should really be translated into action, the farmer would nowhere be a peasant, forming merely a caste, and that a low one, among his fellows. He would be an independent co-operating citizen partaking fully of the fruits of his labor, enjoying the social rewards of his essential position, being sustained and protected by a body of responsive public opinion. The farmer cannot keep the earth for us without an enlightened and very active support from every other person, and without adequate safeguards from exploitation and from unessential commercial pressure. This social support requires a ready response on the part of the farmer; and he must also be developed into his position by a kind of training that will make him quickly and naturally responsive to it. The social fascination of the town will always be greater than that of the open country. The movements are more rapid, more picturesque, have more color and more vivacity. It is not to be expected that we can overcome this fascination and safeguard the country boy and girl merely by introducing more showy or active enterprises into the open country. We must develop a new background for the country youth, establish new standards, and arouse a new point of view. The farmer will not need all the things that the city man thinks the farmer needs. We must stimulate his moral response, his appreciation of the worthiness of the things in which he lives, and increase his knowledge of all the objects and affairs amongst which he moves. The backbone of the rural question is at the bottom a moral problem. We do not yet know whether the race can permanently endure urban life, or whether it must be constantly renewed from the vitalities in the rear. We know that the farms and the back spaces have been the mother of the race. We know that the exigencies and frugalities of life in these backgrounds beget men and women to be serious and steady and to know the value of every hour and of every coin that they earn; and whenever they are properly trained, these folk recognize the holiness of the earth. For some years I have had the satisfaction to speak to rural folk in many places on the holy earth and to make some of the necessary applications. Everywhere I have met the heartiest assent from these people. Specially do they respond to the suggestion that if the earth is hallowed, so are the native products of the earth hallowed; and they like to have the mystery--which is the essential sentiment--of these things brought home to them with frequency. I will here let my reader have a letter that one of these persons wrote me, and I print it without change. On inquiry, the writer of it told me that he is a farmer, has never followed any other occupation, was brought up "in the woods," and has had practically no education. I did not ask him, but I judge from the narrative style that he has been a reader or a hearer of the Old Testament; and here is the letter: As you say, too many people confound farming, with that sordid, selfish, money-getting game, called "business," whereas, the farmer's position is administrative, being in a way a dispenser of the "Mysteries of God," for they are mysteries. Every apple is a mystery, and every potato is a mystery, and every ear of corn is a mystery, and every pound of butter is a mystery, and when a "farmer" is not able to understand these things he is out of place. The farmer uses the soil and the rains and the snows and the frosts and the winds and the sun; these are also the implements of the Almighty, the only tools He uses, and while you were talking that day, it brought to mind the recollection of an account I once read of an occurrence which took place in the vicinity of Carlsruhe, in Germany, about thirty years ago, and I want to tell you about it. An old man and his two sons, who were laborers on a large farm there, went out one morning to mow peas, with scythes, as was the method in use at that time, and soon after they began work, they noticed a large active man coming along a pathway which bordered the field on one side, and when he came to where they were, he spoke to them, very pleasantly, and asked them some questions about their work and taking the scythe from the hands of the older man he mowed some with it and finally returned it and went his way. After a time when the owner of the farm came out to oversee the work they told him of the occurrence, and asked him if he could tell who the stranger might be, and he told them that he was Prince Bismarck, the Chancellor of the empire, who was staying at his country home at Carlsruhe, and was out for his morning walk, and they were astonished, and the old man was filled with a great pride, and he felt himself elevated above all his fellows, and he wouldn't have sold his scythe for half the money in Germany, and his descendants to this day boast of the fact that their father and Bismarck mowed with the same scythe. Now if it was sufficient to stimulate the pride of this old laborer, if it was sufficient to create for him a private aristocracy, if it was sufficient to convert that old rusty scythe into a priceless heirloom to be treasured up and transmitted from father to son, if it was sufficient for all these things that he had once held a momentarily unimportant association with the man of "blood and iron," how much more inconceivably and immeasurably high and exalted is the station of the farmer who is, in a measure, a fellow craftsman of the God of Nature, of the great First Cause of all things, and people don't know it. No wonder the boys leave the farm! _The underlying training of a people_ This, then, is the landsman's obligation, and his joyful privilege. But it must not be supposed that he alone bears the responsibility to maintain the holiness of the divine earth. It is the obligation also of all of us, since every one is born to the earth and lives upon it, and since every one must react to it to the extent of his place and capabilities. This being so, then it is a primary need that we shall place at the use of the people a kind of education that shall quicken these attachments. Certainly all means of education are useful, and every means should be developed to its best; and it is not to be expected that all the people shall pursue a single means: but to the nation and to the race a fundamental training must be provided. We are now in the time of developing a technical education in agriculture, to the end that we may produce our land supplies. Already this education is assuming broad aspects, and we begin to see that it has very important bearing on public policies. It is a new form of exercise in natural science,--the old education in this great realm having become so specialized and departmentalized as to lose much of its value as a means of popular training. It is a happy augury that in North America so many public men and administrators have taken the large view of education by means of agriculture, desiring, while training farmers or those who would be farmers, to make it a means of bringing the understanding of the people back to the land. The Americans are making a very remarkable contribution here, in a spirit of real statesmanship. In the long run, this procedure will produce a spirit in the people that will have far-reaching importance in the development of national character, and in a relation to the backgrounds of which very few of us yet have vision. It will be fortunate if we can escape the formalizing and professionalizing of this education, that has cast such a blight on most of the older means of training the young, and if we can keep it democratic and free in spirit. We shall need to do the same in all the subjects that lie at the foundations,--in all the other crafts; all these crafts are of the earth. They support the physical man and the social fabric, and make the conditions out of which all the highest achievements may come. Every person in a democracy has a right to be educated by these means; and a people living in a democracy must of necessity understand the significance of such education. This education should result or function politically. It is not sufficient to train technically in the trades and crafts and arts to the end of securing greater economic efficiency,--this may be accomplished in a despotism and result in no self-action on the part of the people. Every democracy must reach far beyond what is commonly known as economic efficiency, and do everything it can to enable those in the backgrounds to maintain their standing and their pride and to partake in the making of political affairs. _The neighbor's access to the earth_ When one really feels the response to the native earth, one feels also the obligation and the impulse to share it with the neighbor. The earth is not selfish. It is open and free to all. It invites everywhere. The naturist is not selfish,--he shares all his joys and discoveries, even to the extent of publishing them. The farmer is not selfish with his occupation,--he freely aids every one or any one to engage in his occupation, even if that one becomes his competitor. But occupations that are some degrees removed from the earth may display selfishness; trade and, to a large extent, manufacture are selfish, and they lock themselves in. Even the exploiting of the resources of the earth may be selfish, in the taking of the timber and the coal, the water-powers and the minerals, for all this is likely to develop to a species of plunder. The naturist desires to protect the plants and the animals and the situations for those less fortunate and for those who come after. There are lumbermen and miners with the finest sense of obligation. There are other men who would take the last nugget and destroy the last bole. We are to recognize the essential integrity of the farming occupation, when developed constructively, as contrasted with the vast system of improbity and dishonor that arises from depredation and from the taking of booty. The best kind of community interest attaches to the proper use and partitioning of the earth, a communism that is dissociated from propaganda and programs. The freedom of the earth is not the freedom of license: there is always the thought of the others that are dependent on it. It is the freedom of utilization for needs and natural desires, without regard to one's place among one's fellows, or even to one's condition of degradation or state of sinfulness. All men are the same when they come back to the meadows, to the hills, and to the deep woods: He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust. The lesson of the growing abounding earth is of liberality for all, and never exploitation or very exclusive opportunities for the few. Even if the weaker anywhere perish in the contest for food, they are nevertheless given the opportunity to contest on terms equal to their abilities; and at all events, we come, in the human sphere, to the domination of sweet reason rather than to competition in sheer force. When, by means of reasonable education, this simple relation is understood by mankind and begins to express itself spontaneously, we shall find our voluminous complex of laws to regulate selfishness gradually disappearing and passing into the limbo. It is now easy to understand the sinfulness of vast private estates that shut up expanses of the surface of the earth from the reach and enjoyment of others that are born similarly to the privileges of the planet. There is no warrant in nature for guarantee deeds to such estates. It is true, of course, that land-estates should not be equal, for capacities for use are not equal, and abilities and deserts are not equal. It is legitimate to reward those who otherwise render great service, and this reward may lie in unusual privileges. The present emoluments in the way of incomes bear little relation to service or even to merit. We have not yet escaped the idea that vested rights--and particularly personal realty--are inviolable. Certainly these rights must be protected by law, otherwise there can be no stability and regularity in affairs; but there is no inalienable right in the ownership of the surface of the earth. Readjustments must come, and even now they are coming slowly, and here and there in the interest of the neighbor; and in the end there will be no private monopoly of public or natural resources. The cure for these ills does not lie, however, in the ownership of all the land by "the government," at least not in our time and perhaps never. It is well for a person to have his own plot for his lifetime, with the right to use it as he will so long as he does not offend, or does not despoil it for those who follow: it steadies him, and it identifies him with a definite program in life. We usually speak as if all good results in the distribution of the natural bounty will ensue if "the government" or "the state" owns the resources; but government ownership of resources and direction of industries may not mean freedom or escape for the people. It depends entirely on the kind of government,--not on its name or description, but on the extent to which the people have been trained to partake on their own initiative. The government may be an autocracy or only another form of monopoly. The aristocracy of land has much to its credit. Great gains in human accomplishment have come out of it; but this does not justify it for the future. The aristocracy of land is a very dangerous power in human affairs. It is all the more dangerous when associated with aristocracy of birth and of factitious social position, which usually accompany it. A people may be ever so free in its advantages and in its theoretical political organization, and yet suffer overwhelming bondage if its land is tied up in an aristocratic system, and particularly if that system is connected into a social aristocracy. And whenever rigid aristocracy in land connects itself with the close control of politics, the subjection becomes final and complete. What lies within a nation or a people may lie in enlarged form between the nations or the peoples. Neighborliness is international. Contest for land and sea is at the basis of wars. Recognizing the right of any people to its own life, we must equally recognize its right to a sufficient part of the surface of the earth. We must learn how to subdivide it on the basis of neighborliness, friendship, and conference; if we cannot learn this, then we cannot be neighbors but only enemies. The proposal now before Congress to cede to Canada the Alaskan Panhandle, or a part of it, is an evidence of this growth of international morals, extended to the very basis on which nations have been the least ready to co-operate. If we may fraternalize territory, so shall we fraternalize commerce. No people may rightly be denied the privilege to trade with all other peoples. All kinds of useful interchange are civilizers and peacemakers; and if we carry ourselves to others when we carry our produce and our wares, so do any of us need that others shall bring their produce and their wares to us. It would be a sorry people that purchased no supplies from without. Every people, small or large, has right of access to the sea, for the sea belongs to mankind. It follows that no people has a right to deprive any other people of the shore, if that people desires the contact. We now begin to understand the awful sin of partitioning the earth by force. _The subdividing of the land_ The question then arises whether lands and other natural resources shall now be divided and redistributed in order that the share-and-share of the earth's patrimony shall be morally just. Undoubtedly the logic of the situation makes for many personal points of very close contact with the mother earth, and contact is usually most definite and best when it results from what we understand as ownership. This, in practice, suggests many small parcels of land--for those who would have their contact by means of land, which is the directest means--under personal fee. But due provision must always be made, as I have already indicated, for the man who makes unusual contribution to the welfare of his fellows, that he may be allowed to extend his service and attain his own full development; and moreover, an established order may not be overturned suddenly and completely without much damage, not only to personal interests but to society. Every person should have the right and the privilege to a personal use of some part of the earth; and naturally the extent of his privilege must be determined by his use of it. It is urged that lands can be most economically administered in very large units and under corporate management; but the economic results are not the most important results to be secured, although at present they are the most stressed. The ultimate good in the use of land is the development of the people; it may be better that more persons have contact with it than that it shall be executively more effectively administered. The morals of land management is more important than the economics of land management; and of course my reader is aware that by morals I mean the results that arise from a right use of the earth rather than the formal attitudes toward standardized or conventional codes of conduct. If the moral and the economic ends can be secured simultaneously, as eventually they will be secured, the perfect results will come to pass; but any line of development founded on accountant economics alone will fail. Here I must pause for an explanation in self-defense, for my reader may think I advise the "little farm well tilled" that has so much captured the public mind. So far from giving such advice, I am not thinking exclusively of farming when I speak of the partitioning of the land. One may have land merely to live on. Another may have a wood to wander in. One may have a spot on which to make a garden. Another may have a shore, and another a retreat in the mountains or in some far space. Much of the earth can never be farmed or mined or used for timber, and yet these supposed waste places may be very real assets to the race: we shall learn this in time. I am glad to see these outlying places set aside as public reserves; and yet we must not so organize and tie up the far spaces as to prevent persons of little means from securing small parcels. These persons should have land that they can handle and manipulate, in which they may dig, on which they may plant trees and build cabins, and which they may feel is theirs to keep and to master, and which they are not obliged to "improve." In the parks and reserves the land may be available only to look at, or as a retreat in which one may secure permission to camp. The regulations are necessary for these places, but these places are not sufficient. If it were possible for every person to own a tree and to care for it, the good results would be beyond estimation. Now, farming is a means of support; and in this case, the economic possibilities of a particular piece of land are of primary consequence. Of course, the most complete permanent contact with the earth is by means of farming, when one makes a living from the land; this should produce better results than hunting or sport; but one must learn how to make this connection. It is possible to hoe potatoes and to hear the birds sing at the same time, although our teaching has not much developed this completeness in the minds of the people. I hope, therefore, that the farmer's piece of land will be economically good (that it may make him a living and produce a surplus for some of the rest of us), and that the farmer may be responsive to his situation. The size of the farm that is to support a family, and the kinds of crops that shall be grown and even the yields that shall be secured to the acre, are technical problems of agriculture. In this New World, with expensive labor and still with cheap land, we cannot yet afford to produce the high yields of some of the Old World places,--it may be better to till more land with less yield to the acre. But all this is aside from my present purpose; and this purpose is to suggest the very real importance of making it possible for an increasing proportion of the people to have close touch with the earth in their own rights and in their own names. We recognize different grades or kinds of land occupancy, some of it being proprietorship and some of it tenancy and some of it mere shareholding. Thus far have we spoken of the partitioning of the land mostly in its large social and political relations; but to society also belongs the fertility of the land, and all efforts to conserve this fertility are public questions in the best sense. In America we think of tenant occupancy of land as dangerous because it does not safeguard fertility; in fact, it may waste fertility. This is because the practice in tenancy does not recognize the public interest in fertility, and the contract or agreement is made merely between the landowner and the tenant, and is largely an arrangement for skinning the land. It is only when the land itself is a party in the contract (when posterity is considered) that tenancy is safe. Then the tenant is obliged to fertilize the land, to practise certain rotations, and otherwise to conserve fertility, returning to the land the manurial value of products that are sold. When such contracts are made and enforced, tenancy farming does not deplete the land more than other farming, as the experience in some countries demonstrates. It is hardly to be expected, however, that tenant occupancy will give the man as close moral contact with the earth and its materials as will ownership; yet a well-developed tenancy is better than absentee farming by persons who live in town and run the farm by temporary hired help. The tenancy in the United States is partly a preliminary stage to ownership: if we can fulfil the moral obligation to society in the conserving of fertility and other natural resources, tenancy may be considered as a means to an end. Persons who work the land should have the privilege of owning it. It may be urged by those who contend that land should be held by society, that this regulation of tenancy provides a means of administering all farm lands by government in the interest of maintenance of fertility. Leaving aside the primary desirability, as I see it, of reserving individual initiative, it is to be said that this kind of regulation of the tenant is possible only with a live-stock husbandry; nor do we yet have sufficient knowledge to enable us to project a legal system for all kinds of agriculture; nor again is it applicable to widely differing conditions and regions. A keener sense of responsibility will enable owner and tenant to work out better methods in all cases, but it is now impossible to incorporate complete control methods into successful legislative regulations. The increasing competition will make it ever more difficult for the careless man to make a good living by farming, and he will be driven from the business; or if he is not driven out, society will take away his privilege. Yet we are not to think of society as founded wholly on small separate tracts, or "family farms," occupied by persons who live merely in contentment; this would mean that all landsmen would be essentially laborers. We need to hold on the land many persons who possess large powers of organization, who are managers, who can handle affairs in a bold way: it would be fatal to the best social and spiritual results if such persons could find no adequate opportunities on the land and were forced into other occupations. Undoubtedly we shall find ourselves with very unlike land units, encouraged and determined by the differing conditions and opportunities in different regions; and thereby shall we also avoid the great danger of making our fundamental occupation to produce a uniform and narrow class spirit. We need the great example of persons who live separately on their lands, who desire to abide, who are serious in the business, and who have sufficient proprietary rights to enable them to handle the natural resources responsibly. There is a type of well-intentioned writers that would have the farmers live in centres in order that they may have what are called "social" advantages, betaking themselves every morning to the fields when the dew is on the grass and the birds sing, hastening back every evening (probably when the clock points to five) to engage in the delightful delirium of card-parties and moving-picture shows (of course gathering the golden harvest in the meantime). Other writers are to have the farms so small that the residences will be as close as on a village street, and a trolley-car will run through, and I suppose the band will play! _A new map_ If, then, we are to give the people access to the holy earth, it means not only a new assent on the part of society but a new way of partitioning the surface. This is true whether we consider the subject wholly from the view-point of making natural resources utilizable or from the added desire to let the people out to those resources. The organization of any affair or enterprise determines to a great extent the character of the result; and the organization rests directly on the subdivision into parts. The dividing of a business into separate responsibilities of different departments and sub-departments makes for easy access and for what we now know as efficiency; the dividing of a nation into states or provinces and counties and many lesser units makes political life possible; the setting off of a man's farm into fields, with lanes and roads connecting, makes a working enterprise. The more accurately these subdivisions follow natural and living necessities, the greater will be the values and the satisfactions that result from the undertaking. Here is the open country, behind the great cities and the highly specialized industries. There are hills in it, great and small. There are forests here, none there; sands that nobody wants; fertile lands that everybody wants; shores inviting trade; mineral wealth; healing waters; power in streams; fish in ponds and lakes; building stone; swamps abounding in life; wild corners that stimulate desire; sceneries that take the soul into the far places. These are the fundamental reserves and the backgrounds. The first responsibility of any society is to protect them, husband them, bring them into use, and at the same time to teach the people what they mean. To bring them into use, and, at the same time, to protect them from rapacious citizens who have small social conscience, it is necessary to have good access. It is necessary to have roads. These roads should be laid where the resources exist, direct, purposeful. In a flat and uniform country, road systems may well be rectangular, following section-lines and intermediate lines; but the rectangularity is not the essential merit,--it is only a serviceable way of subdividing the resources. To find one's direction, north or south, is convenient, but it may clearly be subordinated to the utilization and protection of the supplies. The section-line division may accomplish this or it may not, and it is likely to place roads in wrong locations and to render the country monotonous and uninteresting. But in the broken country, in the country of tumbled hills and crooked falling streams, of slopes that would better be left in the wild, and of lands that are good and fruitful for the plow, the roads may go the easy grades; but they ought also to go in such a plan as to open up the country to the best development, to divide its resources in the surest way for the greatest number of persons, and to reduce profitless human toil to the minimum,--and this is just what they may not do. They may go up over bare and barren hills merely to pass a few homesteads where no homesteads ought to be, roads that are always expensive and never good, that accomplish practically nothing for society. They leave good little valleys at one side, or enter them over almost impossible slopes. There are resources of physical wealth and of wonderful scenery that they do not touch, that would be of much value if they were accessible. The farming country is often not divided in such a way as to render it either most readily accessible or to make it the most useful as an asset for the people. To connect villages and cities by stone roads is good. But what are we to do with all the back country, to make it contribute its needful part to feed the people in the days that are to come, and to open it to the persons who ought to go? We cannot accomplish this to the greatest purpose by the present road systems, even if the roads themselves are all made good. When the traveler goes to a strange country, he is interested in the public buildings, the cities, and some of the visible externals; but if he wants to understand the country, he must have a detailed map of its roads. The automobile maps are of no value for this purpose, for they show how one may pass over the country, not how the country is developed. As the last nerve-fibre and the last capillary are essential to the end of the finger and to the entire body, so the ultimate roads are essential to the myriad farms and to the national life. It is difficult in any country to get these maps, accurately and in detail; but they are the essential guidebooks. We undertake great conquests of engineering, over mountains and across rivers and through the morasses; but at the last we shall call on the engineer for the greatest conquest of all,--how to divide the surface of the earth so that it shall yield us its best and mean to us the most, on the easiest grades, in the most practicable way, that we may utilize every piece of land to fullest advantage. This means a new division and perhaps a redistribution of lands in such a way that the farmer will have his due proportion of hill and of valley, rather than that one shall have all valley and another all hard-scrabble on the hill or all waste land in some remote place. It means that there will be on each holding the proper relation of tilled land and pasture land and forest land, and that the outlets for the farmer and his products will be the readiest and the simplest that it is possible to make. It means that some roads will be abandoned entirely, as not worth the cost, and society will make a way for farmers living on impossible farms to move to other lands; and that there will be no "back roads," for they will be the marks of an undeveloped society. It means that we shall cease the pretense to bring all lands into farming, whether they are useful for farming or not; and that in the back country beyond the last farms there shall be trails that lead far away. In the farm region itself, much of the old division will pass away, being uneconomical and non-social. The abandonment of farms is in some cases a beginning of the process, but it is blind and undirected. Our educational effort is at present directed toward making the farmer prosperous on his existing farm, rather than to help him to secure a farm of proper resources and with proper access. As time goes on, we must reassemble many of the land divisions, if each man is to have adequate opportunity to make the most effective application of his knowledge, the best use of himself, and the greatest possible contribution to society. It would be well if some of the farms could be dispossessed of their owners, so that areas might be recombined on a better basis. This is no Utopian or socialistic scheme, nor does it imply a forcible interference with vested rights. It is a plain statement of the necessities of the situation. Of course it cannot come about quickly or as a result of direct legislation; but there are various movements that may start it,--it is, in fact, already started. All the burning rural problems relate themselves in the end to the division of the land. In America, we do not suffer from the holding of the land in a few families or in an aristocratic class; that great danger we have escaped, but we have not yet learned how to give the land meaning to the greatest number of people. This is a question for the best political program, for we look for the day when statesmanship shall be expressed in the details of common politics. We now hear much about the good-roads question, as if it were a problem only of highway construction: it is really a question of a new map. _The public program_ It would be a great gain if many persons could look forward to the ownership of a bit of the earth, to share in the partition, to partake in the brotherhood. Some day we shall make it easy rather than difficult for this to be brought about. Society, in its collective interest, also has necessities in the land. There is necessity of land to be owned by cities and other assemblages for water reservoirs, and all the rights thereto; for school grounds, playgrounds, reformatory institutions, hospitals, drill grounds, sewage-disposal areas, irrigation developments, drainage reclamations; for the public control of banks and borders of streams and ponds, for the shores of all vast bodies of water, for pleasure parks, recreation, breathing spaces in the great congestions, highways and other lines of communication; for the sites of public buildings, colleges and experiment stations, bird and beast refuges, fish and game reservations, cemeteries. There are also the rights of many semi-public agencies that need land,--of churches, of fraternal organizations, of incorporated seminaries and schools, of water-power and oil and coal developments, of manufacturing establishments, of extensive quarries, and of commercial enterprises of very many kinds. There is also the obligation of the general government that it shall have reserves against future needs, and that it shall protect the latent resources from exploitation and from waste. Great areas must be reserved for forests, as well as for other crops, and, in the nature of the case, these forest spaces in the future must be mostly in public ownership. Great remainders should be held by the people to be sold in small parcels to those who desire to get out to the backgrounds but who do not want to be farmers, where they may spend a vacation or renew themselves in the soil or under the trees, or by the green pastures or along the everlasting streams. It is a false assumption which supposes that if land cannot be turned into products of sale it is therefore valueless. The present active back-to-the-land movement has meaning to us here. It expresses the yearning of the people for contact with the earth and for escape from complexity and unessentials. As there is no regular way for attaining these satisfactions, it has largely taken the form of farming, which occupation has also been re-established in popular estimation in the same epoch. It should not be primarily a back-to-the-farm movement, however, and it is not to be derided. We are to recognize its meaning and to find some way of enabling more of the people to stand on the ground. Aside from all this, land is needed for human habitation, where persons may have space and may have the privilege of gathering about them the goods that add value to life. Much land will be needed in future for this habitation, not only because there will be more people, but also because every person will be given an outlet. We know it is not right that any family should be doomed to the occupancy of a very few dreary rooms and deathly closets in the depths of great cities, seeing that all children are born to the natural sky and to the wind and to the earth. We do not yet see the way to allow them to have what is naturally theirs, but we shall learn how. In that day we shall take down the wonderful towers and cliffs in the cities, in which people work and live, shelf on shelf, but in which they have no home. The great city expansion in the end will be horizontal rather than perpendicular. We shall have many knots, clustered about factories and other enterprises, and we shall learn how to distribute the satisfactions in life rather than merely to assemble them. Before this time comes, we shall have passed the present insistence on so-called commercial efficiency, as if it were the sole measure of a civilization, and higher ends shall come to have control. All this will rest largely on the dividing of the land. It is the common assumption that the solution of these problems lies in facilities of transportation, and, to an extent, this is true; but this assumption usually rests on the other assumption, that the method of the present city vortex is the method of all time, with its violent rush into the vortex and out of it, consuming vastly of time and energy, preventing home leisure and destroying locality feeling, herding the people like cattle. The question of transportation is indeed a major problem, but it must be met in part by a different philosophy of human effort, settling the people in many small or moderate assemblages rather than in a few mighty congestions. It will be better to move the materials than to move the people. The great cities will grow larger; that is, they will cover more land. The smaller cities, the villages, the country towns will take on greatly increased importance. We shall learn how to secure the best satisfactions when we live in villages as well as when we live in cities. We begin to plan our cities and to a small extent our villages. We now begin to plan the layout of the farms, that they may accomplish the best results. But the cities and the towns depend on the country that lies beyond; and the country beyond depends on the city and the town. The problem is broadly one problem,--the problem of so dividing and subdividing the surface of the earth that there shall be the least conflict between all these interests, that public reservations shall not be placed where it is better to have farms, that farming developments may not interfere with public utilities, that institutions may be so placed and with such area as to develop their highest usefulness, that the people desiring outlet and contact with the earth in their own right may be accorded that essential privilege. We have not yet begun to approach the subject in a fundamental way, and yet it is the primary problem of the occupancy of the planet. To the growing movement for city planning should be added an equal movement for country planning; and these should not proceed separately, but both together. No other public program is now more needed. _The honest day's work_ There is still another application of this problem of the land background. It is the influence that productive ownership exerts on the day's work. Yesterday for some time I observed eight working men engaged in removing parts of a structure and loading the pieces on a freight-car. At no time were more than two of the men making any pretension of working at once, most of the time they were all visiting or watching passers-by, and in the whole period the eight men did not accomplish what one good honest man should have performed. I wondered whether they had sufficient exercise to keep them in good health. They apparently were concerned about their "rights"; if the employer had rights they were undiscoverable. We know the integrity and effectiveness of the body of workmen; yet any reader who has formed a habit of observing men on day work and public work will recognize my account. Day men usually work in gangs, frequently too many of them to allow any one to labor effectively, and the whole process is likely to be mechanical, impersonal, often shiftless and pervaded with the highly developed skill of putting in the time and reducing the time to the minimum and of beginning to quit well in advance of the quitting time. The process of securing labor has become involved, tied up, and the labor is not rendered in a sufficient spirit of service. About the only free labor yet remaining to us is the month labor on the farm, even though it may be difficult to secure and be comprised largely of ineffective remainders. Over against all this is the importance of setting men at work singly and for themselves; this can be accomplished only when they own their property or have some real personal share in the production. The gang-spirit of labor runs into the politics of the group and constitutes the norm. If we are to have self-acting men they must be removed from close control, in labor as well as elsewhere. If it is necessary that any great proportion of the laboring men shall be controlled, then is it equally important that other men in sufficient numbers shall constitute the requisite counterbalance and corrective. It is doubtful whether any kind of profit-sharing in closely controlled industries can ever be as effective in training responsible men for a democracy, other things being equal, as an occupation or series of occupations in which the worker is responsible for his own results rather than to an overseer, although the profit-sharing may for the time being develop the greater technical efficiency. The influence of ownership on the performance of the man is often well illustrated when the farm laborer or tenant becomes the proprietor. Some of my readers will have had experience in the difficult and doubtful process of trying to "run a farm" at long range by means of ordinary hired help: the residence is uninhabitable; the tools are old and out of date, and some of them cannot be found; the well water is not good; the poultry is of the wrong breed, and the hens will not sit; the horses are not adapted to the work; the wagons must be painted and the harnesses replaced; the absolutely essential supplies are interminable; there must be more day labor. Now let this hired man come into the ownership of the farm: presto! the house can be repaired at almost no cost; the tools are good for some years yet; the harnesses can easily be mended; the absolutely essential supplies dwindle exceedingly; and the outside labor reduces itself to minor terms. Work with machinery, in factories, may proceed more rapidly because the operator must keep up with the machine; and there are also definite standards or measures of performance. Yet even here it is not to be expected that the work will be much more than time-service. In fact, the very movement among labor is greatly to emphasize time-service, and often quite independently of justice. There must necessarily be a reaction from this attitude if we are to hope for the best human product. The best human product results from the bearing of responsibility; in a controlled labor body the responsibility is shifted to the organization or to the boss. Assuredly the consolidating of labor is much to be desired if it is for the common benefit and for protection, and if it leaves the laborer free with his own product. Every person has the inalienable right to express himself, so long as it does not violate similar rights of his fellows, and to put forth his best production; if a man can best express himself in manual labor, no organization should suppress him or deny him that privilege. It is a sad case, and a denial of fundamental liberties, if a man is not allowed to work or to produce as much as he desires. Good development does not come from repression. Society recognizes its obligation to the laboring man of whatever kind and the necessity of safeguarding him both in his own interest and because he stands at the very foundations; the laboring man bears an obligation to respond liberally with service and good-will. Is it desirable to have an important part of the labor of a people founded on ownership? Is it worth while to have an example in a large class of the population of manual work that is free-spirited, and not dominated by class interest and time-service? Is it essential to social progress that a day's work shall be full measure? _The group reaction_ One of the interesting phenomena of human association is the arising of a certain standard or norm of moral action within the various groups that compose it. These standards may not be inherently righteous, but they become so thoroughly established as to be enacted into law or even to be more powerful than law. So is it, as we have seen, with the idea of inalienable rights in natural property that may be held even out of all proportion to any proper use that the owners may be able to make of it; and so is it with the idea of inviolable natural privileges to those who control facilities that depend on public patronage for their commercial success. The man himself may hold one kind of personal morals, but the group of which he is a part may hold a very different kind. It is our problem, in dealing with the resources of the earth, to develop in the group the highest expression of duty that is to be found in individuals. The restraint of the group, or the correction of the group action, is applied from the outside in the form of public opinion and in attack by other groups. The correction does not often arise from within. The establishing of many kinds of public-service bodies illustrates this fact. It is the check of society on group-selfishness. These remarks apply to the man who stands at the foundation of society, next the earth, as well as to others, although he has not organized to propagate the action of his class. The spoliation of land, the insufficient regard for it, the trifling with it, is much more than an economic deficiency. Society will demand either through the pressure of public opinion, or by regularized action, that the producing power of the land shall be safeguarded and increased, as I have indicated in an earlier part of the discussion. It will be better if it comes as the result of education, and thereby develops the voluntary feeling of obligation and responsibility. At the same time, it is equally the responsibility of every other person to make it possible for the farmer to prosecute his business under the expression of the highest standards. There is just now abroad amongst us a teaching to the effect that the farmer cannot afford to put much additional effort into his crop production, inasmuch as the profit in an acre may not depend on the increase in yield, and therefore he does not carry an obligation to augment his acre-yields. This is a weakening philosophy. Undoubtedly there is a point beyond which he may not go with profit in the effort to secure a heavy yield, for it may cost him too much to produce the maximum; so it may not be profitable for a transportation company to maintain the highest possible speed. With this economic question I have nothing to do; but it is the farmer's moral responsibility to society to increase his production, and the stimulation reacts powerfully upon himself. It is a man's natural responsibility to do his best: it is specially important that the man at the bottom put forth his best efforts. To increase his yields is one of the ways in which he expresses himself as a man and applies his knowledge. This incentive taken away, agriculture loses one of its best endeavors, the occupation remains stationary or even deteriorates, and society loses a moral support at the very point where it is most needed. If the economic conditions are such that the farmer cannot afford to increase his production, then the remedy is to be found without rather than by the repression of the producer. We are expending vast effort to educate the farmer in the ways of better production, but we do not make it possible for him to apply this education to the best advantage. The real farmer, the one whom we so much delight to honor, has a strong moral regard for his land, for his animals, and his crops. These are established men, with highly developed obligations, feeling their responsibility to the farm on which they live. No nation can long persist that does not have this kind of citizenry in the background. I have spoken of one phase of the group reaction, as suggested in the attitude of the farmer. It may be interesting to recall, again, the fact that the purpose of farming is changing. The farmer is now adopting the outlook and the moral conduct of commerce. His business is no longer to produce the supplies for his family and to share the small overplus with society. He grows or makes a certain line of produce that he sells for cash, and then he purchases his other supplies in the general market. The days of homespun are gone. The farmer is as much a buyer as a seller. Commercial methods and standards are invading the remotest communities. This will have far-reaching results. Perhaps a fundamental shift in the moral basis of the agricultural occupations is slowly under way. The measuring of farming in terms of yields and incomes introduces a dangerous standard. It is commonly assumed that State moneys for agriculture-education may be used only for "practical"--that is, for dollars-and-cents--results, and the emphasis is widely placed very exclusively on more alfalfa, more corn, more hogs, more fruit, on the two-blades-of-grass morals; and yet the highest good that can accrue to a State for the expenditure of its money is the raising up of a population less responsive to cash than to some other stimuli. The good physical support is indeed essential, but it is only the beginning of a process. I am conscious of a peculiar hardness in some of the agriculture-enterprise, with little real uplook; I hope that we may soon pass this cruder phase. Undoubtedly we are in the beginning of an epoch in rural affairs. We are at a formative period. We begin to consider the rural problem increasingly in terms of social groups. The attitudes that these groups assume, the way in which they react to their problems, will be determined in the broader aspects for some time to come by the character of the young leadership that is now taking the field. _The spiritual contact with nature_ A useful contact with the earth places man not as superior to nature but as a superior intelligence working in nature as a conscious and therefore as a responsible part in a plan of evolution, which is a continuing creation. It distinguishes the elemental virtues as against the acquired, factitious, and pampered virtues. These strong and simple traits may be brought out easily and naturally if we incorporate into our schemes of education the solid experiences of tramping, camping, scouting, farming, handcraft, and other activities that are not mere refinements of subjective processes. Lack of training in the realities drives us to find satisfaction in all sorts of make-believes and in play-lives. The "movies" and many other developments of our time make an appeal wholly beyond their merits, and they challenge the methods and intentions of education. There are more fundamental satisfactions than "thrills." There is more heart-ease in frugality than in surfeit. There is no real relish except when the appetite is keen. We are now provided with all sorts of things that nobody ever should want. The good spiritual reaction to nature is not a form of dogmatism or impressionism. It results normally from objective experience, when the person is ready for it and has good digestion. It should be the natural emotion of the man who knows his objects and does not merely dream about them. There is no hallucination in it. The remedy for some of the erratic "futurism" and other forms of illusion is to put the man hard against the facts: he might be set to studying bugs or soils or placed between the handles of a plow until such time as objects begin to take their natural shape and meaning in his mind. It is not within my purview here to consider the abstract righteous relation of man to the creation, nor to examine the major emotions that result from a contemplation of nature. It is only a very few of the simpler and more practical considerations that I may suggest. The training in solid experience naturally emphasizes the righteousness of plain and simple eating and drinking, and of frugality and control in pleasures. Many of the adventitious pleasures are in the highest degree pernicious and are indications of weakness. Considering the almost universal opinion that nature exhibits the merciless and relentless struggle of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, it is significant that one of the most productive ways of training a youth in sensitiveness and in regard for other creatures is by means of the nature contact. Even if the person is taught that the strong and ferocious survive and conquer, he nevertheless soon comes to have the tenderest regard for every living thing if he has the naturist in him. He discards the idea that we lose virility when we cease to kill, and relegates the notion to the limbo of deceits. This only means that unconsciously he has experienced the truth in nature, and in practice has discarded the erroneous philosophy contained in books even though he may still give these philosophies his mental assent. It is exactly among the naturists that the old instinct to kill begins to lose its force and that an instinct of helpfulness and real brotherhood soon takes its place. From another source, the instinct to kill dies out among the moralists and other people. And yet it is passing strange how this old survival--or is it a reversion?--holds its place amongst us, even in the higher levels. The punishment of a life for a life is itself a survival. Entertainment even yet plays upon this old memory of killing, as in books of adventure, in fiction, in playgames of children, and worst of all on the stage where this strange anachronism, even in plays that are not historic, is still portrayed in pernicious features and in a way that would rouse any community and violate law if it were enacted in real life. It is difficult to explain these survivals when we pretend to be so much shocked by the struggle for existence. We must accept the struggle, but we ought to try to understand it. The actual suffering among the creatures as the result of this struggle is probably small, and the bloody and ferocious contest that we like to picture to ourselves is relatively insignificant. There is a righteous element in the struggle; or, more truthfully, the struggle itself is right. Every living and sentient thing persists by its merit and by its right. It persists within its sphere, and usually not in the sphere of some other creature. The weeding-out process is probably related in some way with adaptability, but only remotely with physical strength. It is a process of applying the test. The test is applied continuously, and not in some violent upheaval. If one looks for a moral significance in the struggle for existence, one finds it in the fact that it is a process of adjustment rather than a contest in ambition. The elimination of the unessentials and of the survivals of a lower order of creation that have no proper place in human society, is the daily necessity of the race. The human struggle should not be on the plane of the struggle in the lower creation, by the simple fact that the human plane is unlike; and those who contend that we should draw our methods of contest from wild nature would therefore put us back on the plane of the creatures we are supposed to have passed. If there is one struggle of the creeping things, if there is one struggle of the fish of the sea and another of the beasts of the field, and still another of the fowls of the air, then surely there must be still another order for those who have dominion. _The struggle for existence: war_ We may consider even further, although briefly, the nature of the struggle for existence in its spiritual relation. It would be violence to assume a holy earth and a holy production from the earth, if the contest between the creatures seems to violate all that we know as rightness. The notion of the contentious and sanguinary struggle for existence finds its most pronounced popular expression in the existence of human war. It is a wide-spread opinion that war is necessary in the nature of things, and, in fact, it has been not only justified but glorified on this basis. We may here examine this contention briefly, and we may ask whether, in the case of human beings, there are other sufficient means of personal and social development than by mortal combat with one's fellows. We may ask whether the principle of enmity or the principle of fellow feeling is the more important and controlling. We are not to deny or even to overlook the great results that have come from war. Virile races have forced themselves to the front and have impressed their stamp on society; the peoples have been mixed and also assorted; lethargic folk have been galvanized into activity; iron has been put into men's sinews; heroic deeds have arisen; old combinations and intrigues have been broken up (although new ones take their place). A kind of national purification may result from a great war. The state of human affairs has been brought to its present condition largely as the issue of wars. On the other hand, we are not to overlook the damaging results, the destruction, the anguish, the check to all productive enterprise, the hatred and revenge, the hypocrisy and deceit, the despicable foreign spy system, the loss of standards, the demoralization, the lessening respect and regard for the rights of the other, the breeding of human parasites that fatten at the fringes of disaster, the levying of tribute, the setting up of unnatural boundaries, the thwarting of national and racial developments which, so far as we can see, gave every promise of great results. We naturally extol the nations that have survived; we do not know how many superior stocks may have been sacrificed to military conquest, or how many racial possibilities may have been suppressed in their beginnings. Vast changes in mental attitudes may result from a great war, and the course of civilization may be deflected; and while we adjust ourselves to these changes, no one may say at the time that they are just or even that they are temporarily best. We are never able at the moment to measure the effects of the unholy conquest of peoples who should not have been conquered; these results work themselves out in tribulation and perhaps in loss of effort and of racial standards through many weary centuries. Force, or even "success," cannot justify theft. But even assuming the great changes that have arisen from war, this is not a justification of war; it only states a fact, it only provides a measure of the condition of society at any epoch. It is probable that war will still exert a mighty even if a lessening influence; it may still be necessary to resort to arms to win for a people its natural opportunity and to free a race from bondage; and if any people has a right to its own existence, it has an equal right and indeed a duty to defend itself. But this again only indicates the wretched state of development in which we live. Undoubtedly, also, a certain amount of military training is very useful, but there should be other ways, in a democracy, to secure something of this needful training. The struggle for existence, as expressed in human combat, does not necessarily result in the survival of the most desirable, so far as we are able to define desirability. We are confusing very unlike situations in our easy application of the struggle for existence to war. The struggle is not now between individuals to decide the fitter; it is between vast bodies hurling death by wholesale. We pick the physically fit and send them to the battle-line; and these fit are slain. This is not the situation in nature from which we draw our illustrations. Moreover, the final test of fitness in nature is adaptation, not power. Adaptation and adjustment mean peace, not war. Physical force has been immensely magnified in the human sphere; we even speak of the great nations as "powers," a terminology that some day we shall regret. The military method of civilization finds no justification in the biological struggle for existence. The final conquest of a man is of himself, and he shall then be greater than when he takes a city. The final conquest of a society is of itself, and it shall then be greater than when it conquers its neighboring society. Man now begins to measure himself against nature also, and he begins to see that herein shall lie his greatest conquests beyond himself; in fact, by this means shall he conquer himself,--by great feats of engineering, by completer utilization of the possibilities of the planet, by vast discoveries in the unknown, and by the final enlargement of the soul; and in these fields shall be the heroes. The most virile and upstanding qualities can find expression in the conquest of the earth. In the contest with the planet every man may feel himself grow. What we have done in times past shows the way by which we have come; it does not provide a program of procedure for days that are coming; or if it does, then we deny the effective evolution of the race. We have passed witchcraft, religious persecution, the inquisition, subjugation of women, the enslavement of our fellows except alone enslavement in war. Here I come particularly to a consideration of the struggle for existence. Before I enter on this subject, I must pause to say that I would not of myself found an argument either for war or against it on the analogies of the struggle for existence. Man has responsibilities quite apart from the conditions that obtain in the lower creation. Man is a moral agent; animals and plants are not moral agents. But the argument for war is so often founded on this struggle in nature, that the question must be considered. It has been persistently repeated for years that in nature the weakest perish and that the victory is with the strong, meaning by that the physically powerful. This is a false analogy and a false biology. It leads men far astray. It is the result of a misconception of the teaching of evolution. Our minds dwell on the capture and the carnage in nature,--the hawk swooping on its prey, the cat stealthily watching for the mouse, wolves hunting in packs, ferocious beasts lying in wait, sharks that follow ships, serpents with venomous fangs, the vast range of parasitism; and with the poet we say that nature is "red in tooth and claw." Of course, we are not to deny the struggle of might against might, which is mostly between individuals, and of which we are all aware; but the weak and the fragile and the small are the organisms that have persisted. There are thousands of little and soft things still abundant in the world that have outlived the fearsome ravenous monsters of ages past; there were Goliaths in those days, but the Davids have outlived them, and Gath is not peopled by giants. The big and strong have not triumphed. The struggle in nature is not a combat, as we commonly understand that word, and it is not warfare. The earth is not strewn with corpses. I was impressed in reading Roosevelt's "African Game Trails" with the great extent of small and defenseless and fragile animal life that abounds in the midst of the terrible beasts,--little uncourageous things that hide in the crevices, myriads that fly in the air, those that ride on the rhinos, that swim and hide in the pools, and bats that hang in the acacia-trees. He travelled in the region of the lion, in the region that "holds the mightiest creatures that tread the earth or swim in its rivers; it also holds distant kinsfolk of these same creatures, no bigger than woodchucks, which dwell in crannies of the rocks, and in the tree tops. There are antelope smaller than hares and antelope larger than oxen. There are creatures which are the embodiment of grace; and others whose huge ungainliness is like that of a shape in a nightmare. The plains are alive with droves of strange and beautiful animals whose like is not known elsewhere." The lion is mighty; he is the king of beasts; but he keeps his place and he has no kingdom. He has not mastered the earth. No beast has ever overcome the earth; and the natural world has never been conquered by muscular force. Nature is not in a state of perpetual enmity, one part with another. My friend went to a far country. He told me that he was most impressed with the ferocity, chiefly of wild men. It came my time to go to that country. I saw that men had been savage,--men are the most ferocious of animals, and the ferocity has never reached its high point of refined fury until to-day. (Of course, savages fight and slay; this is because they are savages.) But I saw also that these savage men are passing away. I saw animals that had never tasted blood, that had no means of defense against a rapacious captor, and yet they were multiplying. Every stone that I upturned disclosed some tender organism; every bush that I disturbed revealed some timid atom of animal life; every spot where I walked bore some delicate plant, and I recalled the remark of Sir J. William Dawson "that frail and delicate plants may be more ancient than the mountains or plains on which they live"; and if I went on the sea, I saw the medusæ, as frail as a poet's dream, with the very sunshine streaming through them, yet holding their own in the mighty upheaval of the oceans; and I reflected on the myriads of microscopic things that for untold ages had cast the very rock on which much of the ocean rests. The minor things and the weak things are the most numerous, and they have played the greatest part in the polity of nature. So I came away from that far country impressed with the power of the little feeble things. I had a new understanding of the worth of creatures so unobtrusive and so silent that the multitude does not know them. I saw protective colorings; I saw fleet wings and swift feet; I saw the ability to hide and to conceal; I saw habits of adaptation; I saw marvellous powers of reproduction. You have seen them in every field; you have met them on your casual walks, until you accept them as the natural order of things. And you know that the beasts of prey have not prevailed. The whole contrivance of nature is to protect the weak. We have wrongly visualized the "struggle." We have given it an intensely human application. We need to go back to Darwin who gave significance to the phrase "struggle for existence." "I use this term," he said, "in a large and metaphorical sense, including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more important) not only the life of the individual, but success in leaving progeny." The dependence of one being on another, success in leaving progeny,--how accurate and how far-seeing was Darwin! I hope that I speak to naturists and to farmers. They know how diverse are the forms of life; and they know that somehow these forms live together and that only rarely do whole races perish by subjugation. They know that the beasts do not set forth to conquer, but only to gain subsistence and to protect themselves. The beasts and birds do not pursue indiscriminately. A hen-hawk does not attack crows or butterflies. Even a vicious bull does not attack fowls or rabbits or sheep. The great issues are the issues of live and let-live. There are whole nations of plants, more unlike than nations of humankind, living together in mutual interdependence. There are nations of quiet and mightless animals that live in the very regions of the mighty and the stout. And we are glad it is so. Consider the mockery of invoking the struggle for existence as justification for a battle on a June morning, when all nature is vibrant with life and competition is severe, and when, if ever, we are to look for strife. But the very earth breathes peace. The fulness of every field and wood is in complete adjustment. The teeming multitudes of animal and plant have found a way to live together, and we look abroad on a vast harmony, verdurous, prolific, abounding. Into this concord, project your holocaust! _The daily fare_ Some pages back, I said something about the essential simplicity in habit of life that results from the nature contact, and I illustrated the remark by calling attention to the righteousness of simple eating and drinking. Of course, the eating must be substantial, but the adventitious appetites accomplish nothing and they may be not only intemperate and damaging to health but even unmoral. Yet it is not alone the simplicity of the daily fare that interests me here, but the necessity that it shall be as direct as possible from the ground or the sea, and that it shall be undisguised and shall have meaning beyond the satisfying of the appetite. I was interested in Tusser's "Christmas husbandly fare," notwithstanding some suggestion of gluttony in it and of oversupply. There is a certain vigor and good relish about it, and lack of ostentation, that seem to suggest a lesson. It was more than three centuries ago that native Thomas Tusser, musician, chorister, and farmer, gave to the world his incomparable "Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry." He covered the farm year and the farm work as completely as Vergil had covered it more than fifteen centuries before; and he left us sketches of the countryside of his day, and the ways of the good plain folk, and quaint bits of philosophy and counsel. He celebrated the Christmas festival with much conviction, and in the homely way of the home folks, deriving his satisfactions from the things that the land produces. His sketches are wholesome reading in these days of foods transported from the ends of the earth, and compounded by impersonal devices and condensed into packages that go into every house alike. Thomas Tusser would celebrate with "things handsome to have, as they ought to be had." His board would not be scant of provisions, for he seems not to have advised the simple life in the way of things good to eat; but he chose good raw materials, and we can imagine that the "good husband and huswife" gave these materials their best compliments and prepared them with diligence and skill. Not once does he suggest that these materials be secured from the market, or that any imported labor be employed in the preparation of them. "Good bread and good drink, a good fire in the hall, Brawn, pudding, and souse, and good mustard withal." Here is the whole philosophy of the contented festival,--the fruit of one's labor, the common genuine materials, and the cheer of the family fireside. The day is to be given over to the spirit of the celebration; every common object will glow with a new consecration, and everything will be good,--even the mustard will be good withal. What a contempt old Tusser would have had for all the imported and fabricated condiments and trivialities that now come to our tables in packages suggestive of medicines and drugs! And how ridiculously would they have stood themselves beside the brawn, pudding, and souse! A few plain accessories, every one stout and genuine, and in good quantity, must accompany the substantialities that one takes with a free hand directly from the land that one manages. It surprises us that he had such a bountiful list from which to draw, and yet the kinds are not more than might be secured from any good land property, if one set about securing them: "Beef, mutton, and pork, shred pies of the best, Pig, veal, goose, and capon, and turkey well drest, Cheese, apples, and nuts, joly carols to hear, As then in the country, is counted good cheer." In these days we should draw less heavily on the meats, for in the three centuries we have gained greatly in the vegetable foods. Tusser did not have the potato. But nevertheless, these materials are of the very bone of the land. They grow up with the year and out of the conditions, and they have all the days in them, the sunshine, the rain, the dew of morning, the wind, the cold foggy nights, and the work of laborious hands. Every one of them means something to the person who raises them, and there is no impersonality in them. John's father drained the land when yet he was a boy; the hedges were set; long ago the place was laid out in its rotations; the old trees in the fields are a part of it; every stall in the stables and every window-seat in the old house hold memories; and John has grown up with these memories, and with these fields, and with the footpaths that lead out over brooks and amongst the herds of cattle. It is a part of his religion to keep the land well; and these supplies at Christmas time are taken with a deep reverence for the goodness that is in them, and with a pride in having produced them. And Thomas Tusser, good husbandman, rejoiced that these bounties cost no cash: "What cost to good husband, is any of this? Good household provision only it is. Of other the like, I do leave out a many That costeth a husbandman never a penny." To farm well; to provide well; to produce it oneself; to be independent of trade, so far as this is possible in the furnishing of the table,--these are good elements in living. And in this day we are rapidly losing all this; many persons already have lost it; many have never known the satisfaction of it. Most of us must live from the box and the bottle and the tin-can; we are even feeding our cattle from the factory and the bag. The farmer now raises a few prime products to sell, and then he buys his foods in the markets under label and tag; and he knows not who produced the materials, and he soon comes not to care. No thought of the seasons, and of the men and women who labored, of the place, of the kind of soil, of the special contribution of the native earth, come with the trademark or the brand. And so we all live mechanically, from shop to table, without contact, and irreverently. May we not once in the year remember the earth in the food that we eat? May we not in some way, even though we live in town, so organize our Christmas festival that the thought of the goodness of the land and its bounty shall be a conscious part of our celebration? May we not for once reduce to the very minimum the supply of manufactured and sophisticated things, and come somewhere near, at least in spirit, to a "Christmas husbandly fare?" Yet, Thomas Tusser would not confine his husbandly fare to the Christmas time. In another poem, he gives us "The farmer's daily diet," in which the sturdy products are still much the same, secured and prepared by those who partake. All this may be little applicable literally in our present living, and yet I think it is easily possible, as certainly it is very desirable, to develop a new attitude toward the table fare, avoiding much unnecessary and insignificant household labor and lending an attitude of good morality to the daily sustenance. Much of our eating and feasting is a vicious waste of time, and also of human energy that might be put to good uses. One can scarcely conceive how such indirect and uncomfortable and expensive methods could have come into use. Perhaps they originated with persons of quality in an aristocratic society, when an abundance of servants must be trained to serve and when distinctions in eating were a part of the distinction in rank. But to have introduced these laborious and unintelligent methods into hotels, where persons tarry for comfort and into homes that do not need to maintain an extrinsic appearance, is a vain and ludicrous imitation. The numbers of courses, with more service than food, that one often meets at the table d'hôte of the frequented hotels abroad, are most exasperating to one who values time and has a serious purpose in travel and a rightful care for the bodily apparatus. Here is the performance--it was nothing more than a performance, consisting in repeated changing of all the dishes, the removing of every fragment of edibles, and in passing very small separate parcels of food--that it was my lot to endure on an otherwise happy day in a hotel that had little else to distinguish it: Course 1. Dry bread (no butter). Removal. Course 2. Soup (nothing else). Removal. Course 3. Fish (very economical), with a potato on the side. Removal. Course 4. Veal, macaroni. Removal. Course 5. Spoonful of green beans (nothing else). Removal. Course 6. Beef and salad (fragmentary). Removal. Course 7. Charlotte Russe, bit of cake. Removal. Course 8. Fruit (slight). Removal. Course 9. Morsel of cheese, one cracker. Removal. Course 10. Coffee. Relief. The traveler knows that this species of time-wasting is not unusual; certainly the food is not unusual and does not merit such considerate attention, although it may profit by the magnification. All this contributes nothing to human efficiency--quite the reverse--and certainly nothing to the rightful gusto in the enjoyment of one's subsistence. It is a ceremony. Such laborious uselessness is quite immoral. I am afraid that our food habits very well represent how far we have moved away from the essentials and how much we have misled ourselves as to the standards of excellence. I looked in a cookbook to learn how to serve potatoes: I found twenty-three recipes, every one of which was apparently designed to disguise the fact that they were potatoes; and yet there is really nothing in a potato to be ashamed of. Of course, this kind of deception is not peculiar to cookery. It is of the same piece as the stamping of the metal building coverings in forms to represent brick and stone, although everybody knows that they are not brick and stone, rather than to make a design that shall express metal and thereby frankly tell the truth; of the same kind also as the casting of cement blocks to represent undressed rock, although every one is aware of the deception, rather than to develop a form that will express cement blocks as brick expresses brick; of the same order as the inflating of good wholesome water by carbonic gas; and all the other deceits in materials on which our common affairs are built. It is, of course, legitimate to present our foods in many forms that we may secure variety even with scant and common materials; but danger may lie in any untruthfulness with which we use the raw materials of life. So cookery has come to be a process of concealment. Not only does it conceal the materials, but it also conceals the names of them in a ridiculous nomenclature. Apparently, the higher the art of cookery, the greater is the merit of complete concealment. I think that one reason why persons enjoy the simple cooking of farmers and sailors and other elemental folk, is because of its comparative lack of disguise, although they may not be aware of this merit of it. We have so successfully disguised our viands through so many years that it is not "good form" to make inquiries: we may not smell the food, although the odor should be one of the best and most rightful satisfactions, as it is in fruits and flowers. We may smell a parsnip or a potato when it grows in the field, but not when it is cooked. We add the extrinsic and meaningless odors of spices and flavorings, forgetting that odor no less than music hath occasions; each of the materials has its own odor that the discriminating cook will try to bring out in its best expression. Were we to be deprived of all these exotic seasonings, undoubtedly cookery would be the gainer in the end; nor could we so readily disguise materials that in themselves are not fit to eat. There is a reason why "all foods taste alike," as we often hear it said of the cooking in public places. Moreover, we want everything that is out of season, necessitating great attention to the arts of preserving and requiring still further fabrication; and by this desire we also lessen the meaning of the seasons when they come in their natural sequence, bringing their treasure of materials that are adapted to the time and to the place. We can understand, then, why it so happens that we neglect the cookery of the common foods, as seeming to be not quite worth the while, and expend ourselves with so much effort on the accessories and the frills. I have been interested to observe some of the instruction in cooking,--how it often begins with little desserts, and fudge, and a variety of dib-dabs. This is much like the instruction in manual training that begins with formal and meaningless model work or trivialities and neglects the issues of life. It is much like some of the teaching in agriculture not so many years ago, before we attacked very effectively the serious problems of wheat and alfalfa and forests and markets. Mastery does not lie in these pieces of play work, nor does the best intellectual interest on the part of the student reside in them. Result is that one finds the greatest difficulty in securing a really good baked potato, a well-cooked steak, or a wholesome dish of apple-sauce that is not strained and flavored beyond recognition. It is nearly impossible for one to secure an egg fried hard and yet very tender and that has not been "turned" or scorched on the edges,--this is quite the test of the skill of the good cook. The notion that a hard fried egg is dangerously indigestible is probably a fable of poor cookery. One can secure many sophisticated and disguised egg dishes, but I think skill in plainly cooking eggs is almost an unknown art, perhaps a little-practised art. Now, it is on these simple and essential things that I would start my instruction in cookery; and this not only for the gain to good eating but also for the advantage of vigor and good morals. I am afraid that our cooking does not set a good example before the young three times every day in the year; and how eager are the young and how amenable to suggestion at these three blessed epochs every day in the year! Some unsympathetic reader will say that I am drawing a long bow; yet undoubtedly our cookery has prepared the public mind for the adulteration. Knowing the elaboration of many of the foods and fancy dishes, the use of flavoring and spice and other additions to disguise unwholesome materials, the addition of coloring matter to make things attractive, the mixtures, the elaborate designs and trimmings and concoctions, and various deceptions, one wonders how far is the step from some of the cookery to some of the adulteration and whether these processes are really all of one piece. I will leave with my reader a paragraph assembled from a statement made by a food chemist but a few years ago, to let him compare adulteration with what is regarded as legitimate food preparation and note the essential similarity of many of the processes. I do not mean to enter the discussion of food adulteration, and I do not know whether these sophistications are true at the present day; but the statement describes a situation in which we found ourselves and indicates what had become a staggering infidelity in the use of the good raw materials. Hamburg steak often contains sodium sulphite; bologna sausage and similar meats until recently usually contained a large percentage of added cereal. "Pancake flour" often contains little if any buckwheat; wheat flour is bleached with nitric oxide to improve its appearance. Fancy French peas are colored with sulphate of copper. Bottled ketchup usually contains benzoate of soda as a preservative. Japanese tea is colored with cyanide of potassium and iron. Prepared mustard usually contains a large quantity of added starch and is colored with tumeric. Ground coffee has recently been adulterated with roasted peas. So-called non-alcoholic bottled beverages often contain alcohol or a habit-forming drug and are usually colored with aniline. Candy is commonly colored with aniline dye and often coated with paraffine to prevent evaporation. Cheap candies contain such substances as glue and soapstone. The higher-priced kinds of molasses usually contain sulphites. Flavoring extracts seldom are made from pure products and usually are artificially colored. Jams are made of apple jelly with the addition of coloring matter and also of seeds to imitate berries from which they are supposed to be made; the cheap apple jelly is itself often imitated by a mixture of glucose, starch, aniline dye, and flavoring. Lard nearly always contains added tallow. Bakeries in large cities have used decomposed products, as decayed eggs. Cheap ice-cream is often made of gelatin, glue, and starch. Cottonseed-oil is sold for olive-oil. The poison saccharine is often used in place of sugar in prepared sweetened products. The attentive reader of the public prints in the recent years can greatly extend this humiliating recital if he choose. It is our habit to attach all the blame to the adulterators, and it is difficult to excuse them; but we usually find that there are contributory causes and certainly there must be reasons. Has our daily fare been honest? _The admiration of good materials_ Not even yet am I done with this plain problem of the daily fare. The very fact that it is daily--thrice daily--and that it enters so much into the thought and effort of every one of us, makes it a subject of the deepest concern from every point of view. The aspect of the case that I am now to reassert is the effect of much of our food preparation in removing us from a knowledge of the good raw materials that come out of the abounding earth. Let us stop to admire an apple. I see a committee of the old worthies in some fruit-show going slowly and discriminatingly among the plates of fruits, discussing the shapes and colors and sizes, catching the fragrance, debating the origins and the histories, and testing them with the utmost precaution and deliberation; and I follow to hear their judgment. This kind of apple is very perfect in spherical form, deeply cut at the stem, well ridged at the shallow crater, beautifully splashed and streaked with carmine-red on a yellowish green under-color, finely flecked with dots, slightly russet on the shaded side, apparently a good keeper; its texture is fine-grained and uniform, flavor mildly subacid, the quality good to very good; if the tree is hardy and productive, this variety is to be recommended to the amateur for further trial! The next sample is somewhat elongated in form, rather below the average in color, the stem very long and well set and indicating a fruit that does not readily drop in windstorms, the texture exceedingly melting but the flavor slightly lacking in character and therefore rendering it of doubtful value for further test. Another sample lacks decidedly in quality, as judged by the specimens on the table, and the exhibitor is respectfully recommended to withdraw it from future exhibitions; another kind has a very pronounced aromatic odor, which will commend it to persons desiring to grow a choice collection of interesting fruits; still another is of good size, very firm and solid, of uniform red color, slightly oblate and therefore lending itself to easy packing, quality fair to good, and if the tree bears such uniform samples as those shown on the table it apparently gives promise of some usefulness as a market sort. My older friends, if they have something of the feeling of the pomologist, can construct the remainder of the picture. In physical perfectness of form and texture and color, there is nothing in all the world that exceeds a well-grown fruit. Let it lie in the palm of your hand. Close your fingers slowly about it. Feel its firm or soft and modelled surface. Put it against your cheek, and inhale its fragrance. Trace its neutral under-colors, and follow its stripes and mark its dots. If an apple, trace the eye that lies in a moulded basin. Note its stem, how it stands firmly in its cavity, and let your imagination run back to the tree from which, when finally mature, it parted freely. This apple is not only the product of your labor, but it holds the essence of the year and it is in itself a thing of exquisite beauty. There is no other rondure and no other fragrance like this. I am convinced that we need much to cultivate this appreciation of the physical perfectness of the fruits that we grow. We cannot afford to lose this note from our lives, for this may contribute a good part of our satisfaction of being in the world. The discriminating appreciation that one applies to a picture or a piece of sculpture may be equally applied to any fruit that grows on the commonest tree or bush in our field or to any animal that stands on a green pasture. It is no doubt a mark of a well-tempered mind that it can understand the significance of the forms in fruits and plants and animals and apply it in the work of the day. I sometimes think that the rise of the culinary arts is banishing this fine old appreciation of fruits in their natural forms. There are so many ways of canning and preserving and evaporating and extracting the juices, so many disguises and so much fabrication, that the fruit is lost in the process. The tin-can and the bottle seem to have put an insuperable barrier between us and nature, and it is difficult for us to get back to a good munch of real apples under a tree or by the fireside. The difficulty is all the greater in our congested city life where orchards and trees are only a vacant memory or stories told to the young, and where the space in the larder is so small that apples must be purchased by the quart. The eating of good apples out of hand seems to be almost a lost art. Only the most indestructible kinds, along with leather-skinned oranges and withered bananas, seem to be purchasable in the market. The discriminating apple-eater in the Old World sends to a grower for samples of the kinds that he grows; and after the inquirer has tested them in the family, and discussed them, he orders his winter supply. The American leaves the matter to the cook and she orders plain apples; and she gets them. I wonder whether in time the perfection of fabrication will not reach such a point that some fruits will be known to the great public only by the picture on the package or on the bottle. Every process that removes us one step farther from the earth is a distinct loss to the people, and yet we are rapidly coming into the habit of taking all things at second hand. My objection to the wine of the grape is not so much a question of abstinence as of the fact that I find no particular satisfaction in the shape and texture of a bottle. If one has a sensitive appreciation of the beauty in form and color and modelling of the common fruits, he will find his interest gradually extending to other products. Some time ago I visited Hood River Valley in company with a rugged potato-grower from the Rocky Mountains. We were amazed at the wonderful scenery, and captivated by the beauty of the fruits. In one orchard the owner showed us with much satisfaction a brace of apples of perfect form and glowing colors. When the grower had properly expounded the marvels of Hood River apples, which he said were the finest in the world, my friend thrust his hand into his pocket and pulled out a potato, and said to the man: "Why is not that just as handsome as a Hood River apple?" And sure enough it was. For twenty-five years this grower had been raising and selecting the old Peachblow potato, until he had a form much more perfect than the old Peachblow ever was, with a uniform delicate pink skin, smooth surface, comely shape, and medium size, and with eyes very small and scarcely sunken; and my Hood River friend admitted that a potato as well as an apple may be handsome and satisfying to the hand and to the eye, and well worth carrying in one's pocket. But this was a high-bred potato, and not one of the common lot. This episode of the potato allows me another opportunity to enforce my contention that we lose the fruit or the vegetable in the processes of cookery. The customary practice of "mashing" potatoes takes all the individuality out of the product, and the result is mostly so much starch. There is an important dietary side to this. Cut a thin slice across a potato and hold it to the light. Note the interior undifferentiated mass, and then the thick band of rind surrounding it. The potato flavor and a large part of the nutriment lie in this exterior. We slice this part away and fry, boil, or otherwise fuss up the remainder. When we mash it, we go still farther and break down the potato texture; and in the modern method we squeeze and strain it till we eliminate every part of the potato, leaving only a pasty mass, which, in my estimation, is not fit to eat. The potato should be cooked with the rind on, if it is a good potato, and if it is necessary to remove the outer skin the process should be performed after the cooking. The most toothsome part of the potato is in these outer portions, if the tuber is well grown and handled. We have so sophisticated the potato in the modern disguised cookery that we often practically ruin it as an article of food, and we have bred a race of people that sees nothing to admire in a good and well-grown potato tuber. I now wish to take an excursion from the potato to the pumpkin. In all the range of vegetable products, I doubt whether there is a more perfect example of pleasing form, fine modelling, attractive texture and color, and more bracing odor, than in a well-grown and ripe field pumpkin. Place a pumpkin on your table; run your fingers down its smooth grooves; trace the furrows to the poles; take note of its form; absorb its rich color; get the tang of its fragrance. The roughness and ruggedness of its leaves, the sharp-angled stem strongly set, make a foil that a sculptor cannot improve. Then wonder how this marvellous thing was born out of your garden soil through the medium of one small strand of a succulent stem. We all recognize the appeal of a bouquet of flowers, but we are unaware that we may have a bouquet of fruits. We have given little attention to arranging them, or any study of the kinds that consort well together, nor have we receptacles in which effectively to display them. Yet, apples and oranges and plums and grapes and nuts, and good melons and cucumbers and peppers and carrots and onions, may be arranged into the most artistic and satisfying combinations. I would fall short of my obligation if I were to stop with the fruit of the tree and say nothing about the tree or the plant itself. In our haste for lawn trees of new kinds and from the uttermost parts, we forget that a fruit-tree is ornamental and that it provides acceptable shade. A full-grown apple-tree or pear-tree is one of the most individual and picturesque of trees. The foliage is good, the blossoms as handsome as those of fancy imported things, the fruits always interesting, and the tree is reliable. Nothing is more interesting than an orange tree, in the regions where it grows, with its shining and evergreen leaves and its continuing flowers and fruits. The practice of planting apples and pears and sweet cherries, and other fruit and nut trees, for shade and adornment is much to be commended in certain places. But the point I wish specially to urge in this connection is the value of many kinds of fruit-trees in real landscape work. We think of these trees as single or separate specimens, but they may be used with good result in mass planting, when it is desired to produce a given effect in a large area or in one division of a property. I do not know that any one has worked out full plans for the combining of fruit-trees, nuts, and berry-bearing plants into good treatments, but it is much to be desired that this shall be done. Any of you can picture a sweep of countryside planted to these things that would be not only novel and striking, but at the same time conformable to the best traditions of artistic rendering. I think it should be a fundamental purpose in our educational plans to acquaint the people with the common resources of the region, and particularly with those materials on which we subsist. If this is accepted, then we cannot deprive our parks, highways, and school grounds of the trees that bear the staple fruits. It is worth while to have an intellectual interest in a fruit-tree. I know a fruit-grower who secures many prizes for his apples and his pears; when he secures a blue ribbon, he ties it on the tree that bore the fruit. The admiration of a good domestic animal is much to be desired. It develops a most responsible attitude in the man or the woman. I have observed a peculiar charm in the breeders of these wonderful animals, a certain poise and masterfulness and breadth of sympathy. To admire a good horse and to know just why he admires him is a great resource to any man, as also to feel the responsibility for the care and health of any flock or herd. Fowls, pigs, sheep on their pastures, cows, mules, all perfect of their kind, all sensitive, all of them marvellous in their forms and powers,--verily these are good to know. If the raw materials grow out of the holy earth, then a man should have pride in producing them, and also in handling them. As a man thinketh of his materials, so doth he profit in the use of them. He builds them into himself. There is a wide-spread feeling that in some way these materials reflect themselves in a man's bearing. One type of man grows out of the handling of rocks, another out of the handling of fishes, another out of the growing of the products from the good earth. All irreverence in the handling of these materials that come out of the earth's bounty, and all waste and poor workmanship, make for a low spiritual expression. The farmer specially should be proud of his materials, he is so close to the sources and so hard against the backgrounds. Moreover, he cannot conceal his materials. He cannot lock up his farm or disguise his crops. He lives on his farm, and visibly with his products. The architect does not live in the houses and temples he builds. The engineer does not live on his bridge. The miner does not live in his mine. Even the sailor has his home away from his ship. But the farmer cannot separate himself from his works. Every bushel of buckwheat and every barrel of apples and every bale of cotton bears his name; the beef that he takes to market, the sheep that he herds on his pastures, the horse that he drives,--these are his products and they carry his name. He should have the same pride in these--his productions--as another who builds a machine, or another who writes a book about them. The admiration of a field of hay, of a cow producing milk, of a shapely and fragrant head of cabbage, is a great force for good. It would mean much if we could celebrate the raw materials and the products. Particularly is it good to celebrate the yearly bounty. The Puritans recognized their immediate dependence on the products of the ground, and their celebration was connected with religion. I should be sorry if our celebrations were to be wholly secular. We have been much given to the display of fabricated materials,--of the products of looms, lathes, foundries, and many factories of skill. We also exhibit the agricultural produce, but largely in a crass and rude way to display bulk and to win prizes. We now begin to arrange our exhibitions for color effect, comparison, and educational influence. But we do not justly understand the natural products when we confine them to formal exhibitions. They must be incorporated into many celebrations, expressing therein the earth's bounty and our appreciation of it. The usual and common products, domesticated and wild, should be gathered in these occasions, and not for competition or for prize awards or even for display, but for their intrinsic qualities. An apple day or an apple sabbath would teach the people to express their gratitude for apples. The moral obligation to grow good apples, to handle them honestly, to treat the soil and the trees fairly and reverently, could be developed as a living practical philosophy into the working-days of an apple-growing people. The technical knowledge we now possess requires the moral support of a stimulated public appreciation to make it a thoroughly effective force. Many of the products and crops lend themselves well to this kind of admiration, and all of them should awaken gratitude and reverence. Sermons and teaching may issue from them. Nor is it necessary that this gratitude be expressed only in collected materials, or that all preaching and all teaching shall be indoors. The best understanding of our relations to the earth will be possible when we learn how to apply our devotions in the open places. _The keeping of the beautiful earth_ The proper care-taking of the earth lies not alone in maintaining its fertility or in safeguarding its products. The lines of beauty that appeal to the eye and the charm that satisfies the five senses are in our keeping. The natural landscape is always interesting and it is satisfying. The physical universe is the source of art. We know no other form and color than that which we see in nature or derive from it. If art is true to its theme, it is one expression of morals. If it is a moral obligation to express the art-sense in painting and sculpture and literature and music, so is it an equal obligation to express it in good landscape. Of the first importance is it that the race keep its artistic backgrounds, and not alone for the few who may travel far and near and who may pause deliberately, but also for those more numerous folk who must remain with the daily toil and catch the far look only as they labor. To put the best expression of any landscape into the consciousness of one's day's work is more to be desired than much riches. When we complete our conquest, there will be no unseemly landscapes. The abundance of violated landscapes is proof that we have not yet mastered. The farmer does not have full command of his situation until the landscape is a part of his farming. Farms may be units in well-developed and pleasing landscapes, beautiful in their combinations with other farms and appropriate to their setting as well as attractive in themselves. No one has a moral right to contribute unsightly factory premises or a forbidding commercial establishment to any community. The lines of utility and efficiency ought also to be the lines of beauty; and it is due every worker to have a good landscape to look upon, even though its area be very constricted. To produce bushels of wheat and marvels of machinery, to maintain devastating military establishments, do not comprise the sum of conquest. The backgrounds must be kept. If moral strength comes from good and sufficient scenery, so does the preservation of it become a social duty. It is much more than a civic obligation. But the resources of the earth must be available to man for his use and this necessarily means a modification of the original scenery. Some pieces and kinds of scenery are above all economic use and should be kept wholly in the natural state. Much of it may yield to modification if he takes good care to preserve its essential features. Unfortunately, the engineer seems not often to be trained in the values of scenery and he is likely to despoil a landscape or at least to leave it raw and unfinished. On the other hand, there is unfortunately a feeling abroad that any modification of a striking landscape is violation and despoliation; and unwarranted opposition, in some cases amounting almost to prudery, follows any needful work of utilization. Undoubtedly the farmer and builder and promoter have been too unmindful of the effect of their interference on scenery, and particularly in taking little care in the disposition of wastes and in the healing of wounds; but a work either of farming or of construction may add interest and even lines of beauty to a landscape and endow it with the suggestion of human interest. If care were taken in the construction of public and semi-public work to reshape the banks into pleasing lines, to clean up, to care for, to plant, to erect structures of good proportions whether they cost much or little, and to give proper regard to the sensibilities of the communities, most of the present agitation against interference with natural scenery would disappear. One has only to visit the factory districts, the vacation resorts, the tenement areas, the banks of streams and gorges, to look at the faces of cliffs and at many engineering enterprises and at numberless farmyards, to find examples of the disregard of men for the materials that they handle. It is as much our obligation to hold the scenery reverently as to handle the products reverently. Man found the earth looking well. Humanity began in a garden. The keeping of the good earth depends on preservation rather than on destruction. The office of the farmer and the planter is to produce rather than to destroy; whatever they destroy is to the end that they may produce more abundantly; these persons are therefore natural care-takers. If to this office we add the habit of good housekeeping, we shall have more than one-third of our population at once directly partaking in keeping the earth. It is one of the bitter ironies that farmers should ever have been taken out of their place to wreak vengeance on the earth by means of military devastation. In the past, this ravage has been small in amount because the engines of destruction were weak, but with the perfecting of the modern enginery the havoc is awful and brutal. While we have to our credit the improvement of agriculture and other agencies of conservation, it is yet a fact that man has never been so destructive as now. He is able to turn the skill of his discovery to destructive ends (a subject that we have already approached from another point of view). The keeping of the earth is therefore involved in the organization of society. Military power heads toward destructiveness. Civil power heads toward conservation. The military power may be constructive in times of peace, but its end, if it uses the tools it invents, is devastation and the inflicting of injury. When the civil power is subjugated to the military power, society is headed toward calamity. To keep and to waste are opposite processes. Not only are we able to despoil the earth by sheer lust of ravage and by blighting the fields with caverns of human slaughter, but we shoot away incredible supplies of copper and petroleum and other unrenewable materials that by every right and equity belong to our successors; and, moreover, we are to make these successors pay for the destruction of their heritage. Day by day we are mortgaging the future, depriving it of supplies that it may need, burdening the shoulders of generations yet unborn. Merely to make the earth productive and to keep it clean and to bear a reverent regard for its products, is the special prerogative of a good agriculture and a good citizenry founded thereon; this may seem at the moment to be small and ineffective as against mad impersonal and limitless havoc, but it carries the final healing; and while the land worker will bear much of the burden on his back he will also redeem the earth. _The tones of industry_ One of the clearest notes of our time is the recognition of the holiness of industry and the attempt to formulate the morals of it. We accept this fact indirectly by the modern endeavor to give the laboring man his due. The handworker is more or less elemental, dealing directly with the materials. We begin to recognize these industries in literature, in sculpture, and in painting; but we do not yet very consciously or effectively translate them into music. It is to be recognized, of course, that melody is emotional and dynamic not imitative, that its power lies in suggestion rather than in direct representation, and that its language is general; with all this I have nothing to do. Meunier has done much with his chisel to interpret the spirit of constructive labor and to develop its higher significance. His art is indeed concrete and static, and sculpture and music are not to be compared; yet it raises the question whether there may be other bold extensions of art. The primitive industries must have been mostly silent, when there were no iron tools, when fire felled the forest tree and hollowed the canoe, when the parts in construction were secured by thongs, and when the game was caught in silent traps or by the swift noiseless arrow and spear. Even at the Stone Age the rude implements and the materials must have been mostly devoid of resonance. But now industry has become universal and complex, and it has also become noisy,--so noisy that we organize to protect ourselves from becoming distraught. And yet a workshop, particularly if it works in metal, is replete with tones that are essentially musical. Workmen respond readily to unison. There are melodies that arise from certain kinds of labor. Much of our labor is rhythmic. In any factory driven by power, there is a fundamental rhythm and motion, tying all things together. I have often thought, standing at the threshold of a mill, that it might be possible somewhere by careful forethought to eliminate the clatter and so to organize the work as to develop a better expression in labor. Very much do we need to make industry vocal. It is worth considering, also, whether it is possible to take over into music any of these sounds of industry in a new way, that they may be given meanings they do not now possess. At all events, the poetic element in industry is capable of great development and of progressive interpretation; and poetry is scarcely to be dissociated from sound. All good work well done is essentially poetic to the sensitive mind; and when the work is the rhythm of many men acting in unison, the poetry has voice. The striking of the rivet The purr of a drill The crash of a steam-shovel The plunge of a dredge The buzz of a saw The roll of belts and chains The whirl of spindles The hiss of steam The tip-tap of valves The undertone rumble of a mill The silence intent of men at work The talk of men going to their homes,-- These are all the notes of great symphonies. Nor should I stop with the industries of commerce and manufacture. There are many possibilities in the sounds and voices that are known of fisherfolk and campers and foresters and farmers. Somehow we should be able to individualize these voices and to give them an artistic expression in some kind of human composition. There are rich suggestions in the voices of the farmyard, the calls of wild creatures, the tones of farm implements and machinery, the sounds of the elements, and particularly in the relations of all these to the pauses, the silences, and the distances beyond. Whether it is possible to utilize any of these tones and voices artistically is not for a layman to say; but the layman may express the need that he feels. _The threatened literature_ A fear seems to be abroad that the inquisitiveness and exactness of science will deprive literature of imagination and sympathy and will destroy artistic expression; and it is said that we are in danger of losing the devotional element in literature. If these apprehensions are well founded, then do we have cause for alarm, seeing that literature is an immeasurable resource. Great literature may be relatively independent of time and place, and this is beyond discussion here; but if the standards of interpretative literature are lowering it must be because the standards of life are lowering, for the attainment and the outlook of a people are bound to be displayed in its letters. Perhaps our difficulty lies in a change in methods and standards rather than in essential qualities. We constantly acquire new material for literary use. The riches of life are vaster and deeper than ever before. It would be strange indeed if the new experience of the planet did not express itself in new literary form. We are led astray by the fatal habit of making comparisons, contrasting one epoch with another. There may be inflexible souls among the investigators who see little or nothing beyond the set of facts in a little field, but surely the greater number of scientific men are persons of keen imagination and of broad interest in all conquests. Indeed, a lively imagination is indispensable in persons of the best attainments in science; it is necessary only that the imagination be regulated and trained. Never has it been so true that fact is stranger than fiction. Never have the flights of the poets been so evenly matched by the flights of science. All great engineers, chemists, physiologists, physicists work in the realm of imagination, of imagination that projects the unknown from the known. Almost do we think that the Roentgen ray, the wireless telegraphy, the analysis of the light of the stars, the serum control of disease are the product of what we might call pure fancy. The very utilities and conquests of modern society are the results of better imagination than the world has yet known. If it is true that the desire to measure and to analyze is now an established trait, equally is it true that it directs the mind into far and untried reaches; and if we have not yet found this range of inspiration in what is called artistic literature, it must be because literary criticism has not accepted the imagery of the modern world and is still looking for its art to the models of the past. The models of the past are properly the standards for the performances of their time, but this does not constitute them the standards of all time or of the present time. Perhaps the writing of language for the sake of writing it is losing its hold; but a new, clear, and forceful literature appears. This new literature has its own criteria. It would be violence to judge it only by standards of criticism founded on Elizabethan writings. We do not descend into crude materialism because we describe the materials of the cosmos; we do not eliminate imagination because we desire that it shall have meaning; we do not strip literature of artistic quality because it is true to the facts and the outlook of our own time. It may be admitted that present literature is inadequate, and that we are still obliged to go to the former compositions for our highest artistic expressions. Very good. Let us hope that we shall never cease to want these older literatures. Let us hope that we shall never be severed from our past. But perhaps the good judge in a coming generation, when the slow process of elimination has perfected its criticism, will discover something very noble and even very artistic in the abundant writing of our day. Certainly he will note the recovery from the first excess of reaction against the older orders, and he will be aware that at this epoch man began anew to express his social sense in a large way, as a result of all his painstaking studies in science. Even if he should not discover the highest forms of literary expression, he might find that here was the large promise of a new order. Possibly he would discover major compositions of the excellence of which we ourselves are not aware. It is less than forty years since Darwin and less than fifty years since Agassiz. It is only twenty years since Pasteur. It is only a century and a quarter since Franklin, fifty years since Faraday, less than twenty-five since Tyndall. It is sixty years since Humboldt glorified the earth with the range of his imagination. It is not so very far even if we go back to Newton and to Kepler. Within the span of a century we count name after name of prophets who have set us on a new course. So complete has been the revolution that we lost our old bearings before we had found the new. We have not yet worked out the new relationships, nor put into practice their moral obligations, nor have we grasped the fulness of our privileges. We have not yet made the new knowledge consciously into a philosophy of life or incorporated it completely into working attitudes of social equity. Therefore, not even now are we ripe for the new literature. We have gone far enough, however, to know that science is not unsympathetic and that it is not contemptuous of the unknown. By lens and prism and balance and line we measure minutely whatever we can sense; then with bared heads we look out to the great unknown and we cast our lines beyond the stars. There are no realms beyond which the prophecy of science would not go. It resolves the atom and it weighs the planets. Among the science men I have found as many poetic souls as among the literary men, although they may not know so much poetry, and they are not equally trained in literary expression; being free of the restraint of conventional criticism, they are likely to have a peculiarly keen and sympathetic projection. Close dissection long continued may not lead to free artistic literary expression; this is as true of literary anatomy as of biological anatomy: but this does not destroy the freedom of other souls, and it may afford good material for the artist. Two kinds of popular writing are confused in the public mind, for there are two classes that express the findings of scientific inquiry. The prevailing product is that which issues from establishments and institutions. This is supervised, edited, and made to conform; it is the product of our perfected organizations and has all the hardness of its origin. The other literature is of a different breed. It is the expression of personality. The one is a useful and necessary public literature of record and advice; the other is a literature of outlook and inspiration. The latter is not to be expected from the institutions, for it is naturally the literature of freedom. My reader now knows my line of approach to the charge that literature is in danger of losing its element of devotion, and hereby lies the main reason for introducing this discussion into my little book. We may be losing the old literary piety and the technical theology, because we are losing the old theocratic outlook on creation. We also know that the final control of human welfare will not be governmental or military, and we shall some day learn that it will not be economic as we now prevailingly use the word. We have long since forgotten that once it was patriarchal. We shall know the creator in the creation. We shall derive more of our solaces from the creation and in the consciousness of our right relations to it. We shall be more fully aware that righteousness inheres in honest occupation. We shall find some bold and free way in which the human spirit may express itself. _The separate soul_ Many times in this journey have we come against the importance of the individual. We are to develop the man's social feeling at the same time that we allow him to remain separate. We are to accomplish certain social results otherwise than by the process of thronging, which is so much a part of the philosophy of this anxious epoch; and therefore we may pursue the subject still a little further. Any close and worth-while contact with the earth tends to make one original or at least detached in one's judgments and independent of group control. In proportion as society becomes organized and involved, do we need the separate spirit and persons who are responsible beings on their own account. The independent judgment should be much furthered by studies in the sciences that are founded on observation of native forms and conditions. And yet the gains of scientific study become so rigidly organized into great enterprises that the individual is likely to be lost in them. As an example of what I mean, I mention John Muir, who has recently passed away, and who stood for a definite contribution to his generation. He could hardly have made this contribution if he had been attached to any of the great institutions or organizations or to big business. He has left a personal impression and a remarkable literature that has been very little influenced by group psychology. He is the interpreter of mountains, forests, and glaciers. There is one method of aggregation and social intercourse. There is another method of isolation and separateness. Never in the open country do I see a young man or woman at nightfall going down the highways and the long fields but I think of the character that develops out of the loneliness, in the silence of vast surroundings, projected against the backgrounds, and of the suggestions that must come from these situations as contrasted with those that arise from the babble of the crowds. There is hardiness in such training; there is independence, the taking of one's own risk and no need of the protection of compensation-acts. There is no over-imposed director to fall back on. Physical recuperation is in the situation. As against these fields, much of the habitual golf and tennis and other adventitious means of killing time and of making up deficiencies is almost ludicrous. Many of our reformers fail because they express only a group psychology and do not have a living personal interpretation. Undoubtedly many persons who might have had a message of their own have lost it and have also lost the opportunity to express it by belonging to too many clubs and by too continuous association with so-called kindred spirits, or by taking too much post-graduate study. It is a great temptation to join many clubs, but if one feels any stir of originality in himself, he should be cautious how he joins. I may also recall the great example of Agassiz at Penikese. In his last year, broken in health, feeling the message he still had for the people, he opened the school on the little island off the coast of Massachusetts. It was a short school in one summer only, yet it has made an indelible impression on American education. It stimulates one to know that the person who met the incoming students on the wharf was Agassiz himself, not an assistant or an instructor. Out of the great number of applicants, he chose fifty whom he would teach. He wanted to send forth these chosen persons with his message, apostles to carry the methods and the way of approach. (When are we to have the Penikese for the rural backgrounds?) Sometime there will be many great unattached teachers, who will choose their own pupils because they want them and not merely because the applicants have satisfied certain arbitrary tests. The students may be graduates of colleges or they may be others. They will pursue their work not for credit or for any other reward. We shall yet come back to the masters, and there will be teaching in the market-places. We are now in the epoch of great organization not only in industrial developments but also in educational and social enterprises, in religious work, and in governmental activities. So completely is the organization proceeding in every direction, and so good is it, that one habitually and properly desires to identify oneself with some form of associated work. Almost in spite of oneself, one is caught up into the plan of things, and becomes part of a social, economic, or educational mechanism. No longer do we seek our educational institutions so much for the purpose of attaching ourselves to a master as to pursue a course of study. No more do we sit at the feet of Gamaliel. In government, the organization has recently taken the form of mechanism for efficiency. We want government and all kinds of organization to be efficient and effective, but administrative efficiency may easily proceed at the expense of personality. Much of our public organization for efficiency is essentially monarchic in its tendency. It is likely to eliminate the most precious resource in human society, which is the freedom of expression of the competent individual. We are piling organization on organization, one supervising and watching and "investigating" the other. The greater the number of the commissions, investigating committees, and the interlocking groups, the more complex does the whole process become and the more difficult is it for the person to find himself. We can never successfully substitute bookkeeping for men and women. We are more in need of personality than of administrative regularity. This is not a doctrine of laisser-faire or let-alone. The very conditions of modern society demand strong control and regulation and vigorous organization; but the danger is that we apply the controls uniformly and everywhere and eliminate the free action of the individual, as if control were in itself a merit. In some way we must protect the person from being submerged in the system. We need always to get back of the group to the individual. The person is the reason for the group, although he is responsible to the group. It is probably a great advantage to our democracy that our educational institutions are so completely organized, for by that means we are able to educate many more persons and to prepare them for the world with a clear and direct purpose in life. But this is not the whole of the public educational process. Some of the most useful persons cannot express themselves in institutions. This is not the fault of the institutions. In the nature of their character, these persons are separate. For the most part, they do not now have adequate means of self-expression or of contributing themselves to the public welfare. When we shall have completed the present necessity of consolidation, centralization, and organization, society will begin to be conscious of the separate souls, who in the nature of the case must stand by themselves, and it will make use of them for the public good. Society will endow persons, not on a basis of salary, and enable them thereby to teach in their own way and their own time. This will represent one of the highest types of endowment by government and society. We begin to approach this time by the support, through semi-public agencies, of persons to accomplish certain results or to undertake special pieces of work, particularly of research; but we have not yet attained the higher aim of endowing individuals to express themselves personally. There are liberated personalities, rare and prophetic, who are consumed only in making a living but who should be given unreservedly to the people: the people are much in need. Never have we needed the separate soul so much as now. _The element of separateness in society_ If it is so important that we have these separate souls, then must we inquire where they may be found and particularly how we may insure the requisite supply. Isolated separates appear here and there, in all the ranges of human experiences; these cannot be provided or foretold; but we shall need, in days to come, a group or a large class of persons, who in the nature of their occupation, situation, and training are relatively independent and free. We need more than a limited number of strong outstanding figures who rise to personal leadership. We must have a body of unattached laborers and producers who are in sufficient numbers to influence unexpressed public opinion and who will form a natural corrective as against organization-men, habitual reformers, and extremists. It is apparent that such a class must own productive property, be able to secure support by working for themselves, and produce supplies that are indispensable to society. Their individual interests must be greater and more insistent than their associative interests. They should be in direct contact with native resources. This characterization describes the farmer, and no other large or important group. We have considered, on a former page, that we are not to look for the self-acting individuals among the workingmen as a class. They are rapidly partaking in an opposite development. They are controlled by associative interests. Even under a profit-sharing system they are parts in a close concert. How to strike the balance between the needful individualism and social crystallization is probably the most difficult question before society. Of the great underlying classes of occupations, farming is the only one that presents the individualistic side very strongly. If individualism is to be preserved anywhere, it must be preserved here. The tendency of our present-day discussion is to organize the farmers as other groups or masses are organized. We are in danger here. Assuredly, the farmer needs better resources in association, but it is a nice question how far we should go and how completely we should try to redirect him. Fortunately, the holding of title to land and the separateness of farm habitations prevent solidification. If, on this individualism and without destroying it, we can develop a co-acting and co-operating activity, we shall undoubtedly be on the line of safety as well as on the line of promise. It would be a pity to organize the farming people merely to secure them their "rights." We ought soon to pass this epoch in civilization. There are no "rights" exclusive to any class. "Rights" are not possessions. I do not know where the element of separateness in society is to be derived unless it comes out of the earth. Given sufficient organization to enable the farmer to express himself fully in his occupation and to secure protection, then we may well let the matter rest until his place in society develops by the operation of natural forces. We cannot allow the fundamental supplies from the common earth to be controlled by arbitrary class regulation. It would be a misfortune if the farmer were to isolate himself by making "demands" on society. I hope that the farmer's obligation may be so sensitively developed in him as to produce a better kind of mass-cohesion than we have yet known. _The democratic basis in agriculture_ All these positions are capable of direct application in the incorporation of agriculture into a scheme of democracy. A brief treatment of this subject I had developed for the present book; and this treatment, with applications to particular situations now confronting us, I used recently in the vice-presidential address before the new Section M of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (published in _Science_, February 26, 1915, where the remainder of it may be found). Some of the general points of view, modified from that address, may be brought together here. The desirability of keeping a free and unattached attitude in the people on the land may be expounded in many directions, but for my purpose I will confine the illustrations to organization in the field of education. The agricultural situation is now much in the public mind. It is widely discussed in the press, which shows that it has news value. Much of this value is merely of superficial and temporary interest. Much of it represents a desire to try new remedies for old ills. Many of these remedies will not work. We must be prepared for some loss of public interest in them as time goes on. We are now in a publicity stage of our rural development. It would seem that the news-gathering and some other agencies discover these movements after the work of many constructive spirits has set them going and has laid real foundations; and not these foundations, but only detached items of passing interest, may be known of any large part of the public. I hope that we shall not be disturbed by this circumstance nor let it interfere with good work or with fundamental considerations, however much we may deplore the false expectations that may result. We are at the parting of the ways. For years without number--for years that run into the centuries when men have slaughtered each other on many fields, thinking that they were on the fields of honor, when many awful despotisms have ground men into the dust, the despotisms thinking themselves divine--for all these years there have been men on the land wishing to see the light, trying to make mankind hear, hoping but never realizing. They have been the pawns on the great battlefields, men taken out of the peasantries to be hurled against other men they did not know and for no rewards except further enslavement. They may even have been developed to a high degree of manual or technical skill that they might the better support governments to make conquests. They have been on the bottom, upholding the whole superstructure and pressed into the earth by the weight of it. When the final history is written, the lot of the man on the land will be the saddest chapter. But in the nineteenth century, the man at the bottom began really to be recognized politically. This recognition is of two kinds,--the use that a government can make in its own interest of a highly efficient husbandry, and the desire to give the husbandman full opportunity and full justice. I hope that in these times the latter motive always prevails. It is the only course of safety. Great public-service institutions have now been founded in the rural movement. The United States Department of Agriculture has grown to be one of the notable governmental establishments of the world, extending itself to a multitude of interests and operating with remarkable effectiveness. The chain of colleges of agriculture and experiment stations, generously co-operative between nation and State, is unlike any other development anywhere, meaning more, I think, for the future welfare and peace of the people than any one of us yet foresees. There is the finest fraternalism, and yet without clannishness, between these great agencies, setting a good example in public service. And to these agencies we are to add the State departments of agriculture, the work of private endowments although yet in its infancy, the growing and very desirable contact with the rural field of many institutions of learning. All these agencies comprise a distinctly modern phase of public activity. A new agency has been created in the agricultural extension act which was signed by President Wilson on the 8th of May in 1914. The farmer is to find help at his own door. A new instrumentality in the world has now received the sanction of a whole people and we are just beginning to organize it. The organization must be extensive, and it ought also to be liberal. No such national plan on such a scale has ever been attempted; and it almost staggers one when one even partly comprehends the tremendous consequences that in all likelihood will come of it. The significance of it is not yet grasped by the great body of the people. Now, the problem is to relate all this public work to the development of a democracy. I am not thinking so much of the development of a form of government as of a real democratic expression on the part of the people. Agriculture is our basic industry. As we organize its affairs, so to a great degree shall we secure the results in society in general. It is very important in our great experiment in democracy that we do not lose sight of the first principle in democracy, which is to let the control of policies and affairs rest directly back on the people. We have developed the institutions on public funds to train the farmer and to give him voice. These institutions are of vast importance in the founding of a people. The folk are to be developed in themselves rather than by class legislation, or by favor of government, or by any attitude of benevolence from without. Whether there is any danger in the organization of our new nationalized extension work, and the other public rural agencies, I suppose not one of us knows. But for myself, I have apprehension of the tendency to make some of the agricultural work into "projects" at Washington and elsewhere. If we are not careful, we shall not only too much centralize the work, but we shall tie it up in perplexing red-tape, official obstacles, and bookkeeping. The merit of the projects themselves and the intentions of the officers concerned in them are not involved in what I say; I speak only of the tendency of all government to formality and to crystallization, to machine work and to armchair regulations; and even at the risk of a somewhat lower so-called "efficiency," I should prefer for such work as investigating and teaching in agriculture, a dispersion of the initiative and responsibility, letting the co-ordination and standardizing arise very much from conference and very little from arbitrary regulation. The best project anywhere is a good man or woman working in a program, but unhampered. If it is important that the administration of agricultural work be not overmuch centralized at Washington, it is equally true that it should not be too much centralized in the States. I hear that persons who object strongly to federal concentration may nevertheless decline to give the counties and the communities in their own States the benefit of any useful starting-power and autonomy. In fact, I am inclined to think that here at present lies one of our greatest dangers. A strong centralization within the State may be the most hurtful kind of concentration, for it may more vitally affect the people at home. Here the question, remember, is not the most efficient formal administration, but the best results for the people. The farm-bureau work, for example, can never produce the background results of which it is capable if it is a strongly intrenched movement pushed out from one centre, as from the college of agriculture or other institution. The college may be the guiding force, but it should not remove responsibility from the people of the localities, or offer them a kind of co-operation that is only the privilege of partaking in the college enterprises. I fear that some of our so-called co-operation in public work of many kinds is little more than to allow the co-operator to approve what the official administration has done. In the course of our experience in democracy, we have developed many checks against too great centralization. I hope that we may develop the checks effectively in this new welfare work in agriculture, a desire that I am aware is also strong with many of those who are concerned in the planning of it. Some enterprises may be much centralized, whether in a democracy or elsewhere; an example is the postal service: this is on the business side of government. Some enterprises should be decentralized; an example is a good part of the agricultural service: this is on the educational side of government. It is the tendency to reduce all public work to uniformity; yet there is no virtue in uniformity. Its only value is as a means to an end. Thus far, the rural movement has been wholesomely democratic. It has been my privilege for one-third of a century to have known rather closely many of the men and women who have been instrumental in bringing the rural problem to its present stage of advancement. They have been public-minded, able, far-seeing men and women, and they have rendered an unmeasurable service. The rural movement has been brought to its present state without any demand for special privilege, without bolstering by factitious legislation, and to a remarkable degree without self-seeking. It is based on a real regard for the welfare of all the people, rather than for rural people exclusively. Thrice or more in this book I have spoken as if not convinced that the present insistence on "efficiency" in government is altogether sound. That is exactly the impression I desire to convey. As the term is now commonly applied, it is not a measure of good government. Certain phrases and certain sets of ideas gain dominance at certain times. Just now the idea of administrative efficiency is uppermost. It seems necessarily to be the controlling factor in the progress of any business or any people. Certainly, a people should be efficient; but an efficient government may not mean an efficient people,--it may mean quite otherwise or even the reverse. The primary purpose of government in these days, and particularly in this country, is to educate and to develop all the people and to lead them to express themselves freely and to the full, and to partake politically. And this is what governments may not do, and this is where they may fail even when their efficiency in administration is exact. A monarchic form may be executively more efficient than a democratic form; a despotic form may be more efficient than either. The justification of a democratic form of government lies in the fact that it is a means of education. The final test of government is not executive efficiency. Every movement, every circumstance that takes starting-power and incentive away from the people, even though it makes for exacter administration, is to be challenged. It is specially to be deplored if this loss of starting-power affects the persons who deal first-hand with the surface of the planet and with the products that come directly out of it. There is a broad political significance to all this. Sooner or later the people rebel against intrenched or bureaucratic groups. Many of you know how they resist even strongly centralized departments of public instruction, and how the effectiveness of such departments may be jeopardized and much lessened by the very perfectness of their organization; and if they were to engage in a custom of extraneous forms of news-giving in the public press, the resentment would be the greater. In our rural work we are in danger of developing a piece of machinery founded on our fundamental industry; and if this ever comes about, we shall find the people organizing to resist it. The reader will understand that in this discussion I assume the agricultural work to be systematically organized, both in nation and State; this is essential to good effort and to the accomplishing of results: but we must take care that the formal organization does not get in the way of the good workers, hindering and repressing them and wasting their time. We want governments to be economical and efficient with funds and in the control of affairs; this also is assumed: but we must not overlook the larger issues. In all this new rural effort, we should maintain the spirit of team-work and of co-action, and not make the mistake of depending too much on the routine of centralized control. In this country we are much criticised for the cost of government and for the supposed control of affairs by monopoly. The cost is undoubtedly too great, but it is the price we pay for the satisfaction of using democratic forms. As to the other disability, let us consider that society lies between two dangers,--the danger of monopoly and the danger of bureaucracy. On the one side is the control of the necessities of life by commercial organization. On the other side is the control of the necessities of life, and even of life itself, by intrenched groups that ostensibly represent the people and which it may be impossible to dislodge. Here are the Scylla and the Charybdis between which human society must pick its devious way. Both are evil. Of the two, monopoly may be the lesser: it may be more easily brought under control; it tends to be more progressive; it extends less far; it may be the less hateful. They are only two expressions of one thing, one possibly worse than the other. Probably there are peoples who pride themselves on more or less complete escape from monopoly who are nevertheless suffering from the most deadening bureaucracy. Agriculture is in the foundation of the political, economic, and social structure. If we cannot develop starting-power in the background people, we cannot maintain it elsewhere. The greatness of all this rural work is to lie in the results and not in the methods that absorb so much of our energy. If agriculture cannot be democratic, then there is no democracy. _The background spaces.--The forest_ "This is the forest primeval." These are the significant words of the poet in Evangeline. Perhaps more than any single utterance they have set the American youth against the background of the forest. The backgrounds are important. The life of every one of us is relative. We miss our destiny when we miss or forget our backgrounds. We lose ourselves. Men go off in vague heresies when they forget the conditions against which they live. Judgments become too refined and men tend to become merely disputatious and subtle. The backgrounds are the great unoccupied spaces. They are the large environments in which we live but which we do not make. The backgrounds are the sky with its limitless reaches; the silences of the sea; the tundra in pallid arctic nights; the deserts with their prismatic colors; the shores that gird the planet; the vast mountains that are beyond reach; the winds, which are the universal voice in nature; the sacredness of the night; the elemental simplicity of the open fields; and the solitude of the forest. These are the facts and situations that stand at our backs, to which we adjust our civilization, and by which we measure ourselves. The great conquest of mankind is the conquest of his natural conditions. We admire the man who overcomes: the sailor or navigator in hostile and unknown seas; the engineer who projects himself hard against the obstacles; the miner and the explorer; the builder; the farmer who ameliorates the earth to man's use. But even though we conquer or modify the physical conditions against which we are set, nevertheless the backgrounds will remain. I hope that we may always say "The forest primeval." I hope that some reaches of the sea may never be sailed, that some swamps may never be drained, that some mountain peaks may never be scaled, that some forests may never be harvested. I hope that some knowledge may never be revealed. Look at your map of the globe. Note how few are the areas of great congestion of population and of much human activity as compared with the vast and apparently empty spaces. How small are the spots that represent the cities and what a little part of the earth are the political divisions that are most in the minds of men! We are likely to think that all these outlying and thinly peopled places are the wastes. I suspect that they contribute more to the race than we think. I am glad that there are still some places of mystery, some reaches of hope, some things far beyond us, some spaces to conjure up dreams. I am glad that the earth is not all Iowa or Belgium or the Channel Islands. I am glad that some of it is the hard hills of New England, some the heathered heights of Scotland, some the cold distances of Quebec, some of it the islands far off in little-traversed seas, and some of it also the unexplored domains that lie within eyesight of our own homes. It is well to know that these spaces exist, that there are places of escape. They add much to the ambition of the race; they make for strength, for courage, and for renewal. In the cities I am always interested in the variety of the contents of the store windows. Variously fabricated and disguised, these materials come from the ends of the earth. They come from the shores of the seas, from the mines, from the land, from the forests, from the arctic, and from the tropic. They are from the backgrounds. The cities are great, but how much greater are the forests and the sea! No people should be forbidden the influence of the forest. No child should grow up without a knowledge of the forest; and I mean a real forest and not a grove or village trees or a park. There are no forests in cities, however many trees there may be. As a city is much more than a collection of houses, so is a forest much more than a collection of trees. The forest has its own round of life, its characteristic attributes, its climate, and its inhabitants. When you enter a real forest you enter the solitudes, you are in the unexpressed distances. You walk on the mould of years and perhaps of ages. There is no other wind like the wind of the forest; there is no odor like the odor of the forest; there is no solitude more complete; there is no song of a brook like the song of a forest brook; there is no call of a bird like that of a forest bird; there are no mysteries so deep and which seem yet to be within one's realization. While a forest is more than trees, yet the trees are the essential part of the forest; and no one ever really knows or understands a forest until he first understands a tree. There is no thing in nature finer and stronger than the bark of a tree; it is a thing in place, adapted to its ends, perfect in its conformation, beautiful in its color and its form and the sweep of its contour; and every bark is peculiar to its species. I think that one never really likes a tree until he is impelled to embrace it with his arms and to run his fingers through the grooves of its bark. Man listens in the forest. He pauses in the forest. He finds himself. He loses himself in the town and even perhaps in the university. He may lose himself in business and in great affairs; but in the forest he is one with a tree, he stands by himself and yet has consolation, and he comes back to his own place in the scheme of things. We have almost forgotten to listen; so great and ceaseless is the racket that the little voices pass over our ears and we hear them not. I have asked person after person if he knew the song of the chipping-sparrow, and most of them are unaware that it has any song. We do not hear it in the blare of the city street, in railway travel, or when we are in a thunderous crowd. We hear it in the still places and when our ears are ready to catch the smaller sounds. There is no music like the music of the forest, and the better part of it is faint and far away or high in the tops of trees. The forest may be an asylum. "The groves were God's first temples." We need all our altars and more, but we need also the sanctuary of the forest. It is a poor people that has no forests. I prize the farms because they have forests. It is a poor political philosophy that has no forests. It is a poor nation that has no forests and no workers in wood. In many places there are the forests. I think that we do not get the most out of them. Certainly they have two uses: one for the products, and one for the human relief and the inspiration. I should like to see a movement looking toward the better utilization of the forests humanly, as we use school buildings and church buildings and public halls. I wish that we might take our friends to the forests as we also take them to see the works of the masters. For this purpose, we should not go in large companies. We need sympathetic guidance. Parties of two and four may go separately to the forests to walk and to sit and to be silent. I would not forget the forest in the night, in the silence and the simplicity of the darkness. Strangely few are the people who know a real forest at dark. Few are those who know the forest when the rain is falling or when the snow covers the earth. Yet the forest is as real in all these moments as when the sun is at full and the weather is fair. I wish that we might know the forest intimately and sensitively as a part of our background. I think it would do much to keep us close to the verities and the essentials. _A forest background for a reformatory_ Some years ago I presented to a board that was charged with establishing and maintaining a new State reformatory for wayward and delinquent boys an outline of a possible setting for the enterprise; and as this statement really constitutes a practical application of some of the foregoing discussions, I present the larger part of it here. With delinquents it is specially important to develop the sense of obligation and responsibility, and I fear that we are endeavoring to stimulate this sense too exclusively by means of direct governing and disciplinary methods. The statement follows. I think that the activities in the proposed reformatory should be largely agricultural and industrial. So far as possible the young men should be put into direct contact with realities and with useful and practical work. An effort should be made to have all this work mean something to them and not to be merely make-believe. It is fairly possible to develop such a property and organization as will put them in touch with real work rather than to force the necessity of setting tasks in order to keep them busy. Aside from the manual labor part of it, the background of the reformatory should be such as will develop the feeling of responsibility in the workers. This means that they must come actually in contact with the raw materials and with things as they grow. When a young man has a piece of wood or metal given to him in a shop, his whole responsibility is merely to make something out of this material; he has no responsibility for the material itself, as he would have if he had been obliged to mine it or to grow it. One of the greatest advantages of a farm training is that it develops a man's responsibility toward the materials with which he works. He is always brought face to face with the problem of saving the fertility of the land, saving the crops, saving the forests, and saving the live-stock. The idea of saving and safeguarding these materials is only incidental to those who do not help to produce them. It is important that the farm of this reformatory should be large enough so that all the young men may do some real pieces of work on it. Such a farm is not to be commercial in the ordinary farming sense. Its primary purpose is to aid in a reformative or educational process. You should, therefore, undertake such types of farming as will best serve those needs and best meet the abilities of the inmates. A very highly specialized farming, as the growing of truck-crops, would be quite impracticable as a commercial enterprise because this kind of farming demands the greatest skill and also because it requires a property very easily accessible to our great markets and, therefore, very expensive to procure and difficult to find in large enough acreage for an institution of this size; and it is doubtful whether this type of farming would have the best effect on the inmates. Of course, I should expect that the institution would try to grow its own vegetables, but it would probably be unwise to make truck-gardening the backbone of the farming enterprise. I also feel that it would not be best to make it primarily a dairy farm or a fruit farm or a poultry farm, although all these things should be well represented on the place and in sufficient extent to supply the institution in whole or in part. There should be such a farming enterprise as would give a very large and open background, part of it practically wild, and which would allow for considerable freedom of action on the part of the inmates. You should have operations perhaps somewhat in the rough and which would appeal to the manly qualities of the young men. It seems to me that a forestry enterprise would possibly be the best as the main part of the farming scheme. If the reformatory could have one thousand acres of forest, the area would provide a great variety of conditions that the inmates would have to meet, it would give work in the building of roads and culverts and trails, it would provide winter activity at a time when the other farming enterprises are slack, it would bring the inmates directly in touch with wild and native life, and it would also place them against the natural resources in such a way as to make them feel their responsibility for the objects and the supplies. Perhaps it will be impossible to secure one thousand acres of good timber in a more or less continuous area. However, it might be possible to assemble a good number of contiguous farms in some of the hill regions so that one thousand acres of timber in various grades of maturity might be secured. There would be open spaces which ought to be planted, and this of itself would provide good work and supervision. The trimming, felling, and other care of this forest would be continuous. The forest should not be stripped, but merely the merchantable or ready timber removed from year to year, and the domain kept in a growing and recuperating condition. One thousand acres of forest, in which timber is fit to be cut, should produce an annual increase of two hundred thousand to three hundred thousand board feet, and this increase should not lessen as the years go on. This timber should be manufactured. I have not looked into the question as to whether a market could be found for the materials that would be made from this timber, but I should suppose that a market could be as readily secured for this kind of manufacture as for any other. The educational and moral effect of seeing the material grow, then caring for it, then harvesting it, and then manufacturing it would be very great. One could follow the process from beginning to end and feel a responsibility for it in every stage. I should suppose that the manufacture would be of small work and not merely the sawing of lumber. It might be well to determine whether there would be market for chairs, cabinets, and other furniture, whip-stocks, or small material that could be used in the manufacture of novelties and other like articles. Possibly the reformatory could supply some of the stock to the prisons that are manufacturing furniture, although the educational and moral effects would be better if the inmates could see the process from beginning to end. Of course, you would not limit the manufacturing activities of the reformatory to wood-working. You probably would be obliged to have other kinds of factories, but the wood-working shops ought to be part of the plan and I should hope a very important part. I have not made any careful study of this question, and do not know how feasible these suggestions may be; but they appeal to me very strongly on the educational and reformational end. These suggestions are made only that they may be considered along with other suggestions, and if they seem to be worth while, to have the question investigated. If something like one thousand acres of land were secured for a forest, it would mean that the farm itself would be rather large. There ought to be probably not less than two or three hundred acres of land that might be used for grazing, gardens, and the ordinary farm operations that would contribute to the support of the inmates of the institution. Of course, this arable land ought to be valley land or at least fairly level and accessible along good public highways. The forest land could be more remote, running back on the hills. If the property could be so located that the forest would control the sources of important streams and springs, the results would be all the better. The young men should feel their responsibility for creeks and ponds, and for the protection of wild life as well as for the crops that they raise. Where the reformatory should be located is a matter that should receive very careful attention. It is not alone the problem of finding a site that is proper for a reformatory, but also the question of so placing it that it will have some relation to State development and some connection with the people's interests and desires. State institutions should be so separated that the greatest number of people may see them or come into contact with them. I dislike the tendency to group the State institutions about certain populous centres. In these days of easy transportation, the carrying problem is really of less importance than certain less definite but none the less real relations to all the people. There are certain great areas in the State of considerable population in which there are no State institutions, and in which the people know nothing about such affairs beyond the local school and church. Perhaps at first blush the people of a locality might not relish the idea of having a reformatory in their midst, but this feeling ought soon to pass away; and, moreover, the people should be made to feel their responsibility for reformatories, asylums, and penitentiaries as well as their responsibility for any other State institutions, and the feeling should not be encouraged that such institutions should be put somewhere else merely because one locality does not desire them. The character of the property that is purchased will determine to a very large extent the character of the institution, and, therefore, the nature of the reformatory processes. This is more important than transportation facilities. It is a more important question even than that of the proper buildings, for buildings for these purposes have been studied by many experts and our ideas concerning them have been more or less standardized and, moreover, buildings can be extended and modified more easily than can the landed area. It seems to me that before you think actually of purchasing the land, you should arrive at a fairly definite conclusion as to what kind of a farming enterprise it is desired to develop as a background for the institution; you could then determine as far as possible on principle in what general region the institution ought to be located; and then set out on a direct exploration to determine whether the proper kind and quantity of land can be secured. _The background spaces.--The open fields_ Here not long ago was the forest primeval. Here the trees sprouted, and grew their centuries, and returned to the earth. Here the midsummer brook ran all day long from the far-away places. Here the night-winds slept. Here havened the beasts and fowls when storms pursued them. Here the leaves fell in the glory of the autumn, here other leaves burst forth in the miracle of spring, and here the pewee called in the summer. Here the Indian tracked his game. It was not so very long ago. That old man's father remembers it. Then it was a new and holy land, seemingly fresh from the hand of the creator. The old man speaks of it as of a golden time, now far away and hallowed; he speaks of it with an attitude of reverence. "Ah yes," my father told me; and calmly with bared head he relates it, every incident so sacred that not one hairbreadth must he deviate. The church and the master's school and the forest,--these three are strong in his memory. Yet these are not all. He remembers the homes cut in the dim wall of the forest. He recalls the farms full of stumps and heaps of logs and the ox-teams on them, for these were in his boyhood. The ox-team was a natural part of the slow-moving conquest in those rugged days. Roads betook themselves into the forest, like great serpents devouring as they went. And one day, behold! the forest was gone. Farm joined farm, the village grew, the old folk fell away, new people came whose names had to be asked. And I thought me why these fields are not as hallowed as were the old forests. Here are the same knolls and hills. In this turf there may be still the fibres of ancient trees. Here are the paths of the midsummer brooks, but vocal now only in the freshets. Here are the winds. The autumn goes and the spring comes. The pewee calls in the groves. The farmer and not the Indian tracks the plow. Here I look down on a little city. There is a great school in it. There are spires piercing the trees. In the distance are mills, and I see the smoke of good accomplishment roll out over the hillside. It is a self-centred city, full of pride. Every mile-post praises it. Toward it all the roads lead. It tells itself to all the surrounding country. And yet I cannot but feel that these quiet fields and others like them have made this city; but I am glad that the fields are not proud. One day a boy and one day a girl will go down from these fields, and out into the thoroughways of life. They will go far, but these hills they will still call home. From these uplands the waters flow down into the streams that move the mills and that float the ships. Loads of timber still go hence for the construction down below. Here go building-stones and sand and gravel,--gravel from the glaciers. Here goes the hay for ten thousand horses. Here go the wheat, and here the apples, and the animals. Here are the votes that hold the people steady. Somewhere there is the background. Here is the background. Here things move slowly. Trees grow slowly. The streams change little from year to year, and yet they shape the surface of the earth in this hill country. In yonder fence-row the catbird has built since I was a boy, and yet I have wandered far and I have seen great changes in yonder city. The well-sweep has gone but the well is still there: the wells are gone from the city. The cows have changed in color, but still they are cows and yield their milk in season. The fields do not perish, but time eats away the city. I think all these things must be good and very good or they could not have persisted in all this change. In the beginning! Yes, I know, it was holy then. The forces of eons shaped it: still was it holy. The forest came: still holy. Then came the open fields. _The background spaces.--The ancestral sea_ The planet is not all land, and the sea is as holy as the soil. We speak of the "waste of waters," and we still offer prayers for those who go down to the sea in ships. Superstition yet clings about the sea. The landsman thinks of the sea as barren, and he regrets that it is not solid land on which he may grow grass and cattle. And as one looks over the surface of the waters, with no visible object on the vast expanse and even the clouds lying apparently dead and sterile, and when one considers that three-fourths of the earth's surface is similarly covered, one has the impression of utter waste and desolation, with no good thing abiding there for the comfort and cheer of man. The real inhabitants of the sea are beneath the surface and every part is tenanted, so completely tenanted that the ocean produces greater bulk of life, area for area, than does the solid land; and every atom of this life is as keen to live and follows as completely the law of its existence as does the life of the interiors of the continents. The vast meadows of plankton and nekton, albeit largely of organisms microscopic, form a layer for hundreds of feet beneath the surface and on which the great herbivora feed; and on these animals the legions of the carnivora subsist. Every vertical region has its life, peculiar to it, extending even to the bottoms of the depths in the world-slimes and the darkness; and in these deeps the falling remains of the upper realms, like gentle primeval rains, afford a never-failing, never-ending source of food and maintain the slow life in the bottoms. We think of the huge animals of the sea when we think of mass, and it is true that the great whales are the bulkiest creatures we know to have lived; yet it is the bacteria, the desmids, the minute crustaceans, and many other diminutive forms that everywhere populate the sea from the equator to the poles and provide the vast background of the ocean life. In these gulfs of moving unseen forms nitrification proceeds, and the rounds of life go on unceasingly. The leviathan whale strains out these minute organisms from the volumes of waters, and so full of them may be his maw that his captors remove the accumulation with spades. The rivers bring down their freight of mud and organic matter, and supply food for the denizens of the sea. The last remains of all these multitudes are laid down on the ocean floors as organic oozes; and nobody knows what part the abysmal soil may play in the economy of the plant in some future epoch. The rains of the land come from the sea; the clouds come ultimately from the sea; the trade-winds flow regularly from the sea; the temperatures of the land surface are controlled largely from the sea; the high lands are washed into the sea as into a basin; if all the continents were levelled into the sea still would the sea envelop the planet about two miles deep. Impurities find their way into the sea and are there digested into the universal beneficence. We must reckon with the sea. It is supposed that the first life on the earth came forth where the land and the waters join, from that eternal interplay of cosmic forces where the solid and the fluid, the mobile and the immobile, meet and marry. Verily, the ancestral sea is the background of the planet. Its very vastness makes it significant. It shows no age. Its deeps have no doubt existed from the solidification of the earth and they will probably remain when all works of man perish utterly. The sea is the bosom of the earth's mysteries. Because man cannot set foot on it, the sea remains beyond his power to modify, to handle, and to control. No breach that man may make but will immediately fill; no fleets of mighty ships go down but that the sea covers them in silence and knows them not; man may not hold converse with the monsters in the deeps. The sea is beyond him, surpassing, elemental, and yet blessing him with abundant benedictions. So vast is the sea and so self-recuperating that man cannot sterilize it. He despoils none of its surface when he sails his ships. He does not annihilate the realms of plankton, lying layer on layer in its deluging, consuming soil. It controls him mightily. The seas and the shores have provided the trading ways of the peoples. The ocean connects all lands, surrounds all lands. Until recent times the great marts have been mostly on coasts or within easy water access of them. The polity of early settlements was largely the polity of the sea and the strand. The daring of the navigator was one of the first of the heroic human qualities. Probably all dry land was once under the sea, and therefrom has it drawn much of its power. From earliest times the sea has yielded property common to all and free to whomever would take it,--the fish, the wrack, the drift, the salvage of ships. Pirates have roamed the sea for spoil and booty. When government appropriates the wreckage of ships and the stranded derelict of the sea, the people may think it justifiable protection of their rights to secrete it. Smuggling is an old sea license. Laws and customs and old restraints lose their force and vanish on the sea; and freedom rises out of the sea. And so the ocean has contributed to the making of the outlook of the human family. The race would be a very different race had there been no sea stretching to the unknown, conjuring vague fears and stimulating hopes, bringing its freight, bearing tidings of far lands, sundering traditions, rolling the waves of its elemental music, driving its rank smells into the nostrils, putting its salt into the soul. 
13814	----	THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FEELING FOR NATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND MODERN TIMES by ALFRED BIESE Director of the K. K. Gymnasium at Neuwied Authorized translation from the German 1905 AUTHOR'S PREFACE The encouraging reception of my "Development of the Feeling for Nature among the Greeks and Romans" gradually decided me, after some years, to carry the subject on to modern tunes. Enticing as it was, I did not shut my eyes to the great difficulties of a task whose dimensions have daunted many a savant since the days of Humboldt's clever, terse sketches of the feeling for Nature in different times and peoples. But the subject, once approached, would not let me go. Its solution seemed only possible from the side of historical development, not from that of _a priori_ synthesis. The almost inexhaustible amount of material, especially towards modern times, has often obliged me to limit myself to typical forerunners of the various epochs, although, at the same time, I have tried not to lose the thread of general development. By the addition of the chief phases of landscape, painting, and garden craft, I have aimed at giving completeness to the historical picture; but I hold that literature, especially poetry, as the most intimate medium of a nation's feelings, is the chief source of information in an enquiry which may form a contribution, not only to the history of taste, but also to the comparative history of literature. At a time too when the natural sciences are so highly developed, and the cult of Nature is so widespread, a book of this kind may perhaps claim the interest of that wide circle of educated readers to whom the modern delight in Nature on its many sides makes appeal. And this the more, since books are rare which seek to embrace the whole mental development of the Middle Ages and modern times, and are, at the same time, intended for and intelligible to all people of cultivation. The book has been a work of love, and I hope it will be read with pleasure, not only by those whose special domain it touches, but by all who care for the eternal beauties of Nature. To those who know my earlier papers in the _Preussische Jahrbücher_, the _Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Litteraturgeschichte_, and the _Litteraturbeilage des Hamburgischen Correspondents_, I trust this fuller and more connected treatment of the theme will prove welcome. ALFRED BIESE. Published Translations of the following Authors have been used: SANSCRIT.--Jones, Wilson, Arnold, anonymous translator in a publication of the Society for Resuscitation of Ancient Literature. LATIN AND GREEK.--Lightfoot, Jowett, Farrar, Lodge, Dalrymple, Bigg, Pilkington, Hodgkin, De Montalembert, Gary, Lok, Murray, Gibb, a translator in Bonn's Classics. ITALIAN.--Gary, Longfellow, Cayley, Robinson, Kelly, Bent, Hoole, Roscoe, Leigh Hunt, Lofft, Astley, Oliphant. GERMAN.--Horton and Bell, Middlemore, Lytton, Swanwick, Dwight, Boylau, Bowling, Bell, Aytoun, Martin, Oxenford, Morrison, M'Cullum, Winkworth, Howorth, Taylor, Nind, Brooks, Lloyd, Frothingham, Ewing, Noel, Austin, Carlyle, Storr, Weston, Phillips. SPANISH.--Markham, Major, Bowring, Hasell, M'Carthy, French. FRENCH.--Anonymous translator of Rousseau. PORTUGUESE.--Aubertin. The Translator's thanks are also due to the author for a few alterations in and additions to the text, and to Miss Edgehill, Miss Tomlinson, and Dr B. Scheifers for translations from Greek and Latin, Italian, and Middle German respectively. INTRODUCTION Nature in her ever-constant, ever-changing phases is indispensable to man, his whole existence depends upon her, and she influences him in manifold ways, in mind as well as body. The physical character of a country is reflected in its inhabitants; the one factor of climate alone gives a very different outlook to northerner and southerner. But whereas primitive man, to whom the darkness of night meant anxiety, either feared Nature or worshipped her with awe, civilised man tries to lift her veil, and through science and art to understand her inner and outer beauty--the scientist in her laws, the man of religion in her relation to his Creator, the artist in reproducing the impressions she makes upon him. Probably it has always been common to healthy minds to take some pleasure in her; but it needs no slight culture of heart and mind to grasp her meaning and make it clear to others. Her book lies open before us, but the interpretations have been many and dissimilar. A fine statue or a richly-coloured picture appeals to all, but only knowledge can appreciate it at its true value and discover the full meaning of the artist. And as with Art, so with Nature. For Nature is the greatest artist, though dumb until man, with his inexplicable power of putting himself in her place, transferring to her his bodily and mental self, gives her speech. Goethe said 'man never understands how anthropomorphic he is.' No study, however comprehensive, enables him to overstep human limits, or conceive a concrete being, even the highest, from a wholly impersonal point of view. His own self always remains an encumbering factor. In a real sense he only understands himself, and his measure for all things is man. To understand the world outside him, he must needs ascribe his own attributes to it, must lend his own being to find it again. This unexplained faculty, or rather inherent necessity, which implies at once a power and a limit, extends to persons as well as things. The significant word sympathy expresses it. To feel a friend's grief is to put oneself in his place, think from his standpoint and in his mood--that is, suffer with him. The fear and sympathy which condition the action of tragedy depend upon the same mental process; one's own point of view is shifted to that of another, and when the two are in harmony, and only then, the claim of beauty is satisfied, and æsthetic pleasure results. By the well-known expression of Greek philosophy, 'like is only understood by like,' the Pythagoreans meant that the mathematically trained mind is the organ by which the mathematically constructed cosmos is understood. The expression may also serve as an æsthetic aphorism. The charm of the simplest lyrical song depends upon the hearer's power to put himself in the mood or situation described by the poet, on an interplay between subject and object. Everything in mental life depends upon this faculty. We observe, ponder, feel, because a kindred vibration in the object sets our own fibres in motion. 'You resemble the mind which you understand.' It is a magic bridge from our own mind, making access possible to a work of art, an electric current conveying the artist's ideas into our souls. We know how a drama or a song can thrill us when our feeling vibrates with it; and that thrill, Faust tells us, is the best part of man. If inventive work in whatever art or science gives the purest kind of pleasure, Nature herself seeming to work through the artist, rousing those impulses which come to him as revelations, there is pleasure also in the passive reception of beauty, especially when we are not content to remain passive, but trace out and rethink the artist's thoughts, remaking his work. 'To invent for oneself is beautiful; but to recognise gladly and treasure up the happy inventions of others is that less thine?' said Goethe in his _Jahreszeiten_; and in the _Aphorisms_, confirming what has just been said: 'We know of no world except in relation to man, we desire no art but that which is the expression of this relation.' And, further, 'Look into yourselves and you will find everything, and rejoice if outside yourselves, as you may say, lies a Nature which says yea and amen to all that you have found there.' Certainly Nature only bestows on man in proportion to his own inner wealth. As Rückert says, 'the charm of a landscape lies in this, that it seems to reflect back that part of one's inner life, of mind, mood, and feeling, which we have given it.' And Ebers, 'Lay down your best of heart and mind before eternal Nature; she will repay you a thousandfold, with full hands.' And Vischer remarks, 'Nature at her greatest is not so great that she can work without man's mind.' Every landscape can be beautiful and stimulating if human feeling colours it, and it will be most so to him who brings the richest endowment of heart and mind to bear: Nature only discloses her whole self to a whole man. But it is under the poet's wand above all, that, like the marble at Pygmalion's breast, she grows warm and breathes and answers to his charm; as in that symbolic saga, the listening woods and waters and the creatures followed Orpheus with his lute. Scientific knowledge, optical, acoustical, meteorological, geological, only widens and deepens love for her and increases and refines the sense of her beauty. In short, deep feeling for Nature always proves considerable culture of heart and mind. There is a constant analogy between the growth of this feeling and that of general culture. As each nation and time has its own mode of thought, which is constantly changing, so each period has its 'landscape eye.' The same rule applies to individuals. Nature, as Jean Paul said, is made intelligible to man in being for ever made flesh. We cannot look at her impersonally, we must needs give her form and soul, in order to grasp and describe her. Vischer says[1] 'it is simply by an act of comparison that we think we see our own life in inanimate objects.' We say that Nature's clearness is like clearness of mind, that her darkness and gloom are like a dark and gloomy mood; then, omitting 'like,' we go on to ascribe our qualities directly to her, and say, this neighbourhood, this air, this general tone of colour, is cheerful, melancholy, and so forth. Here we are prompted by an undeveloped dormant consciousness which really only compares, while it seems to take one thing for another. In this way we come to say that a rock projects boldly, that fire rages furiously over a building, that a summer evening with flocks going home at sunset is peaceful and idyllic; that autumn, dripping with rain, its willows sighing in the wind, is elegiac and melancholy and so forth. Perhaps Nature would not prove to be this ready symbol of man's inner life were there no secret rapport between the two. It is as if, in some mysterious way, we meet in her another mind, which speaks a language we know, wakening a foretaste of kinship; and whether the soul she expresses is one we have lent her, or her own which we have divined, the relationship is still one of give and take. Let us take a rapid survey of the course of this feeling in antiquity. Pantheism has always been the home of a special tenderness for Nature, and the poetry of India is full of intimate dealings between man and plants and animals. They are found in the loftiest flights of religious enthusiasm in the Vedas, where, be it only in reference to the splendour of dawn or the 'golden-handed sun,' Nature is always assumed to be closely connected with man's inner and outer life. Later on, as Brahminism appeared, deepening the contemplative side of Hindoo character, and the drama and historical plays came in, generalities gave way to definite localizing, and in the Epics ornate descriptions of actual landscape took independent place. Nature's sympathy with human joys and griefs was taken for granted, and she played a part of her own in drama. In the _Mahâbhârata_, when Damajanti is wandering in search of her lost Nala and sees the great mountain top, she asks it for her prince. Oh mountain lord! Far seen and celebrated hill, that cleav'st The blue o' the sky, refuge of living things, Most noble eminence, I worship thee!... O Mount, whose double ridge stamps on the sky Yon line, by five-score splendid pinnacles Indented; tell me, in this gloomy wood Hast thou seen Nala? Nala, wise and bold! Ah mountain! why consolest thou me not, Answering one word to sorrowful, distressed, Lonely, lost Damajanti? And when she comes to the tree Asoka, she implores: Ah, lovely tree! that wavest here Thy crown of countless shining clustering blooms As thou wert woodland king! Asoka tree! Tree called the sorrow-ender, heart's-ease tree! Be what thy name saith; end my sorrow now, Saying, ah, bright Asoka, thou hast seen My Prince, my dauntless Nala--seen that lord Whom Damajanti loves and his foes fear. In Maghas' epic, _The Death of Sisupala_, plants and animals lead the same voluptuous life as the 'deep-bosomed, wide-hipped' girls with the ardent men. 'The mountain Raivataka touches the ether with a thousand heads, earth with a thousand feet, the sun and moon are his eyes. When the birds are tired and tremble with delight from the caresses of their mates, he grants them shade from lotos leaves. Who in the world is not astonished when he has climbed, to see the prince of mountains who overshadows the ether and far-reaching regions of earth, standing there with his great projecting crags, while the moon's sickle trembles on his summit?' In Kalidasa's _Urwasi_, the deserted King who is searching for his wife asks the peacock: Oh tell, If, free on the wing as you soar, You have seen the loved nymph I deplore-- You will know her, the fairest of damsels fair, By her large soft eye and her graceful air; Bird of the dark blue throat and eye of jet, Oh tell me, have you seen the lovely face Of my fair bride--lost in this dreary wilderness? and the mountain: Say mountain, whose expansive slope confines The forest verge, oh, tell me hast thou seen A nymph as beauteous as the bride of love Mounting with slender frame thy steep ascent, Or wearied, resting in thy crowning woods? As he sits by the side of the stream, he asks whence comes its charm: Whilst gazing on the stream, whose new swollen waters Yet turbid flow, what strange imaginings Possess my soul and fill it with delight. The rippling wave is like her aching brow; The fluttering line of storks, her timid tongue; The foaming spray, her white loose floating vest; And this meandering course the current tracks Her undulating gait. Then he sees a creeper without flowers, and a strange attraction impels him to embrace it, for its likeness to his lost love: Vine of the wilderness, behold A lone heartbroken wretch in me, Who dreams in his embrace to fold His love, as wild he clings to thee. Thereupon the creeper transforms itself into Urwasi. In Kalidasa's _Sakuntala_, too, when the pretty girls are watering the flowers in the garden, Sakuntala says: 'It is not only in obedience to our father that I thus employ myself. I really feel the affection of a sister for these young plants.' Taking it for granted that the mango tree has the same feeling for herself, she cries: 'Yon Amra tree, my friends, points with the fingers of its leaves, which the gale gently agitates, and seems inclined to whisper some secret'; and with maiden shyness, attributing her own thoughts about love to the plants, one of her comrades says: 'See, my Sakuntala, how yon fresh Mallica which you have surnamed Vanadosini or Delight of the Grove, has chosen the sweet Amra for her bridegroom....' 'How charming is the season, when the nuptials even of plants are thus publicly celebrated!'--and elsewhere: 'Here is a plant, Sakuntala, which you have forgotten.' Sakuntala: 'Then I shall forget myself.' Birds,[2] clouds, and waves are messengers of love; all Nature grieves at the separation of lovers. When Sakuntala is leaving her forest, one of her friends says: 'Mark the affliction of the forest itself when the time of your departure approaches! 'The female antelope browses no more on the collected Cusa grass, and the pea-hen ceases to dance on the lawn; the very plants of the grove, whose pale leaves fall on the ground, lose their strength and their beauty.' The poems of India, especially those devoted to descriptions of Nature, abound in such bold, picturesque personifications, which are touching, despite their extravagance, through their intense sympathy with Nature. They shew the Hindoo attitude toward Nature in general, as well as his boundless fancy. I select one example from 'The Gathering of the Seasons' in Kalidasa's _Ritusanhare_: a description of the Rains. 'Pouring rain in torrents at the request of the thirst-stricken Chatakas, and emitting slow mutterings pleasing to the ears, clouds, bent down by the weight of their watery contents, are slowly moving on.... 'The rivers being filled up with the muddy water of the rivers, their force is increased. Therefore, felling down the trees on both the banks, they, like unchaste women, are going quickly towards the ocean.... 'The heat of the forest has been removed by the sprinkling of new water, and the Ketaka flowers have blossomed. On the branches of trees being shaken by the wind, it appears that the entire forest is dancing in delight. On the blossoming of Ketaka flowers it appears that the forest is smiling. Thinking, "he is our refuge when we are bent down by the weight of water, the clouds are enlivening with torrents the mount Vindhya assailed with fierce heat (of the summer)."' Charming pictures and comparisons are numerous, though they have the exaggeration common to oriental imagination, 'Love was the cause of my distemper, and love has healed it; as a summer's day, grown black with clouds, relieves all animals from the heat which itself had caused.' 'Should you be removed to the ends of the world, you will be fixed in this heart, as the shade of a lofty tree remains with it even when the day is departed.' 'The tree of my hope which had risen so luxuriantly is broken down.' 'Removed from the bosom of my father, like a young sandal tree rent from the hill of Malaja, how shall I exist in a strange soil?' This familiar intercourse with Nature stood far as the poles asunder from the monotheistic attitude of the Hebrew. The individual, it is true, was nothing in comparison with Brahma, the All-One; but the divine pervaded and sanctified all things, and so gave them a certain value; whilst before Jehovah, throned above the world, the whole universe was but dust and ashes. The Hindoo, wrapt in the contemplation of Nature, described her at great length and for her own sake, the Hebrew only for the sake of his Creator. She had no independent significance for him; he looked at her only 'sub specie eterni Dei,' in the mirror of the eternal God. Hence he took interest in her phases only as revelations of his God, noting one after another only to group them synthetically under the idea of Godhead. Hence too, despite his profound inwardness--'The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it?' (_Jeremiah_)--human individuality was only expressed in its relation to Jehovah. 'The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.'--_Psalm_ 19. 'Let the heavens rejoice and let the earth be glad; let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof. 'Let the field be joyful, and all that is therein; then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice.'--_Psalm_ 96. 'Let the floods clap their hands: let the hills be joyful together.'--_Psalm_ 98. 'The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice; the floods lift up their waves. The Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea.'--_Psalm_ 93. 'The sea saw it, and fled: Jordan was driven back. The mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs.'--_Psalm_ 114. 'The waters saw thee, O God, the waters saw thee; they were afraid: the depths also were troubled.'--_Psalm_ 77. All these lofty personifications of inanimate Nature only characterise her in her relation to another, and that not man but God. Nothing had significance by itself, Nature was but a book in which to read of Jehovah; and for this reason the Hebrew could not be wrapt in her, could not seek her for her own sake, she was only a revelation of the Deity. 'Lord, how great are thy works, in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy goodness.' Yet there is a fiery glow of enthusiasm in the songs in praise of Jehovah's wonders in creation. '0 Lord my God, thou art very great; thou art clothed with honour and majesty. 'Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment; who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain. 'Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters; who maketh the clouds his chariot; who walketh upon the wings of the wind. 'Who maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flaming fire; who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for ever. 'Thou coveredst the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. 'At thy rebuke they fled; at the voice of thy thunder they hasted away. 'They go up by the mountains; they go down by the valleys unto the place which thou hast founded for them. 'Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over; that they turn not again to cover the earth. 'He sendeth the springs into the valleys, which run among the hills. 'They give drink to every beast of the field: the wild asses quench their thirst. 'By them shall the fowls of the heaven have their habitation, which sing among the branches ... 'He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth. 'And wine that maketh glad the heart of man ... 'The trees of the Lord are full of sap; the cedars of Lebanon, which he hath planted. 'Where the birds make their nests: as for the stork, the fir trees are her house. 'The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats, and the rocks for the conies. 'He appointed the moon for seasons: the sun knoweth his going down. 'Thou makest darkness, and it is night: wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth. 'The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from God. 'The sun ariseth, they gather themselves together, and lay them down in their dens. 'Man goeth forth to his work and to his labour until the evening.... 'This great and wide sea, wherein are creeping things innumerable, both small and great beasts.... 'He looketh on the earth, and it trembleth; he toucheth the hills, and they smoke. 'I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God as long as I have my being.'--_Psalm_ 104. And what a lofty point of view is shewn by the overpowering words which Job puts into the mouth of Jehovah; 'Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof if thou knowest, or who hath stretched the line upon it? 'Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof? 'When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?... 'Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days; and caused the dayspring to know his place? 'That it might take hold of the ends of the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it?... 'Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea, or hast thou walked in the search of the deep?... 'Declare, if thou knowest it all!... 'Where is the way where light dwelleth, and as for darkness, where is the place thereof?' etc. Compare with this _Isaiah_ xl. verse 12, etc. Metaphors too, though poetic and fine, are not individualized. 'Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy water-spouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.'--_Psalm_ 42. 'Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul. I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing; I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me.'--_Psalm_ 69. There are many pictures from the animal world; and these are more elaborate in Job than elsewhere (see _Job_ xl. and xli.). Personifications, as we have seen, are many, but Nature is only called upon to sympathise with man in isolated cases, as, for instance, in 2 _Samuel_ i.: 'Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither let there be rain upon you, nor fields of offerings: for there the shield of the mighty is vilely cast away, the shield of Saul, as if he had not been anointed with oil.' The Cosmos unfolded itself to the Hebrew[3] as one great whole, and the glance fixed upon a distant horizon missed the nearer lying detail of phenomena. His imagination ranged the universe with the wings of the wind, and took vivid note of air, sky, sea, and land, but only, so to speak, in passing; it never rested there, but hurried past the boundaries of earth to Jehovah's throne, and from that height looked down upon creation. The attitude of the Greek was very different. Standing firmly rooted in the world of sense, his open mind and his marvellous eye for beauty appreciated the glorious external world around him down to its finest detail. His was the race of the beautiful, the first in history to train all its powers into harmony to produce a culture of beauty equal in form and contents, and his unique achievement in art and science enriched all after times with lasting standards of the great and beautiful. The influence of classic literature upon the Middle Ages and modern times has not only endured, but has gone on increasing with the centuries; so that we must know the position reached by Greece and Rome as to feeling for Nature, in order to discover whether the line of advance in the Middle Ages led directly forward or began by a backward movement--a zigzag. The terms ancient and modern, naive and sentimental, classic and romantic, have been shibboleths of culture from Jean Paul, Schiller, and Hegel, to Vischer. Jean Paul, in his _Vorschule zur Aesthetik_, compares the ideally simple Greek poetry, with its objectivity, serenity, and moral grace, with the musical poetry of the romantic period, and speaks of one as the sunlight that pervades our waking hours, the other as the moonlight that gleams fitfully on our dreaming ones. Schiller's epoch-making essay _On Naive and Sentimental Poetry_, with its rough division into the classic-naive depending on a harmony between nature and mind, and the modern-sentimental depending on a longing for a lost paradise, is constantly quoted to shew that the Greeks took no pleasure in Nature. This is misleading. Schiller's Greek was very limited; in the very year (1795) in which the essay appeared in _The Hours_, he was asking Humboldt's advice as to learning Greek, with special reference to Homer and Xenophon. To him Homer was the Greek _par excellence_, and who would not agree with him to-day? As in Greek mythology, that naive poem of Nature, the product of the artistic impulse of the race to stamp its impressions in a beautiful and harmonious form, so in the clear-cut comparisons in Homer, the feeling for Nature is profound; but the Homeric hero had no personal relations with her, no conscious leaning towards her; the descriptions only served to frame human action, in time or space. But that cheerful, unreflecting youth of mankind, that naive Homeric time, was short in spite of Schiller, who, in the very essay referred to, included Euripides, Virgil, and Horace among the sentimental, and Shakespeare among the naive, poets--a fact often overlooked. In line with the general development of culture, Greek feeling for Nature passed through various stages. These can be clearly traced from objective similes and naive, homely comparisons to poetic personifications, and so on to more extended descriptions, in which scenery was brought into harmony or contrast with man's inner life; until finally, in Hellenism, Nature was treated for her own sake, and man reduced to the position of supernumerary both in poetry and also--so approaching the modern--in landscape-painting. Greece had her sentimental epoch; she did not, as we have said, long remain naive. From Sophist days a steady process of decomposition went on--in other words, a movement towards what we call modern, a movement which to the classic mind led backward; but from the wider standpoint of general development meant advance. For the path of culture is always the same in the nations; it leads first upward and then downward, and all ripening knowledge, while it enriches the mind, brings with it some unforeseen loss. Mankind pays heavily for each new gain; it paid for increased subjectivity and inwardness by a loss in public spirit and patriotism which, once the most valued of national possessions, fell away before the increasing individuality, the germ of the modern spirit. For what is the modern spirit but limitless individuality? The greater the knowledge of self, the richer the inner life. Man becomes his own chief problem--he begins to watch the lightest flutter of his own feelings, to grasp and reflect upon them, to look upon himself in fact as in a mirror; and it is in this doubling of the ego, so to speak, that sentimentality in the modern sense consists. It leads to love of solitude, the fittest state for the growth of a conscious love of Nature, for, as Rousseau said 'all noble passions are formed in solitude,' 'tis there that one recognizes one's own heart as 'the rarest and most valuable of all possessions.' 'Oh, what a fatal gift of Heaven is a feeling heart!' and elsewhere he said: 'Hearts that are warmed by a divine fire find a pure delight in their own feelings which is independent of fate and of the whole world.' Euripides, too, loved solitude, and avoided the noise of town life by retiring to a grotto at Salamis which he had arranged for himself with a view of the sea; for which reason, his biographer tells us, most of his similes are drawn from the sea. He, rather than Petrarch or Rousseau, was the father of sentimentality. His morbidly sensitive Hippolytos cries 'Alas! would it were possible that I should see myself standing face to face, in which case I should have wept for the sorrows that we suffer'; and in the chorus of _The Suppliants_ we have: 'This insatiate joy of mourning leads me on like as the liquid drop flowing from the sun-trodden rock, ever increasing of groans.' In Euripides we have the first loosening of that ingenuous bond between Nature and the human spirit, as the Sophists laid the axe to the root of the old Hellenic ideas and beliefs. Subjectivity had already gained in strength from the birth of the lyric, that most individual of all expressions of feeling; and since the lyric cannot dispense with the external world, classic song now shewed the tender subjective feeling for Nature which we see in Sappho, Pindar, and Simonides. Yet Euripides (and Aristophanes, whose painful mad laugh, as Doysen says, expresses the same distraction and despair as the deep melancholy of Euripides) only paved the way for that sentimental, idyllic feeling for Nature which dwelt on her quiet charms for their own sake, as in Theocritus, and, like the modern, rose to greater intensity in the presence of the amorous passion, as we see in Kallimachos and the Anthology. It was the outcome of Hellenism, of which sentimental introspection, the freeing of the ego from the bonds of race and position, and the discovery of the individual in all directions of human existence, were marks. And this feeling developing from Homer to Longos, from unreflecting to conscious and then to sentimental pleasure in Nature, was expressed not only in poetry but in painting, although the latter never fully mastered technique. The common thoughtless statement, so often supported by quotations from Schiller, Gervinus, and others, that Greek antiquity was not alive to the beauty of Nature and her responsiveness to human moods, and neither painted scenery nor felt the melancholy poetic charm of ruins and tombs, is therefore a perversion of the truth; but it must be conceded that the feeling which existed then was but the germ of our modern one. It was fettered by the specific national beliefs concerning the world and deities, by the undeveloped state of the natural sciences, which, except botany, still lay in swaddling-clothes, by the new influence of Christendom, and by that strict feeling for style which, very much to its advantage, imposed a moderation that would have excluded much of our senseless modern rhapsody. It was not unnatural that Schiller, in distaste for the weak riot of feeling and the passion for describing Nature which obtained in his day, was led to overpraise the Homeric naïvete and overblame the sentimentality which he wrongly identified with it. In all that is called art, the Romans were pupils of the Greek, and their achievements in the region of beauty cannot be compared with his. But they advanced the course of general culture, and their feeling--always more subjective, abstract, self-conscious, and reflective--has a comparatively familiar, because modern, ring in the great poets. The preference for the practical and social-economic is traceable in their feeling for Nature. Their mythology also lay too much within the bounds of the intelligible; shewed itself too much in forms and ceremonies, in a cult; but it had not lost the sense of awe--it still heard the voices of mysterious powers in the depths of the forest. The dramatists wove effective metaphors and descriptions of Nature into their plays. Lucretius laid the foundations of a knowledge of her which refined both his enjoyment and his descriptions; and the elegiac sentimental style, which we see developed in Tibullus, Propertius, Ovid, Virgil, and Horace, first came to light in the great lyrist Catullus. In Imperial times feeling for Nature grew with the growth of culture in general; men turned to her in times of bad cheer, and found comfort in the great sky spaces, the constant stars, and forests that trembled with awe of the divine Numen. It was so with Seneca, a pantheist through and through. Pliny the younger was quite modern in his choice of rural solitudes, and his appreciation of the views from his villa. With Hadrian and Apuleius the Roman rococo literature began; Apuleius was astonishingly modern, and Ausonius was almost German in the depth and tenderness of his feeling for Nature. Garden-culture and landscape-painting shewed the same movement towards the sympathetic and elegiac-sentimental. Those who deny the Roman feeling for Nature might learn better from a glance at the ruins of their villas. As H. Nissen says in his _Italische Landeskunde_: 'It was more than mere fashion which drew the Roman to the sea-side, and attracted so strongly all those great figures, from the elder Scipio Africanus and his noble daughter, Cornelia, down to Augustus and Tiberius and their successors, whenever their powers flagged in the Forum. There were soft breezes to cool the brow, colour and outline to refresh the eye, and wide views that appealed to a race born to extensive lordship. 'In passing along the desolate, fever-stricken coasts of Latium and Campania to-day, one comes upon many traces of former splendour, and one is reminded that the pleasure which the old Romans took in the sea-side was spoilt for those who came after them by the havoc of the time.' In many points, Roman feeling for Nature was more developed than Greek. For instance, the Romans appreciated landscape as a whole, and distance, light and shade in wood and water, reflections, the charms of hunting and rowing, day-dreams on a mountain side, and so forth. That antiquity and the Middle Ages had any taste for romantic scenery has been energetically denied; but we can find a trace of it. The landscape which the Roman admired was level, graceful, and gentle; he certainly did not see any beauty in the Alps. Livy's 'Foeditas Alpinum' and the dreadful descriptions of Ammian, with others, are the much-quoted vouchers for this. Nor is it surprising; for modern appreciation, still in its youth, is really due to increased knowledge about Nature, to a change of feeling, and to the conveniences of modern travelling, unknown 2000 years ago. The dangers and hardships of those days must have put enjoyment out of the question; and only served to heighten the unfavourable contrast between the wildness of the mountain regions and the cultivation of Italy. Lucretius looked at wild scenery with horror, but later on it became a favourite subject for description; and Seneca notes, as shewing a morbid state of mind, in his essay on tranquillity of mind, that travelling not only attracts men to delightful places, but that some even exclaim: 'Let us go now into Campania; now that delicate soil delighteth us, let us visit the wood countries, let us visit the forest of Calabria, and let us seek some pleasure amidst the deserts, in such sort as these wandering eyes of ours may be relieved in beholding, at our pleasure, the strange solitude of these savage places.' We have thus briefly surveyed on the one hand, in theory, the conditions under which a conscious feeling for Nature develops, and the forms in which it expresses itself; and, on the other, the course this feeling has followed in antiquity among the Hindoos, Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans. The movement toward the modern, toward the subjective and individual, lies clear to view. We will now trace its gradual development along lines which are always strictly analogous to those of culture in general, through the Middle Ages. CHAPTER I CHRISTIANITY AND GERMANISM When the heathen world had outlived its faculties, and its creative power had failed, it sank into the ocean of the past--a sphinx, with her riddle guessed,--and mediæval civilization arose, founded upon Christianity and Germanism. There are times in the world's history when change seems to be abrupt, the old to be swept away and all things made new at a stroke, as if by the world-consuming fire of the old Saga. But, in reality, all change is gradual; the old is for ever failing and passing out of sight, to be taken up as a ferment into the ever emerging new, which changes and remodels as it will. It was so with Christianity. It is easy to imagine that it arose suddenly, like a phoenix, from the ashes of heathendom; but, although dependent at heart upon the sublime personality of its Founder, it was none the less a product of its age, and a result of gradual development--a river with sources partly in Judea, partly in Hellas. And mediæval Christianity never denied the traces of its double origin. Upon this syncretic soil its literature sprang up, moulded as to matter upon Old Testament and specifically Christian models, as to form upon the great writers of antiquity; but matter and form are only separable in the abstract, and the Middle Ages are woven through and through with both Greco-Roman and Jewish elements. But these elements were unfavourable to the development of feeling for Nature; Judaism admitted no delight in her for her own sake, and Christianity intensified the Judaic opposition between God and the world, Creator and created. 'Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world; if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him': by which John meant, raise your eyes to your Heavenly Father, throned above the clouds. Christianity in its stringent form was transcendental, despising the world and renouncing its pleasures. It held that Creation, through the entrance of sin, had become a caricature, and that earthly existence had only the very limited value of a thoroughfare to the eternal Kingdom. While joy in existence characterized the Hellenic world until its downfall, and the Greek took life serenely, delighting in its smooth flow; with Christianity, as Jean Paul put it, 'all the present of earth vanished into the future of Heaven, and the Kingdom of the Infinite arose upon the ruins of the finite.' The beauty of earth was looked upon as an enchantment of the devil; and sin, the worm in the fruit, lurked in its alluring forms. Classic mythology created a world of its own, dimly veiled by the visible one; every phase of Nature shewed the presence or action of deities with whom man had intimate relations; every form of life, animated by them, held something familiar to him, even sacred--his landscape was absorbed by the gods. To Judaism and Christianity, Nature was a fallen angel, separated as far as possible from her God. They only recognized one world--that of spirit; and one sphere of the spiritual, religion--the relation between God and man. Material things were a delusion of Satan's; the heaven on which their eyes were fixed was a very distant one. The Hellenic belief in deities was pandemonistic and cosmic; Christianity, in its original tendency, anti-cosmic and hostile to Nature. And Nature, like the world at large, only existed for it in relation to its Creator, and was no longer 'the great mother of all things,' but merely an instrument in the hands of Providence. The Greek looked at phenomena in detail, in their inexhaustible variety, rarely at things as a whole; the Christian considered Nature as a work of God, full of wonderful order, in which detail had only the importance of a link in a chain. As Lotze says, 'The creative artistic impulse could be of no use to a conception of life in which nothing retained independent significance, but everything referred to or symbolized something else.' But yet, the idea of individuality, of the importance of the ego, gained ground as never before through this introspection and merging of material in spiritual, this giving spirit the exclusive sway; and Christianity, while it broke down the barriers of nation, race, and position, and widened the cleft between Nature and spirit, discovered at the same time the worth of the individual. And this individuality was one of the chief steps towards an artistic, that is, individual point of view about Nature, for it was not possible to consider her freely and for her own sake alone, until the unlimited independence of mind had been recognized. But the full development of Christianity was only reached when it blended with the Germanic spirit, with the German Gemüth (for which no other language has a word), and intensified, by so doing, the innately subjective temperament of the race. The northern climate gives pause for the development of the inner life; its long bleak winter, with the heavy atmosphere and slow coming of spring, wake a craving for light and warmth, and throw man back on himself. This inward inclination, which made itself felt very early in the German race, by bringing out the contemplative and independent sides of his character, and so disinclining him for combined action with his fellows, forwarded the growth of the over-ripe seeds of classic culture and vital Christianity. The Romanic nations, with their brilliant, sharply-defined landscape and serene skies, always retained something of the objective delight in life which belonged to antiquity; they never felt that mysterious impulse towards dreams and enthusiastic longing which the Northerner draws from his lowering skies and dark woods, his mists on level and height, the grey in grey of his atmosphere, and his ever varying landscape. A raw climate drives man indoors in mind as well as body, and prompts that craving for spring and delight in its coming which have been the chief notes in northern feeling for Nature from earliest times. Vischer has shewn in his _Aesthetik_, that German feeling was early influenced by the different forms of plant life around it. Rigid pine, delicate birch, stalwart oak, each had its effect; and the wildness and roughness of land, sea, and animal life in the North combined with the cold of the climate to create the taste for domestic comfort, for fireside dreams, and thought-weaving by the hearth. Nature schooled the race to hard work and scanty pleasure, and yet its relationship to her was deep and heartfelt from the first. Devoutly religious, it gazed at her with mingled love and fear; and the deposit of its ideas about her was its mythology. Its gods dwelt in mountain tops, holes in the rocks, and rivers, and especially in dark forests and in the leafy boughs of sacred trees; and the howling of wind, the rustle of leaves, the soughing in the tree tops, were sounds of their presence. The worship of woods lasted far into Christian times, especially among the Saxons and Frisians.[1] Wodan was the all-powerful father of gods and men--the highest god, who, as among all the Aryan nations, represented Heaven. Light was his shining helmet, clouds were the dark cap he put on when he spread rain over the earth, or crashed through the air as a wild hunter with his raging pack. His son Donar shewed himself in thunder and lightning, as he rode with swinging axe on his goat-spanned car. Mountains were sacred to both, as plants to Ziu. Freyr and Freya were goddesses of fertility, love, and spring; a ram was sacred to them, whose golden fleece illuminated night as well as day, and who drew their car with a horse's speed.[2] As with Freya, an image of the goddess Nerthus was drawn through the land in spring, to announce peace and fertility to mortals. The suggestive myth of Baldur, god of light and spring, killed by blind Hödur, was the expression of general grief at the passing of beauty. The _Edda_ has a touching picture of the sorrow of Nature, of her trees and plants, when the one beloved of all living things fell, pierced by an arrow. Holda was first the mild and gracious goddess, then a divine being, encompassing the earth. She might be seen in morning hours by her favourite haunts of lake and spring, a beautiful white woman, who bathed and vanished. When snow fell, she was making her bed, and the feathers flew. Agriculture and domestic order were under her care. Ostara was goddess of bright dawn, of rising light, and awakening spring, as Hel of subterranean night, the darkness of the underworld. Frigg, wife of the highest god, knew the story of existence, and protected marriage. She was the Northern Juno or Hera. Ravines and hollows in the mountains were the dwelling-places of the dwarfs (Erdmännlein), sometimes friendly, sometimes unfriendly to man; now peaceful and helpful, now impish spirits of mischief in cloud caps and grey coats, thievish and jolly. They were visible by moonlight, dancing in the fields; and when their track was found in the dew,[3] a good harvest was expected. Popular belief took the floating autumn cobwebs for the work of elves and fairies. The spirits of mountain and wood were related to the water-spirits, nixies who sat combing their long hair in the sun, or stretched up lovely arms out of the water. The elves belonged to the more spiritual side of Nature, the giants to the grosser. Rocks and stones were the weapons of the giants; they removed mountains and hills, and boulders were pebbles shaken out of their shoes. Among animals the horse was sacred to many deities, and gods and goddesses readily transformed themselves into birds. Two ravens, Hugin and Munin, whose names signify thought and memory, were Odin's constant companions. The gift of prophecy was ascribed to the cuckoo, as its monotonous voice heralded the spring: Kukuk vam haven, wo lange sail ik leven? There were many legends of men and snakes who exchanged shapes, and whom it was unlucky to kill.[4] The sun and moon, too, were familiar figures in legends. Their movement across the sky was a flight from two pursuing wolves, of which one, the Fenris wolf, was fated one day to catch and devour the moon. The German, like the Greek, dreaded nothing more than the eclipse of sun or moon, and connected it with the destruction of all things and the end of the world. In the moon spots he saw a human form carrying a hare or a stick or an axe on his shoulder. The Solstices impressed him most of all, with their almost constant day in summer, almost constant night in winter. Sun, moon, and stars were the eyes of heaven; there was a pious custom to greet the stars before going to bed. Still earlier, they were sparks of fire from Muspilli, to light the gods home. Night, day, and the sun had their cars--night and day with one horse, the sun with two: sunrise brought sounds sweeter than the song of birds or strings; the rising sun, it was said, rings for joy, murmuring daybreak laughs.[5] Day brought joy, night sorrow; the first was good and friendly, the second bad and hostile. The birds greeted daytime and summer with songs of delight, but grieved in silence through night and winter: the first swallow and stork were hailed as spring's messengers. May with greening woods led in beloved summer, frost and snow the winter. So myth, fable, and legend were interlaced in confusion; who can separate the threads? At any rate, the point of view which they indicate remained the common one even far into the Middle Ages, and shewed simple familiar intercourse with Nature. Even legal formulæ were full of pictures from Nature. In the customary oath to render a contract binding, the promise is to hold, so it runs, 'so long as the sun shines and rivers flow, so long as the wind blows and birds sing, so far off as earth is green and fir trees grow, so far as the vault of heaven reaches.' As Schnaase says,[6] though with some exaggeration, such formulæ, in their summary survey of earth and sky, often give a complete landscape poem in a few words. He points out that in northern, as opposed to classic mythology, Nature was considered, not in the cursory Hebrew way, that hurried over or missed detail, but as a whole, and in her relation to man's inner life. 'The collective picture of heaven and earth, of cloud movement, of the mute life of plants--that side of Nature which had almost escaped the eye of antiquity--occupied the Northerner most of all. 'The _Edda_ even represents all Nature together in one colossal form--the form of the giant Ymir, whom the sons of Boer slew, in order to make the mountains from his bones, the earth from his flesh, the skies from his skull.' A still grander mythical synthesis was the representation of the whole world under the form of the sacred ash tree Yggdrasil. This was the world tree which united heaven, earth, and hell. Its branches stretched across the world and reached up to the skies, and its roots spread in different directions--one toward the race of Asa in heaven, another toward the Hrimthursen, the third toward the underworld; and on both roots and branches creatures lived and played--eagle, squirrel, stag, and snake; while by the murmuring Urdhar stream, which rippled over one root, the Nones sat in judgment with the race of Asa. Not less significant was the conception of the end of the world, the twilight of the gods (Götterdämmerung), according to which all the wicked powers broke loose and fought against the gods; the sun and moon were devoured by wolves, the stars fell and earth quaked, the monster world-serpent Joermungande, in giant rage, reared himself out of the water and came to land: Loki led the Hrimthursen and the retinue of hell, and Surt, with his shining hair, rode away from the flaming earth across Bifröst, the rainbow, which broke beneath him. After the world conflagration a new and better earth arose, with rejuvenated gods.[7] German mediæval poetry, as a whole, epic and lyric, was interwoven with a hazy network of suggestive myth and legend; and moral elements, which in mythology were hidden by the prominence of Nature, stood out clear to view in the fate and character of the heroes. The germ of many of our fairy tales is a bit of purest poetry of Nature--a genuine Nature myth transferred to human affairs, which lay nearer to the child-like popular mind, and were therefore more readily understood by it. So, for instance, from the Maiden of the Shield, Sigrdrifa, who was pierced by Odin's sleep thorn, and who originally represented the earth, frozen in winter, kissed awake by the sun-god, came Brunhild, whose mail Siegfried's sword penetrated as the sun rays penetrate the frost, and lastly the King's daughter, who pricked herself with the fateful spindle, and sank into deep sleep. And as Sigrdrifa was surrounded by walls of flame, so now we have a thorny hedge of wild briar round the beautiful maiden (hence named Dornröschen) when the lucky prince comes to waken her with a kiss.[8] Not all fairy tales have preserved the myth into Christian times in so poetic and transparent a form as this. Its poetic germ arose from hidden depths of myth and legend, and, like heathen superstitions in the first centuries of Christianity, found its most fruitful soil among the people. It has often been disguised beyond recognition by legends, and by the worship of the Madonna and saints, but it has never been destroyed, and it keeps its magic to the present day. We see then that the inborn German feeling for Nature, conditioned by climate and landscape, and pronounced in his mythology, found both an obstacle and a support in Christianity--an obstacle in its transcendentalism, and a support in its inwardness. CHAPTER II THE THEOLOGICAL CHRISTIAN AND THE SYMPATHETIC HEATHEN FEELING OF THE FIRST TEN CENTURIES A.D. The Middle Ages employed its best intellectual power in solving the problems of man's relation to God and the Redeemer, his moral vocation, and his claim to the Kingdom of the blessed. Mind and heart were almost entirely engrossed by the dogmas of the new faith, such as the incarnation, original sin, and free-will, and by doubts which the Old Testament had raised and not solved. Life was looked upon as a test-place, a thoroughfare to the heavenly Kingdom; earth, with its beauty and its appeal to the senses, as a temptress. To flee the world and to lack artistic feeling were therefore marks of the period. We have no trace of scientific knowledge applied to Nature, and she was treated with increasing contempt, as the influence of antiquity died out. In spite of this, the attitude of the Apostolic Fathers was very far from hostile. Their fundamental idea was the Psalmist's 'Lord, how great are Thy works; in wisdom hast Thou made them all!' and yet they turned to Nature--at any rate, the noblest Grecians among them--not only for proof of divine wisdom and goodness, but with a degree of personal inclination, an enthusiasm, to which antiquity was a stranger. Clement of Rome wrote to the Corinthians: 'Let us note how free from anger He is towards all His creatures. The heavens are moved by His direction and obey Him in peace. Day and night accomplish the course assigned to them by Him, without hindrance one to another. The sun and the moon and the dancing stars, according to His appointment, circle in harmony within the bounds assigned to them, without any swerving aside. The earth, bearing fruit in fulfilment of His will at her proper seasons, putteth forth the food that supplieth abundantly both men and beasts and all living things which are thereupon, making no dissension, neither altering anything which He hath decreed. Moreover, the inscrutable depths of the abysses and unutterable statutes of the nether regions are constrained by the same ordinances. The basin of the boundless sea, gathered together by His workmanship into its reservoirs, passeth not the barriers wherewith it is surrounded; but even as He ordered it, so it doeth. For He said, "so far shalt thou come, and thy waves shall be broken within thee." The ocean which is impassable for men, and the worlds beyond it, are directed by the same ordinances of the Master. The seasons of spring and summer and autumn and winter give way in succession one to another in peace. The winds in their several quarters at their proper seasons fulfil their ministry without disturbance, and the overflowing fountains, created for enjoyment and health, without fail give their breasts which sustain the life for men. Yea, the smallest of living things come together in concord and peace.'[1] The three great Cappadocians, the most representative of the Greek Fathers and leaders of the fourth century, wrote about the scenery round them in a tone of sentimentality not less astonishing, in view of the prejudice which denies all feeling for Nature to the Middle Ages, than their broad humanity and free handling of dogma. It was no ascetic renouncing the world and solitude[2]; but rather a sensitive man, thoughtful and dreamy at once, who wrote as follows (Basil the Great to Gregory Nazianzen): It is a lofty mountain overshadowed with a deep wood, irrigated on the north by cold and transparent streams. At its foot is spread a low plain, enriched perpetually with the streams from the mountains. The wood, a virgin forest of trees of various kinds and foliage which grows around it, almost serves it as a rampart; so that even the Isle of Calypso, which Homer evidently admired as a paragon of loveliness, is nothing in comparison with this. For indeed it is very nearly an island, from its being enclosed on all sides with rocky boundaries. On two sides of it are deep and precipitous ravines, and on another side the river flowing from the steep is itself a continuous and almost impassable barrier. The mountain range, with its moon-shaped windings, walls off the accessible parts of the plain. There is but one entrance, of which we are the masters. My hut is built on another point, which uplifts a lofty pinnacle on the summit, so that this plain is outspread before the gaze, and from the height I can catch a glimpse of the river flowing round, which to my fancy affords no less delight than the view of the Strymore as you look from Amphipolis. For the Strymore broadens into lakes with its more tranquil stream, and is so sluggish as almost to forfeit the character of a river. The Iris, on the other hand, flowing with a swifter course than any river I know, for a short space billows along the adjacent rock, and then, plunging over it, rolls into a deep whirlpool, affording a most delightful view to me and to every spectator, and abundantly supplying the needs of the inhabitants, for it nurtures an incredible number of fishes in its eddies. Why need I tell you of the sweet exhalations from the earth or the breezes from the river? Other persons might admire the multitude of the flowers, or of the lyric birds, but I have no time to attend to them. But my highest eulogy of the spot is, that, prolific as it is of all kinds of fruits from its happy situation, it bears for me the sweetest of all fruits, tranquillity; not only because it is free from the noises of cities, but because it is not traversed by a single visitor except the hunters, who occasionally join us. For, besides its other advantages, it also produces animals--not bears and wolves, like yours--heaven forbid! But it feeds herds of stags, and of wild goats and hares, and creatures of that kind. Do you not then observe what a narrow risk I ran, fool that I was, to change such a spot for Tiberine, the depth of the habitable world? I am now hastening to it, pardon me. For even Alcmæon, when he discovered the Echinades, no longer endured his wanderings.[3] This highly-cultured prince of the Church clearly valued the place quite as much for its repose, its idyllic solitude, for what we moderns would call its romantic surroundings, sylvan and rugged at once, as for its fertility and practical uses. But it is too much to say, with Humboldt[4]: In this simple description of scenery and forest life, feelings are expressed which are more intimately in unison with those of modern tunes, than anything which has been transmitted to us from Greek or Roman antiquity. From the lonely Alpine hut to which Basil withdrew, the eye wanders over the humid and leafy roof of the forest below.... The poetic and mythical allusion at the close of the letter falls on the Christian ear like an echo from another and earlier world. The Hellenic poets of the Anthology, and the younger Pliny in Imperial days, held the same tone, elegiac and idyllic[5]; as Villemain says, 'These pleasant pictures, these poetic allusions, do not shew the austerity of the cloister.'[6] The specifically Christian and monastic was hidden by the purely human. Other writings of Basil's express still more strongly the mild dejection which longs for solitude. For instance, when Gregory had been dwelling upon the emptiness of all earthly things, he said in reply, that peace of soul must be man's chief aim, and could only be attained by separation from the world, by solitude; 'for the contemplation of Nature abates the fever of the soul, and banishes all insincerity and presumption.' Therefore he loved the quiet corner where he was undisturbed by human intercourse. He drew melancholy comparisons from Nature: men were compared to wandering clouds that dissolve into nothing, to wavering shadows, and shipwrecked beings, etc. His homilies on the Hexameron, too, shew thought of Nature. There is a fine sense for the play of colour on the sea here: 'A pleasant sight is the glistening sea when a settled calm doth hold it; but pleasant too it is to behold its surface ruffled by gentle breezes, and its colour now purple, now white, now dark; when it dasheth not with violence against the neighbouring coast, but holdeth it in tranquil embrace.'[7] There is enthusiastic admiration for Nature mixed with his profound religious feeling in the whole description of the stars, the seasons, etc. The expression of Ptolymäos, that when he gazed at the stars he felt himself raised to the table of Zeus, is weak in comparison with Basil's words, 'If, on a clear night, you have fixed your gaze upon the beauty of the stars, and then suddenly turned to thoughts of the artist of the universe, whoever he be, who has adorned the sky so wonderfully with these undying flowers, and has so planned it that the beauty of the spectacle is not less than its conformity to law....if the finite and perishable world is so beautiful, what must the infinite and invisible be?'[8] For him, as for modern minds, starlight brought thoughts of eternity: 'If the greatness of the sky is beyond human comprehension, what mind, what understanding could fathom eternal things?' Gregory Nazianzen's feeling for Nature was intensely melancholy. His poem _On Human Nature_ says: For yesterday, worn out with my grief alone, I sat apart in a shady grove, gnawing my heart out. For somehow I love this remedy in time of grief, to talk with mine own heart in silence. And the breezes whispered to the note of the songster birds, and from the branches brought to me sweet slumber, though my heart was well-nigh broken. And the cicadas, friends of the sun, chirped with the shrill note that issues from their breasts, and filled the whole grove with sound. A cold spring hard by bedewed my feet as it flowed gently through the glen; but I was held in the strong grip of grief, nor did I seek aught of these things, for the mind, when it is burdened with sorrow, is not fain to take part in pleasure. The classic writers had also contrasted Nature with mind, as, for example, Ibykos in his famous _Spring Song_[9]; but not with Gregory's brooding melancholy and self-tormenting introspection. The poem goes on to compare him to a cloud that wanders hither and thither in darkness, without even a visible outline of that for which he longed; without peace: I am a stream of troubled water: ever onward I move, nor hath any part of me rest; thou wilt not a second time pass over that stream thou didst before pass over, nor wilt thou see a second time the man thou sawest before. In his dreamy enthusiasm he likes nothing better than solitude: 'Happy he who leads a lonely life, happy he who with the mighty force of a pure mind seeth the glory of the lights of heaven.' The same tone constantly recurs in his writings. Human life is but dust, blown by the wind; a stormy voyage, faded grass; kingdoms and powers are waves of the sea, which suck under and drown; a charming girl is a rose with thorns, etc. Gregory of Nyssa again praises the order and splendour of Nature and her Creator in Old Testament style: 'Seeing the harmony of the whole, of wonders in heaven and in earth, and how the elements of things, though mutually opposed, are all by Nature welded together, and make for one aim through a certain indefinable intercommunion.' With the pathos of Job he cries: Who has spread out the ground at my feet? Who has made the sky firm over me as a dome? Who carries the sun as a torch before me? Who sends springs into the ravines? Who prepares the path of the waters? And who gives my spirit the wing for that high flight in which I leave earth behind and hasten through the wide ocean of air, know the beauty of the ether, and lift myself to the stars and observe all their splendour, and, not staying there, but passing beyond the limits of mutable things, comprehend unchangeable Nature--the immutable Power which is based upon itself, and leads and supports all that exists? This, with its markedly poetic swing, is surprisingly like the passage in Plato's _Phædo_, where Socrates says: 'If any man could arrive at the exterior limit or take the wings of a bird and come to the top, then, like a fish who puts his head out of the water and sees this world, he would see a world beyond; and if the nature of man could sustain the sight, he would acknowledge that this other world was the place of the true heaven and the true light and the true earth.' But even the thought, that the order and splendour of Nature witnessed to the eternal powers which had created her, was not strange to the Greek, as Aristotle proves in the remarks which Cicero preserved to us in his treatise _On the Nature of the Gods_. Well then did Aristotle observe: 'If there were men whose habitations had been always underground, in great and commodious houses, adorned with statues and pictures, finished with everything which they who are reputed happy abound with, and if, without stirring from thence, they should be informed of a certain divine power and majesty, and after some time the earth should open, and they should quit their dark abode to come to us, where they should immediately behold the earth, the seas, the heavens, should consider the vast extent of the clouds and force of the winds, should see the sun, and observe his grandeur and beauty, and also his generative power, inasmuch as day is occasioned by the diffusion of his light through the sky, and when night has obscured the earth, they should contemplate the heavens bespangled and adorned with stars, the surprising variety of the moon in her increase and wane, the rising and setting of all the stars and the inviolable regularity of all their courses; when,' says he, 'they should see these things, they would undoubtedly conclude that there are gods, and that these are their mighty works.' Thus unconsciously the Greek Fathers of the Church took over the thoughts of the great classic philosophers, only substituting a unity for a plurality of godhead. To soar upon the wings of bird, wind, or cloud, a _motif_ which we find here in Gregory of Nyssa, and which reached its finest expression in Ganymede and the evening scene in Faust, had reached a very modern degree of development in antiquity.[10] Gregory of Nyssa was still more sentimental and plaintive than Basil and Gregory Nazianzen: When I see every ledge of rock, every valley and plain, covered with new-born verdure, the varied beauty of the trees, and the lilies at my feet decked by Nature with the double charms of perfume and of colour, when in the distance I see the ocean, towards which the clouds are onward borne, my spirit is overpowered by a sadness not wholly devoid of enjoyment. When in autumn the fruits have passed away, the leaves have fallen, and the branches of the trees, dried and shrivelled, are robbed of their leafy adornments, we are instinctively led, amid the everlasting and regular change in Nature, to feel the harmony of the wondrous powers pervading all things. He who contemplates them with the eye of the soul, feels the littleness of man amid the greatness of the universe. Are not these thoughts, which Humboldt rightly strings together, highly significant and modern? Especially in view of the opinion which Du Bois Reymond, for example, expresses: 'In antiquity, mediæval times, and in later literature up to the last century, one seeks in vain for the expression of what we call a feeling for Nature.'[11] Might not Werther have written them? They have all his sentimental melancholy, coupled with that 'delight of sorrow' which owes its name (Wonne der Wehmuth) to Goethe, although its meaning was known to Euripides. Yet it was only in rare cases, such as Seneca and Aristotle, that classic writers combined such appreciation of Nature's individual traits with that lofty view of the universe which elevates and humbles at once. Gregory shewed the blending of Christian with classic feeling; and the deepening of the inner life through the new faith is quite as clear in patristic writings as their close relationship to the classic. But the thinkers and poets of the Middle Ages did not always see Nature under the brilliant light of Hellenic influence; there were wide spaces of time in which monkish asceticism held sway, and she was treated with most unscientific contempt. For the development of feeling did not proceed in one unswerving line, but was subject to backward movements. The rosy afterglow of the classic world was upon these Greek Fathers; but at the same time they suffered from the sorrowfulness of the new religion, which held so many sad and pessimistic elements. The classic spirit seemed to shudder before the eternity of the individual, before the unfathomable depths which opened up for mankind with this religion of the soul, which can find no rest in itself, no peace in the world, unless it be at one with God in self-forgetting devotion and surrender. Solitude, to which all the deeper minds at this time paid homage, became the mother of new and great thoughts, and of a view of the world little behind the modern in sentimentality. What Villemain says of the quotation from Gregory Nazianzen just given, applies with equal force to the others: No doubt there is a singular charm in this mixture of abstract thoughts and emotions, this contrast between the beauties of Nature and the unrest of a heart tormented by the enigma of existence and seeking to find rest in faith.... It was not the poetry of Homer, it was another poetry.... It was in the new form of contemplative poetry, in this sadness of man about himself, in these impulses towards God and the future, in this idealism so little known by the poets of antiquity, that the Christian imagination could compete without disadvantage. It was there that that poetry arose which modern satiety seeks for, the poetry of reverie and reflection, which penetrates man's heart and deciphers his most intimate thoughts and vaguest wishes. Contempt for art was a characteristic of the Fathers of the Church, and to that end they extolled Nature; man's handiwork, however dazzling, was but vanity in their eyes, whereas Nature was the handiwork of the Creator. Culture and Nature were purposely set in opposition to each other.[12] St Chrysostom wrote: If the aspect of the colonnades of sumptuous buildings would lead thy spirit astray, look upwards to the vault of heaven, and around thee on the open fields, in which herds graze by the water's side. Who does not despise all the creations of art, when in the stillness of his soul he watches with admiration the rising of the sun, as it pours its golden light over the face of the earth; when resting on the thick grass beside the murmuring spring, or beneath the sombre shade of a thick and leafy tree, the eye rests on the far receding and hazy distance? The visible to them was but a mirror of the invisible; as Paul says (13th of the 1st Corinthians): 'Here we see in a glass darkly,' and Goethe: 'Everything transitory is but a similitude.' God (says St Chrysostom again) has placed man in the world as in a royal palace gleaming with gold and precious stones; but the wonderful thing about this palace is, that it is not made of stone, but of far costlier material; he has not lighted up a golden candelabra, but given lights their fixed course in the roof of the palace, where they are not only useful to us, but an object of great delight.[13] The Roman secular writers of the first Christian centuries had not this depth of thought and sadness; but from them too we have notable descriptions of Nature in which personal pleasure and sympathy are evident motives as well as religious feeling. In the little _Octavius_ of Minucius Felix, a writing full of genuine human feeling of the time of Commodus, the mixture of the heathen culture and opinions of antiquity with the Christian way of thinking has a very modern ring. The scenery is finely sketched. The heats of summer being over, autumn began to be temperate ... we (two friends, a heathen and a Christian) agreed to go to the delightful city of Ostia.... As, at break of day, we were proceeding along the banks of the Tiber towards the sea, that the soft breeze might invigorate our limbs, and that we might enjoy the pleasure of feeling the beach gently subside under our footsteps, Cæcilius observed an image of Serapis, and having raised his hands to his lips, after the wont of the superstitious vulgar, he kissed it.... Then Octavius said: 'It is not the part of a good man, brother Marcus, thus to leave an intimate companion and friend amidst blind popular ignorance, and to suffer him, in such open daylight, to stumble against stones,' etc.... Discoursing after this sort, we traversed the space between Ostia and the sea, and arrived at the open coast. There the gentle surges had smoothed the outermost sands like a pleasure walk, and as the sea, although the winds blow not, is ever unquiet, it came forward to the shore, not hoary and foaming, but with waves gently swelling and curled. On this occasion we were agreeably amused by the varieties of its appearance, for, as we stood on the margin and dipped the soles of our feet in the water, the wave alternately struck at us, and then receding, and sliding away, seemed to swallow up itself. We saw some boys eagerly engaged in the game of throwing shells in the sea.... Cæcilius said: 'All things ebb into the fountain from which they spring, and return back to their original without contriver, author, or supreme arbiter ... showers fall, winds blow, thunder bellows, and lightnings flash ... but they have no aim.' Octavius answers: 'Behold the heaven itself, how wide it is stretched out, and with what rapidity its revolutions are performed, whether in the night when studded with stars, or in the daytime when the sun ranges over it, and then you will learn with what a wonderful and divine hand the balance is held by the Supreme Moderator of all things; see how the circuit made by the sun produces the year, and how the moon, in her increase, wanes and changes, drives the months around.... Observe the sea, it is bound by a law that the shore imposes; the variety of trees, how each of them is enlivened from the bowels of the earth! Behold the ocean, it ebbs and flows alternately. Look at the springs, they trickle with a perpetual flow; at rivers, they hold on their course in quick and continued motion. Why should I speak of the ridges of mountains, aptly disposed? of the gentle slope of hills, or of plains widely extended?... In this mansion of the world, when you fully consider the heaven and the earth, and that providence, order, and government visible in them, assure yourself that there is indeed a Lord and Parent of the whole ... do not enquire for the name of God--God is his name.... If I should call Him Father, you would imagine Him earthly; if King, carnal; and if Lord, mortal. Remove all epithets, and then you will be sensible of His glory....' How like Faust's confession of faith to Gretchen: Him who dare name And yet proclaim, Yes! I believe... The All-embracer, All-sustainer, Doth he not embrace, sustain, Thee, me, Himself? Lifts not the Heaven its dome above? Doth not the firm-set earth beneath us rise?... And beaming tenderly with looks of love Climb not the everlasting stars on high?... Fill thence thy heart, how large so e'er it be, And in the feeling when thou'rt wholly blest, Then call it what thou wilt--Bliss! Heart! Love! God! I have no name for it--'tis feeling all Name is but sound and smoke Shrouding the glow of Heaven. Such statements of belief were not rare in the Apologists; but Nature at this time was losing independent importance in men's minds, like life itself, which after Cyprian was counted as nothing but a fight with the devil.[14] There is deep reverence for Nature in the lyrics, the hymns of the first centuries A.D., as a work of God and an emblem of moral ideas. Ebert observes[15] In comparison with the old Roman, one can easily see the peculiarities and perfect originality of these Christian lyrics. I do not mean merely in that dominance of the soul life in which man appeared to be quite merged, and which makes them such profound expressions of feeling; but in man's relationship to Nature, which, one might say, supplies the colour to the painter's brush.[16] Nature appears here in the service of ideal moral powers and robbed of her independence;[17] the servant of her Creator, whose direct command she obeys. She is his instrument for man's welfare, and also at times, under the temporary mastery of the devil, for his destruction. Thus Nature easily symbolizes the moral world. 'Bountiful Giver of light, through whose calm brightness, when the time of night is past and gone, the daylight is suffused abroad, Thou, the world's true morning star, clearer than the full glorious sun, Thou very dayspring, very light in all its fulness, that dost illumine the innermost recesses of the heart,' sings St Hilary in his Morning Hymn; and in another hymn, declaring himself unworthy to lift his sinful eyes to the clear stars, he urges all the creatures, and heaven, earth, sea and river, hill and wood, rose, lily, and star to weep with him and lament the sinfulness of man. In the Morning Hymn of St Ambrose dawn is used symbolically; dark night pales, the light of the world is born again, and the new birth of the soul raises to new energy; Christ is called the true sun, the source of light; 'let modesty be as the dawn, faith as the noonday, let the mind know no twilight.' And Prudentius sings in a Morning Hymn [18]: 'Night and mist and darkness fade, light dawns, the globe brightens, Christ is coming!' and again: 'The herald bird of dawn announces day, Christ the awaker calls us to life.' And in the ninth hymn: 'Let flowing rivers, waves, the seashore's thundering, showers, heat, snow, frost, forest and breeze, night, day, praise Thee throughout the ages.'[19] He speaks of Christ as the sun that never sets, never is obscured by clouds, the flower of David, of the root of Jesse; of the eternal Fatherland where the whole ground is fragrant with beds of purple roses, violets, and crocuses, and slender twigs drop balsam. St Jerome united Christian genius, as Ebert says, with classic culture to such a degree that his writings, especially his letters, often shew a distinctly modern tone,[20] and go to prove that asceticism so deepened and intensified character that even literary style took individual stamp.[21] But the most perfect representative, the most modern man, of his day was Augustine. As Rousseau's _Confessions_ revealed the revolutionary genius of the eighteenth century, Augustine's opened out a powerful character, fully conscious of its own importance, striving with the problems of the time, and throwing search-lights into every corner of its own passionate heart. He had attained, after much struggling, to a glowing faith, and he described the process in characteristic and drastic similes from Nature, which are scarcely suitable for translation. He said on one occasion: For I burned at times in my youth to satiate myself with deeds of hell, and dared to run wild in many a dark love passage.... In the time of my youth I took my fill passionately among the wild beasts, and I dared to roam the woods and pursue my vagrant loves beneath the shade; and my beauty consumed away and I was loathsome in Thy sight, pleasing myself and desiring to please the eyes of men.... The seething waves of my youth flowed up to the shores of matrimony.... Comfortless at the death of his friend: I burned, I sighed, I wept, I was distraught, for I bore within me a soul rent and bloodstained, that would no longer brook my carrying; yet I found no place where I could lay it down, neither in pleasant groves nor in sport was it at rest. All things, even the light itself, were filled with shuddering. Augustine, like Rousseau, understood 'que c'est un fatal présent du ciel qu'une ame sensible.' He looked upon his own heart as a sick child, and sought healing for it in Nature and solitude, though in vain. The pantheistic belief of the Manicheans that all things, fire, air, water, etc., were alive, that figs wept when they were picked and the mother tree shed milky tears for the loss of them, that everything in heaven and earth was a part of godhead, gave him no comfort; it was rather the personal God of the Psalms whom he saw in the ordering of Nature. The cosmological element in theism has never been more beautifully expressed than in his words: I asked the earth, and she said: 'I am not He,' and all things that are in her did confess the same. I asked the sea and the depths and creeping things, and they answered: 'We are not thy God, seek higher.' I asked the blowing breezes, and the whole expanse of air with its inhabitants made answer: 'Anaxagoras was at fault, I am not God.' I asked the sky, the sun, the moon, the stars, and with a loud voice did they exclaim: 'He made us.' My question was the enquiry of my spirit, their answer was the beauty of their form. In another place: Not with uncertain but with sure consciousness, Lord, I love Thee. But behold, sea and sky and all things in them from all sides tell me that I must love Thee, nor do they cease to give all men this message, so that they are without excuse. Sky and earth speak to the deaf Thy praises: when I love Thee, I love not beauty of form, nor radiancy of light; but when I love my God, I love the light, the voice, the sweetness, the food, the embrace of my innermost soul. That is what I love when I love my God. Augustine's interest in Nature was thus religious. At the same time, the soothing influence of quiet woods was not unknown to him. The likeness and unlikeness between the Christian and heathen points of view are very clear in the correspondence between Ausonius, the poet of the Moselle, and Paulinus, Bishop of Nola; and the deep friendship expressed in it raises their dilettante verses to the level of true poetry. Ausonius, thoroughly heathen as he was, carries us far forward into Christian-Germanic times by his sentimentality and his artistic descriptions of the scenery of the Moselle.[22] It is characteristic of the decline of heathendom, that the lack of original national material to serve as inspiration, as the Æneas Saga had once served, led the best men of the time to muse on Nature, and describe scenery and travels. Nothing in classic Roman poetry attests such an acute grasp of Nature's little secret charms as the small poem about the sunny banks of the Moselle, vine-clad and crowned by villas, and reflected in the crystal water below. It seemed as if the Roman, with the German climate, had imbibed the German love of Nature; as if its scenery had bewitched him like the German maiden whom he compared to roses and lilies in his song. Many parts of his poetical epistles are in the same tone, and we learn incidentally from them that a lengthy preamble about weather and place belonged to letter-writing even then.[23] Feeling for Nature and love of his friend are interwoven into a truly poetic appeal in No. 64, in which Ausonius complains that Paulinus does not answer his letters: Rocks give answer to the speech of man, and his words striking against the caves resound, and from the groves cometh the echo of his voice. The cliffs of the coast cry out, the rivers murmur, the hedge hums with the bees that feed upon it, the reedy banks have their own harmonious notes, the foliage of the pine talks in trembling whispers to the winds: what time the light south-east falls on the pointed leaves, songs of Dindymus give answer in the Gargaric grove. Nature has made nothing dumb; the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth are not silent, the snake has its hiss, the fishes of the sea as they breathe give forth their note.... Have the Basque mountains and the snowy haunts of the Pyrenees taken away thy urbanity?... May he, who advises thee to keep silence, never enjoy the singing of sweet songs nor the voices of Nature ... sad and in need may he live in desolate regions, and wander silent in the rounded heights of the Alpine range. The sounds of Nature are detailed with great delicacy in this appeal, and we see that the Alps are referred to as desolate regions. In another letter (25) he reminded his friend of their mutual love, their home at Burdigala, his country-house with its vine-slopes, fields, woods, etc., and went on: Yet without thee no year advanceth with grateful change of season; the rainy spring passeth without flower, the dog-star burns with blazing heat, Pomona bringeth not the changing scents of autumn, Aquarius pours forth his waters and saddens winter. Pontius, dear heart, seest thou what thou hast done? Closing in the same tender strain with a picture of his hope fulfilled: Now he leaves the snowy towns of the Iberians, now he holds the fields of the Tarbellians, now passeth he beneath the halls of Ebromagus, now he is gliding down the stream, and now he knocketh at thy door! Can we believe it? Or do they who love, fashion themselves dreams? The greater inwardness of feeling here, as contrasted with classic times, is undeniable; the tone verges on the sentimentality of the correspondences between 'beautiful souls' in the eighteenth century. Paulinus was touchingly devoted to his former teacher Ausonius, and in every way a man of fine and tender feeling. He gave himself with zeal to Christianity, and became an ascetic and bishop. It was a bitter grief to him that his Ausonius remained a heathen when he himself had sworn allegiance to Christ and said adieu to Apollo. There is a fine urbanity and humanity in his writings, but he did not, like Ausonius, love Nature for her own sake. The one took the Christian ascetic point of view, the other the classic heathen, with sympathy and sentiment in addition. Paulinus recognized the difference, and contrasted their ideas of solitude. 'They are not crazed, nor is it their savage fierceness that makes men choose to live in lonely spots; rather, turning their eyes to the lofty stars, they contemplate God, and set the leisure that is free from empty cares, to fathom the depths of truth they love.' In answer to his friend's praise of home, he praised Spain, in which he was living, and many copious descriptions of time and place run through his other writings[24]; but while he yielded nothing to Ausonius in the matter of friendship, 'sooner shall life disappear from my body than thy image from my heart,' he was without his quiet musing delight in Nature. For her the heathen had the clearer eye and warmer heart; the Christian bishop only acknowledged her existence in relation to his Creator, declaring with pride that no power had been given to us over the elements, nor to them over us, and that not from the stars but from our own hearts come the hindrances to virtue. Lives of the saints and paraphrases of the story of creation were the principal themes of the Christian poets of the fourth and fifth centuries. In some of these the hermit was extolled with a dash of Robinson Crusoe romance, and the descriptions of natural phenomena in connection with Genesis often showed a feeling for the beauty of Nature in poetic language. Dracontius drew a detailed picture of Paradise with much self-satisfaction. Then in flight the joyous feathered throng passed through the heavens, beating the air with sounding wings, various notes do they pour forth in soothing harmony, and, methinks, together praise for that they were accounted worthy to be created.[26] For the charming legend of Paradise was to many Christian minds of this time what the long-lost bliss of Elysium and the Golden Age had been to the Hellenic poets and the Roman elegist--the theme of much vivid imagery and highly-coloured word-painting. Eternal spring softens the air, a healing flame floods the world with light, all the elements glow in healing warmth; as the shades of night fade, day rises.... Then the feathered flocks fly joyfully through the air, beating it with their wings in the rush of their passage, and with flattering satisfaction their voices are heard, and I think they praise God that they were found worthy to be created; some shine in snowy white, some in purple, some in saffron, some in yellow gold; others have white feathers round the eyes, while neck and breast are of the bright tint of the hyacinth ... and upon the branches, the birds are moved to and fro with them by the wind. This shews careful observation of detail; but, for the most part, such idyllic feeling was checked by lofty religious thoughts. 'Man,' he cries, 'should rule over Nature, over all that it contains, over all earth offers in fruit, flowers, and verdure that tree and vine, sea and spring, can give.' He summons all creation to praise the Creator--stars and seasons, hail-storm and lightning, earth, sea, river and spring, cloud and night, plants, animals, and light; and he describes the flood in bold flights of fancy. In the three books of Avitus[27] we have 'a complete poem of the lost Paradise, far removed from a mere paraphrase or versification of the Bible,'[28] which shews artistic leanings and sympathetic feeling here and there. As Catullus[29] pictures the stars looking down upon the quiet love of mortals by night, and Theocritus[30] makes the cypresses their only witnesses, the Christian poet surrounds the marriage of our first parents with the sympathy of Nature: And angel voices joined in harmony and sang to the chaste and pure; Paradise was their wedding-chamber, earth their dowry, and the stars of heaven rejoiced with gladsome radiance.... The kindness of heaven maintains eternal spring there; the tumultuous south wind does not penetrate, the clouds forsake an air which is always pure.... The soil has no need of rains to refresh it, and the plants prosper by virtue of their own dew. The earth is always verdant, and its surface animated by a sweet warmth resplendent with beauty. Herbs never abandon the hills, the trees never lose their leaves, etc. And when Adam and Eve leave it, they find all the rest of the beautiful world ugly and narrow in comparison. 'Day is dark to their eyes, and under the clear sun they complain that the light has disappeared.' It was the reflection of their own condition in Nature. Among heathen writers who were influenced, without being entirely swayed, by Christian teaching, and imitated the rhetorical Roman style in describing Nature, Apollonius Sidonius takes a prominent place. In spite of many empty phrases and a stilted style, difficult to understand as well as to translate, his poems, and still more his letters, give many interesting pictures of the culture of his part of the fifth century. In Carm. 2 he draws a highly--coloured picture of the home of Pontius Leontas,[31] a fine country property, and paints the charms of the villa with all the art of his rhetoric and some real appreciation. The meeting of the two rivers, the Garonne and the Dordogne, in the introduction is poetically rendered, and he goes on to describe the cool hall and grottos, state-rooms, pillars--above all, the splendid view: 'There on the top of the fortress I sit down and lean back and gaze at the mountains covered by olives, so dear to the Muse and the goats. I shall wander in their shade, and believe that coward Daphne grants me her love.' He delighted in unspoilt Nature, and describes: My fountain, which, as it flows from the mountain-side, is overshadowed by a many-covered grotto with its wide circle. It needs not Art; Nature has given it grace. That no artist's hand has touched it is its charm; it is no masterpiece of skill, no hammer with resounding blow will adorn the rocks, nor marble fill up the place where the tufa is worn away. He lays stress upon the contrast between culture and Nature, town luxury and country solitude, in his second letter to Domidius, and describes the beauties of his own modest estate with sentimental delight: You reproach me for loitering in the country; I might complain with more reason that you stay in the town when the earth shines in the light of spring, the ice is melting from the Alps, and the soil is marked by the dry fissures of tortuous furrows ... the stones in the stream, and the mud on the banks are dried up ... here neither nude statues, comic actors, nor Hippodrome are to be found ... the noise of the waters is so great that it drowns conversation. From the dining-room, if you have time to spare at meals, you can occupy it with the delight of looking at the scenery, and watch the fishing ... here you can find a hidden recess, cool even in summer heat, a place to sleep in. Here what joy it is to listen to the cicadas chirping at noonday, and to the frogs croaking when the twilight is coming on, and to the swans and geese giving note at the early hours of the night, and at midnight to the cocks crowing together, and to the boding crows with three-fold note greeting the ruddy torch of the rising dawn; and in the half light of the morning to hear the nightingale warbling in the bushes, and the swallow twittering among the beams.... Between whiles, the shepherds play in their rustic fashion. Not far off is a wood where the branches of two huge limes interlace, though their trunks are apart (in their shade we play ball), and a lake that rises to such fury in a storm that the trees that border it are wetted by the spray. In another letter to Domidius he described a visit to the country-seat of two of his friends: We were torn from one pleasure to another--games, feastings, chatting, rowing, bathing, fishing. As a true adherent even as a bishop of classic culture and humanity, Sidonius is thus an interesting figure in these wild times, with his Pliny-like enthusiasm for country rather than city, and his susceptibility to woodland and pastoral life. The limit of extravagance in the bombastic rhetoric of the period was reached in the travels of Ennodius,[32] who was scarcely more than a fantastic prattler. The purest, noblest, and most important figure of the sixth century was undoubtedly Boetius; but it is Cassiodorus, a statesman of the first rank under Theodoric, who in his _Variorium libris_ gives the most interesting view of the attitude of his day towards Nature. He revelled in her and in describing her. After praising Baja for its beauty[33] and Lactarius for its healthiness, he said of Scyllacium: The city of Scyllacium hangs upon the hills like a cluster of grapes, not that it may pride itself upon their difficult ascent, but that it may voluptuously gaze on verdant plains and the blue back of the sea. The city beholds the rising sun from its very cradle, when the day that is about to be born sends forward no heralding Aurora; but as soon as it begins to rise, the quivering brightness displays its torch. It beholds Phoebus in his joy; it is bathed in the brightness of that luminary so that it might be thought to be itself the native land of the sun, the claims of Rhodes to that honour being outdone.... It enjoys a translucent air, but withal so temperate, that its winters are sunny and its summers cool, and life passes there without sorrow, since hostile seasons are feared by none. Hence, too, man himself is here freer of soul than elsewhere, for this temperateness of the climate prevails in all things.... Assuredly for the body to imbibe muddy waters is a different thing from sucking in the transparency of a sweet fountain. Even so the vigour of the mind is repressed when it is clogged by a heavy atmosphere. Nature itself hath made us subject to these influences.... clouds make us feel sad, and again a bright day fills us with joy.... At the foot of the Moscian Mount we hollowed out the bowels of the rock, and tastefully introduced therein the eddying waves of Nereus. Here a troop of fishes sporting in free captivity refreshes all minds with delight, and charms all eyes with admiration. They run greedily to the hand of man, and, before they become his food, seek dainties from him. He described the town as rich in vineyards and olive woods, cornfields and villas. He awarded the palm of beauty to Como and its lake, and although he wrote in the clumsy language of a decaying literature, this sixth-century sketch still strikes us as surprisingly complete and artistic in feeling: Como, with its precipitous mountains and its vast expanse of lake, seems placed there for the defence of the Province of Liguria; and yet again, it is so beautiful, that one would think it was created for pleasure only. To the south lies a fertile plain with easy roads for the transport of provisions; on the north, a lake sixty miles long abounding in fish, soothing the mind with delicious recreation.... Rightly is it called Como, because it is adorned with such gifts. The lake lies in a shell-like valley with white margins. Above rises a diadem of lofty mountains, their slopes studded with bright villas; a girdle of olives below, vineyards above, while a crest of thick chestnut woods adorns the very summit of the hills. Streams of snowy clearness dash from the hill-sides into the lake. On the eastern side these unite to form the river Addua, so called because it contains the added volume of two streams.... So delightful a region makes men delicate and averse to labour.... Therefore the inhabitants deserve special consideration, and for this reason we wish them to enjoy perpetually the royal bounty. This shews, beyond dispute, that the taste for the beauty of Nature, even at that wild time, was not dead, and that the writer's attitude was not mainly utilitarian. He noted the fertility of the land in wine and grain, and of the sea in fish, but he laid far greater stress upon its charms and their influence upon the inhabitants. On _a priori_ grounds (so misleading in questions of this kind) one would scarcely expect the most disturbed period in the history of the European people to have produced a Venantius Fortunatus, the greatest and most celebrated poet of the sixth century. His whole personality, as well as his poetry, shewed the blending of heathenism and Christianity, of Germanism and Romanism, and it is only now and then among the Roman elegists and later epic poets that we meet a feeling for Nature which can be compared to his. Like all the poets of this late period, his verse lacks form, is rugged and pompous, moving upon the stilts of classic reminiscences, and coining monstrous new expressions for itself; but its feeling is always sincere. It was the last gleam of a setting sun of literature that fell upon this one beneficent figure. He was born in the district of Treviso near Venice, and crossed the Alps a little before the great Lombard invasion, while the Merovingians, following in the steps of Chlodwig, were outdoing each other in bloodshed and cruelty. In the midst of this hard time Fortunatus stood out alone among the poets by virtue of his talent and purity of character. His poems are often disfigured by bombast, prolixity, and misplaced learning; but his keen eye for men and things is undeniable, and his feeling for Nature shews not only in dealing with scenery, but in linking it with the inner life. The lover's wish in _On Virginity_,[34] one of his longer poems, suggests the Volkslieder: O that I too might go, if my hurrying foot could poise amid the lights of heaven and hold on its starry course. But now, without thee, night comes drearily with its dark wings, and the day itself and the glittering sunshine is darkness to me. Lily, narcissus, violet, rose, nard, amomum, bring me no joy--nay, no flower delights my heart. That I may see thee, I pass hovering through each cloud, and my love teaches my wandering eyes to pierce the mist, and lo! in dread fear I ask the stormy winds what they have to tell me of my lord. Before thy feet I long to wash the pavement, and with my hair to sweep thy temples. Whatever it be, I will bear it; all hard things are sweet; if only I see thee, this penalty is my joy. But be thou mindful, for thy vows do I yearn; I have thee in my heart, have me in thy heart too. This is more tender in feeling than any poem by Catullus or Tibullus. We can only explain it by two facts--the deepening of the inner life through Christianity (we almost hear Christ's words about the 'great sinner'), and the intimate friendship which Fortunatus enjoyed with a German lady, who may justly be called the noblest and purest figure of her time in Franconia. This was Radegunde, the unhappy daughter of a Thuringian king, who first saw her father's kingdom lost, and then, fleeing from the cruelty of her husband, the bloodstained Chlotaire, took the veil in Poitiers and founded a convent, of which she made Agnes, a noble Franconian lady, the abbess. When Fortunatus visited the place, these ladies became his devoted friends, and he remained there as a priest until the death of Radegunde. His poems to them, which were often letters and notes written off-hand, are full of affection and gratitude (he was, by the way, a gourmet, and the ladies made allowance for this weakness in dainty gifts), and form an enduring witness of a pure and most touching friendship. They contain many pretty sketches of Nature and delicate offerings of flowers. In one he said: 'If the season brought white lilies or blossomed in red roses, I would send them to you, but now you must be content with purple violets for a greeting'; and in another, because gold and purple are not allowable, he sends her flowers, that she may have 'her gold in crocuses, her purple in violets, and they may adorn her hair with even greater delight than she draws from their fragrance.' Once, when following pious custom, she had withdrawn into her cell, his 'straying thoughts go in search of her': How quickly dost thou hide the light from mine eyes! for without thee I am o'erweighted by the clouds that bear me down, and though thou flee and hide thyself here but for a few short days, that month is longer than the whole hurrying year. Prithee, let the joys of Easter bring thee back in safety, and so may a two-fold light return to us at once. And when she comes out, he cries: Thou hadst robbed me of my happiness; now it returns to me with thee, thou makest me doubly celebrate this solemn festival.... Though the seedlings are only just beginning to shoot up from the furrows, yet I to-day will reap my harvest in seeing thee once more. To-day do I gather in the fruit and lay the peaceful sheaves together. Though the field is bare, nor decked with ears of corn, yet all, through thy return, is radiant fulness. The comparison is tedious and spun out; but the idea is poetic. We find it in the classics: for instance, in Theocritus, when he praises Nais, whose beauty draws even Nature under her sway, and whose coming makes spring everywhere: Where has my light hidden herself from my straying eyes? When I see not thee, I am ne'er satisfied. Though the heavens be bright, though the clouds have fled, yet for me is the day sunless, if it hide thee from me. The most touching evidence of this friendship is the poem _On the Downfall of Thuringia_. 'One must,' says Leo,[35] 'refer the chief excellence of the poem to the lady who tells the tale, must grant that the irresistible power of the description, the spectacle of the freshly open wounds, the sympathy in the consuming sorrow of a friend, gave unwonted power of the wing to this low-flying pen.' Radegunde is thinking of her only remaining relative, Amalafried: When the wind murmurs, I listen if it bring me some news, but of all my kindred not even a shadow presents itself to me.... And thou, Amalafried, gentle son of my father's brother, does no anxiety for me consume thy heart? Hast thou forgotten what Radegunde was to thee in thy earliest years, and how much thou lovedst me, and how thou heldst the place of the father, mother, brother, and sister whom I had lost? An hour absent from thee seemed to me eternal; now ages pass, and I never hear a word from thee. A whole world now lies betwixt those who loved each other and who of old were never separate. If others, for pity alone, cross the Alps to seek their lost slaves, wherefore am I forgotten?--I who am bound to thee by blood? Where art thou? I ask the wind as it sighs, the clouds as they pass--at least some bird might bring me news of thee. If the holy enclosure of this monastery did not restrain me, thou shouldst see me suddenly appear beside thee. I could cross the stormy seas in winter if it were necessary. The tempest that alarms the sailors should cause no fear to me who love thee. If my vessel were dashed to pieces by the tempest, I should cling to a plank to reach thee, and if I could find nothing to cling to, I should go to thee swimming, exhausted. If I could but see thee once more, I should deny all the perils of the journey.... There is little about Nature in this beautiful avowal of love and longing, but the whole colouring of the mood forms a background of feeling for his longer descriptions. His very long and tedious poem about the bridal journey of Gelesiuntha, the Spanish princess, who married King Chilperic, shews deep and touching feeling in parts. She left her Toledo home with a heavy heart, crossing the Pyrenees, where 'the mountains shining with snow reach to the stars, and their sharp peaks project over the rain clouds.' In the same vein as Ausonius, when he urged Paulinus to write to him, she begs her sister for news: By thy name full oft I call thee, Gelesiuntha, sister mine: with this name fountains, woods, rivers, and fields resound. Art thou silent, Gelesiuntha? Answer as to thy sister stones and mountains, groves and waters and sky, answer in language mute. In troubled thought and care she asked the very breezes, but of her sister's safety all were silent. Fortunatus, like Ausonius, not only looked at Nature with sympathy, but was a master in description of scenery. His lengthy descriptions of spring are mostly only decorative work, but here and there we find a really poetic idea. For example: At the first spring, when earth has doffed her frost, the field is clothed with variegated grass; the mountains stretch their leafy heads towards the sky, the shady tree renews its verdant foliage, the lovely vine is swelling with budding branches, giving promise that a weight of grapes shall hang from its prolific stems. While all joys return, the earth is dead and dull. And: The soft violets paint the field with their own purple, the meadows are green with grass, the grass is bright with its fresh shoots. Little by little, like stars, the bright flowers spring up, and the sward is joyous and gay with flecks of colour, and the birds that through the winter cold have been numb and silent, with imprisoned song, are now recalled to their song. He describes the cold winter, and a hot summer's day, when Even in the forests no shade was to be found, and the traveller almost fainted on the burning roads, longing for shade and cool drinks. At last the rustle of a crystal stream is heard, he hurries to it with delight, he lies down and lays his limbs in the soft kisses of the grass. His poems about beautiful and noteworthy places include some on the Garonne and Gers (Egircius): So dried up by heat that it is neither river nor land, and the grumbling croak of the frog, sole ruler of the realm from which the fish are banished, is heard in the lonely swamp; but when the rain pours down, the flood swells, and what was a lake suddenly becomes a sea. He has many verses of this sort, written with little wit but great satisfaction. More attractive are descriptions of the Rhine and Moselle, recalling Ausonius, and due to love partly of Nature, partly of verbal scene-painting. The best and most famous of these is on his journey by the Moselle from Metz to Andernach on the Rhine. Here he shews a keen eye and fine taste for wide views and high mountains, as well as for the minutiæ of scenery, with artistic treatment. He also blends his own thoughts and feelings with his impressions of Nature, making it clear that he values her not merely for decoration, but for her own sake. He has been called the last Roman poet; in reality, he belonged not only to the period which directly succeeded his own, when the Roman world already lay in ruins, but to the fully-developed Middle Ages--the time when Christianity and Germanism had mated with Roman minds. In his best pieces, such as his famous elegy, he caught the classic tone to perfection, feeling himself in vital union with the great of bygone centuries; but in thought and feeling he was really modern and under the influence of the Christian Germanic spirit with all its depth and intensity. His touching friendship with Radegunde is, as it were, a symbol of the blending of the two elements out of which the modern sprang. It was the stimulating influence of the noble Germanic princess, herself Christian in soul, which fanned the dying sparks of classic poetry into a flame. Fortunatus stood upon a borderland. Literature was retreating further and further from the classic models, and culture was declining to its fall. In Gaul, as in Spain and Italy, the shadows of coming night were broadening over literary activity, thought, and feeling. It is a characteristic fact in Roman literature, that not only its great lights, but the lesser ones who followed them, were enthusiastically imitated. Latin poetry of the Middle Ages lived upon recollections of the past, or tried to raise itself again by its help; even so late a comer as Fortunatus became in his turn an object of marvel, and was copied by poets who never reached his level. It is not surprising that feeling for Nature shewed a corresponding shallowness and lassitude. Not only bucolic but didactic writing was modelled upon the classic. Isodorus and Beda, in their works with identical titles 'concerning the existence of things,' relied on Roman models no less than Alcuin, who had formed himself on the pattern of Augustine's time in his _Conflict between Winter and Spring_, as well as in many single verses, directly inspired by Virgil.[36] His _Farewell to his Cell_ caught the idyllic tone very neatly: Beloved cell, retirement's sweet abode! Farewell, a last farewell, thy poet bids thee! Beloved cell, by smiling woods embraced, Whose branches, shaken by the genial breeze, To meditation oft my mind disposed. Around thee too, their health-reviving herbs In verdure gay the fertile meadows spread; And murmuring near, by flowery banks confined, Through fragrant meads the crystal streamlets glide, Wherein his nets the joyful fisher casts, And fragrant with the apple bending bough, With rose and lily joined, the gardens smile; While jubilant, along thy verdant glades At dawn his melody each songster pours, And to his God attunes the notes of praise. These heartfelt effusions express a feeling which certainly inspired many monks when they turned from their gloomy cells to the gardens and woods beyond--a feeling compounded of renunciation of the world with idyllic comfort in their surroundings. If their fundamental feeling was worship and praise of the Creator, their constant outdoor work, which, during the first centuries, was strenuous cultivation of the soil, must have roused a deep appreciation of Nature in the nobler minds among them. Their choice of sites for monasteries and hermitages fully bears out this view.[37] _The Conflict between Spring and Winter_, with its classic suggestions, is penetrated by a truly German love of spring.[38] It described the time when the cuckoo sings high in the branches, grass clothes earth with many tints, and the nightingale sings untiringly in the red-gold butcher's broom, captivating us with her changing melodies. Among the savants whom Charlemagne gathered round him was Angilbert. Virgil was his model, but the influence of the lighter fluency of Fortunatus was visible, as in so many of his contemporaries. With a vivid and artistic pen he described the wood and park of Aachen and the Kaiser's brilliant hunt[39]; the great forest grove, the grassy meadows with brooks and all sorts of birds flitting about, the thicket stocked with many kinds of game. At the same time, his writing betrayed the conventional tone of courts in its praise of his great secular lord, and a 'thoughtful romantic inclination' for the eternal feminine, for the beautiful women with splendid ornaments, and necks shining like milk or snow or glowing like a rose, who, as Ebert puts it, 'lay far from the asceticism of the poetry of the saints.' Naso Muadorinus in his pastorals took Calpurnius and Nemesianus for his models, just as they had taken Virgil, and Virgil Theocritus. Muadorinus imitated the latter in his pastorals. In an alternate song of his between an old man and a boy, the old man draws an artistic contrast between the shady coolness of the wood and the mid-day glow of the sun, while the boy praises Him whose songs the creatures follow as once they followed Orpheus with his lute; and at the end, Charlemagne, who was extolled at the beginning as a second Cæsar, is exalted to heaven as the founder of a new Golden Age. In the Carolingian Renaissance of the Augustine epoch of literature, Theodulf, Bishop of Orleans, takes first place. At any rate, he described in a very superior way, and, like Fortunatus, with some humour, the draining of the Larte at Le Mans, Feb. 820; also, in a light and lively strain, the Battle of the Birds, and, with the same strong colouring, Paradise. The idyll of the cloister garden, so often treated, became famous in the much-read _Hortulus_ of Wahlafried.[40] Despite classical flourishes from Virgil and Columella, and pharmaceutical handling of plants, there is a good deal of thoughtful observation of Nature in these 444 hexameters. They contain descriptions of seasons, of recipes, flowers and vegetables, of the gardener's pleasure in digging his fields in spring, clearing them of nettles, and levelling the ground thrown up by the moles, in protecting his seedlings from rain and sun, and, later on, in his gay beds of deciduous plants. There is a touch here and there which is not unpoetic--for instance: A bright green patch of dark blue rue paints this shady grove; it has short leaves and throws out short umbels, and passes the breath of the wind and the rays of the sun right down to the end of the stalk, and at a gentle touch gives forth a heavy scent. and: With what verse, with what song, can the dry thinness of my meagre muse rightly extol the shining lily, whose whiteness is as the whiteness of gleaming snow, whose sweet scent is as the scent of Sabian woods? He closes pleasantly too, adjuring Grimald to read the book under the shade of the peach tree, while his school-fellows play round and pick the great delicate fruit which they can barely grasp with one hand. In the poem to the layman Ruodbern (100 hexameters) he described the dangers of Alpine travelling, both from weather and other foes. In those days the difficulties of the road excluded all interest in mountain beauty. There is a tender and expressive poem in Sapphic metre, in which, homesick and cold in winter, he sang his longing for beautiful Reichenau. But even he, like most of his predecessors and all his followers, wielded his pen with labour, expression often failing to keep pace with thought. It only remains to mention Wandalbert, a monk of the monastery at Prün, who, in a postscript to the _Conclusio des Martyrologium_, gives a charming account of a landowner's life in field, garden, and hunt. In the cloister, then, idyllic comfort, delighting in Nature and a quiet country life, was quite as much at home as scholarship and classical study. But we shall look there in vain for any trace of the sentimental, the profoundly melancholy attitude of the Fathers of the Church, Basil and Gregory, or for Augustine's deep faith and devout admiration of the works of creation: even the tone of Ausonius and Fortunatus, in their charming descriptions of scenery, was now a thing of the past. Feeling for Nature--sentimental, sympathetic, cosmic, and dogmatic--had dwindled down to mere pleasure in cultivating flowers in the garden, to the level Aachen landscape and such like; and the power to describe the impression made by scenery was, like the impression itself, lame and weary. It was the night of the decline breaking over Latin literature. And how did it stand with German literature up to the eleventh century? A German Kingdom had existed from the treaties of Verdun and Mersen (842), but during this period traces of German poetry are few, outweighed by Latin. The two great Messianic poems, _Heliand_ and _Krist_, stand out alone. In the _Heliand_ the storm on the lake of Gennesaret is vividly painted: Then began the power of the storm; in the whirlwind the waves rose, night descended, the sea broke with uproar, wind and water battled together; yet, obedient to the command and to the controlling word, the water stilled itself and flowed serenely. In _Krist_ there is a certain distinction in the description of the Ascension, as the rising figures soar past the constellations of stars, which disappear beneath their feet; for the rest, the symbolic so supplants the direct meaning, that in place of an epic we have a moralizing sermon. But there are traces of delight in the beauty of the outer world, in the sunshine, and sympathy is attributed to Nature: She grew very angry at such deeds. The poem _Muspilli_ (the world fire) shews the old northern feeling for Nature; still more the few existing words of the _Wessobrunner Prayer_: This I heard as the greatest marvel among men, That once there was no earth nor heaven above, The bright stars gave no light, the sun shone not, Nor the moon, nor the glorious sea. How plainly 'the bright stars' and the 'glorious sea' shew joy in the beauty of the world! In the oldest Scandinavian poems the inflexible character of the Northerner and the northern landscape is reflected; the descriptions are short and scanty; it is not mountain, rock, and sea which count as beautiful, but pleasant, and, above all, fruitful scenery. The imagery is bold: (Kenninger) the wind is the wolf of wood or sail, the sea the pathway of the whale, the bath of the diving bird, etc. The Anglo-Saxon was especially distinguished by his forcible images and epithets. In Rynerwulf we have 'night falls like a helmet, dark brown covers the mountains.' 'The sky is the fortress of the storm, the sun the torch of the world, the jewel of splendour.' 'Fire is eager, wild, blind, and raging; the sea is the gray sea, and the sparkling splendid sea; waves are graves of the dead,' etc. Vivid feeling for Nature is not among the characteristic features of either Scandinavian or old German poetry. It is naive and objective throughout, and seldom weighty or forcible. The Waltharius shews the influence of Virgil's language, in highly-coloured and sympathetic descriptions like those of the Latin poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance. Animal saga probably first arose just before the twelfth century, and their home was probably Franconia. Like the genial notices of plant life in the Latin poems of the Carlovingian period, the animal poems shewed interest in the animal world--the interest of a child who ponders individual differences and peculiarities, the virtues and failings so closely allied to its own. It was a naive 'hand-and-glove' footing between man and the creatures, which attributed all his wishes and weaknesses to them, wiped out all differences between them with perfect impartiality, and gave the characteristics of each animal with exactness and poetry. The soil for the cultivation of poetry about animals was prepared by the symbolic and allegorical way of looking at Nature which held sway all through the Middle Ages. The material was used as a symbolic language for the immaterial, the world of sense conceived of as a great picture-book of the truths of salvation, in whose pages God, the devil, and, between them man, figured: thus plant life suggested the flower of the root of Jesse, foretold by Isaiah, red flowers the Saviour's wounds, and so forth. In the earliest Christian times, a remarkable letter existed in Alexandria, the so-called 'Physiologus,' which has affected the proverbial turns of speech in the world's literature up to the present day to an almost unequalled degree. It gave the symbolic meanings of the different animals. The lamb and unicorn were symbols of Christ; sheep, fish, and deer, of his followers; dragons, serpents, and bears, of the devil; swine, hares, hyenas, of gluttony; the disorderly luxuriance of snow meant death, the phoenix the resurrection, and so forth, indeed, whole categories of animals were turned into allegories of the truths of salvation.[41] The cleverest fables of animals were in _Isengrimen_, published in Ghent about 1140 in Latin verse--the story of the sick lion and his cure by the fox, and the outwitting of the wolf. Such fables did not remain special to German national literature, but became popular subjects in the literature of the whole world; and it is a significant fact that they afterwards took root especially in Flanders, where the taste for still life and delight in Nature has always found a home, and which became the nursery, in later times, of landscape, animal, and genre painting. CHAPTER III THE NAIVE FEELING AT THE TIME OF THE CRUSADES In the development and maturing of the race, as of the individual, nothing is more helpful than contact with foreign elements, people of other manners, thoughts, and feelings. Intimate intercourse between different nationalities rouses what is best in the soul of a nation, inviting, as it does, to discussion and opposition, as well as to the acquisition of new ideas. The conquests of Alexander the Great opened up a new world to the Greek, and a new culture arose--Hellenism. It was a new world that rose before the astonished eyes of the Crusader--in his case too, the East; but the resulting culture did not last. The most diverse motives fused to bring about this great migration to a land at once unknown and yet, through religion, familiar; and a great variety of characters and nations met under the banner of the Cross. Naturally this shaking up together, not only of Europeans among themselves, but of the eastern with the western world, brought about a complete revolution in manners, speech, art, science, trade, manufacture, thought, and feeling, and so became an important factor in general progress. The narrow boundaries of nationality, race, and education were broken through; all felt equal before the leading idea; men, places, plants, and animals were alike new and wonderful. Little wonder if German knights returning home from the East wove fiction with their fact, and produced the most fantastic and adventurous heroic songs. Many of the noblest of the nations joined the Crusades in pious ardour for the cause, and it is easy to imagine the effect of the complete novelty of scene upon them. With such tremendous new impressions to cope with, it is not surprising that even the best minds, untrained as they were, were unequal to the task, and that the descriptions of real experiences or events in poetic form failed to express what they meant. Besides this, there is no doubt that in many ways the facts fell below their ideals; also that the Crusader's mantle covered at the same time a rabble, which joined from the lowest motives, the scum of Europe. It must also be remembered that it is far easier to experience or feel than to pass on that experience and feeling to others; that those who wrote did not always belong to the most educated; and that they wrote, for the most part, with difficulty in Greek or Latin. When all this has been weighed and admitted, the fact remains that in existing accounts of the Crusades there is great poverty of description of scenery, and lack of much feeling for Nature. The historian, as such, was bound to give first place to matters of fact and practical importance, and so to judge a place by its value to an army passing through or occupying it; by its fertility, water-supply, its swamps or stony ground, and so forth; but still the modern reader is astonished to see how little impression the scenery of the Holy Land made, judged by the accounts we possess, upon the Crusaders. Even when it is conceded that other important concerns came first, and that danger, want, and hunger must often have made everything disagreeable, still, references to Nature are very scanty, and one may look in vain for any interest in beautiful scenery for its own sake. There is only matter-of-fact geographical and mythological information in William of Tours' _History of the Crusades_; for instance, in his description of the Bosphorus he does not waste a word over its beauty. But, as 'fruitful' and 'pleasant' are ever-recurring adjectives with him, one cannot say that he absolutely ignored it. He said of Durazzo: 'They weather the bad seasons of the year in fruitful districts rich in woods and fields, and all acceptable conditions'; of Tyre, 'The town has a most excellent position on a plain, almost entirely surrounded by mountains. The soil is productive, the wood of value in many ways.' Of Antioch, 'Its position is very convenient and pleasant, it lies in valleys which have excellent and fertile soil, and are most pleasantly watered by springs and streams. The mountains which enclose the town on both sides are really very high; but send down very clear water, and their sides and slopes are covered by buildings up to the very summits.' There is nothing about beautiful views, unless one takes this, which really only records a meteorological curiosity: 'From the top of one mountain one can see the ball of the sun at the fourth watch of the night, and if one turns round at the time when the first rays light up the darkness, one has night on one side and day on the other.' Tyre is described again as 'conspicuous for the fertility of its soil and the charm of its position.' Its great waterworks are especially admired, since by their means 'not only the gardens and most fruitful orchards flourish, but the cane from which sugar is made, which is so useful to man for health and other purposes, and is sent by merchants to the most distant parts of the world.' Other reporters were charmed by the fertility and wealth of the East. 'On those who came from the poorer and colder western countries, the rich resources of the sunny land in comparison with the poverty of home made an impression of overflowing plenty, and at times almost of inexhaustibleness. The descriptions of certain districts, extolled for their special richness, sound almost enthusiastic.[1] Burkhard von Monte Sion was enthusiastic about Lebanon's wealth of meadows and gardens, and the plain round Tripolis, and considered the Plain of Esdraelon the most desirable place in the world; but, on exact and unprejudiced examination, there is nothing in his words beyond homely admiration and matter-of-fact discussion of its great practical utility. He says of La Boneia, 'That plain has many homesteads, and beautiful groves of olive and fig and other trees of various kinds, and much timber. Moreover, it abounds in no common measure in rivers and pasture land'; closes a geographical account of Lebanon thus, 'There are in Libanus and Antilibanus themselves fertile and well-tilled valleys, rich in pasture land, vineyards, gardens, plantations--in a word, in all the good things of the world'; and says of the Plain of Galilee, 'I never saw a lovelier country, if our sins and wrong-doing did not prevent Christians from living there.' He had some feeling too for a distant view. He wrote of Samaria: 'The site was very beautiful; the view stretched right to the Sea of Joppa and to Antipatris and Cæsarea of Palestine, and over the whole mountain of Ephraim down to Ramathaym and Sophim and to Carmel near Accon by the sea. And it is rich in fountains and gardens and olive groves, and all the good things this world desires.' But it would be going too far to conclude from the following words that he appreciated the contrast between simple and sublime scenery: 'It must be noticed too, that the river, from the source of Jordan at the foot of Lebanon as far as the Desert of Pharan, has broad and pleasant plains on both sides, and beyond these the fields are surrounded by very high mountains as far as the Red Sea.' In dealing with Gethsemane and the Mount of Olives, religious enthusiasm suppresses any reference to scenery. These descriptions shew that the wealth and fertility of the country were praised before its beauty, and that this was only referred to in short, meagre phrases, which tell less about it than any raptures without special knowledge. It was much the same with Phokas, who visited the Holy Land in 1135.[2] He was greatly impressed by the position of Antioch, 'with its meadows and fruitful gardens, and the murmur of waters as the river, fed by the torrents of the Castalian spring, flows quietly round the town and besprinkles its towers with its gentle waves ... but most to be admired of all is the mountain between town and sea, a noble and remarkable sight--indeed, a delight to the beholder's eye ... the Orontes flows with countless windings at the foot of it, and discharges itself into the sea.' He thought Lebanon very beautiful and worthy its praise in Holy Scripture: 'The sun lies like white hair upon its head; its valleys are crowned with pines, cedars, and cypresses; streams, beautiful to look at and quite cold, flow from the ravines and valleys down to the sea, and the freshly melted snow gives the flowing water its crystal clearness.' Tyre, too, was praised for its beauty: 'Strangers were particularly delighted with one spring, which ran through meadows; and if one stands on the tower, one can see the dense growth of plants, the movement of the leaves in the glow of noon.' The plain of Nazareth, too, was 'a heaven on earth, the delight of the soul.' But recollections of the sacred story were dearer to Phokas than the scenery, and elsewhere he limited himself to noting the rich fruit gardens, shady groups of trees, and streams and rivers with pleasant banks. Epiphanius Monachus Hagiopolitæ, in his _Enarratio Syriæ_, was a very dry pioneer; so, too, the _Anonymus de locis Hierosolymitanis_; Perdiccas, in his _Hierosolyma_, describes Sion thus: 'It stands on an eminence so as to strike the eye, and is beautiful to behold, owing to a number of vines and flower gardens and pleasant spots.' It must be admitted then, that, beside utilitarian admiration of a Paradise of fruitfulness, there is some record of simple, even enthusiastic delight in its beauty; but only as to its general features, and in the most meagre terms. The country was more interesting to the Crusaders as the scene of the Christian story than as a place in which to rest and dream and admire Nature for her own sake. The accounts of German pilgrimages[3] of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries only contain dry notices, such as those of Jacob von Bern (1346-47), Pfintzing (1436-40), and Ulrich Leman (1472-80). The last-mentioned praises Damascus in this clumsy fashion: 'The town is very gay, quite surrounded by orchards, with many brooks and springs flowing inside and out, and an inexpressible number of people in it,' etc. Dietrich von Schachten describes Venice in this way: 'Venice lies in the sea, and is built neither on land nor on mountain, but on wooden piles, which is unbelievable to one who has not seen it'; and Candia: 'Candia is a beautiful town in the sea, well built; also a very fruitful island, with all sorts of things that men need for living.' He describes a ride through Southern Italy: 'Saturday we rode from Trepalda, but the same day through chestnut and hazel woods; were told that these woods paid the king 16,000 gulden every year. After that we rode a German mile through a wood, where each tree had its vine--many trees carried 3 ohms of wine, which is pleasant to see--and came to Nola.' He called Naples 'very pretty and big,' and on: 'Then the king took us to the sea and shewed us the ports, which are pretty and strong with bulwarks and gates; we saw many beautiful ships too,' etc. One does not know which is the more wonderful here, the poverty of the description or the utter lack of personal observation: what the wood produced, and how one was protected from the sea, was more important to the writer than wood and sea themselves, and this, even in speaking of the Bay of Naples, perhaps the most beautiful spot in Europe. But instances like these are typical of German descriptions at the time, and their Alpine travels fared no better.[4] Geographical knowledge of the Alps advanced very slowly; there was as yet no æsthetic enjoyment of their beauty. The Frankish historians (Gregory of Tours, Fredegar) chronicled special events in the Alps, but very briefly. Fredegar, for instance, knew of the sudden appearance of a hot spring in the Lake of Thun, and Gregory of Tours notes that the land-slip in 563 at the foot of the Dent du Midi, above the point where the Rhine enters the Lake of Geneva, was a dreadful event. Not only was the Castle of Tauretunum overwhelmed, but the blocking of the Rhine caused a deluge felt as far as Geneva. The pious prince of the Church explained this as a portent of another catastrophe, the pest, which ravaged Gaul soon after. There was much fabling at that time in the legends of saints, about great mines of iron, gold, and silver, and about chamois and buck, cattle-breeding and Alpine husbandry in the 'regio montana'; for example, in von Aribo's _Vita S. Emmerani_. When the Alps became more frequented, especially when, through Charlemagne, a political bridge came to unite Italy and Germany, new roads were made and the whole region was better known--in fact, early in mediæval times, not only political, but ecclesiastical and mercantile life spread its threads over a great part of the known world, and began to bind the lives of nations together, so that the Alps no longer remained _terra incognita_ to dwellers far and near. We have accounts of Alpine journeys by the Abbé Majolus v. Clugny (970), Bernard v. Hildesheim (1101), Aribert v. Mailand, Anno v. Coeln[5], but without a trace of orography. They scarcely refer to the snow and glacier regions from the side of physical geography, or even of æsthetic feeling; and do not mention the mountain monarchs so familiar to-day--Mt. Blanc, the Jungfrau, Ortner, Glockner, etc.--which were of no value to their life, practical or scientific. These writers record nothing but names of places and their own troubles and dangers in travelling, especially in winter. And even at the end of the fifteenth century, German travels across the Alps were written in the same strain--for example, the account of the voyage of the Elector-Palatine Alexander v. Zweibrücken and Count Joh. Ludwig zu Nassau (1495-96) from Zurich Rapperschwyl and Wesen to Wallensee: 'This is the real Switzerland; has few villages, just a house here and a house there, but beautiful meadows, much cattle, and very high mountains, on which snow lies, which falls before Christmas, and is as hard as any rock.' As an exception to this we have a vivid and poetic description of the famous Verona Pass in Latin verse by Guntherus Ligurinus. Günther's description of this notorious ravine, between sky-high Alps, with the torrent rushing at the bottom and a passage so narrow that men could only move forward one by one, sounds like a personal experience. This twelfth-century poem comes to us, in fact, like a belated echo of Fortunatus. We must now enquire whether the chief representatives of German literature at this time shewed any of the national love of Nature, whether the influence of the Crusades was visible in them, how far scenery took a place in epic and song, and whether, as moderns have so often stated, mediæval Germany stood high above antiquity in this respect. Gervinus, a classic example on the last point, in the section of his history of German poetry which treats of the difference between the German fables about animals on the one hand, and Esop's and the Oriental on the other, said: The way in which animals are handled in the fables demanded a far slighter familiarity between them and men; so exact a knowledge as we see in the German fables, often involving knowledge of their natural history, such insight into the 'privacy of the animal world,' belonged to quite another kind of men. Antiquity did not delight in Nature, and delight in Nature is the very foundation of these poems. Remote antiquity neither knew nor sought to know any natural history; but only wondered at Nature. The art of hunting and the passion for it, often carried to excess in the Middle Ages, was unknown to it. It is a bold remark of Grimm's that he could smell the old smell of the woods in the German animal poems, but it is one whose truth every one will feel, who turns to this simple poetry with an open mind, who cares for Nature and life in the open. This is a very tangle of empty phrases and misstatements. No people stood in more heartfelt and naive relation to Nature, especially to the animal world, than the Hindoos and Persians. In earlier enquiries[6] we have reviewed the naive feeling displayed in Homer and the sentimental in Hellenism, and have seen that the taste for hunting increased knowledge of Nature in the open in Hellenic days far more than in the Middle Ages. We shall see now that the level of feeling reached in those and imperial Roman days was not regained in European literature until long after the fall of Latin poetry, and that it was the fertilizing influence of that classic spirit, and that alone, which enabled the inborn German taste for Nature, and for hunting, and plant and animal life, to find artistic expression. It was a too superficial knowledge of classic literature, and an inclination to synthesis, and clever _a priori_ argument (a style impressed upon his day by Hegel's method, and fortunately fast disappearing), which led Gervinus to exalt the Middle Ages at the expense of antiquity. It sounds like a weak concession when he says elsewhere: Joy in Nature, which is peculiar to modern times, in contrast to antiquity, which is seen in the earliest mediæval poems, and in which, moreover, expiring antiquity came to meet the German--this joy in Nature, in dwelling on plant and animal life, is the very soul of this (animal) poetry. As in its plastic art, so in all its poetry, antiquity only concerned itself with gods and heroes; its glance was always turned upwards. But, as a fact, no one has ever stood with feet more firmly planted on this earth than the Greek, enjoying life and undeterred by much scruple or concern as to the powers above; and centuries of development passed before German literature equalled Greek in love of Nature and expressive representation of her beauty. To rank the two national epics of Germany, the _Nibelungenlied_ and _Gudrun_, side by side with the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ is to exaggerate their value. And here, as ever, overstraining the comparison is mischievous. The _Nibelungenlied_ is undeniably charming with its laconic and yet plastic descriptions, its vigorous heroes, and the tragic course of their fate; so is _Gudrun_, that melodious poem of the North Sea. But they never, either in composition, method of representation, or descriptive epithets, reach the perfect art of the Greek epics. What moral beauty and plastic force there is in Homer's comparisons and in his descriptions of times and seasons! what a clear eye and warm heart he has for Nature in all her moods! and what raw and scanty beginnings of such things we have in the _Nibelungenlied_! It is true Homer had not attained to the degree of sympathy which finds in Nature a friend, a sharer of one's joys and sorrows; she is pictured objectively in the form of epic comparisons; but how faithfully, and with what range and variety! There can scarcely be another epic in the world so poor in descriptions of time and place as the _Nibelungenlied_; it cannot be used to prove German feeling for Nature! India, Persia, and Greece made natural phenomena the counterparts of human life, weaving into the tale, by way of comparison or environment, charming genre pictures of plant and animal life, each complete in itself; in the _Nibelungenlied_ Nature plays no part at all, not even as framework. Time is indicated as sparsely as possible: 'Upon the 7th day at Worms on the Rhine shore, the gallant horsemen arrived.' 'On a Whitsun morning we saw them all go by'; or 'When it grew towards even, and near the sun's last ray, seeing the air was cooler'; or 'He must hang, till light morning threw its glow through the window.' The last is the most poetic; elsewhere it is 'Day was over, night fell.' Terseness can be both a beauty and a force; but, in comparison with Greece, how very little feeling for Nature these expressions contain! It is no better with descriptions of place: 'From the Rhine they rode through Hesse, their warriors as well, towards the Saxon country, where they to fighting fell.' 'He found a fortress placed upon a mountain.' 'Into a wide-roomed palace of fashion excellent, for there, beneath it rushing, one saw the Danube's flood.' Even the story of the hunt and the murder of Siegfried is quite matter-of-fact and sparse as to scenery: 'By a cold spring he soon lost his life ... then they rode from there into a deep wood ... there they encamped by the green wood, where they would hunt on the broad mead ... one heard mountain and tree echo.' 'The spring of water was pure and cool and good.' ... 'There fell Chriemhild's husband among the flowers ... all round about the flowers were wetted with his blood.' One thinks instinctively of Indian and Greek poetry, of Adonis and the death of Baldur in the Northern Saga. But even here, where the subject almost suggests it, there is no trace of Nature's sympathy with man. References to the animal world too--Chriemhild's dreams of the falcons seized by two eagles, and the two wild boars which attacked Siegfried, the game hunted in the forests by the heroes who run like panthers--all show it to be of no importance. Even such phrases as rosy-red, snow-white, etc., are rare--'Her lovely face became all rosy-red with pleasure'; but there is a certain tenderness in the comparisons of Chriemhild: 'Then came the lovely maiden, even as morning red from sombre clouds outbreaking,' and, 'just as the moon in brightness excels the brightest stars, and suddenly outshining, athwart the clouds appears,' so she excelled all other women. It has been said that one can hear the sighing of the north wind and the roar of the North Sea in _Gudrun_, but this is scarcely more than a pretty phrase. The 'dark tempestuous' sea, 'wild unfathomable' waves, the shore 'wet from the blood of the slain,' are indeed mentioned, but that is all. Wat of Sturmland says to the young warriors: 'The air is still and the moon shines clear ... when the red star yonder in the south dips his head in the brine, I shall blow on my great horn that all the hosts shall hear'; but it is hope of morning, not delight in the starry sky, that he is expressing. Indications of place too are of the briefest, just 'It was a broad neck of land, called the Wülpensand,' or, 'In a few hours they saw the shores where they would land, a little harbour lay in sight enfolded by low hills clothed with dark fir trees.' The first trace of sympathy with Nature occurs in the account of the effect of Horand's song. Like Orpheus, he charms the little birds and other creatures: 'He sang with such a splendid voice, that the little birds ceased their song.' 'And as he began to sing again, all the birds in the copse round ceased their sweet songs.' 'The very cattle left their green pastures to hearken, the little gold beetles stopped running among the grass, the fishes ceased to shoot about in the brooks. He sang long hours, and it seemed but a brief moment. The very church bells sounded sweet no longer; the folk left the choir songs of the priests and ran to hear him. All who heard his voice were heart-sick after the singer, so grand and sweet was the strain.' Indications of time are rarely found more short and concise than here: When night ended and day began. On the 12th day they quitted the country. In Maytime. On a cool morning. This is a little richer: It was the time when leaves spring up delightfully and birds of all sorts sing their best in the woods. Much more definite and distinct is: It was about that time of the year when departing winter sheds his last terrors upon the earth; a sharp breeze was blowing and the sea was covered with broken up ice; but there were gleams of sunshine upon the hills, and the little birds began to tune their throats tremulously, that they might be ready to sing their lay when the March weather was past. Gudrun trembled with cold; her wet garment clung close to her white limbs; the wind dashed her golden hair about her face. And later, when the morning of Gudrun's deliverance breaks, the indications of time, though short, are plastic enough: After the space of an hour the red star went down upon the edge of the sea, and Wat of Sturmland, standing upon the hill, blew a great blast on his horn, which was heard in the land for miles round.... The sound of Wat's horn ... wakened a young maid, who, stealing on tiptoe to the window, looked over the bay and beheld the glimmering of spears and helms upon the sands.... 'Awake, mistress,' she cried, 'the host of the Hegelings is at hand.' Companions are few; He sprang like a wild lion. The shower of stones flung down upon Wat 'is but an April shower.' Images are few too: This flower of hope, to find repose here on the shore, Hartmouth and his friends did not bring to blossom. Wilhelm Grimm rightly observes: At this epoch the poetry of the Fatherland gave no separate descriptions of Nature--descriptions, that is, whose only object was to paint the impression of the landscape in glowing colours upon the mind. The old German masters certainly did not lack feeling for Nature, but they have left us no other expression of it than such as its connection with historical events demanded. And further: The question, whether contact with Southern Italy, or, through the Crusades, with Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine, did not enrich German poetry with new pictures of Nature, can only, as a general rule, be answered in the negative. In the courtly epics of chivalry, the place of real Nature was taken by a fabulous wonderworld, full of the most fantastic and romantic scenery, in which wood, field, plants, and animals were all distorted. For instance, in the Alexander saga (of Pfaffen Lamprecht) Alexander the Great describes to his teacher Aristotle the wonders he has seen, and how one day he came with his army to a dark forest, where the interlacing boughs of tall trees completely shut out the sunlight. Clear, cool streams ran through it down to the valley, and birds' songs echoed in the shade. The ground was covered by an enormous quantity of flower buds of wondrous size, which looked like great balls, snow-white and rose-coloured, closely folded up. Presently, the fragrant goblets opened, and out of all these wonder-flowers stepped lovely maidens, rosy as dawn and white as day, and about twelve years old. All these thousands of charming beings raised their voices together and competed with the birds in song, swaying up and down in charming lines, singing and laughing in the cool shade. They were dressed in red and white, like the flowers from which they were born; but if sun rays fell on them, they would fade and die. They were only children of the woodland shade and the summer, and lived no longer than the flowers, which May brings to life and Autumn kills. In this wood Alexander and his host pitched their tents, and lived through the summer with the little maids. But their happiness only lasted three months and twelve days: When the time came to an end, our joy passed away too; the flowers faded, and the pretty girls died; trees lost their leaves, springs their flow, and the birds their song; all pleasure passed away. Discomfort began to touch my heart with many sorrows, as day by day I saw the beautiful maidens die, the flowers fade: with a heavy heart, I departed with my men. This fairy-like tale, with its blending of human and plant life, is very poetically conceived; but it is only a play of fancy, one of the early steps towards the modern feeling. The battle scenes, as well as other scenes in this poem, are bold and exaggerated. Armies meet like roaring seas; missiles fly from both sides as thick as snow; after the dreadful bath of blood, sun and moon veil their light and turn away from the murder committed there. Hartmann von der Aue, too, did not draw real Nature, but only one of his own invention. For example, the wild forest with the magic spring in _Iwein_: I turned to the wilds next morning, and found an extensive clearing, hidden in the forest, solitary and without husbandmen. There, to my distress, I descried a sad delight of the eyes--beasts of every kind that I know the names of, attacking each other.... this spring is cold and very pure; neither rain, sun, or wind reach it; it is screened by a most beautiful lime tree. The tree is excessively tall and thick, so that neither sun nor rain can penetrate its foliage, winter does not injure it, nor lessen its beauty by one hair; 'tis green and blossoming the whole year round.... Over the spring there is a wonderfully fine stone ... the tree was so covered with birds that I could scarcely see the branches, and even the foliage almost disappeared. The sweet songs were pleasant and resounded through the forest, which re-echoed them.... As I poured water upon the ruby, the sun, which had just come out, disappeared, the birds' song round about ceased, a black storm approached, dark heavy storm-clouds came from all four quarters of the vault of heaven. It seemed no longer bright day ... soon a thousand flashes of lightning played round me in the forest ... there came storm, rain, and hail ... the storm became so great that the forest broke down. He never shews a real love for Nature even in his lyrics, for the wish for flowers in _Winter Complaint_ can hardly be said to imply that: He who cares for flowers must lament much at this heavy, dismal time; a wife helps to shorten the long nights. In this way I will shorten long winter without the birds' song. Wolfram von Eschenbach, too, is very sparing of references to Nature: time is given by such phrases as 'when twilight began,' or 'as the day broke,' 'at the bright glow of morning' ... 'as day already turned to evening.' His interest in real things was driven into the background by love-making and adventures--_Arthur's Round Table_ and the _Holy Grail_; all the romance of knighthood. When he described a forest or a garden, he always decked it out lavishly. For instance, the garden in Orgeluse: A garden surrounding a mountain, planted with noble trees where pomegranates, figs, olives, vines, and other fruits grew richly ... a spring poured from the rock, and (for all this would have been nothing to him without a fair lady) there he found what did not displease him--a lady so beautiful and fair that he was charmed at the sight, the flower of womanly beauty. Comparisons are few and not very poetic. In _Songs of the Heart_-- The lady of the land watered herself with her heart's tears. Her eyes rained upon the child. Her joy was drowned in lamentation. Gawan and Orgeluse, Spite their outer sweetness, as disagreeable as a shower of rain in sunshine. There were many fair flowers, but their colours could not compare with that of Orgeluse. His heroes are specially fond of birds. Young Parzival Felt little care while the little birds sang round him; it made his heart swell, he ran weeping into the house. and Gawan Found a door open into a garden; he stept in to look round and enjoy the air and the singing of the birds. So we see that in the _Nibelungenlied_ scarcely a plant grew, and Hartmann and Wolfram's gardens belonged almost entirely to an unreal region; there are no traces of a very deep feeling for Nature in all this. But Gottfried von Strassburg, with his vivid, sensuous imagination and keen eye for beauty, shewed a distinct advance both in taste and achievement. He, too, notes time briefly: 'And as it drew towards evening,' 'Now day had broke.' He repeats his comparisons: fair ladies are 'the wonder rose of May,' 'the longing white rose.' The two Isolts are sun and dawn. Brangäne is the full moon. The terrified girl is thus described: Her rosy mouth paled; the fair colour, which was her ornament, died out of her skin; her bright eyes grew dim like night after day. Another comparison is: Like the siren's song, drawing a bark to the reef as by a magnet, so the sweet young queen attracted many hearts. Love is a usurious plant, whose sun never goes down; a romance sweetens the mood as May dew sweetens the blood. Constant friendship is one which takes the pleasure with the pain, the thorn with the rose. The last comparisons shew more thought, and still more is seen in the beginning of the poem, _Riwalin and Blancheflur_, which has a charming description of Spring. Now the festival was agreed upon and arranged For the four flowering weeks When sweet May attracts, till he flies off again. At Tinkapol upon a green plain High up on a wonderful meadow with spring colour Such as no eye has seen before or since. Soft sweet May Had dressed it with his own charming extravagance. There were little wood birds, a joy to the ear, Flowers and grass and green plants and summer meads That were a delight to eye and heart. One found there whatever one would, whatever May should bring-- Shade from the sun, limes by the brook, A gentle breeze which brought the prattle Of Mark's court people. May's friend, the green turf, Had made herself a charming costume of flowers, In which she shone back at the guests with a festival of her own; The blossoming trees smiled so sweetly at every one, That heart and mind smiled back again. The pure notes of the birds, blessed and beautiful, Touched heart and senses, filling hill and dale with joy. The dear nightingale, Sweet bird, may it ever be blessed! Sang so lustily upon the bough That many a heart was filled with joy and good humour. There the company pitched itself With great delight on the green grass. The limes gave enough shade, And many covered their tent roofs with green boughs. There is a heartfelt ring in this. We see that even this early period of German mediæval poetry was not entirely lacking in clear voices to sing of Nature with real sympathy. The description of the Minne grotto is famous, with its magical accessories, its limes and other trees, birds, songs, and flowers, so that 'eye and ear alike found solace'; but the romantic love episode, interwoven as it is by the poet with the life of Nature, is more interesting for our purpose. They had a court, they had a council which brought them nought but joy. Their courtiers were the green trees, the shade and the sunlight, the streamlet and the spring; flowers, grass, leaf, and blossom, which refreshed their eyes. Their service was the song of the birds, the little brown nightingales, the throstlets and the merles and other wood birds. The siskin and the ringdove vied with each other to do them pleasure, all day long their music rejoiced ear and soul. Their love was their high feast.... The man was with the woman, and the woman with the man; they had the fellowship they most desired, and were where they fain would be.... In the dewy morning they gat them forth to the meadow where grass and flowers alike had been refreshed. The glade was their pleasure-ground; they wandered hither and thither hearkening each other's speech, and waking the song of the birds by their footsteps. Then they turned them to where the cool clear spring rippled forth, and sat beside its stream and watched its flow till the sun grew high in the heaven, and they felt its shade. Then they betook them to the linden, its branches offered them a welcome shelter, the breezes were sweet and soft beneath its shade, and the couch at its feet was decked with the fairest grass and flowers. With these lovers, love of Nature is only second to love of each other. So in the following: That same morning had Tristan and his lady-love stolen forth hand in hand and come full early, through the morning dew, to the flowery meadow and the lovely vale. Dove and nightingale saluted them sweetly, greeting their friends Tristan and Iseult. The wild wood birds bade them welcome in their own tongue ... it was as if they had conspired among themselves to give the lovers a morning greeting. They sang from the leafy branches in changeful wise, answering each other in song and refrain. The spring that charmed their eye and ear whispered a welcome, even as did the linden with its rustling leaves. The blossoming trees, the fair meadow, the flowers, and the green grass--all that bloomed laughed at their coming; the dew which cooled their feet and refreshed their heart offered a silent greeting. The amorous passion was the soil in which, in its early narrow stages, sympathy for Nature grew up. Was it the thirteenth-century lyrics, the love-songs of the Minnesingers, which unfolded the germ? For the lyric is the form in which the deepest expression can be given to feeling for Nature, and in which she either appears as background, frame, or ornament, or, by borrowing a soul or symbolizing thought and feeling, blends with the inner life. As the German court epics took their material from France, so the German love-songs were inspired by the Provençal troubadours. The national differences stand out clear to view: the vivid glowing Provençal is fresher, more vehement, and mettlesome; the dreamy German more monotonous, tame, and melancholy. The one is given to proud daring, wooing, battle, and the triumph of victory; the other to musing, loving, and brooding enthusiasm. The stamp of the occasional, of improvisation, is upon all Provençal work; while with the German Minnesingers, everything--Nature as well as love--tends to be stereotyped, monotonous. The scanty remains of Troubadour songs[7] often shew mind and Nature very strikingly brought together, either in harmony or contrast. For example, Bernard von Ventadour (1195): It may annoy others to see the foliage fall from the trees, but it pleases me greatly; one cannot fancy I should long for leaves and flowers when she, my dear one, is haughty to me. Cold and snow become flowers and greenery under her charming glance. As I slumber at night, I am waked by the sweet song of the nightingale; nothing but love in my mind quite thrilled by shudders of delight. God! could I be a swallow and sweep through the air, I would go at midnight to her little chamber. When I behold the lark up spring To meet the bright sun joyfully, How he forgets to poise his wing In his gay spirit's revelry. Alas! that mournful thoughts should spring E'en from that happy songster's glee! Strange that such gladdening sight should bring Not joy but pining care to me. A very modern thought which calls to mind Theodore Storm's touching lines after the death of his wife: But this I cannot endure, that the sun smiles as before, clocks strike and bells ring as in thy lifetime, and day and night still follow each other. He connects spring with love: When grass grows green and fresh leaves spring And flowers are budding on the plain, When nightingales so sweetly sing And through the greenwood swells the strain, Then joy I in the song and in the flower, Joy in myself but in my lady more; All objects round my spirit turns to joy, But most from her my rapture rises high. Arnold von Mareuil (about 1200) sings in the same way: O! how sweet the breeze of April Breathing soft, as May draws near, While through nights serene and gentle Songs of gladness meet the ear. Every bird his well-known language Warbling in the morning's pride, Revelling on in joy and gladness By his happy partner's side.... With such sounds of bliss around me, Who could wear a saddened heart? He calls his lady-love The fairest creature which Nature has produced here below, fairer than I can express and faker than a beautiful May day, than sunshine in March, shade in summer, than May roses, April rain, the flower of beauty, mirror of love, the key of Fame. Bertran de Born too sings: The beautiful spring delights me well When flowers and leaves are growing, And it pleases my heart to hear the swell Of the bird's sweet chorus flowing In the echoing wood, etc. The Greek lyrists up to Alexandrian times contented themselves with implying indirectly that nothing delighted them so much as May and its delights; but these singers implicitly state it. The German Minnesingers too[8] are loud in praise of spring, as in that anonymous song: I think nothing so good nor worthy of praise As a fair rose and my good man's love; The song of the little birds in the woods is clear to many a heart. and summer is greeted with: The good are glad that summer comes. See what a benefit it is to many hearts. The Troubadour motive is here too: Winter and snow seem as beautiful flowers and clover to me, when I have embraced her. and Kürenberg makes a lady sing: When I stand there alone in my shift and think of thee, noble knight, I blush like a rose on its thorn. Delight in summer, complaint of winter--this is the fundamental chord struck again and again; there is scarcely any trace of blending the feelings of the lover with those of Nature. It is a monotonous repetition of a few themes, of flowers and little birds as messengers of love, and lady-loves who are brighter than the sun, whose presence brings spring in winter or cheers a grey and snowy day. Deitmar von Eist greets spring with: Ah! now the time of the little birds' singing is coming for us, the great lime is greening, the long winter is past, one sees well-shaped flowers spread their glory over the heath. 'Tis a joy to many hearts, and a comfort too to mine. In another song the birds and roses remind him of a happy past and of the lady of his heart. A little bird sang on the lime o'erhead, Its song resounded through the wood And turned my heart back to another place; And once again I saw the roses blow, And they brought back the many thoughts I cherish of a lady. A lady says to a falcon: You happy falcon you! You fly whither you will! And choose the tree you like in the wood. I have done the same. I chose a husband For myself, whom my eyes chose. So 'tis fitting for beautiful women. In winter he complains: Alas for summer delight! The birds' song has disappeared with the leaves of the lime. Time has changed, the nightingales are dumb. They have given up their sweet song and the wood has faded from above. Uhland's beautiful motive in _Spring Faith_, that light and hope will come back to the oppressed heart with the flowers and the green, is given, though stiffly and dimly, by Heinrich von Veldegge: I have some delightful news; the flowers are sprouting on the heath, the birds singing in the wood. Where snow lay before, there is now green clover, bedewed in the morning. Who will may enjoy it. No one forces me to, I am not free from cares. and elsewhere: At the time when flowers and grass come to us, all that made my heart sad will be made good again. The loss of the beauty of summer makes him sad: Since the bright sunlight has changed to cold, and the little birds have left off singing their song, and cold nights have faded the foliage of the lime, my heart is sad. Ulrich von Guotenberg makes a pretty comparison: She is my summer joy, she sows flowers and clover In my heart's meadow, whence I, whate'er befall, Must teem with richer bliss: the light of her eyes Makes me bloom, as the hot sun the dripping trees.... Her fair salute, her mild command Softly inclining, make May rain drop down into my heart. Heinrich von Rugge laments winter: The dear nightingale too has forgotten how beautifully she sang ... the birds are mourning everywhere. and longs for summer: I always craved blissful days.... I liked to hear the little birds' delightful songs. Winter cannot but be hard and immeasurably long. I should be glad if it would pass away. Heinrich von Morungen: How did you get into my heart? It must ever be the same with me. As the noon receives her light from the sun, So the glance of your bright eyes, when you leave me, Sinks into my heart. He calls his love his light of May, his Easter Day: She is my sweetheart, a sweet May Bringing delights, a sunshine without cloud. and says, in promising fidelity: 'My steady mind is not like the wind.' Reinmar says: When winter is over I saw the heath with the red flowers, delightful there.... The long winter is past away; when I saw the green leaves I gave up much of my sorrow. In a time of trouble he cried: To me it must always be winter. So we see that Troubadour references to Nature were drawn from a very limited area. Individual grasp of scenery was entirely lacking, it did not occur to them to seek Nature for her own sake. Their comparisons were monotonous, and their scenes bare, stereotyped arabesques, not woven into the tissue of lyric feeling. Their ruling motives were joy in spring and complaint of winter. Wood, flowers, clover, the bright sun, the moon (once), roses, lilies, and woodland birds, especially the nightingale, served them as elementary or landscape figures. Wilhelm Grimm says: The Minnesingers talk often enough of mild May, the nightingale's song, the dew shining on the flowers of the heath, but always in relation only to their own feelings reflected in them. To indicate sad moods they used faded leaves, silent birds, seed buried in snow. and Humboldt: The question, whether contact with Southern Italy, or the Crusades in Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine, have enriched the art of poetry in Germany with new natural pictures, can only generally be answered by the negative. It is not remarked that the acquaintance with the East gave any new direction to the songs of the minstrels. The Crusaders came little into actual contact with the Saracens; they even lived in a state of great restraint with other nations who fought in the same cause. One of the oldest lyric poets was Friedrich of Hausen. He perished in the army of Barbarossa. His songs contain many views of the Crusades; but they chiefly express religious sentiments on the pain of being separated from his dear friends. He found no occasion to say anything concerning the country or any of those who took part in the wars, as Reinmar the Elder, Rubin, Neidhart, and Ulrich of Lichtenstein. Reinmar came a pilgrim to Syria, as it appears, in the train of Leopold the 6th, Duke of Austria. He complains that the recollections of his country always haunted him, and drew away his thoughts from God. The date tree has here been mentioned sometimes, when they speak of the palm branches which pious pilgrims bore upon their shoulders. I do not remember that the splendid scenery in Italy has excited the fancy of the minstrels who crossed the Alps. Walther, who had wandered about, had only seen the river Po; but Friedank was at Rome. He merely remarked that grass grew in the palaces of those who formerly bore sway there. As a fact, even the greatest Minnesinger, Walther, the master lyrist of the thirteenth century, was not ahead of his contemporaries in this matter. His _Spring Longing_ begins: Winter has wrought us harm everywhere, Forest and field are dreary and bare Where the sweet voices of summer once were, Yet by the road where I see maiden fair Tossing the ball, the birds' song is there. and _Spring and Women_: When flowers through the grass begin to spring As though to greet with smiles the sun's bright rays, On some May morning, and in joyous measure, Small songbirds make the dewy forest ring With a sweet chorus of sweet roundelays, Hath life in all its store a purer pleasure? 'Tis half a Paradise on earth. Yet ask me what I hold of equal worth, And I will tell what better still Ofttimes before hath pleased mine eyes, And, while I see it, ever will. When a noble maiden, fair and pure, With raiment rich and tresses deftly braided, Mingles, for pleasure's sake, in company, High bred, with eyes that, laughingly demure, Glance round at times and make all else seem faded, As, when the sun shines, all the stars must die. Let May bud forth in all its splendour; What sight so sweet can he engender As with this picture to compare? Unheeded leave we buds and blooms, And gaze upon the lovely fair! The grace in this rendering of a familiar motive, and the individuality in the following _Complaint of Winter_, were both unusual at the time: Erewhile the world shone red and blue And green in wood and upland too, And birdlets sang on the bough. But now it's grown grey and lost its glow, And there's only the croak of the winter crow, Whence--many a ruffled brow! Elsewhere he says that his lady's favour turns his winter to spring, and adds: Cold winter 'twas no more for me, Though others felt it bitterly; To me it was mid May. He has many pictures of Nature and pretty comparisons, but the stereotyped style predominates--heath, flowers, grass, and nightingales. The pearl of the collection is the naive song which touches sensuous feeling, like the _Song of Solomon_, with the magic light of innocence: Under the lime on the heath where I sat with my love, There you would find The grass and the flowers all crushed-- Sweetly the nightingale sang in the vale by the wood. Tandaradei! When I came up to the meadow my lover was waiting me there. Ah! what a greeting I had! Gracious Mary, 'tis bliss to me still! Tandaradei! Did he kiss me, you ask? Look at the red of my lips! Of sweet flowers of all sorts he made us a bed, I wager who passes now smiles at the sight, The roses would still show just where my head lay. Tandaradei! But how he caressed me, that any but one Should know that, God forbid! I were shamed if they did; Only he and I know it, And one little birdie who never will tell. So we see that interest in Nature in the literature of the Crusaders very seldom went beyond the utilitarian bounds of pleasure and admiration in fertility and pleasantness; and the German national epics rarely alluded to her traits even by way of comparison. The court epics shewed some advance, and sympathy was distinctly traceable in Gottfried, and even attained to artistic expression in his lyrics, where his own feelings chimed with Nature. For the rest, the Minnesingers' descriptions were all alike. The charm of Nature apart from other considerations, delight in her for her own sake alone, was unknown to the time. Hitherto we have only spoken of literature. Feeling for Nature reveals itself in plastic art also, especially in painting; and since the mind of a people is one united organism, the relation between poetry and painting is not one of opposition and mutual exclusion--they rather enlarge and explain, or condition each other. As concerns feeling for Nature, it may be taken as a universal rule that landscape-painting only develops when Nature is sought for her own sake, and that so long as scenery merely serves the purpose of ornament in literature, so long it merely serves as accessory and background in painting; whereas, when Nature takes a wider space in prose and poetry, and becomes an end of representation in herself, the moment for the birth of landscape-painting has come. We will follow the stages of the development of painting very briefly, from Woltmann and Woermann's excellent book,[9] which, if it throws no fresh light upon our subject, illustrates what has just been said in a striking manner. In the first centuries _Anno Domini_, painting was wholly proscribed by Christendom. Its technique did not differ from that of antiquity; but Christendom took up an attitude of antagonism. The picture worship of the old religions was opposed to its very origin and essence, and was only gradually introduced into the Christian cult through heathen influences. It is a fact too, easy to explain, especially through its Jewish origin, that Christianity at first felt no need of art, and that this one-sidedness only ceased when the specifically Jewish element in it had died out, and Christendom passed to cultivated Greeks and Romans. In the cemeteries and catacombs of the first three centuries, we find purely decorative work, light vines with Cupids, but also remains of landscapes; for instance, in the oldest part of the cemetery of Domitilla at Rome, where the ceiling decoration consists of shepherds, fishers, and biblical scenes. The ceiling picture in St Lucina (second century) has apparently the Good Shepherd in the middle, and round it alternate pictures of Him and of the praying Madonna; whilst in the middle it has also charming divisions with fields, branches with leaves and flowers, birds, masks, and floating genii. In Byzantine painting too, the influence of antiquity was still visible, especially in a Psaltery with a Commentary and fourteen large pictures. David appears here as a shepherd; a beautiful woman's form, exhibiting the melody, is leaning with her left arm upon his shoulder; a nymph's head peeps out of the foliage; and in front we have Bethlehem, and the mountain god resting in a bold position under a rock; sheep, goats, and water are close by, and a landscape with classic buildings, streams, and mountains forms the background; it is very poetically conceived. Elsewhere, too, personifications recur, in which classic beauty is still visible, mixed with severe Christian forms. At the end of the tenth century began the Romantic period, which closed in the thirteenth. The brilliant progress made by architecture paved the way for the other arts; minds trained in its laws began to look for law in organic Nature too, and were no longer content with the old uncertain and arbitrary shapes. But as no independent feeling for Nature, in the widest sense of the term, existed, mediæval art treated her, not according to her own laws, but to those of architecture. With the development of the Gothic style, from the thirteenth century on, art became a citizen's craft, a branch of industry. Heretofore it had possessed but one means of expression--religious festival or ceremony, severely ecclesiastical. This limit was now removed. The artist lived a wide life, open to impressions from Nature, his imagination fed by poetry with new ideas and feelings, and constantly stimulated by the love of pleasure, which was so vehement among all classes that it turned every civil and ecclesiastical event to histrionic purposes, and even made its influence felt upon the clergy. The strong religious feeling which pervaded the Middle Ages still ruled, and even rose to greater enthusiasm, in accordance with the spirit of the day; but it was no longer a matter of blind submission of the will, but of conscious acceptance. It is true that knowledge of the external world was as yet very limited; the painter had not explored and mastered it, but only used it as a means to represent a certain realm of feeling, studying it just so far as this demanded. We have seen the same in the case of poetry. The beginnings of realistic painting were visible, although, as, for example, in representing animals, no individuality was reached. From the middle of the fourteenth century a new French school sprang up. The external world was more keenly and accurately studied, especially on its graceful side. It was only at the end of that period that painting felt the need to develop the background, and indicate actual surroundings by blue sky, hills, Gothic buildings, and conventional trees. These were given in linear perspective; of aerial perspective there was none. The earlier taste still ruled in initialling and border decorations; but little flowers were added by degrees to the thorn-leaf pattern, and birds, sometimes angels, introduced. The altar-piece at Cologne, at the end of the fourteenth century, is more subjective in conception, and full of lyric feeling. Poetic feeling came into favour, especially in Madonna pictures of purely idyllic character, which were painted with most charming surroundings. Instead of a throne and worshipping figures, Mary was placed sitting comfortably with the Child on flowery turf, and saints around her; and although the background might be golden instead of landscape, yet all the stems and blossoms in the grass were naturally and accurately treated. In a little picture in the town museum at Frankfort, the Madonna is seated in a rose garden under fruit trees gay with birds, and reading a book; a table with food and drinks stands close by, and a battlemented wall surrounds the garden. She is absorbed in contemplation; three female saints are attending to mundane business close by, one drawing water from a brook, another picking cherries, the third teaching the child Christ to play the zither. There is real feeling in the whole picture, and the landscape is worked in with distinct reference to the chief idea. Hence, although there were many isolated attempts to shew that realistic and individual study of Nature had begun, landscape-painting had not advanced beyond the position of a background, treated in a way more or less suited to the main subject of the picture; and trees, rocks, meadows, flowers, were still only framework, ornament, as in the poetry of the Minnesingers.[10] CHAPTER IV INDIVIDUALISM AND SENTIMENTAL FEELING AT THE RENAISSANCE In a certain sense all times are transitional to those who live in them, since what is old is always in process of being destroyed and giving way to the new. But there are landmarks in the general development of culture, which mark off definite periods and divide what has been from what is beginning. Hellenism was such a landmark in antiquity, the Renaissance in the Middle Ages. Without overlooking the differences between Greek and Italian, classic and modern, which are relative and not absolute, it is instructive to note the great likeness between these two epochs. The limits of their culture will stand out more clearly, if, by the aid of Helbig's researches and Burckhardt's masterly account of the Renaissance, we range the chief points of that likeness side by side. They were epochs in which an icy crust, which had been lying over human thought and feeling, melted as if before a spring breeze. It is true that the theory of life which now began to prevail was not absolutely new; the stages of growth in a nation's culture are never isolated; it was the result of the enlargement of various factors already present, and their fusion with a flood of incoming ones. The Ionic-Doric Greek kingdom widened out in Alexander's time to a Hellenic-Asiatic one, and the barriers of the Romano-Germanic Middle Ages fell with the Crusades and the great voyages of discovery. Hellenism and the Renaissance brought about the transition from antiquity and the mediæval to the specifically modern; the Roman Empire inherited Hellenism, the Reformation the Renaissance. Both had their roots in the past, both made new growth which blossomed at a later time. In Hellenism, Oriental elements were mixed with the Greek; in the Renaissance, it was a mixture of Germanic with the native Italian which caused the revival of classic antiquity and new culture. Burckhardt says[1]: Elsewhere in Europe men deliberately and with reflection borrowed this or the other element of classical civilization; in Italy, the sympathies both of the learned and of the people were naturally engaged on the side of antiquity as a whole, which stood to them as a symbol of past greatness. The Latin language too was easy to an Italian, and the numerous monuments and documents in which the country abounded facilitated a return to the past. With this tendency, other elements--the popular character which time had now greatly modified, the political institutions imported by the Lombards from Germany, chivalry and northern forms of civilization, and the influence of religion and the Church--combined to produce the modern Italian spirit, which was destined to serve as the model and ideal for the whole western world. The distance between the works of the Greek artists and poets--between Homer, Sophocles, and Phidias on the one hand, and the Alexandrian Theocritus and Kallimachos and the Pergamos sculptures on the other--is greater than lies between the _Nibelungenlied_ and the Minnesingers, and Dante and Petrarch. In both cases one finds oneself in a new world of thought and feeling, where each and all bears the stamp of change, in matters political and social as well as artistic. If, for example, by the aid of Von Helbig's researches,[2] we conjure up a picture of the chief points in the history of Greek culture, we are astonished to see how almost every point recurred at the Renaissance, as described by Burckhardt. The chief mark of both epochs was individualism, the discovery of the individual. In Hellenism it was the barriers of race and position which fell; in the Renaissance, the veil, woven of mysticism and delusion, which had obscured mediæval faith, thought, and feeling. Every man recognized himself to be an independent unit of church, state, people, corporation--of all those bodies in which in the Middle Ages he had been entirely merged. Monarchical institutions arose in Hellenism; but the individual was no longer content to serve them only as one among many; he must needs develop his own powers. Private affairs began to preponderate over public; the very physiognomy of the race shewed an individual stamp. After the time of Alexander the Great, portrait shewed most marked individuality. Those of the previous period had a certain uniform expression; one would have looked in vain among them for the diversities in contemporary types shewn by comparing Alexander's vivid face full of stormy energy, Menander's with its peculiar look of irony, and the elaborate savant-physiognomy of Aristotle. (HELBIG.) And Burckhardt says: At the close of the thirteenth century Italy began to swarm with individuality; the charm laid upon human personality was dissolved, and a thousand figures meet us each in its own special shape and dress.... Despotism, as we have already seen, fostered in the highest degree the individuality, not only of the tyrant or Condottiere himself, but also of the men whom he protected or used as his tools--the secretary, minister, poet, or companion. Political indifference brought about a high degree of cosmopolitanism, especially among those who were banished. 'My country is the whole world,' said Dante; and Ghiberti: 'Only he who has learned everything is nowhere a stranger; robbed of his fortune and without friends, he is yet a citizen of every country, and can fearlessly despise the changes of fortune.' In both Hellenism and the Renaissance, an effort was made in art and science to see things as they really were. In art, detail was industriously cultivated; but its naturalism, especially as to undraped figures, was due to a sensuous refinement of gallantry and erotic feeling. The sensuous flourished no less in Greek times than in those of Boccaccio; but the most characteristic peculiarity of Hellenism was its intentional revelling in feeling--its sentimentality. There was a trace of melancholy upon many faces of the time, and unhappy love in endless variations was the poet's main theme. Petrarch's lyre was tuned to the same key; a melancholy delight in grief was the constant burden of his song. In Greece the sight of foreign lands had furthered the natural sciences, especially geography, astronomy, zoology, and botany; and the striving for universality at the Renaissance, which was as much a part of its individualism as its passion for fame, was aided by the widening of the physical and mental horizons through the Crusades and voyages of discovery. Dante was not only the greatest poet of his time, but an astronomer; Petrarch was geographer and cartographer, and, at the end of the fifteenth century, with Paolo Toscanelli, Lucca Baccioli, and Leonardo da Vinci, Italy was beyond all comparison the first nation in Europe in mathematics and natural science. A significant proof of the wide-spread interest in natural history is found in the zeal which shewed itself at an early period for the collection and comparative study of plants and animals. Italy claims to be the first creator of botanical gardens.... princes and wealthy men, in laying out their pleasure gardens, instinctively made a point of collecting the greatest possible number of different plants in all their species and varieties. (BURCKHARDT.) Leon Battista Alberti, a man of wide theoretical knowledge as well as technical and artistic facility of all sorts, entered into the whole life around him with a sympathetic intensity that might almost be called nervous. At the sight of noble trees and waving corn-fields he shed tears ... more than once, when he was ill, the sight of a beautiful landscape cured him. (BURCKHARDT.) He defined a beautiful landscape as one in which one could see in its different parts, sea, mountain, lake or spring, dry rocks or plains, wood and valley. Therefore he cared for variety; and, what is more striking, in contrast to level country, he admired mountains and rocks! In Hellenism, hunting, to which only the Macedonians had been addicted before, became a fashion, and was enjoyed with Oriental pomp in the _paradeisoi_. Writers drew most of their comparisons from it. In the Renaissance, Petrarch did the same, and animals often served as emblems of state--their condition ominous of good or evil--and were fostered with superstitious veneration, as, for example, the lions at Florence. Thus the growth of the natural sciences increased interest in the external world, and sensitiveness brought about a sentimental attitude towards Nature in Hellenism and in the Renaissance. Both discovered in Nature a source of purest pleasure; the Renaissance feeling was, in fact, the extension and enhancement of the Hellenic. Burckhardt overlooked the fact that beautiful scenery was appreciated and described for its own sake in Hellenism, but he says very justly; The Italians are the first among modern peoples by whom the outward world was seen and felt as something beautiful.... By the year 1200, at the height of the Middle Ages, a genuine hearty enjoyment of the external world was again in existence, and found lively expression in the minstrelsy of different nations, which gives evidence of the sympathy felt with all the simple phenomena of Nature--spring with its flowers, the green fields and the woods. But these pictures are all foreground without perspective. Among the Minnesingers there were traces of feeling for Nature; but only for certain stereotyped phases. Of the individuality of a landscape, its characteristic colour, form, and light, not a word was said. Even the Carmina Burana were not much ahead of the Minnesingers in this respect, although they deserve a closer examination. These Latin poems of wandering clerks probably belong to the twelfth century, and though no doubt a product in which the whole of Europe had a share, their best pieces must be ascribed to a French hand. Latin poetry lives again in them, with a freshness the Carlovingian Renaissance never reached; they are mediæval in form, but full of a frank enjoyment of life and its pleasures, which hardly any northerner of that day possessed. Often enough this degenerated into frivolity; but the stir of national awakening after the long sleep of the Middle Ages is felt like a spring breeze through them all. It is a far cry from the view of Nature we saw in the Carlovingian monks, to these highly-coloured verses. The dim light of churches and bare cell walls may have doubled the monks' appreciation of blue skies and open-air life; but they were fettered by the constant fight with the senses; Nature to them must needs be less a work of God for man's delight, than a dangerous means of seduction. 'They wandered through Nature with timid misgiving, and their anxious fantasy depicted forms of terror or marvellous rescues.[3] The idyllic pleasure in the simple charms of Nature, especially in the monastery garden of the Carlovingian time, contrasts strikingly with the tone of these very mundane _vagantes clerici_, for whom Nature had not only long been absorbed and freed from all demoniac influence, but peopled by the charming forms of the old mythic poems, and made for the joy and profit of men, in the widest and naivest sense of the words. Spring songs, as with the Minnesingers, take up most of the space; but the theme is treated with greater variety. Enjoyment of life and Nature breathes through them all. One runs thus: Spring cometh, and the earth is decked and studded with vernal flowers. The harmony of the birds' returning song rouses the heart to be glad. It is the time of joy. Songs 98 to 118 rejoice that winter is gone; for instance: Now in the mild springtime Flora opens the lap which the cold frost had locked in cruel time of winter; the zephyr with gentle murmur cometh with the spring; the grove is clad in leaves. The nightingale is singing, the fields are gay with divers hues. It is sweet to walk in the wooded glens, it is sweeter to pluck the lily with the rose, it is sweetest of all to sport with a lovely maiden. Another makes a similar confession, for Nature and amorous passion are the two strings of these lyres: Beneath the pleasant foliage of a tree 'tis sweet to rest, while the nightingale sings her plaintive song; sweeter still, to sport in the grass with a fair maiden.... O, to what changeful moods is the heart of the lover prone! As the vessel that wanders o'er the waves without an anchor, so doth Love's uncertain warfare toss 'twixt fear and hope. The beauties of Nature are drawn upon to describe the fair maiden; her eyes are compared to stars, her colour to lilies and snow, her mouth to a rose, her kiss 'doth rend in sunder all the clouds of care.' In the flowery season I sat beneath a shady tree while the birds sang in the groves ... and listened to my Thisbe's talk, the talk I love and long for; and we spoke of the sweet interchange of love, and in the doubtful balance of the mind wanton love and chastity were wavering. I have seen the bright green of flowers, I have seen the flower of flowers, I have seen the rose of May; I have seen the star that is brighter than all other, that is glorious and fair above all other, through whom may I ever spend my life in love. On such a theme the poet rings endless changes. The most charming is the poem _Phyllis and Flora_. Actual landscape is not given, but details are treated with freshness and care: In the flowery season of the year, under a sky serene, while the earth's lap was painted with many colours, when the messenger of Aurora had put to flight the stars, sleep left the eyes of Phyllis and of Flora, two maidens whose beauty answered to the morning light. The breeze of spring was gently whispering, the place was green and gay with grass, and in the grass itself there flowed a living brook that played and babbled as it went. And that the sun's heat might not harm the maidens, near the stream there was a spreading pine, decked with leaves and spreading far its interweaving branches, nor could the heat penetrate from without. The maidens sat, the grass supplied the seat.... They intend to go to Love's Paradise: at the entrance of the grove a rivulet murmurs; the breeze is fragrant with myrrh and balsam; they hear the music of a hundred timbrels and lutes. All the notes of the birds resound in all their fulness; they hear the sweet and pleasant song of the blackbird, the garrulous lark, the turtle and the nightingale, etc.... He who stayed there would become immortal; every tree there rejoices in its own fruit; the ways are scented with myrrh and cinnamon and amomum; the master could be forced out of his house. The first to shew proof of a deepening effect of Nature on the human spirit was Dante. Dante and Petrarch elaborated the Hellenistic feeling for Nature; hence the further course of the Renaissance displayed all its elements, but with increased subjectivity and individuality. No one, since the days of Hellenism, had climbed mountains for the sake of the view--Dante was the first to do it. And although, in ranging heaven, earth, hell, and paradise in the _Divina Commedia_, he rarely described real Nature, and then mostly in comparisons; yet, as Humboldt pointed out, how incomparably in a few vigorous lines he wakens the sense of the morning airs and the light on the distant sea in the first canto of Purgatorio: The dawn was vanquishing the matin hour, Which fled before it,-so that from afar I recognized the trembling of the sea. And how vivid this is: The air Impregnate changed to water. Fell the rain: And to the fosses came all that the land Contain'd not, and, as mightiest streams are wont, To the great river with such headlong sweep Rush'd, that naught stayed its course. Through that celestial forest, whose thick shade With lively greenness the new-springing day Attempered, eager now to roam and search Its limits round, forthwith I left the bank; Along the champaign leisurely my way Pursuing, o'er the ground that on all sides Delicious odour breathed. A pleasant air, That intermitted never, never veered, Smote on my temples gently, as a wind Of softest influence, at which the sprays, Obedient all, lean'd trembling to that part Where first the holy mountain casts his shade; Yet were not so disordered; but that still Upon their top the feather'd quiristers Applied their wonted art, and with full joy Welcomed those hours of prime, and warbled shrill Amid the leaves, that to their jocund lays Kept tenour; even as from branch to branch Along the piny forests on the shore Of Chiassi rolls the gathering melody, When Eolus hath from his cavern loosed The dripping south. Already had my steps, Tho' slow, so far into that ancient wood Transported me, I could not ken the place Where I had enter'd; when behold! my path Was bounded by a rill, which to the left With little rippling waters bent the grass That issued from its brink. and this of the heavenly Paradise: I looked, And, in the likeness of a river, saw Light flowing, from whose amber-seeming waves Flash'd up effulgence, as they glided on 'Twixt banks, on either side, painted with spring, Incredible how fair; and, from the tide, There, ever and anon outstarting, flew Sparkles instinct with life; and in the flowers Did set them, like to rubies chased in gold; Then, as if drunk with odours, plunged again Into the wondrous flood, from which, as one Re-entered, still another rose. His numerous comparisons conjure up whole scenes, perfect in truth to Nature, and shewing a keen and widely ranging eye. For example: Bellowing, there groaned A noise, as of a sea in tempest torn By warring winds. (Inferno.) O'er better waves to steer her rapid course The light bark of my genius lifts the sail, Well pleased to leave so cruel sea behind. (Purgatorio.) All ye, who in small bark have following sail'd, Eager to listen on the adventurous track Of my proud keel, that singing cuts her way. (Paradiso.) As sails full spread and bellying with the wind Drop suddenly collapsed, if the mast split, So to the ground down dropp'd the cruel fiend. (Inferno.) As, near upon the hour of dawn, Through the thick vapours Mars with fiery beam Glares down in west, over the ocean floor. (Purgatorio.) As 'fore the sun That weighs our vision down, and veils his form In light transcendent, thus my virtue fail'd Unequal. (Purgatorio.) As sunshine cheers Limbs numb'd by nightly cold, e'en thus my look Unloosed her tongue. And now there came o'er the perturbed waves, Loud crashing, terrible, a sound that made Either shore tremble, as if of a wind Impetuous, from conflicting vapours sprung, That, 'gainst some forest driving all his might, Plucks off the branches, beats them down, and hurls Afar; then, onward pressing, proudly sweeps His whirlwind rage, while beasts and shepherds fly. (Inferno.) As florets, by the frosty air of night Bent down and closed, when day has blanch'd their leaves Rise all unfolded on their spiry stems, So was my fainting vigour new restored. (Inferno.) As fall off the light autumnal leaves, One still another following, till the bough Strews all its honours on the earth beneath. (Inferno.) Bees, dolphins, rays of sunlight, snow, starlings, doves, frogs, a bull, falcons, fishes, larks, and rooks are all used, generally with characteristic touches of detail. Specially tender is this: E'en as the bird, who 'mid the leafy bower Has, in her nest, sat darkling through the night With her sweet brood; impatient to descry Their wished looks, and to bring home their food, In the fond quest, unconscious of her toil; She, of the time prevenient, on the spray That overhangs their couch, with wakeful gaze Expects the sun, nor, ever, till the dawn Removeth from the east her eager ken, So stood the dame erect. The most important forward step was made by Petrarch, and it is strange that this escaped Humboldt in his famous sketch in the second volume of _Cosmos_, as well as his commentator Schaller, and Friedlander. For when we turn from Hellenism to Petrarch, it does not seem as if many centuries lay between; but rather as if notes first struck in the one had just blended into distinct harmony in the other. The modern spirit arose from a union of the genius of the Italian people of the thirteenth century with antiquity, and the feeling for Nature had a share in the wider culture, both as to sentimentality and grasp of scenery. Classic and modern joined hands in Petrarch. Many Hellenic motives handed on by Roman poets reappear in his poetry, but always with that something in addition of which antiquity shewed but a trace--the modern subjectivity and individuality. It was the change from early bud to full blossom. He was one of the first to deserve the name of modern--modern, that is, in his whole feeling and mode of thought, in his sentimentality and his melancholy, and in the fact that 'more than most before and after him, he tried to know himself and to hand on to others what he knew.' (Geiger.) It is an appropriate remark of Hettner's, that the phrase, 'he has discovered his heart,' might serve as a motto for Petrarch's songs and sonnets. He knew that he had that sentimental disorder which he called 'acedia,' and wished to be rid of it. This word has a history of its own. To the Greeks, to Apollonius, for instance,[4] it meant carelessness, indifference; and, joined with the genitive [Greek: nooio]--that is, of the mind--it meant, according to the scholiasts, as much as [Greek: lypê] (Betrübnis)--that is, distress or grief. In the Middle Ages it became 'dislike of intellect so far as that is a divine gift'--that disease of the cloister which a monkish chronicler defined as 'a sadness or loathing and an immoderate distress of mind, caused by mental confusion, through which happiness of mind was destroyed, and the mind thrown back upon itself as from an abyss of despair.' To Dante it meant the state-- Sad In the sweet air, made gladsome by the sun, distaste for the good and beautiful. The modern meaning which it took with Petrarch is well defined by Geiger as being neither ecclesiastic nor secular sin,[5] but Entirely human and peculiar to the cleverest--the battle between reality and seeming, the attempt to people the arid wastes of the commonplace with philosophic thought--the unhappiness and despair that arise from comparing the unconcern of the majority with one's own painful unrest, from the knowledge that the results of striving do not express the effort made--that human life is but a ceaseless and unworthy rotation, in which the bad are always to the fore, and the good fall behind ... as pessimism, melancholy, world pain (Weltschmerz)--that tormenting feeling which mocks all attempt at definition, and is too vitally connected with erring and striving human nature to be curable--that longing at once for human fellowship and solitude, for active work and a life of contemplation. Petrarch knew too the pleasure of sadness, what Goethe called 'Wonne der Wehmuth,' the _dolendi voluptas._ Lo, what new pleasure human wits devise! For oftentimes one loves Whatever new thing moves The sighs, that will in closest order go; And I'm of those whom sorrowing behoves; And that with some success I labour, you may guess, When eyes with tears, and heart is brimmed with woe. In Sonnet 190: My chiefest pleasure now is making moan. Oh world, oh fruitless thought, Oh luck, my luck, who'st led me thus for spite!... For loving well, with pain I'm rent.... Nor can I yet repent, My heart o'erflowed with deadly pleasantness. Now wait I from no less A foe than dealt me my first blow, my last. And were I slain full fast, 'Twould seem a sort of mercy to my mind.... My ode, I shall i' the field Stand firm; to perish flinching were a shame, In fact, myself I blame For such laments; my portion is so sweet. Tears, sighs, and death I greet. O reader that of death the servant art, Earth can no weal, to match my woes, impart. His poems are full of scenes and comparisons from Nature; for the sympathy for her which goes with this modern and sentimental tone is a deep one: In that sweet season of my age's prime Which saw the sprout and, as it were, green blade Of the wild passion.... Changed me From living man into green laurel whose Array by winter's cold no leaf can lose. (Ode 1.) Love is that by which My darknesses were made as bright As clearest noonday light. (Ode 4.) Elsewhere it is the light of heaven breaking in his heart, and springtime which brings the flowers. In Sonnet 44 he plays with impossibilities, like the Greek and Roman poets: Ah me! the sea will have no waves, the snow Will warm and darken, fish on Alps will dwell, And suns droop yonder, where from common cell The springs of Tigris and Euphrates flow, Or ever I shall here have truce or peace Or love.... and uses the same comparisons, Sestina 7: So many creatures throng not ocean's wave, So many, above the circle of the moon, Of stars were never yet beheld by night; So many birds reside not in the groves; So many herbs hath neither field nor shore, But my heart's thoughts outnumber them each eve. Many of his poems witness to the truth that the love-passion is the best interpreter of Nature, especially in its woes. The woes of love are his constant theme, and far more eloquently expressed than its bliss: So fair I have not seen the sun arise, When heaven was clearest of all cloudy stain-- The welkin-bow I have not after rain Seen varied with so many shifting dyes, But that her aspect in more splendid guise Upon the day when I took up Love's chain Diversely glowed, for nothing mortal vies Therewith.... (Sonnet 112.) From each fair eyelid's tranquil firmament So brightly shine my stars untreacherous, That none, whose love thoughts are magnanimous, Would from aught else choose warmth or guidance lent. Oh, 'tis miraculous, when on the grass She sits, a very flower, or when she lays Upon its greenness down her bosom white. (Sonnet 127.) Oh blithe and happy flowers, oh favoured sod, That by my lady in passive mood are pressed, Lawn, which her sweet words hear'st and treasurest, Faint traces, where her shapely foot hath trod, Smooth boughs, green leaves, which now raw juices load, Pale darling violets, and woods which rest In shadow, till that sun's beam you attest, From which hath all your pride and grandeur flowed; Oh land delightsome, oh thou river pure Which bathest her fair face and brilliant eyes And winn'st a virtue from their living light, I envy you each clear and comely guise In which she moves. (Sonnet 129.) These recall Nais in Theocritus: When she crept or trembling footsteps laid, Green bright and soft she made Wood, water, earth, and stone; yea, with conceit The grasses freshened 'neath her palms and feet. And her fair eyes the fields around her dressed With flowers, and the winds and storms she stilled With utterance unskilled As from a tongue that seeketh yet the breast, (Sonnet 25.) As oft as yon white foot on fresh green sod Comelily sets the gentle step, a dower Of grace, that opens and revives each flower, Seems by the delicate palm to be bestowed. (Sonnet 132.) I seem to hear her, hearing airs and sprays, And leaves, and plaintive bird notes, and the brook That steals and murmurs through the sedges green. Such pleasure in lone silence and the maze Of eerie shadowy woods I never took, Though too much tow'r'd my sun they intervene. (Sonnet 143.) and like Goethe's: I think of thee when the bright sunlight shimmers Across the sea; When the clear fountain in the moonbeam glimmers I think of thee.... I hear thee, when the tossing waves' low rumbling Creeps up the hill; I go to the lone wood and listen trembling When all is still.... So Petrarch sings in Ode 15: Now therefore, when in youthful guise I see The world attire itself in soft green hue, I think that in this age unripe I view That lovely girl, who's now a lady's mien. Then, when the sun ariseth all aglow, I trace the wonted show Of amorous fire, in some fine heart made queen... When leaves or boughs or violets on earth I see, what time the winter's cold decays, And when the kindly stars are gathering might, Mine eye that violet and green portrays (And nothing else) which, at my warfare's birth, Armed Love so well that yet he worsts me quite. I see the delicate fine tissue light In which our little damsel's limbs are dressed.... Oft on the hills a feeble snow-streak lies, Which the sun smiteth in sequestered place. Let sun rule snow! Thou, Love, my ruler art, When on that fair and more than human face I muse, which from afar makes soft my eyes.... I never yet saw after mighty rain The roving stars in the calm welkin glide And glitter back between the frost and dew, But straight those lovely eyes are at my side.... If ever yet, on roses white and red, My eyes have fallen, where in bowl of gold They were set down, fresh culled by virgin hands, There have I seemed her aspect to behold.... But when the year has flecked Some deal with white and yellow flowers the braes, I forthwith recollect That day and place in which I first admired Laura's gold hair outspread, and straight was fired.... That I could number all the stars anon And shut the waters in a tiny glass Belike I thought, when in this narrow sheet I got a fancy to record, alas, How many ways this Beauty's paragon Hath spread her light, while standing self-complete, So that from her I never could retreat.... She's closed for me all paths in earth and sky. The reflective modern mind is clear in this, despite its loquacity. He was yet more eloquent and intense, more fertile in comparisons, when his happiest days were over. In Ode 24, standing at a window he watches the strange forms his imagination conjures up--a wild creature torn in pieces by two dogs, a ship wrecked by a storm, a laurel shattered by lightning: Within this wood, out of a rock did rise A spring of water, mildly rumbling down, Whereto approached not in any wise The homely shepherd nor the ruder clown, But many muses and the nymphs withal.... But while herein I took my chief delight, I saw (alas!) the gaping earth devour The spring, the place, and all clean out of sight-- Which yet aggrieves my heart unto this hour.... At last, so fair a lady did I spy, That thinking yet on her I burn and quake, On herbs and flowers she walked pensively.... A stinging serpent by the heel her caught, Wherewith she languished as the gathered flower. Now Zephyrus the blither days brings on, With flowers and leaves, his gallant retinue, And Progne's chiding, Philomela's moan, And maiden spring all white and pink of hue; Now laugh the meadows, heaven is radiant grown, And blithely now doth Love his daughter view; Air, water, earth, now breathe of love alone, And every creature plans again to woo. Ah me! but now return the heaviest sighs, Which my heart from its last resources yields To her that bore its keys to heaven away. And songs of little birds and blooming fields And gracious acts of ladies, fair and wise, Are desert land and uncouth beasts of prey. (Sonnet 269.) The nightingale, who maketh moan so sweet Over his brood belike or nest-mate dear, So deft and tender are his notes to hear, That fields and skies are with delight replete; And all night long he seems with me to treat, And my hard lot recall unto my ear. (Sonnet 270.) In every dell The sands of my deep sighs are circumfused. (Ode 1.) Oh banks, oh dales, oh woods, oh streams, oh fields Ye vouchers of my life's o'erburdened cause, How often Death you've heard me supplicate. (Ode 8.) Whereso my foot may pass, A balmy rapture wakes When I think, here that darling light hath played. If flower I cull or grass, I ponder that it takes Root in that soil, where wontedly she strayed Betwixt the stream and glade, And found at times a seat Green, fresh, and flower-embossed. (Ode 13.) Whenever plaintive warblings, or the note Of leaves by summer breezes gently stirred, Or baffled murmur of bright waves I've heard Along the green and flowery shore to float, Where meditating love I sat and wrote, Then her whom earth conceals, whom heaven conferred, I hear and see, and know with living word She answereth my sighs, though so remote. 'Ah, why art thou,' she pityingly says, 'Pining away before thy hour?' (Sonnet 238.) The waters and the branches and the shore, Birds, fishes, flowers, grasses, talk of love, And me to love for ever all invite. (Sonnet 239.) Thou'st left the world, oh Death, without a sun.... Her mourners should be earth and sea and air. (Sonnet 294.) Here we have happiness and misery felt in the modern way, and Nature in the modern way drawn into the circle of thought and feeling, and personified. Petrarch was the first, since the days of Hellenism, to enjoy the pleasures of solitude quite consciously. How often to my darling place of rest, Fleeing from all, could I myself but flee, I walk and wet with tears my path and breast. (Sonnet 240.) He shared Schiller's thought: Oh Nature is perfect, wherever we stray, 'Tis man that deforms it with care. As love from thought to thought, from hill to hill, Directs me, when all ways that people tread Seem to the quiet of my being, foes, If some lone shore, or fountain-head, or rill Or shady glen, between two slopes outspread, I find--my daunted soul doth there repose.... On mountain heights, in briary woods, I find Some rest; but every dwelling place on earth Appeareth to my eyes a deadly bane.... Where some tall pine or hillock spreads a shade, I sometimes halt, and on the nearest brink Her lovely face I picture from my mind.... Oft hath her living likeness met my sight, (Oh who'll believe the word?) in waters clear, On beechen stems, on some green lawny space, Or in white cloud.... Her loveliest portrait there my fancy draws, And when Truth overawes That sweet delusion, frozen to the core, I then sit down, on living rock, dead stone, And seem to muse, and weep and write thereon.... Then touch my thoughts and sense Those widths of air which hence her beauty part, Which always is so near, yet far away.... Beyond that Alp, my Ode, Where heaven above is gladdest and most clear, Again thou'lt meet me where the streamlet flows And thrilling airs disclose The fresh and scented laurel thicket near, There is my heart and she that stealeth it. (Ode 17.) It is the same idea as Goethe's in _Knowest thou the Land_? Again: Alone, engrossed, the least frequented strands I traverse with my footsteps faint and slow, And often wary glances round me throw, To flee, should human trace imprint the sands. (Sonnet 28.) A life of solitude I've ever sought, This many a field and forest knows, and will. (Sonnet 221.) Love of solitude and feeling for Nature limit or increase each other; and Petrarch; like Dante, took scientific interest in her, and found her a stimulant to mental work. Burckhardt says: 'The enjoyment of Nature is for him the favourite accompaniment of intellectual pursuits; it was to combine the two that he lived in learned retirement at Vaucluse and elsewhere, that he from time to time fled from the world and from his age.' He wrote a book _On a Life of Solitude (De Vita Solitaria)_ by the little river Sorgue, and said in a letter from Vaucluse: 'O if you could imagine the delight with which I breathe here, free and far from the world, with forests and mountains, rivers and springs, and the books of clever men.' Purely objective descriptions, such as his picture of the Gulf of Spezzia and Porto Venere at the end of the sixth book of the _Africa_, were rare with him; but, as we have already seen, he admired mountain scenery. He refers to the hills on the Riviera di Levante as 'hills distinguished by most pleasant wildness and wonderful fertility.'[6] The scenery of Reggio moved him, as he said,[7] to compose a poem. He described the storm at Naples in 1343, and the earthquake at Basle. As we have seen from one of his odes, he delighted in the wide view from mountain heights, and the freedom from the oppression of the air lower down. In this respect he was one of Rousseau's forerunners, though his 'romantic' feeling was restrained within characteristic limits. In a letter of April 26, 1335, interesting both as to the period and the personality of the writer, he described to Dionisius da Borgo San Sepolchro the ascent of Mt. Ventoux near Avignon which he made when he was thirty-two, and greatly enjoyed, though those who were with him did not understand his enjoyment. When they had laboured through the difficulties of the climb, and saw the clouds below them, he was immensely impressed. It was in accordance with his love of solitude that lonely mountain tops should attract him, and the letter shows that he fully appreciated both climb and view. 'It was a long day, the air fine. We enjoyed the advantages of vigour of mind, and strength and agility of body, and everything else essential to those engaged in such an undertaking, and so had no other difficulties to face than those of the region itself.' ... 'At first, owing to the unaccustomed quality of the air and the effect of the great sweep of view spread out before me, I stood like one dazed. I beheld the clouds under our feet, and what I had read of Athos and Olympus seemed less incredible as I myself witnessed the same things from a mountain of less fame. I turned my eyes towards Italy, whither my heart most inclined. The Alps, rugged and snow-capped, seemed to rise close by, although they were really at a great distance.... The Bay of Marseilles, the Rhone itself, lay in sight.' It was a very modern effect of the wide view that 'his whole past life with all its follies rose before his mind; he remembered that ten years ago, that day, he had quitted Bologna a young man, and turned a longing gaze towards his native country: he opened a book which was then his constant companion, _The Confessions of St Augustine_, and his eye fell on the passage in the tenth chapter: And men go about and admire lofty mountains and broad seas, and roaring torrents and the ocean, and the course of the stars, and forget their own selves while doing so. His brother, to whom he read these words, could not understand why he closed the book and said no more. His feeling had suddenly changed. He knew, when he began the climb, that he was doing something very unusual, even unheard of among his contemporaries, and justified himself by the example of Philip V. of Macedon, arguing that a young man of private station might surely be excused for what was not thought blamable in a grey-haired king. Then on the mountain top, lost in the view, the passage in St Augustine suddenly occurred to him, and he started blaming himself for admiring earthly things so much. 'I was amazed ... angry with myself for marvelling but now at earthly things, when I ought to have learnt long ago that nothing save the soul was marvellous, and that to the greatness of the soul nought else was great'; and he closed with an explanation flavoured with theology to the taste of his confessor, to whom he was writing. The mixture of thoroughly modern delight in Nature[8] with ascetic dogma in this letter, gives us a glimpse into the divided feelings of one who stood upon the threshold between two eras, mediæval and modern, into the reaction of the mediæval mind against the budding modern feeling. This is, at any rate, the first mountain ascent for pleasure since Hellenic days, of which we have detailed information. From Greece before Alexander we have nothing; but the Persian King Darius, in his expedition against the Scythians in the region of Chalcedon, ascended the mountain on which stood the Urios temple to Zeus, and there 'sitting in the temple, he took a view of the Euxine Sea, which is worthy of admiration.' (Herodotus.) Philip V. of Macedon ascended the Hæmus B.C. 181, and Apollonios Rhodios describes the panorama spread out before the Argonauts as they ascended the Dindymon, and elsewhere recalls the view from Mt. Olympus. These are the oldest descriptions of distant views conceived as landscape in the classic literature preserved to us. Petrarch's ascent comes next in order. This sentimental and subjective feeling for Nature, half-idyllic, half-romantic, which seemed to arise suddenly and spontaneously in Petrarch, is not to be wholly explained by a marked individuality, nourished by the tendencies of the period; the influence of Roman literature, the re-birth of the classic, must also be taken into account. For the Renaissance attitude towards Nature was closely allied to the Roman, and therefore to the Hellenic; and the fact that the first modern man arose on Italian soil was due to the revival of antiquity plus its union with the genius of the Italian people. Many direct analogies can be traced between Petrarch and the Roman poets; it was in their school that his eyes opened to the wonders of Nature, and he learnt to blend the inner with the outer life. Boccaccio does not lead us much further. There is idyllic quality in his description of a wood in the _Ameto_,[9] and especially in _Fiammetta_, in which he praises country life and describes the spring games of the Florentine youth. This is the description of a valley in the _Decameron_: 'After a walk of nearly a mile, they came to the Ladies' Valley, which they entered by a straight path, whence there issued forth a fine crystal current, and they found it so extremely beautiful and pleasant, especially at that sultry season, that nothing could exceed it, and, as some of them told me afterwards, the plain in the valley was so exact a circle, as if it had been described by a pair of compasses, though it seemed rather the work of Nature than of art, and was about half a mile in circumference, surrounded by six hills of moderate height, on each of which was a palace built in the form of a little castle.... The part that looks toward the south was planted as thick as they could stand together with vines, olives, almonds, cherries, figs, and most other kinds of fruit trees, and on the northern side were fine plantations of oak, ash, etc., so tall and regular that nothing could be more beautiful. The vale, which had only that one entrance, was full of firs, cypress trees, laurels, and pines, all placed in such order as if it had been done by the direction of some exquisite artist, and through which little or no sun could penetrate to the ground, which was covered with a thousand different flowers.... But what gave no less delight than any of the rest was a rivulet that came through a valley which divided two of the mountains, and running through the vein of a rock, made a most agreeable murmur with its fall, appealing, as it was dashed and sprinkled into drops, like so much quicksilver.' Description of scenery for its own sake is scarcely more than attempted here, nor do Petrarch's lyrics, with their free thought of passion and overpowering consciousness of the joys and sorrows of love, reach the level of Hellenism in this respect. Yet it advanced with the Renaissance. Pope Pius II. (Æneas Sylvius) was the first to describe actual landscape (Italian), not merely in a few subjective lines, but with genuine modern enjoyment. He was one of those figures in the world's history in whom all the intellectual life and feeling of a time come to a focus. He had a heart for everything, and an all-round enthusiasm for Nature unique in his day. Antiquity and Nature were his two passions, and the most beautiful descriptions of Nature before Rousseau and Goethe are contained in his _Commentaries_. Writing of the country round his home, he says: 'The sweet spring time had begun, and round about Siena the smiling hills were clothed with leaves and flowers, and the crops were rising in plenty in the fields. Even the pasture land quite close to the town affords an unspeakably lovely view; gently sloping hills, either planted with homely trees or vines, or ploughed for corn, look down on pleasant valleys in which grow crops, or green fields are to be seen, and brooks are even flowing. There are, too, many plantations, either natural or artificial, in which the birds sing with wondrous sweetness. Nor is there a mound on which the citizens have not built a magnificent estate; they are thus a little way out of the town. Through this district the Pope walked with joyous head.' Again and again love of Nature drew him away even in old age from town life and the circle of courtiers and flatterers; he was for ever finding new reasons to prolong his _villeggiatura_, despite the grumbling of his court, which had to put up with wretched inns or monasteries overrun by mice, where the rain came through the roofs and the necessaries of life were scanty.[10] His taste for these beautifully-situated monastic solitudes was a riddle to those around him. He wrote of his summer residence in Tibur: 'On all sides round the town in summer there are most lovely plantations, to which the Pope with his cardinals often retired for relaxation, sitting sometimes on some green sward beneath the olives, sometimes in a green meadow on the bank of the river Aino, whence he could see the clear waters. There are some meadows in a retired glen, watered by many streams; Pius often rested in these meadows near the luxuriant streams and the shady trees. He lived at Tibur with the Minorites on an elevation whence he could see the town and the course of the Aino as it flowed into the plain beneath him and through the quiet gardens, nor did anything else give him pleasure. 'When the summer was over, he had his bedroom in the house overlooking the Aino; from there the most beautiful view was to be seen, and also from a neighbouring mountain on the other side of the river, still covered with a green and leafy grove ... he completed a great part of his journey with the greatest enjoyment.' In May 1462 he went to the baths at Viterbo, and, old man as he was, gives this appreciative description of spring beauties by the way: 'The road by which he made for Sorianum was at that time of the year delightful; there was a tremendous quantity of genista, so that a great part of the field seemed a mass of flowering yellow, while the rest, covered as it was by shrubs and various grasses, brought purple and white and a thousand different colours before the eyes. It was the month of May, and everything was green. On one side were the smiling fields, on the other the smiling woods, in which the birds made sweet harmony. At early dawn he used to walk into the fields to catch the exquisite breeze before the day should grow hot, and gaze at the green crops and the flowering flax, which then, emulating heaven's own blue, gave the greatest joy to all beholders.... Now the crows are holding vigil, and the ringdoves; and the owl at times utters lament with funeral note. The place is most lovely; the view in the direction of Siena stretches as far as Amiata, and in the west reaches Mt. Argentarius.' In the plains the plague was raging; the sight of the people appealing to him as to a god, moved him to tears as he thought how few of the children would survive in the heat. He travelled to a castle charmingly placed on the lake of Bolsena, where 'there is a shady circular walk in the vineyard under the big grapes; stone steps shaded by the vine leaves lead down to the bank, where ilex oaks, alive with the songs of blackbirds, stand among the crags.' Halfway up the mountain, in the monastery of San Salvatore, he and his court took up their quarters. 'The most lovely scenery met the eye. As you look to the west from the higher houses, the view reaches beyond Ilcinum and Siena as far as the Pistorian Alps. To the north a variety of hills and the pleasant green of woods presents itself, stretching a distance of five miles; if your sight is good, your eye will travel as far as the Apennine range and can see Cortona.' There he passed the time, shooting birds, fishing, and rowing. 'In the cool air of the hills, among the old oaks and chestnuts, on the green meadows where there were no thorns to wound the feet, and no snakes or insects to hurt or annoy, the Pope passed days of unclouded happiness.' This is thoroughly modern: 'Silvarum amator,' as he calls himself, he includes both the details of the near and the general effect of the far-distant landscape. And with age his appreciation of it only seemed to increase; for instance, he says of Todi: 'A most lovely view meets the eye wherever you turn; you can see Perusia and all the valley that lies between, full of wide--spreading forts and fertile fields, and honoured by the river Tiber, which, drawing its coils along like a snake, divides Tuscia from Umbria, and, close to the city itself, enters many a mountain, passing through which it descends to the plain, murmuring as it goes, as though constrained against its will.' This is his description of a lake storm, during an excursion to the Albanian Mountains: As far as Ostia 'he had a delightful voyage; at night the sea began to be most unwontedly troubled, and a severe storm arose. The east wind rolled up the waters from their lowest depths, huge waves beat the shore; you could have heard the sea, as it were, groaning and wailing. So great was the force of the winds, that nothing seemed able to resist it; they raged and alternately fled and put one another to rout, they overturned woods and anything that withstood them. The air glittered with frequent lightning, the sky thundered, and terrific thunder-bolts fell from the clouds.... The night was pitch dark, though the flashes of lightning were continuous.' And of a lake at rest he says: 'The beauty of that lake is remarkable; everywhere it is surrounded by high rocks, the water is transparently clear. Nature, so far superior to art, provided a most pleasant journey. The Nemorian lake, with its crystal-clear waters, reflects the faces of those that look into it, and fills a deep basin. The descent from the top to the bottom is wooded. The poetic genius would never be awakened if it slept here; you would say it was the dwelling-place of the Muses, the home of the Nymphs, and, if there is any truth in legends, the hiding-place of Diana.' He visited the lakes among the mountains, climbing and resting under the trees; the view from Monte Cavo was his favourite, from which he could see Terracina, the lakes of Nemi and Albano, etc. He noted their extent and formation, and added: 'The genista, however, was especially delightful, covering, as it did with its flowers, the greater part of the plains. Then, moreover, Rome presented itself fully to the eyes, together with Soracte and the Sabine Land, and the Apennine range white with snow, and Tibur and Præneste.' It is clear that it was a thoroughly modern enthusiasm which attracted Æneas Sylvius to the country and gave him this ready pen for everything in Nature--everything, that is, except bare mountain summits. It is difficult to attribute this faculty for enjoying and describing scenery to the influence of antiquity alone, for, save the younger Pliny, I know of no Roman under the Empire who possessed it, and, besides, we do not know how far Pius II. was acquainted with Roman literature. We know that the re-awakening of classic literature exerted an influence upon the direction of the feeling for Nature in general, and, for the rest, very various elements coalesced. Like times produce like streams of tendency, and Hellenism, the Roman Empire, and the Renaissance were alike to some extent in the conditions of their existence and the results that flowed from them; the causal nexus between them is undeniable, and makes them the chief stepping-stones on the way to the modern. Theocritus, Meleager, Petrarch, and Æneas Sylvius may serve as representatives of the development of the feeling for Nature from classic to modern; they are the ancestors of our enthusiasm, the links in the chain which leads up to Rousseau, Goethe, Byron, and Shelley. From the autobiography of Æneas Sylvius and the lyrics of Petrarch we gain a far truer picture of the feeling of the period up to the sixteenth century than from any poetry in other countries. Even the epic had a more modern tone in Italy; Ariosto's descriptions were far ahead of any German epic. Humboldt pointed out very clearly the difference between the epic of the people and the epic of art--between Homer and Ariosto. Both, he said, are true painters of the world and Nature; but Ariosto pleases more by his brilliance and wealth of colour, Homer by purity of form and beauty of composition. Ariosto achieves through general effect, Homer through perfection of form. Nature is more naive in Homer, the subject is paramount, and the singer disappears; in Ariosto, Nature is sentimental, and the poet always remains in view upon the stage. In Homer all is closely knit, while Ariosto's threads are loosely spun, and he breaks them himself in play. Homer almost never describes, Ariosto always does. Ariosto's scenes and comparisons from Nature, being calculated for effect, are more subjective, and far more highly-coloured than Homer's. But they shew a sympathetic grasp. The modern bloom, so difficult to define, lies over them--something at once sensuous, sentimental, and chivalrous. He is given to describing lonely woodland scenery, fit places for trysts and lovers' rendezvous. In the 1st Canto of _Mad Orlando_: With flowery thorns, vermilion roses near Her, she upon a lovely bush doth meet, That mirrored doth in the bright waves appear, Shut out by lofty oaks from the sun's heat. Amidst the thickest shades there is a clear Space in the middle for a cool retreat; So mixed the leaves and boughs are, through them none Can see; they are impervious to the sun. In the 6th Canto the Hippogriff carries Roger into a country: Nor could he, had he searched the whole world through, Than this a more delightful country see.... Soft meads, clear streams, and banks affording shade, Hillocks and plains, by culture fertile made. Fair thickets of the cedar, palm and no Less pleasant myrtle, of the laurel sweet, Of orange trees, where fruit and flow'rs did grow, And which in various forms, all lovely, meet With their thick shades against the fervid glow Of summer days, afforded a retreat; And nightingales, devoid of fear, among Those branches fluttered, pouring forth their song. Amid the lilies white and roses red, Ever more freshened by the tepid air, The stag was seen, with his proud lofty head, And feeling safe, the rabbit and the hare.... Sapphires and rubies, topazes, pearls, gold, Hyacinths, chrysolites, and diamonds were Like the night flow'rs, which did their leaves unfold There on those glad plains, painted by the air So green the grass, that if we did behold It here, no emeralds could therewith compare; As fair the foliage of the trees was, which With fruit and flow'r eternally were rich. Amid the boughs, sing yellow, white, and blue, And red and green small feathered creatures gay; The crystals less limpidity of hue Than the still lakes or murmuring brooks display. A gentle breeze, that seemeth still to woo And never change from its accustomed way, Made all around so tremulous the air That no annoyance was the day's hot glare. (Canto 34.) Descriptions of time are short: From the hard face of earth the sun's bright hue Not yet its veil obscure and dark did rend; The Lycaonian offspring scarcely through The furrows of the sky his plough did send. (Canto 80.) Comparisons, especially about the beauty of women, are very artistic, recalling Sappho and Catullus: The tender maid is like unto the rose In the fair garden on its native thorn; Whilst it alone and safely doth repose, Nor flock nor shepherd crops it; dewy morn, Water and earth, the breeze that sweetly blows, Are gracious to it; lovely dames adorn With it their bosoms and their beautiful Brows; it enamoured youths delight to cull. (Canto 1.) Only, Alcina fairest was by far As is the sun more fair than every star.... Milk is the bosom, of luxuriant size, And the fair neck is round and snowy white; Two unripe ivory apples fall and rise Like waves upon the sea-beach when a slight Breeze stirs the ocean. (Canto 7.) Now in a gulf of bliss up to the eyes And of fair things, to swim he doth begin. (Canto 7.) So closely doth the ivy not enlace The tree where firmly rooted it doth stand, As clasp each other in their warm embrace These lovers, by each other's sweet breath fanned. Sweet flower, of which on India's shore no trace Is, or on the Sabæan odorous sand. (Canto 7.) Her fair face the appearance did maintain That sometimes shewn is by the sky in spring, When at the very time that falls the rain, The sun aside his cloudy veil doth fling. And as the nightingale its pleasant strain Then on the boughs of the green trees doth sing, Thus Love doth bathe his pinions at those bright But tearful eyes, enjoying the clear light. (Canto 11.) But as more fickle than the leaf was she, When it in autumn doth more sapless grow, And the old wind doth strip it from the tree, And doth before it in its fury grow. (Canto 21.) He uses the sea: As when a bark doth the deep ocean plough, That two winds strike with an alternate blast, 'Tis now sent forward by the one, and now Back by the other in its first place cast, And whirled from prow to poop, from poop to prow, But urged by the most potent wind at last Philander thus irresolute between The two thoughts, did to the least wicked lean. (Canto 21.) As comes the wave upon the salt sea shore Which the smooth wind at first in thought hath fanned; Greater the second is than that before It, and the third more fiercely follows, and Each time the humour more abounds, and more Doth it extend its scourge upon the land: Against Orlando thus from vales below And hills above, doth the vile rabble grow. (Canto 24.) These comparisons not only shew faithful and personal observation, but are far more subjective and subtle than, for instance, Dante's. The same holds good of Tasso. How beautiful in detail, and how sentimental too, is this from _Jerusalem Delivered_: Behold how lovely blooms the vernal rose When scarce the leaves her early bud disclose, When, half unwrapt, and half to view revealed, She gives new pleasure from her charms concealed. But when she shews her bosom wide displayed, How soon her sweets exhale, her beauties fade! No more she seems the flower so lately loved, By virgins cherished and by youths approved. So swiftly fleeting with the transient day Passes the flower of mortal life away. Not less subjective is: Like a ray of light on water A smile of soft desire played in her liquid eyes. (Sonnet 18.) The most famous lines in this poem are those which describe a romantic garden so vividly that Humboldt says 'it reminds one of the charming scenery of Sorrento.' It certainly proves that even epic poetry tried to describe Nature for her own sake: The garden then unfolds a beauteous scene, With flowers adorned and ever living green; There silver lakes reflect the beaming day, Here crystal streams in gurgling fountains play. Cool vales descend and sunny hills arise, And groves and caves and grottos strike the eyes. Art showed her utmost power; but art concealed With greater charm the pleased attention held. It seemed as Nature played a sportive part And strove to mock the mimic works of art: By powerful magic breathes the vernal air, And fragrant trees eternal blossoms bear: Eternal fruits on every branch endure, Those swelling from their buds, and these mature: The joyous birds, concealed in every grove, With gentle strife prolong the notes of love. Soft zephyrs breathe on woods and waters round, The woods and waters yield a murmuring sound; When cease the tuneful choir, the wind replies, But, when they sing, in gentle whisper dies; By turns they sink, by turns their music raise And blend, with equal skill, harmonious lays. But even here the scene is surrounded by an imaginary atmosphere; flowers, fruit, creatures, and atmosphere all lie under a magic charm. Tasso's importance for our subject lies far more in his much-imitated pastorals. The _Arcadia_ of Jacopo Sannazaro, which appeared in 1504, a work of poetic beauty and still greater literary importance,[11] paved the way for pastoral poetry, which, like the sonnet, was interwoven with prose. The shepherd's occupations are described with care, though many of the songs and terms of expression rather fit the man of culture than the child of Nature, and he had that genuine enthusiasm for the rural which begets a convincing eloquence. ''Tis you,' he says at the end, addressing the Muse, 'who first woke the sleeping woods, and taught the shepherds how to strike up their lost songs.' Bembo wrote this inscription for his grave: Strew flowers o'er the sacred ashes, here lies Sannazaro; With thee, gentle Virgil, he shares Muse and grave. Virgil too was industriously imitated in the didactic poetry of his country. Giovanni Rucellai (born 1475) wrote a didactic poem, _The Bees_, which begins: 'O chaste virgins, winged visitants of flowery banks, whilst I prepared to sing your praise in lofty verse, at peep of day I was o'ercome by sleep, and then appeared a chorus of your tiny folk, and from their rich mellifluous haunts, in a clear voice these words flowed forth.... And I will sing how liquid and serene the air distils sweet honey, heavenly gilt, on flowerets and on grass, and how the bees, chaste and industrious, gather it, and thereof with care and skill make perfumed wax to grace the altars of our God.' And a didactic poem by Luigi Alamanni (born 1495), called _Husbandry_, has: 'O blessed is he who dwells in peace, the actual tiller of his joyous fields, to whom, in his remoteness, the most righteous earth brings food, and secure in well-being, he rejoices in his heart. If thou art not surrounded by society rich with purple and gems, nor with houses adorned with costly woods, statues, and gold;... at least, secure in the humble dwelling of wood from the copse hard by, and common stones collected close at hand, which thine own hand has founded and built, whenever thou awakenest at the approach of dawn, thou dost not find outside those who bring news of a thousand events contrary to thy desires.... Thou wanderest at will, now quickly, now slowly, across the green meadow, through the wood, over the grassy hill, or by the stream. Now here, now there ... thou handlest the hatchet, axe, scythe, or hoe.... To enjoy in sober comfort at almost all seasons, with thy dear children, the fruits of thine own tree, the tree planted by thyself, this brings a sweetness sweet beyond all others.' These didactic writings, inspired by Virgilian Georgics, show a distinct preference for the idyllic. Sannazaro's _Arcadia_ went through sixty editions in the sixteenth century alone. Tasso reckoned with the prevalent taste of his day in _Aminta_, which improved the then method of dramatizing a romantic idyll. The whole poem bears the stamp of an idealizing and romantic imagination, and embodies in lyric form his sentimental idea of the Golden Age and an ideal world of Nature. Even down to its details _Aminta_ recalls the pastorals of Longos; and Daphne's words (Act I. Scene 1) suggest the most feeling outpourings of Kallimachos and Nonnos: And callest thou sweet spring-time The time of rage and enmity, Which breathing now and smiling, Reminds the whole creation, The animal, the human, Of loving! Dost thou see not How all things are enamoured Of this enamourer, rich with joy and health? Observe that turtle-dove, How, toying with his dulcet murmuring, He kisses his companion. Hear that nightingale Who goes from bough to bough Singing with his loud heart, 'I love!' 'I love!'... The very trees Are loving. See with what affection there, And in how many a clinging turn and twine, The vine holds fast its husband. Fir loves fir, The pine the pine, and ash and willow and beech Each towards the other yearns, and sighs and trembles. That oak tree which appears So rustic and so rough, Even that has something warm in its sound heart; And hadst thou but a spirit and sense of love, Thou hadst found out a meaning for its whispers. Now tell me, would thou be Less than the very plants and have no love? One seems to hear Sakuntala and her friends talking, or Akontios complaining. So, too, when the unhappy lover laments (Aminta): In my lamentings I have found A very pity in the pebbly waters, And I have found the trees Return them a kind voice: But never have I found, Nor ever hope to find, Compassion in this hard and beautiful What shall I call her? Aminta describes to Tirsis how his love grew from boyhood up: There grew by little and little in my heart, I knew not from what root, But just as the grass grows that sows itself, An unknown something which continually Made me feel anxious to be with her. Sylvia kisses him: Never did bee from flower Suck sugar so divine As was the honey that I gathered then From those twin roses fresh. In Act II. Scene 1, the rejected Satyr, like the rejected Polyphemus or Amaryllis in Theocritus, complains in antitheses which recall Longos: The woods hide serpents, lions, and bears under their green shade, and in your bosom hatred, disdain, and cruelty dwell.... Alas, when I bring the earliest flowers, you refuse them obstinately, perhaps because lovelier ones bloom on your own face; if I offer beautiful apples, you reject them angrily, perhaps because your beautiful bosom swells with lovelier ones.... and yet I am not to be despised, for I saw myself lately in the clear water, when winds were still and there were no waves. This is the sentimental pastoral poetry of Hellenism reborn and intensified. So with the elegiac motive so loved by Alexandrian and Roman poets, praise of a happy past time; the chorus sings in _Aminta_: O lovely age of gold, Not that the rivers rolled With milk, or that the woods wept honeydew; Not that the ready ground Produced without a wound, Or the mild serpent had no tooth that slew.... But solely that.... the law of gold, That glad and golden law, all free, all fitted, Which Nature's own hand wrote--What pleases is permitted!... Go! let us love, the daylight dies, is born; But unto us the light Dies once for all, and sleep brings on eternal night. Over thirty pastoral plays can be ascribed to Italy in the last third of the sixteenth century. The most successful imitator of Tasso was Giovanni Battista Guarini (born 1537) in _The True Shepherd (II Pastor Fido)_. One quotation will shew how he outvied _Aminta_. In Act I, Scene 1, Linko says: Look round thee, Sylvia; behold All in the world that's amiable and fair Is love's sweet work: heaven loves, the earth, the sea, Are full of love and own his mighty sway. Love through the woods The fiercest beasts; love through the waves attends Swift gliding dolphins and the sluggish whales. That little bird which sings.... Oh, had he human sense, 'I burn with love,' he'd cry, 'I burn with love,' And in his heart he truly burns, And in his warble speaks A language, well by his dear mate conceived, Who answering cries, 'And I too burn with love.' He praises woodland solitude: Dear happy groves! And them all silent, solitary gloom, True residence of peace and of repose! How willingly, how willingly my steps To you return, and oh! if but my stars Benightly had decreed My life for solitude, and as my wish Would naturally prompt to pass my days-- No, not the Elysian fields, Those happy gardens of the demi-gods, Would I exchange for yon enchanting shades. The love lyrics of the later Renaissance are remarkably rich in vivid pictures of Nature combined with much personal sentiment. Petrarch's are the model; he inspired Vittoria Colonna, and she too revelled in sad feelings and memories, especially about the death of her husband:[12] 'When I see the earth adorned and beautiful with a thousand lovely and sweet flowers, and how in the heavens every star is resplendent with varied colours; when I see that every solitary and lively creature is moved by natural instinct to come out of the forests and ancient caverns to seek its fellow by day and by night; and when I see the plains adorned again with glorious flowers and new leaves, and hear every babbling brook with grateful murmurs bathing its flowery banks, so that Nature, in love with herself, delights to gaze on the beauty of her works, I say to myself, reflecting: "How brief is this our miserable mortal life!" Yesterday this plain was covered with snow, to-day it is green and flowery. And again in a moment the beauty of the heavens is overclouded by a fierce wind, and the happy loving creatures remain hidden amidst the mountains and the woods; nor can the sweet songs of the tender plants and happy birds be heard, for these cruel storms have dried up the flowers on the ground; the birds are mute, the most rapid streams and smallest rivulets are checked by frost, and what was one hour so beautiful and joyous, is, for a season, miserable and dead.' Here the two pictures in the inner and outer life are equally vivid to the poetess; it is the real 'pleasure of sorrow,' and she lingers over them with delight. Bojardo, too, reminds us of Petrarch; for example, in Sonnet 89:[13] Thou shady wood, inured my griefs to hear, So oft expressed in quick and broken sighs; Thou glorious sun, unused to set or rise But as the witness of my daily fear; Ye wandering birds, ye flocks and ranging deer, Exempt from my consuming agonies; Thou sunny stream to whom my sorrow flies 'Mid savage rocks and wilds, no human traces near. O witnesses eternal, how I live! My sufferings hear, and win to their relief That scornful beauty--tell her how I grieve! But little 'tis to her to hear my grief. To her, who sees the pangs which I receive, And seeing, deigns them not the least relief. Lorenzo de Medici's idylls were particularly rich in descriptions of Nature and full of feeling. 'Here too that delight in pain, in telling of their unhappiness and renunciation; here too those wonderful tones which distinguish the sonnets of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries so favourably from those of a later time.' (Geiger.) There is a delicate compliment in this sonnet: O violets, sweet and fresh and pure indeed, Culled by that hand beyond all others fair! What rain or what pure air has striven to bear Flowers far excelling those 'tis wont to yield? What pearly dew, what sun, or sooth what earth Did you with all these subtle charms adorn; And whence is this sweet scent by Nature drawn, Or heaven who deigns to grant it to such worth? O, my dear violets, the hand which chose You from all others, that has made you fair, 'Twas that adorned you with such charm and worth; Sweet hand! which took my heart altho' it knows Its lowliness, with that you may compare. To that give thanks, and to none else on earth. Thus we see that the Italians of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries were penetrated through and through by the modern spirit--were, indeed, its pioneers. They recognized their own individuality, pondered their own inner life, delighted in the charms of Nature, and described them in prose and poetry, both as counterparts to feeling and for her own sake. Over all the literature we have been considering--whether poetic comparison and personification, or sentimental descriptions of pastoral life and a golden age, of blended inner and outer life, or of the finest details of scenery--there lies that bloom of the modern, that breath of subjective personality, so hard to define. The rest of contemporary Europe had no such culture of heart and mind, no such marked individuality, to shew. The further growth of the Renaissance feeling, itself a rebirth of Hellenic and Roman feeling, was long delayed. Let us turn next to Spain and Portugal--the countries chiefly affected by the great voyages of discovery, not only socially and economically, but artistically--and see the effect of the new scenery upon their imagination. CHAPTER V ENTHUSIASM FOR NATURE AMONG THE DISCOVERERS AND CATHOLIC MYSTICS The great achievement of the Italian Renaissance was the discovery of the world within, of the whole deep contents of the human spirit. Burckhart, praising this achievement, says: If we were to collect the pearls from the courtly and knightly poetry of all the countries of the West during the two preceding centuries, we should have a mass of wonderful divinations and single pictures of the inward life, which at first sight would seem to rival the poetry of the Italians. Leaving lyrical poetry out of account, Godfrey of Strassburg gives us, in his _Tristram and Isolt_, a representation of human passion, some features of which are immortal. But these pearls lie scattered in the ocean of artificial convention, and they are altogether something very different from a complete objective picture of the inward man and his spiritual wealth. The discovery of the beauty of scenery followed as a necessary corollary of this awakening of individualism, this fathoming of the depths of human personality. For only to fully-developed man does Nature fully disclose herself. This had already been stated by one of the most philosophic minds of the time, Pico della Mirandola, in his speech on the dignity of man. God, he tells us, made man at the close of creation to know the laws of the universe, to love its beauty, to admire its greatness. He bound him to no fixed place, to no prescribed form of work, and by no iron necessity; but gave him freedom to will and to move. 'I have set thee,' said the Creator to Adam, 'in the midst of the world, that thou mayest the more easily behold and see all that is therein. I created thee a being neither heavenly nor earthly, neither mortal nor immortal, only that thou mightest be free to shape and to overcome thyself. Thou mayest sink into a beast, and be born again to the Divine likeness. The brutes bring with them from their mothers' body what they will carry with them as long as they live; the higher spirits are from the beginning, or soon after, what they will be for ever. To thee alone is given a growth and a development depending on thine own free will. Thou bearest in thee the germs of a universal life.' The best men of the Renaissance realized this ideal of an all-round development, and it was the glory of Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, that she found a new realm in the inner man at the very time that her discoveries across the seas were enlarging the boundaries of the external world, and her science was studying it. Mixed as the motives of the discoverers must have been, like those of the crusaders before them, and probably, for the most part, self-interested, it is easy to imagine the surprise they must have felt at seeing ignorant people, who, to quote Peter Martyr (de rebus oceanicis):[1] Naked, without weights or measures or death-dealing money, live in a Golden Age without laws, without slanderous judges, without the scales of the balance. Contented with Nature, they spend their lives utterly untroubled for the future.... Theirs is a Golden Age; they do not enclose their farms with trench or wall or hurdle; their gardens are open. Without laws, without the scales of the balance, without judges, they guard the right by Nature's light. And their wonder at the novelties in climate and vegetation, the strange forests, brilliant birds, and splendid stars of the tropics, must have been no less. Yet it is one thing to feel, and another to find words to convey the feeling to others; and the explorers often expressed regret for their lack of skill in this respect. Also, and this is more important in criticizing what they wrote, these seamen were mostly simple, unlettered folk, to whom a country's wealth in natural products and their practical value made the strongest appeal, and whose admiration of bays, harbours, trees, fields of grain, etc., was measured by the same standard of utility. Even such unskilled reporters did not entirely fail to refer to the beauty of Nature; but had it not been for the original and powerful mind of Christopher Columbus, we should have had little more in the way of description than 'pleasant,' 'pretty,' and such words. Marco Polo described his journey to the coast of Cormos[2] in very matter-of-fact fashion, but not without a touch of satisfaction at the peculiarities of the place: You then approach the very beautiful plain of Formosa, watered by fine rivers, with plantations of the date palms, and having the air filled with francolins, parrots, and other birds unknown to our climate. You ride two days to it, and then arrive at the ocean, on which there is a city and a fort named Cormos. The ships of India bring thither all kinds of spiceries, precious stones, and pearls, cloths of silk and gold, elephants' teeth, and many other articles.... They sow wheat, barley, and other kinds of grain in the month of November, and reap them in March, when they become ripe and perfect; but none except the date will endure till May, being dried up by the extreme heat. Elsewhere he wrote of scenery in the same strain: of the Persian deserts, and the green table-lands and wild gorges of Badachshan, Japan with its golden roofed palaces, paradisaical Sunda Islands with their 'abundance of treasure and costly spices,' Java the less with its eight kingdoms, etc.; but naturally his chief interest was given to the manners and customs of the various races, and the fertility and uses of their countries. In Bishop Osorio's _History of Emmanuel, King of Portugal_, we see some pleasure in the beauties of Nature peeping through the matter-of-fact tone of the day. Thus, speaking of the companions of Vasco da Gama, he says that they admired the far coast of Africa: They descried some little islands, which appeared extremely pleasant; the trees were lofty, the meadows of a beautiful verdure, and great numbers of cattle frisked about everywhere; they could see the inhabitants walking upon the shore in vast numbers.... Of Mozambique he says: The palm trees are of a great height, covered with long prickly leaves; broad-spreading boughs afford an agreeable shade, and bear nuts of a great size, called cocoes. Of Melinda: The city stands in a beautiful plain, surrounded with a variety of fine gardens; these are stocked with all sorts of trees, especially the orange, the flowers of which yield a most graceful diffusive smell. The country is rich and plentiful, abounding not only with tame and domestic cattle, but with game of all kinds, which the natives hunt down or take with nets. Of Zanzibar: The soil of this place is rich and fertile, and it abounds with springs of the most excellent water; the whole island is covered with beautiful woods, which are extremely fragrant from the many wild citrons growing there, which diffuse the most grateful scent. Of Brazil, which is 'extremely pleasant and the soil fruitful': Clothed with a beautiful verdure, covered with tall trees, abounding with plenty of excellent water ... and so healthy that the inhabitants make no use of medicines, for almost all who die here are not cut off by any distemper, but worn out by age. Here are many large rivers, besides a vast number of delightful springs. The plains are large and spacious, and afford excellent pasture.... In short, the whole country affords a most beautiful prospect, being diversified with hills and valleys, and these covered with thick shady woods stocked with great variety of trees, many of which our people were quite strangers to: of these there was one of a particular nature, the leaves of which, when cut, sent forth a kind of balsam. The trees used in dyeing scarlet grow here in great plenty and to a great height. The soil likewise produces the most useful plants. Of Ormuz, near Arabia: The name of the island seems to be taken from the ancient city of Armuza in Caramania ... the place is sandy and barren, and the soil so very poor that it produces nothing fit for human sustenance, neither by nature nor by the most laborious cultivation ... yet here you might see greater plenty of these, as well as all luxurious superfluities, than in most other countries of a richer and more fertile soil, for the place, poor in itself, having become the great mart for the commodities of India, Persia, and Arabia, was thus abundantly stocked with the produce of all these countries. Peter Martyr's[3] point of view was much the same. He was full of surprise at the splendour round him, and the advantages such fertility offered to husbandry: Thus after a few days with cheerful hearts they espied the land long looked for.... As they coasted along by the shore of certain of these islands, they heard nightingales sing in the thick woods in the month of November. They found also great rivers of fresh water and natural havens of capacity to harbour great navies of ships.... They found there wild geese, turtle-doves, and ducks, much greater than ours, and as white as swans, with heads of purple colour. Also popinjays, of the which some are green, some yellow, and having their feathers intermingled with green, yellow, and purple, which varieties delighted the sense not a little.... They entered into a main large sea, having in it innumerable islands, marvellously differing one from another; for some of them were very fruitful, full of herbs and trees, other some very dry, barren, and rough, with high rocky mountains of stone, whereof some were of bright blue, or azurine colour, and other glistening white. He filled a whole page with descriptions of the wonderful wealth of flowers, fruit, and vegetables of all kinds, which the ground yields even in February. The richness of the prairie grass, the charm of the rivers, the wealth of fruit, the enormous size of the trees (with a view to native houses), the various kinds of pines, palms, and chestnuts, and their uses, the immense downfall of water carried to the sea by the rivers--all this he noted with admiration; but industrial interest outweighed the æsthetic, even when he called Spain happier than Italy. There is no trace of any real feeling for scenery, any grasp of landscape as a whole; he did not advance beyond scattered details, which attracted his eye chiefly for their material uses. But there is real delight in Nature in the account of a journey to the Cape Verde Islands, undertaken on the suggestion of Henry the Navigator by Aloise da Mosto,[4] an intelligent Venetian nobleman: Cape de Verde is so called because the Portuguese, who had discovered it about a year before, found it covered with trees, which continue green all the year round. This is a high and beautiful Cape, which runs a good length into the sea, and has two hills or little mountains at the point thereof. There are several villages of negroes from Senega, on and about the promontory, who dwell in thatched houses close to the shore, and in sight of those who sail by.... The coast is all low and full of fine large trees, which are constantly green; that is, they never wither as those in Europe do, for the new leaves grow before the old ones fall off. These trees are so near the shore that they seem to drink out of the sea. It is a most beautiful coast to behold, and the author, who had sailed both in the East and West, never saw any comparable with it. As Ruge says: The delight of this solid and prudent citizen of Strasburg in the beauty of the tropics is lost in translation, but very evident in the original account.[5] After reading it, we cannot quite say with Humboldt that Columbus was the very first to give fluent expression to Nature's beauty on the shores of the New World; none the less, and apart from his importance in other respects, he remains the chief representative of his time in the matter. Humboldt noted this in his critical examination of the history of geography in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in which he pointed out his deep feeling for Nature, and also, what only those who know the difficulties of language at the time can appreciate, the beauty and simplicity of his expression of it.[6] Columbus is a striking example of the fact that a man's openness to Nature increases with his general inner growth. No one doubts that uneducated sailors, like other unlettered people, are vividly impressed by fine scenery, especially when it is new to them, if they possess a spark of mental refinement. They have the feeling, but are unable to express it in words. But, as Humboldt says, feeling improves speech; with increased culture, the power of expression increases. We owe a debt of gratitude to Fernandez de Navarrete[7] for the Diary in which we can trace Columbus' love for Nature increasing to 'a deep and poetic feeling for the majesty of creation.' He wrote, October 8th, 1492, in his diary: 'Thanks be to God,' says the Admiral, 'the air is very soft like the April at Seville, and it is a pleasure to be there, so balmy are the breezes.' And Humboldt says: The physiognomy and forms of the vegetation, the impenetrable thickets of the forests, in which one can scarcely distinguish the stems to which the several blossoms and leaves belong, the wild luxuriance of the flowering soil along the humid shores, and the rose-coloured flamingoes which, fishing at early morning at the mouth of the rivers, impart animation to the scenery,--all in turn arrested the attention of the old mariner as he sailed along the shores of Cuba, between the small Lucayan Islands and the Jardinillos. Each new country seemed to him more beautiful than the last; he complained that he could not find new words in which to give the Queen an impression of the beauty of the Cuban coast. It will repay us to examine the Diary more closely, since Humboldt only treated it shortly and in scattered extracts, and it has been partly falsified, unintentionally, by attempts to modernize the language instead of adhering to literal translation. What Peschel says, for instance, is pretty but distinctly exaggerated: Columbus was never weary of listening to the nightingales, comparing the genial Indian climate with the Andalusian spring, and admiring the luxuriant wilderness on these humid shores, with their dense vegetation and forests so rich in all kinds of plants, and alive with swarms of parrots ... with an open eye for all the beauties of Nature and all the wonders of creation, he looked at the splendour of the tropics very much as a tender father looks into the bright eyes of his child.[8] The Diary of November 3rd says: He could see nothing, owing to the dense foliage of the trees, which were very fresh and odoriferous; so that he felt no doubt that there were aromatic herbs among them. He said that all he saw was so beautiful that his eyes could never tire of gazing upon such loveliness, nor his ears of listening to the songs of birds. November 14th: He saw so many islands that he could not count them all, with very high land covered with trees of many kinds and an infinite number of palms. He was much astonished to see so many lofty islands, and assured the Sovereigns that the mountains and islands he had seen since yesterday seemed to him to be second to none in the world, so high and clear of clouds and snow, with the sea at their bases so deep. November 25th: He saw a large stream of beautiful water falling from the mountains above, with a loud noise.... Just then the sailor boys called out that they had found large pines. The Admiral looked up the hill and saw that they were so wonderfully large, that he could not exaggerate their height and straightness, like stout yet fine spindles. He perceived that here there was material for great store of planks and masts for the largest ships in Spain ... the mountains are very high, whence descend many limpid streams, and all the hills are covered with pines, and an infinity of diverse and beautiful trees. November 27th: The freshness and beauty of the trees, the clearness of the water and the birds, made it all so delightful that he wished never to leave them. He said to the men who were with him that to give a true relation to the Sovereigns of the things they had seen, a thousand tongues would not suffice, nor his hand to write it, for that it was like a scene of enchantment. December 13th: The nine men well armed, whom he sent to explore a certain place, said, with regard to the beauty of the land they saw, that the best land in Castille could not be compared with it. The Admiral also said that there was no comparison between them, nor did the Plain of Cordova come near them, the difference being as great as between night and day. They said that all these lands were cultivated, and that a very wide and large river passed through the centre of the valley and could irrigate all the fields. All the trees were green and full of fruit, and the plants tall and covered with flowers. The roads were broad and good. The climate was like April in Castille; the nightingale and other birds sang as they do in Spain during that month, and it was the most pleasant place in the world. Some birds sing sweetly at night, the crickets and frogs are heard a good deal. All this shews a naive and spontaneous delight in Nature, as free from sentimentality as from any grasp of landscape as a distinct entity. In a letter about Cuba, which Humboldt gives, he says: The lands are high, and there are many very lofty mountains ... all most beautiful, of a thousand different shapes, accessible and covered with trees of a thousand kinds of such great height that they seemed to reach the skies. I am told that the trees never lose their foliage, and I can well believe it, for I observed that they were as green and luxuriant as in Spain in the month of May. Some were in bloom, others bearing fruit, and others otherwise according to their nature. There were palm trees of six or eight kinds, wonderful in their beautiful variety; but this is the case with all the other trees; fruits and grasses, trees, plants and fruits filled us with admiration. It contains extraordinary pine groves and very extensive plains. Humboldt here comments that these often-repeated expressions of admiration prove a strong feeling for the beauty of Nature, since they are concerned with foliage and shade, not with precious metals. The next letter shews the growing power of description: Reaching the harbour of Bastimentos, I put in.... The storm and a rapid current kept me in for fourteen days, when I again set sail, but not with favourable weather.... I had already made four leagues when the storm recommenced and wearied me to such a degree that I absolutely knew not what to do; my wound re-opened, and for nine days my life was despaired of. Never was the sea seen so high, so terrific, and so covered with foam; not only did the wind oppose our proceeding onward, but it also rendered it highly dangerous to run in for any headland, and kept me in that sea, which seemed to me a sea of blood, seething like a cauldron on a mighty fire. Never did the sky look more fearful; during one day and one night it burned like a furnace, and emitted flashes in such fashion that each time I looked to see if my masts and my sails were not destroyed; these flashes came with such alarming fury that we all thought the ship must have been consumed. All this time the waters from heaven never ceased, not to say that it rained, for it was like a repetition of the Deluge. The men were at this time so crushed in spirit, that they longed for death as a deliverance from so many martyrdoms. Twice already had the ships suffered loss in boats, anchors, and rigging, and were now lying bare without sails. These extracts shew how feeling for Nature in unlettered minds could develop into an enthusiasm which begot to some extent its own power of expression. Columbus was entirely deficient in all previous knowledge of natural history; but he was gifted with deep feeling (the account of the nocturnal visions in the _Lettera Rarissima_ is proof of this)[9], mental energy, and a capacity for exact observation which many of the other explorers did not possess, and these faculties made up for what he lacked in education. In Cuba alone, he distinguishes seven or eight different species of palm more beautiful and taller than the date tree; he informs his learned friend Anghiera that he has seen pines and palms wonderfully associated together in one and the same plain, and he even so acutely observed the vegetation around him, that he was the first to notice that there were pines in the mountains of Cibao, whose fruits are not fir cones but berries like the olives of the Axarafe de Sevilla. (_Cosmos._) Most of Vespucci's narratives of travel, especially his letters to the Medici, only contain adventures and descriptions of manners and customs. He lacked the originality and enthusiasm which gave the power of the wing to Columbus. That imposing Portuguese poem, the _Lusiad_ of Camoens, is full of jubilation over the discovery of the New World. Camoens made his notes of foreign places at first hand; he had served as a soldier, fought at the foot of Atlas in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, had doubled the Cape twice, and, inspired by a deep love for Nature, had spent sixteen years in examining the phenomena of the ocean on the Indian and Chinese shores. He was a great sea painter. His poetic and inventive power remind one at times of Dante--for instance, in the description of the Dream Face; and he pictures foreign lands with the clearness and detail of the discoverers and later travellers. Here and there his poetry is like the Diary of Columbus translated into verse--epic verse. He had the same fiery spirit, nerve, and fresh insight, with the poet's gift added. (None the less, the classic apparatus of deities in Thetys' _Apology_ is no adornment.) Comparisons from Nature and animals are few but detailed: E'en as the prudent ants which towards their nest Bearing the apportioned heavy burden go, Exercise all their forces at their best, Hostile to hostile winter's frost and snow; There, all their toils and labours stand confessed, There, never looked-for energy they show; So, from the Lusitanians to avert Their horrid Fate, the nymphs their power exert. Thus, as in some sequestered sylvan mere The frogs (the Lycian people formerly), If that by chance some person should appear While out of water they incautious be, Awake the pool by hopping here and there, To fly the danger which they deem they see, And gathering to some safe retreat they know, Only their heads above the water show--So fly the Moors. E'en as when o'er the parching flame there glows A flame, which may from some chance cause ignite, (All while the whistling, puffing Boreas blows), Fanned by the wind sets all the growth alight, The shepherd's group, lying in their repose Of quiet sleep, aroused in wild afright At crackling flames that spread both wide and high, Gather their goods and to the village fly; So doth the Moor. E'en as the daisy which once brightly smiled, Plucked by unruly hands before its hour, And harshly treated by the careless child, All in her chaplet tied with artless power. Droops, of its colour and its scent despoiled, So seems this pale and lifeless damsel flower; The roses of her lips are dry and dead, With her sweet life the mingled white and red. The following simile reminds us of the far-fetched comparison of Apollonios Rhodios[11]: As the reflected lustre from the bright Steel mirror, or of beauteous crystal fine, Which, being stricken by the solar light, Strikes back and on some other part doth shine; And when, to please the child's vain curious sight, Moved o'er the house, as may his hand incline, Dances on walls and roof and everywhere, Restless and tremulous, now here now there, So did the wandering judgment fluctuate. He says of Diana: And, as confronted on her way she pressed, So beautiful her form and bearing were, That everything that saw her love confessed, The stars, the heaven, and the surrounding air. The Indus and Ganges are personified in stanza xiv. 74, the Cape in v. 50. His time references are mostly mixed up with ancient mythology: As soon, however, as the enamelled morn O'er the calm heaven her lovely looks outspread, Opening to bright Hyperion, new-born, Her purple portals as he raised his head, Then the whole fleet their ships with flags adorn. and: So soon, however, as great Sol has spread His rays o'er earth, whom instantly to meet, Her purple brow Aurora rising shews, And rudely life around the horizon throws. He is at his best in writing of the sea. He says of the explorers on first setting sail: Now were they sailing o'er wide ocean bright, The restless waves dividing as they flew; The winds were breathing prosperous and light, The vessels' hollow sails were filled to view; The seas were covered o'er with foaming white Where the advancing prows were cutting through The consecrated waters of the deep.... Thus went we forth these unknown seas to explore, Which by no people yet explored had been; Seeing new isles and climes which long before Great Henry, first discoverer, had seen. Now did the moon in purest lustre rise On Neptune's silvery waves her beams to pour, With stars attendant glittered all the skies, E'en like a meadow daisy-spangled o'er; The fury of the winds all peaceful lies In the dark caverns close along the shore, But still the night-watch constant vigils keep, As long had been their custom on the deep. To tell thee of the dangers of the sea At length, which human understanding scare, Thunder-storms, sudden, dreadful in degree, Lightnings, which seem to set on fire the air, Dark floods of rain, nights of obscurity, Rollings of thunder which the world would tear, Were not less labour than a great mistake, E'en if I had an iron voice to speak. He describes the electric fires of St Elmo and the gradual development of the waterspout: I saw, and clearly saw, the living light Which sailors everywhere as sacred hold In time of storm and crossing winds that fight, Of tempest dark and desperation cold; Nor less it was to all a marvel quite, And matter surely to alarm the bold, To observe the sea-clouds, with a tube immense, Suck water up from Ocean's deep expanse.... A fume or vapour thin and subtle rose, And by the wind begin revolving there; Thence to the topmost clouds a tube it throws, But of a substance so exceeding rare.... But when it was quite gorged it then withdrew The foot that on the sea beneath had grown, And o'er the heavens in fine it raining flew, The jacent waters watering with its own. The storm at sea reminds us of Æschylus in splendour: The winds were such, that scarcely could they shew With greater force or greater rage around, Than if it were this purpose then to blow The mighty tower of Babel to the ground.... Now rising to the clouds they seem to go O'er the wild waves of Neptune borne on end; Now to the bowels of the deep below; It seems to all their senses, they descend; Notus and Auster, Boreas, Aquila, The very world's machinery would rend; While flashings fire the black and ugly night And shed from pole to pole a dazzling light.... But now the star of love beamed forth its ray, Before the sun, upon the horizon clear, And visited, as messenger of day, The earth and spreading sea, with brow to cheer.... And, as it subsides: The mountains that we saw at first appeared, In the far view, like clouds and nothing more. Off the coast of India: Now o'er the hills broke forth the morning light Where Ganges' stream is murmuring heard to flow, Free from the storm and from the first sea's fight, Vain terror from their hearts is banished now. His magic island, the Ilha of Venus, could only have been imagined by a poet who had travelled widely. All the delights of the New World are there, with the vegetation of Southern Europe added. It is a poet's triumphant rendering of impressions which the discoverers so often felt their inability to convey: From far they saw the island fresh and fair, Which Venus o'er the waters guiding drove (E'en as the wind the canvas white doth bear).... Where the coast forms a bay for resting-place, Curved and all quiet, and whose shining sand Is painted with red shells by Venus' hand.... Three beauteous mounts rise nobly to the view, Lifting with graceful pride their sweeling head, O'er which enamelled grass adorning grew. In this delightful lovely island glad, Bright limpid streams their rushing waters threw From heights with rich luxuriant verdure clad, 'Midst the white rocks above, their source derive, The streams sonorous, sweet, and fugitive.... A thousand trees toward heaven their summits raise, With fruits odoriferous and fair; The orange in its produce bright displays The tint that Daphne carried in her hair; The citron on the ground its branches lays, Laden with yellow weights it cannot bear; The beauteous melons, which the whole perfume The virgin bosom in their form assume. The forest trees, which on the hills combine To ennoble them with leafy hair o'ergrown, Are poplars of Alcides; laurels shine, The which the shining God loved as his own; Myrtles of Cytherea with the pine Of Cybele, by other love o'erthrown; The spreading cypress tree points out where lies The seat of the ethereal paradise.... Pomegranates rubicund break forth and shine, A tint whereby thou, ruby, losest sheen. 'Twixt the elm branches hangs the jocund vine, With branches some of red and some of green.... Then the refined and splendid tapestry, Covering the rustic ground beneath the feet, Makes that of Achemeina dull to be, But makes the shady valley far more sweet. Cephisian flowers with head inclined we see About the calm and lucid lake's retreat.... 'Twas difficult to fancy which was true, Seeing on heaven and earth all tints the same, If fair Aurora gave the flowers their time, Or from the lovely flowers to her it came; Flora and Zephyr there in painting drew The violets tinted, as of lovers' flame, The iris, and the rose all fair and fresh E'en as it doth on cheek of maiden blush.... Along the water sings the snow-white swan, While from the branch respondeth Philomel.... Here, in its bill, to the dear nest, with care, The rapid little bird the food doth bear. Subjective feeling for Nature is better displayed in the lyric than the epic. The Spaniard, Fray Luis de Leon, was a typical example of a sixteenth-century lyrist; full of mild enthusiasm for Nature, the theosophico-mystical attitude of the Catholic. A most fervid feeling for Nature from the religious side breathed in St Francis of Assisi--the feeling which inspired his hymn to Brother Sun (_Cantico del Sole_), and led his brother Egidio, intoxicated with love to his Creator, to kiss trees and rocks and weep over them[12]: Praised by His creatures all, Praised be the Lord my God By Messer Sun, my brother above all, Who by his rays lights us and lights the day-- Radiant is she, with his great splendour stored, Thy glory, Lord, confessing. By Sister Moon and Stars my Lord is praised, Where clear and fair they in the heavens are raised By Brother Wind, etc.... His follower, Bonaventura, too, in his verses counted-- The smallest creatures his brothers and sisters, and called upon crops, vineyards, trees, flowers, and stars to praise God. Bernard von Clairvaux made it a principle 'to learn from the earth, trees, corn, flowers, and grass'; and he wrote in his letter to Heinrich Murdach (Letter 106): Believe me, I have proved it; you will find more in the woods than in books; trees and stones will teach you what no other teacher can. He looked upon all natural objects as 'rays of the Godhead,' copies of a great original. His contemporary, Hugo von St Victor, wrote: The whole visible world is like a book written by the finger of God. It is created by divine power, and all human beings are figures placed in it, not to shew the free-will of man, but as a revelation and visible sign, by divine will, of God's invisible wisdom. But as one who only glances at an open book sees marks on it, but does not read the letters, so the wicked and sensual man, in whom the spirit of God is not, sees only the outer surface of visible beings and not their deeper parts. German mystics wrote in the same strain; for instance, the popular Franciscan preacher, Berthold von Regensburg (1272), Whose sermons on fields and meadows drew many thousands of hearers, and moved them partly by the unusual freshness and vitality of his pious feeling for Nature, in spite of many florid symbolical accessories, such as we find again in Ekkehart and other fifteenth-century mystics, and especially in Tauler, Suso, and Ruysbroek. The northern prophetess and foundress of an Order Birgitta (1373) held that the breath of the Creator was in all visible things: 'We feel it pervading us in her visions,' says Hammerich,[13] Whether by gurgling brook or snow-covered firs. It is with us when the prophetess leads us along the ridges of the Swedish coast with their surging waves or down the shaft of a mine, or to wander in the quiet of evening through vineyards between roses and lilies, while the dew is falling and the bells ring out the Ave Maria. Vincentius von Beauvais (1264) in his _Speculum Naturæ_ demonstrates the value of studying Nature from a religious and moral point of view; and the Carthusian general, Dionysius von Rickel (1471), in his paper _On the beauty of the world and the glory of God (De venustate mundi et de pulchritudine Dei)_ says in Chapter xxii.: 'All the beauty of the animal world is nothing but the reflection and out-flow of the original beauty of God,' and gives as special examples: Roses, lilies, and other beautiful and fragrant flowers, shady woods, pine trees, pleasant meadows, high, mountains, springs, streams and rivers, and the broad arm of the immeasurable sea ... and above all shine the stars, completing their course in the clear sky in wonderful splendour and majestic order. Raymundus von Sabieude, a Spaniard, who studied medicine and philosophy at Toulouse, and wrote his _Theologia Naturalis_ in 1436, considered Nature, like Thomas Aquinas, from a mystical and scholastic point of view, as made up of living beings in a graduated scale from the lowest to the highest; and he lauded her in terms which even Pope Clement VII. thought exaggerated. Piety in him went hand in hand with a natural philosophy like Bacon's, and his interest in Nature was rather a matter of intellect than feeling. God has given us two books--the book of all living beings, or Nature, and the Holy Scriptures. The first was given to man from the beginning when all things were created, for each living being is but a letter of the alphabet written by the finger of God, and the book is composed of them all together as a book is of letters ... man is the capital letter of this book. This book is not like the other, falsified and spoilt, but familiar and intelligible; it makes man joyous and humble and obedient, a hater of evil and a lover of virtue. Among the savants of the Renaissance who applied the inductive method to Nature before Bacon,[14] we must include the thoughtful and pious Spaniard Luis Vives (1540), who wrote concerning the useless speculations of alchemists and astrologers about occult things: 'It is not arguing that is needed here, but silent observation of Nature.' Knowledge of Nature, he said, would serve both body and soul. The tender religious lyrics of the mystic, Luis de Leon, followed next.[15] His life (1521-1591) brings us up to the days of the Inquisition. He himself, an excellent teacher and man of science, was imprisoned for years for opinions too openly expressed in his writings; but with all his varied fortunes he never lost his innate manliness and tenderness. His biographer tells us, that as soon as the holidays began, he would hurry away from the gloomy lecture rooms and the noisy students at Salamanca, to the country, where he had taken an estate belonging to a monastery at the foot of a hill by a river, with a little island close by. It had a large uncultivated garden, made beautiful by fine old trees, with paths among the vines and a stream running through it to the river, and a long avenue of poplars whose rustle blended with the noise of the mill-wheel. Beyond was a view of fields. Leon would sit for hours here undisturbed, dipping his feet in the brook under a poplar--the tree which was reputed to flourish on sand alone and give shelter to all the birds under heaven--while the rustle of the leaves sang his melancholy to sleep. His biographer goes on to say that he had the Spaniard's special delight in Nature, and understood her language and her secrets; and the veiled splendour of her tones, colours, and forms could move him to tears. As he sat there gazing at the clouds, he felt lifted up in heart by the insignificance of all things in comparison with the spirit of man. In the pitching and tossing of his 'ships of thought' he never lost the consciousness of Nature's beauty, and would pray the clouds to carry his sighs with them in their tranquil course through heaven. He loved the sunrise, birds, flowers, bees, fishes; nothing was meaningless to him; all things were letters in a divine alphabet, which might bring him a message from above. Nature was symbolic; the glow of dawn meant the glow of divine love; a wide view, true freedom; rays of sunshine, rays of divine glory; the setting sun, eternal light; stars, flowers of light in an everlasting spring. His love for the country, especially for its peacefulness, was free from the folly and excess of the pastoral poetry of his day. He did not paint Nature entirely for her own sake; man was always her master[16] in his poems, and he sometimes, very finely, introduced himself and his affairs at the close, and represented Nature as addressing himself. His descriptions are short, and he often tries to represent sounds onomato-poetically. This is from his ode, _Quiet Life_[17]: O happy he who flies Far from the noisy world away-- Who with the worthy and the wise Hath chosen the narrow way. The silence of the secret road That leads the soul to virtue and to God!... O streams, and shades, and hills on high, Unto the stillness of your breast My wounded spirit longs to fly-- To fly and be at rest. Thus from the world's tempestuous sea, O gentle Nature, do I turn to thee.... A garden by the mountain side Is mine, whose flowery blossoming Shews, even in spring's luxuriant pride, What Autumn's suns shall bring: And from mountain's lofty crown A clear and sparkling rill comes tumbling down; Then, pausing in its downward force The venerable trees among, It gurgles on its winding course; And, as it glides along, Gives freshness to the day and pranks With ever changing flowers its mossy banks. The whisper of the balmy breeze Scatters a thousand sweets around, And sweeps in music through the trees With an enchanting sound That laps the soul in calm delight Where crowns and kingdoms are forgotten quite. The poem, _The Starry Sky_,[18] is full of lofty enthusiasm for Nature and piety: When yonder glorious sky Lighted with million lamps I contemplate, And turn my dazzled eye To this vain mortal state All mean and visionary, mean and desolate, A mingled joy and grief Fills all my soul with dark solicitude.... List to the concert pure Of yon harmonious countless worlds of light. See, in his orbit sure Each takes his journey bright, Led by an unseen hand through the vast maze of night. See how the pale moon rolls Her silver wheel.... See Saturn, father of the golden hours, While round him, bright and blest, The whole empyrean showers Its glorious streams of light on this low world of ours. But who to these can turn And weigh them 'gainst a weeping world like this, Nor feel his spirit burn To grasp so sweet a bliss And mourn that exile hard which here his portion is? For there, and there alone, Are peace and joy and never dying love: Day that shall never cease, No night there threatening, No winter there to chill joy's ever-during spring. Ye fields of changeless green Covered with living streams and fadeless flowers; Thou paradise serene, Eternal joyful hours Thy disembodied soul shall welcome in thy towers! It was chiefly in Spanish literature at this time that Nature was used allegorically. Tieck[19] says: 'In Calderon's poetry, and that of his contemporaries, we often find, in romances and song-like metres, most charming descriptions of the sea, mountains, gardens, and woody valleys, but almost always used allegorically, and with an artistic polish which ends by giving us, not so much a real impression of Nature, as one of clever description in musical verse, repeated again and again with slight variations.' This is true of Leon, but far more of Calderon, since it belongs to the very essence of drama. But, despite his passion for description and his Catholic and conventional tone, there is inexhaustible fancy, splendid colour, and a modern element of individuality in his poems. His heroes are conscious of their own ego, feel themselves to be 'a miniature world,' and search out their own feelings 'in the wild waves of emotion' (as Aurelian, for example, in _Zenobia_). Fernando says in _The Constant Prince_: These flowers awoke in beauty and delight At early dawn, when stars began to set; At eve they leave us but a fond regret, Locked in the cold embraces of the night. These shades that shame the rainbow's arch of light. Where gold and snow in purple pomp are met, All give a warning man should not forget, When one brief day can darken things so bright. 'Tis but to wither that the roses bloom-- 'Tis to grow old they bear their beauteous flowers, One crimson bud their cradle and their tomb. Such are man's fortunes in this world of ours; They live, they die; one day doth end their doom, For ages past but seem to us like hours. The warning which Zenobia gives her captor in his hour of triumph to beware of sudden reverses of fortune is finely conceived: Morn comes forth with rays to crown her, While the sun afar is spreading Golden cloths most finely woven All to dry her tear-drops purely. Up to noon he climbs, then straightway Sinks, and then dark night makes ready For the burial of the sea Canopies of black outstretching-- Tall ships fly on linen pinions, On with speed the breezes send it, Small the wide seas seem and straitened, To its quick flight onward tending. Yet one moment, yet one instant, And the tempest roars, uprearing Waves that might the stars extinguish, Lifted for that ship's o'erwhelming. Day, with fear, looks ever nightwards, Calms must storm await with trembling; Close behind the back of pleasure Evermore stalks sadness dreary. In _Life's a Dream_ Prince Sigismund, chained in a dark prison, says: What sinned I more herein Than others, who were also born? Born the bird was, yet with gay Gala vesture, beauty's dower, Scarcely 'tis a winged flower Or a richly plumaged spray, Ere the aerial halls of day It divideth rapidly, And no more will debtor be To the nest it hates to quit; But, with more of soul than it, I am grudged its liberty. And the beast was born, whose skin Scarce those beauteous spots and bars, Like to constellated stars, Doth from its greater painter win Ere the instinct doth begin: Of its fierceness and its pride, And its lair on every side, It has measured far and nigh; While, with better instinct, I Am its liberty denied. Born the mute fish was also, Child of ooze and ocean weed; Scarce a finny bark of speed To the surface brought, and lo! In vast circuits to and fro Measures it on every side Its illimitable home; While, with greater will to roam, I that freedom am denied. Born the streamlet was, a snake Which unwinds the flowers among, Silver serpent, that not long May to them sweet music make, Ere it quits the flowery brake, Onward hastening to the sea With majestic course and free, Which the open plains supply; While, with more life gifted, I Am denied its liberty. In Act II. Clotardo tells how he has talked to the young prince, brought up in solitude and confinement: There I spoke with him awhile Of the human arts and letters, Which the still and silent aspect Of the mountains and the heavens Him have taught--that school divine Where he has been long a learner, And the voices of the birds And the beasts has apprehended. Descriptions of time and place are very rich in colour. One morning on the ocean, When the half-awakened sun, Trampling down the lingering shadows Of the western vapours dun, Spread its ruby-tinted tresses Over jessamine and rose, Dried with cloths of gold Aurora's Tears of mingled fire and snows Which to pearl his glance converted. Since these gardens cannot steal Away your oft returning woes, Though to beauteous spring they build Snow-white jasmine temples filled With radiant statues of the rose; Come into the sea and make Thy bark the chariot of the sun, And when the golden splendours run Athwart the waves, along thy wake The garden to the sea will say (By melancholy fears deprest)-- 'The sun already gilds the west, How very short has been this day.' There is a striking remark about a garden; Menon says: A beautiful garden surrounded by wild forest Is the more beautiful the nearer it approaches its opposite. Splendour of colour was everything with Calderon, but it was splendour of so stiff and formal a kind, that, like the whole of his intensely severe, even inquisitorial outlook, it leaves us cold. We must turn to Shakespeare to learn how strongly the pulse of sympathy for Nature could beat in contemporary drama. Goethe said: 'In Calderon you have the wine as the last artificial result of the grape, but expressed into the goblet, highly spiced and sweetened, and so given you to drink; but in Shakespeare you have the whole natural process of its ripening besides, and the grapes themselves one by one, for your enjoyment, if you will.' In _Worship at the Cross_ there is pious feeling for Nature and mystical feeling side by side with an obnoxious fanaticism, superstition, and other objectionable traits[20]; and mystical confessions of the same sort may be gathered in numbers from the works of contemporary monks and nuns. Even of such a fanatic and self-tormentor as the Spanish Franciscan Petrus von Alcantara (1562), his biographer says that despite his strict renunciation of the world, he retained a most warm and deep feeling for Nature. 'Whatever he saw of the outer world increased his devotion and gave it wings. The starry sky seen through his little monastery window, often kept him rapt in deep meditation for hours; often he was as if beside himself, so strong was his pious feeling when he saw the power and glory of God reflected in charming flowers and plants.' When Gregorio Lopez (1596), a man who had studied many sides of Nature, was asked if so much knowledge confused him, he answered: 'I find God in all things, great and small.' Similar remarks are attributed to many others. Next to Leon, as a poet in enthusiasm and mysticism, came St Teresa von Avila. She was especially notable for the ravishingly pretty pictures and comparisons she drew from Nature to explain the soul life of the Christian.[21] In all these outpourings of mystic feeling for Nature, there was no interest in her entirely for her own sake; they were all more or less dictated by religious feeling. It was in the later German and Italian mystics--for example, Bruno, Campanella, and Jacob Boehme--that a more subjective and individual point of view was attained through Pantheism and Protestantism. The Protestant free-speaking Shakespeare shewed a far more intense feeling for Nature than the Catholic Calderon. CHAPTER VI SHAKESPEARE'S SYMPATHY FOR NATURE The poetry of India may serve as a measure of the part which Nature can play in drama; it is full of comparisons and personifications, and eloquent expressions of intimate sympathy with plants and animals. In Greek tragedy, Nature stepped into the background; metaphors, comparisons, and personifications are rarer; it was only by degrees, especially in Sophocles and Euripides, in the choruses and monologues, that man's interest in her appeared, and he began to greet the light or the sky, land or sea, to attribute love, pity, or hate to her, or find comfort in her lonely places. During the Middle Ages, drama lay fallow, and the blossoming period of French tragedy, educated to the pathos of Seneca, only produced cold declamation, frosty rhetoric; of any real sympathy between man and Nature there was no question. Over this mediæval void Calderon was the bridge to Shakespeare. Shakespeare reached the Greek standpoint and advanced far beyond it. He was not only the greatest dramatist of modern times as to human action, suffering, and character, but also a genius in the interpretation of Nature.[1] In place of the narrow limits of the old dramatists, he had the wider and maturer modern vision, and, despite his mastery of language, he was free both from the exaggeration and redundance of Oriental drama, and from the mere passion for describing, which so often carried Calderon away. In him too, the subjectivity, which the Renaissance brought into modern art, was still more fully developed. His metaphors and comparisons shew this, and, most of all, the very perfect art with which he assigns Nature a part in the play, and makes her not only form the appropriate background, dark or bright as required, but exert a distinct influence upon human fate. As Carrière points out: At a period which had painting for its leading art, and was turning its attention to music, his mental accord produced effects in his works to which antiquity was a stranger. Herder had already noted that Shakespeare gives colour and atmosphere where the Greek only gave outline. And although Shakespeare's outlines are drawn with more regard to fidelity than to actual beauty, yet, like a great painter, he brings all Nature into sympathy with man. We feel the ghostly shudder of the November night in _Hamlet_, breathe the bracing Highland air in _Macbeth_, the air of the woods in _As You Like It_; the storm on the heath roars through Lear's mad outburst, the nightingale sings in the pomegranate outside Julia's window. 'How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank,' when Love solves all differences in the _Merchant of Venice_! On the other hand, when Macbeth is meditating the murder of Duncan, the wolf howls, the owl hoots, and the cricket cries. And since Shakespeare's characters often act out of part, so that intelligible motive fails, while it is important to the poet that each scene be raised to dramatic level and viewed in a special light, Goethe's words apply: Here everything which in a great world event passes secretly through the air, everything which at the very moment of a terrible occurrence men hide away in their hearts, is expressed; that which they carefully shut up and lock away in their minds is here freely and eloquently brought to light; we recognize the truth to life, but know not how it is achieved. Amorous passion in his hands is an interpreter of Nature; in one of his sonnets he compares it to an ocean which cannot quench thirst. In Sonnet 130 he says: My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dim; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damask'd, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.... And yet, by Heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied by false compare. His lady-love is a mirror in which the whole world is reflected: Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind.... For if it see the rudest or gentlest sight, The most sweet favour or deformed'st creature, The mountain or the sea, the day or night, The crow or dove, it shapes them to your feature. (Sonnet 113.) When she leaves him it seems winter even in spring: 'For summer and his pleasures wait on thee, And thou away, the very birds are mute.' (Sonnet 97.) Here, as in the dramas,[2] contrasts in Nature are often used to point contrasts in life: How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame Which like a canker in the fragrant rose Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name! O in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose! (Sonnet 95.) and No more be grieved at that which thou hast done; Roses have thorns and silver fountains mud; Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun, And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud. (Sonnet 35.) In an opposite sense is Sonnet 70: The ornament of beauty is suspect A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air, For canker vice the sweetest buds did love, And thou presentest a pure unstained prime. Sonnet 7 has: Lo! in the orient when the gracious light Lifts up his burning head, each under eye Doth homage to his new-appearing sight, Serving with looks his sacred majesty. Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate, Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date-- But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. Sonnet 60: Like as the waves make toward the pebbled shore, So do our minutes hasten to their end; Each changing place with that which goes before, In sequent toil all forwards do contend. Sonnet 73: That time of life thou mayst in me behold, When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang In me thou see'st the twilight of such day As after sunset fadeth in the west, Which by-and-by black night doth take away, Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire That on the ashes of his youth doth lie As the death-bed whereon it must expire, Consumed with that which it was nourished by. This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong To love that well which thou must leave ere long. There are no better similes for the oncoming of age and death, than the sere leaf trembling in the wind, the twilight of the setting sun, the expiring flame. Almost all the comparisons from Nature in his plays are original, and rather keen and lightning-like than elaborate, often with the terseness of proverbs; The strawberry grows underneath the nettle. (_Henry V._) Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep. (_Henry VI._) The waters swell before a boisterous storm. (_Richard III._) Sometimes they are heaped up, like Calderon's, 'making it' (true love) Swift as a shadow, short as any dream, Brief as the lightning in the collied night That in a spleen unfolds both heaven and earth, And ere a man hath power to say 'Behold!' The jaws of darkness do devour it up. (_Midsummer Night's Dream._) Compared with Homer's they are very bold, and shew an astonishing play of imagination; in place of the naive simplicity and naturalness of antiquity, this modern genius gives us a dazzling display of wit and thought. To quote only short examples[3]: 'Open as day,' 'deaf as the sea,' 'poor as winter,' 'chaste as unsunn'd snow.' He ranges all Nature. These are characteristic examples: King Richard doth himself appear As doth the blushing discontented sun From out the fiery portal of the east, When he perceives the envious clouds are bent To dim his glory and to stain the track Of his bright passage to the occident. (_Richard II._) Since the more fair crystal is the sky, The uglier seem the clouds that in it fly. As when the golden sun salutes the morn, And, having gilt the ocean with his beams, Gallops the zodiac in his glistering coach And overlooks the highest peering hills, So Tamora. (_Titus Andronicus._) As all the world is cheered by the sun, So I by that; it is my day, my life. (_Richard III._) So sweet a kiss the golden sun gives not To those fresh morning drops upon the rose, As thy eye-beams, when their fresh rays have smote The night of dew that on my cheek down flows; Nor shines the silver moon one half so bright Through the transparent bosom of the deep. As doth thy face through tears of mine give light; Thou shinest on every tear that I do weep. (_Love's Labour's Lost._) This is modern down to its finest detail, and much richer in individuality than the most famous comparisons of the same kind in antiquity. Sea and stream are used: Like an unseasonable stormy day Which makes the silver rivers drown their shores As if the world were all dissolved to tears, So high above his limits swells the rage Of Bolingbroke. (_Richard II._) The current that with gentle murmur glides, Thou know'st, being stopped, impatiently doth rage; But when his fair course is not hindered, He makes sweet music with the enamell'd stones, Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge He overtaketh on his pilgrimage; And so by many winding nooks he strays With willing sport to the wild ocean. Then let me go, and hinder not my course. (_Two Gentlemen of Verona._) Faster than spring-time showers comes thought on thought. You are the fount that makes small brooks to flow. And what is Edward but a ruthless sea? (_Henry VI._) If there were reason for these miseries, Then into limits could I bind my woes; When heaven doth weep, doth not the earth o'er-flow? If the winds rage, doth not the sea wax mad, Threatening the welkin with his big-swoln face? And wilt thou have a reason for this coil? I am the sea: hark, how her sighs do blow! She is the weeping welkin, I the earth; Then must my sea be moved with her sighs; Then must my earth with her continual tears Become a deluge, overflow'd and drowned. (_Titus Andronicus._) This battle fares like to the morning's war When dying clouds contend with growing light, What time the shepherd blowing of his nails Can neither call it perfect day nor night. Now sways it this way, like a mighty sea Forced by the tide to combat with the wind; Now sways it that way, like the self-same sea Forced to retire by fury of the wind. Sometime the flood prevails and then the wind: Now one the better, then another best; Both tugging to be victors, breast to breast, Yet neither conqueror nor conquered. So is the equal poise of this fell war. (_Henry VI._) In the last five examples the epic treatment and the personifications are noteworthy. Comparisons from animal life are forcible and striking: How like a deer, stricken by many princes, Dost thou lie here! (_Julius Cæsar._) Richard III. is called: The wretched bloody and usurping boar That spoil'd your summer fields and fruitful vines, Swills your warm blood like wash and makes his trough In your embowell'd bosoms; this foul swine Lies now even in the centre of this isle. The tiger now hath seized the gentle hind. (_Richard III._) The smallest objects are noted: As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport. (_King Lear._) _Marcus_: Alas! my lord, I have but kill'd a fly. _Titus_: But how if that fly had a father and a mother? How would he hang his slender gilded wings, And buzz lamenting doings in the air! Poor harmless fly! That, with his pretty buzzing melody, Came here to make us merry! and thou Hast kill'd him! (_Titus Andronicus._) Shakespeare has abundance of this idyllic miniature painting, for which all the literature of the day shewed a marked taste. Tamora says: My lovely Aaron, wherefore look'st thou sad, When everything doth make a gleeful boast? The birds chant melody on every bush, The snake lies rolled in the cheerful sun, The green leaves quiver with the cooling wind And make a chequer'd shadow on the ground. (_Titus Andronicus._) And Valentine in _Two Gentlemen of Verona_: This shadowy desert, unfrequented woods, I better brook than flourishing peopled towns; Here can I sit alone, unseen of any, And to the nightingale's complaining notes Tune my distresses and record my woes. Like this, in elegiac sentimentality, is Romeo: Before the worshipp'd sun Peer'd forth the golden window of the east.... Many a morning hath he there been seen With tears augmenting the fresh morning's dew. _Cymbeline, Winter's Tale_, and _As You Like It_ are particularly rich in idyllic traits; the artificiality of court life is contrasted with life in the open; there are songs, too, in praise of woodland joys: Under the greenwood tree Who loves to lie with me, And tune his merry note Unto the sweet bird's throat, Come hither, come hither, come hither! Here shall he see No enemy But winter and rough weather. (_As You Like It._) Blow, blow, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind As man's ingratitude. Thy tooth is not so keen, Because thou art not seen Altho' thy breath be rude. Heigh-ho, sing heigh-ho unto the green holly! Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly![4] (_As You Like It._) Turning again to comparisons, we find birds used abundantly: More pity that the eagle should be mewed While kites and buzzards prey at liberty. (_Richard III._) True hope is swift and flies with swallow's wings. (_Richard III._) As wild geese that the creeping fowler eye, Or russet-pated choughs, many in sort Rising and cawing at the gun's report Sever themselves and madly sweep the sky, So at his sight away his fellows fly. (_Midsummer Night's Dream._) And plant life is touched with special tenderness: All the bystanders had wet their cheeks Like trees bedashed with rain. (_Richard III._) Why grow the branches when the root is gone? Why wither not the leaves that want their sap? (_Richard III._) Their lips were four red roses on a stalk, Which in their summer beauty kiss'd each other. (_Richard III._) Ah! my tender babes! My unblown flowers, new appearing sweets. (_Richard III._) Romeo is To himself so secret and so close ... As is the bud bit with an envious worm, Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air Or dedicate his beauty to the sun. It is astonishing to see how Shakespeare noted the smallest and most fragile things, and found the most poetic expression for them without any sacrifice of truth to Nature. Juliet is 'the sweetest flower of all the field.' Laertes says to Ophelia: For Hamlet and the trifling of his favour Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood, A violet in the youth of primy nature, Forward not permanent, sweet not lasting, The perfume and suppliance of a moment. The canker galls the infants of the spring Too oft before their buttons be disclosed; And in the morn and liquid dew of youth Contagious blastments are most imminent. (_Hamlet._) Hamlet soliloquizes: How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seems to me all the uses of this world. Fie on't, O fie! 'tis an unweeded garden That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. Indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame the earth seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy the air, look you--this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. But the great advance which he made is seen far more in the sympathetic way in which he drew Nature into the action of the play. He established perfect harmony between human fate and the natural phenomena around it. There are moonlight nights for Romeo and Juliet's brief dream, when all Nature, moon, stars, garden, seemed steeped in love together. He places his melancholy, brooding Hamlet In a land of mist and long nights, under a gloomy sky, where day is only night without sleep, and the tragedy holds us imprisoned like the North itself, that damp dungeon of Nature. (BOERNE.) What a dark shudder lies o'er Nature in _Macbeth_! And in _Lear_, as Jacobi says: What a sight! All Nature, living and lifeless, reasonable and unreasonable, surges together, like towering storm clouds, hither and thither; it is black oppressive Nature with only here and there a lightning flash from God--a flash of Providence, rending the clouds. One must look at the art by which this is achieved in order to justify such enthusiastic expressions. Personification of Nature lies at the root of it, and to examine this in the different poets forms one of the most interesting chapters of comparative poetry, especially in Shakespeare. With him artistic personification reached a pitch never attained before. We can trace the steps by which Greece passed from mythical to purely poetic personification, increasing in individuality in the Hellenic period; but Shakespeare opened up an entirely new region by dint of that flashlight genius of imagination which combined and illuminated all and everything. Hense says[5]; The personification is plastic when Æschylus calls the heights the neighbours of the stars; individual, when Shakespeare speaks of hills that kiss the sky. It is plastic that fire and sea are foes who conspire together and keep faith to destroy the Argive army; it is individual to call sea and wind old wranglers who enter into a momentary armistice. Other personifications of Shakespeare's, as when he speaks of the 'wanton wind,' calls laughter a fool, and describes time as having a wallet on his back wherein he puts alms for oblivion, are of a kind which did not, and could not, exist in antiquity. The richer a man's mental endowment, the more individual his feelings, the more he can see in Nature. Shakespeare's fancy revelled in a wealth of images; new metaphors, new points of resemblance between the inner and outer worlds, were for ever pouring from his inexhaustible imagination. The motive of amorous passion, for instance, was a very divining-rod in his hands, revealing the most delicate relations between Nature and the soul. Ibykos had pointed the contrast between the gay spring time and his own unhappy heart in which Eros raged like 'the Thracian blast.' Theocritus had painted the pretty shepherdess drawing all Nature under the spell of her charms; Akontios (Kallimachos) had declared that if trees felt the pangs and longings of love, they would lose their leaves; all such ideas, modern in their way, had been expressed in antiquity. This is Shakespeare's treatment of them: How like a winter hath my absence been From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen! What old December's bareness everywhere! And yet this time removed was summer time, The teeming autumn, big with rich increase ... For summer and his pleasures wait on thee. And thou away the very birds are mute, Or, if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near, (Sonnet 97.) From you have I been absent in the spring, When proud-pied April dress'd in all his trim Hath put a spirit of youth in everything, That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him. Yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet smell Of different flowers in odour and in hue Could make me any summer's story tell.... Yet seem'd it winter still.... (Sonnet 98.) Or compare again the cypresses in Theocritus sole witnesses of secret love; or Walther's One little birdie who never will tell, with These blue-veined violets whereon we lean Never can blab, nor know not what we mean. (_Venus and Adonis._) Comparisons of ladies' lips to roses, and hands to lilies, are common with the old poets. How much more modern is: The forward violet thus did I chide; Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells If not from my love's breath?... The lily I condemned for thy hand, And buds of marjoram had stolen thy hair; The roses fearfully on thorns did stand, One blushing shame, another white despair.... More flowers I noted, yet I none could see But sweet or colour it had stolen from thee. (Sonnet 99.) And how fine the personification in Sonnet 33: Full many a glorious morning have I seen Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye, Kissing with golden face the meadows green, Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy; Anon permit the basest clouds to ride With ugly rack on his celestial face, And from the forlorn world his visage hide, Stealing unseen to West with this disgrace: Even so my sun one early morn did shine With all triumphant splendour on my brow; But out, alack! he was but one hour mine; The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now. Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth; Suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth. This is night in _Venus and Adonis_: Look! the world's comforter with weary gait His day's hot task hath ended in the West; The owl, night's herald, shrieks 'tis very late; The sheep are gone to fold, birds to their nest And coal-black clouds, that shadow heaven's light, Do summon us to part and bid good-night. And this morning, in _Romeo and Juliet_: The grey-ey'd morn smiles on the frowning night, Checkering the Eastern clouds with streaks of light. And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels From forth day's path and Titan's fiery wheels; Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye, The day to cheer, and night's dank dew to dry ... Such wealth and brilliance of personification was not found again until Goethe, Byron, and Shelley. He is unusually rich in descriptive phrases: The weary sun hath made a golden set, And by the bright track of his golden car Gives token of a goodly day to-morrow. The worshipp'd Sun Peered forth the golden window of the East. The all-cheering sun Should in the farthest East begin to draw The shady curtains from Aurora's bed. The moon: Like to a silver bow New bent in heaven. Titania says: I will wind thee in my arms.... So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle Gently entwist; the female ivy so Enrings the barky fingers of the elm. O how I love thee! That same dew, which sometime on the buds Was wont to swell, like round and orient pearls, Stood now within the pretty flow'rets' eyes Like tears. (_Midsummer Night's Dream._) Daffodils That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty. (_Winter's Tale._) Pale primroses That die unmarried, ere they can behold Bright Phoebus in his strength. (_Winter's Tale._) Goethe calls winds and waves lovers. In _Troilus and Cressida_ we have: The sea being smooth, How many shallow bauble boats dare sail Upon her patient breast, making their way With those of nobler bulk! But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage The gentle Thetis, and anon behold The strong-ribb'd bark through liquid mountains cut, Bounding between two moist elements Like Perseus' horse. And further on in the same scene: What raging of the sea! shaking of earth! Commotion in the winds! ... the bounded waters Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores. The personification of the river in _Henry IV._ is half mythical: When on the gentle Severn's sedgy bank In single opposition, hand to hand, He did confound the best part of an hour In changing hardiment with great Glendower; Three times they breath'd, and three times did they drink, Upon agreement, of swift Severn's flood; Who, then affrighted with their bloody looks, Ran fearfully among the trembling reeds, And hid his crisp head in the hollow bank, Blood-stained with these valiant combatants. Striking instances of personification from _Antony and Cleopatra_ are: The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne Burn'd on the water; the poop was beaten gold; Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that The winds were lovesick with them; the oars were silver, Which to the time of flutes kept stroke, and made The water which they beat to follow faster As amorous of their strokes. And Antony, enthron'd in the market-place, sat alone Whistling to the air, which but for vacancy Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too And made a gap in nature. Instead of accumulating further instances of these very modern and individual (and sometimes far-fetched) personifications, it is of more interest to see how Shakespeare used Nature, not only as background and colouring, but to act a part of her own in the play, so producing the grandest of all personifications. At the beginning of Act III. in _King Lear_, Kent asks: Who's there beside foul weather? _Gentleman_: One minded like the weather, most unquietly. _Kent_: Where's the King? _Gent_: Contending with the fretful elements. Bids the wind blow the earth into the sea, Or swell the curled waters 'bove the main, That things might change or cease; tears his white hair, Which the impetuous blasts with eyeless rage Catch in their fury and make nothing of; Strives in his little world of men to outscorn The to-and-fro conflicting wind and rain. In the stormy night on the wild heath the poor old man hears the echo of his own feelings in the elements; his daughters' ingratitude, hardness, and cruelty produce a moral disturbance like the disturbance in Nature; he breaks out: Blow, wind, and crack your cheeks. Rage! Blow! You cataracts and hurricanes, spout Till you have drench'd our steeples, drowned the cocks! You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, Vaunt couriers of oak-cleaving thunder-bolts, Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world! Crack nature's moulds, all germens spill at once That make ungrateful man.... Rumble thy bellyful! Spit fire, spout rain! Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire are my daughters, I tax you not, you elements, with unkindness; I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children, You owe me no subscription; then, let fall Your horrible pleasure; here I stand, your slave, A poor, infirm, weak, and despis'd old man: But yet I call you servile ministers, That will with two pernicious daughters join Your high engender'd battles 'gainst a head So old and white as this. O! O! 'tis foul! How closely here animate and inanimate Nature are woven together, the reasoning with the unreasoning. The poet makes the storm, rain, thunder, and lightning live, and at the same time endues his human figures with a strength of feeling and passion which gives them kinship to the elements. In _Othello_, too, there _is_ uproar in Nature: Do but stand upon the foaming shore, The chidden billow seems to pelt the clouds.... I never did like molestation view On the enchafed flood. but even the unruly elements spare Desdemona: Tempests themselves, high seas and howling winds, The gather'd rocks and congregated sands. Traitors ensteep'd to clog the guiltless keel-- As having sense of beauty, do omit Their mortal natures, letting go safely by The divine Desdemona. Cassio lays stress upon 'the great contention of the sea and skies'; but when Othello meets Desdemona, he cries: O my soul's joy! If after every tempest come such calms, May the winds blow till they have wakened death! And let the labouring bark climb hills of seas Olympus-high, and duck again as low As hell's from heaven. If it were now to die, 'Twere now to be most happy. Iago calls the elements to witness his truthfulness: Witness, you ever-burning lights above, You elements that clip us round about, Witness, that here Iago doth give up The execution of his wit, hands, heart, To wrong'd Othello's service. Nature is disgusted at Othello's jealousy: Heaven stops the nose at it, and the moon winks; The bawdy wind, that kisses all it meets, Is hush'd within the hollow mine of earth And will not hear it. In terrible mental confusion he cries: O insupportable, O heavy hour! Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse Of sun and moon, and that the affrighted globe Should yawn at alteration. Unhappy Desdemona sings: The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree, Sing all a green willow; Her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee, Sing willow, willow, willow; The fresh streams ran by her and murmur'd her moans, Sing willow, willow, willow. A song in _Cymbeline_ contains a beautiful personification of flowers: Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings, And Phoebus 'gins arise, His steeds to water at those springs On chalic'd flowers that lies; And winking Mary-buds begin To ope their golden eyes; With everything that pretty is, My lady sweet, arise; Arise! Arise! The clearest expression of sympathy for Nature is in _Macbeth_. Repeatedly we meet the idea that Nature shudders before the crime, and gives signs of coming disaster. Macbeth himself says: Stars, hide your fires! Let not light see my black and deep desires; The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see. and Lady Macbeth: ... The raven himself is hoarse That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under my battlements.... Come, thick night, And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark To cry 'Hold! hold!'... The peaceful castle to which Duncan comes all unsuspectingly, is in most striking contrast to the fateful tone which pervades the tragedy. Duncan says: This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself Unto our gentle senses. and Banquo: This guest of summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve By his loved masonry, that the heaven's breath Smells wooingly here; no jetty, frieze, Buttress, nor coign of vantage but this bird Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle; Where they most breed and haunt I have observ'd The air is delicate. Perhaps the familiar swallow has never been treated with more discrimination; and at this point of the tale of horror it has the effect of a ray of sunshine in a sky dark with storm clouds. In Act II. Macbeth describes his own horror and Nature's: Now o'er the one half world Nature seems dead.... Thou sure and firm-set earth, Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear Thy very stones prate of my whereabouts. Lady Macbeth says: It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman Which gives the stern'st good-night. Lenox describes this night: The night has been unruly: where we lay Our chimneys were blown down; and, as they say, Lamentings heard i' the air; strange screams of death And prophesying, with accents terrible, Of dire combustion and confus'd events, New hatch'd to the woeful time: the obscure bird Clamour'd the live-long night: some say, the earth Was feverish and did shake. and later on, an old man says: Three score and ten I can remember well; Within the volume of which time I have seen Hours dreadful and things strange; but this sore night Hath trifled former knowings. Rosse answers him: Ah, good father, Thou see'st the heavens, as troubled with man's act, Threaten his bloody stage; by the clock 'tis day, And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp. Is't night's predominance or the day's shame That darkness does the-face of earth entomb When living light should kiss it? The whole play is a thrilling expression of the sympathy for Nature which attributes its own feelings to her--a human shudder in presence of the wicked--a human horror of crime, most thrilling of all in Macbeth's words: Come, seeling night, Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day, And with thy bloody and invisible hand Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond Which keeps me pale. In _Hamlet_, too, Nature is shocked at man's mis-deeds: ... Such an act (the queen's) That blurs the grace and blush of modesty ... Heaven's face doth glow, Yea, this solidity and compound mass With tristful visage, as against the doom, Is thought-sick at the act. But there are other personifications in this most wonderful of all tragedies, such as the magnificent one: But look, the dawn, in russet mantle clad. Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill. The first player declaims: But, as we often see, against some storm A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still, The bold winds speechless, and the orb below As hush as death.... Ophelia dies: When down her weedy trophies and herself Fell in the weeping brook. and Laertes commands: Lay her i' the earth, And from her fair and unpolluted flesh May violets spring. Thus Shakespeare's great imagination gave life and soul to every detail of Nature, and he obtained the right background for his dramas, not only through choice of scenery, but by making Nature a sharer of human impulse, happy with the happy, shuddering in the presence of wickedness. He drew every phase of Nature with the individualizing touch which stamps her own peculiar character, and also brings her into sympathy with the inner life, often with that poetic intuition which is so closely allied to mythology. And this holds good not only in dealing with the great elementary forces--storms, thunder, lightning, etc.--but with flowers, streams, the glow of sunlight. Always and everywhere the grasp of Nature was intenser, more individual, and subjective, than any we have met hitherto. Idyllic feeling for Nature became sympathetic in his hands. CHAPTER VII THE DISCOVERY OF THE BEAUTY OF LANDSCAPE IN PAINTING The indispensable condition of landscape-painting--painting, that is, which raises the representation of Nature to the level of its main subject and paints her entirely for her own sake--is the power to compose separate studies into a whole and imbue that with an artistic idea. It was therefore impossible among people like the Hebrews,[1] whose eyes were always fixed on distance and only noted what lay between in a cursory way, and among those who considered detail without relation to a whole, as we have seen in mediæval poetry until the Renaissance. But just as study of the laws of aerial and linear perspective demands a trained and keen eye, and therefore implies interest in Nature, so the artistic idea, the soul of the picture, depends directly upon the degree of the artist's feeling for her Literature and painting are equal witnesses to the feeling for Nature, and so long as scenery was only background in poetry, it had no greater importance in painting. Landscape painting could only arise in the period which produced complete pictures of scenery in poetry--the sentimental idyllic period. We have seen how in the Italian Renaissance the fetters of dogma, tradition, and mediæval custom were removed, and servility and visionariness gave place to healthy individuality and realism; how man and the world were discovered anew; and further, how among the other Romanic nations a lively feeling for Nature grew up, partly idyllic, partly mystic; and finally, how this feeling found dramatic expression in Shakespeare. Natural philosophy also, in the course of its search for truth, as it threw off both one-sided Christian ideas and ancient traditions, came gradually to feel an interest in Nature; not only her laws, but her beauty, became an object of enthusiastic study. By a very long process of development the Hellenic feeling for Nature was reached again in the Renaissance; but it always remained, despite its sentimental and pantheistic elements, sensual, superficial, and naive, in comparison with Christian feeling, which a warmer heart and a mind trained in scholastic wisdom had rendered more profound and abstract. Hence Nature was sometimes an object of attention in detail, sometimes in mass.[2] As we come to the first landscape painters and their birthplace in the Netherlands, we see how steady and orderly is the development of the human mind, and how factors that seem isolated are really links in one chain. In the Middle Ages, landscape was only background with more or less fitness to the subject. By the fifteenth century it was richer in detail, as we see in Pisanello and the Florentines Gozzoli and Mantegna. The poetry of earth had been discovered; the gold grounds gave way to field, wood, hill, and dale, and the blue behind the heads became a dome of sky. In the sixteenth century, Giorgione shewed the value of effects of light, and Correggio's backgrounds were in harmony with his tender, cheerful scenes. Titian loved to paint autumn; the sunny days of October with blue grapes, golden oranges, and melons; and evening with deep harmonies of colour over the sleeping earth. He was a great pioneer in the realm of landscape. With Michael Angelo not a blade of grass grew; his problem was man alone. Raphael's backgrounds, on the other hand, are life-like in detail: his little birds could fly out of the picture, the stems of his plants seem to curve and bend towards us, and we look deep into the flower they hold out.[3] In the German Renaissance too, the great masters limited themselves to charming framework and ingenious arabesques for their Madonnas and Holy Families. But, as Lübke says,[4] one soon sees that Dürer depended on architecture for borders and backgrounds far less than Holbein; he preferred landscape. 'The charm of this background is so great, the inwardness of German feeling for Nature so strongly expressed in it, that it has a special value of its own, and the master through it has become the father of landscape painting.'[5] This must be taken with a grain of salt; but, at all events, it is true that Dürer combined 'keen and devoted study of Nature (in the widest sense of the word) with a penetration which aimed at tracing her facts up to their source.'[6] It is interesting to see how these qualities overcame his theoretical views on Nature and art.[7] Dürer's deep respect for Nature proved him a child of the new era. Melanchthon relates that he often regretted that he had been too much attracted in his younger days by variety and the fantastic, and had only understood Nature's simple truth and beauty later in life. His riper judgment preferred her to all other models. Nature, in his remarks on the theory of art, includes the animate and the inanimate, living creatures as well as scenery, and it is interesting to observe that his admiration of her as a divine thing was due to deep religious feeling. In his work on Proportion[8] he says: 'Certainly art is hidden in Nature, and he who is able to separate it by force from Nature, he possesses it. Never imagine that you can or will surpass Nature's achievements; human effort cannot compare with the ability which her Creator has given her. Therefore no man can ever make a picture which excels Nature's; and when, through much copying, he has seized her spirit, it cannot be called original work, it is rather something received and learnt, whose seeds grow and bear fruit of their own kind. Thereby the gathered treasure of the heart, and the new creature which takes shape and form there, comes to light in the artist's work.' Elsewhere Dürer says 'a good painter's mind is full of figures,' and he repeatedly remarks upon the superabundant beauty of all living things which human intelligence rarely succeeds in reproducing. The first modern landscapes in which man was only accessory were produced in the Netherlands. Quiet, absorbed musing on the external world was characteristic of the nation; they studied the smallest and most trifling objects with care, and set a high value on minutiæ. The still-life work of their prime was only possible to such an easy-going, life-loving people; the delightful animal pictures of Paul Potter and Adrian van de Velde could only have been painted in the land of Reineke Fuchs. Carrière says about these masters of genre painting[9]: 'Through the emphasis laid upon single objects, they not only revealed the national characteristics, but penetrated far into the soul of Nature and mirrored their own feelings there, so producing works of art of a kind unknown to antiquity. That divine element, which the Greek saw in the human form, the Germanic race divined in all the visible forms of Nature, and so felt at one with them and able to reveal itself through them. 'Nature was studied more for her own sake than in her relation to man, and scenery became no longer mere background, but the actual object of the picture. Animals, and even men, whether bathing in the river, lying under trees, or hunting in the forest, were nothing but accessories; inorganic Nature was the essential element. The greatest Dutch masters did not turn their attention to the extraordinary and stupendous, the splendour of the high Alps or their horrible crevasses, or sunny Italian mountains reflected in their lakes or tropical luxuriance, but to common objects of everyday life. But these they grasped with a precision and depth of feeling which gave charm to the most trifling--it was the life of the universe divined in its minutiæ. In its treatment of landscape their genre painting displayed the very characteristics which had brought it into being.'[10] The physical characters of the country favoured landscape painting too. No doubt the moist atmosphere and its silvery sheen, which add such freshness and brilliance to the colouring, influenced the development of the colour sense, as much as the absence of sharp contrasts in contour, the suggestive skies, and abundance of streams, woods, meadows, and dales. But it was in devotional pictures that the Netherlanders first tried their wings; landscape and scenes from human life did not free themselves permanently from religion and take independent place for more than a century later. The fourteenth-century miniatures shew the first signs of the northern feeling for Nature in illustrations of the seasons in the calendar pictures of religious manuscripts. Beginnings of landscape can be clearly seen in that threshold picture of Netherland art, the altar-piece at Ghent by the brothers Van Eyck, which was finished in 1432. It shews the most accurate observation: all the plants, grasses, flowers, rose bushes, vines, and palms, are correctly drawn; and the luxuriant valley in which the Christian soldiers and the knights are riding, with its rocky walls covered by undergrowth jutting stiffly forward, is very like the valley of the Maas. One sees that the charm of landscape has dawned upon the painters. Their skies are no longer golden, but blue, and flecked with cloudlets and alive with birds; wood and meadow shine in sappy green; fantastic rocks lie about, and the plains are bounded by low hills. They are drinking deep draughts from a newly-opened spring, and they can scarcely have enough of it. They would like to paint all the leaves and fruit on the trees, all the flowers on the grass, even all the dewdrops. The effect of distance too has been discovered, for there are blue hill-tops beyond the nearer green ones, and a foreground scene opens back on a distant plain (in the Ghent altar-piece, the scene with the pilgrims); but they still possess very few tones, and their overcrowded detail is almost all, from foreground to furthest distance, painted in the same luminous strong dark-green, as if in insatiable delight at the beauty of their own colour. The progress made by Jan van Eyck in landscape was immense. To the old masters Nature had been an unintelligible chaos of detail, but beauty, through ecclesiastical tradition, an abstract attribute of the Holy Family and the Saints, and they had used their best powers of imagination in accordance with this view. Hence they placed the Madonna upon a background of one colour, generally gilded. But now the great discovery was made that Nature was a distinct entity, a revelation and reflection of the divine in herself. And Jan van Eyck introduced a great variety of landscapes behind his Madonnas. One looks, for instance, through an open window to a wide stretch of country with fields and fortresses, and towns with streets full of people, all backed by mountains. And whether the scene itself, or only its background, lies in the open, the landscape is of the widest, enlivened by countless forms and adorned by splendid buildings. Molanus, the savant of Löwen, proclaimed Dierick Bouts, born like his predecessor Ouwater at Haarlem, to be the inventor of landscape painting (claruit inventor in describendo rare); but the van Eycks were certainly before him, though he increased the significance of landscape painting and shewed knowledge of aerial perspective and gradations of tone. Landscape was a distinct entity to him, and could excite the mood that suited his subject, as, for instance, in the side picture of the Last Supper, where the foreground is drawn with such exactness that every plant and even the tiny creatures crawling on the grass can be identified. The scenery of Roger van der Weyden of Brabant--river valleys surrounded by jagged rocks and mountains, isolated trees, and meadows bright with sappy green--is clearly the result of direct Nature study; it has a uniform transparent atmosphere, and a clear green shimmer lies over the foreground and gradually passes into blue haze further back. His pupil, Memling, shews the same fine gradations of tone. The composition of his richest picture, 'The Marriage of St Catherine,' did not allow space for an unbroken landscape, but the lines of wood and field converge to a vista in such a way that the general effect is one of unity. Joachim de Patenir, who appeared in 1515, was called a landscape painter by his contemporaries, because he reduced his sacred figures to a modest size, enlarged his landscape, and handled it with extreme care. He was very far from grasping it as a whole, but his method was synthetical; his river valleys, with masses of tree and bush and romantic rocks, fantastic and picturesque, with fortresses on the river banks, all shew this. Kerry de Bles was like him, but less accurate; with all the rest of the sixteenth-century painters of Brabant and Flanders, he did not rise to the idea of landscape as a whole. The most minute attention was given to the accurate painting of single objects, especially plants; the Flemings caring more for perfect truth to life, the Dutch for beauty. The Flemings generally sought to improve their landscape by embellishing its lines, while the Dutch gave its spirit, but adhered simply and strictly to Nature. The landscapes of Peter Brueghel the elder, with their dancing peasants surrounded by rocks, mills, groups of trees, are painful in their thoroughness; and Jan Brueghel carried imitation of Nature so far that his minutise required a magnifying-glass--it was veritable miniature work. He introduced fruit and flower painting as a new feature of art. Rubens and Brueghel often painted on each other's canvas, Brueghel supplying landscape backgrounds for Rubens' pictures, and Rubens the figures for Brueghel's landscapes. Yet Rubens himself was the best landscapist of the Flemish school. He was more than that. For Brueghel and his followers, with all their patience and industry, their blue-green landscape with imaginary trees, boundless distance and endless detail, were very far from a true grasp of Nature. It was Rubens and his school who really made landscape a legitimate independent branch of art. They studied it in all its aspects, quiet and homely, wild and romantic, some taking one and some the other: Rubens himself, in his large way, grasping the whole without losing sight of its parts. They all lifted the veil from Nature and saw her as she was (Falke). Brueghel put off the execution of a picture for which he had a commission from winter to spring, that he might study the flowers for it from Nature when they came out, and did not grudge a journey to Brussels now and then to paint flowers not to be had at Antwerp. There is a characteristic letter which he sent to the Archbishop of Milan with a picture: 'I send your Reverence the picture with the flowers, which are all painted from Nature. I have painted in as many as possible. I believe so many rare and different flowers have never been painted before nor so industriously. It will give a beautiful effect in winter; some of the colours almost equal Nature. I have painted an ornament under the flowers with artistic medallions and curiosities from the sea. I leave it to your reverence to judge whether the flowers do not far exceed gold and jewels in colour.' He also painted landscapes in which people were only accessory, sunny valleys with leafage, golden cornfields, meadows with rows of dancing country folk or reapers in the wheat. Rubens, though he felt the influence of southern light and sunshine as much as his fellows who had been in Italy, took his backgrounds from his native land, from parts round Antwerp, Mechlin, and Brussels. Foliage, water, and undulating ground were indispensable to him--were, to a certain extent, the actual bearers of the impression he wished to convey. Brueghel always kept a childlike attitude, delighting in details, and proud of the clever brush which could carry imitation to the point of deception. Rubens was the first to treat landscape in a bold subjective way. He opened the book of Nature, so to speak, not to spell out the words syllable by syllable, but to master her secret, to descend into the depths of her soul, and then reflect what he found there--in short, he fully understood the task of the landscape painter. The fifty landscapes of his which we possess, contain the whole scale from a state of idyllic repose to one of dramatic excitement and tension. Take, for instance, the evening scene with the rainbow in the Louvre, marvellous in its delicate gradations of atmospheric tone, and the equally marvellous thunderstorm in the Belvedere at Vienna, where a rain-cloud bursts under sulphur lightning, and a mountain stream, swollen to a torrent and lashed by the hurricane, carries all before it--trees, rocks, animals, and men. In France, scarcely a flower had been seen in literature since the Troubadour days, not even in the classical poetry of Corneille and Racine. There were idyllic features in Fénelon's _Telemachus_, and Ronsard borrowed motives from antiquity; but it was pastoral poetry which blossomed luxuriantly here as in Italy and Spain. Honoré d'Urfé's famous _Astrée_ was much translated; but both his shepherds and his landscape were artificial, and the perfume of courts and carpet knights was over the whole, with a certain trace of sadness. The case was different with French painting. After the Netherlands, it was France, by her mediæval illustrated manuscripts, who chiefly aided in opening the world's eyes to landscape. Both the Poussins penetrated below the surface of Nature. Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) painted serious stately subjects, such as a group of trees in the foreground, a hill with a classic building in the middle, and a chain of mountains in the distance, and laid more stress on drawing than colour. There was greater life in the pictures of his brother-in-law, Caspar Doughet, also called Poussin; his grass is more succulent, his winds sigh in the trees, his storm bends the boughs and scatters the clouds. It was Claude Lorraine (1600-1682) who brought the ideal style to its perfection. He inspired the very elements with mind and feeling; his valleys, woods, and seas were just a veil through which divinity was visible. All that was ugly, painful, and confused was purified and transfigured in his hands. There is no sadness or dejection in his pictures, but a spirit of serene beauty, free from ostentation, far-fetched contrast, or artificial glitter. Light breezes blow in his splendid trees, golden light quivers through them, drawing the eye to a bright misty horizon; we say with Uhland, 'The sky is solemn, as if it would say "this is the day of the Lord."' Artistic feeling for Nature became a worship with Claude Lorraine. The Netherlands recorded all Nature's phases in noble emulation with ever-increasing delight. The poetry of air, cloudland, light, the cool freshness of morning, the hazy sultriness of noon, the warm light of evening, it all lives and moves in Cuyp's pictures and Wynant's, while Aart van der Meer painted moonlight and winter snow, and Jan van Goyen the melancholy of mist shot by sunlight. He, too--Jan van Goyen--was very clever in producing effect with very small means, with a few trees reflected in water, or a sand-heap--the art in which Ruysdael excelled all others. The whole poetry of Nature--that secret magic which lies like a spell over quiet wood, murmuring sea, still pool, and lonely pasture--took form and colour under his hands; so little sufficed to enchant, to rouse thought and feeling, and lead them whither he would. Northern seriousness and sadness brood over most of his work; the dark trees are overhung by heavy clouds and rain, mist and dusky shadows move among his ruins. He had painted, says Carrière, the peace of woodland solitude long before Tieck found the word for it. Beechwoods reflected in a stream, misty cloud masses lighted by the rising sun; he moves us with such things as with a morning hymn, and his picture of a swollen torrent forcing its way between graves which catch the last rays of the sun, while a cloud of rain shrouds the ruins of a church in the background, is an elegy which has taken shape and colour. Ruysdael marks the culminating point of this period of development, which had led from mere backgrounds and single traits of Nature--even a flower stem or a blade of grass, up to elaborate compositions imbued by a single motive, a single idea. To conjure up with slight material a complete little world of its own, and waken responsive feeling, is not this the secret of the charm in the pictures of his school--in the wooded hill or peasant's courtyard by Hobbema, the Norwegian mountain scene of Albert van Everdingen, the dusky fig-trees, rugged crags, and foaming cataract, or the half-sullen, half-smiling sea-pieces of Bakhuysen and Van der Velde? All these great Netherlander far outstripped the poetry of their time; it was a hundred years later before mountain and sea found their painter in words, and a complete landscape picture was not born in German poetry until the end of the eighteenth century. CHAPTER VIII HUMANISM, ROCOCO, AND PIGTAIL Many decades passed before German feeling for Nature reached the heights attained by the Italian Renaissance and the Netherland landscapists. In the Middle Ages, Germany was engrossed with ecclesiastical dogma--man's relation, not only to God, but to the one saving Church--and had little interest for Science and Art; and the great achievement of the fifteenth century, the Reformation, called for word and deed to reckon with a thousand years of old traditions and the slavery of intellectual despotism. The new time was born amid bitter throes. The questions at issue--religious and ecclesiastical questions concerned with the liberty of the Christian--were of the most absorbing kind, and though Germany produced minds of individual stamp such as she had never known before, characters of original and marked physiognomy, it was no time for the quiet contemplation of Nature. Mental life was stimulated by the new current of ideas and new delight in life awakened: yet there is scarcely a trace of the intense feeling for Nature which we have seen in Petrarch and Æneas Sylvius. Largely as it was influenced by the Italian Renaissance, it is certainly a mistake to reckon the Humanist movement in Germany, as Geiger does,[1] as a 'merely imported culture, entirely lacking independence.' The germ of this great movement towards mental freedom was contained in the general trend of the time, which was striving to free itself from the fetters of the Middle Ages in customs and education as well as dogma. It was chiefly a polemical movement, a fight between contentious savants. The writings of the Humanists at this naively sensuous period were full of the joy of life and love of pleasure; but scarcely any simple feeling for Nature can be found in them, and there was neither poet nor poem fit to be compared with Petrarch and his sonnets. Natural philosophy, too, was proscribed by scholastic wisdom; the real Aristotle was only gradually shelled out from under mediæval accretions. The natural philosopher, Conrad Summenhart[2] (1450-1501) was quite unable to disbelieve the foolish legend, that the appearance of a comet foretold four certain events--heat, wind, war, and the death of princes. At the same time, not being superstitious, he held aloof from the crazy science of astrology and all the fraud connected with it. Indeed, as an observer of Nature, and still more as a follower and furtherer of the scholastic Aristotelian natural philosophy, he shewed a leaning towards the theory of development, for, according to him, the more highly organized structures proceed from those of lower organization, and these again form the inorganic under the influence of meteors and stars. The poet laureate Conrad Celtes (_b_. 1459), a singer of love and composer of four books about it, was a true poet. His incessant wandering, for he was always moving from place to place, was due in part to love of Nature and of novelty, but still more to a desire to spread his own fame. He lacked the naivete and openness to impressions of the true child of Nature; his songs in praise of spring, etc., scatter a colourless general praise, which is evidently the result of arduous thought rather than of direct impressions from without; and his many references to ancient deities shew that he borrowed more than his phrases. Though geography was then closely bound up with the writing of history, as represented by Beatus Rhenanus (1485-1547) and Johann Aventinus, and patriotism and the accounts of new lands led men to wish to describe the beauties and advantages of their own, the imposing discoveries across the seas did not make so forcible an impression upon the German humanist as upon savants elsewhere, especially in Italy and Spain. A mystico-theosophical feeling for Nature, or rather a magical knowledge of her, flourished in Germany at this time among the learned, both among Protestants and those who were partially true to Catholicism. One of the strangest exponents of such ideas was Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim of Cologne[3] (1535). His system of the world abounded in such fantastic caprices as these: everything depends on harmony and sympathy; when one of Nature's strings is struck, the others sound with it: the analogical correspondences are at the same time magical: symbolic relations between natural objects are sympathetic also: a true love-bond exists between the elm and vine: the sun bestows life on man; the moon, growth; Mercury, imagination; Venus, love, etc. God is reflected in the macrocosm, gives light in all directions through all creatures, is adumbrated in man microcosmically, and so forth. Among others, Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus Paracelsus von Hohenheim (1541), ranked Nature and the Bible, like Agrippa, as the best books about God and the only ones without falsehood. 'One must study the elements, follow Nature from land to land, since each single country is only one leaf in the book of creation. The eyes that find pleasure in this true experience are the true professors, and more reliable than all learned writings.' He held man to be less God's very image than a microcosmic copy of Nature--the quintessence of the whole world. Other enthusiasts made similar statements. Sebastian Frank of Donauwörth (1543) looked upon the whole world as an open book and living Bible, in which to study the power and art of God and learn His will: everything was His image, all creatures are 'a reflection, imprint, and expression of God, through knowledge of which man may come to know the true Mover and Cause of all things.' He shewed warm feeling for Nature in many similes and descriptions[4]-- in fact, much of his pithy drastic writing sounds pantheistic. But he was very far from the standpoint of the great Italian philosophers, Giordano Bruno and Campanella. Bruno, a poet as well as thinker, distinguished Nature in her self-development--matter, soul, and mind--as being stages and phases of the One. The material of all things issues from the original womb, For Nature works with a master hand in her own inner depths; She is art, alive and gifted with a splendid mind. Which fashions its own material, not that of others, And does not falter or doubt, but all by itself Lightly and surely, as fire burns and sparkles. Easily and widely, as light spreads everywhere, Never scattering its forces, but stable, quiet, and at one, Orders and disposes of everything together. Campanella, even in a revolting prison, sang in praise of the wisdom and love of God, and His image in Nature. He personified everything in her; nothing was without feeling; the very movements of the stars depended on sympathy and antipathy; harmony was the central soul of all things. The most extraordinary of all German thinkers was the King of Mystics, Jacob Böhme. Theist and pantheist at once, his mind was a ferment of different systems of thought. It is very difficult to unriddle his _Aurora_, but love of Nature, as well as love of God, is clear in its mystical utterances: God is the heart or source of Nature. Nature is the body of God. 'As man's mind rules his whole body in every vein and fills his whole being, so the Holy Ghost fills all Nature, and is its heart and rules in the good qualities of all things.' 'But now heaven is a delightful chamber of pleasure, in which are all the powers, as in all Nature the sky is the heart of the waters.' In another place he calls God the vital power in the tree of life, the creatures His branches, and Nature the perfection and self-begotten of God. Nature's powers are explained as passion, will, and love, often in lofty and beautiful comparisons: 'As earth always bears beautiful flowers, plants, and trees, as well as metals and animate beings, and these finer, stronger, and more beautiful at one time than another; and as one springs into being as another dies, causing constant use and work, so it is in still greater degree with the begetting of the holy mysteries[5] ... creation is nothing else than a revelation of the all-pervading superficial godhead ... and is like the music of many flutes combined into one great harmony.' But the most representative man, both of the fifteenth century and, in a sense, of the German race, was Luther. That maxim of Goethe's for teaching and ethics,' Cheerfulness is the mother of all virtues, might well serve as a motto for Luther; The two men had much in common. The one, standing half in the Middle Ages, had to free himself from mental slavery by strength of will and courage of belief. The other, as the prophet of the nineteenth century, the incarnation of the modern man, had to shake off the artificiality and weak sentimentality of the eighteenth. To both alike a healthy joy in existence was the root of being. Luther was always open to the influence of Nature, and, characteristically, the Psalter was his favourite book. 'Lord, how manifold are Thy works, in wisdom hast Thou made them all!' True to his German character, he could be profoundly sad; but his disposition was delightfully cheerful and healthy, and we see from his letters and table-talk, that after wife and child, it was in 'God's dear world' that he took the greatest pleasure. He could not have enough of the wonders of creation, great or small. 'By God's mercy we begin to see the splendour of His works and wonders in the little flowers, as we consider how kind and almighty He is; therefore we praise and thank Him. In His creatures we see the power of His word--how great it is. In a peach stone, too, for hard as the shell is, the very soft kernel within causes it to open at the right time.'[6] Again, 'So God is present in all creatures, even the smallest leaves and poppy seeds.' All that he saw of Nature inspired him with confidence in the fatherly goodness of God. He wrote, August 5th, 1530, to Chancellor Brneck: I have lately seen two wonderful things: the first, looking from the window at the stars and God's whole beautiful sky dome, I saw never a pillar to support it, and yet it did not fall, and is still firm in its place. Now, there are some who search for such pillars and are very anxious to seize them and feel them, and because they cannot, fidget and tremble as if the skies would certainly fall ... the other, I also saw great thick clouds sweep over our heads, so heavy that they might be compared to a great sea, and yet I saw no ground on which they rested, and no vats in which they were contained, yet they did not fall on us, but greeted us with a frown and flew away. When they had gone, the rainbow lighted both the ground and the roof which had held them. Luther often used very forcible images from Nature. 'It is only for the sake of winter that we lie and rot in the earth; when our summer comes, our grain will spring up--rain, sun, and wind prepare us for it--that is, the Word, the Sacraments, and the Holy Ghost.' His Bible was an orchard of all sorts of fruit trees; in the introduction to the Psalter, he says of the thanksgiving psalms: 'There one looks into the hearts of the saints as into bright and beautiful gardens--nay, as into heaven itself, where pure and happy thoughts of God and His goodness are the lovely flowers.' His description of heaven for his little son John is full of simple reverent delight in Nature, quite free from platonic and mystical speculation as to God's relation to His universe; and Protestant divines kept this tone up to the following century, until the days of rationalism and pietism. Of such spontaneous hearty joy in Nature as this, the national songs of a nation are always the medium. They were so now; for, while a like feeling was nowhere else to be found, the Volkslieder expressed the simple familiar relationship of the child of Nature to wood, tree, and flower in touching words and a half-mythical, half-allegorical tone which often revealed their old Germanic origin. There is a fourteenth-century song, probably from the Lower Rhine,[7] which suggests the poems of the eighth and ninth centuries, about a great quarrel between Spring, crowned with flowers, and hoary-headed Winter, in which one praises and the other blames the cuckoo for announcing Spring. In this song, Summer complains to mankind and other friends that a mighty master is going to drive him away; this mighty master, Winter, then takes up the word, and menaces Spring with the approach of frost, who will slight and imprison him, and then kill him; ice and hail agree with Winter, and storm, rain, snow, and bitter winds are called his vassals, etc. There are naive verses in praise of Spring and Summer: When that the breezes blow in May, And snow melts from the wood away, Blue violets lift their heads on high, And when the little wood-birds sing, And flow'rets from the ground up-spring, Then everybody's glad. Others complaining of Winter, who must have leave of absence, and the wrongs it has wrought are poured out to Summer. The little birds are very human; the owlet complains: Poor little owlet me! I have to fly all alone through the wood to-night; The branch I want to perch on is broken, The leaves are all faded, My heart is full of grief. The cuckoo is either praised for bringing good news, or made fun of as the 'Gutzgauch.' A cuckoo will fly to his heart's treasure, etc. The fable songs[8] of animal weddings are full of humour. The fox makes arrangements for his wedding: 'Up with you now, little birds! I am going to take a bride. The starling shall saddle the horses, for he has a grey mantle; the beaver with the cap of marten fur must be driver, the hare with his light foot shall be outrider; the nightingale with his clear voice shall sing the songs, the magpie with his steady hop must lead the dances,' etc. The nightingale, with her rich tones, is beloved and honoured before all the winged things; she is called 'the very dear nightingale,' and addressed as a lady. 'Thou art a little woodbird, and flyest in and out the green wood; fair Nightingale, thou little woodbird, thou shalt be my messenger.' It is she who warns the girl against false love, or is the silent witness of caresses. There were a great many wishing songs: 'Were I a little bird and had two wings, I would fly to thee,' or 'Were I a wild falcon, I would take flight and fly down before a rich citizen's house--a little maid is there,' etc. 'And were my love a brooklet cold, and sprang out of a stone, little should I grieve if I were but a green wood; green is the wood, the brooklet is cold, my love is shapely.' The betrayed maiden cries: 'Would God I were a white swan! I would fly away over mountain and deep valley o'er the wide sea, so that my father and mother should not know where I was.' Flowers were used symbolically in many ways; roses are always the flowers of love. 'Pretty girls should be kissed, roses should be gathered,' was a common saying; and 'Gather roses by night, for then all the leaves are covered with cooling dew.' 'The roses are ready to be gathered, so gather them to-day. He who does not gather in summer, will not gather in winter.' There is tenderness in this: 'I only know a little blue flower, the colour of the sky; it grows in the green meadow, 'tis called forget-me-not.' These are sadder: There is a lime tree in this valley, O God! what does it there? It will help me to grieve That I have no lover. 'Alas! you mountains and deep valleys, is this the last time I shall see my beloved? Sun, moon, and the whole sky must grieve with me till my death.' Where lovers embrace, flowers spring out of the grass, roses and other flowers and grasses laugh, the trees creak and birds sing;[9] where lovers part, grass and leaves fade.[10] Most touching of all is the idea, common to the national songs of all nations, that out of the grave of two lovers, lilies and roses spring up, or climbing plants, love thus outliving death. We look in vain among the master singers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries for such fresh heartfelt tones as these, although honest Hans Sachs shews joy in Nature here and there; most charmingly in the famous comparison of 'the Wittenberg Nightingale, which every one hears everywhere now,' in praise of Luther: 'Wake up, the dawn is nigh! I hear a joyous nightingale singing in the green hedge, it fills the hills and valleys with its voice. The night is stooping to the west, the day is rising from the east, the morning red is leaping from the clouds, the sun looks through. The moon quenches her light; now she is pale and wan, but erewhile with false glamours she dazzled all the sheep and turned them from their pasture lands and pastor....' Fischart too, in his quaint description of a voyage on the Rhine in _Glückhaft Schiff_, shews little feeling for Nature; but in _Simplicissimus_, on the other hand, that monument of literature which reflected contemporary culture to a unique degree, it is very marked; the more so since it appeared when Germany lay crushed by the Thirty Years' War. When the hero as a boy was driven from his village home and fled into the forest, he came upon a hermit who took care of him, and waking at midnight, he heard the old man sing: Come, nightingale, comfort of the night, Let your voice rise in a song of joy, come praise the Creator, While other birds are sound asleep and cannot sing!... The stars are shining in the sky in honour of God.... My dearest little bird, we will not be the laziest of all And lie asleep; we will beguile the time with praise Till dawn refreshes the desolate woods. _Simplicissimus_ goes on: 'During this song, methinks, it was as if nightingale, owl, and echo had combined in song, and if ever I had been able to hear the morning star, or to try to imitate the melody on my bagpipe, I should have slipt away out of the hut to join in the melody, so beautiful it seemed; but I was asleep.' What was the general feeling for Nature in other countries during the latter half of the seventeenth century? In Italy and Spain it had assumed a form partly bucolic and idyllic, partly theosophically mystical; Shakespeare's plays had brought sympathy to maturity in England; the Netherlands had given birth to landscape painting, and France had the splendid poetic landscapes of Claude Lorraine. But the idealism thus reached soon degenerated into mannerism and artificiality, the hatching of empty effect. The aberrations of taste which found expression in the periwig style of Louis XIV., and in the pigtails of the eighteenth century, affected the feeling for Nature too. The histories of taste in general, and of feeling for Nature, have this in common, that their line of progress is not uniformly straightforward, but liable to zigzags. This is best seen in reviewing the different civilized races together. Moreover, new ideas, however forcible and original, even epoch-making, do not win acceptance at once, but rather trickle slowly through resisting layers; it is long before any new gain in culture becomes the common property of the educated, and hence opposite extremes are often found side by side--taste for what is natural with taste for what is artificial. Garden style is always a delicate test of feeling for Nature, shewing, as it does, whether we respect her ways or wish to impose our own. The impulse towards the modern French gardening came from Italy. Ancient and modern times both had to do with it. At the Renaissance there was a return to Pliny's style,[11] which the Cinque cento gardens copied. In this style laurel and box-hedges were clipt, and marble statues placed against them, 'to break the uniformity of the dark green with pleasant silhouettes. One looks almost in vain for flowers and turf; even trees were exiled to a special wilderness at the edge of the garden; but the great ornament of the whole was never missing, the wide view over sunny plains and dome-capt towns, or over the distant shimmering sea, which had gladdened the eyes of Roman rulers in classic days.'[12] The old French garden as Maître Lenotre laid it out in Louis XIV.'s time at Versailles, St Germain, and St Cloud, was architectural in design, and directly connected, like Pliny's, with various parts of the house, by open halls, pavilions, and colonnades. Every part of it--from neat turf parterres bordered by box in front of the terrace, designs worked out in flowers or coloured stones, and double rows of orange spaliers, to groups of statues and fountains--belonged to one symmetrical plan, the focus of which was the house, standing free from trees, and visible from every point. Farther off, radiating avenues led the eye in the same direction, and every little intersecting alley, true to the same principle, ran to a definite object--obelisk, temple, or what not. There was no lack of bowers, giant shrubberies, and water-courses running canal-wise through the park, but they all fell into straight lines; every path was ruled by a ruler, the eye could follow it to its very end. Artifice was the governing spirit. As Falke says: 'Nature dared not speak but only supply material; she had to sacrifice her own inventive power to this taste and this art. Hills and woods were only hindrances; the straight lines of trees and hedges, with their medley of statues and "cabinets de verdure," demanded level ground, and the landscape eye of the period only tolerated woods as a finish to its cut and clipt artificialities.'[13] Trees and branches were not allowed to grow at their own sweet will; they were cut into cubes, balls, pyramids, even into shapes of animals, as the gardener's fancy or his principles decreed; cypresses were made into pillars or hearts with the apex above or below; and the art of topiary even achieved complete hunting scenes, with hunters, stags, dogs, and hares in full chase on a hedge. Of such a garden one could say with honest Claudius, ''Tis but a tailor's joke, and shews the traces of the scissors; it has nothing of the great heart of Nature.' It was Nature in bondage: 'green architecture,' with all its parts, walls, windows, roofs, galleries cut out of leafage, and theatres with stage and wings in which silk and velvet marquises with full-bottomed wigs and lace jabots, and ladies in hooped petticoats and hair in towers, played at private theatricals. Where water was available, water devices were added. And in the midst of all this unnaturalness Greek mythology was introduced: the story of Daphne and Apollo appeared in one alley, Meleager and Atalanta in another, all Olympus was set in motion to fill up the walls and niches. And the people were like their gardens both in dress and manners; imposing style was everything. Then came the Rococo period of Louis XV. The great periwig shrivelled to a pigtail, and petty flourish took the place of Lenotre's grandezza. 'The unnatural remained, the imposing disappeared and caprice took its place,' says Falke. Coquetry too. All the artistic output of the time bears this stamp, painting included. Watteau's scenery and people were unnatural and affected--mere inventions to suit the gallant _fêtes_. But he knew and loved Nature, though he saw her with the intoxicated eye of a lover who forgets the individual but keeps a glorified impression of her beauty, whereas Boucher's rosy-blue landscapes look as if he had never seen their originals. His world had nothing in common with Nature, and with reality only this, that its sensuousness, gaiety, falsity, and coquetry were true to the period. But in both Watteau and Boucher there was a faint glimmer of the idyllic--witness the dash of melancholy in Watteau's brightest pictures. Feeling for Nature was seeking its lost path--the path it was to follow with such increased fervour. German literature too, in the seventeenth century, stood under the sign manual of the Pigtail and Periwig; it was baroque, stilted, bombastic, affected, feeling and form alike were forced, not spontaneous. Verses were turned out by machinery and glued together. Martin Opitz,[14] the recognized leader and king of poets, had travelled far, but there is no distinct feeling for Nature in his poetry. His words to a mountain: 'Nature has so arranged pleasure here, that he who takes the trouble to climb thee is repaid by delight,' scarcely admit the inference that he understood the charm of distance in the modern sense. He took warmer interest in the bucolic side of country life; rhyming about the delightful places, dwellings of peace, with their myrtles, mountains, valleys, stones, and flowers, where he longed to be; and his _Spring Song_, an obvious imitation of the classics (Horace's _Beatus ille_ was his model for _Zlatna_), has this conventional contrast between his heart and Nature. 'The frosty ice must melt; snow cannot last any longer, Favonius; the gentle breeze is on the, fields again. Seed is growing vigorously, grass greening in all its splendour, trees are budding, flowers growing ...thou, too my heart, put off thy grief.' There is more nostalgia than feeling for Nature in this: 'Ye birches and tall limes, waste places, woods and fields, farewell to you! 'My comfort and my better dwelling-place is elsewhere!' But (and this Winter, strange to say, ignores) his pastorals have all the sentimental elegiac style of the Pigtail period. There had been German adaptations of foreign pastorals, such as Montreux, _Schãferei von der schönen Juliana_, since 1595; Urfé's _Astrée_ and Montemayor's _Diana_ appeared in 1619, and Sidney's _Arcadia_ ten years later. Opitz tried to widen the propaganda for this kind of poetry, and hence wrote, not to mention little pastorals such as _Daphne, Galatea, Corydon,_ and _Asteria_, his _Schãferei von der 'Nymphen Hercinie.'_ His references to Nature in this are as exaggerated as everything else in the poem. He tells how he did not wake 'until night, the mother of the stars, had gone mad, and the beautiful light of dawn began to shew herself and everything with her.... 'I sprang up and greeted the sweet rays of the sun, which looked down from the tops of the mountains and seemed at the same time to comfort me.' He came to a spring 'which fell from a crag with charming murmur and rustle,' cut a long poem in the fir bark, and conversed with three shepherds on virtue, love, and travelling, till the nymph Hercynia appeared and shewed him the source of the Silesian stream. One of the shepherds, Buchner, was particularly enthusiastic about water: 'Kind Nature, handmaid of the Highest, has shewn her best handiwork in sea, river, and spring.' Fleming too, who already stood much higher as a lyrist and had travelled widely, lacked the power of describing scenery, and must needs call Oreads, Dryads, Castor and Pollux to his aid. He rarely reached the simple purity of his fine sonnet _An Sich,_ or the feeling in this: 'Dense wild wood, where even the Titan's brightest rays give no light, pity my sufferings. In my sick soul 'tis as dark as in thy black hollow.' In this time of decline the hymns of the Evangelical Church (to which Fleming contributed) were full of feeling, and brought the national songs to mind as nothing else did. A few lines of Paul Gerhardt's seem to me to out-weigh whole volumes of contemporary rhymes--lines of such beauty as the _Evening Song_: Now all the woods are sleeping, And night and stillness creeping O'er field and city, man and beast; The last faint beam is going, The golden stars are glowing In yonder dark-blue deep. And after him, and more like him than any one else, came Andreas Gryphius. There was much rhyming about Nature in the poet schools of Hamburg, Königsberg, and Nuremberg; but, for the most part, it was an idle tinkle of words without feeling, empty artificial stuff with high-flown titles, as in Philipp von Zesen's _Pleasure of Spring_, and _Poetic Valley of Roses and Lilies_. 'Up, my thoughts, be glad of heart, in this joyous pleasant March; ah! see spring is reviving, earth opens her treasury,' etc. His romances were more noteworthy if not more interesting. He certainly aimed high, striving for simplicity and clearness of expressions in opposition to the Silesian poets, and hating foreign words. His feeling for Nature was clear; he loved to take his reader into the garden, and was enthusiastic about cool shady walks, beds of tulips, birds' songs, and echoes. Idyllic pastoral life was the fashion--people of distinction gave themselves up to country life and wore shepherd costume--and he introduced a pastoral episode into his romance, _Die adriatische Rosemund._[15] Rosemund, whose father places arbitrary conditions in the way of her marriage with Markhold, becomes a shepherdess. Not far off was a delightful spot where limes and alders made shade on hot summer days for the shepherds and shepherdesses who dwelt around. The shady trees, the meadows, and the streams which ran round it, and through it, made it look beautiful ... the celestial Rosemund had taken up her abode in a little shepherd hut on the slope of a little hill by a water-course, and shaded by some lime trees, in which the birds paid her homage morning and evening.... Such a place and such solitude refreshed the more than human Rosemund, and in such peace she was able to unravel her confused thoughts. She thought continually of Markhold, and spent her time cutting his name in the trees. The following description of a walk with her sister Stillmuth and her lover Markhold, gives some idea of the formal affected style of the time. The day was fine, the sky blue, the weather everywhere warm. The sun shone down on the globe with her pleasant lukewarm beams so pleasantly, that one scarcely cared to stay indoors. They went into the garden, where the roses had opened in the warmth of the sun, and first sat down by the stream, then went to the grottos, where Markhold particularly admired the shell decorations. When this charming party had had enough of both, they finally betook themselves to a leafy walk, where Rosemund introduced pleasant conversation on many topics. She talked first about the many colours of tulips, and remarked that even a painter could not produce a greater variety of tints nor finer pictures than these, etc. In describing physical beauty, he used comparisons from Nature; for instance, in _Simson_[16]: The sun at its brightest never shone so brightly as her two eyes ... no flower at its best can shew such red as blooms in the meadow of her cheeks, no civet rose is so milk-white, no lily so delicate and spotless, no snow fresh-fallen and untrodden is so white, as the heaven of her brows, the stronghold of her mind. H. Anselm von Ziegler und Klipphausen also waxes eloquent in his famous _Asiatischen Banise_: 'The suns of her eyes played with lightnings; her curly hair, like waves round her head, was somewhat darker than white; her cheeks were a pleasant Paradise where rose and lily bloomed together in beauty--yea, love itself seemed to pasture there.' Elsewhere too this writer, so highly esteemed by the second Silesian school of poets, indulged in showy description and inflated rhetoric. Anton Ulrich von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel tried more elaborate descriptions of scenery; so that Chovelius says: The Duke's German character shews pleasantly in his delight in Nature. The story often takes one into woods and fields; already griefs and cares were carried to the running brook and mossy stone, and happy lovers listened to the nightingale. His language is barely intelligible, but there is a pleasant breadth about his drawing--for example, of the king's meadow and the grotto in _Aramena_: Very cold crystal streams flowed through the fields and ran softly over the stony ground, making a pleasant murmur. Whilst the ear was thus contented, a distant landscape delighted the eye. No more delightful place, possessing all this at once, could have been found, etc. Looking through the numerous air-holes, the eye lost itself in a deep valley, surrounded by nothing but mountains, where the shepherds tended their flocks, and one heard their flutes multiplied by the echo in the most delightful way. Mawkish shepherd play is mixed here with such verses as (Rahel): Thou, Chabras, thou art the dear stream, where Jacob's mouth gave me the first kiss. Thou, clear brook, often bearest away the passionate words of my son of Isaac ... on many a bit of wounded bark, the writing of my wounds is to be found. The most insipid pastoral nonsense of the time was produced by the Nuremberg poets, the Pegnitz shepherds Klaj and Harsdörfer. Their strength lay in imitating the sounds of Nature, and they were much admired. What is still more astonishing, Lohenstein's writings were the model for thirty years, and it was the fashion for any one who wrote more simply to apologize for being unable to reach the level of so great a master! To us the bombast, artificiality, and hidden sensuality of his poetry and Hoffmannswaldan's, are equally repulsive. What dreary, manufactured stuff this is from Lohenstein's _Praise of Roses sung by the Sun_[17]: This is the queen of flowers and plants, The bride of heaven, world's treasure, child of stars! For whom love sighs, and I myself, the sun, do pant, Because her crown is golden, and her leaves are velvet, Her foot and stylus emerald, her brilliance shames the ruby. Other beings possess only single beauties, Nature has made the rose beautiful with all at once. She is ashamed, and blushes Because she sees all the other flowers stand ashamed before her. In _Rose Love_ he finds the reflection of love in everything: In whom does not Love's spirit plant his flame? One sees the oil of love burn in the starry lamps, That pleasant light can nothing be but love, For which the dew from Phoebus' veil doth fall. Heaven loves the beauteous globe of earth, And gazes down on her by night with thousand eyes; While earth to please the heaven Doth clover, lilies, tulips in her green hair twine, The elm and vine stock intertwine, The ivy circles round the almond trees, And weeps salt tears when they are forced apart. And where the flowers burn with glow of Love, It is the rose that shews the brightest flame, For is the rose not of all flowers the queen, The wondrous beauty child of sun and earth? Artificiality and bombast reached its highest pitch in these poets, and feeling for Nature was entirely absent. CHAPTER IX SYMPTOMS OF A RETURN TO NATURE It is refreshing to find, side by side with these mummified productions, the traces of a pure national poetry flowing clear as ever, 'breaking forth from the very heart of the people, ever renewing its youth, and not misled by the fashion of the day.'[1] The traces prove that simple primitive love for Nature was not quite dead. For instance, this of the Virgin Mary: 'Mary, she went across the heath, grass and flowers wept for grief, she did not find her son.' And the lines in which the youth forced into the cloister asks Nature to lament with him: 'I greet you all, hill and dale, do not drive me away--grass and foliage and all the green things in the wild forest. O tree! lose your green ornaments, complain, die with me--'tis your duty.' Then the Spring greetings: Now we go into the wide, wide world, With joy and delight we go; The woods are dressing, the meadows greening, The flowers beginning to blow. Listen here! and look there! We can scarce trust our eyes, For the singing and soaring, the joy and life everywhere. And: What is sweeter than to wander in the early days of Spring From one place to another in sheer delight and glee; While the sun is shining brightly, and the birds exult around Fair Nightingale, the foremost of them all? This has the pulse of true and naive feeling (the hunter is starting for the hunt in the early morning): When I come into the forest, still and silent everywhere, There's a look of slumber in it, but the air is fresh and cool. Now Aurora paints the fir tops at their very tips with gold, And the little finch sits up there launching forth his song of praise, Thanking for the night that's over, for the day that's just awake Gently blows the breeze of morning, rocking in the topmost twigs, And it bends them down like children, like good children when they pray; And the dew is an oblation as it drops from their green hair. O what beauties in the forest he that we may see and know! One could melt away one's heart before its wonders manifold! The sixth line in the original has a melody that reminds one of Goethe's early work. But even amidst the artificial poetry then in vogue, there were a few side streams which turned away from the main current of the great poet schools, from the unnaturalness and bombast affected especially by the Silesians. As Winter says, even the satirists Moscherosch and Logau were indirectly of use in paving the way for a healthier condition, through their severe criticisms of the corruption of the language; and Logau's one epigram on May, 'This month is a kiss which heaven gives to earth, that she may be a bride now, a mother by-and-by,' outweighs all Harsdörfer's and Zesen's poetry about Nature. But even by the side of Opitz and Fleming there was at least one poet of real feeling, Friedrich von Spee.[2] With all his mystic and pietist Christianity, he kept an open eye for Nature. His poems are full of disdain of the world and joy in Nature,[3] longings for death and lamentations over sin; he delighted in personifications of abstract ideas, childish playing with words and feelings, and sentimental enthusiasm. But mawkish and canting as he was apt to be, he often shewed a fine appreciation of detail. He was even--a rare thing then--fascinated by the sea. Now rages and roars the wild, wild sea, Now in soft curves lies quietly; Sweetly the light of the sun's bright glow Mirrors itself in the water below. Sad winter's past--the stork is here, Birds are singing and nests appear; Bowery homes steal into the day, Flow'rets present their full array; Like little snakes and woods about, The streams go wandering in and out. His motives, like his diminutives, are constantly recurring. He uses many bold and poetic personifications; the sun 'combs her golden hair,' the moon is a good shepherd who leads his sheep the stars across the blue heath, blowing upon a soft pipe; the sun adorns herself in spring with a crown and a girdle of roses, fills her quiver with arrows, and sends her horses to gallop for miles across the smooth sky; the wind flies about, stopping for breath from time to time; shakes its wings and withdraws into its house when it is tired; the brook of Cedron sits, leaning on a bucket in a hollow, combing his bulrush hair, his shoulders covered by grass and water; he sings a cradle song to his little brooks, or drives them before him, etc. But the most gifted poet of the set, and the most doughty opponent of Lohenstein's bombast, was the unhappy Christian Guenther.[4] He vents his feelings in verse because he must. There is a foretaste of Goethe in his lyrics, poured put to free the soul from a burden, and melodious as if by accident. As we turn over the leaves of his book of songs, we find deep feeling for Nature mingled with his love and sorrows.[5] Bethink you, flowers and trees and shades, Of the sweet evenings here with Flavia! 'Twas here her head upon my shoulder pressed; Conceal, ye limes, what else I dare not say. 'Twas here she clover threw and thyme at me, And here I filled her lap with freshest flowers. Ah! that was a good time! I care more for moon and starlight than the pleasantest of days, And with eyes and heart uplifted from my chamber often gaze With an awe that grows apace till it scarcely findeth space. To his lady-love he writes: Here where I am writing now 'Tis lonely, shady, cool, and green; And by the slender fig I hear The gentle wind blow towards Schweidnitz. And all the time most ardently I give it thousand kisses for thee. And at Schweidnitz: A thousand greetings, bushes, fields, and trees, You know him well whose many rhymes And songs you've heard, whose kisses seen; Remember the joy of those fine summer nights. To Eleanora: Spring is not far away. Walk in green solitude Between your alder rows, and think ... As in the oft-repeated lesson The young birds' cry shall bear my longing; And when the west wind plays with cheek and dress be sure He tells me of thy longing, and kisses thee a thousand times for me. In a time of despair, he wrote: Storm, rage and tear! winds of misfortune, shew all your tyranny! Twist and split bark and twig, And break the tree of hope in two Stem and leaves are struck by this hail and thunder, The root remains till storm and rain have laid their wrath. Again: The woods I'll wander through, From men I'll flee away, With lonely doves I'll coo, And with the wild things stay. When life's the prey of misery, And all my powers depart, A leafy grave will be Far kinder than thy heart. True lyrist, he gave Nature her full right in his feelings, and found comfort in return; but, as Goethe said of him, gifted but unsteady as he was, 'He did not know how to restrain himself, and so his life and poetry melted away.' Among those who made use of better material than the Silesian poets, H. Barthold Brockes stood first. Nature was his one and only subject; but in this he was not original, he was influenced by England. While France was dictating a taste like the baroque, and Germany enthusiastically adopting it (every petty prince in the land copied the gardens at Versailles, Schwetzingen more closely than the rest), a revolution which affected all Europe was brought about by England. The order of the following dates is significant: William Kent, the famous garden artist, died in 1748, James Thomson in the same year, Brockes a year earlier; and about the same time the imitations of Robinson Crusoe sprang up like mushrooms. We have considered Shakespeare's plays; English lyrists too of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries shewed deep feeling for Nature, and invested scenery with their own feelings in a very delicate way. G. Chaucer (1400) praises the nightingale s song in _From the Floure and Leafe_: So was I with the song Thorow ravished, that till late and long Ne wist I in what place I was ne where; ... And at the last, I gan full well aspie Where she sat in a fresh grene laurer tree On the further side, even right by me, That gave so passing a delicious smell According to the eglentere full well.... On the sote grass I sat me downe, for, as for mine entent, The birddes song was more convenient, And more pleasant to me by many fold Than meat or drink or any other thing. Thomas Wyatt (1542) says of his lady-love: The rocks do not so cruelly Repulse the waves continually, As she my suit and affection So that I am past remedy. Robert Southwell (1595), in _Love's Servile Lott_, compares love to April: May never was the month for love, For May is full of floures, But rather Aprill, wett by kinde, For love is full of showers.... Like winter rose and summer yce, Her joyes are still untymelye; Before her hope, behind remorse, Fayre first, in fyne unseemely. Edmund Spenser (1598) describes a garden in _The Faerie Queene_: There the most daintie Paradise on ground It selfe did offer to his sober eye, In which all pleasures plenteously abownd, And none does others' happinesse envye; The painted flowres, the trees upshooting hye, The dales for shade, the hilles for breathing space, The trembling groves, the christall running by, And, that which all fair workes doth most aggrace, The art which all that wrought appeared in no place. Mountain scenery was seldom visited or described. Michael Drayton (1731) wrote an ode on the Peak, in Derbyshire: Though on the utmost Peak A while we do remain, Amongst the mountains bleak Exposed to sleet and rain, No sport our hours shall break To exercise our vein. It is clear that he preferred his comfort to everything, for he goes on: Yet many rivers clear Here glide in silver swathes, And what of all most dear Buxton's delicious baths, Strong ale and noble chear T' assuage breem winter's scathes. Thomas Carew (1639) sings: Ask me no more where Jove bestows, When June is past, the fading rose, For in your beauties' orient deep These flowers, as in their causes, sleep. Ask me no more whither do stray The golden atoms of the day, For in pure love Heaven did prepare Those powders to enrich your hair. Ask me no more whither doth haste The nightingale, when May is past, For in your sweet dividing throat She winters and keeps warm her note. Ask me no more where these stars shine That downwards fall in dead of night, For in your eyes they sit, and there Fixed become, as in their sphere. Ask me no more if east or west The phoenix builds her spicy nest, For unto you at last she flies And in your fragrant bosom dies. William Drummond (1746) avowed a taste which he knew to be very unfashionable: Thrice happy he, who by some shady grove, Far from the clamorous world, doth live his own Though solitary, who is not alone, But doth converse with that eternal love. O how more sweet is birds' harmonious moan Or the soft sobbings of the widow'd dove, Than those smooth whisp'rings near a prince's throne.... O how more sweet is zephyr's wholesome breath And sighs perfum'd, which new-born flowers unfold. Another sonnet, to a nightingale, says: Sweet bird, that sing'st away the early hours Of winters past or coming void of care, Well pleased with delights which present are, Fair seasons, budding sprays, sweet-smelling flowers; To rocks, to springs, to rills, from leafy bowers Thou thy Creator's goodness dost declare, And what dear gifts on thee He did not spare, A stain to human sense in sin that lowers, What soul can be so sick which by thy songs Attir'd in sweetness, sweetly is not driven Quite to forget earth's turmoils, spites, and wrongs? He greets Spring: Sweet Spring, thou turn'st with all thy goodly train Thy head with flames, thy mantle bright with flowers; The zephyrs curl the green locks of the plain, The clouds for joy in pearls weep down their showers. Robert Blair (1746) sings in _The Grave_: Oh, when my friend and I In some thick wood have wander'd heedless on, Hid from the vulgar eye, and sat us down Upon the sloping cowslip-cover'd bank, Where the pure limpid stream has slid along In grateful errors through the underwood, Sweet murmuring; methought the shrill-tongu'd thrush Mended his song of love, the sooty blackbird Mellowed his pipe and soften'd every note, The eglantine smell'd sweeter and the rose Assum'd a dye more deep, whilst ev'ry flower Vied with its fellow plant in luxury Of dress. Oh! then the longest summer's day Seem'd too, too much in haste, still the full heart Had not imparted half; half was happiness Too exquisite to last--Of joys departed Not to return, how painful the remembrance! The great painter of Nature among the poets was James Thomson. He was not original, but followed Pope, who had lighted up the seasons in a dry, dogmatic way in _Windsor Forest_, and pastoral poems, and after the publication of his _Winter_ the taste of the day carried him on. His deep and sentimental affection for Nature was mixed up with piety and moralizing. He said in a letter to his friend Paterson: Retirement and Nature are more and more my passion every day; and now, even now, the charming time comes on; Heaven is just on the point, or rather in the very act, of giving earth a green gown. The voice of the nightingale is heard in our lane. You must know that I have enlarged my rural domain ... walled, no, no! paled in about as much as my garden consisted of before, so that the walk runs round the hedge, where you may figure me walking any time of day, and sometimes of the night.... May your health continue till you have scraped together enough to return home and live in some snug corner, as happy as the Corycius senex in Virgil's fourth Georgic, whom I recommend both to you and myself as a perfect model of the truest happy life. It is a fact that Solitude and Nature became a passion with him. He would wander about the country for weeks at a time, noting every sight and sound, down to the smallest, and finding beauty and divine goodness in all. His _Seasons_ were the result. There is faithful portraiture in these landscapes in verse; some have charm and delicacy, but, for the most part, they are only catalogues of the external world, wholly lacking in links with the inner life. Scene after scene is described without pause, or only interrupted by sermonizing; it is as monotonous as a gallery of landscape paintings. The human beings introduced are mere accessories, they do not live, and the undercurrent of all is praise of the Highest. His predilection is for still life in wood and field, but he does not neglect grander scenery; his muse "Sees Caledonia, in romantic view: Her airy mountains, from the waving main Invested with a keen diffusive sky, Breathing the soul acute; her forests huge, Incult, robust, and tall, by Nature's hand Planted of old; her azure lakes between, Poured out extensive and of watery wealth Full; winding, deep and green, her fertile vales, With many a cool translucent brimming flood Washed lovely...." And in _A Hymn_ we read: Ye headlong torrents rapid and profound, Ye softer floods that lead the humid maze Along the vale; and thou, majestic main, A secret world of wonders in thyself. It is the lack of human life, the didactic tone, and the wearisome detail which destroys interest in the _Seasons_--the lack of happy moments of invention. Yet it had great influence on his contemporaries in rousing love for Nature, and it contains many beautiful passages. For example: Come, gentle Spring, ethereal mildness, come, And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud, While music wakes around, veiled in a shower Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend. His most artistic poem is Winter: When from the pallid sky the sun descends With many a spot, that o'er his glaring orb Uncertain wanders, stained; red fiery streaks Begin to flush around. The reeling clouds Stagger with dizzy poise, as doubting yet Which master to obey; while rising slow, Blank in the leaden-coloured east, the moon Wears a wan circle round her blunted horns. Seen through the turbid fluctuating air, The stars obtuse emit a shivering ray; Or frequent seem to shoot, athwart the gloom, And long behind them trail the whitening blaze. Snatched in short eddies plays the withered leaf, And on the flood the dancing feather floats. With broadened nostrils to the sky upturned, The conscious heifer snuffs the stormy gale.... Retiring from the downs, where all day long They picked their scanty fare, a blackening train Of clamorous rooks thick urge their weary flight And seek the closing shelter of the grove, Assiduous, in his bower, the wailing owl Plies his sad song. The cormorant on high Wheels from the deep, and screams along the land. Loud shrieks the soaring heron, and with wild wing The circling sea-fowl cleave the flaky skies. Ocean, unequal pressed, with broken tide And blind commotion heaves, while from the shore, Eat into caverns by the restless wave And forest-rustling mountains, comes a voice That solemn-sounding bids the world prepare. The elaboration of detail in such painting is certain evidence, not only of a keen, but an enthusiastic eye for Nature. As he says in Winter: Nature, great parent! whose unceasing hand Rolls round the seasons of the changeful year! How mighty, how majestic, are thy works! With what a pleasing dread they swell the soul That sees astonish'd, and astonish'd sings! Brockes was directly influenced by Pope and Thomson, and translated the _Seasons_, when he had finished his _Irdisches Vergnügen in Gott_. This unwieldy work, insipid and prosaic as it is, was still a literary achievement, thanks to the dignity of the subject and the high seriousness of its aim, at a time when frivolity was the fashion in poetry. Its long pious descriptions of natural phenomena have none of the imposing flow of Thomson's strophes. It treats of fire in 138 verses of eight lines each, of air in 79, water in 78, earth in 74, while flowers and fruit are dissected and analyzed at great length; and all this rhymed botany and physics is loosely strung together, but it shews a warm feeling for Nature of a moralizing and devotional sort. He says himself[7] that he took up the study of poetry first as an amusement, but later more seriously, and chose Nature as his theme, not only because her beauty moved him, but as a means 'whereby man might enjoy a permissible pleasure and be edified at the same time.' So I resolved to sing the praises of the Creator to the best of my powers, and felt the more bound to do it, because I held that such great and almost inexcusable neglect and ingratitude was a wrong to the Creator, and unbecoming in Christendom. I therefore composed different pieces, chiefly in Spring, and tried my best to describe the beauties of Nature, in order, through my own pleasure, to rekindle the praise of the wise Creator in myself and others, and this led at last to the first part of my _Irdisches Vergnügen_. (1721.) His evidence from animal and plant life for the teleological argument is very laughable; take, for example, the often-quoted chamois: The fat is good for phthisis, the gall for the face, chamois flesh is good to eat, and its blood cures vertigo--the skin is no less useful. Doth not the love as well as the wisdom and almightiness of the Creator shine forth from this animal? For the rest, the following lines from _Irdisches Vergnügen in Gott_ will serve to give an idea of his style; they certainly do honour to his laborious attempt to miss none of the charms of the wood: Lately as I sat on the green grass Shaded by a lime tree, and read, I raised my eyes by chance and saw Different trees here and there, some far, some near, Some half, some all in light, and some in shade, Their boughs bowed down by leaves. I saw how beautifully both air and flowery mead Were crowned and adorned. To describe the green grace And the landscape it makes so sweet, And at the same time prolong my pleasure, I took pencil and paper And tried to describe the beautiful trees in rhyme, To the glory of God their Creator. Of all the beauty the world lays before our eyes, There certainly is none which does not pale Beside green boughs, Nothing to compare for pure beauty with a wood. The green roofing overhead Makes me feel young again; It hangs there, a living tapestry, To the glory of God and our delight.... Beyond many trees that lay in shade I often saw one in full light; A human eye would scarce believe How sweetly twilight, light and darkness Meet side by side in leafy trees. Peering through the leaves with joy We notice, as we see the leaves Lighted from one side only, That we can almost see the sun Mixing gold with the tender green, etc. and so on for another twenty lines. Yet this rich Burgomaster of Hamburg, for all that he dealt chiefly in rhymed prose, had his moments of rare elevation of thought and mystical rapture about Nature; for instance, in the introduction to _Ueber das Firmament_: As lately in the sapphire depths, Not bound by earth nor water, aim nor end, In the unplumbed aerial sea I gazed, And my absorbed glance, now here, now there, But ever deeper sank--horror came over me, My eye grew dizzy and my soul aghast. That infinite vast vault, True picture of Eternity, Since without birth or end From God alone it comes.... It overwhelmed my soul. The mighty dome of deep dark light, Bright darkness without birth or bound, Swallowed the very world--burying thought. My being dwindled to an atom, to a nought; I lost myself, So suddenly it beat me down, And threatened with despair. But in that salutary nothingness, that blessed loss, All present God! in Thee--I found myself again. While English poetry and its German imitations were shewing these signs of reaction from the artificiality of the time, and science and philosophy often lauded Nature to the skies, as, for instance, Shaftesbury[8] (1671-1713), a return to Nature became the principle of English garden-craft in the first half of the eighteenth century.[9] The line of progress here, as in taste generally, did not run straightforward, but fluctuated. From the geometric gardens of Lenotre, England passed to the opposite extreme; in the full tide of periwig and hoop petticoat, minuets, beauty-patches and rouge, Addison and Pope were banishing everything that was not strictly natural from the garden. Addison would even have everything grow wild in its own way, and Pope wrote: To build, to plant, whatever you intend, To rear the column, or the arch to bend, To swell the terrace or to sink the grot, In all let Nature never be forgot. William Kent made allowance for this idea; but, as a painter, and looking at his native scenery with a painter's eye, he noted its characteristic features--the gentle undulations, the freshness of the green, the wealth of trees--and based his garden-craft on these. The straight line was banished; in its place came wide spaces of lawn and scattered groups of trees of different sorts--dark fir and alder here, silver birch and grey poplar there; and flowery fields with streams running through them stood out in relief against dark woodland. Stiff walls, balustrades, terraces, statues, and so forth, disappeared; the garden was not to contrast with the surrounding landscape, but to merge into it--to be not Art, but a bit of Nature. It was, in fact, to be a number of such bits, each distinct from the rest--waterfall, sheltered sunny nook, dark wood, light glade. Kent himself soon began to vary this mosaic of separate scenes by adding ruins and pavilions; but it was Chambers the architect who developed the idea of variety by his writings on the dwellings and manners of the Chinese.[10] The fundamental idea that the garden ought to be a sample of the landscape was common both to Kent and the Chinese; but, as China is far richer than England in varieties of scenery, her gardens included mountains, rocks, swamps, and deserts, as well as sunny fields and plains, while English gardens were comparatively monotonous. When the fashion for the Chinese style came in, as unluckily it did just when we were trying to oust the Rococo, so that one pigtail superseded the other, variety was achieved by groups of buildings in all sorts of styles. Stables, ice-houses, gardeners' cottages took the form of pavilions, pagodas, kiosks, and temples. Meanwhile, as a reaction against the Rococo, enthusiasm for Nature increased, and feeling was set free from restraint by the growing sentimentality. Richardson's novels fed the taste for the pleasures of weeping sensibility, and garden-craft fell under its sway. In all periods the insignificant and non-essential is unable to resist the general stamp, if that only shews a little originality. These gardens, with temples to friendship and love, melancholy, virtue, re-union, and death, and so forth, were suitable backgrounds for the sentimental scenes described in the English novels, and for the idyllic poets and moonshine singers of Germany. Here it was the fashion to wander, tenderly intertwined, shedding floods of tears and exchanging kisses, and pausing at various places to read the inscriptions which directed them what to feel. At one spot they were to laugh, at another to weep, at a third to be fired with devotion. Hermitages sprang up everywhere, with hermits, real or dummy. Any good house near a wood, or in a shady position, was called a hermitage, and dedicated to arcadian life, free from care and ceremony. Classic and romantic styles competed for favour in architecture; at one moment everything must needs be purely classic, each temple Corinthian, Ionic, or Doric; at another Gothic, with the ruins and fortresses of mediæval romance. And not only English gardens, but those of Europe generally, though to a less degree, passed through these stages of development, for no disease is so infectious as fashion. It was not till the end of the eighteenth century that a healthy reaction set in in England, when Repton turned back to Kent's fundamental principle and freed it from its unnatural excrescences, with the formula: the garden should be an artistic representation of the landscape, a work of art whose materials are provided by Nature herself, whether grass, flowers, bushes, trees, water, or whatever it may be that she has to offer. Thus began our modern landscape gardening. In another region too, a change was brought about from the Rococo to a more natural style. It is true that Nature plays no direct _rôle_ in _Robinson Crusoe_, and wins as little notice there as in its numberless imitations; yet the book roused a longing for healthier, more natural conditions in thousands of minds. It led the idyllic tendency of the day back to its source, and by shewing all the stages, from the raw state of Nature up to the culture of the community, in the life of one man, it brought out the contrast between the far-off age of innocence and the perverted present. The German _Simplicissimus_ closed with a Robinsonade, in which the hero, after long wandering, found rest and peace on an island in the ocean of the world, alone with himself and Nature. The readers of _Robinson Crusoe_ were in much the same position. Defoe was not only a true artist, but a man of noble, patient character, and his romance proved a healing medicine to many sick minds, pointing the way back to Nature and a natural fife, and creating a longing for the lost innocence of man. Rousseau, who was also a zealous advocate of the English gardens, and disgusted by the French Pigtail style, was more impressed by _Robinson Crusoe_ than by any other book. It was the first book his Emilia gave him, as a gospel of Nature and unspoilt taste. CHAPTER X THE SENSITIVENESS AND EXAGGERATION OF THE ELEGIAC IDYLLIC FEELING This longing to return to the lost paradise of Nature gradually produced a state of melancholy hyper-sensitiveness, an epidemic of world pain, quite as unnatural as the Rococo. The heart came into its rights again and laid claim to absolute dominion in its kingdom, and regret that it had lain so long deprived of its own, gave rise to a tearful pensiveness, which added zest to restitution. It was convalescence, but followed at once by another complaint. Feeling swung from one extreme to the other. German feeling in the first half of the eighteenth century was chiefly influenced, on the one hand, by Richardson's novels, which left no room for Nature, and by the poetry of Young and Thomson; on the other, by the pastoral idylls interspersed with anacreontic love-passages, affected by the French. At first description and moralizing preponderated. In 1729 Haller's _Alps_ appeared. It had the merit of drawing the eyes of Europe to Alpine beauty and the moral worth of the Swiss, but shewed little eye for romantic scenery. It is full of descriptive painting, but not of a kind that appeals: scene follows scene with considerable pathos, especially in dealing with the people; but landscape is looked at almost entirely from the moralizing or utilitarian standpoint. 'Here, where the majestic Mount Gothard elevates its summit above the clouds, and where the earth itself seems to approach the sun, Nature has assembled in one spot all the choicest treasure of the globe. The deserts of Libya, indeed, afford us greater novelties, and its sandy plains are more fertile in monsters: but thou, favoured region, art adorned with useful productions only, productions which can satisfy all the wants of man. Even those heaps of ice, those frowning rocks in appearance so sterile, contribute largely to the general good, for they supply inexhaustible fountains to fertilize the land. What a magnificent picture does Nature spread before the eye, when the sun, gilding the top of the Alps, scatters the sea of vapours which undulates below! Through the receding vale the theatre of a whole world rises to the view! Rocks, valleys, lakes, mountains, and forests fill the immeasurable space, and are lost in the wide horizon. We take in at a single glance the confines of divers states, nations of various characters, languages, and manners, till the eyes, overcome by such extent of vision, drop their weary lids, and we ask of the enchanted fancy a continuance of the scene. 'When the first emotion of astonishment has subsided, how delightful is it to observe each several part which makes up this sublime whole! That mass of hills, which presents its graceful declivity covered with flocks of sheep whose bleatings resound through the meadows; that large clear lake, which reflects from its level surface sunbeams gently curved; those valleys, rich in verdure, which compose by their various outlines points of perspective which contract in the distance of the landscape! Here rises a bare steep mountain laden with the accumulated snow of ages; its icy head rests among the clouds, repelling the genial rays of the moon and the fervid heat of the dog-star: there a chain of cultivated hills spreads before the delighted eye; their green pastures are enlivened by flocks, and their golden corn waves in the wind: yet climates so different as those are only separated by a cool, narrow valley. Behold that foaming torrent rushing from a perpendicular height! Its rapid waves dash among the rocks, and shoot even beyond their limits. Divided by the rapidity of its course and the depth of the abyss where it falls, it changes into a grey moving veil; and, at length scattered into humid atoms, it shines with the tints of the rainbow, and, suspended over the valley, refreshes it with plenteous dew. The traveller beholds with astonishment rivers flowing towards the sky, and issuing from one cloud, hide themselves in the grey veil of another. 'Those desert places uncheered by the rays of the sun, those frozen abysses deprived of all verdure, hide beneath their sterile sands invaluable treasures, which defy the rigour of the seasons and all the injuries of time! 'Tis in dark and marshy recesses, upon the damp grottos, that crystal rocks are formed. Thus splendour is diffused through their melancholy vaults, and their shadowy depths gutter with the colours of the rainbow. O Nature, how various are thy operations, how infinite thy fertility!' We cannot agree with Frey[1] that 'these few strophes may serve as sufficient proof that Haller's poetry is still, even among the mass of Alpine poetry, unsurpassed for intense power of direct vision, and easily makes one forget its partial lack of flexibility of diction.' The truth is, flexibility is entirely lacking; but the lines do express the taste for open-air life among the great sublimities and with simple people. The poem is not romantic but idyllic, with a touch of the elegiac. It is the same with the poem _On the Origin of Evil_ (Book I.): On those still heights whence constant springs flow down, I paused within a copse, lured by the evening breeze; Wide country lay spread out beneath my feet, Bounded by its own size alone.... Green woods covered the hills, through which the pale tints of the fields Shone pleasantly. Abundance and repose held sway far as the eye could reach.... And yonder wood, what left it to desire With the red tints upon the half-bare beeches And the rich pine's green shade o'er whitened moss? While many a sun-ray through the interstices A quivering light upon the darkness shed, Blending in varying hues green night with golden day How pleasant is the quiet of the copse! ... Yea, all I see is given by Providence, The world itself is for its burgher's joy; Nature's inspired with the general weal, The highest goodness shews its trace in all. Friedrich von Hagedorn, too, praises country pleasures in _The Feeling of Spring_: Enamelled meadows! freshly decked in green, I sing your praises constantly; Nature and Spring have decked you out.... Delightful quiet, stimulant of joy, How enviable thou art! This idyllic taste for country life was common at the time, especially among the so-called 'anacreontists.' Gleim, for instance, in his _Praise of Country Life_: 'Thank God that I have fled from the bustle of the world and am myself again under the open sky.' And in _The Countryman_: How happy is he who, free from cares, ploughs his father's fields; every morning the sun shines on the grass in which he lies. And Joh. Friedrich von Cronegk: Fly from sordid cares and the proud tumult of cities ... here in the peaceful valley shy wisdom sports at ease, where the smiling Muse crowns herself with dewy roses. With this idyllic tone it is not surprising to find the religious feeling of many hymn writers; for instance, Gleim in _The Goodness of God_: For whom did Thy goodness create the world so beautiful, O God? For whom are the flowers on hill and dale? ... Thou gavest us power to perceive the beauty. And above all, honest Gellert: The skies, the globe, the seas, praise the eternal glory. O my Creator, when I consider Thy might and the wisdom of Thy ways.... Sunshine and storm preach Thee, and the sands of the sea. Ewald von Kleist excelled Haller as much as Haller had excelled Brockes. Julian Schmidt says[3]: 'Later on, descriptive poetry, like didactic, fell into disgrace; but at that time this dwelling upon the minutiæ of Nature served to enrich the imagination; Kleist's descriptions are thoughtful and interesting.' It is easy to see that his longer poems cost him much labour; they were not the pure songs of feeling that gush out spontaneously like a spring from the rock. But in eloquence and keenness of observation he excelled his contemporaries, although he, too, followed the fashion of eighteenth-century literature, and coquetted with Greek nymphs and deities, and the names of winds and maidens. The tendency to depression, increased by his failure to adapt himself to military life, made him incline more and more to solitude. _To Doris_ begins: Now spring doth warm the flakeless air, And in the brook the sky reflects her blue, Shepherds in fragrant flowers find delight ... The corn lifts high its golden head, And Zephyr moves in waves across the grain, Her robe the field embroiders; the young rush Adorns the border of each silver stream, Love seeks the green night of the forest shade, And air and sea and earth and heaven smile. _Sighs for Rest_: O silver brook, my leisure's early soother, When wilt thou murmur lullabies again? When shall I trace thy sliding smooth and smoother, While kingfishers along thy reeds complain; Afar from thee with care and toil opprest, Thy image still can calm my troubled breast. O ye fair groves and odorous violet valleys, Girt with a garland blue of hills around, Thou quiet lake, where, when Aurora sallies, Her golden tresses seem to sweep the ground: Soft mossy turf, on which I wont to stray, For me no longer bloom thy flow'rets gay. As when the chilly nights of March arise And whirl the howling dust in eddies swift, The sunbeams wither in the dimmer skies, O'er the young ears the sand and pebbles drift: So the war rages, and the furious forces The air with smoke bespread, the field with corses. The vineyard bleeds, and trampled is the com, Orchards but heat the kettles of the camp.... As when a lake which gushing rains invade Breaks down its dams, and fields are overflowed. So floods of fire across the region spread, And standing corn by crackling flames is mowed: Bellowing the cattle fly; the forests burn, And their own ashes the old stems in-urn. He too, who fain would live in purity, Feels nature treacherous, hears examples urge, As one who, falling overboard at sea, Beats with his arms and feet the buoyant surge, And climbs at length against some rocky brink, Only beneath exhausted strength to sink. My cheek bedewed with holy tears in vain, To love and heaven I vowed a spotless truth: Too soon the noble tear exhaled again, Example conquered, and the glow of youth To live as live one's comrades seems allowed; He who would be a man, must quit the crowd. He, too, wrote with hymn-like swing in praise of the Creator: 'Great is the Lord! the unnumbered heavens are the chambers of his fortress, storm and thunder-clouds his chariot.' The most famous of his poems, and the one most admired in his own day, was _Spring_. This is full of love for Nature. It describes a country walk after the muggy air of town, and conveys a vivid impression of fresh germinating spring, though it is overlaid by monotonous detail: Receive me, hallowed shades! Ye dwellings of sweet buss! Umbrageous arches full of sleeping dark delights ... Receive me! Fill my soul with longing and with rest ... And you, ye laughing fields, Valleys of roses, labyrinths of streams, I will inhale an ecstasy with your balsamic breath, And, lying in the shade, on strings of gold Sing your indwelling joys.... On rosy clouds, with rose and tulip crowned, Spring has come down from heaven.... The air grew softer, fields took varied hues, The shades were leafy, and soft notes awoke And flew and warbled round the wood in twilight greenery. Brooks took a silver tint, sweet odours filled the air, The early shepherd's pipe was heard by Echo in the dale.... Most dear abode! Ah, were I but allowed Down in the shade by yon loquacious brook Henceforth to live! O sky! thou sea of love, Eternal spring of health, will not thy waters succour me? Must, my life's blossom wither, stifled by the weeds? Johann Peter Uz, who was undervalued because of his sickly style, wrote many little songs full of feeling for Nature, though within narrow limits. Their titles shew the pastoral taste[4]:--_Spring_, _Morning, Shepherd's Morning Song, The Muse with the Shepherds, The Meadow in the Country, Vintage, Evening, May, The Rose, Summer and Wine, Winter Night, Longing for Spring_, etc. Many are fresh and full of warm feeling, especially the Spring Songs: See the blossoming of Spring! Will't not taste the joys it showers? Dost not feel its impulse thrill? Friends! away our cares we'll fling! In the joyous time of flowers, Love and Bacchus have their will. and O forest, O green shady paths, Dear place of spring's display! My good luck from the thronging town Has brought me here away. O what a fresh breeze flows Down from the wooded hill, How pleasantly the west wind flies With rustling dewy wing Across the vale, Where all is green and blossoming. The personification is more marked in this: Thou hast sent us the Spring in his gleaming robe With roses round his head. Smiling he comes, O God! The hours conduct him to his flowery throne Into the groves he enters and they bloom; fresh green is on the plain, The forest shade returns, the west wind lovingly unfurls Its dewy plumes, and happy birds begin to sing. The face of Nature Thou hast deckt with beauty that enchants, O Thou rich source of all the beautiful ... My heart is lifted up to Thee in purest love. His feeling for Nature was warm enough, although most of his writing was so artificial and tedious from much repetition of a few ideas, that Kleist could write to Gleim[5]: 'The odes please me more the more I read them. With a few exceptions, they have only one fault, too many laurel woods; cut them down a little. Take away the marjoram too, it is better in a good sausage than in a beautiful poem.' Joh. Georg Jacobi also belonged to the circle of poets gathered round Gleim; but in many respects he was above it. He imitated the French style[6] far less than the others--than Hagedorn, for example; and though the Anacreontic element was strong in him, he overcame it, and aimed at pure lyrical feeling. From his Life, written by a devoted friend, we see that he had all the sentimentality of the day,[7] but with much that was healthy and amiable in addition, and he touched Nature with peculiar freshness and genuineness. In a poem to his brother, about the Saale valley near Halle, he wrote: Lie down in early spring on yon green moss, By yon still brook where heart with heart we spoke, My brother.... Will't see the little garden and the pleasant heights above, So quiet and unspoilt? O friend, 'tis Nature speaks In distant wood, near plain and careless glade, Here on my little hill and in the clover.... Dost hear the rustle of the streamlet through the wood? Jacobi was one whose heart, as he said of Gleim, took a warm interest in all that breathed, even a violet, and sought sympathy and companionship in the whole range of creation. This is from his _Morning Song_: See how the wood awakes, how from the lighted heights With the soft waving breeze The morning glory smiles in the fresh green.... Here by the rippling brook and quivering flower, We catch Love's rustle as she gently sweeps Like Spring's own breath athwart the plains. Another song is; Tell me, where's the violet fled. Late so gayly blowing. Springing 'neath fair Flora's tread, Choicest sweets bestowing? Swain, the vernal scene is o'er, And the violet blooms no more. Say, where hides the blushing rose, Pride of fragrant morning, Garland meet for beauty's brows, Hill and dale adorning? Gentle maid, the summer's fled, And the hapless rose is dead. Bear me then to yonder rill, Late so freely flowing, Watering many a daffodil On its margin glowing. Sun and wind exhaust its store, Yonder rivulet glides no more. Lead me to the bowery shade, Late with roses flaunting, Loved resort of youth and maid, Amorous ditties chanting. Hail and wind with fury shower, Leafless mourns the rifled bower! Say, where bides the village maid, Late yon cot adorning? Oft I've met her in the glade Fair and fresh as morning. Swain, how short is beauty's bloom, Seek her in her grassy tomb. Whither roves the tuneful swain Who, of rural pleasures, Rose and violet, rill and plain, Sang in deftest measures? Maiden, swift life's vision flies, Death has closed the poet's eyes. _To Nature_ runs thus: Leaves are falling, mists are twining, and to winter sleep inclining Are the trees upon the plain, In the hush of stillness ere the snowflakes hide them, Friendly Nature, speak to me again! Thou art echo and reflection of our striving, Thou art painter of our hopes and of our fears, Thou art singer of our joys and of our sorrows, Of our consolations and our groans.... While feeling for Nature was all of this character, idyllic, sensitive, sympathetic, but within very narrow bounds, and the poets generally were wandering among Greek and Latin bucolics and playing with Damon, Myrtil, Chloe, and Daphnis, Salomon Gessner made a speciality of elegiac pastoral poetry. He was a better landscapist than poet, and his drawings to illustrate his idylls were better than the poems themselves. The forest, for instance, and the felling of the tree, are well drawn; whereas the sickly sweet Rococo verse in imitation of the French, and reminding one more of Longos than Theocritus, is lifeless. His rhapsody about Nature is uncongenial to modern readers, but his love was real. The introduction 'to the Reader'[8] is characteristic: These Idylls are the fruits of some of my happiest hours; of those hours when imagination and tranquillity shed their sweetest influence over me, and, excluding all which belongs to the period in which we live, recalled all the charms and delights of the Golden Age. A noble and well-regulated mind dwells with pleasure on these images of calm tranquillity and uninterrupted happiness, and the scenes in which the poet delineates the simple beauties of uncorrupted nature are endeared to us by the resemblance we fancy we perceive in them to the most blissful moments that we nave ourselves enjoyed. Often do I fly from the city and seek the deepest solitudes; there, the beauties of the landscape soothe and console my heart, and gradually disperse those impressions of solicitude and disgust which accompanied me from the town; enraptured, I give up my whole soul to the contemplation of Nature, and feel, at such moments, richer than an Utopian monarch, and happier than a shepherd of the Golden Age. This is a true picture of the time! Man knew that he was sick, and fled from town and his fellows into solitude, there to dream himself back to a happier past, and revel in the purity and innocence, the healing breath, of forest and field. The magic of moonlight began to be felt. Mirtilla perceived his old father slumbering in the moonbeams.... Mirtilla stood long contemplating him, and his eyes rested fondly on the old man except when he raised them toward heaven through the glistening leaves of the vine, and tears of filial love and joy bedewed his cheeks.... How beautiful! how beautiful is the landscape! How bright, how clear appears the deep blue of heaven through the broken clouds! They fly, they pass away, these towering clouds; but strew a shadow as they pass over the sunny landscape.... Oh, what joy overwhelms my soul! how beautiful, how excellent is all around, what an inexhaustible source of rapture! From the enlivening sun down to the little plant that his mild influence nourishes, all is wonderful! What rapture overpowers me when I stand on the high hill and look down on the wide-spread landscape beneath me, when I lay stretched along the grass and examine the various flowers and herbs and their little inhabitants; when at the midnight hour I contemplate the starry heavens!... Wrapt in each other's arms, let us contemplate the approach of morning, the bright glow of sunset, or the soft beams of moonlight; and as I press thee to my trembling heart, let us breathe out in broken accents our praises and thanksgivings. Ah! what inexpressible joy, when with such raptures are blended the transports of the tenderest love. Many prosaic writings of a different kind shew how universally feeling, in the middle of the eighteenth century, turned towards Nature. The æsthetic writer Sulzer (1750) wrote _On the Beauty of Nature_. Crugot's widely-read work of edification, _Christ in Solitude_ (1761), shewed the same point of view among the mystical and pietist clergy; and Spalding's _Human Vocation_[9] (written with a warmth that reminds one of Gessner) among the rationalists, whom he headed. He says: Nature contains numberless pleasures, which, through my great sensitiveness, nourish my mind... I open eye and ear, and through these openings pleasures flow into my soul from a thousand sides: flowers painted by the hand of Nature, the rich music of the forest, the bright daylight which pours life and light all round me.... How indifferent, tasteless, and dead is all the fantastic glamour of artificial splendour and luxuriance in comparison with the living radiance of the real beautiful world of Nature, with the joyousness, repose, and admiration I feel before a meadow in blossom, a rustling stream, the pleasant awesomeness of night, or of the majesty of innumerable worlds. Even the commonest and most familiar things in Nature give me endless delight, when I feel them with a heart attuned to joy and admiration.... I lose myself, absorbed in delight, in the consideration of all this general beauty, of which I hold myself to be a not disfigured part. Klopstock, the torch-bearer of Germany's greatest poets, owed much of his power of the wing to religion. He introduced that new epoch in the literature of his country which culminated in Goethe. As so often happens in mental development, the reaction against prevailing conditions and the advance to higher ones, in the middle of the eighteenth century, led first of all to the opposite extreme--balance was only reached by degrees. What chiefly made Klopstock a literary reformer was the glowing enthusiasm and powerful imagination which compelled the stiff poetic forms, clumsy as they were, to new rhythm and melodious cadence. And although his style degenerated into mannerism in the _Messias_, for the youthful impetus which had carried his Pegasus over the clouds to the stars could not keep it there without artificial aid, the immense value of his influence remained. He is one of the most interesting representatives, not only of his own, but of all similar periods of exaggerated feelings and ideals. Despite his loftiness of thought and speech, and his seraphic raptures, he was not without a full share of sensuous development, and women's eyes, or a girl's rosy lips, would draw him away from the finest view in the world. A mind so intent upon the noble and beautiful was sure to be enthusiastic about Nature; his correspondence is the best witness to this, and at the same time throws side-lights upon the period. It is difficult to-day to understand the influence which the _Messias_ had upon its readers; even Friedenkende spent happy hours reading it with pious tears of delight, and young and old were of the same opinion. There is a pretty letter from Gustchen Stolberg[10] to Klopstock, which runs thus: UETERSEN, 25 _April_ 1776. In the garden. Yes, in the garden, dearest Klopstock! I have just been walking about, it was so beautiful: the little birds were singing, violets and other flowers wafted their fragrance to me, and I began thinking very warmly of all whom I dearly, dearly love, and so very soon came to my dear Klopstock, who certainly has no truer friend than I am, though perhaps others express it better ... Thanks, thanks, for your very delightful little letter--how dear to me I don't tell you--can't tell you. C. F. Cramer was his enthusiastic panegyrist. It is not only what he says of the private life and special taste of his adored friend which is noteworthy, but the way in which he does it--the tone in which, as a cultivated man of the day, he judged him. 'He will paint and paint Nature. For this he must be acquainted with her. This is why he loves her so well. This is why he strays by the brook and weeps. This is why in spring he goes out into the fields of blossoms, and his eyes run over with tears. All creation fills him with yearning and delight. He goes from mountain to valley like a man in a dream. When he sees a stream, he follows its course; when a hill, he must climb it; when a river--oh! if only he could rush with it to the sea! A rock--oh! to look down from its crags to the land below! A hawk hovers over him--oh! to have its wings and fly so much nearer to the stars! He stands for hours looking at a flower or moss, throws himself down on the grass and decks his hat with ivy and cornflowers. He goes by moonlight to visit the graves and think of death, immortality, and eternal life. Nothing hinders his meditations. He sees everything in relation to something else. Every visible object has an invisible companion, so ardently, so entirely, so closely does he feel it all.' This, coming straight from life, tells us more than a volume of odes; it contains the real feeling of the time, sensitive, dreamy, elegiac. His friend goes on: 'He walks often and likes it, but generally looks for sunny places; he goes very slowly, which is fatal for me, for I run when I walk ... Often he stands still and silent, as if there were knots which he could not untie (in his thoughts). And truly there are unknown depths of feeling as well as thought.' In another place: 'He went out and gloated over the great scene of immeasurable Nature. Orion and the Pleiades moved over his head, the dear moon was opposite. Looking intently into her friendly face, he greeted her repeatedly: "Moon, Moon, friend of my thoughts; hurry not away, dear Moon, but stay. What is thy name? Laura, Cynthia, Cyllene? Or shall I call thee beautiful Betty of the Sky?" ... He loved country walks; we made for lonely places, dark fearsome thickets, lonely unfrequented paths, scrambled up all the hills, spied out every bit of Nature, came to rest at last under a shady rock ... Klopstock's life is one constant enjoyment. He gives himself up to feeling, and revels in Nature's feast ... Winter is his favourite time of year....[11] He preaches skating with the unction of a missionary to the heathen, and not without working miracles, ... the ice by moonlight is a feast of the Gods to him ... only one rule, we do not leave the river till the moon has gone.' Klopstock described this in his _Skating_: O youth, whose skill the ice-cothurn Drives glowing now, and now restrains, On city hearths let faggots burn, But come with me to crystal plains. The scene is filled with vapouring light, As when the winter morning's prime Looks on the lake. Above it night Scatters, like stars, the glittering rime. How still and white is all around! How rings the track with new sparr'd frost! Far off the metal's cymbal sound Betrays thee, for a moment lost ... Cramer tells how Klopstock paid a long-remembered visit to Count Bernstoff at Schloss Stintenburg: It has a most romantic situation in a bewitching part of Mecklenburg; 'tis surrounded by forest full of delightful gloom, and a large lake, with a charming little island in the centre, which wakes echoes. Klopstock is very fond of echoes, and is always trying to find them in his walks. This illustrates the lines in _Stintenburg_: Isle of pious solitude, Loved playmate of the echo and the lake, etc. but in this ode, as in so many of his, simple personal feeling gives way to the stilted mannerism of the bard poetry. He wrote of Soroe,[12] one of the loveliest places in the Island of Zealand, as 'an uncommonly pleasant place'; where 'By a sacred tree, on a raised grass plot two hundred paces from the great alley, and from a view over the Friedensburg Lake towards a little wooded island ... Fanny appeared to him in the silver evening clouds over the tree-tops.' The day on which he composed _The Lake of Zurich_ was one of the pleasantest in his life. Cramer says: 'He has often told me and still tells, with youthful fervour, about those delightful days and this excursion: the boat full of people, mostly young, all in good spirits; charming girls, his wife Herzel, a lovely May morning.' But, unlike St Preux, he 'seemed less impressed by our scenery than by the beauty of our girls,[13] and his letters bear out the remark.[14] Yet delight in Nature was always with him: Klopstock's lofty morality pours forth all through it. Nature, love, fame, wine, everything is looked at from an ennobling point of view.' Fair is the majesty of all thy works On the green earth, O Mother Nature fair! But fairer the glad face Enraptured with their view. Come from the vine banks of the glittering lake, Or--hast thou climbed the smiling skies anew-- Come on the roseate tip Of evening's breezy wing, And teach my song with glee of youth to glow, Sweet joy, like thee--with glee of shouting youths, Or feeling Fanny's laugh. Behind us far already Uto lay. At whose feet Zurich in the quiet vale Feeds her free sons: behind-- Receding vine-clad hills. Uncloud'd beamed the top of silver Alps, And warmer beat the heart of gazing youths, And warmer to their fair Companions spoke its glow. And Haller's Doris sang, the pride of song; And Hirzel's Daphne, dear to Kleist and Gleim; And we youths sang and felt As each were--Hagedorn. Soon the green meadow took us to the cool And shadowy forest, which becrowns the isle. Then cam'st thou, Joy; thou cam'st Down in full tide to us; Yes, goddess Joy, thyself; we felt, we clasp'd, Best sister of humanity, thyself, With thy dear innocence Accompanied, thyself. Sweet thy inspiring breath, O cheerful Spring; When the meads cradle thee, and their soft airs Into the hearts of youths And hearts of virgins glide, Thou makest feeling conqueror. Ah! through thee Fuller, more tremulous, heaves each blooming breast; With lips spell-freed by thee Young love unfaltering pleads. Fair gleams the wine, when to the social change Of thought, or heart-felt pleasure, it invites, And the 'Socratic' cup With dewy roses bound, Sheds through the bosom bliss, and wakes resolves, Such as the drunkard knows not--proud resolves Emboldening to despair Whate'er the sage disowns. Delightful thrills against the panting heart Fame's silver voice--and immortality Is a great thought.... But sweeter, fairer, more delightful, 'tis On a friend's arm to know oneself a friend.... O were ye here, who love me though afar ... How would we build us huts of friendship, here Together dwell for ever. This is of Fredensborg on an August day: Here, too, did Nature tarry, when her hand Pour'd living beauty over dale and hill, And to adorn this pleasant land Long time she lingered and stood still.... The lake how tranquil! From its level brim The shore swells gently, wooded o'er with green, And buries in its verdure dim The lustre of the summer e'en.... The inner and outer life are closely blended in _The Early Grave_: Welcome, O silver moon, Fair still companion of the night! Friend of the pensive, flee not soon; Thou stayest, and the clouds pass light. Young waking May alone Is fair as summer's night so still, When from his locks the dews drop down, And, rosy, he ascends the hill. Ye noble souls and true, Whose graves with sacred moss are strawn. Blest were I, might I see with you The glimmering night, the rosy dawn. This is true lyric feeling, spontaneous, not forced. Many of his odes, and parts of the _Messias_, shew great love for Nature. There is a fine flight of imagination in _The Festival of Spring_: Not into the ocean of all the worlds would I plunge--not hover where the first created, the glad choirs of the sons of light, adore, deeply adore and sunk in ecstasy. Only around the drop on the bucket, only around the earth, would I hover and adore. Hallelujah! hallelujah! the drop on the bucket flowed also out of the hand of the Almighty. When out of the hand of the Almighty the greater earth flowed, when the streams of light rushed, and the seven stars began to be--then flowedst thou, drop, out of the hand of the Almighty. When a stream of light rushed, and our sun began to be, a cataract of waves of light poured, as adown the rock a storm-cloud, and girded Orion, then flowedst thou, drop, out of the hand of the Almighty. Who are the thousandfold thousands, who all the myriads that inhabit the drop?... But thou, worm of Spring, which, greenly golden, art fluttering beside me, thou livest and art, perhaps, ah! not immortal.... The storm winds that carry the thunder, how they roar, how with loud waves they stream athwart the forest! Now they hush, slow wanders the black cloud.... Ah! already rushes heaven and earth with the gracious rain; now is the earth refreshed.... Behold Jehovah comes no longer in storm; in gentle pleasant murmurs comes Jehovah, and under him bends the bow of peace. In another ode, _The Worlds_, he calls the stars 'drops of the ocean.' Again, in _Death_ he shews the sense of his own nothingness, in presence of the overpowering greatness of the Creator: Ye starry hosts that glitter in the sky, How ye exalt me! Trancing is the sight Of all Thy glorious works, Most High. How lofty art Thou in Thy wondrous might; What joy to gaze upon these hosts, to one Who feels himself so little, God so great, Himself but dust, and the great God his own! Oh, when I die, such rapture on me wait! As regards our subject, Klopstock performed this function--he tuned the strings of feeling for Nature to a higher pitch, thereby excelling all his contemporaries. His poetry always tended to extravagance; but in thought, feeling, and language alike, he was ahead of his time. The idyllic was now cultivated with increased fervour, especially by the Göttingen Brotherhood of Poets. The artificial and conventional began to wane, and Nature's own voice was heard again. The songs of Claudius were like a breath of spring.[15] His peasant songs have the genuine ring; they are hail-fellow-well-met with Nature. Hebel is the only modern poet like him. EVENING SONG The lovely day-star's run its course.... Come, mop my face, dear wife, And then dish up.... The silvery moon will look down from his place And preside at our meal over dishes and grace. He hated artificiality: Simple joy in Nature, free from artifice, gives as great a pleasure as an honest lover's kiss. His _Cradle Song to be sung by Moonlight_ is delightful in its naive humour (the moon was his special favourite): Sleep then, little one. Why dost thou weep? Moonlight so tender and quiet so deep, Quickly and easily cometh thy sleep. Fond of all little ones is the good moon; Girls most of all, but he even loves boys. Down from up there he sends beautiful toys.... He's old as a raven, he goes everywhere; Even when father was young, he was there. The pearl of his poems is the exquisite _Evening Song_: The moon hath risen on high, And in the clear dark sky The golden stars all brightly glow; And black and hushed the woods, While o'er the fields and floods The white mists hover to and fro. How still the earth, how calm! What dear and home-like charm From gentle twilight doth she borrow! Like to some quiet room, Where, wrapt in still soft gloom, We sleep away the daylight's sorrow. Boie's _Evening Song_ is in the same key. None of the moonshine poets of his day expressed night-fall like this: How still it is! How soft The breezes blow! The lime leaves lisp in whisper and echo answers low; Scarce audibly the rivulet running amid the flower With murmuring ripple laps the edge of yonder mystic bower. And ever darker grows the veil thou weavest o'er the land, And ever quieter the hush--a hush as of the grave.... Listen! 'tis Night! she comes, unlighted by a star, And with the slow sweep of her heavy wing Awes and revives the timid earth. Bürger sings in praise of idyllic comfort in _The Village_, and Hoelty's mild enthusiasm, touched with melancholy, turned in the same direction. My predilection is for rural poetry and melancholy enthusiasm; all I ask is a hut, a forest, a meadow with a spring in it, and a wife in my hut. The beginning of his _Country Life_ shews that moralizing was still in the air: Happy the man who has the town escaped! To him the whistling trees, the murmuring brooks, The shining pebbles preach Virtue's and wisdom's lore.... The nightingale on him sings slumber down; The nightingale rewakes him, fluting sweet, When shines the lovely red Of morning through the trees. Then he admires Thee in the plain, O God! In the ascending pomp of dawning day, Thee in Thy glorious sun. The worm--the budding branch-- Where coolness gushes in the waving branch Or o'er the flowers streams the fountain, rests, Inhales the breadth of prime The gentle airs of eve. His straw-decked thatch, where doves bask in the sun, And play, and hop, invites to sweeter rest Than golden halls of state Or beds of down afford. To him the plumy people Chatter and whistle on his And from his quiet hand Peck crumbs or peas or grains His _Winter Song_ runs: Summer joys are o'er, Flow'rets bloom no more; Wintry joys are sweeping, Through the snow-drifts peeping; Cheerful evergreen Rarely now is seen. No more plumèd throng Charms the woods with song; Ice-bound trees are glittering, Merry snow-birds twittering, Fondly strive to cheer Scenes so cold and drear. Winter, still I see Many charms in thee, Love thy chilly greeting, Snow-storms fiercely beating, And the dear delights Of the long, long nights. Hoeltz was the most sentimental of this group; Joh. Heinrich Voss was more robust and cheerful. He put his strength into his longer poems; the lyrics contain a great deal of nonsense. An extract from _Luise_ will shew his idyllic taste: Wandering thus through blue fields of flax and acres of barley, both paused on the hill-top, which commands such a view of the whole lake, crisped with the soft breath of the zephyr and sparkling in sunshine; fair were the forests of white barked birch beyond, and the fir-trees, lovely the village at the foot half hid by the wood. Lovely Luise had welcomed her parents and shewn them a green mound under an old beech tree, where the prospect was very inviting. 'There we propose,' said she, to unpack and to spread the breakfast. Then we'll adjourn to the boat and be rowed for a time on the water,' etc. We find the same taste, often expressed in a very original way, in both the brothers Stolberg. In Christian Stolberg's _Elegy to Hangwitz_, for instance, another poem has these lines: Thither, where 'mong the trees of life, Where in celestial bowers Under your fig-tree, bowed with fruit And warranting repose, Under your pine, inviting shady joy, Unchanging blooms Eternal Spring! Friedrich Stolberg was a very prophet of Nature; in his ode _Nature_ he says: He who does not love Nature cannot be my friend. His prayer may serve as the motto of his day: Holy Nature, heavenly fair, Lead me with thy parent care; In thy footsteps let me tread As a willing child is led. When with care and grief opprest, Soft I sink me on thy breast; On thy peaceful bosom laid, Grief shall cease, nor care invade. O congenial power divine, All my votive soul is thine. Lead me with thy parent care, Holy Nature, heavenly fair! He, too, sang the moon; but Klopstock's influence seems to have carried him to higher flights than his contemporaries. He wrote in fine language of wild scenery, even sea and mountains, which had played no part in German poetry before. TO THE SEA Thou boundless, shining, glorious sea, With ecstasy I gaze on thee; Joy, joy to him whose early beam Kisses thy lip, bright ocean stream. Thanks for the thousand hours, old sea, Of sweet communion held with thee; Oft as I gazed, thy billowy roll Woke the deep feelings of my soul. There are beautiful notes, reminding one of Goethe, in his _Unsterbliche Jüngling, Ode to a Mountain Torrent_. Immortal youth! Thou streamest forth from rocky caves; No mortal saw The cradle of thy might, No ear has heard Thy infant stammering in the gushing Spring. How lovely art thou in thy silver locks! How dreadful thundering from the echoing crags! At thy approach The firwood quakes; Thou easiest down, with root and branch, the fir Thou seizest on the rock, And roll'st it scornful like a pebble on. Thee the sun clothes in dazzling beams of glory, And paints with colours of the heavenly bow The clouds that o'er thy dusky cataracts climb. Why hasten so to the cerulean sea? Is not the neighbourhood of heaven good? Not grand thy temple of encircling rocks? Not fair the forest hanging o'er thy bed? Hasten not so to the cerulean sea; Youth, thou art here, Strong as a god, Free as a god, Though yonder beckon treacherous calms below, The wavering lustre of the silent sea, Now softly silvered by the swimming moon, Now rosy golden in the western beam; Youth, what is silken rest, And what the smiling of the friendly moon, Or gold or purple of the evening sun, To him who feels himself in thraldom's bonds? Here thou canst wildly stream As bids thy heart; Below are masters, ever-changeful minds, Or the dead stillness of the servile main. Hasten not so to the cerulean sea; Youth, thou art here, Strong as a god, Free as a god. Here we have, with all Klopstock's pathos, a love for the wild and grandiose in Nature, almost unique in Germany, in this time of idyllic sentimentality. But the discovery of the beauty of romantic mountain scenery had been made by Rousseau some time before, for Rousseau, too, was a typical forerunner, and his romances fell like a bomb-shell among all the idyllic pastoral fiction of the day. CHAPTER XI THE AWAKENING OF FEELING FOR THE ROMANTIC Rousseau was one of those rare men who bring about a complete change in the culture of their time by their revolutionary originality. In such beings the world's history, so to speak, begins again. Out of touch with their own day, and opposed to its ruling taste and mode of thought, they are a law unto themselves, and naturally tend to measure all things by themselves, while their too great subjectivity is apt to be increased by a morbid sophistry of passion and the conviction of the prophet. Of this type, unchecked by a broad sense of humanity, full of subversive wilfulness, and not only untrained in moderation, but degenerating into crass exaggeration, Rousseau was the first example. Hellenism, the Roman Empire, the Renaissance, had only produced forerunners. What in Petrarch was a tendency, became an established condition in Rousseau: the acedia reached its climax. All that went on in his mind was so much grit for his own mill, subject-matter for his observation, and therefore of the greatest value to him. He lived in introspection, a spectator of his own struggles, his own waverings between an ideal of simple duty and the imperious demands of a selfish and sensuous ego. His passion for Nature partially atoned for his unamiable and doubtful character; he was false in many ways; but that feeling rang true--it was the best part of him, and of that 'idealism of the heart' whose right of rule he asserted in an age of artificiality and petty formalism. Those were no empty words in his third letter to Malesherbes: 'Which time of my life do you suppose I recall most often and most willingly in my dreams? Not the pleasures of youth; they were too few, too much mixed with bitterness, and they are too far away now. It is the time of my retreat, of my solitary walks--those fast-flying delicious days that I passed all alone by myself, with my good and simple Thérèse, my beloved dog, my old cat, with the wild birds and the roes of the forest, with all Nature and her inconceivable Maker. 'When I got up early to go and watch the sunrise from my garden, when I saw a fine day begin, my first wish was that neither letters nor visitors might come to break its charm.... 'Then I would seek out some wild place in the forest, some desert spot where there was nothing to shew the hand of man, and so tell of servitude and rule--some refuge which I could fancy I was the first to discover, and where no importunate third party came between Nature and me.... 'The gold broom and the purple heather touched my heart; the majestic trees that shaded me, the delicate shrubs around, the astonishing variety of plants and flowers that I trod under foot, kept me alternately admiring and observing.' His writings shew that with him return to Nature was no mere theory, but real earnest; they condemned the popular garden-craft and carpet fashions, and set up in their place the rights of the heart, and free enjoyment of Nature in her wild state, undisturbed by the hand of man. It was Rousseau who first discovered that the Alps were beautiful. But to see this fact in its true light, we must glance back at the opinions of preceding periods.[1] Though the Alpine countries were the arena of all sorts of enterprise, warlike and peaceful, in the fifteenth century, most of the interest excited by foreign parts was absorbed by the great voyages of discovery; the Alps themselves were almost entirely omitted from the maps. To be just to the time, it must be conceded that security and comfort in travelling are necessary preliminaries to our modern mountain rapture, and in the Middle Ages these were non-existent. Roads and inns were few; there was danger from robbers as well as weather, so that the prevailing feelings on such journeys were misery and anxiety, not pleasure. Knowledge of science, too, was only just beginning; botany, geology, and geognosy were very slightly diffused; glacier theories were undreamt of. The sight of a familiar scene near the great snow-peaks roused men's admiration, because they were surprised to find it there; this told especially in favour of the idyllic mountain valleys. Felix Fabri, the preacher monk of Ulm, visited the East in 1480 and 1483, and gave a lifelike description of his journeys through the Alps in his second account. He said[2]: 'Although the Alps themselves seem dreadful and rigid from the cold of the snow or the heat of the sun, and reach up to the clouds, the valleys below them are pleasant, and as rich and fruitful in all earthly delights as Paradise itself. Many people and animals inhabit them, and almost every metal is dug out of the Alps, especially silver. 'Mid such charms as these men live among the mountains, and Nature blooms as if Venus, Bacchus, and Ceres reigned there. No one who saw the Alps from afar would believe what a delicious Paradise is to be found amid the eternal snow and mountains of perpetual winter and never-melting ice.' Very limited praise only extended to the valleys! In the sixteenth century we have the records of those who crossed the Alps with an army, such as Adam Reissner, the biographer of the Frundsberg, and mention their 'awe' at sight of the valleys, and of those who had travelled to Italy and the East, and congratulated themselves that their troublesome wanderings through the Alps were over. Savants were either very sparing of words about their travels, or else made rugged verses which shewed no trace of mountain inspiration. There were no outbursts of admiration at sight of the great snow-peaks; 'horrible' and 'dreadful' were the current epithets. The æsthetic sense was not sufficiently developed, and discount as we will for the dangers and discomforts of the road, and, as with the earlier travellers to the East, for some lack of power of expression, the fact remains that mountains were not appreciated. The prevalent notion of beautiful scenery was very narrow, and even among cultured people only meant broad, level country. B. Kiechel[3] (1585) was enthusiastic about 'the beautiful level scenery' of Lichfeld, and found it difficult to breathe among the Alps. Schickhart wrote: 'We were delighted to get away from the horrible tedious mountains,' and has nothing to say of the Brenner Pass except this poor joke: 'It did not burn us much, for what with the ice and very deep snow and horribly cold wind, we found no heat.' The most enthusiastic description is of the Lake of Como, by Paulus Jovius (1552), praising Bellagio,'[4] In the seventeenth century there was some admiration for the colossal proportions of the Alps, but only as a foil to the much admired valleys. J.J. Grasser wrote of Rhoetia[5]: 'There are marble masses projecting, looking like walls and towers in imitation of all sorts of wonderful architecture. The villages lie scattered in the valleys, here and there the ground is most fruitful. There is luxuriance close to barrenness, gracefulness close to dreadfulness, life close to loneliness. The delight of the painter's eye is here, yet Nature excels all the skill of art. The very ravines, tortuous foot-paths, torrents, alternately raging and meagre, the arched bridges, waves on the lakes, varied dress of the fields, the mighty trees, in short, whatever heaven and earth grant to the sight, is an astonishment and a pastime to the enraptured eye of the wanderer.' But this pastime depended upon the contrast between the charming valleys and the dreadful mountains. Joseph Furttenbach (1591) writing about the same district of Thusis, described 'the little bridges, under which one hears the Rhine flowing with a great roar, and sees what a horrible cruel wilderness the place is.' In Conrad Gessner's _De admiratione Montium_ (1541)[6] a passage occurs which shews that even in Switzerland itself in the sixteenth century one voice was found to praise Alpine scenery in a very different way, anticipating Rousseau. 'I have resolved that so long as God grants me life I will climb some mountains every year, or at least one mountain, partly to learn the mountain flora, partly to strengthen my body and refresh my soul. What a pleasure it is to see the monstrous mountain masses, and lift one's head among the clouds. How it stimulates worship, to be surrounded by the snowy domes, which the Great Architect of the world built up in one long day of creation! How empty is the life, how mean the striving of those who only crawl about on the earth for gain and home-baked pleasures! The earthly paradise is closed to them.' Yet, just as after Rousseau, and even in the nineteenth century, travellers were to be found who thought the Alps 'dreadful' (I refer to Chateaubriand's 'hideux'), so such praise as this found no echo in its own day. But with the eighteenth century came a change. Travelling no longer subserved the one practical end of making acquaintance with the occupations, the morals, the affairs generally, of other peoples; a new scientific interest arose, geologists and physicists ventured to explore the glaciers and regions of perpetual snow, and first admiration, and then love, supplanted the old feeling of horror. Modern methods began with Scheuchzer's (1672-1733) _Itinera Alpina_. Every corner of the Alps was explored--the Splugen, Julier, Furka, Gotthard, etc.--and glaciers, avalanches, ores, fossils, plants examined. Haller, as his verses shew, was botanist as well as theologian, historian, and poet; but he did not appreciate mountain beauty. Brockes to some extent did. He described the Harz Mountains in the Fourth Book of his _Earthly Pleasure in God (Irdisches Vergüngen in Gott)_; and in his _Observations on the Blankenburg Marble_ he said: 'In many parts the rough mountain heights were monstrously beautiful, their size delights and appals us'; and wound up a discussion of wild scenery in contrast to cultivated with: 'Ponder this with joy and reverence, my soul. The mountain heights wild and beautiful shew us a picture of earthly disorder.'[7] It was very long before expressions of horror and fear entirely disappeared from descriptions of the Alps. In Richardson's _Sir Charles Grandison_ we read: 'We bid adieu to France and found ourselves in Savoy, equally noted for its poverty and rocky mountains. We had left behind us a blooming Spring, which enlivened with its verdure the trees and hedges on the road we passed, and the meadows already smiled with flowers.... Every object which here presents itself is excessively miserable.' Savoy is 'one of the worst countries under Heaven.' Addison,[8] on the other hand, wrote of the Alps from Ripaille: 'It was the pleasantest voyage in the world to follow the windings of this river Inn through such a variety of pleasing scenes as the course of it naturally led us. We had sometimes on each side of us a vast extent of naked rocks and mountains, broken into a thousand irregular steps and precipices ... but, as the materials of a fine landscape are not always the most profitable to the owner of them, we met with but little corn or pasturage,' etc. Lady Mary Wortley[9] Montagu wrote from Lyons, Sept. 25, 1718: 'The prodigious aspect of mountains covered with eternal snow, clouds hanging far below our feet, and the vast cascades tumbling down the rocks with a confused roaring, would have been solemnly entertaining to me, if I had suffered less from the extreme cold that reigns here.' On the whole, Switzerland was little known at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Many travellers still measured the value of scenery entirely by fertility, like Keyssler,[10] who praised garden-like level country such as that round Mantua, in contrast to the useless wild Tyrolese mountains and the woods of Westphalia; and Lüneburg or Moser,[11] who observed ironically to Abbt (1763), after reading _Emilia_ and _La Nouvelle Héloise_: 'The far-famed Alps, about which so much fuss has been made.' Rousseau was the real exponent of rapture for the high Alps and romantic scenery in general. Isolated voices had expressed some feeling before him, but it was he who deliberately proclaimed it, and gave romantic scenery the first place among the beauties of Nature. He did not, as so many would have it--Du Bois Reymond, for example--discover our modern feeling for Nature; the great men of the Renaissance, even the Hellenic poets, fore-ran him; but he directed it, with feeling itself in general, into new channels.[12] In French literature he stood alone; the descriptions of landscape before him were either borrowed blossoms of antiquity or sentimental and erotic pastorals. He opened up again for his country the taste for wood and field, sunshine and moonlight, for the idyllic, and, above all, for the sublime, which had been lost under artificiality and false taste. The primitive freshness, the genuine ring of his enthusiasm for country life, was worth all the laboured pastorals and fables of previous periods of literature. His _Confessions_ opened not only the eyes of France, but the heart. A Swiss by birth, and living in one of the most beautiful parts of Europe, Rousseau was devotedly fond of his home on the Lake of Geneva. As a boy he loved to leave the city and rove in the country. He describes how once on a Sunday in 1728 he wandered about, forgetting the time. 'Before me were fields, trees, flowers; the beautiful lake, the hill country, and high mountains unfolded themselves majestically before my eyes. I gloated over the beautiful spectacle while the sun was setting. At last, too late, I saw that the city gates were shut.' From that time on he felt more drawn to Nature than to men. In the Fourth Book of the _Confessions_ he says, speaking of 1732: 'A view of the Lake of Geneva and its beautiful banks has had even in my idea a particular attraction that I cannot describe, not arising merely from the beauty of the prospect, but something, I know not what, more interesting which affects and softens me. 'Every time I have approached the Vaudois country, I have experienced an impression composed of the remembrance of Mademoiselle de Warens, who was born there; of my father, who lived there; of Mademoiselle de Wulson, who had been my first love; and of several pleasant journeys I had made there in my childhood, mingled with some nameless charm, more powerfully attractive than all the rest. When that ardent desire for a life of happiness and tranquillity (which ever follows me, and for which I was born) inflames my mind, 'tis ever to the country of Vaud, near the lake, on those charming plains, that imagination leads me. An orchard on the banks of that lake, and no other, is absolutely necessary; a firm friend, an amiable woman, a cow, and a little boat; nor could I enjoy perfect happiness on earth without these concomitants.... On my way to Vevey I gave myself up to the soft melancholy ... I sighed and wept like a child.' He clung to Nature, and most of all when surrounded by human beings; a morbid impulse to flee from them was always present as a negative element in the background of his love for her. His Fifth Reverie, the most beautiful one, shews this. He had gone to the Peter Island on the Lake of Bienne. So far as he knew, no other traveller had paid any attention to the place; but that did not disturb his confidence in his own taste. 'The shores of the Lake of Bienne are wilder and more romantic than those of the Lake of Geneva, because the rocks and woods come nearer to the water; but they are not less radiant. With less cultivation and fewer vineyards, towns, and houses, there are more green fields and shady sheltered spots, more contrasts and irregularities. As there are no good carriage roads on these happy shores, the district is little frequented by travellers; but it is interesting for the solitary contemplation of those who like to intoxicate themselves at their leisure with Nature's charms, and to retire into a silence unbroken by any sound but the eagle's cry, the intermittent warbling of birds, and the roar of torrents falling from the mountains,' Here he had a delightful Robinson Crusoe existence. The only other human beings were the Bernese manager with his family and labourers. He counted his two months among the happiest of his life, and would have liked to stay for ever. True to his character, he proceeded to analyze the charm of the episode, and decided that it was made up of the _dolce far niente_, solitude, absence of books and writing materials, dealing with simple folk, healthy movement in the open air, field labour, and, above all, intercourse with Nature, both in admiring and studying her. He was seized with a passion for botanizing, and planned a comprehensive Flora Petrinsularis, dividing the whole island into quarters, so that no part might escape notice. 'There is nothing more strange than the ravishment, the ecstasy, I felt at each observation I made upon vegetable structure and organization. 'I would go by myself, throw myself into a boat when the water was calm, and row to the middle of the lake, and then, lying full-length in the boat with my eyes to the sky, I would let myself drift, sometimes for hours, lost in a thousand confused but delicious reveries.... Often when the sunset reminded me that it was time to return, I found myself so far from the island that I was forced to pull with all my strength to get back before night-fall. At other times, instead of wandering about the lake, I amused myself by skirting the green shores of the island where the limpid water and cool shade often invited to a bathe.... When the lake was too rough for rowing, I would spend the afternoon scouring the island, botanizing right and left. I often sat down to dream at leisure in sunny, lonely nooks, or on the terraces and hillocks, to gaze at the superb ravishing panorama of the lake and its shores--one side crowned by near mountains, the other spread out in rich and fertile plains, across which the eye looked to the more distant boundary of blue mountains.... When evening fell, I came down from the higher parts of the mountains and sat by the shore in some hidden spot, and there the sound of the waves and the movements of the water, making me oblivious of all other distraction, would plunge me into delicious reverie. The ebb and flow of the water, and the sound of it, restrained and yet swelling at intervals, by striking eye and ear without ceasing, came to the aid of those inner movements of the mind which reverie destroys, and sufficed to make me pleasantly conscious of existence without the trouble of thinking.... There is nothing actual in all this to which the heart can attach itself; even in our most intense enjoyment there is scarcely a moment of which the heart can truly say "I should like it to stay for ever."' One thinks of Faust: 'O moment! tarry awhile, thou art so fair!' However, at the close of the Reverie he admits that he has often had such moments--moments free from all earthly passion--on the lake and on the island. His feeling was increased by botanical knowledge, and later on in life the world of trees and plants became his one safe refuge when pursued by delusions of persecution. The Seventh Reverie has a touching account of his pleasure in botany, of the effect of 'earth in her wedding-dress, the only scene in the world of which eyes and heart never weary,' the intoxicating sense that he was part of a great system in which individual detail disappears, and he only sees and hears the whole. 'Shunning men, seeking solitude, no longer dreaming, still less thinking, I began to concern myself with all my surroundings, giving the preference to my favourites...brilliant flowers, emerald meadows, fresh shade, streams, thickets, green turf, these purified my imagination.... Attracted by the pleasant objects around, I note them, study them, and finally learn to classify them, and so become at one stroke as much of a botanist as one need be when one only studies Nature to find ever new reasons for loving her. 'The plants seem sown in profusion over the earth like the stars in the sky, to invite man, through pleasure and curiosity, to study them; but the stars are far off; they require preliminary knowledge ... while plants grow under our very feet--lie, so to speak, in our very hands.' He had a peaceful sense of being free from his enemies when he was pursuing his botany in the woods. He described one never-to-be-forgotten ramble when he lost himself in a dense thicket close to a dizzy precipice, where, save for some rare birds, he was quite alone. He was just feeling the pride of a Columbus in the discovery of new ground, when his eye fell upon a manufactory not far off. His first feeling was a flash of delight at finding himself again among men; but this gave way to the more lasting and painful one, that even among the Alps there was no escape from his tormentors. Years later, when he knew that he would never revisit the spot, the leaves in his herbarium would carry him back to it in memory. So strong a personal attachment to Nature, solitude, and retirement had not been known before; but it was thrown into this high relief by the morbid dread of man and hatred of culture, which formed a constant dark background to his mind. It was a state of mind which naturally led to intense dislike of formal French gardens and open admiration of the English park. He rejected all the garnish of garden-craft, even grafted roses and fruit trees, and only admitted indigenous plants which grew outdoors.[13] It is greatly due to his feeling for English Park style that a healthier garden-craft gained ground in Germany as well as France. The foremost maxim of his philosophy and teaching, that everything is good as it comes from the bosom of mother Nature, or rather from the hand of God, and that man and his culture are responsible for all the evil, worked out in his attitude towards Nature. He placed her upon a pedestal, worshipping her, and the Creator through her, and this made him the first to recognize the fact that study of Nature, especially of botany, should be an important factor in the education of children. His _Confessions_, the truest photographs of a human character in existence, shew at once the keenest introspection and intense love for Nature. No one before Rousseau had been so aware of his own individuality--that is, of himself, as a being--who in this particular state only exists once, and has therefore not only relative but absolute value. He gave this peculiarity its full value, studying it as a thing outside himself, of which every detail was important, watching with great interest his own change of moods, the fluctuations of that double self which now lifted him to the ideal, now cast him down to the lowest and commonest. His relation to Nature was the best thing about him, and when he was happy, as he was for the first time in the society of Mademoiselle de Warens, Nature seemed lovelier than ever. The scattered passages about Nature in the _Confessions_ have a youthful freshness: 'The appearance of Aurora seemed so delightful one morning, that, putting on my clothes, I hastened into the country to see the rising of the sun. I enjoyed that pleasure to its utmost extent. It was one week after midsummer: the earth was covered with verdure and flowers; the nightingales, whose soft warblings were almost over, seemed to vie with each other, and, in concert with birds of various kinds, to bid adieu to spring and hail the approach of a beautiful summer's day.' He loved rambling over hill and dale, even by night; thus, when he was at Lyons: 'It had been a very hot day, the evening was delightful, the dew moistened the parched grass, no wind was stirring; the air was fresh without chilliness, the setting sun had tinged the clouds with a beautiful crimson, which was again reflected by the water, and the trees bordering the terrace were filled with nightingales that were constantly answering each other's songs. I walked along in a kind of ecstasy, surrendering my heart and senses to the enjoyment of so many delights, and sighing only from regret at enjoying them alone. Absorbed in this pleasing reverie, I lengthened my walk till it grew very late, without perceiving I was tired. At length I threw myself on the steps of a kind of niche in a terrace wall. How charming was that couch! The trees formed a stately canopy, a nightingale sat directly over me, and with his soft notes lulled me to rest. How delicious my repose! my awakening more so. It was broad day; on opening my eyes, I saw the water, the verdure, and an adorable landscape before me.' At the end of the Fourth Book he states his idea of beautiful scenery: 'I love to walk at my ease and stop at leisure ... travelling on foot in a fine country with fine weather ... and having an agreeable object to terminate my journey. It is already understood what I mean by a fine country; never can a flat one, though ever so beautiful, appear such to my eyes. I must have torrents, fir trees, black woods, mountains to climb or descend, and rugged roads with precipices on either side to alarm me. I experienced this pleasure to its utmost extent as I approached Chambéry, not far from a mountain road called the Pas d'Échelle. Above the main road, hewn through the solid rock, a small river runs and rushes into fearful chasms, which it appears to have been millions of ages in forming. The road has been hedged by a parapet to prevent accidents, and I was thus enabled to contemplate the whole descent and gain vertigoes at pleasure, for a great part of my amusement in these steep rocks lies in their causing a giddiness and swimming in my head, which I am particularly fond of, provided I am in safety. Leaning therefore on the parapet, I remained whole hours, catching from time to time a glance of the froth and blue water whose rushing caught my ear, mingled with the cries of ravens and other birds of prey that flew from rock to rock and bush to bush at 600 feet below me.' His preference was for the wild and sublime, and he was glad that this was not a popular taste; but he could write glowing descriptions of more idyllic scenery and of village life. He said of a day at the Charmettes, a property near Chambéry, with his beloved friend Madame de Warens, at the end of 1736: 'I arose with the sun and was happy; I walked and was happy; I saw Madame de Warens and was happy; I quitted her and still was happy. Whether I rambled through the woods, over the hills, or strolled along the valley; read, was idle, worked in the garden, or gathered fruits, happiness continually accompanied me.' He offered his morning prayer from a hill-top, and in the evening, before he left, stooped to kiss the ground and the trees, gazing till they were out of sight at the places where he had been so happy. At the Hermitage with Thérèse there was a similar idyll. The most epoch--making event in European feeling for Nature was the appearance of _La Nouvelle Héloise_ (1761). The book overflows with Rousseau's raptures about the Lake of Geneva. St Preux says: 'The nearer I drew to Switzerland, the greater were my emotions. That instant in which I discovered the Lake of Geneva from the heights of Jura, was a moment of ecstasy and rapture. The sight of my country, my beloved country, where a deluge of pleasure had overflowed my heart; the pure and wholesome air of the Alps, the gentle breeze of the country, more sweet than the perfumes of the East; that rich and fertile spot, that unrivalled landscape, the most beautiful that ever struck the eye of man, that delightful abode, to which I found nothing comparable in the vast tour of the globe; the mildness of the season, the serenity of the climate, a thousand pleasing recollections which recalled to my mind the pleasures I had enjoyed;--all these circumstances together threw me into a kind of transport which I cannot describe, and seemed to collect the enjoyment of my whole life into one happy moment.' _La Nouvelle Héloise_ shewed the world three things in quite a new light: the inner consciousness which was determined to give feeling its rights again, though well aware that 'a feeling heart is an unhappy gift from heaven'; the taste for solitude, 'all noble passions are formed in solitude'; and closely bound up with these, the love of romantic scenery, which it described for the first time in glowing language. Such expressions as these of St Preux were unheard of at that time: 'I shall do my best to be free quickly, and able to wander at my ease in the wild places that to my mind make the charm of this country.' 'I am of opinion that this unfrequented country deserves the attention of speculative curiosity, and that it wants nothing to excite admiration but a skilful spectator'; and 'Nature seems desirous of hiding her real charms from the sight of men, because they are too little sensible of them, and disfigure them when within their reach; she flies from public places; it is on the tops of mountains, in the midst of forests, on desert islands, that she displays her most affecting charms.' Rousseau certainly announced his views with all the fervour of a prophet proclaiming a newly-discovered truth. The sketch St Preux gives of the country that 'deserved a year's study,' in the twenty-third letter to Julia, is very poetic. He is ascending a rocky path when a new view breaks upon him: One moment I beheld stupendous rocks hanging ruinous over my head; the next, I was enveloped in a drizzling cloud, which arose from a vast cascade that, dashing, thundered against the rocks below my feet. On one side a perpetual torrent opened to my view a yawning abyss, which my eyes could hardly fathom with safety; sometimes I was lost in the obscurity of a hanging wood, and then was greatly astonished with the sudden opening of a flowery plain. He was always charmed by 'a surprising mixture of wild and cultivated Nature': Here Nature seems to have a singular pleasure in acting contradictory to herself, so different does she appear in the same place in different aspects. Towards the east, the flowers of spring; to the south, the flowers of autumn; and northwards, the ice of winter. Add to that the illusions of vision, the tops of the mountains variously illumined, the harmonious mixture of light and shade.... After climbing, he reflects: Upon the top of mountains, the air being subtle and pure, we respire with greater freedom, our bodies are more active, our minds more serene, our pleasures less ardent, and our passions much more moderate. Our meditations acquire a degree of sublimity from the grandeur of the objects around us. It seems as if, being lifted above all human society, we had left every low terrestrial sentiment behind. He can find no words to express 'the amazing variety, magnitude, and beauty of a thousand stupendous objects, the pleasure of gazing at an entire new scene ... and beholding, as it were, another Nature and a new world.' Earlier in the year he wrote his letters to Julia upon a block of stone in his favourite wild spot, and the wintry landscape harmonized with his feelings: I run to and fro, climb the rocks and explore my whole district, and find everything as horrible without as I experienced it within. There is no longer any verdure to be seen, the grass is yellow and withered, the trees are stripped of their foliage, and the north-east blast heaps snow and ice around me. In short, the whole face of Nature appears as decayed to my outward senses as I myself from within am dead to hope and joy. Julia, too, is enthusiastic about places, where 'no vestiges are seen of human toil, no appearance of studied and laborious art; every object presents only a view of the tender care of Nature, our common mother.' When St Preux knows that she returns his love, his sympathy for Nature overflows: I find the country more delightful, the verdure fresher and livelier, the air more temperate, and the sky more serene than ever I did before; even the feathered songsters seem to tune their tender throats with more harmony and pleasure; the murmuring rills invite to love-inspiring dalliance, while the blossoms of the vine regale me from afar with the choicest perfumes ... let us animate all Nature, which is absolutely dead without the genial warmth of love. St Preux escorts his old love to the Meillerie, and it was with his description of this that Rousseau unrolled the full charm of mountain scenery, and opened the eyes of his readers to see it. They were climbing a mountain top on the Savoy side of the lake: This solitary spot formed a wild and desert nook, but full of those sorts of beauties which are only agreeable to susceptible minds, and appear horrible to others. A torrent, occasioned by the melting of the snow, rolled in a muddy stream within twenty paces of us, and carried dust, sand, and stones along with it, not without considerable noise. Behind us, a chain of inaccessible rocks divided the place where we stood from that part of the Alps which they call the Ice house.... Forests of gloomy fir trees afforded us a melancholy shade on the right, while on the left was a large wood of oak, beyond which the torrent issued; and beneath, that vast body of water which the lake forms in the bay of the Alps, parted us from the rich coast of the Pays de Vaud, crowning the whole landscape with the top of the majestic Jura. Rousseau's influence upon feeling in general, and feeling for Nature in particular, was an extraordinary one, widening and deepening at once. By his strong personal impulse he impelled it into more natural paths, and at the same time he discovered the power of the mountains. He brought to flower the germ which had lain dormant in Hellenism and the Renaissance; and although his readers imbibed a sickly strain of morbid sentimentality with this passion for the new region of feeling, the total effect of his individuality and his idealism was to intensify their love for Nature. His feelings woke the liveliest echo, and it was not France alone who profited by the lessons he taught. He was no mountaineer himself, but he pointed out the way, and others soon followed it. Saussure began his climbing in 1760, exploring the Alps with the indomitable spirit of the discoverer and the scientist's craving for truth. He ascended Mont Blanc in 1787, and only too soon the valleys of Chamounix filled with tourists and speculators. One of the first results of Rousseau's imposing descriptions of scenery was to rouse the most ardent of French romance writers, Bernardin de St Pierre; and his writings, especially his beautiful pictures of the Ile de France, followed hard in the wake of _La Nouvelle Héloise_. In _Paul and Virginia_ vivid descriptions of Nature were interwoven with an idyllic Robinson Crusoe romance: Within this enclosure reigns the most profound silence. The waters, the air, all the elements are at peace. Scarcely does the echo repeat the whispers of the palm trees spreading their broad leaves, the long points of which are gently agitated by the winds. A soft light illumines the bottom of this deep valley, on which the sun shines only at noon. But even at break of day the rays of light are thrown on the surrounding rocks, and their sharp peaks, rising above the shadows of the mountain, appear like tints of gold and purple gleaming upon the azure sky. Like Rousseau, St Pierre held that 'to take refuge in the wildest and most desert places is an instinct common to all feeling and suffering beings, as if rocks were ramparts against misfortune, and Nature's calm could appease the sorrows of the soul'[14]; but he differed in caring for Nature far more for her own sake, and not in opposition to culture and a detested world. He wrote too, not as a philosopher proclaiming a new gospel, but as a poet[15]; the poetry of Nature had been revealed to French literature. St Pierre drew the beauty of the tropics in a poem, and George Forster's _Voyage round the World_[16] shewed how quickly Rousseau's influence told upon travels. It was a far cry from the Crusaders and discoverers to the highly-cultured Forster, alive to everything that was good and beautiful, and able to express it. He was the first to describe countries and peoples from both the scientific and artistic standpoint--a style of writing which Humboldt perfected, and some later writers, Haeckel, for example, in _Indischen Briefen_, have carried on with success. To quote Forster: The town of Santa Cruz in Madeira was abreast of us at six in the afternoon. The mountains are here intersected by numerous deep glens and valleys. On the sloping ground we observed several country houses pleasantly situated amidst surrounding vineyards and lofty cypresses, which gave the country altogether a romantic appearance. Early on the 29th we were agreeably surprised with the picturesque appearance of the city of Funchal.... In October 1772, off South Africa: The night was scarcely begun when the water all round us afforded the most grand and astonishing sight that can be imagined. As far as we could see, the whole ocean seemed to be in a blaze. Every breaking wave had its summit illuminated by a light similar to that of phosphorus, and the sides of the vessel, coming in contact with the sea, were strongly marked by a luminous line.... There was a singularity and a grandeur in the display of this phenomenon which could not fail of giving occupation to the mind, and striking it with a reverential awe, due to omnipotence. The ocean was covered to a great extent with myriads of animalcules; these little beings, organized, alive, endowed with locomotive power, a quality of shining whenever they please, of illuminating every body with which they come in contact ... all these ideas crowded upon us, and bade us admire the Creator, even in His minutest works.... I hope I shall not have formed too favourable an opinion of my readers, if I expect that the generality will sympathize with me in these feelings. In Dusky Bay: We glided along by insensible degrees, wafted by light airs past numerous rocky islands, each of which was covered with wood and shrubberies, where numerous evergreens were sweetly contrasted and mingled with the various shades of autumnal yellow. Flocks of aquatic birds enlivened the rocky shores, and the whole country resounded with the wild notes of the feathered tribe.... The view of rude sceneries in the style of Rosa, of antediluvian forests which clothed the rock, and of numerous rills of water which everywhere rolled down the steep declivity, altogether conspired to complete our joy. Cascade Cove in New Zealand: This waterfall at a distance of a mile and a half seems to be but inconsiderable on account of its great elevation; but, after climbing about 200 yards upwards, we ... found a view of great beauty and grandeur before us. The first object which strikes the beholder is a clear column of water eight or ten yards in circumference, which is projected with great impetuosity from the perpendicular rock at the height of 100 yards. Nearly at the fourth part of the whole height this column meeting a part of the same rock, which now acquires a little inclination, spreads on its broad back into a limpid sheet of about twenty-five yards in width. Here its surface is curled, and dashes upon every little eminence in its rapid descent, till it is all collected in a fine basin about sixty yards in circuit, included on three sides by the natural walls of the rocky chasm, and in front by huge masses of stone irregularly piled above each other. Between them the stream finds its way, and runs foaming with the greatest rapidity along the slope of the hill to the sea. The whole neighbourhood of the cascade ... is filled with a steam or watery vapour.... We ... were struck with the sight of a most beautiful rainbow of a perfectly circular form, produced by the meridian rays of the sun refracted in the vapour of the cascade. The scenery on the left consists of steep brown rocks fringed on the summits with overhanging shrubs and trees; the enchanting melody of various birds resounded on all sides, and completed the beauty of this wild and romantic spot. He described: 'A waterspout, a phenomenon which carried so much terrific majesty in it, and connected, as it were, the sea with the clouds, made our oldest mariners uneasy and at a loss how to behave.' He begins his diary of August 1773 with O'Taheite: It was one of those beautiful mornings which the poets of all nations have attempted to describe, when we saw the isle of O'Taheite within two miles before us. The east wind, which had carried us so far, was entirely vanished, and a faint breeze only wafted a delicious perfume from the land, and curled the surface of the sea. The mountains, clothed with forests, rose majestic in various spiry forms, on which we already perceived the light of the rising sun ... everything seemed as yet asleep; the morning scarce dawned, and a peaceful shade still rested on the landscape.... This spot was one of the most beautiful I had ever seen, and could not fail of bringing to remembrance the most fanciful descriptions of poets, which it eclipsed in beauty; we had a prospect of the plain below us, and of the sea beyond it. In the shade of trees, whose branches hung over the water, we enjoyed a pleasant gale, which softened the heat of the day; and, amidst the solemn uniform noise of the waterfall, which was but seldom interrupted by the whistling of birds, we sat down.... We could have been well pleased to have passed the whole day in this retirement ... however, feasting our eyes once more with the romantic scenery, we returned to the plain. It was such descriptions as these which stimulated Humboldt. There is a breath of poetry in his writings; his _Views of Nature_ and _Cosmos_ give ample proof that love of Nature and knowledge of Nature can condition and deepen each other. It is not surprising that in the flood of scientific 'Travels' which followed, especially in imitation of Forster, there were some that laid claim to a wonderful grade of feeling. For example, the description of a day at the Equator by von Spix and v. Martius in their Travels in Brazil in 1817 to 1820: In these seas the sun rises from the ocean with great splendour, and gilds the clouds accumulated in the horizon, which in grand and various groups seem to present to the eye of the spectator continents with high mountains and valleys, with volcanoes and seas, mythological and other strange creations of fancy. The lamp of day gradually rises in the transparent blue sky; the damp grey fogs subside; the sea is calm or gently rises and falls, with a surface smooth as a mirror, in a regular motion. At noon a pale, faintly shining cloud rises, the herald of a sudden tempest, which at once disturbs the tranquillity of the sea. Thunder and lightning seem as if they would split our planet; but a heavy rain of a salt taste, pouring down in the midst of roaring whirlwinds, puts an end to the raging of the elements, and several semi-circular rainbows, extended over the ocean like gay triumphal arches, announce the peaceful termination of the great natural phenomenon. As soon as the air and sea have recovered their equilibrium, the sky again shews its transparent azure.... As the sun gradually sinks in the clouded horizon, the sea and sky assume a new dress, which is beyond description sublime and magnificent. The most brilliant red, yellow, violet, in infinite shades and contrasts, are poured out in profusion over the azure of the firmament, and are reflected in still gayer variety from the surface of the water. The day departs amid continued lightning on the dusky horizon, while the moon in silent majesty rises from the unbounded ocean into the cloudless upper regions. Variable winds cool the atmosphere; numerous falling stars, coming particularly from the south, shed a magic light; the dark-blue firmament, reflected with the constellations on the untroubled bosom of the water, represents the image of the wholly starry hemisphere; and the ocean, agitated even by the faintest breeze of the night, is changed into a sea of waving fire.... The variety of the light and foliage of the trees, which is seen in the forests, on the slopes of the mountains: the blending of the most diverse colours, and the dark azure and transparency of the sky, impart to the landscapes of the tropical countries a charm to which even the pencil of a Salvator Rosa and a Claude cannot do justice.... Except at noon, when all living creatures in the torrid zone seek shade and repose, and when a solemn silence is diffused over the scene, illumined by the dazzling beams of the sun, every hour of the day calls into action another race of animals.... When the sun goes down, most of the animals retire to rest ... myriads of luminous beetles now begin to fly about like _ignes fatui_, and the blood-sucking bats hover like phantoms in the profound darkness of the night.... The traveller does not here meet with the impressions of those sublime and rugged high Alps of Europe, nor, on the other hand, those of a meaner nature; but the character of these landscapes combines grandeur with simplicity and softness.... He who has not personally experienced the enchantment of tranquil moonlight nights in these happy latitudes can never be inspired, even by the most faithful description, with those feelings which scenes of such wondrous beauty excite in the mind of the beholder. A delicate transparent mist hangs over the country, the moon shines brightly amid heavy and singularly grouped clouds, the outlines of the objects illuminated by it are clear and well defined, while a magic twilight seems to remove from the eye those which are in shade. Scarce a breath of air is stirring, and the neighbouring mimosas, that have folded up their leaves to sleep, stand motionless beside the dark crowns of the manga, the jaca, and the ethereal jambos; or sometimes a sudden wind arises and the juiceless leaves of the acaju rustle, the richly flowered grumijama and pitanga let drop a fragrant shower of snow-white blossoms; the crowns of the majestic palms wave slowly over the silent roof which they overshade, like a symbol of peace and tranquillity. Shrill cries of the cicada, the grasshopper, and tree frog make an incessant hum, and produce by their monotony a pleasing melancholy.... Every half-hour different balsamic odours fill the air, and other flowers alternately unfold their leaves to the night.... While the silent vegetable world, illuminated by scores of fireflies as by a thousand moving stars, charms the night by its delicate effluvia, brilliant lightnings play incessantly on the horizon, and elevate the mind in joyful admiration to the stars, which, glowing in solemn silence in the firmament above the continent and ocean, fill the soul with a presentiment of still sublimer wonders. Travels by sea were described at much greater length and with much more effusion than travels by land; one might infer from the silence of the people who moved about in Europe in the eighteenth century, that no love of Nature existed. The extreme discomfort of the road up to a hundred years ago may account for this silence within Germany. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu wrote in 1716 of Saxon Switzerland: We passed by moonshine the frightful precipices that divide Bohemia from Saxony, at the bottom of which runs the river Elbe ... in many places the road is so narrow that I could not discern an inch of space between the wheels and the precipice.... and her husband declared that he had passed the Alps five times in different places, without having gone a road so dangerous. Scherr relates that in the late autumn of 1721 a citizen of Schwabisch-Gmünd travelled to Ellwangen, a distance of eight hours' posting. Before starting, he had a mass performed in St John's Church 'for the safe conclusion of the coming journey.' He set off one Monday with his wife and a maid in a two-horse vehicle called a small tilt waggon (_Planwägelchen_), but in less than an hour the wheels stuck in mud, and the whole party had to get out and push the carriage, up to their knees in filth. In the middle of the village of Boebingen the driver inadvertently drove the front left wheel into a manure hole, the carriage was overturned, and the lady of the party had her nose and cheek badly grazed by the iron hoops. From Moeggelingen to Aalen they were obliged to use three horses, and yet it took fully six hours, so that they were obliged to spend the night there. Next morning they set off early, and reached the village of Hofen by mid-day without accidents. Here for a time the travelling ceased, for a hundred paces beyond the village the carriage fell into a puddle, and they were all terribly soiled; the maid's right shoulder was dislocated, and the manservant's hand injured. The axle of one of the wheels was broken, and a horse completely lamed in the left forefoot. They had to put up a second time for the night, leave horses, carriage, man, and maid in Hofen, and hire a rack waggon, in which at last, pitifully shaken, they reached the gates of Ellwangen on Wednesday at vesper bells. When Eva König, Lessing's _fiancée_, was on her way from Brunswick to Nuremberg in 1772, she wrote to him from Rattelsdorf (two miles north of Bamberg), on February 28th, as follows: You will certainly never in your life have heard of a village called Rattelsdorf? We have been in it already twenty-four hours, and who knows if we shall not have to stay four times as long! It depends on the Maine, whether it falls or not; as it is now, one could not cross it, even if one dared to. I have never in my life met with so many hindrances, so many dangers and hardships, as on this journey. I can hardly think of any misfortunes which we have not already had. She goes on to describe that in thirty-eight hours two axles and two poles had been broken, the horses had bolted with them, one horse had fallen and died, and so on; on March 2nd they were still prisoners in the wretched village. In 1750 a day's journey was still reckoned at five miles, two hours to the mile; and when in July 1750 Klopstock travelled with Gleim from Halberstadt to Magdeburg in a light carriage drawn by four horses, at the rate of six miles in six hours, he thought this speed remarkable enough to merit comparison with the racing in the Olympian games. People of any pretensions shunned the discomforts of travelling on foot--the bad roads, the insecurity, the dirty inns, and the rough treatment in them; to walk abroad in good clothes and admire the scenery was an unknown thing. (G. Freytag.) It was only after the widening of thoroughfares, the invention of steamboats (the first was on the Weser 1827) and railways (1835), that travelling became commoner and more popular, and feeling for Nature was thereby increased. After the Swiss Alps had been discovered for them, people began to feel interest in their native mountains; Zimmermann led the way with his observations on a journey in the Harz 1775, and Gatterer in 1785 published _A Guide to Travelling in the Harz_ in five volumes. In 1806 appeared Nicolas's _Guide to Switzerland_, in 1777 J.T. Volkmar's _Journey to the Riesengebirge_, and before long each little country and province, be it Weimar, Mecklenburg, or the Mark, had discovered a Switzerland within its own boundaries, with mountains as much like the Swiss Alps as a charming little girl is like a giant. It was the opening of men's eyes to the charms of romantic scenery at home. The Isle of Rügen too, Swedish at that time, with its striking contrasts of deep blue bays and inlets, chalk rocks and beech woods, came into fashion with lovers of Nature, especially after the road from Sagard to Stubbenkamer had been improved[17]--so much so, in fact, that in 1805 Grümbke was complaining that many people only went there to feast, not to enjoy the scene: You know I am no foe to pleasure, and appreciate my food and drink after physical exertion as much as any one; but it is desecration to make that the main object here. In this dreadfully beautiful wilderness, under these green corridors of beeches, on the battlements of this great dazzling temple, before this huge azure mirror of the sea, only high and serious thoughts should find a place--the whole scene, stamped as it is with majesty and mystery, seems designed to attract the mind to the hidden life of the unending world around it. For this, solitude and rest are necessary conditions, hence one must visit Stubbenkamer either alone or with intimate and congenial friends. CHAPTER XII THE UNIVERSAL PANTHEISTIC FEELING OF MODERN TIMES The eighteenth century, so proudly distinguished as the century of Frederic the Great and Maria Theresa, Kant and Lessing, Rousseau and Voltaire, the age of enlightenment, and, above all, of the Revolution, was the most sentimental period in history. Its feeling for Nature bore the same stamp. Many of the Anacreontists and Göttingen poets, as well as Klopstock, shewed genuine enthusiasm; but their horizon was narrow, and though F. Stolberg sang of the sea and his native mountains, most of them only rang the changes on moonlight and starlight, pastoral idylls, the joys of spring, and winter excursions on the ice. Even Rousseau, the prophet of high mountains, was the child of the same sentimental, self-adoring time; a morbid strain, call it misanthropy, melancholy, what you will, underlay all his passion for Nature. It was Goethe who dissolved the spell which lay over the world, and, although born into the days of beautiful souls, moonshine poets, seraphic heaven stormers, pastoral poems, and _La Nouvelle Héloise_, ennobled and purified the tone of the day and freed it from convention! It was by dint of his genius for expression, the gift of finding the one right word, that he became the world's greatest lyrist: what he felt became a poem, what he saw a picture. To see and to fashion into poetry were one with him, whereas his predecessors had called out the whole artillery of Olympus--nymphs, Oreads, Chloe, Phyllis, Damon, Aurora, Echo, and Zephyr--even the still heavier ordnance of the old Teutonic gods and half-gods, only to repeat stereotyped ideas, and produce descriptions of scenery, without lyric thought and feeling. But Goethe's genius passed through very evident stages of development, and found forerunners in Lessing and Herder. Lessing's mind was didactic and critical, not lyric, so that his importance here is a negative one. In laying down the limits of poetry and painting in _Laocoon_, he attacked the error of his day which used poetry for pictures, debasing it to mere descriptions of seasons, places, plants, etc. He was dealing with fundamental principles when he said: Simonides called painting dumb poetry, and poetry speaking painting; but ... many modern critics have drawn the crudest conclusions possible from this agreement between painting and poetry. At one time they confine poetry within the narrow limits of painting, and at another allow painting to fill the whole wide sphere of poetry.... This fault-finding criticism has partially misled the virtuosos themselves. In poetry a fondness for description, and in painting a fancy for allegory, has arisen from the desire to make the one a speaking picture without really knowing what it can and ought to paint, and the other a dumb poem without having considered in how far painting can express universal ideas without abandoning its proper sphere and degenerating into an arbitrary method of writing.... Since the artist can use but a single moment of ever-changing Nature, and the painter must further confine his study of this one moment to a single point of view, while their works are made not simply to be looked at, but to be contemplated long and often, evidently the most fruitful moment and the most fruitful aspect must be chosen. Now that only is fruitful which allows free play to the imagination. The more we see, the more we must be able to imagine; and the more we imagine, the more we must think we see. And against descriptive poetry he said: When a poetaster, says Horace, can do nothing else, he falls to describing a grove, an altar, a brook winding through pleasant meadows, a rushing river, or a rainbow. Pope expressly enjoined upon every one who would not prove himself unworthy the name of poet, to abandon as early as possible this fondness for description. A merely descriptive poem he declared to be a feast made up of sauces. Acute as his distinction was between poetry as the representative art of actions in time, and painting as the representative art of bodies in space, he did not give due value to lyric feeling or landscape painting.[1] They belong to a region in which his sharp, critical acumen was not at home. But his discussions established the position that external objects of any sort, including Nature in all her various shapes, are not proper subjects for poetry when taken as Thomson, Brockes, and Haller took them, by themselves alone, but must first be imbued with human feeling. And the same holds good of landscape painting. Goethe's lyrics are the most perfect examples of this blending of the outer and inner world. Lessing's criticisms had a salutary, emancipating effect upon prevalent taste; but a more positive influence came into play through Herder's warm predilection for the popular songs, which had been so long neglected, and for all that rises, as in the Psalms, Homer, Shakespeare, Ossian, from primitive sources of feeling, and finds spontaneous expression in poetry. The effect of his pioneering was marked, especially upon Goethe. Herder understood the revulsion of feeling from the unnatural restraint of the Pigtail period, and while holding up the mirror to his own day, he at the same time led its taste and the expression of it towards what was simple and natural, by disclosing the treasures which lay hidden in the poetry of the people. The lyric was freed from the artificiality and convention which had so long ruled it, and although he did not carry out his plan of a history of poetry, his collections and his profound remarks upon them were of great service, sowing a seed that bore fruit in succeeding days. The popular songs to him were children of the same mother as the plants and flowers. 'All the songs of such unlettered folk,'[2] he said, 'weave a living world around existing objects, actions, and events. How rich and manifold they all become! And the eye can actually see them, the mind realize them; they are set in motion. The different parts of the song are no more connected together than the trees and bushes in a wood, the rocks in a desert, or the scenes depicted.' In another place[3] he put the history of feeling for Nature very tersely: 'There is no doubt that the spirit of man is made gentler by studying Nature. What did the classics aim at in their Georgics, but under various shapes to make man more humane and raise him gradually to order, industry, and prosperity, and to the power to observe Nature?...' Hence, when poetry revived in the Middle Ages, she soon recollected the true land of her birth among the plants and flowers. The Provencal and the romantic poets loved the same descriptions. Spenser, for instance, has charming stanzas about beautiful wilds with their streams and flowers; Cowley's six books on plants, vegetables, and trees are written with extraordinary affection and a superfluity of imagination; and of our old Brockes, Gessner says: 'He observed Nature's many beauties down to their finest minutiæ, the smallest things move his tender feelings; a dewdrop on a blade of grass in the sunshine inspires him. His scenes are often too laboured, too wide in scope, but still his poems are a storehouse of pictures direct from Nature. Haller's _Alps_, Kleist's poems and Gessner's, Thomson's _Seasons_, speak for themselves.' He delighted in Shaftesbury's praises of Nature as the good and beautiful in the _Moralists_, and translated it[4]; in fact, in Herder we have already an æsthetic cult of the beauties of Nature. After the moral disquisitions of Pope, Addison, Shaftesbury, etc., Nature's influence on man, moral and æsthetic, became, as we have already seen, a favourite theme in Germany too, both in pious and rationalistic circles[5]; but there are few traces of any æsthetic analysis. The most important one was Kant's, in his _Observations on the Beautiful and Sublime_ in 1764. He distinguished, in the finer feeling for Nature, a feeling for the sublime and a feeling for the beautiful. Both touch us pleasantly, but in different ways. The sight of a mountain with a snowy peak reaching above the clouds, the account of a storm ... these excite pleasure, but mixed with awe; while flowery meadows, valleys with winding streams and covered by browsing herds, a description of Elysium ... also cause pleasant feelings, but of a gay and radiant kind. To appreciate the first sensations adequately, we must have a feeling for the sublime; to appreciate the second, a feeling for the beautiful. He mentioned tall oaks, lonely shades in consecrated groves, and night-time, as sublime; day, beds of flowers, low hedges, and trees cut into shapes, as beautiful. Minds which possess the feeling for the sublime are inclined to lofty thoughts of friendship, scorn of the world, eternity, by the quiet stillness of a summer evening, when the twinkling starlight breaks the darkness. The light of day impels to activity and cheerfulness. The sublime soothes, the beautiful stimulates. He goes on to subdivide the sublime: This feeling is sometimes accompanied by horror or by dejection, sometimes merely by quiet admiration, at other times by a sense of wide-spread beauty. I will call the first the terrible, the second the noble, the third the splendid sublime. Profound solitude is sublime, but in a terrible way. This is why great deserts, like the Desert of Gamo in Tartary, have always been the supposed abode of fearful shades, hobgoblins, and ghostly spectres. The sublime is always great and simple; the beautiful may be small, elaborate, and ornamental. He tried, too, to define the romantic in Nature, though very vaguely: The dreadful variety of the sublime, when quite unnatural, is adventurous. When sublimity or beauty is excessive, it is called romantic. In his _Kalligone_, which appeared in 1800, Herder quoted Kant in making one of the characters say, 'One calls day beautiful, night sublime,' and tried to carry the idea a step further; 'The sublime and beautiful are not opposed to each other, but stem and boughs of a tree whose top is the most sublimely beautiful of all,' that is the romantic. In the same book he attempted to analyze his impressions of Nature, calling a rugged place odious, an insignificant one without character tedious. 'In the presence of great mountains,' he says, 'the spirit is filled with bold aspirations, whereas in gentle valleys it lies quiet.' Harmony in variety was his ideal, like the sea in storm and calm. 'An ocean of beautiful forms in rest and movement.' And in reference to the contrast between a place made 'dreadful and horrible' by a torrent dashing over rocks and a quiet and charming valley, he said: 'These changes follow unalterable laws, which are recognized by our minds, and in harmony with our feelings.' He saw the same order in variety among plants, from the highest to the lowest, from palm tree to moss. In the second part of the book he gave an enthusiastic description of the sublime in sky and sea. His beautiful words on the inspiration of Nature shew his insight into her relation to the poet soul of the people: Everything in Nature must be inspired by life, or it does not move me, I do not feel it. The cooling zephyr and the morning sunbeam, the wind blowing through the trees, and the fragrant carpet of flowers, must cool, warm, pervade us--then we feel Nature. The poet does not say he feels her, unless he feels her intensely, living, palpitating and pervading him, like the wild Nature of Ossian, or the soft luxuriant Nature of Theocritus and the Orientals. In Nature, the more varieties the better; for instance, in a beautiful country I rustle with the wind and become alive (and give life--inspire), I inhale fragrance and exhale it with the flowers; I dissolve in water; I float in the blue sky; I feel all these feelings. Herder touched the lyre himself with a skilful hand. Thought predominated with him, but he could make Nature live in his song.[7] 'I greet thee, thou wing of heaven,' he sang to the lark; and to the rainbow, 'Beautiful child of the sun, picture and hope over dark clouds ... hopes are colours, are broken sun-rays and the children of tears, truth is the sun.' In _By the Sea at Naples_ he wrote: A-weary of the summer's fiery brand, I sat me down beside the cooling sea, Where the waves heaving, rolled and kissed the strand Of the grey shore, ... And over me, high over in the air, Of the blue skyey vault, rustled the tree ... Queen of all trees, slender and beautiful, The pine tree, lifting me to golden dreams. In _Recollections of Naples_: Yes! they are gone, those happy, happy hours Joyous but short, by Posilippo's bay! Sweet dream of sea and lake, of rock and hill, Grotto and island, and the mirrored sun In the blue water--thou hast passed away! and When the glow of evening softly fades From the still sea, and with her gleaming host The moon ascends the sky. _Night_ is very poetic: And comest thou again, Thou Mother of the stars and heavenly thoughts? Divine and quiet Mother, comest thou? The earth awaits thee, from thy chalice cup But one drop of thy heavenly dew to quaff, Her flowers bend low their heads; And with them, satiate with vision, droops My overcharged soul.... O starry goddess with the crown of gold, Upon whose wide-spread sable mantle gleam A thousand worlds ... Silence divine, that filleth all the world, Flowing so softly to the eternal shores Of an eternal universe.... And in _St John's Night_, he exclaims: Infinite, ah! inexhaustible art thou, Mother Nature! Like the rest, Herder suffered from the over-sensitiveness of his day. His correspondence with his _fiancée_ shews this[8]; one sees Rousseau's influence: My pleasantest hours are when, quite alone, I walk in a charming wood close to Bückeburg, or lie upon a wall in the shade of my garden, or lastly, for we have had capital moonlight for three nights, and the last was the best of all, when I enjoy these hours of sweetly sleeping night with all the songs of the nightingale. I reckon no hours more delightful than those of green solitude. I live so romantically alone, and among woods and churches, as only poets, lovers, and philosophers can live. And his _fiancée_ wrote: 'Tis all joy within and around me since I have known thee, my best beloved: every plant and flower, everything in Nature, seems beautiful to me. and I went early to my little room; the moon was quite covered by clouds, and the night so melancholy from the croaking of the frogs, that I could not leave the window for a long time: my whole soul was dark and cloudy; I thought of thee, my dear one, and that thought, that sigh, reduced me to tears. and Do you like the ears of wheat so much? I never pass a cornfield without stroking them. Goethe focussed all the rays of feeling for Nature which had found lyrical expression before him, and purged taste, beginning with his own, of its unnatural and sickly elements. So he became the liberating genius of modern culture. Not only did German lyric poetry reach its climax in him; but he was the most accurate, individual, and universal interpreter of German feeling for Nature. His wide original mind kept open house for the most diverse elements of feeling, and exercised an ennobling control upon each and all at will; Homer's naivete, Shakespeare's sympathy, Rousseau's enthusiasm, even Ossian's melancholy, found room there. While most love lyrics of his day were false in feeling, mere raving extravagances, and therefore poor in those metaphors and comparisons which prove sympathy between Nature and the inner life, it could be said of him that 'Nature wished to know what she looked like, and so she created Goethe.' He was the microcosm in which the macrocosm of modern times was reflected. He was more modern and universal than any of his predecessors, and his insight into Nature and love for her have been rarely equalled in later days. He did not live, like so many of the elegiac and idyllic poets of the eighteenth century, a mere dream-life of the imagination: Goethe stood firmly rooted among the actualities; from boyhood up, as he said in _Wahrheit und Dichtung_, he had 'a warm feeling for all objective things.' No poet, Klopstock not excepted, was richer in verbal invention, and many of the phrases and epithets which he coined form in themselves very striking evidence (which is lost in translation) of his close and original observation of Nature. He has many beautiful comparisons to Nature: His lady-love is 'brightly beautiful as morning clouds on yonder height.' 'I was wont to look at thee as one looks at the stars and moon, delighting in thee without the most distant wish in my quiet breast to possess thee.' 'I give kisses as the spring gives flowers.' 'My feeling for thee was like seed, which germinates slowly in winter, but ripens quickly in summer.' The stars move 'with flower feet.' The graces are 'pure as the heart of the waters, as the marrow of earth.' A delicate poem is a rainbow only existing against a dark ground. In _Stella_: Thou dost not feel what heavenly dew to the thirsty it is, to return to thy breast from the sandy desert world. I felt free in soul, free as a spring morning. In _Faust_: The cataract bursting through the rocks is the image of human effort; its coloured reflection the image of life. When Werther feels himself trembling between existence and non-existence, everything around him sinking away, and the world perishing with him: The past flashes like lightning over the dark abyss of the future. These are among his still more numerous metaphors: A sea of folly, an ocean of fragrance, the waves of battle, the stream of genius, the tiger claw of despair, the sun-ray of the past. Iphigenia says to Orestes: O let the pure breath of love blow lightly on thy heart's flame and cool it. and Eleonora complains about Tasso: Let him go! But what twilight falls round me now! Formerly the stream carried us along upon the light waves without a rudder. In Goethe we see very clearly how the inner life, under the pressure of its own intensity, will, so to speak, overflow into the outer world, making that live in its turn; and how this is especially the case when the amorous passion is present to add its impetus to feeling, and attribute its own fervour to all around. _May Song_, _On the Lake_, _Ganymede_, are instances of this. _Ganymede_: Oh, what a glow Around me in morning's Blaze thou diffusest, Beautiful spring! With the rapture of love but intenser, Intenser and deeper and sweeter, Nestles and creeps to my heart The sensation divine Of thy fervour eternal, Oh, thou unspeakably fair! Beautiful personifications abound: The sun is proudly throned in heaven. The glowing sun gazes at the rugged peak or charms it with fiery love, Or bathes like the moon in the ocean. The parting glance of Mother Sun broods on the grapes. 'Morning came frightening away light sleep with its footsteps.' 'The young day arose with delight.' The moon: 'Thou spreadest thy glance soothingly over my abode.' On a cloudy night: 'Evening already rocked earth, and night hung on the mountains; from a hill of clouds the moon looked mournfully out of the mist.' 'The lofty stars turn their clear eyes down to me.' Even the rock lives: 'The hard rock opens its bosom, not envying earth its deep springs.' The stream: 'Thou hurriest on with joyful light mood; see the rock spring bright with the glance of the stars, yet no shady valley, no flowers make him tarry ... his course winds downwards to the plain, then he scatters in delightful spray, in cloud waves ... foams gloomily to the abyss.' With gradual step from out the far-off grey, Self-heralded draws on the storm. Birds on the wing fly low across the water, weighted down, And seamen hasten to reef in the sail Before its stubborn wrath. His flowers are alive: The beauteous snowdrops Droop o'er the plain, The crocus opens Its glowing bud ... With saucy gesture Primroses flare, And roguish violets Hidden with care. But these are only examples. To obtain a clear idea of Goethe's attitude, we must take a more general survey of his work, for his poetic relationship to Nature, like his mental development in general, passed through various stages of growth. That it was a warm one even in youth is shewn by the letter in 1766 from Leipzig[9]: You live contented in M. I even so here. Lonely, lonely, altogether lonely. Dearest Riese, this loneliness has impressed my soul with a certain sadness. This solitary joy is mine, When far apart from all mankind, By shady brook-side to recline. And keep my loved ones in my mind.... He goes on with these lines: Then is my heart with sorrow filled, Sad is mine eye. The flooded brook now rages by, That heretofore so gently rilled. No bird sings in the bushes now, The tree so green is dry, The zephyr which on me did blow So cheering, now storms northerly, And scattered blossoms bears on high. He was already in full sympathy with Nature. A few of his earlier poems[10] shew prevalent taste, the allusions to Zephyr and Lima, for instance, in _Night_; but they are followed by lines which are all his own. He had an incomparable way of striking the chords of love and Nature together. Where his lady-love dwells, 'there is love, and goodness is Nature.' He thinks of her When the bright sunlight shimmers Across the sea, When the clear fountain in the moonbeam glimmers. Thou art seductive and charming; flowers, Sun, moon, and stars only worship thee. There is passionate feeling for Nature in the _May Song_ of his Sesenheimer period: How gloriously gleameth All Nature to me! How bright the sun beameth, How fresh is the lea! White blossoms are bursting The thickets among, And all the gay greenwood Is ringing with song! There's radiance and rapture That nought can destroy, Oh earth, in thy sunshine, Oh heart, in thy joy. Oh love! thou enchanter So golden and bright, Like the red clouds of morning That rest on yon height, It is them that art clothing The fields and the bowers, And everywhere breathing The incense of flowers. Looking back in old age to those happy days of youth, he saw in memory not only Frederica but the scenery around her. He said (_Wahrheit und Dichtung_): 'Her figure never looked more charming than when she was moving along a raised footpath; the charm of her bearing seemed to vie with the flowering ground, and the indestructible cheerfulness of her face with the blue sky.' In Alsace he wrote: One has only to abandon oneself to the present in order to enjoy the charms of the sky, the glow of the rich earth, the mild evenings, the warm nights, at the side of one's love, or near her. and one of the poems to Frederica says: The world lies round me buried deep in mist, but In one glance of thine lies sunshine and happiness. There is a strong pulse of life--life that overflows into Nature--in _The Departure_: To horse! Away, o'er hill and steep, Into the saddle blithe I spring; The eve was cradling earth to sleep, And night upon the mountains hung. With robes of mist around him set, The oak like some huge giant stood, While, with its hundred eyes of jet, Peer'd darkness from the tangled wood. Amid a bank of clouds the moon A sad and troubled glimmer shed; The wind its chilly wings unclosed, And whistled wildly round my head. Night framed a thousand phantoms dire, Yet did I never droop nor start; Within my veins what living fire! What quenchless glow within my heart! And very like it, though in a minor key, is the Elegy which begins, 'A tender, youthful trouble.' He tells in _Wahrheit und Dichtung_ how he found comfort for his love troubles in Frankfort: They were accustomed to call me, on account of wandering about the district, the 'wanderer.' In producing that calm for the mind, which I felt under the open sky, in the valleys, on the heights, in the fields, and in the woods, the situation of Frankfort was serviceable.... On the setting in of winter a new world was revealed to us, since I at once determined to skate.... For this new joyous activity we were also indebted to Klopstock, to his enthusiasm for this happy species of motion.... To pass a splendid Sunday thus on the ice did not satisfy us, we continued in movement late into the night.... The full moon rising from the clouds, over the wide nocturnal meadows which were frozen into fields of ice, the night breeze which rustled towards us on our course, the solemn thunder of the ice which sunk as the water decreased, the strange echo of our own movements, rendered the scenes of Ossian just present to our minds. His attachment, to Lotte, stirred far deeper feelings than the earlier ones to Frederica and Lilli: (If I, my own dear Lilli, loved thee not, How should I joy to view this scene so fair! And yet if I, sweet Lilli, loved thee not, Should I be happy here or anywhere?) and drew him correspondingly nearer to Nature. There is no book in any language which so lives and moves and has its being in Nature as _Werther_.[11] In _Wahrheit und Dichtung_ Goethe said of the 'strange element' in which _Werther_ was designed and written: I sought to free myself internally from all that was foreign to me, to regard the external with love, and to allow all beings, from man downwards, as low as they were comprehensible, to act upon me, each after its own kind. Thus arose a wonderful affinity with the single objects of Nature, and a hearty concord, a harmony with the whole, so that every change, whether of place or region, or of the times of the day and year, or whatever else could happen, affected me in the deepest manner. The glance of the painter associated itself with that of the poet; the beautiful rural landscape, animated by the pleasant river, increased my love of solitude and favoured my silent observations as they extended on all sides. The strong influence of _La Nouvelle Héloise_ upon _Werther_ was very evident, but there was a marked difference between Goethe's feeling for Nature and Rousseau's. Rousseau had the painter's eye, but not the keen poetic vision. Goethe's romances are pervaded by the penetrating quality peculiar to his nation, and by virtue of which in _Werther_, the outer world, the scenery, was not used as framework, but was always interwoven with the hero's mood. The contrast between culture and Nature is always marked in Rousseau, and his religion was deism; Goethe resolves Nature into feeling, and his religion was a growing pantheism. As a work of art, _Werther_ is excellent, _La Nouvelle Héloise_ is not. Goethe used his hero's bearing towards Nature with marvellous effect to indicate the turns and changes of his moods, just as he indicated the threatening calamity and the growing apprehension of it by skilful stress laid upon some of her little traits--a faculty which only Theodore Storm among later poets has caught from him. The growth of amorous passion is portrayed as an elementary force, and the revolutionary element in the book really consists in the strength of this passion and the assertion of its natural rights. Everything artificial, forced, conventional, in thought, act, and feeling--and what at that time was not?--was repugnant to Werther; what he liked most of all was the simplicity of children and uneducated people. Nothing distresses me more than to see men torment each other; particularly when in the flower of their age, in the very season of pleasure, they waste their few short days of sunshine in quarrels and disputes, and only perceive their error when it is too late to repair it. To such intense sympathy as this, all that had been sung ere now by German poets had to give place. Nature, which hitherto had played no _rôle_ at all in fiction, not even among the English, was Werther's truest and most intimate friend. Werther is sensitive and sentimental, though in a single-hearted way, with a sentimentality that reminds us more and more, as the story proceeds, of the gloomy tone of Ossian and Young. He is a thoroughly original character, who feels that he is right so to be; and although he falls a prey to his melancholy, yet there is much more force and thought in his outpourings than in all the moonshine tirades that preceded him. It is the work of a true poet, in the best days of a brilliant youth. Werther, like Rousseau, was happiest in solitude. Solitude, in the 'place like paradise,' was precious balm to his feeling heart, which he considers 'like a sick child'; and the 'warm heavenly imagination of the heart' illuminates Nature round him--his 'favourite valley,' the 'sweet spring morning,' Nature's 'unspeakable beauty.' He was absorbed in artistic feeling, though he could not draw; 'I could not draw them, not a stroke, and have never been a greater artist than at that moment.' His power lay in imbuing his whole subject with feeling; he felt the heart of Nature beating, and its echo in his own breast. When the lovely valley teems with vapour around me, and the meridian sun strikes the upper surface of the impenetrable foliage of my trees, and but a few stray gleams steal into the inner sanctuary, then I throw myself down in the tall grass by the trickling stream; and as I lie close to the earth, a thousand unknown plants discover themselves to me. When I hear the buzz of the little world among the stalks, and grow familiar with the countless indescribable forms of the insects and flies, then I feel the presence of the Almighty who formed us in His own image, and the breath of that universal love which bears and sustains us, as it floats around us in an eternity of bliss; and then, my friend, when darkness overspreads my eyes, and heaven and earth seem to dwell in my soul and absorb its power, like the idea of a beloved mistress, then I often long and think: O that you could describe these conceptions, that you could impress upon paper all that lives so full and warm within you, that it might be the mirror of your soul, as your soul is the mirror of the infinite God! O! my friend! but it is too much for my strength. I sink under the weight of the grandeur of these visions. Werther could not express all his love for Nature, but the secret of it lay in the power to bring his own world of thought and feeling into communion with her, and so give her speech. He divined something immortal in her akin to himself. 'The true feeling of Nature,' he said, 'is love.' He poured 'the stream of his genius' over her, and she became 'dear and familiar' to him.... The simple homely scenery delighted him--the valley, the brook, the fine walnut trees. When I go out at sunrise in the morning to Walheim, and with my own hands gather the peas in the garden, which are to serve for my dinner; when I sit down to shell them and read my Homer during the intervals, and then, selecting a saucepan from the kitchen, fetch my own butter, put my mess on the fire, cover it up.... Nothing fills me with a more pure and genuine sense of happiness than those traits of patriarchal life, which, thank heaven, I can imitate without affectation. With the growth of his love-passion his feeling for Nature increased; on July 24th he wrote: I never felt happier, I never understood Nature better, even down to the veriest stem or smallest blade of grass. Then Albert came on the scene, and love became a torment, and Nature a tormentor: _August_ 18.--Must it ever be thus, that the source of our happiness must also be the fountain of our misery? The full and ardent sentiment which animated my heart with the love of Nature, overwhelming me with a torrent of delight, and which brought all paradise before me, has now become an insupportable torment, a demon which perpetually pursues and harasses me. When in bye-gone days I gazed from these rocks upon yonder mountains across the river and upon the green flowery valley before me, and saw all nature budding and bursting around--the hills clothed from foot to peak with tall thick forest trees, the valleys in all their varied windings shaded with the loveliest woods, and the soft river gliding along amongst the lisping reeds, mirroring the beautiful clouds which the soft evening breeze wafted across the sky--when I heard the groves about me melodious with the music of birds, and saw the million swarms of insects dancing in the last golden beams of the sun, whose setting rays awoke the humming beetles from their grassy beds, whilst the subdued tumult around directed my attention to the ground, and I there observed the arid rock compelled to yield nutriment to the dry moss, whilst the heath flourished upon the barren sands below me--all this displayed to me the inner warmth which animates all Nature, and filled and glowed within my heart. I felt myself exalted by this overflowing fulness to the perception of the Godhead, and the glorious forms of an infinite universe became visible to my soul.... From the inaccessible mountains across the desert, which no mortal foot has trod, far as the confines of the unknown ocean, breathes the spirit of the eternal Creator, and every atom to which He has given existence finds favour in His sight. Ah! how often at that time has the flight of a bird soaring above my head inspired me with the desire of being transported to the shores of the immeasurable waters, there to quaff the pleasure of life from the foaming goblet of the infinite, and to partake, if but for a moment, even with the confined powers of my soul, the beatitude of the Creator, who accomplishes all things in himself and through himself.... It is as if a curtain had been drawn from before my eyes.... My heart is wasted by the thought of that destructive power which lies concealed in every part of universal nature--Nature has formed nothing that does not consume itself and every object near it; so that, surrounded by earth, and air, and all the active powers, I wander on my way with aching heart, and the universe is to me a fearful monster, for ever devouring its own offspring.... If in such moments I find no sympathy ... I either wander through the country, climb some precipitous cliff, or force a path through the trackless thicket, where I am lacerated and torn by thorns and briars, and thence I find relief. Then, as he was going away, he felt how sympathetic the place had been to him: I was walking up and down the very avenue which was so dear to me--a secret sympathy had frequently drawn me thither.... the moon rose from behind a hill, increasing his melancholy, and Charlotte put his feeling into words, saying (like Klopstock): _September_ 10.--Whenever I walk by moonlight, it brings to my remembrance all my beloved and departed friends, and I am filled with thoughts of death and futurity. Even in his misery he realises the [Greek: charisgoôn] of Euripides, Petrarch's _dolendi voluptas_--the _Wonne der Wehmuth_. On September 4th he wrote: It is even so! As Nature puts on her autumn tints, it becomes autumn with me and around me. My leaves are sere and yellow, and the neighbouring trees are divested of their foliage. It was due to this autumn feeling that he could say: Ossian has superseded Homer in my heart. To what a world does the illustrious bard carry me! To wander over pathless wilds, surrounded by impetuous whirlwinds, where, by the feeble light of the moon, we see the spirits of our ancestors; to hear from the mountain tops, 'mid the roar of torrents, their plaintive sounds issuing from deep caverns.... And this heart is now dead; no sentiment can revive it. My eyes are dry, and my senses, no more refreshed by the influence of soft tears, wither and consume my brain. I suffer much, for I have lost the only charm of life, that active sacred power which created worlds around me, and it is no more. When I look from my window at the distant hills and behold the morning sun breaking through the mists and illuminating the country round it which is still wrapt in silence, whilst the soft stream winds gently through the willows which have shed their leaves; when glorious Nature displays all her beauties before me, and her wondrous prospects are ineffectual to attract one tear of joy from my withered heart.... On November 30th he wrote: 'About dinner-time I went to walk by the river side, for I had no appetite,' and goes on in the tone of Ossian: Everything around me seemed gloomy: a cold and damp easterly wind blew from the mountains, and black heavy clouds spread over the plain. and in the dreadful night of the flood: Upon the stroke of twelve I hastened forth. I beheld a fearful sight. The foaming torrents rolled from the mountains in the moonlight; fields and meadows, trees and hedges, were confounded together, and the entire valley was converted into a deep lake which was agitated by the roaring wind. And when the moon shone forth and tinged the black clouds with silver, and the impetuous torrent at my feet foamed and resounded with awful and grand impetuosity, I was overcome by a mingled sensation of awe and delight. With extended arms I looked down into the yawning abyss, and cried 'Plunge!' For a moment my senses forsook me, in the intense delight of ending my sorrows and my sufferings by a plunge into that gulf. To his farewell letter he adds: Yes, Nature! put on mourning. Your child, your friend, your lover, draws near his end. The genuine poetic pantheism, which, for all his melancholy and sentimentality, was the spring of Werther's feeling, is seen in loftier and more comprehensive form in the first part of _Faust_, when Faust opens the book and sees the sign of macrocosmos: How all things live and work, and ever blending, Weave one vast whole from Being's ample range! How powers celestial, rising and descending, Their golden buckets ceaseless interchange. Their flight on rapture-breathing pinions winging, From heaven to earth their genial influence bringing, Through the wide whole their chimes melodious ringing. And the Earth spirit says: In the currents of life, in action's storm, I float and I wave With billowy motion,-- Birth and the grave A limitless ocean. Not only of knowledge of, but of feeling for, Nature, it is said: Inscrutable in broadest light, To be unveiled by force she doth refuse. But Faust is in deep sympathy with her; witness: Thou full-orbed moon! Would thou wert gazing now For the last time upon my troubled brow! and Loos'd from their icy fetters, streams and rills In spring's effusive, quick'ning mildness flow, Hope's budding promise every valley fills. And winter, spent with age, and powerless now, Draws off his forces to the savage hills. and the idyllic evening mood, which gives way to a burst of longing: In the rich sunset see how brightly glow Yon cottage homes girt round with verdant green. Slow sinks the orb, the day is now no more; Yonder he hastens to diffuse new light. Oh! for a pinion from the earth to soar, And after, ever after him to strive! Then should I see the world outspread below, Illumined by the deathless evening beams, The vales reposing, every height aglow, The silver brooklets meeting golden streams.... Alas! that when on Spirit wing we rise, No wing material lifts our mortal clay. But 'tis our inborn impulse, deep and strong, To rush aloft, to struggle still towards heaven, When far above us pours its thrilling song The skylark lost amid the purple even, When on extended pinion sweeps amain The lordly eagle o'er the pine-crowned height. And when, still striving towards its home, the crane O'er moor and ocean wings its onward flight. But the most complete expression of Goethe's attitude, not only in the period of _Werther_ and the first part of _Faust_, but generally, is contained in the _Monologue_, which was probably written not earlier than the spring of 1788: Spirit sublime! Thou gav'st me, gav'st me all For which I prayed. Not vainly hast thou turn'd To me thy countenance in flaming fire; Thou gav'st me glorious Nature for my realm, And also power to feel her and enjoy; Not merely with a cold and wond'ring glance, Thou didst permit me in her depths profound, As in the bosom of a friend, to gaze; Before me thou dost lead her living tribes, And dost in silent grove, in air and stream, Teach me to know my kindred.... His feeling was not admiration alone, nor reverence alone, but the sympathy of _Childe Harold_: Are not the mountains, waves, and skies a part Of me and of my soul, as I of them? Is not the love of these deep in my heart With a pure passion? Should I not contemn All objects, if compared with these? and the very confession of faith of such poetic pantheism is in Faust's words: Him who dare name, And yet proclaim, Yes, I believe?... The All-embracer, All-sustainer, Doth he not embrace, sustain Thee, me, himself? Lifts not the heaven its dome above? Doth not the firm-set earth beneath us rise? And beaming tenderly with looks of love, Climb not the everlasting stars on high? The poems which date directly after the Wetzlar period are full of this sympathetic pantheistic love for Nature--_Mahomet's Song_, for example, with its splendid comparison of pioneering genius to a mountain torrent: Ho! the spring that bursts From the mountain height Joyous and bright, As the gleam of a star.... Down in the vale below Flowers bud beneath his tread ... And woo him with fond eyes. And the streamlets of the mountains Shout to him, and cry out 'Brother'! Brother! take thy brothers with thee, With thee to thine ancient father, To the eternal Ocean, Who with outstretch'd arms awaits us.... And so beareth he his brothers To their primal sire expectant, All his bosom throbbing, heaving, With a wild, tumultuous joy. We see the same pathos--the pathos of Pindar and the Psalms--in the comparison: Like water is the soul of man, From heaven it comes, to heaven it goes, And back again to earth in ceaseless change. in the incomparable _Wanderer_, in _Wanderer's Storm Song,_ and, above all, in _Ganymede_, already given, of which Loeper remarks: The poem is, as it were, a rendering of that letter (Werther's of May 10th) in rhythm. The underlying pantheism had already shewn itself in the _Wanderer's Storm Song_. It was not the delight in God of a Brockes, not the adoration of a Klopstock, not sesthetic enjoyment of Nature, not, as in later years, scientific interest; it was rather a being absorbed in, identified with, Nature, a sympathy carried so far that the very ego was surrendered to the elements. On the Lake of Zurich he wrote, June 15th, 1775: And here I drink new blood, fresh food, From world so free, so blest; How sweet is Nature and how good, Who holds me to her breast. and Elmire sings in _Ermin and Elmire_: From thee, O Nature, with deep breath I drink in painful pleasure. One of the gems among his Nature poems is _Autumn Feelings_ (it was the autumn of his love for Lilli): Flourish greener as ye clamber, O ye leaves, to seek my chamber; Up the trellised vine on high May ye swell, twin-berries tender, Juicier far, and with more splendour Ripen, and more speedily. O'er ye broods the sun at even, As he sinks to rest, and heaven Softly breathes into your ear All its fertilizing fulness, While the moon's refreshing coolness, Magic-laden, hovers near. And alas! ye're watered ever By a stream of tears that rill From mine eyes--tears ceasing never, Tears of love that nought can still. The lyrical effect here depends upon the blending of a single impression of Nature with the passing mood--an occasional poem rare even for Goethe. In a letter to Frau von Stein he admitted that he was greatly influenced by Nature: I have slept well and am quite awake, only a quiet sadness lies upon my soul.... The weather agrees exactly with my state of mind, and I begin to believe that it is the weather around me which has the most immediate effect upon me, and the great world thrills my little one with her own mood. Again, _To the Moon_, in the spring 1778, expresses perfect communion between Nature and feeling: Flooded are the brakes and dells With thy phantom light, And my soul receives the spell Of thy mystic night. To the meadow dost thou send Something of thy grace, Like the kind eye of a friend Beaming on my face. Echoes of departed times Vibrate in mine ear, Joyous, sad, like spirit chimes, As I wander here. Flow, flow on, thou little brook, Ever onward go! Trusted heart and tender look Left me even so! Richer treasure earth has none Than I once possessed-- Ah! so rich, that when 'twas gone Worthless was the rest. Little brook! adown the vale Rush and take my song: Give it passion, give it wail, As thou leap'st along! Sound it in the winter night When thy streams are full, Murmur it when skies are bright Mirror'd in the pool. Happiest he of all created Who the world can shun, Not in hate, and yet unhated, Sharing thought with none, Save one faithful friend, revealing To his kindly ear Thoughts like these, which o'er me stealing, Make the night so drear. In January 1778, he wrote to Frau von Stein about the fate of the unhappy Chr. von Lassberg, who had drowned himself in the Ilm: This inviting grief has something dangerously attractive about it, like the water itself; and the reflections of the stars, which gleam from above and below at once, are alluring. To the same year belongs _The Fisher_, which gave such melodious voice to the magic effect of a shimmering expanse of water, 'the moist yet radiant blue,' upon the mood; just as, later on, _The Erlking_, with the grey of an autumn evening woven ghostlike round tree and shrub, made the mind thrill with foreboding. Goethe was always an industrious traveller. In his seventieth year he went to Frankfort, Strassburg, the Rhine, Thuringia, and the Harz Mountains (Harzreise, 1777): 'We went up to the peaks, and down to the depths of the earth, and hammered at all the rocks.' His love for Nature increased with his science; but, at the same time, poetic expression of it took a more objective form; the passionate vehemence, the really revolutionary attitude of the _Werther_ period, gave way to one equally spiritual and intellectual, but more temperate. This transition is clearly seen in the Swiss letters. In his first Swiss travels, 1775, he was only just free from _Werther_, and his mind was too agitated for quiet observation: Hasten thee, Kronos!... Over stock and stone let thy trot Into life straightway lead.... Wide, high, glorious the view Gazing round upon life, While from mount unto mount Hovers the spirit eterne, Life eternal foreboding.... Far more significant and ripe--in fact, mature--are the letters in 1779, shewing, as they do, the attitude of a man of profound mind, in the prime of his life and time. He was the first German poet to fall under the spell of the mountains--the strongest spell, as he held, which Nature wields in our latitudes. 'These sublime, incomparable scenes will remain for ever in my mind'; and of one view in particular, over the mountains of Savoy and Valais, the Lake of Geneva, and Mont Blanc, he said: 'The view was so great, man's eye could not grasp it.' He wrote of his feelings with perfect openness to Frau von Stein, and these letters extended farther back than those from Switzerland, and were partly mixed with them. From Selz: An uncommonly fine day, a happy country--still all green, only here and there a yellow beech or oak leaf. Meadows still in their silver beauty--a soft welcome breeze everywhere. Grapes improving with every step and every day. Every peasant's house has a vine up to the roof, and every courtyard a great overhanging arbour. The air of heaven soft, warm, and moist. The Rhine and the clear mountains near at hand, the changing woods, meadows, fields like gardens, do men good, and give me a kind of comfort which I have long lacked. The pen remains as ever the pen of a poet, but he looks at Switzerland now with a mature, settled taste, analyzing his impressions, and studying mountains, glaciers, boulders, scientifically. Of the Staubbach Fall, near Lauterbrunnen (Oct. 9th, 1779): The clouds broke in the upper air, and the blue sky came through. Clouds clung to the steep sides of the rocks; even the top where the Staubbach falls over, was lightly covered. It was a very noble sight ... then the clouds came down into the valley and covered all the foreground. The great wall over which the water falls, still stood out on the right. Night came on.... In the Munsterthal, through which we came, everything was lofty, but more within the mind's power of comprehension than these. In comparison with the immensities, one is, and must remain, too small. And after visiting the Berne glacier from Thun (Oct. 14): It is difficult to write after all this ... the first glance from the mountain is striking, the district is surprisingly extensive and pleasant ... the road indescribably beautiful ... the view from the Lake of Brienz towards the snow mountains at sunset is great. More eloquent is the letter of October 3rd, from the Munsterthal: The passage through this defile roused in me a grand but calm emotion. The sublime produces a beautiful calmness in the soul, which, entirely possessed by it, feels as great as it ever can feel. How glorious is such a pure feeling, when it rises to the very highest without overflowing. My eye and my soul were both able to take in the objects before me, and as I was preoccupied by nothing, and had no false tastes to counteract their impression, they had on me their full and natural effect. When we compare such a feeling with that we are sensible of, when we laboriously harass ourselves with some trifle, and strain every nerve to gain as much as possible for it, and, as it were, to patch it out, striving to furnish joy and aliment to the mind from its own creation; we then feel sensibly what a poor expedient, after all, the latter is.... When we see such objects as these for the first time, the unaccustomed soul has to expand itself, and this gives rise to a sort of painful joy, an overflowing of emotion which agitates the mind and draws from us the most delicious tears.... If only destiny had bidden me to dwell in the midst of some grand scenery, then would I every morning have imbibed greatness from its grandeur, as from a lonely valley I would extract patience and repose. One guesses in the dark about the origin and existence of these singular forms.... These masses must have been formed grandly and simply by aggregation. Whatever revolutions may subsequently have up-heaved, rent, and divided them ... the idea of such nightly commotions gives one a deep feeling of the eternal stability of the masses.... One feels deeply convinced that here there is nothing accidental, that here there is working an eternal law which, however slowly, yet surely governs the universe. By the Lake of Geneva, where he thought of Rousseau, he went up the Dole: The whole of the Pays de Vaux and de Gex lay like a plan before us ... we kept watching the mist, which gradually retired ... one by one we distinctly saw Lausanne ... Vevey.... There are no words to express the beauty and grandeur of this view ... the line of glittering glaciers was continually drawing the eye back again to the mountains. From Cluse he wrote: The air was as warm as it usually is at the beginning of September, and the country we travelled through beautiful. Many of the trees still green; most of them had assumed a brownish-yellow tint, but only a few were quite bare. The crops were rich and verdant, the mountains caught from the red sunset a rosy hue blended with violet, and all these rich tints were combined with grand, beautiful, and agreeable forms of the landscape. At Chamouni, about effects of light: Here too again it seemed to us as if the sun had first of all attracted the light mists which evaporated from the tops of the glaciers, and then a gentle breeze had, as it were, combed the fine vapours like a fleece of foam over the atmosphere. I never remember at home, even in the height of summer, to have seen any so transparent, for here it was a perfect web of light. At the Col de Baume: Whilst I am writing, a remarkable phenomenon is passing along the sky. The mists, which are shifting about and breaking in some places, allow you through their openings, as through skylights, to catch a glimpse of the blue sky, while at the same time the mountain peaks, rising above our roofs of vapour, are illuminated by the sun's rays.... At Leukertad, at the foot of the Gemmi, he wrote (Nov. 9th): The clouds which gather here in this valley, at one time completely hiding the immense rocks and absorbing them in a waste impenetrable gloom, or at another letting a part of them be seen like huge spectres, give to the people a cast of melancholy. In the midst of such natural phenomena, the people are full of presentiments and forebodings ... and the eternal and intrinsic energy of his (man's) nature feels itself at every nerve moved to forebode and to indulge in presentiments. On the way across the Rhine glacier to the Furka, he felt the half-suggestive, half-distressing sense of mountain loneliness: It was a strange sight ... in the most desolate region of the world, in a boundless monotonous wilderness of mountains enveloped in snow, where for three leagues before and behind you would not expect to meet a living soul, while on both sides you had the deep hollows of a web of mountains, you might see a line of men wending their way, treading each in the deep footsteps of the one before him, and where, in the whole of the wide expanse thus smoothed over, the eye could discern nothing but the track they left behind them. The hollows, as we left them, lay behind us grey and boundless in the mist. The changing clouds continually passed over the pale disc of the sun, and spread over the whole scene a perpetually moving veil. He sums up the impressions made on him with: The perception of such a long chain of Nature's wonders, excites within me a secret and inexpressible feeling of enjoyment. The most profound change in his mental life was brought about by his visit to Italy, 1786-87. The poetic expression of this refining process, this striving towards the classic ideal, towards Sophrosyne, was _Iphigenia_. Its effect upon his feeling for Nature appeared in a more matter-of-fact tone; the man of feeling gave way to the scientific observer. He had, as he said (Oct. 30th, 1887), lately 'acquired the habit of looking only at things, and not, as formerly, seeing with and in the things what actually was not there.' He no longer imputed his feelings to Nature, and studied her influence on himself, but looked at her with impersonal interest. Weather, cloud, mountain formation, the species of stone, landscape, and social themes, were all treated almost systematically as so much diary memoranda for future use. There was no artistic treatment in such jottings; meteorology, botany, and geology weighed too heavily. The question, 'Is a place beautiful?' paled beside 'Is its soil clay?' 'Are its rocks quartz, chalk, or mica schist?' The problem of the archetypal plant was more absorbing than the finest groups of trees. The years of practical life at Weimar, and, above all, the ever-growing interest in science, were the chief factors in this change, which led him, as he said in his _Treatise on Granite_, from observation and description of the human heart, that part of creation which is the most youthful, varied, unstable, and destructible, to observation of that Son of Nature, which is the oldest, deepest, most stable, most indestructible. The enthusiastic subjective realism of stormy youth was replaced by the measured objective realism of ripe manhood. Hence the difference between his letters from Switzerland and those from Italy, where this inner metamorphosis was completed; as he said, 'Between Weimar and Palermo I have had many changes.' For all that, he revelled in the beauty of Italy. As he once said: It is natural to me to revere the great and beautiful willingly and with pleasure; and to develop this predisposition day by day and hour by hour by means of such glorious objects, is the most delightful feeling. The sea made a great impression upon him: I set out for the Lido...landed, and walked straight across the isthmus. I heard a loud hollow murmur--it was the sea! I soon saw it; it crested high against the shore as it retired, it was about noon and time of ebb. I have then at last seen the sea with my own eyes, and followed it on its beautiful bed, just as it quitted it. But further on he only remarks: 'The sea is a great sight.' Elsewhere, too, it is only noticed very shortly. Rome stimulated his mind to increased productiveness, and, partly for this reason, he could not assimilate all the new impressions which poured in upon him from without, from ruins, paintings, churches, palaces, the life of the people. He drew a great deal too; from Frascati he wrote (Nov. 15th, 1786): The country around is very pleasant; the village lies on the side of a hill, or rather of a mountain, and at every step the draughtsman comes upon the most glorious objects. The prospect is unbounded. Rome lies before you, and beyond it on the right is the sea, the mountains of Tivoli, and so on. In Rome itself (Feb. 2nd, 1787): Of the beauty of a walk through Rome by moonlight it is impossible to form a conception without having witnessed it. During Carnival (Feb. 21st): The sky, so infinitely fine and clear, looked down nobly and innocently upon the mummeries. In the voyage to Sicily: At noon we went on board; the weather being extremely fine, we enjoyed the most glorious of views. The corvette lay at anchor near to the Mole. With an unclouded sun the atmosphere was hazy, giving to the rocky walls of Sorrento, which were in the shade, a tint of most beautiful blue. Naples with its living multitudes lay in full sunshine, and glittered brilliantly with countless tints. and on April 1st: With a cloudy sky, a bright but broken moonlight, the reflection on the sea was infinitely beautiful. At first, Italy, and especially Rome, felt strange to him, in scenery, sky, contour, and colour. It was only by degrees that he felt at home there. He refers to this during his second visit to Rome in a notable remark, which aptly expresses the faculty of apperception--the link between us and the unfamiliar, which enables mental growth. June 16th, 1787: One remark more! Now for the first time do the trees, the rocks, nay, Rome itself, grow dear to me; hitherto I have always felt them as foreign, though, on the other hand, I took pleasure in minor subjects having some resemblance to those I saw in youth. On August 18th, 1787, he wrote: Yesterday before sunrise I drove to Acqua Acetosa. Verily, one might well lose his senses in contemplating the clearness, the manifoldness, the dewy transparency, the heavenly hue of the landscape, especially in the distance. In October, when he heard of the engagement of a beautiful Milanese lady with whom he had fallen in love: I again turned me instantly to Nature, as a subject for landscapes, a field I had been meanwhile neglecting, and endeavoured to copy her in this respect with the utmost fidelity. I was, however, more successful in mastering her with my eyes.... All the sensual fulness which that region offers us in rocks and trees, in acclivities and declivities, in peaceful lakes and lively streams, all this was grasped by my eye more appreciatively, if possible, than ever before, and I could hardly resent the wound which had to such degree sharpened my inward and outward sense. On leaving Rome, he wrote: Three nights before, the full moon shone in the clearest heaven, and the enchantment shed over the vast town, though often felt before, was never felt so keenly as now. The great masses of light, clear as in mild daylight, the contrast of deep shades, occasionally relieved by reflexions dimly portraying details, all this transported us as if into another, a simpler and a greater, world. The later diaries on his travels are sketchy throughout, and more laconic and objective: for example, at Schaffhausen (Sept. 18th): Went out early, 7.30, to see the Falls of the Rhine; colour of water, green--causes of this, the heights covered by mist--the depths clear, and we saw the castle of Laufen half in mist; thought of Ossian. Love mist when moved by deep feeling. At Brunnen: Green of the lake, steep banks, small size of boatman in comparison to the enormous masses of rock. One saw precipices grown over by trees, summits covered by clouds. Sunshine over the scene, one felt the formless greatness of Nature. He was conscious of the great change in himself since his last visit there, and wrote to Schiller (Oct. 14th, 1797): I remember the effect these things had upon me twenty years ago. The total impression remained with me, but the details faded, and I had a wonderful longing to repeat the whole experience and correct my impressions. I had become another man, and therefore it must needs appear different to me. In later years he travelled a great deal in the Harz Mountains, to Carlsbad, Toplitz, the Maine, Marienbad, etc. After the death of his great friends, Schiller and Carl August, he was more and more lonely, and his whole outlook, with increasing years, grew more impersonal, his attitude to Nature more abstract and scientific; the archetypal plant was superseded by the theory of colours. But he kept fresh eyes for natural beauty into ripe age; witness this letter from Heidelberg, May 4th, 1808, to Frau von Stein: Yesterday evening, after finishing my work, I went alone to the castle, and first scrambled about among the ruins, and then betook myself to the great balcony from which one can overlook the whole country. It was one of the loveliest of May evenings and of sunsets. No! I have really never seen such a fine view! Just imagine! One looked into the beautiful though narrow Neckar valley, covered on both sides with woods and vineyards and fruit trees just coming into flower. Further off the valley widened, and one saw the setting sun reflected in the Rhine as it flowed majestically through most beautiful country. On its further side the horizon was bounded by the Vosges mountains, lit up by the sun as if by a fire. The whole country was covered with fresh green, and close to me were the enormous ruins of the old castle, half in light and half in shade. You can easily fancy how it fascinated me. I stood lost in the view quite half an hour, till the rising moon woke me from my dreams. Goethe's true lyrical period was in the seventies, before his Italian journeys; during and after that time he wrote more dramatic and epic poetry, with ballads and the more narrative kind of epic. In sending _Der Jüngling und der Mühlbach_ to Schiller from Switzerland in 1797, he wrote: 'I have discovered splendid material for idylls and elegies, and whatever that sort of poetry is called.' Nature lyrics were few during his Italian travels, as in the journey to Sicily, 1787; among them were _Calm at Sea_: Silence deep rules o'er the waters, Calmly slumbering lies the main. and _Prosperous Voyage_: The mist is fast clearing, And radiant is heaven, Whilst Æolus loosens Our anguish-fraught bond. The most perfect of all such short poems was the _Evening Song_, written one September night of 1783 on the Gickelhahn, near Ilmenau. He was writing at the same time to Frau von Stein: 'The sky is perfectly clear, and I am going out to enjoy the sunset. The view is great and simple--the sun down.' Every tree top is at peace. E'en the rustling woods do cease Every sound; The small birds sleep on every bough. Wait but a moment--soon wilt thou Sleep in peace. The hush of evening, the stilling of desire in the silence of the wood, the beautiful resolution of all discords in Nature's perfect concord, the naive and splendid pantheism of a soul which feels itself at one with the world--all this is not expressed in so many words in the _Night Song_; but it is all there, like the united voicesin a great symphony. (SCHURÉ.) The lines are full of that pantheism which not only brings subject and object, Mind and Nature, into symbolic relationship, but works them into one tissue. Taken alone with _The Fisher_ and _To the Moon_, it would suffice to give him the first place as a poet of Nature. He was not only the greatest poet, but the greatest and most universal thinker of modern times. With him feeling and knowledge worked together, the one reaching its climax in the lyrics of his younger days, the other gradually moderating the fervour of passion, and, with the more objective outlook of age, laying greater stress upon science. His feeling for Nature, which followed an unbroken course, like his mental development generally, stands alone as a type of perfectly modern feeling, and yet no one, despite the many intervening centuries, stood so near both to Homer and to Shakespeare, and in philosophy to Spinoza. But because with Goethe poetry and philosophy were one, his pantheism is full of life and poetic vision, whilst that of the wise man of Amsterdam is severely mathematical and abstract. And the postulate of this pantheism was sympathy, harmony between Nature and the inner life. He felt himself a part of the power which upholds and encompasses the world. Nature became his God, love of her his religion. In his youth, in the period of _Werther, Ganymede_, and the first part of _Faust_, this pantheism was a nameless, unquenchable aspiration towards the divine--for wings to reach, like the rays of light, to unmeasured heights; as he said in the Swiss mountains, 'Into the limitless spaces of the air, to soar over abysses, and let him down upon inaccessible rocks.' After the Italian journeys science took the lead, the student of Nature supplanted the lover, even his symbolism took a more abstract and realistic form. But he never, even in old age, lost his love for the beauties of Nature, and, holding to Spinoza's fundamental ideas of the unchangeableness and eternity of Nature's laws, and the oneness of the Cosmos, he sought to think it out and base it upon scientific grounds, through the unbroken succession of animal and vegetable forms of life, the uniform 'formation and transformation of all organic Nature.' He wrote to Frau von Stein: 'I cannot express to you how legible the book of Nature is growing to me; my long spelling out has helped me. It takes effect now all of a sudden; my quiet delight is inexpressible; I find much that is new, but nothing that is unexpected--everything fits in and conforms, because I have no system, and care for nothing but truth for its own sake. Soon everything about living things will be clear to me.'[13] Poetic and scientific intuition were simultaneous with him, and their common bond was pantheism. This pantheism marked an epoch in the history of feeling. For Goethe not only transformed the unreal feeling of his day into real, described scenery, and inspired it with human feeling, and deciphered the beauty of the Alps, as no one else had done, Rousseau not excepted; but he also brought knowledge of Nature into harmony with feeling for her, and with his wonderfully receptive and constructive mind so studied the earlier centuries, that he gathered out all that was valuable in their feeling. As Goethe in Germany, so Byron in England led the feeling for Nature into new paths by his demoniac genius and glowing pantheism. Milton's great imagination was too puritan, too biblical, to allow her independent importance; he only assigned her a _rôle_ in relation to the Deity. In fiction, too, she had no place; but, on the other hand, we find her in such melancholy, sentimental outpourings as Young's _Night Thoughts_: Night, sable Goddess! from her ebon throne In rayless majesty now stretches forth Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumb'ring world... Creation sleeps. 'Tis as the gen'ral pulse Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause; An awful pause, prophetic of her end...etc. There is a wealth of imagery and comparison amid Ossian's melancholy and mourning; clouds and mist are the very shadows of his struggling heroes. For instance: His spear is a blasted pine, his shield the rising moon. He sat on the shore like a cloud of mist on the rising hill. Thou art snow on the heath; thy hair is the mist of Cromla, when it curls on the hill, when it shines to the beam of the west. Thy breasts are two smooth rocks seen from Branno of streams. As the troubled noise of the ocean when roll the waves on high; as the last peal of the thunder of heaven, such is the noise of battle. As autumn's dark storms pour from two echoing hills, towards each other approached the heroes. The clouds of night came rolling down, Darkness rests on the steeps of Cromla. The stars of the north arise over the rolling of Erin's waves; they shew their heads of fire through the flying mist of heaven. A distant wind roars in the wood. Silent and dark is the plain of death. Wordsworth's influence turned in another direction. His real taste was pastoral, and he preached freer intercourse with Nature, glossing his ideas rather artificially with a theism, through which one reads true love of her, and an undeniable, though hidden, pantheism. In _The Influence of Natural Objects_ he described how a life spent with Nature had early purified him from passion: Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me With stinted kindness. In November days, When vapours, rolling down the valleys, made A lonely scene more lonesome, among woods At noon, and 'mid the calm of summer nights, When by the margin of the trembling lake Beneath the gloomy hills, I homeward went In solitude, such intercourse was mine. 'Twas mine among the fields both day and night, And by the waters all the summer long, And in the frosty season, when the sun Was set, and visible for many a mile, The cottage windows through the twilight blazed, I heeded not the summons.... Like Klopstock, he delighted in sledging while the stars Eastward were sparkling bright, and in the west The orange sky of evening died away. Far more characteristic of the man is the confession in _Tintern Abbey_: Nature then (The coarser pleasures of my boyish days And their glad animal movements all gone by) To me was all in all. I cannot paint What then I was. The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, The colours and their forms, were then to me An appetite, a feeling and a love That had no need of a remoter charm By thought supplied, or any interest Unborrow'd from the eye. Beautiful notes, to be struck again more forcibly by the frank pantheism of Byron. What Scott had been doing for Scotland,[14] and Moore for Ireland, Wordsworth, with still greater fidelity to truth, tried to do for England and her people; in contrast to Byron and Shelley, who forsook home to range more widely, or Southey, whose _Thalaba_ begins with an imposing description of night in the desert: How beautiful is night! A dewy freshness fills the silent air, No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain Breaks the serene of heaven; In full-orb'd glory yonder Moon divine Rolls through the dark blue depths. Beneath her steady ray The desert-circle spreads Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky. How beautiful is night! But all that previous English poets had done seemed harmless and innocent in comparison with Byron's revolutionary poetry. Prophecy in Rousseau became poetry in Byron. There was much common ground between these two passionate aspiring spirits, who never attained to Goethe's serenity. Both were melancholy, and fled from their fellows; both strove for perfect liberty and unlimited self-assertion; both felt with the wild and uproarious side of Nature, and found idyllic scenes marred by thoughts of mankind. Byron's turbulence never subsided; and his love for Nature, passionate and comprehensive as it was, was always 'sickled o'er' with misanthropy and pessimism, with the 'world-pain.' He turned to her first through disdain of his kind and love of introspection, and later on, when he was spurned by the London world which had been at his feet, and disdain grew into hatred and disgust, from a wish to be alone. But, as Boettger says: Though this heart, in which the whole universe is reflected, is a sick one, it has immeasurable depths, and an intensified spirit life which draws everything under its sway and inspires it, feeling and observing everything only as part of itself. The basis of Byron's feeling for Nature was a revolutionary one--elementary passion. The genius which threw off stanza after stanza steeped in melody, was coupled with an unprecedented subjectivity and individualism. When the first part of _Childe Harold_ came out, dull London society was bewitched by the music and novelty of this enthusiastic lyric of Nature, with its incomparable interweaving of scenery and feeling: The sails were fill'd, and fair the light winds blew, As glad to waft him from his native home.... But when the sun was sinking in the sea, He seized his harp... Adieu, adieu! my native shore Fades o'er the waters blue; The night winds sigh, the breakers roar, And shrieks the wild sea-mew; Yon sun that sets upon the sea We follow in his flight; Farewell awhile to him and thee, My native land, good-night! He says of the beauty of Lusitania: Oh Christ! it is a goodly sight to see What Heaven hath done for this delicious land. What fruits of fragrance blush on every tree! What goodly prospects o'er the hills expand!... The horrid crags, by toppling convent crown'd, The cork trees hoar that clothe the shaggy steep, The mountain moss, by scorching skies imbrown'd, The sunken glen, whose sunless shrubs must weep. The tender azure of the unruffled deep, The orange tints that gild the greenest bough, The torrents that from cliff to valley leap, The vine on high, the willow branch below, Mix'd in one mighty scene, with varied beauty glow. Yet his spirit drives him away, 'more restless than the swallow in the skies.' The charm of the idyllic is in the lines: But these between, a silver streamlet glides.... Here leans the idle shepherd on his crook, And vacant on the rippling waves doth look, That peaceful still 'twixt bitterest foemen flow. The beauty of the sea and night in this: The moon is up; by Heaven a lovely eve! Long streams of light o'er dancing waves expand.... How softly on the Spanish shore she plays, Disclosing rock, and slope, and forest brown Distinct.... Bending o'er the vessel's laving side To gaze on Dian's wave-reflected sphere. He reflects that: To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell, To slowly trace the forest's shady scene.... To climb the trackless mountain all unseen With the wild flock that never needs a fold, Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean,-- This is not solitude; 'tis but to hold Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unroll'd. But 'midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men, To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess, And roam along, the world's tired denizen, With none who bless us, none whom we can bless ... This is to be alone--this, this is solitude. His preference for wild scenery shews here: Dear Nature is the kindest mother still, Though always changing, in her aspect mild; From her bare bosom let me take my fill, Her never-wean'd, though not her favour'd child. O she is fairest in her features wild, Where nothing polish'd dares pollute her path; To me by day or night she ever smiled, Though I have mark'd her when none other hath, And sought her more and more, and loved her best in wrath. He observes everything--now 'the billows' melancholy flow' under the bows of the ship, now the whole scene at Zitza: Where'er we gaze, around, above, below, What rainbow tints, what magic charms are found! Rock, river, forest, mountain, all abound, And bluest skies that harmonize the whole; Beneath, the distant torrent's rushing sound Tells where the volumed cataract doth roll Between those hanging rocks, that shock yet please the soul. This is full of poetic vision: Where lone Utraikey forms its circling cove, And weary waves retire to gleam at rest, How brown the foliage of the green hill's grove, Nodding at midnight o'er the calm bay's breast, As winds come lightly whispering from the west, Kissing, not ruffling, the blue deep's serene;-- Here Harold was received a welcome guest; Nor did he pass unmoved the gentle scene, For many a job could he from Night's soft presence glean. Feeling himself 'the most unfit of men to herd with man,' he is happy only with Nature: Once more upon the waters! yet once more! And the waves bound beneath me as a steed That knows his rider. Welcome to the roar! Swift be their guidance, wheresoe'er it lead. Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends; Where rolled the ocean, thereon was his home; Where a blue sky and glowing clime extends, He had the passion and the power to roam; The desert, forest, cavern, breaker's foam, Were unto him companionship; they spake A mutual language, clearer than the tome Of his land's tongue, which he would oft forsake For Nature's pages glass'd by sunbeams on the lake. Again: I live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me, and to me High mountains are a feeling, but the hum Of human cities torture; I can see Nothing to loathe in Nature save to be A link reluctant in a fleshly chain, Class'd among creatures, when the soul can flee, And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain Of ocean, or the stars, mingle, and not in vain. Are not the mountains, waves, and skies a part Of me and of my soul, as I of them? Is not the love of these deep in my heart With a pure passion? Should I not contemn All objects, if compared with these? Love of Nature was a passion with him, and when he looked Upon the peopled desert past As on a place of agony and strife, mountains gave him a sense of freedom. He praised the Rhine: Where Nature, nor too sombre nor too gay, Wild but not rude, awful yet not austere, Is to the mellow earth as autumn to the year. and far more the Alps: Above me are the Alps, The palaces of Nature, whose vast walls Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps, And throned eternity in icy halls Of cold sublimity, where forms and falls The avalanche, the thunderbolt of snow! All that expands the spirit, yet appals, Gather around these summits, as to shew How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man below. On the Lake of Geneva: Ye stars which are the poetry of heaven... All heaven and earth are still--though not in sleep, But breathless, as we grow when feeling most; And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep. All heaven and earth are still: from the high host Of stars, to the lull'd lake and mountain coast, All is concenter'd in a life intense, Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost, But hath a part of being, and a sense Of that which is of all Creator and defence. And this is in the night. Most glorious night, Thou wert not sent for slumber; let me be A sharer in thy fierce and far delight, A portion of the tempest and of thee! How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea, And the big rain comes dancing to the earth! And now again 'tis black--and now, the glee Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain mirth, As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth. But where of ye, oh tempests, is the goal? Are ye like those within the human breast? Or do ye find, at length, like eagles, some high nest? The morn is up again, the dewy morn With breath all incense, and with cheek all bloom, Laughing the clouds away with playful scorn, And living as if earth contained no tomb. In Clarens: Clarens! sweet Clarens, birthplace of deep Love, Thine air is the young breath of passionate thought, Thy trees take root in Love; the snows above The very glaciers have his colours caught, And sunset into rose-hues sees them wrought By rays which sleep there lovingly; the rocks, The permanent crags, tell here of Love. Yet Ever and anon of griefs subdued There comes a token like a scorpion's sting, Scarce seen, but with fresh bitterness imbued; And slight withal may be the things which bring Back on the heart the weight which it would fling Aside for ever; it may be a sound, A tone of music, summer's eve or spring, A flower, the wind, the ocean, which shall wound, Striking the electric chain with which we are darkly bound. The unrest and torment of his own heart he finds reflected in Nature: The roar of waters! from the headlong height Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice; The fall of waters! rapid as the light The flashing mass foams, shaking the abyss; The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss, And boil in endless torture; while the sweat Of their great agony, wrung out from this Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set, And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again Returns in an unceasing shower, which round With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain Is an eternal April to the ground, Making it all one emerald; how profound The gulf, and how the giant element From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound, Crushing the cliffs, which downward, worn and rent With his fierce footsteps, yields in chasms a fearful rent.... Horribly beautiful! but, on the verge From side to side, beneath the glittering morn, An Iris sits amidst the infernal surge, Like Hope upon a deathbed. The 'enormous skeleton' of Rome impresses him most by moonlight: When the rising moon begins to climb Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there; When the stars twinkle through the loops of time, And the low night breeze waves along the air! Underlying all his varying moods is this note: There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but Nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the Universe and feel What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal. The sea, the sky with its stars and clouds, and the mountains, are his passion: Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean--roll! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain; Man marks the earth with ruin--his control Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, When, for a moment, like a drop of rain He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown. (_Childe Harold_.) The day at last has broken. What a night Hath usher'd it! How beautiful in heaven! Though varied with a transitory storm, More beautiful in that variety!... And can the sun so rise, So bright, so rolling back the clouds into Vapours more lovely than the unclouded sky, With golden pinnacles and snowy mountains, And billows purpler than the ocean's, making In heaven a glorious mockery of the earth. (_Sardanapalus.)_ He had loved the Scotch Highlands in youth: Amidst Nature's native scenes, Loved to the last, whatever intervenes Between us and our childhood's sympathy Which still reverts to what first caught the eye. He who first met the Highlands' swelling blue Will love each peak that shews a kindred hue, Hail in each crag a friend's familiar face, And clasp the mountain in his mind's embrace. (_The Island_.) and in _The Island_ he says: How often we forget all time, when lone, Admiring Nature's universal throne, Her woods, her wilds, her waters, the intense Reply of hers to our intelligence! Live not the stars and mountains? Are the waves Without a spirit? Are the dropping cares Without a feeling in their silent tears? No, no; they woo and clasp us to their spheres, Dissolve this clog and clod of clay before Its hour, and merge our soul in the great shore. (_The Island_.) Byron's feeling was thus, like Goethe's in _Werther_ and _Faust_, a pantheistic sympathy. But there was this great difference between them--Goethe's mind passed through its period of storm and stress, and attained a serene and ripe vision; Byron's never did. Melancholy and misanthropy always mingled with his feelings; he was, in fact, the father of our modern 'world-pain.' Still more like a brilliant meteor that flashes and is gone was Shelley, the most highly strung of all modern lyrists. With him, too, love of Nature amounted to a passion; but it was with her remote aerial forms that he was most at home. His imagination, a cosmic one, revelling among the spheres, was like Byron's in its preference for the great, wide, and distant; but unlike his in giving first place to the serene and passionless. As Brandes says: 'In this familiarity with the great forms and movements of Nature, Shelley is like Byron; but like him as a fair genius is like a dark one, as Ariel is like the flame-bringing angel of the morning star.' We see his love for the sea, especially at rest, in the 'Stanzas written in dejection near Naples,' which contain the beautiful line which proved so prophetic of his death: The sun is warm, the sky is clear, The waves are dancing fast and bright; Blue isles and snowy mountains wear The purple noon's transparent might.... I see the deep's untrampled floor With green and purple sea-weeds strewn; I see the waves upon the shore Like light dissolved, in star showers thrown.... Yet now despair itself is mild, Even as the winds and waters are; I could lie down like a tired child And weep away the life of care Which I have borne, and yet must bear,-- Till death like sleep might steal on me, And I might feel in the warm air My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony. In his _Essay on Love_, speaking of the irresistible longing for sympathy, he says: In solitude, or in that deserted state when we are surrounded by human beings, and yet they sympathize not with us, we love the flowers, the grass, and the water and the sky. In the motion of the very leaves of spring, in the blue air, there is then found a secret correspondence with our heart. There is eloquence in the tongueless wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of the reeds beside them, which, by their inconceivable relation to something within the soul, awaken the spirits to a dance of breathless rapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the eyes, like the voice of one beloved singing to you alone. As Brandes says: 'His pulses beat in secret sympathy with Nature's. He called plants and animals his dear sisters and brothers, and the words which his wife inscribed upon his tombstone in Rome, "cor cordium," are true of his relation to Nature also.' _The Cloud_, with its marvellously vivid personification, is a perfect example of his genius. It gives the measure of his unlikeness to the more homekeeping imaginations of his contemporaries Wordsworth, Coleridge, Burns, and Moore; and at the same time to Byron, for here there are no morbid reflections; the poem is pervaded by a naive, childlike tone, such as one hears in the old mythologies. _The Cloud_: I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers From the seas and the streams; I bear light shade for the leaves when laid In their noonday dreams. From my wings are shaken the dews that waken The sweet buds every one, When rocked to rest on their Mother's breast As she dances about the sun. I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under; And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder. I sift the snow on the mountains below, And their great pines groan aghast, And all the night 'tis my pillow white While I sleep in the arms of the Blast.... From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape, Over a torrent sea, Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof, The mountains its columns be. The triumphal arch through which I march, With hurricane, fire, and snow, When the Powers of the air are chained to my chair, Is the million-coloured bow; The Sphere-fire above its soft colours wove While the moist earth was laughing below. I am the daughter of Earth and Water, And the nursling of the Sky. As Brandes puts it; When the cloud sings thus of the moon: When That orbed maiden with white fire laden, Whom Mortals call the Moon, Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor By the midnight breezes strewn; And wherever the beat of her unseen feet, Which only the angels hear, May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof, The Stars peep behind her and peer. or of-- The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes, the reader is carried back, by dint of the virgin freshness of the poet's imagination, to the time when the phenomena of Nature were first moulded into mythology. This kinship to the myth is very clear in the finest of all his poems, the _Ode to the West Wind_, when the poet says to the wind: O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,... Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed. Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean. Angels of rain and lightning, there are spread On the blue surface of thine airy surge, Like the bright hair uplifted from the head Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge Of the horizon to the zenith's height, The locks of the approaching storm. He calls the wind the 'breath of Autumn's being,' the one Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed The winged seeds. And cries to it: If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; A wave to pant beneath thy power and share The impulse of thy strength, only less free Than thou, O uncontrollable!... 0 lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed! A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed One too like thee, tameless, and swift, and proud. Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is; What if my leaves are falling like its own? The tumult of thy mighty harmonies Will take from both a deep autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit. Be thou me, impetuous one! Drive my dead thoughts over the universe, Like withered leaves, to quicken a new birth; And by the incantation of this verse, Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawakened earth The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? His poems are full of this power of inspiring all the elements with life, breathing his own feeling into them, and divining love and sympathy in them; for instance: The fountains mingle with the river, And the river with the ocean; The winds of heaven mix for ever With a sweet emotion.... See the mountains kiss high heaven, And the waves clasp one another... And the sunlight clasps the earth, And the moonbeams kiss the sea. and: I love all thou lovest, Spirit of Delight; The fresh earth in new leaves dressed, And the starry night, Autumn evening and the morn When the golden mists are born. I love snow and all the forms Of the radiant frost; I love waves and winds and storms-- Everything almost Which is Nature's, and may be Untainted by man's misery. To Goethe, Byron, and Shelley, this pantheism, universal love, sympathy with Nature in all her forms, was the base of feeling; but both of England's greatest lyrists, dying young, failed to attain perfect harmony of thought and feeling. There always remained a bitter ingredient in their poetry. Let us now turn to France. LAMARTINE AND VICTOR HUGO Rousseau discovered the beauty of scenery for France; St Pierre portrayed it poetically, not only in _Paul and Virginia_, but in _Chaumiére Indienne_ and _Etudes de la Nature_. The science which these two writers lacked, Buffon possessed in a high degree; but he had not the power to delineate Nature and feeling in combination: he lacked insight into the hidden analogies between the movements of the mind and the phenomena of the outer world. Chateaubriand, on the contrary, had this faculty to its full modern extent. It is true that his ego was constantly to the fore, even in dealing with Nature, but his landscapes were full of sympathetic feeling. He had Rousseau's melancholy and unrest, and cared nothing for those 'oppressive masses,' mountains, except as backgrounds; but he was enthusiastic about the scenery which he saw in America, the virgin forests, and the Mississippi--above all, about the sea. His Réné, that life-like figure, half-passionate, half-_blasé_, measuring everything by himself, and flung hither and thither by the waves of passion, shewed a lover's devotion to the sea and to Nature generally.[15] 'It was not God whom I contemplated on the waves in the magnificence of His works: I saw an unknown woman, and the miracle of his smile, the beauties of the sky, seemed to me disclosed by her breath. I would have bartered eternity for one of her caresses. I pictured her to myself as throbbing behind this veil of the universe which hid her from my eyes. Oh! why was it not in my power to rend the veil and press the idealized woman to my heart, to spend myself on her bosom with the love which is the source of my inspiration, my despair, and my life?' In subjectivity and dreaminess both Chateaubriand and Lamartine were like the German romanticists, but their fundamental note was theism, not pantheism. The storm of the French Revolution, which made radical changes in religion, as in all other things, was followed by a reaction. Christianity acquired new power and inwardness, and Nature was unceasingly praised as the mirror of the divine idea of creation. In his _Génie du Christianisme_, Chateaubriand said: The true God, in entering into His Works, has given his immensity to Nature... there is an instinct in man, which puts him in communication with the scenes of Nature. Lamartine was a sentimental dreamer of dreams, a thinker of lofty thoughts which lost themselves in the inexpressible. His _Meditations_ shew his ardent though sad worship of Nature; his love of evening, moonlight, and starlight. For instance, _L'Isolement_: Ici gronde le fleuve aux vagues écumantes, Il serpente et s'enfonce en un lointain obscur: Là le lac immobile étend ses eaux dormantes Oò l'étoile du soir se lève dans l'azur. An sommet de ces monts couronnés de bois sombres, Le crépuscule encore jette un dernier rayon; Et le char vaporeux de la reine des ombres Monte et blanchit déjà les bords de l'horizon. _Le Soir_: Le soir ramène le silence.... Venus se lève à l'horizon; A mes pieds l'étoile amoureuse De sa lueur mystérieuse Blanchit les tapis de gazon. De ce hêtre au feuillage sombre J'entends frissonner les rameaux; On dirait autour des tombeaux Qu'on entend voltiger une ombre, Tout-à-coup, détaché des cieux, Un rayon de l'astre nocturne, Glissant sur mon front taciturne, Vient mollement toucher mes yeux. Doux reflet d'un globe de flamme Charmant rayon, que me veux-tu? Viens-tu dans mon sein abattu Porter la lumière à mon âme? Descends-tu pour me révéler Des mondes le divin mystére, Ces secrets cachés dans la sphère Où le jour va te rappeler? In the thought of happy past hours, he questions the lake: Un soir, t'en souvient-il, nous voguions en silence; On n'entendait au loin, sur l'onde et sous les cieux, Que le bruit des rameurs qui frappaient en cadence Tes flots harmonieux. O lac! rochers muets! grottes! forêt obscure! Vous que le temps épargne ou qu'il peut rajeunir Gardez de cette nuit, gardez, belle nature, Au moins le souvenir!... Que le vent qui gémit, le roseau qui soupire Que les parfums légers de ton air embaumé, Que tout ce qu'on entend, l'on voit, ou l'on respire, Tout dise: 'ils out aimés! _La Prière_ has: Le roi brillant du jour, se couchant dans sa gloire, Descend avec lenteur de son char de victoire; Le nuage éclatant qui le cache à nos yeux Conserve en sillons d'or sa trace dans les cieux, Et d'un reflet de pourpre inonde l'étendue. Comme une lampe d'or dans l'azur suspendue, La lune se balance aux bords de l'horizon; Ses rayons affaiblis dorment sur le gazon, Et le voile des nuits sur les monts se déplie. C'est l'heure, où la nature, un moment recueillie, Entre la nuit qui touche et le jour qui s'enfuit S'élève au créateur du jour et de la nuit, Et semble offrir à Dieu dans son brillant langage, De la création le magnifique hommage. Voilà le sacrifice immense, universelle! L'univers est le temple, et la terre est l'autel; Les cieux en sont le dôme et ses astres sans nombre, Ces feux demi-voilés, pâle ornement de l'ombre, Dans la voûte d'azur avec ordre semés, Sont les sacrés flambeaux pour ce temple allumés... Mais ce temple est sans voix... ...Mon coeur seul parle dans ce silence-- La voix de l'univers c'est mon intelligence. Sur les rayons du soir, sur les ailes du vent, Elle s'élève à Dieu... _Le Golfe de Baia_: Vois-tu comme le flot paisible Sur le rivage vient mourir? Mais déjà l'ombre plus épaisse Tombe et brunit les vastes mers; Le bord s'efface, le bruit cesse, Le silence occupe les airs. C'est l'heure où la Mélancholie S'assied pensive et recueillie Aux bords silencieux des mers. The decay of autumn corresponds to his own dolorous feelings: Oui, dans ces jours d'automne où la nature expire, A ses regards voilés je trouve plus d'attraits; C'est l'adieu d'un ami, c'est le dernier sourire Des lèvres que la mort va fermer pour jamais. This is from _Ischia_: Le Soleil va porter le jour à d'autres mondes; Dans l'horizon désert Phébé monte sans bruit, Et jette, en pénétrant les ténébres profondes, Un voile transparent sur le front de la nuit. Voyez du haut des monts ses clartés ondoyantes Comme un fleuve de flamme inonder les coteaux, Dormir dans les vallons on glisser sur les pentes, Ou rejaillir au loin du sein brillant des eaux.... Doux comme le soupir d'un enfant qui sommeille, Un son vague et plaintif se répand dans les airs.... Mortel! ouvre ton âme à ces torrents de vie, Reçois par tous les sens les charmes de la nuit.... He sees the transitoriness of all earthly things reflected in Nature: L'onde qui baise ce rivage, De quoi se plaint-elle à ses bords? Pourquoi le roseau sur la plage, pourquoi le ruisseau sous l'ombrage, Rendent-ils de tristes accords? De quoi gémit la tourterelle? Tout naist, tout paise. Such a depth of sympathy and dreamy dolorous reverie was new to France, but Rousseau had broken the ice, and henceforward feeling flowed freely. To Lamartine the theist, as to the pantheists Goethe, Shelley, and Byron, Nature was a friend and lover. Victor Hugo was of the same mind, but his poetry is clearer and more plastic than Lamartine's. We quote from his finest poems, the _Feuilles d'Automne_. He was a true lyrist, familiar both with the external life of Nature and the inner life of man. His beautiful 'Ce qu'on entend sur la montagne' has the spirit of _Faust_. He imagines himself upon a mountain top, with earth on one side, the sea on the other; and there he hears two voices unlike any ever heard before: L'une venait des mers, chant de gloire! hymne heureux! C'était la voix des flots qui se parlaient entre eux.... Or, comme je l'ai dit, l'Océan magnifique Epandait une voix joyeuse et pacifique Chantant comme la harpe aux temples de Sion, Et louait la beauté de la création. while from the other voice: Pleurs et cris! L'injure, l'anatheme.... C'était la terre et l'homme qui pleuraient!... L'une disait, Nature! et l'autre, Humanité! The personifications in this poem are beautiful. He, too, like Lamartine, loves sea and stars most of all. These verses from _Les Orientales_ remind one of St Augustine: J'étais seul près des flots par une nuit d'étoiles, Pas un nuage aux cieux; sur les mers pas de voiles, Et les bois et les monts et toute la nature Semblaient interroger dans confus murmure Les flots des mers, les feux du ciel. Et les étoiles d'or, légions infinies, A voix haute, à voix basse, avec mille harmonies Disaient en inclinant leurs couronnes de feu, Et les flots bleus, que rien gouverne et n'arrête, Disaient en recourbant l'écume de leur crête: C'est le Seigneur Dieu, le Seigneur Dieu! Parfois lorsque tout dort, je m'assieds plein de joie Sous le dôme étoilé qui sur nos fronts flamboie; J'écoute si d'en haut il tombe quelque bruit; Et l'heure vainement me frappe de son aile Quand je contemple ému cette fête eternelle Que le ciel rayonnant donne au monde la nuit! Souvent alors j'ai cru que ces soleils de flamme Dans ce monde endormi n'échauffaient que mon âme; Qu'à les comprendre seul j'étais prédestiné; Que j'étais, moi, vaine ombre obscure et taciturne, Le roi mystérieuse de la pompe nocturne; Que le ciel pour moi seul s'était illuminé! The necessary condition of delight in Nature is very strikingly given: Si vous avez en vous, vivantes et pressées, Un monde intérieur d'images, de pensées, De sentimens, d'amour, d'ardente passion Pour féconder ce monde, échangez-le sans cesse Avec l'autre univers visible qui vous presse! Mêlez toute votre âme à la création.... Que sous nos doigts puissans exhale la nature, Cette immense clavier! His lyrics are rich in fine scenes from Nature, unrolled in cold but stately periods, and the poetic intuition which always divines the spirit life brought him near to that pantheism which we find in all the greatest English and German poets of his time,[16] and which lay, too, at the root of German romanticism. THE GERMAN ROMANTICISTS Schiller did not possess the intrinsically lyrical genius of Goethe; his strength lay, not in song, but drama, and in a didactic form of epic--the song not of feeling, but of thought. Descriptions of Nature occur here and there in his epics and dramas; but his feeling for her was chiefly theoretic. Like his contemporaries, he passed through a sentimental period; _Evening_ shews this, and _Melancholy, to Laura_: Laura, a sunrise seems to break Where'er thy happy looks may glow.... Thy soul--a crystal river passing, Silver clear and sunbeam glassing, Mays into blossom sad autumn by thee: Night and desert, if they spy thee, To gardens laugh--with daylight shine, Lit by those happy smiles of thine! With such ecstatic extravagances contrast the excellent descriptions of Nature full of objective life in his longer poems--for instance, the tumult of Charybdis and the unceasing rain in _The Diver_, evening in _The Hostage_, and landscape in _William Tell_ and _The Walk_. In the last, as Julian Schmidt says, the ever varying scenery is made a 'frame for a kind of phenomenology of mankind.' Flowers of all hue are struggling into glow Along the blooming fields; yet their sweet strife Melts into one harmonious concord. Lo! The path allures me through the pastoral green And the wide world of fields! The labouring bee Hums round me, and on hesitating wing O'er beds of purple clover, quiveringly Hovers the butterfly. Save these, all life Sleeps in the glowing sunlight's steady sheen-- E'en from the west no breeze the lull'd airs bring. Hark! in the calm aloft I hear the skylark sing. The thicket rustles near, the alders bow Down their green coronals, and as I pass, Waves in the rising wind the silvering grass; Come! day's ambrosial night! receive me now Beneath the roof by shadowy beeches made Cool-breathing, etc. Schiller's interest in Nature was more a matter of reflection than direct observation; its real tendency was philosophical and ethical. He called Nature naive (he included naturalness in Nature); those who seek her, sentimental; but he overlooked (as we saw in an earlier chapter) the fact that antiquity did not always remain naive, and that not all moderns are sentimental. As Rousseau's pupil he drew a sharp distinction between Nature and Art, and felt happy in solitude where 'man with his torment does not come,' lying, as he says in _The Bride of Messina_, like a child on the bosom of Nature. In Schiller's sense of the word, perhaps no poet has been more sentimental about Nature than Jean Paul. He was the humorous and satirical idyllist _par excellence_, and laid the scenes of his romances in idyllic surroundings, using the trifling events of daily life to wonderful purpose. There is an almost oriental splendour in his pages, with their audacious metaphors and mixture of ideas. With the exception of Lake Maggiore in _Titan_, he gives no set descriptions of landscape; but all his references to it, all his sunrises and sunsets, are saturated with the temperament of his characters, and they revel in feeling. They all love Nature, and wander indefatigably about their own countryside, finding the reflection of their feelings in her. There is a constant interweaving of the human soul and the universe; therein lies his pantheistic trait. 'To each man,' he said,[17] 'Nature appears different, and the only question is, which is the most beautiful? Nature is for ever becoming flesh for mankind; outer Nature takes a different form in each mind.' Certainly the nature of Jean Paul was different from the Nature of other mortals. Was she more beautiful? He wrote of her in his usual baroque style, with a wealth of thought and feeling, and everywhere the sparkle of genius; but it is all presented in the strangest motley, as exaggerated and unenjoyable as can be. For example, from _Siebenkâs_: I appeared again then on the last evening of the year 1794, on the red waves of which so many bodies, bled to death, were borne away to the ocean of eternity. To the butterfly--proboscis of Siebenkäs, enough honey--cells were still open in every blue thistle-blossom of destiny. When they had passed the gate--that is to say, the un-Palmyra-like ruins of it--the crystal reflecting grotto of the August night stood open and shining above the dark green earth, and the ocean-calm of Nature stayed the wild storm of the human heart. Night was drawing and closing her curtain (a sky full of silent suns, not a breath of breeze moving in it) up above the world, and down beneath it the reaped corn stood in the sheaves without a rustle. The cricket with his one constant song, and a poor old man gathering snails for the snail pits, seemed to be the only things that dwelt in the far-reaching darkness. When it was autumn in his heart: Above the meadows, where all the flowers were withered and dead; above the fields, where the corn ears waved no more, floated dim phantom forms, all pale and wan, faint pictures of the past. Over the grand eternal woods and hills a biting mist was draped in clinging folds, as if all Nature, trembling into dust, must vanish in its wreaths.... But one bright thought pierced these dark fogs of Nature and the soul, turning them to a white gleaming mist, a dew all glittering with rainbow colours, and gently lighting upon flowers. When his married life grew more unhappy, in December: The heart of our sorrowful Firmian grew sadder yet, as he stood upon this cold, burnt-out hearth-place of Nature. and in spring it seemed to him as if his life dwelt, not in a bodily heart, but in some warm and tender tear, as if his heavy-laden soul were expanding and breaking away through some chink in its prison, and melting into a tone of music, a blue ether wave. And _Titan_ expresses that inner enfranchisement which Nature bestows upon us: Exalted Nature! when we see and love thee, we love our fellow-men more warmly, and when we must pity or forget them, thou still remainest with us, reposing before the moist eye like a verdant chain of mountains in the evening red. Ah! before the soul in whose sight the morning dew of its ideals has faded to a cold, grey drizzle ... thou remainest, quickening Nature, with thy flowers and mountains and cataracts, a faithful comforter; and the bleeding son of the gods, cold and speechless, dashes the drop of anguish from his eyes, that they may rest, far and clear, on thy volcanoes, and on thy springs and on thy suns. This is sunset in his abstruse artistic handling: The sun sinks, and the earth closes her great eye like that of a dying god. Then smoke the hills like altars; out of every wood ascends a chorus; the veils of day, the shadows, float around the enkindled transparent tree-tops, and fall upon the gay, gem-like flowers. And the burnished gold of the west throws back a dead gold on the east, and tinges with rosy light the hovering breast of the tremulous lark--the evening bell of Nature. And this sunrise: The flame of the sun now shot up ever nearer to the kindled morning clouds; at length in the heavens, in the brooks and ponds, and in the blooming cups of dew, a hundred suns rose together, while a thousand colours floated over the earth, and one pure dazzling white broke from the sky. It seemed as if an almighty earthquake had forced up from the ocean, yet dripping, a new-created blooming plain, stretching out beyond the bounds of vision, with all its young instincts and powers; the fire of earth glowed beneath the roots of the immense hanging garden, and the fire of heaven poured down its flames and burnt the colours into the mountain summits and the flowers. Between the porcelain towers of white mountains the coloured blooming heights stood as thrones of the Fruit-Goddess; over the far-spread camp of pleasure blossom-cups and sultry drops were pitched here and there like peopled tents; the ground was inlaid with swarming nurseries of grasses and little hearts, and one heart detached itself after another with wings, or fins, or feelers, from the hot breeding-cell of Nature, and hummed and sucked and smacked its little lips, and sung: and for every little proboscis some blossom-cup of; joy was already open. The darling child of the infinite mother, man, alone stood with bright joyful eyes upon the market-place of the living city of the sun, full of brilliance and noise, and gazed, delighted, around him into all its countless streets; but his eternal mother rested veiled in immensity, and only by the warmth which went to his heart did he feel that he was lying upon hers. For very overflow of thought and imagery and ecstasy of feeling, Jean Paul never achieved a balanced beauty of expression. The ideal classic standard which Winckelmann and Lessing had laid down--simple and plastic, calm because objective, crystal-clear in thought and expression--and which Goethe and Schiller had sought to realize and imbue with modern ideas, was too strictly limited for the Romanticists. Hyperion's words expressed their taste more accurately: 'O, man is a god when he dreams, a beggar when he thinks!' and they laid stress upon restless movement, fantastic, highly-coloured effects, a crass subjectivity, a reckless licence of the imagination. Actual and visible things were disregarded; they did not accord with this claim for infinity and the nebulous, for exploring the secret depths of the soul. It was perhaps a necessary reaction from Goethe's classicism; but it passed like a bad dream, after tending, thanks to its heterogeneous elements, now to the mediæval period, now to that of Storm and Stress, and now to Goethe, Herder, and Winckelmann. It certainly contained germs of good, which have grown and flourished in our own day. In keeping with its whole character, the Romantic feeling for Nature was subjective and fantastic to excess, mystically enthusiastic, often with a dreamy symbolism at once deep and naive; its inmost core was pantheistic, with a pantheism shading off imperceptibly into mysticism. After _Werther_, there is perhaps no work of modern fiction in which Nature plays so artistic a part as in Holderlin's _Hyperion_. Embittered by life's failure to realize his ideals, he cries: 'But thou art still visible, sun in the sky! Thou art still green, sacred earth! The streams still rush to the sea, and shady trees rustle at noon. The spring's song of joy sings my mortal thoughts to sleep. The abundance of the universe nourishes and satiates my famished being to intoxication.' This mystical pantheism could not be more clearly expressed than here: O blessed Nature! I know not how it happens when I lift my eyes to your beauty; but all the joy of the sky is in the tears which I shed before you--a lover before the lady of his love. When the soft waves of the air play round my breast, my whole being is speechless and listens. Absorbed in the blue expanse, I often look up to the ether and down to the holy sea; and it seems as if a kindred spirit opened its arms to me, as if the pain of loneliness were lost in the divine life. To be one with all that lives, in blessed self-forgetfulness to return to the All of Nature, that is the height of thought and bliss--the sacred mountain height, the place of eternal rest, where noon loses its sultriness and thunder its voice, and the rough sea is like the waves in a field of wheat. To such feeling as this the actualities are but fetters, hindering aspiration. 'O, if great Nature be the daughter of a father, is the daughter's heart not his heart? Is not he her deepest feeling? But have I found it? Do I know it?' He tries to discern the 'soul of Nature,' hears 'the melody of morning light begin with soft notes.' He says to the flower, 'You are my sister,' and to the springs, 'We are of one race': he finds symbolic resemblance between his heart and all the days and seasons: he feels the beauty of the 'land like paradise,' while scarcely ever, except in the poem _Heidelberg_, giving a clear sketch of scenery. A number of fine comparisons from Nature are scattered through his writings [18]: The caresses of the charming breezes. She light, clear, flattering sea. Sacred air, the sister of the mind which moves and lives in us with fiery force, present everywhere immortal. Earth, 'one of the flowers of the sky.' Heaven, 'the unending garden of life.' Beauty, that 'which is one and all.' He describes his love in a mystical form: We were but one flower, and our souls lived in each other as flowers do, when they love and hide their joy within a closed calyx.... The clear starry night had now become my element, for the beautiful life of my love grew in the stillness as in the depths of earth gold grows mysteriously. He delights 'thus to drink the joy of the world out of one cup with the lady of his love.' 'Yea, man is a sun, seeing all and transfiguring all when he loves; and when he does not love, he is like a dark dwelling in which a little smelly lamp is burning.' All this is soft and feminine, but it has real poetic charm. Beautiful too, though sad and gloomy, is his _Song of Fate_: Nowhere may man abide, But painfully from hour to hour He stumbles blindly on to the unknown, As water falls from rock to rock The long year through. His pantheism finds expression in the odes--in _To Nature_, for instance: Since my heart turneth upward to the sun As one that hears her voice, Hailing the stars as brothers, and the spring As melody divine; Since in the breath that stirs the wood thy soul, The soul of joy, doth move On the still waters of my heart--therefore, O Nature! these are golden days to me! Tieck, too, was keenly alive to Nature. Spring[19]: Look all around thee how the spring advances! New life is playing through the gay green trees! See how in yonder bower the light leaf dances To the bird's tread and to the quivering breeze! How every blossom in the sunlight glances! The winter frost to his dark cavern flees, And earth, warm wakened, feels through every vein The kindling influence of the vernal rain. Now silvery streamlets, from the mountain stealing, Dance joyously the verdant vales along; Cold fear no more the songster's tongue is sealing, Down in the thick dark grove is heard his song. And all their bright and lovely hues revealing, A thousand plants the field and forest throng; Light comes upon the earth in radiant showers, And mingling rainbows play among the flowers. All his writings seem intoxicated with Nature. The hero of his novel _William Lovell_, scamp though he is, a man of criminal egotism whose only law is licence, is deeply in love with Nature. He wrote from Florence: Nature refreshes my soul with her endless beauty. I am often full of enthusiasm at the thousand charms of Nature and Art ... at last my longing to travel to wonderful distant places is satisfied. Even as a child, when I stood outside my father's country-house, and gazed at the distant mountains and discovered a windmill on the very line of the horizon, it seemed to beckon me as it turned, my blood pulsed more quickly, my mind flew to distant regions, a strange longing often filled my eyes with tears. Often it seems to me as if the enigma in ourselves were about to be unriddled, as if we were suddenly to see the transformation of all our feelings and strange experiences. Night surrounded me with a hundred terrors, the transparent moonlight sky was like a crystal dome overhead--in this world the most unusual feelings were as shadows. 'Franz Sternbald' had the same intoxicated feeling for Nature: I should like to fill the whole world with songs of love, to move moonrise and sunrise to echo back my joys and sorrows; and trees, twigs, leaves, grasses to catch the melody and all repeat my music with a thousand tongues.[20] To the Romantic School, Music and Nature were a passion; they longed to resolve all their feelings, like Byron, at one flash, into music. 'For thought is too distant.' Night and the forest, moonlight and starlight, were in all their songs. There is a background of landscape all through _Franz Sternbald's Wanderings_. In the novels of the eighteenth century landscape had had no place; Hermes once gave a few lines to sunset, but excused it as an extravagance, and begged readers and critics not to think that he only wanted to fill up the page. Rousseau altered this; Sophie la Roche, in her _Freundschaftlichen Frauenzimmerbriefen_, introduced ruins, moonlight scenery, hills, vales, and flowering hedges, etc., into scenes of thought and feeling; and most of all, Goethe in _Werther_ tunes scenery and soul to one key. In his later romances he avoided descriptions of scenery. Jean Paul, like Tieck in _Franz Sternbald_, never spares us one sunset or sunrise. Some of Tieck's concise descriptions are very telling, like Theodore Storm's at the present day: Rosy light quivered on the blades of grass, and morning moved in waves along them. The redder the evening grew, the heavier became his dreams; the darkened trees, the shadows lengthening across the fields, the smoke from the roofs of a little village, and the stars coming into view one by one in the sky--all this moved him deeply, moved him to a wistful compassion for himself. As Franz wanders about the wood: He observes the trees reflected in a neighbouring pond. He had never looked at landscape with this pleasure, it had never been given to him to discern the various colours and their shadows, the charm of the stillness, the effect of the foliage, as now in the clear water. Till now he had never drawn a landscape, only looked at it as a necessary adjunct to many historical pictures, had never felt that lifeless Nature could herself compose something whole and complete in itself, and so worthy to be represented. Tieck's shorter stories, fairy tales and others, shew taste for the mysterious and indefinite aspects of Nature--reflections in water, rays of light, cloud forms: They became to him the most fitting characters in which to record that indefinite inexpressible feeling which gave its special colour to his spiritual life.[21] The pantheism of Boehme, with whom he was closely associated, always attracted him, and in Jena he came under the influence of Steffens, and also of Schelling, whose philosophy of Nature called Nature a mysterious poem, a dreaming mind. This mind it became the chief aim of Novalis, as well as Tieck, to decipher. From simple descriptions of Nature he went on to read mystic meanings into her, seeking, psychologically in his novels and mystically in his fairy tales, to fathom the connection between natural phenomena and elementary human feeling. _Blond Egbert_ was the earliest example of this: Night looked sullenly through the windows, and the trees without rustled in the wet cold ... the moon looked fitfully through breaks in the driving clouds.[22] In the same book Bertha describes the horror of loneliness, the vague longings, and then the overwhelming delight in new impressions, which seized her when she fled from home as a child and lost herself among the mountains. _The Runenberg_ gives in a very powerful way the idea of the weird fascination which the subterranean powers were supposed to exert over men, alluring and befooling them, and rousing their thirst for gold. The demoniacal elements in mountain scenery, its crags and abysses, are contrasted with idyllic plains. The tale is sprinkled over with descriptions of Nature, which give it a fairy-like effect.[23] The most extraordinary product of this School was Novalis. With him everything resolved itself into presentiment, twilight, night, into vague longings for a vague distant goal, which he expressed by the search for 'the blue flower.' This is from _Heinrich von Ofterdingen_: 'The cheerful pageant of the glorious evening rocked him in soft imaginings; the flower of his heart was visible now and then as by sheet lightning.' He looked at Nature with the mystic's eye, and described her fantastically: I am never tired of looking minutely at the different plants. Growing plants are the direct language of the earth; each new leaf, each remarkable flower, is a mystery which projects itself, and because it cannot move with love and longing, nor attain to words, is a dumb, quiet plant. When in solitude one finds such a flower, does it not seem as if all around it were brightened, and, best of all, do not the little feathered notes around it remain near? One could weep for joy, and there, far from the world, stick hands and feet into the earth, to take root, and never more leave so delightful a spot. This green mysterious carpet of love is drawn over the whole earth. It is not surprising that night should attract this unnaturally excited imagination most of all: Sacred, inexpressible, mysterious Night, delicious balsam drops from thy hands, from the poppy sheaf; thou upliftest the heavy wings of the Spirit.[24] Night and death are delight and bliss. The fairy-like tale of _Hyacinth and Little Rose,_ with its charming personifications, is refreshing after all this: The violet told the strawberry in confidence, she told her friend the gooseberry, who never ceased to jeer when Hyacinth went, so the whole garden and wood soon knew it, and when Hyacinth went out, voices from all sides cried out, 'Little Rose is my favourite.' When he goes into the wide world to find the land of Isis, he asks the way of the animals, and of springs, rocks, and trees, and the flowers smile at him, the springs offer him a fresh drink, and there is wonderful music when he comes home. 'O that men could understand the music of Nature!' cries the listener in the tale. Then follows a description of 'the sweet passion for the being of Nature and her enchanting raptures,' and the charm of the poetic imagination which finds 'a great sympathy with man's heart' in all the external world. For example, in the breath of wind, which 'with a thousand dark and dolorous notes seems to dissolve one's quiet grief into one deep melodious sigh of all Nature.' 'And am I myself other than the stream when I gaze gloomily down into its waters and lose my thoughts in its flow?' And in ecstasy the youth exclaims: 'Whose heart does not leap for joy, when he feels Nature's innermost life in its fulness, when that powerful feeling, for which language has no other name than love and bliss, spreads like a vapour through his being, and he sinks, palpitating, on the dark alluring breast of Nature, and his poor self is lost in the overwhelming waves of joy?'[25] Here we have the key to the romantic feeling for Nature--communion of the soul with Nature in a twilight mood of dreamy absorption. Yet amidst all this, real delight in romantic scenery was not quite lacking: witness Hulsen's[26] _Observations on Nature on a Journey through Switzerland_; and the genuine lyric of Nature, untainted by mystic and sickly influences, was still to be heard, as in Eichendorff's beautiful songs and his _Tautgenichts_. The Romantic School, in fact, far as it erred from the path, did enlarge the life of feeling generally, and with that, feeling for Nature, and modern literature is still bound to it by a thousand threads. Our modern rapture has thus been reached by a path which, with many deviations in its course, has come to us from a remote past, and is still carrying us farther forward. Its present intensity is due to the growth of science, for although feeling has become more realistic and matter-of-fact in these days of electricity and the microscope, love for Nature has increased with knowledge. Science has even become the investigator of religion, and the pantheistic tendency of the great poets has passed into us, either in the idea of an all-present God, or in that of organic force working through matter--the indestructible active principle of life in the region of the visible. Our explorers combine enthusiasm for Nature with their tireless search for truth--for example, Humboldt, Haeckel, and Paul Güssfeldt; and though, as the shadow side to this light, travelling and admiration of Nature have become a fashion, yet who nowadays can watch a great sunset or a storm over the sea, and remain insensible to the impression? Landscape painting and poetry shew the same deviations from the straight line of development as in earlier times. Our garden craft, like our architecture, is eclectic; but the English park style is still the most adequate expression of prevalent taste: spaces of turf with tree groups, a view over land or sea, gradual change from garden to field; to which has been added a wider cultivation of foreign plants. In landscape painting the zigzag course is very marked: landscapes such as Bocklin's, entirely projected by the imagination and corresponding to nothing on earth, hang together in our galleries with the most faithful studies from Nature. It is the same with literature. In fiction, novels which perpetuate the sentimental rhapsodies of an early period, and open their chapters with forced descriptions of landscape, stand side by side with the masterly work of great writers--for example, Spielhagen, Wilhelmine von Hillern, and Theodore Storm. In poetry, the lyric of Nature is inexhaustible. Heine, the greatest lyrist after Goethe, though his poetry has, like the Nixie, an enchantingly fair body with a fish's tail, wrote in the _Travels in the Harz_: 'How infinitely blissful is the feeling when the outer world of phenomena blends and harmonizes with the inner world of feeling; when green trees, thoughts, birds' songs, sweet melancholy, the azure of heaven, memory, and the perfume of flowers, run together and form the loveliest of arabesques.' But his delight in Nature was spoilt by irony and straining after effect--for example, in _The Fig Tree_; and although _The Lotos Flower_ is a gem, and the _North Sea Pictures_ shew the fine eye of a poet who, like Byron and Shelley, can create myths, his personifications as a whole are affected, and his personal feeling is forced upon Nature for the sake of a witty effect. Every element of Nature has found skilled interpreters both in poetry and painting, and technical facility and truth of representation now stand on one level with the appreciation of her charms. NOTES INTRODUCTION [Footnote 1: _Kritische Gänge_. Comp. Vischer, _Ueber den optischen Formsinn,_ and Carl du Prel, _Psychologie der Lyrik_.] [Footnote 2: As in elegy _Ghatarkarparam_.] [Footnote 3: Comp. Humboldt, _Cosmos_. Schnaase, _Geschichte der bildenden Künste_.] [Footnote 4: See _Die Entwickelung des Naturgefühls bei den Griechen und Römern_, Biese.] CHAPTER I [Footnote 1: Lucos ac nemora consecrant deorumque nominibus adpellant secretum illud, quod sola reverentia vident, Tac. Germ. Comp. Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_.] [Footnote 2: Grimm. Simrock, _Handbuch der Mythologie_.] [Footnote 3: Grimm.] [Footnote 4: Grimm.] [Footnote 5: Grimm.] [Footnote 6: _Geschichte der bildenden Künste_. Comp. Grimm, _Deutsche Rechtsaltertümer_.] [Footnote 7: Grimm.] [Footnote 8: Carrière, _Die Poesie_.] CHAPTER II [Footnote 1: Clement of Rome, i _Cor._ 19, 20. Zoeckler, _Geschichte der Beziehungen zwischen Theologie und Naturwissenschaft_.] [Footnote 2: Comp. _Vita S. Basilii_.] [Footnote 3: _Basilii opera omnia_. Parisus, 1730.] [Footnote 4: _Cosmos_.] [Footnote 5: Biese, _Die Entwickelung des Naturgefühls bei den Griechen und Römern_.] [Footnote 6: _Mélanges philosophiques, historiques, et littéraires_.] [Footnote 7: _Homily_ 4.] [Footnote 8: _Homily_ 6.] [Footnote 9: Biese, _Die Entwickelung des Naturgefühls bei den Griechen und Römern_. 'In spring the Cydmian apple trees give blossom watered by river streams in the hallowed garden of the nymphs; in spring the buds grow and swell beneath the leafy shadow of the vine branch. But my heart knoweth no season of respite; nay, like the Thracian blast that rageth with its lightning, so doth it bear down from Aphrodite's side, dark and fearless, with scorching frenzy in its train, and from its depths shaketh my heart with might.'] [Footnote 10: Comp. Biese, _op. cit._] [Footnote 11: _Deutsche Rundschau_, 1879.] [Footnote 12: Comp. Biese, _op. cit._] [Footnote 13: Chrysostom was not only utilitarian, but praised and enjoyed the world's beauty. From the fifth to third century, Greek progress in feeling for Nature can be traced from unconscious to conscious pleasure in her beauty.] [Footnote 14: _De Mortalitate_, cap. 4.] [Footnote 15: _Geschichte der christlich-lateinischen Literatur_.] [Footnote 16: When one thinks of Sappho, Simonides, Theocritus, Meleager, Catullus, Ovid, and Horace, it cannot be denied that this is true of Greek and Roman lyric.] [Footnote 17: As in the Homeric time, when each sphere of Nature was held to be subject to and under the influence of its special deity. But it cannot be admitted that metaphor was freer and bolder in the hymns; on the contrary, it was very limited and monotonous.] [Footnote 18: In _Cathemerinon_.] [Footnote 19: Comp. fragrant gardens of Paradise, Hymn 3. In Hamartigenia he says that the evil and ugly in Nature originates in the devil.] [Footnote 20: Ebert.] [Footnote 21: The Robinsonade of the hermit Bonosus upon a rocky island is interesting.] [Footnote 22: Comp. Biese, _op. cit._] [Footnote 23: Comp. _ad Paulinum_, epist. 19, _Monum. German._ v. 2.] [Footnote 24: _Carm. nat. 7._] [Footnote 25: _Ep._ xi.] [Footnote 26: _Migne Patrol_ 60.] [Footnote 27: _Migne Patrol_ 59.] [Footnote 28: Ebert.] [Footnote 29: Comp. Biese, _op. cit._] [Footnote 30: Comp. Biese, _op. cit._] [Footnote 31: _Migne Patrol_ 58.] [Footnote 32: _Carm._ lib. i.] [Footnote 33: _Amoenitas loci_: Variorum libri Lugduni, 1677.] [Footnote 34: _Monum. Germ._, 4th ed., Leo, lib. viii.] [Footnote 35: _Deutsche Rundschau_, 1882.] [Footnote 36: _Monum. German Histor., poet. lat. medii ævi_, I. Berlin 1881, ed. Dümmler. Alcuin, _Carmen_ 23.] [Footnote 37: Zoeckler, _Geschichte der Beziehungen zwischen Theologie und Naturwissenschaft_. 'On rocky crags by the sea, on shores fringed by oak or beech woods, in the shady depths of forests, on towering mountain tops, or on the banks of great rivers, one sees the ruins or the still inhabited buildings which once served as the dwellings of the monks who, with the cross as their only weapon, were the pioneers of our modern culture. Their flight from the life of traffic and bustle in the larger towns was by no means a flight from the beauties of Nature.' The last statement is only partly true. In the prime of the monastic era the beauties of Nature were held to be a snare of the devil. Still, in choosing a site, beauty of position was constantly referred to as an auxiliary motive. 'Bernhard loved the valley,' 'but Bernhard chose mountains,' are significant phrases.] [Footnote 38: Comp. Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_, on the old Germanic idea of a conflict between winter and spring.] [Footnote 39: Dümmler, vi. _Carolus et Leo papa._] [Footnote 40: Walahfridi Strabi, _De cultura hortorum_.] [Footnote 41: Comp. H. von Eichen, _Geschichte und System der mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung_. Stuttg. Cotta, 1887.] CHAPTER III [Footnote 1: Prutz, _Geschichte der Kreuzzüge_. Berlin, 1883.] [Footnote 2: Allatius, _Symmicta_. Coeln, 1653.] [Footnote 3: _Deutsche Pilgerreisen nach dem heiligen Lande_, Roehricht und Meissner. Berlin, 1880.] [Footnote 4: For excellent bibliographical evidence see _Die geographische Kenntnis der Alpen im Mittelalter_ in supplement to _Münchner Allgem. Zeitung_, January 1885.] [Footnote 5: Comp. Oehlmann, _Die Alpenpässe im Mittelalter, Jahrbuch für Schweizer_.] [Footnote 6: Biese, _op. cit._] [Footnote 7: Fr. Diez, _Leben und Werke der Troubadours_. Zwickau, 1829] [Footnote 8: _Des Minnesangs Frühling_, von Lachmann-Haupt.] [Footnote 9: _Geschichte der Malerei._ Woermann und Wottmann.] [Footnote 10: 'Detailed study of Nature had begun; but the attempt to blend the separate elements into a background landscape in perspective betrayed the insecurity and constraint of dilettante work at every point.' Ludwig Kämmerer on the period before Van Eyck in _Die Landschaft in der deutschen Kunst bis zum Tode Albrecht Dürers_. Leipzig, 1880] CHAPTER IV [Footnote 1: _Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien._] [Footnote 2: _Untersuchungen über die kampanische Wandmalerei._ Leipzig, 1873.] [Footnote 3: Comp. Schnaase, _op. cit._] [Footnote 4: _Argon_, ii. 219; iii. 260, 298. Comp. Cic. _ad Att._, iv. 18, 3.] [Footnote 5: _Renaissance und Humanismus in Italien und Deutschland._ Berlin, 1882. (Oncken, _Allgemeine Geschichte in Einzeldarstettungen_, ii. 8.)] [Footnote 6: _Itinerar. syr._, Burckhardt ii.] [Footnote 7: _Loci specie percussus_, Burckhardt i.] [Footnote 8: In his paper 'Kulturgeschichte und Naturwissenschaft' (_Deutsche Rundschau_, vol. xiii.), which is full both of original ideas and of exaggerated summary opinions, Du Bois Reymond fails to do justice to this, and altogether misjudges Petrarch's feeling for Nature. After giving this letter in proof of mediæval feeling, he goes on to say: 'Full of shame and remorse, he descends the mountain without another word. The poor fellow had given himself up to innocent enjoyment for a moment, without thinking of the welfare of his soul, and instead of gloomy introspection, had looked into the enticing outer world. Western humanity was so morbid at that time, that the consciousness of having done this was enough to cause painful inner conflict to a man like Petrarch--a man of refined feeling, and scientific, though not a deep thinker.' Even granting this, which is too tragically put, the world was on the very eve of freeing itself from this position, and Petrarch serves as a witness to the change.] [Footnote 9: Comp., too, _De Genealogia Deorum_, xv., in which he says of trees, meadows, brooks, flocks and herds, cottages, etc., that these things 'animum mulcent,' their effect is 'mentem in se colligere.'] [Footnote 10: Comp. Voigt, _Enea Silvio de' Piccolomini als Papst Pius II. und sein Zeitalter_.] [Footnote 11: Comp. Geiger and Ad. Wolff, _Die Klassiker aller Zeiten und Nationen_.] [Footnote 12: Quando mira la terra ornata e bella. Rime di V. Colonna.] [Footnote 13: Ombrosa selva che il mio duolo ascolti.] CHAPTER V [Footnote 1: Ruge, _Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen._ Berlin, 1881. (_Allgem. Geschichte in Einzeldarstellungen_, von Oncken.) _Die neu Welt der Landschaften_, etc. Strasburg, 1534.] [Footnote 2: _De rebus oceanicis et novo orbi Decades tres Petri Martyris at Angleria Mediolanensis, Coloniæ_, 1574.] [Footnote 3: _Il viaggio di Giovan Leone e Le Navagazioni, di Aloise da Mosto. di Pietro, di Cintra. di Anxone, di un Piloto Portuguese e di Vasco di Gama quali si leggono nella raccolta di Giovambattista Ramusio._ Venezia, 1837.] [Footnote 4: For example, this from Ramusio: 'And the coast is all low land, full of most beautiful and very tall trees, which are evergreen, as the leaves do not wither as do those in our country, but a new leaf appears before the other is cast off: the trees extend right down into the marshy tract of shore, and look as if flourishing on the sea. The coast is a most glorious sight, and in my opinion, though I have cruised about in many parts both in the East and in the West, I have never seen any coast which surpassed this in beauty. It is everywhere washed by many rivers, and small streams of little importance, as big ships will not be able to enter them.] [Footnote 5: Ideler, _Examen critique_. Cosmos.] [Footnote 6: _Coleccion de los viajes y decubrimientos que hicieron por mar los espanoles desde fines del siglo XV. con varios documentos ineditos ... co-ordinata e illustrada por Don Martin Fernandez de Navarrete._ Madrid, 1858.] [Footnote 7: _Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen._] [Footnote 8: As he lay sick and despairing off Belem, an unknown voice said to him compassionately: 'O fool! and slow to believe and serve thy God.... He gave thee the keys of those barriers of the ocean sea which were closed with such mighty chains, and thou wast obeyed through many lands, and hast gained an honourable fame throughout Christendom.' In a letter to the King and Queen of Spain in fourth voyage.] [Footnote 9: Humboldt.] [Footnote 10: Biese, _op. cit._] [Footnote 11: Zoeckler, _Geschichte der Beziehungen zwischen Theologie und Naturwissenschaft_.] [Footnote 12: F. Hammerich, _St Birgitta._] [Footnote 13: Zoeckler, _op. cit._] [Footnote 14: Comp. Wilkens' _Fray Luis de Leon_. Halle, 1866.] [Footnote 15: Comp. Wilkens' _Fray Luis de Leon_. Halle, 1866.] [Footnote 16: Comp. Wilkens' _Fray Luis de Leon_. Halle, 1866.] [Footnote 17: Comp. Wilkens' _Fray Luis de Leon_. Halle, 1866.] [Footnote 18: Humboldt.] [Footnote 19: Comp. Carrière, _Die Poesie_.] [Footnote 20: Zoeckler, in Herzog's _Real-Encykl._, xxi., refers to 'Le Solitaire des Indes ou la Vie de Gregoire Lopez.' Goerres, _Die christliche Mystik_; S. Arnold, _Leben der Gläubigen_; French, _Life of St Teresa_.] CHAPTER VI [Footnote 1: In _Shakespeare Studien_, chap. 4, Hense treats Shakespeare's attitude towards Nature very suggestively; but I have gone my own way.] [Footnote 2: _Hamlet_, i. 3: 'The canker galls the infants of the spring too oft before their buttons be disclosed.' Comp. i. 1; _Romeo and Juliet_, i. 1; _Henry VI._, part 2, iii. 1; _Tempest_, i. 2.] [Footnote 3: Comp. Henkel, _Das Goethe'sche Gleichnis_; _Henry IV._, 2nd pt., iv. 4; _Richard II._, i. i; _Othello_, iii. 3, and v. 2; _Cymbeline_, ii. 4; _King John_, ii. 2; _Hamlet_, iii. 1; _Tempest_, iv. 2.] [Footnote 4: See Hense for bucolic idyllic traits.] [Footnote 5: _Poetische Personifikation in griechischen Dichtungen._] CHAPTER VII [Footnote 1: Comp. Woermann, _Ueber den landschaftlichen Natursinn der Griechen und Römer, Vorstudien zu einer Arckäologie der Landschaftsmalerei_. München, 1871.] [Footnote 2: Comp. Schnaase, _Geschichte der bildenden Künste im 15 Jahrhundert_, edited by Lübke. Stuttgart, 1879.] [Footnote 3: Falke, _Geschichte des modernen Geschmacks_. Leipzig, 1880] [Footnote 4: _Geschichte der deutschen Renaissance_. Stuttgart, 1873.] [Footnote 5: Comp. also Kaemmerer, _op. cit._] [Footnote 6: Lûbke, _op. cit._] [Footnote 7: Lûbke refers to A. von Zahn's searching work, _Durer's Kunstlehre und sein Verhältnis zur Renaissance_. Leipzig, 1866.] [Footnote 8: Proportion III., B.T. iii. b. Nuremberg, 1528.] [Footnote 9: _Op. cit._] [Footnote 10: In what follows, I have borrowed largely from Rosenberg's interesting writings (_Greuzboten_, Nos. 43 and 44, 1884-85), and still more from Schnaase, Falke, and Carrière, as I myself only know the masters represented at Berlin and Munich.] [Footnote 11: Kaemmerer, _op. cit._] [Footnote 12: Kaemmerer, _op. cit._] CHAPTER VIII [Footnote 1: _Renaissance und Humanismus in Italien und Deutschland._] [Footnote 2: _Renaissance und Humanismus in Italien und Deutschland._] [Footnote 3: Zoeckler.] [Footnote 4: Comp. Hase, _Sebastian Frank von Woerd der Schwarmgeist_.] [Footnote 5: Comp. Hubert, _Kleine Schriften_.] [Footnote 6: Zoeckler, etc.] [Footnote 7: Comp. Uhland, _Schriften zur Geschichte der Dichtung und Sage_. Alte hoch und nieder deutsche Volkslieder, where plants, ivy, holly, box, and willow, represent summer and winter.] [Footnote 8: Uhland.] [Footnote 9: Uhland.] [Footnote 10: Wunderhorn.] [Footnote 11: Biese, _op. cit._] [Footnote 12: Fred Cohn, '_Die Gärten in alter und neuer Zeit,' D. Rundschau_ 18, 1879. In Italy in the sixteenth century there was a change to this extent, that greenery was no longer clipt, but allowed to grow naturally, and the garden represented the transition from palace to landscape, from bare architectural forms to the free creations of Nature. The passion for flowers--the art of the pleasure garden, flourished in Holland and Germany. (Falke.)] [Footnote 13: W.H. Riehl states (_Kulturstudien aus drei Jahrhunderten_) that Berlin, Augsburg, Leipzig, Darmstadt, and Mannheim were described in the seventeenth century as having 'very fine and delightful positions'; and the finest parts of the Black Forest, Harz and Thuringian mountains as 'very desolate,' deserted, and monotonous, or, at best, as not particularly pleasant scenery. If only a region were flat and treeless, a delicious landscape could be charmed out of it. Welcker, Court physician at Hesse Cassel, describing Schlangenbad in 1721, said that it lay in a desolate, unpleasing district, where nothing grew but foliage and grass, but that through ingenious planting of clipt trees in lines and cross lines, some sort of artistic effect had been produced. Clearly the principles of French garden-craft had become a widely accepted dogma of taste. Riehl contrasts the periwig period with the mediæval, and concludes that the mediæval backgrounds of pictures implied feeling for the wild and romantic. He says: 'In the Middle Ages the painters chose romantic jagged forms of mountains and rocks for backgrounds, hence the wild, bare, and arid counted as a prototype of beautiful scenery, while some centuries later such forms were held to be too rustic and irregular for beauty.' One cannot entirely agree with this. He weakens it himself in what follows. 'It was not a real scene which rose Alp-like before their mind's eye, but an imaginary and sacred one; their fantastic, romantic ideal called for rough and rugged environment': and adds, arguing in a circle, 'Their minds passed then to real portraiture of Nature, and decided the landscape eye of the period.' My own opinion is that the loftiness of the 'heroic' mountain backgrounds seemed suitable for the sacred subjects which loomed so large and sublime in their own minds, and that these backgrounds did not reveal their ideal of landscape beauty, nor 'a romantic feeling for Nature,' nor 'a taste for the romantic,' nor yet a wondrous change of view in the periwig period.] [Footnote 14: In his _Harburg Program_ of 1883 _(Beiträge zur Geschichte des Naturgefühls_), after an incomplete survey of ancient and modern writings on the subject, Winter sketches the development of modern feeling for Nature in Germany from Opitz to 1770, as shewn in the literature of that period, basing his information chiefly upon Goedeke's _Deutsche Dichtung._] [Footnote 15: Comp. Chovelius _Die bedeutendsten deutschen Romanz des 17 Jahrhunderts_. Leipzig, 1866.] [Footnote 16: Chovelius.] [Footnote 17: Daniel Lohenstein's _Blumen_. Breslau, 1689.] CHAPTER IX [Footnote 1: Freiherr von Ditfurth, _Deutsche Volks und Gesellschaftslieder des 17 und 18 Jahrhunderts_, 1872.] [Footnote 2: Goedeke-Tittmannschen Sammlung, xiii., _Trutz-Nachtigall._] [Footnote 3: _Geschichte der deutschen Litteratur_.] [Footnote 4: Tittmann's _Deutsche Dichter des 17 Jahrhunderts_, vol. vi.] [Footnote 5: Comp., too, iv. 5: 'Die ihr alles hört und saget, Luft and Forst und Meer durchjaget; Echo, Sonne, Mond, und Wind, Sagt mir doch, wo steckt mein Kind?' 21. 'Den sanften West bewegt mein Klagen, Es rauscht der Bach den Seufzern nach Aus Mitleid meiner Plagen; Die Vögel schweigen, Um nur zu zeigen Dass diese schöne Tyrannei Auch Tieren überlegen sei.' _Abendlied_ contains beautiful personifications: 'Der Feierabend ist gemacht, Die Arbeit schläft, der Traum erwacht, Die Sonne führt die Pferde trinken; Der Erdkreis wandert zu der Ruh, Die Nacht drückt ihm die Augen zu, Die schon dem süssen Schlafe winken.'] [Footnote 6: Hettner, _Litteraturgeschichte des 18 Jahrhunderts_.] [Footnote 7: Lappenberg in _Zeitschrift für Hamburgische Geschichte_, ii. Hettner, _op. cit._] [Footnote 8: 'Ye fields and woods, my refuge from the toilsome world of business, receive me in your quiet sanctuaries and favour my Retreat and thoughtful Solitude. Ye verdant plains, how gladly I salute ye! Hail all ye blissful Mansions! Known Seats! Delightful Prospects! Majestick Beautys of this earth, and all ye rural Powers and Graces! Bless'd be ye chaste Abodes of happiest Mortals who here in peaceful Innocence enjoy a Life unenvy'd, the Divine, whilst with its bless'd Tranquility it affords a happy Leisure and Retreat for Man, who, made for contemplation and to search his own and other natures, may here best meditate the cause of Things, and, plac'd amidst the various scenes of Nature, may nearer view her Works. O glorious Nature! supremely fair and sovereignly good! All-loving and All-lovely All-Divine! Whose looks are so becoming, and of such infinite grace, whose study brings such Wisdom, and whose contemplation such Delight.... Since by thee (O Sovereign mind!) I have been form'd such as I am, intelligent and rational; since the peculiar Dignity of my Nature is to know and contemplate Thee; permit that with due freedom I exert those Facultys with which thou hast adorn'd me. Bear with my ventrous and bold approach. And since not vain Curiosity, nor fond Conceit, nor Love of aught save Thee alone, inspires me with such thoughts as these, be thou my Assistant, and guide me in this Pursuit; whilst I venture thus to tread the Labyrinth of wide Nature, and endeavour to trace thee in thy Works.'] [Footnote 9: Comp. Jacob von Falke, '_Der englische Garten_' (_Nord und Süd_, Nov. 1884), and his _Geschichte des modernen Geschmacks_.] [Footnote 10: _Dessins des édifices, meubles, habits, machines, et utensils des Chinois_, 1757.] CHAPTER X [Footnote 1: '_Die Alpen im Lichte verschiedener Zeitalter_,' _Sammlung wissenschaftlicher Vorträge_, Virchow und Holtzendorff. Berlin, 1877.] [Footnote 2: Geschäfte Zwang und Grillen Entweihn nicht diese Trift; Ich finde hier im Stillen Des Unmuts Gegengift. Es webet, wallt, und spielet, Das Laub um jeden Strauch, Und jede Staude fühlet Des lauen Zephyrs Hauch. Was mir vor Augen schwebet Gefällt und hüpft und singt, Und alles, alles lebet, Und alles scheint verjüngt. Ihr Thäler und ihr Höhen Die Lust und Sommer schmückt! Euch ungestört zu sehen, Ist, was mein Herz erquickt. Die Reizung freier Felder Beschämt der Gärten Pracht, Und in die offnen Wälder Wird ohne Zwang gelacht.... In jährlich neuen Schätzen zeigt sich des Landmanns Glück, Und Freiheit und Ergötzen Erheitern seinen Blick.... Ihm prangt die fette Weide Und die betante Flur; Ihm grünet Lust und Freude Ihm malet die Natur.'] [Footnote 3: _Litteratur geschichte_.] [Footnote 4: _Sämtliche poetische Werke_, J.P. Uz. Leipzig, 1786.] [Footnote 5: _Sämtliche Werke_. Berlin, 1803.] [Footnote 6: _Sämtliche Werke_, J.G. Jacobi, vol. viii. Zurich, 1882.] [Footnote 7: He said of his garden at Freiburg, which was laid out in terraces on a slope, that all that Flora and Pomona could offer was gathered there. It had a special Poet's Corner on a hillock under a poplar, where a moss-covered seat was laid for him upon some limestone rock-work; white and yellow jasmine grew round, and laurels and myrtles hung down over his head. Here he would rest when he walked in the sun; on his left was a mossy Ara, a little artificial stone altar on which he laid his book, and from here he could gaze across the visible bit of the distant Rhine to the Vosges, and give himself up undisturbed to his thoughts.] [Footnote 8: Gessners _Schriften_. Zurich, 1770.] [Footnote 9: Spalding, _Die Bestimmung des Menschen_. Leipzig, 1768.] [Footnote 10: Klopstock's _Briefe_. Brunswick, 1867.] [Footnote 11: Comp. _Odes_, 'Die Kunst Tialfs' and 'Winterfreuden.'] [Footnote 12: _Briefe_.] [Footnote 13: Julian Schmidt.] [Footnote 14: Comp. his letters from Switzerland, which contain nothing particular about the scenery, although he crossed the Lake of Zurich, and 'a wicked mountain' to the Lake of Zug and Lucerne.] [Footnote 15: Claudius, who, at a time when the lyric both of poetry and music was lost in Germany in conventional tea and coffee songs, was the first to rediscover the direct expression of feeling--that is, Nature feeling. (Storm's _Hausbuch_.)] CHAPTER XI [Footnote 1: I have obtained much information and suggestion from '_Ueber die geographische Kenntnis der Alpen im Mittelalter_,' and '_Ueber die Alpine Reiselitteratur in fruherer Zeit_,' in _Allgem. Zeitung_. Jan. 11, 1885, and Sept. 1885, respectively.] [Footnote 2: _Evagatorium 3, Bibliothek d. litterar. Vereins_. Stuttgart, 1849.] [Footnote 3: _Bibliothek des litterar. Vereins_. Stuttgart, 1886.] [Footnote 4: _Descriptio Larii lacus_. Milan, 1558.] [Footnote 5: _Itinerarium Basil_. 1624.] [Footnote 6: Osenbrüggen, _Wanderungen in der Schweiz_, 1867; _Entwickelungsgeschichte des Schweizreisens_; Friedländer, _Ueber die Entstehung und Entwickelung_.] [Footnote 7: Comp. Erich Schmidt, _Richardson, Rousseau, and Goethe_. Jena, 1875.] [Footnote 8: Remarks on several parts of Italy. London, 1761.] [Footnote 9: Letters of Lady M. Wortley Montagu, Sept. 25, 1718.] [Footnote 10: Friedländer, _op. cit._] [Footnote 11: Schmidt. Moser's description of a sensitive soul in _Patriotischen Phantasien_ is most amusing.] [Footnote 12: Laprade adduces little of importance in his book _Le Sentiment de la Nature_ (2nd edition), the first volume of which I have dealt with elsewhere. I have little in common with Laprade, although he is the only writer who has treated the subject comprehensively and historically. His standpoint is that of Catholic theology; he never separates feeling for Nature from religion, and is severe upon unbelievers. The book is well written, and in parts clever, but only touches the surface and misses much. His position is thus laid down: 'Le vrai sentiment de la Nature, le seul poétique, le seul fécond et puissant, le seul innocent de tout danger, est celui qui ne sépare jamais l'idée des choses visibles de la pensée de Dieu.' He accounts for the lack of any important expressions of feeling for Nature in French classics with: 'Le génie de la France est le génie de l'action.' and 'L'âme humaine est le but de la poésie.' He recognizes that even with Fénélon 'la Nature reste à ses yeux comme une simple décoration du drame que l'homme y joue, le poëte en lui ne la regarde jamais à travers les yeux du mystique.' Of the treatment of Nature in La Fontaine's Fables, he says: 'Ce n'est pas peindre la Nature, c'est l'abolir'; and draws this conclusion: 'Le sentiment de l'infini est absent de la poésie du dix-septième siècle aussi bien que le sentiment de la Nature'; and again: 'L'esprit général du dix-huitième siècle est la négation même de la poésie ... l'amour de la Nature n'était guerre autre chose qu'une haine déguisée et une déclaration de guerre a la société et a la réligion. Il n'y a pai trace du sentiment légitime et profond qui attire l'artiste et le poëte vers les splendeurs de la création, révélatrices du monde invisible. Ne demandez pas an dix-huitème siècle la poésie de la Nature, pas plus que celle du coeur.' Buffon shews 'l'état poétique des sciences de la Nature,' but his brilliant prose painting lacks 'la présence de Dieu, la révélation de l'infini les harmonies de l'âme et de la Nature n'existent pas pour Buffon.... plus de la rhétorique que de vrai sentiment de la Nature.'] [Footnote 13: Comp. the garden of Elysium in _La Nouvelle Héloise:_ Where the gardener's hand is nowhere to be discerned, nothing contradicts the idea of a desert island, and I cannot perceive any footsteps of men ... you see nothing here in an exact row, nothing level, Nature plants nothing by the ruler.'] [Footnote 14: _OEuvres de Jacques Bernardin Henri de Saint Pierre_.] [Footnote 15: 'B. de S. Pierre a plus que Rousseau les facultés propres du paysagiste, l'amour même du pittoresque, la vive curiosité des sites, des animaux, et des plants, la couleur et une certaine magie spéciale du pinceau,' Laprade adds the reproof: 'Sa pensée réligieuse est au-dessous de son talent d'artiste et en abaisse le niveau.'] [Footnote 16: _Voyage round the World_, 1772-1775.] [Footnote 17: Paul Lemnius, 1597, _Landes Rugiae_; Kosegarten, 1777-1779; Rellstab, 1799, _Ausflucht noch der Insel Rügen;_ Navest, 1800, _Wanderungen durch die Insel Rügen_; Grümbke, 1805; _Indigena, Streifzüge durch das Rügenland_. J.P. Hackert in 1762, and K. D. Friedrichs in 1792, painted the scenery. Comp. E. Boll, _Die Inset Rügen_, 1858.] CHAPTER XII [Footnote 1: Comp. Gottschall, _Poetik_. Breslau, 1853.] [Footnote 2: _Ueber Ossian und die Lieder alter Völker_, Sämtliche _Werke_, Teil 7.] [Footnote 3: _Op. cit._, Teil 15.] [Footnote 4: _Zur Philosophie und Gesehichte,_ 2 Teil.] [Footnote 5: J.G. Sulzer's _Unterredungen über die Schönheit der Nätur nebst desselben moralischen Betrachtungen über besondere Gegenstände der Naturlehre_ is typical. Charites describes his conversion to the love of Nature by his friend Eukrates. Eukrates woke him at dawn and led him to a hill close by, as the sun rose. The fresh air, the birds' songs, and the wide landscape move him, and Eukrates points out that the love of Nature is the 'most natural of pleasures,' making the labourer so happy that he forgets servitude and misery, and sings at his work. 'This pleasure is always new to us, and the heart, provided it be not possessed by vanity or stormy passions, lies always open to it. Do you not know that they who are in trouble, and, above all, they who are in love, find their chief relief here? Is not a sick man better cheered by sunshine than by any other refreshment?' Then he points out Nature's harmonies and changes of colour, and warns Charites to avoid the storms of the passions. 'Yonder brook is a picture of our soul; so long as it runs quietly between its banks, the water is clear and grass and flowers border it; but when it swells and flows tumultuously, all this ornament is torn away, and it becomes turbid. To delight in Nature the mind must be free.... She is a sanctity only approached by pure souls.... As only the quiet stream shews the sky and the objects around, so it is only on quiet souls that Nature's pictures are painted; ruffled water reflects nothing.' He waxes eloquent about birds' songs, flowers, and brooks, and wanders by the hour in the woods, 'all his senses open to Nature's impressions,' which are 'rays from that source of all beauty, the sight of which will one day bless the soul.' His friend is soon convinced that Nature cannot be overpraised, and that her art is endlessly great.] [Footnote 6: _Vorn Gefühl des Schönen und Physiologie überhaupt._ Winter.] [Footnote 7: Comp. _Das Fluchtigste_. 'Tadle nicht der Nachtigallen, Bald verhallend süsses Lied,' oder 'Nichts verliert sich,' etc.] [Footnote 8: Herder's _Nachlass_, Düntzer und F.G. von Herder, 1857.] [Footnote 9: Bernay's _Der junge Goethe_.] [Footnote 10: _Die Sprödde, Die Bekehrte, März, Lust und Qual, Luna, Gegenwart_.] [Footnote 11: Laprade is all admiration for the 'incomparable artiste et poëte inspiré du sentiment de la Nature, c'est qu'il excelle à peindre le monde extérieur et le coeur humain l'un par l'autre, qu'il mêle les images de l'univers visible à l'expression des sentiments intimes, de manière à n'en former qu'un seul tissu.... Tous les éléments d'un objet d'une situation apparaissent à la fois, et dans leur harmonie, essentielle à cet incomparable esprit.' He is astonished at the symbolism in _Werthtr_: 'Chaque lettre répond à la saison ou elle est écrite.... l'idee et l'image s'identifient dans un fait suprême, dans un cri; il se fait entre l'émotion intime et l'impression du dehors une sorte de fusion.' And despite Goethe's Greek paganism and pantheism, he declares: 'Le nom de Goethe marque une de ces grandes dates, une de ces grandes révolutions de la poésie--la plus grande, nous le croyons, depuis Homer.' ... 'Goethe est la plus haut expression poétique des tendances de notre siècle vers le monde extérieur et la philosophie de la Nature.'] [Footnote 12: Comp. _Tagebucher und Briefe Goethe's aus Italien an Frau von Stein und Herder_. E. Schmidt, Weimar, 1886.] [Footnote 13: Julian Schmidt.] [Footnote 14: _The Lady of the Lake_ breathes a delightful freshness, the very spirit of mountain and wood, free alike from the moral preaching of Wordsworth, and from the storms of passion.] [Footnote 15: Laprade.] [Footnote 16: 'Sa formule réligieuse, c'est une question; sa pensée, c'est le doute ... l'artiste divinise chaque détail. Son panthéisme ne s'applique pas seulement à l'ensemble des choses; Dieu tout entier est réellement présent poor lui dans chaque fragment de matière dans le plus immonde animal ... c'est une réligion aussi vieille que l'humanité décline; cela s'appelle purement et simplement le fétichisme.' (Laprade.)] [Footnote 17: _Vorschule der Æsthetik_. Compare 'With every genius a new Nature is created for us in the further unveiling of the old.' 2 Aufi. _Berlin Reimer_, 1827.] [Footnote 18: 'Like a lily softly swaying in the hushed air, so my being moves in its elements, in the charming dream of her.' 'Our souls rush forward in colossal plans, like exulting streams rushing perpetually through mountain and forest.' 'If the old mute rock of Fate did not stand opposing them, the waves of the heart would never foam so beautifully and become mind.' 'There is a night in the soul which no gleam of starlight, not even dry wood, illuminates,' etc.] [Footnote 19: Comp. Tieck's _Biographie von Koepke_. Brandes.] [Footnote 20: _Franz Sternbald_, I. Berlin, 1798.] [Footnote 21: Haym, _Die romantische Schule_. Berlin, 1870.] [Footnote 22: _Phantasus_, i. Berlin, 1812.] [Footnote 23: 'A young hunter was sitting in the heart of the mountains in a thoughtful mood beside his fowling-piece, while the noise of the water and the woods was sounding through the solitude ... it grew darker ... the birds of night began to shoot with fitful wing along their mazy courses ... unthinkingly he pulled a straggling root from the earth, and on the instant heard with affright a stifled moan underground, which winded downwards in doleful tones, and died plaintively away in the deep distance. The sound went through his inmost heart; it seized him as if he had unwittingly touched the wound, of which the dying frame of Nature was expiring in its agony.' (Runenberg.)] [Footnote 24: _Hymnen an die Nacht_.] [Footnote 25: In _Die Lehrlinge von Sais_.] [Footnote 26: _Athenäum_, iii., 1800.] INDEX Addison Æschylus Agrippa v. Nettesheim Alamanni Alberti, Leon Alcantara Alcuin Alexander Ambrose Angilbert Anno v. Coeln Apollonios Rhodios Apollonius Sidonius Apuleius Aquinus, Thomas Aribert v. Mailand Aribo Ariosto Aristophanes Aristotle Augustine Augustus Ausonius Aventinus Avitus Baccioli, Lucca Bakhuysen Basil Beauvais, V. v. Beda v. Bern Bernhard v. Clairvaux Bernhard v. Hildesheim Bernhard v. Ventadour Bertran de Born Birgitta Blair de Bles Boccaccio Boecklin Boehme Boetius Boie Bojardo Bonaventura Boucher Bouts Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, A. v. Brockes Brueghel, Peter and Jan Bruno Buffon Bürger Burkhard v. Monte Sion Byron, Calderon Calpernius Camoens Campanella Carew Cassiodorus Catullus Celtes Chambers Charlemagne Chateaubriand Chaucer Chlodwig Chlotaire Chrysostom Cicero Claudius Clement of Rome v. Clugny, Abbé M. Colonna, Vittoria Columbus Columella Corneille Cornelia Correggio Cowley Cramer Cronegk Crugot Cuyp Cyprian Dante Darius Defoe Dionisius da B.S. Sepolchro Domidius Dracontius Drayton Drummond du Bois-Reymond Dürer v. Eichendorff Eist, Deitmar v. Ekkehart Ennodius Epiphanius, M.H. Euripides Everdingen, A. v. v. Eyck Fabri Fénélon Fischart Fleming Forster Fortunatus, Francis of Assisi Frank, Sebastian Fredegar Frederic the Great Friedlander Fürttenbach Gatterer Gellert Gerhard, Paul Gervinus Gessner, Conrad Gessner, Salomon Giorgione Gleim Goethe Gogen Gottfried v. Strassburg Gozzoli Grasser Gregory Nazianzen Gregory of Nyssa Gregory of Tours Grümbke Gryphius Guarini, G. Günther, Christian Günther d. Liguriner Guotenberg, U. v. Gussfeldt Hadrian Haeckel Hagedorn Haller Harsdörfer Hartmann Hebel Hegel Heine Herder Hermes Hilary Hillern, W. v. Hobbema Hoffmannswaldau Hölderlin Hölty Homer Horace Hugo v. St. Victor Hugo, Victor Hulsen Humboldt Ibykos Isodore Jacob v. Bern Jacobi, Joh. G. Jerome Jovius Kalidasa Kallimachos Kant Kent Keyssler Kiechel Klaj Kleist, E. v. Klipphausen Klopstock König, Eva Kürenberg Lamartine Lamprecht Leman Lenôtre Leon, Luis de Leonardo da Vinci Lessing Livy Logau Lohenstein Longos Lopez Lorraine, Claude Louis XIV. Louis XV. Lucretius Ludwig zu Nassau Luis de Leon Lüneberg Luther Maghas Mantegna Mareuil, A. v. Maria Theresa v. Martius Medici, Lorenzo de Meer, Aart v. d. Meleager Memling Menander Michael Angelo Milton Minucius Felix Molanus Montagu Montemayor Montreux Moore Morungen, H. v. Moscherosch Möser Mosto, A. da Murdach Navarrete, F. de Nemesianus Nettesheim, C.A. v. Nicolas Nonnos Novalis Opitz Osorio Ossian Ouwater Ovid Paracelsus Patenir Paul, Jean, Paul, St Paulinus of Nola Perdiccas Peter Martyr Petrarch Pfintzing Phidias Philip of Macedon Phokas Pico della Mirandola Pierre, B. de St Pindar Pisanello Pius II. (Enea Silvio), Plato Pliny Polo, Marco Pope Potter, Paul Poussin Propertius Prudentius Ptolemaios Racine Radegunde Raphael Regensburg Reinmar Reissner Richardson Rickel, D. v. Roche, Sophie la Ronsard Rousseau, Rubens Rucellai Rückert Rugge Ruysbroek Ruysdael Sabiende, R. v. Sachs, Hans Sannazaro Sappho Saussure v. Schachten Schaller Scherr Scheuchzer Schickhart Schiller Scipio Africanus Scott Seneca Shaftesbury Shakespeare, Shelley, Sidney Simonides Socrates Sophocles Southey Southwell Spalding Spee Spenser Spielhagen Spinoza Spix Stolberg Storm, Th. Sulzer Summenhart Suso Tasso Tauler Teresa v. Avila Theocritus Theodoric Theodulf Thomson Tiberius Tibullus Tieck Titian Toscanelli, Paolo Uhland d'Urfé Uz, Joh. P. Vasco da Gama Velde, Adrian v. d. Veldegge, H. v. Vespucci Virgil Vischer Vives, Luis Volkmar Voltaire Voss Wahlafried Walther v. d. Vogelweide Wandelbert Watteau Weyden, Roger v. d. William of Tours Winckelmann Wolfram v. Eschenbach Wordsworth Wyatt Wynant Young Zesen, P. v. Ziegler, A. v. Zimmermann Zweibrücken, A. v. 
31167	----	The Old Willow-tree and other stories by CARL EWALD Translated by A. Teixeira de Mattos Drawings by Helen M. Jacobs & G. E. Lee [Illustration] Thornton Butterworth Limited 15 Bedford St Strand London. W. C. 2 _First published October, 1921._ _Copyright U.S.A., 1907, by Charles Scribner's Sons._ THE ROYAL ROAD LIBRARY THE OLD WILLOW-TREE AND OTHER STORIES THE ROYAL ROAD LIBRARY THE CARL EWALD BOOKS Translated by ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS 1. TWO-LEGS 2. THE OLD WILLOW TREE and other stories THE NETTA SYRETT BOOKS 3. TOBY & THE ODD BEASTS 4. RACHEL & THE SEVEN WONDERS THE W. H. KOEBEL BOOKS 5. THE BUTTERFLIES' DAY [Illustration: 'YOU HAVE DISTURBED MY AFTERNOON NAP'] FOR THE HONBLE. MRS. HENRY MCLAREN. DEAR CHRISTABEL, From the first, your interest in Carl Ewald has been kindly, gracious and insistent; as Michael Finsbury might have said, "you were his friend through thick and thin;" and it is very much due to you (not to mention Betty and Charles) that this volume has seen the light of day. Most of the stories are new to this country; and I dedicate my translation to you in all gratitude. A. T. DE M. CHELSEA, _23 September, 1921_. [Illustration: List of Stories] CHAPTER I _Page_ THE OLD WILLOW-TREE 13 CHAPTER II THE MISTLETOE 47 CHAPTER III THE LILAC-BUSH 59 CHAPTER IV THE BEECH AND THE OAK 69 CHAPTER V THE WEEDS 81 CHAPTER VI THE ANEMONES 89 CHAPTER VII THE WOOD AND THE HEATH 101 CHAPTER VIII SOMEWHERE IN THE WOOD 111 CHAPTER IX THE COUSINS 123 [Illustration: List of Pictures] 'You have disturbed my afternoon nap' (_Coloured_) _Frontispiece._ 'I want to pick some for myself!' (_Coloured_) 40 The old dog stood on his hind-legs and blinked with his blind eyes 50 'You really ought not to be so wasteful with your leaves, old friend,' said the bear, licking his paws 70 'Hide me! Save me!' (_Coloured_) 80 'Fie, for shame!' they cried to the beech-leaves. 'It's you that are killing us' 94 'Good-bye,' said the maiden-pink 114 There sat the mouse in the sugar-basin (_Coloured_) 128 [Illustration: The Old Willow-tree] I There are many kinds of willows and they are so unlike that you would hardly believe them to be relations. There are some so small and wretched that they creep along the ground. They live on the heath, or high up in the mountains, or in the cold arctic regions. In the winter, they are quite hidden under the snow; in the summer, they just poke up their noses above the tops of the heather. There are people who shrink from notice because they are so badly off. It is simply stupid to be ashamed of being poor; and the little dwarf-willows are not a bit ashamed. But they know that the soil they grow in is so poor that they can never attain the height of proper trees. If they tried to shoot up and began to carry their heads like their stately cousins the poplars, they would soon learn the difference. For the poplars are their cousins. They are the stateliest of all the willow-trees and they know it, as any one can see by looking at them with half an eye. You only have to notice the way in which they hold themselves erect to perceive it. The beech and the oak and the birch and whatever the other trees are called stick out one polite branch on this side and one polite branch on that. "May I beg you kindly to give me a little bit of sunshine?" says the branch up in the air. "Can I help you to a little bit of shadow?" says the branch down by the ground. But the poplars sing a very different tune. With them it is: "Every branch straight up on high! Close up to the trunk with you! There's nothing to stare at down below! Look above you! Heads up!... March!" And all the branches strut right up to the sky and the whole tree shoots up, straight and proud as a pikestaff. It's tiring. But it's elegant. And it pays. For has any one ever seen a smarter tree than one of those real, regular poplars, as stiff as a tin soldier and as tall as a steeple? And, when the poplars stand along the road, in a long row on either side, you feel very respectful as you walk between them and are not in the least surprised when it appears that the avenue leads right up to a fine country-house. The dwarf-willows and the poplars belong to the same family. The first are the commonest on the common side, the second are the smartest on the smart side. Between them are a number of other willow-trees. There are some whose leaves are like silver underneath and some whose leaves quiver so mournfully in the warm summer wind that the poets write verses about them. There are some whose branches droop so sorrowfully towards the ground that people plant them on their graves and some whose branches are so tough and flexible that people use them to weave baskets of. There are some out of which you can carve yourself a grand flute, if you know how. And then there are a heap about which there is nothing very remarkable to tell. 2 The willow-tree in this story was just one of the middling sort. But he had a destiny; and that is how he came to find his way into print. His destiny began with this, that one of the proud poplars who stood in the avenue leading to the manor-house was blown down in a terrible storm. He snapped right down at his roots; the stump was dug up; and it left a very ugly gap in the middle of the long row of trees. As soon as spring came, therefore, the keeper brought a cutting and stuck it where the old poplar used to stand, stamped down the ground firmly all around it and nodded to it: "Hurry, now, and shoot up," he said. "I know it's in your blood; and you have only to look down the road to see good examples for you to follow in growing." Now the man thought it was a poplar he had planted. But it was only a quite ordinary willow-twig, which he had taken by mistake, and, as time passed and the cutting grew up, this came to light. "What a monster!" said the keeper. "We must pull this up again." "Let him be, now that he's there," said the squire. For that happened to be his mood that day. "Shall we put up with him?" asked the poplars along the road. They whispered about it for a long time; and, as no one knew how to get rid of him, they agreed to put up with him. After all, he belonged to the family, though not to the smart side of it. "But let me see you make an effort and grow as straight as you're able," said the poplar who stood nearest to him. "You have found your way into much too fine a company, let me tell you. You would have done better beside a village-pond than in the avenue of a manor. But now the scandal is an accomplished fact and we must hush it up as best we may. The rest of us will shoot up and grow a bit straighter and thinner still; and then we'll hope that the quality will drive past without noticing you." "I'll do my best," said the willow-tree. In the fields close by, on a little hillock, stood an oak. On the hillock also grew a charming wild rose. They both heard what the trees of the avenue had said and the oak began to scoff at them: "Fancy caring to stand out there in the road!" he said. "I suppose you will want to be running up and down next, like those silly men and women? It was unkind and thoughtless of your mother to sow you out there. Trees ought to grow together in a wood, if they are not as handsome and stately as I, who can stand alone." "My mother didn't sow me at all," said the willow-tree. "Oh, Lord preserve us!" said the oak. "So your mother didn't sow you at all, didn't she? Perhaps the others weren't sown either? Perhaps you just dropped down from the sky?" "If you had eyes in your head, you would have seen that the keeper put me here," said the willow. "I am a cutting." And all along the road the poplars whispered to one another: "We are cuttings ... cuttings ... cuttings..." It was a real avenue and a real adventure. "You managed that very well," said the poplar who stood nearest to the willow-tree. "Only go on as you've begun and we will forgive you for not being as smart as the rest of us." "I'll do my best," replied the willow-tree. The oak said nothing. He did not know what cuttings were, and did not want to commit himself or make a blunder. But, later on, in the evening, he whispered to the wild rose-bush: "What was that rubbish he was talking about cuttings?" "It's not rubbish at all," said the rose-bush. "It was right enough, what the willow said. I myself came out of a seed, like you, and I didn't see the keeper plant him either, for I happened to be busy with my buds that day. But I have some smart cousins up in the garden at the manor-house. They came out of cuttings. Their scent is so sweet, their colours so bright and their blossoms so rich and full that one simply can't believe it. But they get no seed." [Illustration] "What next!" said the oak. "Yes, I, too, would rather be the wild rose I am," said the rose-bush. 3 Now years passed, as they are bound to pass. Spring came and summer, autumn and winter. Rain came and snow came, sunshine and storm, good days and bad. The birds flew out of the country and flew back again, the flowers blossomed and withered, the trees burst into leaf and cast their leaves again, when the time came. The willow-cutting grew and grew quickly, after the manner of the family. He was now quite a tree, with a thick trunk and a top with many branches. But there was no denying it: he was not a poplar. And his fellow-members of the avenue were greatly displeased with him: "Isn't it possible for you to grow taller in stature?" asked the nearest poplar. "You ought never to have been here, but, once you've joined the avenue through an accident, I should like to ask you to stretch yourself up a bit." "I'll do my best," answered the willow-tree. "I fear your best isn't good enough," said the poplar. "You have no grip at all to keep your branches in with. They hang quite slack on every side, just as if you were a common beech or birch or oak or whatever the ordinary trees are called." "Do you call me ordinary, you windbag?" said the oak. The poplar did not mind a jot what the oak said, but went on admonishing the willow-tree: "You should take example by the squire's wife," he said. "At first she was no better than a common kitchen-maid. She used to scour the pots and make up the fire and stir the milk when it boiled. I used often to see her go down the avenue bare-armed and bare-headed, with a pail in her hand and her skirts tucked back." "So did we ... so did we ... so did we," whispered the poplars along the avenue. "Then the squire fell in love with her and made her his wife," said the poplar. "Now she goes in silk, with a train to her dress and ostrich-feathers on her head and gold slippers on her feet and long gloves from Paris on her hands. She looks down from on high: only yesterday she was driving along here in her smart turn-out with the four bays." "We saw her ... we saw her ... we saw her," whispered the poplars along the avenue. "She joined the avenue, do you see?" said the poplar. "She learnt to hold herself erect and whisper; and now she whispers and holds herself erect. I think you might profit by her example. After all, you belong to the family, even though you are not one of the real poplars; so it ought to be easier for you than her." "I'll do my best," said the willow-tree. But nothing came of it. His branches kept on growing out at the sides and the whole tree was not more than half as tall as the lowest poplars. For the rest, he was quite nice and comfortable-looking, but that's not what counts in the smart world. And the poplars grew more and more annoyed every day. They themselves stood stiff and straight and strutted and gave no more shade than their trunks were able to cast. But under the willow there was quite a big shady place. "He's ruining the whole avenue," said the nearest poplar. "The whole avenue ... the whole avenue ... the whole avenue," whispered the poplars. Then, one regular sunny summer's day, the squire came walking along. He took off his hat, wiped the perspiration from his forehead and sat down in the shade of the willow: [Illustration] "Thank you for your shade, you good Willow-Tree," he said. "Those confounded poplars stand there and strut and don't give as much shade as the back of my hand. I think I'll cut them all down and plant willows in their stead." For that happened to be his mood that day. "Did you hear the squire praise me?" said the willow-tree, when he had gone. "Goodness gracious!" said the nearest poplar. "Did we hear him? It's a perfect scandal! He talked just like a common peasant. But, of course, that comes of marrying a kitchen-maid. It's the truest thing that ever was said, that birds of a feather fly together." "Birds of a feather fly together ... fly together ... fly together ... together ... together," whispered the poplars all along the avenue. The oak on the little hillock in the fields twisted his crooked branches with laughter. The wild rose, whose hips were already beginning to turn red, nodded to the willow-tree: "Every one has his position in life," she said. "We have ours and the smart ones theirs. Now I wouldn't change with anybody." "Still, one would like to give satisfaction in one's position," said the willow-tree and sighed! 4 After the warm days came rain and drizzle and wind. The roads became difficult because of the mud and slosh. Only in the avenue did it dry up soon, however hard it had rained. For the poplars gave no shade, so the sun was able to come at once as soon as the rain had ceased. And they gave no shelter either, so the wind came with a rush and dried the puddles. [Illustration] The squire came driving with his wife. When the carriage reached the place where the willow stood, the wet mud splashed all over her new silk dress. "Ugh!" she said. "What's all this nasty mess?" asked the squire. The keeper, who was sitting on the box beside the coachman, pointed to the willow-tree: "It's that fellow there," he said. "He was planted by mistake and now he has stood and grown big. He shelters the ground from the wind and shades it from the sun, so there is always a big puddle under him, long after the rest of the avenue is dry." "Did you ever hear of such a thing?" said the squire. "And the look of him, too! He spoils the whole of the beautiful, stately avenue. See and poll him to-morrow, keeper. Off with the whole of his crown, do you hear?" For that happened to be his mood that day. On the next day, they came and sawed the willow-tree down to a man's height. Only the thick naked trunk remained. Not a leaf was-left, except five that stood on a little twig down by the ground and really had no business to be there at all. The whole of the splendid crown lay in the ditch. The keeper chopped all the branches into pieces with his axe. "Will they become cuttings?" asked the willow, disconsolately. "They will become faggots," replied the keeper and went on chopping to the last stick. "Then rather let me die at once," said the willow. "For the present, you will stay where you are, till the winter is past," said the keeper. "When the snow lies thick and smooth all over the roads, you can do good service as a warning-post against the ditch. What will happen afterwards depends upon the squire." "That was a fine ending to the cutting-farce," said the oak-tree. "Poor Willow-Tree!" said the wild rose-bush. "Thank you," said the willow-tree. "I still feel a little stunned. It is no trifle to lose the whole of one's crown. I don't quite know what's to become of me." "It's a terrible scandal," said the nearest poplar. "A wholly unprecedented family-scandal. If only they would come and take you away altogether, so that you couldn't stand there and disgrace us like a horrible, withered stick!" "A family-scandal ... a scandal ... a scandal," whispered the poplars along the avenue. "I don't feel at all withered, oddly enough," said the willow-tree. "I don't know either that I have done anything to be ashamed of. I was set up here and I did my best to fill the position. The squire praised me one day and cut me down another. We must take life as it comes. I shall never be a poplar, but I am one of the family for all that. And a family has other qualities, besides pride. So let us see in a year's time what becomes of me." "He's speaking like a man," said the wild rose-bush. The oak-tree said nothing. The poplars whispered in their superior way, but talked no more about the family-scandal. 5 Now it so happened that the squire and his wife went to Italy and stayed there for a couple of years. And this, in its turn, led to the result that the polled willow was left to stand in peace among the proud poplars. When the master and mistress were away, there was no one who gave a further thought to the stately avenue. Throughout the winter, the willow stood silent and perplexed. And it is quite natural that a tree should not care to talk when his head is chopped off. But, half-way through March, suddenly one day he fell a-moaning in the most piteous fashion: "Oh, my head, my head!" he cried. "Well, I never in all my born days heard the like," said the oak. "Listen to him talking about his head, when all the world can see that it's been chopped off, so that there's nothing but a wretched stump left." "It's all very well for you to talk," said the willow-tree. "I should like to see you in my place. All my crown is gone, all the big branches and the little twigs, on which the next year's buds used to sit so nicely, each in its axil. But I still have all my roots, all those which I procured when I had a big household and many to provide for. Now the ice on the ground is melting and the sun shining and the roots are sucking and sucking. All the sap is going up through my trunk and rising to my head. And I haven't the slightest use for it.... Oh, oh!... I'm bursting, I'm dying!" "Poor Willow-Tree!" said the rose-bush. But round on the other side of the little hillock stood an elder-bush, whom no one talked to, as a rule, and who never put in his oar: "Just wait and see," he said. "Two or three days will put things right. Only listen to what a poor, but honest elder-bush tells you. Things always end by settling themselves in one way or another." "Yes, you've experienced a bit of life," said the oak. "Goodness knows I have!" said the elder. "They have cut me and cropped me and chopped me and slashed at me in every direction. But, every time they curtailed me on one side, I shot out on the other. It will be just like that with the willow-tree. He comes of a tough family too." "Do you hear that?" said the nearest poplar. "The elder-bush is comparing his family with ours! Let's pretend not to hear him. We'll stand erect and whisper." "We'll stand erect and whisper ... whisper ... stand erect and whisper," whispered the poplars along the avenue. "What are those funny little things up in the willow-tree's top?" said the oak. "Just look ... he's swelling, right up there ... it's a regular eruption.... If only we don't catch it!" "Oh dear no, those are buds!" said the willow-tree. "I can't understand it, but I can feel it. They are real live buds. I am turning green again, I am getting a new crown." Then came the busiest time of the year, when every one had enough to do minding his own affairs and had no time to think about the poor willow-tree. The stately poplars and the humble elder got new leaves. The grass shot up green beside the ditch, the corn grew in the fields, the wild rose-bush put forth her dainty leaves, so that the flowers should look their best when they arrived in July. Violets and anemones blossomed and died, daisies and pansies, dandelions and wild chervil and parsley: oh, it was a swarming and a delight on every hand! The birds sang as they had never sung before, the frogs croaked in the marsh, the snake lay on the stone fence, basking his black body in the sun. The only one who did not join in was the oak. He was distrustful by nature and nothing would persuade him to come out until he saw that all the others were green. Therefore he stood and peered from one to the other and therefore he was the first to discover what was happening to the willow-tree: "Look! Look!" he cried. They all looked across and saw that the willow-tree was standing with quite a lot of charming, green, long, lithe twigs, which shot straight up and waved their green and pretty leaves. All the twigs stood in a circle at the top of the polled trunk and were so straight that no poplar need have been ashamed to own them. "What did I tell you?" said the elder-bush, who stood quite full of dark-green leaves. "Now I have a crown again," said the willow-tree. "Even though it's not so smart as the old one, it's a crown, as nobody can deny." "No," said the wild rose. "That's true enough. Besides, one can live very happily without a crown. I have none and never had one and enjoy just as much honour and esteem without it." "If I may say so, one's crown is only an inconvenience," said the elder-bush. "I had one myself once, but am much more contented since they took it away; and I can shoot my branches as it suits me." "That's not my way of thinking," said the willow-tree. "I am a tree; and a tree must have a crown. If I had never got a crown, I should certainly have died of sorrow and shame." "There's poplar-blood in him after all," said the nearest poplar. The others whispered their assent along the avenue. "Let us now see what happens," said the oak. 6 The summer passed as usual. The sun shone until every living thing prayed for rain. Then it rained until they all cried to Heaven for sunshine. The willow-tree, however, was not the worst off. He was easily contented by nature. And then he was so greatly pleased with his new crown that he thought he could manage, whatever happened. Up in the top, in the middle of the wreath of green branches, was a hole which had come when the keeper had chopped off the crown. The hole was not so very small even; and, when it rained, it was full of water, which remained for a good while after the sun had dried the ground again. One day, a blackbird came flying and sat down up there: "May I take a drop of water from you, you dear old Willow-Tree?" he asked. "With the greatest pleasure," said the willow-tree. "By the way, I am not so very old. I have been ill-treated." "Oh, yes," said the blackbird, "you have been polled! We know all about that." "Would you be so kind as to wipe your feet?" said the willow-tree. "I only mean that I should not like you to muddy the water if another should come and want a drink. One can never tell, in this drought." The blackbird scraped his feet clean on a splinter of wood that was there. The splinter broke off and, when the bird flew away, there was quite a little heap of earth left. Next day a swallow came and next a lark and gradually quite a number of birds. For it soon got about that, at a pinch, there was generally a drop of water to be found in the old polled willow in the avenue. They all left something or other behind them; and, by the autumn, there was so much up there that, one fine day, it collapsed and quite filled up the little hole where the water was. "You're simply keeping a public-house," said the oak. "Why shouldn't one be kind to one's fellow-creatures?" said the willow-tree. It was now autumn. The withered leaves blew up into the willow-tree and lay and rotted. A dragon-fly had lain down to die up there in the latter part of the summer. One of the dandelion's fluffy seeds had fallen just beside her. The winter came and the snow fell on the little spot and lay for its appointed time, exactly as on the ground. "It is just as though I had quite a piece of the world in my head," said the willow-tree. "It's not healthy to have too much in one's head," said the oak. "Once I had a large and glorious crown," said the willow-tree, sadly. "Now I am satisfied and delighted with less. We must take life as it comes." "That's so," said the wild rose-bush. "It will be all right," said the elder-bush. "I told you so." "Horrid vulgar fellow," said the nearest poplar. "Horrid ... vulgar ... fellow," whispered the poplars along the avenue. 7 The winter passed and the spring came. Up in the middle of the willow-tree's top peeped a little green sprout. "Hullo, who are you?" asked the willow-tree. "I'm just a little dandelion," said the sprout. "I was in mother's head, with a heap of brothers and sisters. Each of us had a little parachute. 'Fly away now, darlings,' said mother. 'The farther away you go, the better. I can do no more for you than I have done; and I won't deny that I am a little concerned about all the children that I have brought into the world. But that can't be helped either; and I hope you will find a spot where an honest dandelion can shift for herself.'" "Yes, that's just how a little flower-mother talks," said the wild rose-bush. "What then?" asked the willow-tree. "Then there came a gust of wind," said the dandelion. "We all flew up into the air together, carried by our parachutes. What became of the others I have no idea; but I remember it began to rain and then I was flung down here. Of course, I thought that, when I had dried, I could fly on again. But not a bit of it, for my parachute was smashed. So I had to stay where I was. To my great surprise, I saw that I was lying on earth. Gradually more earth came, in which I lay hidden all the winter; and now I have sprouted. That's the whole story." "It's quite a romance," said the wild rose-bush. "Very likely," said the dandelion. "But what's going to happen to me in the future? Honestly speaking, I would give a good deal to be down in the earth again." "I'll do all I can for you," said the willow-tree. "I have known adversity myself; and it is a great honour and pleasure for me to have you growing in my poor head." "Very many thanks for your kindness," said the dandelion. "There's really not so much of it in the world that one shouldn't appreciate it when one meets with it. But, when all is said and done, it's ability that tells; and I fear that's where the shoe pinches." "I know what you're thinking of," said the willow-tree, sadly. "I can't shade you, since the keeper cut off my nice crown. My long branches up there are all very well and I wouldn't be without them for anything, but they don't give any shade worth talking about and I shall never get another crown, that's quite clear. So you're afraid that the sun will shine too strong on you?" "Not in the least!" said the dandelion. "The more the sun shines on my yellow face, the better I'm pleased. No, look here, it's the earth I'm anxious about." "And the most important thing too," said the oak. "But that's the willow-tree's business. If he wants to run an hotel for flowers in his head, he must provide earth: that goes without saying." "Yes, but is there no earth, my dear Dandelion?" asked the willow-tree. "There is," said the dandelion. "And good earth too: it's not that. I'm only afraid that there won't be enough of it. You must know, I have a terribly long root: quite a stake, I assure you. When I'm full-grown, there will be at least six inches of it down in the ground." "Upon my word!" said the oak. "To hear that brat of a dandelion talking about roots!" The willow-tree stood for a while and said nothing, but thought all the more. The wild rose-bush comforted the dandelion and said nice things about the willow-tree; the elder-bush said it would be all right; the oak grumbled and asked whether, after all, one could expect much from a tree without a crown. "Now listen," said the willow-tree, who had paid no attention to the others. "I'll tell you something, my dear Dandelion, which I don't generally care to talk about. You know I have had a bad time and have lost my crown?" "I heard you say so," said the dandelion. "I can also see that you look rather cowed among the other trees in the avenue." "Don't talk about the poplars," said the willow-tree, distressfully. "They are my relations, but they have never forgiven me for being put here by mistake as a cutting. Look at them and look at me and you can judge for yourself that such a monster as I must be a blot upon a stately avenue of poplars." "He has some sense of shame left in him," said the nearest poplar. And all the other trees of the avenue whispered their assent. "You think about it too much," said the elder-bush. "The more one broods upon a thing, the worse it becomes. I should have died long ago, you know, if I had stood and cried at the losses I have suffered." "Yes, that's as may be," said the willow-tree. "We all take things in our own way and I in mine. I have not the least intention of throwing up the game, but I know that I am a cripple and shall never be anything else. I thought, a little time ago, that my branches up there would turn into a new crown, but that was sheer folly. They grow and strut and turn green and that is all they do. And then, besides, I feel that I am beginning to decay. "What's that you say?" asked the wild rose-bush. "Are you decaying?" asked the oak. "Yes ... that's by far the worst thing of all," said the elder-bush. "He's revealing his inmost secrets to the rabble," said the nearest poplar. "Let us stand erect and stiff and whisper and look aloft, dear brothers of the avenue!" All the poplars whispered. "I am decaying," said the willow-tree. "I am decaying in my top. How could it be otherwise? There's a puddle up there in summer, the snow lies there in winter and now it's full of moist earth. I can plainly perceive that the hole is growing bigger and bigger, going deeper and deeper inside me. My wood is mouldering away. The shell is good enough still; and I am satisfied as long as it holds out. Then the sap can run up from my roots to my dear, long twigs. Well ... I was thinking the birds will come and visit me, as they are used to, and they will be sure to bring earth with them, so that there will always be more of it as my hole becomes deeper by degrees. And plenty of withered leaves fall on my poor maimed top. I also positively believe that I have an earth-worm up there. How he got there, I don't know: perhaps a bird dropped him out of his beak. But he draws the leaves down into the earth and eats them and turns them into mould. So I say, like the elder-bush, it will be all right." "So you're becoming hollow?" asked the oak. "I am," said the willow-tree. "It can't be helped. It's not quite the sort of thing to talk about, but it's different now, because the dandelion was so anxious. It shall never be said of me that I took a respectable flower as a boarder and then let her suffer mortal want." "Who ever heard a tree talk like that?" said the oak. "Well, I must say I agree with you this time," said the wild rose-bush. "I don't think he will hold out very long now," said the elder-bush. "Thank you, you good old Willow-Tree," said the dandelion. "Now I can go on growing hopefully. I have only this year to think of. When I have sent my seeds into the world with their little parachutes, I shall have done all that is expected of me. I should be delighted if one of them would stay here and grow on you." "Many thanks," said the willow-tree. "He accepts the sympathy of the rose-bush and the elder ... he says thank-you to the dandelion ... and he's a relation of ours ... oh, shocking!" said the nearest poplar. "Shocking ... shocking ... shocking!" whispered the poplars along the avenue. Then evening came and night; and one and all slept. The wind had gone down, so that there was not even the least whisper in the poplars. But the oak on the little hillock in the fields called out to the willow-tree: "Pst!... Pst!... Willow-Tree!... Are you asleep?" "I can't sleep," said the willow-tree. "It's rumbling and gnawing and trickling and seething inside me. I can feel it coming lower and lower. I don't know what it is, but it makes me so melancholy." "You're becoming hollow," said the oak. "Perhaps that's what it is," said the willow-tree, sadly. "Well, there's nothing to be done. What can't be cured must be endured." "Now listen to me, Willow-Tree," said the oak. "On the whole I don't like you." "I don't know that I ever did you any harm," said the willow-tree. "Very likely," said the oak. "Only I thought you so arrogant ever since the time when you came the cutting over us. But never mind that now. I have felt most awfully sorry for you since I heard that you were about to become hollow. Take care, that's what I say. It's a terrible misfortune." "I really don't know what to do to prevent it," said the willow-tree. "No more do I," said the oak. "But I tell you for all that: take care. See if you can't get all the birds who visit you to scrape all the earth out of the hole in your head before it becomes too deep." "I mustn't harm the dandelion," said the willow-tree. "Besides, I don't think there's any danger yet. My twigs are green and thriving and my roots are sucking pretty well. As long as the root is sound, everything's sound: you know that as well as I do." "Take care, that's all," said the oak. "You don't know what it means, but I do. I may as well tell you, I have an old hollow uncle." "Have you?" said the willow-tree. "Yes, there's a tragedy in every family. You have your uncle and the poplars have me." "You've no idea of the sort of life he leads," said the oak. "He's awfully old and awfully hollow. Yes, he's like you in a way, but ever so much worse. There's nothing left of him but a very thin shell and just a wretched twig or two in his top. Almost all his roots are dead, too. And he's always full of owls and bats and other vermin. It's a terrible life he leads." "I'm very sorry to hear it," said the willow-tree. [Illustration] "I merely say, look out!" said the oak. 8 And the years came and went and time passed, as it must and will pass. The willow-tree became more and more decayed and the hole filled with earth and more customers arrived. One spring there was a dainty little sprout, which the tree welcomed under the impression that it was a dandelion. "Hullo!" said the sprout. "What do you think I am?" "I have the highest opinion of you," said the willow-tree. "But you are still so small. May I ask your name?" "I am a strawberry-plant," said the sprout. "And one of the best. My own idea is that I am the equal of those which grow in the manor-garden. Just wait till I get my fruit: then we shall see." "Goodness me!" said the willow-tree. "If I could only understand where you came from!" Another sprout came, which proved to be the beginning of a black-currant-bush. A third came, which grew into a dear little mountain-ash. Every summer there were a couple of dandelions. The bees came and buzzed and sucked honey and flew away with it to their hives. The butterflies flitted from flower to flower, sipped a little honey here and there and ate it up. They knew they had to die, so there was no reason for saving it. "It's wonderful!" said the willow-tree. "If only I knew where all this good fortune comes from!" "Never mind about that: just take it as it comes," said the elder-bush. "You will have a fine old age," said the wild rose-bush. "You're getting hollower and hollower," said the oak. "Remember what I told you about my poor old uncle." "He has gradually become quite weak-minded," said the nearest poplar. "Quite weak-minded ... quite weak-minded ... weak-minded," whispered the poplars along the avenue. The blackbird was the first who had visited the willow-tree and he returned several times each year. One day he came in a great state of fright and asked if he might hide up there. There was a horrid boy who had been shooting at him all the morning with his air-gun: "I am really preserved at this time of the year," he said. "But what does that brat of a boy care about that? And, if I must lose my life, I would rather be caught in a proper snare." "I should have thought it would be better to be shot," said the willow-tree. "Then you're done with for good and all." "I don't agree with you," said the blackbird. "While there's life there's hope. You can always hang on in the snare and struggle and feel that there may be a chance of escaping." "Yes, indeed," said the willow-tree, pensively. "That's just my case. I also am caught in a trap and know that I must die soon, but I cling to life nevertheless. Well, I have now attained a blessed old age, as the wild rose said. If only I knew where all the dear creatures who grew in my top came from!" "Well, I can tell you that," said the blackbird. "You may be sure that most of them come from me." Then he described how fond he was of red berries of every kind. He resorted in particular to the garden of the manor-house, which was full of the nicest things. Then, when he sat and digested his food in the willow-tree, he usually left something behind him, something in the way of one seed or another. "Is that true?" said the willow-tree. "Yes, of course it's true. So I really owe all my happiness to you!" "Probably," said the blackbird and whistled with a very consequential air. "We all of us have our mission in this world, thank goodness.... But just look: as I live, there's a beautiful ripe strawberry!" He ate the strawberry and said, "Hum!" and "Ha!" and "Ho!" for it was so nice: "It's just as good as those which grow in the squire's own beds," he said. "But I almost think it has got a still nicer flavour by growing up here in you, you old Willow-Tree." "My dear Blackbird," said the strawberry-plant, "you're often at the manor-house. Won't you do me the favour to tell the squire that I am growing up here?" "That I will certainly not do," said the blackbird. "In the first place, nothing would induce me to tell any one else where a good berry grows. In the second place, I have been getting so stout and fat lately that I must be a bit careful. Otherwise, it might occur to the squire that strawberries taste twice as nice on top of roast blackbird." "That's very tiresome," said the strawberry-plant. "I know that the squire has said he will eat no other berries than those which grow in our family; and there are so very few of us. I also heard a bird sing that he had come home from Italy; and I am sure that, if he knew I grew up here, he would himself climb up and pick my berries." "Lord preserve us!" said the willow-tree. "Would the squire himself really climb into my top? That honour would be greater than I could bear!" "It certainly would," said the oak. "For you are growing hollower every day. Your long branches are not so green this year as last. You are beginning to look more and more like my unhappy uncle. You're approaching your end, Willow-Tree." "You may be right," said the willow-tree. "We must all undergo our lot. I myself feel that my shell is getting thinner and thinner; and it has holes in it, besides, in two places down below." "Away with him!" said the nearest poplar. "He's a disgrace and a reproach to our family." "Away with him!... Away ... away ... away!" whispered the poplars along the avenue. 9 Time passed and it was incredible that the old willow-tree should still be alive. [Illustration] His bark had fallen off in great pieces and the holes below had joined in the middle, so that, one day, the fox was able to slip in at one and out at the other. The mice gnawed at the rotten wood. There were only three or four twigs left up above and they were so thin and leafless that it was a pitiful sight to see. But the garden at the top thrived as it had never done before. The strawberry-plant put out big flowers which turned into red heavy berries. The black-currant-bush had also grown up and was bearing her fruit. The dandelions shone yellow; and there was also a little blue violet and a scarlet pimpernel, who only opened her flower when the sun shone strongest at noon, and a tall spike of rye, swaying before the wind. "Why, you're better off now than ever!" said the wild rose-bush. "Since you absolutely had to come to grief and lose your crown, you may well say that fate has been kind to you and made amends to you." "That's just what I do say," said the willow-tree. "If only I can bear all this good fortune! I am getting thinner and thinner in my shell and every year I lose a twig or two." "It will end badly," said the oak. "I warned you beforehand. Remember my poor old hollow uncle!" "I daresay that it will end as it always ends," said the elder-bush. "Whether the end comes one way or another, it is the same for all of us. But I think the willow-tree has life left in him yet." "There's nothing left to show that he belongs to the family," said the nearest poplar. "His own branches are withering more and more; and it is only strange twigs and leaves that he fans himself with. So that's all right. We sha'n't say a word about his belonging to us: hush!" "Hush ... hush ... hush!" whispered the poplars along the avenue. One afternoon the earth-worm crept up there. Hitherto, he had always kept down in the earth, for fear of the many birds about. He was the longest, stoutest, fattest earth-worm in the world. "Hullo, my dear Earth-Worm, how are you?" said the willow-tree. "I knew you were there, but I have not had the pleasure of seeing you. I am glad you are doing so well in me. How did you come up here exactly?" "To tell the truth, it was really the blackbird's fault," said the earth-worm. "He dropped me out of his beak. That is to say, he had only got half of me. The rest of me drew back into the ground. So I was only half a worm when I arrived." "You're welcome all the same," said the willow-tree. "It makes no difference to me if you're whole or half. I myself have lost my crown and become no more than a wretched cripple. But are you all right again now?" "Oh dear yes!" said the earth-worm. "I don't mind in the least if they chip one end off me. It soon grows again, if only they leave me alone.... But do you know what sort of little sprout this is who is coming up here beside me, with such a funny thick hat on his head?" "I don't know him," said the willow-tree. "I have become feeble with years and can't at once make out all that grows on me. Do you know him?" "I should think I ought to!" said the earth-worm. "Why it was I who dragged him into the ground a couple of years ago. He was joined on to a leaf and stalk and I ate up both the leaf and the stalk, but I couldn't manage this chap. That wasn't so odd either, for he was an acorn. Now he has sprouted, he's a little oak." "An oak!" said the willow-tree, overcome with respectful awe. "He blew over here in the great storm of the autumn before last," said the earth-worm. "I remember it distinctly, because you were creaking so that I thought it would have been up with all of us." "What's that you're saying?" said the oak on the little hillock in the fields. "Is one of my children growing on you?" "Yes," said the old willow-tree. "It's really a little oak. That's a great honour for me." "It's folly," said the oak. "He must be going to die." "We all have to die," said the elder-bush. 10 One day the squire came walking down the avenue. He had the keeper with him and his own two children, a little boy and a little girl. They had not been long at the manor-house and looked about them inquisitively, for everything was new to them. "What on earth is that ugly old stump doing there?" asked the squire, pointing at the old willow-tree with his cane. "He's enough to spoil the whole avenue. See that you get rid of him to-morrow, keeper. It makes me quite ill to look at him." For that happened to be his mood that day. "Now it's coming," said the oak. "That's your death-warrant, you old Willow-Tree. Well, you won't be sorry. I think it must be better to make an end of it than to stand and get hollower day by day." "We all cling to life," said the willow-tree sadly. "And what will become of my boarders?" "They may be thankful that they lived so long," said the wild rose-bush. "Let's first see what happens," said the elder-bush. "I have been through times that looked worse still and have escaped for all that." "Thank goodness that's over!" said the poplar who stood nearest. "Thank goodness!... Thank goodness!... Thank goodness!" whispered the poplars along the avenue. Next morning the keeper came. He had merely an axe with him, for he thought it would only take a couple of blows to do away with the old, rotten willow-stump. Just as he was about to strike, his eyes fell upon the black-currant-bush in the top. The currants were big and ripe. He put out his hand, picked one of them and ate it: "What a remarkable thing!" he said. "It's exactly like those in the manor-garden. Goodness knows how it got up there!" [Illustration: 'I WANT TO PICK SOME FOR MYSELF'] "Keeper! Keeper!" The squire's son came running down the avenue. He wanted to see the old willow-tree felled. The keeper told him about the black-currant-bush and picked a currant and gave it to him. "Lift me up. I must pick some for myself," said the boy. The keeper lifted him up. He pulled with both hands at the willow-twigs up there and pulled so hard that they snapped. Then he caught hold of the tree's thin shell, which was so brittle that a big piece came off in each of his hands. But then he clapped his hands with surprise and delight and shouted: "Keeper! Keeper! There's quite a garden up here. There are the loveliest strawberries beside the black-currant-bush ... and here's a little mountain-ash ... and a dear little oak ... and weeds, too ... five yellow dandelions ... and a spike of barley, keeper.... Oh, how glorious, how glorious! I say, I must show it to sissy ... and to father!" "Hurry now and eat the strawberries," said the keeper. "For the trunk has to be cut down and then it's all up with the whole concern." "Lift me down," said the boy, kicking and sprawling. Then, when he stood on the ground, "Don't you dare cut down that tree," he said. "Do you hear? Don't you just dare!" "Ah, but I do dare!" said the keeper, smiling. "You yourself heard the squire tell me." "I'm going to run and fetch father," said the boy. "And don't you dare touch the tree before I come back. If you do, trust me, I'll take my revenge on you when I'm squire myself one day!" Then he ran up the avenue. The keeper sat down in the ditch and waited, for he thought that the wisest thing to do: "The young rascal has the squire's temper," he said. "What did I tell you?" said the elder-bush. "You should always listen to those who know." "It's an awful tension to be in," said the willow-tree. "If only I don't go to pieces for sheer fright. As it is, the boy took a good pull at me; and Heaven knows I can't stand much more!" "Now you must hold out until we see what happens," said the wild rose-bush. "I have never known anything so exciting." "Nor I," said the oak. "But it can't end well, when you're hollow to start with." Then the boy came back with the squire. The little chap pointed and told his story. The keeper rolled a stone up, so that the squire could stand on it and look at the willow-tree's top: "Well, I never saw anything like it!" he said. "It's quite true: there's a regular garden up there. And my own strawberries, I do believe!" He picked one and ate it: "Um!" he said. "Why, that's the genuine flavour! I almost think they're even better than those in the garden." "And is the tree to be cut down, father?" "On no account!" said the squire. "It would be a thousand pities. Why, he's the most remarkable tree on the whole estate! See and have a hoop put round him at the top, keeper. And then put a railing round him, so that the cows can't get at him and do him harm. We'll keep this fine old willow-tree as long as we possibly can. I'm exceedingly fond of him." For that happened to be his mood that day. An iron hoop was put round the willow-tree's trunk at the top and a railing at the bottom. Every time the squire came driving along the avenue he stopped the carriage at the willow-tree: "Yes, the avenue is very nice indeed," he said to his guests. "But they're only quite ordinary poplars. Now here I can show you something out of the common. Yes, I know it looks like an old willow-stump, but just come over here...." They stepped out of the carriage and on to the stone, one after the other, and admired the garden in the willow-tree's top. "If the hoop wasn't there, I should burst," said the willow-tree. "What an honour and what luck for a wretched cripple like me! Only think: the squire really climbed up and ate strawberries off me! And all the visitors to the manor-house are brought to look at me." "It's incredible," said the oak. "It's just as though there were a premium on getting hollow." "It's a romance," said the wild rose-bush. "I'll tell it to every bird that settles on me, so that it may be sung all over the world." "It's exactly as I told you," said the elder-bush. "When all is said and done, it was I, in a measure, who prepared the romance," said the blackbird. "But, honestly speaking, I prefer things as they were in the old days. Then one could sit here in peace and quiet. Now we run the risk every moment of somebody or other coming and sticking up his head and saying, 'Well, I never!' or 'Did you ever?' or 'O-oh!' or 'A-ah!'" "Never in my born days have I known anything like it," said the nearest poplar. "Did you hear how the squire talked of his proud and stately poplars? We, who have stood guard along the road to his manor-house, summer and winter, year after year, all equally straight and still ... quite ordinary poplars, he called us! And then that disgusting, vulgar willow-tree!... That rotten old stump!... And he's a relation of ours into the bargain!... For shame!" "For shame!... Shame!... Shame!" whispered the poplars along the avenue. 11 One winter's day, a storm came, till all the trees in the wood creaked and crashed. The wind howled and tore down the avenue and all the proud poplars swayed like rushes. The snow drifted till sky and earth became one. "Now I can hold out no longer," said the old willow-tree. Then he snapped, right down by his root. The iron hoop which he wore round his head went clattering down the frozen road. The railing tumbled over. The garden up at the top was scattered by the wind in every direction: the black-currant-bush and the strawberry-plant, the mountain-ash and the little oak, the dandelions and the violets all blew away; and nobody knows what has become of them since. The earth-worm lay just below and wriggled: "I can't stand this," he said. "Let them chop me into two ... into three.... But this is worse. The ground is as hard as iron: there's not a hole to creep into. And the frost bites my thin skin. Good-bye, all of you: I'm dying!" 12 In the spring, the stump of the willow-tree was cleared away. But the squire ordered that no new tree should be planted in its stead. Every time he drove past, he told the people with him about the curious old willow-tree that had had quite a garden in his hollow head. And the wild rose-bush told it to the birds, who sang the story all over the world. The oak could never learn to understand it and the elder-bush said that he had understood it all the time. The blackbird was caught in a snare and eaten. But the poplars, stately and indignant as ever, still stand and whisper along the avenue. [Illustration] [Illustration: THE MISTLETOE] 1 Just outside the fence of the keeper's garden stood a crab-apple-tree, with crooked branches and apples sour as vinegar. She had once stood in the middle of a thorn-thicket. But the thorns had died and rotted away; and now the apple-tree stood quite alone in a little green glade. She was old and ugly and small. She could only just peep over the hazel-hedge into the garden, at the orange-pippin-tree and the russet-apple-tree, who stood and gleamed in the autumn sun with their great red-and-yellow fruit and looked far more important than the crab-apple-tree. Every morning, the keeper's dog came jogging round the fence to take a mouthful of fresh air and a little exercise. He had lost all his teeth and could see only with one eye. He always stopped for a bit when he came to the crab-apple-tree and rubbed himself against her: "It's the fleas," said the dog. "Pray don't mind me in the least," replied the apple-tree. "We have known each other since the days when you were a puppy and the keeper used to thrash you with his whip when you wouldn't obey. I am always delighted to do an old friend a service. By the way, you have plenty of apple-trees nearer at hand ... in there, I mean, in the garden. Why don't you rub yourself against them?" "Heaven forbid!" the dog. "All honour to the real apple-trees; they are right enough in their way; but you are so beautifully gnarled." "I am the real apple-tree," said the tree, in an offended tone. "Those in there are only monsters, whom men have deformed for their own use. They grow where the keeper put them and let him pluck them when he pleases; I am wild and free and my own mistress." The dog rubbed himself and shook his wise old head: "You ought really to have entered men's service too, old friend," he said. "It's good and snug there. And what else is to become of old fogeys like you and me? Of course, we have to do what is required of us; but then we get what we want in return." "Perhaps it's there you got your fleas?" asked the apple-tree, sarcastically. "For you certainly have all you want of them!" But the dog had already jogged back into the garden and did not hear. 2 Soon after, a blackbird came flying and perched on one of the tree's thickest branches. He flapped his wings and then rubbed his beak against the branch. "You're welcome," said the apple-tree. [Illustration] She knew that the blackbird always did like that, after he had been eating, and she was a courteous tree, when no one offended her. "Thank you," said the blackbird and went on rubbing his beak. "You're working awfully hard to-day," said the tree. "There's a stone on the side of my beak," said the blackbird. "It's there as if it were glued fast; and I can't get it off, however much I rub." "What have you had to eat?" [Illustration] "I had some beautiful white berries," said the blackbird. "I never tasted anything so good; and I am a judge of berries, as you know. It was somewhere ever so far away; and now I've been flying for a day and a half with this silly stone. Every moment, I've been trying to get it off.... Ah, there it goes, thank goodness! Now it's on you, you old Crab-Apple-Tree. You'll see, you will never get rid of it." "Just let it be," said the apple-tree, gaily, "and don't bother about me. It'll take to its legs, right enough, when it begins to rain and blow." The blackbird flew away and the crab-apple-tree stood sunk in her own old thoughts, with the stone on her branch. In the evening, it came on to rain violently and the stone slipped slowly down the wet branch, until it reached the underside. "Now it will drop," thought the apple-tree. But the stone did not drop. At night, a terrible storm broke loose and all the trees creaked and swayed to and fro. Inside the keeper's garden, the orange-pippins and the russets fell to the ground by the bushel. But the stone stuck where it was. "Well, that's odd!" thought the crab-apple-tree. And, when the dog came jogging along in the morning, the tree told him of the queer thing: "What sort of a chap can it be?" she asked. "I expect it's a flea," said the dog and rubbed himself. "One can never get rid of them. Does it hop all over you? And bite you?" "Certainly not," replied the apple-tree. "Last night, it slipped down quite gently to the underside of the branch; and, for that matter, it does me no harm." "Then it's not a flea," said the dog. 3 Autumn came and all the good apples in the garden were gathered and stored in the loft. There was no one who cared about the crab-apple-tree. Her apples remained on the branches till they fell to the ground, where they lay and rotted. But the tree was well-pleased with the state of things. She knew that little crab-apple-trees would sprout from them and that was why she had put them forth. [Illustration] [Illustration: THE OLD DOG STOOD ON HIS HIND-LEGS AND BLINKED WITH HIS BLIND EYES] Then winter came, with frost and snow. The old dog lay all day under the stove in the parlour. The crab-apple-tree stood outside in the snow, with the queer stone under her branch. When spring returned, the dog, one day, came jogging round the fence. It took longer than last year and he was now almost quite blind in the other eye as well. But he found his way to the apple-tree and rubbed himself, so that she saw that he still had those fleas. "All going as usual, Dog?" "Yes, Apple-Tree.... Same with you?" "Well, I'll tell you," said the tree. "I daresay you remember that stone the blackbird brought me? Well, look here, some time ago, I felt a most curious pricking and itching and aching just where it was." "Then it _must_ be a flea," said the dog. "Now listen," said the tree. "It was a most unpleasant sensation. And then my branch swelled up at the place where the stone was...." "It's a flea, it's a flea!" cried the dog. "There's no doubt about it. Just rub yourself up against me, old Apple-Tree! It's only fair that I should make you a return for your kindness." "What does a flea look like?" asked the apple-tree. "We-ell," said the dog and rubbed himself. "They're that sort of chaps, you know, that one really never has time to see them." "Has a flea green leaves?" "Not that I know of," said the dog. "Come and look up here," said the tree. "There ... on my lowest branch ... just above your head ... is that a flea?" The old dog stood on his hind-legs and blinked with his blind eyes: "I can't see so far," he said. "But I have never been able to see the fleas on my own tail, so that doesn't mean anything." Then he slunk away. But, a little later, a thin voice came from the apple-tree's branch and said: "I am not a flea. I am the mistletoe." [Illustration] "Well, I'm no wiser," said the apple-tree. "I'm a plant like yourself," said the voice. "I shall turn into a bush ... with roots and branches and flowers and leaves and all the rest of it." "Then why don't you grow in the ground like us?" asked the crab-apple-tree. "That happens not to be my nature," said the mistletoe. "Then you have a nasty nature," said the apple-tree and shook herself furiously, so that her white blossoms trembled. "For I understand this much, that I shall have to feed you, you sluggard!" "Yes, please, if you will be so good," said the mistletoe. "I have my roots fixed in you already; and I am growing day by day. Later on, I shall put forth little green blossoms. They're not much to look at; but then the berries will come, beautiful, juicy white berries: the blackbird is quite mad on them." "The blackbird is a very fine bird," said the apple-tree; "but, if he wants to dine off me, he can eat my own apples." "You mustn't think that I have berries for the blackbird's sake," said the mistletoe. "Inside the berry there is a stone; and in the stone my seed lies. And the stone is so sticky that it hangs tight on to the blackbird's beak, until he manages to rub it off on some good old apple-tree or other, who will be a foster-mother to my children, as you have been to me." "You're a nice family, upon my word!" said the apple-tree. "Aren't you ashamed to live upon other people's labour? And can't you cast your seed on the ground, as every one else does, and leave it to look after itself?" "No," said the mistletoe, "I can't. But it's no use my explaining that to you. There is something mysterious and refined about me that raises me above the common trees. Men and women understand it. They have surrounded me with beautiful and curious legends and ballads. Just think, over in England they simply can't keep Christmas without hanging a bunch of me from the ceiling. Then, when they dance and come under the bunch, they are allowed to kiss each other." "Pooh!" said the crab-apple-tree. "That's nothing to talk about. Why, there isn't an engaged couple in the whole parish but has sat in my shade and kissed." "You miss the point of it, old friend," said the mistletoe. "Engaged couples can kiss wherever they please. But those who dance under the mistletoe may kiss each other even if they are not engaged." "You horrid, immoral foreigner!" said the apple-tree. "But one can't expect anything else from the sort of life you lead. Well, it's to be hoped that you'll freeze to bits in the winter." "Indeed, I shall do no such thing," replied the mistletoe. "When your leaves are withered and fallen and you stand strutting with your bare branches in the snow, mine will be just as fresh and green as now. I am _evergreen_ you must know: green in winter and green in spring." The crab-apple-tree was so exasperated that she was quite unable to reply. But, when the dog came next day, she told him all about it. "Then he is a flea, after all," said the old dog. "In a fashion. You must manage to rub him off you: that's the only thing that helps a bit." "I am not a dog to run and rub myself," said the apple-tree. "But, all the same, it's hard for a respectable tree to have to put up with this sort of thing in her old age." "Take it calmly now!" said the mistletoe. "Who knows but that you'll end by being glad to have me?" [Illustration] 4 The next summer, an old professor, with a pair of spectacles on his nose and a great botanizing-case on his back, came roaming through the wood. He sat down under the crab-apple-tree to eat his lunch, but fell a-thinking in the middle of it, leant his head back against the trunk and looked up into the leaves. Suddenly he jumped up, dropped his sandwich and stared hard at the mistletoe. He took off his spectacles, wiped them on the skirt of his coat, put them back on his nose and went on staring. Then he ran in and fetched the old keeper: "Keeper, do you see that tree?" he said. "That's the most remarkable tree in the whole wood." "That one there?" said the keeper. "Why, it's only an old crab-apple-tree, professor. You should see a couple of apple-trees I have in my garden." "I don't care a fig for them," said the professor. "I would give all the apple-trees in the world for this one tree. There's a mistletoe growing on her, you must know, and the mistletoe is the rarest plant in Denmark. You must put a fence round the tree at once, so that no one can hurt her. For, if she dies, then the mistletoe dies too." And a fence was put round the old apple-tree. The professor wrote about her in the newspapers; and every one who came to the neighbourhood had to go and look at the mistletoe. "Well?" said the mistletoe. "My dear little foster-child," said the crab-apple-tree, "if there's anything you require, do, for goodness' sake, say so!" When the keeper's old dog came out and wanted to rub himself, he remained standing in amazement and looked at the fence with his one, half-blind eye. "You can go back to the garden and rub yourself against the _real_ apple-trees!" said the crab-apple-tree, haughtily. "I stand here with a mistletoe and must be treated with the utmost care. If I die, the mistletoe dies: do you understand? I have been written about in the papers. I am the most important tree in the wood!" "Yes ... you're all that!" said the dog and jogged home again. [Illustration] [Illustration: THE LILAC-BUSH] 1 There was a terrible commotion in the lilac-bush. Not a breath of wind was blowing; and yet the branches shook from top to bottom and all the leaves quivered so that it hurt one's eyes to see. The chaffinch perched upon the bush for his after-dinner nap, as was his wont; but the branches shook under him to such an extent that he could not close an eye and he flew away quite frightened to the laburnum. He asked his wife what on earth could be the matter with that decent bush; but she was sitting on her eggs and was too busy to answer. Then he asked his neighbour, the tit; and the tit scratched his black skull-cap and shook his head mysteriously: "I don't understand bush-language," he said. "But there's something wrong. I noticed it myself this morning, when I was sitting over there, singing." [Illustration ] Then he sat down in the laburnum beside the chaffinch and both of them stared at the queer bush. Now the only thing the matter with the lilac-bush was that the root had turned sulky: [Illustration ] "Here I have to sit and drudge for the whole family!" he growled. "It is I who do all the work. I must provide food for the branches and the leaves and the flowers and hold them fast besides, else the wind would soon blow the whole lot away. And who gives a thought to a faithful servant like me? Does it ever occur to those fine fellows up there that somebody else might also need a little recreation? I hear them talk of the spring and sunshine and all that sort of thing; but I myself never get a bit of it. I don't even know for certain what it means; I only know that in the spring they all eat like mad. It's quite a decent place in the winter: then there's no more to do than a fellow can manage; and it's snug and cosy in here. But a root has a regular dog's life of it as soon as the air turns warm." "Catch good hold of the earth, you old root!" cried the branches. "The wind's rising, there's a storm brewing!" "Send us up some more food, you black root!" whispered the leaves. "It will be long before the whole family has done growing." Then the flowers began to sing: "Water's a boon; Send us some soon! For, in fierce heat, Drinking is sweet. Then grant our suit, You ugly root; Send water, pray, This way!" "Ah, isn't that just what I said?" growled the root. "It's I who bear all the brunt. But we'll soon put an end to that. I want to come up and have a good wash in the rain and let the sun shine on me, so that people can see that I am quite as good as the rest. Hullo, you dandy branches, who are not twopence-worth of use! I'm sick and tired of working for a pack of idlers like you. I'm coming up to take a holiday. Hold tight, for I'm letting go!" "Idlers, indeed!" cried the branches. "That's all you know about it, you silly root! We certainly do at least as much as you." "You?" asked the root. "What do you do, I should like to know?" "We straddle all day long to lift up the green leaves in the sunshine," replied the branches. "We have to spread ourselves on every side, so that they may all get the same amount. If you could look up here, you would see that some of us are crooked with the mere effort. No, you can call the leaves idlers, if you must needs have somebody to vent your sulks upon." The root pondered upon this for a while and at last came to the conclusion that it was very sensible. And then he began storming frightfully at the green leaves: "How long do you think that I mean to be your servant?" he growled. "I give you notice, from the first of the month, I do! Then you can turn to and do some work for yourselves, you lazy leaves!" The branches now began to scold in their turn and cried to the leaves: "The root is right! You must make yourselves useful, that's what we say too. We are tired of carrying you." And they creaked loudly to emphasize their remarks. "Fair and softly, you black root!" whispered the leaves. "And, if you were not so consequential, you long branches, you would not shout loud, for, after all, it's annoying to have people find out what dunces you are. Do you imagine that we have not our task as well as you?" "Let's hear, let's hear!" said the branches, drawing themselves up. "Let's hear about it!" said the root, making himself as stiff as he could. "Now don't you know that it's we who prepare the food?" whispered the leaves. "Do you imagine that decent folk can eat it raw, just as the root takes it out of the ground and sends it up through the branches? No, it has to come up to us first; and, when we receive it, we light a fire and cook away in the sun's rays until it's all ready and fit to eat. Do you call that being no use?" "We-ell!" said the branches, creaking in an embarrassed sort of fashion. "There may be something in that." They began to explain it to the root, who had not quite understood, and he also thought that it sounded very reasonable. A little later, the leaves began to whisper again: "Since you absolutely must have some one to abuse, why not go for the flowers? They are more smartly dressed than any of us; they live at the top of the tree, nearest to the sun. And what do they do? Perhaps you know, for, upon my word, we don't!" "Quite right!" growled the root. "We won't submit to it any longer. Please render an account of yourselves, you lazy, dressed-up flowers! What are you good for? Why should we others drudge and toil for you?" [Illustration] The flowers rocked softly to and fro and wafted their fragrance in the air. The others had to ask three times before they got an answer; but then the flowers sang: "Where sunlight is streaming, We float, ever dreaming..." "Yes, we believe you!" said the leaves. "And do you call that working?" But the flowers sang again: "Where sunlight is streaming, We float, ever dreaming Of light and happiness and love, Of all the glory of heaven above, Of buds which at last through black earth shall rise With thousands of tiny, lilac eyes." "Bosh!" whispered the leaves and "Bosh!" cried the branches and "Bosh!" growled the root, on receiving this explanation. They all agreed that it was a great shame that they should work for those lazy flowers. And they shook and creaked and whispered and cried and growled for sheer rage; and it became a terrible commotion. But the flowers only laughed at them and sang: "Grumble, root, and whisper, leaf! No flower feels the slightest grief. Long brown shoots, for all your screaming, Not a flower is baulked of dreaming!" 3 The summer passed and it was autumn. The young green branches put on their winter coats. The leaves had no winter coats. They took great offence at this and were not content until they had vexed themselves into a jaundice. Then they died. One by one, they fell to the ground and at last they lay in a great heap over the old, cross-grained root. But the flowers had long since gone to the wall. In their stead were a number of queer, ugly things that rustled whenever the wind blew. And, when the first storm of winter had passed over the lilac-bush, they also fell off and there was nothing left but the bare branches. [Illustration] "Oh dear!" sighed the branches. "We wouldn't mind changing with you now, you black root. You're having a nice cosy time in the ground just now." The root did not reply, for he had got something to meditate on. Close beside him, you must know, lay a singular little thing which he simply couldn't make out at all. "What sort of a fellow are you?" asked the root, but received no answer. "Can't you answer when you're spoken to by respectable people?" said the root again. "Seeing that we're neighbours, it seems reasonable that we should make each other's acquaintance." But the queer thing persisted in saying nothing and the root meditated all through the winter and wondered what it could be. Later, in the spring, the thing swelled out and grew ever so fat and, one day, a little sprout shot out of it. "Good-morning!" said the root. "A merry spring-time to you! Perhaps you will now think fit to answer what I have been asking you these last six months: whom have I the honour of addressing?" "I am the flowers' dream," replied the thing. "I am a seed and you are a blockhead." The root pondered about this for some little time. He did not mind being called a blockhead, for, when you're a root, you have to submit to being abused. But he couldn't quite understand that remark about the flowers' dream and so he begged for a further explanation. "I can feel that the ground is still too hard for me to break through," said the seed, "so I don't mind having a chat with you. You see, I was lying inside one of the flowers, when you others were squabbling with them in the summer, and I heard all that you said. I had a fine laugh at you, believe me; but I dared not join in the conversation: I was too green for that." "Well, but, now that you are big, I suppose you're allowed to talk?" asked the root. "Big enough not to care a fig for you!" replied the seed and, at the same time, shot a dear little root into the ground. "I have a root of my own now and need not submit to any of your impudence." The old root opened his eyes very wide indeed, but said nothing. "However, I prefer to treat you with civility," said the seed. "After all, in a manner of speaking, you're my father." "Am I?" asked the root and looked as important as ever he could. "Of course you are," replied the seed. "You are all of you my parents. You procured food for me in the earth and the leaves cooked it in the sun. The branches lifted me into the air and light, but the flower rocked me in the bottom of her calyx and dreamed and, in her dream, whispered in the ears of the bumblebees, so that they might tell it to the other lilacs. You all gave me of your best; I owe my whole life to you." [Illustration] This gave the root something to think about. It was almost midsummer before he solved the problem. But, when he had got it thoroughly into his stupid head, he asked the branches, in an unusually civil voice, whether there was not a fine little lilac-bush standing near them. "Certainly there is!" replied the branches. "But you just attend to your business! It's blowing hard enough to topple us all over this very moment." "Never you fear!" said the root. "I shall hold tight enough. I only wanted to tell you that that little lilac-bush is my child." "Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the branches. "Do you think an old black root like you can get such a sweet little child as that? It's prettier and fresher and greener than you can imagine." "It's my child for all that," said the root, proudly. And then he told the branches what he had heard from the seed; and the branches repeated it to all the leaves. "Well, there!" they all said; and then they understood that they were a big family, in which each had his own work to see to. "Hush!" they said to one another. "Let us be careful not to disturb the flowers in their dream." And the old root toiled away, as if he were paid for it, to provide lots of food; and the branches stretched and pushed and twisted awfully to supply proper light and air; and the leaves fluttered in the warm summer breeze and looked as if they were doing nothing at all; but, inside them, there was roasting and stewing in thousands of little kitchens. And up at the top of the bush sat the flowers and dreamed and sang: "Dear little seed, sing lullaby! Leaves shall fall and flowers shall die. You, in the black earth singing low, Into a bonny bush shall grow, A bush with leaves and flowers Scenting June's glad hours!" [Illustration] [Illustration: THE BEECH AND THE OAK] 1 It was in the old days. There were no towns with houses and streets and towering church-steeples. There were no schools. For there were not many boys; and those there were learnt from their fathers to shoot with a bow and arrow, to hunt the deer in his hiding-place, to kill the bear in order to make clothes of his skin and to get fire by rubbing two pieces of wood together. When they knew all this thoroughly, their education was completed. Nor were there any railways, or tilled fields, or ships on the sea, or books, for there was nobody who could read them. There was hardly anything but trees. [Illustration] But then of trees there were plenty. They stood everywhere from coast to coast, mirrored themselves in every river and lake and stretched their mighty branches up into the sky. They stooped over the sea-shore, dipped their branches in the black water of the marshes and looked haughtily over the land from the tall hills. [Illustration] They all knew one another, for they belonged to one big family and they were proud of it: "We are all oak-trees," they said and drew themselves up. "We own the land and we govern it." And they were quite right, for there were only very few people at that time. Otherwise there was nothing but wild animals. The bear, the wolf and the fox went hunting, while the deer grazed by the edge of the marsh. The wood-mouse sat outside her hole and ate acorns and the beaver built his ingenious house on the river-bank. 2 [Illustration] Then, one day, the bear came trudging along and lay down at full length under a great oak-tree. "Are you there again, you robber?" said the oak and shook a heap of withered leaves over him. [Illustration: 'YOU REALLY OUGHT NOT TO BE SO WASTEFUL WITH YOUR LEAVES, OLD FRIEND,' SAID THE BEAR, LICKING HIS PAWS.] "You really ought not to be so wasteful with your leaves, old friend," said the bear, licking his paws. "They are the only thing you have to keep off the sun with." "If you don't like me, you can go," replied the oak, proudly. "I am lord of the land and, look where you may, you will find none but my brothers." "True enough," growled the bear. "That's just the tiresome part of it. I've been for a little trip abroad, you see, and have been a bit spoilt. That was in a country down south. I took a nap under the beech-trees there. They are tall, slender trees, not crooked old fellows like you. And their tops are so dense that the sunbeams can't pierce through them at all. It was a real delight to sleep there of an afternoon, believe me." "Beech-trees?" asked the oak, curiously. "What are they?" "You might wish that you were half so handsome as a beech-tree," said the bear. "But I'm not going to gossip with you any more just now. I've had to trot over a mile in front of a confounded hunter, who caught me on one of my hind-legs with an arrow. Now I want to sleep; and perhaps you will be so kind as to provide me with rest, since you can't provide me with shade." The bear lay down and closed his eyes, but there was no sleep for him this time. For the other trees had heard what he said and there came such a chattering and a jabbering and a rustling of leaves as had never been known in the forest: "Heaven knows what sort of trees those are!" said one. "Of course, it's a story which the bear wants us to swallow," said another. "What can trees be like whose leaves are so close together that the sunbeams can't pierce them through?" asked a little oak who had been listening to what the big ones were saying. But next to him stood an old, gnarled tree, who slapped the little oak on the head with one of his lower branches: "Hold your tongue," he said, "and don't talk till you have something to say. And you others need not believe a word of the bear's nonsense. I am much taller than you and I can see a long way over the forest. But as far away as I can see there is nothing but oak-trees." The little oak remained shamefaced and silent and the other big trees whispered softly to one another, for they had a great respect for the old one. But the bear got up and rubbed his eyes: "Now you have disturbed my afternoon nap," he growled, angrily, "and I shall have my revenge on you, never fear. When I come back, I shall bring some beech-seed with me and I'll answer for it that you will all turn yellow with envy when you see how handsome the new trees are." Then he trotted away. But the oaks talked to one another for days at a time of the queer trees which he had told them of: "If they come, we'll do for them!" said the little oak-tree. But the old oak gave him one on the head: "If they come," he said, "you'll be civil to them, you puppy. But they won't come." 3 But this was where the old oak was wrong, for they did come. In the autumn, the bear returned and lay down under the old oak: "I am to give you the kind regards of the people down below there," he said and picked some funny things off his shaggy coat. "Just look what I've got for you." "What's that?" asked the oak. "That's beech," replied the bear. "Beech-seed, as I promised you." Then he trampled the seed into the earth and prepared to leave again: "It's a pity I can't stay to see how annoyed you will be," he said, "but those dashed human beings have become so troublesome. They killed my wife and one of my brothers the other day and I must look out for a place where I can dwell in peace. There is hardly a spot left for an honest bear to live in. Good-bye, you gnarled old oak-trees!" When the bear had jogged off, the trees looked at one another seriously: "Let's see what happens," said the old oak. And, when the spring came, the grass was green and the birds began to sing where they last left off. The flowers swarmed up from the ground and everything looked fresh and vigorous. The oaks alone still stood with leafless branches: "It is very distinguished to come last," they said to one another. "The king of the forest does not arrive before the whole company is assembled." But at last they did arrive. All the leaves burst forth from the fat buds and the trees looked at one another and complimented one another on their good appearance. The little oak had grown a decent bit. This made him feel important and think that he now had a right to join in the conversation: "There's not much coming of the bear's beech-trees," he said, mockingly, but at the same time glanced up anxiously at the old oak who used to slap his head. The old oak heard what he said and so did the others. But they said nothing. None of them had forgotten what the bear had said and, every morning, when the sun shone, they peeped down stealthily to see if the beeches had come. At bottom, they were a little uneasy, but they were too proud to talk about it. And, one day, at last, the little sprouts shot up from the ground. The sun shone upon them and the rain fell over them, so that it was not long before they grew to a good height. "I say, how pretty they are!" said the great oaks and twisted their crooked branches still more, so as to see them better. "You are welcome among us," said the old oak and gave them a gracious nod. "You shall be my foster-children and have just as good a time as my own." "Thank you," said the little beeches and not a word more. But the little oak did not like the strange trees: "It's awful, the way you're shooting up," he said, in a vexed tone. "You're already half as tall as I am. May I beg you to remember that I am much older than you and of a good family besides?" The beeches laughed with their tiny little green leaves, but said nothing. "Shall I bend my branches a little to one side, so that the sun may shine on you better?" asked the old tree, politely. "Much obliged," replied the beeches, "but we can grow quite nicely in the shade." 4 And all the summer passed and another summer and still more. The beeches kept on growing steadily and at last grew right over the little oak's head. "Keep your leaves to yourselves," cried the oak. "You're standing in my light; and that I can't endure. I must have proper sunshine. Take your leaves away, or else I shall die." The beeches only laughed and went on growing. At last they met right over the little oak's head and then he died. "That was ill done," roared the big oaks and shook their branches in anger. But the old oak stood up for his foster-children: "Serve him right!" he said. "That's his reward for bragging. I say it, though he is my own flesh and blood. But you must be careful now, you little beeches, or else I shall slap you on the head too." 5 The years passed and the beeches kept on growing and gradually became slim young trees that reached right up among the old oak's branches. "You're beginning to be rather intrusive for my taste," said the old oak. "You should try to grow a bit thicker and stop this shooting into the air. Just look how your branches stick out. Bend them decently, as you see us do. How will you manage when a regular storm comes? Take it from me, the wind shakes the tree-tops finely! He has many a time come whistling through my old branches; and how do you think that you'll come off, with that flimsy finery which you stick up in the air?" "Every one grows in his own manner and we in ours," replied the young beeches. "This is the way it's done where we come from; and we daresay we are quite as good as you." "That's not a polite remark to make to an old tree with moss on his branches," said the oak. "I am beginning to regret that I was so kind to you. If you have a scrap of honour in your composition, just have the goodness to move your leaves a little to one side. Last year, there were hardly any buds on my lower branches, all through your standing in my light." "We can't quite see what that has to do with us," replied the beeches. "Every one has enough to do to look after himself. If he is industrious and successful, then things go well with him. If not, he must be content to go to the wall. Such is the way of the world." And the oak's lower branches died and he began to be terribly frightened: "You're nice fellows, you are!" he said. "The way you reward me for my hospitality! When you were little, I let you grow at my foot and sheltered you against the storm. I let the sun shine on you whenever he wanted to and I treated you as if you were my own children. And now you choke me, by way of thanks." "Fudge!" said the beeches. Then they blossomed and put forth fruit; and, when the fruit was ripe, the wind shook their branches and scattered it all around. "You are active people like myself," said the wind. "That's why I like you and will gladly give you a hand." [Illustration] And the fox rolled at the foot of the beech and filled his coat with the prickly fruit and ran all over the country with it. The bear did the same and moreover laughed at the old oak while he lay and rested in the shadow of the beech. The wood-mouse was delighted with the new food which she got and thought that beech-nuts tasted much better than acorns. New little beeches shot up around and grew just as quickly as their parents and looked as green and happy as if they did not know what a bad conscience was. And the old oak gazed out sadly over the forest. The bright-green beech-leaves peeped forth on every hand and the oaks sighed and told one another their troubles: "They are taking our power from us," they said and shook themselves as well as they could for the beeches. "The land is no longer ours." One branch died after the other and the storm broke them off and flung them to the ground. The old oak had now only a few leaves left in his top: "The end is at hand," he said, gravely. But there were many more people in the land now than there had been before and they hastened to cut down the oaks while there were still some left: "Oak makes better timber than beech," they said. "So at last we get a little appreciation," said the old oak. "But we shall have to pay for it with our lives." Then he said to the beech-trees: "What was I thinking of, when I helped you on in your youth? What an old fool I have been! We oak-trees used to be lords in the land; and now, year after year, I have had to see my brothers all around perish in the struggle against you. I myself am almost done for; and not one of my acorns has sprouted, thanks to your shade. But, before I die, I should like to know what you call your behaviour." "That's soon said, old friend!" answered the beeches. "We call it _competition_; and it's no discovery of ours. It's what rules the world." "I don't know those outlandish words of yours," said the oak. "_I_ call it base ingratitude." Then he died. [Illustration] [Illustration: 'HIDE ME! SAVE ME!'] [Illustration: THE WEEDS] 1 It was a fine and fruitful year. Rain and sunshine came turn and turn about, in just the way that was best for the corn. As soon as the farmer thought that things were getting rather dry, he could be quite sure that it would rain next day. And, if he considered that he had had rain enough, then the clouds parted at once, just as though it were the farmer that was in command. The farmer, therefore, was in a good humour and did not complain as he usually did. Cheerful and rejoicing he walked over the land with his two boys: [Illustration] "It will be a splendid harvest this year," he said. "I shall get my barns full and make lots of money. Then Jens and Ole shall have a new pair of trousers apiece and I will take them with me to market." "If you don't cut me soon, farmer, I shall be lying down flat," said the rye and bowed her heavy ears right down to the ground. Now the farmer could not hear this, but was quite able to see what the rye was thinking of; and so he went home to fetch his sickle. "It's a good thing to be in the service of men," said the rye. "I can be sure now that all my grains will be well taken care of. Most of them will go to the mill and that, certainly, is not very pleasant. But afterwards they will turn into beautiful new bread; and one must suffer something for honour's sake. What remains the farmer will keep and sow next year on his land." 2 Along the hedge and beside the ditch stood the weeds. Thistle and burdock, poppy and bell-flower and dandelion grew in thick clusters and all had their heads full of seed. For them, too, it had been a fruitful year, for the sun shines and the rain falls on the poor weeds just as much as on the rich corn. [Illustration] "There's no one to cut us and cart us to the barn," said the dandelion and shook her head, but very carefully, lest the seed should fall too soon. "What is to become of our children?" "It gives me a headache to think of it," said the poppy. "Here I stand, with many hundreds of seeds in my head, and I have no idea where to dispose of them." "Let's ask the rye's advice," said the burdock. And then they asked the rye what they ought to do. "It doesn't do to mix in other people's affairs when one's well off," said the rye. "There is only one piece of advice that I will give you: mind you don't fling your silly seed over my field, or you'll have me to deal with!" Now this advice was of no use to the wild flowers; and they stood all day pondering as to what they should do. When the sun went down, they closed their petals to go to sleep, but they dreamt all night of their seed and next morning they had found a remedy. The poppy was the first to wake. She carefully opened some little shutters in the top of her head, so that the sun could shine right in upon the seeds. Next, she called to the morning wind, who was running and playing along the hedge: "Dear Wind," she said, pleasantly. "Will you do me a service?" "Why not?" said the wind. "I don't mind having something to do." [Illustration] "It's a mere trifle," said the poppy. "I will only ask you to give a good shake to my stalk, so that my seeds can fly away out of the shutters." "Right you are," said the wind. And away flew the seeds to every side. The stalk certainly snapped; but that the poppy did not bother about. For, when one has provided for one's children, there's really nothing left to do in this world. "Good-bye," said the wind and wanted to go on. "Wait a bit," said the poppy. "Promise me first that you won't tell the others. Else they might have the same ideas; and then there would be less room for my seeds." "I shall be silent as the grave," said the wind and ran away. "Pst! Pst!" said the bell-flower. "Have you a moment to do me a tiny service?" "All right," said the wind. "What is it?" "Oh, I only wanted to ask you to shake me a little!" said the flower. "I have opened some shutters in my head and I should like to have my seeds sent a good distance out into the world. But you must be sure not to tell the others, or they might think of doing the same thing." "Lord preserve us!" said the wind and laughed. "I shall be dumb as a fish." And then he gave the flower a thorough good shaking and went on. "Dear Wind, dear Wind!" cried the dandelion. "Where are you off to so fast?" "Is there anything the matter with you too?" asked the wind. "Not a bit," said the dandelion. "I only wanted to have a word with you." "Then be quick about it," said the wind, "for I am thinking seriously of going down." "You see," said the dandelion, "it's very difficult for us this year to get all our seed settled; and yet one would like to do the best one can for one's children. How the bell-flower and the poppy and the poor burdock will manage I do not know, upon my word. But the thistle and I have put our heads together and have hit upon an expedient. You must help us." "That makes four in all," thought the wind and could not help laughing aloud. "What are you laughing at?" asked the dandelion. "I saw you whispering with the bell-flower and the poppy just now; but, if you give them the least hint, I won't tell you a thing." "What do you take me for?" said the wind. "Mum's the word! What is it you want?" "We've put a nice little umbrella up at the top of our seed. It's the sweetest little toy that you can think of. If you only just blow on me, it will fly up in the air and fall down wherever you please. Will you?" "Certainly," said the wind. And--whoosh!--he blew over the thistle and the dandelion and carried all their seed with him across the fields. 3 The burdock still stood pondering. She was thick-headed and that was why she took so long. But, in the evening, a hare jumped over the hedge: "Hide me! Save me!" he cried. "Farmer's Trust is after me." "Creep round behind the hedge," said the burdock; "then I'll hide you." "You don't look to me as if you were cut out for that job," said the hare; "but beggars can't be choosers." And then he hid behind the hedge. "Now, in return, you might take some of my seeds to the fields with you," said the burdock; and she broke off some of her many burs and scattered them over the hare. Soon after, Trust came running along the hedge. "Here's the dog!" whispered the burdock; and, with a bound, the hare leapt over the hedge into the rye. "Have you seen the hare?" asked Trust. "I can see that I'm too old for hunting. One of my eyes is quite blind and my nose can no longer find the scent." "I have seen him," replied the burdock, "and, if you will do me a service, I will show you where he is." Trust agreed and the burdock struck some of her burs in his back and said: "Would you just rub yourself against the stile here, inside the field? But that's not where you're to look for the hare, for I saw him run to the wood a little while ago." Trust carried the burs to the field and ran off into the wood. "So now I've got my seeds settled," said the burdock and laughed to herself contentedly. "But goodness knows how the thistle is going to manage and the dandelion and the bell-flower and the poppy!" [Illustration] Next spring, already, the rye was standing quite high: "We are very well off, considering all things," said the rye-stalks. "Here we are in a great company that contains none but our own good family. And we don't hamper one another in the very least. It's really an excellent thing to be in the service of men." But, one fine day, a number of little poppies and thistles and dandelions and burdocks and bell-flowers stuck their heads up above the ground in the midst of the luxuriant rye. "What's the meaning of this now?" asked the rye. "How in the world did you get here?" And the poppy looked at the bell-flower and asked: "How did you get here?" And the thistle looked at the burdock and asked: "How on earth did you get here?" [Illustration] They were all equally surprised and it was some time before they had done explaining. But the rye was the angriest and, when she had heard all about Trust and the hare and the wind, she was quite furious: "Thank goodness that the farmer shot the hare in the autumn," said she. "Trust, luckily, is dead too, the old scamp! So I have no further quarrel with _them_. But how dare the wind carry the seed of the weeds on to the farmer's land!" "Softly, softly, you green Rye!" said the wind, who had been lying behind the hedge and had heard all this. "I ask no one's leave, but do as I please; and now I'm going to make you bow before me." Then he blew over the young rye so that the thin stalks swayed to and fro: "You see," he said, "the farmer looks after his rye, for that is his business. But the rain and the sun and I interest ourselves in all of you alike, without distinction of persons. To us the poor weeds are quite as attractive as the rich corn." Now the farmer came out to look at his rye and, when he saw the weeds that stood in the fields, he was vexed and scratched his head and began to scold in his turn: "That's that dirty Wind," he said to Jens and Ole, who stood beside him with their hands in the pockets of their new trousers. But the wind dashed up and blew off the hats of all three of them and trundled them ever so far away. The farmer and his boys ran after them, but the wind was the quicker. At last, he rolled the hats into the pond; and the farmer and his boys had to stand ever so long and fish for them before they got them out. [Illustration] [Illustration: The ANEMONES] 1 "Peewit! Peewit!" cried the lapwing, as he flew over the bog in the wood. "Dame Spring is coming! I can feel it in my legs and wings." When the new grass, which lay below in the earth, heard this, it at once began to sprout and peeped out gaily from between the old yellow straw. For the grass is always in an immense hurry. Now the anemones in among the trees had also heard the lapwing's cry, but refused on any account to appear above the earth: "You mustn't believe the lapwing," they whispered to one another. "He's a flighty customer and not to be trusted. He always comes too early and starts calling at once. No, we will wait quietly till the starling and the swallow come. They are sensible, sober people, who are not to be taken in and who know what they are about." [Illustration] And the starlings came. They perched on a twig outside their summer villa and looked about them: "Too early, as usual," said Mr. Starling. "Not a green leaf and not a fly, except an old tough one of last year, not worth opening one's beak for." Mrs. Starling said nothing, but looked none too cheerful either. "If we had only remained in our snug winter-quarters beyond the mountains!" said Mr. Starling. He was angry because his wife did not answer, for he was so cold that he thought a little discussion might do him good. "But it's _your_ fault, just as last year. You're always in such a terrible hurry to come out to the country." "If I'm in a hurry, I know the reason why," said Mrs. Starling. "And it would be a shame for you if you didn't know too, for they are your eggs just as much as mine." "Heaven forbid!" replied Mr. Starling, indignantly. "When have I denied my family? Perhaps you expect me, over and above, to sing to you in the cold?" "Yes, that I do!" said Mrs. Starling, in the tone which he could not resist. He at once began to whistle as best he could. But, when Mrs. Starling had heard the first notes, she flapped her wings and pecked at him with her beak: "Will you be quiet at once!" she screamed, angrily. "It sounds so dismal that it makes one feel quite melancholy. You'd better see to it that the anemones come up. I think it's high time. And, besides, one always feels warmer when there are others shivering too." Now, as soon as the anemones had heard the starling's first whistle, they carefully stuck their heads out of the ground. But they were still so tightly tucked up in their green wraps that one could hardly see them. They looked like green buds that might turn into anything. "It's too early," they whispered. "It's a shame for the starling to call us. There's no one left in the world that one can trust." Then the swallow came: "Tsee! Tsee!"he whistled and darted through the air on his long, pointed wings. [Illustration] "Out with you, you silly flowers! Can't you see that Dame Spring has come?" But the anemones had become careful. They just pushed their green wraps a little to one side and peeped out: "One swallow does not make a summer," they said. "Where is your wife? You have only come to see if it's possible to live here and now you're trying to take us in. But we are not so stupid as all that. We know that, once we catch cold, we're done for." "You're a pack of poltroons," said the swallow and sat down on the weathercock on the ranger's roof and looked out over the landscape. But the anemones stood and waited and were very cold. One or two of them, who could not control their impatience, cast off their wraps in the sun. The cold at night killed them; and the story of their pitiful death went from flower to flower and aroused great consternation. 2 Then Dame Spring came, one delightfully mild and still night. No one knows what she looks like, for no one has ever seen her. But all long for her and thank her and bless her. She goes through the wood and touches the flowers and the trees and they bud at once. She goes through the stables and unfastens the cattle and lets them out into the fields. She goes straight into men's hearts and gladdens them. She makes it difficult for the best-behaved boy to sit still on his bench at school and occasions a terrible lot of mistakes in the exercise-books. [Illustration] But she does not do this all at once. She attends to her business night after night and comes direct to those who long for her most. So it happened that, on the very night when she arrived, she went straight to the anemones, who stood in their green wraps and could no longer curb their impatience. And one, two, three! There they stood in newly-ironed white frocks and looked so fresh and pretty that the starlings sang their finest songs for sheer joy at the sight of them. "Oh, how lovely it is here!" said the anemones. "How warm the sun is! And how the birds are singing! It is a thousand times better than last year." But they say this every year, so it doesn't count. Now there were many others who went quite off their heads when they saw that the anemones were out. There was a schoolboy who wanted to have his summer holidays right away; and then there was the beech, who was highly offended: "Aren't you coming to me soon, Dame Spring?" he said. "I am a much more important person than those silly anemones and really I can no longer control my buds." "Coming, coming!" replied Dame Spring. "But you must give me a little time." She went on through the wood. And, at every step, more anemones appeared. They stood in thick bevies around the roots of the beech and modestly bowed their round heads to the ground. [Illustration] "Look up freely," said Dame Spring, "and rejoice in Heaven's bright sun. Your lives are but short, so you must enjoy them while they last." The anemones did as she told them. They stretched themselves and spread their white petals to every side and drank as much sunshine as they could. They pushed their heads against one another and twined their stalks together and laughed and were wonderfully happy. "Now I can wait no longer," said the beech and burst into leaf. Leaf after leaf crept out of its green covering and spread out and fluttered in the wind. The whole green crown arched itself like a mighty roof above the earth. "Good heavens, is it evening so soon?" asked the anemones, who thought that it had turned quite dark. "No, this is death," said Dame Spring. "Now you're over. It's the same with you as with the best in this world. All must bud, blossom and die." "Die?" cried some of the small anemones. "Must we die so soon?" And some of the large anemones turned quite red in the face with anger and arrogance: "We know all about it!" they said. "It's the beech that's killing us. He steals the sunshine for his own leaves and grudges us a single ray. He's a nasty, wicked thing." They stood and scolded and wept for some days. Then Dame Spring came for the last time through the wood. She still had the oaks and some other querulous old fellows to visit: "Lie down nicely to sleep now in the ground," she said to the anemones. "It's no use kicking against the pricks. Next year, I will come again and wake you to new life." And some of the anemones did as she told them. But others continued to stick their heads in the air and grew up so ugly and lanky that they were horrid to look at: "Fie, for shame!" they cried to the beech-leaves. "It's you that are killing us." [Illustration: 'FIE, FOR SHAME!' THEY CRIED TO THE BEECH-LEAVES. 'IT'S YOU THAT ARE KILLING US.'] But the beech shook his long boughs, so that the brown husks fell to the ground: "Wait till autumn, you little blockheads," he said and laughed. "Then you'll just see." The anemones could not understand what he meant. But, when they had stretched themselves as far as they could, they cracked in two and withered. 3 Summer was past and the farmer had carted his corn home from the field. The wood was still green, but darker; and, in many places, yellow and red leaves appeared among the green ones. The sun was tired after his hot work during the summer and went to bed early. [Illustration] At night, winter stole through the trees to see if his time would soon come. When he found a flower, he kissed her politely and said: "Well, well, are you there still? I am glad to see you. Stay where you are. I am a harmless old man and wouldn't hurt a fly." But the flower shuddered at his kiss and the bright dew-drops hanging from her petals froze to ice at the same moment. Winter went oftener and oftener through the wood. He breathed upon the leaves, till they turned yellow, or upon the ground, till even the anemones, who lay below in the earth, waiting for Dame Spring to come again as she had promised, could feel his breath and shuddered right down to their roots: "Oh dear, how cold it is!" they said to one another. "How ever shall we last through the winter? We are sure to die before it is over." "Now my time has come," said winter. "Now I need no longer steal round like a thief in the night. From to-morrow, I shall look every one straight in the face and bite his nose and make his eyes run with tears." At night, the storm broke loose. "Let me see you make a clean sweep of things," said winter. And the storm obeyed his orders. He tore howling through the wood and shook the branches till they creaked and broke. Any that were at all decayed fell down and those that held on had to twist and turn to every side. "Away with all that finery!" howled the storm and tore off the leaves. "This is no time to dress yourselves up. Soon there will be snow on the branches: that's another story." All the leaves fell terrified to the ground, but the storm did not let them lie in peace. He took them round the waist and waltzed with them over the field, high up in the air and into the wood again, swept them together into great heaps and scattered them once more to every side, just as the fit seized him. Not until the morning did the storm grow weary and go down. "Now you can have peace for _this_ time," he said. "I am going down till we have our spring-cleaning. Then we can have another dance, if there are any of you left by then." And the leaves went to rest and lay like a thick carpet over the whole earth. The anemones felt that it had grown delightfully warm: "I wonder if Dame Spring can have come yet?" they asked one another. "I haven't my buds ready!" cried one of them. "No more have I! No more have I!" exclaimed the others in chorus. But one of them took courage and just peeped out above the ground. "Good-morning!" cried the withered beech-leaves. "It's rather too early, young lady: if only you don't come to any harm!" "Isn't that Dame Spring?" asked the anemone. "Not just yet," replied the beech-leaves. "It's we, the green leaves you were so angry with in the summer. Now we have lost our brightness and have not much left to make a show of. We have enjoyed our youth and had our fling, you know. And now we are lying here and protecting all the little flowers in the ground against the winter." "And meanwhile I am standing and freezing in my bare branches," said the beech, crossly. The anemones talked about it down in the earth and thought it very nice: "Those dear beech-leaves!" they said. "Mind you remember it next summer, when I come into leaf," said the beech. "We will, we will!" whispered the anemones. For that sort of thing is promised, but the promise is never kept. [Illustration] The WOOD and the HEATH 1 There was once a beautiful wood, filled with thousands of slender trunks and with singing and whispering in her dark tree-tops. She was surrounded by field and meadow; and there the farmer had built his house. And field and meadow were good and green; and the farmer was hard-working and grateful for the crops which he brought home. But the wood stood like a lady of the manor, high above them all. In the winter-time the fields lay flat and miserable, the meadow was merely one great lake with ice upon it and the farmer sat huddled in the chimney-corner; but the wood just stood straight and placid with her bare branches and let the weather storm and snow as it pleased. In the spring, both meadow and field turned green and the farmer came out and began to plough and sow. But the wood burst forth into so great a splendour that no one could hope to describe it: there were flowers at her feet and sunshine in her green tree-tops; the song of the birds echoed in even the smallest bush; and perfume and bright colours and gaiety reigned here and there and everywhere. Now it happened, one summer's day, while the wood stood waving her branches, that she set eyes upon a funny brown thing which was spreading itself over the hills towards the west and which she had never seen before: "What sort of fellow are you?" asked the wood. "I am the heath," said the brown thing. "I don't know you," said the wood, "and I don't like you: you are so ugly and black, you don't look like the field or the meadow or anything that I know. Can you bud into leaf? Can you blossom? Can you sing?" [Illustration] "Indeed I can," said the heath. "In August, when your leaves begin to look dark and tired, my flowers will come out. Then I am purple, purple from end to end, and more beautiful than anything you have ever seen." "You're a braggart!" said the wood; and the conversation dropped. 2 Next year, the heath had crept a little way down the hill, towards the wood. The wood saw this, but said nothing. She thought it beneath her dignity to talk to such an ugly fellow; but, in her heart of hearts, she was afraid. Then she made herself greener and prettier and looked as if there were nothing the matter. But, every year, the heath came nearer. He had now covered all the hills and lay just outside the fence of the wood. "Be off!" said the wood. "You annoy me. Take care you don't touch my fence!" "I'm coming over your fence," said the heath. "I'm coming into you, to eat you up and destroy you." Then the wood laughed till all her leaves quivered: "So that's what you mean to do, is it?" she said. "If only you can manage it! I'm afraid that you will find me too big a mouthful. I daresay you think I'm a bit of a field or meadow, which one can walk over in a couple of strides. But I'm the most powerful and important person in the neighbourhood, you may as well know. I shall soon sing my song to you; then perhaps you will change your ways of thinking." [Illustration] Then the wood began to sing. All the birds sang; and the flowers raised their heads and sang too. The smallest leaf hummed with the rest, the fox stopped in the middle of eating a fat chicken and beat time with his brush, the wind blew through the branches and played an organ accompaniment to the song of the wood: "Merrier meeting was never yet Than the festal wood discloses, When wood-ruff nestles by violet In a cluster of sweet wild roses. "Small birds in the brake fly up and down Nor ever a bird flies single And the woodman twines for his lass a crown Where berries and beech commingle. "Roe, fox and hare hold revel all, Thro' flowerage the wee worm glances; There great and small a-dancing fall And the sun up in Heaven dances." "What do you say to that?" asked the wood. The heath said nothing. But, next year, he came over the fence. "Are you mad?" screamed the wood. "Why, I forbade you to cross the fence!" "You are not my mistress," said the heath. "I am doing as I said I would." Then the wood called the red fox and shook her branches so that a quantity of beech-mast fell upon him and remained hanging in his skin: "Run across to the heath, Foxie, and scatter the beech-mast out there!" said the wood. [Illustration] "Right you are!" said the fox and jogged away. And the hare did the same and the marten and the mouse. And the crow lent a hand, for old acquaintance' sake, and the wind took hold and blew and shook the branches till the mast flew far out into the heath. "That's it!" said the wood. "Now let's see what comes of _that_." "Yes, let us!" said the heath. A certain time passed and the wood grew green and withered and the heath spread more and more and they did not talk to each other. But, one fine spring day, tiny little new-born beeches and oaks peeped up from the ground round about in the heather. "What do you say now?" asked the wood, triumphantly. "My trees shall grow year after year, till they become tall and strong. Then they shall close their tops over you: no sun shall shine, no rain shall fall upon you; and you shall die, as a punishment for your presumption." But the heath shook his black twigs earnestly: "You don't know me," he said. "I am stronger than you think. Your trees will never turn green in me. I have bound the earth under me as firm as iron and your roots can't go through it. Just wait till next year! Then the little fellows you are so pleased with will all be dead." "You're lying," said the wood. But she was frightened. 3 [Illustration] Next year, it happened as the heath had said. The little oaks and beeches died as one tree. And now a terrible time came for the wood. The heath spread more and more; on every side there was heather instead of violets and anemones. None of the young trees grew up, the bushes withered, the old trees began to die in their tops, and it was a general calamity. "It's no longer at all pleasant in the wood," said the nightingale. "I think I shall build somewhere else." "Why, there's hardly a decent tree left to live in!" said the crow. "The ground has become so hard that it's no longer possible to dig one's self a proper hole and burrow," said the fox. The wood was at her wits' end. The beech stretched his branches to the sky in an appeal for help and the oak wrung his in silent despair. "Sing your song once more!" said the heath. "I have forgotten it," replied the wood, gloomily. "And my flowers are withered and my birds have flown away." "Then I will sing," said the heath. [Illustration] And he sang: "A goodly song round the moorland goes When the sun in the east leaps clearer; And like blood or fire the heather glows As to autumn the woods draw nearer. "All day on the moor will the cotton-grass Weave its white, long bands together; And softly the snake and the adder pass Through the stems of the tufted heather. "On swinging tussock the lapwing leaps, Lark's note above plover's swelling, As the crook-backed cotter in silence creeps From his lonely moorland dwelling." 4 Gradually, as the years passed, things looked worse and worse for the wood. The heath spread farther and farther, until it reached the other end of the wood. The great trees died and toppled down as soon as the storm took a fair hold of them: then they lay and rotted and the heather grew over them. There were now only half a score of the oldest and strongest trees left; but they were altogether hollow and had quite thin tops. "My time is over, I must die," said the wood. "Well, I told you so beforehand," replied the heath. But then the men and women began to grow very frightened at the way the heather was using the wood: "Where am I to get timber for my workshop?" cried the joiner. "Where am I to get sticks to put under my pot?" screamed the goodwife. "Where, oh where, are we to get fuel in the winter?" sighed the old man. "Where am I to stroll with my sweetheart in the spring?" asked the young one. Then, when they had looked at the poor old trees for a bit, to see if there was anything to be done with them, they took their spades and mattocks and ran up the hills to where the heath began. "You may as well save yourselves the trouble," said the heath. "I am not to be dug into." "Alas, no!" sighed the wood; but she was so weak now that no one could hear what she said. But they did not mind about that. They hewed and hewed right down through the hard shell. Then they carted earth into the holes and manured it; and then they planted some small trees. They tended them and put their faith in them and screened them against the east wind as well as they could. And, year after year, the small trees grew. They stood like light, green spots in the middle of the black heather; and, when this had gone on for some time, a little bird came and built a nest in one of them. "Hurrah!" shouted the men. "Now we've got a wood once more." "No one can hold his own against men," said the heath. "The thing can't be helped. So we'll move on." But of the old wood there still remained one tree, who had only one green twig in his top. Here a little bird settled and told of the new wood that was growing up on the hill yonder. "Thank Heaven!" said the old wood. "What one can't do one's self one must leave to the children. If only they're good for something! They look so thin!" "I daresay you were thin yourself once," said the bird. The old wood said nothing to this, for at that very moment she was finished; and so, of course, my story is finished too. [Illustration] [Illustration: SOMEWHERE IN THE WOOD] 1 Somewhere in the wood, quite close to one another, lived a little company of good friends. There was the sheep's-scabious, who looked as if she had something on her head, but had not, and the bell-flower, who was so blue and modest. There was the maiden-pink, meeker and redder and gentler than any, and a few blades of grass, who were nice and green, but poor and quite grateful if one as much as looked at them. Then there was some moss, which grew on the old stump of a tree and kept to itself, and there was the hazel-bush, who was the finest of them all, both because he was so big and, especially, because the linnet had built his nest in him. The friends never had a word. [Illustration] They all minded their own business and did not stand in one another's way. In the evening, when the day's work was done, they listened to the linnet's song. Or else there would be a creaking in the hazel-bush's branches; and that was quite as uncanny as a regular ghost-story. Or else the blades of grass would just whisper softly and nonsensically; but that also is nice to listen to sometimes when you are tired and have nothing on your conscience. If anything joyful happened to any one of the friends, they all rejoiced. When the maiden-pink and the bell-flower budded, the hazel-bush offered his congratulations, the linnet struck his longest trill and the blades of grass appointed a deputation and bowed respectfully to the ground and each shed a dewy tear of emotion. When the little linnets crept out of the egg, all the friends were as happy as if they themselves had had children. [Illustration] From out of the wood came the whistling and singing of many birds, but this did not concern the friends. Sometimes a roe would come bounding or a fox sneaking along; and once a frightened hare hid under the hazel-bush, while the guns banged all around and the dogs gave tongue. They would talk about an event like this for days together. But then they lapsed into quietude again; and time wore on to summer. 2 Then, one morning, the maiden-pink felt strangely unwell. Her stalks and leaves were slack and she had a regular pain in her roots. Her flowers were so queer and loose, she thought. [Illustration] When she complained of not being well, the sheep's-scabious and the bell-flower said that it was just the same with them. So did the blades of grass, but that did not count, for they always agreed with any one they were talking to. The moss said nothing, but that did not signify either, for nobody asked him. "We want rain," said the hazel-bush. "There's nothing else the matter. It doesn't affect me yet, but I suppose it will. You are so short and slender; that's why you feel it first." The blades of grass nodded and thought that this was remarkably well said on the part of the hazel-bush. The others hung their heads. The linnet sang as best he could to cheer the sick friends. But sick they were and sick they remained; and it grew worse every day. "I think I'm dying," said the maiden-pink. [Illustration] The blades of grass observed, most politely, that they were already half-dead. The hazel-bush was not feeling well either and the linnet thought the air so heavy that he was not at all inclined to sing. And, while they were talking about all this, towards the evening, they heard the same complaint in the whispering that came from the great wood, in the bell of the stag and the bay of the fox and the croak of the frog and the squeak of the mouse in her hole. The ranger and the farmer went past and talked about it; they looked up at the bright sky and shook their heads: "We shall have no rain to-morrow either," said the ranger. "My small trees are dying." "And my corn is being blighted," said the farmer. Next morning, the friends became seriously alarmed when they looked at one another. They were hardly recognizable, so ill did they appear, with yellow, hanging leaves and faded flowers and dry roots. Only the moss looked as usual. "Don't you feel anything?" asked the hazel-bush. "Yes, I do," said the moss. "But it doesn't show in me. I might lie here and be dead for a whole month and all the time look as if I were alive and well. I can't help it." "I shall go up and look for a cloud," said the linnet. And he went up in the air, so high that he was quite lost to the others, and he came back and said that there was a cloud far away in the west. "Ask him to come," said the bell-flower, in a faint voice. And the linnet flew up again and came back presently with the sad answer that the cloud could not: "He would like to," said the linnet. "He is tired of hanging up there with all that rain. But he has to wait till the wind comes for him." "Good-bye," said the maiden-pink. "And thank you for the pleasant time we have had together. I can hold out no longer." [Illustration: 'GOOD-BYE,' SAID THE MAIDEN-PINK.] And then she died. All the friends looked at one another in dismay: "We must get hold of the wind," said the hazel-bush, who had more life left in him than the others. "Else it will be all up with every one of us." Next morning early, the wind came stealing along. He came quite slowly, for he too was tired of the intolerable dry heat; but he had to go his rounds for all that. "Dear Wind," said the sheep's-scabious. "Bring us a little cloud, or we shall all be dead." "There is no cloud," said the wind. "That's not true, Wind," said the linnet. "There's a beautiful grey cloud far away in the west." "Re-ally?" said the wind. "Ah ... I happen to be the east wind just now, so I can't help you." "Turn round, dear Wind, and bring us the cloud," asked the bell-flower, civilly. "You can blow wherever you please and we shall be grateful to you as long as we live." "You will earn the thanks of the whole community," said the hazel-bush. "The whole community," whispered the blades of grass. "I daresay," said the wind. "But I am not what you take me for. You believe that I am my own master, because I come shifting and shifting about and sometimes blow gently and sometimes hard and am sometimes mild and sometimes keen. But I am merely a dog that comes when his master calls." "Who is your master then?" asked the linnet. "I will go to him, even if he lives at the end of the earth." "Ah ... if _that_ were enough!" said the wind. "My master is the sun. I run my race at his behest. When he shines really strong anywhere, than I go up with the warm air and fetch cold air from somewhere else and fly with it along the earth. Whether it be east or west does not concern me." "I don't understand it," said the linnet. "I don't understand it either," said the wind. "But I _do_ it!" Then he went down. And the friends stood and hung their heads and were at their wits' end: "There is nothing for it but to die," said the sheep's-scabious. "If I have lived through the winter," said the hazel-bush, "I suppose I can stand this. But it's very hard." And the bell-flower and the sheep's-scabious, who had never lived through the winter, wondered if it could really be worse than this. And the linnet dreamt of the south, where _he_ spent the winter; and the blades of grass had quite thrown up the game. "Can't your branches reach up to the sun?" asked the sheep's-scabious of the hazel-bush. "Can't you fly up to the sun?" asked the bell-flower of the linnet. But that they could not do; and the days passed and the wretchedness increased. It was quite silent in the wood. Not a bird chirped, the fox stayed in his hole, the stag lay in the shade and gasped, with his tongue hanging out of his mouth, and the trees stood with drooping branches, as though they were at a funeral. Then the bell-flower rang all her bells, as if to ring in death over the wood. It sounded quite still and weak and nevertheless rose high in the air like a prayer: "My blue bells chime for the rain to fall In dusty and desolate places, Where buds that should shine and be fragrant all Are pining with pallid faces." It is not easy to know who heard it; and none of the friends said a word. But, at that moment, they all plainly heard some one speak and then they all knew that it was the sun, whom the hazel-bush could not reach with his branches and whom the linnet could not fly to, but who had heard the bell-flower's plaints: "I shine as I must and not as I please; and I cannot help you. I am bound to go my course round another sun, who is a thousand times larger and better than I. I cannot swerve a foot's breadth from my road; I cannot send down a single ray according to my own wishes." "I don't understand it," said the hazel-bush. "I don't understand it either," said the sun. "But I _do_ it." "And I understand that it is all up with a poor sheep's-scabious," said the sheep's-scabious and died then and there. 3 Then night came and all thought that it would be their last. But, suddenly, the bell-flower raised her aching head and listened. She thought she heard a sound as when a drop falls ... now came another ... it smacked down upon a leaf ... and another ... and another.... They all woke up, while the rain poured in torrents. The poor blades of grass stood up, the unhappy moss took fresh courage. The linnet began to sing, though it was a dark night. The hazel-bush shook with delight, until he nearly shook the linnet's young out of the nest. [Illustration] Everything round about in the wood revived. The night was full of happiness. The ranger and the farmer rose from their beds and met in the rain and shook each other by the hand with glad eyes. It rained the whole night and the day after and the next night and one day more. Sometimes it rained gently and sometimes hard. The ground drank all the water with a thirsty mouth and the roots sucked it greedily out of the ground and leaves and flowers unfolded and stood erect and blithe on slender stalks. Then came the third day, with sunshine and a blue sky and life and merriment in the wood. "Well," said the wind and came darting along as though he had never been tired in his life, "do you see, I brought you the rain?" "Well," said the cloud, who drifted high above, in a light, white summer suit, "did you see how I came with the rain?" "Well," said the sun and laughed, rounder and warmer than ever, "so you got what you asked me for!" The friends looked at one another in surprise. But, a little way off, sat the red fox, with his ugly, clever face: "That's the sort of people they are," he said. "When you ask them for something, they're not at home. But they never forget to call for thanks!" [Illustration] [Illustration: THE COUSINS] A STORY OF THE HOUSE-MOUSE, THE WOOD-MOUSE, THE FIELD-MOUSE, THE BLACK RAT AND THE BROWN RAT. 1 The house-mouse went about quietly, minding her business. She lived in the forester's house that lay just on the skirt of the forest, so that there were woods on one side and fields on the other. She had a comfortable home behind the wainscot in the forester's dining-room, right under the window. And the window looked out on the woods; and then down at the bottom of the wall there was a very tiny hole, which the house-mouse was just able to squeeze through, so that she could slip into the woods and home again whenever she pleased. In this way, the house-mouse had a very enjoyable time; and she had a good time also with regard to the people she lived with. True, the forester was a grumpy sort of man, who could not hear the word "mouse" mentioned without flying into a rage. But he was a very old man and the house was managed by his daughter. She never forgot the house-mouse; and this came of a meeting that once took place between the two. One morning, you must know, the young lady went to the sideboard to get out the sugar for her father's coffee. And there sat the mouse in the sugar-basin. She had forgotten the time and gone to sleep. And there she _was_! [Illustration] Of course, she was terribly frightened; and it was worse still when the girl put out her hand over the sugar-basin, as if to catch her: "So there you are, Mousie!" she said. "I _thought_ it was you that was after my sugar! Apart from that, you're a nice little thing. But you needn't go shaking so terribly in your little grey shoes, for, I assure you, I have not the least intention of doing you any harm. Perhaps you have little children, who would starve if you didn't come home to them. So I'll let you go. But, on the other hand, it will never do for you to go stealing our sugar. So, when you get down to the floor, run straight to your hole. I don't know where it is, but, when I find out, I will put a piece of sugar on the floor outside it, every evening before I go to bed. And then I will look for the hole through which you got into the sideboard and stop it up; and then we shall be friends." When she had made this speech, which was much handsomer than the speeches which mice are accustomed to hear from human beings, she put the terrified mouse down on the floor. The mouse at once scudded across the room and disappeared in her hole under the wainscoting. "So that's where you live," said the forester's daughter. "That's all right. Now you will see I shall remember my promise." In the evening she put a lump of sugar there and she did so every evening before she went to bed. And, every morning, the mouse had fetched the sugar. And, when, one day, she heard a squeaking behind the wainscot, she guessed that the little mouse had now got children; and, from that day, she put two lumps of sugar for her every evening. [Illustration] The mouse, therefore, could not complain of the people she lived with and no more she did. Add to this that the only cat that the forester's house contained was an enormous old ginger tom who could no longer either see or hear. He had been there in the forester's wife's day. She was dead now. And, as she had been fond of him, he was allowed to live and eat the bread of charity in the forester's house, though he was no longer of the least use. And, as he could not tolerate other and younger cats, there was no other cat in the place, which of course was a great source of joy to the mouse, who often ran right under the old ginger tomcat's nose, without his noticing her. 2 One day, the mouse was sitting outside the hole that led to the wood. It was in the month of August and it was warm and pleasant and she sat basking in the sun with the greatest enjoyment, the more so as she had just given birth to seven blind children, which is no joke, as any mother will tell you. And, as she sat there, the wood-mouse came out of her house under the root of the beech. "Good-afternoon, cousin," said the house-mouse. "The same to you, cousin," said the wood-mouse. "A fine sunny day," said the house-mouse. "The same to you, cousin," said the wood-mouse. When they had greeted each other in this fashion, they sat and looked at each other for a little while. The house-mouse moved her big ears to and fro; and the wood-mouse did the same, out of courtesy, but her ears were not nearly so big. On the other hand, she had more hairs in her tail than her cousin, so that pretty well made up for the ears. Then the house-mouse said: "Life is lovely." "Do you think so, cousin?" said the wood-mouse. And she looked as though she were of a very different opinion, but too polite to say so outright. "Yes, I do, cousin," replied the house-mouse. "I have just got my last seven youngsters off my hands. And every evening the young mistress puts a piece of sugar outside my hole for me. And the forester and the cat are both so old that they positively can't see when I run through the room. And yesterday an old lady arrived whose name is Petronella. And she's as frightened of me as though she were a mouse and I a cat. When she sees me, she screams and gathers up her skirts and jumps on a chair, old as she is. This amuses the young lady who gives me the sugar immensely, so I like doing it. And, for the matter of that, I needn't even trouble to come out. This morning, I was sitting in my hole while they were drinking tea. Then my young mistress cried, 'There's the mouse!' and in a jiffy Aunt Petronella was up on the chair, though I wasn't there at all. I tell you, it's great fun." [Illustration] "I daresay, cousin," said the wood-mouse. "And I'm very glad indeed that you've such a good time." "And haven't you just as good a time?" asked the house-mouse. "Living in the green wood and hearing the birds sing all day long? No cat and no mouse-traps?" "Yes, it's all right about the birds," said the wood-mouse. "And about the cats too. But you mustn't think on that account, cousin, that this is a sort of paradise. I hear very little of the birds down where I live; and I may as well admit that I don't bother my head about them. Besides, there are one or two awkward customers among them, such as the crow, for instance, and the rook and the jackdaw, who all belong to the same family. Not to speak of the stork and the buzzard, for whom a wood-mouse is a mere mouthful." "Yes, I know," said the house-mouse. "Well, we all have our worries. And, at any rate, you don't have the cat. She's the trickiest of the lot." "Is she?" said the wood-mouse. "Well, you may be right. But we have the fox out here, you know, who is pretty cunning, in addition to the marten and the polecats, who are the blood-thirstiest animals that you can think of. No, taken all round, believe me, it's not so pleasant to be a wood-mouse. And it's very likely that what is your good fortune is just my misfortune!" "Why, how can that be, cousin?" asked the house-mouse. "I can't understand it and I should be sorry to think so." "Well, you see, it's not a thing that _you_ can help," said the wood-mouse. "Heaven forbid! You have always been a first-rate cousin; I don't deny it for a moment. But I expect the reason why you have a good time is that you live with an old gentleman like your forester. The natural consequence is a cat and a sweet young daughter who gives you sugar. Perhaps it would not be so pleasant for you if the forester died and a new one came who was younger. His wife might be too fond of her sugar to care to give you any. His children might set traps for you and torture you. And he might have a young cat, who would get her claws into you and eat you." "You are very likely right," said the house-mouse. "All the more reason why I should value my good fortune while it lasts. But, all the same, I can't understand how my good fortune can be your misfortune." [Illustration: THERE SAT THE MOUSE IN THE SUGAR BASIN.] "Oh, it's not so difficult to understand as all that!" said the wood-mouse. "You see, when a forester is very old, he looks after the wood badly. He is no longer able to shoot and, taken all round, he knows nothing about what goes on out of doors. The result is that there is such an immense number of foxes and martens and polecats and buzzards out here that one of us can hardly stir from her hole without risking her life. Now, if a new and young forester were to come, you can easily understand what a change that would make in things." "Oh yes!" said the house-mouse. "Now I understand! But tell me, cousin, don't you think the new forester would also go for the mice, if he could? It seems to me I have heard the old one say that the mice are the wood's worst enemies. And it must be the wood-mice he means. For I don't know of any harm that I do to the wood." [Illustration] The wood-mouse set up her tail and shook her little head sorrowfully: "Cousin," she said, "you have touched me on my very sorest point." "I am really sorry, cousin," said the house-mouse. "But it appears to me that it was you who began to talk about it." "So it was, cousin," said the wood-mouse. "And we don't do any good by holding our tongues. You see, cousin, there is a great deal of wickedness in this world; and we have to put up with it. But it's pretty hard when it comes from one's relations." "That's true, cousin," said the house-mouse. "Are there really any of your relations who do you any harm?" "Harm?" said the wood-mouse. "I daresay that those of whom I'm thinking don't think of doing me any harm. But they do so for this reason, that they behave themselves in such a way that we have to suffer for it. And, as far as relationship is concerned, they are your relations as well as mine." "But who are they, cousin?" asked the house-mouse. "Tell me, quickly. I have no notion of whom you're thinking." "I'm thinking of the field-mouse," said the wood-mouse, with a deep sigh. The house-mouse was silent for a moment, out of respect for the other's emotion. And presently the wood-mouse began to speak of her own accord: "The field-mouse is our cousin, cousin, our own first cousin. There's no denying the fact. But I must confess that I think she does the family no credit. She is preposterously greedy. And her absurd gluttony injures all of us. The tale is that the mice have done it. And so they have. But who thinks of asking which mouse it is that has done it? Is it you? No. You mind your own business indoors, in the house. Of course, you nibble at a ham or a loaf or an old cheese or anything that comes your way. That's only reasonable. One has to live; and goodness knows what might be said of the way in which human beings get their food, if the matter were looked into." "What you say is an absolute fact," said the house-mouse. "I have often thought, when I have been nibbling at a ham, that, if I was a thief, then the forester, whose ham it was, was neither more nor less than a murderer. Well ... and then they have the cat and the mouse-trap and all the rest of their cunning, so they're all right. A poor mouse has to think very hard and to risk her life pretty well every hour of the day if she is to provide herself with food." "Just so," said the wood-mouse. "It's not you. Then who is it? Is it I? No, I mind my business as you mind yours. Of course, I take nuts and beech-mast and acorns, when they fall; and I admit that I am a regular whale for fir-cones. That fresh fir-seed is about the nicest thing I know. So I gnaw the cones in two and eat the seeds; and then they are gone when the forester wants them to sow firs with. But that is only reasonable. I must live as well as he and there are quite enough firs in the world. And I won't deny I may eat a bit of root once in a way, in the spring, when the roots are quite fresh. But what then? The forester himself is fond of vegetables, so he really need not grudge me a few." "Certainly not," said the house-mouse. "You are quite right, cousin. You only do what we all do." "Thank you for that kind word, cousin," said the wood-mouse. "I think it's only fair. Well, just as he has the cat and the mouse-trap for you, if you become too indiscreet, so he has the fox and the crow and the polecat and the marten and the stork and, above all, the owl for me. You can't imagine what a terribly cunning enemy the owl is. One simply can't hear him flying. One can't see him either, for he only comes at night and his colours are dark. And they all see as well at night as an ordinary body does in broad daylight. And he has all these fellows gratis. The cat and the trap he has to buy. But his forest-police he gets for nothing." "That's true," said the house-mouse. "Therefore it's not I either," said the wood-mouse. "It's not you and it's not I. Shall I tell you who it is? It's our cousin, the field-mouse. The mice have done it, the story goes. And who are the mice? It's the field-mouse. But he is not the only one who has to be prosecuted and punished. Any one bearing the name of mouse is mercilessly and ruthlessly struck down. People are so stupid. They can see no difference. And I don't know how to teach them any better. It's too bad!" "But, cousin," said the house-mouse, "you haven't told me yet what the field-mouse does that the rest of us are blamed for. It must be something shocking to upset you so." "Indeed, the forester is more upset than I am," said the wood-mouse. "And I don't deny that he has every reason to be. You see, just round the corner is a beautiful, green forest-glade. The deer come out here and graze, early in the morning, and they drink from a brook that runs through the glade. It makes a charming picture. I have seen it myself on many a fine summer morning, when I have come home rejoicing at my good luck in escaping the owl and the other ruffians. Well, the forester is particularly fond of the glade, because he uses it for his horses. He makes hay there. And it's the loveliest forest-hay that you can imagine." "Yes, I know," said the house-mouse. "I saw him carting hay into the barn last year." "Yes, but there will be no hay this year," said the wood-mouse. "You see, cousin, some time ago the glade began to wither and turn yellow. It became yellower and yellower every day. The keeper came and told the forester. They were out the other day looking at it. Then they discovered that all the grass-roots were eaten up or gnawed through. They were able to roll up the whole grassy surface like a carpet; and they did so. I was sitting at the edge of the wood myself, looking on. The grass was gone and the hay and everything; and the field-mouse had done it." "Our cousin must be awfully hungry," said the house-mouse. "Or perhaps he has a big family." "Both," said the wood-mouse. "Both. He is awfully greedy and he always has the house full of children. Well, that doesn't concern us: it's his affair. But, when those silly men mix us up in it, lump us all together with Cousin Field-Mouse and persecute us and kill us for what he has done, I tell you, cousin, then it _does_ concern us!" "That's true," said the house-mouse. They sat on; and neither spoke. It was getting on towards evening; and both of them had to go to work when it grew dark. Summer was almost over, so the wood-mouse had begun to collect her winter-stores. She did not lie torpid like the hedgehog or the bat and she could not fly to Africa like the stork and the swallow, so she had to have her store-room filled, if she did not wish to suffer want. She had already collected a good deal of beech-mast. But the nuts were not ripe yet and, if she took them before they were ripe, they were no good to her. And the house-mouse also chose night for going to the larder. Even though her young mistress did nothing to her, nevertheless she dared not be over-impudent, but always waited until she was certain that she would not be disturbed. "Yes," said the wood-mouse, "we must start toiling for our daily bread again. At any rate, you are better off than I, cousin, for the present, as you don't have the winter to think about. You're snug indoors, close to the forester's larder." "I am," said the house-mouse. "And there is almost more in the larder in the winter than in the summer." "Yes, yes," said the wood-mouse. "Well, good-bye, cousin: if you meet the field-mouse, be sure to tell him what I said. I always stand by my word. And, if you can contrive some means of letting the forester know that there's a difference between mice and mice, so much the better. You are nearer to him than we are." "Wait a little longer, cousin," said the house-mouse. "After all, it's not dark enough yet for you to work; and I never go to the larder before my young lady has cleared away after supper. I've been thinking of what you were saying about the field-mouse and most of all of what you said about relations doing harm. For, you see, properly speaking, it's just the same indoors." "You don't say so!" said the wood-mouse. "I should never have thought that the field-mouse had the impudence to come in to you. I must hear more about that. Then it's in the garden that he is?" "No," said the house-mouse. "It's not the field-mouse at all. I don't know anything about him. I have never even set eyes on him, that I know of. But, as we know, we have another big cousin, called the rat." "I have heard a little about him," said the wood-mouse. "But I have never seen him. Is he of the same kind as the field-mouse?" "He is much worse," said the house-mouse. "To begin with, he is so awfully big. I should say he is as big as five fat mice put together. He is quite black, with a long, scaly tail and small ears. He has horrid teeth and a long tongue. And he is greedier than I know how to tell you. He plays just the same part in the house that the field-mouse does among your people. And what happens to you happens to me: I often get blamed for his mean tricks. Just think, one day last year, he bit the odd man in the nose as he lay sleeping one afternoon in the hayloft. He took quite a little bit of flesh, so that the man had to go to the doctor and walk about with a bandage for many days." "That's horrid," said the wood-mouse. "And it's quite unlike a mouse's nature. We are not beasts of prey, that I _do_ know. Do you really believe he's our cousin?" "He is indeed," said the house-mouse. "I know it; and there's no mistaking it either, when you see him. He is the perfect image of a mouse, though he is clumsier. But he is a disgrace to the family; and that's a fact. And fancy what happened. I was just outside the larder: I have a little waiting-hole there, where I sit and wait when I come too early and when my young lady is still in the kitchen. And I was sitting there on the evening it happened; I had been sitting there some time, for it looked as though my young lady was never going. I must tell you she was waiting for the odd man, who had ridden off to the doctor with his nose. He was to have his supper when he came home. He arrived at last and, while he sat there eating his food and talking to the young lady about what had happened, she said that those rats were most disgusting animals and ought to be exterminated in every possible way. 'Yes,' she said. 'I can't abide them for the life of me. And then they are so hideous to look at. They look quite wicked. But I must intercede for the dear little mice. I love them. I have a tiny one, whom I know well and am ever so fond of. I caught her one day in the sugar-basin, the little thief!' "'And didn't you kill her, miss?' asked the man. "'Why, no!' she said. 'I never thought of such a thing! I let her run away to her hole and now, every evening, I put a lump of sugar outside the hole for her. And, every morning, when I come to the dining-room, it's gone. But you mustn't tell father, Jens.' Jens promised that he would not. But he went on to say that mice and rats were one and the same kind of vermin all together and ought to be exterminated. Then the forester came in and agreed with Jens; and nothing that his daughter said to the contrary was of any use. The forester said that he would see and get a regular rat-catcher out here, who would lay poison for the lot of us. And all this is surely not my fault, but is due to that disgusting rat, who bit Jens in the nose. It is really no joke having a reprobate like that in the family, disgracing one's good name." "No," said the wood-mouse, "that's what I say. And how are we to inform the human beings of their mistake? I know no way of obtaining speech with them. Well, good-bye, cousin, and _au revoir_." "Good-bye, cousin, and _au revoir_ to you," said the house-mouse. Then the one went out into the wood, to forage for the winter, and the other into her young lady's larder. 3 Some time after, a great, big packing-case of groceries arrived at the forester's house from Copenhagen. Here ought to be enough to last all through the winter, the forester thought. And he belonged to the old school, who laid in their stores once a year at a fixed time and no other, and he had done so from the first year when he and his wife came to live in the forester's house. Now the packing-case was so big that the young lady and the odd man were at their wits' end to know what to do with it. It could not go into the house, for there was no door wide enough to admit it. It could not remain out in the yard either, for the young lady could not unpack it that day, as she happened to be very busy bottling plums. And, of course, she had to be present herself: there was no question about that. And it was beginning to look like rain. The forester said that it would certainly rain that night. He could feel it in his left shoulder, which was a barometer that never went wrong. "Can't we tumble it into the barn?" said the odd man. "It can stay there as long as need be, without hurting." So they tumbled it into the barn. And there it stood, in a corner. It remained there for five days. But, on the very first night, while the rain came pouring down, as the forester's left shoulder had foretold, a shocking thing happened. Suddenly, then and there, a queer sound began to come from the end of the packing-case that was nearest to the corner of the barn. It was a sort of gnawing and creaking, as though there were an animal inside. And it was soon proved that that was what it was. For, when the gnawing had lasted some time, a great, fat, brown rat came out of the case. The moment she appeared, a quantity of sugar came pouring over her. The rat did not so much as touch the sugar. She had had enough of that inside the case. She began at once to gnaw a hole in the floor, at a place where the boards were rather rotten, so that it was an easy job. The hole was soon ready and there was plenty of room for a family of rats under the boards. The rat immediately began to collect straw and took it down with her. When she had finished her work, she stopped and looked the house-mouse straight in the face. "Who in the name of wonder are you?" asked the house-mouse. "You have mousy ways and, if you were black, I should say you were a rat." "I am a rat," said the other. "Rats were black in the old days. The fashion now is to be brown. Black rats are quite out of date and are of no use to-day." "Oh, really!" said the house-mouse, circumspectly. "Well, I live out here in the country, and know nothing of what goes on in the great world beyond. Allow me to introduce myself. I am the house-mouse." "You needn't tell me that," said the rat. "I have seen many of your sort at Copenhagen. But what are you doing out here on the threshing-floor? I thought you kept to the kitchen and the larder." "So I do, as a rule," said the house-mouse. "But I am free to go where I please. And I can come through the kitchen-drain without getting wet. For it's raining terribly, let me tell you." "What of that?" said the rat. "Are you afraid of a little water? The more the better. I can swim like a fish, you know. I once swam across the harbour at Copenhagen; and, as a matter of fact, I don't feel well unless I have a little swim every day. I hope there's a decent gutter here?" "Ugh, yes, a horrid broad one!" said the mouse. "But I always go round it. I don't set foot in the kitchen-drain either, except when it's dry. To-day, I came to get a bit out of the new case of groceries. I heard my young lady say that it had arrived. And generally there is a bit here and there outside to pick up." "Certainly it has arrived," said the rat. "I ought to know, seeing that I came with it." "Did you come with the case?" cried the house-mouse, in surprise. "I did," said the rat. "I was down at the bottom when they began to pack it. It was half-dark, so they couldn't see me; and, of course, I did not make the slightest sound and did not dare to move, or else they would have discovered me and killed me. So gradually they packed everything on the top of me: sugar and coffee and tea and cinnamon and chocolate and starch and all sorts of groceries, until the case was full up. Then on with the lid and away with us to the station." "That must have been a nice journey," said the house-mouse, licking her lips. "It was," said the rat. "In a way. The fare was good enough and ready to hand, as you can see, and no one to share it with and no one to disturb you. But the tiresome side of the business was that I had just been married and was soon to have my babies. So I was particularly frightened lest they should arrive during the journey. However, it went pretty well and we escaped all right, as you see, because the case was not unpacked at once. Well, even if it had been, I daresay I should have managed to jump past them. But it's better as it is. I have fixed up a nice home for myself here, under the floor of the barn, and the youngsters may come as soon as they like. Would you care to see where I live?" "Thank you," said the mouse. "I should prefer first to see a little of that delicious sugar running about. What a lot of it there is!" "Eat away," said the rat. "There's plenty of it. I'll stand treat. But I may as well tell you that later on, when I am properly settled, you and I had better keep to our own parts. I mean, of course, it might happen that I should pop across to the larder, when I feel inclined and have occasion to. But I strongly advise you not to come here. And you must be particularly careful to avoid me when I'm hungry. I can't answer for what might happen if I met you." "Well, you would never eat me!" said the mouse, sitting and licking the sugar. "Goodness me, how delicious this is!" "Of course, I should eat you," replied the rat. "Up at Copenhagen, one day, we ate a kitten." "A kitten?" The mouse was so frightened that she stopped licking altogether. "Yes, certainly," said the rat. "It was quite simple; and not one of us had the stomach-ache. That fear of the cats is very much overdone. They can do nothing, so long as you eat them while they are small." The house-mouse stared at her in dismay: "Cousin," she said, "you're terrible. I'm afraid of you." "That's very sensible of you," said the rat. "And you mustn't call me cousin. I have never troubled about distant connections; and it would only make it unpleasant if I were to eat you one day. But, for the present, I have had my fill, as I said; so you run no risk." The house-mouse then visited the rat in her new home, which she thought ever so nice, though a little too large from a mouse's point of view. After that, she said good-bye and went back to her own place. But, during the next few days, she came across to the barn every night and had her share of the good things in the packing-case. The rat gnawed the hole bigger, so that more came rushing out, always on the side turned towards the corner, where no one could suspect it. The floor overflowed with dainties; and they ate away like anything. On the fourth day, the rat had her children, seven fine little ones. "They look pretty enough to be mice," said the house-mouse. "Heaven forbid!" said the rat. "If they don't become proper rats soon, I will eat them without hesitation." That night, the house-mouse took a large piece of cinnamon across with her; for she had heard her young lady say that the case must be opened shortly, so she was able to calculate that the fun would soon be over. "Aren't you afraid of being discovered?" she asked the rat. "A rat is never afraid," replied the rat. "If she were afraid, my good girl, she would not be a rat." "It must be strange to feel like that," said the house-mouse. "A house-mouse is always afraid. If she were not afraid, I expect she would not be a mouse." "Very likely," said the rat. "But you had better go now. And remember our arrangement that, when the case is gone, it's all over with friendship and relationship and the rest of it." "All right," said the mouse. "I shall make a point of keeping away. But then you must always remember that it was you who bit the hole in the case and stood treat with all this. If you hadn't come, I should only have licked a bit on the outside, as usual." "You're a fool!" said the rat. "Good-bye." 4 The next day--it was ten o'clock in the morning: they remembered it many years after at the forester's--the young lady and the odd man came across to the barn to unpack the case. The man rolled it across the threshing-floor; and, as soon as it was outside, they saw what had happened. Everything rolled out helter-skelter and higgledy-piggledy: coffee, tea, cinnamon, spices, sugar-candy, all without end and all mixed up together and spoilt. There was not a bag but had a hole in it. They thought, at first, that it was the grocer's fault for packing the things badly; and the young lady was so angry with him that he would have been very much hurt if he had heard all the things that she said. But then they discovered the hole in one of the corners and soon saw that some one had been there and wrought havoc. "There must have been rats here," said the forester's daughter. "There's no question about it: there have been rats here." "There are no rats left in the place," said the man. "We killed the last a fortnight ago. And all their holes are stopped with broken glass; and we laid poison among their tracks; and every bit of poison is eaten up; so you can be easy in your mind, miss, about the rats. They are done with. But some one has been here, that is sure enough. And I am certain it's that artful mouse whom you spoil by giving her sugar every evening." "Never!" said the young lady. "My little mouse could not possibly be such an ungrateful wretch as that." The odd man stuck to his opinion and she stuck to hers. The forester came and, of course, sided with the man. They were all three angry and most of all the forester. For a new case had to be written for and he would have to pay for it. And so he resolved that, this time, the rat-catcher should be sent for in earnest. The odd man suggested a new cat, but that the forester would not hear about, so long as the old one lived. In the meantime, they rescued what they could and the young lady carried the things into the larder, right past the nose of the mouse, who was sitting in her hole: "They are speaking harm of you, my dear little Mouse," she said. "And now there's a horrid rat-catcher coming, who will try to hurt you, if he can. But I'm sure it was not you who did it and I will see if I can help you." As she spoke, she saw a piece of cinnamon which the mouse had left lying outside her hole. She took it up and examined it and, as they had not a scrap of cinnamon in the house, she knew at once that the mouse had been at the case after all. She was so much upset that she cried. For she felt that life was not worth living if she could not even trust her own dear little mouse to whom she had been so kind: "For shame, for shame!" she cried. "See how deceitful you are. But you shall have no more sugar from me, you can be sure of that." But the mouse sat in her hole and cried also. First because of the sugar which she was not to get any longer. Next because of the rat-catcher who was to come. And then because of the kind young lady, who was so unjust to her. For, though she had taken the cinnamon, it was not she who had gnawed a hole in the packing-case. And it was too much to expect of an ordinary, plain little mouse that she should say no when a rat invited her to such a feast. But she couldn't talk to her young lady and explain it to her; and so, of course, she would never get any more sugar in future. Over in the barn, the rat lay snug and warm in her nest. Her young ones grew from day to day. By the time that they had been a month in the world, they were big, greedy rats who did credit to their mamma and scooted about in every direction. "You were right, miss, there are rats here," said the odd man. "But they are brown ones, who are much worse than the black ones that were here before. I am half-inclined to believe that they came in the packing-case from Copenhagen. I have never been there, but my cousin, who is in service in the town, tells me that there are an awful lot of them." "It's quite possible," said the forester's daughter. "But I know that my little mouse had something to do with it; so I don't defend her any longer and I don't give her any sugar either." "That's right," said the odd man. "For rats and mice are one and the same thing; and they are noxious vermin, the whole lot of them. If we let them get the upper hand of us, they would soon eat us out of house and home." "The rat-catcher is coming on Thursday," said the forester. "Jens must drive to the station to fetch him. And the young man from the School of Forestry, who is to be my assistant, is coming by the same train. I am too old now and can't look after the wood as I ought to." 5 More time passed and it was winter. All the birds that ever went away had gone. The leaves had fallen from the trees; it had frozen and it had snowed. The wood had been quite white and beautiful and then again sloppy and wretched to look at, for that's what winter is in Denmark. The forester seldom went out into the wood since his assistant had arrived. He generally sat in his warm room, in his old arm-chair, making up his accounts and thinking of the old days when he was young and active and never bothered whether it was warm or cold. He was also very fond of talking about that time. And, although he had talked about it more than once or twice before, they forgave him, because he was so old, and listened to him patiently. Jens attended to his work, which was not very heavy in the winter. The forester's daughter spent her time between the kitchen and the larder. The rat-catcher had been and gone, after doing his business and receiving his pay. Forty black rats had been drawn from every hole and corner in the barn and threshing-floor, but only two brown ones--and they were quite young still--and no mice. But, as soon as the rat-catcher had gone, the old tom-cat died of sheer old age and laziness. He was buried in the garden with great pomp and ceremony. But, even before he was committed to the grave, Jens brought a young cat over from the keeper's; and there was every reason to hope that she was of a different sort from the old one. The forester, it was true, said that she was the very image of what the old one was when she was young. And that too may have been right enough, for one can't judge youth by old age. This much, in any case, was certain, that she went hunting. The odd man had said that she must have her morning milk and nothing more before she caught a mouse or a rat. And so it stood. Whenever she showed herself for the first time, after her morning milk, she was asked: "Where is your mouse or your rat?" And gradually she grew so used to this that, as soon as she was asked, she ran off and fetched the mouse or the rat, which she had been careful not to eat before. Then, as a reward, she received a scrap of bacon, or something else that was left over from breakfast. But, on days when she had no mouse or rat to show, then she received no bacon either. That was as sure as March in Lent. The young lady no longer interested herself in the matter, but left it all to the odd man. Whenever she caught sight of the hole in the dining-room wainscot, she sighed and said: "You naughty, naughty Mouse, to abuse my trust in you so shamefully! I was good to you and gave you sugar every day; and you stole the cinnamon. Now I have been good to you again and taken away the poison which the rat-catcher put outside your hole. What advantage do you propose to take of me this time? But you can, if you like. I don't trouble about you now. I can't help you if the new cat gets hold of you some day: she is quite a different sort of cat from the old one and she will catch you yet, you'll see. It's your own fault." When she talked like that, as she often did, it was hard for the little mouse to sit inside the wainscot and listen and not to be able to defend herself. She would so much have liked to tell her young lady that she was not quite so bad as she thought. She would so much have liked to have her little lumps of sugar again. For times were shocking, since the rat-catcher had been. She hardly dared eat a thing, for fear lest there should be a hidden poison in it. And she could hardly go anywhere, because of the new cat. But she could not talk to the young lady. Nor did she dare venture across the barn. She would have liked to talk to her cousin from Copenhagen, but, one day when she went through the kitchen-drain, the new cat was sitting at the other end and was within an ace of eating her. So she had to be content with poor fare and a bad conscience. 5 Then, one morning, the house-mouse went out through the hole to the wood. It was at the time when the cat got her morning milk, so she thought there was a chance of peace and no danger. She ran a good way off over the snow, right to the foot of the big beech, where she knew that Cousin Wood-Mouse had her nest. Then she squeaked three times in a particular manner which only mice understand and which means that they would like to talk to the individual concerned. And, when she had waited some time, sure enough the wood-mouse appeared: "Good-morning, cousin," said the wood-mouse. "To what do I owe the honour of this visit? It is ages since I saw you last." "Good-morning, cousin, and the same to you," said the house-mouse. "One doesn't go out for one's pleasure at this time of year." "No, indeed, cousin," said the wood-mouse. "I always stay indoors, except just to take a mouthful of fresh air and throw out the shells. Look, here is my dust-heap." Quite a little pile of nut-and acorn-shells lay outside the mouse-hole. The house-mouse looked at it and sighed: "What a lot you've eaten already!" she said. "And I daresay you have a great deal more down there in your store-room." "No, that I haven't!" said the wood-mouse. "I shall be glad if I can get through the rest of the winter on half-rations. If my own child were suffering want, I could not give it so much as a nut. Times are awfully bad." "So they are," said the house-mouse. "My case is the same as yours. You need not fear, however, that I have come to beg. I have only come to have a chat with you. Can't we go into your place for a little while?" The wood-mouse reflected a bit. She very much objected to having the other down and letting her see all the beautiful food that lay stored up below. So she shook her head with decision: "Not so early in the morning, cousin," she said. "In an hour or two you will be welcome, if you dare go out then and risk meeting the cat. But the rooms haven't been done yet. I know how neat and particular you house-mice are, so I should be ashamed to show you my home before it's quite clean and tidy. I should prefer you to wait until the winter's over, when I have had my spring-cleaning." "Oh, very well!" said the house-mouse. "Then we'll stay here, though it's horribly cold sitting on one's bare tail in the snow. As I said, I only wanted to talk to you a bit. It's about the family. I don't know if you have heard that a cousin of ours has arrived from Copenhagen?" "No, I haven't," said the wood-mouse. "What's he called? Is he a smart fellow?" "She's called the brown rat. It's a she," replied the house-mouse. "And she really was very smart at first. She came in the packing-case in which we get our groceries every year from the shop in Copenhagen. It is a great big case, full of the most delicious things you can think of. She had only found her way into it by mistake and so travelled across with it." "That's what you may call travelling first-class," said the wood-mouse, laughing. "One may indeed," said the house-mouse. "I should have no objection to travelling round the world in a packing-case like that. However, she was a young bride expecting her babies every day. She therefore at once made herself a home in the barn; and the children arrived four days after." "Oh, yes!" said the wood-mouse. "There are always plenty of children and there are always more and more coming." "That is so," said the house-mouse. "But now hear how things went. At first, Cousin Rat was extremely amiable. She treated me to sugar and cinnamon and flour and sugar-candy and so forth during the whole of the four days. You must know that she had gnawed herself out of the case, which stood in the barn waiting to be unpacked. Well, I accepted her invitation and ate away. Wouldn't you have done the same?" "Certainly," said the wood-mouse. "One must never offend people by declining a kind offer. And when it happens to be a cousin ... and the goods are hers...." "Well, they weren't exactly," said the house-mouse. "The case really belonged to the forester." "According to that, nothing is ours," said the wood-mouse. "I work it out differently. I say that the mast and nuts out here are mine. And the larder in the forester's house is yours. And, in the same way, the case in which the rat arrived was hers. But go on and tell me how things went." "Things went very badly," said the house-mouse. "For four days, we lived on the fat of the land. But, on the fifth, the young mistress and the man started unpacking." "Oh!" said the wood-mouse. "Then the fun was over, I expect?" "It was, cousin," said the house-mouse. "But that would have been all. Nothing lasts for ever in this world: not even a chest of groceries from Copenhagen, though it was the biggest I ever saw and simply bursting with good things. But, when they discovered that some one had been at it, they were angry; and we all got blamed for it, you see." "And it was the rat who did it," said the wood-mouse. "That was really hard on you." "So it was," said the house-mouse. "They would not believe it was the rats, because they had killed so many of them after the rats had bitten Jens' nose. And so it must be the mice: that went without saying. To judge by what I have heard them talk about since, the young mistress stood up for me as long as she could, but the forester and his man both said that, with mice and rats, it was six of one and half-a-dozen of the other." "Yes, that's the worst of it," said the wood-mouse. "It's just as with me and the field-mouse. We have to suffer for our relations' misdeeds. Well ... and didn't your mistress find out how things stood?" "She did not," said the wood-mouse. "Taken all round, things went about as badly as they could with me. You see, I had heard them say that the case was to be unpacked. And then there was some nice cinnamon, which I am so fond of. So, on the last night, I resolved to drag a piece over to my place, so as to have a bit to spare. I did so and managed to get it through the drain all right. But then it was so big that I had a difficulty in dragging it any farther. So I nibbled it into two pieces. One of these I got right down into my hole and the other just up to the hole. But then the door slammed and I was frightened and dropped the cinnamon and ran away." "Well, you fetched it afterwards, I suppose?" asked the wood-mouse. "You said it was lying outside the hole." "So it was," said the house-mouse. "But now I'll tell you how badly things went. When I got down into the hole, I fell asleep. I don't know how it is, but cinnamon always makes me so beautifully sleepy. And then I have the most wonderful dreams about bacon and the very nicest things I can think of. So I fell asleep and slept and slept and dreamt beautifully. When I awoke at last, it was broad daylight, as I saw the moment I put my nose outside the hole. The cinnamon was there all right. But the mistress was in the room, so I dared not take it. And, when she went out into the kitchen, she left the door open, a thing she never does as a rule. And, all the time, she was walking up and down. And then they began to unpack the case and she put the things away in the cupboard and the sideboard. And then she suddenly stopped in front of my hole, where the cinnamon was, you know, and then, of course, I was found out. She was very much distressed at my deceit, as she called it, and said that she had done with me and would never give me any more sugar. And, since that day, I have not had a single lump. It's a terrible loss to me." "So it is," said the wood-mouse. "But what can you do? You can't explain the thing to her, you know." "No," said the house-mouse. "I can't do that. And now the rat-catcher has been and a new cat has come, who is a regular demon at her business. It's a perfect miracle that I have escaped so far. I half wish I were dead. The good days in the forester's house are over; and they won't come back either. It's hard, when one was looking forward to having a fairly comfortable time in one's old age." "Oh, you needn't think it's much better out here!" said the wood-mouse. "There's a new young forester come; and he's a terror!" "I know," said the house-mouse. "He came down with the rat-catcher. Jens fetched them at the station." "But the rat-catcher went back again," said the wood-mouse. "The young forester stayed here and is still here; and I don't expect he will ever go. He intends to grapple seriously with the mouse-plague, as he calls it, meaning the field-mouse. The mast and acorns are being gathered earlier than usual, so that we may starve to death. He wants to let cats loose in the woods, I heard him say. And owls are to be imported, as if there were not enough of them before! And foxes and martens and buzzards and polecats and ermines are to be preserved for five years. It will be a fine police-force." "Yes," said the house-mouse, "there are bad times in store for all our family." They sat for a while and idled, each wrapped in her sad reflections. The house-mouse felt horribly cold, because of her bare tail, and the wood-mouse wished her cousin would go away, so that she might run down to her warm nest. "Tell me," said the wood-mouse. "How is our cousin from Copenhagen doing over in the barn? Haven't you talked to her?" "No, I haven't," said the house-mouse. "She was particularly friendly when we had the packing-case: indeed, she even asked me down to see her rooms. But she warned me not to come over there otherwise. She said that I might run the risk of her eating me. She and some other brown rats once ate a kitten, she said. And I could see by the look on her face that it was true." "Oh dear, oh dear!" said the wood-mouse. "But perhaps the rat-catcher or the new cat has caught her?" "No," said the house-mouse. "She escaped; and so did most of her children. And they have multiplied in such a way that you simply can't turn for rats, Jens says." "Then, you'll see, they will forget you all right," said the wood-mouse, "if only you are careful and discreet." "Jens will forget me, perhaps," said the house-mouse, sadly. "But the mistress will never forget me, because she believes I deceived her. And the new cat has set eyes on my hole and she is on the look-out. Some day, sooner or later, I shall be eaten up." "Yes, it's awfully sad," said the wood-mouse. "But what can one do...? Hullo, who's coming now?" The house-mouse turned round and looked in the same direction as the wood-mouse. A black animal came running over the snow. "I positively believe it is our cousin the black rat," said the house-mouse. "I didn't think there were any of them left. Yes, there's no doubt about it, it's the black rat." "Good afternoon, cousin," said the wood-mouse and backed down into her hole until only her nose peeped out. "Welcome to the country. This is the first time, so far as I know, that I have had the pleasure of seeing you out here. You don't care much for nature, I believe." "Give me food! Give me food!" screamed the black rat. "I'm awfully sorry that you are hungry," said the wood-mouse. "Unfortunately I have just eaten my last nut. As you see, here's the shell. The house-mouse had been downstairs calling on me and can bear witness that there's not a bite or a sup to be found in my place." She winked at the house-mouse to confirm the truth of her fib. But the house-mouse could not take her eyes off the black rat, who had lain down in the snow and was moaning piteously: "You're catching cold, cousin," she said kindly. "You had better go back to the barn again. It's warmer there." "I really don't care what becomes of me," said the rat. "To tell you the truth, it's all the same to me whether I die in one way or another. You say I ought to go back to the barn. That's where I've come from. There's no existing there for those loathsome rats from Copenhagen. They call themselves rats, but I don't believe that they are rats at all. I am sure they're a sort of fish by the way they swim. And the way they eat! And the way they multiply! They have children once a week, I do believe. It's disgusting." "It certainly is," said the wood-mouse. "Cousin House-Mouse and I were just sitting and talking about it, cousin. But what's to be done, cousin? I am hard pressed by the field-mouse and get the blame for all his villainy. Some time ago, the house-mouse had to put up with harm for your sake, because you bit the odd man in the nose or else ate and drank things. Now one has come who is stronger than you; and so it's your turn. Besides, it seems to me that you are big enough to send the rat home to where she came from." "Big enough?" said the rat. "Big enough? That great brown brute is bigger than I am! And then there are so many of them! I am the last of my race. When I am dead, there will be no more black rats in this part of the country. And now I am going to die." "Stop a bit! Cousin!" said the house-mouse. "Let us talk it over first!... Perhaps we can hit upon something or other!..." But it was too late. The black rat stretched out her four legs and was dead and gone. "Lord!" said the wood-mouse. "To think that she should go and die like that before our eyes! If you fall to the cat now and I to the owl and if the young forester destroys the field-mouse, then there won't be a single member of all our big family left." "Yes, there will be: I'm here," said a deep, gruff voice close by. "Gracious!" said the house-mouse and jumped right into the air. "There's the brown rat!" And there he was. The brown rat stood and mumbled with his snout and sniffed at the dead black cousin, while keeping an eye upon the wood-mouse, who retreated a little farther still into her hole. [Illustration] "Good-afternoon, cousin," said the wood-mouse. "Welcome to the country. I hope your outing will agree with you better than our black cousin's did with her. For she fell down and died where she lay." "Cousin me no cousins!" said the brown rat. "It's awful the way you people out here in the country brag about relationship. What's become of the house-mouse?" "She's run home," said the wood-mouse. "I believe she was afraid of you, which surprises me, for you look so good and kind." "Thank you," said the brown rat. "I always appreciate a friendly word. I'm as hungry as the dickens. Have you something or other you can treat me to? I don't care what: I eat anything." "Very sorry," said the wood-mouse. "Unfortunately, I have eaten up everything and have to starve myself for the remainder of the winter. The house-mouse got a couple of nuts out of me and the black rat the rest of my store. If you had come earlier, there would have been a morsel for you as well, perhaps." "I think I will pay you a visit in your rooms," said the brown rat. "Or you can come up here for a bit and chat to me. I have never seen you, though we are cousins." "Oh, we have become cousins now?" said the wood-mouse, laughing. "A little while ago, we were not. But thank you all the same. My hole, unfortunately, is too narrow for you to get through. And I don't feel equal to going out again to-day. I should catch my death of cold. As for my appearance, you have only to think of a pretty little, nice, fat mouse. Then you have me." "Yes, if only I had you!" said the brown rat. "Then I should eat you straight away. But you are too clever for me." Then he began to nibble at the dead black rat. "What's this?" said the wood-mouse. "Are you eating your dead cousin?" "Yes, I can't help her not being alive!" said the rat. A little after, the black rat was gone, bones and all. The brown rat sat and licked his lips. Then he ran home to the forester's house. The wood-mouse sat in her hole and thought it all over: "Well, bless my soul, after all, what's the objection? The house-mouse will fall to the cat and I to the owl or the fox and the field-mouse to the young forester. Whereas the black rat has remained in the family." [Illustration: THE END] BRISTOL: BURLEIGH LTD., AT THE BURLEIGH PRESS ---- Transcriber's note: In the original, illustrations with captions were detailed as 'facing page', that has not been replicated in this etext ---- 
596	----	RIVERS TO THE SEA BY SARA TEASDALE To ERNST CONTENTS PART I SPRING NIGHT THE FLIGHT NEW LOVE AND OLD THE LOOK SPRING THE LIGHTED WINDOW THE KISS SWANS THE OLD MAID FROM THE WOOLWORTH TOWER AT NIGHT THE YEARS PEACE APRIL COME MOODS APRIL SONG MAY DAY CROWNED TO A CASTILIAN SONG BROADWAY A WINTER BLUEJAY IN A RESTAURANT JOY IN A RAILROAD STATION IN THE TRAIN TO ONE AWAY SONG DEEP IN THE NIGHT THE INDIA WHARF I SHALL NOT CARE DESERT POOLS LONGING PITY AFTER PARTING ENOUGH ALCHEMY FEBRUARY MORNING MAY NIGHT DUSK IN JUNE LOVE-FREE SUMMER NIGHT, RIVERSIDE IN A SUBWAY STATION AFTER LOVE DOORYARD ROSES A PRAYER PART II INDIAN SUMMER THE SEA WIND THE CLOUD THE POOR HOUSE NEW YEAR'S DAWN-BROADWAY THE STAR DOCTORS THE INN OF EARTH IN THE CARPENTER'S SHOP THE CARPENTER'S SON THE MOTHER OF A POET IN MEMORIAM F. O. S TWILIGHT SWALLOW FLIGHT THOUGHTS TO DICK, ON HIS SIXTH BIRTHDAY TO ROSE THE FOUNTAIN THE ROSE DREAMS "I AM NOT YOURS" PIERROT'S SONG NIGHT IN ARIZONA DUSK IN WAR TIME SPRING IN WAR TIME WHILE I MAY DEBT FROM THE NORTH THE LIGHTS OF NEW YORK SEA LONGING THE RIVER LEAVES THE ANSWER PART III OVER THE ROOFS A CRY CHANCE IMMORTAL AFTER DEATH TESTAMENT GIFTS PART IV FROM THE SEA VIGNETTES OVERSEAS PART V SAPPHO ---------------------------------- I SPRING NIGHT THE park is filled with night and fog, The veils are drawn about the world, The drowsy lights along the paths Are dim and pearled. Gold and gleaming the empty streets, Gold and gleaming the misty lake, The mirrored lights like sunken swords, Glimmer and shake. Oh, is it not enough to be Here with this beauty over me? My throat should ache with praise, and I Should kneel in joy beneath the sky. Oh, beauty are you not enough? Why am I crying after love With youth, a singing voice and eyes To take earth's wonder with surprise? Why have I put off my pride, Why am I unsatisfied, I for whom the pensive night Binds her cloudy hair with light, I for whom all beauty burns Like incense in a million urns? Oh, beauty, are you not enough? Why am I crying after love? THE FLIGHT LOOK back with longing eyes and know that I will follow, Lift me up in your love as a light wind lifts a swallow, Let our flight be far in sun or windy rain-- BUT WHAT IF I HEARD MY FIRST LOVE CALLING ME AGAIN? Hold me on your heart as the brave sea holds the foam, Take me far away to the hills that hide your home; Peace shall thatch the roof and love shall latch the door-- BUT WHAT IF I HEARD MY FIRST LOVE CALLING ME ONCE MORE? NEW LOVE AND OLD IN my heart the old love Struggled with the new; It was ghostly waking All night thru. Dear things, kind things, That my old love said, Ranged themselves reproachfully Round my bed. But I could not heed them, For I seemed to see The eyes of my new love Fixed on me. Old love, old love, How can I be true? Shall I be faithless to myself Or to you? THE LOOK STREPHON kissed me in the spring, Robin in the fall, But Colin only looked at me And never kissed at all. Strephon's kiss was lost in jest, Robin's lost in play, But the kiss in Colin's eyes Haunts me night and day. SPRING IN Central Park the lovers sit, On every hilly path they stroll, Each thinks his love is infinite, And crowns his soul. But we are cynical and wise, We walk a careful foot apart, You make a little joke that tries To hide your heart. Give over, we have laughed enough; Oh dearest and most foolish friend, Why do you wage a war with love To lose your battle in the end? THE LIGHTED WINDOW HE SAID: "In the winter dusk When the pavements were gleaming with rain, I walked thru a dingy street Hurried, harassed, Thinking of all my problems that never are solved. Suddenly out of the mist, a flaring gas-jet Shone from a huddled shop. I saw thru the bleary window A mass of playthings: False-faces hung on strings, Valentines, paper and tinsel, Tops of scarlet and green, Candy, marbles, jacks-- A confusion of color Pathetically gaudy and cheap. All of my boyhood Rushed back. Once more these things were treasures Wildly desired. With covetous eyes I looked again at the marbles, The precious agates, the pee-wees, the chinies-- Then I passed on. In the winter dusk, The pavements were gleaming with rain; There in the lighted window I left my boyhood." THE KISS BEFORE YOU kissed me only winds of heaven Had kissed me, and the tenderness of rain-- Now you have come, how can I care for kisses Like theirs again? I sought the sea, she sent her winds to meet me, They surged about me singing of the south-- I turned my head away to keep still holy Your kiss upon my mouth. And swift sweet rains of shining April weather Found not my lips where living kisses are; I bowed my head lest they put out my glory As rain puts out a star. I am my love's and he is mine forever, Sealed with a seal and safe forevermore-- Think you that I could let a beggar enter Where a king stood before? SWANS NIGHT is over the park, and a few brave stars Look on the lights that link it with chains of gold, The lake bears up their reflection in broken bars That seem too heavy for tremulous water to hold. We watch the swans that sleep in a shadowy place, And now and again one wakes and uplifts its head; How still you are--your gaze is on my face-- We watch the swans and never a word is said. THE OLD MAID I SAW her in a Broadway car, The woman I might grow to be; I felt my lover look at her And then turn suddenly to me. Her hair was dull and drew no light And yet its color was as mine; Her eyes were strangely like my eyes Tho' love had never made them shine. Her body was a thing grown thin, Hungry for love that never came; Her soul was frozen in the dark Unwarmed forever by love's flame. I felt my lover look at her And then turn suddenly to me,-- His eyes were magic to defy The woman I shall never be. FROM THE WOOLWORTH TOWER VIVID with love, eager for greater beauty Out of the night we come Into the corridor, brilliant and warm. A metal door slides open, And the lift receives us. Swiftly, with sharp unswerving flight The car shoots upward, And the air, swirling and angry, Howls like a hundred devils. Past the maze of trim bronze doors, Steadily we ascend. I cling to you Conscious of the chasm under us, And a terrible whirring deafens my ears. The flight is ended. We pass thru a door leading onto the ledge-- Wind, night and space Oh terrible height Why have we sought you? Oh bitter wind with icy invisible wings Why do you beat us? Why would you bear us away? We look thru the miles of air, The cold blue miles between us and the city, Over the edge of eternity we look On all the lights, A thousand times more numerous than the stars; Oh lines and loops of light in unwound chains That mark for miles and miles The vast black mazy cobweb of the streets; Near us clusters and splashes of living gold That change far off to bluish steel Where the fragile lights on the Jersey shore Tremble like drops of wind-stirred dew. The strident noises of the city Floating up to us Are hallowed into whispers. Ferries cross thru the darkness Weaving a golden thread into the night, Their whistles weird shadows of sound. We feel the millions of humanity beneath us,-- The warm millions, moving under the roofs, Consumed by their own desires; Preparing food, Sobbing alone in a garret, With burning eyes bending over a needle, Aimlessly reading the evening paper, Dancing in the naked light of the café, Laying out the dead, Bringing a child to birth-- The sorrow, the torpor, the bitterness, the frail joy Come up to us Like a cold fog wrapping us round. Oh in a hundred years Not one of these blood-warm bodies But will be worthless as clay. The anguish, the torpor, the toil Will have passed to other millions Consumed by the same desires. Ages will come and go, Darkness will blot the lights And the tower will be laid on the earth. The sea will remain Black and unchanging, The stars will look down Brilliant and unconcerned. Beloved, Tho' sorrow, futility, defeat Surround us, They cannot bear us down. Here on the abyss of eternity Love has crowned us For a moment Victors. AT NIGHT WE are apart; the city grows quiet between us, She hushes herself, for midnight makes heavy her eyes, The tangle of traffic is ended, the cars are empty, Five streets divide us, and on them the moonlight lies. Oh are you asleep, or lying awake, my lover? Open your dreams to my love and your heart to my words, I send you my thoughts-the air between us is laden, My thoughts fly in at your window, a flock of wild birds. THE YEARS TO-NIGHT I close my eyes and see A strange procession passing me-- The years before I saw your face Go by me with a wistful grace; They pass, the sensitive shy years, As one who strives to dance, half blind with tears. The years went by and never knew That each one brought me nearer you; Their path was narrow and apart And yet it led me to your heart-- Oh sensitive shy years, oh lonely years, That strove to sing with voices drowned in tears. PEACE PEACE flows into me AS the tide to the pool by the shore; It is mine forevermore, It ebbs not back like the sea. I am the pool of blue That worships the vivid sky; My hopes were heaven-high, They are all fulfilled in you. I am the pool of gold When sunset burns and dies,-- You are my deepening skies, Give me your stars to hold. APRIL THE roofs are shining from the rain, The sparrows twitter as they fly, And with a windy April grace The little clouds go by. Yet the back-yards are bare and brown With only one unchanging tree-- I could not be so sure of Spring Save that it sings in me. COME COME, when the pale moon like a petal Floats in the pearly dusk of spring, Come with arms outstretched to take me, Come with lips pursed up to cling. Come, for life is a frail moth flying Caught in the web of the years that pass, And soon we two, so warm and eager Will be as the gray stones in the grass. MOODS I AM the still rain falling, Too tired for singing mirth-- Oh, be the green fields calling, Oh, be for me the earth! I am the brown bird pining To leave the nest and fly-- Oh, be the fresh cloud shining, Oh, be for me the sky! APRIL SONG WILLOW in your April gown Delicate and gleaming, Do you mind in years gone by All my dreaming? Spring was like a call to me That I could not answer, I was chained to loneliness, I, the dancer. Willow, twinkling in the sun, Still your leaves and hear me, I can answer spring at last, Love is near me! MAY DAY THE shining line of motors, The swaying motor-bus, The prancing dancing horses Are passing by for us. The sunlight on the steeple, The toys we stop to see, The smiling passing people Are all for you and me. "I love you and I love you!"-- "And oh, I love you, too!"-- "All of the flower girl's lilies Were only grown for you!" Fifth Avenue and April And love and lack of care-- The world is mad with music Too beautiful to bear. CROWNED I WEAR a crown invisible and clear, And go my lifted royal way apart Since you have crowned me softly in your heart With love that is half ardent, half austere; And as a queen disguised might pass anear The bitter crowd that barters in a mart, Veiling her pride while tears of pity start, I hide my glory thru a jealous fear. My crown shall stay a sweet and secret thing Kept pure with prayer at evensong and morn, And when you come to take it from my head, I shall not weep, nor will a word be said, But I shall kneel before you, oh my king, And bind my brow forever with a thorn. TO A CASTILIAN SONG WE held the book together timidly, Whose antique music in an alien tongue Once rose among the dew-drenched vines that hung Beneath a high Castilian balcony. I felt the lute strings' ancient ecstasy, And while he read, my love-filled heart was stung, And throbbed, as where an ardent bird has clung The branches tremble on a blossomed tree. Oh lady for whose sake the song was made, Laid long ago in some still cypress shade, Divided from the man who longed for thee, Here in a land whose name he never heard, His song brought love as April brings the bird, And not a breath divides my love from me! BROADWAY THIS is the quiet hour; the theaters Have gathered in their crowds, and steadily The million lights blaze on for few to see, Robbing the sky of stars that should be hers. A woman waits with bag and shabby furs, A somber man drifts by, and only we Pass up the street unwearied, warm and free, For over us the olden magic stirs. Beneath the liquid splendor of the lights We live a little ere the charm is spent; This night is ours, of all the golden nights, The pavement an enchanted palace floor, And Youth the player on the viol, who sent A strain of music thru an open door. A WINTER BLUEJAY CRISPLY the bright snow whispered, Crunching beneath our feet; Behind us as we walked along the parkway, Our shadows danced, Fantastic shapes in vivid blue. Across the lake the skaters Flew to and fro, With sharp turns weaving A frail invisible net. In ecstasy the earth Drank the silver sunlight; In ecstasy the skaters Drank the wine of speed; In ecstasy we laughed Drinking the wine of love. Had not the music of our joy Sounded its highest note? But no, For suddenly, with lifted eyes you said, "Oh look!" There, on the black bough of a snow flecked maple, Fearless and gay as our love, A bluejay cocked his crest! Oh who can tell the range of joy Or set the bounds of beauty? IN A RESTAURANT THE darkened street was muffled with the snow, The falling flakes had made your shoulders white, And when we found a shelter from the night Its glamor fell upon us like a blow. The clash of dishes and the viol and bow Mingled beneath the fever of the light. The heat was full of savors, and the bright Laughter of women lured the wine to flow. A little child ate nothing while she sat Watching a woman at a table there Lean to a kiss beneath a drooping hat. The hour went by, we rose and turned to go, The somber street received us from the glare, And once more on your shoulders fell the snow. JOY I AM wild, I will sing to the trees, I will sing to the stars in the sky, I love, I am loved, he is mine, Now at last I can die! I am sandaled with wind and with flame, I have heart-fire and singing to give, I can tread on the grass or the stars, Now at last I can live! IN A RAILROAD STATION WE stood in the shrill electric light, Dumb and sick in the whirling din We who had all of love to say And a single second to say it in. "Good-by!" "Good-by!"--you turned to go, I felt the train's slow heavy start, You thought to see me cry, but oh My tears were hidden in my heart. IN THE TRAIN FIELDS beneath a quilt of snow From which the rocks and stubble peep, And in the west a shy white star That shivers as it wakes from sleep. The restless rumble of the train, The drowsy people in the car, Steel blue twilight in the world, And in my heart a timid star. TO ONE AWAY I HEARD a cry in the night, A thousand miles it came, Sharp as a flash of light, My name, my name! It was your voice I heard, You waked and loved me so-- I send you back this word, I know, I know! SONG Love me with your whole heart Or give no love to me, Half-love is a poor thing, Neither bond nor free. You must love me gladly Soul and body too, Or else find a new love, And good-by to you. DEEP IN THE NIGHT DEEP in the night the cry of a swallow, Under the stars he flew, Keen as pain was his call to follow Over the world to you. Love in my heart is a cry forever Lost as the swallow's flight, Seeking for you and never, never Stilled by the stars at night. THE INDIA WHARF HERE in the velvet stillness The wide sown fields fall to the faint horizon, Sleeping in starlight. . . . A year ago we walked in the jangling city Together . . . . forgetful. One by one we crossed the avenues, Rivers of light, roaring in tumult, And came to the narrow, knotted streets. Thru the tense crowd We went aloof, ecstatic, walking in wonder, Unconscious of our motion. Forever the foreign people with dark, deep-seeing eyes Passed us and passed. Lights and foreign words and foreign faces, I forgot them all; I only felt alive, defiant of all death and sorrow, Sure and elated. That was the gift you gave me. . . . The streets grew still more tangled, And led at last to water black and glossy, Flecked here and there with lights, faint and far off. There on a shabby building was a sign "The India Wharf " . . . and we turned back. I always felt we could have taken ship And crossed the bright green seas To dreaming cities set on sacred streams And palaces Of ivory and scarlet. I SHALL NOT CARE WHEN I am dead and over me bright April Shakes out her rain-drenched hair, Tho' you should lean above me broken-hearted, I shall not care. I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful When rain bends down the bough, And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted Than you are now. DESERT POOLS I LOVE too much; I am a river Surging with spring that seeks the sea, I am too generous a giver, Love will not stoop to drink of me. His feet will turn to desert places Shadowless, reft of rain and dew, Where stars stare down with sharpened faces From heavens pitilessly blue. And there at midnight sick with faring, He will stoop down in his desire To slake the thirst grown past all bearing In stagnant water keen as fire. LONGING I AM not sorry for my soul That it must go unsatisfied, For it can live a thousand times, Eternity is deep and wide. I am not sorry for my soul, But oh, my body that must go Back to a little drift of dust Without the joy it longed to know. PITY THEY never saw my lover's face, They only know our love was brief, Wearing awhile a windy grace And passing like an autumn leaf. They wonder why I do not weep, They think it strange that I can sing, They say, "Her love was scarcely deep Since it has left so slight a sting." They never saw my love, nor knew That in my heart's most secret place I pity them as angels do Men who have never seen God's face. AFTER PARTING OH I have sown my love so wide That he will find it everywhere; It will awake him in the night, It will enfold him in the air. I set my shadow in his sight And I have winged it with desire, That it may be a cloud by day And in the night a shaft of fire. ENOUGH IT is enough for me by day To walk the same bright earth with him; Enough that over us by night The same great roof of stars is dim. I have no care to bind the wind Or set a fetter on the sea-- It is enough to feel his love Blow by like music over me. ALCHEMY I LIFT my heart as spring lifts up A yellow daisy to the rain; My heart will be a lovely cup Altho' it holds but pain. For I shall learn from flower and leaf That color every drop they hold, To change the lifeless wine of grief To living gold. FEBRUARY THEY spoke of him I love With cruel words and gay; My lips kept silent guard On all I could not say. I heard, and down the street The lonely trees in the square Stood in the winter wind Patient and bare. I heard . . . oh voiceless trees Under the wind, I knew The eager terrible spring Hidden in you. MORNING I WENT out on an April morning All alone, for my heart was high, I was a child of the shining meadow, I was a sister of the sky. There in the windy flood of morning Longing lifted its weight from me, Lost as a sob in the midst of cheering, Swept as a sea-bird out to sea. MAY NIGHT THE spring is fresh and fearless And every leaf is new, The world is brimmed with moonlight, The lilac brimmed with dew. Here in the moving shadows I catch my breath and sing-- My heart is fresh and fearless And over-brimmed with spring. DUSK IN JUNE EVENING, and all the birds In a chorus of shimmering sound Are easing their hearts of joy For miles around. The air is blue and sweet, The few first stars are white,-- Oh let me like the birds Sing before night. LOVE-FREE I AM free of love as a bird flying south in the autumn, Swift and intent, asking no joy from another, Glad to forget all of the passion of April Ere it was love-free. I am free of love, and I listen to music lightly, But if he returned, if he should look at me deeply, I should awake, I should awake and remember I am my lover's. SUMMER NIGHT, RIVERSIDE IN the wild soft summer darkness How many and many a night we two together Sat in the park and watched the Hudson Wearing her lights like golden spangles Glinting on black satin. The rail along the curving pathway Was low in a happy place to let us cross, And down the hill a tree that dripped with bloom Sheltered us While your kisses and the flowers, Falling, falling, Tangled my hair. . . . The frail white stars moved slowly over the sky. And now, far off In the fragrant darkness The tree is tremulous again with bloom For June comes back. To-night what girl When she goes home, Dreamily before her mirror shakes from her hair This year's blossoms, clinging in its coils ? IN A SUBWAY STATION AFTER a year I came again to the place; The tireless lights and the reverberation, The angry thunder of trains that burrow the ground, The hunted, hurrying people were still the same-- But oh, another man beside me and not you! Another voice and other eyes in mine! And suddenly I turned and saw again The gleaming curve of tracks, the bridge above-- They were burned deep into my heart before, The night I watched them to avoid your eyes, When you were saying, "Oh, look up at me!" When you were saying, "Will you never love me?" And when I answered with a lie. Oh then You dropped your eyes. I felt your utter pain. I would have died to say the truth to you. After a year I came again to the place-- The hunted hurrying people were still the same.... AFTER LOVE THERE is no magic when we meet, We speak as other people do, You work no miracle for me Nor I for you. You were the wind and I the sea-- There is no splendor any more, I have grown listless as the pool Beside the shore. But tho' the pool is safe from storm And from the tide has found surcease, It grows more bitter than the sea, For all its peace. DOORYARD ROSES I HAVE come the selfsame path To the selfsame door, Years have left the roses there Burning as before. While I watch them in the wind Quick the hot tears start-- Strange so frail a flame outlasts Fire in the heart. A PRAYER UNTIL I lose my soul and lie Blind to the beauty of the earth, Deaf tho' a lyric wind goes by, Dumb in a storm of mirth; Until my heart is quenched at length And I have left the land of men, Oh let me love with all my strength Careless if I am loved again. II INDIAN SUMMER LYRIC night of the lingering Indian Summer, Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing, Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects, Ceaseless, insistent. The grasshopper's horn, and far off, high in the maples The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence, Under a moon waning and worn and broken, Tired with summer. Let me remember you, voices of little insects, Weeds in the moonlight, fields that are tangled with asters, Let me remember you, soon will the winter be on us, Snow-hushed and heartless. Over my soul murmur your mute benediction While I gaze, oh fields that rest after harvest, As those who part look long in the eyes they lean to, Lest they forget them. THE SEA WIND I AM a pool in a peaceful place, I greet the great sky face to face, I know the stars and the stately moon And the wind that runs with rippling shoon-- But why does it always bring to me The far-off, beautiful sound of the sea? The marsh-grass weaves me a wall of green, But the wind comes whispering in between, In the dead of night when the sky is deep The wind comes waking me out of sleep-- Why does it always bring to me The far-off, terrible call of the sea? THE CLOUD I AM a cloud in the heaven's height, The stars are lit for my delight, Tireless and changeful, swift and free, I cast my shadow on hill and sea-- But why do the pines on the mountain's crest Call to me always, "Rest, rest"? I throw my mantle over the moon And I blind the sun on his throne at noon, Nothing can tame me, nothing can bind, I am a child of the heartless wind-- But oh the pines on the mountain's crest Whispering always, "Rest, rest." THE POOR HOUSE HOPE went by and Peace went by And would not enter in; Youth went by and Health went by And Love that is their kin. Those within the house shed tears On their bitter bread; Some were old and some were mad, And some were sick a-bed. Gray Death saw the wretched house And even he passed by-- "They have never lived," he said, "They can wait to die." NEW YEAR'S DAWN--BROADWAY WHEN the horns wear thin And the noise, like a garment outworn, Falls from the night, The tattered and shivering night, That thinks she is gay; When the patient silence comes back, And retires, And returns, Rebuffed by a ribald song, Wounded by vehement cries, Fleeing again to the stars-- Ashamed of her sister the night; Oh, then they steal home, The blinded, the pitiful ones With their gew-gaws still in their hands, Reeling with odorous breath And thick, coarse words on their tongues. They get them to bed, somehow, And sleep the forgiving, Comes thru the scattering tumult And closes their eyes. The stars sink down ashamed And the dawn awakes, Like a youth who steals from a brothel, Dizzy and sick. THE STAR A WHITE star born in the evening glow Looked to the round green world below, And saw a pool in a wooded place That held like a jewel her mirrored face. She said to the pool: "Oh, wondrous deep, I love you, I give you my light to keep. Oh, more profound than the moving sea That never has shown myself to me! Oh, fathomless as the sky is far, Hold forever your tremulous star!" But out of the woods as night grew cool A brown pig came to the little pool; It grunted and splashed and waded in And the deepest place but reached its chin. The water gurgled with tender glee And the mud churned up in it turbidly. The star grew pale and hid her face In a bit of floating cloud like lace. DOCTORS EVERY night I lie awake And every day I lie abed And hear the doctors, Pain and Death, Conferring at my head. They speak in scientific tones, Professional and low-- One argues for a speedy cure, The other, sure and slow. To one so humble as myself It should be matter for some pride To have such noted fellows here, Conferring at my side. . THE INN OF EARTH I CAME to the crowded Inn of Earth, And called for a cup of wine, But the Host went by with averted eye From a thirst as keen as mine. Then I sat down with weariness And asked a bit of bread, But the Host went by with averted eye And never a word he said. While always from the outer night The waiting souls came in With stifled cries of sharp surprise At all the light and din. "Then give me a bed to sleep," I said, "For midnight comes apace"-- But the Host went by with averted eye And I never saw his face. "Since there is neither food nor rest, I go where I fared before"-- But the Host went by with averted eye And barred the outer door. IN THE CARPENTER'S SHOP MARY sat in the corner dreaming, Dim was the room and low, While in the dusk, the saw went screaming To and fro. Jesus and Joseph toiled together, Mary was watching them, Thinking of kings in the wintry weather At Bethlehem. Mary sat in the corner thinking, Jesus had grown a man; One by one her hopes were sinking As the years ran. Jesus and Joseph toiled together, Mary's thoughts were far-- Angels sang in the wintry weather Under a star. Mary sat in the corner weeping, Bitter and hot her tears-- Little faith were the angels keeping All the years. THE CARPENTER'S SON THE summer dawn came over-soon, The earth was like hot iron at noon In Nazareth; There fell no rain to ease the heat, And dusk drew on with tired feet And stifled breath. The shop was low and hot and square, And fresh-cut wood made sharp the air, While all day long The saw went tearing thru the oak That moaned as tho' the tree's heart broke Beneath its wrong. The narrow street was full of cries, Of bickering and snarling lies In many keys-- The tongues of Egypt and of Rome And lands beyond the shifting foam Of windy seas. Sometimes a ruler riding fast Scattered the dark crowds as he passed, And drove them close In doorways, drawing broken breath Lest they be trampled to their death Where the dust rose. There in the gathering night and noise A group of Galilean boys Crowding to see Gray Joseph toiling with his son, Saw Jesus, when the task was done, Turn wearily. He passed them by with hurried tread Silently, nor raised his head, He who looked up Drinking all beauty from his birth Out of the heaven and the earth As from a cup. And Mary, who was growing old, Knew that the pottage would be cold When he returned; He hungered only for the night, And westward, bending sharp and bright, The thin moon burned. He reached the open western gate Where whining halt and leper wait, And came at last To the blue desert, where the deep Great seas of twilight lay asleep, Windless and vast. With shining eyes the stars awoke, The dew lay heavy on his cloak, The world was dim; And in the stillness he could hear His secret thoughts draw very near And call to him. Faint voices lifted shrill with pain And multitudinous as rain; From all the lands And all the villages thereof Men crying for the gift of love With outstretched hands. Voices that called with ceaseless crying, The broken and the blind, the dying, And those grown dumb Beneath oppression, and he heard Upon their lips a single word, "Come!" Their cries engulfed him like the night, The moon put out her placid light And black and low Nearer the heavy thunder drew, Hushing the voices . . . yet he knew That he would go. A quick-spun thread of lightning burns, And for a flash the day returns-- He only hears Joseph, an old man bent and white Toiling alone from morn till night Thru all the years. Swift clouds make all the heavens blind, A storm is running on the wind-- He only sees How Mary will stretch out her hands Sobbing, who never understands Voices like these. THE MOTHER OF A POET SHE is too kind, I think, for mortal things, Too gentle for the gusty ways of earth; God gave to her a shy and silver mirth, And made her soul as clear And softly singing as an orchard spring's In sheltered hollows all the sunny year-- A spring that thru the leaning grass looks up And holds all heaven in its clarid cup, Mirror to holy meadows high and blue With stars like drops of dew. I love to think that never tears at night Have made her eyes less bright; That all her girlhood thru Never a cry of love made over-tense Her voice's innocence; That in her hands have lain, Flowers beaten by the rain, And little birds before they learned to sing Drowned in the sudden ecstasy of spring. I love to think that with a wistful wonder She held her baby warm against her breast; That never any fear awoke whereunder She shuddered at her gift, or trembled lest Thru the great doors of birth Here to a windy earth She lured from heaven a half-unwilling guest. She caught and kept his first vague flickering smile, The faint upleaping of his spirit's fire; And for a long sweet while In her was all he asked of earth or heaven-- But in the end how far, Past every shaken star, Should leap at last that arrow-like desire, His full-grown manhood's keen Ardor toward the unseen Dark mystery beyond the Pleiads seven. And in her heart she heard His first dim-spoken word-- She only of them all could understand, Flushing to feel at last The silence over-past, Thrilling as tho' her hand had touched God's hand. But in the end how many words Winged on a flight she could not follow, Farther than skyward lark or swallow, His lips should free to lands she never knew; Braver than white sea-faring birds With a fearless melody, Flying over a shining sea, A star-white song between the blue and blue. Oh I have seen a lake as clear and fair As it were molten air, Lifting a lily upward to the sun. How should the water know the glowing heart That ever to the heaven lifts its fire, A golden and unchangeable desire? The water only knows The faint and rosy glows Of under-petals, opening apart. Yet in the soul of earth, Deep in the primal ground, Its searching roots are wound, And centuries have struggled toward its birth. So, in the man who sings, All of the voiceless horde From the cold dawn of things Have their reward; All in whose pulses ran Blood that is his at last, From the first stooping man Far in the winnowed past. Out of the tumult of their love and mating Each one created, seeing life was good-- Dumb, till at last the song that they were waiting Breaks like brave April thru a wintry wood. RIVERS TO THE SEA But what of her whose heart is troubled by it, The mother who would soothe and set him free, Fearing the song's storm-shaken ecstasy-- Oh, as the moon that has no power to quiet The strong wind-driven sea. . IN MEMORIAM F. O. S. You go a long and lovely journey, For all the stars, like burning dew, Are luminous and luring footprints Of souls adventurous as you. Oh, if you lived on earth elated, How is it now that you can run Free of the weight of flesh and faring Far past the birthplace of the sun? TWILIGHT THE stately tragedy of dusk Drew to its perfect close, The virginal white evening star Sank, and the red moon rose. SWALLOW FLIGHT I LOVE my hour of wind and light, I love men's faces and their eyes, I love my spirit's veering flight Like swallows under evening skies, THOUGHTS WHEN I can make my thoughts come forth To walk like ladies up and down, Each one puts on before the glass Her most becoming hat and gown. But oh, the shy and eager thoughts That hide and will not get them dressed, Why is it that they always seem So much more lovely than the rest? TO DICK, ON HIS SIXTH BIRTHDAY Tho' I am very old and wise, And you are neither wise nor old, When I look far into your eyes, I know things I was never told: I know how flame must strain and fret Prisoned in a mortal net; How joy with over-eager wings, Bruises the small heart where he sings; How too much life, like too much gold, Is sometimes very hard to hold. . . . All that is talking--I know This much is true, six years ago An angel living near the moon Walked thru the sky and sang a tune Plucking stars to make his crown-- And suddenly two stars fell down, Two falling arrows made of light. Six years ago this very night I saw them fall and wondered why The angel dropped them from the sky-- But when I saw your eyes I knew The angel sent the stars to you. TO ROSE ROSE, when I remember you, Little lady, scarcely two, I am suddenly aware Of the angels in the air. All your softly gracious ways Make an island in my days Where my thoughts fly back to be Sheltered from too strong a sea. All your luminous delight Shines before me in the night When I grope for sleep and find Only shadows in my mind. Rose, when I remember you, White and glowing, pink and new, With so swift a sense of fun Altho' life has just begun; With so sure a pride of place In your very infant face, I should like to make a prayer To the angels in the air: "If an angel ever brings Me a baby in her wings, Please be certain that it grows Very, very much like Rose." THE FOUNTAIN On in the deep blue night The fountain sang alone; It sang to the drowsy heart Of the satyr carved in stone. The fountain sang and sang But the satyr never stirred-- Only the great white moon In the empty heaven heard. The fountain sang and sang And on the marble rim The milk-white peacocks slept, Their dreams were strange and dim. Bright dew was on the grass, And on the ilex dew, The dreamy milk-white birds Were all a-glisten too. The fountain sang and sang The things one cannot tell, The dreaming peacocks stirred And the gleaming dew-drops fell. THE ROSE BENEATH my chamber window Pierrot was singing, singing; I heard his lute the whole night thru Until the east was red. Alas, alas, Pierrot, I had no rose for flinging Save one that drank my tears for dew Before its leaves were dead. I found it in the darkness, I kissed it once and threw it, The petals scattered over him, His song was turned to joy; And he will never know-- Alas, the one who knew it!-- The rose was plucked when dusk was dim Beside a laughing boy. DREAMS I GAVE my life to another lover, I gave my love, and all, and all-- But over a dream the past will hover, Out of a dream the past will call. I tear myself from sleep with a shiver But on my breast a kiss is hot, And by my bed the ghostly giver Is waiting tho' I see him not. "I AM NOT YOURS " I AM not yours, not lost in you, Not lost, altho' I long to be Lost as a candle lit at noon, Lost as a snow-flake in the sea. You love me, and I find you still A spirit beautiful and bright, Yet I am I, who long to be Lost as a light is lost in light. Oh plunge me deep in love--put out My senses, leave me deaf and blind, Swept by the tempest of your love, A taper in a rushing wind. PIERROT'S SONG (For a picture by Dugald Walker) LADY, light in the east hangs low, Draw your veils of dream apart, Under the casement stands Pierrot Making a song to ease his heart. (Yet do not break the song too soon-- I love to sing in the paling moon.) The petals are falling, heavy with dew, The stars have fainted out of the sky, Come to me, come, or else I too, Faint with the weight of love will die. (She comes--alas, I hoped to make Another stanza for her sake!) NIGHT IN ARIZONA THE moon is a charring ember Dying into the dark; Off in the crouching mountains Coyotes bark. The stars are heavy in heaven, Too great for the sky to hold-- What if they fell and shattered The earth with gold? No lights are over the mesa, The wind is hard and wild, I stand at the darkened window And cry like a child. DUSK IN WAR TIME A HALF-HOUR more and you will lean To gather me close in the old sweet way-- But oh, to the woman over the sea Who will come at the close of day? A half-hour more and I will hear The key in the latch and the strong quick tread-- But oh, the woman over the sea Waiting at dusk for one who is dead! SPRING IN WAR TIME I FEEL the Spring far off, far off, The faint far scent of bud and leaf-- Oh how can Spring take heart to come To a world in grief, Deep grief? The sun turns north, the days grow long, Later the evening star grows bright-- How can the daylight linger on For men to fight, Still fight? The grass is waking in the ground, Soon it will rise and blow in waves-- How can it have the heart to sway Over the graves, New graves? Under the boughs where lovers walked The apple-blooms will shed their breath-- But what of all the lovers now Parted by death, Gray Death? WHILE I MAY WIND and hail and veering rain, Driven mist that veils the day, Soul's distress and body's pain, I would bear you while I may. I would love you if I might, For so soon my life will be Buried in a lasting night, Even pain denied to me. DEBT WHAT do I owe to you Who loved me deep and long? You never gave my spirit wings Or gave my heart a song. But oh, to him I loved Who loved me not at all, I owe the little open gate That led thru heaven's wall. FROM THE NORTH THE northern woods are delicately sweet, The lake is folded softly by the shore, But I am restless for the subway's roar, The thunder and the hurrying of feet. I try to sleep, but still my eyelids beat Against the image of the tower that bore Me high aloft, as if thru heaven's door I watched the world from God's unshaken seat. I would go back and breathe with quickened sense The tunnel's strong hot breath of powdered steel; But at the ferries I should leave the tense Dark air behind, and I should mount and be One among many who are thrilled to feel The first keen sea-breath from the open sea. THE LIGHTS OF NEW YORK THE lightning spun your garment for the night Of silver filaments with fire shot thru, A broidery of lamps that lit for you The steadfast splendor of enduring light. The moon drifts dimly in the heaven's height, Watching with wonder how the earth she knew That lay so long wrapped deep in dark and dew, Should wear upon her breast a star so white. The festivals of Babylon were dark With flaring flambeaux that the wind blew down; The Saturnalia were a wild boy's lark With rain-quenched torches dripping thru the town-- But you have found a god and filched from him A fire that neither wind nor rain can dim. SEA LONGING A THOUSAND miles beyond this sun-steeped wall Somewhere the waves creep cool along the sand, The ebbing tide forsakes the listless land With the old murmur, long and musical; The windy waves mount up and curve and fall, And round the rocks the foam blows up like snow,-- Tho' I am inland far, I hear and know, For I was born the sea's eternal thrall. I would that I were there and over me The cold insistence of the tide would roll, Quenching this burning thing men call the soul,-- Then with the ebbing I should drift and be Less than the smallest shell along the shoal, Less than the sea-gulls calling to the sea. THE RIVER I CAME from the sunny valleys And sought for the open sea, For I thought in its gray expanses My peace would come to me. I came at last to the ocean And found it wild and black, And I cried to the windless valleys, "Be kind and take me back!" But the thirsty tide ran inland, And the salt waves drank of me, And I who was fresh as the rainfall Am bitter as the sea. LEAVES ONE by one, like leaves from a tree, All my faiths have forsaken me; But the stars above my head Burn in white and delicate red, And beneath my feet the earth Brings the sturdy grass to birth. I who was content to be But a silken-singing tree, But a rustle of delight In the wistful heart of night-- I have lost the leaves that knew Touch of rain and weight of dew. Blinded by a leafy crown I looked neither up nor down-- But the little leaves that die Have left me room to see the sky; Now for the first time I know Stars above and earth below. THE ANSWER WHEN I go back to earth And all my joyous body Puts off the red and white That once had been so proud, If men should pass above With false and feeble pity, My dust will find a voice To answer them aloud: "Be still, I am content, Take back your poor compassion, Joy was a flame in me Too steady to destroy; Lithe as a bending reed Loving the storm that sways her-- I found more joy in sorrow Than you could find in joy." III OVER THE ROOFS I OH chimes set high on the sunny tower Ring on, ring on unendingly, Make all the hours a single hour, For when the dusk begins to flower, The man I love will come to me! . . . But no, go slowly as you will, I should not bid you hasten so, For while I wait for love to come, Some other girl is standing dumb, Fearing her love will go. II Oh white steam over the roofs, blow high! Oh chimes in the tower ring clear and free ! Oh sun awake in the covered sky, For the man I love, loves me I . . . Oh drifting steam disperse and die, Oh tower stand shrouded toward the south,-- Fate heard afar my happy cry, And laid her finger on my mouth. III The dusk was blue with blowing mist, The lights were spangles in a veil, And from the clamor far below Floated faint music like a wail. It voiced what I shall never speak, My heart was breaking all night long, But when the dawn was hard and gray, My tears distilled into a song. IV I said, "I have shut my heart As one shuts an open door, That Love may starve therein And trouble me no more." But over the roofs there came The wet new wind of May, And a tune blew up from the curb Where the street-pianos play. My room was white with the sun And Love cried out in me, "I am strong, I will break your heart Unless you set me free." A CRY OH, there are eyes that he can see, And hands to make his hands rejoice, But to my lover I must be Only a voice. Oh, there are breasts to bear his head, And lips whereon his lips can lie, But I must be till I am dead Only a cry. CHANCE How many times we must have met Here on the street as strangers do, Children of chance we were, who passed The door of heaven and never knew. IMMORTAL So soon my body will have gone Beyond the sound and sight of men, And tho' it wakes and suffers now, Its sleep will be unbroken then; But oh, my frail immortal soul That will not sleep forevermore, A leaf borne onward by the blast, A wave that never finds the shore. AFTER DEATH Now while my lips are living Their words must stay unsaid, And will my soul remember To speak when I am dead? Yet if my soul remembered You would not heed it, dear, For now you must not listen, And then you could not hear. TESTAMENT I SAID, "I will take my life And throw it away; I who was fire and song Will turn to clay." "I will lie no more in the night With shaken breath, I will toss my heart in the air To be caught by Death." But out of the night I heard, Like the inland sound of the sea, The hushed and terrible sob Of all humanity. Then I said, "Oh who am I To scorn God to his face? I will bow my head and stay And suffer with my race." GIFTS I GAVE my first love laughter, I gave my second tears, I gave my third love silence Thru all the years. My first love gave me singing, My second eyes to see, But oh, it was my third love Who gave my soul to me. IV FROM THE SEA ALL beauty calls you to me, and you seem, Past twice a thousand miles of shifting sea, To reach me. You are as the wind I breathe Here on the ship's sun-smitten topmost deck, With only light between the heavens and me. I feel your spirit and I close my eyes, Knowing the bright hair blowing in the sun, The eager whisper and the searching eyes. Listen, I love you. Do not turn your face Nor touch me. Only stand and watch awhile The blue unbroken circle of the sea. Look far away and let me ease my heart Of words that beat in it with broken wing. Look far away, and if I say too much, Forget that I am speaking. Only watch, How like a gull that sparkling sinks to rest, The foam-crest drifts along a happy wave Toward the bright verge, the boundary of the world. I am so weak a thing, praise me for this, That in some strange way I was strong enough To keep my love unuttered and to stand Altho' I longed to kneel to you that night You looked at me with ever-calling eyes. Was I not calm? And if you guessed my love You thought it something delicate and free, Soft as the sound of fir-trees in the wind, Fleeting as phosphorescent stars in foam. Yet in my heart there was a beating storm Bending my thoughts before it, and I strove To say too little lest I say too much, And from my eyes to drive love's happy shame. Yet when I heard your name the first far time It seemed like other names to me, and I Was all unconscious, as a dreaming river That nears at last its long predestined sea; And when you spoke to me, I did not know That to my life's high altar came its priest. But now I know between my God and me You stand forever, nearer God than I, And in your hands with faith and utter joy I would that I could lay my woman's soul. Oh, my love To whom I cannot come with any gift Of body or of soul, I pass and go. But sometimes when you hear blown back to you My wistful, far-off singing touched with tears, Know that I sang for you alone to hear, And that I wondered if the wind would bring To him who tuned my heart its distant song. So might a woman who in loneliness Had borne a child, dreaming of days to come, Wonder if it would please its father's eyes. But long before I ever heard your name, Always the undertone's unchanging note In all my singing had prefigured you, Foretold you as a spark foretells a flame. Yet I was free as an untethered cloud In the great space between the sky and sea, And might have blown before the wind of joy Like a bright banner woven by the sun. I did not know the longing in the night-- You who have waked me cannot give me sleep. All things in all the world can rest, but I, Even the smooth brief respite of a wave When it gives up its broken crown of foam, Even that little rest I may not have. And yet all quiet loves of friends, all joy In all the piercing beauty of the world I would give up--go blind forevermore, Rather than have God blot from out my soul Remembrance of your voice that said my name. For us no starlight stilled the April fields, No birds awoke in darkling trees for us, Yet where we walked the city's street that night Felt in our feet the singing fire of spring, And in our path we left a trail of light Soft as the phosphorescence of the sea When night submerges in the vessel's wake A heaven of unborn evanescent stars. VIGNETTES OVERSEAS I Off Gibraltar BEYOND the sleepy hills of Spain, The sun goes down in yellow mist, The sky is fresh with dewy stars Above a sea of amethyst. Yet in the city of my love High noon burns all the heavens bare-- For him the happiness of light, For me a delicate despair. II Off Algiers Oh give me neither love nor tears, Nor dreams that sear the night with fire, Go lightly on your pilgrimage Unburdened by desire. Forget me for a month, a year, But, oh, beloved, think of me When unexpected beauty burns Like sudden sunlight on the sea. III Naples Nisida and Prosida are laughing in the light, Capri is a dewy flower lifting into sight, Posilipo kneels and looks in the burnished sea, Naples crowds her million roofs close as close can be; Round about the mountain's crest a flag of smoke is hung-- Oh when God made Italy he was gay and young! IV Capri When beauty grows too great to bear How shall I ease me of its ache, For beauty more than bitterness Makes the heart break. Now while I watch the dreaming sea With isles like flowers against her breast, Only one voice in all the world Could give me rest. V Night Song at Amalfi I asked the heaven of stars What I should give my love-- It answered me with silence, Silence above. I asked the darkened sea Down where the fishers go-- It answered me with silence, Silence below. Oh, I could give him weeping, Or I could give him song-- But how can I give silence My whole life long? VI Ruins of Paestum On lowlands where the temples lie The marsh-grass mingles with the flowers, Only the little songs of birds Link the unbroken hours. So in the end, above my heart Once like the city wild and gay, The slow white stars will pass by night, The swift brown birds by day. VII Rome Oh for the rising moon Over the roofs of Rome, And swallows in the dusk Circling a darkened dome! Oh for the measured dawns That pass with folded wings-- How can I let them go With unremembered things? VIII Florence The bells ring over the Anno, Midnight, the long, long chime; Here in the quivering darkness I am afraid of time. Oh, gray bells cease your tolling, Time takes too much from me, And yet to rock and river He gives eternity. IX Villa Serbelloni, Bellaggio The fountain shivers lightly in the rain, The laurels drip, the fading roses fall, The marble satyr plays a mournful strain That leaves the rainy fragrance musical. Oh dripping laurel, Phoebus sacred tree, Would that swift Daphne's lot might come to me, Then would I still my soul and for an hour Change to a laurel in the glancing shower. X Stresa The moon grows out of the hills A yellow flower, The lake is a dreamy bride Who waits her hour. Beauty has filled my heart, It can hold no more, It is full, as the lake is full, From shore to shore. XI Hamburg The day that I come home, What will you find to say,-- Words as light as foam With laughter light as spray? Yet say what words you will The day that I come home; I shall hear the whole deep ocean Beating under the foam. V SAPPHO SAPPHO I MIDNIGHT, and in the darkness not a sound, So, with hushed breathing, sleeps the autumn night; Only the white immortal stars shall know, Here in the house with the low-lintelled door, How, for the last time, I have lit the lamp. I think you are not wholly careless now, Walls that have sheltered me so many an hour, Bed that has brought me ecstasy and sleep, Floors that have borne me when a gale of joy Lifted my soul and made me half a god. Farewell! Across the threshold many feet Shall pass, but never Sappho's feet again. Girls shall come in whom love has made aware Of all their swaying beauty--they shall sing, But never Sappho's voice, like golden fire, Shall seek for heaven thru your echoing rafters. There shall be swallows bringing back the spring Over the long blue meadows of the sea, And south-wind playing on the reeds of rain, But never Sappho's whisper in the night, Never her love-cry when the lover comes. Farewell! I close the door and make it fast. The little street lies meek beneath the moon, Running, as rivers run, to meet the sea. I too go seaward and shall not return. Oh garlands on the doorposts that I pass, Woven of asters and of autumn leaves, I make a prayer for you: Cypris be kind, That every lover may be given love. I shall not hasten lest the paving stones Should echo with my sandals and awake Those who are warm beneath the cloak of sleep, Lest they should rise and see me and should say, "Whither goes Sappho lonely in the night?" Whither goes Sappho? Whither all men go, But they go driven, straining back with fear, And Sappho goes as lightly as a leaf Blown from brown autumn forests to the sea. Here on the rock Zeus lifted from the waves, I shall await the waking of the dawn, Lying beneath the weight of dark as one Lies breathless, till the lover shall awake. And with the sun the sea shall cover me-- I shall be less than the dissolving foam Murmuring and melting on the ebbing tide; I shall be less than spindrift, less than shells; And yet I shall be greater than the gods, For destiny no more can bow my soul As rain bows down the watch-fires on the hills. Yes, if my soul escape it shall aspire To the white heaven as flame that has its will. I go not bitterly, not dumb with pain, Not broken by the ache of love--I go As one grown tired lies down and hopes to sleep. Yet they shall say: "It was for Cercolas; She died because she could not bear her love." They shall remember how we used to walk Here on the cliff beneath the oleanders In the long limpid twilight of the spring, Looking toward Lemnos, where the amber sky Was pierced with the faint arrow of a star. How should they know the wind of a new beauty Sweeping my soul had winnowed it with song? I have been glad tho' love should come or go, Happy as trees that find a wind to sway them, Happy again when it has left them rest. Others shall say, "Grave Dica wrought her death. She would not lift her lips to take a kiss, Or ever lift her eyes to take a smile. She was a pool the winter paves with ice That the wild hunter in the hills must leave With thirst unslaked in the brief southward sun." Ah Dica, it is not for thee I go; And not for Phaon, tho' his ship lifts sail Here in the windless harbor for the south. Oh, darkling deities that guard the Nile, Watch over one whose gods are far away. Egypt, be kind to him, his eyes are deep-- Yet they are wrong who say it was for him. How should they know that Sappho lived and died Faithful to love, not faithful to the lover, Never transfused and lost in what she loved, Never so wholly loving nor at peace. I asked for something greater than I found, And every time that love has made me weep, I have rejoiced that love could be so strong; For I have stood apart and watched my soul Caught in the gust of passion, as a bird With baffled wings against the dusty whirlwind Struggles and frees itself to find the sky. It is not for a single god I go; I have grown weary of the winds of heaven. I will not be a reed to hold the sound Of whatsoever breath the gods may blow, Turning my torment into music for them. They gave me life; the gift was bountiful, I lived with the swift singing strength of fire, Seeking for beauty as a flame for fuel-- Beauty in all things and in every hour. The gods have given life--I gave them song; The debt is paid and now I turn to go. The breath of dawn blows the stars out like lamps, There is a rim of silver on the sea, As one grown tired who hopes to sleep, I go. II Oh Litis, little slave, why will you sleep? These long Egyptian noons bend down your head Bowed like the yarrow with a yellow bee. There, lift your eyes no man has ever kindled, Dark eyes that wait like faggots for the fire. See how the temple's solid square of shade Points north to Lesbos, and the splendid sea That you have never seen, oh evening-eyed. Yet have you never wondered what the Nile Is seeking always, restless and wild with spring And no less in the winter, seeking still? How shall I tell you? Can you think of fields Greater than Gods could till, more blue than night Sown over with the stars; and delicate With filmy nets of foam that come and go? It is more cruel and more compassionate Than harried earth. It takes with unconcern And quick forgetting, rapture of the rain And agony of thunder, the moon's white Soft-garmented virginity, and then The insatiable ardor of the sun. And me it took. But there is one more strong, Love, that came laughing from the elder seas, The Cyprian, the mother of the world; She gave me love who only asked for death-- I who had seen much sorrow in men's eyes And in my own too sorrowful a fire. I was a sister of the stars, and yet Shaken with pain; sister of birds and yet The wings that bore my soul were very tired. I watched the careless spring too many times Light her green torches in a hungry wind; Too many times I watched them flare, and then Fall to forsaken embers in the autumn. And I was sick of all things--even song. In the dull autumn dawn I turned to death, Buried my living body in the sea, The strong cold sea that takes and does not give-- But there is one more strong, the Cyprian. Litis, to wake from sleep and find your eyes Met in their first fresh upward gaze by love, Filled with love's happy shame from other eyes, Dazzled with tenderness and drowned in light As tho' you looked unthinking at the sun, Oh Litis, that is joy! But if you came Not from the sunny shallow pool of sleep, But from the sea of death, the strangling sea Of night and nothingness, and waked to find Love looking down upon you, glad and still, Strange and yet known forever, that is peace. So did he lean above me. Not a word He spoke; I only heard the morning sea Singing against his happy ship, the keen And straining joy of wind-awakened sails And songs of mariners, and in myself The precious pain of arms that held me fast. They warmed the cold sea out of all my blood; I slept, feeling his eyes above my sleep. There on the ship with wines and olives laden, Led by the stars to far invisible ports, Egypt and islands of the inner seas, Love came to me, and Cercolas was love. III ¹ ¹ From " Helen of Troy and Other Poems." The twilight's inner flame grows blue and deep, And in my Lesbos, over leagues of sea, The temples glimmer moon-wise in the trees. Twilight has veiled the little flower-face Here on my heart, but still the night is kind And leaves her warm sweet weight against my breast. Am I that Sappho who would run at dusk Along the surges creeping up the shore When tides came in to ease the hungry beach, And running, running till the night was black, Would fall forespent upon the chilly sand And quiver with the winds from off the sea? Ah quietly the shingle waits the tides Whose waves are stinging kisses, but to me Love brought no peace, nor darkness any rest. I crept and touched the foam with fevered hands And cried to Love, from whom the sea is sweet, From whom the sea is bitterer than death. Ah, Aphrodite, if I sing no more To thee, God's daughter, powerful as God, It is that thou hast made my life too sweet To hold the added sweetness of a song. There is a quiet at the heart of love, And I have pierced the pain and come to peace I hold my peace, my Cleïs, on my heart; And softer than a little wild bird's wing Are kisses that she pours upon my mouth. Ah never any more when spring like fire Will flicker in the newly opened leaves, Shall I steal forth to seek for solitude Beyond the lure of light Alcaeus' lyre, Beyond the sob that stilled Erinna's voice. Ah, never with a throat that aches with song, Beneath the white uncaring sky of spring, Shall I go forth to hide awhile from Love The quiver and the crying of my heart. Still I remember how I strove to flee The love-note of the birds, and bowed my head To hurry faster, but upon the ground I saw two wingèd shadows side by side, And all the world's spring passion stifled me. Ah, Love there is no fleeing from thy might, No lonely place where thou hast never trod, No desert thou hast left uncarpeted With flowers that spring beneath thy perfect feet. In many guises didst thou come to me; I saw thee by the maidens while they danced, Phaon allured me with a look of thine, In Anactoria I knew thy grace, I looked at Cercolas and saw thine eyes; But never wholly, soul and body mine, Didst thou bid any love me as I loved. Now have I found the peace that fled from me; Close, close against my heart I hold my world. Ah, Love that made my life a Iyric cry, Ah, Love that tuned my lips to Iyres of thine, I taught the world thy music, now alone I sing for one who falls asleep to hear. 
38421	----	http://www.archive.org/details/littleboylost00huds A LITTLE BOY LOST * * * * * UNUSUAL BOOKS _FOR BOYS AND GIRLS_ THREE AND THE MOON BY JACQUES DOREY _DECORATED BY BORIS ARTZYBASHEFF_ THE KINGDOM AND THE POWER AND THE GLORY BIBLE STORIES _SELECTED AND DECORATED BY JAMES DAUGHERTY_ THE RUNAWAY SARDINE _TOLD AND ILLUSTRATED BY EMMA L. BROCK_ THE THREE MULLA-MULGARS BY WALTER DE LA MARE _ILLUSTRATED BY DOROTHY LATHROP_ COME HITHER BY WALTER DE LA MARE _DECORATED BY ALEC BUCKELS_ * * * * * [Illustration: HE IN TURN, LEANING OVER THE ROCK STARED BACK INTO MARTIN'S FACE WITH HIS IMMENSE FISHY EYES.] A LITTLE BOY LOST by W · H · HUDSON Author of "Green Mansions," Etc. Illustrated by Dorothy · P · Lathrop [Illustration] New York Alfred · A · Knopf MCMXXXVI Copyright 1920 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages or reproduce not more than three illustrations in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper. Published September 18, 1920 Manufactured in the United States of America _Contents_ I THE HOME ON THE GREAT PLAIN, 13 II THE SPOONBILL AND THE CLOUD, 20 III CHASING A FLYING FIGURE, 29 IV MARTIN IS FOUND BY A DEAF OLD MAN, 33 V THE PEOPLE OF THE MIRAGE, 44 VI MARTIN MEETS WITH SAVAGES, 60 VII ALONE IN THE GREAT FOREST, 68 VIII THE FLOWER AND THE SERPENT, 76 IX THE BLACK PEOPLE OF THE SKY, 86 X A TROOP OF WILD HORSES, 95 XI THE LADY OF THE HILLS, 109 XII THE LITTLE PEOPLE UNDERGROUND, 117 XIII THE GREAT BLUE WATER, 129 XIV THE WONDERS OF THE HILLS, 135 XV MARTIN'S EYES ARE OPENED, 144 XVI THE PEOPLE OF THE MIST, 153 XVII THE OLD MAN OF THE SEA, 163 XVIII MARTIN PLAYS WITH THE WAVES, 173 NOTE, 184 _Illustrations_ He in turn, leaning over the rock stared back into Martin's face with his immense fishy eyes _Frontispiece_ PAGE "Oh, poor bird," he cried suddenly, "open your wings and fly away!" 28 Groping his way to the bucket of cold water--he managed to raise it up in his arms, and poured it over the sleeper 39 "The Queen wishes to speak to you--stand up, little boy" 52 How strange it seemed when, holding on to a twig, he bent over and saw himself reflected in that black mirror 71 He quickly ate it, and then pulled another and ate that, and then another, and still others, until he could eat no more 79 Then the wild man, catching Martin up, leaped upon the back of one of the horses 103 She raised him in her arms and pressed him to her bosom, wrapping her hair like a warm mantle around him 115 For a moment or two he was tempted to turn and run back into the passage through which he had come 122 The doe--timidly smelt at his hand, then licked it with her long pink tongue 140 Throwing up her arms, she uttered a long call, and the birds began to come lower and lower down 145 One of the mist people--held the shell to Martin's ear,--and Martin knew--that it was the voice of the sea 156 A LITTLE BOY LOST [Illustration] _Chapter One_ _The Home on the Great Plain_ Some like to be one thing, some another. There is so much to be done, so many different things to do, so many trades! Shepherds, soldiers, sailors, ploughmen, carters--one could go on all day naming without getting to the end of them. For myself, boy and man, I have been many things, working for a living, and sometimes doing things just for pleasure; but somehow, whatever I did, it never seemed quite the right and proper thing to do--it never quite satisfied me. I always wanted to do something else--I wanted to be a carpenter. It seemed to me that to stand among wood-shavings and sawdust, making things at a bench with bright beautiful tools out of nice-smelling wood, was the cleanest, healthiest, prettiest work that any man can do. Now all this has nothing, or very little, to do with my story: I only spoke of it because I had to begin somehow, and it struck me that would make a start that way. And for another reason, too. _His father was a carpenter_. I mean Martin's father--Martin, the Little Boy Lost. His father's name was John, and he was a very good man and a good carpenter, and he loved to do his carpentering better than anything else; in fact as much as I should have loved it if I had been taught that trade. He lived in a seaside town, named Southampton, where there is a great harbour, where he saw great ships coming and going to and from all parts of the world. Now, no strong, brave man can live in a place like that, seeing the ships and often talking to the people who voyaged in them about the distant lands where they had been, without wishing to go and see those distant countries for himself. When it is winter in England, and it rains and rains, and the east wind blows, and it is grey and cold and the trees are bare, who does not think how nice it would be to fly away like the summer birds to some distant country where the sky is always blue and the sun shines bright and warm every day? And so it came to pass that John, at last, when he was an old man, sold his shop, and went abroad. They went to a country many thousands of miles away--for you must know that Mrs. John went too; and when the sea voyage ended, they travelled many days and weeks in a wagon until they came to the place where they wanted to live; and there, in that lonely country, they built a house, and made a garden, and planted an orchard. It was a desert, and they had no neighbours, but they were happy enough because they had as much land as they wanted, and the weather was always bright and beautiful; John, too, had his carpenter's tools to work with when he felt inclined; and, best of all, they had little Martin to love and think about. But how about Martin himself? You might think that with no other child to prattle to and play with or even to see, it was too lonely a home for him. Not a bit of it! No child could have been happier. He did not want for company; his play-fellows were the dogs and cats and chickens, and any creature in and about the house. But most of all he loved the little shy creatures that lived in the sunshine among the flowers--the small birds and butterflies, and little beasties and creeping things he was accustomed to see outside the gate among the tall, wild sunflowers. There were acres of these plants, and they were taller than Martin, and covered with flowers no bigger than marigolds, and here among the sunflowers he used to spend most of the day, as happy as possible. He had other amusements too. Whenever John went to his carpenter's shop--for the old man still dearly loved his carpentering--Martin would run in to keep him company. One thing he loved to do was to pick up the longest wood-shavings, to wind them round his neck and arms and legs, and then he would laugh and dance with delight, happy as a young Indian in his ornaments. A wood-shaving may seem a poor plaything to a child with all the toyshops in London to pick and choose from, but it is really very curious and pretty. Bright and smooth to the touch, pencilled with delicate wavy lines, while in its spiral shape it reminds one of winding plants, and tendrils by means of which vines and creepers support themselves, and flowers with curling petals, and curled leaves and sea-shells and many other pretty natural objects. One day Martin ran into the house looking very flushed and joyous, holding up his pinafore with something heavy in it. "What have you got now?" cried his father and mother in a breath, getting up to peep at his treasure, for Martin was always fetching in the most curious out-of-the-way things to show them. "My pretty shaving," said Martin proudly. When they looked they were amazed and horrified to see a spotted green snake coiled comfortably up in the pinafore. It didn't appear to like being looked at by them, for it raised its curious heart-shaped head and flicked its little red, forked tongue at them. His mother gave a great scream, and dropped the jug she had in her hand upon the floor, while John rushed off to get a big stick. "Drop it, Martin--drop the wicked snake before it stings you, and I'll soon kill it." Martin stared, surprised at the fuss they were making; then, still tightly holding the ends of his pinafore, he turned and ran out of the room and away as fast as he could go. Away went his father after him, stick in hand, and out of the gate into the thicket of tall wild sunflowers where Martin had vanished from sight. After hunting about for some time, he found the little run-away sitting on the ground among the weeds. "Where's the snake?" he cried. "Gone!" said Martin, waving his little hand around. "I let it go and you mustn't look for it." John picked the child up in his arms and marched back to the room and popped him down on the floor, then gave him a good scolding. "It's a mercy the poisonous thing didn't sting you," he said. "You're a naughty little boy to play with snakes, because they're dangerous bad things, and you die if they bite you. And now you must go straight to bed; that's the only punishment that has any effect on such a harebrained little butterfly." Martin, puckering up his face for a cry, crept away to his little room. It was very hard to have to go to bed in the daytime when he was not sleepy, and when the birds and butterflies were out in the sunshine having such a good time. "It's not a bit of use scolding him--I found that out long ago," said Mrs. John, shaking her head. "Do you know, John, I can't help thinking sometimes that he's not our child at all." "Whose child do you think he is, then?" said John, who had a cup of water in his hand, for the chase after Martin had made him hot, and he wanted cooling. "I don't know--but I once had a very curious dream." "People often do have curious dreams," said wise old John. "But this was a very curious one, and I remember saying to myself, if this doesn't mean something that is going to happen, then dreams don't count for much." "No more they do," said John. "It was in England, just when we were getting ready for the voyage, and it was autumn, when the birds were leaving us. I dreamed that I went out alone and walked by the sea, and stood watching a great number of swallows flying by and out over the sea--flying away to some distant land. By-and-by I noticed one bird coming down lower and lower as if he wanted to alight, and I watched it, and it came down straight to me, and at last flew right into my bosom. I put my hand on it, and looking close saw that it was a martin, all pure white on its throat and breast, and with a white patch on its back. Then I woke up, and it was because of that dream that I named our child Martin instead of John as you wished to do. Now, when I watch swallows flying about, coming and going round the house, I sometimes think that Martin came to us like that one in the dream, and that some day he will fly away from us. When he gets bigger, I mean." "When he gets littler, you mean," said John with a laugh. "No, no, he's too big for a swallow--a Michaelmas goose would be nothing to him for size. But here I am listening to your silly dreams instead of watering the melons and cucumbers!" And out he went to his garden, but in a minute he put his head in at the door and said, "You may go and tell him to get up if you like. Poor little fellow! Only make him promise not to go chumming with spotted snakes any more, and not to bring them into the house, because somehow they disagree with me." [Illustration] [Illustration] _Chapter Two_ _The Spoonbill and the Cloud_ As Martin grew in years and strength, his age being now about seven, his rambles began to extend beyond the waste grounds outside of the fenced orchard and gate. These waste grounds were a wilderness of weeds: here were the sunflowers that Martin liked best; the wild cock's-comb, flaunting great crimson tufts; the yellow flowering mustard, taller than the tallest man; giant thistle, and wild pumpkin with spotted leaves; the huge hairy fox-gloves with yellow bells; feathery fennel, and the big grey-green thorn-apples, with prickly burs full of bright red seed, and long white wax-like flowers, that bloomed only in the evening. He could never get high enough on anything to see over the tops of these plants; but at last he found his way through them, and discovered on their further side a wide grassy plain with scarcely a tree on it, stretching away into the blue distance. On this vast plain he gazed with wonderment and delight. Behind the orchard and weedy waste the ground sloped down to a stream of running water, full of tall rushes with dark green polished stems, and yellow water-lilies. All along the moist banks grew other flowers that were never seen in the dry ground above--the blue star, and scarlet and white verbenas; and sweet-peas of all colours; and the delicate red vinegar flower, and angel's hair, and the small fragrant lilies called Mary's-tears, and tall scattered flags, flaunting their yellow blossoms high above the meadow grass. Every day Martin ran down to the stream to gather flowers and shells; for many curious water-snails were found there with brown purple-striped shells; and he also liked to watch the small birds that build their nests in the rushes. There were three of these small birds that did not appear to know that Martin loved them; for no sooner would he present himself at the stream than forth they would flutter in a great state of mind. One, the prettiest, was a tiny, green-backed little creature, with a crimson crest and a velvet-black band across a bright yellow breast: this one had a soft, low, complaining voice, clear as a silver bell. The second was a brisk little grey and black fellow, with a loud, indignant chuck, and a broad tail which he incessantly opened and shut, like a Spanish lady playing with her fan. The third was a shy, mysterious little brown bird, peering out of the clustering leaves, and making a sound like the soft ticking of a clock. They were like three little men, an Italian, a Dutchman, and a Hindoo, talking together, each in his own language, and yet well able to understand each other. Martin could not make out what they said, but suspected that they were talking about him; and he feared that their remarks were not always of a friendly nature. At length he made the discovery that the water of the stream was perpetually running away. If he dropped a leaf on the surface it would hasten down stream, and toss about and fret impatiently against anything that stood in its way, until, making its escape, it would quickly hurry out of sight. Whither did this rippling, running water go? He was anxious to find out. At length, losing all fear and fired with the sight of many new and pretty things he found while following it, he ran along the banks until, miles from home, he came to a great lake he could hardly see across, it was so broad. It was a wonderful place, full of birds; not small, fretful creatures flitting in and out of the rushes, but great majestic birds that took very little notice of him. Far out on the blue surface of the water floated numbers of wild fowl, and chief among them for grace and beauty was a swan, pure white with black head and neck and crimson bill. There also were stately flamingoes, stalking along knee-deep in the water, which was shallow; and nearer to the shore were flocks of rose-coloured spoonbills and solitary big grey herons standing motionless; also groups of white egrets, and a great multitude of glossy ibises, with dark green and purple plumage and long sickle-like beaks. The sight of this water with its beds of rushes and tall flowering reeds, and its great company of birds, filled Martin with delight; and other joys were soon to follow. Throwing off his shoes, he dashed with a shout into the water, frightening a number of ibises; up they flew, each bird uttering a cry repeated many times, that sounded just like his old father's laugh when he laughed loud and heartily. Then what was Martin's amazement to hear his own shout and this chorus of bird ha, ha, ha's, repeated by hundreds of voices all over the lake. At first he thought that the other birds were mocking the ibises; but presently he shouted again, and again his shouts were repeated by dozens of voices. This delighted him so much that he spent the whole day shouting himself hoarse at the waterside. When he related his wonderful experience at home, and heard from his father that the sounds he had heard were only echoes from the beds of rushes, he was not a bit wiser than before, so that the echoes remained to him a continual wonder and source of never-failing pleasure. Every day he would take some noisy instrument to the lake to startle the echoes; a whistle his father made him served for a time; after that he marched up and down the banks, rattling a tin canister with pebbles in it; then he got a large frying-pan from the kitchen, and beat on it with a stick every day for about a fortnight. When he grew tired of all these sounds, and began casting about for some new thing to wake the echoes with, he all at once remembered his father's gun--just what he wanted, for it was the noisiest thing in the world. Watching his opportunity, he got secretly into the room where it was kept loaded, and succeeded in carrying it out of the house without being seen; then, full of joyful anticipations, he ran as fast as the heavy gun would let him to his favourite haunt. When he arrived at the lake three or four spoonbills--those beautiful, tall, rose-coloured birds--were standing on the bank, quietly dozing in the hot sunshine. They did not fly away at his approach, for the birds were now so accustomed to Martin and his harmless noises that they took very little notice of him. He knelt on one knee and pointed the gun at them. "Now, birdies, you don't know what a fright I'm going to give you--off you go!" he cried, and pulled the trigger. The roar of the loud report travelled all over the wide lake, creating a great commotion among the feathered people, and they rose up with a general scream into the air. All this was of no benefit to Martin, the recoil of the gun having sent him flying over, his heels in the air; and before he recovered himself the echoes were silent, and all the frightened birds were settling on the water again. But there, just before him, lay one of the spoonbills, beating its great rose-coloured wings against the ground. Martin ran to it, full of keen distress, but was powerless to help; its life's blood was fast running away from the shot wounds it had received in its side, staining the grass with crimson. Presently it closed its beautiful ruby-coloured eyes and the quivering wings grew still. Then Martin sat down on the grass by its side and began to cry. Oh, that great bird, half as tall as himself, and so many times more lovely and strong and beautiful in its life--he had killed it, and it would never fly again! He raised it up very tenderly in his arms and kissed it--kissed its pale green head and rosy wings; then out of his arms it tumbled back again on to the grass. "Oh, poor bird," he cried suddenly, "open your wings and fly away!" But it was dead. Then Martin got up and stared all round him at the wide landscape, and everything looked strange and dim and sorrowful. A shadow passed over the lake, and a murmur came up out of the rushes that was like a voice saying something that he could not understand. A great cry of pain rose from his heart and died to a whisper on his lips; he was awed into silence. Sinking down upon the grass again, he hid his face against the rosy-breasted bird and began to sob. How warm the dead bird felt against his cheek--oh, so warm--and it could not live and fly about with the others. At length he sat up and knew the reason of that change that had come over the earth. A dark cloud had sprung up in the south-west, far off as yet, and near the horizon; but its fringe already touched and obscured the low-hanging sun, and a shadow flew far and vast before it. Over the lake flew that great shadow: the waters looked cold and still, reflecting as in a polished glass the motionless rushes, the glassy bank, and Martin, sitting on it, still clasping in his arms the dead rose-coloured bird. Swifter and vaster, following close upon the flying shadow, came the mighty cloud, changing from black to slaty grey; and then, as the sun broke forth again under its lower edge, it was all flushed with a brilliant rose colour. But what a marvellous thing it was, when the cloud covered a third of the wide heavens, almost touching the horizon on either side with its wing-like extremities; Martin, gazing steadily at it, saw that in its form it was like an immense spoonbill flying through the air! He would gladly have run away then to hide himself from its sight, but he dared not stir, for it was now directly above him; so, lying down on the grass and hiding his face against the dead bird, he waited in fear and trembling. He heard the rushing sound of the mighty wings: the wind they created smote on the waters in a hurricane, so that the reeds were beaten flat on the surface, and a great cry of terror went up from all the wild birds. It passed, and when Martin raised his bowed head and looked again, the sun, just about to touch the horizon with its great red globe, shone out, shedding a rich radiance over the earth and water; while far off, on the opposite side of the heavens, the great cloud-bird was rapidly fading out of sight. [Illustration: "OH, POOR BIRD," HE CRIED SUDDENLY, "OPEN YOUR WINGS AND FLY AWAY!"] [Illustration] _Chapter Three_ _Chasing a Flying Figure_ After what had happened Martin could never visit the waterside and look at the great birds wading and swimming there without a feeling that was like a sudden coldness in the blood of his veins. The rosy spoonbill he had killed and cried over and the great bird-cloud that had frightened him were never forgotten. He grew tired of shouting to the echoes: he discovered that there were even more wonderful things than the marsh echoes in the world, and that the world was bigger than he had thought it. When spring with its moist verdure and frail, sweet-smelling flowers had gone; when the great plain began to turn to a rusty-brown colour, and the dry hard earth was full of cracks, and the days grew longer and the heat greater, there came an appearance of water that quivered and glittered and danced before his wondering sight, and would lead him miles from home every day in his vain efforts to find out what it was. He could talk of nothing else, and asked endless questions about it, and they told him that this strange thing was nothing but the Mirage, but of course that was not telling him enough, so that he was left to puzzle his little boy-brains over this new mystery, just as they had puzzled before over the mystery of the echoes. Now this Mirage was a glittering whiteness that looked just like water, always shining and dancing before him and all round him, on the dry level plain where there was no water. It was never quiet, but perpetually quivering and running into wavelets that threw up crests and jets of sprays as from a fountain, and showers of brilliant drops that flashed like molten silver in the sunlight before they broke and vanished, only to be renewed again. It appeared every day when the sun was high and the air hot, and it was often called _The False Water_. And false it was, since it always flew before him as he ran, so that although he often seemed to be getting nearer to it he could never quite overtake it. But Martin had a very determined spirit for a small boy, and although this appearance of water mocked his efforts a hundred times every day with its vanishing brightness and beauty, he would not give up the pursuit. Now one day when there was not a cloud on the great hot whitey-blue sky, nor a breath of air stirring, when it was all silent, for not even a grass-hopper creaked in the dead, yellow, motionless grass, the whole level earth began to shine and sparkle like a lake of silvery water, as Martin had never seen it shine before. He had wandered far away from home--never had he been so far--and still he ran and ran and ran, and still that whiteness quivered and glittered and flew on before him; and ever it looked more temptingly near, urging him to fresh exertions. At length, tired out and overcome with heat, he sat down to rest, and feeling very much hurt at the way he had been deceived and led on, he shed one little tear. There was no mistake about that tear; he felt it running like a small spider down his cheek, and finally he saw it fall. It fell on to a blade of yellow grass and ran down the blade, then stopped so as to gather itself into a little round drop before touching the ground. Just then, out of the roots of the grass beneath it, crept a tiny dusty black beetle and began drinking the drop, waving its little horns up and down like donkey's ears, apparently very much pleased at its good fortune in finding water and having a good drink in such a dry, thirsty place. Probably it took the tear for a drop of rain just fallen out of the sky. "You _are_ a funny little thing!" exclaimed Martin, feeling now less like crying than laughing. The wee beetle, satisfied and refreshed, climbed up the grass-blade, and when it reached the tip lifted its dusty black wing-cases just enough to throw out a pair of fine gauzy wings that had been neatly folded up beneath them, and flew away. Martin, following its flight, had his eyes quite dazzled by the intense glitter of the False Water, which now seemed to be only a few yards from him: but the strangest thing was that in it there appeared a form--a bright beautiful form that vanished when he gazed steadily at it. Again he got up and began running harder than ever after the flying mocking Mirage, and every time he stopped he fancied that he could see the figure again, sometimes like a pale blue shadow on the brightness; sometimes shining with its own excessive light, and sometimes only seen in outline, like a figure graved on glass, and always vanishing when looked at steadily. Perhaps that white water-like glitter of the Mirage was like a looking-glass, and he was only chasing his own reflection. I cannot say, but there it was, always before him, a face as of a beautiful boy, with tumbled hair and laughing lips, its figure clothed in a fluttering dress of lights and shadows. It also seemed to beckon to him with its hand, and encourage him to run on after it with its bright merry glances. At length when it was past the hour of noon, Martin sat down under a small bush that gave just shade enough to cover him and none to spare. It was only a little spot of shade like an island in a sea of heat and brightness. He was too hot and tired to run more, too tired even to keep his eyes open, and so, propping his back against the stem of the small bush, he closed his tired hot eyes. [Illustration] [Illustration] _Chapter Four_ _Martin is Found by a Deaf Old Man_ Martin kept his eyes shut for only about a minute, as he thought; but he must have been asleep some time, for when he opened them the False Water had vanished, and the sun, looking very large and crimson, was just about to set. He started up, feeling very thirsty and hungry and bewildered; for he was far, far from home, and lost on the great plain. Presently he spied a man coming towards him on horseback. A very funny-looking old man he proved to be, with a face wrinkled and tanned by sun and wind, until it resembled a piece of ancient shoe-leather left lying for years on some neglected spot of ground. A Brazil nut is not darker nor more wrinkled than was the old man's face. His long matted beard and hair had once been white, but the sun out of doors and the smoke in his smoky hut had given them a yellowish tinge, so that they looked like dry dead grass. He wore big jack-boots, patched all over, and full of cracks and holes; and a great pea-jacket, rusty and ragged, fastened with horn buttons big as saucers. His old brimless hat looked like a dilapidated tea-cosy on his head, and to prevent it from being carried off by the wind it was kept on with an old flannel shirt-sleeve tied under his chin. His saddle, too, like his clothes, was old and full of rents, with wisps of hair and straw-stuffing sticking out in various places, and his feet were thrust into a pair of big stirrups made of pieces of wood and rusty iron tied together with string and wire. "Boy, what may you being a doing of here?" bawled this old man at the top of his voice: for he was as deaf as a post, and like a good many deaf people thought it necessary to speak very loud to make himself heard. "Playing," answered Martin innocently. But he could not make the old man hear until he stood up on tip-toe and shouted out his answer as loud as he could. "Playing," exclaimed the old man. "Well, I never in all my life! When there ain't a house 'cepting my own for leagues and leagues, and he says he's playing! What may you be now?" he shouted again. "A little boy," screamed Martin. "I knowed that afore I axed," said the other. Then he slapped his legs and held up his hand with astonishment, and at last began to chuckle. "Will you come home along o' me?" he shouted. "Will you give me something to eat?" asked Martin in return. "Haw, haw, haw," guffawed the old fellow. It was a tremendous laugh, so loud and hollow, it astonished and almost frightened Martin to hear it. "Well I never!" he said. "He ain't no fool, neither. Now, old Jacob, just you take your time and think a bit afore you makes your answer to that." This curious old man, whose name was Jacob, had lived so long by himself that he always thought out loud--louder than other people talk: for, being deaf, he could not hear himself, and never had a suspicion that he could be heard by others. "He's lost, that's what he is," continued old Jacob aloud to himself. "And what's more, he's been and gone and forgot all about his own home, and all he wants is summat to eat. I'll take him and keep him, that's what I'll do: for he's a stray lamb, and belongs to him that finds him, like any other lamb I finds. I'll make him believe I'm his old dad; for he's little and will believe most anything you tells him. I'll learn him to do things about the house--to boil the kettle, and cook the wittels, and gather the firewood, and mend the clothes, and do the washing, and draw the water, and milk the cow, and dig the potatoes, and mind the sheep and--and--and that's what I'll learn him. Then, Jacob, you can sit down and smoke your pipe, 'cos you'll have some one to do your work for you." Martin stood quietly listening to all this, not quite understanding the old man's kind intentions. Then old Jacob, promising to give him something to eat, pulled him up on to his horse, and started home at a gallop. Soon they arrived at a mud hovel, thatched with rushes, the roof sloping down so low that one could almost step on to it; it was surrounded with a ditch, and had a potato patch and a sheep enclosure; for old Jacob was a shepherd, and had a flock of sheep. There were several big dogs, and when Martin got down from the horse, they began jumping round him, barking with delight, as if they knew him, half-smothering him with their rough caresses. Jacob led him into the hut, which looked extremely dirty and neglected, and had only one room. In the corners against walls were piles of sheep-skins that had a strong and rather unpleasant smell: the thatch above was covered with dusty cobwebs, hanging like old rags, and the clay floor was littered with bones, sticks, and other rubbish. The only nice thing to see was a tea-kettle singing and steaming away merrily on the fire in the grate. Old Jacob set about preparing the evening meal; and soon they sat down at a small deal table to a supper of cold mutton and potatoes, and tea which did not taste very nice, as it was sweetened with moist black sugar. Martin was too hungry to turn up his nose at anything, and while he ate and drank the old man chuckled and talked aloud to himself about his good fortune in finding the little boy to do his work for him. After supper he cleared the table, and put two mugs of tea on it, and then got out his clay pipe and tobacco. "Now, little boy," he cried, "let's have a jolly evening together. Your very good health, little boy," and here he jingled his mug against Martin's, and took a sip of tea. "Would you like to hear a song, little boy?" he said, after finishing his pipe. "No," said Martin, who was getting sleepy; but Jacob took no to mean yes, and so he stood up on his legs and sang this song:-- "My name is Jacob, that's my name; And tho' I'm old, the old man's game-- The air it is so good, d'ye see: And on the plain my flock I keep, And sing all day to please my sheep, And never lose them like Bo-Peep, Becos the ways of them are known to me. "When winter comes and winds do blow, Unto my sheep so good I go-- I'm always good to them, d'ye see-- Ho, sheep, say I, both ram, both ewe, I've sung you songs all summer through, Now lend to me a skin or two, To keep the cold and wet from out o' me." This song, accompanied with loud raps on the table, was bellowed forth in a dreadfully discordant voice; and very soon all the dogs rushed into the room and began to bark and howl most dismally, which seemed to please the old man greatly, for to him it was a kind of applause. But the noise was too much for Martin; so he stopped up his ears, and only removed his fingers from them when the performance was over. After the song the old man offered to dance, for he had not yet had amusement enough. "Boy, can you play on this?" he shouted, holding up a frying-pan and a big stick to beat it with. Of course Martin could play on _that_ instrument: he had often enough played on one like it to startle the echoes on the lake, in other days. And so, when he had been lifted on to the table, he took the frying-pan by the handle, and began vigorously beating on it with the stick. He did not mind the noise now since he was helping to make it. Meanwhile old Jacob began flinging his arms and legs about in all directions, looking like a scarecrow made to tumble about by means of springs and wires. He pounded the clay floor with his ponderous old boots until the room was filled with a cloud of dust; then in his excitement he kicked over chairs, pots, kettle, and whatever came in his way, while he kept on revolving round the table in a kind of crazy fandango. Martin thought it fine fun, and screamed with laughter, and beat his gong louder than ever; then to make matters worse old Jacob at intervals uttered whoops and yells, which the dogs answered with long howls from the door, until the din was something tremendous. At length they both grew tired, and then after resting and sipping some more cold tea, prepared to go to bed. Some sheep-skins were piled up in a corner for Martin to sleep on, and old Jacob covered him with a horse-rug, and tucked him in very carefully. Then the kind old man withdrew to his own bed on the opposite side of the room. [Illustration: GROPING HIS WAY TO THE BUCKET OF COLD WATER--HE MANAGED TO RAISE IT UP IN HIS ARMS, AND POURED IT OVER THE SLEEPER.] About midnight Martin was wakened by loud horrible noises in the room, and started up on bed trembling with fear. The sounds came from the old man's nose, and resembled a succession of blasts on a ram's horn, which, on account of its roughness and twisted shape, makes a very bad trumpet. As soon as Martin discovered the cause of the noise he crept out of bed and tried to waken the old snorer by shouting to him, tugging at his arms and legs, and finally pulling his beard. He refused to wake. Then Martin had a bright idea, and groping his way to the bucket of cold water standing beside the fire-place, he managed to raise it up in his arms, and poured it over the sleeper. The snoring changed to cries of loud choking snorts, then ceased. Martin, well pleased at the success of his experiment, was about to return to his bed when old Jacob struggled up to a sitting posture. "Hullo, wake up, little boy!" he shouted. "My bed's all full o' water--goodness knows where it comes from." "I poured it over you to wake you up. Don't you know you were making a noise with your nose?" cried Martin at the top of his voice. "You--you--you throwed it over me! You--O you most wicked little villain you! You throwed it over me did you!" and here he poured out such a torrent of abusive words that Martin was horrified and cried out, "O what a naughty, wicked, bad old man you are!" It was too dark for old Jacob to see him, but he knew his way about the room, and taking up the wet rug that served him for covering he groped his way to Martin's bed and began pounding it with the rug, thinking the naughty little boy was there. "You little rascal you--I hope you like that!--and that!--and that!" he shouted, pounding away. "I'll learn you to throw water over your poor old dad! And such a--a affectionate father as I've been too, giving him sich nice wittles--and--and singing and dancing to him to teach him music. Perhaps you'd like a little more, you takes it so quietly? Well, then, take that!--and that!--and that! Why, how's this--the young warmint ain't here arter all! Well, I'm blowed if that don't beat everythink! What did he go and chuck that water over me for? What a walloping I'll give him in the morning when it's light! and now, boy, you may go and sleep on my bed, 'cos it's wet, d'ye see; and I'll sleep on yourn, 'cos it's dry." Then he got into Martin's bed, and muttered and grumbled himself to sleep. Martin came out from under the table, and after dressing himself with great secrecy crept to the door to make his escape. It was locked and the key taken away. But he was determined to make his escape somehow, and not wait to be whipped; so, by and by, he drew the little deal table close against the wall, and getting on to it began picking the rushes one by one out of the lower part of the thatch. After working for half-an-hour, like a mouse eating his way out of a soft wooden box, he began to see the light coming through the hole, and in another half hour it was large enough for him to creep through. When he had got out, he slipped down to the ground, where the dogs were lying. They seemed very glad to see him, and began pressing round to lick his face; but he pushed them off, and ran away over the plain as fast as he could. The stars were shining, but it was very dark and silent; only in moist places, where the grass grew tall, he heard the crickets strumming sadly on their little harps. At length, tired with running, he coiled himself in a large tussock of dry grass and went to sleep, just as if he had been accustomed to sleep out of doors all his life. [Illustration] [Illustration] _Chapter Five_ _The People of the Mirage_ In that remote land where Martin was born, with its bright warm climate and rich soil, no person need go very long hungry--not even a small boy alone and lost on that great grassy plain. For there is a little useful plant in that place, with small leaves like clover leaves and a pretty yellow flower, which bears a wholesome sweet root, about as big as a pigeon's egg and of a pearly white colour. It is so well known to the settlers' children in that desert country that they are always wandering off to the plain to look for it, just as the children in a town are always running off with their halfpence to the sweet-stuff shop. This pretty white root is watery, so that it satisfies both hunger and thirst at the same time. Now when Martin woke next morning, he found a great many of the little three-leaved plants growing close to the spot where he had slept, and they supplied him with a nice sweet breakfast. After he had eaten enough and had amused himself by rolling over and over several times on the grass, he started once more on his travels, going towards the sunrise as fast as he could run. He could run well for a small boy, but he got tired at last and sat down to rest. Then he jumped up and went on again at a trot: this pace he kept up very steadily, only pausing from time to time to watch a flock of small white birds that followed him all the morning out of curiosity. At length he began to feel so hot and tired that he could only walk. Still he kept on; he could see no flowers nor anything pretty in that place--why should he stay in it? He would go on, and on, and on, in spite of the heat, until he came to something. But it grew hotter as the day advanced, and the ground about him more dry and barren and desolate, until at last he came to ground where there was scarcely a blade of grass: it was a great, barren, level plain, covered with a slight crust of salt crystals that glittered in the sun so brightly that it dazzled and pained his eyesight. Here were no sweet watery roots for refreshment, and no berries; nor could Martin find a bush to give him a little shade and protection from the burning noonday sun. He saw one large dark object in the distance, and mistaking it for a bush covered with thick foliage he ran towards it; but suddenly it started up, when he was near, and waving its great grey and white wings like sails, fled across the plain. It was an ostrich! Now this hot, shadeless plain seemed to be the very home and dwelling-place of the False Water. It sparkled and danced all round him so close that there only appeared to be a small space of dry ground for him to walk on; only he was always exactly in the centre of the dry spot; for as he advanced, the glittering whiteness, that looked so like shiny water, flew mockingly before his steps. But he hoped to get to it at last, as every time he flagged in the chase the mysterious figure of the day before appeared again to lure him still further on. At length, unable to move another step, Martin sat right down on the bare ground: it was like sitting on the floor of a heated oven, but there was no help for it, he was so tired. The air was so thick and heavy that he could hardly breathe, even with his mouth wide open like a little gasping bird; and the sky looked like metal, heated to a white heat, and so low down as to make him fancy that if he were to throw up his hands he would touch it and burn his fingers. And the Mirage--oh, how it glistened and quivered here where he had sat down, half blinding him with its brightness! Now that he could no longer run after it, nor even walk, it came to him, breaking round and over him in a thousand fantastic shapes, filling the air with a million white flakes that whirled about as if driven by a furious wind, although not a breath was stirring. They looked like whitest snow-flakes, yet stung his cheeks like sparks of fire. Not only did he see and feel, he could even _hear_ it now: his ears were filled with a humming sound, growing louder and louder every minute, like the noise made by a large colony of bumble-bees when a person carelessly treads on their nest, and they are angered and thrown into a great commotion and swarm out to defend their home. Very soon out of this confused murmur louder, clearer sounds began to rise; and these could be distinguished as the notes of numberless musical instruments, and voices of people singing, talking, and laughing. Then, all at once, there appeared running and skipping over the ground towards him a great company of girls--scores and hundreds of them scattered over the plain, exceeding in loveliness all lovely things that he had ever beheld. Their faces were whiter than lilies, and their loose, fluttering hair looked like a mist of pale shining gold; and their skirts, that rustled as they ran, were also shining like the wings of dragon-flies, and were touched with brown reflections and changing, beautiful tints, such as are seen on soap-bubbles. Each of them carried a silver pitcher, and as they ran and skipped along they dipped their fingers in and sprinkled the desert with water. The bright drops they scattered fell all around in a grateful shower, and flew up again from the heated earth in the form of a white mist touched with rainbow colours, filling the air with a refreshing coolness. At Martin's side there grew a small plant, its grey-green leaves lying wilted on the ground, and one of the girls paused to water it, and as she sprinkled the drops on it she sang:-- "Little weed, little weed, In such need, Must you pain, ask in vain, Die for rain, Never bloom, never seed, Little weed? O, no, no, you shall not die, From the sky With my pitcher down I fly. Drink the rain, grow again, Bloom and seed, Little weed." Martin held up his hot little hands to catch some of the falling drops; then the girl, raising her pitcher, poured a stream of cool water right into his face, and laughing at what she had done, went away with a hop, skip, and jump after her companions. The girls with pitchers had all gone, and were succeeded by troops of boys, just as beautiful, many of them singing and some playing on wind and stringed instruments; and some were running, others quietly walking, and still others riding on various animals--ostriches, sheep, goats, fawns, and small donkeys, all pure white. One boy was riding a ram, and as he came by, strum-strumming on a little silver-stringed banjo, he sang a very curious song, which made Martin prick up his ears to listen. It was about a speckled snake that lived far away on a piece of waste ground; how day after day he sought for his lost playmate--the little boy that had left him; how he glided this way and that on his smooth, bright belly, winding in and out among the tall wild sunflowers; how he listened for the dear footsteps--listened with his green leaf-shaped, little head raised high among the leaves. But his playmate was far away and came no more to feed him from his basin of bread and milk, and caress his cold, smooth coils with his warm, soft, little hand. Close after the boy on the ram marched four other little boys on foot, holding up long silver trumpets in readiness to blow. One of them stopped, and putting his trumpet down close to Martin's ear, puffed out his little, round cheeks, and blew a blast that made him jump. Laughing at the joke, they passed on, and were succeeded by others and still others, singing, shouting, twanging their instruments, and some of them stopping for a few moments to look at Martin or play some pretty little trick on him. But now all at once Martin ceased to listen or even look at them, for something new and different was coming, something strange which made him curious and afraid at the same time. It was a sound, very deep and solemn, of men's voices singing together a song that was like a dirge and coming nearer and nearer, and it was like the coming of a storm with wind and rain and thunder. Soon he could see them marching through the great crowd of people--old men moving in a slow procession, and they had pale dark faces and their hair and long beards were whiter than snow, and their long flowing robes were of the silvery dark colour of a rain-cloud. Then he saw that the leaders of the procession were followed by others who carried a couch of mother-o'-pearl resting on their shoulders, that on the couch reposed a pale sweet-looking youth dressed in silk clothes of a delicate rose-colour. He also wore crimson shoes, and a tight-fitting apple-green skull cap, which made his head look very small. His eyes were ruby-red, and he had a long slender nose like a snipe's bill, only broad and flattened at the tip. And then Martin saw that he was wounded, for he had one white hand pressed to his side and it was stained with blood, and drops of blood were trickling through his fingers. He was troubled at the sight, and he gazed at him, and listened to the words of that solemn song the old men were singing but could not understand them. Not because he was a child, for no person, however aged and wise and filled with all learning he might be, could have understood that strange song about Wonderful Life and Wonderful Death. Yet there was something in it too which any one who heard it, man or child, could understand; and he understood it, and it went into his heart to make it so heavy and sad that he could have put his little face down on the ground and cried as he had never cried before. But he did not put his face down and cry, for just then the wounded youth looked down on him as they carried him past and smiled a very sweet smile: then Martin felt that he loved him above all the bright and beautiful beings that had passed before him. [Illustration: "THE QUEEN WISHES TO SPEAK TO YOU--STAND UP, LITTLE BOY."] Then, when he was gone from sight; when the solemn sound of the voices began to grow fainter in the distance like the sound of a storm when it passes away, his heaviness of heart and sorrow left him, and he began to listen to the shouts and cries and clanging of noisy instruments of music swiftly coming nearer and nearer; and then all around and past him came a vast company of youths and maidens singing and playing and shouting and dancing as they moved onwards. They were the most beautiful beings he had ever seen in their shining dresses, some all in white, others in amber-colour, others in sky-blue, and some in still other lovely colours. "The Queen! the Queen!" they were shouting. "Stand up, little boy, and bow to the Queen." "The Queen! Kneel to the Queen, little boy," cried others. Then many others in the company began crying out together. "The Queen! lie down flat on the ground, little boy." "The Queen! Shut your eyes and open your mouth, little boy." "The Queen! Run away as fast as you can, little boy." "Stand on your head to the Queen, little boy!" "Crow like a cock and bark like a dog, little boy!" Trying to obey all these conflicting commands at one and the same time, poor Martin made strange noises and tumbled about this way and that and set them all laughing at him. "The Queen wishes to speak to you--stand up, little boy," said one of the brightest beings, touching Martin on the cheek. There before him, surrounded by all that beautiful company, stood the horses that drew her--great milk-white horses impatiently pawing the dusty ground with their hoofs and proudly champing their gold bridles, tossing the white froth from their mouths. But when he lifted his eyes timidly to the majestic being seated in her chariot before him he was dazzled and overcome with the sight. Her face had a brightness that was like that of the Mirage at noon, and the eyes that gazed on him were like two great opals; she appeared clothed in a white shining mist, and her hair spread wide on her shoulders looked white--whiter than a lamb's fleece, and powdered with fine gold that sparkled and quivered and ran through it like sparks of yellow fire: and on her head she wore a crown that was like a diamond seen by candle-light, or like a dew-drop in the sun, and every moment it changed its colour, and by turns was a red flame, then a green, then a yellow, then a violet. "Child, you have followed me far," said the Queen, "and now you are rewarded, for you have looked on my face and I have refreshed you; and the Sun, my father, will never more hurt you for my sake." "He is a naughty boy and unworthy of your goodness," spoke one of the bright beings standing near. "He killed the spoonbill." "He cried for the poor slain bird," replied the Queen: "He will never remember it without grief, and I forgive him." "He went away from his home and thinks no more of his poor old father and mother, who cry for him and are seeking for him on the great plain," continued the voice. "I forgive him," returned the Queen. "He is such a little wanderer--he could not always rest at home." "He emptied a bucketful of water over good old Jacob, who found him and took him in and fed him, and sang to him, and danced to him, and was a second father to him." At that there was great laughter; even the Queen laughed when she said that she forgave him that too. And Martin when he remembered old Jacob, and saw that they only made a joke of it, laughed with them. But the accusing voice still went on: "And when the good old shepherd went to sleep a second time, then the naughty little boy climbed on the table and picked a hole in the thatch and got out and ran away." Another burst of laughter followed; then a youth in a shining, violet-coloured dress suddenly began twanging on his instrument and wildly capering about in imitation of old Jacob's dancing, and while he played and danced he sang-- "Ho, sheep whose ways are known to me, Both ewe and lamb And horned ram Wherever can that Martin be? All day for him I ride Over the plains so wide, And on my horn I blow, Just to let him know That Jacob's on his track, And soon will have him back, I look and look all day, And when I'm home I say: He isn't like a mole To dig himself a hole; Them little legs he's got They can't go far, trot, trot, They can't go far, run run, Oh no, it is his fun; I'm sure he's near; He must be here A-skulking round the house Just like a little mouse. I'll get a mouse-trap in a minute, And bait with cheese that's smelly To bring him helter-skelly-- That little empty belly, And then I'll have him in it. Where have he hid, That little kid, That good old Jacob was so kind to? And when a rest I am inclined to Who'll boil the cow and dig the kittles And milk the stockings, darn the wittles? Who mugs of tea Will drink with me? When round and round I pound the ground With boots of cowhide, boots of thunder, Who'll help to make the noise, I wonder? Who'll join the row Of loud bow-wow With din of tin and copper clatter With bang and whang of pan and platter? O when I find Him fast I'll bind And upside down I'll hold him; And when a-home I gallop late-o I'll give him no more cold potato, But cuff him, box him, bang him, scold him, And drench him with a pail of water, And fill his mouth with wool and mortar, Because he don't do things he oughter, But does the things he ought not to, Then tell me true, Both ram and ewe, Wherever have that Martin got to? For Jacob's old and deaf and dim And never knowed the ways of him." "I forgive him everything," said the Queen very graciously, when the song ended, at which they all laughed. "And now let two of you speak and each bestow a gift on him. He deserves to be rewarded for running so far after us." Then one of those bright beautiful beings came forward and cried out: "He loves wandering; let him have his will and be a wanderer all his days on the face of the earth." "Well spoken!" cried the Queen. "A wanderer he is to be," said another: "let the sea do him no harm--that is my gift." "So be it," said the Queen; "and to your two gifts I shall add a third. Let all men love him. Go now, Martin, you are well equipped, and satisfy your heart with the sight of all the strange and beautiful things the world contains." "Kneel and thank the Queen for her gifts," said a voice to Martin. He dropped on to his knees, but could speak no word; when he raised his eyes again the whole glorious company had vanished. The air was cool and fragrant, the earth moist as if a shower had just fallen. He got up and slowly walked onward until near sunset, thinking of nothing but the beautiful people of the Mirage. He had left the barren salt plain behind by now; the earth was covered with yellow grass, and he found and ate some sweet roots and berries. Then feeling very tired, he stretched himself out on his back and began to wonder if what he had seen was nothing but a dream. Yes, it was surely a dream, but then--in his life dreams and realities were so mixed--how was he always to know one from the other? Which was most strange, the Mirage that glittered and quivered round him and flew mockingly before him, or the people of the Mirage he had seen? If you are lying quite still with your eyes shut and some one comes softly up and stands over you, somehow you know it, and open your eyes to see who it is. Just in that way Martin knew that some one had come and was standing over him. Still he kept his eyes shut, feeling sure that it was one of those bright and beautiful beings he had lately seen, perhaps the Queen herself, and that the sight of her shining countenance would dazzle his eyes. Then all at once he thought that it might be old Jacob, who would punish him for running away. He opened his eyes very quickly then. What do you think he saw? An ostrich--that same big ostrich he had seen and startled early in the day! It was standing over him, staring down with its great vacant eyes. Gradually its head came lower and lower down, until at last it made a sudden peck at a metal button on his jacket, and gave such a vigorous tug at it that Martin was almost lifted off the ground. He screamed and gave a jump; but it was nothing to the jump the ostrich gave when he discovered that the button belonged to a living boy. He jumped six feet high into the air and came down with a great flop; then feeling rather ashamed of himself for being frightened at such an insignificant thing as Martin, he stalked majestically away, glancing back, first over one shoulder then the other, and kicking up his heels behind him in a somewhat disdainful manner. Martin laughed, and in the middle of his laugh he fell asleep. [Illustration] [Illustration] _Chapter Six_ _Martin Meets With Savages_ When, on waking next morning, Martin took his first peep over the grass, there, directly before him, loomed the great blue hills, or Sierras as they are called in that country. He had often seen them, long ago in his distant home on clear mornings, when they had appeared like a blue cloud on the horizon. He had even wished to get to them, to tread their beautiful blue summits that looked as if they would be soft to his feet--softer than the moist springy turf on the plain; but he wished it only as one wishes to get to some far-off impossible place--a white cloud, for instance, or the blue sky itself. Now all at once he unexpectedly found himself near them, and the sight fired him with a new desire. The level plain had nothing half so enchanting as the cloud-like blue airy hills, and very soon he was up on his feet and hurrying towards them. In spite of hurrying he did not seem to get any nearer; still it was pleasant to be always going on and on, knowing that he would get to them at last. He had now left the drier plains behind; the earth was clothed with green and yellow grass easy to the feet, and during the day he found many sweet roots to refresh him. He also found quantities of cam-berries, a round fruit a little less than a cherry in size, bright yellow in colour, and each berry inside a green case or sheath shaped like a heart. They were very sweet. At night he slept once more in the long grass, and when daylight returned he travelled on, feeling very happy there alone--happy to think that he would get to the beautiful hills at last. But only in the early morning would they look distinct and near; later in the day, when the sun grew hot, they would seem further off, like a cloud resting on the earth, which made him think sometimes that they moved on as he went towards them. On the third day he came to a high piece of ground; and when he got to the top and looked over to the other side he saw a broad green valley with a stream of water running in it: on one hand the valley with its gleaming water stretched away as far as he could see, or until it lost itself in the distant haze; but on the other hand, on looking up the valley, there appeared a great forest, looking blue in the distance; and this was the first forest Martin had ever seen. Close by, down in the green valley before him, there was something else to attract his attention, and this was a large group of men and horses. No sooner had he caught sight of them than he set off at a run towards them, greatly excited; and as he drew near they all rose up from the grass where they had been sitting or lying to stare at him, filled with wonder at the sight of that small boy alone in the desert. There were about twenty men and women, and several children; the men were very big and tall, and were dressed only in robes made of the skins of some wild animal; they had broad, flat faces, and dark copper-coloured skins, and their long black hair hung down loose on their backs. These strange, rude-looking people were savages, and are supposed to be cruel and wicked, and to take pleasure in torturing and killing any lost or stray person that falls into their hands; but indeed it is not so, as you shall shortly find. Poor ignorant, little Martin, who had never read a book in his life, having always refused to learn his letters, knew nothing about savages, and feared them no more than he had feared old Jacob, or the small spotted snake, the very sight of which had made grown-up people scream and run away. So he marched boldly up and stared at them, and they in turn stared at him out of their great, dark, savage eyes. They had just been eating their supper of deer's flesh, roasted on the coals, and after a time one of the savages, as an experiment, took up a bone of meat and offered it to him. Being very hungry he gladly took it, and began gnawing the meat off the bone. When he had satisfied his hunger, he began to look round him, still stared at by the others. Then one of the women, who had a good-humoured face, caught him up, and seating him on her knees, tried to talk to him. "Melu-melumia quiltahou papa shani cha silmata," she spoke, gazing very earnestly into his face. They had all been talking among themselves while he was eating; but he did not know that savages had a language of their own different from ours, and so thought that they had only been amusing themselves with a kind of nonsense talk, which meant nothing. Now when the woman addressed this funny kind of talk to him, he answered her in her own way, as he imagined, readily enough: "Hey diddle-diddle, the cat's in the fiddle, fe fo fi fum, chumpty-chumpty-chum, with bings on her ringers, and tells on her boes." They all listened with grave attention, as if he had said something very important. Then the woman continued: "Huanatopa ana ana quiltahou." To which Martin answered, "Theophilus Thistle, the thistle-sifter, sifted a sieve of unsifted thistles; and if Theophilus--oh, I won't say any more!" Then she said, "Quira-holata silhoa mari changa changa." "Cock-a-doodle-do!" cried Martin, getting tired and impatient. "Baa, baa, black sheep, bow, wow, wow; goosey, goosey gander; see-saw, Mary Daw; chick-a-dee-dee, will you listen to me. And now let me go!" But she held him fast and kept on talking her nonsense language to him, until becoming vexed he caught hold of her hair and pulled it. She only laughed and tossed him up into the air and caught him again, just as he might have tossed and caught a small kitten. At length she released him, for now they were all beginning to lie down by the fire to sleep, as it was getting dark; Martin being very tired settled himself down among them, and as one of the women threw a skin over him he slept very comfortably. Next morning the hills looked nearer than ever just across the river; but little he cared for hills now, and when the little savage children went out to hunt for berries and sweet roots he followed and spent the day agreeably enough in their company. On the afternoon of the second day his new play-fellows all threw off their little skin cloaks and plunged into the stream to bathe; and Martin, seeing how much they seemed to enjoy being in the water, undressed himself and went in after them. The water was not too deep in that place, and it was rare fun splashing about and trying to keep his legs in the swift current and clambering over slippery rocks, he went out some distance from the bank. All at once he discovered that the others had left him, and looking back he saw that they were all scrambling out on to the bank and fighting over his clothes. Back he dashed in haste to rescue his property, but by the time he reached the spot they had finished dividing the spoil, and jumping up they ran away and scattered in all directions, one wearing his jacket, another his knickerbockers, another his shirt and one sock, another his cap and shoes, and the last the one remaining sock only. In vain he pursued and called for them; and at last he was compelled to follow them unclothed to the camping ground, where he presented himself crying piteously; but the women who had been so kind to him would not help him now, and only laughed to see how white his skin looked by contrast with the dark copper-coloured skins of the other children. At length one of them compassionately gave him a small soft-furred skin of some wild animal, and fastened it on him like a cloak; and this he was compelled to wear with shame and grief, feeling very strange and uncomfortable in it. But the feeling of discomfort in that new savage dress was nothing to the sense of injury that stung him, and in his secret heart he was determined not to lose his own clothes. When the children went out next day he followed them, watching and waiting for a chance to recover anything that belonged to him; and at last, seeing the little boy who wore his cap off his guard, he made a sudden rush, and snatching it off the young savage's head, put it firmly upon his own. But the little savage now regarded that cap as his very own: he had taken it by force or stratagem, and had worn it on his head since the day before, and that made it his property; and so at Martin he went, and they fought stoutly together, and being nearly of a size, he could not conquer the little white boy. Then he cried out to the others to help him, and they came and overthrew Martin, and deprived him not only of his cap, but of his little skin cloak as well, and then punished him until he screamed aloud with pain. Leaving him crying on the ground, they ran back to the camp. He followed shortly afterwards, but got no sympathy, for, as a rule, grown-up savages do not trouble themselves very much about these little matters: they leave their children to settle their own disputes. During the rest of that day Martin sulked by himself behind a great tussock of grass, refusing to eat with the others, and when one of the women went to him and offered him a piece of meat he struck it vindictively out of her hand. She only laughed a little and left him. Now when the sun was setting, and he was beginning to feel very cold and miserable in his nakedness, the men were seen returning from the hunt; but instead of riding slowly to the camp as on other days, they came riding furiously and shouting. The moment they were seen and their shouts heard the women jumped up and began hastily packing the skins and all their belongings into bundles; and in less than ten minutes the whole company was mounted on horseback and ready for flight. One of the men picked Martin up and placed him on the horse's back before him, and then they all started at a swift canter up the valley towards that great blue forest in the distance. In about an hour they came to it: it was then quite dark, the sky powdered with numberless stars; but when they got among the trees the blue, dusky sky and brilliant stars disappeared from sight, as if a black cloud had come over them, so dark was it in the forest. For the trees were very tall and mingled their branches overhead; but they had got into a narrow path known to them, and moving slowly in single file, they kept on for about two hours longer, then stopped and dismounted under the great trees, and lying down all close together, went to sleep. Martin, lying among them, crept under the edge of one of the large skin robes and, feeling warm, he soon fell fast asleep and did not wake till daylight. [Illustration] [Illustration] _Chapter Seven_ _Alone in the Great Forest_ Imagine to yourself one accustomed to live in the great treeless plain, accustomed to open his eyes each morning to the wide blue sky and the brilliant sunlight, now for the first time opening them in that vast gloomy forest, where neither wind nor sunlight came, and no sound was heard, and twilight lasted all day long! All round him were trees with straight, tall grey trunks, and behind and beyond them yet other trees--trees everywhere that stood motionless like pillars of stone supporting the dim green roof of foliage far above. It was like a vast gloomy prison in which he had been shut, and he longed to make his escape to where he could see the rising sun and feel the fanning wind on his cheeks. He looked round at the others: they were all stretched on the ground still in a deep sleep, and it frightened him a little to look at their great, broad, dark faces framed in masses of black hair. He felt that he hated them, for they had treated him badly: the children had taken his clothes, compelling him to go naked, and had beaten and bruised him, and he had not been pitied and helped by their elders. By and by, very quietly and cautiously he crept away from among them, and made his escape into the gloomy wood. On one side the forest shadows looked less dark than the other, and on that side he went, for it was the side on which the sun rose, and the direction he had been travelling when he first met with the savages. On and on he went, over the thick bed of dark decaying leaves, which made no rustling sound, looking like a little white ghost of a boy in that great gloomy wood. But he came to no open place, nor did he find anything to eat when hunger pressed him; for there were no sweet roots and berries there, nor any plant that he had ever seen before. It was all strange and gloomy, and very silent. Not a leaf trembled; for if one had trembled near him he would have heard it whisper in that profound stillness that made him hold his breath to listen. But sometimes at long intervals the silence would be broken by a sound that made him start and stand still and wonder what had caused it. For the rare sounds in the forest were unlike any sounds he had heard before. Three or four times during the day a burst of loud, hollow, confused laughter sounded high up among the trees; but he saw nothing, although most likely the creature that had laughed saw him plainly enough from its hiding-place in the deep shadows as it ran up the trunks of the trees. At length he came to a river about thirty or forty yards wide; and this was the same river that he had bathed in many leagues further down in the open valley. It is called by the savages Co-viota-co-chamanga, which means that it runs partly in the dark and partly in the light. Here it was in the dark. The trees grew thick and tall on its banks, and their wide branches met and intermingled above its waters that flowed on without a ripple, black to the eye as a river of ink. How strange it seemed when, holding on to a twig, he bent over and saw himself reflected--a white, naked child with a scared face--in that black mirror! Overcome by thirst, he ventured to creep down and dip his hand in the stream, and was astonished to see that the black water looked as clear as crystal in his hollow hand. After quenching his thirst he went on, following the river now, for it had made him turn aside; but after walking for an hour or more he came to a great tree that had fallen across the stream, and climbing on to the slippery trunk, he crept cautiously over and then went gladly on in the old direction. [Illustration: HOW STRANGE IT SEEMED WHEN, HOLDING ON TO A TWIG, HE BENT OVER AND SAW HIMSELF REFLECTED IN THAT BLACK MIRROR.] Now, after he had crossed the river and walked a long distance, he came to a more open part; but though it was nice to feel the sunshine on him again, the underwood and grass and creepers trailing over the ground made it difficult and tiring to walk, and in this place a curious thing happened. Picking his way through the tangled herbage, an animal his footsteps had startled scuttled away in great fear, and as it went he caught a glimpse of it. It was a kind of weasel, but very large--larger than a big tom-cat, and all over as black as the blackest cat. Looking down he discovered that this strange animal had been feasting on eggs. The eggs were nearly as large as fowls', of a deep green colour, with polished shells. There had been about a dozen in the nest, which was only a small hollow in the ground lined with dry grass, but most of them had been broken, and the contents devoured by the weasel. Only two remained entire, and these he took, and tempted by his hunger, soon broke the shells at the small end and sucked them clean. They were raw, but never had eggs, boiled, fried, or poached, tasted so nice before! He had just finished his meal, and was wishing that a third egg had remained in the ruined nest, when a slight sound like the buzzing of an insect made him look round, and there, within a few feet of him, was the big black weasel once more, looking strangely bold and savage-tempered. It kept staring fixedly at Martin out of its small, wicked, beady black eyes, and snarling so as to show its white sharp teeth; and very white they looked by contrast with the black lips, and nose, and hair. Martin stared back at it, but it kept moving and coming nearer, now sitting straight up, then dropping its fore-feet and gathering its legs in a bunch as if about to spring, and finally stretching itself straight out towards him again, its round flat head and long smooth body making it look like a great black snake crawling towards him. And all the time it kept on snarling and clicking its sharp teeth and uttering its low, buzzing growl. Martin grew more and more afraid, it looked so strong and angry, so unspeakably fierce. The creature looked as if he was speaking to Martin, saying something very easy to understand, and very dreadful to hear. This is what it seemed to be saying:-- "Ha, you came on me unawares, and startled me away from the nest I found! You have eaten the last two eggs; and I found them, and they were mine! Must I go hungry for you--starveling, robber! A miserable little boy alone and lost in the forest, naked, all scratched and bleeding with thorns, with no courage in his heart, no strength in his hands! Look at me! I am not weak, but strong and black and fierce; I live here--this is my home; I fear nothing; I am like a serpent, and like brass and tempered steel--nothing can bruise or break me: my teeth are like fine daggers; when I strike them into the flesh of any creature I never loose my hold till I have sucked out all the blood in his heart. But you, weak little wretch, I hate you! I thirst for your blood for stealing my food from me! What can you do to save yourself? Down, down on the ground, chicken-heart, where I can get hold of you! You shall pay me for the eggs with your life! I shall hold you fast by the throat, and drink and drink until I see your glassy eyes close, and your cheeks turn whiter than ashes, and I feel your heart flutter like a leaf in your bosom! Down, down!" It was terrible to watch him and seem to hear such words. He was nearer now--scarcely a yard away, still with his beady glaring eyes fixed on Martin's face: and Martin was powerless to fly from him--powerless even to stir a step or to lift a hand. His heart jumped so that it choked him, his hair stood up on his head, and he trembled so that he was ready to fall. And at last, when about to fall to the ground, in the extremity of his terror, he uttered a great scream of despair; and the sudden scream so startled the weasel, that he jumped and scuttled away as fast as he could through the creepers and bushes, making a great rustling over the dead leaves and twigs; and Martin, recovering his strength, listened to that retreating sound as it passed away into the deep shadows, until it ceased altogether. [Illustration] [Illustration] _Chapter Eight_ _The Flower and the Serpent_ His escape from the horrible black animal made Martin quite happy, in spite of hunger and fatigue, and he pushed on as bravely as ever. But it was slow going and very difficult, even painful in places, on account of the rough thorny undergrowth, where he had to push and crawl through the close bushes, and tread on ground littered with old dead prickly leaves and dead thorny twigs. After going on for about an hour in this way, he came to a stream, a branch of the river he had left, and much shallower, so that he could easily cross from side to side, and he could also see the bright pebbles under the clear swift current. The stream appeared to run from the east, the way he wished to travel towards the hills, so that he could keep by it, which he was glad enough to do, as it was nice to get a drink of water whenever he felt thirsty, and to refresh his tired and sore little feet in the stream. Following this water he came before very long to a place in the forest where there was little or no underwood, but only low trees and bushes scattered about, and all the ground moist and very green and fresh like a water-meadow. It was indeed pleasant to feel his feet on the soft carpet of grass, and stooping, he put his hands down on it, and finally lying down he rolled on it so as to have the nice sensation of the warm soft grass all over his body. So agreeable was it lying and rolling about in that open green place with the sweet sunshine on him, that he felt no inclination to get up and travel on. It was so sweet to rest after all his strivings and sufferings in that great dark forest! So sweet was it that he pretty soon fell asleep, and no doubt slept a long time, for when he woke, the sun, which had been over his head, was now far down in the west. It was very still, and the air warm and fragrant at that hour, with the sun shining through the higher branches of the trees on the green turf where he was lying. How green it was--the grass, the trees, every tiny blade and every leaf was like a piece of emerald green glass with the sun shining through it! So wonderful did it seem to him--the intense greenness, the brilliant sunbeams that shone into his eyes, and seemed to fill him with brightness, and the stillness of the forest, that he sat up and stared about him. What did it mean--that brightness and stillness? Then, at a little distance away, he caught sight of something on a tree of a shining golden yellow colour. Jumping up he ran to the tree, and found that it was half overgrown with a very beautiful climbing plant, with leaves divided like the fingers of a hand, and large flowers and fruit, both green and ripe. The ripe fruit was as big as a duck's egg, and the same shape, and of a shining yellow colour. Reaching up his hand he began to feel the smooth lovely fruit, when, being very ripe, it came off its stem into his hand. It smelt very nice, and then, in his hunger, he bit through the smooth rind with his teeth, and it tasted as nice as it looked. He quickly ate it, and then pulled another and ate that, and then another, and still others, until he could eat no more. He had not had so delicious a meal for many a long day. Not until he had eaten his fill did Martin begin to look closely at the flowers on the plant. It was the passion-flower, and he had never seen it before, and now that he looked well at it he thought it the loveliest and strangest flower he had ever beheld; not brilliant and shining, jewel-like, in the sun, like the scarlet verbena of the plains, or some yellow flower, but pale and misty, the petals being of a dim greenish cream-colour, with a large blue circle in the centre; and the blue, too, was misty like the blue haze in the distance on a summer day. To see and admire it better he reached out his hand and tried to pluck one of the flowers; then in an instant he dropped his hand, as if he had been pricked by a thorn. But there was no thorn and nothing to hurt him; he dropped his hand only because he felt that he had hurt the flower. Moving a step back he stared at it, and the flower seemed like a thing alive that looked back at him, and asked him why he had hurt it. [Illustration: HE QUICKLY ATE IT, AND THEN PULLED ANOTHER AND ATE THAT, AND THEN ANOTHER, AND STILL OTHERS, UNTIL HE COULD EAT NO MORE.] "O, poor flower!" said Martin, and, coming closer he touched it gently with his finger-tips; and then, standing on tip-toe, he touched its petals with his lips, just as his mother had often and often kissed his little hand when he had bruised it or pricked it with a thorn. Then, while still standing by the plant, on bringing his eyes down to the ground he spied a great snake lying coiled up on a bed of moss on the sunny side of the same tree where the plant was growing. He remembered the dear little snake he had once made a friend of, and he did not feel afraid, for he thought that all snakes must be friendly towards him, although this was a very big one, thicker than his arm and of a different colour. It was a pale olive-green, like the half-dry moss it was lying on, with a pattern of black and brown mottling along its back. It was lying coiled round and round, with its flat arrow-shaped head resting on its coils, and its round bright eyes fixed on Martin's face. The sun shining on its eyes made them glint like polished jewels or pieces of glass, and when Martin moved nearer and stood still, or when he drew back and went to this side or that, those brilliant glinting eyes were still on his face, and it began to trouble him, until at last he covered his face with his hands. Then he opened his fingers enough to peep through them, and still those glittering eyes were fixed on him. Martin wondered if the snake was vexed with him for coming there, and why it watched him so steadily with those shining eyes. "Will you please look some other way?" he said at last, but the snake would not, and so he turned from it, and then it seemed to him that everything was alive and watching him in the same intent way--the passion-flowers, the green leaves, the grass, the trees, the wide sky, the great shining sun. He listened, and there was no sound in the wood, not even the hum of a fly or a wild bee, and it was so still that not a leaf moved. Finally he moved away from that spot, but treading very softly, and holding his breath to listen, for it seemed to him that the forest had something to tell him, and that if he listened he would hear the leaves speaking to him. And by-and-by he did hear a sound: it came from a spot about a hundred yards away, and was like the sound of a person crying. Then came low sobs which rose and fell and then ceased, and after a silent interval began again. Perhaps it was a child, lost there in the forest like himself. Going softly to the spot he discovered that the sobbing sounds came from the other side of a low tree with wide-spread branches, a kind of acacia with thin loose foliage, but he could not see through it, and so he went round the tree to look, and startled a dove which flew off with a loud clatter of its wings. When the dove had flown away it was again very silent. What was he to do? He was too tired now to walk much farther, and the sun was getting low, so that all the ground was in shadow. He went on a little way looking for some nice shelter where he could pass the night, but could not find one. At length, when the sun had set and the dark was coming, he came upon an old half-dead tree, where there was a hollow at the roots, lined with half-dry moss, very soft to his foot, and it seemed a nice place to sleep in. But he had no choice, for he was afraid of going further in the dark among the trees; and so, creeping into the hollow among the old roots, he curled himself up as comfortably as he could, and soon began to get very drowsy, in spite of having no covering to keep him warm. But although very tired and sleepy, he did not go quite to sleep, for he had never been all alone in a wood by night before, and it was different from the open plain where he could see all round, even at night, and where he had feared nothing. Here the trees looked strange and made strange black shadows, and he thought that the strange people of the wood were perhaps now roaming about and would find him there. He did not want them to find him fast asleep; it was better to be awake, so that when they came he could jump up and run away and hide himself from them. Once or twice a slight rustling sound made him start and think that at last some one was coming to him, stealing softly so as to catch him unawares, but he could see nothing moving, and when he held his breath to listen there was no sound. Then all at once, just when he had almost dropped off, a great cry sounded at a distance, and made him start up wide awake again. "Oh look! look! look!" cried the voice in a tone so deep and strange and powerful that no one could have heard it without terror, for it seemed to be uttered by some forest monster twenty times bigger than an ordinary man. In a moment an answer came from another part of the wood. "What's that?" cried the answering voice; and then another voice cried, and then others far and near, all shouting "What's that?" and for only answer the first voice shouted once more, "O Look! Look! Look!" Poor Martin, trembling with fright, crouched lower down in his mossy bed, thinking that the awful people of the forest must have seen him, and would be upon him in a few moments. But though he stared with wide-open eyes into the gloom he could see nothing but the trees, standing silent and motionless, and no sound of approaching footsteps could he hear. After that it was silent again for a while, and he began to hope that they had given up looking for him; when suddenly, close by, sounded a loud startling "Who's that?" and he gave himself up for lost. For he was too terrified to jump up and run away, as he had thought to do: he could only lie still, his teeth chattering, his hair standing up on his head. "Who's that?" exclaimed the terrible voice once more, and then he saw a big black shape drop down from the tree above and settle on a dead branch a few feet above his hiding-place. It was a bird--a great owl, for now he could see it, sharply outlined against the clear starry sky; and the bird had seen and was peering curiously at him. And now all his fear was gone, for he could not be afraid of an owl; he had been accustomed to see owls all his life, only they were small, and this owl of the forest was as big as an eagle, and had a round head and ears like a cat, and great cat-like eyes that shone in the dark. The owl kept staring at Martin for some time, swaying his body this way and that, and lowering then raising his head so as to get a better view. And Martin, on his side, stared back at the owl, and at last he exclaimed, "O what a great big owl you are! Please say _Who's that?_ again." But before the owl said anything Martin was fast asleep in his mossy bed. [Illustration] [Illustration] _Chapter Nine_ _The Black People of the Sky_ Whether or not the great owl went on shouting _O look! look! look!_ and asking _What's that?_ and _Who's that?_ all night, Martin did not know. He was fast asleep until the morning sun shone on his face and woke him, and as he had no clothes and shoes to put on he was soon up and out. First he took a drink of water, then, feeling very hungry he went back to the place where he had found the ripe fruit and made a very good breakfast. After that he set out once more through the wood towards sunrise, still following the stream. Before long the wood became still more open, and at last to his great joy he found that he had got clear of it, and was once more on the great open plain. And now the hills were once more in sight--those great blue hills where he wished to be, looking nearer and larger than before, but they still looked blue like great banks of cloud and were a long distance away. But he was determined to get to them, to climb up their steep sides, and by and by when he found the stream bent away to the south, he left it so as to go on straight as he could to the hills. Away from the waterside the ground was higher, and very flat and covered with dry yellow grass. Over this yellow plain he walked for hours, resting at times, but finding no water and no sweet roots to quench his thirst, until he was too tired to walk any further, and so he sat down on the dry grass under that wide blue sky. There was not a cloud on it--nothing but the great globe of the sun above him; and there was no wind and no motion in the yellow grass blades, and no sight or sound of any living creature. Martin lying on his back gazed up at the blue sky, keeping his eyes from the sun, which was too bright for them, and after a time he did see something moving--a small black spot no bigger than a fly moving in a circle. But he knew it was something big, but at so great a height from the earth as to look like a fly. And then he caught sight of a second black speck, then another and another, until he could make out a dozen or twenty, or more, all moving in wide circles at that vast height. Martin thought they must be the black people of the sky; he wondered why they were black and not white, like white birds, or blue, and of other brilliant colours like the people of the Mirage. Now it was impossible for Martin to lie like that, following those small black spots on the hot blue sky as they wheeled round and round continuously, without giving his eyes a little rest by shutting them at intervals. By-and-by he kept them shut a little too long; he fell asleep, and when he woke he didn't wake fully in a moment; he remained lying motionless just as before, with eyes still closed, but the lids just raised enough to enable him to see about him. And the sight that met his eyes was very curious. He was no longer alone in that solitary place. There were people all round him, dozens and scores of little black men about two feet in height, of a very singular appearance. They had bald heads and thin hatchet faces, wrinkled and warty, and long noses; and they all wore black silk clothes--coat, waistcoat and knickerbockers, but without shoes and stockings; their thin black legs and feet were bare; nor did they have anything on their bald heads. They were gathered round Martin in a circle, but a very wide circle quite twenty to thirty feet away from him, and some were walking about, others standing alone or in groups, talking together, and all looking at Martin. Only one who appeared to be the most important person of the company kept inside the circle, and whenever one or more of the others came forward a few steps he held up his hand and begged them to go back a little. "We must not be in a hurry," he said. "We must wait." "Wait for what?" asked one. "For what may happen," said the important one. "I must ask you again to leave it to me to decide when it is time to begin." Then he strutted up and down in the open space, turning now towards his fellows and again to Martin, moving his head about to get a better sight of his face. Then, putting his hand down between his coat and waistcoat he drew out a knife with a long shining blade, and holding it from him looked attentively at it. By and by he breathed gently on the bright blade, then pulling out a black silk pocket handkerchief wiped off the stain of his breath, and turning the blade about made it glitter in the sun. Then he put it back under his coat and resumed his walk up and down. "We are getting very hungry," said one of the others at length. "Very hungry indeed!" cried another. "Some of us have not tasted food these three days." "It certainly does seem hard," said yet another, "to see our dinner before us and not be allowed to touch it." "Not so fast, my friends, I beg," exclaimed the man with the knife. "I have already explained the case, and I do think you are a little unfair in pressing me as you do." Thus rebuked they consulted together, then one of them spoke. "If, sir, you consider us unfair, or that we have not full confidence in you, would it not be as well to get some other person to take your place?" "Yes, I am ready to do that," returned the important one promptly; and here, drawing forth the knife once more, he held it out towards them. But instead of coming forward to take it they all recoiled some steps, showing considerable alarm. And then they all began protesting that they were not complaining of him, that they were satisfied with their choice, and could not have put the matter in abler hands. "I am pleased at your good opinion," said the important one. "I may tell you that I am no chicken. I first saw the light in September, 1739, and, as you know, we are now within seven months and thirteen days of the end of the first decade of the second half of the nineteenth century. You may infer from this that I have had a pretty extensive experience, and I promise you that when I come to cut the body up you will not be able to say that I have made an unfair distribution, or that any one has been left without his portion." All murmured approval, and then one of the company asked if he would be allowed to bespeak the liver for his share. "No, sir, certainly not," replied the other. "Such matters must be left to my discretion entirely, and I must also remind you that there is such a thing as the _carver's privilege_, and it is possible that in this instance he may think fit to retain the liver for his own consumption." After thus asserting himself he began to examine the blade of his knife which he still held in his hand, and to breathe gently on it, and wipe it with his handkerchief to make it shine brighter in the sun. Finally, raising his arm, he flourished it and then made two or three stabs and lunges in the air, then walking on tip-toe he advanced to Martin lying so still on the yellow grass in the midst of that black-robed company, the hot sun shining on his naked white body. The others all immediately pressed forward, craning their necks and looking highly excited: they were expecting great things; but when the man with a knife had got quite close to Martin he was seized with fear and made two or three long jumps back to where the others were; and then, recovering from his alarm, he quietly put back the knife under his coat. "We really thought you were going to begin," said one of the crowd. "Oh, no; no indeed; not just yet," said the other. "It is very disappointing," remarked one. The man with the knife turned on him and replied with dignity, "I am really surprised at such a remark after all I have said on the subject. I do wish you would consider the circumstances of the case. They are peculiar, for this person--this Martin--is not an ordinary person. We have been keeping our eyes on him for some time past, and have witnessed some remarkable actions on his part, to put it mildly. Let us keep in mind the boldness, the resource, the dangerous violence he has displayed on so many occasions since he took to his present vagabond way of life." "It appears to me," said one of the others, "that if Martin is dead we need not concern ourselves about his character and desperate deeds in the past." "_If_ he is dead!" exclaimed the other sharply. "That is the very point,--_is_ he dead? Can you confidently say that he is not in a sound sleep, or in a dead faint, or shamming and ready at the first touch of the knife to leap up and seize his assailant--I mean his carver--by the throat and perhaps murder him as he once murdered a spoonbill?" "That would be very dreadful," said one. "But surely," said another, "there are means of telling whether a person is dead or not? One simple and effectual method, which I have heard, is to place a hand over the heart to feel if it still beats." "Yes, I know, I have also heard of that plan. Very simple, as you say; but who is to try it? I invite the person who makes the suggestion to put it in practice." "With pleasure," said the other, coming forward with a tripping gait and an air of not being in the least afraid. But on coming near the supposed corpse he paused to look round at the others, then pulling out his black silk handkerchief he wiped his black wrinkled forehead and bald head. "Whew!" he exclaimed, "it's very hot today." "I don't find it so," said the man with the knife. "It is sometimes a matter of nerves." It was not a very nice remark, but it had the effect of bracing the other up, and moving forward a little more he began anxiously scrutinizing Martin's face. The others now began to press forward, but were warned by the man with a knife not to come too near. Then the bold person who had undertaken to feel Martin's heart doubled back the silk sleeve of his coat, and after some further preparation extended his arm and made two or three preliminary passes with his trembling hand at a distance of a foot or so from the breast of the corpse. Then he approached it a little nearer, but before it came to the touching point a sudden fear made him start back. "What is it? What did you see?" cried the others. "I'm not sure there wasn't a twitch of the eyelid," he replied. "Never mind the eyelid--feel his heart," said one. "That's all very well," he returned, "but how would you like it yourself? Will _you_ come and do it?" "No, no!" they all cried. "You have undertaken this, and must go through with it." Thus encouraged, he once more turned to the corpse, and again anxiously began to examine the face. Now Martin had been watching them through the slits of his not quite closed eyes all the time, and listening to their talk. Being hungry himself he could not help feeling for them, and not thinking that it would hurt him to be cut up in pieces and devoured, he had begun to wish that they would really begin on him. He was both amused and annoyed at their nervousness, and at last opening wide his eyes very suddenly he cried, "Feel my heart!" It was as if a gun had been fired among them; for a moment they were struck still with terror, and then all together turned and fled, going away with three very long hops, and then opening wide their great wings they launched themselves on the air. For they were not little black men in black silk clothes as it had seemed, but vultures--those great, high-soaring, black-plumaged birds which he had watched circling in the sky, looking no bigger than bees or flies at that vast distance above the earth. And when he was watching them they were watching him, and after he had fallen asleep they continued moving round and round in the sky for hours, and seeing him lying so still on the plain they at last imagined that he was dead, and one by one they closed or half-closed their wings and dropped, gliding downwards, growing larger in appearance as they neared the ground, until the small black spots no bigger than flies were seen to be great black birds as big as turkeys. But you see Martin was not dead after all, and so they had to go away without their dinner. [Illustration] [Illustration] _Chapter Ten_ _A Troop of Wild Horses_ It seemed so lonely to Martin when the vultures had gone up out of sight in the sky, so silent and solitary on that immense level plain, that he could not help wishing them back for the sake of company. They were an amusing people when they were walking round him, conversing together, and trying without coming too near to discover whether he was dead or only sleeping. All that day it was just as lonely, for though he went on as far as he could before night, he was still on that great level plain of dry yellow grass which appeared to have no end, and the blue hills looked no nearer than when he had started in the morning. He was hungry and thirsty that evening, and very cold too when he nestled down on the ground with nothing to cover him but the little heap of dry grass he had gathered for his bed. It was better next day, for after walking two or three hours he came to the end of that yellow plain to higher ground, where the earth was sandy and barren, with a few scattered bushes growing on it--dark, prickly bushes like butcher's broom. When he got to the highest part of this barren ground he saw a green valley beyond, stretching away as far as he could see on either hand. But it was nice to see a green place again, and going down into the valley he managed to find some sweet roots to stay his hunger and thirst; then, after a rest, he went on again, and when he got to the top of the high ground beyond the valley, he saw another valley before him, just like the one he had left behind. Again he rested in that green place, and then slowly went up the high land beyond, where it was barren and sandy with the dark stiff prickly bushes growing here and there, and when he got to the top he looked down, and behold! there was yet another green valley stretching away to the right and left as far as he could see. Would they never end--these high barren ridges and the long green valleys between! When he toiled slowly up out of this last green resting-place it was growing late in the day, and he was very tired. Then he came to the top of another ridge like the others, only higher and more barren, and when he could see the country beyond, lo! another valley, greener and broader than those he had left behind, and a river flowing in it, looking like a band of silver lying along the green earth--a river too broad for him to cross, stretching away north and south as far as he could see. How then should he ever be able to get to the hills, still far, far away beyond that water? Martin stared at the scene before him for some time; then, feeling very tired and weak, he sat down on the sandy ground beside a scanty dark bush. Tears came to his eyes: he felt them running down his cheeks; and all at once he remembered how long before when his wandering began, he had dropped a tear, and a small dusty beetle had refreshed himself by drinking it. He bent down and let a tear drop, and watched it as it sank into the ground, but no small beetle came out to drink it, and he felt more lonely and miserable than ever. He began to think of all the queer creatures and people he had met in the desert, and to wish for them. Some of them had not been very kind, but he did not remember that now, it was so sad to be quite alone in the world without even a small beetle to visit him. He remembered the beautiful people of the Mirage and the black people of the sky; and the ostrich, and old Jacob, and the savages, and the serpent, and the black weasel in the forest. He stood up and stared all round to see if anything was coming, but he could see nothing and hear nothing. By-and-by, in that deep silence, there was a sound; it seemed to come from a great distance, it was so faint. Then it grew louder and nearer; and far away he saw a little cloud of dust, and then, even through the dust, dark forms coming swiftly towards him. The sound he heard was like a long halloo, a cry like the cry of a man, but wild and shrill, like a bird's cry; and whenever that cry was uttered, it was followed by a strange confused noise as of the neighing of many horses. They were, in truth, horses that were coming swiftly towards him--a herd of sixty or seventy wild horses. He could see and hear them only too plainly now, looking very terrible in their strength and speed, and the flowing black manes that covered them like a black cloud, as they came thundering on, intending perhaps to sweep over him and trample him to death with their iron-hard hoofs. All at once, when they were within fifty yards of Martin, the long, shrill, wild cry went up again, and the horses swerved to one side, and went sweeping round him in a wide circle. Then, as they galloped by, he caught sight of the strangest-looking being he had ever seen, a man, on the back of one of the horses; naked and hairy, he looked like a baboon as he crouched, doubled up, gripping the shoulders and neck of the horse with his knees, clinging with his hands to the mane, and craning his neck like a flying bird. It was this strange rider who had uttered the long piercing man-and-bird-like cries; and now changing his voice to a whinnying sound the horses came to a stop, and gathering together in a crowd they stood tossing their manes and staring at Martin with their wild, startled eyes. In another moment the wild rider came bounding out from among them, and moving now erect, now on all fours, came sideling up to Martin, flinging his arms and legs about, wagging his head, grimacing and uttering whinnying and other curious noises. Never had Martin looked upon so strange a man! He was long and lean so that you could have counted his ribs, and he was stark naked, except for the hair of his head and face, which half covered him. His skin was of a yellowish brown colour, and the hair the colour of old dead grass; and it was coarse and tangled, falling over his shoulders and back and covering his forehead like a thatch, his big brown nose standing out beneath it like a beak. The face was covered with the beard which was tangled too, and grew down to his waist. After staring at Martin for some time with his big, yellow, goat-like eyes, he pranced up to him and began to sniff round him, then touched him with his nose on his face, arms, and shoulders. "Who are you?" said Martin in astonishment. For only answer the other squealed and whinnied, grimacing and kicking his legs up at the same time. Then the horses advanced to them, and gathering round in a close crowd began touching Martin with their noses. He liked it--the softness of their sensitive skins, which were like velvet, and putting up his hands he began to stroke their noses. Then one by one, after smelling him, and being touched by his hand, they turned away, and going down into the valley were soon scattered about, most of them grazing, some rolling, others lying stretched out on the grass as if to sleep; while the young foals in the troop, leaving their dams, began playing about and challenging one another to run a race. Martin, following and watching them, almost wished that he too could go on four legs to join them in their games. He trusted those wild horses, but he was still puzzled by that strange man, who had also left him now and was going quietly round on all fours, smelling at the grass. By-and-by he found something to his liking in a small patch of tender green clover, which he began nosing and tearing it up with his teeth, then turning his head round he stared back at Martin, his jaws working vigorously all the time, the stems and leaves of the clover he was eating sticking out from his mouth and hanging about his beard. All at once he jumped up, and flying back at Martin, snatched him up from the ground, carried him to the clover patch, and set him upon it, face down, on all fours; then when Martin sat up he grasped him by the head and forced it down until his nose was on the grass so as to make him smell it and know that it was good. But smell it he would not, and finally the other seized him roughly again and opening his mouth, forced a bunch of grass into it. "It's grass, and I sha'n't eat it!" screamed Martin, crying with anger at being so treated, and spewing the green stuff out of his mouth. Then the man released him, and withdrawing a space of two or three yards, sat down on his haunches, and, planting his bony elbows on his knees thrust his great brown fingers in his tangled hair, and stared at Martin with his big yellow goat's eyes for a long time. Suddenly a wild excited look came into his eyes, and, leaping up with a shrill cry, which caused all the horses to look round at him, he once more snatched Martin up, and holding him firmly gripped to his ribby side by his arm, bounded off to where a mare was standing giving suck to her young foal. With a vigorous kick he sent the foal away, and forced Martin to take his place, and, to make it easier for him, pressed the teat into his mouth. Martin was not accustomed to feed in that way, and he not only refused to suck, but continued to cry with indignation at such treatment, and to struggle with all his little might to free himself. His striving was all in vain; and by-and-by the man, seeing that he would not suck, had a fresh idea, and, gripping Martin more firmly than ever, with one hand forced and held his mouth open, and with the other drew a stream of milk into it. After choking and spluttering and crying more than ever for a while, Martin began to grow quiet, and to swallow the milk with some satisfaction, for he was very hungry and thirsty, and it tasted very good. By-and-by, when no more milk could be drawn from the teats, he was taken to a second mare, from which the foal was kicked away with as little ceremony as the first one, and then he had as much more milk as he wanted, and began to like being fed in this amusing way. Of what happened after that Martin did not know much, except that the man seemed very happy after feeding him. He set Martin on the back of a horse, then jumped and danced round him, making funny chuckling noises, after which he rolled horse-like on the grass, his arms and legs up in the air, and finally, pulling Martin down, he made him roll too. But the little fellow was too tired to keep his eyes any longer open, and when he next opened them it was morning, and he found himself lying wedged in between a mare and her young foal lying side by side close together. There too was the wild man, coiled up like a sleeping dog, his head pillowed on the foal's neck, and the hair of his great shaggy beard thrown like a blanket over Martin. He very soon grew accustomed to the new strange manner of life, and even liked it. Those big, noble-looking wild horses, with their shining coats, brown and bay and black and sorrel and chestnut, and their black manes and tails that swept the grass when they moved, were so friendly to him that he could not help loving them. As he went about among them when they grazed, every horse he approached would raise his head and touch his face and arms with his nose. "O you dear horse!" Martin would exclaim, rubbing the warm, velvet-soft, sensitive nose with his hand. [Illustration: THEN THE WILD MAN, CATCHING MARTIN UP, LEAPED UPON THE BACK OF ONE OF THE HORSES.] He soon discovered that they were just as fond of play as he was, and that he too was to take part in their games. Having fed as long as they wanted that morning, they all at once began to gather together, coming at a gallop, neighing shrilly; then the wild man, catching Martin up, leaped upon the back of one of the horses, and away went the whole troop at a furious pace to the great open dry plain, where Martin had met with them on the previous day. Now it was very terrifying for him at first to be in the midst of that flying crowd, as the animals went tearing over the plain, which seemed to shake beneath their thundering hoofs, while their human leader cheered them on with his shrill, repeated cries. But in a little while he too caught the excitement, and, losing all his fear, was as wildly happy as the others, crying out at the top of his voice in imitation of the wild man. After an hour's run they returned to the valley, and then Martin, without being compelled to do so, rolled about on the grass, and went after the young foals when they came out to challenge one another to a game. He tried to do as they did, prancing and throwing up his heels and snorting, but when they ran from him they soon left him hopelessly behind. Meanwhile the wild man kept watch over him, feeding him with mare's milk, and inviting him from time to time to smell and taste the tender grass. Best of all was, when they went for another run in the evening, and when Martin was no longer held with a tight grip against the man's side, but was taught or allowed to hold on, clinging with his legs to the man's body and clasping him round the neck with his arms, his fingers tightly holding on to the great shaggy beard. Three days passed in this way, and if his time had been much longer with the wild horses he would have become one of the troop, and would perhaps have eaten grass too, and forgotten his human speech, or that he was a little boy born to a very different kind of life. But it was not to be, and in the end he was separated from the troop by accident. At the end of the third day, when the sun was setting, and all the horses were scattered about in the valley, quietly grazing, something disturbed them. It might have been a sight or sound of some feared object, or perhaps the wind had brought the smell of their enemies and hunters from a great distance to their nostrils. Suddenly they were all in a wild commotion, galloping from all sides toward their leader, and he, picking Martin up, was quickly on a horse, and off they went full speed, but not towards the plain where they were accustomed to go for their runs. Now they fled in the opposite direction down to the river: into it they went, into that wide, deep, dangerous current, leaping from the bank, each horse, as he fell into the water with a tremendous splash, disappearing from sight; but in another moment the head and upper part of the neck was seen to rise above the surface, until the whole lot were in, and appeared to Martin like a troop of horses' heads swimming without bodies over the river. He, clinging to the neck and beard of the wild man, had the upper half of his body out of the cold, rushing water, and in this way they all got safely across and up the opposite bank. No sooner were they out, than, without even pausing to shake the water from their skins, they set off at full speed across the valley towards the distant hills. Now on this side, at a distance of a mile or so from the river, there were vast reed-beds standing on low land, dried to a hard crust by the summer heat, and right into the reeds the horses rushed and struggled to force their way through. The reeds were dead and dry, so tall that they rose high above the horses' heads, and growing so close together that it was hard to struggle through them. Then when they were in the midst of this difficult place, the dry crust that covered the low ground began to yield to the heavy hoofs, and the horses, sinking to their knees, were thrown down and plunged about in the most desperate way, and in the midst of this confusion Martin was struck and thrown from his place, falling amongst the reeds. Luckily he was not trampled upon, but he was left behind, and then what a dreadful situation was his, when the whole troop had at last succeeded in fighting their way through, and had gone away leaving him in that dark, solitary place! He listened until the sound of heavy hoofs and the long cries of the man had died away in the distance; then the silence and darkness terrified him, and he struggled to get out, but the reeds grew so close together that before he had pushed a dozen yards through them he sank down, unable to do more. The air was hot and close and still down there on the ground, but by leaning his head back, and staring straight up he could see the pale night sky sprinkled with stars in the openings between the dry leaves and spikes of the reeds. Poor Martin could do nothing but gaze up at the little he could see of the sky in that close, black place, until his neck ached with the strain; but at last, to make him hope, he heard a sound--the now familiar long shrill cry of the wild man. Then, as it came nearer, the sound of tramping hoofs and neighing of the horses was heard, and the cries and hoof-beats grew louder and then fainter in turns, and sounded now on this side, now on that, and he knew that they were looking for him. "I'm here, I'm here," he cried; "oh, dear horses, come and take me away!" But they could not hear him, and at last the sound of their neighing and the wild long cries died away altogether, and Martin was left alone in that black silent place. [Illustration] [Illustration] _Chapter Eleven_ _The Lady of the Hills_ No escape was possible for poor little Martin so long as it was dark, and there he had to stay all night, but morning brought him comfort; for now he could see the reed-stems that hemmed him in all round, and by using his hands to bend them from him on either side he could push through them. By-and-by the sunlight touched the tops of the tall plants, and working his way towards the side from which the light came he soon made his escape from that prison, and came into a place where he could walk without trouble, and could see the earth and sky again. Further on, in a grassy part of the valley, he found some sweet roots which greatly refreshed him, and at last, leaving the valley, he came out on a high grassy plain, and saw the hills before him looking very much nearer than he had ever seen them look before. Up till now they had appeared like masses of dark blue banked up cloud resting on the earth, now he could see that they were indeed stone--blue stone piled up in huge cliffs and crags high above the green world; he could see the roughness of the heaped up rocks, the fissures and crevices in the sides of the hills, and here and there the patches of green colour where trees and bushes had taken root. How wonderful it seemed to Martin that evening standing there in the wide green plain, the level sun at his back shining on his naked body, making him look like a statue of a small boy carved in whitest marble or alabaster. Then, to make the sight he gazed on still more enchanting, just as the sun went down the colour of the hills changed from stone blue to a purple that was like the purple of ripe plums and grapes, only more beautiful and bright. In a few minutes the purple colour faded away and the hills grew shadowy and dark. It was too late in the day, and he was too tired to walk further. He was very hungry and thirsty too, and so when he had found a few small white partridge-berries and had made a poor supper on them, he gathered some dry grass into a little heap, and lying down in it, was soon in a sound sleep. It was not until the late afternoon next day that Martin at last got to the foot of the hill, or mountain, and looking up he saw it like a great wall of stone above him, with trees and bushes and trailing vines growing out of the crevices and on the narrow ledges of the rock. Going some distance he came to a place where he could ascend, and here he began slowly walking upwards. At first he could hardly contain his delight where everything looked new and strange, and here he found some very beautiful flowers; but as he toiled on he grew more tired and hungry at every step, and then, to make matters worse, his legs began to pain so that he could hardly lift them. It was a curious pain which he had never felt in his sturdy little legs before in all his wanderings. Then a cloud came over the sun, and a sharp wind sprang up that made him shiver with cold: then followed a shower of rain; and now Martin, feeling sore and miserable, crept into a cavity beneath a pile of overhanging rocks for shelter. He was out of the rain there, but the wind blew in on him until it made his teeth chatter with cold. He began to think of his mother, and of all the comforts of his lost home--the bread and milk when he was hungry, the warm clothing, and the soft little bed with its snowy white coverlid in which he had slept so sweetly every night. "O mother, mother!" he cried, but his mother was too far off to hear his piteous cry. When the shower was over he crept out of his shelter again, and with his little feet already bleeding from the sharp rocks, tried to climb on. In one spot he found some small, creeping, myrtle plants covered with ripe white berries, and although they had a very pungent taste he ate his fill of them, he was so very hungry. Then feeling that he could climb no higher, he began to look round for a dry, sheltered spot to pass the night in. In a little while he came to a great, smooth, flat stone that looked like a floor in a room, and was about forty yards wide: nothing grew on it except some small tufts of grey lichen; but on the further side, at the foot of a steep, rocky precipice, there was a thick bed of tall green and yellow ferns, and among the ferns he hoped to find a place to lie down in. Very slowly he limped across the open space, crying with the pain he felt at every step; but when he reached the bed of ferns he all at once saw, sitting among the tall fronds on a stone, a strange-looking woman in a green dress, who was gazing very steadily at him with eyes full of love and compassion. At her side there crouched a big yellow beast, covered all over with black, eye-like spots, with a big round head, and looking just like a cat, but a hundred times larger than the biggest cat he had ever seen. The animal rose up with a low sound like a growl, and glared at Martin with its wide, yellow, fiery eyes, which so terrified him that he dared not move another step until the woman, speaking very gently to him, told him not to fear. She caressed the great beast, making him lie down again; then coming forward and taking Martin by the hand, she drew him up to her knees. "What is your name, poor little suffering child?" she asked, bending down to him, and speaking softly. "Martin--what's yours?" he returned, still half sobbing, and rubbing his eyes with his little fists. "I am called the Lady of the Hills, and I live here alone in the mountain. Tell me, why do you cry, Martin?" "Because I'm so cold, and--and my legs hurt so, and--and because I want to go back to my mother. She's over there," said he, with another sob, pointing vaguely to the great plain beneath their feet, extending far, far away into the blue distance, where the crimson sun was now setting. "I will be your mother, and you shall live with me here on the mountain," she said, caressing his little cold hands with hers. "Will you call me mother?" "You are _not_ my mother," he returned warmly. "I don't want to call you mother." "When I love you so much, dear child?" she pleaded, bending down until her lips were close to his averted face. "How that great spotted cat stares at me!" he suddenly said. "Do you think it will kill me?" "No, no, he only wants to play with you. Will you not even look at me, Martin?" He still resisted her, but her hand felt very warm and comforting--it was such a large, warm, protecting hand. So pleasant did it feel that after a little while he began to move his hand up her beautiful, soft, white arm until it touched her hair. For her hair was unbound and loose; it was dark, and finer than the finest spun silk, and fell all over her shoulders and down her back to the stone she sat on. He let his fingers stray in and out among it; and it felt like the soft, warm down that lines a little bird's nest to his skin. Finally, he touched her neck and allowed his hand to rest there, it was such a soft, warm neck. At length, but reluctantly, for his little rebellious heart was not yet wholly subdued, he raised his eyes to her face. Oh, how beautiful she was! Her love and eager desire to win him had flushed her clear olive skin with rich red colour; out of her sweet red lips, half parted, came her warm breath on his cheek, more fragrant than wild flowers; and her large dark eyes were gazing down into his with such a tenderness in them that Martin, seeing it, felt a strange little shudder pass through him, and scarcely knew whether to think it pleasant or painful. "Dear child, I love you so much," she spoke, "will you not call me mother?" Dropping his eyes and with trembling lips, feeling a little ashamed at being conquered at last, he whispered "Mother." She raised him in her arms and pressed him to her bosom, wrapping her hair like a warm mantle round him; and in less than one minute, overcome by fatigue, he fell fast asleep in her arms. [Illustration] [Illustration: SHE RAISED HIM IN HER ARMS AND PRESSED HIM TO HER BOSOM, WRAPPING HER HAIR LIKE A WARM MANTLE AROUND HIM.] [Illustration] _Chapter Twelve_ _The Little People Underground_ When he awoke Martin found himself lying on a soft downy bed in a dim stone chamber, and feeling silky hair over his cheek and neck and arms, he knew that he was still with his new strange mother, the beautiful Lady of the Mountain. She, seeing him awake, took him up in her arms, and holding him against her bosom, carried him through a long winding stone passage, and out into the bright morning sunlight. There by a small spring of clearest water that gushed from the rock she washed his scratched and bruised skin, and rubbed it with sweet-smelling unguents, and gave him food and drink. The great spotted beast sat by them all the time, purring like a cat, and at intervals he tried to entice Martin to leave the woman's lap and play with him. But she would not let him out of her arms: all day she nursed and fondled him as if he had been a helpless babe instead of the sturdy little run-away and adventurer he had proved himself to be. She also made him tell her the story of how he had got lost and of all the wonderful things that had happened to him in his wanderings in the wilderness--the people of the Mirage, and old Jacob and the savages, the great forest, the serpent, the owl, the wild horses and wild man, and the black people of the sky. But it was of the Mirage and the procession of lovely beings about which he spoke most and questioned her. "Do you think it was all a dream?" he kept asking her, "the Queen and all those people?" She was vexed at the question, and turning her face away, refused to answer him. For though at all other times, and when he spoke of other things, she was gentle and loving in her manner, the moment he spoke of the Queen of the Mirage and the gifts she had bestowed on him, she became impatient, and rebuked him for saying such foolish things. At length she spoke and told him that it was a dream, a very very idle dream, a dream that was not worth dreaming; that he must never speak of it again, never think of it, but forget it, just as he had forgotten all the other vain silly dreams he had ever had. And having said this much a little sharply, she smiled again and fondled him, and promised that when he next slept he should have a good dream, one worth the dreaming, and worth remembering and talking about. She held him away from her, seating him on her knees, to look at his face, and said, "For oh, dear little Martin, you are lovely and sweet to look at, and you are mine, my own sweet child, and so long as you live with me on the hills, and love me and call me mother, you shall be happy, and everything you see, sleeping and walking, shall seem strange and beautiful." It was quite true that he was sweet to look at, very pretty with his rosy-white skin deepening to red on his cheeks; and his hair curling all over his head was of a bright golden chestnut colour; and his eyes were a very bright blue, and looked keen and straight at you just like a bird's eyes, that seem to be thinking of nothing, and yet seeing everything. After this Martin was eager to go to sleep at once and have the promised dream, but his very eagerness kept him wide awake all day, and even after going to bed in that dim chamber in the heart of the hill, it was a long time before he dropped off. But he did not know that he had fallen asleep: it seemed to him that he was very wide awake, and that he heard a voice speaking in the chamber, and that he started up to listen to it. "Do you not know that there are things just as strange underground as above it?" said the voice. Martin could not see the speaker, but he answered quite boldly: "No--there's nothing underground except earth and worms and roots. I've seen it when they've been digging." "Oh, but there is!" said the voice. "You can see for yourself. All you've got to do is to find a path leading down, and to follow it. There's a path over there just in front of you; you can see the opening from where you are lying." He looked, and sure enough there _was_ an opening, and a dim passage running down through the solid rock. Up he jumped, fired at the prospect of seeing new and wonderful things, and without looking any more to see who had spoken to him, he ran over to it. The passage had a smooth floor of stone, and sloped downward into the earth, and went round and round in an immense spiral; but the circles were so wide that Martin scarcely knew that he was not travelling in a straight line. Have you by chance ever seen a buzzard, or stork, or vulture, or some other great bird, soaring upwards into the sky in wide circles, each circle taking it higher above the earth, until it looked like a mere black speck in the vast blue heavens, and at length disappeared altogether? Just in that way, going round and round in just such wide circles, lightly running all the time, with never a pause to rest, and without feeling in the least tired, Martin went on, only down and down and further down, instead of up and up like the soaring bird, until he was as far under the mountain as ever any buzzard or crane or eagle soared above it. [Illustration: FOR A MOMENT OR TWO HE WAS TEMPTED TO TURN AND RUN BACK INTO THE PASSAGE THROUGH WHICH HE HAD COME.] Thus running he came at last out of the passage to an open room or space so wide that, look which way he would, he could see no end to it. The stone roof of this place was held up by huge stone pillars standing scattered about like groups of great rough-barked trees, many times bigger round than hogsheads. Here and there in the roof, or the stone overhead, were immense black caverns which almost frightened him to gaze up at them, they were so vast and black. And no light or sun or moon came down into that deep part of the earth: the light was from big fires, and they were fires of smithies burning all about him, sending up great flames and clouds of black smoke, which rose and floated upwards through those big black caverns in the roof. Crowds of people were gathered around the smithies, all very busy heating metal and hammering on anvils like blacksmiths. Never had he seen so many people, nor ever had he seen such busy men as these, rushing about here and there shouting and colliding with one another, bringing and carrying huge loads in baskets on their backs, and altogether the sight of them, and the racket and the smoke and dust, and the blazing fires, was almost too much for Martin; and for a moment or two he was tempted to turn and run back into the passage through which he had come. But the strangeness of it all kept him there, and then he began to look more closely at the people, for these were the little men that live under the earth, and they were unlike anything he had seen on its surface. They were very stout, strong-looking little men, dressed in coarse dark clothes, covered with dust and grime, and they had dark faces, and long hair, and rough, unkempt beards; they had very long arms and big hands, like baboons, and there was not one among them who looked taller than Martin himself. After looking at them he did not feel at all afraid of them; he only wanted very much to know who they were, and what they were doing, and why they were so excited and noisy over their work. So he thrust himself among them, going to the smithies where they were in crowds, and peering curiously at them. Then he began to notice that his coming among them created a great commotion, for no sooner would he appear than all work would be instantly suspended; down would go their baskets and loads of wood, their hammers and implements of all kinds, and they would stare and point at him, all jabbering together, so that the noise was as if a thousand cockatoos and parrots and paroquets were all screaming at once. What it was all about he could not tell, as he could not make out what they said; he could only see, and plainly enough, that his presence astonished and upset them, for as he went about among them they fell back before him, crowding together, and all staring and pointing at him. But at length he began to make out what they were saying; they were all exclaiming and talking about him. "Look at him! look at him!" they cried. "Who is he? What, Martin--this Martin? Never. No, no, no! Yes, yes, yes! Martin himself--Martin with nothing on! Not a shred--not a thread! Impossible--it cannot be! Nothing so strange has ever happened! _Naked_--do you say that Martin is naked? Oh, dreadful--from the crown of his head to his toes, naked as he was born! No clothes--no clothes--oh no, it can't be Martin. It is, it is!" And so on and on, until Martin could not endure it longer, for he had been naked for days and days, and had ceased to think about it, and in fact did not know that he was naked. And now hearing their remarks, and seeing how they were disturbed, he looked down at himself and saw that it was indeed so--that he had nothing on, and he grew ashamed and frightened, and thought he would run and hide himself from them in some hole in the ground. But there was no place to hide in, for now they had gathered all round him in a vast crowd, so that whichever way he turned there before him they appeared--hundreds and hundreds of dark, excited faces, hundreds of grimy hands all pointing at him. Then, all at once, he caught sight of an old rag of a garment lying on the ground among the ashes and cinders, and he thought he would cover himself with it, and picking it hastily up was just going to put it round him when a great roar of "No!" burst out from the crowd; he was almost deafened with the sound, so that he stood trembling with the old dirty rag of cloth in his hand. Then one of the little men came up to him, and snatching the rag from his hand, flung it angrily down upon the floor; then as if afraid of remaining so near Martin, he backed away into the crowd again. Just then Martin heard a very low voice close to his ear speaking to him, but when he looked round he could see no person near him. He knew it was the same voice which had spoken to him in the cave where he slept, and had told him to go down into that place underground. "Do not fear," said the gentle voice to Martin. "Say to the little men that you have lost your clothes, and ask them for something to put on." Then Martin, who had covered his face with his hands to shut out the sight of the angry crowd, took courage, and looking at them, said, half sobbing, "O, Little Men, I've lost my clothes--won't you give me something to put on?" This speech had a wonderful effect: instantly there was a mighty rush, all the Little Men hurrying away in all directions, shouting and tumbling over each other in their haste to get away, and by-and-by it looked to Martin as if they were having a great struggle or contest over something. They were all struggling to get possession of a small closed basket, and it was like a game of football with hundreds of persons all playing, all fighting for possession of the ball. At length one of them succeeded in getting hold of the basket and escaping from all the others who opposed him, and running to Martin he threw it down at his feet, and lifting the lid displayed to his sight a bundle of the most beautiful clothes ever seen by child or man. With a glad cry Martin pulled them out, but the next moment a very important-looking Little Man, with a great white beard, sprang forward and snatched them out of his hand. "No, no," he shouted. "These are not fit for Martin to wear! They will soil!" Saying which, he flung them down on that dusty floor with its litter of cinders and dirt, and began to trample on them as if in a great passion. Then he snatched them up again and shook them, and all could see that they were unsoiled and just as bright and beautiful as before. Then Martin tried to take them from him, but the other would not let him. "Never shall Martin wear such poor clothes," shouted the old man. "They will not even keep out the wet," and with that he thrust them into a great tub of water, and jumping in began treading them down with his feet. But when he pulled them out again and shook them before their faces, all saw that they were as dry and bright as before. "Give them to me!" cried Martin, thinking that it was all right now. "Never shall Martin wear such poor clothes--they will not resist fire," cried the old man, and into the flames he flung them. Martin now gave up all hopes of possessing them, and was ready to burst into tears at their loss, when out of the fire they were pulled again, and it was seen that the flames had not injured or tarnished them in the least. Once more Martin put out his arms and this time he was allowed to take those beautiful clothes, and then just as he clasped them to him with a cry of delight he woke! His head was lying on his new mother's arm, and she was awake watching him. "O, mother, what a nice dream I had! O such pretty clothes--why did I wake so soon?" She laughed and touched his arms, showing him that they were still clasping that beautiful suit of clothes to his breast--the very clothes of his wonderful dream! [Illustration] [Illustration] _Chapter Thirteen_ _The Great Blue Water_ There was not in all that land, nor perhaps in all the wide world, a happier little boy than Martin, when after waking from his sleep and dream he dressed himself for the first time in that new suit, and went out from the cave into the morning sunlight. He then felt the comfort of such clothes, for they were softer than the finest, softest down or silk to his skin, and kept him warm when it was cold, and cool when it was hot, and dry when it rained on him, and the earth could not soil them, nor the thorns tear them; and above everything they were the most beautiful clothes ever seen. Their colour was a deep moss green, or so it looked at a little distance, or when seen in the shade, but in the sunshine it sparkled as if small, shining, many-coloured beads had been sewn in the cloth; only there were no beads; it was only the shining threads that made it sparkle so, like clean sand in the sun. When you looked closely at the cloth, you could see the lovely pattern woven in it--small leaf and flower, the leaves like moss leaves, and the flowers like the pimpernel, but not half so big, and they were yellow and red and blue and violet in colour. But there were many, many things besides the lovely clothes to make him contented and happy. First, the beautiful woman of the hills who loved and cherished him and made him call her by the sweet name of "mother" so many times every day that he well nigh forgot she was not his real mother. Then there was the great stony hillside on which he now lived for a playground, where he could wander all day among the rocks, overgrown with creepers and strange sweet-smelling flowers he had never seen on the plain below. The birds and butterflies he saw there were different from those he had always seen; so were the snakes which he often found sleepily coiled up on the rocks, and the little swift lizards. Even the water looked strange and more beautiful than the water in the plain, for here it gushed out of the living rock, sparkling like crystal in the sun, and was always cold when he dipped his hands in it even on the hottest days. Perhaps the most wonderful thing was the immense distance he could see, when he looked away from the hillside across the plain and saw the great dark forest where he had been, and the earth stretching far, far away beyond. Then there was his playmate, the great yellow-spotted cat, who followed him about and was always ready for a frolic, playing in a very curious way. Whenever Martin would prepare to take a running leap, or a swift run down a slope, the animal, stealing quietly up behind, would put out a claw from his big soft foot--a great white claw as big as an owl's beak--and pull him suddenly back. At last Martin would lose his temper, and picking up a stick would turn on his playmate; and away the animal would fly, pretending to be afraid, and going over bushes and big stones with tremendous leaps to disappear from sight on the mountain side. But very soon he would steal secretly back by some other way to spring upon Martin unawares and roll him over and over on the ground, growling as if angry, and making believe to worry him with his great white teeth, although never really hurting him in the least. He played with Martin just as a cat plays with its kitten when it pretends to punish it. When ever Martin began to show the least sign of weariness the Lady of the Hills would call him to her. Then, lying back among the ferns, she would unbind her long silky tresses to let him play with them, for this was always a delight to him. Then she would gather her hair up again and dress it with yellow flowers and glossy dark green leaves to make herself look more lovely than ever. At other times, taking him on her shoulders, she would bound nimbly as a wild goat up the steepest places, springing from crag to crag, and dancing gaily along the narrow ledges of rock, where it made him dizzy to look down. Then when the sun was near setting, when long shadows from rocks and trees began to creep over the mountain, and he had eaten the fruits and honey and other wild delicacies she provided, she would make him lie on her bosom. Playing with her loose hair and listening to her singing as she rocked herself on a stone, he would presently fall asleep. In the morning on waking he would always find himself lying still clasped to her breast in that great dim cavern; and almost always when he woke he would find her crying. Sometimes on opening his eyes he would find her asleep, but with traces of tears on her face, showing that she had been awake and crying. One afternoon, seeing him tired of play and hard to amuse, she took him in her arms and carried him right up the side of the mountain, where it grew so steep that even the big cat could not follow them. Finally she brought him out on the extreme summit, and looking round he seemed to see the whole world spread out beneath him. Below, half-way down, there were some wild cattle feeding on the mountain side, and they looked at that distance no bigger than mice. Looking eastwards he beheld just beyond the plain a vast expanse of blue water extending leagues and leagues away until it faded into the blue sky. He shouted with joy when he saw it, and could not take his eyes from this wonderful world of water. "Take me there--take me there!" he cried. She only shook her head and tried to laugh him out of such a wish; but by-and-by when she attempted to carry him back down the mountain he refused to move from the spot; nor would he speak to her nor look up into her pleading face, but kept his eyes fixed on that distant blue ocean which had so enchanted him. For it seemed to Martin the most wonderful thing he had ever beheld. At length it began to grow cold on the summit; then with gentle caressing words she made him turn and look to the opposite side of the heavens, where the sun was just setting behind a great mass of clouds--dark purple and crimson, rising into peaks that were like hills of rose-coloured pearl, and all the heavens beyond them a pale primrose-coloured flame. Filled with wonder at all this rich and varied colour he forgot the ocean for a moment, and uttered an exclamation of delight. "Do you know, dear Martin," said she, "what we should find there, where it all looks so bright and beautiful, if I had wings and could fly with you, clinging to my bosom like a little bat clinging to its mother when she flies abroad in the twilight?" "What?" asked Martin. "Only dark dark clouds full of rain and cutting hail and thunder and lightning. That is how it is with the sea, Martin: it makes you love it when you see it at a distance; but oh, it is cruel and treacherous, and when it has once got you in its power then it is more terrible than the thunder and lightning in the cloud. Do you remember, when you first came to me, naked, shivering with cold, with your little bare feet blistered and bleeding from the sharp stones, how I comforted you with my love, and you found it warm and pleasant lying on my breast? The sea will not comfort you in that way; it will clasp you to a cold, cold breast, and kiss you with bitter salt lips, and carry you down where it is always dark, where you will never never see the blue sky and sunshine and flowers again." Martin shivered and nestled closer to her; and then while the shadows of evening were gathering round them, she sat rocking herself to and fro on a stone, murmuring many tender, sweet words to him, until the music of her voice and the warmth of her bosom made him sleep. [Illustration] [Illustration] _Chapter Fourteen_ _The Wonders of the Hills_ Now, although Martin had gone very comfortably to sleep in her arms and found it sweet to be watched over so tenderly, he was not the happy little boy he had been before the sight of the distant ocean. And she knew it, and was troubled in her mind, and anxious to do something to make him forget that great blue water. She could do many things, and above all she could show him new and wonderful things in the hills where she wished to keep him always with her. To caress him, to feed and watch over him by day, and hold him in her arms when he slept at night--all that was less to him than the sight of something new and strange; she knew this well, and therefore determined to satisfy his desire and make his life so full that he would always be more than contented with it. In the morning he went out on the hillside, wandering listlessly among the rocks, and when the big cat found him there and tried to tempt him to a game he refused to play, for he had not yet got over his disappointment, and could think of nothing but the sea. But the cat did not know that anything was the matter with him, and was more determined to play than ever; crouching now here, now there among the stones and bushes, he would spring out upon Martin and pull him down with its big paws, and this so enraged him that picking up a stick he struck furiously at his tormentor. But the cat was too quick for him; he dodged the blows, then knocked the stick out of his hand, and finally Martin, to escape from him, crept into a crevice in a rock where the cat could not reach him, and refused to come out even when the Lady of the Hills came to look for him and begged him to come to her. When at last, compelled by hunger, he returned to her, he was silent and sullen and would not be caressed. He saw no more of the cat, and when next day he asked her where it was, she said that it had gone from them and would return no more--that she had sent it away because it had vexed him. This made Martin sulk, and he would have gone away and hidden himself from her had she not caught him up in her arms. He struggled to free himself, but could not, and she then carried him away a long distance down the mountainside until they came to a small dell, green with creepers and bushes, with a deep carpet of dry moss on the ground, and here she sat down and began to talk to him. "The cat was a very beautiful beast with his spotted hide," she said; "and you liked to play with him sometimes, but in a little while you will be glad that he has gone from you." He asked her why. "Because though he was fond of you and liked to follow you about and play with you, he is very fierce and powerful, and all the other beasts are afraid of him. So long as he was with us they would not come, but now he has gone they will come to you and let you go to them." "Where are they?" said Martin, his curiosity greatly excited. "Let us wait here," she said, "and perhaps we shall see one by-and-by." So they waited and were silent, and as nothing came and nothing happened, Martin sitting on the mossy ground began to feel a strange drowsiness stealing over him. He rubbed his eyes and looked round; he wanted to keep very wide awake and alert, so as not to miss the sight of anything that might come. He was vexed with himself for feeling drowsy, and wondered why it was; then listening to the low continuous hum of the bees, he concluded that it was that low, soft, humming sound that made him sleepy. He began to look at the bees, and saw that they were unlike other wild bees he knew, that they were like bumble-bees in shape but much smaller, and were all of a golden brown colour: they were in scores and hundreds coming and going, and had their home or nest in the rock a few feet above his head. He got up, and climbing from his mother's knee to her shoulder, and standing on it, he looked into the crevice into which the bees were streaming, and saw their nest full of clusters of small round objects that looked like white berries. Then he came down and told her what he had seen, and wanted to know all about it, and when she answered that the little round fruit-like objects he had seen were cells full of purple honey that tasted sweet and salt, he wanted her to get him some. "Not now--not today," she replied, "for now you love me and are contented to be with me, and you are my own darling child. When you are naughty, and try to grieve me all you can, and would like to go away and never see me more, you shall taste the purple honey." He looked up into her face wondering and troubled at her words, and she smiled down so sweetly on his upturned face, looking very beautiful and tender, that it almost made him cry to think how wilful and passionate he had been, and climbing on to her knees he put his little face against her cheek. [Illustration: THE DOE--TIMIDLY SMELT AT HIS HAND, THEN LICKED IT WITH HER LONG PINK TONGUE.] Then, while he was still caressing her, light tripping steps were heard over the stony path, and through the bushes came two beautiful wild animals--a doe with her fawn! Martin had often seen the wild deer on the plains, but always at a great distance and running; now that he had them standing before him he could see just what they were like, and of all the four-footed creatures he had ever looked on they were undoubtedly the most lovely. They were of a slim shape, and of a very bright reddish fawn-colour, the young one with dappled sides; and both had large trumpet-like ears, which they held up as if listening, while they gazed fixedly at Martin's face with their large, dark, soft eyes. Enchanted with the sight of them, he slipped down from his mother's lap, and stretched out his arms towards them, and the doe, coming a little nearer, timidly smelt at his hand, then licked it with her long, pink tongue. In a few minutes the doe and fawn went away and they saw them no more; but they left Martin with a heart filled with happy excitement; and they were but the first of many strange and beautiful wild animals he was now made acquainted with, so that for days he could think of nothing else and wished for nothing better. But one day when she had taken him a good way up on the hillside, Martin suddenly recognized a huge rocky precipice before him as the one up which she had taken him, and from the top of which he had seen the great blue water. Instantly he demanded to be taken up again, and when she refused he rebelled against her, and was first passionate and then sullen. Finding that he would not listen to anything she could say, she sat down on a rock and left him to himself. He could not climb up that precipice, and so he rambled away to some distance, thinking to hide himself from her, because he thought her unreasonable and unkind not to allow him to see the blue water once more. But presently he caught sight of a snake lying motionless on a bed of moss at the foot of a rock, with the sun on it, lighting up its polished scales so that they shone like gems or coloured glass. Resting his elbows on the stone and holding his face between his hands he fell to watching the snake, for though it seemed fast asleep in the sun its gem-like eyes were wide open. All at once he felt his mother's hand on his head: "Martin," she said, "would you like to know what the snake feels when it lies with eyes open in the bright hot sun? Shall I make you feel just how he feels?" "Yes," said Martin eagerly, forgetting his quarrel with her; then taking him up in her strong arms she walked rapidly away, and brought him to that very spot where he had seen the doe and fawn. She sat him down, and instantly his ears were filled with the murmur of the bees; and in a moment she put her hand in the crevice and pulled out a cluster of white cells, and gave them to Martin. Breaking one of the cells he saw that it was full of thick honey, of a violet colour, and tasting it he found it was like very sweet honey in which a little salt had been mixed. He liked it and he didn't like it; still, it was not the same in all the cells; in some it was scarcely salt at all; and he began to suck the honey of cell after cell, trying to find one that was not salt; and by-and-by he dropped the cluster of cells from his hand, and stooping to pick it up forgot to do so, and laying his head down and stretching himself out on the mossy ground looked up into his mother's face with drowsy, happy eyes. How sweet it seemed, lying there in the sun, with the sun shining right into his eyes, and filling his whole being with its delicious heat! He wished for nothing now--not even for the sight of new wonderful things; he forgot the blue water, the strange, beautiful wild animals, and his only thought, if he had a thought, was that it was very nice to lie there, not sleeping, but feeling the sun in him, and seeing it above him; and seeing all things--the blue sky, the grey rocks and green bushes and moss, and the woman in her green dress and her loose black hair--and hearing, too, the soft, low, continuous murmur of the yellow bees. For hours he lay there in that drowsy condition, his mother keeping watch over him, and when it passed off, and he got up again, his temper appeared changed; he was more gentle and affectionate with his mother, and obeyed her every wish. And when in his rambles on the hill he found a snake lying in the sun he would steal softly near it and watch it steadily for a long time, half wishing to taste that strange purple honey again, so that he might lie in the sun, feeling what the snake feels. But there were more wonderful things yet for Martin to see and know in the hills, so that in a little while he ceased to have that desire. [Illustration] _Chapter Fifteen_ _Martin's Eyes Are Opened_ One morning when they went up into a wild rocky place very high up on the hillside a number of big birds were seen coming over the mountain at a great height in the air, travelling in a northerly direction. They were big hawks almost as big as eagles, with very broad rounded wings, and instead of travelling straight like other birds they moved in wide circles, so that they progressed very slowly. [Illustration: THROWING UP HER ARMS, SHE CRIED A LONG CALL, AND THE BIRDS BEGAN TO COME LOWER AND LOWER DOWN.] They sat down on a stone to watch the birds, and whenever one flying lower than the others came pretty near them Martin gazed delightedly at it, and wished it would come still nearer so that he might see it better. Then the woman stood up on the stone, and, gazing skywards and throwing up her arms, she uttered a long call, and the birds began to come lower and lower down, still sweeping round in wide circles, and by-and-by one came quite down and pitched on a stone a few yards from them. Then another came and lighted on another stone, then another, and others followed, until they were all round him in scores, sitting on the rocks, great brown birds with black bars on their wings and tails, and buff-coloured breasts with rust-red spots and stripes. It was a wonderful sight, those eagle-like hawks, with their blue hooked beaks and deep-set dark piercing eyes, sitting in numbers on the rocks, and others and still others dropping down from the sky to increase the gathering. Then the woman sat down by Martin's side, and after a while one of the hawks spread his great wings and rose up into the air to resume his flight. After an interval of a minute or so another rose, then another, but it was an hour before they were all gone. "O the dear birds--they are all gone!" cried Martin. "Mother, where are they going?" She told him of a far-away land in the south, from which, when autumn comes, the birds migrate north to a warmer country hundreds of leagues away, and that birds of all kinds were now travelling north, and would be travelling through the sky above them for many days to come. Martin looked up at the sky, and said he could see no birds now that the buzzards were all gone. "I can see them," she returned, looking up and glancing about the sky. "O mother, I wish I could see them!" he cried. "Why can't I see them when you can?" "Because your eyes are not like mine. Look, can you see this?" and she held up a small stone phial which she took from her bosom. He took it in his hand and unstopped and smelt at it. "Is it honey? Can I taste it?" he asked. She laughed. "It is better than honey, but you can't eat it!" she said. "Do you remember how the honey made you feel like a snake? This would make you see what I see if I put some of it on your eyes." He begged her to do so, and she consenting poured a little into the palm of her hand. It was thick and white as milk; then taking some on her finger tip, she made him hold his eyes wide open while she rubbed it on the eye-balls. It made his eyes smart, and everything at first looked like a blue mist when he tried to see; then slowly the mist faded away and the air had a new marvellous clearness, and when he looked away over the plain beneath them he shouted for joy, so far could he see and so distinct did distant objects appear. At one point where nothing but the grey haze that obscured the distance had been visible, a herd of wild cattle now appeared, scattered about, some grazing, others lying down ruminating, and in the midst of the herd a very noble-looking, tawny-coloured bull was standing. "O mother, do you see that bull?" cried Martin in delight. "Yes, I see him," she returned. "Sometimes he brings his herd to feed on the hillside, and when I see him here another time I shall take you to him, and put you on his back. But look now at the sky, Martin." He looked up, and was astonished to see numbers of great birds flying north, where no birds had appeared before. They were miles high, and invisible to ordinary sight, but he could see them so distinctly, their shape and colours, that all the birds he knew were easily recognized. There were swans, shining white, with black heads and necks, flying in wedge-shaped flocks, and rose-coloured spoonbills, and flamingoes with scarlet wings tipped with black, and ibises, and ducks of different colours, and many other birds, both water and land, appeared, flock after flock, all flying as fast as their wings could bear them towards the north. He continued watching them until it was past noon, and then he saw fewer and fewer, only very big birds, appearing; and then these were seen less and less until there were none. Then he turned his eyes on the plain and tried to find the herd of wild cattle, but they were no longer visible; it was as he had seen it in the morning with the pale blue haze over all the distant earth. He was told that the power to see all distant things with a vision equal to his mother's was now exhausted, and when he grieved at the loss she comforted him with the promise that it would be renewed at some other time. Now one day when they were out together Martin was greatly surprised and disturbed at a change in his mother. When he spoke to her she was silent; and by-and-by, drawing a little away, he looked at her with a fear which increased to a kind of terror, so strangely altered did she seem, standing motionless, gazing fixedly with wide-open eyes at the plain beneath them, her whole face white and drawn with a look of rage. He had an impulse to fly from her and hide himself in some hole in the rocks from the sight of that pale, wrathful face, but when he looked round him he was afraid to move from her, for the hill itself seemed changed, and now looked black and angry even as she did. The ground he stood on, the grey old stones covered with silvery-white and yellow lichen and pretty flowery, creeping plants, so beautiful to look at in the bright sunlight a few moments ago, now were covered with a dull mist which appeared to be rising from them, making the air around them dark and strange. And the air, too, had become sultry and close, and the sky was growing dark above them. Then suddenly remembering all her love and kindness he flew to her, and clinging to her dress sobbed out, "O mother, mother, what is it?" She put her hand on him, then drew him up to her side, with his feet on the stone she was standing by. "Would you like to see what I see, Martin?" she asked, and taking the phial from her bosom she rubbed the white thick liquid on his eye-balls, and in a little while, when the mistiness passed off, she pointed with her hand and told him to look there. He looked, and as on the former occasion, all distant things were clearly visible, for although that mist and blackness given off by the hill had wrapped them round so that they seemed to be standing in the midst of a black cloud, yet away on the plain beneath the sun was shining brightly, and all that was there could be seen by him. Where he had once seen a herd of wild cattle he now saw mounted men, to the number of about a dozen, slowly riding towards the hill, and though they were miles away he could see them very distinctly. They were dark, black-bearded men, strangely dressed, some with fawn-coloured cloaks with broad stripes, others in a scarlet uniform, and they wore cone-shaped scarlet caps. Some carried lances, others carbines; and they all wore swords--he could see the steel scabbards shining in the sun. As he watched them they drew rein and some of them got off their horses, and they stood for some time as if talking excitedly, pointing towards the hill and using emphatic gestures. What were they talking about so excitedly? thought Martin. He wanted to know, and he would have asked her, but when he looked up at her she was still gazing fixedly at them with the same pale face and terrible stern expression, and he could but dimly see her face in that black cloud which had closed around them. He trembled with fear and could only murmur, "Mother! mother!" Then her arm was put round him, and she drew him close against her side, and at that moment--O how terrible it was!--the black cloud and the whole universe was lit up with a sudden flash that seemed to blind and scorch him, and the hill and the world was shaken and seemed to be shattered by an awful thunder crash. It was more than he could endure: he ceased to feel or know anything, and was like one dead, and when he came to himself and opened his eyes he was lying in her lap with her face smiling very tenderly, bending over him. "O poor little Martin," she said, "what a poor weak little boy you are to lose your senses at the lightning and thunder! I was angry when I saw them coming to the hill, for they are wicked, cruel men, stained with blood, and I made the storm to drive them away. They are gone, and the storm is over now, and it is late--come, let us go to our cave;" and she took him up and carried him in her arms. [Illustration] [Illustration] _Chapter Sixteen_ _The People of the Mist_ When Martin first came to the hills it was at the end of the long, hot, dry summer of that distant land: it was autumn now, and the autumn was like a second summer, only not so hot and dry as the first. But sometimes at this season a wet mist came up from the sea by night and spread over all the country, covering it like a cloud; to a soaring bird looking down from the sky it must have appeared like another sea of a pale or pearly grey colour, with the hills rising like islands from it. When the sun rose in the morning, if the sky was clear so that it could shine, then the sea-fog would drift and break up and melt away or float up in the form of thin white clouds. Now, whenever this sea-mist was out over the world the Lady of the Hills, without coming out of her chamber, knew of it, and she would prevent Martin from leaving the bed and going out. He loved to be out on the hillside, to watch the sun come up, and she would say to him, "You cannot see the sun because of the mist; and it is cold and wet on the hill; wait until the mist has gone and then you shall go out." But now a new idea came into her mind. She had succeeded in making him happy during the last few days; but she wished to do more--she wished to make him fear and hate the sea so that he would never grow discontented with his life on the hills nor wish to leave her. So now, one morning, when the mist was out over the land, she said to Martin when he woke, "Get up and go out on to the hill and see the mist; and when you feel its coldness and taste its salt on your lips, and see how it dims and saddens the earth, you will know better than to wish for that great water it comes from." So Martin got up and went out on the hill, and it was as she had said: there was no blue sky above, no wide green earth before him: the mist had blotted all out; he could hardly see the rocks and bushes a dozen yards from him; the leaves and flowers were heavy laden with the grey wet; and it felt clammy and cold on his face, and he tasted its salt on his lips. It seemed thickest and darkest when he looked down and lightest when he looked up, and the lightness led him to climb up among the dripping, slippery rocks; and slipping and stumbling he went on and on, the light increasing as he went, until at last to his delight he got above the mist. There was an immense crag there which stood boldly up on the hillside, and on to this he managed to climb, and standing on it he looked down upon that vast moving sea of grey mist that covered the earth, and saw the sun, a large crimson disc, rising from it. [Illustration: ONE OF THE MIST PEOPLE--HELD THE SHELL TO MARTIN'S EAR--AND MARTIN KNEW--THAT IT WAS THE VOICE OF THE SEA.] It was a great thing to see, and made him cry out aloud for joy: and then as the sun rose higher into the pure, blue sky the grey mist changed to silvery white, and the white changed in places to shining gold: and it drifted faster and faster away before the sun, and began to break up, and when a cloud of mist swept by the rock on which he stood it beat like a fine rain upon his face, and covered his bright clothes with a grey beady moisture. Now, looking abroad over the earth, it appeared to Martin that the thousands and tens and hundreds of thousands of fragments of mist, had the shapes of men, and were like an innumerable multitude of gigantic men with shining white faces and shining golden hair and long cloud-like robes of a pearly grey colour, that trailed on the earth as they moved. They were like a vast army covering the whole earth, all with their faces set towards the west, all moving swiftly and smoothly on towards the west. And he saw that every one held his robes to his breast with his left hand, and that in his right hand, raised to the level of his head, he carried a strange object. This object was a shell--a big sea-shell of a golden yellow colour with curved pink lips; and very soon one of the mist people came near him, and as he passed by the rock he held the shell to Martin's ear, and it sounded in his ear--a low, deep murmur as of waves breaking on a long shingled beach, and Martin knew, though no word was spoken to him, that it was the sound of the sea, and tears of delight came to his eyes, and at the same time his heart was sick and sad with longing for the sea. Again and again, until the whole vast multitude of the mist people had gone by, a shell was held to his ear; and when they were all gone, when he had watched them fade like a white cloud over the plain, and float away and disappear in the blue sky, he sat down on the rock and cried with the desire that was in him. When his mother found him with traces of tears on his cheeks; and he was silent when she spoke to him, and had a strange look in his eyes as if they were gazing at some distant object, she was angrier than ever with the sea, for she knew that the thought of it had returned to him and that it would be harder than ever to keep him. One morning on waking he found her still asleep, although the traces of tears on her cheeks showed that she had been awake and crying during the night. "Ah, now I know why she cries every morning," thought Martin; "it is because I must go away and leave her alone on the hills." He was out of her arms and dressed in a very few moments, moving very softly lest she should wake; but though he knew that if she awoke she would not let him go, he could not leave her without saying good-bye. And so coming near he stooped over her and very gently kissed her soft cheek and sweet mouth and murmured, "Good-bye, sweet mother." Then, very cautiously, like a shy, little wild animal he stole out of the cavern. Once outside, in the early morning light, he started running as fast as he could, jumping from stone to stone in the rough places, and scrambling through the dew-laden bushes and creepers, until, hot and panting, he arrived down at the very foot of the hill. Then it was easier walking, and he went on a little until he heard a voice crying, "Martin! Martin!" and, looking back, he saw the Lady of the Hills standing on a great stone near the foot of the mountain, gazing sadly after him. "Martin, oh, my child, come back to me," she called, stretching out her arms towards him. "Oh, Martin, I cannot leave the hills to follow you and shield you from harm and save you from death. Where will you go? Oh, me, what shall I do without you?" For a little while he stood still, listening with tears in his eyes to her words, and wavering in his mind; but very soon he thought of the great blue water once more and could not go back, but began to run again, and went on and on for a long distance before stopping to rest. Then he looked back, but he could no longer see her form standing there on the stone. All that day he journeyed on towards the ocean over a great plain. There were no trees and no rocks nor hills, only grass on the level earth, in some places so tall that the spikes, looking like great white ostrich plumes, waved high above his head. But it was easy walking, as the grass grew in tussocks or bunches, and underneath the ground was bare and smooth so that he could walk easily between the bunches. He wondered that he did not get to the sea, but it was still far off, and so the long summer day wore to an end, and he was so tired that he could scarcely lift his legs to walk. Then, as he went slowly on in the fading light, where the grass was short and the evening primroses were opening and filling the desert air with their sweet perfume, he all at once saw a little grey old man not above six inches in height standing on the ground right before him, and staring fixedly at him with great, round, yellow eyes. "You bad boy!" exclaimed this curious little, old man; whereupon Martin stopped in his walk and stood still, gazing in the greatest surprise at him. "You bad boy!" repeated the strange little man. The more Martin stared at him the harder he stared back at Martin, always with the same unbending severity in his small, round, grey face. He began to feel a little afraid, and was almost inclined to run away; then he thought it would be funny to run from such a very small man as this, so he stared bravely back once more and cried out, "Go away!" "You bad boy!" answered the little grey man without moving. "Perhaps he's deaf, just like that other old man," said Martin to himself, and throwing out his arms he shouted at the top of his voice, "Go away!" And away with a scream he went, for it was only a little grey burrowing owl after all! Martin laughed a little at his own foolishness in mistaking that common bird he was accustomed to see every day for a little old man. By-and-by, feeling very tired, he sat down to rest, and just where he sat grew a plant with long white flowers like tall thin goblets in shape. Sitting on the grass he could see right into one of the flower-tubes, and presently he noticed a little, old, grey, shrivelled woman in it, very, very small, for she was not longer than the nail of his little finger. She wore a grey shawl that dragged behind her, and kept getting under her feet and tripping her up. She was most active, whisking about this way and that inside the flower; and at intervals she turned to stare at Martin, who kept getting nearer and nearer to watch her until his face nearly touched the flower; and whenever she looked at him she wore an exceedingly severe expression on her small dried-up countenance. It seemed to Martin that she was very angry with him for some reason. Then she would turn her back on him, and tumble about in the tube of the flower, and gathering up the ends of her shawl in her arms begin dusting with great energy; then hurrying out once more she would shake the dust from her big, funny shawl in his eyes. At last he carefully raised a hand and was just going to take hold of the queer, little, old dame with his forefinger and thumb when up she flew. It was only a small, grey, twilight moth! Very much puzzled and confused, and perhaps a little frightened at these curious deceptions, he laid himself down on the grass and shut his eyes so as to go to sleep; but no sooner had he shut his eyes than he heard a soft, soft little voice calling, "Martin! Martin!" He started up and listened. It was only a field cricket singing in the grass. But often as he lay down and closed his eyes the small voice called again, plainly as possible, and oh, so sadly, "Martin! Martin!" It made him remember his beautiful mother, now perhaps crying alone in the cave on the mountain, no little Martin resting on her bosom, and he cried to think of it. And still the small voice went on, calling, "Martin! Martin!" sadder than ever, until, unable to endure it longer, he jumped up and ran away a good distance, and at last, too tired to go any further, he crept into a tussock of tall grass and went to sleep. [Illustration] [Illustration] _Chapter Seventeen_ _The Old Man of the Sea_ Next day Martin journeyed on in the old way, jumping up and taking a good long run, then dropping into a trot, then a walk, and finally sitting down to rest. Then up again and another run, and so on. But although feeling hungry and thirsty, he was so full of the thought of the great blue water he was going to see, so eager to look upon it at last after wishing for it so long, that he hardly gave himself any time to hunt for food. Nor did he think of his mother of the hills, alone today, and grieving at his loss, so excited was he at the prospect of what lay before him. A little past noon he began to hear a low murmuring sound that seemed in the earth beneath him, and all about him, and in the air above him; but he did not know that it was the sound of the sea. At length he came to a place where the earth rose up in long ridges of yellow sand, on which nothing grew but scattered tufts of stiff, yellow grass. As he toiled over the loose sand, sometimes sinking ankle-deep in it, the curious deep murmuring sound he had heard for so long grew louder and louder, until it was like the sound of a mighty wind in a wood, but deeper and hoarser, rising and falling, and at intervals broken by great throbs, as of thunder echoed and re-echoed among the distant hills. At length he had toiled over the last ridge of sand; and then all at once the world--his world of solid earth at all events--came to an abrupt end; for no more ground on which to set a foot was before him, but only the ocean--that ocean which he had wanted so badly, and had loved at a distance more than the plains and hills, and all they contained to delight him! How wide, how vast it was, stretching away to where it melted into the low sky, its immense grey-blue surface broken into ten thousand thousand waves, lit with white crests that came in sight and vanished like lightning flashes! How tremendous, how terrible it was in its agitation--O the world had nothing to compare with it, nothing to hold his heart after it; and it was well that the earth was silent, that it only gazed upon it with the sun and moon and stars, listening day and night for ever to the great voice of the sea! Only by lying flat on his chest could Martin look down over the edge of the awful cliff, which is one of the highest in the world; and then the sight of the sea swirling and beating at the foot of that stupendous black precipice, sending up great clouds of spray in its fury, made him shudder, it was so awful to look upon. But he could not stir from that spot; there he stayed lying flat on his chest, gazing and gazing, feeling neither hunger nor thirst, forgetful of the beautiful woman he had called mother, and of everything besides. And as he gazed, little by little, that great tumult of the waves grew less; they no longer lifted themselves up, wave following wave, to beat upon the cliff, and make it tremble; but sank lower and lower; and at last drew off from the precipice, leaving at its foot a long narrow strip of sand and shingle exposed to sight. A solemn calm fell upon the waste of waters; only near the shore it continued to move a little, rising and falling like the chest of a sleeping giant, while along the margin small waves continued to form and break in white foam on the shingle with a perpetual low, moaning sound. Further out it was quite calm, its surface everywhere flushed with changing violet, green, and rosy tints: in a little while these lovely colours faded as from a sunset cloud, and it was all deep dark blue: for the sun had gone, and the shadows of evening were over land and sea. Then Martin, his little heart filled with a great awe and a great joy, crept away a few yards from the edge of the cliff and coiled himself up to sleep in a hollow in the soft warm sand. On the following morning, after satisfying his hunger and thirst with some roots which he had not to go very far to find, he returned to watch the sea once more, and there he remained, never removing his eyes from the wonderful scene until the sun was directly over his head; then, when the sea was calm once more, he got up and started to walk along the cliff. Keeping close to the edge, occasionally stopping to lie down on his chest and peer over, he went on and on for hours, until the afternoon tide once more covered the strip of shingled beach, and the waves rising high began to beat with a sound like thunder against the tremendous cliff, making the earth tremble under him. At length he came to a spot where there was a great gap in the line of the cliff, where in past times a portion of it had tumbled down, and the stupendous masses of rock had rolled far out into the sea, and now formed islands of black jagged rock, standing high above the water. Here among the rocks the sea boiled and roared its loudest, churning its waters into masses of white froth. Here a fresh wonder met his sight: a number of big animals unlike any creature he had ever seen before were lying prone on the rocks just out of reach of the waves that beat round them. At first they looked like cows, then he saw that they had neither horns nor legs, that their heads were like dog's but without ears, and that they had two great flapper-shaped feet on their chests with which they walked or crawled upon the rocks whenever a wave broke on them, causing them to move a little higher. They were sea-lions, a very big sort of seal, but Martin had never heard of such a creature, and being anxious to look more closely at them he went into the gap, and began cautiously climbing down over the broken masses of rock and clay until he got quite near the sea. Lying there on a flat rock he became absorbed in watching these strange dog-headed legless cattle of the sea; for he now had them near, and they could see him, and occasionally one would lift his head and gaze earnestly at him out of large dark eyes that were soft and beautiful like the eyes of the doe that came to him on the hills. O how glad he was to know that the sea, the mighty waters roaring so loud as if in wrath, had its big beasts too for him to love, like the hills and plains with their cattle and deer and horses! But the tide was still rising, and very soon the biggest waves began to come quite over the rocks, rolling the big beasts over and even washing them off, and it angered them when the waves struck them, and they roared aloud, and by-and-by they began to go away, some disappearing beneath the water, others with heads above the surface swimming away out into the open sea, until all were gone. Martin was sorry to lose them, but the sight of the sea tumbling and foaming on the rocks still held him there, until all the rocks but one had been covered by the waters, and this one was a great black jagged rock close to the shore, not above twenty or thirty yards from him. Against this mass of rock the waves continued to dash themselves with a mighty noise, sending up a cloud of white foam and spray at every blow. The sight and sound fascinated him. The sea appeared to be talking, whispering, and murmuring, and crying out aloud to him in such a manner that he actually began trying to make out what it was saying. Then up would come a great green wave rushing and moaning, to dash itself to pieces right before his face; and each time it broke against the rock, and rose high up it took a fantastic shape that began to look more and more the shape of a man. Yes, it was unmistakably like a monstrous grey old man, with a vast snow-white beard, and a world of disordered white hair floating over and around its head. At all events it was white for a moment, then it looked green--a great green beard which the old man took with his two hands and twisted just as a washerwoman twists a blanket or counterpane, so as to wring the water out of it. Martin stared at this strange uncouth visitor from the sea; while he in turn, leaning over the rock, stared back into Martin's face with his immense fishy eyes. Every time a fresh wave broke over him, lifting up his hair and garments, which were of brown seaweed and all rags and tatters, it seemed to annoy him somewhat; but he never stirred; and when the wave retired he would wring the water out once more and blow a cloud of sea-spray from his beard. At length, holding out his mighty arms towards Martin, he opened his great, cod-fish mouth, and burst into a hoarse laugh, which sounded like the deep laughter-like cries of the big, black-backed gulls. Still, Martin did not feel at all afraid of him, for he looked good-natured and friendly. "Who are you?" shouted Martin at last. "Who be I?" returned the man-shaped monster in a hoarse, sea-like voice. "Ho, ho, ho,--now I calls that a good un! Why, little Martin, that I've knowed all along, I be Bill. Leastways, that's what they called me afore: but I got promotion, and in consekence I'm called the Old Man of the Sea." "And how did you know I was Martin?" "How did I know as you was Martin? Why, bless your innocent heart, I knowed it all along of course. How d'ye think I wouldn't know that? Why, I no sooner saw you there among them rocks than I says to myself, 'Hullo,' says I, bless my eyes if that ain't Martin looking at my cows, as I calls 'em. Of course I knowed as you was Martin." "And what made you go and live in the sea, Old--Bill?" questioned Martin, "and why did you grow so big?" "Ho, ho, ho!" laughed the giant, blowing a great cloud of spray from his lips. "I don't mind telling you that. You see, Martin, I ain't pressed for time. Them blessed bells is nothing to me now, not being in the foc'sle trying to git a bit of a snooze. Well, to begin, I were born longer ago than I can tell in a old town by the sea, and my father he were a sailor man, and was drowned when I were very small; then my mother she died just becoz every man that belonged to her was drowned. For those as lives by the sea, Martin, mostly dies in the sea. Being a orphan I were brought up by Granny. I were very small then, and used to go and play all day in the marshes, and I loved the cows and water-rats and all the little beasties, same as you, Martin. When I were a bit growed Granny says to me one day, 'Bill, you go to sea and be a sailor-boy,' she says, 'becoz I've had a dream,' she says, 'and it's wrote that you'll never git drowned.' For you see, Martin, my Granny were a wise woman. So to the sea I goes, and boy and man, I was on a many voyages to Turkey and Injy and the Cape and the West Coast and Ameriky, and all round the world forty times over. Many and many's the time I was ship-wrecked and overboard, but I never got drowned. At last, when I were gitting a old man, and not much use by reason of the rheumatiz and stiffness in the jints, there was a mutiny in our ship when we was off the Cape; and the captain and mate they was killed. Then comes my turn, becoz I went again the men, d'ye see, and they wasn't a-going for to pardon me that. So out they had me on deck and began to talk about how they'd finish me--rope, knife, or bullet. 'Mates,' says I, 'shoot me if you like and I'll dies comfortably; or run a knife into me, which is better still; or string me up to the yard-arm, which is the most comforble thing I know. But don't you go and put me into the sea,' says I, 'becoz it's wrote that I ain't never going to git drowned, and you'll have all your trouble for nothing,' says I. That made 'em larf a most tremenjous larf. 'Old Bill,' says they, 'will have his little joke.' Then they brings up some iron stowed in the hold, and with ropes and chains they ties well-nigh half a ton of it to my legs and arms, then lowers me over the side. Down I went, in course, which made 'em larf louder than afore; and I were fathoms and fathoms under water afore I stopped hearing them larf. At last I comes down to the bottom of the sea, and glad I were to git there, becoz now I couldn't go no further. There I lies doubled up like a old sea-sarpint along of the rocks, but warm and comfortable like. Last of all, the ropes and chains they got busted off becoz of my growing so big and strong down there, and up I comes to blow like a grampus, for I were full of water by reason that it had soaked into me. So that's how I got to be the Old Man of the Sea, hundreds and hundreds of years ago." "And do you like to be always in the sea, Old Bill?" asked Martin. "Ho, ho, ho!" laughed the monster. "That's a good un, little Martin! Do I like it? Well, it's better than being a sailor man in a ship, I can tell 'ee. That were a hard life, with nothing good except perhaps the baccy. I were very fond of baccy once before the sea put out my pipe. Likewise of rum. Many's the time I've been picked up on shore that drunk, Martin, you wouldn't believe it, I were that fond of rum. Sometimes, down here, when I remember how good it tasted, I open my mouth wide and takes down a big gulp of sea water, enough to fill a hogshead; then I comes up and blows it all out again just like a old grampus." And having said this, he opened his vast cavernous mouth and roared out his hoarse ho, ho, ho! louder than before, and at the same time he rose up higher above the water and the black rock he had been leaning on, until he stood like a stupendous tower above Martin--a man-shaped tower of water and spray, and white froth and brown seaweed. Then he slowly fell backwards out upon the sea, and falling upon the sea caused so mighty a wave that it went high over the black rock and washed the face of the cliff, sweeping Martin back among the rocks. When the great wave retired, and Martin, half-choked with water and half-dazed, struggled on to his feet, he saw that it was night, and a cloudy, black sky was above, and the black sea beneath him. He had not seen the light fade, and had perhaps fallen asleep and seen and talked with that old sea monster in a dream. But now he could not escape from his position down in the gap, just above the roaring waves. There he had to stay, sheltered in a cavity in the rock, and lying there, half sleeping and half waking, he had that great voice of the sea in his ears all night. [Illustration] [Illustration] _Chapter Eighteen_ _Martin Plays With the Waves_ After a night spent in the roar of the sea, a drenched and bruised prisoner among the rocks, it was nice to see the dawn again. No sooner was it light than Martin set about trying to make his escape. He had been washed by that big wave into a deep cleft among the rocks and masses of hard clay, and shut in there he could not see the water nor anything excepting a patch of sky above him. Now he began climbing over the stones and crawling and forcing himself through crevices and other small openings, making a little progress, for he was sore from his bruises and very weak from his long fast, and at intervals, tired and beaten, he would drop down crying with pain and misery. But Martin was by nature a very resolute little boy, and after two or three minutes' rest his tears would cease, and he would be up struggling on determinedly as before. He was like some little wild animal when it finds itself captive in a cage or box or room, who tries without ceasing to find a way out. There may be no way, but it will not give up trying to find one. And at last, after so trying, Martin's efforts were rewarded: he succeeded in getting into the steep passage by which he had come down to the sea on the previous day, and in the end got to the top of the cliff once more. It was a great relief, and after resting a little while he began to feel glad and happy at the sight before him: there was the glorious sea again, not as he had seen it before, its wide surface roughened by the wind and flecked with foam; for now the water was smooth, but not still; it rose and fell in vast rollers, or long waves that were like ridges, wave following wave in a very grand and ordered manner. And as he gazed, the clouds broke and floated away, and the sky grew clear and bright, and then all at once the great red sun came up out of the waters! But it was impossible for him to stay there longer when there was nothing to eat; his extreme hunger compelled him to get up and leave the cliff and the sandy hills behind it; and then for an hour or two he walked feebly about searching for sweet roots, but finding none. It would have gone hard with him then if he had not seen some low, dark-looking bushes at a distance on the dry, yellow plain, and gone to them. They looked like yew-bushes, and when he got to them he found that they were thickly covered with small berries; on some bushes they were purple-black, on others crimson, but all were ripe, and many small birds were there feasting on them. The berries were pleasant to the taste, and he feasted with the little birds on them until his hunger was satisfied; and then, with his mouth and fingers stained purple with the juice, he went to sleep in the shade of one of the bushes. There, too, he spent the whole of that day and the night, hearing the low murmur of the sea when waking, and when morning came he was strong and happy once more, and, after filling himself with the fruit, set off to the sea again. Arrived at the cliff, he began walking along the edge, and in about an hour's time came to the end of it, for there it sloped down to the water, and before him, far as he could see, there was a wide, shingled beach with low sand-hills behind it. With a shout of joy he ran down to the margin, and the rest of that day he spent dabbling in the water, gathering beautiful shells and seaweed and strangely-painted pebbles into heaps, then going on and on again, still picking up more beautiful riffraff on the margin, only to leave it all behind him at last. Never had he spent a happier day, and when it came to an end he found a sheltered spot not far from the sea, so that when he woke in the night he would still hear the deep, low murmur of the waves on the beach. Many happy days he spent in the same way, with no living thing to keep him company, except the little white and grey sanderlings that piped so shrill and clear as they flitted along the margin before him; and the great sea-gulls that uttered hoarse, laughter-like cries as they soared and hovered above his head. "Oh, happy birds!" exclaimed Martin, clapping his hands, and shouting in answer to their cries. Every day Martin grew more familiar with the sea, and loved it more, and it was his companion and playmate. He was bolder than the little restless sanderlings that ran and flitted before the advancing waves, and so never got their pretty white and grey plumage wet: often he would turn to meet the coming wave, and let it break round and rush past him, and then in a moment he would be standing knee-deep in the midst of a great sheet of dazzling white foam, until with a long hiss as it fled back, drawing the round pebbles with it, it would be gone, and he would laugh and shout with glee. What a grand old play-fellow the sea was! And it loved him, like the big spotted cat of the hills, and only pretended to be angry with him when it wanted to play, and would do him no harm. And still he was not satisfied, but grew bolder and bolder, putting himself in its power and trusting to its mercy. He could play better with his clothes off; and one day, chasing a great receding wave as far as it would go, he stood up bravely to encounter the succeeding wave, but it was greater than the last, and lifting him in its great green arms it carried him high up till it broke with a mighty roar on the beach; then instead of leaving him stranded there it rushed back still bearing him in its arms out into the deep. Further and further from the shore it carried him, until he became terrified, and throwing out his little arms towards the land, he cried aloud, "Mother! Mother!" He was not calling to his own mother far away on the great plain; he had forgotten her. Now he only thought of the beautiful woman of the Hills, who was so strong, and loved him and made him call her "Mother"; and to her he cried in his need for help. Now he remembered her warm, protecting bosom, and how she had cried every night at the fear of losing him; how when he ran from her she followed him, calling to him to return. Ah, how cold was the sea's bosom, how bitter its lips! Struggling still with the great wave, struggling in vain, blinded and half-choked with salt water, he was driven violently against a great black object tumbling about in the surf, and with all the strength of his little hands he clung to it. The water rolled over him, and beat against him, but he would not lose his hold; and at last there came a bigger wave and lifted him up and cast him right on to the object he was clinging to. It was as if some enormous monster of the sea had caught him up and put him in that place, just as the Lady of the Hills had often snatched him up from the edge of some perilous precipice to set him down in a safe place. There he lay exhausted, stretched out at full length, so tossed about on the billows that he had a sensation of being in a swing; but the sea grew quiet at last, and when he looked up it was dark, the stars glittering in the dim blue vault above, and the smooth, black water reflecting them all round him, so that he seemed to be floating suspended between two vast, starry skies, one immeasurably far above, the other below him. All night, with only the twinkling, trembling stars for company, he lay there, naked, wet, and cold, thirsty with the bitter taste of sea-salt in his mouth, never daring to stir, listening to the continual lapping sound of the water. Morning dawned at last; the sea was green once more, the sky blue, and beautiful with the young fresh light. He was lying on an old raft of black, water-logged spars and planks lashed together with chains and rotting ropes. But alas! there was no shore in sight, for all night long he had been drifting, drifting further and further away from land. A strange habitation for Martin, the child of the plain, was that old raft! It had been made by ship-wrecked mariners, long, long ago, and had floated about the sea until it had become of the sea, like a half-submerged floating island; brown and many-coloured seaweeds had attached themselves to it; strange creatures, half plant and half animal, grew on it; and little shell-fish and numberless slimy, creeping things of the sea made it their dwelling-place. It was about as big as the floor of a large room, all rough, black and slippery, with the seaweed floating like ragged hair many yards long around it, and right in the middle of the raft there was a large hole where the wood had rotted away. Now, it was very curious that when Martin looked over the side of the raft he could see down into the clear, green water a few fathoms only; but when he crept to the edge of the hole and looked into the water there, he was able to see ten times further down. Looking in this hole, he saw far down a strange, fish-shaped creature, striped like a zebra, with long spines on its back, moving about to and fro. It disappeared, and then, very much further down, something moved, first like a shadow, then like a great, dark form; and as it came up higher it took the shape of a man, but dim and vast like a man-shaped cloud or shadow that floated in the green translucent water. The shoulders and head appeared; then it changed its position and the face was towards him with the vast eyes, that had a dim, greyish light in them, gazing up into his. Martin trembled as he gazed, not exactly with fear, but with excitement, because he recognized in this huge water-monster under him that Old Man of the Sea who had appeared and talked to him in his dream when he fell asleep among the rocks. Could it be, although he was asleep at the time, that the Old Man really had appeared before him, and that his eyes had been open just enough to see him? By-and-by the cloud-like face disappeared, and did not return though he watched for it a long time. Then sitting on the black, rotten wood and brown seaweed he gazed over the ocean, a vast green, sunlit expanse with no shore and no living thing upon it. But after a while he began to think that there was some living thing in it, which was always near him though he could not see what it was. From time to time the surface of the sea was broken just as if some huge fish had risen to the surface and then sunk again without showing itself. It was something very big, judging from the commotion it made in the water; and at last he did see it or a part of it--a vast brown object which looked like a gigantic man's shoulder, but it might have been the back of a whale. It was no sooner seen than gone, but in a very short time after its appearance cries as of birds were heard at a great distance. The cries came from various directions, growing louder and louder, and before long Martin saw many birds flying towards him. On arrival they began to soar and circle round above him, all screaming excitedly. They were white birds with long wings and long sharp beaks, and were very much like gulls, except that they had an easier and swifter flight. Martin rejoiced at seeing them, for he had been in the greatest terror at the strangeness and loneliness of the sea now that there was no land in sight. Sitting on the black raft he was constantly thinking of the warning words his mother of the hills had spoken--that the sea would kiss him with cold salt lips and take him down into the depths where he would never see the light again. O how strange the sea was to him now, how lonely, how terrible! But birds that with their wings could range over the whole world were of the land, and now seemed to bring the land near him with their white forms and wild cries. How could they help him? He did not know, he did not ask; but he was not alone now that they had come to him, and his terror was less. And still more birds kept coming; and as the morning wore on the crowd of birds increased until they were in hundreds, then in thousands, perpetually wheeling and swooping and rising and hovering over him in a great white cloud. And they were of many kinds, mostly white, some grey, others sooty brown or mottled, and some wholly black. Then in the midst of the crowd of birds he saw one of great size wheeling about like a king or giant among the others, with wings of amazing length, wild eyes of a glittering yellow, and a yellow beak half as long as Martin's arm, with a huge vulture-like hook at the end. Now when this mighty bird swooped close down over his head, fanning him with its immense wings, Martin again began to be alarmed at its formidable appearance; and as more and more birds came, with more of the big kind, and the wild outcry they made increased, his fear and astonishment grew; then all at once these feelings rose to extreme terror and amazement at the sight of a new bird-like creature a thousand times bigger than the largest one in the circling crowd above, coming swiftly towards him. He saw that it was not flying but swimming or gliding over the surface of the sea; and its body was black, and above the body were many immense white wings of various shapes, which stood up like a white cloud. Overcome with terror he fell flat on the raft, hiding his face in the brown seaweed that covered it; then in a few minutes the sea became agitated and rocked him in his raft, and a wave came over him which almost swept him into the sea. At the same time the outcry of the birds were redoubled until he was nearly deafened by their screams, and the screams seemed to shape themselves into words. "Martin! Martin!" the birds seemed to be screaming. "Look up, Martin, look up, look up!" The whole air above and about him seemed to be full of the cries, and every cry said to him, "Martin! Martin! look up! look up!" Although dazed with the awful din and almost fainting with terror and weakness, he could not resist the command. Pressing his hands on the raft he at last struggled up to his knees, and saw that the feared bird-like monster had passed him by: he saw that it was a ship with a black hull, its white sails spread, and that the motion of the water and the wave that swept over him had been created by the ship as it came close to the raft. It was now rapidly gliding from him, but still very near, and he saw a crowd of strange-looking rough men, with sun-browned faces and long hair and shaggy beards, leaning over the bulwarks staring at him. They had seen with astonishment the corpse, as they thought, of a little naked white boy lying on the old black raft, with a multitude of sea-birds gathered to feed on him; now when they saw him get up on his knees and look at them, they uttered a great cry, and began rushing excitedly hither and thither, to pull at ropes and lower a boat. Martin did not know what they were doing; he only knew that they were men in a ship, but he was now too weak and worn-out to look at or think of more than one thing at a time, and what he was looking at now was the birds. For no sooner had he looked up and seen the ship than their wild cries ceased, and they rose up and up like a white cloud to scatter far and wide over sky and sea. For some moments he continued watching them, listening to their changed voices, which now had a very soft and pleasant sound, as if they were satisfied and happy. It made him happy to hear them, and he lifted his hands up and smiled; then, relieved of his terror and overcome with weariness, he closed his eyes and dropped once more full length upon his bed of wet seaweed. At that the men stared into each other's face, a very strange startled look coming into their eyes. And no wonder! For long, long months, running to years, they had been cruising in those lonely desolate seas, thousands of miles from home, seeing no land nor any green thing, nor dear face of woman or child: and now by some strange chance a child had come to them, and even while they were making all haste to rescue it, putting their arms out to take it from the sea, its life had seemingly been snatched from them! But he was only sleeping. [Illustration] _Note_ _When I arranged with Mr. Hudson for the publication of an American Edition of_ A Little Boy Lost, _I asked him to write a special foreword to his American readers. He replied with a characteristic letter, and, taking him at his word I am printing it on the following pages._ ALFRED A. KNOPF. _Dear Mr. Knopf:_ Your request for a Foreword to insert in the American reprint of the little book worries me. A critic on this side has said that my Prefaces to reprints of my earlier works are of the nature of parting kicks, and I have no desire just now to kick this poor innocent. That evil-tempered old woman, Mother Nature, in one of her worst tantrums, has been inflicting so many cuffs and blows on me that she has left me no energy or disposition to kick anything--even myself. The trouble is that I know so little about it. Did I write this book? What then made me do it? In reading a volume of Fors Clavigera I once came upon a passage which sounded well but left me in a mist, and it relieved me to find a footnote to it in which the author says: "This passage was written many years ago and what I was thinking about at the time has quite escaped my memory. At all events, though I let it stand, I can find no meaning in it now." Little men may admire but must not try to imitate these gestures of the giants. And as a result of a little quiet thinking it over I seem able to recover the idea I had in my mind when I composed this child's story and found a title for it in Blake. Something too of the semi-wild spirit of the child hero in the lines: "Naught loves another as itself.... And, father, how can I love you Or any of my brothers more? I love you like the little birds That pick up crumbs about the door." There nature is, after picking up the crumbs to fly away. A long time ago I formed a small collection of children's books of the early years of the nineteenth century; and looking through them, wishing that some of them had fallen into my hands when I was a child I recalled the books I had read at that time--especially two or three. Like any normal child I delighted in such stories as the Swiss Family Robinson, but they were not the books I prized most; they omitted the very quality I liked best--the little thrills that nature itself gave me, which half frightened and fascinated at the same time, the wonder and mystery of it all. Once in a while I got a book with something of this rare element in it, contained perhaps in some perfectly absurd narrative of animals taking human shape or using human speech, with such like transformations and vagaries; they could never be too extravagant, fantastic and incredible, so long as they expressed anything of the feeling I myself experienced when out of sight and sound of my fellow beings, whether out on the great level plain, with a glitter of illusory water all round me, or among the shadowy trees with their bird and insect sounds, or by the waterside and bed of tall dark bull-rushes murmuring in the wind. These ancient memories put it in my mind to write a book which, I imagined, would have suited my peculiar taste of that early period, the impossible story to be founded on my own childish impressions and adventures, with a few dreams and fancies thrown in and two or three native legends and myths, such as the one of the Lady of the Hills, the incarnate spirit of the rocky Sierras on the great plains, about which I heard from my gaucho comrades when on the spot--the strange woman seldom viewed by human eyes who is jealous of man's presence and is able to create sudden violent tempests to frighten them from her sacred haunts. That's the story of my story, and to the question in your publisher's practical mind, I'm sorry to have to say I don't know. I have no way of finding out, since children are not accustomed to write to authors to tell them what they think of their books. And after all these excuses it just occurs to me that children do not read forewords and introductions; they have to be addressed to adults who do not read children's books, so that in any case it would be thrown away. Still if a foreword you must have, and from me, I think you will have to get it out of this letter. I remain, Yours cordially, W. H. HUDSON. November 14, 1917. * * * * * Transcriber's note: Obvious punctuation and typographical errors have been corrected. 
5177	----	BIRDS AND POETS WITH OTHER PAPERS THE WRITINGS OF JOHN BURROUGHS, VOLUME III WITH PORTRAITS AND MANY ILLUSTRATIONS By John Burroughs PREFACE I have deliberated a long time about coupling some of my sketches of outdoor nature with a few chapters of a more purely literary character, and thus confiding to my reader what absorbs and delights me inside my four walls, as well as what pleases and engages me outside those walls; especially since I have aimed to bring my outdoor spirit and method within, and still to look upon my subject with the best naturalist's eye I could command. I hope, therefore, he will not be scared away when I boldly confront him in the latter portions of my book with this name of strange portent, Walt Whitman, for I assure him that in this misjudged man he may press the strongest poetic pulse that has yet beaten in America, or perhaps in modern times. Then, these chapters are a proper supplement or continuation of my themes and their analogy in literature, because in them we shall "follow out these lessons of the earth and air," and behold their application to higher matters. It is not an artificially graded path strewn with roses that invites us in this part, but, let me hope, something better, a rugged trail through the woods or along the beach where we shall now and then get a whiff of natural air, or a glimpse of something to "Make the wild blood start In its mystic springs." ESOPUS-ON-HUDSON, March, 1877. CONTENTS I. BIRDS AND POETS II. TOUCHES OF NATURE III. A BIRD MEDLEY IV. APRIL V. SPRING POEMS VI. OUR RURAL DIVINITY VII. BEFORE GENIUS VIII. BEFORE BEAUTY IX. EMERSON X. THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE INDEX BIRDS AND POETS I BIRDS AND POETS "In summer, when the shawes be shene, And leaves be large and long, It is full merry in fair forest To hear the fowlés' song. The wood-wele sang, and wolde not cease, Sitting upon the spray; So loud, it wakened Robin Hood In the greenwood where he lay." It might almost be said that the birds are all birds of the poets and of no one else, because it is only the poetical temperament that fully responds to them. So true is this, that all the great ornithologists--original namers and biographers of the birds--have been poets in deed if not in word. Audubon is a notable case in point, who, if he had not the tongue or the pen of the poet, certainly had the eye and ear and heart--"the fluid and attaching character"--and the singleness of purpose, the enthusiasm, the unworldliness, the love, that characterize the true and divine race of bards. So had Wilson, though perhaps not in as large a measure; yet he took fire as only a poet can. While making a journey on foot to Philadelphia, shortly after landing in this country, he caught sight of the red-headed woodpecker flitting among the trees,--a bird that shows like a tricolored scarf among the foliage,--and it so kindled his enthusiasm that his life was devoted to the pursuit of the birds from that day. It was a lucky hit. Wilson had already set up as a poet in Scotland, and was still fermenting when the bird met his eye and suggested to his soul a new outlet for its enthusiasm. The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense is his life,--large-brained, large-lunged, hot, ecstatic, his frame charged with buoyancy and his heart with song. The beautiful vagabonds, endowed with every grace, masters of all climes, and knowing no bounds,--how many human aspirations are realized in their free, holiday lives, and how many suggestions to the poet in their flight and song! Indeed, is not the bird the original type and teacher of the poet, and do we not demand of the human lark or thrush that he "shake out his carols" in the same free and spontaneous manner as his winged prototype? Kingsley has shown how surely the old minnesingers and early ballad-writers have learned of the birds, taking their key-note from the blackbird, or the wood-lark, or the throstle, and giving utterance to a melody as simple and unstudied. Such things as the following were surely caught from the fields or the woods:-- "She sat down below a thorn, Fine flowers in the valley, And there has she her sweet babe borne, And the green leaves they grow rarely." Or the best lyric pieces, how like they are to certain bird-songs!--clear, ringing, ecstatic, and suggesting that challenge and triumph which the outpouring of the male bird contains. (Is not the genuine singing, lyrical quality essentially masculine?) Keats and Shelley, perhaps more notably than any other English poets, have the bird organization and the piercing wild-bird cry. This, of course, is not saying that they are the greatest poets, but that they have preëminently the sharp semi-tones of the sparrows and the larks. But when the general reader thinks of the birds of the poets, he very naturally calls to mind the renowned birds, the lark and the nightingale, Old World melodists, embalmed in Old World poetry, but occasionally appearing on these shores, transported in the verse of some callow singer. The very oldest poets, the towering antique bards, seem to make little mention of the song-birds. They loved better the soaring, swooping birds of prey, the eagle, the ominous birds, the vultures, the storks and cranes, or the clamorous sea-birds and the screaming hawks. These suited better the rugged, warlike character of the times and the simple, powerful souls of the singers themselves. Homer must have heard the twittering of the swallows, the cry of the plover, the voice of the turtle, and the warble of the nightingale; but they were not adequate symbols to express what he felt or to adorn his theme. Aeschylus saw in the eagle "the dog of Jove," and his verse cuts like a sword with such a conception. It is not because the old bards were less as poets, but that they were more as men. To strong, susceptible characters, the music of nature is not confined to sweet sounds. The defiant scream of the hawk circling aloft, the wild whinny of the loon, the whooping of the crane, the booming of the bittern, the vulpine bark of the eagle, the loud trumpeting of the migratory geese sounding down out of the midnight sky; or by the seashore, the coast of New Jersey or Long Island, the wild crooning of the flocks of gulls, repeated, continued by the hour, swirling sharp and shrill, rising and falling like the wind in a storm, as they circle above the beach or dip to the dash of the waves,--are much more welcome in certain moods than any and all mere bird-melodies, in keeping as they are with the shaggy and untamed features of ocean and woods, and suggesting something like the Richard Wagner music in the ornithological orchestra. "Nor these alone whose notes Nice-fingered art must emulate in vain, But cawing rooks, and kites that swim sublime In still repeated circles, screaming loud, The jay, the pie, and even the boding owl, That hails the rising moon, have charms for me," says Cowper. "I never hear," says Burns in one of his letters, "the loud, solitary whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild mixing cadence of a troop of gray plovers in an autumnal morning, without feeling an elevation of soul like the enthusiasm of devotion or poetry." Even the Greek minor poets, the swarm of them that are represented in the Greek Anthology, rarely make affectionate mention of the birds, except perhaps Sappho, whom Ben Jonson makes speak of the nightingale as-- "The dear glad angel of the spring." The cicada, the locust, and the grasshopper are often referred to, but rarely by name any of the common birds. That Greek grasshopper must have been a wonderful creature. He was a sacred object in Greece, and is spoken of by the poets as a charming songster. What we would say of birds the Greek said of this favorite insect. When Socrates and Phaedrus came to the fountain shaded by the plane-tree, where they had their famous discourse, Socrates said: "Observe the freshness of the spot, how charming and very delightful it is, and how summer-like and shrill it sounds from the choir of grasshoppers." One of the poets in the Anthology finds a grasshopper struggling in a spider's web, which he releases with the words:-- "Go safe and free with your sweet voice of song." Another one makes the insect say to a rustic who had captured him:-- "Me, the Nymphs' wayside minstrel whose sweet note O'er sultry hill is heard, and shady grove to float." Still another sings how a grasshopper took the place of a broken string on his lyre, and "filled the cadence due." "For while six chords beneath my fingers cried, He with his tuneful voice the seventh supplied; The midday songster of the mountain set His pastoral ditty to my canzonet; And when he sang, his modulated throat Accorded with the lifeless string I smote." While we are trying to introduce the lark in this country, why not try this Pindaric grasshopper also? It is to the literary poets and to the minstrels of a softer age that we must look for special mention of the song-birds and for poetical rhapsodies upon them. The nightingale is the most general favorite, and nearly all the more noted English poets have sung her praises. To the melancholy poet she is melancholy, and to the cheerful she is cheerful. Shakespeare in one of his sonnets speaks of her song as mournful, while Martial calls her the "most garrulous" of birds. Milton sang:-- "Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly, Most musical, most melancholy, Thee, chantress, oft the woods among I woo, to hear thy evening song." To Wordsworth she told another story:-- "O nightingale! thou surely art A creature of ebullient heart; These notes of thine,--they pierce and pierce,-- Tumultuous harmony and fierce! Thou sing'st as if the god of wine Had helped thee to a valentine; A song in mockery and despite Of shades, and dews, and silent night, And steady bliss, and all the loves Now sleeping in these peaceful groves." In a like vein Coleridge sang:-- "'T is the merry nightingale That crowds and hurries and precipitates With fast, thick warble his delicious notes." Keats's poem on the nightingale is doubtless more in the spirit of the bird's strain than any other. It is less a description of the song and more the song itself. Hood called the nightingale "The sweet and plaintive Sappho of the dell." I mention the nightingale only to point my remarks upon its American rival, the famous mockingbird of the Southern States, which is also a nightingale,--a night-singer,--and which no doubt excels the Old World bird in the variety and compass of its powers. The two birds belong to totally distinct families, there being no American species which answers to the European nightingale, as there are that answer to the robin, the cuckoo, the blackbird, and numerous others. Philomel has the color, manners, and habits of a thrush,--our hermit thrush,--but it is not a thrush at all, but a warbler. I gather from the books that its song is protracted and full rather than melodious,--a capricious, long-continued warble, doubling and redoubling, rising and falling, issuing from the groves and the great gardens, and associated in the minds of the poets with love and moonlight and the privacy of sequestered walks. All our sympathies and attractions are with the bird, and we do not forget that Arabia and Persia are there back of its song. _Our_ nightingale has mainly the reputation of the caged bird, and is famed mostly for its powers of mimicry, which are truly wonderful, enabling the bird to exactly reproduce and even improve upon the notes of almost any other songster. But in a state of freedom it has a song of its own which is infinitely rich and various. It is a garrulous polyglot when it chooses to be, and there is a dash of the clown and the buffoon in its nature which too often flavors its whole performance, especially in captivity; but in its native haunts, and when its love-passion is upon it, the serious and even grand side of its character comes out. In Alabama and Florida its song may be heard all through the sultry summer night, at times low and plaintive, then full and strong. A friend of Thoreau and a careful observer, who has resided in Florida, tells me that this bird is a much more marvelous singer than it has the credit of being. He describes a habit it has of singing on the wing on moonlight nights, that would be worth going South to hear. Starting from a low bush, it mounts in the air and continues its flight apparently to an altitude of several hundred feet, remaining on the wing a number of minutes, and pouring out its song with the utmost clearness and abandon,--a slowly rising musical rocket that fills the night air with harmonious sounds. Here are both the lark and nightingale in one; and if poets were as plentiful down South as they are in New England, we should have heard of this song long ago, and had it celebrated in appropriate verse. But so far only one Southern poet, Wilde, has accredited the bird this song. This he has done in the following admirable sonnet:-- TO THE MOCKINGBIRD Winged mimic of the woods! thou motley fool! Who shall thy gay buffoonery describe? Thine ever-ready notes of ridicule Pursue thy fellows still with jest and gibe. Wit--sophist--songster--Yorick of thy tribe, Thou sportive satirist of Nature's school, To thee the palm of scoffing we ascribe, Arch scoffer, and mad Abbot of Misrule! For such thou art by day--but all night long Thou pour'st a soft, sweet, pensive, solemn strain, As if thou didst in this, thy moonlight song, Like to the melancholy Jaques, complain, Musing on falsehood, violence, and wrong, And sighing for thy motley coat again. Aside from this sonnet, the mockingbird has got into poetical literature, so far as I know, in only one notable instance, and that in the page of a poet where we would least expect to find him,--a bard who habitually bends his ear only to the musical surge and rhythmus of total nature, and is as little wont to turn aside for any special beauties or points as the most austere of the ancient masters. I refer to Walt Whitman's "Out of the cradle endlessly rocking," in which the mockingbird plays a part. The poet's treatment of the bird is entirely ideal and eminently characteristic. That is to say, it is altogether poetical and not at all ornithological; yet it contains a rendering or free translation of a bird-song--the nocturne of the mockingbird, singing and calling through the night for its lost mate--that I consider quite unmatched in our literature:-- Once, Paumanok, When the snows had melted, and the Fifth-month grass was growing, Up this seashore, in some briers, Two guests from Alabama--two together, And their nest, and four light green eggs, spotted with brown, And every day the he-bird, to and fro, near at hand, And every day the she-bird, crouched on her nest, silent, with bright eyes, And every day I, a curious boy, never too close, never disturbing them, Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating. _Shine! Shine! Shine! Pour down your warmth, great Sun! While we bask--we two together._ _Two together! Winds blow South, or winds blow North, Day come white, or night come black, Home, or rivers and mountains from home, Singing all time, minding no time, If we two but keep together._ Till of a sudden, Maybe killed unknown to her mate, One forenoon the she-bird crouched not on the nest, Nor returned that afternoon, nor the next, Nor ever appeared again. And thenceforward all summer, in the sound of the sea, And at night, under the full of the moon, in calmer weather, Over the hoarse surging of the sea, Or flitting from brier to brier by day, I saw, I heard at intervals, the remaining one, the he-bird, The solitary guest from Alabama. _Blow! blow! blow! Blow up, sea-winds, along Paumanok's shore! I wait and I wait, till you blow my mate to me._ Yes, when the stars glistened, All night long, on the prong of a moss-scalloped stake, Down, almost amid the slapping waves, Sat the lone singer, wonderful, causing tears. He called on his mate: He poured forth the meanings which I, of all men, know. . . . . . . . . . . . _Soothe! soothe! soothe! Close on its wave soothes the wave behind, And again another behind, embracing and lapping, every one close, But my love soothes not me, not me._ _Low hangs the moon--it rose late. Oh it is lagging--oh I think it is heavy with love, with love._ _Oh madly the sea pushes, pushes upon the land, With love--with love._ _O night! do I not see my love fluttering out there among the breakers! What is that little black thing I see there in the white?_ _Loud! loud! loud! Loud I call to you, my love! High and clear I shoot my voice over the waves: Surely you must know who is here, is here; You must know who I am, my love._ _Low-hanging moon! What is that dusky spot in your brown yellow? Oh it is the shape, the shape of my mate! O moon, do not keep her from me any longer._ _Land! land! O land! Whichever way I turn, oh I think you could give my mate back again, if you only would; For I am almost sure I see her dimly whichever way I look._ _O rising stars! Perhaps the one I want so much will rise, will rise with some of you._ _O throat! O trembling throat! Sound clearer through the atmosphere! Pierce the woods, the earth; Somewhere listening to catch you, must be the one I want._ _Shake out, carols! Solitary here--the night's carols! Carols of lonesome love! Death's carols! Carols under that lagging, yellow, waning moon! Oh, under that moon, where she droops almost down into the sea! O reckless, despairing carols._ _But soft! sink low! Soft! let me just murmur; And do you wait a moment, you husky-noised sea; For somewhere I believe I heard my mate responding to me, So faint--I must be still, be still to listen! But not altogether still, for then she might not come immediately to me._ _Hither, my love! Here I am! Here! With this just-sustained note I announce myself to you; This gentle call is for you, my love, for you._ _Do not be decoyed elsewhere! That is the whistle of the wind--it is not my voice; That is the fluttering, the fluttering of the spray; Those are the shadows of leaves._ _O darkness! Oh in vain! Oh I am very sick and sorrowful._ . . . . . . . . . . . The bird that occupies the second place to the nightingale in British poetical literature is the skylark, a pastoral bird as the Philomel is an arboreal,--a creature of light and air and motion, the companion of the plowman, the shepherd, the harvester,--whose nest is in the stubble and whose tryst is in the clouds. Its life affords that kind of contrast which the imagination loves,--one moment a plain pedestrian bird, hardly distinguishable from the ground, the next a soaring, untiring songster, reveling in the upper air, challenging the eye to follow him and the ear to separate his notes. The lark's song is not especially melodious, but is blithesome, sibilant, and unceasing. Its type is the grass, where the bird makes its home, abounding, multitudinous, the notes nearly all alike and all in the same key, but rapid, swarming, prodigal, showering down as thick and fast as drops of rain in a summer shower. Many noted poets have sung the praises of the lark, or been kindled by his example. Shelley's ode and Wordsworth's "To a Skylark" are well known to all readers of poetry, while every schoolboy will recall Hogg's poem, beginning:-- "Bird of the wilderness, Blithesome and cumberless, Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea! Emblem of happiness, Blest is thy dwelling-place-- Oh to abide in the desert with thee!" I heard of an enthusiastic American who went about English fields hunting a lark with Shelley's poem in his hand, thinking no doubt to use it as a kind of guide-book to the intricacies and harmonies of the song. He reported not having heard any larks, though I have little doubt they were soaring and singing about him all the time, though of course they did not sing to his ear the song that Shelley heard. The poets are the best natural historians, only you must know how to read them. They translate the facts largely and freely. A celebrated lady once said to Turner, "I confess I cannot see in nature what you do." "Ah, madam," said the complacent artist, "don't you wish you could!" Shelley's poem is perhaps better known, and has a higher reputation among literary folk, than Wordsworth's; it is more lyrical and lark-like; but it is needlessly long, though no longer than the lark's song itself, but the lark can't help it, and Shelley can. I quote only a few stanzas:-- "In the golden lightning Of the sunken sun, O'er which clouds are bright'ning Thou dost float and run, Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. "The pale purple even Melts around thy flight; Like a star of heaven, In the broad daylight Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight, "Keen as are the arrows Of that silver sphere, Whose intense lamp narrows In the white dawn clear, Until we hardly see--we feel that it is there; "All the earth and air With thy voice is loud, As, when Night is bare, From one lonely cloud The moon rains out her beams, and Heaven is overflowed." Wordsworth has written two poems upon the lark, in one of which he calls the bird "pilgrim of the sky." This is the one quoted by Emerson in "Parnassus." Here is the concluding stanza:-- "Leave to the nightingale her shady wood; A privacy of glorious light is thine, Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood Of harmony, with instinct more divine; Type of the wise, who soar, but never roam, True to the kindred points of heaven and home." The other poem I give entire:-- "Up with me! up with me into the clouds! For thy song, Lark, is strong; Up with me, up with me into the clouds! Singing, singing, With clouds and sky about thee ringing, Lift me, guide me till I find That spot which seems so to thy mind! "I have walked through wilderness dreary, And to-day my heart is weary; Had I now the wings of a Faery Up to thee would I fly. There is madness about thee, and joy divine In that song of thine; Lift me, guide me high and high To thy banqueting-place in the sky. "Joyous as morning Thou art laughing and scorning; Thou hast a nest for thy love and thy rest, And, though little troubled with sloth, Drunken Lark! thou wouldst be loth To be such a traveler as I. Happy, happy Liver! With a soul as strong as a mountain river, Pouring out praise to the Almighty Giver, Joy and jollity be with us both! "Alas! my journey, rugged and uneven, Through prickly moors or dusty ways must wind; But hearing thee, or others of thy kind, As full of gladness and as free of heaven, I, with my fate contented, will plod on, And hope for higher raptures, when life's day is done." But better than either--better and more than a hundred pages--is Shakespeare's simple line,-- "Hark, hark, the lark at heaven's gate sings," or John Lyly's, his contemporary,-- "Who is't now we hear? None but the lark so shrill and clear; Now at heaven's gate she claps her wings, The morn not waking till she sings." We have no well-known pastoral bird in the Eastern States that answers to the skylark. The American pipit or titlark and the shore lark, both birds of the far north, and seen in the States only in fall and winter, are said to sing on the wing in a similar strain. Common enough in our woods are two birds that have many of the habits and manners of the lark--the water-thrush and the golden-crowned thrush, or oven-bird. They are both walkers, and the latter frequently sings on the wing up aloft after the manner of the lark. Starting from its low perch, it rises in a spiral flight far above the tallest trees, and breaks out in a clear, ringing, ecstatic song, sweeter and more richly modulated than the skylark's, but brief, ceasing almost before you have noticed it; whereas the skylark goes singing away after you have forgotten him and returned to him half a dozen times. But on the Great Plains, of the West there; is a bird whose song resembles the skylark's quite closely and is said to be not at all inferior. This is Sprague's pipit, sometimes called the Missouri skylark, an excelsior songster, which from far up in the transparent blue rains down its notes for many minutes together. It is, no doubt, destined to figure in the future poetical literature of the West. Throughout the northern and eastern parts of the Union the lark would find a dangerous rival in the bobolink, a bird that has no European prototype, and no near relatives anywhere, standing quite alone, unique, and, in the qualities of hilarity and musical tintinnabulation, with a song unequaled. He has already a secure place in general literature, having been laureated by no less a poet than Bryant, and invested with a lasting human charm in the sunny page of Irving, and is the only one of our songsters, I believe, that the mockingbird cannot parody or imitate. He affords the most marked example of exuberant pride, and a glad, rollicking, holiday spirit, that can be seen among our birds. Every note expresses complacency and glee. He is a beau of the first pattern, and, unlike any other bird of my acquaintance, pushes his gallantry to the point of wheeling gayly into the train of every female that comes along, even after the season of courtship is over and the matches are all settled; and when she leads him on too wild a chase, he turns, lightly about and breaks out with a song is precisely analogous to a burst of gay and self-satisfied laughter, as much as to say, _"Ha! ha! ha! I must have my fun, Miss Silverthimble, thimble, thimble, if I break every heart in the meadow, see, see, see!"_ At the approach of the breeding season the bobolink undergoes a complete change; his form changes, his color changes, his flight changes. From mottled brown or brindle he becomes black and white, earning, in some localities, the shocking name of "skunk bird;" his small, compact form becomes broad and conspicuous, and his ordinary flight is laid aside for a mincing, affected gait, in which he seems to use only the very tips of his wings. It is very noticeable what a contrast he presents to his mate at this season, not only in color but in manners, she being as shy and retiring as he is forward and hilarious. Indeed, she seems disagreeably serious and indisposed to any fun or jollity, scurrying away at his approach, and apparently annoyed at every endearing word and look. It is surprising that all this parade of plumage and tinkling of cymbals should be gone through with and persisted in to please a creature so coldly indifferent as she really seems to be. If Robert O'Lincoln has been stimulated into acquiring this holiday uniform and this musical gift by the approbation of Mrs. Robert, as Darwin, with his sexual selection principle, would have us believe, then there must have been a time when the females of this tribe were not quite so chary of their favors as they are now. Indeed, I never knew a female bird of any kind that did not appear utterly indifferent to the charms of voice and plumage that the male birds are so fond of displaying. But I am inclined to believe that the males think only of themselves and of outshining each other, and not at all of the approbation of their mates, as, in an analogous case in a higher species, it is well known whom the females dress for, and whom they want to kill with envy! I know of no other song-bird that expresses so much self-consciousness and vanity, and comes so near being an ornithological coxcomb. The red-bird, the yellowbird, the indigo-bird, the oriole, the cardinal grosbeak, and others, all birds of brilliant plumage and musical ability, seem quite unconscious of self, and neither by tone nor act challenge the admiration of the beholder. By the time the bobolink reaches the Potomac, in September, he has degenerated into a game-bird that is slaughtered by tens of thousands in the marshes. I think the prospects now are of his gradual extermination, as gunners and sportsmen are clearly on the increase, while the limit of the bird's productivity in the North has no doubt been reached long ago. There are no more meadows to be added to his domain there, while he is being waylaid and cut off more and more on his return to the South. It is gourmand eat gourmand, until in half a century more I expect the blithest and merriest of our meadow songsters will have disappeared before the rapacity of human throats. But the poets have had a shot at him in good time, and have preserved some of his traits. Bryant's poem on this subject does not compare with his lines "To a Water-Fowl,"--a subject so well suited to the peculiar, simple, and deliberate motion of his mind; at the same time it is fit that the poet who sings of "The Planting of the Apple-Tree" should render into words the song of "Robert of Lincoln." I subjoin a few stanzas:-- ROBERT OF LINCOLN Merrily swinging on brier and weed, Near to the nest of his little dame, Over the mountain-side or mead, Robert of Lincoln is telling his name: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink: Snug and safe is that nest of ours, Hidden among the summer flowers. Chee, chee, chee. Robert of Lincoln is gayly drest, Wearing a bright black wedding-coat, White are his shoulders and white his crest, Hear him call in his merry note: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink: Look what a nice new coat is mine, Sure there was never a bird so fine. Chee, chee, chee. Robert of Lincoln's Quaker wife, Pretty and quiet, with plain brown wings, Passing at home a patient life, Broods in the grass while her husband sings. Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink: Brood, kind creature; you need not fear Thieves and robbers while I am here. Chee, chee, chee. But it has been reserved for a practical ornithologist, Mr. Wilson Flagg, to write by far the best poem on the bobolink that I have yet seen. It is much more in the mood and spirit of the actual song than Bryant's poem:-- THE O'LINCOLN FAMILY A flock of merry singing-birds were sporting in the grove; Some were warbling cheerily, and some were making love: There were Bobolincon, Wadolincon, Winterseeble, Conquedle,-- A livelier set was never led by tabor, pipe, or fiddle,-- Crying, "Phew, shew, Wadolincon, see, see, Bobolincon, Down among the tickletops, hiding in the buttercups! I know the saucy chap, I see his shining cap Bobbing in the clover there--see, see, see!" Up flies Bobolincon, perching on an apple-tree, Startled by his rival's song, quickened by his raillery. Soon he spies the rogue afloat, curveting in the air, And merrily he turns about, and warns him to beware! "'T is you that would a-wooing go, down among the rushes O! But wait a week, till flowers are cheery,--wait a week,and, ere you marry, Be sure of a house wherein to tarry! Wadolink, Whiskodink, Tom Denny, wait, wait, wait!" Every one's a funny fellow; every one's a little mellow; Follow, follow, follow, follow, o'er the hill and in the hollow! Merrily, merrily, there they hie; now they rise and now they fly; They cross and turn, and in and out, and down in the middle, and wheel about,-- With a "Phew, shew, Wadolincon! listen to me, Bobolincon!-- Happy's the wooing that's speedily doing, that's speedily doing, That's merry and over with the bloom of the clover! Bobolincon, Wadolincon, Winterseeble, follow, follow me!" Many persons, I presume, have admired Wordsworth's poem on the cuckoo, without recognizing its truthfulness, or how thoroughly, in the main, the description applies to our own species. If the poem had been written in New England or New York, it could not have suited our case better:-- "O blithe New-comer! I have heard, I hear thee and rejoice, O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird, Or but a wandering Voice? "While I am lying on the grass, Thy twofold shout I hear, From hill to hill it seems to pass, At once far off, and near. "Though babbling only to the Vale, Of sunshine and of flowers, Thou bringest unto me a tale Of visionary hours. "Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring! Even yet thou art to me No bird, but an invisible thing, A voice, a mystery; "The same whom in my schoolboy days I listened to; that Cry Which made me look a thousand ways In bush, and tree, and sky. "To seek thee did I often rove Through woods and on the green; And thou wert still a hope, a love; Still longed for, never seen. "And I can listen to thee yet; Can lie upon the plain And listen, till I do beget That golden time again. "O blesséd Bird! the earth we pace Again appears to be An unsubstantial, faery place; That is fit home for thee!" Logan's stanzas, "To the Cuckoo," have less merit both as poetry and natural history, but they are older, and doubtless the latter poet benefited by them. Burke admired them so much that, while on a visit to Edinburgh, he sought the author out to compliment him:-- "Hail, beauteous stranger of the grove! Thou messenger of spring! Now Heaven repairs thy rural seat, And woods thy welcome sing. "What time the daisy decks the green, Thy certain voice we hear; Hast thou a star to guide thy path, Or mark the rolling year? . . . . . . . . "The schoolboy, wandering through the wood To pull the primrose gay, Starts, the new voice of spring to hear, And imitates thy lay. . . . . . . . . "Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green, Thy sky is ever clear; Thou hast no sorrow in thy song, No winter in thy year." The European cuckoo is evidently a much gayer bird than ours, and much more noticeable. "Hark, how the jolly cuckoos sing 'Cuckoo!' to welcome in the spring," says John Lyly three hundred years agone. Its note is easily imitated, and boys will render it so perfectly as to deceive any but the shrewdest ear. An English lady tells me its voice reminds one of children at play, and is full of gayety and happiness. It is a persistent songster, and keeps up its call from morning to night. Indeed, certain parts of Wordsworth's poem--those that refer to the bird as a mystery, a wandering, solitary voice--seem to fit our bird better than the European species. Our cuckoo is in fact a solitary wanderer, repeating its loud, guttural call in the depths of the forest, and well calculated to arrest the attention of a poet like Wordsworth, who was himself a kind of cuckoo, a solitary voice, syllabling the loneliness that broods over streams and woods,-- "And once far off, and near." Our cuckoo is not a spring bird, being seldom seen or heard in the North before late in May. He is a great devourer of canker-worms, and, when these pests appear, he comes out of his forest seclusion and makes excursions through the orchards stealthily and quietly, regaling himself upon those pulpy, fuzzy titbits. His coat of deep cinnamon brown has a silky gloss and is very beautiful. His note or call is not musical but loud, and has in a remarkable degree the quality of remoteness and introvertedness. It is like a vocal legend, and to the farmer bodes rain. It is worthy of note, and illustrates some things said farther back, that birds not strictly denominated songsters, but criers like the cuckoo, have been quite as great favorites with the poets, and have received as affectionate treatment at their hands, as have the song-birds. One readily recalls Emerson's "Titmouse," Trowbridge's "Pewee," Celia Thaxter's "Sandpiper," and others of a like character. It is also worthy of note that the owl appears to be a greater favorite with the poets than the proud, soaring hawk. The owl is doubtless the more human and picturesque bird; then he belongs to the night and its weird effects. Bird of the silent wing and expansive eye, grimalkin in feathers, feline, mousing, haunting ruins" and towers, and mocking the midnight stillness with thy uncanny cry! The owl is the great bugaboo of the feathered tribes. His appearance by day is hailed by shouts of alarm and derision from nearly every bird that flies, from crows down to sparrows. They swarm about him like flies, and literally mob him back into his dusky retreat. Silence is as the breath of his nostrils to him, and the uproar that greets him when he emerges into the open day seems to alarm and confuse him as it does the pickpocket when everybody cries Thief. But the poets, I say, have not despised him:-- "The lark is but a bumpkin fowl; He sleeps in his nest till morn; But my blessing upon the jolly owl That all night blows his horn." Both Shakespeare and Tennyson have made songs about him. This is Shakespeare's, from "Love's Labor's Lost," and perhaps has reference to the white or snowy owl:-- "When icicles hang by the wall, And Dick the shepherd blows his nail, And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail; When blood is nipped and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-whoo! Tu-whit! tu-whoo! a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. "When all aloud the wind doth blow, And coughing drowns the parson's saw, And birds sit brooding in the snow, And Marian's nose looks red and raw; When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl, Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-whoo! Tu-whit! Tu-whoo! a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot." There is, perhaps, a slight reminiscence of this song in Tennyson's "Owl:"-- "When cats run home and light is come, And dew is cold upon the ground, And the far-off stream is dumb, And the whirring sail goes round, And the whirring sail goes round; Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl in the belfry sits. "When merry milkmaids click the latch, And rarely smells the new-mown hay, And the cock hath sung beneath the thatch Twice or thrice his roundelay, Twice or thrice his roundelay; Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl in the belfry sits." Tennyson has not directly celebrated any of the more famous birds, but his poems contain frequent allusions to them. The "Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet, Rings Eden through the budded quicks, Oh, tell me where the senses mix, Oh, tell me where the passions meet," of "In Memoriam," is doubtless the nightingale. And here we have the lark:-- "Now sings the woodland loud and long, And distance takes a lovelier hue, And drowned in yonder living blue The lark becomes a sightless song." And again in this from "A Dream of Fair Women:"-- "Then I heard A noise of some one coming through the lawn, And singing clearer than the crested bird That claps his wings at dawn." The swallow is a favorite bird with Tennyson, and is frequently mentioned, beside being the principal figure in one of those charming love-songs in "The Princess." His allusions to the birds, as to any other natural feature, show him to be a careful observer, as when he speaks of "The swamp, where hums the dropping snipe." His single bird-poem, aside from the song I have quoted, is "The Blackbird," the Old World prototype of our robin, as if our bird had doffed the aristocratic black for a more democratic suit on reaching these shores. In curious contrast to the color of its plumage is its beak, which is as yellow as a kernel of Indian corn. The following are the two middle stanzas of the poem:-- "Yet, though I spared thee all the spring, Thy sole delight is, sitting still, With that gold dagger of thy bill To fret the summer jenneting. "A golden bill! the silver tongue Cold February loved is dry; Plenty corrupts the melody That made thee famous once, when young." Shakespeare, in one of his songs, alludes to the blackbird as the ouzel-cock; indeed, he puts quite a flock of birds in this song:-- "The ouzel-cock so black of hue, With orange tawny bill; The throstle with his note so true, The wren with little quill; The finch, the sparrow, and the lark, The plain song cuckoo gray, Whose note full many a man doth mark, And dares not answer nay." So far as external appearances are concerned,--form, plumage, grace of manner,--no one ever had a less promising subject than had Trowbridge in the "Pewee." This bird, if not the plainest dressed, is the most unshapely in the woods. It is stiff and abrupt in its manners and sedentary in its habits, sitting around all day, in the dark recesses of the woods, on the dry twigs and branches, uttering now and then its plaintive cry, and "with many a flirt and flutter" snapping up its insect game. The pewee belongs to quite a large family of birds, all of whom have strong family traits, and who are not the most peaceable and harmonious of the sylvan folk. They are pugnacious, harsh-voiced, angular in form and movement, with flexible tails and broad, flat, bristling beaks that stand to the face at the angle of a turn-up nose, and most of them wear a black cap pulled well down over their eyes. Their heads are large, neck and legs short, and elbows sharp. The wild Irishman of them all is the great crested flycatcher, a large, leather-colored or sandy-complexioned bird that prowls through the woods, uttering its harsh, uncanny note and waging fierce warfare upon its fellows. The exquisite of the family, and the braggart of the orchard, is the kingbird, a bully that loves to strip the feathers off its more timid neighbors such as the bluebird, that feeds on the stingless bees of the hive, the drones, and earns the reputation of great boldness by teasing large hawks, while it gives a wide berth to little ones. The best beloved of them all is the phoebe-bird, one of the firstlings of the spring, of whom so many of our poets have made affectionate mention. The wood pewee is the sweetest voiced, and, notwithstanding the ungracious things I have said of it and of its relations, merits to the full all Trowbridge's pleasant fancies. His poem is indeed a very careful study of the bird and its haunts, and is good poetry as well as good ornithology:-- "The listening Dryads hushed the woods; The boughs were thick, and thin and few The golden ribbons fluttering through; Their sun-embroidered, leafy hoods The lindens lifted to the blue; Only a little forest-brook The farthest hem of silence shook; When in the hollow shades I heard-- Was it a spirit or a bird? Or, strayed from Eden, desolate, Some Peri calling to her mate, Whom nevermore her mate would cheer? 'Pe-ri! pe-ri! peer!' . . . . . . . . "To trace it in its green retreat I sought among the boughs in vain; And followed still the wandering strain, So melancholy and so sweet, The dim-eyed violets yearned with pain. 'T was now a sorrow in the air, Some nymph's immortalized despair Haunting the woods and waterfalls; And now, at long, sad intervals, Sitting unseen in dusky shade, His plaintive pipe some fairy played, With long-drawn cadence thin and clear,-- 'Pe-wee! pe-wee! peer!' "Long-drawn and clear its closes were-- As if the hand of Music through The sombre robe of Silence drew A thread of golden gossamer; So pure a flute the fairy blew. Like beggared princes of the wood, In silver rags the birches stood; The hemlocks, lordly counselors, Were dumb; the sturdy servitors, In beechen jackets patched and gray, Seemed waiting spellbound all the day That low, entrancing note to hear,-- 'Pe-wee! pe-wee! peer!' "I quit the search, and sat me down Beside the brook, irresolute, And watched a little bird in suit Of sober olive, soft and brown, Perched in the maple branches, mute; With greenish gold its vest was fringed, Its tiny cap was ebon-tinged, With ivory pale its wings were barred, And its dark eyes were tender-starred. "Dear bird," I said, "what is thy name?" And thrice the mournful answer came, So faint and far, and yet so near,-- 'Pe-wee! pe-wee! peer!' "For so I found my forest bird,-- The pewee of the loneliest woods, Sole singer in these solitudes, Which never robin's whistle stirred, Where never bluebird's plume intrudes. Quick darting through the dewy morn, The redstart trilled his twittering horn And vanished in thick boughs; at even, Like liquid pearls fresh showered from heaven, The high notes of the lone wood thrush Fell on the forest's holy hush; But thou all day complainest here,-- 'Pe-wee! pe-wee! peer!'" Emerson's best natural history poem is the "Humble-Bee,"--a poem as good in its way as Burns's poem on the mouse; but his later poem, "The Titmouse," has many of the same qualities, and cannot fail to be acceptable to both poet and naturalist. The chickadee is indeed a truly Emersonian bird, and the poet shows him to be both a hero and a philosopher. Hardy, active, social, a winter bird no less than a summer, a defier of both frost and heat, lover of the pine-tree, and diligent searcher after truth in the shape of eggs and larvae of insects, preëminently a New England bird, clad in black and ashen gray, with a note the most cheering and reassuring to be heard in our January woods,--I know of none other of our birds so well calculated to captivate the Emersonian muse. Emerson himself is a northern hyperborean genius,--a winter bird with a clear, saucy, cheery call, and not a passionate summer songster. His lines have little melody to the ear, but they have the vigor and distinctness of all pure and compact things. They are like the needles of the pine--"the snow loving pine"--more than the emotional foliage of the deciduous trees, and the titmouse becomes them well:-- "Up and away for life! be fleet!-- The frost-king ties my fumbling feet, Sings in my ears, my hands are stones, Curdles the blood to the marble bones, Tugs at the heart-strings, numbs the sense, And hems in life with narrowing fence. Well, in this broad bed lie and sleep,-- The punctual stars will vigil keep,-- Embalmed by purifying cold; The wind shall sing their dead march old, The snow is no ignoble shroud, The moon thy mourner, and the cloud. "Softly,--but this way fate was pointing, 'T was coming fast to such anointing, When piped a tiny voice hard by, Gay and polite, a cheerful cry, _Chick-chickadeedee!_ saucy note, Out of sound heart and merry throat, As if it said 'Good day, good sir! Fine afternoon, old passenger! Happy to meet you in these places, Where January brings few faces.' "This poet, though he lived apart, Moved by his hospitable heart, Sped, when I passed his sylvan fort, To do the honors of his court, As fits a feathered lord of land; Flew near, with soft wing grazed my hands Hopped on the bough, then darting low, Prints his small impress on the snow, Shows feats of his gymnastic play, Head downward, clinging to the spray. "Here was this atom in full breath, Hurling defiance at vast death; This scrap of valor just for play Fronts the north-wind in waistcoat gray, As if to shame my weak behavior; I greeted loud my little savior, 'You pet! what dost here? and what for? In these woods, thy small Labrador, At this pinch, wee San Salvador! What fire burns in that little chest, So frolic, stout, and self-possest? Henceforth I wear no stripe but thine; Ashes and jet all hues outshine. Why are not diamonds black and gray, To ape thy dare-devil array? And I affirm, the spacious North Exists to draw thy virtue forth. I think no virtue goes with size; The reason of all cowardice Is, that men are overgrown, And, to be valiant, must come down To the titmouse dimension.' . . . . . . . . "I think old Caesar must have heard In northern Gaul my dauntless bird, And, echoed in some frosty wold, Borrowed thy battle-numbers bold. And I will write our annals new And thank thee for a better clew. I, who dreamed not when I came here To find the antidote of fear, Now hear thee say in Roman key, _Poean! Veni, vidi, vici."_ A late bird-poem, and a good one of its kind, is Celia Thaxter's "Sandpiper," which recalls Bryant's "Water-Fowl" in its successful rendering of the spirit and atmosphere of the scene, and the distinctness with which the lone bird, flitting along the beach, is brought before the mind. It is a woman's or a feminine poem, as Bryant's is characteristically a man's. The sentiment or feeling awakened by any of the aquatic fowls is preëminently one of loneliness. The wood duck which your approach starts from the pond or the marsh, the loon neighing down out of the April sky, the wild goose, the curlew, the stork, the bittern, the sandpiper, awaken quite a different train of emotions from those awakened by the land-birds. They all have clinging to them some reminiscence and suggestion of the sea. Their cries echo its wildness and desolation; their wings are the shape of its billows. Of the sandpipers there are many varieties, found upon the coast and penetrating inland along the rivers and water-courses, one of the most interesting of the family, commonly called the "tip-up," going up all the mountain brooks and breeding in the sand along their banks; but the characteristics are the same in all, and the eye detects little difference except in size. The walker on the beach sees it running or flitting before him, following up the breakers and picking up the aquatic insects left on the sands; and the trout-fisher along the farthest inland stream likewise intrudes upon its privacy. Flitting along from stone to stone seeking its food, the hind part of its body "teetering" up and down, its soft gray color blending it with the pebbles and the rocks, or else skimming up or down the stream on its long, convex wings, uttering its shrill cry, the sandpiper is not a bird of the sea merely; and Mrs. Thaxter's poem is as much for the dweller inland as for the dweller upon the coast:-- THE SANDPIPER Across the narrow beach we flit, One little sandpiper and I; And fast I gather, bit by bit, The scattered driftwood bleached and dry. The wild waves reach their hands for it, The wild wind raves, the tide runs high, As up and down the beach we flit,-- One little sandpiper and I. Above our heads the sullen clouds Scud black and swift across the sky; Like silent ghosts in misty shrouds Stand out the white lighthouses high. Almost as far as eye can reach I see the close-reefed vessels fly, As fast we flit along the beach,-- One little sandpiper and I. I watch him as he skims along, Uttering his sweet and mournful cry; He starts not at my fitful song, Or flash of fluttering drapery; He has no thought of any wrong; He scans me with a fearless eye. Stanch friends are we, well tried and strong, The little sandpiper and I. Comrade, where wilt thou be to-night When the loosed storm breaks furiously? My driftwood fire will burn so bright! To what warm shelter canst thou fly? I do not fear for thee, though wroth The tempest rushes through the sky; For are we not God's children both, Thou, little sandpiper, and I? Others of our birds have been game for the poetic muse, but in most cases the poets have had some moral or pretty conceit to convey, and have not loved the bird first. Mr. Lathrop preaches a little in his pleasant poem, "The Sparrow," but he must some time have looked upon the bird with genuine emotion to have written the first two stanzas:-- "Glimmers gay the leafless thicket Close beside my garden gate, Where, so light, from post to wicket, Hops the sparrow, blithe, sedate: Who, with meekly folded wing, Comes to sun himself and sing. "It was there, perhaps, last year, That his little house he built; For he seems to perk and peer, And to twitter, too, and tilt The bare branches in between, With a fond, familiar mien." The bluebird has not been overlooked, and Halleek, Longfellow, and Mrs. Sigourney have written poems upon him, but from none of them does there fall that first note of his in early spring,--a note that may be called the violet of sound, and as welcome to the ear, heard above the cold, damp earth; as is its floral type to the eye a few weeks later Lowell's two lines come nearer the mark:-- "The bluebird, shifting his light load of song From post to post along the cheerless fence." Or the first swallow that comes twittering up the southern valley, laughing a gleeful, childish laugh, and awakening such memories in the heart, who has put him in a poem? So the hummingbird, too, escapes through the finest meshes of rhyme. The most melodious of our songsters, the wood thrush and the hermit thrush,--birds whose strains, more than any others, express harmony and serenity,--have not yet, that I am aware, had reared to them their merited poetic monument, unless, indeed, Whitman has done this service for the hermit thrush in his "President Lincoln's Burial Hymn." Here the threnody is blent of three chords, the blossoming lilac, the evening star, and the hermit thrush, the latter playing the most prominent part throughout the composition. It is the exalting and spiritual utterance of the "solitary singer" that calms and consoles the poet when the powerful shock of the President's assassination comes upon him, and he flees from the stifling atmosphere and offensive lights and conversation of the house,-- "Forth to hiding, receiving night that talks not, Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness, To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still." Numerous others of our birds would seem to challenge attention by their calls and notes. There is the Maryland yellowthroat, for instance, standing in the door of his bushy tent, and calling out as you approach, _"which way, sir! which way, sir!"_ If he says this to the ear of common folk, what would he not say to the poet? One of the peewees says _"stay there!"_ with great emphasis. The cardinal grosbeak calls out _"what cheer" "what cheer;"_ " the bluebird says _"purity," "purity," "purity;"_ the brown thrasher, or ferruginous thrush, according to Thoreau, calls out to the farmer planting his corn, _"drop it," "drop it," "cover it up," "cover it up"_ The yellow-breasted chat says _"who," "who"_ and _"tea-boy"_ What the robin says, caroling that simple strain from the top of the tall maple, or the crow with his hardy haw-haw, or the pedestrain meadowlark sounding his piercing and long-drawn note in the spring meadows, the poets ought to be able to tell us. I only know the birds all have a language which is very expressive, and which is easily translatable into the human tongue. II TOUCHES OF NATURE I WHEREVER Nature has commissioned one creature to prey upon another, she has preserved the balance by forewarning that other creature of what she has done. Nature says to the cat, "Catch the mouse," and she equips her for that purpose; but on the selfsame day she says to the mouse, "Be wary,--the cat is watching for you." Nature takes care that none of her creatures have smooth sailing, the whole voyage at least. Why has she not made the mosquito noiseless and its bite itchless? Simply because in that case the odds would be too greatly in its favor. She has taken especial pains to enable the owl to fly softly and silently, because the creatures it preys upon are small and wary, and never venture far from their holes. She has not shown the same caution in the case of the crow, because the crow feeds on dead flesh, or on grubs and beetles, or fruit and grain, that do not need to be approached stealthily. The big fish love to cat up the little fish, and the little fish know it, and, on the very day they are hatched, seek shallow water, and put little sandbars between themselves and their too loving parents. How easily a bird's tail, or that of any fowl, or in fact any part of the plumage, comes out when the hold of its would-be capturer is upon this alone; and how hard it yields in the dead bird! No doubt there is relaxation in the former case. Nature says to the pursuer, "Hold on," and to the pursued, "Let your tail go." What is the tortuous, zigzag course of those slow-flying moths for but to make it difficult for the birds to snap them up? The skunk is a slow, witless creature, and the fox and lynx love its meat; yet it carries a bloodless weapon that neither likes to face. I recently heard of an ingenious method a certain other simple and slow-going creature has of baffling its enemy. A friend of mine was walking in the fields when he saw a commotion in the grass a few yards off. Approaching the spot, he found a snake--the common garter snake--trying to swallow a lizard. And how do you suppose the lizard was defeating the benevolent designs of the snake? By simply taking hold of its own tail and making itself into a hoop. The snake went round and round, and could find neither beginning nor end. Who was the old giant that found himself wrestling with Time? This little snake had a tougher customer the other day in the bit of eternity it was trying to swallow. The snake itself has not the same wit, because I lately saw a black snake in the woods trying to swallow the garter snake, and he had made some headway, though the little snake was fighting every inch of the ground, hooking his tail about sticks and bushes, and pulling back with all his might, apparently not liking the look of things down there at all. I thought it well to let him have a good taste of his own doctrines, when I put my foot down against further proceedings. This arming of one creature against another is often cited as an evidence of the wisdom of Nature, but it is rather an evidence of her impartiality. She does not care a fig more for one creature than for another, and is equally on the side of both, or perhaps it would be better to say she does not care a fig for either. Every creature must take its chances, and man is no exception. We can ride if we know how and are going her way, or we can be run over if we fall or make a mistake. Nature does not care whether the hunter slay the beast or the beast the hunter; she will make good compost of them both, and her ends are prospered whichever succeeds. "If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again." What is the end of Nature? Where is the end of a sphere? The sphere balances at any and every point. So everything in Nature is at the top, and yet no _one_ thing is at the top. She works with reference to no measure of time, no limit of space, and with an abundance of material, not expressed by exhaustless. Did you think Niagara a great exhibition of power? What is that, then, that withdraws noiseless and invisible in the ground about, and of which Niagara is but the lifting of the finger? Nature is thoroughly selfish, and looks only to her own ends. One thing she is bent upon, and that is keeping up the supply, multiplying endlessly and scattering as she multiplies. Did Nature have in view our delectation when she made the apple, the peach, the plum, the cherry? Undoubtedly; but only as a means to her own private ends. What a bribe or a wage is the pulp of these delicacies to all creatures to come and sow their seed! And Nature has taken care to make the seed indigestible, so that, though the fruit be eaten, the germ is not, but only planted. God made the crab, but man made the pippin; but the pippin cannot propagate itself, and exists only by violence and usurpation. Bacon says, "It is easier to deceive Nature than to force her," but it seems to me the nurserymen really force her. They cut off the head of a savage and clap on the head of a fine gentleman, and the crab becomes a Swaar or a Baldwin. Or is it a kind of deception practiced upon Nature, which succeeds only by being carefully concealed? If we could play the same tricks upon her in the human species, how the great geniuses could be preserved and propagated, and the world stocked with them! But what a frightful condition of things that would be! No new men, but a tiresome and endless repetition of the old ones,--a world perpetually stocked with Newtons and Shakespeares! We say Nature knows best, and has adapted this or that to our wants or to our constitution,--sound to the ear, light and color to the eye; but she has not done any such thing, but has adapted man to these things. The physical cosmos is the mould, and man is the molten metal that is poured into it. The light fashioned the eye, the laws of sound made the ear; in fact, man is the outcome of Nature and not the reverse. Creatures that live forever in the dark have no eyes; and would not any one of our senses perish and be shed, as it were, in a world where it could not be used? II It is well to let down our metropolitan pride a little. Man thinks himself at the top, and that the immense display and prodigality of Nature are for him. But they are no more for him than they are for the birds and beasts, and he is no more at the top than they are. He appeared upon the stage when the play had advanced to a certain point, and he will disappear from the stage when the play has reached another point, and the great drama will go on without him. The geological ages, the convulsions and parturition throes of the globe, were to bring him forth no more than the beetles. Is not all this wealth of the seasons, these solar and sidereal influences, this depth and vitality and internal fire, these seas, and rivers, and oceans, and atmospheric currents, as necessary to the life of the ants and worms we tread under foot as to our own? And does the sun shine for me any more than for yon butterfly? What I mean to say is, we cannot put our finger upon this or that and say, Here is the end of Nature. The Infinite cannot be measured. The plan of Nature is so immense,--but she has no plan, no scheme, but to go on and on forever. What is size, what is time, distance, to the Infinite? Nothing. The Infinite knows no time, no space, no great, no small, no beginning, no end. I sometimes think that the earth and the worlds are a kind of nervous ganglia in an organization of which we can form no conception, or less even than that. If one of the globules of blood that circulate in our veins were magnified enough million times, we might see a globe teeming with life and power. Such is this earth of ours, coursing in the veins of the Infinite. Size is only relative, and the imagination finds no end to the series either way. III Looking out of the car window one day, I saw the pretty and unusual sight of an eagle sitting upon the ice in the river, surrounded by half a dozen or more crows. The crows appeared as if looking up to the noble bird and attending his movements. "Are those its young?" asked a gentleman by my side. How much did that man know--not about eagles, but about Nature? If he had been familiar with geese or hens, or with donkeys, he would not have asked that question. The ancients had an axiom that he who knew one truth knew all truths; so much else becomes knowable when one vital fact is thoroughly known. You have a key, a standard, and cannot be deceived. Chemistry, geology, astronomy, natural history, all admit one to the same measureless interiors. I heard a great man say that he could see how much of the theology of the day would fall before the standard of him who had got even the insects. And let any one set about studying these creatures carefully, and he will see the force of the remark. We learn the tremendous doctrine of metamorphosis from the insect world; and have not the bee and the ant taught man wisdom from the first? I was highly edified the past summer by observing the ways and doings of a colony of black hornets that established themselves under one of the projecting gables of my house. This hornet has the reputation of being a very ugly customer, but I found it no trouble to live on the most friendly terms with her. She was as little disposed to quarrel as I was. She is indeed the eagle among hornets, and very noble and dignified in her bearing. She used to come freely into the house and prey upon the flies. You would hear that deep, mellow hum, and see the black falcon poising on wing, or striking here and there at the flies, that scattered on her approach like chickens before a hawk. When she had caught one, she would alight upon some object and proceed to dress and draw her game. The wings were sheared off, the legs cut away, the bristles trimmed, then the body thoroughly bruised and broken. When the work was completed, the fly was rolled up into a small pellet, and with it under her arm the hornet flew to her nest, where no doubt in due time it was properly served up on the royal board. Every dinner inside these paper walls is a state dinner, for the queen is always present. I used to mount the ladder to within two or three feet of the nest and observe the proceedings. I at first thought the workshop must be inside,--a place where the pulp was mixed, and perhaps treated with chemicals; for each hornet, when she came with her burden of materials, passed into the nest, and then, after a few moments, emerged again and crawled to the place of building. But I one day stopped up the entrance with some cotton, when no one happened to be on guard, and then observed that, when the loaded hornet could not get inside, she, after some deliberation, proceeded to the unfinished part and went forward with her work. Hence I inferred that maybe the hornet went inside to report and to receive orders, or possibly to surrender her material into fresh hands. Her career when away from the nest is beset with dangers; the colony is never large, and the safe return of every hornet is no doubt a matter of solicitude to the royal mother. The hornet was the first paper-maker, and holds the original patent. The paper it makes is about like that of the newspaper; nearly as firm, and made of essentially the same material,--woody fibres scraped from old rails and boards. And there is news on it, too, if one could make out the characters. When I stopped the entrance with cotton, there was no commotion or excitement, as there would have been in the case of yellow-jackets. Those outside went to pulling, and those inside went to pushing and chewing. Only once did one of the outsiders come down and look me suspiciously in the face, and inquire very plainly what my business might be up there. I bowed my head, being at the top of a twenty-foot ladder, and had nothing to say. The cotton was chewed and moistened about the edges till every fibre was loosened, when the mass dropped. But instantly the entrance was made smaller, and changed so as to make the feat of stopping it more difficult. IV There are those who look at Nature from the standpoint of conventional and artificial life,--from parlor windows and through gilt-edged poems,--the sentimentalists. At the other extreme are those who do not look at Nature at all, but are a grown part of her, and look away from her toward the other class,--the backwoodsmen and pioneers, and all rude and simple persons. Then there are those in whom the two are united or merged,--the great poets and artists. In them the sentimentalist is corrected and cured, and the hairy and taciturn frontiersman has had experience to some purpose. The true poet knows more about Nature than the naturalist because he carries her open secrets in his heart. Eckermann could instruct Goethe in ornithology, but could not Goethe instruct Eckermann in the meaning and mystery of the bird? It is my privilege to number among my friends a man who has passed his life in cities amid the throngs of men, who never goes to the woods or to the country, or hunts or fishes, and yet he is the true naturalist. I think he studies the orbs. I think day and night and the stars, and the faces of men and women, have taught him all there is worth knowing. We run to Nature because we are afraid of man. Our artists paint the landscape because they cannot paint the human face. If we could look into the eyes of a man as coolly as we can into the eyes of an animal, the products of our pens and brushes would be quite different from what they are. V But I suspect, after all, it makes but little difference to which school you go, whether to the woods or to the city. A sincere man learns pretty much the same things in both places. The differences are superficial, the resemblances deep and many. The hermit is a hermit, and the poet a poet, whether he grow up in the town or the country. I was forcibly reminded of this fact recently on opening the works of Charles Lamb after I had been reading those of our Henry Thoreau. Lamb cared nothing for nature, Thoreau for little else. One was as attached to the city and the life of the street and tavern as the other to the country and the life of animals and plants. Yet they are close akin. They give out the same tone and are pitched in about the same key. Their methods are the same; so are their quaintness and scorn of rhetoric. Thoreau has the drier humor, as might be expected, and is less stomachic. There is more juice and unction in Lamb, but this he owes to his nationality. Both are essayists who in a less reflective age would have been poets pure and simple. Both were spare, high-nosed men, and I fancy a resemblance even in their portraits. Thoreau is the Lamb of New England fields and woods, and Lamb is the Thoreau of London streets and clubs. There was a willfulness and perversity about Thoreau, behind which he concealed his shyness and his thin skin, and there was a similar foil in Lamb, though less marked, on account of his good-nature; that was a part of his armor, too. VI Speaking of Thoreau's dry humor reminds me how surely the old English unctuous and sympathetic humor is dying out or has died out of our literature. Our first notable crop of authors had it,--Paulding, Cooper, Irving, and in a measure Hawthorne,--but our later humorists have it not at all, but in its stead an intellectual quickness and perception of the ludicrous that is not unmixed with scorn. One of the marks of the great humorist, like Cervantes, or Sterne, or Scott, is that he approaches his subject, not through his head merely, but through his heart, his love, his humanity. His humor is full of compassion, full of the milk of human kindness, and does not separate him from his subject, but unites him to it by vital ties. How Sterne loved Uncle Toby and sympathized with him, and Cervantes his luckless knight! I fear our humorists would have made fun of them, would have shown them up and stood aloof superior, and "laughed a laugh of merry scorn." Whatever else the great humorist or poet, or any artist, may be or do, there is no contempt in his laughter. And this point cannot be too strongly insisted on in view of the fact that nearly all our humorous writers seem impressed with the conviction that their own dignity and self-respect require them to _look down_ upon what they portray. But it is only little men who look down upon anything or speak down to anybody. One sees every day how clear it is that specially fine, delicate, intellectual persons cannot portray satisfactorily coarse, common, uncultured characters. Their attitude is at once scornful and supercilious. The great man, like Socrates, or Dr. Johnson, or Abraham Lincoln, is just as surely coarse as he is fine, but the complaint I make with our humorists is that they are fine and not coarse in any healthful and manly sense. A great part of the best literature and the best art is of the vital fluids, the bowels, the chest, the appetites, and is to be read and judged only through love and compassion. Let us pray for unction, which is the marrowfat of humor, and for humility, which is the badge of manhood. As the voice of the American has retreated from his chest to his throat and nasal passages, so there is danger that his contribution to literature will soon cease to imply any blood or viscera, or healthful carnality, or depth of human and manly affection, and will be the fruit entirely of our toploftical brilliancy and cleverness. What I complain of is just as true of the essayists and the critics as of the novelists. The prevailing tone here also is born of a feeling of immense superiority. How our lofty young men, for instance, look down upon Carlyle, and administer their masterly rebukes to him! But see how Carlyle treats Burns, or Scott, or Johnson, or Novalis, or any of his heroes. Ay, there's the rub; he makes heroes of them, which is not a trick of small natures. He can say of Johnson that he was "moonstruck," but it is from no lofty height of fancied superiority, but he uses the word as a naturalist uses a term to describe an object he loves. What we want, and perhaps have got more of than I am ready to admit, is a race of writers who affiliate with their subjects, and enter into them through their blood, their sexuality and manliness, instead of standing apart and criticising them and writing about them through mere intellectual cleverness and "smartness." VII There is a feeling in heroic poetry, or in a burst of eloquence, that I sometimes catch in quite different fields. I caught it this morning, for instance, when I saw the belated trains go by, and knew how they had been battling with storm, darkness, and distance, and had triumphed. They were due at my place in the night, but did not pass till after eight o'clock in the morning. Two trains coupled together,--the fast mail and the express,--making an immense line of coaches hauled by two engines. They had come from the West, and were all covered with snow and ice, like soldiers with the dust of battle upon them. They had massed their forces, and were now moving with augmented speed, and with a resolution that was epic and grand. Talk about the railroad dispelling the romance from the landscape; if it does, it brings the heroic element in. The moving train is a proud spectacle, especially on stormy and tempestuous nights. When I look out and see its light, steady and unflickering as the planets, and hear the roar of its advancing tread, or its sound diminishing in the distance, I am comforted and made stout of heart. O night, where is thy stay! O space, where is thy victory! Or to see the fast mail pass in the morning is as good as a page of Homer. It quickens one's pulse for all day. It is the Ajax of trains. I hear its defiant, warning whistle, hear it thunder over the bridges, and its sharp, rushing ring among the rocks, and in the winter mornings see its glancing, meteoric lights, or in summer its white form bursting through the silence and the shadows, its plume of smoke lying flat upon its roofs and stretching far behind,--a sight better than a battle. It is something of the same feeling one has in witnessing any wild, free careering in storms, and in floods in nature; or in beholding the charge of an army; or in listening to an eloquent man, or to a hundred instruments of music in full blast,--it is triumph, victory. What is eloquence but mass in motion,--a flood, a cataract, an express train, a cavalry charge? We are literally carried away, swept from our feet, and recover our senses again as best we can. I experienced the same emotion when I saw them go by with the sunken steamer. The procession moved slowly and solemnly. It was like a funeral cortege,--a long line of grim floats and barges and boxes, with their bowed and solemn derricks, the pall-bearers; and underneath in her watery grave, where she had been for six months, the sunken steamer, partially lifted and borne along. Next day the procession went back again, and the spectacle was still more eloquent. The steamer had been taken to the flats above and raised till her walking-beam was out of water; her bell also was exposed and cleaned and rung, and the wreckers' Herculean labor seemed nearly over. But that night the winds and the storms held high carnival. It looked like preconcerted action on the part of tide, tempest, and rain to defeat these wreckers, for the elements all pulled together and pulled till cables and hawser snapped like threads. Back the procession started, anchors were dragged or lost, immense new cables were quickly taken ashore and fastened to trees; but no use: trees were upturned, the cables stretched till they grew small and sang like harp-strings, then parted; back, back against the desperate efforts of the men, till within a few feet of her old grave, when there was a great commotion among the craft, floats were overturned, enormous chains parted, colossal timbers were snapped like pipestems, and, with a sound that filled all the air, the steamer plunged to the bottom again in seventy feet of water. VIII I am glad to observe that all the poetry of the midsummer harvesting has not gone out with the scythe and the whetstone. The line of mowers was a pretty sight, if one did not sympathize too deeply with the human backs turned up there to the sun, and the sound of the whetstone, coming up from the meadows in the dewy morning, was pleasant music. But I find the sound of the mowing-machine and the patent reaper is even more in tune with the voices of Nature at this season. The characteristic sounds of midsummer are the sharp, whirring crescendo of the cicada or harvest fly, and the rasping, stridulous notes of the nocturnal insects. The mowing-machine repeats and imitates these sounds. 'T is like the hum of a locust or the shuffling of a mighty grasshopper. More than that, the grass and the grain at this season have become hard. The timothy stalk is like a file; the rye straw is glazed with flint; the grasshoppers snap sharply as they fly up in front of you; the bird-songs have ceased; the ground crackles under foot; the eye of day is brassy and merciless; and in harmony with all these things is the rattle of the mower and the hay-tedder. IX 'T is an evidence of how directly we are related to Nature, that we more or less sympathize with the weather, and take on the color of the day. Goethe said he worked easiest on a high barometer. One is like a chimney that draws well some days and won't draw at all on others, and the secret is mainly in the condition of the atmosphere. Anything positive and decided with the weather is a good omen. A pouring rain may be more auspicious than a sleeping sunshine. When the stove draws well, the fogs and fumes will leave your mind. I find there is great virtue in the bare ground, and have been much put out at times by those white angelic days we have in winter, such as Whittier has so well described in these lines:-- "Around the glistening wonder bent The blue walls of the firmament; No cloud above, no earth below, A universe of sky and snow." On such days my spirit gets snow-blind; all things take on the same color, or no color; my thought loses its perspective; the inner world is a blank like the outer, and all my great ideals are wrapped in the same monotonous and expressionless commonplace. The blackest of black days are better. Why does snow so kill the landscape and blot out our interest in it? Not merely because it is cold, and the symbol of death,--for I imagine as many inches of apple blossoms would have about the same effect,--but because it expresses nothing. White is a negative; a perfect blank. The eye was made for color, and for the earthy tints, and, when these are denied it, the mind is very apt to sympathize and to suffer also. Then when the sap begins to mount in the trees, and the spring languor comes, does not one grow restless indoors? The sun puts out the fire, the people say, and the spring sun certainly makes one's intellectual light grow dim. Why should not a man sympathize with the seasons and the moods and phases of Nature? He is an apple upon this tree, or rather he is a babe at this breast, and what his great mother feels affects him also. X I have frequently been surprised, in late fall and early winter, to see how unequal or irregular was the encroachment of the frost upon the earth. If there is suddenly a great fall in the mercury, the frost lays siege to the soil and effects a lodgment here and there, and extends its conquests gradually. At one place in the field you can easily run your staff through into the soft ground, when a few rods farther on it will be as hard as a rock. A little covering of dry grass or leaves is a great protection. The moist places hold out long, and the spring runs never freeze. You find the frost has gone several inches into the plowed ground, but on going to the woods, and poking away the leaves and debris under the hemlocks and cedars, you find there is no frost at all. The Earth freezes her ears and toes and naked places first, and her body last. If heat were visible, or if we should represent it say by smoke, then the December landscape would present a curious spectacle. We should see the smoke lying low over the meadows, thickest in the hollows and moist places, and where the turf is oldest and densest. It would cling to the fences and ravines. Under every evergreen tree we should see the vapor rising and filling the branches, while the woods of pine and hemlock would be blue with it long after it had disappeared from the open country. It would rise from the tops of the trees, and be carried this way and that with the wind. The valleys of the great rivers, like the Hudson, would overflow with it. Large bodies of water become regular magazines in which heat is stored during the summer, and they give it out again during the fall and early winter. The early frosts keep well back from the Hudson, skulking behind the ridges, and hardly come over in sight at any point. But they grow bold as the season advances, till the river's fires, too, I are put out and Winter covers it with his snows. XI One of the strong and original strokes of Nature was when she made the loon. It is always refreshing to contemplate a creature so positive and characteristic. He is the great diver and flyer under water. The loon is the genius loci of the wild northern lakes, as solitary as they are. Some birds represent the majesty of nature, like the eagles; others its ferocity, like the hawks; others its cunning, like the crow; others its sweetness and melody, like the song-birds. The loon represents its wildness and solitariness. It is cousin to the beaver. It has the feathers of a bird and the fur of an animal, and the heart of both. It is as quick and cunning as it is bold and resolute. It dives with such marvelous quickness that the shot of the gunner get there just in time "to cut across a circle of descending tail feathers and a couple of little jets of water flung upward by the web feet of the loon." When disabled so that it can neither dive nor fly, it is said to face its foe, look him in the face with its clear, piercing eye, and fight resolutely till death. The gunners say there is something in its wailing, piteous cry, when dying, almost human in its agony. The loon is, in the strictest sense, an aquatic fowl. It can barely walk upon the land, and one species at least cannot take flight from the shore. But in the water its feet are more than feet, and its wings more than wings. It plunges into this denser air and flies with incredible speed. Its head and beak form a sharp point to its tapering neck. Its wings are far in front and its legs equally far in the rear, and its course through the crystal depths is like the speed of an arrow. In the northern lakes it has been taken forty feet under water upon hooks baited for the great lake trout. I had never seen one till last fall, when one appeared on the river in front of my house. I knew instantly it was the loon. Who could not tell a loon a half mile or more away, though he had never seen one before? The river was like glass, and every movement of the bird as it sported about broke the surface into ripples, that revealed it far and wide. Presently a boat shot out from shore, and went ripping up the surface toward the loon. The creature at once seemed to divine the intentions of the boatman, and sidled off obliquely, keeping a sharp lookout as if to make sure it was pursued. A steamer came down and passed between them, and when the way was again clear, the loon was still swimming on the surface. Presently it disappeared under the water, and the boatman pulled sharp and hard. In a few moments the bird reappeared some rods farther on, as if to make an observation. Seeing it was being pursued, and no mistake, it dived quickly, and, when it came up again, had gone many times as far as the boat had in the same space of time. Then it dived again, and distanced its pursuer so easily that he gave over the chase and rested upon his oars. But the bird made a final plunge, and, when it emerged upon the surface again, it was over a mile away. Its course must have been, and doubtless was, an actual flight under water, and half as fast as the crow flies in the air. The loon would have delighted the old poets. Its wild, demoniac laughter awakens the echoes on the solitary lakes, and its ferity and hardiness are kindred to those robust spirits. XII One notable difference between man and the four-footed animals which has often occurred to me is in the eye, and the greater perfection, or rather supremacy, of the sense of sight in the human species. All the animals--the dog, the fox, the wolf, the deer, the cow, the horse--depend mainly upon the senses of hearing and smell. Almost their entire powers of discrimination are confined to these two senses. The dog picks his master out of the crowd by smell, and the cow her calf out of the herd. Sight is only partial recognition. The question can only be settled beyond all doubt by the aid of the nose. The fox, alert and cunning as he is, will pass within a few yards of the hunter and not know him from a stump. A squirrel will run across your lap, and a marmot between your feet, if you are motionless. When a herd of cattle see a strange object, they are not satisfied till each one has sniffed it; and the horse is cured of his fright at the robe, or the meal-bag, or other object, as soon as he can be induced to smell it. There is a great deal of speculation in the eye of an animal, but very little science. Then you cannot catch an animal's eye; he looks at you, but not into your eye. The dog directs his gaze toward your face, but, for aught you can tell, it centres upon your mouth or nose. The same with your horse or cow. Their eye is vague and indefinite. Not so with the birds. The bird has the human eye in its clearness, its power, and its supremacy over the other senses. How acute their sense of smell may be is uncertain; their hearing is sharp enough, but their vision is the most remarkable. A crow or a hawk, or any of the larger birds, will not mistake you for a stump or a rock, stand you never so still amid the bushes. But they cannot separate you from your horse or team. A hawk reads a man on horseback as one animal, and reads it as a horse. None of the sharp-scented animals could be thus deceived. The bird has man's brain also in its size. The brain of a song-bird is even much larger in proportion than that of the greatest human monarch, and its life is correspondingly intense and high-strung. But the bird's eye is superficial. It is on the outside of his head. It is round, that it may take in a full circle at a glance. All the quadrupeds emphasize their direct forward gaze by a corresponding movement of the ears, as if to supplement and aid one sense with another. But man's eye seldom needs the confirmation of his ear, while it is so set, and his head so poised, that his look is forcible and pointed without being thus seconded. XIII I once saw a cow that had lost her cud. How forlorn and desolate and sick at heart that cow looked! No more rumination, no more of that second and finer mastication, no more of that sweet and juicy reverie under the spreading trees, or in the stall. Then the farmer took an elder and scraped the bark and put something with it, and made the cow a cud, and, after due waiting, the experiment took, a response came back, and the mysterious machinery was once more in motion, and the cow was herself again. Have you, O poet, or essayist, or story-writer, never lost your cud, and wandered about days and weeks without being able to start a single thought or an image that tasted good,--your literary appetite dull or all gone, and the conviction daily growing that it was all over with you in that direction? A little elder-bark, something fresh and bitter from the woods, is about the best thing you can take. XIV Notwithstanding what I have elsewhere said about the desolation of snow, when one looks closely it is little more than a thin veil after all, and takes and repeats the form of whatever it covers. Every path through the fields is just as plain as before. On every hand the ground sends tokens, and the curves and slopes are not of the snow, but of the earth beneath. In like manner the rankest vegetation hides the ground less than we think. Looking across a wide valley in the month of July, I have noted that the fields, except the meadows, had a ruddy tinge, and that corn, which near at hand seemed to completely envelop the soil, at that distance gave only a slight shade of green. The color of the ground everywhere predominated, and I doubt not that, if we could see the earth from a point sufficiently removed, as from the moon, its ruddy hue, like that of Mars, would alone be visible. What is a man but a miniature earth, with many disguises in the way of manners, possessions, dissemblances? Yet through all--through all the work of his hands and all the thoughts of his mind--how surely the ground quality of him, the fundamental hue, whether it be this or that, makes itself felt and is alone important! XV Men follow their noses, it is said. I have wondered why the Greek did not follow his nose in architecture,--did not copy those arches that spring from it as from a pier, and support his brow,--but always and everywhere used the post and the lintel. There was something in that face that has never reappeared in the human countenance. I am thinking especially of that straight, strong profile. Is it really godlike, or is this impression the result of association? But any suggestion or reminiscence of it in the modern face at once gives one the idea of strength. It is a face strong in the loins, or it suggests a high, elastic instep. It is the face of order and proportion. Those arches are the symbols of law and self-control. The point of greatest interest is the union of the nose with the brow,--that strong, high embankment; it makes the bridge from the ideal to the real sure and easy. All the Greek's ideas passed readily into form. In the modern face the arches are more or less crushed, and the nose is severed from the brow,--hence the abstract and the analytic; hence the preponderance of the speculative intellect over creative power. XVI I have thought that the boy is the only true lover of Nature, and that we, who make such a dead set at studying and admiring her, come very wide of the mark. "The nonchalance of a boy who is sure of his dinner," says our Emerson, "is the healthy attitude of humanity." The boy is a part of Nature; he is as indifferent, as careless, as vagrant as she. He browses, he digs, he hunts, he climbs, he halloes, he feeds on roots and greens and mast. He uses things roughly and without sentiment. The coolness with which boys will drown dogs or cats, or hang them to trees, or murder young birds, or torture frogs or squirrels, is like Nature's own mercilessness. Certain it is that we often get some of the best touches of nature from children. Childhood is a world by itself, and we listen to children when they frankly speak out of it with a strange interest. There is such a freedom from responsibility and from worldly wisdom,--it is heavenly wisdom. There is no sentiment in children, because there is no ruin; nothing has gone to decay about them yet,--not a leaf or a twig. Until he is well into his teens, and sometimes later, a boy is like a bean-pod before the fruit has developed,--indefinite, succulent, rich in possibilities which are only vaguely outlined. He is a pericarp merely. How rudimental are all his ideas! I knew a boy who began his school composition on swallows by saying there were two kinds of swallows,--chimney swallows and swallows. Girls come to themselves sooner; are indeed, from the first, more definite and "translatable." XVII Who will write the natural history of the boy? One of the first points to be taken account of is his clannishness. The boys of one neighborhood are always pitted against those of an adjoining neighborhood, or of one end of the town against those of the other end. A bridge, a river, a railroad track, are always boundaries of hostile or semi-hostile tribes. The boys that go up the road from the country school hoot derisively at those that go down the road, and not infrequently add the insult of stones; and the down-roaders return the hooting and the missiles with interest. Often there is open war, and the boys meet and have regular battles. A few years since, the boys of two rival towns on opposite sides of the Ohio River became so belligerent that the authorities had to interfere. Whenever an Ohio boy was caught on the West Virginia side of the river, he was unmercifully beaten; and when a West Virginia boy was discovered on the Ohio side, he was pounced upon in the same manner. One day a vast number of boys, about one hundred and fifty on a side, met by appointment upon the ice and engaged in a pitched battle. Every conceivable missile was used, including pistols. The battle, says the local paper, raged with fury for about two hours. One boy received a wound behind the ear, from the effects of which he died the next morning. More recently the boys of a large manufacturing town of New Jersey were divided into two hostile clans that came into frequent collision. One Saturday both sides mustered their forces, and a regular fight ensued, one boy here also losing his life from the encounter. Every village and settlement is at times the scene of these youthful collisions When a new boy appears in the village, or at the country school, how the other boys crowd around him and take his measure, or pick at him and insult him to try his mettle! I knew a boy, twelve or thirteen years old, who was sent to help a drover with some cattle as far as a certain village ten miles from his home. After the place was reached, and while the boy was eating his cracker and candies, he strolled about the village, and fell in with some other boys playing upon a bridge. In a short time a large number of children of all sizes had collected upon the bridge. The new-comer was presently challenged by the boys of his own age to jump with them. This he readily did, and cleared their farthest mark. Then he gave them a sample of his stone-throwing, and at this pastime he also far surpassed his competitors. Before long, the feeling of the crowd began to set against him, showing itself first in the smaller fry, who began half playfully to throw pebbles and lumps of dry earth at him. Then they would run up slyly and strike him with sticks. Presently the large ones began to tease him in like manner, till the contagion of hostility spread, and the whole pack was arrayed against the strange boy. He kept them at bay for a few moments with his stick, till, the feeling mounting higher and higher, he broke through their ranks, and fled precipitately toward home, with the throng of little and big at his heels. Gradually the girls and smaller boys dropped behind, till at the end of the first fifty rods only two boys of about his own size, with wrath and determination in their faces, kept up the pursuit. But to these he added the final insult of beating them at running also, and reached, much blown, a point beyond which they refused to follow. The world the boy lives in is separate and distinct from the world the man lives in. It is a world inhabited only by boys. No events are important or of any moment save those affecting boys. How they ignore the presence of their elders on the street, shouting out their invitations, their appointments, their pass-words from our midst, as from the veriest solitude! They have peculiar calls, whistles, signals, by which they communicate with each other at long distances, like birds or wild creatures. And there is as genuine a wildness about these notes and calls as about those of a fox or a coon. The boy is a savage, a barbarian, in his taste,--devouring roots, leaves, bark, unripe fruit; and in the kind of music or discord he delights in,--of harmony he has no perception. He has his fashions that spread from city to city. In one of our large cities the rage at one time was an old tin can with a string attached, out of which they tortured the most savage and ear-splitting discords. The police were obliged to interfere and suppress the nuisance. On another occasion, at Christmas, they all came forth with tin horns, and nearly drove the town distracted with the hideous uproar. Another savage trait of the boy is his untruthfulness. Corner him, and the chances are ten to one he will lie his way out. Conscience is a plant of slow growth in the boy. If caught in one lie, he invents another. I know a boy who was in the habit of eating apples in school. His teacher finally caught him in the act, and, without removing his eye from him, called him to the middle of the floor. "I saw you this time," said the teacher. "Saw me what?" said the boy innocently. "Bite that apple," replied the teacher. "No, sir," said the rascal. "Open your mouth;" and from its depths the teacher, with his thumb and finger, took out the piece of apple. "Did n't know it was there," said the boy, unabashed. Nearly all the moral sentiment and graces are late in maturing in the boy. He has no proper self-respect till past his majority. Of course there are exceptions, but they are mostly windfalls. The good boys die young. We lament the wickedness and thoughtlessness of the young vagabonds at the same time that we know it is mainly the acridity and bitterness of the unripe fruit that we are lamenting. III A BIRD MEDLEY People who have not made friends with the birds do not know how much they miss. Especially to one living in the country, of strong local attachments and an observing turn of mind, does an acquaintance with the birds form a close and invaluable tie. The only time I saw Thomas Carlyle, I remember his relating, apropos of this subject, that in his earlier days he was sent on a journey to a distant town on some business that gave him much bother and vexation, and that on his way back home, forlorn and dejected, he suddenly heard the larks singing all about him,--soaring and singing, just as they did about his father's fields, and it comforted him and cheered him up amazingly. Most lovers of the birds can doubtless recall similar experiences from their own lives. Nothing wonts me to a new place more than the birds. I go, for instance, to take up my abode in the country,--to plant myself upon unfamiliar ground. I know nobody, and nobody knows me. The roads, the fields, the hills, the streams, the woods, are all strange. I look wistfully upon them, but they know me not. They give back nothing to my yearning gaze. But there, on every hand, are the long-familiar birds,--the same ones I left behind me, the same ones I knew in my youth,--robins, sparrows, swallows, bobolinks, crows, hawks, high-holes, meadowlarks, all there before me, and ready to renew and perpetuate the old associations. Before my house is begun, theirs is completed; before I have taken root at all, they are thoroughly established. I do not yet know what kind of apples my apple-trees bear, but there, in the cavity of a decayed limb, the bluebirds are building a nest, and yonder, on that branch, the social sparrow is busy with hairs and straws. The robins have tasted the quality of my cherries, and the cedar-birds have known every red cedar on the place these many years. While my house is yet surrounded by its scaffoldings, the phoebe-bird has built her exquisite mossy nest on a projecting stone beneath the eaves, a robin has filled a niche in the wall with mud and dry grass, the chimney swallows are going out and in the chimney, and a pair of house wrens are at home in a snug cavity over the door, and, during an April snowstorm, a number of hermit thrushes have taken shelter in my unfinished chambers. Indeed, I am in the midst of friends before I fairly know it. The place is not so new as I had thought. It is already old; the birds have supplied the memories of many decades of years. There is something almost pathetic in the fact that the birds remain forever the same. You grow old, your friends die or move to distant lands, events sweep on, and all things are changed. Yet there in your garden or orchard are the birds of your boyhood, the same notes, the same calls, and, to all intents and purposes, the identical birds endowed with perennial youth. The swallows, that built so far out of your reach beneath the eaves of your father's barn, the same ones now squeak and chatter beneath the eaves of your barn. The warblers and shy wood-birds you pursued with such glee ever so many summers ago, and whose names you taught to some beloved youth who now, perchance, sleeps amid his native hills, no marks of time or change cling to them; and when you walk out to the strange woods, there they are, mocking you with their ever-renewed and joyous youth. The call of the high-holes, the whistle of the quail, the strong piercing note of the meadowlark, the drumming of the grouse,--how these sounds ignore the years, and strike on the ear with the melody of that springtime when the world was young, and life was all holiday and romance! During any unusual tension of the feelings or emotions, how the note or song of a single bird will sink into the memory, and become inseparably associated with your grief or joy! Shall I ever again be able to hear the song of the oriole without being pierced through and through? Can it ever be other than a dirge for the dead to me? Day after day, and week after week, this bird whistled and warbled in a mulberry by the door, while sorrow, like a pall, darkened my day. So loud and persistent was the singer that his note teased and worried my excited ear. "Hearken to yon pine warbler, Singing aloft in the tree! Hearest thou, O traveler! What he singeth to me? "Not unless God made sharp thine ear With sorrow such as mine, Out of that delicate lay couldst thou Its heavy tale divine." It is the opinion of some naturalists that birds never die what is called a natural death, but come to their end by some murderous or accidental means; yet I have found sparrows and vireos in the fields and woods dead or dying, that bore no marks of violence; and I remember that once in my childhood a redbird fell down in the yard exhausted, and was brought in by the girl; its bright scarlet image is indelibly stamped upon my recollection. It is not known that birds have any distempers like the domestic fowls, but I saw a social sparrow one day quite disabled by some curious malady that suggested a disease that sometimes attacks poultry; one eye was nearly put out by a scrofulous-looking sore, and on the last joint of one wing there was a large tumorous or fungous growth that crippled the bird completely. On another occasion I picked up one that appeared well, but could not keep its centre of gravity when in flight, and so fell to the ground. One reason why dead birds and animals are so rarely found is, that on the approach of death their instinct prompts them to creep away in some hole or under some cover, where they will be least liable to fall a prey to their natural enemies. It is doubtful if any of the game-birds, like the pigeon and grouse, ever die of old age, or the semi-game-birds, like the bobolink, or the "century living" crow; but in what other form can death overtake the hummingbird, or even the swift and the barn swallow? Such are true birds of the air; they may be occasionally lost at sea during their migrations, but, so far as I know, they are not preyed upon by any other species. The valley of the Hudson, I find, forms a great natural highway for the birds, as do doubtless the Connecticut, the Susquehanna, the Delaware, and all other large water-courses running north and south. The birds love an easy way, and in the valleys of the rivers they find a road already graded for them; and they abound more in such places throughout the season than they do farther inland. The swarms of robins that come to us in early spring are a delight to behold. In one of his poems Emerson speaks of "April's bird, Blue-coated, flying before from tree to tree;" but April's bird with me is the robin, brisk, vociferous, musical, dotting every field, and larking it in every grove; he is as easily atop at this season as the bobolink is a month or two later. The tints of April are ruddy and brown,--the new furrow and the leafless trees,--and these are the tints of its dominant bird. From my dining-room window I look, or did look, out upon a long stretch of smooth meadow, and as pretty a spring sight as I ever wish to behold was this field, sprinkled all over with robins, their red breasts turned toward the morning sun, or their pert forms sharply outlined against lingering patches of snow. Every morning for weeks I had those robins for breakfast; but what they had I never could find out. After the leaves are out, and gayer colors come into fashion, the robin takes a back seat. He goes to housekeeping in the old apple-tree, or, what he likes better, the cherry-tree. A pair reared their domestic altar (of mud and dry grass) in one of the latter trees, where I saw much of them. The cock took it upon himself to keep the tree free of all other robins during cherry time, and its branches were the scene of some lively tussles every hour in the day. The innocent visitor would scarcely alight before the jealous cock was upon him; but while he was thrusting the intruder out at one side, a second would be coming in on the other. He managed, however, to protect his cherries very well, but had so little time to eat the fruit himself that we got fully our share. I have frequently seen the robin courting, and have always been astonished and amused at the utter coldness and indifference of the female. The females of every species of bird, however, I believe, have this in common,--they are absolutely free from coquetry, or any airs and wiles whatever. In most cases, Nature has given the song and the plumage to the other sex, and all the embellishing and acting is done by the male bird. I am always at home when I see the passenger pigeon. Few spectacles please me more than to see clouds of these birds sweeping across the sky, and few sounds are more agreeable to my ear than their lively piping and calling in the spring woods. They come in such multitudes, they people the whole air; they cover townships, and make the solitary places gay as with a festival. The naked woods are suddenly blue as with fluttering ribbons and scarfs, and vocal as with the voices of children. Their arrival is always unexpected. We know April will bring the robins and May the bobolinks, but we do not know that either they or any other month will bring the passenger pigeon. Sometimes years elapse and scarcely a flock is seen. Then, of a sudden, some March or April they come pouring over the horizon from the south or southwest, and for a few days the land is alive with them. The whole race seems to be collected in a few vast swarms or assemblages. Indeed, I have sometimes thought there was only one such in the United States, and that it moved in squads, and regiments, and brigades, and divisions, like a giant army. The scouting and foraging squads are not unusual, and every few years we see larger bodies of them, but rarely indeed do we witness the spectacle of the whole vast tribe in motion. Sometimes we hear of them in Virginia, or Kentucky and Tennessee; then in Ohio or Pennsylvania; then in New York; then in Canada or Michigan or Missouri. They are followed from point to point, and from State to State, by human sharks, who catch and shoot them for market. A year ago last April, the pigeons flew for two or three days up and down the Hudson. In long bowing lines, or else in dense masses, they moved across the sky. It was not the whole army, but I should think at least one corps of it; I had not seen such a flight of pigeons since my boyhood. I went up to the top of the house, the better to behold the winged procession. The day seemed memorable and poetic in which such sights occurred. [Footnote: This proved to be the last flight of the pigeons in the valley of the Hudson. The whole tribe has now (1895) been nearly exterminated by pot-hunters. The few that still remain appear to be scattered through the Northern States in small, loose flocks.] While I was looking at the pigeons, a flock of wild geese went by, harrowing the sky northward. The geese strike a deeper chord than the pigeons. Level and straight they go as fate to its mark. I cannot tell what emotions these migrating birds awaken in me,--the geese especially. One seldom sees more than a flock or two in a season, and what a spring token it is! The great bodies are in motion. It is like the passage of a victorious army. No longer inch by inch does spring come, but these geese advance the standard across zones at one pull. How my desire goes with them; how something in me, wild and migratory, plumes itself and follows fast! "Steering north, with raucous cry, Through tracts and provinces of sky, Every night alighting down In new landscapes of romance, Where darkling feed the clamorous clans By lonely lakes to men unknown." Dwelling upon these sights, I am reminded that the seeing of spring come, not only upon the great wings of the geese and the lesser wings of the pigeons and birds, but in the many more subtle and indirect signs and mediums, is also a part of the compensation of living in the country. I enjoy not less what may be called the negative side of spring,--those dark, dank, dissolving days, yellow sposh and mud and water everywhere,--yet who can stay long indoors? The humidity is soft and satisfying to the smell, and to the face and hands, and, for the first time for months, there is the fresh odor of the earth. The air is full of the notes and calls of the first birds. The domestic fowls refuse their accustomed food and wander far from the barn. Is it something winter has left, or spring has dropped, that they pick up? And what is it that holds me so long standing in the yard or in the fields? Something besides the ice and snow melts and runs away with the spring floods. The little sparrows and purple finches are so punctual in announcing spring, that some seasons one wonders how they know without looking in the almanac, for surely there are no signs of spring out of doors. Yet they will strike up as cheerily amid the driving snow as if they had just been told that to-morrow is the first day of March. About the same time I notice the potatoes in the cellar show signs of sprouting. They, too, find out so quickly when spring is near. Spring comes by two routes,--in the air and underground, and often gets here by the latter course first. She undermines Winter when outwardly his front is nearly as bold as ever. I have known the trees to bud long before, by outward appearances, one would expect them to. The frost was gone from the ground before the snow was gone from the surface. But Winter hath his birds also; some of them such tiny bodies that one wonders how they withstand the giant cold,--but they do. Birds live on highly concentrated food,--the fine seeds of weeds and grasses, and the eggs and larvae of insects. Such food must be very stimulating and heating. A gizzard full of ants, for instance, what spiced and seasoned extract is equal to that? Think what virtue there must be in an ounce of gnats or mosquitoes, or in the fine mysterious food the chickadee and the brown creeper gather in the winter woods! It is doubtful if these birds ever freeze when fuel enough can be had to keep their little furnaces going. And, as they get their food entirely from the limbs and trunks of trees, like the woodpeckers, their supply is seldom interfered with by the snow. The worst annoyance must be the enameling of ice our winter woods sometimes get. Indeed, the food question seems to be the only serious one with the birds. Give them plenty to eat, and no doubt the majority of them would face our winters. I believe all the woodpeckers are winter birds, except the high-hole or yellow-hammer, and he obtains the greater part of his subsistence from the ground, and is not a woodpecker at all in his habits of feeding. Were it not that it has recourse to budding, the ruffed grouse would be obliged to migrate. The quail--a bird, no doubt, equally hardy, but whose food is at the mercy of the snow--is frequently cut off by our severe winters when it ventures to brave them, which is not often. Where plenty of the berries of the red cedar can be had, the cedar-bird will pass the winter in New York. The old ornithologists say the bluebird migrates to Bermuda; but in the winter of 1874-75, severe as it was, a pair of them wintered with me eighty miles north of New York city. They seem to have been decided in their choice by the attractions of my rustic porch and the fruit of a sugar-berry tree (celtis--a kind of tree-lotus) that stood in front of it. They lodged in the porch and took their meals in the tree. Indeed, they became regular lotus-eaters. Punctually at dusk they were in their places on a large laurel root in the top of the porch, whence, however, they were frequently routed by an indignant broom that was jealous of the neatness of the porch floor. But the pair would not take any hints of this kind, and did not give up their quarters in the porch or their lotus berries till spring. Many times during the winter the sugar-berry tree was visited by a flock of cedar-birds that also wintered in the vicinity. At such times it was amusing to witness the pretty wrath of the bluebirds, scolding and threatening the intruders, and begrudging them every berry they ate. The bluebird cannot utter a harsh or unpleasing note. Indeed, he seems to have but one language, one speech, for both love and war, and the expression of his indignation is nearly as musical as his song. The male frequently made hostile demonstrations toward the cedar-birds, but did not openly attack them, and, with his mate, appeared to experience great relief when the poachers had gone. I had other company in my solitude also, among the rest a distinguished arrival from the far north, the pine grosbeak, a bird rarely seen in these parts, except now and then a single specimen. But in the winter of 1875, heralding the extreme cold weather, and no doubt in consequence of it, there was a large incursion of them into this State and New England. They attracted the notice of the country people everywhere. I first saw them early in December about the head of the Delaware. I was walking along a cleared ridge with my gun, just at sundown, when I beheld two strange birds sitting in a small maple. On bringing one of them down, I found it was a bird I had never before seen; in color and shape like the purple finch, but quite as large again in size. From its heavy beak, I at once recognized it as belonging to the family of grosbeaks. A few days later I saw large numbers of them in the woods, on the ground, and in the trees. And still later, and on till February, they were very numerous on the Hudson, coming all about my house,--more familiar even than the little snowbird, hopping beneath the windows, and looking up at me apparently with as much curiosity as I looked down upon them. They fed on the buds of the sugar maples and upon frozen apples in the orchard. They were mostly young birds and females, colored very much like the common sparrow, with now and then visible the dull carmine-colored head and neck of an old male. Other northern visitors that tarried with me the same winter were the tree or Canada sparrow and the redpoll, the former a bird larger than the social sparrow or hair-bird, but otherwise much resembling it, and distinguishable by a dark spot in the middle of its breast; the latter a bird the size and shape of the common goldfinch, with the same manner of flight and nearly the same note or cry, but darker than the winter plumage of the goldfinch, and with a red crown and a tinge of red on the breast. Little bands of these two species lurked about the barnyard all winter, picking up the hayseed, the sparrow sometimes venturing in on the haymow when the supply outside was short. I felt grateful to them for their company. They gave a sort of ornithological air to every errand I had to the barn. Though a number of birds face our winters, and by various shifts worry through till spring, some of them permanent residents, and some of them visitors from the far north, yet there is but one genuine snow bird, nursling of the snow, and that is the snow bunting, a bird that seems proper to this season, heralding the coming storm, sweeping by on bold and rapid wing, and calling and chirping as cheerily as the songsters of May. In its plumage it reflects the winter landscape,--an expanse of white surmounted or streaked with gray and brown; a field of snow with a line of woods or a tinge of stubble. It fits into the scene, and does not appear to lead a beggarly and disconsolate life, like most of our winter residents. During the ice-harvesting on the river, I see them flitting about among the gangs of men, or floating on the cakes of ice, picking and scratching amid the droppings of the horses. They love the stack and hay-barn in the distant field, where the farmer fodders his cattle upon the snow, and every red-root, ragweed, or pigweed left standing in the fall adds to their winter stores. Though this bird, and one or two others, like the chickadee and nuthatch, are more or less complacent and cheerful during the winter, yet no bird can look our winters in the face and sing, as do so many of the English birds. Several species in Great Britain, their biographers tell us, sing the winter through, except during the severest frosts; but with us, as far south as Virginia, and, for aught I know, much farther, the birds are tuneless at this season. The owls, even, do not hoot, nor the hawks scream. Among the birds that tarry briefly with us in the spring on their way to Canada and beyond, there is none I behold with so much pleasure as the white-crowned sparrow. I have an eye out for him all through April and the first week in May. He is the rarest and most beautiful of the sparrow kind. He is crowned, as some hero or victor in the games. He is usually in company with his congener, the white-throated sparrow, but seldom more than in the proportion of one to twenty of the latter. Contrasted with this bird, he looks like its more fortunate brother, upon whom some special distinction has been conferred, and who is, from the egg, of finer make and quality. His sparrow color of ashen gray and brown is very clear and bright, and his form graceful. His whole expression, however, culminates in a singular manner in his crown. The various tints of the bird are brought to a focus here and intensified, the lighter ones becoming white, and the deeper ones nearly black. There is the suggestion of a crest, also, from a habit the bird has of slightly elevating this part of its plumage, as if to make more conspicuous its pretty markings. They are great scratchers, and will often remain several minutes scratching in one place, like a hen. Yet, unlike the hen and like all hoppers, they scratch with both feet at once, which is by no means the best way to scratch. The white-throats often sing during their sojourning both in fall and spring; but only on one occasion have I ever heard any part of the song of the white-crowned, and that proceeded from what I took to be a young male, one October morning, just as the sun was rising. It was pitched very low, like a half-forgotten air, but it was very sweet. It was the song of the vesper sparrow and the white-throat in one. In his breeding haunts he must be a superior songster, but he is very chary of his music while on his travels. The sparrows are all meek and lowly birds. They are of the grass, the fences, the low bushes, the weedy wayside places. Nature has denied them all brilliant tints, but she has given them sweet and musical voices. Theirs are the quaint and simple lullaby songs of childhood. The white-throat has a timid, tremulous strain, that issues from the low bushes or from behind the fence, where its cradle is hid. The song sparrow modulates its simple ditty as softly as the lining of its own nest. The vesper sparrow has only peace and gentleness in its strain. What pretty nests, too, the sparrows build! Can anything be more exquisite than a sparrow's nest under a grassy or mossy bank? What care the bird has taken not to disturb one straw or spear of grass, or thread of moss! You cannot approach it and put your hand into it without violating the place more or less, and yet the little architect has wrought day after day and left no marks. There has been an excavation, and yet no grain of earth appears to have been moved. If the nest had slowly and silently grown like the grass and the moss, it could not have been more nicely adjusted to its place and surroundings. There is absolutely nothing to tell the eye it is there. Generally a few spears of dry grass fall down from the turf above and form a slight screen before it. How commonly and coarsely it begins, blending with the debris that lies about, and how it refines and comes into form as it approaches the centre, which is modeled so perfectly and lined so softly! Then, when the full complement of eggs is laid, and incubation has fairly begun, what a sweet, pleasing little mystery the silent old bank holds! The song sparrow, whose nest I have been describing, displays a more marked individuality in its song than any bird with which I am acquainted. Birds of the same species generally all sing alike, but I have observed numerous song sparrows with songs peculiarly their own. Last season, the whole summer through, one sang about my grounds like this: _swee-e-t, swee-e-t, swee-e-t, bitter._ Day after day, from May to September, I heard this strain, which I thought a simple but very profound summing-up of life, and wondered how the little bird had learned it so quickly. The present season, I heard another with a song equally original, but not so easily worded. Among a large troop of them in April, my attention was attracted to one that was a master songster,--some Shelley or Tennyson among his kind. The strain was remarkably prolonged, intricate, and animated, and far surpassed anything I ever before heard from that source. But the most noticeable instance of departure from the standard song of a species I ever knew of was in the case of a wood thrush. The bird sang, as did the sparrow, the whole season through, at the foot of my lot near the river. The song began correctly and ended correctly; but interjected into it about midway was a loud, piercing, artificial note, at utter variance with the rest of the strain. When my ear first caught this singular note, I started out, not a little puzzled, to make, as I supposed, a new acquaintance, but had not gone far when I discovered whence it proceeded. Brass amid gold, or pebbles amid pearls, are not more out of place than was this discordant scream or cry in the melodious strain of the wood thrush. It pained and startled the ear. It seemed as if the instrument of the bird was not under control, or else that one note was sadly out of tune, and, when its turn came, instead of giving forth one of those sounds that are indeed like pearls, it shocked the ear with a piercing discord. Yet the singer appeared entirely unconscious of the defect; or had he grown used to it, or had his friends persuaded him that it was a variation to be coveted? Sometimes, after the brood had hatched and the bird's pride was at its full, he would make a little triumphal tour of the locality, coming from under the hill quite up to the house, and flaunting his cracked instrument in the face of whoever would listen. He did not return again the next season; or, if he did, the malformation of his song was gone. I have noticed that the bobolink does not sing the same in different localities. In New Jersey it has one song; on the Hudson, a slight variation of the same; and on the high grass-lands of the interior of the State, quite a different strain,--clearer, more distinctly articulated, and running off with more sparkle and liltingness. It reminds one of the clearer mountain air and the translucent spring-water of those localities. I never could make out what the bobolink says in New Jersey, but in certain districts in this State his enunciation is quite distinct. Sometimes he begins with the word _gegue, gegue._ Then again, more fully, _be true to me, Clarsy, be true to me, Clarsy, Clarsy,_ thence full tilt into his inimitable song, interspersed in which the words _kick your slipper, kick your slipper,_ and temperance, temperance (the last with a peculiar nasal resonance), are plainly heard. At its best, it is a remarkable performance, a unique performance, as it contains not the slightest hint or suggestion, either in tone or manner or effect, of any other bird-song to be heard. The bobolink has no mate or parallel in any part of the world. He stands alone. There is no closely allied species. He is not a lark, nor a finch, nor a warbler, nor a thrush, nor a starling (though classed with the starlings by late naturalists). He is an exception to many well-known rules. He is the only ground-bird known to me of marked and conspicuous plumage. He is the only black and white field-bird we have east of the Mississippi, and, what is still more odd, he is black beneath and white above,--the reverse of the fact in all other cases. Preëminently a bird of the meadow during the breeding season, and associated with clover and daisies and buttercups as no other bird is, he yet has the look of an interloper or a newcomer, and not of one to the manner born. The bobolink has an unusually full throat, which may help account for his great power of song. No bird has yet been found that could imitate him, or even repeat or suggest a single note, as if his song were the product of a new set of organs. There is a vibration about it, and a rapid running over the keys, that is the despair of other songsters. It is said that the mockingbird is dumb in the presence of the bobolink. My neighbor has an English skylark that was hatched and reared in captivity. The bird is a most persistent and vociferous songster, and fully as successful a mimic as the mockingbird. It pours out a strain that is a regular mosaic of nearly all the bird-notes to be heard, its own proper lark song forming a kind of bordering for the whole. The notes of the phoebe-bird, the purple finch, the swallow, the yellowbird, the kingbird, the robin, and others, are rendered with perfect distinctness and accuracy, but not a word of the bobolink's, though the lark must have heard its song every day for four successive summers. It was the one conspicuous note in the fields around that the lark made no attempt to plagiarize. He could not steal the bobolink's thunder. The lark is a more marvelous songster than the bobolink only on account of his soaring flight and the sustained copiousness of his song. His note is rasping and harsh, in point of melody, when compared with the bobolink's. When caged and near at hand, the lark's song is positively disagreeable, it is so loud and full of sharp, aspirated sounds. But high in air above the broad downs, poured out without interruption for many minutes together, it is very agreeable. The bird among us that is usually called a lark, namely, the meadowlark, but which our later classifiers say is no lark at all, has nearly the same quality of voice as the English skylark,--loud, piercing, z-z-ing; and during the mating season it frequently indulges while on the wing in a brief song that is quite lark-like. It is also a bird of the stubble, and one of the last to retreat on the approach of winter. The habits of many of our birds are slowly undergoing a change. Their migrations are less marked. With the settlement and cultivation of the country, the means of subsistence of nearly every species are vastly increased. Insects are more numerous, and seeds of weeds and grasses more abundant. They become more and more domestic, like the English birds. The swallows have nearly all left their original abodes--hollow trees, and cliffs, and rocks--for human habitations and their environments. Where did the barn swallow nest before the country was settled? The chimney swallow nested in hollow trees, and, perhaps, occasionally resorts thither yet. But the chimney, notwithstanding the smoke, seems to suit his taste best. In the spring, before they have paired, I think these swallows sometimes pass the night in the woods, but not if an old, disused chimney is handy. One evening in early May, my attention was arrested by a band of them containing several hundreds, perhaps a thousand, circling about near a large, tall, disused chimney in a secluded place in the country. They were very lively, and chippering, and diving in a most extraordinary manner. They formed a broad continuous circle many rods in diameter. Gradually the circle contracted and neared the chimney. Presently some of the birds as they came round began to dive toward it, and the chippering was more animated than ever. Then a few ventured in; in a moment more, the air at the mouth of the chimney was black with the stream of descending swallows. When the passage began to get crowded, the circle lifted and the rest of the birds continued their flight, giving those inside time to dispose of themselves. Then the influx began again, and was kept up till the crowd became too great, when it cleared as before. Thus by installments, or in layers, the swallows were packed into the chimney until the last one was stowed away. Passing by the place a few days afterward, I saw a board reaching from the roof of the building to the top of the chimney, and imagined some curious person or some predaceous boy had been up to take a peep inside, and see how so many swallows could dispose of themselves in such a space. It would have been an interesting spectacle to see them emerge from the chimney in the morning. IV APRIL If we represent the winter of our northern climate by a rugged snow-clad mountain, and summer by a broad fertile plain, then the intermediate belt, the hilly and breezy uplands, will stand for spring, with March reaching well up into the region of the snows, and April lapping well down upon the greening fields and unloosened currents, not beyond the limits of winter's sallying storms, but well within the vernal zone,--within the reach of the warm breath and subtle, quickening influences of the plain below. At its best, April is the tenderest of tender salads made crisp by ice or snow water. Its type is the first spear of grass. The senses--sight, hearing, smell--are as hungry for its delicate and almost spiritual tokens as the cattle are for the first bite of its fields. How it touches one and makes him both glad and sad! The voices of the arriving birds, the migrating fowls, the clouds of pigeons sweeping across the sky or filling the woods, the elfin horn of the first honey-bee venturing abroad in the middle of the day, the clear piping of the little frogs in the marshes at sundown, the campfire in the sugar-bush, the smoke seen afar rising over the trees, the tinge of green that comes so suddenly on the sunny knolls and slopes, the full translucent streams, the waxing and warming sun,--how these things and others like them are noted by the eager eye and ear! April is my natal month, and I am born again into new delight and new surprises at each return of it. Its name has an indescribable charm to me. Its two syllables are like the calls of the first birds,--like that of the phoebe-bird, or of the meadowlark. Its very snows are fertilizing, and are called the poor man's manure. Then its odors! I am thrilled by its fresh and indescribable odors,--the perfume of the bursting sod, of the quickened roots and rootlets, of the mould under the leaves, of the fresh furrows. No other month has odors like it. The west wind the other day came fraught with a perfume that was to the sense of smell what a wild and delicate strain of music is to the ear. It was almost transcendental. I walked across the hill with my nose in the air taking it in. It lasted for two days. I imagined it came from the willows of a distant swamp, whose catkins were affording the bees their first pollen: or did it come from much farther,--from beyond the horizon, the accumulated breath of innumerable farms and budding forests? The main characteristic of these April odors is their uncloying freshness. They are not sweet, they are oftener bitter, they are penetrating and lyrical. I know well the odors of May and June, of the world of meadows and orchards bursting into bloom, but they are not so ineffable and immaterial and so stimulating to the sense as the incense of April. The season of which I speak does not correspond with the April of the almanac in all sections of our vast geography. It answers to March in Virginia and Maryland, while in parts of New York and New England it laps well over into May. It begins when the partridge drums, when the hyla pipes, when the shad start up the rivers, when the grass greens in the spring runs, and it ends when the leaves are unfolding and the last snowflake dissolves in midair. It may be the first of May before the first swallow appears, before the whip-poor-will is heard, before the wood thrush sings; but it is April as long as there is snow upon the mountains, no matter what the almanac may say. Our April is, in fact, a kind of Alpine summer, full of such contrasts and touches of wild, delicate beauty as no other season affords. The deluded citizen fancies there is nothing enjoyable in the country till June, and so misses the freshest, tenderest part. It is as if one should miss strawberries and begin his fruit-eating with melons and peaches. These last are good,--supremely so, they are melting and luscious,--but nothing so thrills and penetrates the taste, and wakes up and teases the papillae of the tongue, as the uncloying strawberry. What midsummer sweetness half so distracting as its brisk sub-acid flavor, and what splendor of full-leaved June can stir the blood like the best of leafless April? One characteristic April feature, and one that delights me very much, is the perfect emerald of the spring runs while the fields are yet brown and sere,--strips and patches of the most vivid velvet green on the slopes and in the valleys. How the eye grazes there, and is filled and refreshed! I had forgotten what a marked feature this was until I recently rode in an open wagon for three days through a mountainous, pastoral country, remarkable for its fine springs. Those delicious green patches are yet in my eye. The fountains flowed with May. Where no springs occurred, there were hints and suggestions of springs about the fields and by the roadside in the freshened grass,--sometimes overflowing a space in the form of an actual fountain. The water did not quite get to the surface in such places, but sent its influence. The fields of wheat and rye, too, how they stand out of the April landscape,--great green squares on a field of brown or gray! Among April sounds there is none more welcome or suggestive to me than the voice of the little frogs piping in the marshes. No bird-note can surpass it as a spring token; and as it is not mentioned, to my knowledge, by the poets and writers of other lands, I am ready to believe it is characteristic of our season alone. You may be sure April has really come when this little amphibian creeps out of the mud and inflates its throat. We talk of the bird inflating its throat, but you should see this tiny minstrel inflate _its_ throat, which becomes like a large bubble, and suggests a drummer-boy with his drum slung very high. In this drum, or by the aid of it, the sound is produced. Generally the note is very feeble at first, as if the frost was not yet all out of the creature's throat, and only one voice will be heard, some prophet bolder than all the rest, or upon whom the quickening ray of spring has first fallen. And it often happens that he is stoned for his pains by the yet unpacified element, and is compelled literally to "shut up" beneath a fall of snow or a heavy frost. Soon, however, he lifts up his voice again with more confidence, and is joined by others and still others, till in due time, say toward the last of the month, there is a shrill musical uproar, as the sun is setting, in every marsh and bog in the land. It is a plaintive sound, and I have heard people from the city speak of it as lonesome and depressing, but to the lover of the country it is a pure spring melody. The little piper will sometimes climb a bulrush, to which he clings like a sailor to a mast, and send forth his shrill call. There is a Southern species, heard when you have reached the Potomac, whose note is far more harsh and crackling. To stand on the verge of a swamp vocal with these, pains and stuns the ear. The call of the Northern species is far more tender and musical. [Footnote: The Southern species is called the green hyla. I have since heard them in my neighborhood on the Hudson.] Then is there anything like a perfect April morning? One hardly knows what the sentiment of it is, but it is something very delicious. It is youth and hope. It is a new earth and a new sky. How the air transmits sounds, and what an awakening, prophetic character all sounds have! The distant barking of a dog, or the lowing of a cow, or the crowing of a cock, seems from out the heart of Nature, and to be a call to come forth. The great sun appears to have been reburnished, and there is something in his first glance above the eastern hills, and the way his eye-beams dart right and left and smite the rugged mountains into gold, that quickens the pulse and inspires the heart. Across the fields in the early morning I hear some of the rare April birds,--the chewink and the brown thrasher. The robin, the bluebird, the song sparrow, the phoebe-bird, come in March; but these two ground-birds are seldom heard till toward the last of April. The ground-birds are all tree-singers or air-singers; they must have an elevated stage to speak from. Our long-tailed thrush, or thrasher, like its congeners the catbird and the mockingbird, delights in a high branch of some solitary tree, whence it will pour out its rich and intricate warble for an hour together. This bird is the great American chipper. There is no other bird that I know of that can chip with such emphasis and military decision as this yellow-eyed songster. It is like the click of a giant gunlock. Why is the thrasher so stealthy? It always seems to be going about on tiptoe. I never knew it to steal anything, and yet it skulks and hides like a fugitive from justice. One never sees it flying aloft in the air and traversing the world openly, like most birds, but it darts along fences and through bushes as if pursued by a guilty conscience. Only when the musical fit is upon it does it come up into full view, and invite the world to hear and behold. The chewink is a shy bird also, but not stealthy. It is very inquisitive, and sets up a great scratching among the leaves, apparently to attract your attention. The male is perhaps the most conspicuously marked of all the ground-birds except the bobolink, being black above, bay on the sides, and white beneath. The bay is in compliment to the leaves he is forever scratching among,--they have rustled against his breast and sides so long that these parts have taken their color; but whence come the white and the black? The bird seems to be aware that his color betrays him, for there are few birds in the woods so careful about keeping themselves screened from view. When in song, its favorite perch is the top of some high bush near to cover. On being disturbed at such times, it pitches down into the brush and is instantly lost to view. This is the bird that Thomas Jefferson wrote to Wilson about, greatly exciting the latter's curiosity. Wilson was just then upon the threshold of his career as an ornithologist, and had made a drawing of the Canada jay which he sent to the President. It was a new bird, and in reply Jefferson called his attention to a "curious bird" which was everywhere to be heard, but scarcely ever to be seen. He had for twenty years interested the young sportsmen of his neighborhood to shoot one for him, but without success. "It is in all the forests, from spring to fall," he says in his letter, "and never but on the tops of the tallest trees, from which it perpetually serenades us with some of the sweetest notes, and as clear as those of the nightingale. I have followed it for miles, without ever but once getting a good view of it. It is of the size and make of the mockingbird, lightly thrush-colored on the back, and a grayish white on the breast and belly. Mr. Randolph, my son-in-law, was in possession of one which had been shot by a neighbor," etc. Randolph pronounced it a flycatcher, which was a good way wide of the mark. Jefferson must have seen only the female, after all his tramp, from his description of the color; but he was doubtless following his own great thoughts more than the bird, else he would have had an earlier view. The bird was not a new one, but was well known then as the ground-robin. The President put Wilson on the wrong scent by his erroneous description, and it was a long time before the latter got at the truth of the case. But Jefferson's letter is a good sample of those which specialists often receive from intelligent persons who have seen or heard something in their line very curious or entirely new, and who set the man of science agog by a description of the supposed novelty,--a description that generally fits the facts of the case about as well as your coat fits the chair-back. Strange and curious things in the air, and in the water, and in the earth beneath, are seen every day except by those who are looking for them, namely, the naturalists. When Wilson or Audubon gets his eye on the unknown bird, the illusion vanishes, and your phenomenon turns out to be one of the commonplaces of the fields or woods. A prominent April bird, that one does not have to go to the woods or away from his own door to see and hear, is the hardy and ever-welcome meadowlark. What a twang there is about this bird, and what vigor! It smacks of the soil. It is the winged embodiment of the spirit of our spring meadows. What emphasis in its _"z-d-t, z-d-t"_ and what character in its long, piercing note! Its straight, tapering, sharp beak is typical of its voice. Its note goes like a shaft from a crossbow; it is a little too sharp and piercing when near at hand, but, heard in the proper perspective, it is eminently melodious and pleasing. It is one of the major notes of the fields at this season. In fact, it easily dominates all others. _"Spring o' the year! spring o' the year!"_ it says, with a long-drawn breath, a little plaintive, but not complaining or melancholy. At times it indulges in something much more intricate and lark-like while hovering on the wing in midair, but a song is beyond the compass of its instrument, and the attempt usually ends in a breakdown. A clear, sweet, strong, high-keyed note, uttered from some knoll or rock, or stake in the fence, is its proper vocal performance. It has the build and walk and flight of the quail and the grouse. It gets up before you in much the same manner, and falls an easy prey to the crack shot. Its yellow breast, surmounted by a black crescent, it need not be ashamed to turn to the morning sun, while its coat of mottled gray is in perfect keeping with the stubble amid which it walks. The two lateral white quills in its tail seem strictly in character. These quills spring from a dash of scorn and defiance in the bird's make-up. By the aid of these, it can almost emit a flash as it struts about the fields and jerks out its sharp notes. They give a rayed, a definite and piquant expression to its movements. This bird is not properly a lark, but a starling, say the ornithologists, though it is lark-like in its habits, being a walker and entirely a ground-bird. Its color also allies it to the true lark. I believe there is no bird in the English or European fields that answers to this hardy pedestrian of our meadows. He is a true American, and his note one of our characteristic April sounds. Another marked April note, proceeding sometimes from the meadows, but more frequently from the rough pastures and borders of the woods, is the call of the high-hole, or golden-shafted woodpecker. It is quite as strong as that of the meadowlark, but not so long-drawn and piercing. It is a succession of short notes rapidly uttered, as if the bird said _"if-if-if-if-if-if-if."_ The notes of the ordinary downy and hairy woodpeckers suggest, in some way, the sound of a steel punch; but that of the high-hole is much softer, and strikes on the ear with real springtime melody. The high-hole is not so much a wood-pecker as he is a ground-pecker. He subsists largely on ants and crickets, and does not appear till they are to be found. In Solomon's description of spring, the voice of the turtle is prominent, but our turtle, or mourning dove, though it arrives in April, can hardly be said to contribute noticeably to the open-air sounds. Its call is so vague, and soft, and mournful,--in fact, so remote and diffused,--that few persons ever hear it at all. Such songsters as the cow blackbird are noticeable at this season, though they take a back seat a little later. It utters a peculiarly liquid April sound. Indeed, one would think its crop was full of water, its notes so bubble up and regurgitate, and are delivered with such an apparent stomachic contraction. This bird is the only feathered polygamist we have. The females are greatly in excess of the males, and the latter are usually attended by three or four of the former. As soon as the other birds begin to build, they are on the _qui vive,_ prowling about like gypsies, not to steal the young of others, but to steal their eggs into other birds' nests, and so shirk the labor and responsibility of hatching and rearing their own young. As these birds do not mate, and as therefore there can be little or no rivalry or competition between the males, one wonders--in view of Darwin's teaching--why one sex should have brighter and richer plumage than the other, which is the fact. The males are easily distinguished from the dull and faded females by their deep glossy-black coats. The April of English literature corresponds nearly to our May. In Great Britain, the swallow and the cuckoo usually arrive by the middle of April; with us, their appearance is a week or two later. Our April, at its best, is a bright, laughing face under a hood of snow, like the English March, but presenting sharper contrasts, a greater mixture of smiles and tears and icy looks than are known to our ancestral climate. Indeed, Winter sometimes retraces his steps in this month, and unburdens himself of the snows that the previous cold has kept back; but we are always sure of a number of radiant, equable days,--days that go before the bud, when the sun embraces the earth with fervor and determination. How his beams pour into the woods till the mould under the leaves is warm and emits an odor! The waters glint and sparkle, the birds gather in groups, and even those unused to singing find a voice. On the streets of the cities, what a flutter, what bright looks and gay colors! I recall one preëminent day of this kind last April. I made a note of it in my note-book. The earth seemed suddenly to emerge from a wilderness of clouds and chilliness into one of these blue sunlit spaces. How the voyagers rejoiced! Invalids came forth, old men sauntered down the street, stocks went up, and the political outlook brightened. Such days bring out the last of the hibernating animals. The woodchuck unrolls and creeps out of his den to see if his clover has started yet. The torpidity leaves the snakes and the turtles, and they come forth and bask in the sun. There is nothing so small, nothing so great, that it does not respond to these celestial spring days, and give the pendulum of life a fresh start. April is also the month of the new furrow. As soon as the frost is gone and the ground settled, the plow is started upon the hill, and at each bout I see its brightened mould-board flash in the sun. Where the last remnants of the snowdrift lingered yesterday the plow breaks the sod to-day. Where the drift was deepest the grass is pressed flat, and there is a deposit of sand and earth blown from the fields to windward. Line upon line the turf is reversed, until there stands out of the neutral landscape a ruddy square visible for miles, or until the breasts of the broad hills glow like the breasts of the robins. Then who would not have a garden in April? to rake together the rubbish and burn it up, to turn over the renewed soil, to scatter the rich compost, to plant the first seed, or bury the first tuber! It is not the seed that is planted, any more than it is I that is planted; it is not the dry stalks and weeds that are burned up, any more than it is my gloom and regrets that are consumed. An April smoke makes a clean harvest. I think April is the best month to be born in. One is just in time, so to speak, to catch the first train, which is made up in this month. My April chickens always turn out best. They get an early start; they have rugged constitutions. Late chickens cannot stand the heavy dews, or withstand the predaceous hawks. In April all nature starts with you. You have not come out of your hibernaculum too early or too late; the time is ripe, and, if you do not keep pace with the rest, why, the fault is not in the season. V SPRING POEMS There is no month oftener on the tongues of the poets than April. It is the initiative month; it opens the door of the seasons; the interest and expectations of the untried, the untasted, lurk in it, "From you have I been absent in the spring," says Shakespeare in one of his sonnets,-- "When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim, Hath put a spirit of youth in everything, That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him." The following poem, from Tennyson's "In Memoriam," might be headed "April," and serve as descriptive of parts of our season:-- "Now fades the last long streak of snow, Now bourgeons every maze of quick About the flowering squares, and thick By ashen roots the violets blow. "Now rings the woodland loud and long, The distance takes a lovelier hue, And drowned in yonder living blue The lark becomes a sightless song. "Now dance the lights on lawn and lea, The flocks are whiter down the vale, And milkier every milky sail On winding stream or distant sea; "Where now the sea-mew pipes, or dives In yonder greening gleam, and fly The happy birds, that change their sky To build and brood; that live their lives "From land to land; and in my breast Spring wakens too; and my regret Becomes an April violet, And buds and blossoms like the rest." In the same poem the poet asks:-- "Can trouble live with April days?" Yet they are not all jubilant chords that this season awakens. Occasionally there is an undertone of vague longing and sadness, akin to that which one experiences in autumn. Hope for a moment assumes the attitude of memory and stands with reverted look. The haze, that in spring as well as in fall sometimes descends and envelops all things, has in it in some way the sentiment of music, of melody, and awakens pensive thoughts. Elizabeth Akers, in her "April," has recognized and fully expressed this feeling. I give the first and last stanzas:-- "The strange, sweet days are here again, The happy-mournful days; The songs which trembled on our lips Are half complaint, half praise. "Swing, robin, on the budded sprays, And sing your blithest tune;-- Help us across these homesick days Into the joy of June!" This poet has also given a touch of spring in her "March," which, however, should be written "April" in the New England climate:-- "The brown buds thicken on the trees, Unbound, the free streams sing, As March leads forth across the leas The wild and windy spring. "Where in the fields the melted snow Leaves hollows warm and wet, Ere many days will sweetly blow The first blue violet." But on the whole the poets have not been eminently successful in depicting spring. The humid season, with its tender, melting blue sky, its fresh, earthy smells, its new furrow, its few simple signs and awakenings here and there, and its strange feeling of unrest,--how difficult to put its charms into words! None of the so-called pastoral poets have succeeded in doing it. That is the best part of spring which escapes a direct and matter-of-fact description of her. There is more of spring in a line or two of Chaucer and Spenser than in the elaborate portraits of her by Thomson or Pope, because the former had spring in their hearts, and the latter only in their inkhorns. Nearly all Shakespeare's songs are spring songs,--full of the banter, the frolic, and the love-making of the early season. What an unloosed current, too, of joy and fresh new life and appetite in Burns! In spring everything has such a margin! there are such spaces of silence! The influences are at work underground. Our delight is in a few things. The drying road is enough; a single wild flower, the note of the first bird, the partridge drumming in the April woods, the restless herds, the sheep steering for the uplands, the cow lowing in the highway or hiding her calf in the bushes, the first fires, the smoke going up through the shining atmosphere, from the burning of rubbish in gardens and old fields,--each of these simple things fills the breast with yearning and delight, for they are tokens of the spring. The best spring poems have this singleness and sparseness. Listen to Solomon: "For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land." In Wordsworth are some things that breathe the air of spring. These lines, written in early spring, afford a good specimen:-- "I heard a thousand blended notes, While in a grove I sate reclined, In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts Bring sad thoughts to the mind." "To her fair works did Nature link The human soul that through me ran; And much it grieved my heart to think What man has made of man. "Through primrose tufts, in that green bower, The periwinkle trailed its wreaths; And 't is my faith that every flower Enjoys the air it breathes. "The birds around me hopped and played, Their thoughts I cannot measure: But the least motion which they made It seemed a thrill of pleasure." Or these from another poem, written in his usual study, "Out-of-Doors," and addressed to his sister:-- "It is the first mild day of March, Each minute sweeter than before; The redbreast sings from the tall larch That stands beside the door. "There is a blessing in the air, Which seems a sense of joy to yield To the bare trees, and mountains bare, And grass in the green field. . . . . . . . . . "Love, now a universal birth, From heart to heart is stealing, From earth to man, from man to earth; It is the hour of feeling. "One moment now may give us more Than years of toiling reason: Our minds shall drink at every pore The spirit of the season." It is the simplicity of such lines, like the naked branches of the trees or the unclothed fields, and the spring-like depth of feeling and suggestion they hold, that make them so appropriate to this season. At this season I often find myself repeating these lines of his also:-- "My heart leaps up, when I behold A rainbow in the sky; So was it, when my life began; So is it, now I am a man; So be it, when I shall grow old, Or let me die!" Though there are so few good poems especially commemorative of the spring, there have no doubt been spring poets,--poets with such newness and fullness of life, and such quickening power, that the world is re-created, as it were, beneath their touch. Of course this is in a measure so with all real poets. But the difference I would indicate may exist between poets of the same or nearly the same magnitude. Thus, in this light Tennyson is an autumnal poet, mellow and dead-ripe, and was so from the first; while Wordsworth has much more of the spring in him, is nearer the bone of things and to primitive conditions. Among the old poems, one which seems to me to have much of the charm of springtime upon it is the story of Cupid and Psyche in Apuleius. The songs, gambols, and wooings of the early birds are not more welcome and suggestive. How graceful and airy, and yet what a tender, profound, human significance it contains! But the great vernal poem, doubly so in that it is the expression of the springtime of the race, the boyhood of man as well, is the Iliad of Homer. What faith, what simple wonder, what unconscious strength, what beautiful savagery, what magnanimous enmity,--a very paradise of war! Though so young a people, there is not much of the feeling of spring in any of our books. The muse of our poets is wise rather than joyous. There is no excess or extravagance or unruliness in her. There are spring sounds and tokens in Emerson's "May-Day:"-- "April cold with dropping rain Willows and lilacs brings again, The whistle of returning birds, And trumpet-lowing of the herds. The scarlet maple-keys betray What potent blood hath modest May, What fiery force the earth renews, The wealth of forms, the flush of hues; What joy in rosy waves outpoured Flows from the heart of Love, the Lord." But this is not spring in the blood. Among the works of our young and rising poets, I am not certain but that Mr. Gilder's "New Day" is entitled to rank as a spring poem in the sense in which I am speaking. It is full of gayety and daring, and full of the reckless abandon of the male bird when he is winning his mate. It is full also of the tantalizing suggestiveness, the half-lights and shades, of April and May. Of prose poets who have the charm of the springtime upon them, the best recent example I know of is Björnson, the Norwegian romancist. What especially makes his books spring-like is their freshness and sweet good faith. There is also a reticence and an unwrought suggestiveness about them that is like the promise of buds and early flowers. Of Turgenieff, the Russian, much the same thing might be said. His stories are simple and elementary, and have none of the elaborate hair-splitting and forced hot-house character of the current English or American novel. They spring from stronger, more healthful and manly conditions, and have a force in them that is like a rising, incoming tide. VI OUR RURAL DIVINITY I wonder that Wilson Flagg did not include the cow among his "Picturesque Animals," for that is where she belongs. She has not the classic beauty of the horse, but in picture-making qualities she is far ahead of him. Her shaggy, loose-jointed body; her irregular, sketchy outlines, like those of the landscape,--the hollows and ridges, the slopes and prominences; her tossing horns, her bushy tail, tier swinging gait, her tranquil, ruminating habits,--all tend to make her an object upon which the artist eye loves to dwell. The artists are forever putting her into pictures, too. In rural landscape scenes she is an important feature. Behold her grazing in the pastures and on the hillsides, or along banks of streams, or ruminating under wide-spreading trees, or standing belly-deep in the creek or pond, or lying upon the smooth places in the quiet summer afternoon, the day's grazing done, and waiting to be summoned home to be milked; and again in the twilight lying upon the level summit of the hill, or where the sward is thickest and softest; or in winter a herd of them filing along toward the spring to drink, or being "foddered" from the stack in the field upon the new snow,--surely the cow is a picturesque animal, and all her goings and comings are pleasant to behold. I looked into Hamerton's clever book on the domestic animals also, expecting to find my divinity duly celebrated, but he passes her by and contemplates the bovine qualities only as they appear in the ox and the bull. Neither have the poets made much of the cow, but have rather dwelt upon the steer, or the ox yoked to the plow. I recall this touch from Emerson:-- "The heifer that lows in the upland farm, Far heard, lows not thine ear to charm." But the ear is charmed, nevertheless, especially if it be not too near, and the air be still and dense, or hollow, as the farmer says. And again, if it be springtime and she task that powerful bellows of hers to its utmost capacity, how round the sound is, and how far it goes over the hills! The cow has at least four tones or lows. First, there is her alarmed or distressed low when deprived of her calf, or when separated from her mates,--her low of affection. Then there is her call of hunger, a petition for food, sometimes full of impatience, or her answer to the farmer's call, full of eagerness. Then there is that peculiar frenzied bawl she utters on smelling blood, which causes every member of the herd to lift its head and hasten to the spot,--the native cry of the clan. When she is gored or in great danger she bawls also, but that is different. And lastly, there is the long, sonorous volley she lets off on the hills or in the yard, or along the highway, and which seems to be expressive of a kind of unrest and vague longing,--the longing of the imprisoned Io for her lost identity. She sends her voice forth so that every god on Mount Olympus can hear her plaint. She makes this sound in the morning, especially in the spring, as she goes forth to graze. One of our rural poets, Myron Benton, whose verse often has the flavor of sweet cream, has written some lines called "Rumination," in which the cow is the principal figure, and with which I am permitted to adorn my theme. The poet first gives his attention to a little brook that "breaks its shallow gossip" at his feet and "drowns the oriole's voice:"-- "But moveth not that wise and ancient cow, Who chews her juicy cud so languid now Beneath her favorite elm, whose drooping bough Lulls all but inward vision fast asleep: But still, her tireless tail a pendulum sweep Mysterious clock-work guides, and some hid pulley Her drowsy cud, each moment, raises duly. "Of this great, wondrous world she has seen more Than you, my little brook, and cropped its store Of succulent grass on many a mead and lawn; And strayed to distant uplands in the dawn. And she has had some dark experience Of graceless man's ingratitude; and hence Her ways have not been ways of pleasantness, Nor all her paths of peace. But her distress And grief she has lived past; your giddy round Disturbs her not, for she is learned profound In deep brahminical philosophy. She chews the cud of sweetest revery Above your worldly prattle, brooklet merry, Oblivious of all things sublunary." The cow figures in Grecian mythology, and in the Oriental literature is treated as a sacred animal. "The clouds are cows and the rain milk." I remember what Herodotus says of the Egyptians' worship of heifers and steers; and in the traditions of the Celtic nations the cow is regarded as a divinity. In Norse mythology the milk of the cow Andhumbla afforded nourishment to the Frost giants, and it was she that licked into being and into shape a god, the father of Odin. If anything could lick a god into shape, certainly the cow could do it. You may see her perform this office for young Taurus any spring. She licks him out of the fogs and bewilderments and uncertainties in which he finds himself on first landing upon these shores, and up onto his feet in an incredibly short time. Indeed, that potent tongue of hers can almost make the dead alive any day, and the creative lick of the old Scandinavian mother cow is only a large-lettered rendering of the commonest facts. The horse belongs to the fiery god Mars. He favors war, and is one of its oldest, most available, and most formidable engines. The steed is clothed with thunder, and smells the battle from afar; but the cattle upon a thousand hills denote that peace and plenty bear sway in the land. The neighing of the horse is a call to battle; but the lowing of old Brockleface in the valley brings the golden age again. The savage tribes are never without the horse; the Scythians are all mounted; but the cow would tame and humanize them. When the Indians will cultivate the cow, I shall think their civilization fairly begun. Recently, when the horses were sick with the epizoötic, and the oxen came to the city and helped to do their work, what an Arcadian air again filled the streets! But the dear old oxen,--how awkward and distressed they looked! Juno wept in the face of every one of them. The horse is a true citizen, and is entirely at home in the paved streets; but the ox,--what a complete embodiment of all rustic and rural things! Slow, deliberate, thick-skinned, powerful, hulky, ruminating, fragrant-breathed, when he came to town the spirit and suggestion of all Georgics and Bucolics came with him. O citizen, was it only a plodding, unsightly brute that went by? Was there no chord in your bosom, long silent, that sweetly vibrated at the sight of that patient, Herculean couple? Did you smell no hay or cropped herbage, see no summer pastures with circles of cool shade, hear no voice of herds among the hills? They were very likely the only horses your grandfather ever had. Not much trouble to harness and unharness them. Not much vanity on the road in those days. They did all the work on the early pioneer farm. They were the gods whose rude strength first broke the soil. They could live where the moose and the deer could. If there was no clover or timothy to be had, then the twigs of the basswood and birch would do. Before there were yet fields given up to grass, they found ample pasturage in the woods. Their wide-spreading horns gleamed in the duskiness, and their paths and the paths of the cows became the future roads and highways, or even the streets of great cities. All the descendants of Odin show a bovine trace, and cherish and cultivate the cow. In Norway she is a great feature. Professor Boyesen describes what he calls the _saeter_, the spring migration of the dairy and dairymaids, with all the appurtenances of butter and cheese making, from the valleys to the distant plains upon the mountains, where the grass keeps fresh and tender till fall. It is the great event of the year in all the rural districts. Nearly the whole family go with the cattle and remain with them. At evening the cows are summoned home with a long horn, called the _loor,_ in the hands of the milkmaid. The whole herd comes winding down the mountain-side toward the _saeter_ in obedience to the mellow blast. What were those old Vikings but thick-hided bulls that delighted in nothing so much as goring each other? And has not the charge of beefiness been brought much nearer home to us than that? But about all the northern races there is something that is kindred to cattle in the best sense,--something in their art and literature that is essentially pastoral, sweet-breathed, continent, dispassionate, ruminating, wide-eyed, soft-voiced,--a charm of kine, the virtue of brutes. The cow belongs more especially to the northern peoples, to the region of the good, green grass. She is the true _grazing_ animal. That broad, smooth, always dewy nose of hers is just the suggestion of greensward. She caresses the grass; she sweeps off the ends of the leaves; she reaps it with the soft sickle of her tongue. She crops close, but she does not bruise or devour the turf like the horse. She is the sward's best friend, and will make it thick and smooth as a carpet. "The turfy mountains where live the nibbling sheep" are not for her. Her muzzle is too blunt; then she does not _bite_ as do the sheep; she has no upper teeth; she _crops._ But on the lower slopes, and margins, and rich bottoms, she is at home. Where the daisy and the buttercup and clover bloom, and where corn will grow, is her proper domain. The agriculture of no country can long thrive without her. Not only a large part of the real, but much of the potential, wealth of the land is wrapped up in her. Then the cow has given us some good words and hints. How could we get along without the parable of the cow that gave a good pail of milk and then kicked it over? One could hardly keep house without it. Or the parable of the cream and the skimmed milk, or of the buttered bread? We know, too, through her aid, what the horns of the dilemma mean, and what comfort there is in the juicy cud of reverie. I have said the cow has not been of much service to the poets, and yet I remember that Jean Ingelow could hardly have managed her "High Tide" without "Whitefoot" and "Lightfoot" and "Cusha! Cusha! Cusha! calling;" or Trowbridge his "Evening at the Farm," in which the real call of the American farm-boy of "Co', boss! Co', boss! Co', Co'," makes a very musical refrain. Tennyson's charming "Milking Song" is another flower of poesy that has sprung up in my divinity's footsteps. What a variety of individualities a herd of cows presents when you have come to know them all, not only in form and color, but in manners and disposition! Some are timid and awkward, and the butt of the whole herd. Some remind you of deer. Some have an expression in the face like certain persons you have known. A petted and well-fed cow has a benevolent and gracious look; an ill-used and poorly fed one, a pitiful and forlorn look. Some cows have a masculine or ox expression; others are extremely feminine. The latter are the ones for milk. Some cows will kick like a horse; some jump fences like deer. Every herd has its ringleader, its unruly spirit,--one that plans all the mischief, and leads the rest through the fences into the grain or into the orchard. This one is usually quite different from the master spirit, the "boss of the yard." The latter is generally the most peaceful and law-abiding cow in the lot, and the least bullying and quarrelsome. But she is not to be trifled with; her will is law; the whole herd give way before her, those that have crossed horns with her and those that have not, but yielded their allegiance without crossing. I remember such a one among my father's milkers when I was a boy,--a slender-horned, deep-shouldered, large-uddered, dewlapped old cow that we always put first in the long stable, so she could not have a cow on each side of her to forage upon; for the master is yielded to no less in the stanchions than in the yard. She always had the first place anywhere. She had her choice of standing-room in the milking-yard, and when she wanted to lie down there or in the fields the best and softest spot was hers. When the herd were foddered from the stack or barn, or fed with pumpkins in the fall, she was always first served. Her demeanor was quiet but impressive. She never bullied or gored her mates, but literally ruled them with the breath of her nostrils. If any new-comer or ambitious younger cow, however, chafed under her supremacy, she was ever ready to make good her claims. And with what spirit she would fight when openly challenged! She was a whirlwind of pluck and valor; and not after one defeat or two defeats would she yield the championship. The boss cow, when overcome, seems to brood over her disgrace, and day after day will meet her rival in fierce combat. A friend of mine, a pastoral philosopher, whom I have consulted in regard to the master cow, thinks it is seldom the case that one rules all the herd, if it number many, but that there is often one that will rule nearly all. "Curiously enough," he says, "a case like this will often occur: No. 1 will whip No. 2; No. 2 whips No. 3; and No. 3 whips No. 1; so around in a circle. This is not a mistake; it is often the case. I remember," he continued, "we once had feeding out of a large bin in the centre of the yard six cows who mastered right through in succession from No. 1 to No. 6; _but_ No. 6 _paid off the score by whipping No. 1._ I often watched them when they were all trying to feed out of the box, and of course trying, dog-in-the-manger fashion, each to prevent any other she could. They would often get in the order to do it very systematically, since they could keep rotating about the box till the chain happened to get broken somewhere, when there would be confusion. Their mastership, you know, like that between nations, is constantly changing. There are always Napoleons who hold their own through many vicissitudes; but the ordinary cow is continually liable to lose her foothold. Some cow she has always despised, and has often sent tossing across the yard at her horns' ends, some pleasant morning will return the compliment and pay off old scores." But my own observation has been that, in herds in which there have been no important changes for several years, the question of might gets pretty well settled, and some one cow becomes the acknowledged ruler. The bully of the yard is never the master, but usually a second or third rate pusher that never loses an opportunity to hook those beneath her, or to gore the masters if she can get them in a tight place. If such a one can get loose in the stable, she is quite certain to do mischief. She delights to pause in the open bars and turn and keep those behind her at bay till she sees a pair of threatening horns pressing toward her, when she quickly passes on. As one cow masters all, so there is one cow that is mastered by all. These are the two extremes of the herd, the head and the tail. Between them are all grades of authority, with none so poor but hath some poorer to do her reverence. The cow has evidently come down to us from a wild or semi-wild state; perhaps is a descendant of those wild, shaggy cattle of which a small band is still preserved in some nobleman's park in Scotland. Cuvier seems to have been of this opinion. One of the ways in which her wild instincts still crop out is the disposition she shows in spring to hide her calf,--a common practice among the wild herds. Her wild nature would be likely to come to the surface at this crisis if ever; and I have known cows that practiced great secrecy in dropping their calves. As their time approached, they grew restless, a wild and excited look was upon them; and if left free, they generally set out for the woods, or for some other secluded spot. After the calf is several hours old, and has got upon its feet and had its first meal, the dam by some sign commands it to lie down and remain quiet while she goes forth to feed. If the calf is approached at such time, it plays "possum," pretends to be dead or asleep, till, on finding this ruse does not succeed, it mounts to its feet, bleats loudly and fiercely, and charges desperately upon the intruder. But it recovers from this wild scare in a little while, and never shows signs of it again. The habit of the cow, also, in eating the placenta, looks to me like a vestige of her former wild instincts,--the instinct to remove everything that would give the wild beasts a clew or a scent, and so attract them to her helpless young. How wise and sagacious the cows become that run upon the street, or pick their living along the highway! The mystery of gates and bars is at last solved to them. They ponder over them by night, they lurk about them by day, till they acquire a new sense,--till they become _en rapport_ with them and know when they are open and unguarded. The garden gate, if it open into the highway at any point, is never out of the mind of these roadsters, or out of their calculations. They calculate upon the chances of its being left open a certain number of times in the season; and if it be but once, and only for five minutes, your cabbage and sweet corn suffer. What villager, or countryman either, has not been awakened at night by the squeaking and crunching of those piratical jaws under the window, or in the direction of the vegetable patch? I have had the cows, after they had eaten up my garden, break into the stable where my own milcher was tied, and gore her and devour her meal. Yes, life presents but one absorbing problem to the street cow, and that is how to get into your garden. She catches glimpses of it over the fence or through the pickets, and her imagination or her epigastrium is inflamed. When the spot is surrounded by a high board fence, I think I have seen her peeping at the cabbages through a knothole. At last she learns to open the gate. It is a great triumph of bovine wit. She does it with her horn or her nose, or may be with her ever-ready tongue. I doubt if she has ever yet penetrated the mystery of the newer patent fastenings; but the old-fashioned thumb-latch she can see through, give her time enough. A large, lank, muley or polled cow used to annoy me in this way when I was a dweller in a certain pastoral city. I more than half suspected she was turned in by some one; so one day I watched. Presently I heard the gate-latch rattle; the gate swung open, and in walked the old buffalo. On seeing me she turned and ran like a horse. I then fastened the gate on the inside and watched again. After long waiting the old cow came quickly round the corner and approached the gate. She lifted the latch with her nose. Then, as the gate did not move, she lifted it again and again. Then she gently nudged it. Then, the obtuse gate not taking the hint, she butted it gently, then harder and still harder, till it rattled again. At this juncture I emerged from my hiding-place, when the old villain scampered off with great precipitation. She knew she was trespassing, and she had learned that there were usually some swift penalties attached to this pastime. I have owned but three cows and loved but one. That was the first one, Chloe, a bright red, curly-pated, golden-skinned Devonshire cow, that an ocean steamer landed for me upon the banks of the Potomac one bright May Day many clover summers ago. She came from the north, from the pastoral regions of the Catskills, to graze upon the broad commons of the national capital. I was then the fortunate and happy lessee of an old place with an acre of ground attached, almost within the shadow of the dome of the Capitol. Behind a high but aged and decrepit board fence I indulged my rural and unclerical tastes. I could look up from my homely tasks and cast a potato almost in the midst of that cataract of marble steps that flows out of the north wing of the patriotic pile. Ah! when that creaking and sagging back gate closed behind me in the evening, I was happy; and when it opened for my egress thence in the morning, I was not happy. Inside that gate was a miniature farm, redolent of homely, primitive life, a tumble-down house and stables and implements of agriculture and horticulture, broods of chickens, and growing pumpkins, and a thousand antidotes to the weariness of an artificial life. Outside of it were the marble and iron palaces, the paved and blistering streets, and the high, vacant mahogany desk of a government clerk. In that ancient inclosure I took an earth bath twice a day. I planted myself as deep in the soil as I could, to restore the normal tone and freshness of my system, impaired by the above-mentioned government mahogany. I have found there is nothing like the earth to draw the various social distempers out of one. The blue devils take flight at once if they see you mean to bury them and make compost of them. Emerson intimates that the scholar had better not try to have two gardens; but I could never spend an hour hoeing up dock and red-root and twitch-grass without in some way getting rid of many weeds and fungi, unwholesome growths, that a petty indoor life is forever fostering in my moral and intellectual nature. But the finishing touch was not given till Chloe came. She was the jewel for which this homely setting waited. My agriculture had some object then. The old gate never opened with such alacrity as when she paused before it. How we waited for her coming! Should I send Drewer, the colored patriarch, for her? No; the master of the house himself should receive Juno at the capital. "One cask for you," said the clerk, referring to the steamer bill of lading. "Then I hope it's a cask of milk," I said. "I expected a cow." "One cask, it says here." "Well, let's see it; I'll warrant it has horns and is tied by a rope;" which proved to be the case, for there stood the only object that bore my name, chewing its cud, on the forward deck. How she liked the voyage I could not find out; but she seemed to relish so much the feeling of solid ground beneath her feet once more, that she led me a lively step all the way home. She cut capers in front of the White House, and tried twice to wind me up in the rope as we passed the Treasury. She kicked up her heels on the broad avenue, and became very coltish as she came under the walls of the Capitol. But that night the long-vacant stall in the old stable was filled, and the next morning the coffee had met with a change of heart. I had to go out twice with the lantern and survey my treasure before I went to bed. Did she not come from the delectable mountains, and did I not have a sort of filial regard for her as toward my foster-mother? This was during the Arcadian age at the capital, before the easy-going Southern ways had gone out and the prim new Northern ways had come in, and when the domestic animals were treated with distinguished consideration and granted the freedom of the city. There was a charm of cattle in the street and upon the commons; goats cropped your rosebushes through the pickets, and nooned upon your front porch; and pigs dreamed Arcadian dreams under your garden fence, or languidly frescoed it with pigments from the nearest pool. It was a time of peace; it was the poor man's golden age. Your cow, your goat, your pig, led vagrant, wandering lives, and picked up a subsistence wherever they could, like the bees, which was almost everywhere. Your cow went forth in the morning and came home fraught with milk at night, and you never troubled yourself where she went or how far she roamed. Chloe took very naturally to this kind of life. At first I had to go with her a few times and pilot her to the nearest commons, and then I left her to her own wit, which never failed her. What adventures she had, what acquaintances she made, how far she wandered, I never knew. I never came across her in my walks or rambles. Indeed, on several occasions I thought I would look her up and see her feeding in national pastures, but I never could find her. There were plenty of cows, but they were all strangers. But punctually, between four and five o'clock in the afternoon, her white horns would be seen tossing above the gate and her impatient low be heard. Sometimes, when I turned her forth in the morning, she would pause and apparently consider which way she would go. Should she go toward Kendall Green to-day, or follow the Tiber, or over by the Big Spring, or out around Lincoln Hospital? She seldom reached a conclusion till she had stretched forth her neck and blown a blast on her trumpet that awoke the echoes in the very lantern on the dome of the Capitol. Then, after one or two licks, she would disappear around the corner. Later in the season, when the grass was parched or poor on the commons, and the corn and cabbage tempting in the garden, Chloe was loath to depart in the morning, and her deliberations were longer than ever, and very often I had to aid her in coming to a decision. For two summers she was a wellspring of pleasure and profit in my farm of one acre, when, in an evil moment, I resolved to part with her and try another. In an evil moment I say, for from that time my luck in cattle left me. The goddess never forgave me the execution of that rash and cruel resolve. The day is indelibly stamped on my memory when I exposed my Chloe for sale in the public market-place. It was in November, a bright, dreamy, Indian summer day. A sadness oppressed me, not unmixed with guilt and remorse. An old Irish woman came to the market also with her pets to sell, a sow and five pigs, and took up a position next me. We condoled with each other; we bewailed the fate of our darlings together; we berated in chorus the white-aproned but blood-stained fraternity who prowled about us. When she went away for a moment I minded the pigs, and when I strolled about she minded my cow. How shy the innocent beast was of those carnal marketmen! How she would shrink away from them! When they put out a hand to feel her condition she would "scrooch" down her back, or bend this way or that, as if the hand were a branding-iron. So long as I stood by her head she felt safe--deluded creature!--and chewed the cud of sweet content; but the moment I left her side she seemed filled with apprehension, and followed me with her eyes, lowing softly and entreatingly till I returned. At last the money was counted out for her, and her rope surrendered to the hand of another. How that last look of alarm and incredulity, which I caught as I turned for a parting glance, went to my heart! Her stall was soon filled, or partly filled, and this time with a native,--a specimen of what may be called the cornstalk breed of Virginia; a slender, furtive, long-geared heifer just verging on cowhood, that in spite of my best efforts would wear a pinched and hungry look. She evidently inherited a humped back. It was a family trait, and evidence of the purity of her blood. For the native blooded cow of Virginia, from shivering over half rations of cornstalks in the open air during those bleak and windy winters, and roaming over those parched fields in summer, has come to have some marked features. For one thing, her pedal extremities seem lengthened; for another, her udder does not impede her traveling; for a third, her backbone inclines strongly to the curve; then, she despiseth hay. This last is a sure test. Offer a thorough-bred Virginia cow hay, and she will laugh in your face; but rattle the husks or shucks, and she knows you to be her friend. The new-comer even declined corn-meal at first. She eyed it furtively, then sniffed it suspiciously, but finally discovered that it bore some relation to her native "shucks," when she fell to eagerly. I cherish the memory of this cow, however, as the most affectionate brute I ever knew. Being deprived of her calf, she transferred her affections to her master, and would fain have made a calf of him, lowing in the most piteous and inconsolable manner when he was out of her sight, hardly forgetting her grief long enough to eat her meal, and entirely neglecting her beloved husks. Often in the middle of the night she would set up that sonorous lamentation, and continue it till sleep was chased from every eye in the household. This generally had the effect of bringing the object of her affection before her, but in a mood anything but filial or comforting. Still, at such times a kick seemed a comfort to her, and she would gladly have kissed the rod that was the instrument of my midnight wrath. But her tender star was destined soon to a fatal eclipse. Being tied with too long a rope on one occasion during my temporary absence, she got her head into the meal-barrel, and stopped not till she had devoured nearly half a bushel of dry meal. The singularly placid and benevolent look that beamed from the meal-besmeared face when I discovered her was something to be remembered. For the first time, also, her spinal column came near assuming a horizontal line. But the grist proved too much for her frail mill, and her demise took place on the third day, not of course without some attempt to relieve her on my part. I gave her, as is usual in such emergencies, everything I "could think of," and everything my neighbors could think of, besides some fearful prescriptions which I obtained from a German veterinary surgeon, but to no purpose. I imagined her poor maw distended and inflamed with the baking sodden mass which no physic could penetrate or enliven. Thus ended my second venture in live-stock. My third, which followed sharp upon the heels of this disaster, was scarcely more of a success. This time I led to the altar a buffalo cow, as they call the "muley" down South,--a large, spotted, creamy-skinned cow, with a fine udder, that I persuaded a Jew drover to part with for ninety dollars. "Pag like a dish rack (rag)," said he, pointing to her udder after she had been milked. "You vill come pack and gif me the udder ten tollar" (for he had demanded an even hundred), he continued, "after you have had her a gouple of days." True, I felt like returning to him after a "gouple of days," but not to pay the other ten dollars. The cow proved to be as blind as a bat, though capable of counterfeiting the act of seeing to perfection. For did she not lift up her head and follow with her eyes a dog that scaled the fence and ran through the other end of the lot, and the next moment dash my hopes thus raised by trying to walk over a locust-tree thirty feet high? And when I set the bucket before her containing her first mess of meal, she missed it by several inches, and her nose brought up against the ground. Was it a kind of far-sightedness and near blindness? That was it, I think; she had genius, but not talent; she could see the man in the moon, but was quite oblivious to the man immediately in her front. Her eyes were telescopic and required a long range. As long as I kept her in the stall, or confined to the inclosure, this strange eclipse of her sight was of little consequence. But when spring came, and it was time for her to go forth and seek her livelihood in the city's waste places, I was embarrassed. Into what remote corners or into what _terra incognita_ might she not wander! There was little doubt but that she would drift around home in the course of the summer, or perhaps as often as every week or two; but could she be trusted to find her way back every night? Perhaps she could be taught. Perhaps her other senses were acute enough to compensate in a measure for her defective vision. So I gave her lessons in the topography of the country. I led her forth to graze for a few hours each day and led her home again. Then I left her to come home alone, which feat she accomplished very encouragingly. She came feeling her way along, stepping very high, but apparently a most diligent and interested sight-seer. But she was not sure of the right house when she got to it, though she stared at it very hard. Again I turned her forth, and again she came back, her telescopic eyes apparently of some service to her. On the third day, there was a fierce thunder-storm late in the afternoon, and old buffalo did not come home. It had evidently scattered and bewildered what little wits she had. Being barely able to navigate those streets on a calm day, what could she be expected to do in a tempest? After the storm had passed, and near sundown, I set out in quest of her, but could get no clew. I heard that two cows had been struck by lightning about a mile out on the commons. My conscience instantly told me that one of them was mine. It would be a fit closing of the third act of this pastoral drama. Thitherward I bent my steps, and there upon the smooth plain I beheld the scorched and swollen forms of two cows slain by thunderbolts, but neither of them had ever been mine. The next day I continued the search, and the next, and the next. Finally I hoisted an umbrella over my head, for the weather had become hot, and set out deliberately and systematically to explore every foot of open common on Capitol Hill. I tramped many miles, and found every man's cow but my own,--some twelve or fifteen hundred, I should think. I saw many vagrant boys and Irish and colored women, nearly all of whom had seen a buffalo cow that very day that answered exactly to my description, but in such diverse and widely separate places that I knew it was no cow of mine. And it was astonishing how many times I was myself deceived; how many rumps or heads, or line backs or white flanks, I saw peeping over knolls, or from behind fences or other objects, that could belong to no cow but mine! Finally I gave up the search, concluded the cow had been stolen, and advertised her, offering a reward. But days passed, and no tidings were obtained. Hope began to burn pretty low,--was indeed on the point of going out altogether,--when one afternoon, as I was strolling over the commons (for in my walks I still hovered about the scenes of my lost milcher), I saw the rump of a cow, over a grassy knoll, that looked familiar. Coming nearer, the beast lifted up her head; and, behold! it was she! only a few squares from home, where doubtless she had been most of the time. I had overshot the mark in my search. I had ransacked the far-off, and had neglected the near-at-hand, as we are so apt to do. But she was ruined as a milcher, and her history thenceforward was brief and touching! VII BEFORE GENIUS If there did not something else go to the making of literature besides mere literary parts, even the best of them, how long ago the old bards and the Biblical writers would have been superseded by the learned professors and the gentlemanly versifiers of later times! Is there to-day a popular poet, using the English language, who does not, in technical acquirements and in the artificial adjuncts of poetry,--rhyme, metre, melody, and especially sweet, dainty fancies,--surpass Europe's and Asia's loftiest and oldest? Indeed, so marked is the success of the latter-day poets in this respect, that any ordinary reader may well be puzzled, and ask, if the shaggy antique masters are poets, what are the refined and euphonious producers of our own day? If we were to inquire what this something else is which is prerequisite to any deep and lasting success in literature, we should undoubtedly find that it is the man behind the book. It is the fashion of the day to attribute all splendid results to genius and culture. But genius and culture are not enough. "All other knowledge is hurtful to him who has not the science of honesty and goodness," says Montaigne. The quality of simple manhood, and the universal human traits which form the bond of union between man and man,--which form the basis of society, of the family, of government, of friendship,--are quite overlooked; and the credit is given to some special facility, or to brilliant and lucky hit. Does any one doubt that the great poets and artists are made up mainly of the most common universal human and heroic characteristics?--that in them, though working to other ends, is all that construct the soldier, the sailor, the farmer, the discoverer, the bringer-to-pass in any field, and that their work is good and enduring in proportion as it is saturated and fertilized by the qualities of these? Good human stock is the main dependence. No great poet ever appeared except from a race of good fighters, good eaters, good sleepers, good breeders. Literature dies with the decay of the _un-_literary element. It is not in the spirit of something far away in the clouds or under the moon, something ethereal, visionary, and anti-mundane, that Angelo, Dante, and Shakespeare work, but in the spirit of common Nature and of the homeliest facts; through these, and not away from them, the path of the creator lies. It is no doubt this tendency, always more or less marked in highly refined and cultivated times, to forget or overlook the primary basic qualities, and to parade and make much of verbal and technical acquirements, that led Huxley to speak with such bitter scorn of the "sensual caterwauling of the literary classes," for this is not the only country in which books are produced that are a mere skin of elegant words blown up by copious literary gas. In imaginative works, especially, much depends upon the quality of mere weight. A stern, material inertia is indispensable. It is like the immobility and the power of resistance of a piece of ordnance, upon which the force and efficacy of the projectile finally depend. In the most daring flights of the master, there is still something which remains indifferent and uncommitted, and which acts as reserve power, making the man always superior to his work. He must always leave the impression that if he wanted to pull harder or to fly higher he could easily do so. In Homer there is much that is not directly available for Homer's purposes as poet. This is his personality,--the real Homer,--which lies deeper than his talents and skill, and which works through these by indirections. This gives the authority; this is the unseen backer, which makes every promise good. What depths can a man sound but his own, or what heights explore? "We carry within us," says Sir Thomas Browne, "the wonders we seek without us." Indeed, there is a strict moral or ethical dependence of the capacity to conceive or to project great things upon the capacity to be or to do them. It is as true as any law of hydraulics or of statics, that the workmanship of a man can never rise above the level of his character. He can never adequately say or do anything greater than he himself is. There is no such thing, for instance, as deep insight into the mystery of Creation, without integrity and simplicity of character. In the highest mental results and conditions the whole being sympathizes. The perception of a certain range of truth, such as is indicated by Plato, Hegel, Swedenborg, and which is very far from what is called "religious" or "moral," I should regard as the best testimonial that could be offered of a man's probity and essential nobility of soul. Is it possible to imagine a fickle, inconstant, or a sly, vain, mean person reading and appreciating Emerson? Think of the real men of science, the great geologists and astronomers, one opening up time, the other space! Shall mere intellectual acumen be accredited with these immense results? What noble pride, self-reliance, and continuity of character underlie Newton's deductions! Only those books are for the making of men into which a man has gone in the making. Mere professional skill and sleight of hand, of themselves, are to be apprized as lightly in letters as in war or in government, or in any kind of leadership. Strong native qualities only avail in the long run; and the more these dominate over the artificial endowments, sloughing or dropping the latter in the final result, the more we are refreshed and enlarged. Who has not, at some period of his life, been captivated by the rhetoric and fine style of nearly all the popular authors of a certain sort, but at last waked up to discover that behind these brilliant names was no strong, loving man, but only a refined taste, a fertile invention, or a special talent of one kind or another. Think of the lather of the modern novel, and the fashion-plate men and women that figure in it! What noble person has Dickens sketched, or has any novelist since Scott? The utter poverty of almost every current novelist, in any grand universal human traits in his own character, is shown in nothing more clearly than in the _kind_ of interest the reader takes in his books. We are led along solely by the ingenuity of the plot, and a silly desire to see how the affair came out. What must be the effect, long continued, of this class of jugglers working upon the sympathies and the imagination of a nation of gestating women? How the best modern novel collapses before the homely but immense human significance of Homer's celestial swineherd entertaining divine Ulysses, or even the solitary watchman in Aeschylus' "Agamemnon," crouched, like a night-dog, on the roofs of the Atreidae, waiting for the signal fires that should announce the fall of sacred Ilion! But one need not look long, even in contemporary British literature, to find a man. In the author of "Characteristics" and "Sartor Resartus" we surely encounter one of the true heroic cast. We are made aware that here is something more than a _littérateur,_ something more than genius. Here is veracity, homely directness and sincerity, and strong primary idiosyncrasies. Here the man enters into the estimate of the author. There is no separating them, as there never is in great examples. A curious perversity runs through all, but in no way vitiates the result. In both his moral and intellectual nature, Carlyle seems made with a sort of stub and twist, like the best gun-barrels. The knotty and corrugated character of his sentences suits well the peculiar and intense activity of his mind. What a transition from his terse and sharply articulated pages, brimming with character and life, and a strange mixture of rage, humor, tenderness, poetry, philosophy, to the cold disbelief and municipal splendor of Macaulay! Nothing in Carlyle's contributions seems fortuitous. It all flows from a good and sufficient cause in the character of the man. Every great man is, in a certain way, an Atlas, with the weight of the world upon him. And if one is to criticise at all, he may say that, if Carlyle had not been quite so conscious of this weight, his work would have been better done. Yet to whom do we owe more, even as Americans? Anti-democratic in his opinions, he surely is not so in spirit, or in the quality of his make. The nobility of labor and the essential nobility of man were never so effectively preached before. The deadliest enemy of democracy is not the warning or dissenting voice, but it is the spirit, rife among us, which would engraft upon our hardy Western stock the sickly and decayed standards of the expiring feudal world. With two or three exceptions, there is little as yet in American literature that shows much advance beyond the merely conventional and scholastic,--little, I mean, in which one gets a whiff of the strong, unbreathed air of mountain or prairie, or a taste of rude, new power that is like the tonic of the sea. Thoreau occupies a niche by himself. Thoreau was not a great personality, yet his writings have a strong characteristic flavor. He is anti-scorbutic, like leeks and onions. He has reference, also, to the highest truths. It is very likely true that our most native and original characters do not yet take to literature. It is, perhaps, too early in the day. Iron and lime have to pass through the vegetable before they can reach the higher organization of the animal, and maybe this Western nerve and heartiness will yet emerge on the intellectual plane. Let us hope that it will indeed be Western nerve and heartiness when it gets there, and not Eastern wit and epigram! In Abraham Lincoln we had a character of very marked and lofty type, the most suggestive study or sketch of the future American man that has yet appeared in our history. How broad, unconventional, and humane! How democratic! how adhesive! No fine arabesque carvings, but strong, unhewn, native traits, and deep lines of care, toil, and human sympathy. Lincoln's Gettysburg speech is one of the most genuine and characteristic utterances in our annals. It has the true antique simplicity and impressiveness. It came straight from the man, and is as sure an index of character as the living voice, or the physiognomy, or the personal presence. Indeed, it may be said of Mr. Lincoln's entire course while at the head of the nation, that no President, since the first, ever in his public acts allowed the man so fully to appear, or showed so little disposition to retreat behind the featureless political mask which seems to adhere to the idea of gubernatorial dignity. It would be hardly fair to cite Everett's speech on the same occasion as a specimen of the opposite style, wherein ornate scholarship and the pride of talents dominate. Yet a stern critic would be obliged to say that, as an author, Everett allowed, for the most part, only the expurgated, complimenting, drawing-room man to speak; and that, considering the need of America to be kept virile and broad at all hazards, his contribution, both as man and writer, falls immeasurably short of Abraham Lincoln's. What a noble specimen of its kind, and how free from any verbal tricks or admixture of literary sauce, is Thoreau's "Maine Woods"! And what a marked specimen of the opposite style is a certain other book I could mention in which these wild and grand scenes serve but as a medium to advertise the author's fund of classic lore! Can there be any doubt about the traits and outward signs of a noble character, and is not the style of an author the manners of his soul? Is there a lyceum lecturer in the country who is above manoeuvring for the applause of his audience? or a writer who is willing to make himself of no account for the sake of what he has to say? Even in the best there is something of the air and manners of a performer on exhibition. The newspaper, or magazine, or book is a sort of raised platform upon which the advertiser advances before a gaping and expectant crowd. Truly, how well he _handles_ his subject! He turns it over, and around, and inside out, and top-side down. He tosses it about; he twirls it; he takes it apart and puts it together again, and knows well beforehand where the applause will come in. Any reader, in taking up the antique authors, must be struck by the contrast. "In Aeschylus," says Landor, "there is no trickery, no trifling, no delay, no exposition, no garrulity, no dogmatism, no declamation, no prosing,... but the loud, clear challenge, the firm, unstealthy step, of an erect, broad-breasted soldier." On the whole, the old authors are better than the new. The real question of literature is not simplified by culture or a multiplication of books, as the conditions of life are always the same, and are not made one whit easier by all the myriads of men and women who have lived upon the globe. The standing want is never for more skill, but for newer, fresher power,--a more plentiful supply of arterial blood. The discoverer, or the historian, or the man of science, may begin where his predecessor left off, but the poet or any artist must go back for a fresh start. With him it is always the first day of creation, and he must begin at the stump or nowhere. VIII BEFORE BEAUTY I Before genius is manliness, and before beauty is power. The Russian novelist and poet, Turgenieff, scattered all through whose works you will find unmistakable traits of greatness, makes one of his characters say, speaking of beauty, "The old masters,--they never hunted after it; it comes of itself into their compositions, God knows whence, from heaven or elsewhere. The whole world belonged to them, but we are unable to clasp its broad spaces; our arms are too short." From the same depth of insight come these lines from "Leaves of Grass," apropos of true poems:-- "They do not seek beauty--they are sought; Forever touching them, or close upon them, follows beauty, longing, fain, love-sick." The Roman was perhaps the first to separate beauty from use, and to pursue it as ornament merely. He built his grand edifice,--its piers, its vaults, its walls of brick and concrete,--and then gave it a marble envelope copied from the Greek architecture. The latter could be stripped away, as in many cases it was by the hand of time, and leave the essentials of the structure nearly complete. Not so with the Greek: he did not seek the beautiful, he was beauty; his building had no ornament, it was all structure; in its beauty was the flower of necessity, the charm of inborn fitness and proportion. In other words, "his art was structure refined into beautiful forms, not beautiful forms superimposed upon structure," as with the Roman. And it is in Greek mythology, is it not, that Beauty is represented as riding upon the back of a lion? as she assuredly always does in their poetry and art,--rides upon power, or terror, or savage fate; not only rides upon, but is wedded and incorporated with it; hence the athletic desire and refreshment her coming imparts. This is the invariable order of nature. Beauty without a rank material basis enfeebles. The world is not thus made; man is not thus begotten and nourished. It comes to me there is something implied or understood when we look upon a beautiful object, that has quite as much to do with the impression made upon the mind as anything in the object itself; perhaps more. There is somehow an immense and undefined background of vast and unconscionable energy, as of earthquakes, and ocean storms, and cleft mountains, across which things of beauty play, and to which they constantly defer; and when this background is wanting, as it is in much current poetry, beauty sickens and dies, or at most has only a feeble existence. Nature does nothing merely for beauty; beauty follows as the inevitable result; and the final impression of health and finish which her works make upon the mind is owing as much to those things which are not technically called beautiful as to those which are. The former give identity to the latter. The one is to the other what substance is to form, or bone to flesh. The beauty of nature includes all that is called beautiful, as its flower; and all that is not called beautiful, as its stalk and roots. Indeed, when I go to the woods or the fields, or ascend to the hilltop, I do not seem to be gazing upon beauty at all, but to be breathing it like the air. I am not dazzled or astonished; I am in no hurry to look lest it be gone. I would not have the litter and debris removed, or the banks trimmed, or the ground painted. What I enjoy is commensurate with the earth and sky itself. It clings to the rocks and trees; it is kindred to the roughness and savagery; it rises from every tangle and chasm; it perches on the dry oak-stubs with the hawks and buzzards; the crows shed it from their wings and weave it into their nests of coarse sticks; the fox barks it, the cattle low it, and every mountain path leads to its haunts. I am not a spectator of, but a participator in it. It is not an adornment; its roots strike to the centre of the earth. All true beauty in nature or in art is like the iridescent hue of mother-of-pearl, which is intrinsic and necessary, being the result of the arrangement of the particles,--the flowering of the mechanism of the shell; or like the beauty of health which comes out of and reaches back again to the bones and the digestion. There is no grace like the grace of strength. What sheer muscular gripe and power lie back of the firm, delicate notes of the great violinist! "Wit," says Heine,--and the same thing is true of beauty,--"isolated, is worthless. It is only endurable when it rests on a solid basis." In fact, beauty as a separate and distinct thing does not exist. Neither can it be reached by any sorting or sifting or clarifying process. It is an experience of the mind, and must be preceded by certain conditions, just as light is an experience of the eye, and sound of the ear. To attempt to manufacture beauty is as vain as to attempt to manufacture truth; and to give it to us in poems or any form of art, without a lion of some sort, a lion of truth or fitness or power, is to emasculate it and destroy its volition. But current poetry is, for the most part, an attempt to do this very thing, to give us beauty without beauty's antecedents and foil. The poets want to spare us the annoyance of the beast. Since beauty is the chief attraction, why not have this part alone, pure and unadulterated,--why not pluck the plumage from the bird, the flower from its stalk, the moss from the rock, the shell from the shore, the honey-bag from the bee, and thus have in brief what pleases us? Hence, with rare exceptions, one feels, on opening the latest book of poems, like exclaiming, Well, here is the beautiful at last divested of everything else,--of truth, of power, of utility,--and one may add of beauty, too. It charms as color, or flowers, or jewels, or perfume charms--and that is the end of it. It is ever present to the true artist, in his attempt to report nature, that every object as it stands in the circuit of cause and effect has a history which involves its surroundings, and that the depth of the interest which it awakens in us is in proportion as its integrity in this respect is preserved. In nature we are prepared for any opulence of color or of vegetation, or freak of form, or display of any kind, because of the preponderance of the common, ever-present feature of the earth. The foil is always at hand. In like manner in the master poems we are never surfeited with mere beauty. Woe to any artist who disengages Beauty from the wide background of rudeness, darkness, and strength,--and disengages her from absolute nature! The mild and beneficent aspects of nature,--what gulfs and abysses of power underlie them! The great shaggy, barbaric earth,--yet the summing-up, the plenum, of all we know or can know of beauty! So the orbic poems of the world have a foundation as of the earth itself, and are beautiful because they are something else first. Homer chose for his groundwork War, clinching, tearing, tugging war; in Dante, it is Hell; in Milton, Satan and the Fall; in Shakespeare, it is the fierce Feudal world, with its towering and kingly personalities; in Byron, it is Revolt and diabolic passion. When we get to Tennyson, the lion is a good deal tamed, but he is still there in the shape of the proud, haughty, and manly Norman, and in many forms yet stimulates the mind. The perception of cosmical beauty comes by a vital original process. It is in some measure a creative act, and those works that rest upon it make demands--perhaps extraordinary ones--upon the reader or the beholder. We regard mere surface glitter, or mere verbal sweetness, in a mood entirely passive, and with a pleasure entirely profitless. The beauty of excellent stage scenery seems much more obvious and easy of apprehension than the beauty of trees and hills themselves, inasmuch as the act of association in the mind is much easier and cheaper than the act of original perception. Only the greatest works in any department afford any explanation of this wonder we call nature, or aid the mind in arriving at correct notions concerning it. To copy here and there a line or a trait is no explanation; but to translate nature into another language--to bridge it to us, to repeat in some sort the act of creation itself--is the crowning triumph of poetic art. II After the critic has enumerated all the stock qualities of the poet, as taste, fancy, melody, it remains to be said that unless there is something in him that is _living identity,_ something analogous to the growing, pushing, reproducing forces of nature, all the rest in the end pass for but little. This is perhaps what the German critic, Lessing, really means by _action,_ for true poems are more like deeds, expressive of something behind, more like acts of heroism or devotion, or like personal character, than like thoughts or intellections. All the master poets have in their work an interior, chemical, assimilative property, a sort of gastric juice which dissolves thought and form, and holds in vital fusion religions, times, races, and the theory of their own construction, naming up with electric and defiant power,--power without any admixture of resisting form, as in a living organism. There are in nature two types or forms, the cell and the crystal. One means the organic, the other the inorganic; one means growth, development, life; the other means reaction, solidification, rest. The hint and model of all creative works is the cell; critical, reflective, and philosophical works are nearer akin to the crystal; while there is much good literature that is neither the one nor the other distinctively, but which in a measure touches and includes both. But crystallic beauty or cut and polished gems of thought, the result of the reflex rather than the direct action of the mind, we do not expect to find in the best poems, though they may be most prized by specially intellectual persons. In the immortal poems the solids are very few, or do not appear at all as solids,--as lime and iron,--any more than they do in organic nature, in the flesh of the peach or the apple. The main thing in every living organism is the vital fluids: seven tenths of man is water; and seven tenths of Shakespeare is passion, emotion,--fluid humanity. Out of this arise his forms, as Venus arose out of the sea, and as man is daily built up out of the liquids of the body. We cannot taste, much less assimilate, a solid until it becomes a liquid; and your great idea, your sermon or moral, lies upon your poem a dead, cumbrous mass unless there is adequate heat and solvent, emotional power. Herein I think Wordsworth's "Excursion" fails as a poem. It has too much solid matter. It is an over-freighted bark that does not ride the waves buoyantly and lifelike; far less so than Tennyson's "In Memoriam," which is just as truly a philosophical poem as the "Excursion." (Wordsworth is the fresher poet; his poems seem really to have been written in the open air, and to have been brought directly under the oxygenating influence of outdoor nature; while in Tennyson this influence seems tempered or farther removed.) The physical cosmos itself is not a thought, but an act. Natural objects do not affect us like well-wrought specimens or finished handicraft, which have nothing to follow, but as living, procreating energy. Nature is perpetual transition. Everything passes and presses on; there is no pause, no completion, no explanation. To produce and multiply endlessly, without ever reaching the last possibility of excellence, and without committing herself to any end, is the law of Nature. These considerations bring us very near the essential difference between prose and poetry, or rather between the poetic and the didactic treatment of a subject. The essence of creative art is always the same; namely, interior movement and fusion; while the method of the didactic or prosaic treatment is fixity, limitation. The latter must formulate and define; but the principle of the former is to flow, to suffuse, to mount, to escape. We can conceive of life only as something constantly _becoming._ It plays forever on the verge. It is never _in loco,_ but always _in transitu._ Arrest the wind, and it is no longer the wind; close your hands upon the light, and behold, it is gone. The antithesis of art in method is science, as Coleridge has intimated. As the latter aims at the particular, so the former aims at the universal. One would have truth of detail, the other truth of _ensemble._ The method of science may be symbolized by the straight line, that of art by the curve. The results of science, relatively to its aim, must be parts and pieces; while art must give the whole in every act; not quantitively of course, but qualitively,--by the integrity of the spirit in which it works. The Greek mind will always be the type of the artist mind, mainly because of its practical bent, its healthful objectivity. The Greek never looked inward, but outward. Criticism and speculation were foreign to him. His head shows a very marked predominance of the motive and perceptive powers over the reflective. The expression of the face is never what we call intellectual or thoughtful, but commanding. His gods are not philosophers, but delight in deeds, justice, rulership. Among the differences between the modern and the classical aesthetic mind is the greater precision and definiteness of the latter. The modern genius is Gothic, and demands in art a certain vagueness and spirituality like that of music, refusing to be grasped and formulated. Hence for us (and this is undoubtedly an improvement) there must always be something about a poem, or any work of art, besides the evident intellect or plot of it, or what is on its surface, or what it tells. This something is the Invisible, the Undefined, almost Unexpressed, and is perhaps the best part of any work of art, as it is of a noble personality. To amuse, to exhibit culture, to formulate the aesthetic, or even to excite the emotions, is by no means all,--is not even the deepest part. Beside these, and inclosing all, is the general impalpable effect, like good air, or the subtle presence of good spirits, wordless but more potent far than words. As, in the superbest person, it is not merely what he says or knows or shows, or even how he behaves, but the silent qualities, like gravitation, that insensibly but resistlessly hold us; so in a good poem, or in any other expression of art. IX EMERSON Wherein the race has so far lost and gained, in being transplanted from Europe to the New England soil and climate, is well illustrated by the writings of Emerson. There is greater refinement and sublimation of thought, greater clearness and sharpness of outline, greater audacity of statement, but, on the other hand, there is a loss of bulk, of unction, of adipose tissue, and shall we say of power? Emerson is undoubtedly a master on the New England scale,--such a master as the land and race are capable of producing. He stands out clear and undeniable. The national type, as illustrated by that section of the country, is the purest and strongest in him of any yet. He can never suffer eclipse. Compared with the English or German master, he is undoubtedly deficient in viscera, in moral and intellectual stomach; but, on the other hand, he is of a fibre and quality hard to match in any age or land. From first to last he strikes one as something extremely pure and compact, like a nut or an egg. Great matters and tendencies lie folded in him, or rather are summarized in his pages. He writes short but pregnant chapters on great themes, as in his "English Traits," a book like rich preserves put up pound for pound, a pound of Emerson to every pound of John Bull. His chapter on Swedenborg in "Representative Men" is a good sample of his power to abbreviate and restate with added force. His mind acts like a sun-lens in gathering the cold pale beams of that luminary to a focus which warms and stimulates the reader in a surprising manner. The gist of the whole matter is here; and how much weariness and dullness and plodding is left out! In fact, Emerson is an essence, a condensation; more so, perhaps, than any other man who has appeared in literature. Nowhere else is there such a preponderance of pure statement, of the very attar of thought, over the bulkier, circumstantial, qualifying, or secondary elements. He gives us net results. He is like those strong artificial fertilizers. A pinch of him is equivalent to a page or two of Johnson, and he is pitched many degrees higher as an essayist than even Bacon. He has had an immediate stimulating effect upon all the best minds of the country; how deep or lasting this influence will be remains to be seen. This point and brevity has its convenience and value especially in certain fields of literature. I by no means would wish to water Emerson; yet it will not do to lose sight of the fact that mass and inertia are indispensable to the creator. Considering him as poet alone, I have no doubt of his irremediable deficiency here. You cannot have broad, massive effect, deep light and shade, or a torrent of power, with such extreme refinement and condensation. The superphosphates cannot take the place of the coarser, bulkier fertilizers. Especially in poetry do we require pure thought to be well diluted with the human, emotional qualities. In the writing most precious to the race, how little is definition and intellectual formula, and how much is impulse, emotion, will, character, blood, chyle! We must have liquids and gases and solvents. We perhaps get more of them in Carlyle. Emerson's page has more serene astral beauty than Carlyle's, but not that intense blast-furnace heat that melts down the most obdurate facts and characters into something plastic and poetical. Emerson's ideal is always the scholar, the man of books and ready wit; Carlyle's hero is a riding or striding ruler, or a master worker in some active field. The antique mind no doubt affords the true type of health and wholeness in this respect. The Greek could see, and feel, and paint, and carve, and speak nothing but emotional man. In nature he saw nothing but personality,--nothing but human or superhuman qualities; to him the elements all took the human shape. Of that vague, spiritual, abstract something which we call Nature he had no conception. He had no sentiment, properly speaking, but impulse and will-power. And the master minds of the world, in proportion to their strength, their spinal strength, have approximated to this type. Dante, Angelo, Shakespeare, Byron, Goethe, saw mainly man, and him not abstractly but concretely. And this is the charm of Burns and the glory of Scott. Carlyle has written the best histories and biographies of modern times, because he sees man with such fierce and steadfast eyes. Emerson sees him also, but he is not interested in him as a man, but mainly as a spirit, as a demigod, or as a wit or a philosopher. Emerson's quality has changed a good deal in his later writings. His corn is no longer in the milk; it has grown hard, and we that read have grown hard, too. He has now ceased to be an expansive, revolutionary force, but he has not ceased to be a writer of extraordinary gripe and unexpected resources of statement. His startling piece of advice, "Hitch your wagon to a star," is typical of the man, as combining the most unlike and widely separate qualities. Because not less marked than his idealism and mysticism is his shrewd common sense, his practical bent, his definiteness,--in fact, the sharp New England mould in which he is cast. He is the master Yankee, the centennial flower of that thrifty and peculiar stock. More especially in his later writings and speakings do we see the native New England traits,--the alertness, eagerness, inquisitiveness, thrift, dryness, archness, caution, the nervous energy as distinguished from the old English unction and vascular force. How he husbands himself,--what prudence, what economy, always spending up, as he says, and not down! How alert, how attentive; what an inquisitor; always ready with some test question, with some fact or idea to match or to verify, ever on the lookout for some choice bit of adventure or information, or some anecdote that has pith and point! No tyro basks and takes his ease in his presence, but is instantly put on trial and must answer or be disgraced. He strikes at an idea like a falcon at a bird. His great fear seems to be lest there be some fact or point worth knowing that will escape him. He is a close-browed miser of the scholar's gains. He turns all values into intellectual coin. Every book or person or experience is an investment that will or will not warrant a good return in ideas. He goes to the Radical Club, or to the literary gathering, and listens with the closest attention to every word that is said, in hope that something will be said, some word dropped, that has the ring of the true metal. Apparently he does not permit himself a moment's indifference or inattention. His own pride is always to have the ready change, to speak the exact and proper word, to give to every occasion the dignity of wise speech. You are bartered with for your best. There is no profit in life but in the interchange of ideas, and the chief success is to have a head well filled with them. Hard cash at that; no paper promises satisfy him; he loves the clink and glint of the real coin. His earlier writings were more flowing and suggestive, and had reference to larger problems; but now everything has got weighed and stamped and converted into the medium of wise and scholarly conversation. It is of great value; these later essays are so many bags of genuine coin, which it has taken a lifetime to hoard; not all gold, but all good, and the fruit of wise industry and economy. I know of no other writing that yields the reader so many strongly stamped medallion-like sayings and distinctions. There is a perpetual refining and recoining of the current wisdom of life and conversation. It is the old gold or silver or copper, but how bright and new it looks in his pages! Emerson loves facts, things, objects, as the workman his tools. He makes everything serve. The stress of expression is so great that he bends the most obdurate element to his purpose; as the bird, under her keen necessity, weaves the most contrary and diverse materials into her nest. He seems to like best material that is a little refractory; it makes his page more piquant and stimulating. Within certain limits he loves roughness, but not at the expense of harmony. He has wonderful hardiness and push. Where else in literature is there a mind, moving in so rare a medium, that gives one such a sense of tangible resistance and force? It is a principle in mechanics that velocity is twice as great as mass: double your speed and you double your heat, though you halve your weight. In like manner this body we are considering is not the largest, but its speed is great, and the intensity of its impact with objects and experience is almost without parallel. Everything about a man like Emerson is important. I find his phrenology and physiognomy more than ordinarily typical and suggestive. Look at his picture there,--large, strong features on a small face and head,--no blank spaces; all given up to expression; a high predaceous nose, a sinewy brow, a massive, benevolent chin. In most men there is more face than feature, but here is a vast deal more feature than face, and a corresponding alertness and emphasis of character. Indeed, the man is made after this fashion. He is all type; his expression is transcendent. His mind has the hand's pronounced anatomy,--its cords and sinews and multiform articulations and processes, its opposing and coordinating power. If his brain is small, its texture is fine and its convolutions are deep. There have been broader and more catholic natures, but few so towering and audacious in expression and so rich in characteristic traits. Every scrap and shred of him is important and related. Like the strongly aromatic herbs and simples,--sage, mint, wintergreen, sassafras,--the least part carries the flavor of the whole. Is there one indifferent or equivocal or unsympathizing drop of blood in him? Where he is at all, he is entirely,--nothing extemporaneous; his most casual word seems to have lain in pickle a long time, and is saturated through and through with the Emersonian brine. Indeed, so pungent and penetrating is his quality that even his quotations seem more than half his own. He is a man who occupies every inch of his rightful territory; he is there in proper person to the farthest bound. Not every man is himself and his best self at all times and to his finger points. Many great characters, perhaps the greatest, have more or less neutral or waste ground. You must penetrate a distance before you reach the real quick. Or there is a good wide margin of the commonplace which is sure to put them on good terms with the mass of their fellow-citizens. And one would think Emerson could afford to relax a little; that he had earned the right to a dull page or two now and then. The second best or third best word sometimes would make us appreciate his first best all the more. Even his god-father Plato nods occasionally, but Emerson's good breeding will not for a moment permit such a slight to the reader. Emerson's peculiar quality is very subtle, but very sharp and firm and unmistakable. It is not analogous to the commoner, slower-going elements, as heat, air, fire, water, but is nearer akin to that elusive but potent something we call electricity. It is abrupt, freaky, unexpected, and always communicates a little wholesome shock. It darts this way and that, and connects the far and the near in every line. There is always a leaping thread of light, and there is always a kind of answering peal or percussion. With what quickness and suddenness extremes are brought together! The reader is never prepared for what is to come next; the spark will most likely leap from some source or fact least thought of. His page seldom glows and burns, but there is a never-ceasing crackling and discharge of moral and intellectual force into the mind. His chief weapon, and one that he never lays down, is identical with that of the great wits, namely, surprise. The point of his remark or idea is always sprung upon the reader, never quietly laid before him. He has a mortal dread of tameness and flatness, and would make the very water we drink bite the tongue. He has been from the first a speaker and lecturer, and his style has been largely modeled according to the demand of those sharp, heady New England audiences for ceaseless intellectual friction and chafing. Hence every sentence is braided hard, and more or less knotted, and, though of silk, makes the mind tingle. He startles by overstatement, by understatement, by paradox, by antithesis, and by synthesis. Into every sentence enters the unexpected,--the congruous leaping from the incongruous, the high coming down, the low springing up, likeness or relation suddenly coming into view where before was only difference or antagonism. How he delights to bring the reader up with a short turn, to impale him on a knotty point, to explode one of his verbal bombshells under his very nose! Yet there is no trickery or rhetorical legerdemain. His heroic fibre always saves him. The language in which Taine describes Bacon applies with even more force to Emerson:-- "Bacon," he says, "is a producer of conceptions and of sentences. The matter being explored, he says to us: 'Such it is; touch it not on that side; it must be approached from the other.' Nothing more; no proof, no effort to convince; he affirms, and nothing more; he has thought in the manner of artists and poets, and he speaks after the manner of prophets and seers. 'Cogita et visa,'--this title of one of his books might be the title of all. His process is that of the creators; it is intuition, not reasoning.... There is nothing more hazardous, more like fantasy, than this mode of thought when it is not checked by natural and good strong common sense. This common sense, which is a kind of natural divination, the stable equilibrium of an intellect always gravitating to the true, like the needle to the north pole, Bacon possesses in the highest degree. He has a preëminently practical, even an utilitarian mind." It is significant, and is indeed the hidden seed or root out of which comes the explanation of much, if not the main part, of his life and writings, that Emerson comes of a long line of clergymen; that the blood in his veins has been teaching, and preaching, and thinking, and growing austere, these many generations. One wonders that it is still so bounding and strong, so red with iron and quick with oxygen. But in him seems to be illustrated one of those rare cases in the genealogy of families where the best is carried forward each time, and steadily recruited and intensified. It does not seem possible for any man to become just what Emerson is from the stump, though perhaps great men have been the fruit of one generation; but there is a quality in him, an aroma of fine manners, a propriety, a chivalry in the blood, that dates back, and has been refined and transmitted many times. Power is born with a man, and is always first hand, but culture, genius, noble instincts, gentle manners, or the easy capacity for these things, may be, and to a greater or a lesser extent are, the contribution of the past. Emerson's culture is radical and ante-natal, and never fails him. The virtues of all those New England ministers and all those tomes of sermons are in this casket. One fears sometimes that he has been too much clarified, or that there is not enough savage grace or original viciousness and grit in him to save him. How he hates the roysterers, and all the rank, turbulent, human passions, and is chilled by the thought that perhaps after all Shakespeare led a vulgar life! When Tyndall was here, he showed us how the dark, coarse, invisible heat rays could be strained out of the spectrum; or, in other words, that every solar beam was weighted with a vast, nether, invisible side, which made it a lever of tremendous power in organic nature. After some such analogy, one sees how the highest order of power in the intellectual world draws upon and is nourished by those rude, primitive, barbaric human qualities that our culture and pietism tend to cut off and strain out. Our culture has its eye on the other end of the spectrum, where the fine violet and indigo rays are; but all the lifting, rounding, fructifying powers of the system are in the coarse, dark rays--the black devil--at the base. The angel of light is yoked with the demon of darkness, and the pair create and sustain the world. In rare souls like Emerson, the fruit of extreme culture, it is inevitable that at least some of the heat rays should be lost, and we miss them especially when we contrast him with the elder masters. The elder masters did not seem to get rid of the coarse or vulgar in human life, but royally accepted it, and struck their roots into it, and drew from it sustenance and power: but there is an ever-present suspicion that Emerson prefers the saints to the sinners; prefers the prophets and seers to Homer, Shakespeare, and Dante. Indeed, it is to be distinctly stated and emphasized, that Emerson is essentially a priest, and that the key to all he has said and written is to be found in the fact that his point of view is not that of the acceptor, the creator,--Shakespeare's point of view,--but that of the refiner and selector, the priest's point of view. He described his own state rather than that of mankind when he said, "The human mind stands ever in perplexity, demanding intellect, demanding sanctity, impatient equally of each without the other." Much surprise has been expressed in literary circles in this country that Emerson has not followed up his first off-hand indorsement of Walt Whitman with fuller and more deliberate approval of that poet, but has rather taken the opposite tack. But the wonder is that he should have been carried off his feet at all in the manner he was; and it must have been no ordinary breeze that did it. Emerson shares with his contemporaries the vast preponderance of the critical and discerning intellect over the fervid, manly qualities and faith. His power of statement is enormous; his scope of being is not enormous. The prayer he uttered many years ago for a poet of the modern, one who could see in the gigantic materialism of the times the carnival of the same deities we so much admire in Greece and Rome, seems to many to have even been explicitly answered in Whitman; but Emerson is balked by the cloud of materials, the din and dust of action, and the moving armies, in which the god comes enveloped. But Emerson has his difficulties with all the poets. Homer is too literal, Milton too literary, and there is too much of the whooping savage in Whitman. He seems to think the real poet is yet to appear; a poet on new terms, the reconciler, the poet-priest,--one who shall unite the whiteness and purity of the saint with the power and unction of the sinner; one who shall bridge the chasm between Shakespeare and St. John. For when our Emerson gets on his highest horse, which he does only on two or three occasions, he finds Shakespeare only a half man, and that it would take Plato and Manu and Moses and Jesus to complete him. Shakespeare, he says, rested with the symbol, with the festal beauty of the world, and did not take the final step, and explore the essence of things, and ask, "Whence? What? and Whither?" He was not wise for himself; he did not lead a beautiful, saintly life, but ate, and drank, and reveled, and affiliated with all manner of persons, and quaffed the cup of life with gusto and relish. The elect, spotless souls will always look upon the heat and unconscious optimism of the great poet with deep regret. But if man would not become emasculated, if human life is to continue, we must cherish the coarse as well as the fine, the root as well as the top and flower. The poet-priest in the Emersonian sense has never yet appeared, and what reason have we to expect him? The poet means life, the whole of life,--all your ethics and philosophies, and essences and reason of things, in vital play and fusion, clothed with form and color, and throbbing with passion: the priest means a part, a thought, a precept; he means suppression, expurgation, death. To have gone farther than Shakespeare would have been to cease to be a poet, and to become a mystic or a seer. Yet it would be absurd to say, as a leading British literary journal recently did, that Emerson is not a poet. He is one kind of a poet. He has written plenty of poems that are as melodious as the hum of a wild bee in the air,--chords of wild aeolian music. Undoubtedly his is, on the whole, a bloodless kind of poetry. It suggests the pale gray matter of the cerebrum rather than flesh and blood. Mr. William Rossetti has made a suggestive remark about him. He is not so essentially a poet, says this critic, as he is a Druid that wanders among the bards, and strikes the harp with even more than bardic stress. Not in the poetry of any of his contemporaries is there such a burden of the mystery of things, nor are there such round wind-harp tones, nor lines so tense and resonant, and blown upon by a breeze from the highest heaven of thought. In certain respects he has gone beyond any other. He has gone beyond the symbol to the thing signified. He has emptied poetic forms of their meaning and made poetry of that. He would fain cut the world up into stars to shine in the intellectual firmament. He is more and he is less than the best. He stands among other poets like a pine-tree amid a forest of oak and maple. He seems to belong to another race, and to other climes and conditions. He is great in one direction, up; no dancing leaves, but rapt needles; never abandonment, never a tossing and careering, never an avalanche of emotion; the same in sun and snow, scattering his cones, and with night and obscurity amid his branches. He is moral first and last, and it is through his impassioned and poetic treatment of the moral law that he gains such an ascendency over his reader. He says, as for other things he makes poetry of them, but the moral law makes poetry of him. He sees in the world only the ethical, but he sees it through the aesthetic faculty. Hence his page has the double charm of the beautiful and the good. II One of the penalties Emerson pays for his sharp decision, his mental pertinence and resistance, is the curtailment of his field of vision and enjoyment. He is one of those men whom the gods drive with blinders on, so that they see fiercely in only a few directions. Supreme lover as he is of poetry,--Herrick's poetry,--yet from the whole domain of what may be called emotional poetry, the poetry of fluid humanity, tallied by music, he seems to be shut out. This may be seen by his reference to Shelley in his last book, "Letters and Social Aims," and by his preference of the metaphysical poet throughout his writings. Wordsworth's famous "Ode" is, he says, the high-water mark of English literature. What he seems to value most in Shakespeare is the marvelous wit, the pregnant sayings. He finds no poet in France, and in his "English Traits" credits Tennyson with little but melody and color. (In our last readings, do we not surely come to feel the manly and robust fibre beneath Tennyson's silken vestments?) He demands of poetry that it be a kind of spiritual manna, and is at last forced to confess that there are no poets, and that when such angels do appear, Homer and Milton will be tin pans. One feels that this will not do, and that health, and wholeness, and the well-being of man are more in the keeping of Shakespeare than in the hands of Zoroaster or any of the saints. I doubt if that rarefied air will make good red blood and plenty of it. But Emerson makes his point plain, and is not indebted to any of his teachers for it. It is the burden of all he writes upon the subject. The long discourse that opens his last volume [footnote: _Letters and Social Aims_] has numerous subheadings, as "Poetry," "Imagination," "Creation," "Morals," and "Transcendency;" but it's all a plea for transcendency. I am reminded of the story of an old Indian chief who was invited to some great dinner where the first course was "succotash." When the second course was ready the old Indian said he would have a little more succotash, and when the third was ready he called for more succotash and so with the fourth and fifth, and on to the end. In like manner Emerson will have nothing but the "spiritual law" in poetry, and he has an enormous appetite for that. Let him have it, but why should he be so sure that mankind all want succotash? Mankind finally comes to care little for what any poet has to _say,_ but only for what he has to _sing._ We want the pearl of thought dissolved in the wine of life. How much better are sound bones and a good digestion in poetry than all the philosophy and transcendentalism in the world! What one comes at last to want is power, mastery; and, whether it be mastery over the subtleties of the intellect, as in Emerson himself, or over the passions and the springs of action, as in Shakespeare, or over our terrors and the awful hobgoblins of hell and Satan, as in Dante, or over vast masses and spaces of nature and the abysms of aboriginal man, as in Walt Whitman, what matters it? Are we not refreshed by all? There is one mastery in Burns, another in Byron, another in Rabelais, and in Victor Hugo, and in Tennyson; and though the critic has his preferences, though he affect one more than another, yet who shall say this one is a poet and that one is not? "There may be any number of supremes," says the master, and "one by no means contravenes another." Every gas is a vacuum to every other gas, says Emerson, quoting the scientist; and every great poet complements and leaves the world free to every other great poet. Emerson's limitation or fixity is seen also in the fact that he has taken no new step in his own direction, if indeed another step could be taken in that direction and not step off. He is a prisoner on his peak. He cannot get away from the old themes. His later essays are upon essentially the same subjects as his first. He began by writing on nature, greatness, manners, art, poetry, and he is still writing on them. He is a husbandman who practices no rotation of crops, but submits to the exhaustive process of taking about the same things from his soil year after year. Some readers think they detect a falling off. It is evident there is not the same spontaneity, and that the soil has to be more and more stirred and encouraged, which is not at all to be wondered at. But if Emerson has not advanced, he has not receded, at least in conviction and will, which is always the great danger with our bold prophets. The world in which he lives, the themes upon which he writes, never become hackneyed to him. They are always fresh and new. He has hardened, but time has not abated one jot or tittle his courage and hope,--no cynicism and no relaxing of his hold, no decay of his faith, while the nobleness of his tone, the chivalry of his utterance, is even more marked than at first. Better a hundred-fold than his praise of fine manners is the delicacy and courtesy and the grace of generous breeding displayed on every page. Why does one grow impatient and vicious when Emerson writes of fine manners and the punctilios of conventional life, and feel like kicking into the street every divinity enshrined in the drawing-room? It is a kind of insult to a man to speak the word in his presence. Purify the parlors indeed by keeping out the Choctaws, the laughers! Let us go and hold high carnival for a week, and split the ears of the groundlings with our "contemptible squeals of joy." And when he makes a dead set at praising eloquence, I find myself instantly on the side of the old clergyman he tells of who prayed that he might never be eloquent; or when he makes the test of a man an intellectual one, as his skill at repartee, and praises the literary crack shot, and defines manliness to be readiness, as he does in this last volume and in the preceding one, I am filled with a perverse envy of all the confused and stammering heroes of history. Is Washington faltering out a few broken and ungrammatical sentences, in reply to the vote of thanks of the Virginia legislature, less manly than the glib tongue in the court-room or in the club that can hit the mark every time? The test of a wit or of a scholar is one thing; the test of a man, I take it, is quite another. In this and some other respects Emerson is well antidoted by Carlyle, who lays the stress on the opposite qualities, and charges his hero to hold his tongue. But one cheerfully forgives Emerson the way he puts his thumb-nail on the bores. He speaks feelingly, and no doubt from as deep an experience as any man in America. I really hold Emerson in such high esteem that I think I can safely indulge myself in a little more fault-finding with him. I think it must be admitted that he is deficient in sympathy. This accounts in a measure for his coolness, his self-possession, and that kind of uncompromising rectitude or inflexibleness that marks his career, and that he so lauds in his essays. No man is so little liable to be warped or compromised in any way as the unsympathetic man. Emerson's ideal is the man who stands firm, who is unmoved, who never laughs, or apologizes, or deprecates, or makes concessions, or assents through good-nature, or goes abroad; who is not afraid of giving offense; "who answers you without supplication in his eye,"--in fact, who stands like a granite pillar amid the slough of life. You may wrestle with this man, he says, or swim with him, or lodge in the same chamber with him, or eat at the same table, and yet he is a thousand miles off, and can at any moment finish with you. He is a sheer precipice, is this man, and not to be trifled with. You shrinking, quivering, acquiescing natures, avaunt! You sensitive plants, you hesitating, indefinite creatures, you uncertain around the edges, you non-resisting, and you heroes, whose courage is quick, but whose wit is tardy, make way, and let the human crustacean pass. Emerson is moulded upon this pattern. It is no mush and milk that you get at this table. "A great man is coming to dine with me; I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to please me." On the lecture stand he might be of wood, so far as he is responsive to the moods and feelings of his auditors. They must come to him; he will not go to them: but they do not always come. Latterly the people have felt insulted, the lecturer showed them so little respect. Then, before a promiscuous gathering, and in stirring and eventful times like ours, what anachronisms most of his lectures are, even if we take the high ground that they are pearls before swine! The swine may safely demand some apology of him who offers them pearls instead of corn. Emerson's fibre is too fine for large public uses. He is what he is, and is to be accepted as such, only let us _know_ what he is. He does not speak to universal conditions, or to human nature in its broadest, deepest, strongest phases. His thought is far above the great sea level of humanity, where stand most of the world's masters. He is like one of those marvelously clear mountain lakes whose water-line runs above all the salt seas of the globe. He is very precious, taken at his real worth. Why find fault with the isolation and the remoteness in view of the sky-like purity and depth? Still I must go on sounding and exploring him, reporting where I touch bottom and where I do not. He reaps great advantage from his want of sympathy. The world makes no inroads upon him through this channel. He is not distracted by the throng or maybe the mob of emotions that find entrance here. He shines like a star undimmed by current events. He speaks as from out the interstellar spaces. 'T is vulgar sympathy makes mortals of us all, and I think Emerson's poetry finally lacks just that human coloring and tone, that flesh tint of the heart, which vulgar sympathy with human life as such imparts. But after we have made all possible deductions from Emerson, there remains the fact that he is a living force, and, tried by home standards, a master. Wherein does the secret of his power lie? He is the prophet and philosopher of young men. The old man and the man of the world make little of him, but of the youth who is ripe for him he takes almost an unfair advantage. One secret of his charm I take to be the instant success with which he transfers our interest in the romantic, the chivalrous, the heroic, to the sphere of morals and the intellect. We are let into another realm unlooked for, where daring and imagination also lead. The secret and suppressed heart finds a champion. To the young man fed upon the penny precepts and staple Johnsonianism of English literature, and upon what is generally doled out in the schools and colleges, it is a surprise; it is a revelation. A new world opens before him. The nebulae of his spirit are resolved or shown to be irresolvable. The fixed stars of his inner firmament are brought immeasurably near. He drops all other books. He will gaze and wonder. From Locke or Johnson or Wayland to Emerson is like a change from the school history to the Arabian Nights. There may be extravagances and some jugglery, but for all that the lesson is a genuine one, and to us of this generation immense. Emerson is the knight-errant of the moral sentiment. He leads, in our time and country, one illustrious division, at least, in the holy crusade of the affections and the intuitions against the usurpations of tradition and theological dogma. He marks the flower, the culmination, under American conditions and in the finer air of the New World, of the reaction begun by the German philosophers, and passed along by later French and English thinkers, of man against circumstance, of spirit against form, of the present against the past. What splendid affirmation, what inspiring audacity, what glorious egoism, what generous brag, what sacred impiety! There is an _eclat_ about his words, and a brave challenging of immense odds, that is like an army with banners. It stirs the blood like a bugle-call: beauty, bravery, and a sacred cause,--the three things that win with us always. The first essay is a forlorn hope. See what the chances are: "The world exists for the education of each man.... He should see that he can live all history in his own person. He must sit solidly at home, and not suffer himself to be bullied by kings or empires, but know that he is greater than all the geography and all the government of the world; he must transfer the point of view from which history is commonly read from Rome and Athens and London to himself, and not deny his conviction that he is the court, and, if England or Egypt have anything to say to him, he will try the case; if not, let them forever be silent." In every essay that follows, there are the same great odds and the same electric call to the youth to face them. It is, indeed, as much a world of fable and romance that Emerson introduces us to as we get in Homer or Herodotus. It is true, all true,--true as Arthur and his knights, or Pilgrim's Progress, and I pity the man who has not tasted its intoxication, or who can see nothing in it. The intuitions are the bright band, without armor or shield, that slay the mailed and bucklered giants of the understanding. Government, institutions, religions, fall before the glance of the hero's eye. Art and literature, Shakespeare, Angelo, Aeschylus, are humble suppliants before you, the king. The commonest fact is idealized, and the whole relation of man to the universe is thrown into a kind of gigantic perspective. It is not much to say there is exaggeration; the very start makes Mohammed's attitude toward the mountain tame. The mountain _shall_ come to Mohammed, and, in the eyes of all born readers of Emerson, the mountain does come, and comes with alacrity. Some shrewd judges apprehend that Emerson is not going to last; basing their opinion upon the fact, already alluded to, that we outgrow him, or pass through him as through an experience that we cannot repeat. He is but a bridge to other things; he gets you over. He is an exceptional fact in literature, say they, and does not represent lasting or universal conditions. He is too fine for the rough wear and tear of ages. True, we do not outgrow Dante, or Cervantes, or Bacon; and I doubt if the Anglo-Saxon stock at least ever outgrows that king of romancers, Walter Scott. These men and their like appeal to a larger audience, and in some respects a more adult one, at least one more likely to be found in every age and people. Their achievement was more from the common level of human nature than are Emerson's astonishing paradoxes. Yet I believe his work has the seal of immortality upon it as much as that of any of them. No doubt he has a meaning to us now and in this country that will be lost to succeeding time. His religious significance will not be so important to the next generation. He is being or has been so completely absorbed by his times, that readers and hearers hereafter will get him from a thousand sources, or his contribution will become the common property of the race. All the masters probably had some peculiar import or tie to their contemporaries that we at a distance miss. It is thought by scholars that we have lost the key, or one key, to Dante, and Chaucer, and Shakespeare,--the key or the insight that people living under the same roof get of each other. But, aside from and over and above everything else, Emerson _appeals to youth and to genius._ If you have these, you will understand him and delight in him; if not, or neither of them, you will make little of him. And I do not see why this should not be just as true any time hence as at present. X THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE TO WALT WHITMAN "'I, thirty-six years old, in perfect health, begin, Hoping to cease not till death.'" CHANTS DEMOCRATIC. "They say that thou art sick, art growing old, Thou Poet of unconquerable health, With youth far-stretching, through the golden wealth Of autumn, to Death's frostful, friendly cold. The never-blenching eyes, that did behold Life's fair and foul, with measureless content, And gaze ne'er sated, saddened as they bent Over the dying soldier in the fold Of thy large comrade love;--then broke the tear! War-dream, field-vigil, the bequeathed kiss, Have brought old age to thee; yet, Master, now, Cease not thy song to us; lest we should miss A death-chant of indomitable cheer, Blown as a gale from God;--oh sing it thou!" ARRAN LEIGH (England). I Whoever has witnessed the flight of any of the great birds, as the eagle, the condor, the sea-gulls, the proud hawks, has perhaps felt that the poetic suggestion of the feathered tribes is not all confined to the sweet and tiny songsters,--the thrushes, canaries, and mockingbirds of the groves and orchards, or of the gilded cage in my lady's chamber. It is by some such analogy that I would indicate the character of the poetry I am about to discuss, compared with that of the more popular and melodious singer,--the poetry of the strong wing and the daring flight. Well and profoundly has a Danish critic said, in "For Ide og Virkelighed" ("For the Idea and the Reality"), a Copenhagen magazine:-- "It may be candidly admitted that the American poet has not the elegance, special melody, nor _recherché_ aroma of the accepted poets of Europe or his own country; but his compass and general harmony are infinitely greater. The sweetness and spice, the poetic _ennui,_ the tender longings, the exquisite art-finish of those choice poets are mainly unseen and unmet in him,--perhaps because he cannot achieve them, more likely because he disdains them. But there is an electric _living soul_ in his poetry, far more fermenting and bracing. His wings do not glitter in their movement from rich and varicolored plumage, nor are his notes those of the accustomed song-birds; but his flight is the flight of the eagle." Yes, there is not only the delighting of the ear with the outpouring of sweetest melody and its lessons, but there is the delighting of the eye and soul through that soaring and circling in the vast empyrean of "a strong bird on pinions free,"--lessons of freedom, power, grace, and spiritual suggestion,--vast, unparalleled, _formless_ lessons. It is now upwards of twenty years since Walt Whitman printed (in 1855) his first thin beginning volume of "Leaves of Grass;" and, holding him to the test which he himself early proclaimed, namely, "that the proof of the poet shall be sternly deferred till his country has absorb'd him as affectionately as he has absorb'd it," he is yet on trial, yet makes his appeal to an indifferent or to a scornful audience. That his complete absorption, however, by his own country and by the world, is ultimately to take place, is one of the beliefs that grows stronger and stronger within me as time passes, and I suppose it is with a hope to help forward this absorption that I write of him now. Only here and there has he yet effected a lodgment, usually in the younger and more virile minds. But considering the unparalleled audacity of his undertaking, and the absence in most critics and readers of anything like full-grown and robust aesthetic perception, the wonder really is not that he should have made such slow progress, but that he should have gained any foothold at all. The whole literary _technique_ of the race for the last two hundred years has been squarely against him, laying, as it does, the emphasis upon form and scholarly endowments instead of upon aboriginal power and manhood. My own mastery of the poet, incomplete as it is, has doubtless been much facilitated by contact--talks, meals, and jaunts--with him, stretching through a decade of years, and by seeing how everything in his _personnel_ was resumed and carried forward in his literary expression; in fact, how the one was a living commentary upon the other. After the test of time, nothing goes home like the test of actual intimacy; and to tell me that Whitman is not a large, fine, fresh, magnetic personality, making you love him and want always to be with him, were to tell me that my whole past life is a deception, and all the impression of my perceptive faculties a fraud. I have studied him as I have studied the birds, and have found that the nearer I got to him the more I saw. Nothing about a first-class man can be overlooked; he is to be studied in every feature,--in his physiology and phrenology, in the shape of his head, in his brow, his eye, his glance, his nose, his ear (the ear is as indicative in a man as in a horse), his voice. In Whitman all these things are remarkably striking and suggestive. His face exhibits a rare combination of harmony and sweetness with strength,--strength like the vaults and piers of the Roman architecture. Sculptor never carved a finer ear or a more imaginative brow. Then his heavy-lidded, absorbing eye, his sympathetic voice, and the impression which he makes of starting from the broad bases of the universal human traits. (If Whitman was grand in his physical and perfect health, I think him far more so now (1877), cheerfully mastering paralysis, penury, and old age.) You know, on seeing the man and becoming familiar with his presence, that, if he achieve the height at all, it will be from where every man stands, and not from some special genius, or exceptional and adventitious point. He does not make the impression of the scholar or artist or _littérateur,_ but such as you would imagine the antique heroes to make,--that of a sweet-blooded, receptive, perfectly normal, catholic man, with, further than that, a look about him that is best suggested by the word elemental or cosmical. It was this, doubtless, that led Thoreau to write, after an hour's interview, that he suggested "something a little more than human." In fact, the main clew to Walt Whitman's life and personality, and the expression of them in his poems, is to be found in about the largest emotional element that has appeared anywhere. This, if not controlled by a potent rational balance, would either have tossed him helplessly forever, or wrecked him as disastrously as ever storm and gale drove ship to ruin. These volcanic emotional fires appear everywhere in his books; and it is really these, aroused to intense activity and unnatural strain during the four years of the war and his persistent labors in the hospitals, that have resulted in his illness and paralysis since. It has been impossible, I say, to resist these personal impressions and magnetisms, and impossible with me not to follow them up in the poems, in doing which I found that his "Leaves of Grass" was really the _drama of himself,_ played upon various and successive stages of nature, history, passion, experience, patriotism, and that he had not made, nor had he intended to make, mere excellent "poems," tunes, statues, or statuettes, in the ordinary sense. Before the man's complete acceptance and assimilation by America, he may have to be first passed down through the minds of critics and commentators, and given to the people with some of his rank new quality taken off,--a quality like that which adheres to objects in the open air, and makes them either forbidding or attractive, as one's mood is healthful and robust or feeble and languid. The processes are silently at work. Already seen from a distance, and from other atmospheres and surroundings, he assumes magnitude and orbic coherence; for in curious contrast to the general denial of Whitman in this country (though he has more lovers and admirers here than is generally believed) stands the reception accorded him in Europe. The poets there, almost without exception, recognize his transcendent quality, the men of science his thorough scientific basis, the republicans his inborn democracy, and all his towering picturesque personality and modernness. Professor Clifford says he is more thoroughly in harmony with the spirit and letter of advanced scientism than any other living poet. Professor Tyrrell and Mr. Symonds find him eminently Greek, in the sense in which to be natural and "self-regulated by the law of perfect health" is to be Greek. The French "Revue des Deux Mondes" pronounces his war poems the most vivid, the most humanly passionate, and the most modern, of all the verse of the nineteenth century. Freiligrath translated him into German, and hailed him as the founder of a new democratic and modern order of poetry, greater than the old. But I do not propose to go over the whole list here; I only wish to indicate that the absorption is well commenced abroad, and that probably her poet will at last reach America by way of those far-off, roundabout channels. The old mother will first masticate and moisten the food which is still too tough for her offspring. When I first fell in with "Leaves of Grass," I was taken by isolated passages scattered here and there through the poems; these I seized upon, and gave myself no concern about the rest. Single lines in it often went to the bottom of the questions that were vexing me. The following, though less here than when encountered in the frame of mind which the poet begets in you, curiously settled and stratified a certain range of turbid, fluctuating inquiry:-- "There was never any more inception than there is now,-- Nor any more youth or age than there is now; And will never be any more perfection than there is now, Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now." These lines, also, early had an attraction for me I could not define, and were of great service:-- "Pleasantly and well-suited I walk, Whither I walk I cannot define, but I know it is good, The whole universe indicates that it is good, The past and the present indicate that it is good." In the following episode, too, there was to me something far deeper than the words or the story:-- "The runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside; I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the wood-pile; Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy and weak, And went where he sat on a log, and led him in, and assured him, And brought water and fill'd a tub for his sweated body and bruis'd feet, And gave him a room that entered from my own, and gave him some coarse clean clothes; And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness, And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles: He stayed with me a week before he was recuperated and pass'd North; (I had him sit next me at table--my firelock lean'd in the corner.)" But of the book as a whole I could form no adequate conception, and it was not for many years, and after I had known the poet himself, as already stated, that I saw in it a teeming, rushing globe well worthy my best days and strength to surround and comprehend. One thing that early took me in the poems was (as before alluded to) the tremendous personal force back of them, and felt through them as the sun through vapor; not merely intellectual grasp or push, but a warm, breathing, towering, magnetic Presence that there was no escape from. Another fact I was quick to perceive, namely, that this man had almost in excess a quality in which every current poet was lacking,--I mean the faculty of being in entire sympathy with actual nature, and the objects; and shows of nature, and of rude, abysmal man; and appalling directness of utterance therefrom, at first hand, without any intermediate agency or modification. The influence of books and works of art upon an author may be seen in all respectable writers. If knowledge alone made literature, or culture genius, there would be no dearth of these things among the moderns. But I feel bound to say that there is something higher and deeper than the influence or perusal of any or all books, or all other productions of genius,--a quality of information which the masters can never impart, and which all the libraries do not hold. This is the absorption by an author, previous to becoming so, of the spirit of nature, through the visible objects of the universe, and his affiliation with them subjectively and objectively. Not more surely is the blood quickened and purified by contact with the unbreathed air than is the spirit of man vitalized and made strong by intercourse with the real things of the earth. The calm, all-permitting, wordless spirit of nature,--yet so eloquent to him who hath ears to hear! The sunrise, the heaving sea, the woods and mountains, the storm and the whistling winds, the gentle summer day, the winter sights and sounds, the night and the high dome of stars,--to have really perused these, especially from childhood onward, till what there is in them, so impossible to define, finds its full mate and echo in the mind,--this only is the lore which breathes the breath of life into all the rest. Without it, literary productions may have the superb beauty of statues, but with it only can they have the beauty of life. I was never troubled at all by what the critics called Whitman's want of art, or his violation of art. I saw that he at once designedly swept away all which the said critics have commonly meant by that term. The dominant impression was of the living presence and voice. He would have no curtains, he said, not the finest, between himself and his reader; and in thus bringing me face to face with his subject I perceived he not only did not escape conventional art, but I perceived an enlarged, enfranchised art in this very abnegation of art. "When half-gods go, whole gods arrive." It was obvious to me that the new style gained more than it lost, and that in this fullest operatic launching forth of the voice, though it sounded strange at first, and required the ear to get used to it, there might be quite as much science, and a good deal more power, than in the tuneful but constricted measures we were accustomed to. To the eye the page of the new poet presented about the same contrast with the page of the popular poets that trees and the free, unbidden growths of nature do with a carefully clipped hedge; and to the spirit the contrast was about the same. The hedge is the more studiedly and obviously beautiful, but, ah! there is a kind of beauty and satisfaction in trees that one would not care to lose. There are symmetry and proportion in the sonnet, but to me there is something I would not exchange for them in the wild swing and balance of many free and unrhymed passages in Shakespeare; like the one, for instance, in which these lines occur:-- "To be imprisoned in the viewless winds, And blown with restless violence round About the pendent world." Here is the spontaneous grace and symmetry of a forest tree, or a soughing mass of foliage. And this passage from my poet I do not think could be improved by the verse-maker's art:-- "This day before dawn I ascended a hill and look'd at the crowded heaven, And I said to my Spirit, _When we become the enfolders of those orbs and the pleasure and knowledge of everything in them, shall we be fill'd and satisfied then?_ And my Spirit said, No, _we but level that lift, to pass and continue beyond."_ Such breaking with the routine poetic, and with the grammar of verse, was of course a dangerous experiment, and threw the composer absolutely upon his intrinsic merits, upon his innately poetic and rhythmic quality. He must stand or fall by these alone, since he discarded all artificial, all adventitious helps. If interior, spontaneous rhythm could not be relied on, and the natural music and flexibility of language, then there was nothing to shield the ear from the pitiless hail of words,--not one softly padded verse anywhere. All poets, except those of the very first order, owe immensely to the form, the art, the stereotyped metres, and stock figures they find ready to hand. The form is suggestive,--it invites and aids expression, and lends itself readily, like fashion, to conceal, or extenuate, or eke out poverty of thought and feeling in the verse. The poet can "cut and cover," as the farmer says, in a way the prose-writer never can, nor one whose form is essentially prose, like Whitman's. I, too, love to see the forms worthily used, as they always are by the master; and I have no expectation that they are going out of fashion right away. A great deal of poetry that serves, and helps sweeten one's cup, would be impossible without them,--would be nothing when separated from them. It is for the ear, and for the sense of tune and of carefully carved and modeled forms, and is not meant to arouse the soul with the taste of power, and to start off on journeys for itself. But the great inspired utterances, like the Bible,--what would they gain by being cast in the moulds of metrical verse? In all that concerns art, viewed from any high standpoint,--proportion, continence, self-control, unfaltering adherence to natural standards, subordination of parts, perfect adjustment of the means to the end, obedience to inward law, no trifling, no levity, no straining after effect, impartially attending to the back and loins as well as to the head, and even holding toward his subject an attitude of perfect acceptance and equality,--principles of art to which alone the great spirits are amenable,--in all these respects, I say, this poet is as true as an orb in astronomy. To his literary expression pitched on scales of such unprecedented breadth and loftiness, the contrast of his personal life comes in with a foil of curious homeliness and simplicity. Perhaps never before has the absolute and average _commonness of humanity_ been so steadily and unaffectedly adhered to. I give here a glimpse of him in Washington on a Navy Yard horse-car, toward the close of the war, one summer day at sundown. The car is crowded and suffocatingly hot, with many passengers on the rear platform, and among them a bearded, florid-faced man, elderly but agile, resting against the dash, by the side of the young conductor, and evidently his intimate friend. The man wears a broad-brim white hat. Among the jam inside, near the door, a young Englishwoman, of the working class, with two children, has had trouble all the way with the youngest, a strong, fat, fretful, bright babe of fourteen or fifteen months, who bids fair to worry the mother completely out, besides becoming a howling nuisance to everybody. As the car tugs around Capitol Hill the young one is more demoniac than ever, and the flushed and perspiring mother is just ready to burst into tears with weariness and vexation. The car stops at the top of the hill to let off most of the rear platform passengers, and the white-hatted man reaches inside, and, gently but firmly disengaging the babe from its stifling place in the mother's arms, takes it in his own, and out in the air. The astonished and excited child, partly in fear, partly in satisfaction at the change, stops its screaming, and, as the man adjusts it more securely to his breast, plants its chubby hands against him, and, pushing off as far as it can, gives a good long look squarely in his face,--then, as if satisfied, snuggles down with its head on his neck, and in less than a minute is sound and peacefully asleep without another whimper, utterly fagged out. A square or so more and the conductor, who has had an unusually hard and uninterrupted day's work, gets off for his first meal and relief since morning. And now the white-hatted man, holding the slumbering babe, also acts as conductor the rest of the distance, keeping his eye on the passengers inside, who have by this time thinned out greatly. He makes a very good conductor, too, pulling the bell to stop or to go on as needed, and seems to enjoy the occupation. The babe meanwhile rests its fat cheeks close on his neck and gray beard, one of his arms vigilantly surrounding it, while the other signals, from time to time, with the strap; and the flushed mother inside has a good half hour to breathe, and to cool and recover herself. II No poem of our day dates and locates itself as absolutely as "Leaves of Grass;" but suppose it had been written three or four centuries ago, and had located itself in mediaeval Europe, and was now first brought to light, together with a history of Walt Whitman's simple and disinterested life, can there be any doubt about the cackling that would at once break out in the whole brood of critics over the golden egg that had been uncovered? This reckon would be a favorite passage with all:-- "You sea! I resign myself to you also--I guess what you mean; I behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers; I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me; We must have a turn together--I undress--hurry me out of sight of the land; Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse; Dash me with amorous wet--I can repay you. "Sea of stretch'd ground-swells! Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths! Sea of the brine of life! sea of unshovel'd yet always ready graves! Howler and scooper of storms! capricious and dainty sea! I am integral with you--I too am of one phase, and of all phases." This other passage would afford many a text for the moralists and essayists:-- "Of persons arrived at high positions, ceremonies, wealth, scholarship, and the like; To me, all that those persons have arrived at sinks away from them, except as it results to their Bodies and Souls, So that often, to me, they appear gaunt and naked, And often, to me, each one mocks the others, and mocks himself or herself, And of each one, the core of life, namely happiness, is full of the rotten excrement of maggots; And often, to me, those men and women pass unwittingly the true realities of life, and go toward false realities, And often, to me, they are alive after what custom has served them, but nothing more, And often, to me, they are sad, hasty, unwaked somnambules, walking the dusk." Ah, Time, you enchantress! what tricks you play with us! The old is already proved,--the past and the distant hold nothing but the beautiful. Or let us take another view. Suppose Walt Whitman had never existed, and some bold essayist, like Mr. Higginson or Matthew Arnold, had projected him in abstract, outlined him on a scholarly ideal background, formulated and put in harmless critical periods the principles of art which he illustrates, and which are the inevitable logic of his poems,--said essayist would have won great applause. "Yes, indeed, that were a poet to cherish; fill those shoes and you have a god." How different a critic's account of Shakespeare from Shakespeare himself,--the difference between the hewn or sawed timber and the living tree! A few years ago we had here a lecturer from over seas, who gave to our well-dressed audiences the high, moral, and intellectual statement of the poet Burns. It was very fine, and people were greatly pleased, vastly more so, I fear, than they were with Burns himself. Indeed, I could not help wondering how many of those appreciative listeners had any original satisfaction in the Scotch poet at first hand, or would have accepted him had he been their neighbor and fellow-citizen. But as he filtered through the scholarly mind in trickling drops, oh, he was so sweet! Everybody stirred with satisfaction as the lecturer said: "When literature becomes dozy, respectable, and goes in the smooth grooves of fashion, and copies and copies again, something must be done; and to give life to that dying literature a man must be found _not educated under its influence."_ I applauded with the rest, for it was a bold saying; but I could not help thinking how that theory, brought home to ourselves and illustrated in a living example, would have sent that nodding millinery and faultless tailory flying downstairs, as at an alarm of fire. One great service of Walt Whitman is that he exerts a tremendous influence to bring the race up on this nether side,--to place the emotional, the assimilative, the sympathetic, the spontaneous, intuitive man, the man of the fluids and of the affections, flush with the intellectual man. That we moderns have fallen behind here is unquestionable, and we in this country more than the Old World peoples. All the works of Whitman, prose and verse, are embosomed in a sea of emotional humanity, and they float deeper than they show; there is far more in what they necessitate and imply than in what they say. It is not so much of fatty degeneration that we are in danger in America, but of calcareous. The fluids, moral and physical, are evaporating; surfaces are becoming encrusted, there is a deposit of flint in the veins and arteries, outlines are abnormally sharp and hard, nothing is held in solution, all is precipitated in well-defined ideas and opinions. But when I think of the type of character planted and developed by my poet, I think of a man or a woman rich above all things in the genial human attributes, one "nine times folded" in an atmosphere of tenderest, most considerate humanity,--an atmosphere warm with the breath of a tropic heart, that makes your buds of affection and of genius start and unfold like a south wind in May. Your intercourse with such a character is not merely intellectual; it is deeper and better than that. Walter Scott carried such a fund of sympathy and goodwill that even the animals found fellowship with him, and the pigs understood his great heart. It was the large endowment of Whitman, in his own character in this respect, that made his services in the army hospitals during the war so ministering and effective, and that renders his "Drum-Taps" the tenderest and most deeply yearning and sorrowful expression of the human heart in poetry that ever war called forth. Indeed, from my own point of view, there is no false or dangerous tendency among us, in life or in letters, that this poet does not offset and correct. Fret and chafe as much as we will, we are bound to gravitate, more or less, toward this mountain, and feel its bracing, rugged air. Without a certain self-surrender there is no greatness possible in literature, any more than in religion, or in anything else. It is always a trait of the master that he is not afraid of being compromised by the company he keeps. He is the central and main fact in any company. Nothing so lowly but he will do it reverence; nothing so high but he can stand in its presence. His theme is the river, and he the ample and willing channel. Little natures love to disparage and take down; they do it in self-defense; but the master gives you all, and more than your due. Whitman does not stand aloof, superior, a priest or a critic: he abandons himself to all the strong human currents; he enters into and affiliates with every phase of life; he bestows himself royally upon whoever and whatever will receive him. There is no competition between himself and his subject; he is not afraid of over-praising, or making too much of the commonest individual. What exalts others exalts him. We have had great help in Emerson in certain ways,--first-class service. He probes the conscience and the moral purpose as few men have done, and gives much needed stimulus there. But, after him, the need is all the more pressing for a broad, powerful, opulent, human personality to absorb these ideals, and to make something more of them than fine sayings. With Emerson alone we are rich in sunlight, but poor in rain and dew,--poor, too, in soil, and in the moist, gestating earth principle. Emerson's tendency is not to broaden and enrich, but to concentrate and refine. Then, is there not an excessive modesty, without warrant in philosophy or nature, dwindling us in this country, drying us up in the viscera? Is there not a decay--a deliberate, strange abnegation and dread--of sane sexuality, of maternity and paternity, among us, and in our literary ideals and social types of men and women? For myself, I welcome any evidence to the contrary, or any evidence that deeper and counteracting agencies are at work, as unspeakably precious. I do not know where this evidence is furnished in such ample measure as in the pages of Walt Whitman. The great lesson of nature, I take it, is that a sane sensuality must be preserved at all hazards, and this, it seems to me, is also the great lesson of his writings. The point is fully settled in him that, however they may have been held in abeyance or restricted to other channels, there is still sap and fecundity, and depth of virgin soil in the race, sufficient to produce a man of the largest mould and the most audacious and unconquerable egotism, and on a plane the last to be reached by these qualities; a man of antique stature, of Greek fibre and gripe, with science and the modern added, without abating one jot or tittle of his native force, adhesiveness, Americanism, and democracy. As I have already hinted, Whitman has met with by far his amplest acceptance and appreciation in Europe. There is good reason for this, though it is not what has been generally claimed, namely, that the cultivated classes of Europe are surfeited with respectability, half dead with _ennui_ and routine, and find an agreeable change in the daring unconventionality of the new poet. For the fact is, it is not the old and jaded minds of London, or Paris, or Dublin, or Copenhagen, that have acknowledged him, but the fresh, eager, young minds. Nine tenths of his admirers there are the sturdiest men in the fields of art, science, and literature. In many respects, as a race, we Americans have been pampered and spoiled; we have been brought up on sweets. I suppose that, speaking literally, no people under the sun consume so much confectionery, so much pastry and cake, or indulge in so many gassy and sugared drinks. The soda-fountain, with its syrups, has got into literature, and furnishes the popular standard of poetry. The old heroic stamina of our ancestors, that craved the bitter but nourishing home-brewed, has died out, and in its place there is a sickly cadaverousness that must be pampered and cosseted. Among educated people here there is a mania for the bleached, the double-refined,--white houses, white china, white marble, and white skins. We take the bone and sinew out of the flour in order to have white bread, and are bolting our literature as fast as possible. It is for these and kindred reasons that Walt Whitman is more read abroad than in his own country. It is on the rank, human, and emotional side--sex, magnetism, health, physique,--that he is so full. Then his receptivity and assimilative powers are enormous, and he demands these in his reader. In fact, his poems are physiological as much as they are intellectual. They radiate from his entire being, and are charged to repletion with that blended quality of mind and body--psychic and physiologic--which the living form and presence send forth. Never before in poetry has the body received such ennoblement. The great theme is IDENTITY, and identity comes through the body; and all that pertains to the body, the poet teaches, is entailed upon the spirit. In his rapt gaze, the body and the soul are one, and what debases the one debases the other. Hence he glorifies the body. Not more ardently and purely did the great sculptors of antiquity carve it in the enduring marble than this poet has celebrated it in his masculine and flowing lines. The bearing of his work in this direction is invaluable. Well has it been said that the man or the woman who has "Leaves of Grass" for a daily companion will be under the constant, invisible influence of sanity, cleanliness, strength, and a gradual severance from all that corrupts and makes morbid and mean. In regard to the unity and construction of the poems, the reader sooner or later discovers the true solution to be, that the dependence, cohesion, and final reconciliation of the whole are in the Personality of the poet himself. As in Shakespeare everything is strung upon the plot, the play, and loses when separated from it, so in this poet every line and sentence refers to and necessitates the Personality behind it, and derives its chief significance therefrom. In other words, "Leaves of Grass" is essentially a dramatic poem, a free representation of man in his relation to the outward world,--the play, the interchanges between him and it, apart from social and artificial considerations,--in which we discern the central purpose or thought to be for every man and woman his or her Individuality, and around that, Nationality. To show rather than to tell,--to body forth as in a play how these arise and blend; how the man is developed and recruited, his spirit's descent; how he walks through materials absorbing and conquering them; how he confronts the immensities of time and space; where are the true sources of his power, the soul's real riches,--that which "adheres and goes forward and is not dropped by death;" how he is all defined and published and made certain through his body; the value of health and physique; the great solvent, Sympathy,--to show the need of larger and fresher types in art and in life, and then how the state is compacted, and how the democratic idea is ample and composite, and cannot fail us,--to show all this, I say, not as in a lecture or a critique, but suggestively and inferentially,--to work it out freely and picturesquely, with endless variations, with person and picture and parable and adventure, is the lesson and object of "Leaves of Grass." From the first line, where the poet says, "I loafe and invite my Soul," to the last, all is movement and fusion,--all is clothed in flesh and blood. The scene changes, the curtain rises and falls, but the theme is still Man,--his opportunities, his relations, his past, his future, his sex, his pride in himself, his omnivorousness, his "great hands," his yearning heart, his seething brain, the abysmal depths that underlie him and open from him, all illustrated in the poet's own character,--he the chief actor always. His personality directly facing you, and with its eye steadily upon you, runs through every page, spans all the details, and rounds and completes them, and compactly holds them. This gives the form and the art conception, and gives homogeneousness. When Tennyson sends out a poem, it is perfect, like an apple or a peach; slowly wrought out and dismissed, it drops from his boughs holding a conception or an idea that spheres it and makes it whole. It is completed, distinct, and separate,--might be his, or might be any man's. It carries his quality, but it is a thing of itself, and centres and depends upon itself. Whether or not the world will hereafter consent, as in the past, to call only beautiful creations of this sort _poems,_ remains to be seen. But this is certainly not what Walt Whitman does, or aims to do, except in a few cases. He completes no poems apart and separate from himself, and his pages abound in hints to that effect:-- "Let others finish specimens--I never finish specimens; I shower them by exhaustless laws, as Nature does, fresh and modern continually." His lines are pulsations, thrills, waves of force, indefinite dynamics, formless, constantly emanating from the living centre, and they carry the quality of the author's personal presence with them in a way that is unprecedented in literature. Occasionally there is a poem or a short piece that detaches itself, and assumes something like ejaculatory and statuesque proportion, as "O Captain, my Captain," "Pioneers," "Beat, Beat, Drums," and others in "Drum-Taps;" but all the great poems, like "Walt Whitman," "Song of the Open Road," "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," "To Working Men," "Sleep-Chasings," etc., are out-flamings, out-rushings, of the pent fires of the poet's soul. The first-named poem, which is the seething, dazzling sun of his subsequent poetic system, shoots in rapid succession waves of almost consuming energy. It is indeed a central orb of fiercest light and heat, swept by wild storms of emotion, but at the same time of sane and beneficent potentiality. Neither in it nor in either of the others is there the building-up of a fair verbal structure, a symmetrical piece of mechanism, whose last stone is implied and necessitated in the first. "The critic's great error," says Heine, "lies in asking, 'What ought the artist to do?' It would be far more correct to ask, 'What does the artist intend?'" It is probably partly because his field is so large, his demands so exacting, his method so new (necessarily so), and from the whole standard of the poems being what I may call an astronomical one, that the critics complain so generally of want of form in him. And the critics are right enough, as far as their objection goes. There is no deliberate form here, any more than there is in the forces of nature. Shall we say, then, that nothing but the void exists? The void is filled by a Presence. There is a controlling, directing, overarching will in every page, every verse, that there is no escape from. Design and purpose, natural selection, growth, culmination, are just as pronounced as in any poet. There is a want of form in the unfinished statue, because it is struggling into form; it is nothing without form; but there is no want of form in the elemental laws and effusions,--in fire, or water, or rain, or dew, or the smell of the shore or the plunging waves. And may there not be the analogue of this in literature,--a potent, quickening, exhilarating quality in words, apart from and without any consideration of constructive form? Under the influence of the expansive, creative force that plays upon me from these pages, like sunlight or gravitation, the question of form never comes up, because I do not for one moment escape the eye, the source from which the power and action emanate. I know that Walt Whitman has written many passages with reference far more to their position, interpretation, and scanning ages hence, than for current reading. Much of his material is too near us; it needs time. Seen through the vista of long years, perhaps centuries, it will assume quite different hues. Perhaps those long lists of trades, tools, and occupations would not be so repellent if we could read them, as we read Homer's catalogue of the ships, through the retrospect of ages. They are justified in the poem aside from their historic value, because they are alive and full of action,--panoramas of the whole mechanical and industrial life of America, north, east, south, west,--bits of scenery, bird's-eye views, glimpses of moving figures, caught as by a flash, characteristic touches indoors and out, all passing in quick succession before you. They have in the fullest measure what Lessing demands in poetry,--the quality of ebbing and flowing action, as distinct from the dead water of description; they are thoroughly dramatic, fused, pliant, and obedient to the poet's will. No glamour is thrown over them, no wash of sentiment; and if they have not the charm of novelty and distance, why, that is an accident that bars them in a measure to us, but not to the future. Very frequently in these lists or enumerations of objects, actions, shows, there are sure to occur lines of perfect description:-- "Where the heifers browse--where geese nip their food with short jerks; Where sun-down shadows lengthen over the limitless and lonesome prairie; Where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square miles far and near; Where the splash of swimmers and divers cools the warm noon; Where the katydid works her chromatic reed on the walnut-tree over the well." "Spar-makers in the spar-yard, the swarming row of well-grown apprentices, The swing of their axes on the square-hew'd log, shaping it toward the shape of a mast, The brisk short crackle of the steel driven slantingly into the pine, The butter-color'd chips flying off in great flakes and slivers, The limber motion of brawny young arms and hips in easy costumes." "Always these compact lands--lands tied at the hips with the belt stringing the huge oval lakes." "Far breath'd land! Arctic braced! Mexican breez'd!--the diverse! the compact!" Tried by the standards of the perfect statuesque poems, these pages will indeed seem strange enough; but viewed as a part of the poetic compend of America, the swift gathering-in, from her wide-spreading, multitudinous, material life, of traits and points and suggestions that belong here and are characteristic, they have their value. The poet casts his great seine into events and doings and material progress, and these are some of the fish, not all beautiful by any means, but all terribly alive, and all native to these waters. In the "Carol of Occupations" occur, too, those formidable inventories of the more heavy and coarsegrained trades and tools that few if any readers have been able to stand before, and that have given the scoffers and caricaturists their favorite weapons. If you detach a page of these and ask, "Is it poetry? have the 'hog-hook,' the 'killing-hammer,' 'the cutter's cleaver,' 'the packer's maul,' met with a change of heart, and been converted into celestial cutlery?" I answer, No, they are as barren of poetry as a desert is of grass; but in their place in the poem, and in the collection, they serve as masses of shade or neutral color in pictures, or in nature, or in character,--a negative service, but still indispensable. The point, the moral of the poem, is really backed up and driven home by this list. The poet is determined there shall be no mistake about it. He will not put in the dainty and pretty things merely,--he will put in the coarse and common things also, and he swells the list till even his robust muse begins to look uneasy. Remember, too, that Whitman declaredly writes the lyrics of America, of the masses, of democracy, and of the practical labor of mechanics, boatmen, and farmers:-- "The sum of all known reverence I add up in you, whoever you are; All doctrines, all politics and civilization, exude from you; All sculpture and monuments, and anything inscribed anywhere, are tallied in you; The gist of histories and statistics as far back as the records reach, is in you this hour, and myths and tales the same: If you were not breathing and walking here, where would they all be? The most renown'd poems would be ashes, orations and plays would be vacuums. "All architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it; (Did you think it was in the white or gray stone? or the lines of the arches and cornices?) "All music is what awakens from you when you are reminded by the instruments; It is not the violins and the cornets--it is not the oboe, nor the beating drums--nor the score of the baritone singer singing his sweet romanza--nor that of the men's chorus, nor that of the women's chorus, It is nearer and farther than they." Out of this same spirit of reverence for man and all that pertains essentially to him, and the steady ignoring of conventional and social distinctions and prohibitions, and on the same plane as the universal brotherhood of the poems, come those passages in "Leaves of Grass" that have caused so much abuse and fury,--the allusions to sexual acts and organs,--the momentary contemplation of man as the perpetuator of his species. Many good judges, who have followed Whitman thus far, stop here and refuse their concurrence. But if the poet has failed in this part, he has failed in the rest. It is of a piece with the whole. He has felt in his way the same necessity as that which makes the anatomist or the physiologist not pass by, or neglect, or falsify, the loins of his typical personage. All the passages and allusions that come under this head have a scientific coldness and purity, but differ from science, as poetry always must differ, in being alive and sympathetic, instead of dead and analytic. There is nothing of the forbidden here, none of those sweet morsels that we love to roll under the tongue, such as are found in Byron and Shakespeare, and even in austere Dante. If the fact is not lifted up and redeemed by the solemn and far-reaching laws of maternity and paternity, through which the poet alone contemplates it, then it is irredeemable, and one side of our nature is intrinsically vulgar and mean. Again: Out of all the full-grown, first-class poems, no matter what their plot or theme, emerges a sample of Man, each after its kind, its period, its nationality, its antecedents. The vast and cumbrous Hindu epics contribute their special types of both man and woman, impossible except from far-off Asia and Asian antiquity. Out of Homer, after all his gorgeous action and events, the distinct personal identity, the heroic and warlike chieftain of Hellas only permanently remains. In the same way, when the fire and fervor of Shakespeare's plots and passions subside, the special feudal personality, as lord or gentleman, still towers in undying vitality. Even the Sacred Writings themselves, considered as the first great poems, leave on record, out of all the rest, the portraiture of a characteristic Oriental Man. Far different from these (and yet, as he says, "the same old countenance pensively looking forth," and "the same red running blood"), "Leaves of Grass" and "Two Rivulets" also bring their contribution; nay, behind every page _that_ is the main purport,--to outline a New World Man and a New World Woman, modern, complete, democratic, not only fully and nobly intellectual and spiritual, but in the same measure physical, emotional, and even fully and nobly carnal. An acute person once said to me, "As I read and re-read these poems, I more and more think their inevitable result in time must be to produce 'A race of splendid and savage _old men,_' of course dominated by moral and spiritual laws, but with volcanoes of force always alive beneath the surface." And still again: One of the questions to be put to any poem assuming a first-class importance among us--and I especially invite this inquiry toward "Leaves of Grass"--is, How far is this work consistent with, and the outcome of, that something which secures to the race ascendency, empire, and perpetuity? There is in every dominant people a germ, a quality, an expansive force, that, no matter how it is overlaid, gives them their push and their hold upon existence,--writes their history upon the earth, and stamps their imprint upon the age. To what extent is your masterpiece the standard-bearer of this quality,--helping the race to victory? helping me to be more myself than I otherwise would? III Not the least of my poet's successes is in his thorough assimilation of the modern sciences, transmuting them into strong poetic nutriment, and in the extent to which all his main poems are grounded in the deepest principles of modern philosophical inquiry. Nearly all the old literatures may be said to have been founded upon fable, and upon a basis and even superstructure of ignorance, that, however charming it may be, we have not now got, and could not keep if we had. The bump of wonder and the feeling of the marvelous,--a kind of half-pleasing fear, like that of children in the dark or in the woods,--were largely operative with the old poets, and I believe are necessary to any eminent success in this field; but they seem nearly to have died out of the modern mind, like organs there is no longer any use for. The poetic temperament has not yet adjusted itself to the new lights, to science, and to the vast fields and expanses opened up in the physical cosmos by astronomy and geology, and in the spiritual or intellectual world by the great German metaphysicians. The staple of a large share of our poetic literature is yet mainly the result of the long age of fable and myth that now lies behind us. "Leaves of Grass" is, perhaps, the first serious and large attempt at an expression in poetry of a knowledge of the earth as one of the orbs, and of man as a microcosm of the whole, and to give to the imagination these new and true fields of wonder and romance. In it fable and superstition are at an end, priestcraft is at an end, skepticism and doubt are at an end, with all the misgivings and dark forebodings that have dogged the human mind since it began to relax its hold upon tradition and the past; and we behold man reconciled, happy, ecstatic, full of reverence, awe, and wonder, reinstated in Paradise,--the paradise of perfect knowledge and unrestricted faith. It needs but a little pondering to see that the great poet of the future will not be afraid of science, but will rather seek to plant his feet upon it as upon a rock. He knows that, from an enlarged point of view, there is no feud between Science and Poesy, any more than there is between Science and Religion, or between Science and Life. He sees that the poet and the scientist do not travel opposite but parallel roads, that often approach each other very closely, if they do not at times actually join. The poet will always pause when he finds himself in opposition to science; and the scientist is never more worthy the name than when he escapes from analysis into synthesis, and gives us living wholes. And science, in its present bold and receptive mood, may be said to be eminently creative, and to have made every first-class thinker and every large worker in any aesthetic or spiritual field immeasurably its debtor. It has dispelled many illusions, but it has more than compensated the imagination by the unbounded vistas it has opened up on every hand. It has added to our knowledge, but it has added to our ignorance in the same measure: the large circle of light only reveals the larger circle of darkness that encompasses it, and life and being and the orbs are enveloped in a greater mystery to the poet to-day than they were in the times of Homer or Isaiah. Science, therefore, does not restrict the imagination, but often compels it to longer flights. The conception of the earth as an orb shooting like a midnight meteor through space, a brand cast by the burning sun with the fire at its heart still unquenched, the sun itself shooting and carrying the whole train of worlds with it, no one knows whither,--what a lift has science given the imagination in this field! Or the tremendous discovery of the correlation and conservation of forces, the identity and convertibility of heat and force and motion, and that no ounce of power is lost, but forever passed along, changing form but not essence, is a poetic discovery no less than a scientific one. The poets have always felt that it must be so, and, when the fact was authoritatively announced by science, every profound poetic mind must have felt a thrill of pleasure. Or the nebular hypothesis of the solar system,--it seems the conception of some inspired madman, like William Blake, rather than the cool conclusion of reason, and to carry its own justification, as great power always does. Indeed, our interest in astronomy and geology is essentially a poetic one,--the love of the marvelous, of the sublime, and of grand harmonies. The scientific conception of the sun is strikingly Dantesque, and appalls the imagination. Or the hell of fire through which the earth has passed, and the aeons of monsters from which its fair forms have emerged,--from which of the seven circles of the Inferno did the scientist get his hint? Indeed, science everywhere reveals a carnival of mightier gods than those that cut such fantastic tricks in the ancient world. Listen to Tyndall on light, or to Youmans on the chemistry of a sunbeam, and see how fable pales its ineffectual fires, and the boldest dreams of the poets are eclipsed. The vibratory theory of light and its identity with the laws of sound, the laws of the tides and the seasons, the wonders of the spectroscope, the theory of gravitation, of electricity, of chemical affinity, the deep beneath deep of the telescope, the world within world of the microscope,--in these and many other fields it is hard to tell whether it is the scientist or the poet we are listening to. What greater magic than that you can take a colorless ray of light, break it across a prism, and catch upon a screen all the divine hues of the rainbow? In some respects science has but followed out and confirmed the dim foreshadowings of the human breast. Man in his simplicity has called the sun father and the earth mother. Science shows this to be no fiction, but a reality; that we are really children of the sun, and that every heart-beat, every pound of force we exert, is a solar emanation. The power with which you now move and breathe came from the sun just as literally as the bank-notes in your pocket came from the bank. The ancients fabled the earth as resting upon the shoulders of Atlas, and Atlas as standing upon a turtle; but what the turtle stood upon was a puzzle. An acute person says that science has but changed the terms of the equation, but that the unknown quantity is the same as ever. The earth now rests upon the sun,--in his outstretched palm; the sun rests upon some other sun, and that upon some other; but what they all finally rest upon, who can tell? Well may Tennyson speak of the "fairy tales of science," and well may Walt Whitman say:-- "I lie abstracted, and hear beautiful tales of things, and the reasons of things; They are so beautiful, I nudge myself to listen." But, making all due acknowledgments to science, there is one danger attending it that the poet alone can save us from,--the danger that science, absorbed with its great problems, will forget Man. Hence the especial office of the poet with reference to science is to endow it with a human interest. The heart has been disenchanted by having disclosed to it blind, abstract forces where it had enthroned personal humanistic divinities. In the old time, man was the centre of the system; everything was interested in him, and took sides for or against him. There were nothing but men and gods in the universe. But in the results of science the world is more and more, and man is less and less. The poet must come to the rescue, and place man again at the top, magnify him, exalt him, reinforce him, and match these wonders from without with equal wonders from within. Welcome to the bard who is not appalled by the task, and who can readily assimilate and turn into human emotions these vast deductions of the savants! The minor poets do nothing in this direction; only men of the largest calibre and the most heroic fibre are adequate to the service. Hence one finds in Tennyson a vast deal more science than he would at first suspect; but it is under his feet; it is no longer science, but faith, or reverence, or poetic nutriment. It is in "Locksley Hall," "The Princess," "In Memoriam," "Maud," and in others of his poems. Here is a passage from "In Memoriam:"-- "They say, The solid earth whereon we tread "In tracts of fluent heat began, And grew to seeming-random forms, The seeming prey of cyclic storms, Till at the last arose the man; "Who throve and branch'd from clime to clime, The herald of a higher race, And of himself in higher place If so he type this work of time "Within himself, from more to more; Or, crown'd with attributes of woe, Like glories, move his course, and show That life is not as idle ore, "But iron dug from central gloom, And heated hot with burning fears, And dipt in baths of hissing tears, And batter'd with the shocks of doom "To shape and use. Arise and fly The reeling Faun, the sensual feast; Move upward, working out the beast, And let the ape and tiger die." Or in this stanza behold how the science is disguised or turned into the sweetest music:-- "Move eastward, happy earth, and leave Yon orange sunset waning slow; From fringes of the faded eve, O happy planet, eastward go; Till over thy dark shoulder glow Thy silver sister-world, and rise To glass herself in dewy eyes That watch me from the glen below." A recognition of the planetary system, and of the great fact that the earth moves eastward through the heavens, in a soft and tender love-song! But in Walt Whitman alone do we find the full, practical absorption, and re-departure therefrom, of the astounding idea that the earth is a star in the heavens like the rest, and that man, as the crown and finish, carries in his moral consciousness the flower, the outcome, of all this wide field of turbulent unconscious nature. Of course in his handling it is no longer science, or rather it is science dissolved in the fervent heat of the poet's heart, and charged with emotion. "The words of true poems," he says, "are the tufts and final applause of science." Before Darwin or Spencer he proclaimed the doctrine of evolution:-- "I am stuccoed with quadrupeds and birds all over, And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons, And call anything close again when I desire it. "In vain the speeding and shyness; In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach; In vain the mastodon retreats beneath his own powder'd bones; In vain objects stand leagues off, and assume manifold shapes; In vain the ocean settling in hollows, and the great monsters lying low." In the following passage the idea is more fully carried out, and man is viewed through a vista which science alone has laid open; yet how absolutely a work of the creative imagination is revealed:-- "I am an acme of things accomplish'd, and I am incloser of things to be. My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs; On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the steps; All below duly travel'd, and still I mount and mount. "Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me; Afar down I see the huge first Nothing--I know I was even there; I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist, And took my time, and took no hurt from the foetid carbon. "Long I was hugg'd close--long and long, Immense have been the preparations for me, Faithful and friendly the arms that have help'd me, Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen; For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings; They sent influences to look after what was to hold me. "Before I was born out of my mother, generations guided me; My embryo has never been torpid--nothing could overlay it, For it the nebula cohered to an orb, The long low strata piled to rest it on, Vast vegetables gave it sustenance, Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths, and deposited it with care; All forces have been steadily employ'd to complete and delight me: Now on this spot I stand with my robust Soul." I recall no single line of poetry in the language that fills my imagination like that beginning the second stanza:-- "Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me." One seems to see those huge Brocken shadows of the past sinking and dropping below the horizon like mountain peaks, as he presses onward on his journey. Akin to this absorption of science is another quality in my poet not found in the rest, except perhaps a mere hint of it now and then in Lucretius,--a quality easier felt than described. It is a tidal wave of emotion running all through the poems, which is now and then crested with such passages as this:-- "I am he that walks with the tender and growing night; I call to the earth and sea, half held by the night. "Press close, bare-bosom'd night! Press close, magnetic, nourishing night! Night of south winds! night of the large, few stars! Still, nodding night! mad, naked, summer night. "Smile, O voluptuous, cool-breath'd earth! Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees! Earth of departed sunset! Earth of the mountains, misty topt! Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon, just tinged with blue! Earth of shine and dark, mottling the tide of the river! Earth of the limpid gray of clouds, brighter and clearer for my sake! Far-swooping, elbow'd earth! rich, apple-blossom'd earth! Smile, for your lover comes!" Professor Clifford calls it "cosmic emotion,"--a poetic thrill and rhapsody in contemplating the earth as a whole,--its chemistry and vitality, its bounty, its beauty, its power, and the applicability of its laws and principles to human, aesthetic, and art products. It affords the key to the theory of art upon which Whitman's poems are projected, and accounts for what several critics call their sense of magnitude,--"something of the vastness of the succession of objects in Nature." "I swear there is no greatness or power that does not emulate those of the earth! I swear there can be no theory of any account, unless it corroborate the theory of the earth! No politics, art, religion, behavior, or what not, is of account, unless it compare with the amplitude of the earth, Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude of the earth." Or again, in his "Laws for Creation:"-- "All must have reference to the ensemble of the world, and the compact truth of the world, There shall be no subject too pronounced--All works shall illustrate the divine law of indirections." Indeed, the earth ever floats in this poet's mind as his mightiest symbol,--his type of completeness and power. It is the armory from which he draws his most potent weapons. See, especially, "To the Sayers of Words," "This Compost," "The Song of the Open Road," and "Pensive on her Dead gazing I heard the Mother of all." The poet holds essentially the same attitude toward cosmic humanity, well illustrated in "Salut au Monde:"-- "My spirit has pass'd in compassion and determination around the whole earth; I have look'd for equals and lovers, and found them ready for me in all lands; I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them. "O vapors! I think I have risen with you and moved away to distant continents, and fallen down there for reasons; I think I have blown with you, O winds; O waters, I have finger'd every shore with you." Indeed, the whole book is leavened with vehement Comradeship. Not only in the relations of individuals to each other shall loving good-will exist and be cultivated,--not only between the different towns and cities, and all the States of this indissoluble, compacted Union,--but it shall make a tie of fraternity and fusion holding all the races and peoples and countries of the whole earth. Then the National question. As Whitman's completed works now stand, in their two volumes, it is certain they could only have grown out of the Secession War; and they will probably go to future ages as in literature the most characteristic identification of that war,--risen from and portraying it, representing its sea of passions and progresses, partaking of all its fierce movements and perturbed emotions, and yet sinking the mere military parts of that war, great as those were, below and with matters far greater, deeper, more human, more expanding, and more enduring. I must not close this paper without some reference to Walt Whitman's prose writings, which are scarcely less important than his poems. Never has Patriotism, never has the antique Love of Country, with even doubled passion and strength, been more fully expressed than in these contributions. They comprise two thin volumes,--now included in "Two Rivulets,"--called "Democratic Vistas" and "Memoranda during the War;" the former exhibiting the personality of the poet in more vehement and sweeping action even than do the poems, and affording specimens of soaring vaticination and impassioned appeal impossible to match in the literature of our time. The only living author suggested is Carlyle; but so much is added, the _presence_ is so much more vascular and human, and the whole page so saturated with faith and love and democracy, that even the great Scotchman is overborne. Whitman, too, radiates belief, while at the core of Carlyle's utterances is despair. The style here is eruptive and complex, or what Jeremy Taylor calls _agglomerative,_ and puts the Addisonian models utterly to rout,--a style such as only the largest and most Titanic workman could effectively use. A sensitive lady of my acquaintance says reading the "Vistas" is like being exposed to a pouring hailstorm,--the words fairly bruise her mind. In its literary construction the book is indeed a shower, or a succession of showers, multitudinous, wide-stretching, down-pouring,--the wrathful bolt and the quick veins of poetic fire lighting up the page from time to time. I can easily conceive how certain minds must be swayed and bent by some of these long, involved, but firm and vehement passages. I cannot deny myself the pleasure of quoting one or two pages. The writer is referring to the great literary relics of past times:-- "For us, along the great highways of time, those monuments stand,--those forms of majesty and beauty. For us those beacons burn through all the nights. Unknown Egyptians, graving hieroglyphs; Hindus, with hymn and apothegm and endless epic; Hebrew prophet, with spirituality, as in flames of lightning, conscience like red-hot iron, plaintive songs and screams of vengeance for tyrannies and enslavement; Christ, with bent head, brooding love and peace, like a dove; Greek, creating eternal shapes of physical and aesthetic proportion; Roman, lord of satire, the sword, and the codex,--of the figures, some far off and veiled, others near and visible; Dante, stalking with lean form, nothing but fibre, not a grain of superfluous flesh; Angelo, and the great painters, architects, musicians; rich Shakespeare, luxuriant as the sun, artist and singer of Feudalism in its sunset, with all the gorgeous colors, owner thereof, and using them at will;--and so to such as German Kant and Hegel, where they, though near us, leaping over the ages, sit again, impassive, imperturbable, like the Egyptian gods. Of these, and the like of these, is it too much, indeed, to return to our favorite figure, and view them as orbs, moving in free paths in the spaces of that other heaven, the cosmic intellect, the Soul? "Ye powerful and resplendent ones! ye were, in your atmospheres, grown not for America, but rather for her foes, the Feudal and the old--while our genius is democratic and modern. Yet could ye, indeed, but breathe your breath of life into our New World's nostrils--not to enslave us as now, but, for our needs, to breed a spirit like your own--perhaps (dare we to say it?) to dominate, even destroy what you yourselves have left! On your plane, and no less, but even higher and wider, will I mete and measure for our wants to-day and here. I demand races of orbic bards, with unconditional, uncompromising sway. Come forth, sweet democratic despots of the west!" Here is another passage of a political cast, but showing the same great pinions and lofty flight:-- "It seems as if the Almighty had spread before this nation charts of imperial destinies, dazzling as the sun, yet with lines of blood, and many a deep intestine difficulty, and human aggregate of cankerous imperfection,--saying, Lo! the roads, the only plans of development, long, and varied with all terrible balks and ebullitions. You said in your soul, I will be empire of empires, overshadowing all else, past and present, putting the history of Old World dynasties, conquests, behind me as of no account,--making a new history, the history of Democracy, making old history a dwarf,--I alone inaugurating largeness, culminating time. If these, O lands of America, are indeed the prizes, the determinations of your Soul, be it so. But behold the cost, and already specimens of the cost. Behold the anguish of suspense, existence itself wavering in the balance, uncertain whether to rise or fall; already, close behind you and around you, thick winrows of corpses on battlefields, countless maimed and sick in hospitals, treachery among Generals, folly in the Executive and Legislative departments, schemers, thieves everywhere,--cant, credulity, make-believe everywhere. Thought you greatness was to ripen for you, like a pear? If you would have greatness, know that you must conquer it through ages, centuries,--must pay for it with a proportionate price. For you, too, as for all lands, the struggle, the traitor, the wily person in office, scrofulous wealth, the surfeit of prosperity, the demonism of greed, the hell of passion, the decay of faith, the long postponement, the fossil-like lethargy, the ceaseless need of revolutions, prophets, thunder-storms, deaths, births, new projections, and invigorations of ideas and men." The "Memoranda during the War" is mainly a record of personal experiences, nursing the sick and wounded soldiers in the hospitals: most of it is in a low key, simple, unwrought, like a diary kept for one's self; but it reveals the large, tender, sympathetic soul of the poet even more than his elaborate works, and puts in practical form that unprecedented and fervid comradeship which is his leading element. It is printed almost verbatim, just as the notes were jotted down at the time and on the spot. It is impossible to read it without the feeling of tears, while there is elsewhere no such portrayal of the common soldier, and such appreciation of him, as is contained in its pages. It is heart's blood, every word of it, and along with "Drum-Taps" is the only literature of the war thus far entirely characteristic and worthy of serious mention. There are in particular two passages in the "Memoranda" that have amazing dramatic power, vividness, and rapid action, like some quick painter covering a large canvas. I refer to the account of the assassination of President Lincoln, and to that of the scenes in Washington after the first battle of Bull Run. What may be called the mass-movement of Whitman's prose style--the rapid marshaling and grouping together of many facts and details, gathering up, and recruiting, and expanding as the sentences move along, till the force and momentum become like a rolling flood, or an army in echelon on the charge--is here displayed with wonderful effect. Noting and studying what forces move the world, the only sane explanation that comes to me of the fact that such writing as these little volumes contain has not, in this country especially, met with its due recognition and approval, is that, like all Whitman's works, they have really never yet been published at all in the true sense,--have never entered the arena where the great laurels are won. They have been printed by the author, and a few readers have found them out, but to all intents and purposes they are unknown. I have not dwelt on Whitman's personal circumstances, his age (he is now, 1877, entering his fifty-ninth year), paralysis, seclusion, and the treatment of him by certain portions of the literary classes, although these have all been made the subjects of wide discussion of late, both in America and Great Britain, and have, I think, a bearing under the circumstances on his character and genius. It is an unwritten tragedy that will doubtless always remain unwritten. I will but mention an eloquent appeal of the Scotch poet, Robert Buchanan, published in London in March, 1876, eulogizing and defending the American bard, in his old age, illness, and poverty, from the swarms of maligners who still continue to assail him. The appeal has this fine passage:-- "He who wanders through the solitudes of far-off Uist or lonely Donegal may often behold the Golden Eagle sick to death, worn with age or famine, or with both, passing with weary waft of wing from promontory to promontory, from peak to peak, pursued by a crowd of rooks and crows, which fall back screaming whenever the noble bird turns his indignant head, and which follow frantically once more, hooting behind him, whenever he wends again upon his way." Skipping many things I should yet like to touch upon,--for this paper is already too long,--I will say in conclusion that, if any reader of mine is moved by what I have here written to undertake the perusal of "Leaves of Grass," or the later volume, "Two Rivulets," let me yet warn him that he little suspects what is before him. Poetry in the Virgilian, Tennysonian, or Lowellian sense it certainly is not. Just as the living form of man in its ordinary garb is less beautiful (yet more beautiful) than the marble statue; just as the living woman and child that may have sat for the model is less beautiful (yet more so) than one of Raphael's finest Madonnas, or just as a forest of trees addresses itself less directly to the feeling of what is called art and form than the house or other edifice built from them; just as you, and the whole spirit of our current times, have been trained to feed on and enjoy, not Nature or Man, or the aboriginal forces, or the actual, but pictures, books, art, and the selected and refined,--just so these poems will doubtless first shock and disappoint you. Your admiration for the beautiful is never the feeling directly and chiefly addressed in them, but your love for the breathing flesh, the concrete reality, the moving forms and shows of the universe. A man reaches and moves you, not an artist. Doubtless, too, a certain withholding and repugnance has first to be overcome, analogous to a cold sea plunge; and it is not till you experience the reaction, the after-glow, and feel the swing and surge of the strong waves, that you know what Walt Whitman's pages really are. They don't give themselves at first,--like the real landscape and the sea, they are all indirections. You may have to try them many times; there is something of Nature's rudeness and forbiddingness, not only at the first, but probably always. But after you have mastered them by resigning yourself to them, there is nothing like them anywhere in literature for vital help and meaning. The poet says:-- "The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections, That scorn the best I can do to relate them." And the press of your mind to these pages will certainly start new and countless problems that poetry and art have never before touched, and that afford a perpetual stimulus and delight. It has been said that the object of poetry and the higher forms of literature is to escape from the tyranny of the real into the freedom of the ideal; but what is the ideal unless ballasted and weighted with the real? All these poems have a lofty ideal background; the great laws and harmonies stretch unerringly above them, and give their vista and perspective. It is because Whitman's ideal is clothed with rank materiality, as the soul is clothed with the carnal body, that his poems beget such warmth and desire in the mind, and are the reservoirs of so much power. No one can feel more than I how absolutely necessary it is that the facts of nature and experience be born again in the heart of the bard, and receive the baptism of the true fire before they be counted poetical; and I have no trouble on this score with the author of "Leaves of Grass." He never fails to ascend into spiritual meanings. Indeed, the spirituality of Walt Whitman is the chief fact after all, and dominates every page he has written. Observe that this singer and artist makes no _direct_ attempt to be poetical, any more than he does to be melodious or rhythmical. He approaches these qualities and results as it were from beneath, and always indirectly; they are drawn to him, not he to them; and if they appear absent from his page at first, it is because we have been looking for them in the customary places on the outside, where he never puts them, and have not yet penetrated the interiors. As many of the fowls hide their eggs by a sort of intuitive prudery and secretiveness, Whitman always half hides, or more than half hides, his thought, his glow, his magnetism, his most golden and orbic treasures. Finally, as those men and women respect and love Walt Whitman best who have known him longest and closest personally, the same rule will apply to "Leaves of Grass" and the later volume, "Two Rivulets." It is indeed neither the first surface reading of those books, nor perhaps even the second or third, that will any more than prepare the student for the full assimilation of the poems. Like Nature, and like the Sciences, they suggest endless suites of chambers opening and expanding more and more and continually. INDEX [Transcribist's note: Index has been shortened to names of authors and to birds, with scientific names.] Aeschylus Akers, Elizabeth. Apuleius. Audubon, John Jaines. Bacon, Francis. Benton, Myron. Bible. Bittern, American (_Botaurus lentiginosus_). Björnson, Björnstjerne. Blackbird, cow, or cowbird (_Molothrus ater_). Blackbird, European. Bluebird (_Sialia sialis_). Bobolink (_Dolichonyx oryzivorus_). Bryant, William Cullen. Buchanan, Robert. Bunting, snow, or snowflake (_Passerina nivalis_). Burke, Edmund. Burns, Robert. Byron, Lord. Cardinal. See Grosbeak, cardinal. Carlyle, Thomas. Cedar-bird, or cedar waxwing (_Ampelis cedrorum_). Chat, yellow-breasted (_Icteria virens_). Chewink, or towhee (_Pipilo erythrophthalmus_). Chickadee (_Parus atricapillus_). Cicada. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Cowper, William. Crow, American (_Corvis brachyrhynchos_). Cuckoo, American. Cuckoo, European. Dante. Darwin, Charles. Dove, mourning (_Zenaidura macroura_). Eagle. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Everett, Edward. Flagg, Wilson. Flicker. See High-hole. Flycatcher, great crested (_Myiarchus crinitus_). Frogs. See Hyla. Gilder, Richard Watson. Grasshopper of Greek poetry. Grosbeak, cardinal, or cardinal (_Cardinalis cardinalis_). Grosbeak, pine (_Pinicola enucleator leucura_). Grouse, ruffed (_Bonasa umbellus_). Hamerton, Philip Gilbert. Hawk. High-hole, or yellow-hammer, or golden-shafted woodpecker, or flicker (_Colaptes auratus luteus_). Hogg, James. Homer. Hood, Thomas. Hornets, black. Hudson River valley. Hummingbird, ruby-throated (_Trochilus colubris_). Hyla, green. Hyla, Pickering's. Ingelow, Jean. Jefferson, Thomas. Jonson, Ben. Keats, John. Kingbird (_Tyrannus tyrannus_). Lamb, Charles. Lark. See Skylark. Lark, shore or horned (_Otocoris alpestris_). Lathrop, George Parson. Lincoln, Abraham. Lizard. Locust. Logan, John. Loon (_Gavia imber_). Lowell, James Russell. Lyly, John. Macaulay, Thomas Babington. Meadowlark (_Sturnella magna_). Michael Angelo. Milton, John. Mockingbird (_Mimus polyglottos_). Oriole, Baltimore (_Icterus galbula_). Oven-bird, or golden-crowned thrush (_Seiurus aurocapillus_). Owl. Partridge. See Grouse, ruffed. Pewee, wood (_Contopus virens_). Phaedrus. Phoebe-bird (_Sayornis phoebe_). Pigeon, passenger (_Ectopistes migratorius_). Pipit, American, or titlark (_Anthus pensilvanicus_). Pipit, Sprague's (_Anthus spragueii_). Pope, Alexander. Quail, or bob-white (_Colinus virginianus_). Redpoll (_Acanthis linaria_). Robin, American (_Merula migratoria_). Sandpiper, spotted, or "tip-up" (_Actitis macularia_). Sandpipers. Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Snake. Snake, garter. Socrates. Solomon. Sparrow, social or chipping (_Spizella socialis_). Sparrow, song (_Melospiza cinerea melodia_). Sparrow, tree or Canada (_Spizella monticola_). Sparrow, vesper (_Pooecetes gramineus_). Sparrow, white-crowned (_Zonotrichia leucophrys_). Sparrow, white-throated (_Zonotrichia albicollis_). Spenser. Strawberry. Sugar-berry. Swallow, barn (_Hirundo erythrogastra_). Swallow, chimney, or chimney swift (_Chaetura pelagica_). Swallow, cliff (Petrochellidon lunifrons). Swift, chimney. See Swallow. Taine, Hippolyte Adolphe. Tennyson, Alfred. Thaxter, Celia. Thomson, James. Thoreau, Henry D.. Thrasher, brown, or long-tailed thrush (_Toxostoma rufum_). Thrush, golden-crowned. See Ovenbird. Thrush, hermit (_Hylocichla guttata pallasii_). Thrush, wood (_Hylocichla mustelina_). Tip-up. See Sandpiper, spotted. Titlark. See Pipit, American. Townee. See Chewink. Trowbridge, John T. Turgenieff. Turner, J. M. W. Turtles. Warbler, pine (_Dendroica vigorsii_). Water-thrush. Whip-poor-will (_Antrostomus vociferous_). Whitman, Walt. Whittier, John Greenleaf. Wilde, Richard Henry. Wilson, Alexander. Woodchuck. Woodpecker, downy (_Dryobates pubescens medianus_). Woodpecker, golden-shafted. See High-hole. Woodpecker, hairy (_Dryobates villosus_). Woodpecker, red-headed (_Melanerpes erythrocephalus_). Wordsworth, William. Wren, house (_Troglodytes aëdon_). Yellow-hammer. See High-hole. Yellow-throat, Maryland, or northern yellow-throat (_Geothlypis trichas brachidactyla_). 
6164	----	THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS BY RICHARD JEFFERIES My thanks are due to those editors who have so kindly permitted me to reprint the following pages:--"The Field-Play" appeared in _Time_; "Bits of Oak Bark" and "The Pageant of Summer" in _Longman's Magazine_; "Meadow Thoughts" and "Mind under Water" in _The Graphic_; "Clematis Lane," "Nature near Brighton," "Sea, Sky, and Down," "January in the Sussex Woods," and "By the Exe" in _The Standard_; "Notes on Landscape Painting," in _The Magazine of Art_; "Village Miners," in _The Gentleman's Magazine_; "Nature and the Gamekeeper," "The Sacrifice to Trout," "The Hovering of the Kestrel," and "Birds Climbing the Air," in _The St. James's Gazette_; "Sport and Science," in _The National Review_; "The Water-Colley," in _The Manchester Guardian_; "Country Literature," "Sunlight in a London Square," "Venice in the East End," "The Pigeons at the British Museum," and "The Plainest City in Europe," in _The Pall Mall Gazette_. RICHARD JEFFERIES CONTENTS THE PAGEANT OF SUMMER THE FIELD PLAY: I. UPTILL-A-THORN II. RURAL DYNAMITE BITS OF OAK BARK: I. THE ACORN-GATHERER II. THE LEGEND OF A GATEWAY III. A ROMAN BROOK MEADOW THOUGHTS CLEMATIS LANE NATURE NEAR BRIGHTON SEA, SKY, AND DOWN JANUARY IN THE SUSSEX WOODS BY THE EXE THE WATER-COLLEY NOTES ON LANDSCAPE PAINTING VILLAGE MINERS MIND UNDER WATER SPORT AND SCIENCE NATURE AND THE GAMEKEEPER THE SACRIFICE TO TROUT THE HOVERING OF THE KESTREL BIRDS CLIMBING THE AIR COUNTRY LITERATURE: I. THE AWAKENING. II. SCARCITY OF BOOKS III. THE VILLAGER'S TASTE IN READING IV. PLAN OF DISTRIBUTION SUNLIGHT IN A LONDON SQUARE VENICE IN THE EAST END. THE PIGEONS AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM THE PLAINEST CITY IN EUROPE THE PAGEANT OF SUMMER I Green rushes, long and thick, standing up above the edge of the ditch, told the hour of the year as distinctly as the shadow on the dial the hour of the day. Green and thick and sappy to the touch, they felt like summer, soft and elastic, as if full of life, mere rushes though they were. On the fingers they left a green scent; rushes have a separate scent of green, so, too, have ferns, very different to that of grass or leaves. Rising from brown sheaths, the tall stems enlarged a little in the middle, like classical columns, and heavy with their sap and freshness, leaned against the hawthorn sprays. From the earth they had drawn its moisture, and made the ditch dry; some of the sweetness of the air had entered into their fibres, and the rushes--the common rushes--were full of beautiful summer. The white pollen of early grasses growing on the edge was dusted from them each time the hawthorn boughs were shaken by a thrush. These lower sprays came down in among the grass, and leaves and grass-blades touched. Smooth round stems of angelica, big as a gun-barrel, hollow and strong, stood on the slope of the mound, their tiers of well-balanced branches rising like those of a tree. Such a sturdy growth pushed back the ranks of hedge parsley in full white flower, which blocked every avenue and winding bird's-path of the bank. But the "gix," or wild parsnip, reached already high above both, and would rear its fluted stalk, joint on joint, till it could face a man. Trees they were to the lesser birds, not even bending if perched on; but though so stout, the birds did not place their nests on or against them. Something in the odour of these umbelliferous plants, perhaps, is not quite liked; if brushed or bruised they give out a bitter greenish scent. Under their cover, well shaded and hidden, birds build, but not against or on the stems, though they will affix their nests to much less certain supports. With the grasses that overhung the edge, with the rushes in the ditch itself, and these great plants on the mound, the whole hedge was wrapped and thickened. No cunning of glance could see through it; it would have needed a ladder to help any one look over. It was between the may and the June roses. The may-bloom had fallen, and among the hawthorn boughs were the little green bunches that would feed the redwings in autumn. High up the briars had climbed, straight and towering while there was a thorn, or an ash sapling, or a yellow-green willow to uphold them, and then curving over towards the meadow. The buds were on them, but not yet open; it was between the may and the rose. As the wind, wandering over the sea, takes from each wave an invisible portion, and brings to those on shore the ethereal essence of ocean, so the air lingering among the woods and hedges--green waves and billows--became full of fine atoms of summer. Swept from notched hawthorn leaves, broad-topped oak-leaves, narrow ash sprays and oval willows; from vast elm cliffs and sharp-taloned brambles under; brushed from the waving grasses and stiffening corn, the dust of the sunshine was borne along and breathed. Steeped in flower and pollen to the music of bees and birds, the stream of the atmosphere became a living thing. It was life to breathe it, for the air itself was life. The strength of the earth went up through the leaves into the wind. Fed thus on the food of the Immortals, the heart opened to the width and depth of the summer--to the broad horizon afar, down to the minutest creature in the grass, up to the highest swallow. Winter shows us Matter in its dead form, like the Primary rocks, like granite and basalt--clear but cold and frozen crystal. Summer shows us Matter changing into life, sap rising from the earth through a million tubes, the alchemic power of light entering the solid oak; and see! it bursts forth in countless leaves. Living things leap in the grass, living things drift upon the air, living things are coming forth to breathe in every hawthorn bush. No longer does the immense weight of Matter--the dead, the crystallised--press ponderously on the thinking mind. The whole office of Matter is to feed life--to feed the green rushes, and the roses that are about to be; to feed the swallows above, and us that wander beneath them. So much greater is this ween and common rush than all the Alps. Fanning so swiftly, the wasp's wings are but just visible as he passes; did he pause, the light would be apparent through their texture. On the wings of the dragon-fly as he hovers an instant before he darts there is a prismatic gleam. These wing textures are even more delicate than the minute filaments on a swallow's quill, more delicate than the pollen of a flower. They are formed of matter indeed, but how exquisitely it is resolved into the means and organs of life! Though not often consciously recognised, perhaps this is the great pleasure of summer, to watch the earth, the dead particles, resolving themselves into the living case of life, to see the seed-leaf push aside the clod and become by degrees the perfumed flower. From the tiny mottled egg come the wings that by-and-by shall pass the immense sea. It is in this marvellous transformation of clods and cold matter into living things that the joy and the hope of summer reside. Every blade of grass, each leaf, each separate floret and petal, is an inscription speaking of hope. Consider the grasses and the oaks, the swallows, the sweet blue butterfly--they are one and all a sign and token showing before our eyes earth made into life. So that my hope becomes as broad as the horizon afar, reiterated by every leaf, sung on every bough, reflected in the gleam of every flower. There is so much for us yet to come, so much to be gathered, and enjoyed. Not for you and me, now, but for our race, who will ultimately use this magical secret for their happiness. Earth holds secrets enough to give them the life of the fabled Immortals. My heart is fixed firm and stable in the belief that ultimately the sunshine and the summer, the flowers and the azure sky, shall become, as it were, interwoven into man's existence. He shall take from all their beauty and enjoy their glory. Hence it is that a flower is to me so much more than stalk and petals. When I look in the glass I see that every line in my face means pessimism; but in spite of my face--that is my experience--I remain an optimist. Time with an unsteady hand has etched thin crooked lines, and, deepening the hollows, has cast the original expression into shadow. Pain and sorrow flow over us with little ceasing, as the sea-hoofs beat on the beach. Let us not look at ourselves but onwards, and take strength from the leaf and the signs of the field. He is indeed despicable who cannot look onwards to the ideal life of man. Not to do so is to deny our birthright of mind. The long grass flowing towards the hedge has reared in a wave against it. Along the hedge it is higher and greener, and rustles into the very bushes. There is a mark only now where the footpath was; it passed close to the hedge, but its place is traceable only as a groove in the sorrel and seed-tops. Though it has quite filled the path, the grass there cannot send its tops so high; it has left a winding crease. By the hedge here stands a moss-grown willow, and its slender branches extend over the sward. Beyond it is an oak, just apart from the bushes; then the ground gently rises, and an ancient pollard ash, hollow and black inside, guards an open gateway like a low tower. The different tone of green shows that the hedge is there of nut-trees; but one great hawthorn spreads out in a semicircle, roofing the grass which is yet more verdant in the still pool (as it were) under it. Next a corner, more oaks, and a chestnut in bloom. Returning to-this spot an old apple tree stands right out in the meadow like an island. There seemed just now the tiniest twinkle of movement by the rushes, but it was lost among the hedge parsley. Among the grey leaves of the willow there is another flit of motion; and visible now against the sky there is a little brown bird, not to be distinguished at the moment from the many other little brown birds that are known to be about. He got up into the willow from the hedge parsley somehow, without being seen to climb or fly. Suddenly he crosses to the tops of the hawthorn and immediately flings himself up into the air a yard or two, his wings and ruffled crest making a ragged outline; jerk, jerk, jerk, as if it were with the utmost difficulty he could keep even at that height. He scolds, and twitters, and chirps, and all at once sinks like a stone into the hedge and out of sight as a stone into a pond. It is a whitethroat; his nest is deep in the parsley and nettles. Presently he will go out to the island apple tree and back again in a minute or two; the pair of them are so fond of each other's affectionate company they cannot remain apart. Watching the line of the hedge, about every two minutes, either near at hand or yonder a bird darts out just at the level of the grass, hovers a second with labouring wings, and returns as swiftly to the cover. Sometimes it is a flycatcher, sometimes a greenfinch, or chaffinch, now and then a robin, in one place a shrike, perhaps another is a redstart. They are fly-fishing all of them, seizing insects from the sorrel tips and grass, as the kingfisher takes a roach from the water. A blackbird slips up into the oak and a dove descends in the corner by the chestnut tree. But these are not visible together, only one at a time and with intervals. The larger part of the life of the hedge is out of sight. All the thrush-fledglings, the young blackbirds, and finches are hidden, most of them on the mound among the ivy, and parsley, and rough grasses, protected too by a roof of brambles. The nests that still have eggs are not, like the nests of the early days of April, easily found; they are deep down in the tangled herbage by the shore of the ditch, or far inside the thorny thickets which then looked mere bushes, and are now so broad. Landrails are running in the grass concealed as a man would be in a wood; they have nests and eggs on the ground for which you may search in vain till the mowers come. Up in the corner a fragment of white fur and marks of scratching show where a doe has been preparing for a litter. Some well-trodden runs lead from mound to mound; they are sandy near the hedge where the particles have been carried out adhering to the rabbits' feet and fur. A crow rises lazily from the upper end of the field, and perches in the chestnut. His presence, too, was unsuspected. He is there by far too frequently. At this season the crows are always in the mowing-grass, searching about, stalking in winding tracks from furrow to furrow, picking up an egg here and a foolish fledgling that has wandered from the mound yonder. Very likely there may be a moorhen or two slipping about under cover of the long grass; thus hidden, they can leave the shelter of the flags and wander a distance from the brook. So that beneath the surface of the grass and under the screen of the leaves there are ten times more birds than are seen. Besides the singing and calling, there is a peculiar sound which is only heard in summer. Waiting quietly to discover what birds are about, I become aware of a sound in the very air. It is not the midsummer hum which will soon be heard over the heated hay in the valley and over the cooler hills alike. It is not enough to be called a hum, and does but just tremble at the extreme edge of hearing. If the branches wave and rustle they overbear it; the buzz of a passing bee is so much louder it overcomes all of it that is in the whole field. I cannot, define it, except by calling the hours of winter to mind--they are silent; you hear a branch crack or creak as it rubs another in the wood, you hear the hoar-frost crunch on the grass beneath your feet, but the air is without sound in itself. The sound of summer is everywhere--in the passing breeze, in the hedge, in the broad branching trees, in the grass as it swings; all the myriad particles that together make the summer are in motion. The sap moves in the trees, the pollen is pushed out from grass and flower, and yet again these acres and acres of leaves and square miles of grass blades--for they would cover acres and square miles if reckoned edge to edge--are drawing their strength from the atmosphere. Exceedingly minute as these vibrations must be, their numbers perhaps may give them a volume almost reaching in the aggregate to the power of the ear. Besides the quivering leaf, the swinging grass, the fluttering bird's wing, and the thousand oval membranes which innumerable insects whirl about, a faint resonance seems to come from the very earth itself. The fervour of the sunbeams descending in a tidal flood rings on the strung harp of earth. It is this exquisite undertone, heard and yet unheard, which brings the mind into sweet accordance with the wonderful instrument of nature. By the apple tree there is a low bank, where the grass is less tall and admits the heat direct to the ground; here there are blue flowers--bluer than the wings of my favourite butterflies--with white centres--the lovely bird's-eyes, or veronica. The violet and cowslip, bluebell and rose, are known to thousands; the veronica is overlooked. The ploughboys know it, and the wayside children, the mower and those who linger in fields, but few else. Brightly blue and surrounded by greenest grass, imbedded in and all the more blue for the shadow of the grass, these growing butterflies' wings draw to themselves the sun. From this island I look down into the depth of the grasses. Red sorrel spires--deep drinkers of reddest sun wine--stand the boldest, and in their numbers threaten the buttercups. To these in the distance they give the gipsy-gold tint--the reflection of fire on plates of the precious metal. It will show even on a ring by firelight; blood in the gold, they say. Gather the open marguerite daisies, and they seem large--so wide a disc, such fingers of rays; but in the grass their size is toned by so much green. Clover heads of honey lurk in the bunches and by the hidden footpath. Like clubs from Polynesia the tips of the grasses are varied in shape: some tend to a point--the foxtails--some are hard and cylindrical; others, avoiding the club shape, put forth the slenderest branches with fruit of seed at the ends, which tremble as the air goes by. Their stalks are ripening and becoming of the colour of hay while yet the long blades remain green. Each kind is repeated a hundred times, the foxtails are succeeded by foxtails, the narrow blades by narrow blades, but never become monotonous; sorrel stands by sorrel, daisy flowers by daisy. This bed of veronica at the foot of the ancient apple has a whole handful of flowers, and yet they do not weary the eye. Oak follows oak and elm ranks with elm, but the woodlands are pleasant; however many times reduplicated, their beauty only increases. So, too, the summer days; the sun rises on the same grasses and green hedges, there is the same blue sky, but did we ever have enough of them? No, not in a hundred years! There seems always a depth, somewhere, unexplored, a thicket that has not been seen through, a corner full of ferns, a quaint old hollow tree, which may give us something. Bees go by me as I stand under the apple, but they pass on for the most part bound on a long journey, across to the clover fields or up to the thyme lands; only a few go down into the mowing-grass. The hive bees are the most impatient of insects; they cannot bear to entangle their wings beating against grasses or boughs. Not one will enter a hedge. They like an open and level surface, places cropped by sheep, the sward by the roadside, fields of clover, where the flower is not deep under grass. II It is the patient humble-bee that goes down into the forest of the mowing-grass. If entangled, the humble-bee climbs up a sorrel stem and takes wing, without any sign of annoyance. His broad back with tawny bar buoyantly glides over the golden buttercups. He hums to himself as he goes, so happy is he. He knows no skep, no cunning work in glass receives his labour, no artificial saccharine aids him when the beams of the sun are cold, there is no step to his house that he may alight in comfort; the way is not made clear for him that he may start straight for the flowers, nor are any sown for him. He has no shelter if the storm descends suddenly; he has no dome of twisted straw well thatched and tiled to retreat to. The butcher-bird, with a beak like a crooked iron nail, drives him to the ground, and leaves him pierced with a thorn; but no hail of shot revenges his tortures. The grass stiffens at nightfall (in autumn), and he must creep where he may, if possibly he may escape the frost. No one cares for the humble-bee. But down to the flowering nettle in the mossy-sided ditch, up into the tall elm, winding in and out and round the branched buttercups, along the banks of the brook, far inside the deepest wood, away he wanders and despises nothing. His nest is under the rough grasses and the mosses of the mound; a mere tunnel beneath the fibres and matted surface. The hawthorn overhangs it, the fern grows by, red mice rustle past. It thunders, and the great oak trembles; the heavy rain drops through the treble roof of oak and hawthorn and fern. Under the arched branches the lightning plays along, swiftly to and fro, or seems to, like the swish of a whip, a yellowish-red against the green; a boom! a crackle as if a tree fell from the sky. The thick grasses are bowed, the white florets of the wild parsley are beaten down, the rain hurls itself, and suddenly a fierce blast tears the green oak leaves and whirls them out into the fields; but the humble-bee's home, under moss and matted fibres, remains uninjured. His house at the root of the king of trees, like a cave in the rock, is safe. The storm passes and the sun comes out, the air is the sweeter and the richer for the rain, like verses with a rhyme; there will be more honey in the flowers. Humble he is, but wild; always in the field, the wood; always by the banks and thickets; always wild and humming to his flowers. Therefore I like the humble-bee, being, at heart at least, for ever roaming among the woodlands and the hills and by the brooks. In such quick summer storms the lightning gives the impression of being far more dangerous than the zigzag paths traced on the autumn sky. The electric cloud seems almost level with the ground and the livid flame to rush to and fro beneath the boughs as the little bats do in the evening. Caught by such a cloud, I have stayed under thick larches at the edge of plantations. They are no shelter, but conceal one perfectly. The wood-pigeons come home to their nest trees; in larches they seem to have permanent nests, almost like rooks. Kestrels, too, come home to the wood. Pheasants crow, but not from fear--from defiance, in fear they scream. The boom startles them, and they instantly defy the sky. The rabbits quietly feed on out in the field between the thistles and rushes that so often grow in woodside pastures, quietly hopping to their favourite places, utterly heedless how heavy the echoes may be in the hollows of the wooded hills. Till the rain comes they take no heed whatever, but then make for shelter. Blackbirds often make a good deal of noise; but the soft turtle-doves coo gently, let the lightning be as savage as it will. Nothing has the least fear. Man alone, more senseless than a pigeon, put a god in vapour; and to this day, though the printing press has set a foot on every threshold, numbers bow the knee when they hear the roar the timid dove does not heed. So trustful are the doves, the squirrels, the birds of the branches, and the creatures of the field. Under their tuition let us rid ourselves of mental terrors, and face death itself as calmly as they do the livid lightning; so trustful and so content with their fate, resting in themselves and unappalled. If but by reason and will I could reach the godlike calm and courage of what we so thoughtlessly call the timid turtle-dove, I should lead a nearly perfect life. The bark of the ancient apple tree under which I have been standing is shrunken like iron which has been heated and let cool round the rim of a wheel. For a hundred years the horses have rubbed against it while feeding in the aftermath. The scales of the bark are gone or smoothed down and level, so that insects have no hiding-place. There are no crevices for them, the horsehairs that were caught anywhere have been carried away by birds for their nests. The trunk is smooth and columnar, hard as iron. A hundred times the mowing-grass has grown up around it, the birds have built their nests, the butterflies fluttered by, and the acorns dropped from the oaks. It is a long, long time, counted by artificial hours or by the seasons, but it is longer still in another way. The greenfinch in the hawthorn yonder has been there since I came out, and all the time has been happily talking to his love. He has left the hawthorn indeed, but only for a minute or two, to fetch a few seeds, and comes back each time more full of song-talk than ever. He notes no slow movement of the oak's shadow on the grass; it is nothing to him and his lady dear that the sun, as seen from his nest, is crossing from one great bough of the oak to another. The dew even in the deepest and most tangled grass has long since been dried, and some of the flowers that close at noon will shortly fold their petals. The morning airs, which breathe so sweetly, come less and less frequently as the heat increases. Vanishing from the sky, the last fragments of cloud have left an untarnished azure. Many times the bees have returned to their hives, and thus the index of the day advances. It is nothing to the green-finches; all their thoughts are in their song-talk. The sunny moment is to them all in all. So deeply are they rapt in it that they do not know whether it is a moment or a year. There is no clock for feeling, for joy, for love. And with all their motions and stepping from bough to bough, they are not restless; they have so much time, you see. So, too, the whitethroat in the wild parsley; so, too, the thrush that just now peered out and partly fluttered his wings as he stood to look. A butterfly comes and stays on a leaf--a leaf much warmed by the sun--and shuts his wings. In a minute he opens them, shuts them again, half wheels round, and by-and-by--just when he chooses, and not before--floats away. The flowers open, and remain open for hours, to the sun. Hastelessness is the only word one can make up to describe it; there is much rest, but no haste. Each moment, as with the greenfinches, is so full of life that it seems so long and so sufficient in itself. Not only the days, but life itself lengthens in summer. I would spread abroad my arms and gather more of it to me, could I do so. All the procession of living and growing things passes. The grass stands up taller and still taller, the sheaths open, and the stalk arises, the pollen clings till the breeze sweeps it. The bees rush past, and the resolute wasps; the humble-bees, whose weight swings them along. About the oaks and maples the brown chafers swarm; and the fern-owls at dusk, and the blackbirds and jays by day, cannot reduce their legions while they last. Yellow butterflies, and white, broad red admirals, and sweet blues; think of the kingdom of flowers which is theirs! Heavy moths burring at the edge of the copse; green, and red, and gold flies: gnats, like smoke, around the tree-tops; midges so thick over the brook, as if you could haul a netful; tiny leaping creatures in the grass; bronze beetles across the path; blue dragonflies pondering on cool leaves of water-plantain. Blue jays flitting, a magpie drooping across from elm to elm; young rooks that have escaped the hostile shot blundering up into the branches; missel thrushes leading their fledglings, already strong on the wing, from field to field. An egg here on the sward dropped by a starling; a red ladybird creeping, tortoise-like, up a green fern frond. Finches undulating through the air, shooting themselves with closed wings, and linnets happy with their young. Golden dandelion discs--gold and orange--of a hue more beautiful, I think, than the higher and more visible buttercup. A blackbird, gleaming, so black is he, splashing in the runlet of water across the gateway. A ruddy kingfisher swiftly drawing himself as you might draw a stroke with a pencil, over the surface of the yellow buttercups, and away above the hedge. Hart's-tongue fern, thick with green, so green as to be thick with its colour, deep in the ditch under the shady hazel boughs. White meadow-sweet lifting its tiny florets, and black-flowered sedges. You must push through the reed grass to find the sword-flags; the stout willow-herbs will not be trampled down, but resist the foot like underwood. Pink lychnis flowers behind the withy stoles, and little black moorhens swim away, as you gather it, after their mother, who has dived under the water-grass, and broken the smooth surface of the duckweed. Yellow loosestrife is rising, thick comfrey stands at the very edge; the sandpipers run where the shore is free from bushes. Back by the underwood the prickly and repellent brambles will presently present us with fruit. For the squirrels the nuts are forming, green beechmast is there--green wedges under the spray; up in the oaks the small knots, like bark rolled up in a dot, will be acorns. Purple vetches along the mounds, yellow lotus where the grass is shorter, and orchis succeeds to orchis. As I write them, so these things come--not set in gradation, but like the broadcast flowers in the mowing-grass. Now follows the gorse, and the pink rest-harrow, and the sweet lady's-bedstraw, set as it were in the midst of a little thorn-bush. The broad repetition of the yellow clover is not to be written; acre upon acre, and not one spot of green, as if all the green had been planed away, leaving only the flowers to which the bees come by the thousand from far and near. But one white campion stands in the midst of the lake of yellow. The field is scented as though a hundred hives of honey had been emptied on it. Along the mound by it the bluebells are seeding, the hedge has been cut and the ground is strewn with twigs. Among those seeding bluebells and dry twigs and mosses I think a titlark has his nest, as he stays all day there and in the oak over. The pale clear yellow of charlock, sharp and clear, promises the finches bushels of seed for their young. Under the scarlet of the poppies the larks run, and then for change of colour soar into the blue. Creamy honeysuckle on the hedge around the cornfield, buds of wild rose everywhere, but no sweet petal yet. Yonder, where the wheat can climb no higher up the slope, are the purple heath-bells, thyme and flitting stonechats. The lone barn shut off by acres of barley is noisy with sparrows. It is their city, and there is a nest in every crevice, almost under every tile. Sometimes the partridges run between the ricks, and when the bats come out of the roof, leverets play in the waggon-track. At even a fern-owl beats by, passing close to the eaves whence the moths issue. On the narrow waggon-track which descends along a coombe and is worn in chalk, the heat pours down by day as if an invisible lens in the atmosphere focussed the sun's rays. Strong woody knapweed endures it, so does toadflax and pale blue scabious, and wild mignonette. The very sun of Spain burns and burns and ripens the wheat on the edge of the coombe, and will only let the spring moisten a yard or two around it; but there a few rushes have sprung, and in the water itself brooklime with blue flowers grows so thickly that nothing but a bird could find space to drink. So down again from this sun of Spain to woody coverts where the wild hops are blocking every avenue, and green-flowered bryony would fain climb to the trees; where grey-flecked ivy winds spirally about the red rugged bark of pines, where burdocks fight for the footpath, and teazle-heads look over the low hedges. Brake-fern rises five feet high; in some way woodpeckers are associated with brake, and there seem more of them where it flourishes. If you count the depth and strength of its roots in the loamy sand, add the thickness of its flattened stem, and the width of its branching fronds, you may say that it comes near to be a little tree. Beneath where the ponds are bushy mare's-tails grow, and on the moist banks jointed pewterwort; some of the broad bronze leaves of water-weeds seem to try and conquer the pond and cover it so firmly that a wagtail may run on them. A white butterfly follows along the waggon-road, the pheasants slip away as quietly as the butterfly flies, but a jay screeches loudly and flutters in high rage to see us. Under an ancient garden wall among matted bines of trumpet convolvulus, there is a hedge-sparrow's nest overhung with ivy on which even now the last black berries cling. There are minute white flowers on the top of the wall, out of reach, and lichen grows against it dried by the sun till it looks ready to crumble. By the gateway grows a thick bunch of meadow geranium, soon to flower; over the gate is the dusty highway road, quiet but dusty, dotted with the innumerable footmarks of a flock of sheep that has passed. The sound of their bleating still comes back, and the bees driven up by their feet have hardly had time to settle again on the white clover beginning to flower on the short roadside sward. All the hawthorn leaves and briar and bramble, the honeysuckle, too, is gritty with the dust that has been scattered upon it. But see--can it be? Stretch a hand high, quick, and reach it down; the first, the sweetest, the dearest rose of June. Not yet expected, for the time is between the may and the roses, least of all here in the hot and dusty highway; but it is found--the first rose of June. Straight go the white petals to the heart; straight the mind's glance goes back to how many other pageants of summer in old times When perchance the sunny days were even more sunny; when the stilly oaks were full of mystery, lurking like the Druid's mistletoe in the midst of their mighty branches. A glamour in the heart came back to it again from every flower; as the sunshine was reflected from them so the feeling in the heart returned tenfold. To the dreamy summer haze love gave a deep enchantment, the colours were fairer, the blue more lovely in the lucid sky. Each leaf finer, and the gross earth enamelled beneath the feet. A sweet breath on the air, a soft warm hand in the touch of the sunshine, a glance in the gleam of the rippled waters, a whisper in the dance of the shadows. The ethereal haze lifted the heavy oaks and they were buoyant on the mead, the rugged bark was chastened and no longer rough, each slender flower beneath them again refined. There was a presence everywhere though unseen, on the open hills, and not shut out under the dark pines. Dear were the June roses then because for another gathered. Yet even dearer now with so many years as it were upon the petals; all the days that have been before, all the heart-throbs, all our hopes lie in this opened bud. Let not the eyes grow dim, look not back but forward; the soul must uphold itself like the sun. Let us labour to make the heart grow larger as we become older, as the spreading oak gives more shelter. That we could but take to the soul some of the greatness and the beauty of the summer! Still the pageant moves. The song-talk of the finches rises and sinks like the tinkle of a waterfall. The greenfinches have been by me all the while. A bullfinch pipes now and then further up the hedge where the brambles and thorns are thickest. Boldest of birds to look at, he is always in hiding. The shrill tone of a goldfinch came just now from the ash branches, but he has gone on. Every four or five minutes a chaffinch sings close by, and another fills the interval near the gateway. There are linnets somewhere, but I cannot from the old apple tree fix their exact place. Thrushes have sung and ceased; they will begin again in ten minutes. The blackbirds do not cease; the note tittered by a blackbird in the oak yonder before it can drop is taken up by a second near the top of the field, and ere it falls is caught by a third on the left-hand side. From one of the topmost boughs of an elm there fell the song of a willow warbler for awhile; one of the least of birds, he often seeks the highest branches of the highest tree. A yellowhammer has just flown from a bare branch in the gateway, where he has been perched and singing a full hour. Presently he will commence again, and as the sun declines will sing him to the horizon, and then again sing till nearly dusk. The yellowhammer is almost the longest of all the singers; he sits and sits and has no inclination to move. In the spring he sings, in the summer he sings, and he continues when the last sheaves are being carried from the wheat field. The redstart yonder has given forth a few notes, the whitethroat flings himself into the air at short intervals and chatters, the shrike calls sharp and determined, faint but shrill calls descend from the swifts in the air These descend, but the twittering notes of the swallows do not reach so far--they are too high to-day. A cuckoo has called by the brook, and now fainter from a greater distance. That the titlarks are singing I know, but not within hearing from here; a dove, though, is audible, and a chiffchaff has twice passed. Afar beyond the oaks at the top of the field dark specks ascend from time to time, and after moving in wide circles for awhile descend again to the corn. These must be larks; but their notes are not powerful enough to reach me, though they would were it not for the song in the hedges, the hum of innumerable insects, and the ceaseless "crake, crake" of landrails. There are at least two landrails in the mowing-grass; one of them just now seemed coming straight towards the apple tree, and I expected in a minute to see the grass move, when the bird turned aside and entered the tufts and wild parsley by the hedge. Thence the call has come without a moment's pause, "crake, crake," till the thick hedge seems filled with it. Tits have visited the apple tree over my head, a wren has sung in the willow, or rather on a dead branch projecting lower down than the leafy boughs, and a robin across under the elms in the opposite hedge. Elms are a favourite tree of robins--not the upper branches, but those that grow down the trunk, and are the first to have leaves in spring. The yellowhammer is the most persistent individually, but I think the blackbirds when listened to are the masters of the fields. Before one can finish another begins, like the summer ripples succeeding behind each other, so that the melodious sound merely changes its position. Now here, now in the corner, then across the field, again in the distant copse, where it seems about to sink, when it rises again almost at hand. Like a great human artist, the blackbird makes no effort, being fully conscious that his liquid tone cannot be matched. He utters a few delicious notes, and carelessly quits the green stage of the oak till it pleases him to sing again. Without the blackbird, in whose throat the sweetness of the green fields dwells, the days would be only partly summer. Without the violet all the bluebells and cowslips could not make a spring, and without the blackbird even the nightingale would be but half welcome. It is not yet noon, these songs have been ceaseless since dawn; this evening, after the yellowhammer has sung the sun down, when the moon rises and the faint stars appear, still the cuckoo will call, and the grasshopper lark, the landrail's "crake, crake" will echo from the mound, a warbler or a blackcap will utter his notes, and even at the darkest of the summer night the swallows will hardly sleep in their nests. As the morning sky grows blue, an hour before the sun, up will rise the larks singing and audible now, the cuckoo will recommence, and the swallows will start again on their tireless journey. So that the songs of the summer birds are as ceaseless as the sound of the waterfall which plays day and night. I cannot leave it; I must stay under the old tree in the midst of the long grass, the luxury of the leaves, and the song in the very air. I seem as if I could feel all the glowing life the sunshine gives and the south wind calls to being. The endless grass, the endless leaves, the immense strength of the oak expanding, the unalloyed joy of finch and blackbird; from all of them I receive a little. Each gives me something of the pure joy they gather for themselves. In the blackbird's melody one note is mine; in the dance of the leaf shadows the formed maze is for me, though the motion is theirs; the flowers with a thousand faces have collected the kisses of the morning. Feeling with them, I receive some, at least, of their fulness of life. Never could I have enough; never stay long enough--whether here or whether lying on the shorter sward under the sweeping and graceful birches, or on the thyme-scented hills. Hour after hour, and still not enough. Or walking the footpath was never long enough, or my strength sufficient to endure till the mind was weary. The exceeding beauty of the earth, in her splendour of life, yields a new thought with every petal. The hours when the mind is absorbed by beauty are the only hours when we really live, so that the longer we can stay among these things so much the more is snatched from inevitable Time. Let the shadow advance upon the dial-I can watch it with equanimity while it is there to be watched. It is only when the shadow is _not_ there, when the clouds of winter cover it, that the dial is terrible. The invisible shadow goes on and steals from us. But now, while I can see the shadow of the tree and watch it slowly gliding along the surface of the grass, it is mine. These are the only hours that are not wasted--these hours that absorb the soul and fill it with beauty. This is real life, and all else is illusion, or mere endurance. Does this reverie of flowers and waterfall and song form an ideal, a human ideal, in the mind? It does; much the same ideal that Phidias sculptured of man and woman filled with a godlike sense of the violet fields of Greece, beautiful beyond thought, calm as my turtle-dove before the lurid lightning of the unknown. To be beautiful and to be calm, without mental fear, is the ideal of nature. If I cannot achieve it, at least I can think it. THE FIELD-PLAY I UPTILL-A-THORN "Save the nightingale alone; She, poor bird, as all forlorn, Lean'd her breast uptill a thorn." --_Passionate Pilgrim._ She pinned her torn dress with a thorn torn from the bushes through which she had scrambled to the hay-field. The gap from the lane was narrow, made more narrow by the rapid growth of summer; her rake caught in an ash-spray, and in releasing it she "ranted" the bosom of her print dress. So soon as she had got through she dropped her rake on the hay, searched for a long, nail-like thorn, and thrust it through, for the good-looking, careless hussy never had any provision of pins about her. Then, taking a June rose which pricked her finger, she put the flower by the "rant", or tear, and went to join the rest of the hay-makers. The blood welled up out of the scratch in the finger more freely than would have been supposed from so small a place. She put her lips to it to suck it away, as folk do in all quarters of the earth yet discovered, being one of those instinctive things which come without teaching. A red dot of blood stained her soft white cheek, for, in brushing back her hair with her hand, she forgot the wounded finger. With red blood on her face, a thorn and a rose in her bosom, and a hurt on her hand, she reached the chorus of rakers. The farmer and the sun are the leading actors, and the hay-makers are the chorus, who bear the burden of the play. Marching, each a step behind the other, and yet in a row, they presented a slanting front, and so crossed the field, turning the "wallows." At the hedge she took her place, the last in the row. There were five men and eight women; all flouted her. The men teased her for being late again at work; she said it was so far to come. The women jeered at her for tearing her dress--she couldn't get through a "thornin'" hedge right. There was only one thing she could do, and that was to "make a vool of zum veller" (make a fool of some fellow). Dolly did not take much notice, except that her nervous temperament showed slight excitement in the manner she used her rake, now turning the hay quickly, now missing altogether, then catching the teeth of the rake in the buttercup-runners. The women did not fail to tell her how awkward she was. By-and-by Dolly bounced forward, and, with a flush on her cheek, took the place next to the men. They teased her too, you see, but there was no spiteful malice in their tongues. There are some natures which, naturally meek, if much condemned, defy that condemnation, and willingly give it ground of justification by open guilt. The women accused her of too free a carriage with the men; she replied by seeking their company in the broad glare of the summer day. They laughed loudly, joked, but welcomed her; they chatted with her gaily; they compelled her to sip from their ale as they paused by the hedge. By noon there was a high colour on her cheeks; the sun, the exercise, the badinage had brought it up. So fair a complexion could not brown even in summer, exposed to the utmost heat. The beams indeed did heighten the hue of her cheeks a little, but it did not shade to brown. Her chin and neck were wholly untanned, white and soft, and the blue veins roamed at their will. Lips red, a little full perhaps; teeth slightly prominent but white and gleamy as she smiled. Dark brown hair in no great abundance, always slipping out of its confinement and straggling, now on her forehead, and now on her shoulders, like wandering bines of bryony. The softest of brown eyes under long eyelashes; eyes that seemed to see everything in its gentlest aspect, that could see no harm anywhere. A ready smile on the face, and a smile in the form. Her shape yielded so easily at each movement that it seemed to smile as she walked. Her nose was the least pleasing feature--not delicate enough to fit with the complexion, and distinctly upturned, though not offensively. But it was not noticed; no one saw anything beyond the laughing lips, the laughing shape, the eyes that melted so near to tears. The torn dress, the straggling hair, the tattered shoes, the unmended stocking, the straw hat split, the mingled poverty and carelessness--perhaps rather dreaminess--disappeared when once you had met the full untroubled gaze of those beautiful eyes. Untroubled, that is, with any ulterior thought of evil or cunning; they were as open as the day, the day which you can make your own for evil or good. So, too, like the day, was she ready to the making. No stability; now fast in motion; now slow; now by fits and starts; washing her face to-day, her hands to-morrow. Never going straight, even along the road; talking with the waggoner, helping a child to pick watercress, patting the shepherd's dog, finding a flower, and late every morning at the hay-field. It was so far to come, she said; no doubt it was, if these stoppings and doublings were counted in. No character whatever, no more than the wind; she was like a well-hung gate swinging to a touch; like water yielding to let a reed sway; like a singing-flame rising and falling to a word, and even to an altered tone of voice. A word pushed her this way; a word pushed her that. Always yielding, sweet, and gentle. Is not this the most seductive of all characters in women? Had they left her alone, would it have been any different? Those bitter, coarse, feminine tongues which gave her the name of evil, and so led her to openly announce that, as she had the name, she would carry on the game. That is an old country saying, "Bear the name, carry the game." If you have the name of a poacher, then poach; you will be no worse off and you will have the pleasure of the poaching. It is a serious matter, indeed, to give any one a bad name, more especially a sensitive, nervous, beautiful girl. Under the shady oaks at luncheon the men all petted her and flattered her in their rude way, which, rude as it was, had the advantage of admitting of no mistake. Two or three more men strolled up from other fields, luncheon in hand and eating as they came, merely to chat with her. One was a mower--a powerful fellow, big boned, big everywhere, and heavy fisted; his chest had been open since four o'clock that morning to the sun, and was tanned like his face. He took her in his mighty arms and kissed her before them all; not one dared move, for the weight of that bone-smashing fist was known. Big Mat drank, as all strong men do; he fought; beyond that there was nothing against him. He worked hard, and farmers are only too glad of a man who will work. He was rather a favourite with the master, and trusted. He kissed her twice, and then went back to his work of mowing, which needs more strength than any other country labour--a mower is to a man what a dray-horse is to a horse. They lingered long over the luncheon under the shady oaks, with the great blue tile of the sky overhead, and the sweet scent of hay around them. They lingered so long, that young Mr. Andrew came to start them again, and found Dolly's cheeks all aglow. The heat and the laughter had warmed them; her cheeks burned, in contrast to her white, pure forehead--for her hat was off--and to the cool shade of the trees. She lingered yet a little longer chatting with Mr. Andrew--lingered a full half-hour--and when they parted, she had given him a rose from the hedge. Young Mr. Andrew was but half a farmer's son; he was destined for a merchant's office in town; he had been educated for it, and was only awaiting the promised opening. He was young, but no yokel; too knowing of town cunning and selfish hardness to entangle himself. Yet those soft brown eyes, that laughing shape; Andrew was very young and so was she, and the summer sun burned warm. The blackbirds whistled the day away, and the swallows sought their nests under the eaves. The curved moon hung on the sky as the hunter's horn on the wall. Timid Wat--the hare--came ambling along the lane, and almost ran against two lovers in a recess of the bushes by an elm. Andrew, Andrew! these lips are too sweet for you; get you to your desk--that smiling shape, those shaded, soft brown eyes, let them alone. Be generous--do not awaken hopes you can never, never fulfil. The new-mown hay is scented yet more sweetly in the evening--of a summer's eve it is always too soon to go home. The blackbirds whistled again, big Mat slew the grass from the rising to the going down of the sun--moon-daisies, sorrel, and buttercups lay in rows of swathe as he mowed. I wonder whether the man ever thought, as he reposed at noontide on a couch of grass under the hedge? Did he think that those immense muscles, that broad, rough-hewn plank of a chest of his, those vast bones encased in sinewy limbs--being flesh in its fulness--ought to have more of this earth than mere common men, and still more than thin-faced people--mere people, not men--in black coats? Did he dimly claim the rights of strength in his mind, and arrogate to himself the prerogatives of arbitrary kings? Who knows what big processes of reasoning, dim and big, passed through his mind in the summer days? Did he conclude he had a right to take what others only asked or worked for? The sweet scent of the new-mown hay disappeared, the hay became whiter, the ricks rose higher, and were topped and finished. Hourly the year grew drier and sultry, as the time of wheat-harvest approached. Sap of spring had dried away; dry stalk of high summer remained, browned with heat. Mr. Andrew (in the country the son is always called by his Christian name, with the prefix Master or Mr.) had been sent for to London to fill the promised lucrative berth. The reapers were in the corn--Dolly tying up; big Mat slashing at the yellow stalks. Why the man worked so hard no one could imagine, unless it was for pure physical pleasure of using those great muscles. Unless, indeed, a fire, as it were, was burning in his mind, and drove him to labour to smother it, as they smother fires by beating them. Dolly was happier than ever--the gayest of the gay. She sang, she laughed, her white, gleaming teeth shone in the sunshine; it was as if she had some secret which enabled her to defy the taunts and cruel, shameless words hurled at her, like clods of earth, by the other women. Gay she was, as the brilliant poppies who, having the sun as their own, cared for nothing else. Till suddenly, just before the close of harvest, Dolly and Mat were missing from the field. Of course their absence was slanderously connected, but there was no known ground for it. Big Mat was found intoxicated at the tavern, from which he never moved for a fortnight, spending in one long drain of drink the lump of money his mighty arms had torn from the sun in the burning hours of work. Dolly was ill at home; sometimes in her room, sometimes downstairs; but ill, shaky and weak--ague they called it. There were dark circles round her eyes, her chin drooped to her breast; she wrapped herself in a shawl in all the heat. It was some time before even the necessity of working brought her forth again, and then her manner was hurried and furtive; she would begin trembling all of a minute, and her eyes filled quickly. By degrees the autumn advanced, and the rooks followed the ploughman. Dolly gradually recovered something of her physical buoyancy; her former light-heartedness never returned. Sometimes an incident would cause a flash of the old gaiety, only for her to sink back into subdued quietness. The change was most noticeable in her eyes; soft and tender still, brown and velvety, there was a deep sadness in them--the longer she looked at you, the more it was visible. They seemed as if her spirit had suffered some great wrong; too great for redress, and that could only be borne in silence. How beautiful are beautiful eyes! Not from one aspect only, as a picture is, where the light falls rightly on it--the painter's point of view--they vary to every and any aspect. The orb rolls to meet the changing circumstance, and is adjusted to all. But a little inquiry into the mechanism of the eyes will indicate how wondrously they are formed. Science has dispelled many illusions, broken many dreams; but here, in the investigation of the eye, it has added to our marvelling interest. The eye is still like the work of a magician: it is physically divine. Besides the liquid flesh which delights the beholder, there is then the retina, the mysterious nerve which receives a thousand pictures on one surface and confuses none; and further, the mystery of the brain, which reproduces them at will, twenty years, yes threescore years and ten, afterwards. Perhaps of all physical things, the eye is most beautiful, most divine. Her eyes were still beautiful, but subdued and full of a great wrong. What that wrong was became apparent in the course of time. Dolly had to live with Mat, and, unhappily, not as his wife. Next harvest there was a child wrapped in a red shawl with her in the field, placed under the shocks while she worked. Her brother Bill talked and threatened--of what avail was it? The law gave no redress, and among men in these things, force is master still. There were none who could meet big Mat in fight. Something seemed to burn in Mat like fire. Now he worked, and now he drank, but the drink which would have killed another did him no injury. He grew and flourished upon it, more bone, more muscle, more of the savage nature of original man. But there was something within on fire. Was he not satisfied even yet? Did he arrogate yet further prerogatives of kings?--prerogatives which even kings claim no longer. One day, while in drink, his heavy fist descended--he forgot his might; he did not check it, like Ulysses in the battle with Irus--and Dolly fell. When they lifted her up, one eye was gone. It was utterly put out, organically destroyed; no skill, no money, no loving care could restore it. The soft, brown velvet, the laugh, the tear gone for ever. The divine eye was broken--battered as a stone might be. The exquisite structure which reflected the trees and flowers, and took to itself the colour of the summer sky, was shapeless. In the second year, Mr. Andrew came down, and one day met her in the village. He did not know her. The stoop, the dress which clothed, but responded to no curve, the sunken breast, and the sightless eye, how should he recognise these? This ragged, plain, this ugly, repellent creature--he did not know her. She spoke; Mr. Andrew hastily fumbled in his pocket, fetched out half-a-crown, gave it, and passed on quickly. How fortunate that he had not entangled himself! Meantime, Mat drank and worked harder than ever, and became more morose, so that no one dared cross him, yet as a worker he was trusted by the farmer. Whatever it was, the fire in him burned deeper, and to the very quick. The poppies came and went once more, the harvest moon rose yellow and ruddy, all the joy of the year proceeded, but Dolly was like a violet over which a waggon-wheel had rolled. The thorn had gone deep into her bosom. II RURAL DYNAMITE In the cold North men eat bread of fir-bark; in our own fields the mouse, if pressed for food in winter, will gnaw the bark of sapling trees. Frost sharpens the teeth like a file, and hunger is keener than frost. If any one used to more fertile scenes had walked across the barren meads Mr. Roberts rented as the summer declined, he would have said that a living could only be gained from them as the mouse gains it in frost-time. By sharp-set nibbling and paring; by the keenest frost-bitten meanness of living; by scraping a little bit here, and saving another trifle yonder, a farmer might possibly get through the year. At the end of each year he would be rather worse off than before, descending a step annually. He must nibble like a frost-driven mouse to merely exist. So poor was the soil, that the clay came to the surface, and in wet weather a slip of the foot exposed it--the heel cut through the veneer of turf into the cold, dead, moist clay. Nothing grew but rushes. Every time a horse moved over the marshy land his hoof left deep holes which never again filled up, but remained the year through, now puddles, full of rain water, and now dry holes. The rain made the ground a swamp; the sun cracked it as it does paint. Who could pay rent for such a place?--for rushes, flags, and water. Yet it was said, with whisper and nod, that the tenant, Mr. Roberts, was a warm man as warm men go after several years of bad seasons, falling prices, and troubles of all kinds. For one thing, he hopped, and it is noted among country folk, that, if a man hops, he generally accumulates money. Mr. Roberts hopped, or rather dragged his legs from rheumatics contracted in thirty years' hardest of hard labour on that thankless farm. Never did any man labour so continually as he, from the earliest winter dawn when the blackbird, with puffed feathers, still tried to slumber in the thornbush, but could not for cold, on till the latest summer eve, after the white barn owl had passed round the fir copse. Both with his hands, and with his eyes, now working, now watching, the man ceased not, and such was his dogged pertinacity that, like the mouse, he won a living. He did more, he saved. At what price? At the price of a fireless life: I mean without cheer, by denial of everything which renders human life superior to that of the rabbit in his burrow. No wife, no children, no niece, or any woman to see to his comforts; no comfort and no pleasure; a bare house and rheumatism. Bill, his principal labourer, Dolly's brother, slept with him in the same bed, master and man, a custom common in old times, long since generally disused. Yet Mr. Roberts was not without some humanism, if such a word may be used; certainly he never gave away a penny, but as certainly he cheated no man. He was upright in conduct, and not unpleasant in manner. He could not have been utterly crabbed for this one labourer, Bill, to stay with him five-and-twenty years. This was the six-and-twentieth year they had dwelt there together in the gaunt, grey, lonely house, with woods around them, isolated from the world, and without a hearth. A hearth is no hearth unless a woman sit by it. This six-and-twentieth year, the season then just ended, had been the worst of the series; rain had spoiled the hay, increased the payment of wages by lengthening the time of hay-making; ruin, he declared, stared him in the face; he supposed at last he must leave the tenancy. And now the harvest was done, the ricks thatched with flags from the marsh (to save straw), the partridges were dispersed, the sportsmen having broken up the coveys, the black swifts had departed--they built every year in the grey stone slates on the lonely house--and nothing was left to be done but to tend the cattle morning and evening, to reflect on the losses, and to talk ceaselessly of the new terror which hung over the whole district. It was rick-burning. Probably, gentlemen in London, who "sit at home at ease," imagine rick-burning a thing of the past, impossible since insurance robbed the incendiary of his sting, unheard of and extinct. Nothing of the kind. That it is not general is true, still to this day it breaks out in places, and rages with vehemence, placing the countryside under a reign of terror. The thing seems inexplicable, but it is a fact; the burning of ricks and farm-sheds every now and then, in certain localities, reaches the dimensions of a public disaster. One night from the garret window, Mr. Roberts, and Bill, his man, counted five fires visible at once. One was in full sight, not a mile distant, two behind the wood, above which rose the red glow, the other two dimly illumined the horizon on the left like a rising moon. While they watched in the dark garret the rats scampered behind them, and a white barn owl floated silently by. They counted up fourteen fires that had taken place since the beginning of the month, and now there were five together. Mr. Roberts did not sleep that night. Being so near the woods and preserves it was part of the understanding that he should not keep a gun--he took a stout staff, and went out to his hayricks, and there stayed till daylight. By ten o'clock he was trudging into the town; his mind had been half-crazed with anxiety for his ricks; he was not insured, he had never insured, just to save the few shillings it cost, such was the nibbling by which he lived. He had struggled hard and kept the secret to himself--of the non-insurance--he foresaw that if known he should immediately suffer. But at the town the insurance agent demurred to issue a policy. The losses had been so heavy, there was no knowing how much farther the loss might extend, for not the slightest trace of the incendiary had yet been discovered, notwithstanding the reward offered, and this was a new policy. Had it been to add to an old one, had Mr. Roberts insured in previous years, it would have been different. He could not do it on his own responsibility, he must communicate with the head office; most likely they would do it, but he must have their authority. By return of post he should know. Mr. Roberts trudged home again, with the misery of two more nights confronting him; two more nights of exposure to the chance of utter ruin. If those ricks were burned, the savings--the nibblings of his life--were gone. This intense, frost-bitten economy, by which alone he had been able to prosper, now threatened to overwhelm him with destruction. There is nothing that burns so resolutely as a hayrick; nothing that catches fire so easily. Children are playing with matches; one holds the ignited match till, it scorches the fingers, and then drops it. The expiring flame touches three blades of dry grass, of hay fallen from the rick, these flare immediately; the flame runs along like a train of gun-powder, rushes up the side of the rick, singeing it as a horse's coat is singed, takes the straw of the thatch which blackens into a hole, cuts its way through, the draught lifts it up the slope of the thatch, and in five minutes the rick is on fire irrecoverably. Unless beaten out at the first start, it is certain to go on. A spark from a pipe, dropped from the mouth of a sleeping man, will do it. Once well alight, and the engines may come at full speed, one five miles, one eight, two ten; they may pump the pond dry, and lay hose to the distant brook--it is in vain. The spread of the flames may be arrested, but not all the water that can be thrown will put out the rick. The outside of the rick where the water strikes it turns black, and dense smoke arises, but the inside core continues to burn till the last piece is charred. All that can be done is to hastily cut away that side of the rick--if any remains--yet untouched, and carry it bodily away. A hayrick will burn for hours, one huge mass of concentrated, glowing, solid fire, not much flame, but glowing coals, so that the farmer may fully understand, may watch and study and fully comprehend the extent of his loss. It burns itself from a square to a dome, and the red dome grows gradually smaller till its lowest layer of ashes strews the ground. It burns itself as it were in blocks: the rick was really homogeneous; it looks while aglow as if it had been constructed of large bricks or blocks of hay. These now blackened blocks dry and crumble one by one till the dome sinks. Under foot the earth is heated, so intense is the fire; no one can approach, even on the windward side, within a pole's length. A widening stream of dense white smoke flows away upwards, flecked with great sparks, blackening the elms, and carrying flakes of burning hay over outhouses, sheds, and farmsteads. Thus from the clouds, as it seems, drops further destruction. Nothing in the line of the wind is safe. Fine impalpable ashes drift and fall like rain half a mile away. Sometimes they remain suspended in the air for hours, and come down presently when the fire is out, like volcanic dust drifting from the crater. This dust lies soft and silky on the hand. By the burning rick, the air rushing to the furnace roars aloud, coming so swiftly as to be cold; on one side intense heat, on the other cold wind. The pump, pump, swing, swing of the manual engines; the quick, short pant of the steam fire-engine; the stream and hiss of the water; shouts and answers; gleaming brass helmets; frightened birds; crowds of white faces, whose frames are in shadow; a red glow on the black, wet mud of the empty pond; rosy light on the walls of the homestead, crossed with vast magnified shadows; windows glistening; men dragging sail-like tarpaulins and rick cloths to cover the sheds; constables upright and quiet, but watchful, standing at intervals to keep order; if by day, the strangest mixture of perfect calm and heated anxiety, the smoke bluish, the floating flakes visible as black specks, the flames tawny, pigeons fluttering round, cows grazing in idol-like indifference to human fears. Ultimately, rows of flattened and roughly circular layers of blackened ashes, whose traces remain for months. This is dynamite in the hands of the village ruffian. This hay, or wheat, or barley, not only represents money; it represents the work of an entire year, the sunshine of a whole summer; it is the outcome of man's thought and patient labour, and it is the food of the helpless cattle. Besides the hay, there often go with it buildings, implements, waggons, and occasionally horses are suffocated. Once now and then the farmstead goes. Now, has not the farmer, even if covered by insurance, good reason to dread this horrible incendiarism? It is a blow at his moral existence as well as at his pecuniary interests. Hardened indeed must be that heart that could look at the old familiar scene, blackened, fire-spilt, trodden, and blotted, without an inward desolation. Boxes and barrels of merchandise in warehouses can be replaced, but money does not replace the growth of nature. Hence the brutality of it--the blow at a man's heart. His hay, his wheat, his cattle, are to a farmer part of his life; coin will not replace them. Nor does the incendiary care if the man himself, his house, home, and all perish at the same time. It is dynamite in despite of insurance. The new system of silos--burying the grass when cut at once in its green state, in artificial caves--may much reduce the risk of fire if it comes into general use. These fire invasions almost always come in the form of an epidemic; not one but three, five, ten, fifteen fires follow in quick succession. Sometimes they last through an entire winter, though often known to take place in summer, directly after harvest. Rarely does detection happen; to this day half these incendiary fires are never followed by punishment. Yet it is noted that they generally occur within a certain radius; they are all within six, or seven, or eight miles, being about the distance that a man or two bent on evil could compass in the night time. But it is not always night; numerous fires are started in broad daylight. Stress of winter weather, little food, and clothing, and less fuel at home have been put forward as causes of a chill desperation, ending in crime. On the contrary, these fires frequently occur when labourers' pockets are full, just after they have received their harvest wages. Bread is not at famine prices; hard masters are not specially selected for the gratification of spite; good masters suffer equally. What then is the cause? There is none but that bitter, bitter feeling which I venture to call the dynamite disposition, and which is found in every part of the civilised world; in Germany, Italy, France, and our own mildly ruled England. A brooding, morose, concentrated hatred of those who possess any kind of substance or comfort; landlord, farmer, every one. An unsparing vendetta, a merciless shark-like thirst of destructive vengeance; a monomania of battering, smashing, crushing, such as seizes the Lancashire weaver, who kicks his woman's brains out without any special reason for dislike, mingled with and made more terrible by this unchangeable hostility to property and those who own it. No creed, no high moral hopes of the rights of man and social regeneration, no true sans culottism even, nothing at all but set teeth and inflated nostrils; blow up, burn, smash, annihilate! A disposition or character which is not imaginary but a fact, as proved abundantly by the placing of rails and iron chairs on lines to upset trains, by the dynamite explosions at Government offices, railway stations, and even at newspaper offices, the sending of letters filled with explosives, firing dynamite in trout streams just to destroy the harmless fish; a character which in the country has hitherto manifested itself in the burning of ricks and farm buildings. Science is always putting fresh power into the hands of this class. In cities they have partly awakened to the power of knowledge; in the country they still use the match. If any one thinks that there is no danger in England because there are no deep-seated causes of discontent, such as foreign rule, oppressive enactments, or conscription, I can assure him that he is wofully mistaken. This class needs no cause at all; prosperity cannot allay its hatred, and adversity does not weaken it. It is certainly unwise to the last degree to provoke this demon, to control which as yet no means have been found. You cannot arrest the invisible; you cannot pour Martini-Henry bullets into a phantom. How are you going to capture people who blow themselves into atoms in order to shatter the frame of a Czar? In its dealings with the lower class this generation is certainly far from wise. Never was the distinction so sharp between the poor--the sullen poor who stand scornful and desperate at the street corners--and the well-to-do. The contrast now extends to every one who can afford a black coat. It is not confined to the millionaire. The contrast is with every black coat. Those who only see the drawing-room side of society, those who move, too, in the well-oiled atmosphere of commercial offices, are quite ignorant of the savage animosity which watches them to and fro the office or the drawing-room from the street corner. Question it is if any mediaeval soldiery bursting abroad in Sinigaglia were so brutal as is the street rough, that blot and hideous product of modern civilisation. How easy it is to point to the sobriety and the good sense of the working class and smile in assumed complacency! What have the sober mass of the working class to do with it? No more than you or I, or the Rothschilds, or dukes of blood royal. There the thing is, and it requires no great sagacity to see that the present mode of dealing with it is a failure and likely to be worse. If you have gunpowder, you should not put it under hydraulic pressure. You should not stir it up and hold matches to it to see if it is there. That is what prosecutions and imprisonments on charges of atheism and so on do. It is stirring up the powder and trying it with a match. Nor should you put it under hydraulic pressure, which is now being done all over the country, under the new laws which force every wretch who enters a workhouse for a night's shelter to stay there two nights; under the cold-blooded cruelty which, in the guise of science, takes the miserable quarter of a pint of ale from the lips of the palsied and decrepit inmates; which puts the imbecile--even the guiltless imbecile--on what is practically bread and water. Words fail me to express the cruelty and inhumanity of this crazed legislation. Sometimes we see a complacent paragraph in the papers, penned by an official doubtless, congratulating the public that the number relieved under the new regulations has dropped from, say, six hundred to a hundred and fifty. And what, oh blindest of the blind, do you imagine has become of the remaining four hundred and fifty? Has your precious folly extinguished them? Are they dead? No, indeed. All over the country, hydraulic pressure, in the name of science, progress, temperance, and similar perverted things, is being put on the gunpowder--or the dynamite, if you like--of society. Every now and then some individual member of the Army of Wretches turns and becomes the Devil of modern civilisation. Modern civilisation has put out the spiritual Devil and produced the Demon of Dynamite. Let me raise a voice, in pleading for more humane treatment of the poor--the only way, believe me, by which society can narrow down and confine the operations of this new Devil. A human being is not a dog, yet is treated worse than a dog. Force these human dogs to learn to read with empty stomachs--stomachs craving for a piece of bread while education is crammed into them. In manhood, if unfortunate, set them to break stones. If imbecility supervene give them bread and water. In helpless age give them the cup of cold water. This is the way to breed dynamite. And then at the other end of the scale let your Thames Embankment Boulevard be the domain of the street rough; let your Islington streets be swept by bands of brutes; let the well dressed be afraid to venture anywhere unless in the glare of gas and electric light! Manufacture it in one district, and give it free scope and play in another. Yet never was there an age in which the mass of society, from the titled to the cottager, was so full of real and true humanity, so ready to start forward to help, so imbued with the highest sentiments. The wrong is done in official circles. No steel-clad baron of Norman days, no ruthless red-stockinged cardinal, with the Bastile in one hand and the tumbril in the other, ever ruled with so total an absence of Heart as the modern "official," the Tyrants of the nineteenth century; whose rods are hobbies in the name of science miscalled, in the name of temperance perverted, in the name of progress backwards, in the name of education without food. It is time that the common-sense of society at large rose in revolution against it. Meantime dynamite. This is a long digression: suppose while you have been reading it that Mr. Roberts has passed one of the two terrible nights, his faithful Bill at one end of the rickyard and himself at the other. The second night they took up their positions in the same manner as soon as it was dark. There was no moon, and the sky was overcast with those stationary clouds which often precede a great storm, so that the darkness was marked, and after they had parted a step or two they lost sight of each other. Worn with long wakefulness, and hard labour during the day, they both dropped asleep at their posts. Mr. Roberts awoke from the dead vacancy of sleep to the sensation of a flash of light crossing his eyelids, and to catch a glimpse of a man's neck with a red necktie illuminated by flame like a Rembrandt head in the centre of shadow. He leaped forward literally yelling--the incendiary he wholly forgot--his rick! his rick! He beat the side of the rick with his stick, and as it had but just caught he beat the flame out. Then he dropped senseless on the ground. Bill, awakened by Roberts' awful yell or shriek of excitement, started to his feet, heard a man rushing by in the darkness, and hurled his heavy stick in that direction. By the thud which followed and a curse, he knew it had hit the object, but not with sufficient force to bring the scoundrel down. The fellow escaped; Bill went to his master and lifted him up; how he got Roberts home he did not know, but it was hours before Roberts could speak. Towards sunrise he recovered, and would go immediately to assure himself that the ricks were safe. Then they found a man's hat--Bill's stick had knocked it off--and by that hat and the red necktie the incendiary was brought to justice. The hat was big Mat's; he always wore a red necktie. Big Mat made no defence; he was simply stolidly indifferent to the whole proceedings. The only statement he made was that he had not fired four of the ricks, and he did not know who had done so. Example is contagious; some one had followed the dynamite lead, detection never took place, but the fires ceased. Mat, of course, went for the longest period of penal servitude the law allotted. I should say that he did not himself know why he did it. That intense, brooding moroseness, that wormwood hatred, does not often understand itself. So much the more dangerous is it; no argument, no softening influence can reach it. Faithful Bill, who had served Mr. Roberts almost all his life, and who probably would have served him till the end, received a money reward from the insurance office for his share in detecting the incendiary. This reward ruined him--killed him. Golden sovereigns in his pocket destroyed him. He went on the drink; he drank, and was enticed to drink, till in six weeks he died in the infirmary of the workhouse. Mat being in the convict prison, and Dolly near to another confinement, she could not support herself; she was driven to the same workhouse in which her brother had but just died. I am not sure, but believe that pseudo-science, the Torturer of these days, denied her the least drop of alcohol during her travail. If it did permit one drop, then was the Torturer false to his creed. Dolly survived, but utterly broken, hollow-chested, a workhouse fixture. Still, so long as she could stand she had to wash in the laundry; weak as she was, they weakened her still further with steam and heat, and labour. Washing is hard work for those who enjoy health and vigour. To a girl, broken in heart and body, it is a slow destroyer. Heat relaxes all the fibres; Dolly's required bracing. Steam will soften wood and enable the artificer to bend it to any shape. Dolly's chest became yet more hollow; her cheek-bones prominent; she bent to the steam. This was the girl who had lingered in the lane to help the boy pick watercress, to gather a flower, to listen to a thrush, to bask in the sunshine. Open air and green fields were to her life itself. Heart miseries are always better borne in the open air. How just, how truly scientific, to shut her in a steaming wash-house! The workhouse was situated in a lovely spot, on the lowest slope of hills, hills covered afar with woods. Meads at hand, corn-fields farther away, then green slopes over which broad cloud-shadows glided slowly. The larks sang in spring, in summer the wheat was golden, in autumn the distant woods were brown and red and yellow. Had you spent your youth in those fields, had your little drama of life been enacted in them, do you not think that you would like at least to gaze out at them from the windows of your prison? It was observed that the miserable wretches were always looking out of the windows in this direction. The windows on that side were accordingly built up and bricked in that they might not look out. BITS OF OAK BARK I THE ACORN-GATHERER Black rooks, yellow oak leaves, and a boy asleep at the foot of the tree. His head was lying on a bulging root close to the stem: his feet reached to a small sack or bag half full of acorns. In his slumber his forehead frowned--they were fixed lines, like the grooves in the oak bark. There was nothing else in his features attractive or repellent: they were such as might have belonged to a dozen hedge children. The set angry frown was the only distinguishing mark--like the dents on a penny made by a hobnail boot, by which it can be known from twenty otherwise precisely similar. His clothes were little better than sacking, but clean, tidy, and repaired. Any one would have said, "Poor, but carefully tended." A kind heart might have put a threepenny-bit in his clenched little fist, and sighed. But that iron set frown on the young brow would not have unbent even for the silver. Caw! Caw! The happiest creatures in the world are the rooks at the acorns. It is not only the eating of them, but the finding: the fluttering up there and hopping from branch to branch, the sidling out to the extreme end of the bough, and the inward chuckling when a friend lets his acorn drop tip-tap from bough to bough. Amid such plenty they cannot quarrel or fight, having no cause of battle, but they can boast of success, and do so to the loudest of their voices. He who has selected a choice one flies with it as if it were a nugget in his beak, out to some open spot of ground, followed by a general Caw! This was going on above while the boy slept below. A thrush looked out from the hedge, and among the short grass there was still the hum of bees, constant sun-worshippers as they are. The sunshine gleamed on the rooks' black feathers overhead, and on the sward sparkled from hawkweed, some lotus and yellow weed, as from a faint ripple of water. The oak was near a corner formed by two hedges, and in the angle was a narrow thorny gap. Presently an old woman, very upright, came through this gap carrying a faggot on her shoulder and a stout ash stick in her hand. She was very clean, well dressed for a labouring woman, hard of feature, but superior in some scarcely defined way to most of her class. The upright carriage had something to do with it, the firm mouth, the light blue eyes that looked every one straight in the face. Possibly these, however, had less effect than her conscious righteousness. Her religion lifted her above the rest, and I do assure you that it was perfectly genuine. That hard face and cotton gown would have gone to the stake. When she had got through the gap she put the faggot down in it, walked a short distance out into the field, and came back towards the boy, keeping him between her and the corner. Caw! said the rooks, Caw! Caw! Thwack, thwack, bang, went the ash stick on the sleeping boy, heavily enough to have broken his bones. Like a piece of machinery suddenly let loose, without a second of dubious awakening and without a cry, he darted straight for the gap in the corner. There the faggot stopped him, and before he could tear it away the old woman had him again, thwack, thwack, and one last stinging slash across his legs as he doubled past her. Quick as the wind as he rushed he picked up the bag of acorns and pitched it into the mound, where the acorns rolled down into a pond and were lost--a good round shilling's worth. Then across the field without his cap, over the rising ground, and out of sight. The old woman made no attempt to hold him, knowing from previous experience that it was useless, and would probably result in her own overthrow. The faggot, brought a quarter of a mile for the purpose, enabled her, you see, to get two good chances at him. A wickeder boy never lived: nothing could be done with the reprobate. He was her grandson--at least, the son of her daughter, for he was not legitimate. The man drank, the girl died, as was believed, of sheer starvation: the granny kept the child, and he was now between ten and eleven years old. She had done and did her duty, as she understood it. A prayer-meeting was held in her cottage twice a week, she prayed herself aloud among them, she was a leading member of the sect. Neither example, precept, nor the rod could change that boy's heart. In time perhaps she got to beat him from habit rather than from any particular anger of the moment, just as she fetched water and filled her kettle, as one of the ordinary events of the day. Why did not the father interfere? Because if so he would have had to keep his son: so many shillings a week the less for ale. In the garden attached to the cottage there was a small shed with a padlock, used to store produce or wood in. One morning, after a severe beating, she drove the boy in there and locked him in the whole day without food. It was no use, he was as hardened as ever. A footpath which crossed the field went by the cottage, and every Sunday those who were walking to church could see the boy in the window with granny's Bible open before him. There he had to sit, the door locked, under terror of stick, and study the page. What was the use of compelling him to do that? He could not read. "No," said the old woman, "he won't read, but I makes him look at his book." The thwacking went on for some time, when one day the boy was sent on an errand two or three miles, and for a wonder started willingly enough. At night he did not return, nor the next day, nor the next, and it was as clear as possible that he had run away. No one thought of tracking his footsteps, or following up the path he had to take, which passed a railway, brooks, and a canal. He had run away, and he might stop away: it was beautiful summer weather, and it would do him no harm to stop out for a week. A dealer who had business in a field by the canal thought indeed that he saw something in the water, but he did not want any trouble, nor indeed did he know that some one was missing. Most likely a dead dog; so he turned his back and went to look again at the cow he thought of buying. A barge came by, and the steerswoman, with a pipe in her mouth, saw something roll over and come up under the rudder: the length of the barge having passed over it. She knew what it was, but she wanted to reach the wharf and go ashore and have a quart of ale. No use picking it up, only make a mess on deck, there was no reward--"Gee-up! Neddy." The barge went on, turning up the mud in the shallow water, sending ripples washing up to the grassy meadow shores, while the moorhens hid in the flags till it was gone. In time a labourer walking on the towing-path saw "it," and fished it out, and with it a slender ash sapling, with twine and hook, a worm still on it. This was why the dead boy had gone so willingly, thinking to fish in the "river," as he called the canal. When his feet slipped and he fell in, his fishing-line somehow became twisted about his arms and legs, else most likely he would have scrambled out, as it was not very deep. This was the end; nor was he even remembered. Does any one sorrow for the rook, shot, and hung up as a scarecrow? The boy had been talked to, and held up as a scarecrow all his life: he was dead, and that is all. As for granny, she felt no twinge: she had done her duty. II THE LEGEND OF A GATEWAY A great beech tree with a white mark some way up the trunk stood in the mound by a gate which opened into a lane. Strangers coming down the lane in the dusk often hesitated before they approached this beech. The white mark looked like a ghostly figure emerging from the dark hedge and the shadow of the tree. The trunk itself was of the same hue at that hour as the bushes, so that the whiteness seemed to stand out unsupported. So perfect was the illusion that even those who knew the spot well, walking or riding past and not thinking about it, started as it suddenly came into sight. Ploughboys used to throw flints at it, as if the sound of the stone striking the tree assured them that it was really material. Some lichen was apparently the cause of this whiteness: the great beech indeed was known to be decaying and was dotted with knot-holes high above. The gate was rather low, so that any one could lean with arms over the top bar. At one time a lady used to be very frequently seen just inside the gate, generally without a hat, for the homestead was close by. Sometimes a horse, saddled and bridled, but without his rider, was observed to be fastened to the gate, and country people, being singularly curious and inquisitive, if they chanced to go by always peered through every opening in the hedge till they had discerned where the pair were walking among the cowslips. More often a spaniel betrayed them, especially in the evening, for while the courting was proceeding he amused himself digging with his paws at the rabbit-holes in the mound. The folk returning to their cottages at even smiled and looked meaningly at each other if they heard a peculiarly long and shrill whistle, which was known to every one as Luke's signal. Some said that it was heard every evening: no matter how far Luke had to ride in the day, his whistle was sure to be heard towards dusk. Luke was a timber-dealer, or merchant, a calling that generally leads to substantial profit as wealth is understood in country places. He bought up likely timber all over the neighbourhood: he had wharves on the canal, and yards by the little railway station miles away. He often went up to "Lunnon," but if it was ninety miles, he was sure to be back in time to whistle. If he was not too busy the whistle used to go twice a day, for when he started off in the morning, no matter where he had to go to, that lane was the road to it. The lane led everywhere. Up in the great beech about eleven o'clock on spring mornings there was always a wood-pigeon. The wood-pigeon is a contemplative sort of bird, and pauses now and then during the day to consider over his labours in filling his crop. He came again about half-past four, but it was at eleven that his visit to the beech was usually noticed. From the window in the lady's own room the beech and the gate could be seen, and as that was often Luke's time she frequently sat upstairs with the window open listening for the sound of hoofs, or the well-known whistle. She saw the wood-pigeon on so many occasions that at last she grew to watch for the bird, and when he went up into the tree, put down her work or her book and walked out that way. Secure in the top of the great beech, and conscious that it was spring, when guns are laid aside, the wood-pigeon took no heed of her. There is nothing so pleasant to stroll among as cowslips. This mead was full of them, so much so that a little way in front the surface seemed yellow. They had all short stalks; this is always the case where these flowers grow very thickly, and the bells were a pale and somewhat lemon colour. The great cowslips with deep yellow and marked spots grow by themselves in bunches in corners or on the banks of brooks. Here a man might have mown acres of cowslips, pale but sweet. Out of their cups the bees hummed as she walked amongst them, a closed book in her hand, dreaming. She generally returned with Luke's spaniel beside her, for whether his master came or not the knowing dog rarely missed his visit, aware that there was always something good for him. One morning she went dreaming on like this through the cowslips, past the old beech and the gate, and along by the nut-tree hedge. It was very sunny and warm, and the birds sang with all their might, for there had been a shower at dawn, which always set their hearts atune. At least eight or nine of them were singing at once, thrush and blackbird, cuckoo (afar off), dove, and greenfinch, nightingale, robin and loud wren, and larks in the sky. But, unlike all other music, though each had a different voice and the notes crossed and interfered with each other, yet they did not jangle, but produced the sweetest sounds. The more of them that sang together, the sweeter the music. It is true they all had one thought of love at heart, and that perhaps brought about the concord. She did not expect to see Luke that morning, knowing that he had to get some felled trees removed from a field, the farmer wishing them taken away before the mowing-grass grew too high, and as the spot was ten or twelve miles distant he had to start early. Not being so much on the alert, she fell deeper perhaps into reverie, which lasted till she reached the other side of the field, when the spaniel rushed out of the hedge and leaped up to be noticed, quite startling her. At the same moment she thought she heard the noise of hoofs in the lane--it might be Luke--and immediately afterwards there came his long, shrill, and peculiar whistle from the gate under the beech. She ran as fast as she could, the spaniel barking beside her, and was at the gate in two or three minutes, but Luke was not there. Nor was he anywhere in the lane--she could see up and down it over the low gate. He must have gone on up to the homestead, not seeing her. At the house, however, she found they had not seen him. He had not called. A little hurt that he should have galloped on so hastily, she set about some household affairs, resolved to think no more of him that morning, and to give him a frown when he came in the evening. But he did not come in the evening; it was evident he was detained. Luke's trees were lying in the long grass beside a copse, and the object was to get them out of the field, across the adjacent railway, and to set them down in a lane, on the sward, whence he could send for them at leisure. The farmer was very anxious to get them out of the grass, and Luke did his best to oblige him. When Luke arrived at the spot, having for once ridden straight there, he found that almost all the work was done, and only one tree remained. This they were getting up on the timber-carriage, and Luke dismounted and assisted. While it was on the timber-carriage, he said, as it was the last, they could take it along to the wharf. The farmer had come down to watch how the work got on, and with him was his little boy, a child of five or six. When the boy saw the great tree fixed, he cried to be mounted on it for a ride, but as it was so rough they persuaded him to ride on one of the horses instead. As they all approached the gate at the level crossing, a white gate with the words in long black letters, "To be kept Locked," they heard the roar of the morning express and stayed for it to go by. So soon as the train had passed, the gate was opened and the horses began to drag the carriage across. As they strained at the heavy weight, the boy found the motion uncomfortable and cried out, and Luke, always kind-hearted, went and held him on. Whether it was the shouting at the team, the cracking of the whip, the rumbling of the wheels, or what, was never known; but suddenly the farmer, who had crossed the rail, screamed, "The goods!" Round the curve by the copse, and till then hidden by it, swept a goods train, scarce thirty yards away. Luke might have saved himself, but the boy! He snatched the child from the horse, hurled him--literally hurled him--into the father's arms, and in the instant was a shapeless mass. The scene is too dreadful for further description. This miserable accident happened, as the driver of the goods train afterwards stated, at exactly eight minutes past eleven o'clock. It was precisely at that time that Luke's lady, dreaming among the cowslips, heard the noise of hoofs, and his long, shrill, and peculiar whistle at the gate beneath the beech. She was certain of the time, for these reasons: first, she had seen the wood-pigeon go up into the beech just before she started out; secondly, she remembered nodding to an aged labourer who came up to the house every morning at that hour for his ale; thirdly, it would take a person walking slowly eight or ten minutes to cross that side of the mead; and, fourthly, when she came back to the house to see if Luke was there, the clock pointed to a quarter past, and was known to be a little fast. Without a doubt she had heard the well-known whistle, apparently coming from the gate beneath the beech exactly at the moment poor Luke was dashed to pieces twelve miles away. III A ROMAN BROOK The brook has forgotten me, but I have not forgotten the brook. Many faces have been mirrored since in the flowing water, many feet have waded in the sandy shallow. I wonder if any one else can see it in a picture before the eyes as I can, bright, and vivid as trees suddenly shown at night by a great flash of lightning. All the leaves and branches and the birds at roost are visible during the flash. It is barely a second; it seems much longer. Memory, like the lightning, reveals the pictures in the mind. Every curve, and shore, and shallow is as familiar now as when I followed the winding stream so often. When the mowing-grass was at its height, you could not walk far beside the bank; it grew so thick and strong and full of umbelliferous plants as to weary the knees. The life as it were of the meadows seemed to crowd down towards the brook in summer, to reach out and stretch towards the life-giving water. There the buttercups were taller and closer together, nails of gold driven so thickly that the true surface was not visible. Countless rootlets drew up the richness of the earth like miners in the darkness, throwing their petals of yellow ore broadcast above them. With their fulness of leaves the hawthorn bushes grow larger--the trees extend farther--and thus overhung with leaf and branch, and closely set about by grass and plant, the brook disappeared only a little way off, and could not have been known from a mound and hedge. It was lost in the plain of meads--the flowers alone saw its sparkle. Hidden in those bushes and tall grasses, high in the trees and low on the ground, there were the nests of happy birds. In the hawthorns blackbirds and thrushes built, often overhanging the stream, and the fledglings fluttered out into the flowery grass. Down among the stalks of the umbelliferous plants, where the grasses were knotted together, the nettle-creeper concealed her treasure, having selected a hollow by the bank so that the scythe should pass over. Up in the pollard ashes and willows here and there wood-pigeons built. Doves cooed in the little wooded enclosures where the brook curved almost round upon itself. If there was a hollow in the oak a pair of starlings chose it, for there was no advantageous nook that was not seized on. Low beside the willow stoles the sedge-reedlings built; on the ledges of the ditches, full of flags, moor-hens made their nests. After the swallows had coursed long miles over the meads to and fro, they rested on the tops of the ashes and twittered sweetly. Like the flowers and grass, the birds were drawn towards the brook. They built by it, they came to it to drink; in the evening a grasshopper-lark trilled in a hawthorn bush. By night crossing the footbridge a star sometimes shone in the water underfoot. At morn and even the peasant girls came down to dip; their path was worn through the mowing-grass, and there was a flat stone let into the bank as a step to stand on. Though they were poorly habited, without one line of form or tint of colour that could please the eye, there is something in dipping water that is Greek--Homeric--something that carries the mind home to primitive times. Always the little children came with them; they too loved the brook like the grass and birds. They wanted to see the fishes dart away and hide in the green flags: they flung daisies and buttercups into the stream to float and catch awhile at the flags, and float again and pass away, like the friends of our boyhood, out of sight. Where there was pasture roan cattle came to drink, and horses, restless horses, stood for hours by the edge under the shade of ash trees. With what joy the spaniel plunged in, straight from the bank out among the flags--you could mark his course by seeing their tips bend as he brushed them swimming. All life loved the brook. Far down away from roads and hamlets there was a small orchard on the very bank of the stream, and just before the grass grew too high to walk through I looked in the enclosure to speak to its owner. He was busy with his spade at a strip of garden, and grumbled that the hares would not let it alone, with all that stretch of grass to feed on. Nor would the rooks; and the moor-hens ran over it, and the water-rats burrowed; the wood-pigeons would have the peas, and there was no rest from them all. While he talked and talked, far from the object in hand, as aged people will, I thought how the apple tree in blossom before us cared little enough who saw its glory. The branches were in bloom everywhere, at the top as well as at the side; at the top where no one could see them but the swallows. They did not grow for human admiration: that was not their purpose; that is our affair only--we bring the thought to the tree. On a short branch low down the trunk there hung the weather-beaten and broken handle of an earthenware vessel; the old man said it was a jug, one of the old folks' jugs--he often dug them up. Some were cracked, some nearly perfect; lots of them had been thrown out to mend the lane. There were some chips among the heap of weeds yonder. These fragments were the remains of Anglo-Roman pottery. Coins had been found--half a gallon of them--the children had had most. He took one from his pocket, dug up that morning; they were of no value, they would not ring. The labourers tried to get some ale for them, but could not; no one would take the little brass things. That was all he knew of the Caesars: the apples were in fine bloom now, weren't they? Fifteen centuries before there had been a Roman station at the spot where the lane crossed the brook. There the centurions rested their troops after their weary march across the downs, for the lane, now bramble-grown and full of ruts, was then a Roman road. There were villas, and baths, and fortifications; these things you may read about in books. They are lost now in the hedges, under the flowering grass, in the ash copses, all forgotten in the lane, and along the footpath where the June roses will bloom after the apple blossom has dropped. But just where the ancient military way crosses the brook there grow the finest, the largest, the bluest, and most lovely forget-me-nots that ever lover gathered for his lady. The old man, seeing my interest in the fragments of pottery, wished to show me something of a different kind lately discovered. He led me to a spot where the brook was deep, and had somewhat undermined the edge. A horse trying to drink there had pushed a quantity of earth into the stream, and exposed a human skeleton lying within a few inches of the water. Then I looked up the stream and remembered the buttercups and tall grasses, the flowers that crowded down to the edge; I remembered the nests, and the dove cooing; the girls that came down to dip, the children that cast their flowers to float away. The wind blew the loose apple bloom and it fell in showers of painted snow. Sweetly the greenfinches were calling in the trees: afar the voice of the cuckoo came over the oaks. By the side of the living water, the water that all things rejoiced in, near to its gentle sound, and the sparkle of sunshine on it, had lain this sorrowful thing. MEADOW THOUGHTS The old house stood by the silent country road, secluded by many a long, long mile, and yet again secluded within the great walls of the garden. Often and often I rambled up to the milestone which stood under an oak, to look at the chipped inscription low down--"To London, 79 Miles." So far away, you see, that the very inscription was cut at the foot of the stone, since no one would be likely to want that information. It was half hidden by docks and nettles, despised and unnoticed. A broad land this seventy-nine miles--how many meadows and corn-fields, hedges and woods, in that distance?--wide enough to seclude any house, to hide it, like an acorn in the grass. Those who have lived all their lives in remote places do not feel the remoteness. No one else seemed to be conscious of the breadth that separated the place from the great centre, but it was, perhaps, that consciousness which deepened the solitude to me. It made the silence more still; the shadows of the oaks yet slower in their movement; everything more earnest. To convey a full impression of the intense concentration of Nature in the meadows is very difficult--everything is so utterly oblivious of man's thought and man's heart. The oaks stand--quiet, still--so still that the lichen loves them. At their feet the grass grows, and heeds nothing. Among it the squirrels leap, and their little hearts are as far away from you or me as the very wood of the oaks. The sunshine settles itself in the valley by the brook, and abides there whether we come or not. Glance through the gap in the hedge by the oak, and see how concentrated it is--all of it, every blade of grass, and leaf, and flower, and living creature, finch or squirrel. It is mesmerised upon itself. Then I used to feel that it really was seventy-nine miles to London, and not an hour or two only by rail, really all those miles. A great, broad province of green furrow and ploughed furrow between the old house and the city of the world. Such solace and solitude seventy-nine miles thick cannot be painted; the trees cannot be placed far enough away in perspective. It is necessary to stay in it like the oaks to know it. Lime-tree branches overhung the corner of the garden-wall, whence a view was easy of the silent and dusty road, till overarching oaks concealed it. The white dust heated by the sunshine, the green hedges, and the heavily massed trees, white clouds rolled together in the sky, a footpath opposite lost in the fields, as you might thrust a stick into the grass, tender lime leaves caressing the cheek, and silence. That is, the silence of the fields. If a breeze rustled the boughs, if a greenfinch called, if the cart-mare in the meadow shook herself, making the earth and air tremble by her with the convulsion of her mighty muscles, these were not sounds, they were the silence itself. So sensitive to it as I was, in its turn it held me firmly, like the fabled spells of old time. The mere touch of a leaf was a talisman to bring me under the enchantment, so that I seemed to feel and know all that was proceeding among the grass-blades and in the bushes. Among the lime trees along the wall the birds never built, though so close and sheltered. They built everywhere but there. To the broad coping-stones of the wall under the lime boughs speckled thrushes came almost hourly, sometimes to peer out and reconnoitre if it was safe to visit the garden, sometimes to see if a snail had climbed up the ivy. Then they dropped quietly down into the long strawberry patch immediately under. The cover of strawberries is the constant resource of all creeping things; the thrushes looked round every plant and under every leaf and runner. One toad always resided there, often two, and as you gathered a ripe strawberry you might catch sight of his black eye watching you take the fruit he had saved for you. Down the road skims an eave-swallow, swift as an arrow, his white back making the sun-dried dust dull and dingy; he is seeking a pool for mortar, and will waver to and fro by the brook below till he finds a convenient place to alight. Thence back to the eave here, where for forty years he and his ancestors built in safety. Two white butterflies fluttering round each other rise over the limes, once more up over the house, and soar on till their white shows no longer against the illumined air. A grasshopper calls on the sward by the strawberries, and immediately fillips himself over seven leagues of grass-blades. Yonder a line of men and women file across the field, seen for a moment as they pass a gateway, and the hay changes from hay-colour to green behind them as they turn the under but still sappy side upwards. They are working hard, but it looks easy, slow, and sunny. Finches fly out from the hedgerow to the overturned hay. Another butterfly, a brown one, floats along the dusty road--the only traveller yet. The white clouds are slowly passing behind the oaks, large puffed clouds, like deliberate loads of hay, leaving little wisps and flecks behind them caught in the sky. How pleasant it would be to read in the shadow! There is a broad shadow on the sward by the strawberries cast by a tall and fine-grown American crab tree. The very place for a book; and although I know it is useless, yet I go and fetch one and dispose myself on the grass. I can never read in summer out-of-doors. Though in shadow the bright light fills it, summer shadows are broadest daylight. The page is so white and hard, the letters so very black, the meaning and drift not quite intelligible, because neither eye nor mind will dwell upon it. Human thoughts and imaginings written down are pale and feeble in bright summer light. The eye wanders away, and rests more lovingly on greensward and green lime leaves. The mind wanders yet deeper and farther into the dreamy mystery of the azure sky. Once now and then, determined to write down that mystery and delicious sense while actually in it, I have brought out table and ink and paper, and sat there in the midst of the summer day. Three words, and where is the thought? Gone. The paper is so obviously paper, the ink so evidently ink, the pen so stiff; all so inadequate. You want colour, flexibility, light, sweet low sound--all these to paint it and play it in music, at the same time you want something that will answer to and record in one touch the strong throb of life and the thought, or feeling, or whatever it is that goes out into the earth and sky and space, endless as a beam of light. The very shade of the pen on the paper tells you how utterly hopeless it is to express these things. There is the shade and the brilliant gleaming whiteness; now tell me in plain written words the simple contrast of the two. Not in twenty pages, for the bright light shows the paper in its common fibre-ground, coarse aspect, in its reality, not as a mind-tablet. The delicacy and beauty of thought or feeling is so extreme that it cannot be inked in; it is like the green and blue of field and sky, of veronica flower and grass blade, which in their own existence throw light and beauty on each other, but in artificial colours repel. Take the table indoors again, and the book; the thoughts and imaginings of others are vain, and of your own too deep to be written. For the mind is filled with the exceeding beauty of these things, and their great wondrousness and marvel. Never yet have I been able to write what I felt about the sunlight only. Colour and form and light are as magic to me. It is a trance. It requires a language of ideas to convey it. It is ten years since I last reclined on that grass plot, and yet I have been writing of it as if it was yesterday, and every blade of grass is as visible and as real to me now as then. They were greener towards the house, and more brown-tinted on the margin of the strawberry bed, because towards the house the shadow rested longest. By the strawberries the fierce sunlight burned them. The sunlight put out the books I brought into it just as it put out the fire on the hearth indoors. The tawny flames floating upwards could not bite the crackling sticks when the full beams came pouring on them. Such extravagance of light overcame the little fire till it was screened from the power of the heavens. So here in the shadow of the American crab tree the light of the sky put out the written pages. For this beautiful and wonderful light excited a sense of some likewise beautiful and wonderful truth, some unknown but grand thought hovering as a swallow above. The swallows hovered and did not alight, but they were there. An inexpressible thought quivered in the azure overhead; it could not be fully grasped, but there was a sense and feeling of its presence. Before that mere sense of its presence the weak and feeble pages, the small fires of human knowledge, dwindled and lost meaning. There was something here that was not in the books. In all the philosophies and searches of mind there was nothing that could be brought to face it, to say, This is what it intends, this is the explanation of the dream. The very grass-blades confounded the wisest, the tender lime leaf put them to shame, the grasshopper derided them, the sparrow on the wall chirped his scorn. The books were put out, unless a screen were placed between them and the light of the sky--that is, an assumption, so as to make an artificial mental darkness. Grant some assumptions--that is, screen off the light--and in that darkness everything was easily arranged, this thing here, and that yonder. But Nature grants no assumptions, and the books were put out. There is something beyond the philosophies in the light, in the grass-blades, the leaf, the grasshopper, the sparrow on the wall. Some day the great and beautiful thought which hovers on the confines of the mind will at last alight. In that is hope, the whole sky is full of abounding hope. Something beyond the books, that is consolation. The little lawn beside the strawberry bed, burned brown there, and green towards the house shadow, holds how many myriad grass-blades? Here they are all matted together, long, and dragging each other down. Part them, and beneath them are still more, overhung and hidden. The fibres are intertangled, woven in an endless basket-work and chaos of green and dried threads. A blamable profusion this; a fifth as many would be enough; altogether a wilful waste here. As for these insects that spring out of it as I press the grass, a hundredth part of them would suffice. The American crab tree is a snowy mount in spring; the flakes of bloom, when they fall, cover the grass with a film--a bushel of bloom, which the wind takes and scatters afar. The extravagance is sublime. The two little cherry trees are as wasteful; they throw away handfuls of flower; but in the meadows the careless, spendthrift ways of grass and flower and all things are not to be expressed. Seeds by the hundred million float with absolute indifference on the air. The oak has a hundred thousand more leaves than necessary, and never hides a single acorn. Nothing utilitarian--everything on a scale of splendid waste. Such noble, broadcast, open-armed waste is delicious to behold. Never was there such a lying proverb as "Enough is as good as a feast." Give me the feast; give me squandered millions of seeds, luxurious carpets of petals, green mountains of oak leaves. The greater the waste, the greater the enjoyment--the nearer the approach to real life. Casuistry is of no avail; the fact is obvious; Nature flings treasures abroad, puffs them with open ups along on every breeze, piles up lavish layers of them in the free open air, packs countless numbers together in the needles of a fir tree. Prodigality and superfluity are stamped on everything she does. The ear of wheat returns a hundredfold the grain from which it grew. The surface of the earth offers to us far more than we can consume--the grains, the seeds, the fruits, the animals, the abounding products are beyond the power of all the human race to devour. They can, too, be multiplied a thousandfold. There is no natural lack. Whenever there is lack among us it is from artificial causes, which intelligence should remove. From the littleness, and meanness, and niggardliness forced upon us by circumstances, what a relief to turn aside to the exceeding plenty of Nature! There are no bounds to it, there is no comparison to parallel it, so great is this generosity. No physical reason exists why every human being should not have sufficient, at least, of necessities. For any human being to starve, or even to be in trouble about the procuring of simple food, appears, indeed, a strange and unaccountable thing, quite upside down, and contrary to sense, if you do but consider a moment the enormous profusion the earth throws at our feet. In the slow process of time, as the human heart grows larger, such provision, I sincerely trust, will be made that no one need ever feel anxiety about mere subsistence. Then, too, let there be some imitation of this open-handed generosity and divine waste. Let the generations to come feast free of care, like my finches on the seeds of the mowing-grass, from which no voice drives them. If I could but give away as freely as the earth does! The white-backed eave-swallow has returned many, many times from the shallow drinking-place by the brook to his half-built nest. Sometimes the pair of them cling to the mortar they have fixed under the eave, and twitter to each other about the progress of the work. They dive downwards with such velocity when they quit hold that it seems as if they must strike the ground, but they shoot up again, over the wall and the lime trees. A thrush has been to the arbour yonder twenty times; it is made of crossed laths, and overgrown with "tea-plant," and the nest is inside the lath-work. A sparrow has visited the rose-tree by the wall--the buds are covered with aphides. A brown tree-creeper has been to the limes, then to the cherries, and even to a stout lilac stem. No matter how small the tree, he tries all that are in his way. The bright colours of a bullfinch were visible a moment just now, as he passed across the shadows farther down the garden under the damson trees and into the bushes. The grasshopper has gone past and along the garden-path, his voice is not heard now; but there is another coming. While I have been dreaming, all these and hundreds out in the meadow have been intensely happy. So concentrated on their little work in the sunshine, so intent on the tiny egg, on the insect captured on the grass-tip to be carried to the eager fledglings, so joyful in listening to the song poured out for them or in pouring it forth, quite oblivious of all else. It is in this intense concentration that they are so happy. If they could only live longer!--but a few such seasons for them--I wish they could live a hundred years just to feast on the seeds and sing and be utterly happy and oblivious of everything but the moment they are passing. A black line has rushed up from the espalier apple yonder to the housetop thirty times at least. The starlings fly so swiftly and so straight that they seem to leave a black line along the air. They have a nest in the roof, they are to and fro it and the meadow the entire day, from dawn till eve. The espalier apple, like a screen, hides the meadow from me, so that the descending starlings appear to dive into a space behind it. Sloping downwards the meadow makes a valley; I cannot see it, but know that it is golden with buttercups, and that a brook runs in the groove of it. Afar yonder I can see a summit beyond where the grass swells upwards to a higher level than this spot. There are bushes and elms whose height is decreased by distance on the summit, horses in the shadow of the trees, and a small flock of sheep crowded, as is their wont, in the hot and sunny gateway. By the side of the summit is a deep green trench, so it looks from here, in the hill-side: it is really the course of a streamlet worn deep in the earth. I can see nothing between the top of the espalier screen and the horses under the elms on the hill. But the starlings go up and down into the hollow space, which is aglow with golden buttercups, and, indeed, I am looking over a hundred finches eagerly searching, sweetly calling, happy as the summer day. A thousand thousand grasshoppers are leaping, thrushes are labouring, filled with love and tenderness, doves cooing--there is as much joy as there are leaves on the hedges. Faster than the starling's flight my mind runs up to the streamlet in the deep green trench beside the hill. Pleasant it was to trace it upwards, narrowing at every ascending step, till the thin stream, thinner than fragile glass, did but merely slip over the stones. A little less and it could not have run at all, water could not stretch out to greater tenuity. It smoothed the brown growth on the stones, stroking it softly. It filled up tiny basins of sand and ran out at the edges between minute rocks of flint. Beneath it went under thickest brooklime, blue flowered, and serrated water-parsnips, lost like many a mighty river for awhile among a forest of leaves. Higher up masses of bramble and projecting thorn stopped the explorer, who must wind round the grassy mound. Pausing to look back a moment there were meads under the hill with the shortest and greenest herbage, perpetually watered, and without one single buttercup, a strip of pure green among yellow flowers and yellowing corn. A few hollow oaks on whose boughs the cuckoos stayed to call, two or three peewits coursing up and down, larks singing, and for all else silence. Between the wheat and the grassy mound the path was almost closed, burdocks and brambles thrust the adventurer outward to brush against the wheat-ears. Upwards till suddenly it turned, and led by steep notches in the bank, as it seemed down to the roots of the elm trees. The clump of elms grew right over a deep and rugged hollow; their branches reached out across it, roofing in the cave. Here was the spring, at the foot of a perpendicular rock, moss-grown low down, and overrun with creeping ivy higher. Green thorn bushes filled the chinks and made a wall to the well, and the long narrow hart's-tongue streaked the face of the cliff. Behind the thick thorns hid the course of the streamlet, in front rose the solid rock, upon the right hand the sward came to the edge--it shook every now and then as the horses in the shade of the elms stamped their feet--on the left hand the ears of wheat peered over the verge. A rocky cell in concentrated silence of green things. Now and again a finch, a starling, or a sparrow would come meaning to drink--athirst from the meadow or the cornfield--and start and almost entangle their wings in the bushes, so completely astonished that any one should be there. The spring rises in a hollow under the rock imperceptibly, and without bubble or sound. The fine sand of the shallow basin is undisturbed--no tiny water-volcano pushes up a dome of particles. Nor is there any crevice in the stone, but the basin is always full and always running over. As it slips from the brim a gleam of sunshine falls through the boughs and meets it. To this cell I used to come once now and then on a summer's day, tempted, perhaps, like the finches, by the sweet cool water, but drawn also by a feeling that could not be analysed. Stooping, I lifted the water in the hollow of my hand--carefully, lest the sand might be disturbed--and the sunlight gleamed on it as it slipped through ray fingers. Alone in the green-roofed cave, alone with the sunlight and the pure water, there was a sense of something more than these. The water was more to me than water, and the sun than sun. The gleaming rays on the water in my palm held me for a moment, the touch of the water gave me something from itself. A moment, and the gleam was gone, the water flowing away, but I had had them. Beside the physical water and physical light I had received from them their beauty; they had communicated to me this silent mystery. The pure and beautiful water, the pure, clear, and beautiful light, each had given me something of their truth. So many times I came to it, toiling up the long and shadowless bill in the burning sunshine, often carrying a vessel to take some of it home with me. There was a brook, indeed but this was different, it was the spring; it was taken home as a beautiful flower might be brought. It is not the physical water, it is the sense or feeling that it conveys. Nor is it the physical sunshine; it is the sense of inexpressible beauty which it brings with it. Of such I still drink, and hope to do so still deeper. CLEMATIS LANE Wild clematis grew so thickly on one side of the narrow lane that the hedge seemed made of it. Trailing over the low bushes, the leaves hid the hawthorn and bramble, so that the hedge was covered with clematis leaf and flower. The innumerable pale flowers gave out a faint odour, and coloured the sides of the highway. Rising up the hazel rods and taller hawthorn, the tendrils hung downwards and suspended the flowers overhead. Across the field, where a hill rose and was dotted with bushes--these bushes, too, were concealed by clematis, and though the flowers were so pale, their numbers tinted the slope. A cropped nut-tree hedge, again, low, but five or six yards thick, was bound together by the bines of the same creeping plant, twisting in and out, and holding it together. No care or art could have led it over the branches in so graceful a manner; the lane was festooned for the triumphal progress of the waggons laden with corn. Here and there, on the dry bank over which the clematis projected like an eave, there stood tall campanulas, their blue bells as large as the fingerstall of a foxglove. The slender purple spires of the climbing vetch were lifted above the low hushes to which it clung; there were ferns deeper in the hedge, and yellow bedstraw by the gateways. A few blackberries were ripe, but the clematis seemed to have overcome the brambles, and spoilt their yield. Nuts, reddened at the tip, were visible on the higher hazel boughs; they were ripe, but difficult to get at. Leaving the lane by a waggon track--a gipsy track through a copse--there were large bunches of pale-red berries hanging from the wayfaring trees, or wild viburnum, and green and red berries of bryony wreathed among the branches. The bryony leaves had turned, some were pale buff already. Among the many berries of autumn those of the wayfaring tree may be known by their flattened shape, as if the sides had been pressed in like a flask. The bushes were not high enough for shadow, and the harvest sun was hot between them. The track led past the foot of a steep headland of the Downs, which could not be left without an ascent. Dry and slippery, the short grass gave no hold to the feet, and it was necessary to step in the holes cut through the turf for the purpose. Pushed forward from the main line of the Downs, the buff headland projected into the Weald, as headlands on the southern side of the range project into the sea. Towards the summit the brow came out somewhat, and even the rude steps in the turf were not much assistance in climbing this almost perpendicular wall of sward. Above the brow the ascent became easy; these brows raised steeper than the general slope are often found on the higher hills. A circular entrenchment encloses the summit, but the rampart has much sunk, and is in places levelled. Here it was pleasant to look back upon the beech woods at the foot of the great Downs, and far over the endless fields of the Weald or plain. Thirty fields could be counted in succession, one after the other, like irregular chess-squares, some corn, some grass, and these only extended to the first undulation, where the woods hid the fields behind them. But beyond these, in reality, succeeded another series of fields to the second undulation, and still a third series to the farthest undulation visible. Yet farther there was a faint line of hills, a dark cloud-like bank in the extreme distance. To the right and to the left were similar views. Reapers were at work in the wheat below, but already much of the corn had been carried, and the hum of a threshing engine came up from the ricks. A woodpecker called loudly in the beech wood; a "wish-wish" in the air overhead was caused by the swift motion of a wood-pigeon passing from "holt" to "hurst," from copse to copse. On the dry short turf of the hill-top even the shadow of a swallow was visible as he flew but a few yards high. In a little hollow where the rougher grasses grew longer a blue butterfly fluttered and could not get out. He was entangled with his own wings, he could not guide himself between the grass tops; his wings fluttered and carried him back again. The grass was like a net to him, and there he fluttered till the wind lifted him out, and gave him the freedom of the hills. One small green orchis stood in the grass, alone; the harebells were many. It is curious that, if gathered, in a few hours (if pressed between paper) they become a deeper blue than when growing. Another butterfly went over, large and velvety, flying head to the wind, but unable to make way against it, and so carried sidelong across the current. From the summit of the hill he drifted out into the air five hundred feet above the flowers of the plain. Perhaps it was a peacock; for there was a peacock-butterfly in Clematis Lane. The harebells swung, and the dry tips of the grass bent to the wind which came over the hills from the sea, but from which the sun had dried the sea-moisture, leaving it twice refined--once by the passage above a hundred miles of wave and foam and again by the grasses and the hills, which forced the current to a higher level, where the sunbeams dried it. Twice refined, the air was strong and pure, sweet like the scent of a flower. If the air at the sea-beach is good, that of the hills above the sea is at least twice as good, and twice as strengthening. It possesses all the virtue of the sea air without the moisture which ultimately loosens the joints, and seems to penetrate to the very nerves. Those who desire air and quick recovery should go to the hills, where the wind has a scent of the sunbeams. In the short time since ascending the slope the definition of the view has changed. At first it was clear indeed, and no one would have supposed there was any mist. But now suddenly every hill stands out sharp and definite; the scattered hawthorn bushes are distinct; the hills look higher than before. From about the woods an impalpable bluish mistiness that was there just now has been blown away. The yellow squares of stubble--just cleared--far below are whiter and look drier. I think it is the air that tints everything. This fresh stratum now sweeping over has altered the appearance of the country and given me a new scene. The invisible air, as if charged with colour, has spread another tone broadly over the landscape. Omitting no detail, it has worked out afresh every little bough of the scattered hawthorn bushes, and made each twig distinct. It is the air that tints everything. While I have been thinking, a flock of sheep has stolen quietly into the space enclosed by the entrenchment. With the iron head of his crook placed against his breast, and the handle aslant to the ground, the shepherd leans against it, and looks down upon the reapers. He is a young man, and has a bright intelligent expression on his features. Alone with his sheep so many hours, he is glad of some one to talk to, and points out to me the various places in view. The copses that cover the slopes of the hills he calls "holts"; there are three or four within a short distance. His crook is not a Pyecombe crook (for the best crooks used to be made at Pyecombe, a little Down hamlet), but he has another, which was made from a Pyecombe pattern. The village craftsman, whose shepherd's crooks were sought for all along the South Downs, is no more, and he has left no one able to carry on his work. He had an apprentice, but the apprentice has taken to another craft, and cannot make crooks. The Pyecombe crook has a curve or semicircle, and then opens straight; the straight part starts at a tangent from the semicircle. How difficult it is to describe so simple a matter as a shepherd's crook! In some way or other this Pyecombe form is found more effective for capturing sheep, but it is not so easy to make. The crook he held in his hand opened with an elongated curve. It appeared very small beside the ordinary crooks; this, he said, was an advantage, as it would hold a lamb. Another he showed me had the ordinary hook; this was bought at Brighton. The curve was too big, and a sheep could get its leg out; besides which, the iron was soft, and when a sheep was caught the iron bent and enlarged, and so let the sheep go. The handles were of hazel: one handle was straight, smooth, and the best in appearance--but he said it was weak; the other handle, which was crooked and rough-looking, was twice as strong. They used hazel rods for handles--ash rods were apt to "fly," i.e. break. Wages were now fifteen shillings a week. The "farm hands"--elsewhere labourers--had fifteen shillings a week, and paid one shilling and sixpence a week for their cottages. The new cottages that had been built were two shillings and sixpence a week. They liked the old cottages best, not only because they were cheaper, but because they had larger gardens attached. It seemed that the men were fairly satisfied with their earnings; just then, of course, they were receiving much more for harvest work, such as tying up after the reaping machine at seven shillings and sixpence per acre. Clothes were the heaviest item of expenditure, especially where there was a family and the children were not old enough to earn anything. Except that he said "wid" for with--"wid" this, instead of with this--he scarcely mispronounced a word, speaking as distinctly and expressing himself as clearly as any one could possibly do. The briskness of manner, quick apprehension, and directness of answer showed a well-trained mind. The Sussex shepherd on this lonely hill was quite the equal of any man in his rank of life, and superior in politeness to many who move in more civilised places. He left me to fetch some wattles, called flakes in other counties; a stronger sort of hurdles. Most of the reaping is now done by machine, still there were men cutting wheat by hand at the foot of the hill. They call their reaphooks swaphooks, or swophooks, and are of opinion that although the machine answers well and clears the ground quickly when the corn stands up, if it is beaten down the swaphook is preferable. The swaphook is the same as the fagging-hook of other districts. Every hawthorn bush now bears its red berries, or haws; these are called "hog-hazels." In the west they are called "peggles." "Sweel" is an odd Sussex word, meaning to singe linen. People who live towards the hills (which are near the coast) say that places farther inland are more "uperds "--up the country--up towards Tunbridge, for instance. The grasshoppers sang merrily round me as I sat on the sward; the warm sun and cloudless sky and the dry turf pleased them. Though cloudless, the wind rendered the warmth pleasant, so that the sunbeams, from which there was no shade, were not oppressive. The grasshoppers sang, the wind swept through the grass and swung the harebells, the "drowsy hum" of the threshing engine rose up from the plain; the low slumberous melody of harvest time floated in the air. An hour had gone by imperceptibly before I descended the slope to Clematis Lane. Out in the stubble where the wheat had just been cut, down amongst the dry short stalks of straw, were the light-blue petals of the grey field veronica. Almost the very first of field flowers in the earliest days of spring, when the rain drives over the furrow, and hail may hap at any time, here it was blooming again in the midst of the harvest. Two scenes could scarcely be more dissimilar than the wet and stormy hours of the early year, and the dry, hot time of harvest; the pale blue veronica, with one white petal, flourished in both, true and faithful. The gates beside the lane were not gates at all, but double draw-bars framed together, so that the gate did not open on a hinge, but had to be drawn out of the mortices. Looking over one of these grey and lichened draw-bars in a hazel hedge there were the shocks of wheat standing within the field, and on them a flock of rooks helping themselves freely. Lower in the valley, where there was water, the tall willow-herbs stood up high as the hedges. On the banks of a pool water-plantains had sent up stalks a yard high, branched, and each branch bearing its three-petalled flower. In a copse near the stems of cow-parsnip stood quite seven feet, drawn up by the willow bushes--these great plants are some of the largest that grow in the country. Goatsbeard grew by the wayside; it is like the dandelion, but has dark spots in the centre of the disc, and the flower shuts at noon. The wild carrots were forming their "birds' nests"--so soon as the flowering is over the umbel closes into the shape of a cup or bird's nest. The flower of the wild carrot is white; it is made up of numerous small separate florets on an umbel, and in the centre of these tiny florets is a deep crimson one. Getting down towards the sea and the houses now I found a shrub of henbane by the dusty road, dusty itself, grey-green, and draggled; I call it a shrub, though a plant because of its shrub-like look. The flowers were over--they are a peculiar colour, dark and green veined and red, there is no exact term for it, but you may know the plant by the leaves, which, if crushed, smell like those of the black currant. This is one of the old English medicinal plants still in use. The figs were ripening fast in an orchard; the fig trees are frequently grown between apple trees, which shelter them, and some of the fruit was enclosed in muslin bags to protect it. The fig orchards along the coast suggest thoughts of Italy and the ancient Roman galleys which crossed the sea to the Sussex ports. There is a curious statement in a classic author, to the effect that a letter written by Julius Caesar, when in Britain, on the Kalends of September, reached Rome on the fourth day before the Kalends of October, showing how long a letter was being carried from the South Coast to the centre of Italy, nineteen centuries ago. NATURE NEAR BRIGHTON "As wild as a hawk" is a proverbial comparison, but kestrels venture into the outskirts of Brighton, and even right over the town. Not long since one was observed hovering above a field which divides part of Brighton from Hove. The bird had hardly settled himself and obtained his balance, when three or four rooks who were passing deliberately changed their course to attack him. Moving with greater swiftness, the kestrel escaped their angry but clumsy assaults; still they drove him from the spot, and followed him eastwards over the town till out of sight--now wheeling round, and now doing their utmost to rise higher and get the advantage of him. Kestrels appear rather numerous in this vicinity. Those who have driven round Brighton and Hove must have noticed the large stables which have been erected for the convenience of gentlemen residing in streets where stabling at the rear of the house is impracticable. Early in the year a kestrel began to haunt one of these large establishments, notwithstanding that it was much frequented, carriages driving in and out constantly, hunters taken to and fro, and in despite of the neighbourhood being built over with villas. There was a piece of waste ground by the building where, on a little tree, the hawk perched day after clay. Then, beating round, he hovered over the gardens of the district, often above the public roads and over a large tennis lawn. His farthest sweep seemed to be to the Sussex County Cricket field and then back again. Day after day he went his rounds for weeks together, through the stormy times of the early months, passing several times a day, almost as regularly as the postman. He showed no fear, hovering close to the people in the roads or working in their gardens. All his motions could be observed with facility--the mode of hovering, which he accomplished easily, whether there was a gale or a perfect calm; indeed, his ways could be noted as well as if it had been by the side of the wildest copse. One morning he perched on a chimney; the house was not occupied, but the next to it was, and there were builders' workmen engaged on the opposite side of the road; so that the wild hawk, if unmolested, would soon become comparatively tame. When the season became less rigorous, and the breeding time approached, the kestrel was seen no more; having flown for the copses between the Downs or in the Weald. The power of hovering is not so wonderful as that of soaring, which the hawks possess, but which is also exhibited by seagulls. On a March morning two gulls came up from the sea, and as they neared the Downs began to soar. It was necessary to fix the gaze on one, as the eyes cannot follow two soaring birds at once. This gull, having spread his wings wide, swept up the dean, or valley, with great speed, and, turning a large circle, rose level with the hill. Round again he came, rising spirally--a spiral with a diameter varying from a furlong to a quarter of a mile, sometimes wider--and was now high overhead. Turn succeeded turn, up, up, and this without a single movement of the wings, which were held extended and rigid. The edge of the wing on the outer side was inclined to the horizon--one wing elevated, the other depressed--as the bird leaned inwards like a train going round a curve. The plane of the wings glided up the air as, with no apparent diminution of speed from friction, the bird swiftly ascended. Fourteen times the bird swept round, never so much as moving his wings, till now the gaze could no longer distinguish his manner of progress. The white body was still perceptible, but the wings were indistinct. Up to that height the gull had not assisted his ascent by flapping, or striking the air in any way. The original impulse, and some hitherto unexplained elasticity or property of air, had sufficed to raise him, in apparent defiance of the retardation of friction, and of the drag of gravitation. This power of soaring is the most wonderful of the various problems of flight being accomplished without effort; and yet, according to our preconceived ideas, there must be force somewhere to cause motion. There was a moderate air moving at the time, but it must be remembered that if a wind assists one way it retards the other. [Footnote: See the paper on "Birds Climbing the Air"] Hawks can certainly soar in the calmest weather. One day I saw a weasel cross a road in Hove, close to a terrace of houses. It is curious that a seagull can generally be observed opposite the Aquarium; when there is no seagull elsewhere along the whole Brighton front there is often one there. Young gulls occasionally alight on the roof, or are blown there. Once now and then a porpoise may be seen sunning himself off a groyne; barely dipping himself, and rolling about at the surface, the water shines like oil as it slips off his back. The Brighton rooks are house birds, like sparrows, and perch on the roofs or chimneys--there are generally some on the roof of the Eglise Reformee Francaise, a church situated in a much-frequented part. It is amusing to see a black rook perched on a red tile chimney, with the smoke coming up around him, and darkening with soot his dingy plumage. They take every scrap thrown out, like sparrows, and peck bones if they find them. The builders in Brighton appear to have somewhat overshot the mark, to judge from the number of empty houses, and, indeed, it is currently reported that it will be five years before the building speculation recovers itself. Upon these empty houses, the hoardings, and scaffold-poles, the rooks perch exactly as if they were trees in a hedgerow, waiting with comic gravity to pounce on anything in the gardens or on the lawns. They are quite aware when it is Sunday--on week-days they keep at a fair distance from workmen; on Sundays they drop down in places where at other times they do not dare to venture, so that a glove might be thrown out of window among them. In winter and spring there are rooks everywhere; as summer advances, most leave the town for the fields. A marked sign of spring in Brighton is the return of the wheatears; they suddenly appear in the waste places by the houses in the first few days of April. Wheatears often run a considerable distance on the sward very swiftly, usually stopping on some raised spot of the turf. Meadow-pipits are another spring bird here; any one going up the Dyke Road in early spring will observe a little brown bird singing in the air much like a lark, but more feebly. He only rises to a certain height, and then descends in a slanting direction, singing, to the ground. The meadow-pipit is, apparently, uncertain where he shall come down, wandering and irregular on his course. Many of them finish their song in the gardens of the Convent of the Sacred Heart, which seem to be a refuge to birds. At least, the thrushes sing there sweetly--yellowhammers, too--on the high wall. There is another resort of birds, opposite the Convent, on the Stanford Estate, on which persons are warned not to shoot or net small birds. A little shrubbery there in April and May is full of thrushes, blackbirds, and various finches, happily singing, and busy at their nests. Here the birds sing both sides of the highway, despite the reproach that Brighton is bare of trees; they pass from the shrubbery to and from the Convent gardens. It is to be wished that these notices not to shoot or net small birds were more frequently seen. Brighton is still a bird-catching centre, and before the new close season commences acres of ground are covered with the nets of the bird-catchers. Pity they could not be confined a little while in the same manner as they confine their miserable feathery victims (in cages just to fit the bird, say six inches square) in cells where movement or rest would be alike impossible. Yet goldfinches are still to be seen close to the town; they are fond of the seeds which they find wherever there is a waste place, and on the slopes of unfinished roads. Each unoccupied house, and many occupied, has its brood of starlings; a starling the other day was taking insects from the surface of a sheep pond on the hill, flying out to the middle of the pond and snatching the insects from the water During the long weeks of rain and stormy weather in the spring of 1883, the Downs looked dreary indeed; open, unsheltered, the grass so short as scarcely to be called grass wet and slippery. But a few glimpses of sunshine soon brought a change. Where the furze bushes had been cut down, the stems of furze began to shoot, looking at a little distance like moss on the ground. Among these there were broad violet patches--scentless violets, nothing to gather, but pleasant to see--colouring the earth. Presently the gorse flowered, miles of it, and the willow wrens sang plaintively among it. The brightest bird on the Downs was then the stonechat. Perched on a dead thistle, his blackest of black heads, the white streak by his neck, and the brilliance of his colouring contrasted with the yellow gorse around. In the hedges on the northern slopes of the Downs, towards the Weald, or plain, the wayfaring tree grows in large shrubs, blooming among the thorns. The banks by Brighton in early spring are purple with the flowers of ground ivy, which flowers with exceptional freedom. One bank, or waste spot, that was observed was first of all perfectly purple with ground ivy; by degrees these flowers faded, and the spot became a beautiful blue with veronica, or bird's-eye; then, again, these disappeared, and up came the larger daisies on stalks a foot high, whose discs touched each other from end to end of the bank. Here was a succession of flowers as if designed, one taking the other's place. Meantime the trifolium appeared like blood spilt among the grass. The thin, chalky soil of Sussex is singularly favourable to poppies and charlock--the one scarlet, the other a sharp yellow; they cover acres. Wild pansies flowered on the hillside fallows, high up among the wind, where the notes of the cuckoo came faint from the wood in the Weald beneath. The wind threw back the ringing notes, but every now and then, as the breeze ebbed, they came, having travelled a full mile against the current of air. There is no bird with so powerful a voice as the cuckoo; his cry can be heard almost as far as a clarion. The wild pansies were very thick--little yellow petals streaked with black lines. In a western county the cottagers call them "Loving Idols," which may perhaps be a distortion of the name they bore in Shakespeare's time--"Love in Idleness." It appears as if the rabbits on the chalk are of a rather greyish hue, perceptibly less sandy in colour than those living in meadows on low ground. Though Brighton is bare of trees, there is a large wood at a short distance. It is principally of beech. In this particular wood there is a singular absence of the jays which elsewhere make so much noise. Early in the spring there did not seem a jay in it. They make their appearance in the nesting season and are then trapped. A thrush's nest with eggs in it having been found, a little platform of sticks is built before the nest and a trap placed on it. The jay is so fond of eggs he cannot resist these; he alights on the platform in front of the nest, and is so captured. The bait of an egg will generally succeed in drawing a jay to his destruction. A good deal of poaching goes on about Brighton at Christmas time, when the coverts are full of game. The Downs as they trend along the coast now recede and now approach, now sink in deans, then rise abruptly, topped with copses which, like Lancing Clump, are visible many miles both at sea and on land. Between them and the beach there lies a rich alluvial belt, narrow and flat, much of which appears to have been reclaimed by drainage from the condition of marsh, and which, in fact, presents a close similitude to the fens. Here, in the dykes, the aquatic grasses reach a great height, and the flowering rush grows. It is said that this land is sought after among agriculturists, and that those who occupy it have escaped better than the majority from the pressure of bad seasons. Somewhat away from the present coast-line, where the hills begin--perhaps the sea came as far inland once--may be found ancient places, still ports, with histories running back into the mythic period. Passing through such a place on a sunny day in the earlier part of the year, the extreme quiet and air of silence were singularly opposite to the restlessness of the great watering-place near. It was but a few steps out into the wooded country. Yellow wallflowers grew along the high wall, and flowered against the sky; swallows flew to and fro the warm space sheltered from the wind, beneath them. In the lane a blackbird was so occupied among the arums at the roots of the trees that he did not stir till actually obliged. Blackbirds and thrushes are fond of searching about where the arums grow thickest. In the park a clump of tall aspens gleamed like silk in the sunshine. The calls of moorhens came up from a lake in a deep valley near, beeches grow down the steep slope to the edge of the water, and the wind which rippled it drew in a strong draught up the hill. From that height the glance saw to the bottom of the clear water, to which the waves and the wind gave a translucent green. The valley winds northward, curving like a brook, and in the trough a narrow green band of dark grass follows the windings, a pathlike ribbon as deeply coloured as a fairy ring, and showing between the slopes of pale turf. On this side are copses of beech, and on that of fir; the fir copses are encircled by a loose hedge of box, fading and yellowish, while the larch tops were filled with sweet and tender green. Like the masts and yards of a ship, which are gradually hidden as the sails are set, so these green sails unfurling concealed the tall masts and taper branches of the fir. Afar the great hills were bare, wind-swept and dry. The glass-green river wound along the plain, and the sea bloomed blue under the sun, blue by the distant shore, darkening like a level cloud where a dim ship marked the horizon. A blue sky requires greensward and green woods--the sward is pale and the woods are slow; the cuckoo calls for his leaves. Farther along the edge of the valley the beeches thicken, and the turf is covered by the shrunken leaves of last year. Empty hulls of beechmast crunch under foot, the brown beech leaves have drifted a foot deep against the trunk of a felled tree. Beech leaves lie at rest in the cover of furze, sheltered from the wind; suddenly a little cloud of earth rises like dust as a startled cock pheasant scrambles on his wings with a scream. A hen follows, and rises steadily in a long-drawn slanting line till near the tops of the beeches, then rockets sharp up over the highest branches, and descends in a wide sweeping curve along the valley. In the glade among the beeches the furze has grown straight up ten feet high, like, sapling trees, and flowers at the top, golden bloom on a dry pole. There are more pheasants in the furze, so that, not to disturb them, it is best to walk round and not enter it. Every now and then there is a curious, half-finished note among the trees--yuc, yuc. This great hawthorn has a twisted stem; the wood winds round itself in a spiral. The bole of a beech in the sunshine h spotted like a trout by the separate shadows of its first young leaves. Tall bushes--almost trees--of blackthorn are in full white flower; the dark, leafless boughs make it appear the whiter. Among the blackthorn several tits are busy, searching about on the twigs, and pecking into the petals; calling loudly as they do so. A willow-wren is peering into the bloom too, but silent for the moment. The blackthorn is much lichened, the lichen which is built into the domed nest of the long-tailed titmouse. Yuc--yuc, again. Stalks of spurge, thickening towards the top, and then surrounded with leaves, and above these dull yellow-green flowers, grow in shrub-like bunches in more open ground. Among the shrunken leaves on the turf here and there are the white flowers of the barren strawberry. A green woodpecker starts from a tree, and can be watched between the trunks as he flies; his bright colour marks him. Presently, on rounding some furze, he rises again, this time from the ground, and goes over the open glade; flying, the green woodpecker appears a larger bird than would be supposed if seen when still. He has been among the beeches all the time, and it was his "Yuc, yuc" which we heard. Where the woodpecker is heard and seen, there the woods are woods and wild--a sense of wildness accompanies his presence. Across the valley the straight shadows of firs rise up the slope, all drawn in the same direction, parallel on the sward. Far in a hollow of the rounded hill a herd of deer are resting; the plain lies beneath them, and beyond it the sea. Though they rest in a hollow the green hill is open above and below them; they do not dread the rifle, but if they did they would be safe there. Returning again through the woods, there are some bucks lying on a pleasant sunny slope. Almost too idle to rise, they arch their backs, and stretch their legs, as much as to say, Why trouble us? The wind rushes through the trees, and draws from them strange sounds, now a groan, now almost a shriek, as the boughs grind against each other and wear the bark away. From a maple a twisted ivy basket hangs filled with twigs, leaves, and tree dust, big as three rooks' nests. Only recently a fine white-tailed eagle was soaring over the woods, he may have followed the line of the sea down from the Hebrides. Up from the sea comes the wind, drawing swifter between the beech trunks, resting a little in the sunny glades, On again into the woods. The glass-green river yonder coloured by the wind runs on seaward, there are thin masts of ships visible at its mouth miles away, the wind whistles in their shrouds; beyond the blue by the shore, far, far distant on the level cloud, the dim ship has sailed along the horizon. It dries the pale grass, and rustles the restless shrunken leaves on the ground; it dries the grey lichen on the beech trunks; it swings the fledglings in the rooks' nests, and carries the ringdove on a speedier wing. Blackbirds whistle all around, the woods are full of them; willow-wrens plaintively sing in the trees; other birds call--the dry wind mingles their notes. It is a hungry wind--it makes a wanderer as hungry as Robin Hood; it drives him back to the houses, and there by a doorstep lies a heap of buck's-horns thrown down like an armful of wood. SEA, SKY, AND DOWN In the cloudless January sky the sun at noonday appears high above the southern horizon, and there is a broad band of sky between it and the line of the sea. This sense of the sun's elevation is caused by the level plain of water, which affords no contrast. Inland the hills rise up, and even at midday the sun in winter does not seem much above their ridges. But here by the shore the sun hangs high, and does not look as if he descended so low in his winter curve. There is little wind, and the wavelets swing gently rather than roll, illumined both in their hollows and on their crests with a film of silver. Three or four miles away a vessel at anchor occasionally sways, and at each movement flashes a bright gleam from her wet side like a mirror. White gulls hawk to and fro by the strand, darting on floating fragments and rising again; their plumage is snowy white in the sunshine. Brown nets lie on the pebbles; brown nets are stretched from the mastheads of the smacks to the sea-wall; brown and deeply wrinkled sails are hoisted to dry in the sun and air. The broad red streaks on the smacks' sides stand out distinctly among the general pitchy hues of gunwales and great coils of rope. Men in dull yellow tan frocks are busy round about among them, some mending nets some stooping over a boat turned bottom upwards, upon which a patch is being placed. It needs at least three or four men to manage this patch properly. These tan frocks vary from a dull yellow to a copperish red colour. A golden vane high overhead points to the westward, and the dolphin, with open mouth, faces the light breeze. Under the groynes there is shadow as in summer; once and again the sea runs up and breaks on the beach, and the foam, white as the whitest milk, hisses as it subsides among the pebbles; it effervesces and bubbles at the brim of the cup of the sea. Farther along the chalk cliffs stand up clear and sharp, the green sea beneath, and the blue sky above them. There is a light and colour everywhere, the least fragment of colour is brought out, even the worn red tiles washed smooth by the tides and rolled over and over among the pebbles, the sea gleams, and there is everything of summer but the heat. Reflected in the plate-glass windows of the street the sea occupies the shop front, covering over the golden bracelets and jewellery with a moving picture of the silvery waves. The day is lengthened by the light, and dark winter driven away, till, the sun's curve approaching the horizon, misty vapours begin to thicken in the atmosphere where they had not been suspected. The tide is out, and for miles the foam runs in on the level sands, forming a long succession of graceful curves marked with a white edge. As the sun sinks, the wet sands are washed with a brownish yellow, the colour of ripe wheat if it could be supposed liquid. The sunset, which has begun with pale hues, flushes over a rich violet, soon again overlaid with orange, and succeeded in its turn by a deep red glow--a glow which looks the deeper the more it is gazed at, like a petal of peony. There are no fair faces in the street now, they are all brunettes, fair complexions and dark skins are alike tinted by the sunset; they are all swarthy. On the sea a dull redness reaches away and is lost in the vapour on the horizon; eastwards great vapours, tinged rosy, stand up high in the sky, and seem to drift inland, carrying the sunset with them; presently the atmosphere round the houses is filled with a threatening light, like a great fire reflected over the housetops. It fades, and there is nothing left but a dark cloud at the western horizon, tinted blood-red along its upper edge. Next morning the sun rises, a ball of orange amid streaks of scarlet. But sometimes the sunset takes other order than this, and after the orange there appears a rayed scarlet crown, such as one sees on old coins--rays of scarlet shoot upward from a common centre above where the sun went down. Sometimes, instead of these brilliant hues, there is the most delicate shading of pearly greys and nameless silver tints, such tints as might be imagined were the clouds like feathers, the art of which is to let the under hue shine through the upper layer of the plumage. Though not so gaudy or at first so striking, these pearl-greys, and silvers, and delicate interweaving of tints are really as wonderful, being graduated and laid on with a touch no camel's hair can approach. Sometimes, again, the sunset shows a burnished sky, like the surface of old copper burnt or oxidised--the copper tinted with rose, or with rose and violet. During the prevalence of the scarlet and orange hues, the moon, then young, shining at the edge of the sunset, appeared faintly green and people remarked how curious a green moon looked on a blue sky, for it was just where the sunset vapour melted into the upper sky. At the same moment the gas-lamps burned green--rows and rows of pale green lights. As the sunset faded both the moon and gas-lamps took their proper hue; hence it appeared as if the change of colour were due to contrast. The gas-lamps had looked greenish several evenings before the new moon shone, and in their case there can be no doubt the tint was contrast merely. One night, some hours after sunset, and long after the last trace of it had disappeared, the moon was sailing through light white clouds, which only partly concealed her, and was surrounded by the ordinary prismatic halo. But outside this halo there was a green circle, a broad green band, very distinct--a pale emerald green. Beautiful and interesting as these sunsets have been, I cannot subscribe to the opinion that they surpass all that have been observed; for I distinctly remember sunsets equally brilliant, and some even more so, which occurred not so very long ago. To those who are in the habit of observing out-of-door phenomena a beautiful sunset is by no means uncommon. Sometimes the sea disappears under the haze of the winter's day: it is fine, but hazy, and from the hills, looking southwards, the sea seems gone, till, the sun breaking out, two or three horizontal streaks reflected suddenly reveal its surface. Another time the reflection of the sun's rays takes the form of a gigantic and exaggerated hour-glass; by the shore the reflection widens out, narrows as it recedes to a mere path, and again at the horizon widens and fills a mile or more. Then at the horizon the lighted sea seems raised above the general level. Rain is approaching, and then by the beach the sea becomes yellowish, beyond that green, and a hard blue at the horizon; there is one lovely streak of green on the right; in front a broad spot of sunlight where the clouds have parted. The wind sings, and a schooner is working rapidly out to windward for more room. During changeable weather the sky between the clouds occasionally takes a pale yellow hue, like that of the tinted paper used for drawing. This colour is opaque, and evidently depends upon the presence of thin vapour. It is seen when the wind is in the act of changing its direction, and the clouds, arrested in their march, are thrown out of rank. That which was the side becomes the rear of the cloud, and is banked up by the sudden pressure. Clouds coming in from the sea are met with a land wind, and so diverted. The effect of mist on the sea in the dark winter days is to increase distances, so that a ship at four or five miles appears hull down, and her shadowy sails move in vapour almost as thick as the canvas. At evening there is no visible sunset, but presently the whole sky, dull and gloomy, is suffused with a redness, not more in one part than another, but over the entire heavens. So in the clouded mornings, a deep red hue fills the whole dome. But if the sun rises clear, the rays light up the yellow sand of the quarries inland, the dark brown ploughed fields, and the black copses where many a bud is sleeping and waiting for the spring. A haze lies about the Downs and softens their smooth outline as in summer, if you can but face the bleak wind which never rests up there. The outline starts on the left hand fairly distinguished against the sky. As it sweeps round, it sinks, and is lost in the bluish haze; gradually it rises again, and is visible on the right, where the woods stand leafless on the ridge. Or the vapour settles down thicker, and the vast expanse becomes gloomy in broad day. The formless hills loom round about, the roads and marks of civilisation seem blotted out, it may be some absolute desert for aught that appears. An immense hollow filled with mist lies underneath. Presently the wind drifts the earth-cloud along, and there by a dark copse are three or four horsemen eagerly seeking a way through the plantation. They are two miles distant, but as plainly visible as if you could touch them. By-and-by one finds a path, and in single file the troop rides into the wood. On the other side there is a long stretch of open ploughed field, and about the middle of it little white dots close together, sweeping along as if the wind drove them. Horsemen are galloping on the turf at the edge of the arable, which is doubtless heavy going. The troop that has worked through the wood labours hard to overtake; the vapour follows again, and horsemen and hounds are lost in the abyss. On a ridge closer at hand, and above the mist, stand two conical wheat ricks sharply defined--all that a draughtsman could seize on. Still, even in winter there is about the hills the charm of outline, and the uncertain haze produces some of the effects of summer, but it is impossible to stay and admire, the penetrating wind will permit of nothing except hard exercise. Looking back now and then, the distant hollows are sometimes visible and sometimes filled; great curtains of mist sweep along illumined by the sunlight above them; the woods are now brown, now dark, and now faintly blue, as the light changes. Over the range-and down in the valley where the hursts or woods are situated, surrounded by meads and cornfields, there are other notes of colour to be found. In the leafless branches of the oak sometimes the sunshine plays on the bark of the smaller boughs, and causes a sense of light and colour among them. The slender boughs of the birch, too, reflect the sunshine as if polished. Beech leaves still adhere to the lower branches, spots of bright brown among the grey and ash tint of the underwood. If a woodpecker passes, his green plumage gleams the more from the absence of the abundant foliage which partly conceals even him in summer. The light-coloured wood-pigeons show distinctly against the dark firs; the golden crest of the tiny wren is to be seen in the furze or bramble. All broader effects of colour must in winter be looked for in the atmosphere, as the light changes, as the mist passes, as the north wind brings down a blackness, or the gust dries up the furrow; as the colour of the air alters, for it is certain that the air is often full of colour. To the atmosphere we must look for all broader effects. Specks of detail may be sometimes discerned, one or two in a walk, as the white breasts of the lapwings on the dark ploughed ridges; yellow oat-straw by the farm, still retaining the golden tint of summer; if fortunate, a blue kingfisher by the brook, and always dew flashing emerald and ruby. JANUARY IN THE SUSSEX WOODS The lost leaves measure our years; they are gone as the days are gone, and the bare branches silently speak of a new year, slowly advancing to its buds, its foliage, and fruit. Deciduous trees associate with human life as this yew never can. Clothed in its yellowish-green needles, its tarnished green, it knows no hope or sorrow; it is indifferent to winter, and does not look forward to summer. With their annual loss of leaves, and renewal, oak and elm and ash and beech seem to stand by us and to share our thoughts. There is no wind at the edge of the wood, and the few flakes of snow that fall from the overcast sky flutter as they drop, now one side higher and then the other, as the leaves did in the still hours of autumn. The delicacy of the outer boughs of the great trees visible against the dark background of cloud is as beautiful in its own way as the massed foliage of summer. Each slender bough is drawn out to a line; line follows line as shade grows under the pencil, but each of these lines is separate. Great boles of beech, heavy timber at the foot, thus end at their summits in the lightest and most elegant pencilling. Where the birches are tall, sometimes the number and closeness of these bare sprays causes a thickening almost as if there were leaves there. The leaves, in fact, when they come, conceal the finish of the trees; they give colour, but they hide the beautiful structure under them. Each tree at a distance is recognisable by its particular lines; the ash, for instance, grows with its own marked curve. Some flakes of snow have remained on this bough of spruce, pure white on dull green. Sparingly dispersed, the snow can be seen falling far ahead between the trunks; indeed, the white dots appear to increase the distance the eye can penetrate; it sees farther because there is something to catch the glance. Nothing seems left for food in the woods for bird or animal. Some ivy berries and black privet berries remain, a few haws may be found; for the rest, it is gone; the squirrels have had the nuts, the acorns were taken by the jays, rooks, and pheasants. Bushels of acorns, too, were collected by hand as food for the fallow deer in the park. A great fieldfare rises, like a lesser pigeon; fieldfares often haunt the verge of woods, while the redwing thrushes go out into the meadows. It can scarcely be doubted that both these birds come over to escape the keener cold of the winters in Norway, or that the same cause drives the blackbirds hither. In spring we listen to Norwegian songs--the blackbird and the thrush that please us so much, if not themselves of Scandinavian birth, have had a Scandinavian origin. Any one walking about woods like these in January can understand how, where there are large flocks of birds, they must find the pressure of numbers through the insufficiency of food. They go then to seek a warmer climate and more to eat; more particularly probably for sustenance. The original and simple theory that the majority of birds migrate for food or warmth is not overthrown by modern observations. That appears to be the primary impulse, though others may be traced or reasonably imagined. To suppose, as has been put forward, that birds are endowed with a migratory instinct for the express purpose of keeping down their numbers, in order, that is, that they may perish in crossing the sea, is really too absurd for serious consideration. If that were the end in view, it would be most easily obtained by keeping them at home, where snow would speedily starve them. On the contrary, it will appear to any one who walks about woods and fields that migration is essential to the preservation of these creatures. By migration, in fact, the species is kept in existence, and room is found for life. Apart from the necessity of food, movement and change is one of the most powerful agencies in renewing health. This we see in our own experience; the condition of the air is especially important, and it is well within reasonable supposition that some birds and animals may wish to avoid certain states of atmosphere. There is, too, the question of moulting and change of plumage, and the possibility that this physiological event may influence the removal to a different climate. Birds migrate principally for food and warmth; secondly, on account of the pressure of numbers (for in good seasons they increase very fast); thirdly, for the sake of health; fourthly, for sexual reasons; fifthly, from the operation of a kind of prehistoric memory; sixthly, from choice. One or other of these causes will explain almost every case of migration. Birds are lively and intellectual, imaginative and affectionate creatures, and all their movements are not dictated by mere necessity. They love the hedge and bush where they were born, they return to the same tree, or the same spot under the eave. On the other hand, they like to roam about the fields and woods, and some of them travel long distances during the day. When the pleasurable cares of the nest are concluded, it is possible that they may in some cases cross the sea solely for the solace of change. Variety of food is itself a great pleasure. By prehistoric memory is meant the unconscious influence of ancient habit impressed upon the race in times when the conformation of land and sea and the conditions of life were different. No space is left for a mysterious agency; migration is purely natural, and acts for the general preservation. Try to put yourself in a bird's place, and you will see that migration is very natural indeed. If at some future period of the world's history men should acquire the art of flying, there can be no doubt that migration would become the custom, and whole nations would change their localities. Man has, indeed, been always a migratory animal. History is little beyond the record of migrations, how one race moved on and overcame the race in front of it. In ancient days lots were cast as to who should migrate, and those chosen by this conscription left their homes that the rest remaining might have room and food. Checking the attempted migration of the Helvetii was the beginning of Caesar's exploits. What men do only at intervals birds do frequently, having greater freedom of movement. Who can doubt that the wild fowl come south because the north is frozen over? The Laplander and the reindeer migrate together; the Tartars migrate all the year through, crossing the steppes in winding and devious but fixed paths, paths settled for each family, and kept without a map, though invisible to strangers. It is only necessary to watch the common sparrow. In spring his merry chirp and his few notes of song are heard on the roof or in the garden; here he spends his time till the broods are reared and the corn is ripe. Immediately he migrates into the fields. By degrees he is joined by those left behind to rear second broods, and at last the stubble is crowded with sparrows, such flocks no one would believe possible unless they had seen them. He has migrated for food, for his food changes with the season, being mainly insects in spring, and grain and seeds in autumn. Something may, I venture to think, in some cases of migration, be fairly attributed to the influence of a desire for change, a desire springing from physiological promptings for the preservation of health. I am personally subject twice a year to the migratory impulse. I feel it in spring and autumn, say about March, when the leaves begin to appear, and again as the corn is carried, and most strongly as the fields are left in stubble. I have felt it every year since boyhood, often so powerfully as to be quite unable to resist it. Go I must, and go I do, somewhere; if I do not I am soon unwell. The general idea of direction is southerly, both spring and autumn; no doubt the reason is because this is a northern country. Some little green stays on the mounds where the rabbits creep and nibble the grasses. Cinquefoil remains green though faded, and wild parsley the freshest looking of all; plantain leaves are found under shelter of brambles, and the dumb nettles, though the old stalks are dead, have living leaves at the ground. Grey-veined ivy trails along, here and there is a frond of hart's-tongue fern, though withered at the tip, and greenish grey lichen grows on the exposed stumps of trees. These together give a green tint to the mound, which is not so utterly devoid of colour as the season of the year might indicate. Where they fail, brown brake fern fills the spaces between the brambles; and in a moist spot the bunches of rushes are composed half of dry stalks, and half of green. Stems of willow-herb, four feet high, still stand, and tiny long-tailed tits perch sideways on them. Above, on the bank, another species of willow-herb has died down to a short stalk, from which springs a living branch, and at its end is one pink flower. A dandelion is opening on the same sheltered bank; farther on the gorse is sprinkled with golden spots of bloom. A flock of greenfinches starts from the bushes, and their colour shows against the ruddy wands of the osier-bed over which they fly. The path winds round the edge of the wood, where a waggon track goes up the hill; it is deeply grooved at the foot of the hill. These tracks wear deeply into the chalk just where the ascent begins. The chalk adheres to the shoes like mortar, and for some time after one has left it each footstep leaves a white mark on the turf. On the ridge the low trees and bushes have an outline like the flame of a candle in a draught--the wind has blown them till they have grown fixed in that shape. In an oak across the ploughed field a flock of wood-pigeons have settled; on the furrows there are chaffinches, and larks rise and float a few yards farther away. The snow has ceased, and though there is no wind on the surface, the clouds high above have opened somewhat, not sufficient for the sun to shine, but to prolong the already closing afternoon a few minutes. If the sun shines to-morrow morning the lark will soar and sing, though it is January, and the quick note of the chaffinch will be heard as he perches on the little branches projecting from the trunks of trees below the great boughs. Thrushes sing every mild day in December and January, entirely irrespective of the season, also before rain. A curious instance of a starling having a young brood at this time of the year, recently recorded, seems to suggest that birds are not really deceived by the passing mildness of a few days, but are obliged to prepare nests, finding themselves in a condition to require them. The cause, in short, is physiological, and not the folly of the bird. This starling had had two previous broods, one in October, and now again in December-January. The starling was not, therefore, deceived by the chance of mild weather; her own bodily condition led her to the nest, and had she been a robin or thrush she would have built one instead of resorting to a cranny. It is certain that individuals among birds and animals do occasionally breed at later periods than is usual for the generality of their species. Exceptionally prolific individuals among birds continue to breed into the winter. They are not egregiously deceived any more than we are by a mild interval; the nesting is caused by their individual temperament. The daylight has lingered on longer than expected, but now the gloom of the short January evening is settling down fast in the wood. The silent and motionless trees rise out of a mysterious shadow, which fills up the spaces between their trunks. Only above, where their delicate outer branches are shown against the dark sky, is there any separation between them. Somewhere in the deep shadow of the underwood a blackbird calls "ching, ching" before he finally settles himself to roost. In the yew the lesser birds are already quiet, sheltered by the evergreen spray; they have also sought the ivy-grown trunks. "Twit, twit," sounds high overhead as one or two belated little creatures, scarcely visible, pass quickly for the cover of the furze on the hill. The short January evening is of but a few minutes' duration; just now it was only dusky, and already the interior of the wood is impenetrable to the glance. There rises a loud though distant clamour of rooks and daws, who have restlessly moved in their roost-trees. Darkness is almost on them, yet they cannot quite settle. The cawing and dawing rises to a pitch, and then declines; the wood is silent, and it is suddenly night. BY THE EXE The whortleberry bushes are almost as thick as the heather in places on the steep, rocky hills that overlook the Exe. Feeding on these berries when half ripe is said to make the heath poults thin (they are acid), so that a good crop of whortleberries is not advantageous to the black game. Deep in the hollow the Exe winds and bends, finding a crooked way among the ruddy rocks. Sometimes an almost inaccessible precipice rises on one shore, covered with firs and ferns, which no one can gather; while on the other is a narrow but verdant strip of mead. Coming down in flood from the moors the Exe will not wait to run round its curves, but rushes across the intervening corner, and leaves behind, as it subsides, a mass of stones, flat as slates or scales, destroying the grass. But the fly-fisherman seeks the spot because the water is swift at the angle of the stream and broken by a ledge of rock. He can throw up stream--the line falls soft as silk on the slow eddy below the rock, and the fly is drawn gently towards him across the current. When a natural fly approaches the surface of running water, and flutters along just above it, it encounters a light air, which flows in the same direction as the stream. Facing this surface breeze, the fly cannot progress straight up the river, but is carried sideways across it. This motion the artificial fly imitates; a trout takes it, and is landed on the stones. He is not half a pound, yet in the sunshine has all the beauty of a larger fish. Spots of cochineal and gold dust, finely mixed together, dot his sides; they are not red nor yellow exactly, as if gold dust were mixed with some bright red. A line is drawn along his glistening greenish side, and across this there are faintly marked lozenges of darker colour, so that in swimming past he would appear barred. There are dark spots on the head between the eyes, the tail at its lower and upper edges is pinkish; his gills are bright scarlet. Proportioned and exquisitely shaped, he looks like a living arrow, formed to shoot through the water. The delicate little creature is finished in every detail, painted to the utmost minutiae, and carries a wonderful store of force, enabling him to easily surmount the rapids. Exe and Earle are twin streams, parted only by a ridge of heather-grown moor. The Earle rises near a place called Simons' Bath, about which there is a legend recalling the fate of Captain Webb. There is a pool at Simons' Bath, in which is a small whirlpool. The stream running in does not seem of much strength; but the eddy is sufficient to carry a dog down. By report the eddy is said to be unfathomable. A long time since a man named Simons thought he could swim through the whirlpool, much as Captain Webb thought he could float down the rapids of Niagara; only in this case Simons relied on the insignificant character of the eddy. He made the attempt, was sucked down and drowned, and hence the spot has been since known as Simons' Bath. So runs the tradition in the neighbourhood, varied in details by different narrators, but not so apocryphal, perhaps, as the story of the two giants, or demons, who amused themselves one day throwing stones, to see which could throw farthest. Their stones were huge boulders; the first pitched his pebble across the Bristol Channel into Wales; the second's foot slipped, and his boulder dropped on Exmoor, where it is known as White Stones to this day. The antiquarians refer Simons' Bath to one Sigmund, but the country-side tradition declares it was named from a man who was drowned. Exe and Earle presently mingle their streams by pleasant oak woods. At the edge of one of these woods the trench, in the early summer, was filled with ferns, so that, instead of thorns and brambles, the wood was fenced with their green fronds. Among these ferns were some buttercups, at least so they looked in passing; but a slight difference of appearance induced me to stop, and on getting across the trench the buttercups were found to be yellow Welsh poppies. The petals are larger than those of the buttercup, and a paler yellow, without the metallic burnish of the ranunculus. In the centre is the seed vessel, somewhat like an urn; indeed, the yellow poppy resembles the scarlet field poppy, though smaller in width of petal and much more local in habitat. So concealed were the stalks by the ferns that the flowers appeared to grow on their fronds. On the mounds grew corn marigolds, so brilliantly yellow that they seemed to shine in the sunlight, and on a wall moth-mullein flowered high above the foxgloves. It was curious to hear the labouring people say, "There's the guckoo," when the cuckoo cried. They said he called "guckoo"; so cuckoo sounded to their ears. There are numbers of birds of prey in the oak woods which everywhere grow on the slopes of the Exmoor hills. The keeper who wishes to destroy a whole brood of jays (which take the eggs of game) waits till the young birds are fledged. He then catches one, or wounds it, and, hiding himself in the bushes, pinches it till the bird cries "scaac, scaac." At the sound the old birds come, and are shot as they approach. The fledglings could, of course, be easily destroyed; the object is to get at the wary old jays, and prevent their returning next year. Now and then a buzzard is shot, and if it be only wounded the gunner conceals himself and pinches it till it calls, when the bird's partner presently appears, and is also killed. Stoats are plentiful. They have their young in burrows, or in holes and crevices among the stones, which are found in quantities in the woods. As any one passes such a heap of stones the young stoats peep from the crevices and cry "yac, yac," like barking, and so betray their presence. Three or four traps are set in a circle round the spot, baited with pieces of rabbit, in which the old stoats are soon caught. The young stoats in a day or two, not being fed, come out of the stones, and are shot, or knocked on the head. The woods are always on the sheltered slopes of the hills, the moors on the summits are bare of trees; yet it would seem that trees once grew there, trunks of oak being occasionally dug up from the peat. Both the peaty turf and the heather are used for fuel; the heather is pulled up, the turf cut with a particular kind of spade, heart-shaped and pointed, not unlike the traditional spade used by the gravedigger in "Hamlet," but with a very long curved handle. Vipers are sometimes encountered among the heather where it is sandy. A viper will sometimes wind itself round the stem of a thorn bush, and thus, turning its head in every direction, defy a dog. Whichever side the dog approaches, the viper turns its venomous head. Dogs frequently kill them, and are sometimes bitten, generally in the face, when the dog's head swells in a few minutes to twice its natural size. Salad oil is the remedy relied on, and seldom known to fail. The effect of anger on the common snake is marked. The skin, if the creature is annoyed, becomes bristly and colder; sometimes there is a strong snake-like smell emitted. It is singular that the goat-sucker, or fern owl, often stuffed when shot and preserved in glass cases, does not keep; the bird looks draggled and falling to pieces. So many of them are like this. Some of the labouring people who work by the numerous streamlets say that the wagtail dives, goes right under water like a diver now and then--a circumstance I have not noticed myself. There is a custom of serving up water-cress with roast fowl; it is also sometimes boiled like a garden vegetable. Sometimes a man will take cider with his tea--a cup of tea one side and a mug of cider on the other. The German bands, who wander even into these extreme parts of the country, always ask for cider, which they say reminds them of their own wines at home--like hock, or Rhenish. Though the junction of Earle and Exe is a long way from the sea (as the Exe winds), salmon come far up above that to the moors. Salmon-fishing is preserved, but poachers take them at night with gaffs. There are water-bailiffs, who keep a good look-out, or think they do, but occasionally find heads of salmon nailed to their doors in derision. The missel-thrush is called the "holm-screech." The missel-thrushes, I know, have a difficulty to defend their young against crows; but last spring I found a jackdaw endeavouring to get at a missel-thrush's nest. The old birds were screeching loudly, and trying to drive the jackdaw away. The chaffinch appears to be called "woodfinch," at least the chaffinch answered nearest to the bird described to me as a "woodfinch." In another county it is called the piefinch. One summer evening I was under a wood by the Exe. The sun had set, and from over the wooded hill above bars of golden and rosy cloud stretched out across the sky. The rooks came slowly home to roost, disappearing over the wood, and at the same time the herons approached in exactly the opposite direction, flying from Devon into Somerset, and starting out to feed as the rooks returned home. The first heron sailed on steadily at a great height, uttering a loud "caak, caak" at intervals. In a few minutes a second followed, and "caak, caak" sounded again over the river valley. The third was flying at a less height, and as he came into sight over the line of the wood he suddenly wheeled round, and, holding his immense wings extended, dived as a rook will downwards through the air. He twisted from side to side like a coin partly spun round by the finger and thumb, as he came down, rushing through the air head first. The sound of his great vanes pressing and dividing the air was plainly audible. He looked unable to manage his descent; but at the right moment he recovered his balance, and rose a little up into a tree on the summit, drawing his long legs into the branches behind him. The fourth heron fetched a wide circle, and so descended into the wood; two more passed on over the valley--altogether six herons in about a quarter of an hour. They intended, no doubt, to wait in the trees till it was dusky, and then to go down and fish in the river. Herons are called cranes, and heronies are craneries. A determined sportsman, who used to eat every heron he could shoot in revenge for their ravages among the trout, at last became suspicious, and examining one, found in it the remains of a rat and of a toad, after which he did not eat any more. Another sportsman found a heron in the very act of gulping down a good-sized trout, which stuck in the gullet. He shot the heron and got the trout, which was not at all injured, only marked on each side where the beak had cut it. The fish was cooked and eaten. This summer evening the bars of golden and rosy cloud gradually lost their bright colour, but retained some purple in the vapour for a long time. If the red sunset clouds turn black, the country people say it will rain; if any other colour, it will be fine. The path from the river led beside the now dusky moor, and the curlew's weird whistle came out of the increasing darkness. Wild as the curlew is in early summer (when there are young birds), he will fly up within a short distance of the wayfarer, whistling, and alight on the burnt, barren surface of the moor. There he stalks to and fro, grey and upright. He looks a large bird so close. His head nods at each step, and every now and then his long bill, curved like a sabre, takes something from the ground. But he is not feeding, he is watching you. He utters his strange, crying whistle from time to time, which draws your attention from the young birds. By these rivers of the west otters are still numerous, and are regularly hunted. Besides haunting the rivers, they ascend the brooks, and even the smallest streamlets, and are often killed a long way from the larger waters. There are three things to be chiefly noticed in the otter--first, the great width of the upper nostril; secondly, the length and sharpness of the hold-fast teeth; and, thirdly, the sturdiness and roundness of the chest or barrel, expressive of singular strength. The upper nostril is so broad that when the mouth is open the lower jaw appears but a third of its width--a mere narrow streak of jaw, dotted, however, with the sharpest teeth. This distension of the upper jaw and narrowness of the lower gives the impression of relentless ferocity. His teeth are somewhat cat-like, and so is his manner of biting. He forces his teeth to meet through whatever he takes hold of, but then immediately repeats the bite somewhere else, not holding what he has, but snapping again and again like a cat, so that his bite is considered even worse than that of the badger. Now and then, in the excitement of the hunt, a man will put his hand into the hole occupied by the otter to draw him out. If the huntsman sees this there is some hard language used, for if the otter chance to catch the hand, he might so crush and mangle it that it would be useless for life. Nothing annoys the huntsman more than anything of this kind. The otter's short legs are deceptive; it does not look as if a creature so low down could be very serious to encounter or difficult to kill. His short legs are, in fact, an addition to his strength, which is perhaps greater than that of any other animal of proportionate size. He weighs nearly as heavy as a fox, and is even as hard to kill fairly. Unless speared, or knocked heavily on the head, the otter-hounds can rarely kill him in the water; when driven to land at last or to a shallow he is often rather crushed and pressed to death than anything else, and the skin sometimes has not got a single toothmark in it. Not a single hound has succeeded in biting through, but there is a different story to tell on the other side. A terrier has his jaw loose and it has to be bound up, such a crushing bite has he had. There are torn shoulders, necks, and limbs, and specks of blood on the nostrils and coats of the other hounds. A full-grown otter fights like a lion in the water; if he gets in a hole under the bank where it is hollow, called a "hover," he has to be thrust out with a pole. He dives under the path of his enemies as they yelp in the water, and as he goes attacks one from beneath, seizes him by the leg, and drags him down, and almost drowns him before he will let go. The air he is compelled to emit from his lungs as he travels across to another retreat shows his course on the surface, and by the bubbles he is tracked as he goes deep below. He tries up the stream, and finds at the place where a ledge of rocks crosses it eight or ten men armed with long staves standing waiting for him. If there was but one deep place at the side of the ledge of rocks he could beat them still and slip by, but the water is low for want of rain, and he is unable to do so. He turns and tries at the sides of the river lower down. Behind matted roots, and under the bank, with a rocky fragment at one side, he faces his pursuers. The hounds are snapped at as they approach in front. He cannot be struck with a staff from above because the bank covers him. Some one must wade across and strike him with a pole till he moves, or carry a terrier or two and pitch them in the hole, half above and half under water. Next he tries the other bank, then baffles all by doubling, till some one spies his nostril as he comes up to breathe. The rocky hill at hand resounds with the cries of the hounds, the sharp bark of the terriers, the orders of the huntsman, and the shouts of the others. There are ladies in the mead by the river's edge watching the hunt. Met in every direction, the otter swims down stream; there are no rocks there, he knows, but as he comes he finds a net stretched across. He cannot go down the river for the net, nor up it for the guarded ledge of rocks; he is enclosed in a pool without a chance of escape from it, and all he can do is to prolong the unequal contest to the last moment. Now he visits his former holes or "hovers," to be again found out; now he rests behind rocky fragments, now dives and doubles or eludes all for a minute by some turn. So long as his wind endures or he is not wounded he can stop in the water, and so long as he is in the water he can live. But by degrees he is encircled; some wade in and cut off his course; hounds stop him one way and men the other, till, finally forced to land or to the shallow, he is slain. His webbed feet are cut off and given as trophies to the ladies who are present. The skin varies in colour--sometimes a deep brown, sometimes fawn. The otter is far wilder than the fox; for the fox a home is found and covers are kept for him, even though he makes free with the pheasants; but the otter has no home except the river and the rocky fastnesses beside it. No creature could be more absolutely wild, depending solely upon his own exertions for existence. Of olden time he was believed to be able to scent the fish in the water at a considerable distance, as a hound scents a fox, and to go straight to them. If he gets among a number he will kill many more than he needs. For this reason he has been driven by degrees from most of the rivers in the south where he used to be found, but still exists in Somerset and Devon. Not even in otter-hunting does he get the same fair play as the fox. No one strikes a fox or puts a net across his course. That, however, is necessary, but it is time that a strong protest was made against the extermination of the otter in rivers like the Thames, where he is treated as a venomous cobra might be on land; The truth is the otter is a most interesting animal and worth preservation, even at the cost of what he eats. There is a great difference between keeping the number of otters down by otter-hunting within reasonable limits and utterly exterminating them. Hunting the otter in Somerset is one thing, exterminating them in the Thames another, and I cannot but feel a sense of deep regret when I hear of fresh efforts towards this end. In the home counties, and, indeed, in many other counties, the list of wild creatures is already short enough, and is gradually decreasing, and the loss of the otter would be serious. This animal is one of the few perfectly wild creatures that have survived without any protection from the ancient forest days. Despite civilisation, it still ventures, occasionally, within a few miles of London, and well inside that circle in which London takes its pleasure. It would be imagined that its occurrence so near the metropolis would be recorded with pride; instead of which, no sooner is the existence of an otter suspected than gun and trap are eagerly employed for its destruction. I cannot but think that the people of London at large, if aware of these facts, would disapprove of the attempt to exterminate one of the most remarkable members of their fauna. They should look upon the inhabitants of the river as peculiarly their own. Some day, perhaps, they will take possession of the fauna and flora within a certain compass of their city. Every creature that could be kept alive within such a circle would be a gain, especially to the Thames, that well-head of the greatest city in the world. I marvel that they permit the least of birds to be shot upon its banks. Nothing at present is safe, not so much as a reed-sparrow, not even the martins that hover over the stormy reaches. Where is the kingfisher? Where are the water-fowl? Where soon will be the water-lilies? But if London extended its strong arm, how soon would every bush be full of bird-life, and the osier-beds and eyots the haunt of wild creatures! At this moment, it appears, so bitter is the enmity to the otter, that a reward is set on his head, and as much as two guineas is sometimes paid for the destruction of a full-grown one. Perhaps the following list of slaughter may call attention to the matter:--Three killed by Harlingham Weir in three years. On the 22nd of January, at East Molesey, opposite the Gallery at Hampton Court, in a field, a fine otter was shot, weighing twenty-six pounds, and measuring fifty-two inches. On the 26th of January 1884, a small otter was killed at Thames Ditton. Both these were close to London from a sporting or natural history point of view. In February or March 1884, an otter was killed at Cliefden Springs, Maidenhead; it measured fifty-one inches. Here, then, are six in a short period, and it is not a complete list; I have a distinct memory of one caught in a trap by Molesey Weir within the last two or three years, and then beaten to death with a spade. THE WATER-COLLEY The sweet grass was wet with dew as I walked through a meadow in Somerset to the river. The cuckoo sang, the pleasanter perhaps because his brief time was nearly over, and all pleasant things seem to have a deeper note as they draw towards an end. Dew and sweet green grass were the more beautiful because of the knowledge that the high hills around were covered by sun-dried, wiry heather. River-side mead, dew-laden grass, and sparkling stream were like an oasis in the dry desert. They refreshed the heart to look upon as water refreshes the weary. The shadows were more marked and defined than they are as day advances, the hues of the flowers brighter, for the dew was to shadow and flower as if the colours of the artist were not yet dry. Humblebees went down with caution into the long grass, not liking to wet their wings. Butterflies and the brilliant moths of a hot summer's morn alight on a dry heated footpath till the dew is gone. A great rock rising from the grass by the river's edge alone looked arid, and its surface already heated, yet it also cast a cool shadow. By a copse, two rabbits--the latest up of all those which had sported during the night--stayed till I came near, and then quietly moved in among the ferns and foxgloves. In the narrowest part of the wood between the hedge and the river a corncrake called his loudest "crake, crake," incessantly. The cornncrake or landrail is difficult even to see, so closely does he conceal himself in the tall grasses, and his call echoed and re-echoed deceives those who try to find him. Yet by great patience and watchful skilfulness the corncrake is sometimes caught by hand. If tracked, and if you can see him--the most difficult part--you can put your hand on him. Now and then a corncrake is caught in the same way by hand while sitting on her nest on the ground. It is not, however, as easy as it reads. Walking through the grass, and thinking of the dew and the beautiful morning sunshine, I scarcely noticed the quantity of cuckoo-flowers, or cardamine, till presently it occurred to me that it was very late in the season for cuckoo-flowers and stooping I picked one, and in the act saw it was an orchis--the early purple. The meadow was coloured, or rather tinted, with the abundance of the orchis, palest of pale pink, dotted with red, the small narrow leaves sometimes with black spots. They grew in the pasture everywhere, from the river's side in the deep valley to the top of the hill by the wood. As soon as the surface of the river was in sight I stood and watched, but no ripple or ring of wavelets appeared; the trout were not feeding. The water was so low that the river consisted of a series of pools, connected by rapids descending over ledges of stones and rocky fragments. Illumined to the very bottom, every trout was visible, even those under the roots of trees and the hollow of the bank. A cast with the fly there was useless; the line would be seen; there was no ripple to hide it. As the trout, too, were in the pools, it might be concluded that those worth taking had fed, and only the lesser fish would be found in the eddies, where they are permitted by the larger fish to feed after they have finished. Experience and reason were all against the attempt, yet so delightful is the mere motion and delicate touch of the fly-line on the water that I could not but let myself enjoy that at least. The slender lancewood rod swayed, the line swished through the air, and the fly dropped a few inches too high up the rapid among the stones--I had meant it to fall farther across in the dark backwater at the foot of the fall. The swift rush of the current carried the fly instantly downwards, but not so quick as to escape a troutlet; he took it, and was landed immediately. But to destroy these under-sized fish was not sport, and as at that moment a water-colley passed I determined to let the trout alone, and observe his ways. Colley means a blackbird; water-colley, the water-blackbird or water-ousel--called the dipper in the North. In districts where the bird is seldom seen it is occasionally shot and preserved as a white blackbird. But in flight and general appearance the water-colley is almost exactly like a starling with a white neck. His colour is not black or brown--it is a rusty, undecided brown, at a distance something the colour of a young starling, and he flies in a straight line, and yet clumsily, as a young starling does. His very cry, too, sounds immature, pettish, and unfinished, as if from a throat not capable of a full note. There are usually two together, and they pass and re-pass all day as you fish, but if followed are not to be observed without care. I came on the colley too suddenly the first time, at a bend of the river; he was beneath the bank towards me, and flew out from under my feet, so that I did not see him till he was on the wing. Away he flew with a call like a young bird just tumbled out of its nest, following the curves of the stream. Presently I saw him through an alder bush which hid me; he was perched on a root of alder under the opposite bank. Worn away by the stream the dissolved earth had left the roots exposed, the colley was on one of them; in a moment he stepped on to the shore under the hollow, and was hidden behind the roots under a moss-grown stole. When he came out he saw me, and stopped feeding. He bobbed himself up and down as he perched on the root in the oddest manner, bending his legs so that his body almost touched his perch, and rising again quickly, this repeated in quick succession as if curtsying. This motion with him is a sign of uncertainty--it shows suspicion; after he had bobbed to me ten times, off he went. I found him next on a stone in the middle of the river; it stood up above the surface of a rapid connecting two pools. Like the trout, the colley always feeds at the rapids, and flies as they swim, from fall to fall. He was bobbing up and down, his legs bent, and his rusty brown body went up and down, but as I was hidden by a hedge he pained confidence, suspended his curtsying, and began to feed. First he looked all round the stone, and then stepped to another similar island in the midst of the rushing water, pushing his head over the edge into it. Next he stepped into the current, which, though shallow, looked strong enough to sweep him away. The water checked against him rose to the white mark on his breast. He waded up the rapid, every now and then thrusting his head completely under the water; sometimes he was up to his neck, sometimes not so deep; now and then getting on a stone, searching right and left as he climbed the cascade. The eddying water shot by his slender legs, but he moved against it easily, and soon ascended the waterfall. At the summit a second colley flew past, and he rose and accompanied his friend. Upon a ledge of rock I saw him once more, but there was no hedge to hide me, and he would not feed; he stood and curtsied, and at the moment of bobbing let his wings too partly down, his tail drooping at the same time. Calling in an injured tone, as if much annoyed, he flew, swept round the meadow, and so to the river behind me. His friend followed. On reaching the river at a safe distance down, he skimmed along the surface like a kingfisher. They find abundance of insect life among the stones at the falls, and everywhere in shallow water. Some accuse them of taking the ova of trout, and they are shot at trout nurseries; but it is doubtful if they are really guilty, nor can they do any appreciable injury in an open stream, not being in sufficient numbers. It is the birds and other creatures peculiar to the water that render fly-fishing so pleasant; were they all destroyed, and nothing left but the mere fish, one might as well stand and fish in a stone cattle-trough. I hope all true lovers of sport will assist in preserving rather than in killing them. NOTES ON LANDSCAPE PAINTING I The earth has a way of absorbing things that are placed upon it, of drawing from them their stiff individuality of newness, and throwing over them something of her own antiquity. As the furrow smooths and brightens the share, as the mist eats away the sharpness of the iron angles, so, in a larger manner, the machines sent forth to conquer the soil are conquered by it, become a part of it, and as natural as the old, old scythe and reaping-hook. Thus already the new agriculture has grown hoar. The oldest of the modern implements is the threshing-machine, which is historic, for it was once the cause of rural war. There are yeomanry men still living who remember how they rode about at night after the rioters, guided by the blazing bonfires kindled to burn the new-fangled things. Much blood--of John Barleycorn--was spilt in that campaign; and there is many a farmer yet hearty who recollects the ale-barrels being rolled up into the rickyards and there broached in cans and buckets, that the rebels, propitiated with plentiful liquor, might forbear to set fire to the ricks or sack the homestead. Such memories read strange to the present generation, proving thereby that the threshing-machine has already grown old. It is so accepted that the fields would seem to lack something if it were absent. It is as natural as the ricks: things grow old so soon in the fields. On the fitful autumn breeze, with brown leaves whirling and grey grass rustling in the hedges, the hum of the fly-wheel sounds afar, travelling through the mist which hides the hills. Sometimes the ricks are in the open stubble, up the Down side, where the wind comes in a long, strong rush, like a tide, carrying away the smoke from the funnel in a sweeping trail; while the brown canvas, stretched as a screen, flaps and tears, and the folk at work can scarce hear each other speak, any more than you can by the side of the sea. Vast atmospheric curtains--what else can you call them?--roll away, opening a view of the stage of hills a moment, and, closing again, reach from heaven to earth around. The dark sky thickens and lowers as if it were gathering thunder, as women glean wheatears in their laps. It is not thunder; it is as if the wind grew solid and hurled itself--as a man might throw out his clenched fist--at the hill. The inclined plane of the mist-clouds again reflects a grey light, and, as if swept up by the fierce gale, a beam of sunshine comes. You see it first long, as it is at an angle; then overhead it shortens, and again lengthens after it has passed, somewhat like the spoke of a wheel. In the second of its presence a red handkerchief a woman wears on the ricks stands out, the brass on the engine glows, the water in the butt gleams, men's faces brighten, the cart-horse's coat looks glossy, the straw a pleasant yellow. It is gone, and lights up the backs of the sheep yonder as it runs up the hill swifter than a hare. Swish! The north wind darkens the sky, and the fly-wheel moans in the gloom; the wood-pigeons go a mile a minute on the wind, hardly using their wings; the brown woods below huddle together, rounding their shoulders to the blast; a great air-shadow, not mist, a shadow of thickness in the air looms behind a tiled roof in the valley. The vast profound is full of the rushing air. These are days of autumn; but earlier than this, when the wheat that is now being threshed was ripe, the reaping-machine went round and round the field, beginning at the outside by the hedges. Red arms, not unlike a travelling windmill on a small scale, sweep the corn as it is cut and leave it spread on the ground. The bright red fans, the white jacket of the man driving, the brown and iron-grey horses, and yellow wheat are toned--melted together at their edges--with warm sunlight. The machine is lost in the corn, and nothing is visible but the colours, and the fact that it is the reaping, the time of harvest, dear to man these how many thousand years! There is nothing new in it; it is all old as the hills. The straw covers over the knives, the rims of the wheels sink into pimpernel, convolvulus, veronica; the dry earth powders them, and so all beneath is concealed. Above the sunlight (and once now and then the shadow of a tree) throws its mantle over, and, like the hand of an enchanter softly waving, surrounds it with a charm. So the cranks, and wheels, and knives, and mechanism do not exist--it was a machine in the workshop, but it is not a machine in the wheat-field. For the wheat-field you see is very, very old, and the air is of old time, and the shadow, the flowers, and the sunlight, and that which moves among them becomes of them. The solitary reaper alone in the great field goes round and round, the red fans striking beside him, alone with the sunlight, and the blue sky, and the distant hills; and he and his reaper are as much of the corn-field as the long-forgotten sickle or the reaping-hook. The sharp rattle of the mowing-machine disturbs the corncrake in the meadow. Crake! crake! for many a long day since the grass began to grow fast in April till the cowslips flowered, and white parsley flourished like a thicket, blue scabious came up, and yonder the apple trees drop their bloom. Crake! crake! nearly day and night; but now the rattle begins, and the bird must take refuge in the corn. Like the reaper, the mowing-machine is buried under the swathe it cuts, and flowers fall over it--broad ox-eye daisies and red sorrel. Upon the hedge June roses bloom; blackbirds whistle in the oaks; now and again come the soft hollow notes of the cuckoo. Angles and wheels, cranks and cogs, where are they? They are lost; it is not these we see, but the flowers and the pollen on the grass. There is an odour of new-made hay; there is the song of birds, and the trees are beautiful. As for the drill in spring-time, it is ancient indeed, and ancients follow it--aged men stepping after over the clods, and watching it as if it were a living thing, that the grains may fall each in its appointed place. Their faces, their gait, nay, the very planting of their heavy shoes' stamp on the earth, are full of the importance of this matter. On this the year depends, and the harvest, and all our lives, that the sowing be accomplished in good order, as is meet. Therefore they are in earnest, and do not turn aside to gaze at strangers, like those do who hoe, being of no account. This is a serious matter, needing men of days, little of speech, but long of experience. So the heavy drill, with its hanging rows of funnels, travels across the field well tended, and there is not one who notes the deep azure of the March sky above the elms. Still another step, tracing the seasons backwards, brings in the steam-plough. When the spotted arum leaves unfold on the bank, before the violets or the first celandine, while the "pussies" hang on the hazel, the engines roll into the field, pressing the earth into barred ruts. The massive wheels leave their imprint, the footsteps of steam, behind them. By the hedges they stand, one on either side, and they hold the field between them with their rope of iron. Like the claws of some prehistoric monster, the shares rout up the ground; the solid ground is helpless before them; they tear and rend it. One engine is under an oak, dark yet with leafless boughs, up through which the black smoke rises; the other overtops a low hedge, and is in full profile. By the panting, and the humming, and the clanking as the drum revolves, by the smoke hanging in the still air, by the trembling of the monster as it strains and tugs, by the sense of heat, and effort, and pent-up energy bubbling over in jets of steam that struggle through crevices somewhere, by the straightened rope and the jerking of the plough as it comes, you know how mighty is the power that thus in narrow space works its will upon the earth. Planted broadside, its four limbs--the massive wheels--hold the ground like a wrestler drawing to him the unwilling opponent. Humming, panting, trembling, with stretched but irresistible muscles, the iron creature conquers, and the plough approaches. All the field for the minute seems concentrated in this thing of power. There are acres and acres, scores of acres around, but they are surface only. This is the central spot: they are nothing, mere matter. This is force--Thor in another form. If you are near you cannot take your eyes off the sentient iron, the wrestler straining. But now the plough has come over, and the signal given reverses its way. The lazy monotonous clanking as the drum unwinds on this side, the rustling of the rope as it is dragged forth over the clods, the quiet rotation of the fly-wheel--these sounds let the excited thought down as the rotating fly-wheel works off the maddened steam. The combat over, you can look round. It is the February summer that comes, and lasts a week or so between the January frosts and the east winds that rush through the thorns. Some little green is even now visible along the mound where seed-leaves are springing up. The sun is warm, and the still air genial, the sky only dotted with a few white clouds. Wood-pigeons are busy in the elms, where the ivy is thick with ripe berries. There is a feeling of spring and of growth; in a day or two we shall find violets; and listen, how sweetly the larks are singing! Some chase each other, and then hover fluttering above the hedge. The stubble, whitened by exposure to the weather, looks lighter in the sunshine, and the distant view is softened by haze. A water-tank approaches, and the cart-horse steps in the pride of strength. The carter's lad goes to look at the engine and to wonder at the uses of the gauge. All the brazen parts gleam in the bright sun, and the driver presses some waste against the piston now it works slowly, till it shines like polished silver. The red glow within, as the furnace-door is opened, lights up the lad's studious face beneath like sunset. A few brown leaves yet cling to one bough of the oak, and the rooks come over cawing happily in the unwonted warmth. The low hum and the monotonous clanking, the rustling of the wire rope, give a sense of quiet. Let us wander along the hedge, and look for signs of spring. This is to-day. To-morrow, if we come, the engines are half hidden from afar by driving sleet and scattered snow-flakes fleeting aslant the field. Still sternly they labour in the cold and gloom. A third time you may find them, in September or bright October, with acorns dropping from the oaks, the distant sound of the gun, and perhaps a pheasant looking out from the corner. If the moon be full and bright they work on an hour or so by her light, and the vast shadows of the engines are thrown upon the stubble. II Among the meadows the buttercups in spring are as innumerable as ever and as pleasant to look upon. The petal of the buttercup has an enamel of gold; with the nail you may scrape it off, leaving still a yellow ground, but not reflecting the sunlight like the outer layer. From the centre the golden pollen covers the fingers with dust like that from the wing of a butterfly. In the bunches of grass and by the gateways the germander speedwell looks like tiny specks of blue stolen, like Prometheus' fire, from the summer sky. When the mowing-grass is ripe the heads of sorrel are so thick and close that at a little distance the surface seems as if sunset were always shining red upon it. From the spotted orchis leaves in April to the honeysuckle-clover in June, and the rose and the honeysuckle itself, the meadow has changed in nothing that delights the eye. The draining, indeed, has made it more comfortable to walk about on, and some of the rougher grasses have gone from the furrows, diminishing at the same time the number of cardamine flowers; but of these there are hundreds by the side of every tiny rivulet of water, and the aquatic grasses flourish in every ditch. The meadow-farmers, dairymen, have not grubbed many hedges--only a few, to enlarge the fields, too small before, by throwing two into one. So that hawthorn and blackthorn, ash and willow, with their varied hues of green in spring, briar and bramble, with blackberries and hips later on, are still there as in the old, old time. Bluebells, violets, cowslips--the same old favourite flowers--may be found on the mounds or sheltered near by. The meadow-farmers have dealt mercifully with the hedges, because they know that for shade in heat and shelter in storm the cattle resort to them. The hedges--yes, the hedges, the very synonym of Merry England--are yet there, and long may they remain. Without hedges England would not be England. Hedges, thick and high, and full of flowers, birds, and living creatures, of shade and flecks of sunshine dancing up and down the bark of the trees--I love their very thorns. You do not know how much there is in the hedges. We have still the woods, with here and there a forest, the beauty of the hills, and the charm of winding brooks. I never see roads, or horses, men, or anything when I get beside a brook. There is the grass, and the wheat, the clouds, the delicious sky, and the wind, and the sunlight which falls on the heart like a song. It is the same, the very same, only I think it is brighter and more lovely now than it was twenty years ago. Along the footpath we travel slowly; you cannot walk fast very long in a footpath; no matter how rapidly at first, you soon lessen your pace, and so country people always walk slowly. The stiles--how stupidly they are put together. For years and years every one who has passed them, as long as man can remember, has grumbled at them; yet there they are still, with the elms reaching high above, and cows gazing over--cows that look so powerful, but so peacefully yield the way. They are a better shape than the cattle of the ancient time, less lanky, and with fewer corners; the lines, to talk in yachtsman's language, are finer. Roan is a colour that contrasts well with meadows and hedges. The horses are finer, both cart-horse and nag. Approaching the farmsteads, there are hay-ricks, but there are fewer corn-ricks. Instead of the rows on rows, like the conical huts of a savage town, there are but a few, sometimes none. So many are built in the fields and threshed there "to rights," as the bailiff would say. It is not needful to have them near home or keep them, now the threshing-machine has stayed the flail and emptied the barns. Perhaps these are the only two losses to those who look at things and mete them with the eye--the corn-ricks and the barns. The corn-ricks were very characteristic, but even now you may see plenty if you look directly after harvest. The barns are going by degrees, passing out of the life of farming; let us hope that some of them will be converted into silos, and so saved. At the farmsteads themselves there are considerations for and against. On the one hand, the house and the garden is much tidier, less uncouth; there are flowers, such as geraniums, standard roses, those that are favourites in towns; and the unsightly and unhealthy middens and pools of muddy water have disappeared from beside the gates. But the old flowers and herbs are gone, or linger neglected in corners, and somehow the gentle touch of time has been effaced. The house has got a good deal away from farming. It is on the farm, but disconnected. It is a residence, not a farmhouse. Then you must consider that it is more healthy, sweeter, and better for those who live in it. From a little distance the old effect is obtainable. One thing only I must protest against, and that is the replacing of tiles with slates. The old red tiles of the farmhouses are as natural as leaves; they harmonise with the trees and the hedges, the grass, the wheat, and the ricks. But slates are wrong. In new houses, even farmhouses, it does not matter so much; the owners cannot be found fault with for using the advantages of modern times. On old houses where tiles were once, to put slates is an offence, nothing less. Every one who passes exclaims against it. Tiles tone down and become at home; they nestle together, and look as if you could be happily drowsy and slumber under them. They are to a house what leaves are to a tree, and leaves turn reddish or brown in the autumn. Upon the whole, with the exception of the slates--the hateful slates--the farmsteads are improved, for they have lost a great deal that was uncouth and even repulsive, which was slurred over in old pictures or omitted, but which was there. The new cottages are ugly with all their ornamentation; their false gables, impossible porches, absurd windows, are distinctly repellent. They are an improvement in a sanitary sense, and we are all glad of that, but we cannot like the buildings. They are of no style or time; only one thing is certain about them--they are _not_ English. Fortunately there are plenty of old cottages, hundreds of them (they show little or no sign of disappearing), and these can be chosen instead. The villages are to outward appearance much as they used to be, but the people are very different. In manners, conversation, and general tone there is a great change. It is, indeed, the people who have altered more than the surface of the country. Hard as the farmer may work, and plough and sow with engine and drill, the surface of the land does not much vary; but the farmer himself and the farmer's man are quite another race to what they were. Perhaps it was from this fact that the impression grew up that modern agriculture has polished away all the distinctive characteristics of the country. But it has not done so any more than it has removed the hills. The truth is, as I have endeavoured to explain, innovations so soon become old in the fields. The ancient earth covers them with her own hoar antiquity, and their newness disappears. They have already become so much a part of the life of the country that it seems as if they had always been there, so easily do they fit in, so easily does the eye accept them. Intrinsically there is nothing used in modern agriculture less symmetrical than what was previously employed. The flails were the simplest of instruments, and were always seen with the same accompaniment--the interior of a barn. The threshing-machine is certainly not less interesting; it works in the open air, often with fine scenic surroundings, and the number of people with it impart vivacity. In reaping with the reaping-hook there were more men in the wheat, but the reaping-machine is not without colour. Scythes are not at all pleasant things; the mowing-machine is at least no worse. As for the steam-plough, it is very interesting to watch. All these fit in with trees and hedges, fields and woods, as well, and in some cases in a more striking manner than the old instruments. The surface of the ground presents more varied colours even than before, and the sunlight produces rich effects. Nor have all the ancient aspects disappeared as supposed--quite the reverse. In the next field to the steam-plough the old ploughs drawn by horses may be seen at work, and barns still stand, and the old houses. In hill districts oxen are yet yoked to the plough, the scythe and reaping-hook are often seen at work, and, in short, the old and the new so shade and blend together that you can hardly say where one begins and the other ends. That there are many, very many things concerning agriculture and country life whose disappearance is to be regretted I have often pointed out, and having done so, I feel that I can with the more strength affirm that in its natural beauty the country is as lovely now as ever. It is, I venture to think, a mistake on the part of some who depict country scenes on canvas that they omit these modern aspects, doubtless under the impression that to admit them would impair the pastoral scene intended to be conveyed. So many pictures and so many illustrations seem to proceed upon the assumption that steam-plough and reaping-machine do not exist, that the landscape contains nothing but what it did a hundred years ago. These sketches are often beautiful, but they lack the force of truth and reality. Every one who has been fifty miles into the country, if only by rail, knows while looking at them that they are not real. You feel that there is something wanting, you do not know what. That something is the hard, perhaps angular fact which at once makes the sky above it appear likewise a fact. Why omit fifty years from the picture? That is what it usually means--fifty years left out; and somehow we feel as we gaze that these fields and these skies are not of our day. The actual fields, the actual machines, the actual men and women (how differently dressed to the conventional pictorial costumes!) would prepare the mind to see and appreciate the colouring, the design, the beauty--what, for lack of a better expression, may be called the soul of the picture--far more than forgotten, and nowadays even impossible accessories. For our sympathy is not with them, but with the things of our own time. VILLAGE MINERS "Right so, the hunter takes his pony which has been trained for the purpose, and stalks the deer behind him; the pony feeds towards the herd, so that they do not mind his approach, and when within a hundred yards, the hunter kneels down in the grass and fixes his iron rest or fork in the ground. He rests his Winchester rifle in the fork, and aims under the pony (which stands quite still) at his game. He generally kills one dead at the first shot, and wounds two or three more, firing rapidly after the first discharge so as to get as many shots as possible before the herd is out of range." So writes a friend in the wilds of Texas, adding that the hides fetch a few dollars. "Right so, departed Sir Launcelot."... "Right so, Sir Launcelot, his father, dressed his spear."... "Right so, he heard a voice that said;"--so runs the phrase in the "Mort d'Arthur," that ancient history of the Round Table, which was published nearly four hundred years ago. The coincidence of phrase indicates some resemblance in the circumstances, though so wide apart in time and distance. In England, in those old days, men lived in the woods and forests--out-of-doors--and were occupied with manual works. They had no opportunities of polishing their discourse, or their literary compositions. At this hour, in remote parts of the great continent of America, the pioneers of modern civilisation may be said to live amid medieval surroundings. The vast forests and endless prairies give a romance to common things. Sometimes pathos and sometimes humour arises in the log-cabin, and when the history of these simple but deeply human incidents comes to be told in this country, we are moved by the strange piquancy of event and language. From the new sounds and scenes, these Anglo-Saxons hewing a way through pine and hemlock now, as their ancestors hewed a way into England, have added fresh words and phrases to our common tongue. These words are not slang, they are pure primeval language. They express the act, or the scene, or the circumstance, as exactly as if it was painted in sound. For instance, the word "crack" expresses the noise of a rifle; say "crack," and you have the very sound; say "detonation," and it gives no ear-picture at all. Such a word is "ker-chunk." Imagine a huge log of timber falling from rock to rock, or a wounded opossum out of a tree, the word expresses the sound. There are scores of such examples, and it is these pure primitive words which put so much force into the narratives of American pathos and humour. Now, the dwellers in our own villages and country places in their way make use of just such expressions, that is, of words which afford the ear a picture of the act or circumstance, hieroglyphs of sound, and often, both in language and character, exhibit a close parallelism with the Californian miners. Country people say "fall" for autumn; "fall" is the usual American term for that season, and fall is most appropriate for the downward curve of time, the descent of the leaf. A slender slip of womanhood in the undeveloped period is alluded to in the villages as a "slickit" of a girl. "Slickit" means thin, slender, a piece that might be whittled off a stick with a knife, not a shaving, for a shaving curls, but a "slickit," a long thin slice. If any one be carving awkwardly with the left wrist doubled under, the right arm angularly extended, and the knife sawing at a joint, our village miners and country Californians call it "cack-" or "cag-handed." Cag-handed is worse than back-handed; it means awkward, twisted, and clumsy. You may see many a cag-handed person hacking at a fowl. Hamlet folk are very apt to look a gift horse in the mouth, and if any one should receive a present not so large as expected, it would be contemptuously described as a "footy" little thing. "Footy" pronounced with a sneering expression of countenance conveys a sense of despicableness, even to those who do not know its exact definition, which may be taken as mean. Suppose a bunch of ripe nuts high up and almost out of reach; by dint of pressing into the bushes, pulling at the bough, and straining on tiptoe, you may succeed in "scraambing" it down. "Scraambing," or "scraambed," with a long accent on the aa, indicates the action of stretching and pulling downwards. Though somewhat similar in sound, it has no affinity with scramble; people scramble for things which have been thrown on the ground. In getting through hedges the thorns are apt to "limm" one's clothes, tearing a jagged hole in the coat. Country children are always "limming" their clothes to pieces; "limm," or "limb," expresses a ragged tear. Recently, fashion set the example of ladies having their hair shorn as short as men. It is quite common to see young ladies, the backs of whose heads are polled, all the glory of hair gone, no plait, no twist, but all cut close and somewhat rough. If a village Californian were to see this he would say, "they got their hair hogged off." "Hogged" means cut off short so as to stand up like bristles. Ponies often have hogs' manes; all the horses in the Grecian sculpture have their manes hogged. In bitter winter weather the servants in the dairies who have much to do with buckets of water, and spend the morning in splashing--for dairies need much of that kind of thing--sometimes find that the drops have frozen as they walk, and discover that their aprons are fringed with "daglets," _i.e._ icicles. Thatched roofs are always hung with "daglets" in frost; thatch holds a certain amount of moisture, as of mist, and this drips during the day and so forms stalactites of ice, often a foot or more in length. "Clout" is a "dictionary word," a knock on the head, but it is pronounced differently here; they say a "clue" in the head. Stuttering and stammering each express well-known conditions of speech, but there is another not recognised in dictionary language. If a person has been made a butt of, laughed at, joked, and tormented till he hesitates and fumbles as it were with his words, he is said to be in a state of "hacka." "Hacka" is to have to think a minute before he can say what he wants to. "Simmily" is a word of little interest, being evidently a mere provincialism and distortion of "seemingly," as "summat" of "something," or "somewhat," indifferently. Occasionally a person is seized with a giggling fit, laughs on the least, or without any, provocation--a rather idiotic state--which he is quite conscious of but cannot stop. Presently some one will ask, "Have you found a wicker's nest?" which is a biting sarcasm, though the precise meaning seems uncertain, unless it bears some relation to mare's nest. Mares wicker, so do goats; giggling is wickering. The first work a boy does is to go out with a clapper, or his own strong voice, to scare birds from the corn all day; this we call bird-keeping, but the lads themselves, with an appreciation of the other side of the case, call it bird-starving. Forage is often used in a general sense of food, or in the more particular sense of green food, as clover, or vetches. Fodder, on the other hand, indicates dry food, such as hay; the labourers go twice a day in winter to fodder the cattle, that is, to carry them their hay. Many of these labourers before they start out to work, in their own words, "fodder" their boots. Some fine soft hay is pushed into the boots, forming a species of sock. Should either of them have a clumsy pair, they say his boots are like a seed-lip, which is a vessel like a basket used in sowing corn, and would be a very loose fit. They have not yet forgotten the ancient superstition about Easter Sunday, and the girls will not go out without a new ribbon at least; they must have something new on that day, if the merest trifle. The backwoodsmen have found out many ways of curing cuts, wounds, bruises and injuries, rough methods, but effectual, and use the herbs and leaves much as their English forefathers did a century ago. For the most part in villages the knowledge and use of herbs has died out, and there are not many who resort to them. Elder-flower ointment, however, keeps its ground, and is, I think, still made for sale in the shops of towns. But the true country elder-flower ointment contains a little piece of adder's-tongue fern, which is believed to confer magical virtue. So curious a plant may naturally have had a mysterious value attached to it in old times. It is the presence of this touch of home-lore in the recipe which makes the product so different from the "ointment of the apothecary," manufactured by scale and weight and prosaic rule. Upon some roofs the houseleek still grows, though it is now often torn away as injurious. Where it grows it is usually on outhouses attached to the main building, sloping lean-tos. It does not present so glowing an appearance as the stonecrop, which now and then flourishes on houses, and looks like a brilliant golden cushion against the red tiles. The houseleek, however, is a singular plant, worthy of examination; it has an old-world look, as if it had survived beyond its date into the nineteenth century. It hides in odd places and gables like a relic of witchcraft, and a black cat and an aged woman with a crutch-handled stick would be its appropriate owner. The houseleek is still used for the cure of wounds and cuts. A leaf--the leaves are rather like portions of the plant than mere leaves--is bruised to pulp, and the juice and some of the pulp mixed with cream. They say it is efficacious. They call it "silgreen." In old English singreen means evergreen. Silgreen and singreen seem close congeners. Possibly sil or sin may be translated "through" as much as "ever," for the leaf of the plant is thick, and green all through, if broken like a tough cake. I think I would rather use it than the tobacco juice which the mowers and reapers are now so fond of applying to the cuts they frequently get. They appear to have quite forsaken the ancient herbal remedies, as the sickle-herb, knotted figwort, and so on. Tobacco juice does not seem a nice thing for a bleeding wound; probably it gets well rather in spite of it than because of it. If any one wanted a tonic in old farmhouses, it used to be the custom, and till quite lately, to put a nail in sherry, making an iron wine, which was believed to be very restorative. Now, one of the recent additions to the wine merchants' lists is a sherry from Australia, Tintara, which is recommended on account of its having been extracted from grapes growing on an ironstone soil. So the old things come up again in another form. There are scores of iron tonics of various kinds sold in the shops; possibly the nail in sherry was almost as good. Those who did not care to purchase sherry, put their nail in cider. A few odd names of plants may yet be heard among the labourers, such as "loving-andrews" for the blue meadow geranium; "loggerums" for the hard knapweed, and also for the scabious; "Saturday night's pepper" for the spurge, which grows wild in gardens; and there is a weed called "good-neighbour," but as to which it is I am ignorant. The spotted-leaf orchis flowers, which grow in moist and shady meads, lifting their purplish heads among the early spring grass, are called by the children "gran'fer goslings." To express extreme lack--as of money--they will say their purses are as bare as a toad is of feathers. In these days it is the fashion to praise mattresses and to depreciate the feather-bed. Nothing so healthy as a mattress, nothing so good in every way. Mattresses are certainly cheaper, and there it ends. I maintain that no modern invention approaches the feather-bed. People try to persuade me to eat the coarsest part of flour--actually the rejected part--and to sleep on a mattress; that is to say, to go back about twenty thousand years in civilisation. But I decline. Having some acquaintance with wheat, I prefer the fine white flour, which is the very finest of all the products of the earth; having slept on all sorts of beds, sitting on a pole, lying on turf leaning against a tree, and so forth, no one will ever persuade me that any couch is equal to a feather-bed. But should any desire a yet cheaper mattress than those advertised, I can put them in the way to obtain it. Among my hamlet Californians it is not unusual to find beds in use stuffed with the "hucks" of oats, _i.e._ the chaff. Like the backwoodsmen, they have to make shift with what they can get. Their ancestors steamed their arrows so as to soften the wood, when it was bound to a rigid rod and hung up in the chimney to dry perfectly straight. The modern cottager takes a stout stick and boils it in the pot till it becomes flexible. He then bends it into the shape of a hook, ties it with string in that curve, and suspends it in his chimney corner to dry crooked. This crooked stick is the fagging hook used to pull the wheat towards the reaper with the left hand, while he cuts it with the reap-hook in the right. Suppose some one wavers and cannot make up his mind. Now he will do this and now he will do that, uncertain and unstable, putting his hand to the plough and removing it again, my Californian at home would call him "wivel-minded." "Wivelly" means undecided, wavering, not to be depended on. It sounds like it. If the labourer gets his clothes soaked, he says they are "sobbled." The sound of boots or dress saturated with rain very nearly approximates to sobbled. But "gaamze" is the queerest word, perhaps, of all--it is to smear as with grease. Beans are said to be "cherky," which means dry. Doubtless the obese old gentleman in Boccaccio who was cured of his pains--the result of luxurious living--by a diet which forced him to devour beans for very hunger, did think them dry and cherky. They have come up again now in the shape of lentils, which are nothing but beans. It is not generally known that Boccaccio was the inventor of the bean cure. Cat's claws are notoriously apt to scratch. Should a savage cat tear out a piece of flesh from the hand, she is said to "dawk" it out. "Dawk" expresses a ferocious dab and tear combined. A sharp iron nail unseen might "dawk" the skin off an unwary hand. In ancient days when women quarrelled and fought, they are said to have "dawked" fragments from each other's faces with their finger-nails. Such incidents are now obsolete. It has often been pointed out that many names of places are reduplications. New layers of population, Saxon, Dane, or Norman, added their words with the same meaning to the former term. There is a hill called "Up-at-a-Peak." "Up" itself signifies high, as in the endless examples in which it forms the first syllable. "Peak," of course, is point. This is a modern reduplication, not an archaeological one. If any one hacks and haws in speaking, it is called "hum-dawing." Some very prominent persons of the present day are much given to "hum-dawing," which is often a species of conversational hedging. Are "horse-stepple" and "stabbling" purely provincial, or known in towns? "Stepple" is the mark or step of a horse; "stabbling" is poaching up the turf or ground from continual movement of feet, whether human, equine, or otherwise. The ground near gateways in fields is often "stabbled" to such a degree in wet weather as to appear impassable. A piece of wood falling into water, gradually absorbs the liquid into its pores, and swells. The same thing happens in wet weather to gates and even doors; the wood swells, so that if they fitted at all tightly before, they can then scarcely be opened. Anything that swells in this manner by absorption is said to "plim." A sponge does not "plim"; it is not apparently larger when full of water than previously, and it is still limp. To "plim" up implies a certain amount of enlargement, and consequent tightness or firmness. Snow-flakes are called "blossoms." The word snow-flake is unknown. A big baby is always a thing to be proud of, and you may hear an enthusiastic aunt describing the weight and lumpiness of the youngster, and winding up with the declaration, "He's a regular nitch." A chump of wood, short, thick, and heavy, is said to be a "nitch," but it seems gone out of use a good deal for general weights, and to be chiefly used in speaking of infants. There is a word of somewhat similar sound common among the fishermen of the south coast. Towards the stern of a fishing smack there is a stout upright post with a fork at the top, into which fork the mast is lowered while they are engaged with the nets at sea. It is called the "mitch," or "match," but though I mention it as similar in sound, I do not think it has any other affinity. Of old time, crab-apples were usually planted in or near rickyards or elsewhere close to farmhouses. The custom is now gone out; no crab-apples are planted, and so in course of years there will be but few. Crab-apple is not nearly so plentiful as anciently, either in hedges or enclosures. The juice of the crab-apple, varges, used to be valued as a cure for sprains. The present generation can hardly understand that there was a time when matches were not known. To such a period must be traced the expression still common in out-of-the-way places, of a "handful of fire." A cottager who found her fire out would go to a neighbour and bring home some live embers to light up again. When the fire chances to be nearly out, the expression is still heard both in cottages and farmhouses, "There is hardly a handful of fire." Such a mere handful is of course easily "douted." An extinguisher "douts" a candle; the heel of a boot "douts" a match thrown down. But the exact definition of "dout" is to smother, or extinguish by beating. In the days when wood fires were universal, as the wood burned, quantities of a fine white powder or ash collected, which at intervals, when the servant cleaned the hearth, was swept up into a corner. At night, if any embers remained glowing, a few shovelfuls of this heap of white ash were thrown over them before retiring, and so the fire was "douted." To smother with such ashes precisely conveys the meaning of "dout." Incipient fires in grass, straw, or other material, are often beaten out as with bushes; this too is "douting." Stick your heels in the ground, arch your spine, and drag with all your might at a rope, and then you would be said to "scaut." Horses going uphill, or straining to draw a heavily laden waggon through a mud hole, "scaut" and tug. At football there is a good deal of "scauting." The axle of a wheelbarrow revolving without grease, and causing an ear-piercing sound, is said to be giving forth a "scrupeting" noise. What can be more explicit, and at the same time so aggravating, as to be told that you are a "mix-muddle"? A person who mixes up his commissions may feel a little abashed. A person who muddles his affairs may not be altogether proud of his achievements. But to be a mix-muddle, to both mix and muddle, to morally fumble without tact, and display a totally imbecile wandering; I shall get mixed myself if I try to describe such a state. Mixed in this sense is American too. Take a duster, dexterously swing it, and remove a fleck of dust from a table or books, and you will understand the verb to "flirk," which is nearly the same as to flick. "Pansherds" are "potsherds." Here is a country recipe for discovering whether a lover is faithful or not. Take a laurel leaf, scratch his name on it, or the initials, and put it in the bosom of the dress. If it turns brown, he is true; if not, he'll deceive you. The character of a girl, according to the following couplets, is to be learned from the colour of her eyes:-- "Brown eyes, beauty, Do your mother's duty. Blue eyes--pick-a-pie, Lie a-bed and tell a lie. Grey eyes--greediness, Gobble all the world up." The interpretation is, that brown eyes indicate a gentle and dutiful disposition. Blue eyes show three guilty tendencies--to pick-a-pie, that is, to steal; to lie a-bed, that is, to be idle; and to tell a lie. As for grey eyes, their selfish greediness and ambition could not be contented with less than the whole world. No one but a woman could have composed this scandal on the sex. Sometimes the green lanes are crossed by gates, over which the trees in the hedges each side form a leafy arch. On the top bar of such a gate, rustic lovers often write love messages to their ladies, with a fragment of chalk. Unable from some cause or other to keep the appointed rendezvous, they leave a few explanatory words in conspicuous white letters, so that the gate answers the same purpose as the correspondence column in the daily papers. When a gate is not available, they thrust a stick in the ground near the footpath, split the upper end, and place a piece of paper in it with the message. The hamlet forge is not yet quite extinct, and the blacksmith's hammer sounds among the oaks. He frequently has to join two pieces of iron together, say to lengthen a rod. He places both ends in the fire, heats them to a certain point, and then presses the one against the other. By this simple means of touching they unite, the metal becomes one almost like a chemical union, and so complete is it, that, with a little polishing to remove the marks of fire, the join is not perceptible to an ordinary eye. This is the most perfect way of joining metal, and when accomplished, the pieces are said to be "butt-shut." The word has passed from the forge into conversation, and the expression is often heard, "That won't butt-shut." If any one be telling a tale, or giving an account of something of which his hearers are incredulous, they say it will not butt-shut--one part of the story will not agree and dovetail with the rest; there is a break in the continuity of the evidence, which does not unite and make one rod. Such a term is true miners' language. Indeed, the American backwoodsmen, miners, and so on, are really only English farmers and labourers transplanted to a freer and larger life. MIND UNDER WATER The thud, thud of a horse's hoof does not alarm fish. Basking in the sun under the bank, a jack or pike lying close to the surface of the water will remain unmoved, however heavy the sound may be. The vibrations reach the fish in several ways. There is what we should ourselves call the noise as conveyed by the air, and which in the case of a jack actually at the surface may be supposed to reach him direct. Next there is the vibration passing through the water, which is usually pronounced to be a good medium. Lastly, there is the bodily movement of the substance of the water. When the bank is hard and dry this latter amounts only to a slight shaking, but it frequently happens that the side of a brook or pond is soft, and "gives" under a heavy weight. Sometimes the edge is even pushed into the water, and the brook in a manner squeezed. You can see this when cattle walk by the margin the grassy edge is pushed out, and in a minute way they may be said to contract the stream. It is in too small a degree to have the least apparent effect upon the water, but it is different with the sense of hearing, which is so delicate that the bodily movement thus caused may be reasonably believed to be very audible indeed to the jack. The wire fences which are now so much used round shrubberies and across parks give a very good illustration of the conveyance of sound. Strung tight by a spanner, the strands of twisted wire resemble a stringed instrument. If you place your hand on one of the wires and get a friend to strike it with his stick, say, thirty or forty yards away, you will distinctly feel it vibrate. If the ear is held close enough you will hear it, vibration and sound being practically convertible terms. To the basking jack three such wires extend, and when the cart-horse in the meadow puts down his heavy hoof he strikes them all at once. Yet, though fish are so sensitive to sound, the jack is not in the least alarmed, and there can be little doubt that he knows what it is. A whole herd of cattle feeding and walking about does not disturb him, but if the light step--light in comparison--of a man approach, away he goes. Poachers, therefore, unable to disguise their footsteps, endeavour to conceal them, and by moving slowly to avoid vibrating the earth, and through it the water. In poaching, the intelligence of the man is backed against the intelligence of the fish or animal, and the poacher tries to get himself into the ways of the creature he means to snare. That is what really takes place as seen by us as lookers-on; to the poacher himself, in nine out of ten cases, it is merely an acquired knack learned from watching others, and improved by practice. But to us, as lookers-on, this is what occurs: the man fits himself to the ways of the creature, and for the time it becomes a struggle between them. It is the same with the Red Indians, and the white trappers and hunters in wild regions, who depend much more on their knowledge of the ways and habits of the fur-bearing animals than upon their skill with the rifle. A man may be an excellent shot with gun or rifle, and yet be quite incapable of coping on comparatively equal terms with wild creatures. He is a sportsman, depending on skill, quick sight, and ready hand--not a hunter. Perhaps the nearest approach to it in legitimate, English sport is in fly-fishing and salmon fishing, when the sportsman relies upon his own unassisted efforts. Deer-stalking, where the sportsman has to reckon on the wind, and its curious twists and turns in valleys and round rocks, would be a very near approach to it did the stalker stalk alone. But all this work is usually done for him by an attendant, a native Highlander; and this man really does pit his intelligence against that of the stag. The Highlander actually is a Red Indian, or hunter, and in this sense struggles with the wild animal. The poacher is the hunter on illegitimate ground, and with arts which it has been mutually agreed shall not be employed. Considered in this sense it is interesting to observe to what extent the intelligence even of a fish reaches--and I think upon reflection it will be found that the fish is as clever as any creature could be in its position. I deny altogether that the cold-blooded fish--looked on with contempt so far as its intellectual powers are concerned--is stupid, or slow to learn. On the contrary, fish are remarkably quick, not only under natural conditions, but quick at accommodating themselves to altered circumstances which they could not foresee, and the knowledge how to meet which could not have been inherited. The basking jack is not alarmed at the cart-horse's hoofs, but remains quiet, let them come down with ever so heavy a thud. He has observed that these vibrations never cause him any injury. He hears them at all periods of the day and night, often with long intervals of silence and with every possible variation. Never once has the sound been followed by injury or by anything to disturb his peace. So the rooks have observed that passing trains are harmless, and will perch on the telegraph wires or poles over the steam of the roaring locomotive. Observation has given them confidence. Thunder of wheels and immense weight in motion, the open furnace and glaring light, the faces at the long tier of windows--all these terrors do not ruffle a feather. A little boy with a wooden clapper can set a flock in retreat immediately. Now the rooks could not have acquired this confidence in the course of innumerable generations; it is not hereditary; it is purely what we understand by intelligence. Why are the rooks afraid of the little boy with the clapper? Because they have noticed his hostile intent. Why is the basking jack off the instant he hears the light step of a man? He has observed that after this step there have often followed attempts to injure him; a stone has been flung at him, a long pole thrust into the water; he has been shot at, or felt the pinch of a wire. He remembers this, and does not wait for the attempt to be repeated, but puts himself into safety. If he did not realise that it was a man--and a possible enemy--he would not trouble. The object consequently of the tricks of the poacher is to obliterate himself. If you can contrive to so move, and to so conduct yourself that the fish shall not recognise you as his enemy, you can do much as you please with him, and in varying degrees it is the same with animals. Think a moment by what tokens a fish recognises a man. First, his light, and, compared with other animals, brisk step--a two-step instead of a four-step, remember; two feet, not four hoofs. There is a difference at once in the rhythm of the noise. Four hoofs can by no possibility produce the same sound, or succession of sounds, as is made even by four feet--that is, by two men. The beats are not the same. Secondly, by his motions, and especially the brisk motions of the arms. Thirdly, by this briskness itself; for most animals, except man, move with a slow motion--paradox as it may seem--even when they are going along fast. With them it is usually repose in action. Fourthly, and this is rather curious--experience seems to show that fish, and animals and birds certainly, recognise man by his hat or cap, to which they have a species of superstitious dislike. Hats are generally of a different hue to the rest of the suit, for one thing; and it was noted, a century ago, that wild creatures have a particular objection to a black hat. A covering to the head at all is so Opposite to their own ideas that it arouses suspicion, for we must remember that animals look on our clothes as our skin. To have a black skin over the hair of the head is somewhat odd. By all these signs a fish knows a man immediately, and as certainly as any creature moving on land would know him. There is no instinctive or hereditary fear of man at all--it is acquired by observation (which a thousand facts demonstrate); so that we are quite justified in believing that a fish really does notice some or all of these attributes of its enemy. What the poacher or wild hunter has to do is to conceal these attributes. To hide the two-step, he walks as slowly as possible, not putting the foot down hard, but feeling the ground first, and gradually pressing it. In this way progress may be made without vibration. The earth is not shaken, and does not communicate the sound to the water. This will bring him to the verge of the place where the fish is basking. Very probably not only fish, but animals and some birds hear as much by the vibration of the earth as by the sound travelling in the atmosphere, and depend as much upon their immediate perception of the slightest tremor of the earth as upon recognition by the ear in the manner familiar to ourselves. When rabbits, for instance, are out feeding in the grass, it is often possible to get quite close to them by walking in this way, extremely slowly, and carefully placing the foot by slow degrees upon the ground. The earth is then merely pressed, and not stepped upon at all, so that there is no jar. By doing this I have often moved up within gunshot of rabbits without the least aid from cover. Once now and then I have walked across a field straight at them. Something, however, depends on the direction of the wind, for then the question of scent comes in. To some degree it is the same with hares. It is certainly the case with birds, as wood-pigeons, a flock of them, will remain feeding only just the other side of the hedge; but, if you stamp the earth, will rise instantly. So will rooks, though they will not fly far if you are not armed. Partridges certainly secure themselves by their attention to the faint tremor of the ground. Pheasants do so too, and make off, running through the underwood long before any one is in sight. The most sensitive are landrails, and it is difficult to get near them, for this reason. Though the mowing-grass must conceal an approaching person from them as it conceals them from him, these birds change their positions, no matter how quietly he walks. Let him be as cunning as he will, and think to cut off corners and cross the land-rail's retreat, the bird baffles him nine times in ten. That it is advised of the direction the pursuer takes by the vibration of the surface is at least probable. Other birds sit, and hope to escape by remaining still, till they detect the tremor coming direct towards them, when they rise. Rain and dry weather change the susceptibility of the surface to vibrate, and may sometimes in part account for the wildness or apparent tameness of birds and animals. Should any one doubt the existence of such tremors, he has only to lie on the ground with his ear near the surface; but, being unused to the experiment, he will at first only notice the heavier sounds, as of a waggon or a cart-horse. In recent experiments with most delicate instruments devised to show the cosmic vibration of the earth, the movements communicated to it by the tides, or by the "pull" of the sun and moon, it has been found almost impossible as yet to carry out the object, so greatly are these movements obscured by the ceaseless and inexplicable vibrations of the solid earth. There is nothing unreasonable in the supposition that, if an instrument can be constructed to show these, the ears of animals and birds--living organisms, and not iron and steel--should be able to discover the tremors of the surface. The wild hunter can still further check or altogether prevent observation by moving on hands and knees, when his weight is widely distributed. In the particular instance of a fish he endeavours to come to the margin of the water at the rear of the fish, whose eyes are so placed that it can see best in front. When he has arrived at the margin, and has to rear himself up, if from hands and knees, or, if already upright, when he commences his work, he tries to conceal his arms, or, rather, to minimise their peculiar appearance as much as practicable by keeping them close to his sides. All this time I am supposing that you are looking at the poacher from the fish. To a fish or any wild animal the arms of a man are suspicious. No other creature that they know possesses these singular appurtenances, which move in almost any direction, and yet have nothing to do with locomotion. You may be sure that this great difference in the anatomical construction of a man is recognised by all wild animals once they are compelled for their own safety to observe him. Arms are so entirely opposite to all the varieties of limb possessed by the varieties of living creatures. Can you put yourselves in the position of either of these creatures--moving on all-fours, on wings, or by the aid of a membraneous tail and fins, and without arms, and imagine how strange the arms of a man must look? Suppose yourself with your arms tucked to your sides under the fur of an animal; something of the idea may be gathered by putting on a cloak without sleeves or armholes. At once it will be apparent how helpless all creatures are in comparison with man. It is true that apes are an exception; yet their arms are also legs, and they are deficient in the power of the thumb. Man may be defined as an animal with arms. While the creatures of the field or the water have no cause to fear him they do not observe him, but the moment they learn that he is bent on their destruction they watch him narrowly, and his arms are, above all, the part which alarms them. To them these limbs are men's weapons--his tusks, and tusks which strike and wound afar. From these proceed an invisible force which can destroy where it would seem the intervening distance alone would afford safety. The sharp shot, the keen hook, the lacerating wire, the spear--everything which kills or wounds, comes in some manner or other from the arms, down to the stone or the primitive knob-kerrie. Consequently animals, birds, and fishes not only in our own, but in the wildest countries, have learned to watch and to dread man's arms. He raises his arms, and in an instant there shoots forth a bright flash of flame, and before the swift wings can beat the air again the partridge is dashed to the ground. So long as a gun is carried under the arm--that is, with the arms close to the sides--many birds will let the sportsman approach. Rabbits will do the same. Rabbits have one advantage (and perhaps only one): being numerous and feeding out by daylight, all kinds of experiments can be tried on them, while hares are not so easily managed. Suppose a rabbit feeding, and any one with a gun creeping up beside the hedge, while the gun is kept down and the arms down the rabbit remains still; the instant the arms are lifted to point the gun, up he sits, or off he goes. You have only to point your arm at a rook, without any gun, to frighten him. Bird-keepers instinctively raise their arms above their heads, when shouting, to startle birds. Every creature that has ever watched man knows that his arms are dangerous. The poacher or wild hunter has to conceal his arms by reducing their movements to a minimum, and by conducting those movements as slowly as possible. To thoroughly appreciate the importance which animals of all kinds put on the motions of the upper limbs, and to put one's self quite in their position, one has only to recall to mind the well-known trick of the Australian bushrangers. "Bail up!" is their order when they suddenly produce their revolvers; "Bail up!" they shout to the clerks of the bank they are about to sack, to the inmates of a house, or to the travellers they meet on the road. "Hold your arms above your head" is the meaning; and, if it is not immediately obeyed, they fire. They know that every man has a pistol in his pocket or belt; but he cannot use it if compelled to keep his arms high over his head. One or more of the band keep a sharp look-out on the upheld arms while the rest plunder; and, if any are lowered--bang! Like the animals, they know the extreme danger to be apprehended from movements of the human arms. So long as the human arms are "bailed" (though in this case in an opposite direction, i.e. held down), animals are not afraid. Could they make us "bail up," we should be helpless to injure them. Moving his arms as gently as possible, with the elbows close to his sides, the poacher proceeds to slowly push his rod and wire loop towards the basking jack. If he were going to shoot partridges at roost on the ground, he would raise his gun in an equally slow and careful manner. As a partridge is a small bird, and stands at about a shilling in the poacher's catalogue, he does not care to risk a shot at one, but likes to get several at once. This he can do in the spring, when the birds have paired and remain so near together, and again in the latter part of the summer, when the coveys are large, not having yet been much broken up by the sportsmen. These large coveys, having enjoyed an immunity from disturbance all through the summer, wandering at their own will among clover and corn, are not at all difficult to approach, and a shot at them through a gap in a hedge will often bring down four or five. Later on the poacher takes them at roost. They roost on the ground in a circle, heads outwards, much in the same position as the eggs of a lapwing. The spot is marked; and at night, having crept up near enough, the poacher fires at the spot itself rather than at the birds, with a gun loaded with a moderate charge of powder, but a large quantity of shot, that it may spread wide. On moderately light nights he can succeed at this game. It is in raising the arms to point the gun that the risk of alarming the birds has to be met; and so with a hare sitting in a form in daytime. Lift your arms suddenly, and away she goes; keep your arms still, and close to your side, and she will sit till you have crept up actually to her very side, and can pounce on her if you choose. Sometimes, where fish have not been disturbed by poachers, or loafers throwing stones and otherwise annoying them, they will not heed a passer-by, whose gentle walk or saunter does not affright them with brisk emotion, especially if the saunterer, on espying them, in no degree alters his pace or changes his manner. That wild creatures immediately detect a change of manner, and therefore of mood, any one may demonstrate for himself They are as quick to see it as the dog, who is always with his master, and knows by the very way he puts a book on the table what temper he is in. When a book goes with a bang on the table the dog creeps under it. Wild creatures, too, catch their manners from man. Walk along a lane with your hands in your pockets, and you will see twice as much of the birds and animals, because they will not set themselves to steadfastly watch you. A quick movement sets wings quickly beating. I have noticed that even horses in stables do not like visitors with jerky, brisk, angular ways of moving. A stranger entering in a quiet, easy manner is not very objectionable, but if he comes in in a bustling, citizen-like style, it is quite probable that one or other horse will show a wicked white corner in his eye. It roughs them up the wrong way. Especially all wild creatures dislike the shuffling, mincing step so common in towns. That alone will disturb everything. Indeed, I have often thought that a good and successful wild hunter--like the backwoods man, or the sportsman in African bush or Indian jungle--is really made as much by his feet as his eyes or hands. Unconsciously he feels with his feet; they come to know the exact time to move, whether a long or short stride be desirable, and where to put down, not to rustle or cause a cracking sound, and accommodate themselves to the slope of the ground, touching it and holding it like hands. A great many people seem to have no feet; they have boots, but no feet. They stamp or clump, or swing their boots along and knock the ground at every step; this matters not in most callings, but if a man wish to become what I have called a wild hunter, he must let his feet learn. He must walk with hands in his boots. Now and then a person walks like this naturally, and he will come in and tell you that he has seen a fish basking, a partridge, a hare, or what not, when another never gets near anything. This is where they have not been much disturbed by loafers, who are worse than poachers. As a rule, poachers are intermittent in their action, and they do not want to disturb the game, as it makes it wild and interferes with their profits. Loafers are not intermittent--they are always about, often in gangs, and destroy others' sports without having any themselves. Near large towns there are places where the fish have to be protected with hurdles thrown across the stream on poles, that the stones and brickbats hurled by every rascal passing may not make their very life a burden. A rural poacher is infinitely preferable. The difference in the ways of fish when they have been much disturbed and when they have been let alone is at at once discerned. No sooner do you approach a fish who has been much annoyed and driven than he strikes, and a quick-rotating curl on the surface shows with what vehemence his tail was forced against it. In other places, if a fish perceives you, he gives himself so slight a propulsion that the curl hardly rises, and you can see him gliding slowly into the deeper or overshadowed water. If in terror he would go so quickly as to be almost invisible. In places where the fish have been much disturbed the poacher, or any one who desires to watch their habits, has to move as slowly as the hands of a clock, and even then they will scarcely bear the very sight of a man, sometimes not at all. The least briskness of movement would send them into the depths out of sight. Cattle, to whom they are accustomed, walk slowly, and so do horses left to themselves in the meads by water. The slowest man walking past has quicker, perhaps because shorter, movements than those of cattle and horses, so that, even when bushes intervene and conceal his form, his very ways often proclaim him. Most people will only grant a moderate degree of intelligence to fish, linking coldness of blood to narrowness of intellect, and convinced that there can be but little brain in so small a compass as its head. That the jack can compete with the dog, of course, is out of the question: but I am by no means prepared to admit that fish are so devoid of sense as supposed. Not long since an experiment was tried with a jack, an account of which appeared in the papers. The jack was in a tank, and after awhile the tank was partly divided by inserting a plate of glass. He was then hunted round, and notes taken of the number of times he bumped his head against the plate of glass, and how long it took him to learn that there was something to obstruct his path. Further statistics were kept as to the length of his memory when he had learnt the existence of the glass--that is, to see if he would recollect it several days afterwards. The fish was some time learning the position of the glass; and then, if much alarmed, he would forget its position and dash against it. But he did learn it, and retained his memory some while. It seems to me that this was a very hard and unfair test. The jack had to acquire the idea of something transparent, and yet hard as wood. A moment's thought will show how exactly opposite the qualities of glass are to anything either this particular fish or his ancestors could have met with--no hereditary intelligence to aid him, no experience bearing, however slightly, upon the subject. Accustomed all his life to transparent water, he had also been accustomed to find it liquid, and easily parted. Put suddenly face to face with the transparent material which repelled him, what was he to think? Much the same effect would be produced if you or I, having been accustomed, of course, all our lives, to the fluidity of air, which opens for our passage, were opposed by a solid block of transparent atmosphere. Imagine any one running for a train, and striking his head with all his might against such a block. He would rise, shake himself together, and endeavour to pursue his journey, and be again repelled. More than likely he would try three times before he became convinced that it really was something in the air itself which stopped him. Then he would thrust with his stick and feel, more and more astounded every moment, and scarcely able to believe his own senses. During the day, otherwise engaged, he would argue himself into the view that he had made a mistake, and determine to try again, though more cautiously. But so strong is habit that if a cause for alarm arose, and he started running, he might quite probably go with tremendous force up to the solid block of transparent air, to be hurled back as the jack was. These are no mere suppositions, for quite recently I heard of a case which nearly parallels the conduct of the jack. A messenger was despatched by rail to a shop for certain articles, and was desired to return by a certain time. The parcel was made up, the man took it, heard an engine whistle, turned to run, and in his haste dashed himself right through a plate-glass window into the street. He narrowly escaped decapitation, as the great pieces of glass fell like the knife of a guillotine. Cases of people injuring themselves by walking against plate-glass are by no means uncommon; when the mind is preoccupied it takes much the same place as the plate of glass in the water and the jack. Authorities on mythology state that some Oriental nations had not arrived at the conception of a fluid heaven--of free space; they thought the sky was solid, like a roof. The fish was very much in the same position. The reason why fish swim round and round in tanks, and do not beat themselves against the glass walls, is evidently because they can see where the water ends. A distinction is apparent between it and the air outside; but when the plate of glass was put inside the tank the jack saw water beyond it, or through it. I never see a fish in a tank without remembering this experiment and the long train of reflections it gives rise to. To take a fish from his native brook, and to place him suddenly in the midst of such, to him, inconceivable conditions, is almost like watching the actual creation of mind. His mind has to be created anew to meet it, and that it did ultimately meet the conditions shows that even the fish--the cold-blooded, the narrow-brained--is not confined to the grooves of hereditary knowledge alone, but is capable of wider and novel efforts. I thought the jack came out very well indeed from the trial, and I have mentioned the matter lest some should think I have attributed too much intelligence to fish. Other creatures besides fish are puzzled by glass. One day I observed a robin trying to get in at the fanlight of a hall door. Repeatedly he struck himself against it, beat it with his wings, and struggled to get through the pane. Possibly there was a spider inside which tempted him; but allowing that temptation, it was remarkable that the robin should so strive in vain. Always about houses, he must have had experience of the properties of glass, and yet forgot it so soon. His ancestors for many generations must have had experience of glass, still it did not prevent him making many trials. The slowness of the jack to learn the impenetrable nature of the glass plate and its position is not the least indication of lack of intelligence. In daily life we constantly see people do things they have observed injure them, and yet, in spite of experience, go and do the same again. The glass experiment proves to me that the jack, like all other creatures, really has a latent power of intelligence beyond that brought into play by the usual circumstances of existence. Consider the conditions under which the jack exists--the jack we have been approaching so carefully. His limits are the brook, the ponds it feeds, and the ditches that enter it. He can only move a short distance up the stream because there is a high hatch, nor can he go far down because of a mill; if he could, the conditions would be much the same; but, as a matter of fact, the space he has at his command is not much. The running water, the green flags, the lesser fishes, the water-rats, the horses and cattle on the bank--these are about all the things that he is likely to be interested in. Of these only the water, the lesser fishes, the flags, and the bottom or sides of the brook, are actually in his touch and complete understanding. As he is unable to live out of water, the horse on the bank, in whose very shadow he sometimes lies, might be a mile away for aught it concerns him. By no possible means can he discover anything about it. The horse may be itself nothing more than a shadow, unless in a shallow place he steps in and splashes. Night and day he knows, the cool night, and the sunbeams in which he basks; but he has no way of ascertaining the nature of anything outside the water. Centuries spent in such conditions could add but little to his experience. Does he hear the stream running past him? Do the particles of water, as they brush his sides and fins, cause a sound, as the wind by us? While he lurks beneath a weed in the still pool, suddenly a shoal of roach rush by with a sound like a flock of birds whose wings beat the air. The smooth surface of the still water appears to cover an utter silence, but probably to the fish there are ceaseless sounds. Water-fowl feeding in the weedy corners, whose legs depend down into the water and disturb it; water-rats diving and running along the bottom; water-beetles moving about; eels in the mud; the lower parts of flags and aquatic grasses swinging as the breeze ruffles their tips; the thud, thud of a horse's hoofs, and now and then the more distant roll of a hay-laden waggon. And thunder--how does thunder sound under the surface? It seems reasonable to suppose that fish possess a wide gamut of hearing since their other senses are necessarily somewhat curtailed, and that they are peculiarly sensitive to vibratory movements is certain from the destruction a charge of dynamite causes if exploded under water. Even in the deep sea the discharge of a torpedo will kill thousands of herrings. They are as it were killed by noise. So that there are grounds for thinking that my quiet jack in the pool, under the bank of the brook, is most keenly alive by his sense of hearing to things that are proceeding both out and in the water. More especially, no doubt, of things in the water itself. With all this specialised power of hearing he is still circumscribed and limited to the groove of the brook. The birds fly from field to field, from valley to mountain, and across the sea. Their experience extends to whole countries, and their opportunities are constant. How much more fortunate in this respect than the jack! A small display of intelligence by the fish is equivalent to a large display by the bird. When the jack has been much disturbed no one can do more than obtain a view of him, however skilfully he may conceal himself. The least sign of further proceedings will send the jack away; sometimes the mere appearance of the human form is sufficient. If less suspicious, the rod with the wire attached--or if you wish to make experiments, the rod without the wire--can be placed in the water, and moved how you choose. SPORT AND SCIENCE Kingfisher Corner was the first place I made for when, as a lad, I started from home with my gun. The dew of September lies long on the grass, and by the gateway I often noticed wasps that had spent the night in the bunches, numbed and chilled, crawling up the blades bent into an arch by the weight of the drops. Thence they got on the gate, where, too, the flies congregated at that time in the morning; for while it was still cool at the surface on the ground, the dry wood soon absorbed the heat of the sun. This warmth brought them to life again, and after getting well charged with it, the insects flew off to any apples they could discover. These heavy dews, as the summer declines, keep the grass fresh and green, and maintain the leaves on hedge and tree; yet they do not reach the earth, which remains dry. It is a different dew to the spring dew, or acts in another manner: the spring dews moisten the earth, and from the arable lands as the sun shines forth you may see the vapour rise and drift along the surface, like the smoke of a gun on a damp day. The mottled geometrical giant spiders find their webs thick with this September dew, which seems as if a little unctuous. Stepping through the gateway with the morning sun behind me, I saw at each step a fresh circle of dewdrops gleam, some ruby, some emerald, some brightly white, at the same distance in front. The angle of refraction advanced as I moved; there was a point at which the dewdrop shot back a brilliant ray, and then became invisible, or appeared a mere drop of dull water. By moonlight there is thus formed a semicircle of light on the grass, which continually moves before you; it is a halo on the grass-tips. I noticed this as a boy, and tried all sorts of experiments respecting it, but never met with any mention of it in books till quite lately, in Benvenuto Cellini's "Autobiography." He says, "There appeared a resplendent light over my head, which has displayed itself conspicuously to all I have thought proper to show it to, but those were very few. This shining light is to be seen in the morning over my shadow till two o'clock in the afternoon, and it appears to the greatest advantage when the grass is moist with dew; it is likewise visible in the evening at sunset. This phenomenon I took notice of in Paris, because the air is exceedingly clear in that climate, so that I could distinguish it there much plainer than in Italy, where mists are much more frequent; but I can still see it even here, and show it to others, though not to the same advantage as in France." Benvenuto thought this one of the most extraordinary things that had happened to him; and records it after a wonderful dream, as if it, too, were supernatural. It is, however, possible that some eyes are so constituted as not to be able to see this phenomenon in their own case; at least, I have sometimes tried in vain to get other people to see it. I should not have noticed it had I not been about at all hours with my gun as a boy. It is much more visible by moonlight, when the rabbits' white tails go dot, dot, lightly over the grass, and you are just as likely to shoot at their shadows as at their bodies. As the scythe of the mower mows a swathe before him, so the semicircle of light moves in front over the dew, and the grass appears another tint, as it does after a roller has passed. In a scientific publication not long since, a letter was published describing what the writer supposed was indeed something extraordinary. He had seen a fragment of rainbow--a square piece, as it were--by itself in the sky, some distance to one side of the sun. In provincial papers such letters may often be found, and even, until lately, in papers issued in London; now with accurate accounts of an ordinary halo about the sun, now with a description of a prismatic cloud round the moon, and one day some one discovered that there were two currents of air, as the clouds went in two directions. Now, it is clear enough that none of these writers had ever been out with a gun or a rod; I mean out all day, and out in the full sense of the phrase. They had read books of science; from their language they were thoroughly educated, and felt a deep interest in natural phenomena. Yet what a marvel was here made out of the commonest incidents of the sky! Halos about the sun happen continually; the prismatic band or cloud about the moon is common; so is the detached rainbow; as for the two currents of air, the clouds often travel in three directions, occasionally in four. These incidents are no more surprising to a sportsman than the sunset. I saw them, as a boy, almost day by day, and recorded the meteors in the evening. It seems to me that I used to see scores of meteors of various degrees of brightness. Once the path, the woods, the fields, and the distant hills were lit as if with a gigantic electric light; I was so interested in tracing the well-known scene so suddenly made apparent in the darkness that it was not for some seconds I thought of looking for the bolide, but even then I was in time to see it declining just before extinction. Others who have been out with their guns have, of course, seen exactly the same things; I do not mention them to claim for myself any special powers of observation, but as instances of the way in which sport brings one in contact with nature. Other sportsmen, too, must have smiled at the marvel made of such appearances by clever and well-educated, but indoor, people. This very spring (1883), as I walked about a town in the evening, I used to listen to find if I could hear any one mention the zodiacal light, which, just after sunset, was distinctly visible for a fortnight at a time. It was more than usually distinct, a perfect cone, reaching far up into the sky among the western stars. No one seemed to observe it, though it faced them evening after evening. Here was an instance in the opposite direction--a curious phenomenon, even now rather the subject of hypothesis than of demonstration, entirely overlooked. The common phenomenon made a marvel, and the unexplained phenomenon unnoticed. Both in the eyes of a thoughtful person are equally wonderful; but that point of view is apart from my present object, which is to show that sport trains the eye. As a boy, roving about the hedges with my gun, it was my especial delight to see Mercury, because one of the great astronomers had never seen that planet, and because in all the books it was stated as difficult to see. The planet was favourably situated, and I used to see it constantly after sunset then, pale, and but just outside the sunset glow, only a little way above the distant hills. Now it is curious, to remark in passing, that as the sun sets behind a hill the slope of the hill towards you is often obscured by his light. It appears a luminous misty surface, rosy-tinted, and this luminous mist hides the trees upon it, so that the slope is apparently nothing but a broad sweep of colour; while those hills opposite the sun, even if twice as distant, are so clearly defined that the smallest object is evident upon them. Sometimes, instead of the mist on the western hill, there is a blood-like purple almost startling in its glory of light. There have been few things I have read of, or studied, which in some manner or other I have not seen illustrated in this country while out in the fields. It is said that in the Far West, on the level prairies, when the snow covers them, you see miles and miles away, a waggon stopping; you hurry on, and in half a day's journey overtake it, to find the skull of an ox--so greatly has distance and the mirage of the snow magnified its apparent size. But a few days since I saw some rooks on the telegraph wires against a bright sky, but as I approached they flew and resolved into starlings, so much had the brilliant light deceived me. A hare sometimes, on the open ground, looks at a distance, in the sunny days of May when hares are often abroad in daylight, as big as a good-sized dog, and, except by the leap and the absence of visible tail, can hardly be told from a dog. The bamboo fishing-rods, if you will glance at the bamboo itself as you fish, seem the most singular of growths. There is no wood in the hedge like it, neither ash, hazel, oak, sapling, nor anything; it is thoroughly foreign, almost unnatural. The hard knots, the hollow stem, the surface glazed so as to resist a cut with a knife and nearly turn the steel--this is a tropical production alone. But while working round the shore presently you come to the sedges, and by the sedges stands a bunch of reeds. A reed is a miniature bamboo, the same shape, the same knots, and glazy surface; and on reference to any intelligent work of botany, it appears that they both belong to the same order of inward-growing Endogens, so that a few moments bestowed on the reed by the waters give a clear idea of the tropical bamboo, and make the singular foreign production home-like and natural. I found, while I was shooting every day, that the reeds, and ferns, and various growths through which I pushed my way, explained to me the jungles of India, the swamps of Central Africa, and the backwoods of America; all the vegetation of the world. Representatives exist in our own woods, hedges, and fields, or by the shore of inland waters. It was the same with flowers. I think I am scientifically accurate in saying that every known plant has a relative of the same species or genus, growing wild in this country. The very daisy, the commonest of all, contains a volume of botany; so do the heaths, and the harebells that hang so heavily under the weight of the September dew. The horse-tails by the shore carry the imagination further back into the prehistoric world when relations of these plants flourished as trees. The horse-tails by ponds are generally short, about a foot or eighteen inches high, more or less, but in ditches occasionally there are specimens of the giant horse-tail as high as the waistcoat, with a stem as thick as a walking-stick. This is a sapling from which the prehistoric tree can readily be imagined. From our southern woods the wild cat has been banished, but still lives in the north as an English representative of that ferocious feline genus which roams in tropical forests. We still have the deer, both wild and in parks. Then there are the birds, and these, in the same manner as plants, represent the inhabitants of the trackless wilds abroad. Happily the illustration fails mostly in reptiles, which need not be regretted; but even these, in their general outline as it were, are presented. It has long been one of my fancies that this country is an epitome of the natural world, and that if any one has come really into contact with its productions, and is familiar with them, and what they mean and represent, then he has a knowledge of all that exists on the earth. It holds good even of Australia; for palaeontologists produce fossil remains of marsupials or kangaroos. As for the polar conditions, when going round for snipes I constantly saw these in miniature. The planing action of ice was shown in the ditches, where bridges of ice had been formed; these slipping, with a partial thaw, smoothed the grasses and mars of teazles in the higher part of the slope, and then lower down, as the pressure increased, cut away the earth, exposing the roots of grasses, and sometimes the stores of acorns laid up by mice. Frozen again in the night, the glacier stayed, and crumbling earth, leaves, fibres, acorns, and small dead boughs fell on it. Slipping on as the wind grew warmer, it carried these with it and deposited them fifty yards from where they originated. This is exactly the action of a glacier. The ice-mist was often visible over the frozen water-meadows, where I went for duck, teal, and at intervals a woodcock in the adjacent mounds. But it was better seen in the early evening over a great pond, a mile or more long; where, too, the immense lifting power of water was exemplified, as the merest trickle of a streamlet flowing in by-and-by forced up the thick ice in broad sheets weighing hundreds of tons. Then, too, breathing-holes formed just as they are described in the immense lakes of North America, Lakes Superior or Michigan, and in the ice of the Polar circle. These were never frozen over, and attracted wild-fowl. In August, when there were a few young ducks about, the pond used to remind me in places of the tropical lakes we heard so much of after the explorers got through the portentous continent, on account of the growth of aquatic weeds, the quantity and extent of which no one would credit who had not seen them. No wonder the explorers could not get through the papyrus-grown rivers and lakes, for a boat could hardly be forced through these. Acres upon acres of weeds covered the place, some coming up from a depth of twelve feet. Some fish are chiefly on the feed in the morning, and any one who has the courage to get up at five will find them ravenous. We often visited the place a little after that hour. A swim was generally the first thing, and I mention a swim because it brings me to the way in which this mere pond illustrated the great ocean which encircles the world. For it is well known that the mighty ocean is belted with currents, the cold water of the Polar seas seeking the warmth of the Equator, and the warm water of the Equator floating--like the Gulf Stream--towards the Pole, floating because (I think I am right) the warm water runs on the surface. The favourite spot for swimming in our pond was in such a position that a copse cast a wide piece of water there into deep shadow all the morning up till ten o'clock at least. At six in the morning this did not matter, all the water was of much the same temperature; having been exposed to the night everywhere, it was cold of course. But after ten the thing was different; by that time the hot reaper's sun had warmed the surface of the open water on which the rays fell almost from the moment the sun rose. Towards eleven o'clock the difference in temperature was marked; but those who then came to bathe, walking along the shore or rowing, dipped their hands in and found the water warm, and anticipated that it would be equally so at the bathing-place. So it was at the surface, for the warm water had begun to flow in, and the cold water out, rather deeper, setting up, in fact, an exact copy of the current of the ocean, the shadowed part by the copse representing the Polar area. Directly any one began to swim he found the difference, the legs went down into cold water, and in many cases cramp ensued with alarming results and danger. Down to the chest it was warm, quite warm, while the feet were very cold. Not much imagination is needed to conceive the effect on persons not used to rough bathing, and even a strong man might suffer. People insisted that these chills and cramps were caused by cold springs rising at the bottom, and could not be argued out of that belief. As a matter of fact there was not a single spring over the whole extent of the bottom. That part in particular was often dry, not from dry weather, but as the water of the pond was drawn away. Let it rain as much as it would, no spring ever broke up there. The cold currents were produced by the shadow of the copse, and, had the trees been felled, would have disappeared. That would have been like letting the sun of the Equator shine on the Polar seas. After a storm of wind the lee shore was marked with a dark-green line of weeds and horse-tails, torn up and drifted across, which had been thrown up by the little breakers beyond the usual level of the water. A mass of other weeds and horse-tails, boughs and leaves, remained floating; and now was seen a reversal of the habits of fishes. Every one knows that fishes seek the windward shore in a breeze for the insects blown in; but now, while the gale, though subsiding, still rippled the water, the best place to fish was on the lee shore, just at the edge of the drifted weeds. Various insects probably were there washed away from the green raft to which they had clung. The water being often lowered by drawing hatches, the level changed frequently; and as storms of wind happened at different levels, so there were several little raised beaches showing where the level had been, formed of washed gravel and stones--the counterpart, in fact, of the raised beaches of the geologists. When the water was almost all drawn off, then there was a deep winding channel in the mud of the bottom, along which trickled a little streamlet which fed the pond. The sun hardening the mud, it was possible by-and-by to walk to the edge of the channel, where it could be seen that the streamlet ran five or six feet deep between precipitous banks of mud. Near where the stream first entered the pond the deposit was much deeper, for this five feet of alluvium had, in fact, been brought down by one small brook in the course of little more than fifty years. The pond had been formed fifty years previously, but already in so short a period, geologically speaking, all that end was silting up, and the little brook was making a delta, and a new land was rising from the depths of the wave. This is exactly what has happened on an immensely larger scale in the history of the earth, and any one who had seen it, and knew the circumstances, could comprehend the enormous effects produced in geological time by rivers like the Ganges, the Amazon, or Nile. Going by with a gun so frequently, one could not help noticing these things, and remembering them when reading Lyell's "Geology," or Maury's book on the sea, or the innumerable treatises bearing on the same interesting questions. Whether en route for the rabbit-ground, or looking for water-fowl, or later for snipe, I never passed by without finding something, often a fragment of fossil washed from the gravel or sand by the last storm. NATURE AND THE GAMEKEEPER The changes in the fauna of the inland counties brought about by the favour shown to certain species are very remarkable. The alterations caused by the preservation of pheasants have reached their limit. No further effects are likely to be produced, even if pheasant-preserving should be carried to a still greater extent, which itself is improbable. One creature at least, the pine-marten, has been exterminated over Southern England, and is now only to be seen--in the stuffed state--in museums. It may be roughly described as a large tree-weasel, and was shot down on account of its habit of seizing pheasants at roost. The polecat is also practically extinct, though occasional specimens are said to occur. These two animals could not be allowed to exist in any preserve. But it is in the list of birds that the change is most striking. Eagles are gone: if one is seen it is a stray from Scotland or Wales; and so are the buzzards, except from the moors. Falcons are equally rare: the little merlin comes down from the north now and then, but the peregrine falcon as a resident or regular visitor is extinct. The hen-harrier is still shot at intervals; but the large hawks have ceased out of the daily life, as it were, of woods and fields. Horned owls are becoming rare; even the barn-owl has all but disappeared from some districts, and the wood-owl is local. The raven is extinct--quite put out. The birds are said to exist near the sea-coast; but it is certain that any one may walk over inland country for years without seeing one. These, being all more or less birds of prey, could not but be excluded from pheasant-covers. All these birds, however, would probably resume their ancient habitations in the course of five-and-twenty years if permitted to do so. They exist plentifully at no great distance--judged as such strong flyers judge distance; and if they found that they were unmolested they would soon come back from the extremities of the land. But even more remarkable than the list of birds driven away is the list of those creatures, birds and animals, which have stood their ground in spite of traps, guns, and dogs. Stoats and weasels are always shot when seen, they are frequently trapped, and in every manner hunted to the death and their litters destroyed--the last the most effectual method of extermination. But in spite of the unceasing enmity directed against them, stoat and weasel remain common. They still take their share of game, both winged and ground. Stoat and weasel will not be killed out. As they are both defenceless creatures, and not even swift of foot, being easily overtaken in the open, their persistent continuance is curious. If any reason can be assigned for it, it must be because they spend much of their time in buries, where they are comparatively safe, and because they do not confine themselves to woods, but roam cornfields and meadows. Certainly, if man has tried to exterminate any creature, he has tried his hardest to get rid of these two, and has failed. It is even questionable whether their numbers show any appreciable diminution. Kept down to the utmost in one place, they flourish in another. Kestrel and sparrowhawk form a parallel among winged creatures. These two hawks have been shot, trapped, and their eggs destroyed unsparingly: they remain numerous just the same. Neither of them choose inaccessible places for their eyries; neither of them rear large broods. The sparrowhawk makes a nest in a tree, often in firs; the kestrel lays in old rooks', crows', or magpies' nests. Both the parents are often shot on or near the nest, and the eggs broken. Sometimes the young are permitted to grow large enough to fly, and are then shot down after the manner of rook-shooting. Nevertheless kestrels are common, and sparrowhawks, if not quite so numerous, are in no degree uncommon. Perhaps the places of those killed are supplied by birds from the great woods, moors, and mountains of the north. A third instance is the crow. Hated by all gamekeepers, and sportsmen, by farmers, and every one who has anything to do with country life, the crow survives. Cruel tyrant as he is to every creature smaller than himself, not a voice is raised in his favour. Yet crows exist in considerable numbers. Shot off in some places, they are recruited again from others where there is less game preservation. The case of the crow, however, is less striking than that of the two hawks; because the crow is a cosmopolitan bird, and if every specimen in the British Isles were destroyed to-day, there would be an influx from abroad in a very short time. The crow is, too, partly a sea-coast feeder, and so escapes. Still, to any one who knows how determined is the hostility to his race shown by all country people, his existence in any number must be considered remarkable. His more powerful congener the raven, as has been pointed out, is practically extinct in southern counties, and no longer attacks the shepherd's weakly lambs. Why, then, does the crow live on? Wherever a pair of ravens do exist the landowner generally preserves them now, as interesting representatives of old times. They are taken care of; people go to see them; the appearance of eggs in the nest is recorded. But the raven does not multiply. Barn-owls live on, though not in all districts. Influenced by the remonstrance of naturalists, many gentlemen have stopped the destruction of owls; but a custom once established is not easily put an end to. Jays and magpies have also been subjected to a bitter warfare of extermination. Magpies are quite shot off some places; in others they exist sparingly; here and there they may be found in fair numbers. Occasionally their nests are preserved--indeed, the growing tendency is to spare. Still, they have been shot off rigorously, and have survived it. So have jays. In large woods--particularly where there is much fir--jays are so numerous that to destroy them seems almost impossible. Another bird that has defied the gun and trap is the green woodpecker, which used to be killed for alleged destruction of timber. Woodpeckers are not now so ceaselessly killed, though the old system of slaying them is common enough. They have defied not only gun and trap, but the cunning noose placed at the mouth of their holes. Twenty creatures, furred and feathered, have undergone severe persecution since the extension of pheasant-covers, and of these the first nine have more or less succumbed--namely, pine-marten, polecat, eagle, buzzard, falcon, kite, horned owl, harrier, and raven. The remaining eleven have survived--namely, stoat, weasel, rat, crow, kestrel, sparrowhawk, brown and barn owl, jay, magpie, and woodpecker. Pheasants of themselves are not responsible for all this warfare and all these changes; but the pheasant-cover means more than pheasants, or rather has done. Rabbits required even more protection from furred enemies; the head of rabbits kept up in many places practically paid the keeper's wages. This warfare in its fiercest form may be roughly said to be coeval with the invention of the percussion gun, and to have raged now for over half a century. The resistance, therefore, of the various species has been fairly tested, and we may reasonably conclude that no further disappearance will take place, unless by the destruction of woods themselves. One new bird only has been introduced into England since the pheasant--the red-legged partridge which seems to be fairly established in some districts, not to the entire satisfaction of sportsmen. One new bird has also been introduced into Scotland--in this case a re-introduction. The magnificent capercailzie is now flourishing again in the north, to the honour of those who laboured for its restoration. In these notes I have not included attempts at acclimatisation, as that of the wild turkey from North America, which has partly succeeded. Beavers, too, have been induced to resume possession of their ancient streams under careful supervision, but they are outside present consideration. While England has thus lost some species and suffered a diminution of several, other countries have been supplied from our streams and woods and hedgerows. England has sent the sparrow to the United States and Australia; also the nightingale, rabbit, salmon, trout, and sweet-briar. It is quite open to argument that pheasant-covers have saved as well as destroyed. Wood-pigeons could scarcely exist in such numbers without the quiet of preserved woods to breed in; nor could squirrels. Nor can the rarity of such birds as the little bearded tit be charged on game. The great bustard, the crane, and bittern have been driven away by cultivation. The crane, possibly, has deserted us wilfully; since civilisation in other countries has not destroyed it. And then the fashion of making natural history collections has much extended of recent years: so much so, that many blame too ardent collectors for the increasing rarity of birds like the crossbill, waxwing, hoopoe, golden oriole, and others which seem to have once visited this country more commonly than at present. THE SACRIFICE TO TROUT How much the breeding of pheasants has told upon the existence of other creatures in fur and feathers I have already shown; and much the same thing is true of the preservation of trout. There is this difference, however: that while the pheasant has now produced its utmost effect, the alterations due to trout are increasing. Trout are now so highly and so widely preserved that the effect cannot but be felt. Their preservation in the numbers now considered necessary entails the destruction of some and the banishment of other creatures. The most important of these is the otter. Guns, dogs, traps set under water so as not to be scented; all modes of attack are pressed into the service, and it is not often that he escapes. When traces of an otter were found, a little while since, in the Kennet--he had left his mark on the back of a trout--the fact was recorded with as much anxiety as if a veritable wolf had appeared. With such animosity has the otter been hunted that he is becoming one of the rarest of wild animals here in the south. He is practically extinct on the majority of southern streams, and has been almost beaten off the Thames itself. But the otter is not likely to be exterminated in the sense that the wolf has been. Otters will be found elsewhere in England long after the last of them has disappeared from the south. Next the pike must be ousted from trout-streams. Special nets have been invented by which pike can be routed from their strongholds. Much hunting about quickens the intelligence of the pike to such a degree that he cannot be secured in the ordinary manner; he baffles the net by keeping close to the bank, behind stones, or by retiring to holes under roots. Perch have to go as well as pike; and then comes the turn of birds. Herons, kingfishers, moorhens, coots, grebes, ducks, teal, various divers, are all proscribed on behalf of trout. Herons are regarded as most injurious to a fishery. As was observed a century ago, a single heron will soon empty a pond or a stretch of brook. As their long necks give them easy command of a wide radius in spying round them, it is rather difficult to shoot them with a shot-gun; but with the small-bore rifles now made no heron is safe. They are generally shot early in the morning. Were it not for the fact that herons nest like rooks, and that heronries are valued appurtenances in parks, they would soon become scarce. Kingfishers prey on smaller fish, but are believed to eat almost as many as herons. Kingfishers resort in numbers to trout nurseries, which are as traps for them: and there they are more than decimated. Owls are known to take fish occasionally, and are therefore shot. The greatest loss sustained in fisheries takes place in the spawning season, and again when the fry are about. Some students of fish-life believe that almost all wild-fowl will swallow the ova and fry of trout. It must be understood that I am not here entering into the question whether all these are really so injurious; I am merely giving a list of the "dogs with a bad name." Moorhens and coots are especially disliked because they are on or near the water day and night, and can clear off large quantities of fry. Grebes (di-dappers or dabchicks) are similar in habit, but less destructive because fewer. Ducks are ravenous devourers; teal are equally hated. The various divers which occasionally visit the streams are also guilty. Lastly, the swan is a well-known trout-pirate. Besides these, the two kinds of rat--land and water--have a black mark against them. Otter, pike, perch, heron, kingfisher, owl, moorhen, coot, grebe, diver, wild-duck, swan, teal, dipper, land-rat, and water-rat--altogether sixteen creatures--are killed in order that one may flourish. Although none of these, even in the south of England--except the otter--has yet been excluded, the majority of them are so thinned down as to be rarely seen unless carefully sought. To go through the list: otters are practically excluded; the pike is banished from trout streams but is plentiful in others; so too with perch; herons, much reduced in numbers; owls, reduced; kingfishers, growing scarce; coots, much less numerous because not permitted to nest; grebes, reduced; wild-duck, seldom seen in summer, because not permitted to nest; teal, same; swan, not permitted on fisheries unless ancient rights protect it; divers, never numerous, now scarcer; moorhens, still fairly plentiful because their ranks are constantly supplied from moats and ponds where they breed under semi-domestic conditions. The draining of marsh-lands and levels began the exile of wild-fowl; and now the increasing preservation of trout adds to the difficulties under which these birds strive to retain a hold upon inland waters. The Thames is too long and wide for complete exclusion; but it is surprising how few moorhens even are to be seen along the river. Lesser rivers are still more empty, as it were, of life. The great osier-beds still give shelter to some, but not nearly so many as formerly. Up towards the spring-heads, where the feeders are mere runlets, the scarcity of wild-fowl has long been noticed. Hardly a wild-duck is now seen; one or two moorhens or a dabchick seem all. Coots have quite disappeared in some places: they are shot on ponds, having an ill reputation for the destruction of the fry of coarse or pond fish, as well as of trout. Not all these changes, indeed, are attributable to trout alone; but the trout holds a sort of official position and leads the van. Other southern rivers, with the exception of the Thames, are for the most part easily preserved. They run through cultivated country, with meadows or cornfields, woods or copses, and rarely far through open, unenclosed land. A stranger, and without permission, would often find it difficult to walk half a mile along the bank of such a stream as this. Consequently, if it is desired to preserve it, the riparian owners can do so to the utmost, and the water-fowl considered injurious to fish can as easily be kept down. It is different in the north, for instance, where the streams have a background of moors, mountains, tarns, and lakes. In these their fastnesses birds find some security. From the coast they are also recruited; while on our southern coasts it is a source of lament that wild-fowl are not nearly so plentiful as formerly. Of course in winter it often happens that a flock of wild-fowl alight in passing; but how long do they stay? The real question is, how many breed? Where trout are carefully preserved, very few indeed; so that it is evident trout are making as much difference as the pheasants. Trout preservation has become much more extended since the fish has been studied and found to be easily bred. Advertisements are even put forward recommending people to keep trout instead of poultry, since they can be managed with certainty. It seems reasonable, therefore, to suppose that the influence of trout on wild creatures will continue to extend for some time yet. Already where trout preservation has been carefully carried out it has produced a visible impression upon their ranks. In ten years, if it were abandoned, most of these creatures would be plentiful again on the waters from which they have been driven; I should myself be very glad to see many of them back again. But if preservation has excluded many creatures, it has also saved many. Badgers, in all probability, would be extinct--really extinct, like the wolf--were it not for the seclusion of covers. Without the protection which hunting affords them, foxes would certainly have disappeared. The stag and fallow-deer are other examples; so, too, the wild white cattle maintained in a few parks. In a measure the rook owes its existence to protection; for although naturalists have pointed out its usefulness, the rook is no favourite with agriculturists. Woodcocks, again, are protected, and are said to have increased, though it is open to question if their increased numbers may not be due to other causes. Cultivation banishes wild geese and snipe, but adds to the numbers of small birds, I fancy, and very probably to the number of mice. When the country was three-fourths champaign--open, unenclosed, and uncultivated--it cannot be supposed that so many grain-eating birds found sustenance as now. The subject is capable of much development Enough, however, has been said to show that Nature at present is under artificial restraints; but her excluded creatures are for the most part ready to return if ever those restraints are removed. THE HOVERING OF THE KESTREL There has lately been some discussion about the hovering of kestrels: the point being whether the bird can or cannot support itself in the air while stationary, without the assistance of one or more currents of air. The kestrel is the commonest hawk in the southern parts of England, so that many opportunities occur to observe his habits; and there ought not to be any doubt in the matter. It is even alleged that it will go far to decide the question of the possibility of flight or of the construction of an aerial machine. Without entering into this portion of the discussion, let us examine the kestrel's habits. This hawk has a light easy flight, usually maintaining an altitude a little lower than the tallest elms, but higher than most trees. He will keep this particular altitude for hours together, and sweep over miles of country, with only occasional variations--excluding, of course, descents for the purpose of taking mice. It is usually at this height that a kestrel hovers, though he is capable of doing it a much greater elevation. As he comes gliding through the atmosphere, suddenly he shoots up a little (say, roughly, two or three feet), and then stops short. His tail, which is broader than it looks, is bent slightly downwards; his wings beat the air, at the first glance, just as if he was progressing. Sometimes he seems to oscillate to one side, sometimes to the other; but these side movements do not amount to any appreciable change of position. If there be little or no wind (note this) he remains beating the air, to the eye at least perfectly stationary, perhaps as much as half a minute or more. He then seems to slip forward about half a yard, as if a pent-up force was released, but immediately recovers himself and hovers again. This alternate hovering and slipping forward may be repeated two or three times: it seems to depend on the bird's judgment as to the chance of prey. If he does not think a mouse is to be had, at the first slip he allows himself to proceed. If the spot be likely, or (what is still more tempting) if it is near a place where he has taken prey previously, he will slip and bring up several times. Now and then he will even fetch a half-circle when his balance or impetus (or both) is quite exhausted, and to return to the same spot and recommence. But this is not often, as a rule, after two or three slips he proceeds on his voyage. He will repeat the same round day after day, if undisturbed, and, if the place be at all infested with mice, he will come to it three or four times a day. There is, therefore, every chance of watching him, if you have once found his route. Should he spy a mouse, down he comes, quick but steady, and very nearly straight upon it. But kestrels do not always descend upon prey actually in view. Unless I am much mistaken, they now and then descend in a likely spot and watch like a cat for a minute or two for mice or beetles. For rest they always seek a tree. Now, having briefly sketched his general manner, let us return and examine the details. In the first place, he usually rises slightly, with outstretched wings, as if about to soar at the moment of commencing hovering. The planes of the wings are then inclined, and meet the air. At the instant of stopping, the tail is depressed. It appears reasonable to conjecture that the slight soaring is to assist the tail in checking his onward course, and to gain a balance. Immediately the wings beat rapidly, somewhat as they do in ordinary flight but with a more forward motion, and somewhat as birds do when about to perch on an awkward ledge, as a swallow at an incomplete nest under an eave. The wings look more, in front, as if attached to his neck. In an exaggerated way ducks beat the air like this, with no intention of rising at all, merely to stretch their wings. The duck raises himself as he stands on the ground, stretches himself to his full height, and flaps his wings horizontally. The kestrel's wings strike downwards and a very little forwards, for his natural tendency is to slip forwards, and the object of slightly reversing his vanes is to prevent this and yet at the same time to support him. His shape is such that if he were rigid with outstretched wings he would glide ahead, just as a ship in a calm slowly forges ahead because of her lines, which are drawn for forward motion. The kestrel's object is to prevent his slip forwards, and the tail alone will not do it. It is necessary for him to "stroke" the air in order to keep up at all; because the moment he pauses gravitation exercises a force much greater than when he glides. While hovering there are several forces balanced: first, the original impetus onwards; secondly, that of the depressed tail dragging and stopping that onward course; thirdly, that of the wing beating downwards; and fourthly, that of the wing a very little reversed beating forwards, like backing water with a scull. When used in the ordinary way the shape of the wing causes it to exert a downward and a backward pressure. His slip is when he loses balance: it is most obviously a loss of balance; he quite oscillates sometimes when it occurs; and now and then I have seen a kestrel unable to catch himself, and obliged to proceed some distance before he could hover again. Occasionally, in the slip he loses a foot or so of elevation, but not always. While actually hovering, his altitude does not vary an inch. All and each of these movements and the considerations to which they give rise show conclusively that the act of hovering is nothing more or less than an act of balancing; and when he has his balance he will rest a moment with outstretched wings kept still. He uses his wings with just sufficient force neither to rise nor fall, and prevents progress by a slightly different stroke. The next point is, Where does he hover? He hovers any and everywhere, without the slightest choice. He hovers over meadows, cornfields; over the tops of the highest downs, sometimes at the very edge of a precipice or above a chalk quarry; over gardens, waste ground; over the highway; over summer and other ricks and thatched sheds, from which he sometimes takes his prey; over stables, where mice abound. He has no preference for one side of a hedge or grove, and cares not the least on which the wind blows. His hovering is entirely determined by his judgment as to the chance of prey. I have seen a kestrel hover over every variety of dry ground that is to be found. Next, as to the wind. If any one has read what has preceded upon his manner of preserving his balance, it must be at once apparent that, supposing a kestrel were hovering in a calm and a wind arose, he would at once face it, else his balance could not be kept. Even on the ground almost all birds face the wind by choice; but the hovering kestrel has no choice. He must hover facing the wind, or it would upset him: just as you may often see a rook flung half aback by a sudden gust. Hence has arisen the supposition that a kestrel cannot hover without a wind. The truth is, he can hover in a perfect calm, and no doubt could do so in a room if it were large enough. He requires no current of any kind, neither a horizontal breeze nor an ascending current. A kestrel can and does hover in the dead calm of summer days, when there is not the faintest breath of wind. He will and does hover in the still, soft atmosphere of early autumn, when the gossamer falls in showers, coming straight down as if it were raining silk. If you puff up a ball of thistledown it will languish on your breath and sink again to the sward. The reapers are sweltering in the wheat, the keeper suffocates in the wood, the carter walks in the shadow cast by his load of corn, the country-side stares all parched and cracked and gasps for a rainy breeze. The kestrel hovers just the same. Could he not do so, a long calm would half starve him, as that is his manner of preying. Having often spent hours in trees for the purpose of a better watch upon animals and birds, I can vouch for it that ascending currents are not frequent--rare, in fact, except in a gale. In a light air or calm there is no ascending current, or it is imperceptible and of no use to the kestrel. Such currents, when they do exist, are very local; but the kestrel's hover is not local: he can hover anywhere. He can do it in the face of a stiff gale, and in a perfect calm. The only weather he dislikes is heavy thunder, rain, or hail, during which he generally perches on a tree; but he can hover in all ordinary rain. He effects it by sheer power and dexterity of wing. Therefore if the fact has any bearing upon the problem of flight, the question of currents may be left out altogether. His facing the wind is, as has been pointed out, only a proof that he is keeping his balance. The kestrel is not the only bird that hovers. The sparrowhawk can. So can all the finches, more or less, when taking seeds from a plant which will not bear their weight or which they cannot otherwise get at; also when taking insects on the wing. Sparrows do the same. Larks hover in their mating season uttering a short song, not the same as when they soar. Numerous insects can hover: the great dragon-fly will stop dead short in his rapid flight, and stay suspended till it suits him to advance. None of these require any current or wind. I do not think that hovering requires so much strength of wing or such an exercise of force as when birds rise almost straight up. Snipes do it, and woodcocks; so also pheasants, rocketing with tremendous effort; so also a sparrow in a confined court, rising almost straight to the slates. Evidently this needs great power. Hovering is very interesting; but not nearly so mysterious as at least one other power possessed by birds. BIRDS CLIMBING THE AIR Two hawks come over the trees, and, approaching each other, rise higher into the air. They wheel about for a little without any apparent design, still rising, when one ceases to beat the air with his wings, stretches them to their full length, and seems to lean aside. His impetus carries him forward and upward, at the same time in a circle, something like a skater on one foot. Revolving round a centre, he rises in a spiral, perhaps a hundred yards across; screwing upwards, and at each turn ascending half the diameter of the spiral. When he begins this it appears perfectly natural, and nothing more than would necessarily result if the wings were held outstretched and one edge of the plane slightly elevated. The impulse of previous flight, the beat of strong pinions, and the swing and rush of the bird evidently suffice for two or three, possibly for four or five, winding movements, after which the retarding effects of friction and gravitation ought, according to theory, to gradually bring the bird to a stop. But up goes the hawk, round and round like a woodpecker climbing a tree; only the hawk has nothing tangible into which to stick his claws and to rest his tail against. Those winding circles must surely cease; his own weight alone must stop him, and those wide wings outstretched must check his course. Instead of which the hawk rises as easily as at first, and without the slightest effort--no beat of wing or flutter, without even a slip or jerk, easily round and round. His companion does the same; often, perhaps always, revolving the opposite way, so as to face the first. It is a fascinating motion to watch. The graceful sweeping curl holds the eye: it is a line of beauty, and draws the glance up into the heights of the air. The darker upper part of one is usually visible at the same time as the lighter under part of the other, and as the dark wheels again the sunlight gleams on the breast and under wing. Sometimes they take regular curves, ascending in an equal degree with each; each curve representing an equal height gained perpendicularly. Sometimes they sweep round in wide circles, scarcely ascending at all. Again, suddenly one will shoot up almost perpendicularly, immediately followed by the other. Then they will resume the regular ascent. Up, like the woodpecker round a tree, till now the level of the rainy scud which hurries over in wet weather has long been past; up till to the eye it looks as if they must soon attain to the flecks of white cloud in the sunny sky to-day. They are in reality far from that elevation; but their true height is none the less wonderful. Resting on the sward, I have watched them go up like this through a lovely morning atmosphere till they seemed about to actually enter the blue, till they were smaller in appearance than larks at their highest ascent, till the head had to be thrown right back to see them. This last circumstance shows how perpendicularly they ascend, winding round a line drawn straight up. At their very highest they are hardly visible, except when the under wing and breast passes and gleams in the light. All this is accomplished with outstretched wings held at full length, without flap, or beat, or any apparent renewal of the original impetus. If you take a flat stone and throw it so that it will spin, it will go some way straight, then rise, turn aside, describe a half-circle, and fall. If the impetus kept in it, it would soar like the hawk, but this does not happen. A boomerang acts much in the same manner, only more perfectly: yet, however forcibly thrown, the impetus soon dies out of a boomerang. A skater gets up his utmost speed, suddenly stands on one foot, and describes several circles; but in two minutes comes to a standstill, unless he "screws," or works his skate, and so renews the impulse. Even at his best he only goes round, and does not raise his weight an inch from the ice. The velocity of a bullet rapidly decreases, and a ball shot from an express rifle, and driven by a heavy charge, soon begins to droop. When these facts are duly considered, it will soon be apparent what a remarkable feat soaring really is. The hawk does not always ascend in a spiral, but every now and then revolves in a circle--a flat circle--and suddenly shoots up with renewed rapidity. Whether this be merely sportive wantonness or whether it is a necessity, is impossible to determine; but to me it does not appear as if the hawk did it from necessity. It has more the appearance of variation: just as you or I might walk fast at one moment and slowly at another, now this side of the street and now the other. A shifting of the plane of the wings would, however, in all probability, give some impetus: the question is, would it be sufficient? I have seen hawks go up in sunny and lovely weather--in fact, they seem to prefer still, calm weather; but, considering the height to which they attain, no one can positively assert that they do or do not utilise a current. If they do, they may be said to sail (a hawk's wings are technically his sails) round half the circle with the wind fair and behind, and then meet it the other half of the turn, using the impetus they have gained to surmount the breeze as they breast it. Granting this mechanical assistance, it still remains a wonderful feat, since the nicest adjustment must be necessary to get the impetus sufficient to carry the birds over the resistance. They do not drift, or very little. My own impression is that a hawk can soar in a perfectly still atmosphere. If there is a wind he uses it; but it is quite as much an impediment as an aid. If there is no wind he goes up with the greater ease and to the greater height, and will of choice soar in a calm. The spectacle of a weight--for of course the hawk has an appreciable weight--apparently lifting itself in the face of gravitation and overcoming friction, is a very striking one. When an autumn leaf parts on a still day from the twig, it often rotates and travels some distance from the tree, falling reluctantly and with pauses and delays in the air. It is conceivable that if the leaf were animated and could guide its rotation, it might retard its fall for a considerable period of time, or even rise higher than the tree. COUNTRY LITERATURE I THE AWAKENING Four hundred years after the first printed book was sent out by Caxton the country has begun to read. An extraordinary reflection that twelve generations should pass away presenting the impenetrable front of indifference to the printing-press! The invention which travelled so swiftly from shore to shore till the remote cities of Mexico, then but lately discovered, welcomed it, for four centuries failed to enter the English counties. This incredible delay must not be supposed to be due to any exceptional circumstances or to inquisitorial action. The cause is found in the agricultural character itself. There has never been any difficulty in obtaining books in the country other than could be surmounted with patience. It is the peculiarity of knowledge that those who really thirst for it always get it. Books certainly came down in some way or other to Stratford-on-Avon, and the great mind that was growing there somehow found a means of reading them. Long, long before, when the printed page had not been dreamed of, the Grecian student, listening at the school, made his notes on oyster-shells and blade-bones. But here the will was wanting. There was no prejudice, for no people admired learning more than the village people, or gave it more willing precedence. It was simple indifference, which was mistaken for a lack of intelligence, but it was most certainly nothing of the kind. How great, then, must be the change when at last, after four hundred years, the country begins to read! To read everything and anything! The cottagers in faraway hamlets, miles from a railway station, read every scrap of printed paper that drifts across their way, like leaves in autumn. The torn newspapers in which the grocer at the market town wraps up their weekly purchases, stained with tallow or treacle, are not burned heedlessly. Some paragraph, some fragment of curious information, is gathered from the pieces. The ploughman at his luncheon reads the scrap of newspaper in which his bread-and-cheese was packed for him. Men read the bits of paper in which they carry their screws of tobacco. The stone-pickers in spring in the meadows, often women, look at the bits of paper scattered here and there before putting them in their baskets. A line here and a line yonder, one to-day, one to-morrow, in time make material equal to a book. All information in our day filters through the newspapers. There is no subject you can name of which you may not get together a good body of knowledge, often superior, because more recent, than that contained in the best volumes, by watching the papers and cutting out the paragraphs that relate to it. No villager does that, but this ceaseless searching for scraps comes to something like the same thing in a more general manner. London newspapers come now to the village and hamlet in all sorts of ways. Some by post, others by milk-cart, by carrier, by travellers; for country folk travel now, and invariably bring back papers bought at the railway bookstalls. After these have been read by the farmers and upper sort of people who purchased them, the fragments get out through innumerable channels to the cottages. The regular labourers employed on the farm often receive them as presents, and take nothing more gladly. If any one wishes to make a cottager a little present to show friendly remembrance, the best thing to send is a bundle of newspapers, especially, of course, if they are illustrated, which will be welcomed, and not a corner of the contents slurred over. Nothing is so contrary to fact as the common opinion that the agricultural labourer and his family are stupid and unintelligent. In truth, there are none who so appreciate information and they are quite capable of understanding anything that may be sent them in print. London papers of various descriptions come to the villages now in greatly increased numbers, probably fifteen or twenty for one that formerly arrived, and all these, or some portion of each, are nearly sure to be ultimately perused by some cottager. At the inns and beer-houses there is now usually a daily paper, unless the distance is farther than general to a station, and then there are weeklies with summaries of everything. So that the London press is accessible at the meanest beer-house, and well bethumbed and besmeared the blackened sheets are, with holes where clumsy fingers have gone through. The shepherd in his hut in the lambing season, when the east wind blows and he needs shelter, is sure to have a scrap of newspaper with him to pore over in the hollow of the windy downs. In summer he reads in the shade of the firs while his sheep graze on the slope beneath. The little country stations are often not stations at all in the urban idea of such a convenience, being quite distant from any town, and merely gathering together the traffic from cross-roads. But the porters and men who work there at times get a good many newspapers, and these, after looking at them themselves, they take or send up to their relatives in the village five or six miles away. Everybody likes to tell another the news; and now that there is such a village demand for papers, to pass on a paper is like passing the news, and gives a pleasure to donor and recipient. So that papers which in days gone by would have stopped where they first arrived now travel on and circulate. If you had given a cottager a newspaper a few years since he would have been silent and looked glum. If you give him one now he says, "Thank you," briskly. He and his read anything and everything; and as he walks beside the waggon he will pick up a scrap of newspaper from the roadside and pore over it as he goes. Girls in service send home papers from London; so do the lads when from home--and so many are away from home now. Papers come from Australia and America; the latter are especial favourites on account of the oddities with which the editors fill the corners. No one ever talks of the Continent in agricultural places; you hear nothing of France or Germany; nothing of Paris or Vienna, which are not so very distant in these days of railways, if distance be measured by miles. London and London news is familiar enough--they talk of London and of the United States or Australia, but particularly of the United States. The Continent does not exist to them; but the United States is a sort of second home, and the older men who have not gone sigh and say, "If I had 'a emigrated, now you see, I should 'a done well." There must be an immense increase in the number of papers passing through country post-offices. That the United States papers do come there is no doubt, for they are generally taken up by the cottage people to the farmhouses to show where the young fellows are who have left the place. But the remarkable fact is not in the increase of the papers, but in the growth of the desire to read them--the demand of the country for something to read. In cottages of the better sort years ago you used to find the most formal of old prints or coloured pictures on the walls, stiff as buckram, unreal, badly executed, and not always decent. The favourites now are cuttings from the _Illustrated London News_ or the _Graphic_, with pictures from which many cottages in the farthest away of the far country are hung round. Now and then one may be entered which is perfectly papered with such illustrations. These pictures in themselves play no inconsiderable part in educating the young, whose eyes become accustomed to correct representations of scenes in distant places, and who learn as much about such places and things as they could do without personally going. Besides which, the picture being found there is evidence that at fourth or fifth, or it may be the tenth hand, the paper itself must have got there, and if it got there it was read. The local press has certainly trebled in recent times, as may be learned by reference to any newspaper list and looking at the dates. The export, so to say, of type, machines, rollers, and the material of printing from London to little country places has equally grown. Now, these are not sent out for nothing, but are in effect paid for by the pennies collected in the crooked lanes and byways of rural districts. Besides the numerous new papers, there are the old-established ones whose circulation has enlarged. Altogether, the growth of the local country press is as remarkable in its way as was the expansion of the London press after the removal of the newspaper stamp. This is conclusive evidence of the desire to read, for a paper is a thing unsaleable unless some one wants to read it. They are for the most part weeklies, and their primary object is the collection of local information; but they one and all have excerpts from London publications, often very well selected, and quite amusing if casually caught up by persons who may have fancied they knew something of London, current gossip, and the world at large. For you must go from home to learn the news; and if you go into a remote hamlet and take up the local paper you are extremely likely to light on some paragraph skilfully culled which will make an impression on you. It is with these excerpts that the present argument is chiefly concerned, the point being that they are important influences in the spread of general information. After the local gossip has been looked at the purchasers of these prints are sure to turn to these pieces, which serve them and theirs the most of the week to absorb. II SCARCITY OF BOOKS Some little traffic in books, or rather pamphlets, goes on now in rural places through the medium of pedlars. There are not so many pedlars as was once the case, and those that remain are not men of such substance as their predecessors who travelled on foot with jewellery, laces, watches, and similar articles. The packmen who walk round the villages for tradesmen are a different class altogether: the pedlar does not confine himself to one district, and he sells for his own profit. In addition to the pins and ribbons, Birmingham jewellery, dream-books, and penny ballads, the pedlar now produces a bundle of small books, which are practically pamphlets, though in more convenient form than the ancient quartos. They are a miscellaneous lot, from fifty to one hundred and fifty pages; little monographs on one subject, tales, and especially such narratives as are drawn up and printed after a great calamity like the loss of the _Atalanta_. It is a curious fact that country people are much attracted to the sea, and the story of a shipwreck known to be true easily tempts the sixpences from their pockets. Dream-books and ballads sell as they always did sell, but for the rest the pedlar's bundle has nothing in it, as a rule, more pernicious than may be purchased at any little shop. Romantic novelettes, reprints of popular and really clever stories, numbers of semi-religious essays and so on--some only stitched and without a wrapper--make up the show he spreads open before the cottage door or the servants at the farmhouse. Often the gipsy women, whose vans go slowly along the main roads while they make expeditions to the isolated houses in the fields, bring with them very similar bundles of publications. The sale of books has thus partly supplanted that of clothes-pegs and trumpery finery. Neither pedlars nor gipsies would carry such articles as books unless there was a demand for them, and they thereby demonstrate the growth of the disposition to read. There are no other persons engaged in circulating books in the actual country than these. In the windows of petty shops in villages it is common to see a local newspaper displayed as a sign that it is sold there; and once now and then, but not often, a few children's story-books, rather dingy, may be found. But the keepers of such shops are not awake to the new condition of things; very likely they cannot read themselves, and it does not occur to them that the people now growing up may have different feelings to those that were general in their own young days. In this inability to observe the change they are not alone. If it was explained to them, again, they would not know how to set about getting in a suitable stock; they would not know what to choose nor where to buy cheaply. Somebody would have to do it all for them. Practically, therefore, in the actual country there are no other traders distributing cheap books than pedlars and gipsy women. Coming in thence to those larger villages which possess a market and are called towns--often only one long street--there is generally a sort of curiosity shop, kept perhaps by a cobbler, a carver and gilder, or brazier, where odds and ends, as old guns and pistols, renovated umbrellas, a stray portmanteau, rusty fenders, and so forth, are for sale. Inside the window are a few old books, with the brown and faded gilt covers so common in days gone by, and on market days these are put outside on the window-sill, or perhaps a plank on trestles forming a bookstall. The stray customers have hardly any connection with the growing taste for reading, being people a little outside the general run--gentlemen with archaeological or controversial tendencies, who never pass a dingy cover without going as far as the title-page--visitors, perhaps, at houses in the neighbourhood wandering round to look at an ancient gateway or sun-dial left from monastic days. Villagers beginning to read do not care for this class of work; like children, they look for something more amusing, and want something to wonder at for their money. At the post-office there is often an assortment of cheap stationery on sale, for where one cottager wrote a letter a few years ago ten write them now. But the shopkeeper--most likely a grocer or storekeeper of some kind--knows nothing of books, and will tell you, if you ask him, that he never sells any or has any orders. How should he sell any, pray, when he does not put the right sort into his window? He does not think people read: he is occupied with moist sugar. So that in these places literature is at a standstill. Proceeding onwards to the larger market town, which really is a town, perhaps a county town, or at least with a railway station, here one or two stationers may be found. One has a fair trade almost entirely with the middle-class people of the town; farmers when they drive in call for stationery, or for books if there is a circulating library, as there usually is. The villagers do not come to this shop; they feel that it is a little above them, and they are shy of asking for three pennyworth of writing-paper and envelopes. If they look in at the window in passing they see many well-bound books from 5s. to 10s., some of the more reputable novels, and educational manuals. The first they cannot afford; for the second they have not yet acquired the taste; the last repel them. This bookseller, though of course quite of a different stamp, and a man of business, would probably also declare that the villagers do not read. They do not come to him, and he is too busy to sit down and think about it. The other stationer's is a more humble establishment, where they sell cheap toys, Berlin wool, the weekly London papers with tales in them, and so on. The villagers who get as far as this more central town call here for their cheap stationery, their weekly London novelette, or tin trumpets for the children. But here, again, they do not order books, and rarely buy those displayed, for exactly the same reason as in the lesser village towns. The shopkeeper does not understand what they want, and they cannot tell him. They would know if they saw it; but till they see it they do not know themselves. There is no medium between the villager who wants to read and the books he would like. There is no machinery between the villager who wants to read and the London publisher. The villager is in utter ignorance of the books in the publisher's warehouse in London. The villager who has just begun to read is in a position almost incomprehensible to a Londoner. The latter has seen books, books, books from boyhood always around him. He cannot walk down a street, enter an omnibus, go on a platform without having books thrust under his eyes. Advertisements a yard high glare at him from every hoarding, railway arch, and end-house facing a thoroughfare. In tunnels underground, on the very roofs above, book advertisements press upon his notice. It is impossible to avoid seeing them, even if he would. Books are everywhere--at home, at the reading-room, on the way to business; and on his return it is books, books, books. He buys a weekly paper, and book advertisements, book reviews, occupy a large part of it. Buy what sort of print he will--and he is always buying some sort from mere habit--books are pushed on him. If he is at all a student, or takes an interest--and what educated Londoner does not?--in some political, scientific, or other question, he is constantly on the watch for publications bearing upon it. He subscribes to or sees a copy of one or other of the purely literary papers devoted to the examination of books, and has not the slightest difficulty in finding what he wants; the reviews tell him precisely the thing he requires to know, whether the volume will suit him or not. The reading Londoner is thus in constant contact with the publisher, as much as if the publisher spoke to him across the breakfast table. But the villager has never heard the publisher's name; the villager never sees a literary review; he has never heard, or, if so, so casually as not to remember, the name of any literary paper describing books. When he gets hold of a London paper, the parts which attract him are certainly not the advertisements; if he sees a book advertised there, it is by chance. Besides which, the advertisements in London papers are, from necessity of cost, only useful to those who frequently purchase books or have some reason for keeping an eye on those that appear. There are thousands of books on publishers' shelves which have been advertised, of course, but are not now ever put in the papers. So that when the villager gets a London paper, as he does now much more frequently, the advertisements, if he sees them, are not designed for his eye and do not attract him. He never sees a gaudy poster stuck on the side of the barn; there are no glazed frames with advertisements in the sheds or hung on the trees; the ricks are not covered, like the walls of the London railway stations, with book advertisements, nor are they conspicuous on the waggons as they are on the omnibuses. When he walks down the village there are no broad windows piled with books higher than his head--books with the backs towards him, books with the ornamented cover towards him, books temptingly open at an illustration: nothing of the sort. There is not a book to be seen. Some few books are advertised in the local press and receive notices--only a few, and these generally of a class too expensive for him. Books of real value are usually dear when first published. If he goes to a stationer's, as already pointed out, for a few sheets of writing paper and a packet of envelopes, he sees nothing displayed there to tempt him. Lastly, he hears no talking about books. Perhaps the most effective of all advertisements in selling a book is conversation. If people hear other people continually alluding to, or quoting, or arguing about a book, they say, "We must have it;" and they do have it. Conversation is the very life of literature. Now, the villager never hears anybody talk about a book. III THE VILLAGER'S TASTE IN READING The villager could not even write down what he would like to read, not yet having reached the stage when the mind turns inwards to analyse itself. If you unexpectedly put a boy with a taste for reading in a large library and leave him to himself, he is at a loss which way to turn or what to take from the shelves. He proceeds by experiment, looking at cover after cover, half pulling out one, turning over a few leaves of another, peeping into this, and so on, till something seizes his imagination, when he will sit down on the steps at once instead of walking across the room to the luxurious easy-chair. The world of books is to the villager far more unknown than to the boy in the library, who has the books before him, while the villager looks into vacancy. What the villager would like can only be gathered from a variety of little indications which hint at the unconscious wishes of his mind. First, the idea that he would require something easy and simple like a horn-book or primer must be dismissed. Villagers are not so simple by any means. Nor do they need something written in the plainest language, specially chosen, as words of one syllable are for children. What is designed for the village must not be written down to it. The village will reject rice and corn-flour--it will only accept strong meat. The subject must be strong, the manner strong, and the language powerful. Like the highest and most cultured minds--for extremes meet--the intelligence of the villagers naturally approves the best literature. Those authors whose works have a world-wide reputation (though totally unknown by name in hamlets sixty miles from London) would be the most popular. Their antiquity matters nothing; they would be new in the hamlet. When a gentleman furnishes a library he chooses representative authors--what are called library-books--first, forming a solid groundwork to the collection. These are the very volumes the country would like. Every one when first exploring the world of books, and through them the larger world of reality, is attracted by travels and voyages. These are peculiarly interesting to country people, to whom the idea of exploration is natural. Reading such a book is like coming to a hill and seeing a fresh landscape spread out before them. There are no museums in the villages to familiarise them with the details of life in distant parts of the earth, so that every page as it is turned over brings something new. They understand the hardships of existence, hard food, exposure, the struggle with the storm, and can enter into the anxieties and privations of the earlier voyagers searching out the coast of America. They would rather read these than the most exciting novels. If they could get geography, without degrees of longitude, geography, or rather ethnography, which deals with the ways of the inhabitants, they would be delighted. All such facts being previously unknown come with the novelty of fiction. Sport, where it battles with the tigers of India, the lions of Africa, or the buffalo in America--with large game--is sure to be read with interest. There does not appear to be much demand for history, other than descriptions of great battles, not for history in the modern sense. A good account of a battle, of the actual fighting without the political movements that led to it, is eagerly read. Almost perhaps more than all these the wonders of science draw country readers. If a little book containing an intelligible and non-technical description of the electric railway were offered in the villages, it would be certain to sell. But it must not be educational in tone, because they dislike to feel that they are being taught, and they are repelled by books which profess to show the reader how to do this or that. Technical books are unsuitable; and as for the goody-goody, it is out of the question. Most of the reading-rooms started in villages by well-meaning persons have failed from the introduction of goody-goody. These are the principal subjects which the villager would select or avoid had he the opportunity to make a choice. As it is, he has to take what chance brings him, and often to be content with nothing, because he does not know what to ask for. If any one ever takes up the task of supplying the country with the sound and thoroughly first-class literature for which it is now ready, he will at least have the certain knowledge that he is engaged in a most worthy propaganda--with the likelihood of a large pecuniary reward. Such profits must of necessity be slow in the beginning, as they are in all new businesses, but they would also be slow in working off. It is a peculiarity of the country to be loyal. If country people believe in a bank, for instance--and they always believe in the first bank that comes among them--they continue to believe, and no effort whatever is necessary to keep the connection. It will be generations in dying out. So with a newspaper, so with an auctioneer--with everything. That which comes first is looked on with suspicion and distrust for a time, people are chary of having anything to do with it; but by-and-by they deal, and, having once dealt, always deal. They remain loyal; competition is of no use, the old name is the one believed in. Whoever acquires a name for the supply of the literature the country wants will retain that name for three-quarters of a century, and with a minimum of labour. At the same time the extent of country is so large that there is certainly room for several without clashing. In working out a scheme for such a supply, it may be taken for granted that books intended for the villages must be cheap. When we consider the low prices at which reprinted books, the copyrights of which have expired, are now often met with, there really seems no difficulty in this. Sixpence, a shilling, eighteenpence; nothing must be more than two shillings, and a shilling should be the general maximum. For a shilling how many clever little books are on sale on London bookstalls! If so, why should not other books adapted to the villager's wishes be on sale at a similar price in the country? Something might, perhaps, be learned in this direction from the American practice. Books in America are often sold for a few cents; good-sized books too. Thousands of books are sold in France at a franc--twopence less than the maximum of a shilling. The paper is poor, the printing nothing to boast of, the binding merely paper, but the text is there. All the villager wants is the text. Binding, the face of the printing, the quality of the paper--to these outside accidents he is perfectly indifferent. If the text only is the object, a book can be produced cheaply. On first thoughts, it appeared that much might be effected in the way of reprinting extracts from the best authors, little handbooks which could be sold at a few pence. Something, indeed, might be done in this way. But upon the whole I think that as a general rule extracts are a mistake. There is nothing so unsatisfactory as an extract. You cannot supply the preceding part nor the following with success. The extract itself loses its force and brilliance because the mind has not been prepared to perceive it by the gradual approach the author designed. It is like a face cut out of a large picture. The face may be pretty, but the meaning is lost. Such fragments of Shakspeare, for instance, as one sometimes still meets with reprinted in this way strike the mind like a fragment of rock hurled at one's head. They stun with rugged grandeur. As a rule, extracts, then, are a mistake--not as a rigid rule, but as a general principle. It would be better for the village reader to have a few books complete as to text, no matter how poorly printed, or how coarsely got up, than numerous partial reprints which lead the thoughts nowhere. There must be no censorship, nothing kept back. The weakness and narrowness of mind which still exists--curious relic of the past--among some otherwise worthy classes who persist in thinking no one must read what they dislike, must not be permitted to domineer the village bookstall. There must be absolute freedom, or the villager will turn away. His mind, though open to receive, is robust like his body, and will not accept shackles. The propaganda should be of the best productions of the highest intellects, independent of creed and party. A practical difficulty arises from the copyrights; you cannot reprint a book of which the copyright still exists without injury to the original publisher and the author. But there are many hundred books of the very best order of which the copyright has expired, and which can be reprinted without injury to any one. Then there are the books which it may be presumed would be compiled on purpose for the object in view when once the scheme was in working order. Thirdly, it is probable that many living authors when about publishing a volume would not object to an arrangement for a production in cheap form after a reasonable time. So that there is no such difficulty here but that it might be overcome. IV PLAN OF DISTRIBUTION When you have got your village library ready, how is it to be sold? How is it to be distributed and placed in the hands of the people? How are these people to be got at? They are scattered far apart, and not within sound of trumpet. Travellers, indeed, could be sent round, but travellers cost money. There is the horse and the man to attend to it, turnpikes, repairs, hotels--all the various expenses so well known in business. Each traveller could only call on a certain number of cottages and country houses per day, comparatively a small number, for they are often at long distances from each other; possibly he might find the garden gate locked and the people in the field. At the best after a long day's work he would only have sold a few dozen cheap books, and his inn bill would cover the profit upon them. Reduced thus to the rigid test of figures, the chance of success vanishes. But so, too, does the chance of success in any enterprise if looked at in this fashion. It must be borne in mind that the few copies of a cheap book sold in a day by a single traveller would not represent the ultimate possible return. The traveller prepares the ground which may yield a hundredfold afterwards. He awakens the demand and shows how it can be supplied. He teaches the villager what he wants, and how to get it. He lays the foundation of business in the future. The few pence he actually receives are the forerunners of pounds. Nothing can be accomplished without preliminary outlay. But conceding that the regulation traveller is a costly instrument, and putting that method upon one side for the present, there are other means available. There is the post. The post is a far more powerful disseminator in the country than in town. A townsman picks up twenty letters, snatches the envelopes open, and casts them aside. The letters delivered in the country have marvellously multiplied, but still country people do not treat letters offhand. The arrival of a letter or two is still an event; it is read twice or three times, put in the pocket, and looked at again. Suburban residents receive circulars by every other post of every kind and description, and cast them contemptuously aside. In the country the delivery of a circular is not so treated. It is certain to be read. Nothing may come of it, but it is certain to be looked over, and more than once. It will be left on the table, or be folded up and put on the mantelpiece: it will not be destroyed. Country people have not yet got into the habit which may be called slur-reading. They really read. The circulars at present delivered in the country are counted by ones and twos where suburban residents get scores and fifties. Almost the only firms who have found out the value of circulars in the country are the great drapery establishments, and their enterprise is richly rewarded. The volume of business thus transacted and brought to the London house by the circular is enormous. There are very few farmhouses in the country which do not contribute orders once or twice a year. Very many families get all their materials in this way, far cheaper, better, and more novel than those on sale in the country towns. Here, then, is a powerful lever ready to the hand of the publisher. Every circular sent to a country house will be read--not slurred--and will ultimately yield a return. Cottagers never receive a circular at all. If a circular came to a cottage by post it would be read and re-read, folded up neatly, and preserved. After a time--for an advertisement is exactly like seed sown in the ground--something would be done. Some incident would happen, and it would be remembered that there was something about it in the circular--some book that dealt with the subject. There is business directly. The same post that brought the original circular, distributing knowledge of books, can bring the book itself. Those who understand the importance attached by country people, and especially by cottagers, to anything that comes by post, will see the use of the circular, which must be regarded as the most effective means of reaching the rural population. Next in value to the circular is the poster. The extent to which posters are used in London, which contains a highly educated population, is proof sufficient of its utility as a disseminator. But in the country the poster has never yet been resorted to as an aid to the bookseller. The auctioneers have found out its importance, and their bills are freely dispersed in every nook and corner. There are no keener men, and they know from experience that it is the cheapest way of advertising sales. Their posters are everywhere--on walls, gate-posts, sign-posts, barns, in the bars of wayside inns. The local drapers in the market towns resort to the poster when they have a sale at "vastly reduced" prices, sending round the bill-sticker to remote hamlets and mere settlements of two or three houses. They, too, know its value, and that by it customers are attracted from the most outlying places. People in villages and hamlets pass the greater part of their time out-of-doors and are in no hurry, so that if in walking down the road to or from their work they see a bill stuck upon a wall, they invariably stop to read it. People on the London railway platforms rather blink the posters displayed around them: they would rather avoid them, though they cannot altogether. It is just the reverse in the hamlet, where the inhabitants lead such monotonous lives, and have so little excitement that a fresh poster is a good subject for conversation. No matter where you put a poster, somebody will read it, and it is only next in value to the circular, appealing to the public as the circular appeals to the individual. Here are two methods of reaching the country and of disseminating a knowledge of books other than the employment of expensive travellers. Even if travellers be called in, circular and poster should precede their efforts. There is then the advertisement column of the local press. The local press has never been used for the advertisement of such books as are suitable to country readers, certainly not for the class hitherto chiefly borne in view and for convenience designated villager. The reason why such books have not been advertised in the local press is probably because the authors and publishers had no idea of the market that exists in the country. For the most part readers in town and the suburbs only glance at the exciting portions of papers, and then cast them aside. Readers in the villages read every line from the first column to the last, from the title to the printer's address. The local papers are ploughed steadily through, just as the horses plough the fields, and every furrow conscientiously followed from end to end, advertisements and all. The brewer's, the grocer's, the draper's, the ironmonger's advertisements (market-town tradesmen), which have been there month after month, are all read, and the slightest change immediately noted. If there were any advertisement of books suitable to their taste it would be read in exactly the same manner. But in advertising for country people one fact must be steadily borne in mind--that they are slow to act; that is, the advertisement must be permanent. A few insertions are forgotten before those who have seen them have made up their minds to purchase. When an advertisement is always there, by-and-by the thought suggested acts on the will, and the stray coin is invested--it may be six months after the first inclination arose. The procrastination of country people is inexplicable to hurrying London men. But it is quite useless to advertise unless it is taken into account. If permanent, an advertisement in the local press will reach its mark. It is this permanency which gives another value to the circular and the poster; the circular is folded up and preserved to be looked at again like a book of reference; the poster remains on the dry wall of the barn, and the ink is legible months after it was first put up. Having now informed the hamlets of the books which are in existence, if complete success is desired, the next step should be to put specimens of those books before the eyes of the residents. To read of them, to know that they exist, and then to actually see them--as Londoners see them in every street--is a logical process leading to purchases. As already pointed out, there are little shops in every village and hamlet where the local paper can be obtained which would gladly expose books for sale if the offer were made to them. The same remark applies to the shops in the market towns. These, too, require to be supplied; they require the thing explained to them, and they would at once try it. Finally, let a traveller once now and then come along, and call at these shops to wake up and stir the business and change the face of the counter. Let him while in the hamlet also call at as many houses and cottages as he can manage in a few hours, leaving circulars--always circulars--behind him. There would then be a complete system of supply. SUNLIGHT IN A LONDON SQUARE [Footnote: The sunlight and the winds enter London, and the life of the fields is there too, if you will but see it.] There are days now and again when the summer broods in Trafalgar Square; the flood of light from a cloudless sky gathers and grows, thickening the air; the houses enclose the beams as water is enclosed in a cup. Sideways from the white-painted walls light is reflected; upwards from the broad, heated pavement in the centre light and heat ascend; from the blue heaven it presses downwards. Not only from the sun--one point--but from the entire width of the visible blue the brilliant stream flows. Summer is enclosed between the banks of houses--all summer's glow and glory of exceeding brightness. The blue panel overhead has but a stray fleck of cloud, a Cupid drawn on the panel in pure white, but made indefinite by distance. The joyous swallows climb high into the illuminated air till the eye, daunted by the glow, can scarce detect their white breasts as they turn. Slant shadows from the western side give but a margin of contrast; the rays are reflected through them, and they are only shadows of shadows. At the edges their faint sloping lines are seen in the air, where a million motes impart a fleeting solidity to the atmosphere. A pink-painted front, the golden eagle of the great West, golden lettering, every chance strip and speck of colour is washed in the dazzling light, made clear and evident. The hands and numerals of the clock yonder are distinct and legible, the white dial-plate polished; a window suddenly opened throws a flash across the square. Eastwards the air in front of the white walls quivers, heat and light reverberating visibly, and the dry flowers on the window-sills burn red and yellow in the glare. Southwards green trees, far down the street, stand, as it seems, almost at the foot of the chiselled tower of Parliament--chiselled in straight lines and perpendicular grooves, each of which casts a shadow into itself. Again, the corners advanced before the main wall throw shadows on it, and the hollow casements draw shadows into their cavities. Thus, in the bright light against the blue sky the tower pencils itself with a dark crayon, and is built, not of stone, but of light and shadow. Flowing lines of water rise and fall from the fountains in the square, drooping like the boughs of a weeping ash, drifted a little to one side by an imperceptible air, and there sprinkling the warm pavement in a sparkling shower. The shower of finely divided spray now advances and now retreats, as the column of water bends to the current of air, or returns to its upright position. By a pillared gateway there is a group in scarlet, and from time to time other groups in scarlet pass and repass within the barrack-court. A cream-tinted dress, a pink parasol--summer hues--go by in the stream of dark-clothed people; a flower fallen on the black water of a river. Either the light subdues the sound, or perhaps rather it renders the senses slumberous and less sensitive, but the great sunlit square is silent--silent, that is, for the largest city on earth. A slumberous silence of abundant light, of the full summer day, of the high flood of summer hours whose tide can rise no higher. A time to linger and dream under the beautiful breast of heaven, heaven brooding and descending in pure light upon man's handiwork. If the light shall thus come in, and of its mere loveliness overcome every aspect of dreariness, why shall not the light of thought, and hope--the light of the soul--overcome and sweep away the dust of our lives? I stood under the portico of the National Gallery in the shade looking southwards, across the fountains and the lions, towards the green trees under the distant tower. Once a swallow sang in passing on the wing, garrulous still as in the time of old Rome and Augustan Virgil. From the high pediments dropped the occasional chatter of sparrows and the chirp of their young in the roofs. The second brood, they were late; they would not be in time for the harvest and the fields of stubble. A flight of blue pigeons rose from the central pavement to the level line of the parapet of the western houses. A starling shot across the square, swift, straight, resolute. I looked for the swifts, but they had gone, earliest of all to leave our sky for distant countries. Away in the harvest field the reaper, pausing in his work, had glanced up at the one stray fleck of cloud in the sky, which to my fancy might be a Cupid on a blue panel, and seeing it smiled in the midst of the corn, wiping his blackened face, for he knew it meant dry weather. Heat, and the dust of the straw, the violent labour had darkened his face from brown almost to blackness--a more than swarthiness, a blackness. The stray cloud was spreading out in filaments, each thread drawn to a fineness that ended presently in disappearance. It was a sign to him of continued sunshine and the prosperity of increased wages. The sun from whose fiery brilliance I escaped into the shadow was to him a welcome friend; his neck was bare to the fierceness of the sun. His heart was gladdened because the sky promised him permission to labour till the sinews of his fingers stiffened in their crooked shape (as they held the reaping-hook), and he could hardly open them to grasp the loaf he had gained. So men laboured of old time, whether with plough or sickle or pruning-hook, in the days when Augustan Virgil heard the garrulous swallow, still garrulous. An endless succession of labour, under the brightness of summer, under the gloom of winter; to my thought it is a sadness even in the colour and light and glow of this hour of sun, this ceaseless labour, repeating the furrow, reiterating the blow, the same furrow, the same stroke--shall we never know how to lighten it, how to live with the flowers, the swallows, the sweet delicious shade, and the murmur of the stream? Not the blackened reaper only, but the crowd whose low hum renders the fountain inaudible, the nameless and unknown crowd of this immense city wreathed round about the central square. I hope that at some time, by dint of bolder thought and freer action, the world shall see a race able to enjoy it without stint, a race able to enjoy the flowers with which the physical world is strewn, the colours of the garden of life. To look backwards with the swallow there is sadness, to-day with the fleck of cloud there is unrest; but forward, with the broad sunlight, there is hope. Except you see these colours, and light, and tones, except you see the blue heaven over the parapet, you know not, you cannot feel, how great are the possibilities of man. At my back, within the gallery, there is many a canvas painted under Italian skies, in glowing Spain, in bright Southern France. There are scenes lit with the light that gleams on orange grove and myrtle; these are faces tinted with the golden hue that floats in southern air. But yet, if any one impartial will stand here outside, under the portico, and forgetting that it is prosaic London, will look at the summer enclosed within the square, and acknowledge it for itself as it is, he must admit that the view--light and colour, tone and shade--is equal to the painted canvas, is full, as it were, to the brim of interest, suggestion, and delight. Before the painted canvas you stand with prepared mind; you have come to see Italy, you are educated to find colour, and the poetry of tone. Therefore you see it, if it is there. Here in the portico you are unprepared, uneducated; no one has ever given a thought of it. But now trace out the colour and the brightness; gaze up into the sky, watch the swallows, note the sparkle of the fountain, observe the distant tower chiselled with the light and shade. Think, then, of the people, not as mere buyers and sellers, as mere counters, but as human beings--beings possessed of hearts and minds, full of the passions and the hopes and fears which made the ancient poets great merely to record. These are the same passions that were felt in antique Rome, whose very name is a section of human life. There is colour in these lives now as then. VENICE IN THE EAST END The great red bowsprit of an Australian clipper projects aslant the quay. Stem to the shore, the vessel thrusts an outstretched arm high over the land, as an oak in a glade pushes a bare branch athwart the opening. This beam is larger than an entire tree divested of its foliage, such trees, that is, as are seen in English woods. The great oaks might be bigger at the base where they swell and rest themselves on a secure pedestal. Five hundred years old an oak might measure more at six feet, at eight, or ten feet from the ground; after five hundred years, that is, of steady growth. But if even such a monarch were taken, and by some enormous mechanic power drawn out, and its substance elongated into a tapering spar, it would not be massive enough to form this single beam. Where it starts from the stem of the vessel it is already placed as high above the level of the quay as it is from the sward to the first branch of an oak. At its root it starts high overhead, high enough for a trapeze to be slung to it upon which grown persons could practise athletic exercises. From its roots, from the forward end of the deck, the red beam rises at a regular angle, diminishing in size with altitude till its end in comparison with the commencement may be called pointed, though in reality blunt. To the pointed end it would be a long climb; it would need a ladder. The dull red of the vast beam is obscured by the neutral tint of the ropes which are attached to it; colour generally gives a sense of lightness by defining shape, but this red is worn and weatherbeaten, rubbed and battered, so that its uncertain surface adds to the weight of the boom. It hangs, an immense arm thrust across the sky; it is so high it is scarcely noticed in walking under it; it is so great and ponderous, and ultra in size, that the eye and mind alike fail to estimate it. For it is a common effect of great things to be overlooked. A moderately large rock, a moderately large house, is understood and mentally put down, as it were, at a certain figure, but the immense--which is beyond the human--cannot enter the organs of the senses. The portals of the senses are not wide enough to receive it; you must turn your back on it and reflect, and add a little piece of it to another little piece, and so build up your understanding. Human things are small; you live in a large house, but the space you actually occupy is very inconsiderable; the earth itself, great as it is, is overlooked, it is too large to be seen. The eye is accustomed to the little, and cannot in a moment receive the immense. Only by slow comparison with the bulk of oak trees, by the height of a trapeze, by the climbing of a ladder, can I convey to my mind a true estimate and idea of this gigantic bowsprit. It would be quite possible to walk by and never see it because of its size, as one walks by bridges or travels over a viaduct without a thought. The vessel lies with her bowsprit projecting over the quay, moored as a boat run ashore on the quiet sandy beach of a lake, not as a ship is generally placed with her broadside to the quay wall or to the pier. Her stern is yonder--far out in the waters of the dock, too far to concern us much as we look from the verge of the wall. Access to the ship is obtained by a wooden staging running out at the side; instead of the ship lying beside the pier, a pier has been built out to fit to the ship. This plan, contrary to preconceived ideas, is evidently founded on good reason, for if such a vessel were moored broadside to the quay how much space would she take up? There would be, first, the hull itself say eighty yards, and then the immense bowsprit. Two or three such ships would, as it were, fill a whole field of water; they would fill a whole dock; it would not require many to cover a mile. By placing each stem to the quay they only occupy a space equal to their breadth instead of to their length. This arrangement, again, tends to deceive the eye; you might pass by, and, seeing only the bow, casually think there was nothing particular in it. Everything here is on so grand a scale that the largest component part is diminished; the quay, broad enough to build several streets abreast; the square, open stretches of gloomy water; and beyond these the wide river. The wind blows across these open spaces in a broad way--not as it comes in sudden gusts around a street corner, but in a broad open way, each puff a quarter of a mile wide. The view of the sky is open overhead, masts do not obstruct the upward look; the sunshine illumines or the cloud-shadows darken hundreds of acres at once. It is a great plain; a plain of enclosed waters, built in and restrained by the labour of man, and holding upon its surface fleet upon fleet, argosy upon argosy. Masts to the right, masts to the left, masts in front, masts yonder above the warehouses; masts in among the streets as steeples appear amid roofs; masts across the river hung with drooping half-furled sails; masts afar down thin and attenuated, mere dark straight lines in the distance. They await in stillness the rising of the tide. It comes, and at the exact moment--foreknown to a second--the gates are opened, and the world of ships moves outwards to the stream. Downwards they drift to the east, some slowly that have as yet but barely felt the pull of the hawser, others swiftly, and the swifter because their masts cross and pass the masts of inward-bound ships ascending. Two lines of masts, one raking one way, the other the other, cross and puzzle the eye to separate their weaving motion and to assign the rigging to the right vessel. White funnels aslant, dark funnels, red funnels rush between them; white steam curls upwards; there is a hum, a haste, almost a whirl, for the commerce of the world is crowded into the hour of the full tide. These great hulls, these crossing masts a-rake, the intertangled rigging, the background of black barges drifting downwards, the lines and ripple of the water as the sun comes out, if you look too steadily, daze the eyes and cause a sense of giddiness. It is so difficult to realise so much mass--so much bulk--moving so swiftly, and in so intertangled a manner; a mighty dance of thousands of tons--gliding, slipping, drifting onwards, yet without apparent effort. Thousands upon thousands of tons go by like shadows, silently, as if the ponderous hulls had no stability or weight; like a dream they float past, solid and yet without reality. It is a giddiness to watch them. This happens, not on one day only, not one tide, but at every tide and every day the year through, year after year. The bright summer sun glows upon it; the red sun of the frosty hours of winter looks at it from under the deepening canopy of vapour the blasts of the autumnal equinox howl over the vast city and whistle shrilly in the rigging; still at every tide the world of ships moves out into the river. Why does not a painter come here and place the real romance of these things upon canvas, as Venice has been placed? Never twice alike, the changing atmosphere is reflected in the hue of the varnished masts, now gleaming, now dull, now dark. Till it has been painted, and sung by poet, and described by writers, nothing is human. Venice has been made human by poet, painter, and dramatist, yet what was Venice to this--this the Fact of our own day? Two of the caravels of the Doge's fleet, two of Othello's strongest war-ships, could scarcely carry the mast of my Australian clipper. At a guess it is four feet through; it is of iron, tubular; there is room for a winding spiral staircase within it; as for its height, I will not risk a guess at it. Could Othello's war-ships carry it they would consider it a feat, as the bringing of the Egyptian obelisk to London was thought a feat. The petty ripples of the Adriatic, what were they? This red bowsprit at its roots is high enough to suspend a trapeze; at its head a ladder would be required to mount it from the quay; yet by-and-by, when the tide at last comes, and its time arrives to move outwards in the dance of a million tons, this mighty bowsprit, meeting the Atlantic rollers in the Bay of Biscay, will dip and bury itself in foam under the stress of the vast sails aloft. The forty-feet billows of the Pacific will swing these three or four thousand or more tons, this giant hull which must be moored even stem to shore, up and down and side to side as a handful in the grasp of the sea. Now, each night as the clouds part, the north star looks down upon the deck; then, the Southern Cross will be visible in the sky, words quickly written, but half a globe apart. What was there in Venice to arouse thoughts such as spring from the sight of this red bowsprit? In two voyages my Australian clipper shall carry as much merchandise as shall equal the entire commerce of Venice for a year. Yet it is not the volume, not the bulk only; cannot you see the white sails swelling, and the proud vessel rising to the Pacific billows, the north star sinking, and the advent of the Southern Cross; the thousand miles of ocean without land around, the voyage through space made visible as sea, the far, far south, the transit around a world? If Italian painters had had such things as these to paint, if poets of old time had had such things as these to sing, do you imagine they would have been contented with crank caravels and tales thrice told already? They had eyes to see that which was around them. Open your eyes and see those things which are around us at this hour. THE PIGEONS AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM The front of the British Museum stands in the sunlight clearly marked against the firm blue of the northern sky. The blue appears firm as if solid above the angle of the stonework, for while looking towards it--towards the north--the rays do not come through the azure, which is therefore colour without life. It seems nearer than the southern sky, it descends and forms a close background to the building; as you approach you seem to come nearer to the blue surface rising at its rear. The dark edges of sloping stone are distinct and separate, but not sharp; the hue of the stone is toned by time and weather, and is so indefinite as to have lost its hardness. Those small rounded bodies upon the cornice are pigeons resting in the sun, so motionless and neutral-tinted that they might be mistaken for some portion of the carving. A double gilt ring, a circle in a circle, at the feet of an allegorical figure gleams brightly against the dark surface. The sky already seems farther away seen between the boles of stone, perpetual shade dwells in their depth, but two or three of the pigeons fluttering down are searching for food on the sunlit gravel at the bottom of the steps. To them the building is merely a rock, pierced with convenient caverns; they use its exterior for their purpose, but penetrate no farther. With air and light, the sunlit gravel, the green lawn between it and the outer railings--with these they are concerned, and with these only. The heavy roll of the traffic in Oxford Street, audible here, is nothing to them; the struggle for money does not touch them, they let it go by. Nor the many minds searching and re-searching in the great Library, this mental toil is no more to them than the lading of the waggons in the street. Neither the tangible product nor the intellectual attainment is of any value--only the air and light. There are idols in the galleries within upon whose sculptured features the hot Eastern sun shone thousands of years since. They were made by human effort, however mistaken, and they were the outcome of human thought and handiwork. The doves fluttered about the temples in those days, full only of the air and light. They fluttered about the better temples of Greece and round the porticos where philosophy was born. Still only the light, the sunlight, the air of heaven. We labour on and think, and carve our idols and the pen never ceases from its labour; but the lapse of the centuries has left us in the same place. The doves who have not laboured nor travailed in thought possess the sunlight. Is not theirs the preferable portion? The shade deepens as I turn from the portico to the hall and vast domed house of books. The half-hearted light under the dome is stagnant and dead. For it is the nature of light to beat and throb; it has a pulse and undulation like the swing of the sea. Under the trees in the woodlands it vibrates and lives; on the hills there is a resonance of light. It beats against every leaf, and, thrown back, beats again; it is agitated with the motion of the grass blades; you can feel it ceaselessly streaming on your face. It is renewed and fresh every moment, and never twice do you see the same ray. Stayed and checked by the dome and book-built walls, the beams lose their elasticity, and the ripple ceases in the motionless pool. The eyes, responding, forget to turn quickly, and only partially see. Deeper thought and inspiration quit the heart, for they can only exist where the light vibrates and communicates its tone to the soul. If any imagine they shall find thought in many books, certainly they will be disappointed. Thought dwells by the stream and sea, by the hill and in the woodland, in the sunlight and free wind, where the wild dove haunts. Walls and roof shut it off as they shut off the undulation of light. The very lightning cannot penetrate here. A murkiness marks the coming of the cloud, and the dome becomes vague, but the fierce flash is shorn to a pale reflection, and the thunder is no more than the rolling of a heavier truck loaded with tomes. But in closing out the sky, with it is cut off all that the sky can tell you with its light, or in its passion of storm. Sitting at these long desks and trying to read, I soon find that I have made a mistake; it is not here I shall find that which I seek. Yet the magic of books draws me here time after time, to be as often disappointed. Something in a book tempts the mind as pictures tempt the eye; the eye grows weary of pictures, but looks again. The mind wearies of books, yet cannot forget that once when they were first opened in youth they gave it hope of knowledge. Those first books exhausted, there is nothing left but words and covers. It seems as if all the books in the world--really books--can be bought for L10. Man's whole thought is purchaseable at that small price, for the value of a watch, of a good dog. For the rest it is repetition and paraphrase. The grains of wheat were threshed out and garnered two thousand years since. Except the receipts of chemists, except specifications for the steam-engine, or the electric motor, there is nothing in these millions of books that was not known at the commencement of our era. Not a thought has been added. Continual threshing has widened out the heap of straw and spread it abroad, but it is empty. Nothing will ever be found in it. Those original grains of true thought were found beside the stream, the sea, in the sunlight, at the shady verge of woods. Let us leave this beating and turning over of empty straw; let us return to the stream and the hills; let us ponder by night in view of the stars. It is pleasant to go out again into the portico under the great columns. On the threshold I feel nearer knowledge than when within. The sun shines, and southwards above the houses there is a statue crowning the summit of some building. The figure is in the midst of the light; it stands out clear and white as if in Italy. The southern blue is luminous--the beams of light flow through it--the air is full of the undulation and life of light. There is rest in gazing at the sky: a sense that wisdom does exist and may be found, a hope returns that was taken away among the books. The green lawn is pleasant to look at, though it is mown so ruthlessly. If they would only let the grass spring up, there would be a thought somewhere entangled in the long blades as a dewdrop sparkles in their depths. Seats should be placed here, under the great columns or by the grass, so that one might enjoy the sunshine after books and watch the pigeons. They have no fear of the people, they come to my feet, but the noise of a door heavily swinging-to in the great building alarms them; they rise and float round, and return again. The sunlight casts a shadow of the pigeon's head and neck upon his shoulder; he turns his head, and the shadow of his beak falls on his breast. Iridescent gleams of bronze and green and blue play about his neck; blue predominates. His pink feet step so near, the red round his eye is visible. As he rises vertically, forcing his way in a straight line upwards, his wings almost meet above his back and again beneath the body; they are put forth to his full stroke. When his flight inclines and becomes gradually horizontal, the effort is less and the wing tips do not approach so closely. They have not laboured in mental searching as we have; they have not wasted their time looking among empty straw for the grain that is not there. They have been in the sunlight. Since the days of ancient Greece the doves have remained in the sunshine; we who have laboured have found nothing. In the sunshine, by the shady verge of woods, by the sweet waters where the wild dove sips, there alone will thought be found. THE PLAINEST CITY IN EUROPE The fixed perspective of Paris neither elongates nor contracts with any change of atmosphere, so that the apparent distance from one point to another remains always the same. Reduced to the simplest elements the street architecture of Paris consists of two parallel lines, which to the eye appear to gradually converge. In sunshine and shade the sides of the street approach in an unvarying ratio; a cloud goes over, and the lines do not soften; brilliant light succeeds, and is merely light--no effect accompanies it. The architecture conquers, and is always architecture; it resists the sun, the air, the rain, being without expression. The geometry of the street can never be forgotten. Moving along it you have merely advanced so far along a perspective, between the two lines which tutors rule to teach drawing. By-and-by, when you reach the other end and look back, the perspective is accurately reversed. This is now the large end of the street, and that which has been left the small. The houses seen from this end present precisely the same facade as they did at starting, so that were it not for the sense of weariness from walking it would be easy to imagine that no movement had taken place. Each house is exactly the same height as the next, the windows are of the same pattern, the wooden outer blinds the same shape; the line of the level roof runs along straight and unbroken, the chimneys are either invisible or insignificant. Nothing projects, no bow window, balcony, or gable; the surface is as flat as well can be. From parapet to pavement the wall descends plumb, and the glance slips along it unchecked. Each house is exactly the same colour as the next, white; the wooden outer blinds are all the same colour, a dull grey; in the windows there are no visible red, or green, or tapestry curtains, mere sashes. There are no flowers in the windows to catch the sunlight. The upper storeys have the air of being uninhabited, as the windows have no curtains whatever, and the wooden blinds are frequently closed. Two flat vertical surfaces, one on each side of the street, each white and grey, extend onwards and approach in mathematical ratio. That is a Parisian street. Go on now to the next street, and you find precisely the same conditions repeated--the streets that cross are similar, those that radiate the same. Some are short, others long, some wide, some narrow; they are all geometry and white paint. The vast avenues, a rifle-shot across, such as the Avenue de l'Opera, differ only in width and in the height of the houses. The monotony of these gigantic houses is too great to be expressed. Then across the end of the avenue they throw some immense facade--some public building, an opera-house, a palace, a ministry, anything will do--in order that you shall see nothing but Paris. Weary of the gigantic monotony of the gigantic houses, exactly alike, your eye shall not catch a glimpse of some distant cloud rising like a snowy mountain (as Japanese artists show the top of Fusiyama); you shall not see the breadth of the sky, nor even any steeple, tower, dome, or gable; you shall see nothing but Paris; the avenue is wide enough for the Grand Army to march down, but the exit to the eye is blocked by this immense meaningless facade drawn across it. No doubt it is executed in the "highest style"; in effect it appears a repetition of windows, columns, and doorways exactly alike, all quite meaningless, for the columns support nothing, like the fronts sold in boxes of children's toy bricks. Perhaps on the roof there is some gilding, and you ask yourself the question why it is there. These facades, of which there are so many, vary in detail; in effect they are all the same, an utter weariness to the eye. Every fresh day's research into the city brings increasing disappointment, a sense of the childish, of feebleness, and weakness exhibited in public, as if they had built in sugar for the top of a cake. The level ground will not permit of any advantage of view; there are none of those sudden views so common and so striking in English towns. Everything is planed, smoothed, and set to an oppressive regularity. Turning round a corner one comes suddenly on a pillar of a dingy, dull hue, whose outline bulges unpleasantly. In London you would shrug your shoulders, mutter "hideous!" and pass on. This is the famous Vendome Column. As for the Column of July, it is so insignificant, so silly (no other word expresses it so well), that a second glance is carefully avoided. The Hotel de Ville, a vast white building, is past description, it is so plain and so repellent in its naked glaring assertion. From about old Notre Dame they have removed every medieval outwork which had grown up around and rendered it lifelike; it now rises perpendicular and abrupt from the white surface of the square. Unless you had been told that it was the Notre Dame of Victor Hugo you would not look at its exterior twice. The interior is another matter. In external form Notre Dame cannot enter into competition with Canterbury. The barrack-like Hotel des Invalides, the tomb of Napoleon--was ever a tomb so miserably lacking in all that should inspire a reverential feeling? The marble tub in which the urn is sunk, the gilded chapel, and the yellow windows--could anything be more artificial and less appropriate? They jar on the senses, they insult the torn flags which were carried by the veterans at Austerlitz, and which now droop, never again to be unfurled to the wind of battle. The tiny Seine might as well flow in a tunnel, being bridged so much. There remains but the Arc de Triomphe, the only piece of architecture in all modern Paris worth a second look. Even this is spoiled by the same intolerable artificiality. The ridiculous sculpture on the face, the figures blowing trumpets, and, above all, the group on the summit, which the tongue of man cannot describe, so utterly hideous is it, destroy the noble lines of the arch, if any one is so imprudent as to approach near it. Receding down the Avenue Friedland--somewhat aslant--the chestnut trees presently conceal the side sculpture; and then by tilting one's hat so that the brim shall hide the group on the summit, it is possible to admire the proportions of the Arc. In the Tuileries gardens there is a spot where distance obliterates the sculpture, and the projecting bough of an elm conceals the group on the top. Here the arch appears noble; but it is no longer French; it is now merely a copy of a Roman original, which any of our own architects could erect for us in Hyde Park. For the most part the vaunted Boulevards are but planted with planes, the least pleasing of trees, whose leaves present an unvarying green, till they drop a dead brown; and the horse-chestnuts in the Champs Elysees are set in straight lines to repeat the geometry of the streets. Thus central Paris has no character. It is without individuality and expressionless. Suppose you said, "The human face is really very irregular; it requires shaping. This nose projects; here, let us flatten it to the level of the cheek. This mouth curves at the corners; let us cut it straight. These eyebrows arch; make them straight. This colour is too flesh-like; bring white paint. Besides, the features move, they laugh, they assume sadness; this is wrong. Here, divide the muscles, that they may hence forth remain in unvarying rigidity." That is what has been done to Paris. It is made straight; it is idealised after Euclid; it is stiff, wearisome, and feeble. Lastly, it has no expression. The distances as observed at the commencement remain always the same, partly because of the obtrusive geometry and the monotony, partly because of the whiteness, and partly because of the peculiarity of the atmosphere, for which of course the Parisian is not responsible, but should have remembered in building. Advantage might surely have been taken of so clear an air in some manner. The colour and tone, the light and shade, the change and variety of London are entirely wanting; in short, Paris is the plainest city in Europe. 
7055	----	GONE TO EARTH by Mary Webb 1917 [Dedication] _To him whose presence is home._ Chapter 1 Small feckless clouds were hurried across the vast untroubled sky--shepherdless, futile, imponderable--and were torn to fragments on the fangs of the mountains, so ending their ephemeral adventures with nothing of their fugitive existence left but a few tears. It was cold in the Callow--a spinney of silver birches and larches that topped a round hill. A purple mist hinted of buds in the tree-tops, and a fainter purple haunted the vistas between the silver and brown boles. Only the crudeness of youth was here as yet, and not its triumph--only the sharp calyx-point, the pricking tip of the bud, like spears, and not the paten of the leaf, the chalice of the flower. For as yet spring had no flight, no song, but went like a half-fledged bird, hopping tentatively through the undergrowth. The bright springing mercury that carpeted the open spaces had only just hung out its pale flowers, and honeysuckle leaves were still tongues of green fire. Between the larch boles and under the thickets of honeysuckle and blackberry came a tawny silent form, wearing with the calm dignity of woodland creatures a beauty of eye and limb, a brilliance of tint, that few-women could have worn without self-consciousness. Clear-eyed, lithe, it stood for a moment in the full sunlight--a year-old fox, round-headed and velvet-footed. Then it slid into the shadows. A shrill whistle came from the interior of the wood, and the fox bounded towards it. 'Where you bin? You'm stray and lose yourself, certain sure!' said a girl's voice, chidingly motherly. 'And if you'm alost, I'm alost; so come you whome. The sun's undering, and there's bones for supper!' With that she took to her heels, the little fox after her, racing down the Callow in the cold level light till they came to the Woodus's cottage. Hazel Woodus, to whom the fox belonged, had always lived at the Callow. There her mother, a Welsh gipsy, had born her in bitter rebellion, hating marriage and a settled life and Abel Woodus as a wild cat hates a cage. She was a rover, born for the artist's joy and sorrow, and her spirit found no relief for its emotions; for it was dumb. To the linnet its flight, to the thrush its song; but she had neither flight nor song. Yet the tongueless thrush is a thrush still, and has golden music in its heart. The caged linnet may sit moping, but her soul knows the dip and rise of flight on an everlasting May morning. All the things she felt and could not say, all the stored honey, the black hatred, the wistful homesickness for the unfenced wild--all that other women would have put into their prayers, she gave to Hazel. The whole force of her wayward heart flowed into the softly beating heart of her baby. It was as if she passionately flung the life she did not value into the arms of her child. When Hazel was fourteen she died, leaving her treasure--an old, dirty, partially illegible manuscript-book of spells and charms and other gipsy lore--to her daughter. Her one request was that she might be buried in the Callow under the yellow larch needles, and not in a churchyard. Abel Woodus did as she asked, and was regarded askance by most of the community for not burying her in Chrissen-ground. But this did not trouble him. He had his harp still, and while he had that he needed no other friend. It had been his absorption in his music that had prevented him understanding his wife, and in the early days of their marriage she had been wildly jealous of the tall gilt harp with its faded felt cover that stood in the corner of the living-room. Then her jealousy changed to love of it, and her one desire was to be able to draw music from its plaintive strings. She could never master even the rudiments of music, but she would sit on rainy evenings when Abel was away and run her thin hands over the strings with a despairing passion of grieving love. Yet she could not bear to hear Abel play. Just as some childless women with all their accumulated stores of love cannot bear to see a mother with her child, so Maray Woodus, with her sealed genius, her incapacity for expression, could not bear to hear the easy self-expression of another. For Abel was in his way a master of his art; he had dark places in his soul, and that is the very core of art and its substance. He had the lissom hands and cheerful self-absorption that bring success. He had met Maray at an Eisteddfod that had been held in days gone by on a hill five miles from the Callow, called God's Little Mountain, and crowned by a chapel. She had listened, swaying and weeping to the surge and lament of his harp, and when he won the harper's prize and laid it in her lap she had consented to be married in the chapel at the end of the Eisteddfod week. That was nineteen years ago, and she was fled like the leaves and the birds of departed summers; but God's Little Mountain still towered as darkly to the eastward; the wind still leapt sheer from the chapel to the young larches of the Callow; nothing had changed at all; only one more young, anxious, eager creature had come into the towering, subluminous scheme of things. Hazel had her mother's eyes, strange, fawn-coloured eyes like water, and in the large clear irises were tawny flecks. In their shy honesty they were akin to the little fox's. Her hair, too, of a richer colour than her father's, was tawny and foxlike, and her ways were graceful and covert as a wild creature's. She stood in the lane above the cottage, which nestled below with its roof on a level with the hedge-roots, and watched the sun dip. The red light from the west stained her torn old dress, her thin face, her eyes, till she seemed to be dipped in blood. The fox, wistfulness in her expression and the consciousness of coming supper in her mind, gazed obediently where her mistress gazed, and was touched with the same fierce beauty. They stood there fronting the crimson pools over the far hills, two small sentient things facing destiny with pathetic courage; they had, in the chill evening on the lonely hill, a look as of those predestined to grief, almost an air of martyrdom. The small clouds that went westward took each in its turn the prevailing colour, and vanished, dipped in blood. From the cottage, as Hazel went down the path, came the faint thrumming of the harp, changing as she reached the door to the air of 'The Ash Grove.' The cottage was very low, one-storied, and roofed with red corrugated iron. The three small windows had frames coloured with washing-blue and frills of crimson cotton within. There seemed scarcely room for even Hazel's small figure. The house was little larger than a good pigsty, and only the trail of smoke from its squat chimney showed that humanity dwelt there. Hazel gave Foxy her supper and put her to bed in the old washtub where she slept. Then she went into the cottage with an armful of logs from the wood heap. She threw them on the open fire. 'I'm a-cold,' she said; 'the rain's cleared, and there'll be a duck's frost to-night.' Abel looked up absently, humming the air he intended to play next. 'I bin in the Callow, and I've gotten a primmyrose,' continued Hazel, accustomed to his ways, and not discouraged. 'And I got a bit of blackthorn, white as a lady.' Abel was well on in 'Ap Jenkyn' by now. Hazel moved about, seeing to supper, for she was as hungry as Foxy, talking all the time in her rather shrilly sweet voice, while she dumped the cracked cups and the loaf and margarine on the bare table. The kettle was not boiling, so she threw some bacon-grease on the fire, and a great tongue of flame sprang out and licked at Abel's beard. He raised a hand to it, continuing to play with the other. Hazel laughed. 'You be fair comic-struck,' she said. She always spoke in this tone of easy comradeship; they got on very well; they were so entirely indifferent to each other. There was nothing filial about her or parental about him. Neither did they ever evince the least affection for each other. He struck up 'It's a fine hunting day.' 'Oh! shut thy row with that drodsome thing!' said Hazel with sudden passion. 'Look'ee! I unna bide in if you go on.' 'Ur?' queried Abel dreamily. 'Play summat else!' said Hazel, 'not that; I dunna like it.' 'You be a queer girl, 'Azel,' said Abel, coming out of his abstraction. 'But I dunna mind playing "Why do the People?" instead; it's just as heartening.' 'Canna you stop meddling wi' the music and come to supper?' asked Hazel. The harp was always called 'the music,' just as Abel's mouth-organ was 'the little music.' She reached down the flitch to cut some bacon off, and her dress, already torn, ripped from shoulder to waist. 'If you dunna take needle to that, you'll be mother-naked afore a week's out,' said Abel indifferently. 'I mun get a new un,' said Hazel. 'It unna mend. I'll go to town to-morrow.' 'Shall you bide with yer auntie the night over?' 'Ah.' 'I shanna look for your face till I see your shadow, then. You can bring a tuthree wreath-frames. There's old Samson at the Yeath unna last long; they'll want a wreath made.' Hazel sat and considered her new dress. She never had a new one till the old one fell off her back, and then she usually got a second-hand one, as a shilling or two would buy only material if new, but would stretch to a ready-made if second-hand. 'Foxy'd like me to get a green velvet,' said Hazel. She always expressed her intense desires, which were few, in this formula. It was her unconscious protest against the lovelessness of her life. She put the blackthorn in water and contemplated its whiteness with delight; but it had not occurred to her that she might herself, with a little trouble, be as sweet and fresh as its blossom. The spiritualization of sex would be needed before such things would occur to her. At present she was sexless as a leaf. They sat by the fire till it went out; then they went to bed, not troubling to say good-night. In the middle of the night Foxy woke. The moon filled her kennel-mouth like a door, and the light shone in her eyes. This frightened her--so large a lantern in an unseen hand, held so purposefully before the tiny home of one defenceless little creature. She barked sharply. Hazel awoke promptly, as a mother at her child's cry. She ran straight out with her bare feet into the fierce moonlight. 'What ails you?' she whispered. 'What ails you, little un?' The wind stalked through the Callow, and the Callow moaned. A moan came also from the plain, and black shapes moved there as the clouds drove onwards. 'Maybe they're out,' muttered Hazel. 'Maybe the black meet's set for to-night and she's scented the jeath pack.' She looked about nervously. 'I can see summat driving dark o'er the pastures yonder; they'm abroad, surely.' She hurried Foxy into the cottage and bolted the door. 'There!' she said. 'Now you lie good and quiet in the corner, and the death pack shanna get you.' It was said that the death pack, phantom hounds of a bad squire, whose gross body had been long since put to sweeter uses than any he put it to in life--changed into the clear-eyed daisy and the ardent pimpernel--scoured the country on dark stormy nights. Harm was for the house past which it streamed, death for those that heard it give tongue. This was the legend, and Hazel believed it implicitly. When she had found Foxy half dead outside her deserted earth, she had been quite sure that it was the death pack that had made away with Foxy's mother. She connected it also with her own mother's death. Hounds symbolized everything she hated, everything that was not young, wild and happy. She identified herself with Foxy, and so with all things hunted and snared and destroyed. Night, shadow, loud winds, winter--these were inimical; with these came the death pack, stealthy and untiring, following for ever the trail of the defenceless. Sunlight, soft airs, bright colours, kindness--these were beneficent havens to flee into. Such was the essence of her creed, the only creed she held, and it lay darkly in her heart, never expressed even to herself. But when she ran into the night to comfort the little fox, she was living up to her faith as few do; when she gathered flowers and lay in the sun, she was dwelling in a mystical atmosphere as vivid as that of the saints; when she recoiled from cruelty, she was trampling evil underfoot, perhaps more surely than those great divines who destroyed one another in their zeal for their Maker. Chapter 2 At six the next morning they had breakfast. Abel was busy making a hive for the next summer's swarm. When he made a coffin, he always used up the bits thus. A large coffin did not leave very much; but sometimes there were small ones, and then he made splendid hives. The white township on the south side of the lilac hedge increased as slowly and unceasingly as the green township around the distant churchyard. In summer the garden was loud with bees, and the cottage was full of them at swarming-time. Later it was littered with honey-sections; honey dripped from the table, and pieces of broken comb lay on the floor and were contentedly eaten by Foxy. Whenever an order for a coffin came, Hazel went to tell the bees who was dead. Her father thought this unnecessary. It was only for folks that died in the house, he said. But he had himself told the bees when his wife died. He had gone out on that vivid June morning to his hives, and had stood watching the lines of bees fetching water, their shadows going and coming on the clean white boards. Then he had stooped and said with a curious confidential indifference, 'Maray's jead.' He had put his ear to the hive and listened to the deep, solemn murmur within; but it was the murmur of the future, and not of the past, the preoccupation with life, not with death, that filled the pale galleries within. Today the eighteen hives lay under their winter covering, and the eager creatures within slept. Only one or two strayed sometimes to the early arabis, desultory and sad, driven home again by the frosty air to await the purple times of honey. The happiest days of Abel's life were those when he sat like a bard before the seething hives and harped to the muffled roar of sound that came from within. All his means of livelihood were joys to him. He had the art of perpetual happiness in this, that he could earn as much as he needed by doing the work he loved. He played at flower shows and country dances, revivals and weddings. He sold his honey, and sometimes his bees. He delighted in wreath-making, gardening, and carpentering, and always in the background was his music--some new air to try on the gilded harp, some new chord or turn to master. The garden was almost big enough, and quite beautiful enough, for that of a mansion. In the summer white lilies haunted it, standing out in the dusk with their demure cajolery, looking, as Hazel said, like ghosses. Goldenrod foamed round the cottage, deeply embowering it, and lavender made a grey mist beside the red quarries of the path. Then Hazel sat like a queen in a regalia of flowers, eating the piece of bread and honey that made her dinner, and covering her face with lily pollen. Now, there were no flowers in the garden; only the yew-tree by the gate that hung her waxen blossom along the undersides of the branches. Hazel hated the look of the frozen garden; she had an almost unnaturally intense craving for everything rich, vivid, and vital. She was all these things herself, as she communed with Foxy before starting. She had wound her hair round her head in a large plait and her old black hat made the colour richer. 'You'm nigh on thirty miles to go there and back, unless you get a lift,' said Abel. 'A lift? I dunna want never no lifts!' said Hazel scornfully. 'You'm as good a walker as John of No Man's Parish,' replied Abel, 'and he walks for ever, so they do say.' As Hazel set forth in the sharp, fresh morning, the Callow shone with radiant brown and silver, and no presage moved within it of the snow that would hurtle upon it from mountains of cloud all night. When Hazel had chosen her dress--a peacock blue serge--and had put it on there and then in the back of the shop, curtained off for this purpose, she went to her aunt's. Her cousin Albert regarded her with a startled look. He was in a margarine shop, and spent his days explaining that Margarine was as good as butter. But, looking at Hazel, he felt that here _was_ butter--something that needed no apology, and created its own demand. The bright blue made her so radiant that her aunt shook her head. 'You take after your ma, 'Azel,' she said. Her tone was irritated. 'I be glad.' Her aunt sniffed. 'You ought to be as glad to take after one parent as another, if you were jutiful,' she said. 'I dunna want to take after anybody but myself.' Hazel flushed indignantly. 'Well! we _are_ conceited!' exclaimed her aunt. 'Albert, don't give 'Azel all the liver and bacon. I s'pose your mother can eat as well as schoolgirls?' Albert was gazing at Hazel so animatedly, so obviously approving of all she said, that her aunt was very much ruffled. 'No wonder you only want to be like yourself,' he said. 'Jam! my word, Hazel, you're jam!' 'Albert!' cried his mother raspingly, with a pathetic note of pleading, 'haven't I always taught you to say preserve?' She was not pleading against the inelegant word, but against Hazel. When Albert went back to the shop, Hazel helped her aunt to wash up. All the time she was doing this, with unusual care, and cleaning the knives--a thing she hated--she was waiting anxiously for the expected invitation to stay the night. She longed for it as the righteous long for the damnation of their enemies. She never paid a visit except here, and to her it was a wild excitement. The gas-stove, the pretty china, the rose-patterned wall-paper, were all strange and marvellous as a fairy-tale. At home there was no paper, no lath and plaster, only the bare bricks, and the ceiling was of bulging sailcloth hung under the rafters. Now to all these was added the new delight of Albert's admiring gaze--an alert, live gaze, a thing hitherto unknown to Albert. Perhaps, if she stayed, Albert would take her out for the evening. She would see the streets of the town in the magic of lights. She would walk out in her new dress with a real young man--a young man who possessed a gilt watch-chain. The suspense, as the wintry afternoon drew in, became almost intolerable. Still her aunt did not speak. The sitting-room looked so cosy when tea was laid; the firelight played over the cups; her aunt drew the curtains. On one side there was joy, warmth--all that she could desire; on the other, a forlorn walk in the dark. She had left it until so late that her heart shook at the idea of the many miles she must cover alone if her aunt did not ask her. Her aunt knew what was going on in Hazel's mind, and smiled grimly at Hazel's unusual meekness. She took the opportunity of administering a few hometruths. 'You look like an actress,' she said. 'Do I, auntie?' 'Yes. It's a disgrace, the way you look. You quite draw men's eyes.' 'It's nice to draw men's eyes, inna it, auntie?' 'Nice! Hazel, I should like to box your ears! You naughty girl! You'll go wrong one of these days.' 'What for will I, auntie?' 'Some day you'll get spoke to!' She said the last words in a hollow whisper. 'And after that, as you won't say and do what a good girl would, you'll get picked up.' 'I'd like to see anyone pick me up!' said Hazel indignantly. 'I'd kick!' 'Oh! how unladylike! I didn't mean really picked up! I meant allegorically--like in the Bible.' 'Oh! only like in the Bible,' said Hazel disappointedly. 'I thought you meant summat _real_.' 'Oh! You'll bring down my grey hairs,' wailed Mrs. Prowde. An actress was bad, but an infidel! 'That I should live to hear it--in my own villa, with my own soda cake on the cake-dish--and my own son,' she added dramatically, as Albert entered, 'coming in to have his God-fearing heart broken!' This embarrassed Albert, for it was true, though the cause assigned was not. 'What's Hazel been up to?' he queried. The affection beneath his heavy pleasantry strengthened his mother in her resolve that Hazel should not stay the night. 'There's a magic-lantern lecture on tonight, Hazel,' he said. 'Like to come?' 'Ah! I should that.' 'You can't walk home at that time of night,' said Mrs. Prowde. 'In fact, you ought to start now.' 'But Hazel's staying the night, mother, surely?' 'Hazel must get back to her father.' 'But, mother, there's the spare-room.' 'The spare-room's being spring-cleaned.' Albert plunged; he was desperate and forgetful of propriety. 'I can sleep on this sofa,' he said. 'She can have my room.' 'Hazel can't have your room. It's not suitable.' 'Well, let her share yours, then.' Mrs. Prowde played her trump-card. 'Little I thought,' she said, 'when your dear father went, that before three years had passed you'd be so forgetful of my comfort (and his memory) as to suggest such a thing. As long as I live, my room's mine. When I'm gone,' she concluded, knocking down her adversary with her superior weight of years--'when I'm gone (and the sooner the better for you, no doubt), you can put her in my room and yourself, too.' When she had said this she was horrified at herself. What an improper thing to say! Even anger and jealousy did not excuse impropriety, though they excused any amount of unkindness. But at this Hazel cried out in her turn: 'That he never will!' The fierce egoism of the consciously weak flamed up in her. 'I keep myself to myself,' she finished. 'If such things come to pass, mother,' Albert said, and his eyes looked suddenly vivid, so that Hazel clapped her hands and said, 'Yer lamps are lit! Yer lamps are lit!' and broke into peals of laughter. 'If such a thing comes to pass,' laboured Albert, 'they'll come decent, that is, they won't be spoken of.' He voiced his own and his mother's creed. At this point the argument ended, because Albert had to go back after tea to finish some work. As he stamped innumerable swans on the yielding material, he never doubted that his mother had also yielded. He forgot that life had to be shaped with an axe till the chips fly. As soon as he had gone, Mrs. Prowde shut the door on Hazel hastily, for fear the weather might bring relenting. She had other views for Albert. In after years, when the consequences of her action had become things of the past, she always spoke of how she had done her best with Hazel. She never dreamed that she, by her selfishness that night, had herself set Hazel's feet in the dark and winding path that she must tread from that night onward to its hidden, shadowy ending. Mrs. Prowde, through her many contented years, blamed in turn Hazel, Abel, Albert, the devil, and (only tacitly and, as it were, in secret from herself) God. If there is any purgatorial fire of remorse for the hard and selfish natures that crucify love, it must burn elsewhere. It does not touch them in this world. They go as the three children went, in their coats, their hosen, and their hats all complete, nor does the smell of fire pass over them. Hazel felt that heaven was closed--locked and barred. She could see the golden light stream through its gates. She could hear the songs of joy--joy unattained and therefore immortal; she could see the bright figures of her dreams go to and fro. But heaven was shut. The wind ran up and down the narrow streets like a lost dog, whimpering. Hazel hurried on, for it was already twilight, and though she was not afraid of the Callow and the fields at night, she was afraid of the high roads. For the Callow was home, but the roads were the wide world. On the fringe of the town she saw lights in the bedroom windows of prosperous houses. 'My! they go to their beds early,' she thought, not having heard of dressing for dinner. It made her feel more lonely that people should be going to bed. From other houses music floated, or the savoury smell of dinner. As she passed the last lamp-post she began to cry, feeling like a lost and helpless little animal. Her new dress was forgotten; the wreath-frames would not fit under her arm, and caused a continual minor discomfort, and the Callow seemed to be half across the country. She heard a trapped rabbit screaming somewhere, a thin anguished cry that she could not ignore. This delayed her a good deal, and in letting it out she got a large bloodstain on her dress. She cried again at this. The pain of a blister, unnoticed in the morning journey, now made itself felt; she tried walking without her boots, but the ground was cold and hard. The icy, driving wind leapt across the plain like a horseman with a long sword, and stealthily in its track came the melancholy whisper of snow. When this began, Hazel was in the open, half-way to Wolfbatch. She sat down on the step of a stile, and sighed with relief at the ease it gave her foot. Then, far off she heard the sharp miniature sound, very neat and staccato, of a horse galloping. She held her breath to hear if it would turn down a by-road, but it came on. It came on, and grew in volume and in meaning, became almost ominous in the frozen silence. Hazel rose and stood in the fitful moonlight. She felt that the approaching hoof-beats were for her. They were the one sound in a dead world, and she nearly cried out at the thought of their dying in the distance. They must not; they should not. 'Maybe it's a farmer and his missus as have drove a good bargain, and the girl told to get supper fire-hot agen they come. Maybe they'll give me a lift! Maybe they'll say "Bide the night over?"' She knew it was only a foolish dream; nevertheless, she stood well in the light, a slim, brow-beaten figure, the colour of her dress wan in the grey world. A trap came swaying round the corner. Hazel cried out beseechingly, and the driver pulled the horse up short. 'I must be blind drunk,' he soliloquized, 'seeing ghosts!' 'Oh, please sir!' Hazel could say no more, for the tears that companionship unfroze. The man peered at her. 'What in hell are you doing here?' he asked. 'Walking home-along. She wouldna let me bide the night over. And my foot's blistered in a balloon and blood on my dress.' She choked with sobs. 'What's your name?' 'Hazel.' 'What else?' With an instinct of self-protection she refused to tell her surname. 'Well, mine's Reddin,' he said crossly; 'and why you're so dark about yours I don't know, but up you get, anyway.' The sun came out in Hazel's face. He helped her up, she was so stiff with cold. 'Your arm,' she said in a low tremulous voice, when he had put the rug round her--'your arm pulling me in be like the Sunday-school tale of Jesus Christ and Peter on the wild sea--me being Peter.' Reddin looked at her sideways to see if she was in earnest. Seeing that she was, he changed the subject. 'Far to go?' he asked. 'Ah! miles on miles.' 'Like to stop the night over?' At last, late certainly, but no matter, at last the invitation had come, not from her aunt, but from a stranger. That made it more exciting. 'I'm much obleeged,' he said. 'Where at?' 'D'you know Undern?' 'I've heard tell on it.' 'Well, it's two miles from here. Like to come?' 'Ah! Will your mother be angry?' 'I haven't one.' 'Father?' 'No.' 'Who be there, then?' 'Only Vessons and me.' 'Who's Vessons?' 'My servant.' 'Be you a gentleman, then?' Reddin hesitated slightly. She said it with such reverence and made it seem so great a thing. 'Yes,' he said at last. 'Yes, that's what I am--a gentleman.' He was conscious of bravado. 'Will there be supper, fire-hot?' 'Yes, if Vessons is in a good temper.' 'Where you bin?' she asked next. 'Market.' 'You've had about as much as is good for you,' she remarked, as if thinking aloud. He certainly smelt strongly of whisky. 'You've got a cheek!' said he. 'Let's look at you.' He stared into her tired but vivid eyes for a long time, and the trap careered from side to side. 'My word!' he said, 'I'm in luck to-night!' 'What for be you?' 'Meeting a girl like you.' 'Do I draw men's eyes?' 'Eh?' He was startled. Then he guffawed. 'Yes,' he replied. '_She_ said so,' Hazel murmured. 'And she said I'd get spoke to, and she said I'd get puck up. I'm main glad of it, too. She's a witch.' 'She said you'd get picked up, did she?' 'Ah.' Reddin put his arm round her. 'You're so pretty! That's why.' 'Dunna maul me!' 'You might be civil. I'm doing you a kindness.' They went on in that fashion, his arm about her, each wondering what manner of companion the other was. When they neared Undern there were gates to open, and he admired her litheness as she jumped in and out. In his pastures, where the deeply rutted track was already white with snow, two foals stood sadly by their mothers, gazing at the cold world with their peculiarly disconsolate eyes. 'Eh! look's the abron un! Abron, like me!' cried Hazel. Reddin suddenly gripped the long coils that were loose on her shoulders, twisted them in a rope round his neck, and kissed her. She was enmeshed, and could not avoid his kisses. The cob took this opportunity--one long desired--to rear, and Reddin flogged him the rest of the way. So they arrived with a clatter, and were met at the door by Andrew Vessons--knowing of eye as a blackbird, straw in mouth, the poison of asps on his tongue. Chapter 3 Undern Hall, with its many small-paned windows, faced the north sullenly. It was a place of which the influence and magic were not good. Even in May, when the lilacs frothed into purple, paved the lawn with shadows, steeped the air with scent; when soft leaves lipped each other consolingly; when blackbirds sang, fell in their effortless way from the green height to the green depth, and sang again--still, something that haunted the place set the heart fluttering. No place is its own, and that which is most stained with old tumults has the strongest fascination. So at Undern, whatever had happened there went on still; someone who had been there was there still. The lawns under the trees were mournful with old pain, or with vanished joys more pathetic than pain in their fleeting mimicry of immortality. It was only at midsummer that the windows were coloured by dawn and sunset; then they had a sanguinary aspect, staring into the delicate skyey dramas like blind, bloodshot eyes. Secretly, under the heavy rhododendron leaves and in the furtive sunlight beneath the yew-trees, gnats danced. Their faint motions made the garden stiller; their smallness made it oppressive; their momentary life made it infinitely old. Then Undern Pool was full of leaf shadows like multitudinous lolling tongues, and the smell of the mud tainted the air--half sickly, half sweet. The clipped bushes and the twisted chimneys made inky shadows like steeples on the grass, and great trees of roses, beautiful in desolation, dripped with red and white and elbowed the guelder roses and the elders set with white patens. Cherries fell in the orchard with the same rich monotony, the same fatality, as drops of blood. They lay under the fungus-riven trees till the hens ate them, pecking gingerly and enjoyably at their lustrous beauty as the world does at a poet's heart. In the kitchen-garden also the hens took their ease, banqueting sparely beneath the straggling black boughs of a red-currant grove. In the sandstone walls of this garden hornets built undisturbed, and the thyme and lavender borders had grown into forests and obliterated the path. The cattle drowsed in the meadows, birds in the heavy trees; the golden day-lilies drooped like the daughters of pleasure; the very principle of life seemed to slumber. It was then, when the scent of elder blossom, decaying fruit, mud and hot yew brooded there, that the place attained one of its most individual moods--narcotic, aphrodisiac. In winter the yews and firs were like waving funeral plumes and mantled, headless goddesses; then the giant beeches would lash themselves to frenzy, and, stooping, would scourge the ice on Undern Pool and the cracked walls of the house, like beings drunken with the passion of cruelty. This was the second mood of Undern--brutality. Then those within were, it seemed, already in the grave, heavily covered with the prison of frost and snow, or shouted into silence by the wind. On a January night the house seemed to lie outside time and space; slow, ominous movement began beyond the blind windows, and the inflexible softness of snow, blurred on the vast background of night, buried summer ever deeper with invincible, caressing threats. The front door was half glass, so that a wandering candle within could be seen from outside, and it looked inexpressibly forlorn, like a glow-worm seeking escape from a chloroform-box or mankind looking for the way to heaven. Only four windows were ever lit, and of these two at a time. They were Jack Reddin's parlour, Andrew Vessons' kitchen, and their respective bedrooms. Reddin of Undern cared as little for the graciousness of life as he did for its pitiful rhapsodies, its purple-mantled tragedies. He had no time for such trivialities. Fox-hunting, horse-breeding, and kennel lore were his vocation. He rode straight, lived hard, exercised such creative faculties as he had on his work, and found it very good. Three times a year he stated in the Undern pew at Wolfbatch that he intended to continue leading a godly, righteous, and sober life. At these times, with amber lights from the windows playing over his well-shaped head, his rather heavy face looked, as the Miss Clombers from Wolfbatch Hall said, 'so chivalrous, so uplifted.' The Miss Clombers purred when they talked, like cats with a mouse. The younger still hunted, painfully compressing an overfed body into a riding-habit of some forgotten cut, and riding with so grim a mouth and such a bloodthirsty expression that she might have had a blood-feud with all foxes. Perhaps, when she rode down the anxious red-brown streak, she thought she was riding down a cruel fate that had somehow left her life vacant of joy; perhaps, when the little creature was torn piece-meal, she imagined herself tearing so the frail unconquerable powers of love and beauty. Anyway, she never missed a meet, and she and her sister never ceased their long silent battle for Reddin, who remained as unconscious of them as if they were his aunts. He was, of course, beneath them, very much beneath them--hardly more than a farmer, but still--a man. Reddin went on his dubious and discreditable way, and the woman Sally Haggard, of the cottage in the hollow, gained by virtue of a certain harsh beauty what the ladies Clomber would have given all their wealth for. The other inhabitant of Undern, Andrew, revolved in his own orbit, and was entirely unknown to his master. He cut the yews--the peacocks and the clipped round trees and the ones like tables--twice a year. He was creating a swan. He had spent twenty years on it, and hoped to complete it in a few more, when the twigs that were to be the beak had grown sufficiently. It never occurred to him that the place was not his, that he might have to leave it. He had his spring work and his autumn work; in the winter he ordained various small indoor jobs for himself; and in the summer, in common with the rest of the place, he grew somnolent. He sat by the hacked and stained kitchen-table (which he seldom scrubbed, and on which he tried his knife, sawed bones, and chopped meat) and slept the afternoons away in the ceaseless drone of flies. When Reddin called him he rarely answered, and only deigned to go to him when he felt sure that his order was going to be reasonable. Everything he said was non-committal, every movement was expostulatory. Reddin never noticed. Vessons suited his needs, and he always had such meals as he liked. Vessons was a bachelor. Monasticism had found, in a countryside teeming with sex, one silent but rabid disciple. If Vessons ever felt the irony of his own presence in a breeding stable, he never said so. He went about his work with tight disapproving lips, as if he thought that Nature owed him a debt of gratitude for his tolerance of her ways. Ruminative and critical, he went to and fro in the darkly lovely domain, with pig buckets or ash buckets or barrows full of manure. The lines of his face were always etched in dirt, and he always had a bit of rag tied round some cut or blister. He was a lonely soul, as he once said himself when unusually mellow at the Hunter's Arms; he was 'wi'out mother, wi'out father, wi'out descent.' He preferred it to the ties of family. He liked living with Reddin because they never spoke except of necessity, and because he was quite indifferent to Reddin's welfare and Reddin to his. But to Undern itself he was not indifferent. Ties deep as the tangled roots of the bindweed, strong as the great hawsers of the beeches that reached below the mud of Undern Pool, held him to it, the bondslave of a beauty he could not understand, a terror he could not express. When he trudged the muddy paths, 'setting taters' or earthing up; when he scythed the lawn, looking, with a rose in his hat, weirder and more ridiculous than ever; and when he shook the apples down with a kind of sour humour, as if to say, 'There! that's what you trees get by having apples!'--at all these times he seemed less an individual than a blind force. For though his personality was strong, that of the place was stronger. Half out of the soil, minded like the dormouse and the beetle, he was, by virtue of his unspoken passion, the protoplasm of a poet. Chapter 4 Vessons took up the pose of one seeing a new patient. 'This young lady's lost her way,' Reddin remarked. 'She 'as, God's truth! But you'll find it forra I make no doubt, sir. "There's a way"' (he looked ironically at the poultry-basket behind the trap, from which peered anxious, beaky faces)--'"a way as no fowl knoweth, the way of a man with a maid."' 'Fetch the brood mares in from the lower pasture. They should have been in this hour.' 'And late love's worse than lad's love, so they do say,' concluded Vessons. 'There's nothing of love between us,' Reddin snapped. 'I dunna wonder at it!' Andrew cast an appraising look at his master's flushed face and at Hazel's tousled hair, and withdrew. Hazel went into the elaborately carved porch. She looked round the brown hall where deep shadows lurked. Oak chests and carved chairs, all more or less dusty, stood about, looking as if disorderly feasters had just left them. In one corner was an inlaid sideboard piano. Hazel did not notice the grey dust and the hearth full of matches and cigarette ends. She only saw what seemed to her fabulous splendour. A foxhound rose from the moth-eaten leopard-skin by the hearth as they came in. Hazel stiffened. 'I canna-d-abear the hound-dogs,' she said. 'Nasty snabbing things.' 'Best dogs going.' 'No, they kills the poor foxes.' 'Vermin.' Hazel's face became tense. She clenched her hands and advanced a determined chin. 'Keep yer tongue off our Foxy, or I unna stay!' she said. 'Who's Foxy?' 'My little small cub as I took and reared.' 'Oh! you reared it, did you?' 'Ah. She didna like having no mam. I'm her mam now.' Reddin had been looking at her as thoughtfully as his rather maudlin state allowed. He had decided that she should stay at Undern and be his mistress. 'You'll be wanting something better than foxes to be mothering one of these days,' he remarked to the fire, with a half embarrassed, half jocose air, and a hand on the poker. 'Eh?' said Hazel, who was wondering how long it would take her to learn to play the music in the corner. Reddin was annoyed. When one made these arch speeches at such cost of imagination, they should be received properly. He got up and went across to Hazel, who had played three consecutive notes, and was gleeful. He put his hand on hers heavily, and a discord was wrung from the soft-toned notes that had perhaps known other such discords long ago. 'Laws! what a din!' said Hazel. 'What for d'you do that, Mr. Reddin?' Reddin found it harder than ever to repeat his remark, and dropped it. 'What's that brown on your dress?' he asked instead. 'That? Oh, that's from a rabbit as I loosed out'n a trap. It bled awful.' 'Little sneak, to let it out.' 'Sneak's trick to catchen un, so tiny and all,' replied Hazel composedly. 'Well, you'd better change your dress; it's very wet, and there's plenty here,' said he, going to a chest and pulling out an armful of old-fashioned gowns. 'If you lived at Undern you could wear them every day.' 'If ifs were beans and bacon, there's few'd go clemmed,' said Hazel. 'That green un's proper, like when the leaves come new, and little small roses and all.' Put it on while I see what Vessons is doing.' 'He's grumbling in the kitchen, seemingly,' said Hazel. Vessons always grumbled. His mood could be judged only by the _piano_ or _forte_ effects. Hazel heard him reply to Reddin. 'No. Supper binna ready; I've only just put 'im on.' He always spoke of all phases of his day's work in the masculine gender. Hazel stopped buttoning her dress to hear what Reddin was saying. 'Have you some hot water for the lady?' ('The lady! That's me!' she thought.) 'No, sir, I anna. Nor yet I anna got no myrrh, aloes, nor cassher. There's nought in my kitchen but a wold useless cat and an o'erdruv man of six-and-sixty, a pot of victuals not yet simmering, and a gentleman as ought to know better than to bring a girl to Undern and ruin her--a poor innocent little creature.' 'Me again,' said Hazel. She pondered on the remark and flushed. 'Maybe I'd best go,' she thought. Yet only vague instinct stirred her to this, and all her soul was set on staying. 'Never shall it be said'--Andrew's voice rose like a preacher's--'never shall it be said as a young female found no friend in Andrew Vessons; never shall it be said'--his voice soared over various annoyed exclamations of Reddin's--'as a female went from this 'all different from what she came.' 'Shut up, Vessons!' But Vessons was, as he would have phrased it himself, 'in full honey-flow,' and not to be silenced. 'Single she be, and single she'd ought to stay. This 'ere rubbitch of kissing and clipping!' 'But, Vessons, if there were no children gotten, the world'd be empty.' 'Let 'un be. 'Im above'll get a bit of rest, nights, from their sins.' 'Eh, I like that old chap,' thought Hazel. The wrangle continued. It was the deathless quarrel of the world and the monastery--natural man and the hermit. Finally Vessons concluded on a top note. 'Well, if you take this girl's good name off'n her--' Suddenly something happened in Hazel's brain. It was the realization of life in relation to self. It marks the end of childhood. She no more saw herself throned above life and fate, as a child does. She saw that she was a part of it all; she was mutable and mortal. She had seen life go on, had heard of funerals, courtings, confinements and weddings in their conventional order--or reversed--and she had remained, as it were, intact. She had starved and slaved and woven superstitions, loved Foxy, and tolerated her father. Girl friends had hinted of a wild revelry that went on somewhere-- everywhere--calling like a hidden merry-go-round to any who cared to hear. But she had not heard. They had let fall such sentences as 'He got the better of me,' 'I cried out, and he thought someone was coming, and he let me go.' Later, she heard, 'And I thought I'd ne'er get through it when baby came.' She felt vaguely sorry for these girls; but she realized nothing of their life. Nor did she associate funerals and illness with herself. As the convolvulus stands in apparent changelessness in a silent rose-and-white eternity, so she seemed to herself a stationary being. But the convolvulus has budded and bloomed and closed again while you thought her still, and she dies--the rayed and rosy cup so full of airy sweetness--she dies in a day. * * * * * Hazel got up from her chair by the fire and went restlessly, with a rustle as of innumerable autumn leaves, to the hall door. She gazed through the glass, and saw the sad feather-flights of snow wandering and hesitating, and finally coming to earth. They held to their individuality as flakes as long as they could, it seemed; but the end came to all, and they were merged in earth and their own multitudes. Hazel opened the door and stood on the threshold, so that snow-flakes flattened themselves on the yellow roses of her dress. Outside there was no world, only a waste of grey and white. Like leaves on a dead bird, the wrappings of white grew deeper over Undern. Hazel shivered in the cold wind off the hill, and saw Undern Pool curdling and thickening in the frost. No sound came across the outspread country. There were no roads near Undern except its own cart track; there were no railways within miles. Nothing moved except the snow-flakes, fulfilling their relentless destiny of negation. She saw them only, and heard only the raised voices in the house arguing about herself. 'I mun go,' she said, strong in her spirit of freedom, remote and withdrawn. 'I mun stay,' she amended, weak in her undefended smallness, and very tired. She turned back to the fire. But the instinct that had awakened as childhood died clamoured within her and would not let her rest. She softly took off the silk dress, and put on her own. She picked up the wreath-frames with a sigh and opened the door again. She would have a long, wild walk home, but she could creep in through her bedroom window, which would not latch, and she could make a great fire of dry broom and brew some tea. 'And I'll let Foxy in and eat a loaf, I will, for I'm clemmed!' she said. She slipped out through the door that had seen so many human lives come and go. Even as she went, the door betrayed her, for Reddin, coming from the kitchen, saw her through the upper panes. Chapter 5 'I be going home-along,' she said, but he pulled her in and shut the door. 'Why did you want to go?' 'I'm alost in this grand place.' 'Your hair's grander than anything in the place. And your eyes are like sherry.' 'Truth on your life?' 'Yes. Now you'd better change your dress again.' He reached down an old silver candlestick, very tarnished. 'You can go upstairs. There's a glass in the first room you come to. Then we'll have supper.' 'Sitting at the supper in a grand shining gown wi' roses on it,' said Hazel ecstatically, her voice rising to a kind of chant, 'with a white cloth on table like school-treat, and the old servant hopping to and agen like thrussels after worms.' 'Thrussel yourself!' muttered Andrew, peering in at the door. He retired again, remarking to the cat in a sour lugubrious voice, as he always did when ruffled: 'There's no cats i' the Bible.' He began to sing 'By the waters of Babylon.' Upstairs Hazel coiled her hair, running her fingers through its bright lengths, as she had no comb, and turning in her underbodice to make it suit the low dress. Outside, his rough hair wet with snow, stood Reddin, watching her from the vantage-ground of the darkness! He saw her stand with head erect and bare white shoulders, smiling at herself in the glass. He saw her slip into the rich gown and pose delightedly, mincing to and fro like a wagtail. He noted her lissom figure and shining coils of hair. 'She'll do,' he said, and did not wonder whether he would do himself. Then he gave a smothered exclamation. She had opened the window, pushing the snowy ivy aside, and she leant out, her breast under its folds of silk resting on the snow. She looked over his head into the immensity of night. 'Dunna let 'un take my good name, for the old feller says I'd ought to keep it,' she said. 'And let me get back to Foxy quick in the morning light, and no harm come to us for ever and ever.' The night received her prayer in silence. Whether or not any heard but Reddin none could say. Reddin tiptoed into the house, rather downcast. This was a strange creature that he had caught. Vessons was still at the waters of Babylon when Hazel came down. 'Why canna he get beyond them five words?' asked Hazel. 'He allus stops and goes back like a dog on a chain.' She sang it through in her high clear voice. There was silence in the kitchen. Reddin stared at Hazel. 'Who taught you to sing?' he asked. 'Father. He's wonderful with the music, is father.' Hazel found that in the presence of strangers her feeling for her father was almost warm. 'Playing the harp nights, he makes your flesh creep; ah! and he makes the place all on a charm, like the spinneys in May month. And he says, "Sing!" says he, and I ups and sings, and whiles I don't never know what I bin singing.' 'That I can well believe,' said Vessons. Reddin swung round. 'What the devil are you doing here?' he asked. 'I've come to say'--Vessons' tone was dry--'as supper's burnt.' 'Burnt?' 'Ah, to a cinder.' 'How did you do that, you fool?' 'Harkening at the lady teaching me to sing.' Reddin was furious. He knew why supper was burnt. 'Get out!' he said. 'Get out into the stable and stay there. I'll get supper myself.' Vessons withdrew composedly. Since Hazel had offended him, he had decided that she must take care of herself. 'Couldna he bide in the house?' asked Hazel uneasily. 'No.' They fetched in bread and beer and cold meat. Her host was jubilant, and during supper, quite deferential. He had been awed by Hazel's request to the night and by her beauty. But when his hunger was satisfied, his voice grew louder and his eyes sultry. Restraint fell between them. Looking at his face, Hazel again had an impulse for flight. When he said, 'I want to stroke that silk dress,' and came towards her, knocking the candle over as if by accident, she edged away, saying sharply: 'Dunna maul me!' He paid no attention. 'I'll do right by you,' he said; 'I swear I will. I'll--yes, I'll even marry you to-morrow. But to-night's mine.' It was not a question of marrying or not marrying in Hazel's eyes. It was a matter of primitive instinct. She would be her own. He had pulled the low dress off one shoulder. She twitched it out of his hand and slipped from his grasp like a fish from a net. He was too surprised to follow at once. 'Old feller!' she called, running into the yard, 'quick! quick!' A rough grey head appeared. 'What? after the old 'un?' 'I wunna stay along of him!' Vessons looked at her interestedly. Apparently she also was a devotee of his religion--celibacy; one who dared to go against the explicit decrees of nature. 'I think the better of you,' he said. 'So he's had his trouble for nothing,' he chuckled. 'You can have my room. You shanna say Andrew Vessons inna a man of charitable nature. Never shall you! There's a key to it.' He led the way to his room through the back door and up the kitchen stairs. Most people would have suffered anything rather than sleep in the room he revealed when he proudly flung the door open. He had the recluse's love of little possessions and daily comforts. On an upturned box by the bed were his clay pipe, matches, a treacle-tin containing whisky, and some chicken-bones. He usually kept a few bones to pick at his ease. A goldfinch with a harassed air occupied a wooden cage in the window, and the mantelpiece was fitted up with white mice in home-made cages. It seemed quite a pleasant room to Hazel. 'Mind as you're very careful of all my things,' said Vessons wistfully. 'I hanna slep away from this room for nigh twenty year. That bird's ne'er slep without me. He'll miss me. He unna sing for anybody else.' He always asserted this, and the bird always belied it by singing to Reddin and any chance visitor. But Vessons continued to believe it. There are some things that it is necessary to believe; doubt of them means despair. Vessons was conscious that he was being generous. 'You can drink a sup of whisky if you like,' he said. 'Now I'm going, afore that bird notices, or I shall never get away.' The bird sat in preoccupied silence. He was probably thinking of the woods and seeded dandelions. He was of the fellowship to which comfort means little and freedom much. So was Hazel. 'Lock the door!' Vessons said in a sepulchral whisper from the stairs. Hazel did so, and curled up to sleep in the creaking house, thoughtless as the white mice, defenceless as they, as little grateful to Vessons for his protection, and in as deep an ignorance of what the world could do to her if it chose. Chapter 6 Early next morning, while the finch still dreamed its heavy dream and the mice were still motionless balls, Hazel was awakened by a knock at the massive oak door. She ran across and opened it a crack, peering out from amid her hair like a squirrel from autumn leaves. Vessons stood there with a pint mug of beer, which he proffered. But Hazel had a woman's craving for tea. 'If so be the kettle's boiling,' she said apologetically. 'Tay!' said Vessons. 'Laws! how furiously the women do rage after tay! I s'pose it's me as is to make it?' 'If kettle's boiling.' 'Kettle! O' course kettle's boiling this hour past. Or how would the ca'ves get their meal?' 'Well, you needna shout. You'll wake 'im.' Fright was in her eyes, strong and inexplicable to herself. 'I mun go!' she whispered. 'Ah! You go,' said Vessons, glad that for once duty and inclination went hand in hand. 'I'll send you,' he added. 'Where d'yer live?' She hesitated. 'You needna be frit to tell _me,_' said Vessons. 'I'm six-and-sixty, and you're no more to me'--he surveyed her flushing face contemplatively--'than the wold useless cat,' he concluded. Hazel frowned; but she wanted a promise from Vessons, so she made no retort. 'You wunna tell 'im?' she pleaded. ''Im? Never will I! Wild 'orses shanna drag it from me, nor yet blood 'orses, nor 'unters, nor cart-'orses, nor Suffolk punches!' Vessons waxed eloquent, for again righteousness and desire coincided. He did not want a woman at Undern. 'Well,' said Hazel, whispering through the crack, 'I lives at the Callow.' 'What! that lost and forgotten place t'other side the Mountain?' 'Ah! But it inna lost and forgotten; it's better'n this. We've got bees.' 'So've I got bees.' 'And a music.' 'Music? What's a music? You canna eat it.' 'And my dad makes coffins.' 'Does 'e, now?' said Vessons, interested at last. Then he bethought him of the credit of Undern. 'But you anna got a mulberry-tree,' he said triumphantly. 'Now then! _I_ 'ave!' He creaked downstairs. In a few moments Hazel also went down, and drank her tea by the red fire in the kitchen, watching the frost-flowers being softly effaced from the window as if someone rubbed them away with a sponge. Snow like sifted sugar was heaped on the sill, and the yard and outbuildings and fields, the pools and the ricks, all had the dim radiance of antimony. 'Where be the road?' asked Hazel, standing on the door-step and feeling rather lost. 'How'll I find it?' 'You wunna find it.' 'Oh, but I mun!' 'D'you think Andrew Vessons'll let an 'ooman trapse in the snow when he's got good horses in stable?' queried Vessons grandly. 'I'll drive yer.' 'I'm much obleeged, I'm sure,' said Hazel. 'But wunna he know?' 'He'll sleep till noon if I let 'im,' said Andrew. They drove off in silence, the snow muffling the plunging hoofs. Hazel looked back as the sky crimsoned for dawn. The house fronted her with a look of power and patience. She felt that it had not yet done with her. She wondered how she would feel if Reddin suddenly appeared at his window. And a tiny traitorous wish slipped up from somewhere in her heart. She watched the windows till a turn hid the house, and then she sighed. Almost she wished that Reddin had awakened. But she soon forgot everything in delight; for the snow shone, the long slots of the rabbits and hares, the birds' tracks in orderly rows, the deep footprints of sheep, all made her laugh by their vagaries, for they ran in loops and in circles, and appeared like the crazy steps of a sleep-walker to those who had not the key of their activity. Hazel's own doings were like that; everyone's doings are like it, if one sees the doings without the motive. Plovers wheeled and cried desolately, seeing the soft relentless snow between themselves and their green meadows, sad as those that see fate drawing thick veils between themselves and the meadows of their hope and joy. At the foot of the Callow Hazel got out. 'Never tell him,' she said, looking up. 'Never in life,' said Vessons. Hazel hesitated. 'Never tell him,' she added, 'unless he asks a deal and canna rest.' 'He may ask till Doomsday,' said Vessons, 'and he may be restless as the ten thousand ghosses that trapse round Undern when the moon's low, but I'll ne'er tell 'im.' Hazel sighed, and turned to climb the hill. 'A missus at Undern!' said Andrew to the cob's ears as they trotted home. 'No, never will I!' A magpie rose from a wood near the road, jibing at him. He looked round almost as if it had been someone laughing at his resolve, and repeated, 'Never will I!' 'Where's Hazel?' asked Reddin. 'Neither wild 'orses, nor blood 'orses, nor race 'orses nor cart 'orses, nor Suffolk punches--' began Vessons whose style was cumulative, and who, when he had made a good phrase, was apt to work it to death like any other artist. 'Oh, you're drunk, Vessons!' said his master. 'Shall drag it from me,' finished Vessons. Reddin knew this was true, and felt rather hopeless. Still, he determined not to give up the search until he had found Hazel. He inquired at the Hunter's Arms, but Vessons had been there before him, and he was met by pleasant stupidity. Vessons was of the people, Reddin of the aristocracy, so the frequenters of the Hunter's Arms sided as one man against Reddin. 'You'll not get another bite of that apple,' said Vessons with satisfaction, when his master returned with downcast face. 'I can't stand your manners much longer, Vessons,' said he irritably. 'Gie me notice, then,' said Vessons, falling back on the well-worn formula, and scoring his usual triumph. Reddin had the faults of his class, but turning an old servant adrift was not one of them. Vessons traded on this, and invariably said and did exactly what he liked. Chapter 7 When Hazel got in, her father had finished his breakfast and was busy at work. 'Brought the wreath-frames?' he asked, without looking up. 'Ah.' 'He's jead at last. At the turn of the night. They came after the coffin but now. I'll be able to get them there new section crates I wanted. He's doing more for me, wanting a coffin, and him stiff and cold, than what he did in the heat of life.' 'Many folks be like that,' said Hazel out of her new wisdom. Neither of them reflected that Abel had always been like that towards Hazel, that she was becoming more like it to him every year. Abel made no remark at all about Hazel's adventures, and she preserved a discreet silence. 'That little vixen's took a chicken,' said Abel, after a time; 'that's the second.' 'She only does it when I'm away, being clemmed,' said Hazel pleadingly. 'Well, if she does it again,' Abel announced, 'it's the water and a stone round her neck. So now you know.' 'You durstn't.' 'We'll see if I durst.' Hazel fled in tears to the unrepentant and dignified Foxy. Some of us find it hard enough to be dignified when we have done right; but Foxy could be dignified when she had done wrong, and the more wrong, the more dignity. She was very bland, and there was a look of deep content--digestive content, a state bordering on the mystic's trance--in her affectionate topaz eyes. It had been a tender and nourishing chicken; the hours she had spent in gnawing through her rope had been well repaid. 'Oh! you darlin' wicked little thing!' wailed Hazel. 'You munna do it, Foxy, or he'll drown you dead. What for did you do it, Foxy, my dear?' Foxy's eyes became more eloquent and more liquid. 'You gallus little blessed!' said Hazel again. 'Eh! I wish you and me could live all alone by our lonesome where there was no men and women.' Foxy shut her eyes and yawned, evidently feeling doubtful if such a halcyon place existed in the world. Hazel sat on her heels and thought. It was flight or Foxy. She knew that if she did not take Foxy away, her renewed naughtiness was as certain as sunset. 'You was made bad,' she said sadly but sympathetically. 'Leastways, you wasn't made like watch-dogs and house-cats and cows. You was made a fox, and you be a fox, and its queer-like to me, Foxy, as folk canna see that. They expect you to be what you wanna made to be. You'm made to be a fox; and when you'm busy being a fox they say you'm a sinner!' Having wrestled with philosophy until Foxy yawned again, Hazel went in to try her proposition on Abel. But Abel met it as the world in general usually meets a new truth. 'She took the chick,' he said. 'Now, would a tarrier do that--a well-trained tarrier? I says 'e would _not_' 'But it inna fair to make the same law for foxes and terriers.' 'I make what laws suit me,' said Abel. 'And what goes agen me--gets drownded.' 'But it inna all for you!' cried Hazel. 'Eh?' 'The world wunna made in seven days only for Abel Woodus,' said Hazel daringly. 'You've come back very peart from Silverton,' said Abel reflectively-- 'very peart, you 'ave. How many young fellers told you your 'air was abron this time? That fool Albert said so last time, and you were neither to hold nor to bind. Abron! Carrots!' But it was not, as he thought, this climax that silenced Hazel. It was the lucky hit about the young fellows and the reminiscence called up by the word 'abron.' He continued his advantage, mollified by victory. 'Tell you what it is, 'Azel; it's time you was married. You're too uppish.' 'I shall ne'er get married.' 'Words! words! You'll take the first as comes--if there's ever such a fool.' Hazel wished she could tell him that one had asked her, and that no labouring man. But discretion triumphed. 'Maybe,' she said tossing her head, 'I _will_ marry, to get away from the Callow.' 'Well, well, things couldna be dirtier; maybe they'll be cleaner when you'm gone. Look's the floor!' Hazel fell into a rage. He was always saying things about the floor. She hated the floor. 'I swear I'll wed the first as comes!' she cried--'the very first!' 'And last,' put in Abel. 'What'll you swear by?' 'By God's Little Mountain.' 'Well,' said Abel contentedly, 'now you've sworn _that_ oath, you're bound to keep it, and so now I know that if ever an 'usband _does_ come forrard you canna play the fool.' Hazel was too wrathful for consideration. 'You look right tidy in that gownd,' Abel said. 'I 'spose you'll be wearing it to the meeting up at the Mountain?' 'What meeting?' 'Didna I tell you I'd promised you for it--to sing? They'm after me to take the music and play.' Hazel forgot everything in delight. 'Be we going for certain sure?' she asked. 'Ah! Next Monday three weeks.' 'We mun practise.' 'They say that minister's a great one for the music. One of them sort as is that musical he canna play. There'll be a tea.' 'Eh!' said Hazel, 'it'll be grand to be in a gentleman's house agen!' 'When've you bin in a gentleman's house?' Hazel was taken aback. 'Yesterday!' she flashed. 'If Albert inna a gent I dunno who is, for he's got a watch-chain brass-mockin'-gold all across his wescoat.' Abel roared. Then he fell to in earnest on the coffin, whistling like a blackbird. Hazel sat down and watched him, resting her cheek on her hand. The cold snowlight struck on her face wanly. 'Dunna you ever think, making coffins for poor souls to rest in as inna tired, as there's a tree growing somewhere for yours?' she asked. 'Laws! What's took you? Measles? What for should I think of me coffin? That's about the only thing as I'll ne'er be bound to pay for.' He laughed. 'What ails you?' 'Nought. Only last night it came o'er me as I'll die as well as others.' 'Well, have you only just found that out? Laws! what a queen of fools you be!' Hazel looked at the narrow box, and thought of the active, angular old man for whom it was now considered an ample house. 'It seems like the world's a big spring-trap, and us in it,' she said slowly. Then she sprang up feverishly. 'Let's practise till we're as hoarse as a young rook!' she cried. So amid the hammering their voices sprang up, like two keen flames. Then Abel threw away the hammer and began to harp madly, till the little shanty throbbed with the sound of the wires and the lament of the voices that rose and fell with artless cunning. The cottage was like a tree full of thrushes. After their twelve o'clock dinner, Abel cut holly for the wreaths, and Hazel began to make them. For the first time home seemed dull. She thought wistfully of the green silk dress and the supper in the old, stately room. She thought of Vessons, and of Reddin's eyes as he pulled her back from the door. She thought of Undern as a refuge for Foxy. 'Maybe sometime I'll go and see 'em,' she thought. She went to the door and looked out. Frost tingled in the air; icicles had formed round the water-butt; the strange humming stillness of intense cold was about her. It froze her desire for adventure. 'I'll stay as I be,' she thought. 'I wunna be his'n.' To her, Reddin was a terror and a fascination. She returned to the prickly wreath, sewing on the variegated holly-leaves one by one, with clusters of berries at intervals. 'What good'll it do 'im?' she asked; 'he canna see it.' 'Who wants him to see it?' Abel was amused. 'When his father died he 'ad his enjoyment--proud as proud was Samson, for there were seven wreaths, no less.' Hazel's thoughts returned to the coming festivity. Her hair and her peacock-blue dress would be admired. To be admired was a wonderful new sensation. She fetched a cloth and rubbed at the brown mark. It would not come out. As long as she wore the dress it would be there, like the stigma of pain that all creatures bear as long as they wear the garment of the flesh. At last she burst into tears. 'I want another dress with no blood on it!' she wailed. And so wailing she voiced the deep lament, old as the moan of forests and falling water, that goes up through the centuries to the aloof and silent sky, and remains, as ever, unassuaged. * * * * * Hazel hated a burying, for then she had to go with Abel to help in carrying the coffin to the house of mourning. They set out on the second day after her return. The steep road down to the plain--called the Monkey's Ladder--was a river, for a thaw had set in. But Hazel did not mind that, though her boots let in the water, as she minded the atmosphere of gloom at old Samson's blind house. She would never, as Abel always did, 'view the corpse,' and this was always taken as an insult. So she waited in the road, half snow and half water, and thought with regret of Undern and its great fire of logs, and the green rich dress, and Reddin with his force and virility, loud voice, and strong teeth. He was so very much alive in a world where old men would keep dying. Abel came out at last, very gay, for he had been given, over and above the usual payment, glove-money and a glass of beer. 'Us'll get a drop at the public,' he said. So they turned in there. Hazel thought the red-curtained, firelit room, with its crudely coloured jugs and mugs, a most wonderful place. She sat in a corner of the settle and watched her boots steam, growing very sleepy. But suddenly there was a great clatter outside, the sound of a horse, pulled up sharply, slipping on the cobbles, and a shout for the landlord. 'Oh, my mortal life!' said Hazel, 'it met be the Black Huntsman himself.' 'No, I won't come in,' said the rider, 'a glass out here.' Hazel knew who it was. 'Can you tell me,' he went on, 'if there's any young lady about here with auburn hair? Father plays the fiddle.' 'He's got it wrong,' thought Hazel. 'Young lady!' repeated the landlord. 'Hawburn? No, there's no lady of that colour hereabouts. And what ladies there be are weathered and case-hardened.' 'The one I'm looking for's young--young as a kitten, and as troublesome.' Hazel clapped her hands to her mouth. 'There's no fiddler chap hereabouts, then?' Abel rose and went to the door. 'If it's music you want, I know better music than fiddles, and that's harps,' he said. 'Saw! saw! The only time as ever I liked a fiddle was when the fellow snabbed at the strings with his ten fingers--despert-like.' 'Oh, damn you!' said Reddin. 'I didn't come to hear about harps.' 'If it's funerals or a forester's supper, a concert or a wedding,' Abel went on, quite undaunted, 'I'm your man.' Reddin laughed. 'It might be the last,' he said. 'Wedding or bedding, either or both, I suppose,' said the publican, who was counted a wit. Reddin gave a great roar of laughter. 'Both!' he said. 'Neither!' whispered Hazel, who had been poised indecisively, as if half prepared to go to the door. She sat further into the shadow. In another moment he was gone. 'Whoever she be,' said the publican, nodding his large head wisely, 'have her he will, for certain sure!' All through the night, murmurous with little rivulets of snow-water, the gurgling of full troughing, and the patter of rain on the iron roof of the house and the miniature roofs of the beehives, Hazel, waking from uneasy slumber, heard those words and muttered them. In her frightened dreams she reached out to something that she felt must be beyond the pleasant sound of falling water, so small and transitory; beyond the drip and patter of human destinies--something vast, solitary, and silent. How should she find that which none has ever named or known? Men only stammer of it in such words as Eternity, Fate, God. All the outcries of all creatures, living and dying, sink in its depth as in an unsounded ocean. Whether this listening silence, incurious, yet hearing all, is benignant or malevolent, who can say? The wistful dreams of men haunt this theme for ever; the creeds of men are so many keys that do not fit the lock. We ponder it in our hearts, and some find peace, and some find terror. The silence presses upon us ever more heavily until Death comes with his cajoling voice and promises us the key. Then we run after him into the stillness, and are heard no more. Hazel and her father practised hard through the dark, wet evenings. She was to sing 'Harps in Heaven,' a song her mother had taught her. He was to accompany the choir, or glee-party, that met together at different places, coming from the villages and hillsides of a wide stretch of country. 'Well,' said Abel on the morning of their final rehearsal, 'it's a miserable bit of a silly song, but you mun make the best of it. Give it voice, girl! Dunna go to sing it like a mouse in milk!' His musical taste was offended by Hazel's way of being more dramatic than musical. She would sink her voice in the sad parts almost to a whisper, and then rise to a kind of keen. 'You'm like nought but Owen's old sheep-dog,' he said, 'wowing the moon!' But Hazel's idea of music continued to be that of a bird. She was a wild thing, and she sang according to instinct, and not by rule, though her good ear kept her notes true. They set out early, for they had a good walk in front of them, and the April sun was hot. Hazel, under the pale green larch-trees, in her bright dress, with her crown of tawny hair, seemed to be an incarnation of the secret woods. Abel strode ahead in his black cut-away coat, snuff-coloured trousers, and high-crowned felt hat with its ornamental band. This receded to the back of his head as he grew hotter. The harp was slung from his shoulder, the gilding looking tawdry in the open day. Twice during the walk, once in a round clearing fringed with birches, and once in a pine-glade, he stopped, put the harp down and played, sitting on a felled tree. Hazel, quite intoxicated with excitement, danced between the slender boles till her hair fell down and the long plait swung against her shoulder. 'If folks came by, maybe they'd think I was a fairy!' she cried. 'Dunna kick about so!' said Abel, emerging from his abstraction. 'It inna decent, now you're an 'ooman growd.' 'I'm not an 'ooman growd!' cried Hazel shrilly. 'I dunna want to be, and I won't never be.' The pine-tops bent in the wind like attentive heads, as gods, sitting stately above, might nod thoughtfully over a human destiny. Someone, it almost seemed, had heard and registered Hazel's cry, 'I'll never be an 'ooman,' assenting, sardonic. They came to the quarry at the mountain; the deserted mounds and chasms looked more desolate than ever in the spring world. Here and there the leaves of a young tree lipped the grey-white steeps, as if wistfully trying to love them, as a child tries to caress a forbidding parent. They climbed round the larger heaps and skirted a precipitous place. 'I canna bear this place,' said Hazel; 'it's so drodsome.' 'Awhile since, afore you were born, a cow fell down that there place, hundreds of feet.' 'Did they save her?' 'Laws, no! She was all of a jelly.' Hazel broke out with sudden passionate crying. 'Oh, dunna, dunna!' she sobbed. So she did always at any mention of helpless suffering, flinging herself down in wild rebellion and abandonment so that epilepsy had been suspected. But it was not epilepsy. It was pity. She, in her inexpressive, childish way, shared with the love-martyr of Galilee the heartrending capacity for imaginative sympathy. In common with Him and others of her kind, she was not only acquainted with grief, but reviled and rejected. In her schooldays boys brought maimed frogs and threw them in her lap, to watch, from a safe distance, her almost crazy grief and rage. 'Whatever's come o'er ye?' said her father now. 'You're too nesh, that's what you be, nesh-spirited.' He could not understand; for the art in him was not that warm, suffering thing, creation, but hard, brightly polished talent. Hazel stood at the edge of the steep grey cliff, her hands folded, a curious fatalism in her eyes. 'There'll be summat bad'll come to me hereabouts,' she said--'summat bad and awful.' The dark shadows lying so still on the dirty white mounds had a stealthy, crouching look, and the large soft leaves of a plane-tree flapped helplessly against the shale with the air of important people who whisper 'Alas!' Abel was on ahead. Suddenly he turned round, excited as a boy. 'They've started!' he cried. 'Hark at the music! They allus begin with the organ.' Hazel followed him, eager for joy, running obedient and hopeful at the heels of life as a young lamb runs with its mother. She forgot her dark intuitions; she only remembered that she wanted to enjoy herself, and that if she was a good girl, surely, surely God would let her. Chapter 8 The chapel and minister's house at God's Little Mountain were all in one--a long, low building of grey stone surrounded by the graveyard, where stones, flat, erect, and askew, took the place of a flower-garden. Away to the left, just over a rise, the hill was gashed by the grey steeps of the quarries. In front rose another curve covered with thick woods. To the right was the batch, down which a road--in winter a water-course--led into the valley. Behind the house God's Little Mountain sloped softly up and away apparently to its possessor. Not the least of the mysteries of the place, and it was tense with mystery, was the Sunday congregation, which appeared to spring up miraculously from the rocks, woods and graves. When the present minister, Edward Marston, came there with his mother he detested it; but after a time it insinuated itself into his heart, and gave a stronger character to his religion. He had always been naturally religious, taking on trust what he was taught; and he had an instinctive pleasure in clean and healthy things. But on winter nights at the mountain, when the tingling stars sprang in and out of their black ambush and frost cracked the tombstones; in summer, when lightning crackled in the woods and ripped along the hillside like a thousand devils, the need of a God grew ever more urgent. He spoke of this to his mother. 'No, dear, I can't say I have more need of our Lord here than in Crigton,' she said. 'In Crigton there was the bus to be afraid of, and bicycles. Here I just cover my ears for wind, put on an extra flannel petticoat for frost, and sit in the coal-house for thunder. Not that I'm forgetting God. God with us, of course, coal-house or elsewhere.' 'But don't you feel something ominous about the place, mother? I feel as if something awful would happen here, don't you?' 'No, dear. Nor will you when you've had some magnesia. Martha!' (Martha was the general who came in by the day from the first cottage in the batch)--'Martha, put on an extra chop for the master. You aren't in love, are you, my dear?' 'Gracious, no! Who should I be in love with, mother?' 'Quite right, dear. There is no one about here with more looks than a brussels sprout. Not that I say anything against sprouts. Martha, just go and see if there are any sprouts left. We'll have them for dinner.' Edward looked at the woods across the batch, and wondered why the young fresh green of the larches and the elm samaras was so sad, and why the cry of a sheep from an upper slope was so forlorn. 'I hope, Edward,' said Mrs. Marston, 'that it won't be serious music. I think serious music interferes with the digestion. Your poor father and I went to the "Creation" on our honeymoon, and thought little of it; then we went to the "Crucifixion," and though it was very pleasant, I couldn't digest the oysters afterwards. And then, again, these clever musicians allow themselves to become so passionate, one almost thinks they are inebriated. Not flutes and cornets, they have to think of their breath, but fiddlers can wreak their feelings on the instrument without suffering for it.' Edward laughed. 'I hope the gentleman that's coming to-day is a nice quiet one,' she went on, as if Abel were a pony. 'And I hope the lady singer is not a contralto. Contralto, to my mind,' she went on placidly, stirring her porter in preparation for a draught, 'is only another name for roaring, which is unseemly.' She drank her porter gratefully, keeping the spoon in place with one finger. If she could have seen father and daughter as they set forth, hilarious, to superimpose tumult on the peace of God's Little Mountain, she would have been a good deal less placid. It was restful to sit and look at her kind old face, soft and round beneath her lace cap, steeped in a peace deeper than lethargy. She was one of nature's opiates, and she administered herself unconsciously to everyone who saw much of her. Edward's father, having had an overdose, had not survived. Mrs. Marston always spoke of him as 'my poor husband who fell asleep,' as if he had dozed in a sermon. Sleep was her fetish, panacea and art. Her strongest condemnation was to call a person 'a stirring body.' She sat to-day, while preparations raged in the kitchen, placidly knitting. She always knitted--socks for Edward and shawls for herself. She had made so many shawls, and she so felt the cold, that she wore them in layers--pink, grey, white, heather mixture, and a purple cross-over. When Martha and the friend who had come to help quarrelled shrilly, she murmured, 'Poor things! putting themselves in such a pother!' When, after a crash, Martha was heard to say, 'There's the cream-jug now! Well, break one, break three!' she only shook her head, and murmured that servants were not what they used to be. When Martha's friend's little boy dropped the urn--presented to the late Mr. Marston by a grateful congregation, and as large as a watering-can--and Martha's friend shouted, 'I'll warm your buttons!' and proceeded to do so, Mrs. Marston remained self-poised as a sun. At last supper was set out, the cloths going in terraces according to the various heights of the tables; the tea-sets--willow and Coalport, the feather pattern, and the seaweed--looking like a china-shop; the urn, now rakishly dinted, presiding. People paid for their supper on these occasions, and expected to have as much as they could eat. Mrs. Marston had rashly told Martha that she could have what was left as a perquisite, which resulted later in stormy happenings. * * * * * From the nook on the hillside where the chapel stood, as Abel ran hastily down the slope--the harp jogging on his shoulders and looking like some weird demon that clung round his neck and possessed him--came a roar of sound. The brass band from Black Mountain was in possession of the platform. The golden windows shone comfortably in the cold spring evening, and Hazel ran towards them as she would have run towards the wide-flung onyx doors of faery. They arrived breathless and panting in the graveyard, where the tombstones seemed to elbow each other outside the shining windows, looking into this cave of saffron light and rosy joy as sardonically as if they knew that those within its shelter would soon be without, shelterless in the storm of death; that those who came in so gaily by twos and threes would go out one by one without a word. Hazel peered in. 'Fine raps they're having!' she whispered. 'All the band's there, purple with pleasure, and sweating with the music like chaps haying.' Abel looked in. 'Eh, dear,' he said, 'they're settled there for the neet. We'll ne'er get a squeak in. There's nought for Black Mountain Band'll stop at when they're elbow to elbow; they eggs each other on cruel, so they do! Your ears may be dinned and deafened for life, and you lost to the bee-keeping (for hear you must, or you'm done, with bees), but the band dunna care! There! Now they've got a hencore--that's to say, do it agen; and every time they get one of them it goes to their yeads, and they play louder.' 'Ah, but you play better,' said Hazel comfortingly; for Abel's voice had trembled, and Hazel must comfort grief wherever she found it, for grief implied weakness. 'I know I do,' he assented; 'but what can I do agen ten strong men?' At the mountain, as in the world of art and letters, it seemed that the artist must elbow and push, and that if he did not often stop his honeyed utterances to shout his wares he would not be heard at all. 'Dunna they look funny!' said Hazel with a giggle. 'All sleepy and quiet, like smoked bees. Is that the Minister? Him by the old sleepy lady--she's had more smoke than most!' 'Where?' 'There. He's got a black coat on and a kind face, sad-like.' 'Maybe if you took an axed him, he'd marry you--when the moon falls down the chapel chimney and rabbits chase the bobtailed sheep-dog!' 'I'm not for marrying anybody. Let's go in,' said Hazel. She took off her hat and coat, to enter more splendidly. On her head, resting softly among the coils of ruddy hair, she put a wreath of violets, which grew everywhere at the Callow; a big bunch of them was at her throat like a cameo brooch. When she entered the band faltered, and the cornet, a fiery young man whom none could tire, wavered into silence. Edward, turning to find out what had caused this most desirable event, saw her coming up the room with the radiant fatefulness of a fairy in a dream. His heart went out to her, not only for her morning air, her vivid eyes, her coronet of youth's rare violets, but for the wistfulness that was not only in her face, but in her poise and in every movement. He felt as he would to a small bright bird that had come, greatly daring, in at his window on a stormy night. She had entered the empty room of his heart, and from this night onwards his only thought was how to keep her there. When she went up to sing, his eyes dwelt on her. She was the most vital thing he had ever seen. The tendrils of burnished hair about her forehead and ears curled and shone with life; her eyes danced with life; her body was taut as a slim arrow ready to fly from life's bow. Abel sat down in the middle of the platform and began to play, quite regardless of Hazel, who had to start when she could. 'Harps in heaven played for you; Played for Christ with his eyes so blue; Played for Peter and for Paul, But never played for me at all! Harps in heaven, made all of glass, Greener than the rainy grass. Ne'er a one but is bespoken, And mine is broken--mine is broken! Harps in heaven play high, play low; In the cold, rainy wind I go To find my harp, as green as spring-- My splintered harp without a string!' She sang with passion. The wail of the lost was in her voice. She had not the slightest idea what the words meant (probably they meant nothing), but the sad cadence suited her emotional tone, and the ideas of loss and exile expressed her vague mistrust of the world. Edward imagined her in her blue-green dress and violet crown playing on a large glass harp in a company of angels. 'Poor child!' he thought. 'Is it mystical longing or a sense of sin that cries out in her voice?' It was neither of those things; it was nothing that Edward could have understood at that time, though later he did. It was the grief of rainy forests, and the moan of stormy water; the muffled complaint of driven leaves; the keening--wild and universal--of life for the perishing matter that it inhabits. Hazel expressed things that she knew nothing of, as a blackbird does. For, though she was young and fresh, she had her origin in the old, dark heart of earth, full of innumerable agonies, and in that heart she dwelt, and ever would, singing from its gloom as a bird sings in a yew-tree. Her being was more full of echoes than the hearts of those that live further from the soil; and we are all as full of echoes as a rocky wood--echoes of the past, reflex echoes of the future, and echoes of the soil (these last reverberating through our filmiest dreams, like the sound of thunder in a blossoming orchard). The echoes are in us of great voices long gone hence, the unknown cries of huge beasts on the mountains; the sullen aims of creatures in the slime; the love-call of the bittern. We know, too, echoes of things outside our ken--the thought that shapes itself in the bee's brain and becomes a waxen box of sweets; the tyranny of youth stirring in the womb; the crazy terror of small slaughtered beasts; the upward push of folded grass, and how the leaf feels in all its veins the cold rain; the ceremonial that passes yearly in the emerald temples of bud and calyx--we have walked those temples; we are the sacrifice on those altars. And the future floats on the current of our blood like a secret argosy. We hear the ideals of our descendants, like songs in the night, long before our firstborn is begotten. We, in whom the pollen and the dust, sprouting grain and falling berry, the dark past and the dark future, cry and call--we ask, Who is this Singer that sends his voice through the dark forest, and inhabits us with ageless and immortal music, and sets the long echoes rolling for evermore? The audience, however, did not notice that there were echoes in Hazel, and would have gaped if you had proclaimed God in her voice. They looked at her with critical eyes that were perfectly blind to her real self. Mrs. Marston thought what a pity it was that she looked so wild; Martha thought it a pity that she did not wear a chenille net over her hair to keep it neat; and Abel, peering up at her through the strings of the harp and looking--with his face framed in wild red hair--like a peculiarly intelligent animal in a cage, did not think of her at all. But Edward made up for them, because he thought of her all the time. Before the end of the concert he had got as far as to be sure she was the only girl he would ever want to marry. His ministerial self put in a faint proviso, 'If she is a good girl'; but it was instantly shouted down by his other self, who asserted that as she was so beautiful she must be good. During the last items on the programme--two vociferous glees rendered by a stage-full of people packed so tightly that it was marvellous how they expanded their diaphragms--Edward was in anguish of mind lest the cornet should monopolize Hazel at supper. The said cornet had become several shades more purple each time Hazel sang, so Edward was prepared for the worst. He was determined to make a struggle for it, and felt that though his position denied him the privilege of scuffling, he might at least use finesse--that has never been denied to any Church. 'My dear,' whispered Mrs. Marston, 'have you an unwelcome guest?' This was her polite way of indicating a flea. 'No, mother.' 'Well, dear, there must be something preying on your mind; you have kept up such a feeling of uneasiness that I have hardly had any nap at all.' 'What do you think of her, mother?' 'Who, dear?' 'The beautiful girl.' 'A pretty tune, the first she sang,' said Mrs. Marston, not having heard the others. 'But such wild manners and such hair! Like pussy stroked the wrong way. And there is something a little peculiar about her, for when she sings about heaven it seems somehow improper, and that,' she added drowsily, 'heaven hardly _should_ do.' Edward understood what she meant. He had been conscious himself of something desperately exciting in the bearing of Hazel Woodus--something that penetrated the underworld which lay like a covered well within him, and, like a ray of light, set all kinds of unsuspected life moving and developing there. As supper went on Edward kept more and more of Hazel's attention, and the quiet grey eyes met the restless amber ones more often. 'If I came some day--soon--to your home, would you sing to me?' he asked. 'I couldna. I'm promised for the bark-stripping.' 'What's that?' Hazel looked at him pityingly. 'Dunna you know what that is?' 'I'm afraid not.' 'It's fetching the bark off'n the failed trees ready for lugging.' 'Where are the felled trees?' 'Hunter's Spinney.' 'That's close here.' 'Ah.' Edward was deep in thought. The cornet whispered to Hazel: 'Making up next Sunday's sermon!' But Edward turned round disconcertingly. 'As it's on your way, why not come to tea with mother? I might be out, but you wouldn't mind that?' 'Eh, but I should! I dunna want to talk to an old lady!' 'I'll stop at home,' then, he replied, very much amused, and with a look of quiet triumph at the cornet. 'Which day?' 'Wednesday week's the first.' 'Come Wednesday, then.' 'What'll the old sleepy lady say?' 'My mother,' he said with dignity, 'will approve of anything I think right.' But his heart misgave. So far he had only 'thought right' what her conventions approved. He had seldom acted on his own initiative. She therefore had a phrase, 'Dear Edward is always right.' It was possible that when he left off his unquestioning concordance with her, she would leave off saying 'Dear Edward is always right.' So far he had not wanted anything particularly, and as it was as difficult to quarrel with Mrs. Marston as to strike a match on a damp box, there had never been any friction. She liked things, as she said, 'nice and pleasant.' To do Providence justice, everything always had been. Even when her husband died it had been, in a crape-clad way, nice and pleasant, for he died after the testimonial and the urn, and not before, as a less considerate man would have done. He died on a Sunday, which was 'so suitable,' and at dawn, which was 'so beautiful'; also (in the phrase used for criminals and the dying) 'he went quietly.' Not that Mrs. Marston did not feel it. She did, as deeply as her nature could. But she felt it, as a well-padded boy feels a whacking, through layers of convention. Now, at her age, to find out that life was not so pleasant as she thought would be little short of tragedy. 'Ah, I'll come, and I'm much obleeged,' said Hazel. 'I'll meet you at Hunter's Spinney and see you home.' Edward decided. To this also Hazel assented so delightedly that the cornet pushed back his chair and went to another table with a sardonic laugh. But his remarks were drowned by a voice which proclaimed: 'All the years I've bin to suppers I've 'ad tartlets! To-night they wunna go round. I've paid the same as others. Tartlets I'll 'ave!' 'But the plate's empty,' said Martha, flushed and determined. 'I've had no finger in the emptying of it. More must be fetched.' Other voices joined in, and Mrs. Marston was heard to murmur, 'Unpleasant.' Edward was oblivious to it all. 'Shall you,' he asked earnestly, 'like me to come to the Spinney?' 'Ah, I shall that!' said Hazel, who already felt an aura of protection about him. 'It'll be so safe--like when I was little, and was used to pick daisies round grandad.' Edward knew more definitely than before the relation in which he wished to stand towards Hazel. It was not that of grandad. Any reply he might have made was drowned by the uproar that broke forth at the cry, 'She's hidden 'em! Look in the kitchen!' Martha's cousin--in his spare time policeman of a distant village--felt that if Martha was detected in fraud it would not look well, and therefore put his sinewy person in the kitchen doorway. Edward seized the moment, when there was a hush of surprise, to say grace, during which the invincible voice murmured: 'I've not received tartlets. I'm not thankful.' 'Mother,' Edward said, when the last unruly guest had disappeared in the wild April night, and Hazel's vivid presence and violet fragrance and young laughter had been taken by the darkness, 'I've asked Hazel Woodus to tea on Wednesday.' 'She is not of your class, Edward.' 'What does class matter?' 'Martha's brother calls you "sir," and Martha looks down on this young person.' 'Don't call her "young person," mother.' 'Whether it is mistaken kindness, dear, or a silly flirtation, it will only do you harm with the congregation.' 'Young men and women,' soliloquized Mrs. Marston as she hoisted herself upstairs with the candlestick very much aslant in a torpid hand, 'are not what they used to be.' Chapter 9 Hunter's Spinney, a conical hill nearly as high as God's Little Mountain, lay between that range and Undern. It was deeply wooded; only its top was bare and caught the light redly. It was a silent and deserted place, cowled in ancient legends. Here the Black Huntsman stalled his steed, and the death-pack coming to its precincts, ceased into the hill. Here, in November twilights, when the dumb birds cowered in the dark pines, you might hear from the summit a horn blown-very clearly, with tuneful devilry, and a scattered sound of deep barking like the noise of sawing timber, and then the blood-curdling tumult of the pack at feeding time. To-day, as Hazel began her work, the radiant woods were full of pale colour, so delicate and lucent that Beauty seemed a fugitive presence from some other world trapped and panting to be free. The small patens of the beeches shone like green glass, and the pale spired chestnuts were candelabras on either side of the steep path. In the bright breathless glades of larches the willow-wrens sang softly, but with boundless vitality. On sunny slopes the hyacinths pushed out close-packed buds between their covering leaves; soon they would spread their grave blue like a prayer-carpet. Hazel, stooping in her old multi-coloured pinafore, her bare arms gleaming like the stripped trees, seemed to Edward as he came up the shady path to be the spirit of beauty. He quite realized that her occupation was not suited to a minister's future wife. 'But she may never be that,' he thought despairingly. 'Have you ever thought, Hazel,' he said later, sitting down on a log--'have you ever thought of the question of marriage?' 'I ne'er did till Foxy took the chicks.' Edward looked dazed. 'It's like this,' Hazel went on. 'Father (he's a rum 'un, is father!), he says he'll drown Foxy if she takes another.' 'Who is Foxy?' 'Oh! Fancy you not knowing Foxy! Her's my little cub. Pretty! you ne'er saw anything so pretty.' Edward thought he had. 'But she canna get used to folks' ways.' (This was a new point of view to Edward.) 'She'm a fox, and she can't be no other. And I'd liefer she'd _be_ a fox.' 'Foxes are very mischievous,' Edward said mildly. 'Mischievous!' Hazel flamed on him like a little thunderstorm. 'Mischievous! And who made 'em mischievous, I'd like to know? They didna make theirselves.' 'God made them,' Edward said simply. 'What for did He, if He didna like 'em when they were done?' 'We can't know all His reasons; He walks in darkness.' 'Well, that's no manner of use to me and Foxy,' said Hazel practically. 'So all as I can see to do is to get married and take Foxy where there's no chicks.' 'So you think of marrying?' 'Ah! And I told father I'd marry the first as come. I swore it by the Mountain.' 'And who came?' Edward had a kind of faintness in his heart. 'Never a one.' 'Nobody at all?' 'Never a one.' 'And if anyone came and asked for you, you'd take him?' 'Well, I'm bound to, seemingly. But it dunna matter. None'll ever come. What for should they?' She herself answered her own question fully as she stood aureoled in dusky light. His eyes were eloquent, but she was too busy to notice them. 'And should you like to be married?' he asked gently. He expected a shy affirmative. He received a flat negative. 'My mam didna like it. And she said it'd be the end of going in the woods and all my gamesome days. And she said tears and torment, tears and torment was the married lot. And she said, "Keep yourself to yourself. You wunna made for marrying any more than me. Eat in company, but sleep alone"--that's what she said, Mr. Marston.' Edward was so startled at this unhesitating frankness that he said nothing. But he silently buried several sweet hopes that had been pushing up like folded hyacinths for a week. The old madness was upon him, but it was a larger, more spiritual madness than Reddin's, as the sky is larger and more ethereal than the clouds that obscure it. He was always accustomed to think more of giving than receiving, so now he concentrated himself on what he could do for Hazel. He felt that her beauty would be an ample return for anything he could do as her husband to make her happy. If she would confide in him, demands on his time, run to him for refuge, he felt that he could ask no more of life. The strength of the ancient laws of earth was as yet hidden from him. He did not know the fierceness of the conflict in which he was engaging for Hazel's sake--the world-old conflict between sex and altruism. If he had known, he would still not have hesitated. Suddenly Hazel looked round with an affrighted air. 'It's late to be here,' she said. 'Why?' 'There's harm here if you bide late. The jeath pack's about here in the twilight, so they do say.' They looked up into the dark steeps, and the future seemed to lower on them. 'Maybe summat bad'll come to us in this spinney,' she whispered. 'Nothing bad can come to you when you are in God's keeping.' There canna be many folk in His keeping, then.' 'Do you say your prayers, Hazel?' he asked rather sadly. 'Ah! I say: "Keep me one year, keep me seven, Till the gold turns silver on my head; Bring me up to the hill o' heaven, And leave me die quiet in my bed." That's what I allus say.' 'Who taught you?' 'My mam.' 'Ah, well, it must be a good prayer if she taught it you, mustn't it?' he said. Suddenly Hazel clutched his arm affrightedly. 'Hark! Galloping up yonder! Run! run! It's the Black Huntsman!' It was Reddin, skirting the wood on his way home from a search for Hazel. If he had come into the spinney he would have seen them, but he kept straight on. 'It's bringing harm!' cried Hazel, pulling at Edward's arm; 'see the shivers on me! It's somebody galloping o'er my grave!' Edward resolved to combat these superstitions and replace them by a sane religion. He had not yet fathomed the ancient, cruel and mighty power of these exhalations of the soil. Nor did he see that Hazel was enchained by earth, prisoner to it only a little less than the beech and the hyacinth--bond-serf of the sod. When Edward and Hazel burst into the parlour, like sunshine into an old garden, they were met by a powerful smell of burnt merino. Mrs. Marston had been for some hours as near Paradise as we poor mortals can hope to be. Her elastic-sided cloth boots rested on the fender, and her skirt, carefully turned up, revealed a grey stuff petticoat with a hint of white flannel beneath. The pink shawl was top, which meant optimism. With Mrs. Marston, optimism was the direct result of warmth. Her spectacles had crept up and round her head, and had a rakishly benign appearance. On her comfortable lap lay the missionary _Word_ and a large roll of brown knitting which was intended to imitate fur. Edward noted hopefully that the pink shawl was top. 'Here's Hazel come to see you, mother!' Mrs. Marston straightened her spectacles, surveyed Hazel, and asked if she would like to do her hair. This ceremony over, they sat down to tea. 'And how many brothers and sisters have you, my dear?' asked the old lady. 'Never a one. Nobody but our Foxy.' 'Edward, too, has none. Who is Foxy?' 'My little cub.' 'You speak as if the animals were a relation, dear.' 'So all animals be my brothers and sisters.' 'I know, dear. Quite right. All animals in conversation should be so. But any single animal in reality is only an animal, and can't be. Animals have no souls.' 'Yes, they have, then! If they hanna; _you_ hanna!' Edward hastened to make peace. 'We don't know, do we, mother?' he said. 'And now suppose we have tea?' Mrs. Marston looked at Hazel suspiciously over the rim of her glasses. 'My dear, don't have ideas,' she said. 'There, Hazel!' Edward smiled. 'What about your ideas in the spinney?' 'There's queer things doing in Hunter's Spinney, and what for shouldna you believe it?' said Hazel. 'Sometimes more than other times, and midsummer most of all.' 'What sort of queer things?' asked Edward, in order to be able to watch her as she answered. Hazel shut her eyes and clasped her hands, speaking in a soft monotone as if repeating a lesson. 'In Hunter's Spinney on midsummer night there's things moving as move no other time; things free as was fast; things crying out as have been a long while hurted.' She suddenly opened her eyes and went on dramatically 'First comes the Black Huntsman, crouching low on his horse and the horse going belly to earth. And John Meares o' the public, he seed the red froth from his nostrils on the brakes one morning when he was ketching pheasants. And the jeath's with him, great hound-dogs, real as real, only no eyes, but sockets with a light behind 'em. Ne'er a one knows what they's after. If I seed 'em I'd die,' she finished hastily, taking a large bite of cake. 'Myths are interesting,' said Edward, 'especially nature myths.' 'What's a myth, Mr. Marston?' 'An untruth, my dear,' said Mrs. Marston. 'This inna one, then! I tell you John seed the blood!' 'Tell us more.' Edward would have drunk in nonsense rhymes from her lips. 'And there's never a one to gainsay 'em in all the dark 'oods,' Hazel went on, 'except on Midsummer Eve.' 'Midsummer!'--Mrs. Marston's tone was gently wistful--'is the only time I'm really warm. That is, if the weather's as it should be. But the weather's not what it was!' 'Tell us more, Hazel!' pleaded Edward. 'What for do you want to hear, my soul?' Edward flushed at the caressing phrase, and Mrs. Marston looked as indignant as was possible to her physiognomy, until she realized that it was a mere form of speech. 'Because I love--old tales.' 'Well, if so be you go there, then'--Hazel leant forward, earnest and mysterious--'after the pack's gone you'll hear soft feet running, and you'll see faces look out and hands waving. And gangs of folks come galloping under the leaves, not seen clear, hastening above a bit. And others come quick after, all with trouble on 'em. And the place is full of whispering and rustling and voices calling a long way off. And my mam said the trees get free that night--or else folk of the trees--creeping and struggling out of the boles like a chicken from an egg--getting free like lads out of school; and they go after the jeath-pack like birds after a cuckoo. And last comes the lady of Undern Coppy, lagging and lonesome, riding in a troop of shadows, and sobbing, "Lost--lost! Oh, my green garden!" And they say the brake flowers on the eve of that night, and no bird sings and no star falls.' 'What a pack of nonsense!' murmured Mrs. Marston drowsily. 'That it inna!' cried Hazel; 'it's the bloody truth!' Mrs. Marston's drowsiness forsook her. Hazel became conscious for tension. 'Mother!'--Edward's voice shook with suppressed laughter, although he was indignant with Hazel's father for such a mistaken upbringing--'mother, would you give Hazel the receipt for this splendid cake?' 'And welcome, my dear.' The old lady was safely launched on her favourite topic. 'And if you'd like a seed-cake as well, you shall have it. Have you put down any butter yet?' Hazel never put down or preserved or made anything. Her most ambitious cooking was a rasher and a saucepan of potatoes. 'I dunna know what you mean,' she said awkwardly. Edward was disappointed. He had thought her such a paragon. 'Well, well, cooking was, after all, a secondary thing. Let it go.' 'You mean to say you don't know what putting down butter is, my poor child? But perhaps you go in for higher branches? Lemon-curd, now, and bottled fruit. I'm sure you can do those?' Hazel felt blank. She thought it best to have things clear. 'I canna do naught,' she said defiantly. 'Now, mother'--Edward came to the rescue again--'see how right you are in saying that a girl's education is not what it used to be! See how Hazel's has been neglected! Think what a lot you could teach her! Suppose you were to begin quite soon?' 'A batter,' began Mrs. Marston, with the eagerness of a philosopher expounding her theory, 'is a well-beaten mixture of eggs and flour. Repeat after me, my dear.' 'Eh, what's the use? _He_ dunna know what he eats no more than a pig! I shanna cook for 'im.' 'Who's that, dear?' Mrs. Marston inquired. 'My dad.' Mrs. Marston held up her hands with the mock-fur knitting in them, and looked at Edward with round eyes. 'She says her father's a--a pig, my dear!' 'She doesn't mean it,' said he loyally, 'do you, Hazel?' 'Ah, and more!' The host and hostess sighed. Then Edward said: 'Yes, but you won't always be keeping house for your father, you know,' and found himself so confused that he had to go and fetch a pipe. Afterwards he walked part way home with Hazel, and coming back under the driving sky--that seemed to move all in a piece like a sliding window, and showed the moon as a slim lady waiting for unlooked-for happenings--he could have wept at the crude sweetness of Hazel. She was of so ruthless an honesty towards herself as well as others; she had such strange lights and shadows in her eyes, her voice, her soul; she was so full of faults, and so brimming with fascination. 'Oh, God, if I may have her to keep and defend, to glow in my house like a rose, I'll ask no more,' he murmured. The pine-tops bowed in as stately a manner as they had when Hazel cried, 'I'll never be a woman!' They listened like grown-ups to the prattle of a child. And the stars, like gods in silver armour sitting afar in halls of black marble, seemed to hear and disdain the little gnat-like voice, as they heard Vessons' defiant 'Never will I!' and Mrs. Marston's woolly prayers, and Reddin's hoof-beats. All man's desires--predatory, fugitive, or merely negative--wander away into those dark halls, and are heard no more. Among the pillars of the night is there One who listens and remembers, and judges the foolishness of man, not by effects, but by motives? And does that One, in the majesty of everlasting vitality and resistless peace, ever see how we run after the painted butterflies of our desires and fall down the dark precipice? And if He sees and hears the wavering, calamitous life of all creatures, and especially of the most beautiful and the most helpless, does He ever sigh and weep, as we do when we see a dead child or a moth's wing impaled on a thorn? Our heavy burden is that we cannot know. For all our tears and prayers and weary dreaming, we cannot know. Edward lay awake all night, and heard the first blackbird begin, tentatively, his clear song--a song to bring tears by its golden security of joy in a world where nothing is secure. The old madness surged in upon Edward more strongly as the light grew, and he tried to read the Gospel of St. John (his favourite), but the words left no trace on his mind. Hazel was there, and like a scarlet-berried rowan on the sky she held the gaze by the perfection of the picture she made. The bent of Edward's mind and upbringing was set against the rush of his wishes and of circumstance. She had said, 'The first that came,' and he was sure that in her state of dark superstition she would hold by her vow. Suppose some other--some farm-hand, who would never see the real Hazel--should have been thinking over the matter, and should go to-day and should be the first? It was just how things happened. And then his flower would be gone, and the other man would never know it was a flower. He worked himself into such a fever that he could not rest, but got up and went out into the lively air, and saw the sun come lingeringly through aery meadows of pale green and primrose. He saw the ice slip from the bright pointed lilac buds, and sheep browsing the frosty grass, and going to and fro in the unreserved way that animals have in the early hours before the restraint of human society is imposed on them. He saw, yet noticed nothing, until a long scarlet bar of cloud reminded him of Hazel by its vividness, and he found a violet by the graveyard gate. 'Little Hazel!' he whispered. He pondered on the future, and tried to imagine such an early walk as this with Hazel by his side, and could not for the glory of it. Then he reasoned with himself. This wild haste was not right, perhaps. He ought to wait. But that vow! That foolish, childish vow! 'I could look after her. She could blossom here like a violet in a quiet garden.' Giving was never too early. 'And I am asking nothing--not for years. She shall live her own life, and be mother's daughter and my little sister for as long as she likes. My little sister!' he repeated aloud, as if some voice had contradicted him. And, indeed, the whole wide morning seemed to contradict his scheme--the mating birds, the sheep suckling their lambs, the insistent neighing and bellowing that rose from the fields and farms, the very tombstones, with their legends of multitudinous families, and the voice that cried to man and woman, not in words, but in the zest of the earth and air, '"Beget, bring forth, and then depart, for I have done with you!"' A sharp cold shower stung his cheeks, and he saw a slim rosebud beating itself helplessly against the wet earth, broken and muddy. He fetched a stake and tied it up. I think,' he said to himself, 'that I was put into the world to tie up broken roses, and one that is not broken yet, thank God! It is miraculous that she has never come to harm, for that great overgrown boy, her father, takes no care of her. Yes, I was meant for that. I can't preach.' He smiled ruefully as he remembered how steadfastly the congregation slept through his best sermons. 'I can't say the right things at the right time. I'm not clever. But I can take care of Hazel. And that is my life-work,' he added naively, 'perhaps I'd better begin at once, and go to see her to-day.' Ah! the gold and scarlet morning as he came home after finding that resolve, which, as a matter of fact, he had taken with him! How the roof of the parsonage shone like the New Jerusalem! And how the fantail pigeons, very rotund denizens of that city, cooed as they walked gingerly--tiles being cold to pink feet on a frosty morning--up and down in the early sun! Edward so much wanted to keep the violet he had found that he decided he ought to give it to his mother. So he put it on her plate, and looked for a suitable passage to read at prayers. The Song of Solomon seemed the only thing really in tune with the morning, but he decided rather sadly that 'something in Corinthians' might please his mother better. So he read, 'The greatest of these is love,' and his voice was so husky and so unmanageable that Mrs. Marston, who did not notice the golden undertones that matched their beauty with the blackbird's song, went straight from the chair she knelt at in the prayers to her store-room, and produced lemon and honey, which Edward loathed. 'You're very throaty, my dear, and you must take a level spoonful,' she said. It is only in poetry that all the world understands a lover. In real life he is called throaty, and given a level spoonful of that nauseous compound known as common sense. Chapter 10 The garden at the Callow was full of old, sad-coloured flowers that had lost all names but the country ones. Chief among them, by reason of its hardihood, was a small plant called virgin's pride. Its ephemeral petals, pale and bee-haunted, fluttered like banners of some lost, forgotten cause. The garden was hazy with their demure, faintly scented flowers, and the voices of the bees came up in a soft roar triumphantly, as the voices of victors returning with hardwon spoil. Abel had been putting some new sections on the hives, and, as usual, after a long spell of listening to their low, changeless music, he rushed in for his harp. He sat down under the hawthorn by the gate, and looked like a patriarch beneath a pale green tint. As day declined the music waxed; he played with a tenderness, a rage of delight, that did not often come to him except on spring evenings. He almost touched genius. Hazel came out, leaving the floor half scrubbed, and began to dance on the potato flat. 'Dunna stomp the taters to jeath, 'Azel!' said he. 'They binna up!' she replied, continuing to dance. He never wasted words. He continued the air with one hand and threw a stone at her with the other. He hit her on the cheek. 'You wold beast!' she screamed. 'Gerroff taters!' He continued to play. She went, hand to cheek, and frowning, off the potato patch. But she did not stop dancing. Neither of them ever let such things as anger, business, or cleanliness interfere with their pleasures. So Hazel danced on, though on a smaller area among the virgin's pride. The music, wild, crude and melancholy, floated on the soft air to Edward as he approached. The sun slipped lower; leaf shadows began to tremble on Hazel's pinafore, which, with its faded blue and its many stains, was transmuted in the vivid light, and looked like the flowers of virgin's pride. '"The Ash Tree"!' said Abel, who always announced his tunes in this way, as singers do at a choir supper. The forlorn music met Edward at the gate. He stopped, startled at the sight of Hazel dancing in the shadowy garden with her hair loose and her abandon tempered by weariness. He stood behind the hedge until Abel brought the tune to an early end with the laconic remark, 'Supper,' and went indoors with his harp. Edward opened the gate and went in. 'Eh, mister! what a start you give me!' said Hazel breathlessly. 'So this is your home?' 'Ah!' Edward found her more disturbing to-night than at the concert; the gulf between them was more obvious; she had been comparatively tidy before. Now her disreputableness contrasted strongly with his correct black coat and general air of civilized well-being. Hazel came nearer. 'He inna bad to live along of,' she confided, with a nod towards the cottage. 'O' course, he's crossways time and again, and a devil's temper.' 'You mustn't speak of your father like that, Hazel.' 'What for not? He _be_ like that.' 'Are all these apple-trees yours?' he asked to change the subject. 'No, they'm father's. But I get the windfa'ls and the bruised 'uns. I allus see'--she smiled winningly--'as there's plenty of them. Foxy likes 'em. He found me at it once bruising of 'em. God a'mighty! what a hiding he give me!' Edward felt depressed. He could not harmonize Hazel's personality with his mother's; he was shocked at her expressions; he was sufficiently fastidious to recoil from dirt; the thought of Abel as a father-in-law was little short of appalling. Yet, in spite of all these things, he had felt such elation, such spring rapture when Hazel danced; the world took on such strange new colours when she looked at him that he knew he must love her for ever. He felt that as his emotions grew stronger--and they were becoming more and more like a herd of young calves out at grass--his ways of expression must increase in correctness. 'Hazel--' he began. 'I like the way you say it,' she interrupted. 'Ah! I like it right well! Breathin' strong, like folk coming up the Monkey's Ladder.' 'Whatever's that?' 'Dunna you know Monkey's Ladder? It's that road there. Somebody's coming up it now on a horse.' They both looked down at Reddin climbing slowly and still some way off. They did not know who it was, nor what destiny was pacing silently towards them with his advancing figure, nor why he rode up and down this road and other roads every day; but an inexplicable sense of urgency came upon Edward. To his own surprise, he said suddenly: 'I came to ask if you'd marry me, Hazel Woodus?' 'Eh?' said she, dazed with surprise. 'Will you marry me, Hazel? I can give you a good home, and I will try to be a good husband, and--and I love you, Hazel, dear.' Hazel put her head on one side like a willow-wren singing. She liked to be called dear. 'D'you like me as much as I like Foxy?' 'Far more.' 'You've bin very quick about it.' 'I'm afraid I have.' 'Will you buy me a green gown with yellow roses on?' 'If you like.' He spoke doubtfully, wondering what his mother would think of it. 'And shall we sit down to our dinners at a table with a cloth on like at--' She stopped. She could not tell him about Undern. 'Like the gentry?' she finished. 'Yes, dear.' 'And will you tell that sleepy old lady as lives along, of you--' ('Oh, poor mother!' thought Edward.) '--Not to stare and stare at me over the top of her spectacles like a cow at a cornfield over the fence?' 'Yes--yes,' said Edward hastily, feeling that his mother must wait to be reinstated until he had made sure of Hazel. 'All right, then; I'll come.' Edward took her hand; then he kissed her cheek gently. She accepted the kiss placidly. There was nothing in it to remind her of Reddin's. 'And you'll do always as you like,' Edward went on, 'and be my little sister.' Then, to make matters clearer, he added: 'and you shall have a room papered with buttercups and daisies for your very own.' 'Eh! how grand!' 'You'll like that?' His voice was wistful in its eagerness for a denial. 'Ah! I shall like it right well.' Edward made no reply. He was never any good at putting in a word for himself. He was usually left out of things, and stood contentedly in the background while inferior men pushed in front of him. 'And now,' he said, 'I'll give you a token till I can get you a ring.' He picked a spray of the faint pink and blue flowers. 'What's its name?' he asked. 'Virgin's pride.' Edward gave her a quick look. Then he realized that she was as innocent as her little fox, and as free from artifice. That was its name, so she told it to him. 'A very pretty little flower, and a very sweet name,' he said, 'And now, where's your father?' 'Guzzling his supper.' Edward frowned. Then the humour of the situation struck him, and he laughed. Abel rose as they came to the door. 'Well, mister,' he inquired glumly, 'what'n you after? Money for them missions to buy clothes for savages as 'd liefer go bare? Or money for them poor clergy? I'm poorer nor the clergy.' 'I want to marry Hazel.' Abel flung back his head and roared. Then he jerked his thumb over his shoulder towards Hazel. 'What?--'er?' he queried in ecstasies of mirth. ''Er? Look at the floor, man! Look at the apern she's got on! Laws, man! you surely dunna want our 'Azel for your missus?' 'Yes.' Edward was nettled and embarrassed. 'Well, 'er's only eighteen.' He looked Hazel over appraisingly, as he would have looked at a heifer. 'Still, I suppose she's an 'ooman growed. Well, you can take her. I dunna mind. When d'you want her?' I shall ask her when she will wish to marry me.' Abel laughed again. 'Lord love us!' he said. 'You unna take and ax her? Tell her, that's what! Just tell her what to do, and she'll do it if you give her one for herself now and agen. So you mean marrying, do yer?' Edward was angry. Abel's outlook and manner of expression rawed his nerves. 'I leave all the arrangements to her,' he said stiffly. 'Then the devil aid you,' said Abel, 'for I canna!' Hazel stood with downcast face, submissive, but ill at ease. She wanted to spring at her father and scream, 'Ho'd yer row!' for she hated him for talking so to Edward. Somehow it made her flushed and ashamed for Edward to be told to 'give her one for herself.' She looked at him under her lashes, and wondered if he would. There was something not altogether unpleasant in the idea. She felt that to be ordered about by young lips and struck by a young man's hand would be, as business men say, 'quite in order.' She appraised Edward, and decided that he would not. Had she been able to decide in the affirmative, she would probably have fallen in love with him there and then. Edward came over to her and took her hand. 'When will you be my wife, Hazel?' he said. 'I dunno. Not for above a bit.' 'Haw! haw!' laughed Abel. 'Hark at her! Throw summat at er', man!' 'I should prefer your absence,' said Edward, stung to expression at last. 'Eh?' 'Go away!' said Edward rudely. He was surprised at himself afterwards. Abel withdrew open-mouthed. Hazel laughed with delight. 'But why didna you hit 'un?' she asked wistfully. 'My dear girl! What a thing to say!' 'Be it?' 'Yes. But now, when shall we be married?' 'Not for years and years,' said Hazel, pleased at the dismay on his face, and enjoying her new power. Then she reflected on the many untried delights of the new life. 'Leastways, not for days an' days,' she amended. 'Will you gi' me pear-drops every day?' 'Pear-drops! My dear Hazel, you must think of better things than pear-drops!' 'There's nought better,' she said, 'without it's bull's-eyes.' 'But, dear,' Edward reasoned gently, 'don't you want to think of helping me, and going with me to chapel?' Hazel considered. 'D'you preach long and solemn?' she asked. 'No,' said Edward rather curtly. 'But if I did, you ought to like it.' Hazel took his measure again. Then she said naughtily: 'Tell you what I'll do if you preach long and solemn, mister. I'll put me tongue out!' Edward laughed in spite of himself, and thought for the twentieth time, 'Poor mother!' But that did not prevent his being anxious to have Hazel safely at the Mountain. It seemed to him that every man in the county must want to marry her. 'What would you say to May, Hazel, early May--lilac-time?' 'I'd like it right well.' 'And suppose we fix it the day after the spring flower-show at Evenwood, and go to it together?' 'I'm going with father to sing.' 'Well, when you've sung, you can have tea with me.' 'Thank you kindly, Mr. Marston.' 'Edward.' 'Ed'ard.' Abel came round the house. 'You can come and see the bees, if you've a mind,' he said forgivingly. In his angers and his joys he was like a child. He was, in fact, what he looked--a barbaric child, prematurely aged. He was aged and had lines on his face because he enjoyed life so much, for joy bites as deep as sickness or grief or any other physical strain. Hazel would age soon, for she lived in an intenser world than most people, as if she saw everything through magnifying glass and coloured glass. Edward went to the bees as he would have gone to the dogs--sadly. He disliked the bees even more than he disliked Abel, who in his expansive mood was much less attractive than in his natural sulkiness. Abel did not know how near he came once or twice to frustrating an end that he thought very desirable. A less steadfast man than Edward, with a less altruistic object in view, would have been frightened away from Hazel by Abel's crudeness. 'What about the bitch?' he asked Edward when they had seen the bees. 'Will you take her, or shall I drown her?' Rage flamed in Hazel's face--rage all the more destructive because it was caused by pity. Her father's calm taking for granted that Foxy's fate (and her own) depended on his whim and Edward's, the picture of Foxy tied up in a bag to be drowned--Foxy, who had all her love--infuriated her. Edward was troubled at the look in her eyes. He had not yet had much opportunity for seeing those wild red lights that burn in the eyes of the hunter, and are reflected in those of the hunted, and make life a lurid nightmare. The scene set his teeth on edge. 'Of course,' he said, and the recklessness of it was quite clear to him when he thought of his mother--'of course, the little fox shall come.' 'And the one-eyed cat and the blind bird and the old ancient rabbit, I'll wager!' queried Abel. 'Well, minister, you can set up a menagerie and make money.' 'They could go in bits of holes and corners,' Hazel put in anxiously, 'and nobody'd ever know they were there! And the bird chirrups lovely, fine days.' Abel shouted with laughter. 'Tuthree feathers and a beak!' he said. 'And the rabbit'd be comforbler a muff.' Edward hastily ended the discussion. 'Of course, they shall all come,' he said. Somehow, Hazel made the sheltering of these poor creatures a matter of religion. He found himself connecting them with the great 'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto these--' He had never seen the text in that light before. But he was dubious about the possibility of making his mother see it thus. 'They'll be much obleeged,' Hazel said. 'Come and see 'em.' She spoke as one conferring the freedom of a city. Foxy--very clean in her straw, smoothly white and brown, dignified, and golden of eye--looked mistrustfully at Edward and showed her baby white teeth. 'She'll liven the old lady up,' said Hazel. 'I'm afraid--' began Edward; and then--'she shows her teeth a good deal.' 'Only along of being frit.' 'She needn't be frightened. I'll take care of her and of you, and see that no harm comes to you.' The statement was received by the night--critical, attent--in a silence so deep that it seemed quizzical. On his way home he felt rather dismayed at his task, because he saw that in making Hazel happy he must make his mother unhappy. 'Ah, well, it'll all come right,' he thought, 'for He is love, and He will help me.' The sharp staccato sound of a horse cantering came up behind him. It was Reddin returning from a wide detour. He pulled up short. 'Is there any fiddler in your parish, parson?' he inquired. Edward considered. 'There is one man on the far side of the Mountain.' 'Pretty daughter?' 'No. He is only twenty.' 'Damn!' He was gone. Hazel, in the untidy room at the Callow, fed her pets and had supper in a dream of coming peace for them all. She would not have been peaceful if she had seen the meeting of the two men in the dusk, both wanting her with a passion equal in suddenness and force, but different in quality. She wanted neither. Her passion, no less intense, was for freedom, for the wood-track, for green places where soft feet scudded and eager eyes peered out and adventurous lives were lived up in the tree-tops, down in the moss. She was fascinated by Reddin; she was drawn to confide in Edward; but she wanted neither of them. Whether or not in years to come she would find room in her heart for human passion, she had no room for it now. She had only room for the little creatures she befriended and for her eager, quickly growing self. For, like her mother, she had the egoism that is more selfless than most people's altruism--the divine egoism that is genius. Chapter 11 When Edward got home his mother was asleep in the armchair. Her whole person rose and fell like a tropical sea. Her shut eyes were like those of a statue, behind the lids of which one knows there are no pupils. Her eyebrows were slightly raised, as if in expostulation at being obliged to breathe. Her figure expressed the dignity of old age, which may or may not be due to rheumatism. Edward, as he looked at her, felt as one does who has been reading a fairy-tale and is called to the family meal. All the things he had meant to say, that had seemed so eloquent, now seemed foolish. He awoke her hastily in case his courage should fail before that most adamantine thing--an unsympathetic atmosphere. 'I've got some news for you, mother.' 'Nothing unpleasant, dear?' 'No, Pleasant. It makes me very happy.' 'The good are always happy,' replied Mrs. Marston securely. Before the bland passivity of this remark it seemed that irony itself must soften. 'I am engaged, mother.' 'What in, dear?' 'I am going to bring home a wife.' She was deaf and very sleepy. 'What kind of a knife, dear?' she asked. 'I am going to marry Hazel Woodus.' 'You can't do that, dear,' She spoke with unruffled calm, as if Edward were three years old. 'I can, and shall mother.' 'Ah, well, it won't be for a long, long time,' she said, thinking aloud as she often did, and adding with the callousness that sometimes comes with age--arising not from hardness, but from the atrophy of the emotions--'and, of course, she may die before then.' 'Die!' Edward's voice surprised himself, and it made his mother jump. 'The young do die,' she went on; 'we all have to go. Your poor father fell asleep. I shall fall asleep.' She began to do so. But his next words made her wide awake again. 'I'm going to be married in May, next month.' Her whole weight of passive resistance was set against his purpose. 'Such unseemly haste!' she murmured. 'So inordinate--such a hurried marriage!' But, Edward's motives being what they were, he was proof against this. 'What will the congregation think?' 'Bother the congregation!' 'That's the second time you've said that, Edward. I'm afraid you are going from bad to worse.' 'No. Only going to be married mother.' 'But a year's engagement is the least, the very least I could countenance,' she pleaded, 'and a year is so soon gone. One eats and sleeps, and Lord's Day breaks the week, and time soon passes.' 'Oh, can't you understand, mother?' He tried illustration. 'Suppose you saw a beautiful shawl out on a hedge in the rain, shouldn't you want to bring it in?' 'Certainly not. It would be most unwise. Besides, I have seven.' 'Well, anyway, I can't put it off. Even now something may have happened to her.' He spoke with the sense of the inimical in life that all lovers feel. 'But things will have to be bought,' she said helplessly, 'and things will have to be made.' 'There is plenty of time, several weeks yet. Won't you,' he suggested tactfully, 'see after Hazel's clothes for her? She is too poor to buy them herself. Won't you lay out a sum of money for me mother?' 'Yes, I think,' she said, beginning to recover her benignity--'I think I could lay out a sum of money.' * * * * * Mrs. Marston had what she called 'not a wink of sleep'--that is to say, she kept awake for half an hour after getting into bed. The idea of a wedding, although it was offensive by reason of being different from every day, was still quite pleasant. It would be an opportunity for using the multitude of things that were stored in every cupboard and never used, being thought too good for every day. Mrs. Marston was one of those that, having great possessions, go sadly all their days. It is strange how generation after generation spends its fleeting years in this fetish-worship, never daring to make life beautiful by the daily use of things lovely, but for ever being busy about them. Mrs. Marston's china glowed so, and was so stainless and uncracked that it seemed as if the lives of all the beautiful young women in her family must have been sacrificed in its behalf. They had all drunk of the cup of death long ago, and their beauty had long ago been broken and defaced; but the beautiful old china remained. There were still the two dozen cups and saucers, the cream jug, sugar basin and large plates of the feather-cups, just as when they were first bought. Their rich gilding, which completely covered them outside, was hardly worn at all, nor were the bright birds' feathers and raised pink flowers. It would be very pleasant, Mrs. Marston reflected wistfully, to use it again. There were all the bottled fruits, too, and lemon-curd and jellies; and a wedding would be a very pleasant, suitable opportunity for making one of her famous layer cakes and for wearing her purple silk dress. Mingled with these ideas was the knowledge that Edward wanted it, would be 'vexed' if it had to be put off. 'I have never known him to be so reckless,' she pondered. 'But still, he'll settle down once he's married. And she'll sober down, too, when the little ones come. It will be pleasant when they come. A grandmother has all the pleasures of a mother and none of the pains. And she will not want to manage anything. Edward said so. I should not have liked a managing daughter-in-law. Edward was wise in his choice. For, though noisy, she'll quiet down a little with each of the dear babies, and there will be plenty of them, I think and hope.' It was characteristic of Mrs. Marston's class and creed (united with the fact that she was Edward's mother) that she did not consider Hazel in the matter. Hazel's point of view, personality, hopes and fears were non-existent to her. Hazel would be absorbed into the Marston family like a new piece of furniture. She would be provided for without being consulted; it would be seen to that she did her duty, also without being consulted. She would become, as all the other women in this and the other families of the world had, the servant of the china and the electro-plate and the furniture, and she would be the means by which Edward's children came into the world. She would, when not incapacitated, fetch shawls. At all times she would say 'Yes, dear' or 'As you wish, Edward.' With all this before her, what did she want with personality and points of view? Obviously nothing. If she brought all the grandchildren safely into the world, with their due complement of legs and arms and noses, she would be a satisfactory asset. But Mrs. Marston forgot, in this summing up, to find out whether Hazel cared for Edward more than she cared for freedom. Mrs. Marston came down to breakfast with an air of resignation. 'I have decided to make the best of it, my dear Edward,' she said; 'of course, I had hoped there would never be anyone. But it doesn't signify. I will lay out the money and be as good a grandmother as I can. And now, dear' (she spoke passively, shifting the responsibility on to Edward's shoulders)--'and now, how will you get me to town?' Here was a problem. The little country station was several miles away, far beyond her walking limit, and no farmer in the neighbourhood had a horse quiet enough to please her. 'In my day, dear, I can remember horses so quiet, so well-bred, so beautifully trained, and, above all, so fat, that an accident was, apart from God's will, impossible. Now, my dear father, in the days when he travelled for Jeremy's green tea (and very good tea it was, and a very fine flavour, and a picture of a black man on every canister). Where was I? Oh yes; he always used to allow a day for a ten-mile round. Very pleasant it was, but the horses are not--' Here Edward cut in with a suggestion. 'Why shouldn't you go by the traction trailer? You enjoyed it that one time?' The traction engine, belonging to a stone quarry, passed two or three times a week, and was never--the country being hilly--so full that it could not accommodate a passenger. It was therefore arranged that Edward should go and see the driver, and afterwards see Hazel, and arrange for her to go to town also. He was to stay at home. Mrs. Marston would never leave the house, as she said, 'without breath in it,' though she could give no reason for this idea, and prided herself on having no superstitions. She would not trust Martha by herself; so Edward was ruefully obliged to undertake the office of 'breathing', like a living bellows to blow away harm. It was settled that they were to go on the day before the flower-show, and Hazel was to stay the night. It would be the last night but one before the wedding. Meanwhile, the bark-stripping continued, and fate went on leading Jack Reddin's horse in every direction but the right one. Edward went to Hunter's Spinney every day. He began to find a new world among the budding hyacinths on the soft leafy soil, breaking up on every side with the push of eager lives coming through, and full of those elusive, stimulating scents that only spring knows. * * * * * When the day came for going to Silverton, and Hazel arrived fresh and rosy from her early walk, he felt very rebellious. Still, it was ordained that someone must breathe, and only his mother could choose the clothes. It took Mrs. Marston several hours to get ready, and Edward and Martha were kept busy running up and down. Not that Mrs. Marston's clothes had to be hunted for or mended--far from it. But there were so many cupboards to be locked, their keys hidden in drawers, the keys of which, in their turn, went into more cupboards. When such an inextricable tangle as no burglar could tackle had been woven, Mrs. Marston always wanted something out of the first cupboard, and all had to be done over again. But at last she was achieved. Edward and Martha stood back and surveyed her with pride, and looked to Hazel for admiration of their work; but Hazel was too young and too happy to see either the pathos or the humour of old ladies. She danced down the steep path with an armful of wraps, at the idea of wearing which she had made faces. The path led steeply in a zigzag down one side of the quarry cliff, where Abel had told Hazel of the cow falling, and where she had felt drodsome. Once more as she came down with a more and more lagging step, the same horror came over her. 'I'm frit!' she cried; 'canna we be quick?' But speed was not in Mrs. Marston. She came clinging to Edward's arm, very cautiously, like a cat on ice. Martha, her stout red arms bare, her blue gingham dress and white apron flying in the wind, was directed to hold on to Mrs. Marston's mantle behind--as one tightens the reins downhill--to keep her on her feet. Edward was carrying a kitchen chair for his mother to sit on during the journey. Hazel felt that they were none of them any good; they none of them knew what it was like to be frit. So she ran away, and left the hot, secretive, omniscient place with its fierce white and its crafty shadows. She reached a tiny field that ran up to the woods, and there, among the brilliantly varnished buttercups, the bees sounded like the tides coming in on the coasts of faery. Hazel forgot her dread--an inexplicable sickening dread of the quarry. She chased a fat bumble-bee all across the golden floor--one eager, fluffy, shining head after the other. They might have been, in the all-permeating glory on their hill terrace, with the sapphire-circled plain around--they might have been the two youngest citizens of Paradise, circled in for ever from bleak honeyless winter, bleak honeyless hearts. The slow cortege came down the path, Martha being obliged, as the descent grew steeper, to fling herself back like a person in a tug-of-war, for Mrs. Marston gathered way as she went, and uttered little helpless cries. 'I'm going, Martha! I'm losing control! Not by the bugles, Martha! Not by the braid!' When they reached the road, the traction engine was not in sight, so they sat in the bank and waited, Mrs. Marston regal in the chair; and Hazel held a buttercup under Edward's chin to see if he liked butter. 'Very warm and pleasant,' murmured Mrs. Marston, and dropped into a doze. Edward listened to the thrushes; they were flinging their voices--as jugglers fling golden balls--against the stark sides of the quarry. Up went a rush of bright notes, pattered on the gloomy wall, and returned again defeated. To Edward, as he watched Hazel, they seemed like people thanking God for blessings, and being heard and blessed again. To Hazel, they seemed so many other Hazels singing because it was a festal day. To Mrs. Marston they were 'noisy birds, and very disturbing.' Martha crotcheted. She was making edging, hundreds of yards of it, for wedding garments. This was all the more creditable, as it was an act of faith, for no young man had as yet seemed at all desirous of Martha. At last the traction engine appeared, and Mrs. Marston was hoisted into the trailer--a large truck with scarlet-painted sides, and about half full of stone. This had been shovelled away from the front to make room for Mrs. Marston and Hazel. A flap in the scarlet side was let down, and with the help of one of the traction men Edward and Martha got her safely settled. She really was a very splendid old lady. Her hat, a kind of spoon-shape, was trimmed lavishly with black glass grapes, that clashed together softly when she moved. There was also a veil with white chenille spots. The hat was tied under her chin with black ribbons, and her kind old face, very pink and plump and charming, looked out pleasantly upon, the world. She wore her best mantle, heavily trimmed with jet bugles, and her alpaca skirt was looped up uncompromisingly with an old-fashioned skirt-hook made like a butterfly. Hung on one arm was her umbrella, and she carried her reticule in both hands for safety. So, with all her accoutrements on, she sat, pleasantly aware that she was at once self-respecting and adventurous. They started in a whirl of good-byes, shrieks of delight from Hazel, and advice of Mrs. Marston to the driver to put the brake on and keep it on. Hazel was perched on the side of the truck near her. They rounded a turn with great dignity, the trailer, with Mrs. Marston as its figure-head--wearing an expression of pride, fear, and resignation--swinging along majestically. 'Please, Mrs. Marston, can I buy a green silk gown wi' yellow roses on?' 'Certainly not, my dear. It would be most unsuitable. So very far from quiet.' 'What's quiet matter?' 'Quietness is the secret of good manners. The quieter you are, the more of a lady you'll be thought. All truly good people are quiet in manners, dress, and speech, just as all the best horses are advertised as quiet to ride and drive, but few are really so.' 'Han you got to be ever and ever so quiet to be a lady?' 'Yes.' 'What for have you?' 'Because, dear, it is the proper thing. Now my poor husband was quiet, so quiet that you never knew if he was there or not. And Edward is quiet too,--as quiet as--' 'Oh! dunna, dunna!' wailed Hazel. 'Is a pin sticking into you dear?' 'No. Dunna say Ed'ard's quiet!' Mrs. Marston looked amicably over her spectacles. 'My dear, why not?' she asked. 'I dunna like that sort.' 'Could you explain a little, dear?' 'I dunna like quiet men--nor quiet horses. My mam was quiet when she was dead. Everybody's quiet when they're dead.' 'Very, very quiet,' crooned Mrs. Marston. 'Yes, we all fall asleep in our turn.' 'I like,' went on Hazel in her rather crude voice, harsh with youth like a young blackbird's--'I like things as go quick and men as talk loud and stare hard and drive like the devil!' She broke off, flushing at Mrs. Marston's expression, and at the sudden knowledge that she had been describing Reddin. 'It doesn't signify very much,' said Mrs. Marston (severely for her), 'what you like, dear. But I suppose'--she softened--'that you do really like Edward, since he has chosen you and you are pledged?' Hazel shook her shoulders as if she wanted to get rid of a yoke. They fell into silence, and as Mrs. Marston dozed, Hazel was able to fulfil her desire that had sprung into being at the moment of seeing Mrs. Marston's hat--namely, to squash one of those very round and brittle grapes. Her quick little hand, gleaming in the sun, hovered momentarily above the black hat like a darting dragon-fly, and the mischief was done--bland respectability smashed and derided. Chapter 12 They went gallantly, if slowly, on through narrow ways, lit on either side by the breath-taking freshness of new hawthorn leaves. Primroses, wet and tall, crisply pink of stalk and huge of leaf, eyed them, as Madonnas might, from niches in the isles of grass and weed. Carts had to back into gates to let them go by, and when they came into the main road horses reared and had to be led past. Hazel found it all delightful. She liked, when the driver pulled up outside little wayside inns, to peer into the brown gloom where pewter pots and rows of china jugs shone, and from which, over newly washed floors of red tiles, landlords advanced with foaming mugs. Mrs. Marston strongly disapproved of these proceedings, but did not think it polite to expostulate, as she was receiving a favour. In Silverton Mrs. Marston lingered a long while before any shop where sacred pictures were displayed. The ones she looked at longest were those of that peculiarly seedy and emasculated type which modern religion seems to produce. Hazel, all in a fidget to go and buy her clothes, looked at them, and wondered what they had to do with her. There was one of an untidy woman sitting in a garden of lilies--evidently forced--talking to an anaemic-looking man with uncut hair and a phosphorescent head. Hazel did not know about phosphorus or haloes, but she remembered how she had gone into the kitchen one night in the dark and screamed at sight of a sheep's head on the table, shining with a strange greenish light. This picture reminded her of it. She hastily looked at the others. She liked the one with sheep in it best, only the artist had made them like bolsters, and given the shepherd saucer eyes. Then she came to one of the Crucifixion, a subject on which the artist had lavished all the slumbering instincts of torture that are in so many people. 'Oh! what a drodsome un! I dunna like this shop,' said Hazel tearfully. 'What'm they doing to 'im? Oh, they'm great beasts!' Perhaps she had seen in her dim and childish way the everlasting tyranny of the material over the abstract; of bluster over nerves; strength over beauty; States over individuals; churches over souls; and fox-hunting squires over the creatures they honour with their attention. 'What is it, my dear?' Mrs. Marston looked over her spectacles, and her eyes were like half moons peering over full moons. 'That there picture! They'm hurting Him so cruel. And Him fast and all.' 'Oh!' said Mrs. Marston wonderingly, 'that's nothing to get vexed about. Why, don't you know that's Jesus Christ dying for us?' 'Not for me!' flashed Hazel. 'My dear!' 'No, what for should He? There shall none die along of me, much less be tormented.' 'Needs be that one man die for the people,' quoted Mrs. Marston easily. 'Only through blood can sin be washed white.' 'Blood makes things raddled, not white; and if so be any's got to die; I'll die for myself.' The old gabled houses, dark and solemn with heavy carved oak, the smart plate-glass windows of the modern shops, the square dogmatic church towers and the pointed insinuating spires--all seemed to listen in surprise to this being who was not content to let another suffer for her. For civilization as it now stands is based solely on this one thing--vicarious suffering. From the central doctrine of its chief creed to the system of its trade; from the vivisection-table to the consumptive genius dying so that crowds of fat folk may get his soul in a cheap form, it is all built up on sacrifice of other creatures. 'What'd you say if Ed'ard died for yer?' queried Hazel crudely. 'My dear! How unseemly! In the street!' 'And what'd I do if Foxy died for me?' 'Well, well, Foxy's only an animal.' 'So're you and me animals!' said Hazel so loudly that poor Mrs. Marston flushed all over her gentle old face. 'So indecent!' she murmured. 'My dear,' she said, when she had steered Hazel past the shop, 'you want a nice cup of tea. And I do hope,' she went on softly, putting a great deal of cream in Hazel's cup as she would have put lubricating oil on a stiff sewing-machine--'I do hope, my dear, you'll become more Christian as time goes on.' 'If Foxy died along of me,' said Hazel stubbornly--for, although grateful for the festive meal, she could not let her basic rule of life slip--'if Foxy died along of me, I'd die too. I couldna do aught else.' 'Things are very different,' said Mrs. Marston, flustered, flushed and helpless--'very different from what they used to be.' 'What for are they, Mrs. Marston?' But that question Mrs. Marston was quite unable to answer. If she had known the answer--that the change was in herself, and that the world was not different, but still kept up its ancient war between love and respectability, beauty and mass--she would not have liked it, and so she would not have believed it. It was seven o'clock when they were put down, tired and laden with parcels, at the quarry half-way up God's Little Mountain. Edward had been there for more than an hour, tormented with fears for Hazel's safety, angry with himself for letting her go. All afternoon he had fidgeted, worried Martha with suggestions about tea, finally gone to the shop several miles away for some of Hazel's favourite cake, quite forgetting that he ought to be in the house breathing. It all resulted in a most beautiful tea, as Hazel thought when they had pushed and pulled Mrs. Marston home. What with the joy of staying the night and the wonder of her new clothes, Hazel was as radiant and talked so fast that Edward could do nothing but watch her. In her short life there had not been many moments of such rose and gold. It was the happiest hour of Edward's life also; for she looked to him as flowers to warm heaven, as winter birds to a fruited tree. As he watched her opening parcel after parcel with frank innocence and little bird-like cries of rapture, he knew the intolerable sweetness of bestowing delight on the beloved--a sweetness only equalled by the intolerable agony of seeing helpless and incurable pain on the loved face. 'And what's that one?' he asked, like a mother helping in a child's game. He pointed to a parcel which contained chemises and nightdresses. 'That,' said Mrs. Marston, frowning portentously at Hazel, who was tearing it open--'that is other useful garments.' 'What for canna I show 'em Ed'ard? I want to show all. The money was his'n.' It was a tribute to Edward's self-control that she was so entirely lacking in shyness towards him. 'My dear! A young man!' whispered Mrs. Marston. Suddenly, by some strange necromancy, there was conjured in Hazel's mind a picture of Reddin--flushed, hard-eyed, with an expression that aroused in her misgiving and even terror. So she had seen him just before she fled to Vessons. At the remembrance she flushed so deeply that Mrs. Marston congratulated herself on the fact that her daughter-in-law had _some_ modesty and right feeling. If she had known who caused the flush, who it was that had awakened the love of pretty clothes which Edward was satisfying, she would have thought very different thoughts, and would have been utterly miserable. For her love for Edward was deep enough to make her wish him to have what he wanted, and not what she thought he ought to want, as long as he did not clash with her religion. For Edward to know it, though so early in his love for Hazel, would have meant a rocking of heaven and earth around him. Even she, with her childish egotism like a shell about her, realized that this was a thing that could not be. 'But it be all right,' she thought, as she curled up luxuriously in the strangely clean and comfortable bed, 'it'll be all right. Him above'll see as Mr. Reddin ne'er shows his face here; for the old lady said Him above looked after good folks, and Ed'ard's good. But I wish some un 'ud look after the bad uns,' she thought, looking across the room to the north where Undern lay. * * * * * 'My dear, wait a moment!' said Mrs. Marston to Edward downstairs, as he was lighting her candle. I have something to tell you. I fear you must brace yourself.' 'Well, mother?' Edward smiled. 'Hazel's not a Christian!' She spoke in a sepulchral whisper, and looked at him afterwards, as if to say, 'There, now, I _have_ surprised you!' 'And how do you make that out, mother?' Edward found in his heart this fact, that it made no difference to his love whether Hazel were a Christian or not; this troubled him. 'No. She's not a Christian, my dear,' said Mrs. Marston in a kind of gasp; 'she refuses to be died for!' Upstairs, Hazel was saying her orisons at the window. 'If there's anybody there,' she murmured, staring out into the consuming darkness that had absorbed every colour, every form, except the looming outline of God's Little Mountain against a watery moon-rise--'if there's anybody there, I'd be obleeged if you'd give an eye to our Foxy, as is lonesome in tub. It dunna matter about me, being under Ed'ard's roof.' Hazel had never felt so like a child in its mother's lap. Her own mother had not made her feel so. She had been a vague, abstracted woman with an air of bepuzzlement and lostness. She looked so long out of the door--never shut, except when Abel insisted on it--that there was no time for Hazel. Only occasionally she would catch her by the shoulders and look into her eyes and tell her strange news of faery. But now she felt cared for as she looked round the low room with its chair-bed and little dressing-table hung with pink glazed calico. There was a text over the fireplace: '"Not a hair of thy head shall perish."' It seemed particularly reassuring to Hazel as she brushed her long shining coils before the hanging mirror. There was a bowl of double primroses--red, mauve and white--on the window-sill, and a card 'with Edward's love.' Flowers in a bedroom were something very new. To her, as to so many poor people, a bedroom was a stuffy place to crawl into at night and get out of as quickly as possible in the morning. 'Eh! it'll be grand to live here,' she thought drowsily, as she lay down in the cool clean sheets and heard the large clock on the wall of the landing ticking slumbrously in a measured activity that deepened the peace. She heard Mrs. Marston slide past in her soft slippers with her characteristic walk, rather like skating. Then Edward came up (evidently in stockinged feet, for he was only heralded by creakings). Hazel never dreamt that he had taken his shoes off for her sake. The moon, riding clear of cloud, flung the shadow of Edward's primroses on the bed--a large round posy like a Christmas-pudding with outstanding leaves and flowers clearly defined, all very black on the counterpane. Undern seemed very far off. 'I like this better'n that old dark place, green dress or no green dress,' she thought, 'and I'll ne'er go back there. It inna true what he said, "Have her he will for certain sure," for I'm going to live along of Ed'ard, and the old sleepy lady'll learn me to make batter for ever and ever. Batter's a well-beaten mixture of eggs and summat.' She fell asleep. * * * * * In his room Edward walked up and down, too happy to go to bed. 'My little one! my little one!' he whispered. And he prayed that Hazel might have rosy and immortal happiness, guarded by strong angels along a path of flowers all her life long, and at last running in through the celestial gates as a child runs home. The spring wind, rainy and mournful, came groping out of the waste places and cried about the house like a man mourning for his love. The cavern of night, impenetrable and vast, was full of echoes, as if some voice, terrible and violent, had shouted there a long while since, and might, even before the age-long reverberations had died away, be uplifted again, if it was the will of the Power (invisible but so immanent that it pressed upon the brain) that inhabited the obscure, star-dripping cavern. Chapter 13 Next morning Mrs. Marston came in from the kitchen with the toast, which she would not trust anyone but herself to make, with a face portending great happenings. 'Mind you see that they are all properly placed, Edward; they should be all together in one part of the room.' 'Who'd that be?' Hazel inquired. '1906, plums; 1908, gooseberries; 1909, cherries, sugarless. The sugared ones are older.' Mrs. Marston spoke so personally that Hazel stared. 'It's mother's exhibits, Hazel,' explained Edward. 'Yes. They've been to shows year by year, and very well they've stood it. I only hope the constant travelling won't set up fermentation. I should like those Morellas to outlive me. A receipt I had of Jane Thorn, and she died of dropsy, poor thing, and bottled to the end.' 'Dunna you ever eat 'em?' asked Hazel. This was blasphemy. To eat 1909 Morellas! It was passed over in tense silence, allowances being made for a prospective bride. 'Poor thing! she's upset.' The exhibits, packed in a great bed of the vivid star-moss that grew in the secret recesses of the woods, were waiting on the front step in their usual box. There were some wonderful new jellies that made Hazel long to be Mrs. Marston and have control of the storeroom. This was a dim place where ivy leaves scraped the cobwebby window, and tall green canisters stood on shelves in company with glass jars, neatly labelled, and barrels of home-made wine; where hams hung from the ceiling, and herbs in bunches and on trays sent out a pungent sweetness. In there the magic was now heightened by the presence--dignified even in deshabille--of a wedding-cake which was being slowly but thoroughly iced. People often wondered how Mrs. Marston did it. No one ever saw her hurried or busy, yet the proofs of her industry were here. She worked like the coral insect, in the dark, as it were, of instinct unlit by intellect, and, like the coral insect, she raised a monumental structure that hemmed her in. They had to start early, driven by Edward's one substantial parishioner, who was principal judge, chief exhibitor, and organizer of the show. The exhibits must be there by ten; but Edward did not care in the least how many hours he spent there. The day was only darkened for him by one thing. When the trap came round, and Hazel climbed in joyously, Edward forgot the exhibits. He would have gone off without them had not Martha come flying down the path shouting: 'Mr. Ed'ard! Mr. Ed'ard! Nineteen six! Nineteen nine! Jam!' 'What for's Martha cursing?' asked Hazel. Edward, looking round, saw his mother's face in the doorway, dismayed, surprised, wounded. He jumped out and ran up the path. 'Oh, mother! How could I?' he said miserably. Mrs. Marston looked up; her mouth, that had fallen in a little, trembling pitifully, and her eyes smarting with the thick, painful tears of age. 'It wasn't you, my dear,' she said; 'you never forget; it was--the young woman.' One's god must at all hazards go clear of blame. Edward kissed her, but with reserve, and when he got into the trap he put an arm protectingly round Hazel. 'What a fool I am!' he thought. 'Now everything's spoilt.' In the silent store-room, hour by hour, Mrs. Marston propelled the mixture of sugar and egg through her icing syringe, building complex designs of frosty whiteness. Her back ached, and it seemed a long way round the cake, but she went on until Martha, with a note of sympathetic understanding in her voice, announced: 'Yer dinner's in, mum, and a cup of tea along of it.' Mrs. Marston sighed gratefully. 'How nice and pleasant!' she said; 'but not as nice and pleasant as it was--before.' 'Not by a long mile!' said Martha heartily. For Hazel had 'taken the eye' of all the eligibles at the concert, and was altogether disturbing. 'Perhaps, Martha,' said Mrs. Marston wistfully, 'when she's been here a long while, and we're used to her, and she's part of the house--perhaps it'll be as nice and pleasant as before?' 'When the yeast's in,' said Martha pessimistically, 'the dough's leavened!' * * * * * As Edward and Hazel drew near the show-ground they passed people walking and were overtaken by traps. A man passed at full gallop, and Hazel was reminded of Reddin. Later, she said: 'How'd you like it, Ed'ard, if somebody was after you, like a weasel after a rabbit or a terrier at a fox-earth? What'd you do?' 'What morbid things you think of, dear!' 'What'd you do?' 'I don't know.' 'There's nought to do.' Edward remembered his creed. 'I should pray, Hazel.' 'What good'd that do?' 'God answers prayers.' 'That He dunna! Or where'd the fox-hunting gents be, and who'd have rabbit-pie? I dunna see as He _can_ answer 'em.' 'Little girls mustn't bother their pretty heads.' 'If you'd found as many creatures in traps as me, and loosened 'em, and seed their broken legs, and eyes as if they'd seed ghosses, and onst a dog caught by the tongue--eh! you'd bother! You would that! And feyther killing the pigs Good Fridays.' 'Why Good Fridays, of all days?' 'That was the day. Ah! every Good Friday I was used to fight feyther!' 'My dear child!' 'You would if you'd seed the pig that comforble and contented, and know'd what it'd look like in a minute. I'd a killed feyther if I could.' 'But why? Surely it was worse of you to want to kill your father than of him to want to kill the pig?' 'I dunno. But I couldn't abear it. I bit him awful one time, and he hit me on the head with a rake, and I went to sleep.' Edward's forehead was damp with sweat. 'Merciful God!' he thought, 'that such things should be!' 'And when I've heard things screaming and crying to be loosed, and them in traps, and never a one coming to 'em but me, it's come o'er me to won'er who'd loose _me_ out if I was in a trap.' 'God would.' 'I dunna think so. He ne'er lets the others out.' Edward was silent. The radiant day had gone dark, and he groped in it. 'What for dunnot He, my soul? What for dun He give 'em mouths so's they can holla, and not listen at 'em? I listen when Foxy shouts out.' At this moment Edward saw Abel approaching, swaggering along with the harp. He had never been glad to see him so far; now he was almost affectionate. 'Laws, Ed'ard!' said Abel, straining the affection to breaking-point, 'you'm having a randy, and no mistake! Dancing and all, I s'pose?' 'No. I shall go before the dancing.' 'You won't get our 'Azel to go along of you, then. Dance her will, like a leaf in the fall.' 'You'd rather come home with me on your wedding-eve, Hazel, wouldn't you?' Abel, seeing Hazel's dismayed face, laughed loudly. Edward hated him as only sensitive temperaments can, and was conscience-stricken when he realized the fact. 'Well, Hazel?' he asked gently, and created a situation. 'I dunno,' said Hazel, awkwardly. A depressed silence fell between them; both were so bitterly disappointed. Abel, like an ancient mischievous gnome, went off, calling to Hazel: 'Clear your throat agen the judgin's over!' The judges were locked into the barn where the exhibits were. They took a long while over the judging, presumably because they tasted everything, even to the turnips (Mrs. James was partial to early turnips). Edward and Hazel passed a window and looked in. 'Look at 'em longing after the old lady's jam!' said Hazel. 'It's a mercy the covers are well stuck on or they'd be in like wasps! Look at Mr. Frodley wi' the eggs! Dear now, he's sucking one like a lad at a throstles' nest! Oh! Father'd ought to be there! He ne'er eats a cooked egg. Allus raw. Oh! Mr. James has unscrewed a bottle of father's honey and dipped! Look at 'im sucking his fingers!' 'Do people buy the remnants?' asked Edward, amused and disgusted. 'Ah! What for not?' The judges are now making a hearty meal off some cheeses. 'I wonder whose cheeses they are?' Edward mused. They were, in fact, Vessons'. He always insisted on making cheeses for some obscure reason; possibly it was the pride of the old-fashioned servant in being worth more than his wages. Vessons certainly was. He made stacks of cheeses, and took them to fairs and shows without the slightest encouragement from his master, who, when Vessons returned, red with conflict, and said, planking down the money with intense pride--''Ere it is! I 'ad to labour for thre'pences, though,' would merely nod uninterestedly. But still the Undern cheeses went to shows labelled 'John Reddin, Esquire, per A. Vessons.' At last the judges came out. The mere judging did not take long, for Mr. James usually considered his exhibit the best, and said so; the others, being only small-holders, were generally too polite to gainsay him. Edward and Hazel went into the barn where the exhibits were set out with stern simplicity, looking brave and beautiful with their earthly glamour. There were rolls of golden butter, nut-brown eggs, snowy bouquets of broccoli, daffodils with the sun striking through their aery petals, masses of dark wallflower where a stray bee revelled. There was Abel's honey, with a large placard drawn by himself proclaiming in drunken capitals: ABEL WOODUS. BEE-MAN. COFFINS. HONEY. WREATHS. OPEN TO ENGAGEMENTS TO PLAY THE HARP AT WEDDINGS, WAKES AND CLUB-DAYS. The golden jars shone; the sections in their lace-edged boxes, whitely sealed, were as provocative as the reserve of a fair woman. Edward bought one for Hazel. 'To open on your wedding-day,' he said. But the symbolism, so apparent to him, was lost on Hazel. Between the judging and the tea hour was a dull time. The races had not begun, and though an ancient of benign aspect announced continually, 'I'll take two to one!' no one responded. The people stood about, taking their pleasure like an anaesthetic, and looking like drugged bees. Now and then an old man from a far hill-side would meet another old man from a farther one, and there would be handshaking lasting, perhaps, a quarter of an hour. When Abel played, they remained stoical and silent, however madly or mournfully the harp cried. They took good music as their right. Then Hazel sang, gazing up at the purple ramparts of the hills that hung above the show-ground, and Edward's eyes were full of tears. A very old man, smooth-faced, and wondering as a baby, came, leaning on his stick, and stood before Hazel, gazing into her mouth with the steadfast curiosity of a dog at a gramophone. If she moved, he moved, absorbed, his jaw dropped with interest. Hazel did not notice him. She was free on the migratory wings of music. She did not see Vessons looking across the crowd with dismay, nor know that he edged away, muttering, 'That gel agen! Never will I!' Edward was glad when the singing and collection were over, and he could take Hazel into the shilling tent, where sat the elite, and give her tea. People remained in a sessile state over tea for a long time while the chief race of the afternoon was begun by the ringing of a dinner-bell. The race took so long, the riders having to go round the course so many times, that people went on complacently with their tea, only looking out occasionally to see how things progressed, watching the riders go by--one with bright red braces, one in a blue cotton coat, two middle-aged men in their best bowlers, and one, obviously too well mounted for the rest, in correct riding-dress. They came round each time in the same order--the correct one, red braces, blue coat, and the bowlers last. Evidently the foremost one knew he could easily win, and the others had decided that 'it was to be.' In the machine-like regularity of their advent, their unaltered positions, and leisured pace, they were like hobby-horses. 'How many times have they bin round?' Hazel asked the waitress, who poured tea and made conversation in a sociable manner. 'It'll be the seventh. They might as well give over. They're only labouring to stay in the same place.' 'I want to see 'em come in,' said Hazel. They went out, but Abel waylaid them, and took Edward off to show him a queen bee in a box from Italy. Edward loathed bees in or out of boxes, but he was too kind-hearted to refuse. Abel was so unperceptive that he touched pathos. Hazel found a place some distance down the course where she could look along the straight to the winning-post; she loved to hear them thunder past. She leaned over the rail and watched them come, still fatalistic, but gallant, bent on a dramatic finish, stooping and 'cutting' their horses. The first man was on her side of the course. She stared at him in amazed consternation as he came towards her. His strong blue eyes, caught by the fixity of her glance or by her bright hair, saw her, and became triumphant. He pulled the horse in sharply, and within a few yards of the winning-post wheeled and went back, amid the jeers and howls of the crowd, who thought he must be drunk. 'You've given me a long enough chase,' he said, leaning towards her. 'Where the devil _do_ you live?' 'Oh, dunna stop! He's coming.' 'Who?' 'Mr. Marston, the minister.' 'What do I care if he's a dozen ministers?' 'But he'll be angered.' 'I'll make his nose bleed if he's got such cheek.' 'Oh, he's coming, Mr. Reddin! I mun go.' She turned away. Reddin followed. 'Why should he be angry?' 'Because we're going to be wed to-morrow' Reddin whistled. 'And Foxy's coming, and all of 'em. And there's a clock as tick-tacks ever so sleepy, and a sleepy old lady, and Ed'ard's bought me a box full of clothes.' 'I gave you a box full too,' he said with a note of pleading. 'You little runaway!' Hazel was annoyed because he disturbed her so. She wanted to get rid of him, and she desired to exercise her power. So she looked up and said impishly: 'Yours were old 'uns. His be new--new as morning.' He was too angry to swear. 'You've got to come and talk to me while they're dancing to-night,' he said. 'I wunna.' 'You must. If you don't, I'll tell the parson you stopped the night at Undern. Surely you know that he wouldn't marry you then?' He was bluffing. He knew Vessons would tell Marston the truth if he spoke. But it served his turn. 'You wouldna!' she pleaded. He laughed. 'A'right, then,' she said, 'if you wunna tell 'un.' 'Will he stay for the dancing?' 'No. I mun go along of him.' 'You know better.' He turned away sharply as Edward came up. He knew him for the minister he had met near the Callow. Edward was tying up some daffodils for Hazel, and did not see Reddin. Scarlet braces, a fatalist no more, came trotting up. 'What went wrong?' he asked with thinly veiled triumph. 'Everything,' snapped Reddin, and calling Vessons, he went off to the beer-tent to wait till the dancing began. 'These are for your room, Hazel,' Edward was saying, 'because the time of the singing of birds is come.' He was thinking that God was indeed leading him forth by the waters of comfort. Hazel said nothing. She was wondering what excuse she could make for staying. 'Don't frown, little one. There are no more worries for you now.' 'Binna there?' 'No. You are coming to God's Little Mountain. What harm can come there? Now look up and smile, Hazel.' She met his grey eyes, very tender and thoughtful. What she saw, however, were blue eyes, hard, and not at all thoughtful. Chapter 14 Prize-giving time came, and the younger Miss Clomber, who was to present them, tried to persuade Reddin to go up on the platform, a lorry with chairs on it. There already were Mr. James and the secretary, counting the prize-money. Below stood the winners, Vessons conspicuous in his red waistcoat. Miss Clomber felt that she looked well. She was dressed in tweeds to show that this was not an occasion to her as to the country damsels. 'No. I shall stay here,' said Reddin, answering her stare, intended to be inviting, with a harder stare of indifference. 'As the last representative of such an old family--' 'Oh, damn family' he said peevishly, having lost sight of Hazel. As Miss Clomber still persisted, he quenched the argument. 'Young families are more in my line than old 'uns.' She blushed unbecomingly, and hastily got on to the lorry. Reddin went in search of Hazel, while Mr. James began to read the names. 'Mr. Thomas. Mr. James. Mrs. Marston. Mr. James--' He handed the pile of shillings to Miss Clomber, who presented them with the usual fatuous remarks. When he had won the prize he received it back from her with a bow, taking off his hat. As his own name occurred more frequently than usual, he began to get rather self-conscious. He looked round the ring of faces, and translated their stodginess as self-consciousness dictated. Perhaps it would be as well to carry it off as a jest? So his hat came off with a flourish, and he said jocosely as he took the next heap, 'Keeping-apples, Mr. James. I'll put it in me pocket!' This attitude wearing thin, he took refuge in that of unimpeachable honesty. 'Fair and square! The best man wins!' This lasted for some time, but was not proof against 'Swedes, Mr. James. Mangolds, Mr. James. Stewing pears, Mr. James.' He began to get in a panic. His bow was cursory. He pocketed the money furtively and read his name in a low, apologetic tone. But this would never do! He must pull himself together. He tried bravado. 'Mr. Vessons. Mr. James.' Vessons stood immovable within arm's reach of Miss Clomber. When he got a prize, which he did three times, no one else having sent any cheeses, he extended his arm like one side of a pair of compasses, and vouchsafed neither bow nor smile. He disliked Miss Clomber because he knew that she meant to be mistress of Undern. Mr. James was getting on well with the bravado. 'What do I care what people think? Dear me! All the world may see me get my prize.' Then he caught Abel's satiric eye, and went all to pieces. He clutched at his first attitude--the business-like--and so began all over again, and managed to get through by not looking in Abel's direction, being upheld by the knowledge that his pockets were getting very full. When he read out, 'Cherries, bottled. Mrs. Marston,' and Edward went to receive the prize, Reddin shouldered up to Hazel and asked: 'What time's he going?' 'I dunno.' 'Don't forget, mind.' 'Oh, Mr. Reddin, I mun go! What for wunna you let me be?' But Reddin, finding Miss Clomber's eye on him, was gone. Mr. James had come to the end of the list. He read out Abel's name and that of an old bent man with grey elf-locks, a famous bee-master. Mr. James looked at Abel as much as to say, 'You've got your prize, you see! It's quite fair.' 'Thank yer,' said Abel to Miss Clomber, and then to James with fine irony: 'You dunna keep bees, do yer, Mr. James?' * * * * * The hills loomed in the dusk over the show-ground. They were of a cold and terrific colour, neither purple nor black nor grey, but partaking of all. Kingly, mournful, threatening, they dominated the life below as the race dominates the individual. Hazel gazed up at them. She stood in the attitude of one listening, for in her ears was a voice that she had never heard before, a deep inflexible voice that urged her to do--she knew not what. She looked up at the round wooded hill that hid God's Little Mountain--so high, so cold for a poor child to climb. She felt that the life there would be too righteous, too well-mannered. The thought of it suddenly made her homesick for dirt and the Callow. She thought of Undern crouched under its hill like a toad. She remembered its echoing rooms and the sound as of dresses rustling that came along the passages while she put on the green gown. Undern made her more homesick than the parsonage. Edward had gone. She had said she wanted to stay with her father, and Edward had thought her a sweet daughter and had acquiesced, though sadly. Now she was awaiting Reddin. The dancing had not begun, though the tent was ready. Yellow light flowed from every gap in the canvas, and Hazel felt very forlorn out in the dark; for light seemed her natural sphere. As she stood there, looking very small and slight, she had a cowering air. Always, when she stood under a tree or sheltered from the rain, she had this look of a refugee, furtive and brow-beaten. When she ran she seemed a fugitive, fleeing across the world with no city or refuge to flee into. Miss Clomber's approach made her start. 'A word with you!' said Miss Clomber in her brisk, unsympathetic voice. 'I saw you with Mr. Reddin twice. I just wanted to say in a sisterly and Christian spirit'--she lowered her voice to a hollow whisper--'that he is not a good man.' 'Well,' said Hazel, with a sigh of relief in the midst of her shyness and her oppression about the mountain, 'that's summat, anyway!' Miss Clomber, outraged and furious, strode away. Hazel was again left to the hills. The taciturnity of winter was upon them still, and in the sky beyond was the cynical aloofness that comes with frost after sunset. She turned from them to the lighted tent. The golden glow was like some bright creature imprisoned. Abel had prorogued an interminable argument with the old man with the elf-locks, and now began thrumming inside the tent. Young men and women converged upon it at the sound of the music, as flies flock to the osier blossom. They went in, as the blessed to Paradise. The canvas began to sway and billow in the wind of the dancing. Hazel felt that life was going on gaily without her--she shut away in the dark. Her feet began to dance. 'I'll go in!' she said defiantly. 'What for not?' But just as she was lifting the flap she heard Reddin's voice at her elbow. 'Hazel, why did you run away?' 'I dunno.' 'Why didn't you tell me your name? Here have I been going hell-for-leather up and down the country.' 'Ah! That's gospel! That's righteous! I seed you.' Reddin was speechless. 'Me and father was in the public, and you came. I thought it was the Black Huntsman.' 'Thanks. Not a pin to choose, I suppose.' 'Not all that.' 'We're wasting time. What's all this about the parson?' 'I told 'ee.' 'But it isn't true. You and the parson!' He laughed. Hazel looked at him with disfavour. 'You're like a hound-dog when you laugh like to that,' she said, 'and I dunna like the hound-dogs.' He stopped laughing. Abel's harp beat upon them, and the soft thudding of feet on the turf, like sheep stamping, had grown in volume as the shyest were gradually drawn into the revelry. A rainstorm, shaped like a pillar, walked slowly along the valley, skirting the base of the hills. It was like a grey god with folded arms and head aloof in the sky. As it drew slowly nearer to the two who stood there like lovers and were not lovers, and as it lashed them across the eyes, it might have been fate. 'Hazel, can't you see I'm in love with you?' 'What for are you?' There was a wailing note in Hazel's voice, and the rain ran down her face like tears. 'There's you and there's Ed'ard Oh, what for are you?' Reddin looked at her in astonishment. A woman not to like a man to be in love with her. It was uncanny. He stood square-set against the darkening sky, his fine massive head slightly bent, looking down at her. 'I never thought,' he said helplessly--'I never thought, when I had come to forty years without the need of women' ('of love,' he corrected himself), 'that I should be like this.' He looked at Hazel accusingly; then he gazed up at the coming night as a lion might at the sound of thunder. 'Be you forty?' Hazel's voice was on the top note of wonder. 'Laws! what an age!' 'It's not really old,' he pleaded, very humbly for him. She laughed. 'The parson, now, I suppose he's young?' His voice was wistful. 'He'm the right age.' Reddin's temper flamed. 'I'll show you if I'm old! I'll show you who makes the best lover, me or a silly lad!' 'Hands off, Mr. Reddin!' But her words went down the lonely wind that had begun to drag at the lighted tent. 'There' said Reddin, pleased with his kisses. 'Now come and dance, and you'll see if a chap of forty can't tire you. Afterwards we'll settle the parson's hash.' He lifted the tent-flap, and they went in and were taken by the bright, slow-whirling life. Hazel was glad to dance with him or anyone, so that she might dance. Reddin held his head high, for he was a lover to-night, and he had never been that before in any of his amours. He was angry and enthralled with Hazel, and the two emotions together were intoxicating. Hazel was a flower in a gale when she danced, a slim poplar tremulous and swaying in the dawn, a young beech assenting to the wind's will. Abel watched her with pride. She was turning out a credit to him, after all. It was astonishing. 'It's worth playing for our 'Azel's feet. The others just stomps,' he thought. 'Who's the fellow she's along with? I'd best keep an eye. A bargain's a bargain.' 'You'm kept your word,' said Hazel suddenly to Reddin. 'H'm?' 'Tired me out.' 'Come outside, then, and I'll get you a cup of tea.' He fetched it and sat down by her on an orange-box. 'Now look here,' he said, 'fair and square, will you marry me?' He was surprised at himself. Andrew Vessons, who had tiptoed after them from the tent, spread out his hands and gazed at heaven with a look of supreme despair, all the more intense because he could not speak. He returned desolately to the tent, where he stood with a cynical smile, leaning a little forward with his arms behind him, watching the dancing, an apotheosis of sex, to him not only silly and pitiful, but disgusting. Now and then he shook his head, went to the door to see if his master was coming, and shook it again. A friend came up. 'Why did the gaffer muck up the race?' he asked. 'Why,' asked Vessons, with a far-off gaze, 'did 'Im as made the 'orld put women in?' Outside things were going more to his liking than he knew. 'What's the good of keeping on, Mr. Reddin? I told 'ee I was promised to Ed'ard.' 'But you like me a bit? Better than the parson?' 'I dunno.' 'Come off with me now. I swear I'll play fair.' '_I_ swore!' she cried. 'I swore by the Mountains, and that can ne'er be broke.' 'What did you swear?' 'To marry the first as come. That's Ed'ard. If I broke that oath, when I was jead, my cold soul 'ud wander and find ne'er a bit of rest, crying about the Mountains and about, nights, and Ed'ard thinking it was the wind. 'If you chuck him, he'll soon get over it; if you chuck me, I shan't. He's never gone after the drink and women.' It was a curious plea for a lover. 'Miss Clomber said you wunna a good man.' 'Well, I'm blowed! But look here. If he loses you, he'll be off his feed for a bit; but if I lose you, there'll be the devil to pay. Has he kissed you?' 'Time and agen.' 'I won't have it!' ''Azel!' called her father. 'You won't go?' 'I mun. It's father.' 'And I shan't see you again-till you're married? Oh, marry _me_, Hazel! Marry _me_!' His voice shook. At the mysterious grief in his face--a grief that was half rage, and the more pitiful for that--she began to sob. Abel came up. 'A mourning-party, seemingly,' he said, holding his lantern so as to light each face in turn. 'I want to marry your daughter.' Abel roared. 'Another? First 'er bags a parson and next a squire!' 'Farmer.' 'It'll be the king on his throne next. Laws, girl! you're like beer and treacle.' 'You've not answered me,' said Reddin. 'She's set.' 'Eh?' 'Set. Bespoke. Let.' 'She's a right to change her mind.' 'Nay! A bargain's a bargain. Why, they've bought the clothes, mister, and the furniture and the cake!' 'If she comes with me, you'll go home with a cheque for fifty pounds, and that's all I've got,' said Reddin naively. 'I tell you, sir, she's let,' Abel repeated. 'A bargain's a bargain!' It occurred to him that the Callow garden might, with fifty pounds, be filled with beehives from end to end. 'Mister,' he said, almost in tears, 'you didn't ought to go for to 'tice me! Eh! dear 'eart, the wood I could buy, and the white paint and a separator and queens from foreign parts!' He made a gesture of despair and his face worked. 'You could have a new harp if you wanted one.' Reddin suggested. Abel gulped. 'A bargain's a bargain!' he repeated. 'And I promised the parson.' He turned away. ''Azel,' he said over his shoulder, 'you munna go along of this gent. Many's the time,' he added turning round and surveying her moodily, 'as you've gone agen me and done what I gainsayed.' With a long imploring look he hitched the harp on his back and trudged away. Hazel followed. But Reddin stepped in front of her. 'Look here, Hazel! You say you don't like hurting things. You're hurting me!' Looking at his haggard face, she knew it was true. She wiped her tears away with her sleeve. 'It inna my fault. I'm allus hurting things. I canna set foot in the garden nor cook a cabbage but I kill a lot of little pretty flies and things. And when we take honey there's allus bees hurted. I'm bound to go agen you or Ed'ard, and I canna go agen Ed'ard; he sets store by me, does Ed'ard. You should 'a seen the primmyroses he put in my room last night; I slep' at the parsonage along of us being late.' Reddin frowned as if in physical pain. 'And he bought me stockings, all thin, and a sky-blue petticoat.' Reddin looked round. He would have picked her up then and there and taken her to Undern, but the road was full of people. 'I couldna go agen Ed'ard! He'm that kind. Foxy likes him, too; she'd ne'er growl at 'im.' 'Perhaps,' Reddin said hoarsely, 'Foxy'd like me if I gave her bones.' 'She wouldna! You'm got blood on you.' She drew away coldly at this remembrance, which had been obliterated by Reddin's grief. 'You'm got the blood of a many little foxes on you,' she said, and her voice cut him like sharp sleet--'little foxes as met have died quick and easy wi' a gunshot. And you've watched 'em minced alive.' 'I'll give it up if you'll chuck the parson.' 'I won'er you dunna see 'em, nights, watching you out of the black dark with their gold eyes, like kingcups, and the look in 'em of things dying hard. I won'er you dunna hear 'em screaming.' His cause was lost, and he knew it, but he pleaded on. 'No. If I hadna swore by the Mountain I wouldna come,' she said. 'You've got blood on you.' At that moment a neighbour passed and offered Hazel a lift. Now that she was marrying a minister, she had become a personality. Hazel climbed in and drove off, and Reddin's tragic moment died, as great fires die, into grey ash. He went home heavily. His way lay past the parsonage where Edward and his mother slept peacefully. The white calm of unselfish love wrapped Edward, for he felt that he could make Hazel happy. As he fell asleep that night he thought: 'She was made for a minister's wife.' Reddin, leaning heavily on the low wall, staring at the drunken tombstones and the quiet moon-silvered house, thought: 'She was made for me.' Both men saw her as what they wanted her to be, not as she was. Many thoughts darkened Reddin's face as he stood there hour after hour in the cold May night. The rime whitened his broad shoulders as he leaned on the wall, and in the moonlight the sprinkling of white hairs at his temples shone out from the black as if to mock this young passion that had possessed him. God's Little Mountain lay shrugged in slumber; the woods crouched like beaten creatures under the night; the small soft leaves hung limply in the frost. Still Reddin stood there, chilled through and through, brooding upon the house. Not until dawn, like a knife, gashed the east with blood did he stir. He sighed. 'Too late!' he said. Then he laughed. 'Beaten by the parson!' A demoniac rage surged in him. He picked up a piece of rock, and lifting it in both arms, flung it at the house. It smashed the kitchen window. But before Edward came to his window Reddin was out of sight in the batch. 'My dear,' said Mrs. Marston tremulously, 'I always feared disaster from this strange match.' 'How _can_ Hazel have anything to do with it, mother?' 'I think, dear, it is a sign from God. On your wedding-morning! Broken glass! Yes, it is a sign from God. I wish it need not have been quite so violent. But, of course, He knows best.' Chapter 15 At the parsonage everything was ready early. Edward, restless after his rough awakening, had risen at three and finished his own preparations, being ready to help Mrs. Marston when she came down, still a good deal upset. Whenever she passed Hazel's room, or saw Edward take flowers there, she said, 'Oh, my dear!' and shook her head sadly. For the kind of life that seemed to be mapped out by Edward would, she feared, not include grandchildren. And grandchildren had acquired, through long cogitations, the glamour of the customary. She was also ruffled by Martha, who, unlike her own pastry, was 'short.' What with the two women, angry and grieved, and the fact that his wedding-day held only half the splendour that it should have held, Edward's spirits might have been expected to be low; but they were not. He ran up and down, joked with Martha, soothed his mother, and sang until Martha, who thought that a minister's deportment at a wedding should be only a little less grandiloquent than at a funeral, said: 'He'm less like a minister than a nest of birds.' She and Mrs. Marston were setting out the feather-cups in the best parlour. At that moment Edward stood at the door of Hazel's room, and realized that he would enter it no more. He must not see the sweet disarray of her unpacking, nor rest night by night in the charmed circle of her presence. Almost he felt, in this agony of loss--loss of things never possessed, the most bitter loss of all--that, if he could have had these things, even the ruddy-haired, golden-eyed children of his dreams might go. He knelt by Hazel's bed and laid his dark head on the pillow, torn by physical and spiritual passion. His hair was clammy, and a new line marked his forehead from that day. Anyone seeing him would have thought that he was praying; he was so still. It was Edward's fate to be thought 'so quiet,' because the fires within him made no sound, burning at a still-white heat. He was not praying. Prayer had receded to a far distance, like a signpost long passed. Perhaps he would come round to it again; but now he was in the trackless desert. It is only those that have suffered moderately that speak of prayer as the sufferer's refuge. By that you know them. Those that have been tortured remember that the worst part of the torture was the breaking of the prayer in their hands, piercing, and not upholding. Edward knew, kneeling there with his eyes shut, how Hazel's hair would flow sweetly over the pillow; how her warm arm would feel about his neck; how wildly sweet it would be, in some dark hour, to allay dream-fears and hush her to sleep. Never before had the gracious intimacy of marriage so shone in his eyes. And he was going to have just the amount of intimacy that his mother would have, perhaps rather less. Every night he would stand on the threshold, kiss Hazel with a brotherly kiss, and turn away. His life would be a cold threshold. Month by month, year by year, he would read the sweet, frank love-stories of the Bible--stories that would, if written by a novelist, be banned, so true are they; year by year he would see nest and young creatures, and go into cottages where babies in fluffy shawls gazed at him anciently and caught his fingers in a grip of tyrannous weakness. And always there would be Hazel, alluring him with an imperishable magic even stronger than beauty, startling him from his hard-won calm by the turn of a wrist, the curve of a waist-ribbon, a wave of her hair. And then the stern hour of crisis rode him down, and a great voice cried, not with the cunning that he would have expected of a temper, but with the majesty of morning on the heights: 'Take her. She is yours.' He knew that it was true. Who would gainsay him? She was his. In a few hours she would be his wife, in his own house, giving him every law of creed and race. In fact, by not pleasing himself he would be outraging creed and race. The latch of her door was his to lift at any time. That chamber of roses and gold, rainbows and silver cries like the dawn-notes of birds, was there for him like the open rose for the bee. His mother, too, would be pleased. She had expostulated gelatinously about 'this marriage which was no marriage.' He would be that companionable and inspiring thing--the norm. He would be one of the world-wide company of men that work, marry, bring up children, maybe see their grandchildren, and then, in the glory of fulfilment, lay their silver heads on the pillow of sleep. He had always loved normal things. He was not one of those who are set apart by the strange aloofness of genius, whose souls burn with a wild light, instead of with the comfortable glow of the hearth fire. He was an ordinary man, loved ordinary things. Neither was he effeminate or a celibate by instinct, though he had not Reddin's fury of masculinity. Sex would never have awakened in him but at the touch of spiritual love. But the touch had come; it had awakened; it threatened to master him. Pictures came dimly and yet radiantly before him: Hazel as she would stand to-night brushing out her hair; this room as it would be when she had put the light out and only starlight illuminated it; the flowery scent, the sound of her soft breathing; and then, in a tempestuous rush, the emotions he would feel as he laid his hand on the latch--love, triumph, intoxication. How would she look? What would she say? She could not forbid him. She would, perhaps, when she awoke to the sweetness of marriage, love him as passionately as he loved her. A wild mastery possessed him. He would have what he wanted of life. What need was there to renounce? And then, like a minor chord, soft and plaintive, he heard Hazel's voice in bewildered accents murmur: 'What for do you, my soul?' and, 'I'm much obleeged, I'm sure.' What stood between him and his desire was Hazel's helplessness, her personality, like a delicate glass that he would break if he stirred. Creed and convention pushed him on. For Church and State are for material righteousness, the letter of the law. Spiritual flowerings, high motives clad in apparent lawlessness--these are hardly in their province since they are for those who still need crude rules. To the scribes, and still more to them that sold doves, Christ was a brawler. Rather than break that glass he would not stir. What were the race and public opinion to him compared with her spirit? His tenets must make an exception for her. These things were negligible. All that mattered was himself and Hazel; his passion, Hazel's freedom; his longing for husbandhood and fatherhood, her elvish incapacity for wifehood and motherhood. He suddenly detested himself for the rosy pictures he had seen. He was utterly abased at the knowledge that he had really meant at one moment to enforce his rights, to lift the latch. The selfish use of strength always seemed to him a most despicable thing. From all points he surveyed his crisis with shame. He had made his decision; but he knew how easy it would have been to make the opposite one. How easy and how sweet! He stayed where he was for a long time, too tired to get up, weary with a conflict that was hardly yet begun. Then he heard his mother calling, and got up, closing the door as one surrenders a dream. He still held in one hand the bunch of rosy tulips he had bought for Hazel at the show. They hung their heads. 'Oh, my dear boy,' said Mrs. Marston, 'I've called and better called, and no answer! Where were you?' Edward might have said with truth, 'In hell.' He only said: 'In a valley of this restless mind.' 'What valley, dear? Oh, no valley, only a poem?' How very peculiar! Dear, dear! she thought; I hope all this isn't turning his brain; it seemed so like nonsense what he said. 'You look so pale, my dear, and so distraught,' she went on; 'I think you want a--' 'No, mother. Thank you, I want nothing.' He was half conscious of the bitter irony of it as he said it. Mrs. Marston was looking at his knees. 'Oh, my dear, I know now,' she said; 'I beg your pardon for saying you wanted a powder. You were with the Lord. You could not have been better occupied on your wedding morning!' She was very much touched. Edward flushed darkly, conscious of how he had been occupied. 'There!' cried she; 'now you're as flushed as you were pale. It's the fever. I'll mix you something that will soon put you all right.' 'I only wish you could,' he sighed. 'And what I wanted,' said she, catching at her previous thought in the same blind way as she caught at her skirts on muddy days--'what I wanted, dear, was--it's so heavy, the cake--' 'You want me to lift it, mother?' 'Yes, my dear. How well you know! And mind not to spoil the icing; it's so hard not to, it being so white and brittle.' 'No, I won't spoil the white,' he said earnestly, 'however hard it is.' She did not notice that the earnestness was unnatural; intense earnestness in household matters was her normal state. Chapter 16 The stately May morning, caparisoned in diamonds, full of the solemnity that perfect beauty wears, had come out of the purple mist and shamed the hovel where Hazel dressed for her bridal. The cottage had sunk almost out of recognition in the foam of spring. Ancient lilacs stood about it and nodded purple-coroneted heads across its one chimney. Their scent bore down all other scents like a strong personality and there was no choice but to think the thoughts of the lilac. Two laburnums, forked and huge of trunk, fingered the roof with their lower branches and dripped gold on it. The upper branches sprang far into the blue. The may-tree by the gate knew its perfect moment, covered with crystal buds that shone like rain among the bright green leaves. From every pear-tree--full-blossomed, dropping petals--and from every shell-pink apple-tree came the roar of the bees. Abel rose very early, for he considered it the proper thing to make a wreath for Hazel, being an artist in such matters. The lilies-of-the-valley-were almost out; he had put some in warm water overnight, and now he sat beneath the horse-chestnut and worked at the wreath. The shadows of the leaves rippled over him like water, and often he looked up at the white spires of bloom with a proprietary eye, for his bees were working there with a ferocity of industry. He was moody and miserable, for he thought of the township of hives that Hazel might have won for him. He comforted himself with the thought that there would be something saved on her keep. It never occurred to him to be sorry to lose her; in fact, there was little reason why he should be. Each had lived a lonely, self-sufficing life; they were entirely unsuitable companions for each other. He wove the wet lilies, rather limp from the hot water, on to a piece of wire taken from one of his wreath-frames. So Hazel went to her bridal in a funeral wreath. She awoke very tired from the crisis yesterday, but happy. She and Foxy and the one-eyed cat, her rabbit, and the blackbird, were going to a country far from troublous things, to the peace of Edward's love on the slope of God's Little Mountain. The difficulties of the new life were forgotten. Only its joys were visible to-day. Mrs. Marston seemed to smile and smile in an eternal loving-kindness, and Martha's heavy face wore an air of good-fellowship. The loud winds, lulled and bearing each its gift of balm, would blow softly round Edward's house. Frost, she thought, would not come to God's Little Mountain as to the cold Callow. She had not seen Reddin's rimy shoulders, nor the cold glitter of the tombs. She sang as she dressed with the shrill sweetness of a robin. She had never seen such garments; she hardly knew how to put some of them on. She brushed her hair till it shone like a tiger-lily, and piled it on her small head in great plaits. When her white muslin frock was on, she drew a long breath, seeing herself in bits in the small glass. 'I be like a picture!' she gasped. Round her slim sun-burnt neck was a small gold chain holding a topaz pendant, which matched her eyes. When she came forth like a lily from the mould, Abel staggered backwards, partly in clownish mirth, partly in astonishment. He was so impressed that he got breakfast himself, and afterwards went and sandpapered his hands until they were sore. Hazel, enthroned in one of the broken chairs, fastened on Foxy's wedding-collar, made of blue forget-me-not. Foxy, immensely dignified, sat on her haunches, her chin tucked into the forget-me-nots, immovably bland. She was evidently competent for her new role; she might have been ecclesiastically connected all her life. The one-eyed cat was beside her, blue-ribboned, purring her best, which was like a broken bagpipe on account of her stormy youth. 'Ah! you'd best purr!' said Hazel. 'Sitting on cushions by the fireside all your life long you'll be, and Foxy with a brand new tub!' Not many brides think so little of themselves, so much of small pensioners, as Hazel did this morning. Breakfast was a sociable meal, for Abel made several remarks. Now and then he looked at Hazel and said, 'Laws!' Hazel laughed gleefully. When she stood by the gate watching for the neighbour's cart that was to take them, she looked as full of white budding promise as the may-tree above her. She did not think very much about Edward, except as a protecting presence. Reddin's face, full of strong, mysterious misery; the feel of Reddin's arm as they danced; his hand, hot and muscular, on hers--these claimed her thoughts. She fought them down, conscious that they were not suitable in Edward's bride. At last the cart appeared, coming up the hill with the peculiar lurching deportment of market carts. The pony had a bunch of marigolds on each ear, and there was lilac on the whip. They packed the animals in--the cat giving ventriloquial mews from her basket, the rabbit in its hutch, the bird in its wooden cage, and Foxy sitting up in front of Hazel. The harp completed the load. They drove off amid the cheers of the next-door children, and took their leisurely way through the resinous fragrance of larch-woods. The cream-coloured pony was lame, which gave the cart a peculiar roll, and she was tormented with hunger for the marigolds, which hung down near her nose and caused her to get her head into strange contortions in the effort to reach them. The wind sighed in the tall larches, and once again, as on the day of the concert, they bent attentive heads towards Hazel. In the glades the wide-spread hyacinths would soon be paling towards their euthanasia, knowing the art of dying as well as that of living, fortunate, as few sentient creatures are, in keeping their dignity in death. When they drove through the quarry, where deep shadows lay, Hazel shivered suddenly. 'Somebody walking over your grave,' said Abel. 'Oh, dunna say that! It be unlucky on my wedding-day,' she cried. As they climbed the hill she leaned forward, as if straining upwards out of some deep horror. When their extraordinary turn-out drew up at the gate, Abel boisterously flourishing his lilac-laden whip and shouting elaborate but incomprehensible witticisms, Edward came hastily from the house. His eyes rested on Hazel, and were so vivid, so brimful of tenderness, that Abel remained with a joke half expounded. 'My Hazel,' Edward said, standing by the cart and looking up, 'welcome home, and God bless you!' 'You canna say fairer nor that,' remarked Abel. 'Inna our 'Azel peart? Dressed up summat cruel inna she?' Edward took no notice. He was looking at Hazel, searching hungrily for a hint of the same overwhelming passion that he felt. But he only found childlike joy, gratitude, affection, and a faint shadow for which he could not account, and from which he began to hope many things. If in that silent room upstairs he had come to the opposite decision; if he had that very day told Hazel what his love meant, by the irony of things she would have loved him and spent on him the hidden passion of her nature. But he had chosen the unselfish course. 'Well,' he said in a business-like tone, 'suppose we unpack the little creatures and Hazel first?' Mrs. Marston appeared. 'Oh, are you going to a show, Mr. Woodus?' she asked Abel. 'It would have been so nice and pleasant if you would have played your instrument.' 'Yes, mum. That's what I've acome for. I inna going to no show. I've come to the wedding to get my belly-full.' Mrs. Marston, very much flustered, asked what the animals were for. 'I think, mother, they're for you.' Edward smiled. She surveyed Foxy, full of vitality after the drive; the bird, moping and rough; the rabbit, with one ear inside out, looking far from respectable. She heard the ventriloquistic mews. 'I don't want them, dear,' she said with great decision. 'It's a bit of a cats' 'ome you're starting, mum,' said Abel. Mrs. Marston found no words for her emotions. But while Edward and Abel bestowed the various animals, she said to Martha: 'Weddings are not what they were, Martha.' 'Bride to groom,' said Martha, who always read the local weddings: 'a one-eyed cat; a foolish rabbit as'd be better in a pie; an ill-contrived bird; and a filthy smelly fox!' Mrs. Marston relaxed her dignity so far as to laugh softly. She decided to give Martha a rise next year. Chapter 17 Hazel sat on a large flat gravestone with Foxy beside her. They were like a sculpture in marble on some ancient tomb. Coming, so soon after her strange moment of terror in the quarry, to this place of the dead, she was smitten with formless fear. The crosses and stones had, on that storm-beleaguered hillside, an air of horrible bravado, as if they knew that although the winds were stronger than they, yet they were stronger than humanity; as if they knew that the whole world is the tomb of beauty, and has been made by man the torture-chamber of weakness. She looked down at the lettering on the stone. It was a young girl's grave. 'Oh!' she muttered, looking up into the tremendous dome of blue, empty and adamantine--'oh! dunna let me go young! What for did she dee so young? Dunna let me! dunna!' And the vast dome received her prayer, empty and adamantine. She was suddenly panic-stricken; she ran away from the tombs calling Edward's name. And Edward came on the instant. His hands were full of cabbage which he had been taking to the rabbit. 'What is it, little one?' 'These here!' 'The graves?' 'Ah. They'm so drodsome.' Edward pointed to a laburnum-tree which had rent a tomb, and now waved above it. 'See,' he said. 'Out of the grave and gate of death--' 'Ah! But her as went in hanna come out. On'y a new tree. I'll be bound she wanted to come out.' At this moment Edward's friend, who was to marry them, arrived. 'Now I shall go and wait for you to come,' Edward whispered. Waiting in the dim chapel, with its whitewashed walls and few leaded windows half covered with ivy, his mind was clear of all thoughts but unselfish ones. His mother, trailing purple, came in, and thought how like a sacred picture he looked; this, for her, was superlative praise. Martha's brother was there, ringing the one bell, which gave such a small fugitive sound that it made the white chapel seem like a tinkling bell-wether lost on the hills. Mr. James was there, and several of the congregation, and Martha, with her best dress hastily donned over her print, and a hat of which her brother said 'it 'ud draw tears from an egg.' Mr. James' daughter played a voluntary, in the midst of which an altercation was heard outside. 'Her'll be lonesome wi'out me!' 'They wunna like it. It's blasphemy.' Then the door opened, and Abel, very perspiring, and conscious of the greatness of the occasion, led in Hazel in her wreath of drooping lilies. The green light touched her face with unnatural pallor, and her eyes, haunted by some old evil out of the darkness of life, looked towards Edward as to a saviour. She might have been one of those brides from faery, who rose wraith-like out of a pool or river, and had some mysterious ichor in their veins, and slipped from the grasp of mortal lover, melting like snow at a touch. Edward, watching her, was seized with an inexplicable fear. He wished she had not been so strangely beautiful, that the scent of lilies had not brought so heavy a faintness, reminding him of death-chambers. It was not till Hazel reached the top of the chapel that the congregation observed Foxy, a small red figure, trotting willingly in Hazel's wake--a loving though incompetent bridesmaid. Mr. James arose and walked up the chapel. 'I will remove the animal' he said; then he saw that Hazel was leading Foxy. This insult was, then, deliberate. 'A hanimal,' he said, 'hasn't no business in a place o' worship.' 'What for not?' asked Hazel. 'Because--' Mr. James found himself unable to go on. 'Because not,' he finished blusterously. He laid his hand on the cord, but Foxy prepared for conflict. Edward's colleague turned away, hand to mouth. He was obliged to contemplate the ivy outside the window while the altercation lasted. 'Whoever made you,' Hazel said, 'made Foxy. Where you can come, Foxy can come. You'm deacon, Foxy's bridesmaid!' 'That's heathen talk,' said Mr. James. 'How very naughty Hazel is!' thought poor Mrs. Marston. She felt that she could never hold up her head again. The congregation giggled. The black grapes and the chenille spots trembled. 'How very unpleasant!' thought the old lady. Then Edward spoke, and his voice had an edge of masterfulness that astonished Mr. James. 'Let be,' he said. '"Other sheep I have which are not of this fold. Them also will I bring." She has the same master, James.' Silence fell. The other minister turned round with a surprised, admiring glance at Edward, and the service began. It was short and simple, but it gathered an extraordinary pathos as it progressed. The narcissi on the window-sills eyed Hazel in a white silence, and their dewy golden eyes seemed akin to Foxy's and her own. The fragrance of spring flowers filled the place with wistful sadness. There are no scents so tearful, so grievous, as the scents of valley-lilies and narcissi clustered ghostly by the dark garden hedge, and white lilac, freighted with old dreams, and pansies, faintly reminiscent of mysterious lost ecstasy. Edward felt these things and was oppressed. A great pity for Hazel and her following of forlorn creatures surged over him. A kind of dread grew up in him that he might not be able to defend them as he would wish. It did seem that helplessness went to the wall. Since Hazel had come with her sad philosophy of experience, he had begun to notice facts. He looked up towards the aloof sky as Hazel had done. 'He is love,' he said to himself. The blue sky received his certainty, as it had received Hazel's questioning, in regardless silence. Mrs. Marston observed Edward narrowly. Then she wrote in her hymn-book: 'Mem: Maltine; Edward.' The service was over. Edward smiled at her as he passed, and met Mr. James' frown with dignified good-humour. Foxy, even more willing to go out than to come in, ran on in front, and as they entered the house they heard from the cupboard under the stairs the epithalamium of the one-eyed cat. 'Oh, dear heart!' said Hazel tremulously, looking at the cake, 'I ne'er saw the like!' 'Mother iced it, dear.' Hazel ran to Mrs. Marston and put both her thin arms round her neck, kissing her in a storm of gratitude. 'There, there! quietly, my dear,' said Mrs. Marston. 'I'm glad it pleases.' She smoothed the purple silk smilingly. Hazel was forgiven. 'I'd a brought the big saw if I'd 'a thought,' said Abel jocosely. Only Mr. James was taciturn. Foxy was allowed in, and perambulated the room, to Mrs. Marston's supreme discomfort; every time Foxy drew near she gave a smothered scream. In spite of these various disadvantages, it was a merry party, and did not break up till dusk. After tea Abel played, Mr. James being very patronizing, saying at the end of each piece, 'Very good'; till Abel asked rudely, 'Can yer play yourself?' Edward came to the rescue by offering Mr. James tobacco. They drew round the fire, for the dusk came coldly, only Abel remaining in his corner playing furiously. He considered it only honest, after such a tea, to play his loudest. Hazel, happy but restless, played with Foxy beside the darkening window, low and many-paned and cumbered with bits of furniture dear to Mrs. Marston. Edward was showing his friend a cycle map of the country. Mrs. Marston was sleepily discussing hens--good layers, good sitters, good table-fowl--with Mr. James. Hazel, tired of playing with Foxy, knelt on the big round ottoman with its central peak of stuffed tapestry and looked idly from the window. Suddenly she cried out. Edward was alert in a moment. 'What is it, dear?' Hazel had sunk back on the ottoman, pale and speechless; but she realized that she must pull herself together. 'I stuck a pin in me,' she said. Tins in a wedding-dress? Oh, fie!' said Mrs. Marston. Tricked at your wedding, pricked for aye.' 'Oh, dear, dearie me!' cried Hazel, bursting into tears, and flinging herself at Edward's feet. Wondering, he comforted her. Mrs. Marston called for the lamp; the blinds were drawn, and all was saffron peace. Outside, in the same attitude as before, bowed, and motionless, stood Reddin. He saw Hazel, watched her withdraw, and knew that she had seen him. When the window suddenly shone like daffodils, he recoiled as if at a lash, and, turning, went heavily down the batch. He turned into the woods, and made his way back till he was opposite the house. Thence he watched the guests depart, and later saw Martha go to her cottage. The lights wavered and wandered. He saw one go up the stairs. Inside the house Mrs. Marston confronted with a bridal which she did not quite know how to regard, very tactfully said good night, and left them together in the parlour. They sat there for a time and Edward tried not to realize how much he was missing. He got up at last and lit Hazel's candle. At her door he said good night hastily. Hazel took the arrangements for granted, partly because she had slept in this same room two nights ago, partly because Edward had never shown her a hint of passion. The higher the nature, the more its greatness is taken for granted. Edward turned and went to his room. Reddin, under his black roof of pines, counted the lights, and seeing that there were three, turned homewards with a sigh of relief. But as he went through the fields he remembered how Hazel had looked last night; how she had danced like a leaf; how slender and young she was. He was a man everlastingly maddened by slightness and weakness. As a boy, when his father and mother still kept up their position a little, he had broken a priceless Venetian glass simply because he could not resist the temptation to close his hand on it. His father had flogged him, being of the stupid kind who believe that corporal punishment can influence the soul. And Reddin had done the same thing next day with a bit of egg-shell china. So now, as he thought of Hazel's lissom waist, her large eyes, rather scared, her slender wrists he cursed until the peewits arose mewing all about him. In the thick darkness of the lonely fields he might have been some hero of the dead, mouthing a satanic recitative amid a chorus of lost souls. The long search for Hazel, begun in a whim, had ended in passion. If he had never looked for her, never felt the nettled sense of being foiled, or if he had found her at once, he would never have desired her so fiercely. Now, for the first time in his life impassioned, he felt something mysterious and unwelcome to him begin to mingle with his desire. Above all, life without her meant dullness, lack of vitality, the swift onset of middle-age. He saw this with shrinking. He walked wearily, looking older than he was in the pathos of loss. Life with her meant an indefinitely prolonged youth, an ecstasy he had not dreamt of, the well-being of his whole nature. He walked along moodily, thinking how he would have started afresh, smartened up Undern, worked hard, given his children--his and Hazel's--a good education, become more sober. But he had been a fortnight too late. A miserable fortnight! He, who had raved over the countryside, had missed her. Marston, who had simply remained on his mountain, had won her. 'It's damned unfair!' he said, and pathos faded from him in his rage. All the vague thoughts, dark and turgid, of the last two nights took shape slowly. He neither cursed nor brooded any more. He thought keenly as he walked. His face took a more powerful cast--it had never been a weak face at the worst--and he looked a man that it would not be easy to combat. Bitter hatred of Edward possessed him, silent fury against fate, relentless determination to get Hazel whether she would or not. He had a purpose in life now. Vessons was surprised at his quick, authoritative manner. 'Make me some sandwiches early to-morrow,' he said, 'and you'll have to go to the auction. I shan't go myself.' ''Ow can I go now? Who's to do the cheeses?' 'Give 'em to the pigs.' 'Who's to meet the groom from Farnley? Never will I go!' 'If you're so damned impudent, you'll have to leave.' 'Who's to meet the groom?' Vessons spoke with surly, astonished meekness. 'Groom? Groom be hanged! Wire to him.' 'It'll take me the best part of two hour to go and telegrapht. And it cosses money. And dinner at the auction cosses money.' 'Oh!' cried Reddin with intense irritation, 'take this, you fool!' He flung his purse at Vessons. 'Well, well,' thought Vessons, 'I mun yumour 'im. He's fretched along of her marrying the minister. "Long live the minister!" says Andrew.' Chapter 18 Next morning Vessons went off in high feather; Hazel was so safely disposed of. Reddin left at the same time, and all the long May day Undern was deserted, and lay still and silent as if pondering on its loneliness. Reddin did not return until after night-fall. He spent the day in a curious manner for a man of his position, under a yew-tree, riven of trunk, gigantic, black, commanding Edward's house. He leant against the trunk that had seen so many generations, shadowed so many fox-earths, groaned in so many tempests. Above his tent sailed those hill-wanderers, the white clouds of May. They were as fiercely pure, as apparently imperishable, as a great ideal. With lingering majesty they marched across the sky, first over the parsonage, then over Reddin, laying upon each in turn a hyacinth shadow. Reddin watched the house indifferently, while Martha went to and fro cleaning the chapel after the wedding. Then Mrs. Marston came to the front door and shut it. After that, for a long time, nothing moved but the slow shadows of the gravestones, shortening with the climbing sun. The laburnum waved softly, and flung its lacy shadow on the grave where the grass was long and daisied. A wood-pigeon began in its deep and golden voice a low soliloquy recollected as a saint's, rich as a lover's. Reddin stirred disconsolately, trampling the thin leaves and delicate flowers of the sorrel. At last the door opened, and Edward came out carrying a spade. Hazel followed. They went round to the side of the house away from the graveyard, and Edward began to dig, Hazel sitting on the grass and evidently making suggestions. With the quickness of jealousy, Reddin knew that Edward was making a garden for Hazel. It enraged him. 'I could have made her a garden, and a deal better than that!' he thought. 'She could have had half an acre of the garden at Undern; I could have it made in no time.' He uttered an exclamation of contempt. 'The way he fools with that spade! He's never dug in his life.' Before long Hazel brought out the bird-cage and hung it in the sun. And surprisingly, almost alarmingly, the ancient bird began to sing. It was like hearing an old man sing a love-song. The bird sat there, rough and purblind, and chanted youth with the magic of a master. Hazel and Edward stood still to hear it, holding each other's hands. 'He's ne'er said a word afore,' breathed Hazel. 'Eh! but he likes the Mountain!' In the little warm garden with Hazel, among the thick daisies, with the mirth of the once desolate ringing in his ears, Edward knew perfect happiness. He stood looking at Hazel, his eyes dark with love. She seemed to blossom in the quiet day. He stooped and kissed her hand. To Reddin in his deep shadow every action was clear, for they stood in the sunlight. He ground the sorrel into the earth. After a time Martha rang the dinner-bell, not because she could not both see and hear her master, but because it was the usual thing. To Reddin the bell's rather cracked note was sardonic, for it was summoning another man to eat and drink with Hazel. He ate his sandwiches, not being so much in love that he lost his appetite. Then he sat down and read the racing news. There was no danger of anyone seeing him, for the place was entirely solitary with the double loneliness of hill and woodland. There were no children in the batch except Martha's friend's little boy, and he was timid and never went bird's-nesting. The only sound except the intermittent song of birds, was the far-away noise of a woodman's axe, like the deep scattered barking of hungry hounds. Nothing else stirred under the complex arches of the trees except the sunlight, moving like a ghost. These thick woods, remote on their ridges, were to the watchful eye rich with a half-revealed secret, to the attentive ear full of urgent voices. The solving of all life's riddles might come to one here at any moment. In this hour or in the next, from a grey ash-bole or a blood-red pine-trunk, might come the naked spirit of life with a face fierce or lovely. Coiled in the twist of long honeysuckle ropes that fell from the dead yews; curled in a last year's leaf; embattled in a mailed fir-cone, or resting starrily in the green moss, it seemed that God slumbered. At any moment He might wake, to bless or curse. Reddin, not having a watchful eye or an attentive ear for such things, was not conscious of anything but a sense of loneliness. He read the paper indefatigably. In an hour or so Edward and Hazel came out again, she in her new white hat. They went up God's Little Mountain where it sloped away in pale green illuminated vistas till it reached the dark blue sky. They disappeared on the skyline, and Reddin impatiently composed himself for more waiting. Was he never to get a chance of seeing Hazel alone? 'That fellow dogs her steps,' he said. The transfigured slopes of the mountain were, it seemed to Edward, a suitable place for a thing he wished to tell Hazel. 'Hazel,' he said, 'if you ever feel that you would rather have a husband than a brother, you have only to say so.' Hazel flushed. Although it was such a muted passion that sounded in his voice, it stirred her. Since she had known Reddin, her ignorance had come to recognize the sound of it, and she had also begun to flush easily. If Edward had understood women better, he would have seen that this speech of his was a mistake; for even if a woman knows whether she wishes for a husband, she will never tell him so. They turned home in a constrained silence. Foxy, frightened by a covey of partridges, created a diversion by pulling her cord from Hazel's inattentive hand and setting off for the parsonage. 'Oh! she'll be bound to go to the woods!' cried Hazel, beginning to run. 'Do 'ee see if she's in tub, Ed'ard, and I'll go under the trees and holla.' Reddin was startled when he saw Hazel, who had out-distanced Edward, making straight for his hiding-place. She came running between the boles with an easy grace, an independence that drove him frantic. A pretty woman should not have that easy grace; she should have exchanged it for a matronly bearing by this time, and independence should have yielded to subservience--to the male, to him. With her vivid hair and eyes and her swift slenderness, Hazel had a fawn-like air as she traversed the wavering shadows. She passed his tree without seeing him, and stood listening. Then she began to plead with the truant. 'What for did you run away, Foxy, my dear? Where be you? Come back along with me, dear 'eart, for it draws to night!' Reddin stepped from his tree and spoke to her. With a stifled scream she turned to run away, but he intercepted her. 'No. I've waited long enough for this. So you're married to the parson, after all?' 'Ah.' 'You'll be sorry.' 'What for do you come tormenting of me, Mr. Reddin?' 'You were meant for me. You're mine.' 'Folk allus says I'm theirs. I'd liefer be mine.' 'As you wouldn't marry me, Hazel, the least you can do is to come and talk to me sometimes.' 'Oh, I canna!' 'You must. Any spare time come to this tree. I shall generally be here.' 'But why ever? And you a squire with a big place and fine ladies after you!' 'Because I choose.' 'Leave me be, Mr. Reddin. I be comforble, and Foxy be, and they're all settling so nice. The bird's sung.' 'The parson, too, no doubt. If you don't come often enough, I shall walk past the house and look in. If you go on not coming, I shall tell the parson you stayed the night with me, and he'll turn you out.' 'He wouldna! You wouldna!' 'Yes, I would. He would, too. A parson doesn't want a wife that isn't respectable. So as you've got to'--he dropped his harshness and became persuasive--'you may as well come with a good grace.' 'But it wunna my fault as I stayed the night over. It was aunt Prowde's. What for should folk chide me and not auntie?' 'Lord, I don't know! Because you're pretty.' 'Be I?' 'Hasn't that fellow told you so?' 'No. He dunna say much.' 'You could make such a good chap of me if you liked, Hazel.' 'How ever?' 'I'd give up the drink.' 'And fox-hunting?' 'Well, I might give up even that--for you. Be my friend, Hazel.' He spoke with an indefinable charm inherited from some courtly ancestor. Hazel was fascinated. 'But you've got blood on you!' she protested. 'So have you!' he retorted unexpectedly. 'You say you kill flies, so you're as bad as I am, Hazel. So be my friend.' 'I mun go!' 'Say you'll come tomorrow.' 'Not but for a minute, then.' Edward's voice came from the house. 'I've found her!' Hazel ran home. But as she left the wood she turned and looked down the shadowy steeps of green at Reddin as he strode homewards. She watched him until he passed out of sight; then, sighing, she went home. Chapter 19 Next day Hazel did not go into the woods. In the evening, sitting in the quiet parlour while Edward read aloud and Mrs. Marston knitted, she felt afraid as she remembered it. Yet she had been still more afraid at the idea of going. She had helped Mrs. Marston to cover rhubarb jam in the dim store-room while Edward visited a sick man at some distance. It had been delightful, gumming on the clean tops, and then writing on them. She had dipped freely into the biscuit-box. Then Edward had returned, and they had gardened again. Now they were settled for the evening, and she was learning to knit, twisting obdurate wool round anarchic needles, while Mrs. Marston--the pink shawl top--chanted: 'Knit, purl! Knit, purl!' 'Will it come to aught ever?' queried Hazel. 'It's nought but a tail o' string now!' 'It will come to anything you like to make, dear,' said the old lady. 'Is knitting so like life, mother?' Edward spoke amusedly. 'But it wunna,' said Hazel. 'It'll only come a tanglement,' Edward suggested that he should help; there was great laughter over this interlude, while Mrs. Marston still chanted, 'Knit, purl!' Reddin walked lingeringly past the house in the dark, heard it, and was very angry and miserable. Hazel heard his step on the rough stones, and was alarmedly sure that it was he. She was terribly afraid he would tell Edward. Then a new idea occurred to her. Should she tell Edward herself? She sat in the firelight with her head bent, and turned this new thought about in her brain as incompetently as she twisted the blue wool round the needles. And from the silent shadows, as she played with the thread of destiny, two presences eyed each other across her bright head--one armed, the other bearing roses. Neither Mrs. Marston, with her antiphonal 'Double knit, double purl!' nor Edward, reading in his pleasant voice--he rather fancied his reading, and tried not to--saw those impalpable figures, each with a possessive hand outstretched to Hazel pending her decision. 'Why shouldna I say? There was no harm!' she thought. Then she remembered that there had been something--a queer feeling--that had sent her out of the glass door into the snow. She had never wanted to tell anyone of the episode. She glanced at Edward through her lashes--a look that always made him think of the pool above the parsonage, where lucent brown water shone through rushes. He saw the look, for he always glanced round as he read, having gathered from his book on elocution that this was correct. He smiled across at her, and went on reading. The book was one of those affected by Mrs. Marston and her kind. It had no relation whatever to life. Its ideals, characters, ethics and crises made up an unearthly whole, which, being entirely useless as a tonic or as a balm, was so much poison. It was impossible to imagine its heroine facing any of the facts of life, or engaging in any of those physical acts to which all humanity is bound, and which need more than resignation--namely, open-eyed honesty--to raise them from a humiliation to a glory. It was impossible to imagine also how the child, which appeared discreetly and punctually on the last page, could have come by its existence, since it certainly, with such unexceptional parents, could not have been begotten. Hazel listened anxiously to hear if the heroine ever drove on a winter night with a man who stared at her out of bold blue eyes, and whether she got frightened and took refuge in a bedroom full of white mice. But there were no mice, nor dark roads, nor bold men in all its pages. By the time the reading came to an end, Hazel had quite made up her mind that she could not possibly tell Edward. The blue wool was inextricably tangled, and one of the shadowy presences had vanished. Followed what Mrs. Marston called 'a little chat'; the evening tray, containing cake and cocoa, was brought from its side-table; the kettle was put on, and soon the candles were lit. The presence that remained was with Hazel as she went up to her little room, as she undressed, and when she lay down to sleep. From the mantlepiece in the faint moonlight shone the white background of the text, 'Not a hair of thy head shall perish.' But the promising words were obliterated by night. Next morning, and some time during every subsequent day, Hazel met Reddin under the dark yew-tree. 'You're very fond of the woods, my dear,' said Mrs. Marston one morning. 'It must be very nice and pleasant there just now.' 'No, it inna, Mrs. Marston. It's drodsome.' 'If I could start very early,' Mrs. Marston went on, 'please God I'd go with you. For you always go while Edward is visiting, and it's lonely for you.' Hazel fled down the batch that morning, and back up a shadowed ride to Reddin. 'You munna come never no more, Mr. Reddin!' she cried. 'The old lady's coming to-morrow-day, her says.' Reddin swore. He was getting on so nicely. Already Hazel went red and white at his pleasure, and though he had not attempted to kiss her, he had gained a hold on her imagination. Whenever he saw himself as others would see him if they knew, he hastily said, 'All's fair in love,' and shut his eyes. Also, he felt that he was doing evil in order to bring Hazel good. 'For how a girl can live in that stuffy hole with that old woman and that die-away fellow, Lord only knows!' he thought. 'She'll be twice the girl she is when she lives with a man that _is_ a man, and she can do as she likes with Undern so long as she's not stand-off with me. No, by--! I'll have no nonsense after this! Here I am, sitting under a tree like a dog with a treed cat!' So now he was very angry. His look was like a lash as he said: 'You made that up to get rid of me.' 'I didna!' cried Hazel, trembling. 'But oh! Mr. Reddin canna you leave me be? There's Ed'ard reading the many mansions bit to old Solomon Bache, as good as gold, and you'd ought to let me bide along of the old lady and knit.' 'I'll give you something better to do than knit soon.' 'What for will you?' 'Oh! you women! Are you a little innocent, Hazel? Or are you a d--d clever woman?' 'I dunno. But I canna come no more.' 'Won't, you mean. Very well.' 'What'n you mean, saying "very well" so choppy?' 'I mean that if a man chooses to see a woman, see her he will. It's his place to find ways. It's her privilege to hide if she likes, or do any d--d thing she likes. That only makes it more exciting. Now go back to your knitting. Fff! knitting!' The startled pigeons fled up with a steely clatter of wings at his sudden laughter. 'Oh! hushee! They'll hear and come out.' 'I don't care. If the dead heard and came out and stood between us, I shouldn't care! What are you whispering?' Hazel had said, 'Whoever she be, have her he will, for certain sure.' She would not repeat it, and he turned sharply away in a huff. She also turned away with a sigh of relief, but almost immediately looked back, and watched his retreating figure until it was lost in the trees. Chapter 20 On Lord's Day more than on any other at the mountain Hazel was like a small derelict boat beached on a peaceful shore. There was a hypnotic quiet about the place, with no sound of Martha's scrubbing, no smell of cooking. There was always cold meat on Lord's Day, with pickled cabbage, that concomitant of mysterious Sabbath blessedness. A subdued excitement prevailed about service-time, and sank again afterwards like a wind in the tree-tops. Hazel felt very proud of Edward in chapel, and a little awed at his bearing and his abstracted air. She came near to loving him on the lilac-scented Sundays when he read those old fragrant love-stories that he had dreaded. His voice was pleasant and deep. '"And he took unto him his wife, and she bare him a son."' It may have been that the modulations of Edward's voice spoke as eloquently as words to her, or that Reddin had destroyed her childish detachment, but she began to bring these old tales into touch with her own life. She envied these glamorous women of the ancient world. They were so tall, so richly clad, dwelling under their golden-fruited trees beneath skies for ever blue. It was all so simple for them. There were no Reddins, no old ladies. Their stories went smoothly with unravelled thread, not like her knitting. She began to long to be one of that dark-eyed company, clear and changeless as polished ivory, moving with a slow and gliding stateliness across the rose-coloured dawn, bearing on their heads with effortless grace beautiful pitchers of water for a thirsty world. Edward had shown her just such a picture in his mother's illustrated Bible. Instinctively she fell back on the one link between herself and them. 'Ed'ard's took _me_ to wife,' she thought. The sweetest of vague new ideas stirred in her mind like leaf-buds within the bark of a spring tree. They brought a new expression to her face. Edward's eyes strayed continually to the bar of dusty sunlight where she sat, her down-bent face as mysterious as all vitality is when seen in a new aspect. The demure look she wore in chapel was contradicted by a nascent wildness hovering about her lips. Edward tried to keep his attention on the prayers, and wished he was an Episcopalian, and had his prayers ready-made for him. He once mentioned this to his mother, who was much shocked. She said home-made prayers and home-made bread and home-made jam were the best. 'As for manufactured jam, it's a sloven's refuge, and no more to be said. And prayer's the same. The best printed prayer's no better than bought mixed at four-pence the pound, and a bit gone from keeping.' Edward stumbled on, as Mr. James said afterwards, 'like my old mare Betsy, a step and a stumble, a nod and a flop, and home in the Lord's own time--that's to say, the small hours.' The chapel was still hot, though cool green evening brooded without and the birds had emerged from their day-long coma. Wood-pigeons spoke in their deep voices from the dark pines across the batch a language older than the oldest script of man. Cuckoos shouted in the wind-riven larches, green beyond imagining, at the back of the chapel. A blackbird meditated aloud in high rhapsody, very leisured, but very tireless, on matters deeper than the Coppice Pool far below, deep as the mystery of the chipped, freckled eggs in his nest in the thorn. In and out of the yellow broom-coverts woodlarks played, made their small flights, and sang their small songs. Bright orange wild bees and black bumblebees floated in through the open windows. Mrs. Marston's black and white hens and the minorca cockerel pecked about the open door and came in inquiringly, upon which Martha, who sat near the door for that purpose, swept them softly out with the clothes-prop, which she manipulated in a masterly manner. Mrs. Marston, eyeing Hazel at all the 'Amens,' when, as she always said, one _ought_ to look up, like fowls after a drink, thought it was a pity. What was a pity she did not divulge to herself. She concluded with, 'Well, well, the childless father no sinners,' and hastily shut her eyes, realizing that another 'Amen' had nearly come. Edward's voice had taken a tone of relief which meant the end of a prayer. Mrs. Marston glanced up at him, and decided to put some aniseed in his tea. 'High thinking's as bad as an embolus,' she thought. But Edward was not thinking. He was doing a much more strenuous thing--feeling. Hazel wondered at the vividness of his eyes when he rose from his knees. 'I'm glad I'm Ed'ard's missus, and not Mr. Reddin's,' she thought. She had not seen Reddin for a week, having, since their last meeting in the wood, been so much afraid of encountering him that she had scarcely left the house. The days were rather dull without her visits to the woods, but they were safe. Edward gave out his text: 'Of those that Thou hast given me have I lost none.' All his tenderness for Hazel and her following crept into his sermon. He spoke of the power of protection as almost the greatest good in life, the finest work. He said it was the inevitable reward of self-sacrifice, and that, if one were ready for self-denial, one could protect the beloved from all harm. There was a crunching of gravel outside, and Reddin walked in. He sat down just behind Hazel. Edward glanced up, pleased to have so important an addition to the congregation, and continued his sermon. Hazel, red and white by turns, was in such a state of miserable embarrassment that Reddin was almost sorry for her. But he did not move his gaze from her profile. At last Mrs. Marston, ever watchful for physical symptoms, whispered, 'Are you finding it oppressive? Would you like to go out?' Hazel went out with awkward haste, and Mrs. Marston followed, having mouthed incomprehensible comfort to Edward. He went on stumblingly with the service. Reddin, realizing that he had been femininely outwitted, smiled. Edward wondered who this distinguished-looking man with the merciless mouth might be. He thought the smile was one of amusement at his expense. But Reddin was summing him up with a good deal of respect. Here was a man who would need reckoning with. 'The parson's got a temper,' he reflected, looking at him keenly, 'and, by the Lord, I'm going to rouse it!' He smiled again as he always did when breaking horses. He got up suddenly and went out. Mrs. Marston, administering raspberry cordial in the parlour, heard him knock, and went to the front door. 'Can I help?' he asked in his pleasantest manner. 'A doctor or anything?' Mrs. Marston laughed softly. She liked young men, and thought Reddin 'a nice lad,' for all his forty years. She liked his air of breeding as he stood cap in hand awaiting orders. Above all, she was curious. 'No thank you,' she said. 'But come in, all the same. It's very kind of you. And such a hot day! But it's very pleasant in the parlour. And you'll have a drink of something cool. Now what shall it be?' 'Sherry,' he said, with his eyes on Hazel's. 'I misdoubt if there's any of the Christmas-pudding bottle left, but I'll go and see,' she said, all in a flutter. How tragic a thing for her, who prided herself on her housewifery, to have no sherry when it was asked for! Her steps died away down the cellar stairs. 'So you thought you'd outwitted me?' he said. 'Now you know I've not tamed horses all my life for nothing.' 'Leave me be.' 'You don't want me to.' 'Ah! I do.' 'After I've come all these miles and miles to see you, day after day?' 'I dunna care how many miles you've acome,' said Hazel passionately; 'what for do you do it? Go back to the dark house where you come from, and leave me be!' Reddin dropped his pathos. She was sitting on the horsehair sofa, he in an armchair at its head. He flung out one arm and pulled her back so that her head struck the mahogany frame of the sofa. 'None of that!' he said. He kissed her wildly, and in the kisses repaid himself for all his waiting in the past few weeks. She was crying from the pain of the bump; his kisses hurt her; his shoulder was hard against her breast. She was shaken by strange tremors. She struck him with her clenched hand. He laughed. 'Will you behave yourself? Will you do what I tell you?' he asked. 'I'd be much obleeged,' she said faintly, 'if you'd draw your shoulder off a bit.' Something in the request touched him. He sat quite silent for a time in Edward's armchair and they looked at one another in a haunted immobility. Reddin was sorry for his violence, but would not say so. Then they heard Mrs. Marston's slide, and she entered with a large decanter. 'This is some of the sparkling gooseberry,' she said, 'by Susan Waine's recipe, poor thing! Own cousin to my husband she was, and a good kind body. Never a thing awry in her house, and twelve children had Susan. I remember as clear as clear how the carpet (it was green jute, reversible) was rucked up at her funeral by the bearers' feet. And George Waine said, "That'll worry Susan," and then he remembered, and burst out crying, poor man! And he cried till the party was quite spoilt, and our spirits so low. Where was I? Oh yes, It's quite up, you see, and four years old this next midsummer. But I'm sure I'm quite put out at having no sherry, on account of Martha thinking to return the bottle and finishing the dregs. And there, you asked for sherry!' 'Did I? Oh, well, I like this just as much, thanks.' He felt uncomfortable at this drinking of wine in Marston's house. It seemed unsportsmanlike to hoodwink this old lady. He had no qualms about Hazel. He was going, if Hazel would be sensible, to give her a life she would like, and things her instincts cried out for. Possibly he was right in imagining that her instincts were traitors to her personality. For Nature--that sardonic mother--while she cries with the silver cadence of ten thousand nightingales, 'Take what you want, my children,' sees to it, in the dark of her sorcery-chamber, that her children want what she intends. 'Is it to your liking, Mr.--? I didn't quite catch your name,' said Mrs. Marston. 'Reddin, ma'am. Jack Reddin of Undern.' The name rang in the quiet room with a startling sound, like a gunshot in a wood at night when the birds are roosting. At that moment Edward came in, not having waited till Mr. James had affectionately counted the collection. 'Is Hazel all right, mother?' he called when he got to the front door. 'Oh yes, my dear. It was but the heat. And here's a gentleman to see you. Mr. Reddin of Undern.' Edward came forward with his hand out, and Reddin took it. Their eyes met; a curious hush fell on the room; Hazel sighed tremulously. 'Pleased to see you at our little service, Mr. Reddin,' Edward said heartily. Reddin smiled and said, 'Thanks.' 'Glad there's anything in our simplicity to attract you,' Edward went on, wondering if his sermons were really not so bad, after all. Reddin laughed again shortly. Edward put this down to shyness. 'I hope we shall often have you with us again.' Reddin's eyes narrowed slightly. 'Yes, thanks. I shall be with you again.' 'You'll stay and have some supper?' 'Thanks.' He had left off feeling unsportsmanlike. He had no compunction towards Edward. It was man to man, and the woman to the winner. This was the code avowed by his ancestors openly, and by himself and his contemporaries tacitly. He began to be as excited as he was in a steeplechase. Edward went and sat down by Hazel, asking softly: 'And how is my little girl?' She looked up at him, quiescent, and smiled. Reddin eyed them for a moment, construing their attitudes in his own way. To the unclean mind all frankness of word or action is suspect. Then he turned sharply to Mrs. Marston. 'I can't stay, after all,' he said; 'I've just remembered--something. Thanks very much'--he looked reflectively at Hazel--for the sherry.' He was gone. 'My dear'--Mrs. Marston spoke triumphantly--'didn't I always say that gooseberry wine of Susan Waine's recipe was as good as champagne? Now you see I'm right. For Mr. Reddin of Undern--and a nice pleasant young man he is, too, though a little set about the mouth--and I remember when I was a girl there was a man with just such a mouth came to the May fair with a magic wheel, and it was a curious thing that the wheel never stopped opposite one of the prizes except when he turned it himself; and there! I did so want the green and yellow tab cat--real china--and I spent every penny, but the wheel went on.' 'Poor mother!' 'Yes, my dear, I cried buckets. And I've never trusted that mouth since. But, of course, Mr. Reddin's not that kind at all, and quite above fairs and such things.' 'I don't care for him much,' Edward said. 'No more do I,' said Hazel in a heartfelt tone. Chapter 21 Hazel was up early next morning. She could not sleep, and thought she would go down into the valley and look for spring mushrooms. She crept out of the house, still as death, except for Mrs. Marston's soft yet all-pervading snores. Out in the graveyard, where as yet no bird sang, it was as if the dead had arisen in the stark hours between twelve and two, and were waiting unobtrusively, majestically, each by his own bed, to go down and break their long fast with the bee and the grass-snake in refectories too minute and too immortal to be known by the living. The tombstones seemed taller, seemed to have a presence behind them; the lush grass, lying grey and heavy with dew, seemed to have been swept by silent passing crowds. A dank smell came up, and the place had at once the unkempt look worn by the scene of some past revelry and the expectant air of a stage prepared for a coming drama. Foxy barked sharply, urgently alive in the stronghold of the dead, and Hazel went to explain why she could not come. They held a long conversation, Hazel whispering. Foxy eloquent of eye. Foxy had a marked personality. Dignity never failed her, and she could be hilarious, loving, or clamorous for food without losing a jot of it. She was possessed of herself; the wild was her kingdom. If she was in a kennel--so her expression led you to understand--she was there incognito and of her own choice. Hazel, sitting at Edward's table, had the same look. When the conversation was over, and Foxy had obediently curled herself to sleep with one swift motion like a line of poetry, Hazel went down the hill. She felt courageous; going to the valley was braving civilization. She had Mrs. Marston's skirt-fastener--the golden butterfly, complicated by various hooks--to keep her petticoats up later on. She also had the little bag in which Edward was accustomed to take the Lord's Supper to a distant chapel. To her, mushrooms were as clean as the Lord's Supper, no less mysterious, equally incidental to human needs. In her eyes nothing could be more magical and holy than silken, pink-lined mushrooms placed for her in the meadows overnight by the fairies, or by someone greater and more powerful called God. As she went down the mountain it seemed that the whole country was snowed over. Mist--soft, woolly, and intensely white--lay across the far plain in drifts, filled the valley, and stood about the distant hills almost to their summits. The tops of Hunter's Spinney, God's Little Mountain, and the hill behind Undern stood out darkly green. The long rose-briars, set with pale coral buds, looked elvish against the wintry scene. As Hazel descended the mist rose like a wall about her, shutting her off from Undern and the Mountain. She felt like a child out of school, free of everyone, her own for the pearly hours of morning. When she came to the meadows she gathered up her skirts well above her knees, took off her shoes and stockings, and pinned her sleeves to the shoulders. She ran like a tightly swathed nymph, small and slender, with her slim legs and arms shining in the fresh cold dew. She looked for nests and called 'Thuckoo!' to the cuckoos, and found a young one, savagely egotistic, not ready for flight physically, but ready for untold things psychically. 'You'm proud-stomached, you be!' said Hazel. 'You'd ought to be me, with an old sleepy lady drawing her mouth down whatever you do, and a young fellow--' She stopped. She could not even tell a bird about Reddin. She danced among the shut daisies, wild as a fairy, and when the sun rose her shadow mocked her with delicate foolery. In her hand, and in that of the shadow, bobbed the little black Lord's Supper bag. She went on, regardless of direction. At last she found an old pasture where heavy farm-horses looked round at her over their polished flanks and a sad-eyed foal rose to greet her. There she found button mushrooms to her heart's content. Ancient hedges hung above the field and spoke to her in fragrant voices. The glory of the may was just giving place to the shell-tint of wild-roses. She reached up for some, and her hair fell down; she wisely put the remaining pins in the bag for the return journey. She was intensely happy, as a fish is when it plunges back into the water. For these things, and not the God-fearing comfort of the Mountain, nor the tarnished grandeur of Undern, were her life. She had so deep a kinship with the trees, so intuitive a sympathy with leaf and flower, that it seemed as if the blood in her veins was not slow-moving human blood, but volatile sap. She was of a race that will come in the far future, when we shall have outgrown our egoism--the brainless egoism of a little boy pulling off flies' wings. We shall attain philosophic detachment and emotional sympathy. We have even now far outgrown the age when a great genius like Shakespeare could be so clumsy in the interpretation of other than human life. We have left behind us the bloodshot centuries when killing was the only sport, and we have come to the slightly more reputable times when lovers of killing are conscious that a distinct effort is necessary in order to keep up 'the good old English sports.' Better things are in store for us. Even now, although the most expensively bound and the most plentiful books in the stationers' shops are those about killing and its thousand ramifications, nobody reads them. They are bought at Christmas for necessitous relations and little boys. Hazel, in the fields and woods, enjoyed it all so much that she walked in a mystical exaltation. Reddin in the fields and woods enjoyed himself only. For he took his own atmosphere with him wherever he went, and before his footsteps weakness fled and beauty folded. The sky blossomed in parterres of roses, frailer and brighter than the rose of the briar, and melted beneath them into lagoons greener and paler than the veins of a young beech-leaf. The fairy hedges were so high, so flushed with beauty, the green airy waters ran so far back into mystery, that it seemed as if at any moment God might walk there as in a garden, delicate as a moth. Down by the stream Hazel found tall water-plantains, triune of cup, standing above the ooze like candelabras, and small rough-leaved forget-me-nots eyeing their liquid reflections with complaisance. She watched the birds bathe--bullfinches, smooth-coated and well-found; slim willow-wrens; thrushes, ermine-breasted; lusty blackbirds with beaks of crude yellow. They made neat little tracks over the soft mud, drank, bathed, preened, and made other neat little tracks. Then they 'took off,' as Hazel put it, from the top of the bank, and flew low across the painted meadow or high into the enamelled tree, and piped and fluted till the air was full of silver. Hazel stood as Eve might have stood, hands clasped, eyes full of ecstasy, utterly self-forgetful, enchanted with these living toys. 'Eh, yon's a proper bird!' she exclaimed, as a big silken cuckoo alighted on the mud with a gobble, drank with dignity, and took its vacillating flight to a far ash-tree. 'Foxy ought to see that,' she added. Silver-crested peewits circled and cried with their melancholy cadences, and a tawny pheasant led out her young. Now that the dew was gone, and cobwebs no longer canopied the field with silver, it was blue with germander speedwell--each flower painted with deepening colour, eyed with startling white, and carrying on slender stamens the round white pollen-balls--worlds of silent, lovely activity. Every flower-spike had its family of buds, blue jewels splashed with white, each close-folded on her mystery. To see the whole field not only bright with them, but brimming over, was like watching ten thousand saints rapt in ecstasy, ten thousand children dancing. Hazel knew nothing of saints. She had no words for the wonder in which she walked. But she felt it, she enjoyed it with a passion no words could express. Mrs. Marston had said several times, 'I'm almost afraid Hazel is a great one for wasting her time.' But what is waste of time? Eating and sleeping; hearing grave, sedulous men read out of grave, sedulous book what we have heard a hundred times; besieging God (whom we end by imagining as a great ear) for material benefits; amassing property--these, the world says, are not waste of time. But to drink at the stoup of beauty; to lift the leafy coverlet of earth and seek the cradled God (since here, if anywhere, He dwells), this in the world's eye is waste of time. Oh, filthy, heavy-handed, blear-eyed world, when will you wash and be clean? Hazel came to a place where the white water crossed the road in a glittering shallow ford. Here she stayed, leaning on the wooden bridge, hearing small pebbles grinding on one another; seeing jewel-flashes of ruby, sapphire and emerald struck from them by the low sunlight; smelling the scent that is better than all (except the scent of air on a barren mountain, or of snow)--the scent of running water. She watched the grey wagtails, neat and trim in person, but wild in bearing, racing across the wet gravel like intoxicated Sunday-school teachers. Then, in a huge silver-willow that brooded, dove-like, over the ford, a blackcap began to sing. The trills and gushes of perfect melody, the golden repetitions, the heart-lifting ascents and wistful falls drooping softly as a flower, seemed wonderful to her as an angel's song. She and the bird, sheltered under the grey-silver feathers of the trees, lived their great moments of creation and receptivity until suddenly there was a sharp noise of hoofs, the song snapped, the willow was untenanted, and Reddin's horse splashed through the ford. 'Oh!' cried Hazel, 'what for did you break the song? A sacred bird, it was. And now it's fled!' He had been riding round the remnant of his estate, a bit of hill sheep-walk that faced the Mountain and overlooked the valley. He had seen Hazel wander down the road, white-limbed and veiled in tawny hair. He thought there must be something wrong with his sight. Bare legs! Bare arms! Hair all loose, and no hat! As a squire-farmer, he was very much shocked. As a man, he spurred downhill at the risk of a bad fall. Hazel, unlike the women of civilization, who are pursued by looking-glasses, was apt to forget herself and her appearance. She had done so now. But something in Reddin's face recalled her. She hastily took the butterfly out of her skirt and put on her shoes and stockings. 'What song?' asked Reddin. 'A bird in the tree. What for did you fritten it?' Reddin was indignant. Seeing Hazel wandering thus so near his own domain, he thought she had come in the hope of seeing him. He also thought that the strangeness of her dress was an effort to attract him. To the pure all things are pure. 'But you surely wanted to see me? Wasn't that why you came?' he asked. 'No, it wasna. I came to pick the little musherooms as come wi' the warm rain, for there's none like spring musherooms. And I came to see the flowers, and hearken at the birds, and look the nesses.' 'You could have lots of flowers and birds at Undern.' 'There's plenty at the Mountain.' 'Then why did you come here?' 'To be by my lonesome.' 'Snub for me!' he smiled. He liked opposition. 'But look here, Hazel,' he reasoned. 'If you'd come to Undern, I'd make you enjoy life.' 'But I dunna want to. I be Ed'ard's missus.' 'Be missus!' At the phrase his weather-coarsened face grew redder. It intoxicated him. He slipped off his horse and kissed her. 'I dunna want to be anybody's missus!' she cried vexedly. 'Not yourn nor Ed'ard's neither! But I Ed'ard's, and so I mun stay.' She turned away. 'Good morning to you,' she said in her old-fashioned little way. She trudged up the road. Reddin watched her, a forlorn, slight figure armed with the black bag, weary with the sense of reaction. Reddin was angry and depressed. The master of Undern had been for the second time refused. 'H'm,' he said, considering her departing figure, 'it won't be asking next time, my lady! And it won't be for you to refuse.' He turned home, accompanied by that most depressing companion--the sense of his own meanness. He was unable to help knowing that the exercise of force against weakness is the most cur-like thing on earth. Chapter 22 Hazel was picking wimberry-flowers from their stalks. She sucked out the drop of honey from each flower like a bee. The blossoms were like small, rose-coloured tulips upside down, very magical and clear of colour. The sky also was like a pink tulip veined and streaked with purple and saffron. In its depth, like the honey in the flowers, it held the low, golden sun. Evening stood tiptoe upon the windy hill-top. Hazel had eaten quite a quantity of honey, and had made an appreciable difference in the wimberry yield of half an acre, for she sipped hastily like a honey-fly. She was one of those who are full of impatience and haste through the sunny hours of day, clamorous for joy, since the night cometh. Some prescience was with her. She snatched what her eyes desired, and wept with disappointment. For it is the calm natures, wrapt in timeless quiet, taking what comes and asking nothing, that really enjoy. Hazel ate the fairy tulips as a pixie might, sharp-toothed, often consuming them whole. So she partook of her sacrament in both kinds, and she partook of it alone, taking her wafers and her honeyed wine from hands she never saw, in a presence she could not gauge. She did not even wonder whether it meant ill or well by her. She was barely conscious of it. When she found an unusually large globe of honey in a flower, she sang. Her song was as inconsequent as those of the woodlarks, who, with their hurried ripple of notes and their vacillating flights, were as eager and as soon discouraged as she was herself. Her voice rang out over the listening pastures, and the sheep looked up in a contemplative, ancient way like old ladies at a concert with their knitting. Hazel had fastened two foxgloves round her head in a wreath, and as she went their deep and darkly spotted bells shook above her, and she walked, like a jester in a grieving world, crowned with madness. Suddenly a shout rang across the hill and silenced her and the woodlarks. She saw against the full-blown flower of the west--black on scarlet--Reddin on his tall black horse, galloping towards her. Clouds were coming up for night. They raced with him. From one great round rift the light poured on Hazel as it does from a burning-glass held over a leaf. It burned steadily on her, and then was moved, as if by an invisible hand. Reddin came on, and the thunder of his horse's hoofs was in her ears. Hurtling thus over the pastures, breaking the year-long hush, he was the embodiment of the destructive principle, of cruelty, of the greater part of human society--voracious and carnivorous--with its curious callousness towards the nerves of the rest of the world. 'I a'most thought it was the death-pack,' said Hazel, speaking first, as the more nervous always does. She stood uncomfortably looking up at him as a rabbit looks, surprised half-way out of its burrow. 'Where be going?' she asked at last. 'Looking for you.' Hazel could not enjoy the flattery of this; she was so perturbed by his nearness. 'Where's your lord and master?' 'Ed'ard inna my master. None is.' A hot indignant flush surged over her. 'Yes,' said he; 'I am.' 'That you're not, and never will be.' Reddin said nothing. He sat looking down at her. In the large landscape his figure was carved on the sky, slenderly minute; yet it was instinct with forces enough to uproot a thousand trees and become, by virtue of these, the centre of the picture. He looked at his best on horse-back, where his hardness and roughness appeared as necessary qualities, and his too great share of virility was used up in courage and will-power. Hazel gazed defiantly back; but at last her eyelids flickered, and she turned away. 'I am,' Reddin repeated softly. He was as sure of her as he was of the rabbits and hares he caught in spring-traps when hunger drove them counter to instinct. A power was on Hazel now, driving her against the one instinct of her life hitherto--the wild creature's instinct for flight and self-preservation. She said nothing. Reddin was filled with a tumultuous triumph that Sally Haggard had never roused. 'I am,' he said again, and laughed as if he enjoyed the repetition. 'Come here!' Hazel came slowly, looked up, and burst into tears. 'Hello! Tears already?' he said, concerned. 'Keep 'em till there's something to cry for.' He dismounted and slipped the rein over his arm. 'What's up, Hazel Woodus?' He put one arm round her. The sheep looked more ancient than ever, less like old ladies at a concert than old ladies looking over their prayer-books at a blasphemer. 'My name inna Woodus. You'd ought to call me Mrs. Marston.' For answer, he kissed her so that she cried out. 'That's to show if I'll call you Mrs. Marston.' 'I'd liefer be.' 'What?' 'Ed'ard's missus than yourn.' He ground a foxglove underfoot. 'And there's Foxy in a grand new kennel, and me in a seat in chapel, and a bush o' laylac give me for myself, and a garden and a root o' virgin's pride.' 'I shall have that!' said Reddin, and stopped, having blundered into symbolism, and not knowing where he was. Hazel was silent also, playing with a foxglove flower. 'What are you up to?' he asked. She was glad of something to talk about. 'Look! When you get 'un agen the light you can see two little green things standing inside like people in a tent. They think they're safe shut in!' She bent down and called: 'I see yer! I see yer!' laughing. Reddin was bent on getting back to more satisfactory topics. 'They're just two, like us,' he said. 'Ah! We're like under a tent,' she answered, looking at the arching sky. 'Only there's nobody looking at us.' 'How do you know?' she whispered, looking up gravely. 'I'm thinking there _be_ somebody somewhere out t'other side of that there blue, and looking through like us through this here flower. And if so be he likes he can tear it right open, and get at us.' Reddin looked round almost apprehensively. Then, as the best way of putting a stop to superstition, he caught her to him and kissed her again. 'That's what tents are for, and what you're for,' he said. But he felt a chill in the place, and Hazel had frightened herself so much that she could not be lured from her aloofness. 'I mun go home-along,' she said; 'the sun's undering.' 'Will you come to Hunter's Spinney on Sunday?' 'Why ever?' 'Because I say so.' 'But why so far, whatever?' she asked amazedly. 'Because I want you to.' 'But I mun go to chapel along of Ed'ard, and sing 'ymns proper wi' the folks--and me singing higher nor any of them can go, for all I'm new to it--and the old lady'--her face grew mischievous--'the old lady in a shiny silk gownd as creaks and creaks when she stirs about!' Reddin lost patience. 'You're to start as soon as they're in church, d'you see?' 'Maybe I 'unna come.' 'You've got to. Look here, Hazel, you like having a lover, don't you?' 'I dunno.' 'Hazel! I'll bring you a present.' 'I dunna want it. What is it?' she said in a breath. 'Something nice. Then you promise to come?' There was a long silence. Her eyes seemed to her to be caught by his. She could not look away. And his eyes said strange, terrific things to her, things for which she had no words, wakening vitality, flattering, commanding, stirring a new curiosity, robbing her of breath. They stood thus for a long time, as much alone under the flaming sky as a man and woman of the stone age. When at least he released her eyes, he swung silently into the saddle and was gone. When he got home, Vessons came shambling to the door. 'Supper and a tot of whisky!' ordered his master. Vessons took no notice, but eyed the horse. 'You dunna mind how much work you give me at the day's end, do you?' he inquired conversationally. 'Get on with your jobs!' 'Now, what wench'll cry for this night's work?' mused Vessons. Chapter 23 Hazel ran home through the dew, swift as a hare to her form. Mrs. Marston, communing with a small wood fire and a large Bible, looked over her spectacles as Hazel came in, and said: 'Draw your stockinged foot along the boards, my dear. Yes, I thought so, damp.' Hazel changed her stockings by the fire, and felt very cared for and very grand. A fire to change in the parlour! And several pairs of new stockings! She had never had more than one pair before, and those with 'ladders' in them. 'These here be proper stockings,' she said complacently--'these with holes in 'em as Edward bought me. Holes as _ought_ to be there, I mane. They show my legs mother-naked, and they look right nice.' 'Don't say that word, dear.' 'What 'un?' Mrs. Marston was silent for a moment. 'The sixth from the end,' she said; 'it's not nice for a minister's wife.' 'What mun I say?' Mrs. Marston was in a difficulty. 'Well,' she said at last, 'Edward should not have given you any cause to say anything.' Hazel blazed into loyalty. 'I'm sure I'm very much obleeged to Ed'ard,' she said, 'and I like 'em better for showing my legs. Oh, here _be_ Ed'ard! Ed'ard, these be proper stockings, inna they?' Edward glanced at them, and said indifferently that they were. As he did so, a line that had lately appeared on his forehead became very apparent. In her room upstairs, papered with buttercups and daisies by Edward himself, and scented by a bunch of roses he had given her, Hazel thought about Hunter's Spinney. Edward would not like her to go, and Edward had been kind--kinder than anyone had ever been. He had extended his kindness to Foxy also. 'I'm sure Foxy's much obleeged,' she thought. 'No, she could never tell Edward about Hunter's Spinney. If he questioned her, she knew that she would lie. He would certainly not be pleased. He might be very angry. Mrs. Marston would not like it at all; she would talk about a minister's wife. Reddin had said she must go, but she must not.' She smelt the roses. 'No,' she said, 'I must ne'er go to the Hunter's Spinney--not till doom breaks!' She said her prayers under the shelter of that resolve, with a supplementary one written out very neatly in gold ink by Edward, who wrote, as his mother said, 'a parchment script.' But when she lay down she could not keep her mind clear of Reddin; during each meeting with him she had been more perturbed. His personality dragged at hers. Already he was stronger than her fugitive impulses, her wilding reserve. He was like a hand tearing open a triplet of sorrel leaves folded for rain, so strong in their impulse for self-protection that they could only be conquered by destruction. She was afraid of him, yet days without him were saltless food. There was a ruthlessness about him--the male instinct unaccompanied by humility, the patrician instinct unaccompanied by sympathy, the sportsman's instinct unaccompanied by pity. Whatever he began he would finish. What had he now begun? Innocence and instinct, ignorance and curiosity, struggled in her mind. The attitude of civilization and the Churches towards sex is not one to help a girl in such an hour. For while approving of, and even insisting on, children, they treat with a secrecy that implies disapproval the necessary physical factors that result in children. Tacitly, though not openly, they consider sex disgraceful. Though Hazel had come in contact with the facts of life less than most cottage girls, she was not completely ignorant. But the least ignorant woman knows nothing at all about sex until she has experienced it. So Hazel was dependent on intuition. Intuition told her that if the peaceful life at the parsonage was to continue, she must keep away from Hunter's Spinney. But she could not keep away. It was as if someone had spun invisible threads between her and Reddin, and was slowly tightening them. Long after Edward had locked the house up and shut his door, after the ticking of the clock had ceased to be incidental and become portentous, Hazel lay and tried to think. But she only heard two voices in endless contradiction, 'I munna go. I mun go.' At last she got up and fetched the book of charms, written in a childish, illiterate hand, and nearly black with use. 'I'll try a midsummer 'un, for it's Midsummer Eve come Saturday,' she thought. She searched the book and found a page headed 'The Flowering of the Brake.' That one she decided to work on Saturday. 'And to-morrow the Harpers, and Friday the Holy Sign,' she said. 'And if they say go, I'll go, and if they say stay, I'll stay.' She fell asleep, feeling that she had shifted the responsibility. Her mother had said that before any undertaking you should work the Harper charm. The book directed that on a lonely hill, you must listen with your eyes shut for the fairy playing. If the undertaking was good you would hear, coming from very far away, a sound of harping. Silver folk with golden harps, so the book said, keep on a purple hill somewhere beyond seeing, and there they play the moon up and the moon down. And at sun-up they cry for those that have not heard them. If you hear them ever so faintly, you can go on to the end of your undertaking, and there'll be no tears in it. But you must never tire of waiting, nor tell anyone what you have heard. The next night Hazel stole out in the heavy dew to a hummock of the mountain, and sat down there to wait for moonrise. But when the moon came--the thinnest of silver half-hoops, very faint in the reflected rose from the west--there was no sound except the song of the wood-larks. They persevered, although the sun was gone. Soon they, too, were hushed, and Hazel was folded in silence. She waited a long while. The chapel and the minister's house sank into the deepening night as into water. The longer the omen tarried, the more she wanted it to come. Then fatalism reasserted itself, and she relapsed into her usual state of mind. 'I dunna care,' she said. 'It inna no use to tarry. They unna play. I'll bide along of Ed'ard at chapel on Sunday, and sing higher than last time.' She turned home. At that moment a note of music, strayed, it seemed, out of space, wandered across the hill-top. Then a few more, thin and silvery, ran down the silence like a spray of water. The air was lost in distance, but the notes were undoubtedly those of a harp. 'It's them!' whispered Hazel. 'I'm bound to go.' Then she remembered her mother's injunctions, and took to her heels. At home in her quiet room, she thought of the strange shining folk playing on their purple mountain. She never knew that the harper was her father returning by devious roads from one of the many festivals at which he played in summer-time, and having frequent rests by the way, owing to the good ale he had drunk. Her bright galaxy of faery was only a drunken man. Her fate had been settled by a passing whim of his, but so had been her coming into the world. When she went in, Edward was sitting up for her, anxious, but trying to reason himself into calm, as Hazel was given to roaming. 'Where have you been?' he asked rather sternly, for he had suffered many things from anxiety and from his mother. 'Only up to'erts the pool, Ed'ard.' 'Don't go there again.' 'Canna I go walking on the green hill by my lonesome?' 'No. You can go in the woods. They're safe enough.' 'Foxy's a bad dog!' came Mrs. Marston's voice from upstairs. 'She bit the rope and took the mutton!' 'Eh, I'm main sorry!' cried Hazel. 'But she inna a bad dog, Mrs. Marston; she's a good fox.' 'According to natural history she may be, but in my sight she's a bad dog.' She shut her door with an air of finality. 'The old lady canna'd abear Foxy,' said Hazel. 'Nobody likes Foxy.' She was stubbornly determined that the world bore her a grudge because she loved Foxy. Perhaps she had discovered that the world has a sharp sword for the vulnerable, and that love is easily wounded. 'Don't call mother the old lady, dear.' 'Well, she is. And she says animals has got no souls. She'm only got a little small 'un herself.' 'Hazel!' 'Well, it's God's truth.' 'Why?' 'If she'd got a nice tidy bit herself, she'd know Foxy'd got one, too. Now I've got a shimmy with lace on, I know lots of other girls sure to have 'em. Afore I couldna have believed it.' Edward could find no reply to this. 'Are you happy here, Hazel?' he asked. 'Ah! I be.' 'You don't miss--' 'Father? Not likely!' She looked up with her clear golden eyes. 'You'm mother and father both!' 'Only that, dear?' 'Brother.' 'You've forgotten one, Hazel--husband.' His eyes were wistful. 'And lover, perhaps, some day,' he added. 'Good night, dear.' She lifted a childish mouth, grateful and ready to be affectionate. Too ready, he thought. He looked so eagerly for shyness--a flicker of the eyelids, a mounting flush. He was no fool, nor was he in the least ascetic. In his dreamy life before Hazel came, he had thought of a sane and manly and normal future when he thought of it at all. Now he found that the reality was not like his dreams. The saneness and manliness were still needed, but the joy had gone, or at least was veiled. 'It will come all right,' he told himself, and waited. His face took an expression of suspense. He was like one that watches, rapt, for the sunrise. Only the sun stayed beneath the horizon. He called Hazel in his mind by the country name for wood-sorrel--the Sleeping Beauty. He left her to sleep as long as she would. He kept a hand on himself, and never tried to waken her by easier ways than through the spirit--through the senses, or vanity, or by taking advantages of his superior intellect. He would win her fairly or not at all. So, though to glance into her empty white room set him trembling, though the touch of her hand set his pulses going, he never schemed to touch her, never made pretexts to go into her room. A stormed citadel was in his eyes a thing spoilt in the capturing. So he waited for the gates to open. The irony was that if he had listened to sex--who spoke to him with her deep beguiling voice, like a purple-robed Sibyl--if he had for once parted company with his exacting spiritual self, Hazel would have loved him. We cannot love that in which is nothing of ourselves, and there was no white fire of spiritual exaltation in Hazel. The nearest she approached to that was in her adoration of sensuous beauty, a green flame of passionless devotion to loveliness as seen in inanimate things. But that there should be anything between a man and a woman except an obvious affection, a fraternal sort of thing, or an uncomfortable excitement such as she felt with Reddin, was quite beyond her ideas. She did not know that there could be a fervour of mind for mind, a clasp more frantic than that of the arms, a continuous psychic state more passionate than the great moments of physical passion. If Edward had told her, she could not at this time have understood it. She would have gazed up at him trustingly out of her autumn-tinted eyes; she would have embodied all the spiritual glories of which he dreamed; and she would have understood nothing. Once he tried to share with her a passage in Drummond's 'Natural Law in the Spiritual World.' He was reading it with young delight a good many years behind the times, for books had usually grown very out of date before they percolated through the country libraries to him. He had read it in his pleasant, half-educated voice, dramatically and tenderly; his cheeks had flushed; he had challenged her criticism with keen, attentive eyes. She had said: 'I wonder if that's our Foxy barking, or a strange 'un?' Hazel looked long from her window that night. 'Oh, I canna go! I canna go! Ed'ard setting store by me and all!' she said. 'Maybe the other signs wunna come.' * * * * * On Friday she waited until after the others had gone to bed, and then slipped out. She went into the silent woods as the moths went, purposeless, yet working out destiny. It was a very warm, wet evening, and glow-worms shone incandescently in the long grass, each with her round, wonderful, greenish lamp at its brightest. They beckoned on to faery, though they glowed in perfect stillness. They spoke of marvellous things, though they lit the night in silence. It was a very grave, a very remote personality, surely, that lit those lamps. A more intent eye, a more careful hand were needed, one thinks, to make these than to make the planets, and a mind more vast, big enough to include minuteness. But Hazel felt no awe of them; she was too bounded and earthly a creature to be afraid of mystery. It is the spirit that maketh afraid. She was sure that they were not the Holy Sign, for she had seen them often. The Holy Sign was quite different. 'If I be to go to Hunter's Spinney,' she said, looking up through the black branches and twigs that were like great fowling-nets spread over her--'if I be to go, show me the Holy Sign.' She wandered down the narrow paths. It was very dark and warm and damp. Once the moon came out, and she saw a long pool startle the woods with its brightness, like lightning on steel. The yellow irises that stood about its marges held a pale radiance, and were like butterflies enchanted into immobility. Huge toadstools, vividly tawny as leopards, clumps of ladyfern not yet their full height and thick with curled fronds, stood proudly on their mossy lawns. But none of these was the Sign. 'If it dunna come soon I'll go home-along,' she said. And then, round the next bend, she saw it. At first she thought it was an angel just beginning to appear. The phantom was of a man's height, and it shone as the glow-worms did, only its light would have been enough to read by. It had a strange effect, standing there bathed in its own light in the black unbroken silence. It had a look of life--subdued, but passionate--as a spirit might have when it has just reintegrated its body out of the air. Hazel was terrified. As a rule, she was never afraid in the woods and fields, but only in the haunts of men. But from this, after one paralysed moment, she fled in panic. So she never knew that her second sign was only a rotten tree, shining with the phosphorescence of corruption. Next morning she asked Edward: 'Could folks see angels now?' 'Yes, if it was God's will.' 'If one came, would it be a sign?' 'I suppose so, dear.' 'What'd you do, Ed'ard, if you were bound to find out summat?' Edward was thinking out heads of a discourse on the power of prayer. 'I should pray, dear,' he said absently. 'Who'd answer?' 'God.' 'Would you hear 'Im?' 'No, dear; of course not.' He wanted quiet to finish his sermon, but he tried to be patient. 'You would know by intuition,' he said, 'little signs.' 'The Holy Sign!' murmured Hazel. 'I saw it yester-night--a burning angel.' 'I'm afraid you are too superstitious,' Edward said, and returned to his remarks on ejaculatory prayer. Some people would have found it hard to decide which was the more superstitious, the more pathetic. Chapter 24 In the early morning of Midsummer Eve, Hazel wandered up the hill-slopes. There the sheep, golden, and gospel-like in the early light, fed on wet lawns pale and unsubstantial as gauze. She did not, as the more self-conscious creatures of civilization would have done, envy their peace in so many words. But she did say wistfully to a particularly ample and contented one, 'You'm pretty comfortable, binna you?' When she went in to breakfast she thought the same of Mrs. Marston. Afterwards they picked black currants, Mrs. Marston seated on a camp-stool and wearing her large mushroom hat, which always tilted slightly and made her look rakish. Whenever a blackbird dashed out of the grove of half-ripe red currants, scolding with demoniac vitality, she would look up and say, 'Naughty bird.' She picked with deliberation, and placed the currants in the basket with an air of benediction. The day was hot and splendid, a day to make the leaves limp and crack the flower-beds. But it was cool in the shadow of the mountain-ash that grew near the currants, and a breeze laden with wild thyme and moss fragrance played about the garden like an invisible child. At eleven Martha appeared with cake and milk, and Edward returned from old Solomon's bedside. Then they went on picking, while Edward read them snatches of 'Natural Law.' Hazel was soothed by the reading, to the sense of which she paid no heed. It mingled with the drone of the hot bees falling in and out of the big red peonies, the far-off sound of grass-cutting, the grave, measured soliloquy of a blackbird hidden in the flame-flowered chestnut. Hazel felt that she would like to go on picking currants for ever, growing more and more like Mrs. Marston every day, and at least becoming (possibly through sheer benignity) a grandmother. There seemed no place in her life for Reddin, no time for Hunter's Spinney. She thought, 'I wunna go. I'll stay along of Ed'ard, and no harm'll come to me.' But a peremptory voice said that she must go, and once more her soul became the passive battleground of strange emotions of which she had never even dreamed. While they fought there like creatures in the dark, Hazel, sitting in the aromatic shadow of the currants, fell fast asleep; and as Mrs. Marston could never bring herself to wake anyone, she slept until Martha rang the dinner-bell. So the peaceful, golden day wore on to green evening. It was a day that Hazel always remembered. When the shadows grew long and dew fell, and the daisies on the graves filled the house with their faint, innocent fragrance, and closed their pink-lined petals for the night, Hazel felt very miserable. This very night she was going to work the last charm--the charm of the bracken flower--and whoso she dreamed of with that flower beneath her pillow must be her lover. She felt traitorous to Edward in doing this. She and Edward were handfasted. How, then, could she have any lover but Edward? Why should she work the charm? She puzzled over this during prayers, but no answer came to her questioning. Life is a taciturn mother, and teaches not so much by instruction as by blows. Edward was reading the twenty-third Psalm, which always affected his mother to tears, and in reading which his voice was very tender, '... And lead thee forth beside the waters of comfort.' The room was full of a deep exaltation, a passion of trustfulness. 'I went along by the water,' Hazel thought, 'and watched the piefinches and the canbottlins flying about. And I thought it was the waters of comfort. Only Mr. Reddin came and frit the birds and made the water muddy.' She did not feel as sure as the others did of the waters of comfort. 'So beautiful, dear,' murmured Mrs. Marston, 'so like your poor dear father.' Edward's good night to Hazel was more curt than usual. She was looking so mysteriously lovely. Her stress of mind had given a touch of spirituality to her face, and there is nothing that stirs passion as spirituality does. She had on a print frock of a neat design reminiscent of old-fashioned china, and she had pinned a posy of daisies on her shoulder. For one second, as she held up her cheek to be kissed, standing on the threshold of her moonlit room, Edward hesitated. Then he abruptly turned and shut his door. His hour had struck. His hour had passed. Hazel stood in the window reading the charm. 'On Midsummer Eve, when it wants a little of midnight, spread your smock where the bracken grows. For this is the night of the flowering of the brake, that beareth a blue flower on the stroke of midnight. But it is withered afore morning. Come you again about the time of the first bird-call. If aught is in the smock, take it; it is the dust of the flower. Sleep above it, and he you dream of is your lover. This is a sure charm, and cannot be broke.' * * * * * She took a clean chemise from the drawer, and when the landing clock struck the half-hour she slipped out on to the hillside and laid it under a clump of bracken. As she stooped to set it smooth and straight, the moon swam out of cloud and flung her shadow, black and gigantic, up the hillside. Frightened, she ran home, raked the fire together, and made herself a cup of tea to keep her awake. Sipping it in the dim parlour, where familiar things looked eerie, she thought of Reddin and his strange doings since her wedding. 'Eh, but it ud anger Ed'ard sore if he came to know,' she thought. 'What for does Mr. Reddin come, when he can see I dunna want him?' A slow flush crept over neck and temples as she half guessed the answer. She waited in the dove-grey hour that precedes dawn--an hour pregnant with the future. It is full of hope; for what great deed may not be done, what ethereal idea caged in music or poetry or colour, what rare emotion struck out of pain in the coming day? It is full of grief; for how many beautiful things will be trampled, great dreams torn, sensitive spirits crucified in the time between dusk and dusk? For the death-pack hunts at all hours, light and dark; it is no pale phantom of dreams. It is made not of spirit hounds with fiery eyes--a ghastly 'Melody,' a grisly 'Music'--, but of our fellows, all that have strength without pity. Sometimes our kith and kin, our nearest intimates, are in the first flight; give a view-hallo as we slip hopefully under a covert; are in at the death. It is not the killing that gives horror to the death-pack so much as the lack of the impulse not to kill. One flicker of merciful intention amid relentless action would redeem it. For the world is founded and built up on death, and the reality of death is neither to be questioned nor feared. Death is a dark dream, but it is not a nightmare. It is mankind's lack of pity, mankind's fatal propensity for torture, that is the nightmare. When a man or woman, confronted by helpless terror, is without the impulse to save, the world becomes hell. It was this, dimly but passionately felt, that made Hazel shrink from Reddin. For unless Reddin was without this impulse to save, and had the mind of a fiend without pity, how could he in the mere pursuit of pleasure inflict wholly unnecessary torture, as in fox-hunting? She watched Venus shrink from a silver pool to a silver point. She was full of trouble and unrest. Would she dream of Reddin? Would she go to sleep at all? Mrs. Marston's armchair loomed in the gathering light, and she felt guilty again. The east quickened, as if someone had turned up a light there. She opened the window, and in rushed the inexpressible sweetness of dawn. The bush of syringa by the kitchen window swept in its whole fragrance, heady and sensuous. She took long breaths of it, and thought of Reddin's green dress, of the queer look in his eyes when he stared long at her. A curious passivity quite foreign to her came over her now at the thought of Reddin. What would he look like, what would he say, would he hold her roughly, if she went to Hunter's Spinney? An unwilling elation possessed her as she thought of it. It did not occur to her to wonder why Edward did not kiss her as Reddin did. She took him as much for granted as a child takes its parents. Suddenly the first bird called silverly, startling the dusk. It was a woodlark, and its song seemed even more vacillating than usual in the vast hush. At the first note all Hazel's thoughts of Reddin fled. It seemed that clarity, freshness, and music were bound up in her mind with Edward. She thought only of him as she ran up the hill over the minute starry carpet of mountain bedstraw. 'Maybe there'll be no flower, and then the charm's broke,' she thought hopefully. 'If the charm's broke, I canna dream, and I shanna go.' But when she came to the white garment lying wet and pale in the half-light she drew a sharp breath. There in the centre lay one minute blue petal. Its very smallness proved to her its magic. It was a faery flower. She took it up reverently and went home solemn as a child in church. When, with blue petal under her pillow, she lay down, she fell asleep in a moment. She dreamt of Reddin, for he had more control over her thoughts than Edward, who appealed to her emotions, while Reddin stirred her instincts. Waking at Martha's knock, she said to herself, with mingled heart-sickness and elation: 'The signs say go. I mun go. Foxy wants me to go.' She would not have believed that her third sign was no faery flower, but only a petal of blue milk-wort--little sister of the bracken--loosened by her own nervous hands the night before. Chapter 25 On Sunday evening, as usual, the little bell began to sound plaintively in the soft air which was like a pale wild-rose. Mrs. Marston had betaken herself out of her own door into that of the chapel with a good many sighs at the disturbance of her nap, and with injunctions to Martha to put a bit of fire in the parlour. Edward had gone with his sermon to the back of the house where the tombstones were fewer and it was easier to walk while he read. Hazel ran up to her room and put on her white dress, which was considered by Mrs. Marston 'too flighty' for chapel. She leant out of her window and looked away up the purple hill. Then she gathered a bunch of the tea-roses that encircled it. They were deep cream flushed with rose. She pinned them into her breast, and they matched her flushed face. She was becoming almost dainty in her ways; this enormously increased her attraction for both men. She put on her broad white wedding-hat, and slipped downstairs and out by the kitchen door while Martha was in the parlour. She shut the door behind her like a vanished life. She felt, she did not know why, a sense of excitement, of some great happening, something impending, in her appointment with Reddin. She met no one as she ran down the batch, for the chapel-goers were all inside. The hedges were full of white 'archangel' and purple vetch. When she came to the beginning of Hunter's Spinney she felt frightened; the woods were so far-reaching, so deep with shadow; the trees made so sad a rumour, and swayed with such forlorn abandon. In the dusky places the hyacinths, broken but not yet faded, made a purple carpet, solemn as a pall. Woodruff shone whitely by the path and besieged her with scent. Early wild-roses stood here and there, weighed down with their own beauty, set with rare carmine and tints of shells and snow, too frail to face the thunderstorm that even now advanced with unhurrying pomp far away beyond the horizon. She hurried along, leaving the beaten track, creeping under the broad skirts of the beeches and over the white prostrate larch-boles where the resin ran slowly like the dark blood of creatures beautiful, defeated, dying. She began to climb, holding to the grey, shining boles of mountain ash-trees. The bracken, waist-high at first, was like small hoops at the top of the wood, where the tiny golden tormentil made a carpet and the yellow pimpernel was closing her eager eyes. Hazel came out on the bare hill-top where gnarled may-trees, dropping spent blossom, were pink-tinted as if the colours of the sunsets they had known had run into their whiteness. Hazel sat down on the hilltop and saw the sleek farm-horses far below feeding with their shadows, swifts flying with their shadows, and hills eyeing theirs stilly. So with all life the shadow lingers--incurious, mute, yet in the end victorious, whelming all. As Hazel sat there her own shadow lay darkly behind her, growing larger than herself as the sun slipped lower. Bleatings and lowings, the evening caw of the rooks ascended to her; a horse neighed, aggressively male. From some distance came the loud, crude voice of a man singing. He sang, not in worship, not for the sake of memory or melody or love, but for the same reason that people sing so loudly in church--in the urgent need of expending superabundant vitality. His voice rolled out under the purple sky as if he were the first man, but half emerged from brutishness, pursuing his mate in a world all fief to him, a world that revealed her as she fled through the door of morning and the door of evening, rolling its vaporous curtains back as she went through. It was Reddin, come forth from his dark house, as his foraging ancestors had done, to take his will of the weaponless and ride down the will of others. He did not confess even to himself why he had come. His thoughts on sex were so prurient that, in common with many people, he considered any frankness about it most indecent. Sex was to him a thing that made the ears red. It is hard for them that have breeding-stables to enter the kingdom of heaven. Too often the grave, the majestic significance of the meeting of the sexes--holding as it does the fate of the golden pageantry of life, sacrificially spending as it does the present for the future--is nothing to them. They see it only as a fillip to appetite. So Sally Haggard usually spent most of the money earned by Reddin's stallion, 'The Pride of Undern.' He put the horse to a gallop as he came up Hunter's Spinney, to quench the voice that spoke within him, saying things he would not hear, that spoke of love, and the tenderness and humility of love, and of how these did not detract from the splendour of manhood, the fine rage of passion, but rather glorified them. Something in his feeling for Hazel answered that voice, and it worried him. By heredity and upbringing he had been taught to dislike and mistrust everything that savoured of emotion or ideas, to consider unmanly all that was of the spirit. Therefore he sang more loudly as he saw on the hill-top the flutter of Hazel's white dress, to quench the voice that steadfastly spoke of mutual love as the one reason, the one consecration of passion in man and woman. The hoof-beats thudded like a full pulse. Hazel got up. Suddenly she was afraid of the place, more afraid than she had ever been of the death-pack, which, this evening, she had forgotten. But before she could move away Reddin shouted to her and came up the bridle-path. Hazel hesitated, swayed like the needle of a compass, and finally stood still. 'What'n you wanting me for, Mr. Reddin?' 'Don't you know?' 'If I knew, I shouldna ask.' 'What do men generally want women for?' 'I'm not a woman. I dunna want to be. But what be it, anyway?' He felt in his pocket and drew out a small parcel. 'There! Don't say the giving's all on your side,' he remarked. She opened the parcel. It contained two heavy old-fashioned gold bracelets. Each was set with a large ruby that stared unwinkingly from its setting of pale gold. 'Eh! they'm like drops of blood!' said Hazel. 'Like when fayther starts a-killing the pig. He's a hard un, is fayther, hard as b'rytes. I'm much obleeged to you, Mr. Reddin, but I dunna want 'em. I canna'd abear the sight of blood.' 'Little fool!' said Reddin. 'They're worth pounds.' He caught her wrists and fastened one bracelet on each. She struggled, but could not get free or undo the clasps. She began to cry, loudly and easily, as she always did. All her emotions were sudden, transparent and violent. She also, since her upbringing had not been refined, began to swear. 'Damn your clumsy fists and your bloody bracelets!' she screamed. 'Take 'em off, too! I 'unna stay if you dunna!' Reddin laughed, and in his eyes a glow began; nothing could have so suited his mood. 'You've got to wear 'em,' he said, 'to show you're mine.' 'I binna!' 'Yes.' 'I won't never be!' 'Yes, you will, now.' She raved at him like a little wild-cat, pulling at the bracelets like a kitten at its neck ribbon. He laughed again, stilly. He knew there was not a soul near, for the people from the farm at the foot of the spinney had all gone to church. 'Look here, Hazel,' he said, not unkindly; 'you've got to give in, see?' 'I see nought.' 'You've got to come and live with me at Undern. You can wear those fine dresses.' 'I'm a-cold,' said Hazel; 'the sun's undering; I'd best go home-along.' 'Come on, then. Up you get. We'll be there in no time. You shall have some supper and--' 'What'n I want trapsing to Undern when I live at the Mountain?' 'You'll be asking to come soon,' he said, with the crude wisdom of his kind. 'You like me better than that soft parson even now.' She shook her head. 'I'm a man, anyway.' She looked him over, and owned he was. But she did not want him; she wanted freedom and time to find out how much she liked Edward. 'Well, good neet to you,' she said. 'I'm off.' She ran downhill into the wood. Reddin hitched the reins to a tree and followed. He caught her and flung her into the bracken, and suddenly it seemed to her that the whole world, the woods, herself, were all Reddin. He was her sky, her cloak. The tense silence of the place was heavy on her. Away at God's Little Mountain Edward preached his sermon on the power of prayer--how he could plant a hedge of prayer round the beloved to keep them from all harm. The clock at Alderslea down the valley struck eight in muffled tones. They were burnt into Hazel's brain. The plovers wheeled and cried sadly like the spirits of creatures too greatly outnumbered. Edward was a dream; God's Little Mountain was an old tale--something forgotten, mist-begirt. Twilight thickened, and birds began to shrill in the dew. Voices came up from the farm. They were back from church. Hazel felt crushed, bruised, robbed. 'Now, up you get, Hazel!' said Reddin, who wanted his supper badly, and no longer wanted Hazel. 'Up you get and tidy yourself, and then home.' He felt rather sorry for her. She made no comment, no demur. Instinctively she felt that she belonged to Reddin now, though spiritually she was still Edward's. She looked at Reddin, passive, doubtful; the past evening had become unreal to her. So they regarded one another mistrustfully, like two creatures taken in a snare. They both felt as if they had been trapped by something vast and intangible. Reddin was dazed. For the first time in his life he had felt passion instead of mere lust. The same ideas that had striven within him on his way here uplifted their voices again. Staring dully at Hazel, he felt a smarting at the back of his eyes and a choking in his throat. 'What ails you, catching your breath?' she asked. He could not speak. 'You've got tears in your eyne.' Reddin put his hand up. 'Tell us what ails you?' He shook his head. 'What for not, my--what for not?' She never called Reddin 'my soul.' But he could not or would not speak. Hazel's eyes were red also, with tears of pain. Now she wept again in sympathy with a grief she could not understand. So they sat beneath the black, slow-waving branches under the threat of the oncoming night, weeping like children. They cowered, it seemed, beneath a hand raised to strike. All that they did was wrong; all that they did was inevitable. Two larches bent by the gales kept up a groaning as bole wore on bole, wounding each other every time they swayed. In the indifferent hauteur of the dark steeps, the secret arcades, the avenues leading nowhere, crouched these two incarnations of the troubled earth, sentient for a moment, capable of sadness, cruelty, terror and revolt, and then lapsed again into the earth. Forebodings of that lapse--forebodings that follow the hour of climax as rooks follow the plough--haunted them now, though they found no words for what they felt, but only knew a sense of the pressure of night. It appeared to stoop nearer, blind, impassive, but intensely aware of them under their dark canopy of leaves. Some Being, it seemed, was listening there, and not only listening, but imposing in an effortless but inevitable way its veiled purpose. Hazel and Reddin--he no less than she--appeared to be deprived of identity, like hypnotic mediums. His hardness and strength took on a pitiful dolt-like air before this prescient power. When he at last stopped choking and licking the tears away surreptitiously as they rolled down his cheeks, he was very angry--with himself for crying, with Hazel for witnessing his disgrace. That she should cry was nothing, he thought. Women always cried at these times. Nor did he distinguish between her tears of pain and of sympathy. 'You needn't stare,' he snapped. 'If I've got a cold, there's no reason to gape.' 'What for be you--' 'Shut up! I'm not.' They climbed the crackling wood, ghastly with a sound as of feet passing tiptoe into silence--the multitudinous soft noises of a wood, cones falling, twigs snapping, the wind in old driven leaves, the subdued rustle of the trees. They passed the place where she had talked with Edward at the bark-stripping. The prostrate larches shone as whitely as her shoulder did through her torn gown. She remembered Edward's look, and wept again. 'What is it now?' he asked. 'I was i' this place afore the bluebells died, along with--Ed'ard.' 'Why d'you say the man's name like that? It's no better than other names.' She had no reply for that, and they came in silence to the tormented may-tree where the horse was tied, his black mane and smooth back strown with faded, faintly coloured blossom. Reddin lifted her on and swung into the saddle. She leant against him, silent and passive, as with one arm round her he guided the horse down the difficult path. A star shone through the trees, but it was not a friendly star. It was more like a stare than a tear. When the rest of them sprang out like an army at the reveille, they were aloof and cold, and they rode above in an ironic disdain too terrible to be resented. Reddin put the horse to a gallop. He wanted fierce motion to still the compunction that Hazel's quiet crying brought. A sense of immanent grief was on her, grey loneliness and fear of the future. He tried to comfort her. 'Dunna say ought!' she sobbed. 'You canna run the words o'er your tongue comfortable like Ed'ard can!' 'What do you want me to say?' 'I dunno. I want our Foxy.' 'I'll fetch her in the morning.' 'No, you munna. She'm safe at Ed'ard's. Let her bide. I want to be at Ed'ard's, too.' 'Who comes wailing in the black o' night?' said the voice of Vessons as they neared the hall door. 'I thought it was the lady as no gold comforts--her as hollas "Lost! Alost!" in the Undern Coppy.' Chapter 26 Undern was in its June mood. Pinks frothed over the edges of the borders, and white bush-roses flung their arms high over the porch. All was heavily fragrant, close, muffling the senses. The trees brooded; the house brooded; the hill hung above, deeply recollected; the bats went with a lagging flight. It was like one of those spell-bound places built for an hour or an aeon or a moment on the borders of elfdom, full of charms and old wizardry, ready to fall inwards at a word, but invincible to all but that word. The hot scent of the trees and the garden mingled with the smell of manure, pigsties, cooking pig-wash and Vessons' 'Tom Moody' tobacco. It made Hazel feel faint--a strange sensation to her. Vessons stood surveying them as he had done on the bleak night of Hazel's first coming. 'Where,' he said at last, the countless fine lines that covered his upper lip from nostril to mouth deepening--'where's the reverent?' Receiving no reply but a scowl from his master, he led the horse away. Reddin, with a kind of gauche gentleness, said: 'I'll show you the house.' They went through the echoing rooms, and looked out of the low, spider-hung casements, where young ivy-leaves, soft and vivid, had edged their way through the cracks. They stood under ceilings dark with the smoke of fires and lamps that had been lit unnumbered years ago for some old pathetic revelry. In cupboards left ajar by a hurried hand that had long been still, hung gowns with flower-stains or wine-stains on their faded folds. The doors creaked and sighed after them, the floors groaned, and all about the house, though the summer air was so light and low, there was a moaning of wind. It was as if all the storms that had blown round it, the terror that had been felt in it, the tears that had fallen in it, had crept like forgotten spirits into its innermost recesses and now made complaint there for ever. A lonely listener on a stormy night might hear strange voices uplifted--the sobbing of children; songs of feasters; cries of labouring women; young men's voices shouting in triumph; the long intonations of prayer; the death-rattle. And as Reddin and Hazel--surely the most strangely met of all couples that had owned and been owned by this house--went through the darkening rooms, they were not, it seemed, alone. A sense of witnesses perturbed Hazel, a discomfort as from surveillance. A soft rumour, as of a mute but moving multitude crept along the passages in their wake. 'Be there ghosses?' she whispered. 'I'd liefer sleep under the blue roof-tree. I feel like corn under a millstone in this dark place.' 'It's said to be haunted, but I don't believe it.' He glanced over his shoulder. 'Who by?' 'People that failed. Weaklings. Men that lost their money or their women, and wives and daughters of the family that died young.' 'What for did they fail?' 'Silly ideas. Not knowing what they wanted.' 'Dear now! Foxy and me, we dunna allus know what we want.' 'You want me.' 'Maybe.' 'If you don't, you must learn to. And if you don't know what you want, you'll come to smash.' 'But when I do know, folk take it off me.' A long, mournful cry came down the passages. Hazel screamed. 'Be that the lady as no gold comforts?' she whispered. 'No, you silly girl. It's a barn owl. But she's said to cry in the coppy on Midsummer night.' 'Things crying out as have been a long while hurted,' murmured Hazel. 'To-night's Midsummer. Was she little, like me?' 'I don't know.' 'Did summat strong catch a holt of her?' 'A man did.' He laughed. 'Did she go young?' 'Yes, she died at nineteen.' 'And so'll it be with me!' she cried suddenly. 'So'll it be with me! Dark and strong in the full of life.' She flung herself on a faded blue settee and wept. The impression of companionship--of whisperers breaking out, hands stretched forth, the steady magnetism of countless unseen eyes--was so strong that Hazel could not bear it, and even Reddin was glad to follow her back to the inhabited part of the house. 'This is the bedroom,' Reddin said, opening the door of a big room papered in faded grey, and full of the smell of bygone days. The great four-poster, draped with a chintz of roses on a black ground, awed her. Reddin opened a chest and took out the green dress. He watched her with an air of proud proprietorship as she put it on. She went down the shallow stairs like a leaf loosened from the tree. Vessons, a beer-bottle in either hand, was so aghast at the pale apparition that he nearly dropped them. 'I thought it was a ghost,' he said--'a comfortless ghost.' 'So I be comfortless,' Hazel said to Reddin when Vessons had retired. Her voice had a sound of tears in it, like a dark tide broken on rocks. 'And when I was comfortless at the Mountain Ed'ard was used to read "Comfort ye, my people," as nice as nice.' 'Are you fonder of Marston than of me?' 'I dunno.' She sat down sadly in the home that was not home. She remembered the half-finished collar she was knitting for Foxy. Also, a custom had grown up that she sang hymns in the evenings to Edward's accompaniment. She missed these things. She missed the irritations of that peaceful life--Mrs. Marston's way of clearing her throat softly and pertinaciously; Martha's habit of tidying all her little treasures into the kitchen grate; Edward's absurd determination that she should have clean nails; the ever-renewed argument, 'Foxy's a bad dog!' 'She inna. She's a good fox.' 'In my sight she's a bad dog.' Now she had floated free of all this. She was out of haven on the high seas. She felt very lonely--as the dead might feel, free of the shackles of life. It was certainly pleasant to wear the green dress. But she missed her little duties--clearing away the supper, Martha being gone; fetching the candles (Mrs. Marston always shook her head at the third, not from economy, but from vicarious philoprogenitiveness). Edward's reading of the Book last thing had made her restless; she had thought it a bother. Now it seemed a privilege. To most girls, God's Little Mountain would have been purgatory. To her it was wonderful. It was the first time she had shared in the peculiar beauty of home, the daily sacrament of love. Edward never forgot to kiss them both when he came in; brought them flowers; was always carpentering at surprises for them. These last never turned out very well, his technical skill not keeping pace with his enthusiasm; but Hazel was not critical. She, in common with the other little creatures, sat down in his shadow as in a city of refuge. Mrs. Marston shared this feeling. She always fell asleep at once when Edward was at home in the evening, ceasing to invent alarms about black men creeping through the kitchen window, Foxy getting into the larder, and a great tempest from the Lord blowing them all to perdition because Lord's Day was not kept as it used to be. Into the parlour, at his own good time, Vessons brought the supper, and dumped it on the large round table, veneered like mahogany, heavily Victorian and ornamented with brass feet. There were bread and cheese, bacon, and a good deal of beer. Hazel saw nothing amiss with it, for though she had begun to grow accustomed to respectable middle-class meals, life at the Callow still seemed the homelier. Reddin looked up from cutting bacon to say with unwonted thoughtfulness, 'Like some tea and toast?' He felt that toast was a triumph of imagination. He was rather dubious about asking Vessons to do it, so instead he repeated, 'You'll have some tea and toast?' Vessons went into the kitchen and shut the door. They waited for some time, and Hazel, who, whatever her fate, her faults and sorrows, was always as hungry as Foxy, looked longingly at Reddin's cheese and beer. Physical exhaustion brought tears of appetite to her eyes. At last Reddin went to the kitchen door. 'Where's that tea?' he asked. 'Tay?' 'Yes, you fool!' 'I know nothing about no tay.' 'I said you were to make some.' 'Not to me.' 'And toast.' 'I've douted the fire.' He had just done so. 'Look here, my man, there's a missus at Undern now. You please her or go. She tells me what she wants. I tell you. You do it.' 'I'll 'ave no woman over me!' said Vessons sullenly. 'Never will I! Never a missus did I take, not for all the pleasures of bed and board--no, ne'er a one I ever took. Maiden I am to my dying day.' The coupling of the ideas of Vessons and maidenhood was so funny that Reddin burst out laughing and forgot his anger. 'Now, make that tea, Vessons.' 'She unna be here long?' asked Vessons craftily. 'Yes, for good.' Hazel heard him. 'For good.' Did she want to be in this whispering house for good? Who did she want to be with for good? Not Reddin. Edward? But he had not the passion of the greenwood in him, the lust of the earth. He was not of the tremulously ecstatic company of wild, hunted creatures. If Reddin was definitely antagonistic, a hunter, Edward was neutral, a looker-on. They were not her comrades. They did not live her life. She had to live theirs. She wished she had never seen Reddin, never gone to Hunter's Spinney. Edward's house was at least peaceful. 'And what,' she heard Vessons say, 'will yer lordship's Sally Virtue say?' She did not hear Reddin's reply; it was fierce and low. She wondered who Sally Virtue was, but she was too tired to think much about it. Afterwards Reddin had some whisky, and Vessons drank his health. Then Reddin picked out 'It's a Fine Hunting Day' on the old piano, and sang it in a rough tenor. Vessons joined in from the kitchen in a voice quite free from any music, and the roaring chorus echoed through the house. 'Eh, stop! I canna abide it!' cried Hazel; but they did not hear. Vessons came and stood in the doorway with the teapot in one hand and the expression of acute agony he always wore when singing. 'All trouble and care Will be left far behind us at home!' 'Not for the little foxes!' cried Hazel, and she plucked the music from the piano and ran past Vessons, knocking the teapot out of his hand. She stuffed the music into the kitchen grate. Vessons was petrified. 'Well,' he said, 'you've got the ways of wild-cats and spinsters the world over.' This was an unwilling compliment. 'And I'll say this for you, whatever else I canna say, you've got sperit enough for the eleven thousand virgins!' Reddin felt that the scene was hardly festive enough. He wondered that he himself did not feel more jubilant; reaction had set in. He wished that all should be gay as for a bridal, for he felt that this was a bridal in all but the name. But the old house, like a being lethargic after long revelry, clad in torn and stained garments, seemed unready for mirth. Andrew was highly antagonistic. The hound had bristled, growling, at the intruder; and Hazel--? He looked at Hazel under half-closed lids. Did she know what had happened? He thought not. Perhaps intuition whispered to her. Certainly she avoided his eyes. She sat drinking the tea, which Reddin, with much exertion of authority, at last caused to appear. She was wan, and her face looked very thin. Panic lingered about her eyes, at the corner of her lips. He realized that she was afraid of him--his look, his touch. Immediately he wanted to exercise his power. He went across and took her chin in his hand, laying the other on her shoulder. Her eyelids trembled. 'What'n you after, mauling me?' she said. Then a passion of tears shook her. 'Oh, I want Ed'ard and the old lady! I want to go back to the Mountain, I do! Ed'ard'll be looking me up and down the country.' 'Good Lord, so he will!' said Reddin, 'and rousing the whole place. You must write a letter, Hazel, to say you're safe and happy, and he's not to worry.' 'But I amna.' Reddin frowned at the spontaneity of this. But he made her write the note. 'Saddle the mare, Vessons, and take this to the Mountain.' 'You dunna mind how much--' began Vessons. But Reddin cut him short. 'Get on,' he said, and Vessons knew by the tone that he had better. 'Push it under the parson's door, knock, and make yourself scarce, Vessons,' Reddin ordered. 'You can go up to bed if you like, Hazel.' Left alone, he walked up and down the room, puzzled and uneasy. According to his idea, he had done Hazel the greatest honour a man can pay to a woman. He could not see in what he had failed. He was irritated with his conscience for being troublesome. He had, as he put it, merely satisfied a need of his nature--a need simple and urgent as eating and drinking. He did not understand that in failing to find out whether it was also a need of Hazel's nature--and in nothing else at all--lay his unpardonable crime. That he had offended against the views of his Church did not worry him. For, like many churchmen, he had the happy gift of keeping profession and practice, dogma and deeds, in airtight compartments. How many of the most fervent churchmen are not, or have not been at some period of their lives, exactly like Reddin? 'Of course, I've been a bit of a beast in the past,' he thought. 'But that's done with. Besides, she doesn't know.' He reflected again. 'I suppose I was a bit rough, but she ought to have forgotten that by now. I do wish she wouldn't keep on so about the parson.' He ran upstairs. 'Sorry I was rough, Hazel,' he said shamefacedly. Hazel stood at the open window in a nightdress that she had found in one of the chests--a frail, yellowish thing with many frills of cobwebby lace made and worn by some dead woman on a forgotten bridal. It was symbolic of Hazel's whole life that she came in this way both to Undern and the Mountain--as bare of woman's regalia as a winter leaf is of substance. Hazel was speaking when he entered. He stood still, astonished and suspicious. 'Who are you talking to?' he asked. She turned. 'Him above,' she said. 'I was saying the prayer Ed'ard learnt me. I said it three times, it being Midsummer, and ghosses going to-and-agen and the death-pack about. He'll be bound to hearken to Ed'ard's prayer.' She looked small and pitiful standing in the flickering candlelight. She turned again to the window, and Reddin went downstairs, quite overwhelmed and abashed. The house seemed eerier than ever, full of subdued complaints and whisperings. The faces of the roses round the window were woe-begone in the lamplight. The rustle of the leaves had an expostulatory sound. The wan poplars down the meadow looked accusing. It was almost as if the freemasonry of the green world was up in arms for Hazel. She had its blood in her veins, and shared with it the silent worship of freedom and beauty, and had now been plunged so deeply into human life that she was lost to it. It was as if every incarnation of perfection that she had seen in leaf and flower (and she had seen much, though remaining without expression of it), every moment of deep comradeship with earthy, dewy things, every illumined memory of colours and lights that her vivid mind had gathered and cherished in its rage of love and rapture, had come now, pacing disdainfully through this old haunt of crude humanity; passing up the stairs; standing about the great four-poster where so many Reddins had died and been born; gazing upon this face that had known dreams (however childish) of their eternal magic; grieving as the tree for the leaf that has fallen. They grieved, but they did not forgive. For the spirits of beauty and magic are (as the bondsman of colour knows and the bondsman of poetry) inimical to the ordinary life and destiny of man. They break up homes. They lead a thousand wanderers into the unknown. They brook no half service. It is only the rarest exception when a man loves a woman and yet excels in his art, and a woman must have an amazing genius if she is still a poet after childbirth. But though sometimes these proud spirits will tolerate, will even be sworn companions of human love, it is only when it is a passion pure and burning that they know it for a sister spirit. In the sexual meeting of Hazel and Reddin there was nothing of this. Though it brought out the best in Reddin, the best was so very poor. And Hazel was merely passive. So they stood and wept above her, and they foreswore her company for ever. She might regard the primrose eye to eye, but she would receive no dewy look of comprehension. No lift of the heart would come with the lifting leaves, no pang of mysterious pain with bird-song, star-set, dewfall. Even her love of Foxy would become a groping thing, and not any longer would she know, when her blind bird made its tentative music, all it meant and all it dreamed. This very night she had forgotten to lean out and listen as of old to the soft voices of the trees. She had said her prayer, and then she had been so tired, and pains had shot through her, and her back had ached, and she had cried herself to sleep. 'What for did I go to the Hunter's Spinney?' she asked herself. But the answer was too deep for her, the traitorous impulse of her whole being too mysterious. She could not answer her question. Reddin, pacing the room downstairs, drinking whisky, and fuming at his own compunction, at last grew tired of his silent house. 'Damn it! Why shouldn't I go up?' he said. He opened Hazel's door. 'Look here,' he said; 'the house is mine, and so are you. I'm coming to bed.' He was met by that most intimidating reply to all bluster--silence. She was asleep; and all night long, while he snored, she tossed in her sleep and moaned. Chapter 27 Early next morning Vessons was calling the cows in for milking. He leant over the lichen-green gate contemplatively. All the colours were so bright that they were grotesque and startling. Above the violently green fields the sky shone like blue glass, and across the east were two long vermilion clouds. Behind the black hill the sun had shouldered up, molten, and the shadow of Vessons, standing monkey-like on the lowest bar of the gate, lay on the stretch of wet clover behind him--a purple, elfin creature, gifted with a prehensile dignity. The cows did not appear after his first call. He lifted his head and called again in a high plaintive tone, as one reasons with a fretful child. 'Come o-on, come o-on!' Then he sank into the landscape again. After an interval, a polished red and white cow appeared at a distance of five fields, coming serenely on at her own pace. A white one and a roan followed her at long distances. They advanced through the shadows, each going through the exact middle of the many gateways, always kept open like doors in a suite of rooms at a reception. Vessons waited patiently--more as a slave than a ruler--only uttering his plaintive 'Come o-on!' once, when the last cow dallied overlong with a tuft of lush grass in the hedge. This was the daily ritual. Every morning he appeared, neutral-tinted, from the house, and cried upon an apparently empty landscape; every morning they meandered through the seven gates from the secret leafy purlieus where they spent the night. Mysterious of eye, leisured, vividly red and white, they followed the old man as queens might follow an usher. Hazel was coming down the path from the house. With morning, her abundant vitality had returned. The outer world was new and bright, and she wanted, shyly, to be up and dressed before Reddin awoke. She was full of merriment at the subservience of Vessons to the cows. 'D'you say "mum" to 'em?' she inquired. Vessons looked her up and down. He was very angry, not only at her criticism, but at the difficulty of retort, since he supposed she was now 'missus.' His friendliness for her had entirely gone, not, as would have seemed natural, since her last night's instalment at Undern, but since her marriage with Edward. He felt that she had 'gone back on him.' He had taken her as a comrade, and now she had gone over to the enemy. He was also injured at having been kept up so late last night. He chumbled his straw for some time, until the last cow had disappeared. Then he said: 'You'm up early for a married 'ooman, or whatever you be, missus.' Hazel laughed. She had lived so completely outside the influence of the canons of society that the taunt had no sting. 'Ha! you're jealous!' she said. Then, with a mercilessly accurate imitation of his voice and face, she added: 'A missus at Undern! Never will I!' He quailed under her mocking amber eyes, her impish laughter. Then, looking from side to side with suppressed fury, he said: 'Them birds is after the cherries! I'll get a gun. I'll shoot 'em dead!' 'If you shoot a blackbird, the milk'll turn bloody,' said Hazel; but Vessons paid no heed. All morning, at any spare moment, and after dinner (which he brought in in complete silence, and which was exceedingly unpalatable), he lurked behind trees and crept along hedges, shooting birds. Even Reddin felt awed and could not gather courage to expostulate with him. In and out of the stealthy afternoon shadows, black and solemn, went the shambling old figure with his relentless face and outraged heart. He shot thrushes as they fluted after a meal of wild raspberries; he shot tiny silky willow-wrens, robins, and swallows--their sacredness did not awe him--a pigeon on its nest, blackbirds, a dipper, a goldfinch, and a great many sparrows. The garden and fields were struck into silence because of him; only a flutter of terrified wings showed his whereabouts. He piled his trophies--all the delicate ruffled plumage of summer's prime--on the kitchen table, draggled and bloody. Hazel and Reddin crept from window to window, silent, watching his movements. Undern grew ghostlier than ever, seeming, as the shots rang out startlingly loud in the quiet, like a moribund creature electrified by blows. 'He'd liefer it was me than the birds!' said Hazel. 'Wheresoever I go, folk kill things. What for do they?' 'Things must be killed.' 'It seems like the earth's all bloody,' said Hazel. 'And it's allus the little small uns. There! He's got a jenny-wren. Oh, dearie me! it's like I've killed 'em; it's all along of me coming to Undern.' 'Hush!' said Reddin sharply. 'What I'm afraid of is that he'll shoot himself, he's so damned queer.' The last cow had sauntered to the gate before Vessons opened it and milked them that night. Afterwards he went in with the pails, set them on the parlour floor, and said with fury to Hazel: 'Bloody, is it?' She owned, faintly, that it was not. 'And now,' said Vessons, turning on Reddin, 'it's notice. Notice has been give--one month--by Andrew Vessons to John Reddin, Esquire, of Undern.' With tragic dignity he turned to go. He saw neither Hazel nor Reddin, but only the swan, the yew-tree swan, his creation, now doomed to be for ever unfinished. The generations to come would look upon a beakless swan, and would think he had meant it so. Tears came into his eyes--smarting, difficult tears. The room was full of brooding misery. Reddin felt awkward and astounded. 'Why, Vessons?' he said in rather a sheepish tone. Vessons did not turn. He fumbled with the door-handle. Reddin got up and went across to him. 'Why, Vessons?' he said again, with a hand on his shoulder. 'You and I can't part, you know.' 'We mun.' 'But why, man? What's up with you, Andrew?' The rare Christian name softened Vessons. He deigned to explain. 'She is,' he said, with a sidelong nod at Hazel. 'She mocked me.' 'Did you, Hazel?' 'Now then, missus!' Vessons glared at her. 'I only said--' 'Her said, "Never will I!"' shouted Vessons. 'Ah, that's what her said--"Never will I!" That's what _I_ say,' he added with the pride of a phrase-maker. Reddin could make nothing of them, one so red and angry, the other in tears. 'I'll do no 'ooman's will!' said Vessons. 'Look here, Vessons! Be reasonable. Listen to me. I'm your master, aren't I?' 'Ah! Till a month.' 'Well, you take orders from me; that's all that matters. I'm master here.' The tones of his ancestry were in his voice--an ancestry that ruled over and profited by men and women as good as themselves, or better. 'So we'll say no more about it,' he finished, with the frank and winning smile that was one of his few charms. Vessons stared at him for some time, and, as he stared, an idea occurred to him. It was, he felt, a good idea. It would enable him to keep his swan and his self-respect and to get rid of Hazel. As he pondered it, his face slowly creased into smiles. He touched his forelock--a thing only done on pay-days--and withdrew, murmuring, 'Notice is took back.' They saw him go past the window with the steps and the shears, evidently to attend to the swan. Reddin thought how easy it was to manage these underlings--a little authority, a little tact. He turned to Hazel, crying in the high armchair of black oak with its faded rose-coloured cushions. She was crying not only because Vessons had come off victorious, but because her position was now defined, and was not what she would have liked, but also because Reddin's manner to her jarred after last night. Last night, in the comfortless darkness of Hunter's Spinney, he had seemed for a little while to be a fellow-fugitive of hers, one of the defenceless, fleeing from the vague, unknown power that she feared. Then she had pitied him--self-forgetfully, fiercely--gathered his head to her breast as she so often gathered Foxy's. But now he seemed to have forgotten--seemed once more to be of the swift and strong ones that rode down small creatures. She sobbed afresh. 'Look here, Hazel,' said he, in a tone that he intended to be kind but firm--'look here: I'm not angry with you, only you must leave Vessons alone, you know.' 'You want that old fellow more than you want me!' 'Don't be silly! He has his uses; you have yours.' He spoke with a quite unconscious brutality; he voiced the theory of his class and his political party, which tacitly or openly asserted that woman, servants, and animals were in the world for their benefit. 'I'm not grass to be trod on,' said Hazel, 'and if you canna be civil-spoken, I'll go.' 'You can't,' he replied, 'not now.' She knew it was true, and the knowledge that her own physical nature had proved traitorous to her freedom enraged her the more. 'You can't go,' he went on, coming towards her chair to caress her. 'Shall I tell you why?' Hazel sat up and looked at him, her eyes gloomy, her forehead red with crying. He thought she was awaiting for his answer; but Hazel seldom did or said what he expected. She let him kneel by her chair on one knee; then, frowning, asked: 'Who cried in Hunter's Spinney?' He jumped up as if he had knelt on a pin. He had been trying to forget the incident, and hoped that she had. He was bitterly ashamed of that really fine moment of his life. 'Don't Hazel!' he said. He felt quite frightened when he remembered how he had behaved. A strange doubt of himself, born that night, stirred again. Was he all he had thought? Was the world what he had thought? Misgivings seized him. Perhaps he ought not to have brought Hazel here or to the Spinney. An older code than those of Church and State began to flame before him, condemning him. Suddenly he wanted reassurance. 'You did want to come, didn't you? I didn't take advantage of you very much, did I?' he asked. 'You want to stay?' 'No, I didna want to come till you made me. You got the better of me. But maybe you couldna help it. Maybe you were druv to it.' 'Who by?' he asked, with an attempt at flippancy. Hazel's eyes were dark and haunted. 'Summat strong and drodsome, as drives us all,' she said. She had a vision of all the world racing madly round and round, like the exhausted and terrified horse Reddin had that morning lunged. But what power it was that stood in the centre, breaking without an effort the spirit of the mad, fleeing, tethered creature, she could not tell. Reddin sat brooding until Hazel, recovering first in her mercurial way, said: 'Now I've come, I mun bide. D'you think the old fellow'd let me cook summat for supper? It's been pig-food for us to-day.' But when they went to investigate, they found Vessons preparing a tremendous meal, hot and savoury as a victorious and penitent old man could make it. He showed in his manner that bygones were to be bygones, and night came down in peace on Undern. But it was a curious, torrid peace, like the hush before thunder. Chapter 28 It was the Friday after Hazel's coming, and Reddin was away, much against his will, at a horse fair. He was quite surprised at the hurt it gave him to be away from Hazel. So far he had never been, in the smallest sense, any woman's lover. He had taken what he wanted of them in a kind of animal semi-consciousness that amounted to a stark innocence. Virility, he felt, was not of his seeking. There it was, and it must be satisfied. Now he was annoyed to find that he felt guilty when he remembered these women, and that he wanted Hazel, not, as with them, occasionally, but all the time. He had been accustomed to say at farmers' dinners, after indulging pretty freely: 'Oh, damn it! what d'you want with women between sun-up and sun-down?' His coarseness had been received with laughter and reproof. Now he felt that the reproof was juster than the laughter. It was curious, too, how dull things became when Hazel was not there. Hazel had something fresh to say about everything, and their quarrels were the most invigorating moments he had known. Hazel was primitive enough to be feminine, original enough to be boyish, and mysterious enough to be exciting. As Vessons remarked to the drake, 'Oh, maister! you ne'er saw the like. It's 'Azel, 'Azel, 'Azel the day long, and a good man spoilt as was only part spoilt afore.' Vessons and Hazel were spending the afternoon quarrelling about the bees. When Reddin was away, Hazel put off her new dignity and was Vessons' equal, because it was so dull to be anything else. Vessons tolerated her presence for the sake of the subacid remarks it enabled him to make, but chiefly because of the sardonic pleasure it gave him to remember how soon his resolve would be put into action. They were in the walled garden, and the bees were coming and going so fast that they made, when Hazel half closed her eyes, long black threads swaying between the hive doors and the distant fields and the hill-top. They hung in cones on the low front walls, and lumped on the hive-shelves in that apparently purposeless unrest that precedes creation. But whether they intended, any of them, to create a new city that day, none might know. Vessons said not. Hazel, always for adventure, said they would, and said also that she could hear the queen in one hive 'zeep-zeeping'--that strange music which, like the maddeningly soft skirl of bagpipes or the fiddling of Ned Pugh, has power to lure living creatures away from comfort and full hives into the unknown--so darkly sweet. 'I canna hear it,' said Vessons obstinately. 'Go on! You're deaf, Mr. Vessons.' 'Deaf, am I? Maybe I hear as much as I want to, and more. Ah! that I do!' 'Well, then, why canna you hear 'em? Listen at 'em now. D'you know the noise I mean?' 'Do I know the noise?' Vessons' voice grew almost tearful with rage. 'Do I know? Me! As can make a thousand bees go through the neck of a pint bottle each after other, like cows to the milking! Me! Maybe you'd like to learn me beekeeping?' he continued with salty humility. 'Maybe you would! Never will I!' He began to tear off the tops of the hives. 'Oh, Mr. Vessons, dunna be so cross!' Hazel was afraid there would be another scene like Monday's. 'You take 'em off very neat,' she added, with a pathetic attempt to be tactful--'as neat as my dad.' 'I'd have you know,' said Vessons, 'as I take 'em off neater--ah! a deal neater. Bees and cows and yew-tree swans,' he went on reflectively, 'I can manage better than any married man. For what he puts into matrimony I put into my work. Now I ask you'--he fixed his eyes on her with the expression of a fanatic--'I ask you, was there ever a beekeeper or a general or a sea-captain as was anything to boast of, being married? Never! Marriage kills the mind! Why's bees clever? Why's the skip allus full of honey at summer's end? Because they're all old maids!' 'The queen inna. They all come from her.' Vessons glared for a moment; then, realizing defeat, turned on his heel and went to feed the calves. He had an ingenious way of getting the calves in. He had no dog; it was one of his dreams to have one. But he managed very well. First he opened the calfskit door; then he loosed the pigs; then he fetched a bucket and went to the field where the calves were, followed by a turbulent, squealing, ferocious crowd of pigs. He walked round the calves, and the calves fled homewards, far more afraid of the pigs than of a dog. This piece of farm economy pleased Vessons, and, peace being restored, they laid tea amicably. When Reddin came home to a pleasant scent of toast and the sight of Hazel's shining braids of hair, new brushed and piled high on her head, he felt very well pleased with himself. He stretched in the red armchair and flung an arm round her. His hard blue eyes, his hard mouth, smiled; he felt that he could make a success of marriage, though the parson (as he called Edward) could not. Women, he reflected, were quite easy to manage. 'Just show them who's master straight off, and all's well.' Here was Hazel, radiant, soft, submissive, all the rough prickly husk gone since Sunday. Why had he behaved so strangely in the Spinney? Well, well, he must forget about that. The hot tea ran very comfortably down his throat; the toast was pleasantly resistant to his strong teeth. He felt satisfied with life. Later on, no doubt, Hazel would have a child. That, too, would be a good thing. Two possessions are better than one, and he could well afford children. It never occurred to him to wonder whether Hazel would like it, or to be sorry for the pain in store for her. He felt very unselfish as he thought, 'When she can't go about, I'll sit with her now and again.' It really was a good deal for him to say. He had never taken the slightest notice of Sally Haggard at such times. 'Got something for you,' he said, pulling at his pocket. 'Oh! It's an urchin!' cried Hazel delightedly. Reddin began bruising and pulling at its spines with his gloved hands. 'Dunna!' cried Hazel. Reddin pulled and wrenched until at last the hedgehog screamed--a thin, piercing wail, most ghastly and pitiful and old, ancient as the cry of the death's-head moth, that faint ghostly shriek as of a tortured witch. Centuries of pain were in it, the age-long terror of weakness bound and helpless beneath the knife, and that something vindictive and terrifying that looks up at the hunter from the eyes of trapped animals and sends the cuckoo fleeing in panic before the onset of little birds. Hazel knew the sound well. It was the watchword of the little children of despair, the password of the freemasonry to which she belonged. Before the cry had ceased to horrify the quiet room, she had flung herself at Reddin, a pattern of womanly obedience no longer, but a desperate creature fighting in that most intoxicating of all crusades, the succouring of weakness. On Reddin's head, a moment ago so smooth, on his face, a moment ago so bland, rained the blows of Hazel's hard little fists. Her blows were by no means so negligible as most women's, for her hands were muscular and strong from digging and climbing, and in her heart was the root of pity which nerves the most trembling hands to do mighty deeds. 'What the devil!' spluttered Reddin. 'Here, stop it, you little vixen!' He caught one of her hands, but the other was too quick for him. 'Give over tormenting of it, then!' The hedgehog rolled on the floor, and the foxhound came and sniffed it. Reddin had her other hand now. 'What d'you mean by it?' he asked, very angry, and tingling about the ears. 'Leave it be! It's done you no harm. Lookee! The hound-dog!' she cried. 'Drive him off!' 'I'm going to have some fun seeing the dog kill it.' Hazel went quite white. 'You shanna! Not till I'm jead,' she said. 'It's come to me to be took care of, and took care of it shall be.' She reached a foot out and kicked the hound. Reddin's mood changed. He burst out laughing. 'You're a sight more amusing than hedgehogs,' he said; 'the beast can go free, for all I care.' He pulled her on to his knee and kissed her. 'Send the hound-dog out, then.' When the hound had gone, resentfully, the hedgehog--a sphinx-like, protestant ball--enjoyed the peace, and Hazel became again (as Reddin thought) quite the right sort of girl to live with. During the uproar they had not heard wheels in the drive, so they were startled by Vessons' intrigue insertion of himself into a small opening of the door, his firm shutting of it as if in face of a beleaguering host, and his stentorian whisper: 'Ere's Clombers now!' as if to say, 'When you let a woman in you never know what'll become of it.' 'Tell 'em I'm ill--dead!' said his master. 'Tell 'em I'm in the bath--anything, only send them away!' They heard Vessons recitative. 'The master's very sorry, mum, but he's got the colic too bad to see you. It's heave, curse, heave, curse, till I pray for a good vomit!' The Clombers, urgent upon his track, shouldered past and strode in. 'What the devil do they want?' muttered Reddin. He rose sulkily. 'I hear,' said the eldest Miss Clomber, who had read Bordello and was very clever, 'that young Lochinvar has taken to himself a bride.' This was quite up to her usual standard, for not only had it the true literary flavour, but it was ironic, for she knew who Hazel was. ''Er?' queried Reddin, shaking hands in his rather race-course manner. 'Introduce me, Mr. Reddin!' simpered Amelia Clomber. It was painful when she simpered; her mouth was made for sterner uses. They surveyed Hazel, who shrank from their gaze. Something in their eyes made her feel as if they were her judges, and as if they knew all about Hunter's Spinney. They looked at her with detestation. They thought it was detestation for a sinner. Really, it was for the woman who had, in a few weeks after meeting him, found favour in Reddin's eyes, and attained that defeat which, to women even so desiccated as the Clombers, is the one desired victory. They had come, as they told each other before and after their visit, to snatch a brand from the burning. What was in the heart of each--the frantic desire to be mistress of Undern--they did not mention. Miss Clomber had taken exception to Amelia's tight dress. For Amelia had a figure, and Miss Clomber had not. She always flushed at the text, 'We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts.' Amelia was aware of her advantage as she engaged Reddin in conversation. He fell in with the arrangement, for he detested her sister, who always prefaced every remark with 'Have you read--?' As he never read anything, he thought she was making fun of him. 'And what,' asked Miss Clomber of Hazel, lowering her lids like blinds, 'was your maiden name?' 'Woodus.' 'Where were you married?' 'The Mountain.' 'Shawly there's no charch there?' 'Ah! Ed'ard's church.' 'Edward?' 'Ah! He's minister.' 'You mean the chapel. So that's your persuasion. Now Mr. Reddin is such a sta'nch Charchman.' Reddin looked exceedingly discomfited. 'And when did this happy event take place?' A cat with a mouse was nothing to Miss Clomber with a sinner. At this point Reddin saw, as he put it, what she was driving at. He was very sleepy, having been out all day and eaten a large tea, and he never combated a physical desire. So he cut across a remark of Amelia's to the effect that marriage with the _right_ woman so added to a man's comfort, and said: 'I'm not married if that's what you mean.' 'Then who--' said Miss Clomber, feeling that she had him now. 'My keep,' he said baldly. He thought they would go at that. But they sat tight. They had, as Miss Clomber said afterwards, a soul to save. They both realized how pleasant might be the earthly lot of one engaged in this heavenly occupation. 'Hah! You call a spade a spade, Mr. Reddin,' said Miss Clomber, with a frosty glance at Hazel; 'you are not, as our dear Browning has it, "mealy mouthed".' 'In the breast of a true woman,' said Amelia authoritatively, as a fishmonger might speak of fish, 'is no room for blame.' 'True woman be damned!' Miss Clomber saw that for to-day the cause was lost. At this point Miss Amelia uttered a piercing yell. The hedgehog, encouraged by being left to itself, and by the slight dusk that had begun to gather in the northerly rooms of Undern--where night came early--had begun to creep about. Surreptitiously guided by Hazel's foot, it had crept under Amelia's skirt and laid its cold inquiring head on her ankle, thinly clad for conquest. Hazel went off into peals of laughter, and Miss Amelia hated her more than before. Vessons, in the kitchen, shook his head. 'I never heerd the like of the noise there's been since that gel come. Never did I!' he said. 'Leave him!' said Miss Clomber to Hazel on the doorstep. She was going to add 'for my sake,' but substituted 'his.' 'You are causing him to sin,' she added. 'Be I?' Hazel felt that she was always causing something wrong. Then she sighed. 'I canna leave 'im.' 'Why not?' 'He wunna let me.' With that phrase, all unconsciously, she took a most ample revenge on the Clombers; for it rang in their ears all night, and they knew it was true. Chapter 29 On Sunday Vessons put his resolve--to go to the Mountain and reveal Hazel's whereabouts--into practice. If he had waited, gossip would have done it for him. He set out in the afternoon, having 'cleaned' himself and put on his pepper-and-salt suit, buff leggings, red waistcoat, and the jockey-like cap he affected. He arrived at the back door just as Martha was taking in supper. 'Well?' said Martha, who wanted to have her meal and go home. 'Well?' said Vessons. 'When I say "well," I mean what d'you want?' 'Allus say what you mean.' 'Who d'you want? Me?' 'The master.' 'The master's out.' 'I'll wait, then.' He sat down by the fire, and looked so fixedly at Martha as she poured out her tea that she offered him some in self-defence. He drew up his chair. Now that he was receiving hospitality, he felt that he must be agreeable and complimentary. 'Single, I suppose?' he asked. 'Ah,' said Martha coyly, 'I'm single; but I've no objection to matrimony.' 'Oh!' Vessons spoke sourly, 'I'm sorry for you, then.' 'Maybe you're a married man yourself?' 'Never.' 'Better late than never!' 'If I've kep' out of it in the heat of youth, is it likely I'll go into it in the chilly times? Maiden I am to my dying day!' 'But if you was to meet a nice tidy woman as had a bit saved?' To Martha, a bridegroom of sixty-five seemed better than nothing. 'If I met a score nice tidy women, if I met a gross nice tidy women, it 'ud be no different.' 'Not if she could make strong ale?' 'I can make ale myself. No woman shall come into my kitchen for uncounted gold.' Martha sighed as she changed the subject. 'What do you want the master for?' 'Never tell your tidings,' said Vessons, 'till you meet the king.' 'Martha!' Mrs. Marston stood at the kitchen door in the most splendid of her caps--a pagoda of white lace--and her voice was, as she afterwards said, 'quite sharp,' its mellifluousness being very slightly reduced. Vessons rose, touching his hair. 'What is it, my good man?' 'A bit of news, mum.' 'For my son?' 'Ah!' 'You may go, Martha,' said Mrs. Marston, and Martha went without alacrity. 'Now.' Mrs. Marston spoke encouragingly. 'It's for the master.' 'He cannot see you.' The two old faces regarded each other with silent obstinacy, and Vessons recognized that, for all Mrs. Marston's soft outlines, she was as obstinate as he was. He cleared his throat several times. Mrs. Marston produced a lozenge, which he ate reluctantly, chumbling it with nervous haste. He was so afraid that she would give him another that he told her his news. 'Thank you,' she said, keeping her dignity in a marvellous manner. 'Mrs. Edward Marston, of course, wrote to the minister, but she forgot to give her address.' 'Accidents will 'appen,' Vessons remarked, as he went out. It was some time before Edward came in. He had spent most of his time since last Sunday tramping the hillsides. It was not till he had finished his very cursory meal that his mother said calmly, looking over her spectacles: 'I know where Hazel is.' 'You _know_, mother? Why didn't you tell me?' 'I am telling you, dear. There's nothing to be in a taking about. You've had no supper yet. A little preserve?' Edward, in a sudden passion that startled her, threw the jam-dish across the room. It made a red splash on the wall. Mrs. Marston stopped chumbling her toast, and remained with the rotary motions of her mouth in abeyance. Then she said slowly: 'Your poor father always said, dear, that you'd break out some day. And you have. The best dish! Of course the jam I say little about; jam is but jam, after all; but the cut-glass dish--!' 'Can't you go on with the tale, mother?' 'Yes, my dear, yes. But you fluster me like the Silverton Cheap-jack does; I never _can_ buy the dish he holds up, for I get in such a fluster for fear he'll break it, and then he does. And now you have.' Edward pushed back his chair in desperation. 'For pity's sake!' he said. 'I'm telling you. I never thought Hazel was steadfast, you know.' 'Where _is_ she? Why will you torment me?' 'An old man came. A very untrustworthy old man, I fear. A defiant manner, and that is never pleasant. There he was in the kitchen with Martha! Age is no barrier to wrong, and Martha was very flushed. There was a deal of laughter, too.' 'Mother! If you keep on like this, I shall go mad.' 'Why, Edward, you are all in a fever. There, there! It's more peaceful without her, and I wish Mr. Reddin well of her.' 'Reddin? What Reddin?' 'Mr. Reddin of Undern. Who else?' 'Damn the fellow!' 'Edward! What words you take on your lips! And just think,' she went on sorrowfully, 'that he seemed such a nice man. He liked the gooseberry wine so much, and gave me a "ma'am," which is more than Martha does half her time. Where are you going?' 'To Undern.' 'What for?' 'Hazel.' Mrs. Marston sat bolt upright. 'But, of course, she'll never darken the door again!' 'I shall bring her back to-night, of course.' 'But, my dear! You must divorce her, however unpleasant on account of the papers. Remember, she has been there a week.' 'What of that?' 'But a week, dear!' 'Mother, I did not think to hear the talk of the filthy world from you.' Mrs. Marston quailed a little. There is nothing in the world so pure, so wonderful, so strong, as a young man's love can be--nothing so spiritual, nothing so brave. Mrs. Marston, in her own words, 'shed tears.' 'Don't cry, mother, but help me,' Edward said. 'Be ready for her, love her. She is as pure as a dew-drop. I know it. And I want her more than life.' 'But if she doesn't want you, Edward, what more is to do?' 'To seek and to save,' snapped Edward, and he banged the door and went hatless down the path between the heavy-browed tombstones. But he came back to suggest that there should be some tea ready. As he went down the batch, owls were shrieking in the woods, and the sky was pied with grey and crimson, like bloodstained marble. The cries of the owls were hard as marble also, and of a polished ferocity. They would have their prey. He walked fast through the lonely fields where Hazel had passed on her mushrooming morning. The roses that had then been in the bud were falling. At Alderslea people stared at him as he went by, flushed and hatless. From Alderslea to Wolf batch was some miles; from there to Undern the way lay over Bitterly Hill, where he missed the path. So it was quite dark when he came past Undern Pool, lying black and ghastly in its ring of skeleton trees. The foxhound set up a loud baying within. Only one window was lit. Edward hammered on the knocker, and the sound echoed in the hollow house. There was a noise within of a door opening, and Hazel's voice cried: 'I wouldna go. It's a tramp, likely.' Then Reddin laughed, and Edward clenched his hands in rage at the easy self-confidence of him. The bolt was drawn back, and Reddin stood in the doorway, outlined by pale light. 'Who is it?' he asked in rather a jovial tone. He felt at peace with the world now Hazel was here. 'Beast!' Edward said tersely. 'Just come in a minute, my lad, and let's have a look at you. People don't call me names twice.' Hazel had heard Edward's voice. She ran to the door, and the apple-green gown rustled about her. 'Ed'ard! Ed'ard! Dunna go for to miscall him! He'll hurt 'ee! He's stronger'n you. Do 'ee go back, Ed'ard!' 'Never! till you come, too.' 'I like that,' said Reddin. 'Can't you see she's got my gown on her back? She's mine. She was never yours.' He looked meaningly and triumphantly at Edward. 'Oh, dunna, Jack! What for do you go to shame me?' said Hazel, twisting her hands. Edward took no notice of her. 'I don't know what evil means you used, or how you brought the poor child here,' he said, controlling himself with an effort. 'But you have tried to rob me, and you have insulted her--' 'Oh, don't come here talking like an injured husband,' Reddin said; 'you know you aren't her husband.' 'Keep your foul mouth shut before innocence! To try and rob a poor child of her freedom, of her soul--' Hazel wondered at him. His eyes darkened so upon Reddin, his face was so powerful, irradiated with love and anger. 'So young!' he went on--'so young, and as wild as a little bird. How could anyone help letting her take her own way? She wanted to go free in the woods. I let her; and there you were like a sneaking wolf.' He threw a look at Hazel so full of wistful tenderness that she flung the green skirt over her head and sobbed. 'Stow it, can't you?' said Reddin. 'If you want a fight, say so; but don't preach all night.' His tone was injured. He felt that he had been particularly considerate to Edward in sending him the letter. Also, he was convinced that he had only taken what Edward did not want. That Edward could love Hazel was beyond his comprehension. If a man loved a woman, he possessed her, took his pleasure of her. Love that was abnegation was to his idea impossible. So that, now, when Edward spoke of his love, Reddin simply thought he was posing. 'Why didn't you let her be?' 'Women don't want to be let be,' said Reddin with a very unpleasant laugh. 'Oh! stop talking about me as if I wunna here!' cried Hazel. 'If she loved you, I'd say nothing,' Edward went on, staring at Reddin fixedly. 'The fact that I'm her husband would not have counted with me, if you'd loved her and she you.' 'A fine pastor!' 'But you don't. You only wanted--Oh! you make me sick!' 'Indeed! Well, I'm man enough to take what I want; you're not.' 'You trapped her; you would have betrayed her. But, thank God! a young girl's innocence is a wonderful and powerful thing.' Reddin was astounded. Could Marston really be such a fool as to believe in Hazel still? 'The innocent young girl--' he began, but Hazel struck him on the mouth. 'All right, spitfire!' he said; 'mum's the word.' He was surprisingly good-humoured. 'Well, Hazel'--Edward spoke in a matter-of-fact tone--'shall we go home now?' 'Dunnat ask me, Ed'ard! I mun bide.' 'Why?' Hazel was silent. She could not explain the strange instinct, stronger than her wildness, that Reddin had awakened in her, and that chained her here with invisible chains. 'Come home, little Hazel!' he pleaded. 'I canna,' she whispered. 'Why? You can if you want to. Don't you want to?' 'Ah! I do that.' She was torn between her longing to go and her powerlessness to leave Reddin. The light went out of Edward's face. 'Do you love this man?' he asked. 'No.' 'Does it make you better to live with him?' 'No. It was living with you as did that.' Reddin was so enraged that he struck her, and her expression of submission as she cowered under the blow was worse to Edward than the blow itself. He forgot his views about violence, and struck Reddin back. 'Come outside,' said Reddin in a tone of relief. The situation had now taken a comprehensible turn for him. 'If it's fighting you're after, I'm with you; that's settling it like gentlemen. What are you grinning at?' He spoke huffily. 'Dunna snab at each other! What for do you?' said Hazel. 'Because you're husband's jealous.' Edward was exasperated by the realization that his action in coming did look like that of the commonplace husband. But, after all, what did it matter? Nothing mattered but Hazel. He looked across at her crouched in the armchair sobbing. He went to her and patted her shoulder. 'No one's angry with you, dear,' he said. 'Afterwards, when we're home, you shall explain it all to me.' 'If you win!' put in Reddin. Edward stooped and kissed Hazel's hand. The momentary doubt of her--cruel as hell--had gone. She was his lady, and he was going to fight for her. Hazel looked up at him, and in that instant she almost loved him. They went out. It was a black moonless night. They stood near the lit window. 'Draw the blind up!' shouted Reddin. Hazel drew it up. They faced each other in the square of light. They were both quite collected. It seemed difficult to begin. The humour of this struck Reddin, and he laughed. Edward looked at him disgustedly. Reddin began to feel a fool. 'We must begin,' he said. Seeing that Edward was waiting for him to strike the first blow, and not being angry enough to do so, Reddin said coarsely: 'No good fighting, parson! She's mine--from head to foot.' He received as good a blow as Edward was capable of. They fought with hard-drawn breath, for they were neither of them in training. To Edward it seemed ridiculous to be fighting; to Reddin it seemed ridiculous to be fighting such an opponent. They moved out of the light and back again in the tense silence of the night. A rat splashed in the pool, and silence fell again. Edward could not do much more than defend himself, and Reddin's eyes shone triumphantly. Within, Hazel leaned against the glass faintly. It was as if evil and good, angels and devils, fought for her. And whichever won, she was equally forlorn. She did not want heaven; she wanted earth and the green ways of earth. 'Oh, he'll kill Ed'ard!' she moaned. Edward staggered under a blow, and she hid her eyes. Suddenly she thought of Vessons. Where was he? She ran to the kitchen calling him. He was not there. She went to the stables. He was nowhere to be found. Drawn by an irresistible curiosity, she rushed back to the front of the house. Under the yew-tree she ran into Vessons. 'Sh!' he whispered. 'Say nought! I'll tell you what's a mortal good thing for a dog-fight--pepper!' He held up the kitchen pepper-pot. In the other hand he had the poker. 'Now I'll part 'em, missus, you see!' 'Quick, then!' But as she spoke Reddin got in a blow on Edward's jaw, and he fell. Hazel rushed forward. 'You murderer!'--she screamed, and she bit Reddin's hand as he stretched it out to catch her, and bent over Edward. The victor in the fight was fated to be the loser with Hazel, for she had a never-broken compact with all creatures defeated. She ran to the pool for water. 'Catch a holt on him!' she cried to Vessons; 'he's a murderer!' Reddin stood by, confused and mystified at Hazel's unlooked-for behaviour. Vessons bent over Edward. He struck a match and held it to the end of his nose, chuckling as Edward winced. 'I'll tell you summat as is mortal tough!' he remarked. 'A minister of the Lord! Will the gen'leman stay supper?' he inquired of Reddin. 'No!' said Hazel; 'Mr. Reddin'll take supper alone, for allus, to his dying day. Put the horse in, please, Mr. Vessons.' 'Right you are, missus.' Reddin was so taken aback by the turn of events, and his head ached so much, that he had nothing to say. He watched Vessons bring the horse round, blinked at Hazel as she tore off the silk dress and borrowed Edward's coat instead, and glowered dumbly at Edward as he was helped into the trap. Hazel sat between the two men. 'Pluck up!' said Vessons to the cob unemotionally, and the trap jogged through the gate and out on to the open hill. 'And if it cosses me my place, I'll tell ye one thing!' Vessons said to himself: 'There's as good to be had, and better.' 'Well, I'm damned, said Reddin as they disappeared in the darkness. He went in and finished the whisky in a state of mystification that ended in sleep. Chapter 30 As the horse trotted along the hard road, rabbits scuttled across in the momentary lamplight. Hazel tied her handkerchief round Edward's head. All the windows were dark in Alderslea, except one faint dormer where an old woman was dying. They began to climb the lane that led up to the Mountain. Cattle looked over hedges, breathing hard with curiosity. In an upland field a flock of horned sheep were racing to and fro through a gap in the hedge, coughing and stamping at intervals, and looking, as the moon rose, like fantastic devils working sorcery with their own shadows. The lamps dimmed in the moonlight and the world seemed to widen infinitely, like life at the coming of love. The country lay below like a vast white mere, and the hill sloped vaguely to a silver sky. Vessons walked up the batch to ease the cob, and Edward looked down at Hazel and murmured: 'My little child!' 'Dunna talk,' said Hazel quickly; 'it's bad for 'ee!' She was afraid to break the magical silence, afraid that the new peace that came with Marston's presence would vanish like the moon in driving cloud, and that she would feel the dragging chain that pulled her back to Reddin. Edward was silent, puzzling over the question, Why had not Hazel asked for his help? Reddin must have seen her at least several times, must have persecuted her. He grew very uneasy. He must ask Hazel. They drew up before the white-sentried graveyard. Vessons went up the path and knocked at the silent house. Then he threw handfuls of white spar off a grave at the windows. The Minorca cockerel crew reedily. 'That's unlucky,' said Hazel. Mrs. Marston put her head out, very sleepy, and asked who it was. 'The conquering 'ero!' said Vessons, as Edward and Hazel came up the path, deeply shadowed. He got into the trap and drove off. 'Well, Undern'll be summat like itself again now,' he thought. 'It was a deal more peaceable without her, naughty girl!' thought Mrs. Marston as she sadly and lethargically put on her clothes. 'Well, Edward!' she exclaimed, when she came down in her crimson shawl with the ball fringe, 'here's a to-do! A minister of grace with a pocket-handkerchief round his head coming to his house in the dead of night with a wild old man. What's happened? Oh, my dear, is it your arteries? We wondered where you were, Hazel Marston!' 'I'm very shivery, mother,' Edward said. 'Something hot and sweet!' She bustled off. They were alone for the first time. 'Hazel, why didn't you tell me about this man? It was not kind or right of you.' 'There was nought to tell.' She fidgeted. 'But he must have seen you several times.' 'I was near telling you, but I thought you'd be angered.' 'Angry! With you! Oh, to think of you in such danger!' 'What danger?' 'Of things that, thank God, you never dream of. He forged that letter, I suppose? Or did he frighten you into writing it?' 'Ah.' 'But why did you ever go?' 'He pulled me up on the horse and took me.' 'The man's a savage.' Hazel checked a hasty denial that was on her lips. 'What a pity you happened to meet him!' Edward said. 'Ah!' 'But why didn't you want to come at once when I came to fetch you? Were you so afraid of him as that?' 'Ah!' 'Well, it's over now. He won't show his face here again; we've done with him.' Hazel sighed. But whether it was her spiritual self sighing with relief at being with Edward, or her physical self longing for Reddin, she could not have said. 'Only you could come through such an experience unchanged, my sweet,' Edward said. 'I mun go to Foxy!' she cried desperately. 'Foxy wants me.' 'Foxy wants a good beating,' said Mrs. Marston benignly, looking mercifully over her spectacles. Her wrath was generally like the one drop of acid in a dell of honey, smothered in loving-kindness and _embonpoint_. When Hazel had gone, she said: 'You will send her away from here, of course?' Edward went out into the graveyard without a word. He sat on one of the coffin-shaped stones. 'God send me some quiet!' he said. Mrs. Marston came and draped her shawl round him. He got up, despairing of peace, and said he would go to bed. 'There's a good boy! So will I. You'll be as bright as ever in the morning.' Then she whispered: 'You won't keep her here?' 'Keep her! Who? Hazel? Of course Hazel will stay here.' 'It's hardly right.' 'Pleasant, you mean, mother. You never liked her. You want to be rid of her. But how you can so misjudge a beautiful soul I cannot think. I tell you she's as pure as a daisy. Why, she could not even bear, in her maidenly reserve, the idea of marriage. It is sheer blasphemy to say such things.' 'Blasphemy, my dear, is not a thing you can do against people. It is disagreeing with the Lord that is blasphemy.' 'I must ask you, anyway, never to mention Hazel's name to me until you can think of her differently.' When, after saying good night to Hazel and Foxy, Edward had gone to bed, Mrs. Marston shook her head. 'Edward,' she said, 'is not what he was.' She waited till Hazel came in. 'You're no wife for my son,' she said, 'you've sinned with another man.' 'I hanna done nought nor said nought; it's all other folk's doing and saying, so I dunna see as I've sinned. And I never could abear 'ee,' Hazel cried; 'I'd as lief you was dead as quick!' She rushed up to her room and flung herself on her bed sobbing. She felt dazed, like a child taken into a big toy-shop and told to choose quickly. Life had been too hasty with her. There were things, she knew, that she would have liked; but she had so far not had time to find out what they were. She wished she could tell Edward all about it. But how could she explain that strange inner power that had driven her to Hunter's Spinney? How could she make him understand that she did not want to go, and was yet obliged to go? She could not tell him that. Although she was furious with Reddin on his behalf, although she hated Reddin for the coarseness and cruelty in him, yet parting with him had hurt her. How could this be? She did not know. She only knew that as she lay in her little bed she wanted Reddin, his bodily presence, his kisses or his blows. He had betrayed her utterly, bringing to his aid forces he could not gauge or understand. His crime was that he had made of a woman who could not be his spiritual bride (since her spirit was unawakened, and his was to seek) his body's bride. All the divine paradoxes of sex--the mastery of the lover and his deep humility, his idealization of his bride and her absolute surrender--these he had dragged in the mud. So instead of the mysterious, transcendant illumination that passion brings to a woman, she had only confusion, darkness, and a sense of something dragging at the roots of her being in the darkness. Her eyes needed his eyes to stare them down. The bruises on her arms ached for his hard hands. Her very tears desired his roughness to set them flowing. 'Oh, Jack Reddin! Jack Reddin! You've put a spell on me!' she moaned. 'I want to be along of Ed'ard, and you've bound me to be along of you. I dunna like you, but I canna think of ought else!' She fought a hard battle that night. The compulsion to get up and go straight to Undern was so strong that it could only be compared to the pull of matter on matter. She tried to call up Edward's voice--quiet, tender, almost religious in its tone to her. But she could only hear Reddin's voice, forceful and dictatorial, saying, 'I'm master here!' And every nerve assented, in defiance of her wistful spirit, that he _was_ master. That, when morning came, she was still at the Mountain showed an extraordinary power of resistance, and was simply owing to the fact that Reddin had, in what he called 'giving the parson a good hiding,' opened her eyes very completely to his innate callousness, and to his temperamental and traditional hostility to her creed of love and pity. Soon, in the mysterious woods, the owls turned home--mysterious as the woods--strong creatures driven on to the perpetual destruction of the defenceless, destroyed in their turn and blown down the wind--a few torn feathers. Chapter 31 Edward did not notice the strained relationship between Mrs. Marston and Hazel. He supposed that his mother's suspicions had faded before Hazel's frank presence. Outwardly there was little change in the bearings of the two women; it was only in feminine pinpricks and things implied that Mrs. Marston showed her anger and Hazel her dislike, and it was when he was out that Martha spoke so repeatedly and emphatically of being respectable. His coming into the house brought an armoured peace, but no sooner was he outside the door than the guns were unmasked again. Hazel wished more and more that she had stayed at Undern. She found a man's roughness preferable to women's velvet slaps, his most masterful demands less wearing than their silent criticism. At Undern she could not call her physical self her own. Here, her heart and mind were attacked. She could not explain to Mrs. Marston that something had made her go. Mrs. Marston would simply have said 'Fiddlesticks!' She could not explain that Reddin's touch drugged her. If Mrs. Marston had ever been made to feel that madness of passivity-- which seemed impossible, so that Edward's existence was a paradox--she had long since forgotten it. Besides, Hazel had no words in which to express these things; she was not even clear about them herself. She never tried to explain anything to Edward. She dreaded his anger, and she felt that only by complete silence could she keep the look of loving reverence in his eyes. She understood how very differently Reddin looked at her. It did not matter with him, but Edward--it was everything to her in Edward. Only once there had been a keen look of criticism in Edward's eyes, and her heart had fluttered. Edward said: 'Why, when you were dragged to Undern against your will, did you wear the man's gown? It wasn't dignified. And why did you cry out on him not to shame you? He could not shame you. You had done nothing wrong.' 'He said such awful things, Ed'ard, and the dress--the dress was so pretty.' 'You poor child! you dear little one! So it was a pretty colour, was it?' 'Ah!' 'You shall have one like it.' He went off whistling. * * * * * It was when she had been back nearly six weeks, and the August days were scorching the Mountain, that the strain became unbearable. She was not feeling well. Reddin had made no sign. This had at first calmed her, then piqued her; now it hurt her. Mysteriously she felt that she must be with him. 'He'm that proud, he'd ne'er ask me to go back. And if I went, there'd be no peace. Oh, Jack Reddin, Jack Reddin! You've put a spell on me! There inna much peace, days, nor much rest, nights, in your dark house. And yet--' Yet, whenever she went for a walk, she felt her feet taking her towards Undern. Then, quite suddenly, one morning Reddin rode past the house. Mrs. Marston saw him. 'Edward must know of this,' she said, very much flustered. 'You ought to go away somewhere, Hazel.' 'Away? Why ever?' 'Out of temptation. Why not to your aunt's?' 'Aunt Prowde wouldna have me. And Ed'ard wouldna like me to go.' 'Edward, I am sure, thinks as I do.' 'Gospel?' 'Do not be irreverent.' 'I dunna think you know what Ed'ard thinks as well as me.' 'Don't say "dunna," Hazel. Of course, I know what Edward thinks a great deal better than you. I've known him all his life.' Afterwards, when Mrs. Marston was not in the room, Martha said in her contemptuous tones: 'I s'pose you know, Mrs. Ed'ard, how he's going on?' 'Who?' 'Why, that Mr. Reddin.' 'What's he done?' 'Oh, I know! But I wouldn't soil me mouth, only I'm thinking you'd ought to know.' She looked triumphant. 'He's after that there Sally something as lives nearby. They do say as all her brats be his.' 'Mr. Reddin's? Is he--like--married to her, Martha?' 'About as much as he was to you, I reckon!' 'And does she--live there now?' 'I dunno.' 'Is she pretty?' 'It inna allus the prettiest as get lovers.' 'But is she prettier than me?' 'I've heard she's bigger and finer.' 'But she hanna got abron hair?' 'How should I know?' This was desolate news to Hazel; for Reddin, now that she was going to bear his child, had become necessary to her. She was unconscious of the reason of this need--not a spiritual one, but purely physiological. She did not hate him for this news. Such hatred is abnormal. Nor did she love him. That would have been still more abnormal. But she must be in his house; she must sew for him, share his daily doings, sleep in the big four-poster, and not in the small virginal bed at the Mountain. It would be grievous to leave Edward. He was the shelter between her flickering spirit and the storms of life. She had hesitated, putting off the inevitable, feeling that Undern was always there, like an empty room, for her re-entry, so she had not hurried. Now the room was occupied, her place taken. Immediately she felt that she must go. Feverishly she decided to go this very night and peer in (no one but herself had ever drawn the blinds at Undern of late years) and see for herself. Mrs. Marston and Martha both seemed to be pushing her over the brink. When, after tea, she crept from the house, she was crying--crying at leaving Edward, the master and the comrade of her unknown self. It was as if she gave up immortality. Yet she was relieved to be going--that is, if she could stay at Undern. Both her tears and her relief were natural. The pity was that body and soul had been put in opposition by belonging to different men. She left a little blotted note for Edward. 'Dunna think too bad of me, Ed'ard. I be bound to go to Undern and live; I ud liefer bide along of you.' She went through the shadow-sweet meadows where birds hopped out across green stretches in the cool, the high corn that had once been her comrade, the honeysuckle hedges that used to bring so childish a glee. They wore an air of things estranged and critical. All was so sad, like a dear friend with an altered countenance. She was an exile even in the seeing and hearing. It was strange to her as a town under the tides. There it was, clear and belfried as of old, but fathoms deep, and the bells had so faint a chime that Reddin's voice drowned them. She was turned out of the Eden of the past that she had known in wood and meadow. She was denied the Eden of the future that she might have had in Edward's love. She had the present--Reddin--unless the other woman had robbed her of him also. She sat down in the heavy shadows of the trees at the far side of Undern Pool. The water looked cold and ghastly even on this golden day. She watched the wagtails strut magisterially, the moorhens with the worried air of overworked charwomen, all the mysterious evening life of a summer pool, but she had no smile for them to-day. The swallows slid and circled across the water; their silence was no longer intimate, but alien. She looked across at Undern. There were roses everywhere, but the house had so strong a faculty for imposing its personality that it gave to the red roses and the masses of traveller's joy that frothed over it a deep sadness, as if they had blown and dropped long since and were but memoried flowers. The shadows of swallows came and went on the white western wall, and smoke stood up blue and straight from Vessons' kitchen fire. She watched the cows go down the green lane, and the shadows go over the meadows in triumphal state. When all was shadow, and the sky was as suddenly vacant of swallows as at dawn it had been full of them, she went stealthily towards the house. A light appeared in the parlour. She came close up and looked in. Reddin was in the easy chair, reading the paper, a pipe in the corner of his mouth. No one else was there. 'Jack Reddin!' she said. 'Hullo!' He turned. 'So you've come? I thought you'd have come long ago.' That was all he said. But she assured herself that he was glad she had come, because he shouted to Vessons for tea. She was certain he was glad to see her. Yet there was something vaguely insolent in his manner. He was a man who must never be sure of a woman. The moment she committed herself for him and was at a disadvantage he despised her. 'Come over here!' he said. 'There! I suppose you've forgotten what it's like to be kissed, eh? And to live with a man? You can never go away again now.' 'Why?' 'Well, you are a simpleton! D'you think he'd have you back after this? The first time it was my fault, he thinks; but the second! It won't wash.' He laughed. 'This time's your fault as much as the other. You made me come both times. There's Vessons! Leave me get up.' 'No. Why should I?' Vessons entered. 'This 'ere game of tether-ball,' he said, 'fair makes me giddy.' 'Jack,' said Hazel when he had gone, 'Martha said there was a woman here.' 'Martha's a liar.' 'Hanna there bin?' 'No. Never anyone but you.' 'Hanna you bin fond of anyone?' 'Only you.' 'She said there was a woman as had a lot of little children, as was yours.' 'Damn her!' 'And I thought she's ought to live along of you, and to be married-like, and wear the green dress.' 'No one shall wear that but you, nor have my children but you.' She was, as he had calculated, entirely overwhelmed, and so startled that she forgot to question him any more. 'Oh, no,' she said; 'that'll never be.' He raised his eyebrows at her extraordinary denseness, but he judged it best to say no more. He must get rid of Sally. He supposed she would make him pay heavily. He was sick of the sight of her and the children. They were not nice children. He looked at Hazel contemplatively. If his conjecture was right, he would have to try and legalize things during the next few months. He badly wanted a son--born in wedlock. He would have to go and beg the parson to divorce her. It would be detestable, but it would have to be done. He would wait and see. Meanwhile, Vessons also made plans, his obstinate mouth and pear-shaped face more dour than ever. Hazel had a letter from Edward in the morning; it was very short. She could not tell what he thought of her. He only said that if she ever wanted help she was to come to him. She cried over it, and hid it away. She knew how well Edward would have looked as he wrote it. She knew he would be grieved. She had not the slightest idea that he would be utterly overwhelmed and wrecked. She had not the least notion how he felt for her. She was very glad to be away from Mrs. Marston and Martha. She found this household of two men a great rest after the two women, although Vessons did not relax his disapproval. If it had not been for her passionate spiritual longing for Edward, she would have been happy, for the deep law of her being was now fulfilled in thus returning to Reddin. He, for his part, liked to see her about. Roses appeared in the rooms; it was strange to him, who had never had a woman in his house, to find his bedroom scented with flowers. He liked to watch her doing her hair. He always pretended to be asleep in the morning, so that she should get up first--shyly anxious to be dressed before he awoke. So morning after morning he would watch her through his eyelashes. He never felt that, as she obviously wished for privacy, he was mean or indelicate. 'I've got a right to. She's mine,' was his idea. It was not till a week after Hazel's coming that Reddin pulled himself together, and went to interview Sally Haggard. Vessons, observing the fact, repaired to Sally's cottage on his master's return, and found her in tears. To see this heavy-browed, big-boned woman crying so startled him that he contemplated her in silence. 'Well, fool, can't you speak?' she said. 'I dare say now as he wants you to move on?' queried Vessons. 'Ah.' 'Because of this other young 'ooman he's brought?' 'Ah, what's the good o' mouthing it? I bin faithful to 'im; I hanna gone with others. All the chillun's his'n. And never come near me, he didna, when my time come. And now it's "go!"' She broke out crying again. 'What I come for was to show you a way to make her go. If I tell you, you mun swear never to come and live at Undern.' ''Struth I will!' 'Well, then, just you come and see 'er some time when the master's away. And bring the chillun.' 'Thank you kindly.' 'Not till I say the word, though! I wunna risk it till he's off for the day. If he found me out, it'd be notice. Eh, missus, he's like a lad with his first white mouse! And the parson! Laws, they'm two thrussels wi' one worm, and no mistake.' 'And yet she's only a bit of a thing, you tell me?' 'Ah! But she'm all on wires, to and agen like a canbottle.' 'Why canna she bide with the minister?' 'Lord only knows! It's for 'er good, and for the maister's and yours, not to speak of mine. It's werrit, werrit, all the while, missus, and the fingers in the tea-caddy the day long! It's Andrew this and Andrew that, and a terrible strong smell of flowers--enough for a burying.' * * * * * Vessons waited eagerly for his opportunity; but Reddin was afraid to leave Hazel alone, in case she might see Sally; so September came and drew out its shining span of days, and still Vessons and Sally were waiting. Chapter 32 Morning by morning Hazel watched the fuchsia bushes, set with small red flowers, purple-cupped, with crimson stamens, sway in beautiful abandon. The great black bees pulled at them like a calf at its mother. Their weight dragged the slender drooping branches almost to the earth. So the rich pageantry of beauty, the honeyed silent lives went on, and would go on, it seemed for ever. And then one morning all was over; one of Undern's hard early frosts took then all--the waxen red-pointed buds, the waxen purple cups, the red-veined leaves. The bees were away, and Hazel, seeking them, found a few half alive in sheltered crevices, and many frozen stiff. She put those that were still alive in a little box near the parlour fire. Soon a low delighted humming began as they one by one recovered and set off to explore the ceiling. Into this contented buzzing came Reddin, who had just been again to Sally's, and was much put out by her refusal to go away before November. 'What the h--- is all this humming?' he asked. 'It's bees. I've fetched 'em in to see good times a bit afore they die.' 'What a child's trick!' he said, fending off an inquiring bee. 'Why, they'll stay here all winter! We shall get stung.' Then he saw the hospital full of bees by the fire. 'More?' he said. 'Good Lord!' He threw the box into the fire. Hazel was silent with horror. At last she gasped: 'I was mothering 'em!' 'You're very keen on mothering! Wouldn't you like a kid to mother?' 'No. I'd liefer mother the bees and foxes as none takes thought on. I dunna like babies much--all bald and wrinkly. Martha said as having 'em made folk pray to die, but as it was worth anything to get one. But I dunna think so. I think they'm ugly. I seed one in a pram outside that cottage in the Hollow' (Reddin jumped), 'and it was uglier than a pig. I think you're a cruel beast, Jack Reddin, to burn my bees, and they so comforble, knowing I was taking care on 'em.' She would not speak to him for the rest of the day. He was so bored in the evening that he went out and demanded a boxful of bees from Vessons. 'The missus wants 'em,' he said sheepishly. Vessons was prepared to be pleasant in small matters. He fetched some from the hive. ''Ere you are,' he said patronizingly; 'but you munna be always coming to me after 'em.' He was oblivious of the fact that they were Reddin's bees. Reddin presented them. 'There,' he said gruffly; 'now you can be civil again.' 'But these be hive-bees!' said Hazel, 'and they was comforble to begin with! I dunna want that sort. I wanted miserable uns!' 'Hang it! how could I know?' asked Reddin irritably. 'No. I suppose you couldna,' said Hazel; 'you'm terrible stupid, Jack Reddin!' So life went on at Undern, and Hazel adapted herself to it as well as she could. It was strange that the longer she lived there the more she thought of Edward. She always saw his face lined with grief and very pale, not tanned and ruddy with fresh air as she had known it. It was as if his mentality reached across the valley to hers and laid its melancholy upon her. Sometimes she was very homesick for Foxy, but she would not have her at Undern. She did not trust the place. She never went out anywhere, for people stared, and when Reddin, with some difficulty, persuaded her to amble round the fields with him on a pony he picked up cheap for her, she always wanted to keep in his own fields. It was not until nearly the end of October that Vessons got his chance. Reddin had to go to a very important fair. He wanted Hazel to go with him, but she said she was tired, and, guessing the reason, he immediately gave in. In spite of Vessons' earnest desire to get him off, he started late. He galloped most of the way, determined to get in early. He liked coming home to tea and seeing Hazel awaiting him in the firelight. As soon as she had gone, Vessons set out for Sally's, anxious that she should be quick. But Sally would not hurry. It was washing-day, and she also insisted on making all the children very smart, unaware that their extreme ugliness was her strength. It was not till three o'clock that she arrived at the front door, baby in arms, the four children, heavily expectant, at her heels, and Vessons stage-managing in the background. Hazel had been looking at two of the only books at Undern-'The Horse' and 'The Dog,' illustrated. Vessons had views about books. He considered them useful in their place. 'There's nought like a book,' he would say, 'one of these 'ere big fat novels or a book of sermons, to get a nice red gledy fire. A book at the front and a bit of slack behind, and there you are!' There the books were, too. So Hazel looked at the 'Book of the Horse' until she knew all the pictures by heart. She had fallen asleep over it, and she jumped up in panic when Sally spoke. 'Who be you?' she asked in a frightened voice as they eyed her. 'I'm Sally Haggard and these be my children.' She surveyed them proudly. 'D'you notice that they favour anyone?' Hazel looked at them timidly. 'They favour you,' she said. 'Not Mr. Reddin?' 'Mr. Reddin?' 'Ah! They'd ought to. They'm his'n.' 'His'n?' 'Yes, parrot.' 'Be you the 'ooman as Martha said Jack lived along of?' 'He did live along of me.' 'Why, then, you'd ought to be Mrs. Reddin, and wear this gownd, and live at Undern,' said Hazel. 'Eh?' Sally was astonished. 'And he said there wunna any other but me.' Sally laughed. 'You believed that lie? You little softie!' Hazel looked at the children. 'Be they _all_ his'n?' she said. 'Every man-jack of 'em, and not so much as a thank you for me!' The children were ranged near their mother--on high chairs. They gaped at Hazel, sullen and critical. An irrepressible question broke from Hazel. 'What for did you have 'em?' Sally stared. 'What for?' she repeated. 'Surely to goodness, girl, you're not as innicent-like as that?' 'I ain't ever going to have any,' Hazel went on with great firmness, as she eyed the children. 'God above!' muttered Sally. 'He's fooled her worse'n me!' 'Come and look at the baby, my dear,' she said in a voice astonishingly soft. She looked at Hazel keenly. 'Dunna you know?' she asked. 'What?' 'As you're going to have a baby?' Hazel sprang up, all denial. But Sally, having told the children to play, spoke for a long time in a low tone, and finally convinced a white, sick, trembling Hazel of the fact. Not being sensitive herself, she did not realize the ghastly terror caused by her lurid details of the coming event. Hazel looked so ill that Sally tried to administer consolation. 'Maybe it'll be a boy, and you'll be fine and pleased to see 'un growing a fine tall man like Reddin.' Hazel burst into tears, so that the children stopped their play to watch and laugh. 'But I dunna want it to grow up like Jack,' she said. 'I want it to grow up like Ed'ard, and none else!' 'Well! You _are_ a queer girl. If you like him as you call Ed'ard what for did you take up with Jack?' 'I dunno.' 'Well, the best you can do,' said Sally, 'is to go back to your Edward, lithermonsload and all. And if he wunna take you--' 'Eh, but he will!' A wonderful tender smile broke on Hazel's face. 'He'll come to the front door and pull me in and say, "Come in little Hazel, and get a cup of tea." And it'll be all the same as it was used to be.' 'Well, he must be a fool! But so much the better for you. If I was you, I'd go right back to-neet. Now what's you say to a cup o' tea? I'm thinking it's high time I took a bite and sup in this parlour!' They got tea; and Vessons, hovering in the yard, was in despair. He could not appear, for Hazel must not know his part in the affair. 'Laws! If they've begun on tea, it's all up with Andrew,' he remarked to the swan in passing. Dusk came on and still no Sally appeared. The two chimneys smoked hospitably, and he wanted his tea. He was a very miserable old man. He repaired to the farthest corner of the domain and began to cut a hedge, watching the field track. Soon Reddin appeared, and Vessons was unable to repress a chuckle. 'Rather 'im than me!' he said. Reddin, having fruitlessly shouted for Vessons, took the cob round to the yard himself. Then he went in. As he entered the parlour, aware of a comfortable scent of tea and toast, he met the solemn gaze of seven pairs of eyes, and for a moment he was, for all his tough skin, really staggered. Then he advanced upon Sally with his stock firmly grasped in his hand. 'Get out of this!' he said. The baby set up a yell. Sally rose and stood with her arm raised to fend off the blow. 'Jack,' said Hazel, 'she'm got the best right to be at Undern. Leave her stay! She'm a right nice 'ooman.' Reddin gasped. Why would Hazel always do and say exactly the opposite to what he expected? 'But you're the last person--' he began. 'You're thinking she'd ought to be jealous of me, Jack Reddin,' said Sally. 'But we'm neither of us jealous! I tell you straight! She's too good for you. You've lied to me; I'm used to it. Now you'm lied to her--the poor innicent little thing!' 'What for did you tell me lies, Jack?' asked Hazel. What with the unfaltering gaze of the two women, and the unceasing howls of the baby, Reddin was completely routed. 'Oh, damn you all!' he said, and went hot-foot in a towering passion to look for Vessons. A man to rage at would be a very great luxury. Having at last found Vessons, harmlessly hedge-brushing, he was rather at a loss. 'How dare you let Sally in?' he began. 'Sally?' 'Yes. Why the h-- did you come away here and leave the house?' 'The 'edge wanted doing.' His tone was so innocent that Reddin was suspicious. 'You didn't bring her yourself, did you?' 'Now, _is_ it me,' said Vessons, reasonable but hurt, 'as generally brings these packs of unruly women to Undern?' 'I believe you're lying, Vessons.' Vessons opened his mouth to say, 'Notice is giv''; but seeing that in his master's present mood it might be accepted, he closed it again. When Reddin went in, Sally was gone, and Hazel, much as usual, ministered to his comfort. The only signs of the recent tumult were the constrained silence and the array of cups and plates. 'You'd better understand once and for all,' he said at last, 'that I'll never have that woman here.' 'Not if I went?' 'Never! I'd kill her first.' 'What for did you tell me lies?' 'Because you were so pretty and I wanted you.' The flattery fell on deaf ears. 'Them chillun's terrible ugly,' said Hazel wearily. Reddin came over to her. 'But yours'll be pretty!' he said. 'Dunna come nigh me!' cried Hazel fiercely. 'She says I'm going to have a little 'un! It was a sneak's trick, that; and you're a cruel beast, Jack Reddin, to burn my bees and kill the rabbits and make me have a little 'un unbeknown.' 'But it's what all women expect!' 'You'd ought to have told me. She says it's mortal pain to have a baby, and I'm feared--I'm feared!' 'Hazel,' he said humbly, 'I may as well tell you now that I mean to marry you. The parson must divorce you. Then we'll be married. And I'll turn over a new leaf.' 'I'll ne'er marry you!' said Hazel, 'not till Doom breaks. I dunna like you. I like Ed'ard. And if I mun have a baby, I'd lief it was like Ed'ard, and not like you.' With that she went out of the room, and he noticed that she was wearing the dress she had come in, and not the silk. He sat by the fire, brooding; but at last managed to cheer himself by the thought that she would get over it in time. She was naturally upset by Sally just now. 'And, of course, the parson'll never take her back, nor her father,' he reflected. 'Yes, it'll all come right.' He was upheld in this by the fact that Hazel's manner next day was much as usual, only rather quiet. Chapter 33 It was the night of the great storm. Undern rattled and groaned; its fireless chimneys roared, and doors in unused passages banged so often that the house took on an air of being inhabited. It seemed as if all the people that had ever lived here had come back, ignoring in their mournful dignity of eternal death these momentary wraiths of life. Hazel had always been afraid of the place, and had sat up until Reddin wanted to go to bed, so that she need not traverse the long passages alone. But to-night she was afraid of Reddin also--not just a little afraid, as she had always been, but full of unreasoning terror. All things were confused in her mind, like the sounds that were in the wind; Reddin's face, distorted with rage, as he advanced on Sally with his arm raised; the howling of the baby; the sound of her bees burning--going off like apple-pips. A scene came back to her from the week before--it seemed years ago. They had gone into the harvest-field after a hot, yellow day haunted by the sound of cutting. Only a small square of orange wheat was left; the rest of the field lay in the pale disorder of destruction. The two great horses stood at one corner, darkly shining in the level light. The men who had been tying sheaves stood about, some women and children were coming over the stubble, and several dogs lay in the shadow. They all seemed to be waiting. They were, in fact, waiting for Reddin, who was always present at the dramatic finish of a field. Hazel knew what drama was to be enacted; knew what the knobbled sticks were for; knew who crouched in the tall, kindly wheat, palpitant, unaware that escape was impossible. 'Plenty o' conies, sir!' called one of the men, whose face was a good deal more brutal than that of his mongrel dog. Hazel knew that the small square must be packed with rabbits, stark-eyed and still as death, who had, with a fated foolishness, drawn in from the outer portions of the field all day as the reaper went round. 'Jack,' she said, 'I hanna asked for a present ever.' 'No. You didn't want the bracelets, you silly girl.' 'I want one now.' 'You do, do you?' 'Ah! If you'll give it me, Jack, I'll do aught you want. What'd you like best in the 'orld?' He considered. He was feeling very fit and almost too much alive. 'Hunter's Spinney over again--up to when we got so gloomy.' Hazel never wanted to think of that night, nor see the Spinney again. There had been many times since, in the grey-tinted room, that had been nearly as bad. But for evoking a shuddering, startled horror in her mind, nothing came up to that Sunday night. The reaper was moving again. Soon the rabbits would begin to bolt. 'I'll do ought and go anywhere if you'll do this as I want, Jack.' 'Well?' 'Call 'em off! Leave the last bit till morning. Let 'em creep away in the dark and keep living a bit longer!' 'What nonsense!' 'Call 'em off, Jack! You can. You'm maister!' 'No.' She sobbed. 'I be going, then.' 'No. You're to stay. You'll have to be cured of this damned silliness, and learn to be sensible.' While she struggled to wrench herself free, two rabbits bolted, and hell broke loose. One would not have thought that the great calm evening under its stooping sky, the peaceful, omniscient trees, the grave, contented colours, could have tolerated such hideousness. The women and children shrieked with the best, and Hazel stood alone--the single representative, in a callous world, of God. Or was the world His representative, and she something alien, a dissentient voice to be silenced? Such scenes, infinitely multiplied, bring that question to one's mind. A rabbit had dashed across the field close to them, and Reddin, relaxing his grip of her, had slashed at it with his stick. The look of its eye, white and staring, as it fled past her with insensate speed, came back to her now, and its convulsive roll over and recovery under the blow; and then the next blow--She had fled from the place. She thought again of what Sally had said, and a deep, smouldering rage was in her at this that he had done to her--this torture to which, according to Sally, he had quite consciously condemned her. Now that she knew him better, his daily acts of callousness tormented her. She would go. She was not wanted here. Sally had said so. There had been letters from her aunt, from Reddin's vicar, from the eldest Miss Clomber. In them all she was spoken of as the culprit for being at Undern. Well, she did not want to be at Undern. She would go. 'Well, Hazel, child, what's the matter?' asked Reddin, looking up from doing his quarterly accounts. 'Haven't you got a stocking to mend or a hair-ribbon to make?' 'A many and a many things be the matter.' 'Come here, and I'll see if I can put 'em right.' 'Harkee!' she said suddenly. 'It's like as if the jeath-pack was i' full cry down the wind.' 'Anyone would think you were off your head, Hazel. But come and tell me about the things that are the matter.' 'It's you as makes 'em the matter.' 'Oh, well, sulk as long as you like.' He returned angrily to his accounts. In the kitchen Vessons, very spondaic, was singing 'The Three Jolly Huntsmen.' In a few minutes Hazel rose and lit a candle. She looked, as she walked to the door in her limp muslin dress, like the spectre of some unhappy creature of the past. 'Where are you going?' asked Reddin. 'I thought to go to bed.' 'I'm not ready.' 'I'll go by my lonesome.' 'All right, sulk! It doesn't hurt me.' But it did hurt him. He wanted her to be fond of him, to cling to him. When at last he went up through the screaming house, he thought she was asleep. She lay still in the big bed and made no sign. Reddin was soon snoring, for accounts implied a strenuous intellectual effort. He would have left them to Vessons, but Vessons always had to notch sticks when he did them, and the manual labour ensuing on any accounts running into pounds would have seriously interfered with his other work. The cheese fair accounts usually took a long time. He could be heard saying in a stupendous voice, 'One and one and one--' until the chant ended in, 'Drat it! what _do_ 'em maken?' So Reddin did the accounts and slept the sleep of the intellectual worker afterwards. Hazel looked out from the tent of the bed canopy into the dark, creaking room and the darker, roaring night. She grew more afraid of Reddin and Undern as the hours dragged on. Reddin's presence tore to pieces the things she loved--delicate leafy things--as if they were tissue-paper and he had walked through it. Her pleasures seemed to mean nothing when he was with her and before his loud laughter her wonderful faery-haunted days shrivelled. All she knew was that, now she lived at Undern, she never went out in the green dawn or came home wreathed in pansy and wild snapdragon. Reddin had imposed a deeper change on her than the change from maid to wife. He had robbed her of a thing frailer and rarer than maidenhood--the sacramental love of Nature. It is only the fairest, the highest and fullest matings that do not rob the soul of this, even when it is an old tried joy. He had wronged her as deeply as one human being can wrong another. His theft was cruel as that of one who destroys a man's God. And the strange part of it was that never, as long as he lived, would he know that he had done so, or even guess that there had been any treasure to rifle. He would probably, as an old man, long past desire, repent of the physical part of the affair. Yet this was so much the lesser of the two. Indeed, if he had been able to win her love, it would have been, not wrong-doing, but righteousness. That a woman should, in the evolution of life, cease to be a virgin and become a mother is a thing so natural and so purely physical as hardly to need comment; but that the immortal part of her should be robbed, that she should cease to be part of an entity in a world where personality is the only rare and precious thing--this is tragic. Reddin could not help his over-virility, nor could he help having the insensitive nature that could enjoy the physical side of sex without the spiritual; probably he could not help being the kind of man that supplies the most rabid imperialists, reactionaries, materialists. (He always spoke of the heathen Chinee, lower orders, beastly foreigners, mad fanatics, and silly sentimentalists, these last being those who showed any kind of mercy.) It seemed that he could not help seeing nothing outside his own narrow views. But it did seem a pity that he never tried to alter in the least. It did seem a pity that, after so many centuries, so many matings and births, all his emblazoned and crested ancestors should have produced merely--Reddin, a person exactly like themselves. * * * * * Rain rustled on the window and the wind roared in the elms. The trees round Undern Pool stooped and swung in the attitude of mowers. Hazel knew that the Mountain would be even wilder to-night. Yet the Mountain shone in paradisic colours--her little garden; her knitting; the quiet Sundays; the nightly prayers; above all, Edward's presence, in the aura of which no harm could come--for all these things she passionately longed. They were not home as the wild was, but they were a haven. They were not ecstasy, but they were peace. In her revulsion from Reddin and her terror of Undern, she forgot everything except the sense of protection that Edward gave her. She forgot Mrs. Marston's silent, crushing criticism and Martha's rude righteousness. She forgot that she had sinned against the Mountain so deeply that the old life could never return. She remembered it as on the night of her wedding--the primroses, red and white and lilac; the soothing smell of the clean sheets, that made her feel religious; the reassuring tick of the wall clock; Mrs. Marston's sliding tread; Foxy and the rabbit, the blackbird, and the one-eyed cat. She struck a match softly and crept across the room to the old mahogany tallboy. From beneath a drawerful of clothes she took out Edward's letter. She read it slowly, for she was, as Abel said, no scholar. Edward wanted her, that was quite clear. Comfort flowed from the half-dozen lines. The ethics of the thing held no place in her mind. She was not made for the comforts or the duties of social life, and it was not in her-nor would it have been, however she had been educated--to consider what effect her actions might have on the race. Humanity did not interest her. The ever-circling wheels of birth, mating, death, so all-absorbing to most women, were nothing to her. Freedom, green ways, childlike pleasures of ferny, mossy discoveries, the absence of hunger or pain, and the presence of Foxy and other salvage of her great pity--these were the great realities. She had a deeper fear than most people of death and any kind of violence or pain for herself or her following. Her idea of God had always been shadowy, but it now took shape as a kind of omnipotent Edward. When she had read the letter, she went to the window. A tortured dawn crept up the sky. Vast black clouds, shaped like anvils for some terrific smithy-work, were ranged round the horizon, and, later, the east glowed like a forge. The gale had not abated, but was rising in a series of gusts, each one a blizzard. Hazel was not afraid of it, or of the shrieking woods. The wind had always been her playmate. The wide plain that lay before the Undern windows was shrouded in rain--not falling, but driving. Willows, comely in the evening with the pale gold of autumn, had been stripped in a moment like prisoners of a savage conqueror for sacrifice. The air was full of leaves, whirling, boiling, as in a cauldron. From every field and covert, from the lone hill-tracts behind the house, from garden and orchard, came the wail of the vanquished. Even as she watched, one of the elms by the pool fell with a grinding crash. Reddin stirred in his sleep and muttered restlessly. She waited, frozen with suspense, until he was quiet again. She could hear the hound baying, terrified at the noise of the tree. She dressed hurriedly, crept downstairs and went out by the back way, leaving the house, with its watchful windows, its ancient quiet which was not peace, and the grey, flapping curtains of the rain closed in behind her. She found a little shelter in the deep lanes, but when she came to the woods leading up to the Mountain the wind was reaping them like corn. Larches lay like spellicans one on another. Some leant against those that were yet standing, and in the tops of these last there was a roaring like an incoming tide on rocks. Crackings and groanings, sudden crashes, loud reports like gun-fire, were all about her as she climbed--a tiny figure in chaos. When she came to the graveyard, havoc was there also. Several crosses had fallen, and were smashed; the laburnum-tree, rich with grey seed-vessels, lay prone, and in its fall it had carried half the tomb away with it, so that it yawned darkly, but not as a grave from which one has risen from the dead. A headstone lay in the path, and the text, 'In sure and certain hope of the resurrection,' was half obliterated. Hazel crept into the porch of the chapel to shelter, utterly exhausted. She went to sleep, and was awakened by the breakfast bell. She went to the front door and knocked. Chapter 34 Edward, coming downstairs, felt such a rush of joy and youth at sight of her that he was obliged to stand still and remember that joy and youth were not for him, that his only love had gone of her own will to another man, and must be to him now only a poor waif sheltered for pity. He was very much altered. His face frightened Hazel. 'Have you come to stay, Hazel, or only for a visit?' he asked. 'Oh, dunna look at me the like o' that, and dunna talk so stern, Ed'ard!' 'I wasn't aware that I was stern.' Edward's face was white. He looked down at her with an expression she could not gauge. For there, had come upon him, seeing her there again, so sweet in her dishevelment, so enchanting in her suppliance, the same temptation that tormented him on his wedding-day. Only now he resisted it for a different reason. Hazel, his Hazel, was no fit mate for him. The words flamed in his brain; then fiercely, he denied them. He would not believe it. Circumstance, Hazel, his mother, even God might shout the lie at him. Still, he would not believe. But he must have it out with her. He must know. 'Hazel,' he said, 'after breakfast I want you to come with me up the Mountain.' 'Yes, Ed'ard,' she said obediently. She adored his sternness. She adored his look of weariness. She longed hopefully and passionately for his touch. For now, when it was too late, she loved him--not with any love of earth; that was spoilt for her--but with a grave amorousness kin to that of the Saints, the passion that the Magdalen might have felt for Christ. The earthly love should have been Edward's, too, and would have run in the footsteps of the other love, like a young creature after its mother. But Reddin had intervened. 'First,' Edward said, 'you must have some food and a cup of tea.' He never wavered in tenderness to her. But she noticed that he did not say 'dear,' nor did he, bringing her in, take her hand. Breakfast was an agony to Edward, for his mother, who had from the first treated Hazel with silent contempt as a sinner, now stood, on entering with the toast, and said: 'I will not eat with that woman.' 'Mother!' 'If you bring that woman here, I will be no mother to you.' 'Mother! For my sake!' 'She is a wicked woman,' went on Mrs. Marston, in a calm but terrible voice; 'she is an adulteress.' Edward sprang up. 'How dare you!' he said. 'Are you going to turn her out, Edward?' 'No.' 'Eddie! my little lad!' Her voice shook. 'No.' 'My boy that I lay in pain for, two days and a night, to bring you into the world!' Edward covered his face with his hands. 'You will put me before--her?' 'No, mother.' 'You were breast-fed, Eddie, though I was very weak.' There was a little silence. Edward buried his face in his arms. 'Right is on my side, Edward, and what I wish is God's will. You will put duty first?' 'No. Love.' 'I am getting old, dear. I have not many more years. She has all a lifetime. You will put me first?' He lifted his head. He looked aged and worn. 'No! And again no!' he said. 'Stop torturing me, mother!' Mrs. Marston turned without a word to go out. Hazel sprang up, breaking into a passion of tears. 'Oh, let me go!' she cried. 'I'll go away and away! What for did you fetch me from the Calla? None wants me. I wunna miserable at the Calla. Let me go!' She stared at Mrs. Marston with terrified eyes. 'She's as awful as death,' she said, 'the old lady. As awful as Mr. Reddin when he's loving. I'm feared, Ed'ard! I'd liefer go.' But Edward's arm was round her. His hand was on her trembling one. 'You shall not frighten my little one!' he said to his mother; and she went to the kitchen, where, frozen with grief, she remained all morning in a kind of torpor. Martha was afraid she would have a stroke. But she dared not speak to Edward, for, hovering in the passage, she had seen his face as he shut the door. He made Hazel eat and drink. Then they went out on the hill. 'Now, Hazel,' he said, 'we must have truth between us. Did you go with that man of your own will?' She was silent. 'You must have done, or why go a second time? Did you?' His eyes compelled her. She shivered. 'Yes, Ed'ard. But I didna want to. I didna!' 'How can both be true?' 'They be.' 'How did he compel you to go, then?' Hazel sought for an illustration. 'Like a jacksnipe fetches his mate out o' the grass,' she said. 'What did he say?' 'Nought.' 'Then how--?' 'There's things harder than words; words be nought.' 'Go on.' 'It was like as if there was a secret atween us, and I'd got to find it out. Dunna look so fierce, Ed'ard!' 'Did you find out?' A tide of painful red surged over Hazel; she turned away. But Edward, rendered pitiless by pain, forcibly pulled her back, and made her look at him. 'Did you find out?' he repeated. 'There inna no more,' she whispered. 'Then it is true what he said, that you were his from head to foot?' 'Oh, Ed'ard, let me be! I canna bear it!' 'I wish I could have killed him!' Edward said. 'Then you were his--soul and body?' 'Not soul!' 'You told a good many lies.' 'Oh, Ed'ard, speak kind!' 'What a fool I was! You must have detested me for interrupting the honeymoon. Of course you went back! What a fool I was! And I thought you were pure as an angel.' 'I couldna help it, Ed'ard; the signs said go, and then he threw me in the bracken.' Something broke in Edward's mind. The control of a life-time went from him. 'Why didn't I?' he cried. 'Why didn't I? Good God! To think I suffered and renounced for this!' He laughed. 'And all so simple! Just throw you in the bracken.' She shuddered at the knife-edge in his voice, and also at the new realization that broke on her that Edward had it in him to be like Reddin. 'What for do you fritten me?' she whispered. 'But it's not too late,' Edward went on, and his face, that had been grey, flushed scarlet. 'No, it's not too late. I'm not particular. You're not new, but you'll do.' He crushed her to him and kissed her. 'I'm your husband,' he said, 'and from this day on I'll have my due. You've lied to me, been unfaithful to me, made me suffer because of your purity--and you had no purity. Tonight you sleep in my room; you've slept in his.' 'Oh, let me go, Ed'ard! let me go!' She was lost indeed now. For Edward, the righteous and the loving, was no more. Where should she flee? She did not know this man who held her in desperate embrace. He was more terrible to her than all the rest--more terrible, far, than Reddin--for Reddin had never been a god to her. 'I knelt by your bedside and fought my instincts, and they were good instincts. I had a right to them. I gave up more than you can ever guess.' 'I'm much obleeged, Ed'ard,' she said tremblingly. 'I've disgraced my calling, and I've this morning hurt my mother beyond healing.' 'I'd best be going, Ed'ard. The sun'll soon be undering.' The day blazed towards noon, but she felt the chill of darkness. 'And now,' Edward finished, 'that I have no mother, no self-respect, and no respect for you, I will at least have my pleasure and--my children. The words softened him a little. 'Hazel,' he said, 'I will forgive you for murdering my soul when you give me a son, I will almost believe in you again, next year--Hazel--' He knelt by her with his arms round her. She was astonished at the mastery of passion in him. She had never thought of him but as passionless. 'To-night,' he said, and tenderness crept back into his voice, 'is my bridal. There is no saving for me now in denial, only in fulfilment. I can forgive much, Hazel, for I love much. But I can't renounce any more.' Hazel had heard nothing of what he said since the words, 'when you give me a son.' They rang in her brain. She felt dazed. At last she looked up affrightedly. 'But,' she said, 'when I have the baby, it unna be yours, but his'n.' 'What?' 'It--it'll be his'n.' 'What?' He questioned foolishly, like a child. He could not understand. 'It's gone four month since midsummer,' she said, 'and Sally said I was wi' child of--of--' 'You need not go on, Hazel.' Edward's face looked pinched. The passion had gone, and a deathly look replaced it. He was robbed, utterly and cruelly. He could no longer believe in a God, or how could such things be? Manhood was denied him. The last torture was not denied him--namely, that he saw the full satire of his position, saw that it was his own love that had destroyed them both. Out of his complete ruin he arose joyless, hopeless, but great in a tenderness so vast and selfless that it almost took the place of what he had lost. Hazel was again his inspiration, not as an ideal, but as a waif. In his passion of pity for her he forgot everything. He had something to live for again. 'Poor child!' he said. 'Come home. I will take care of you.' 'But--the old lady?' 'You are first.' She caught his hands; she flung herself upon his shoulder in a rush of tears. If this was his tragic moment, it was also hers. 'Oh, Ed'ard, Ed'ard!' she cried, 'it's you as I'd lief have for my lover! It's you as I'm for, body and soul, if I'm for a mortal man! It's your baby as I want, Ed'ard, and I wouldna be feared o' the pain as Sally told of if it was yours. What for didna you tell me in the spring o' the year, Ed'ard? It be winter now, and late and cold.' 'There, there! you don't know what you're saying. Come home!' Edward did not listen to her, she knew. And, indeed, his brain was weary, and could take in no more. He only knew he must care for Hazel as Christ cared for the lambs of His fold. And darkly on his dark mind loomed his new and bitter creed, 'There is no Christ.' Chapter 35 Martha met them on the doorstep, crying, hiccoughing, and enraged. 'Why, Martha!' Edward looked at her in astonishment. It is usually the supers, and not the principals, that raise lamentation in the midst of tragedy--'why, Martha, have you lost someone dear to you?' He knew all about that loss. 'I've lost nought, sir; thank God my good name's my own, and not gone like some folk's; but I'm bound to give notice, sir, not having fault to find, being as good a master as ever stepped. But seeing the missus is going--' 'The missus?' 'Ah. The mother as God give you, sir, the very next time the trailer goes by, and the letter wrote and all. And when she goes, I go. For I've kep' myself respectable, and I'll serve no light woman, nor yet live in a house give over to sin.' Edward saw Martha in a new light, as he now saw all things. 'What a filthy mind you have, Martha!' he said in a strange, weary voice. 'The minds of all respectable people are obscene. You are a bad woman!' But Martha, setting up a shriek, had fled from the house. She told her brother that the master was mad, bewitched. She never entered the house again. Edward found his mother in the kitchen. 'Mother, you are not really going?' 'Yes, Edward, unless'--a flicker of hope lit her eyes--'unless you have sent her away.' 'Let me explain, mother. It is not as it seems in the world's eyes.' 'She is an adulteress. And you--oh, Edward, I thought you were a good man, like your father! Not even the common decency to wait till the other man's child is born. Why, the merest ploughman would do that!' If any face could have expressed despair, torture and horror, Edward's face did now. He looked at her for a long while, until she said: 'Don't fix your eyes so, Edward! What are you looking at?' 'The world. So that is what you think of me?' 'What else can I think? Why do you say "The world" so strangely?' 'The world!' he said again. 'A place of black mud and spawning creatures. No soul, no God, no grace. Nothing but lust and foul breath and evil thoughts.' 'I will not hear such talk. I will keep my room till I go.' Mrs. Marston rose and went upstairs. She would not have his arm. And though for the next two days he waited on her with his old tenderness, she barely spoke, and there was between them an estrangement wider than death. She prayed for him night and day, but not as one that had much hope. Meanwhile, Hazel managed the house. She put all her worship of Edward into it, all her passion of tenderness. And she, who had hitherto spoilt all the food she touched, now cooked almost with genius. She found an apron of Martha's and washed it; she read Mrs. Marston's receipts till her head ached; she walked over God's Little Mountain each day to buy dainties. When she asked Edward for money, he gave her the keys of his desk. Four times a day appetizing meals went up to Mrs. Marston, and were brought down again barely touched. Hazel ate them, for the urgent necessity of coming maternity was on her, and she would not waste Edward's money. Four times a day Edward's favourite dishes were set in the parlour by a bright hearth. Edward, as soon as Hazel had returned to the kitchen, threw them into the fire. It was Hazel who packed Mrs. Marston's boxes while the old lady slept, and made up the fire in her room in the middle of the night. Then, closing her own door, she would fling herself on her bed in passionate weeping as she thought what might have been if, when Edward had said, 'To-night is my bridal,' she had had a different reply to make. She knew that nothing except what she had said would have made any impression on Edward; she knew he would not have listened to her. She was glad to know this. The momentary fear of him was gone. All was right that he said and did. The whole love of her being was his now. He had filled the place of nature and joy and childish pleasures. She was not meant for human love. But through her grief she loved better than those that were meant for it. All the sweet instincts of love and wifehood; the beauty of passion; the pride of surrender; the forgetfulness of self that creates self; the crying of the spirit from its delicate marble minaret to the flesh in its grassy covert, and the wistful, ascending answer of flesh to spirit--all these were hers. And as she lay and wept, and remembered how many a time Edward had stood on her threshold and hastily, though gently, shut her door upon her, she realized what Edward meant to her, and what he was. Then she would rise and stand at her window, fingered and shaken by the autumn winds, and look up at the hard-eyed stars. 'If there's anybody there,' she would say, 'please let the time go quickly till the baby comes, and let Ed'ard have his bridal like he said, and see his little uns running up and down the batch.' And, looking round the room at all the signs of his love, she would suddenly find unbearable the innocent stare of the buttercups and daisies on the walls, and would bury her face, flushed red with fluttering possibilities of unearthly rapture. Then she would sleep and dream that once more Edward stood upon the threshold and kissed her and turned to his cold room; but she--she had made a noble fire in her little grate; and the room was full of primroses, red and white and lilac; and the wall-clock chimed instead of striking--an intoxicating fairy chime; and there were clear sheets as of old. She forgot her shyness; she forgot to be afraid of his criticism; she caught his hands. He turned. And at the marvel of his face she woke, trembling and happy. Mrs. Marston went without any farewell to Hazel. Edward carried her box down the quarry and helped her into the trailer. He stood and watched it bump away round the corner, Mrs. Marston sitting, as she had done on that bright May morning, majestic in her grape-trimmed hat and the mantle with the bugles. Her face and her attitude expressed the deep though unformulated conviction that God was 'not what He was.' Then he turned and went home, numb, without vitality or hope. A new Hazel met him on the threshold, no longer timorous, deprecating, awkward, but gravely and sweetly maternal. She led him in. Tea was laid with the meticulous reverence of a sacrament. 'Now draw your stockinged foot along the floor!' Hazel commanded. At this remembrance of his mother and at Hazel's careful love, he broke down and wept, his face in her lap. 'Now see!' she whispered. 'She'll come back, Ed'ard, when the anger's overpast.' 'The anger of good people is never overpast, Hazel.' 'See, I'll write her a letter, Ed'ard, and I'll say I'm a wicked girl, and she's to teach me better ways. She'll come like Foxy for bones, Ed'ard.' Comfort stole into Edward's heart. 'And see, my dear, I'll send his baby to him, and maybe, after--' She stumbled into silence. 'What, Hazel?' 'Maybe, Ed'ard, after--a long and long while after--' She began to cry, covering her face. 'Oh, what for canna you see, my soul,' she whispered, 'as I love you true?' Edward looked into her eyes, and he did see. Strangely as an old forgotten tale, there came to him the frail hope of the possibility of joy. And with it some faith, storm-tossed and faint, but still living, in Hazel's ultimate beauty and truth. He did not know this could be. He only knew it was so. He did not know how it was that she, whom all reviled, was pure and shining to him again, while the world grovelled in slime. But so it was. 'Harkee, Ed'ard!' she said; 'I'm agoing to mother you till she comes back. And some day, when you've bin so kind as to forgive me, maybe I unna be mother to you, but--anything you want me to be. And, maybe, there'll be a--a--bridal for you yet, my soul, and your little uns running down the batch.' 'Yes, maybe. But don't let's talk of such things yet, not for many years. They are so vile.' She was cut to the heart, but she only said softly: 'Not for many years, my soul! I'm mothering of you now!' 'That's what I want,' he said, and fell asleep while she stroked' his tired head. Peace settled again on the chapel and parsonage, and a muted happiness. Summer weather had returned for a fleeting interval. The wild bees were busy again revelling in the late flowers, but taking their pleasure sadly; for the flowers were pale and rain-washed, and the scent and the honey were fled. 'Eh! I wish I could bring 'em all in afore the frosses, and keep 'em the winter long,' Hazel said. 'But they've seen good times. It inna so bad for folks to die as have seen good times. Afore I'm old and like to die, I want to see good times, Ed'ard--good times along with you.' 'What sort of good times?' 'Oh, going out of a May morning, you and me--and maybe Foxy on a string--and looking nests, and us with cobwebs on our boots, and setting primmyroses, red and white and laylac, in my garden as you made, and then me cooking the breakfast, and you making the toast and burning it along of reading some hard book, and maybe us laughing over a bit o' fun. And then off to read to somebody ill, and me waiting outside, pleased as a queen, and hearkening to your voice coming quiet through the window. And picking laylac, evenings, and going after musherooms at the turn of the year. Them days be coming, Ed'ard, inna they? I dunna mind ought if I know they're coming.' 'Yes, perhaps they are,' he said, smiling a little at her simple hopes, and even beginning himself to see the possibility of a future for them. Two days went by in this calm way, for no one came near them, and while they were alone there was peace. They did not go beyond the garden, except when Hazel went to the shop. Edward did not go with her; he felt sensitive about meeting anyone. In the evenings, by the parlour fire, Edward read aloud to her. He did not, however, read prayers, and she wondered in silence at the change. She felt a great peace in these evenings, with Foxy on the hearthrug at her feet. They neither of them looked either backward or forward, but lived in the moated present, that turreted heaven whose defences so soon fall. On the third morning Reddin came. Hazel had gone to the shop, and, coming back, she had lingered a little to watch with a sense of old comradeship the swallows wheeling in hundreds about the quarry cliffs. Their breasts were dazzling in the clear hot air. They had no thought for her, being so filled with a rage of joy, dashing up and down the smooth white sides of the quarry, multiplied by their blue shadows. They would nestle in crevices, like bits of thistledown caught in a grass-tuft, and would there sun themselves and chirrup. So many hundreds were there, and their shadows so multiplied them, that they seemed less like birds than like some dream of a bird heaven--essential birdhood. They were so quick with life, so warm, with their red-splashed breasts and blue flashing bodies; they wove such a tireless, mazy pattern, like bobbins weaving invisible lace, that they put winter far off. They comforted Hazel inexpressibly. Yet to-morrow they would, in all likelihood, be gone, not even a shadow left. Hazel wished she could catch them as they swept by, their shining breasts brushing the grasses. She knew they were sacred birds, 'birds with forkit tails and fire on 'em.' If sacredness is in proportion to vitality and joy, Hazel and the swallow tribe should be red-letter saints. It was while she was away that Reddin knocked at the house door, and Edward answered the knock. Something in his look made Reddin speak fast. He had triumphed at their last encounter through muscle. Edward triumphed in this through despair. 'I felt I ought to come, Marston. As things are, the straight thing is for me to marry her--if you'll divorce her.' He looked at Edward questioningly, but Edward stared beyond him with a strange expression of utter nausea, hopeless loss, and loathing of all created things. Reddin went on: 'Her place is with me. It's my duty to look after her now, as it's my child she's going to have.' He could not resist this jibe of the virile to the non-virile. Besides, if he could make Marston angry, perhaps he would fight again, and fighting was so much better than this uncomfortable silence. 'I should naturally pay all expenses and maintenance wherever she was; I never mind paying for my pleasures.' Edward's eyes smouldered, but he said nothing. 'Of course, she can't _expect_ either of us to see to her in her position' (Edward clenched his hands), 'but I intend to do the decent thing. I'm never hard on a woman in that state; some fellows would be; but I've got a memory, hang it, and I'm grateful for favours received.' Why he should be at his very worst for Edward's benefit was not apparent, except that complete silence acts on the nerves, and nervousness brings out the real man. 'Well, think it over,' he concluded. 'You seem to be planning a sermon to-day. I shall be round here on Saturday--the meet's in the woods. I'll call then, and you can decide meanwhile. I don't mind whether she comes or not--at present. Later on, if I can't get on without her, I can no doubt persuade her to come again. But if you say divorce, I'll fetch her at once, and marry her as soon as you've got your decree. Damn you, Marston! Can't you speak? Could I say fairer than that, man to man?' Edward looked at him, and it was such a look that his face and ears reddened. 'You are not a man,' Edward said, with complete detachment; 'you are nothing but sex organs.' He went in and shut the door. Edward said nothing to Hazel of Reddin's visit. He forgot it himself when she came home; it slipped into the weary welter of life as he saw it now--all life, that is, other than Hazel's. Brutality, lust, cruelty--these summed up the world of good people and bad people. He rather preferred the bad ones; their eyes were less awful, and had less of the serpent's glitter and more of the monkey's leer. He did not shrink from Reddin as he shrank from his mother. Hazel came running to him through the graves. She had a little parcel specially tied up, and she wrote on it in the parlour with laborious love. It was tobacco. She had decided that he ought to smoke, because it would soothe him. They sat hand in hand by the fire that evening, and she told him of her aunt Prowde, and how she first came to know Reddin, and how he threatened to tell Edward of her first coming to Undern. She was astonished at the way his face lit up. 'Why didn't you tell me that before, dear? It alters everything. You did not go of your own choice at first, then. He had you in a snare.' 'Seems as if the world's nought but a snare, Ed'ard.' 'Yes. But I'm going to spend my life keeping you safe, little Hazel. I hope it won't make you unhappy to leave the Mountain?' 'Leave the Mountain?' 'Yes. I must give up the ministry.' 'Why ever?' 'Because I know now that Jesus Christ was not God, but only a brave, loving heart hunted to death.' 'Be that why you dunna say prayers now?' 'Yes. I can't take money for telling lies.' 'What'll you do if you inna a minister, Ed'ard?' 'Break stones--anything.' Hazel clapped her hands. 'Can I get a little 'ammer and break, too?' 'Some day. It will only be poor fare and a poor cottage, Hazel.' 'It'll be like heaven!' 'We shall be together, little one.' 'What for be your eyes wet, Ed'ard?' 'At the sweetness of knowing you didn't go of your own accord.' 'What for did you shiver?' 'At the dark power of our fellow-creatures set against us.' 'I inna feared of 'em now, Ed'ard. Maybe it'll come right, and you'll get all as you'd lief have.' 'I only want you.' 'And me you.' They both had happy dreams that night. Outside, the stars were fierce with frost. The world hardened. In the bitter still air and the greenish moonlight the chapel and parsonage took on an unreal look, as if they were built of wavering, vanishing material, and stood somewhere outside space on a pale, crumbling shore. Without, the dead slept, each alone, dreamless. Within, the lovers slept, each alone, but dreaming of a day when night should bring them home each to the other. As the moon set, the shadows of the gravestones lengthened grotesquely, creeping and creeping as if they would dominate the world. In the middle of the night Foxy awoke, and barked and whimpered in some dark terror, and would not be comforted. Chapter 36 Hazel looked out next morning into a cold, hostile world. The wind had gone into its winter quarters, storming down from the top of the Mountain on to the parsonage and raging into the woods. That was why Edward and Hazel never heard the sounds--some of the most horrible of the English countryside--that rose, as the morning went on, from various parts of the lower woods, whiningly, greedily, ferociously, as the hounds cast about for scent. Once there was momentary uproar, but it sank again, and the Master was disappointed. They had not found. The Master was a big fleshy man with white eyelashes and little pig's eyes that might conceal a soul--or might not. Miss Amelia Clomber admired him, and had just ridden up to say, 'A good field. Everybody's here.' Then she saw Reddin in the distance, and waited for him to come up. She was flushed and breathless and quite silent--an extraordinary thing for her. He certainly was looking his best, with the new zest and youth that Hazel had given him heightening the blue of his eyes and giving an added hauteur of masculinity to his bearing. She would, as she watched him coming, cheerfully have become his mistress at a nod for the sake of those eyes and that hauteur. He was entirely unconscious of it. He never was a vain man, and women were to him what a watch is to a child--something to be smashed, not studied. Also, his mind was busy about his coming interview with Edward. He was ludicrously at a loss what to say or do. Blows were the only answer he could think of to such a thing as Edward had said. But blows had lost him Hazel before, and he wanted her still. He was rather surprised at this, passion being satisfied. Still, as he reflected, passion was only in abeyance. Next May-- If Miss Clomber had seen his eyes then, she would probably have proposed to him. But he was looking away towards the heights where Edward's house was. There was in his mind a hint of better things. Hazel had been sweet in the conquering; so many women were not. And she was a little, wild, frail thing. He was sorry for her. He reflected that if he sold the cob he could pay a first-rate doctor to attend her and two nurses. 'I'll sell the cob,' he decided. 'I can easily walk more. It'll do me good.' 'Good morning, Mr. Reddin!' cried Miss Clomber as sweetly as she could. 'May your shadow never grow less!' he replied jocosely, as he cantered by with a great laugh. 'If she'd only die when she has the child!' thought Miss Clomber fiercely. Up on the Mountain Edward and Hazel were studying a map to decide in which part of the county they would live. Round the fire sat Foxy, the one-eyed cat, and the rabbit in a basket. From a hook hung the bird in its cage, making little chirrupings of content. On the window-sill a bowl of crocuses had pushed out white points. But upon their love--Edward's dawn of content and Hazel's laughter--broke a loud imperious knocking. Edward went to the door. Outside stood Mr. James, the old man with the elf-locks who shared the honey prizes with Abel, two farmers from the other side of the Mountain, Martha's brother, and the man with the red braces who had won the race when Reddin turned. They coughed. 'Will you come in?' asked Edward. They straggled in, very much embarrassed. Hazel wished them good morning. 'This young woman,' Mr. James said, 'might, I think, absent herself.' 'Would you rather go or stay, Hazel?' 'Stay along of you, Ed'ard.' Hazel had divined that something threatened Edward. They sat down, very dour. Foxy had retired under the table. The shaggy old man surveyed the bird. 'A nice pet, a bird,' he said. 'Minds me of a throstle I kep' 'Now, now, Thomas! Business!' said Mr. James. 'Yes. Get to the point,' said Edward. James began. 'We've come, minister, six God-fearing men, and me spokesman, being deacon; and we 'ope as good will come of this meeting, and that the Lord'll bless our endeavour. And now, I think, maybe a little prayer?' 'I think not.' 'As you will, minister. There are times when folk avoid prayer as the sick avoid medicine.' James had a resonant voice, and it was always pitched on the intoning note. Also, he accented almost every other syllable. 'We bring you the Lord's message, minister. I speak for 'Im.' 'You are sure?' 'Has not He answered us each and severally with a loud voice in the night-watches?' 'Ah! He 'as! True! Yes, yes!' the crowd murmured. 'And what we are to say,' James went on, 'is that the adulteress must go. You must put her away at once and publicly; and if she will make open confession of the sin, it will be counted to you for righteousness.' Edward came and stood in front of Hazel. 'Had you,' James continued in trumpet tones--'had you, when she played the sinner with Mr. Reddin, Esquire, leading a respectable gentleman into open sin, chastened and corrected her--ay, given her the bread of affliction and the water of affliction and taken counsel with us--' 'Ah! there's wisdom in counsel!' said one of the farmers, a man with crafty eyes. 'Then,' James went on, 'all would 'a been well. But now to spare would be death.' 'Ah, everlasting death!' came the echoes. 'And now' (James' face seemed to Hazel to wear the same expression as when he pocketed the money)--'now there is but one cure. She must go to a reformatory. There she'll be disciplined. She'll be made to repent.' He looked as if he would like to be present. They all leant forward. The younger men were sorry for Edward. None of them was sorry for Hazel. There was a curious likeness, as they leant forward, between them and the questing hounds below. 'And then?' Edward prompted, his face set, tremors running along the nerves under the skin. 'Then we would expect you to make a statement in a sermon, or in any way you chose, that you'd cast your sins from you, that you would never speak or write to this woman again, and that you were at peace with the Lord.' 'And then?' 'Then, sir'--Mr. James rose--'we should onst again be proud to take our minister by the 'and, knowing it was but the deceitfulness of youth that got the better of you, and the wickedness of an 'ooman.' Feeling that this was hardly enough to tempt Edward, the man with the crafty eyes said: 'And if in the Lord's wisdom He sees fit to take her, then, sir, you can choose a wife from among us.' (He was thinking of his daughter.) He said no more. Edward was speaking. His voice was low, but not a man ever forgot a word he said. 'Filthy little beasts!' he said, but without acrimony, simply in weariness. 'I should like to shoot you; but you rule the world--little pot-bellied gods. There is no other God. Your last suggestion (he looked at them with a smile of so peculiar a quality and such strange eyes that the old beeman afterwards said "It took you in the stomach") was worthy of you. It's not enough that unselfish love can't save. It's not enough (his face quivered horribly) that love is allowed to torture the loved one; but you must come with your foul minds and eyes to "view the corpse." And you know nothing--nothing.' 'We know the facts,' said James. 'Facts! What are facts? I could flog you naked through the fields, James, for your stupidity alone.' There was a general smile, James being a corpulent man. He shrank. Then his feelings found relief in spite. 'If you don't dismiss the female, I'll appeal to the Presbytery,' he said, painfully pulling himself together. 'What for?' 'Notice for you.' 'No need. We're going. What d'you suppose I should do here? There's no Lord's Day and no Lord's house, for there's no Lord. For goodness' sake, turn the chapel into a cowhouse!' They blinked. Their minds did not take in his meaning, which was like the upper wind that blows coldly from mountain to mountain and does not touch the plain. They busied themselves with what they could grasp. 'If you take that woman with you, you'll be accurst,' said James. 'I suppose,' he went on, and his tone was, as he afterwards said to his wife with complacency, 'very nasty'--'I suppose you dunno what they're all saying, and what I've come to believe, in this shocking meeting, to be God's truth?' 'I don't know or care.' 'They're saying you've made a tidy bit.' 'What d'you mean?' James hesitated. Filthy thoughts were all very well, but it was awkward to get them into righteous words. 'Well, dear me! they're saying as there was an arrangement betwixt you and 'im--on the gel's account--(the old beeman tried to hush him)--and as cheques signed "John Reddin" went to your bank. Dear me!' Slowly the meaning of this dawned on Edward. He sat down and put his hands up before his face. He was broken, not so much by the insult to himself as by the fixed idea that he had exposed Hazel to all this. He traced all her troubles and mistakes back to himself, blaming his own love for them. While he had been fighting for her happiness, he had given her a mortal wound, and none had warned him. That was why he was sure there was no God. They sat round and looked at their work with some compunction. The old beeman cleared his throat several times. 'O' course,' he said, 'we know it inna true, minister. Mr. James shouldna ha' taken it on his lips.' He looked defiantly at James out of his mild brown eyes. Edward did not hear what he said. Hazel was puzzling over James' meaning. Why had he made Edward like this? Love gave her a quickness that she did not naturally possess, and at last she understood. It was one of the few insults that could touch her, because it was levelled at her primitive womanhood. Her one instinct was for flight. But there was Edward. She turned her back on the semi-circle of eyes, and put a trembling hand on Edward's shoulder. He grasped it. 'Forgive me, dear!' he whispered. 'And go, now, go into the woods; they're not as cold as these. When I've done with them we'll go away, far away from hell.' 'I dunna mind 'em,' said Hazel. 'What for should I, my soul?' Then she saw how dank and livid Edward's face had become, and the anguished rage of the lover against what had hurt her darling flamed up in her. 'Curse you!' she said, letting her eyes, dark-rimmed and large with tears, dwell on each man in turn. 'Curse you for tormenting my Ed'ard, as is the best man in all the country--and you'm nought, nought at all!' The everlasting puzzle, why the paltry and the low should have power to torment greatness, was brooding over her mind. 'The best!' said James, avoiding her eyes, as they all did. 'A hinfidel!' 'I have become an unbeliever,' Edward said, 'not because I am unworthy of your God, but because He is unworthy of me. Hazel, wait for me at the edge of the wood.' Hazel crept out of the room. As she went, she heard him say: 'The beauty of the world isn't for the beautiful people. It's for beef-witted squires and blear-eyed people like yourselves--brutish, callous. Your God stinks like carrion, James.' _Nunc Dimittis_. Hazel passed the tombstone where she had sat on her wedding-day. She went through the wicket where she and her mother had both passed as brides, and down the green slope that led near the quarry to the woods. The swallows had gone. She came to Reddin's black yew-tree at the fringe of the wood, and sat down there, where she could watch the front door. In spite of her bird-like quickness of ear, she was too much overwhelmed by the scene she had just left to notice an increasing, threatening, ghastly tumult that came, at first fitfully, then steadily, up through the woods. At first it was only a rumour, as if some evil thing, imprisoned for the safety of the world, whined and struggled against love in a close underground cavern. But when it came nearer--and it seemed to be emerging from its prison with sinister determination--the wind had no longer any power to disguise its ferocity, although it was still in a minor key, still vacillating and scattered. Nor had it as yet any objective; it was only vaguely clamorous for blood, not for the very marrow of the soul. Yet, as Hazel suddenly became aware of it, a cold shudder ran down her spine. 'Hound-dogs!' she said. She peered through the trees, but nothing was to be seen, for the woods were steep. With a dart of terror she remembered that she had left Foxy loose in the parlour. Would they have let her out? She ran home. 'Be Foxy here?' she asked. Edward looked up from the chapel accounts. James was trying to browbeat him over them. 'No. I expect she went out with you.' Hazel fled to the back of the house, but Foxy was not there. She whistled, but no smooth, white-bibbed personality came trotting round the corner. Hazel ran back to the hill. The sound of the horn came up intermittently with tuneful devilry. She whistled again. Reddin, coming up the wood at some distance from the pack, caught the whistle, and seeing her dress flutter far up the hill, realized what had happened. 'Bother it!' he said. He did not care about Foxy, and he thought Hazel's affection for her very foolish; but he understood very well that if anything happened to Foxy, he would be to blame in Hazel's eyes. Between him and Hazel was a series of precipitous places. He would have to go round to reach her. He spurred his horse, risking a fall from the rabbit-holes and the great ropes of honeysuckle that swung from tree to tree. Hazel ran to and fro, frantically calling to Foxy. Suddenly the sound, that had been querulous, interrogative and various, changed like an organ when a new stop is pulled out. The pack had found. But the scent, it seemed, was not very hot. Hope revived in Hazel. 'It'll be the old scent from yesterday,' she thought. 'Maybe Foxy'll come yet!' Seeing Reddin going in so devil-may-care a manner, a little clergyman (a 'guinea-pig' on Sundays and the last hard-riding parson in the neighbourhood on weekdays) thought that Reddin must have seen the fox, and gave a great view-hallo. He rode a tall raw-boned animal, and looked like a monkey. Hazel did not see either him or Reddin. With fainting heart she had become aware that the hounds were no longer on an old scent. They were not only intent on one life now, but they were close to it. And whoever it was that owned the life was playing with it, coming straight on in the teeth of the wind instead of doubling with it. With an awful constriction of the heart, Hazel knew who it was. She knew also that it was her momentary forgetfulness that had brought about this horror. Terror seized her at the dogs' approach, but she would not desert Foxy. Then, with the fearful inconsequence of a dream, Foxy trotted out of the wood and came to her. Trouble was in her eyes. She was disturbed. She looked to Hazel to remove the unpleasantness, much as Mrs. Marston used to look at Edward. And as Hazel, dry-throated, whispered 'Foxy!' and caught her up, the hounds came over the ridge like water. Riding after them, breaking from the wood on every side, came the Hunt. Scarlet gashed the impenetrable shadows. Coming, as they did, from the deep gloom, fiery-faced and fiery-coated, with eyes frenzied by excitement, and open, cavernous mouths, they were like devils emerging from hell on a foraging expedition. Miss Clomber, her hair loose and several of her pin-curls torn off by the branches, was one of the first, determined to be in at the death. The uproar was so terrific that Edward and the six righteous men came out to see what the matter was. Religion and society were marshalled with due solemnity on God's Little Mountain. Hazel saw nothing, heard nothing. She was running with every nerve at full stretch, her whole soul in her feet. But she had lost her old fleetness, for Reddin's child had even now robbed her of some of her vitality. Foxy, in gathering panic, struggled and impeded her. She was only half-way to the quarry, and the house was twice as far. 'I canna!' she gasped on a long terrible breath. She felt as if her heart was bursting. One picture burnt itself on her brain in blood and agony. One sound was in her ears--the shrieking of the damned. What she saw was Foxy, her smooth little friend, so dignified, so secure of kindness, held in the hand of the purple-faced huntsman above the pack that raved for her convulsive body. She knew how Foxy's eyes would look, and she nearly fainted at the knowledge. She saw the knife descend--saw Foxy, who had been lovely and pleasant to her in life, cut in two and flung (a living creature, fine of nerve) to the pack, and torn to fragments. She heard her scream. Yes; Foxy would cry to her, as she had cried to the Mighty One dwelling in darkness. And she? What would she do? She knew that she could not go on living with that cry in her ears. She clutched the warm body closer. Though her thoughts had taken only an instant, the hounds were coming near. Outside the chapel James said: 'Dear me! A splendid sight! We'll wait to verify the 'apenny columns till they've killed.' They all elbowed in front of Edward. But he had seen. He snatched up his spade from the porch, and knocked James out of the way with the flat of it. 'I'm coming, dear!' he shouted. But she did not hear. Neither did she hear Reddin, who was still at a distance, and was spurring till the blood ran, as in the tale of the death-pack, yelling: 'I'm coming! Give her to me!' Nor the little cleric, in his high-pitched nasal voice, calling: 'Drop it! They'll pull you down!' while the large gold cross bumped up and down on his stomach. The death that Foxy must die, unless she could save her, drowned all other sights and sounds. She gave one backward glance. The awful resistless flood of liver and white and black was very near. Behind it rose shouting devils. It was the death-pack. There was no hope. She could never reach Edward's house. The green turf rose before her like the ascent to Calvary. The members of the hunt, the Master and the huntsmen, were slow to understand. Also, they were at a disadvantage, the run being such an abnormal one--against the wind and up a steep hill. They could not beat off the hounds in time. Edward was the only one near enough to help. If she had seen him and made for him, he might have done something. But she only saw the death-pack; and as Reddin shouted again near at hand, intending to drag her on to the horse, she turned sharply. She knew it was the Black Huntsman. With a scream so awful that Reddin's hands grew nerveless on the rein, she doubled for the quarry. A few woodlarks played there, but they fled at the oncoming tumult. For one instant the hunt and the righteous men, Reddin the destroyer, and Edward the saviour, saw her sway, small and dark, before the staring sky. Then, as the pack, with a ferocity of triumph, was flinging itself upon her, she was gone. She was gone with Foxy into everlasting silence. She would suck no more honey from the rosy flowers, nor dance like a leaf in the wind. Abel would sit, these next nights, making a small coffin that would leave him plenty of beehive wood. * * * * * There was silence on God's Little Mountain for a space. Afterwards a voice, awful and piercing, deep with unutterable horror--the voice of a soul driven mad by torture--clutched the heart of every man and woman. Even the hounds, raging on the quarry edge, cowered and bristled. It echoed in the freezing arches of the sky, and rolled back unanswered to the freezing earth. The little cleric, who had pulled a Prayer-Book from his pocket, dropped it. Once again it rang out, and at its awful reiteration the righteous men and the hunt ceased to be people of any class or time or creed, and became creatures swayed by one primeval passion--fear. They crouched and shuddered like beaten dogs as the terrible cry once more roused the shivering echoes: 'Gone to earth! Gone to earth!' 
37957	----	MAN AND NATURE; OR, PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY AS MODIFIED BY HUMAN ACTION. BY GEORGE P. MARSH. "Not all the winds, and storms, and earthquakes, and seas, and seasons of the world, have done so much to revolutionize the earth as MAN, the power of an endless life, has done since the day he came forth upon it, and received dominion over it."--H. BUSHNELL, _Sermon on the Power of an Endless Life_. NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER & CO., No. 654 BROADWAY. 1867. ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by CHARLES SCRIBNER, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. JOHN F. TROW & CO. PRINTER, STEREOTYPER, AND ELECTROTYPER, 46, 48, & 50 Greene St., New York. PREFACE. The object of the present volume is: to indicate the character and, approximately, the extent of the changes produced by human action in the physical conditions of the globe we inhabit; to point out the dangers of imprudence and the necessity of caution in all operations which, on a large scale, interfere with the spontaneous arrangements of the organic or the inorganic world; to suggest the possibility and the importance of the restoration of disturbed harmonies and the material improvement of waste and exhausted regions; and, incidentally, to illustrate the doctrine, that man is, in both kind and degree, a power of a higher order than any of the other forms of animated life, which, like him, are nourished at the table of bounteous nature. In the rudest stages of life, man depends upon spontaneous animal and vegetable growth for food and clothing, and his consumption of such products consequently diminishes the numerical abundance of the species which serve his uses. At more advanced periods, he protects and propagates certain esculent vegetables and certain fowls and quadrupeds, and, at the same time, wars upon rival organisms which prey upon these objects of his care or obstruct the increase of their numbers. Hence the action of man upon the organic world tends to subvert the original balance of its species, and while it reduces the numbers of some of them, or even extirpates them altogether, it multiplies other forms of animal and vegetable life. The extension of agricultural and pastoral industry involves an enlargement of the sphere of man's domain, by encroachment upon the forests which once covered the greater part of the earth's surface otherwise adapted to his occupation. The felling of the woods has been attended with momentous consequences to the drainage of the soil, to the external configuration of its surface, and probably, also, to local climate; and the importance of human life as a transforming power is, perhaps, more clearly demonstrable in the influence man has thus exerted upon superficial geography than in any other result of his material effort. Lands won from the woods must be both drained and irrigated; river banks and maritime coasts must be secured by means of artificial bulwarks against inundation by inland and by ocean floods; and the needs of commerce require the improvement of natural, and the construction of artificial channels of navigation. Thus man is compelled to extend over the unstable waters the empire he had already founded upon the solid land. The upheaval of the bed of seas and the movements of water and of wind expose vast deposits of sand, which occupy space required for the convenience of man, and often, by the drifting of their particles, overwhelm the fields of human industry with invasions as disastrous as the incursions of the ocean. On the other hand, on many coasts, sand hills both protect the shores from erosion by the waves and currents, and shelter valuable grounds from blasting sea winds. Man, therefore, must sometimes resist, sometimes promote, the formation and growth of dunes, and subject the barren and flying sands to the same obedience to his will to which he has reduced other forms of terrestrial surface. Besides these old and comparatively familiar methods of material improvement, modern ambition aspires to yet grander achievements in the conquest of physical nature, and projects are meditated which quite eclipse the boldest enterprises hitherto undertaken for the modification of geographical surface. The natural character of the various fields where human industry has effected revolutions so important, and where the multiplying population and the impoverished resources of the globe demand new triumphs of mind over matter, suggests a corresponding division of the general subject, and I have conformed the distribution of the several topics to the chronological succession in which man must be supposed to have extended his sway over the different provinces of his material kingdom. I have, then, in the Introductory chapter, stated, in a comprehensive way, the general effects and the prospective consequences of human action upon the earth's surface and the life which peoples it. This chapter is followed by four others in which I have traced the history of man's industry as exerted upon Animal and Vegetable Life, upon the Woods, upon the Waters, and upon the Sands; and to these I have added a concluding chapter upon Probable and Possible Geographical Revolutions yet to be effected by the art of man. I have only to add what, indeed, sufficiently appears upon every page of the volume, that I address myself not to professed physicists, but to the general intelligence of educated, observing, and thinking men; and that my purpose is rather to make practical suggestions than to indulge in theoretical speculations properly suited to a different class from that to which those for whom I write belong. GEORGE P. MARSH. _December 1, 1863._ BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LIST OF WORKS CONSULTED IN THE PREPARATION OF THIS VOLUME. _Amersfoordt, J. P._ Het Haarlemmermeer, Oorsprong, Geschiedenis, Droogmaking. Haarlem, 1857. 8vo. _Andresen, C. 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Laybach, 1689. 4 vols. folio. _Van Lennep._ Extracts from Journal of, in the Missionary Herald. _Vaupell, Chr._ Bögens Indvandring i de Danske Skove. Kjöbenhavn, 1857. 8vo. ---- De Nordsjællandske Skovmoser. Kjöbenhavn, 1851. 4to. _pamphlet_. _Venema, G. A._ Over het Dalen van de Noordelijke Kuststreken van ons Land. Groningen, 1854. 8vo. _Villa, Antonio Giovanni Batt._ Necessità dei Boschi nella Lombardia. Milano, 1850. 4to. _Viollet, J. B._ Théorie des Puits Artésiens. Paris, 1840. 8vo. _Walterhausen, W. Sartorius von._ Ueber den Sicilianischen Ackerbau. Göttingen, 1863. _Webster, Noah._ A Collection of Papers on Political, Literary, and Moral Subjects. New York, 1843. 8vo. _Wessely, Joseph._ Die Oesterreichischen Alpenländer und ihre Forste. Wien, 1853. 2 vols. 8vo. _Wetzstein, J. G._ Reisebericht über Hauran und die Trachonen. Berlin, 1860. 8vo. _Wild, Albert._ Die Niederlande. Leipzig, 1862. 2 vols. 8vo. _Wilhelm, Gustav._ Der Boden und das Wasser. Wien, 1861. 8vo. _Williams, Dr._ History of Vermont. 2 vols. 8vo. _Wittwer, W. C._ Die Physikalische Geographie. Leipzig, 1855. 8vo. _Young, Arthur._ Voyages en France, pendant les années 1787, 1788, 1789, précédée d'une introduction par Lavergne. Paris, 1860. 2 vols. 12mo. ---- Voyages en Italie et en Espagne, pendant les années 1787, 1789. Paris, 1860. 1 vol. 12mo. TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. Natural Advantages of the Territory of the Roman Empire--Physical Decay of that Territory and of other parts of the Old World-- Causes of the Decay--New School of Geographers--Reaction of Man upon Nature--Observation of Nature--Cosmical and Geological Influences--Geographical Influence of Man--Uncertainty of our Meteorological Knowledge--Mechanical Effects produced by Man on the surface of the Earth--Importance and Possibility of Physical Restoration--Stability of Nature--Restoration of Disturbed Harmonies--Destructiveness of Man--Physical Improvement--Human and Brute Action Compared--Forms and Formations most liable to Physical Degradation--Physical Decay of New Countries--Corrupt Influence of Private Corporations, _Note_, 1 CHAPTER II. TRANSFER, MODIFICATION, AND EXTIRPATION OF VEGETABLE AND OF ANIMAL SPECIES. Modern Geography embraces Organic Life--Transfer of Vegetable Life--Foreign Plants grown in the United States--American Plants grown in Europe--Modes of Introduction of Foreign Plants--Vegetables, how affected by transfer to Foreign Soils--Extirpation of Vegetables--Origin of Domestic Plants-- Organic Life as a Geological and Geographical Agency--Origin and Transfer of Domestic Animals--Extirpation of Animals-- Numbers of Birds in the United States--Birds as Sowers and Consumers of Seeds, and as Destroyers of Insects--Diminution and Extirpation of Birds--Introduction of Birds--Utility of Insects and Worms--Introduction of Insects--Destruction of Insects--Reptiles--Destruction of Fish--Introduction and Breeding of Fish--Extirpation of Aquatic Animals--Minute Organisms, 57 CHAPTER III. THE WOODS. The Habitable Earth originally Wooded--The Forest does not furnish Food for Man--First Removal of the Woods--Effects of Fire on Forest Soil--Effects of the Destruction of the Forest--Electrical Influence of Trees--Chemical Influence of the Forest. Influence of the Forest, considered as Inorganic Matter, on Temperature: _a_, Absorbing and Emitting Surface; _b_, Trees as Conductors of Heat; _c_, Trees in Summer and in Winter; _d_, Dead Products of Tree; _e_, Trees as a Shelter to Grounds to the leeward of them; _f_, Trees as a Protection against Malaria--The Forest, as Inorganic Matter, tends to mitigate extremes. Trees as Organisms: Specific Temperature--Total Influence of the Forest on Temperature. Influence of Forests on the Humidity of the Air and the Earth: _a_, as Inorganic Matter; _b_, as Organic--Wood Mosses and Fungi--Flow of Sap--Absorption and Exhalation of Moisture by Trees--Balance of Conflicting Influences--Influence of the Forest on Temperature and Precipitation--Influence of the Forest on the Humidity of the Soil--Its Influence on the Flow of Springs--General Consequences of the Destruction of the Woods--Literature and Condition of the Forest in different Countries--The Influence of the Forest on Inundations-- Destructive Action of Torrents--The Po and its Deposits-- Mountain Slides--Protection against the Fall of Rocks and Avalanches by Trees--Principal Causes of the Destruction of the Forest--American Forest Trees--Special Causes of the Destruction of European Woods--Royal Forests and Game Laws-- Small Forest Plants, Vitality of Seeds--Utility of the Forest--The Forests of Europe--Forests of the United States and Canada--The Economy of the Forest--European and American Trees Compared--Sylviculture--Instability of American Life, 128 CHAPTER IV. THE WATERS. Land artificially won from the Waters: _a_, Exclusion of the Sea by Diking; _b_, Draining of Lakes and Marshes; _c_, Geographical Influence of such Operations--Lowering of Lakes--Mountain Lakes-- Climatic Effects of Draining Lakes and Marshes. Geographical and Climatic Effects of Aqueducts, Reservoirs, and Canals--Surface and Underdraining, and their Climatic and Geographical Effects--Irrigation and its Climatic and Geographical Effects. Inundations and Torrents: _a_, River Embankments; _b_, Floods of the Ardèche; _c_, Crushing Force of Torrents; _d_, Inundations of 1856 in France; _e_, Remedies against Inundations--Consequences if the Nile had been confined by Lateral Dikes. Improvements in the Val di Chiana--Improvements in the Tuscan Maremme--Obstruction of River Mouths--Subterranean Waters-- Artesian Wells--Artificial Springs--Economizing Precipitation, 330 CHAPTER V. THE SANDS. Origin of Sand--Sand now carried down to the Sea--The Sands of Egypt and the adjacent Desert--The Suez Canal--The Sands of Egypt--Coast Dunes and Sand Plains--Sand Banks--Dunes on Coast of America--Dunes of Western Europe--Formation of Dunes--Character of Dune Sand--Interior Structure of Dunes--Form of Dunes--Geological Importance of Dunes--Inland Dunes--Age, Character, and Permanence of Dunes--Use of Dunes as Barrier against the Sea--Encroachments of the Sea--The Lümfjord--Encroachments of the Sea--Drifting of Dune Sands--Dunes of Gascony--Dunes of Denmark--Dunes of Prussia--Artificial Formation of Dunes--Trees suitable for Dune Plantations--Extent of Dunes in Europe--Dune Vineyards of Cape Breton--Removal of Dunes--Inland Sand Plains--The Landes of Gascony--The Belgian Campine--Sands and Steppes of Eastern Europe--Advantages of Reclaiming Dunes--Government Works of Improvement, 451 CHAPTER VI. PROJECTED OR POSSIBLE GEOGRAPHICAL CHANGES BY MAN. Cutting of Marine Isthmuses--The Suez Canal--Canal across Isthmus of Darien--Canals to the Dead Sea--Maritime Canals in Greece-- Canal of Saros--Cape Cod Canal--Diversion of the Nile--Changes in the Caspian--Improvements in North American Hydrography-- Diversion of the Rhine--Draining of the Zuiderzee--Waters of the Karst--Subterranean Waters of Greece--Soil below Rock-- Covering Rocks with Earth--Wadies of Arabia Petræa--Incidental Effects of Human Action--Resistance to great Natural Forces-- Effects of Mining--Espy's Theories--River Sediment--Nothing small in Nature, 517 CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. NATURAL ADVANTAGES OF THE TERRITORY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE--PHYSICAL DECAY OF THAT TERRITORY AND OF OTHER PARTS OF THE OLD WORLD--CAUSES OF THE DECAY--NEW SCHOOL OF GEOGRAPHERS--REACTION OF MAN UPON NATURE-- OBSERVATION OF NATURE--COSMICAL AND GEOLOGICAL INFLUENCES--GEOGRAPHICAL INFLUENCE OF MAN--UNCERTAINTY OF OUR METEOROLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE-- MECHANICAL EFFECTS PRODUCED BY MAN ON THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH-- IMPORTANCE AND POSSIBILITY OF PHYSICAL RESTORATION--STABILITY OF NATURE--RESTORATION OF DISTURBED HARMONIES--DESTRUCTIVENESS OF MAN-- PHYSICAL IMPROVEMENT--HUMAN AND BRUTE ACTION COMPARED--FORMS AND FORMATIONS MOST LIABLE TO PHYSICAL DEGRADATION--PHYSICAL DECAY OF NEW COUNTRIES--CORRUPT INFLUENCE OF PRIVATE CORPORATIONS, _note_. _Natural Advantages of the Territory of the Roman Empire._ The Roman Empire, at the period of its greatest expansion, comprised the regions of the earth most distinguished by a happy combination of physical advantages. The provinces bordering on the principal and the secondary basins of the Mediterranean enjoyed a healthfulness and an equability of climate, a fertility of soil, a variety of vegetable and mineral products, and natural facilities for the transportation and distribution of exchangeable commodities, which have not been possessed in an equal degree by any territory of like extent in the Old World or the New. The abundance of the land and of the waters adequately supplied every material want, ministered liberally to every sensuous enjoyment. Gold and silver, indeed, were not found in the profusion which has proved so baneful to the industry of lands richer in veins of the precious metals; but mines and river beds yielded them in the spare measure most favorable to stability of value in the medium of exchange, and, consequently, to the regularity of commercial transactions. The ornaments of the barbaric pride of the East, the pearl, the ruby, the sapphire, and the diamond--though not unknown to the luxury of a people whose conquests and whose wealth commanded whatever the habitable world could contribute to augment the material splendor of their social life--were scarcely native to the territory of the empire; but the comparative rarity of these gems in Europe, at somewhat earlier periods, was, perhaps, the very circumstance that led the cunning artists of classic antiquity to enrich softer stones with engravings, which invest the common onyx and carnelian with a worth surpassing, in cultivated eyes, the lustre of the most brilliant oriental jewels. Of these manifold blessings the temperature of the air, the distribution of the rains, the relative disposition of land and water, the plenty of the sea, the composition of the soil, and the raw material of some of the arts, were wholly gratuitous gifts. Yet the spontaneous nature of Europe, of Western Asia, of Libya, neither fed nor clothed the civilized inhabitants of those provinces. Every loaf was eaten in the sweat of the brow. All must be earned by toil. But toil was nowhere else rewarded by so generous wages; for nowhere would a given amount of intelligent labor produce so abundant, and, at the same time, so varied returns of the good things of material existence. The luxuriant harvests of cereals that waved on every field from the shores of the Rhine to the banks of the Nile, the vines that festooned the hillsides of Syria, of Italy, and of Greece, the olives of Spain, the fruits of the gardens of the Hesperides, the domestic quadrupeds and fowls known in ancient rural husbandry--all these were original products of foreign climes, naturalized in new homes, and gradually ennobled by the art of man, while centuries of persevering labor were expelling the wild vegetation, and fitting the earth for the production of more generous growths. Only for the sense of landscape beauty did unaided nature make provision. Indeed, the very commonness of this source of refined enjoyment seems to have deprived it of half its value; and it was only in the infancy of lands where all the earth was fair, that Greek and Roman humanity had sympathy enough with the inanimate world to be alive to the charms of rural and of mountain scenery. In later generations, when the glories of the landscape had been heightened by plantation, and decorative architecture, and other forms of picturesque improvement, the poets of Greece and Rome were blinded by excess of light, and became, at last, almost insensible to beauties that now, even in their degraded state, enchant every eye, except, too often, those which a lifelong familiarity has dulled to their attractions. _Physical Decay of the Territory of the Roman Empire, and of other parts of the Old World._ If we compare the present physical condition of the countries of which I am speaking, with the descriptions that ancient historians and geographers have given of their fertility and general capability of ministering to human uses, we shall find that more than one half of their whole extent--including the provinces most celebrated for the profusion and variety of their spontaneous and their cultivated products, and for the wealth and social advancement of their inhabitants--is either deserted by civilized man and surrendered to hopeless desolation, or at least greatly reduced in both productiveness and population. Vast forests have disappeared from mountain spurs and ridges; the vegetable earth accumulated beneath the trees by the decay of leaves and fallen trunks, the soil of the alpine pastures which skirted and indented the woods, and the mould of the upland fields, are washed away; meadows, once fertilized by irrigation, are waste and unproductive, because the cisterns and reservoirs that supplied the ancient canals are broken, or the springs that fed them dried up; rivers famous in history and song have shrunk to humble brooklets; the willows that ornamented and protected the banks of the lesser watercourses are gone, and the rivulets have ceased to exist as perennial currents, because the little water that finds its way into their old channels is evaporated by the droughts of summer, or absorbed by the parched earth, before it reaches the lowlands; the beds of the brooks have widened into broad expanses of pebbles and gravel, over which, though in the hot season passed dryshod, in winter sealike torrents thunder; the entrances of navigable streams are obstructed by sandbars, and harbors, once marts of an extensive commerce, are shoaled by the deposits of the rivers at whose mouths they lie; the elevation of the beds of estuaries, and the consequently diminished velocity of the streams which flow into them, have converted thousands of leagues of shallow sea and fertile lowland into unproductive and miasmatic morasses. Besides the direct testimony of history to the ancient fertility of the regions to which I refer--Northern Africa, the greater Arabian peninsula, Syria, Mesopotamia, Armenia and many other provinces of Asia Minor, Greece, Sicily, and parts of even Italy and Spain--the multitude and extent of yet remaining architectural ruins, and of decayed works of internal improvement, show that at former epochs a dense population inhabited those now lonely districts. Such a population could have been sustained only by a productiveness of soil of which we at present discover but slender traces; and the abundance derived from that fertility serves to explain how large armies, like those of the ancient Persians, and of the Crusaders and the Tartars in later ages, could, without an organized commissariat, secure adequate supplies in long marches through territories which, in our times, would scarcely afford forage for a single regiment. It appears, then, that the fairest and fruitfulest provinces of the Roman Empire, precisely that portion of terrestrial surface, in short, which, about the commencement of the Christian era, was endowed with the greatest superiority of soil, climate, and position, which had been carried to the highest pitch of physical improvement, and which thus combined the natural and artificial conditions best fitting it for the habitation and enjoyment of a dense and highly refined and cultivated population, is now completely exhausted of its fertility, or so diminished in productiveness, as, with the exception of a few favored oases that have escaped the general ruin, to be no longer capable of affording sustenance to civilized man. If to this realm of desolation we add the now wasted and solitary soils of Persia and the remoter East, that once fed their millions with milk and honey, we shall see that a territory larger than all Europe, the abundance of which sustained in bygone centuries a population scarcely inferior to that of the whole Christian world at the present day, has been entirely withdrawn from human use, or, at best, is thinly inhabited by tribes too few in numbers, too poor in superfluous products, and too little advanced in culture and the social arts, to contribute anything to the general moral or material interests of the great commonwealth of man. _Causes of this Decay._ The decay of these once flourishing countries is partly due, no doubt, to that class of geological causes, whose action we can neither resist nor guide, and partly also to the direct violence of hostile human force; but it is, in a far greater proportion, either the result of man's ignorant disregard of the laws of nature, or an incidental consequence of war, and of civil and ecclesiastical tyranny and misrule. Next to ignorance of these laws, the primitive source, the _causa causarum_, of the acts and neglects which have blasted with sterility and physical decrepitude the noblest half of the empire of the Cæsars, is, first, the brutal and exhausting despotism which Rome herself exercised over her conquered kingdoms, and even over her Italian territory; then, the host of temporal and spiritual tyrannies which she left as her dying curse to all her wide dominion, and which, in some form of violence or of fraud, still brood over almost every soil subdued by the Roman legions.[1] Man cannot struggle at once against crushing oppression and the destructive forces of inorganic nature. When both are combined against him, he succumbs after a shorter or a longer struggle, and the fields he has won from the primeval wood relapse into their original state of wild and luxuriant, but unprofitable forest growth, or fall into that of a dry and barren wilderness. Rome imposed on the products of agricultural labor in the rural districts taxes which the sale of the entire harvest would scarcely discharge; she drained them of their population by military conscription; she impoverished the peasantry by forced and unpaid labor on public works; she hampered industry and internal commerce by absurd restrictions and unwise regulations. Hence, large tracts of land were left uncultivated, or altogether deserted, and exposed to all the destructive forces which act with such energy on the surface of the earth when it is deprived of those protections by which nature originally guarded it, and for which, in well-ordered husbandry, human ingenuity has contrived more or less efficient substitutes.[2] Similar abuses have tended to perpetuate and extend these evils in later ages, and it is but recently that, even in the most populous parts of Europe, public attention has been half awakened to the necessity of restoring the disturbed harmonies of nature, whose well-balanced influences are so propitious to all her organic offspring, of repaying to our great mother the debt which the prodigality and the thriftlessness of former generations have imposed upon their successors--thus fulfilling the command of religion and of practical wisdom, to use this world as not abusing it. _New School of Geographers._ The labors of Humboldt, of Ritter, of Guyot and their followers, have given to the science of geography a more philosophical, and, at the same time, a more imaginative character than it had received from the hands of their predecessors. Perhaps the most interesting field of speculation, thrown open by the new school to the cultivators of this attractive study, is the inquiry: how far external physical conditions, and especially the configuration of the earth's surface, and the distribution, outline, and relative position of land and water, have influenced the social life and social progress of man. _Reaction of Man on Nature._ But, as we have seen, man has reacted upon organized and inorganic nature, and thereby modified, if not determined, the material structure of his earthly home. The measure of that reaction manifestly constitutes a very important element in the appreciation of the relations between mind and matter, as well as in the discussion of many purely physical problems. But though the subject has been incidentally touched upon by many geographers, and treated with much fulness of detail in regard to certain limited fields of human effort, and to certain specific effects of human action, it has not, as a whole, so far as I know, been made matter of special observation, or of historical research by any scientific inquirer.[3] Indeed, until the influence of physical geography upon human life was recognized as a distinct branch of philosophical investigation, there was no motive for the pursuit of such speculations; and it was desirable to inquire whether we have or can become the architects of our own abiding place, only when it was known how the mode of our physical, moral, and intellectual being is affected by the character of the home which Providence has appointed, and we have fashioned, for our material habitation.[4] It is still too early to attempt scientific method in discussing this problem, nor is our present store of the necessary facts by any means complete enough to warrant me in promising any approach to fulness of statement respecting them. Systematic observation in relation to this subject has hardly yet begun,[5] and the scattered data which have chanced to be recorded have never been collected. It has now no place in the general scheme of physical science, and is matter of suggestion and speculation only, not of established and positive conclusion. At present, then, all that I can hope is to excite an interest in a topic of much economical importance, by pointing out the directions and illustrating the modes in which human action has been or may be most injurious or most beneficial in its influence upon the physical conditions of the earth we inhabit. _Observation of Nature._ In these pages, as in all I have ever written or propose to write, it is my aim to stimulate, not to satisfy, curiosity, and it is no part of my object to save my readers the labor of observation or of thought. For labor is life, and Death lives where power lives unused.[6] Self is the schoolmaster whose lessons are best worth his wages; and since the subject I am considering has not yet become a branch of formal instruction, those whom it may interest can, fortunately, have no pedagogue but themselves. To the natural philosopher, the descriptive poet, the painter, and the sculptor, as well as to the common observer, the power most important to cultivate, and, at the same time, hardest to acquire, is that of seeing what is before him. Sight is a faculty; seeing, an art. The eye is a physical, but not a self-acting apparatus, and in general it sees only what it seeks. Like a mirror, it reflects objects presented to it; but it may be as insensible as a mirror, and it does not necessarily perceive what it reflects.[7] It is disputed whether the purely material sensibility of the eye is capable of improvement and cultivation. It has been maintained by high authority, that the natural acuteness of none of our sensuous faculties can be heightened by use, and hence that the minutest details of the image formed on the retina are as perfect in the most untrained, as in the most thoroughly disciplined organ. This may well be doubted, and it is agreed on all hands that the power of multifarious perception and rapid discrimination may be immensely increased by well-directed practice.[8] This exercise of the eye I desire to promote, and, next to moral and religious doctrine, I know no more important practical lessons in this earthly life of ours--which, to the wise man, is a school from the cradle to the grave--than those relating to the employment of the sense of vision in the study of nature. The pursuit of physical geography, embracing actual observation of terrestrial surface, affords to the eye the best general training that is accessible to all. The majority of even cultivated men have not the time and means of acquiring anything beyond a very superficial acquaintance with any branch of physical knowledge. Natural science has become so vastly extended, its recorded facts and its unanswered questions so immensely multiplied, that every strictly scientific man must be a specialist, and confine the researches of a whole life within a comparatively narrow circle. The study I am recommending, in the view I propose to take of it, is yet in that imperfectly developed state which allows its votaries to occupy themselves with such broad and general views as are attainable by every person of culture, and it does not now require a knowledge of special details which only years of application can master. It may be profitably pursued by all; and every traveller, every lover of rural scenery, every agriculturist, who will wisely use the gift of sight, may add valuable contributions to the common stock of knowledge on a subject which, as I hope to convince my readers, though long neglected, and now inartificially presented, is not only a very important, but a very interesting field of inquiry. _Cosmical and Geological Influences._ The revolutions of the seasons, with their alternations of temperature and of length of day and night, the climates of different zones, and the general condition and movements of the atmosphere and the seas, depend upon causes for the most part cosmical, and, of course, wholly beyond our control. The elevation, configuration, and composition of the great masses of terrestrial surface, and the relative extent and distribution of land and water, are determined by geological influences equally remote from our jurisdiction. It would hence seem that the physical adaptation of different portions of the earth to the use and enjoyment of man is a matter so strictly belonging to mightier than human powers, that we can only accept geographical nature as we find her, and be content with such soils and such skies as she spontaneously offers. _Geographical Influence of Man._ But it is certain that man has done much to mould the form of the earth's surface, though we cannot always distinguish between the results of his action and the effects of purely geological causes; that the destruction of the forests, the drainage of lakes and marshes, and the operations of rural husbandry and industrial art have tended to produce great changes in the hygrometric, thermometric, electric, and chemical condition of the atmosphere, though we are not yet able to measure the force of the different elements of disturbance, or to say how far they have been compensated by each other, or by still obscurer influences; and, finally, that the myriad forms of animal and vegetable life, which covered the earth when man first entered upon the theatre of a nature whose harmonies he was destined to derange, have been, through his action, greatly changed in numerical proportion, sometimes much modified in form and product, and sometimes entirely extirpated. The physical revolutions thus wrought by man have not all been destructive to human interests. Soils to which no nutritious vegetable was indigenous, countries which once brought forth but the fewest products suited for the sustenance and comfort of man--while the severity of their climates created and stimulated the greatest number and the most imperious urgency of physical wants--surfaces the most rugged and intractable, and least blessed with natural facilities of communication, have been made in modern times to yield and distribute all that supplies the material necessities, all that contributes to the sensuous enjoyments and conveniences of civilized life. The Scythia, the Thule, the Britain, the Germany, and the Gaul which the Roman writers describe in such forbidding terms, have been brought almost to rival the native luxuriance and easily won plenty of Southern Italy; and, while the fountains of oil and wine that refreshed old Greece and Syria and Northern Africa have almost ceased to flow, and the soils of those fair lands are turned to thirsty and inhospitable deserts, the hyperborean regions of Europe have conquered, or rather compensated, the rigors of climate, and attained to a material wealth and variety of product that, with all their natural advantages, the granaries of the ancient world can hardly be said to have enjoyed. These changes for evil and for good have not been caused by great natural revolutions of the globe, nor are they by any means attributable wholly to the moral and physical action or inaction of the peoples, or, in all cases, even of the races that now inhabit these respective regions. They are products of a complication of conflicting or coincident forces, acting through a long series of generations; here, improvidence, wastefulness, and wanton violence; there, foresight and wisely guided persevering industry. So far as they are purely the calculated and desired results of those simple and familiar operations of agriculture and of social life which are as universal as civilization--the removal of the forests which covered the soil required for the cultivation of edible fruits, the drying of here and there a few acres too moist for profitable husbandry, by draining off the surface waters, the substitution of domesticated and nutritious for wild and unprofitable vegetable growths, the construction of roads and canals and artificial harbors--they belong to the sphere of rural, commercial, and political economy more properly than to geography, and hence are but incidentally embraced within the range of our present inquiries, which concern physical, not financial balances. I propose to examine only the greater, more permanent, and more comprehensive mutations which man has produced, and is producing, in earth, sea, and sky, sometimes, indeed, with conscious purpose, but for the most part, as unforeseen though natural consequences of acts performed for narrower and more immediate ends. The exact measurement of the geographical changes hitherto thus effected is, as I have hinted, impracticable, and we possess, in relation to them, the means of only qualitative, not quantitative analysis. The fact of such revolutions is established partly by historical evidence, partly by analogical deduction from effects produced in our own time by operations similar in character to those which must have taken place in more or less remote ages of human action. Both sources of information are alike defective in precision; the latter, for general reasons too obvious to require specification; the former, because the facts to which it bears testimony occurred before the habit or the means of rigorously scientific observation upon any branch of physical research, and especially upon climatic changes, existed. _Uncertainty of our Meteorological Knowledge._ The invention of measures of heat, and of atmospheric moisture, pressure, and precipitation, is extremely recent. Hence, ancient physicists have left us no thermometric or barometric records, no tables of the fall, evaporation, and flow of waters, and even no accurate maps of coast lines and the course of rivers. Their notices of these phenomena are almost wholly confined to excessive and exceptional instances of high or of low temperatures, extraordinary falls of rain and snow, and unusual floods or droughts. Our knowledge of the meteorological condition of the earth, at any period more than two centuries before our own time, is derived from these imperfect details, from the vague statements of ancient historians and geographers in regard to the volume of rivers and the relative extent of forest and cultivated land, from the indications furnished by the history of the agriculture and rural economy of past generations, and from other almost purely casual sources of information. Among these latter we must rank certain newly laid open fields of investigation, from which facts bearing on the point now under consideration have been gathered. I allude to the discovery of artificial objects in geological formations older than any hitherto recognized as exhibiting traces of the existence of man; to the ancient lacustrine habitations of Switzerland, containing the implements of the occupants, remains of their food, and other relics of human life; to the curious revelations of the Kjökkenmöddinger, or heaps of kitchen refuse, in Denmark, and of the peat mosses in the same and other northern countries; to the dwellings and other evidences of the industry of man in remote ages sometimes laid bare by the movement of sand dunes on the coasts of France and of the North Sea; and to the facts disclosed on the shores of the latter, by excavations in inhabited mounds which were, perhaps, raised before the period of the Roman Empire. These remains are memorials of races which have left no written records, because they perished before the historical period of the countries they occupied began. The plants and animals that furnished the relics found in the deposits were certainly contemporaneous with man; for they are associated with his works, and have evidently served his uses. In some cases, the animals belonged to species well ascertained to be now altogether extinct; in some others, both the animals and the vegetables, though extant elsewhere, have ceased to inhabit the regions where their remains are discovered. From the character of the artificial objects, as compared with others belonging to known dates, or at least to known periods of civilization, ingenious inferences have been drawn as to their age; and from the vegetation, remains of which accompany them, as to the climates of Central and Northern Europe at the time of their production. There are, however, sources of error which have not always been sufficiently guarded against in making these estimates. When a boat, composed of several pieces of wood fastened together by pins of the same material, is dug out of a bog, it is inferred that the vessel, and the skeletons and implements found with it, belong to an age when the use of iron was not known to the builders. But this conclusion is not warranted by the simple fact that metals were not employed in its construction; for the Nubians at this day build boats large enough to carry half a dozen persons across the Nile, out of small pieces of acacia wood pinned together entirely with wooden bolts. Nor is the occurrence of flint arrow heads and knives, in conjunction with other evidences of human life, conclusive proof as to the antiquity of the latter. Lyell informs us that some Oriental tribes still continue to use the same stone implements as their ancestors, "after that mighty empires, where the use of metals in the arts was well known, had flourished for three thousand years in their neighborhood;"[9] and the North American Indians now manufacture and use weapons of stone, and even of glass, chipping them in the latter case out of the bottoms of thick bottles, with great facility.[10] We may also be misled by our ignorance of the commercial relations existing between savage tribes. Extremely rude nations, in spite of their jealousies and their perpetual wars, sometimes contrive to exchange the products of provinces very widely separated from each other. The mounds of Ohio contain pearls, thought to be marine, which must have come from the Gulf of Mexico, or perhaps even from California, and the knives and pipes found in the same graves are often formed of far-fetched material, that was naturally paid for by some home product exported to the locality whence the material was derived. The art of preserving fish, flesh, and fowl by drying and smoking is widely diffused, and of great antiquity. The Indians of Long Island Sound are said to have carried on a trade in dried shell fish with tribes residing very far inland. From the earliest ages, the inhabitants of the Faroe and Orkney Islands, and of the opposite mainland coasts, have smoked wild fowl and other flesh. Hence it is possible that the animal and the vegetable food, the remains of which are found in the ancient deposits I am speaking of, may sometimes have been brought from climates remote from that where it was consumed. The most important, as well as the most trustworthy conclusions with respect to the climate of ancient Europe and Asia, are those drawn from the accounts given by the classical writers of the growth of cultivated plants; but these are by no means free from uncertainty, because we can seldom be sure of an identity of species, almost never of an identity of race or variety, between vegetables known to the agriculturists of Greece and Rome and those of modern times which are thought most nearly to resemble them. Besides this, there is always room for doubt whether the habits of plants long grown in different countries may not have been so changed by domestication that the conditions of temperature and humidity which they required twenty centuries ago were different from those at present demanded for their advantageous cultivation.[11] Even if we suppose an identity of species, of race, and of habit to be established between a given ancient and modern plant, the negative fact that the latter will not grow now where it flourished two thousand years ago does not in all cases prove a change of climate. The same result might follow from the exhaustion of the soil,[12] or from a change in the quantity of moisture it habitually contains. After a district of country has been completely or even partially cleared of its forest growth, and brought under cultivation, the drying of the soil, under favorable circumstances, goes on for generations, perhaps for ages.[13] In other cases, from injudicious husbandry, or the diversion or choking up of natural watercourses, it may become more highly charged with humidity. An increase or diminution of the moisture of a soil almost necessarily supposes an elevation or a depression of its winter or its summer heat, and of its extreme, if not of its mean annual temperature, though such elevation or depression may be so slight as not sensibly to raise or lower the mercury in a thermometer exposed to the open air. Any of these causes, more or less humidity, or more or less warmth of soil, would affect the growth both of wild and of cultivated vegetation, and consequently, without any appreciable change in atmospheric temperature, precipitation, or evaporation, plants of a particular species might cease to be advantageously cultivated where they had once been easily reared.[14] We are very imperfectly acquainted with the present mean and extreme temperature, or the precipitation and the evaporation of any extensive region, even in countries most densely peopled and best supplied with instruments and observers. The progress of science is constantly detecting errors of method in older observations, and many laboriously constructed tables of meteorological phenomena are now thrown aside as fallacious, and therefore worse than useless, because some condition necessary to secure accuracy of result was neglected, in obtaining the data on which they were founded. To take a familiar instance: it is but recently that attention has been drawn to the great influence of slight changes of station upon the results of observations of temperature and precipitation. A thermometer removed but a few hundred yards from its first position differs not unfrequently five, sometimes even ten degrees in its readings; and when we are told that the annual fall of rain on the roof of the observatory at Paris is two inches less than on the ground by the side of it, we may see that the level of the rain-gauge is a point of much consequence in making estimates from its measurements. The data from which results have been deduced with respect to the hygrometrical and thermometrical conditions, the climate in short, of different countries, have very often been derived from observations at single points in cities or districts separated by considerable distances. The tendency of errors and accidents to balance each other authorizes us, indeed, to entertain greater confidence than we could otherwise feel in the conclusions drawn from such tables; but it is in the highest degree probable that they would be much modified by more numerous series of observations, at different stations within narrow limits.[15] There is one branch of research which is of the utmost importance in reference to these questions, but which, from the great difficulty of direct observation upon it, has been less successfully studied than almost any other problem of physical science. I refer to the proportions between precipitation, superficial drainage, absorption, and evaporation. Precise actual measurement of these quantities upon even a single acre of ground is impossible; and in all cabinet experiments on the subject, the conditions of the surface observed are so different from those which occur in nature, that we cannot safely reason from one case to the other. In nature, the inclination of the ground, the degree of freedom or obstruction of the surface, the composition and density of the soil, upon which its permeability by water and its power of absorbing and retaining or transmitting moisture depend, its temperature, the dryness or saturation of the subsoil, vary at comparatively short distances; and though the precipitation upon and the superficial flow from very small geographical basins may be estimated with an approach to precision, yet even here we have no present means of knowing how much of the water absorbed by the earth is restored to the atmosphere by evaporation, and how much carried off by infiltration or other modes of underground discharge. When, therefore, we attempt to use the phenomena observed on a few square or cubic yards of earth, as a basis of reasoning upon the meteorology of a province, it is evident that our data must be insufficient to warrant positive general conclusions. In discussing the climatology of whole countries, or even of comparatively small local divisions, we may safely say that none can tell what percentage of the water they receive from the atmosphere is evaporated; what absorbed by the ground and conveyed off by subterranean conduits; what carried down to the sea by superficial channels; what drawn from the earth or the air by a given extent of forest, of short pasture vegetation, or of tall meadow-grass; what given out again by surfaces so covered, or by bare ground of various textures and composition, under different conditions of atmospheric temperature, pressure, and humidity; or what is the amount of evaporation from water, ice, or snow, under the varying exposures to which, in actual nature, they are constantly subjected. If, then, we are so ignorant of all these climatic phenomena in the best-known regions inhabited by man, it is evident that we can rely little upon theoretical deductions applied to the former more natural state of the same regions--less still to such as are adopted with respect to distant, strange, and primitive countries. _Mechanical Effects produced by Man on the Surface of the Earth more easily ascertainable._ In investigating the mechanical effects of human action on superficial geography, we are treading on safer ground, and dealing with much less subtile phenomena, less intractable elements. Great physical changes can, in some cases, be positively shown, in some almost certainly inferred, to have been produced by the operations of rural industry, and by the labors of man in other spheres of material effort; and hence, in this most important part of our subject, we can arrive at many positive generalizations, and obtain practical results of no small economical value. _Importance and Possibility of Physical Restoration._ Many circumstances conspire to invest with great present interest the questions: how far man can permanently modify and ameliorate those physical conditions of terrestrial surface and climate on which his material welfare depends; how far he can compensate, arrest, or retard the deterioration which many of his agricultural and industrial processes tend to produce; and how far he can restore fertility and salubrity to soils which his follies or his crimes have made barren or pestilential. Among these circumstances, the most prominent, perhaps, is the necessity of providing new homes for a European population which is increasing more rapidly than its means of subsistence, new physical comforts for classes of the people that have now become too much enlightened and have imbibed too much culture to submit to a longer deprivation of a share in the material enjoyments which the privileged ranks have hitherto monopolized. To supply new hives for the emigrant swarms, there are, first, the vast unoccupied prairies and forests of America, of Australia, and of many other great oceanic islands, the sparsely inhabited and still unexhausted soils of Southern and even Central Africa, and, finally, the impoverished and half-depopulated shores of the Mediterranean, and the interior of Asia Minor and the farther East. To furnish to those who shall remain after emigration shall have conveniently reduced the too dense population of many European states, those means of sensuous and of intellectual well-being which are styled "artificial wants" when demanded by the humble and the poor, but are admitted to be "necessaries" when claimed by the noble and the rich, the soil must be stimulated to its highest powers of production, and man's utmost ingenuity and energy must be tasked to renovate a nature drained, by his improvidence, of fountains which a wise economy would have made plenteous and perennial sources of beauty, health, and wealth. In those yet virgin lands which the progress of modern discovery in both hemispheres has brought and is still bringing to the knowledge and control of civilized man, not much improvement of great physical conditions is to be looked for. The proportion of forest is indeed to be considerably reduced, superfluous waters to be drawn off, and routes of internal communication to be constructed; but the primitive geographical and climatic features of these countries ought to be, as far as possible, retained. _Stability of Nature._ Nature, left undisturbed, so fashions her territory as to give it almost unchanging permanence of form, outline, and proportion, except when shattered by geologic convulsions; and in these comparatively rare cases of derangement, she sets herself at once to repair the superficial damage, and to restore, as nearly as practicable, the former aspect of her dominion. In new countries, the natural inclination of the ground, the self-formed slopes and levels, are generally such as best secure the stability of the soil. They have been graded and lowered or elevated by frost and chemical forces and gravitation and the flow of water and vegetable deposit and the action of the winds, until, by a general compensation of conflicting forces, a condition of equilibrium has been reached which, without the action of man, would remain, with little fluctuation, for countless ages. We need not go far back to reach a period when, in all that portion of the North American continent which has been occupied by British colonization, the geographical elements very nearly balanced and compensated each other. At the commencement of the seventeenth century, the soil, with insignificant exceptions, was covered with forests;[16] and whenever the Indian, in consequence of war or the exhaustion of the beasts of the chase, abandoned the narrow fields he had planted and the woods he had burned over, they speedily returned, by a succession of herbaceous, arborescent, and arboreal growths, to their original state. Even a single generation sufficed to restore them almost to their primitive luxuriance of forest vegetation.[17] The unbroken forests had attained to their maximum density and strength of growth, and, as the older trees decayed and fell, they were succeeded by new shoots or seedlings, so that from century to century no perceptible change seems to have occurred in the wood, except the slow, spontaneous succession of crops. This succession involved no interruption of growth, and but little break in the "boundless contiguity of shade;" for, in the husbandry of nature, there are no fallows. Trees fall singly, not by square roods, and the tall pine is hardly prostrate, before the light and heat, admitted to the ground by the removal of the dense crown of foliage which had shut them out, stimulate the germination of the seeds of broad-leaved trees that had lain, waiting this kindly influence, perhaps for centuries. Two natural causes, destructive in character, were, indeed, in operation in the primitive American forests, though, in the Northern colonies, at least, there were sufficient compensations; for we do not discover that any considerable permanent change was produced by them. I refer to the action of beavers and of fallen trees in producing bogs,[18] and of smaller animals, insects, and birds, in destroying the woods. Bogs are less numerous and extensive in the Northern States of the American union, because the natural inclination of the surface favors drainage; but they are more frequent, and cover more ground, in the Southern States, for the opposite reason.[19] They generally originate in the checking of watercourses by the falling of timber, or of earth and rocks, across their channels. If the impediment thus created is sufficient to retain a permanent accumulation of water behind it, the trees whose roots are overflowed soon perish, and then by their fall increase the obstruction, and, of course, occasion a still wider spread of the stagnating stream. This process goes on until the water finds a new outlet, at a higher level, not liable to similar interruption. The fallen trees not completely covered by water are soon overgrown with mosses; aquatic and semi-aquatic plants propagate themselves, and spread until they more or less completely fill up the space occupied by the water, and the surface is gradually converted from a pond to a quaking morass.[20] The morass is slowly solidified by vegetable production and deposit, then very often restored to the forest condition by the growth of black ashes, cedars, or, in southern latitudes, cypresses, and other trees suited to such a soil, and thus the interrupted harmony of nature is at last reëstablished. I am disposed to think that more bogs in the Northern States owe their origin to beavers than to accidental obstructions of rivulets by wind-fallen or naturally decayed trees; for there are few swamps in those States, at the outlets of which we may not, by careful search, find the remains of a beaver dam. The beaver sometimes inhabits natural lakelets, but he prefers to owe his pond to his own ingenuity and toil. The reservoir once constructed, its inhabitants rapidly multiply, and as its harvests of pond lilies, and other aquatic plants on which this quadruped feeds in winter, become too small for the growing population, the beaver metropolis sends out expeditions of discovery and colonization. The pond gradually fills up, by the operation of the same causes as when it owes its existence to an accidental obstruction, and when, at last, the original settlement is converted into a bog by the usual processes of vegetable life, the remaining inhabitants abandon it and build on some virgin brooklet a new city of the waters. In countries somewhat further advanced in civilization than those occupied by the North American Indians, as in mediæval Ireland, the formation of bogs may be commenced by the neglect of man to remove, from the natural channels of superficial drainage, the tops and branches of trees felled for the various purposes to which wood is applicable in his rude industry; and, when the flow of the water is thus checked, nature goes on with the processes I have already described. In such half-civilized regions, too, windfalls are more frequent than in those where the forest is unbroken, because, when openings have been made in it, for agricultural or other purposes, the entrance thus afforded to the wind occasions the sudden overthrow of hundreds of trees which might otherwise have stood for generations, and thus have fallen to the ground, only one by one, as natural decay brought them down.[21] Besides this, the flocks bred by man in the pastoral state, keep down the incipient growth of trees on the half-dried bogs, and prevent them from recovering their primitive condition. Young trees in the native forest are sometimes girdled and killed by the smaller rodent quadrupeds, and their growth is checked by birds which feed on the terminal bud; but these animals, as we shall see, are generally found on the skirts of the wood only, not in its deeper recesses, and hence the mischief they do is not extensive. The insects which damage primitive forests by feeding upon products of trees essential to their growth, are not numerous, nor is their appearance, in destructive numbers, frequent; and those which perforate the stems and branches, to deposit and hatch their eggs, more commonly select dead trees for that purpose, though, unhappily, there are important exceptions to this latter remark.[22] I do not know that we have any evidence of the destruction or serious injury of American forests by insects, before or even soon after the period of colonization; but since the white man has laid bare a vast proportion of the earth's surface, and thereby produced changes favorable, perhaps, to the multiplication of these pests, they have greatly increased in numbers, and, apparently, in voracity also. Not many years ago, the pines on thousands of acres of land in North Carolina, were destroyed by insects not known to have ever done serious injury to that tree before. In such cases as this and others of the like sort, there is good reason to believe that man is the indirect cause of an evil for which he pays so heavy a penalty. Insects increase whenever the birds which feed upon them disappear. Hence, in the wanton destruction of the robin and other insectivorous birds, the _bipes implumis_, the featherless biped, man, is not only exchanging the vocal orchestra which greets the rising sun for the drowsy beetle's evening drone, and depriving his groves and his fields of their fairest ornament, but he is waging a treacherous warfare on his natural allies.[23] In fine, in countries untrodden by man, the proportions and relative positions of land and water, the atmospheric precipitation and evaporation, the thermometric mean, and the distribution of vegetable and animal life, are subject to change only from geological influences so slow in their operation that the geographical conditions may be regarded as constant and immutable. These arrangements of nature it is, in most cases, highly desirable substantially to maintain, when such regions become the seat of organized commonwealths. It is, therefore, a matter of the first importance, that, in commencing the process of fitting them for permanent civilized occupation, the transforming operations should be so conducted as not unnecessarily to derange and destroy what, in too many cases, it is beyond the power of man to rectify or restore. _Restoration of Disturbed Harmonies._ In reclaiming and reoccupying lands laid waste by human improvidence or malice, and abandoned by man, or occupied only by a nomade or thinly scattered population, the task of the pioneer settler is of a very different character. He is to become a co-worker with nature in the reconstruction of the damaged fabric which the negligence or the wantonness of former lodgers has rendered untenantable. He must aid her in reclothing the mountain slopes with forests and vegetable mould, thereby restoring the fountains which she provided to water them; in checking the devastating fury of torrents, and bringing back the surface drainage to its primitive narrow channels; and in drying deadly morasses by opening the natural sluices which have been choked up, and cutting new canals for drawing off their stagnant waters. He must thus, on the one hand, create new reservoirs, and, on the other, remove mischievous accumulations of moisture, thereby equalizing and regulating the sources of atmospheric humidity and of flowing water, both which are so essential to all vegetable growth, and, of course, to human and lower animal life. _Destructiveness of Man._ Man has too long forgotten that the earth was given to him for usufruct alone, not for consumption, still less for profligate waste. Nature has provided against the absolute destruction of any of her elementary matter, the raw material of her works; the thunderbolt and the tornado, the most convulsive throes of even the volcano and the earthquake, being only phenomena of decomposition and recomposition. But she has left it within the power of man irreparably to derange the combinations of inorganic matter and of organic life, which through the night of æons she had been proportioning and balancing, to prepare the earth for his habitation, when, in the fulness of time, his Creator should call him forth to enter into its possession. Apart from the hostile influence of man, the organic and the inorganic world are, as I have remarked, bound together by such mutual relations and adaptations as secure, if not the absolute permanence and equilibrium of both, a long continuance of the established conditions of each at any given time and place, or at least, a very slow and gradual succession of changes in those conditions. But man is everywhere a disturbing agent. Wherever he plants his foot, the harmonies of nature are turned to discords. The proportions and accommodations which insured the stability of existing arrangements are overthrown. Indigenous vegetable and animal species are extirpated, and supplanted by others of foreign origin, spontaneous production is forbidden or restricted, and the face of the earth is either laid bare or covered with a new and reluctant growth of vegetable forms, and with alien tribes of animal life. These intentional changes and substitutions constitute, indeed, great revolutions; but vast as is their magnitude and importance, they are, as we shall see, insignificant in comparison with the contingent and unsought results which have flowed from them. The fact that, of all organic beings, man alone is to be regarded as essentially a destructive power, and that he wields energies to resist which, nature--that Nature whom all material life and all inorganic substance obey--is wholly impotent, tends to prove that, though living in physical nature, he is not of her, that he is of more exalted parentage, and belongs to a higher order of existences than those born of her womb and submissive to her dictates. There are, indeed, brute destroyers, beasts and birds and insects of prey--all animal life feeds upon, and, of course, destroys other life,--but this destruction is balanced by compensations. It is, in fact, the very means by which the existence of one tribe of animals or of vegetables is secured against being smothered by the encroachments of another; and the reproductive powers of species, which serve as the food of others, are always proportioned to the demand they are destined to supply. Man pursues his victims with reckless destructiveness; and, while the sacrifice of life by the lower animals is limited by the cravings of appetite, he unsparingly persecutes, even to extirpation, thousands of organic forms which he cannot consume.[24] The earth was not, in its natural condition, completely adapted to the use of man, but only to the sustenance of wild animals and wild vegetation. These live, multiply their kind in just proportion, and attain their perfect measure of strength and beauty, without producing or requiring any change in the natural arrangements of surface, or in each other's spontaneous tendencies, except such mutual repression of excessive increase as may prevent the extirpation of one species by the encroachments of another. In short, without man, lower animal and spontaneous vegetable life would have been constant in type, distribution, and proportion, and the physical geography of the earth would have remained undisturbed for indefinite periods, and been subject to revolution only from possible, unknown cosmical causes, or from geological action. But man, the domestic animals that serve him, the field and garden plants the products of which supply him with food and clothing, cannot subsist and rise to the full development of their higher properties, unless brute and unconscious nature be effectually combated, and, in a great degree, vanquished by human art. Hence, a certain measure of transformation of terrestrial surface, of suppression of natural, and stimulation of artificially modified productivity becomes necessary. This measure man has unfortunately exceeded. He has felled the forests whose network of fibrous roots bound the mould to the rocky skeleton of the earth; but had he allowed here and there a belt of woodland to reproduce itself by spontaneous propagation, most of the mischiefs which his reckless destruction of the natural protection of the soil has occasioned would have been averted. He has broken up the mountain reservoirs, the percolation of whose waters through unseen channels supplied the fountains that refreshed his cattle and fertilized his fields; but he has neglected to maintain the cisterns and the canals of irrigation which a wise antiquity had constructed to neutralize the consequences of its own imprudence. While he has torn the thin glebe which confined the light earth of extensive plains, and has destroyed the fringe of semi-aquatic plants which skirted the coast and checked the drifting of the sea sand, he has failed to prevent the spreading of the dunes by clothing them with artificially propagated vegetation. He has ruthlessly warred on all the tribes of animated nature whose spoil he could convert to his own uses, and he has not protected the birds which prey on the insects most destructive to his own harvests. Purely untutored humanity, it is true, interferes comparatively little with the arrangements of nature,[25] and the destructive agency of man becomes more and more energetic and unsparing as he advances in civilization, until the impoverishment, with which his exhaustion of the natural resources of the soil is threatening him, at last awakens him to the necessity of preserving what is left, if not of restoring what has been wantonly wasted. The wandering savage grows no cultivated vegetable, fells no forest, and extirpates no useful plant, no noxious weed. If his skill in the chase enables him to entrap numbers of the animals on which he feeds, he compensates this loss by destroying also the lion, the tiger, the wolf, the otter, the seal, and the eagle, thus indirectly protecting the feebler quadrupeds and fish and fowls, which would otherwise become the booty of beasts and birds of prey. But with stationary life, or rather with the pastoral state, man at once commences an almost indiscriminate warfare upon all the forms of animal and vegetable existence around him, and as he advances in civilization, he gradually eradicates or transforms every spontaneous product of the soil he occupies.[26] _Human and Brute Action Compared._ It has been maintained by authorities as high as any known to modern science, that the action of man upon nature, though greater in _degree_, does not differ in _kind_, from that of wild animals. It appears to me to differ in essential character, because, though it is often followed by unforeseen and undesired results, yet it is nevertheless guided by a self-conscious and intelligent will aiming as often at secondary and remote as at immediate objects. The wild animal, on the other hand, acts instinctively, and, so far as we are able to perceive, always with a view to single and direct purposes. The backwoodsman and the beaver alike fell trees; the man that he may convert the forest into an olive grove that will mature its fruit only for a succeeding generation, the beaver that he may feed upon their bark or use them in the construction of his habitation. Human differs from brute action, too, in its influence upon the material world, because it is not controlled by natural compensations and balances. Natural arrangements, once disturbed by man, are not restored until he retires from the field, and leaves free scope to spontaneous recuperative energies; the wounds he inflicts upon the material creation are not healed until he withdraws the arm that gave the blow. On the other hand, I am not aware of any evidence that wild animals have ever destroyed the smallest forest, extirpated any organic species or modified its natural character, occasioned any permanent change of terrestrial surface, or produced any disturbance of physical conditions which nature has not, of herself, repaired without the expulsion of the animal that had caused it.[27] The form of geographical surface, and very probably the climate of a given country, depend much on the character of the vegetable life belonging to it. Man has, by domestication, greatly changed the habits and properties of the plants he rears; he has, by voluntary selection, immensely modified the forms and qualities of the animated creatures that serve him; and he has, at the same time, completely rooted out many forms of animal if not of vegetable being.[28] What is there, in the influence of brute life, that corresponds to this? We have no reason to believe that in that portion of the American continent which, though peopled by many tribes of quadruped and fowl, remained uninhabited by man, or only thinly occupied by purely savage tribes, any sensible geographical change had occurred within twenty centuries before the epoch of discovery and colonization, while, during the same period, man had changed millions of square miles, in the fairest and most fertile regions of the Old World, into the barrenest deserts. The ravages committed by man subvert the relations and destroy the balance which nature had established between her organized and her inorganic creations; and she avenges herself upon the intruder, by letting loose upon her defaced provinces destructive energies hitherto kept in check by organic forces destined to be his best auxiliaries, but which he has unwisely dispersed and driven from the field of action. When the forest is gone, the great reservoir of moisture stored up in its vegetable mould is evaporated, and returns only in deluges of rain to wash away the parched dust into which that mould has been converted. The well-wooded and humid hills are turned to ridges of dry rock, which encumbers the low grounds and chokes the watercourses with its debris, and--except in countries favored with an equable distribution of rain through the seasons, and a moderate and regular inclination of surface--the whole earth, unless rescued by human art from the physical degradation to which it tends, becomes an assemblage of bald mountains, of barren, turfless hills, and of swampy and malarious plains. There are parts of Asia Minor, of Northern Africa, of Greece, and even of Alpine Europe, where the operation of causes set in action by man has brought the face of the earth to a desolation almost as complete as that of the moon; and though, within that brief space of time which we call "the historical period," they are known to have been covered with luxuriant woods, verdant pastures, and fertile meadows, they are now too far deteriorated to be reclaimable by man, nor can they become again fitted for human use, except through great geological changes, or other mysterious influences or agencies of which we have no present knowledge, and over which we have no prospective control. The earth is fast becoming an unfit home for its noblest inhabitant, and another era of equal human crime and human improvidence, and of like duration with that through which traces of that crime and that improvidence extend, would reduce it to such a condition of impoverished productiveness, of shattered surface, of climatic excess, as to threaten the depravation, barbarism, and perhaps even extinction of the species.[29] _Physical Improvement._ True, there is a partial reverse to this picture. On narrow theatres, new forests have been planted; inundations of flowing streams restrained by heavy walls of masonry and other constructions; torrents compelled to aid, by depositing the slime with which they are charged, in filling up lowlands, and raising the level of morasses which their own overflows had created; ground submerged by the encroachments of the ocean, or exposed to be covered by its tides, has been rescued from its dominion by diking;[30] swamps and even lakes have been drained, and their beds brought within the domain of agricultural industry; drifting coast dunes have been checked and made productive by plantation; seas and inland waters have been repeopled with fish, and even the sands of the Sahara have been fertilized by artesian fountains. These achievements are more glorious than the proudest triumphs of war, but, thus far, they give but faint hope that we shall yet make full atonement for our spendthrift waste of the bounties of nature. It is, on the one hand, rash and unphilosophical to attempt to set limits to the ultimate power of man over inorganic nature, and it is unprofitable, on the other, to speculate on what may be accomplished by the discovery of now unknown and unimagined natural forces, or even by the invention of new arts and new processes. But since we have seen aerostation, the motive power of elastic vapors, the wonders of modern telegraphy, the destructive explosiveness of gunpowder, and even of a substance so harmless, unresisting, and inert as cotton, nothing in the way of mechanical achievement seems impossible, and it is hard to restrain the imagination from wandering forward a couple of generations to an epoch when our descendants shall have advanced as far beyond us in physical conquest, as we have marched beyond the trophies erected by our grandfathers. I must therefore be understood to mean only, that no agencies now known to man and directed by him seem adequate to the reducing of great Alpine precipices to such slopes as would enable them to support a vegetable clothing, or to the covering of large extents of denuded rock with earth, and planting upon them a forest growth. But among the mysteries which science is yet to reveal, there may be still undiscovered methods of accomplishing even grander wonders than these. Mechanical philosophers have suggested the possibility of accumulating and treasuring up for human use some of the greater natural forces, which the action of the elements puts forth with such astonishing energy. Could we gather, and bind, and make subservient to our control, the power which a West Indian hurricane exerts through a small area in one continuous blast, or the momentum expended by the waves, in a tempestuous winter, upon the breakwater at Cherbourg,[31] or the lifting power of the tide, for a month, at the head of the Bay of Fundy, or the pressure of a square mile of sea water at the depth of five thousand fathoms, or a moment of the might of an earthquake or a volcano, our age--which moves no mountains and casts them into the sea by faith alone--might hope to scarp the rugged walls of the Alps and Pyrenees and Mount Taurus, robe them once more in a vegetation as rich as that of their pristine woods, and turn their wasting torrents into refreshing streams.[32] Could this old world, which man has overthrown, be rebuilded, could human cunning rescue its wasted hillsides and its deserted plains from solitude or mere nomade occupation, from barrenness, from nakedness, and from insalubrity, and restore the ancient fertility and healthfulness of the Etruscan sea coast, the Campagna and the Pontine marshes, of Calabria, of Sicily, of the Peloponnesus and insular and continental Greece, of Asia Minor, of the slopes of Lebanon and Hermon, of Palestine, of the Syrian desert, of Mesopotamia and the delta of the Euphrates, of the Cyrenaica, of Africa proper, Numidia, and Mauritania, the thronging millions of Europe might still find room on the Eastern continent, and the main current of emigration be turned toward the rising instead of the setting sun. But changes like these must await great political and moral revolutions in the governments and peoples by whom those regions are now possessed, a command of pecuniary and of mechanical means not at present enjoyed by those nations, and a more advanced and generally diffused knowledge of the processes by which the amelioration of soil and climate is possible, than now anywhere exists. Until such circumstances shall conspire to favor the work of geographical regeneration, the countries I have mentioned, with here and there a local exception, will continue to sink into yet deeper desolation, and in the mean time, the American continent, Southern Africa, Australia, and the smaller oceanic islands, will be almost the only theatres where man is engaged, on a great scale, in transforming the face of nature. _Arrest of Physical Decay of New Countries._ Comparatively short as is the period through which the colonization of foreign lands by European emigrants extends, great, and, it is to be feared, sometimes irreparable, injury has been already done in the various processes by which man seeks to subjugate the virgin earth; and many provinces, first trodden by the _homo sapiens Europæ_ within the last two centuries, begin to show signs of that melancholy dilapidation which is now driving so many of the peasantry of Europe from their native hearths. It is evidently a matter of great moment, not only to the population of the states where these symptoms are manifesting themselves, but to the general interests of humanity, that this decay should be arrested, and that the future operations of rural husbandry and of forest industry, in districts yet remaining substantially in their native condition, should be so conducted as to prevent the widespread mischiefs which have been elsewhere produced by thoughtless or wanton destruction of the natural safeguards of the soil. This can be done only by the diffusion of knowledge on this subject among the classes that, in earlier days, subdued and tilled ground in which they had no vested rights, but who, in our time, own their woods, their pastures, and their ploughlands as a perpetual possession for them and theirs, and have, therefore, a strong interest in the protection of their domain against deterioration. _Forms and Formations most liable to Physical Degradation._ The character and extent of the evils under consideration depend very much on climate and the natural forms and constitution of surface. If the precipitation, whether great or small in amount, be equally distributed through the seasons, so that there are neither torrential rains nor parching droughts, and if, further, the general inclination of ground be moderate, so that the superficial waters are carried off without destructive rapidity of flow, and without sudden accumulation in the channels of natural drainage, there is little danger of the degradation of the soil in consequence of the removal of forest or other vegetable covering, and the natural face of the earth may be considered as substantially permanent. These conditions are well exemplified in Ireland, in a great part of England, in extensive districts in Germany and France, and, fortunately, in an immense proportion of the valley of the Mississippi and the basin of the great American lakes, as well as in many parts of the continents of South America and of Africa. Destructive changes are most frequent in countries of irregular and mountainous surface, and in climates where the precipitation is confined chiefly to a single season, and where the year is divided into a wet and a dry period, as is the case throughout a great part of the Ottoman empire, and, more or less strictly, the whole Mediterranean basin. It is partly, though by no means entirely, owing to topographical and climatic causes that the blight, which has smitten the fairest and most fertile provinces of Imperial Rome, has spared Britannia, Germania, Pannonia, and M[oe]sia, the comparatively inhospitable homes of barbarous races, who, in the days of the Cæsars, were too little advanced in civilized life to possess either the power or the will to wage that war against the order of nature which seems, hitherto, an almost inseparable condition precedent of high social culture, and of great progress in fine and mechanical art.[33] In mountainous countries, on the other hand, various causes combine to expose the soil to constant dangers. The rain and snow usually fall in greater quantity, and with much inequality of distribution; the snow on the summits accumulates for many months in succession, and then is not unfrequently almost wholly dissolved in a single thaw, so that the entire precipitation of months is in a few hours hurried down the flanks of the mountains, and through the ravines that furrow them; the natural inclination of the surface promotes the swiftness of the gathering currents of diluvial rain and of melting snow, which soon acquire an almost irresistible force, and power of removal and transportation; the soil itself is less compact and tenacious than that of the plains, and if the sheltering forest has been destroyed, it is confined by few of the threads and ligaments by which nature had bound it together, and attached it to the rocky groundwork. Hence every considerable shower lays bare its roods of rock, and the torrents sent down by the thaws of spring, and by occasional heavy discharges of the summer and autumnal rains, are seas of mud and rolling stones that sometimes lay waste, and bury beneath them acres, and even miles, of pasture and field and vineyard.[34] _Physical Decay of New Countries._ I have remarked that the effects of human action on the forms of the earth's surface could not always be distinguished from those resulting from geological causes, and there is also much uncertainty in respect to the precise influence of the clearing and cultivating of the ground, and of other rural operations, upon climate. It is disputed whether either the mean or the extremes of temperature, the periods of the seasons, or the amount or distribution of precipitation and of evaporation, in any country whose annals are known, have undergone any change during the historical period. It is, indeed, impossible to doubt that many of the operations of the pioneer settler tend to produce great modifications in atmospheric humidity, temperature, and electricity; but we are at present unable to determine how far one set of effects is neutralized by another, or compensated by unknown agencies. This question scientific research is inadequate to solve, for want of the necessary data; but well conducted observation, in regions now first brought under the occupation of man, combined with such historical evidence as still exists, may be expected at no distant period to throw much light on this subject. Australia is, perhaps, the country from which we have a right to expect the fullest elucidation of these difficult and disputable problems. Its colonization did not commence until the physical sciences had become matter of almost universal attention, and is, indeed, so recent that the memory of living men embraces the principal epochs of its history; the peculiarities of its fauna, its flora, and its geology are such as to have excited for it the liveliest interest of the votaries of natural science; its mines have given its people the necessary wealth for procuring the means of instrumental observation, and the leisure required for the pursuit of scientific research; and large tracts of virgin forest and natural meadow are rapidly passing under the control of civilized man. Here, then, exist greater facilities and stronger motives for the careful study of the topics in question than have ever been found combined in any other theatre of European colonization. In North America, the change from the natural to the artificial condition of terrestrial surface began about the period when the most important instruments of meteorological observation were invented. The first settlers in the territory now constituting the United States and the British American provinces had other things to do than to tabulate barometrical and thermometrical readings, but there remain some interesting physical records from the early days of the colonies,[35] and there is still an immense extent of North American soil where the industry and the folly of man have as yet produced little appreciable change. Here, too, with the present increased facilities for scientific observation, the future effects, direct and contingent, of man's labors, can be measured, and such precautions taken in those rural processes which we call improvements, as to mitigate evils, perhaps, in some degree, inseparable from every attempt to control the action of natural laws. In order to arrive at safe conclusions, we must first obtain a more exact knowledge of the topography, and of the present superficial and climatic condition of countries where the natural surface is as yet more or less unbroken. This can only be accomplished by accurate surveys, and by a great multiplication of the points of meteorological registry,[36] already so numerous; and as, moreover, considerable changes in the proportion of forest and of cultivated land, or of dry and wholly or partially submerged surface, will often take place within brief periods, it is highly desirable that the attention of observers, in whose neighborhood the clearing of the soil, or the drainage of lakes and swamps, or other great works of rural improvement, are going on or meditated, should be especially drawn not only to revolutions in atmospheric temperature and precipitation, but to the more easily ascertained and perhaps more important local changes produced by these operations in the temperature and the hygrometric state of the superficial strata of the earth, and in its spontaneous vegetable and animal products. The rapid extension of railroads, which now everywhere keeps pace with, and sometimes even precedes, the occupation of new soil for agricultural purposes, furnishes great facilities for enlarging our knowledge of the topography of the territory they traverse, because their cuttings reveal the composition and general structure of surface, and the inclination and elevation of their lines constitute known hypsometrical sections, which give numerous points of departure for the measurement of higher and lower stations, and of course for determining the relief and depression of surface, the slope of the beds of watercourses, and many other not less important questions.[37] The geological, hydrographical, and topographical surveys, which almost every general and even local government of the civilized world is carrying on, are making yet more important contributions to our stock of geographical and general physical knowledge, and, within a comparatively short space, there will be an accumulation of well established constant and historical facts, from which we can safely reason upon all the relations of action and reaction between man and external nature. But we are, even now, breaking up the floor and wainscoting and doors and window frames of our dwelling, for fuel to warm our bodies and seethe our pottage, and the world cannot afford to wait till the slow and sure progress of exact science has taught it a better economy. Many practical lessons have been learned by the common observation of unschooled men; and the teachings of simple experience, on topics where natural philosophy has scarcely yet spoken, are not to be despised. In these humble pages, which do not in the least aspire to rank among scientific expositions of the laws of nature, I shall attempt to give the most important practical conclusions suggested by the history of man's efforts to replenish the earth and subdue it; and I shall aim to support those conclusions by such facts and illustrations only as address themselves to the understanding of every intelligent reader, and as are to be found recorded in works capable of profitable perusal, or at least consultation, by persons who have not enjoyed a special scientific training. CHAPTER II. TRANSFER, MODIFICATION, AND EXTIRPATION OF VEGETABLE AND OF ANIMAL SPECIES. MODERN GEOGRAPHY EMBRACES ORGANIC LIFE--TRANSFER OF VEGETABLE LIFE-- FOREIGN PLANTS GROWN IN THE UNITED STATES--AMERICAN PLANTS GROWS IN EUROPE--MODES OF INTRODUCTION OF FOREIGN PLANTS--VEGETABLES, HOW AFFECTED BY TRANSFER TO FOREIGN SOILS--EXTIRPATION OF VEGETABLES-- ORIGIN OF DOMESTIC PLANTS--ORGANIC LIFE AS A GEOLOGICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL AGENCY--ORIGIN AND TRANSFER OF DOMESTIC ANIMALS--EXTIRPATION OF ANIMALS--NUMBERS OF BIRDS IN THE UNITED STATES--BIRDS AS SOWERS AND CONSUMERS OF SEEDS, AND AS DESTROYERS OF INSECTS--DIMINUTION AND EXTIRPATION OF BIRDS--INTRODUCTION OF BIRDS--UTILITY OF INSECTS AND WORMS--INTRODUCTION OF INSECTS--DESTRUCTION OF INSECTS--REPTILES-- DESTRUCTION OF FISH--INTRODUCTION AND BREEDING OF FISH--EXTIRPATION OF AQUATIC ANIMALS--MINUTE ORGANISMS. _Modern Geography embraces Organic Life._ It was a narrow view of geography which confined that science to delineation of terrestrial surface and outline, and to description of the relative position and magnitude of land and water. In its improved form, it embraces not only the globe itself, but the living things which vegetate or move upon it, the varied influences they exert upon each other, the reciprocal action and reaction between them and the earth they inhabit. Even if the end of geographical studies were only to obtain a knowledge of the external forms of the mineral and fluid masses which constitute the globe, it would still be necessary to take into account the element of life; for every plant, every animal, is a geographical agency, man a destructive, vegetables, and even wild beasts, restorative powers. The rushing waters sweep down earth from the uplands; in the first moment of repose, vegetation seeks to reëstablish itself on the bared surface, and, by the slow deposit of its decaying products, to raise again the soil which the torrent had lowered. So important an element of reconstruction is this, that it has been seriously questioned whether, upon the whole, vegetation does not contribute as much to elevate, as the waters to depress, the level of the surface. Whenever man has transported a plant from its native habitat to a new soil, he has introduced a new geographical force to act upon it, and this generally at the expense of some indigenous growth which the foreign vegetable has supplanted. The new and the old plants are rarely the equivalents of each other, and the substitution of an exotic for a native tree, shrub, or grass, increases or diminishes the relative importance of the vegetable element in the geography of the country to which it is removed. Further, man sows that he may reap. The products of agricultural industry are not suffered to rot upon the ground, and thus raise it by an annual stratum of new mould. They are gathered, transported to greater or less distances, and after they have served their uses in human economy, they enter, on the final decomposition of their elements, into new combinations, and are only in small proportion returned to the soil on which they grew. The roots of the grasses, and of many other cultivated plants, however, usually remain and decay in the earth, and contribute to raise its surface, though certainly not in the same degree as the forest. The vegetables, which have taken the place of trees, unquestionably perform many of the same functions. They radiate heat, they condense the humidity of the atmosphere, they act upon the chemical constitution of the air, their roots penetrate the earth to greater depths than is commonly supposed, and form an inextricable labyrinth of filaments which bind the soil together and prevent its erosion by water. The broad-leaved annuals and perennials, too, shade the ground, and prevent the evaporation of moisture from its surface by wind and sun.[38] At a certain stage of growth, grass land is probably a more energetic radiator and condenser than even the forest, but this powerful action is exerted, in its full intensity, for a few days only, while trees continue such functions, with unabated vigor, for many months in succession. Upon the whole, it seems quite certain, that no cultivated ground is as efficient in tempering climatic extremes, or in conservation of geographical surface and outline, as is the soil which nature herself has planted. _Transfer of Vegetable Life._ It belongs to vegetable and animal geography, which are almost sciences of themselves, to point out in detail what man has done to change the distribution of plants and of animated life and to revolutionize the aspect of organic nature; but some of the more important facts bearing on this subject may pertinently be introduced here. Most of the fruit trees grown in Europe and the United States are believed, and--if the testimony of Pliny and other ancient naturalists is to be depended upon--many of them are historically known, to have originated in the temperate climates of Asia. The wine grape has been thought to be truly indigenous only in the regions bordering on the eastern end of the Black Sea, where it now, particularly on the banks of the Rion, the ancient Phasis, propagates itself spontaneously, and grows with unexampled luxuriance.[39] But, some species of the vine seem native to Europe, and many varieties of grape have been too long known as common to every part of the United States to admit of the supposition that they were all introduced by European colonists.[40] It is an interesting fact that the commerce--or at least the maritime carrying trade--and the agricultural and mechanical industry of the world are, in very large proportion, dependent on vegetable and animal products little or not at all known to ancient Greek, Roman, and Jewish civilization. In many instances, the chief supply of these articles comes from countries to which they are probably indigenous, and where they are still almost exclusively grown; but in many others, the plants or animals from which they are derived have been introduced by man into the regions now remarkable for their most successful cultivation, and that, too, in comparatively recent times, or, in other words, within two or three centuries. _Foreign Plants grown in the United States._ According to Bigelow, the United States had, on the first of June, 1860, in round numbers, 163,000,000 acres of improved land, the quantity having been increased by 50,000,000 acres within the ten years next preceding.[41] Not to mention less important crops, this land produced, in the year ending on the day last mentioned, in round numbers, 171,000,000 bushels of wheat, 21,000,000 bushels of rye, 172,000,000 bushels of oats, 15,000,000 bushels of pease and beans, 16,000,000 bushels of barley, orchard fruits to the value of $20,000,000, 900,000 bushels of cloverseed, 900,000 bushels of other grass seed, 104,000 tons of hemp, 4,000,000 pounds of flax, and 600,000 pounds of flaxseed. These vegetable growths were familiar to ancient European agriculture, but they were all introduced into North America after the close of the sixteenth century. Of the fruits of agricultural industry unknown to the Greeks and Romans, or too little employed by them to be of any commercial importance, the United States produced, in the same year, 187,000,000 pounds of rice, 18,000,000 bushels of buckwheat, 2,075,000,000 pounds of ginned cotton,[42] 302,000,000 pounds of cane sugar, 16,000,000 gallons of cane molasses, 7,000,000 gallons of sorghum molasses, all yielded by vegetables introduced into that country within two hundred years, and--with the exception of buckwheat, the origin of which is uncertain, and of cotton--all, directly or indirectly, from the East Indies; besides, from indigenous plants unknown to ancient agriculture, 830,000,000 bushels of Indian corn or maize, 429,000,000 pounds of tobacco, 110,000,000 bushels of potatoes, 42,000,000 bushels of sweet potatoes, 39,000,000 pounds of maple sugar, and 2,000,000 gallons of maple molasses. To all this we are to add 19,000,000 tons of hay, produced partly by new, partly by long known, partly by exotic, partly by native herbs and grasses, an incalculable quantity of garden vegetables, chiefly of European or Asiatic origin, and many minor agricultural products. The weight of this harvest of a year would be not less than 60,000,000 tons--which is eleven times the tonnage of all the shipping of the United States at the close of the year 1861--and, with the exception of the maple sugar, the maple molasses, and the products of the Western prairie lands and some small Indian clearings, it was all grown upon lands wrested from the forest by the European race within little more than two hundred years. The wants of Europe have introduced into the colonies of tropical America the sugar cane, the coffee plant, the orange and the lemon,[43] all of Oriental origin, have immensely stimulated the cultivation of the former two in the countries of which they are natives, and, of course, promoted agricultural operations which must have affected the geography of those regions to an extent proportionate to the scale on which they have been pursued. _American Plants grown in Europe._ America has partially repaid her debt to the Eastern continent. Maize and the potato are very valuable additions to the field agriculture of Europe and the East, and the tomato is no mean gift to the kitchen gardens of the Old World, though certainly not an adequate return for the multitude of esculent roots and leguminous plants which the European colonists carried with them.[44] I wish I could believe, with some, that America is not alone responsible for the introduction of the filthy weed, tobacco, the use of which is the most vulgar and pernicious habit engrafted by the semi-barbarism of modern civilization upon the less multifarious sensualism of ancient life;[45] but the alleged occurrence of pipe-like objects in Sclavonic, and, it has been said, in Hungarian sepulchres, is hardly sufficient evidence to convict those races of complicity in this grave offence against the temperance and the refinement of modern society. _Modes of Introduction of Foreign Plants._ Besides the vegetables I have mentioned, we know that many plants of smaller economical value have been the subjects of international exchange in very recent times. Busbequius, Austrian ambassador at Constantinople about the middle of the sixteenth century--whose letters contain one of the best accounts of Turkish life which have appeared down to the present day--brought home from the Ottoman capital the lilac and the tulip. The Belgian Clusius about the same time introduced from the East the horse chestnut, which has since wandered to America. The weeping willows of Europe and the United States are said to have sprung from a slip received from Smyrna by the poet Pope, and planted by him in an English garden; and the Portuguese declare that the progenitor of all the European and American oranges was an Oriental tree transplanted to Lisbon, and still living in the last generation.[46] The present favorite flowers of the parterres of Europe have been imported from America, Japan and other remote Oriental countries, within a century and a half, and, in fine, there are few vegetables of any agricultural importance, few ornamental trees or decorative plants, which are not now common to the three civilized continents. The statistics of vegetable emigration exhibit numerical results quite surprising to those not familiar with the subject. The lonely island of St. Helena is described as producing, at the time of its discovery in the year 1501, about sixty vegetable species, including some three or four known to grow elsewhere also. At the present time its flora numbers seven hundred and fifty species. Humboldt and Bonpland found, among the unquestionably indigenous plants of tropical America, monocotyledons only, all the dicotyledons of those extensive regions having been probably introduced after the colonization of the New World by Spain. The faculty of spontaneous reproduction and perpetuation necessarily supposes a greater power of accommodation, within a certain range, than we find in most domesticated plants, for it would rarely happen that the seed of a wild plant would fall into ground as nearly similar, in composition and condition, to that where its parent grew, as the soils of different fields artificially prepared for growing a particular vegetable are to each other. Accordingly, though every wild species affects a habitat of a particular character, it is found that, if accidentally or designedly sown elsewhere, it will grow under conditions extremely unlike those of its birthplace.[47] Cooper says: "We cannot say positively that _any_ plant is _uncultivable_ anywhere until it has been tried;" and this seems to be even more true of wild than of domesticated vegetation. The seven hundred new species which have found their way to St. Helena within three centuries and a half, were certainly not all, or even in the largest proportion, designedly planted there by human art, and if we were well acquainted with vegetable emigration, we should probably be able to show that man has intentionally transferred fewer plants than he has accidentally introduced into countries foreign to them. After the wheat, follow the tares that infest it. The weeds that grow among the cereal grains, the pests of the kitchen garden, are the same in America as in Europe.[48] The overturning of a wagon, or any of the thousand accidents which befall the emigrant in his journey across the Western plains, may scatter upon the ground the seeds he designed for his garden, and the herbs which fill so important a place in the rustic materia medica of the Eastern States, spring up along the prairie paths but just opened by the caravan of the settler.[49] The hortus siccus of a botanist may accidentally sow seeds from the foot of the Himalayas on the plains that skirt the Alps; and it is a fact of very familiar observation, that exotics, transplanted to foreign climates suited to their growth, often escape from the flower garden and naturalize themselves among the spontaneous vegetation of the pastures. When the cases containing the artistic treasures of Thorvaldsen were opened in the court of the museum where they are deposited, the straw and grass employed in packing them were scattered upon the ground, and the next season there sprang up from the seeds no less than twenty-five species of plants belonging to the Roman campagna, some of which were preserved and cultivated as a new tribute to the memory of the great Scandinavian sculptor, and at least four are said to have spontaneously naturalized themselves about Copenhagen.[50] In the campaign of 1814, the Russian troops brought, in the stuffing of their saddles and by other accidental means, seeds from the banks of the Dnieper to the valley of the Rhine, and even introduced the plants of the steppes into the environs of Paris. The Turkish armies, in their incursions into Europe, brought Eastern vegetables in their train, and left the seeds of Oriental wall plants to grow upon the ramparts of Buda and Vienna.[51] The Canada thistle, _Erigeron Canadense_, is said to have sprung up in Europe, two hundred years ago, from a seed which dropped out of the stuffed skin of a bird.[52] _Vegetables, how affected by Transfer to Foreign Soils._ Vegetables, naturalized abroad either by accident or design, sometimes exhibit a greatly increased luxuriance of growth. The European cardoon, an esculent thistle, has broken out from the gardens of the Spanish colonies on the La Plata, acquired a gigantic stature, and propagated itself, in impenetrable thickets, over hundreds of leagues of the Pampas; and the _Anacharis alsinastrum_, a water plant not much inclined to spread in its native American habitat, has found its way into English rivers, and extended itself to such a degree as to form a serious obstruction to the flow of the current, and even to navigation. Not only do many wild plants exhibit a remarkable facility of accommodation, but their seeds usually possess great tenacity of life, and their germinating power resists very severe trials. Hence, while the seeds of very many cultivated vegetables lose their vitality in two or three years, and can be transported safely to distant countries only with great precautions, the weeds that infest those vegetables, though not cared for by man, continue to accompany him in his migrations, and find a new home on every soil he colonizes. Nature fights in defence of her free children, but wars upon them when they have deserted her banners and tamely submitted to the dominion of man.[53] Not only is the wild plant much hardier than the domesticated vegetable, but the same law prevails in animated brute and even human life. The beasts of the chase are more capable of endurance and privation and more tenacious of life, than the domesticated animals which most nearly resemble them. The savage fights on, after he has received half a dozen mortal wounds, the least of which would have instantly paralyzed the strength of his civilized enemy, and, like the wild boar,[54] he has been known to press forward along the shaft of the spear which was transpiercing his vitals, and to deal a deathblow on the soldier who wielded it. True, domesticated plants can be gradually acclimatized to bear a degree of heat or of cold, which, in their wild state, they would not have supported; the trained English racer outstrips the swiftest horse of the pampas or prairies, perhaps even the less systematically educated courser of the Arab; the strength of the European, as tested by the dynamometer, is greater than that of the New Zealander. But all these are instances of excessive development of particular capacities and faculties at the expense of general vital power. Expose untamed and domesticated forms of life, together, to an entire set of physical conditions equally alien to the former habits of both, so that every power of resistance and accommodation shall be called into action, and the wild plant or animal will live, while the domesticated will perish. The saline atmosphere of the sea is specially injurious both to seeds and to very many young plants, and it is only recently that the transportation of some very important vegetables across the ocean has been made practicable, through the invention of Ward's airtight glass cases. It is by this means that large numbers of the trees which produce the Jesuit's bark have been successfully transplanted from America to the British possessions in the East, where it is hoped they will become fully naturalized. _Extirpation of Vegetables._ Lamentable as are the evils produced by the too general felling of the woods in the Old World, I believe it does not satisfactorily appear that any species of native forest tree has yet been extirpated by man on the Eastern continent. The roots, stumps, trunks, and foliage found in bogs are recognized as belonging to still extant species. Except in some few cases where there is historical evidence that foreign material was employed, the timber of the oldest European buildings, and even of the lacustrine habitations of Switzerland, is evidently the product of trees still common in or near the countries where such architectural remains are found; nor have the Egyptian catacombs themselves revealed to us the former existence of any woods not now familiar to us as the growth of still living trees.[55] It is, however, said that the yew tree, _Taxus baccata_, formerly very common in England, Germany, and--as we are authorized to infer from Theophrastus--in Greece, has almost wholly disappeared from the latter country, and seems to be dying out in Germany. The wood of the yew surpasses that of any other European tree in closeness and fineness of grain, and it is well known for the elasticity which of old made it so great a favorite with the English archer. It is much in request among wood carvers and turners, and the demand for it explains, in part, its increasing scarcity. It is also worth remarking that no insect depends upon it for food or shelter, or aids in its fructification, no bird feeds upon its berries--the latter a circumstance of some importance, because the tree hence wants one means of propagation or diffusion common to so many other plants. But it is alleged that the reproductive power of the yew is exhausted, and that it can no longer be readily propagated by the natural sowing of its seeds, or by artificial methods. If further investigation and careful experiment should establish this fact, it will go far to show that a climatic change, of a character unfavorable to the growth of the yew, has really taken place in Germany, though not yet proved by instrumental observation, and the most probable cause of such change would be found in the diminution of the area covered by the forests. The industry of man is said to have been so successful in the local extirpation of noxious or useless vegetables in China, that, with the exception of a few water plants in the rice grounds, it is sometimes impossible to find a single weed in an extensive district; and the late eminent agriculturist, Mr. Coke, is reported to have offered in vain a considerable reward for the detection of a weed in a large wheatfield on his estate in England. In these cases, however, there is no reason to suppose that diligent husbandry has done more than to eradicate the pests of agriculture within a comparatively limited area, and the cockle and the darnel will probably remain to plague the slovenly cultivator as long as the cereal grains continue to bless him.[56] _Origin of Domestic Plants._ One of the most important, and, at the same time, most difficult questions connected with our subject is: how far we are to regard our cereal grains, our esculent bulbs and roots, and the multiplied tree fruits of our gardens, as artificially modified and improved forms of wild, self-propagating vegetation. The narratives of botanical travellers have often announced the discovery of the original form and habitat of domesticated plants, and scientific journals have described the experiments by which the identity of particular wild and cultivated vegetables has been thought to be established. It is confidently affirmed that maize and the potato--which we must suppose to have been first cultivated at a much later period than the breadstuffs and most other esculent vegetables of Europe and the East--are found wild and self-propagating in Spanish America, though in forms not recognizable by the common observer as identical with the familiar corn and tuber of modern agriculture. It was lately asserted, upon what seemed very strong evidence, that the _Ægilops ovata_, a plant growing wild in Southern France, had been actually converted into common wheat; but, upon a repetition of the experiments, later observers have declared that the apparent change was only a case of temporary hybridation or fecundation by the pollen of true wheat, and that the grass alleged to be transformed into wheat could not be perpetuated as such from its own seed. The very great modifications which cultivated plants are constantly undergoing under our eyes, and the numerous varieties and races which spring up among them, certainly countenance the doctrine, that every domesticated vegetable, however dependent upon human care for growth and propagation in its present form, may have been really derived, by a long succession of changes, from some wild plant not now much resembling it. But it is, in every case, a question of evidence. The only satisfactory proof that a given wild plant is identical with a given garden or field vegetable, is the test of experiment, the actual growing of the one from the seed of the other, or the conversion of the one into the other by transplantation and change of conditions. It is hardly contended that any of the cereals or other plants important as human aliment, or as objects of agricultural industry, exist and propagate themselves uncultivated in the same form and with the same properties as when sown and reared by human art.[57] In fact, the cases are rare where the identity of a wild with a domesticated plant is considered by the best authorities as conclusively established, and we are warranted in affirming of but few of the latter, as a historically known or experimentally proved fact, that they ever did exist, or could exist, independently of man.[58] _Organic Life as a Geological and Geographical Agency._ The quantitative value of organic life, as a geological agency, seems to be inversely as the volume of the individual organism; for nature supplies by numbers what is wanting in the bulk of the plant or animal out of whose remains or structures she forms strata covering whole provinces, and builds up from the depths of the sea large islands, if not continents. There are, it is true, near the mouths of the great Siberian rivers which empty themselves into the Polar Sea, drift islands composed, in an incredibly large proportion, of the bones and tusks of elephants, mastodons, and other huge pachyderms, and many extensive caves in various parts of the world are half filled with the skeletons of quadrupeds, sometimes lying loose in the earth, sometimes cemented together into an osseous breccia by a calcareous deposit or other binding material. These remains of large animals, though found in comparatively late formations, generally belong to extinct species, and their modern congeners or representatives do not exist in sufficient numbers to be of sensible importance in geology or in geography by the mere mass of their skeletons.[59] But the vegetable products found with them, and, in rare cases, in the stomachs of some of them, are those of yet extant plants; and besides this evidence, the recent discovery of works of human art, deposited in juxtaposition with fossil bones, and evidently at the same time and by the same agency which buried these latter--not to speak of alleged human bones found in the same strata--proves that the animals whose former existence they testify were contemporaneous with man, and possibly even extirpated by him.[60] I do not propose to enter upon the thorny question, whether the existing races of man are genealogically connected with these ancient types of humanity, and I advert to these facts only for the sake of the suggestion that man, in his earliest known stages of existence, was probably a destructive power upon the earth, though perhaps not so emphatically as his present representatives. The larger wild animals are not now numerous enough in any one region to form extensive deposits by their remains; but they have, nevertheless, a certain geographical importance. If the myriads of large browsing and grazing quadrupeds which wander over the plains of Southern Africa--and the slaughter of which by thousands is the source of a ferocious pleasure and a brutal triumph to professedly civilized hunters--if the herds of the American bison, which are numbered by hundreds of thousands, do not produce visible changes in the forms of terrestrial surface, they have at least an immense influence on the growth and distribution of vegetable life, and, of course, indirectly upon all the physical conditions of soil and climate between which and vegetation a mutual interdependence exists. The influence of wild quadrupeds upon vegetable life has been little studied, and not many facts bearing upon it have been recorded, but, so far as it is known, it appears to be conservative rather than pernicious.[61] Few if any of them depend for their subsistence on vegetable products obtainable only by the destruction of the plant, and they seem to confine their consumption almost exclusively to the annual harvest of leaf or twig, or at least of parts of the vegetable easily reproduced. If there are exceptions to this rule, they are in cases where the numbers of the animal are so proportioned to the abundance of the vegetable, that there is no danger of the extermination of the plant from the voracity of the quadruped, or of the extinction of the quadruped from the scarcity of the plant. In diet and natural wants the bison resembles the ox, the ibex and the chamois assimilate themselves to the goat and the sheep; but while the wild animal does not appear to be a destructive agency in the garden of nature, his domestic congeners are eminently so. This is partly from the change of habits resulting from domestication and association with man, partly from the fact that the number of reclaimed animals is not determined by the natural relation of demand and spontaneous supply which regulates the multiplication of wild creatures, but by the convenience of man, who is, in comparatively few things, amenable to the control of the merely physical arrangements of nature. When the domesticated animal escapes from human jurisdiction, as in the case of the ox, the horse, the goat, and perhaps the ass--which, so far as I know, are the only well-authenticated instances of the complete emancipation of household quadrupeds--he becomes again an unresisting subject of nature, and all his economy is governed by the same laws as that of his fellows which have never been enslaved by man; but, so long as he obeys a human lord, he is an auxiliary in the warfare his master is ever waging against all existences except those which he can tame to a willing servitude. _Number of Quadrupeds in the United States._ Civilization is so intimately associated with, if not dependent upon, certain inferior forms of animal life, that cultivated man has never failed to accompany himself, in all his migrations, with some of these humble attendants. The ox, the horse, the sheep, and even the comparatively useless dog and cat, as well as several species of poultry, are voluntarily transported by every emigrant colony, and they soon multiply to numbers very far exceeding those of the wild genera most nearly corresponding to them.[62] According to the census of the United States for 1860,[63] the total number of horses in all the States of the American Union, was, in round numbers, 7,300,000; of asses and mules, 1,300,000; of the ox tribe, 29,000,000;[64] of sheep, 25,000,000; and of swine, 39,000,000. The only North American quadruped sufficiently gregarious in habits, and sufficiently multiplied in numbers, to form really large herds, is the bison, or, as he is commonly called in America, the buffalo; and this animal is confined to the prairie region of the Mississippi basin and Northern Mexico. The engineers sent out to survey railroad routes to the Pacific estimated the number of a single herd of bisons seen within the last ten years on the great plains near the Upper Missouri, at not less than 200,000, and yet the range occupied by this animal is now very much smaller in area than it was when the whites first established themselves on the prairies.[65] But it must be remarked that the American buffalo is a migratory animal, and that, at the season of his annual journeys, the whole stock of a vast extent of pasture ground is collected into a single army, which is seen at or very near any one point only for a few days during the entire season. Hence there is risk of great error in estimating the numbers of the bison in a given district from the magnitude of the herds seen at or about the same time at a single place of observation; and, upon the whole, it is neither proved nor probable that the bison was ever, at any one time, as numerous in North America as the domestic bovine species is at present. The elk, the moose, the musk ox, the caribou, and the smaller quadrupeds popularly embraced under the general name of deer,[66] though sufficient for the wants of a sparse savage population, were never numerically very abundant, and the carnivora which fed upon them were still less so. It is almost needless to add that the Rocky Mountain sheep and goat must always have been very rare. Summing up the whole, then, it is evident that the wild quadrupeds of North America, even when most numerous, were few compared with their domestic successors, that they required a much less supply of vegetable food, and consequently were far less important as geographical elements than the many millions of hoofed and horned cattle now fed by civilized man on the same continent. _Origin and Transfer of Domestic Quadrupeds._ Of the origin of our domestic animals, we know historically nothing, because their domestication belongs to the ages which preceded written history; but though they cannot all be specifically identified with now extant wild animals, it is presumable that they have been reclaimed from an originally wild state. Ancient annalists have preserved to us fewer data respecting the introduction of domestic animals into new countries than respecting the transplantation of domestic vegetables. Ritter, in his learned essay on the camel, has shown that this animal was not employed by the Egyptians until a comparatively late period in their history; that he was unknown to the Carthaginians until after the downfall of their commonwealth; and that his first appearance in Western Africa is more recent still. The Bactrian camel was certainly brought from Asia Minor to the Northern shores of the Black Sea, by the Goths, in the third or fourth century.[67] The Arabian single-humped camel, or dromedary, has been carried to the Canary Islands, partially introduced into Australia, Greece, Spain, and even Tuscany, experimented upon to little purpose in Venezuela, and finally imported by the American Government into Texas and New Mexico, where it finds the climate and the vegetable products best suited to its wants, and promises to become a very useful agent in the promotion of the special civilization for which those regions are adapted. America had no domestic quadruped but a species of dog, the lama tribe, and, to a certain extent, the bison or buffalo.[68] Of course, it owes the horse, the ass, the ox, the sheep, the goat, and the swine, as does also Australia, to European colonization. Modern Europe has, thus far, not accomplished much in the way of importation of new animals, though some interesting essays have been made. The reindeer was successfully introduced into Iceland about a century ago, while similar attempts failed, about the same time, in Scotland. The Cashmere or Thibet goat was brought to France a generation since, and succeeds well. The same or an allied species and the Asiatic buffalo were carried to South Carolina about the year 1850, and the former, at least, is thought likely to prove of permanent value in the United States. The yak, or Tartary ox, seems to thrive in France, and success has attended the recent efforts to introduce the South American alpaca into Europe. _Extirpation of Quadrupeds._ Although man never fails greatly to diminish, and is perhaps destined ultimately to exterminate, such of the larger wild quadrupeds as he cannot profitably domesticate, yet their numbers often fluctuate, and even after they seem almost extinct, they sometimes suddenly increase, without any intentional steps to promote such a result on his part. During the wars which followed the French Revolution, the wolf multiplied in many parts of Europe, partly because the hunters were withdrawn from the woods to chase a nobler game, and partly because the bodies of slain men and horses supplied this voracious quadruped with more abundant food. The same animal became again more numerous in Poland after the general disarming of the rural population by the Russian Government. On the other hand, when the hunters pursue the wolf, the graminivorous wild quadrupeds increase, and thus in turn promote the multiplication of their great four-footed destroyer by augmenting the supply of his nourishment. So long as the fur of the beaver was extensively employed as a material for fine hats, it bore a very high price, and the chase of this quadruped was so keen that naturalists feared its speedy extinction. When a Parisian manufacturer invented the silk hat, which soon came into almost universal use, the demand for beavers' fur fell off, and this animal--whose habits, as we have seen, are an important agency in the formation of bogs and other modifications of forest nature--immediately began to increase, reappeared in haunts which he had long abandoned, and can no longer be regarded as rare enough to be in immediate danger of extirpation. Thus the convenience or the caprice of Parisian fashion has unconsciously exercised an influence which may sensibly affect the physical geography of a distant continent. Since the invention of gunpowder, some quadrupeds have completely disappeared from many European and Asiatic countries where they were formerly numerous. The last wolf was killed in Great Britain two hundred years ago, and the bear was extirpated from that island still earlier. The British wild ox exists only in a few English and Scottish parks, while in Irish bogs, of no great apparent antiquity, are found antlers which testify to the former existence of a stag much larger than any extant European species. The lion is believed to have inhabited Asia Minor and Syria, and probably Greece and Sicily also, long after the commencement of the historical period, and he is even said to have been not yet extinct in the first-named two of these countries at the time of the first Crusades.[69] Two large graminivorous or browsing quadrupeds, the ur and the schelk, once common in Germany, are utterly extinct, the eland and the auerochs nearly so. The Nibelungen-Lied, which, in the oldest form preserved to us, dates from about the year 1,200, though its original composition no doubt belongs to an earlier period, thus sings: Then slowe the dowghtie Sigfrid a wisent and an elk, He smote four stoute uroxen and a grim and sturdie schelk.[70] Modern naturalists identify the elk with the eland, the wisent with the auerochs. The period when the ur and the schelk became extinct is not known. The auerochs survived in Prussia until the middle of the last century, but unless it is identical with a similar quadruped said to be found on the Caucasus, it now exists only in the Russian imperial forest of Bialowitz, where about a thousand are still preserved, and in some great menageries, as for example that at Schönbrunn, near Vienna, which, in 1852, had four specimens. The eland, which is closely allied to the American wapiti, if not specifically the same animal, is still kept in the royal preserves of Prussia, to the number of four or five hundred individuals. The chamois is becoming rare, and the ibex or steinbock, once common in all the high Alps, is now believed to be confined to the Cogne mountains in Piedmont, between the valleys of the Dora Baltea and the Orco. _Number of Birds in the United States._ The tame fowls play a much less conspicuous part in rural life than the quadrupeds, and, in their relations to the economy of nature, they are of very much less moment than four-footed animals, or than the undomesticated birds. The domestic turkey[71] is probably more numerous in the territory of the United States than the wild bird of the same species ever was, and the grouse cannot, at the period of their greatest abundance, have counted as many as we now number of the common hen. The dove, however, must fall greatly short of the wild pigeon in multitude, and it is hardly probable that the flocks of domestic geese and ducks are as numerous as once were those of their wild congeners. The pigeon, indeed, seems to have multiplied immensely, for some years after the first clearings in the woods, because the settlers warred unsparingly upon the hawk, while the crops of grain and other vegetable growths increased the supply of food within the reach of the young birds, at the age when their power of flight is not yet great enough to enable them to seek it over a wide area.[72] The pigeon is not described by the earliest white inhabitants of the American States as filling the air with such clouds of winged life as astonish naturalists in the descriptions of Audubon, and, at the present day, the net and the gun have so reduced its abundance, that its appearance in large numbers is recorded only at long intervals, and it is never seen in the great flocks remembered by many still living observers as formerly very common. _Birds as Sowers and Consumers of Seeds, and as Destroyers of Insects._ Wild birds form of themselves a very conspicuous and interesting feature in the _staffage_, as painters call it, of the natural landscape, and they are important elements in the view we are taking of geography, whether we consider their immediate or their incidental influence. Birds affect vegetation directly by sowing seeds and by consuming them; they affect it indirectly by destroying insects injurious, or, in some cases, beneficial to vegetable life. Hence, when we kill a seed-sowing bird, we check the dissemination of a plant; when we kill a bird which digests the seed it swallows, we promote the increase of a vegetable. Nature protects the seeds of wild, much more effectually than those of domesticated plants. The cereal grains are completely digested when consumed by birds, but the germ of the smaller stone fruits and of very many other wild vegetables is uninjured, perhaps even stimulated to more vigorous growth, by the natural chemistry of the bird's stomach. The power of flight and the restless habits of the bird enable it to transport heavy seeds to far greater distances than they could be carried by the wind. A swift-winged bird may drop cherry stones a thousand miles from the tree they grow on; a hawk, in tearing a pigeon, may scatter from its crop the still fresh rice it had swallowed at a distance of ten degrees of latitude,[73] and thus the occurrence of isolated plants in situations where their presence cannot otherwise well be explained, is easily accounted for. There is a large class of seeds apparently specially fitted by nature for dissemination by animals. I refer to those which attach themselves, by means of hooks, or by viscous juices, to the coats of quadrupeds and the feathers of birds, and are thus transported wherever their living vehicles may chance to wander. Some birds, too, deliberately bury seeds, not indeed with a foresight aiming directly at the propagation of the plant, but from apparently purposeless secretiveness, or as a mode of preserving food for future use. An unfortunate popular error greatly magnifies the injury done to the crops of grain and leguminous vegetables by wild birds. Very many of those generally supposed to consume large quantities of the seeds of cultivated plants really feed almost exclusively upon insects, and frequent the wheatfields, not for the sake of the grain, but for the eggs, larvæ, and fly of the multiplied tribes of insect life which are so destructive to the harvests. This fact has been so well established by the examination of the stomachs of great numbers of birds in Europe and New England, at different seasons of the year, that it is no longer open to doubt, and it appears highly probable that even the species which consume more or less grain generally make amends, by destroying insects whose ravages would have been still more injurious.[74] On this subject, we have much other evidence besides that derived from dissection. Direct observation has shown, in many instances, that the destruction of wild birds has been followed by a great multiplication of noxious insects, and, on the other hand, that these latter have been much reduced in numbers by the protection and increase of the birds that devour them. Many interesting facts of this nature have been collected by professed naturalists, but I shall content myself with a few taken from familiar and generally accessible sources. The following extract is from Michelet, _L'Oiseau_ pp. 169, 170: "The _stingy_ farmer--an epithet justly and feelingly bestowed by Virgil. Avaricious, blind, indeed, who proscribes the birds--those destroyers of insects, those defenders of his harvests. Not a grain for the creature which, during the rains of winter, hunts the future insect, finds out the nests of the larvæ, examines, turns over every leaf, and destroys, every day, thousands of incipient caterpillars. But sacks of corn for the mature insect, whole fields for the grasshoppers, which the bird would have made war upon. With eyes fixed upon his furrow, upon the present moment only, without seeing and without foreseeing, blind to the great harmony which is never broken with impunity, he has everywhere demanded or approved laws for the extermination of that necessary ally of his toil--the insectivorous bird. And the insect has well avenged the bird. It has become necessary to revoke in haste the proscription. In the Isle of Bourbon, for instance, a price was set on the head of the martin; it disappeared, and the grasshoppers took possession of the island, devouring, withering, scorching with a biting drought all that they did not consume. In North America it has been the same with the starling, the protector of Indian corn.[75] Even the sparrow, which really does attack grain, but which protects it still more, the pilferer, the outlaw, loaded with abuse and smitten with curses--it has been found in Hungary that they were likely to perish without him, that he alone could sustain the mighty war against the beetles and the thousand winged enemies that swarm in the lowlands; they have revoked the decree of banishment, recalled in haste this valiant militia, which, though deficient in discipline, is nevertheless the salvation of the country.[76] "Not long since, in the neighborhood of Rouen and in the valley of Monville, the blackbird was for some time proscribed. The beetles profited well by this proscription; their larvæ, infinitely multiplied, carried on their subterranean labors with such success, that a meadow was shown me, the surface of which was completely dried up, every herbaceous root was consumed, and the whole grassy mantle, easily loosened, might have been rolled up and carried away like a carpet." _Diminution and Extirpation of Birds._ The general hostility of the European populace to the smaller birds is, in part, the remote effect of the reaction created by the game laws. When the restrictions imposed upon the chase by those laws were suddenly removed in France, the whole people at once commenced a destructive campaign against every species of wild animal. Arthur Young, writing in Provence, on the 30th of August, 1789, soon after the National Assembly had declared the chase free, thus complains of the annoyance he experienced from the use made by the peasantry of their newly won liberty. "One would think that every rusty firelock in all Provence was at work in the indiscriminate destruction of all the birds. The wadding buzzed by my ears, or fell into my carriage, five or six times in the course of the day." * * "The declaration of the Assembly that every man is free to hunt on his own land * * has filled all France with an intolerable cloud of sportsmen. * * The declaration speaks of compensations and indemnities [to the _seigneurs_], but the ungovernable populace takes advantage of the abolition of the game laws and laughs at the obligation imposed by the decree." The French Revolution removed similar restrictions, with similar results, in other countries. The habits then formed have become hereditary on the Continent, and though game laws still exist in England, there is little doubt that the blind prejudices of the ignorant and half-educated classes in that country against birds are, in some degree, at least, due to a legislation, which, by restricting the chase of all game worth killing, drives the unprivileged sportsman to indemnify himself by slaughtering all wild life which is not reserved for the amusement of his betters. Hence the lord of the manor buys his partridges and his hares by sacrificing the bread of his tenants, and so long as the farmers of Crawley are forbidden to follow higher game, they will suicidally revenge themselves by destroying the sparrows which protect their wheatfields. On the Continent, and especially in Italy, the comparative scarcity and dearness of animal food combine with the feeling I have just mentioned to stimulate still further the destructive passions of the fowler. In the Tuscan province of Grosseto, containing less than 2,000 square miles, nearly 300,000 thrushes and other small birds are annually brought to market.[77] Birds are less hardy in constitution, they possess less facility of accommodation,[78] and they are more severely affected by climatic excess than quadrupeds. Besides, they generally want the means of shelter against the inclemency of the weather and against pursuit by their enemies, which holes and dens afford to burrowing animals and to some larger beasts of prey. The egg is exposed to many dangers before hatching, and the young bird is especially tender, defenceless, and helpless. Every cold rain, every violent wind, every hailstorm during the breeding season, destroys hundreds of nestlings, and the parent often perishes with her progeny while brooding over it in the vain effort to protect it.[79] The great proportional numbers of birds, their migratory habits, and the ease with which they may escape most dangers that beset them, would seem to secure them from extirpation, and even from very great numerical reduction. But experience shows that when not protected by law, by popular favor or superstition, or by other special circumstances, they yield very readily to the hostile influences of civilization, and, though the first operations of the settler are favorable to the increase of many species, the great extension of rural and of mechanical industry is, in a variety of ways, destructive even to tribes not directly warred upon by man.[80] Nature sets bounds to the disproportionate increase of birds, while at the same time, by the multitude of their resources, she secures them from extinction through her own spontaneous agencies. Man both preys upon them and wantonly destroys them. The delicious flavor of game birds, and the skill implied in the various arts of the sportsman who devotes himself to fowling, make them favorite objects of the chase, while the beauty of their plumage, as a military and feminine decoration, threatens to involve the sacrifice of the last survivor of many once numerous species. Thus far, but few birds described by ancient or modern naturalists are known to have become absolutely extinct, though there are some cases in which they are ascertained to have utterly disappeared from the face of the earth in very recent times. The most familiar instances are those of the dodo, a large bird peculiar to the Mauritius or Isle of France, exterminated about the year 1690, and now known only by two or three fragments of skeletons, and the solitary, which inhabited the islands of Bourbon and Rodriguez, but has not been seen for more than a century. A parrot and some other birds of the Norfolk Island group are said to have lately become extinct. The wingless auk, _Alca impennis_, a bird remarkable for its excessive fatness, was very abundant two or three hundred years ago in the Faroe Islands, and on the whole Scandinavian seaboard. The early voyagers found either the same or a closely allied species, in immense numbers, on all the coasts and islands of Newfoundland. The value of its flesh and its oil made it one of the most important resources of the inhabitants of those sterile regions, and it was naturally an object of keen pursuit. It is supposed to be now completely extinct, and few museums can show even its skeleton. There seems to be strong reason to believe that our boasted modern civilization is guiltless of one or two sins of extermination which have been committed in recent ages. New Zealand formerly possessed three species of dinornis, one of which, called _moa_ by the islanders, was much larger than the ostrich. The condition in which the bones of these birds have been found and the traditions of the natives concur to prove that, though the aborigines had probably extirpated them before the discovery of New Zealand by the whites, they still existed at a comparatively late period. The same remarks apply to a winged giant the eggs of which have been brought from Madagascar. This bird must have much exceeded the dimensions of the moa, at least so far as we can judge from the egg, which is eight times as large as the average size of the ostrich egg, or about one hundred and fifty times that of the hen. But though we have no evidence that man has exterminated many species of birds, we know that his persecutions have caused their disappearance from many localities where they once were common, and greatly diminished their numbers in others. The cappercailzie, _Tetrao urogallus_, the finest of the grouse family, formerly abundant in Scotland, had become extinct in Great Britain, but has been reintroduced from Sweden.[81] The ostrich is mentioned by all the old travellers, as common on the Isthmus of Suez down to the middle of the seventeenth century. It appears to have frequented Syria and even Asia Minor at earlier periods, but is now found only in the seclusion of remoter deserts. The modern increased facilities of transportation have brought distant markets within reach of the professional hunter, and thereby given a new impulse to his destructive propensities. Not only do all Great Britain and Ireland contribute to the supply of game for the British capital, but the canvas-back duck of the Potomac, and even the prairie hen from the basin of the Mississippi, may be found at the stalls of the London poulterer. Kohl[82] informs us that on the coasts of the North Sea, twenty thousand wild ducks are usually taken in the course of the season in a single decoy, and sent to the large maritime towns for sale. The statistics of the great European cities show a prodigious consumption of game birds, but the official returns fall far below the truth, because they do not include the rural districts, and because neither the poacher nor his customers report the number of his victims. Reproduction, in cultivated countries, cannot keep pace with this excessive destruction, and there is no doubt that all the wild birds which are chased for their flesh or their plumage are diminishing with a rapidity which justifies the fear that the last of them will soon follow the dodo and the wingless auk. Fortunately the larger birds which are pursued for their flesh or for their feathers, and those the eggs of which are used as food, are, so far as we know the functions appointed to them by nature, not otherwise specially useful to man, and, therefore, their wholesale destruction is an economical evil only in the same sense in which all waste of productive capital is an evil. If it were possible to confine the consumption of game fowl to a number equal to the annual increase, the world would be a gainer, but not to the same extent as it would be by checking the wanton sacrifice of millions of the smaller birds, which are of no real value as food, but which, as we have seen, render a most important service by battling, in our behalf, as well as in their own, against the countless legions of humming and of creeping things, with which the prolific powers of insect life would otherwise cover the earth. _Introduction of Birds._ Man has undesignedly introduced into new districts perhaps fewer species of birds than of quadrupeds; but the distribution of birds is very much influenced by the character of his industry, and the transplantation of every object of agricultural production is, at a longer or shorter interval, followed by that of the birds which feed upon its seeds, or more frequently upon the insects it harbors. The vulture, the crow, and other winged scavengers, follow the march of armies as regularly as the wolf. Birds accompany ships on long voyages, for the sake of the offal which is thrown overboard, and, in such cases, it might often happen that they would breed and become naturalized in countries where they had been unknown before.[83] There is a familiar story of an English bird which built its nest in an unused block in the rigging of a ship, and made one or two short voyages with the vessel while hatching its eggs. Had the young become fledged while lying in a foreign harbor, they would of course have claimed the rights of citizenship in the country where they first took to the wing.[84] Some enthusiastic entomologist will, perhaps, by and by discover that insects and worms are as essential as the larger organisms to the proper working of the great terraqueous machine, and we shall have as eloquent pleas in defence of the mosquito, and perhaps even of the tzetze fly, as Toussenel and Michelet have framed in behalf of the bird.[85] The silkworm and the bee need no apologist; a gallnut produced by the puncture of an insect on a Syrian oak is a necessary ingredient in the ink I am writing with, and from my windows I recognize the grain of the kermes and the cochineal in the gay habiliments of the holiday groups beneath them. But agriculture, too, is indebted to the insect and the worm. The ancients, according to Pliny, were accustomed to hang branches of the wild fig upon the domestic tree, in order that the insects which frequented the former might hasten the ripening of the cultivated fig by their punctures--or, as others suppose, might fructify it by transporting to it the pollen of the wild fruit--and this process, called caprification, is not yet entirely obsolete. The earthworms long ago made good their title to the respect and gratitude of the farmer as well as of the angler. The utility of the earthworms has been pointed out in many scientific as well as in many agricultural treatises. The following extract, cut from a newspaper, will answer my present purpose: "Mr. Josiah Parkes, the consulting engineer of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, says that worms are great assistants to the drainer, and valuable aids to the farmer in keeping up the fertility of the soil. He says they love moist, but not wet soils; they will bore down to, but not into water; they multiply rapidly on land after drainage, and prefer a deeply dried soil. On examining with Mr. Thomas Hammond, of Penhurst, Kent, part of a field which he had deeply drained, after long-previous shallow drainage, he found that the worms had greatly increased in number, and that their bores descended quite to the level of the pipes. Many worm bores were large enough to receive the little finger. Mr. Henry Handley had informed him of a piece of land near the sea in Lincolnshire, over which the sea had broken and killed all the worms--the field remained sterile until the worms again inhabited it. He also showed him a piece of pasture land near to his house, in which worms were in such numbers that he thought their casts interfered too much with its produce, which induced him to have it rolled at night in order to destroy the worms. The result was, that the fertility of the field greatly declined, nor was it restored until they had recruited their numbers, which was aided by collecting and transporting multitudes of worms from the fields. "The great depth into which worms will bore, and from which they push up fine fertile soil, and cast it on the surface, has been admirably traced by Mr. C. Darwin, of Down, Kent, who has shown that in a few years they have actually elevated the surface of fields by a large layer of rich mould, several inches thick--thus affording nourishment to the roots of grasses, and increasing the productiveness of the soil." It should be added that the writer quoted, and others who have discussed the subject, have overlooked one very important element in the fertilization produced by earthworms. I refer to the enrichment of the soil by their excreta during life, and by the decomposition of their remains when they die. The manure thus furnished is as valuable as the like amount of similar animal products derived from higher organisms, and when we consider the prodigious numbers of these worms found on a single square yard of some soils, we may easily see that they furnish no insignificant contribution to the nutritive material required for the growth of plants.[86] The perforations of the earthworm mechanically affect the texture of the soil and its permeability by water, and they therefore have a certain influence on the form and character of surface. But the geographical importance of insects proper, as well as of worms, depends principally on their connection with vegetable life as agents of its fecundation, and of its destruction.[87] I am acquainted with no single fact so strikingly illustrative of this importance, as the following statement which I take from a notice of Darwin's volume, On Various Contrivances by which British and Foreign Orchids are Fertilized by Insects, in the _Saturday Review_, of October 18, 1862: "The net result is, that some six thousand species of orchids are absolutely dependent upon the agency of insects for their fertilization. That is to say, were those plants unvisited by insects, they would all rapidly disappear." What is true of the orchids is more or less true of many other vegetable families. We do not know the limits of this agency, and many of the insects habitually regarded as unqualified pests, may directly or indirectly perform functions as important to the most valuable plants as the services rendered by certain tribes to the orchids. I say directly or indirectly, because, besides the other arrangements of nature for checking the undue multiplication of particular species, she has established a police among insects themselves, by which some of them keep down or promote the increase of others; for there are insects, as well as birds and beasts, of prey. The existence of an insect which fertilizes a useful vegetable may depend on that of another, which constitutes his food in some stage of his life, and this other again may be as injurious to some plant as his destroyer is beneficial to another. The equation of animal and vegetable life is too complicated a problem for human intelligence to solve, and we can never know how wide a circle of disturbance we produce in the harmonies of nature when we throw the smallest pebble into the ocean of organic life. This much, however, we seem authorized to conclude: as often as we destroy the balance by deranging the original proportions between different orders of spontaneous life, the law of self-preservation requires us to restore the equilibrium, by either directly returning the weight abstracted from one scale, or removing a corresponding quantity from the other. In other words, destruction must be either repaired by reproduction, or compensated by new destruction in an opposite quarter. The parlor aquarium has taught even those to whom it is but an amusing toy, that the balance of animal and vegetable life must be preserved, and that the excess of either is fatal to the other, in the artificial tank as well as in natural waters. A few years ago, the water of the Cochituate aqueduct at Boston became so offensive in smell and taste as to be quite unfit for use. Scientific investigation found the cause in the too scrupulous care with which aquatic vegetation had been excluded from the reservoir, and the consequent death and decay of the animalculæ which could not be shut out, nor live in the water without the vegetable element.[88] _Introduction of Insects._ The general tendency of man's encroachments upon spontaneous nature has been to increase insect life at the expense of vegetation and of the smaller quadrupeds and birds. Doubtless there are insects in all woods, but in temperate climates they are comparatively few and harmless, and the most numerous tribes which breed in the forest, or rather in its waters, and indeed in all solitudes, are those which little injure vegetation, such as mosquitoes, gnats, and the like. With the cultivated plants of man come the myriad tribes which feed or breed upon them, and agriculture not only introduces new species, but so multiplies the number of individuals as to defy calculation. Newly introduced vegetables frequently escape for years the insect plagues which had infested them in their native habitat; but the importation of other varieties of the plant, the exchange of seed, or some mere accident, is sure in the long run to carry the egg, the larva, or the chrysalis to the most distant shores where the plant assigned to it by nature as its possession has preceded it. For many years after the colonization of the United States, few or none of the insects which attack wheat in its different stages of growth, were known in America. During the Revolutionary war, the Hessian fly, _Cecidomyia destructor_, made its appearance, and it was so called because it was first observed in the year when the Hessian troops were brought over, and was popularly supposed to have been accidentally imported by those unwelcome strangers. Other destroyers of cereal grains have since found their way across the Atlantic, and a noxious European aphis has first attacked the American wheatfields within the last four or five years. Unhappily, in these cases of migration, the natural corrective of excessive multiplication, the parasitic or voracious enemy of the noxious insect, does not always accompany the wanderings of its prey, and the bane long precedes the antidote. Hence, in the United States, the ravages of imported insects injurious to cultivated crops, not being checked by the counteracting influences which nature had provided to limit their devastations in the Old World, are much more destructive than in Europe. It is not known that the wheat midge is preyed upon in America by any other insect, and in seasons favorable to it, it multiplies to a degree which would prove almost fatal to the entire harvest, were it not that, in the great territorial extent of the United States, there is room for such differences of soil and climate as, in a given year, to present in one State all the conditions favorable to the increase of a particular insect, while in another, the natural influences are hostile to it. The only apparent remedy for this evil is, to balance the disproportionate development of noxious foreign species by bringing from their native country the tribes which prey upon them. This, it seems, has been attempted. The United States' Census Report for 1860, p. 82, states that the New York Agricultural Society "has introduced into this country from abroad certain parasites which Providence has created to counteract the destructive powers of some of these depredators." This is, however, not the only purpose for which man has designedly introduced foreign forms of insect life. The eggs of the silkworm are known to have been brought from the farther East to Europe in the sixth century, and new silk spinners which feed on the castor oil bean and the ailanthus, have recently been reared in France and in South America with promising success. The cochineal, long regularly bred in aboriginal America, has been transplanted to Spain, and both the kermes insect and the cantharides have been transferred to other climates than their own. The honey bee must be ranked next to the silkworm in economical importance.[89] This useful creature was carried to the United States by European colonists, in the latter part of the seventeenth century; it did not cross the Mississippi till the close of the eighteenth, and it is only within the last five or six years that it has been transported to California, where it was previously unknown. The Italian stingless bee has very lately been introduced into the United States. The insects and worms intentionally transplanted by man bear but a small proportion to those accidentally introduced by him. Plants and animals often carry their parasites with them, and the traffic of commercial countries, which exchange their products with every zone and every stage of social existence, cannot fail to transfer in both directions the minute organisms that are, in one way or another, associated with almost every object important to the material interests of man.[90] The tenacity of life possessed by many insects, their prodigious fecundity, the length of time they often remain in the different phases of their existence,[91] the security of the retreats into which their small dimensions enable them to retire, are all circumstances very favorable not only to the perpetuity of their species, but to their transportation to distant climates and their multiplication in their new homes. The teredo, so destructive to shipping, has been carried by the vessels whose wooden walls it mines to almost every part of the globe. The termite, or white ant, is said to have been brought to Rochefort by the commerce of that port a hundred years ago.[92] This creature is more injurious to wooden structures and implements than any other known insect. It eats out almost the entire substance of the wood, leaving only thin partitions between the galleries it excavates in it; but as it never gnaws through the surface to the air, a stick of timber may be almost wholly consumed without showing any external sign of the damage it has sustained. The termite is found also in other parts of France, and particularly at Rochelle, where, thus far, its ravages are confined to a single quarter of the city. A borer, of similar habits, is not uncommon in Italy, and you may see in that country, handsome chairs and other furniture which have been reduced by this insect to a framework of powder of post, covered, and apparently held together, by nothing but the varnish. The carnivorous, and often the herbivorous insects render an important service to man by consuming dead and decaying animal and vegetable matter, the decomposition of which would otherwise fill the air with effluvia noxious to health. Some of them, the grave-digger beetle, for instance, bury the small animals in which they lay their eggs, and thereby prevent the escape of the gases disengaged by putrefaction. The prodigious rapidity of development in insect life, the great numbers of the individuals in many species, and the voracity of most of them while in the larva state, justify the appellation of nature's scavengers which has been bestowed upon them, and there is very little doubt that, in warm countries, they consume a much larger quantity of putrescent organic material than the quadrupeds and the birds which feed upon such aliment. _Destruction of Insects._ It is well known to naturalists, but less familiarly to common observers, that the aquatic larvæ of some insects constitute, at certain seasons, a large part of the food of fresh-water fish, while other larvæ, in their turn, prey upon the spawn and even the young of their persecutors.[93] The larvæ of the mosquito and the gnat are the favorite food of the trout in the wooded regions where those insects abound.[94] Earlier in the year the trout feeds on the larvæ of the May fly, which is itself very destructive to the spawn of the salmon, and hence, by a sort of house-that-Jack-built, the destruction of the mosquito, that feeds the trout that preys on the May fly that destroys the eggs that hatch the salmon that pampers the epicure, may occasion a scarcity of this latter fish in waters where he would otherwise be abundant. Thus all nature is linked together by invisible bonds, and every organic creature, however low, however feeble, however dependent, is necessary to the well-being of some other among the myriad forms of life with which the Creator has peopled the earth. I have said that man has promoted the increase of the insect and the worm, by destroying the bird and the fish which feed upon them. Many insects, in the four different stages of their growth, inhabit in succession the earth, the water, and the air. In each of these elements they have their special enemies, and, deep and dark as are the minute recesses in which they hide themselves, they are pursued to the remotest, obscurest corners by the executioners that nature has appointed to punish their delinquencies, and furnished with cunning contrivances for ferreting out the offenders and dragging them into the light of day. One tribe of birds, the woodpeckers, seems to depend for subsistence almost wholly on those insects which breed in dead or dying trees, and it is, perhaps, needless to say that the injury these birds do the forest is imaginary. They do not cut holes in the trunk of the tree to prepare a lodgment for a future colony of boring larvæ, but to extract the worm which has already begun his mining labors. Hence these birds are not found where the forester removes trees as fast as they become fit habitations for such insects. In clearing new lands in the United States, dead trees, especially of the spike-leaved kinds, too much decayed to serve for timber, and which, in that state, are worth little for fuel, are often allowed to stand until they fall of themselves. Such _stubs_, as they are popularly called, are filled with borers, and often deeply cut by the woodpeckers, whose strong bills enable them to penetrate to the very heart of the tree and drag out the lurking larvæ. After a few years, the stubs fall, or, as wood becomes valuable, are cut and carried off for firewood, and, at the same time, the farmer selects for felling, in the forest he has reserved as a permanent source of supply of fuel and timber, the decaying trees which, like the dead stems in the fields, serve as a home for both the worm and his pursuer. We thus gradually extirpate this tribe of insects, and, with them, the species of birds which subsist principally upon them. Thus the fine, large, red-headed woodpecker, _Picus erythrocephalus_, formerly very common in New England, has almost entirely disappeared from those States, since the dead trees are gone, and the apples, his favorite vegetable food, are less abundant. There are even large quadrupeds which feed almost exclusively upon insects. The ant bear is strong enough to pull down the clay houses built by the species of termites that constitute his ordinary diet, and the curious ai-ai, a climbing quadruped of Madagascar--of which I believe only a single specimen, secured by Mr. Sandwith, has yet reached Europe--is provided with a very slender, hook-nailed finger, long enough to reach far into a hole in the trunk of a tree, and extract the worm which bored it. _Reptiles._ But perhaps the most formidable foes of the insect, and even of the small rodents, are the reptiles. The chameleon approaches the insect perched upon the twig of a tree, with an almost imperceptible slowness of motion, until, at the distance of a foot, he shoots out his long, slimy tongue, and rarely fails to secure the victim. Even the slow toad catches the swift and wary housefly in the same manner; and in the warm countries of Europe, the numerous lizards contribute very essentially to the reduction of the insect population, which they both surprise in the winged state upon walls and trees, and consume as egg, worm, and chrysalis, in their earlier metamorphoses. The serpents feed much upon insects, as well as upon mice, moles, and small reptiles, including also other snakes. The disgust and fear with which the serpent is so universally regarded expose him to constant persecution by man, and perhaps no other animal is so relentlessly sacrificed by him. In temperate climates, snakes are consumed by scarcely any beast or bird of prey except the stork, and they have few dangerous enemies but man, though in the tropics other animals prey upon them.[95] It is doubtful whether any species of serpent has been exterminated within the human period, and even the dense population of China has not been able completely to rid itself of the viper. They have, however, almost entirely disappeared from particular localities. The rattlesnake is now wholly unknown in many large districts where it was extremely common half a century ago, and Palestine has long been, if not absolutely free from venomous serpents, at least very nearly so.[96] _Destruction of Fish._ The inhabitants of the waters seem comparatively secure from human pursuit or interference by the inaccessibility of their retreats, and by our ignorance of their habits--a natural result of the difficulty of observing the ways of creatures living in a medium in which we cannot exist. Human agency has, nevertheless, both directly and incidentally, produced great changes in the population of the sea, the lakes, and the rivers, and if the effects of such revolutions in aquatic life are apparently of small importance in general geography, they are still not wholly inappreciable. The great diminution in the abundance of the larger fish employed for food or pursued for products useful in the arts is familiar, and when we consider how the vegetable and animal life on which they feed must be affected by the reduction of their numbers, it is easy to see that their destruction may involve considerable modifications in many of the material arrangements of nature. The whale does not appear to have been an object of pursuit by the ancients, for any purpose, nor do we know when the whale fishery first commenced.[97] It was, however, very actively prosecuted in the Middle Ages, and the Biscayans seem to have been particularly successful in this as indeed in other branches of nautical industry.[98] Five hundred years ago, whales abounded in every sea. They long since became so rare in the Mediterranean as not to afford encouragement for the fishery as a regular occupation; and the great demand for oil and whalebone for mechanical and manufacturing purposes, in the present century, has stimulated the pursuit of the "hugest of living creatures" to such activity, that he has now almost wholly disappeared from many favorite fishing grounds, and in others is greatly diminished in numbers. What special functions, besides his uses to man, are assigned to the whale in the economy of nature, we do not know; but some considerations, suggested by the character of the food upon which certain species subsist, deserve to be specially noticed. None of the great mammals grouped under the general name of whale are rapacious. They all live upon small organisms, and the most numerous species feed almost wholly upon the soft gelatinous mollusks in which the sea abounds in all latitudes. We cannot calculate even approximately the number of the whales, or the quantity of organic nutriment consumed by an individual, and of course we can form no estimate of the total amount of animal matter withdrawn by them, in a given period, from the waters of the sea. It is certain, however, that it must have been enormous when they were more abundant, and that it is still very considerable. A very few years since, the United States had more than six hundred whaling ships constantly employed in the Pacific, and the product of the American whale fishery for the year ending June 1st, 1860, was seven millions and a half of dollars.[99] The mere bulk of the whales destroyed in a single year by the American and the European vessels engaged in this fishery would form an island of no inconsiderable dimensions, and each one of those taken must have consumed, in the course of his growth, many times his own weight of mollusks. The destruction of the whales must have been followed by a proportional increase of the organisms they feed upon, and if we had the means of comparing the statistics of these humble forms of life, for even so short a period as that between the years 1760 and 1860, we should find a difference sufficient, possibly, to suggest an explanation of some phenomena at present unaccounted for. For instance, as I have observed in another work,[100] the phosphorescence of the sea was unknown to ancient writers, or at least scarcely noticed by them, and even Homer--who, blind as tradition makes him when he composed his epics, had seen, and marked, in earlier life, all that the glorious nature of the Mediterranean and its coasts discloses to unscientific observation--nowhere alludes to this most beautiful and striking of maritime wonders. In the passage just referred to, I have endeavored to explain the silence of ancient writers with respect to this as well as other remarkable phenomena on psychological grounds; but is it not possible that, in modern times, the animalculæ which produce it may have immensely multiplied, from the destruction of their natural enemies by man, and hence that the gleam shot forth by their decomposition, or by their living processes, is both more frequent and more brilliant than in the days of classic antiquity? Although the whale does not prey upon smaller creatures resembling himself in form and habits, yet true fishes are extremely voracious, and almost every tribe devours unsparingly the feebler species, and even the spawn and young of its own. The enormous destruction of the pike, the trout family, and other ravenous fish, as well as of the fishing birds, the seal, and the otter, by man, would naturally have occasioned a great increase in the weaker and more defenceless fish on which they feed, had he not been as hostile to them also as to their persecutors. We have little evidence that any fish employed as human food has naturally multiplied in modern times, while all the more valuable tribes have been immensely reduced in numbers.[101] This reduction must have affected the more voracious species not used as food by man, and accordingly the shark, and other fish of similar habits, though not objects of systematic pursuit, are now comparatively rare in many waters where they formerly abounded. The result is, that man has greatly reduced the numbers of all larger marine animals, and consequently indirectly favored the multiplication of the smaller aquatic organisms which entered into their nutriment. This change in the relations of the organic and inorganic matter of the sea must have exercised an influence on the latter. What that influence has been, we cannot say, still less can we predict what it will be hereafter; but its action is not for that reason the less certain. _Introduction and Breeding of Fish._ The introduction and successful breeding of fish of foreign species appears to have been long practised in China and was not unknown to the Greeks and Romans. This art has been revived in modern times, but thus far without any important results, economical or physical, though there seems to be good reason to believe it may be employed with advantage on an extended scale. As in the case of plants, man has sometimes undesignedly introduced new species of aquatic animals into countries distant from their birthplace. The accidental escape of the Chinese goldfish from ponds where they were bred as a garden ornament, has peopled some European, and it is said American streams with this species. Canals of navigation and irrigation interchange the fish of lakes and rivers widely separated by natural barriers, as well as the plants which drop their seeds into the waters. The Erie Canal, as measured by its own channel, has a length of about three hundred and sixty miles, and it has ascending and descending locks in both directions. By this route, the fresh-water fish of the Hudson and the Upper Lakes, and some of the indigenous vegetables of these respective basins, have intermixed, and the fauna and flora of the two regions have now more species common to both than before the canal was opened. Some accidental attraction not unfrequently induces fish to follow a vessel for days in succession, and they may thus be enticed into zones very distant from their native habitat. Several years ago, I was told at Constantinople, upon good authority, that a couple of fish, of a species wholly unknown to the natives, had just been taken in the Bosphorus. They were alleged to have followed an English ship from the Thames, and to have been frequently observed by the crew during the passage, but I was unable to learn their specific character. Many of the fish which pass the greater part of the year in salt water spawn in fresh, and some fresh-water species, the common brook trout of New England for instance, which, under ordinary circumstances, never visit the sea, will, if transferred to brooks emptying directly into the ocean, go down into the salt water after spawning time, and return again the next season. Sea fish, the smelt among others, are said to have been naturalized in fresh water, and some naturalists have argued from the character of the fish of Lake Baikal, and especially from the existence of the seal in that locality, that all its inhabitants were originally marine species, and have changed their habits with the gradual conversion of the saline waters of the lake--once, as is assumed, a maritime bay--into fresh.[102] The presence of the seal is hardly conclusive on this point, for it is sometimes seen in Lake Champlain at the distance of some hundreds of miles from even brackish water. One of these animals was killed on the ice in that lake in February, 1810, another in February, 1846,[103] and remains of the seal have been found at other times in the same waters. The remains of the higher orders of aquatic animals are generally so perishable that, even where most abundant, they do not appear to be now forming permanent deposits of any considerable magnitude; but it is quite otherwise with shell fish, and, as we shall see hereafter, with many of the minute limeworkers of the sea. There are, on the southern coast of the United States, beds of shells so extensive that they were formerly supposed to have been naturally accumulated, and were appealed to as proofs of an elevation of the coast by geological causes; but they are now ascertained to have been derived from oysters, consumed in the course of long ages by the inhabitants of Indian towns. The planting of a bed of oysters in a new locality might, very probably, lead, in time, to the formation of a bank, which, in connection with other deposits, might perceptibly affect the line of a coast, or, by changing the course of marine currents, or the outlet of a river, produce geographical changes of no small importance. The transplantation of oysters to artificial ponds has long been common, and it appears to have recently succeeded well on a large scale in the open sea on the French coast. A great extension of this fishery is hoped for, and it is now proposed to introduce upon the same coast the American soft clam, which is so abundant in the tide-washed beach sands of Long Island Sound as to form an important article in the diet of the neighboring population. The intentional naturalization of foreign fish, as I have said, has not thus far yielded important fruits; but though this particular branch of what is called, not very happily, _pisciculture_, has not yet established its claims to the attention of the physical geographer or the political economist, the artificial breeding of domestic fish has already produced very valuable results, and is apparently destined to occupy an extremely conspicuous place in the history of man's efforts to compensate his prodigal waste of the gifts of nature. The restoration of the primitive abundance of salt and fresh water fish, is one of the greatest material benefits that, with our present physical resources, governments can hope to confer upon their subjects. The rivers, lakes, and seacoasts once restocked, and protected by law from exhaustion by taking fish at improper seasons, by destructive methods, and in extravagant quantities, would continue indefinitely to furnish a very large supply of most healthful food, which, unlike all domestic and agricultural products, would spontaneously renew itself and cost nothing but the taking. There are many sterile or wornout soils in Europe so situated that they might, at no very formidable cost, be converted into permanent lakes, which would serve not only as reservoirs to retain the water of winter rains and snow, and give it out in the dry season for irrigation, but as breeding ponds for fish, and would thus, without further cost, yield a larger supply of human food than can at present be obtained from them even at a great expenditure of capital and labor in agricultural operations. The additions which might be made to the nutriment of the civilized world by a judicious administration of the resources of the waters, would allow some restriction of the amount of soil at present employed for agricultural purposes, and a corresponding extension of the area of the forest, and would thus facilitate a return to primitive geographical arrangements which it is important partially to restore. _Extirpation of Aquatic Animals._ It does not seem probable that man, with all his rapacity and all his enginery, will succeed in totally extirpating any salt-water fish, but he has already exterminated at least one marine warm-blooded animal--Steller's sea cow--and the walrus, the sea lion, and other large amphibia, as well as the principal fishing quadrupeds, are in imminent danger of extinction. Steller's sea cow, _Rhytina Stelleri_, was first seen by Europeans in the year 1741, on Bering's Island. It was a huge amphibious mammal, weighing not less than eight thousand pounds, and appears to have been confined exclusively to the islands and coasts in the neighborhood of Bering's Strait. Its flesh was very palatable, and the localities it frequented were easily accessible from the Russian establishments in Kamtschatka. As soon as its existence and character, and the abundance of fur animals in the same waters, were made known to the occupants of those posts by the return of the survivors of Bering's expedition, so active a chase was commenced against the amphibia of that region, that, in the course of twenty-seven years, the sea cow, described by Steller as extremely numerous in 1741, is believed to have been completely extirpated, not a single individual having been seen since the year 1768. The various tribes of seals in the Northern and Southern Pacific, the walrus and the sea otter, are already so reduced in numbers that they seem destined soon to follow the sea cow, unless protected by legislation stringent enough, and a police energetic enough, to repress the ardent cupidity of their pursuers. The seals, the otter tribe, and many other amphibia which feed almost exclusively upon fish, are extremely voracious, and of course their destruction or numerical reduction must have favored the multiplication of the species of fish principally preyed upon by them. I have been assured by the keeper of several tamed seals that, if supplied at frequent intervals, each seal would devour not less than fourteen pounds of fish, or about a quarter of his own weight, in a day.[104] A very intelligent and observing hunter, who has passed a great part of his life in the forest, after carefully watching the habits of the fresh-water otter of the Northern American States, estimates their consumption of fish at about four pounds per day. Man has promoted the multiplication of fish by making war on their brute enemies, but he has by no means thereby compensated his own greater destructiveness.[105] The bird and beast of prey, whether on land or in the water, hunt only as long as they feel the stimulus of hunger, their ravages are limited by the demands of present appetite, and they do not wastefully destroy what they cannot consume. Man, on the contrary, angles to-day that he may dine to-morrow; he takes and dries millions of fish on the banks of Newfoundland, that the fervent Catholic of the shores of the Mediterranean may have wherewithal to satisfy the cravings of the stomach during next year's Lent, without imperilling his soul by violating the discipline of the papal church; and all the arrangements of his fisheries are so organized as to involve the destruction of many more fish than are secured for human use, and the loss of a large proportion of the annual harvest of the sea in the process of curing, or in transportation to the places of its consumption.[106] Fish are more affected than quadrupeds by slight and even imperceptible differences in their breeding places and feeding grounds. Every river, every brook, every lake stamps a special character upon its salmon, its shad, and its trout, which is at once recognized by those who deal in or consume them. No skill can give the fish fattened by food selected and prepared by man the flavor of those which are nourished at the table of nature, and the trout of the artificial ponds in Germany and Switzerland are so inferior to the brook fish of the same species and climate, that it is hard to believe them identical. The superior sapidity of the American trout to the European species, which is familiar to every one acquainted with both continents, is probably due less to specific difference than to the fact that, even in the parts of the New World which have been longest cultivated, wild nature is not yet tamed down to the character it has assumed in the Old, and which it will acquire in America also when her civilization shall be as ancient as is now that of Europe. Man has hitherto hardly anywhere produced such climatic or other changes as would suffice of themselves totally to banish the wild inhabitants of the dry land, and the disappearance of the native birds and quadrupeds from particular localities is to be ascribed quite as much to his direct persecutions as to the want of forest shelter, of appropriate food, or of other conditions indispensable to their existence. But almost all the processes of agriculture, and of mechanical and chemical industry, are fatally destructive to aquatic animals within reach of their influence. When, in consequence of clearing the woods, the changes already described as thereby produced in the beds and currents of rivers, are in progress, the spawning grounds of fish are exposed from year to year to a succession of mechanical disturbances; the temperature of the water is higher in summer, colder in winter, than when it was shaded and protected by wood; the smaller organisms, which formed the sustenance of the young fry, disappear or are reduced in numbers, and new enemies are added to the old foes that preyed upon them; the increased turbidness of the water in the annual inundations chokes the fish; and, finally, the quickened velocity of its current sweeps them down into the larger rivers or into the sea, before they are yet strong enough to support so great a change of circumstances.[107] Industrial operations are not less destructive to fish which live or spawn in fresh water. Milldams impede their migrations, if they do not absolutely prevent them, the sawdust from lumber mills clogs their gills, and the thousand deleterious mineral substances, discharged into rivers from metallurgical, chemical, and manufacturing establishments, poison them by shoals. _Minute Organisms._ Besides the larger creatures of the land and of the sea, the quadrupeds, the reptiles, the birds, the amphibia, the crustacea, the fish, the insects, and the worms, there are other countless forms of vital being. Earth, water, the ducts and fluids of vegetable and of animal life, the very air we breathe, are peopled by minute organisms which perform most important functions in both the living and the inanimate kingdoms of nature. Of the offices assigned to these creatures, the most familiar to common observation is the extraction of lime, and more rarely, of silex, from the waters inhabited by them, and the deposit of these minerals in a solid form, either as the material of their habitations or as the exuviæ of their bodies. The microscope and other means of scientific observation assure us that the chalk beds of England and of France, the coral reefs of marine waters in warm climates, vast calcareous and silicious deposits in the sea and in many fresh-water ponds, the common polishing earths and slates, and many species of apparently dense and solid rock, are the work of the humble organisms of which I speak, often, indeed, of animalculæ so small as to become visible only by the aid of lenses magnifying a hundred times the linear measures. It is popularly supposed that animalculæ, or what are commonly embraced under the vague name of infusoria, inhabit the water alone, but the atmospheric dust transported by every wind and deposited by every calm is full of microscopic life or of its relics. The soil on which the city of Berlin stands, contains at the depth of ten or fifteen feet below the surface, living elaborators of silex;[108] and a microscopic examination of a handful of earth connected with the material evidences of guilt has enabled the naturalist to point out the very spot where a crime was committed. It has been computed that one sixth part of the solid matter let fall by great rivers at their outlets consists of still recognizable infusory shells and shields, and, as the friction of rolling water must reduce much of these fragile structures to a state of comminution which even the microscope cannot resolve into distinct particles and identify as relics of animal or of vegetable life, we must conclude that a considerably larger proportion of river deposits is really the product of animalcules.[109] It is evident that the chemical, and in many cases the mechanical character of a great number of the objects important in the material economy of human life, must be affected by the presence of so large an organic element in their substance, and it is equally obvious that all agricultural and all industrial operations tend to disturb the natural arrangements of this element, to increase or to diminish the special adaptation of every medium in which it lives to the particular orders of being inhabited by it. The conversion of woodland into pasturage, of pasture into plough land, of swamp or of shallow sea into dry ground, the rotations of cultivated crops, must prove fatal to millions of living things upon every rood of surface thus deranged by man, and must, at the same time, more or less fully compensate this destruction of life by promoting the growth and multiplication of other tribes equally minute in dimensions. I do not know that man has yet endeavored to avail himself, by artificial contrivances, of the agency of these wonderful architects and manufacturers. We are hardly well enough acquainted with their natural economy to devise means to turn their industry to profitable account, and they are in very many cases too slow in producing visible results for an age so impatient as ours. The over-civilization of the nineteenth century cannot wait for wealth to be amassed by infinitesimal gains, and we are in haste to _speculate_ upon the powers of nature, as we do upon objects of bargain and sale in our trafficking one with another. But there are still some cases where the little we know of a life, whose workings are invisible to the naked eye, suggests the possibility of advantageously directing the efforts of troops of artisans that we cannot see. Upon coasts occupied by the corallines, the reef-building animalcule does not work near the mouth of rivers. Hence the change of the outlet of a stream, often a very easy matter, may promote the construction of a barrier to coast navigation at one point, and check the formation of a reef at another, by diverting a current of fresh water from the former and pouring it into the sea at the latter. Cases may probably be found in tropical seas, where rivers have prevented the working of the coral animalcules in straits separating islands from each other or from the mainland. The diversion of such streams might remove this obstacle, and reefs consequently be formed which should convert an archipelago into a single large island, and finally join that to the neighboring continent. Quatrefages proposed to destroy the teredo in harbors by impregnating the water with a mineral solution fatal to them. Perhaps the labors of the coralline animals might be arrested over a considerable extent of sea coast by similar means. The reef builders are leisurely architects, but the precious coral is formed so rapidly that the beds may be refished advantageously as often as once in ten years.[110] It does not seem impossible that this coral might be transplanted to the American coast, where the Gulf stream would furnish a suitable temperature beyond the climatic limits that otherwise confine its growth; and thus a new source of profit might perhaps be added to the scanty returns of the hardy fisherman. In certain geological formations, the diatomaceæ deposit, at the bottom of fresh-water ponds, beds of silicious shields, valuable as a material for a species of very light firebrick, in the manufacture of water glass and of hydraulic cement, and ultimately, doubtless, in many yet undiscovered industrial processes. An attentive study of the conditions favorable to the propagation of the diatomaceæ might perhaps help us to profit directly by the productivity of this organism, and, at the same time, disclose secrets of nature capable of being turned to valuable account in dealing with silicious rocks, and the metal which is the base of them. Our acquaintance with the obscure and infinitesimal life of which I have now been treating is very recent, and still very imperfect. We know that it is of vast importance in the economy of nature, but we are so ambitious to grasp the great, so little accustomed to occupy ourselves with the minute, that we are not yet prepared to enter seriously upon the question how far we can control and direct the operations, not of unembodied physical forces, but of beings, in popular apprehension, almost as immaterial as they. Nature has no unit of magnitude by which she measures her works. Man takes his standards of dimension from himself. The hair's breadth was his minimum until the microscope told him that there are animated creatures to which one of the hairs of his head is a larger cylinder than is the trunk of the giant California redwood to him. He borrows his inch from the breadth of his thumb, his palm and span from the width of his hand and the spread of his fingers, his foot from the length of the organ so named; his cubit is the distance from the tip of his middle finger to his elbow, and his fathom is the space he can measure with his outstretched arms. To a being who instinctively finds the standard of all magnitudes in his own material frame, all objects exceeding his own dimensions are absolutely great, all falling short of them absolutely small. Hence we habitually regard the whale and the elephant as essentially large and therefore important creatures, the animalcule as an essentially small and therefore unimportant organism. But no geological formation owes its origin to the labors or the remains of the huge mammal, while the animalcule composes, or has furnished, the substance of strata thousands of feet in thickness, and extending, in unbroken beds, over many degrees of terrestrial surface. If man is destined to inhabit the earth much longer, and to advance in natural knowledge with the rapidity which has marked his progress in physical science for the last two or three centuries, he will learn to put a wiser estimate on the works of creation, and will derive not only great instruction from studying the ways of nature in her obscurest, humblest walks, but great material advantage from stimulating her productive energies in provinces of her empire hitherto regarded as forever inaccessible, utterly barren.[111] CHAPTER III. THE WOODS. THE HABITABLE EARTH ORIGINALLY WOODED--THE FOREST DOES NOT FURNISH FOOD FOR MAN--FIRST REMOVAL OF THE WOODS--EFFECTS OF FIRE ON FOREST SOIL--EFFECTS OF THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FOREST--ELECTRICAL INFLUENCE OF TREES--CHEMICAL INFLUENCE OF THE FOREST. INFLUENCE OF THE FOREST, CONSIDERED AS INORGANIC MATTER, ON TEMPERATURE: _a_, ABSORBING AND EMITTING SURFACE; _b_, TREES AS CONDUCTORS OF HEAT; _c_, TREES IN SUMMER AND IN WINTER; _d_, DEAD PRODUCTS OF TREES; _e_, TREES AS A SHELTER TO GROUNDS TO THE LEEWARD OF THEM; _f_, TREES AS A PROTECTION AGAINST MALARIA--THE FOREST, AS INORGANIC MATTER, TENDS TO MITIGATE EXTREMES. TREES AS ORGANISMS: SPECIFIC TEMPERATURE--TOTAL INFLUENCE OF THE FOREST ON TEMPERATURE. INFLUENCE OF FORESTS ON THE HUMIDITY OF THE AIR AND THE EARTH: _a_, AS INORGANIC MATTER; _b_, AS ORGANIC--WOOD MOSSES AND FUNGI-- FLOW OF SAP--ABSORPTION AND EXHALATION OF MOISTURE BY TREES--BALANCE OF CONFLICTING INFLUENCES--INFLUENCE OF THE FOREST ON TEMPERATURE AND PRECIPITATION--INFLUENCE OF THE FOREST ON THE HUMIDITY OF THE SOIL-- ITS INFLUENCE ON THE FLOW OF SPRINGS--GENERAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE DESTRUCTION OF THE WOODS--LITERATURE AND CONDITION OF THE FOREST IN DIFFERENT COUNTRIES--THE INFLUENCE OF THE FOREST ON INUNDATIONS-- DESTRUCTIVE ACTION OF TORRENTS--THE PO AND ITS DEPOSITS--MOUNTAIN SLIDES--PROTECTION AGAINST THE FALL OF ROCKS AND AVALANCHES BY TREES--PRINCIPAL CAUSES OF THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FOREST--AMERICAN FOREST TREES--SPECIAL CAUSES OF THE DESTRUCTION OF EUROPEAN WOODS-- ROYAL FORESTS AND GAME LAWS--SMALL FOREST PLANTS, VITALITY OF SEEDS-- UTILITY OF THE FOREST--THE FORESTS OF EUROPE--FORESTS OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA--THE ECONOMY OF THE FOREST--EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN TREES COMPARED--SYLVICULTURE--INSTABILITY OF AMERICAN LIFE. _The Habitable Earth Originally Wooded._ There is good reason to believe that the surface of the habitable earth, in all the climates and regions which have been the abodes of dense and civilized populations, was, with few exceptions, already covered with a forest growth when it first became the home of man. This we infer from the extensive vegetable remains--trunks, branches, roots, fruits, seeds, and leaves of trees--so often found in conjunction with works of primitive art, in the boggy soil of districts where no forests appear to have existed within the eras through which written annals reach; from ancient historical records, which prove that large provinces, where the earth has long been wholly bare of trees, were clothed with vast and almost unbroken woods when first made known to Greek and Roman civilization;[112] and from the state of much of North and of South America when they were discovered and colonized by the European race.[113] These evidences are strengthened by observation of the natural economy of our own time; for, whenever a tract of country, once inhabited and cultivated by man, is abandoned by him and by domestic animals,[114] and surrendered to the undisturbed influences of spontaneous nature, its soil sooner or later clothes itself with herbaceous and arborescent plants, and at no long interval, with a dense forest growth. Indeed, upon surfaces of a certain stability, and not absolutely precipitous inclination, the special conditions required for the spontaneous propagation of trees may all be negatively expressed and reduced to these three: exemption from defect or excess of moisture, from perpetual frost, and from the depredations of man and browsing quadrupeds. Where these requisites are secured, the hardest rock is as certain to be overgrown with wood as the most fertile plain, though, for obvious reasons, the process is slower in the former than in the latter case. Lichens and mosses first prepare the way for a more highly organized vegetation. They retain the moisture of rains and dews, and bring it to act, in combination with the gases evolved by their organic processes, in decomposing the surface of the rocks they cover; they arrest and confine the dust which the wind scatters over them, and their final decay adds new material to the soil already half formed beneath and upon them. A very thin stratum of mould is sufficient for the germination of seeds of the hardy evergreens and birches, the roots of which are often found in immediate contact with the rock, supplying their trees with nourishment from a soil derived from the decomposition of their own foliage, or sending out long rootlets into the surrounding earth in search of juices to feed them. The eruptive matter of volcanoes, forbidding as is its aspect, does not refuse nutriment to the woods. The refractory lava of Etna, it is true, remains long barren, and that of the great eruption of 1669 is still almost wholly devoid of vegetation.[115] But the cactus is making inroads even here, while the volcanic sand and molten rock thrown out by Vesuvius soon becomes productive. George Sandys, who visited this latter mountain in 1611, after it had reposed for several centuries, found the throat of the volcano at the bottom of the crater "almost choked with broken rocks and _trees_ that are falne therein." "Next to this," he continues, "the matter thrown up is ruddy, light, and soft: more removed, blacke and ponderous: the uttermost brow, that declineth like the seates in a theater, flourishing with trees and excellent pasturage. The midst of the hill is shaded with chestnut trees, and others bearing sundry fruits."[116] I am convinced that forests would soon cover many parts of the Arabian and African deserts, if man and domestic animals, especially the goat and the camel, were banished from them. The hard palate and tongue and strong teeth and jaws of this latter quadruped enable him to break off and masticate tough and thorny branches as large as the finger. He is particularly fond of the smaller twigs, leaves, and seedpods of the _sont_ and other acacias, which, like the American Robinia, thrive well on dry and sandy soils, and he spares no tree the branches of which are within his reach, except, if I remember right, the tamarisk that produces manna. Young trees sprout plentifully around the springs and along the winter watercourses of the desert, and these are just the halting stations of the caravans and their routes of travel. In the shade of these trees, annual grasses and perennial shrubs shoot up, but are mown down by the hungry cattle of the Bedouin, as fast as they grow. A few years of undisturbed vegetation would suffice to cover such points with groves, and these would gradually extend themselves over soils where now scarcely any green thing but the bitter colocynth and the poisonous foxglove is ever seen. _The Forest does not Furnish Food for Man._ In a region absolutely covered with trees, human life could not long be sustained, for want of animal and vegetable food. The depths of the forest seldom furnish either bulb or fruit suited to the nourishment of man; and the fowls and beasts on which he feeds are scarcely seen except upon the margin of the wood, for here only grow the shrubs and grasses, and here only are found the seeds and insects, which form the sustenance of the non-carnivorous birds and quadrupeds.[117] _First Removal of the Forest._ As soon as multiplying man had filled the open grounds along the margin of the rivers, the lakes, and the sea, and sufficiently peopled the natural meadows and savannas of the interior, where such existed,[118] he could find room for expansion and further growth, only by the removal of a portion of the forest that hemmed him in. The destruction of the woods, then, was man's first geographical conquest, his first violation of the harmonies of inanimate nature. Primitive man had little occasion to fell trees for fuel, or, for the construction of dwellings, boats, and the implements of his rude agriculture and handicrafts. Windfalls would furnish a thin population with a sufficient supply of such material, and if occasionally a growing tree was cut, the injury to the forest would be too insignificant to be at all appreciable. The accidental escape and spread of fire, or, possibly, the combustion of forests by lightning, must have first suggested the advantages to be derived from the removal of too abundant and extensive woods, and, at the same time, have pointed out a means by which a large tract of surface could readily be cleared of much of this natural incumbrance. As soon as agriculture had commenced at all, it would be observed that the growth of cultivated plants, as well as of many species of wild vegetation, was particularly rapid and luxuriant on soils which had been burned over, and thus a new stimulus would be given to the practice of destroying the woods by fire, as a means of both extending the open grounds, and making the acquisition of a yet more productive soil. After a few harvests had exhausted the first rank fertility of the virgin mould, or when weeds and briers and the sprouting roots of the trees had begun to choke the crops of the half-subdued soil, the ground would be abandoned for new fields won from the forest by the same means, and the deserted plain or hillock would soon clothe itself anew with shrubs and trees, to be again subjected to the same destructive process, and again surrendered to the restorative powers of vegetable nature.[119] This rude economy would be continued for generations, and wasteful as it is, is still largely pursued in Northern Sweden, Swedish Lapland, and sometimes even in France and the United States.[120] _Effects of Fire on Forest Soil._ Aside from the mechanical and chemical effects of the disturbance of the soil by agricultural operations, and of the freer admission of sun, rain, and air to the ground, the fire of itself exerts an important influence on its texture and condition. It consumes a portion of the half-decayed vegetable mould which served to hold its mineral particles together and to retain the water of precipitation, and thus loosens, pulverizes, and dries the earth; it destroys reptiles, insects, and worms, with their eggs, and the seeds of trees and of smaller plants; it supplies, in the ashes which it deposits on the surface, important elements for the growth of a new forest clothing, as well as of the usual objects of agricultural industry; and by the changes thus produced, it fits the ground for the reception of a vegetation different in character from that which had spontaneously covered it. These new conditions help to explain the natural succession of forest crops, so generally observed in all woods cleared by fire and then abandoned. There is no doubt, however, that other influences contribute to the same result, because effects more or less analogous follow when the trees are destroyed by other causes, as by high winds, by the woodman's axe, and even by natural decay.[121] _Effects of Destruction of the Forest._ The physico-geographical effects of the destruction of the forests may be divided into two great classes, each having an important influence on vegetable and on animal life in all their manifestations, as well as on every branch of rural economy and productive industry, and, therefore, on all the material interests of man. The first respects the meteorology of the countries exposed to the action of these influences; the second, their superficial geography, or, in other words, configuration, consistence, and clothing of surface. For reasons assigned in the first chapter, the meteorological or climatic branch of the subject is the most obscure, and the conclusions of physicists respecting it are, in a great degree, inferential only, not founded on experiment or direct observation. They are, as might be expected, somewhat discordant, though certain general results are almost universally accepted, and seem indeed too well supported to admit of serious question. _Electrical Influence of Trees._ The properties of trees, singly and in groups, as exciters or conductors of electricity, and their consequent influence upon the electrical state of the atmosphere, do not appear to have been much investigated; and the conditions of the forest itself are so variable and so complicated, that the solution of any general problem respecting its electrical influence would be a matter of extreme difficulty. It is, indeed, impossible to suppose that a dense cloud, a sea of vapor, can pass over miles of surface bristling with good conductors, without undergoing some change of electrical condition. Hypothetical cases may be put in which the character of the change could be deduced from the known laws of electrical action. But in actual nature, the elements are too numerous for us to seize. The true electrical condition of neither cloud nor forest could be known, and it could seldom be predicted whether the vapors would be dissolved as they floated over the wood, or discharged upon it in a deluge of rain. With regard to possible electrical influences of the forest, wider still in their range of action, the uncertainty is even greater. The data which alone could lead to certain, or even probable, conclusions are wanting, and we should, therefore, only embarrass our argument by any attempt to discuss this meteorological element, important as it may be, in its relations of cause and effect to more familiar and better understood meteoric phenomena. It may, however, be observed that hail storms--which were once generally supposed, and are still held by many, to be produced by a specific electrical action, and which, at least, are always accompanied by electrical disturbances--are believed, in all countries particularly exposed to that scourge, to have become more frequent and destructive in proportion as the forests have been cleared. Caimi observes: "When the chains of the Alps and the Apennines had not yet been stripped of their magnificent crown of woods, the May hail, which now desolates the fertile plains of Lombardy, was much less frequent; but since the general prostration of the forest, these tempests are laying waste even the mountain soils whose older inhabitants scarcely knew this plague.[122] The _paragrandini_,[123] which the learned curate of Rivolta advised to erect, with sheaves of straw set up vertically, over a great extent of cultivated country, are but a Liliputian image of the vast paragrandini, pines, larches, firs, which nature had planted by millions on the crests and ridges of the Alps and the Apennines."[124] "Electrical action being diminished," says Meguscher, "and the rapid congelation of vapors by the abstraction of heat being impeded by the influence of the woods, it is rare that hail or waterspouts are produced, within the precincts of a large forest when it is assailed by the tempest."[125] Arthur Young was told that since the forests which covered the mountains between the Riviera and the county of Montferrat had disappeared, hail had become more destructive in the district of Acqui,[126] and it appears upon good authority, that a similar increase in the frequency and violence of hail storms in the neighborhood of Saluzzo and Mondovì, the lower part of the Valtelline, and the territory of Verona and Vicenza, is probably to be ascribed to a similar cause.[127] _Chemical Influence of the Forest._ We know that the air in a close apartment is appreciably affected through the inspiration and expiration of gases by plants growing in it. The same operations are performed on a gigantic scale by the forest, and it has even been supposed that the absorption of carbon, by the rank vegetation of earlier geological periods, occasioned a permanent change in the constitution of the terrestrial atmosphere.[128] To the effects thus produced, are to be added those of the ultimate gaseous decomposition of the vast vegetable mass annually shed by trees, and of their trunks and branches when they fall a prey to time. But the quantity of gases thus abstracted from and restored to the atmosphere is inconsiderable--infinitesimal, one might almost say--in comparison with the ocean of air from which they are drawn and to which they return; and though the exhalations from bogs, and other low grounds covered with decaying vegetable matter, are highly deleterious to human health, yet, in general, the air of the forest is hardly chemically distinguishable from that of the sand plains, and we can as little trace the influence of the woods in the analysis of the atmosphere, as we can prove that the mineral ingredients of land springs sensibly affect the chemistry of the sea. I may, then, properly dismiss the chemical, as I have done the electrical influences of the forest, and treat them both alike, if not as unimportant agencies, at least as quantities of unknown value in our meteorological equation.[129] Our inquiries upon this branch of the subject will accordingly be limited to the thermometrical and hygrometrical influences of the woods. _Influence of the Forest, considered as Inorganic Matter, on Temperature._ The evaporation of fluids, and the condensation and expansion of vapors and gases, are attended with changes of temperature; and the quantity of moisture which the air is capable of containing, and, of course, the evaporation, rise and fall with the thermometer. The hygroscopical and the thermoscopical conditions of the atmosphere are, therefore, inseparably connected as reciprocally dependent quantities, and neither can be fully discussed without taking notice of the other. But the forest, regarded purely as inorganic matter, and without reference to its living processes of absorption and exhalation of water and gases, has, as an absorbent, a radiator and a conductor of heat, and as a mere covering of the ground, an influence on the temperature of the air and the earth, which may be considered by itself. a. _Absorbing and Emitting Surface._ A given area of ground, as estimated by the every-day rule of measurement in yards or acres, presents always the same apparent quantity of absorbing, radiating, and reflecting surface; but the real extent of that surface is very variable, depending, as it does, upon its configuration, and the bulk and form of the adventitious objects it bears upon it; and, besides, the true superficies remaining the same, its power of absorption, radiation, reflection, and conduction of heat will be much affected by its consistence, its greater or less humidity, and its color, as well as by its inclination of plane and exposure.[130] An acre of chalk, rolled hard and smooth, would have great reflecting power, but its radiation would be much increased by breaking it up into clods, because the actually exposed surface would be greater, though the outline of the field remained the same. The area of a triangle being equal to its base multiplied by half the length of a perpendicular let fall from its apex, it follows that the entire superficies of the triangular faces of a quadrangular pyramid, the perpendicular of whose sides should be twice the length of the base, would be four times the area of the ground it covered, and would add to the field on which it stood so much surface capable of receiving and emitting heat, though, in consequence of obliquity and direction of plane, its actual absorption and emission of heat might not be so great as that of an additional quantity of level ground containing four times the area of its base. The lesser inequalities which always occur in the surface of ordinary earth affect in the same way its quantity of superficies acting upon the temperature of the atmosphere, and acted on by it, though the amount of this action and reaction is not susceptible of measurement. Analogous effects are produced by other objects, of whatever form or character, standing or lying upon the earth, and no solid can be placed upon a flat piece of ground, without itself exposing a greater surface than it covers. This applies, of course, to forest trees and their leaves, and indeed to all vegetables, as well as to other prominent bodies. If we suppose forty trees to be planted on an acre, one being situated in the centre of every square of two rods the side, and to grow until their branches and leaves everywhere meet, it is evident that, when in full foliage, the trunks, branches, and leaves would present an amount of thermoscopic surface much greater than that of an acre of bare earth; and besides this, the fallen leaves lying scattered on the ground, would somewhat augment the sum total.[131] On the other hand, the growing leaves of trees generally form a succession of stages, or, loosely speaking, layers, corresponding to the animal growth of the branches, and more or less overlying each other. This disposition of the foliage interferes with that free communication between sun and sky above, and leaf surface below, on which the amount of radiation and absorption of heat depends. From all these considerations, it appears that though the effective thermoscopic surface of a forest in full leaf does not exceed that of bare ground in the same proportion as does its measured superficies, yet the actual quantity of area capable of receiving and emitting heat must be greater in the former than in the latter case.[132] It must further be remembered that the form and texture of a given surface are important elements in determining its thermoscopic character. Leaves are porous, and admit air and light more or less freely into their substance; they are generally smooth and even glazed on one surface; they are usually covered on one or both sides with spiculæ, and they very commonly present one or more acuminated points in their outline--all circumstances which tend to augment their power of emitting heat by reflection or radiation. Direct experiment on growing trees is very difficult, nor is it in any case practicable to distinguish how far a reduction of temperature produced by vegetation is due to radiation, and how far to exhalation of the fluids of the plant in a gaseous form; for both processes usually go on together. But the frigorific effect of leafy structure is well observed in the deposit of dew and the occurrence of hoarfrost on the foliage of grasses and other small vegetables, and on other objects of similar form and consistence, when the temperature of the air a few yards above has not been brought down to the dew point, still less to 32°, the degree of cold required to congeal dew to frost.[133] b. _Trees as Conductors of Heat._ We are also to take into account the action of the forest as a conductor of heat between the atmosphere and the earth. In the most important countries of America and Europe, and especially in those which have suffered most from the destruction of the woods, the superficial strata of the earth are colder in winter, and warmer in summer than those a few inches lower, and their shifting temperature approximates to the atmospheric mean of the respective seasons. The roots of large trees penetrate beneath the superficial strata, and reach earth of a nearly constant temperature, corresponding to the mean for the entire year. As conductors, they convey the heat of the atmosphere to the earth when the earth is colder than the air, and transmit it in the contrary direction when the temperature of the earth is higher than that of the atmosphere. Of course, then, as conductors, they tend to equalize the temperature of the earth and the air. c. _Trees in Summer and Winter._ In countries where the questions I am considering have the greatest practical importance, a very large proportion, if not a majority, of the trees are of deciduous foliage, and their radiating as well as their shading surface is very much greater in summer than in winter. In the latter season, they little obstruct the reception of heat by the ground or the radiation from it; whereas, in the former, they often interpose a complete canopy between the ground and the sky, and materially interfere with both processes. d. _Dead Products of Trees._ Besides this various action of standing trees considered as inorganic matter, the forest exercises, by the annual moulting of its foliage, still another influence on the temperature of the earth, and, consequently, of the atmosphere which rests upon it. If you examine the constitution of the superficial soil in a primitive or an old and undisturbed artificially planted wood, you find, first, a deposit of undecayed leaves, twigs, and seeds, lying in loose layers on the surface; then, more compact beds of the same materials in incipient, and, as you descend, more and more advanced stages of decomposition; then, a mass of black mould, in which traces of organic structure are hardly discoverable except by microscopic examination; then, a stratum of mineral soil, more or less mixed with vegetable matter carried down into it by water, or resulting from the decay of roots; and, finally, the inorganic earth or rock itself. Without this deposit of the dead products of trees, this latter would be the superficial stratum, and as its powers of absorption, radiation, and conduction of heat would differ essentially from those of the layers with which it has been covered by the droppings of the forest, it would act upon the temperature of the atmosphere, and be acted on by it, in a very different way from the leaves and mould which rest upon it. Leaves, still entire, or partially decayed, are very indifferent conductors of heat, and, therefore, though they diminish the warming influence of the summer sun on the soil below them, they, on the other hand, prevent the escape of heat from that soil in winter, and, consequently, in cold climates, even when the ground is not covered by a protecting mantle of snow, the earth does not freeze to as great a depth in the wood as in the open field. e. _Trees as a Shelter to Ground to the Leeward._ The action of the forest, considered merely as a mechanical shelter to grounds lying to the leeward of it, would seem to be an influence of too restricted a character to deserve much notice; but many facts concur to show that it is an important element in local climate, and that it is often a valuable means of defence against the spread of miasmatic effluvia, though, in this last case, it may exercise a chemical as well as a mechanical agency. In the report of a committee appointed in 1836 to examine an article of the forest code of France, Arago observes: "If a curtain of forest on the coasts of Normandy and of Brittany were destroyed, these two provinces would become accessible to the winds from the west, to the mild breezes of the sea. Hence a decrease of the cold of winter. If a similar forest were to be cleared on the eastern border of France, the glacial east wind would prevail with greater strength, and the winters would become more severe. Thus the removal of a belt of wood would produce opposite effects in the two regions."[134] This opinion receives confirmation from an observation of Dr. Dwight, who remarks, in reference to the woods of New England: "Another effect of removing the forest will be the free passage of the winds, and among them of the southern winds, over the surface. This, I think, has been an increasing fact within my own remembrance. As the cultivation of the country has extended farther to the north, the winds from the south have reached distances more remote from the ocean, and imparted their warmth frequently, and in such degrees as, forty years since, were in the same places very little known. This fact, also, contributes to lengthen the summer, and to shorten the winter-half of the year."[135] It is thought in Italy that the clearing of the Apennines has very materially affected the climate of the valley of the Po. It is asserted in Le Alpi che cingono l'Italia that: "In consequence of the felling of the woods on the Apennines, the sirocco prevails greatly on the right bank of the Po, in the Parmesan territory, and in a part of Lombardy; it injures the harvests and the vineyards, and sometimes ruins the crops of the season. To the same cause many ascribe the meteorological changes in the precincts of Modena and of Reggio. In the communes of these districts, where formerly straw roofs resisted the force of the winds, tiles are now hardly sufficient; in others, where tiles answered for roofs, large slabs of stone are now ineffectual; and in many neighboring communes the grapes and the grain are swept off by the blasts of the south and southwest winds." On the other hand, according to the same authority, the pinery of Porto, near Ravenna--which is 33 kilometres long, and is one of the oldest pine woods in Italy--having been replanted with resinous trees after it was unfortunately cut, has relieved the city from the sirocco to which it had become exposed, and in a great degree restored its ancient climate.[136] The felling of the woods on the Atlantic coast of Jutland has exposed the soil not only to drifting sands, but to sharp sea winds, that have exerted a sensible deteriorating effect on the climate of that peninsula, which has no mountains to serve at once as a barrier to the force of the winds, and as a storehouse of moisture received by precipitation or condensed from atmospheric vapors.[137] It is evident that the effect of the forest, as a mechanical impediment to the passage of the wind, would extend to a very considerable distance above its own height, and hence protect while standing, or lay open when felled, a much larger surface than might at first thought be supposed. The atmosphere, movable as are its particles, and light and elastic as are its masses, is nevertheless held together as a continuous whole by the gravitation of its atoms and their consequent pressure on each other, if not by attraction between them, and, therefore, an obstruction which mechanically impedes the movement of a given stratum of air, will retard the passage of the strata above and below it. To this effect may often be added that of an ascending current from the forest itself, which must always exist when the atmosphere within the wood is warmer than the stratum of air above it, and must be of almost constant occurrence in the case of cold winds, from whatever quarter, because the still air in the forest is slow in taking up the temperature of the moving columns and currents around and above it. Experience, in fact, has shown that mere rows of trees, and even much lower obstructions, are of essential service in defending vegetation against the action of the wind. Hardy proposes planting, in Algeria, belts of trees at the distance of one hundred mètres from each other, as a shelter which experience had proved to be useful in France.[138] "In the valley of the Rhone," says Becquerel, "a simple hedge, two mètres in height, is a sufficient protection for a distance of twenty-two mètres."[139] The mechanical shelter acts, no doubt, chiefly as a defence against the mechanical force of the wind, but its uses are by no means limited to this effect. If the current of air which it resists moves horizontally, it would prevent the access of cold or parching blasts to the ground for a great distance; and did the wind even descend at a large angle with the surface, still a considerable extent of ground would be protected by a forest to the windward of it. If we suppose the trees of a wood to have a mean height of only twenty yards, they would often beneficially affect the temperature or the moisture of a belt of land two or three hundred yards in width, and thus perhaps rescue valuable crops from destruction.[140] The local retardation of spring so much complained of in Italy, France, and Switzerland, and the increased frequency of late frosts at that season, appear to be ascribable to the admission of cold blasts to the surface, by the felling of the forests which formerly both screened it as by a wall, and communicated the warmth of their soil to the air and earth to the leeward. Caimi states that since the cutting down of the woods of the Apennines, the cold winds destroy or stunt the vegetation, and that, in consequence of "the usurpation of winter on the domain of spring," the district of Mugello has lost all its mulberries, except the few which find in the lee of buildings a protection like that once furnished by the forest.[141] "It is proved," says Clavé, "Études," p. 44, "that the department of Ardèche, which now contains not a single considerable wood, has experienced within thirty years a climatic disturbance, of which the late frosts, formerly unknown in the country, are one of the most melancholy effects. Similar results have been observed in the plain of Alsace, in consequence of the denudation of several of the crests of the Vosges." Dussard, as quoted by Ribbe,[142] maintains that even the _mistral_, or northwest wind, whose chilling blasts are so fatal to tender vegetation in the spring, "is the child of man, the result of his devastations." "Under the reign of Augustus," continues he, "the forests which protected the Cévennes were felled, or destroyed by fire, in mass. A vast country, before covered with impenetrable woods--powerful obstacles to the movement and even to the formation of hurricanes--was suddenly denuded, swept bare, stripped, and soon after, a scourge hitherto unknown struck terror over the land from Avignon to the Bouches du Rhone, thence to Marseilles, and then extended its ravages, diminished indeed by a long career which had partially exhausted its force, over the whole maritime frontier. The people thought this wind a curse sent of God. They raised altars to it and offered sacrifices to appease its rage." It seems, however, that this plague was less destructive than at present, until the close of the sixteenth century, when further clearings had removed most of the remaining barriers to its course. Up to that time, the northwest wind appears not to have attained to the maximum of specific effect which now characterizes it as a local phenomenon. Extensive districts, from which the rigor of the seasons has now banished valuable crops, were not then exposed to the loss of their harvests by tempests, cold, or drought. The deterioration was rapid in its progress. Under the Consulate, the clearings had exerted so injurious an effect upon the climate, that the cultivation of the olive had retreated several leagues, and since the winters and springs of 1820 and 1836, this branch of rural industry has been abandoned in a great number of localities where it was advantageously pursued before. The orange now flourishes only at a few sheltered points of the coast, and it is threatened even at Ilyères, where the clearing of the hills near the town has proved very prejudicial to this valuable tree. Marchand informs us that, since the felling of the woods, late spring frosts are more frequent in many localities north of the Alps; that fruit trees thrive well no longer, and that it is difficult to raise young trees.[143] f. _Trees as a Protection against Malaria._ The influence of forests in preventing the diffusion of miasmatic vapors is a matter of less familiar observation, and perhaps does not come strictly within the sphere of the present inquiry, but its importance will justify me in devoting some space to the subject. "It has been observed" (I quote again from Becquerel) "that humid air, charged with miasmata, is deprived of them in passing through the forest. Rigaud de Lille observed localities in Italy where the interposition of a screen of trees preserved everything beyond it, while the unprotected grounds were subject to fevers."[144] Few European countries present better opportunities for observation on this point than Italy, because in that kingdom the localities exposed to miasmatic exhalations are numerous, and belts of trees, if not forests, are of so frequent occurrence that their efficacy in this respect can be easily tested. The belief that rows of trees afford an important protection against malarious influences is very general among Italians best qualified by intelligence and professional experience to judge upon the subject. The commissioners appointed to report on the measures to be adopted for the improvement of the Tuscan Maremme advised the planting of three or four rows of poplars, _Populus alba_, in such directions as to obstruct the currents of air from malarious localities, and thus intercept a great proportion of the pernicious exhalations."[145] Lieutenant Maury even believed that a few rows of sunflowers, planted between the Washington Observatory and the marshy banks of the Potomac, had saved the inmates of that establishment from the intermittent fevers to which they had been formerly liable. Maury's experiments have been repeated in Italy. Large plantations of sunflowers have been made upon the alluvial deposits of the Oglio, above its entrance into the Lake of Iseo near Pisogne, and it is said with favorable results to the health of the neighborhood.[146] In fact, the generally beneficial effects of a forest wall or other vegetable screen, as a protection against noxious exhalations from marshes or other sources of disease situated to the windward of them, are very commonly admitted. It is argued that, in these cases, the foliage of trees and of other vegetables exercises a chemical as well as a mechanical effect upon the atmosphere, and some, who allow that forests may intercept the circulation of the miasmatic effluvia of swampy soils, or even render them harmless by decomposing them, contend, nevertheless, that they are themselves active causes of the production of malaria. The subject has been a good deal discussed in Italy, and there is some reason to think that under special circumstances the influence of the forest in this respect may be prejudicial rather than salutary, though this does not appear to be generally the case.[147] It is, at all events, well known that the great swamps of Virginia and the Carolinas, in climates nearly similar to that of Italy, are healthy even to the white man, so long as the forests in and around them remain, but become very insalubrious when the woods are felled.[148] _The Forest, as Inorganic Matter, tends to mitigate Extremes._ The surface which trees and leaves present augments the general superficies of the earth exposed to the absorption of heat, and increases the radiating and reflecting area in the same proportion. It is impossible to measure the relative value of these two elements--increase of absorbing and increase of emitting surface--as thermometrical influences, because they exert themselves under infinitely varied conditions; and it is equally impossible to make a quantitative estimate of any partial, still more of the total effect of the forest, considered as dead matter, on the temperature of the atmosphere, and of the portion of the earth's surface acted on by it. But it seems probable that its greatest influence in this respect is due to its character of a screen, or mechanical obstacle to the transmission of heat between the earth and the air; and this is equally true of the standing tree and of the dead foliage which it deposits in successive layers at its foot. The complicated action of trees and their products, as dead absorbents, radiators, reflectors, and conductors of heat, and as interceptors of its transmission, is so intimately connected with their effects upon the humidity of the air and the earth, and with all their living processes, that it is difficult to separate the former from the latter class of influences; but upon the whole, the forest must thus far be regarded as tending to mitigate extremes, and, therefore, as an equalizer of temperature. TREES AS ORGANISMS. _Specific Heat._ Trees, considered as organisms, produce in themselves, or in the air, a certain amount of heat, by absorbing and condensing atmospheric vapor, and they exert an opposite influence by absorbing water and exhaling it in the form of vapor; but there is still another mode by which their living processes may warm the air around them, independently of the thermometric effects of condensation and evaporation. The vital heat of a dozen persons raises the temperature of a room. If trees possess a specific temperature of their own, an organic power of generating heat, like that with which the warm-blooded animals are gifted, though by a different process, a certain amount of weight is to be ascribed to this element, in estimating the action of the forest upon atmospheric temperature. "Observation shows," says Meguscher, "that the wood of a living tree maintains a temperature of +12° or 13° Cent. [= 54°, 56° Fahr.] when the temperature of the air stands at 3°, 7°, and 8° [=37°, 46°, 47° F.] above zero, and that the internal warmth of the tree does not rise and fall in proportion to that of the atmosphere. So long as the latter is below 18° [= 67° Fahr.], that of the tree is always the highest; but if the temperature of the air rises to 18°, that of the vegetable growth is the lowest. Since, then, trees maintain at all seasons a constant mean temperature of 12° [= 54° Fahr.], it is easy to see why the air in contact with the forest must be warmer in winter, cooler in summer, than in situations where it is deprived of that influence."[149] Boussingault remarks: "In many flowers there has been observed a very considerable evolution of heat, at the approach of fecundation. In certain _arums_ the temperature rises to 40° or 50° Cent. [= 104° or 122° Fahr.]. It is very probable that this phenomenon is general, and varies only in the intensity with which it is manifested."[150] If we suppose the fecundation of the flowers of forest trees to be attended with a tenth only of this calorific power, they could not fail to exert an important influence on the warmth of the atmospheric strata in contact with them. In a paper on Meteorology by Professor Henry, published in the United States Patent Office Report for 1857, p. 504, that distinguished physicist observes: "As a general deduction from chemical and mechanical principles, we think no change of temperature is ever produced where the actions belonging to one or both of these principles are not present. Hence, in midwinter, when all vegetable functions are dormant, we do not believe that any heat is developed by a tree, or that its interior differs in temperature from its exterior further than it is protected from the external air. The experiments which have been made on this point, we think, have been directed by a false analogy. During the active circulation of the sap and the production of new tissue, variations of temperature belonging exclusively to the plant may be observed; but it is inconsistent with general principles that heat should be generated where no change is taking place." There can be no doubt that moisture is given out by trees and evaporated in extremely cold winter-weather, and unless new fluid were supplied from the roots, the tree would be exhausted of its juices before winter was over. But this is not observed to be the fact, and, though the point is disputed, respectable authorities declare that "wood felled in the depth of winter is the heaviest and fullest of sap."[151] Warm weather in winter, of too short continuance to affect the temperature of the ground sensibly, stimulates a free flow of sap in the maple. Thus, in the last week of December, 1862, and the first week of January, 1863, sugar was made from that tree, in various parts of New England. "A single branch of a tree, admitted into a warm room in winter through an aperture in a window, opened its buds and developed its leaves while the rest of the tree in the external air remained in its winter sleep."[152] The roots of forest trees in temperate climates, remain, for the most part, in a moist soil, of a temperature not much below the annual mean, through the whole winter; and we cannot account for the uninterrupted moisture of the tree, unless we suppose that the roots furnish a constant supply of water. Atkinson describes a ravine in a valley in Siberia, which was filled with ice to the depth of twenty-five feet. Poplars were growing in this ice, which was thawed to the distance of some inches from the stem. But the surface of the soil beneath it must have remained still frozen, for the holes around the trees were full of water resulting from its melting, and this would have escaped below if the ground had been thawed. In this case, although the roots had not thawed the thick covering of earth above them, the trunks must have melted the ice in contact with them. The trees, when observed by Atkinson, were in full leaf, but it does not appear at what period the ice around their stems had melted. From these facts, and others of the like sort, it would seem that "all vegetable functions are" not absolutely "dormant" in winter, and, therefore, that trees may give out _some_ heat at that season. But, however this may be, the "circulation of the sap" commences at a very early period in the spring, and the temperature of the air in contact with trees may then be sufficiently affected by heat evolved in the vital processes of vegetation, to raise the thermometric mean of wooded countries for that season, and, of course, for the year.[153] _Total Influence of the Forest on Temperature._ It has not yet been found practicable to measure, sum up, and equate the total influence of the forest, its processes and its products, dead and living, upon temperature, and investigators differ much in their conclusions on this subject. It seems probable that in every particular case the result is, if not determined, at least so much modified by local conditions which are infinitely varied, that no general formula is applicable to the question. In the report to which I referred on page 149, Gay-Lussac says: "In my opinion we have not yet any positive proof that the forest has, in itself, any real influence on the climate of a great country, or of a particular locality. By closely examining the effects of clearing off the woods, we should perhaps find that, far from being an evil, it is an advantage; but these questions are so complicated when they are examined in a climatological point of view, that the solution of them is very difficult, not to say impossible." Becquerel, on the other hand, considers it certain that in tropical climates, the destruction of the forests is accompanied with an elevation of the mean temperature, and he thinks it highly probable that it has the same effect in the temperate zones. The following is the substance of his remarks on this subject:-- "Forests act as frigorific causes in three ways: "1. They shelter the ground against solar irradiation and maintain a greater humidity. "2. They produce a cutaneous transpiration by the leaves. "3. They multiply, by the expansion of their branches, the surfaces which are cooled by radiation. "These three causes acting with greater or less force, we must, in the study of the climatology of a country, take into account the proportion between the area of the forests and the surface which is bared of trees and covered with herbs and grasses. "We should be inclined to believe _à priori_, according to the foregoing considerations, that the clearing of the woods, by raising the temperature and increasing the dryness of the air, ought to react on climate. There is no doubt that, if the vast desert of the Sahara were to become wooded in the course of ages, the sands would cease to be heated as much as at the present epoch, when the mean temperature is twenty-nine degrees [centigrade, = 85° Fahr.]. In that case, the ascending currents of warm air would cease, or be less warm, and would not contribute, by descending in our latitudes, to soften the climate of Western Europe. Thus the clearing of a great country may react on the climates of regions more or less remote from it. "The observations by Boussingault leave no doubt on this point. This writer determined the mean temperature of wooded and of cleared points, under the same latitude, and at the same elevation above the sea, in localities comprised between the eleventh degree of north and the fifth degree of south latitude, that is to say, in the portion of the tropics nearest to the equator, and where radiation tends powerfully during the night to lower the temperature under a sky without clouds."[154] The result of these observations, which has been pretty generally adopted by physicists, is that the mean temperature of cleared land in the tropics appears to be about one degree centigrade, or a little less than two degrees of Fahrenheit, above that of the forest. On page 147 of the volume just cited, Becquerel argues that, inasmuch as the same and sometimes a greater difference is found in favor of the open ground, at points within the tropics so elevated as to have a temperate or even a polar climate, we must conclude that the forests in Northern America exert a refrigerating influence equally powerful. But the conditions of the soil are so different in the two regions compared, that I think we cannot, with entire confidence, reason from the one to the other, and it is much to be desired that observations be made on the summer and winter temperature of both the air and the ground in the depths of the North American forests, before it is too late.[155] INFLUENCE OF FORESTS ON THE HUMIDITY OF THE AIR AND THE EARTH. a. _As Inorganic Matter._ The most important influence of the forest on climate is, no doubt, that which it exercises on the humidity of the air and the earth, and this climatic action it exerts partly as dead, partly as living matter. By its interposition as a curtain between the sky and the ground, it intercepts a large proportion of the dew and the lighter showers, which would otherwise moisten the surface of the soil, and restores it to the atmosphere by evaporation; while in heavier rains, the large drops which fall upon the leaves and branches are broken into smaller ones, and consequently strike the ground with less mechanical force, or are perhaps even dispersed into vapor without reaching it.[156] As a screen, it prevents the access of the sun's rays to the earth, and, of course, an elevation of temperature which would occasion a great increase of evaporation. As a mechanical obstruction, it impedes the passage of air currents over the ground, which, as is well known, is one of the most efficient agents in promoting evaporation and the refrigeration resulting from it.[157] In the forest, the air is almost quiescent, and moves only as local changes of temperature affect the specific gravity of its particles. Hence there is often a dead calm in the woods when a furious blast is raging in the open country at a few yards' distance. The denser the forest--as for example, where it consists of spike-leaved trees, or is thickly intermixed with them--the more obvious is its effect, and no one can have passed from the field to the wood in cold, windy weather, without having remarked it.[158] The vegetable mould, resulting from the decomposition of leaves and of wood, carpets the ground with a spongy covering which obstructs the evaporation from the mineral earth below, drinks up the rains and melting snows that would otherwise flow rapidly over the surface and perhaps be conveyed to the distant sea, and then slowly gives out, by evaporation, infiltration, and percolation, the moisture thus imbibed. The roots, too, penetrate far below the superficial soil, conduct the water along their surface to the lower depths to which they reach, and thus serve to drain the superior strata and remove the moisture out of the reach of evaporation. b. _The Forest as Organic._ These are the principal modes in which the humidity of the atmosphere is affected by the forest regarded as lifeless matter. Let us inquire how its organic processes act upon this meteorological element. The commonest observation shows that the wood and bark of living trees are always more or less pervaded with watery and other fluids, one of which, the sap, is very abundant in trees of deciduous foliage when the buds begin to swell and the leaves to develop themselves in the spring. The outer bark of most trees is of a corky character, not admitting the absorption of much moisture from the atmosphere through its pores, and we can hardly suppose that the buds are able to extract from the air a much larger supply. The obvious conclusion as to the source from which the extraordinary quantity of sap at this season is derived, is that to which scientific investigation leads us, namely, that it is absorbed from the earth by the roots, and thence distributed to all parts of the plant. Popular opinion, indeed, supposes that all the vegetable fluids, during the entire period of growth, are thus drawn from the bosom of the earth, and that the wood and other products of the tree are wholly formed from matter held in solution in the water abstracted by the roots from the ground. This is an error, for, not only is the solid matter of the tree, in a certain proportion not important to our present inquiry, received from the atmosphere in a gaseous form, through the pores of the leaves and of the young shoots, but water in the state of vapor is absorbed and contributed to the circulation, by the same organs.[159] The amount of water taken up by the roots, however, is vastly greater than that imbibed through the leaves, especially at the season when the juices are most abundant, and when, as we have seen, the leaves are yet in embryo. The quantity of water thus received from the air and the earth, in a single year, by a wood of even a hundred acres, is very great, though experiments are wanting to furnish the data for even an approximate estimate of its measure; for only the vaguest conclusions can be drawn from the observations which have been made on the imbibition and exhalation of water by trees and other plants reared in artificial conditions diverse from those of the natural forest.[160] _Wood Mosses and Fungi._ Besides the water drawn by the roots from the earth and the vapor absorbed by the leaves from the air, the wood mosses and fungi, which abound in all dense forests, take up a great quantity of moisture from the atmosphere when it is charged with humidity, and exhale it again when the air is dry. These humble organizations, which play a more important part in regulating the humidity of the air than writers on the forest have usually assigned to them, perish with the trees they grow on; but, in many situations, nature provides a compensation for the tree mosses in ground species, which, on cold soils, especially those with a northern exposure, spring up abundantly both before the woods are felled, and when the land is cleared and employed for pasturage, or deserted. These mosses discharge a portion of the functions appropriated to the wood, and while they render the soil of improved lands much less fit for agricultural use, they, at the same time, prepare it for the growth of a new harvest of trees, when the infertility they produce shall have driven man to abandon it and suffer it to relapse into the hands of nature.[161] _Flow of Sap._ The amount of sap which can be withdrawn from living trees furnishes, not indeed a measure of the quantity of water sucked up by their roots from the ground--for we cannot extract from a tree its whole moisture--but numerical data which may aid the imagination to form a general notion of the powerful action of the forest as an absorbent of humidity from the earth. The only forest tree known to Europe and North America, the sap of which is largely enough applied to economical uses to have made the amount of its flow a matter of practical importance and popular observation, is the sugar maple, _Acer saccharinum_, of the Anglo-American Provinces and States. In the course of a single "sugar season," which lasts ordinarily from twenty-five to thirty days, a sugar maple two feet in diameter will yield not less than twenty gallons of sap, and sometimes much more.[162] This, however, is but a trifling proportion of the water abstracted from the earth by the roots during this season, when the yet undeveloped leaves can hardly absorb an appreciable quantity of vapor from the atmosphere;[163] for all this fluid runs from two or three incisions or auger holes, so narrow as to intercept the current of comparatively few sap vessels, and besides, experience shows that large as is the quantity withdrawn from the circulation, it is relatively too small to affect very sensibly the growth of the tree.[164] The number of large maple trees on an acre is frequently not less than fifty,[165] and of course the quantity of moisture abstracted from the soil by this tree alone is measured by thousands of gallons to the acre. The sugar orchards, as they are called, contain also many young maples too small for tapping, and numerous other trees--two of which, at least, the black birch, _Betula lenta_, and yellow birch, _Betula excelsa_, both very common in the same climate, are far more abundant in sap than the maple[166]--are scattered among the sugar trees; for the North American native forests are remarkable for the mixture of their crops. The sap of the maple, and of other trees with deciduous leaves which grow in the same climate, flows most freely in the early spring, and especially in clear weather, when the nights are frosty and the days warm; for it is then that the melting snows supply the earth with moisture in the justest proportion, and that the absorbent power of the roots is stimulated to its highest activity.[167] When the buds are ready to burst, and the green leaves begin to show themselves beneath their scaly covering, the ground has become drier, the thirst of the roots is quenched, and the flow of sap from them to the stem is greatly diminished.[168] _Absorption and Exhalation of Moisture._ The leaves now commence the process of absorption, and imbibe both uncombined gases and an unascertained but perhaps considerable quantity of watery vapor from the humid atmosphere of spring which bathes them. The organic action of the tree, as thus far described, tends to the desiccation of air and earth; but when we consider what volumes of water are daily absorbed by a large tree, and how small a proportion of the weight of this fluid consists of matter which enters into new combinations, and becomes a part of the solid framework of the vegetable, or a component of its deciduous products, it is evident that the superfluous moisture must somehow be carried off almost as rapidly as it flows into the tree.[169] At the very commencement of vegetation in spring, some of this fluid certainly escapes through the buds, the nascent foliage, and the pores of the barb, and vegetable physiology tells us that there is a current of sap toward the roots as well as from them.[170] I do not know that the exudation of water into the earth, through the bark or at the extremities of these latter organs, has been directly proved, but the other known modes of carrying off the surplus do not seem adequate to dispose of it at the almost leafless period when it is most abundantly received, and it is therefore difficult to believe that the roots do not, to some extent, drain as well as flood the watercourses of their stem. Later in the season the roots absorb less, and the now developed leaves exhale a vastly increased quantity of moisture into the air. In any event, all the water derived by the growing tree from the atmosphere and the ground is returned again by transpiration or exudation, after having surrendered to the plant the small proportion of matter required for vegetable growth which it held in solution or suspension.[171] The hygrometrical equilibrium is then restored, so far as this: the tree yields up again the moisture it had drawn from the earth and the air, though it does not return it each to each; for the vapor carried off by transpiration greatly exceeds the quantity of water absorbed by the foliage from the atmosphere, and the amount, if any, carried back to the ground by the roots. The evaporation of the juices of the plant, by whatever process effected, takes up atmospheric heat and produces refrigeration. This effect is not less real, though much less sensible, in the forest than in meadow or pasture land, and it cannot be doubted that the local temperature is considerably affected by it. But the evaporation that cools the air diffuses through it, at the same time, a medium which powerfully resists the escape of heat from the earth by radiation. Visible vapors or clouds, it is well known, prevent frosts by obstructing radiation, or rather by reflecting back again the heat radiated by the earth, just as any mechanical screen would do. On the other hand, clouds intercept the rays of the sun also, and hinder its heat from reaching the earth. The invisible vapors given out by leaves impede the passage of heat reflected and radiated by the earth and by all terrestrial objects, but oppose much less resistance to the transmission of direct solar heat, and indeed the beams of the sun seem more scorching when received through clear air charged with uncondensed moisture than after passing through a dry atmosphere. Hence the reduction of temperature by the evaporation of moisture from vegetation, though sensible, is less than it would be if water in the gaseous state were as impervious to heat given out by the sun as to that emitted by terrestrial objects. The hygroscopicity of vegetable mould is much greater than that of any mineral earth, and therefore the soil of the forest absorbs more atmospheric moisture than the open ground. The condensation of the vapor by absorption disengages heat, and consequently raises the temperature of the soil which absorbs it. Von Babo found the temperature of sandy earth thus elevated from 20° to 27° centigrade, making a difference of nearly thirteen degrees of Fahrenheit, and that of soil rich in humus from 20° to 31° centigrade, a difference of almost twenty degrees of Fahrenheit.[172] _Balance of Conflicting Influences._ We have shown that the forest, considered as dead matter, tends to diminish the moisture of the air, by preventing the sun's rays from reaching the ground and evaporating the water that falls upon the surface, and also by spreading over the earth a spongy mantle which sucks up and retains the humidity it receives from the atmosphere, while, at the same time, this covering acts in the contrary direction by accumulating, in a reservoir not wholly inaccessible to vaporizing influences, the water of precipitation which might otherwise suddenly sink deep into the bowels of the earth, or flow by superficial channels to other climatic regions. We now see that, as a living organism, it tends, on the one hand, to diminish the humidity of the air by absorbing moisture from it, and, on the other, to increase that humidity by pouring out into the atmosphere, in a vaporous form, the water it draws up through its roots. This last operation, at the same time, lowers the temperature of the air in contact with or proximity to the wood, by the same law as in other cases of the conversion of water into vapor. As I have repeatedly said, we cannot measure the value of any one of these elements of climatic disturbance, raising or lowering of temperature, increase or diminution of humidity, nor can we say that in any one season, any one year, or any one fixed cycle, however long or short, they balance and compensate each other. They are sometimes, but certainly not always, contemporaneous in their action, whether their tendency is in the same or in opposite directions, and, therefore, their influence is sometimes cumulative, sometimes conflicting; but, upon the whole, their general effect seems to be to mitigate extremes of atmospheric heat and cold, moisture and drought. They serve as equalizers of temperature and humidity, and it is highly probable that, in analogy with most other works and workings of nature, they, at certain or uncertain periods, restore the equilibrium which, whether as lifeless masses or as living organisms, they may have temporarily disturbed. When, therefore, man destroyed these natural harmonizers of climatic discords, he sacrificed an important conservative power, though it is far from certain that he has thereby affected the mean, however much he may have exaggerated the extremes of atmospheric temperature and humidity, or, in other words, may have increased the range and lengthened the scale of thermometric and hygrometric variation. _Influence of the Forest on Temperature and Precipitation._ Aside from the question of compensation, it does not seem probable that the forests sensibly affect the total quantity of precipitation, or the general mean of atmospheric temperature of the globe, or even that they had this influence when their extent was vastly greater than at present. The waters cover about three fourths of the face of the earth,[173] and if we deduct the frozen zones, the peaks and crests of lofty mountains and their craggy slopes, the Sahara and other great African and Asiatic deserts, and all such other portions of the solid surface as are permanently unfit for the growth of wood, we shall find that probably not one tenth of the total superficies of our planet was ever, at any one time in the present geological epoch, covered with forests. Besides this, the distribution of forest land, of desert, and of water, is such as to reduce the possible influence of the former to a low expression; for the forests are, in large proportion, situated in cold or temperate climates, where the action of the sun is comparatively feeble both in elevating temperature and in promoting evaporation; while, in the torrid zone, the desert and the sea--the latter of which always presents an evaporable surface--enormously preponderate. It is, upon the whole, not probable that so small an extent of forest, so situated, could produce an appreciable influence on the _general_ climate of the globe, though it might appreciably affect the local action of all climatic elements. The total annual amount of solar heat absorbed and radiated by the earth, and the sum of terrestrial evaporation and atmospheric precipitation must be supposed constant; but the distribution of heat and of humidity is exposed to disturbance in both time and place, by a multitude of local causes, among which the presence or absence of the forest is doubtless one. So far as we are able to sum up the general results, it would appear that, in countries in the temperate zone still chiefly covered with wood, the summers would be cooler, moister, shorter, the winters milder, drier, longer, than in the same regions after the removal of the forest. The slender historical evidence we possess seems to point to the same conclusion, though there is some conflict of testimony and of opinion on this point, and some apparently well-established exceptions to particular branches of what appears to be the general law. One of these occurs both in climates where the cold of winter is severe enough to freeze the ground to a considerable depth, as in Sweden and the Northern States of the American Union, and in milder zones, where the face of the earth is exposed to cold mountain winds, as in some parts of Italy and of France; for there, as we have seen, the winter is believed to extend itself into the months which belong to the spring, later than at periods when the forest covered the greater part of the ground.[174] More causes than one doubtless contribute to this result; but in the case of Sweden and the United States, the most obvious explanation of the fact is to be found in the loss of the shelter afforded to the ground by the thick coating of leaves which the forest sheds upon it, and the snow which the woods protect from blowing away, or from melting in the brief thaws of winter. I have already remarked that bare ground freezes much deeper than that which is covered by beds of leaves, and when the earth is thickly coated with snow, the strata frozen before it fell begin to thaw. It is not uncommon to find the ground in the woods, where the snow lies two or three feet deep, entirely free from frost, when the atmospheric temperature has been for several weeks below the freezing point, and for some days even below the zero of Fahrenheit. When the ground is cleared and brought under cultivation, the leaves are ploughed into the soil and decomposed, and the snow, especially upon knolls and eminences, is blown off, or perhaps half thawed, several times during the winter. The water from the melting snow runs into the depressions, and when, after a day or two of warm sunshine or tepid rain, the cold returns, it is consolidated to ice, and the bared ridges and swells of earth are deeply frozen.[175] It requires many days of mild weather to raise the temperature of soil in this condition, and of the air in contact with it, to that of the earth in the forests of the same climatic region. Flora is already plaiting her sylvan wreath before the corn flowers which are to deck the garland of Ceres have waked from their winter's sleep; and it is not a popular error to believe that, where man has substituted his artificial crops for the spontaneous harvest of nature, spring delays her coming. In many cases, the apparent change in the period of the seasons is a purely local phenomenon, which is probably compensated by a higher temperature in other months, without any real disturbance of the average thermometrical equilibrium. We may easily suppose that there are analogous partial deviations from the general law of precipitation; and, without insisting that the removal of the forest has diminished the sum total of snow and rain, we may well admit that it has lessened the quantity which annually falls within particular limits. Various theoretical considerations make this probable, the most obvious argument, perhaps, being that drawn from the generally admitted fact, that the summer and even the mean temperature of the forest is below that of the open country in the same latitude. If the air in a wood is cooler than that around it, it must reduce the temperature of the atmospheric stratum immediately above it, and, of course, whenever a saturated current sweeps over it, it must produce precipitation which would fall upon or near it. But the subject is so exceedingly complex and difficult, that it is safer to regard it as a historical problem, or at least as what lawyers call a mixed question of law and fact, than to attempt to decide it upon _à priori_ grounds. Unfortunately the evidence is conflicting in tendency, and sometimes equivocal in interpretation, but I believe that a majority of the foresters and physicists who have studied the question are of opinion that in many, if not in all cases, the destruction of the woods has been followed by a diminution in the annual quantity of rain and dew. Indeed, it has long been a popularly settled belief that vegetation and the condensation and fall of atmospheric moisture are reciprocally necessary to each other, and even the poets sing of Afric's barren sand, Where nought can grow, because it raineth not, And where no rain can fall to bless the land, Because nought grows there.[176] Before stating the evidence on the general question and citing the judgments of the learned upon it, however, it is well to remark that the comparative variety or frequency of inundations in earlier and later centuries is not necessarily, in most cases not probably, entitled to any weight whatever, as a proof that more or less rain fell formerly than now; because the accumulation of water in the channel of a river depends far less upon the quantity of precipitation in its valley, than upon the rapidity with which it is conducted, on or under the surface of the ground, to the central artery that drains the basin. But this point will be more fully discussed in a subsequent chapter. There is another important observation which may properly be introduced here. It is not universally, or even generally true, that the atmosphere returns its humidity to the local source from which it receives it. The air is constantly in motion, ----howling tempests scour amain From sea to land, from land to sea;[177] and, therefore, it is always probable that the evaporation drawn up by the atmosphere from a given river, or sea, or forest, or meadow, will be discharged by precipitation, not at or near the point where it rose, but at a distance of miles, leagues, or even degrees. The currents of the upper air are invisible, and they leave behind them no landmark to record their track. We know not whence they come, or whither they go. We have a certain rapidly increasing acquaintance with the laws of general atmospheric motion, but of the origin and limits, the beginning and end of that motion, as it manifests itself at any particular time and place, we know nothing. We cannot say where or when the vapor, exhaled to-day from the lake on which we float, will be condensed and fall; whether it will waste itself on a barren desert, refresh upland pastures, descend in snow on Alpine heights, or contribute to swell a distant torrent which shall lay waste square miles of fertile corn land; nor do we know whether the rain which feeds our brooklets is due to the transpiration from a neighboring forest, or to the evaporation from a far-off sea. If, therefore, it were proved that the annual quantity of rain and dew is now as great on the plains of Castile, for example, as it was when they were covered with the native forest, it would by no means follow that those woods did not augment the amount of precipitation elsewhere. But I return to the question. Beginning with the latest authorities, I cite a passage from Clavé.[178] After arguing that we cannot reason from the climatic effects of the forest in tropical and sub-tropical countries as to its influence in temperate latitudes, the author proceeds: "The action of the forests on rain, a consequence of that which they exercise on temperature, is difficult to estimate in our climate, but is very pronounced in hot countries, and is established by numerous examples. M. Boussingault states that in the region comprised between the Bay of Cupica and the Gulf of Guayaquil, which is covered with immense forests, the rains are almost continual, and that the mean temperature of this humid country rises hardly to twenty-six degrees (= 80° Fahr.). M. Blanqui, in his 'Travels in Bulgaria,' informs us that at Malta rain has become so rare, since the woods were cleared to make room for the growth of cotton, that at the time of his visit in October, 1841, not a drop of rain had fallen for three years.[179] The terrible droughts which desolate the Cape Verd Islands must also be attributed to the destruction of the forests. In the Island of St. Helena, where the wooded surface has considerably extended within a few years, it has been observed that the rain has increased in the same proportion. It is now in quantity double what it was during the residence of Napoleon. In Egypt, recent plantations have caused rains, which hitherto were almost unknown." Schacht[180] observes: "In wooded countries, the atmosphere is generally humid, and rain and dew fertilize the soil. As the lightning rod abstracts the electric fluid from the stormy sky, so the forest attracts to itself the rain from the clouds, which, in falling, refreshes not it alone, but extends its benefits to the neighboring fields. * * The forest, presenting a considerable surface for evaporation, gives to its own soil and to all the adjacent ground an abundant and enlivening dew. There falls, it is true, less dew on a tall and thick wood than on the surrounding meadows, which, being more highly heated during the day by the influence of insolation, cool with greater rapidity by radiation. But it must be remarked, that this increased deposition of dew on the neighboring fields is partly due to the forests themselves; for the dense, saturated strata of air which hover over the woods descend in cool, calm evenings, like clouds, to the valley, and in the morning, beads of dew sparkle on the leaves of the grass and the flowers of the field. Forests, in a word, exert, in the interior of continents, an influence like that of the sea on the climate of islands and of coasts: both water the soil and thereby insure its fertility." In a note upon this passage, quoting as authority the _Historia de la Conquista de las siete islas de Gran Canaria, de Juan de Abreu Galindo_, 1632, p. 47, he adds: "Old historians relate that a celebrated laurel in Ferro formerly furnished drinkable water to the inhabitants of the island. The water flowed from its foliage, uninterruptedly, drop by drop, and was collected in cisterns. Every morning the sea breeze drove a cloud toward the wonderful tree, which attracted it to its huge top," where it was condensed to a liquid form. In a number of the _Missionary Herald_, published at Boston, the date of which I have mislaid, the Rev. Mr. Van Lennep, well known as a competent observer, gives the following remarkable account of a similar fact witnessed by him in an excursion to the east of Tocat in Asia Minor: "In this region, some 3,000 feet above the sea, the trees are mostly oak, and attain a large size. I noticed an illustration of the influence of trees in general in collecting moisture. Despite the fog, of a week's duration, the ground was everywhere perfectly dry. The dry oak leaves, however, had gathered the water, and the branches and trunks of the trees were more or less wet. In many cases the water had run down the trunk and moistened the soil around the roots of the tree. In two places, several trees had each furnished a small stream of water, and these, uniting, had run upon the road, so that travellers had to pass through the mud; although, as I said, everywhere else the ground was perfectly dry. Moreover, the collected moisture was not sufficient to drop directly from the leaves, but in every case it ran down the branches and trunk to the ground. Farther on we found a grove, and at the foot of each tree, on the north side, was a lump of ice, the water having frozen as it reached the ground. This is a most striking illustration of the acknowledged influence of trees in collecting moisture; and one cannot for a moment doubt, that the parched regions which commence at Sivas, and extend in one direction to the Persian Gulf, and in another to the Red Sea, were once a fertile garden, teeming with a prosperous population, before the forests which covered the hillsides were cut down--before the cedar and the fir tree were rooted up from the sides of Lebanon. "As we now descended the northern side of the watershed, we passed through the grove of walnut, oak, and black mulberry trees, which shade the village of Oktab, whose houses, cattle, and ruddy children were indicative of prosperity." Coultas thus argues: "The ocean, winds, and woods may be regarded as the several parts of a grand distillatory apparatus. The sea is the boiler in which vapor is raised by the solar heat, the winds are the guiding tubes which carry the vapor with them to the forests where a lower temperature prevails. This naturally condenses the vapor, and showers of rain are thus distilled from the cloud masses which float in the atmosphere, by the woods beneath them."[181] Sir John F. W. Herschel enumerates among "the influences unfavorable to rain," "absence of vegetation in warm climates, and especially of trees. This is, no doubt," continues he, "one of the reasons of the extreme aridity of Spain. The hatred of a Spaniard toward a tree is proverbial. Many districts in France have been materially injured by denudation (Earl of Lovelace on Climate, etc.), and, on the other hand, rain has become more frequent in Egypt since the more vigorous cultivation of the palm tree." Hohenstein remarks: "With respect to the temperature in the forest, I have already observed that, at certain times of the day and of the year, it is less than in the open field. Hence the woods may, in the daytime, in summer and toward the end of winter, tend to increase the fall of rain; but it is otherwise in summer nights and at the beginning of winter, when there is a higher temperature in the forest, which is not favorable to that effect. * * * The wood is, further, like the mountain, a mechanical obstruction to the motion of rain clouds, and, as it checks them in their course, it gives them occasion to deposit their water. These considerations render it probable that the forest increases the quantity of rain; but they do not establish the certainty of this conclusion, because we have no positive numerical data to produce on the depression of temperature, and the humidity of the air in the woods."[182] Barth presents the following view of the subject: "The ground in the forest, as well as the atmospheric stratum over it, continues humid after the woodless districts have lost their moisture; and the air, charged with the humidity drawn from them, is usually carried away by the winds before it has deposited itself in a condensed form on the earth. Trees constantly transpire through their leaves a great quantity of moisture, which they partly absorb again by the same organs, while the greatest part of their supply is pumped up through their widely ramifying roots from considerable depths in the ground. Thus a constant evaporation is produced, which keeps the forest atmosphere moist even in long droughts, when all other sources of humidity in the forest itself are dried up. * * * Little is required to compel the stratum of air resting upon a wood to give up its moisture, which thus, as rain, fog, or dew, is returned to the forest. * * * The warm, moist currents of air which come from other regions are cooled as they approach the wood by its less heated atmosphere, and obliged to let fall the humidity with which they are charged. The woods contribute to the same effect by mechanically impeding the motion of fog and rain cloud, whose particles are thus accumulated and condensed to rain. The forest thus has a greater power than the open ground to retain within its own limits already existing humidity, and to preserve it, and it attracts and collects that which the wind brings it from elsewhere, and forces it to deposit itself as rain or other precipitation. * * * In consequence of these relations of the forest to humidity, it follows that wooded districts have both more frequent and more abundant rain, and in general are more humid, than woodless regions; for what is true of the woods themselves, in this respect, is true also of their treeless neighborhood, which, in consequence of the ready mobility of the air and its constant changes, receives a share of the characteristics of the forest atmosphere, coolness and moisture. * * * When the districts stripped of trees have long been deprived of rain and dew, * * * and the grass and the fruits of the field are ready to wither, the grounds which are surrounded by woods are green and flourishing. By night they are refreshed with dew, which is never wanting in the moist air of the forest, and in due season they are watered by a beneficent shower, or a mist which rolls slowly over them."[183] Asbjörnsen, after adducing the familiar theoretical arguments on this point, adds: "The rainless territories in Peru and North Africa establish this conclusion, and numerous other examples show that woods exert an influence in producing rain, and that rain fails where they are wanting; for many countries have, by the destruction of the forests, been deprived of rain, moisture, springs, and watercourses, which are necessary for vegetable growth. * * * The narratives of travellers show the deplorable consequences of felling the woods in the Island of Trinidad, Martinique, San Domingo, and indeed, in almost the entire West Indian group. * * * In Palestine and many other parts of Asia and Northern Africa, which in ancient times were the granaries of Europe, fertile and populous, similar consequences have been experienced. These lands are now deserts, and it is the destruction of the forests alone which has produced this desolation. * * * In Southern France, many districts have, from the same cause, become barren wastes of stone, and the cultivation of the vine and the olive has suffered severely since the baring of the neighboring mountains. Since the extensive clearings between the Spree and the Oder, the inhabitants complain that the clover crop is much less productive than before. On the other hand, examples of the beneficial influence of planting and restoring the woods are not wanting. In Scotland, where many miles square have been planted with trees, this effect has been manifest, and similar observations have been made in several places in Southern France. In Lower Egypt, both at Cairo and near Alexandria, rain rarely fell in considerable quantity--for example, during the French occupation of Egypt, about 1798, it did not rain for sixteen months--but since Mehemet Aali and Ibrahim Pacha executed their vast plantations (the former alone having planted more than twenty millions of olive and fig trees, cottonwood, oranges, acacias, planes, &c.), there now falls a good deal of rain, especially along the coast, in the months of November, December, and January; and even at Cairo it rains both oftener and more abundantly, so that real showers are no rarity."[184] Babinet, in one of his lectures,[185] cites the supposed fact of the increase of rain in Egypt in consequence of the planting of trees, and thus remarks upon it: "A few years ago it never rained in Lower Egypt. The constant north winds, which almost exclusively prevail there, passed without obstruction over a surface bare of vegetation. Grain was kept on the roofs in Alexandria, without being covered or otherwise protected from injury by the atmosphere; but since the making of plantations, an obstacle has been created which retards the current of air from the north. The air thus checked, accumulates, dilates, cools, and yields rain.[186] The forests of the Vosges and Ardennes produce the same effects in the north east of France, and send us a great river, the Meuse, which is as remarkable for its volume as for the small extent of its basin. With respect to the retardation of the atmospheric currents, and the effects of that retardation, one of my illustrious colleagues, M. Mignet, who is not less a profound thinker than an eloquent writer, suggested to me that, to produce rain, a forest was as good as a mountain, and this is literally true." Monestier-Savignat arrives at this conclusion: "Forests on the one hand diminish evaporation; on the other, they act on the atmosphere as refrigerating causes. The second scale of the balance predominates over the other, for it is established that in wooded countries it rains oftener, and that, the quantity of rain being equal, they are more humid."[187] Boussingault--whose observations on the drying up of lakes and springs, from the destruction of the woods, in tropical America, have often been cited as a conclusive proof that the quantity of rain was thereby diminished--after examining the question with much care, remarks: "In my judgment it is settled that very large clearings must diminish the annual fall of rain in a country;" and on a subsequent page, he concludes that, "arguing from meteorological facts collected in the equinoctial regions, there is reason to presume that clearings diminish the annual fall of rain."[188] The same eminent author proposes series of observations on the level of natural lakes, especially on those without outlet, as a means of determining the increase or diminution of precipitation in their basins, and, of course, of measuring the effect of clearing when such operations take place within those basins. But it must be observed that lakes without a visible outlet are of very rare occurrence, and besides, where no superficial conduit for the discharge of lacustrine waters exists, we can seldom or never be sure that nature has not provided subterranean channels for their escape. Indeed, when we consider that most earths, and even some rocks under great hydrostatic pressure, are freely permeable by water, and that fissures are frequent in almost all rocky strata, it is evident that we cannot know in what proportion the depression of the level of a lake is to be ascribed to infiltration, to percolation, or to evaporation.[189] Further, we are, in general, as little able to affirm that a given lake derives all its water from the fall of rain within its geographical basin, or that it receives all the water that falls in that basin except what evaporates from the ground, as we are to show that all its superfluous water is carried off by visible channels and by evaporation. Suppose the strata of the mountains on two sides of a lake, east and west, to be tilted in the same direction, and that those of the hill on the east side incline toward the lake, those of that on the west side from it. In this case a large proportion of the rain which falls on the eastern slope of the eastern hill may find its way between the strata to the lake, and an equally large proportion of the precipitation upon the eastern slope of the western ridge may escape out of the basin by similar channels. In such case the clearing of the _outer_ slopes of either or both mountains, while the forests of the _inner_ declivities remained intact, might affect the quantity of water received by the lake, and it would always be impossible to know to what territorial extent influences thus affecting the level of a lake might reach. Boussingault admits that extensive clearing _below_ an alpine lake, even at a considerable distance, might affect the level of its waters. How it would produce this influence he does not inform us, but, as he says nothing of the natural subterranean drainage of surface waters, it is to be presumed that he refers to the supposed diminution of the quantity of rain from the removal of the forest, which might manifest itself at a point more elevated than the cause which occasioned it. The elevation or depression of the level of natural lakes, then, cannot be relied upon as a proof, still less as a measure of an increase or diminution in the fall of rain within their geographical basins, resulting from the felling of the woods which covered them; though such phenomena afford very strong presumptive evidence that the supply of water is somehow augmented or lessened. The supply is, in most cases, derived much less from the precipitation which falls directly upon the surface of lakes, than from waters which flow above or under the ground around them, and which, in the latter case, often come from districts not comprised within what superficial geography would regard as belonging to the lake basins. It is, upon the whole, evident that the question can hardly be determined except by the comparison of pluviometrical observations made at a given station before and after the destruction of the woods. Such observations, unhappily, are scarcely to be found, and the opportunity for making them is rapidly passing away, except so far as a converse series might be collected in countries--France, for example--where forest plantation is now going on upon a large scale. The Smithsonian Institution at Washington is well situated for directing the attention of observers in the newer territory of the United States to this subject, and it is to be hoped that it will not fail to avail itself of its facilities for this purpose. Numerous other authorities might be cited in support of the proposition that forests tend, at least in certain latitudes and at certain seasons, to produce rain; but though the arguments of the advocates of this doctrine are very plausible, not to say convincing, their opinions are rather _à priori_ conclusions from general meteorological laws, than deductions from facts of observation, and it is remarkable that there is so little direct evidence on the subject. On the other hand, Foissac expresses the opinion that forests have no influence on precipitation, beyond that of promoting the deposit of dew in their vicinity, and he states, as a fact of experience, that the planting of large vegetables, and especially of trees, is a very efficient means of drying morasses, because the plants draw from the earth a quantity of water larger than the average annual fall of rain.[190] Klöden, admitting that the rivers Oder and Elbe have diminished in quantity of water, the former since 1778, the latter since 1828, denies that the diminution of volume is to be ascribed to a decrease of precipitation in consequence of the felling of the forests, and states, what other physicists confirm, that, during the same period, meteorological records in various parts of Europe show rather an augmentation than a reduction of rain.[191] The observations of Belgrand tend to show, contrary to the general opinion, that less rain falls in wooded than in denuded districts. He compared the precipitation for the year 1852, at Vezelay in the valley of the Bouchat, and at Avallon in the valley of the Grenetière. At the first of these places it was 881 millimètres, at the latter 581 millimètres. The two cities are not more than eight miles apart. They are at the same altitude, and it is stated that the only difference in their geographical conditions consists in the different proportions of forest and cultivated country around them, the basin of the Bouchat being entirely bare, while that of the Grenetière is well wooded.[192] Observations in the same valleys, considered with reference to the seasons, show the following pluviometric results: FOR LA GRENETIÈRE. February, 1852, 42.2 millimètres precipitation. November, " 23.8 " " January, 1853, 35.4 " " ----- Total, 106.4 in three cold months. September, 1851, 27.1 millimètres precipitation. May, 1852, 20.9 " " June, " 56.3 " " July, " 22.8 " " September, " 22.8 " " ----- Total, 149.9 in five warm months. FOR LE BOUCHAT. February, 1852, 51.3 millimètres precipitation. November, " 36.6 " " January, 1853, 92.0 " " ----- Total, 179.9 in three cold months. September, 1851, 43.8 millimètres precipitation. May, 1852, 13.2 " " June, " 55.5 " " July, " 19.5 " " September, " 26.5 " " ----- Total, 158.5 in five warm months. These observations, so far as they go, seem to show that more rain falls in cleared than in wooded countries, but this result is so contrary to what has been generally accepted as a theoretical conclusion, that further experiment is required to determine the question. Becquerel--whose treatise on the climatic effects of the destruction of the forest is the fullest general discussion of that subject known to me--does not examine this particular point, and as, in the summary of the results of his investigations, he does not ascribe to the forest any influence upon precipitation, the presumption is that he rejects the doctrine of its importance as an agent in producing the fall of rain. The effect of the forest on precipitation, then, is not entirely free from doubt, and we cannot positively affirm that the total annual quantity of rain is diminished or increased by the destruction of the woods, though both theoretical considerations and the balance of testimony strongly favor the opinion that more rain falls in wooded than in open countries. One important conclusion, at least, upon the meteorological influence of forests is certain and undisputed: the proposition, namely, that, within their own limits, and near their own borders, they maintain a more uniform degree of humidity in the atmosphere than is observed in cleared grounds. Scarcely less can it be questioned that they promote the frequency of showers, and, if they do not augment the amount of precipitation, they equalize its distribution through the different seasons. _Influence of the Forest on the Humidity of the Soil._ I have hitherto confined myself to the influence of the forest on meteorological conditions, a subject, as has been seen, full of difficulty and uncertainty. Its comparative effects on the temperature, the humidity, the texture and consistence, the configuration and distribution of the mould or arable soil, and, very often, of the mineral strata below, and on the permanence and regularity of springs and greater superficial watercourses, are much less disputable as well as more easily estimated, and much more important, than its possible value as a cause of strictly climatic equilibrium or disturbance. The action of the forest on the earth is chiefly mechanical, but the organic process of abstraction of water by its roots affects the quantity of that fluid contained in the vegetable mould, and in the mineral strata near the surface, and, consequently, the consistency of the soil. In treating of the effects of trees on the moisture of the atmosphere, I have said that the forest, by interposing a canopy between the sky and the ground, and by covering the surface with a thick mantle of fallen leaves, at once obstructed insolation and prevented the radiation of heat from the earth. These influences go far to balance each other; but familiar observation shows that, in summer, the forest soil is not raised to so high a temperature as open grounds exposed to irradiation. For this reason, and in consequence of the mechanical resistance opposed by the bed of dead leaves to the escape of moisture, we should expect that, except after recent rains, the superficial strata of woodland soil would be more humid than that of cleared land. This agrees with experience. The soil of the forest is always moist, except in the extremest droughts, and it is exceedingly rare that a primitive wood suffers from want of humidity. How far this accumulation of water affects the condition of neighboring grounds by lateral infiltration, we do not know, but we shall see, in a subsequent chapter, that water is conveyed to great distances by this process, and we may hence infer that the influence in question is an important one. _Influence of the Forest on the Flow of Springs._ It is well established that the protection afforded by the forest against the escape of moisture from its soil, insures the permanence and regularity of natural springs, not only within the limits of the wood, but at some distance beyond its borders, and thus contributes to the supply of an element essential to both vegetable and animal life. As the forests are destroyed, the springs which flowed from the woods, and, consequently, the greater watercourses fed by them, diminish both in number and in volume. This fact is so familiar throughout the American States and the British Provinces, that there are few old residents of the interior of those districts who are not able to testify to its truth as a matter of personal observation. My own recollection suggests to me many instances of this sort, and I remember one case where a small mountain spring, which disappeared soon after the clearing of the ground where it rose, was recovered about ten or twelve years ago, by simply allowing the bushes and young trees to grow up on a rocky knoll, not more than half an acre in extent, immediately above it, and has since continued to flow uninterruptedly. The uplands in the Atlantic States formerly abounded in sources and rills, but in many parts of those States which have been cleared for above a generation or two, the hill pastures now suffer severely from drought, and in dry seasons no longer afford either water or herbage for cattle. Foissac, indeed, quotes from the elder Pliny (_Nat. Hist._, xxxi, c. 30) a passage affirming that the felling of the woods gives rise to springs which did not exist before because the water of the soil was absorbed by the trees; and the same meteorologist declares, as I observed in treating of the effect of the forest on atmospheric humidity, that the planting of trees tends to drain marshy ground, because the roots absorb more water than falls from the air. But Pliny's statement rests on very doubtful authority, and Foissac cites no evidence in support of his own proposition.[193] In the American States, it is always observed that clearing the ground not only causes running springs to disappear, but dries up the stagnant pools and the spongy soils of the low grounds. The first roads in those States ran along the ridges, when practicable, because there only was the earth dry enough to allow of their construction, and, for the same reason, the cabins of the first settlers were perched upon the hills. As the forests have been from time to time removed, and the face of the earth laid open to the air and sun, the moisture has been evaporated, and the removal of the highways and of human habitations from the bleak hills to the sheltered valleys, is one of the most agreeable among the many improvements which later generations have witnessed in the interior of New England and the other Northern States. Almost every treatise on the economy of the forest adduces numerous facts in support of the doctrine that the clearing of the woods tends to diminish the flow of springs and the humidity of the soil, and it might seem unnecessary to bring forward further evidence on this point.[194] But the subject is of too much practical importance and of too great philosophical interest to be summarily disposed of; and it ought particularly to be noticed that there is at least one case--that of some loose soils which, when bared of wood, very rapidly absorb and transmit to lower strata the water they receive from the atmosphere, as argued by Vallès[195]--where the removal of the forest may increase the flow of springs at levels below it, by exposing to the rain and melted snow a surface more bibulous, and at the same time less retentive, than its original covering. Under such circumstances, the water of precipitation, which had formerly flowed off without penetrating through the superficial layers of leaves upon the ground--as, in very heavy showers, it sometimes does--or been absorbed by the vegetable mould and retained until it was evaporated, might descend through porous earth until it meets an impermeable stratum, and then be conducted along it, until, finally, at the outcropping of this stratum, it bursts from a hillside as a running spring. But such instances are doubtless too rare to form a frequent or an important exception to the general law, because it is only under very uncommon circumstances that rain water runs off over the surface of forest ground instead of sinking into it, and very rarely the case that such a soil as has just been supposed is covered by a layer of vegetable earth thick enough to retain, until it is evaporated, all the rain that falls upon it, without imparting any water to the strata below it. If we look at the point under discussion as purely a question of fact, to be determined by positive evidence and not by argument, the observations of Boussingault are, both in the circumstances they detail, and in the weight of authority to be attached to the testimony, among the most important yet recorded. They are embodied in the fourth section of the twentieth chapter of that writer's _Économie Rurale_, and I have already referred to them on page 191 for another purpose. The interest of the question will justify me in giving, in Boussingault's own words, the facts and some of the remarks with which he accompanies the details of them: "In many localities," he observes,[196] "it has been thought that, within a certain number of years, a sensible diminution has been perceived in the volume of water of streams utilized as a motive power; at other points, there are grounds for believing that rivers have become shallower, and the increasing breadth of the belt of pebbles along their banks seems to prove the loss of a part of their water; and, finally, abundant springs have almost dried up. These observations have been principally made in valleys bounded by high mountains, and it is thought to have been noticed that this diminution of the waters has immediately followed the epoch when the inhabitants have begun to destroy, unsparingly, the woods which were spread over the face of the land. "These facts would indicate that, where clearings have been made, it rains less than formerly, and this is the generally received opinion. * * * But while the facts I have stated have been established, it has been observed, at the same time, that, since the clearing of the mountains, the rivers and the torrents, which seemed to have lost a part of their water, sometimes suddenly swell, and that, occasionally, to a degree which causes great disasters. Besides, after violent storms, springs which had become almost exhausted have been observed to burst out with impetuosity, and soon after to dry up again. These latter observations, it will be easily conceived, warn us not to admit hastily the common opinion that the felling of the woods lessens the quantity of rain; for not only is it very possible that the quantity of rain has not changed, but the mean volume of running water may have remained the same, in spite of the appearance of drought presented by the rivers and springs, at certain periods of the year. Perhaps the only difference would be that the flow of the same quantity of water becomes more irregular in consequence of clearing. For instance: if the low water of the Rhone during one part of the year were exactly compensated by a sufficient number of floods, it would follow that this river would convey to the Mediterranean the same volume of water which it carried to that sea in ancient times, before the period when the countries near its source were stripped of their woods, and when, probably, its mean depth was not subject to so great variations as in our days. If this were so, the forests would have this value--that of regulating, of economizing in a certain sort, the drainage of the rain water. "If running streams really become rarer in proportion as clearing is extended, it follows either that the rain is less abundant, or that evaporation is greatly favored by a surface which is no longer protected by trees against the rays of the sun and the wind. These two causes, acting in the same direction, must often be cumulative in their effects, and before we attempt to fix the value of each, it is proper to inquire whether it is an established fact that running waters diminish on the surface of a country in which extensive clearing is going on; in a word, to examine whether an apparent fact has not been mistaken for a real one. And here lies the practical point of the question; for if it is once established that clearing diminishes the volume of streams, it is less important to know to what special cause this effect is due. * * * I shall attach no value except to facts which have taken place under the eye of man, as it is the influence of his labors on the meteorological condition of the atmosphere which I propose to estimate. What I am about to detail has been observed particularly in America, but I shall endeavor to establish, that what I believe to be true of America would be equally so for any other continent. "One of the most interesting parts of Venezuela is, no doubt, the valley of Aragua. Situated at a short distance from the coast, and endowed, from its elevation, with various climates and a soil of unexampled fertility, its agriculture embraces at once the crops suited to tropical regions and to Europe. Wheat succeeds well on the heights of Victoria. Bounded on the north by the coast chain, on the south by a system of mountains connected with the Llanos, the valley is shut in on the east and the west by lines of hills which completely close it. In consequence of this singular configuration, the rivers which rise within it, having no outlet to the ocean, form, by their union, the beautiful Lake of Tacarigua or Valencia. This lake, according to Humboldt, is larger than that of Neufchâtel; it is at an elevation of 439 mètres [= 1,460 English feet] above the sea, and its greatest length does not exceed two leagues and a half [= seven English miles]. "At the time of Humboldt's visit to the valley of Aragua, the inhabitants were struck by the gradual diminution which the lake had been undergoing for thirty years. In fact, by comparing the descriptions given by historians with its actual condition, even making large allowance for exaggeration, it was easy to see that the level was considerably depressed. The facts spoke for themselves. Oviedo, who, toward the close of the sixteenth century, had often traversed the valley of Aragua, says positively that New Valencia was founded, in 1555, at half a league from the Lake of Tacarigua; in 1800, Humboldt found this city 5,260 mètres [= 3-1/3 English miles] from the shore. "The aspect of the soil furnished new proofs. Many hillocks on the plain retain the name of islands, which they more justly bore when they were surrounded by water. The ground laid bare by the retreat of the lake was converted into admirable plantations of cotton, bananas, and sugar cane; and buildings erected near the lake showed the sinking of the water from year to year. In 1796, new islands made their appearance. An important military point, a fortress built in 1740 on the island of Cabrera, was now on a peninsula; and, finally, on two granitic islands, those of Cura and Cabo Blanco, Humboldt observed among the shrubs, some mètres above the water, fine sand filled with helicites. "These clear and positive facts suggested numerous explanations, all assuming a subterranean outlet, which permitted the discharge of the water to the ocean. Humboldt disposed of these hypotheses, and, after a careful examination of the locality, the distinguished traveller did not hesitate to ascribe the diminution of the waters of the lake to the numerous clearings which had been made in the valley of Aragua within half a century. * * * "In 1800, the valley of Aragua possessed a population as dense as that of any of the best-peopled parts of France. * * * Such was the prosperous condition of this fine country when Humboldt occupied the Hacienda de Cura. "Twenty-two years later, I explored the valley of Aragua, fixing my residence in the little town of Maracay. For some years previous, the inhabitants had observed that the waters of the lake were no longer retiring, but, on the contrary, were sensibly rising. Grounds, not long before occupied by plantations, were submerged. The islands of Nuevas Aparecidas, which appeared above the surface in 1796, had again become shoals dangerous to navigation. Cabrera, a tongue of land on the north side of the valley, was so narrow that the least rise of the water completely inundated it. A protracted north wind sufficed to flood the road between Maracay and New Valencia. The fears which the inhabitants of the shores had so long entertained were reversed. * * * Those who had explained the diminution of the lake by the supposition of subterranean channels were suspected of blocking them up, to prove themselves in the right. "During the twenty-two years which had elapsed, important political events had occurred. Venezuela no longer belonged to Spain. The peaceful valley of Aragua had been the theatre of bloody struggles, and a war of extermination had desolated these smiling lands and decimated their population. At the first cry of independence a great number of slaves found their liberty by enlisting under the banners of the new republic; the great plantations were abandoned, and the forest, which in the tropics so rapidly encroaches, had soon recovered a large proportion of the soil which man had wrested from it by more than a century of constant and painful labor. "At the time of the growing prosperity of the valley of Aragua, the principal affluents of the lake were diverted, to serve for irrigation, and the rivers were dry for more than six months of the year. At the period of my visit, their waters, no longer employed, flowed freely." Boussingault proceeds to state that two lakes near Ubate in New Granada, at an elevation of 2,562 mètres (= 8,500 English feet), where there is a constant temperature of 14° to 16° centigrade [= 57°, 61° Fahrenheit], had formed but one, a century before his visit; that the waters were gradually retiring, and the plantations extending over the abandoned bed; that, by inquiry of old hunters and by examination of parish records, he found that extensive clearings had been made and were still going on. He found, also, that the length of the Lake of Fuquené, in the same valley, had, within two centuries, been reduced from ten leagues to one and a half, its breadth from three leagues to one. At the former period, timber was abundant, and the neighboring mountains were covered, to a certain height, with American oaks, laurels, and other trees of indigenous species; but at the time of his visit the mountains had been almost entirely stripped of their wood, chiefly to furnish fuel for salt-works. Our author adds that other cases, similar to those already detailed, might be cited, and he proceeds to show, by several examples, that the waters of other lakes in the same regions, where the valleys had always been bare of wood, or where the forests had not been disturbed, had undergone no change of level. Boussingault further maintains that the lakes of Switzerland have sustained a depression of level since the too prevalent destruction of the woods, and arrives at the general conclusion, that, "in countries where great clearings have been made, there has most probably been a diminution in the living waters which flow upon the surface of the ground." This conclusion he further supports by two examples: one, where a fine spring, at the foot of a wooded mountain in the Island of Ascension, dried up when the mountain was cleared, but reappeared when the wood was replanted; the other at Marmato, in the province of Popayan, where the streams employed to drive machinery were much diminished in volume, within two years after the clearing of the heights from which they derived their supplies. This latter is an interesting case, because, although the rain gauges, established as soon as the decrease of water began to excite alarm, showed a greater fall of rain for the second year of observation than the first, yet there was no appreciable increase in the flow of the mill streams. From these cases, the distinguished physicist infers that very restricted local clearings may diminish and even suppress springs and brooks, without any reduction in the total quantity of rain. It will have been noticed that these observations, with the exception of the last two cases, do not bear directly upon the question of the diminution of springs by clearings, but they logically infer it from the subsidence of the natural reservoirs which springs once filled. There is, however, no want of positive evidence on this subject. Marschand cites the following instances: "Before the felling of the woods, within the last few years, in the valley of the Soulce, the Combe-ès-Mounin and the Little Valley, the Sorne furnished a regular and sufficient supply of water for the iron works of Unterwyl, which was almost unaffected by drought or by heavy rains. The Sorne has now become a torrent, every shower occasions a flood, and after a few days of fine weather, the current falls so low that it has been necessary to change the water wheels, because those of the old construction are no longer able to drive the machinery, and at last to introduce a steam engine to prevent the stoppage of the works for want of water. "When the factory of St. Ursanne was established, the river that furnished its power was abundant, long known and tried, and had, from time immemorial, sufficed for the machinery of a previous factory. Afterward, the woods near its sources were cut. The supply of water fell off in consequence, the factory wanted water for half the year, and was at last obliged to stop altogether. "The spring of Combefoulat, in the commune of Seleate, was well known as one of the best in the country; it was remarkably abundant and sufficient, in spite of the severest droughts, to supply all the fountains of the town; but, as soon as considerable forests were felled in Combe-de-pré Martin and in the valley of Combefoulat, the famous spring which lies below these woods has become a mere thread of water, and disappears altogether in times of drought. "The spring of Varieux, which formerly supplied the castle of Pruntrut, lost more than half its water after the clearing of Varieux and Rongeoles. These woods have been replanted, the young trees are growing well, and with the woods, the waters of the spring are increasing. "The Dog Spring between Pruntrut and Bressancourt has entirely vanished since the surrounding forests grounds were brought under cultivation. "The Wolf Spring, in the commune of Soubey, furnishes a remarkable example of the influence of the woods upon fountains. A few years ago this spring did not exist. At the place where it now rises, a small thread of water was observed after very long rains, but the stream disappeared with the rain. The spot is in the middle of a very steep pasture inclining to the south. Eighty years ago, the owner of the land, perceiving that young firs were shooting up in the upper part of it, determined to let them grow, and they soon formed a flourishing grove. As soon as they were well grown, a fine spring appeared in place of the occasional rill, and furnished abundant water in the longest droughts. For forty or fifty years, this spring was considered the best in the Clos du Doubs. A few years since, the grove was felled, and the ground turned again to a pasture. The spring disappeared with the wood, and is now as dry as it was ninety years ago."[197] "The influence of the forest on springs," says Hummel, "is strikingly shown by an instance at Heilbronn. The woods on the hills surrounding the town are cut in regular succession every twentieth year. As the annual cuttings approach a certain point, the springs yield less water, some of them none at all; but as the young growth shoots up, they now more and more freely, and at length bubble up again in all their original abundance."[198] Piper states the following case: "Within about half a mile of my residence there is a pond upon which mills have been standing for a long time, dating back, I believe, to the first settlement of the town. These have been kept in constant operation until within some twenty or thirty years, when the supply of water began to fail. The pond owes its existence to a stream which has its source in the hills which stretch some miles to the south. Within the time mentioned, these hills, which were clothed with a dense forest, have been almost entirely stripped of trees; and to the wonder and loss of the mill owners, the water in the pond has failed, except in the season of freshets; and, what was never heard of before, the stream itself has been entirely dry. Within the last ten years a new growth of wood has sprung up on most of the land formerly occupied by the old forest; and now the water runs through the year, notwithstanding the great droughts of the last few years, going back from 1856." Dr. Piper quotes from a letter of William C. Bryant the following remarks: "It is a common observation that our summers are become drier, and our streams smaller. Take the Cuyahoga as an illustration. Fifty years ago large barges loaded with goods went up and down that river, and one of the vessels engaged in the battle of Lake Erie, in which the gallant Perry was victorious, was built at Old Portage, six miles north of Albion, and floated down to the lake. Now, in an ordinary stage of the water, a canoe or skiff can hardly pass down the stream. Many a boat of fifty tons burden has been built and loaded in the Tuscarawas, at New Portage, and sailed to New Orleans without breaking bulk. Now, the river hardly affords a supply of water at New Portage for the canal. The same may be said of other streams--they are drying up. And from the same cause--the destruction of our forests--our summers are growing drier, and our winters colder."[199] No observer has more carefully studied the influence of the forest upon the flow of the waters, or reasoned more ably on the ascertained phenomena than Cantegril. The facts presented in the following case, communicated by him to the _Ami des Sciences_ for December, 1859, are as nearly conclusive as any single instance well can be: "In the territory of the commune of Labruguière, there is a forest of 1,834 hectares [4,530 acres], known by the name of the Forest of Montaut, and belonging to that commune. It extends along the northern slope of the Black Mountains. The soil is granitic, the maximum altitude 1,243 mètres [4,140 feet], and the inclination ranges between 15 and 60 to 100. "A small current of water, the brook of Caunan, takes its rise in this forest, and receives the waters of two thirds of its surface. At the lower extremity of the wood and on the stream are several fulleries, each requiring a force of eight horse-power to drive the water wheels which work the stampers. The commune of Labruguière had been for a long time famous for its opposition to forest laws. Trespasses and abuses of the right of pasturage had converted the wood into an immense waste, so that this vast property now scarcely sufficed to pay the expense of protecting it, and to furnish the inhabitants with a meagre supply of fuel. While the forest was thus ruined, and the soil thus bared, the water, after every abundant rain, made an eruption into the valley, brought down a great quantity of pebbles which still clog the current of the Caunan. The violence of the floods was sometimes such that they were obliged to stop the machinery for some time. During the summer another inconvenience was felt. If the dry weather continued a little longer than usual, the delivery of water became insignificant. Each fullery could for the most part only employ a single set of stampers, and it was not unusual to see the work entirely suspended. "After 1840, the municipal authority succeeded in enlightening the population as to their true interests. Protected by a more watchful supervision, aided by well-managed replantation, the forest has continued to improve to the present day. In proportion to the restoration of the forest, the condition of the manufactories has become less and less precarious, and the action of the water is completely modified. For example, there are, no longer, sudden and violent floods which make it necessary to stop the machinery. There is no increase in the delivery until six or eight hours after the beginning of the rain; the floods follow a regular progression till they reach their maximum, and decrease in the same manner. Finally, the fulleries are no longer forced to suspend work in summer; the water is always sufficiently abundant to allow the employment of two sets of stampers at least, and often even of three. "This example is remarkable in this respect, that, all other circumstances having remained the same, the changes in the action of the stream can be attributed only to the restoration of the forest--changes which may be thus summed up: diminution of flood water during rains--increase of delivery at other seasons." _The Forest in Winter._ To estimate rightly the importance of the forest as a natural apparatus for accumulating the water that falls upon the surface and transmitting it to the subjacent strata, we must compare the condition and properties of its soil with those of cleared and cultivated earth, and examine the consequently different action of these soils at different seasons of the year. The disparity between them is greatest in climates where, as in the Northern American States and in the North of Europe, the open ground freezes and remains impervious to water during a considerable part of the winter; though, even in climates where the earth does not freeze at all, the woods have still an important influence of the same character. The difference is yet greater in countries which have regular wet and dry seasons, rain being very frequent in the former period, while, in the latter, it scarcely occurs at all. These countries lie chiefly in or near the tropics, but they are not wanting in higher latitudes; for a large part of Asiatic and even of European Turkey is almost wholly deprived of summer rains. In the principal regions occupied by European cultivation, and where alone the questions discussed in this volume are recognized as having, at present, any practical importance, rain falls at all seasons, and it is to these regions that, on this point as well as others, I chiefly confine my attention. The influence of the forest upon the waters of the earth has been more studied in France than in any other part of the civilized world, because that country has, in recent times, suffered most severely from the destruction of the woods. But in the southern provinces of that empire, where the evils resulting from this cause are most sensibly felt, the winters are not attended with much frost, while, in Northern Europe, where the winters are rigorous enough to freeze the ground to the depth of some inches, or even feet, a humid atmosphere and frequent summer rains prevent the drying up of the springs observed in southern latitudes when the woods are gone. For these reasons, the specific character of the forest, as a winter reservoir of moisture in countries with a cold and dry atmosphere, has not attracted so much attention in France and Northern Europe as it deserves in the United States, where an excessive climate renders that function of the woods more important. In New England, irregular as the climate is, the first autumnal snows usually fall before the ground is frozen at all, or when the frost extends at most to the depth of only a few inches. In the woods, especially those situated upon the elevated ridges which supply the natural irrigation of the soil and feed the perennial fountains and streams, the ground remains covered with snow during the winter; for the trees protect the snow from blowing from the general surface into the depressions, and new accessions are received before the covering deposited by the first fall is melted. Snow is of a color unfavorable for radiation, but, even when it is of considerable thickness, it is not wholly impervious to the rays of the sun, and for this reason, as well as from the warmth of lower strata, the frozen crust, if one has been formed, is soon thawed, and does not again fall below the freezing point during the winter. The snow in contact with the earth now begins to melt, with greater or less rapidity, according to the relative temperature of the earth and the air, while the water resulting from its dissolution is imbibed by the vegetable mould, and carried off by infiltration so fast that both the snow and the layers of leaves in contact with it often seem comparatively dry, when, in fact, the under surface of the former is in a state of perpetual thaw. No doubt a certain proportion of the snow is returned to the atmosphere by direct evaporation, but in the woods it is partially protected from the action of the sun, and as very little water runs off in the winter by superficial watercourses, except in rare cases of sudden thaw, there can be no question that much the greater part of the snow deposited in the forest is slowly melted and absorbed by the earth. The quantity of snow that falls in extensive forests, far from the open country, has seldom been ascertained by direct observation, because there are few meteorological stations in such situations. In the Northeastern border States of the American Union, the ground in the deep woods is covered with snow four or five months, and the proportion of water which falls in snow does not exceed one fifth of the total precipitation for the year.[200] Although, in the open grounds, snow and ice are evaporated with great rapidity in clear weather, even when the thermometer stands far below the freezing point, the surface of the snow in the woods does not indicate much loss in this way. Very small deposits of snowflakes remain unevaporated in the forest, for many days after snow let fall at the same time in the cleared field has disappeared without either a thaw to melt it or a wind powerful enough to drift it away. Even when bared of their leaves, the trees of a wood obstruct, in an important degree, both the direct action of the sun's rays on the snow, and the movement of drying and thawing winds. Dr. Piper records the following observations: "A body of snow, one foot in depth, and sixteen feet square, was protected from the wind by a tight board fence about five feet high, while another body of snow, much more sheltered from the sun than the first, six feet in depth, and about sixteen feet square, was fully exposed to the wind. When the thaw came on, which lasted about a fortnight, the larger body of snow was entirely dissolved in less than a week, while the smaller body was not wholly gone at the end of the second week. "Equal quantities of snow were placed in vessels of the same kind and capacity, the temperature of the air being seventy degrees. In the one case, a constant current of air was kept passing over the open vessel, while the other was protected by a cover. The snow in the first was dissolved in sixteen minutes, while the latter had a small unthawed proportion remaining at the end of eighty-five minutes."[201] The snow in the woods is protected in the same way, though not literally to the same extent as by the fence in one of these cases and the cover in the other. Little of the winter precipitation, therefore, is lost by evaporation, and as it slowly melts at bottom it is absorbed by the earth, and but a very small quantity of water runs off from the surface. The immense importance of the forest, as a reservoir of this stock of moisture, becomes apparent, when we consider that a large proportion of the summer rain either flows into the valleys and the rivers, because it falls faster than the ground can imbibe it; or, if absorbed by the warm superficial strata, is evaporated from them without sinking deep enough to reach wells and springs, which, of course, depend very much on winter rains and snows for their entire supply. This observation, though specially true of cleared and cultivated grounds, is not wholly inapplicable to the forest, particularly when, as is too often the case in Europe, the underwood and the decaying leaves are removed. The general effect of the forest in cold climates is to assimilate the winter state of the ground to that of wooded regions under softer skies; and it is a circumstance well worth noting, that in Southern Europe, where nature has denied to the earth a warm winter-garment of flocculent snow, she has, by one of those compensations in which her empire is so rich, clothed the hillsides with umbrella pines, ilexes, cork oaks, and other trees of persistent foliage, whose evergreen leaves afford to the soil a protection analogous to that which it derives from snow in more northern climates. The water imbibed by the soil in winter sinks until it meets a more or less impermeable, or a saturated stratum, and then, by unseen conduits, slowly finds its way to the channels of springs, or oozes out of the ground in drops which unite in rills, and so all is conveyed to the larger streams, and by them finally to the sea. The water, in percolating through the vegetable and mineral layers, acquires their temperature, and is chemically affected by their action, but it carries very little matter in mechanical suspension. The process I have described is a slow one, and the supply of moisture derived from the snow, augmented by the rains of the following seasons, keeps the forest ground, where the surface is level or but moderately inclined, in a state of saturation through almost the whole year. The rivers fed by springs and shaded by woods are comparatively uniform in volume, in temperature, and in chemical composition. Their banks are little abraded, nor are their courses much obstructed by fallen timber, or by earth and gravel washed down from the highlands. Their channels are subject only to slow and gradual changes, and they carry down to the lakes and the sea no accumulation of sand or silt to fill up their outlets, and, by raising their beds, to force them to spread over the low grounds near their mouth.[202] In this state of things, destructive tendencies of all sorts are arrested or compensated, and tree, bird, beast, and fish, alike, find a constant uniformity of condition most favorable to the regular and harmonious coexistence of them all. _General Consequences of the Destruction of the Forest._ With the disappearance of the forest, all is changed. At one season, the earth parts with its warmth by radiation to an open sky--receives, at another, an immoderate heat from the unobstructed rays of the sun. Hence the climate becomes excessive, and the soil is alternately parched by the fervors of summer, and seared by the rigors of winter. Bleak winds sweep unresisted over its surface, drift away the snow that sheltered it from the frost, and dry up its scanty moisture. The precipitation becomes as regular as the temperature; the melting snows and vernal rains, no longer absorbed by a loose and bibulous vegetable mould, rush over the frozen surface, and pour down the valleys seaward, instead of filling a retentive bed of absorbent earth, and storing up a supply of moisture to feed perennial springs. The soil is bared of its covering of leaves, broken and loosened by the plough, deprived of the fibrous rootlets which held it together, dried and pulverized by sun and wind, and at last exhausted by new combinations. The face of the earth is no longer a sponge, but a dust heap, and the floods which the waters of the sky pour over it hurry swiftly along its slopes, carrying in suspension vast quantities of earthy particles which increase the abrading power and mechanical force of the current, and, augmented by the sand and gravel of falling banks, fill the beds of the streams, divert them into new channels and obstruct their outlets. The rivulets, wanting their former regularity of supply and deprived of the protecting shade of the woods, are heated, evaporated, and thus reduced in their summer currents, but swollen to raging torrents in autumn and in spring. From these causes, there is a constant degradation of the uplands, and a consequent elevation of the beds of watercourses and of lakes by the deposition of the mineral and vegetable matter carried down by the waters. The channels of great rivers become unnavigable, their estuaries are choked up, and harbors which once sheltered large navies are shoaled by dangerous sandbars. The earth, stripped of its vegetable glebe, grows less and less productive, and, consequently, less able to protect itself by weaving a new network of roots to bind its particles together, a new carpeting of turf to shield it from wind and sun and scouring rain. Gradually it becomes altogether barren. The washing of the soil from the mountains leaves bare ridges of sterile rock, and the rich organic mould which covered them, now swept down into the dank low grounds, promotes a luxuriance of aquatic vegetation that breeds fever, and more insidious forms of mortal disease, by its decay, and thus the earth is rendered no longer fit for the habitation of man.[203] To the general truth of this sad picture there are many exceptions, even in countries of excessive climates. Some of these are due to favorable conditions of surface, of geological structure, and of the distribution of rain; in many others, the evil consequences of man's improvidence have not yet been experienced, only because a sufficient time has not elapsed, since the felling of the forest, to allow them to develop themselves. But the vengeance of nature for the violation of her harmonies, though slow, is sure, and the gradual deterioration of soil and climate in such exceptional regions is as certain to result from the destruction of the woods as is any natural effect to follow its cause. In the vast farrago of crudities which the elder Pliny's ambition of encyclopædic attainment and his ready credulity have gathered together, we meet some judicious observations. Among these we must reckon the remark with which he accompanies his extraordinary statement respecting the prevention of springs by the growth of forest trees, though, as is usual with him, his philosophy is wrong. "Destructive torrents are generally formed when hills are stripped of the trees which formerly confined and absorbed the rains." The absorption here referred to is not that of the soil, but of the roots, which, Pliny supposed, drank up the water to feed the growth of the trees. Although this particular evil effect of too extensive clearing was so early noticed, the lesson seems to have been soon forgotten. The legislation of the Middle Ages in Europe is full of absurd provisions concerning the forests, which sovereigns sometimes destroyed because they furnished a retreat for rebels and robbers, sometimes protected because they were necessary to breed stags and boars for the chase, and sometimes spared with the more enlightened view of securing a supply of timber and of fuel to future generations.[204] It was reserved to later ages to appreciate their geographical importance, and it is only in very recent times, only in a few European countries, that the too general felling of the woods has been recognized as the most destructive among the many causes of the physical deterioration of the earth. _Condition of the Forest, and its Literature in different Countries._ The literature of the forest, which in England and America has not yet become sufficiently extensive to be known as a special branch of authorship, counts its thousands of volumes in Germany, Italy, and France. It is in the latter country, perhaps, that the relations of the woods to the regular drainage of the soil, and especially to the permanence of the natural configuration of terrestrial surface, have been most thoroughly investigated. On the other hand, the purely economical aspects of sylviculture have been most satisfactorily expounded, and that art has been most philosophically discussed, and most skilfully and successfully practised, in Germany. The eminence of Italian theoretical hydrographers and the great ability of Italian hydraulic engineers are well known, but the specific geographical importance of the woods has not been so clearly recognized in Italy as in the states bordering it on the north and west. It is true that the face of nature has been as completely revolutionized by man, and that the action of torrents has created as wide and as hopeless devastation in that country as in France; but in the French Empire the desolation produced by clearing the forests is more recent,[205] has been more suddenly effected, and, therefore, excites a livelier and more general interest than in Italy, where public opinion does not so readily connect the effect with its true cause. Italy, too, from ancient habit, employs little wood in architectural construction; for generations she has maintained no military or commercial marine large enough to require exhaustive quantities of timber,[206] and the mildness of her climate makes small demands on the woods for fuel. Besides these circumstances, it must be remembered that the sciences of observation did not become knowledges of practical application till after the mischief was already mainly done and even forgotten in Alpine Italy, while its evils were just beginning to be sensibly felt in France when the claims of natural philosophy as a liberal study were first acknowledged in modern Europe. The former political condition of the Italian Peninsula would have effectually prevented the adoption of a general system of forest economy, however clearly the importance of a wise administration of this great public interest might have been understood. The woods which controlled and regulated the flow of the river sources were very often in one jurisdiction, the plains to be irrigated, or to be inundated by floods and desolated by torrents, in another. Concert of action on such a subject between a multitude of jealous petty sovereignties was obviously impossible, and nothing but the union of all the Italian states under a single government can render practicable the establishment of such arrangements for the conservation and restoration of the forests and the regulation of the flow of the waters as are necessary for the full development of the yet unexhausted resources of that fairest of lands, and even for the permanent maintenance of the present condition of its physical geography. The denudation of the Central and Southern Apennines and of the Italian declivity of the Western Alps began at a period of unknown antiquity, but it does not seem to have been carried to a very dangerous length until the foreign conquests and extended commerce of Rome created a greatly increased demand for wood for the construction of ships and for military material. The Eastern Alps, the Western Apennines, and the Maritime Alps retained their forests much later; but even here the want of wood, and the injury to the plains and the navigation of the rivers by sediment brought down by the torrents, led to some legislation for the protection of the forests, by the Republic of Venice in the fifteenth century, by that of Genoa as early at least as the seventeenth; and Marschand states that the latter Government passed laws requiring the proprietors of mountain lands to replant the woods. These, however, do not seem to have been effectually enforced. It is very common in Italy to ascribe to the French occupation under the first Empire all the improvements, and all the abuses of recent times, according to the political sympathies of the individual; and the French are often said to have prostrated every forest which has disappeared within a century.[207] But, however this may be, no energetic system of repression or restoration was adopted by any of the Italian states after the downfall of the Empire, and the taxes on forest property in some of them were so burdensome that rural municipalities sometimes proposed to cede their common woods to the Government, without any other compensation than the remission of the taxes imposed on forest lands.[208] Under such circumstances, woodlands would soon become disafforested, and where facilities of transportation and a good demand for timber have increased the inducements to fell it, as upon the borders of the Mediterranean, the destruction of the forest and all the evils which attend it have gone on at a seriously alarming rate. It has even been calculated that four tenths of the area of the Ligurian provinces have been washed away or rendered incapable of cultivation by the felling of the woods.[209] The damp and cold climate of England requires the maintenance of household fires through a large part of the year. Contrivances for economizing fuel were of later introduction in that country than on the Continent. The soil, like the sky, was, in general, charged with humidity; its natural condition was unfavorable for common roads, and the transportation of so heavy a material as coal, by land, from the remote counties where alone it was mined in the Middle Ages, was costly and difficult. For all these reasons, the consumption of wood was large, and apprehensions of the exhaustion of the forests were excited at an early period. Legislation there, as elsewhere, proved ineffectual to protect them, and many authors of the sixteenth century express fears of serious evils from the wasteful economy of the people in this respect. Harrison, in his curious chapter "Of Woods and Marishes" in Holinshed's compilation, complains of the rapid decrease of the forests, and adds: "Howbeit thus much I dare affirme, that if woods go so fast to decaie in the next hundred yeere of Grace, as they haue doone and are like to doo in this, * * * it is to be feared that the fennie bote, broome, turfe, gall, heath, firze, brakes, whinnes, ling, dies, hassacks, flags, straw, sedge, réed, rush, and also _seacole_, will be good merchandize euen in the citie of London, whereunto some of them euen now haue gotten readie passage, and taken vp their innes in the greatest merchants' parlours. * * * I would wish that I might liue no longer than to sée foure things in this land reformed, that is: the want of discipline in the church: the couetous dealing of most of our merchants in the preferment of the commodities of other countries, and hinderance of their owne: the holding of faires and markets vpon the sundaie to be abolished and referred to the wednesdaies: and that euerie man, in whatsoeuer part of the champaine soile enioieth fortie acres of land, and vpwards, after that rate, either by frée deed, copie hold, or fee farme, might plant one acre of wood, or sowe the same with oke mast, hasell, béech, and sufficient prouision be made that it may be cherished and kept. But I feare me that I should then liue too long, and so long, that I should either be wearie of the world, or the world of me."[210] Evelyn's "Silva," the first edition of which appeared in 1664, rendered an extremely important service to the cause of the woods, and there is no doubt that the ornamental plantations in which England far surpasses all other countries, are, in some measure, the fruit of Evelyn's enthusiasm. In England, however, arboriculture, the planting and nursing of single trees, has, until recently, been better understood than sylviculture, the sowing and training of the forest. But this latter branch of rural improvement is now pursued on a very considerable scale, though, so far as I know, not by the National Government. _The Influence of the Forest on Inundations._ Besides the climatic question, which I have already sufficiently discussed, and the obvious inconveniences of a scanty supply of charcoal, of fuel, and of timber for architectural and naval construction and for the thousand other uses to which wood is applied in rural and domestic economy, and in the various industrial processes of civilized life, the attention of French foresters and public economists has been specially drawn to three points, namely: the influence of the forests on the permanence and regular flow of springs or natural fountains; on inundations by the overflow of rivers; and on the abrasion of soil and the transportation of earth, gravel, pebbles, and even of considerable masses of rock, from higher to lower levels, by torrents. There are, however, connected with this general subject, several other topics of minor or strictly local interest, or of more uncertain character, which I shall have occasion more fully to speak of hereafter. The first of these three principal subjects--the influence of the woods on springs and other living waters--has been already considered; and if the facts stated in that discussion are well established, and the conclusions I have drawn from them are logically sound, it would seem to follow, as a necessary corollary, that the action of the forest is as important in diminishing the frequency and violence of river floods, as in securing the permanence and equability of natural fountains; for any cause which promotes the absorption and accumulation of the water of precipitation by the superficial strata of the soil, to be slowly given out by infiltration and percolation, must, by preventing the rapid flow of surface water into the natural channels of drainage, tend to check the sudden rise of rivers, and, consequently, the overflow of their banks, which constitutes what is called inundation. The mechanical resistance, too, offered by the trunks of trees and of undergrowth to the flow of water over the surface, tends sensibly to retard the rapidity of its descent down declivities, and to divert and divide streams which may have already accumulated from smaller threads of water.[211] Inundations are produced by the insufficiency of the natural channels of rivers to carry off the waters of their basins as fast as those waters flow into them. In accordance with the usual economy of nature, we should presume that she had everywhere provided the means of discharging, without disturbance of her general arrangements or abnormal destruction of her products, the precipitation which she sheds upon the face of the earth. Observation confirms this presumption, at least in the countries to which I confine my inquiries; for, so far as we know the primitive conditions of the regions brought under human occupation within the historical period, it appears that the overflow of river banks was much less frequent and destructive than at the present day, or, at least, that rivers rose and fell less suddenly before man had removed the natural checks to the too rapid drainage of the basins in which their tributaries originate. The banks of the rivers and smaller streams in the North American colonies were formerly little abraded by the currents. Even now the trees come down almost to the water's edge along the rivers, in the larger forests of the United States, and the surface of the streams seems liable to no great change in level or in rapidity of current. A circumstance almost conclusive as to the regularity of flow in forest rivers, is that they do not form large sedimentary deposits, at their points of discharge into lakes or larger streams, such accumulations beginning, or at least advancing far more rapidly, after the valleys are cleared. In the Northern United States, although inundations are sometimes produced in the height of summer by heavy rains, it will be found generally true that the most rapid rise of the waters, and, of course, the most destructive "freshets," as they are called in America, are produced by the sudden dissolution of the snow before the open ground is thawed in the spring. It frequently happens that a powerful thaw sets in after a long period of frost, and the snow which had been months in accumulating is dissolved and carried off in a few hours. When the snow is deep, it, to use a popular expression, "takes the frost out of the ground" in the woods, and, if it lies long enough, in the fields also. But the heaviest snows usually fall after midwinter, and are succeeded by warm rains or sunshine, which dissolve the snow on the cleared land before it has had time to act upon the frost-bound soil beneath it. In this case, the snow in the woods is absorbed as fast as it melts, by the soil it has protected from freezing, and does not materially contribute to swell the current of the rivers. If the mild weather, in which great snowstorms usually occur, does not continue and become a regular thaw, it is almost sure to be followed by drifting winds, and the inequality with which they distribute the snow leaves the ridges comparatively bare, while the depressions are often filled with drifts to the height of many feet. The knolls become frozen to a great depth; succeeding partial thaws melt the surface snow, and the water runs down into the furrows of ploughed fields, and other artificial and natural hollows, and then often freezes to solid ice. In this state of things, almost the entire surface of the cleared land is impervious to water, and from the absence of trees and the general smoothness of the ground, it offers little mechanical resistance to superficial currents. If, under these circumstances, warm weather accompanied by rain occurs, the rain and melted snow are swiftly hurried to the bottom of the valleys and gathered to raging torrents. It ought further to be considered that, though the lighter ploughed soils readily imbibe a great deal of water, yet the grass lands, and all the heavy and tenacious earths, absorb it in much smaller quantities, and less rapidly than the vegetable mould of the forest. Pasture, meadow, and clayey soils, taken together, greatly predominate over the sandy ploughed fields, in all large agricultural districts, and hence, even if, in the case we are supposing, the open ground chance to have been thawed before the melting of the snow which covers it, it is already saturated with moisture, or very soon becomes so, and, of course, cannot relieve the pressure by absorbing more water. The consequence is that the face of the country is suddenly flooded with a quantity of melted snow and rain equivalent to a fall of six or eight inches of the latter, or even more. This runs unobstructed to rivers often still bound with thick ice, and thus inundations of a fearfully devastating character are produced. The ice bursts, from the hydrostatic pressure from below, or is violently torn up by the current, and is swept by the impetuous stream, in large masses and with resistless fury, against banks, bridges, dams, and mills erected near them. The bark of the trees along the rivers is often abraded, at a height of many feet above the ordinary water level, by cakes of floating ice, which are at last stranded by the receding flood on meadow or ploughland, to delay, by their chilling influence, the advent of the tardy spring. The surface of a forest, in its natural condition, can never pour forth such deluges of water as flow from cultivated soil. Humus, or vegetable mould, is capable of absorbing almost twice its own weight of water. The soil in a forest of deciduous foliage is composed of humus, more or less unmixed, to the depth of several inches, sometimes even of feet, and this stratum is usually able to imbibe all the water possibly resulting from the snow which at any one time covers it. But the vegetable mould does not cease to absorb water when it becomes saturated, for it then gives off a portion of its moisture to the mineral earth below, and thus is ready to receive a new supply; and, besides, the bed of leaves not yet converted to mould takes up and retains a very considerable proportion of snow water, as well as of rain. In the warm climates of Southern Europe, as I have already said, the functions of the forest, so far as the disposal of the water of precipitation is concerned, are essentially the same at all seasons, and are analogous to those which it performs in the Northern United States in summer. Hence, in the former countries, the winter floods have not the characteristics which mark them in the latter, nor is the conservative influence of the woods in winter relatively so important, though it is equally unquestionable. If the summer floods in the United States are attended with less pecuniary damage than those of the Loire and other rivers of France, the Po and its tributaries in Italy, the Emme and her sister torrents which devastate the valleys of Switzerland, it is partly because the banks of American rivers are not yet lined with towns, their shores and the bottoms which skirt them not yet covered with improvements whose cost is counted by millions, and, consequently, a smaller amount of property is exposed to injury by inundation. But the comparative exemption of the American people from the terrible calamities which the overflow of rivers has brought on some of the fairest portions of the Old World, is, in a still greater degree, to be ascribed to the fact that, with all our thoughtless improvidence, we have not yet bared all the sources of our streams, not yet overthrown all the barriers which nature has erected to restrain her own destructive energies. Let us be wise in time, and profit by the errors of our older brethren! The influence of the forest in preventing inundations has been very generally recognized, both as a theoretical inference and as a fact of observation; but Belgrand and his commentator Vallès have deduced an opposite result from various facts of experience and from scientific considerations. They contend that the superficial drainage is more regular from cleared than from wooded ground, and that clearing diminishes rather than augments the intensity of inundations. Neither of these conclusions is warranted by their data or their reasoning, and they rest partly upon facts, which, truly interpreted, are not inconsistent with the received opinions on these subjects, partly upon assumptions which are contradicted by experience. Two of these latter are, first, that the fallen leaves in the forest constitute an impermeable covering of the soil over, not through, which the water of rains and of melting snows flows off, and secondly, that the roots of trees penetrate and choke up the fissures in the rocks, so as to impede the passage of water through channels which nature has provided for its descent to lower strata. As to the first of these, we may appeal to familiar facts within the personal knowledge of every man acquainted with the operations of sylvan nature. I have before me a letter from an acute and experienced observer, containing this paragraph: "I think that rain water does not ever, except in very trifling quantities, flow over the leaves in the woods in summer or autumn. Water runs over them only in the spring, when they are pressed down smoothly and compactly, a state in which they remain only until they are dry, when shrinkage and the action of the wind soon roughen the surface so as effectually to stop, by absorption, all flow of water." I have observed that when a sudden frost succeeds a thaw at the close of the winter after the snow has principally disappeared, the water in and between the layers of leaves sometimes freezes into a solid crust, which allows the flow of water over it. But this occurs only in depressions and on a very small scale; and the ice thus formed is so soon dissolved that no sensible effect is produced on the escape of water from the general surface. As to the influence of roots upon drainage, I believe there is no doubt that they, independently of their action as absorbents, mechanically promote it. Not only does the water of the soil follow them downward,[212] but their swelling growth powerfully tends to enlarge the crevices of rock into which they enter; and as the fissures in rocks are longitudinal, not mere circular orifices, every line of additional width gained by the growth of roots within them increases the area of the crevice in proportion to its length. Consequently, the widening of a fissure to the extent of one inch might give an additional drainage equal to a square foot of open tubing. The observations and reasonings of Belgrand and Vallès, though their conclusions have not been accepted by many, are very important in one point of view. These writers insist much on the necessity of taking into account, in estimating the relations between precipitation and evaporation, the abstraction of water from the surface and surface currents, by absorption and infiltration--an element unquestionably of great value, but hitherto much neglected by meteorological inquirers, who have very often reasoned as if the surface earth were either impermeable to water, or already saturated with it; whereas, in fact, it is a sponge, always imbibing humidity and always giving it off, not by evaporation only, but by infiltration and percolation. The destructive effects of inundations considered simply as a mechanical power by which life is endangered, crops destroyed, and the artificial constructions of man overthrown, are very terrible. Thus far, however, the flood is a temporary and by no means an irreparable evil, for if its ravages end here, the prolific powers of nature and the industry of man soon restore what had been lost, and the face of the earth no longer shows traces of the deluge that had overwhelmed it. Inundations have even their compensations. The structures they destroy are replaced by better and more secure erections, and if they sweep off a crop of corn, they not unfrequently leave behind them, as they subside, a fertilizing deposit which enriches the exhausted field for a succession of seasons.[213] If, then, the too rapid flow of the surface waters occasioned no other evil than to produce, once in ten years upon the average, an inundation which should destroy the harvest of the low grounds along the rivers, the damage would be too inconsiderable, and of too transitory a character, to warrant the inconveniences and the expense involved in the measures which the most competent judges in many parts of Europe believe the respective governments ought to take to obviate it. _Destructive Action of Torrents._ But the great, the irreparable, the appalling mischiefs which have already resulted, and threaten to ensue on a still more extensive scale hereafter, from too rapid superficial drainage, are of a properly geographical character, and consist primarily in erosion, displacement, and transportation of the superficial strata, vegetable and mineral--of the integuments, so to speak, with which nature has clothed the skeleton framework of the globe. It is difficult to convey by description an idea of the desolation of the regions most exposed to the ravages of torrent and of flood; and the thousands, who, in these days of travel, are whirled by steam near or even through the theatres of these calamities, have but rare and imperfect opportunities of observing the destructive causes in action. Still more rarely can they compare the past with the actual condition of the provinces in question, and trace the progress of their conversion from forest-crowned hills, luxuriant pasture grounds, and abundant cornfields and vineyards well watered by springs and fertilizing rivulets, to bald mountain ridges, rocky declivities, and steep earth banks furrowed by deep ravines with beds now dry, now filled by torrents of fluid mud and gravel hurrying down to spread themselves over the plain, and dooming to everlasting barrenness the once productive fields. In traversing such scenes, it is difficult to resist the impression that nature pronounced the curse of perpetual sterility and desolation upon these sublime but fearful wastes, difficult to believe that they were once, and but for the folly of man might still be, blessed with all the natural advantages which Providence has bestowed upon the most favored climes. But the historical evidence is conclusive as to the destructive changes occasioned by the agency of man upon the flanks of the Alps, the Apennines, the Pyrenees, and other mountain ranges in Central and Southern Europe, and the progress of physical deterioration has been so rapid that, in some localities, a single generation has witnessed the beginning and the end of the melancholy revolution. It is certain that a desolation, like that which has overwhelmed many once beautiful and fertile regions of Europe, awaits an important part of the territory of the United States, and of other comparatively new countries over which European civilization is now extending its sway, unless prompt measures are taken to check the action of destructive causes already in operation. It is vain to expect that legislation can do anything effectual to arrest the progress of the evil in those countries, except so far as the state is still the proprietor of extensive forests. Woodlands which have passed into private hands will everywhere be managed, in spite of legal restrictions, upon the same economical principles as other possessions, and every proprietor will, as a general rule, fell his woods, unless he believes that it will be for his pecuniary interest to preserve them. Few of the new provinces which the last three centuries have brought under the control of the European race, would tolerate any interference by the law-making power with what they regard as the most sacred of civil rights--the right, namely, of every man to do what he will with his own. In the Old World, even in France, whose people, of all European nations, love best to be governed and are least annoyed by bureaucratic supervision, law has been found impotent to prevent the destruction, or wasteful economy, of private forests; and in many of the mountainous departments of that country, man is at this moment so fast laying waste the face of the earth, that the most serious fears are entertained, not only of the depopulation of those districts, but of enormous mischiefs to the provinces contiguous to them.[214] The only legal provisions from which anything is to be hoped, are such as shall make it a matter of private advantage to the landholder to spare the trees upon his grounds, and promote the growth of the young wood. Something may be done by exempting standing forests from taxation, and by imposing taxes on wood felled for fuel or for timber, something by premiums or honorary distinctions for judicious management of the woods. It would be difficult to induce governments, general or local, to make the necessary appropriations for such purposes, but there can be no doubt that it would be sound economy in the end. In countries where there exist municipalities endowed with an intelligent public spirit, the purchase and control of forests by such corporations would often prove advantageous; and in some of the provinces of Northern Lombardy, experience has shown that such operations may be conducted with great benefit to all the interests connected with the proper management of the woods. In Switzerland, on the other hand, except in some few cases where woods have been preserved as a defence against avalanches, the forests of the communes have been productive of little advantage to the public interests, and have very generally gone to decay. The rights of pasturage, everywhere destructive to trees, combined with toleration of trespasses, have so reduced their value, that there is, too often, nothing left that is worth protecting. In the canton of Ticino, the peasants have very frequently voted to sell the town woods and divide the proceeds among the corporators. The sometimes considerable sums thus received are squandered in wild revelry, and the sacrifice of the forests brings not even a momentary benefit to the proprietors.[215] It is evidently a matter of the utmost importance that the public, and especially land owners, be roused to a sense of the dangers to which the indiscriminate clearing of the woods may expose not only future generations, but the very soil itself. Fortunately, some of the American States, as well as the governments of many European colonies, still retain the ownership of great tracts of primitive woodland. The State of New York, for example, has, in its northeastern counties, a vast extent of territory in which the lumberman has only here and there established his camp, and where the forest, though interspersed with permanent settlements, robbed of some of its finest pine groves, and often ravaged by devastating fires, still covers far the largest proportion of the surface. Through this territory, the soil is generally poor, and even the new clearings have little of the luxuriance of harvest which distinguishes them elsewhere. The value of the land for agricultural uses is therefore very small, and few purchases are made for any other purpose than to strip the soil of its timber. It has been often proposed that the State should declare the remaining forest the inalienable property of the commonwealth, but I believe the motive of the suggestion has originated rather in poetical than in economical views of the subject. Both these classes of considerations have a real worth. It is desirable that some large and easily accessible region of American soil should remain, as far as possible, in its primitive condition, at once a museum for the instruction of the student, a garden for the recreation of the lover of nature, and an asylum where indigenous tree, and humble plant that loves the shade, and fish and fowl and four-footed beast, may dwell and perpetuate their kind, in the enjoyment of such imperfect protection as the laws of a people jealous of restraint can afford them. The immediate loss to the public treasury from the adoption of this policy would be inconsiderable, for these lands are sold at low rates. The forest alone, economically managed, would, without injury, and even with benefit to its permanence and growth, soon yield a regular income larger than the present value of the fee. The collateral advantages of the preservation of these forests would be far greater. Nature threw up those mountains and clothed them with lofty woods, that they might serve as a reservoir to supply with perennial waters the thousand rivers and rills that are fed by the rains and snows of the Adirondacks, and as a screen for the fertile plains of the central counties against the chilling blasts of the north wind, which meet no other barrier in their sweep from the Arctic pole. The climate of Northern New York even now presents greater extremes of temperature than that of Southern France. The long continued cold of winter is far more intense, the short heats of summer not less fierce than in Provence, and hence the preservation of every influence that tends to maintain an equilibrium of temperature and humidity is of cardinal importance. The felling of the Adirondack woods would ultimately involve for Northern and Central New York consequences similar to those which have resulted from the laying bare of the southern and western declivities of the French Alps and the spurs, ridges, and detached peaks in front of them. It is true that the evils to be apprehended from the clearing of the mountains of New York may be less in degree than those which a similar cause has produced in Southern France, where the intensity of its action has been increased by the inclination of the mountain declivities, and by the peculiar geological constitution of the earth. The degradation of the soil is, perhaps, not equally promoted by a combination of the same circumstances, in any of the American Atlantic States, but still they have rapid slopes and loose and friable soils enough to render widespread desolation certain, if the further destruction of the woods is not soon arrested. The effects of clearing are already perceptible in the comparatively unviolated region of which I am speaking. The rivers which rise in it flow with diminished currents in dry seasons, and with augmented volumes of water after heavy rains. They bring down much larger quantities of sediment, and the increasing obstructions to the navigation of the Hudson, which are extending themselves down the channel in proportion as the fields are encroaching upon the forest, give good grounds for the fear of serious injury to the commerce of the important towns on the upper waters of that river, unless measures are taken to prevent the expansion of "improvements" which have already been carried beyond the demands of a wise economy. I have stated, in a general way, the nature of the evils in question, and of the processes by which they are produced; but I shall make their precise character and magnitude better understood by presenting some descriptive and statistical details of facts of actual occurrence. I select for this purpose the southeastern portion of France, not because that territory has suffered more severely than some others, but because its deterioration is comparatively recent, and has been watched and described by very competent and trustworthy observers, whose reports are more easily accessible than those published in other countries.[216] The provinces of Dauphiny, Avignon, and Provence comprise a territory of fourteen or fifteen thousand square miles, bounded northwest by the Isere, northeast and east by the Alps, south by the Mediterranean, west by the Rhone, and extending from 42° to about 45° of north latitude. The surface is generally hilly and even mountainous, and several of the peaks in Dauphiny rise above the limit of perpetual snow. The climate, as compared with that of the United States in the same latitude, is extremely mild. Little snow falls, except upon the higher mountain ranges, the frosts are light, and the summers long, as might, indeed, be inferred from the vegetation; for in the cultivated districts, the vine and the fig everywhere flourish, the olive thrives as far north as 43½°, and upon the coast, grow the orange, the lemon, and the date palm. The forest trees, too, are of southern type, umbrella pines, various species of evergreen oaks, and many other trees and shrubs of persistent broad-leaved foliage, characterizing the landscape. The rapid slope of the mountains naturally exposed these provinces to damage by torrents, and the Romans diminished their injurious effects by erecting, in the beds of ravines, barriers of rocks loosely piled up, which permitted a slow escape of the water, but compelled it to deposit above the dikes the earth and gravel with which it was charged.[217] At a later period the Crusaders brought home from Palestine, with much other knowledge gathered from the wiser Moslems, the art of securing the hillsides and making them productive by terracing and irrigation. The forests which covered the mountains secured an abundant flow of springs, and the process of clearing the soil went on so slowly that, for centuries, neither the want of timber and fuel, nor the other evils about to be depicted, were seriously felt. Indeed, throughout the Middle Ages, these provinces were well wooded, and famous for the fertility and abundance, not only of the low grounds, but of the hills. Such was the state of things at the close of the fifteenth century. The statistics of the seventeenth show that while there had been an increase of prosperity and population in Lower Provence, as well as in the correspondingly situated parts of the other two provinces I have mentioned, there was an alarming decrease both in the wealth and in the population of Upper Provence and Dauphiny, although, by the clearing of the forests, a great extent of plough land and pasturage had been added to the soil before reduced to cultivation. It was found, in fact, that the augmented violence of the torrents had swept away, or buried in sand and gravel, more land than had been reclaimed by clearing; and the taxes computed by fires or habitations underwent several successive reductions in consequence of the gradual abandonment of the wasted soil by its starving occupants. The growth of the large towns on and near the Rhone and the coast, their advance in commerce and industry, and the consequently enlarged demand for agricultural products, ought naturally to have increased the rural population and the value of their lands; but the physical decay of the uplands was such that considerable tracts were deserted altogether, and in Upper Provence, the fires which in 1471 counted 897, were reduced to 747 in 1699, to 728 in 1733, and to 635 in 1776. These facts I take from the _La Provence au point de vue des Bois, des Torrents et des Inondations_, of Charles de Ribbe, one of the highest authorities, and I add further details from the same source. "Commune of Barles, 1707: Two hills have become connected by land slides, and have formed a lake which covers the best part of the soil. 1746: New slides buried twenty houses composing a village, no trace of which is left; more than one third of the land had disappeared. "Monans, 1724: Deserted by its inhabitants and no longer cultivated. "Gueydan, 1760: It appears by records that the best grounds have been swept off since 1756, and that ravines occupy their place. "Digne, 1762: The river Bléone has destroyed the most valuable part of the territory. "Malmaison, 1768: The inhabitants have emigrated, all their fields having been lost." In the case of the commune of St. Laurent du Var, it appears that, after clearings in the Alps, succeeded by others in the common woods of the town, the floods of the torrent Var became more formidable, and had already carried off much land as early as 1708. "The clearing continued, and more soil was swept away in 1761. In 1762, after another destructive inundation, many of the inhabitants emigrated, and in 1765, one half of the territory had been laid waste. "In 1766, the assessor Serraire said to the Assembly: 'As to the damage caused by brooks and torrents, it is impossible to deny its extent. Upper Provence is in danger of total destruction, and the waters which lay it waste threaten also the ruin of the most valuable grounds on the plain below. Villages have been almost submerged by torrents which formerly had not even names, and large towns are on the point of destruction from the same cause.'" In 1776, Viscount Puget thus reported: "The mere aspect of Upper Provence is calculated to appal the patriotic magistrate. One sees only lofty mountains, deep valleys with precipitous sides, rivers with broad beds and little water, impetuous torrents, which in floods lay waste the cultivated land upon their banks and roll huge rocks along their channels; steep and parched hillsides, the melancholy consequences of indiscriminate clearing; villages whose inhabitants, finding no longer the means of subsistence, are emigrating day by day; houses dilapidated to huts, and but a miserable remnant of population." "In a document of the year 1771, the ravages of the torrents were compared to the effects of an earthquake, half the soil in many communes seeming to have been swallowed up. "Our mountains," said the administrators of the province of the Lower Alps in 1792, "present nothing but a surface of stony tufa; clearing is still going on, and the little rivulets are becoming torrents. Many communes have lost their harvests, their flocks, and their houses by floods. The washing down of the mountains is to be ascribed to the clearings and the practice of burning them over." These complaints, it will be seen, all date before the Revolution, but the desolation they describe has since advanced with still swifter steps. Surell--whose valuable work, _Étude sur les Torrents des Hautes Alpes_, published in 1841, presents the most appalling picture of the desolations of the torrent, and, at the same time, the most careful studies of the history and essential character of this great evil--in speaking of the valley of Dévoluy, on page 152, says: "Everything concurs to show that it was anciently wooded. In its peat bogs are found buried trunks of trees, monuments of its former vegetation. In the framework of old houses, one sees enormous timber, which is no longer to be found in the district. Many localities, now completely bare, still retain the name of 'wood,' and one of them is called, in old deeds, _Comba nigra_ [Black forest or dell], on account of its dense woods. These and many other proofs confirm the local traditions which are unanimous on this point. "There, as everywhere in the Upper Alps, the clearings began on the flanks of the mountains, and were gradually extended into the valleys and then to the highest accessible peaks. Then followed the Revolution, and caused the destruction of the remainder of the trees which had thus far escaped the woodman's axe." In a note to this passage, the writer says: "Several persons have told me that they had lost flocks of sheep, by straying, in the forests of Mont Auroux, which covered the flanks of the mountain from La Cluse to Agnères. These declivities are now as bare as the palm of the hand." The ground upon the steep mountains being once bared of trees, and the underwood killed by the grazing of horned cattle, sheep, and goats, every depression becomes a watercourse. "Every storm," says Surell, page 153, "gives rise to a new torrent. Examples of such are shown, which, though not yet three years old, have laid waste the finest fields of their valleys, and whole villages have narrowly escaped being swept into ravines formed in the course of a few hours. Sometimes the flood pours in a sheet over the surface, without ravine or even bed, and ruins extensive grounds, which are abandoned forever." I cannot follow Surell in his description and classification of torrents, and I must refer the reader to his instructive work for a full exposition of the theory of the subject. In order, however, to show what a concentration of destructive energies may be effected by felling the woods that clothe and support the sides of mountain abysses, I cite his description of a valley descending from the Col Isoard, which he calls "a complete type of a basin of reception," that is, a gorge which serves as a common point of accumulation and discharge for the waters of several lateral torrents. "The aspect of the monstrous channel," says he, "is frightful. Within a distance of less than three kilomètres [= one mile and seven eighths English], more than sixty torrents hurl into the depths of the gorge the debris torn from its two flanks. The smallest of these secondary torrents, if transferred to a fertile valley, would be enough to ruin it." The eminent political economist Blanqui, in a memoir read before the Academy of Moral and Political Science on the 25th of November, 1843, thus expresses himself: "Important as are the causes of impoverishment already described, they are not to be compared to the consequences which have followed from the two inveterate evils of the Alpine provinces of France, the extension of clearing and the ravages of torrents. * * The most important result of this destruction is this: that the agricultural capital, or rather the ground itself--which, in a rapidly increasing degree, is daily swept away by the waters--is totally lost. Signs of unparalleled destitution are visible in all the mountain zone, and the solitudes of those districts are assuming an indescribable character of sterility and desolation. The gradual destruction of the woods has, in a thousand localities, annihilated at once the springs and the fuel. Between Grenoble and Briançon in the valley of the Romanche, many villages are so destitute of wood that they are reduced to the necessity of baking their bread with sun-dried cowdung, and even this they can afford to do but once a year. This bread becomes so hard that it can be cut only with an axe, and I have myself seen a loaf of bread in September, at the kneading of which I was present the January previous. "Whoever has visited the valley of Barcelonette, those of Embrun, and of Verdun, and that Arabia Petræa of the department of the Upper Alps, called Dévoluy, knows that there is no time to lose, that in fifty years from this date France will be separated from Savoy, as Egypt from Syria, by a desert."[218] It deserves to be specially noticed that the district here referred to, though now among the most hopelessly waste in France, was very productive even down to so late a period as the commencement of the French Revolution. Arthur Young, writing in 1789, says: "About Barcelonette and in the highest parts of the mountains, the hill pastures feed a million of sheep, besides large herds of other cattle;" and he adds: "With such a soil, and in such a climate we are not to suppose a country barren because it is mountainous. The valleys I have visited are, in general, beautiful."[219] He ascribes the same character to the provinces of Dauphiny, Provence, and Auvergne, and, though he visited, with the eye of an attentive and practised observer, many of the scenes since blasted with the wild desolation described by Blanqui, the Durance and a part of the course of the Loire are the only streams he mentions as inflicting serious injury by their floods. The ravages of the torrents had, indeed, as we have seen, commenced earlier in some other localities, but we are authorized to infer that they were, in Young's time, too limited in range, and relatively too insignificant, to require notice in a general view of the provinces where they have now ruined so large a proportion of the soil. But I resume my citations. "I do not exaggerate," says Blanqui. "When I shall have finished my excursion and designated localities by their names, there will rise, I am sure, more than one voice from the spots themselves, to attest the rigorous exactness of this picture of their wretchedness. I have never seen its equal even in the Kabyle villages of the province of Constantine; for there you can travel on horseback, and you find grass in the spring, whereas in more than fifty communes in the Alps there is absolutely nothing. "The clear, brilliant, Alpine sky of Embrun, of Gap, of Barcelonette, and of Digne, which for months is without a cloud, produces droughts interrupted only by diluvial rains like those of the tropics. The abuse of the right of pasturage and the felling of the woods have stripped the soil of all its grass and all its trees, and the scorching sun bakes it to the consistence of porphyry. When moistened by the rain, as it has neither support nor cohesion, it rolls down to the valleys, sometimes in floods resembling black, yellow, or reddish lava, sometimes in streams of pebbles, and even huge blocks of stone, which pour down with a frightful roar, and in their swift course exhibit the most convulsive movements. If you overlook from an eminence one of these landscapes furrowed with so many ravines, it presents only images of desolation and of death. Vast deposits of flinty pebbles, many feet in thickness, which have rolled down and spread far over the plain, surround large trees, bury even their tops, and rise above them, leaving to the husbandman no longer a ray of hope. One can imagine no sadder spectacle than the deep fissures in the flanks of the mountains, which seem to have burst forth in eruption to cover the plains with their ruins. These gorges, under the influence of the sun which cracks and shivers to fragments the very rocks, and of the rain which sweeps them down, penetrate deeper and deeper into the heart of the mountain, while the beds of the torrents issuing from them are sometimes raised several feet, in a single year, by the debris, so that they reach the level of the bridges, which, of course, are then carried off. The torrent beds are recognized at a great distance, as they issue from the mountains, and they spread themselves over the low grounds, in fan-shaped expansions, like a mantle of stone, sometimes ten thousand feet wide, rising high at the centre, and curving toward the circumference till their lower edges meet the plain. "Such is their aspect in dry weather. But no tongue can give an adequate description of their devastations in one of those sudden floods which resemble, in almost none of their phenomena, the action of ordinary river water. They are now no longer overflowing brooks, but real seas, tumbling down in cataracts, and rolling before them blocks of stone, which are hurled forward by the shock of the waves like balls shot out by the explosion of gunpowder. Sometimes ridges of pebbles are driven down when the transporting torrent does not rise high enough to show itself, and then the movement is accompanied with a roar louder than the crash of thunder. A furious wind precedes the rushing water and announces its approach. Then comes a violent eruption, followed by a flow of muddy waves, and after a few hours all returns to the dreary silence which at periods of rest marks these abodes of desolation. "This is but an imperfect sketch of this scourge of the Alps. Its devastations are increasing with the progress of clearing, and are every day turning a portion of our frontier departments into barren wastes. "The unfortunate passion for clearing manifested itself at the beginning of the French Revolution, and has much increased under the pressure of immediate want. It has now reached an extreme point, and must be speedily checked, or the last inhabitant will be compelled to retreat when the last tree falls. "The elements of destruction are increasing in violence. Rivers might be mentioned whose beds have been raised ten feet in a single year. The devastation advances in geometrical progression as the higher slopes are bared of their wood, and 'the ruin from above,' to use the words of a peasant, 'helps to hasten the desolation below.' "The Alps of Provence present a terrible aspect. In the more equable climate of Northern France, one can form no conception of those parched mountain gorges where not even a bush can be found to shelter a bird, where, at most, the wanderer sees in summer here and there a withered lavender, where all the springs are dried up, and where a dead silence, hardly broken by even the hum of an insect, prevails. But if a storm bursts forth, masses of water suddenly shoot from the mountain heights into the shattered gulfs, waste without irrigating, deluge without refreshing the soil they overflow in their swift descent, and leave it even more seared than it was from want of moisture. Man at last retires from the fearful desert, and I have, the present season, found not a living soul in districts where I remember to have enjoyed hospitality thirty years ago." In 1853, ten years after the date of Blanqui's memoir, M. de Bonville, prefect of the Lower Alps, addressed to the Government a report in which the following passages occur: "It is certain that the productive mould of the Alps, swept off by the increasing violence of that curse of the mountains, the torrents, is daily diminishing with fearful rapidity. All our Alps are wholly, or in large proportion, bared of wood. Their soil, scorched by the sun of Provence, cut up by the hoofs of the sheep, which, not finding on the surface the grass they require for their sustenance, scratch the ground in search of roots to satisfy their hunger, is periodically washed and carried off by melting snows and summer storms. "I will not dwell on the effects of the torrents. For sixty years they have been too often depicted to require to be further discussed, but it is important to show that their ravages are daily extending the range of devastation. The bed of the Durance, which now in some places exceeds 2,000 mètres [about 6,600 feet, or a mile and a quarter] in width, and, at ordinary times, has a current of water less than 10 mètres [about 33 feet] wide, shows something of the extent of the damage.[220] Where, ten years ago, there were still woods and cultivated grounds to be seen, there is now but a vast torrent: there is not one of our mountains which has not at least one torrent, and new ones are daily forming. "An indirect proof of the diminution of the soil is to be found in the depopulation of the country. In 1852, I reported to the General Council that, according to the census of that year, the population of the department of the Lower Alps had fallen off no less than 5,000 souls in the five years between 1846 and 1851. "Unless prompt and energetic measures are taken, it is easy to fix the epoch when the French Alps will be but a desert. The interval between 1851 and 1856 will show a further decrease of population. In 1862, the ministry will announce a continued and progressive reduction in the number of acres devoted to agriculture; every year will aggravate the evil, and, in a half century, France will count more ruins, and a department the less." Time has verified the predictions of De Bonville. The later census returns show a progressive diminution in the population of the departments of the Lower Alps, the Isère, the Drome, Ariège, the Upper and the Lower Pyrenees, the Lozère, the Ardennes, the Doubs, the Vosges, and, in short, in all the provinces formerly remarkable for their forests. This diminution is not to be ascribed to a passion for foreign emigration, as in Ireland, and in parts of Germany and of Italy; it is simply a transfer of population from one part of the empire to another, from soils which human folly has rendered uninhabitable, by ruthlessly depriving them of their natural advantages and securities, to provinces where the face of the earth was so formed by nature as to need no such safeguards, and where, consequently, she preserves her outlines in spite of the wasteful improvidence of man.[221] Highly colored as these pictures seem, they are not exaggerated, although the hasty tourist through Southern France and Northern Italy, finding little in his high road experiences to justify them, might suppose them so. The lines of communication by locomotive train and diligence lead generally over safer ground, and it is only when they ascend the Alpine passes and traverse the mountain chains, that scenes somewhat resembling those just described fall under the eye of the ordinary traveller. But the extension of the sphere of devastation, by the degradation of the mountains and the transportation of their debris, is producing analogous effects upon the lower ridges of the Alps and the plains which skirt them; and even now one needs but an hour's departure from some great thoroughfares to reach sites where the genius of destruction revels as wildly as in the most frightful of the abysses which Blanqui has painted.[222] There is one effect of the action of torrents which few travellers on the Continent are heedless enough to pass without notice. I refer to the elevation of the beds of mountain streams in consequence of the deposit of the debris with which they are charged. To prevent the spread of sand and gravel over the fields and the deluging overflow of the raging waters, the streams are confined by walls and embankments, which are gradually built higher and higher as the bed of the torrent is raised, so that, to reach a river, you ascend from the fields beside it; and sometimes the ordinary level of the stream is above the streets and even the roofs of the towns through which it passes.[223] The traveller who visits the depths of an Alpine ravine, observes the length and width of the gorge and the great height and apparent solidity of the precipitous walls which bound it, and calculates the mass of rock required to fill the vacancy, can hardly believe that the humble brooklet which purls at his feet has been the principal agent in accomplishing this tremendous erosion. Closer observation will often teach him, that the seemingly unbroken rock which overhangs the valley is full of cracks and fissures, and really in such a state of disintegration that every frost must bring down tons of it. If he compute the area of the basin which finds here its only discharge, he will perceive that a sudden thaw of the winter's deposit of snow, or one of those terrible discharges of rain so common in the Alps, must send forth a deluge mighty enough to sweep down the largest masses of gravel and of rock.[224] The simple measurement of the cubical contents of the semi-circular hillock which he climbed before he entered the gorge, the structure and composition of which conclusively show that it must have been washed out of this latter by torrential action, will often account satisfactorily for the disposal of most of the matter which once filled the ravine. It must further be remembered, that every inch of the violent movement of the rocks is accompanied with crushing concussion, or, at least, with great abrasion, and, as you follow the deposit along the course of the waters which transport it, you find the stones gradually rounding off in form, and diminishing in size until they pass successively into gravel, sand, impalpable slime. I do not mean to assert that all the rocky valleys of the Alps have been produced by the action of torrents resulting from the destruction of the forests. All the greater, and many of the smaller channels, by which that chain is drained, owe their origin to higher causes. They are primitive fissures, ascribable to disruption in upheaval or other geological convulsion, widened and scarped, and often even polished, so to speak, by the action of glaciers during the ice period, and but little changed in form by running water in later eras.[225] In these valleys of ancient formation, which extend into the very heart of the mountains, the streams, though rapid, have lost the true torrential character, if, indeed, they ever possessed it. Their beds have become approximately constant, and their walls no longer crumble and fall into the waters that wash their bases. The torrent-worn ravines, of which I have spoken, are of later date, and belong more properly to what may be called the crust of the Alps, consisting of loose rocks, of gravel, and of earth, strewed along the surface of the great declivities of the central ridge, and accumulated thickly between their solid buttresses. But it is on this crust that the mountaineer dwells. Here are his forests, here his pastures, and the ravages of the torrent both destroy his world, and convert it into a source of overwhelming desolation to the plains below. _Transporting Power of Rivers._ An instance that fell under my own observation in 1857, will serve to show something of the eroding and transporting power of streams which, in these respects, fall incalculably below the torrents of the Alps. In a flood of the Ottaquechee, a small river which flows through Woodstock, Vermont, a milldam on that stream burst, and the sediment with which the pond was filled, estimated after careful measurement at 13,000 cubic yards, was carried down by the current. Between this dam and the slack water of another, four miles below, the bed of the stream, which is composed of pebbles interspersed in a few places with larger stones, is about sixty-five feet wide, though, at low water, the breadth of the current is considerably less. The sand and fine gravel were smoothly and evenly distributed over the bed to a width of fifty-five or sixty feet, and for a distance of about two miles, except at two or three intervening rapids, filled up all the interstices between the stones, covering them to the depth of nine or ten inches, so as to present a regularly formed concave channel, lined with sand, and reducing the depth of water, in some places, from five or six feet to fifteen or eighteen inches. Observing this deposit after the river had subsided and become so clear that the bottom could be seen, I supposed that the next flood would produce an extraordinary erosion of the banks and some permanent changes in the channel of the stream, in consequence of the elevation of the bed and the filling up of the spaces between the stones through which formerly much water had flowed; but no such result followed. The spring freshet of the next year entirely washed out the sand its predecessor had deposited, carried it to ponds and still-water reaches below, and left the bed of the river almost precisely in its former condition, though, of course, with the slight displacement of the pebbles which every flood produces in the channels of such streams. The pond, though often previously discharged by the breakage of the dam, had then been undisturbed for about twenty-five years, and its contents consisted almost entirely of sand, the rapidity of the current in floods being such that it would let fall little lighter sediment, even above an obstruction like a dam. The quantity I have mentioned evidently bears a very inconsiderable proportion to the total erosion of the stream during that period, because the wash of the banks consists chiefly of fine earth rather than of sand, and after the pond was once filled, or nearly so, even this material could no longer be deposited in it. The fact of the complete removal of the deposit I have described between the two dams in a single freshet, shows that, in spite of considerable obstruction from roughness of bed, large quantities of sand may be taken up and carried off by streams of no great rapidity of inclination; for the whole descent of the bed of the river between the two dams--a distance of four miles--is but sixty feet, or fifteen feet to the mile. _The Po and its Deposits._ The current of the river Po, for a considerable distance after its volume of water is otherwise sufficient for continuous navigation, is too rapid for that purpose until near Piacenza, where its velocity becomes too much reduced to transport great quantities of mineral matter, except in a state of minute division. Its southern affluents bring down from the Apennines a large quantity of fine earth from various geological formations, while its Alpine tributaries west of the Ticino are charged chiefly with rock ground down to sand or gravel.[226] The bed of the river has been somewhat elevated by the deposits in its channel, though not by any means above the level of the adjacent plains as has been so often represented. The dikes, which confine the current at high water, at the same time augment its velocity and compel it to carry most of its sediment to the Adriatic. It has, therefore, raised neither its own channel nor its alluvial shores, as it would have done if it had remained unconfined. But, as the surface of the water in floods is from six to fifteen feet above the general level of its banks, the Po can, at that period, receive no contributions of earth from the washing of the fields of Lombardy, and there is no doubt that a large proportion of the sediment it now deposits at its mouth descended from the Alps in the form of rock, though reduced by the grinding action of the waters, in its passage seaward, to the condition of fine sand, and often of silt.[227] We know little of the history of the Po, or of the geography of the coast near the point where it enters the Adriatic, at any period more than twenty centuries before our own. Still less can we say how much of the plains of Lombardy had been formed by its action, combined with other causes, before man accelerated its levelling operations by felling the first woods on the mountains whence its waters are derived. But we know that since the Roman conquest of Northern Italy, its deposits have amounted to a quantity which, if recemented into rock, recombined into gravel, common earth, and vegetable mould, and restored to the situations where eruption or upheaval originally placed, or vegetation deposited it, would fill up hundreds of deep ravines in the Alps and Apennines, change the plan and profile of their chains, and give their southern and northern faces respectively a geographical aspect very different from that they now present. Ravenna, forty miles south of the principal mouth of the Po, was built like Venice, in a lagoon, and the Adriatic still washed its walls at the commencement of the Christian era. The mud of the Po has filled up the lagoon, and Ravenna is now four miles from the sea. The town of Adria, which lies between the Po and the Adige, at the distance of some four or five miles from each, was once a harbor famous enough to have given its name to the Adriatic sea, and it was still a seaport in the time of Augustus. The combined action of the two rivers has so advanced the coast line that Adria is now about fourteen miles inland, and, in other places, the deposits made within the same period by these and other neighboring streams have a width of twenty miles. What proportion of the earth with which they are charged these rivers have borne out into deep water, during the last two thousand years, we do not know, but as they still transport enormous quantities, as the North Adriatic appears to have shoaled rapidly, and as long islands, composed in great part of fluviatile deposits, have formed opposite their mouths, it must evidently have been very great. The floods of the Po occur but once, or sometimes twice in a year.[228] At other times, its waters are comparatively limpid and seem to hold no great amount of mud or fine sand in mechanical suspension; but at high water it contains a large proportion of solid matter, and according to Lombardini, it annually transports to the shores of the Adriatic not less than 42,760,000 cubic mètres, or very nearly 55,000,000 cubic yards, which carries the coast line out into the sea at the rate of more than 200 feet in a year.[229] The depth of the annual deposit is stated at eighteen centimètres, or rather more than seven inches, and it would cover an area of not much less than ninety square miles with a layer of that thickness. The Adige, also, brings every year to the Adriatic many million cubic yards of Alpine detritus, and the contributions of the Brenta from the same source are far from inconsiderable. The Adriatic, however, receives but a small proportion of the soil and rock washed away from the Italian slope of the Alps and the northern declivity of the Apennines by torrents. Nearly the whole of the debris thus removed from the southern face of the Alps between Monte Rosa and the sources of the Adda--a length of watershed not less than one hundred and fifty miles--is arrested by the still waters of the Lakes Maggiore and Como, and some smaller lacustrine reservoirs, and never reaches the sea. The Po is not continuously embanked except for the lower half of its course. Above Piacenza, therefore, it spreads and deposits sediment over a wide surface, and the water withdrawn from it for irrigation at lower points, as well as its inundations in the occasional ruptures of its banks, carry over the adjacent soil a large amount of slime. If we add to the estimated annual deposits of the Po at its mouth, the earth and sand transported to the sea by the Adige, the Brenta, and other less important streams, the prodigious mass of detritus swept into Lago Maggiore by the Tosa, the Maggia, and the Ticino, into the lake of Como by the Maira and the Adda, into the lake of Garda by its affluents, and the yet vaster heaps of pebbles, gravel, and earth permanently deposited by the torrents near their points of eruption from mountain gorges, or spread over the wide plains at lower levels, we may safely assume that we have an aggregate of not less than four times the quantity carried to the Adriatic by the Po, or 220,000,000 cubic yards of solid matter, abstracted every year from the Italian Alps and the Apennines, and removed out of their domain by the force of running water.[230] The present rate of deposit at the mouth of the Po has continued since the year 1600, the previous advance of the coast, after the year 1200, having been only one third as rapid. The great increase of erosion and transport is ascribed by Lombardini chiefly to the destruction of the forests in the basin of that river and the valleys, of its tributaries, since the beginning of the seventeenth century.[231] We have no data to show the rate of deposit in any given century before the year 1200, and it doubtless varied according to the progress of population and the consequent extension of clearing and cultivation. The transporting power of torrents is greatest soon after their formation, because at that time their points of delivery are lower, and, of course, their general slope and velocity more rapid, than after years of erosion above, and deposit below, have depressed the beds of their mountain valleys, and elevated the channels of their lower course. Their eroding action also is most powerful at the same period, both because their mechanical force is then greatest, and because the loose earth and stones of freshly cleared forest ground are most easily removed. Many of the Alpine valleys west of the Ticino--that of the Dora Baltea for instance--were nearly stripped of their forests in the days of the Roman empire, others in the Middle Ages, and, of course, there must have been, at different periods before the year 1200, epochs when the erosion and transportation of solid matter from the Alps and the Apennines were as great as since the year 1600. Upon the whole, we shall not greatly err if we assume that, for a period of not less than two thousand years, the walls of the basin of the Po--the Italian slope of the Alps, and the northern and northeastern declivities of the Apennines--have annually sent down into the Adriatic, the lakes, and the plains, not less than 150,000,000 cubic yards of earth and disintegrated rock. We have, then, an aggregate of 300,000,000,000 cubic yards of such material, which, allowing to the mountain surface in question an area of 50,000,000,000 square yards, would cover the whole to the depth of six yards.[232] There are very large portions of this area, where, as we know from ancient remains--roads, bridges, and the like--from other direct testimony, and from geological considerations, very little degradation has taken place within twenty centuries, and hence the quantity to be assigned to localities where the destructive causes have been most active is increased in proportion. If this vast mass of pulverized rock and earth were restored to the localities from which it was derived, it certainly would not obliterate valleys and gorges hollowed out by great geological causes, but it would reduce the length and diminish the depth of ravines of later formation, modify the inclination of their walls, reclothe with earth many bare mountain ridges, essentially change the line of junction between plain and mountain, and carry back a long reach of the Adriatic coast many miles to the west.[233] It is, indeed, not to be supposed that all the degradation of the mountains is due to the destruction of the forests--that the flanks of every Alpine valley in Central Europe below the snow line were once covered with earth and green with woods, but there are not many particular cases, in which we can, with certainty, or even with strong probability, affirm the contrary. We cannot measure the share which human action has had in augmenting the intensity of causes of mountain degradation, but we know that the clearing of the woods has, in some cases, produced within two or three generations, effects as blasting as those generally ascribed to geological convulsions, and has laid waste the face of the earth more hopelessly than if it had been buried by a current of lava or a shower of volcanic sand. Now torrents are forming every year in the Alps. Tradition, written records, and analogy concur to establish the belief that the ruin of most of the now desolate valleys in those mountains is to be ascribed to the same cause, and authentic descriptions of the irresistible force of the torrent show that, aided by frost and heat, it is adequate to level Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa themselves, unless new upheavals shall maintain their elevation. It has been contended that all rivers which take their rise in mountains originated in torrents. These, it is said, have lowered the summits by gradual erosion, and, with the material thus derived, have formed shoals in the sea which once beat against the cliffs; then, by successive deposits, gradually raised them above the surface, and finally expanded them into broad plains traversed by gently flowing streams. If we could go back to earlier geological periods, we should find this theory often verified, and we cannot fail to see that the torrents go on at the present hour, depressing still lower the ridges of the Alps and the Apennines, raising still higher the plains of Lombardy and Provence, extending the coast still farther into the Adriatic and the Mediterranean, reducing the inclination of their own beds and the rapidity of their flow, and thus tending to become river-like in character. There are cases where torrents cease their ravages of themselves, in consequence of some change in the condition of the basin where they originate, or of the face of the mountain at a higher level, while the plain or the sea below remains in substantially the same state as before. If a torrent rises in a small valley containing no great amount of earth and of disintegrated or loose rock, it may, in the course of a certain period, wash out all the transportable material, and if the valley is then left with solid walls, it will cease to furnish debris to be carried down by floods. If, in this state of things, a new channel be formed at an elevation above the head of the valley, it may divert a part, or even the whole of the rain water and melted snow which would otherwise have flowed into it, and the once furious torrent now sinks to the rank of a humble and harmless brooklet. "In traversing this department," says Surell, "one often sees, at the outlet of a gorge, a flattened hillock, with a fan-shaped outline and regular slopes; it is the bed of dejection of an ancient torrent. It sometimes requires long and careful study to detect the primitive form, masked as it is by groves of trees, by cultivated fields, and often by houses, but, when examined closely, and from different points of view, its characteristic figure manifestly appears, and its true history cannot be mistaken. Along the hillock flows a streamlet, issuing from the ravine, and quietly watering the fields. This was originally a torrent, and in the background may be discovered its mountain basin. Such _extinguished_ torrents, if I may use the expression, are numerous."[234] But for the intervention of man and domestic animals, these latter beneficent revolutions would occur more frequently, proceed more rapidly. The new scarped mountains, the hillocks of debris, the plains elevated by sand and gravel spread over them, the shores freshly formed by fluviatile deposits, would clothe themselves with shrubs and trees, the intensity of the causes of degradation would be diminished, and nature would thus regain her ancient equilibrium. But these processes, under ordinary circumstances, demand, not years, generations, but centuries;[235] and man, who even now finds scarce breathing room on this vast globe, cannot retire from the Old World to some yet undiscovered continent, and wait for the slow action of such causes to replace, by a new creation, the Eden he has wasted. _Mountain Slides._ I have said that the mountainous regions of the Atlantic States of the American Union are exposed to similar ravages, and I may add that there is, in some cases, reason to apprehend from the same cause even more appalling calamities than those which I have yet described. The slide in the Notch of the White Mountains, by which the Willey family lost their lives, is an instance of the sort I refer to, though I am not able to say that in this particular case, the slip of the earth and rock was produced by the denudation of the surface. It may have been occasioned by this cause, or by the construction of the road through the Notch, the excavations for which, perhaps, cut through the buttresses that supported the sloping strata above. Not to speak of the fall of earth when the roots which held it together, and the bed of leaves and mould which sheltered it both from disintegrating frost and from sudden drenching and dissolution by heavy showers, are gone, it is easy to see that, in a climate with severe winters, the removal of the forest, and, consequently, of the soil it had contributed to form, might cause the displacement and descent of great masses of rock. The woods, the vegetable mould, and the soil beneath, protect the rocks they cover from the direct action of heat and cold, and from the expansion and contraction which accompany them. Most rocks, while covered with earth, contain a considerable quantity of water.[236] A fragment of rock pervaded with moisture cracks and splits, if thrown into a furnace, and sometimes with a loud detonation; and it is a familiar observation that the fire, in burning over newly cleared lands, breaks up and sometimes almost pulverizes the stones. This effect is due partly to the unequal expansion of the stone, partly to the action of heat on the water it contains in its pores. The sun, suddenly let in upon rock which had been covered with moist earth for centuries, produces more or less disintegration in the same way, and the stone is also exposed to chemical influences from which it was sheltered before. But in the climate of the United States as well as of the Alps, frost is a still more powerful agent in breaking up mountain masses. The soil that protects the lime and sand stone, the slate and the granite from the influence of the sun, also prevents the water which filters into their crevices and between their strata from freezing in the hardest winters, and the moisture descends, in a liquid form, until it escapes in springs, or passes off by deep subterranean channels. But when the ridges are laid bare, the water of the autumnal rains fills the minutest pores and veins and fissures and lines of separation of the rocks, then suddenly freezes, and bursts asunder huge, and apparently solid blocks of adamantine stone.[237] Where the strata are inclined at a considerable angle, the freezing of a thin film of water over a large interstratal area might occasion a slide that should cover miles with its ruins; and similar results might be produced by the simple hydrostatic pressure of a column of water, admitted by the removal of the covering of earth to flow into a crevice faster than it could escape through orifices below. Earth or rather mountain slides, compared to which the catastrophe that buried the Willey family in New Hampshire was but a pinch of dust, have often occurred in the Swiss Italian, and French Alps. The land slip, which overwhelmed and covered to the depth of seventy feet, the town of Plurs in the valley of the Maira, on the night of the 4th of September, 1618, sparing not a soul of a population of 2,430 inhabitants, is one of the most memorable of these catastrophes, and the fall of the Rossberg or Rufiberg, which destroyed the little town of Goldau in Switzerland, and 450 of its people, on the 2d of September, 1806, is almost equally celebrated. In 1771, according to Wessely, the mountain peak Piz, near Alleghe in the province of Belluno, slipped into the bed of the Cordevole, a tributary of the Piave, destroying in its fall three hamlets and sixty lives. The rubbish filled the valley for a distance of nearly two miles, and, by damming up the waters of the Cordevole, formed a lake about three miles long, and a hundred and fifty feet deep, which still subsists, though reduced to half its original length by the wearing down of its outlet.[238] On the 14th of February, 1855, the hill of Belmonte, a little below the parish of San Stefano, in Tuscany, slid into the valley of the Tiber, which consequently flooded the village to the depth of fifty feet, and was finally drained off by a tunnel. The mass of debris is stated to have been about 3,500 feet long, 1,000 wide, and not less than 600 high.[239] Such displacements of earth and rocky strata rise to the magnitude of geological convulsions, but they are of so rare occurrence in countries still covered by the primitive forest, so common where the mountains have been stripped of their native covering, and, in many cases, so easily explicable by the drenching of incohesive earth from rain, or the free admission of water between the strata of rocks--both of which a coating of vegetation would have prevented--that we are justified in ascribing them for the most part to the same cause as that to which the destructive effects of mountain torrents are chiefly due--the felling of the woods. In nearly every case of this sort the circumstances of which are known, the immediate cause of the slip has been, either an earthquake, the imbibition of water in large quantities by bare earth, or its introduction between or beneath solid strata. If water insinuates itself between the strata, it creates a sliding surface, or it may, by its expansion in freezing, separate beds of rock, which had been nearly continuous before, widely enough to allow the gravitation of the superincumbent mass to overcome the resistance afforded by inequalities of face and by friction; if it finds its way beneath hard earth or rock reposing on clay or other bedding of similar properties, it converts the supporting layer into a semi-fluid mud, which opposes no obstacle to the sliding of the strata above. The upper part of the mountain which buried Goldau was composed of a hard but brittle conglomerate, called _nagelflue_, resting on an unctuous clay, and inclining rapidly toward the village. Much earth remained upon the rock, in irregular masses, but the woods had been felled, and the water had free access to the surface, and to the crevices which sun and frost had already produced in the rock, and of course, to the slimy stratum beneath. The whole summer of 1806 had been very wet, and an almost incessant deluge of rain had fallen the day preceding the catastrophe, as well as on that of its occurrence. All conditions then, were favorable to the sliding of the rock, and, in obedience to the laws of gravitation, it precipitated itself into the valley as soon as its adhesion to the earth beneath it was destroyed by the conversion of the latter into a viscous paste. The mass that fell measured between two and a half and three miles in length by one thousand feet in width, and its average thickness is thought to have been about a hundred feet. The highest portion of the mountain was more than three thousand feet above the village, and the momentum acquired by the rocks and earth in their descent carried huge blocks of stone far up the opposite slope of the Rigi. The Piz, which fell into the Cordevole, rested on a steeply inclined stratum of limestone, with a thin layer of calcareous marl intervening, which, by long exposure to frost and the infiltration of water, had lost its original consistence, and become a loose and slippery mass instead of a cohesive and tenacious bed. _Protection against fall of Rocks and Avalanches by Trees._ Forests often subserve a valuable purpose in preventing the fall of rocks, by mere mechanical resistance. Trees, as well as herbaceous vegetation, grow in the Alps upon declivities of surprising steepness of inclination, and the traveller sees both luxuriant grass and flourishing woods on slopes at which the soil, in the dry air of lower regions, would crumble and fall by the weight of its own particles. When loose rocks lie scattered on the face of these declivities, they are held in place by the trunks of the trees, and it is very common to observe a stone that weighs hundreds of pounds, perhaps even tons, resting against a tree which has stopped its progress just as it was beginning to slide down to a lower level. When a forest in such a position is cut, these blocks lose their support, and a single wet season is enough not only to bare the face of a considerable extent of rock, but to cover with earth and stone many acres of fertile soil below.[240] In Switzerland and other snowy and mountainous countries, forests render a most important service by preventing the formation and fall of destructive avalanches, and in many parts of the Alps exposed to this catastrophe, the woods are protected, though too often ineffectually, by law. No forest, indeed, could arrest a large avalanche once in motion, but the mechanical resistance afforded by the trees prevents their formation, both by obstructing the wind, which gives to the dry snow of the _Staub-Lawine_, or dust avalanche, its first impulse, and by checking the disposition of moist snow to gather itself into what is called the _Rutsch-Lawine_, or sliding avalanche. Marschand states that, the very first winter after the felling of the trees on the higher part of a declivity between Saanen and Gsteig where the snow had never been known to slide, an avalanche formed itself in the clearing, thundered down the mountain, and overthrew and carried with it a hitherto unviolated forest to the amount of nearly a million cubic feet of timber.[241] The path once opened down the flanks of the mountain, the evil is almost beyond remedy. The snow sometimes carries off the earth from the face of the rock, or, if the soil is left, fresh slides every winter destroy the young plantations, and the restoration of the wood becomes impossible. The track widens with every new avalanche. Dwellings and their occupants are buried in the snow, or swept away by the rushing mass, or by the furious blasts it occasions through the displacement of the air; roads and bridges are destroyed; rivers blocked up, which swell till they overflow the valley above, and then, bursting their snowy barrier, flood the fields below with all the horrors of a winter inundation.[242] _Principal Causes of the Destruction of the Forest._ The needs of agriculture are the most familiar cause of the destruction of the forest in new countries; for not only does an increasing population demand additional acres to grow the vegetables which feed it and its domestic animals, but the slovenly husbandry of the border settler soon exhausts the luxuriance of his first fields, and compels him to remove his household gods to a fresher soil. With growing numbers, too, come the many arts for which wood is the material. The demands of the near and the distant market for this product excite the cupidity of the hardy forester, and a few years of that wild industry of which Springer's "Forest Life and Forest Trees" so vividly depicts the dangers and the triumphs, suffice to rob the most inaccessible glens of their fairest ornaments. The value of timber increases with its dimensions in almost geometrical proportion, and the tallest, most vigorous, and most symmetrical trees fall the first sacrifice. This is a fortunate circumstance for the remainder of the wood; for the impatient lumberman contents himself with felling a few of the best trees, and then hurries on to take his tithe of still virgin groves. The unparalleled facilities for internal navigation, afforded by the numerous rivers of the present and former British colonial possessions in North America, have proved very fatal to the forests of that continent. Quebec has become a centre for a lumber trade, which, in the bulk of its material, and, consequently, in the tonnage required for its transportation, rivals the commerce of the greatest European cities. Immense rafts are collected at Quebec from the great Lakes, from the Ottawa, and from all the other tributaries which unite to swell the current of the St. Lawrence and help it to struggle against its mighty tides.[243] Ships, of burden formerly undreamed of, have been built to convey the timber to the markets of Europe, and during the summer months the St. Lawrence is almost as crowded with vessels as the Thames.[244] Of late, Chicago, in Illinois, has been one of the greatest lumber as well as grain depots of the United States, and it receives and distributes contributions from all the forests in the States washed by Lake Michigan, as well as from some more distant points. The operations of the lumberman involve other dangers to the woods besides the loss of the trees felled by him. The narrow clearings around his _shanties_[245] form openings which let in the wind, and thus sometimes occasion the overthrow of thousands of trees, the fall of which dams up small streams, and creates bogs by the spreading of the waters, while the decaying trunks facilitate the multiplication of the insects which breed in dead wood, and are, some of them, injurious to living trees. The escape and spread of camp fires, however, is the most devastating of all the causes of destruction that find their origin in the operations of the lumberman. The proportion of trees fit for industrial uses is small in all primitive woods. Only these fall before the forester's axe, but the fire destroys, indiscriminately, every age and every species of tree.[246] While, then, without much injury to the younger growths, the native forest will bear several "cuttings over" in a generation--for the increasing value of lumber brings into use, every four or five years, a quality of timber which had been before rejected as unmarketable--a fire may render the declivity of a mountain unproductive for a century.[247] _American Forest Trees._ The remaining forests of the Northern States and of Canada no longer boast the mighty pines which almost rivalled the gigantic Sequoia of California; and the growth of the larger forest trees is so slow, after they have attained to a certain size, that if every pine and oak were spared for two centuries, the largest now standing would not reach the stature of hundreds recorded to have been cut within two or three generations.[248] Dr. Williams, who wrote about sixty years ago, states the following as the dimensions of "such trees as are esteemed large ones of their kind in that part of America" [Vermont], qualifying his account with the remark that his measurements "do not denote the greatest which nature has produced of their particular species, but the greatest which are to be found in most of our towns." Diameter. Height. Pine, 6 feet, 247 feet. Maple, 5 " 9 inches, } Buttonwood, 5 " 6 " } Elm, 5 " } Hemlock, 4 " 9 " } Oak, 4 " } From 100 to 200 feet. Basswood, 4 " } Ash, 4 " } Birch, 4 " } He adds a note saying that a white pine was cut in Dunstable, New Hampshire, in the year 1736, the diameter of which was seven feet and eight inches. Dr. Dwight says that a fallen pine in Connecticut was found to measure two hundred and forty-seven feet in height, and adds: "A few years since, such trees were in great numbers along the northern parts of Connecticut River." In another letter, he speaks of the white pine as "frequently six feet in diameter, and two hundred and fifty feet in height," and states that a pine had been cut in Lancaster, New Hampshire, which measured two hundred and sixty-four feet. Emerson wrote in 1846: "Fifty years ago, several trees growing on rather dry land in Blandford, Massachusetts, measured, after they were felled, two hundred and twenty-three feet. All these trees are surpassed by a pine felled at Hanover, New Hampshire, about a hundred years ago, and described as measuring two hundred and seventy-four feet.[249] These descriptions, it will be noticed, apply to trees cut from sixty to one hundred years since. Persons, whom observation has rendered familiar with the present character of the American forest, will be struck with the smallness of the diameter which Dr. Williams and Dr. Dwight ascribe to trees of such extraordinary height. Individuals of the several species mentioned in Dr. Williams's table, are now hardly to be found in the same climate, exceeding one half or at most two thirds of the height which he assigns to them; but, except in the case of the oak and the pine, the diameter stated by him would not be thought very extraordinary in trees of far less height, now standing. Even in the species I have excepted, those diameters, with half the heights of Dr. Williams, might perhaps be paralleled at the present time; and many elms, transplanted, at a diameter of six inches, within the memory of persons still living, measure six, and sometimes even seven feet through. For this change in the growth of forest trees there are two reasons: the one is, that the great commercial value of the pine and the oak have caused the destruction of all the best--that is, the tallest and straightest--specimens of both; the other, that the thinning of the woods by the axe of the lumberman has allowed the access of light and heat and air to trees of humbler worth and lower stature, which have survived their more towering brethren. These, consequently, have been able to expand their crowns and swell their stems to a degree not possible so long as they were overshadowed and stifled by the lordly oak and pine. While, therefore, the New England forester must search long before he finds a pine fit to be the mast Of some great ammiral, beeches and elms and birches, as sturdy as the mightiest of their progenitors, are still no rarity.[250] Another evil, sometimes of serious magnitude, which attends the operations of the lumberman, is the injury to the banks of rivers from the practice of floating. I do not here allude to rafts, which, being under the control of those who navigate them, may be so guided as to avoid damage to the shore, but to masts, logs, and other pieces of timber singly intrusted to the streams, to be conveyed by their currents to sawmill ponds, or to convenient places for collecting them into rafts. The lumbermen usually haul the timber to the banks of the rivers in the winter, and when the spring floods swell the streams and break up the ice, they roll the logs into the water, leaving them to float down to their destination. If the transporting stream is too small to furnish a sufficient channel for this rude navigation, it is sometimes dammed up, and the timber collected in the pond thus formed above the dam. When the pond is full, a sluice is opened, or the dam is blown up or otherwise suddenly broken, and the whole mass of lumber above it is hurried down with the rolling flood. Both of these modes of proceeding expose the banks of the rivers employed as channels of flotation to abrasion,[251] and in some of the American States it has been found necessary to protect, by special legislation, the lands through which they flow from the serious injury sometimes received through the practices I have described.[252] _Special Causes of the Destruction of European Woods._ The causes of forest waste thus far enumerated are more or less common to both continents; but in Europe extensive woods have, at different periods, been deliberately destroyed by fire or the axe, because they afforded a retreat to enemies, robbers, and outlaws, and this practice is said to have been resorted to in the Mediterranean provinces of France as recently as the time of Napoleon I.[253] The severe and even sanguinary legislation, by which some of the governments of mediæval Europe, as well as of earlier ages, protected the woods, was dictated by a love of the chase, or the fear of a scarcity of fuel and timber. The laws of almost every European state more or less adequately secure the permanence of the forest; and I believe Spain is the only European land which has not made some public provision for the protection and restoration of the woods--the only country whose people systematically war upon the garden of God.[254] _Royal Forests and Game Laws._ The French authors I have quoted, as well as many other writers of the same nation, refer to the French Revolution as having given a new impulse to destructive causes which were already threatening the total extermination of the woods.[255] The general crusade against the forests, which accompanied that important event, is to be ascribed, in a considerable degree, to political resentments. The forest codes of the mediæval kings, and the local "coutumes" of feudalism contained many severe and even inhuman provisions, adopted rather for the preservation of game than from any enlightened views of the more important functions of the woods. Ordericus Vitalis informs us that William the Conqueror destroyed sixty parishes, and drove out their inhabitants, in order that he might turn their lands into a forest,[256] to be reserved as a hunting ground for himself and his posterity, and he punished with death the killing of a deer, wild boar, or even a hare. His successor, William Rufus, according to the _Histoire des Ducs de Normandie et des Rois d'Angleterre_, p. 67, "was hunting one day in a new forest, which he had caused to be made out of eighteen parishes that he had destroyed, when, by mischance, he was killed by an arrow wherewith Tyreus de Rois [Sir Walter Tyrell] thought to slay a beast, but missed the beast, and slew the king, who was beyond it. And in this very same forest, his brother Richard ran so hard against a tree that he died of it. And men commonly said that these things were because they had so laid waste and taken the said parishes." These barbarous acts, as Bonnemère observes,[257] were simply the transfer of the customs of the French kings, of their vassals, and even of inferior gentlemen, to conquered England. "The death of a hare," says our author, "was a hanging matter, the murder of a plover a capital crime. Death was inflicted on those who spread nets for pigeons; wretches who had drawn a bow upon a stag were to be tied to the animal alive; and among the seigniors it was a standing excuse for having killed game on forbidden ground, that they aimed at a serf." The feudal lords enforced these codes with unrelenting rigor, and not unfrequently took the law into their own hands. In the time of Louis IX, according to William of Nangis, "three noble children, born in Flanders, who were sojourning at the abbey of St. Nicholas in the Wood, to learn the speech of France, went out into the forest of the abbey, with their bows and iron-headed arrows, to disport them in shooting hares, chased the game, which they had started in the wood of the abbey, into the forest of Enguerrand, lord of Coucy, and were taken by the sergeants which kept the wood. When the fell and pitiless Sir Enguerrand knew this, he had the children straightway hanged without any manner of trial."[258] The matter being brought to the notice of good King Louis, Sir Enguerrand was summoned to appear, and, finally, after many feudal shifts and dilatory pleas, brought to trial before Louis himself and a special council. Notwithstanding the opposition of the other seigniors, who, it is needless to say, spared no efforts to save a peer, probably not a greater criminal than themselves, the king was much inclined to inflict the punishment of death on the proud baron. "If he believed," said he, "that our Lord would be as well content with hanging as with pardoning, he would hang Sir Enguerrand in spite of all his barons;" but noble and clerical interests unfortunately prevailed. The king was persuaded to inflict a milder retribution, and the murderer was condemned to pay ten thousand livres in coin, and to "build for the souls of the three children two chapels wherein mass should be said every day."[259] The hope of shortening the purgatorial term of the young persons, by the religious rites to be celebrated in the chapels, was doubtless the consideration which operated most powerfully on the mind of the king; and Europe lost a great example for the sake of a mass. The desolation and depopulation, resulting from the extension of the forest and the enforcement of the game laws, induced several of the French kings to consent to some relaxation of the severity of these latter. Francis I, however, revived their barbarous provisions, and, according to Bonnemère, even so good a monarch as Henry IV reënacted them, and "signed the sentence of death upon peasants guilty of having defended their fields against devastation by wild beasts." "A fine of twenty livres," he continues, "was imposed on every one shooting at pigeons, which, at that time, swooped down by thousands upon the new-sown fields and devoured the seed. But let us count even this a progress, for we have seen that the murder of a pigeon had been a capital crime."[260] Not only were the slightest trespasses on the forest domain--the cutting of an oxgoad, for instance--severely punished, but game animals were still sacred when they had wandered from their native precincts and were ravaging the fields of the peasantry. A herd of deer or of wild boars often consumed or trod down a harvest of grain, the sole hope of the year for a whole family; and the simple driving out of such animals from this costly pasturage brought dire vengeance on the head of the rustic, who had endeavored to save his children's bread from their voracity. "At all times," says Paul Louis Courier, speaking in the name of the peasants of Chambord, in the "Simple Discours," "the game has made war upon us. Paris was blockaded eight hundred years by the deer, and its environs, now so rich, so fertile, did not yield bread enough to support the gamekeepers."[261] In the popular mind, the forest was associated with all the abuses of feudalism, and the evils the peasantry had suffered from the legislation which protected both it and the game it sheltered, blinded them to the still greater physical mischiefs which its destruction was to entail upon them. No longer protected by law, the crown forests and those of the great lords were attacked with relentless fury, unscrupulously plundered and wantonly laid waste, and even the rights of property in small private woods were no longer respected.[262] Various absurd theories, some of which are not even yet exploded, were propagated with regard to the economical advantages of converting the forest into pasture and ploughland, its injurious effects upon climate, health, facility of internal communication, and the like. Thus resentful memory of the wrongs associated with the forest, popular ignorance, and the cupidity of speculators cunning enough to turn these circumstances to profitable account, combined to hasten the sacrifice of the remaining woods, and a waste was produced which hundreds of years and millions of treasure will hardly repair. _Small Forest Plants, and Vitality of Seed._ Another function of the woods to which I have barely alluded deserves a fuller notice than can be bestowed upon it in a treatise the scope of which is purely economical. The forest is the native habitat of a large number of humbler plants, to the growth and perpetuation of which its shade, its humidity, and its vegetable mould appear to be indispensable necessities.[263] We cannot positively say that the felling of the woods in a given vegetable province would involve the final extinction of the smaller plants which are found only within their precincts. Some of these, though not naturally propagating themselves in the open ground, may perhaps germinate and grow under artificial stimulation and protection, and finally become hardy enough to maintain an independent existence in very different circumstances from those which at present seem essential to their life. Besides this, although the accounts of the growth of seeds, which have lain for ages in the ashy dryness of Egyptian catacombs, are to be received with great caution, or, more probably, to be rejected altogether, yet their vitality seems almost imperishable while they remain in the situations in which nature deposits them. When a forest old enough to have witnessed the mysteries of the Druids is felled, trees of other species spring up in its place; and when they, in their turn, fall before the axe, sometimes even as soon as they have spread their protecting shade over the surface, the germs which their predecessors had shed years, perhaps centuries before, sprout up, and in due time, if not choked by other trees belonging to a later stage in the order of natural succession, restore again the original wood. In these cases, the seeds of the new crop may often have been brought by the wind, by birds, by quadrupeds, or by other causes; but, in many instances, this explanation is not probable. When newly cleared ground is burnt over in the United States, the ashes are hardly cold before they are covered with a crop of fire weed, a tall herbaceous plant, very seldom seen growing under other circumstances, and often not to be found for a distance of many miles from the clearing. Its seeds, whether the fruit of an ancient vegetation or newly sown by winds or birds, require either a quickening by a heat which raises to a certain high point the temperature of the stratum where they lie buried, or a special pabulum furnished only by the combustion of the vegetable remains that cover the ground in the woods. Earth brought up from wells or other excavations soon produces a harvest of plants often very unlike those of the local flora. Moritz Wagner, as quoted by Wittwer,[264] remarks in his description of Mount Ararat: "A singular phenomenon to which my guide drew my attention is the appearance of several plants on the earth-heaps left by the last catastrophe [an earthquake], which grow nowhere else on the mountain, and had never been observed in this region before. The seeds of these plants were probably brought by birds, and found in the loose, clayey soil remaining from the streams of mud, the conditions of growth which the other soil of the mountain refused them." This is probable enough, but it is hardly less so that the flowing mud brought them up to the influence of air and sun, from depths where a previous convulsion had buried them ages before. Seeds of small sylvan plants, too deeply buried by successive layers of forest foliage and the mould resulting from its decomposition to be reached by the plough when the trees are gone and the ground brought under cultivation, may, if a wiser posterity replants the wood which sheltered their parent stems, germinate and grow, after lying for generations in a state of suspended animation. Darwin says: "In Staffordshire, on the estate of a relation, where I had ample means of investigation, there was a large and extremely barren heath, which had never been touched by the hand of man, but several hundred acres of exactly the same nature had been enclosed twenty-five years previously and planted with Scotch fir. The change in the native vegetation of the planted part of the heath was most remarkable--more than is generally seen in passing from one quite different soil to another; not only the proportional numbers of the heath plants were wholly changed, but _twelve species_ of plants (not counting grasses and sedges) flourished in the plantation which could not be found on the heath."[265] Had the author informed us that these twelve plants belonged to a species whose seeds enter into the nutriment of the birds which appeared with the young wood, we could easily account for their presence in the soil; but he says distinctly that the birds were of insectivorous species, and it therefore seems more probable that the seeds had been deposited when an ancient forest protected the growth of the plants which bore them, and that they sprang up to new life when a return of favorable conditions awaked them from a sleep of centuries. Darwin indeed says that the heath "had never been touched by the hand of man." Perhaps not, after it became a heath; but what evidence is there to control the general presumption that this heath was preceded by a forest, in whose shade the vegetables which dropped the seeds in question might have grown?[266] Although, therefore, the destruction of a wood and the reclaiming of the soil to agricultural uses suppose the death of its smaller dependent flora, these revolutions do not exclude the possibility of its resurrection. In a practical view of the subject, however, we must admit that when the woodman fells a tree he sacrifices the colony of humbler growths which had vegetated under its protection. Some wood plants are known to possess valuable medicinal properties, and experiment may show that the number of these is greater than we now suppose. Few of them, however, have any other economical value than that of furnishing a slender pasturage to cattle allowed to roam in the woods; and even this small advantage is far more than compensated by the mischief done to the young trees by browsing animals. Upon the whole, the importance of this class of vegetables, as physic or as food, is not such as to furnish a very telling popular argument for the conservation of the forest as a necessary means of their perpetuation. More potent remedial agents may supply their place in the _materia medica_, and an acre of grass land yields more nutriment for cattle than a range of a hundred acres of forest. But he whose sympathies with nature have taught him to feel that there is a fellowship between all God's creatures; to love the brilliant ore better than the dull ingot, iodic silver and crystallized red copper better than the shillings and the pennies forged from them by the coiner's cunning; a venerable oak tree than the brandy cask whose staves are split out from its heart wood; a bed of anemones, hepaticas, or wood violets than the leeks and onions which he may grow on the soil they have enriched and in the air they made fragrant--he who has enjoyed that special training of the heart and intellect which can be acquired only in the unviolated sanctuaries of nature, "where man is distant, but God is near"--will not rashly assert his right to extirpate a tribe of harmless vegetables, barely because their products neither tickle his palate nor fill his pocket; and his regret at the dwindling area of the forest solitude will be augmented by the reflection that the nurselings of the woodland perish with the pines, the oaks, and the beeches that sheltered them.[267] Although, as I have said, birds do not frequent the deeper recesses of the wood,[268] yet a very large proportion of them build their nests in trees, and find in their foliage and branches a secure retreat from the inclemencies of the seasons and the pursuit of the reptiles and quadrupeds which prey upon them. The borders of the forests are vocal with song; and when the gray morning calls the creeping things of the earth out of their night cells, it summons from the neighboring wood legions of their winged enemies, which swoop down upon the fields to save man's harvests by devouring the destroying worm, and surprising the lagging beetle in his tardy retreat to the dark cover where he lurks through the hours of daylight. The insects most injurious to rural industry do not multiply in or near the woods. The locust, which ravages the East with its voracious armies, is bred in vast open plains which admit the full heat of the sun to hasten the hatching of the eggs, gather no moisture to destroy them, and harbor no bird to feed upon the larvæ.[269] It is only since the felling of the forests of Asia Minor and Cyrene that the locust has become so fearfully destructive in those countries; and the grasshopper, which now threatens to be almost as great a pest to the agriculture of some North American soils, breeds in seriously injurious numbers only where a wide extent of surface is bare of woods. _Utility of the Forest._ In most parts of Europe, the woods are already so nearly extirpated that the mere protection of those which now exist is by no means an adequate remedy for the evils resulting from the want of them; and besides, as I have already said, abundant experience has shown that no legislation can secure the permanence of the forest in private hands. Enlightened individuals in most European states, governments in others, have made very extensive plantations,[270] and France has now set herself energetically at work to restore the woods in the southern provinces, and thereby to prevent the utter depopulation and waste with which that once fertile soil and delicious climate are threatened. The objects of the restoration of the forest are as multifarious as the motives that have led to its destruction, and as the evils which that destruction has occasioned. It is hoped that the planting of the mountains will diminish the frequency and violence of river inundations, prevent the formation of torrents, mitigate the extremes of atmospheric temperature, humidity, and precipitation, restore dried-up springs, rivulets, and sources of irrigation, shelter the fields from chilling and from parching winds, prevent the spread of miasmatic effluvia, and, finally, furnish an inexhaustible and self-renewing supply of a material indispensable to so many purposes of domestic comfort, to the successful exercise of every art of peace, every destructive energy of war.[271] But our enumeration of the uses of trees is not yet complete. Besides the influence of the forest, in mountain ranges, as a means of preventing the scooping out of ravines and the accumulations of water which fill them, trees subserve a valuable purpose, in lower positions, as barriers against the spread of floods and of the material they transport with them; but this will be more appropriately considered in the chapter on the waters; and another very important use of trees, that of fixing movable sand-dunes, and reclaiming them to profitable cultivation, will be pointed out in the chapter on the sands. The vast extension of railroads, of manufactures and the mechanical arts, of military armaments, and especially of the commercial fleets and navies of Christendom within the present century, has greatly augmented the demand for wood,[272] and, but for improvements in metallurgy which have facilitated the substitution of iron for that material, the last twenty-five years would almost have stripped Europe of her only remaining trees fit for such uses.[273] The walnut trees alone felled in Europe within two years to furnish the armies of America with gunstocks, would form a forest of no inconsiderable extent.[274] _The Forests of Europe._ Mirabeau estimated the forests of France in 1750 at seventeen millions of hectares [42,000,000 acres]; in 1860 they were reduced to eight millions [19,769,000 acres]. This would be at the rate of 82,000 hectares [202,600 acres] per year. Troy, from whose valuable pamphlet, _Étude sur le Reboisement des Montagnes_, I take these statistical details, supposes that Mirabeau's statement may have been an extravagant one, but it still remains certain that the waste has been enormous; for it is known that, in some departments, that of Ariège, for instance, clearing has gone on during the last half century at the rate of three thousand acres a year,[275] and in all parts of the empire trees have been felled faster than they have grown. The total area of France, excluding Savoy, is about one hundred and thirty-one millions of acres. The extent of forest supposed by Mirabeau would be about thirty-two per cent. of the whole territory.[276] In a country and a climate where the conservative influences of the forest are so necessary as in France, trees must cover a large surface and be grouped in large masses, in order to discharge to the best advantage the various functions assigned to them by nature. The consumption of wood is rapidly increasing in that empire, and a large part of its territory is mountainous, sterile, and otherwise such in character or situation that it can be more profitably devoted to the growth of wood than to any agricultural use. Hence it is evident that the proportion of forest in 1750, taking even Mirabeau's large estimate, was not very much too great for permanent maintenance, though doubtless the distribution was so unequal that it would have been sound policy to fell the woods and clear land in some provinces, while large forests should have been planted in others.[277] During the period in question, France neither exported manufactured wood or rough timber, nor derived important collateral advantages of any sort from the destruction of her forests. She is consequently impoverished and crippled to the extent of the difference between what she actually possesses of wooded surface and what she ought to have retained. Italy and Spain are bared of trees in a greater degree than France, and even Russia, which we habitually consider as substantially a forest country, is beginning to suffer seriously for want of wood. Jourdier, as quoted by Clavé, observes: "Instead of a vast territory with immense forests, which we expect to meet, one sees only scattered groves thinned by the wind or by the axe of the _moujik_, grounds cut over and more or less recently cleared for cultivation. There is probably not a single district in Russia which has not to deplore the ravages of man or of fire, those two great enemies of Muscovite sylviculture. This is so true, that clear-sighted men already foresee a crisis which will become terrible, unless the discovery of great deposits of some new combustible, as pit coal or anthracite, shall diminish its evils."[278] Germany, from character of surface and climate, and from the attention which has long been paid in all the German States to sylviculture, is, taken as a whole, in a far better condition in this respect than its more southern neighbors; but in the Alpine provinces of Bavaria and Austria, the same improvidence which marks the rural economy of the corresponding districts of Switzerland, Italy, and France, is producing effects hardly less disastrous. As an instance of the scarcity of fuel in some parts of the territory of Bavaria, where, not long since, wood abounded, I may mention the fact that the water of salt springs is, in some instances, conveyed to the distance of sixty miles, in iron pipes, to reach a supply of fuel for boiling it down.[279] _Forests of the United States and Canada._ The vast forests of the United States and Canada cannot long resist the improvident habits of the backwoodsman and the increased demand for lumber. According to the census of the former country for 1860, which gives returns of the "sawed and planed lumber" alone, timber for framing and for a vast variety of mechanical purposes being omitted altogether, the value of the former material prepared for market in the United States was, in 1850, $58,521,976; in 1860, $95,912,286. The quantity of unsawed lumber is not likely to have increased in the same proportion, because comparatively little is exported in that condition, and because masonry is fast taking the place of carpentry in building, and stone, brick, and iron are used instead of timber more largely than they were ten years ago. Still a much greater quantity of unsawed lumber must have been marketed in 1860 than in 1850. It must further be admitted that the price of lumber rose considerably between those dates, and consequently that the increase in quantity is not to be measured by the increase in pecuniary value. Perhaps this rise of prices may even be sufficient to make the entire difference between the value of "sawed and planed lumber" produced in the ten years in question by the six New England States (21 per cent.), and the six Middle States (15 per cent.); but the amount produced by the Western and by the Southern States had doubled, and that returned from the Pacific States and Territories had trebled in value in the same interval, so that there was certainly, in those States, a large increase in the actual quantity prepared for sale. I greatly doubt whether any one of the American States, except, perhaps, Oregon, has, at this moment, more woodland than it ought permanently to preserve, though, no doubt, a different distribution of the forests in all of them might be highly advantageous. It is a great misfortune to the American Union that the State Governments have so generally disposed of their original domain to private citizens. It is true that public property is not sufficiently respected in the United States; and it is also true that, within the memory of almost every man of mature age, timber was of so little value in that country, that the owners of private woodlands submitted, almost without complaint, to what would be regarded elsewhere as very aggravated trespasses upon them.[280] Under such circumstances, it is difficult to protect the forest, whether it belong to the state or to individuals. Property of this kind would be subject to much plunder, as well as to frequent damage by fire. The destruction from these causes would, indeed, considerably lessen, but would not wholly annihilate the climatic and geographical influences of the forest, or ruinously diminish its value as a regular source of supply of fuel and timber. For prevention of the evils upon which I have so long dwelt, the American people must look to the diffusion of general intelligence on this subject, and to the enlightened self interest, for which they are remarkable, not to the action of their local or general legislatures. Even in France, government has moved with too slow and hesitating a pace, and preventive measures do not yet compensate destructive causes. The judicious remarks of Troy on this point may well be applied to other countries than France, other measures of public policy than the preservation of the woods. "To move softly," says he, "is to commit the most dangerous, the most unpardonable of imprudences; it diminishes the prestige of authority; it furnishes a triumph to the sneerer and the incredulous; it strengthens opposition and encourages resistance; it ruins the administration in the opinion of the people, weakens its power and depresses its courage."[281] _The Economy of the Forest._ The legislation of European states upon sylviculture, and the practice of that art, divide themselves into two great branches--the preservation of existing forests, and the creation of new. From the long operation of causes already set forth, what is understood in America and other new countries by the "primitive forest," no longer exists in the territories which were the seats of ancient civilization and empire, except upon a small scale, and in remote and almost inaccessible glens quite out of the reach of ordinary observation. The oldest European woods, indeed, are native, that is, sprung from self-sown seed, or from the roots of trees which have been felled for human purposes; but their growth has been controlled, in a variety of ways, by man and by domestic animals, and they always present more or less of an artificial character and arrangement. Both they and planted forests, which, though certainly not few, are of recent date in Europe, demand, as well for protection as for promotion of growth, a treatment different in some respects from that which would be suited to the character and wants of the virgin wood. On this latter branch of the subject, experience and observation have not yet collected a sufficient stock of facts to serve for the construction of a complete system of sylviculture; but the management of the forest as it exists in France--the different zones and climates of which country present many points of analogy with those of the United States and some of the British colonies--has been carefully studied, and several manuals of practice have been prepared for the foresters of that empire. I believe the best of these is the _Cours Élémentaire de Culture des Bois créé à l'École Forestière de Nancy, par M. Lorentz, complété, et publié par A. Parade_, with a supplement under the title of _Cours d'Aménagement des Forêts, par Henri Nanquette_. The _Études sur l'Économie Forestière, par Jules Clavé_, which I have often quoted, presents a great number of interesting views on this subject, and well deserves to be translated for the use of the English and American reader; but it is not designed as a practical guide, and it does not profess to be sufficiently specific in its details to serve that purpose. Notwithstanding the difference of conditions between the aboriginal and the trained forest, the judicious observer who aims at the preservation of the former will reap much instruction from the treatises I have cited, and I believe he will be convinced that the sooner a natural wood is brought into the state of an artificially regulated one, the better it is for all the multiplied interests which depend on the wise administration of this branch of public economy.[282] One consideration bearing on this subject has received less attention than it merits, because most persons interested in such questions have not opportunities for the comparison I refer to. I mean the great general superiority of cultivated timber to that of strictly spontaneous growth. I say _general_ superiority, because there are exceptions to the rule. The white pine, _Pinus strobus_, for instance, and other trees of similar character and uses, require, for their perfect growth, a density of forest vegetation around them, which protects them from too much agitation by wind, and from the persistence of the lateral branches which fill the wood with knots. A pine which has grown under those conditions possesses a tall, straight stem, admirably fitted for masts and spars, and, at the same time, its wood is almost wholly free from knots, is regular in annular structure, soft and uniform in texture, and, consequently, superior to almost all other timber for joinery. If, while a large pine is spared, the broad-leaved or other smaller trees around it are felled, the swaying of the tree from the action of the wind mechanically produces separations between the layers of annual growth, and greatly diminishes the value of the timber. The same defect is often observed in pines which, from some accident of growth, have much overtopped their fellows in the virgin forest. The white pine, growing in the fields, or in open glades in the woods, is totally different from the true forest tree, both in general aspect and in quality of wood. Its stem is much shorter, its top less tapering, its foliage denser and more inclined to gather into tufts, its branches more numerous and of larger diameter, its wood shows much more distinctly the divisions of annual growth, is of coarser grain, harder and more difficult to work into mitre joints. Intermixed with the most valuable pines in the American forests, are met many trees of the character I have just described. The lumbermen call them "saplings," and generally regard them as different in species from the true white pine, but botanists are unable to establish a distinction between them, and as they agree in almost all respects with trees grown in the open grounds from known white-pine seedlings, I believe their peculiar character is due to unfavorable circumstances in their early growth. The pine, then, is an exception to the general rule as to the inferiority of the forest to the open-ground tree. The pasture oak and pasture beech, on the contrary, are well known to produce far better timber than those grown in the woods, and there are few trees to which the remark is not equally applicable.[283] Another advantage of the artificially regulated forest is, that it admits of such grading of the ground as to favor the retention or discharge of water at will, while the facilities it affords for selecting and duly proportioning, as well as properly spacing, the trees which compose it, are too obvious to require to be more than hinted at. In conducting these operations, we must have a diligent eye to the requirements of nature, and must remember that a wood is not an arbitrary assemblage of trees to be selected and disposed according to the caprice of its owner. "A forest," says Clavé, "is not, as is often supposed, a simple collection of trees succeeding each other in long perspective, without bond of union, and capable of isolation from each other; it is, on the contrary, a whole, the different parts of which are interdependent upon each other, and it constitutes, so to speak, a true individuality. Every forest has a special character, determined by the form of the surface it grows upon, the kinds of trees that compose it, and the manner in which they are grouped."[284] _European and American Trees compared._ The woods of North America are strikingly distinguished from those of Europe by the vastly greater variety of species they contain. According to Clavé, there are in "France and in most parts of Europe" only about twenty forest trees, five or six of which are spike-leaved and resinous, the remainder broad-leaved."[285] Our author, however, doubtless means genera, though he uses the word _espèces_. Rossmässler enumerates fifty-seven species of forest trees as found in Germany, but some of these are mere shrubs, some are fruit and properly garden trees, and some others are only varieties of familiar species. The valuable manual of Parade describes about the same number, including, however, two of American origin--the locust, _Robinia pseudacacia_, and the Weymouth or white pine, _Pinus strobus_--and the cedar of Lebanon from Asia, though it is indigenous in Algeria also. We may then safely say that Europe does not possess above forty or fifty trees of such economical value as to be worth the special care of the forester, while the oak alone numbers not less than thirty species in the United States,[286] and some other North American genera are almost equally diversified.[287] Few European trees, except those bearing edible fruit, have been naturalized in the United States, while the American forest flora has made large contributions to that of Europe. It is a very poor taste which has led to the substitution of the less picturesque European for the graceful and majestic American elm, in some public grounds in the United States. On the other hand, the European mountain ash--which in beauty and healthfulness of growth is superior to our own--the horse chestnut, and the abele, or silver poplar, are valuable additions to the ornamental trees of North America. The Swiss arve or zirbelkiefer, _Pinus cembra_, which yields a well-flavored edible seed and furnishes excellent wood for carving, the umbrella pine which also bears a seed agreeable to the taste, and which, from the color of its foliage and the beautiful form of its dome-like crown, is among the most elegant of trees, the white birch of Central Europe, with its pendulous branches almost rivalling those of the weeping willow in length, flexibility, and gracefulness of fall, and, especially, the "cypresse funerall," might be introduced into the United States with great advantage to the landscape. The European beech and chestnut furnish timber of far better quality than that of their American congeners. The fruit of the European chestnut, though inferior to the American in flavor, is larger, and is an important article of diet among the French and Italian peasantry. The walnut of Europe, though not equal to some of the American species in beauty of growth or of wood, or to others in strength and elasticity of fibre, is valuable for its timber and its oil.[288] The maritime pine, which has proved of such immense use in fixing drifting sands in France, may perhaps be better adapted to this purpose than any of the pines of the New World, and it is of great importance for its turpentine, resin, and tar. The épicéa, or common fir, _Abies picea_, _Abies excelsa_, _Picea excelsa_, abundant in the mountains of France and the contiguous country, is known for its product, Burgundy pitch, and, as it flourishes in a greater variety of soil and climate than almost any other spike-leaved tree, it might be well worth transplantation.[289] The cork oak has been introduced into the United States, I believe, and would undoubtedly thrive in the Southern section of the Union.[290] In the walnut, the chestnut, the cork oak, the mulberry, the olive, the orange, the lemon, the fig, and the multitude of other trees which, by their fruit, or by other products, yield an annual revenue, nature has provided Southern Europe with a partial compensation for the loss of the native forest. It is true that these trees, planted as most of them are at such distances as to admit of cultivation, or of the growth of grass among them, are but an inadequate substitute for the thick and shady wood; but they perform to a certain extent the same offices of absorption and transpiration, they shade the surface of the ground, they serve to break the force of the wind, and on many a steep declivity, many a bleak and barren hillside, the chestnut binds the soil together with its roots, and prevents tons of earth and gravel from washing down upon the fields and the gardens. Fruit trees are not wanting, certainly, north of the Alps. The apple, the pear, and the prune are important in the economy both of man and of nature, but they are far less numerous in Switzerland and Northern France than are the trees I have mentioned in Southern Europe, both because they are in general less remunerative, and because the climate, in higher latitudes, does not permit the free introduction of shade trees into grounds occupied for agricultural purposes.[291] The multitude of species, intermixed as they are in their spontaneous growth, gives the American forest landscape a variety of aspect not often seen in the woods of Europe, and the gorgeous tints, which nature repeats from the dying dolphin to paint the falling leaf of the American maples, oaks, and ash trees, clothe the hillsides and fringe the watercourses with a rainbow splendor of foliage, unsurpassed by the brightest groupings of the tropical flora. It must be admitted, however, that both the northern and the southern declivities of the Alps exhibit a nearer approximation to this rich and multifarious coloring of autumnal vegetation than most American travellers in Europe are willing to allow; and, besides, the small deciduous shrubs which often carpet the forest glades of these mountains are dyed with a ruddy and orange glow, which, in the distant landscape, is no mean substitute for the scarlet and crimson and gold and amber of the transatlantic woodland. No American evergreen known to me resembles the umbrella pine sufficiently to be a fair object of comparison with it.[292] A cedar, very common above the Highlands on the Hudson, is extremely like the cypress, straight, slender, with erect, compressed ramification, and feathered to the ground, but its foliage is neither so dark nor so dense, the tree does not attain the majestic height of the cypress, nor has it the lithe flexibility of that tree. In mere shape, the Lombardy poplar nearly resembles this latter, but it is almost a profanation to compare the two, especially when they are agitated by the wind; for under such circumstances, the one is the most majestic, the other the most ungraceful, or--if I may apply such an expression to anything but human affectation of movement--the most awkward of trees. The poplar trembles before the blast, flutters, struggles wildly, dishevels its foliage, gropes around with its feeble branches, and hisses as in impotent passion. The cypress gathers its limbs still more closely to its stem, bows a gracious salute rather than an humble obeisance to the tempest, bends to the wind with an elasticity that assures you of its prompt return to its regal attitude, and sends from its thick leaflets a murmur like the roar of the far-off ocean. The cypress and the umbrella pine are not merely conventional types of the Italian landscape. They are essential elements in a field of rural beauty which can be seen in perfection only in the basin of the Mediterranean, and they are as characteristic of this class of scenery as the date palm is of the oases of the desert. There is, however, this difference: a single cypress or pine is often enough to shed beauty over a wide area; the palm is a social tree, and its beauty is not so much that of the individual as of the group. The frequency of the cypress and the pine--combined with the fact that the other trees of Southern Europe which most interest a stranger from the north, the orange and the lemon, the cork oak, the ilex, the myrtle, and the laurel, are evergreens--goes far to explain the beauty of the winter scenery of Italy. Indeed it is only in the winter that a tourist who confines himself to wheel carriages and high roads can acquire any notion of the face of the earth, and form any proper geographical image of that country. At other seasons, not high walls only, but equally impervious hedges, and now, unhappily, acacias thickly planted along the railway routes, confine the view so completely, that the arch of a tunnel, or a night cap over the traveller's eyes, is scarcely a more effectual obstacle to the gratification of his curiosity.[293] _Sylviculture._ The art, or, as the Continental foresters call it, the science of sylviculture has been so little pursued in England and America, that its nomenclature has not been introduced into the English vocabulary, and I shall not be able to describe its processes with technical propriety of language, without occasionally borrowing a word from the forest literature of France and Germany. A full discussion of the methods of sylviculture would, indeed, be out of place in a work like the present, but the almost total want of conveniently accessible means of information on the subject, in English-speaking countries, will justify me in presenting it with somewhat more of detail than would otherwise be pertinent. The two best known methods are those distinguished as the _taillis_, copse or coppice treatment,[294] and the _futaie_, for which I find no English equivalent, but which may not inappropriately be called the _full-growth_ system. A _taillis_, copse, or coppice, is a wood composed of shoots from the roots of trees previously cut for fuel and timber. The shoots are thinned out from time to time, and finally cut, either after a fixed number of years, or after the young trees have attained to certain dimensions, their roots being then left to send out a new progeny as before. This is the cheapest method of management, and therefore the best wherever the price of labor and of capital bears a high proportion to that of land and of timber; but it is essentially a wasteful economy. If the woodland is, in the first place, completely cut over, as is found most convenient in practice, the young shoots have neither the shade nor the protection from wind so important to forest growth, and their progress is comparatively slow, while, at the same time, the thick clumps they form choke the seedlings that may have sprouted near them. If domestic animals of any species are allowed to roam in the wood, they browse upon the terminal buds and the tender branches, thereby stunting, if they do not kill, the young trees, and depriving them of all beauty and vigor of growth. The evergreens, once cut, do not shoot up again,[295] and the mixed character of the forest--in many respects an important advantage, if not an indispensable condition of growth--is lost;[296] and besides this, large wood of any species cannot be grown in this method, because trees which shoot from decaying stumps and their dying roots, become hollow or otherwise unsound before they acquire their full dimensions. A more fatal objection still, is, that the roots of trees will not bear more than two or three, or at most four cuttings of their shoots before their vitality is exhausted, and the wood can then be restored only by replanting entirely. The period of cutting coppices varies in Europe from fifteen to forty years, according to soil, species, and rapidity of growth. In the _futaie_, or full-growth system, the trees are allowed to stand as long as they continue in healthy and vigorous growth. This is a shorter period than would be at first supposed, when we consider the advanced age and great dimensions to which, under favorable circumstances, many forest trees attain in temperate climates. But, as every observing person familiar with the natural forest is aware, these are exceptional cases, just as are instances of great longevity or of gigantic stature among men. Able vegetable physiologists have maintained that the tree, like most reptiles, has no natural limit of life or of growth, and that the only reason why our oaks and our pines do not reach the age of twenty centuries and the height of a hundred fathoms, is, that in the multitude of accidents to which they are exposed, the chances of their attaining to such a length of years and to such dimensions of growth are a million to one against them. But another explanation of this fact is possible. In trees affected by no discoverable external cause of death, decay begins at the topmost branches, which seem to wither and die for want of nutriment. The mysterious force by which the sap is carried from the roots to the utmost twigs, cannot be conceived to be unlimited in power, and it is probable that it differs in different species, so that while it may suffice to raise the fluid to the height of five hundred feet in the sequoia, it may not be able to carry it beyond one hundred and fifty in the oak. The limit may be different, too, in different trees of the same species, not from defective organization in those of inferior growth, but from more or less favorable conditions of soil, nourishment, and exposure. Whenever a tree attains to the limit beyond which its circulating fluids cannot rise, we may suppose that decay begins, and death follows, from the same causes which bring about the same results in animals of limited size--such, for example, as the interruption of functions essential to life, in consequence of the clogging up of ducts by matter assimilable in the stage of growth, but no longer so when increment has ceased. In the natural woods, we observe that, though, among the myriads of trees which grow upon a square mile, there are several vegetable giants, yet the great majority of them begin to decay long before they have attained their maximum of stature, and this seems to be still more emphatically true of the artificial forest. In France, according to Clavé, "oaks, in a suitable soil, may stand, without exhibiting any sign of decay, for two or three hundred years; the pines hardly exceed one hundred and twenty, and the soft or white woods [_bois blancs_], in wet soils, languish and die before reaching the fiftieth year."[297] These ages are certainly below the average of those of American forest trees, and are greatly exceeded in very numerous well-attested instances of isolated trees in Europe. The former mode of treating the futaie, called the garden system, was to cut the trees individually as they arrived at maturity, but, in the best regulated forests, this practice has been abandoned for the German method, which embraces not only the securing of the largest immediate profit, but the replanting of the forest, and the care of the young growth. This is effected in the case of a forest, whether natural or artificial, which is to be subjected to regular management, by three operations. The first of these consists in felling about one third of the wood, in such way as to leave convenient spaces for the growth of young trees. The remaining two-thirds are relied upon to replant the vacancies, by natural sowing, which they seldom or never fail to do. The seedlings are watched, are thinned out when too dense, the ill formed and sickly, as well as those of inferior value, and the shrubs and thorns which might otherwise choke or too closely shade them, are pulled up. When they have attained sufficient strength and development of foliage to bear or to require more light and air, the second step is taken, by removing a suitable proportion of the old trees which had been spared at the first cutting; and when, finally, they are hardened enough to bear frost and sun without other protection than that which they mutually give to each other, the remainder of the original forest is felled, and the wood now consists wholly of young and vigorous trees. This result is obtained after about twenty years. At convenient periods afterward, the unhealthy stocks and those injured by wind or other accidents are removed, and in some instances the growth of the remainder is promoted by irrigation or by fertilizing applications.[298] When the forest is approaching to maturity, the original processes already described are repeated; and as, in different parts of an extensive forest, they would take place in different zones, it would afford indefinitely an annual crop of firewood and timber. The duties of the forester do not end here. It sometimes happens that the glades left by felling the older trees are not sufficiently seeded, or that the species, or _essences_, as the French oddly call them, are not duly proportioned in the new crop. In this case, seed must be artificially sown, or young trees planted in the vacancies. One of the most important rules in the administration of the forest is the absolute exclusion of domestic quadrupeds from every wood which is not destined to be cleared. No growth of young trees is possible where cattle are admitted to pasture at any season of the year, though they are undoubtedly most destructive while trees are in leaf.[299] It is often necessary to take measures for the protection of young trees against the rabbit, the mole, and other rodent quadrupeds, and of older ones against the damage done by the larvæ of insects hatched upon the surface or in the tissues of the bark, or even in the wood itself. The much greater liability of the artificial than of the natural forest to injury from this cause is perhaps the only point in which the superiority of the former to the latter is not as marked as that of any domesticated vegetable to its wild representative. But the better quality of the wood and the much more rapid growth of the trained and regulated forest are abundant compensations for the loss thus occasioned, and the progress of entomological science will, perhaps, suggest new methods of preventing the ravages of insects. Thus far, however, the collection and destruction of the eggs, by simple but expensive means, has proved the only effectual remedy.[300] It is common in Europe to permit the removal of the fallen leaves and fragments of bark and branches with which the forest soil is covered, and sometimes the cutting of the lower twigs of evergreens. The leaves and twigs are principally used as litter for cattle, and finally as manure, the bark and wind-fallen branches as fuel. By long usage, sometimes by express grant, this privilege has become a vested right of the population in the neighborhood of many public, and even large private forests; but it is generally regarded as a serious evil. To remove the leaves and fallen twigs is to withdraw much of the pabulum upon which the tree was destined to feed. The small branches and leaves are the parts of the tree which yield the largest proportion of ashes on combustion, and of course they supply a great amount of nutriment for the young shoots. "A cubic foot of twigs," says Vaupell, "yields four times as much ashes as a cubic foot of stem wood. * * For every hundred weight of dried leaves carried off from a beech forest, we sacrifice a hundred and sixty cubic feet of wood. The leaves and the mosses are a substitute, not only for manure, but for ploughing. The carbonic acid given out by decaying leaves, when taken up by water, serves to dissolve the mineral constituents of the soil, and is particularly active in disintegrating feldspar and the clay derived from its decomposition. * * * The leaves belong to the soil. Without them it cannot preserve its fertility, and cannot furnish nutriment to the beech. The trees languish, produce seed incapable of germination, and the spontaneous self-sowing, which is an indispensable element in the best systems of sylviculture, fails altogether in the bared and impoverished soil."[301] Besides these evils, the removal of the leaves deprives the soil of that spongy character which gives it such immense value as a reservoir of moisture and a regulator of the flow of springs; and, finally, it exposes the surface roots to the drying influence of sun and wind, to accidental mechanical injury from the tread of animals or men, and, in cold climates, to the destructive effects of frost. The annual lopping and trimming of trees for fuel, so common in Europe, is fatal to the higher uses of the forest, but where small groves are made, or rows of trees planted, for no other purpose than to secure a supply of firewood, or to serve as supports for the vine, it is often very advantageous. The willows, and many other trees, bear polling for a long series of years without apparent diminution of growth of branches, and though certainly a polled, or, to use an old English word, a doddered tree, is in general a melancholy object, yet it must be admitted that the aspect of some species--the American locust, _Robinia pseudacacia_, for instance--when young, is improved by this process.[302] I have spoken of the needs of agriculture as a principal cause of the destruction of the forest, and of domestic cattle as particularly injurious to the growth of young trees. But these animals affect the forest, indirectly, in a still more important way, because the extent of cleared ground required for agricultural use depends very much on the number and kinds of the cattle bred. We have seen, in a former chapter, that, in the United States, the domestic quadrupeds amount to more than a hundred millions, or three times the number of the human population of the Union. In many of the Western States, the swine subsist more or less on acorns, nuts, and other products of the woods, and the prairies, or natural meadows of the Mississippi valley, yield a large amount of food for beast, as well as for man. With these exceptions, all this vast army of quadrupeds is fed wholly on grass, grain, pulse, and roots grown on soil reclaimed from the forest by European settlers. It is true that the flesh of domestic quadrupeds enters very largely into the aliment of the American people, and greatly reduces the quantity of vegetable nutriment which they would otherwise consume, so that a smaller amount of agricultural product is required for immediate human food, and, of course, a smaller extent of cleared land is needed for the growth of that product, than if no domestic animals existed. But the flesh of the horse, the ass, and the mule is not consumed by man, and the sheep is reared rather for its fleece than for food. Besides this, the ground required to produce the grass and grain consumed in rearing and fattening a grazing quadruped, would yield a far larger amount of nutriment, if devoted to the growing of breadstuffs, than is furnished by his flesh; and, upon the whole, whatever advantages may be reaped from the breeding of domestic cattle, it is plain that the cleared land devoted to their sustenance in the originally wooded part of the United States, after deducting a quantity sufficient to produce an amount of aliment equal to their flesh, still greatly exceeds that cultivated for vegetables, directly consumed by the people of the same regions; or, to express a nearly equivalent idea in other words, the meadow and the pasture, taken together, much exceed the plough land.[303] In fertile countries, like the United States, the foreign demand for animal and vegetable aliment, for cotton, and for tobacco, much enlarges the sphere of agricultural operations, and, of course, prompts further encroachments upon the forest. The commerce in these articles, therefore, constitutes in America a special cause of the destruction of the woods, which does not exist in the numerous states of the Old World that derive the raw material of their mechanical industry from distant lands, and import many articles of vegetable food or luxury which their own climates cannot advantageously produce. The growth of arboreal vegetation is so slow that, though he who buries an acorn may hope to see it shoot up to a miniature resemblance of the majestic tree which shall shade his remote descendants, yet the longest life hardly embraces the seedtime and the harvest of a forest. The planter of a wood must be actuated by higher motives than those of an investment the profits of which consist in direct pecuniary gain to himself or even to his posterity; for if, in rare cases, an artificial forest may, in two or three generations, more than repay its original cost, still, in general, the value of its timber will not return the capital expended and the interest accrued.[304] But when we consider the immense collateral advantages derived from the presence, the terrible evils necessarily resulting from the destruction of the forest, both the preservation of existing woods, and the far more costly extension of them where they have been unduly reduced, are among the most obvious of the duties which this age owes to those that are to come after it. Especially is this obligation incumbent upon Americans. No civilized people profits so largely from the toils and sacrifices of its immediate predecessors as they; no generations have ever sown so liberally, and, in their own persons, reaped so scanty a return, as the pioneers of Anglo-American social life. We can repay our debt to our noble forefathers only by a like magnanimity, by a like self-forgetting care for the moral and material interests of our own posterity. _Instability of American Life._ All human institutions, associate arrangements, modes of life, have their characteristic imperfections. The natural, perhaps the necessary defect of ours, is their instability, their want of fixedness, not in form only, but even in spirit. The face of physical nature in the United States shares this incessant fluctuation, and the landscape is as variable as the habits of the population. It is time for some abatement in the restless love of change which characterizes us, and makes us almost a nomade rather than a sedentary people.[305] We have now felled forest enough everywhere, in many districts far too much. Let us restore this one element of material life to its normal proportions, and devise means for maintaining the permanence of its relations to the fields, the meadows, and the pastures, to the rain and the dews of heaven, to the springs and rivulets with which it waters the earth. The establishment of an approximately fixed ratio between the two most broadly characterized distinctions of rural surface--woodland and plough land--would involve a certain persistence of character in all the branches of industry, all the occupations and habits of life, which depend upon or are immediately connected with either, without implying a rigidity that should exclude flexibility of accommodation to the many changes of external circumstance which human wisdom can neither prevent nor foresee, and would thus help us to become, more emphatically, a well-ordered and stable commonwealth, and, not less conspicuously, a people of progress. NOTE on word _watershed_, omitted on p. 257.--Sir John F. W. Herschel (_Physical Geography_, 137, and elsewhere) spells this word _water-sched_, because he considers it a translation, or rather an adoption of the German "Wasser-scheide, separation of the waters, not water-_shed_, the slope _down which_ the waters run," As a point of historical etymology, it is probable that the word in question was suggested to those who first used it by the German _Wasserscheide_; but the spelling _water-sched_, proposed by Herschel, is objectionable, both because _sch_ is a combination of letters wholly unknown to modern English orthography and properly representing no sound recognized in English orthoepy, and for the still better reason that _watershed_, in the sense of _division-of-the-waters_, has a legitimate English etymology. The Anglo-Saxon _sceadan_ meant both to separate or divide, and to shade or shelter. It is the root of the English verbs _to shed_ and _to shade_, and in the former meaning is the A. S. equivalent of the German verb _scheiden_. _Shed_ in Old English had the meaning _to separate_ or _distinguish_. It is so used in the _Owl and the Nightingale_, v. 197. Palsgrave (_Lesclarcissement, etc._, p. 717) defines _I shede_, I departe thinges asonder; and the word still means _to divide_ in several English local dialects. Hence, _watershed_, the division or separation of the waters, is good English both in sense and spelling. CHAPTER IV. THE WATERS. LAND ARTIFICIALLY WON FROM THE WATERS: _a_, EXCLUSION OF THE SEA BY DIKING; _b_, DRAINING OF LAKES AND MARSHES; _c_, GEOGRAPHICAL INFLUENCE OF SUCH OPERATIONS--LOWERING OF LAKES--MOUNTAIN LAKES--CLIMATIC EFFECTS OF DRAINING LAKES AND MARSHES--GEOGRAPHICAL AND CLIMATIC EFFECTS OF AQUEDUCTS, RESERVOIRS, AND CANALS--SURFACE AND UNDERDRAINING, AND THEIR CLIMATIC AND GEOGRAPHICAL EFFECTS--IRRIGATION AND ITS CLIMATIC AND GEOGRAPHICAL EFFECTS. INUNDATIONS AND TORRENTS: _a_, RIVER EMBANKMENTS; _b_, FLOODS OF THE ARDÈCHE; _c_, CRUSHING FORCE OF TORRENTS; _d_, INUNDATIONS OF 1856 IN FRANCE; _e_, REMEDIES AGAINST INUNDATIONS--CONSEQUENCES IF THE NILE HAD BEEN CONFINED BY LATERAL DIKES. IMPROVEMENTS IN THE VAL DI CHIANA--IMPROVEMENTS IN THE TUSCAN MAREMME--OBSTRUCTION OF RIVER MOUTHS--SUBTERRANEAN WATERS--ARTESIAN WELLS--ARTIFICIAL SPRINGS--ECONOMIZING PRECIPITATION. _Land artificially won from the Waters._ Man, as we have seen, has done much to revolutionize the solid surface of the globe, and to change the distribution and proportions, if not the essential character, of the organisms which inhabit the land and even the waters. Besides the influence thus exerted upon the life which peoples the sea, his action upon the land has involved a certain amount of indirect encroachment upon the territorial jurisdiction of the ocean. So far as he has increased the erosion of running waters by the destruction of the forest, he has promoted the deposit of solid matter in the sea, thus reducing its depth, advancing the coast line, and diminishing the area covered by the waters. He has gone beyond this, and invaded the realm of the ocean by constructing within its borders wharves, piers, lighthouses, breakwaters, fortresses, and other facilities for his commercial and military operations; and in some countries he has permanently rescued from tidal overflow, and even from the very bed of the deep, tracts of ground extensive enough to constitute valuable additions to his agricultural domain. The quantity of soil gained from the sea by these different modes of acquisition is, indeed, too inconsiderable to form an appreciable element in the comparison of the general proportion between the two great forms of terrestrial surface, land and water; but the results of such operations, considered in their physical and their moral bearings, are sufficiently important to entitle them to special notice in every comprehensive view of the relations between man and nature. There are cases, as on the western shores of the Baltic, where, in consequence of the secular elevation of the coast, the sea appears to be retiring; others, where, from the slow sinking of the land, it seems to be advancing. These movements depend upon geological causes wholly out of our reach, and man can neither advance nor retard them. There are also cases where similar apparent effects are produced by local oceanic currents, by river deposit or erosion, by tidal action, or by the influence of the wind upon the waves and the sands of the sea beach. A regular current may drift suspended earth and seaweed along a coast until they are caught by an eddy and finally deposited out of the reach of further disturbance, or it may scoop out the bed of the sea and undermine promontories and headlands; a powerful river, as the wind changes the direction of its flow at its outlet, may wash away shores and sandbanks at one point to deposit their material at another; the tide or waves, stirred to unusual depths by the wind, may gradually wear down the line of coast, or they may form shoals and coast dunes by depositing the sand they have rolled up from the bottom of the ocean. These latter modes of action are slow in producing effects sufficiently important to be noticed in general geography, or even to be visible in the representations of coast line laid down in ordinary maps; but they nevertheless form conspicuous features in local topography, and they are attended with consequences of great moment to the material and the moral interests of men. The forces which produce these results are all in a considerable degree subject to control, or rather to direction and resistance, by human power, and it is in guiding and combating them that man has achieved some of his most remarkable and honorable conquests over nature. The triumphs in question, or what we generally call harbor and coast improvements, whether we estimate their value by the money and labor expended upon them, or by their bearing upon the interests of commerce and the arts of civilization, must take a very high rank among the great works of man, and they are fast assuming a magnitude greatly exceeding their former relative importance. The extension of commerce and of the military marine, and especially the introduction of vessels of increased burden and deeper draught of water, have imposed upon engineers tasks of a character which a century ago would have been pronounced, and, in fact, would have been impracticable; but necessity has stimulated an ingenuity which has contrived means of executing them, and which gives promise of yet greater performance in time to come. Men have ceased to admire the power which heaped up the great pyramid to gratify the pride of a despot with a giant sepulchre; for many great harbors, many important lines of internal communication, in the civilized world, now exhibit works which surpass the vastest remains of ancient architectural art in mass and weight of matter, demand the exercise of far greater constructive skill, and involve a much heavier pecuniary expenditure than would now be required for the building of the tomb of Cheops. It is computed that the great pyramid, the solid contents of which when complete were about 3,000,000 cubic yards, could be erected for a million of pounds sterling. The breakwater at Cherbourg, founded in rough water sixty feet, deep, at an average distance of more than two miles from the shore, contains double the mass of the pyramid, and many a comparatively unimportant railroad has been constructed at twice the cost which would now build that stupendous monument. Indeed, although man, detached from the solid earth, is almost powerless to struggle against the sea, he is fast becoming invincible by it so long as his foot is planted on the shore, or even on the bottom of the rolling ocean; and though on some battle fields between the waters and the land, he is obliged slowly to yield his ground, yet he retreats still facing the foe, and will finally be able to say to the sea: "Thus far shalt thou come and no farther, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed!" The description of works of harbor and coast improvement which have only an economical value, not a true geographical importance, does not come within the plan of the present volume, and in treating this branch of my subject, I shall confine myself to such as are designed either to gain new soil by excluding the waters from grounds which they had permanently or occasionally covered, or to resist new encroachments of the sea upon the land. a. _Exclusion of the Sea by Diking._ The draining of the Lincolnshire fens in England, which converted about 400,000 acres of marsh, pool, and tide-washed flat into plough land and pasturage, is a work, or rather series of works, of great magnitude, and it possesses much economical, and, indeed, no trifling geographical importance. Its plans and methods were, at least in part, borrowed from the example of like improvements in Holland, and it is, in difficulty and extent, inferior to works executed for the same purpose on the opposite coast of the North Sea, by Dutch, Frisic, and Low German engineers. The space I can devote to such operations will be better employed in describing the latter, and I content myself with the simple statement I have already made of the quantity of worthless and even pestilential land which has been rendered both productive and salubrious in Lincolnshire, by diking out the sea, and the rivers which traverse the fens of that country. The almost continued prevalence of west winds upon both coasts of the German Ocean occasions a constant set of the currents of that sea to the east, and both for this reason and on account of the greater violence of storms from the former quarter, the English shores are much less exposed to invasion by the waves than those of the Netherlands and the provinces contiguous to them on the north. The old Netherlandish chronicles are filled with the most startling accounts of the damage done by the irruptions of the ocean, from west winds or extraordinarily high tides, at times long before any considerable extent of seacoast was diked. Several hundreds of these terrible inundations are recorded, and in very many of them the loss of human lives is estimated as high as one hundred thousand. It is impossible to doubt that there must be enormous exaggeration in these numbers; for, with all the reckless hardihood shown by men in braving the dangers and privations attached by nature to their birthplace, it is inconceivable that so dense a population as such wholesale destruction of life supposes could find the means of subsistence, or content itself to dwell, on a territory liable, a dozen times in a century, to such fearful devastation. There can be no doubt, however, that the low continental shores of the German Ocean very frequently suffered immense injury from inundation by the sea, and it is natural, therefore, that the various arts of resistance to the encroachments of the ocean, and, finally, of aggressive warfare upon its domain, and of permanent conquest of its territory, should have been earlier studied and carried to higher perfection in the latter countries, than in England, which had much less to lose or to gain by the incursions or the retreat of the waters. Indeed, although the confinement of swelling rivers by artificial embankments is of great antiquity, I do not know that the defence or acquisition of land from the sea by diking was ever practised on a large scale until systematically undertaken by the Netherlanders, a few centuries after the commencement of the Christian era. The silence of the Roman historians affords a strong presumption that this art was unknown to the inhabitants of the Netherlands at the time of the Roman invasion, and the elder Pliny's description of the mode of life along the coast which has now been long diked in, applies precisely to the habits of the people who live on the low islands and mainland flats lying outside of the chain of dikes, and wholly unprotected by embankments of any sort. It has been conjectured, and not without probability, that the causeways built by the Romans across the marshes of the Low Countries, in their campaigns against the Germanic tribes, gave the natives the first hint of the utility which might be derived from similar constructions applied to a different purpose.[306] If this is so, it is one of the most interesting among the many instances in which the arts and enginery of war have been so modified as to be eminently promotive of the blessings of peace, thereby in some measure compensating the wrongs and sufferings they have inflicted on humanity.[307] The Lowlanders are believed to have secured some coast and bay islands by ring dikes, and to have embanked some fresh water channels, as early as the eighth or ninth century; but it does not appear that sea dikes, important enough to be noticed in historical records, were constructed on the mainland before the thirteenth century. The practice of draining inland accumulation of water, whether fresh or salt, for the purpose of bringing under cultivation the ground they cover, is of later origin, and is said not to have been adopted until after the middle of the fifteenth century.[308] The total amount of surface gained to the agriculture of the Netherlands by diking out the sea and by draining shallow bays and lakes, is estimated by Staring at three hundred and fifty-five thousand _bunder_ or hectares, equal to eight hundred and seventy-seven thousand two hundred and forty acres, which is one tenth of the area of the kingdom.[309] In very many instances, the dikes have been partially, in some particularly exposed localities totally destroyed by the violence of the sea, and the drained lands again flooded. In some cases, the soil thus painfully won from the ocean has been entirely lost; in others it has been recovered by repairing or rebuilding the dikes and pumping out the water. Besides this, the weight of the dikes gradually sinks them into the soft soil beneath, and this loss of elevation must be compensated by raising the surface, while the increased burden thus added tends to sink them still lower. "Tetens declares," says Kohl, "that in some places the dikes have gradually sunk to the depth of sixty or even a hundred feet."[310] For these reasons, the processes of dike building have been almost everywhere again and again repeated, and thus the total expenditure of money and of labor upon the works in question is much greater than would appear from an estimate of the actual cost of diking-in a given extent of coast land and draining a given area of water surface.[311] On the other hand, by erosion of the coast line, the drifting of sand dunes into the interior, and the drowning of fens and morasses by incursions of the sea--all caused, or at least greatly aggravated, by human improvidence--the Netherlands have lost a far larger area of land since the commencement of the Christian era than they have gained by diking and draining. Staring despairs of the possibility of calculating the loss from the first-mentioned two causes of destruction, but he estimates that not less than six hundred and forty thousand bunder, or one million five hundred and eighty-one thousand acres, of fen and marsh have been washed away, or rather deprived of their vegetable surface and covered by water, and thirty-seven thousand bunder, or ninety-one thousand four hundred acres of recovered land, have been lost by the destruction of the dikes which protected them.[312] The average value of land gained from the sea is estimated at about nineteen pounds sterling, or ninety dollars, per acre; while the lost fen and morass was not worth more than one twenty-fifth part of the same price. The ground buried by the drifting of the dunes appears to have been almost entirely of this latter character, and, upon the whole, there is no doubt that the soil added by human industry to the territory of the Netherlands, within the historical period, greatly exceeds in pecuniary value that which has fallen a prey to the waves during the same era. Upon most low and shelving coasts, like those of the Netherlands, the maritime currents are constantly changing, in consequence of the variability of the winds, and the shifting of the sandbanks, which the currents themselves now form and now displace. While, therefore, at one point the sea is advancing landward, and requiring great effort to prevent the undermining and washing away of the dikes, it is shoaling at another by its own deposits, and exposing, at low water, a gradually widening belt of sands and ooze. The coast lands selected for diking-in are always at points where the sea is depositing productive soil. The Eider, the Elbe, the Weser, the Ems, the Rhine, the Maas, and the Schelde bring down large quantities of fine earth. The prevalence of west winds prevents the waters from carrying this material far out from the coast, and it is at last deposited northward or southward from the mouth of the rivers which contribute it, according to the varying drift of the currents. The process of natural deposit which prepares the coast for diking-in is thus described by Staring: "All sea-deposited soil is composed of the same constituents. First comes a stratum of sand, with marine shells, or the shells of mollusks living in brackish water. If there be tides, and, of course, flowing and ebbing currents, mud is let fall upon the sand only after the latter has been raised above low-water mark; for then only, at the change from flood to ebb, is the water still enough to form a deposit of so light a material. Where mud is found at greater depths, as, for example, in a large proportion of the Ij, it is a proof that at this point there was never any considerable tidal flow or other current. * * * The powerful tidal currents, flowing and ebbing twice a day, drift sand with them. They scoop out the bottom at one point, raise it at another, and the sandbanks in the current are continually shifting. As soon as a bank raises itself above low-water mark, flags and reeds establish themselves upon it. The mechanical resistance of these plants checks the retreat of the high water and favors the deposit of the earth suspended in it, and the formation of land goes on with surprising rapidity. When it has risen to high-water level, it is soon covered with grasses, and becomes what is called _schor_ in Zeeland, _kwelder_ in Friesland. Such grounds are the foundation or starting point of the process of diking. When they are once elevated to the flood-tide level, no more mud is deposited upon them except by extraordinary high tides. Their further rise is, accordingly, very slow, and it is seldom advantageous to delay longer the operation of diking."[313] The formation of new banks by the sea is constantly going on at points favorable for the deposit of sand and earth, and hence opportunity is continually afforded for enclosure of new land outside of that already diked in, the coast is fast advancing seaward, and every new embankment increases the security of former enclosures. The province of Zeeland consists of islands washed by the sea on their western coasts, and separated by the many channels through which the Schelde and some other rivers find their way to the ocean. In the twelfth century these islands were much smaller and more numerous than at present. They have been gradually enlarged, and, in several instances, at last connected by the extension of their system of dikes. Walcheren is formed of ten islets united into one about the end of the fourteenth century. At the middle of the fifteenth century, Goeree and Overflakkee consisted of separate islands, containing altogether about ten thousand acres; by means of above sixty successive advances of the dikes, they have been brought to compose a single island, whose area is not less than sixty thousand acres.[314] In the Netherlands--which the first Napoleon characterized as a deposit of the Rhine, and as, therefore, by natural law, rightfully the property of him who controlled the sources of that great river--and on the adjacent Frisic, Low German and Danish shores and islands, sea and river dikes have been constructed on a grander and more imposing scale than in any other country. The whole economy of the art has been there most thoroughly studied, and the literature of the subject is very extensive. For my present aim, which is concerned with results rather than with processes, it is not worth while to refer to professional treatises, and I shall content myself with presenting such information as can be gathered from works of a more popular character.[315] The superior strata of the lowlands upon and near the coast are, as we have seen, principally composed of soil brought down by the great rivers I have mentioned, and either directly deposited by them upon the sands of the bottom, or carried out to sea by their currents, and then, after a shorter or longer exposure to the chemical and mechanical action of salt water and marine currents, restored again to the land by tidal overflow and subsidence from the waters in which it was suspended. At a very remote period, the coast flats were, at many points, raised so high by successive alluvious or tidal deposits as to be above ordinary high water level, but they were still liable to occasional inundation from river floods, and from the sea water also, when heavy or long-continued west winds drove it landward. The extraordinary fertility of this soil and its security as a retreat from hostile violence attracted to it a considerable population, while its want of protection against inundation exposed it to the devastations of which the chroniclers of the Middle Ages have left such highly colored pictures. The first permanent dwellings on the coast flats were erected upon artificial mounds, and many similar precarious habitations still exist on the unwalled islands and shores beyond the chain of dikes. River embankments, which, as is familiarly known, have from the earliest antiquity been employed in many countries where sea dikes are unknown, were probably the first works of this character constructed in the Low Countries, and when two neighboring streams of fresh water had been embanked, the next step in the process would naturally be to connect the river walls together by a transverse dike or raised causeway, which would serve to secure the intermediate ground both against the backwater of river floods and against overflow by the sea. The oldest true sea dikes described in historical records, however, are those enclosing islands in the estuaries of the great rivers, and it is not impossible that the double character they possess as a security against maritime floods and as a military rampart, led to their adoption upon those islands before similar constructions had been attempted upon the mainland. At some points of the coast, various contrivances, such as piers, piles, and, in fact, obstructions of all sorts to the ebb of the current, are employed to facilitate the deposit of slime, before a regular enclosure is commenced. Usually, however, the first step is to build low and cheap embankments, extending from an older dike, or from high ground, around the parcel of flat intended to be secured. These are called summer dikes (_sommer-deich_, pl. _sommer-deiche_, German; _zomerkaai_, _zomerkade_, pl. _zomerkaaie_, _zomerkaden_, Dutch). They are erected when a sufficient extent of ground to repay the cost has been elevated enough to be covered with coarse vegetation fit for pasturage. They serve both to secure the ground from overflow by the ordinary flood tides of mild weather, and to retain the slime deposited by very high water, which would otherwise be partly carried off by the retreating ebb. The elevation of the soil goes on slowly after this; but when it has at last been sufficiently enriched, and raised high enough to justify the necessary outlay, permanent dikes are constructed by which the water is excluded at all seasons. These embankments are constructed of sand from the coast dunes or from sandbanks, and of earth from the mainland or from flats outside the dikes, bound and strengthened by fascines, and provided with sluices, which are generally founded on piles and of very expensive construction, for drainage at low water. The outward slope of the sea dikes is gentle, experience having shown that this form is least exposed to injury both from the waves and from floating ice, and the most modern dikes are even more moderate in the inclination of the seaward scarp than the older ones.[316] The crown of the dike, however, for the last three or four feet of its height, is much steeper, being intended rather as a protection against the spray than against the waves, and the inner slope is always comparatively abrupt. The height and thickness of dikes varies according to the elevation of the ground they enclose, the rise of the tides, the direction of the prevailing winds, and other special causes of exposure, but it may be said that they are, in general, raised from fifteen to twenty feet above ordinary high-water mark. The water slopes of river dikes are protected by plantations of willows or strong semi-aquatic shrubs or grasses, but as these will not grow upon banks exposed to salt water, sea dikes must be faced with stone, fascines, or some other _revêtement_.[317] Upon the coast of Schleswig and Holstein, where the people have less capital at their command, they defend their embankments against ice and the waves by a coating of twisted straw or reeds, which must be renewed as often as once, sometimes twice a year. The inhabitants of these coasts call the chain of dikes "the golden border," a name it well deserves, whether we suppose it to refer to its enormous cost, or, as is more probable, to its immense value as a protection to their fields and their firesides. When outlying flats are enclosed by building new embankments, the old interior dikes are suffered to remain, both as an additional security against the waves, and because the removal of them would be expensive. They serve, also, as roads or causeways, a purpose for which the embankments nearest the sea are seldom employed, because the whole structure might be endangered from the breaking of the turf by wheels and the hoofs of horses. Where successive rows of dikes have been thus constructed, it is observed that the ground defended by the more ancient embankments is lower than that embraced within the newer enclosures, and this depression of level has been ascribed to a general subsidence of the coast from geological causes; but the better opinion seems to be that it is, in most cases, due merely to the consolidation and settling of the earth from being more effectually dried, from the weight of the dikes, from the tread of men and cattle, and from the movement of the heavy wagons which carry off the crops.[318] Notwithstanding this slow sinking, most of the land enclosed by dikes is still above low-water mark, and can, therefore, be wholly or partially freed from rain water, and from that received by infiltration from higher ground, by sluices opened at the ebb of the tide. For this purpose, the land is carefully ditched, and advantage is taken of every favorable occasion for discharging the water through the sluices. But the ground cannot be effectually drained by this means, unless it is elevated four or five feet, at least, above the level of the ebb tide, because the ditches would not otherwise have a sufficient descent to carry the water off in the short interval between ebb and flow, and because the moisture of the saturated subsoil is always rising by capillary attraction. Whenever, therefore, the soil has sunk below the level I have mentioned, and in cases where its surface has never been raised above it, pumps, worked by wind or some other mechanical power, must be very frequently employed to keep the land dry enough for pasturage and cultivation.[319] b. _Draining of Lakes and Marshes._ The substitution of steam engines for the feeble and uncertain action of windmills, in driving pumps, has much facilitated the removal of water from the polders and the draining of lakes, marshes, and shallow bays, and thus given such an impulse to these enterprises, that not less than one hundred and ten thousand acres were reclaimed from the waters, and added to the agricultural domain of the Netherlands, between 1815 and 1858. The most important of these undertakings was the draining of the Lake of Haarlem, and for this purpose some of the most powerful hydraulic engines ever constructed were designed and executed.[320] The origin of this lake is unknown. It is supposed by some geographers to be a part of an ancient bed of the Rhine, the channel of which, as there is good reason to believe, has undergone great changes since the Roman invasion of the Netherlands; by others it is thought to have once formed an inland marine channel, separated from the sea by a chain of low islands, which the sand washed up by the tides has since connected with the mainland and converted into a continuous line of coast. The best authorities, however, find geological evidence that the surface occupied by the lake was originally a marshy tract containing within its limits little solid ground, but many ponds and inlets, and much floating as well as fixed fen. In consequence of the cutting of turf for fuel, and the destruction of the few trees and shrubs which held the loose soil together with their roots, the ponds are supposed to have gradually extended themselves, until the action of the wind upon their enlarged surface gave their waves sufficient force to overcome the resistance of the feeble barriers which separated them, and to unite them all into a single lake. Popular tradition, it is true, ascribes the formation of the Lake of Haarlem to a single irruption of the sea, at a remote period, and connects it with one or another of the destructive inundations of which the Netherland chronicles describe so many; but on a map of the year 1531, a chain of four smaller waters occupies nearly the ground afterward covered by the Lake of Haarlem, and they have more probably been united by gradual encroachments resulting from the improvident practices above referred to, though no doubt the consummation may have been hastened by floods, and by the neglect to maintain dikes, or the intentional destruction of them, in the long wars of the sixteenth century. The Lake of Haarlem was a body of water not far from fifteen miles in length, by seven in greatest width, lying between the cities of Amsterdam and Leyden, running parallel with the coast of Holland at the distance of about five miles from the sea, and covering an area of about 45,000 acres. By means of the Ij, it communicated with the Zuiderzee, the Mediterranean of the Netherlands, and its surface was little above the mean elevation of that of the sea. Whenever, therefore, the waters of the Zuiderzee were acted upon by strong northwest winds, those of the Lake of Haarlem were raised proportionally and driven southward, while winds from the south tended to create a flow in the opposite direction. The shores of the lake were everywhere low, and though in the course of the eighty years between 1767 and 1848 more than £350,000 or $1,700,000 had been expended in checking its encroachments, it often burst its barriers, and produced destructive inundations. On the 29th of November, 1836, a south wind brought its waters to the very gates of Amsterdam, and on the 26th of December of the same year, in a northwest gale, they overflowed twenty thousand acres of land at the southern extremity of the lake, and flooded a part of the city of Leyden. The depth of water did not, in general, exceed fourteen feet, but the bottom was a semi-fluid ooze or slime, which partook of the agitation of the waves, and added considerably to their mechanical force. Serious fears were entertained that the lake would form a junction with the inland waters of the Legmeer and Mijdrecht, swallow up a vast extent of valuable soil, and finally endanger the security of a large proportion of the land which the industry of Holland had gained in the course of centuries from the ocean. For this reason, and for the sake of the large addition the bottom of the lake would make to the cultivable soil of the state, it was resolved to drain it, and the preliminary steps for that purpose were commenced in the year 1840. The first operation was to surround the entire lake with a ring canal and dike, in order to cut off the communication with the Ij, and to exclude the water of the streams and morasses which discharged themselves into it from the land side. The dike was composed of different materials, according to the means of supply at different points, such as sand from the coast dunes, earth and turf excavated from the line of the ring canal, and floating turf,[321] fascines being everywhere used to bind and compact the mass together. This operation was completed in 1848, and three steam pumps were then employed for five years in discharging the water. The whole enterprise was conducted at the expense of the state, and in 1853 the recovered lands were offered for sale for its benefit. Up to 1858, forty-two thousand acres had been sold at not far from sixteen pounds sterling or seventy-seven dollars an acre, amounting altogether to £661,000 sterling or $3,200,000. The unsold lands were valued at more than £6,000 or nearly $30,000, and as the total cost was £764,500 or about $3,700,000, the direct loss to the state, exclusive of interest on the capital expended, may be stated at £100,000 or something less than $500,000. In a country like the United States, of almost boundless extent of sparsely inhabited territory, such an expenditure for such an object would be poor economy. But Holland has a narrow domain, great pecuniary resources, an excessively crowded population, and a consequent need of enlarged room and opportunity for the exercise of industry. Under such circumstances, and especially with an exposure to dangers so formidable, there is no question of the wisdom of the measure. It has already provided homes and occupation for more than five thousand citizens, and furnished a profitable investment for a capital of not less than £400,000 sterling or $2,000,000, which has been expended in improvements over and above the purchase money of the soil; and the greater part of this sum, as well as of the cost of drainage, has been paid as a compensation for labor. The excess of governmental expenditure over the receipts, if employed in constructing ships of war or fortifications, would have added little to the military strength of the kingdom; but the increase of territory, the multiplication of homes and firesides which the people have an interest in defending, and the augmentation of agricultural resources, constitute a stronger bulwark against foreign invasion than a ship of the line or a fortress armed with a hundred cannon. The bearing of the works I have noticed, and of others similar in character, upon the social and moral, as well as the purely economical interests of the people of the Netherlands, has induced me to describe them more in detail than the general purpose of this volume may be thought to justify; but if we consider them simply from a geographical point of view, we shall find that they are possessed of no small importance as modifications of the natural condition of terrestrial surface. There is good reason to believe that before the establishment of a partially civilized race upon the territory now occupied by Dutch, Frisic, and Low German communities, the grounds not exposed to inundation were overgrown with dense woods, that the lowlands between these forests and the sea coasts were marshes, covered and partially solidified by a thick matting of peat plants and shrubs interspersed with trees, and that even the sand dunes of the shore were protected by a vegetable growth which, in a great measure, prevented the drifting and translocation of them. The present causes of river and coast erosion existed, indeed, at the period in question; but some of them must have acted with less intensity, there were strong natural safeguards against the influence of marine and fresh-water currents, and the conflicting tendencies had arrived at a condition of approximate equilibrium, which permitted but slow and gradual changes in the face of nature. The destruction of the forests around the sources and along the valleys of the rivers by man gave them a more torrential character. The felling of the trees, and the extirpation of the shrubbery upon the fens by domestic cattle, deprived the surface of cohesion and consistence, and the cutting of peat for fuel opened cavities in it, which, filling at once with water, rapidly extended themselves by abrasion of their borders, and finally enlarged to pools, lakes, and gulfs, like the Lake of Haarlem and the northern part of the Zuiderzee. The cutting of the wood and the depasturing of the grasses upon the sand dunes converted them from solid bulwarks against the ocean to loose accumulations of dust, which every sea breeze drove farther landward, burying, perhaps, fertile soil and choking up watercourses on one side, and exposing the coast to erosion by the sea upon the other. c. _Geographical Influence of such Operations._ The changes which human action has produced within twenty centuries in the Netherlands and the neighboring provinces, are certainly of no small geographical importance, considered simply as a direct question of loss and gain of territory. They have also undoubtedly been attended with some climatic consequences, they have exercised a great influence on the spontaneous animal and vegetable life of this region, and they cannot have failed to produce effects upon tidal and other oceanic currents, the range of which may be very extensive. The force of the tidal wave, the height to which it rises, the direction of its currents, and, in fact, all the phenomena which characterize it, as well as all the effects it produces, depend as much upon the configuration of the coast it washes, and the depth of water, and form of bottom near the shore, as upon the attraction which occasions it. Every one of the terrestrial conditions which affect the character of tidal and other marine currents has been very sensibly modified by the operations I have described, and on this coast, at least, man has acted almost as powerfully on the physical geography of the sea as on that of the land. _Lowering of Lakes._ The hydraulic works of the Netherlands and of the neighboring states are of such magnitude, that they quite throw into the shade all other known artificial arrangements for defending the land against the encroachments of the rivers and the sea, and for reclaiming to the domain of agriculture and civilization soil long covered by the waters. But although the recovery and protection of lands flooded by the sea seems to be an art wholly of Netherlandish origin, we have abundant evidence, that in ancient as well as in comparatively modern times, great enterprises more or less analogous in character have been successfully undertaken, both in inland Europe and in the less familiar countries of the East. One of the best known of these is the tunnel which serves to discharge the surplus waters of the Lake of Albano, about fourteen miles from Rome. This lake, about six miles in circuit, occupies one of the craters of an extinct volcanic range, and the surface of its waters is about nine hundred feet above the sea. It is fed by rivulets and subterranean springs originating in the Alban Mount, or Monte Cavo, the most elevated peak of the volcanic group just mentioned, which rises to the height of about three thousand feet. At present the lake has no discoverable natural outlet, but it is not known that the water ever stood at such a height as to flow regularly over the lip of the crater. It seems that at the earliest period of which we have any authentic memorials, its level was usually kept by evaporation, or by discharge through subterranean channels, considerably below the rim of the basin which encompassed it, but in the year 397 B. C., the water, either from the obstruction of such channels, or in consequence of increased supplies from unknown sources, rose to such a height as to flow over the edge of the crater, and threaten inundation to the country below by bursting through its walls. To obviate this danger, a tunnel for carrying off the water was pierced at a level much below the height to which it had risen. This gallery, cut entirely with the chisel through the rock for a distance of six thousand feet, or nearly a mile and one seventh, is still in so good condition as to serve its original purpose. The fact that this work was contemporaneous with the siege of Veii, has given to ancient annalists occasion to connect the two events, but modern critics are inclined to reject Livy's account of the matter, as one of the many improbable fables which disfigure the pages of that historian. It is, however, repeated by Cicero and by Dionysins of Halicarnassus, and it is by no means impossible that, in an age when priests and soothsayers monopolized both the arts of natural magic and the little which yet existed of physical science, the Government of Rome, by their aid, availed itself at once of the superstition and of the military ardor of its citizens to obtain their sanction to an enterprise which sounder arguments might not have induced them to approve. Still more remarkable is the tunnel cut by the Emperor Claudius to drain the Lake Fucinus, now Lago di Celano, in the Neapolitan territory, about fifty miles eastward of Rome. This lake, as far as its history is known, has varied very considerably in its dimensions at different periods, according to the character of the seasons. It has no visible outlet, but was originally either drained by natural subterranean conduits, or kept within certain extreme limits by evaporation. In years of uncommon moisture, it spread over the adjacent soil and destroyed the crops; in dry seasons, it retreated, and produced epidemic disease by poisonous exhalations from the decay of vegetable and animal matter upon its exposed bed. Julius Cæsar had proposed the construction of a tunnel to drain the lake, but the enterprise was not actually undertaken until the reign of Claudius, when--after a temporary failure, from errors in levelling by the engineers, as was pretended at the time, or, as now appears certain, in consequence of frauds by the contractors in the execution of the work--it was at least partially completed. From this imperfect construction, it soon got out of repair, but was restored by Hadrian, and seems to have answered its design for some centuries. In the barbarism which followed the downfall of the empire, it again fell into decay, and though numerous attempts were made to repair it during the Middle Ages, no tolerable success seems to have attended any of these efforts, until the present generation. Works have now been some years in progress for restoring, or rather enlarging and rebuilding this ancient tunnel, upon a scale of grandeur which does infinite honor to the liberality and public spirit of the projectors, and with an ingenuity of design and a constructive skill which reflect the highest credit upon the professional ability of the engineers who have planned the works and directed their execution. The length of this tunnel is 18,634 feet, or rather more than three miles and a half. Of course, it is one of the longest subterranean galleries yet executed in Europe, and it offers many curious particulars in its original design which cannot here be described. The difference between the highest and the lowest known levels of the surface of the lake amounts to at least forty feet, and the difference of area covered at these respective stages is not much less than eight thousand acres. The tunnel will reduce the water to a much lower point, and it is computed that, including the lands occasionally overflowed, not less than forty thousand acres of as fertile soil as any in Italy will be recovered from the lake and permanently secured from inundation by its waters. Many similar enterprises have been conceived and executed in modern times, both for the purpose of reclaiming land covered by water and for sanitary reasons.[322] They are sometimes attended with wholly unexpected evils, as, for example, in the case of Barton Pond, in Vermont, and in that of the Lake Storsjö, in Sweden, already mentioned on a former page. Another still less obvious consequence of the withdrawal of the waters has occasionally been observed in these operations. The hydrostatic force with which the water, in virtue of its specific gravity, presses against the banks that confine it, has a tendency to sustain them whenever their composition and texture are not such as to expose them to softening and dissolution by the infiltration of the water. If then, the slope of the banks is considerable, or if the earth of which they are composed rests on a smooth and slippery stratum inclining toward the bed of the lake, they are liable to fall or slide forward when the mechanical support of the water is removed, and this sometimes happens on a considerable scale. A few years ago, the surface of the Lake of Lungern, in the Canton of Unterwalden, in Switzerland, was lowered by driving a tunnel about a quarter of a mile long through the narrow ridge, called the Kaiserstuhl, which forms a barrier at the north end of the basin. When the water was drawn off, the banks, which are steep, cracked and burst, several acres of ground slid down as low as the water receded, and even the whole village of Lungern was thought to be in no small danger. Other inconveniences of a very serious character have often resulted from the natural wearing down, or, much more frequently, the imprudent destruction, of the barriers which confine mountain lakes. In their natural condition, such basins serve both to receive and retain the rocks and other detritus brought down by the torrents which empty into them, and to check the impetus of the rushing waters by bringing them to a temporary pause; but if the outlets are lowered so as to drain the reservoirs, the torrents continue their rapid flow through the ancient bed of the basins, and carry down with them the sand and gravel with which they are charged, instead of depositing their burden as before in the still waters of the lakes. _Mountain Lakes._ It is a common opinion in America that the river meadows, bottoms, or _intervales_, as they are popularly called, are generally the beds of ancient lakes which have burst their barriers and left running currents in their place. It was shown by Dr. Dwight, many years ago, that this is very far from being universally true; but there is no doubt that mountain lakes were of much more frequent occurrence in primitive than in modern geography, and there are many chains of such still existing in regions where man has yet little disturbed the original features of the earth. In the long valleys of the Adirondack range in Northern New York, and in the mountainous parts of Maine, eight, ten, and even more lakes and lakelets are sometimes found in succession, each emptying into the next lower pool, and so all at last into some considerable river. When the mountain slopes which supply these basins shall be stripped of their woods, the augmented swelling of the lakes will break down their barriers, their waters will run off, and the valleys will present successions of flats with rivers running through them, instead of chains of lakes connected by natural canals. A similar state of things seems to have existed in the ancient geography of France. "Nature," says Lavergne, "has not excavated on the flanks of our Alps reservoirs as magnificent as those of Lombardy; she had, however, constructed smaller, but more numerous lakes, which the negligence of man has permitted to disappear. Auguste de Gasparin, brother of the illustrious agriculturist, demonstrated more than thirty years ago, in an original paper, that many natural dikes formerly existed in the mountain valleys, which have been swept away by the waters. He proposed to rebuild and to multiply them. This interesting suggestion has reappeared several times since, but has met with strong opposition from skilful engineers. It would, nevertheless, be well to try the experiment of creating artificial lakes which should fill themselves with the water of melting snows and deluging rains, to be drawn out in times of drought. If this plan has able opposers, it has also warm advocates. Experience alone can decide the question."[323] _Climatic Effects of Draining Lakes and Marshes._ The draining of lakes, marshes, and other superficial accumulations of moisture, reduces the water surface of a country, and, of course, the evaporation from it. Lakes, too, in elevated positions, lose a part of their water by infiltration, and thereby supply other lakes, springs, and rivulets at lower levels. Hence, it is evident that the draining of such waters, if carried on upon a large scale, must affect both the humidity and the temperature of the atmosphere, and the permanent supply of water for extensive districts.[324] _Geographical and Climatic Effects of Aqueducts, Reservoirs, and Canals._ Many processes of internal improvement, such as aqueducts for the supply of great cities, railroad cuts and embankments, and the like, divert water from its natural channels, and affect its distribution and ultimate discharge. The collecting of the waters of a considerable district into reservoirs, to be thence carried off by means of aqueducts, as, for example, in the forest of Belgrade, near Constantinople, deprives the grounds originally watered by the springs and rivulets of the necessary moisture, and reduces them to barrenness. Similar effects must have followed from the construction of the numerous aqueducts which supplied ancient Rome with such a profuse abundance of water. On the other hand, the filtration of water through the banks or walls of an aqueduct carried upon a high level across low ground, often injures the adjacent soil, and is prejudicial to the health of the neighboring population; and it has been observed in Switzerland, that fevers have been produced by the stagnation of the water in excavations from which earth had been taken to form embankments for railways. If we consider only the influence of physical improvements on civilized life, we shall perhaps ascribe to navigable canals a higher importance, or at least a more diversified influence, than to any other works of man designed to control the waters of the earth, and to affect their distribution, They bind distant regions together by social ties, through the agency of the commerce they promote; they facilitate the transportation of military stores and engines, and of other heavy material connected with the discharge of the functions of government; they encourage industry by giving marketable value to raw material and to objects of artificial elaboration which would otherwise be worthless on account of the cost of conveyance; they supply from their surplus waters means of irrigation and of mechanical power; and, in many other ways, they contribute much to advance the prosperity and civilization of nations. Nor are they wholly without geographical importance. They sometimes drain lands by conveying off water which would otherwise stagnate on the surface, and, on the other hand, like aqueducts, they render the neighboring soil cold and moist by the percolation of water through their embankments;[325] they dam up, check, and divert the course of natural currents, and deliver them at points opposite to, or distant from, their original outlets; they often require extensive reservoirs to feed them, thus retaining through the year accumulations of water--which would otherwise run off, or evaporate in the dry season--and thereby enlarging the evaporable surface of the country; and we have already seen that they interchange the flora and the fauna of provinces widely separated by nature. All these modes of action certainly influence climate and the character of terrestrial surface, though our means of observation are not yet perfected enough to enable us to appreciate and measure their effects. _Climatic and Geographical Effects of Surface and Underground Draining._ I have commenced this chapter with a description of the dikes and other hydraulic works of the Netherland engineers, because the geographical results of such operations are more obvious and more easily measured, though certainly not more important, than those of the older and more widely diffused modes of resisting or directing the flow of waters, which have been practised from remote antiquity in the interior of all civilized countries. Draining and irrigation are habitually regarded as purely agricultural processes, having little or no relation to technical geography; but we shall find that they exert a powerful influence on soil, climate, and animal and vegetable life, and may, therefore, justly claim to be regarded as geographical elements. _Surface and Under-draining and their Effects._ Superficial draining is a necessity in all lands newly reclaimed from the forest. The face of the ground in the woods is never so regularly inclined as to permit water to flow freely over it. There are, even on the hillsides, many small ridges and depressions, partly belonging to the original distribution of the soil, and partly occasioned by irregularities in the growth and deposit of vegetable matter. These, in the husbandry of nature, serve as dams and reservoirs to collect a larger supply of moisture than the spongy earth can at once imbibe. Besides this, the vegetable mould is, even under the most favorable circumstances, slow in parting with the humidity it has accumulated under the protection of the woods, and the infiltration from neighboring forests contributes to keep the soil of small clearings too wet for the advantageous cultivation of artificial crops. For these reasons, surface draining must have commenced with agriculture itself, and there is probably no cultivated district, one may almost say no single field, which is not provided with artificial arrangements for facilitating the escape of superficial water, and thus carrying off moisture which, in the natural condition of the earth, would have been imbibed by the soil. The beneficial effects of surface drainage, the necessity of extending the fields as population increased, and the inconveniences resulting from the presence of marshes in otherwise improved regions, must have suggested at a very early period of human industry the expediency of converting bogs and swamps into dry land by drawing off their waters; and it would not be long after the introduction of this practice before further acquisition of agricultural territory would be made by lowering the outlet of small ponds and lakes, and adding the ground they covered to the domain of the husbandman. All these processes belong to the incipient civilization of the ante-historical periods, but the construction of subterranean channels for the removal of infiltrated water marks ages and countries distinguished by a great advance in agricultural theory and practice, a great accumulation of pecuniary capital, and a density of population which creates a ready demand and a high price for all products of rural industry. Under-draining, too, would be most advantageous in damp and cool climates, where evaporation is slow, and upon soils where the natural inclination of surface does not promote a very rapid flow of the surface waters. All the conditions required to make this mode of rural improvement, if not absolutely necessary, at least apparently profitable, exist in Great Britain, and it is, therefore, very natural that the wealthy and intelligent farmers of England should have carried this practice farther, and reaped a more abundant pecuniary return from it, than those of any other country. Besides superficial and subsoil drains, there is another method of disposing of superfluous surface water, which, however, can rarely be practised, because the necessary conditions for its employment are not of frequent occurrence. Whenever a tenacious water-holding stratum rests on a loose, gravelly bed, so situated as to admit of a free discharge of water from or through it by means of the outcropping of the bed at a lower level, or of deep-lying conduits leading to distant points of discharge, superficial waters may be carried off by opening a passage for them through the impervious into the permeable stratum. Thus, according to Bischof, as early as the time of King Réné, in the first half of the fifteenth century, the plain of Paluns, near Marseilles, was laid dry by boring, and Wittwer informs us that drainage is effected at Munich by conducting the superfluous water into large excavations, from which it filters through into a lower stratum of pebble and gravel lying a little above the level of the river Isar.[326] So at Washington, in the western part of the city, which lies high above the rivers Potomac and Rock Creek, many houses are provided with dry wells for draining their cellars and foundations. These extend through hard tenacious earth to the depth of thirty or forty feet, when they strike a stratum of gravel, through which the water readily passes off. This practice has been extensively employed at Paris, not merely for carrying off ordinary surface water, but for the discharge of offensive and deleterious fluids from chemical and manufacturing establishments. A well of this sort received, in the winter of 1832-'33, twenty thousand gallons per day of the foul water from a starch factory, and the same process was largely used in other factories. The apprehension of injury to common and artesian wells and springs led to an investigation on this subject, in behalf of the municipal authorities, by Girard and Parent Duchatelet, in the latter year. The report of these gentlemen, published in the _Annales des Ponts et Chaussées_ for 1833, second half year, is full of curious and instructive facts respecting the position and distribution of the subterranean waters under and near Paris; but it must suffice to say that the report came to the conclusion that, in consequence of the absolute immobility of these waters, and the relatively small quantity of noxious fluid to be conveyed to them, there was no danger of the diffusion of this latter, if discharged into them. This result will not surprise those who know that, in another work, Duchatelet maintains analogous opinions as to the effect of the discharge of the city sewers into the Seine upon the waters of that river. The quantity of matter delivered by them he holds to be so nearly infinitesimal, as compared with the volume of water of the Seine, that it cannot possibly affect it to a sensible degree. I would, however, advise determined water drinkers living at Paris to adopt his conclusions, without studying his facts and his arguments; for it is quite possible that he may convert his readers to a faith opposite to his own, and that they will finally agree with the poet who held water an "ignoble beverage." _Climatic and Geographical Effects of Surface Draining._ When we remove water from the surface, we diminish the evaporation from it, and, of course, the refrigeration which accompanies all evaporation is diminished in proportion. Hence superficial draining ought to be attended with an elevation of atmospheric temperature, and, in cold countries, it might be expected to lessen the frequency of frosts. Accordingly, it is a fact of experience that, other things being equal, dry soils, and the air in contact with them, are perceptibly warmer during the season of vegetation, when evaporation is most rapid, than moist lands and the atmospheric stratum resting upon them. Instrumental observation on this special point has not yet been undertaken on a very large scale, but still we have thermometric data sufficient to warrant the general conclusion, and the influence of drainage in diminishing the frequency of frost appears to be even better established than a direct increase of atmospheric temperature. The steep and dry uplands of the Green Mountain range in New England often escape frosts when the Indian corn harvest on moister grounds, five hundred or even a thousand feet lower, is destroyed or greatly injured by them. The neighborhood of a marsh is sure to be exposed to late spring and early autumnal frosts, but they cease to be feared after it is drained, and this is particularly observable in very cold climates, as, for example, in Lapland.[327] In England, under-drains are not generally laid below the reach of daily variations of temperature, or below a point from which moisture might be brought to the surface by capillary attraction and evaporated by the heat of the sun. They, therefore, like surface drains, withdraw from local solar action much moisture which would otherwise be vaporized by it, and, at the same time, by drying the soil above them, they increase its effective hygroscopicity, and it consequently absorbs from the atmosphere a greater quantity of water than it did when, for want of under-drainage, the subsoil was always humid, if not saturated. Under-drains, then, contribute to the dryness as well as to the warmth of the atmosphere, and, as dry ground is more readily heated by the rays of the sun than wet, they tend also to raise the mean, and especially the summer temperature of the soil. So far as respects the immediate improvement of soil and climate, and the increased abundance of the harvests, the English system of surface and subsoil drainage has fully justified the eulogiums of its advocates; but its extensive adoption appears to have been attended with some altogether unforeseen and undesirable consequences, very analogous to those which I have described as resulting from the clearing of the forests. The under-drains carry off very rapidly the water imbibed by the soil from precipitation, and through infiltration from neighboring springs or other sources of supply. Consequently, in wet seasons, or after heavy rains, a river bordered by artificially drained lands receives in a few hours, from superficial and from subterranean conduits, an accession of water which, in the natural state of the earth, would have reached it only by small instalments after percolating through hidden paths for weeks or even months, and would have furnished perennial and comparatively regular contributions, instead of swelling deluges, to its channel. Thus, when human impatience rashly substitutes swiftly acting artificial contrivances for the slow methods by which nature drains the surface and superficial strata of a river basin, the original equilibrium is disturbed, the waters of the heavens are no longer stored up in the earth to be gradually given out again, but are hurried out of man's domain with wasteful haste; and while the inundations of the river are sudden and disastrous, its current, when the drains have run dry, is reduced to a rivulet, it ceases to supply the power to drive the machinery for which it was once amply sufficient, and scarcely even waters the herds that pasture upon its margin.[328] _Irrigation and its Climatic and Geographical Effects._ We know little of the history of the extinct civilizations which preceded the culture of the classic ages, and no nation has, in modern times, spontaneously emerged from barbarism, and created for itself the arts of social life.[329] The improvements of the savage races whose history we can distinctly trace are borrowed and imitative, and our theories as to the origin and natural development of industrial art are conjectural. Of course, the relative antiquity of particular branches of human industry depends much upon the natural character of soil, climate, and spontaneous vegetable and animal life in different countries; and while the geographical influence of man would, under given circumstances, be exerted in one direction, it would, under different conditions, act in an opposite or a diverging line. I have given some reasons for thinking that in the climates to which our attention has been chiefly directed, man's first interference with the natural arrangement and disposal of the waters was in the way of drainage of surface. But if we are to judge from existing remains alone, we should probably conclude that irrigation is older than drainage; for, in the regions regarded by general tradition as the cradle of the human race, we find traces of canals evidently constructed for the former purpose at a period long preceding the ages of which we have any written memorials. There are, in ancient Armenia, extensive districts which were already abandoned to desolation at the earliest historical epoch, but which, in a yet remoter antiquity, had been irrigated by a complicated and highly artificial system of canals, the lines of which can still be followed; and there are, in all the highlands where the sources of the Euphrates rise, in Persia, in Egypt, in India, and in China, works of this sort which must have been in existence before man had begun to record his own annals. In warm countries, such as most of those just mentioned, the effects I have described as usually resulting from the clearing of the forests would very soon follow. In such climates, the rains are inclined to be periodical; they are also violent, and for these reasons the soil would be parched in summer and liable to wash in winter. In these countries, therefore, the necessity for irrigation must soon have been felt, and its introduction into mountainous regions like Armenia must have been immediately followed by a system of terracing, or at least scarping the hillsides. Pasture and meadow, indeed, may be irrigated even when the surface is both steep and irregular, as may be observed abundantly on the Swiss as well as on the Piedmontese slope of the Alps; but in dry climates, plough land and gardens on hilly grounds require terracing, both for supporting the soil and for administering water by irrigation, and it should be remembered that terracing, of itself, even without special arrangements for controlling the distribution of water, prevents or at least checks the flow of rain water, and gives it time to sink into the ground instead of running off over the surface. There are few things in Continental husbandry which surprise English or American observers so much as the extent to which irrigation is employed in agriculture, and that, too, on soils, and with a temperature, where their own experience would have led them to suppose it would be injurious to vegetation rather than beneficial to it. The summers in Northern Italy, though longer, are very often not warmer than in New England; and in ordinary years, the summer rains are as frequent and as abundant in the former country as in the latter. Yet in Piedmont and Lombardy, irrigation is bestowed upon almost every crop, while in New England it is never employed at all in farming husbandry, or indeed for any purpose except in kitchen gardens, and possibly, in rare cases, in some other small branch of agricultural industry.[330] The summers in Egypt, in Syria, and in Asia Minor and even Rumelia, are almost rainless. In such climates, the necessity of irrigation is obvious, and the loss of the ancient means of furnishing it readily explains the diminished fertility of most of the countries in question.[331] The surface of Palestine, for example, is composed, in a great measure, of rounded limestone hills, once, no doubt, covered with forests. These were partially removed before the Jewish conquest.[332] When the soil began to suffer from drought, reservoirs to retain the waters of winter were hewn in the rock near the tops of the hills, and the declivities were terraced. So long as the cisterns were in good order, and the terraces kept up, the fertility of Palestine was unsurpassed, but when misgovernment and foreign and intestine war occasioned the neglect or destruction of these works--traces of which still meet the traveller's eye at every step,--when the reservoirs were broken and the terrace walls had fallen down, there was no longer water for irrigation in summer, the rains of winter soon washed away most of the thin layer of earth upon the rocks, and Palestine was reduced almost to the condition of a desert. The course of events has been the same in Idumæa. The observing traveller discovers everywhere about Petra, particularly if he enters the city by the route of Wadi Ksheibeh, very extensive traces of ancient cultivation, and upon the neighboring ridges are the ruins of numerous cisterns evidently constructed to furnish a supply of water for irrigation.[333] In primitive ages, the precipitation of winter in these hilly countries was, in great part, retained for a time in the superficial soil, first by the vegetable mould of the forests, and then by the artificial arrangements I have described. The water imbibed by the earth was partly taken up by direct evaporation, partly absorbed by vegetation, and partly carried down by infiltration to subjacent strata which gave it out in springs at lower levels, and thus a fertility of soil and a condition of the atmosphere were maintained sufficient to admit of the dense population that once inhabited those now arid wastes. At present, the rain water runs immediately off from the surface and is carried down to the sea, or is drunk up by the sands of the wadis, and the hillsides which once teemed with plenty are bare of vegetation, and seared by the scorching winds of the desert. In Southern Europe, in the Turkish Empire, and in many other countries, a very large proportion of the surface is, if not absolutely flooded, at least thoroughly moistened by irrigation, a great number of times in the course of every season, and this, especially, at periods when it would otherwise be quite dry, and when, too, the power of the sun and the capacity of the air for absorbing moisture are greatest. Hence it is obvious that the amount of evaporation from the earth in these countries, and, of course, the humidity and the temperature of both the soil and the atmosphere in contact with it, must be much affected by the practice of irrigation. The cultivable area of Egypt, or the space accessible to cultivation, between desert and desert, is more than seven thousand square statute miles. Much of the surface, though not out of the reach of irrigation, lies too high to be economically watered, and irrigation and cultivation are therefore confined to an area of five or six thousand square miles, nearly the whole of which is regularly and constantly watered when not covered by the inundation, except in the short interval between the harvest and the rise of the waters. For nearly half of the year, then, irrigation adds five or six thousand square miles, or more than a square equatorial degree, to the evaporable surface of the Nile valley, or, in other words, more than decuples the area from which an appreciable quantity of moisture would otherwise be evaporated; for after the Nile has retired within its banks, its waters by no means cover one tenth of the space just mentioned.[334] The fresh-water canals now constructing, in connection with the works for the Suez canal, will not only restore the long abandoned fields east of the Nile, but add to the arable soil of Egypt hundreds of square miles of newly reclaimed desert, and thus still further increase the climatic effects of irrigation.[335] The Nile receives not a single tributary in its course through Egypt; there is not so much as one living spring in the whole land,[336] and, with the exception of a narrow strip of coast, where the annual precipitation is said to amount to six inches, the fall of rain in the territory of the Pharaohs is not two inches in the year. The subsoil of the whole valley is pervaded with moisture by infiltration from the Nile, and water can everywhere be found at the depth of a few feet. Were irrigation suspended, and Egypt abandoned, as in that case it must be, to the operations of nature, there is no doubt that trees, the roots of which penetrate deeply, would in time establish themselves on the deserted soil, fill the valley with verdure, and perhaps at last temper the climate, and even call down abundant rain from the heavens.[337] But the immediate effect of discontinuing irrigation would be, first, an immense reduction of the evaporation from the valley in the dry season, and then a greatly augmented dryness and heat of the atmosphere. Even the almost constant north wind--the strength of which would be increased in consequence of these changes--would little reduce the temperature of the narrow cleft between the burning mountains which hem in the channel of the Nile, so that a single year would transform the most fertile of soils to the most barren of deserts, and render uninhabitable a territory that irrigation makes capable of sustaining as dense a population as has ever existed in any part of the world.[338] Whether man found the valley of the Nile a forest, or such a waste as I have just described, we do not historically know. In either case, he has not simply converted a wilderness into a garden, but has unquestionably produced extensive climatic change.[339] The fields of Egypt are more regularly watered than those of any other country bordering on the Mediterranean, except the rice grounds in Italy, and perhaps the _marcite_ or winter meadows of Lombardy; but irrigation is more or less employed throughout almost the entire basin of that sea, and is everywhere attended with effects which, if less in degree, are analogous in character to those resulting from it in Egypt. In general, it may be said that the soil is nowhere artificially watered except when it is so dry that little moisture would be evaporated from it, and, consequently, every acre of irrigated ground is so much added to the evaporable surface of the country. When the supply of water is unlimited, it is allowed, after serving its purpose on one field, to run into drains, canals, or rivers. But in most regions where irrigation is regularly employed, it is necessary to economize the water; after passing over or through one parcel of ground, it is conducted to another; no more is withdrawn from the canals at any one point than is absorbed by the soil it irrigates, or evaporated from it, and, consequently, it is not restored to liquid circulation, except by infiltration or precipitation. We are safe, then, in saying that the humidity evaporated from any artificially watered soil is increased by a quantity bearing a large proportion to the whole amount distributed over it; for most even of that which is absorbed by the earth is immediately given out again either by vegetables or by evaporation. It is not easy to ascertain precisely either the extent of surface thus watered, or the amount of water supplied, in any given country, because these quantities vary with the character of the season; but there are not many districts in Southern Europe where the management of the arrangements for irrigation is not one of the most important branches of agricultural labor. The eminent engineer Lombardini describes the system of irrigation in Lombardy as, "every day in summer, diffusing over 550,000 hectares of land 45,000,000 cubic mètres of water, which is equal to the entire volume of the Seine, at an ordinary flood, or a rise of three mètres above the hydrometer at the bridge of La Tournelle at Paris."[340] Niel states the quantity of land irrigated in the former kingdom of Sardinia, including Savoy, in 1856, at 240,000 hectares, or not much less than 600,000 acres. This is about four thirteenths of the cultivable soil of the kingdom. According to the same author, the irrigated lands in France did not exceed 100,000 hectares, or 247,000 acres, while those in Lombardy amounted to 450,000 hectares, more than 1,100,000 acres.[341] In these three states alone, then, there were more than three thousand square miles of artificially watered land, and if we add the irrigated soils of the rest of Italy, of the Mediterranean islands, of the Spanish peninsula, of Turkey in Europe and in Asia Minor, of Syria, of Egypt and the remainder of Northern Africa, we shall see that irrigation increases the evaporable surface of the Mediterranean basin by a quantity bearing no inconsiderable proportion to the area naturally covered by water within it. As near as can be ascertained, the amount of water applied to irrigated lands is scarcely anywhere less than the total precipitation during the season of vegetable growth, and in general it much exceeds that quantity. In grass grounds and in field culture it ranges from 27 or 28 to 60 inches, while in smaller crops, tilled by hand labor, it is sometimes carried as high as 300 inches.[342] The rice grounds and the _marcite_ of Lombardy are not included in these estimates of the amount of water applied. Arrangements are concluded, and new plans proposed, for an immense increase of the lands fertilized by irrigation in France and Italy, and there is every reason to believe that the artificially watered soil of the latter country will be doubled, that of France quadrupled, before the end of this century. There can be no doubt that by these operations man is exercising a powerful influence on soil, on vegetable and animal life, and on climate, and hence that in this, as in many other fields of industry, he is truly a geographical agency.[343] The quantity of water artificially withdrawn from running streams for the purpose of irrigation is such as very sensibly to affect their volume, and it is, therefore, an important element in the geography of rivers. Brooks of no trifling current are often wholly diverted from their natural channels to supply the canals, and their entire mass of water completely absorbed, so that it does not reach the river which it naturally feeds, except in such proportion as it is conveyed to it by infiltration. Irrigation, therefore, diminishes great rivers in warm countries by cutting off their sources of supply as well as by direct abstraction of water from their channels. We have just seen that the system of irrigation in Lombardy deprives the Po of a quantity of water equal to the total delivery of the Seine at ordinary flood, or, in other words, of the equivalent of a tributary navigable for hundreds of miles by vessels of considerable burden. The new canals commenced and projected will greatly increase the loss. The water required for irrigation in Egypt is less than would be supposed from the exceeding rapidity of evaporation in that arid climate; for the soil is thoroughly saturated during the inundation, and infiltration from the Nile continues to supply a considerable amount of humidity in the dryest season. Linant Bey computed that twenty-nine cubic mètres per day sufficed to irrigate a hectare in the Delta.[344] This is equivalent to a fall of rain of two millimètres and nine tenths per day, or, if we suppose water to be applied for one hundred and fifty days during the dry season, to a total precipitation of 435 millimètres, about seventeen inches and one third. Taking the area of actually cultivated soil in Egypt at the low estimate of 3,600,000 acres, and the average amount of water daily applied in both Upper and Lower Egypt at twelve hundredths of an inch in depth, we have an abstraction of 61,000,000 cubic yards, which--the mean daily delivery of the Nile being in round numbers 320,000,000 cubic yards--is nearly one fifth of the average quantity of water contributed to the Mediterranean by that river. Irrigation, as employed for certain special purposes in Europe and America, is productive of very prejudicial climatic effects. I refer particularly to the cultivation of rice in the Slave States of the American Union and in Italy. The climate of the Southern States is not necessarily unhealthy for the white man, but he can scarcely sleep a single night in the vicinity of the rice grounds without being attacked by a dangerous fever.[345] The neighborhood of the rice fields is less pestilential in Lombardy and Piedmont than in South Carolina and Georgia, but still very insalubrious to both man and beast. "Not only does the population decrease where rice is grown," says Escourrou Milliago, "but even the flocks are attacked by typhus. In the rice grounds, the soil is divided into compartments rising in gradual succession to the level of the irrigating canal, in order that the water, after having flowed one field, may be drawn off to another, and thus a single current serve for several compartments, the lowest field, of course, still being higher than the ditch which at last drains both it and the adjacent soil. This arrangement gives a certain force of hydrostatic pressure to the water with which the rice is irrigated, and the infiltration from these fields is said to extend through neighboring grounds, sometimes to the distance of not less than a myriamètre, or six English miles, and to be destructive to crops and even trees reached by it. Land thus affected can no longer be employed for any purpose but growing rice, and when prepared for that crop, it propagates still further the evils under which it had itself suffered, and, of course, the mischief is a growing one."[346] The attentive traveller in Egypt and Nubia cannot fail to notice many localities, generally of small extent, where the soil is rendered infertile by an excess of saline matter in its composition. In many cases, perhaps in all, these barren spots lie rather above the level usually flooded by the inundations of the Nile, and yet they exhibit traces of former cultivation. Recent observations in India, a notice of which I find in an account of a meeting of the Asiatic Society in the Athenæum of December 20, 1862, No. 1834, suggest a possible explanation of this fact. At this meeting, Professor Medlicott read an essay on "the saline efflorescence called 'Reh' and 'Kuller,'" which is gradually invading many of the most fertile districts of Northern and Western India, and changing them into sterile deserts. It consists principally of sulphate of soda (Glauber's salts), with varying proportions of common salt. Mr. Medlicott pronounces "these salts (which, in small quantities are favorable to fertility of soil) to be the gradual result of concentration by evaporation of river and canal waters, which contain them in very minute quantities, and with which the lands are either irrigated or occasionally overflowed." The river inundations in hot countries usually take place but once in a year, and, though the banks remain submerged for days or even weeks, the water at that period, being derived principally from rains and snows, must be less highly charged with mineral matter than at lower stages, and besides, it is always in motion. The water of irrigation, on the other hand, is applied for many months in succession, it is drawn from rivers at the seasons when their proportion of salts is greatest, and it either sinks into the superficial soil, carrying with it the saline substances it holds in solution, or is evaporated from the surface, leaving them upon it. Hence irrigation must impart to the soil more salts than natural inundation. The sterilized grounds in Egypt and Nubia lying above the reach of the floods, as I have said, we may suppose them to have been first cultivated in that remote antiquity when the Nile valley received its earliest inhabitants. They must have been artificially irrigated from the beginning; they may have been under cultivation many centuries before the soil at a lower level was invaded by man, and hence it is natural that they should be more strongly impregnated with saline matter than fields which are exposed every year, for some weeks, to the action of running water so nearly pure that it would be more likely to dissolve salts than to deposit them. INUNDATIONS AND TORRENTS. In pointing out in a former chapter the evils which have resulted from the too extensive destruction of the forests, I dwelt at some length on the increased violence of river inundations, and especially on the devastations of torrents, in countries improvidently deprived of their woods, and I spoke of the replanting of the forests as the only effectual method of preventing the frequent recurrence of disastrous floods. There are many regions where, from the loss of the superficial soil, from financial considerations, and from other causes, the restoration of the woods is not, under present circumstances, to be hoped for. Even where that measure is feasible and in actual process of execution, a great number of years must elapse before the action of the destructive causes in question can be arrested or perhaps even sensibly mitigated by it. Besides this, leaving out of view the objections urged by Belgrand and his followers to the generally received opinions concerning the beneficial influence of the forest as respects river inundations--for no one disputes its importance in preventing the formation and limiting the ravages of mountain torrents--floods will always occur in years of excessive precipitation, whether the surface of the soil be generally cleared or generally wooded. Physical improvement in this respect, then, cannot he confined to preventive measures, but, in countries subject to damage by inundation, means must he contrived to obviate dangers and diminish injuries to which human life and all the works of human industry will occasionally be exposed, in spite of every effort to lessen the frequency of their recurrence by acting directly on the causes that produce them. As every civilized country is, in some degree, subject to inundation by the overflow of rivers, the evil is a familiar one, and needs no general description. In discussing this branch of the subject, therefore, I may confine myself chiefly to the means that have been or may be employed to resist the force and limit the ravages of floods, which, left wholly unrestrained, would not only inflict immense injury upon the material interests of man, but produce geographical revolutions of no little magnitude. a. _River Embankments._ The most obvious and doubtless earliest method of preventing the escape of river waters from their natural channels, and the overflow of fields and towns by their spread, is that of raised embankments along their course. The necessity of such embankments usually arises from the gradual elevation of the bed of running streams in consequence of the deposit of the earth and gravel they are charged with in high water; and, as we have seen, this elevation is rapidly accelerated when the highlands around the headwaters of rivers are cleared of their forests. When a river is embanked at a given point, and, consequently, the water of its floods, which would otherwise spread over a wide surface, is confined within narrow limits, the velocity of the current and its transporting power are augmented, and its burden of sand and gravel is deposited at some lower point, where the rapidity of its flow is checked by a diminution in the inclination of the bed, by a wider channel, or finally by a lacustrine or marine basin which receives its waters. Wherever it lets fall solid material, its channel is raised in consequence, and the declivity of the whole bed between the head of the embankment and the slack of the stream is reduced. Hence the current, at first accelerated by confinement, is afterward checked by the mechanical resistance of the matter deposited, and by the diminished inclination of its channel, and then begins again to let fall the earth it holds in suspension, and to raise its bed at the point where its overflow had been before prevented by embankment. The bank must now be raised in proportion, and these processes would be repeated and repeated indefinitely, had not nature provided a remedy in floods, which sweep out recent deposits, burst the bonds of the river and overwhelm the adjacent country with final desolation, or divert the current into a new channel, destined to become, in its turn, the scene of a similar struggle between man and the waters. Few rivers, like the Nile, more than compensate by the fertilizing properties of their water and their slime for the damage they may do in inundations, and, consequently, there are few whose floods are not an object of dread, few whose encroachments upon their banks are not a source of constant anxiety and expense to the proprietors of the lands through which they flow. River dikes, for confining the spread of currents at high water, are of great antiquity in the East, and those of the Po and its tributaries were begun before we have any trustworthy physical or political annals of the provinces upon their borders. From the earliest ages, the Italian hydraulic engineers have stood in the front rank of their profession, and the Italian literature of this branch of material improvement is exceedingly voluminous. But the countries for which I write have no rivers like the Po, no plains like those of Lombardy, and the dangers to which the inhabitants of English and American river banks are exposed are more nearly analogous to those that threaten the soil and population in the valleys and plains of France, than to the perils and losses of the Lombard. The writings of the Italian hydrographers, too, though rich in professional instruction, are less accessible to foreigners and less adapted to popular use than those of French engineers.[347] For these reasons I shall take my citations principally from French authorities, though I shall occasionally allude to Italian writers on the floods of the Tiber, of the Arno, and some other Italian streams which much resemble those of the rivers of England and the United States. b. _Floods of the Ardèche._ The floods of mountain streams are attended with greater immediate danger to life and property than those of rivers of less rapid flow, because their currents are more impetuous, and they rise more suddenly and with less previous warning. At the same time, their ravages are confined within narrower limits, the waters retire sooner to their accustomed channel, and the danger is more quickly over, than in the case of inundations of larger rivers. The Ardèche, which has given its name to a department in France, drains a basin of 600,238 acres, or a little less than nine hundred and thirty-eight square miles. Its remotest source is about seventy-five miles, in a straight line, from its junction with the Rhone, and springs at an elevation of four thousand feet above that point. At the lowest stage of the river, the bed of the Chassezac, its largest and longest tributary, is in many places completely dry on the surface--the water being sufficient only to supply the subterranean channels of infiltration--and the Ardèche itself is almost everywhere fordable, even below the mouth of the Chassezac. But in floods, the river has sometimes risen more than sixty feet at the Pont d'Arc, a natural arch of two hundred feet chord, which spans the stream below its junction with all its important affluents. At the height of the inundation of 1827, the quantity of water passing this point--after deducting thirty per cent. for material transported with the current and for irregularity of flow--was estimated at 8,845 cubic yards to the second, and between twelve at noon on the 10th of September of that year and ten o'clock the next morning, the water discharged through the passage in question amounted to more than 450,000,000 cubic yards. This quantity, distributed equally through the basin of the river, would cover its entire area to a depth of more than five inches. The Ardèche rises so suddenly that, in the inundation of 1846, the women who were washing in the bed of the river had not time to save their linen, and barely escaped with their lives, though they instantly fled upon hearing the roar of the approaching flood. Its waters and those of its affluents fall almost as rapidly, for in less than twenty-four hours after the rain has ceased in the Cévennes, where it rises, the Ardèche returns within its ordinary channel, even at its junction with the Rhone. In the flood of 1772, the water at La Beaume de Ruoms, on the Beaume, a tributary of the Ardèche, rose thirty-five feet above low water, but the stream was again fordable on the evening of the same day. The inundation of 1827 was, in this respect, exceptional, for it continued three days, during which period the Ardèche poured into the Rhone 1,305,000,000 cubic yards of water. The Nile delivers into the sea 101,000 cubic feet or 3,741 cubic yards per second, on an average of the whole year.[348] This is equal to 323,222,400 cubic yards per day. In a single day of flood, then, the Ardèche, a river too insignificant to be known except in the local topography of France, contributed to the Rhone once and a half, and for three consecutive days once and one third, as much as the average delivery of the Nile during the same periods, though the basin of the latter river contains 500,000 square miles of surface, or more than five hundred times as much as that of the former. The average annual precipitation in the basin of the Ardèche is not greater than in many other parts of Europe, but excessive quantities of rain frequently fall in that valley in the autumn. On the 9th of October, 1827, there fell at Joyeuse, on the Beaume, no less than thirty-one inches between three o'clock in the morning and midnight. Such facts as this explain the extraordinary suddenness and violence of the floods of the Ardèche, and the basins of many other tributaries of the Rhone exhibit meteorological phenomena not less remarkable.[349] The inundation of the 10th September, 1857, was accompanied with a terrific hurricane, which passed along the eastern slope of the high grounds where the Ardèche and several other western affluents of the Rhone take their rise. The wind tore up all the trees in its path, and the rushing torrents bore their trunks down to the larger streams, which again transported them to the Rhone in such rafts that one might almost have crossed that river by stepping from trunk to trunk.[350] The Rhone, therefore, is naturally subject to great and sudden inundations, and the same remark may be applied to most of the principal rivers of France, because the geographical character of all of them is approximately the same. The height and violence of the inundations of most great rivers are determined by the degree in which the floods of the different tributaries are coincident in time. Were all the affluents of the Rhone to pour their highest annual floods into its channel at once, were a dozen Niles to empty themselves into its bed at the same moment, its water would rise to a height and rush with an impetus that would sweep into the Mediterranean the entire population of its banks, and all the works that man has erected upon the plains which border it. But such a coincidence can never happen. The tributaries of this river run in very different directions, and some of them are swollen principally by the melting of the snows about their sources, others almost exclusively by heavy rains. When a damp southeast wind blows up the valley of the Ardèche, its moisture is condensed, and precipitated in a deluge upon the mountains which embosom the headwaters of that stream, thus producing a flood, while a neighboring basin, the axis of which lies transversely or obliquely to that of the Ardèche, is not at all affected.[351] It is easy to see that the damage occasioned by such floods as I have described must be almost incalculable, and it is by no means confined to the effects produced by overflow and the mechanical force of the superficial currents. In treating of the devastations of torrents in a former chapter, I confined myself principally to the erosion of surface and the transportation of mineral matter to lower grounds by them. The general action of torrents, as there shown, tends to the ultimate elevation of their beds by the deposit of the earth, gravel, and stone conveyed by them; but until they have thus raised their outlets so as sensibly to diminish the inclination of their channels--and sometimes when extraordinary floods give the torrents momentum enough to sweep away the accumulations which they have themselves heaped up--the swift flow of their currents, aided by the abrasion of the rolling rocks and gravel, scoops their beds constantly deeper, and they consequently not only undermine their banks, but frequently sap the most solid foundations which the art of man can build for the support of bridges and hydraulic structures.[352] In the inundation of 1857, the Ardèche destroyed a stone bridge near La Beaume, which had been built about eighty years before. The resistance of the piers, which were erected on piles, the channel at that point being of gravel, produced an eddying current that washed away the bed of the river above them, and the foundation, thus deprived of lateral support, yielded to the weight of the bridge, and the piles and piers fell up stream. By a curious law of compensation, the stream which, at flood, scoops out cavities in its bed, often fills them up again as soon as the diminished velocity of the current allows it to let fall the sand and gravel with which it is charged, so that when the waters return to their usual channel, the bottom shows no sign of having been disturbed. In a flood of the Escontay, a tributary of the Rhone, in 1846, piles driven sixteen feet into its gravelly bed for the foundation of a pier were torn up and carried off, and yet, when the river had fallen to low-water mark, the bottom at that point appeared to have been raised higher than it was before the flood, by new deposits of sand and gravel, while the cut stones of the half-built pier were found buried to a great depth, in the excavation which the water had first washed out. The gravel with which rivers thus restore the level of their beds is principally derived from the crushing of the rocks brought down by the mountain torrents, and the destructive effects of inundations are immensely diminished by this reduction of large stones to minute fragments. If the blocks hurled down from the cliffs were transported unbroken to the channels of large rivers, the mechanical force of their movement would be irresistible. They would overthrow the strongest barriers, spread themselves over a surface as wide as the flow of the waters, and convert the most smiling valleys into scenes of the wildest desolation. c. _Crushing Force of Torrents._ There are few operations of nature where the effect seems more disproportioned to the cause than in the comminution of rock in the channel of swift waters. Igneous rocks are generally so hard as to be wrought with great difficulty, and they bear the weight of enormous superstructures without yielding to the pressure; but to the torrent they are as wheat to the millstone. The streams which pour down the southern scarp of the Mediterranean Alps along the Riviera di Ponente, near Genoa, have short courses, and a brisk walk of a couple of hours or even less takes you from the sea beach to the headspring of many of them. In their heaviest floods, they bring rounded masses of serpentine quite down to the sea, but at ordinary high water their lower course is charged only with finely divided particles of that rock. Hence, while, near their sources, their channels are filled with pebbles and angular fragments, intermixed with a little gravel, the proportions are reversed near their mouths, and, just above the points where their outlets are partially choked by the rolling shingle of the beach, their beds are composed of sand and gravel to the almost total exclusion of pebbles. The greatest depth of the basin of the Ardèche is seventy-five miles, but most of its tributaries have a much shorter course. "These affluents," says Mardigny, "hurl into the bed of the Ardèche enormous blocks of rock, which this river, in its turn, bears onward, and grinds down, at high water, so that its current rolls only gravel at its confluence with the Rhone."[353] Guglielmini argued that the gravel and sand of the beds of running streams were derived from the trituration of rocks by the action of the currents, and inferred that this action was generally sufficient to reduce hard rock to sand in its passage from the source to the outlet of rivers. Frisi controverted this opinion, and maintained that river sand was of more ancient origin, and he inferred from experiments in artificially grinding stones that the concussion, friction, and attrition of rock in the channel of running waters were inadequate to its comminution, though he admitted that these same causes might reduce silicious sand to a fine powder capable of transportation to the sea by the currents.[354] Frisi's experiments were tried upon rounded and polished river pebbles, and prove nothing with regard to the action of torrents upon the irregular, more or less weathered, and often cracked and shattered rocks which lie loose in the ground at the head of mountain valleys. The fury of the waters and of the wind which accompanies them in the floods of the French Alpine torrents is such, that large blocks of stone are hurled out of the bed of the stream to the height of twelve or thirteen feet. The impulse of masses driven with such force overthrows the most solid masonry, and their concussion cannot fail to be attended with the crushing of the rocks themselves.[355] d. _Inundations of 1856 in France._ The month of May, 1856, was remarkable for violent and almost uninterrupted rains, and most of the river basins of France were inundated to an extraordinary height. In the valleys of the Loire and its affluents, about a million of acres, including many towns and villages, were laid under water, and the amount of pecuniary damage was almost incalculable.[356] The flood was not less destructive in the valley of the Rhone, and in fact an invasion by a hostile army could hardly have been more disastrous to the inhabitants of the plains than was this terrible deluge. There had been a flood of this latter river in the year 1840, which, for height and quantity of water, was almost as remarkable as that of 1856, but it took place in the month of November, when the crops had all been harvested, and the injury inflicted by it upon agriculturists was, therefore, of a character to be less severely and less immediately felt than the consequences of the inundation of 1856.[357] In the fifteen years between these two great floods, the population and the rural improvements of the river valleys had much increased, common roads, bridges, and railways had been multiplied and extended, telegraph lines had been constructed, all of which shared in the general ruin, and hence greater and more diversified interests were affected by the catastrophe of 1856 than by any former like calamity. The great flood of 1840 had excited the attention and roused the sympathies of the French people, and the subject was invested with new interest by the still more formidable character of the inundations of 1856. It was felt that these scourges had ceased to be a matter of merely local concern, for, although they bore most heavily on those whose homes and fields were situated within the immediate reach of the swelling waters, yet they frequently destroyed harvests valuable enough to be a matter of national interest, endangered the personal security of the population of important political centres, interrupted communication for days and even weeks together on great lines of traffic and travel--thus severing as it were all Southwestern France from the rest of the empire--and finally threatened to produce great and permanent geographical changes. The well-being of the whole commonwealth was seen to be involved in preventing the recurrence, and in limiting the range of such devastations. The Government encouraged scientific investigation of the phenomena and their laws. Their causes, their history, their immediate and remote consequences, and the possible safeguards to be employed against them, have been carefully studied by the most eminent physicists, as well as by the ablest theoretical and practical engineers of France. Many hitherto unobserved facts have been collected, many new hypotheses suggested, and many plans, more or less original in character, have been devised for combating the evil; but thus far, the most competent judges are not well agreed as to the mode, or even the possibility, of applying a remedy. e. _Remedies against Inundations._ Perhaps no one point has been more prominent in the discussions than the influence of the forest in equalizing and regulating the flow of the water of precipitation. As we have already seen, opinion is still somewhat divided on this subject, but the conservative action of the woods in this respect has been generally recognized by the public of France, and the Government of the empire has made this principle the basis of important legislation for the protection of existing forests, and for the formation of new. The clearing of woodland, and the organization and functions of a police for its protection, are regulated by a law bearing date June 18th, 1859, and provision was made for promoting the restoration of private woods by a statute adopted on the 28th of July, 1860. The former of these laws passed the legislative body by a vote of 246 against 4, the latter with but a single negative voice. The influence of the government, in a country where the throne is so potent as in France, would account for a large majority, but when it is considered that both laws, the former especially, interfere very materially with the rights of private domain, the almost entire unanimity with which they were adopted is proof of a very general popular conviction, that the protection and extension of the forests is a measure more likely than any other to check the violence, if not to prevent the recurrence, of destructive inundations. The law of July 28th, 1860, appropriated 10,000,000 francs, to be expended, at the rate of 1,000,000 francs per year, in executing or aiding the replanting of woods. It is computed that this appropriation will secure the creation of new forest to the extent of about 250,000 acres, or one eleventh part of the soil where the restoration of the forest is thought feasible and, at the same time, specially important as a security against the evils ascribed in a great measure to its destruction. The provisions of the laws in question are preventive rather than remedial; but some immediate effect may be expected to result from them, particularly if they are accompanied with certain other measures, the suggestion of which has been favorably received. The strong repugnance of the mountaineers to the application of a system which deprives them of a part of their pasturage--for the absolute exclusion of domestic animals is indispensable to the maintenance of an existing forest and to the formation of a new--is the most formidable obstacle to the execution of the laws of 1859-'60. It is proposed to compensate this loss by a cheap system of irrigation of lower pasture grounds, consisting in little more than in running horizontal furrows along the hillsides, thus converting the scarp of the hills into a succession of small terraces which, when once turfed over, are very permanent. Experience is said to have demonstrated that this simple process suffices to retain the water of rains, of snows, and of small springs and rivulets, long enough for the irrigation of the soil, thus increasing its product of herbage in a fivefold proportion, and that it partially checks the too rapid flow of surface water into the valleys, and, consequently, in some measure obviates one of the most prominent causes of inundations.[358] It is evident that, if such results are produced by this method, its introduction upon an extensive scale must also have the same climatic effects as other systems of irrigation. Whatever may be the ultimate advantages of reclothing a large extent of the territory of France with wood, or of so shaping its surface as to prevent the too rapid flow of water over it, the results to be obtained by such processes can be realized in an adequate measure only after a long succession of years. Other steps must be taken, both for the immediate security of the lives and property of the present generation, and for the prevention of yet greater and remoter evils which are inevitable unless means to obviate them are found before it is forever too late. The frequent recurrence of inundations like those of 1856, for a single score of years, in the basins of the Rhone and the Loire, with only the present securities against them, would almost depopulate the valleys of those rivers, and produce physical revolutions in them, which, like revolutions in the political world, could never be made to "go backward." Destructive inundations are seldom, if ever, produced by precipitation within the limits of the principal valley, but almost uniformly by sudden thaws or excessive rains on the mountain ranges where the tributaries take their rise. It is therefore plain that any measures which shall check the flow of surface waters into the channels of the affluents, or which shall retard the delivery of such waters into the principal stream by its tributaries, will diminish in the same proportion the dangers and the evils of inundation by great rivers. The retention of the surface waters upon or in the soil can hardly be accomplished except by the methods already mentioned, replanting of forests, and furrowing or terracing. The current of mountain streams can be checked by various methods, among which the most familiar and obvious is the erection of barriers or dams across their channels, at points convenient for forming reservoirs large enough to retain the superfluous waters of great rains and thaws. Besides the utility of such basins in preventing floods, the construction of them is recommended by very strong considerations, such as the meteorological effects of increased evaporable surface, the furnishing of a constant supply of water for agricultural and mechanical purposes, and, finally, their value as ponds for breeding and rearing fish, and, perhaps, for cultivating aquatic vegetables. The objections to the general adoption of the system of reservoirs are these: the expense of their construction and maintenance; the reduction of cultivable area by the amount of surface they must cover; the interruption they would occasion to free communication; the probability that they would soon be filled up with sediment, and the obvious fact that when full of earth or even water, they would no longer serve their principal purpose; the great danger to which they would expose the country below them in case of the bursting of their barriers;[359] the evil consequences they would occasion by prolonging the flow of inundations in proportion as they diminished their height; the injurious effects it is supposed they would produce upon the salubrity of the neighboring districts; and, lastly, the alleged impossibility of constructing artificial basins sufficient in capacity to prevent, or in any considerable measure to mitigate, the evils they are intended to guard against. The last argument is more easily reduced to a numerical question than the others. The mean and extreme annual precipitation of all the basins where the construction of such works would be seriously proposed is already approximately known by meteorological tables, and the quantity of water, delivered by the greatest floods which have occurred within the memory of man, may be roughly estimated from their visible traces. From these elements, or from recorded observations, the capacity of the necessary reservoirs can be calculated. Let us take the case of the Ardèche. In the inundation of 1857, that river poured into the Rhone 1,305,000,000 cubic yards of water in three days. If we suppose that half this quantity might have been suffered to flow down its channel without inconvenience, we shall have about 650,000,000 cubic yards to provide for by reservoirs. The Ardèche and its principal affluent, the Chassezac, have, together, about twelve considerable tributaries rising near the crest of the mountains which bound the basin. If reservoirs of equal capacity were constructed upon all of them, each reservoir must be able to contain 54,000,000 cubic yards, or, in other words, must be equal to a lake 3,000 yards long, 1,000 yards wide, and 18 yards deep, and besides, in order to render any effectual service, the reservoirs must all have been empty at the commencement of the rains which produced the inundation. Thus far, I have supposed the swelling of the waters to be uniform throughout the whole basin; but such was by no means the fact in the inundation of 1857, for the rise of the Chassezac, which is as large as the Ardèche proper, did not exceed the limits of ordinary floods, and the dangerous excess came solely from the headwaters of the latter stream. Hence reservoirs of double the capacity I have supposed would have been necessary upon the tributaries of that river, to prevent the injurious effects of the inundation. It is evident that the construction of reservoirs of such magnitude for such a purpose is financially, if not physically, impracticable, and when we take into account a point I have just suggested, namely, that the reservoirs must be empty at all times of apprehended flood, and, of course, their utility limited almost solely to the single object of preventing inundations, the total inapplicability of such a measure in this particular case becomes still more glaringly manifest. Another not less conclusive fact is that the valleys of all the upland tributaries of the Ardèche descend so rapidly, and have so little lateral expansion, as to render the construction of capacious reservoirs in them quite impracticable. Indeed, engineers have found but two points in the whole basin suitable for that purpose, and the reservoirs admissible at these would have only a joint capacity of about 70,000,000 cubic yards, or less than one ninth part of what I suppose to be required. The case of the Ardèche is no doubt an extreme one, both in the topographical character of its basin and in its exposure to excessive rains; but all destructive inundations are, in a certain sense, extreme cases also, and this of the Ardèche serves to show that the construction of reservoirs is not by any means to be regarded as a universal panacea against floods. Nor, on the other hand, is this measure to be summarily rejected. Nature has adopted it on a great scale, on both flanks of the Alps, and on a smaller, on those of the Adirondacks and lower chains, and in this as in many other instances, her processes may often be imitated with advantage. The validity of the remaining objections to the system under discussion depends on the topography, geology, and special climate of the regions where it is proposed to establish such reservoirs. Many upland streams present numerous points where none of these objections, except those of expense and of danger from the breaking of dams, could have any application. Reservoirs may be so constructed as to retain the entire precipitation of the heaviest thaws and rains, leaving only the ordinary quantity to flow along the channel; they may be raised to such a height as only partially to obstruct the surface drainage; or they may be provided with sluices by means of which their whole contents can be discharged in the dry season and a summer crop be grown upon the ground they cover at high water. The expediency of employing them and the mode of construction depend on local conditions, and no rules of universal applicability can be laid down on the subject. It is remarkable that nations which we, in the false pride of our modern civilization, so generally regard as little less than barbarian, should have long preceded Christian Europe in the systematic employment of great artificial basins for the various purposes they are calculated to subserve. The ancient Peruvians built strong walls, of excellent workmanship, across the channels of the mountain sources of important streams, and the Arabs executed immense works of similar description, both in the great Arabian peninsula and in all the provinces of Spain which had the good fortune to fall under their sway. The Spaniards of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, who, in many points of true civilization and culture, were far inferior to the races they subdued, wantonly destroyed these noble monuments of social and political wisdom, or suffered them to perish, because they were too ignorant to appreciate their value, or too unskilful as practical engineers to be able to maintain them, and some of their most important territories were soon reduced to sterility and poverty in consequence. Another method of preventing or diminishing the evils of inundation by torrents and mountain rivers, analogous to that employed for the drainage of lakes, consists in the permanent or occasional diversion of their surplus waters, or of their entire currents, from their natural courses, by tunnels or open channels cut through their banks. Nature, in many cases, resorts to a similar process. Most great rivers divide themselves into several arms in their lower course, and enter the sea by different mouths. There are also cases where rivers send off lateral branches to convey a part of their waters into the channel of other streams.[360] The most remarkable of these is the junction between the Amazon and the Orinoco by the natural canal of the Cassiquiare and the Rio Negro. In India, the Cambodja and the Menam are connected by the Anam; the Saluen and the Irawaddi by the Panlaun. There are similar examples, though on a much smaller scale, in Europe. The Torneå and the Calix rivers in Lapland communicate by the Tarando, and in Westphalia, the Else, an arm of the Haase, falls into the Weser. The change of bed in rivers by gradual erosion of their banks is familiar to all, but instances of the sudden abandonment of a primitive channel are by no means wanting. At a period of unknown antiquity, the Ardèche pierced a tunnel 200 feet wide and 100 high, through a rock, and sent its whole current through it, deserting its former bed, which gradually filled up, though its course remained traceable. In the great inundation of 1827, the tunnel proved insufficient for the discharge of the water, and the river burst through the obstructions which had now choked up its ancient channel, and resumed its original course.[361] It was probably such facts as these that suggested to ancient engineers the possibility of like artificial operations, and there are numerous instances of the execution of works for this purpose in very remote ages. The Bahr Jusef, the great stream which supplies the Fayoum with water from the Nile, has been supposed, by some writers, to be a natural channel; but both it and the Bahr el Wady are almost certainly artificial canals constructed to water that basin, to regulate the level of Lake Moeris, and possibly, also, to diminish the dangers resulting from excessive inundations of the Nile, by serving as waste-weirs to discharge a part of its surplus waters. Several of the seven ancient mouths of the Nile are believed to be artificial channels, and Herodotus even asserts that King Menes diverted the entire course of that river from the Libyan to the Arabian side of the valley. There are traces of an ancient river bed along the western mountains, which give some countenance to this statement. But it is much more probable that the works of Menes were designed rather to prevent a natural, than to produce an artificial, change in the channel of the river. Two of the most celebrated cascades in Europe, those of the Teverone at Tivoli and of the Velino at Terni, owe, if not their existence, at least their position and character, to the diversion of their waters from their natural beds into new channels, in order to obviate the evils produced by their frequent floods. Remarkable works of the same sort have been executed in Switzerland, in very recent times. Until the year 1714, the Kander, which drains several large Alpine valleys, ran, for a considerable distance, parallel with the Lake of Thun, and a few miles below the city of that name emptied into the river Aar. It frequently flooded the flats along the lower part of its course, and it was determined to divert it into the Lake of Thun. For this purpose, two parallel tunnels were cut through the intervening rock, and the river turned into them. The violence of the current burst up the roof of the tunnels, and, in a very short time, wore the new channel down not less than one hundred feet, and even deepened the former bed at least fifty feet, for a distance of two or three miles above the tunnel. The lake was two hundred feet deep at the point where the river was conducted into it, but the gravel and sand carried down by the Kander has formed at its mouth a delta containing more than a hundred acres, which is still advancing at the rate of several yards a year. The Linth, which formerly sent its waters directly to the Lake of Zurich, and often produced very destructive inundations, was turned into the Wallensee about forty years ago, and in both these cases a great quantity of valuable land was rescued both from flood and from insalubrity. In Switzerland, the most terrible inundations often result from the damming up of deep valleys by ice slips or by the gradual advance of glaciers, and the accumulation of great masses of water above the obstructions. The ice is finally dissolved by the heat of summer or the flow of warm waters, and when it bursts, the lake formed above is discharged almost in an instant, and all below is swept down to certain destruction. In 1595, about a hundred and fifty lives and a great amount of property were lost by the eruption of a lake formed by the descent of a glacier into the valley of the Drance, and a similar calamity laid waste a considerable extent of soil in the year 1818. On this latter occasion, the barrier of ice and snow was 3,000 feet long, 600 thick, and 400 high, and the lake which had formed above it contained not less than 800,000,000 cubic feet. A tunnel was driven through the ice, and about 300,000,000 cubic feet of water safely drawn off by it, but the thawing of the walls of the tunnel rapidly enlarged it, and before the lake was half drained, the barrier gave way and the remaining 500,000,000 cubic feet of water were discharged in half an hour. The recurrence of these floods has since been prevented by directing streams of water, warmed by the sun, upon the ice in the bed of the valley, and thus thawing it before it accumulates in sufficient mass to threaten serious danger. In the cases of diversion of streams above mentioned, important geographical changes have been directly produced by those operations. By the rarer process of draining glacier lakes, natural eruptions of water, which would have occasioned not less important changes in the face of the earth, have been prevented by human agency. The principal means hitherto relied upon for defence against river inundations has been the construction of dikes along the banks of the streams, parallel to the channel and generally separated from each other by a distance not much greater than the natural width of the bed.[362] If such walls are high enough to confine the water and strong enough to resist its pressure, they secure the lands behind them from all the evils of inundation except those resulting from infiltration; but such ramparts are enormously costly in original construction and maintenance, and, as we have already seen, the filling up of the bed of the river in its lower course, by sand and gravel, involves the necessity of occasionally incurring new expenditures in increasing the height of the banks.[363] They are attended, too, with some collateral disadvantages. They deprive the earth of the fertilizing deposits of the waters, which are powerful natural restoratives of soils exhausted by cultivation; they accelerate the rapidity and transporting power of the current at high water by confining it to a narrower channel, and it consequently conveys to the sea the earthy matter it holds in suspension, and chokes up harbors with a deposit which it would otherwise have spread over a wide surface; they interfere with roads and the convenience of river navigation, and no amount of cost or care can secure them from occasional rupture, in case of which the rush of the waters through the breach is more destructive than the natural flow of the highest inundation.[364] For these reasons, many experienced engineers are of opinion that the system of longitudinal dikes ought to be abandoned, or, where that cannot be done without involving too great a sacrifice of existing constructions, their elevation should be much reduced, so as to present no obstruction to the lateral spread of extraordinary floods, and they should be provided with sluices to admit the water without violence whenever they are likely to be overflowed. Where dikes have not been erected, and where they have been reduced in height, it is proposed to construct, at convenient intervals, transverse embankments of moderate height running from the banks of the river across the plains to the hills which bound them. These measures, it is argued, will diminish the violence of inundations by permitting the waters to extend themselves over a greater surface and thus retarding the flow of the river currents, and will, at the same time, secure the deposit of fertilizing slime upon all the soil covered by the flood. Rozet, an eminent French engineer, has proposed a method of diminishing the ravages of inundations, which aims to combine the advantages of all other systems, and at the same time to obviate the objections to which they are all more or less liable.[365] The plan of Rozet is recommended by its simplicity and cheapness as well as its facility and rapidity of execution, and is looked upon with favor by many persons very competent to judge in such matters. He proposes to commence with the amphitheatres in which mountain torrents so often rise, by covering their slopes and filling their beds with loose blocks of rock, and by constructing at their outlets, and at other narrow points in the channels of the torrents, permeable barriers of the same material promiscuously heaped up, much according to the method employed by the ancient Romans in their northern provinces for a similar purpose. By this means, he supposes, the rapidity of the current would be checked, and the quantity of transported pebbles and gravel much diminished. When the stream has reached that part of its course where it is bordered by soil capable of cultivation, and worth the expense of protection, he proposes to place along one or both sides of the stream, according to circumstances, a line of cubical blocks of stone or pillars of masonry three or four feet high and wide, and at the distance of about eleven yards from each other. The space between the two lines, or between a line and the opposite high bank, would, of course, be determined by observation of the width of the swift-water current at high floods. As an auxiliary measure, small ditches and banks, or low walls of pebbles, should be constructed from the line of blocks across the grounds to be protected, nearly at right angles to the current, but slightly inclining downward, and at convenient distances from each other. Rozet thinks the proper interval would be 300 yards, and it is evident that, if he is right in his main principle, hedges, rows of trees, or even common fences, would in many cases answer as good a purpose as banks and trenches or low walls. The blocks or pillars of stone would, he contends, check the lateral currents so as to compel them to let fall all their pebbles and gravel in the main channel--where they would be rolled along until ground down to sand or silt--and the transverse obstructions would detain the water upon the soil long enough to secure the deposit of its fertilizing slime. Numerous facts are cited in support of the author's views, and I imagine there are few residents of rural districts whose own observation will not furnish testimony confirmatory of their soundness.[366] The deposit of slime by rivers upon the flats along their banks not only contributes greatly to the fertility of the soil thus flowed, but it subserves a still more important purpose in the general economy of nature. All running streams begin with excavating channels for themselves, or deepening the natural depressions in which they flow;[367] but in proportion as their outlets are raised by the solid material transported by their currents, their velocity is diminished, they deposit gravel and sand at constantly higher and higher points, and so at last elevate, in the middle and lower part of their course, the beds they had previously scooped out.[368] The raising of the channels is compensated in part by the simultaneous elevation of their banks and the flats adjoining them, from the deposit of the finer particles of earth and vegetable mould brought down from the mountains, without which elevation the low grounds bordering all rivers would be, as in many cases they in fact are, mere morasses. All arrangements which tend to obstruct this process of raising the flats adjacent to the channel, whether consisting in dikes which confine the waters, and, at the same time, augment the velocity of the current, or in other means of producing the last-mentioned effect, interfere with the restorative economy of nature, and at last occasion the formation of marshes where, if left to herself, she would have accumulated inexhaustible stores of the richest soil, and spread them out in plains above the reach of ordinary floods.[369] _Consequences if the Nile had been Diked._ If a system of continuous lateral dikes, like those of the Po, had been adopted in Egypt in the early dynasties, when the power and the will to undertake the most stupendous material enterprises were so eminently characteristic of the government of that country, and the waters of the annual inundation consequently prevented from flooding the land, it is conceivable that the productiveness of the small area of cultivable soil in the Nile valley might have been long kept up by artificial irrigation and the application of manures. But nature would have rebelled at last, and centuries before our time the mighty river would have burst the fetters by which impotent man had vainly striven to bind his swelling floods, the fertile fields of Egypt would have been converted into dank morasses, and then, perhaps, in some distant future, when the expulsion of man should have allowed the gradual restoration of the primitive equilibrium, would be again transformed into luxuriant garden and plough land. Fortunately, the "wisdom of Egypt" taught her children better things. They invited and welcomed, not repulsed, the slimy embraces of Nilus, and his favors have been, from the hoariest antiquity, the greatest material blessing ever bestowed upon a people.[370] The valley of the Po has probably not been cultivated or inhabited so long as that of the Nile, but embankments have been employed on its lower course for at least two thousand years, and for many centuries they have been connected in a continuous chain. I have pointed out in a former chapter the effects produced on the geography of the Adriatic by the deposit of river sediment in the sea at the mouths of the Po, the Adige, and the Brenta. If these rivers had been left unconfined, like the Nile, and allowed to spread their muddy waters at will, according to the laws of nature, the slime they have carried to the coast would have been chiefly distributed over the plains of Lombardy. Their banks would have risen as fast as their beds, the coast line would not have been extended so far into the Adriatic, and, the current of the streams being consequently shorter, the inclination of their channel and the rapidity of their flow would not have been so greatly diminished. Had man spared a reasonable proportion of the forests of the Alps, and not attempted to control the natural drainage of the surface, the Po would resemble the Nile in all its essential characteristics, and, in spite of the difference of climate, perhaps be regarded as the friend and ally, not the enemy and the invader, of the population which dwells upon its banks.[371] The Nile is larger than all the rivers of Lombardy together,[372] it drains a basin twenty times as extensive, its banks have been occupied by man probably twice as long. But its geographical character has not been much changed in the whole period of recorded history, and, though its outlets have somewhat fluctuated in number and position, its historically known encroachments upon the sea are trifling compared with those of the Po and the neighboring streams. The deposits of the Nile are naturally greater in Upper than in Lower Egypt. They are found to have raised the soil at Thebes about seven feet within the last seventeen hundred years, and in the Delta the rise has been certainly more than half as great. We shall, therefore, not exceed the truth if we suppose the annually inundated surface of Egypt to have been elevated, upon an average, ten feet, within the last 5,000 years, or twice and a half the period during which the history of the Po is known to us.[373] We may estimate the present actually cultivated area of Egypt at about 5,500 square statute miles. As I have computed in a note on page 372, that area is not more than half as extensive as under the dynasties of the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies; for--though, in consequence of the elevation of the river bed, the inundations now have a wider _natural_ spread--the industry of the ancient Egyptians conducted the Nile water over a great extent of soil it does not now reach. We may, then, adopt a mean between the two quantities, and we shall probably come near the truth if we assume the convenient number of 7,920 square statute miles as the average measure of the inundated land during the historical period. Taking the deposit on this surface at ten feet, the river sediment let fall on the soil of Egypt within the last fifty centuries would amount to fifteen cubic miles. Had the Nile been banked in, like the Po, all this deposit, except that contained in the water diverted by canals or otherwise drawn from the river for irrigation and other purposes, would have been carried out to sea.[374] This would have been a considerable quantity; for the Nile holds earth in suspension even at low water, a much larger proportion during the flood, and irrigation must have been carried on during the whole year. The precise amount which would have been thus distributed over the soil is matter of conjecture, but three cubic miles is certainly a liberal estimate. This would leave twelve cubic miles as the quantity which embankments would have compelled the Nile to transport to the Mediterranean over and above what it has actually deposited in that sea. The Mediterranean is shoal for some miles out to sea along the whole coast of the Delta, and the large bays or lagoons within the coast line, which communicate both with the river and the sea, have little depth of water. These lagoons the river deposits would have filled up, and there would still have been surplus earth enough to extend the Delta far into the Mediterranean.[375] _Deposits of the Tuscan Rivers._ The Arno, and all the rivers rising on the western slopes and spurs of the Apennines, carry down immense quantities of mud to the Mediterranean. There can be no doubt that the volume of earth so transported is very much greater than it would have been had the soil about the headwaters of those rivers continued to be protected from wash by forests; and there is as little question that the quantity borne out to sea by the rivers of Western Italy is much increased by artificial embankments, because they are thereby prevented from spreading over the surface the sedimentary matter with which they are charged. The western coast of Tuscany has advanced some miles seaward within a very few centuries. The bed of the sea, for a long distance, has been raised, and of course the relative elevation of the land above it lessened; harbors have been filled up and destroyed; long lines of coast dunes have been formed, and the diminished inclination of the beds of the rivers near their outlets has caused their waters to overflow their banks and convert them into pestilential marshes. The territorial extent of Western Italy has thus been considerably increased, but the amount of soil habitable and cultivable by man has been, in a still higher proportion, diminished. The coast of ancient Etruria was filled with great commercial towns, and their rural environs were occupied by a large and prosperous population. But maritime Tuscany has long been one of the most unhealthy districts in Christendom; the famous mart of Populonia has not an inhabitant; the coast is almost absolutely depopulated, and the malarious fevers have extended their ravages far into the interior. These results are certainly not to be ascribed wholly to human action. They are, in a large proportion, due to geological causes over which man has no control. The soil of much of Tuscany becomes pasty, almost fluid even, as soon as it is moistened, and when thoroughly saturated with water, it flows like a river. Such a soil as this would not be completely protected by woods, and, indeed, it would now be difficult to confine it long enough to allow it to cover itself with forest vegetation. Nevertheless, it certainly was once chiefly wooded, and the rivers which flow through it must then have been much less charged with earthy matter than at present, and they must have carried into the sea a smaller proportion of their sediment when they were free to deposit it on their banks than since they have been confined by dikes.[376] It is, in general, true, that the intervention of man has hitherto seemed to insure the final exhaustion, ruin, and desolation of every province of nature which he has reduced to his dominion. Attila was only giving an energetic and picturesque expression to the tendencies of human action, as personified in himself, when he said that "no grass grew where his horse's hoofs had trod." The instances are few, where a second civilization has flourished upon the ruins of an ancient culture, and lands once rendered uninhabitable by human acts or neglect have generally been forever abandoned as hopelessly irreclaimable. It is, as I have before remarked, a question of vast importance, how far it is practicable to restore the garden we have wasted, and it is a problem on which experience throws little light, because few deliberate attempts have yet been made at the work of physical regeneration, on a scale large enough to warrant general conclusions in any one class of cases. The valleys and shores of Tuscany form, however, a striking exception to this remark. The success with which human guidance has made the operations of nature herself available for the restoration of her disturbed harmonies, in the Val di Chiana and the Tuscan Maremma, is among the noblest, if not the most brilliant achievements of modern engineering, and, regarded in all its bearings on the great question of which I have just spoken, it is, as an example, of more importance to the general interests of humanity than the proudest work of internal improvement that mechanical means have yet constructed. The operations in the Val di Chiana have consisted chiefly in so regulating the flow of the surface waters into and through it, as to compel them to deposit their sedimentary matter at the will of the engineers, and thereby to raise grounds rendered insalubrious and unfit for agricultural use by stagnating water; the improvements in the Maremma have embraced both this method of elevating the level of the soil, and the prevention of the mixture of salt water with fresh in the coast marshes and shallow bays, which is a very active cause of the development of malarious influences.[377] _Improvements in the Val di Chiana._ For twenty miles or more after the remotest headwaters of the Arno have united to form a considerable stream, this river flows southeastward to the vicinity of Arezzo. It here sweeps round to the northwest, and follows that course to near its junction with the Sieve, a few miles above Florence, from which point its general direction is westward to the sea. From the bend at Arezzo, a depression called the Val di Chiana runs southeastward until it strikes into the valley of the Paglia, a tributary of the Tiber, and thus connects the basin of the latter river with that of the Arno. In the Middle Ages, and down to the eighteenth century, the Val di Chiana was often overflowed and devastated by the torrents which poured down from the highlands, transporting great quantities of slime with their currents, stagnating upon its surface, and gradually converting it into a marshy and unhealthy district, which was at last very greatly reduced in population and productiveness. It had, in fact, become so desolate that even the swallow had deserted it.[378] The bed of the Arno near Arezzo and that of the Paglia at the southern extremity of the Val di Chiana did not differ much in level. The general inclination of the valley was therefore small; it does not appear to have ever been divided into opposite slopes by a true watershed, and the position of the summit seems to have shifted according to the varying amount and place of deposit of the sediment brought down by the lateral streams which emptied into it. The length of its principal channel of drainage, and even the direction of its flow at any given point, were therefore fluctuating. Hence, much difference of opinion was entertained at different times with regard to the normal course of this stream, and, consequently, to the question whether it was to be regarded as properly an affluent of the Tiber or of the Arno. The bed of the latter river at the bend has been eroded to the depth of thirty or forty feet, and that, apparently, at no very remote period. If it were elevated to what was evidently its original height, the current of the Arno would be so much above that of the Paglia as to allow of a regular flow from its channel to the latter stream, through the Val di Chiana, provided the bed of the valley had remained at the level which excavations prove it to have had a few centuries ago, before it was raised by the deposits I have mentioned. These facts, together with the testimony of ancient geographers which scarcely admits of any other explanation, are thought to prove that all the waters of the Upper Arno were originally discharged through the Val di Chiana into the Tiber, and that a part of them still continued to flow, at least occasionally, in that direction down to the days of the Roman empire, and perhaps for some time later. The depression of the bed of the Arno, and the raising of that of the valley by the deposits of the lateral torrents and of the Arno itself, finally cut off the branch of the river which had flowed to the Tiber, and all its waters were turned into its present channel, though the principal drainage of the Val di Chiana appears to have been in a southeastwardly direction until within a comparatively recent period. In the sixteenth century, the elevation of the bed of the valley had become so considerable, that in 1551, at a point about ten miles south of the Arno, it was found to be not less than one hundred and thirty feet above that river; then followed a level of ten miles, and then a continuous descent to the Paglia. Along the level portion of the valley was a boatable channel, and lakes, sometimes a mile or even two miles in breadth, had formed at various points farther south. At this period, the drainage of the summit level might easily have been determined in either direction, and the opposite descents of the valley made to culminate at the north or at the south end of the level. In the former case, the watershed would have been ten miles south of the Arno; in the latter, twenty miles, and the division would have been not very unequal. Various schemes were suggested at this time for drawing off the stagnant waters, as well as for the future regular drainage of the valley, and small operations for those purposes were undertaken with partial success; but it was feared that the discharge of the accumulated waters into the Tiber would produce a dangerous inundation, while the diversion of the drainage into the Arno would increase the violence of the floods to which that river was very subject, and no decisive steps were taken. In 1606, an engineer whose name has not been preserved proposed, as the only possible method of improvement, the piercing of a tunnel through the hills bounding the valley on the west to convey its waters to the Ombrone, but the expense and other objections prevented the adoption of this project.[379] The fears of the Roman Government for the security of the valley of the Tiber had induced it to construct barriers across that part of the channel which lay within its territory, and these obstructions, though not specifically intended for that purpose, naturally promoted the deposit of sediment and the elevation of the bed of the valley in their neighborhood. The effect of this measure and of the continued spontaneous action of the torrents was, that the northern slope, which in 1551 had commenced at the distance of ten miles from the Arno, was found in 1605 to begin, nearly thirty miles south of that river, and in 1645 it had been removed about six miles farther in the same direction.[380] In the seventeenth century, the Tuscan and Papal Governments consulted Galileo, Torricelli, Castelli, Cassini, Viviani, and other distinguished philosophers and engineers, on the possibility of reclaiming the valley by a regular artificial drainage. Most of these eminent physicists were of opinion that the measure was impracticable, though not altogether for the same reasons; but they seem to have agreed in thinking that the opening of such channels, in either direction, as would give the current a flow sufficiently rapid to drain the lands properly, would dangerously augment the inundations of the river--whether the Tiber or the Arno--into which the waters should be turned. The general improvement of the valley was now for a long time abandoned, and the waters were allowed to spread and stagnate until carried off by partial drainage, infiltration, and evaporation. Torricelli had contended that the slope of a large part of the valley was too small to allow it to be drained by ordinary methods, and that no practicable depth and width of canal would suffice for that purpose. It could be laid dry, he thought, only by converting its surface into an inclined plane, and he suggested that this might be accomplished by controlling the flow of the numerous torrents which pour into it, so as to force them to deposit their sediment at the pleasure of the engineer, and, consequently, to elevate the level of the area over which it should be spread.[381] This plan did not meet with immediate general acceptance, but it was soon adopted for local purposes at some points in the southern part of the valley, and it gradually grew in public favor and was extended in application until its final triumph a hundred years later. In spite of these encouraging successes, however, the fear of danger to the valley of the Arno and the Tiber, and the difficulty of an agreement between Tuscany and Rome--the boundary between which states crossed the Val di Chiana not far from the halfway point between the two rivers--and of reconciling other conflicting interests, prevented the resumption of the projects for the general drainage of the valley until after the middle of the eighteenth century. In the mean time the science of hydraulics had become better understood, and the establishment of the natural law according to which the velocity of a current of water, and of course the proportional quantity discharged by it in a given time, are increased by increasing its mass, had diminished if not dissipated the fear of exposing the banks of the Arno to greater danger from inundations by draining the Val di Chiana into it. The suggestion of Torricelli was finally adopted as the basis of a comprehensive system of improvement, and it was decided to continue and extend the inversion of the original flow of the waters, and to turn them into the Arno from a point as far to the south as should be found practicable. The conduct of the works was committed to a succession of able engineers who, for a long series of years, were under the general direction of the celebrated philosopher and statesman Fossombroni, and the success has fully justified the expectations of the most sanguine advocates of the scheme. The plan of improvement embraced two branches: the one, the removal of certain obstructions in the bed of the Arno, and, consequently, the further depression of the channel of that river, in certain places, with the view of increasing the rapidity of its current; the other, the gradual filling up of the ponds and swamps, and raising of the lower grounds of the Val di Chiana, by directing to convenient points the flow of the streams which pour down into it, and there confining their waters by temporary dams until the sediment was deposited where it was needed. The economical result of these operations has been, that in 1835 an area of more than four hundred and fifty square miles of pond, marsh, and damp, sickly low grounds had been converted into fertile, healthy and well-drained soil, and, consequently, that so much territory has been added to the agricultural domain of Tuscany. But in our present view of the subject, the geographical revolution which has been accomplished is still more interesting. The climatic influence of the elevation and draining of the soil must have been considerable, though I do not know that an increase or a diminution of the mean temperature or precipitation in the valley has been established by meteorological observation. There is, however, in the improvement of the sanitary condition of the Val di Chiana, which was formerly extremely unhealthy, satisfactory proof of a beneficial climatic change. The fevers, which not only decimated the population of the low grounds but infested the adjacent hills, have ceased their ravages, and are now not more frequent than in other parts of Tuscany. The strictly topographical effect of the operations in question, besides the conversion of marsh into dry surface, has been the inversion of the inclination of the valley for a distance of thirty-five miles, so that this great plain which, within a comparatively short period, sloped and drained its waters to the south, now inclines and sends its drainage to the north. The reversal of the currents of the valley has added to the Arno a new tributary equal to the largest of its former affluents, and a most important circumstance connected with this latter fact is, that the increase of the volume of its waters has accelerated their velocity in a still greater proportion, and, instead of augmenting the danger from its inundations, has almost wholly obviated that source of apprehension. Between the beginning of the fifteenth century and the year 1761, thirty-one destructive floods of the Arno are recorded; between 1761, when the principal streams of the Val di Chiana were diverted into that river, and 1835, not one.[382] _Improvements in the Tuscan Maremme._ In the improvements of the Tuscan Maremma, more formidable difficulties have been encountered. The territory to be reclaimed was more extensive; the salubrious places of retreat for laborers and inspectors were more remote; the courses of the rivers to be controlled were longer and their natural inclination less rapid; some of them, rising in wooded regions, transported comparatively little earthy matter,[383] and above all, A like example is observed in the Anapus near Syracuse, which, below the junction of its two branches, is narrower, though swifter than either of them, and such cases are by no means unfrequent. The immediate effect of the confluence of two rivers upon the current below depends upon local circumstances, and especially upon the angle of incidence. If the two nearly coincide in direction, so as to include a small angle, the joint current will have a greater velocity than the slower confluent, perhaps even than either of them. If the two rivers run in transverse, still more if they flow in more or less opposite directions, the velocity of the principal branch will be retarded both above and below the junction, and at high water it may even set back the current of the affluent. On the other hand, the diversion of a considerable branch from a river retards its velocity below the point of separation, and here a deposit of earth in its channel immediately begins, which has a tendency to turn the whole stream into the new bed. "Theory and the authority of all hydrographical writers combine to show that the channels of rivers undergo an elevation of bed below a canal of diversion."--Letter of FOSSOMBRONI, in SALVAGNOLI, _Raccolta di Documenti_, p. 32. See the early authorities and discussions on the principle stated in the text, in FRISI, _Del modo di regolare i Fiumi e i Torrenti_, libro iii, capit. i. the coast, which is a recent deposit of the waters, is little elevated above the sea, and admits into its lagoons and the mouths of its rivers floods of salt water with every western wind, every rising tide.[384] The western coast of Tuscany is not supposed to have been an unhealthy region before the conquest of Etruria by the Romans, but it certainly became so within a few centuries after that event. This was a natural consequence of the neglect or wanton destruction of the public improvements, and especially the hydraulic works in which the Etruscans were so skilful, and of the felling of the upland forests, to satisfy the demand for wood at Rome for domestic, industrial, and military purposes. After the downfall of the Roman empire, the incursions of the barbarians, and then feudalism, foreign domination, intestine wars, and temporal and spiritual tyrannies, aggravated still more cruelly the moral and physical evils which Tuscany and the other Italian States were doomed to suffer, and from which they have enjoyed but brief respites during the whole period of modern history. The Maremma was already proverbially unhealthy in the time of Dante, who refers to the fact in several familiar passages, and the petty tyrants upon its borders often sent criminals to places of confinement in its territory, as a slow but certain mode of execution. Ignorance of the causes of the insalubrity, and often the interference of private rights,[385] prevented the adoption of measures to remove it, and the growing political and commercial importance of the large towns in more healthful localities absorbed the attention of Government, and deprived the Maremma of its just share in the systems of physical improvement which were successfully adopted in interior and Northern Italy. Before any serious attempts were made to drain or fill up the marshes of the Maremme, various other sanitary experiments were tried. It was generally believed that the insalubrity of the province was the consequence, not the cause, of its depopulation, and that, if it were once densely inhabited, the ordinary operations of agriculture, and especially the maintenance of numerous domestic fires, would restore it to its ancient healthfulness.[386] In accordance with these views, settlers were invited from various parts of Italy, from Greece, and, after the accession of the Lorraine princes, from that country also, and colonized in the Maremme. To strangers coming from soils and skies so unlike those of the Tuscan marshes, the climate was more fatal than to the inhabitants of the neighboring districts, whose constitutions had become in some degree inured to the local influences, or who at least knew better how to guard against them. The consequence very naturally was that the experiment totally failed to produce the desired effects, and was attended with a great sacrifice of life and a heavy loss to the treasury of the state. The territory known as the Tuscan Maremma, _ora maritima_, or Maremme--for the plural form is most generally used--lies upon and near the western coast of Tuscany, and comprises about 1,900 square miles English, of which 500 square miles, or 320,000 acres, are plain and marsh including 45,500 acres of water surface, and about 290,000 acres are forest. One of the mountain peaks, that of Mount Amiata, rises to the height of 6,280 feet. The mountains of the Maremma are healthy, the lower hills much less so, as the malaria is felt at some points at the height of 1,000 feet, and the plains, with the exception of a few localities favorably situated on the seacoast, are in a high degree pestilential. The fixed population is about 80,000, of whom one sixth live on the plains in the winter and about one tenth in the summer. Nine or ten thousand laborers come down from the mountains of the Maremma and the neighboring provinces into the plain, during the latter season, to cultivate and gather the crops. Out of this small number of inhabitants and strangers, 35,619 were ill enough to require medical treatment between the 1st of June, 1840, and the 1st of June, 1841, and more than one half the cases were of intermittent, malignant, gastric, or catarrhal fever. Very few agricultural laborers escaped fever, though the disease did not always manifest itself until they had returned to the mountains. In the province of Grosseto, which embraces nearly the whole of the Maremma, the annual mortality was 3.92 per cent. the average duration of life but 23.18 years, and 75 per cent. of the deaths were among persons engaged in agriculture. The filling up of the low grounds and the partial separation of the waters of the sea and the land, which had been in progress since the year 1827, now began to show very decided effects upon the sanitary condition of the population. In the year ending June 1st, 1842, the number of the sick was reduced by more than 2,000, and the cases of fever by more than 4,000. The next year, the cases of fever fell to 10,500, and in that ending June 1st, 1844, to 9,200. The political events of 1848 and the preceding and following years, occasioned the suspension of the works of improvement in the Maremma, but they were resumed after the revolution of 1859, and are now in successful progress. I have spoken, with some detail, of the improvements in the Val di Chiana and the Tuscan Maremma, because of their great relative importance, and because their history is well known; but like operations have been executed in the territory of Pisa and upon the coast of the duchy of Lucca. In the latter case, they were confined principally to prevention of the intermixing of fresh water with that of the sea. In 1741, sluices or lock gates were constructed for this purpose, and the following year, the fevers, which had been destructive to the coast population for a long time previous, disappeared altogether. In 1768 and 1769, the works having fallen to decay, the fevers returned in a very malignant form, but the rebuilding of the gates again restored the healthfulness of the shore. Similar facts recurred in 1784 and 1785, and again from 1804 to 1821. This long and repeated experience has at last impressed upon the people the necessity of vigilant attention to the sluices, which are now kept in constant repair. The health of the coast is uninterrupted, and Viareggio, the capital town of the district, is now much frequented for its sea baths and its general salubrity, at a season when formerly it was justly shunned as the abode of disease and death.[387] It is now a hundred years since the commencement of the improvements in the Val di Chiana, and those of the Maremma have been in more or less continued operation for above a generation. They have, as we have seen, produced important geographical changes in the surface of the earth and in the flow of considerable rivers, and their effects have been not less conspicuous in preventing other changes, of a deleterious character, which would infallibly have taken place if they had not been arrested by the improvements in question. It has been already stated that, in order to prevent the overflow of the valley of the Tiber by freely draining the Val di Chiana into it, the Papal authorities, long before the commencement of the Tuscan works, constructed strong barriers near the southern end of the valley, which detained the waters of the wet season until they could be gradually drawn off into the Paglia. They consequently deposited most of their sediment in the Val di Chiana and carried down comparatively little earth to the Tiber. The lateral streams contributing the largest quantities of sedimentary matter to the Val di Chiana originally flowed into that valley near its northern end; and the change of their channels and outlets in a southern direction, so as to raise that part of the valley by their deposits and thereby reverse its drainage, was one of the principal steps in the process of improvement. We have seen that the north end of the Val di Chiana near the Arno had been raised by spontaneous deposit of sediment to such a height as to interpose a sufficient obstacle to all flow in that direction. If, then, the Roman dam had not been erected, or the works of the Tuscan Government undertaken, the whole of the earth, which has been arrested by those works and employed to raise the bed and reverse the declivity of the valley, would have been carried down to the Tiber and thence into the sea. The deposit thus created, would, of course, have contributed to increase the advance of the shore at the mouth of that river, which has long been going on at the rate of three mètres and nine tenths (twelve feet and nine inches) per annum.[388] It is evident that a quantity of earth, sufficient to effect the immense changes I have described in a wide valley more than thirty miles long, if deposited at the outlet of the Tiber, would have very considerably modified the outline of the coast, and have exerted no unimportant influence on the flow of that river, by raising its point of discharge and lengthening its channel. The sediment washed into the marshes of the Maremme is not less than 12,000,000 cubic yards per annum. The escape of this quantity into the sea, which is now almost wholly prevented, would be sufficient to advance the coast line fourteen yards per year, for a distance of forty miles, computing the mean depth of the sea near the shore at twelve yards. It is true that in this case, as well as in that of other rivers, the sedimentary matter would not be distributed equally along the shore, and much of it would be carried out into deep water, or perhaps transported by the currents to distant coasts. The immediate effects of the deposit, therefore, would not be so palpable as they appear in this numerical form, but they would be equally certain, and would infallibly manifest themselves, first, perhaps, at some remote point, and afterward at or near the outlets of the rivers which produced them. _Obstruction of River Mouths._ The mouths of a large proportion of the streams known to ancient internal navigation are already blocked up by sandbars or fluviatile deposits, and the maritime approaches to river harbors frequented by the ships of Phenicia and Carthage and Greece and Rome are shoaled to a considerable distance out to sea. The inclination of almost every known river bed has been considerably reduced within the historical period, and nothing but great volume of water, or exceptional rapidity of flow, now enables a few large streams like the Amazon, the La Plata, the Ganges, and, in a less degree, the Mississippi, to carry their own deposits far enough out into deep water to prevent the formation of serious obstructions to navigation. But the degradation of their banks, and the transportation of earthy matter to the sea by their currents, are gradually filling up the estuaries even of these mighty floods, and unless the threatened evil shall be averted by the action of geological forces, or by artificial contrivances more efficient than dredging machines, the destruction of every harbor in the world which receives a considerable river must inevitably take place at no very distant date. This result would, perhaps, have followed in some incalculably distant future, if man had not come to inhabit the earth as soon as the natural forces which had formed its surface had arrived at such an approximate equilibrium that his existence on the globe was possible; but the general effect of his industrial operations has been to accelerate it immensely. Rivers, in countries planted by nature with forests and never inhabited by man, employ the little earth and gravel they transport chiefly to raise their own beds and to form plains in their basins.[389] In their upper course, where the current is swiftest, they are most heavily charged with coarse rolled or suspended matter, and this, in floods, they deposit on their shores in the mountain valleys where they rise; in their middle course, a lighter earth is spread over the bottom of their widening basins, and forms plains of moderate extent; the fine silt which floats farther is deposited over a still broader area, or, if carried out to sea, is, in great part quickly swept far off by marine currents and dropped at last in deep water. Man's "improvement" of the soil increases the erosion from its surface; his arrangements for confining the lateral spread of the water in floods compel the rivers to transport to their mouths the earth derived from that erosion even in their upper course; and, consequently, the sediment they deposit at their outlets is not only much larger in quantity, but composed of heavier materials, which sink more readily to the bottom of the sea and are less easily removed by marine currents. The tidal movement of the ocean, deep sea currents, and the agitation of inland waters by the wind, lift up the sands strewn over the bottom by diluvial streams or sent down by mountain torrents, and throw them up on dry land, or deposit them in sheltered bays and nooks of the coast--for the flowing is stronger than the ebbing tide, the affluent than the refluent wave. This cause of injury to harbors it is not in man's power to resist by any means at present available; but, as we have seen, something can be done to prevent the degradation of high grounds, and to diminish the quantity of earth which is annually abstracted from the mountains, from table lands, and from river banks, to raise the bottom of the sea. This latter cause of harbor obstruction, though an active agent, is, nevertheless, in many cases, the less powerful of the two. The earth suspended in the lower course of fluviatile currents is lighter than sea sand, river water lighter than sea water, and hence, if a land stream enters the sea with a considerable volume, its water flows over that of the sea, and bears its slime with it until it lets it fall far from shore, or, as is more frequently the case, mingles with some marine current and transports its sediment to a remote point of deposit. The earth borne out of the mouths of the Nile is in part carried over the waves which throw up sea sand on the beach, and deposited in deep water, in part drifted by the current, which sweeps east and north along the coasts of Egypt and Syria, until it finds a resting place in the northeastern angle of the Mediterranean.[390] Thus the earth loosened by the rude Abyssinian ploughshare, and washed down by the rain from the hills of Ethiopia which man has stripped of their protecting forests, contributes to raise the plains of Egypt, to shoal the maritime channels which lead to the city built by Alexander near the mouth of the Nile, and to fill up the harbors made famous by Phenician commerce. _Subterranean Waters._ I have frequently alluded to a branch of geography, the importance of which is but recently adequately recognized--the subterranean waters of the earth considered as stationary reservoirs, as flowing currents, and as filtrating fluids. The earth drinks in moisture by direct absorption from the atmosphere, by the deposition of dew, by rain and snow, by percolation from rivers and other superficial bodies of water, and sometimes by currents flowing into caves or smaller visible apertures.[391] Some of this humidity is exhaled again by the soil, some is taken up by organic growths and by inorganic compounds, some poured out upon the surface by springs and either immediately evaporated or carried down to larger streams and to the sea, some flows by subterranean courses into the bed of fresh-water rivers[392] or of the ocean, and some remains, though even here not in forever motionless repose, to fill deep cavities and underground channels.[393] In every case the aqueous vapors of the air are the ultimate source of supply, and all these hidden stores are again returned to the atmosphere by evaporation. The proportion of the water of precipitation taken up by direct evaporation from the surface of the ground seems to have been generally exaggerated, sufficient allowance not being made for moisture carried downward, or in a lateral direction, by infiltration or by crevices in the superior rocky or earthy strata. According to Wittwer, Mariotte found that but one sixth of the precipitation in the basin of the Seine was delivered into the sea by that river, "so that five sixths remained for evaporation and consumption by the organic world."[394] Lieutenant Maury--whose scientific reputation, though fallen, has not quite sunk to the level of his patriotism--estimates the annual amount of precipitation in the valley of the Mississippi at 620 cubic miles, the discharge of that river into the sea at 107 cubic miles, and concludes that "this would leave 513 cubic miles of water to be evaporated from this river basin annually."[395] In these and other like computations, the water carried down into the earth by capillary and larger conduits is wholly lost sight of, and no thought is bestowed upon the supply for springs, for common and artesian wells, and for underground rivers, like those in the great caves of Kentucky, which may gush up in fresh-water currents at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea, or rise to the light of day in the far-off peninsula of Florida. The progress of the emphatically modern science of geology has corrected these erroneous views, because the observations on which it depends have demonstrated not only the existence, but the movement, of water in nearly all geological formations, have collected evidence of the presence of large reservoirs at greater or less depths beneath surfaces of almost every character, and have investigated the rationale of the attendant phenomena. The distribution of these waters has been minutely studied with reference to a great number of localities, and though the actual mode of their vertical and horizontal transmission is still involved in much doubt, the laws which determine their aggregation are so well understood, that, when the geology of a given district is known, it is not difficult to determine at what depth water will be reached by the borer, and to what height it will rise. The same principles have been successfully applied to the discovery of small subterranean collections or currents of water, and some persons have acquired, by a moderate knowledge of the superficial structure of the earth combined with long practice, a skill in the selection of favorable places for digging wells which seems to common observers little less than miraculous. The Abbé Paramelle--a French ecclesiastic who devoted himself for some years to this subject and was extensively employed as a well-finder--states, in his work on Fountains, that in the course of thirty-four years he had pointed out more than ten thousand subterranean springs, and though his geological speculations were often erroneous, the highest scientific authorities in Europe have testified to the great practical value of his methods, and the almost infallible certainty of his predictions.[396] Babinet quotes a French proverb, "Summer rain wets nothing," and explains it as meaning that the water of such rains is "almost totally taken up by evaporation." "The rains of summer," he adds, "however abundant they may be, do not penetrate the soil to a greater depth than 15 or 20 centimètres. In summer the evaporating power of the heat is five or six times as great as in winter, and this power is exerted by an atmosphere capable of containing five times as much vapor as in winter." "A stratum of snow which prevents evaporation [from the soil] causes almost all the water that composes it to filter down into the earth, and form a reserve for springs, wells, and rivers which could not be supplied by any amount of summer rain." "This latter--useful, indeed like dew, to vegetation--does not penetrate the soil and accumulate a store to feed springs and to be brought up by them to the open air."[397] This conclusion, however applicable it may be to the climate and soil of France, is too broadly stated to be accepted as a general truth, and in countries where the precipitation is small in the winter months, familiar observation shows that the quantity of water yielded by deep wells and natural springs depends not less on the rains of summer than on those of the rest of the year, and, consequently, that much of the precipitation of that season must find its way to strata too deep to lose water by evaporation. The supply of subterranean reservoirs and currents, as well as of springs, is undoubtedly derived chiefly from infiltration, and hence it must be affected by all changes of the natural surface that accelerate or retard the drainage of the soil, or that either promote or obstruct evaporation from it. It has sufficiently appeared from what has gone before, that the spontaneous drainage of cleared ground is more rapid than that of the forest, and consequently, that the felling of the woods, as well as the draining of swamps, deprives the subterranean waters of accessions which would otherwise be conveyed to them by infiltration. The same effect is produced by artificial contrivances for drying the soil either by open ditches or by underground pipes or channels, and in proportion as the sphere of these operations is extended, the effect of them cannot fail to make itself more and more sensibly felt in the diminished supply of water furnished by wells and running springs.[398] It is undoubtedly true that loose soils, stripped of vegetation and broken up by the plough or other processes of cultivation, may, until again carpeted by grasses or other plants, absorb more rain and snow water than when they were covered by a natural growth; but it is also true that the evaporation from such soils is augmented in a still greater proportion. Rain scarcely penetrates beneath the sod of grass ground, but runs off over the surface; and after the heaviest showers a ploughed field will often be dried by evaporation before the water can be carried off by infiltration, while the soil of a neighboring grove will remain half saturated for weeks together. Sandy soils frequently rest on a tenacious subsoil, at a moderate depth, as is usually seen in the pine plains of the United States, where pools of rain water collect in slight depressions on the surface of earth, the upper stratum of which is as porous as a sponge. In the open grounds such pools are very soon dried up by the sun and wind; in the woods they remain unevaporated long enough for the water to diffuse itself laterally until it finds, in the subsoil, crevices through which it may escape, or slopes which it may follow to their outcrop or descend along them to lower strata. The readiness with which water not obstructed by impermeable strata diffuses itself through the earth in all directions--and, consequently, the importance of keeping up the supply of subterranean reservoirs--find a familiar illustration in the effect of paving the ground about the stems of vines and trees. The surface earth around the trunk of a tree may be made perfectly impervious to water, by flag stones and cement, for a distance greater than the spread of the roots; and yet the tree will not suffer for want of moisture, except in droughts severe enough sensibly to affect the supply in deep wells and springs. Both forest and fruit trees grow well in cities where the streets and courts are closely paved, and where even the lateral access of water to the roots is more or less obstructed by deep cellars and foundation walls. The deep-lying veins and sheets of water, supplied by infiltration from above, send up moisture by capillary attraction, and the pavement prevents the soil beneath it from losing its humidity by evaporation. Hence, city-grown trees find moisture enough for their roots, and though plagued with smoke and dust, often retain their freshness while those planted in the open fields, where sun and wind dry up the soil faster than the subterranean fountains can water it, are withering from drought. Without the help of artificial conduit or of water carrier, the Thames and the Seine refresh the ornamental trees that shade the thoroughfares of London and of Paris, and beneath the hot and reeking mould of Egypt, the Nile sends currents to the extremest border of its valley.[399] _Artesian Wells._ The existence of artesian wells depends upon that of subterranean reservoirs and rivers, and the supply yielded by borings is regulated by the abundance of such sources. The waters of the earth are, in many cases, derived from superficial currents which are seen to pour into chasms opened, as it were, expressly for their reception; and in others where no apertures in the crust of the earth have been detected, their existence is proved by the fact that artesian wells sometimes bring up from great depths seeds, leaves, and even living fish, which must have been carried down through channels large enough to admit a considerable stream. But in general, the sheets and currents of water reached by deep boring appear to be primarily due to infiltration from highlands where the water is first collected in superficial or subterranean reservoirs. By means of channels conforming to the dip of the strata, these reservoirs communicate with the lower basins, and exert upon them a fluid pressure sufficient to raise a column to the surface, whenever an orifice is opened.[400] The water delivered by an artesian well is, therefore, often derived from distant sources, and may be wholly unaffected by geographical or meteorological changes in its immediate neighborhood, while the same changes may quite dry up common wells and springs which are fed only by the local infiltration of their own narrow basins. In most cases, artesian wells have been bored for purely economical or industrial purposes, such as to obtain good water for domestic use or for driving light machinery, to reach saline or other mineral springs, and recently, in America, to open fountains of petroleum or rock oil. The geographical and geological effects of such abstraction of fluids from the bowels of the earth are too remote and uncertain to be here noticed;[401] but artesian wells have lately been employed in Algeria for a purpose which has even now a substantial, and may hereafter acquire a very great geographical importance. It was observed by many earlier as well as recent travellers in the East, among whom Shaw deserves special mention, that the Libyan desert, bordering upon the cultivated shores of the Mediterranean, appeared in many places to rest upon a subterranean lake at an accessible distance below the surface. The Moors are vaguely said to have _bored_ artesian wells down to this reservoir, to obtain water for domestic use and irrigation, but I do not find such wells described by any trustworthy traveller, and the universal astonishment and incredulity with which the native tribes viewed the operations of the French engineers sent into the desert for that purpose, are a sufficient proof that this mode of reaching the subterranean waters was new to them. They were, however, aware of the existence of water below the sands, and were dexterous in digging wells--square shafts lined with a framework of palm-tree stems--to the level of the sheet. The wells so constructed, though not technically artesian wells, answer the same purpose; for the water rises to the surface and flows over it as from a spring.[402] These wells, however, are too few and too scanty in supply to serve any other purposes than the domestic wells of other countries, and it is but recently that the transformation of desert into cultivable land by this means has been seriously attempted. The French Government has bored a large number of artesian wells in the Algerian desert within a few years, and the native sheikhs are beginning to avail themselves of the process. Every well becomes the nucleus of a settlement proportioned to the supply of water, and before the end of the year 1860, several nomade tribes had abandoned their wandering life, established themselves around the wells, and planted more than 30,000 palm trees, besides other perennial vegetables.[403] The water is found at a small depth, generally from 100 to 200 feet, and though containing too large a proportion of mineral matter to be acceptable to a European palate, it answers well for irrigation, and does not prove unwholesome to the natives. The most obvious use of artesian wells in the desert at present is that of creating stations for the establishment of military posts and halting places for the desert traveller; but if the supply of water shall prove adequate for the indefinite extension of the system, it is probably destined to produce a greater geographical transformation than has ever been effected by any scheme of human improvement. The most striking contrast of landscape scenery that nature brings near together in time or place, is that between the greenery of the tropics, or of a northern summer, and the snowy pall of leafless winter. Next to this in startling novelty of effect, we must rank the sudden transition from the shady and verdant oasis of the desert to the bare and burning party-colored ocean of sand and rock which surrounds it.[404] The most sanguine believer in indefinite human progress hardly expects that man's cunning will accomplish the universal fufilment of the prophecy, "the desert shall blossom as the rose," in its literal sense; but sober geographers have thought the future conversion of the sand plains of Northern Africa into fruitful gardens, by means of artesian wells, not an improbable expectation. They have gone farther, and argued that, if the soil were covered with fields and forests, vegetation would call down moisture from the Libyan sky, and that the showers which are now wasted on the sea, or so often deluge Southern Europe with destructive inundation, would in part be condensed over the arid wastes of Africa, and thus, without further aid from man, bestow abundance on regions which nature seems to have condemned to perpetual desolation. An equally bold speculation, founded on the well-known fact, that the temperature of the earth and of its internal waters increases as we descend beneath the surface, has suggested that artesian wells might supply heat for industrial and domestic purposes, for hot-house cultivation, and even for the local amelioration of climate. The success with which Count Lardarello has employed natural hot springs for the evaporation of water charged with boracic acid, and other fortunate applications of the heat of thermal sources, lend some countenance to the latter project; but both must, for the present, be ranked among the vague possibilities of science, not regarded as probable future triumphs of man over nature. _Artificial Springs._ A more plausible and inviting scheme is that of the creation of perennial springs by husbanding rain and snow water, storing it up in artificial reservoirs of earth, and filtering it through purifying strata, in analogy with the operations of nature. The sagacious Palissy--starting from the theory that all springs are primarily derived from precipitation, and reasoning justly on the accumulation and movement of water in the earth--proposed to reduce theory to practice, and to imitate the natural processes by which rain is absorbed by the earth and given out again in running fountains. "When I had long and diligently considered the cause of the springing of natural fountains and the places where they be wont to issue," says he, "I did plainly perceive, at last, that they do proceed and are engendered of nought but the rains. And it is this, look you, which hath moved me to enterprise the gathering together of rain water after the manner of nature, and the most closely according to her fashion that I am able; and I am well assured that by following the formulary of the Supreme Contriver of fountains, I can make springs, the water whereof shall be as good and pure and clear as of such which be natural."[405] Palissy discusses the subject of the origin of springs at length and with much ability, dwelling specially on infiltration, and, among other things, thus explains the frequency of springs in mountainous regions: "Having well considered the which, thou mayest plainly see the reason why there be more springs and rivulets proceeding from the mountains than from the rest of the earth; which is for no other cause but that the rocks and mountains do retain the water of the rains like vessels of brass. And the said waters falling upon the said mountains descend continually through the earth, and through crevices, and stop not till they find some place that is bottomed with stone or close and thick rocks; and they rest upon such bottom until they find some channel or other manner of issue, and then they flow out in springs or brooks or rivers, according to the greatness of the reservoirs and of the outlets thereof."[406] After a full exposition of his theory, Palissy proceeds to describe his method of creating springs, which is substantially the same as that lately proposed by Babinet in the following terms: "Choose a piece of ground containing four or five acres, with a sandy soil, and with a gentle slope to determine the flow of the water. Along its upper line, dig a trench five or six feet deep and six feet wide. Level the bottom of the trench, and make it impermeable by paving, by macadamizing, by bitumen, or, more simply and cheaply, by a layer of clay. By the side of this trench dig another, and throw the earth from it into the first, and so on until you have rendered the subsoil of the whole parcel impermeable to rain water. Build a wall along the lower line with an aperture in the middle for the water, and plant fruit or other low trees upon the whole, to shade the ground and check the currents of air which promote evaporation. This will infallibly give you a good spring which will flow without intermission and supply the wants of a whole hamlet or a large chateau."[407] Babinet states that the whole amount of precipitation on a reservoir of the proposed area, in the climate of Paris, would be about 13,000 cubic yards, not above one half of which, he thinks, would be lost, and, of course, the other half would remain available to supply the spring. I much doubt whether this expectation would be realized in practice, in its whole extent; for if Babinet is right in supposing that the summer rain is wholly evaporated, the winter rains, being much less in quantity, would hardly suffice to keep the earth saturated and give off so large a surplus. The method of Palissy, though, as I have said, similar in principle to that of Babinet, would be cheaper of execution, and, at the same time, more efficient. He proposes the construction of relatively small filtering receptacles, into which he would conduct the rain falling upon a large area of rocky hillside, or other sloping ground not readily absorbing water. This process would, in all probability, be a very successful, as well as an inexpensive, mode of economizing atmospheric precipitation, and compelling the rain and snow to form perennial fountains at will. _Economizing Precipitation._ The methods suggested by Palissy and by Babinet are of limited application, and designed only to supply a sufficient quantity of water for the domestic use of small villages or large private establishments. Dumas has proposed a much more extensive system for collecting and retaining the whole precipitation in considerable valleys, and storing it in reservoirs, whence it is to be drawn for household and mechanical purposes, for irrigation, and, in short, for all the uses to which the water of natural springs and brooks is applicable. His plan consists in draining both surface and subsoil, by means of conduits differing in construction according to local circumstances, but in the main not unlike those employed in improved agriculture, collecting the water in a central channel, securing its proper filterage, checking its too rapid flow by barriers at convenient points, and finally receiving the whole in spacious covered reservoirs, from which it may be discharged in a constant flow or at intervals as convenience may dictate.[408] There is no reasonable doubt that a very wide employment of these various contrivances for economizing and supplying water is practicable, and the expediency of resorting to them is almost purely an economical question. There appears to be no serious reason to apprehend collateral evils from them, and in fact all of them, except artesian wells, are simply indirect methods of returning to the original arrangements of nature, or, in other words, of restoring the fluid circulation of the globe; for when the earth was covered with the forest, perennial springs gushed from the foot of every hill, brooks flowed down the bed of every valley. The partial recovery of the fountains and rivulets which once abundantly watered the face of the agricultural world seems practicable by such means, even without any general replanting of the forests; and the cost of one year's warfare, if judiciously expended in a combination of both methods of improvement, would secure, to almost every country that man has exhausted, an amelioration of climate, a renovated fertility of soil, and a general physical improvement, which might almost be characterized as a new creation. CHAPTER V. THE SANDS. ORIGIN OF SAND--SAND NOW CARRIED DOWN TO THE SEA--THE SANDS OF EGYPT AND THE ADJACENT DESERT----THE SUEZ CANAL----THE SANDS OF EGYPT--COAST DUNES AND SAND PLAINS--SAND BANKS--DUNES ON COAST OF AMERICA--DUNES OF WESTERN EUROPE--FORMATION OF DUNES--CHARACTER OF DUNE SAND--INTERIOR STRUCTURE OF DUNES--FORM OF DUNES--GEOLOGICAL IMPORTANCE OF DUNES--INLAND DUNES-- AGE, CHARACTER, AND PERMANENCE OF DUNES--USE OF DUNES AS BARRIER AGAINST THE SEA--ENCROACHMENTS OF THE SEA--THE LIIMFJORD--ENCROACHMENTS OF THE SEA--DRIFTING OF DUNE SANDS--DUNES OF GASCONY--DUNES OF DENMARK--DUNES OF PRUSSIA--ARTIFICIAL FORMATION OF DUNES--TREES SUITABLE FOR DUNE PLANTATIONS--EXTENT OF DUNES IN EUROPE--DUNE VINEYARDS OF CAPE BRETON-- REMOVAL OF DUNES--INLAND SAND PLAINS--THE LANDES OF GASCONY--THE BELGIAN CAMPINE--SANDS AND STEPPES OF EASTERN EUROPE--ADVANTAGES OF RECLAIMING DUNES--GOVERNMENT WORKS OF IMPROVEMENT. _Origin of Sand._ Sand, which is found in beds or strata at the bottom of the sea or in the channels of rivers, as well as in extensive deposits upon or beneath the surface of the dry land, appears to consist essentially of the detritus of rocks. It is not always by any means clear through what agency the solid rock has been reduced to a granular condition; for there are beds of quartzose sand, where the sharp, angular shape of the particles renders it highly improbable that they have been formed by gradual abrasion and attrition, and where the supposition of a crushing mechanical force seems equally inadmissible. In common sand, the quartz grains are the most numerous; but this is not a proof that the rocks from which these particles were derived were wholly, or even chiefly, quartzose in character; for, in many composite rocks, as, for example, in the granitic group, the mica, felspar, and hornblende are more easily decomposed by chemical action, or disintegrated, comminuted, and reduced to an impalpable state by mechanical force, than the quartz. In the destruction of such rocks, therefore, the quartz would survive the other ingredients, and remain unmixed, when they had been decomposed and had entered into new chemical combinations, or been ground to slime and washed away by water currents. The greater or less specific gravity of the different constituents of rock doubtless aids in separating them into distinct masses when once disintegrated, though there are veined and stratified beds of sand where the difference between the upper and lower layers, in this respect, is too slight to be supposed capable of effecting a complete separation.[409] In cases where rock has been reduced to sandy fragments by heat, or by obscure chemical and other molecular forces, the sandbeds may remain undisturbed, and represent, in the series of geological strata, the solid formations from which they were derived. The large masses of sand not found in place have been transported and accumulated by water or by wind, the former being generally considered the most important of these agencies; for the extensive deposits of the Sahara, of the deserts of Persia, and of that of Gobi, are commonly supposed to have been swept together or distributed by marine currents, and to have been elevated above the ocean by the same means as other upheaved strata. Meteoric and mechanical influences are still active in the reduction of rocks to a fragmentary state; but the quantity of sand now transported to the sea seems to be comparatively inconsiderable, because--not to speak of the absence of diluvial action--the number of torrents emptying directly into the sea is much less than it was at earlier periods. The formation of alluvial plains in maritime bays, by the sedimentary matter brought down from the mountains, has lengthened the flow of such streams and converted them very generally into rivers, or rather affluents of rivers much younger than themselves. The filling up of the estuaries has so reduced the slope of all large and many small rivers, and, consequently, so checked the current of what the Germans call their _Unterlauf_, or lower course, that they are much less able to transport heavy material than at earlier epochs. The slime deposited by rivers at their junction with the sea, is usually found to be composed of material too finely ground and too light to be denominated sand, and it can be abundantly shown that the sandbanks at the outlet of large streams are of tidal, not of fluviatile origin, or, in lakes and tideless seas, a result of the concurrent action of waves and of wind. Large deposits of sand, therefore, must in general be considered as of ancient, not of recent formation, and many eminent geologists ascribe them to diluvial action. Staring has discussed this question very fully, with special reference to the sands of the North Sea, the Zuiderzee, and the bays and channels of the Dutch coast.[410] His general conclusion is, that the rivers of the Netherlands "move sand only by a very slow displacement of sandbanks, and do not carry it with them as a suspended or floating material." The sands of the German Ocean he holds to be a product of the "great North German drift," deposited where they now lie before the commencement of the present geological period, and he maintains similar opinions with regard to the sands thrown up by the Mediterranean at the mouths of the Nile and on the Barbary coast.[411] _Sand now carried to the Sea._ There are, however, cases where mountain streams still bear to the sea perhaps relatively small, but certainly absolutely large, amounts of disintegrated rock.[412] The quantity of sand and gravel carried into the Mediterranean by the torrents of the Maritime Alps, the Ligurian Apennines, the islands of Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily, and the mountains of Calabria, is apparently great. In mere mass, it is possible, if not probable, that as much rocky material, more or less comminuted, is contributed to the basin of the Mediterranean by Europe, even excluding the shores of the Adriatic and the Euxine, as is washed up from it upon the coasts of Africa and Syria. A great part of this material is thrown out again by the waves on the European shores of that sea. The harbors of Luni, Albenga, San Remo, and Savona west of Genoa, and of Porto Fino on the other side, are filling up, and the coast near Carrara and Massa is said to have advanced upon the sea to a distance of 475 feet in thirty-three years.[413] Besides this, we have no evidence of the existence of deep-water currents in the Mediterranean, extensive enough and strong enough to transport quartzose sand across the sea. It may be added that much of the rock from which the torrent sands of Southern Europe are derived contains little quartz, and hence the general character of these sands is such that they must be decomposed or ground down to an impalpable slime, long before they could be swept over to the African shore. The torrents of Europe, then, do not at present furnish the material which composes the beach sands of Northern Africa, and it is equally certain that those sands are not brought down by the rivers of the latter continent. They belong to a remote geological period, and have been accumulated by causes which we cannot at present assign. The wind does not stir water to great depths with sufficient force to disturb the bottom,[414] and the sand thrown upon the coast in question must be derived from a narrow belt of sea. It must hence, in time, become exhausted, and the formation of new sandbanks and dunes upon the southern shores of the Mediterranean will cease at last for want of material.[415] But even in the cases where the accumulations of sand in extensive deserts appear to be of marine formation, or rather aggregation, and to have been brought to their present position by upheaval, they are not wholly composed of material collected or distributed by the currents of the sea; for, in all such regions, they continue to receive some small contributions from the disintegration of the rocks which underlie, or crop out through, the superficial deposits. In some instances, too, as in Northern Africa, additions are constantly made to the mass by the prevalence of sea winds, which transport, or, to speak more precisely, roll the finer beach sand to considerable distances into the interior. But this is a very slow process, and the exaggerations of travellers have diffused a vast deal of popular error on the subject. _Sands of Egypt._ In the narrow valley of the Nile--which, above its bifurcation near Cairo, is, throughout Egypt and Nubia, generally bounded by precipitous cliffs--wherever a ravine or other considerable depression occurs in the wall of rock, one sees what seems a stream of desert sand pouring down, and common observers have hence concluded that the whole valley is in danger of being buried under a stratum of infertile soil. The ancient Egyptians apprehended this, and erected walls, often of unburnt brick, across the outlet of gorges and lateral valleys, to check the flow of the sand streams. In later ages, these walls have mostly fallen into decay, and no preventive measures against such encroachments are now resorted to. But the extent of the mischief to the soil of Egypt, and the future danger from this source, have been much overrated. The sand on the borders of the Nile is neither elevated so high by the wind, nor transported by that agency in so great masses, as is popularly supposed; and of that which is actually lifted or rolled and finally deposited by air currents, a considerable proportion is either calcareous, and, therefore, readily decomposable, or in the state of a very fine dust, and so, in neither case, injurious to the soil. There are, indeed, both in Africa and in Arabia, considerable tracts of fine silicious sand, which may be carried far by high winds, but these are exceptional cases, and in general the progress of the desert sand is by a rolling motion along the surface.[416] So little is it lifted, and so inconsiderable is the quantity yet remaining on the borders of Egypt, that a wall four or five feet high suffices for centuries to check its encroachments. This is obvious to the eye of every observer who prefers the true to the marvellous; but the old-world fable of the overwhelming of caravans by the fearful simoom--which, even the Arabs no longer repeat, if indeed they are the authors of it--is so thoroughly rooted in the imagination of Christendom that most desert travellers, of the tourist class, think they shall disappoint the readers of their journals if they do not recount the particulars of their escape from being buried alive by a sand storm, and the popular demand for a "sensation" must be gratified accordingly.[417] Another circumstance is necessary to be considered in estimating the danger to which the arable lands of Egypt are exposed. The prevailing wind in the valley of the Nile and its borders is from the north, and it may be said without exaggeration that the north wind blows for three quarters of the year.[418] The effect of winds blowing up the valley is to drive the sands of the desert plateau which border it, in a direction parallel with the axis of the valley, not transversely to it; and if it ran in a straight line, the north wind would carry no desert sand into it. There are, however, both curves and angles in its course, and hence, wherever its direction deviates from that of the wind, it might receive sand drifts from the desert plain through which it runs. But, in the course of ages, the winds have, in a great measure, bared the projecting points of their ancient deposits, and no great accumulations remain in situations from which either a north or a south wind would carry them into the valley.[419] _The Suez Canal._ These considerations apply, with equal force, to the supposed danger of the obstruction of the Suez Canal by the drifting of the desert sands. The winds across the isthmus are almost uniformly from the north, and they swept it clean of flying sands long ages since. The traces of the ancient canal between the Red Sea and the Nile are easily followed for a considerable distance from Suez. Had the drifts upon the isthmus been as formidable as some have feared and others have hoped, those traces would have been obliterated, and Lake Timsah and the Bitter Lakes filled up, many centuries ago. The few particles driven by the rare east and west winds toward the line of the canal, would easily be arrested by plantations or other simple methods, or removed by dredging. The real dangers and difficulties of this magnificent enterprise--and they are great--consist in the nature of the soil to be removed in order to form the line, and especially in the constantly increasing accumulation of sea sand at the southern terminus by the tides of the Red Sea, and at the northern, by the action of the winds. Both seas are shallow for miles from the shore, and the excavation and maintenance of deep channels, and of capacious harbors with easy and secure entrances, in such localities, is doubtless one of the hardest problems offered to modern engineers for practical solution. _Sands of Egypt._ The sand let fall in Egypt by the north wind is derived, not from the desert, but from a very different source--the sea. Considerable quantities of sand are thrown up by the Mediterranean, at and between the mouths of the Nile, and indeed along almost the whole southern coast of that sea, and drifted into the interior to distances varying according to the force of the wind and the abundance and quality of the material. The sand so transported contributes to the gradual elevation of the Delta, and of the banks and bed of the river itself. But just in proportion as the bed of the stream is elevated, the height of the water in the annual inundations is increased also, and as the inclination of the channel is diminished, the rapidity of the current is checked, and the deposition of the slime it holds in suspension consequently promoted. Thus the winds and the water, moving in contrary directions, join in producing a common effect. The sand, blown over the Delta and the cultivated land higher up the stream during the inundation, is covered or mixed with the fertile earth brought down by the river, and no serious injury is sustained from it. That spread over the same ground after the water has subsided, and during the short period when the soil is not stirred by cultivation or covered by the flood, forms a thin pellicle over the surface as far as it extends, and serves to divide and distinguish the successive layers of slime deposited by the annual inundations. The particles taken up by the wind on the sea beach are borne onward, by a hopping motion, or rolled along the surface, until they are arrested by the temporary cessation of the wind, by vegetation, or by some other obstruction, and they may, in process of time, accumulate in large masses, under the lee of rocky projections, buildings, or other barriers which break the force of the wind. In these facts we find the true explanation of the sand drifts, which have half buried the Sphinx and so many other ancient monuments in that part of Egypt. These drifts, as I have said, are not primarily from the desert, but from the sea; and, as might be supposed from the distance they have travelled, they have been long in gathering. While Egypt was a great and flourishing kingdom, measures were taken to protect its territory against the encroachment of sand, whether from the desert or from the sea; but the foreign conquerors, who destroyed so many of its religious monuments, did not spare its public works, and the process of physical degradation undoubtedly began as early as the Persian invasion. The urgent necessity, which has compelled all the successive tyrannies of Egypt to keep up some of the canals and other arrangements for irrigation, was not felt with respect to the advancement of the sands; for their progress was so slow as hardly to be perceptible in the course of a single reign, and long experience has shown that, from the natural effect of the inundations, the cultivable soil of the valley is, on the whole, trenching upon the domain of the desert, not retreating before it. The oases of the Libyan, as well as of many Asiatic deserts, have no such safeguards. The sands are fast encroaching upon them, and threaten soon to engulf them, unless man shall resort to artesian wells and plantations, or to some other efficient means of checking the advance of this formidable enemy, in time to save these islands of the waste from final destruction. Accumulations of sand are, in certain cases, beneficial as a protection against the ravages of the sea; but, in general, the vicinity, and especially the shifting of bodies of this material, are destructive to human industry, and hence, in civilized countries, measures are taken to prevent its spread. This, however, can be done only where the population is large and enlightened, and the value of the soil, or of the artificial erections and improvements upon it, is considerable. Hence in the deserts of Africa and of Asia, and the inhabited lands which border on them, no pains are usually taken to check the drifts, and when once the fields, the houses, the springs, or the canals of irrigation are covered or choked, the district is abandoned without a struggle, and surrendered to perpetual desolation.[420] _Sand Dunes and Sand Plains._ Two forms of sand deposit are specially important in European and American geography. The one is that of dune or shifting hillock upon the coast, the other that of barren plain in the interior. The coast dunes are composed of sand washed up from the depths of the sea by the waves, and heaped in knolls and ridges by the winds. The sand with which many plains are covered, appears sometimes to have been deposited upon them while they were yet submerged, sometimes to have been drifted from the sea coast, and scattered over them by wind currents, sometimes to have been washed upon them by running water. In these latter cases, the deposit, though in itself considerable, is comparatively narrow in extent and irregular in distribution, while, in the former, it is often evenly spread over a very wide surface. In all great bodies of either sort, the silicious grains are the principal constituent, though, when not resulting from the disintegration of silicious rock and still remaining in place, they are generally accompanied with a greater or less admixture of other mineral particles, and of animal and vegetable remains,[421] and they are, also, usually somewhat changed in consistence by the ever-varying conditions of temperature and moisture to which they have been exposed since their deposit. Unless the proportion of these latter ingredients is so large as to create a certain adhesiveness in the mass--in which case it can no longer properly be called sand--it is infertile, and, if not charged with water, partially agglutinated by iron, lime, or other cement, or confined by alluvion resting upon it, it is much inclined to drift, whenever, by any chance, the vegetable network which, in most cases, thinly clothes and at the same time confines it, is broken. Human industry has not only fixed the flying dunes, but, by mixing clay and other tenacious earths with the superficial stratum of extensive sand plains, and by the application of fertilizing substances, it has made them abundantly productive of vegetable life. These latter processes belong to agriculture and not to geography, and, therefore, are not embraced within the scope of the present subject. But the preliminary steps, whereby wastes of loose, drifting barren sands are transformed into wooded knolls and plains, and finally, through the accumulation of vegetable mould, into arable ground, constitute a conquest over nature which precedes agriculture--a geographical revolution--and, therefore, an account of the means by which the change has been effected belongs properly to the history of man's influence on the great features of physical geography. I proceed, then, to examine the structure of dunes, and to describe the warfare man wages with the sand hills, striving on the one hand to maintain and even extend them, as a natural barrier against encroachments of the sea, and, on the other, to check their moving and wandering propensities, and prevent them from trespassing upon the fields he has planted and the habitations in which he dwells. _Coast Dunes._ Coast dunes are oblong ridges or round hillocks, formed by the action of the wind upon sands thrown up by the waves on the beach of seas, and sometimes of fresh-water lakes. On most coasts, the supply of sand for the formation of dunes is derived from tidal waves. The flow of the tide is more rapid, and consequently its transporting power greater, than that of the ebb; the momentum, acquired by the heavy particles in rolling in with the water, tends to carry them even beyond the flow of the waves; and at the turn of the tide, the water is in a state of repose long enough to allow it to let fall much of the solid matter it holds in suspension. Hence, on all low, tide-washed coasts of seas with sandy bottoms, there exist several conditions favorable to the formation of sand deposits along high-water mark.[422] If the land winds are of greater frequency, duration, or strength than the sea winds, the sands left by the retreating wave will be constantly blown back into the water; but if the prevailing air currents are in the opposite direction, the sands will soon be carried out of the reach of the highest waves, and transported continually farther and farther into the interior of the land, unless obstructed by high grounds, vegetation, or other obstacles. The tide, though a usual, is by no means a necessary condition for the accumulations of sand out of which dunes are formed. The Baltic and the Mediterranean are almost tideless seas, but there are dunes on the Russian and Prussian coasts of the Baltic, and at the mouths of the Nile and many other points on the shores of the Mediterranean. The vast shoals in the latter sea, known to the ancients as the Greater and Lesser Syrtis, are of marine origin. They are still filling up with sand, washed up from greater depths, or sometimes drifted from the coast in small quantities, and will probably be converted, at some future period, into dry land covered with sand hills. There are also extensive ranges of dunes upon the eastern shores of the Caspian, and at the southern, or rather southeastern extremity of Lake Michigan.[423] There is no doubt that this latter lake formerly extended much farther in that direction, but its southern portion has gradually shoaled and at last been converted into solid land, in consequence of the prevalence of the northwest winds. These blow over the lake a large part of the year, and create a southwardly set of the currents, which wash up sand from the bed of the lake and throw it on shore. Sand is taken up from the beach at Michigan City by every wind from that quarter, and, after a heavy blow of some hours' duration, sand ridges may be observed on the north side of the fences, like the snow wreaths deposited by a drifting wind in winter. Some of the particles are carried back by contrary winds, but most of them lodge on or behind the dunes, or in the moist soil near the lake, or are entangled by vegetables, and tend permanently to elevate the level. Like effects are produced by constant sea winds, and dunes will generally be formed on all low coasts where such prevail, whether in tideless or in tidal waters. Jobard thus describes the _modus operandi_, under ordinary circumstances, at the mouths of the Nile, where a tide can scarcely be detected: "When a wave breaks, it deposits an almost imperceptible line of fine sand. The next wave brings also its contribution, and shoves the preceding line a little higher. As soon as the particles are fairly out of the reach of the water they are dried by the heat of the burning sun, and immediately seized by the wind and rolled or borne farther inland. The gravel is not thrown out by the waves, but rolls backward and forward until it is worn down to the state of fine sand, when it, in its turn, is cast upon the land and taken up by the wind."[424] This description applies only to the common every-day action of wind and water; but just in proportion to the increasing force of the wind and the waves, there is an increase in the quantity of sand, and in the magnitude of the particles carried off from the beach by it, and, of course, every storm in a landward direction adds sensibly to the accumulation upon the shore. _Sand Banks._ Although dunes, properly so called, are found only on dry land and above ordinary high-water mark, and owe their elevation and structure to the action of the wind, yet, upon many shelving coasts, accumulations of sand much resembling dunes are formed under water at some distance from the shore by the oscillations of the waves, and are well known by the name of sand banks. They are usually rather ridges than banks, of moderate inclination, and with the steepest slope seaward; and their form differs from that of dunes only in being lower and more continuous. Upon the western coast of the island of Amrum, for example, there are three rows of such banks, the summits of which are at a distance of perhaps a couple of miles from each other; so that, including the width of the banks themselves, the spaces between them, and the breadth of the zone of dunes upon the land, the belt of moving sands on that coast is probably not less than eight miles wide. Under ordinary circumstances, sand banks are always rolling landward, and they compose the magazine from which the material for the dunes is derived. The dunes, in fact, are but aquatic sand banks transferred to dry land. The laws of their formation are closely analogous, because the action of the two fluids, by which they are respectively accumulated and built up, is very similar when brought to bear upon loose particles of solid matter. It would, indeed, seem that the slow and comparatively regular movements of the heavy, unelastic water ought to affect such particles very differently from the sudden and fitful impulses of the light and elastic air. But the velocity of the wind currents gives them a mechanical force approximating to that of the slower waves, and, however difficult it may be to explain all the phenomena that characterize the structure of the dunes, observation has proved that it is nearly identical with that of submerged sand banks. The differences of form are generally ascribable to the greater number and variety of surface accidents of the ground on which the sand hills of the land are built up, and to the more frequent changes, and wider variety of direction, in the courses of the wind. _Dunes on the Coast of America._ Upon the Atlantic coast of the United States, the prevalence of western or off-shore winds is unfavorable to the formation of dunes, and, though marine currents lodge vast quantities of sand, in the form of banks, on that coast, its shores are proportionally more free from sand hills than some others of lesser extent. There are, however, very important exceptions. The action of the tide throws much sand upon some points of the New England coast, as well as upon the beaches of Long Island and other more southern shores, and here dunes resembling those of Europe are formed. There are also extensive ranges of dunes on the Pacific coast of the United States, and at San Francisco they border some of the streets of the city. The dunes of America are far older than her civilization, and the soil they threaten or protect possesses, in general, too little value to justify any great expenditure in measures for arresting their progress or preventing their destruction. Hence, great as is their extent and their geographical importance, they have, at present, no such intimate relations to human life as to render them objects of special interest in the point of view I am taking, and I do not know that the laws of their formation and motion have been made a subject of original investigation by any American observer. _Dunes of Western Europe._ Upon the western coast of Europe, on the contrary, the ravages occasioned by the movement of sand dunes, and the serious consequences often resulting from the destruction of them, have long engaged the earnest attention of governments and of scientific men, and for nearly a century persevering and systematic effort has been made to bring them under human control. The subject has been carefully studied in Denmark and the adjacent duchies, in Western Prussia, in the Netherlands, and in France; and the experiments in the way of arresting the drifting of the dunes, and of securing them, and the lands they shelter, from the encroachments of the sea, have resulted in the adoption of a system of coast improvement substantially the same in all these countries. The sands, like the forests, have now their special literature, and the volumes and memoirs, which describe them and the processes employed to subdue them, are full of scientific interest and of practical instruction.[425] _Formation of Dunes._ The laws which govern the formation of dunes are substantially these. We have seen that, under certain conditions, sand is accumulated above high-water mark on low sea and lake shores. So long as the sand is kept wet by the spray or by capillary attraction, it is not disturbed by air currents, but as soon as the waves retire sufficiently to allow it to dry, it becomes the sport of the wind, and is driven up the gently sloping beach until it is arrested by stones, vegetables, or other obstructions, and thus an accumulation is formed which constitutes the foundation of a dune. However slight the elevation thus created, it serves to stop or retard the progress of the sand grains which are driven against its shoreward face, and to protect from the further influence of the wind the particles which are borne beyond it, or rolled over its crest, and fall down behind it. If the shore above the beach line were perfectly level and straight, the grass or bushes upon it of equal height, the sand thrown up by the waves uniform in size and weight of particles as well as in distribution, and if the action of the wind were steady and regular, a continuous bank would be formed, everywhere alike in height and cross section. But no such constant conditions anywhere exist. The banks are curved, broken, unequal in elevation; they are sometimes bare, sometimes clothed with vegetables of different structure and dimensions; the sand thrown up is variable in quantity and character; and the winds are shifting, gusty, vortical, and often blowing in very narrow currents. From all these causes, instead of uniform hills, there rise irregular rows of sand heaps, and these, as would naturally be expected, are of a pyramidal, or rather conical shape, and connected at bottom by more or less continuous ridges of the same material. On a receding coast, dunes will not attain so great a height as on more secure shores, because they are undermined and carried off before they have time to reach their greatest dimensions. Hence, while at sheltered points in Southwestern France, there are dunes three hundred feet or more in height, those on the Frisic Islands and the exposed parts of the coast of Schleswig-Holstein range only from twenty to one hundred feet. On the western shores of Africa, it is said that they sometimes attain an elevation of six hundred feet. This is one of the very few points known to geographers where desert sands are advancing seaward, and here they rise to the greatest altitude to which sand grains can be carried by the wind. The hillocks, once deposited, are held together and kept in shape, partly by mere gravity, and partly by the slight cohesion of the lime, clay, and organic matter mixed with the sand; and it is observed that, from capillary attraction, evaporation from lower strata, and retention of rain water, they are always moist a little below the surface.[426] By successive accumulations, they gradually rise to the height of thirty, fifty, sixty, or a hundred feet, and sometimes even much higher. Strong winds, instead of adding to their elevation, sweep off loose particles from their surface, and these, with others blown over or between them, build up a second row of dunes, and so on according to the character of the wind, the supply and consistence of the sand, and the face of the country. In this way is formed a belt of sand dunes, irregularly dispersed and varying much in height and dimensions, and some times many miles in breadth. On the Island of Sylt, in the German Sea, where there are several rows, the width of the belt is from half a mile to a mile. There are similar ranges on the coast of Holland, exceeding two miles in breadth, while at the mouths of the Nile they form a zone not less than ten miles wide. The base of some of the dunes in the Delta of the Nile is reached by the river during the annual inundation, and the infiltration of the water, which contains lime, has converted the lower strata into a silicious limestone, or rather a calcareous sandstone, and thus afforded an opportunity of studying the structure of that rock in a locality where its origin and mode of aggregation and solidification are known. _Character of Dune Sand._ "Dune sand," says Staring, "consists of well-rounded grains of quartz, more or less colored by iron, and often mingled with fragments of shells, small indeed, but still visible to the naked eye.[427] These fragments are not constant constituents of dune sand. They are sometimes found at the very summits of the hillocks, as at Overveen; in the King's Dune, near Egmond, they form a coarse calcareous gravel very largely distributed through the sand, while the interior dunes between Haarlem and Warmond exhibit no trace of them. It is yet undecided whether the presence or absence of these fragments is determined by the period of the formation of the dunes, or whether it depends on a difference in the process by which different dunes have been accumulated. Land shells, such as snails, for example, are found on the surface of the dunes in abundance, and many of the shelly fragments in the interior of the hillocks may be derived from the same source."[428] J. G. Kohl has some poetical thoughts upon the origin and character of the dune sands, which are worth quoting: "The sand was composed of pure transparent quartz. I could not observe this sand without the greatest admiration. If it is the product of the waves, breaking and crushing flints and fragments of quartz against each other, it is a result which could be brought about only in the course of countless ages. We need not lift ourselves to the stars, to their incalculable magnitudes and distances and numbers, in order to feel the giddiness of astonishment. Here, upon earth, in the simple sand, we find miracle enough. Think of the number of sand grains contained in a single dune, then of all the dunes upon this widely extended coast--not to speak of the innumerable grains in the Arabian, African, and Prussian deserts--this, of itself, is sufficient to overwhelm a thoughtful fancy. How long, how many times must the waves have risen and sunk in order to reduce these vast heaps to powder! "During the whole time I spent on this coast, I had always some sand in my fingers, was rubbing and rolling it about, examining it on all sides, holding a little shining grain on the tip of my finger, and thinking to myself how, in its corners, its angles, its whole configuration, it might very probably have a history longer than that of the old German nation--possibly longer than that of the human race. Where was the original quartz crystal, of which this is a fragment, first formed? To what was it once fixed? What power broke it loose? How was it beaten smaller and ever smaller by the waves? They tossed it, for æons, to and fro upon the beach, rolled it up and down, forced it to make thousands and thousands of daily voyages for millions and millions of days. Then the wind bore it away, and used it in building up a dune; there it lay for centuries, packed in with its fellows, protecting the marshes and cherished by the inhabitants, till, seized again by the pursuing sea, it fell once more into the water, there to begin the endless dance anew--and again to be swept away by the wind--and again to find rest in the dunes, a protection and a blessing to the coast. There is something mysterious about such a grain of sand, and at last I went so far as to fancy a little immortal spark linked with each one, presiding over its destiny, and sharing its vicissitudes. Could we arm our eyes with a microscope, and then dive, like a sparling, into one of these dunes, the pile, which is in fact only a heap of countless little crystal blocks, would strike us as the most marvellous building upon earth. The sunbeams would pass, with illuminating power, through all these little crystalline bodies. We should see how every sand grain is formed, by what multifarious little facets it is bounded, we should even discover that it is itself composed of many distinct particles."[429] Sand concretions form within the dunes and especially in the depressions between them. These are sometimes so extensive and impervious as to retain a sufficient supply of water to feed perennial springs, and to form small permanent ponds, and they are a great impediment to the penetration of roots, and consequently to the growth of trees planted, or germinating from self-sown seeds, upon the dunes.[430] _Interior Structure of Dunes._ The interior structure of the dunes, the arrangement of their particles, is not, as might be expected, that of an unorganized, confused heap, but they show a strong tendency to stratification. This is a point of much geological interest, because it indicates that sandstone may owe its stratified character to the action of wind as well as of water. The origin and peculiar character of these layers are due to a variety of causes. A southwest wind and current may deposit upon a dune a stratum of a given color and mineral composition, and this may be succeeded by a northwest wind and current, bringing with them particles of a different hue, constitution, and origin. Again, if we suppose a violent tempest to strew the beach with sand grains very different in magnitude and specific gravity, and, after the sand is dry, to be succeeded by a gentle breeze, it is evident that only the lighter particles will be taken up and carried to the dunes. If, after some time, the wind freshens, heavier grains will be transported and deposited on the former, and a still stronger succeeding gale will roll up yet larger kernels. Each of these deposits will form a stratum. If we suppose the tempest to be followed, after the sand is dry, not by a gentle breeze, but by a wind powerful enough to lift at the same time particles of very various magnitudes and weights, the heaviest will often lodge on the dune while the lighter will be carried farther. This would produce a stratum of coarse sand, and the same effect might result from the blowing away of light particles out of a mixed layer, while the heavier remained undisturbed.[431] Still another cause of stratification may be found in the occasional interposition of a thin layer of leaves or other vegetable remains between successive deposits, and this I imagine to be more frequent than has been generally supposed. The eddies of strong winds between the hillocks must also occasion disturbances and re-arrangements of the sand layers, and it seems possible that the irregular thickness and the strange contortions of the strata of the sandstone at Petra may be due to some such cause. A curious observation of Professor Forchhammer suggests an explanation of another peculiarity in the structure of the sandstone of Mount Seir. He describes dunes in Jutland, composed of yellow quartzose sand intermixed with black titanian iron. When the wind blows over the surface of the dunes, it furrows the sand with alternate ridges and depressions, ripples, in short, like those of water. The swells, the dividing ridges of the system of sand ripples, are composed of the light grains of quartz, while the heavier iron rolls into the depressions between, and thus the whole surface of the dune appears as if covered with a fine black network. _Form of Dunes._ The sea side of dunes, being more exposed to the caprices of the wind, is more irregular in form than the lee or land side, where the arrangement of the particles is affected by fewer disturbing and conflicting influences. Hence, the stratification of the windward slope is somewhat confused, while the sand on the lee side is found to be disposed in more regular beds, inclining landward, and with the largest particles lowest, where their greater weight would naturally carry them. The lee side of the dunes, being thus formed of sand deposited according to the laws of gravity, is very uniform in its slope, which, according to Forchhammer, varies little from an angle of 30° with the horizon, while the more exposed and irregular weather side lies at an inclination of from 5° to 10°. When, however, the outer tier of dunes is formed so near the waterline as to be exposed to the immediate action of the waves, it is undermined, and the face of the hill is very steep and sometimes nearly perpendicular. _Geological Importance of Dunes._ These observations, and other facts which a more attentive study on the spot would detect, might furnish the means of determining interesting and important questions concerning geological formations in localities very unlike those where dunes are now thrown up. For example, Studer supposes that the drifting sand hills of the African desert were originally coast dunes, and that they have been transported to their present position far in the interior, by the rolling and shifting leeward movement to which all dunes not covered with vegetation are subject. The present general drift of the sands of that desert appears to be to the southwest and west, the prevailing winds blowing from the northeast and east; but it has been doubted whether the shoals of the western coast of Northern Africa, and the sands upon that shore, are derived from the bottom of the Atlantic, in the usual manner, or, by an inverse process, from those of the Sahara. The latter, as has been before remarked, is probably the truth, though observations are wanting to decide the question.[432] There is nothing violently improbable in the supposition that they may have been first thrown up by the Mediterranean on its Libyan coast, and thence blown south and west over the vast space they now cover. But whatever has been their source and movement, they can hardly fail to have left on their route some sandstone monuments to mark their progress, such, for example, as we have seen are formed from the dune sand at the mouth of the Nile; and it is conceivable that the character of the drifting sands themselves, and of the conglomerates and sandstones to whose formation they have contributed, might furnish satisfactory evidence as to their origin, their starting point, and the course by which they have wandered so far from the sea.[433] If the sand of coast dunes is, as Staring describes it, composed chiefly of well-rounded quartzose grains, fragments of shells, and other constant ingredients, it would often be recognizable as coast sand, in its agglutinate state of sandstone. The texture of this rock varies from an almost imperceptible fineness of grain to great coarseness, and affords good facilities for microscopic observation of its structure. There are sandstones, such, for example, as are used for grindstones, where the grit, as it is called, is of exceeding sharpness; others where the angles of the grains are so obtuse that they scarcely act at all on hard metals. The former may be composed of grains of rock, disintegrated indeed, and recemented together, but not, in the meanwhile, much rolled; the latter, of sands long washed by the sea, and drifted by land winds. There is, indeed, so much resemblance between the effects of driving winds and of rolling water upon light bodies, that there would be difficulty in distinguishing them;[434] but after all, it is not probable that sandstone, composed of grains thrown up from the salt sea, and long tossed by the winds, would be identical in its structure with that formed from fragments of rock crushed by mechanical force, or disintegrated by heat, and again agglutinated without much exposure to the action of moving water.[435] _Inland Dunes._ I have met with some observations indicating a structural difference between interior and coast dunes, which might perhaps be recognized in the sandstones formed from these two species of sand hills respectively. In the great American desert between the Andes and the Pacific, Meyen found sand heaps of a perfect falciform shape.[436] They were from seven to fifteen feet high, the chord of their arc measuring from twenty to seventy paces. The slope of the convex face is described as very small, that of the concave as high as 70° or 80°, and their surfaces were rippled. No smaller dunes were observed, nor any in the process of formation. The concave side uniformly faced the northwest, except toward the centre of the desert, where, for a distance of one or two hundred paces, they gradually opened to the west, and then again gradually resumed the former position. Pöppig ascribes a falciform shape to the movable, a conical to the fixed dunes, or _medanos_, of the same desert. "The medanos," he observes, "are hillock-like elevations of sand, some having a firm, others a loose base. The former [latter], which are always crescent shaped, are from ten to twenty feet high, and have an acute crest. The inner side is perpendicular, and the outer or bow side forms an angle with a steep inclination downward. When driven by violent winds, the medanos pass rapidly over the plains. The smaller and lighter ones move quickly forward, before the larger; but the latter soon overtake and crush them, whilst they are themselves shivered by the collision. These medanos assume all sorts of extraordinary figures, and sometimes move along the plain in rows forming most intricate labyrinths. * * A plain often appears to be covered with a row of medanos, and some days afterward it is again restored to its level and uniform aspect. * * * "The medanos with immovable bases are formed on the blocks of rocks which are scattered about the plain. The sand is driven against them by the wind, and as soon as it reaches the top point, it descends on the other side until that is likewise covered; thus gradually arises a conical-formed hill. Entire hillock chains with acute crests are formed in a similar manner. * * * On their southern declivities are found vast masses of sand, drifted thither by the mid-day gales. The northern declivity, though not steeper than the southern, is only sparingly covered with sand. If a hillock chain somewhat distant from the sea extends in a line parallel with the Andes, namely, from S. S. E. to N. N. W., the western declivity is almost entirely free of sand, as it is driven to the plain below by the southeast wind, which constantly alternates with the wind from the south."[437] It is difficult to reconcile this description with that of Meyen, but if confidence is to be reposed in the accuracy of either observer, the formation of the sand hills in question must be governed by very different laws from those which determine the structure of coast dunes. Captain Gilliss, of the American navy, found the sand hills of the Peruvian desert to be in general crescent shaped, as described by Meyen, and a similar structure is said to characterize the inland dunes of the Llano Estacado and other plateaus of the North American desert, though these latter are of greater height and other dimensions than those described by Meyen. There is no very obvious explanation of this difference in form between maritime and inland sand hills, and the subject merits investigation.[438] _Age, Character, and Permanence of Dunes._ The origin of most great lines of dunes goes back past all history. There are on many coasts, several distinct ranges of sand hills which seem to be of very different ages, and to have been formed under different relative conditions of land and water.[439] In some cases, there has been an upheaval of the coast line since the formation of the oldest hillocks, and these have become inland dunes, while younger rows have been thrown up on the new beach laid bare by elevation of the sea bed. Our knowledge of the mode of their first accumulation is derived from observation of the action of wind and water in the few instances where, with or without the aid of man, new coast dunes have been accumulated, and of the influence of wind alone in elevating new sand heaps inland of the coast tier, when the outer rows are destroyed by the sea, as also when the sodded surface of ancient sands has been broken, and the subjacent strata laid open to the air. It is a question of much interest, in what degree the naked condition of most dunes is to be ascribed to the improvidence and indiscretion of man. There are, in Western France, extensive ranges of dunes covered with ancient and dense forests, while the recently formed sand hills between them and the sea are bare of vegetation, and are rapidly advancing upon the wooded dunes, which they threaten to bury beneath their drifts. Between the old dunes and the new, there is no discoverable difference in material or in structure; but the modern sand hills are naked and shifting, the ancient, clothed with vegetation and fixed. It has been conjectured that artificial methods of confinement and plantation were employed by the primitive inhabitants of Gaul; and Laval, basing his calculations on the rate of annual movement of the shifting dunes, assigns the fifth century of the Christian era as the period when these processes were abandoned.[440] There is no historical evidence that the Gauls were acquainted with artificial methods of fixing the sands of the coast, and we have little reason to suppose that they were advanced enough in civilization to be likely to resort to such processes, especially at a period when land could have had but a moderate value. In other countries, dunes have spontaneously clothed themselves with forests, and the rapidity with which their surface is covered by various species of sand plants, and finally by trees, where man and cattle and burrowing animals are excluded from them, renders it highly probable that they would, as a general rule, protect themselves, if left to the undisturbed action of natural causes. The sand hills of the Frische Nehrung, on the coast of Prussia, were formerly wooded down to the water's edge, and it was only in the last century that, in consequence of the destruction of their forests, they became moving sands.[441] There is every reason to believe that the dunes of the Netherlands were clothed with trees until after the Roman invasion. The old geographers, in describing these countries, speak of vast forests extending to the very brink of the sea; but drifting coast dunes are first mentioned by the chroniclers of the Middle Ages, and so far as we know they have assumed a destructive character in consequence of the improvidence of man.[442] The history of the dunes of Michigan, so far as I have been able to learn from my own observation, or that of others, is the same. Thirty years ago, when that region was scarcely inhabited, they were generally covered with a thick growth of trees, chiefly pines, and underwood, and there was little appearance of undermining and wash on the lake side, or of shifting of the sands, except where the trees had been cut or turned up by the roots.[443] Nature, as she builds up dunes for the protection of the sea shore, provides, with similar conservatism, for the preservation of the dunes themselves; so that, without the interference of man, these hillocks would be, not perhaps absolutely perpetual, but very lasting in duration, and very slowly altered in form or position. When once covered with the trees, shrubs, and herbaceous growths adapted to such localities, dunes undergo no apparent change, except the slow occasional undermining of the outer tier, and accidental destruction by the exposure of the interior, from the burrowing of animals, or the upturning of trees with their roots, and all these causes of displacement are very much less destructive when a vegetable covering exists in the immediate neighborhood of the breach. Before the occupation of the coasts by civilized and therefore destructive man, dunes, at all points where they have been observed, seem to have been protected in their rear by forests, which served to break the force of the winds in both directions,[444] and to have spontaneously clothed themselves with a dense growth of the various plants, grasses, shrubs, and trees, which nature has assigned to such soils. It is observed in Europe that dunes, though now without the shelter of a forest country behind them, begin to protect themselves as soon as human trespassers are excluded, and grazing animals denied access to them. Herbaceous and arborescent plants spring up almost at once, first in the depressions, and then upon the surface of the sand hills. Every seed that sprouts, binds together a certain amount of sand by its roots, shades a little ground with its leaves, and furnishes food and shelter for still younger or smaller growths. A succession of a very few favorable seasons suffices to bind the whole surface together with a vegetable network, and the power of resistance possessed by the dunes themselves, and the protection they afford to the fields behind them, are just in proportion to the abundance and density of the plants they support. The growth of the vegetable covering can, of course, be much accelerated by judicious planting and watchful care, and this species of improvement is now carried on upon a vast scale, wherever the value of land is considerable and the population dense. In the main, the dunes on the coast of the German Sea, notwithstanding the great quantity of often fertile land they cover, and the evils which result from their movement, are, upon the whole, a protective and beneficial agent, and their maintenance is an object of solicitude with the governments and people of the shores they protect.[445] _Use of Dunes as a Barrier against the Sea._ Although the sea throws up large quantities of sand on flat lee-shores, there are, as we have seen, many cases where it continually encroaches on those same shores and washes them away. At all points of the shallow North Sea where the agitation of the waves extends to the bottom, banks are forming and rolling eastward. Hence the sea sand tends to accumulate upon the coast of Schleswig-Holstein and Jutland, and were there no conflicting influences, the shore would rapidly extend itself westward. But the same waves which wash the sand to the coast undermine the beach they cover, and still more rapidly degrade the shore at points where it is too high to receive partial protection by the formation of dunes upon it. The earth of the coast is generally composed of particles finer, lighter, and more transportable by water than the sea sand. While, therefore, the billows raised by a heavy west wind may roll up and deposit along the beach thousands of tons of sand, the same waves may swallow up even a larger quantity of fine shore earth. This earth, with a portion of the sand, is swept off by northwardly and southwardly currents, and let fall at other points of the coast, or carried off, altogether, out of the reach of causes which might bring it back to its former position. Although, then, the eastern shore of the German Ocean here and there advances into the sea, it in general retreats before it, and but for the protection afforded it by natural arrangements seconded by the art and industry of man, whole provinces would soon be engulfed by the waters. This protection consists in an almost unbroken chain of sand banks and dunes, extending from the northernmost point of Jutland to the Elbe, a distance of not much less than three hundred miles, and from the Elbe again, though with more frequent and wider interruptions, to the Atlantic borders of France and Spain.[446] So long as the dunes are maintained by nature or by human art, they serve, like any other embankment or dike, as a partial or a complete protection against the encroachments of the sea; and on the other hand, when their drifts are not checked by natural processes, or by the industry of man, they become a cause of as certain, if not of as sudden, destruction as the ocean itself whose advance they retard. _Encroachments of the Sea._ The eastward progress of the sea on the Danish and Netherlandish coast, and on certain shores of the Atlantic, depends so much on local geological structure, on the force and direction of tidal and other marine currents, on the volume and rapidity of coast rivers, on the contingencies of the weather and on other varying circumstances, that no general rate can he assigned to it. At Agger, near the western end of the Liimfjord, in Jutland, the coast was washed away, between the years 1815 and 1839, at the rate of more than eighteen feet a year. The advance of the sea appears to have been something less rapid for a century before; but from 1840 to 1857, it gained upon the land no less than thirty feet a year. At other points of the shore of Jutland, the loss is smaller, but the sea is encroaching generally upon the whole line of the coast.[447] _The Liimfjord._ The irruption of the sea into the fresh-water lagoon of Liimfjord in Jutland, in 1825--one of the most remarkable encroachments of the ocean in modern times--is expressly ascribed to "mismanagement of the dunes" on the narrow neck of land which separated the fjord from the North Sea. At earlier periods, the sea had swept across the isthmus, and even burst through it, but the channel had been filled up again, sometimes by artificial means, sometimes by the operation of natural causes, and on all these occasions effects were produced very similar to those resulting from the formation of the new channel in 1825, which still remains open.[448] Within comparatively recent historical ages, the Liimfjord has thus been several times alternately filled with fresh and with salt water, and man has produced, by neglecting the dunes, or at least might have prevented by maintaining them, changes identical with those which are usually ascribed to the action of great geological causes, and sometimes supposed to have required vast periods of time for their accomplishment. "This breach," says Forchhammer, "which converted the Liimfjord into a sound, and the northern part of Jutland into an island, occasioned remarkable changes. The first and most striking phenomenon was the sudden destruction of almost all the fresh-water fish previously inhabiting this lagoon, which was famous for its abundant fisheries. Millions of fresh-water fish were thrown on shore, partly dead and partly dying, and were carted off by the people. A few only survived, and still frequent the shores at the mouth of the brooks. The eel, however, has gradually accommodated itself to the change of circumstances, and is found in all parts of the fjord, while to all other fresh-water fish, the salt water of the ocean seems to have been fatal. It is more than probable that the sand washed in by the irruption covers, in many places, a layer of dead fish, and has thus prepared the way for a petrified stratum similar to those observed in so many older formations. "As it seems to be a law of nature that animals whose life is suddenly extinguished while yet in full vigor, are the most likely to be preserved by petrification, we find here one of the conditions favorable to the formation of such a petrified stratum. The bottom of the Liimfjord was covered with a vigorous growth of aquatic plants, belonging both to fresh and to salt water, especially _Zostera marina_. This vegetation totally disappeared after the irruption, and, in some instances, was buried by the sand; and here again we have a familiar phenomenon often observed in ancient strata--the indication of a given formation by a particular vegetable species--and when the strata deposited at the time of the breach shall be accessible by upheaval, the period of eruption will be marked by a stratum of _Zostera_, and probably by impressions of fresh-water fishes. "It is very remarkable that the _Zostera marina_, a sea plant, was destroyed even where no sand was deposited. This was probably in consequence of the sudden change from brackish to salt water. * * It is well established that the Liimfjord communicated with the German Ocean at some former period. To that era belong the deep beds of oyster shells and _Cardium edule_, which are still found at the bottom of the fjord. And now, after an interval of centuries, during which the lagoon contained no salt-water shell fish, it again produces great numbers of _Mytilus edulis_. Could we obtain a deep section of the bottom, we should find beds of _Ostrea edulis_ and _Cardium edule_, then a layer of _Zostera marina_ with fresh-water fish, and then a bed of _Mytilus edulis_. If, in course of time, the new channel should be closed, the brooks would fill the lagoon again with fresh water; fresh-water fish and shell fish would reappear, and thus we should have a repeated alternation of organic inhabitants of the sea and of the waters of the land. "These events have been accompanied with but a comparatively insignificant change of land surface, while the formations in the bed of this inland sea have been totally revolutionized in character."[449] _Coasts of Schleswig-Holstein, Holland, and France._ On the islands on the coast of Schleswig-Holstein, the advance of the sea has been more unequivocal and more rapid. Near the beginning of the last century, the dunes which had protected the western coast of the island of Sylt began to roll to the east, and the sea followed closely as they retired. In 1757, the church of Rantum, a village upon that island, was obliged to be taken down in consequence of the advance of the sand hills; in 1791, these hills had passed beyond its site, the waves had swallowed up its foundations, and the sea gained so rapidly, that, fifty years later, the spot where they lay was seven hundred feet from the shore.[450] The most prominent geological landmark on the coast of Holland is the Huis te Britten, _Arx Britannica_, a fortress built by the Romans, in the time of Caligula, on the main land near the mouth of the Rhine. At the close of the seventeenth century, the sea had advanced sixteen hundred paces beyond it. The older Dutch annalists record, with much parade of numerical accuracy, frequent encroachments of the sea upon many parts of the Netherlandish coast. But though the general fact of an advance of the ocean upon the land is established beyond dispute, the precision of the measurements which have been given is open to question. Staring, however, who thinks the erosion of the coast much exaggerated by popular geographers, admits a loss of more than a million and a half acres, chiefly worthless morass;[451] and it is certain that but for the resistance of man, but for his erection of dikes and protection of dunes, there would now be left of Holland little but the name. It is, as has been already seen, still a debated question among geologists whether the coast of Holland now is, and for centuries has been, subsiding. I believe most investigators maintain the affirmative; and if the fact is so, the advance of the sea upon the land is, in part, due to this cause. But the rate of subsidence is at all events very small, and therefore the encroachments of the ocean upon the coast are mainly to be ascribed to the erosion and transportation of the soil by marine waves and currents. The sea is fast advancing at several points of the western coast of France, and unknown causes have given a new impulse to its ravages since the commencement of the present century. Between 1830 and 1842, the Point de Grave, on the north side of the Gironde, retreated one hundred and eighty mètres, or about fifty feet per year; from the latter year to 1846, the rate was increased to more than three times that quantity, and the loss in those four years was above six hundred feet. All the buildings at the extremity of the peninsula have been taken down and rebuilt farther landward, and the lighthouse of the Grave now occupies its third position. The sea attacked the base of the peninsula also, and the Point de Grave and the adjacent coasts have been for twenty years the scene of one of the most obstinately contested struggles between man and the ocean recorded in the annals of modern engineering. It cannot, indeed, be affirmed that human power is able to arrest altogether the incursions of the waves on sandy coasts, by planting the beach, and clothing the dunes with wood. On the contrary, both in Holland and on the French coast, it has been found necessary to protect the dunes themselves by piling and by piers and sea walls of heavy masonry. But experience has amply shown that the processes referred to are entirely successful in preventing the movement of the dunes, and the drifting of their sands over cultivated lands behind them; and that, at the same time, the plantations very much retard the landward progress of the waters.[452] _Drifting of Dune Sands._ Besides their importance as a barrier against the inroads of the ocean, dunes are useful by sheltering the cultivated ground behind them from the violence of the sea wind, from salt spray, and from the drifts of beach sand which would otherwise overwhelm them. But the dunes themselves, unless their surface sands are kept moist, and confined by the growth of plants, or at least by a crust of vegetable earth, are constantly rolling inward; and thus, while, on one side, they lay bare the traces of ancient human habitations or other evidences of the social life of primitive man, they are, on the other, burying fields, houses, churches, and converting populous districts into barren and deserted wastes. Especially destructive are they when, by any accident, a cavity is opened into them to a considerable depth, thereby giving the wind access to the interior, where the sand is thus first dried, and then scooped out and scattered far over the neighboring soil. The dune is now a magazine of sand, no longer a rampart against it, and mischief from this source seems more difficult to resist than from almost any other drift, because the supply of material at the command of the wind, is more abundant and more concentrated than in its original thin and widespread deposits on the beach. The burrowing of conies in the dunes is, in this way, not unfrequently a cause of their destruction and of great injury to the fields behind them. Drifts, and even inland sand hills, sometimes result from breaking the surface of more level sand deposits, far within the range of the coast dunes. Thus we learn from Staring, that one of the highest inland dunes in Friesland owes its origin to the opening of the drift sand by the uprooting of a large oak.[453] Great as are the ravages produced by the encroachment of the sea upon the western shores of continental Europe, they have been in some degree compensated by spontaneous marine deposits at other points of the coast, and we have seen in a former chapter that the industry of man has reclaimed a large territory from the bosom of the ocean. These latter triumphs are not of recent origin, and the incipient victories which paved the way for them date back perhaps as far as ten centuries. In the mean time, the dunes had been left to the operation of the laws of nature, or rather freed, by human imprudence, from the fetters with which nature had bound them, and it is scarcely three generations since man first attempted to check their destructive movements. As they advanced, he unresistingly yielded and retreated before them, and they have buried under their sandy billows many hundreds of square miles of luxuriant cornfields and vineyards and forests. _Dunes of Gascony._ On the west coast of France, a belt of dunes, varying in width from a quarter of a mile to five miles, extends from the Adour to the estuary of the Gironde, and covers an area of three hundred and seventy-five square miles. When not fixed by vegetable growths, they advance eastward at a mean rate of about one rod, or sixteen and a half feet, a year. We do not know historically when they began to drift, but if we suppose their motion to have been always the same as at present, they would have passed over the space between the sea coast and their eastern boundary, and covered the large area above mentioned, in fourteen hundred years. We know, from written records, that they have buried extensive fields and forests and thriving villages, and changed the courses of rivers, and that the lighter particles carried from them by the winds, even where not transported in sufficient quantities to form sand hills, have rendered sterile much land formerly fertile.[454] They have also injuriously obstructed the natural drainage of the maritime districts by choking up the beds of the streams, and forming lakes and pestilential swamps of no inconsiderable extent. In fact, so completely do they embank the coast, that between the Gironde and the village of Mimizan, a distance of one hundred miles, there are but two outlets for the discharge of all the waters which flow from the land to the sea; and the eastern front of the dunes is bordered by a succession of stagnant pools, some of which are more than six miles in length and breadth.[455] _The Dunes of Denmark and Prussia._ In the small kingdom of Denmark, inclusive of the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, the dunes cover an area of more than two hundred and sixty square miles. The breadth of the chain is very various, and in some places it consists only of a single row of sand hills, while in others, it is more than six miles wide. The general rate of eastward movement of the drifting dunes is from three to twenty-four feet per annum. If we adopt the mean of thirteen feet and a half for the annual motion, the dunes have traversed the widest part of the belt in about twenty-five hundred years. Historical data are wanting as to the period of the formation of these dunes and of the commencement of their drifting; but there is recorded evidence that they have buried a vast extent of valuable land within three or four centuries, and further proof is found in the fact that the movement of the sands is constantly uncovering ruins of ancient buildings, and other evidences of human occupation, at points far within the present limits of the uninhabitable desert. Andresen estimates the average depth of the sand deposited over this area at thirty feet, which would give a cubic mile and a half for the total quantity.[456] The drifting of the dunes on the coast of Prussia commenced not much more than a hundred years ago. The Frische Nehrung is separated from the mainland by the Frische Haff, and there is but a narrow strip of arable land along its eastern borders. Hence its rolling sands have covered a comparatively small extent of dry land, but fields and villages have been buried and valuable forests laid waste by them. The loose coast row has drifted over the inland ranges, which, as was noticed in the description of these dunes on a former page, were protected by a surface of different composition, and the sand has thus been raised to a height which it could not have reached upon level ground. This elevation has enabled it to advance upon and overwhelm woods, which, upon a plain, would have checked its progress, and, in one instance, a forest of many hundred acres of tall pines was destroyed by the drifts between 1804 and 1827. _Control of Dunes by Man._ There are three principal modes in which the industry of man is brought to bear upon the dunes. First, the creation of them, at points where, from changes in the currents or other causes, new encroachments of the sea are threatened; second, the maintenance and protection of them where they have been naturally formed; and third, the removal of the inner rows where the belt is so broad that no danger is to be apprehended from the loss of them. _Artificial Formation of Dunes._ In describing the natural formation of dunes, it was said that they began with an accumulation of sand around some vegetable or other accidental obstruction to the drifting of the particles. A high, perpendicular cliff, which deadens the wind altogether, prevents all accumulation of sand; but, up to a certain point, the higher and broader the obstruction, the more sand will heap up in front of it, and the more will that which falls behind it be protected from drifting farther. This familiar observation has taught the inhabitants of the coast that an artificial wall or dike will, in many situations, give rise to a broad belt of dunes. Thus a sand dike or wall, of three or four miles in length, thrown in 1610 across the Koegras, a tide-washed flat between the Zuiderzee and the North Sea, has occasioned the formation of rows of dunes a mile in breadth, and thus excluded the sea altogether from the Koegras. A similar dike, called the Zijperzeedijk, has produced another scarcely less extensive belt in the course of two centuries. A few years since, the sea was threatening to cut through the island of Ameland, and, by encroachment on the southern side and the blowing off of the sand from a low flat which connected the two higher parts of the island, it had made such progress, that in heavy storms the waves sometimes rolled quite across the isthmus. The construction of a breakwater and a sand dike have already checked the advance of the sea, and a large number of sand hills has been formed, the rapid growth of which promises complete future security against both wind and wave. Similar effects have been produced by the erection of plank fences, and even of simple screens of wattling and reeds.[457] _Protection of Dunes._ The dunes of Holland are sometimes protected from the dashing of the waves by a _revêtement_ of stone, or by piles; and the lateral high-water currents, which wash away their base, are occasionally checked by transverse walls running from the foot of the dunes to low-water mark; but the great expense of such constructions has prevented their adoption on a large scale.[458] The principal means relied on for the protection of the sand hills are the planting of their surfaces and the exclusion of burrowing and grazing animals. There are grasses, creeping plants, and shrubs of spontaneous growth, which flourish in loose sand, and, if protected, spread over considerable tracts, and finally convert their face into a soil capable of cultivation, or, at least, of producing forest trees. Krause enumerates one hundred and seventy-one plants as native to the coast sands of Prussia, and the observations of Andresen in Jutland carry the number of these vegetables up to two hundred and thirty-four. Some of these plants, especially the _Arundo arenaria_ or _arenosa_, or _Psamma_ or _Psammophila arenaria_--Klittetag, or Hjelme in Danish, helm in Dutch, Dünenhalm, Sandschilf, or Hügelrohr in German, gourbet in French, and marram in English--are exclusively confined to sandy soils, and thrive well only in a saline atmosphere.[459] The arundo grows to the height of about twenty-four inches, but sends its strong roots with their many rootlets to a distance of forty or fifty feet. It has the peculiar property of nourishing best in the loosest soil, and a sand shower seems to refresh it as the rain revives the thirsty plants of the common earth. Its roots bind together the dunes, and its leaves protect their surface. When the sand ceases to drift, the arundo dies, its decaying roots fertilizing the sand, and the decomposition of its leaves forming a layer of vegetable earth over it. Then follows a succession of other plants which gradually fit the sand hills, by growth and decay, for forest planting, for pasturage, and sometimes for ordinary agricultural use. But the protection and gradual transformation of the dunes is not the only service rendered by this valuable plant. Its leaves are nutritious food for sheep and cattle, its seeds for poultry;[460] cordage and netting twine are manufactured from its fibres, it makes a good material for thatching, and its dried roots furnish excellent fuel. These useful qualities, unfortunately, are too often prejudicial to its growth. The peasants feed it down with their cattle, cut it for rope making, or dig it up for fuel, and it has been found necessary to resort to severe legislation to prevent them from bringing ruin upon themselves by thus improvidently sacrificing their most effectual safeguard against the drifting of the sands.[461] In 1539, a decree of Christian III, king of Denmark, imposed a fine upon persons convicted of destroying certain species of sand plants upon the west coast of Jutland. This ordinance was renewed and made more comprehensive in 1558, and in 1569 the inhabitants of several districts were required, by royal rescript, to do their best to check the sand drifts, though the specific measures to be adopted for that purpose are not indicated. Various laws against stripping the dunes of their vegetation were enacted in the following century, but no active measures were taken for the subjugation of the sand drifts until 1779, when a preliminary system of operation for that purpose was adopted. This consisted in little more than the planting of the _Arundo arenaria_ and other sand plants, and the exclusion of animals destructive to these vegetables.[462] Ten years later, plantations of forest trees, which have since proved so valuable a means of fixing the dunes and rendering them productive, were commenced, and have been continued ever since.[463] During this latter period, Brémontier, without any knowledge of what was doing in Denmark, experimented upon the cultivation of forest trees on the dunes of Gascony, and perfected a system, which, with some improvements in matters of detail, is still largely pursued on those shores. The example of Denmark was soon followed in the neighboring kingdom of Prussia, and in the Netherlands; and, as we shall see hereafter, these improvements have been everywhere crowned with most flattering success. Under the administration of Reventlov, a little before the close of the last century, the Danish Government organized a regular system of improvement in the economy of the dunes. They were planted with the arundo and other vegetables of similar habits, protected against trespassers, and at last partly covered with forest trees. By these means much waste soil has been converted into arable ground, a large growth of valuable timber obtained, and the further spread of the drifts, which threatened to lay waste the whole peninsula of Jutland, to a considerable extent arrested. In France, the operations for fixing and reclaiming the dunes--which began under the direction of Brémontier about the same time as in Denmark, and which are, in principle and in many of their details, similar to those employed in the latter kingdom--have been conducted on a far larger scale, and with greater success, than in any other country. This is partly owing to a climate more favorable to the growth of suitable forest trees than that of Northern Europe, and partly to the liberality of the Government, which, having more important landed interests to protect, has put larger means at the disposal of the engineers than Denmark and Prussia have found it convenient to appropriate to that purpose. The area of the dunes already secured from drifting, and planted by the processes invented by Brémontier and perfected by his successors, is about 100,000 acres.[464] This amount of productive soil, then, has been added to the resources of France, and a still greater quantity of valuable land has been thereby rescued from the otherwise certain destruction with which it was threatened by the advance of the rolling sand hills. The improvements of the dunes on the coast of West Prussia began in 1795, under Sören Björn, a native of Denmark, and, with the exception of the ten years between 1807 and 1817, they have been prosecuted ever since. The methods do not differ essentially from those employed in Denmark and France, though they are modified by local circumstances, and, with respect to the trees selected for planting, by climate. In 1850, between the mouth of the Vistula and Kahlberg, 6,300 acres, including about 1,900 acres planted with pines and birches, had been secured from drifting; between Kahlberg and the eastern boundary of West-Prussia, 8,000 acres; and important preliminary operations had been carried on for subduing the dunes on the west coast.[465] _Trees suited to Dune Plantations._ The tree which has been found to thrive best upon the sand hills of the French coast, and at the same time to confine the sand most firmly and yield the largest pecuniary returns, is the maritime pine, _Pinus maritima_, a species valuable both for its timber and for its resinous products. It is always grown from seed, and the young shoots require to be protected for several seasons, by the branches of other trees, planted in rows, or spread over the surface and staked down, by the growth of the _Arundo arenaria_ and other small sand plants, or by wattled hedges. The beach, from which the sand is derived, has been generally planted with the arundo, because the pine does not thrive well so near the sea; but it is thought that a species of tamarisk is likely to succeed in that latitude even better than the arundo. The shade and the protection offered by the branching top of this pine are favorable to the growth of deciduous trees, and, while still young, of shrubs and smaller plants, which contribute more rapidly to the formation of vegetable mould, and thus, when the pine has once taken root, the redemption of the waste is considered as effectually secured. In France, the maritime pine is planted on the sands of the interior as well as on the dunes of the sea coast, and with equal advantage. This tree resembles the pitch pine of the Southern American States in its habits, and is applied to the same uses. The extraction of turpentine from it begins at the age of about twenty years, or when it has attained a diameter of from nine to twelve inches. Incisions are made up and down the trunk, to the depth of about half an inch in the wood, and it is insisted that if not more than two such slits are cut, the tree is not sensibly injured by the process. The growth, indeed, is somewhat checked, but the wood becomes superior to that of trees from which the turpentine is not extracted. Thus treated, the pine continues to flourish to the age of one hundred or one hundred and twenty years, and up to this age the trees on a hectare yield annually 350 kilogrammes of essence of turpentine, and 280 kilogrammes of resin, worth together 110 francs. The expense of extraction and distillation is calculated at 44 francs, and a clear profit of 66 francs per hectare, or more than five dollars per acre, is left.[466] This is exclusive of the value of the timber, when finally cut, which, of course, amounts to a very considerable sum. In Denmark, where the climate is much colder, hardier conifers, as well as the birch and other northern trees, are found to answer a better purpose than the maritime pine, and it is doubtful whether this tree would be able to resist the winter on the dunes of Massachusetts. Probably the pitch pine of the Northern States, in conjunction with some of the American oaks, birches, and poplars, and especially the robinia or locust, would prove very suitable to be employed on the sand hills of Cape Cod and Long Island. The ailanthus, now coming into notice as a sand-loving tree, may, perhaps, serve a better purpose than any of them. _Extent of Dunes in Europe._ The dunes of Denmark, as we have seen, cover an area of two hundred and sixty square miles, or one hundred and sixty-six thousand acres; those of the Prussian coast are vaguely estimated at from eighty-five to one hundred and ten thousand acres; those of Holland at one hundred and forty thousand acres;[467] those of Gascony at about three hundred thousand acres.[468] I do not find any estimate of their extent in other provinces of France, in the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, or in the Baltic provinces of Russia, but it is probable that the entire quantity of dune land upon the eastern shores of the Atlantic and the Baltic does not fall much short of a million of acres.[469] This vast deposit of sea sand extends along the coast for a distance of several hundred miles, and from the time of the destruction of the forests which covered it, to the year 1789, the whole line was rolling inward and burying the soil beneath it, or rendering the fields unproductive by the sand which drifted from it. At the same time, as the sand hills moved eastward, the ocean was closely following their retreat and swallowing up the ground they had covered, as fast as their movement left it bare. Planting the dunes has completely prevented the surface sands from blowing over the soil to the leeward of the plantations, and though it has not, in all cases, arrested the encroachments of the sea, it has so greatly retarded the rapidity of their advance, that sandy coasts, when once covered with forests, may be considered as substantially secure, so long as proper measures are taken for the protection of the woods. _Dune Vineyards of Cap Breton._ In the vicinity of Cap Breton in France, a peculiar process is successfully employed, both for preventing the drifting of dunes, and for rendering the sands themselves immediately productive; but this method is applicable only in exceptional cases of favorable climate and exposure. It consists in planting vineyards upon the dunes, and protecting them by hedges of broom, _Erica scoparia_, so disposed as to form rectangles about thirty feet by forty. The vines planted in these enclosures thrive admirably, and the grapes produced by them are among the best grown in France. The dunes are so far from being an unfavorable soil for the vine, that fresh sea-sand is regularly employed as a fertilizer for it, alternating every other season with ordinary manure. The quantity of sand thus applied every second year, raises the surface of the vineyard about four or five inches. The vines are cut down every year to three or four shoots, and the raising of the soil rapidly covers the old stocks. As fast as buried, they send out new roots near the surface, and thus the vineyard is constantly renewed, and has always a youthful appearance, though it may have been already planted a couple of generations. This practice is ascertained to have been followed for two centuries, and is among the oldest well-authenticated attempts of man to resist and vanquish the dunes.[470] _Removal of Dunes._ The artificial removal of dunes, no longer necessary as a protection, does not appear to have been practised upon a large scale except in the Netherlands, where the numerous canals furnish an easy and economical means of transporting the sand, and where the construction and maintenance of sea and river dikes, and of causeways and other embankments and fillings, create a great demand for that material. Sand is also employed in Holland, in large quantities, for improving the consistence of the tough clay bordering upon or underlying diluvial deposits, and for forming an artificial soil for the growth of certain garden and ornamental vegetables. When the dunes are removed, the ground they covered is restored to the domain of industry; and the quantity of land, recovered in the Netherlands by the removal of the barren sands which encumbered it, amounts to hundreds and perhaps thousands of acres.[471] _Inland Sand Plains._ The inland sand plains of Europe are either derived from the drifting of dunes or other beach sands, or consist of diluvial deposits. As we have seen, when once the interior of a dune is laid open to the wind, its contents are soon scattered far and wide over the adjacent country, and the beach sands, no longer checked by the rampart which nature had constrained them to build against their own encroachments, are also carried to considerable distances from the coast. Few regions have suffered so much from this cause in proportion to their extent, as the peninsula of Jutland. So long as the woods, with which nature had planted the Danish dunes, were spared, they seem to have been stationary, and we have no historical evidence, of an earlier date than the sixteenth century, that they had become in any way injurious. From that period, there are frequent notices of the invasions of cultivated grounds by the sands; and excavations are constantly bringing to light proof of human habitation and of agricultural industry, in former ages, on soils now buried beneath deep drifts from the dunes and beaches of the sea coast.[472] Extensive tracts of valuable plain land in the Netherlands and in France have been covered in the same way with a layer of sand deep enough to render them infertile, and they can be restored to cultivation only by processes analogous to those employed for fixing and improving the dunes.[473] Diluvial sand plains, also, have been reclaimed by these methods in the Duchy of Austria, between Vienna and the Semmering ridge, in Jutland, and in the great champaign country of Northern Germany, especially the Mark Brandenburg, where artificial forests can be propagated with great ease, and where, consequently, this branch of industry has been pursued on a great scale, and with highly beneficial results, both as respects the supply of forest products and the preparation of the soil for agricultural use. As a general rule, inland sands are looser, dryer, and more inclined to drift, than those of the sea coast, where the moist and saline atmosphere of the ocean keeps them always more or less humid and cohesive. No shore dunes are so movable as the medanos of Peru described in a passage quoted from Pöppig on a former page, or as the sand hills of Poland, both of which seem better entitled to the appellation of sand waves than those of the Sahara or of the Arabian desert. The sands of the valley of the Lower Euphrates--themselves probably of submarine origin, and not derived from dunes--are advancing to the northwest with a rapidity which seems fabulous when compared with the slow movement of the sand hills of Gascony and the Low German coasts. Loftus, speaking of Niliyya, an old Arab town a few miles east of the ruins of Babylon, says that, "in 1848, the sand began to accumulate around it, and in six years, the desert, within a radius of six miles, was covered with little, undulating domes, while the ruins of the city were so buried that it is now impossible to trace their original form or extent."[474] Loftus considers this sand flood as the "vanguard of those vast drifts which, advancing from the southeast, threaten eventually to overwhelm Babylon and Baghdad." An observation of Layard, cited by Loftus, appears to me to furnish a possible explanation of this irruption. He "passed two or three places where the sand, issuing from the earth like water, is called 'Aioun-er-rummal,' sand springs." These "springs" are very probably merely the drifting of sand from the ancient subsoil, where the protecting crust of aquatic deposit and vegetable earth has been broken through, as in the case of the drift which arose from the upturning of an oak mentioned on a former page. When the valley of the Euphrates was regularly irrigated and cultivated, the underlying sands were bound by moisture, alluvial slime, and vegetation; but now, that all improvement is neglected, and the surface, no longer watered, has become parched, powdery, and naked, a mere accidental fissure in the superficial stratum may soon be enlarged to a wide opening, that will let loose sand enough to overwhelm a province. _The Landes of Gascony._ The most remarkable sand plain of France lies at the southwestern extremity of the empire, and is generally known as the Landes, or heaths, of Gascony. Clavé thus describes it: "Composed of pure sand, resting on an impermeable stratum called _alios_, the soil of the Landes was, for centuries, considered incapable of cultivation. Parched in summer, drowned in winter, it produced only ferns, rushes, and heath, and scarcely furnished pasturage for a few half-starved flocks. To crown its miseries, this plain was continually threatened by the encroachments of the dunes. Vast ridges of sand, thrown up by the waves, for a distance of more than fifty leagues along the coast, and continually renewed, were driven inland by the west wind, and, as they rolled over the plain, they buried the soil and the hamlets, overcame all resistance, and advanced with fearful regularity. The whole province seemed devoted to certain destruction, when Brémontier invented his method of fixing the dunes by plantations of the maritime pine."[475] Although the Landes had been almost abandoned for ages, they show numerous traces of ancient cultivation and prosperity, and it is principally by means of the encroachments of the sands that they have become reduced to their present desolate condition. The destruction of the coast towns and harbors, which furnished markets for the products of the plains, the damming up of the rivers, and the obstruction of the smaller channels of natural drainage by the advance of the dunes, were no doubt very influential causes; and if we add the drifting of the sea sand over the soil, we have at least a partial explanation of the decayed agriculture and diminished population of this great waste. When the dunes were once arrested, and the soil to the east of them was felt to be secure against invasion by them, experiments, in the way of agricultural improvement, by drainage and plantation, were commenced, and they have been attended with such signal success, that the complete recovery of one of the dreariest and most extensive wastes in Europe may be considered as both a probable and a near event.[476] _The Belgian Campine._ In the northern part of Belgium, and extending across the confines of Holland, is another very similar heath plain, called the Campine. This is a vast sand flat, interspersed with marshes and inland dunes, and, until recently, considered wholly incapable of cultivation. Enormous sums have been expended in reclaiming it by draining and other familiar agricultural processes, but without results at all proportional to the capital invested. In 1849, the unimproved portion of the Campine was estimated at little less than three hundred and fifty thousand acres. The example of France has prompted experiments in the planting of trees, especially the maritime pine, upon this barren waste, and the results have been such as to show that its sands may both be fixed and made productive, not only without loss, but with positive pecuniary advantage.[477] _Sands and Steppes of Eastern Europe._ There are still unsubdued sand wastes in many parts of interior Europe not familiarly known to tourists or even geographers. "Olkuez and Schiewier in Poland," says Naumann, "lie in true sand deserts, and a boundless plain of sand stretches around Ozenstockau, on which there grows neither tree nor shrub. In heavy winds, this plain resembles a rolling sea, and the sand hills rise and disappear like the waves of the ocean. The heaps of waste from the Olkuez mines are covered with sand to the depth of four fathoms."[478] No attempts have yet been made to subdue the sands of Poland, but when peace and prosperity shall be restored to that unhappy country, there is no reasonable doubt that the measures, which have proved so successful on similar formations in Germany, may be employed with advantage in the Polish deserts. There are sand drifts in parts of the steppes of Russia, but in general the soil of those vast plains is of a different, though very varied, composition, and is covered with vegetation. The steppes, however, have many points of analogy with the sand plains of Northern Germany, and if they are ever fitted for civilized occupation, it must be by the same means, that is, by planting forests. It is disputed whether the steppes were ever wooded. They were certainly bare of forest growth at a very remote period; for Herodotus describes the country of the Scythians between the Ister and the Tanais as woodless, with the exception of the small province of Xylæa between the Dnieper and the Gulf of Perekop. They are known to have been occupied by a large nomade and pastoral population down to the sixteenth century, though these tribes are now much reduced in numbers. The habits of such races are scarcely less destructive to the forest than those of civilized life. Pastoral tribes do not employ much wood for fuel or for construction, but they carelessly or recklessly burn down the forests, and their cattle effectually check the growth of young trees wherever their range extends. At present, the furious winds which sweep over the plains, the droughts of summer, and the rights and abuses of pasturage, constitute very formidable obstacles to the employment of measures which have been attended with so valuable results on the sand wastes of France and Germany. The Russian Government has, however, attempted the wooding of the steppes, and there are thriving plantations in the neighborhood of Odessa, where the soil is of a particularly loose and sandy character.[479] The trees best suited to this locality, and, as there is good reason to suppose, to sand plains in general, is the _Ailanthus glandulosa_, or Japan varnish tree.[480] The remarkable success which has crowned the experiments with the ailanthus at Odessa, will, no doubt, stimulate to similar trials elsewhere, and it seems not improbable that the arundo and the maritime pine, which have fixed so many thousand acres of drifting sands in Western Europe, will be, partially at least, superseded by the tamarisk and the varnish tree. _Advantages of Reclaiming the Sands._ If we consider the quantity of waste land which has been made productive by the planting of the sand hills and plains, and the extent of fertile soil, the number of villages and other human improvements, and the value of the harbors, which the same process has saved from being buried under the rolling dunes, and at last swallowed up forever by the invasions of the sea, we shall be inclined to rank Brémontier and Reventlov among the greatest benefactors of their race. With the exception of the dikes of the Netherlands, their labors are the first deliberate and direct attempts of man to make himself, on a great scale, a geographical power, to restore natural balances which earlier generations had disturbed, and to atone, by acts guided by foreseeing and settled purpose, for the waste which thoughtless improvidence had created. _Government Works._ There is an important political difference between these latter works and the diking system of the Netherlandish and German coasts. The dikes originally were, and in modern times very generally have been, private enterprises, undertaken with no other aim than to add a certain quantity of cultivable soil to the former possessions of their proprietor, or sometimes of the state. In short, with few exceptions, they have been merely a pecuniary investment, a mode of acquiring land not economically different from purchase. The planting of the dunes, on the contrary, has always been a public work, executed, not with the expectation of reaping a regular direct percentage of income from the expenditure, but dictated by higher views of state economy--by the same governmental principles, in fact, which animate all commonwealths in repelling invasion by hostile armies, or in repairing the damages that invading forces may have inflicted on the general interests of the people. The restoration of the forests in the southern part of France, as now conducted by the Government of that empire, is a measure of the same elevated character as the fixing of the dunes. In former ages, forests were formed or protected simply for the sake of the shelter they afforded to game, or for the timber they yielded; but the recent legislation of France, and of some other Continental countries, on this subject, looks to more distant as well as nobler ends, and these are among the public acts which most strongly encourage the hope that the rulers of Christendom are coming better to understand the true duties and interests of civilized government. CHAPTER VI. PROJECTED OR POSSIBLE GEOGRAPHICAL CHANGES BY MAN. CUTTING OF MARINE ISTHMUSES--THE SUEZ CANAL--CANAL ACROSS ISTHMUS OF DARIEN--CANALS TO THE DEAD SEA--MARITIME CANALS IN GREECE--CANAL OF SAROS--CAPE COD CANAL--DIVERSION OF THE NILE--CHANGES IN THE CASPIAN-- IMPROVEMENTS IN NORTH AMERICAN HYDROGRAPHY--DIVERSION OF RHINE-- DRAINING OF THE ZUIDERZEE--WATERS OF THE KARST--SUBTERRANEAN WATERS OF GREECE--SOIL BELOW ROCK--COVERING ROCKS WITH EARTH--WADIES OF ARABIA PETRÆA--INCIDENTAL EFFECTS OF HUMAN ACTION--RESISTANCE TO GREAT NATURAL FORCES--EFFECTS OF MINING--ESPY'S THEORIES--RIVER SEDIMENT--NOTHING SMALL IN NATURE. _Cutting of Marine Isthmuses._ Besides the great enterprises of physical transformation of which I have already spoken, other works of internal improvement or change have been projected in ancient and modern times, the execution of which would produce considerable, and, in some cases, extremely important, revolutions in the face of the earth. Some of the schemes to which I refer are evidently chimerical; others are difficult, indeed, but cannot be said to be impracticable, though discouraged by the apprehension of disastrous consequences from the disturbance of existing natural or artificial arrangements; and there are still others, the accomplishment of which is ultimately certain, though for the present forbidden by economical considerations. When we consider the number of narrow necks or isthmuses which separate gulfs and bays of the sea from each other, or from the main ocean, and take into account the time and cost, and risks of navigation which would be saved by executing channels to connect such waters, and thus avoiding the necessity of doubling long capes and promontories, or even continents, it seems strange that more of the enterprise and money which have been so lavishly expended in forming artificial rivers for internal navigation should not have been bestowed upon the construction of maritime canals. Many such have been projected in early and in recent ages, and some trifling cuts between marine waters have been actually made, but no work of this sort, possessing real geographical or even commercial importance, has yet been effected. These enterprises are attended with difficulties and open to objections, which are not, at first sight, obvious. Nature guards well the chains by which she connects promontories with mainlands, and binds continents together. Isthmuses are usually composed of adamantine rock or of shifting sands--the latter being much the more refractory material to deal with. In all such works there is a necessity for deep excavation below low-water mark--always a matter of great difficulty; the dimensions of channels for sea-going ships must be much greater than those of canals of inland navigation; the height of the masts or smoke pipes of that class of vessels would often render bridging impossible, and thus a ship canal might obstruct a communication more important than that which it was intended to promote; the securing of the entrances of marine canals and the construction of ports at their termini would in general be difficult and expensive, and the harbors and the channel which connected them would be extremely liable to fill up by deposits washed in from sea and shore. Besides all this, there is, in many cases, an alarming uncertainty as to the effects of joining together waters which nature has put asunder. A new channel may deflect strong currents from safe courses, and thus occasion destructive erosion of shores otherwise secure, or promote the transportation of sand or slime to block up important harbors, or it may furnish a powerful enemy with dangerous facilities for hostile operations along the coast. Nature sometimes mocks the cunning and the power of man by spontaneously performing, for his benefit, works which he shrinks from undertaking, and the execution of which by him she would resist with unconquerable obstinacy. A dangerous sand bank, that all the enginery of the world could not dredge out in a generation, may be carried off in a night by a strong river flood, or a current impelled by a violent wind from an unusual quarter, and a passage scarcely navigable by fishing boats may be thus converted into a commodious channel for the largest ship that floats upon the ocean. In the remarkable gulf of Liimfjord in Jutland, nature has given a singular example of a canal which she alternately opens as a marine strait, and, by shutting again, converts into a fresh-water lagoon. The Liimfjord was doubtless originally an open channel from the Atlantic to the Baltic between two islands, but the sand washed up by the sea blocked up the western entrance, and built a wall of dunes to close it more firmly. This natural dike, as we have seen, has been more than once broken through, and it is perhaps in the power of man, either permanently to maintain the barrier, or to remove it and keep a navigable channel constantly open. If the Liimfjord becomes an open strait, the washing of sea sand through it would perhaps block up some of the belts and small channels now important for the navigation of the Baltic, and the direct introduction of a tidal current might produce very perceptible effects on the hydrography of the Cattegat. _The Suez Canal._ If the Suez Canal--the greatest and most truly cosmopolite physical improvement ever undertaken by man--shall prove successful, it will considerably affect the basins of the Mediterranean and of the Red Sea, though in a different manner, and probably in a less degree than the diversion of the current of the Nile from the one to the other--to which I shall presently refer--would do. It is, indeed, conceivable, that if a free channel be once cut from sea to sea, the coincidence of a high tide and a heavy south wind might produce a hydraulic force that would convert the narrow canal into an open strait. In such a case, it is impossible to estimate, or even to foresee, the consequences which might result from the unobstructed mingling of the flowing and ebbing currents of the Red Sea with the almost tideless waters of the Mediterranean. There can be no doubt, however, that they would be of a most important character as respects the simply geographical features and the organic life of both. But the shallowness of the two seas at the termini of the canal, the action of the tides of the one and the currents of the other, and the nature of the intervening isthmus, render the occurrence of such a cataclysm in the highest degree improbable. The obstruction of the canal by sea sand at both ends is a danger far more difficult to guard against and avert, than an irruption of the waters of either sea. There is, then, no reason to expect any change of coast lines or of natural navigable channels as a direct consequence of the opening of the Suez Canal, but it will, no doubt, produce very interesting revolutions in the animal and vegetable population of both basins. The Mediterranean, with some local exceptions--such as the bays of Calabria, and the coast of Sicily so picturesquely described by Quatrefages[481]--is comparatively poor in marine vegetation, and in shell as well as in fin fish. The scarcity of fish in some of its gulfs is proverbial, and you may scrutinize long stretches of beach on its northern shores, after every south wind for a whole winter, without finding a dozen shells to reward your search. But no one who has not looked down into tropical or subtropical seas can conceive the amazing wealth of the Red Sea in organic life. Its bottom is carpeted or paved with marine plants, with zoophytes and with shells, while its waters are teeming with infinitely varied forms of moving life. Most of its vegetables and its animals, no doubt, are confined by the laws of their organization to warmer temperatures than that of the Mediterranean, but among them there must be many, whose habitat is of a wider range, many whose powers of accommodation would enable them to acclimate themselves in a colder sea. We may suppose the less numerous aquatic fauna and flora of the Mediterranean to be equally capable of climatic adaptation, and hence, when the canal shall be opened, there will be an interchange of the organic population not already common to both seas. Destructive species, thus newly introduced, may diminish the numbers of their proper prey in either basin, and, on the other hand, the increased supply of appropriate food may greatly multiply the abundance of others, and at the same time add important contributions to the aliment of man in the countries bordering on the Mediterranean. A collateral feature of this great project deserves notice as possessing no inconsiderable geographical importance. I refer to the conduit or conduits constructed from the Nile to the isthmus, primarily to supply fresh water to the laborers on the great canal, and ultimately to serve as aqueducts for the city of Suez, and for the irrigation and reclamation of a large extent of desert soil. In the flourishing days of the Egyptian empire, the waters of the Nile were carried over important districts east of the river. In later ages, most of this territory relapsed into a desert, from the decay of the canals which once fertilized it. There is no difficulty in restoring the ancient channels, or in constructing new, and thus watering not only all the soil that the wisdom of the Pharaohs had improved, but much additional land. Hundreds of square miles of arid sand waste would thus be converted into fields of perennial verdure, and the geography of Lower Egypt would be thereby sensibly changed. If the canal succeeds, considerable towns will grow up at once at both ends of the channel, and at intermediate points, all depending on the maintenance of aqueducts from the Nile, both for water and for the irrigation of the neighboring fields which are to supply them with bread. Important interests will thus be created, which will secure the permanence of the hydraulic works and of the geographical changes produced by them, and Suez, or Port Said, or the city at Lake Timsah, may become the capital of the government which has been so long established at Cairo. _Canal across the Isthmus of Darien._ The most colossal project of canalization ever suggested, whether we consider the physical difficulties of its execution, the magnitude and importance of the waters proposed to be united, or the distance which would be saved in navigation, is that of a channel between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific, across the Isthmus of Darien. I do not now speak of a lock canal, by way of the Lake of Nicaragua or any other route--for such a work would not differ essentially from other canals, and would scarcely possess a geographical character--but of an open cut between the two seas. It has been by no means shown that the construction of such a channel is possible, and, if it were opened, it is highly probable that sand bars would accumulate at both entrances, so as to obstruct any powerful current through it. But if we suppose the work to be actually accomplished, there would be, in the first place, such a mixture of the animal and vegetable life of the two great oceans as I have stated to be likely to result from the opening of the Suez Canal between two much smaller basins. In the next place, if the channel were not obstructed by sand bars, it might sooner or later be greatly widened and deepened by the mechanical action of the current through it, and consequences, not inferior in magnitude to any physical revolution which has taken place since man appeared upon the earth, might result from it. What those consequences would be is in a great degree matter of pure conjecture, and there is much room for the exercise of the imagination on the subject; but, as more than one geographer has suggested, there is one possible result which throws all other conceivable effects of such a work quite into the shade. I refer to changes in the course of the two great oceanic rivers, the Gulf Stream and the corresponding current on the Pacific side of the isthmus. The warm waters which the Gulf Stream transports to high latitudes and then spreads out, like an expanded hand, along the eastern shores of the Atlantic, give out, as they cool, heat enough to raise the mean temperature of Western Europe several degrees. In fact, the Gulf Stream is the principal cause of the superiority of the climate of Western Europe over those of Eastern America and Eastern Asia in the corresponding latitudes. All the meteorological conditions of the former region are in a great measure regulated by it, and hence it is the grandest and most beneficent of all purely geographical phenomena. We do not yet know enough of the laws which govern the movements of this mighty flood of warmth and life to be able to say whether its current would be perceptibly affected by the severance of the Isthmus of Darien; but as it enters and sweeps round the Gulf of Mexico, it is possible that the removal of the resistance of the land which forms the western shore of that sea, might allow the stream to maintain its original westward direction, and join itself to the tropical current of the Pacific. The effect of such a change would be an immediate depression of the mean temperature of Western Europe to the level of that of Eastern America, and perhaps the climate of the former continent might become as excessive as that of the latter, or even a new "ice period" be occasioned by the withdrawal of so important a source of warmth from the northern zones. Hence would result the extinction of vast multitudes of land and sea plants and animals, and a total revolution in the domestic and rural economy of human life in all those countries from which the New World has received its civilized population. Other scarcely less startling consequences may be imagined as possible; but the whole speculation is too dreary, distant, and improbable to deserve to be long indulged in.[482] _Canals to the Dead Sea._ The project of Captain Allen for opening a new route to India by cuts between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea, and between the Dead Sea and the Red Sea, presents many interesting considerations.[483] The hypsometrical observations of Bertou, Roth, and others, render it highly probable, if not certain, that the watershed in the Wadi-el-Araba between the Dead Sea and the Red Sea is not less than three hundred feet above the mean level of the latter, and if this is so, the execution of a canal from the one sea to the other is quite out of the question. But the summit level between the Mediterranean and the Jordan, near Jezreel, is believed to be little, if at all, more than one hundred feet above the sea, and the distance is so short that the cutting of a channel through the dividing ridge would probably be found by no means an impracticable undertaking. Although, therefore, we have no reason to believe it possible to open a navigable channel to the east by way of the Dead Sea, there is not much doubt that the basin of the latter might be made accessible from the Mediterranean. The level of the Dead Sea lies 1,316.7 feet below that of the ocean. It is bounded east and west by mountain ridges, rising to the height of from 2,000 to 4,000 feet above the ocean. From its southern end, a depression called the Wadi-el-Araba extends to the Gulf of Akaba, the eastern arm of the Red Sea. The Jordan empties into its northern extremity, after having passed through the Lake of Tiberias at an elevation of 663.4 feet above the Dead Sea, or 653.3 below the Mediterranean, and drains a considerable valley north of the lake, as well as the plain of Jericho, which lies between the lake and the sea. If the waters of the Mediterranean were admitted freely into the basin of the Dead Sea, they would raise its surface to the general level of the ocean, and consequently flood all the dry land below that level within the basin. I do not know that accurate levels have been taken in the valley of the Jordan above the Lake of Tiberias, and our information is very vague as to the hypsometry of the northern part of the Wadi-el-Araba. As little do we know where a contour line, carried around the basin at the level of the Mediterranean, would strike its eastern and western borders. We cannot, therefore, accurately compute the extent of now dry land which would be covered by the admission of the waters of the Mediterranean, or the area of the inland sea which would be thus created. Its length, however, would certainly exceed one hundred and fifty miles, and its mean breadth, including its gulfs and bays, could scarcely be less than fifteen, perhaps even twenty. It would cover very little ground now occupied by civilized or even uncivilized man, though some of the soil which would be submerged--for instance, that watered by the Fountain of Elisha and other neighboring sources--is of great fertility, and, under a wiser government and better civil institutions, might rise to importance, because, from its depression, it possesses a very warm climate, and might supply Southeastern Europe with tropical products more readily than they can be obtained from any other source. Such a canal and sea would be of no present commercial importance, because they would give access to no new markets or sources of supply; but when the fertile valleys and the deserted plains east of the Jordan shall be reclaimed to agriculture and civilization, these waters would furnish a channel of communication which might become the medium of a very extensive trade. Whatever might be the economical results of the opening and filling of the Dead Sea basin, the creation of a new evaporable area, adding not less than 2,000 or perhaps 3,000 square miles to the present fluid surface of Syria, could not fail to produce important meteorological effects. The climate of Syria would be tempered, its precipitation and its fertility increased, the courses of its winds and the electrical condition of its atmosphere modified. The present organic life of the valley would be extinguished, and many tribes of plants and animals would emigrate from the Mediterranean to the new home which human art had prepared for them. It is possible, too, that the addition of 1,300 feet, or forty atmospheres, of hydrostatic pressure upon the bottom of the basin might disturb the equilibrium between the internal and the external forces of the crust of the earth at this point of abnormal configuration, and thus produce geological convulsions the intensity of which cannot be even conjectured. _Maritime Canals in Greece._ A maritime canal executed and another projected in ancient times, the latter of which is again beginning to excite attention, deserve some notice, though their importance is of a commercial rather than a geographical character. The first of these is the cut made by Xerxes through the rock which connects the promontory of Mount Athos with the mainland; the other, a navigable canal through the Isthmus of Corinth. In spite of the testimony of Herodotus and Thucydides, the Romans classed the canal of Xerxes among the fables of "mendacious Greece," and yet traces of it are perfectly distinct at the present day through its whole extent, except at a single point where, after it had become so choked as to be no longer navigable, it was probably filled up to facilitate communication by land between the promontory and the country in the rear of it. If the fancy kingdom of Greece shall ever become a sober reality, escape from its tutelage and acquire such a moral as well as political status that its own capitalists--who now prefer to establish themselves and employ their funds anywhere else rather than in their native land--have any confidence in the permanency of its institutions, a navigable channel will no doubt be opened between the gulfs of Lepanto and Ægina. The annexation of the Ionian Islands to Greece will make such a work almost a political necessity, and it would not only furnish valuable facilities for domestic intercourse, but become an important channel of communication between the Levant and the countries bordering on the Adriatic, or conducting their trade through that sea. As I have said, the importance of this latter canal and of a navigable channel between Mount Athos and the continent would be chiefly commercial, but both of them would be conspicuous instances of the control of man over nature in a field where he has thus far done little to interfere with her spontaneous arrangements. If they were constructed upon such a scale as to admit of the free passage of the water through them, in either direction, as the prevailing winds should impel it, they would exercise a certain influence on the coast currents, which are important as hydrographical elements, and also as producing abrasion of the coast and a drift at the bottom of seas, and hence would be entitled to a higher rank than simply as artificial means of transit. _Canal of Saros._ It has been thought practicable to cut a canal across the peninsula of Gallipoli from the outlet of the Sea of Marmora into the Gulf of Saros. It may be doubted whether the mechanical difficulties of such a work would not be found insuperable; but when Constantinople shall recover the important political and commercial rank which naturally belongs to her, the execution of such a canal will be recommended by strong reasons of military expediency, as well as by the interests of trade. An open channel across the peninsula would divert a portion of the water which now flows through the Dardanelles, diminish the rapidity of that powerful current, and thus in part remove the difficulties which obstruct the navigation of the strait. It would considerably abridge the distance by water between Constantinople and the northern coast of the Ægean, and it would have the important advantage of obliging an enemy to maintain two blockading fleets instead of one. _Cape Cod Canal._ The opening of a navigable cut through the narrow neck which separates the southern part of Cape Cod Bay in Massachusetts from the Atlantic, was long ago suggested, and there are few coast improvements on the Atlantic shores of the United States which are recommended by higher considerations of utility. It would save the most important coasting trade of the United States the long and dangerous navigation around Cape Cod, afford a new and safer entrance to Boston harbor for vessels from Southern ports, secure a choice of passages, thus permitting arrivals upon the coast and departures from it at periods when wind and weather might otherwise prevent them, and furnish a most valuable internal communication in case of coast blockade by a foreign power. The difficulties of the undertaking are no doubt formidable, but the expense of maintenance and the uncertainty of the effects of currents setting through the new strait are still more serious objections. _Diversion of the Nile._ Perhaps the most remarkable project of great physical change, proposed or threatened in earlier ages, is that of the diversion of the Nile from its natural channel, and the turning of its current into either the Libyan desert or the Red Sea. The Ethiopian or Abyssinian princes more than once menaced the Memlouk sultans with the execution of this alarming project, and the fear of so serious an evil is said to have induced the Moslems to conciliate the Abyssinian kings by large presents, and by some concessions to the oppressed Christians of Egypt.[484] Indeed, Arabic historians affirm that in the tenth century the Ethiopians dammed the river, and, for a whole year, cut off its waters from Egypt. The probable explanation of this story is to be found in a season of extreme drought, such as have sometimes occurred in the valley of the Nile. About the beginning of the sixteenth century, Albuquerque the "Terrible" revived the scheme of turning the Nile into the Red Sea, with the hope of destroying the transit trade through Egypt by way of Kesseir. In 1525 the King of Portugal was requested by the Emperor of Abyssinia to send him engineers for that purpose; a successor of that prince threatened to attempt the project about the year 1700, and even as late as the French occupation of Egypt, the possibility of driving out the intruder by this means was suggested in England. It cannot be positively affirmed that the diversion of the waters of the Nile to the Red Sea is impossible. In the chain of mountains which separates the two valleys, Brown found a deep depression or wadi, extending from the one to the other, at no great elevation above the bed of the river. The Libyan desert is so much higher than the Nile below the junction of the two principal branches at Khartum, that there is no reason to believe a new channel for their united waters could be found in that direction; but the Bahr-el-Abiad flows through, if it does not rise in, a great table land, and some of its tributaries are supposed to communicate in the rainy season with branches of great rivers flowing in quite another direction. Hence it is probable that a portion at least of the waters of this great arm of the Nile--and perhaps a quantity the abstraction of which would be sensibly felt in Egypt--might be sent to the Atlantic by the Niger, lost in the inland lakes of Central Africa, or employed to fertilize the Libyan sand wastes. Admitting the possibility of turning the whole river into the Red Sea, let us consider the probable effect of the change. First and most obvious is the total destruction of the fertility of Middle and Lower Egypt, the conversion of that part of the valley into a desert, and the extinction of its imperfect civilization, if not the absolute extirpation of its inhabitants. This is the calamity threatened by the Abyssinian princes and the ferocious Portuguese warrior, and feared by the sultans of Egypt. Beyond these immediate and palpable consequences neither party then looked; but a far wider geographical area, and far more extensive and various human interests, would be affected by the measure. The spread of the Nile during the annual inundation covers, for many weeks, several thousand square miles with water, and at other seasons of the year pervades the same and even a larger area with moisture by infiltration. The abstraction of so large an evaporable surface from the southern shores of the Mediterranean could not but produce important effects on many meteorological phenomena, and the humidity, the temperature, the electrical condition and the atmospheric currents of Northeastern Africa might be modified to a degree that would sensibly affect the climate of Europe. The Mediterranean, deprived of the contributions of the Nile, would require a larger supply, and of course a stronger current, of water from the Atlantic through the Straits of Gibraltar; the proportion of salt it contains would be increased, and the animal life of at least its southern borders would be consequently modified; the current which winds along its southern, eastern, and northeastern shores would be diminished in force and volume, if not destroyed altogether, and its basin and its harbors would be shoaled by no new deposits from the highlands of inner Africa. In the much smaller Red Sea, more immediately perceptible, if not greater, effects, would be produced. The deposits of slime would reduce its depth, and perhaps, in the course of ages, divide it into an inland and an open sea; its waters would be more or less freshened, and its immensely rich marine fauna and flora changed in character and proportion, and, near the mouth of the river, perhaps even destroyed altogether; its navigable channels would be altered in position and often quite obstructed; the flow of its tides would be modified by the new geographical conditions; the sediment of the river would form new coast lines and lowlands, which would be covered with vegetation, and probably thereby produce sensible climatic changes. _Changes in the Caspian._ The Russian Government has contemplated the establishment of a nearly direct water communication between the Caspian Sea and the Sea of Azoff, partly by natural and partly by artificial channels, and there are now navigable canals between the Don and the Volga; but these works, though not wanting in commercial and political interest, do not possess any geographical importance. It is, however, very possible to produce appreciable geographical changes in the basin of the Caspian by the diversion of the great rivers which flow from Central Russia. The surface of the Caspian is eighty-three feet below the level of the Sea of Azoff, and its depression has been explained upon the hypothesis that the evaporation exceeds the supply derived, directly and indirectly, from precipitation, though able physicists now maintain that the sinking of this sea is due to a subsidence of its bottom from geological causes. At Tsaritsin, the Don, which empties into the Sea of Azoff, and the Volga, which pours into the Caspian, approach each other within ten miles. Near this point, by means of open or subterranean canals, the Don might be turned into the Volga, or the Volga into the Don. If we suppose the whole or a large proportion of the waters of the Don to be thus diverted from their natural outlet and sent down to the Caspian, the equilibrium between the evaporation from that sea and its supply of water might be restored, or its level even raised above its ancient limits. If the Volga were turned into the Sea of Azoff, the Caspian would be reduced in dimensions until the balance between loss and gain should be reëstablished, and it would occupy a much smaller area than at present. Such changes in the proportion of solid and fluid surface would have some climatic effects in the territory which drains into the Caspian, and on the other hand, the introduction of a greater quantity of fresh water into the Sea of Azoff would render that gulf less saline, affect the character and numbers of its fish, and perhaps be not wholly without sensible influence on the water of the Black Sea. _Improvements in North American Hydrography._ We are not yet well enough acquainted with the geography of Central Africa, or of the interior of South America, to conjecture what hydrographical revolutions might there be wrought; but from the fact that many important rivers in both continents drain extensive table lands, of very moderate inclination, there is reason to suppose that important changes in the course of rivers might be accomplished. Our knowledge of the drainage of North America is much more complete, and it is certain that there are numerous points where the courses of great rivers, or the discharge of considerable lakes, might be completely diverted, or at least partially directed into different channels. The surface of Lake Erie is 565 feet above that of the Hudson at Albany, and it is so near the level of the great plain lying east of it, that it was found practicable to supply the western section of the canal, which unites it with the Hudson, with water from the lake, or rather from the Niagara which flows out of it. Hence a channel might be constructed, which would draw off into the valley of the Genesee any desirable proportion of the water naturally discharged by the Niagara. The greatest depth of water yet sounded in Lake Erie is but two hundred and seventy feet, the mean depth one hundred and twenty. Open canals parallel with the Niagara, or directly toward the Genesee, might be executed upon a scale which would exercise an important influence on the drainage of the lake, if there were any adequate motive for such an undertaking. Still easier would it be to create additional outlets for the waters of Lake Superior at the Saut St. Mary--where the river which drains the lake descends twenty-two feet in a single mile--and thus produce incalculable effects, both upon that lake and upon the great chain of inland waters which communicate with it. The summit level between Lake Michigan and the Des Plaines, a tributary of the Mississippi, is only twenty-seven feet above the lake, and the intervening distance is but a very few miles. It has often been proposed to cut an open channel across this ridge, and there is no doubt of the practicability of the project. Were this accomplished, although such a cut would not, of itself, form a navigable canal, a part of the waters of Lake Michigan would be contributed to the Gulf of Mexico, instead of to that of St. Lawrence, and the flow might be so regulated as to keep the Illinois and the Mississippi at flood at all seasons of the year. The increase in the volume of these rivers would augment their velocity and their transporting power, and consequently, the erosion of their banks and the deposit of slime in the Gulf of Mexico, while the introduction of a larger body of cold water into the beds of these rivers would very probably produce a considerable effect on the animal life that peoples them. The diversion of water from the common basin of the great lakes through a new channel, in a direction opposite to their natural discharge, would not be absolutely without influence on the St. Lawrence, though probably the effect would be too small to be in any way perceptible. _Diversion of the Rhine._ The interference of physical improvements with vested rights and ancient arrangements, is a more formidable obstacle in old countries than in new, to enterprises involving anything approaching to a geographical revolution. Hence such projects meet with stronger opposition in Europe than in America, and the number of probable changes in the face of nature in the former continent is proportionally less. I have noticed some important hydraulic improvements as already executed or in progress in Europe, and I may refer to some others as contemplated or suggested. One of these is the diversion of the Rhine from its present channel below Ragatz, by a cut through the narrow ridge near Sargans, and the consequent turning of its current into the Lake of Wallenstadt. This would be an extremely easy undertaking, for the ridge is but twenty feet above the level of the Rhine, and hardly two hundred yards wide. There is no present adequate motive for this diversion, but it is easy to suppose that it may become advisable within no long period. The navigation of the Lake of Constance is rapidly increasing in importance, and the shoaling of the eastern end of that lake by the deposits of the Rhine may require a remedy which can be found by no other so ready means as the discharge of that river into the Lake of Wallenstadt. The navigation of this latter lake is not important, nor is it ever likely to become so, because the rocky and precipitous character of its shores renders their cultivation impossible. It is of great depth, and its basin is capacious enough to receive and retain all the sediment which the Rhine would carry into it for thousands of years. _Draining of the Zuiderzee._ I have referred to the draining of the Lake of Haarlem as an operation of great geographical as well as economical and mechanical interest. A much more gigantic project, of a similar character, is now engaging the attention of the Netherlandish engineers. It is proposed to drain the great salt-water basin called the Zuiderzee. This inland sea covers an area of not less than two thousand square miles, or about one million three hundred thousand acres. The seaward half, or that portion lying northwest of a line drawn from Enkhuizen to Stavoren, is believed to have been converted from a marsh to an open bay since the fifth century after Christ, and this change is ascribed, partly if not wholly, to the interference of man with the order of nature. The Zuiderzee communicates with the sea by at least six considerable channels, separated from each other by low islands, and the tide rises within the basin to the height of three feet. To drain the Zuiderzee, these channels must first be closed and the passage of the tidal flood through them cut off. If this be done, the coast currents will be restored approximately to the lines they followed fourteen or fifteen centuries ago, and there can be little doubt that an appreciable effect will thus be produced upon all the tidal phenomena of that coast, and, of course, upon the maritime geography of Holland. A ring dike and canal must then be constructed around the landward side of the basin, to exclude and carry off the fresh-water streams which now empty into it. One of these, the Ijssel, a considerable river, has a course of eighty miles, and is, in fact, one of the outlets of the Rhine, though augmented by the waters of several independent tributaries. These preparations being made, and perhaps transverse dikes erected at convenient points for dividing the gulf into smaller portions, the water must be pumped out by machinery, in substantially the same way as in the case of the Lake of Haarlem. No safe calculations can be made as to the expenditure of time and money required for the execution of this stupendous enterprise, but I believe its practicability is not denied by competent judges, though doubts are entertained as to its financial expediency. The geographical results of this improvement would be analogous to those of the draining of the Lake of Haarlem, but many times multiplied in extent, and its meteorological effects, though perhaps not perceptible on the coast, could hardly fail to be appreciable in the interior of Holland. _Waters of the Karst._ The singular structure of the Karst, the great limestone plateau lying to the north of Trieste, has suggested some engineering operations which might be attended with sensible effects upon the geography of the province. I have described this table land as, though now bare of forests, and almost of vegetation, having once been covered with woods, and as being completely honeycombed by caves through which the drainage of that region is conducted. Schmidl has spent years in studying the subterranean geography and hydrography of this singular district, and his discoveries, and those of earlier cave-hunters, have led to various proposals of physical improvement of a novel character. Many of the underground water courses of the Karst are without visible outlet, and, in some instances at least, they, no doubt, send their waters, by deep channels, to the Adriatic.[485] The city of Trieste is very insufficiently provided with fresh water. It has been thought practicable to supply this want by tunnelling through the wall of the plateau, which rises abruptly in the rear of the town, until some subterranean stream is encountered, the current of which can be conducted to the city. More visionary projectors have gone further, and imagined that advantage might be taken of the natural tunnels under the Karst for the passage of roads, railways, and even navigable canals. But however chimerical these latter schemes may seem, there is every reason to believe that art might avail itself of these galleries for improving the imperfect drainage of the champaign country bounded by the Karst, and that stopping or opening the natural channels might very much modify the hydrography of an extensive region. _Subterranean Waters of Greece._ There are parts of continental Greece which resemble the Karst and the adjacent plains in being provided with a natural subterranean drainage. The superfluous waters run off into limestone caves called _catavothra_ ([Greek: katabothra]). In ancient times, the entrances to the catavothra were enlarged or partially closed as the convenience of drainage or irrigation required, and there is no doubt that similar measures might be adopted at the present day with great advantage both to the salubrity and the productiveness of the regions so drained. _Soil below Rock._ One of the most singular changes of natural surface effected by man is that observed by Beechey and by Barth at Lîn Tefla, and near Gebel Genûnes, in the district of Ben Gâsi, in Northern Africa. In this region the superficial stratum originally consisted of a thin sheet of rock covering a layer of fertile earth. This rock has been broken up, and, when not practicable to find use for it in fences, fortresses, or dwellings, heaped together in high piles, and the soil, thus bared of its stony shell, has been employed for agricultural purposes.[486] If we remember that gunpowder was unknown at the period when these remarkable improvements were executed, and of course that the rock could have been broken only with the chisel and wedge, we must infer that land had at that time a very great pecuniary value, and, of course, that the province, though now exhausted, and almost entirely deserted by man, had once a dense population. _Covering Rock with Earth._ If man has, in some cases, broken up rock to reach productive ground beneath, he has, in many other instances, covered bare ledges, and sometimes extensive surfaces of solid stone, with fruitful earth, brought from no inconsiderable distance. Not to speak of the Campo Santo at Pisa, filled, or at least coated, with earth from the Holy Land, for quite a different purpose, it is affirmed that the garden of the monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai is composed of Nile mud, transported on the backs of camels from the banks of that river. Parthey and older authors state that all the productive soil of the Island of Malta was brought over from Sicily.[487] The accuracy of the information may be questioned in both cases, but similar practices, on a smaller scale, are matter of daily observation in many parts of Southern Europe. Much of the wine of the Moselle is derived from grapes grown on earth carried high up the cliffs on the shoulders of men. In China, too, rock has been artificially covered with earth to an extent which gives such operations a real geographical importance, and the accounts of the importation of earth at Malta, and the fertilization of the rocks on Mount Sinai with slime from the Nile, may be not wholly without foundation. _Wadies of Arabia, Petræa._ In the latter case, indeed, river sediment might be very useful as a manure, but it could hardly be needed as a soil; for the growth of vegetation in the wadies of the Sinaitic Peninsula shows that the disintegrated rock of its mountains requires only water to stimulate it to considerable productiveness. The wadies present, not unfrequently, narrow gorges, which might easily be closed, and thus accumulations of earth, and reservoirs of water to irrigate it, might be formed which would convert many a square mile of desert into flourishing date gardens and cornfields. Not far from Wadi Feiran, on the most direct route to Wadi Esh-Sheikh, is a very narrow pass called by the Arabs El Bueb (El Bab) or, The Gate, which might be securely closed to a very considerable height, with little labor or expense. Above this pass is a wide and nearly level expanse, containing a hundred acres, perhaps much more. This is filled up to a certain regular level with deposits brought down by torrents before the Gate, or Bueb, was broken through, and they have now worn down a channel in the deposits to the bed of the wadi. If a dam were constructed at the pass, and reservoirs built to retain the winter rains, a great extent of valley might be rendered cultivable. _Incidental Effects of Human Action._ I have more than once alluded to the collateral and unsought consequences of human action as being often more momentous than the direct and desired results. There are cases where such incidental, or, in popular speech, accidental, consequences, though of minor importance in themselves, serve to illustrate natural processes; others, where, by the magnitude and character of the material traces they leave behind them, they prove that man, in primary or in more advanced stages of social life, must have occupied particular districts for a longer period than has been supposed by popular chronology. "On the coast of Jutland," says Forchhammer, "wherever a bolt from a wreck or any other fragment of iron is deposited in the beach sand, the particles are cemented together, and form a very solid mass around the iron. A remarkable formation of this sort was observed a few years ago in constructing the sea wall of the harbor of Elsineur. This stratum, which seldom exceeded a foot in thickness, rested upon common beach sand, and was found at various depths, less near the shore, greater at some distance from it. It was composed of pebbles and sand, and contained a great quantity of pins, and some coins of the reign of Christian IV, between the beginning and the middle of the seventeenth century. Here and there, a coating of metallic copper had been deposited by galvanic action, and the presence of completely oxydized metallic iron was often detected. An investigation undertaken by Councillor Reinhard and myself, at the instance of the Society of Science, made it in the highest degree probable that this formation owed its origin to the street sweepings of the town, which had been thrown upon the beach, and carried off and distributed by the waves over the bottom of the harbor."[488] These and other familiar observations of the like sort show that a sandstone reef, of no inconsiderable magnitude, might originate from the stranding of a ship with a cargo of iron,[489] or from throwing the waste of an establishment for working metals into running water which might carry it to the sea. Parthey records a singular instance of unforeseen mischief from an interference with the arrangements of nature. A landowner at Malta possessed a rocky plateau sloping gradually toward the sea, and terminating in a precipice forty or fifty feet high, through natural openings in which the sea water flowed into a large cave under the rock. The proprietor attempted to establish salt works on the surface, and cut shallow pools in the rock for the evaporation of the water. In order to fill the salt pans more readily, he sank a well down to the cave beneath, through which he drew up water by a windlass and buckets. The speculation proved a failure, because the water filtered through the porous bottom of the pans, leaving little salt behind. But this was a small evil, compared with other destructive consequences that followed. When the sea was driven into the cave by violent west or northwest winds, it shot a _jet d'eau_ through the well to the height of sixty feet, the spray of which was scattered far and wide over the neighboring gardens and blasted the crops. The well was now closed with stones, but the next winter's storms hurled them out again, and spread the salt spray over the grounds in the vicinity as before. Repeated attempts were made to stop the orifice, but at the time of Parthey's visit the sea had thrice burst through, and it was feared that the evil was without remedy.[490] I have mentioned the great extent of the heaps of oyster and other shells left by the American Indians on the Atlantic coast of the United States. Some of the Danish kitchen-middens, which closely resemble them, are a thousand feet long, from one hundred and fifty to two hundred wide, and from six to ten high. These piles have an importance as geological witnesses, independent of their bearing upon human history. Wherever the coast line appears, from other evidence, to have remained unchanged in outline and elevation since they were accumulated, they are found near the sea, and not more than about ten feet above its level. In some cases they are at a considerable distance from the beach, and in these instances, so far as yet examined, there are proofs that the coast has advanced in consequence of upheaval or of fluviatile or marine deposit. Where they are altogether wanting, the coast seems to have sunk or been washed away by the sea. The constancy of these observations justifies geologists in arguing, where other evidence is wanting, the advance of land or sea respectively, or the elevation or depression of the former, from the position or the absence of these heaps alone. Every traveller in Italy is familiar with Monte Testaccio, the mountain of potsherds, at Rome; but this deposit, large as it is, shrinks into insignificance when compared with masses of similar origin in the neighborhood of older cities. The castaway pottery of ancient towns in Magna Græcia composes strata of such extent and thickness that they have been dignified with the appellation of the ceramic formation. The Nile, as it slowly changes its bed, exposes in its banks masses of the same material, so vast that the population of the world during the whole historical period would seem to have chosen this valley as a general deposit for its broken vessels. The fertility imparted to the banks of the Nile by the water and the slime of the inundations, is such that manures are little employed. Hence much domestic waste, which would elsewhere be employed to enrich the soil, is thrown out into vacant places near the town. Hills of rubbish are thus piled up which astonish the traveller almost as much as the solid pyramids themselves. The heaps of ashes and other household refuse collected on the borders and within the limits of Cairo were so large, that the removal of them by Ibrahim Pacha has been looked upon as one of the great works of the age. The soil near cities, the street sweepings of which are spread upon the ground as manure, is perceptibly raised by them and by other effects of human industry, and in spite of all efforts to remove the waste, the level of the ground on which large towns stand is constantly elevated. The present streets of Rome are twenty feet above those of the ancient city. The Appian way between Rome and Albano, when cleared out a few years ago, was found buried four or five feet deep, and the fields along the road were elevated nearly or quite as much. The floors of many churches in Italy, not more than six or seven centuries old, are now three or four feet below the adjacent streets, though it is proved by excavations that they were built as many feet above them. _Resistance to Great Natural Forces._ I have often spoken of the greater and more subtile natural forces, and especially of geological agencies, as powers beyond human guidance or resistance. This is no doubt at present true in the main, but man has shown that he is not altogether impotent to struggle with even these mighty servants of nature, and his unconscious as well as his deliberate action may in some cases have increased or diminished the intensity of their energies. It is a very ancient belief that earthquakes are more destructive in districts where the crust of the earth is solid and homogeneous, than where it is of a looser and more interrupted structure. Aristotle, Pliny the elder, and Seneca believed that not only natural ravines and caves, but quarries, wells, and other human excavations, which break the continuity of the terrestrial strata and facilitate the escape of elastic vapors, have a sensible influence in diminishing the violence and preventing the propagation of the earth waves. In all countries subject to earthquakes this opinion is still maintained, and it is asserted that, both in ancient and in modern times, buildings protected by deep wells under or near them have suffered less from earthquakes than those the architects of which have neglected this precaution.[491] If the commonly received theory of the cause of earthquakes is true--that, namely, which ascribes them to the elastic force of gases accumulated or generated in subterranean reservoirs--it is evident that open channels of communication between such reservoirs and the atmosphere might serve as a harmless discharge of gases that would otherwise acquire destructive energy. The doubt is whether artificial excavations can be carried deep enough to reach the laboratory where the elastic fluids are distilled. There are, in many places, small natural crevices through which such fluids escape, and the source of them sometimes lies at so moderate a depth that they pervade the superficial soil and, as it were, transpire from it, over a considerable area. When the borer of an ordinary artesian well strikes into a cavity in the earth, imprisoned air often rushes out with great violence, and this has been still more frequently observed in sinking mineral-oil wells. In this latter case, the discharge of a vehement current of inflammable fluid sometimes continues for hours and even longer periods. These facts seem to render it not wholly improbable that the popular belief of the efficacy of deep wells in mitigating the violence of earthquakes is well founded. In general, light, wooden buildings are less injured by earthquakes than more solid structures of stone or brick, and it is commonly supposed that the power put forth by the earth wave is too great to be resisted by any amount of weight or solidity of mass that man can pile up upon the surface. But the fact that in countries subject to earthquakes many very large and strongly constructed palaces, temples, and other monuments have stood for centuries, comparatively uninjured, suggests a doubt whether this opinion is sound. The earthquake of the first of November, 1755, which was felt over a twelfth part of the earth's surface, was probably the most violent of which we have any clear and distinct account, and it seems to have exerted its most destructive force at Lisbon. It has often been noticed as a remarkable fact, that the mint, a building of great solidity, was almost wholly unaffected by the shock which shattered every house and church in the city, and its escape from the common ruin can hardly be accounted for except upon the supposition that its weight, compactness, and strength of material enabled it to resist an agitation of the earth which overthrew all weaker structures. On the other hand, a stone pier in the harbor of Lisbon, on which thousands of people had taken refuge, sank with its foundations to a great depth during the same earthquake; and it is plain that where subterranean cavities exist, at moderate depths, the erection of heavy masses upon them would tend to promote the breaking down of the strata which roof them over. No physicist, I believe, has supposed that man can avert the eruption of a volcano or diminish the quantity of melted rock which it pours out of the bowels of the earth; but it is not always impossible to divert the course of even a large current of lava. "The smaller streams of lava near Catania," says Ferrara, in describing the great eruption of 1669, "were turned from their course by building dry walls of stone as a barrier against them. * * * It was proposed to divert the main current from Catania, and fifty men, protected by hides, were sent with hooks and iron bars to break the flank of the stream near Belpasso.[492] When the opening was made, fluid lava poured forth and flowed rapidly toward Paterno; but the inhabitants of that place, not caring to sacrifice their own town to save Catania, rushed out in arms and put a stop to the operation."[493] In the eruption of Vesuvius in 1794, the viceroy saved from impending destruction the town of Portici, and the valuable collection of antiquities then deposited there but since removed to Naples, by employing several thousand men to dig a ditch above the town, by which the lava current was carried off in another direction.[494] _Effects of Mining._ The excavations made by man, for mining and other purposes, may sometimes occasion disturbance of the surface by the subsidence of the strata above them, as in the case of the mine of Fahlun, but such accidents must always be too inconsiderable in extent to deserve notice in a geographical point of view. Such excavations, however, may interfere materially with the course of subterranean waters, and it has even been conjectured that the removal of large bodies of metallic ore from their original deposits might, at least locally, affect the magnetic and electrical condition of the earth's crust to a sensible degree. Accidental fires in mines of coal or lignite sometimes lead to consequences not only destructive to large quantities of valuable material, but may, directly or indirectly, produce results important in geography. The coal occasionally takes fire from the miners' lights or other fires used by them, and, if long exposed to air in deserted galleries, may be spontaneously kindled. Under favorable circumstances, a stratum of coal will burn till it is exhausted, and a cavity may be burnt out in a few months which human labor could not excavate in many years. Wittwer informs us that a coal mine at St. Etienne in Dauphiny has been burning ever since the fourteenth century, and that a mine near Duttweiler, another near Epterode, and a third at Zwickau, have been on fire for two hundred years. Such conflagrations not only produce cavities in the earth, but communicate a perceptible degree of heat to the surface, and the author just quoted cites cases where this heat has been advantageously employed in forcing vegetation.[495] _Espy's Theories._ Espy's well known suggestion of the possibility of causing rain artificially, by kindling great fires, is not likely to be turned to practical account, but the speculations of this able meteorologist are not, for that reason, to be rejected as worthless. His labors exhibit great industry in the collection of facts, much ingenuity in dealing with them, remarkable insight into the laws of nature, and a ready perception of analogies and relations not obvious to minds less philosophically constituted. They have unquestionably contributed very essentially to the advancement of meteorological science. The possibility that the distribution and action of electricity may be considerably modified by long lines of iron railways and telegraph wires, is a kindred thought, and in fact rests much on the same foundation as the belief in the utility of lightning rods, but such influence is too obscure and too small to have been yet detected. _River Sediment._ The manifestation of the internal heat of the earth at any given point is conditioned by the thickness of the crust at such point. The deposits of rivers tend to augment that thickness at their estuaries. The sediment of slowly flowing rivers emptying into shallow seas is spread over so great a surface that we can hardly imagine the foot or two of slime they let fall over a wide area in a century to form an element among even the infinitesimal quantities which compose the terms of the equations of nature. But some swift rivers, rolling mountains of fine earth, discharge themselves into deeply scooped gulfs or bays, and in such cases the deposit amounts, in the course of a few years, to a mass the transfer of which from the surface of a large basin, and its accumulation at a single point, may be supposed to produce other effects than those measurable by the sounding line. Now, almost all the operations of rural life, as I have abundantly shown, increase the liability of the soil to erosion by water. Hence, the clearing of the valley of the Ganges by man must have much augmented the quantity of earth transported by that river to the sea, and of course have strengthened the effects, whatever they may be, of thickening the crust of the earth in the Bay of Bengal. In such cases, then, human action must rank among geological influences. _Nothing Small in Nature._ It is a legal maxim that "the law concerneth not itself with trifles," _de minimus non curat lex_; but in the vocabulary of nature, little and great are terms of comparison only; she knows no trifles, and her laws are as inflexible in dealing with an atom as with a continent or a planet.[496] The human operations mentioned in the last few paragraphs, therefore, do act in the ways ascribed to them, though our limited faculties are at present, perhaps forever, incapable of weighing their immediate, still more their ultimate consequences. But our inability to assign definite values to these causes of the disturbance of natural arrangements is not a reason for ignoring the existence of such causes in any general view of the relations between man and nature, and we are never justified in assuming a force to be insignificant because its measure is unknown, or even because no physical effect can now be traced to it as its origin. The collection of phenomena must precede the analysis of them, and every new fact, illustrative of the action and reaction between humanity and the material world around it, is another step toward the determination of the great question, whether man is of nature or above her. FOOTNOTES: [1] In the Middle Ages, feudalism, and a nominal Christianity whose corruptions had converted the most beneficent of religions into the most baneful of superstitions, perpetuated every abuse of Roman tyranny, and added new oppressions and new methods of extortion to those invented by older despotisms. The burdens in question fell most heavily on the provinces that had been longest colonized by the Latin race, and these are the portions of Europe which have suffered the greatest physical degradation. "Feudalism," says Blanqui, "was a concentration of scourges. The peasant, stripped of the inheritance of his fathers, became the property of inflexible, ignorant, indolent masters; he was obliged to travel fifty leagues with their carts whenever they required it; he labored for them three days in the week, and surrendered to them half the product of his earnings during the other three; without their consent he could not change his residence, or marry. And why, indeed, should he wish to marry, when he could scarcely save enough to maintain himself? The Abbot Alcuin had twenty thousand slaves, called _serfs_, who were forever attached to the soil. This is the great cause of the rapid depopulation observed in the Middle Ages, and of the prodigious multitude of monasteries which sprang up on every side. It was doubtless a relief to such miserable men to find in the cloisters a retreat from oppression; but the human race never suffered a more cruel outrage, industry never received a wound better calculated to plunge the world again into the darkness of the rudest antiquity. It suffices to say that the prediction of the approaching end of the world, industriously spread by the rapacious monks at this time, was received without terror."--_Résumé de l'Histoire du Commerce_, p. 156. The abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, which, in the time of Charlemagne, had possessed a million of acres, was, down to the Revolution, still so wealthy, that the personal income of the abbot was 300,000 livres. The abbey of Saint-Denis was nearly as rich as that of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.--LAVERGNE, _Économie Rurale de la France_, p. 104. Paul Louis Courier quotes from La Bruyère the following striking picture of the condition of the French peasantry in his time: "One sees certain dark, livid, naked, sunburnt, wild animals, male and female, scattered over the country and attached to the soil, which they root and turn over with indomitable perseverance. They have, as it were, an articulate voice, and when they rise to their feet, they show a human face. They are, in fact, men; they creep at night into dens, where they live on black bread, water, and roots. They spare other men the labor of ploughing, sowing, and harvesting, and therefore deserve some small share of the bread they have grown." "These are his own words," adds Courier; "he is speaking of the fortunate peasants, of those who had work and bread, and they were then the few."--_Pétition à la Chambre des Députís pour les Villageois que l'on empêche de danser._ Arthur Young, who travelled in France from 1787 to 1789, gives, in the twenty-first chapter of his Travels, a frightful account of the burdens of the rural population even at that late period. Besides the regular governmental taxes, and a multitude of heavy fines imposed for trifling offences, he enumerates about thirty seignorial rights, the very origin and nature of some of which are now unknown, while those of some others, claimed and enforced by ecclesiastical as well as by temporal lords, are as repulsive to humanity and morality, as the worst abuses ever practised by heathen despotism. Most of these, indeed, had been commuted for money payments, and were levied on the peasantry as pecuniary imposts for the benefit of prelates and lay lords, who, by virtue of their nobility, were exempt from taxation. Who can wonder at the hostility of the French plebeian classes toward the aristocracy in the days of the Revolution? [2] The temporary depopulation of an exhausted soil may be, in some cases, a physical, though, like fallows in agriculture, a dear-bought advantage. Under favorable circumstances, the withdrawal of man and his flocks allows the earth to clothe itself again with forests, and in a few generations to recover its ancient productiveness. In the Middle Ages, worn-out fields were depopulated, in many parts of the Continent, by civil and ecclesiastical tyrannies, which insisted on the surrender of the half of a loaf already too small to sustain its producer. Thus abandoned, these lands often relapsed into the forest state, and, some centuries later, were again brought under cultivation with renovated fertility. [3] The subject of climatic change, with and without reference to human action as a cause, has been much discussed by Moreau de Jonnes, Dureau, de la Malle, Arago, Humboldt, Fuster, Gasparin, Becquerel, and many other writers in Europe, and by Noah Webster, Forry, Drake, and others in America. Fraas has endeavored to show, by the history of vegetation in Greece, not merely that clearing and cultivation have affected climate, but that change of climate has essentially modified the character of vegetable life. See his _Klima und Pflanzenwelt in der Zeit_. [4] Gods Almagt wenkte van den troon, En schiep elk volk een land ter woon: Hier vestte Zij een grondgebied, Dat Zij ons zelven scheppen liet. [5] The udometric measurements of Belgrand, reported in the _Annales Forestières_ for 1854, and discussed by Vallès in chap. vi of his _Études sur les Inondations_, constitute the earliest, and, in some respects, the most remarkable series known to me, of persevering and systematic observations bearing directly and exclusively upon the influence of human action on climate, or, to speak more accurately, on precipitation and natural drainage. The conclusions of Belgrand, however, and of Vallès, who adopts them, have not been generally accepted by the scientific world, and they seem to have been, in part at least, refuted by the arguments of Héricourt and the observations of Cantegril, Jeandel, and Belland. See chapter iii: _The Woods_. [6] Verses addressed by G. C. to Sir Walter Raleigh.--HAKLUYT, i, p. 668. [7] ----I troer, at Synets Sands er lagt i Öiet, Mens dette kun er Redskab. Synet strömmer Fra Sjælens Dyb, og Öiets fine Nerver Gaae ud fra Hjernens hemmelige Værksted. HENRIK HERTZ, _Kong René's Datter_, sc. ii. In the material eye, you think, sight lodgeth! The _eye_ is but an organ. _Seeing_ streameth From the soul's inmost depths. The fine perceptive Nerve springeth from the brain's mysterious workshop. [8] Skill in marksmanship, whether with firearms or with other projectile weapons, depends more upon the training of the eye than is generally supposed, and I have often found particularly good shots to possess an almost telescopic vision. In the ordinary use of the rifle, the barrel serves as a guide to the eye, but there are sportsmen who fire with the but of the gun at the hip. In this case, as in the use of the sling, the lasso, and the bolas, in hurling the knife (see BABINET, _Lectures_, vii, p. 84), in throwing the boomerang, the javelin, or a stone, and in the employment of the blow pipe and the bow, the movements of the hand and arm are guided by that mysterious sympathy which exists between the eye and the unseeing organs of the body. In shooting the tortoises of the Amazon and its tributaries, the Indians use an arrow with a long twine and a float attached to it. Avé-Lallemant (_Die Benutzung der Palmen am Amazonenstrom_, p. 32) thus describes their mode of aiming: "As the arrow, if aimed directly at the floating tortoise, would strike it at a small angle, and glance from its flat and wet shell, the archers have a peculiar method of shooting. They are able to calculate exactly their own muscular effort, the velocity of the stream, the distance and size of the tortoise, and they shoot the arrow directly up into the air, so that it falls almost vertically upon the shell of the tortoise, and sticks in it." Analogous calculations--if such physico-mental operations can properly be so called--are made in the use of other missiles; for no projectile flies in a right line to its mark. But the exact training of the eye lies at the bottom of all of them, and marksmanship depends almost wholly upon the power of that organ, whose directions the blind muscles implicitly follow. It is perhaps not out of place to observe here that our English word aim comes from the Latin æstimo, I calculate or estimate. See WEDGWOOD'S _Dictionary of English Etymology_, and the note to the American edition, under _Aim_. Another proof of the control of the limbs by the eye has been observed in deaf-and-dumb schools, and others where pupils are first taught to write on large slates or blackboards. The writing is in large characters, the small letters being an inch or more high. They are formed with chalk or a slate pencil firmly grasped in the fingers, and by appropriate motions of the wrist, elbow, and shoulder, not of the finger joints. Nevertheless, when a pen is put into the hand of a pupil thus taught, his handwriting, though produced by a totally different set of muscles and muscular movements, is identical in character with that which he has practised on the blackboard. It has been much doubted whether the artists of the classic ages possessed a more perfect sight than those of modern times, or whether, in executing their minute mosaics and gem engravings, they used magnifiers. Glasses ground convex have been found at Pompeii, but they are too rudely fashioned and too imperfectly polished to have been of any practical use for optical purposes. But though the ancient artists may have had a microscopic vision, their astronomers cannot have had a telescopic power of sight; for they did not discover the satellites of Jupiter, which are often seen with the naked eye at Oormeeah, in Persia, and sometimes, as I can testify by personal observation, at Cairo. For a very remarkable account of the restoration of vision impaired from age, by judicious training, see _Lessons in Life_, by TIMOTHY TITCOMB, lesson xi. [9] _Antiquity of Man_, p. 377. [10] "One of them [the Indians] seated himself near me, and made from a fragment of quartz, with a simple piece of round bone, one end of which was hemispherical, with a small crease in it (as if worn by a thread) the sixteenth of an inch deep, an arrow head which was very sharp and piercing, and such as they use on all their arrows. The skill and rapidity with which it was made, without a blow, but by simply breaking the sharp edges with the creased bone by the strength of his hands--for the crease merely served to prevent the instrument from slipping, affording no leverage--was remarkable."--_Reports of Explorations and Surveys for Pacific Railroad_, vol. ii, 1855, _Lieut._ BECKWITH'S _Report_, p. 43. It has been said that stone weapons are not found in Sicily, except in certain caves half filled with the skeletons of extinct animals. If they have not been found in that island in more easily accessible localities, I suspect it is because eyes familiar with such objects have not sought for them. In January, 1854, I picked up an arrow head of quartz in a little ravine or furrow just washed out by a heavy rain, in a field near the Simeto. It is rudely fashioned, but its artificial character and its special purpose are quite unequivocal. [11] Probably no cultivated vegetable affords so good an opportunity of studying the laws of acclimation of plants as maize or Indian corn. Maize is grown from the tropics to at least lat. 47° in Northeastern America, and farther north in Europe. Every two or three degrees of latitude brings you to a new variety, with new climatic adaptations, and the capacity of the plant to accommodate itself to new conditions of temperature and season seems almost unlimited. We may easily suppose a variety of this grain, which had become acclimated in still higher latitudes, to have been lost, and in such case the failure to raise a crop from seed brought from some distance to the south would not prove that the climate had become colder. Many persons now living remember that, when the common tomato was first introduced into Northern New England, it often failed to ripen; but, in the course of a very few years, it completely adapted itself to the climate, and now not only matures both its fruit and its seeds with as much certainty as any cultivated vegetable, but regularly propagates itself by self-sown seed. Meteorological observations, however, do not show any amelioration of the summer climate in those States within that period. See _Appendix_, No. 1. Maize and the tomato, if not new to human use, have not been long known to civilization, and were, very probably, reclaimed and domesticated at a much more recent period than the plants which form the great staples of agricultural husbandry in Europe and Asia. Is the great power of accomodation to climate possessed by them due to this circumstance? There is some reason to suppose that the character of maize has been sensibly changed by cultivation in South America; for, according to Pöppig, the ears of this grain found in old Peruvian tombs belong to varieties not now known in Peru.--_Travels in Peru_, chap. vii. [12] The cultivation of madder is said to have been introduced into Europe by an Oriental in the year 1765, and it was first planted in the neighborhood of Avignon. Of course, it has been grown in that district for less than a century; but upon soils where it has been a frequent crop, it is already losing much of its coloring properties.--LAVERGNE, _Économie Rurale de la France_, pp. 259-291. I believe there is no doubt that the cultivation of madder in the vicinity of Avignon is of recent introduction; but it appears from Fuller and other evidence, that this plant was grown in Europe before the middle of the seventeenth century. The madder brought to France from Persia may be of a different species, or, at least, variety. "Some two years since," says Fuller, "madder was sown by Sir Nicholas Crispe at Debtford, and I hope will have good success; first because it groweth in Zeland in the same (if not a more _northern_) _latitude_. Secondly, because _wild madder_ grows here in abundance; and why may not _tame madder_ if _cicurated_ by art. Lastly, because as good as any grew some thirty years since at Barn-Elms, in Surrey, though it quit not cost through some error in the first planter thereof, which now we hope will be rectified."--FULLER, _Worthies of England_, ii, pp. 57, 58. Perhaps the recent diseases of the olive, the vine, and the silkworm--the prevailing malady of which insect is supposed by some to be the effect of an incipient decay of the mulberry tree--may be, in part, due to changes produced in the character of the soil by exhaustion through long cultivation. [13] In many parts of New England there are tracts, miles in extent, and presenting all varieties of surface and exposure, which were partially cleared sixty or seventy years ago, and where little or no change in the proportion of cultivated ground, pasturage, and woodland has taken place since. In some cases, these tracts compose basins apparently scarcely at all exposed to any local influence in the way of percolation or infiltration of water toward or from neighboring valleys. But in such situations, apart from accidental disturbances, the ground is growing drier and drier, from year to year, springs are still disappearing, and rivulets still diminishing in their summer supply of water. A probable explanation of this is to be found in the rapid drainage of the surface of cleared ground, which prevents the subterranean natural reservoirs, whether cavities or merely strata of bibulous earth, from filling up. How long this process is to last before an equilibrium is reached, none can say. It may be, for years; it may be, for centuries. Livingstone states facts which favor the supposition that a secular desiccation is still going on in central Africa. When the regions where the earth is growing drier were cleared of wood, or, indeed, whether forests ever grew there, we are unable to say, but the change appears to have been long in progress. There is reason to suspect a similar revolution in Arabia Petræa. In many of the wadis, and particularly in the gorges between Wadi Feiran and Wadi Esh Sheikh, there are water-worn banks showing that, at no very remote period, the winter floods must have risen fifty feet in channels where the growth of acacias and tamarisks and the testimony of the Arabs concur to prove that they have not risen six feet within the memory or tradition of the present inhabitants. There is little probability that any considerable part of the Sinaitic peninsula has been wooded since its first occupation by man, and we must seek the cause of its increasing dryness elsewhere than in the removal of the forest. [14] The soil of newly subdued countries is generally in a high degree favorable to the growth of the fruits of the garden and the orchard, but usually becomes much less so in a very few years. Plums, of many varieties, were formerly grown, in great perfection and abundance, in many parts of New England where at present they can scarcely be reared at all; and the peach, which, a generation or two ago, succeeded admirably in the southern portion of the same States, has almost ceased to be cultivated there. The disappearance of these fruits is partly due to the ravages of insects, which have in later years attacked them; but this is evidently by no means the sole, or even the principal cause of their decay. In these cases, it is not to the exhaustion of the particular acres on which the fruit trees have grown that we are to ascribe their degeneracy, but to a general change in the condition of the soil or the air; for it is equally impossible to rear them successfully on absolutely new land in the neighborhood of grounds where, not long since, they bore the finest fruit. I remember being told, many years ago, by one of the earliest settlers of the State of Ohio, a very intelligent and observing person, that the apple trees raised there from seed sown soon after the land was cleared, bore fruit in less than half the time required to bring to bearing those reared from seed sown when the ground had been twenty years under cultivation. In the peat mosses of Denmark, Scotch firs and other trees not now growing in the same localities, are found in abundance. Every generation of trees leaves the soil in a different state from that in which it found it; every tree that springs up in a group of trees of another species than its own, grows under different influences of light and shade and atmosphere from its predecessors. Hence the succession of crops, which occurs in all natural forests, seems to be due rather to changes of condition than of climate. See chapter iii, _post_. [15] The nomenclature of meteorology is vague and sometimes equivocal. Not long since, it was suspected that the observers reporting to a scientific institution did not agree in their understanding of the mode of expressing the direction of the wind prescribed by their instructions. It was found, upon inquiry, that very many of them used the names of the compass-points to indicate the quarter _from_ which the wind blew, while others employed them to signify the quarter _toward_ which the atmospheric currents were moving. In some instances, the observers were no longer within the reach of inquiry, and of course their tables of the wind were of no value. "Winds," says Mrs. Somerville, "are named from the points whence they blow, currents exactly the reverse. An easterly wind comes from the east; whereas an easterly current comes from the west, and flows toward the east."--_Physical Geography_, p. 229. There is no philological ground for this distinction, and it probably originated in a confusion of the terminations _-wardly_ and _-erly_, both of which are modern. The root of the former ending implies the direction _to_ or _to-ward_ which motion is supposed. It corresponds to, and is probably allied with, the Latin _versus_. The termination _-erly_ is a corruption or softening of _-ernly_, easterly for easternly, and many authors of the seventeenth century so write it. In Hakluyt (i, p. 2), _easterly_ is applied to place, "_easterly_ bounds," and means _eastern_. In a passage in Drayton, "_easterly_ winds" must mean winds _from_ the east; but the same author, in speaking of nations, uses _northerly_ for _northern_. Hakewell says: "The sonne cannot goe more _southernely_ from vs, nor come more _northernely_ towards vs." Holland, in his translation of Pliny, referring to the moon has: "When shee is _northerly_," and "shee is gone _southerly_." Richardson, to whom I am indebted for the above citations, quotes a passage from Dampier where _westerly_ is applied to the wind, but the context does not determine the direction. The only example of the termination in _-wardly_ given by this lexicographer is from Donne, where it means _toward_ the west. Shakspeare, in _Hamlet_ (v. ii), uses _northerly_ wind for wind _from_ the north. Milton does not employ either of these terminations, nor were they known to the Anglo-Saxons, who, however, had adjectives of direction in _-an_ or _-en_, _-ern_ and _-weard_, the last always meaning the point _toward_ which motion is supposed, the others that _from_ which it proceeds. We use an _east_ wind, an _eastern_ wind, and an _easterly_ wind, to signify the same thing. The two former expressions are old, and constant in meaning; the last is recent, superfluous, and equivocal. See _Appendix_, No. 2. [16] I do not here speak of the vast prairie region of the Mississippi valley, which cannot properly be said ever to have been a field of British colonization; but of the original colonies, and their dependencies in the territory of the present United States, and in Canada. It is, however, equally true of the Western prairies as of the Eastern forest land, that they had arrived at a state of equilibrium, though under very different conditions. [17] The great fire of Miramichi in 1825, probably the most extensive and terrific conflagration recorded in authentic history, spread its ravages over nearly six thousand square miles, chiefly of woodland, and was of such intensity that it seemed to consume the very soil itself. But so great are the recuperative powers of nature, that, in twenty-five years, the ground was thickly covered again with trees of fair dimensions, except where cultivation and pasturage kept down the forest growth. [18] The English nomenclature of this geographical feature does not seem well settled. We have _bog_, _swamp_, _marsh_, _morass_,_ moor_, _fen_, _turf moss_, _peat moss_, _quagmire_, all of which, though sometimes more or less accurately discriminated, are often used interchangeably, or are perhaps employed, each exclusively, in a particular district. In Sweden, where, especially in the Lappish provinces, this terr-aqueous formation is very extensive and important, the names of its different kinds are more specific in their application. The general designation of all soils permanently pervaded with water is _Kärr_. The elder Læstadius divides the _Kärr_ into two genera: _Myror_ (sing. _myra_), and _Mossar_ (sing. _mosse_). "The former," he observes, "are grass-grown, and overflowed with water through almost the whole summer; the latter are covered with mosses and always moist, but very seldom overflowed." He enumerates the following species of _Myra_, the character of which will perhaps be sufficiently understood by the Latin terms into which he translates the vernacular names, for the benefit of strangers not altogether familiar with the language and the subject: 1. _Hömyror_, paludes graminosæ. 2. _Dy_, paludes profundæ. 3. _Flarkmyror_, or proper _kärr_, paludes limosæ. 4. _Fjällmyror_, paludes uliginosæ. 5. _Tufmyror_, paludes cæspitosæ. 6. _Rismyror_, paludes virgatæ. 7. _Starrängar_, prata irrigata, with their subdivisions, dry _starrängar_ or _risängar_, wet _starrängar_ and _fräkengropar_. 8. _Pölar_, laeunæ. 9. _Gölar_, fossæ inundatæ. The _Mossar_, paludes turfosæ, which are of great extent, have but two species: 1. _Torfmossar_, called also _Mossmyror_ and _Snottermyror_, and, 2. _Björnmossar_. The accumulations of stagnant or stagnating water originating in bogs are distinguished into _Tr[=a]sk_, stagna, and _Tjernar_ or _Tjärnar_ (sing. _Tjern_ or _Tjärn_), stagnatiles. _Tr[=a]sk_ are pools fed by bogs, or water emanating from them, and their bottoms are slimy; _Tjernar_ are small _Träsk_ situated within the limits of _Mossar_.--L. L. LÆSTADIUS, _om Möjligheten af Uppodlingar i Lappmarken_, pp. 23, 24. [19] Although the quantity of bog land in New England is less than in many other regions of equal area, yet there is a considerable extent of this formation in some of the Northeastern States. Dana (_Manual of Geology_, p. 614) states that the quantity of peat in Massachusetts is estimated at 120,000,000 cords, or nearly 569,000,000 cubic yards, but he does not give either the area or the depth of the deposits. In any event, however, bogs cover but a small percentage of the territory in any of the Northern States, while it is said that one tenth of the whole surface of Ireland is composed of bogs, and there are still extensive tracts of undrained marsh in England. Bogs, independently of their importance in geology as explaining the origin of some kinds of mineral coal, have a present value as repositories of fuel. Peat beds have sometimes a thickness of ten or twelve yards, or even more. A depth of ten yards would give 48,000 cubic yards to the acre. The greatest quantity of firewood yielded by the forests of New England to the acre is 100 cords solid measure, or 474 cubic yards; but this comprises only the trunks and larger branches. If we add the small branches and twigs, it is possible that 600 cubic yards might, in some cases, be cut on an acre. This is only one eightieth part of the quantity of peat sometimes found on the same area. It is true that a yard of peat and a yard of wood are not the equivalents of each other, but the fuel on an acre of deep peat is worth much more than that on an acre of the best woodland. Besides this, wood is perishable, and the quantity on an acre cannot be increased beyond the amount just stated; peat is indestructible, and the beds are always growing. [20] "Aquatic plants have a utility in raising the level of marshy grounds, which renders them very valuable, and may well be called a geological function. * * * "The engineer drains ponds at a great expense by lowering the surface of the water; nature attains the same end, gratuitously, by raising the level of the soil without depressing that of the water; but she proceeds more slowly. There are, in the Landes, marshes where this natural filling has a thickness of four mètres, and some of them, at first lower than the sea, have been thus raised and drained so as to grow summer crops, such, for example, as maize."--BOITEL, _Mise en valeur des Terres pauvres_, p. 227. The bogs of Denmark--the examination of which by Steenstrup and Vaupell has presented such curious results with respect to the natural succession of forest trees--appear to have gone through this gradual process of drying, and the birch, which grows freely in very wet soils, has contributed very effectually by its annual deposits to raise the surface above the water level, and thus to prepare the ground for the oak.--VAUPELL, _Bögens Indvandring_, pp. 39, 40. [21] Careful examination of the peat mosses in North Sjælland--which are so abundant in fossil wood that, within thirty years, they have yielded above a million of trees--shows that the trees have generally fallen from age and not from wind. They are found in depressions on the declivities of which they grew, and they lie with the top lowest, always falling toward the bottom of the valley.--VAUPELL, _Bögens Indvandring i de Danske Skove_, pp. 10, 14. [22] The locust insect, _Clitus pictus_, which deposits its eggs in the American locust, _Robinia pseudacacia_, is one of these, and its ravages have been and still are most destructive to that very valuable tree, so remarkable for combining rapidity of growth with strength and durability of wood. This insect, I believe, has not yet appeared in Europe, where, since the so general employment of the _Robinia_ to clothe and protect embankments and the scarps of deep cuts on railroads, it would do incalculable mischief. As a traveller, however, I should find some compensation for this evil in the destruction of these acacia hedges, which as completely obstruct the view on hundreds of miles of French and Italian railways, as the garden walls of the same countries do on the ordinary roads. See _Appendix_, No. 4. [23] In the artificial woods of Europe, insects are far more numerous and destructive to trees than in the primitive forests of America, and the same remark may be made of the smaller rodents, such as moles, mice, and squirrels. In the dense native wood, the ground and the air are too humid, the depth of shade too great for many tribes of these creatures, while near the natural meadows and other open grounds, where circumstances are otherwise more favorable for their existence and multiplication, their numbers are kept down by birds, serpents, foxes, and smaller predacious quadrupeds. In civilized countries, these natural enemies of the worm, the beetle and the mole, are persecuted, sometimes almost exterminated, by man, who also removes from his plantations the decayed or wind-fallen trees, the shrubs and underwood, which, in a state of nature, furnished food and shelter to the borer and the rodent, and often also to the animals that preyed upon them. Hence the insect and the gnawing quadruped are allowed to increase, from the expulsion of the police which, in the natural wood, prevent their excessive multiplication, and they become destructive to the forest because they are driven to the living tree for nutriment and cover. The forest of Fontainebleau is almost wholly without birds, and their absence is ascribed by some writers to the want of water, which, in the thirsty sands of that wood, does not gather into running brooks; but the want of undergrowth is perhaps an equally good reason for their scarcity. In a wood of spontaneous growth, ordered and governed by nature, the squirrel does not attack trees, or at least the injury he may do is too trifling to be perceptible, but he is a formidable enemy to the plantation. "The squirrels bite the cones of the pine and consume the seed which might serve to restock the wood; they do still more mischief by gnawing off, near the leading shoot, a strip of bark, and thus often completely girdling the tree. Trees so injured must be felled, as they would never acquire a vigorous growth. The squirrel is especially destructive to the pine in Sologne, where he gnaws the bark of tress twenty or twenty-five years old." But even here, nature sometimes provides a compensation, by making the appetite of this quadruped serve to prevent an excessive production of seed cones, which tends to obstruct the due growth of the leading shoot. "In some of the pineries of Brittany which produce cones so abundantly as to strangle the development of the leading shoot of the maritime pine, it has been observed that the pines are most vigorous where the squirrels are most numerous, a result attributed to the repression of the cones by this rodent."--BOITEL, _Mise en valeur des Terres pauvres_, p. 50. See _Appendix_, No. 5. [24] The terrible destructiveness of man is remarkably exemplified in the chase of large mammalia and birds for single products, attended with the entire waste of enormous quantities of flesh, and of other parts of the animal, which are capable of valuable uses. The wild cattle of South America are slaughtered by millions for their hides and horns; the buffalo of North America for his skin or his tongue; the elephant, the walrus, and the narwhal for their tusks; the cetacea, and some other marine animals, for their oil and whalebone; the ostrich and other large birds, for their plumage. Within a few years, sheep have been killed in New England by whole flocks, for their pelts and suet alone, the flesh being thrown away; and it is even said that the bodies of the same quadrupeds have been used in Australia as fuel for limekilns. What a vast amount of human nutriment, of bone, and of other animal products valuable in the arts, is thus recklessly squandered! In nearly all these cases, the part which constitutes the motive for this wholesale destruction, and is alone saved, is essentially of insignificant value as compared with what is thrown away. The horns and hide of an ox are not economically worth a tenth part as much as the entire carcass. One of the greatest benefits to be expected from the improvements of civilization is, that increased facilities of communication will render it possible to transport to places of consumption much valuable material that is now wasted because the price at the nearest market will not pay freight. The cattle slaughtered in South America for their hides would feed millions of the starving population of the Old World, if their flesh could be economically preserved and transported across the ocean. We are beginning to learn a better economy in dealing with the inorganic world. The utilization--or, as the Germans more happily call it, the Verwerthung, the _beworthing_--of waste from metallurgical, chemical, and manufacturing establishments, is among the most important results of the application of science to industrial purposes. The incidental products from the laboratories of manufacturing chemists often become more valuable than those for the preparation of which they were erected. The slags from silver refineries, and even from smelting houses of the coarser metals, have not unfrequently yielded to a second operator a better return than the first had derived from dealing with the natural ore; and the saving of lead carried off in the smoke of furnaces has, of itself, given a large profit on the capital invested in the works. A few years ago, an officer of an American mint was charged with embezzling gold committed to him for coinage. He insisted, in his defence, that much of the metal was volatilized and lost in refining and melting, and upon scraping the chimneys of the melting furnaces and the roofs of the adjacent houses, gold enough was found in the soot to account for no small part of the deficiency. [25] It is an interesting and not hitherto sufficiently noticed fact, that the domestication of the organic world, so far as it has yet been achieved, belongs, not indeed to the savage state, but to the earliest dawn of civilization, the conquest of inorganic nature almost as exclusively to the most advanced stages of artificial culture. It is familiarly known to all who have occupied themselves with the psychology and habits of the ruder races, and of persons with imperfectly developed intellects in civilized life, that although these humble tribes and individuals sacrifice, without scruple, the lives of the lower animals to the gratification of their appetites and the supply of their other physical wants, yet they nevertheless seem to cherish with brutes, and even with vegetable life, sympathies which are much more feebly felt by civilized men. The popular traditions of the simpler peoples recognize a certain community of nature between man, brute animals, and even plants; and this serves to explain why the apologue or fable, which ascribes the power of speech and the faculty of reason to birds, quadrupeds, insects, flowers, and trees, is one of the earliest forms of literary composition. In almost every wild tribe, some particular quadruped or bird, though persecuted as a destroyer of more domestic beasts, or hunted for food, is regarded with peculiar respect, one might almost say, affection. Some of the North American aboriginal nations celebrate a propitiatory feast to the manes of the intended victim before they commence a bear hunt; and the Norwegian peasantry have not only retained an old proverb which ascribes to the same animal "_ti M[oe]nds Styrke og tolv M[oe]nds Vid_," ten men's strength and twelve men's cunning, but they still pay to him something of the reverence with which ancient superstition invested him. The student of Icelandic literature will find in the saga of _Finnbogi hinn rami_ a curious illustration of this feeling, in an account of a dialogue between a Norwegian bear and an Icelandic champion--dumb show on the part of Bruin, and chivalric words on that of Finnbogi--followed by a duel, in which the latter, who had thrown away his arms and armor in order that the combatants might meet on equal terms, was victorious. Drummond Hay's very interesting work on Morocco contains many amusing notices of a similar feeling entertained by the Moors toward the redoubtable enemy of their flocks--the lion. This sympathy helps us to understand how it is that most if not all the domestic animals--if indeed they ever existed in a wild state--were appropriated, reclaimed and trained before men had been gathered into organized and fixed communities, that almost every known esculent plant had acquired substantially its present artificial character, and that the properties of nearly all vegetable drugs and poisons were known at the remotest period to which historical records reach. Did nature bestow upon primitive man some instinct akin to that by which she teaches the brute to select the nutritious and to reject the noxious vegetables indiscriminately mixed in forest and pasture? This instinct, it must be admitted, is far from infallible, and, as has been hundreds of times remarked by naturalists, it is in many cases not an original faculty but an acquired and transmitted habit. It is a fact familiar to persons engaged in sheep husbandry in New England--and I have seen it confirmed by personal observation--that sheep bred where the common laurel, as it is called, _Kalmia angustifolia_, abounds, almost always avoid browsing upon the leaves of that plant, while those brought from districts where laurel is unknown, and turned into pastures where it grows, very often feed upon it and are poisoned by it. A curious acquired and hereditary instinct, of a different character, may not improperly be noticed here. I refer to that by which horses bred in provinces where quicksands are common avoid their dangers or extricate themselves from them. See BRÉMONTIER, _Mémoire sur les Dunes, Annales des Ponts et Chaussées_, 1833: _premier sémestre_, pp. 155-157. It is commonly said in New England, and I believe with reason, that the crows of this generation are wiser than their ancestors. Scarecrows which were effectual fifty years ago are no longer respected by the plunderers of the cornfield, and new terrors must from time to time be invented for its protection. See _Appendix_, No. 6. Civilization has added little to the number of vegetable or animal species grown in our fields or bred in our folds, while, on the contrary, the subjugation of the inorganic forces, and the consequent extension of man's sway over, not the annual products of the earth only, but her substance and her springs of action, is almost entirely the work of highly refined and cultivated ages. The employment of the elasticity of wood and of horn, as a projectile power in the bow, is nearly universal among the rudest savages. The application of compressed air to the same purpose, in the blowpipe, is more restricted, and the use of the mechanical powers, the inclined plane, the wheel and axle, and even the wedge and lever, seems almost unknown except to civilized man. I have myself seen European peasants to whom one of the simplest applications of this latter power was a revelation. [26] The difference between the relations of savage life, and of incipient civilization, to nature, is well seen in that part of the valley of the Mississippi which was once occupied by the mound builders and afterward by the far less developed Indian tribes. When the tillers of the fields, which must have been cultivated to sustain the large population that once inhabited those regions perished, or were driven out, the soil fell back to the normal forest state, and the savages who succeeded the more advanced race interfered very little, if at all, with the ordinary course of spontaneous nature. [27] There is a possible--but only a possible--exception in the case of the American bison. See note on that subject in chap. iii, _post_. [28] Whatever may be thought of the modification of organic species by natural selection, there is certainly no evidence that animals have exerted upon any form of life an influence analogous to that of domestication upon plants, quadrupeds, and birds reared artificially by man; and this is as true of unforeseen as of purposely effected improvements accomplished by voluntary selection of breeding animals. [29] ----"And it may be remarked that, as the world has passed through these several stages of strife to produce a Christendom, so by relaxing in the enterprises it has learnt, does it tend downwards, through inverted steps, to wildness and the waste again. Let a people give up their contest with moral evil; disregard the injustice, the ignorance, the greediness, that may prevail among them, and part more and more with the Christian element of their civilization; and in declining this battle with sin, they will inevitably get embroiled with men. Threats of war and revolution punish their unfaithfulness; and if then, instead of retracing their steps, they yield again, and are driven before the storm, the very arts they had created, the structures they had raised, the usages they had established, are swept away; 'in that very day their thoughts perish.' The portion they had reclaimed from the young earth's ruggedness is lost; and failing to stand fast against man, they finally get embroiled with nature, and are thrust down beneath her ever-living hand."--MARTINEAU'S _Sermon_, "_The Good Soldier of Jesus Christ_." [30] The dependence of man upon the aid of spontaneous nature, in his most arduous material works, is curiously illustrated by the fact that one of the most serious difficulties to be encountered in executing the proposed gigantic scheme of draining the Zuiderzee in Holland, is that of procuring brushwood for the fascines to be employed in the embankments. See DIGGELEN'S pamphlet, "_Groote Werken in Nederland_." [31] In heavy storms, the force of the waves as they strike against a sea wall is from one and a half to two tons to the square foot, and Stevenson, in one instance at Skerryvore, found this force equal to three tons per foot. The seaward front of the breakwater at Cherbourg exposes a surface of about 2,500,000 square feet. In rough weather the waves beat against this whole face, though at the depth of twenty-two yards, which is the height of the breakwater, they exert a very much less violent motive force than at and near the surface of the sea, because this force diminishes in geometrical, as the distance below the surface increases in arithmetical proportion. The shock of the waves is received several thousand times in the course of twenty-four hours, and hence the sum of impulse which the breakwater resists in one stormy day amounts to many thousands of millions of tons. The breakwater is entirely an artificial construction. If then man could accumulate and control the forces which he is able effectually to resist, he might be said to be, physically speaking, omnipotent. [32] Some well known experiments show that it is quite possible to accumulate the solar heat by a simple apparatus, and thus to obtain a temperature which might be economically important even in the climate of Switzerland. Saussure, by receiving the sun's rays in a nest of boxes blackened within and covered with glass, raised a thermometer enclosed in the inner box to the boiling point; and under the more powerful sun of the cape of Good Hope, Sir John Herschel cooked the materials for a family dinner by a similar process, using, however, but a single box, surrounded with dry sand and covered with two glasses. Why should not so easy a method of economizing fuel be resorted to in Italy, and even in more northerly climates? The unfortunate John Davidson records in his journal that he saved fuel in Morocco by exposing his teakettle to the sun on the roof of his house, where the water rose to the temperature of one hundred and forty degrees, and, of course, needed little fire to bring it to boil. But this was the direct and simple, not the accumulated heat of the sun. [33] In the successive stages of social progress, the most destructive periods of human action upon nature are the pastoral condition, and that of incipient stationary civilization, or, in the newly discovered countries of modern geography, the colonial, which corresponds to the era of early civilization in older lands. In more advanced states of culture, conservative influences make themselves felt; and if highly civilized communities do not always restore the works of nature, they at least use a less wasteful expenditure than their predecessors in consuming them. [34] The character of geological formation is an element of very great importance in determining the amount of erosion produced by running water, and, of course, in measuring the consequences of clearing off the forests. The soil of the French Alps yields very readily to the force of currents, and the declivities of the northern Apennines are covered with earth which becomes itself a fluid when saturated with water. Hence the erosion of such surfaces is vastly greater than on many other mountains of equal steepness of inclination. This point is fully considered by the authors referred to in chap. iii, _post_. [35] The Travels of Dr. Dwight, president of Yale College, which embody the results of his personal observations, and of his inquiries among the early settlers, in his vacation excursions in the Northern States of the American Union, though presenting few instrumental measurements or tabulated results, are of value for the powers of observation they exhibit, and for the sound common sense with which many natural phenomena, such for instance as the formation of the river meadows, called "intervales," in New England, are explained. They present a true and interesting picture of physical conditions, many of which have long ceased to exist in the theatre of his researches, and of which few other records are extant. [36] The general law of temperature is that it decreases as we ascend. But, in hilly regions, the law is reversed in cold, still weather, the cold air descending, by reason of its greater gravity, into the valleys. If there be wind enough, however, to produce a disturbance and intermixture of higher and lower atmospheric strata, this exception to the general law does not take place. These facts have long been familiar to the common people of Switzerland and of New England, but their importance has not been sufficiently taken into account in the discussion of meteorological observations. The descent of the cold air and the rise of the warm affect the relative temperatures of hills and valleys to a much greater extent than has been usually supposed. A gentleman well known to me kept a thermometrical record for nearly half a century, in a New England country town, at an elevation of at least 1,500 feet above the sea. During these years his thermometer never fell lower than 26° Fahrenheit, while at the shire town of the county, situated in a basin one thousand feet lower, and ten miles distant, as well as at other points in similar positions, the mercury froze several times in the same period. [37] Railroad surveys must be received with great caution where any motive exists for _cooking_ them. Capitalists are shy of investments in roads with steep grades, and of course it is important to make a fair show of facilities in obtaining funds for new routes. Joint-stock companies have no souls; their managers, in general, no consciences. Cases can be cited where engineers and directors of railroads, with long grades above one hundred feet to the mile, have regularly sworn in their annual reports, for years in succession, that there were no grades upon their routes exceeding half that elevation. In fact, every person conversant with the history of these enterprises knows that in their public statements falsehood is the rule, truth the exception. What I am about to remark is not exactly relevant to my subject; but it is hard to "get the floor" in the world's great debating society, and when a speaker who has anything to say once finds access to the public ear, he must make the most of his opportunity, without inquiring too nicely whether his observations are "in order." I shall harm no honest man by endeavoring, as I have often done elsewhere, to excite the attention of thinking and conscientious men to the dangers which threaten the great moral and even political interests of Christendom, from the unscrupulousness of the private associations that now control the monetary affairs, and regulate the transit of persons and property, in almost every civilized country. More than one American State is literally governed by unprincipled corporations, which not only defy the legislative power, but have, too often, corrupted even the administration of justice. Similar evils have become almost equally rife in England, and on the Continent; and I believe the decay of commercial morality, and indeed of the sense of all higher obligations than those of a pecuniary nature, on both sides of the Atlantic, is to be ascribed more to the influence of joint-stock banks and manufacturing and railway companies, to the workings, in short, of what is called the principle of "associate action," than to any other one cause of demoralization. The apophthegm, "the world is governed too much," though unhappily too truly spoken of many countries--and perhaps, in some aspects, true of all--has done much mischief whenever it has been too unconditionally accepted as a political axiom. The popular apprehension of being over-governed, and, I am afraid, more emphatically the fear of being over-taxed, has had much to do with the general abandonment of certain governmental duties by the ruling powers of most modern states. It is theoretically the duty of government to provide all those public facilities of intercommunication and commerce, which are essential to the prosperity of civilized commonwealths, but which individual means are inadequate to furnish, and for the due administration of which individual guaranties are insufficient. Hence public roads, canals, railroads, postal communications, the circulating medium of exchange, whether metallic or representative, armies, navies, being all matters in which the nation at large has a vastly deeper interest than any private association can have, ought legitimately to be constructed and provided only by that which is the visible personification and embodiment of the nation, namely, its legislative head. No doubt the organization and management of these institutions by government are liable, as are all things human, to great abuses. The multiplication of public placeholders, which they imply, is a serious evil. But the corruption thus engendered, foul as it is, does not strike so deep as the rottenness of private corporations; and official rank, position, and duty have, in practice, proved better securities for fidelity and pecuniary integrity in the conduct of the interests in question, than the suretyships of private corporate agents, whose bondsmen so often fail or abscond before their principal is detected. Many theoretical statesmen have thought that voluntary associations for strictly pecuniary and industrial purposes, and for the construction and control of public works, might furnish, in democratic countries, a compensation for the small and doubtful advantages, and at the same time secure an exemption from the great and certain evils, of aristocratic institutions. The example of the American States shows that private corporations--whose rule of action is the interest of the association, not the conscience of the individual--though composed of ultra-democratic elements, may become most dangerous enemies to rational liberty, to the moral interests of the commonwealth, to the purity of legislation and of judicial action, and to the sacredness of private rights. [38] It is impossible to say how far the abstraction of water from the earth by broad-leaved field and garden plants--such as maize, the gourd family, the cabbage, &c.--is compensated by the condensation of dew, which sometimes pours from them in a stream, by the exhalation of aqueous vapor from their leaves, which is directly absorbed by the ground, and by the shelter they afford the soil from sun and wind, thus preventing evaporation. American farmers often say that after the leaves of Indian corn are large enough to "shade the ground," there is little danger that the plants will suffer from drought; but it is probable that the comparative security of the fields from this evil is in part due to the fact that, at this period of growth, the roots penetrate down to a permanently humid stratum of soil, and draw from it the moisture they require. Stirring the ground between the rows of maize with a light harrow or cultivator, in very dry seasons, is often recommended as a preventive of injury by drought. It would seem, indeed, that loosening and turning over the surface earth might aggravate the evil by promoting the evaporation of the little remaining moisture; but the practice is founded partly on the belief that the hygroscopicity of the soil is increased by it to such a degree that it gains more by absorption than it loses by evaporation, and partly on the doctrine that to admit air to the rootlets, or at least to the earth near them, is to supply directly elements of vegetable growth. [39] The vine-wood planks of the ancient great door of the cathedral at Ravenna, which measured thirteen feet in length by a foot and a quarter in width, are traditionally said to have been brought from the Black Sea, by way of Constantinople, about the eleventh or twelfth century. No vines of such dimensions are now found in any other part of the East, and, though I have taken some pains on the subject, I never found in Syria or in Turkey a vine stock exceeding six inches in diameter, bark excluded. [40] The Northmen who--as I think it has been indisputably established by Professor Rafn of Copenhagen--visited the coast of Massachusetts about the year 1000, found grapes growing there in profusion, and the vine still flourishes in great variety and abundance in the southeastern counties of that State. The townships in the vicinity of the Dighton rock, supposed by many--with whom, however, I am sorry I cannot agree--to bear a Scandinavian inscription, abound in wild vines, and I have never seen a region which produced them so freely. I have no doubt that the cultivation of the grape will become, at no distant day, one of the most important branches of rural industry in that district. [41] _Les États Unis d'Amérique en 1863_, p. 360. By "improved" land, in the reports on the census of the United States, is meant "cleared land used for grazing, grass, or tillage, or which is now fallow, connected with or belonging to a farm."--_Instructions to Marshals and Assistants, Census of 1850_, schedule 4, §§ 2, 3. [42] Cotton, though cultivated in Asia and Africa from the remotest antiquity, and known as a rare and costly product to the Latins and the Greeks, was not used by them to any considerable extent, nor did it enter into their commerce as a regular article of importation. The early voyagers found it in common use in the West Indies and in the provinces first colonized by the Spaniards; but it was introduced into the territory of the United States by European settlers, and did not become of any importance until after the Revolution. Cotton seed was sown in Virginia as early as 1621, but was not cultivated with a view to profit for more than a century afterward. Sea-island cotton was first grown on the coast of Georgia in 1786, the seed having been brought from the Bahamas, where it had been introduced from Anguilla.--BIGELOW, _Les États Unis en 1863_, p. 370. [43] The sugar cane was introduced by the Arabs into Sicily and Spain as early as the ninth century, and though it is now scarcely grown in those localities, I am not aware of any reason to doubt that its cultivation might be revived with advantage. From Spain it was carried to the West Indies, though different varieties have since been introduced into those islands from other sources. Tea is now cultivated with a certain success in Brazil, and promises to become an important crop in the Southern States of the American Union. The lemon is, I think, readily recognizable, by Pliny's description, as known to the ancients, but it does not satisfactorily appear that they were acquainted with the orange. [44] John Smith mentions, in his _Historie of Virginia_, 1624, pease and beans as having been cultivated by the natives before the arrival of the whites, and there is no doubt, I believe, that the pumpkin and several other cucurbitaceous plants are of American origin; but most, if not all the varieties of pease, beans, and other pod fruits now grown in American gardens, are from European and other foreign seed. See _Appendix_, No, 8. [45] There are some usages of polite society which are inherently low in themselves, and debasing in their influence and tendency, and which no custom or fashion can make respectable or fit to be followed by self-respecting persons. It is essentially vulgar to smoke or chew tobacco, and especially to take snuff; it is unbecoming a gentleman, to perform the duties of his coachman; it is indelicate in a lady to wear in the street skirts so long that she cannot walk without grossly soiling them. Not that all these things are not practised by persons justly regarded as gentlemen and ladies; but the same individuals would be, and feel themselves to be, much more emphatically gentlemen and ladies, if they abstained from them. [46] The name _portogallo_, so generally applied to the orange in Italy, seems to favor this claim. The orange, however, was known in Europe before the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, and, therefore, before the establishment of direct relations between Portugal and the East. A correspondent of the _Athenæum_, in describing the newly excavated villa, which has been named Livia's Villa, near the Porta del Popolo at Rome, states that: "The walls of one of the rooms are, singularly enough, decorated with landscape paintings, a grove of palm and _orange_ trees, with fruits and birds on the branches--the colors all as fresh and lively as if painted yesterday." The writer remarks on the character of this decoration as something very unusual in Roman architecture; and if the trees in question are really orange, and not lemon trees, this circumstance may throw some doubt on the antiquity of the painting. If, on the other hand, it proves really ancient, it shows that the orange was known to the Roman painters, if not gardeners. The landscape may perhaps represent Oriental, not European scenery. The accessories of the picture would probably determine that question.--_Athenæum_, No. 1859, June 13, 1863. MÜLLER, _Das Buch der Pflanzenwelt_, p. 86, asserts that in 1802 the ancestor of all the mulberries in France, planted in 1500, was still standing in a garden in the village of Allan-Montélimart. [47] The vegetables which, so far as we know their history, seem to have been longest the objects of human care, can, by painstaking industry, be made to grow under a great variety of circumstances, and some of them--the vine for instance--prosper nearly equally well, when planted and tended, on soils of almost any geological character; but their seeds vegetate only in artificially prepared ground, they have little self-sustaining power, and they soon perish when the nursing hand of man is withdrawn from them. In range of climate, wild plants are much more limited than domestic, but much less so with regard to the state of the soil in which they germinate and grow. See _Appendix_, No. 9. Dr. Dwight remarks that the seeds of American forest trees will not vegetate when dropped on grassland. This is one of the very few errors of personal observation to be found in that author's writings. There are seasons, indeed, when few tree seeds germinate in the meadows and the pastures, and years favorable to one species are not always propitious to another; but there is no American forest tree known to me which does not readily propagate itself by seed in the thickest greensward, if its germs are not disturbed by man or animals. [48] Some years ago I made a collection of weeds in the wheatfields of Upper Egypt, and another in the gardens on the Bosphorus. Nearly all the plants were identical with those which grow under the same conditions in New England. I do not remember to have seen in America the scarlet wild poppy so common in European grainfields. I have heard, however, that it has lately crossed the Atlantic, and I am not sorry for it. With our abundant harvests of wheat, we can well afford to pay now and then a loaf of bread for the cheerful radiance of this brilliant flower. [49] Josselyn, who wrote about fifty years after the foundation of the first British colony in New England, says that the settlers at Plymouth had observed more than twenty English plants springing up spontaneously near their improvements. Every country has many plants not now, if ever, made use of by man, and therefore not designedly propagated by him, but which cluster around his dwelling, and continue to grow luxuriantly on the ruins of his rural habitation after he has abandoned it. The site of a cottage, the very foundation stones of which have been carried off, may often be recognized, years afterward, by the rank weeds which cover it, though no others of the same species are found for miles. "Mediæval Catholicism," says Vaupell, "brought us the red horsehoof--whose reddish-brown flower buds shoot up from the ground when the snow melts, and are followed by the large leaves--_lægekulsukker_ and snake-root, which grow only where there were convents and other dwellings in the Middle Ages."--_Bögens Indvandring i de Danske Skove_, pp. 1, 2. [50] VAUPELL, _Bögens Indvandring i de Danske Skove_, p. 2. [51] It is, I believe, nearly certain that the Turks inflicted tobacco upon Hungary, and probable that they in some measure compensated the injury by introducing maize also, which, as well as tobacco, has been claimed as Hungarian by patriotic Magyars. [52] Accidents sometimes limit, as well as promote, the propagation of foreign vegetables in countries new to them. The Lombardy poplar is a di[oe]cious tree, and is very easily grown from cuttings. In most of the countries into which it has been introduced the cuttings have been taken from the male, and as, consequently, males only have grown from them, the poplar does not produce seed in those regions. This is a fortunate circumstance, for otherwise this most worthless and least ornamental of trees would spread with a rapidity that would make it an annoyance to the agriculturist. See _Appendix_, No. 10. [53] Tempests, violent enough to destroy all cultivated plants, often spare those of spontaneous growth. During the present summer, I have seen in Northern Italy, vineyards, maize fields, mulberry and fruit trees completely stripped of their foliage by hail, while the forest trees scattered through the meadows, and the shrubs and brambles which sprang up by the wayside, passed through the ordeal with scarcely the loss of a leaflet. [54] The boar spear is provided with a short crossbar, to enable the hunter to keep the infuriated animal at bay after he has transfixed him. [55] Some botanists think that a species of water lily represented in many Egyptian tombs has become extinct, and the papyrus, which must have once been abundant in Egypt, is now found only in a very few localities near the mouth of the Nile. It grows very well and ripens its seeds in the waters of the Anapus near Syracuse, and I have seen it in garden ponds at Messina and in Malta. There is no apparent reason for believing that it could not be easily cultivated in Egypt, to any extent, if there were any special motive for encouraging its growth. [56] Although it is not known that man has extirpated any vegetable, the mysterious diseases which have, for the last twenty years, so injuriously affected the potato, the vine, the orange, the olive, and silk husbandry--whether in this case the malady resides in the mulberry or in the insect--are ascribed by some to a climatic deterioration produced by excessive destruction of the woods. As will be seen in the next chapter, a retardation in the period of spring has been observed in numerous localities in Southern Europe, as well as in the United States. This change has been thought to favor the multiplication of the obscure parasites which cause the injury to the vegetables just mentioned. Babinet supposes the parasites which attack the grape and the potato to be animal, not vegetable, and he ascribes their multiplication to excessive manuring and stimulation of the growth of the plants on which they live. They are now generally, if not universally, regarded as vegetable, and if they are so, Babinet's theory would be even more plausible than on his own supposition.--_Études et Lectures_, ii, p. 269. It is a fact of some interest in agricultural economy, that the oidium, which is so destructive to the grape, has produced no pecuniary loss to the proprietors of the vineyards in France. "The price of wine," says Lavergne, "has quintupled, and as the product of the vintage has not diminished in the same proportion, the crisis has been, on the whole, rather advantageous than detrimental to the country."--_Économie Rurale de la France_, pp. 263, 264. France produces a considerable surplus of wines for exportation, and the sales to foreign consumers are the principal source of profit to French vinegrowers. In Northern Italy, on the contrary, which exports little wine, there has been no such increase in the price of wine as to compensate the great diminution in the yield of the vines, and the loss of this harvest is severely felt. In Sicily, however, which exports much wine, prices have risen as rapidly as in France. Waltershausen informs us that in the years 1838-'42, the red wine of Mount Etna sold at the rate of one kreuzer and a half, or one cent the bottle, and sometimes even at but two thirds that price, but that at present it commands five or six times as much. The grape disease has operated severely on small cultivators whose vineyards only furnished a supply for domestic use, but Sicily has received a compensation in the immense increase which it has occasioned in both the product and the profits of the sulphur mines. Flour of sulphur is applied to the vine as a remedy against the disease, and the operation is repeated from two to three or four--and even, it is said, eight or ten times--in a season. Hence there is a great demand for sulphur in all the vine-growing countries of Europe, and Waltershausen estimates the annual consumption of that mineral for this single purpose at 850,000 _centner_, or more than forty thousand tons. The price of sulphur has risen in about the same proportion as that of wine.--WALTERSHAUSEN, _Ueber den Sicilianischen Ackerbau_, pp. 19, 20. [57] Some recent observations of the learned traveller Wetzstein are worthy of special notice. "The soil of the Haurân," he remarks, "produces, in its primitive condition, much wild rye, which is not known as a cultivated plant in Syria, and much wild barley and oats. These cereals precisely resemble the corresponding cultivated plants in leaf, ear, size, and height of straw, but their grains are sensibly flatter and poorer in flour."--_Reisebericht über Haurân und die Trachonen_, p. 40. [58] This remark is much less applicable to fruit trees than to garden vegetables and the cerealia. The wild orange of Florida, though once considered indigenous, is now generally thought by botanists to be descended from the European orange introduced by the early colonists. The fig and the olive are found growing wild in every country where those trees are cultivated. The wild fig differs from the domesticated in its habits, its season of fructification, and its insect population, but is, I believe, not specifically distinguishable from the garden fig, though I do not know that it is reclaimable by cultivation. The wild olive, which is so abundant in the Tuscan Maremma, produces good fruit without further care, when thinned out and freed from the shade of other trees, and is particularly suited for grafting. See SALVAGNOLI, _Memorie sulle Maremme_, pp. 63-73. See _Appendix_, No. 12. FRAAS, _Klima und Pflanzenwelt in der Zeit_, pp. 35-38, gives, upon the authority of Link and other botanical writers, a list of the native habitats of most cereals and of many fruits, or at least of localities where these plants are said to be now found wild; but the data do not appear to rest, in general, upon very trustworthy evidence. Theoretically, there can be little doubt that all our cultivated plants are modified forms of spontaneous vegetation, but the connection is not historically shown, nor are we able to say that the originals of some domesticated vegetables may not be now extinct and unrepresented in the existing wild flora. See, on this subject, HUMBOLDT, _Ansichten der Natur_, i, pp. 208, 209. The following are interesting incidents: "A negro slave of the great Cortez was the first who sowed wheat in New Spain. He found three grains of it among the rice which had been brought from Spain as food for the soldiers. In the Franciscan monastery at Quito, I saw the earthen pot which contained the first wheat sown there by Friar Jodoco Rixi, of Ghent. It was preserved as a relic." The Adams of modern botany and zoology have been put to hard shifts in finding names for the multiplied organisms which the Creator has brought before them, "to see what they would call them;" and naturalists and philosophers have shown much moral courage in setting at naught the laws of philology in the coinage of uncouth words to express scientific ideas. It is much to be wished that some bold neologist would devise English technical equivalents for the German _verwildert_, run-wild, and _veredelt_, improved by cultivation. [59] Could the bones and other relics of the domestic quadrupeds destroyed by disease or slaughtered for human use in civilized countries be collected into large deposits, as obscure causes have gathered together those of extinct animals, they would soon form aggregations which might almost be called mountains. There were in the United States, in 1860, as we shall see hereafter, nearly one hundred and two millions of horses, black cattle, sheep, and swine. There are great numbers of all the same animals in the British American Provinces, and in Mexico, and there are large herds of wild horses on the plains, and of tamed among the independent Indian tribes of North America. It would perhaps not be extravagant to suppose that all those cattle may amount to two thirds as many as those of the United States, and thus we have in North America a total of 170,000,000 domestic quadrupeds belonging to species introduced by European colonization, besides dogs, cats, and other four-footed household pets and pests, also of foreign origin. If we allow half a solid foot to the skeleton and other slowly destructible parts of each animal, the remains of these herds would form a cubical mass measuring not much short of four hundred and fifty feet to the side, or a pyramid equal in dimensions to that of Cheops, and as the average life of these animals does not exceed six or seven years, the accumulations of their bones, horns, hoofs, and other durable remains would amount to at least fifteen times as great a volume in a single century. It is true that the actual mass of solid matter, left by the decay of dead domestic quadrupeds and permanently added to the crust of the earth, is not so great as this calculation makes it. The greatest proportion of the soft parts of domestic animals, and even of the bones, is soon decomposed, through direct consumption by man and other carnivora, industrial use, and employment as manure, and enters into new combinations in which its animal origin is scarcely traceable; there is, nevertheless, a large annual residuum, which, like decayed vegetable matter, becomes a part of the superficial mould; and in any event, brute life immensely changes the form and character of the superficial strata, if it does not sensibly augment the quantity of the matter composing them. The remains of man, too, add to the earthy coating that covers the face of the globe. The human bodies deposited in the catacombs during the long, long ages of Egyptian history, would perhaps build as large a pile as one generation of the quadrupeds of the United States. In the barbarous days of old Moslem warfare, the conquerors erected large pyramids of human skulls. The soil of cemeteries in the great cities of Europe has sometimes been raised several feet by the deposit of the dead during a few generations. In the East, Turks and Christians alike bury bodies but a couple of feet beneath the surface. The grave is respected as long as the tombstone remains, but the sepultures of the ignoble poor, and of those whose monuments time or accident has removed, are opened again and again to receive fresh occupants. Hence the ground in Oriental cemeteries is pervaded with relics of humanity, if not wholly composed of them; and an examination of the soil of the lower part of the _Petit Champ des Morts_ at Pera, by the naked eye alone, shows the observer that it consists almost exclusively of the comminuted bones of his fellow man. [60] It is asserted that the bones of mammoths and mastodons, in many instances, appear to have been grazed or cut by flint arrow-heads or other stone weapons. These accounts have often been discredited, because it has been assumed that the extinction of these animals was more ancient than the existence of man. Recent discoveries render it highly probable, if not certain, that this conclusion has been too hastily adopted. Lyell observes: "These stories * * must in future be more carefully inquired into, for we can scarcely doubt that the mastodon in North America lived down to a period when the mammoth coexisted with man in Europe."--_Antiquity of Man_, p. 354. On page 143 of the volume just quoted, the same very distinguished writer remarks that man "no doubt played his part in hastening the era of the extinction" of the large pachyderms and beasts of prey; but, as contemporaneous species of other animals, which man cannot be supposed, to have extirpated, have also become extinct, he argues that the disappearance of the quadrupeds in question cannot be ascribed to human action alone. On this point it may be observed that, as we cannot know what precise physical conditions were necessary to the existence of a given extinct organism, we cannot say how far such conditions may have been modified by the action of man, and he may therefore have influenced the life of such organisms in ways, and to an extent, of which we can form no just idea. [61] Evelyn thought the depasturing of grass by cattle serviceable to its growth. "The biting of cattle," he remarks, "gives a gentle loosening to the roots of the herbage, and makes it to grow fine and sweet, and their very breath and treading as well as soil, and the comfort of their warm bodies, is wholesome and marvellously cherishing."--_Terra, or Philosophical Discourse of Earth_, p. 36. In a note upon this passage, Hunter observes: "Nice farmers consider the lying of a beast upon the ground, for one night only, as a sufficient tilth for the year. The breath of graminivorous quadrupeds does certainly enrich the roots of grass; a circumstance worthy of the attention of the philosophical farmer."--_Terra_, same page. The "philosophical farmer" of the present day will not adopt these opinions without some qualification. [62] The rat and the mouse, though not voluntarily transported, are passengers by every ship that sails from Europe to a foreign port, and several species of these quadrupeds have, consequently, much extended their range and increased their numbers in modern times. From a story of Heliogabalus related by Lampridius, _Hist. Aug. Scriptores_, ed. Casaubon, 1690, p. 110, it would seem that mice at least were not very common in ancient Rome. Among the capricious freaks of that emperor, it is said that he undertook to investigate the statistics of the arachnoid population of the capital, and that 10,000 pounds of spiders (or spiders' webs--for aranea is equivocal) were readily collected; but when he got up a mouse show, he thought ten thousand mice a very fair number. I believe as many might almost be found in a single palace in modern Rome. Rats are not less numerous in all great cities, and in Paris, where their skins are used for gloves, and their flesh, it is whispered, in some very complex and equivocal dishes, they are caught by legions. I have read of a manufacturer who contracted to buy of the rat catchers, at a high price, all the rat skins they could furnish before a certain date, and failed, within a week, for want of capital, when the stock of peltry had run up to 600,000. [63] BIGELOW, _Les États Unis en_ 1863, pp. 379, 380. In the same paragraph this volume states the number of animals slaughtered in the United States by butchers, in 1859, at 212,871,653. This is an error of the press. Number is confounded with value. A reference to the tables of the census shows that the animals slaughtered that year were estimated at 212,871,653 _dollars_; the number of head is not given. The wild horses and horned cattle of the prairies and the horses of the Indians are not included in the returns. [64] Of this total number, 2,240,000, or nearly nine per cent., are reported as working oxen. This would strike European, and especially English agriculturists, as a large proportion; but it is explained by the difference between a new country and an old, in the conditions which determine the employment of animal labor. Oxen are very generally used in the United States and Canada for hauling timber and firewood through and from the forests; for ploughing in ground still full of rocks, stumps, and roots; for breaking up the new soil of the prairies with its strong matting of native grasses, and for the transportation of heavy loads over the rough roads of the interior. In all these cases, the frequent obstructions to the passage of the timber, the plough, and the sled or cart, are a source of constant danger to the animals, the vehicles, and the harness, and the slow and steady step of the ox is attended with much less risk than the swift and sudden movements of the impatient horse. It is surprising to see the sagacity with which the dull and clumsy ox--hampered as he is by the rigid yoke, the most absurd implement of draught ever contrived by man--picks his way, when once trained to forest work, among rocks and roots, and even climbs over fallen trees, not only moving safely, but drawing timber over ground wholly impracticable for the light and agile horse. Cows, so constantly employed for draught in Italy, are never yoked or otherwise used for labor in America, except in the Slave States. [65] "About five miles from camp we ascended to the top of a high hill, and for a great distance ahead every square mile seemed to have a herd of buffalo upon it. Their number was variously estimated by the members of the party; by some as high as half a million. I do not think it any exaggeration to set it down at 200,000."--STEVENS'S _Narrative and Final Report. Reports of Explorations and Surveys for Railroad to Pacific_, vol. xii, book i, 1860. The next day, the party fell in with a "buffalo trail," where at least 100,000 were thought to have crossed a slough. [66] The most zealous and successful New England hunter of whom I have any personal knowledge, and who continued to indulge his favorite passion much beyond the age which generally terminates exploits in woodcraft, lamented on his deathbed that he had not lived long enough to carry up the record of his slaughtered deer to the number of one thousand, which he had fixed as the limit of his ambition. He was able to handle the rifle, for sixty years, at a period when the game was still nearly as abundant as ever, but had killed only nine hundred and sixty of these quadrupeds, of all species. The exploits of this Nimrod have been far exceeded by prairie hunters, but I doubt whether, in the originally wooded territory of the Union, any single marksman has brought down a larger number. [67] _Erdkunde_, viii. _Asien, 1ste Abtheilung_, pp. 660, 758. [68] See chapter iii, _post_; also HUMBOLDT, _Ansichten der Natur_, i, p. 71. From the anatomical character of the bones of the urus, or auerochs, found among the relics of the lacustrine population of ancient Switzerland, and from other circumstances, it is inferred that this animal had been domesticated by that people; and it is stated, I know not upon what authority, in _Le Alpi che cingono l'Italia_, that it had been tamed by the Veneti also. See LYELL, _Antiquity of Man_, pp. 24, 25, and the last-named work, p. 489. This is a fact of much interest, because it is, I believe, the only known instance of the extinction of a domestic quadruped, and the extreme improbability of such an event gives some countenance to the theory of the identity of the domestic ox with, and its descent from, the urus. [69] In maintaining the recent existence of the lion in the countries named in the text, naturalists have, perhaps, laid too much weight on the frequent occurrence of representations of this animal in sculptures apparently of a historical character. It will not do to argue, twenty centuries hence, that the lion and the unicorn were common in Great Britain in Queen Victoria's time, because they are often seen "fighting for the crown" in the carvings and paintings of that period. [70] Dar nach sloger schiere, einen wisent bat elch. Starcher bore biere. but einen grimmen schelch. _XVI Auentiure._ The testimony of the _Nibelungen-Lied_ is not conclusive evidence that these quadrupeds existed in Germany at the time of the composition of that poem. It proves too much; for, a few lines above those just quoted, Sigfrid is said to have killed a lion, an animal which the most patriotic Teuton will hardly claim as a denizen of mediæval Germany. [71] The wild turkey takes readily to the water, and is able to cross rivers of very considerable width by swimming. By way of giving me an idea of the former abundance of this bird, an old and highly respectable gentleman who was among the early white settlers of the West, told me that he once counted, in walking down the northern bank of the Ohio River, within a distance of four miles, eighty-four turkeys as they landed singly, or at most in pairs, after swimming over from the Kentucky side. [72] The wood pigeon has been observed to increase in numbers in Europe also, when pains have been taken to exterminate the hawk. The pigeons, which migrated in flocks so numerous that they were whole days in passing a given point, were no doubt injurious to the grain, but probably less so than is generally supposed; for they did not confine themselves exclusively to the harvests for their nourishment. [73] Pigeons were shot near Albany, in New York, a few years ago, with green rice in their crops, which it was thought must have been growing, a very few hours before, at the distance of seven or eight hundred miles. [74] Professor Treadwell, of Massachusetts, found that a half-grown American robin in confinement ate in one day sixty-eight earthworms, weighing together nearly once and a half as much as the bird himself, and another had previously starved upon a daily allowance of eight or ten worms, or about twenty per cent. of his own weight. The largest of these numbers appeared, so far as could be judged by watching parent birds of the same species, as they brought food to their young, to be much greater than that supplied to them when fed in the nest; for the old birds did not return with worms or insects oftener than once in ten minutes on an average. If we suppose the parents to hunt for food twelve hours in a day, and a nest to contain four young, we should have seventy-two worms, or eighteen each, as the daily supply of the brood. It is probable enough that some of the food collected by the parents may be more nutritious than the earthworms, and consequently that a smaller quantity sufficed for the young in the nest than when reared under artificial conditions. The supply required by growing birds is not the measure of their wants after they have arrived at maturity, and it is not by any means certain that great muscular exertion always increases the demand for nourishment, either in the lower animals or in man. The members of the English Alpine Club are not distinguished for appetites which would make them unwelcome guests to Swiss landlords, and I think every man who has had the personal charge of field or railway hands, must have observed that laborers who spare their strength the least are not the most valiant trencher champions. During the period when imprisonment for debt was permitted in New England, persons confined in country jails had no specific allowance, and they were commonly fed without stint. I have often inquired concerning their diet, and been assured by the jailers that their prisoners, who were not provided with work or other means of exercise, consumed a considerably larger supply of food than common out-door laborers. [75] I hope Michelet has good authority for this statement, but I am unable to confirm it. [76] Apropos of the sparrow--a single pair of which, according to Michelet, p. 315, carries to the nest four thousand and three hundred caterpillars or coleoptera in a week--I take from the _Record_, an English religious newspaper, of December 15, 1862, the following article communicated to a country paper by a person who signs himself "A real friend to the farmer:" "_Crawley Sparrow Club._--The annual dinner took place at the George Inn on Wednesday last. The first prize was awarded to Mr. I. Redford, Worth, having destroyed within the last year 1,467. Mr. Heayman took the second with 1,448 destroyed. Mr. Stone, third, with 982 affixed. Total destroyed, 11,944. Old birds, 8,663; young ditto, 722; eggs, 2,556." This trio of valiant fowlers, and their less fortunate--or rather less unfortunate, but not therefore less guilty--associates, have rescued by their prowess, it may be, a score of pecks of grain from being devoured by the voracious sparrow, but every one of the twelve thousand hatched and unhatched birds, thus sacrificed to puerile vanity and ignorant prejudice, would have saved his bushel of wheat by preying upon insects that destroy the grain. Mr. Redford, Mr. Heayman, and Mr. Stone ought to contribute the value of the bread they have wasted to the fund for the benefit of the Lancashire weavers; and it is to be hoped that the next Byron will satirize the sparrowcide as severely as the first did the prince of anglers, Walton, in the well known lines: "The quaint, old, cruel coxcomb in his gullet Should have a hook, and a small trout to pull it." [77] SALVAGNOLI, _Memorie sulle Maremme Toscane_, p. 143. The country about Naples is filled with slender towers fifteen or twenty feet high, which are a standing puzzle to strangers. They are the stations of the fowlers who watch from them the flocks of small birds and drive them down in to the nets by throwing stones over them. See _Appendix_, No. 14. Tschudi has collected in his little work, _Ueber die Landwirthschaftliche Bedeutung der Vögel_, many interesting facts respecting the utility of birds, and the wanton destruction of them in Italy and elsewhere. Not only the owl, but many other birds more familiarly known as predacious in their habits, are useful by destroying great numbers of mice and moles. The importance of this last service becomes strikingly apparent when it is known that the burrows of the mole are among the most frequent causes of rupture in the dikes of the Po, and, consequently, of inundations which lay many square miles under water.--_Annales des Ponts et Chaussées_, 1847, 1re sémestre, p. 150. See also VOGT, _Nützliche u. schädliche Thiere_. [78] Wild birds are very tenacious in their habits. The extension of particular branches of agriculture introduces new birds; but unless in the case of such changes in physical conditions, particular species seem indissolubly attached to particular localities. The migrating tribes follow almost undeviatingly the same precise line of flight in their annual journeys, and establish themselves in the same breeding places from year to year. The stork is a strong-winged bird and roves far for food, but very rarely establishes new colonies. He is common in Holland, but unknown in England. Not above five or six pairs of storks commonly breed in the suburbs of Constantinople along the European shore of the narrow Bosphorus, while--much to the satisfaction of the Moslems, who are justly proud of the marked partiality of so orthodox a bird--dozens of chimneys of the true believers on the Asiatic side are crowned with his nests. See _App._ No. 15. [79] It is not the unfledged and the nursing bird alone that are exposed to destruction by severe weather. Whole flocks of adult and strong-winged tribes are killed by hail. Severe winters are usually followed by a sensible diminution in the numbers of the non-migrating birds, and a cold storm in summer often proves fatal to the more delicate species. On the 10th of June, 184-, five or six inches of snow fell in Northern Vermont. The next morning I found a humming bird killed by the cold, and hanging by its claws just below a loose clapboard on the wall of a small wooden building where it had sought shelter. [80] LYELL, _Antiquity of Man_, p. 409, observes: "Of birds it is estimated that the number of those which die every year equals the aggregate number by which the species to which they respectively belong is, on the average, permanently represented." A remarkable instance of the influence of new circumstances upon birds was observed upon the establishment of a lighthouse on Cape Cod some years since. The morning after the lamps were lighted for the first time, more than a hundred dead birds of several different species, chiefly water fowl, were found at the foot of the tower. They had been killed in the course of the night by flying against the thick glass or grating of the lantern. See _Appendix_, No. 16. Migrating birds, whether for greater security from eagles, hawks, and other enemies, or for some unknown reason, perform a great part of their annual journeys by night; and it is observed in the Alps that they follow the high roads in their passage across the mountains. This is partly because the food in search of which they must sometimes descend is principally found near the roads. It is, however, not altogether for the sake of consorting with man, or of profiting by his labors, that their line of flight conforms to the paths he has traced, but rather because the great roads are carried through the natural depressions in the chain, and hence the birds can cross the summit by these routes without rising to a height where at the seasons of migration the cold would be excessive. The instinct which guides migratory birds in their course is not in all cases infallible, and it seems to be confounded by changes in the condition of the surface. I am familiar with a village in New England, at the junction of two valleys, each drained by a mill stream, where the flocks of wild geese which formerly passed, every spring and autumn, were very frequently lost, as it was popularly phrased, and I have often heard their screams in the night as they flew wildly about in perplexity as to the proper course. Perhaps the village lights embarrassed them, or perhaps the constant changes in the face of the country, from the clearings then going on, introduced into the landscape features not according with the ideal map handed down in the anserine family, and thus deranged its traditional geography. [81] The cappercailzie, or tjäder, as he is called in Sweden, is a bird of singular habits, and seems to want some of the protective instincts which secure most other wild birds from destruction. The younger Læstadius frequently notices the tjäder, in his very remarkable account of the Swedish Laplanders--a work wholly unsurpassed as a genial picture of semi-barbarian life, and not inferior in minuteness of detail to Schlatter's description of the manners of the Nogai Tartars, or even to Lane's admirable and exhaustive work on the Modern Egyptians. The tjäder, though not a bird of passage, is migratory, or rather wandering in domicile, and appears to undertake very purposeless and absurd journeys. "When he flits," says Læstadius, "he follows a straight course, and sometimes pursues it quite out of the country. It is said that, in foggy weather, he sometimes flies out to sea, and, when tired, falls into the water and is drowned. It is accordingly observed that, when he flies westwardly, toward the mountains, he soon comes back again; but when he takes an eastwardly course, he returns no more, and for a long time is very scarce in Lapland. From this it would seem that he turns back from the bald mountains, when he discovers that he has strayed from his proper home, the wood; but when he finds himself over the Baltic, where he cannot alight to rest and collect himself, he flies on until he is exhausted and falls into the sea."--PETRUS LÆSTADIUS, _Journal af första året, etc._, p. 325. [82] _Die Herzogthümer Schleswig und Holstein_, i, p. 203. [83] Gulls hover about ships in port, and often far out at sea, diligently watching for the waste of the caboose. "While the four great fleets, English, French, Turkish, and Egyptian, were lying in the Bosphorus, in the summer and autumn of 1853, a young lady of my family called my attention to the fact that the gulls were far more numerous about the ships of one of the fleets than about the others. This was verified by repeated observation, and the difference was owing no doubt to the greater abundance of the refuse from the cookrooms of the naval squadron most frequented by the birds. Persons acquainted with the economy of the navies of the states in question, will be able to conjecture which fleet was most favored with these delicate attentions. [84] Birds do not often voluntarily take passage on board ships bound for foreign countries, but I can testify to one such case. A stork, which had nested near one of the palaces on the Bosphorus, had, by some accident, injured a wing, and was unable to join his follows when they commenced their winter migration to the banks of the Nile. Before he was able to fly again, he was caught, and the flag of the nation to which the palace belonged was tied to his leg, so that he was easily identified at a considerable distance. As his wing grow stronger, he made several unsatisfactory experiments at flight, and at last, by a vigorous effort, succeeded in reaching a passing ship bound southward, and perched himself on a topsail yard. I happened to witness this movement, and observed him quietly maintaining his position as long as I could discern him with a spyglass. I suppose he finished the voyage, for he certainly did not return to the palace. [85] The enthusiasm of naturalists is not always proportioned to the magnitude or importance of the organisms they concern themselves with. It is not recorded that Adams, who found the colossal antediluvian pachyderm in a thick-ribbed mountain of Siberian ice, ran wild over his _trouvaille_; but Schmidl, in describing the natural history of the caves of the Karst, speaks of an eminent entomologist as "_der glückliche Entdecker_," the _happy_ discoverer of a new coleopteron, in one of those dim caverns. How various are the sources of happiness! Think of a learned German professor, the bare enumeration of whose Rath-ships and scientific Mitglied-ships fills a page, made famous in the annals of science, immortal, happy, by the discovery of a beetle! Had that imperial _ennuyé_, who offered a premium for the invention of a new pleasure, but read Schmidl's _Höhlen des Karstes_, what splendid rewards would he not have heaped upon Kirby and Spence! [86] I believe there is no foundation for the supposition that earthworms attack the tuber of the potato. Some of them, especially one or two species employed by anglers as bait, if natives of the woods, are at least rare in shaded grounds, but multiply very rapidly after the soil is brought under cultivation. Forty or fifty years ago they were so scarce in the newer parts of New England, that the rustic fishermen of every village kept secret the few places where they were to be found in their neighborhood, as a professional mystery, but at present one can hardly turn over a shovelful of rich moist soil anywhere, without unearthing several of them. A very intelligent lady, born in the woods of Northern New England, told me that, in her childhood, these worms were almost unknown in that region, though anxiously sought for by the anglers, but that they increased as the country was cleared, and at last became so numerous in some places, that the water of springs, and even of shallow wells, which had formerly been excellent, was rendered undrinkable by the quantity of dead worms that fell into them. The increase of the robin and other small birds which follow the settler when he has prepared a suitable home for them, at last checked the excessive multiplication of the worms, and abated the nuisance. [87] I have already remarked that the remains of extant animals are rarely, if ever, gathered in sufficient quantities to possess any geographical importance by their mere mass; but the decayed exuviæ of even the smaller and humbler forms of life are sometimes abundant enough to exercise a perceptible influence on soil and atmosphere. "The plain of Cumana," says Humboldt, "presents a remarkable phenomenon, after heavy rains. The moistened earth, when heated by the rays of the sun, diffuses the musky odor common in the torrid zone to animals of very different classes, to the jaguar, the small species of tiger cat, the cabiaï, the gallinazo vulture, the crocodile, the viper, and the rattlesnake. The gaseous emanations, the vehicles of this aroma, appear to be disengaged in proportion as the soil, which contains the remains of an innumerable multitude of reptiles, worms, and insects, begins to be impregnated with water. Wherever we stir the earth, we are struck with the mass of organic substances which in turn are developed and become transformed or decomposed. Nature in these climes seems more active, more prolific, and so to speak, more prodigal of life." [88] It is remarkable that Palissy, to whose great merits as an acute observer I am happy to have frequent occasion to bear testimony, had noticed that vegetation was necessary to maintain the purity of water in artificial reservoirs, though he mistook the rationale of its influence, which he ascribed to the elemental "salt" supposed by him to play an important part in all the operations of nature. In his treatise upon Waters and Fountains, p. 174, of the reprint of 1844, he says: "And in special, thou shalt note one point, the which is understood of few: that is to say, that the leaves of the trees which fall upon the parterre, and the herbs growing beneath, and singularly the fruits, if any there be upon the trees, being decayed, the waters of the parterre shall draw unto them the salt of the said fruits, leaves, and herbs, the which shall greatly better the water of thy fountains, and hinder the putrefaction thereof." [89] Between the years 1851 and 1853, both inclusive, the United States exported 2,665,857 pounds of beeswax, besides a considerable quantity employed in the manufacture of candles for exportation. This is an average of more than 330,000 pounds per year. The census of 1850 gave the total production of wax and honey for that year at 14,853,128 pounds. In 1860, it amounted to 26,370,813 pounds, the increase being partly due to the introduction of improved races of bees from Italy and Switzerland.--BIGELOW, _Les États Unis en 1863_, p. 376. [90] A few years ago, a laborer, employed at a North American port in discharging a cargo of hides from the opposite extremity of the continent, was fatally poisoned by the bite or the sting of an unknown insect, which ran out from a hide he was handling. [91] In many insects, some of the stages of life regularly continue for several years, and they may, under peculiar circumstances, be almost indefinitely prolonged. Dr. Dwight mentions the following remarkable case of this sort, which may be new to many readers: "While I was here [at Williamstown, Mass.], Dr. Fitch showed me an insect, about an inch in length, of a brown color tinged with orange, with two antennæ, not unlike a rosebug. This insect came out of a tea table, made of the boards of an apple tree." Dr. Dwight examined the table, and found the "cavity whence the insect had emerged into the light," to be "about two inches in length, nearly horizontal, and inclining upward very little, except at the mouth. Between the hole, and the outside of the leaf of the table, there were forty grains of the wood." It was supposed that the sawyer and the cabinet maker must have removed at least thirteen grains more, and the table had been in the possession of its proprietor for twenty years. [92] It does not appear to be quite settled whether the termites of France are indigenous or imported. See QUATREFAGES, _Souvenirs d'un Naturaliste_, ii, pp. 400, 542, 543. [93] I have seen the larva of the dragon fly in an aquarium, bite off the head of a young fish as long as itself. [94] Insects and fish--which prey upon and feed each other--are the only forms of animal life that are numerous in the native woods, and their range is, of course, limited by the extent of the waters. The great abundance of the trout, and of other more or less allied genera in the lakes of Lapland, seems to be due to the supply of food provided for them by the swarms of insects which in the larva state inhabit the waters, or, in other stages of their life, are accidentally swept into them. All travellers in the north of Europe speak of the gnat and the mosquito as very serious drawbacks upon the enjoyments of the summer tourist, who visits the head of the Gulf of Bothnia to see the midnight sun, and the brothers Læstadius regard them as one of the great plagues of sub-Arctic life. "The persecutions of these insects," says Lars Levi Læstadius [_Culex pipiens_, _Culex reptans_, and _Culex pulicaris_], "leave not a moment's peace, by day or night, to any living creature. Not only man, but cattle, and even birds and wild beasts, suffer intolerably from their bite." He adds in a note, "I will not affirm that they have ever devoured a living man, but many young cattle, such as lambs and calves, have been worried out of their lives by them. All the people of Lapland declare that young birds are killed by them, and this is not improbable, for birds are scarce after seasons when the midge, the gnat, and the mosquito are numerous."--_Om Uppodlingar i Lappmarken_, p. 50. Petrus Læstadius makes similar statements in his _Journal för första året_, p. 285. [95] It is very questionable whether there is any foundation for the popular belief in the hostility of swine and of deer to the rattlesnake, and careful experiments as to the former quadruped seem to show that the supposed enmity is wholly imaginary. Observing that the starlings, _stornelli_, which bred in an old tower in Piedmont, carried something from their nests and dropped it upon the ground, about as often as they brought food to their young, I watched their proceedings, and found every day lying near the tower numbers of dead or dying slowworms, and, in a few cases, small lizards, which had, in every instance, lost about two inches of the tail. This part I believe the starlings gave to their nestlings, and threw away the remainder. [96] Russell denies the existence of poisonous snakes in Northern Syria, and states that the last instance of death known to have occurred from the bite of a serpent near Aleppo took place a hundred years before his time. In Palestine, the climate, the thinness of population, the multitude of insects and of lizards, all circumstances, in fact, seem very favorable to the multiplication of serpents, but the venomous species, at least, are extremely rare, if at all known, in that country. I have, however, been assured by persons very familiar with Mount Lebanon, that cases of poisoning from the bite of snakes had occurred within a few years, near Hasbeiyeh, and at other places on the southern declivities of Lebanon and Hermon. In Egypt, on the other hand, the cobra, the asp, and the cerastes are as numerous as ever, and are much dreaded by all the natives, except the professional snake charmers. See _Appendix_, No. 18. [97] I use _whale_ not in a technical sense, but as a generic term for all the large inhabitants of the sea popularly grouped under that name. [98] From the narrative of Ohther, introduced by King Alfred into his translation of Orosius, it is clear that the Northmen pursued the whale fishery in the ninth century, and it appears, both from the poem called The Whale, in the Codex Exoniensis, and from the dialogue with the fisherman in the Colloquies of Aelfric, that the Anglo-Saxons followed this dangerous chase at a period not much later. I am not aware of any evidence to show that any of the Latin nations engaged in this fishery until a century or two afterward, though it may not be easy to disprove their earlier participation in it. In mediæval literature, Latin and Romance, very frequent mention is made of a species of vessel called in Latin, _baleneria_, _balenerium_, _balenerius_, _balaneria_, etc.; in Catalan, _balener_; in French, _balenier_; all of which words occur in many other forms. The most obvious etymology of these words would suggest the meaning, _whaler_, _baleinier_; but some have supposed that the name was descriptive of the great size of the ships, and others have referred it to a different root. From the fourteenth century, the word occurs oftener, perhaps, in old Catalan, than in any other language; but Capmany does not notice the whale fishery as one of the maritime pursuits of the very enterprising Catalan people, nor do I find any of the products of the whale mentioned in the old Catalan tariffs. The _whalebone_ of the mediæval writers, which is described as very white, is doubtless the ivory of the walrus or of the narwhale. [99] In consequence of the great scarcity of the whale, the use of coal gas for illumination, the substitution of other fatty and oleaginous substances, such as lard, palm oil, and petroleum, for right-whale oil and spermaceti, the whale fishery has rapidly fallen off within a few years. The great supply of petroleum, which is much used for lubricating machinery as well as for numerous other purposes, has produced a more perceptible effect on the whale fishery than any other single circumstance. According to Bigelow, _Les États Unis en 1863_, p. 346, the American whaling fleet was diminished by 29 in 1858, 57 in 1860, 94 in 1861, and 65 in 1862. The present number of American ships employed in that fishery is 353. [100] The Origin and History of the English Language, &c., pp. 423, 424. [101] Among the unexpected results of human action, the destruction or multiplication of fish, as well as of other animals, is a not unfrequent occurrence. I shall have occasion to mention on a following page the extermination of the fish in a Swedish river by a flood occasioned by the sudden discharge of the waters of a pond. Williams, in his _History of Vermont_, i, p. 149, quoted in Thompson's _Natural History of Vermont_, p. 142, records a case of the increase of trout from an opposite cause. In a pond formed by damming a small stream to obtain water power for a sawmill, and covering one thousand acres of primitive forest, the increased supply of food brought within reach of the fish multiplied them to that degree, that, at the head of the pond, where, in the spring, they crowded together in the brook which supplied it, they were taken by the hands at pleasure, and swine caught them without difficulty. A single sweep of a small scoopnet would bring up half a bushel, carts were filled with them as fast as if picked up on dry land, and in the fishing season they were commonly sold at a shilling (eightpence halfpenny, or about seventeen cents) a bushel. The increase in the size of the trout was as remarkable as the multiplication of their numbers. [102] BABINET, _Études et Lectures_, ii, pp. 108, 110. [103] THOMPSON, _Natural History of Vermont_, p. 38, and Appendix, p. 13. There is no reason to believe that the seal breeds in Lake Champlain, but the individual last taken there must have been some weeks, at least, in its waters. It was killed on the ice in the widest part of the lake, on the 23d of February, thirteen days after the surface was entirely frozen, except the usual small cracks, and a month or two after the ice closed at all points north of the place where the seal was found. [104] See page 89, note, _ante_. [105] According to Hartwig, the United Provinces of Holland had, in 1618, three thousand herring busses and nine thousand vessels engaged in the transport of these fish to market. The whole number of persons employed in the Dutch herring fishery was computed at 200,000. In the latter part of the eighteenth century, this fishery was most successfully prosecuted by the Swedes, and in 1781, the town of Gottenburg alone exported 136,649 barrels, each containing 1,200 herrings, making a total of about 164,000,000; but so rapid was the exhaustion of the fish, from this keen pursuit, that in 1799 it was found necessary to prohibit the exportation of them altogether.--_Das Leben des Meeres_, p. 182. In 1855, the British fisheries produced 900,000 barrels, or enough to supply a fish to every human inhabitant of the globe. On the shores of Long Island Sound, the white fish, a species of herring too bony to be easily eaten, is used as manure in very great quantities. Ten thousand are employed as a dressing for an acre, and a single net has sometimes taken 200,000 in a day.--DWIGHT's _Travels_, ii, pp. 512, 515. [106] The indiscriminate hostility of man to inferior forms of animated life is little creditable to modern civilization, and it is painful to reflect that it becomes keener and more unsparing in proportion to the refinement of the race. The savage slays no animal, not even the rattlesnake, wantonly; and the Turk, whom we call a barbarian, treats the dumb beast as gently as a child. One cannot live many weeks in Turkey without witnessing touching instances of the kindness of the people to the lower animals, and I have found it very difficult to induce even the boys to catch lizards and other reptiles for preservation as specimens. See _Appendix_, No. 19. The fearless confidence in man, so generally manifested by wild animals in newly discovered islands, ought to have inspired a gentler treatment of them; but a very few years of the relentless pursuit, to which they are immediately subjected, suffice to make them as timid as the wildest inhabitants of the European forest. This timidity, however, may easily be overcome. The squirrels introduced by Mayor Smith into the public parks of Boston are so tame as to feed from the hands of passengers, and they not unfrequently enter the neighboring houses. [107] A fact mentioned by Schubert--and which in its causes and many of its results corresponds almost precisely with those connected with the escape of Barton Pond in Vermont, so well known to geological students--is important, as showing that the diminution of the fish in rivers exposed to inundations is chiefly to be ascribed to the mechanical action of the current, and not mainly, as some have supposed, to changes of temperature occasioned by clearing. Our author states that, in 1796, a terrible inundation was produced in the Indalself, which rises in the Storsjö in Jemtland, by drawing off into it the waters of another lake near Ragunda. The flood destroyed houses and fields; much earth was swept into the channel, and the water made turbid and muddy; the salmon and the smaller fish forsook the river altogether, and never returned. The banks of the river have never regained their former solidity, and portions of their soil are still continually falling into the water.--_Resa genom Sverge_, ii, p. 51. [108] WITTWER, _Physikalische Geographie_, p. 142. [109] To vary the phrase, I make occasional use of _animalcule_, which, as a popular designation, embraces all microscopic organisms. The name is founded on the now exploded supposition that all of them are animated, which was the general belief of naturalists when attention was first drawn to them. It was soon discovered that many of them were unquestionably vegetable, and there are numerous genera the true classification of which is matter of dispute among the ablest observers. There are cases in which objects formerly taken for living animalcules turn out to be products of the decomposition of matter once animated, and it is admitted that neither spontaneous motion nor even apparent irritability are sure signs of animal life. [110] See an interesting report on the coral fishery, by Sant' Agabio, Italian Consul-General at Algiers, in the _Bollettino Consolare_, published by the Department of Foreign Affairs, 1862, pp. 139, 151, and in the _Annali di Agricoltura, Industria e Commercio_, No. ii, pp. 360, 373. [111] The fermentation of liquids, and in many cases the decomposition of semi-solids, formerly supposed to be owing purely to chemical action, are now ascertained to be due to vital processes of living minute organisms both vegetable and animal, and consequently to physiological, as well as to chemical forces. Even alcohol is stated to be an animal product. See an interesting article by Auguste Laugel on the recent researches of Pasteur, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, for September 15th, 1863. [112] The recorded evidence in support of the proposition in the text has been collected by L. F. Alfred Maury, in his _Histoire des grandes Forêts de la Gaule et de l'ancienne France_, and by Becquerel, in his important work, _Des climats et de l'Influence qu'exercent les Sols boisés et non boisés_, livre ii, chap. i to iv. We may rank among historical evidences on this point, if not technically among historical records, old geographical names and terminations etymologically indicating forest or grove, which are so common in many parts of the Eastern Continent now entirely stripped of woods--such as, in Southern Europe, Breuil, Broglio, Brolio, Brolo; in Northern, Brühl, -wald, -wold, -wood, -shaw, -skeg, and -skov. [113] The island of Madeira, whose noble forests were devastated by fire not long after its colonization by European settlers, derives its name from the Portuguese word for wood. [114] Browsing animals, and most of all the goat, are considered by foresters as more injurious to the growth of young trees, and, therefore, to the reproduction of the forest, than almost any other destructive cause. "According to Beatson's _Saint Helena_, introductory chapter, and Darwin's _Journal of Researches in Geology and Natural History_, pp. 582, 583," says Emsmann, in the notes to his translation of Foissac, p. 654, "it was the goats which destroyed the beautiful forests that, three hundred and fifty years ago, covered a continuous surface of not less than two thousand acres in the interior of the island [of St. Helena], not to mention scattered groups of trees. Darwin observes: 'During our stay at Valparaiso, I was most positively assured that sandal wood formerly grew in abundance on the island of Juan Fernandez, but that this tree had now become entirely extinct there, having been extirpated by the goats which early navigators had introduced. The neighboring islands, to which goats have not been carried, still abound in sandal wood.'" In the winter, the deer tribe, especially the great American moose deer, subsists much on the buds and young sprouts of trees; yet--though from the destruction of the wolves or from some not easily explained cause, these latter animals have recently multiplied so rapidly in some parts of North America, that, not long since, four hundred of them are said to have been killed, in one season, on a territory in Maine not comprising more than one hundred and fifty square miles--the wild browsing quadrupeds are rarely, if ever, numerous enough in regions uninhabited by man to produce any sensible effect on the condition of the forest. A reason why they are less injurious than the goat to young trees may be that they resort to this nutriment only in the winter, when the grasses and shrubs are leafless or covered with snow, whereas the goat feeds upon buds and young shoots principally in the season of growth. However this may be, the natural law of consumption and supply keeps the forest growth, and the wild animals which live on its products, in such a state of equilibrium as to insure the indefinite continuance of both, and the perpetuity of neither is endangered until man, who is above natural law, interferes and destroys the balance. When, however, deer are bred and protected in parks, they multiply like domestic cattle, and become equally injurious to trees. "A few years ago," says Clavé, "there were not less than two thousand deer of different ages in the forest of Fontainebleau. For want of grass, they are driven to the trees, and they do not spare them. * * It is calculated that the browsing of these animals, and the consequent retardation of the growth of the wood, diminishes the annual product of the forest to the amount of two hundred thousand cubic feet per year, * * and besides this, the trees thus mutilated are soon exhausted and die. The deer attack the pines, too, tearing off the bark in long strips, or rubbing their heads against them when shedding their horns; and sometimes, in groves of more than a hundred hectares, not one pine is found uninjured by them."--_Revue des Deux Mondes_, Mai, 1863, p. 157. See also _Appendix_, No. 21. Beckstein computes that a park of 2,500 acres, containing 250 acres of marsh, 250 of fields and meadows, and the remaining 2,000 of wood, may keep 364 deer of different species, 47 wild boars, 200 hares, 100 rabbits, and an indefinite number of pheasants. These animals would require, in winter, 123,000 pounds of hay, and 22,000 pounds of potatoes, besides what they would pick up themselves. The natural forest most thickly peopled with wild animals would not, in temperate climates, contain, upon the average, one tenth of these numbers to the same extent of surface. [115] Even the volcanic dust of Etna remains very long unproductive. Near Nicolosi is a great extent of coarse black sand, thrown out in 1669, which, for almost two centuries, lay entirely bare, and can be made to grow plants only by artificial mixtures and much labor. The increase in the price of wines, in consequence of the diminution of the product from the grape disease, however, has brought even these ashes under cultivation. "I found," says Waltershausen, referring to the years 1861-'62, "plains of volcanic sand and half-subdued lava streams, which twenty years ago lay utterly waste, now covered with fine vineyards. The ashfield of ten square miles above Nicolosi, created by the eruption of 1669, which was entirely barren in 1835, is now planted with vines almost to the summits of Monte Rosso, at a height of three thousand feet."--_Ueber den Sicilianischen Ackerbau_, p. 19. [116] _A Relation of a Journey Begun An. Dom._ 1610, lib. 4, p. 260, edition of 1627. The testimony of Sandys on this point is confirmed by that of Pighio, Braccini, Magliocco, Salimbeni, and Nicola di Rubeo, all cited by Roth, _Der Vesuv._, p. 9. There is some uncertainty about the date of the last eruption previous to the great one of 1631. Ashes, though not lava, appear to have been thrown out about the year 1500, and some chroniclers have recorded an eruption in the year 1306; but this seems to be an error for 1036, when a great quantity of lava was ejected. In 1139, ashes were thrown out for many days. I take those dates from the work of Roth just cited. [117] Except upon the banks of rivers or of lakes, the woods of the interior of North America, far from the habitations of man, are almost destitute of animal life. Dr. Newberry, describing the vast forests of the yellow pine of the West, _Pinus ponderosa_, remarks: "In the arid and desert regions of the interior basin, we made whole days' marches in forests of yellow pine, of which neither the monotony was broken by other forms of vegetation, nor its stillness by the flutter of a bird or the hum of an insect."--_Pacific Railroad Report_, vol. vi, 1857. Dr. NEWBERRY's _Report on Botany_, p. 37. The wild fruit and nut trees, the Canada plum, the cherries, the many species of walnut, the butternut, the hazel, yield very little, frequently nothing, so long as they grow in the woods; and it is only when the trees around them are cut down, or when they grow in pastures, that they become productive. The berries, too--the strawberry, the blackberry, the raspberry, the whortleberry, scarcely bear fruit at all except in cleared ground. The North American Indians did not inhabit the interior of the forests. Their settlements were upon the shores of rivers and lakes, and their weapons and other relics are found only in the narrow open grounds which they had burned over and cultivated, or in the margin of the woods around their villages. The rank forests of the tropics are as unproductive of human aliment as the less luxuriant woods of the temperate zone. In Strain's unfortunate expedition across the great American isthmus, where the journey lay principally through thick woods, several of the party died of starvation, and for many days the survivors were forced to subsist on the scantiest supplies of unnutritious vegetables perhaps never before employed for food by man. See the interesting account of that expedition in _Harper's Magazine_ for March, April, and May, 1855. Clavé, as well as many earlier writers, supposes that primitive man derived his nutriment from the spontaneous productions of the wood. "It is to the forests," says he, "that man was first indebted for the means of subsistence. Exposed alone, without defence, to the rigor of the seasons, as well as to the attacks of animals stronger and swifter than himself, he found in them his first shelter, drew from them his first weapons. In the first period of humanity, they provided for all his wants: they furnished him wood for warmth, fruits for food, garments to cover his nakedness, arms for his defence."--_Études sur l'Économie Forestière_, p. 13. But the history of savage life, as far as it is known to us, presents man in that condition as inhabiting only the borders of the forest and the open grounds that skirt the waters and the woods, and as finding only there the aliments which make up his daily bread. [118] The origin of the great natural meadows, or prairies as they are called, of the valley of the Mississippi, is obscure. There is, of course, no historical evidence on the subject, and I believe that remains of forest vegetation are seldom or never found beneath the surface, even in the _sloughs_, where the perpetual moisture would preserve such remains indefinitely. The want of trees upon them has been ascribed to the occasional long-continued droughts of summer, and the excessive humidity of the soil in winter; but it is, in very many instances, certain that, by whatever means the growth of forests upon them was first prevented or destroyed, the trees have been since kept out of them only by the annual burning of the grass, by grazing animals, or by cultivation. The groves and belts of trees which are found upon the prairies, though their seedlings are occasionally killed by drought, or by excess of moisture, extend themselves rapidly over them when the seeds and shoots are protected against fire, cattle, and the plough. The prairies, though of vast extent, must be considered as a local, and, so far as our present knowledge extends, abnormal exception to the law which clothes all suitable surfaces with forest; for there are many parts of the United States--Ohio, for example--where the physical conditions appear to be nearly identical with those of the States lying farther west, but where there were comparatively few natural meadows. The prairies were the proper feeding grounds of the bison, and the vast number of those animals is connected, as cause or consequence, with the existence of those vast pastures. The bison, indeed, could not convert the forest into a pasture, but he would do much to prevent the pasture from becoming a forest. There is positive evidence that some of the American tribes possessed large herds of domesticated bisons. See HUMBOLDT, _Ansichten der Natur_, i, pp. 71-73. What authorizes us to affirm that this was simply the wild bison reclaimed, and why may we not, with equal probability, believe that the migratory prairie buffalo is the progeny of the domestic animal run wild? There are, both on the prairies, as in Wisconsin, and in deep forests, as in Ohio, extensive remains of a primitive people, who must have been more numerous and more advanced in art than the present Indian tribes. There can be no doubt that the woods where such earthworks are found in Ohio were cleared by them, and that the vicinity of these fortresses or temples was inhabited by a large population. Nothing forbids the supposition that the prairies were cleared by the same or a similar people, and that the growth of trees upon them has been prevented by fires and grazing, while the restoration of the woods in Ohio may be due to the abandonment of that region by its original inhabitants. The climatic conditions unfavorable to the spontaneous growth of trees on the prairies may be an effect of too extensive clearings, rather than a cause of the want of woods. See _Appendix_, No. 22. [119] In many parts of the North American States, the first white settlers found extensive tracts of thin woods, of a very park-like character, called "oak openings," from the predominance of different species of that tree upon them. These were the semi-artificial pasture grounds of the Indians, brought into that state, and so kept, by partial clearing, and by the annual burning of the grass. The object of this operation was to attract the deer to the fresh herbage which sprang up after the fire. The oaks bore the annual scorching, at least for a certain time; but if it had been indefinitely continued, they would very probably have been destroyed at last. The soil would have then been much in the prairie condition, and would have needed nothing but grazing for a long succession of years to make the resemblance perfect. That the annual fires alone occasioned the peculiar character of the oak openings, is proved by the fact, that as soon as the Indians had left the country, young trees of many species sprang up and grew luxuriantly upon them. See a very interesting account of the oak openings in DWIGHT's _Travels_, iv, pp. 58-63. [120] The practice of burning over woodland, at once to clear and manure the ground, is called in Swedish _svedjande_, a participial noun from the verb _att svedja_, to burn over. Though used in Sweden as a preparation for crops of rye or other grain, it is employed in Lapland more frequently to secure an abundant growth of pasturage, which follows in two or three years after the fire; and it is sometimes resorted to as a mode of driving the Laplanders and their reindeer from the vicinity of the Swedish backwoodsman's grass grounds and haystacks, to which they are dangerous neighbors. The forest, indeed, rapidly recovers itself, but it is a generation or more before the reindeer moss grows again. When the forest consists of pine, _tall_, the ground, instead of being rendered fertile by this process, becomes hopelessly barren, and for a long time afterward produces nothing but weeds and briers.--LÆSTADIUS, _Om Uppodlingar i Lappmarken_, p. 15. See also SCHUBERT, _Resa i Sverge_, ii, p. 375. In some parts of France this practice is so general that Clavé says: "In the department of Ardennes it (_le sartage_) is the basis of agriculture. The northern part of the department, comprising the arrondissements of Rocroi and Mézières, is covered by steep wooded mountains with an argillaceous, compact, moist and cold soil; it is furrowed by three valleys, or rather three deep ravines, at the bottom of which roll the waters of the Meuse, the Semoy, and the Sormonne, and villages show themselves wherever the walls of the valleys retreat sufficiently from the rivers to give room to establish them. Deprived of arable soil, since the nature of the ground permits neither regular clearing nor cultivation, the peasant of the Ardennes, by means of burning, obtains from the forest a subsistence which, without this resource, would fail him. After the removal of the disposable wood, he spreads over the soil the branches, twigs, briars, and heath, sets fire to them in the dry weather of July and August, and sows in September a crop of rye, which he covers by a light ploughing. Thus prepared, the ground yields from seventeen to twenty bushels an acre, besides a ton and a half or two tons of straw of the best quality for the manufacture of straw hats."--CLAVÉ, _Études sur l'Économie Forestière_, p. 21. Clavé does not expressly condemn the _sartage_, which indeed seems the only practicable method of obtaining crops from the soil he describes, but, as we shall see hereafter, it is regarded by most writers as a highly pernicious practice. [121] The remarkable mounds and other earthworks constructed in the valley of the Ohio and elsewhere in the territory of the United States, by a people apparently more advanced in culture than the modern Indian, were overgrown with a dense clothing of forest when first discovered by the whites. But though the ground where they were erected must have been occupied by a large population for a considerable length of time, and therefore entirely cleared, the trees which grew upon the ancient fortresses and the adjacent lands were not distinguishable in species, or even in dimensions and character of growth, from the neighboring forests, where the soil seemed never to have been disturbed. This apparent exception to the law of change of crop in natural forest growth was ingeniously explained by General Harrison's suggestion, that the lapse of time since the era of the mound builders was so great as to have embraced several successive generations of trees, and occasioned, by their rotation, a return to the original vegetation. The successive changes in the spontaneous growth of the forest, as proved by the character of the wood found in bogs, is not unfrequently such as to suggest the theory of a considerable change of climate during the human period. But the laws which govern the germination and growth of forest trees must be further studied, and the primitive local conditions of the sites where ancient woods lie buried must be better ascertained, before this theory can be admitted upon the evidence in question. In fact, the order of succession--for a rotation or alternation is not yet proved--may move in opposite directions in different countries with the same climate and at the same time. Thus in Denmark and in Holland the spike-leaved firs have given place to the broad-leaved beech, while in Northern Germany the process has been reversed, and evergreens have supplanted the oaks and birches of deciduous foliage. The principal determining cause seems to be the influence of light upon the germination of the seeds and the growth of the young tree. In a forest of firs, for instance, the distribution of the light and shade, to the influence of which seeds and shoots are exposed, is by no means the same as in a wood of beeches or of oaks, and hence the growth of different species will be stimulated in the two forests. See BERG, _Das Verdrängen der Laubwälder im Nördlichen Deutschland_, 1844. HEYER, _Das Verhalten der Waldbäume gegen Licht und Schatten_, 1852. STARING, _De Bodem van Nederland_, 1856, i, pp. 120-200. VAUPELL, _Om Bögens Indvandring i de Danske Skove_, 1857. KNORR, _Studien über die Buchen-Wirthschaft_, 1863. [122] There are, in Northern Italy and in Switzerland, joint-stock companies which insure against damage by hail, as well as by fire and lightning. Between the years 1854 and 1861, a single one of these companies, La Riunione Adriatica, paid, for damage by hail in Piedmont, Venetian Lombardy, and the Duchy of Parma, above 6,500,000 francs, or nearly $200,000 per year. [123] The _paragrandine_, or, as it is called in French, the _paragrêle_, is a species of conductor by which it has been hoped to protect the harvests in countries particularly exposed to damage by hail. It was at first proposed to employ for this purpose poles supporting sheaves of straw connected with the ground by the same material; but the experiment was afterward tried in Lombardy on a large scale, with more perfect electrical conductors, consisting of poles secured to the top of tall trees and provided with a pointed wire entering the ground and reaching above the top of the pole. It was at first thought that this apparatus, erected at numerous points over an extent of several miles, was of some service as a protection against hail, but this opinion was soon disputed, and does not appear to be supported by well-ascertained facts. The question of a repetition of the experiment over a wide area has been again agitated within a very few years in Lombardy; but the doubts expressed by very able physicists as to its efficacy, and as to the point whether hail is an electrical phenomenon, have discouraged its advocates from attempting it. [124] _Cenni sulla Importanza e Coltura dei Boschi_, p. 6. [125] _Memoria sui Boschi, etc._, p. 44. [126] _Travels in Italy_, chap. iii. [127] _Le Alpi che cingono l'Italia_, i, p. 377. [128] "Long before the appearance of man, * * * they [the forests] had robbed the atmosphere of the enormous quantity of carbonic acid it contained, and thereby transformed it into respirable air. Trees heaped upon trees had already filled up the ponds and marshes, and buried with them in the bowels of the earth--to restore it to us after thousands of ages in the form of bituminous coal and of anthracite--the carbon which was destined to become, by this wonderful condensation, a precious store of future wealth."--CLAVÉ, _Études sur l'Économie Forestière_, p. 13. This opinion of the modification of the atmosphere by vegetation is contested. [129] Schacht ascribes to the forest a specific, if not a measurable, influence upon the constitution of the atmosphere. "Plants imbibe from the air carbonic acid and other gaseous or volatile products exhaled by animals or developed by the natural phenomena of decomposition. On the other hand, the vegetable pours into the atmosphere oxygen, which is taken up by animals and appropriated by them. The tree, by means of its leaves and its young herbaceous twigs, presents a considerable surface for absorption and evaporation; it abstracts the carbon of carbonic acid, and solidifies it in wood, fecula, and a multitude of other compounds. The result is that a forest withdraws from the air, by its great absorbent surface, much more gas than meadows or cultivated fields, and exhales proportionally a considerably greater quantity of oxygen. The influence of the forests on the chemical composition of the atmosphere is, in a word, of the highest importance."--_Les Arbres_, p. 111. See _Appendix_, No. 23. [130] Composition, texture and color of soil are important elements to be considered in estimating the effects of the removal of the forest upon its thermoscopic action. "Experience has proved," says Becquerel, "that when the soil is bared, it becomes more or less heated [by the rays of the sun] according to the nature and the color of the particles which compose it, and according to its humidity, and that, in the refrigeration resulting from radiation, we must take into the account the conducting power of those particles also. Other things being equal, silicious and calcareous sands, compared in equal volumes with different argillaceous earths, with calcareous powder or dust, with humus, with arable and with garden earth, are the soils which least conduct heat. It is for this reason that sandy ground, in summer, maintains a high temperature even during the night. We may hence conclude that when a sandy soil is stripped of wood, the local temperature will be raised. After the sands follow successively argillaceous, arable, and garden ground, then humus, which occupies the lowest rank. If we represent the power of calcareous sand to retain heat by 100, we have, according to Schubler, For [silicious?] sand 95.6 " arable calcareous soil 74.8 " argillaceous earth 68.4 " garden earth 64.8 " humus 49.0 "The retentive power of humus, then, is but half as great as that of calcareous sand. We will add that the power of retaining heat is proportional to the density. It has also a relation to the magnitude of the particles. It is for this reason that ground covered with silicious pebbles cools more slowly than silicious sand, and that pebbly soils are best suited to the cultivation of the vine, because they advance the ripening of the grape more rapidly than chalky and clayey earths, which cool quickly. Hence we see that in examining the calorific effects of clearing forests, it is important to take into account the properties of the soil laid bare."--BECQUEREL, _Des Climats et des Sols boisés_, p. 137. [131] "The Washington elm at Cambridge--a tree of no extraordinary size--was some years ago estimated to produce a crop of seven millions of leaves, exposing a surface of two hundred thousand square feet, or about five acres of foliage."--GRAY, _First Lessons in Botany and Vegetable Physiology_, as quoted by COULTAS, _What may be learned from a Tree_, p. 34. [132] See, on this particular point, and on the general influence of the forest on temperature, HUMBOLDT, _Ansichten der Natur_, i, 158. [133] The radiating and refrigerating power of objects by no means depends on their form alone. Melloni cut sheets of metal into the shape of leaves and grasses, and found that they produced little cooling effect, and were not moistened under atmospheric conditions which determined a plentiful deposit of dew on the leaves of vegetables. [134] BECQUEREL, _Des Climats, etc., Discours Prélim._ vi. [135] _Travels_, i, p. 61. [136] _Le Alpi che cingono l'Italia_, pp. 370, 371. [137] BERGSÖE, _Reventlovs Virksomhed_, ii, p. 125. [138] BECQUEREL, _Des Climats, etc._, p. 179. [139] Ibid., p. 116. [140] The following well-attested instance of a local change of climate is probably to be referred to the influence of the forest as a shelter against cold winds. To supply the extraordinary demand for Italian iron occasioned by the exclusion of English iron in the time of Napoleon I, the furnaces of the valleys of Bergamo were stimulated to great activity. "The ordinary production of charcoal not sufficing to feed the furnaces and the forges, the woods were felled, the copses cut before their time, and the whole economy of the forest was deranged. At Piazzatorre there was such a devastation of the woods, and consequently such an increased severity of climate, that maize no longer ripened. An association, formed for the purpose, effected the restoration of the forest, and maize flourishes again in the fields of Piazzatorre."--Report by G. ROSA, in _Il Politecnico_, Dicembre, 1861, p. 614. Similar ameliorations have been produced by plantations in Belgium. In an interesting series of articles by Baude, entitled "Les Cotes de la Manche," in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, I find this statement: "A spectator placed on the famous bell tower of the cathedral of Antwerp, saw, not long since, on the opposite side of the Schelde only a vast desert plain; now he sees a forest, the limits of which are confounded with the horizon. Let him enter within its shade. The supposed forest is but a system of regular rows of trees, the oldest of which is not forty years of age. These plantations have ameliorated the climate which had doomed to sterility the soil where they are planted. While the tempest is violently agitating their tops, the air a little below is still, and sands far more barren than the plateau of La Hague have been transformed, under their protection, into fertile fields."--_Revue des Deux Mondes_, January, 1859, p. 277. [141] _Cenni sulla Importanza e Coltura dei Boschi_, p. 31. [142] _La Provence au point de vue des Torrents et des Inondations_, p. 19. [143] _Ueber die Entwaldung der Gebirge_, p. 28. [144] BECQUEREL, _Des Climats, etc._, p. 9. [145] SALVAGNOLI, _Rapporto sul Bonificamento delle Maremme Toscane_, pp. xli, 124. [146] _Il Politecnico, Milano, Aprile e Maggio_, 1863, p. 35. [147] SALVAGNOLI, _Memorie sulle Maremme Toscane_, pp. 213, 214. [148] Except in the seething marshes of the tropics, where vegetable decay is extremely rapid, the uniformity of temperature and of atmospheric humidity renders all forests eminently healthful. See HOHENSTEIN's observations on this subject, _Der Wald_, p. 41. There is no question that open squares and parks conduce to the salubrity of cities, and many observers are of opinion that the trees and other vegetables with which such grounds are planted contribute essentially to their beneficial influence. See an article in _Aus der Natur_, xxii, p. 813. [149] _Memoria sui Boschi di Lombardia_, p. 45. [150] _Économie Rurale_, i, p. 22. [151] ROSSMÄSSLER, _Der Wald_, p. 158. [152] Ibid., p. 160. [153] The low temperature of air and soil at which, in the frigid zone, as well as in warmer latitudes under special circumstances, the processes of vegetation go on, seems to necessitate the supposition that all the manifestations of vegetable life are attended with an evolution of heat. In the United States, it is common to protect ice, in icehouses, by a covering of straw, which naturally sometimes contains kernels of grain. These often sprout, and even throw out roots and leaves to a considerable length, in a temperature very little above the freezing point. Three or four years since, I saw a lump of very clear and apparently solid ice, about eight inches long by six thick, on which a kernel of grain had sprouted in an icehouse, and sent half a dozen or more very slender roots into the pores of the ice and through the whole length of the lump. The young plant must have thrown out a considerable quantity of heat; for though the ice was, as I have said, otherwise solid, the pores through which the roots passed were enlarged to perhaps double the diameter of the fibres, but still not so much as to prevent the retention of water in them by capillary attraction. See _App._ 24. [154] BECQUEREL, _Des Climats, etc._, pp. 139-141. [155] Dr. Williams made some observations on this subject in 1789, and in 1791, but they generally belonged to the warmer months, and I do not know that any extensive series of comparisons between the temperature of the ground in the woods and the fields has been attempted in America. Dr. Williams's thermometer was sunk to the depth of ten inches, and gave the following results: +-------------+--------------+--------------+-------------+ | | Temperature | Temperature | | | TIME. | of ground in | of ground in | Difference. | | | pasture. | woods. | | +-------------+--------------+--------------+-------------+ | May 23 | 52 | 46 | 6 | | " 28 | 57 | 48 | 9 | | June 15 | 64 | 51 | 13 | | " 27 | 62 | 51 | 11 | | July 16 | 62 | 51 | 11 | | " 30 | 65½ | 55½ | 10 | | Aug. 15 | 68 | 58 | 10 | | " 31 | 59½ | 55 | 4½ | | Sept. 15 | 59½ | 55 | 4½ | | Oct. 1 | 59½ | 55 | 4½ | | " 15 | 49 | 49 | 0 | | Nov. 1 | 43 | 43 | 0 | | " 16 | 43½ | 43½ | 0 | +-------------+--------------+--------------+-------------+ On the 14th of January, 1791, in a winter remarkable for its extreme severity, he found the ground, on a plain open field where the snow had been blown away, frozen to the depth of three feet and five inches; in the woods where the snow was three feet deep, and where the soil had frozen to the depth of six inches before the snow fell, the thermometer, at six inches below the surface of the ground, stood at 39°. In consequence of the covering of the snow, therefore, the previously frozen ground had been thawed and raised to seven degrees above the freezing point.--WILLIAMS'S _Vermont_, i, p. 74. Bodies of fresh water, so large as not to be sensibly affected by local influences of narrow reach or short duration, would afford climatic indications well worthy of special observation. Lake Champlain, which forms the boundary between the States of New York and Vermont, presents very favorable conditions for this purpose. This lake, which drains a basin of about 6,000 square miles, covers an area, excluding its islands, of about 500 square miles. It extends from lat. 43° 30' to 45° 20', in very nearly a meridian line, has a mean width of four and a half miles, with an extreme breadth, excluding bays almost land-locked, of thirteen miles. Its mean depth is not well known. It is, however, 400 feet deep in some places, and from 100 to 200 in many, and has few shoals or flats. The climate is of such severity that it rarely fails to freeze completely over, and to be safely crossed upon the ice, with heavy teams, for several weeks every winter. THOMPSON (_Vermont_, p. 14, and Appendix, p. 9) gives the following table of the times of the complete closing and opening of the ice, opposite Burlington, about the centre of the lake, and where it is ten miles wide. +------+-------------+------------+-------+ | Year.| Closing. | Opening. | Days | | | | |closed.| +------+-------------+------------+-------+ | 1816 | February 9 | | | | 1817 | January 29 | April 16 | 78 | | 1818 | February 2 | April 15 | 72 | | 1819 | March 4 | April 17 | 44 | | 1820 |{February 3 | February | } 4 | | |{March 8 | March 12 | } | | 1821 | January 15 | April 21 | 95 | | 1822 | January 24 | March 30 | 75 | | 1823 | February 7 | April 5 | 57 | | 1824 | January 22 | February 11| 20 | | 1825 | February 9 | | | | 1826 | February 1 | March 24 | 51 | | 1827 | January 21 | March 31 | 68 | | 1828 | not closed | | | | 1829 | January 31 | April | | | 1832 | February 6 | April 17 | 70 | | 1833 | February 2 | April 6 | 63 | | 1834 | February 13 | February 20| 7 | | 1835 |{January 10 | January 23 | 18 | | |{February 7 | April 12 | 64 | | 1836 | January 27 | April 21 | 85 | | 1837 | January 15 | April 26 | 101 | | 1838 | February 2 | April 13 | 70 | | 1839 | January 25 | April 6 | 71 | | 1840 | January 25 | February 20| 26 | | 1841 | February 18 | April 19 | 61 | | 1842 | not closed | | | | 1843 | February 16 | April 22 | 65 | | 1844 | January 25 | April 11 | 77 | | 1845 | February 3 | March 26 | 51 | | 1846 | February 10 | March 26 | 44 | | 1847 | February 15 | April 23 | 68 | | 1848 | February 13 | February 26| 13 | | 1849 | February 7 | March 23 | 44 | | 1850 | not closed | | | | 1851 | February 1 | March 12 | 89 | | 1852 | January 18 | April 10 | 92 | +------+-------------+------------+-------+ In 1847, although, at the point indicated, the ice broke up on the 23d of April, it remained frozen much later at the North, and steamers were not able to traverse the whole length of the lake until May 6th. [156] We are not, indeed, to suppose that condensation of vapor and evaporation of water are going on in the same stratum of air at the same time, or, in other words, that vapor is condensed into raindrops, and raindrops evaporated, under the same conditions; but rain formed in one stratum, may fall through another, where vapor would not be condensed. Two saturated strata of different temperatures may be brought into contact in the higher regions, and discharge large raindrops, which, if not divided by some obstruction, will reach the ground, though passing all the time through strata which would vaporize them if they were in a state of more minute division. [157] It is perhaps too much to say that the influence of trees upon the wind is strictly limited to the mechanical resistance of their trunks, branches, and foliage. So far as the forest, by dead or by living action, raises or lowers the temperature of the air within it, so far it creates upward or downward currents in the atmosphere above it, and, consequently, a flow of air toward or from itself. These air streams have a certain, though doubtless a very small influence on the force and direction of greater atmospheric movements. [158] As a familiar illustration of the influence of the forest in checking the movement of winds, I may mention the well-known fact, that the sensible cold is never extreme in thick woods, where the motion of the air is little felt. The lumbermen in Canada and the Northern United States labor in the woods, without inconvenience, when the mercury stands many degrees below the zero of Fahrenheit, while in the open grounds, with only a moderate breeze, the same temperature is almost insupportable. The engineers and firemen of locomotives, employed on railways running through forests of any considerable extent, observe that, in very cold weather, it is much easier to keep up the steam while the engine is passing through the woods than in the open ground. As soon as the train emerges from the shelter of the trees the steam gauge falls, and the stoker is obliged to throw in a liberal supply of fuel to bring it up again. Another less frequently noticed fact, due, no doubt, in a great measure to the immobility of the air, is, that sounds are transmitted to incredible distances in the unbroken forest. Many instances of this have fallen under my own observation, and others, yet more striking, have been related to me by credible and competent witnesses familiar with a more primitive condition of the Anglo-American world. An acute observer of natural phenomena, whose childhood and youth were spent in the interior of one of the newer New England States, has often told me that when he established his home in the forest, he always distinctly heard, in still weather, the plash of horses' feet, when they forded a small brook nearly seven-eighths of a mile from his house, though a portion of the wood that intervened consisted of a ridge seventy or eighty feet higher than either the house or the ford. I have no doubt that, in such cases, the stillness of the air is the most important element in the extraordinary transmissibility of sound; but it must be admitted that the absence of the multiplied and confused noises, which accompany human industry in countries thickly peopled by man, contributes to the same result. We become, by habit, almost insensible to the familiar and never-resting voices of civilization in cities and towns; but the indistinguishable drone, which sometimes escapes even the ear of him who listens for it, deadens and often quite obstructs the transmission of sounds which would otherwise be clearly audible. An observer, who wishes to appreciate that hum of civic life which he cannot analyze, will find an excellent opportunity by placing himself on the hill of Capo di Monte at Naples, in the line of prolongation of the street called Spaccanapoli. It is probably to the stillness of which I have spoken, that we are to ascribe the transmission of sound to great distances at sea in calm weather. In June, 1853, I and my family were passengers on board a ship of war bound up the Ægean. On the evening of the 27th of that month, as we were discussing, at the tea table, some observations of Humboldt on this subject, the captain of the ship told us that he had once heard a single gun at sea at the distance of ninety nautical miles. The nest morning, though a light breeze had sprung up from the north, the sea was of glassy smoothness when we went on deck. As we came up, an officer told us that he had heard a gun at sunrise, and the conversation of the previous evening suggested the inquiry whether it could have been fired from the combined French and English fleet then lying at Beshika Bay. Upon examination of our position we were found to have been, at sunrise, ninety sea miles from that point. We continued beating up northward, and between sunrise and twelve o'clock meridian of the 28th, we had made twelve miles northing, reducing our distance from Beshika Bay to seventy-eight sea miles. At noon we heard several guns so distinctly that we were able to count the number. On the 29th we came up with the fleet, and learned from an officer who came on board that a royal salute had been fired at noon on the 28th, in honor of the day as the anniversary of the Queen of England's coronation. The report at sunrise was evidently the morning gun, those at noon the salute. Such cases are rare, because the sea is seldom still, and the [Greek: kymatôn anêrithmon gelasma] rarely silent, over so great a space as ninety or even seventy-eight nautical miles. I apply the epithet _silent_ to [Greek: gelasma] advisedly. I am convinced that Æschylus meant the audible laugh of the waves, which is indeed of _countless_ multiplicity, not the visible smile of the sea, which, belonging to the great expanse as one impersonation, is single, though, like the human smile, made up of the play of many features. [159] "The presence of watery vapor in the air is general. * * * Vegetable surfaces are endowed with the power of absorbing gases, vapors, and also, no doubt, the various soluble bodies which are presented to them. The inhalation of humidity is carried on by the leaves upon a large scale; the dew of a cold summer night revives the groves and the meadows, and a single shower of rain suffices to refresh the verdure of a forest which a long drought had parched."--SCHACHT, _Les Arbres_, ix, p. 340. The absorption of the vapor of water by leaves is disputed. "The absorption of watery vapor by the leaves of plants is, according to Unger's experiments, inadmissible."--WILHELM, _Der Boden und das Wasser_, p. 19. If this latter view is correct, the apparently refreshing effects of atmospheric humidity upon vegetation must be ascribed to moisture absorbed by the ground from the air and supplied to the roots. In some recent experiments by Dr. Sachs, a porous flower-pot, with a plant growing in it, was left unwatered until the earth was dry, and the plant began to languish. The pot was then placed in a glass case containing air, which was kept always saturated with humidity, but no water was supplied, and the leaves of the plant were exposed to the open atmosphere. The soil in the flower pot absorbed from the air moisture enough to revive the foliage, and keep it a long time green, but not enough to promote development of new leaves.--Id., ibid., p. 18. [160] The experiments of Hales and others, on the absorption and exhalation of water by vegetables, are of the highest physiological interest; but observations on sunflowers, cabbages, hops, and single branches of isolated trees, growing in artificially prepared soils and under artificial conditions, furnish no trustworthy data for computing the quantity of water received and given off by the natural wood. [161] In the primitive forest, except where the soil is too wet for the dense growth of trees, the ground is generally too thickly covered with leaves to allow much room for ground mosses. In the more open woods of Europe, this form of vegetation is more frequent--as, indeed, are many other small plants of a more inviting character--than in the native American forest. See, on the cryptogams and wood plants, ROSSMÄSSLER, _Der Wald_, pp. 33 _et seqq._ [162] Emerson (_Trees of Massachusetts_, p. 493) mentions a maple six feet in diameter, as having yielded a barrel, or thirty-one and a half gallons of sap in twenty-four hours, and another, the dimensions of which are not stated, as having yielded one hundred and seventy-five gallons in the course of the season. The _Cultivator_, an American agricultural journal, for June, 1842, states that twenty gallons of sap were drawn in eighteen hours from a single maple, two and a half feet in diameter, in the town of Warner, New Hampshire, and the truth of this account has been verified by personal inquiry made in my behalf. This tree was of the original forest growth, and had been left standing when the ground around it was cleared. It was tapped only every other year, and then with six or eight incisions. Dr. Williams (_History of Vermont_, i, p. 91) says: "A man much employed in making maple sugar, found that, for twenty-one days together, a maple tree discharged seven and a half gallons per day." An intelligent correspondent, of much experience in the manufacture of maple sugar, writes me that a second-growth maple, of about two feet in diameter, standing in open ground, tapped with four incisions, has, for several seasons, generally run eight gallons per day in fair weather. He speaks of a very large tree, from which sixty gallons were drawn in the course of a season, and of another, something more than three feet through, which made forty-two pounds of wet sugar, and must have yielded not less than one hundred and fifty gallons. [163] "The buds of the maple," says the same correspondent, "do not start till toward the close of the sugar season. As soon as they begin to swell, the sap seems less sweet, and the sugar made from it is of a darker color, and with less of the distinctive maple flavor." [164] "In this region, maples are usually tapped with a three-quarter inch bit, boring to the depth of one and a half or two inches. In the smaller trees, one incision only is made, two in those of eighteen inches in diameter, and four in trees of larger size. Two 3/4-inch holes in a tree twenty-two inches in diameter = 1/46 of the circumference, and 1/169 of the area of section." "Tapping does not check the growth, but does injure the quality of the wood of maples. The wood of trees often tapped is lighter and less dense than that of trees which have not been tapped, and gives less heat in burning. No difference has been observed in the starting of the buds of tapped and untapped trees."--_Same correspondent._ [165] Dr. Rush, in a letter to Jefferson, states the number of maples fit for tapping on an acre at from thirty to fifty. "This," observes my correspondent, "is correct with regard to the original growth, which is always more or less intermixed with other trees; but in second growth, composed of maples alone, the number greatly exceeds this. I have had the maples on a quarter of an acre, which I thought about an average of second-growth 'maple orchards,' counted. The number was found to be fifty-two, of which thirty-two were ten inches or more in diameter, and, of course, large enough to tap. This gives two hundred and eight trees to the acre, one hundred and twenty-eight of which were of proper size for tapping." According to the census returns, the quantity of maple sugar made in the United States in 1850 was 34,253,436 pounds; in 1860, it was 38,863,884 pounds, besides 1,944,594 gallons of molasses. The cane sugar made in 1850 amounted to 237,133,000 pounds; in 1859, to 302,205,000.--_Preliminary Report on the Eighth Census_, p. 88. According to Bigelow, _Les États Unis d'Amérique en 1863_, chap. iv, the sugar product of Louisiana alone for 1862 is estimated at 528,321,500 pounds. [166] The correspondent already referred to informs me that a black birch, tapped about noon with two incisions, was found the next morning to have yielded sixteen gallons. Dr. Williams (_History of Vermont_, i, p. 91) says: "A large birch, tapped in the spring, ran at the rate of five gallons an hour when first tapped. Eight or nine days after, it was found to run at the rate of about two and a half gallons an hour, and at the end of fifteen days the discharge continued in nearly the same quantity. The sap continued to flow for four or five weeks, and it was the opinion of the observers that it must have yielded as much as sixty barrels [1,890 gallons]." [167] "The best state of weather for a good run," says my correspondent, "is clear days, thawing fast in the daytime and freezing well at night, with a gentle west or northwest wind; though we sometimes have clear, fine, thawing days followed by frosty nights, without a good run of sap, I have thought it probable that the irregular flow of sap on different days in the same season is connected with the variation in atmospheric pressure; for the atmospheric conditions above mentioned as those most favorable to a free flow of sap are also those in which the barometer usually indicates pressure considerably above the mean. With a south or southeast wind, and in lowering weather, which causes a fall in the barometer, the flow generally ceases, though the sap sometimes runs till after the beginning of the storm. With a _gentle_ wind, south of west, maples sometimes run all night. When this occurs, it is oftenest shortly before a storm. Last spring, the sap of a sugar orchard in a neighboring town flowed the greater part of the time for two days and two nights successively, and did not cease till after the commencement of a rain storm." The cessation of the flow of sap at night is perhaps in part to be ascribed to the nocturnal frost, which checks the melting of the snow, of course diminishing the supply of moisture in the ground, and sometimes congeals the strata from which the rootlets suck in water. From the facts already mentioned, however, and from other well-known circumstances--such, for example, as the more liberal flow of sap from incisions on the south side of the trunk--it is evident that the withdrawal of the stimulating influences of the sun's light and heat is the principal cause of the suspension of the circulation in the night. [168] "The flow ceases altogether soon after the buds begin to swell."--_Letter before quoted._ [169] We might obtain a contribution to an approximate estimate of the quantity of moisture abstracted by forest vegetation from the earth and the air, by ascertaining, as nearly as possible, the quantity of wood on a given area, the proportion of assimilable matter contained in the fluids of the tree at different seasons of the year, the ages of the trees respectively, and the quantity of leaf and seed annually shed by them. The results would, indeed, be very vague, but they might serve to check or confirm estimates arrived at by other processes. The following facts are items too loose perhaps to be employed as elements in such a computation. Dr. Williams, who wrote when the woods of Northern New England were generally in their primitive condition, states the number of trees growing on an acre at from one hundred and fifty to six hundred and fifty, according to their size and the quality of the soil; the quantity of wood, at from fifty to two hundred cords, or from 238 to 952 cubic yards, but adds that on land covered with pines, the quantity of wood would be much greater. Whether he means to give the entire solid contents of the tree, or, as is usual in ordinary estimates in New England, the marketable wood only, the trunks and larger branches, does not appear. Next to the pine, the maple would probably yield a larger amount to a given area than any of the other trees mentioned by Dr. Williams, but mixed wood, in general, measures most. In a good deal of observation on this subject, the largest quantity of marketable wood I have ever known cut on an acre of virgin forest was one hundred and four cords, or 493 cubic yards, and half that amount is considered a very fair yield. The smaller trees, branches, and twigs would not increase the quantity more than twenty-five per cent., and if we add as much more for the roots, we should have a total of about 750 cubic yards. I think Dr. Williams's estimate too large, though it would fall much below the product of the great trees of the Mississippi Valley, of Oregon, and of California. It should be observed that these measurements are those of the wood as it lies when 'corded' or piled up for market, and exceed the real solid contents by not less than fifteen per cent. "In a soil of medium quality," says Clavé, quoting the estimates of Pfeil, for the climate of Prussia, "the volume of a hectare of pines twenty years old, would exceed 80 cubic mètres [42½ cubic yards to the acre]; it would amount to but 24 in a meagre soil. This tree attains its maximum of mean growth at the age of seventy-five years. At that age, in the sandy earth of Prussia, it produces annually about 5 cubic mètres, with a total volume of 311 cubic mètres per hectare [166 cubic yards per acre]. After this age the volume increases, but the mean rate of growth diminishes. At eighty years, for instance, the volume is 335 cubic mètres, the annual production 4 only. The beech reaches its maximum of annual growth at one hundred and twenty years. It then has a total volume of 633 cubic mètres to the hectare [335 cubic yards to the acre], and produces 5 cubic mètres per year."--CLAVÉ, _Études_, p. 151. These measures, I believe, include the entire ligneous product of the tree, exclusive of the roots, and express the actual solid contents. The specific gravity of maple wood is stated to be 75. Maple sap yields sugar at the rate of about one pound _wet_ sugar to three gallons of sap, and wet sugar is to dry sugar in about the proportion of nineteen to sixteen. Besides the sugar, there is a small residuum of "sand," composed of phosphate of lime, with a little silex, and it is certain that by the ordinary hasty process of manufacture, a good deal of sugar is lost; for the drops, condensed from the vapor of the boilers on the rafters of the rude sheds where the sap is boiled, have a decidedly sweet taste. [170] "The elaborated sap, passing out of the leaves, is received into the inner bark, * * * and a part of what descends finds its way even to the ends of the roots, and is all along diffused laterally into the stem, where it meets and mingles with the ascending crude sap or raw material. So there is no separate circulation of the two kinds of sap; and no crude sap exists separately in any part of the plant. Even in the root, where it enters, this mingles at once with some elaborated sap already there."--GRAY, _How Plants Grow_, § 273. [171] Ward's tight glazed cases for raising, and especially for transporting plants, go far to prove that water only circulates through vegetables, and is again and again absorbed and transpired by organs appropriated to these functions. Seeds, growing grasses, shrubs, or trees planted in proper earth, moderately watered and covered with a glass bell or close frame of glass, live for months and even years, with only the original store of air and water. In one of Ward's early experiments, a spire of grass and a fern, which sprang up in a corked bottle containing a little moist earth introduced as a bed for a snail, lived and flourished for eighteen years without a new supply of either fluid. In these boxes the plants grow till the enclosed air is exhausted of the gaseous constituents of vegetation, and till the water has yielded up the assimilable matter it held in solution, and dissolved and supplied to the roots the nutriment contained in the earth in which they are planted. After this, they continue for a long time in a state of vegetable sleep, but if fresh air and water be introduced into the cases, or the plants be transplanted into open ground, they rouse themselves to renewed life, and grow vigorously, without appearing to have suffered from their long imprisonment. The water transpired by the leaves is partly absorbed by the earth directly from the air, partly condensed on the glass, along which it trickles down to the earth, enters the roots again, and thus continually repeats the circuit. See _Aus der Natur_, 21, B. S. 537. [172] WILHELM, _Der Boden und das Wasser_, p. 18. It is not ascertained in what proportions the dew is evaporated, and in what it is absorbed by the earth, in actual nature, but there can be no doubt that the amount of water taken up by the ground, both from vapor suspended in the air and from dew, is large. The annual fall of dew in England is estimated at five inches, but this quantity is much exceeded in many countries with a clearer sky. "In many of our Algerian campaigns," says Babinet, "when it was wished to punish the brigandage of the unsubdued tribes, it was impossible to set their grain fields on fire until a late hour of the day; for the plants were so wet with the night dew that it was necessary to wait until the sun had dried them."--_Études et Lectures_, ii, p. 212. [173] "It has been concluded that the dry land occupies about 49,800,000 square statute miles. This does not include the recently discovered tracts of land in the vicinity of the poles, and allowing for yet undiscovered land (which, however, can only exist in small quantity), if we assign 51,000,000 to the land, there will remain about 146,000,000 of square miles for the extent of surface occupied by the ocean."--Sir J. F. W. HERSCHEL, _Physical Geography_, 1861, p. 19. It does not appear to which category Herschel assigns the inland seas and the fresh-water lakes and rivers of the earth; and Mrs. Somerville, who states that the "dry land occupies an area of 38,000,000 of square miles," and that "the ocean covers nearly three fourths of the surface of the globe," is equally silent on this point.--_Physical Geography_, fifth edition, p. 30. On the following page, Mrs. Somerville, in a note, cites Mr. Gardner as her authority, and says that, "according to his computation, the extent of land is about 37,673,000 square British miles, independently of Victoria Continent; and the sea occupies 110,849,000. Hence the land is to the sea as 1 to 4 nearly." Sir John F. W. Herschel makes the area of dry land and ocean together 197,000,000 square miles; Mrs. Somerville, or rather Mr. Gardner, 148,522,000. I suppose Sir John Herschel includes the islands in his aggregate of the "dry land," and the inland waters under the general designation of the "ocean," and that Mrs. Somerville excludes both. [174] It has been observed in Sweden that the spring, in many districts where the forests have been cleared off, now comes on a fortnight later than in the last century.--ASBJÖRNSEN, _Om Skovene i Norge_, p. 101. The conclusion arrived at by Noah Webster, in his very learned and able paper on the supposed change in the temperature of winter, read before the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1799, was as follows: "From a careful comparison of these facts, it appears that the weather, in modern winters, in the United States, is more inconstant than when the earth was covered with woods, at the first settlement of Europeans in the country; that the warm weather of autumn extends further into the winter months, and the cold weather of winter and spring encroaches upon the summer; that, the wind being more variable, snow is less permanent, and perhaps the same remark may be applicable to the ice of the rivers. These effects seem to result necessarily from the greater quantity of heat accumulated in the earth in summer since the ground has been cleared of wood and exposed to the rays of the sun, and to the greater depth of frost in the earth in winter by the exposure of its uncovered surface to the cold atmosphere."--_Collection of Papers by_ NOAH WEBSTER, p. 162. [175] I have seen, in Northern New England, the surface of the open ground frozen to the depth of twenty-two inches, in the month of November, when in the forest earth no frost was discoverable; and later in the winter, I have known an exposed sand knoll to remain frozen six feet deep, after the ground in the woods was completely thawed. [176] ----Det golde Strög i Afrika, Der Intet voxe kan, da ei det regner, Og, omvendt, ingen Regn kan falde, da Der Intet voxer. PALUDAN-MÜLLER, _Adam Homo_, ii, 408. [177] Und Stürme brausen um die Wette Vom Meer aufs Land, vom Land aufs Meer. GOETHE, _Faust, Song of the Archangels_. [178] _Études sur l'Économie Forestière_, pp. 45, 46. [179] I am not aware of any evidence to show that Malta had any woods of importance at any time since the cultivation of cotton was introduced there; and if it is true, as has been often asserted, that its present soil was imported from Sicily, it can certainly have possessed no forests since a very remote period. In Sandys's time, 1611, there were no woods in the island, and it produced little cotton. He describes it as "a country altogether champion, being no other than a rocke couered ouer with earth, but two feete deepe where the deepest; hauing but few trees but such as beare fruite. * * * So that their wood they haue from Sicilia." They have "an indifferent quantity of cotton wooll, but that the best of all other."--SANDYS, _Travels_, p. 228. [180] SCHACHT, _Les Arbres_, p. 412. [181] _What may be learned from a Tree_, p. 117. [182] _Der Wald_, p. 13. [183] _Om Skovene og deres Forhold til National[oe]conomien_, pp. 131-133. [184] _Om Skovene og om et ordnet Skovbrug i Norge_, p. 106. [185] _Études et Lectures_, iv. p. 114. [186] The supposed increase in the frequency and quantity of rain in Lower Egypt is by no means established. I have heard it disputed on the spot by intelligent Franks, whose residence in that country began before the plantations of Mehemet Aali and Ibrahim Pacha, and I have been assured by them that meteorological observations, made at Alexandria about the beginning of this century, show an annual fall of rain as great as is usual at this day. The mere fact, that it did not rain during the French occupation, is not conclusive. Having experienced a gentle shower of nearly twenty-four hours' duration in Upper Egypt, I inquired of the local governor in relation to the frequency of this phenomenon, and was told by him that not a drop of rain had fallen at that point for more than two years previous. The belief in the increase of rain in Egypt rests almost entirely on the observations of Marshal Marmont, and the evidence collected by him in 1836. His conclusions have been disputed, if not confuted, by Jomard and others, and are probably erroneous. See, FOISSAC, _Météorologie_, German translation, pp. 634-639. It certainly sometimes rains briskly at Cairo, but evaporation is exceedingly rapid in Egypt--as any one, who ever saw a Fellah woman wash a napkin in the Nile, and dry it by shaking it a few moments in the air, can testify; and a heap of grain, wet a few inches below the surface, would probably dry again without injury. At any rate, the Egyptian Government often has vast quantities of wheat stored at Boulak, in uncovered yards through the winter, though it must be admitted that the slovenliness and want of foresight in Oriental life, public and private, are such that we cannot infer the safety of any practice followed in the East, merely from its long continuance. Grain, however, may be long kept in the open air in climates much less dry than that of Egypt, without injury, except to the superficial layers; for moisture does not penetrate to a great depth in a heap of grain once well dried, and kept well aired. When Louis IX was making his preparations for his campaign in the East, he had large quantities of wine and grain purchased in the Island of Cyprus, and stored up, for two years, to await his arrival. "When we were come to Cyprus," says Joinville, _Histoire de Saint Louis_, §§ 72, 73, "we found there greate foison of the Kynge's purveyance. * * The wheate and the barley they had piled up in greate heapes in the feeldes, and to looke vpon, they were like vnto mountaynes; for the raine, the whyche hadde beaten vpon the wheate now a longe whyle, had made it to sproute on the toppe, so that it seemed as greene grasse. And whanne they were mynded to carrie it to Egypte, they brake that sod of greene herbe, and dyd finde under the same the wheate and the barley, as freshe as yf menne hadde but nowe thrashed it." [187] _Étude sur les Eaux au point de vue des Inondations_, p. 91. [188] _Économie Rurale_, ii, chap. xx, § 4, pp. 756-759. See also p. 733. [189] Jacini, speaking of the great Italian lakes, says: "A large proportion of the water of the lakes, instead of discharging itself by the Ticino, the Adda, the Oglio, the Mincio, filters through the silicious strata which underlie the hills, and follows subterranean channels to the plain, where it collects in the _fontanili_, and being thence conducted into the canals of irrigation, becomes a source of great fertility."--_La Proprietà Fondiaria, etc._, p. 144. [190] _Météorologie_, German translation by EMSMANN, p. 605. [191] _Handbuch der Physischen Geographie_, p. 658. [192] _Annales des Ponts et Chaussées_, 1854, 1st sémestre, pp. 21 _et seqq._ See the comments of VALLÈS on these observations, in his _Études sur les Inondations_, pp. 441 _et seqq._ [193] The passage in Pliny is as follows: "Nascuntur fontes, decisis plerumque silvis, quos arborum alimenta consumebant, sicut in Hæmo, obsidente Gallos Cassandro, quum valli gratia cecidissent. Plerumque vero damnosi torrentes corrivantur, detracta collibus silva continere nimbos ac digerere consueta."--_Nat. Hist._, xxxi, 30. Seneca cites this case, and another similar one said to have been observed at Magnesia, from a passage in Theophrastus, not to be found in the extant works of that author; but he adds that the stories are incredible, because shaded grounds abound most in water: ferè aquosissima sunt quæcumque umbrosissima.--_Quæst. Nat._, iii, 11. _See Appendix_, No. 26. [194] "Why go so far for the proof of a phenomenon that is repeated every day under our own eyes, and of which every Parisian may convince himself, without venturing beyond the Bois de Boulogne or the forest of Meudon? Let him, after a few rainy days, pass along the Chevreuse road, which is bordered on the right by the wood, on the left by cultivated fields. The fall of water and the continuance of the rain have been the same on both sides; but the ditch on the side of the forest will remain filled with water proceeding from the infiltration through the wooded soil, long after the other, contiguous to the open ground, has performed its office of drainage and become dry. The ditch on the left will have discharged in a few hours a quantity of water, which the ditch on the right requires several days to receive and carry down to the valley."--CLAVÉ, _Études, etc._, pp. 53, 54. [195] VALLÈS, _Études sur les Inondations_, p. 472. [196] _Économie Rurale_, p. 730. [197] _Ueber die Entwaldung der Gebirge_, pp. 20 _et seqq._ [198] _Physische Geographie_, p. 32. [199] _The Trees of America_, pp. 50, 51. [200] THOMPSON's _Vermont_, appendix, p. 8. [201] _Trees of America_, p. 48. [202] Dumont, following Dansse, gives an interesting extract from the Misopogon of the Emperor Julian, showing that, in the fourth century, the Seine--the level of which now varies to the extent of thirty feet between extreme high and extreme low water mark--was almost wholly exempt from inundations, and flowed with a uniform current through the whole year. "Ego olim eram in hibernis apud caram Lutetiam, [sic] enim Galli Parisiorum oppidum appellant, quæ insula est non magna, in fluvio sita, qui eam omni ex parte eingit. Pontes sublicii utrinque ad eam ferunt, raròque fluvius minuitur ae crescit; sed qualis æstate, talis esse solet hyeme."--_Des Travaux Publics dans leur Rapports avec l'Agriculture_, p. 361, note. As Julian was six years in Gaul, and his principal residence was at Paris, his testimony as to the habitual condition of the Seine, at a period when the provinces where its sources originate were well wooded, is very valuable. [203] Almost every narrative of travel in those countries which were the earliest seats of civilization, contains evidence of the truth of these general statements, and this evidence is presented with more or less detail in most of the special works on the forest which I have occasion to cite. I may refer particularly to HOHENSTEIN, _Der Wald_, 1860, as full of important facts on this subject. See also CAIMI, _Cenni sulla Importanza dei Boschi_, for some statistics not readily found elsewhere, on this and other topics connected with the forest. [204] Stanley, citing SELDEN, _De Jure Naturali_, book vi, and FABRICIUS, _Cod. Pseudap._ V. T., i, 874, mentions a remarkable Jewish tradition of uncertain but unquestionably ancient date, which is among the oldest evidences of public respect for the woods, and of enlightened views of their importance and proper treatment: "To Joshua a fixed Jewish tradition ascribed ten decrees, laying down precise rules, which were instituted to protect the property of each tribe and of each householder from lawless depredation. Cattle, of a smaller kind, were to be allowed to graze in thick woods, not in thin woods; in woods, no kind of cattle without the owner's consent. Sticks and branches might be gathered by any Hebrew, but not cut. * * * Woods might be pruned, provided they were not olives or fruit trees, and that there was sufficient shade in the place."--_Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church_, part i, p. 271. [205] There seems to have been a tendency to excessive clearing in Central and Western, earlier than in Southeastern France. Wise and good Bernard Palissy--one of those persecuted Protestants of the sixteenth century, whose heroism, virtue, refinement, and taste shine out in such splendid contrast to the brutality, corruption, grossness, and barbarism of their oppressors--in the _Recepte Véritable_, first printed in 1563, thus complains: "When I consider the value of the least clump of trees, or even of thorns, I much marvel at the great ignorance of men, who, as it seemeth, do nowadays study only to break down, fell, and waste the fair forests which their forefathers did guard so choicely. I would think no evil of them for cutting down the woods, did they but replant again some part of them; but they care nought for the time to come, neither reck they of the great damage they do to their children which shall come after them."--_[OE]uvres Complètes de Bernard Palissy_, 1844, p. 88. [206] The great naval and commercial marines of Venice and of Genoa must have occasioned an immense consumption of lumber in the Middle Ages, and the centuries immediately succeeding those commonly embraced in that designation. The marine construction of that period employed larger timbers than the modern naval architecture of most commercial countries, but apparently without a proportional increase of strength. The old modes of ship building have been, to a considerable extent, handed down to the present day in the Mediterranean, and an American or an Englishman looks with astonishment at the huge beams and thick planks so often employed in the construction of very small vessels navigating that sea. According to Hummel, the desolation of the Karst, the high plateau lying north of Trieste, now one of the most parched and barren districts in Europe, is owing to the felling of its woods to build the navies of Venice. "Where the miserable peasant of the Karst now sees nothing but bare rock swept and scoured by the raging Bora, the fury of this wind was once subdued by mighty firs, which Venice recklessly cut down to build her fleets."--_Physische Geographie_, p. 32. See _Appendix_, No. 27. [207] _Le Alpi che cingono l'Italia_, i, p. 367. [208] See the periodical _Politecnico_, published at Milan, for the month of May, 1862, p. 234. [209] _Annali di Agricoltura, Industria e Commercio_, vol. i, p. 77. [210] HOLINSHED, reprint of 1807, i, pp. 357, 358. It is evident from this passage, and from another on page 397 of the same volume, that, though sea coal was largely exported to the Continent, it had not yet come into general use in England. It is a question of much interest, when coal was first employed in England for fuel. I can find no evidence that it was used as a combustible until more than a century after the Norman conquest. It has been said that it was known to the Anglo-Saxon population, but I am acquainted with no passage in the literature of that people which proves this. The dictionaries explain the Anglo-Saxon word _græfa_ by sea coal. I have met with this word in no Anglo-Saxon work, except in the _Chronicle_, A. D. 852, from a manuscript certainly not older than the twelfth century, and in that passage it may as probably mean peat as coal, and quite as probably something else as either. Coal is not mentioned in King Alfred's Bede, in Glanville, or in Robert of Gloucester, though all these writers speak of jet as found in England, and are full in their enumeration of the mineral products of the island. England was anciently remarkable for its forests, but Cæsar says it wanted the _fagus_ and the _abies_. There can be no doubt that _fagus_ means the beech, which, as the remains in the Danish peat mosses show, is a tree of late introduction into Denmark, where it succeeded the fir, a tree not now native to that country. The succession of forest crops seems to have been the same in England; for Harrison, p. 359, speaks of the "great store of firre" found lying "at their whole lengths" in the "fens and marises" of Lancashire and other counties, where not even bushes grew in his time. We cannot be sure what species of evergreen Cæsar intended by _abies_. The popular designations of spike-leaved trees are always more vague and uncertain in their application than those of broad-leaved trees. _Pinus_, _pine_, has been very loosely employed even in botanical nomenclature, and _Kiefer_, _Fichte_, and _Tanne_ are often confounded in German.--ROSSMÄSSLER, _Der Wald_, pp. 256, 289, 324. If it were certain that the _abies_ of Cæsar was the fir formerly and still found in peat mosses, and that he was right in denying the existence of the beech in England in his time, the observation would be very important, because it would fix a date at which the fir had become extinct, and the beech had not yet appeared in the island. The English oak, though strong and durable, was not considered generally suitable for finer work in the sixteenth century. There were, however, exceptions. "Of all in Essex," observes HARRISON, _Holinshed_, i, p. 357, "that growing in Bardfield parke is the finest for ioiners craft: for oftentimes haue I seene of their workes made of that oke so fine and faire, as most of the wainescot that is brought hither out of Danske; for our wainescot is not made in England. Yet diuerse haue assaied to deale without [with our] okes to that end, but not with so good successe as they haue hoped, bicause the ab or iuice will not so soone be remoued and cleane drawne out, which some attribute to want of time in the salt water." This passage is also of interest as showing that soaking in salt water, as a mode of seasoning, was practised in Harrison's time. But the importation of wainscot, or boards for ceiling, panelling, and otherwise finishing rooms, which was generally of oak, commenced three centuries before the time of Harrison. On page 204 of the _Liber Albus_--a book which could have been far more valuable if the editor had given us the texts, with his learned notes, instead of a translation--mention is made of "squared oak timber," brought in from the country by carts, and of course of domestic growth, as free of city duty or octroi, and of "planks of oak" coming in in the same way as paying one plank a cartload. But in the chapter on the "Customs of Billyngesgate," pp. 208, 209, relating to goods imported from foreign countries, a duty of one halfpenny is imposed on every hundred of boards called "weynscotte," and of one penny on every hundred of boards called "Rygholt." The editor explains "Rygholt" as "wood of Riga." This was doubtless pine or fir. The year in which these provisions were made does not appear, but they belong to the reign of Henry III. [211] In a letter addressed to the Minister of Public Works, after the terrible inundations of 1857, the Emperor thus happily expressed himself: "Before we seek the remedy for an evil, we inquire into its cause. Whence come the sudden floods of our rivers? From the water which falls on the mountains, not from that which falls on the plains. The waters which fall on our fields produce but few rivulets, but those which fall on our roofs and are collected in the gutters, form small streams at once. Now, the roofs are mountains--the gutters are valleys." "To continue the comparison," observes D'Héricourt, "roofs are smooth and impermeable, and the rain water pours rapidly off from their surfaces; but this rapidity of flow would be greatly diminished if the roofs were carpeted with mosses and grasses; more still, if they were covered with dry leaves, little shrubs, strewn branches, and other impediments--in short, if they were wooded."--_Annales Forestières, Déc._, 1857, p. 311. [212] "The roots of vegetables," says D'Héricourt, "perform the office of a perpendicular drainage analogous to that which has been practised with success in Holland and in some parts of the British Islands. This system consists in driving down three or four thousand stakes upon a hectare; the rain water filters down along the stakes, and, in certain cases, as favorable results are obtained by this method as by horizontal drains."--_Annales Forestières_, 1857, p. 312. [213] The productiveness of Egypt has been attributed too exclusively to the fertilizing effects of the slime deposited by the inundations of the Nile; for in that climate a liberal supply of water would produce good crops on almost any ordinary sand, while, without water, the richest soil would yield nothing. The sediment deposited annually is but a very small fraction of an inch in thickness. It is alleged that in quantity it would be hardly sufficient for a good top dressing, and that in quality it is not chemically distinguishable from the soil inches or feet below the surface. But to deny, as some writers have done, that the slime has any fertilizing properties at all, is as great an error as the opposite one of ascribing all the agricultural wealth of Egypt to that single cause of productiveness. Fine soils deposited by water are almost uniformly rich in all climates; those brought down by rivers, carried out into salt water, and then returned again by the tide, seem to be more permanently fertile than any others. The polders of the Netherland coast are of this character, and the meadows in Lincolnshire, which have been covered with slime by _warping_, as it is called, or admitting water over them at high tide, are remarkably productive. See _Appendix_, No. 28. [214] "The laws against clearing have never been able to prevent these operations when the proprietor found his advantage in them, and the long series of royal ordinances and decrees of parliaments, proclaimed from the days of Charlemagne to our own, with a view of securing forest property, have served only to show the impotence of legislative notion on this subject."--CLAVÉ, _Études sur l'Économie Forestière_, p. 32. "A proprietor can always contrive to clear his woods, whatever may be done to prevent him; it is a mere question of time, and a few imprudent cuttings, a few abuses of the right of pasturage, suffice to destroy a forest in spite of all regulations to the contrary."--DUNOYER, _De la Liberté du Travail_, ii, p. 452, as quoted by Clavé, p. 353. Both authors agree that the preservation of the forests in France is practicable only by their transfer to the state, which alone can protect them and secure their proper treatment. It is much to be feared that even this measure would be inadequate to save the forests of the American Union. There is little respect for public property in America, and the Federal Government, certainly, would not be the proper agent of the nation for this purpose. It proved itself unable to protect the live-oak woods of Florida, which were intended to be preserved for the use of the navy, and it more than once paid contractors a high price for timber stolen from its own forests. The authorities of the individual States might be more efficient. [215] See the lively account of the sale of a communal wood in BERLEPSCH, _Die Alpen, Holzschläger und Flösser_. [216] Streffleur (_Ueber die Natur und die Wirkungen der Wildbäche_, p. 3) maintains that all the observations and speculations of French authors on the nature of torrents had been anticipated by Austrian writers. In proof of this assertion he refers to the works of Franz von Zallinger, 1778, Von Arretin, 1808, Franz Duile, 1826, all published at Innsbruck, and HAGEN's _Beschreibung neuerer Wasserbauwerke_, Königsberg, 1826, none of which works are known to me. It is evident, however, that the conclusions of Surell and other French writers whom I cite, are original results of personal investigation, and not borrowed opinions. [217] Whether Palissy was acquainted with this ancient practice, or whether it was one of those original suggestions of which his works are so full, I know not; but in his treatise, _Des Eaux et Fontaines_, he thus recommends it, by way of reply to the objections of "Théorique," who had expressed the fear that "the waters which rush violently down from the heights of the mountain would bring with them much earth, sand, and other things," and thus spoil the artificial fountain that "Practique" was teaching him to make: "And for hindrance of the mischiefs of great waters which may be gathered in few hours by great storms, when thou shalt have made ready thy parterre to receive the water, thou must lay great stones athwart the deep channels which lead to thy parterre. And so the force of the rushing currents shall be deadened, and thy water shall flow peacefully into his cisterns."--_[OE]uvres Complètes_, p. 173. [218] Ladoucette says the peasant of Dévoluy "often goes a distance of five hours over rocks and precipices for a single [man's] load of wood;" and he remarks on another page, that "the justice of peace of that canton had, in the course of forty-three years, but once heard the voice of the nightingale."--_Histoire, etc., des Hautes Alpes_, pp. 220, 434. [219] The valley of Embrun, now almost completely devastated, was once remarkable for its fertility. In 1806, Héricart de Thury said of it: "In this magnificent valley nature had been prodigal of her gifts. Its inhabitants have blindly revelled in her favors, and fallen asleep in the midst of her profusion."--BECQUEREL, _Des Climats, etc._, p. 314. [220] In the days of the Roman empire the Durance was a navigable river, with a commerce so important that the boatmen upon it formed a distinct corporation.--LADOUCETTE, _Histoire, etc., des Hautes Alpes_, p. 354. Even as early as 1789, the Durance was computed to have already covered with gravel and pebbles not less than 130,000 acres, "which, but for its inundations, would have been the finest land in the province."--ARTHUR YOUNG, _Travels in France_, vol. i, ch. i. [221] Between 1851 and 1856 the population of Languedoc and Provence had increased by 101,000 souls. The augmentation, however, was wholly in the provinces of the plains, where all the principal cities are found. In these provinces the increase was 204,000, while in the mountain provinces there was a diminution of 103,000. The reduction of the area of arable land is perhaps even more striking. In 1842, the department of the Lower Alps possessed 99,000 hectares, or nearly 245,000 acres, of cultivated soil. In 1852, it had but 74,000 hectares. In other words, in ten years 25,000 hectares, or 61,000 acres, had been washed away or rendered worthless for cultivation, by torrents and the abuses of pasturage.--CLAVÉ, _Études_, pp. 66, 67. [222] The Skalära-Tobel, for instance, near Coire. See the description in BERLEPSCH, _Die Alpen_, pp. 169 _et seqq_, or in Stephen's English translation. The recent change in the character of the Mella--a river anciently so remarkable for the gentleness of its current that it was specially noticed by Catullus as flowing _molli flumine_--deserves more than a passing remark. This river rises in the mountain chain east of Lake Iseo, and traversing the district of Brescia, empties into the Oglio after a course of about seventy miles. The iron works in the upper valley of the Mella had long created a considerable demand for wood, but their operations were not so extensive as to occasion any very sudden or general destruction of the forests, and the only evil experienced from the clearings was the gradual diminution of the volume of the river. Within the last twenty years, the superior quality of the arms manufactured at Brescia has greatly enlarged the sale of them, and very naturally stimulated the activity of both the forges and of the colliers who supply them, and the hillsides have been rapidly stripped of their timber. Up to 1850, no destructive inundation of the Mella had been recorded. Buildings in great numbers had been erected upon its margin, and its valley was conspicuous for its rural beauty and its fertility. But when the denudation of the mountains had reached a certain point, avenging nature began the work of retribution. In the spring and summer of 1850 several new torrents were suddenly formed in the upper tributary valleys, and on the 14th and 15th of August in that year, a fall of rain, not heavier than had been often experienced, produced a flood which not only inundated much ground never before overflowed, but destroyed a great number of bridges, dams, factories, and other valuable structures, and, what was a far more serious evil, swept off from the rocks an incredible extent of soil, and converted one of the most beautiful valleys of the Italian Alps into a ravine almost as bare and as barren as the savagest gorge of Southern France. The pecuniary damage was estimated at many millions of francs, and the violence of the catastrophe was deemed so extraordinary, even in a country subject to similar visitations, that the sympathy excited for the sufferers produced, in five months, voluntary contributions for their relief to the amount of nearly $200,000--_Delle Inondazioni del Mella, etc., nella notte del 14 al 15 Agosto_, 1850. The author of this remarkable pamphlet has chosen as a motto a passage from the Vulgate translation of Job, which is interesting as showing accurate observation of the action of the torrent: "Mons cadens definit, et saxum transfertur de loco suo; lapides excavant aquæ et alluvione paullatim terra consumitur."--_Job_ xiv, 18, 19. The English version is much less striking, and gives a different sense. [223] Streffleur quotes from Duile the following observations: "The channel of the Tyrolese brooks is often raised much above the valleys through which they flow. The bed of the Fersina is elevated high above the city of Trient, which lies near it. The Villerbach flows at a much more elevated level than that of the market place of Neumarkt and Vill, and threatens to overwhelm both of them with its waters. The Talfer at Botzen is at least even with the roofs of the adjacent town, if not above them. The tower steeples of the villages of Schlanders, Kortsch, and Laas, are lower than the surface of the Gadribach. The Saldurbach at Schluderns menaces the far lower village with destruction, and the chief town, Schwaz, is in similar danger from the Lahnbach."--STREFFLEUR, _Ueber die Wildbäche, etc._, p. 7. [224] The snow drifts into the ravines and accumulates to incredible depths, and the water resulting from its dissolution and from the deluging rains which fall in spring, and sometimes in the summer, being confined by rocky walls on both sides, rises to a very great height, and of course acquires an immense velocity and transporting power in its rapid descent to its outlet from the mountain. In the winter of 1842--'3, the valley of the Doveria, along which the Simplon road passes, was filled with solid snowdrifts to the depth of a hundred feet above the carriage road, and the sledge track by which passengers and the mails were carried ran at that height. Other things being equal, the transporting power of the water is greatest where its flow is most rapid. This is usually in the direction of the axis of the ravine. As the current pours out of the gorge and escapes from the lateral confinement of its walls, it spreads and divides itself into numerous smaller streams, which shoot out from the mouth of the valley, as from a centre, in different directions, like the ribs of a fan from the pivot, each carrying with it its quota of stones and gravel. The plain below the point of issue from the mountain is rapidly raised by newly formed torrents, the elevation depending on the inclination of the bed and the form and weight of the matter transported. Every flood both increases the height of this central point and extends the entire circumference of the deposit. The stream retaining most nearly the original direction moves with the greatest momentum, and consequently transports the solid matter with which it is charged to the greatest distance. The untravelled reader will comprehend this the better when he is informed that the southern slope of the Alps generally rises suddenly out of the plain, with no intervening hill to break the abruptness of the transition, except those consisting of comparatively small heaps of its own debris brought down by ancient glaciers or recent torrents. The torrents do not wind down valleys gradually widening to the rivers or the sea, but leap at once from the flanks of the mountains upon the plains below. This arrangement of surfaces naturally facilitates the formation of vast deposits at their points of emergence, and the centre of the accumulation in the case of very small torrents is not unfrequently a hundred feet high, and sometimes very much more. Torrents and the rivers that receive them transport mountain debris to almost incredible distances. Lorentz, in an official report on this subject, as quoted by Marschand from the Memoirs of the Agricultural Society of Lyons, says: "The felling of the woods produces torrents which cover the cultivated soil with pebbles and fragments of rock, and they do not confine their ravages to the vicinity of the mountains, but extend them into the fertile fields of Provence and other departments, to the distance of forty or fifty leagues."--_Entwaldung der Gebirge_, p. 17. [225] The precipitous walls of the Val de Lys, and more especially of the Val Doveria, though here and there shattered, show in many places a smoothness of face over a large vertical plane, at the height of hundreds of feet above the bottom of the valley, which no known agency but glacier ice is capable of producing, and of course they can have undergone no sensible change at those points for a vast length of time. The beds of the rivers which flow through those valleys suffer lateral displacement occasionally, where there is room for the shifting of the channel; but if any elevation or depression takes place in them, it is too slow to be perceptible except in case of some merely temporary obstruction. [226] Lombardini found, twenty years ago, that the mineral matter brought down to the Po by its tributaries was, in general, comminuted to about the same degree of fineness as the sands of its bed at their points of discharge. In the case of the Trebbia, which rises high in the Apennines and empties into the Po at Piacenza, it was otherwise, that river rolling pebbles and coarse gravel into the channel of the principal stream. The banks of the other affluents--excepting some of those which discharge their waters into the great lakes--then either retained their woods, or had been so long clear of them, that the torrents had removed most of the disintegrated and loose rock in their upper basins. The valley of the Trebbia had been recently cleared, and all the forces which tend to the degradation and transportation of rock were in full activity.--_Notice sur les Rivières de la Lombardie, Annales des Ponts et Chaussées_, 1847, 1er sémestre, p. 131. Since the date of Lombardini's observations, many Alpine valleys have been stripped of their woods. It would be interesting to know whether any sensible change has been produced in the character or quantity of the matter transported by them to the Po. [227] In proportion as the dikes are improved, and breaches and the escape of the water through them are less frequent, the height of the annual inundations is increased. Many towns on the banks of the river, and of course within the system of parallel embankments, were formerly secure from flood by the height of the artificial mounds on which they were built; but they have recently been obliged to construct ring dikes for their protection.--BAUMGARTEN, after LOMBARDINI, in the paper last quoted, pp. 141, 147. [228] Three centuries ago, when the declivities of the mountains still retained a much larger proportion of their woods, the moderate annual floods of the Po were occasioned by the melting of the snows, and, as appears by a passage of Tasso quoted by Castellani (_Dell' Influenza delle Selve_, i, p. 58, note), they took place in May. The much more violent inundations of the present century are due to rains, the waters of which are no longer retained by a forest soil, but conveyed at once to the rivers--and they occur almost uniformly in the autumn or late summer. Castellani, on the page just quoted, says that even so late as about 1780, the Po required a heavy rain of a week to overflow its banks, but that forty years later, it was sometimes raised to full flood in a single day. [229] This change of coast line cannot be ascribed to upheaval, for a comparison of the level of old buildings--as, for instance, the church of San Vitale and the tomb of Theodoric at Ravenna--with that of the sea, tends to prove a depression rather than an elevation of their foundations. A computation by a different method makes the deposits at the mouth of the Po 2,123,000 mètres less; but as both of them omit the gravel and silt rolled, if not floated, down at ordinary and low water, we are safe in assuming the larger quantity.--_Article last quoted_, p. 174. (See note, p. 329) [230] Mengotti estimated the mass of solid matter annually "united to the waters of the Po" at 822,000,000 cubic mètres, or nearly twenty times as much as, according to Lombardini, that river delivers into the Adriatic. Castellani supposes the computation of Mengotti to fall much below the truth, and there can be no doubt that a vastly larger quantity of earth and gravel is washed down from the Alps and the Apennines than is carried to the sea.--CASTELLANI, _Dell' Immediata Influenza delle Selve sul corso delle Acque_, i, pp. 42, 43. I have contented myself with assuming less than one fifth of Mengotti's estimate. [231] BAUMGARTEN, _An. des Ponts et Chaussées_, 1847, 1er sémestre, p. 175. [232] The total superficies of the basin of the Po, down to Ponte Lagoscuro [Ferrara]--a point where it has received all its affluents--is 6,938,200 hectares, that is, 4,105,600 in mountain lands, 2,832,600 in plain lands.--DUMONT, _Travaux Publics, etc._, p. 272. These latter two quantities are equal respectively to 10,145,348, and 6,999,638 acres, or 15,852 and 10,937 square miles. [233] I do not use the numbers I have borrowed or assumed as factors the value of which is precisely ascertained; nor, for the purposes of the present argument, is quantitative exactness important. I employ numerical statements simply as a means of aiding the imagination to form a general and certainly not extravagant idea of the extent of geographical revolutions which man has done much to accelerate, if not, strictly speaking, to produce. There is an old proverb, _Dolus latet in generalibus_, and Arthur Young is not the only public economist who has warned his readers against the deceitfulness of round numbers. I think, on the contrary, that vastly more error has been produced by the affectation of precision in cases where precision is impossible. In all the great operations of terrestrial nature, the elements are so numerous and so difficult of exact appreciation, that, until the means of scientific observation and measurement are much more perfected than they now are, we must content ourselves with general approximations. I say _terrestrial_ nature, because in cosmical movements we have fewer elements to deal with, and may therefore arrive at much more rigorous accuracy in determination of time and place than we can in fixing and predicting the quantities and the epochs of variable natural phenomena on the earth's surface. The value of a high standard of accuracy in scientific observation can hardly be overrated; but habits of rigorous exactness will never be formed by an investigator who allows himself to trust implicitly to the numerical precision of the results of a few experiments. The wonderful accuracy of geodetic measurements in modern times is, in general, attained by taking the mean of a great number of observations at every station, and this final precision is but the mutual balance and compensation of numerous errors. Travellers are often misled by local habits in the use of what may be called representative numbers, where a definite is put for an indefinite quantity. A Greek, who wished to express the notion of a great, but undetermined number, used "myriad, or ten thousand;" a Roman, "six hundred;" an Oriental, "forty," or, at present, very commonly, "fifteen thousand." Many a tourist has gravely repeated, as an ascertained fact, the vague statement of the Arabs and the monks of Mount Sinai, that the ascent from the convent of St. Catherine to the summit of Gebel Moosa counts "fifteen thousand" steps, though the difference of level is barely two thousand feet, and the "Forty" Thieves, the "forty" martyr monks of the convent of El Arbain--not to speak of a similar use of this numeral in more important cases--have often been understood as expressions of a known number, when in fact they mean simply _many_. The number "fifteen thousand" has found its way to Rome, and De Quincey seriously informs us, on the authority of a lady who had been at much pains to ascertain the _exact_ truth, that, including closets large enough for a bed, the Vatican contains fifteen thousand rooms. Any one who has observed the vast dimensions of most of the apartments of that structure will admit that we make a very small allowance of space when we assign a square rod, sixteen and a half feet square, to each room upon the average. On an acre, there might be one hundred and sixty such rooms, including partition walls; and, to contain fifteen thousand of them, a building must cover more than nine acres, and be ten stories high, or possess other equivalent dimensions, which, as every traveller knows, many times exceeds the truth. That most entertaining writer, About, reduces the number of rooms in the Vatican, but he compensates this reduction by increased dimensions, for he uses the word _salle_, which cannot be applied to closets barely large enough to contain a bed. According to him, there are in that "presbytère," as he irreverently calls it, twelve thousand large rooms [_salles_], thirty courts, and three hundred staircases.--_Rome Contemporaire_, p. 68. The pretended exactness of statistical tables is generally little better than an imposture; and those founded not on direct estimation by competent observers, but on the report of persons who have no particular interest in knowing, but often have a motive for distorting, the truth--such as census returns--are commonly to be regarded as but vague guesses at the actual fact. Fuller, who, for the combination of wit, wisdom, fancy, and personal goodness, stands first in English literature, thus remarks on the pretentious exactness of historical and statistical writers: "I approve the plain, country By-word, as containing much Innocent Simplicity therein, _'Almost and very nigh Have saved many a Lie.'_ So have the Latines their _prope_, _fere_, _juxta_, _circiter_, _plus minus_, used in matters of fact by the most authentic Historians. Yea, we may observe that the Spirit of Truth itself, where _Numbers_ and _Measures_ are concerned, in Times, Places, and Persons, useth the aforesaid Modifications, save in such cases where some mystery contained in the number requireth a particular specification thereof: In Times. | In Places. | In Person. | | Daniel, 5:33. | Luke, 24:13. | Exodus, 12:37. Luke, 3:23. | John, 6:19. | Acts, 2:41. None therefore can justly find fault with me, if, on the like occasion, I have secured myself with the same Qualifications. Indeed, such Historians who grind their Intelligence to the _powder of fraction_, pretending to _cleave the pin_, do sometimes _misse the But_. Thus, one reporteth, how in the Persecution under _Dioeletian_, there were neither under nor over, but just _nine hundred ninety-nine_ martyrs. Yea, generally those that trade in such _Retail-ware_, and deal in such small parcells, may by the ignorant be commended for their _care_, but condemned by the judicious for their ridiculous _curiosity_."--_The History of the Worthies of England_, i, p. 59. [234] SURELL, _Les Torrents des Hautes Alpes_, chap. xxiv. In such cases, the clearing of the ground, which, in consequence of a temporary diversion of the waters, or from some other cause, has become rewooded, sometimes renews the ravages of the torrent. Thus, on the left bank of the Durance, a wooded declivity had been formed by the debris brought down by torrents, which had extinguished themselves after having swept off much of the superficial strata of the mountain of Morgon. "All this district was covered with woods, which have now been thinned out and are perishing from day to day; consequently, the torrents have recommenced their devastations, and if the clearings continue, this declivity, now fertile, will be ruined, like so many others."--Id., p. 155. [235] Where a torrent has not been long in operation, and earth still remains mixed with the rocks and gravel it heaps up at its point of eruption, vegetation soon starts up and prospers, if protected from encroachment. In Provence, "several communes determined, about ten years ago, to reserve the soils thus wasted, that is, to abandon them for a certain time, to spontaneous vegetation, which was not slow in making its appearance."--BECQUEREL, _Des Climats_, p. 315. [236] Rock is permeable by water to a greater extent than is generally supposed. Freshly quarried marble, and even granite, as well as most other stones, are sensibly heavier, as well as softer and more easily wrought, than after they are dried and hardened by air-seasoning. Many sandstones are porous enough to serve as filters for liquids, and much of that of Upper Egypt and Nubia hisses audibly when thrown into water, from the escape of the air forced out of it by hydrostatic pressure and the capillary attraction of the pores for water. See _Appendix_, No. 29. [237] Palissy had observed the action of frost in disintegrating rock, and he thus describes it, in his essay on the formation of ice: "I know that the stones of the mountains of Ardennes be harder than marble. Nevertheless, the people of that country do not quarry the said stones in winter, for that they be subject to frost; and many times the rocks have been seen to fall without being cut, by means whereof many people have been killed, when the said rocks were thawing." Palissy was ignorant of the expansion of water in freezing--in fact he supposed that the mechanical force exerted by freezing water was due to compression, not dilatation--and therefore he ascribes to thawing alone effects resulting not less from congelation. Various forces combine to produce the stone avalanches of the higher Alps, the fall of which is one of the greatest dangers incurred by the adventurous explorers of those regions--the direct action of the sun upon the stone, the expansion of freezing water, and the loosening of masses of rock by the thawing of the ice which supported them or held them together. [238] WESSELY, _Die Oesterreichischen Alpenländer und ihre Forste_, pp. 125, 126. Wessely records several other more or less similar occurrences in the Austrian Alps. Some of them, certainly, are not to be ascribed to the removal of the woods, but in most cases they are clearly traceable to that cause. [239] BIANCHI, Appendix to the Italian translation of Mrs. SOMERVILLE's _Physical Geography_, p. xxxvi. [240] See in KOHL, _Alpenreisen_, i, 120, an account of the ruin of fields and pastures, and even of the destruction of a broad belt of forest, by the fall of rocks in consequence of cutting a few large trees. Cattle are very often killed in Switzerland by rock avalanches, and their owners secure themselves from loss by insurance against this risk as against damage by fire or hail. [241] _Entwaldung der Gebirge_, p. 41. [242] The importance of the wood in preventing avalanches is well illustrated by the fact that, where the forest is wanting, the inhabitants of localities exposed to snow slides often supply the place of the trees by driving stakes through the snow into the ground, and thus checking its propensity to slip. The woods themselves are sometimes thus protected against avalanches originating on slopes above them, and as a further security, small trees are cut down along the upper line of the forest, and laid against the trunks of larger trees, transversely to the path of the slide, to serve as a fence or dam to the motion of an incipient avalanche, which may by this means be arrested before it acquires a destructive velocity and force. [243] The tide rises at Quebec to the height of twenty-five feet, and when it is aided by a northeast wind, it flows with almost irresistible violence. Rafts containing several hundred thousand cubic feet of timber are often caught by the flood tide, torn to pieces, and dispersed for miles along the shores. [244] One of these, the Baron of Renfrew--so named from one of the titles of the kings of England--built thirty or forty years ago, measured 5,000 tons. They were little else than rafts, being almost solid masses of timber designed to be taken to pieces and sold as lumber on arriving at their port of destination. The lumber trade at Quebec is still very large. According to a recent article in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, that city exported, in 1860, 30,000,000 cubic feet of squared timber, and 400,000,000 square feet of "planches." The thickness of the boards is not stated, but I believe they are generally cut an inch and a quarter thick for the Quebec trade, and as they shrink somewhat in drying, we may estimate ten square for one cubic foot of boards. This gives a total of 70,000,000 cubic feet. The specific gravity of white pine is .554, and the weight of this quantity of lumber, very little of which is thoroughly seasoned, would exceed a million of tons, even supposing it to consist wholly of wood as light as pine. New Brunswick, too, exports a large amount of lumber. [245] This name, from the French _chantier_, which has a wider meaning, is applied in America to temporary huts or habitations erected for the convenience of forest life, or in connection with works of material improvement. [246] Trees differ much in their power of resisting the action of forest fires. Different woods vary greatly in combustibility, and even when their bark is scarcely scorched, they are, partly in consequence of physiological character, and partly from the greater or less depth at which their roots habitually lie below the surface, very differently affected by running fires. The white pine, _Pinus strobus_, as it is the most valuable, is also perhaps the most delicate tree of the American forest, while its congener, the Northern pitch pine, _Pinus rigida_, is less injured by fire than any other tree of that country. I have heard experienced lumbermen maintain that the growth of this pine was even accelerated by a fire brisk enough to destroy all other trees, and I have myself seen it still flourishing after a conflagration which had left not a green leaf but its own in the wood, and actually throwing out fresh foliage, when the old had been quite burnt off and the bark almost converted into charcoal. The wood of the pitch pine is of comparatively little value for the joiner, but it is useful for very many purposes. Its rapidity of growth in even poor soils, its hardihood, and its abundant yield of resinous products, entitle it to much more consideration, as a plantation tree, than it has hitherto received in Europe or America. [247] Between fifty and sixty years ago, a steep mountain with which I am very familiar, composed of metamorphic rock, and at that time covered with a thick coating of soil and a dense primeval forest, was accidentally burnt over. The fire took place in a very dry season, the slope of the mountain was too rapid to retain much water, and the conflagration was of an extraordinarily fierce character, consuming the wood almost entirely, burning the leaves and combustible portion of the mould, and in many places cracking and disintegrating the rock beneath. The rains of the following autumn carried off much of the remaining soil, and the mountain side was nearly bare of wood for two or three years afterward. At length, a new crop of trees sprang up and grew vigorously, and the mountain is now thickly covered again. But the depth of mould and earth is too small to allow the trees to reach maturity. When they attain to the diameter of about six inches, they uniformly die, and this they will no doubt continue to do until the decay of leaves and wood on the surface, and the decomposition of the subjacent rock, shall have formed, perhaps hundreds of years hence, a stratum of soil thick enough to support a full-grown forest. [248] The growth of the white pine, on a good soil and in open ground, is rather rapid until it reaches the diameter of a couple of feet, after which it is much slower. The favorite habitat of this tree is light sandy earth. On this soil, and in a dense wood, it requires a century to attain the diameter of a yard. Emerson (_Trees of Massachusetts_, p. 65), says that a pine of this species, near Paris, "thirty years planted, is eighty feet high, with a diameter of three feet." He also states that ten white pines planted at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1809 or 1810, exhibited, in the winter of 1841 and 1842, an average of twenty inches diameter at the ground, the two largest measuring, at the height of three feet, four feet eight inches in circumference; and he mentions another pine growing in a rocky swamp, which, at the age of thirty-two years, "gave seven feet in circumference at the but, with a height of sixty-two feet six inches." This latter I suppose to be a seedling, the others _transplanted_ trees, which might have been some years old when placed where they finally grew. The following case came under my own observation: In 1824, a pine tree, so small that a young lady, with the help of a lad, took it up from the ground and carried it a quarter of a mile, was planted near a house in a town in Vermont. It was occasionally watered, but received no other special treatment. I measured this tree in 1860, and found it, at four feet from the ground, and entirely above the spread of the roots, two feet and four inches in diameter. It could not have been more than three inches through when transplanted, and must have increased its diameter twenty-five inches in thirty-six years. [249] WILLIAMS, _History of Vermont_, ii, p. 53. DWIGHT's _Travels_, iv, p. 21, and iii, p. 36. EMERSON, _Trees of Massachusetts_, p. 61. PARISH, _Life of President Wheelock_, p. 56. [250] The forest trees of the Northern States do not attain to extreme longevity in the dense woods. Dr. Williams found that none of the huge pines, the age of which he ascertained, exceeded three hundred and fifty or four hundred years, though he quotes a friend who thought he had noticed trees considerably older. The oak lives longer than the pine, and the hemlock spruce is perhaps equally long lived. A tree of this latter species, cut within my knowledge in a thick wood, counted four hundred and eighty-six, or, according to another observer, five hundred annual circles. Great luxuriance of animal and vegetable production is not commonly accompanied by long duration of the individual. The oldest men are not found in the crowded city; and in the tropics, where life is prolific and precocious, it is also short. The most ancient forest trees of which we have accounts have not been those growing in thick woods, but isolated specimens, with no taller neighbor to intercept the light and heat and air, and no rival to share the nutriment afforded by the soil. The more rapid growth and greater dimensions of trees standing near the boundary of the forest, are matters of familiar observation. "Long experience has shown that trees growing on the confines of the wood may be cut at sixty years of age as advantageously as others of the same species, reared in the depth of the forest, at a hundred and twenty. We have often remarked, in our Alps, that the trunk of trees upon the border of a grove is most developed or enlarged upon the outer or open side, where the branches extend themselves farthest, while the concentric circles of growth are most uniform in those entirely surrounded by other trees, or standing entirely alone."--A. and G. VILLA, _Necessità dei Boschi_, pp. 17, 18. [251] Caimi states that "a single flotation in the Valtelline in 1839, caused damages alleged to amount to more than $800,000, and actually appraised at $250,000."--_Cenni sulla Importanza e Coltura dei Boschi_, p. 65. [252] Most physicists who have investigated the laws of natural hydraulics maintain that, in consequence of direct obstruction and frictional resistance to the flow of the water of rivers along their banks, there is both an increased rapidity of current and an elevation of the water in the middle of the channel, so that a river presents always a convex surface. The lumbermen deny this. They affirm that, while rivers are rising, the water is highest in the middle of the channel, and tends to throw floating objects shoreward; while they are falling, it is lowest in the middle, and floating objects incline toward the centre. Logs, they say, rolled into the water during the rise, are very apt to lodge on the banks, while those set afloat during the falling of the waters keep in the current, and are carried without hindrance to their destination. Foresters and lumbermen, like sailors and other persons whose daily occupations bring them into contact, and often, into conflict, with great natural forces, have many peculiar opinions, not to say superstitions. In one of these categories we must rank the universal belief of lumbermen, that with a given head of water, and in a given number of hours, a sawmill cuts more lumber by night than by day. Having been personally interested in several sawmills, I have frequently conversed with sawyers on this subject, and have always been assured by them that their uniform experience established the fact that, other things being equal, the action of the machinery of sawmills is more rapid by night than by day. I am sorry--perhaps I ought to be ashamed--to say that my scepticism has been too strong to allow me to avail myself of my opportunities of testing this question by passing a night, watch in hand, counting the strokes of a millsaw. More unprejudiced, and I must add, very intelligent and credible persons have informed me that they have done so, and found the report of the sawyers abundantly confirmed. A land surveyor, who was also an experienced lumberman, sawyer, and machinist, a good mathematician and an exact observer, has repeatedly told me, that he had very often "timed" sawmills, and found the difference in favor of night work above thirty per cent. _Sed quære._ [253] For many instances of this sort, see BECQUEREL, _Des Climats, etc._, pp. 301-303. In 1664, the Swedes made an incursion into Jutland and felled a considerable extent of forest. After they retired, a survey of the damage was had, and the report is still extant. The number of trees cut was found to be 120,000, and as an account was kept of the numbers of each species of tree, the document is of interest in the history of the forest, as showing the relative proportions between the different trees which composed the wood. See VAUPELL. _Bögens Indvandring_, p. 35, and _Notes_, p. 55. [254] Since writing this paragraph, I have fallen upon--and that in a Spanish author--one of those odd coincidences of thought which every man of miscellaneous reading so often meets with. Antonio Ponz (_Viage de España_, i, prólogo, p. lxiii), says: "Nor would this be so great an evil, were not some of them declaimers against _trees_, thereby proclaiming themselves, in some sort, enemies of the works of God, who gave us the leafy abode of Paradise to dwell in, where we should be even now sojourning, but for the first sin, which expelled us from it." I do not know at what period the two Castiles were bared of their woods, but the Spaniard's proverbial "hatred of a tree" is of long standing. Herrera vigorously combats this foolish prejudice; and Ponz, in the prologue to the ninth volume of his journey, says that many carried it so far as wantonly to destroy the shade and ornamental trees planted by the municipal authorities. "Trees," they contended, and still believe, "breed birds, and birds eat up the grain." Our author argues against the supposition of the "breeding of birds by trees," which, he says, is as absurd as to believe that an elm tree can yield pears; and he charitably suggests that the expression is, perhaps, a _manière de dire_, a popular phrase, signifying simply that trees harbor birds. [255] Religious intolerance had produced similar effects in France at an earlier period. "The revocation of the edict of Nantes and the dragonnades occasioned the sale of the forests of the unhappy Protestants, who fled to seek in foreign lands the liberty of conscience which was refused to them in France. The forests were soon felled by the purchasers, and the soil in part brought under cultivation."'--BECQUEREL, _Des Climats, etc._, p. 303. [256] The American reader must be reminded that, in the language of the chase and of the English law, a "forest" is not necessarily a wood. Any large extent of ground, withdrawn from cultivation, reserved for the pleasures of the chase, and allowed to clothe itself with a spontaneous growth, serving as what is technically called "cover" for wild animals, is, in the dialects I have mentioned, a forest. When, therefore, the Norman kings afforested the grounds referred to in the text, it is not to be supposed that they planted them with trees, though the protection afforded to them by the game laws would, if cattle had been kept out, soon have converted them into real woods. [257] _Histoire des Paysans_, ii, p. 190. The work of Bonnemère is of great value to those who study the history of mediæval Europe from a desire to know its real character, and not in the hope of finding apparent facts to sustain a false and dangerous theory. Bonnemère is one of the few writers who, like Michelet, have been honest enough and bold enough to speak the truth with regard to the relations between the church and the people in the Middle Ages. [258] It is painful to add that a similar outrage was perpetrated a very few years ago, in one of the European states, by a prince of a family now dethroned. In this case, however, the prince killed the trespasser with his own hand, his sergeants refusing to execute his mandate. [259] GUILLAUME DE NANGIS, as quoted in the notes to JOINVILLE, _Nouvelle Collection des Mémoires, etc._, par Michaud et Poujoulat, première série, i, p. 335. Persons acquainted with the character and influence of the mediæval clergy will hardly need to be informed that the ten thousand livres never found their way to the royal exchequer. It was easy to prove to the simple-minded king that, as the profits of sin were a monopoly of the church, he ought not to derive advantage from the commission of a crime by one of his subjects; and the priests were cunning enough both to secure to themselves the amount of the fine, and to extort from Louis large additional grants to carry out the purposes to which they devoted the money. "And though the king did take the moneys," says the chronicler, "he put them not into his treasury, but turned them into good works; for he builded therewith the maison-Dieu of Pontoise, and endowed the same with rents and lands; also the schools and the dormitory of the friars preachers of Paris, and the monastery of the Minorite friars." [260] _Histoire des Paysans_, ii, p. 200. [261] The following details from Bonnemère will serve to give a more complete idea of the vexatious and irritating nature of the game laws of France. The officers of the chase went so far as to forbid the pulling up of thistles and weeds, or the mowing of any unenclosed ground before St. John's day [24th June], in order that the nests of game birds might not be disturbed. It was unlawful to fence-in any grounds in the plains where royal residences were situated; thorns were ordered to be planted in all fields of wheat, barley, or oats, to prevent the use of ground nets for catching the birds which consumed, or were believed to consume, the grain, and it was forbidden to cut or pull stubble before the first of October, lest the partridge and the quail might be deprived of their cover. For destroying the eggs of the quail, a fine of one hundred livres was imposed for the first offence, double that amount for the second, and for the third the culprit was flogged and banished for five years to a distance of six leagues from the forest.--_Histoire des Paysans_, ii, p. 202, text and notes. Neither these severe penalties, nor any provisions devised by the ingenuity of modern legislation, have been able effectually to repress poaching. "The game laws," says Clavé, "have not delivered us from the poachers, who kill twenty times as much game as the sportsmen. In the forest of Fontainebleau, as in all those belonging to the state, poaching is a very common and a very profitable offence. It is in vain that the gamekeepers are on the alert night and day, they cannot prevent it. Those who follow the trade begin by carefully studying the habits of the game. They will lie motionless on the ground, by the roadside or in thickets, for whole days, watching the paths most frequented by the animals," &c.--_Revue des Deux Mondes_, Mai, 1863, p. 160. The writer adds many details on this subject, and it appears that, as there are "beggars on horseback" in South America, there are poachers in carriages in France. [262] "Whole trees were sacrificed for the most insignificant purposes; the peasants would cut down two firs to make a single pair of wooden shoes."--MICHELET, as quoted by CLAVÉ, _Études_, p. 24. A similar wastefulness formerly prevailed in Russia, though not from the same cause. In St. Pierre's time, the planks brought to St. Petersburg were not sawn, but hewn with the axe, and a tree furnished but a single plank. [263] "A hundred and fifty paces from my house is a hill of drift sand, on which stood a few scattered pines. _Pinus sylvestris_, and _Sempervivum tectorum_ in abundance, _Statice armeria_, _Ammone vernalis_, _Dianthus carthusianorum_, with other sand plants, were growing there. I planted the hill with a few birches, and all the plants I have mentioned completely disappeared, though there were many naked spots of sand between the trees. It should be added, however, that the hillock is more thickly wooded than before. * * * It seems then that _Sempervivum tectorum_, &c., will not bear the neighborhood of the birch, though growing well near the _Pinus sylvestris_. I have found the large red variety of _Agaricus deliciosus_ only among the roots of the pine; the greenish-blue _Agaricus deliciosus_ among alder roots, but not near any other tree. Birds have their partialities among trees and shrubs. The _Silviæ_ prefer the _Pinus Larix_ to other trees. In my garden this _Pinus_ is never without them, but I never saw a bird perch on _Thuja occidenialis_ or _Juniperus sabina_, although the thick foliage of these latter trees affords birds a better shelter than the loose leafage of other trees. Not even a wren ever finds its way to one of them. Perhaps the scent of the _Thuja_ and the _Juniperus_ is offensive to them. I have spoiled one of my meadows by cutting away the bushes. It formerly bore grass four feet high, because many umbelliferous plants, such as _Heracleum spondylium_, _Spiræa ulmaria_, _Laserpitium latifolia_, &c., grew in it. Under the shelter of the bushes these plants ripened and bore seed, but they gradually disappeared as the shrubs were extirpated, and the grass now does not grow to the height of more than two feet, because it is no longer obliged to keep pace with the umbellifera which flourished among it." See a paper by J. G. BÜTTNER, of Kurland, in BERGHAUS' _Geographisches Jahrbuch_, 1852, No. 4, pp. 14, 15. These facts are interesting as illustrating the multitude of often obscure conditions upon which the life or vigorous growth of smaller organisms depends. Particular species of truffles and of mushrooms are found associated with particular trees, without being, as is popularly supposed, parasites deriving their nutriment from the dying or dead roots of those trees. The success of Rousseau's experiments seem decisive on this point, for he obtains larger crops of truffles from ground covered with young seedling oaks than from that filled with roots of old trees. See an article on Mont Ventoux, by Charles Martins, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, Avril, 1863, p. 626. It ought to be much more generally known than it is that most, if not, all mushrooms, even of the species reputed poisonous, may be rendered harmless and healthful as food by soaking them for two hours in acidulated or salt water. The water requires two or three spoonfuls of vinegar or two spoonfuls of gray salt to the quart, and a quart of water is enough for a pound of sliced mushrooms. After thus soaking, they are well washed in fresh water, thrown into cold water, which is raised to the boiling point, and, after remaining half an hour, taken out and again washed. Gérard, to prove that "crumpets is wholesome," ate one hundred and seventy-five pounds of the most poisonous mushrooms thus prepared, in a single month, fed his family _ad libitum_ with the same, and finally administered them, in heroic doses, to the members of a committee appointed by the Council of Health of the city of Paris. See FIGUIER, _L'Année Scientifique_, 1862, pp. 353, 384. See _Appendix_, No. 31. It has long been known that the Russian peasantry eat, with impunity, mushrooms of species everywhere else regarded as very poisonous. Is it not probable that the secret of rendering them harmless--which was known to Pliny, though since forgotten in Italy--is possessed by the rustic Muscovites? [264] _Physikalische Geographie_, p. 486. [265] _Origin of Species_, American edition, p. 69. [266] Writers on vegetable physiology record numerous instances where seeds have grown after lying dormant for ages. The following cases, mentioned by Dr. Dwight (_Travels_, ii, pp. 438, 439), may be new to many readers: "The lands [in Panton, Vermont], which have here been once cultivated, and again permitted to lie waste for several years, yield a rich and fine growth of hickory [_Carya porcina_]. Of this wood there is not, I believe, a single tree in any original forest within fifty miles from this spot. The native growth was here white pine, of which I did not see a single stem in a whole grove of hickory." The hickory is a walnut, bearing a fruit too heavy to be likely to be carried fifty miles by birds, and besides, I believe it is not eaten by any bird indigenous to Vermont. "A field, about five miles from Northampton, on an eminence called Rail Hill, was cultivated about a century ago. The native growth here, and in all the surrounding region, was wholly oak, chestnut, &c. As the field belonged to my grandfather, I had the best opportunity of learning its history. It contained about five acres, in the form of an irregular parallelogram. As the savages rendered the cultivation dangerous, it was given up. On this ground there sprang up a grove of white pines covering the field and retaining its figure exactly. So far as I remember, there was not in it a single oak or chestnut tree. * * * There was not a single pine whose seeds were, or, probably, had for ages been, sufficiently near to have been planted on this spot. The fact that these white pines covered this field exactly, so as to preserve both its extent and its figure, and that there were none in the neighborhood, are decisive proofs that cultivation brought up the seeds of a former forest within the limits of vegetation, and gave them an opportunity to germinate." [267] Quaint old Valvasor had observed the subduing influence of nature's solitudes. In describing the lonely Canker-Thal, which, though rocky, was in his time well wooded with "fir, larches, beeches, and other trees," he says: "Gladsomeness and beauty, which dwell in many valleys, may not be looked for there. The journey through it is cheerless, melancholy, wearisome, and serveth to temper and mortify over-joyousness of thought. * * * In sum it is a very wild, wherein the wildness of human pride doth grow tame."--_Ehre der Crain_, i, p. 136, b. [268] Valvasor says, in the same paragraph from which I have just quoted, "In my many journeys through this valley, I did never have sight of so much as a single bird." [269] Smela, in the government of Kiew, has, for some years, not suffered at all from the locusts, which formerly came every year in vast swarms, and the curculio, so injurious to the turnip crops, is less destructive there than in other parts of the province. This improvement is owing partly to the more thorough cultivation of the soil, partly to the groves which are interspersed among the plough lands. * * * When in the midst of the plains woods shall be planted and filled with insectivorous birds, the locusts will cease to be a plague and a terror to the farmer.--RENTZSCH, _Der Wald_, pp. 45, 46. [270] England is, I believe, the only country where private enterprise has pursued sylviculture on a really great scale, though admirable examples have been set in many others on both sides of the Atlantic. In England the law of primogeniture, and other institutions and national customs which tend to keep large estates long undivided and in the same line of inheritance, the wealth of the landholders, and the difficulty of finding safe and profitable investments of capital, combine to afford encouragements for the plantation of forests, which nowhere else exist in the same degree. The climate of England, too, is very favorable to the growth of forest trees, though the character of surface secures a large part of the island from the evils which have resulted from the destruction of the woods elsewhere, and therefore their restoration is a matter of less geographical importance in England than on the Continent. [271] The preservation of the woods on the eastern frontier of France, as a kind of natural abattis, is also recognized by the Government of that country as an important measure of military defence, though there have been conflicting opinions on the subject. [272] Let us take the supply of timber for railroad ties. According to Clavé (p. 248), France has 9,000 kilomètres of railway in operation, 7,000 in construction, half of which is built with a double track. Adding turnouts and extra tracks at stations, the number of ties required for a single track is stated at 1,200 to the kilomètre, or, as Clavé computes, for the entire network of France, 58,000,000. As the schoolboys say, "this sum does not prove;" for 16,000 + 8,000 for the double track halfway = 24,000, and 24,000 × 1,200 = 28,800,000. According to Bigelow (_Les États Unis en 1863_, p. 439), the United States had in operation or construction on the first of January, 1862, 51,000 miles, or about 81,000 kilomètres of railroad, and the military operations of the present civil war are rapidly extending the system. Allowing the same proportion as in France, the American railroads required 97,200,000 ties in 1862. The consumption of timber in Europe and America during the present generation, occasioned by this demand, has required the sacrifice of many hundred thousand acres of forest, and if we add the quantity employed for telegraph posts, we have an amount of destruction, for entirely new purposes, which is really appalling. The consumption of wood for lucifer matches is enormous, and I have heard of several instances where tracts of pine forest, hundreds and even thousands of acres in extent, have been purchased and felled, solely to supply timber for this purpose. The demand for wood for small carvings and for children's toys is incredibly large. Rentzsch states the export of such objects from the town of Sonneberg alone to have amounted, in 1853, to 60,000 centner, or three thousand tons' weight.--_Der Wald_, p. 68. See _Appendix_, No. 33. The importance of so managing the forest that it may continue indefinitely to furnish an adequate supply of material for naval architecture is well illustrated by some remarks of the same author in the valuable little work just cited. He suggests that the prosperity of modern England is due, in no small degree, to the supplies of wood and other material for building and equipping ships, received from the forests of her colonies and of other countries with which she has maintained close commercial relations, and he adds: "Spain, which by her position seemed destined for universal power, and once, in fact, possessed it, has lost her political rank, because during the unwise administration of the successors of Philip II, the empty exchequer could not furnish the means of building new fleets; for the destruction of the forests had raised the price of timber above the resources of the state."--_Der Wald_, p. 63. The market price of timber, like that of all other commodities, may be said, in a general way, to be regulated by the laws of demand and supply, but it is also controlled by those seemingly unrelated accidents which so often disappoint the calculations of political economists in other branches of commerce. A curious case of this sort is noticed by CERINI, _Dell' Impianto e Conservazione dei Boschi_, p. 17: "In the mountains on the Lago Maggiore, in years when maize is cheap, the woodcutters can provide themselves with corn meal enough for a week by three days' labor, and they refuse to work the remaining four. Hence the dealers in wood, not being able to supply the demand, for want of laborers, are obliged to raise the price for the following season, both for timber and for firewood; so that a low price of grain occasions a high price of building lumber and of fuel. The consequence is, that though the poor have supplied themselves cheaply with food, they must pay dear for firewood, and they cannot get work, because the high price of lumber has discouraged repairs and building, the expense of which landed proprietors cannot undertake when their incomes have been reduced by sales of grain at low rates, and hence there is not demand enough for lumber to induce the timber merchants to furnish employment to the woodmen." [273] Besides the substitution of iron for wood, a great saving of consumption of this latter material has been effected by the revival of ancient methods of increasing its durability, and the invention of new processes for the same purpose. The most effectual preservative yet discovered for wood employed on land, is sulphate of copper, a solution of which is introduced into the pores of the wood while green, by soaking, by forcing-pumps, or, most economically, by the simple pressure of a column of the fluid in a small pipe connected with the end of the piece of timber subjected to the treatment. Clavé (_Études Forestières_, pp. 240-249) gives an interesting account of the various processes employed for rendering wood imperishable, and states that railroad ties injected with sulphate of copper in 1846, were found absolutely unaltered in 1855; and telegraphic posts prepared two years earlier, are now in a state of perfect preservation. For many purposes, the method of injection is too expensive, and some simpler process is much to be desired. The question of the proper time of felling timber is not settled, and the best modes of air, water, and steam seasoning are not yet fully ascertained. Experiments on these subjects would be well worth the patronage of governments in new countries, where they can be very easily made, without the necessity of much waste of valuable material, and without expensive arrangements for observation. The practice of stripping living trees of their bark some years before they are felled, is as old as the time of Vitruvius, but is much less followed than it deserves, partly because the timber of trees so treated inclines to crack and split, and partly because it becomes so hard as to be wrought with considerable difficulty. In America, economy in the consumption of fuel has been much promoted by the substitution of coal for wood, the general use of stoves both for wood and coal, and recently by the employment of anthracite in the furnaces of stationary and locomotive steam-engines. All the objections to the use of anthracite for this latter purpose appear to have been overcome, and the improvements in its combustion have been attended with a great pecuniary saving, and with much advantage to the preservation of the woods. The employment of coal has produced a great reduction in the consumption of fire wood in Paris. In 1815, the supply of fire wood for the city required 1,200,000 stères, or cubic mètres; in 1859, it had fallen to 501,805, while, in the mean time, the consumption of coal had risen from 600,000 to 432,000,000 metrical quintals. See CLAVÉ, _Études_, p. 212. I think there must be some error in this last sum, as 432 millions of metrical quintals would amount to 43 millions of tons, a quantity which it is difficult to suppose could be consumed in the city of Paris. The price of fire wood has scarcely advanced at all in Paris for half a century, though that of timber generally has risen enormously. [274] In the first two years of the present civil war in the United States, twenty-eight thousand walnut trees were felled to supply a single European manufactory of gunstocks for the American market. [275] Among the indirect proofs of the comparatively recent existence of extensive forests in France, may be mentioned the fact, that wolves were abundant, not very long since, in parts of the empire where there are now neither wolves nor woods to shelter them. Arthur Young more than once speaks of the "innumerable multitudes" of these animals which infested France in 1789, and George Sand states, in the _Histoire de ma Vie_, that some years after the restoration of the Bourbons, they chased travellers on horseback in the Southern provinces, and literally knocked at the doors of her father-in-law's country seat. [276] In the _Recepte Véritable_, Palissy having expressed his indignation at the folly of men in destroying the woods, his interlocutor defends the policy of felling them, by citing the example of "divers bishops, cardinals, priors, abbots, monkeries, and chapters, which, by cutting their woods, have made three profits," the sale of the timber, the rent of the ground, and the "good portion" they received of the grain grown by the peasants upon it. To this argument, Palissy replies: "I cannot enough detest this thing, and I call it not an error, but a curse and a calamity to all France; for when forests shall be cut, all arts shall cease, and they which practise them shall be driven out to eat grass with Nebuchadnezzar and the beasts of the field. I have divers times thought to set down in writing the arts which shall perish when there shall be no more wood; but when I had written down a great number, I did perceive that there could be no end of my writing, and having diligently considered, I found there was not any which could be followed without wood." * * "And truly I could well allege to thee a thousand reasons, but 'tis so cheap a philosophy, that the very chamber wenches, if they do but think, may see that without wood, it is not possible to exercise any manner of human art or cunning."--_[OE]uvres de_ BERNARD PALISSY, p. 89. [277] Since writing the above paragraph, I have found the view I have taken of this point confirmed by the careful investigations of Rentzsch, who estimates the proper proportion of woodland to entire surface at twenty-three per cent. for the interior of Germany, and supposes that near the coast, where the air is supplied with humidity by evaporation from the sea, it might safely be reduced to twenty per cent. See Rentzsch's very valuable prize essay, _Der Wald im Haushalt der Natur und der Volkswirthschaft_, cap. viii. The due proportion in France would considerably exceed that for the German States, because France has relatively more surface unfit for any growth but that of wood, because the form and geological character of her mountains expose her territory to much greater injury from torrents, and because at least her southern provinces are more frequently visited both by extreme drought and by deluging rains. [278] _Études sur l'Économie Forestière_, p. 261. Clavé adds (p. 262): "The Russian forests are very unequally distributed through the territory of this vast empire. In the north they form immense masses, and cover whole provinces, while in the south they are so completely wanting that the inhabitants have no other fuel than straw, dung, rushes, and heath." * * * "At Moscow, firewood costs thirty per cent. more than at Paris, while, at the distance of a few leagues, it sells for a tenth of that price." This state of things is partly due to the want of facilities of transportation, and some parts of the United States are in a similar condition. During a severe winter, six or seven years ago, the sudden freezing of the canals and rivers, before a large American town had received its usual supply of fuel, occasioned an enormous rise in the price of wood and coal, and the poor suffered severely for want of it. Within a few hours of the city were large forests and an abundant stock of firewood felled and prepared for burning. This might easily have been carried to town by the railroads which passed through the woods; but the managers of the roads refused to receive it as freight, because the opening of a new market for wood might raise the price of the fuel they employed for their locomotives. Hohenstein, who was long professionally employed as a forester in Russia, describes the consequences of the general war upon the woods in that country as already most disastrous, and as threatening still more ruinous evils. The river Volga, the life artery of Russian internal commerce, is drying up from this cause, and the great Muscovite plains are fast advancing to a desolation like that of Persia.--_Der Wald_, p. 223. The level of the Caspian Sea is eighty-three feet lower than that of the Sea of Azoff, and the surface of Lake Aral is fast sinking. Von Baer maintains that the depression of the Caspian was produced by a sudden subsidence, from geological causes, and not gradually by excess of evaporation over supply. See _Kaspische Studien_, p. 25. But this subsidence diminished the area and consequently the evaporation of that sea, and the rivers which once maintained its ancient equilibrium ought to raise it to its former level, if their own flow had not been diminished. It is, indeed, not proved that the laying bare of a wooded country diminishes the total annual precipitation upon it; but it is certain that the summer evaporation from the surface of a champaign region, like that through which the Volga, its tributaries, and the feeders of Lake Aral flow, is increased by the removal of its woods. Hence, though as much rain may still fall in the valleys of those rivers as when their whole surface was covered with forests, a less quantity of water may be delivered by them since their basins were cleared, and therefore the present condition of the inland waters in question may be due to the removal of the forests in their basins. [279] Rentzsch _(Der Wald, etc._, pp. 123, 124) states the proportions of woodland in different European countries as follows: ---------------+----------+----------- | |Acres per | Per cent.| head of | |population. ---------------+----------+----------- Germany | 26.58 | 0.6638 Great Britain | 5. | 0.1 France | 16.79 | 0.3766 Russia | 30.90 | 4.28 Sweden | 60. | 8.55 Norway | 66. | 24.61 Denmark | 5.50 | 0.22 Switzerland | 15. | 0.396 Holland | 7.10 | 0.12 Belgium | 18.52 | 0.186 Spain | 5.52 | 0.291 Portugal | 4.40 | 0.182 Sardinia | 12.29 | 0.223 Naples | 9.43 | 0.138 ---------------+----------+----------- Probably no European countries can so well dispense with the forests, in their capacity of conservative influences, as England and Ireland. Their insular position and latitude secure an abundance of atmospheric moisture, and the general inclination of surface is not such as to expose it to special injury from torrents. The due proportion of woodland in England and Ireland is, therefore, almost purely an economical question, to be decided by the comparative direct pecuniary return from forest growth, pasturage, and plough land. In Scotland, where the country is for the most part more broken and mountainous, the general destruction of the forests has been attended with very serious evils, and it is in Scotland that many of the most extensive British forest plantations have now been formed. But although the inclination of surface in Scotland is rapid, the geological constitution of the soil is not of a character to promote such destructive degradation by running water as in Southern France, and it has not to contend with the parching droughts by which the devastations of the torrents are rendered more injurious in that part of the French empire. In giving the proportion of woodland to population, I compute Rentzsch's Morgen at .3882 of an English acre, because I find, by Alexander's most accurate and valuable Dictionary of Weights and Measures, that this is the value of the Dresden Morgen, and Rentzsch is a Saxon writer. In the different German States, there are more than twenty different land measures known by the name of Morgen, varying from about one third of an acre to more than three acres in value. When will the world be wise enough to unite in adopting the French metrical and monetary systems? As to the latter, never while Christendom continues to be ruled by money changers, who can compel you to part with your sovereigns in France at twenty-five francs, and in England to accept fifteen shillings for your napoleons. I speak as a sufferer. _Experto crede Roberto._ [280] According to the maxims of English jurisprudence, the common law consists of general customs so long established that "the memory of man runneth not to the contrary." In other words, long custom makes law. In new countries, the change of circumstances creates new customs, and, in time, new law, without the aid of legislation. Had the American colonists observed a more sparing economy in the treatment of their woods, a new code of customary forest law would have sprung up and acquired the force of a statute. Popular habit was fast elaborating the fundamental principles of such a code, when the rapid increase in the value of timber, in consequence of the reckless devastation of the woodlands, made it the interest of the proprietors to interfere with this incipient system of forest jurisprudence, and appeal to the rules of English law for the protection of their woods. The courts have sustained these appeals, and forest property is now legally as inviolable as any other, though common opinion still combats the course of judicial decision on such questions. In the United States, swarms of honey bees, on leaving the parent hive, often take up their quarters in hollow trees in the neighboring woods. By the early customs of New England, the finder of a "bee tree" on the land of another owner was regarded as entitled to the honey by right of discovery; and as a necessary incident of that right, he might cut the tree, at the proper season, without asking permission of the proprietor of the soil. The quantity of "wild honey" in a tree was often large, and "bee hunting" was so profitable that it became almost a regular profession. The "bee hunter" sallied forth with a small box containing honey and a little vermilion. The bees which were attracted by the honey marked themselves with the vermilion, and hence were more readily followed in their homeward flight, and recognized when they returned a second time for booty. When loaded with spoil, this insect returns to his hive by the shortest route, and hence a straight line is popularly called in America a "bee line." By such a line, the hunter followed the bees to their sylvan hive, marked the tree with his initials, and returned to secure his prize in the autumn. When the right of the "bee hunter" was at last disputed by the land proprietors, it was with difficulty that judgments could be obtained, in inferior courts, in favor of the latter, and it was only after repeated decisions of the higher legal tribunals that the superior right of the owner of the soil was at last acquiesced in. [281] _Étude sur le Reboisement des Montagnes_, p. 5. [282] "In America," says Clavé (p. 124, 125), "where there is a vast extent of land almost without pecuniary value, but where labor is dear and the rate of interest high, it is profitable to till a large surface at the least possible cost; _extensive_ cultivation is there the most advantageous. In England, France, and Germany, where every corner of soil is occupied, and the least bit of ground is sold at a high price, but where labor and capital are comparatively cheap, it is wisest to employ _intensive_ cultivation. * * * All the efforts of the cultivator ought to be directed to the obtaining of a given result with the least sacrifice, and there is equally a loss to the commonwealth if the application of improved agricultural processes be neglected where they are advantageous, or if they be employed where they are not required. * * * In this point of view, sylviculture must follow the same laws as agriculture, and, like it, be modified according to the economical conditions of different states. In countries abounding in good forests, and thinly peopled, elementary and cheap methods must be pursued; in civilized regions, where a dense population requires that the soil shall be made to produce all it can yield, the regular artificial forest, with all the processes that science teaches, should be cultivated. It would be absurd to apply to the endless woods of Brazil and of Canada the method of the Spessart by "double stages," and not less so in our country, where every yard of ground has a high value, to leave to nature the task of propagating trees, and to content ourselves with cutting, every twenty or twenty-five years, the meagre growths that chance may have produced." [283] It is often laid down as a universal law, that the wood of trees of slow vegetation is superior to that of quick growth. This is one of those commonplaces by which men love to shield themselves from the labor of painstaking observation. It has, in fact, so many exceptions, that it may be doubted whether it is in any sense true. Most of the cedars are slow of growth; but while the timber of some of them is firm and durable, that of others is light, brittle, and perishable. The hemlock spruce is slower of growth than the pines, but its wood is of very little value. The pasture oak and beech show a breadth of grain--and, of course, an annual increment--twice as great as trees of the same species grown in the woods; and the American locust, _Robinia pseudacacia_, the wood of which is of extreme toughness and durability, is, of all trees indigenous to Northeastern America, by far the most rapid in growth. As an illustration of the mutual interdependence of the mechanic arts, I may mention that in Italy, where stone, brick, and plaster are almost the only materials used in architecture, and where the "hollow ware" kitchen implements are of copper or of clay, the ordinary tools for working wood are of a very inferior description, and the locust timber is found too hard for their temper. Southey informs us, in "Espriella's Letters," that when a small quantity of mahogany was brought to England, early in the last century, the cabinetmakers were unable to use it, from the defective temper of their tools, until the demand for furniture from the new wood compelled them to improve the quality of their implements. In America, the cheapness of wood long made it the preferable material for almost all purposes to which it could by any possibility be applied. The mechanical cutlery and artisans' tools of the United States are of admirable temper, finish, and convenience, and no wood is too hard, or otherwise too refractory, to be wrought with great facility, both by hand tools and by the multitude of ingenious machines which the Americans have invented for this purpose. [284] _Études Forestières_, p. 7. [285] _Études Forestières_, p. 7. [286] For very full catalogues of American forest trees, and remarks on their geographical distribution, consult papers on the subject by Dr. J. G. Cooper, in the Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1858, and the Report of the United States Patent Office, Agricultural Division, for 1860. [287] Although Spenser's catalogue of trees occurs in the first canto of the first book of the "Faëry Queene"--the only canto of that exquisite poem actually read by most students of English literature--it is not so generally familiar as to make the quotation of it altogether superfluous: VII. Enforst to seeke some covert nigh at hand, A shadie grove not farr away they spide, That promist ayde the tempest to withstand; Whose loftie trees, yelad with sommers pride, Did spred so broad, that heavens light did hide, Not perceable with power of any starr: And all within were pathes and alleies wide, With footing worne, and leading inward farr; Faire harbour that them seems; so in they entred ar. VIII. And foorth they passe, with pleasure forward led, Joying to heare the birdes sweete harmony, Which therein shrouded from the tempest dred, Seemd in their song to scorne the cruell sky. Much can they praise the trees so straight and hy, The sayling pine; the cedar stout and tall; The vine-propp elm; the poplar never dry; The builder oake, sole king of forrests all; The aspine good for staves; the cypresse funerall; IX. The laurell, meed of mightie conquerours And poets sage; the firre that weepeth still; The willow, worne of forlorn paramours; The eugh, obedient to the benders will; The birch for shaftes; the sallow for the mill; The mirrhe sweete-bleeding in the bitter wound; The warlike beech; the ash for nothing ill; The fruitfull olive; and the platane round; The carver holme; the maple seeldom inward sound. [288] The walnut is a more valuable tree than is generally supposed. It yields one third of the oil produced in France, and in this respect occupies an intermediate position between the olive of the south, and the oleaginous seeds of the north. A hectare (about two and a half acres), will produce nuts to the value of five hundred francs a year, which cost nothing but the gathering. Unfortunately, its maturity must be long waited for, and more nut-trees are felled than planted. The demand for its wood in cabinet work is the principal cause of its destruction. See LAVERGNE, _Économie Rurale de la France_, p. 253. According to Cosimo Ridolfi (Lezioni Orali, ii. p. 424), France obtains three times as much oil from the walnut as from the olive, and nearly as much as from all oleaginous seeds together. He states that the walnut bears nuts at the age of twenty years, and yields its maximum product at seventy, and that a hectare of ground, with thirty trees, or twelve to the acre, is equal to a capital of twenty-five hundred francs. The nut of this tree is known in the United States as the "English walnut." The fruit and the wood much resemble those of the American black walnut, _Juglans nigra_, but for cabinet work the American is the more beautiful material, especially when the large knots are employed. The timber of the European species, when straight grained, and _clear_, or free from knots, is, for ordinary purposes, better than that of the American black walnut, but bears no comparison with the wood of the hickory, when strength combined with elasticity is required, and its nut is very inferior in taste to that of the shagbark, as well as to the butternut, which it somewhat resembles. "The chestnut is more valuable still, for it produces on a sterile soil, which, without it, would yield only ferns and heaths, an abundant nutriment for man."--LAVERGNE, _Économie Rurale de la France_, p. 253. I believe the varieties developed by cultivation are less numerous in the walnut than in the chestnut, which latter tree is often grafted in Southern Europe. [289] This fir is remarkable for its tendency to cicatrize or heal over its stumps, a property which it possesses in common with some other firs, the maritime pine, and the European larch. When these trees grow in thick clumps, their roots are apt to unite by a species of natural grafting, and if one of them be felled, although its own proper rootlets die, the stump may continue, sometimes for a century, to receive nourishment from the radicles of the surrounding trees, and a dome of wood and bark of considerable thickness be formed over it. The cicatrization is, however, only apparent, for the entire stump, except the outside ring of annual growth, soon dies, and even decays within its covering, without sending out new shoots. [290] At the age of twelve or fifteen years, the cork tree is stripped of its outer bark for the first time. This first yield is of inferior quality, and is employed for floats for nets and buoys, or burnt for lampblack. After this, a new layer of cork, an inch or an inch and a quarter in thickness, is formed about once in ten years, and is removed in large sheets without injury to the tree, which lives a hundred and fifty years or more. According to Clavé (p. 252), the annual product of a forest of cork oaks is calculated at about 660 kilogrammes, worth 150 francs, to the hectare, which, deducting expenses, leaves a profit of 100 francs. This is about equal to 250 pound weight, and eight dollars profit to the acre. The cork oaks of the national domain in Algeria cover about 500,000 acres, and are let to individuals at rates which are expected, when the whole is rented, to yield to the state a revenue of about $2,000,000. George Sand, in the _Histoire de ma Vie_, speaks of the cork forests in Southern France as among the most profitable of rural possessions, and states, what I do not remember to have seen noticed elsewhere, that Russia is the best customer for cork. The large sheets taken from the trees are slit into thin plates, and used to line the walls of apartments in that cold climate. [291] The walnut, the chestnut, the apple, and the pear are common to the border between the countries I have mentioned, but the range of the other trees is bounded by the Alps, and by a well-defined and sharply drawn line to the west of those mountains. I cannot give statistical details as to the number of any of the trees in question, or as to the area they would cover if brought together in a given country. From some peculiarity in the sky of Europe, cultivated plants will thrive, in Northern Italy, in Southern France, and even in Switzerland, under a depth of shade where no crop, not even grass, worth harvesting, would grow in the United States with an equally high summer temperature. Hence the cultivation of all these trees is practicable in Europe to a greater extent than would be supposed reconcilable with the interests of agriculture. Some idea of the importance of the olive orchards may be formed from the fact that Sicily alone, an island scarcely exceeding 10,000 square miles in area, of which one third at least is absolutely barren, has exported to the single port of Marseilles more than 2,000,000 pounds weight of olive oil per year, for the last twenty years. [292] It is hard to say how far the peculiar form of the graceful crown of this pine is due to pruning. It is true that the extremities of the topmost branches are rarely lopped, but the lateral boughs are almost uniformly removed to a very considerable height, and it is not improbable that the shape of the top is thereby affected. [293] Besides this, in a country so diversified in surface--I wish we could with the French say _accidented_--as Italy with the exception of the champaign region drained by the Po, every new field of view requires either an extraordinary _coup d'[oe]il_ in the spectator, or a long study, in order to master its relief, its plans, its salient and retreating angles. In summer, the universal greenery confounds light and shade, distance and foreground; and though the impression upon a traveller, who journeys for the sake of "sensations," may be strengthened by the mysterious annihilation of all standards for the measurement of space, yet the superior intelligibility of the winter scenery of Italy is more profitable to those who see with a view to analyze. [294] Copse, or coppice, from the French _couper_, to cut, signifies properly a wood the trees of which are cut at certain periods of immature growth, and allowed to shoot up again from the roots; but it has come to signify, very commonly, a young wood, grove, or thicket, without reference to its origin, or to its character of a forest crop. [295] It has been recently stated, upon the evidence of the Government foresters of Greece, and of the queen's gardener, that a large wood has been discovered in Arcadia, consisting of a fir which has the property of sending up both vertical and lateral shoots from the stump of felled trees and forming a new crown. It was at first supposed that this forest grew only on the "mountains," of which the hero of About's most amusing story, _Le Roi des Montagnes_, was "king;" but it is now said that small stumps, with the shoots attached, have been sent to Germany, and recognized by able botanists as true natural products. [296] Natural forests are rarely, if ever, composed of trees of a single species, and experience has shown that oaks and other broad-leaved trees, planted as artificial woods, require to be mixed, or associated with others of different habits. In the forest of Fontainebleau, "oaks, mingled with beeches in due proportion," says Clavé, "may arrive at the age of five or six hundred years in full vigor, and attain dimensions which I have never seen surpassed; when, however, they are wholly unmixed with other trees, they begin to decay and die at the top, at the age of forty or fifty years, like men, old before their time, weary of the world, and longing only to quit it. This has been observed in most of the oak plantations of which I have spoken, and they have not been able to attain to full growth. When the vegetation was perceived to languish, they were cut, in the hope that this operation would restore their vigor, and that the new shoots would succeed better than the original trees; and, in fact, they seemed to be recovering for the first few years. But the shoots were soon attacked by the same decay, and the operation had to be renewed at shorter and shorter intervals, until at last it was found necessary to treat as coppices plantations originally designed for the full-growth system. Nor was this all: the soil, periodically bared by these cuttings, became impoverished, and less and less suited to the growth of the oak. * * * It was then proposed to introduce the pine and plant with it the vacancies and glades. * * * By this means, the forest was saved from the ruin which threatened it, and now more than 10,000 acres of pines, from fifteen to thirty years old, are disseminated at various points, sometimes intermixed with broad-leaved trees, sometimes forming groves by themselves."--_Revue des Deux Mondes_, Mai, 1863, pp. 153, 154. The forests of Denmark, which, in modern times, have been succeeded by the beech--a species more inclined to be exclusive than any other broad-leaved tree--were composed of birches, oaks, firs, aspens, willows, hazel, and maple, the first three being the leading species. At present, the beech greatly predominates.--VAUPELL, _Bögens Indvandring_, pp. 19, 20. [297] _Études Forestières_, p. 89. [298] The grounds which it is most important to clothe with wood as a conservative influence, and which, also, can best be spared from agricultural use, are steep hillsides. But the performance of all the offices of the forester to the tree--seeding, planting, thinning, and finally felling and removing for consumption--is more laborious upon a rapid declivity than on a level soil, and at the same time it is difficult to apply irrigation or manures to trees so situated. Experience has shown that there is great advantage in terracing the face of a hill before planting it, both as preventing the wash of the earth by checking the flow of water down its slope, and as presenting a surface favorable for irrigation, as well as for manuring and cultivating the tree. But even without so expensive a process, very important results have been obtained by simply ditching declivities. "In order to hasten the growth of wood on the flanks of a mountain, Mr. Eugène Chevandier divided the slope into zones forty or fifty feet wide, by horizontal ditches closed at both ends, and thereby obtained, from firs of different ages, shoots double the dimensions of those which grew on a dry soil of the same character, where the water was allowed to run off without obstruction."--DUMONT, _Des Travaux Publics, etc._, pp. 94-96. The ditches were about two feet and a half deep, and three feet and a half wide, and they cost about forty francs the hectare, or three dollars the acre. This extraordinary growth was produced wholly by the retention of the rain water in the ditches, whence it filtered through the whole soil and supplied moisture to the roots of the trees. It may be doubted whether in a climate cold enough to freeze the entire contents of the ditches in winter, it would not be expedient to draw off the water in the autumn, as the presence of so large a quantity of ice in the soil might prove injurious to trees too young and small to shelter the ground effectually against frost. Chevandier computes that, if the annual growth of the pine in the marshy soil of the Vosges be represented by one, it will equal two in dry ground, four or five on slopes so ditched or graded as to retain the water flowing upon them from roads or steep declivities, and six where the earth is kept constantly moist by infiltration from running brooks.--_Comptes Rendus à l'Académie des Sciences_--t. xix, Juillet, Dec., 1844, p. 167. The effect of accidental irrigation is well shown in the growth of the trees planted along the canals of irrigation which traverse the fields in many parts of Italy. They flourish most luxuriantly, in spite of continual lopping, and yield a very important contribution to the stock of fuel for domestic use; while trees, situated so far from canals as to be out of the reach of infiltration from them, are of much slower growth, under circumstances otherwise equally favorable. In other experiments of Chevandier, under better conditions, the yield of wood was increased, by judicious irrigation, in the ratio of seven to one, the profits in that of twelve to one. At the Exposition of 1855, Chambrelent exhibited young trees, which, in four years from the seed, had grown to the height of sixteen and twenty feet, and the diameter of ten and twelve inches. Chevandier experimented with various manures, and found that some of them might be profitably applied to young, but not to old trees, the quantity required in the latter case being too great. Wood ashes and the refuse of soda factories are particularly recommended. I have seen an extraordinary growth produced in fir trees by the application of soapsuds. [299] Although the economy of the forest has received little attention in the United States, no lover of American nature can have failed to observe a marked difference between a native wood from which cattle are excluded and one where they are permitted to browse. A few seasons suffice for the total extirpation of the "underbrush," including the young trees on which alone the reproduction of the forest depends, and all the branches of those of larger growth which hang within reach of the cattle are stripped of their buds and leaves, and soon wither and fall off. These effects are observable at a great distance, and a wood pasture is recognized, almost as far as it can be seen, by the regularity with which its lower foliage terminates at what Ruskin somewhere calls the "cattle line." This always runs parallel to the surface of the ground, and is determined by the height to which domestic quadrupeds can reach to feed upon the leaves. In describing a visit to the grand-ducal farm of San Rossore near Pisa, where a large herd of camels is kept, Chateauvieux says: "In passing through a wood of evergreen oaks, I observed that all the twigs and foliage of the trees were clipped up to the height of about twelve feet above the ground, without leaving a single spray below that level. I was informed that the browsing of the camels had trimmed the trees as high as they could reach."--LULLIN DE CHATEAUVIEUX, _Lettres sur l'Italie_, p. 113. The removal of the shelter afforded by the brushwood and the pendulous branches of trees permits drying and chilling winds to parch and cool the ground, and of course injuriously affects the growth of the wood. But this is not all. The tread of quadrupeds exposes and bruises the roots of the trees, which often die from this cause, as any one may observe by following the paths made by cattle through woodlands. [300] I have remarked elsewhere that most insects which deposit and hatch their eggs in the wood of the natural forest confine themselves to dead trees. Not only is this the fact, but it is also true that many of the borers attack only freshly cut timber. Their season of labor is a short one, and unless the tree is cut during this period, it is safe from them. In summer you may hear them plying their augers in the wood of a young pine with soft green bark, as you sit upon its trunk, within a week after it has been felled, but the windfalls of the winter lie uninjured by the worm and even undecayed for centuries. In the pine woods of New England, after the regular lumberman has removed the standing trees, these old trunks are hauled out from the mosses and leaves which half cover them, and often furnish excellent timber. The slow decay of such timber in the woods, it may be remarked, furnishes another proof of the uniformity of temperature and humidity in the forest, for the trunk of a tree lying on grass or plough land, and of course exposed to all the alternations of climate, hardly resists complete decomposition for a generation. The forests of Europe exhibit similar facts. Wessely, in a description of the primitive wood of Neuwald in Lower Austria, says that the windfalls required from 150 to 200 years for entire decay.-_-Die Oesterreichischen Alpenländer und ihre Forste_, p. 312. [301] VAUPELL, _Bögens Indvandring i de Danske Skove_, pp. 29, 46. Vaupell further observes, on the page last quoted: "The removal of leaves is injurious to the forest, not only because it retards the growth of trees, but still more because it disqualifies the soil for the production of particular species. When the beech languishes, and the development of its branches is less vigorous and its crown less spreading, it becomes unable to resist the encroachments of the fir. This latter tree thrives in an inferior soil, and being no longer stifled by the thick foliage of the beech, it spreads gradually through the wood, while the beech retreats before it and finally perishes." The study of the natural order of succession in forest trees is of the utmost importance in sylviculture, because it guides us in the selection of the species to be employed in planting a new or restoring a decayed forest. When ground is laid bare both of trees and of vegetable mould, and left to the action of unaided and unobstructed nature, she first propagates trees which germinate and grow only under the influence of a full supply of light and air, and then, in succession, other species, according to their ability to bear the shade and their demand for more abundant nutriment. In Northern Europe, the larch, the white birch, the aspen, first appear; then follow the maple, the alder, the ash, the fir; then the oak and the linden; and then the beech. The trees called by these respective names in the United States are not specifically the same as their European namesakes, nor are they always even the equivalents of these latter, and therefore the order of succession in America would not be precisely as indicated by the foregoing list, but it nevertheless very nearly corresponds to it. It is thought important to encourage the growth of the beech in Denmark and Northern Germany, because it upon the whole yields better returns than other trees, and particularly because it appears not to exhaust, but on the contrary to enrich the soil; for by shedding its leaves it returns to it most of the nutriment it has drawn from it, and at the same time furnishes a solvent which aids materially in the decomposition of its mineral constituents. When the forest is left to itself, the order of succession is constant, and its occasional inversion is always explicable by some human interference. It is curious that the trees which require most light are content with the poorest soils, and _vice versa_. The trees which first appear are also those which propagate themselves farthest to the north. The birch, the larch, and the fir bear a severer climate than the oak, the oak than the beech. "These parallelisms," says Vaupell, "are very interesting, because they are entirely independent of each other," and each prescribes the same order of succession.--_Bögens Indvandring_, p. 42. [302] When vigorous young locusts, of two or three inches in diameter, are polled, they throw out a great number of very thick-leaved shoots, which arrange themselves in a globular head, so unlike the natural crown of the acacia, that persons familiar only with the untrained tree often take them for a different species. [303] The two ideas expressed in the text are not exactly equivalent, because, though the consumption of animal food diminishes the amount of vegetable aliment required for human use, yet the animals themselves consume a great quantity of grain and roots grown on ground ploughed and cultivated as regularly and as laboriously as any other. The 170,000,000 bushels of oats raised in the United States in 1860, and fed to the 6,000,000 horses, the potatoes, the turnips, and the maize employed in fattening the oxen, the sheep, and the swine slaughtered the same year, occupied an extent of ground which, cultivated by hand labor and with Chinese industry and skill, would probably have produced a quantity of vegetable food equal in alimentary power to the flesh of the quadrupeds killed for domestic use. Hence, so far as the naked question of _amount_ of aliment is concerned, the meadows and the pastures might as well have remained in the forest condition. [304] According to Clavé (_Études_, p. 159), the net revenue from the forests of the state in France, making no allowance for interest on the capital represented by the forest, is two dollars per acre. In Saxony it is about the same, though the cost of administration is twice as much as in France; in Würtemberg it is about a dollar an acre; and in Prussia, where half the income is consumed in the expenses of administration, it sinks to less than half a dollar. This low rate in Prussia is partly explained by the fact that a considerable proportion of the annual product of wood is either conceded to persons claiming prescriptive rights, or sold, at a very small price, to the poor. Taking into account the capital invested in forest land, and adding interest upon it, Pressler calculates that a pine wood, managed with a view to felling it when eighty years old, would yield only one eighth of one per cent. annual profit; a fir wood, at one hundred years, one sixth of one per cent.; a beech wood, at one hundred and twenty years, one fourth of one per cent. The same author (p. 335) gives the net income of the New forest in England, over and above expenses, interest not computed, at twenty-five cents per acre only. In America, where no expense is bestowed upon the woods, the annual growth would generally be estimated much higher. [305] It is rare that a middle-aged American dies in the house where he was born, or an old man even in that which he has built; and this is scarcely less true of the rural districts, where every man owns his habitation, than of the city, where the majority live in hired houses. This life of incessant flitting is unfavorable for the execution of permanent improvements of every sort, and especially of those which, like the forest, are slow in repaying any part of the capital expended in them. It requires a very generous spirit in a landholder to plant a wood on a farm he expects to sell, or which he knows will pass out of the hands of his descendants at his death. But the very fact of having begun a plantation would attach the proprietor more strongly to the soil for which he had made such a sacrifice; and the paternal acres would have a greater value in the eyes of a succeeding generation, if thus improved and beautified by the labors of those from whom they were inherited. Landed property, therefore, the transfer of which is happily free from every legal impediment or restriction in the United States, would find, in the feelings thus prompted, a moral check against a too frequent change of owners, and would tend to remain long enough in one proprietor or one family to admit of gradual improvements which would increase its value both to the possessor and to the state. [306] It has been often asserted by eminent writers that a part of the fens in Lincolnshire was reclaimed by sea dikes under the government of the Romans. I have found no ancient authority in support of this allegation, nor can I refer to any passage in Roman literature in which sea dikes are expressly mentioned otherwise than as walls or piers, except that in Pliny (_Hist. Nat._ xxxvi, 24), where it is said that the Tyrrhenian sea was excluded from the Lucrine lake by dikes. [307] A friend has recently suggested to me an interesting illustration of the applicability of military instrumentalities to pacific art. The sale of gunpowder in the United States, he informs me, is smaller since the commencement of the present rebellion than before, because the war has caused the suspension of many public and private improvements, in the execution of which great quantities of powder were used for blasting. It is alleged that the same observation was made in France during the Crimean war, and that, in general, not ten per cent. of the powder manufactured on either side of the Atlantic is employed for military purposes. It is a fact not creditable to the moral sense of modern civilization, that very many of the most important improvements in machinery and the working of metals have originated in the necessities of war, and that man's highest ingenuity has been shown, and many of his most remarkable triumphs over natural forces achieved, in the contrivance of engines for the destruction of his fellow man. The military material employed by the first Napoleon has become, in less than two generations, nearly as obsolete as the sling and stone of the shepherd, and attack and defence now begin at distances to which, half a century ago, military reconnoissances hardly extended. Upon a partial view of the subject, the human race seems destined to become its own executioner--on the one hand, exhausting the capacity of the earth to furnish sustenance to her taskmaster; on the other, compensating diminished production by inventing more efficient methods of exterminating the consumer. But war develops great civil virtues, and brings into action a degree and kind of physical energy which seldom fails to awaken a new intellectual life in a people that achieves great moral and political results through great heroism and endurance and perseverance. Domestic corruption has destroyed more nations than foreign invasion, and a people is rarely conquered till it has deserved subjugation. [308] STARING, _Voormaals en Thans_, p. 150. [309] Idem, p. 163. Much the largest proportion of the lands so reclaimed, though for the most part lying above low-water tidemark, are at a lower level than the Lincolnshire fens, and more subject to inundation from the irruptions of the sea. [310] _Die Inseln und Marschen der Herzogthümer Schleswig und Holstein_, iii, p. 151. [311] The purely agricultural island of Pelworm, off the coast of Schleswig, containing about 10,000 acres, annually expends for the maintenance of its dikes not less than £6,000 sterling, or nearly $30,000.--J. G. KOHL, _Inseln und Marschen Schleswig's und Holstein's_, ii, p. 394. The original cost of the dikes of Pelworm is not stated. "The greatest part of the province of Zeeland is protected by dikes measuring 250 miles in length, the maintenance of which costs, in ordinary years, more than a million guilders [above $400,000]. * * * The annual expenditure for dikes and hydraulic works in Holland is from five to seven million guilders" [$2,000,000 to $2,800,000].--WILD, _Die Niederlande_, i, p. 62. One is not sorry to learn that the Spanish tyranny in the Netherlands had some compensations. The great chain of ring dikes which surrounds a large part of Zeeland is due to the energy of Caspar de Robles, the Spanish governor of that province, who in 1570 ordered the construction of these works at the public expense, as a substitute for the private embankments which had previously partially served the same purpose.--WILD, _Die Niederlande_, i, p. 62. [312] STARING, _Voormaals en Thans_, p. 163. [313] _Voormaals en Thans_, pp. 150, 151. [314] STARING, _Voormaals en Thans_, p. 152. Kohl states that the peninsula of Diksand on the coast of Holstein consisted, at the close of the last century, of several islands measuring together less than five thousand acres. In 1837 they had been connected with the mainland, and had nearly doubled in area.--_Inseln u. Marschen Schlesw. Holst._, iii, p. 262. [315] The most instructive and entertaining of tourists, J. G. Kohl--so aptly characterized by Davies as the "Herodotus of modern Europe"--furnishes a great amount of interesting information on the dikes of the Low German seacoast, in his _Inseln und Marschen der Herzogthümer Schleswig und Holstein_. I am acquainted with no popular work on this subject which the reader can consult with greater profit. See also STARING, _Voormaals en Thans_, and _De Bodem van Nederland_, on the dikes of the Netherlands. [316] The inclination varies from one foot rise in four of base to one foot in fourteen.--KOHL, iii, p. 210. [317] The dikes are sometimes founded upon piles, and sometimes protected by one or more rows of piles driven deeply down into the bed of the sea in front of them. "Triple rows of piles of Scandinavian pine," says Wild, "have been driven down along the coast of Friesland, where there are no dunes, for a distance of one hundred and fifty miles. The piles are bound together by strong cross timbers and iron clamps, and the interstices filled with stones. The ground adjacent to the piling is secured with fascines, and at exposed points heavy blocks of stone are heaped up as an additional protection. The earth dike is built behind the mighty bulwark of this breakwater, and its foot also is fortified with stones." * * * "The great Helder dike is about five miles long and forty feet wide at the top, along which runs a good road. It slopes down two hundred feet into the sea, at an angle of forty degrees. The highest waves do not reach the summit, the lowest always cover its base. At certain distances, immense buttresses, of a height and width proportioned to those of the dike, and even more strongly built, run several hundred feet out into the rolling sea. This gigantic artificial coast is entirely composed of Norwegian granite."--WILD, _Die Niederlande_, i, pp. 61, 62. [318] The shaking of the ground, even when loaded with large buildings, by the passage of heavy carriages or artillery, or by the march of a body of cavalry or even infantry, shows that such causes may produce important mechanical effects on the condition of the soil. The bogs in the Netherlands, as in most other countries, contain large numbers of fallen trees, buried to a certain depth by earth and vegetable mould. When the bogs are dry enough to serve as pastures, it is observed that trunks of these ancient trees rise of themselves to the surface. Staring ascribes this singular phenomenon to the agitation of the ground by the tread of cattle. "When roadbeds," observes he, "are constructed of gravel and pebbles of different sizes, and these latter are placed at the bottom without being broken and rolled hard together, they are soon brought to the top by the effect of travel on the road. Lying loosely, they undergo some motion from the passage of every wagon wheel and the tread of every horse that passes over them. This motion is an oscillation or partial rolling, and as one side of a pebble is raised, a little fine sand or earth is forced under it, and the frequent repetition of this process by cattle or carriages moving in opposite directions brings it at last to the surface. We may suppose that a similar effect is produced on the stems of trees in the bogs by the tread of animals."--_De Bodem van Nederland_, i, pp. 75, 76. It is observed in the Northern United States, that when soils containing pebbles are cleared and cultivated, and the stones removed from the surface, new pebbles, and even bowlders of many pounds weight, continue to show themselves above the ground, every spring, for a long series of years. In clayey soils the fence posts are thrown up in a similar way, and it is not uncommon to see the lower rail of a fence thus gradually raised a foot or even two feet above the ground. This rising of stones and fences is popularly ascribed to the action of the severe frosts of that climate. The expansion of the ground, in freezing, it is said, raises its surface, and, with the surface, objects lying near or connected with it. When the soil thaws in the spring, it settles back again to its former level, while the pebbles and posts are prevented from sinking as low as before by loose earth which has fallen under them. The fact that the elevation spoken of is observed only in the spring, gives countenance to this theory, which is perhaps applicable also to the cases stated by Staring, and it is probable that the two causes above assigned concur in producing the effect. The question of the subsidence of the Netherlandish coast has been much discussed. Not to mention earlier geologists, Venema, in several essays, and particularly in _Het Dalen van de Noordelijke Kuststreken van ons Land_, 1854, adduces many facts and arguments to prove a slow sinking of the northern provinces of Holland. Laveleye (_Affaissement du sol et envasement des fleuves survenus dans les temps historiques_, 1859), upon a still fuller investigation, arrives at the same conclusion. The eminent geologist Staring, however, who briefly refers to the subject in _De Bodem van Nederland_, i, p. 356 _et seqq._, does not consider the evidence sufficient to prove anything more than the sinking of the surface of the polders from drying and consolidation. [319] The elevation of the lands enclosed by dikes--or _polders_, as they are called in Holland--above low water mark, depends upon the height of the tides, or, in other words, upon, the difference between ebb and flood. The tide cannot deposit earth higher than it flows, and after the ground is once enclosed, the decay of the vegetables grown upon it and the addition of manures do not compensate the depression occasioned by drying and consolidation. On the coast of Zeeland and the islands of South Holland, the tides, and of course the surface of the lands deposited by them, are so high that the polders can be drained by ditching and sluices, but at other points, as in the enclosed grounds of North Holland on the Zuiderzee, where the tide rises but three feet or even less, pumping is necessary from the beginning.--STARING, _Voormaals en Thans_, p. 152. [320] The principal engine--called the Leeghwater, from the name of an engineer who had proposed the draining of the lake in 1641--was of 500 horse power, and drove eleven pumps making six strokes per minute. Each pump raised six cubic mètres, or nearly eight cubic yards of water to the stroke, amounting in all to 23,760 cubic mètres, or above 31,000 cubic yards, the hour.--WILD, _Die Niederlande_, i, p. 87. [321] In England and New England, where the marshes have been already drained or are of comparatively small extent, the existence of large floating islands seems incredible, and has sometimes been treated as a fable, but no geographical fact is better established. Kohl (_Inseln und Marschen Schleswig-Holsteins_, iii, p. 309) reminds us that Pliny mentions among the wonders of Germany the floating islands, covered with trees, which met the Roman fleets at the mouths of the Elbe and the Weser. Our author speaks also of having visited, in the territory of Bremen, floating moors, bearing not only houses but whole villages. At low stages of the water these moors rest upon a bed of sand, but are raised from six to ten feet by the high water of spring, and remain afloat until, in the course of the summer, the water beneath is exhausted by evaporation and drainage, when they sink down upon the sand again. See _Appendix_, No. 40. Staring explains, in an interesting way, the whole growth, formation, and functions of floating fens or bogs, in his very valuable work, _De Bodem van_ _Nederland_, i, pp. 36-43. The substance of his account is as follows: The first condition for the growth of the plants which compose the substance of turf and the surface of the fens, is stillness of the water. Hence they are not found in running streams, nor in pools so large as to be subject to frequent agitation by the wind. For example, not a single plant grew in the open part of the Lake of Haarlem, and fens cease to form in all pools as soon as, by the cutting of the turf for fuel or other purposes, their area is sufficiently enlarged to be much acted on by wind. When still water above a yard deep is left undisturbed, aquatic plants of various genera, such us Nuphar, Nymphæa, Limnanthemum, Stratiotes, Polygonum, and Potamogeton, fill the bottom with roots and cover the surface with leaves. Many of the plants die every year, and prepare at the bottom a soil fit for the growth of a higher order of vegetation, Phragmites, Acorus, Sparganium, Rumex, Lythrum, Pedicularis, Spiræa, Polystichum, Comarum, Caltha, &c., &c. In the course of twenty or thirty years the muddy bottom is filled with roots of aquatic and marsh plants, which are lighter than water, and if the depth is great enough to give room for detaching this vegetable network, a couple of yards for example, it rises to the surface, bearing with it, of course, the soil formed above it by decay of stems and leaves. New genera now appear upon the mass, such as Carex, Menyanthes, and others, and soon thickly cover it. The turf has now acquired a thickness of from two to four feet, and is called in Groningen _lad_; in Friesland, _til_, _tilland_, or _drijftil_; in Overijssel, _krag_; and in Holland, _rietzod_. It floats about as driven by the wind, gradually increasing in thickness by the decay of its annual crops of vegetation, and in about half a century reaches the bottom and becomes fixed. If it has not been invaded in the mean time by men or cattle, trees and arborescent plants, Alnus, Salix, Myrica, &c. appear, and these contribute to hasten the attachment of the turf to the bottom, both by their weight and by sending their roots quite through into the ground. This is the regular method employed by nature for the gradual filling up of shallow lakes and pools, and converting them first into morass and then into dry land. Whenever therefore man removes the peat or turf, he exerts an injurious geographical agency, and, as I have already said, there is no doubt that the immense extension of the inland seas of Holland in modern times is owing to this and other human imprudences. "Hundreds of hectares of floating pastures," says our author, "which have nothing in their appearance to distinguish them from grass lands resting on solid bog, are found in Overijssel, in North Holland and near Utrecht. In short, they occur in all deep bogs, and wherever deep water is left long undisturbed." In one case, a floating island, which had attached itself to the shore, continued to float about for a long time after it was torn off by a flood, and was solid enough to keep a pond of fresh water upon it sweet, though the water in which it was swimming had become brackish from the irruption of the sea. After the hay is cut, cattle are pastured upon those islands, and they sometimes have large trees growing upon them. When the turf or peat has been cut, leaving water less than a yard deep, Equisetum limosum grows at once, and is followed by the second class of marsh plants mentioned above. Their roots do not become detached from the bottom in such shallow water, but form ordinary turf or peat. These processes are so rapid that a thickness of from three to six feet of turf is formed in half a century, and many men have lived to mow grass where they had fished in their boyhood, and to cut turf twice in the same spot. Captain Gilliss says that before Lake Taguataga in Chili was drained, there were in it islands composed of dead plants matted together to a thickness of from four to six feet, and with trees of medium size growing upon them. These islands floated before the wind "with their trees and browsing cattle."--_United States Naval Astronomical Expedition to the Southern Hemisphere_, i, pp. 16, 17. [322] A considerable work of this character is mentioned by Captain Gilliss as having been executed in Chili, a country to which we should have hardly looked for an improvement of such a nature. The Lake Taguataga was partially drained by cutting through a narrow ridge of land, not at the natural outlet, but upon one side of the lake, and eight thousand acres of land covered by it were gained for cultivation.--_U. S. Naval Astronomical Expedition to the Southern Hemisphere_, i, pp. 16, 17. [323] _Économie Rurale de la France_, p. 289. [324] In a note on a former page of this volume I noticed an observation of Jacini, to the effect that the great Italian lakes discharge themselves partly by infiltration beneath the hills which bound them. The amount of such infiltration must depend much upon the hydrostatic pressure on the walls of the lake basins, and, of course, the lowering of the surface of these lakes, by diminishing that pressure, would diminish also the infiltration. It is now proposed to lower the level of the Lake of Como some feet by deepening its outlet. It is possible that the effect of this may manifest itself in a diminution of the water in springs and _fontanili_ or artesian wells in Lombardy. See _Appendix_, No. 43. [325] Simonde, speaking of the Tuscan canals, observes: "But inundations are not the only damage caused by the waters to the plains of Tuscany. Raised, as the canals are, above the soil, the water percolates through their banks, penetrates every obstruction, and, in spite of all the efforts of industry, sterilizes and turns to morasses fields which nature and the richness of the soil seemed to have designed for the most abundant harvests. In ground thus pervaded with moisture, or rendered _cold_, as the Tuscans express it, by the filtration of the canal water, the vines and the mulberries, after having for a few years yielded fruit of a saltish taste, rot and perish. The wheat decays in the ground, or dies as soon as it sprouts. Winter crops are given up, and summer cultivation tried for a time; but the increasing humidity, and the saline matter communicated to the earth--which affects the taste of all its products, even to the grasses, which the cattle refuse to touch--at last compel the husbandman to abandon his fields, and leave uncultivated a soil that no longer repays his labor."--_Tableau de l'Agriculture Toscane._ pp. 11, 12. [326] _Physikalische Geographie_, p. 288. Draining by driving down stakes, mentioned in a note in a chapter on the woods, _ante_, is a process of the same nature. [327] "The simplest backwoodsman knows by experience that all cultivation is impossible in the neighborhood of bogs and marshes. Why is a crop near the borders of a marsh cut off by frost, while a field upon a hillock, a few stone's throws from it, is spared?"--LARS LEVI LÆSTADIUS, _Om Uppodlingar i Lappmarken_, pp. 69, 74. [328] Babinet condemns even the general draining of marshes. "Draining," says he, "has been much in fashion for some years. It has been a special object to dry and fertilize marshy grounds. My opinion has always been that excessive dryness is thus produced, and that other soils in the neighborhood are sterilized in proportion." [329] I ought perhaps to except the Mexicans and the Peruvians, whose arts and institutions are not yet shown to be historically connected with those of any more ancient people. The lamentable destruction of so many memorials of these tribes, by the ignorance and bigotry of the so-called Christian barbarians who conquered them, has left us much in the dark as to many points of their civilization; but they seem to have reached that stage where continued progress in knowledge and in power over nature is secure, and a few more centuries of independence might have brought them to originate for themselves most of the great inventions which the last four centuries have bestowed upon man. [330] The necessity of irrigation in the great alluvial plain of Northern Italy is partly explained by the fact that the superficial stratum of fine earth and vegetable mould is very extensively underlaid by beds of pebbles and gravel brought down by mountain torrents at a remote epoch. The water of the surface soil drains rapidly down into these loose beds, and passes off by subterranean channels to some unknown point of discharge; but this circumstance alone is not a sufficient solution. Is it not possible that the habits of vegetables, grown in countries where irrigation has been immemorially employed, have been so changed that they require water under conditions of soil and climate where their congeners, which have not been thus indulgently treated, do not? There are some atmospheric phenomena in Northern Italy, which an American finds it hard to reconcile with what he has observed in the United States. To an American eye, for instance, the sky of Piedmont, Lombardy, and the northern coast of the Mediterranean, is always whitish and curdled, and it never has the intensity and fathomless depth of the blue of his native heavens. And yet the heat of the sun's rays, as measured by sensation, and, at the same time, the evaporation, are greater than they would be with the thermometer at the same point in America. I have frequently felt in Italy, with the mercury below 60° Fahrenheit, and with a mottled and almost opaque sky, a heat of solar irradiation which I can compare to nothing but the scorching sensation experienced in America at a temperature twenty degrees higher, during the intervals between showers, or before a rain, when the clear blue of the sky seems infinite in depth and transparency. Such circumstances may create a necessity for irrigation where it would otherwise be superfluous, if not absolutely injurious. In speaking of the superior apparent clearness of the _sky_ in America, I confine myself to the concave vault of the heavens, and do not mean to assert that terrestrial objects are generally visible at greater distances in the United States than in Italy. Indeed I am rather disposed to maintain the contrary; for though I know that the lower strata of the atmosphere in Europe never equal in transparency the air near the earth in New Mexico, Peru, and Chili, yet I think the accidents of the coast line of the Riviera, as, for example, between Nice and La Spezia, and those of the incomparable Alpine panorama seen from Turin, are distinguishable at greater distances than they would be in the United States. [331] In Egypt, evaporation and absorption by the earth are so rapid, that all annual crops require irrigation during the whole period of their growth. As fast as the water retires by the subsidence of the annual inundation, the seed is sown upon the still moist uncovered soil, and irrigation begins at once. Upon the Nile, you hear the creaking of the water wheels, and sometimes the movement of steam pumps, through the whole night, while the poorer cultivators unceasingly ply the simple _shadoof_, or bucket-and-sweep, laboriously raising the water from trough to trough by as many as six or seven stages when the river is low. The bucket is of flexible leather, with a stiff rim, and is emptied into the trough, not by inverting it like a wooden bucket, but by putting the hand beneath and pushing the bottom up till the water all runs out over the brim, or, in other words, by turning the vessel inside out. The quantity of water thus withdrawn from the Nile is enormous. Most of this is evaporated directly from the surface or the superficial strata, but some moisture percolates down and oozes through the banks into the river again, while a larger quantity sinks till it joins the slow current of infiltration by which the Nile water pervades the earth of the valley to the distance, at some points, of not less than fifty miles. [332] "Forests," "woods," and "groves," are very frequently mentioned in the Old Testament as existing at particular places, and they are often referred to by way of illustration, as familiar objects. "Wood" is twice spoken of as a material in the New Testament, but otherwise--at least according to Cruden--not one of the above words occurs in that volume. This interesting fact, were other evidence wanting, would go far to prove that a great change had taken place in this respect between the periods when the Old Testament and the New were respectively composed; for the scriptural writers, and the speakers introduced into their narratives, are remarkable for their frequent allusions to the natural objects and the social and industrial habits which characterized their ages and their country. See _Appendix_, No. 44. Solomon anticipated Chevandier in the irrigation of forest trees: "I made me pools of water, to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees."--_Ecclesiastes_ ii, 6. [333] One of these, upon Mount Hor, two stories in height, is still in such preservation that I found not less than ten feet of water in it in the month of June, 1851. The brook Ain Musa, which runs through the city of Petra and finally disappears in the sands of Wadi el Araba, is a considerable river in winter, and the inhabitants of that town were obliged to excavate a tunnel through the rock near the right bank, just above the upper entrance of the Sik, to discharge a part of its swollen current. The sagacity of Dr. Robinson detected the necessity of this measure, though the tunnel, the mouth of which was hidden by brushwood, was not discovered till some time after his visit. I even noticed unequivocal remains of a sluice by which the water was diverted to the tunnel near the arch that crosses the Sik. Immense labor was also expended in widening the natural channel at several points below the town, to prevent the damming up and setting back of the water--a fact I believe not hitherto noticed by travellers. The Fellahheen above Petra still employ the waters of Ain Musa for irrigation, and in summer the superficial current is wholly diverted from its natural channel for that purpose. At this season, the bed of the brook, which is composed of pebbles, gravel, and sand, is dry in the Sik and through the town; but the infiltration is such that water is generally found by digging to a small depth in the channel. Observing these facts in a visit to Petra in the summer, I was curious to know whether the subterranean waters escaped again to daylight, and I followed the ravine below the town for a long distance. Not very far from the upper entrance of the ravine, arborescent vegetation appeared upon its bottom, and as soon as the ground was well shaded, a thread of water burst out. This was joined by others a little lower down, and, at the distance of a mile from the town, a strong current was formed and ran down toward Wadi el Araba. [334] The authorities differ as to the extent of the cultivable and the cultivated soil of Egypt. Lippincott's, or rather Thomas and Baldwin's, _Gazetteer_--a work of careful research--estimates "the whole area comprised in the valley [below the first cataract] and delta," at 11,000 square miles. Smith's _Dictionary of the Bible_, article "Egypt," says: "Egypt has a superficies of about 9,582 square geographical miles of soil, which the Nile either does or can water and fertilize. This computation includes the river and lakes as well as sundry tracts which can be inundated, and the whole space either cultivated or fit for cultivation is no more than about 5,626 square miles." By geographical mile is here meant, I suppose, the nautical mile of sixty to an equatorial degree, or about 2,025 yards. The whole area, then, by this estimate, is 12,682 square statute or English miles, that of the space "cultivated or fit for cultivation," 7,447. Smith's _Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography_, article "Ægyptus," gives 2,255 square miles as the area of the valley between Syene and the bifurcation of the Nile, exclusive of the Fayoom, which is estimated at 340. The area of the Delta is stated at 1,976 square miles between the main branches of the river, and, including the irrigated lands east and west of those branches, at 4,500 square miles. This latter work does not inform us whether these are statute or nautical miles, but nautical miles must be intended. Other writers give estimates differing considerably from those just cited. The latest computations I have seen are those in the first volume of Kremer's _Ægypten_, 1863. This author (pp. 6, 7) assigns to the Delta an area of 200 square German geographical miles (fifteen to the degree); to all Lower Egypt, including, of course, the Delta, 400 such miles. These numbers are equal, respectively, to 4,239 and 8,478 square statute miles, and the great lagoons are embraced in the areas computed. Upper Egypt (above Cairo) is said (p. 11) to contain 4,000,000 feddan of _culturfläche_, or cultivable land. The feddan is stated (p. 37) to contain 7,333 square piks, the pik being 75 centimètres, and it therefore corresponds almost exactly to the English acre. Hence, according to Kremer, the cultivable soil of Upper Egypt is 6,250 square statute miles, or twice as much as the whole area of the valley between Syene and the bifurcation of the Nile, according to Smith's _Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography_. I suspect that 4,000,000 feddan is erroneously given as the cultivable area of Upper Egypt alone, when in fact it should be taken for the arable surface of both Lower and Upper Egypt; for from the statistical tables in the same volume, it appears that 3,317,125 feddan, or 5,253 square statute miles, were cultivated, in both geographical divisions, in the year referred to in the tables, the date of which is not stated. The area which the Nile would now cover at high water, if left to itself, is greater than in ancient times, because the bed of the river has been elevated, and consequently the lateral spread of the inundation increased. See SMITH'S _Dictionary of Geography_, article "Ægyptus." But the industry of the Egyptians in the days of the Pharaohs and the Ptolomies carried the Nile-water to large provinces which have now been long abandoned and have relapsed into the condition of a desert. "Anciently," observes the writer of the article "Egypt" in Smith's _Dictionary of the Bible_, "2,735 square miles more [about 3,700 square statute miles] may have been cultivated. In the best days of Egypt, probably all the land was cultivated that could be made available for agricultural purposes, and hence we may estimate the ancient arable area of that country at not less than 11,000 square statute miles, or fully double its present extent." [335] A canal has been constructed, and new ones are in progress, to convey water from the Nile to the city of Suez, and to various points on the line of the ship canal, with the double purpose of supplying fresh water to the inhabitants and laborers, and of irrigating the adjacent soil. The area of land which may be thus reclaimed and fertilized is very large, but the actual quantity which it will be found economically expedient to bring under cultivation cannot now be determined. [336] The so-called spring at Heliopolis is only a thread of water infiltrated from the Nile or the canals. [337] The date and the doum palm, the _sont_ and many other acacias, the caroub, the sycamore, and other trees, grow well in Egypt without irrigation, and would doubtless spread through the entire valley in a few years. [338] Wilkinson has shown that the cultivable soil of Egypt has not been diminished by encroachment of the desert sands, or otherwise, but that, on the contrary, it must have been increased since the age of the Pharaohs. The Gotha _Almanac_ for 1862 states the population of Egypt in 1859 at 5,125,000 souls; but this must be a great exaggeration, even supposing the estimate to include the inhabitants of Nubia, and of much other territory not geographically belonging to Egypt. In general, the population of that country has been estimated at something more than three millions, or about six hundred to the square mile; but with a better government and better social institutions, the soil would sustain a much greater number, and in fact it is believed that in ancient times its inhabitants were twice, perhaps even thrice, as numerous as at present. Wilkinson (_Handbook for Travellers in Egypt_, p. 10) observes that the total population, which two hundred years ago was estimated at 4,000,000, amounted till lately only to about 1,800,000 souls, having been reduced since 1800 from 2,500,000 to that number. [339] Ritter supposes Egypt to have been a sandy desert when it was first occupied by man. "The first inhabitant of the sandy valley of the Nile was a desert dweller, as his neighbors right and left, the Libyan, the nomade Arab, still are. But the civilized people of Egypt transformed, by canals, the waste into the richest granary of the world; they liberated themselves from the shackles of the rock and sand desert, in the midst of which, by a wise distribution of the fluid through the solid geographical form, by irrigation in short, they created a region of culture most rich in historical monuments."--_Einleitung zur allgemeinen vergleichenden Geographie_, pp. 165, 166. This view seems to me highly improbable; for though, by canals and embankments, man has done much to modify the natural distribution of the waters of the Nile, and possibly has even transferred its channel from one side of the valley to the other, yet the annual inundation is not his work, and the river must have overflowed its banks and carried spontaneous vegetation with its waters, as well before as since Egypt was first occupied by the human family. There is, indeed, some reason to suppose that man lived upon the banks of the Nile when its channel was much lower, and the spread of its inundations much narrower than at present; but wherever its flood reached, there the forest would propagate itself, and its shores are much more likely to have been morasses than sands. [340] _Memorie sui progetti per l'estensione dell' Irrigazione, etc., il Politecnico_, for January, 1863, p. 6. [341] NIEL, _L'Agriculture des États Sardes_, p. 232. [342] NIEL, _Agriculture des États Sardes_, p. 237. Lombardini's computation just given allows eighty-one cubic mètres per day to the hectare, which, supposing the season of irrigation to be one hundred days, is equal to a precipitation of thirty-two inches. But in Lombardy, water is applied to some crops during a longer period than one hundred days; and in the _marcite_ it flows over the ground even in winter. According to Boussingault (_Économie Rurale_, ii, p. 246) grass grounds ought to receive, in Germany, twenty-one centimètres of water per week, and with less than half that quantity it is not advisable to incur the expense of supplying it. The ground is irrigated twenty-five or thirty times, and if the full quantity of twenty-one centimètres is applied, it receives about two hundred inches of water, or six times the total amount of precipitation. Puvis, quoted by Boussingault, after much research comes to the conclusion that a proper quantity is twenty centimètres applied twenty-five or thirty times, which corresponds with the estimate just stated. Puvis adds--and, as our author thinks, with reason--that this amount might be doubled without disadvantage. Boussingault observes that rain water is vastly more fertilizing than the water of irrigating canals, and therefore the supply of the latter must be greater. This is explained partly by the different character of the substances held in solution or suspension by the waters of the earth and of the sky, partly by the higher temperature of the latter, and, possibly, partly also by the mode of application--the rain being finely divided in its fall or by striking plants on the ground, river water flowing in a continuous sheet. The temperature of the water is thought even more important than its composition. The sources which irrigate the _marcite_ of Lombardy--meadows so fertile that less than an acre furnishes grass for a cow the whole year--are very warm. The ground watered by them never freezes, and a first crop, for soiling, is cut from it in January or February. The Canal Cavour, just now commenced--which is to take its supply from the Po at Chivasso, fourteen or fifteen miles below Turin--will furnish water of much higher fertilizing power than that derived from the Dora Baltea and the Sesia, both because it is warmer, and because it transports a more abundant and a richer sediment than the latter streams, which are fed by Alpine icefields and melting snows, and which flow, for long distances, in channels ground smooth and bare by ancient glaciers, and not now contributing much vegetable mould or fine slime to their waters. [343] It belongs rather to agriculture than to geography to discuss the quality of the crops obtained by irrigation, or the permanent effects produced by it on the productiveness of the soil. There is no doubt, however, that all crops which can be raised without watering are superior in flavor and in nutritive power to those grown by the aid of irrigation. Garden vegetables, particularly, profusely watered, are so insipid as to be hardly eatable. Wherever irrigation is practised, there is an almost irresistible tendency, especially among ignorant cultivators, to carry it to excess; and in Piedmont and Lombardy, if the supply of water is abundant, it is so liberally applied as sometimes not only to injure the quality of the product, but to drown the plants and diminish the actual weight of the crop. Professor Liebig, in his _Modern Agriculture_, says: "There is not to be found in chemistry a more wonderful phenomenon, one which more confounds all human wisdom, than is presented by the soil of a garden or field. By the simplest experiment, any one may satisfy himself that rain water filtered through field or garden soil does not dissolve out a trace of potash, silicic acid, ammonia, or phosphoric acid. The soil does not give up to the water one particle of the food of plants which it contains. The most continuous rains cannot remove from the field, except mechanically, any of the essential constituents of its fertility." "The soil not only retains firmly all the food of plants which is actually in it, but its power to preserve all that may be useful to them extends much farther. If rain or other water holding in solution ammonia, potash, and phosphoric and silicic acids, be brought in contact with soil, these substances disappear almost immediately from the solution; the soil withdraws them from the water. Only such substances are completely withdrawn by the soil as are indispensable articles of food for plants; all others remain wholly or in part in solution." The first of the paragraphs just quoted is not in accordance with the alleged experience of agriculturists in those parts of Italy where irrigation is most successfully applied. They believe that the constituents of vegetable growth are washed out of the soil by excessive and long-continued watering. They consider it also established as a fact of observation, that water which has flowed through or over rich ground is far more valuable for irrigation than water from the same source, which has not been impregnated with fertilizing substances by passing through soils containing them; and, on the other hand, that water, rich in the elements of vegetation, parts with them in serving to irrigate a poor soil, and is therefore less valuable as a fertilizer of lower grounds to which it may afterward be conducted. The practice of irrigation--except in mountainous countries where springs and rivulets are numerous--is attended with very serious economical, social, and political evils. The construction of canals and their immensely ramified branches, and the grading and scarping of the ground to be watered, are always expensive operations, and they very often require an amount of capital which can be commanded only by the state, by moneyed corporations, or by very wealthy proprietors; the capacity of the canals must be calculated with reference to the area intended to be irrigated, and when they and their branches are once constructed, it is very difficult to extend them, or to accommodate any of their original arrangements to changes in the condition of the soil, or in the modes or objects of cultivation; the flow of the water being limited by the abundance of the source or the capacity of the canals, the individual proprietor cannot be allowed to withdraw water at will, according to his own private interest or convenience, but both the time and the quantity of supply must be regulated by a general system applicable, as far as may be, to the whole area irrigated by the same canal, and every cultivator must conform his industry to a plan which may be quite at variance with his special objects or with his views of good husbandry. The clashing interests and the jealousies of proprietors depending on the same means of supply are a source of incessant contention and litigation, and the caprices or partialities of the officers who control, or of contractors who farm the canals, lead not unfrequently to ruinous injustice toward individual landholders. These circumstances discourage the division of the soil into small properties, and there is a constant tendency to the accumulation of large estates of irrigated land in the hands of great capitalists, and consequently to the dispossession of the small cultivators, who pass from the condition of owners of the land to that of hireling tillers. The farmers are no longer yeomen, but peasants. Having no interest in the soil which composes their country, they are virtually expatriated, and the middle class, which ought to constitute the real physical and moral strength of the land, ceases to exist as a rural estate, and is found only among the professional, the mercantile, and the industrial population of the cities. [344] BOUSSINGAULT, _Économie Rurale_, ii, pp. 248, 249. [345] The cultivation of rice is so prejudicial to health everywhere that nothing but the necessities of a dense population can justify the sacrifice of life it costs in countries where it is pursued. It has been demonstrated by actual experiment, that even in Mississippi, cotton can be advantageously raised by the white man without danger to health; and in fact, a great deal of the cotton brought to the Vicksburg market for some years past has been grown exclusively by white labor. There is no reason why the cultivation of cotton should be a more unhealthy occupation in America than it is in other countries where it was never dreamed of as dangerous, and no well-informed American, in the Slave States or out of them, believes that the abolition of slavery in the South would permanently diminish the cotton crop of those States. [346] _L'Italie à propos de l'Exposition de Paris_, p. 92. [347] The very valuable memoirs of Lombardini, _Cenni idrografi sulla Lombardia, Intorno al sistema idraulico del Po_, and other papers on similar subjects, were published in periodicals little known out of Italy; and the _Idraulica Pratica_ of Mari has not, I believe, been translated into French or English. These works, and other sources of information equally inaccessible out of Italy, have been freely used by Baumgarten, in a memoir entitled _Notice sur les Rivières de la Lombardie_, in the _Annales des Ponts et Chaussées_, 1847, 1er sémestre, pp. 129 _et seqq._, and by Dumont, _Des Travaux Publics dans leurs Rapports avec l'Agriculture_, note, viii, pp. 269 _et seqq._ For the convenience of my readers, I shall use these two articles instead of the original authorities on which they are founded. [348] Sir John F. W. Herschel, citing Talabot as his authority, _Physical Geography_ (24). In an elaborate paper on "Irrigation," printed in the _United States Patent Report_ for 1860, p. 169, it is stated that the volume of water poured into the Mediterranean by the Nile in twenty-four hours, at low water, is 150,566,392,368 cubic mètres; at high water, 705,514,667,440 cubic mètres. Taking the mean of these two numbers, the average daily delivery of the Nile would be 428,081,059,808 cubic mètres, or more than 550,000,000,000 cubic yards. There is some enormous mistake, probably a typographical error, in this statement, which makes the delivery of the Nile seventeen hundred times as great as computed by Talabot, and many times more than any physical geographer has ever estimated the quantity supplied by all the rivers on the face of the globe. [349] The Drac, a torrent emptying into the Isère a little below Grenoble, has discharged 5,200, the Isère, which receives it, 7,800 cubic yards, and the Durance an equal quantity, per second.--MONTLUISANT, _Note sur les Desséchements, etc., Annales des Ponts et Chaussées_, 1833, 2me sémestre, p. 288. The floods of some other French rivers scarcely fall behind those of the Rhone. The Loire, above Roanne, has a basin of 2,471 square miles, or about twice and a half the area of that of the Ardèche. In some of its inundations it has delivered above 9,500 cubic yards per second.--BELGRAND, _De l'Influence des Forêts, etc., Annales des Ponts et Chaussées_, 1854, 1er sémestre, p. 15, note. [350] The original forests in which the basin of the Ardèche was rich have been rapidly disappearing, for many years, and the terrific violence of the inundations which are now laying it waste is ascribed, by the ablest investigators, to that cause. In an article inserted in the _Annales Forestières_ for 1843, quoted by Hohenstein, _Der Wald_, p. 177, it is said that about one third of the area of the department had already become absolutely barren, in consequence of clearing, and that the destruction of the woods was still going on with great rapidity. New torrents were constantly forming, and they were estimated to have covered more than 70,000 acres of good land, or one eighth of the surface of the department, with sand and gravel. [351] "There is no example of a coincidence between great floods of the Ardèche and of the Rhone, all the known inundations of the former having taken place when the latter was very low."--MARDIGNY, _Mémoire sur les Inondations des Rivières de l'Ardèche_, p. 26. I take this occasion to acknowledge myself indebted to the interesting memoir just quoted for all the statements I make respecting the floods of the Ardèche, except the comparison of the volume of its waters with that of the Nile, and the computation with respect to the capacity required for reservoirs to be constructed in its basin. [352] In some cases where the bed of rapid Alpine streams is composed of very hard rock--as is the case in many of the valleys once filled by ancient glaciers--and especially where they are fed by glaciers not overhung by crumbling cliffs, the channel may remain almost unchanged for centuries. This is observable in many of the tributaries of the Dora Baltea, which drains the valley of the Aosta. Several of these small rivers are spanned by more or less perfect Roman bridges--one of which, that over the Lys at Pont St. Martin, is still in good repair and in constant use. An examination of the rocks on which the abutments of this and some other similar structures are founded, and of the channels of the rivers they cross, shows that the beds of the streams cannot have been much elevated or depressed since the bridges were built. In other cases, as at the outlet of the Val Tournanche at Chatillon, where a single rib of a Roman bridge still remains, there is nothing to forbid the supposition that the deep excavation of the channel may have been partly effected at a much later period. See _App._, No. 45. [353] _Mémoire sur les Inondations des Rivières de l'Ardèche_, p. 16. "The terrific roar, the thunder of the raging torrents proceeds principally from the stones which are rolled along in the bed of the stream. This movement is attended with such powerful attrition that, in the Southern Alps, the atmosphere of valleys where the limestone contains bitumen, has, at the time of floods, the marked bituminous smell produced by rubbing pieces of such limestone together."--WESSELY, _Die Oesterreichischien Alpenländer_, i, p. 113. See _Appendix_, No. 48. [354] FRISI, _Del modo di regolare i Fiumi e i Torrenti_, pp. 4-19. [355] SURELL, _Étude sur les Torrents_, pp. 31-36. [356] CHAMPION, _Les Inondations en France_, iii, p. 156, note. [357] Notwithstanding this favorable circumstance, the damage done by the inundation of 1840 in the valley of the Rhone was estimated at seventy-two millions of francs.--CHAMPION, _Les Inondations en France_, iv, p. 124. Several smaller floods of the Rhone, experienced at a somewhat earlier season of the year in 1846, occasioned a loss of forty-five millions of francs. "What if," says Dumont, "instead of happening in October, that is between harvest and seedtime, they had occurred before the crops were secured? The damage would have been counted by hundreds of millions."--_Des Travaux Publics_, p. 99, note. [358] TROY, _Étude sur le Reboisement des Montagnes_, §§ 6, 7, 21. [359] For accounts of damage from the bursting of reservoirs, see VALLÉE, _Mémoire sur les Reservoirs d'Alimentation des Canaux, Annales des Ponts et Chaussées_, 1833, 1er sémestre, p. 261. [360] Some geographical writers apply the term _bifurcation_ exclusively to this intercommunication of rivers; others, with more etymological propriety, use it to express the division of great rivers into branches at the head of their deltas. A technical term is wanting to designate the phenomenon mentioned in the text. [361] MARDIGNY, _Mémoire sur les Inondations de l'Ardèche_, p. 13. [362] In the case of rivers flowing through wide alluvial plains and much inclined to shift their beds, like the Po, the embankments often leave a very wide space between them. The dikes of the Po are sometimes three or four miles apart.--BAUMGARTEN, after LOMBARDINI, _Annales des Ponts et Chaussées_, 1847, 1er sémestre, p. 149. [363] It appears from the investigations of Lombardini that the rate of elevation of the bed of the Po has been much exaggerated by earlier writers, and in some parts of its course the change is so slow that its level may be regarded as nearly constant.--BAUMGARTEN, volume before cited, pp. 175, et seqq. See _Appendix_, No. 49. If the western coast of the Adriatic is undergoing a secular depression, as many circumstances concur to prove, the sinking of the plain near the coast may both tend to prevent the deposit of sediment in the river bed by increasing the velocity of its current, and compensate the elevation really produced by deposits, so that no sensible elevation would result, though much gravel and slime might be let fall. [364] To secure the city of Sacramento in California from the inundations to which it is subject, a dike or levée was built upon the bank of the river and raised to an elevation above that of the highest known floods, and it was connected, below the town, with grounds lying considerably above the river. On one occasion a breach in the dike occurred above the town at a very high stage of the flood. The water poured in behind it, and overflowed the lower part of the city, which remained submerged for some time after the river had retired to its ordinary level, because the dike, which had been built to keep the water _out_, now kept it _in_. According to Arthur Young, on the lower Po, where the surface of the river has been elevated much above the level of the adjacent fields by diking, the peasants in his time frequently endeavored to secure their grounds against threatened devastation through the bursting of the dikes, by crossing the river when the danger became imminent and opening a cut in the opposite bank, thus saving their own property by flooding their neighbors'. He adds, that at high water the navigation of the river was absolutely interdicted, except to mail and passenger boats, and that the guards fired upon all others; the object of the prohibition being to prevent the peasants from resorting to this measure of self-defence.--_Travels in Italy and Spain_, Nov. 7, 1789. In a flood of the Po in 1839, a breach of the embankment took place at Bonizzo. The water poured through and inundated 116,000 acres, or 181 square miles, of the plain, to the depth of from twenty to twenty-three feet in its lower parts.--BAUMGARTEN, after LOMBARDINI, volume before cited, p. 152. [365] MOYENS _de forcer les Torrents de rendre une partie du sol qu'ils ravagent, et d'empêcher les grandes Inondations_. [366] The effect of trees and other detached obstructions in checking the flow of water is particularly noticed by Palissy in his essay on _Waters and Fountains_, p. 173, edition of 1844. "There be," says he, "in divers parts of France, and specially at Nantes, wooden bridges, where, to break the force of the waters and of the floating ice, which might endamage the piers of the said bridges, they have driven upright timbers into the bed of the rivers above the said piers, without the which they should abide but little. And in like wise, the trees which be planted along the mountains do much deaden the violence of the waters that flow from them." [367] I do not mean to say that all rivers excavate their own valleys, for I have no doubt that in the majority of cases such depressions of the surface originate in higher geological causes, and hence the valley makes the river, not the river the valley. But even if we suppose a basin of the hardest rock to be elevated at once, completely formed, from the submarine abyss where it was fashioned, the first shower of rain that falls upon it after it rises to the air, while its waters will follow the lowest lines of the surface, will cut those lines deeper, and so on with every successive rain. The disintegrated rock from the upper part of the basin forms the lower by alluvial deposit, which is constantly transported farther and farther until the resistance of gravitation and cohesion balances the mechanical force of the running water. Thus plains, more or less steeply inclined, are formed, in which the river is constantly changing its bed, according to the perpetually varying force and direction of its currents, modified as they are by ever-fluctuating conditions. Thus the Po is said to have long inclined to move its channel southward in consequence of the superior mechanical force of its northern affluents. A diversion of these tributaries from their present beds, so that they should enter the main stream at other points and in different directions, might modify the whole course of that great river. But the mechanical force of the tributary is not the only element of its influence on the course of the principal stream. The deposits it lodges in the bed of the latter, acting as simple obstructions or causes of diversion, are not less important agents of change. [368] The distance to which a new obstruction to the flow of a river, whether by a dam or by a deposit in its channel, will retard its current, or, in popular phrase, "set back the water," is a problem of more difficult practical solution than almost any other in hydraulics. The elements--such as straightness or crookedness of channel, character of bottom and banks, volume and previous velocity of current, mass of water far above the obstruction, extraordinary drought or humidity of seasons, relative extent to which the river may be affected by the precipitation in its own basin, and by supplies received through subterranean channels from sources so distant as to be exposed to very different meteorological influences, effects of clearing and other improvements always going on in new countries--are all extremely difficult, and some of them impossible, to be known and measured. In the American States, very numerous watermills have been erected within a few years, and there is scarcely a stream in the settled portion of the country which has not several milldams upon it. When a dam is raised--a process which the gradual diminution of the summer currents renders frequently necessary--or when a new dam is built, it often happens that the meadows above are flowed, or that the retardation of the stream extends back to the dam next above. This leads to frequent lawsuits. From the great uncertainty of the facts, the testimony is more conflicting in these than in any other class of cases, and the obstinacy with which "water causes" are disputed has become proverbial. The subterranean courses of the waters form a subject very difficult of investigation, and it is only recently that its vast importance has been recognized. The interesting observations of Schmidt on the caves of the Karst and their rivers throw much light on the underground hydrography of limestone districts, and serve to explain how, in the low peninsula of Florida, rivers, which must have their sources in mountains a hundred or more miles distant, can pour out of the earth in currents large enough to admit of steamboat navigation to their very basins of eruption. Artesian wells are revealing to us the existence of subterranean lakes and rivers sometimes superposed one above another in successive sheets; but the still more important subject of the absorption of water by earth and its transmission by infiltration is yet wrapped in great obscurity. [369] The sediment of the Po has filled up some lagoons and swamps in its delta, and converted them into comparatively dry land; but, on the other hand, the retardation of the current from the lengthening of its course, and the diminution of its velocity by the deposits at its mouth, have forced its waters at some higher points to spread in spite of embankments, and thus fertile fields have been turned into unhealthy and unproductive marshes.--See BOTTER, _Sulla condizione dei Terreni Maremmani nel Ferrarese. Annali di Agricoltura, etc._, Fasc. v, 1863. [370] Deep borings have not detected any essential difference in the quantity or quality of the deposits of the Nile for forty or fifty, or, as some compute, for a hundred centuries. From what vast store of rich earth does this river derive the three or four inches of fertilizing material which it spreads over the soil of Egypt every hundred years? Not from the White Nile, for that river drops nearly all its suspended matter in the broad expansions and slow current of its channel south of the tenth degree of north latitude. Nor does it appear that much sediment is contributed by the Bahr-el-Azrek, which flows through forests for a great part of its course. I have been informed by an old European resident of Egypt who is very familiar with the Upper Nile, that almost the whole of the earth with which its waters are charged is brought down by the Takazzé. [371] It is very probably true that, as Lombardini supposes, the plain of Lombardy was anciently covered with forests and morasses (Baumgarten, l. c. p. 156); but, had the Po remained unconfined, its deposits would have raised its banks as fast as its bed, and there is no obvious reason why this plain should be more marshy than other alluvial flats traversed by great rivers. Its lower course would possibly have become more marshy than at present, but the banks of its middle and upper course would have been in a better condition for agricultural use than they now are. [372] From daily measurements during a period of fourteen years--1827 to 1840--the mean delivery of the Po at Ponte Lagoscuro, below the entrance of its last tributary, is found to be 1,720 cubic mètres, or 60,745 cubic feet, per second. Its smallest delivery is 186 cubic mètres, or 6,569 cubic feet, its greatest 5,156 cubic mètres, or 182,094 cubic feet.--BAUMGARTEN, following LOMBARDINI, volume before cited, p. 159. The average delivery of the Nile being 101,000 cubic feet per second, it follows that the Po contributes to the Adriatic six tenths as much water as the Nile to the Mediterranean--a result which will surprise most readers. [373] We are quite safe in supposing that the valley of the Nile has been occupied by man at least 5,000 years. The dates of Egyptian chronology are uncertain, but I believe no inquirer estimates the age of the great pyramids at less than forty centuries, and the construction of such works implies an already ancient civilization. [374] There are many dikes in Egypt, but they are employed in but a very few cases to exclude the waters of the inundation. Their office is to retain the water received at high Nile into the inclosures formed by them until it shall have deposited its sediment or been drawn out for irrigation; and they serve also as causeways for interior communication during the floods. The Egyptian dikes, therefore, instead of forcing the river, like those of the Po, to transport its sediment to the sea, help to retain the slime, which, if the flow of the current over the land were not obstructed, might be carried back into the channel, and at last to the Mediterranean. [375] The Mediterranean front of the Delta may be estimated at one hundred and fifty miles in length. Two cubic miles of earth would more than fill up the lagoons on the coast, and the remaining ten, even allowing the mean depth of the water to be twenty fathoms, which is beyond the truth, would have been sufficient to extend the coast line about three miles farther seaward, and thus, including the land gained by the filling up of the lagoons, to add more than five hundred square miles to the area of Egypt. Nor is this all; for the retardation of the current, by lengthening the course and consequently diminishing the inclination of the channel, would have increased the deposit of suspended matter, and proportionally augmented the total effect of the embankment. [376] For the convenience of navigation, and to lessen the danger of inundation by giving greater directness, and, of course, rapidity to the current, bends in rivers are sometimes cut off and winding channels made straight. This process has the same general effects as diking, and therefore cannot be employed without many of the same results. This practice has often been resorted to on the Mississippi with advantage to navigation, but it is quite another question whether that advantage has not been too dearly purchased by the injury to the banks at lower points. If we suppose a river to have a navigable course of 1,600 miles as measured by its natural channel, with a descent of 800 feet, we shall have a fall of six inches to the mile. If the length of channel be reduced to 1,200 miles by cutting off bends, the fall is increased to eight inches per mile. The augmentation of velocity consequent upon this increase of inclination is not computable without taking into account other elements, such as depth and volume of water, diminution of direct resistance, and the like, but in almost any supposable case, it would be sufficient to produce great effects on the height of floods, the deposit of sediment in the channel, on the shores, and at the outlet, the erosion of banks and other points of much geographical importance. The Po, in those parts of its course where the embankments leave a wide space between, often cuts off bends in its channel and straightens its course. These short cuts are called _salti_, or leaps, and sometimes reduce the distance between their termini by several miles. In 1777, the salto of Cottaro shortened a distance of 7,000 mètres by 5,000, or, in other words, reduced the length of the channel more than three miles; and in 1807 and 1810 the two salti of Mezzanone effected a reduction of distance to the amount of between seven and eight miles.--BAUMGARTEN, l. c. p. 38. [377] The fact, that the mixing of salt and fresh water in coast marshes and lagoons is deleterious to the sanitary condition of the vicinity, seems almost universally admitted, though the precise reason why a mixture of both should be more injurious than either alone, is not altogether clear. It has been suggested that the admission of salt water to the lagoons and rivers kills many fresh water plants and animals, while the fresh water is equally fatal to many marine organisms, and that the decomposition of the remains originates poisonous miasmata. Other theories however have been proposed. The whole subject is fully and ably discussed by Dr. Salvagnoli Marchetti in the appendix to his valuable _Rapporto sul Bonificamento delle Maremme Toscane_. See also the _Memorie Economico-Statistiche sulle Maremme Toscane_, of the same author. [378] This curious fact is thus stated in the preface to Fossombroni (_Memorie sopra la Val di Chiana_, edition of 1835, p. xiii), from which also I borrow most of the data hereafter given with respect to that valley: "It is perhaps not universally known, that the swallows, which come from the north [south] to spend the summer in our climate, do not frequent marshy districts with a malarious atmosphere. A proof of the restoration of salubrity in the Val di Chiana is furnished by these aerial visitors, which had never before been seen in those low grounds, but which have appeared within a few years at Forano and other points similarly situated." Is the air of swamps destructive to the swallows, or is their absence in such localities merely due to the want of human habitations, near which this half-domestic bird loves to breed, perhaps because the house fly and other insects which follow man are found only in the vicinity of his dwellings? In almost all European countries, the swallow is protected, by popular opinion or superstition, from the persecution to which almost all other birds are subject. It is possible that this respect for the swallow is founded upon ancient observation of the fact just stated on the authority of Fossombroni. Ignorance mistakes the effect for the cause, and the absence of this bird may have been supposed to be the occasion, not the consequence, of the unhealthiness of particular localities. This opinion once adopted, the swallow would become a sacred bird, and in process of time fables and legends would be invented to give additional sanction to the prejudices which protected it. The Romans considered the swallow as consecrated to the Penates, or household gods, and according to Peretti (_Le Serate del Villaggio_, p. 168) the Lombard peasantry think it a sin to kill them, because they are _le gallinelle del Signore_, the chickens of the Lord. The following little Tuscan _rispetto_ from Gradi (_Racconti Popolari_, p. 33) well expresses the feeling of the peasantry toward this bird: O rondinella che passi lo mare Torna 'ndietro, vo' dirti du' parole; Dammi 'na penna delle tue bell' ale, Vo' scrivere 'na lettera al mi' amore; E quando l' avrò scritta 'n carta bella, Ti renderò la penna, o rondinella; E quando l' avrò scritta 'n carta bianca, Ti renderò la penna che ti manca; E quando l' avrò scritta in carta d' oro, Ti renderò la penna al tuo bel volo. O swallow, that fliest beyond the sea, Turn back! I would fain have a word with thee. A feather oh grant, from thy wing so bright! For I to my sweetheart a letter would write; And when it is written on paper fine I'll give thee, O swallow, that feather of thine; --On paper so white, and I'll give thee back, O pretty swallow, the pen thou dost lack; --On paper of gold, and then I'll restore To thy beautiful pinion the feather once more. Popular traditions and superstitions are so closely connected with localities, that, though an emigrant people may carry them to a foreign land, they seldom survive a second generation. The swallow, however, is still protected in New England by prejudices of transatlantic origin; and I remember hearing, in my childhood, that if the swallows were killed, the cows would give bloody milk. [379] MOROZZI, _Dello stato antico e moderno del fiume Arno_, ii, p. 42. [380] MOROZZI, _Dello stato, etc., dell' Arno_, ii, pp. 39, 40. [381] Torricelli thus expressed himself on this point: "If we content ourselves with what nature has made practicable to human industry, we shall endeavor to control, as far as possible, the outlets of these streams, which, by raising the bed of the valley with their deposits, will realize the fable of the Tagus and the Pactolus, and truly roll golden sands for him that is wise enough to avail himself of them."--FOSSOMBRONI, _Memorie sopra la Val di Chiana_, p. 219. [382] Arrian observes that at the junction of the Hydaspes and the Acesines, both of which are described as wide streams, "one very narrow river is formed of two confluents, and its current is very swift."--ARRIAN, _Alex. Anab._, vi, 4. [383] This difficulty has been remedied as to one important river of the Maremma, the Pecora, by clearings recently executed along its upper course. "The condition of this marsh and of its affluents are now, November, 1859, much changed, and it is advisable to prosecute its improvement by deposits. In consequence of the extensive felling of the woods upon the plains, hills, and mountains of the territory of Massa and Scarlino, within the last ten years, the Pecora and other affluents of the marsh receive, during the rains, water abundantly charged with slime, so that the deposits within the first division of the marsh are already considerable, and we may now hope to see the whole marsh and pond filled up in a much shorter time than we had a right to expect before 1850. This circumstance totally changes the terms of the question, because the filling of the marsh and pond, which then seemed almost impossible on account of the small amount of sediment deposited by the Pecora, has now become practicable."--SALVAGNOLI, _Rapporto sul Bonificamento delle Maremme Toscane_, pp. li, lii. The annual amount of sediment brought down by the rivers of the Maremma is computed at more than 12,000,000 cubic yards, or enough to raise an area of four square miles one yard. Between 1830 and 1859 more than three times that quantity was deposited in the marsh and shoal water lake of Castiglione alone.--SALVAGNOLI, _Raccolta di Documenti_, pp. 74, 75. [384] The tide rises ten inches on the coast of Tuscany. See Memoir by FANTONI, in the appendix to SALVAGNOLI, _Rapporto_, p. 189. On the tides of the Mediterranean, see BÖTTGER, _Das Mittelmeer_, p. 190. Not having Admiral Smyth's Mediterranean--on which Böttger's work is founded--at hand, I do not know how far credit is due to the former author for the matter contained in the chapter referred to. [385] In Catholic countries, the discipline of the church requires a _meagre_ diet at certain seasons, and as fish is not flesh, there is a great demand for that article of food at those periods. For the convenience of monasteries and their patrons, and as a source of pecuniary emolument to ecclesiastical establishments and sometimes to lay proprietors, great numbers of artificial fish ponds were created during the Middle Ages. They were generally shallow pools formed by damming up the outlet of marshes, and they were among the most fruitful sources of endemic disease, and of the peculiar malignity of the epidemics which so often ravaged Europe in those centuries. These ponds, in religious hands, were too sacred to be infringed upon for sanitary purposes, and when belonging to powerful lay lords they were almost as inviolable. The rights of fishery were a standing obstacle to every proposal of hydraulic improvement, and to this day large and fertile districts in Southern Europe remain sickly and almost unimproved and uninhabited, because the draining of the ponds upon them would reduce the income of proprietors who derive large profits by supplying the faithful, in Lent, with fish, and with various species of waterfowl which, though very fat, are, ecclesiastically speaking, meagre. [386] Macchiavelli advised the Government of Tuscany "to provide that men should restore the wholesomeness of the soil by cultivation, and purify the air by fires."--SALVAGNOLI, _Memorie_, p. 111. [387] GIORGINI, _Sur les causes de l'Insalubrité de l'air dans le voisinage des marais, etc., lue à l'Académie des Sciences à Paris_, le 12 Juillet, 1825. Reprinted in SALVAGNOLI, _Rapporto, etc._, appendice, p. 5, _et seqq._ [388] See the careful estimates of ROSET, _Moyens de forcer les Torrents, etc._, pp. 42, 44. [389] Rivers which transport sand, gravel, pebbles, heavy mineral matter in short, tend to raise their own beds; those charged only with fine, light earth, to cut them deeper. The prairie rivers of the West have deep channels, because the mineral matter they carry down is not heavy enough to resist the impulse of even a moderate current, and those tributaries of the Po which deposit their sediment in the lakes--the Ticino, the Adda, the Oglio, and the Mincio--flow, in deep cuts, for the same reason.--BAUMGARTEN, l. c., p. 132. [390] "The stream carries this mud, &c., at first farther to the east, and only lets it fall where the force of the current becomes weakened. This explains the continual advance of the land seaward along the Syrian coast, in consequence of which Tyre and Sidon no longer lie on the shore, but some distance inland. That the Nile contributes to this deposit may easily be seen, even by the unscientific observer, from the stained and turbid character of the water for many miles from its mouths. A somewhat alarming phenomenon was observed in this neighborhood in 1801, on board the English frigate Romulus, Captain Culverhouse, on a voyage from Acre to Abukir. Dr. E. D. Clarke, who was a passenger on board this ship, thus describes it: "'26th July.--To-day, Sunday, we accompanied the captain to the wardroom to dine, as usual, with his officers. While we were at table, we heard the sailors who were throwing the lead suddenly cry out: "Three and a half!" The captain sprang up, was on deck in an instant, and, almost at the same moment, the ship slackened her way, and veered about. Every sailor on board supposed she would ground at once. Meanwhile, however, as the ship came round, the whole surface of the water was seen to be covered with thick, black mud, which extended so far that it appeared like an island. At the same time, actual land was nowhere to be seen--not even from the masthead--nor was any notice of such a shoal to be found on any chart on board. The fact is, as we learned afterward, that a stratum of mud, stretching from the mouths of the Nile for many miles out into the open sea, forms a movable deposit along the Egyptian coast. If this deposit is driven forward by powerful currents, it sometimes rises to the surface, and disturbs the mariner by the sudden appearance of shoals where the charts lead him to expect a considerable depth of water. But these strata of mud are, in reality, not in the least dangerous. As soon as a ship strikes them they break up at once, and a frigate may hold her course in perfect safety where an inexperienced pilot, misled by his soundings, would every moment expect to be stranded.'"--BÖTTGER, _Das Mittelmeer_, pp. 188, 189. [391] The caves of Carniola receive considerable rivers from the surface of the earth, which cannot, in all cases, be identified with streams flowing out of them at other points, and like phenomena are not uncommon in other limestone countries. The cases are certainly not numerous where marine currents are known to pour continuously into cavities beneath the surface of the earth, but there is at least one well-authenticated instance of this sort--that of the mill streams at Argostoli in the island of Cephalonia. It had been long observed that the sea water flowed into several rifts and cavities in the limestone rocks of the coast, but the phenomenon has excited little attention until very recently. In 1833, three of the entrances were closed, and a regular channel, sixteen feet long and three feet wide, with a fall of three feet, was cut into the mouth of a larger cavity. The sea water flowed into this canal, and could be followed eighteen or twenty feet beyond its inner terminus, when it disappeared in holes and clefts in the rock. In 1858, the canal had been enlarged to the width of five feet and a half, and a depth of a foot. The water pours rapidly through the canal into an irregular depression and forms a pool, the surface of which is three or four feet below the adjacent soil, and about two and a half or three feet below the level of the sea. From this pool it escapes through several holes and clefts in the rock, and has not yet been found to emerge elsewhere. There is a tide at Argostoli of about six inches in still weather, but it is considerably higher with a south wind. I do not find it stated whether water flows through the canal into the cavity at low tide, but it distinctly appears that there is no refluent current, as of course there could not be from a basin so much below the sea. Mousson found the delivery through the canal to be at the rate of 24.88 cubic feet to the second; at what stage of the tide does not appear. Other mills of the same sort have been erected, and there appear to be several points on the coast where the sea flows into the land. Various hypotheses have been suggested to explain this phenomenon, some of which assume that the water descends to a great depth beneath the crust of the earth, but the supposition of a difference of level in the surface of the sea on the opposite sides of the island, which seems confirmed by other circumstances, is the most obvious method of explaining these singular facts. If we suppose the level of the water on one side of the island to be raised by the action of currents three or four feet higher than on the other, the existence of cavities and channels in the rock would easily account for a subterranean current beneath the island, and the apertures of escape might be so deep or so small as to elude observation. See _Aus der Natur_, vol. 19, pp. 129, _et seqq._ See _Appendix_, No. 53. [392] "The affluents received by the Seine below Rouen are so inconsiderable, that the augmentation of the volume of that river must be ascribed principally to springs rising in its bed. This is a point of which engineers now take notice, and M. Belgrand, the able officer charged with the improvement of the navigation of the Seine between Paris and Rouen, has devoted much attention to it."--BABINET, _Études et Lectures_, iii, p. 185. On page 232 of the volume just quoted, the same author observes: "In the lower part of its course, from the falls of the Oise, the Seine receives so few important affluents, that evaporation alone would suffice to exhaust all the water which passes under the bridges of Paris." This supposes a much greater amount of evaporation than has been usually computed, but I believe it is well settled that the Seine conveys to the sea much more water than is discharged into it by all its superficial branches. [393] Girard and Duchatelet maintain that the subterranean waters of Paris are absolutely stagnant. See their report on drainage by artesian wells, _Annales des Ponts et Chaussées_, 1833, 2me sémestre, pp. 313, _et seqq._ This opinion, if locally true, cannot be generally so, for it is inconsistent with the well-known fact that the very first eruption of water from a boring often brings up leaves and other objects which must have been carried into the underground reservoirs by currents. [394] _Physikalische Geographie_, p. 286. It does not appear whether this inference is Mariotte's or Wittwer's. I suppose it is a conclusion of the latter. [395] _Physical Geography of the Sea._ Tenth edition. London, 1861, § 274. [396] PARAMELLE, _Quellenkunde, mit einem Vorwort von_ B. COTTA, 1856. [397] _Études et Lectures_, vi, p. 118. [398] "The area of soil dried by draining is constantly increasing, and the water received by the surface from atmospheric precipitation is thereby partly conducted into new channels, and, in general, carried off more rapidly than before. Will not this fact exert an influence on the condition of many springs, whose basin of supply thus undergoes a partial or complete transformation? I am convinced that it will, and it is important to collect data for solving the question." BERNHARD COTTA, Preface to PARAMELLE, _Quellenkunde_ (German translation), pp. vii, viii. See _Appendix_, No. 54. [399] See the interesting observations of KRIEGK on this subject, _Schriften zur allgemeinen Erdkunde_, cap. iii, § 6, and especially the passages in RITTER'S _Erdkunde_, vol. i, there referred to. Laurent, (_Mémoires sur le Sahara Oriental_, pp. 8, 9), in speaking of a river at El-Faid, "which, like all those of the desert, is, most of the time, without water," observes, that many wells are dug in the bed of the river in the dry season, and that the subterranean current thus reached appears to extend itself laterally, at about the same level, at least a kilomètre from the river, as water is found by digging to the depth of twelve or fifteen mètres at a village situated at that distance from the bank. The most remarkable case of infiltration known to me by personal observation is the occurrence of fresh water in the beach sand on the eastern side of the Gulf of Akaba, the eastern arm of the Red Sea. If you dig a cavity in the beach near the sea level, it soon fills with water so fresh as not to be undrinkable, though the sea water two or three yards from it contains even more than the average quantity of salt. It cannot be maintained that this is sea water freshened by filtration through a few feet or inches of sand, for salt water cannot be deprived of its salt by that process. It can only come from the highlands of Arabia, and it would seem that there must exist some large reservoir in the interior to furnish a supply which, in spite of evaporation, holds out for months after the last rains of winter, and perhaps even through the year. I observed the fact in the month of June. The precipitation in the mountains that border the Red Sea is not known by pluviometric measurement, but the mass of debris brought down the ravines by the torrents proves that their volume must be large. The proportion of surface covered by sand and absorbent earth, in Arabia Petræa and the neighboring countries, is small, and the mountains drain themselves rapidly into the wadies or ravines where the torrents are formed; but the beds of earth and disintegrated rock at the bottom of the valleys are of so loose and porous texture, that a great quantity of water is absorbed in saturating them before a visible current is formed on their surface. In a heavy thunder storm, accompanied by a deluging rain, which I witnessed at Mount Sinai in the month of May, a large stream of water poured, in an almost continuous cascade, down the steep ravine north of the convent, by which travellers sometimes descend from the plateau between the two peaks, but after reaching the foot of the mountain, it flowed but a few yards before it was swallowed up in the sands. [400] It is conceivable that in large and shallow subterranean basins the superincumbent earth may rest upon the water and be partly supported by it. In such case the weight of the earth would be an additional, if not the sole, cause of the ascent of the water through the tubes of artesian wells. The elasticity of gases in the cavities may also aid in forcing up water. A French engineer, M. Mullot, invented a simple method of bringing to the surface water from any one of several successive accumulations at different depths, or of raising it, unmixed, from two or more of them at once. It consists in employing concentric tubes, one within the other, leaving a space for the rise of water between them, and reaching each to the sheet from which it is intended to draw. [401] Many more or less probable conjectures have been made on this subject, but thus far I am not aware that any of the apprehended results have been actually shown to have happened. In an article in the _Annales des Ponts et Chaussées_ for July and August, 1839, p. 131, it was suggested that the sinking of the piers of a bridge at Tours in France was occasioned by the abstraction of water from the earth by artesian wells, and the consequent withdrawal of the mechanical support it had previously given to the strata containing it. A reply to this article will be found in VIOLETT, _Théorie des Puits Artésiens_, p. 217. In some instances the water has rushed up with a force which seemed to threaten the inundation of the neighborhood, and even the washing away of much soil; but in those cases the partial exhaustion of the supply, or the relief of hydrostatic or elastic pressure, has generally produced a diminution of the flow in a short time, and I do not know that any serious evil has ever been occasioned in this way. [402] See a very interesting account of these wells, and of the workmen who clean them out when obstructed by sand brought up with the water, in Laurent's memoir on the artesian wells recently bored by the French Government in the Algerian desert, _Mémoire sur le Sahara Oriental, etc._, pp. 19, _et seqq._ Some of the men remained under water from two minutes to two minutes and forty seconds. Several officers are quoted as having observed immersions of three minutes' duration, and M. Berbrugger alleges that he witnessed one of five minutes and fifty-five seconds. The shortest of these periods is longer than the best pearl diver can remain below the surface of salt water. The wells of the Sahara are from twenty to eighty mètres deep. It has often been asserted that the ancient Egyptians were acquainted with the art of boring artesian wells. Parthey, describing the Little Oasis, mentions ruins of a Roman aqueduct, and observes: "It appears from the recent researches of Aim, a French engineer, that these aqueducts are connected with old artesian wells, the restoration of which would render it practicable to extend cultivation much beyond its present limits. This agrees with ancient testimony. It is asserted that the inhabitants of the oases sunk wells to the depth of 200, 300, and even 500 ells, from which affluent streams of water poured out. See OLYMPIODORUS in _Photii Bibl._, cod. 80, p. 61, l. 17, ed. Bekk."--PARTHEY, _Wanderungen_, ii, p. 528. In a paper entitled, _Note relative à l'execution d'un Puits Artésien en Egypte sous la XVIII dynastie_, presented to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, on the 12th of November, 1852, M. Lenormant endeavors to show that a hieroglyphic inscription found at Contrapscelcis proves the execution of a work of this sort in the Nubian desert, at the period indicated in the title to his paper. The interpretation of the inscription is a question for Egyptologists; but if wells were actually bored through the rock by the Egyptians after the Chinese or the European fashion, it is singular that among the numerous and minute representations of their industrial operations, painted or carved on the walls of their tombs, no trace of the processes employed for so remarkable and important a purpose should have been discovered. See _Appendix_, No. 56. It is certain that artesian wells have been common in China from a very remote antiquity, and the simple method used by the Chinese--where the borer is raised and let fall by a rope, instead of a rigid rod--has been lately been employed in Europe with advantage. Some of the Chinese wells are said to be 3,000 feet deep; that of Neusalzwerk in Silesia--the deepest in Europe--is 2,300. A well was bored at St. Louis, in Missouri, a few years ago, to supply a sugar refinery, to the depth of 2,199 feet. This was executed by a private firm in three years, at the expense of only $10,000. Another has since been bored at the State capitol at Columbus, Ohio, 2,500 feet deep, but without obtaining the desired supply of water. [403] "In the anticipation of our success at Oum-Thiour, every thing had been prepared to take advantage of this new source of wealth without a moment's delay. A division of the tribe of the Selmia, and their sheikh, Aïssa ben Shâ, laid the foundation of a village as soon as the water flowed, and planted twelve hundred date palms, renouncing their wandering life to attach themselves to the soil. In this arid spot, life had taken the place of solitude, and presented itself, with its smiling images, to the astonished traveller. Young girls were drawing water at the fountain; the flocks, the great dromedaries with their slow pace, the horses led by the halter, were moving to the watering trough; the hounds and the falcons enlivened the group of party-colored tents, and living voices and animated movement had succeeded to silence and desolation."--LAURENT, _Mémoires sur le Sahara_, p. 85. [404] The variety of hues and tones in the local color of the desert is, I think, one of the phenomena which most surprise and interest a stranger to those regions. In England and the United States, rock is so generally covered with moss or earth, and earth with vegetation, that untravelled Englishmen and Americans are not very familiar with naked rock as a conspicuous element of landscape. Hence, in their conception of a bare cliff or precipice, they hardly ascribe definite color to it, but depict it to their imagination as wearing a neutral tint not assimilable to any of the hues with which nature tinges her atmospheric or paints her organic creations. There are certainly extensive desert ranges, chiefly limestone formations, where the surface is either white, or has weathered down to a dull uniformity of tone which can hardly be called color at all; and there are sand plains and drifting hills of wearisome monotony of tint. But the chemistry of the air, though it may tame the glitter of the limestone to a dusky gray, brings out the green and brown and purple of the igneous rocks, and the white and red and blue and violet and yellow of the sandstone. Many a cliff in Arabia Petræa is as manifold in color as the rainbow, and the veins are so variable in thickness and inclination, so contorted and involved in arrangement, as to bewilder the eye of the spectator like a disk of party-colored glass in rapid revolution. In the narrower wadies, the mirage is not common; but on broad expanses, as at many points between Cairo and Suez, and in Wadi el Araba, it mocks you with lakes and land-locked bays, studded with islands and fringed with trees, all painted with an illusory truth of representation absolutely indistinguishable from the reality. The checkered earth, too, is canopied with a heaven as variegated as itself. You see, high up in the sky, rosy clouds at noonday, colored probably by reflection from the ruddy mountains, while near the horizon float cumuli of a transparent ethereal blue, seemingly balled up out of the clear cerulean substance of the firmament, and detached from the heavenly vault, not by color or consistence, but solely by the light and shade of their prominences. [405] _[OE]uvres de Palissy, Des Eaux et Fontaines_, p. 157. [406] Id., p. 166. See _Appendix_, No. 57. [407] BABINET, _Études et Lectures sur les Sciences d'Observation_, ii, p. 225. Our author precedes his account of his method with a complaint which most men who indulge in thinking have occasion to repeat many times in the course of their lives. "I will explain to my readers the construction of artificial fountains according to the plan of the famous Bernard de Palissy, who, a hundred and fifty [three hundred] years ago, came and took away from me, a humble academician of the nineteenth century, this discovery which I had taken a great deal of pains to make. It is enough to discourage all invention when one finds plagiarists in the past as well as in the future!" (P. 224.) [408] M. G. DUMAS, _La Science des Fontaines_, 1857. [409] In the curiously variegated sandstone of Arabia Petræa--which is certainly a reaggregation of loose sand derived from particles of older rocks--the contiguous veins frequently differ very widely in color, but not sensibly in specific gravity or in texture; and the singular way in which they are now alternated, now confusedly intermixed, must be explained otherwise than by the weight of the respective grains which compose them. They seem, in fact, to have been let fall by water in violent ebullition or tumultuous mechanical agitation, or by a succession of sudden aquatic or aerial currents flowing in different directions and charged with differently colored matter. [410] _De Bodem van Nederland_, i, pp. 243, 246-377, _et seqq._ See also the arguments of Brémontier as to the origin of the dune sands of Gascony, _Annales des Ponts et Chaussées_, 1833, 1er sémestre, pp. 158, 161. Brémontier estimates the sand annually thrown up on that coast at five cubic toises and two feet to the running toise (ubi supra, p. 162), or rather more than two hundred and twenty cubic feet to the running foot. Laval, upon observations continued through seven years, found the quantity to be twenty-five mètres per running mètre, which is equal to two hundred and sixty-eight cubic feet to the running foot.--_Annales des Ponts et Chaussées_, 1842, 2me sémestre, p. 229. These computations make the proportion of sand deposited on the coast of Gascony three or four times as great as that observed by Andresen on the shores of Jutland. Laval estimates the total quantity of sand annually thrown up on the coast of Gascony at 6,000,000 cubic mètres, or more than 7,800,000 cubic yards. [411] _De Bodem van Nederland_, i, p. 339. [412] The conditions favorable to the production of sand from disintegrated rock, by causes now in action, are perhaps nowhere more perfectly realized than in the Sinaitic Peninsula. The mountains are steep and lofty, unprotected by vegetation or even by a coating of earth, and the rocks which compose them are in a shattered and fragmentary condition. They are furrowed by deep and precipitous ravines, with beds sufficiently inclined for the rapid flow of water, and generally without basins in which the larger blocks of stone rolled by the torrents can be dropped and left in repose; there are severe frosts and much snow on the higher summits and ridges, and the winter rains are abundant and heavy. The mountains are principally of igneous formation, but many of the less elevated peaks are capped with sandstone, and on the eastern slope of the peninsula you may sometimes see, at a single glance, several lofty pyramids of granite, separated by considerable intervals, and all surmounted by horizontally stratified deposits of sandstone often only a few yards square, which correspond to each other in height, are evidently contemporaneous in origin, and were once connected in continuous beds. The degradation of the rock on which this formation rests is constantly bringing down masses of it, and mingling them with the basaltic, porphyritic, granitic, and calcareous fragments which the torrents carry down to the valleys, and, through them, in a state of greater or less disintegration, to the sea. The quantity of sand annually washed into the Red Sea by the larger torrents of the Lesser Peninsula, is probably at least equal to that contributed to the ocean by any streams draining basins of no greater extent. Absolutely considered, then, the mass may be said to be large, but it is apparently very small as compared with the sand thrown up by the German Ocean and the Atlantic on the coasts of Denmark and of France. There are, indeed, in Arabia Petræa, many torrents with very short courses, for the sea waves in many parts of the peninsular coast wash the base of the mountains. In these cases, the debris of the rocks do not reach the sea in a sufficiently comminuted condition to be entitled to the appellation of sand, or even in the form of well-rounded pebbles. The fragments retain their angular shape, and, at some points on the coast, they become cemented together by lime or other binding substances held in solution or mechanical suspension in the sea water, and are so rapidly converted into a singularly heterogeneous conglomerate, that one deposit seems to be consolidated into a breccia before the next winter's torrents cover it with another. In the northern part of the peninsula there are extensive deposits of sand intermingled with agate pebbles and petrified wood, but these are evidently neither derived from the Sinaitic group, nor products of local causes known to be now in action. I may here notice the often repeated but mistaken assertion, that the petrified wood of the Western Arabian desert consists wholly of the stems of palms, or at least of endogenous vegetables. This is an error. I have myself picked up in that desert, within the space of a very few square yards, fragments both of fossil palms, and of at least two petrified trees distinctly marked as of exogenous growth both by annular structure and by knots. In ligneous character, one of these almost precisely resembles the grain of the extant beech, and this specimen was wormeaten before it was converted into silex. [413] BÖTTGER, _Das Mittelmeer_, p. 128. [414] The testimony of divers and of other observers on this point is conflicting, as might be expected from the infinite variety of conditions by which the movement of water is affected. It is generally believed that the action of the wind upon the water is not perceptible at greater depths than from fifteen feet in ordinary, to eighty or ninety in extreme cases; but these estimates are probably very considerably below the truth. Andresen quotes Brémontier as stating that the movement of the waves sometimes extends to the depth of five hundred feet, and he adds that others think it may reach to six or even seven hundred feet below the surface.--ANDRESEN, _Om Klitformationen_, p. 20. Many physicists now suppose that the undulations of great bodies of water reach even deeper. But a movement of undulation is not necessarily a movement of translation, and besides, there is very frequently an undertow, which tends to carry suspended bodies out to sea as powerfully as the superficial waves to throw them on shore. Sandbanks sometimes recede from the coast, instead of rolling toward it. Reclus informs us that the Mauvaise, a sandbank near the Point de Grave, on the Atlantic coast of France, has moved five miles to the west in less than a century.--_Revue des Deux Mondes_, for December, 1862, p. 905. The action of currents may, in some cases, have been confounded with that of the waves. Sea currents, strong enough, possibly, to transport sand for some distance, flow far below the surface in parts of the open ocean, and in narrow straits they have great force and velocity. The divers employed at Constantinople in 1853 found in the Bosphorus, at the depth of twenty-five fathoms and at a point much exposed to the wash from Galata and Pera, a number of bronze guns supposed to have belonged to a ship of war blown up about a hundred and fifty years before. These guns were not covered by sand or slime, though a crust of earthy matter, an inch in thickness, adhered to their upper surfaces, and the bottom of the strait appeared to be wholly free from sediment. The current was so powerful at this depth that the divers were hardly able to stand, and a keg of nails, purposely dropped into the water, in order that its movements might serve as a guide in the search for a bag of coin accidentally lost overboard from a ship in the harbor, was rolled by the stream several hundred yards before it stopped. [415] Few seas have thrown up so much sand as the shallow German Ocean; but there is some reason to think that the amount of this material now cast upon its northern shores is less than at some former periods, though no extensive series of observations on this subject has been recorded. On the Spit of Agger, at the present outlet of the Liimfjord, Andresen found the quantity during ten years, on a beach about five hundred and seventy feet broad, equal to an annual deposit of an inch and a half over the whole surface.--_Om Klitformationen_, p. 56. This gives seventy-one and a quarter cubic feet to the running foot--a quantity certainly much smaller than that cast up by the same sea on the shores of the Dano-German duchies and of Holland, and, as we have seen, scarcely one fourth of that deposited by the Atlantic on the coast of Gascony. See _ante_, p. 453, note. [416] Sand heaps, three and even six hundred feet high, are indeed formed by the wind, but this is effected by driving the particles up an inclined plane, not by lifting them. Brémontier, speaking of the sand hills on the western coast of France, says: "The particles of sand composing them are not large enough to resist wind of a certain force, nor small enough to be taken up by it, like dust; they only roll along the surface from which they are detached, and, though moving with great velocity, they rarely rise to a greater height than three or four inches."--_Mémoire sur les Dunes, Annales des Ponts et Chaussées_, 1833, 1er sémestre, p. 148. Andresen says that a wind, having a velocity of forty feet per second, is strong enough to raise particles of sand as high as the face and eyes of a man, but that, in general, it rolls along the ground, and is scarcely ever thrown more than to the height of a couple of yards from the surface. Even in these cases, it is carried forward by a hopping, not a continuous, motion; for a very narrow sheet or channel of water stops the drift entirely, all the sand dropping into it until it is filled up. The character of the motion of sand drifts is well illustrated by an interesting fact not much noticed hitherto by travellers in the East. In situations where the sand is driven through depressions in rock beds, or over deposits of silicious pebbles, the surface of the stone is worn and smoothed much more effectually than it could be by running water, and you may pick up, in such localities, rounded, irregularly broken fragments of agate, which have received from the attrition of the sand as fine a polish as could be given them by the wheel of the lapidary. Very interesting observations on the polishing of hard stones by drifting sand will be found in the Geological Report of William P. Blake: _Pacific Railroad Report_, vol. v, pp. 92, 230, 231. The same geologist observes, p. 242, that the sand of the Colorado desert does not rise high in the air, but bounds along on the surface or only a few inches above it. [417] Wilkinson says that, in much experience in the most sandy parts of the Libyan desert, and much inquiry of the best native sources, he never saw or heard of any instance of danger to man or beast from the mere accumulation of sand transported by the wind. Chesney's observations in Arabia, and the testimony of the Bedouins he consulted, are to the same purpose. The dangers of the simoom are of a different character, though they are certainly aggravated by the blinding effects of the light particles of dust and sand borne along by it, and by that of the inhalation of them upon the respiration. [418] In the narrow valley of the Nile, bounded as it is, above the Delta, by high cliffs, all air currents from the northern quarter become north winds, though, of course varying in partial direction, in conformity with the sinuosities of the valley. Upon the desert plateau they incline westward, and have already borne into the valley the sands of the eastern banks, and driven those of the western quite out of the Egyptian portion of the Nile basin. [419] "The North African desert falls into two divisions: the Sahel, or western, and the Sahar, or eastern. The sands of the Sahar were, at a remote period, drifted to the west. In the Sahel, the prevailing east winds drive the sand-ocean with a progressive westward motion. The eastern half of the desert is swept clean."--NAUMANN, _Geognosie_, ii, p. 1173. [420] In parts of the Algerian desert, some efforts are made to retard the advance of sand dunes which threaten to overwhelm villages. "At Debila," says Laurent, "the lower parts of the lofty dunes are planted with palms, * * * but they are constantly menaced with burial by the sands. The only remedy employed by the natives consists in little dry walls of crystallized gypsum, built on the crests of the dunes, together with hedges of dead palm leaves. These defensive measures are aided by incessant labor; for every day the people take up in baskets the sand blown over to them the night before and carry it back to the other side of the dune."--_Mémoires sur le Sahara_, p. 14. [421] Organic constituents, such as comminuted shells, and silicious and calcareous exuviæ of infusorial animals and plants, are sometimes found mingled in considerable quantities with mineral sands. These are usually the remains of aquatic vegetables or animals, but not uniformly so, for the microscopic organisms, whose flinty cases enter so largely into the sandbeds of the Mark of Brandenburg, are still living and prolific in the dry earth. See WITTWER, _Physikalische Geographie_, p. 142. The desert on both sides of the Nile is inhabited by a land snail, and thousands of its shells are swept along and finally buried in the drifts by every wind. Every handful of the sand contains fragments of them. FORCHHAMMER, in LEONHARD Und BRONN's _Jahrbuch_, 1841, p. 8, says of the sand hills of the Danish coast: "It is not rare to find, high in the knolls, marine shells, and especially those of the oyster. They are due to the oyster eater [_Hæmalopus ostralegus_], which carries his prey to the top of the dunes to devour it." See also STARING, _De Bodem van_, N. I. p. 321. [422] There are various reasons why the formation of dunes is confined to low shores, and this law is so universal, that when bluffs are surmounted by them, there is always cause to suspect upheaval, or the removal of a sloping beach in front of the bluff, after the dunes were formed. Bold shores are usually without a sufficient beach for the accumulation of large deposits; they are commonly washed by a sea too deep to bring up sand from its bottom; their abrupt elevation, even if moderate in amount, would still be too great to allow ordinary winds to lift the sand above them; and their influence in deadening the wind which blows toward them would even more effectually prevent the raising of sand from the beach at their foot. Forchhammer, describing the coast of Jutland, says that, in high winds, "one can hardly stand upon the dunes, except when they are near the water line and have been cut down perpendicularly by the waves. Then the wind is little or not at all felt--a fact of experience very common on our coasts, observed on all the steep shore bluffs of two hundred feet in height, and, in the Faroe Islands, on precipices two thousand feet high. In heavy gales in those islands, the cattle fly to the very edge of the cliffs for shelter, and frequently fall over. The wind, impinging against the vertical wall, creates an ascending current which shoots somewhat past the crest of the rock, and thus the observer or the animal is protected against the tempest by a barrier of air."--LEONHARD und BRONN, _Jahrbuch_, 1841, p. 3. The calming, or rather diversion, of the wind by cliffs extends to a considerable distance in front of them, and no wind would have sufficient force to raise the sand vertically, parallel to the face of a bluff, even to the height of twenty feet. It is very commonly believed that it is impossible to grow forest trees on sea-shore bluffs, or points much exposed to strong winds. The observations just cited tend to show that it would not be difficult to protect trees from the mechanical effect of the wind, by screens much lower than the height to which they are expected to grow. Recent experiments confirm this, and it is found that, though the outer row or rows may suffer from the wind, every tree shelters a taller one behind it. Extensive groves have thus been formed in situations where an isolated tree would not grow at all. Piper, in his _Trees of America_, p. 19, gives an interesting account of Mr. Tudor's success in planting trees on the bleak and barren shore of Nahant. "Mr. Tudor," observes he, "has planted more than ten thousand trees at Nahant, and, by the results of his experiments, has fully demonstrated that trees, properly cared for in the beginning, may be made to grow up to the very bounds of the ocean, exposed to the biting of the wind and the spray of the sea. The only shelter they require is, at first, some interruption to break the current of the wind, such as fences, houses, or other trees." [423] The careful observations of Colonel J. D. Graham, of the United States Army, show a tide of about three inches in Lake Michigan. See "A Lunar Tidal Wave in the North American Lakes," demonstrated by Lieut.-Colonel J. D. Graham, in the fourteenth volume of the _Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science_. [424] STARING, _De Bodem van Nederland_, i, p. 327, note. [425] The principal special works and essays on this subject known to me are: BRÉMONTIER, _Mémoire sur les Dunes, etc._, 1790, reprinted in _Annales des Ponts et Chaussées_, 1833, 1er sémestre, pp. 145-186. _Rapport sur les differents Mémoires de M. Brémontier_, par LAUMONT et autres, 1806, same volume, pp. 192, 224. LEFORT, _Notice sur les Travaux de Fixation des Dunes, Annales des Ponts et Chaussées_, 1831, 2me sémestre, pp. 320-332. FORCHHAMMER, _Geognostische Studien am Meeres Ufer_, in LEONHARD und BRONN, _Jahrbuch, etc._, 1841, pp. 1, 38. J. G. KOHL, _Die Inseln und Marschen der Herzogthümer Schleswig und Holstein_, 1846, vol. ii, pp. 112-162, 193-204. LAVAL, _Mémoire sur les Dunes du Golfe de Gascogne, Annales des Ponts et Chaussées_, 1847, 2me sémestre, pp. 218-268. G. C. A. KRAUSE, _Der Dünenbau auf den Ostsee-Küsten West-Preussens_, 1850, 1 vol. 8vo. W. C. H. STARING, _De Bodem van Nederland_, 1856, vol. i, pp. 310-341, and 424-431. Same author, _Voormaals en Thans_, 1858, pages cited. C. C. ANDRESEN, _Om Klitformationen og Klittens Behandling og Bestyrelse_, 1861, 1 vol. 8vo, x, 392 pp., much the most complete treatise on the subject. ANDRESEN cites, upon the origin of the dunes: HULL, _Over den Oorsprong en de Geschiedenis der Hollandsche Duinen_, 1838, and GROSS's _Veiledning ved Behandlingen af Sandflugtstrækningerne_, 1847; and upon the improvement of sand plains by planting, PANNEWITZ, _Anleitung zum Anbau der Sandflächen_, 1832. I am not acquainted with either of the latter two works but I have consulted with advantage, on this subject, DELAMARRE, _Historique de la Création d'une Richesse millionaire par la culture des Pins_, 1827; BOITEL, _Mise en valeur des terres pauvres par le Pin maritime_, 1857; and BRINCKEN, _Ansichten über die Bewaldung der Steppen des Europäischen Russlands_, 1854. [426] "Dunes are always full of water, from the action of capillary attraction. Upon the summits, one seldom needs to dig more than a foot to find the sand moist, and in the depressions, fresh water is met with near the surface."--FORCHHAMMER, in LEONHARD und BRONN, for 1841, p. 5, note. On the other hand, Andresen, who has very carefully investigated this as well as all other dune phenomena, maintains that the humidity of the sand ridges cannot be derived from capillary attraction. He found by experiment that drift sand was not moistened to a greater height than eight and a half inches, after standing a whole night in water. He states the minimum of water contained by the sand of the dunes, one foot below the surface, after a long drought, at two per cent., the maximum, after a rainy month, at four per cent. At greater depths the quantity is larger. The hygroscopicity of the sand of the coast of Jutland he found to be thirty-three per cent. by measure, or 21.5 by weight. The annual precipitation on that coast is twenty-seven inches, and, as the evaporation is about the same, he argues that rain water does not penetrate far beneath the surface of the dunes, and concludes that their humidity can be explained only by evaporation from below.--_Om Klitformationen_, pp. 106-110. In the dunes of Algeria, water is so abundant that wells are constantly dug in them at high points on their surface. They are sunk to the depth of three or four mètres only, and the water rises to the height of a mètre in them.--LAURENT, _Mémoire sur le Sahara_, pp. 11, 12, 13. The same writer observes (p. 14) that the hollows in the dunes are planted with palms which find moisture enough a little below the surface. It would hence seem that the proposal to fix the dunes which are supposed to threaten the Suez Canal, by planting the maritime pine and other trees upon them, is not altogether so absurd as it is thought to be by some of those disinterested philanthropists of other nations who are distressed with fears that French capitalists will lose the money they have invested in that great undertaking. Ponds of water are often found in the depressions between the sand hills of the dune chains in the North American desert. [427] According to the French authorities, the dunes of France are not always composed of quartzose sand. "The dune sands" of different characters, says Brémontier, "partake of the nature of the different materials which compose them. At certain points on the coast of Normandy they are found to be purely calcareous; they are of mixed composition on the shores of Brittany and Saintonge, and generally quartzose between the mouth of the Gironde and that of the Adour."--_Mémoire sur les Dunes, Annales des Ponts et Chaussées_, t. vii, 1833, 1er sémestre, p. 146. In the dunes of Long Island and of Jutland, there are considerable veins composed almost wholly of garnet. For a very full examination of the mechanical and chemical composition of the dune sands of Jutland, see ANDRESEN, _Om Klitformationen_, p. 110. [428] _De Bodem van Nederland_, i, p. 323. [429] J. G. KOHL, _Die Inseln und Marschen der Herzogthümer Schleswig und Holstein_, ii, p. 200. [430] STARING, _De Bodem van Nederland_, i, p. 317. See also, BERGSÖE, _Reventov's Virksomhed_, ii, p. 11. "In the sand-hill ponds mentioned in the text, there is a vigorous growth of bog plants accompanied with the formation of peat, which goes on regularly as long as the dune sand does not drift. But if the surface of the dunes is broken, the sand blows into the ponds, covers the peat, and puts an end to its formation. When, in the course of time, marine currents cut away the coast, the dunes move landward and fill up the ponds, and thus are formed the remarkable strata of fossile peat called Martörv, which appears to be unknown to the geologists of other parts of Europe."--FORCHHAMMER, in LEONHARD und BRONN, 1841, p. 13. [431] The lower strata must be older than the superficial layers, and the particles which compose them may in time become more disintegrated, and therefore finer than those deposited later and above them. [432] "On the west coast of Africa the dunes are drifting seawards, and always receiving new accessions from the Sahara. They are constantly advancing out into the sea." See _ante_, p. 16, note.--NAUMANN, _Geognosie_, ii, p. 1172. See _Appendix_, No. 58. [433] Forchhammer, after pointing out the coincidence between the inclined stratification of dunes and the structure of ancient tilted rocks, says: "But I am not able to point out a sandstone formation corresponding to the dunes. Probably most ancient dunes have been destroyed by submersion before the loose sand became cemented to solid stone, but we may suppose that circumstances have existed somewhere which have preserved the characteristics of this formation."--LEONHARD und BRONN, 1841, p. 8, 9. Such formations, however, certainly exist. I find from Laurent (_Mémoire sur le Sahara, etc._, p. 12), that in the Algerian desert there exist "sandstone formations" not only "corresponding to the dunes," but actually consolidated within them. "A place called El-Mouia-Tadjer presents a repetition of what we saw at El-Baya; one of the funnels formed in the middle of the dunes contains wells from two mètres to two and a half in depth, dug in a sand which pressure, and probably the presence of certain salts, have cemented so as to form true sandstone, soft indeed, but which does not yield except to the pickaxe. These sandstones exhibit an inclination which seems to be the effect of wind; for they conform to the direction of the sands which roll down a scarp occasioned by the primitive obstacle." See _Appendix_, No. 59. The dunes near the mouth of the Nile, the lower sands of which have been cemented together by the infiltration of Nile water, would probably show a similar stratification in the sandstone which now forms their base. [434] Forchhammer ascribes the resemblance between the furrowing of the dune sands and the beach ripples, not to the similarity of the effect of wind and water upon sand, but wholly to the action of the former fluid; in the first instance, directly, in the latter, through the water. "The wind ripples on the surface of the dunes precisely resemble the water ripples of sand flats occasionally overflowed by the sea; and with the closest scrutiny, I have never been able to detect the slightest difference between them. This is easily explained by the fact, that the water ripples are produced by the action of light wind on the water which only transmits the air waves to the sand."--LEONHARD und BRONN, 1841, pp. 7, 8. [435] American observers do not agree in their descriptions of the form and character of the sand grains which compose the interior dunes of the North American desert. C. C. Parry, geologist to the Mexican Boundary Commission, in describing the dunes near the station at a spring thirty-two miles west from the Rio Grande at El Paso, says: "The separate grains of the sand composing the sand hills are seen under a lens to be angular, and not rounded, as would be the case in regular beach deposits."--_U. S. Mexican Boundary Survey, Report of_, vol. i, _Geological Report of C. C. Parry_, p. 10. In the general description of the country traversed, same volume, p. 47, Colonel Emory says that on an "examination of the sand with a microscope of sufficient power," the grains are seen to be angular, not rounded by rolling in water. On the other hand, Blake, in _Geological Report, Pacific Railroad Rep._, vol. v, p. 119, observes that the grains of the dune sand, consisting of quartz, chalcedony, carnelian, agate, rose quartz, and probably chrysolite, were much rounded; and on page 241, he says that many of the sand grains of the Colorado desert are perfect spheres. On page 20 of a report in vol. ii of the _Pacific Railroad Report_, by the same observer, it is said that an examination of dune sands brought from the Llano Estacado by Captain Pope, showed the grains to be "much rounded by attrition." The sands described by Mr. Parry and Colonel Emory are not from the same localities as those examined by Mr. Blake, and the difference in their character may denote a difference of origin or of age. [436] LAURENT (_Mémoire sur le Sahara_, pp. 11, 12, and elsewhere) speaks of a funnel-shaped depression at a high point in the dunes, as a characteristic feature of the sand hills of the Algerian desert. This seems to be an approximation to the crescent form noticed by Meyen and Pöppig in the inland dunes of Peru. [437] _Travels in Peru_, New York, 1848, chap. ix. [438] Notwithstanding the general tendency of isolated coast dunes and of the peaks of the sand ridges to assume a conical form, Andresen states that the hills of the inner or landward rows are sometimes _bow-shaped_, and sometimes undulating in outline.--_Om Klitformationen_, p. 84. He says further that: "Before an obstruction, two or three feet high and considerably longer, lying perpendicularly to the direction of the wind, the sand is deposited with a windward angle of from 6° to 12°, and the bank presents a concave face to the wind, while, behind the obstruction, the outline is convex;" and he lays it down as a general rule, that a slope, _from_ which sand is blown, is left with a concavity of about one inch of depth to four feet of distance; a slope, _upon_ which sand is dropped by the wind, is convex. It appears from Andresen's figures, however, that the concavity and convexity referred to, apply, not to the _horizontal longitudinal_ section of the sand bank, as his language unexplained by the drawings might be supposed to mean, but to the _vertical cross-section_, and hence the dunes he describes, with the exception above noted, do not correspond to those of the American deserts.--_Om Klitformationen_, p. 86. The dunes of Gascony, which sometimes exceed three hundred feet in height, present the same concavity and convexity of _vertical_ cross-section. The slopes of these dunes are much steeper than those of the Netherlands and the Danish coast; for while all observers agree in assigning to the seaward and landward faces of those latter, respectively, angles of from 5° to 12°, and 30° with the horizon, the corresponding faces of the dunes of Gascony present angles of from 10° to 25°, and 50° to 60°.--LAVAL, _Mémoire sur les Dunes de Gascogne, Annales des Ponts et Chaussées_, 1847, 2me sémestre. [439] Krause, speaking of the dunes on the coast of Prussia, says: "Their origin belongs to three different periods, in which important changes in the relative level of sea and land have unquestionably taken place. * * * Except in the deep depressions between them, the dunes are everywhere sprinkled, to a considerable height, with brown oxydulated iron, which has penetrated into the sand to the depth of from three to eighteen inches, and colored it red. * * * Above the iron is a stratum of sand differing in composition from ordinary sea sand, and on this, growing woods are always found. * * * The gradually accumulated forest soil occurs in beds of from one to three feet thick, and changes, proceeding upward, from gray sand to black humus." Even on the third or seaward range, the sand grasses appear and thrive luxuriantly, at least on the west coast, though. Krause doubts whether the dunes of the east coast were ever thus protected.--_Der Dünenbau_, pp. 8, 11. [440] LAVAL, _Mémoire sur les Dunes de Gascogne, Annales des Ponts et Chaussées_, 1847, 2me sémestre, p. 231. The same opinion had been expressed by BRÉMONTIER, _Annales des Ponts et Chaussées_, 1833, 1er sémestre, p. 185. [441] "In the Middle Ages," says Willibald Alexis, as quoted by Müller, _Das Buch der Pflanzenwelt_ i, p. 16, "the Nehrung was extending itself further, and the narrow opening near Lochstadt had filled itself up with sand. A great pine forest bound with its roots the dune sand and the heath uninterruptedly from Danzig to Pillau. King Frederick William I was once in want of money. A certain Herr von Korff promised to procure it for him, without loan or taxes, if he could be allowed to remove something quite useless. He thinned out the forests of Prussia, which then, indeed, possessed little pecuniary value; but he felled the entire woods of the Frische Nehrung, so far as they lay within the Prussian territory. The financial operation was a success. The king had money, but in the elementary operation which resulted from it, the state received irreparable injury. The sea winds rush over the bared hills; the Frische Haff is half-choked with sand; the channel between Elbing, the sea, and Königsberg is endangered, and the fisheries in the Haff injured. The operation of Herr von Korff brought the king 200,000 thalers. The state would now willingly expend millions to restore the forests again." [442] STARING, _Voormaals en Thans_, p. 231. Had the dunes of the Netherlandish and French coasts, at the period of the Roman invasion, resembled the moving sand hills of the present day, it is inconceivable that they could have escaped the notice of so acute a physical geographer as Strabo; and the absolute silence of Cæsar, Ptolemy, and the encyclopædic Pliny, respecting them, would be not less inexplicable. The Old Northern language, the ancient tongue of Denmark, though rich in terms descriptive of natural scenery, had no name for dune, nor do I think the sand hills of the coast are anywhere noticed in Icelandic literature. The modern Icelanders, in treating of the dunes of Jutland, call them _klettr_, hill, cliff, and the Danish _klit_ is from that source. The word Düne is also of recent introduction into German. Had the dunes been distinguished from other hillocks, in ancient times, by so remarkable a feature as the propensity to drift, they would certainly have acquired a specific name in both Old Northern and German. So long as they were wooded knolls, they needed no peculiar name; when they became formidable, from the destruction of the woods which confined them, they acquired a designation. [443] The sands of Cape Cod were partially, if not completely, covered with vegetation by nature. Dr. Dwight, describing the dunes as they were in 1800, says: "Some of them are covered with beach grass; some fringed with whortleberry bushes; and some tufted with a small and singular growth of oaks. * * * The parts of this barrier, which are covered with whortleberry bushes and with oaks, have been either not at all, or very little blown. The oaks, particularly, appear to be the continuation of the forests originally formed on this spot. * * * They wore all the marks of extreme age; were, in some instances, already decayed, and in others decaying; were hoary with moss, and were deformed by branches, broken and wasted, not by violence, but by time."--_Travels_, iii, p. 91. [444] Bergsöe (_Reventlovs Virksomhed_, ii, 3) states that the dunes on the west coast of Jutland were stationary before the destruction of the forests to the east of them. The felling of the tall trees removed the resistance to the lower currents of the westerly winds, and the sands have since buried a great extent of fertile soil. See also same work, ii, p. 124. [445] "We must, therefore, not be surprised to see the people here deal as gingerly with their dunes, as if treading among eggs. He who is lucky enough to own a molehill of dune pets it affectionately, and spends his substance in cherishing and fattening it. That fair, fertile, rich province, the peninsula of Eiderstädt in the south of Friesland, has, on the point toward the sea, only a tiny row of dunes, some six miles long or so; but the people talk of their fringe of sand hills as if it were a border set with pearls. They look upon it as their best defence against Neptune. They have connected it with their system of dikes, and for years have kept sentries posted to protect it against wanton injury."--J. G. KOHL, _Die Inseln u. Marschen Schleswig-Holsteins_, ii, p. 115. [446] Sand banks sometimes connect themselves with the coast at both ends, and thus cut off a portion of the sea. In this case, as well as when salt water is enclosed by sea dikes, the water thus separated from the ocean gradually becomes fresh, or at least brackish. The Haffs, or large expanses of fresh water in Eastern Prussia--which are divided from the Baltic by narrow sand banks called Nehrungen, or, at sheltered points of the coast, by fluviatile deposits called Werders--all have one or more open passages, through which the water of the rivers that supply them at last finds its way to the sea. [447] ANDRESEN, _Om Klitformationen_, pp. 68-72. [448] Id., pp. 231, 232. Andresen's work, though printed in 1861, was finished in 1859. Lyell (_Antiquity of Man_, 1863, p. 14) says: "Even in the course of the present century, the salt waters have made one eruption into the Baltic by the Liimfjord, although they have been now again excluded." [449] FORCHHAMMER, _Geognostische Studien am Meeres-Ufer_. LEONHARD und BRONN, _Jahrbuch_, 1841, pp. 11, 13. [450] ANDRESEN, _Om Klitformationen_, pp. 68, 72. [451] _Voormaals en Thans_, pp. 126, 170. [452] See a very interesting article entitled "Le Littoral de la France," by ÉLISÉE RECLUS, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, for December, 1862, pp. 901, 936. [453] _De Bodem van Nederland_, i, p. 425. See _Appendix_, No. 60. [454] The movement of the dunes has been hardly less destructive on the north side of the Gironde. Sea the valuable article of ÉLISÉE RECLUS already referred to, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, for December, 1862, entitled "Le Littoral de la France." [455] LAVAL, _Mémoire sur les Dunes du Golfe de Gascogne, Annales des Ponts et Chaussées_, 1847, p. 223. The author adds, as a curious and unexplained fact, that some of these pools, though evidently not original formations but mere accumulations of water dammed up by the dunes, have, along their western shore, near the base of the sand hills, a depth of more than one hundred and thirty feet, and hence their bottoms are not less than eighty feet below the level of the lowest tides. Their western banks descend steeply, conforming nearly to the slope of the dunes, while on the northeast and south the inclination of their beds is very gradual. The greatest depth of these pools corresponds to that of the sea ten miles from the shore. Is it possible that the weight of the sands has pressed together the soil on which they rest, and thus occasioned a subsidence of the surface extending beyond their base? See _Appendix_, No. 61. [456] ANDRESEN, _Om Klitformationem_, pp. 56, 79, 82. [457] STARING, _De Bodem van Nederland_, i, pp. 329-331. Id., _Voormaals en Thans_, p. 163. ANDRESEN, _Om Klitformationen_, pp. 280, 295. The creation of new dunes, by the processes mentioned in the text, seems to be much older in Europe than the adoption of measures for securing them by planting. Dr. Dwight mentions a case in Massachusetts, where a beach was restored, and new dunes formed, by planting beach grass. "Within the memory of my informant, the sea broke over the beach which connects Truro with Province Town, and swept the body of it away for some distance. The beach grass was immediately planted on the spot; in consequence of which the beach was again raised to a sufficient height, and in various places into hills."--_Dwight's Travels_, iii, p. 93. [458] STARING, i, pp. 310, 332. [459] There is some confusion in the popular use of these names, and in the scientific designations of sand plants, and they are possibly applied to different plants in different places. Some writers style the gourbet _Calamagrostis arenaria_, and distinguish it from the Danish Klittetag or Hjelme. [460] Bread, not indeed very palatable, has been made of the seeds of the arundo, but the quantity which can be gathered is not sufficient to form an important economical resource.----ANDRESEN, _Om Klitformationen_, p. 160. [461] BERGSÖE, _Reventlovs Virksomhed_, ii, p. 4. [462] Measures were taken for the protection of the dunes of Cape Cod, in Massachusetts, during the colonial period, though I believe they are now substantially abandoned. A hundred years ago, before the valley of the Mississippi, or even the rich plains of Central and Western New York, were opened to the white settler, the value of land was relatively much greater in New England than it is at present, and consequently some rural improvements were then worth making, which would not now yield sufficient returns to tempt the investment of capital. The money and the time required to subdue and render productive twenty acres of sea sand on Cape Cod, would buy a "section" and rear a family in Illinois. The son of the Pilgrims, therefore, abandons the sand hills, and seeks a better fortune on the fertile prairies of the West. Dr. Dwight, who visited Cape Cod in the year 1800, after describing the "beach grass, a vegetable bearing a general resemblance to sedge, but of a light bluish-green, and of a coarse appearance," which "flourishes with a strong and rapid vegetation on the sands," observes that he received "from a Mr. Collins, formerly of Truro, the following information:" "When he lived at Truro, the inhabitants were, under the authority of law, regularly warned in the month of April, yearly, to plant beach grass, as, in other towns of New England, they are warned to repair highways. It was required by the laws of the State, and under the proper penalties for disobedience; being as regular a public tax as any other. The people, therefore, generally attended and performed the labor. The grass was dug in bunches, as it naturally grows; and each bunch divided into a number of smaller ones. These were set out in the sand at distances of three feet. After one row was set, others were placed behind it in such a manner as to shut up the interstices; or, as a carpenter would say, so as to break the joints. * * * When it is once set, it grows and spreads with rapidity. * * * The seeds are so heavy that they bend down the heads of the grass; and when ripe, drop directly down by its side, where they immediately vegetate. Thus in a short time the ground is covered. "Where this covering is found, none of the sand is blown. On the contrary, it is accumulated and raised continually as snow gathers and rises among bushes, or branches of trees cut and spread upon the earth. Nor does the grass merely defend the surface on which it is planted; but rises, as that rises by new accumulations; and always overtops the sand, however high that may be raised by the wind."--_Dwight's Travels in New England and New York_, ii, p. 92, 93. This information was received in 1800, and it relates to a former state of things, probably more than twenty years previous, and earlier than 1779, when the Government of Denmark first seriously attempted the conquest of the dunes. The depasturing of the beach grass--a plant allied in habits, if not in botanical character, to the arundo--has been attended with very injurious effects in Massachusetts. Dr. Dwight, after referring to the laws for its propagation, already cited, says: "The benefit of this useful plant, and of these prudent regulations, is, however, in some measure lost. There are in Province Town, as I was informed, one hundred and forty cows. These animals, being stinted in their means of subsistence, are permitted to wander, at times, in search of food. In every such case, they make depredations on the beach grass, and prevent its seeds from being formed. In this manner the plant is ultimately destroyed."--_Travels_, iii, p. 94. On page 101 of the same volume, the author mentions an instance of great injury from this cause. "Here, about one thousand acres were entirely blown away to the depth, in many places, of ten feet. * * * Not a green thing was visible except the whortleberries, which tufted a few lonely hillocks rising to the height of the original surface and prevented by this defence from being blown away also. These, although they varied the prospect, added to the gloom by their strongly picturesque appearance, by marking exactly the original level of the plain, and by showing us in this manner the immensity of the mass which had been thus carried away by the wind. The beach grass had been planted here, and the ground had been formerly enclosed; but the gates had been left open, and the cattle had destroyed this invaluable plant." [463] ANDRESEN, _Om Klitformationen_, pp. 237, 240. [464] "These plantations, perseveringly continued from the time of Brémontier now cover more than 40,000 hectares, and compose forests which are not only the salvation of the department, but constitute its wealth."--CLAVÉ, _Études Forestières_, p. 254. Other authors have stated the plantations of the French dunes to be much more extensive. [465] KRUSE, _Dünenbau_, pp. 34, 38, 40. [466] These processes are substantially similar to those employed in the pineries of the Carolinas, but they are better systematized and more economically conducted in France. In the latter country, all the products of the pine, even to the cones, find a remunerating market, while, in America, the price of resin is so low, that in the fierce steamboat races on the great rivers, large quantities of it are thrown into the furnaces to increase the intensity of the fires. In a carefully prepared article on the Southern pineries published in an American magazine--I think Harper's--a few years ago, it was stated that the resin from the turpentine distilleries was sometimes allowed to run to waste; and the writer, in one instance, observed a mass, thus rejected as rubbish, which was estimated to amount to two thousand barrels. See _Appendix_, No. 62. [467] ANDRESEN, _Om Klitformationen_, pp. 78, 262, 275. [468] LAVAL, _Mémoire sur les Dunes du Golfe de Gascogne, Annales des Ponts et Chaussées_, 1847, 2me sémestre, p. 261. See _Appendix_, No. 63. [469] There are extensive ranges of dunes on various parts of the coasts of the British Islands, but I find no estimate of their area. Pannewitz (_Anleitung zam Anbau der Sandflächen_), as cited by Andresen (_Om Klitformationen_, p. 45), states that the drifting sands of Europe, including, of course, sand plains as well as dunes, cover an extent of 21,000 square miles. This is, perhaps, an exaggeration, though there is, undoubtedly, much more desert land of this description on the European continent than has been generally supposed. There is no question that most of this waste is capable of reclamation by simple planting, and no mode of physical improvement is better worth the attention of civilized Governments than this. There are often serious objections to extensive forest planting on soils capable of being otherwise made productive, but they do not apply to sand wastes, which, until covered by woods, are not only a useless incumbrance, but a source of serious danger to all human improvements in the neighborhood of them. [470] BOITEL, _Mise en valeur des Terres pauvres par le Pin maritime_, pp. 212, 218. [471] See _Appendix_, No. . [472] For details, consult ANDRESEN, _Om Klitformationen_, pp. 223, 236. [473] When the deposit is not very deep, and the adjacent land lying to the leeward of the prevailing winds is covered with water, or otherwise worthless, the surface is sometimes freed from the drifts by repeated harrowings, which loosen the sand, so that the wind takes it up and transports it to grounds where accumulations of it are less injurious. [474] _Travels and Researches in Chaldæa_, chap. ix. [475] _Études Forestières_, p. 253. [476] LAVERGNE, _Économie Rurale de la France_, p. 300, estimates the area of the Landes of Gascony at 700,000 hectares, or about 1,700,000 acres. The same author states (p. 304), that when the Moors were driven from Spain by the blind cupidity and brutal intolerance of the age, they demanded permission to establish themselves in this desert; but political and religious prejudices prevented the granting of this liberty. At this period the Moors were a far more cultivated people than their Christian persecutors, and they had carried many arts, that of agriculture especially, to a higher pitch than any other European nation. But France was not wise enough to accept what Spain had cast out, and the Landes remained a waste for three centuries longer. See _Appendix_, No. 64. The forest of Fontainebleau, which contains above 40,000 acres, is not a plain, but its soil is composed almost wholly of sand, interspersed with ledges of rock. The sand forms not less than ninety-eight per cent. of the earth, and, as it is almost without water, it would be a drifting desert but for the artificial propagation of forest trees upon it. [477] _Économie Rurale de la Belgique, par_ EMILE DE LAVELEYE, _Revue des Deux Mondes_, Juin, 1861, pp. 617-644. [478] _Geognosie_, ii, p. 1173. [479] According to HOHENSTEIN, _Der Wald_, pp. 228, 229, an extensive plantation of pines--a tree new to Southern Russia--was commenced in 1842, on the barren and sandy banks of the Ingula, near Elisabethgrod, and has met with very flattering success. Other experiments in sylviculture at different points on the steppes promise valuable results. [480] "Sixteen years ago," says an Odessa landholder, "I attempted to fix the sand of the steppes, which covers the rocky ground to the depth of a foot, and forms moving hillocks with every change of wind. I tried acacias and pines in vain; nothing would grow in such a soil. At length I planted the varnish tree, or _ailanthus_, which succeeded completely in binding the sand." This result encouraged the proprietor to extend his plantations over both dunes and sand steppes, and in the course of sixteen years this rapidly growing tree had formed real forests. Other landowners have imitated his example with great advantage.--RENTSCH, _Der Wald_, p. 44, 45. [481] _Souvenirs d'un Naturaliste_, i, pp. 204 _et seqq._ [482] "If we suppose the narrow isthmus of Central America to be sunk in the ocean, the warm equatorial current would no longer follow its circuitous route around the Gulf of Mexico, but pour itself through the new opening directly into the Pacific. We should then lose the warmth of the Gulf Stream, and cold polar currents flowing farther southward would take its place and be driven upon our coasts by the western winds. The North Sea would resemble Hudson's Bay, and its harbors be free from ice at best only in summer. The power and prosperity of its coasts would shrivel under the breath of winter, as a medusa thrown on shore shrinks to an insignificant film under the influence of the destructive atmosphere. Commerce, industry, fertility of soil, population, would disappear, and the vast waste--a new Labrador--would become a worthless appendage of some clime more favored by nature."--HARTWIG, _Das Leben des Meeres_, p. 70. [483] I know nothing of Captain Allen's work but its title and its subject. Very probably he may have anticipated many of the following speculations, and thrown light on points upon which I am ignorant. [484] "Some haue writt[=e], that by certain kings inhabiting aboue, the _Nilus_ should there be stopped; & at a time prefixt, let loose vpon a certaine tribute payd them by the _Aegyptians_. The error springing perhaps fr[=o] a truth (as all wandring reports for the most part doe) in that the _Sultan_ doth pay a certaine annuall summe to the _Abissin_ Emperour for not diuerting the course of the Riuer, which (they say) he may, or impouerish it at the least."--GEORGE SANDYS, _A Relation of a Journey, etc._, p. 98. [485] The Recca, a river with a considerable current, has been satisfactorily identified with a stream flowing through the cave of Trebich, and with the Timavo--the Timavus of Virgil and the ancient geographers--which empties through several mouths into the Adriatic between Trieste and Aquileia. The distance from Trieste to a suitable point in the grotto of Trebich is thought to be less than three miles, and the difficulties in the way of constructing a tunnel do not seem formidable. The works of Schmidl, _Die Höhlen des Karstes_, and _Der unterirdische Lauf der Recca_, are not common out of Germany, but the reader will find many interesting facts derived from them in two articles entitled _Der unterirdische Lauf der Recca_, in _Aus der Natur_, xx, pp. 250-254, 263-266. [486] BARTH, _Wanderungen durch die Küsten des Mittelmeeres_, i, p. 353. In a note on page 380, of the same volume, Barth cites Strabo as asserting that a similar practice prevailed in Iapygia; but it may be questioned whether the epithet [Greek: tracheia], applied by Strabo to the original surface, necessarily implies that it was covered with a continuous stratum of rock. [487] PARTHEY, _Wanderungen durch Sicilien und die Levante_, i, p. 404. [488] _Geognostische Studien am Meeres Ufer_, LEONHARD und BRONN, _Jahrbuch_, 1841, pp. 25, 26. [489] KOHL, _Schleswig-Holstein_, ii, p. 45. [490] _Wanderungen durch Sicilien und die Levante_, i, p. 406. [491] LANDGREBE, _Naturgeschichte der Vulkane_, ii, pp. 19, 20. [492] Soon after the current issues from the volcano, it is covered above and at its sides, and finally in front, with scoriæ, formed by the cooling of the exposed surface, which bury and conceal the fluid mass. The stream rolls on under the coating, and between the walls of scoriæ, and it was the lateral crust which was broken through by the workmen mentioned in the text. The distance to which lava flows, before its surface begins to solidify, depends on its volume, its composition, its temperature and that of the air, the force with which it is ejected, and the inclination of the declivity over which it runs. In most cases it is difficult to approach the current at points where it is still entirely fluid, and hence opportunities of observing it in that condition are not very frequent. In the eruption of February, 1850, on the east side of Vesuvius, I went quite up to one of the outlets. The lava shot out of the orifice upward with great velocity, like the water from a spring, in a stream eight or ten feet in diameter, throwing up occasionally volcanic bombs, but it immediately spread out on the declivity down which it flowed, to the width of several yards. It continued red hot in broad daylight, and without a particle of scoriæ on its surface, for a course of at least one hundred yards. At this distance, the suffocating, sulphurous vapors became so dense that I could follow the current no farther. The undulations of the surface were like those of a brook swollen by rain. I estimated the height of the waves at five or six inches by a breadth of eighteen or twenty. To the eye, the fluidity of the lava seemed as perfect as that of water, but masses of cold lava weighing ten or fifteen pounds floated upon it like cork. The heat emitted by lava currents seems extremely small when we consider the temperature required to fuse such materials and the great length of time they take in cooling. I saw at Nicolosi ancient oil jars, holding a hundred gallons or more, which had been dug out from under a stream of old lava above that town. They had been very slightly covered with volcanic ashes before the lava flowed over them, but the lead with which holes in them had been plugged was not melted. The current that buried Mompiliere in 1669 was thirty-five feet thick, but marble statues, in a church over which the lava formed an arch, were found uncalcined and uninjured in 1704. See SCROPE, _Volcanoes_, chap. VI. § 6. [493] FERRARA, _Descrizione dell' Etna_, p. 108. [494] LANGREBE, _Naturgeschichte der Vulkane_, ii, p. 82. [495] _Physikalische Geographie_, p. 168. Beds of peat, accidentally set on fire, sometimes continue to burn for months. I take the following account of a case of this sort from a recent American journal: "A CURIOUS PHENOMENON.--When the track of the railroad between Brunswick and Bath was being graded, in crossing a meadow near the populous portion of the latter city, the 'dump' suddenly took on a sinking symptom, and down went the twenty feet fill of gravel, clay, and broken rocks, out of sight, and it was a long, _long_ time before dirt trains could fill the capacious stomach that seemed ready to receive all the solid material that could be turned into it. The difficulty was at length overcome, but all along the side of the sinkage the earth was thrown up, broken into yawning chasms, and the surface was thus elevated above its old watery level. Since that time this ground, thus slightly elevated, has been cultivated, and has yielded enormously of whatever the owner seemed disposed to plant upon it. Some three months ago, by some means unknown to us, the underlying peat took fire, and for weeks, as we had occasion to pass it, we noticed the smoke arising from the smouldering combustion beneath the surface. Rains fell, but the fire burned, and the smoke continued to arise. Monday we had occasion to pass the spot, and though nearly a week's rain had been drenching the ground, and though the surface was whitened with snow, and though pools of water were standing upon the surface in the immediate neighborhood, still the everlasting subterranean fire was burning, and the smoke arising through the snow." [496] One of the sublimest, and at the same time most fearful suggestions that have been prompted by the researches of modern science, was made by Babbage in the ninth chapter of his _Ninth Bridgewater Treatise_. I have not the volume at hand, but the following explanation will recall to the reader, if it does not otherwise make intelligible, the suggestion I refer to. No atom can be disturbed in place, or undergo any change of temperature, of electrical state, or other material condition, without affecting, by attraction or repulsion or other communication, the surrounding atoms. These, again, by the same law, transmit the influence to other atoms, and the impulse thus given extends through the whole material universe. Every human movement, every organic act, every volition, passion, or emotion, every intellectual process, is accompanied with atomic disturbance, and hence every such movement, every such act or process affects all the atoms of universal matter. Though action and reaction are equal, yet reaction does not restore disturbed atoms to their former place and condition, and consequently the effects of the least material change are never cancelled, but in some way perpetuated, so that no action can take place in physical, moral, or intellectual nature, without leaving all matter in a different state from what it would have been if such action had not occurred. Hence, to use language which I have employed on another occasion: there exists, not alone in the human conscience or in the omniscience of the Creator, but in external material nature, an ineffaceable, imperishable record, possibly legible even to created intelligence, of every act done, every word uttered, nay, of every wish and purpose and thought conceived by mortal man, from the birth of our first parent to the final extinction of our race; so that the physical traces of our most secret sins shall last until time shall be merged in that eternity of which not science, but religion alone, assumes to take cognizance. APPENDIX. No. 1 (page 19, _note_). It may be said that the cases referred to in the note on p. 19--and indeed all cases of a supposed acclimation consisting in physiological changes--are instances of the origination of new varieties by natural selection, the hardier maize, tomato, and other vegetables of the North, being the progeny of seeds of individuals endowed, exceptionally, with greater power of resisting cold than belongs in general to the species which produced them. But, so far as the evidence of change of climate, from a difference in vegetable growth, is concerned, it is immaterial whether we adopt this view or maintain the older and more familiar doctrine of a local modification of character in the plants in question. No. 2 (page 24, _note_). The adjectives of direction in _-erly_ are not unfrequently used to indicate, in a loose way, the course of winds blowing from unspecified points between N.E. and S.E.; S.E. and S.W.; S.W. and N.W. or N.W. and N.E. If the employment of these words were understood to be limited to thus expressing a direction nearer to the cardinal point from whose name the adjective is taken than to any other cardinal point, they would be valuable elements of English meteorological nomenclature. No. 3 (page 31). I find a confirmation of my observations on the habits of the beaver as a geographical agency, in a report of the proceedings of the British Association, in the London Athenæum of October 8, 1864, p. 469. It is there stated that Viscount Milton and Dr. Cheadle, in an expedition across the Rocky Mountains by the Yellow Head, or Leather Pass, observed that "a great portion of the country to the east of the mountains" had been "completely changed in character by the agency of the beaver, which formerly existed here in enormous numbers. The shallow valleys were formerly traversed by rivers and chains of lakes which, dammed up along their course at numerous points, by the work of those animals, have become a series of marshes in various stages of consolidation. So complete has this change been, that hardly a stream is found for a distance of two hundred miles, with the exception of the large rivers. The animals have thus destroyed, by their own labors, the waters necessary to their own existence." When the process of "consolidation" shall have been completed, and the forest reëstablished upon the marshes, the water now diffused through them will be collected in the lower or more yielding portions, cut new channels for their flow, become running brooks, and thus restore the ancient aspect of the surface. No. 4 (page 33, _note_). The lignivorous insects that attack living trees almost uniformly confine their ravages to trees already unsound or diseased in growth from the depredations of leaf-eaters, such as caterpillars and the like, or from other causes. The decay of the tree, therefore, is the cause not the consequence of the invasions of the borer. This subject has been discussed by Perris in the _Annales de la Société Entomologique de la France_, for 1851 (?), and his conclusions are confirmed by the observations of Samanos, who quotes, at some length, the views of Perris. "Having, for fifteen years," says the latter author, "incessantly studied the habits of lignivorous insects in one of the best wooded regions of France, I have observed facts enough to feel myself warranted in expressing my conclusions, which are: that insects in general--I am not speaking of those which confine their voracity to the leaf--do not attack trees in sound health, and they assail those only whose normal conditions and functions have been by some cause impaired." See, more fully, Samanos, _Traité de la Culture du Pin Maritime_, Paris, 1864, pp. 140-145. No. 5 (page 34, _note_). Very interesting observations, on the agency of the squirrel and other small animals in planting and in destroying nuts and other seeds of trees, may be found in a paper on the Succession of Forests in Thoreau's _Excursions_, pp. 135 _et seqq._ I once saw several quarts of beech-nuts taken from the winter quarters of a family of flying squirrels in a hollow tree. The kernels were neatly stripped of their shells and carefully stored in a dry cavity. No. 6 (page 40, _note_). Schroeder van der Kolk, in _Het Verschil tusschen den Psychischen Aanleg van het Dier en van den Mensch_, cites from Burdach and other authorities many interesting facts respecting instincts lost, or newly developed and become hereditary, in the lower animals, and he quotes Aristotle and Pliny as evidence that the common quadrupeds and fowls of our fields and our poultry yards were much less perfectly domesticated in their times than long, long ages of servitude have now made them. Perhaps the half-wild character ascribed by P. Læstadius and other Swedish writers to the reindeer of Lapland, may be in some degree due to the comparative shortness of the period during which he has been partially tamed. The domestic swine bred in the woods of Hungary and the buffaloes of Southern Italy are so wild and savage as to be very dangerous to all but their keepers. The former have relapsed into their original condition, the latter have not yet been reclaimed from it. Among other instances of obliterated instincts, Schroeder van der Kolk states that in Holland, where, for centuries, the young of the cow has been usually taken from the dam at birth and fed by hand, calves, even if left with the mother, make no attempt to suck; while in England, where calves are not weaned until several weeks old, they resort to the udder as naturally as the young of wild quadrupeds.--_Ziel en Ligchaam_, p. 128, _n._ No. 7 (page 60, _first note_). At Piè di Mulera, at the outlet of the Val Anzasca, near the principal hotel, is a vine measuring thirty-one inches in circumference. The door of the chapter-hall in the cloister of the church of San Giovanni, at Saluzzo, is of vine wood, and the boards of which the panels were made could not have been less than ten inches wide. Statues and other objects of considerable dimensions, of vine wood, are mentioned by ancient writers. No. 8 (page 63, _second note_). Cartier, A. D. 1535-'6, mentions "vines, great melons, cucumbers, gourds [courges], pease, beans of various colors, but not like ours," as common among the Indians of the banks of the St. Lawrence.--_Bref Recit_, etc., reprint. Paris, 1863, pp. 13, a; 14, b; 20, b; 31, a. No. 8 (page 65, _second paragraph_). It may be considered very highly probable, if not certain, that the undiscriminating herbalists of the sixteenth century must have overlooked many plants native to this island. An English botanist, in an hour's visit to Aden, discovered several species of plants on rocks always reported, even by scientific travellers, as absolutely barren. But after all, it appears to be well established that the original flora of St. Helena was extremely limited, though now counting hundreds of species. No. 9 (page 66, _first note_). Although the vine _genus_ is very catholic and cosmopolite in its habits, yet particular _varieties_ are extremely fastidious and exclusive in their requirements as to soil and climate. The stocks of many celebrated vineyards lose their peculiar qualities by transplantation, and the most famous wines are capable of production only in certain well-defined, and for the most part narrow districts. The Ionian vine which bears the little stoneless grape known in commerce as the Zante currant, has resisted almost all efforts to naturalize it elsewhere, and is scarcely grown except in two or three of the Ionian islands and in a narrow territory on the northern shores of the Morea. No. 10 (page 68, _first note_). In most of the countries of Southern Europe, sheep and beeves are wintered upon the plains, but driven in the summer to mountain pastures at many days' distance from the homesteads of their owners. They transport seeds in their coats in both directions, and hence Alpine plants often shoot up at the foot of the mountains, the grasses of the plain on the borders of the glaciers; but in both cases, they usually fail to propagate themselves by ripening their seed. This explains the scattered tufts of common clover, with pale and flaccid blossoms, which are sometimes seen at heights exceeding 7,000 feet above the sea. No. 11 (page 73, _last paragraph_). The poisonous wild parsnip, which is very common in New England, is popularly believed to be identical with the garden parsnip, and differenced only by conditions of growth, a richer soil depriving it, it is said, of its noxious properties. Many wild medicinal plants, such as pennyroyal for example, are so much less aromatic and powerful, when cultivated in gardens, than when self-sown on meagre soils, as to be hardly fit for use. No. 12 (page 74, _second note_). See in Thoreau's _Excursions_, an interesting description of the wild apple-trees of Massachusetts. No. 13 (page 86, _first paragraph_). It is said at Courmayeur that a very few ibexes of a larger variety than those of the Cogne mountains, still linger about the Grande Jorasse. No. 14 (page 92, _first note_). In Northern and Central Italy, one often sees hillocks crowned with grove-like plantations of small trees, much resembling large arbors. These serve to collect birds, which are entrapped in nets in great numbers. These plantations are called _ragnaje_, and the reader will find, in Bindi's edition of Davanzati, a very pleasant description of a ragnaja, though its authorship is not now ascribed to that eminent writer. No. 15 (page 93, _second note_). The appearance of the dove-like grouse, _Tetrao paradoxus_, or _Syrrhaptes Pallasii_, in various parts of Europe, in 1859 and the following years, is a noticeable exception to the law of regularity which seems to govern the movements and determine the habitat of birds. The proper home of this bird is the steppes of Tartary, and it is not recorded to have been observed in Europe, or at least west of Russia, until the year abovementioned, when many flocks of twenty or thirty, and even a hundred individuals, were seen in Bohemia, Germany, Holland, Denmark, England, Ireland, and France. A considerable flock frequented the Frisian island of Borkum for more than five months. It was hoped they would breed and remain permanently in the island, but this expectation has been disappointed, and the steppe-grouse seems to have disappeared again altogether. No. 16 (page 94, _note_). From an article by A. Esquiros, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ for Sept. 1, 1864, entitled, _La vie Anglaise_, p. 119, it appears that such occurrences as that stated in the note are not unfrequent on the British coast. No. 17 (page 100, _first paragraph_). I cannot learn that caprification is now practised in Italy, but it is still in use in Greece. No. 18 (page 112, _first note_). The recent great multiplication of vipers in some parts of France, is a singular and startling fact. Toussenel, quoting from official documents, states, that upon the offer of a reward of fifty centimes, or ten cents, a head, _twelve thousand_ vipers were brought to the prefect of a single department, and that in 1859 fifteen hundred snakes and twenty quarts of snakes' eggs were found under a farm-house hearthstone. The granary, the stables, the roof, the very beds swarmed with serpents, and the family were obliged to abandon its habitation. Dr. Viaugrandmarais, of Nantes, reported to the prefect of his department more than two hundred recent cases of viper bites, twenty-four of which proved fatal.--_Tristia_, p. 176 _et seqq._ No. 19 (page 121, _first note_). The Beduins are little given to the chase, and seldom make war on the game birds and quadrupeds of the desert. Hence the wild animals of Arabia are less timid than those of Europe. On one occasion, when I was encamped during a sand storm of some violence in Arabia Petræa, a wild pigeon took refuge in one of our tents which had not been blown down, and remained quietly perched on a boy in the midst of four or five persons, until the storm was over, and then took his departure, _insalutato hospite_. No. 20 (page 122). It is possible that time may modify the habits of the fresh water fish of the North American States, and accommodate them to the now physical conditions of their native waters. Hence it may be hoped that nature, even unaided by art, will do something toward restoring the ancient plenty of our lakes and rivers. The decrease of our fresh water fish cannot be ascribed alone to exhaustion by fishing, for in the waters of the valleys and flanks of the Alps, which have been inhabited and fished ten times as long by a denser population, fish are still very abundant, and they thrive and multiply under circumstances where no American species could live at all. On the southern slope of those mountains, trout are caught in great numbers, in the swift streams which rush from the glaciers, and where the water is of icy coldness, and so turbid with particles of fine-ground rock, that you cannot see an inch below the surface. The glacier streams of Switzerland, however, are less abundant in fish. No. 21 (page 131, _note_). Vaupell, though agreeing with other writers as to the injury done to the forest by most domestic animals--which he illustrates in an interesting way in his posthumous work, _The Danish Woods_--thinks, nevertheless, that at the season when the mast is falling swine are rather useful than otherwise to forests of beech and oak, by treading into the ground and thus sowing beechnuts and acorns, and by destroying moles and mice.--_De Danske Skore_, p. 12. No. 22 (page 135, _note_). The able authors of Humphreys and Abbot's most valuable Report on the Physics and Hydraulics of the Mississippi, conclude that the delta of that river began its encroachments on the Gulf of Mexico not more than 4,400 years ago, before which period they suppose the Mississippi to have been "a comparatively clear stream," conveying very little sediment to the sea. The present rate of advance of the delta is 262 feet a year, and there are reasons for thinking that the amount of deposit has long been approximately constant.--_Report_, pp. 435, 436. The change in the character of the river must, if this opinion is well founded, be due to some geological revolution, or at least convulsion, and the hypothesis of the former existence of one or more great lakes in its upper valley, whose bottoms are occupied by the present prairie region, has been suggested. The shores of these supposed lakes have not, I believe, been traced, or even detected, and we cannot admit the truth of this hypothesis without supposing changes much more extensive than the mere bursting of the barrier which confined the waters. No. 23 (page 143, _note_). See on this subject a paper by J. Jamin, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ for Sept. 15, 1864; and, on the effects of human industry on the atmosphere, an article in _Aus der Natur_, vol. 29, 1864, pp. 443, 449, 465 _et seqq._ No. 24 (page 159, _second paragraph_). All evergreens, even the broad-leaved trees, resist frosts of extraordinary severity better than the deciduous trees of the same climates. Is not this because the vital processes of trees of persistent foliage are less interrupted during winter than those of trees which annually shed their leaves, and therefore more organic heat is developed? No. 25 (page 191, _first paragraph_). In discussing the influence of mountains on precipitation, meteorologists have generally treated the popular belief, that mountains "attract" to them clouds floating within a certain distance from them, as an ignorant prejudice, and they ascribe the appearance of clouds about high peaks solely to the condensation of the humidity of the air carried by atmospheric currents up the slopes of the mountain to a colder temperature. But if mountains do not really draw clouds and invisible vapors to them, they are an exception to the universal law of attraction. The attraction of the small Mount Shehallien was found sufficient to deflect from the perpendicular, by a measurable quantity, a plummet weighing but a few ounces. Why, then, should not greater masses attract to them volumes of vapor weighing hundreds of tons, and floating freely in the atmosphere within moderate distances of the mountains? No. 26 (page 198, _note_). Élisée Redus ascribes the diminution of the ponds which border the dunes of Gascony to the absorption of their water by the trees which have been planted upon the sands.--_Revue des Deux Mondes_, 1 Aug., 1863, p. 694. No. 27 (page 219, _note_). The waste of wood in European carpentry was formerly enormous, the beams of houses being both larger and more numerous than permanence or stability required. In examining the construction of the houses occupied by the eighty families which inhabit the village of Faucigny, in Savoy, in 1834, the forest inspector found that _fifty thousand_ trees had been employed in building them. The builders "seemed," says Hudry-Menos, "to have tried to solve the problem of piling upon the walls the largest quantity of timber possible without crushing them."--_Revue des Deux Mondes_, 1 June, 1864, p. 601. No. 28 (page 231, _note_). In a remarkable pamphlet, to which I shall have occasion to refer more than once hereafter, entitled _Avant-projet pour la création d'un sol fertile à la surface des Landes de Gascogne_, Duponchel argues with much force, that the fertilizing properties of river-slime are generally due much more to its mineral than to its vegetable constituents. No. 29 (page 265, _note_). Even the denser silicious stones are penetrable by fluids and the coloring matter they contain, to such an extent that agates and other forms of silex may be artificially stained through their substance. This art was known to and practised by the ancient lapidaries, and it has been revived in recent times. No. 30 (page 268). There is good reason for thinking that many of the earth and rock slides in the Alps occurred at an earlier period than the origin of the forest vegetation which, in later ages, covered the flanks of those mountains. See _Bericht über die Untersuchung der Schweizerischen Hochgebirgswaldungen_. 1862. P. 61. Where more recent slides have been again clothed with woods, the trees, shrubs, and smaller plants which spontaneously grow upon them are usually of different species from those observed upon soil displaced at remote periods. This difference is so marked that the site of a slide can often be recognized at a great distance by the general color of the foliage of its vegetation. No. 31 (page 286, _note_). It should have been observed that the venomous principle of poisonous mushrooms is not decomposed and rendered innocent by the process described in the _note_. It is merely extracted by the acidulated or saline water employed for soaking the plants, and care should be taken that this water be thrown away out of the reach of mischief. No. 32 (page 293, _note_). Gaudry estimates the ties employed in the railways of France at thirty millions, to supply which not less than two millions of large trees have been felled. These ties have been, upon the average, at least once renewed, and hence we must double the number of ties and of trees required to furnish them.--_Revue des Deux Mondes_, 15 July, 1863, p. 425. No. 33 (page 294, _second paragraph of note_). After all, the present consumption of wood and timber for fuel and other domestic and rural purposes, in many parts of Europe, seems incredibly small to an American. In rural Switzerland, the whole supply of firewood, fuel for small smitheries, dairies, breweries, brick and lime kilns, distilleries, fences, furniture, tools, and even house building--exclusive of the small quantity derived from the trimmings of fruit trees, grape vines and hedges, and from decayed fences and buildings--does not exceed an average of _two hundred and thirty cubic feet_, or less than two cords, a year per household. The average consumption of wood in New England for domestic fuel alone, is from five to ten times as much as Swiss families require for all the uses above enumerated. But the existing habitations of Switzerland are sufficient for a population which increases but slowly, and in the peasants' houses but a single room is usually heated. See _Bericht über die Untersuchung der Schweiz. Hochgebirgswaldungen_, pp. 85-89. No. 34 (page 304). Among more recent manuals may be mentioned: _Les Études de Maitre Pierre._ Paris, 1864. 12mo; BAZELAIRE, _Traité de Reboisement_. 2d edition, Paris, 1864; and, in Italian, SIEMONI, _Manuale teorico-pratico d'arte Forestale_. Firenze, 1864. 8vo. A very important work has lately been published in France by Viscount de Courval, which is known to me only by a German translation published at Berlin, in 1864, under the title, _Das Aufästen der Waldbäume_. The principal feature of De Courval's very successful system of sylviculture, is a mode of trimming which compels the tree to develop the stem by reducing the lateral ramification. Beginning with young trees, the buds are rubbed off from the stems, and superfluous lateral shoots are pruned down to the trunk. When large trees are taken in hand, branches which can be spared, and whose removal is necessary to obtain a proper length of stem, are very smoothly cut off quite close to the trunk, and the exposed surface is _immediately_ brushed over with mineral-coal tar. When thus treated, it is said that the healing of the wound is perfect, and without any decay of the tree. No. 35 (page 313). The most gorgeous autumnal coloring I have observed in the vegetation of Europe, has been in the valleys of the Durance and its tributaries in Dauphiny. I must admit that neither in variety nor in purity and brilliancy of tint, does this coloring fall much, if at all, short of that of the New England woods. But there is this difference: in Dauphiny, it is only in small shrubs that this rich painting is seen, while in North America the foliage of large trees is dyed in full splendor. Hence the American woodland has fewer broken lights and more of what painters call breadth of coloring. Besides this, the arrangement of the leafage in large globular or conical masses, affords a wider scale of light and shade, thus aiding now the gradation, now the contrast of tints, and gives the American October landscape a softer and more harmonious tone than marks the humble shrubbery of the forest hill-sides of Dauphiny. Thoreau--who was not, like some very celebrated landscape critics of the present day, an outside spectator of the action and products of natural forces, but, in the old religious sense, an _observer_ of organic nature, living, more than almost any other descriptive writer, among and with her children--has a very eloquent paper on the "Autumnal Tints" of the New England landscape.--See his _Excursions_, pp. 215 _et seqq._ Few men have personally noticed so many facts in natural history accessible to unscientific observation as Thoreau, and yet he had never seen that very common and striking spectacle, the phosphorescence of decaying wood, until, in the latter years of his life, it caught his attention in a bivouac in the forests of Maine. He seems to have been more excited by this phenomenon than by any other described in his works. It must be a capacious eye that takes in all the visible facts in the history of the most familiar natural object.--_The Maine Woods_, p. 184. "The luminous appearance of bodies projected against the sky adjacent to the rising" or setting sun, so well described in Professor Necker's Letter to Sir David Brewster, is, as Tyndall observes, "hardly ever seen by either guides or travellers, though it would seem, _prima facie_, that it must be of frequent occurrence." See TYNDALL, _Glaciers of the Alps_. Part I. Second ascent of Mont Blanc. Judging from my own observation, however, I should much doubt whether this brilliant phenomenon can be so often seen in perfection as would be expected; for I have frequently sought it in vain at the foot of the Alps, under conditions apparently otherwise identical with those where, in the elevated Alpine valleys, it shows itself in the greatest splendor. No. 36 (page 314). European poets, whose knowledge of the date palm is not founded on personal observation, often describe its trunk as not only slender, but particularly _straight_. Nothing can be farther from the truth. When the Orientals compare the form of a beautiful girl to the stem of the palm, they do not represent it as rigidly straight, but on the contrary as made up of graceful curves, which seem less like permanent outlines than like flowing motion. In a palm grove, the trunks, so far from standing planted upright like the candles of a chandelier, bend in a vast variety of curves, now leaning towards, now diverging from, now crossing, each other, and among a hundred you will hardly see two whose axes are parallel. No. 37 (page 316, _first note_). Charles Martin ascribes the power of reproduction by shoots from the stump to the cedar of Mount Atlas, which appears to be identical with the cedar of Lebanon.--_Revue des Deux Mondes_, 15 July, 1864, p. 315. No. 38 (page 332). In an interesting article on recent internal improvements in England, in the London Quarterly Review for January, 1858, it is related that in a single rock cutting on the Liverpool and Manchester railway, 480,000 cubic yards of stone were removed; that the earth excavated and removed in the construction of English railways up to that date, amounted to a hundred and fifty million cubic yards, and that at the Round Down Cliff, near Dover, a single blast of nineteen thousand pounds of powder blew down a thousand million tons of chalk, and covered fifteen acres of land with the fragments. No. 39 (page 339). According to Reventlov, whose work is one of the best sources of information on the subject of diking-in tide-washed flats, _Salicornia herbacea_ appears as soon as the flat is raised high enough to be dry for three hours at ordinary ebb tide, or, in other words, where the ordinary flood covers it to a depth of not more than two feet. At a flood depth of one foot, the _Salicornia_ dies and is succeeded by various sand plants. These are followed by _Poa distans_ and _Poa maritima_ as the ground is raised by further deposits, and these plants finally by common grasses. The _Salicornia_ is preceded by _confervæ_, growing in deeper water, which spread over the bottom, and when covered by a fresh deposit of slime reappear above it, and thus vegetable and alluvial strata alternate until the flat is raised sufficiently high for the growth of _Salicornia_.--_Om Marskdannelsen paa Vestkysten af Hertugdömmet Slesvig_, pp. 7, 8. No. 40 (page 348, _note_). The drijftil employed for the ring dike of the Lake of Haarlem, was in part cut in sections fifty feet long by six or seven wide, and these were navigated like rafts to the spot where they were sunk to form the dike.--EMILE DE LAVELEYE, _Revue des Deux Mondes_, 15 Sept., 1863, p. 285. No. 41 (page 352, _last paragraph_). See on the influence of the improvements in question on tidal and other marine currents, Staring, _De Bodem van Nederland_, I. p. 279. Although the dikes of the Netherlands and the adjacent states have protected a considerable extent of coast from the encroachments of the sea, and have won a large tract of cultivable land from the dominion of the waters, it has been questioned whether a different method of accomplishing these objects might not have been adopted with advantage. It has been suggested that a system of inland dikes and canals, upon the principle of those which, as will be seen in a subsequent part of the chapter on the waters, have been so successfully employed in the Val di Chiana and in Egypt, might have elevated the low grounds above the ocean tides, by spreading over them the sediment brought down by the Rhine, the Maes, and the Scheld. If this process had been introduced in the Middle Ages and constantly pursued to our times, the superficial and coast geography, as well as the hydrography of the countries in question, would undoubtedly have presented an aspect very different from their present condition; and by combining the process with a system of maritime dikes, which would have been necessary, both to resist the advance of the sea and to retain the slime deposited by river overflows, it is possible that the territory of those states would have been as extensive as it now is, and, at the same time, more elevated by several feet. But it must be borne in mind that we do not know the proportions in which the marine deposits that form the polders have been derived from materials brought down by these rivers or from other more remote sources. Much of the river slime has no doubt been transported by marine currents quite beyond the reach of returning streams, and it is uncertain how far this loss has been balanced by earth washed by the sea from distant shores and let fall on the coasts of the Netherlands and other neighboring countries. We know little or nothing of the quantity of solid matter brought down by the rivers of Western Europe in early ages, but, as the banks of those rivers are now generally better secured against wash and abrasion than in former centuries, the sediment transported by them must be less than at periods nearer the removal of the primitive forests of their valleys. Klöden states the quantity of sedimentary matter now annually brought down by the Rhine at Bonn to be sufficient only to cover a square English mile to the depth of a little more than a foot.--_Erdkunde_, I. p. 384. No. 42 (page 358, _first paragraph_). Meteorological observations have been regularly recorded at Zwanenburg, near the north end of the Lake of Haarlem, for more than a century, and since 1845 a similar register has been kept at the Helder, forty or fifty miles farther north. In comparing these two series of observations, it is found that about the end of the year 1852, when the drawing off of the waters of the Lake of Haarlem was completed, and the preceding summer had dried the grounds laid bare so as greatly to reduce the evaporable surface, a change took place in the relative temperature of the two stations. Taking the mean of every successive period of five days from 1845 to 1852, the temperature at Zwanenburg was thirty-three hundredths of a centigrade degree _lower_ than at the Helder. Since the end of 1852, the thermometer at Zwanenburg has stood, from the 11th of April to the 20th of September inclusive, twenty-two hundredths of a degree _higher_ than at the Helder, but from the 14th of October to the 17th of March, it has averaged one-tenth of a degree _lower_ than its mean between the same dates before 1853. There is no reasonable doubt that these differences are due to the draining of the lake. There has been less refrigeration from evaporation in summer, and the ground has absorbed more solar heat at the same period, while in the winter it has radiated more warmth then when it was covered with water. Doubtless the quantity of humidity contained in the atmosphere has also been affected by the same cause, but observations do not appear to have been made on that point. See KRECKE, _Het Klimaat van Nederland_, II. 64. No. 43 (page 358, _note_). In the course of the present year (1864), there have been several land slips on the borders of the Lake of Como, and in one instance the grounds of a villa lying upon the margin of the water suffered a considerable displacement. If the lake should be lowered to any considerable extent, in pursuance of the plan mentioned in the note on page 358, there is ground to fear that the steep shores of the lake might, at some points, be deprived of a lateral pressure requisite to their stability, and slide into the water as on the Lake of Lungern. See p. 356. No. 44 (page 369, _last paragraph but one of note_). In like manner, while the box, the cedar, the fir, the oak, the pine, "beams," and "timber," are very frequently mentioned in the Old Testament, not one of these words is found in the New, _except_ the case of the "beam in the eye," in the parable in Matthew and Luke. No. 45 (page 375, _note_). In all probability, the real change effected by human art in the superficial geography of Egypt, is the conversion of pools and marshes into dry land, by a system of transverse dikes, which compelled the flood water to deposit its sediment on the banks of the river instead of carrying it to the sea. The _colmate_ of modern Italy were thus anticipated in ancient Egypt. No. 46 (page 378). We have seen in _Appendix_, No. 42, _ante_, that the mean temperature of a station on the borders of the Lake of Haarlem--a sheet of water formerly covering sixty-two and a half square English miles--for the period between the 11th of April and the 20th of September, had been raised not less than a degree of Fahrenheit by the draining of that lake; or, to state the case more precisely, that the formation of the lake, which was a consequence of man's improvidence, had reduced the temperature one degree F. below the natural standard. The artificially irrigated lands of France, Piedmont, and Lombardy, taken together, are fifty times as extensive as the Lake of Haarlem, and they are situated in climates where evaporation is vastly more rapid than in the Netherlands. They must therefore, no doubt, affect the local climate to a far greater extent than has been observed in connection with the draining of the lake in question. I do not know that special observations have been made with a view to measure the climatic effects of irrigation, but in the summer I have often found the _morning_ temperature, when the difference would naturally be least perceptible, on the watered plains of Piedmont, nine miles south of Turin, several degrees lower than that recorded at an observatory in the city. No. 47 (page 391, _note_). The Roman aqueduct known as the Pont du Gard, near Nismes, was built, in all probability, nineteen centuries ago. The bed of the river Gardon, a rather swift stream, which flows beneath it, can have suffered but a slight depression since the piers of the aqueduct were founded. No. 48 (page 393, _first note_). Duponchel makes the following remarkable statement: "The river Herault rises in a granitic region, but soon reaches calcareous formations, which it traverses for more than sixty kilometres, rolling through deep and precipitous ravines, into which the torrents are constantly discharging enormous masses of pebbles belonging to the hardest rocks of the Jurassian period. These debris, continually renewed, compose, even below the exit of the gorge where the river enters into a regular channel cut in a tertiary deposit, broad beaches, prodigious accumulations of rolled pebbles, extending several kilometres down the stream, but they diminish in size and weight so rapidly that above the mouth of the river, which is at a distance of thirty or thirty-five kilometres from the gorge, every trace of calcareous matter has disappeared from the sands of the bottom, which are exclusively silicious."--_Avant-projet pour la création d'un sol fertile_, etc., p. 20. No. 49 (page 404, _first paragraph of second note_). The length of the lower course of the Po having been considerably increased by the filling up of the Adriatic with its deposits, the velocity of the current ought, _prima facie_, to have been diminished and its bed raised in proportion. There are grounds for believing that this has happened in the case of the Nile, and one reason why the same effect has not been more sensibly perceptible in the Po is, that the confinement of the current by continuous embankments gives it a high-water velocity sufficient to sweep out deposits let fall at lower stages and slower movements of the water. Torrential streams tend first to excavate, then to raise, their beds. No general law on this point can be stated in relation to the middle and lower course of rivers. The conditions which determine the question of the depression or elevation of a river bed are too multifarious, variable, and complex to be subjected to formulæ, and they can scarcely even be enumerated. See, however, note on p. 431. No. 50 (page 406, _first paragraph_). The system proposed in the text is substantially the Egyptian method, the Nile dikes having been constructed rather to retain than to exclude the water. The waters of rivers which flow down planes of gentle inclination, deposit in their inundations the largest proportion of their sediment as soon as, by overflowing their banks, they escape from the swift current of the channel, and consequently the immediate banks of such rivers become higher than the grounds lying farther from the stream. In the "intervals," or "bottoms," of the great North American rivers, the alluvial banks are elevated and dry, the flats more remote from the river lower and swampy. This is generally observable in Egypt, though less so than in the valley of the Mississippi, where, below Cape Girardeau, the alluvial banks constitute natural glacis descending as you recede from the river, at an average of seven feet in the first mile.--HUMPHREYS AND ABBOT'S _Report_, pp. 96, 97. The Egyptian crossdikes, by retaining the water of the inundations, compel it to let fall its remaining slime, and hence the elevation of the remoter land goes on at a rate not very much slower than that of the immediate banks. Probably transverse embankments would produce the same effect in the Mississippi valley. In the great floods of this river, it is observed that, at a certain distance from the channel, the bottoms, though lower than the banks, are flooded to a less depth. See cross sections in Plate IV. of Humphreys and Abbot's Report. This apparently anomalous fact is due, I suppose, to the greater swiftness of the current of the overflowing water in the low grounds, which are often drained through the channels of rivers whose beds lie at a lower level than that of the Mississippi, or by the bayous which are so characteristic a feature of the geography of that valley. A judicious use of dikes would probably convert the swamps of the lower Mississippi valley into a region like Egypt. No. 51 (_second note_). The mean discharge of the Mississippi is 675,000 cubic feet per second, and, accordingly, that river contributes to the sea about eleven times as much water as the Po, and more than sis and a half times as much as the Nile. The discharge of the Mississippi is estimated at one-fourth of the precipitation in its basin, certainly a very large proportion, when we consider the rapidity of evaporation in many parts of the basin, and the probable loss by infiltration.--HUMPHREYS AND ABBOT'S _Report_, p. 93. No. 52 (page 423, _first paragraph_). Artificially directed currents of water have been advantageously used in civil engineering for displacing and transporting large quantities of earth, and there is no doubt that this agency might be profitably employed to a far greater extent than has yet been attempted. Some of the hydraulic works in California for washing down masses of auriferous earth are on a scale stupenduous enough to produce really important topographical changes. No. 53 (page 435, _first note_). I have lately been informed by a resident of the Ionian Islands, who is familiar with this phenomenon, that the sea flows uninterruptedly into the sub-insular cavities, at all stages of the tide. No. 54 (page 438, _note_). It is observed in Cornwall that deep mines are freer from water in artificially well-drained, than in undrained agricultural districts.--ESQUIROS, _Revue des Deux Mondes_, Nov. 15, 1863, p. 430. No. 55 (page 441). See, on the Artesian wells of the Sahara, and especially on the throwing up of living fish by them, an article entitled, _Le Sahara_, etc., by Charles Martins, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ for August 1, 1864, pp. 618, 619. No. 56 (page 444, _first note_). From the article in the _Rev. des Deux Mondes_, referred to in the preceding note, it appears that the wells discovered by Ayme were truly artesian. They were bored in rock, and provided at the outlet with a pear-shaped valve of stone, by which the orifice could be closed or opened at pleasure. No. 57 (page 447, _second note_). Hull ingeniously suggests that, besides other changes, fine sand intermixed with or deposited above a coarser stratum, as well as the minute particles resulting from the disintegration of the latter, may be carried by rain in the case of dunes, or by the ordinary action of sea water in that of subaqueous sandbanks, down through the interstices in the coarser layer, and thus the relative position of fine sand and gravel may be more or less changed.--_Oorsprong der Hollandsche Duinen_, p. 103. No. 58 (page 479). It appears from Laurent, that marine shells, of extant species, are found in the sands of the Sahara, far from the sea, and even at considerable depths below the surface.--_Mémoires sur le Sahara Oriental_, p. 62. This observation has been confirmed by late travellers, and is an important link in the chain of evidence which tends to prove that the upheaval of the Libyan desert is of comparatively recent date. No. 59 (p. 480). "At New Quay [in England] the dune sands are converted to stone by an oxyde of iron held in solution by the water which pervades them. This stone, which is formed, so to speak, under our eye, has been found solid enough to be employed for building."--ESQUIROS, _L'Angleterre et la vie Anglaise_, _Revue des Deux Mondes_, 1 March, 1864, pp. 44, 45. No. 60 (page 496, _first paragraph_). In Ditmarsh, the breaking of the surface by the man[oe]uvering of a corps of cavalry let loose a sand-drift which did serious injury before it was subdued.--KOHL, _Inseln u. Marschen._ etc., III. p. 282. Similar cases have occurred in Eastern Massachusetts, from equally slight causes.--See THOREAU, _A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers_, pp. 151-208. No. 61 (page 497, _last note_). A more probable explanation of the fact stated in the note is suggested by Èlisée Reclus, in an article entitled, _Le Littoral de la France_, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ for Sept. 1, 1864, pp. 193, 194. This able writer believes such pools to be the remains of ancient maritime bays, which have been cut off from the ocean by gradually accumulated sand banks raised by the waves and winds to the character of dunes. No. 62 (page 506, _note_). The statement in the note is confirmed by Olmsted: "There is not a sufficient demand for rosin, except of the first qualities, to make it worth transporting from the inland distilleries; it is ordinarily, therefore, conducted off to a little distance, in a wooden trough, and allowed to flow from it to waste upon the ground. At the first distillery I visited, which had been in operation but one year, there lay a congealed pool of rosin, estimated to contain over three thousand barrels."--_A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States_, 1863, p. 345. No. 63 (page 507). In an article on the dunes of Europe, in Vol. 29 (1864) of _Aus der Natur_, p. 590, the dunes are estimated to cover, on the islands and coasts of Schleswig Holstein, in Northwest Germany, Denmark, Holland, and France, one hundred and eighty-one German, or nearly four thousand English square miles; in Scotland, about ten German, or two hundred and ten English miles; in Ireland, twenty German, or four hundred and twenty English miles; and in England, one hundred and twenty German, or more than twenty-five hundred English miles. No. 64 (page 512, _last paragraph_). For a brilliant account of the improvement of the Landes, see Edmond About, _Le Progrès_, Chap, VII. In the memoir referred to in _Appendix_, No. 48, _ante_, Duponchel proposes the construction of artificial torrents to grind calcareous rock to slime by rolling and attrition in its bed, and, at the same time, the washing down of an argillaceous deposit which is to be mixed with the calcareous slime and distributed over the Landes by watercourses constructed for the purpose. By this means, he supposes that a highly fertile soil could be formed on the surface, which would also be so raised by the process as to admit of freer drainage. That nothing may be wanting to recommend this project, Duponchel suggests that, as some of the rivers of Western France are auriferous, it is probable that gold enough may be collected from the washings to reduce the cost of the operations materially. No. 65 (page 528, _first paragraph_). The opening of a channel across Cape Cod would have, though perhaps to a smaller extent, the same effects in interchanging the animal life of the southern and northern shores of the isthmus, as in the case of the Suez canal; for although the breadth of Cape Cod does not anywhere exceed twenty miles, and is in some places reduced to one, it appears from the official reports on the Natural History of Massachusetts, that the population of the opposite waters differs widely in species. Not having the original documents at hand, I quote an extract from the _Report on the Invertebrate Animals of Mass._, given by Thoreau, _Excursions_, p. 69: "The distribution of the marine shells is well worthy of notice as a geological fact. Cape Cod, the right arm of the Commonwealth, reaches out into the ocean some fifty or sixty miles. It is nowhere many miles wide; but this narrow point of land has hitherto proved a barrier to the migration of many species of mollusca. Several genera and numerous species, which are separated by the intervention of only a few miles of land, are effectually prevented from mingling by the Cape, and do not pass from one side to the other * * * * Of the one hundred and ninety-seven marine species, eighty-three do not pass to the south shore, and fifty are not found on the north shore of the Cape." Probably the distribution of the species of mollusks is affected by unknown local conditions, and therefore an open canal across the Cape might not make every species that inhabits the waters on one side common to those of the other; but there can be no doubt that there would be a considerable migration in both directions. The fact stated in the report may suggest an important caution in drawing conclusions upon the relative age of formations from the character of their fossils. Had a geological movement or movements upheaved to different levels the bottoms of waters thus separated by a narrow isthmus, and dislocated the connection between those bottoms, naturalists, in after ages, reasoning from the character of the fossil faunas, might have assigned them to different, and perhaps very widely distant, periods. No. 66 (page 548, _first paragraph_). To the geological effects of the thickening of the earth's crust in the Bay of Bengal, are to be added those of thinning it on the highlands where the Ganges rises. The same action may, as a learned friend suggests to me, even have a cosmical influence. The great rivers of the earth, taken as a whole, transport sediment from the polar regions in an equatorial direction, and hence tend to increase the equatorial diameter, and at the same time, by their inequality of action, to a continual displacement of the centre of gravity, of the earth. The motion of the globe and of all bodies affected by its attraction, is modified by every change of its form, and in this case we are not authorized to say that such effects are in any way compensated. INDEX Abbeys of St. Germain and St. Denis, revenues of, 6. Adirondack forest, 235; lakes of, 357. Ailanthus glandulosa, 515. Akaba, gulf of, infiltration of fresh water in, 440. Albano, lake of, artificial lowering of, 353. Algeria, deserts of, artesian wells in, 443; sand dunes of, 463; consolidated dunes, 480. Alpaca, South American, 83. Amazon, Indians of, 11. Ameland, island of, 499. America, North, primitive physical condition of, 27, 43; forests of, 28; possibility of noting its physical changes, 52; by scientific observation, 53; forest trees of, 274; sand dunes of, 469; proposed changes in hydrography of, 532. Animal life, sympathy of ruder races with, 39; instinct, fallibility of, 40; hostility of civilized man to inferior forms of, 121. Animals, wild, action of on vegetation, 78. Aphis, the European, 104. Apennines, effects of felling the woods on, 150, 152. Appian way, the, 542. Aqueducts, geographical and climatic effects of, 358. Arabia Petræa, surface drainage of, 440; sandstone of, 452; sands and petrified wood of, 455; wadies of, 538. Aragua, valley of, Venezuela, 202. Ararat, Mt., phenomenon of vegetation on, 287. Ardèche, l', department of, 152; destruction of forests in, 389. -- river and basin, floods of, 386; supply of water to the Rhone, 388, 398; violence of inundations of, 388; damage done by, 390; effect on river beds, 391; force of its affluents, 392. Argostoli, Cephalonia, millstreams of, 434. Armenia, ancient irrigation of, 366. Arno, the river, deposits of, 414; upper course of in the Val di Chiana, 417, 420. Artesian wells, their sources, 441; usual objects, 442; occasional effects, 442; employment in the Algerian desert, 443; by the French Government, 444; success and probable results of, 445; known to the ancients, 443; depth of, 444. Arundo arenaria, 501. Ascension, island of, 205. Auk, the wingless, extirpation of, 95. Australia a field of physical observation, 51. Avalanches, Alpine, various causes of, 266; by felling trees, 270. Azoff, sea of, proposed changes, 531. Babinet, plan for artificial springs, by, 448. Baikal Lake, the fish of, 117. Baltic Sea, sand dunes of, 467. Barcelonette, valley of, former fertility, 243; present degradation of, 244. Bavaria, scarcity of fuel in, 299. Bear, the mythical character of, 40. Beaver, the, agency in forming bogs, 31; cause of its increased numbers, 84. Bee, the honey, products of, 105; introduction in United States, 106. Belgium, effect of plantations in, 152; Campine of, 513. Ben Gâsi, district of, rock formation in, 537. Bergamo, change of climate in the valley of, 151. Bibliographical list of authorities, vii. Birch tree (black and yellow), produce of, 171. Birds, number of, in United States, 86; the turkey, dove, pigeon, 87; as sowers and consumers of seeds, 87; as destroyers of insects, 89; injurious extirpation of, 90; wanton destruction of, 92; weakness of, 93; instinct of migratory, 94; extinction of species, 95; commercial value of, 97; introduction of species, 98. Bison, the American, 78; number and migrations of, 81, 83; domesticated, 135. Blackbird, the proscription of, 91. Bogs, formation and nomenclature of, 29-32; of New England, 29; repositories of fuel, 30. Brémontier, system of dune plantations of, 503; a benefactor to his race, 515. Breton, Cap, dune vineyards of, 508. Busbequius' letters, 64. Camel, the, transfer and migrations of, 83; injurious to vegetation, 132. Campine of Belgium, 513. Canada thistle, the, 68. Canals, geographic and climatic effects of, 359; injurious effects of Tuscan, 359; projected, Suez, 519; Isthmus of Darien, 522; to the Dead Sea, 524; maritime, in Greece, 526; Saros, 527; Cape Cod, 528; the Don and the Volga, 531; Lake Erie and the Genesee, 532; Lake Michigan and the Mississippi, 533. Cape Cod, sand dunes of, 487; legislative protection of, 502; vegetation of, 503; projected canal through, 528. Cappercailzie, the, extinction of, in Britain, 96. Carniola, caves of, 434. Caspian Sea, proposed changes in its basin, 531. Catania, lava streams of, 544. Catavothra of Greece, 536. Cévennes, effects of clearing the, 153. Champlain, lake, dates of its congelation, 163. Cherbourg, breakwater of, 46, 332. Chiana, Val di, description and character of, 417-420; plans for its restoration, 420; artificial drainage of, attempted, 421; successfully executed, 423. Clergy, mediæval, their character, 282. Climatic change, discussions of, 9; how tested, 20; causes producing, in New England, Africa, Arabia Petræa, 20-22; man's action on, difficult to ascertain, 51; deterioration, 71. Coal mines, combustion of, 546. Coal, sea, early use of, for fuel, 222; increased use of, in Paris, 295. Coast line, change of, from natural causes, 331; subject to human guidance, 332. Cochineal insect transferred to Spain, 105. Cochituate Aqueduct, Boston, 103. Col Isoard, valley of, devastated, 242. Commerce, modern, on what dependent, 60. Como, lake of, proposed lowering of, 358. Constance, lake of, 534. Cork-oak tree, yield of, 311. Corporations, social and political, influence of, 54. Cosmical influences, 13. Cotton, early cultivation of, 61; can be raised by white labor, 381. Crawley Sparrow Club, 90. Currents, sea, strength of, 456; in the Bosphorus, 457. Cuyahoga river, 208. Cypress tree, its beauty, 314. Darien, Isthmus of, proposed canal across, 522; conjectural effects of, 523. Dead Sea, projected canals to, 524; possible results of, 525. Deer, numbers of, in United States; 82; tame, injurious to trees, 130. Denmark, peat mosses of, 22; dunes of, 497; extent and movement of, 498; legislative protection of, 501, 504. Desert, the, richness of local color, 445; mirage in, 446. Des Plaines river, 533. Despotism a cause of physical decay, 5. Dikes, recovery of land by, in the Netherlands, 335; early usage and immense extent of, 336; encouraged by the Spaniards, 337; details of their construction and effect on the land gained, 340-345; in Egypt, 413. Dinornis, or moa, recent extirpation of, in New Zealand, 95. Dodo, the, extirpation of, 95. Domestic animals, action of, on vegetation, 79; origin and transfer of, 82; injurious to the forest growth, 130. Don river, proposed diversion of, 531. Draining a geographical element, 360; superficial, its necessity in forest lands, 363; effect on temperature, 364; underground, _ib._; extensive use of, in England, 362; affects the atmosphere, 364; disturbs the equilibrium of river supply, 365; by boring, 362; in France, &c., 362; Paris, 363. Drance, Switzerland, glacier lake of, 403. Dry land and water, relative extent of, 178. Dwight, Dr., Travels in the United States, characterized, 52. Earth, fertile, below the rock, 537; transported to cover rocky surfaces, 537. Earthquakes, effects of, 542; causes and possible prevention of, 543; of Lisbon, 544. Earthworm, utility of, in agriculture, 100; multiplication of, in New England, 101. Egypt, catacombs, 70; papyrus or water lily, 70; poisonous snakes of, 112; supposed increase of rain in, 190; productiveness of, 230; necessity and extent of irrigation in, 368, 373; cultivated soil of, 372, 374; population of, 374; amount of water used for irrigation, 380; saline deposits, 382; artificial river courses of, 402; cultivated area of, 412; sands of, 458; their prevalence and extent, 459; source of, 461; action on the Delta and cultivated land, 462; effect of the diversion of the Nile on, 529; refuse heaps near Cairo, 541. Eland, the, preserved in Prussia, 86. Elm, the Washington, Cambridge, 146. Elsineur, artificial formation in harbor of, 539. England, forest economy of, 221; large extent of ornamental plantations, 222; Forests of, described by Cæsar, 222; private enterprise in sylviculture, 292; sand dunes of, 507. Enguerrand de Coucy, cruelty of, 281. Erie Canal, the, influence on the fauna and flora of its region, 116; lake, depth and level of, 532; proposed canal from, 532. Espy's theories of artificial rain, 547. Etna, volcanic lava and dust, 131. Euphrates, sand plains in the valley of, 511. Eye, cultivation of the, 11; control of the limbs by, 12; trained by the study of physical geography, 12. Feudalism, pernicious influence of, 6. Fir tree, the, its products, 311. Fire weed, in burnt forests of the United States, 287. Fish, destruction of, by man, 112, 114, 120, 122; voracity of, 114; introduction and breeding of foreign, 116; naturalization of, 117; inferiority of the artificially fattened, 121. Fish, shell, extensive remains of, in United States, 117; of Indian origin, 128. Fish ponds of Catholic countries, 426. Fontainebleau, forest of, 34, 130; poaching in, 284; its renovation, 316; soil of, 513. Food, ancient arts of preservation of, 18. Forest, the, influence of, on the humidity of air, 162; do. of earth, 165; as organic, 166; balance of conflicting influences in, 176; influence on temperature, 178; on precipitation, 181, 196; in South America, 184; the Canary Islands and Asia Minor, 185; Peru, 188; Palestine, Southern France, Scotland and Egypt, 189; influence of, on humidity of soil, 196; on springs, 197; in Venezuela, 202; New Granada, 204; Switzerland and France, 205, 208; United States, 207; in winter, 210; general consequences of its destruction, 214; on the earth, springs, rivers, 215; literature of, in France, 217; Germany, 218; Italy, 218; England, 221; influence of, on inundations, 223; in North America, 225; disputed effects of, in Europe, 228; principal causes of its destruction, 270; in British America, 271; in Europe, 279; royal forests, 280; effects of the Revolution on, in France, 284; utility of, for the preservation of smaller plants, 286, 290; do. of birds, 291; economic utility of, and necessity for its restoration, 292; extent of, in Europe, 296; proportion in different countries of, 300; of the United States and Canada, 300; economy of, 303; management of, in France, 304; European forests, all of artificial growth, 305; artificial and natural, their respective advantages, 307; American do., their peculiar characteristics, 313; economic action of cattle on, 325; duty of preserving, 327; average revenue from, 327; regulated by laws in France, 395. See _Trees_, _Woods_. Forests of North America, balance of geographical elements in, 27; agency of quadrupeds and insects in, 32; injury to, by insects, 33; meteorological importance of, 139. Forest laws, mediæval, character of, 217; do. Jewish, 217; severity of, in France and England, 280; under Louis IX., 281; of America, created by circumstances, 302. France, forest literature and economy of, 217; legislation on forests, 233; -- Southeastern, former physical state of, 237; altered condition of, 239; royal forests of, and forest laws, 280; extent of, in, 296; ancient lakes of, 357; inundations of 1856 in, 393; remedies against inundations in, 395; sand dunes of Western, 485; encroachments of the sea on, 494. French peasantry, described by La Bruyere, 6; do. Arthur Young, 7; of Chambord, 283. Friesland, sand dunes of, 489. Fucinus Lake (Lago di Celano), drainage of, by the Romans, 354; moderns, 355. Game Laws, effect on the numbers of birds in France, 91; in England and Italy, 92; severity of, in France, 283; unable to stop poaching, 284. Ganges, valley of the, 548. Gascony, coast sands of, 453; dunes of, 496; extent and advance of, 497; fixing and reclaiming of, 504; Landes of, 511; their reclamation, 512. Geological influences, 13. Geographers, new school of, 8. Geographical influence of changes produced by man, 352. Geography, modern, improved form of, 57. German Ocean, sands of, 454, 457. Germany, extent of forests in, 299. Glacier lakes in Switzerland, 403. Goat, the Cashmere or Thibet, 83. Gold fish, the migration from China, 116. Goldau, Switzerland, destruction of, 268. Grape disease, its economic effect in France, Italy, Sicily, 72. Grasshopper, the rapid increase in America, 291. Gravedigger beetle, the, 107. Greece, proposed maritime canals in, through the Corinthian Isthmus, 526; Mount Athos, 527; subterranean waters of, 536. Gulls, sea, habits of, 98. Gulf stream, the, 523. Gunpowder chiefly used for industrial purposes, 335. Haarlem Lake, origin and extent of, 346, 347; reasons for draining it, 348; means employed, 349; successful results, 350. Hauran, the productions of, its soil, 74. Heilbronn, springs at, 207. Herring fishery, produce of, 120. Hessian fly, introduction of in the United States, 104. Honey bee, the wild, New England, legal usage, 302. Humid air, movement of, 183. Hunter in New England, exploits of, 82. Ibex, the Alpine, 86. India, saline efflorescence of its soil, 382; natural connection of rivers in, 401. Insects, injurious to vegetable life, 33; utility of, 99; agency in the fertilization of orchids, 102; mass of their exuviæ in South America, 102; introduction of injurious species, 104, 106; ravages of, 105; tenacity of life in, 106; the carnivorous, useful to man, 107; destruction of, by fish, 108; abundance of, in Northern Europe, 108; destruction of, by birds, 109; do. quadrupeds, 110; do. reptiles, 110; do not multiply in the forest, 291; confine themselves to dead trees, 322. Inundations, influence of the forest on, 223; of the German Ocean, 334; means for obviating, 384; of 1856 in France, 393; remedies against, 395; legislative regulation of the woodlands in France for prevention of, 396; proposed basins of reception, 398; do. in Peru and Spain, 400; Rozet's plan for diminishing, 406. Irrigation, remote date of in ancient nations, 366; among Mexicans and Peruvians, 366; its necessity in hot climates, 367; in Europe, 367; in Palestine, 368; in Idumæa, 370; Egypt, 371, 373; quantity of water so applied, 376, 377; extent of lands irrigated, 396; effects of, 378; on river supply, 380; on human health, 381; saline deposits from, in India and Egypt, 382; effect of, on vegetable crops, 378; on the soil, 379; economic evils of, 379. Islands, floating, in Holland and South America, 349, 351. Ijssel river, Holland, 535. Italy, effects of the denudation of its forests, 220; political condition adverse to their preservation, 219; beauty of its winter scenery, 314; extent of irrigation in, 368; atmospheric phenomena of Northern, 368. Jupiter, satellites of, visible to the eye, 12. Jutland, effects of felling the woods in, 150; destruction of forests in, 279; encroachments of the sea on, 491. Kander river, Switzerland, artificial course of, 403. Karst, the subterranean waters of, 536. Kjökkenmöddinger in Denmark, 16; their extent, 540. Kohl, J. G., "the Herodotus of modern Europe," 340; on dune sand, 475. Labruguière, commune of, 208. Læstadius, account of the Swedish Laplanders, 96. Lakes, draining of, by steam hydraulic engines, 346; natural process of filling up by aquatic vegetation, 349; lowering of, in ancient and modern times, 353; in Italy, 354; in Switzerland, 356; inconvenient consequences of, 356; mountain, their disappearance, 357. Landscape beauty, insensibility of the ancients to, 2; of the oasis and the desert, 445. Lava currents, diversion of their course, 544; from Vesuvius, phenomena of, 545; heat emitted by, 545. Life, balance of animal and vegetable, 103. Liimfjord, the, irruption of the sea into, 491; aquatic vegetation of, 492; original state of, 519. Lion, an inhabitant of Europe, 85. Lisbon, earthquake of, 544. Locust, the, does not multiply in woods, 296; tree and insect, 32. Lombardy, statistics of irrigation in, 376. Louis IX., of France, clemency of, 282. Lower Alps, department of, ravages of torrents in, 246. Lumber trade of Quebec, 271; of United States, 1850-'60, 301. Lungern, lake of, lowering of, 356. Madagascar, gigantic bird of, 96; the ai-ai of, 110. Madder, early cultivation of, in Europe, 20. Madeira, named from its forests, 129. Maize, early cultivation of, law of its acclimation, 19; native country of, 73. Malta, transported soil of, 538; salt works at, 540. Man, reaction of, on nature, 8; insufficiency of data, 9; geographical influence of, 13; physical revolutions wrought by, 14; unpremeditated results of conscious action, 15; ancient relics of, in old geological formations, 16; mechanical effects of, on the earth's surface, 25; destructiveness of, 35; in animal life and inorganic nature, 36-39; character of his action compared with that of brutes, 42; subversive of the balance of nature, 43; sometimes exercised for good, 44; present limits to, 45; transfer of vegetable life by, 59; remains of, 76; contemporary with the mammoth, 77; agency in the extermination of birds, 96; do. introduction of species, 98; increase of insect life, 104; introduction of new forms of do. by, 105; destruction of fish by, 112, 120, 122; extirpation of aquatic animals by, 119; possible control of minute organisms, 125; his first physical conquest, 135; his action on land and the waters, 330; possible geographical changes by, 517; incidental effects of his action, 539; illimitable and ever enduring do., 548. Maremme of Tuscany, ancient and mediæval state of, 425; extent of, 427; inhabitants, 428; improvement of, 429; sedimentary deposits of, 425, 430. Marine isthmuses, cutting of, 517; its difficulties, 518; sometimes done by nature, 519. Marmato in Popayan, 205. Marshes, climatic effects of draining, 358; insalubrity of mixture of fresh and salt water in, 417. Mechanic arts, illustration of their mutual interdependence, 307. Medanos of the South American desert, 482. Mediterranean Sea, tides of, 425; sand dunes of, 467; poor in organic life, 520. Mella, the river, Italy, 248. Meteorology, uncertainty and late rise of, 16, 22; varying nomenclature of, 23; precipitation and evaporation, 24. Michigan, lake, sand dunes of, 467; originally wooded, 487; proposed diversion of its waters, 532. Mining excavations, effects of, 545. Minute organisms, their offices, 123; universal diffusion and products of, 124, 127; possible control of their agency by man, 125; the coral insect, 125; the diatomaceæ, 126. Miramichi, great fire of, 28. Mistral in France, 153. Mississippi river, "cut offs" and their effect, 415; precipitation in the valley of, 436; projected canal to, 533. Mountain slides, their cause, 265, 268; their frequency in the Alps, 267. Mountainous countries, their liability to physical degradation, 50. Monte Testaccio, Rome, 541. Moose deer, the American, rapid multiplication of, 130. Mushrooms, poisonous, how to render harmless, 286. Natural forces, accumulation of, 46; resistance to, 542. Nature, man's reaction on, 8; observation of, 10; stability of, 27, 34; restoration of disturbed harmonies of, 35; nothing small in, 548. Naturalists, enthusiasm of, 99. Netherlands, ancient inundations of, 334; recovery of land by diking, 334; the practice derived from the Romans, 335; extent of land gained from the sea, 336; do. lost by incursions of do., 337; character of lands gained, 338; natural process of recovery, 339; grandeur of the dike system of, 340; method of their construction in, 341; modes of protection, 343; various uses of, 343; effect on the level of the land, 344; drainage of do., 345; primitive condition of, 351; effects on the social, moral, and economic interests of the people of, 351; sand dunes of, 486; encroachments of the sea on, 494; artificial dunes in, 499; protection of dunes in, 500; removal of do., 509. Nile, the river, valley of, 374; its ancient state, 375; inundations of, 385; water delivery of, 387; artificial mouths of, 402; consequences of diking, 410, 413; richness of its deposits, 411; extent of do., 412; mud banks caused by its deposits, 433; sand dunes at its mouths, 468; conduits for irrigation, 521; proposed diversion of, 528; not impossible, 529; effects of, 530; ceramic banks of, 541. Northmen in New England, 60. Nubians, Nile boats of the, 17. Numbers, the frequent error in too definite statements of, 260; oriental and Italian usage of, 261. Oak, the English, early uses in the arts, 223; "openings" of North America, 136. Ohio, mounds of, 18; remains of a primitive people in, 135, 138; apple trees of, 22. Old World, former populousness of, 4; physical decay of, 3; present desolation of, 5; its causes, 5; ancient climate of, 19; physical restoration of, 47. Olive tree, the wild, 74; importance of, 312. Orange tree known to the ancients, 64; the wild, 74. Orchids, fertilization of, by insects, 102. Organic life embraced in modern geography, 57; its geological agency, 75; geographical importance of, 7; bones and relics of, human and animal, 76. Ostrich, the, diminution of its numbers, 97. Ottaquechee river, Vermont, transporting power of, 253. Otter, the American, voracity of, 120. Oxen, agricultural uses of, in United States, 80. Oyster, the, transplantation of, 118. Palestine, ancient terrace culture and irrigation of, 369; disastrous effects of its neglect, 370. Palissy, Bernard, character of, 218; plan for artificial springs, 447. Paragrandini of Lombardy, 141. Paramelle, the Abbé, on fountains, 437. Peat beds, accidental burning of, 546; -- mosses of Denmark, 32. Pecora, river of the Maremma, its deposits, 425. Peru, ancient progress in the arts, 366; basins of reception in, 400. Petra, in Idumæa, ancient irrigation at, 370. Phosphorescence of the sea unknown to the ancients, 114. Physical decay of the earth's surface, 3; its causes, 5; arrest of, in new countries, 48; forms and formations predisposing to, 49. Physical geography, study of recommended, 12; restoration of the earth, 8; importance and possibility of, 26; of disturbed harmonies, 35; of the Old World, 47. Pine, the American, former ordinary dimensions of, 275; how affected by the accidents of its growth, 306; the maritime, on dune sands in France, 506; the pitch, hardihood of, 273; umbrella, the, most elegant of trees, 309, 313; the white, rapidity of its growth, 274. Pinus cembra of Switzerland, 309. Pisciculture, its valuable results, 118. Plants, cultivated, uncertain identity of ancient and modern, 19; do. of wild and domestic species, 73; changes of habit by domestication, 19; geographical influence of, 58; foreign, grown in United States, 61; American, grown in Europe, 63; modes of introduction, 64; accidental do., 66; power of accommodation of, 65; how affected by transfer, 68; tenacity of life in wild species, 69; extirpation of, 70; domestic origin of, 72; species employed for protection of sand dunes, 500. Pliny, the elder, theory of springs, 198, 216. Po, river, ancient state of its basin, 255; modern changes, 256; its floods, tributaries, and deposits, 256-261, 405; embankments of, 385, 404; sediment of, 410; age and consequences of its embankments, 411; mean delivery of, 412; _salti_ of, 415. Poland, sand plains of, 514. Poplar, the Lombardy, 68; characterized, 313. Potato, native country of, 73. Prairies, conjectural origin of, 134. Provence, physical structure of, 237; ancient state of, 238; destructive action of torrents on, 236; Alps of, 245. Prussia, sand dunes of, 485; drifting of, 498; measures for reclaiming of, 505. Quadrupeds, number in United States, 79; extirpation of, 84. Quebec, high tides of, 271; lumber trade of, 272. Railways, scientific uses of, 53. Rain water, its absorption and infiltration, 438, 439; economizing its precipitation, 449. Ravenna, cathedral of, 60; pine woods of, 150. Red Sea, richness of, in organic life, 320; diversion of the Nile to, its effects, 530. Reindeer, the, 83. Reservoirs, geographic and climatic effects of, 258. Reventlov's organization of dune economy in Denmark, 504; a benefactor to his race, 515. Rhine, river, proposed diversion of, 533. Rice, cultivation of, 381. Rivers, transporting power of, 252; in Vermont, 253; their origin, 262; injury to their banks by lumbermen, 277; conditions of their rise and fall, 278; mutual action of rivers and valleys, 408; effect of obstructions in, 409; subterranean course of, 409; confluences of, effect on the current below, 424; sediment of, its extent, 547. River beds, natural change of, 401; artificial do. in Egypt, 402; Italy and Switzerland, 403. River deposits, 408; of the Nile, 410; the Po, 411; the Tuscan rivers, 414. River embankments, 384; their use, 404; disadvantages, 405; transverse do., superiority of, 406; effects of, 409. River mouths, obstructions of, 430; by sand banks, 431; accelerated by man's influence, 432; effect of tidal movements, 432. Robin, the American, voracity of, 88. Rock generally permeable by water, 265. Roman empire, natural advantages of its territory, 1; increased by intelligent labor, 2; physical decay of, 3; present desolation, 4; caused by its despotism and oppression, 5. Rozet's plan for diminishing inundations, 406. Rude tribes, continuity of arts among, 17; commerce of, 18; relations to organic life, 39; and to nature, 41. Russia, diminution of forests in, 298; effects of, on rivers and lakes, 299; sand drifts of the steppes of, 514; attempts to reclaim them, 515. Sacramento City, California, effect of river dike at, 405. Sand, its composition and origin, 452; action of rivers, 453; ancient deposits of, 454, 456; amount of, carried to the Mediterranean, 455; of Egypt, 458, 461; movement of, by the wind, 459; drifts of, from the sea, 461; dangers of accumulation of, 463; two forms of deposit, 463; drifting of dune, 495. Sand banks, aquatic, 468; movement of, 469; connect themselves with the coast, 490. Sand dunes, how formed, 464; utilization of, 465; inland, of the South American desert, 482; their peculiarities, 483; age, character, and permanence of, 484; naturally wooded, 486; not noticed by ancient writers, 487; management of, 488; coast, sources of supply, 465; law of their formation, 466, 471, 483; of the Mediterranean, 467; of Lake Michigan, 467; of the Nile mouths, 468; of America, 469; of Western Europe, 470; literature of, 471; height of, 472; humidity of, 473; of Cape Cod, 487; character of their sand, 474, 481; concretion within, 476; interior structure of, 477; general form of, 478; geological importance of, 479; composition of sandstone, 481; as barriers against the sea, 489; in Western Europe, 490; extent of, 507; of Gascony, 496; of Denmark, 497; of Prussia, 497; artificial formation of, in Holland, 499; protection of, 500; by vegetation, 501; trees adapted to, 505; removal of, 509. Sand-dune vineyard of Cap Breton, 508. Sand plains, mode of deposit, 464; constituent parts, 464; inland, of Europe, 509; landes of Gascony, 511; Belgium, 513; Eastern Europe, 513; advantages of reclaiming, 515; private and public enterprise, 516. Sand springs, 511. Sandal wood extirpated in Juan Fernandez, 130. Saros, projected canal of, 527. Sawmills, action of their machinery more rapid by night, 278. Schelk, the extirpation of, 85. Schleswig-Holstein, encroachments of the sea on, 493. Scientific observation, practical lessons of, 54-56. Sea, the, exclusion of, by dikes, in Lincolnshire, 333; encroachments of, 490; coast, 491; the Liimfjord, 491; Schleswig-Holstein, 493; Holland, 494; France, 494. Sea cow, Steller's, extirpation of, 119. Seal, the, in Lake Champlain, 117; voracity of, 120. Seeds, vitality of, as preserved by the forest, 287, 289. Seine river, ancient level of, 214; affluents of, 435. Ship building of the middle ages, Venice and Genoa, 218. Siberia, ice ravine in, 158. Sicily, stone weapons found in, 18; sulphur mines of, 72; olive oil crop of, 312. Silkworm, introduction in South America, 105. Sinai, Mt., rain torrent at, 441; production of sand in peninsula of, 454; garden of monastery at, 537. Snakes, destructive to insects, 110; tenacity of species, 111; number of, in Palestine and Egypt, 111. Snow, action of the woods on, 211; experiments on, 212. Soils, amount of thermoscopic action on various, 144; mechanical effects of shaking in the Netherlands, 344; effect of frost on, in United States, 344. Solar heat, economic employment of, 47. Solitary, the, extirpation of, 95. Sound, transmission of, in still air, 165. Springs, artificial, proposed by Palissy, 447; by Babinet, 448. Spain, neglect of forest culture in, 279. Squirrel, the, destructiveness of, in forests, 34; of Boston, 121. St. Helena, flora of, 65; destruction of its forests, 130. Staffordshire, phenomena of vegetation in, 288. Starlings, habits of, in Piedmont, 111. Stork, the, geographical range of, 93; anecdote of a, 99. Subterranean waters, their origin, 434; sources of supply, 435; reservoirs and currents of, 438; diffusion of, in the soil, 439; importance, 440; of the Karst, 535; of Greece, 536. Suez canal, the, danger from sand drifts, 461; effect on the Mediterranean and Red Sea basins, 520. Sugar cane, culture of, 62. Sugar-maple tree, produce of, 169. Summer dikes of Holland, 342. Sunflowers, effect of plantations of, 154. Swallow, the, popular superstitions respecting, 418. Switzerland, ancient lacustrine habitations of, 16, 70, 83. Sylt Island, sand dunes of, 474; encroachments of the sea on, 493. Sylviculture, best manuals of practice of, 304; when and how profitable, 305; its methods, 315; the _taillis_ treatment, 315; the _futaie_ do., 317; beneficial effects of irrigation, 319; exclusion of animals, 321; removal of leaves, &c., 322; topping and trimming, 324. Taguataga Lake, Chili, 355. Tea plant, the, cultivated in America, 62. Temperature, general law of, 52. Teredo, the general diffusion of, 107. Termite, or white ant, ravages of, 107. Teverone, cascade of, Tivoli, 402. Timber, general superiority of cultivated, 305; slow decay of, in forest, 322. Tobacco an American plant, 68; introduction in Hungary, 67. Tocat, Asia Minor, oak woods of, 186. Tomato, the, introduction to New England, 19. Torricelli, successful plan for draining the Val di Chiana, 421. Torrents, destructive action of, 231; means of prevention, 233; ravages of, in Southeastern France, 237; Provence, 239; Upper Alps, 240; Lower Alps, 246; action of, in elevating the beds of mainland streams, 249; in excavating ravines, 250; transporting power of, 251; signs of, extinguished, 263; crushing force of, 392. Trees, as organisms, specific temperature of, 156; moisture given out by, 158; total influence on temperature, 159; absorption of water by, 166; flow of sap, 169; absorption of moisture by foliage of, 172; exhalation of do., 174; consequent refrigeration, 175; amount of ligneous products of, 173; protection against avalanches afforded by, 269; power of resisting the action of fire, 273; American forest trees, 274; their dimensions, 275; change in relative proportions of height and diameter, 276; comparative longevity of, 277; European and American compared, 308; species more numerous in America, 309; Spenser's catalogue of, 308; interchange of European and American species, 310; species of Southern Europe and their extent, 312; natural order of succession in, 323. See _Forest_, _Woods_. Trieste, proposed supply of water to, 536. Trout, the American, 115, 117, 121. Tuscany, rivers of, their deposits, 414; physical restoration in, 416; improvements in Val di Chiana, 417; do. in the Maremma, 424. Tyrolese rivers, elevation of their beds, 249. Ubate, lakes of, New Granada, 204. Undulation of water, 456. United States, foreign plants grown in, 61; weight of annual harvest in, 62; number of quadrupeds in, 79; of birds, 86; effect of felling woods on its climate, 180; forests of, 300; instability of life in, 328. Upper Alps, department of, ravages of torrents in, 240. Urus, or auerochs, domesticated by man, 83; extirpation of, 85. Val de Lys, evidence of glacier action in, 252. Vegetable life, transfer by man's action, 59. Velino, cascade of, Tivoli, 402. Vesuvius, vegetation on, 131; eruption of February, 1851, 544. Volcanic action, resistance to, 544; matter, vegetation in, 131. Volga river, proposed diversion of, 531. Walcheren, formation of the island, 340. Wallenstadt, lake of, 534. Walnut tree, consumption of, for gun stocks, 296; oil yielded by, 310. Ward's cases for plants, 175. Waste products, utilization of, 37. Weeds common to Old and New World, 66; extirpated in China, &c., 71. Whale, the, food of, 113; destruction of, 114. Whale fishery, date of its commencement unknown, 112; in the middle ages, 112; American, 113. Wheat, its asserted origin, 73; introduction to America, 74. Wild animals, number of, 84. Wild organisms, vegetable and animal, tenacity of life in, 69. Willow, the weeping, introduction in Europe, 64. Wolf, increase of the, 84; prevalence in forests of France, 296. Wolf Spring, Soubey, 206. Wood, increased demand for, 293; ship building, railroads, &c., 294; market price of, 294; replaced by iron in the arts, 295; means of increasing its durability, 295; how affected by rapid growth, 306; facilities for working, 307. Woods, habitable earth originally covered by, 128; conditions of their propagation, 131; destructive agency of man and domestic animals, 132; do not furnish food for man, 133; first removal of, 134; burning of, 136; in Sweden and France, 137; effect on the soil, 138; destruction of, its effect, 139; electrical influence of, 140; chemical influence of, 142; influence on temperature, 143; absorbing and emitting surface of, 144; in summer and winter, 147; dead products of, 148; as a shelter, 149; in France, 149, 151; New England, 149; Italy and Jutland, 150; as a protection against malaria, 154; tend to mitigate extremes of temperature, 155. See _Forest_, _Trees_. Wood mosses and fungi, absorbent of moisture, 168. Woodpecker, the, destroyer of insects, 109. Yak, or Tartary ox, the, 83. Yew tree, geographical range of, 70. Zeeland, province, formation of, 339. Zostera marina, 492. Zuiderzee, proposed drainage of, 534; means of, and geographical results, 535. THE END. * * * * * FORSYTH'S "CICERO." A New Life of Cicero. BY WILLIAM FORSYTH, M. A., Q. C. With Twenty Illustrations. 2 vols. crown octavo. Printed on tinted and laid paper. Price, $5.00. The object of this work is to exhibit Cicero not merely as a Statesman and an Orator, but as he was at home in the relations of private life, as a Husband, a Father, a Brother, and a Friend. His letters are full of interesting details, which enable us to form a vivid idea of how the old Romans lived 2,000 years ago; and the Biography embraces not only a History of Events, as momentous as any in the annals of the world, but a large amount of Anecdote and Gossip, which amused the generation that witnessed the downfall of the Republic. The _London Athenæuem_ says: "Mr. Forsyth has rightly aimed to set before us a portrait of Cicero in the modern style of biography, carefully gleaning from his extensive correspondence all those little traits of character and habit which marked his private and domestic life. These volumes form a very acceptable addition to the classic library. The style is that of a scholar and a man of taste." From the _Saturday Review_:--"Mr. Forsyth has discreetly told his story, evenly and pleasantly supplied it with apt illustrations from modern law, eloquence, and history, and brought Cicero as near to the present time as the differences of age and manners warrant. * * * These volumes we heartily recommend as both a useful and agreeable guide to the writings and character of one who was next in intellectual and political rank to the foremost man of all the world, at a period when there were many to dispute with him the triple crown of forensic, philosophic, and political composition." "A scholar without pedantry, and a Christian without cant, Mr. Forsyth seems to have seized with praiseworthy tact the precise attitude which it behoves a biographer to take when narrating the life, the personal life, of Cicero. Mr. Forsyth produces what we venture to say will become one of _the classics of English biographical literature_, and will be welcomed by readers of all ages and both sexes, of all professions and of no profession at all."--_London Quarterly._ "This book is a valuable contribution to our Standard Literature. It is a work which will aid our progress towards the truth; it lifts a corner of the veil which has hung over the scenes and actors of times so full of ferment, and allows us to catch a glimpse of the stage upon which the great drama was played."--_North American Review._ _Copies sent by mail, post paid, on receipt of price._ LORD DERBY'S "HOMER." The Iliad of Homer. RENDERED INTO ENGLISH BLANK VERSE BY EDWARD, EARL OF DERBY. From the fifth London Edition. Two volumes, royal octavo, on tinted paper. Price $7.50 per vol. Extracts from Notices and Reviews from the English Quarterlies, &c. "The merits of Lord Derby's translation may be summed up in one word: "it is eminently attractive; it is instinct with life; it may be read with fervent interest; it is immeasurably nearer than Pope to the text of the original. * * * We think that Lord Derby's translation will not only be read, but read over and over again. * * * Lord Derby has given to England a version far more closely allied to the original, and superior to any that has yet been attempted in the blank verse of our language."--_Edinburgh Review, January 1865._ "As often as we return from even the best of them (other translations) to the translation before us, we find ourselves in a purer atmosphere of taste. We find more spirit, more tact in avoiding either trivial or conceited phrases, and altogether a presence of merits, and an absence of defects which continues, as we read, to lengthen more and more the distance between Lord Derby and the foremost of his competitors."--_London Quarterly Review, January, 1865._ "While the versification of Lord Derby is such as Pope himself would have admired, his Iliad is in all other essentials superior to that of his great rival. For the rest, if Pope is dethroned what remains? * * * It is the Iliad we would place in the hands of English readers as the truest counterpart of the original, the nearest existing approach to a reproduction of that original's matchless feature."--_Saturday Review._ "Among those curiosities of literature which are also its treasures, Lord Derby's translation of Homer must occupy a very conspicuous place. * * * Lord Derby's work is, on the whole, more remarkable for the constancy of its excellence and the high level which it maintains throughout, than for its special bursts of eloquence. It is uniformly worthy of itself and its author."--_The Reader._ "Whatever may be the ultimate fate of this poem--whether it take sufficient hold of the public mind to satisfy that demand for a translation of Homer which we have alluded to, and thus become a permanent classic of the language, or whether it give place to the still more perfect production of some yet unknown poet--it must equally be considered a splendid performance; and for the present we have no hesitation in saying that it is by far the best representation of Homer's Iliad in the English language." AMERICAN NOTICES. The _Publishers Circular_ says:--At the advanced age of sixty-five, the Earl of Derby, leader of the Tory party in England, has published a translation of Homer, in blank verse. Nearly all the London critics unite in declaring, with _The Times_, "that it is by far the best representation of Homer's 'Iliad' in the English language." His purpose was to produce a translation, and not a paraphrase--fairly and honestly giving the sense of every passage and of every line. Without doubt the greatest of all living British orators, he has now shown high poetic power as well as great scholarship. From the _New York World_:--"The reader of English, who seeks to know what Homer really was, and in what fashion he thought and felt and wrote, will owe to Lord Derby his first honest opportunity of doing so. The Earl's translation is devoid alike of pretension and of prettiness. It is animated in movement, simple and representative to phraseology, breezy in atmosphere, if we may so speak, and pervaded by a refinement of taste which is as far removed from daintiness or effeminacy as can well be imagined." _Copies sent by mail, post paid, on receipt of price._ TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES: 1. Passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_. 2. The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version these letters have been replaced with transliterations. 3. Certain words use "oe" ligature in the original, indicated by [oe] and [OE]. 4. The letters with macron are represented within square braces with an equals sign preceding it. For example, letter a with macron is indicated by [=a]. 5. In this text version, some of the references to appendix notes within footnotes were incorrect which have been corrected. Also, errors found in page references within Appendix have been corrected. 
6019	----	THE EARTH AS MODIFIED BY HUMAN ACTION. A NEW EDITION OF MAN AND NATURE. BY GEORGE P. MARSH. "Not all the winds, and storms, and earthquakes, and seas, and seasons of the world, have done so much to revolutionize the earth as MAN, the power of an endless life, has done since the day he came forth upon it, and received dominion over it."--H. Bushnell, Sermon on the Power of an Endless Life. 1874. PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. The object of the present volume is: to indicate the character and, approximately, the extent of the changes produced by human action in the physical conditions of the globe we inhabit; to point out the dangers of imprudence and the necessity of caution in all operations which, on a large scale, interfere with the spontaneous arrangements of the organic or the inorganic world; to suggest the possibility and the importance of the restoration of disturbed harmonies and the material improvement of waste and exhausted regions; and, incidentally, to illustrate the doctrine that man is, in both kind and degree, a power of a higher order than any of the other forms of animated life, which, like him, are nourished at the table of bounteous nature. In the rudest stages of life, man depends upon spontaneous animal and vegetable growth for food and clothing, and his consumption of such products consequently diminishes the numerical abundance of the species which serve his uses. At more advanced periods, he protects and propagates certain esculent vegetables and certain fowls and quadrupeds, and, at the same time, wars upon rival organisms which prey upon these objects of his care or obstruct the increase of their numbers. Hence the action of man upon the organic world tends to derange its original balances, and while it reduces the numbers of some species, or even extirpates them altogether, it multiplies other forms of animal and vegetable life. The extension of agricultural and pastoral industry involves an enlargement of the sphere of man's domain, by encroachment upon the forests which once covered the greater part of the earth's surface otherwise adapted to his occupation. The felling of the woods has been attended with momentous consequences to the drainage of the soil, to the external configuration of its surface, and probably, also, to local climate; and the importance of human life as a transforming power is, perhaps, more clearly demonstrable in the influence man has thus exerted upon superficial geography than in any other result of his material effort. Lands won from the woods must be both drained and irrigated; river-banks and maritime coasts must be secured by means of artificial bulwarks against inundation by inland and by ocean floods; and the needs of commerce require the improvement of natural and the construction of artificial channels of navigation. Thus man is compelled to extend over the unstable waters the empire he had already founded upon the solid land. The upheaval of the bed of seas and the movements of water and of wind expose vast deposits of sand, which occupy space required for the convenience of man, and often, by the drifting of their particles, overwhelm the fields of human industry with invasions as disastrous as the incursions of the ocean. On the other hand, on many coasts, sand-hills both protect the shores from erosion by the waves and currents, and shelter valuable grounds from blasting sea-winds. Man, therefore, must sometimes resist, sometimes promote, the formation and growth of dunes, and subject the barren and flying sands to the same obedience to his will to which he has reduced other forms of terrestrial surface. Besides these old and comparatively familiar methods of material improvement, modern ambition aspires to yet grander achievements in the conquest of physical nature, and projects are meditated which quite eclipse the boldest enterprises hitherto undertaken for the modification of geographical surface. The natural character of the various fields where human industry has effected revolutions so important, and where the multiplying population and the impoverished resources of the globe demand new triumphs of mind over matter, suggests a corresponding division of the general subject, and I have conformed the distribution of the several topics to the chronological succession in which man must be supposed to have extended his sway over the different provinces of his material kingdom. I have, then, in the introductory chapter, stated, in a comprehensive way, the general effects and the prospective consequences of human action upon the earth's surface and the life which peoples it. This chapter is followed by four others in which I have traced the history of man's industry as exerted upon Animal and Vegetable Life, upon the Woods, upon the Waters, and upon the Sands; and to these I have added a concluding chapter upon Man. It is perhaps superfluous to add, what indeed sufficiently appears upon every page of the volume, that I address myself not to professed physicists, but to the general intelligence of observing and thinking men; and that my purpose is rather to make practical suggestions than to indulge in theoretical speculations more properly suited to a different class from that for which I write. GEORGE P. MARSH. December 1, 1868. PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION. In preparing for the press an Italian translation of this work, published at Florence in 1870, I made numerous corrections in the statement of both facts and opinions; I incorporated into the text and introduced in notes a large amount of new data and other illustrative matter; I attempted to improve the method by differently arranging many of the minor subdivisions of the chapters; and I suppressed a few passages which teemed to me superfluous. In the present edition, which is based on the Italian translation, I have made many further corrections and changes of arrangement of the original matter; I have rewritten a considerable portion of the work, and have made, in the text and in notes, numerous and important additions, founded partly on observations of my own, partly on those of other students of Physical Geography, and though my general conclusions remain substantially the same as those I first announced, yet I think I may claim to have given greater completeness and a more consequent and logical form to the whole argument Since the publication of the original edition, Mr. Elisee Reclus, in the second volume of his admirable work, La Terre (Paris, 1868), lately made accessible to English-reading students, has treated, in a general way, the subject I have undertaken to discuss. He has, however, occupied himself with the conservative and restorative, rather than with the destructive, effects of human industry, and he has drawn an attractive and encouraging picture of the ameliorating influences of the action of man, and of the compensations by which he, consciously or unconsciously, makes amends for the deterioration which he has produced in the medium he inhabits. The labors of Mr. Reclus, therefore, though aiming at a much higher and wider scope than I have had in view, are, in this particular point, a complement to my own. I earnestly recommend the work of this able writer to the attention of my readers. George P. Marsh Rome, May 1, 1878. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LIST OF WORKS CONSULTED IN THE PREPARATION OF THIS VOLUME. Amersfoordt, J.P. Het Haarlemmermeer, Oorsprong, Geschiedenis, Droogmaking. Haarlem, 1857. 8vo. Andresen, C.C. Om Klitformationen og Klittens Behandling og Bestyrelse. Kjobenhavn, 1861. 8vo. Annali di Agricoltura, Industria e Commercio. Pubblicati per cura del Ministero d'Agricoltura, Industria e Commercio. Faso i-v. Torino, 1862-'3. 8vo. Arago, F. Extracts from, in Becquerel, Des Climate. Arriani, Opera. Lipsiae, 1856. 2 vols. 12mo. Asbjornen, P.Chr. Om Skoveno og om et ordnet Skovbrug i Norge. Christiania, 1855. 12mo. Aus der Natur. Die neuesten Entdeckungen auf dem Gebiete der Naturwissenschaften. Leipzig, various years. 20 vols. 8vo. Ave-Lallemant, K.C.B. Die Benutzung der Palmen am Amazonenstrom in der Oekonomie der Indier. Hamburg, 1861. 18mo. Babinet. Etudes et Lectures sur les Sciences d'Obsorvation. Paris, 1855- 1863. 7 vols. 18mo. Baer, von. Kaspische Studien. St. Petersburg, 1855-1859. 8vo. Barth, Heinrich. Wanderungen durch die Kustenlander des Mittelmeeres. V.1. Berlin, 1849. 8vo. Barth, J.B. Om Skovene i deres Forhold til Nationaloeconomien. Christiania, 1857. 8vo. Baude, J.J. Les Cotes de la Manche, Revue des Deux Mondes, 15 Janvier, 1859. Baumgarten. Notice sur les Rivieres de la Lombardie; in Annales des Ponts et Chaussees, 1847, 1er semestre, pp. 129-199. Beckwith, Lieut. Report in Pacific Railroad Report, vol. Ii. Becquerel. Des Climats et de l'Influence qu'exercent les Sols bolses et non-boises. Paris, 1858. 8vo. ----Elements de Physique Terrestre et de Meteorologie. Paris, 1847. 8vo. Belgrand. De l'Influence des Forets sur l'ecoulement des Eaux Pluviales; in Annales des Ponts et Chaussees, 1854, ler semestre, pp. 1, 27. Berg, Edmund von. Das Verdrangen der Laubwalder im Nordlichen Deutschlande durch die Fichte und die Kiefer. Darmstadt, 1844. 8vo. Bergsoe, A.F. Greve Ch. Ditlev Frederik Reventlovs Virksomhed som Kongens Embedsmand og Statens Borger. Kjobenhavn, 1837. 2 vols. 8vo. Berlepsch, H. Die Alpen in Natur-und Lebensbildern. Leipzig, 1862. 8vo. Bianchi, Celestino. Compendio di Geografia Fisica Speciale d'Italia. Appendice alla traduzione Italiana della Geog.-Fisica di Maria Somerville. Firenze, 1861. 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Paris, 1862. 12mo.---La Foret de Fontainebleau; Revue des Deux Mondes, 1 Mai, 1868. Cooper, J. G. The Forests and Trees of Northern America; in Report of the Commissioner of Patents for the year 1860, pp. 416, 445. Cotta, Bernhard. Deutschlands Boden. Leipzig, 1858. 2 vols. 8vo.---Vorwort zu Paramelle's Quellenkunde. See Paramelle.---Die Alpen. Leipzig, 1851. 8vo. Coultas, Harland. What may be Learned from a Tree. New York, 1860. 8vo. Courier, Paul-Louis. Oeuvres Completes. Bruxelles, 1838. 8vo. Dana, James D. Manual of Geology. Philadelphia, 1863. 8vo. Delamarre, L. G. Historique de la Creation d'une Richesse Millionaire par la culture des Pins. Paris, 1827. 8vo. D. Hericourt, A. F. Les Inondations et le livre de M. Valles; Annales Forestieres, December, 1857, pp. 310, 321. Paris. Diggelen, B. P. G. van. Gruote Werken in Nederland. Zwolle, 1855. 8vo. Dumas, M. J. La Science des Fontaines. 2me edition, Paris, 1857. 8vo. Dumont, Aristide. 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Paris, 1862-'3. 12mo. Finnboga Saga hins rama. Kaupmannahofn, 1812. 4to. Foissac, P. Meteorologie mit Ruoksicht auf die Lehre vom Kosmos, Deutsch von A. H. Emsmann. Leipzig, 1859. 8vo. Forchhammer, G. Geognostische Studien am Meeres-Ufer; in Leonhard und Bronn's Neues Jabrbuch fur Mineralogie, Geognosie, Geologie, etc. Jahrgang, 1841, pp. 1-38. Fossombroni, Vittorio. Memorie Idraulico-Storiche sopra la Val-di-Ohiana. Montepulciano, Sza edizione, 1835. 8vo. Fraas, C. Klima und Pflanzenwelt in der Zeit. Landshut, 1847. 8vo. Frisi, Paolo. Del Modo di regolare i Fiumi e i Torrenti. Lucca, 1762. 4to. Fuller, Thomas. The History of the Worthies of England. London, 1662. Folio. Gilliss, J. M., Capt. United States Naval Astronomical Expedition to the Southern Hemisphere. Washington, 1855. 2 vols. 4to. Giorgini. Paper by; in Salvagnoli-Marchetti, Rapporto sul Bouificamento delle Maremme, App. v. Girard et Parent-Duchatelet. 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Der Wald sammt dessen wichtigem Einfluss auf das Klima, &c. Wien, 1860. 8vo. Humbolt, Alexander von. Ansichten der Natur. Dritte Ausgabe, Stuttgart und Tubingen, 1849. 2 vols. 12mo. Hummel, Karl. Physische Geographie. Grax, 1835. 8vo. Hunter, A. Notes to Evelyn, Silva, and Terra. York, 1786. See Evelyn. Jacini, Stefano. La Proprieta Fondiaria e le Popolazioni agrioole in Lombardia. Milano e Verona, 1857. 8vo. Joinville. Histoire de Saint-Louis. Nouvelle Collection des Memoires pour servir a l'Histoire de France, par Michaud et Poujoulat. Tome i. Paris, 1836. 8vo. Josselyn, John. New England Rarities. London, 1672. 12mo. Knorr, E. A. Studien uber die Buchen-Wirthschaft. Nordhausen, 1863. 8vo. Kohl, J. G. Alpenreisen. Dresden und Leipzig, 1849. 8 vols. 8vo. ----Die Marschen und Inseln der Herzogthumer Schleswig und Holstein. Dresden und Leipzig, 1846. 3 vols. 8vo. Kramer, Gustav. Der Fuciner-See. Berlin, 1839. 4to. Krause, G. C. A. 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Geologique de France. Laval. Memoire sur les Dunes da Golfe de Gascogno; in Annales des Ponts et Ohaussees, 1847, 2mo semestre, pp. 218-268. Lavergne, M. L. de. Economie Rurale de la France, depuis 1789. 2me edition, Paris, 1861. 12mo. Le Alpi che cingono l'Italia. Parte 1er, vol. 1er. Torino, 1845. 8vo. Lefort. Notice sur les travaux de Fixation des Dunes; in Annales des Ponts et Ohaussecs, 1831, 2me semestre, pp. 320-382 Lenormant. Note relative a l'Execution d'un Puits Artesien en Egypte sous la XVIIIeme Dynastie; Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 12 Novembre, 1852. Liber Albus: The White Book of the City of London. London, 1861. 4to. Loftus, W. K. Travels and Researches in Chaldaea and Susiana. New York, 1867. 8vo. Lombardini. 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Travels in Peru. New York, 1848. 8vo. Valles, M.F. Etudes sur les Inondations, leurs causes et leurs effets. Paris, 1857. 8vo. Valvasor, Johann Weichard. Die Ehre des Herzogthums Crain. Laybach, 1689. 4 vols. folio. Van Lennep. Extracts from Journal of, in the Missionary Herald. Vaupell, Chr. Bogene Indvandring i de Danske Skove. Kjobenhavn, 1857. 8vo. ----De Nordsjaellandake Skovmoser. Kjobenhavn, 1851. 4to, pamphlet. Venema, G.A. Over het Dalen van de Noordelijke Kuststreken van ons Land. Groningen, 1854. 8vo. Villa, Antonio Giovanni Batt. Necessita dei Boschi nella Lombardia. Milano, 1850. 4to. Viollet, J.B. Theorie des Puits Artesiens. Paris, 1840. 8vo. Waltershausen, W. Sartorius von. Ueber den Sicilianischen Ackerbau Gottingen, 1863. Webster, Noah. A Collection of Papers on Political, Literary, and Moral Subjects. New York, 1843. 8vo. Wessely, Joseph. Die Oesterreichischen Alpenlander und ihre Forste. Wien, 1853. 2 vols. 8vo. Wetzstein, J.G. Reisebericht uber Hanran und die Trachonen. Berlin, 1860. 8vo. Wild, Albert. Die Niederlande. Leipzig, 1862. 2 vols. 8vo. Wilhelm, Gustav. Der Boden und das Wasser. Wien, 1861. 8vo. Williams, Dr. History of Vermont. 2 vols. 8vo. Wittwer, W.C. Die Physikalische Geographie. Leipzig, 1855. 8vo. Young, Arthur. Voyages en France, pendant les annees 1787, 1788, 1789, procedee d'une introduction par Lavergne. Paris, 1860. 2 vols. 12mo. ----Voyages en Italie et en Espagne, pendant les annees 1787, 1789. Paris, 1860. 1 vol. 12mo. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY Natural Advantages of the Territory of the Roman Empire--Physical Decay of that Territory--Causes of the Decay--Reaction of Man on Nature--Observation of Nature--Uncertainty of Our Historical Knowledge of Ancient Climates--Uncertainty of Modern Meteorology--Stability of Nature--Formation of Bogs--Natural Conditions Favorable to Geographical Change--Destructiveness of Man--Human and Brute Action Compared--Limits of Human Power--Importance of Physical Conservation and Restoration--Uncertainty as to Effects of Human Action CHAPTER II. TRANSFER, MODIFICATION, AND EXTIRPATION OF VEGETABLE AND OF ANIMAL SPECIES. Modern Geography takes Account of Organic Life--Geographical Importance of Plants--Origin of Domestic Vegetables--Transfer of Vegetable Life--Objects of Modern Commerce--Foreign Plants, how Introduced--Vegetable Power of Accommodation--Agricultural Products of the United States--Useful American Plants Grown in Europe--Extirpation of Vegetables--Animal Life as a Geological and Geographical Agency--Origin and Transfer of Domestic Quadrupeds--Extirpation of Wild Quadrupeds--Large Marine Animals Relatively Unimportant in Geography--Introduction and Breeding of Fish--Destruction of Fish--Geographical Importance of Birds--Introduction of Birds--Destruction of Birds--Utility and Destruction of Reptiles--Utility of Insects and Worms--Injury to the Forest by Insects--Introduction of Insects--Destruction of Insects--Minute Organisms CHAPTER III. THE WOODS. The Habitable Earth Originally Wooded--General Meteorological Influence of the Forest--Electrical Action of Trees--Chemical Influence of Woods--Trees as Protection against Malaria--Trees as Shelter to Ground to the Leeward--Influence of the Forest as Inorganic on Temperature--Thermometrical Action of Trees as Organic--Total Influence of the Forest on Temperature--Influence of Forests as Inorganic on Humidity of Air and Earth--Influence as Organic--Balance of Conflicting Influences--Influence of Woods on Precipitation--Total Climatic Action of the Forest--Influence of the Forest on Humidity of Soil--The Forest in Winter--Summer Rain, Importance of--Influence of the Forest on the Flow of Springs--Influence of the Forest on Inundations and Torrents--Destructive Action of Torrents--Floods of the Ardeche--Excavation by Torrents--Extinction of Torrents--Crushing Force of Torrents--Transporting Power of Water--The Po and its Deposits--Mountain Slides--Forest as Protection against Avalanches--Minor Uses of the Forest--Small Forest Plants and Vitality of Seeds--Locusts do not Breed in Forests--General Functions of Forest--General Consequences of Destruction of--Due Proportion of Woodland--Proportion of Woodland in European Countries--Forests of Great Britain--Forests of France--Forests of Italy--Forests of Germany--Forests of United States--American Forest Trees--European and American Forest Trees Compared--The Forest does not furnish Food for Man--First Removal of the Forest--Principal Causes of Destruction of Forest--Destruction and Protection of Forests by Governments--Royal Forests and Game-laws--Effects of the French Revolution--Increased Demand for Lumber--Effects of Burning Forest--Floating of Timber--Restoration of the Forest--Economy of the Forest--Forest Legislation--Plantation of Forests In America--Financial Results of Forest Plantations--Instability of American Life CHAPTER IV. THE WATERS. Land Artificially Won from the Waters--Great Works of Material Improvement--Draining of Lincolnshire Fens--Incursions of the Sea in the Netherlands--Origin of Sea-dikes--Gain and Loss of Land in the Netherlands--Marine Deposits on the Coast of Netherlands--Draining of Lake of Haarlem--Draining of the Zuiderzee--Geographical Effects of--Improvements in the Netherlands--Ancient Hydraulic Works--Draining of Lake Celano by Prince Torlonia--Incidental Consequences of Draining Lakes--Draining of Marshes--Agricultural Draining--Meteorological Effects of Draining--Geographical Effects of Draining--Geographical Effects of Aqueducts and Canals--Antiquity of Irrigation--Irrigation in Palestine, India, and Egypt--Irrigation in Europe--Meteorological Effects of Irrigation--Water withdrawn from Rivers for Irrigation--Injurious Effects of Rice-culture--Salts Deposited by Water of Irrigation--Subterranean Waters--Artesian Wells--Artificial Springs--Economizing Precipitation--Inundations in France--Basins of Reception--Diversion of Rivers--Glacier Lakes--River Embankments--Other Remedies against Inundations--Dikes of the Nile--Deposits of Tuscan Rivers--Improvements in Tuscan Maremma--Improvements in Val di Chiana--Coast of the Netherlands CHAPTER V. THE SANDS. Origin of Sand--Sand now Carried to the Sea--Beach Sands of Northern Africa--Sands of Egypt--Sand Dunes and Sand Plains--Coast Dunes--Sand Banks--Character of Dune Sand--Interior Structure of Dunes--Geological Importance of Dunes--Dunes on American Coasts--Dunes of Western Europe--Age, Character, and Permanence of Dunes--Dunes as a Barrier against the Sea--Encroachments of the Sea--Liimfjord--Coasts of Schleswig-Holstein, Netherlands, and France--Movement of Dunes--Control of Dunes by Man--Inland Dunes--Inland Sand Plains CHAPTER VI. GREAT PROJECTS OF PHYSICAL CHANGE ACCOMPLISHED OR PROPOSED BY MAN. Cutting of Isthmuses--Canal of Suez--Maritime Canals in Greece--Canals to Dead Sea--Canals to Libyan Desert--Maritime Canals in Europe--Cape Cod Canal--Changes in Caspian--Diversion of the Nile--Diversion of the Rhine--Improvements in North American Hydrography--Soil below Rock--Covering Rock with Earth--Desert Valleys--Effects of Mining--Duponchel's Plans of Improvement--Action of Man on the Weather--Resistance to Great Natural Forces--Incidental Effects of Human Action--Nothing Small In Nature THE EARTH AS MODIFIED BY HUMAN ACTION. CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTORY. Natural Advantages of the Territory of the Roman Empire.--Physical Decay of that Territory.--Causes of the Decay.--Reaction of Man on Nature.-- Observation of Nature.--Uncertainty of Our Historical Knowledge of Ancient Climates.--Uncertainty of Modern Meteorology.--Stability of Nature.--Formation of Bogs--Natural Conditions Favorable to Geographical Change.--Destructiveness of Man--Human and Brute Action Compared.--Limits of Human Power.--Importance of Physical Conservation and Restoration--Uncertainty as to Effects of Human Action. Natural Advantages of the Territory of the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire, at the period of its greatest expansion, comprised the regions of the earth most distinguished by a happy combination of physical conditions. The provinces bordering on the principal and the secondary basins of the Mediterranean enjoyed in healthfulness and equability of climate, in fertility of soil, in variety of vegetable and mineral products, and in natural facilities for the transportation and distribution of exchangeable commodities, advantages which have not been possessed in any equal degree by any territory of like extent in the Old World or the New. The abundance of the land and of the waters adequately supplied every material want, ministered liberally to every sensuous enjoyment. Gold and silver, indeed, were not found in the profusion which has proved so baneful to the industry of lands richer in veins of the precious metals; but mines and river beds yielded them in the spare measure most favorable to stability of value in the medium of exchange, and, consequently, to the regularity of commercial transactions. The ornaments of the barbaric pride of the East, the pearl, the ruby, the sapphire, and the diamond--though not unknown to the luxury of a people whose conquests and whose wealth commanded whatever the habitable world could contribute to augment the material splendor of their social life--were scarcely native to the territory of the empire; but the comparative rarity of these gems in Europe, at somewhat earlier periods, was, perhaps, the very circumstance that led the cunning artists of classic antiquity to enrich softer stones with engravings, which invest the common onyx and cornelian with a worth surpassing, in cultivated eyes, the lustre of the most brilliant oriental jewels. Of these manifold blessings the temperature of the air, the distribution of the rains, the relative disposition of land and water, the plenty of the sea, the composition of the soil, and the raw material of the primitive arts, were wholly gratuitous gifts. Yet the spontaneous nature of Europe, of Western Asia, of Libya, neither fed nor clothed the civilized inhabitants of those provinces. The luxuriant harvests of cereals that waved on every field from the shores of the Rhine to the banks of the Nile, the vines that festooned the hillsides of Syria, of Italy and of Greece, the olives of Spain, the fruits of the gardens of the Hesperides, the domestic quadrupeds and fowls known in ancient rural husbandry--all these were original products of foreign climes, naturalized in new homes, and gradually ennobled by the art of man, while centuries of persevering labor were expelling the wild vegetation, and fitting the earth for the production of more generous growths. Every loaf was eaten in the sweat of the brow. All must be earned by toil. But toil was nowhere else rewarded by so generous wages; for nowhere would a given amount of intelligent labor produce so abundant, and, at the same time, so varied returns of the good things of material existence. Physical Decay of the Territory of the Roman Empire. If we compare the present physical condition of the countries of which I am speaking, with the descriptions that ancient historians and geographers have given of their fertility and general capability of ministering to human uses, we shall find that more than one-half their whole extent--not excluding the provinces most celebrated for the profusion and variety of their spontaneous and their cultivated products, and for the wealth and social advancement of their inhabitants--is either deserted by civilized man and surrendored to hopeless desolation, or at least greatly reduced in both productiveness and population. Vast forests have disappeared from mountain spurs and ridges; the vegetable earth accumulated beneath the trees by the decay of leaves and fallen trunks, the soil of the alpine pastures which skirted and indented the woods, and the mould of the upland fields, are washed away; meadows, once fertilized by irrigation, are waste and unproductive because the cisterns and reservoirs that supplied the ancient canals are broken, or the springs that fed them dried up; rivers famous in history and song have shrunk to humble brooklets; the willows that ornamented and protected the banks of the lesser watercourses are gone, and the rivulets have ceased to exist as perennial currents, because the little water that finds its way into their old channels is evaporated by the droughts of summer, or absorbed by the parched earth before it reaches the lowlands; the beds of the brooks have widened into broad expanses of pebbles and gravel, over which, though in the hot season passed dryshod, in winter sealike torrents thunder; the entrances of navigable streams are obstructed by sandbars; and harbors, once marts of an extensive commerce, are shoaled by the deposits of the rivers at whose mouths they lie; the elevation of the beds of estuaries, and the consequently diminished velocity and increased lateral spread of the streams which flow into them, have converted thousands of leagues of shallow sea and fertile lowland into unproductive and miasmatic morasses. Besides the direct testimony of history to the ancient fertility of the now exhausted regions to which I refer--Northern Africa, the greater Arabian peninsula, Syria, Mesopotamia, Armenia and many other provinces of Asia Minor, Greece, Sicily, and parts of even Italy and Spain--the multitude and extent of yet remaining architectural ruins, and of decayed works of internal improvement, show that at former epochs a dense population inhabited those now lonely districts. Such a population could have been sustained only by a productiveness of soil of which we at present discover but slender traces; and the abundance derived from that fertility serves to explain how large armies, like those of the ancient Persians, and of the Crusaders and the Tartars in later ages, could, without an organized commissariat, secure adequate supplies in long marches through territories which, in our times, would scarcely afford forage for a single regiment. It appears then, that the fairest and fruitfulest provinces of the Roman Empire, precisely that portion of terrestrial surface, in short, which, about the commencement of the Christian era, was endowed with the greatest superiority of soil, climate, and position, which had been carried to the highest pitch of physical improvement, and which thus combined the natural and artificial conditions best fitting it for the habitation and enjoyment of a dense and highly refined and cultivated population, are now completely exhausted of their fertility, or so diminished in productiveness, as, with the exception of a few favored oases that have escaped the general ruin, to be no longer capable of affording sustenance to civilized man. If to this realm of desolation we add the now wasted and solitary soils of Persia and the remoter East that once fed their millions with milk and honey, we shall see that a territory larger than all Europe, the abundance of which sustained in bygone centuries a population scarcely inferior to that of the whole Christian world at the present day, has been entirely withdrawn from human use, or, at best, is thinly inhabited by tribes too few in numbers, too poor in superfluous products, and too little advanced in culture and the social arts, to contribute anything to the general moral or material interests of the great commonwealth of man. Causes of this Decay. The decay of these once flourishing countries is partly due, no doubt, to that class of geological causes whose action we can neither resist nor guide, and partly also to the direct violence of hostile human force; but it is, in a far greater proportion, either the result of man's ignorant disregard of the laws of nature, or an incidental consequence of war and of civil and ecclesiastical tyranny and misrule. Next to ignorance of these laws, the primitive source, the causa causarum, of the acts and neglects which have blasted with sterility and physical decrepitude the noblest half of the empire of the Caesars, is, first, the brutal and exhausting despotism which Rome herself exercised over her conquered kingdoms, and even over her Italian territory; then, the host of temporal and spiritual tyrannies which she left as her dying curse to all her wide dominion, and which, in some form of violence or of fraud, still brood over almost every soil subdued by the Roman legions. [Footnote: In the Middle Ages, feudalism, and a nominal Christianity, whose corruptions had converted the most beneficent of religions into the most baneful of superstitions, perpetuated every abuse of Roman tyranny, and added new oppressions and new methods of extortion to those invented by older despotisms. The burdens in question fell most heavily on the provinces that had been longest colonized by the Latin race, and those are the portions of Europe which have suffered the greatest physical degradation. "Feudalism," says Blanqui, "was a concentration of scourges. The peasant, stripped of the inheritance of his fathers, became the property of inflexible, ignorant, indolent masters; he was obliged to travel fifty leagues with their carts whenever they required it; he labored for them three days in the week, and surrendered to them half the product of his earnings during the other three; without their consent he could not change his residence, or marry. And why, indeed, should he wish to marry, when he could scarcely save enough to maintain himself The Abbot Alcuin had twenty thousand slaves, called SERFS, who were forever attached to the soil. This is the great cauue of the rapid depopulation observed in the Middle Ages, and of the prodigious multitude of monasteries which sprang up on every side. It was doubtless a relief to such miserable men to find in the cloisters a retreat from oppression; but the human race never suffered a more cruel outrage, industry never received a wound better calculated to plunge the world again into the darkness of the rudest antiquity. It suffices to say that the prediction of the approaching end of the world, industriously spread by the rapacious monks at this time, was received without terror."--Resume de l'Histoire du Commerce, p. 156.] Man cannot struggle at once against human oppression and the destructive forces of inorganic nature. "When both are combined against him, he succumbs after a shorter or longer struggle, and the fields he has won from the primeval wood relapse into their original state of wild and luxuriant, but unprofitable forest growth, or fall into that of a dry and barren wilderness. The abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, which, in the time of Charlemagne, had possessed a million of acres, was, down to the Revolution, still so wealthy, that the personal income of the abbot was 300,000 livres. Theabbey of Saint-Denis was nearly as rich as that of Saint-Germain-des-Pres.--Lavergne, Economie Rurale de la France, p. 104. Paul Louis Courier quotes from La Bruyere the following striking picture of the condition of the French peasantry in his time: "One sees certain dark, livid, naked, sunburnt, wild animals, male and female, scattered over the country and attached to the soil, which they root and turn over with indomitable perseverance. They have, as it were, an articulate voice, and when they rise to their feet, they show a human face. They are, in fact, men; they creep at night into dens, where they live on black bread, water, and roots. They spare other men the labor of ploughing, Bowing, and harvesting, and therefore deserve some small share of the bread they have grown." "These are his own words," adds Courier, "and he is speaking of the fortunate peasants, of those who had work and bread, and they were then the few."--Petition a la Chambre des Deputes pour les Villageois l'en empeche ce danser. Arthur Young, who travelled in France from 1787 to 1789, gives, in the twenty-first chapter of his Travels, a frightful account of the burdens of the rural population even at that late period. Besides the regular governmental taxes, and a multitude of heavy fines imposed for trifling offense, he enumerates about thirty seignorial rights, the very origin and nature of some of which are now unknown, while those of some others are as repulsive to humanity and morality, as the worst abuses ever practised by heathen despotism. But Young underrates the number of these oppressive impositions. Moreau de Jonnes, a higher authority, asserts that in a brief examination he had discovered upwards of three hundred distinct lights of the feudatory over the person or the property of his vassal. See Etat Economique et Social de la France, Paris, 1890, p. 389. Most of these, indeed, had been commuted for money payments, and were levied on the peasantry as pecuniary imposts for the benefit of prelates and lay lords, who, by virtue of their nobility, were exempt from taxation. The collection of the taxes was enforced with unrelenting severity. On one occasion, in the reign of Louis XIV., the troops sent out against the recreant peasants made more than 3,000 prisoners, of whom 400 were condemned to the galleys for life, and a number so large that the government did not dare to disclose it, were hung on trees or broken on the wheel.--Moreau de Jonnes, Etat Economique et Social de la France, p. 420. Who can wonder at the hostility of the French plebeian classes towards the aristocracy in the days of the Revolution? Rome imposed on the products of agricultural labor in the rural districts taxes which the sale of the entire harvest would scarcely discharge; she drained them of their population by military conscription; she impoverished the peasantry by forced and unpaid labor on public works; she hampered industry and both foreign and internal commerce by absurd restrictions and unwise regulations. [Footnote: Commerce, in common with all gainful occupations except agriculture, was despised by the Romans, and the exercise of it was forbidden to the higher ranks. Cicero, however, admits that though retail trade, which could only prosper by lying and knavery, was contemptible, yet wholesale commerce was not altogether to be condemned, and might even be laudable, provided the merchant retired early from trade and invested his gaits in farm lands.--De Officiis, lib. i.,42.] Hence, large tracts of land were left uncultivated, or altogether deserted, and exposed to all the destructive forces which act with such energy on the surface of the earth when it is deprived of those protections by which nature originally guarded it, and for which, in well-ordered husbandry, human ingenuity has contrived more or less efficient substitutes. [Footnote: The temporary depopulation of an exhausted soil may be, in some cases, a physical, though, like fallows in agriculture, a dear-bought advantage. Under favorable circumstances, the withdrawal of man and his flocks allows the earth to clothe itself again with forests, and in a few generations to recover its ancient productiveness. In the Middle Ages, worn-out fields were depopulated, in many parts of the Continent, by civil and ecclesiastical tyrannies, which insisted on the surrender of the half of a loaf already too small to sustain its producer. Thus abandoned, these lands often relapsed into the forest state, and, some centuries later, were again brought under cultivation with renovated fertility.] Similar abuses have tended to perpetuate and extend these evils in later ages, and it is but recently that, even in the most populous parts of Europe, public attention has been half awakened to the necessity of restoring the disturbed harmonies of nature, whose well-balanced influences are so propitious to all her organic offspring, and of repaying to our great mother the debt which the prodigality and the thriftlessness of former generations have imposed upon their successors--thus fulfilling the command of religion and of practical wisdom, to use this world as not abusing it. Reaction of Man on Nature. The revolutions of the seasons, with their alternations of temperature and of length of day and night, the climates of different zones, and the general conditions and movements of the atmosphere and the seas, depend upon causes for the most part cosmical, and, of course, wholly beyond our control. The elevation, configuration, and composition of the great masses of terrestrial surface, and the relative extent and distribution of land and water, are determined by geological influences equally remote from our jurisdiction. It would hence seem that the physical adaptation of different portions of the earth to the use and enjoyment of man is a matter so strictly belonging to mightier than human powers, that we can only accept geographical nature as we find her, and be content with such soils and such skies as she spontaneously offers. But it is certain that man has reacted upon organized and inorganic nature, and thereby modified, if not determined, the material structure of his earthly home. The measure of that reaction manifestly constitutes a very important element in the appreciation of the relations between mind and matter, as well as in the discussion of many purely physical problems. But though the subject has been incidentally touched upon by many geographers, and treated with much fulness of detail in regard to certain limited fields of human effort and to certain specific effects of human action, it has not, as a whole, so tar as I know, been made matter of special observation, or of historical research, by any scientific inquirer. Indeed, until the influence of geographical conditions upon human life was recognized as a distinct branch of philosophical investigation, there was no motive for the pursuit of such speculations; and it was desirable to inquire how far we have, or can, become the architects of our own abiding place, only when it was known how the mode of our physical, moral, and intellectual being is affected by the character of the home which Providence has appointed, and we have fashioned, for our material habitation. [Footnote:Gods Almagt wenkte van den troon, En schiep elk volk een land ter woon: Hier vestte Zij een grondgebied, Dat Zij ona zelven scheppon llet.] It is still too early to attempt scientific method in discussing this problem, nor is our present store of the necessary facts by any means complete enough to warrant me in promising any approach to fulness of statement respecting them. Systematic observation in relation to this subject has hardly yet begun, and the scattered data which have chanced to be recorded have never been collected. It has now no place in the general scheme of physical science, and is matter of suggestion and speculation only, not of established and positive conclusion. At present, then, all that I can hope is to excite an interest in a topic of much economical importance, by pointing out the directions and illustrating the modes in which human action has been, or may be, most injurious or most beneficial in its influence upon the physical conditions of the earth we inhabit We cannot always distinguish between the results of man's action and the effects of purely geological or cosmical causes. The destruction of the forests, the drainage of lakes and marshes, and the operations of rural husbandry and industrial art have unquestionably tended to produce great changes in the hygrometric, thermometric, electric, and chemical condition of the atmosphere, though we are not yet able to measure the force of the different elements of disturbance, or to say how far they have been neutralised by each other, or by still obscurer influences; and it is equally certain that the myriad forms of animal and vegetable life, which covered the earth when man first entered upon the theatre of a nature whose harmonies he was destined to derange, have been, through his interference, greatly changed in numerical proportion, sometimes much modified in form and product, and sometimes entirely extirpated. [Footnote: Man has not only subverted the natural numerical relations of wild as well as domestic quadrupeds, fish, birds, reptile, insect, and common plants, and even of still humbler tribes of animal and vegetable life, but he has effected in the forms, habits, nutriment and products of the organisms which minister to his wants and his pleasures, changes which, more than any other manifestaion of human energy, resemble the exercise of a creative power. Even wild animals have been compelled by him, through the destruction of plants and insects which furnished their proper aliment, to resort to food belonging to a different kingdom of nature. Thus a New Zealand bird, originally granivorous and insectivorous, has become carnivorous, from the want of its natural supplies, and now tears the fleeces from the backs of the sheep, in order to feed on their living flesh. All these changes have exercised more or less direct or indirect action on the inorganic surface of the globe; and the history of the geographical revolutions thus produced would furnish ample material for a volume. The modification of organic species by domestication is a branch of philosophic inquiry which we may almost say has been created by Darwin; but the geographical results of these modifications do not appear to have yet been made a subject of scientific investigation. I do not know that the following passage from Pliny has ever been cited in connection with the Darwinian theories but it is worth a reference: "But behold a very strange and new fashion of them [cucumbers] in Campane, for there you shall have abundance of them come up in forme of a Quince. And as I heare say, one of the channced so to grow first at a very venture; but afterwards from the seed of it came a whole race and progenie of the like, which therefore they call Melonopopones, as a man would say, the Quince-pompions or cucumbers"--Pliny, Nat. Hist., Holland's translation, book xix, c.5 The word cucumis used in the original of this passage embraces many of the cucurbitaceae, but the context shows that here means the cucumber. The physical revolutions thus wrought by man have not indeed all been destructive to human interests, and the heaviest blows he has inflicted upon nature have not been wholly without their compensations. Soils to which no nutritious vegetable was indigenous, countries which once brought forth but the fewest products suited for the sustenance and comfort of man--while the severity of their climates created and stimulated the greatest number and the most imperious urgency of physical wants--surfaces the most rugged and intractable, and least blessed with natural facilities of communication, have been brought in modern times to yield and distribute all that supplies the material necessities, all that contributes to the sensuous enjoyments and conveniences of civilized life. The Scythia, the Thule, the Britain, the Germany, and the Gaul which the Roman writers describe in such forbidding terms, have been brought almost to rival the native luxuriance and easily won plenty of Southern Italy; and, while the fountains of oil and wine that refreshed old Greece and Syria and Northern Africa have almost ceased to flow, and the soils of those fair lands are turned to thirsty and inhospitable deserts, the hyperborean regions of Europe have learnod to conquer, or rather compensate, the rigors of climate, and have attained to a material wealth and variety of product that, with all their natural advantages, the granaries of the ancient world can hardly be said to have enjoyed. Observation of Nature. In these pages it is my aim to stimulate, not to satisfy, curiosity, and it is no part of my object to save my readers the labor of observation or of thought. For labor is life, and Death lives where power lives unused. [Footnote: Verses addressed by G. C. to Sir Walter Raleigh.--Haklutt, i., p. 608.] Self is the schoolmaster whose lessons are best worth his wages; and since the subject I am considering has not yet become a branch of formal instruction, those whom it may interest can, fortunately, have no pedagogue but themselves. To the natural philosopher, the descriptive poet, the painter, the sculptor, and indeed every earnest observer, the power most important to cultivate, and, at the same time, hardest to acquire, is that of seeing what is before him. Sight is a faculty; seeing, an art. The eye is a physical but not a self-acting apparatus, and in general it sees only what it seeks. Like a mirror, it reflects objects presented to it; but it may be as insensible as a mirror, and not consciously perceive what it reflects. [Footnote: --I troer, at Synets Sands er lagt i Oiet, Mens dette kun er Redskab. Synet strommer Fra Sjaelens Dyb, og Oiets fine Nerver Gaae ud fra Hjernens hemmelige Vaerksted. Henrik Hertz, Kong Rene's Datter, sc. ii. In the material eye, you think, sight lodgeth! The EYE is but an organ. SEEING streameth from the soul's inmost depths. The fine perceptive Nerve springeth from the brain's mysterious workshop.] It has been maintained by high authority, that the natural acuteness of our sensuous faculties cannot be heightened by use, and hence, that the minutest details of the image formed on the retina are as perfect in the most untrained as in the most thoroughly disciplined organ. This may be questioned, and it is agreed on all hands that the power of multifarious perception and rapid discrimination may be immensely increased by well-directed practice. [Footnote: Skill in marksmanship, whether with firearms or with other projectile weapons, depends more upon the training of the eye than is generally supposed, and I have often found particularly good shots to possess an almost telescopic vision. In the ordinary use of the rifle, the barrel is guided by the eye, but there are sportemen who fire with the butt of the gun at the hip. In this case, as in the use of the sling, the lasso, and the bolas, in hurling the knife (see Babinet, Lectures, vii., p. 84), in throwing the boomerang, the javelin, or a stone, and in the employment of the blowpipe and the bow, the movements of the hand and arm are guided by that mysterious sympathy which exists between the eye and the unseeing organs of the body. "Some men wonder whye, in casting a man's eye at the marke, the hand should go streighte. Surely if he considered the nature of a man's eye he would not wonder at it: for this I am certaine of, that no servaunt to his maister, no childe to his father, is so obedient, as every joynte and peece of the bodye is to do whatsover the eye biddes."--Roger Ascham, Taxophilus, Book ii. In shooting the tortoises of the Amazon and its tributaries, the Indians use an arrow with a long twine and a float attached to it. Ave-Lallemant (Die Benutzung der Palmen am Amazonenstrom, p. 32) thus describes their mode of aiming: "As the arrow, if aimed directly at the floating tortoise, would strike it at a small angle and glance from its fiat and wet shell, the archers have a peculiar method of shooting. They are able to calculate exactly their own muscular effort, the velocity of the stream, the distance and size of the tortoise, and they shoot the arrow directly up into the air, so that it falls almost vertically upon the shell of the tortoise, and sticks in it." Analogous calculations--if such physico-mental operations can property be so called--are made in the use of other missiles; for no projectile flies in a right line to its mark. But the exact training of the eye lies at the bottom of them all, and marksmanship depends almost wholly upon the power of that organ, whose directions the blind muscles implicitly follow. Savages accustomed only to the use of the bow become good shots with firearms after very little practice. It is perhaps not out of place to observe here that our English word aim comes from the Latin aestimo, I calculate or estimate. See Wedgwood's Dictionary of English Etymology, and the note to the American edition, under Aim. Another proof of the control of the limbs by the eye has been observed in deaf-and-dumb schools, and others where pupils are first taught to write on large slates or blackboards. The writing is in large characters, the small letters being an inch or more high. They are formed with chalk or a slate pencil firmly grasped in the fingers, and by appropriate motions of the wrist, elbow, and shoulder, not of the finger joints. Nevertheless, when a pen is put into the hand of a pupil thus taught, his handwriting, though produced by a totally different set of muscles and muscular movements, is identical in character with that which he has practised on the blackboard. For a very remarkable account of the restoration of vision impaired from age, by judicious training, see Lessons in Life, by Timothy Titcomb, lesson xi. It has been much doubted whether the artists of the classic ages possessed a more perfect light than those of modern times, or whether, in executing their minute mosaics and gem engravings, they need magnifiers. Glasses ground convex have been found at Pompeii, but they are too rudely fashioned and too imperfectly polished to have been of any practical use for optical purposes. But though the ancient artists may have had a microscopic vision, their astronomers cannot have had a telescopic power of sight; for they did not discover the satellites of Jupiter, which are often seen with the naked eye at Oormeeah, in Persia, and sometimes, as I can testify by personal observation, at Cairo.] This exercise of the eye I desire to promote, and, next to moral and religious doctrine, I know no more important practical lessons in this earthly life of ours--which, to the wise man, is a school from the cradle to the grave--than those relating to the employment of the sense of vision in the study of nature. The pursuit of physical geography, embracing actual observation of terrestrial surface, affords to the eye the best general training that is accessible to all. The majority of even cultivated men have not the time and means of acquiring anything beyond a very superficial acquaintance with any branch of physical knowledge. Natural science has become so vastly extended, its recorded facts and its unanswered questions so immensely multiplied, that every strictly scientific man must be a specialist, and confine the researches of a whole life within a comparatively narrow circle. The study I am recommending, in the view I propose to take of it, is yet in that imperfectly developed state which allows its votaries to occupy themselves with broad and general views attainable by every person of culture, and it does not now require a knowledge of special details which only years of application can master. It may be profitably pursued by all; and every traveller, every lover of rural scenery, every agriculturist, who will wisely use the gift of sight, may add valuable contributions to the common stock of knowledge on a subject which, as I hope to convince my readers, though long neglected, and now inartificially presented, is not only a very important but a very interesting field of inquiry. Measurement of Man's Influence. The exact measurement of the geographical and climatic changes hitherto effected by man is impracticable, and we possess, in relation to them, the means of only qualitative, not quantitative analysis. The fact of such revolutions is established partly by historical evidence, partly by analogical deduction from effects produced, in our own time, by operations similar in character to those which must have taken place in more or less remote ages of human action. Both sources of information are alike defective in precision; the latter, for general reasons too obvious to require specification; the former, because the facts to which it bears testimony occurred before the habit or the means of rigorously scientific observation upon any branch of physical research, and especially upon climatic changes, existed. UNCERTAINTY OF OUR HISTORICAL CONCLUSIONS ON ANCIENT CLIMATES. The invention of measures of heat and of atmospheric moisture, pressure, and precipitation, is extremely recent. Hence, ancient physicists have left us no thermometric or barometric records, no tables of the fall, evaporation, and flow of waters, and even no accurate maps of coast lines and the course of rivers. Their notices of these phenomena are almost wholly confined to excessive and exceptional instances of high or of low temperatures, extraordinary falls of rain and snow, and unusual floods or droughts. Our knowledge of the meteorological condition of the earth, at any period more than two centuries before our own time, is derived from these imperfect details, from the vague statements of ancient historians and geographers in regard to the volume of rivers and the relative extent of forest and cultivated land, from the indications furnished by the history of the agriculture and rural economy of past generations, and from other almost purely casual sources of information. [Footnote: The subject of climatic change, with and without reference to human action as a cause, has been much discussed by Moreau de Jonnes, Dureau de la Malle, Arago, Humboldt, Fuster, Gasparin, Becquerel, Schleiden, and many other writers in Europe, and by Noah Webster, Forry, Drake, and others in America. Fraas has endeavored to show, by the history of vegetation in Greece, not merely that clearing and cultivation have affected climate, but that change of climate has essentially modified the character of vegetable life. See his Klima und Pflansenwelt in der Zeit.] Among these latter we must rank certain newly laid open fields of investigation, from which facts bearing on the point now under consideration have been gathered. I allude to the discovery of artificial objects in geological formations older than any hitherto recognized as exhibiting traces of the existence of man; to the ancient lacustrine habitations of Switzerland and of the terremare of Italy, [Footnote: See two learned articles by Pigorini, in the Nuova Antologia for January and October, 1870.] containing the implements of the occupants, remains of their food, and other relics of human life; to the curious revelations of the Kjokkenmoddinger, or heaps of kitchen refuse, in Denmark and elsewhere, and of the peat mosses in the same and other northern countries; to the dwellings and other evidences of the industry of man in remote ages sometimes laid bare by the movement of sand dunes on the coasts of France and of the North Sea; and to the facts disclosed on the tide-washed flats of the latter shores by excavations in Halligs or inhabited mounds which were probably raised before the era of the Roman Empire. [Footnote: For a very picturesque description of the Halligs, see Pliny, N.H., Book xvi, c. 1.] These remains are memorials of races which have left no written records, which perished at a period beyond the reach of even historical tradition. The plants and animals that furnished the relics found in the deposits were certainly contemporaneous with man; for they are associated with his works, and have evidently served his uses. In some cases, the animals belonged to species well ascertained to be now altogether extinct; in some others, both the animals and the vegetables, though extant elsewhere, have ceased to inhabit the regions where their remains are discovered. From the character of the artificial objects, as compared with others belonging to known dates, or at least to known periods of civilization, ingenious inferences have been drawn as to their age; and from the vegetable remains which accompany them, as to the climates of Central and Northern Europe at the time of their production. There are, however, sources of error which have not always been sufficiently guarded against in making these estimates. When a boat, composed of several pieces of wood fastened together by pins of the same material, is dug out of a bog, it is inferred that the vessel, and the skeletons and implements found with it, belong to an age when the use of iron was not known to the builders. But this conclusion is not warranted by the simple fact that metals were not employed in its construction; for the Nubians at this day build boats large enough to carry half a dozen persons across the Nile, out of small pieces of acacia wood pinned together entirely with wooden bolts, and large vessels of similar construction are used by the islanders of the Malay archipelago. Nor is the occurrence of flint arrow heads and knives, in conjunction with other evidences of human life, conclusive proof as to the antiquity of the latter. Lyell informs us that some Oriental tribes still continue to use the same stone implements as their ancestors, "after that mighty empires, where the use of metals in the arts was well known, had flourished for three thousand years in their neighborhood;" [Footnote: Antiquity of Man, p. 377.] and the North American Indians now manufacture weapons of stone, and even of glass, chipping them in the latter case out of the bottoms of thick bottles, with great facility. [Footnote: "One of the Indians seated himself near me, and made from a fragment of quartz, with a simple piece of round bone, one end of which was hemispherical, with a small crease in it (as if worn by a thread) the sixteenth of an inch deep, an arrow head which was very sharp and piercing, and such as they use on all their arrows. The skill and rapidity with which it was made, without a blow, but by simply breaking the sharp edges with the creased bone by the strength of his hands--for the crease merely served to prevent the instrument from slipping, affording no leverage--was remarkable."--Reports of Explorations and Surveys for Pacific Railroad, vol. ii., 1855, Lieut. Beckwith'S Report, p. 43. See also American Naturalist for May, 1870, and especially Stevens, Flint Chips, London, 1870, pp. 77 et seq. Mariette Bey lately saw an Egyptian barber shave the head of an Arab with a flint razor.] We may also be misled by our ignorance of the commercial relations existing between savage tribes. Extremely rude nations, in spite of their jealousies and their perpetual wars, sometimes contrive to exchange the products of provinces very widely separated from each other. The mounds of Ohio contain pearls, thought to be marine, which must have come from the Gulf of Mexico, or perhaps even from California, and the knives and pipes found in the same graves are often formed of far-fetched material, that was naturally paid for by some home product exported to the locality whence the material was derived. The art of preserving fish, flesh, and fowl by drying and smoking is widely diffused, and of great antiquity. The Indians of Long Island Sound are said to have carried on a trade in dried shell fish with tribes residing very far inland. From the earliest ages, the inhabitants of the Faroe and Orkney Islands, and of the opposite mainland coasts, have smoked wild fowl and other flesh. Hence it is possible that the animal and the vegetable food, the remains of which are found in the ancient deposits I am speaking of, may sometimes have been brought from climates remote from that where it was consumed. The most important, as well as the most trustworthy conclusions with respect to the climate of ancient Europe and Asia, are those drawn from the accounts given by the classical writers of the growth of cultivated plants; but these are by no means free from uncertainty, because we can seldom be sure of an identity of species, almost never of an identity of race or variety, between vegetables known to the agriculturists of Greece and Rome and those of modern times which are thought most nearly to resemble them. Besides this, there is always room for doubt whether the habits of plants long grown in different countries may not have been so changed by domestication or by natural selection, that the conditions of temperature and humidity which they required twenty centuries ago were different from those at present demanded for their advantageous cultivation. [Footnote: Probably no cultivated vegetable affords so good an opportunity of studying the law of acclimation of plants as maize or Indian corn. Maize is grown from the tropics to at least lat. 47 degrees in Northeastern America, and farther north in Europe. Every two or three degrees of latitude brings you to a new variety with new climatic adaptations, and the capacity of the plant to accommodate itself to new conditions of temperature and season seems almost unlimited. Many persons now living remember that, when the common tomato was first introduced into Northern New England, it often failed to ripen; but, in the course of a very few years, it completely adapted itself to the climate, and now not only matures both its fruit and its seeds with as much certainty as any cultivated vegetable, but regularly propagates itself by self-sown seed. Meteorological observations, however, do not show any amelioration of the summer climate in those States within that period. It may be said that these cases--and indeed all cases of a supposed acclimation consisting in physiological changes--are instances of the origination of new varieties by natural selection, the hardier maize, tomato, and other vegetables of the North, being the progeny of seeds of individuals endowed, exceptionally, with greater power of resisting cold than belongs in general to the species which produced them. But, so far as the evidence of change of climate, from a difference in vegetable growth, is concerned, it is immaterial whether we adopt this view or maintain the older and more familiar doctrine of a local modification of character in the plants in question. Maize and the tomato, if not new to human use, have not been long known to civilization, and were, very probably, reclaimed and domesticated at a much more recent period than the plants which form the great staples of agricultural husbandry in Europe and Asia. Is the great power of accommodation to climate possessed by them due to this circumstance There is some reason to suppose that the character of maize has been sensibly changed by cultivation in South America; for, according to Tschudi, the ears of this grain found in old Peruvian tombs belong to varieties not now known in Peru.--Travels in Peru, chap. vii. See important observations in Schubeler, Die Pflanzenwelt Norwegans (Allgemeiner Theil), Christinania, 1873, 77 and following pp.] Even if we suppose an identity of species, of race, and of habit to be established between a given ancient and modern plant, the negative fact that the latter will not grow now where it flourished two thousand years ago does not in all cases prove a change of climate. The same result might follow from the exhaustion of the soil, [Footnote: The cultivation of madder is said to have been introduced into Europe by an Oriental in the year 1765, and it was first planted in the neighborhood of Avignon. Of course, it has been grown in that district for less than a century; but upon soils where it has been a frequent crop, it is already losing much of its coloring properties.--Lavergne, Economic Rurale de la France, pp. 250-201. I believe there is no doubt that the cultivation of madder in the vicinity of Avignon is of recent introduction; but it is certain that it was grown by the ancient Romans, and throughout nearly all Europe in the middle ages. The madder brought from Persia to France, may belong to a different species, or at least variety.] or from a change in the quantity of moisture it habitually contains. After a district of country has been completely or even partially cleared of its forest growth, and brought under cultivation, the drying of the soil, under favorable circumstances, goes on for generations, perhaps for ages. [Footnote: In many parts of New England there are tracts, many square miles in extent and presenting all varieties of surface and exposure, which were partially cleared sixty or seventy years ago, and where little or no change in the proportion of cultivated ground, pasturage, and woodland has taken place since. In some cases, these tracts compose basins apparently scarcely at all exposed to any local influence in the way of percolation or infiltration of water towards or from neighboring valleys. But in such situations, apart from accidental disturbances, the ground is growing drier and drier from year to year, springs are still disappearing, and rivulets still diminishing in their summer supply of water. A probable explanation of this is to be found in the rapid drainage of the surface of cleared ground, which prevents the subterranean natural reservoirs, whether cavities or merely strata of bibulous earth, from filling up. How long this process is to last before an equilibrium is reached, none can say. It may be, for years; it may be, for centuries. Livingstone states facts which strongly favor the supposition that a secular desiccation is still going on in central Africa, and there is reason to suspect that a like change is taking place in California. When the regions where the earth is growing drier were cleared of wood, or, indeed, whether forests ever grew there, we are unable to say, but the change appears to have been long in progress. A similar revolution appears to have occurred in Arabia Petraea. In many of the wadis, and particularly in the gorges between Wadi Feiran and Wadi Esh Sheikh, there are water-worn banks showing that, at no very remote period, the winter floods must have risen fifty feet in channels where the growth of acacias and tamarisks and the testimony of the Arabs concur to prove that they have not risen six feet within the memory or tradition of the present inhabitants. Recent travellers have discovered traces of extensive ancient cultivation, and of the former existence of large towns in the Tih desert, in localities where all agriculture is now impossible for want of water. Is this drought due to the destruction of ancient forests or to some other cause? For important observations on supposed changes of climate in our Western prairie region, from cultivation of the soil and the introduction of domestic cattle, see Bryant's valuable Forest Trees, 1871, chapter v., and Hayden, Preliminary Report on Survey of Wyoming, p. 455. Some physicists believe that the waters of our earth are, from chemical of other less known causes, diminishing by entering into new inorganic combinations, and that this element will finally disappear from the globe.] In other cases, from injudicioua husbandry, or the diversion or choking up of natural water-courses, it may become more highly charged with humidity. An increase or diminution of the moisture of a soil almost necessarily supposes an elevation or a depression of its winter or its summer heat, and of its extreme if not of its mean annual temperature, though such elevation or depression may be so slight as not sensibly to raise or lower the mercury in a thermometer exposed to the open air. Any of these causes, more or less humidity, or more or less warmth of soil, would affect the growth both of wild and of cultivated vegetation, and consequently, without any appreciable change in atmospheric temperature, precipitation, or evaporation, plants of a particular species might cease to be advantageously cultivated where they had once been easily reared. [Footnote: The soil of newly subdued countries is generally highly favorable to the growth of the fruits of the garden and the orchard, but usually becomes much less so in a very few years. Plums, of many varieties, were formerly grown, in great perfection and abundance, in many parts of New England where at present they can scarcely be reared at all; and the peach, which, a generation or two ago, succeeded admirably in the southern portion of the same States, has almost ceased to be cultivated there. The disappearance of these fruits is partly due to the ravages of insects, which have in later years attacked them; but this is evidently by no means the sole, or even the principal cause of their decay. In these cases, it is not to the exhaustion of the particular acres on which the fruit trees have grown that we are to ascribe their degeneracy, but to a general change in the condition of the soil or the air; for it is equally impossible to rear them successfully on absolutely new land in the neighborhood of grounds where, not long since, they bore the finest fruit. I remember being told, many years ago, by intelligent early settlers of the State of Ohio, that the apple trees raised there from seed sown soon after the land was cleared, bore fruit in less than half the time required to bring to bearing those reared from seed gown when the ground had been twenty years under cultivation. Analogous changes occur slowly and almost imperceptibly even in spontaneous vegetation. In the peat mosses of Denmark, Scotch firs and other trees not now growing in the same localities, are found in abundance. Every generation of trees leaves the soil in a different state from that in which it found it; every tree that springs up in a group of trees of another species than its own, grows under different influences of light and shade and atmosphere from its predecessors. Hence the succession of crops, which occurs in all natural forests, seems to be due rather to changes of condition than of climate. See chapter iii., post.] Uncertainty of Modern Meteorology. We are very imperfectly acquainted with the present mean and extreme temperature, or the precipitation and the evaporation of any extensive region, even in countries most densely peopled and best supplied with instruments and observers. The progress of science is constantly detecting errors of method in older observations, and many laboriously constructed tables of meteorological phenomena are now thrown aside as fallacious, and therefore worse than useless, because some condition necessary to secure accuracy of result was neglected, in obtaining and recording the data on which they were founded. To take a familiar instance: it is but recently that attention has been drawn to the great influence of slight differences in station upon the results of observations of temperature and precipitation. Two thermometers hung but a few hundred yards from each other differ not unfrequently five, sometimes even ten degrees in their readings; [Footnote: Tyndall, in a lecture on Radiation, expresses the opinion that from ten to fifteen per cent. of the heat radiated from the earth is absorbed by aqueous vapor within ten feet of the earth's surface.--Fragments of Science, 3d edition, London, 1871, p. 203. Thermometers at most meteorological stations, when not suspended at points regulated by the mere personal convenience of the observer, are hung from 20 to 40 feet above the ground. In such positions they are less exposed to disturbance from the action of surrounding bodies than at a lower level, and their indications are consequently more uniform; but according to Tyndall's views they do not mark the temperature of the atmospheric stratum in which nearly all the vegetables useful to man, except forest trees, bud and blossom and ripen, and in which a vast majority of the ordinary operations of material life are performed. They give the rise and fall of the mercury at heights arbitrarily taken, without reference to the relations of temperature to human interests, or to any other scientific consideration than a somewhat less liability to accidental disturbance.] and when we are told that the annual fall of rain on the roof of the observatory at Paris is two inches less than on the ground by the side of it, we may see that the height of the rain-gauge above the earth is a point of much consequence in making estimates from its measurements. [Footnote: Careful observations by the late lamented Dallas Bache appeared to show that there is no such difference in the quantity of precipitation falling at slightly different levels as has been generally supposed. The apparent difference was ascribed by Prof. Bache to the irregular distribution of the drops of rain and flakes of snow, exposed, as they are, to local disturbances by the currents of air around the corners of buildings or other accidents of the surface. This consideration much increases the importance of great care in the selection of positions for rain-gauges. But Mr. Bache's conclusions seem not to be accepted by late experimenters in England. See Quarterly Journal of Science for January, 1871, p. 123.] The data from which results have been deduced with respect to the hygrometrical and thermometrical conditions, to the climate in short, of different countries, have very often been derived from observations at single points in cities or districts separated by considerable distances. The tendency of errors and accidents to balance each other authorizes us, indeed, to entertain greater confidence than we could otherwise feel in the conclusions drawn from such tables; but it is in the highest degree probable that they would be much modified by more numerous series of observations, at different stations within narrow limits. [Footnote: The nomenclature of meteorology is vague and sometimes equivocal. Not long since, it was suspected that the observers reporting to a scientific institution did not agree in their understanding of the mode of expressing the direction of the wind prescribed by their instructions. It was found, upon inquiry, that very many of them used the names of the compass-points to indicate the quarter FROM which the wind blew, while others employed them to signify the quarter TOWARDS which the atmospheric currents were moving. In some instances, the observers were no longer within the reach of inquiry, and of course their tables of the wind were of no value. "Winds," says Mrs. Somerville, "are named from the points whence they blow, currents exactly the reverse. An easterly wind comes from the east; whereas on easterly current comes from the west, and flows towards the east."--Physical Geography, p. 229. There is no philological ground for this distinction, and it probably originated in a confusion of the terminations -WARDLY and -ERLY, both of which are modern. The root of the former ending implies the direction TO or TO-WARDS which motion is supposed. It corresponds to, and is probably allied with, the Latin VERSUS. The termination -ERLY is a corruption or softening of -ERNLY, easterly for easternly, and many authors of the nineteenth century so write it. In Haklnyt (i., p. 2), EASTERLY is applied to place, "EASTERLY bounds," and means EASTERN. In a passage in Drayton, "EASTERLY winds" must mean winds FROM the east; but the same author, in speaking of nations, uses NORTHERLY for NORTHERN. Lakewell says: "The sonne cannot goe more SOUTHERNLY from us, nor come more NORTHERNLY towards us." Holland, in his translation of Pliny, referring to the moon, has: "When shee is NORTHERLY," and "shee is gone SOUTHERLY." Richardson, to whom I am indebted for the above citations, quotes a passage from Dampier where WESTERLY is applied to the wind, but the context does not determine the direction. The only example of the termination -WARDLY given by this lexicographer is from Donne, where it means TOWARDS the west. Shakespeare, in Hamlet(v., ii.), uses NORTHERLY wind for wind FROM the north. Milton does not employ either of these terminations, nor were they known to the Anglo-Saxons, who, however, had adjectives of direction in -AN or -EN, -ern and -weard, the last always meaning the point TOWARDS which motion in supposed, the others that FROM which it proceeds. The vocabulary of science has no specific name for one of the most important phenomena in meteorology--I mean for watery vapor condensed and rendered visible by cold. The Latins expressed this condition of water by the word vapor. For INVISIBLE vapor they had no name, because they did not know that it existed, and Van Helmont was obliged to invent a word, gas, as a generic name for watery and other fluids in the invisible state. The moderns have perverted the meaning of the word vapor, and in science its use is confined to express water in the gaseous and invisible state. When vapor in rendered visible by condensation, we call it fog or mist--between which two words there is no clearly established distinction--if it is lying on or near the surface of the earth or of water; when it floats in the air we call it cloud. But these words express the form and position of the humid aggregation, not the condition of the water-globules which compose it. The breath from our mouths, the steam from an engine, thrown out into cold air, become visible, and consist of water in the same state as in fog or cloud; but we do not apply those terms to these phenomena. It would be an improvement in meteorological nomenclature to restore vapor to its original meaning, and to employ a new word, such for example as hydrogas, to explain the new scientific idea of water in the invisible state.] There is one branch of research which is of the utmost importance in reference to these questions, but which, from the great difficulty of direct observation upon it, has been less successfully studied than almost any other problem of physical science. I refer to the proportions between precipitation, superficial drainage, absorption, and evaporation. Precise actual measurement of these quantities upon even a single acre of ground is impossible; and in all cabinet experiments on the subject, the conditions of the surface observed are so different from those which occur in nature, that we cannot safely reason from one case to the other. In nature, the inclination and exposure of the ground, the degree of freedom or obstruction of the flow of water over the surface, the composition and density of the soil, the presence or absence of perforations by worms and small burrowing quadrupeds--upon which the permeability of the ground by water and its power of absorbing and retaining or transmitting moisture depend--its temperature, the dryness or saturation of the subsoil, vary at comparatively short distances; and though the precipitation upon very small geographical basins and the superficial flow from them may be estimated with an approach to precision, yet even here we have no present means of knowing how much of the water absorbed by the earth is restored to the atmosphere by evaporation, and how much carried off by infiltration or other modes of underground discharge. When, therefore, we attempt to use the phenomena observed on a few square or cubic yards of earth, as a basis of reasoning upon the meteorology of a province, it is evident that our data must be insufficient to warrant positive general conclusions. In discussing the climatology of whole countries, or even of comparatively small local divisions, we may safely say that none can tell what percentage of the water they receive from the atmosphere is evaporated; what absorbed by the ground and conveyed off by subterranean conduits; what carried down to the sea by superficial channels; what drawn from the earth or the air by a given extent of forest, of short pasture vegetation, or of tall meadow-grass; what given out again by surfaces so covered, or by bare ground of various textures and composition, under different conditions of atmospheric temperature, pressure, and humidity; or what is the amount of evaporation from water, ice, or snow, under the varying exposures to which, in actual nature, they are constantly subjected. If, then, we are so ignorant of all these climatic phenomena in the best-known regions inhabited by man, it is evident that we can rely little upon theoretical deductions applied to the former more natural state of the same regions--less still to such as are adopted with respect to distant, strange, and primitive countries. STABILITY OF NATURE. Nature, left undisturbed, so fashions her territory as to give it almost unchanging permanence of form, outline, and proportion, except when shattered by geologic convulsions; and in these comparatively rare cases of derangement, she sets herself at once to repair the superficial damage, and to restore, as nearly as practicable, the former aspect of her dominion. In new countries, the natural inclination of the ground, the self-formed slopes and levels, are generally such as best secure the stability of the soil. They have been graded and lowered or elevated by frost and chemical forces and gravitation and the flow of water and vegetable deposit and the action of the winds, until, by a general compensation of conflicting forces, a condition of equilibrium has been readied which, without the action of main, would remain, with little fluctuation, for countless ages. We need not go far back to reach a period when, in all that portion of the North American continent which has been occupied by British colonization, the geographical elements very nearly balanced and compensated each other. At the commencement of the seventeenth century, the soil, with insignificant exceptions, was covered with forests; [Footnote: I do not here speak of the vast prairie region of the Mississippi valley, which cannot properly said ever to have been a field of British colonization; but of the original colonies, and their dependencies in the territory of the present United States, and in Canada. It is, however, equally true of the Western prairies as of the Eastern forest land, that they had arrived at a state of equilibrium, though under very different conditions.] and whenever the Indian, in consequence of war or the exhaustion of the beasts of the chase, abandoned the narrow fields he had planted and the woods he had burned over, they speedily returned, by a succession of herbaceous, arborescent, and arboreal growths, to their original state. Even a single generation sufficed to restore them almost to their primitive luxuriance of forest vegetation. [Footnote: The great fire of Miramichi in 1825, probably the most extensive and terrific conflagration recorded in authentic history, spread its ravages over nearly six thousand square miles, chiefly of woodland, and was of such intensity that it seemed to consume the very soil itself. But so great are the recuperative powers of nature, that, in twenty-five years, the ground was thickly covered again with tree of fair dimensions, except where cultivation and pasturage kept down the forest growth.] The unbroken forests had attained to their maximum density and strength of growth, and, as the older trees decayed and fell, they were succeeded by new shoots or seedlings, so that from century to century no perceptible change seems to have occurred in the wood, except the slow, spontaneous succession of crops. This succession involved no interruption of growth, and but little break in the "boundless contiguity of shade;" for, in the husbandry of nature, there are no fallows. Trees fall singly, not by square roods, and the tall pine is hardly prostrate, before the light and heat, admitted to the ground by the removal of the dense crown of foliage which had shut them out, stimulate the germination of the seeds of broad-leaved trees that had lain, waiting this kindly influence, perhaps for centuries. FORMATION OF BOGS. Two natural causes, destructive in character, were, indeed, in operation in the primitive American forests, though, in the Northern colonies, at least, there were sufficient compensations; for we do not discover that any considerable permanent change was produced by them. I refer to the action of beavers and of fallen trees in producing bogs, [Footnote: The English nomenclature of this geographical feature does not seem well settled. We have bog, swamp, marsh, morass, moor, fen, turf-moss, peat-moss, quagmire, all of which, though sometimes more or less accurately discriminated, are often used interchangeably, or are perhaps employed, each exclusively, in a particular district. In Sweden, where, especially in the Lappish provinces, this terr-aqueous formation is very extensive and important, the names of its different kinds are more specific in their application. The general designation of all soils permanently pervaded with water is Karr. The elder Laestadius divides the Karr into two genera: Myror (sing. myra), and Mossar (sing. mosse). "The former," he observes, "are grass-grown, and overflowed with water through almost the whole summer; the latter are covered with mosses and always moist, but very seldom overflowed." He enumerates the following species of Myra, the character of which will perhaps be sufficiently understood by the Latin terms into which he translates the vernacular names, for the benefit of strangers not altogether familiar with the language and the subject: 1. Homyror, paludes graminosae. 2. Dy, paludes profundae. 3. Flarkmyror, or proper karr, paludes limosae. 4. Fjalimyror, paludes uliginosae. 5. Tufmyror, paludes caespitosae. 6. Rismyror, paludes virgatae. 7. Starrangar, prata irrigata, with their subdivisions, dry starrungar or risangar, wet starrangar and frakengropar. 8. Polar, lacunae. 9. Golar, fossae inundatae. The Mossar, paludes turfosae, which are of great extent, have but two species: 1. Torfmossar, called also Mossmyror and Snottermyror, and, 2. Bjornmossar. The accumulations of stagnant or stagnating water originating in bogs are distinguished into Trask, stagna, and Tjernar or Tjarnar (sing. Tjern or Tjarn), stagnatiles. Trask are pools fed by bogs, or water emanating from them, and their bottoms are slimy; Tjernar are small Trask situated within the limits of Mossar.--L.L. Laestadius, om Mojligheten af Uppodlingar i Lappmarken, pp. 23, 24. Although the quantity of bog land in New England is less than in many other regions of equal area, yet there is a considerable extent of this formation in some of the Northeastern States. Dana (Manual of Geology, p. 614) states that the quantity of peat in Massachusetts is estimated at 120,000,000 cords, or nearly 569,000,000 cubic yards, but he does not give either the area or the depth of the deposits. In any event, however, bogs cover but a small percentage of the territory in any of the Northern States, while it is said that one tenth of the whole surface of Ireland is composed of bogs, and there are still extensive tracts of undrained marsh in England. The amount of this formation in Great Britain is estimated at 6,000,000 acres, with an average depth of twelve feet, which would yield 21,600,000 tons of air-dried peat.--Asbjornsen, Tore og Torodrift, Christiania, 1868, p. 6. Peat beds have sometimes a thickness of ten or twelve yards, or even more. A depth of ten yards would give 48,000 cubic yards to the acre. The greatest quantity of firewood yielded by the forests of New England to the acre is 100 cords solid measure, or 474 cubic yards; but this comprises only the trunks and larger branches. If we add the small branches and twigs, it is possible that 600 cubic yards might, in some cases, be cut on an acre. This is only one eightieth part of the quantity of peat sometimes found on the same area. It is true that a yard of peat and a yard of wood are not the equivalents of each other, but the fuel on an acre of deep peat is worth much more than that on an acre of the best woodland. Besides this, wood is perishable, and the quantity of an acre cannot be increased beyond the amount just stated; peat is indestructible, and the beds are always growing. See post, Chap. IV. Cold favors the conversion of aquatic vegetables into peat. Asbjornsen says some of the best peat he has met with is from a bog which is frozen for forty weeks in the year. The Greeks and Romans were not acquainted with the employment of peat as fuel, but it appears from a curious passage which I have already cited from Pliny, N. H., book xvi., chap. 1, that the inhabitants of the North Sea coast used what is called kneaded turf in his time. This is the finer and more thoroughly decomposed matter lying at the bottom of the peat, kneaded by the hands, formed into small blocks and dried. It is still prepared in precisely the same way by the poorer inhabitants of those shores. But though the Low German tribes, including probably the Anglo-Saxons, have used peat as fuel from time immemorial, it appears not to have been known to the High Germans until a recent period. At least, I can find neither in Old nor in Middle High German lexicons and glossaries any word signifying peat. Zurb indeed is found in Graff as an Old High German word, but only in the sense of grass-turf, or greensward. Peat bogs of vast extent occur in many High German localities, but the former abundance of wood in the same regions rendered the use of peat unnecessary.] and of smaller animals, insects, and birds, in destroying the woods. [Footnote: See Chapter II., post.] Bogs generally originate in the checking of watercourses by the falling of timber or of earth and rocks, or by artificial obstructions across their channels. If the impediment is sufficient to retain a permanent accumulation of water behind it, the trees whose roots are overflowed soon perish, and then by their fall increase the obstruction, and, of course, occasion a still wider spread of the stagnating stream. This process goes on until the water finds a new outlet, at a higher level, not liable to similar interruption. The fallen trees not completely covered by water are soon overgrown with mosses; aquatic and semiaquatic plants propagate themselves, and spread until they more or less completely fill up the space occupied by the water, and the surface is gradually converted from a pond to a quaking morass. The morass is slowly solidified by vegetable production and deposit, then very often restored to the forest condition by the growth of black ashes, cedars, or, in southern latitudes, cypresses, and other trees suited to such a soil, and thus the interrupted harmony of nature is at last reestablished. [Footnote: "Aquatic plants have a utility in raising the level of marshy grounds, which renders them very valuable, and may well be called a geological function. The engineer drains ponds at a great expense by lowering the surface of the water; nature attains the same end, gratuitously, by raising the level of the soil without depressing that of the water; but she proceeds more slowly. There are, in the Landes, marshes where this natural filling has a thickness of four metres, and some of them, at first lower than the sea, have been thus raised and drained so as to grow summer crops, such, for example, as maize."--Boitel, Mise en valeur des Terres pauvres, p. 227. The bogs of Denmark--the examination of which by Steenstrap and Vaupell has presented such curious results with respect to the natural succession of forest trees--appear to have gone through this gradual process of drying, and the birch, which grow freely in very wet soils, has contributed very effectually by its annual deposits to raise the surface above the water level, and thus to prepare the ground for the oak.--Vaupell, Bogens Indvandring, pp. 39, 40. The growth of the peat not unfrequently raises the surface of bogs considerably above the level of the surrounding country, and they sometimes burst and overflow lower grounds with a torrent of mud and water as destructive as a current of lava.] In countries somewhat further advanced in civilization than those occupied by the North American Indians, as in mediaeval Ireland, the formation of bogs may be commenced by the neglect of man to remove, from the natural channels of superficial drainage, the tops and branches of trees felled for the various purposes to which wood is applicable in his rude industry; and, when the flow of the water is thus checked, nature goes on with the processes I have already described. In such half-civilized regions, too, windfalls are more frequent than in those where the forest is unbroken, because, when openings have been made in it for agricultural or other purposes, the entrance thus afforded to the wind occasions the sudden overthrow of hundreds of trees which might otherwise have stood for generations and have fallen to the ground, only one by one, as natural decay brought them down. [Footnote: Careful examination of the peat mosses in North Sjaelland--which are so abundant in fossil wood that, within thirty years, they have yielded above a million of trees--shows that the trees have generally fallen from age and not from wind. They are found in depressions on the declivities of which they grew, and they lie with the top lowest, always falling towards the bottom of the valley.--Vaupell, Bogens Indvandring i de Danske Skove, pp. 10,14.] Besides this, the flocks bred by man in the pastoral state keep down the incipient growth of trees on the half-dried bogs, and prevent them from recovering their primitive condition. Young trees in the native forest are sometimes girdled and killed by the smaller rodent quadrupeds, and their growth is checked by birds which feed on the terminal bud; but these animals, as we shall see, are generally found on the skirts of the wood only, not in its deeper recesses, and hence the mischief they do is not extensive. In fine, in countries untrodden by man, the proportions and relative positions of land and water, the atmospheric precipitation and evaporation, the thermometric mean, and the distribution of vegetable and animal life, are maintained by natural compensations, in a state of approximate equilibrium, and are subject to appreciable change only from geological influences so slow in their operation that the geographical conditions may be regarded as substantially constant and immutable. NATURAL CONDITIONS FAVORABLE TO GEOGRAPHICAL CHANGE. There are, nevertheless, certain climatic conditions and certain forms and formations of terrestrial surface, which tend respectively to impede and to facilitate the physical degradation both of new countries and of old. If the precipitation, whether great or small in amount, be equally distributed through the seasons, so that there are neither torrential rains nor parching droughts, and if, further, the general inclination of ground be moderate, so that the superficial waters are carried off without destructive rapidity of flow, and without sudden accumulation in the channels of natural drainage, there is little danger of the degradation of the soil in consequence of the removal of forest or other vegetable covering, and the natural face of the earth may be considered as virtually permanent. These conditions are well exemplified in Ireland, in a great part of England, in extensive districts in Germany and France, and, fortunately, in an immense proportion of the valley of the Mississippi and the basin of the great American lakes, as well as in many parts of the continents of South America and of Africa, and it is partly, though by no means entirely, owing to topographical and climatic causes that the blight, which has smitten the fairest and most fertile provinces of Imperial Rome, has spared Britannia, Germania, Pannonia, and Moesia, the comparatively inhospitable homes of barbarous races, who, in the days of the Caesars, were too little advanced in civilized life to possess either the power or the will to wage that war against the order of nature which seems, hitherto, an almost inseparable condition precedent of high social culture, and of great progress in fine and mechanical art. Destructive changes are most frequent in countries of irregular and mountainous surface, and in climates where the precipitation is confined chiefly to a single season, and where, of course, the year is divided into a wet and a dry period, as is the case throughout a great part of the Ottoman empire, and, indeed, in a large proportion of the whole Mediterranean basin. In mountainous countries various causes combine to expose the soil to constant dangers. The rain and snow usually fall in greater quantity, and with much inequality of distribution; the snow on the summits accumulates for many months in succession, and then is not unfrequently almost wholly dissolved in a single thaw, so that the entire precipitation of months is in a few hours hurried down the flanks of the mountains, and through the ravines that furrow them; the natural inclination of the surface promotes the swiftness of the gathering currents of diluvial rain and of melting snow, which soon acquire an almost irresistible force and power of removal and transportation; the soil itself is less compact and tenacious than that of the plains, and if the sheltering forest has been destroyed, it is contined by few of the threads and ligaments by which nature had bound it together, and attached it to the rocky groundwork. Hence every considerable shower lays bare its roods of rock, and the torrents sent down by the thaws of spring, and by occasional heavy discharges of the summer and autumnal rains, are seas of mud and rolling stones that sometimes lay waste and bury beneath them acres, and even miles, of pasture and field and vineyard. [Footnote: The character of geological formation is an element of very great importance in determining the amount of erosion produced by running water, and, of course, in measuring the consequences of clearing off the forests. The soil of the French Alps yields very readily to the force of currents, and the declivities of the northern Apennines, as well as of many minor mountain ridges in Tuscany and other parts or Italy, are covered with earth which becomes itself almost a fluid when saturated with water. Hence the erosion of such surfaces is vastly greater than on many other mountains of equal steepness of inclination. The traveller who passes over the route between Bologna and Florence, and the Perugia and the Siena roads from the latter city to Rome, will have many opportunities of observing such localities.] Destructiveness of Man. Man has too long forgotten that the earth was given to him for usufruct alone, not for consumption, still less for profligate waste. Nature has provided against the absolute destruction of any of her elementary matter, the raw material of her works; the thunderbolt and the tornado, the most convulsive throes of even the volcano and the earthquake, being only phenomena of decomposition and recomposition. But she has left it within the power of man irreparably to derange the combinations of inorganic matter and of organic life, which through the night of aeons she had been proportioning and balancing, to prepare the earth for his habitation, when in the fulness of time his Creator should call him forth to enter into its possession. Apart from the hostile influence of man, the organic and the inorganic world are, as I have remarked, bound together by such mutual relations and adaptations as secure, if not the absolute permanence and equilibrium of both, a long continuance of the established conditions of each at any given time and place, or at least, a very slow and gradual succession of changes in those conditions. But man is everywhere a disturbing agent. Wherever he plants his foot, the harmonies of nature are turned to discords. The proportions and accommodations which insured the stability of existing arrangements are overthrown. Indigenous vegetable and animal species are extirpated, and supplanted by others of foreign origin, spontaneous production is forbidden or restricted, and the face of the earth is either laid bare or covered with a new and reluctant growth of vegetable forms, and with alien tribes of animal life. These intentional changes and substitutions constitute, indeed, great revolutions; but vast as is their magnitude and importance, they are, as we shall see, insignificant in comparison with the contingent and unsought results which have flowed from them. The fact that, of all organic beings, man alone is to be regarded as essentially a destructive power, and that he wields energies to resist which Nature--that nature whom all material life and all inorganic substance obey--is wholly impotent, tends to prove that, though living in physical nature, he is not of her, that he is of more exalted parentage, and belongs to a higher order of existences, than those which are born of her womb and live in blind submission to her dictates. There are, indeed, brute destroyers, beasts and birds and insects of prey--all animal life feeds upon, and, of course, destroys other life,--but this destruction is balanced by compensations. It is, in fact, the very means by which the existence of one tribe of animals or of vegetables is secured against being smothered by the encroachments of another; and the reproductive powers of species, which serve as the food of others, are always proportioned to the demand they are destined to supply. Man pursues his victims with reckless destructiveness; and, while the sacrifice of life by the lower animals is limited by the cravings of appetite, he unsparingly persecutes, even to extirpation, thousands of organic forms which he cannot consume. [Footnote: The terrible destructiveness of man is remarkably exemplified in the chase of large mammalia and birds for single products, attended with the entire waste of enormous quantities of flesh, and of other parts of the animal which are capable of valuable uses. The wild cattle of South America are slaughtered by millions for their hides and hairs; the buffalo of North America for his skin or his tongue; the elephant, the walrus, and the narwhal for their tusks; the cetacen, and some other marine animals, for their whalebone and oil; the ostrich and other large birds, for their plumage. Within a few years, sheep have been killed in New England, by whole flocks, for their pelts and suet alone, the flesh being thrown away; and it is even said that the bodies of the same quadrupeds have been used in Australia as fuel for limekilns. What a vast amount of human nutriment, of bone, and of other animal products valuable in the arts, is thus recklessly squandered! In nearly all these cases, the part which constitutes the motive for this wholesale destruction, and is alone saved, is essentially of insignificant value as compared with what is thrown away. The horns and hide of an ox are not economically worth a tenth part as much as the entire carcass. During the present year, large quantities of Indian corn have been used as domestic fuel, and even for burning lime, in Iowa and other Western States. Corn at from fifteen to eighteen cents per bushel is found cheaper than wood at from five to seven dollars per cord, or coal at six or seven dollars per ton.-Rep. Agric. Dept., Nov. and Dec., 1872, p. 487. One of the greatest benefits to be expected from the improvement civilization is, that increased facilities of communication will render it possible to transport to places of consumption much valuable material that is now wasted because the price at the nearest market will not pay freight. The cattle slaughtered in South America for their hides would feed millions of the starving population of the Old World, if their flesh could be economically preserved and transported across the ocean. This, indeed, is already done, but on a scale which, though absolutely considerable, is relatively insignificant. South America sends to Europe a certain quantity of nutriment in the form of meat extracts, Liebig's and others; and preserved flesh from Australia is beginning to figure in the English market. We are beginning to learn a better economy in dealing with the inorganic world. The utilization--or, as the Germans more happily call it, the Verwerthung, the BEWORTHING--of waste from metallurgical, chemical, and manufacturing establishments, is among the most important results of the application of science to industrial purposes. The incidental products from the laboratories of manufacturing chemists often become more valuable than those for the preparation of which they were erected. The slags front silver refineries, and even from smelting houses of the coarser metals, have not unfrequently yielded to a second operator a better return than the first had derived from dealing with the natural ore; and the saving of lead carried off in the smoke of furnaces has, of itself, given a large profit on the capital invested in the works. According to Ure's Dictionary of Arts, see vol. ii., p. 832, an English miner has constructed flues five miles in length for the condensation of the smoke from his lead-works, and makes thereby an annual saving of metal to the value of ten thousand pounds sterling. A few years ago, an officer of an American mint was charged with embezzling gold committed to him for coinage. He insisted, in his defence, that much of the metal was volatilized and lost in refining and melting, and upon scraping the chimneys of the melting furnaces and the roofs of the adjacent houses, gold enough was found in the soot to account for no small part of the deficiency. The substitution of expensive machinery for manual labor, even in agriculture--not to speak of older and more familiar applications--besides being highly remunerative, has better secured the harvests, and it is computed that the 230,000 threshing machines used in the United States in 1870 obtained five per cent. more grain from the sheaves which passed through them than could have been secured by the use of the flail. The cotton growing States in America produce annually nearly three million tons of cotton seed. This, until very recently, has been thrown away as a useless incumbrance, but it is now valued at ten or twelve dollars per ton for the cotton fibre which adheres to it, for the oil extracted from it, and for the feed which the refuse furnishes to cattle. The oil--which may be described as neutral--is used very largely for mixing with other oils, many of which bear a large proportion of it without injury to their special properties. There are still, however, cases of enormous waste in many mineral and mechanical industries. Thus, while in many European countries common salt is a government monopoly, and consequently so dear that the poor do not use as much or it as health requires, in others, as in Transylvania, where it is quarried like stone, the large blocks only are saved, the fragments, to the amount of millions of hundred weights, being thrown away.--Bonar, Transylvania, p. 455, 6. One of the most interesting and important branches of economy at the present day is the recovery of agents such as ammonia and ethers which had been utilized in chemical manufactures, and re-employing them indefinitely afterwards in repeating the same process. Among the supplemental exhibitions which will be formed in connection with the Vienna Universal Exhibition is to be one showing what steps have been taken since 1851 (the date of the first London Exhibition) in the utilization of substances previously regarded as waste. On the one hand will be shown the waste products in all the industrial processes included in the forthcoming Exhibition; on the other hand, the useful products which have been obtained from such wastes since 1851. This is intended to serve as an incentive to further researches in the same important direction.] The earth was not, in its natural condition, completely adapted to the use of man, but only to the sustenance of wild animals and wild vegetation. These live, multiply their kind in just proportion, and attain their perfect measure of strength and beauty, without producing or requiring any important change in the natural arrangements of surface, or in each other's spontaneous tendencies, except such mutual repression of excessive increase as may prevent the extirpation of one species by the encroachments of another. In short, without man, lower animal and spontaneous vegetable life would have been practically constant in type, distribution, and proportion, and the physical geography of the earth would have remained undisturbed for indefinite periods, and been subject to revolution only from slow development, from possible, unknown cosmical causes, or from geological action. But man, the domestic animals that serve him, the field and garden plants the products of which supply him with food and clothing, cannot subsist and rise to the full development of their higher properties, unless brute and unconscious nature be effectually combated, and, in a great degree, vanquished by human art. Hence, a certain measure of transformation of terrestrial surface, of suppression of natural, and stimulation of artificially modified productivity becomes necessary. This measure man has unfortunately exceeded. He has felled the forests whose network of fibrous roots bound the mould to the rocky skeleton of the earth; but had he allowed here and there a belt of woodland to reproduce itself by spontaneous propagation, most of the mischiefs which his reckless destruction of the natural protection of the soil has occasioned would have been averted. He has broken up the mountain reservoirs, the percolation of whose waters through unseen channels supplied the fountains that refreshed his cattle and fertilized his fields; but he has neglected to maintain the cisterns and the canals of irrigation which a wise antiquity had constructed to neutralize the consequences of its own imprudence. While he has torn the thin glebe which confined the light earth of extensive plains, and has destroyed the fringe of semi-aquatic plants which skirted the coast and checked the drifting of the sea sand, he has failed to prevent the spreading of the dunes by clothing them with artificially propagated vegetation. He has ruthlessly warred on all the tribes of animated nature whose spoil he could convert to his own uses, and he has not protected the birds which prey on the insects most destructive to his own harvests. Purely untutored humanity, it is true, interferes comparatively little with the arrangements of nature, [Footnote: It is an interesting and not hitherto sufficiently noticed fact, that the domestication of the organic world, so far as it has yet been achieved, belongs, not indeed to the savage state, but to the earliest dawn of civilization, the conquest of inorganic nature almost as exclusively to the most advanced stages of artificial culture. Civilization has added little to the number of vegetable or animal species grown in our fields or bred in our folds--the cranberry and the wild grape being almost the only plants which the Anglo-American has reclaimed out of our most native flora and added to his harvests--while, on the contrary, the subjugation of the inorganic forces, and the consequent extension of man's sway over, not the annual products of the earth only, but her substance and her springs of action, is almost entirely the work of highly refined and cultivated ages. The employment of the elasticity of wood and of horn, as a projectile power in the bow, is nearly universal among the rudest savages. The application of compressed air to the same purpose, in the blowpipe, is more restricted, and the use of the mechanical powers, the inclined plane, the wheel and axle, and even the wedge and lever, seems almost unknown except to civilized man. I have myself seen European peasants to whom one of the simplest applications of this latter power was a revelation. It is familiarly known to all who have occupied themselves with the psychology and habits of the ruder races, and of persons with imperfectly developed intellects in civilized life, that although these humble tribes and individuals sacrifice, without scruple, the lives of the lower animals to the gratification of their appetites and the supply of their other physical wants, yet they nevertheless seem to cherish with brutes, and even with vegetable life, sympathies which are much more feebly felt by civilized men. The popular traditions of the simpler peoples recognize a certain community of nature between man, brute animals, and even plants; and this serves to explain why the apologue or fable, which ascribes the power of speech and the faculty of reason to birds, quadrupeds, insects, flowers, and trees, is one of the earliest forms of literary composition. In almost every wild tribe, some particular quadruped or bird, though persecuted as a destroyer of other animals more useful to man, or hunted for food, is regarded with peculiar respect, one might almost say, affection. Some of the North American aboriginal nations celebrate a propitiatory feast to the manes of the intended victim before they commence a bear hunt; and the Norwegian peasantry have not only retained an old proverb which ascribes to the same animal "ti Maends Styrke og tolo Maends Vid," ten men's strength and twelve men's cunning, but they still pay to him something of the reverence with which ancient superstition invested him. The student of Icelandic literature will find in the saga of Finnbogi hinn rami a curious illustration of this feeling, in an account of a dialogue between a Norwegian bear and an Icelandic champion--dumb show on the part of Bruin, and chivalric words on that of Finnbogi--followed by a duel, in which the latter, who had thrown away his arms and armor in order that the combatants might meet on equal terms, was victorious. See also Friis, Lappisk Mythologi, Christiania, 1871, section 37, and the earlier authors there cited. Drummond Hay's very interesting work on Morocco contains many amusing notices of a similar feeling entertained by the Moors towards the redoubtable enemy of their flocks--the lion. This sympathy helps us to understand how it is that most if not all the domestic animals--if indeed they ever existed in a wild state--were appropriated, reclaimed and trained before men had been gathered into organized and fixed communities, that almost every known esculent plant had acquired substantially its present artificial character, and that the properties of nearly all vegetable drugs and poisons were known at the remotest period to which historical records reach. Did nature bestow upon primitive man some instinct akin to that by which she has been supposed to teach the brute to select the nutritious and to reject the noxious vegetables indiscriminately mixed in forest and pasture? This instinct, it must be admitted, is far from infallible, and, as has been hundreds of times remarked by naturalists, it is in many cases not an original faculty but an acquired and transmitted habit. It is a fact familiar to persons engaged in sheep husbandry in New England--and I have seen it confirmed by personal observation--that sheep bred where the common laurel, as it is called, Kalmia angustifolia, abounds, almost always avoid browsing upon the leaves of that plant, while those brought from districts where laurel is unknown, and turned into pastures where it grows, very often feed upon it and are poisoned by it. A curious acquired and hereditary instinct, of a different character, may not improperly be noticed here. I refer to that by which horses bred in provinces where quicksands are common avoid their dangers or extricate themsleves from them. See Bremontier, Memoire sur les Dunes, Annales des Ponts et Chaussees, 1833; premier semestre, pp. 155-157. It is commonly said in New England, and I believe with reason, that the crows of this generation are wiser than their ancestors. Scarecrows which were effectual fifty yeara ago are no longer respected by the plunderers of the cornfield, and new terrors must from time to time be invented for its protection. Schroeder van der Kolk, in Het Verschil tusschen den Psychischen, Aanleg van het Dier en van den Mensch, cites many interesting facts respecting instincts lost, or newly developed and become hereditary, in the lower animals, and he quotes Aristotle and Pliny as evidence that the common quadrupeds and fowls of our fields and our poultry yards were much less perfectly domesticated in their times than long, long ages of servitude have now made them. Among other inntances of obliterated instincts, this author states that in Holland, where, for centuries, the young of the cow has been usually taken from the dam at birth and fed by hand, calves, even if left with the mother, make no attempt to suck; while in England, where calves are not weaned until several weeks old, they resort to the udder as naturally as the young of wild quadrupeds.-Ziel en Ligchaam, p. 128. n. Perhaps the half-wild character ascribed by P. Laestadius and other Swedish writers to the reindeer of Lapland, may be in some degree due to the comparative shortness of the period during which he has been partially tamed. The domestic swine bred in the woods of Hungary and the buffalo of Southern Italy are so wild and savage as to be very dangerous to all but their keepers. The former have relapsed into their original condition, the latter, perhaps, have never been fully reclaimed from it.] and the destructive agency of man becomes more and more energetic and unsparing as he advances in civilization, until the impoverishment with which his exhaustion of the natural resources of the soil is threatening him, at last awakens him to the necessity of preserving what is left, if not of restoring what has been wantonly wasted. The wandering savage grows no cultivated vegetable, fells no forest, and extirpates no useful plant, no noxious weed. If his skill in the chase enables him to entrap numbers of the animals on which he feeds, he compensates this loss by destroying also the lion, the tiger, the wolf, the otter, the seal, and the eagle, thus indirectly protecting the feebler quadrupeds and fish and fowls, which would otherwise become the booty of beasts and birds of prey. But with stationary life, or at latest with the pastoral state, man at once commences an almost indiscriminate warfare upon all the forms of animal and vegetable existence around him, and as he advances in civilization, he gradually eradicates or transforms every spontaneous product of the soil he occupies. [Footnote: The difference between the relations of savage life, and of incipient civilization, to nature, is well seen in that part of the valley of the Mississippi which was once occupied by the mound builders and afterwards by the far less developed Indian tribes. When the tillers of the fields, which must have been cultivated to sustain the large population that once inhabited those regions, perished, or were driven out, the soil fell back to the normal forest state, and the savages who succeeded the more advanced race interfered very little, if at all, with the ordinary course of spontaneous nature.] Human and Brute Action Compared. It is maintained by authorities as high as any known to modern science, that the action of man upon nature, though greater in DEGREE, does not differ in KIND from that of wild animals. It is perhaps impossible to establish a radical distinction in genere between the two classes of effects, but there is an essential difference between the motive of action which calls out the energies of civilized man and the mere appetite which controls the life of the beast. The action of man, indeed, is frequently followed by unforeseen and undesired results, yet it is nevertheless guided by a self-conscious will aiming as often at secondary and remote as at immediate objects. The wild animal, on the other hand, acts instinctively, and, so far as we are able to perceive, always with a view to single and direct purposes. The backwoodsman and the beaver alike fell trees; the man that he may convert the forest into an olive grove that will mature its fruit only for a succeeding generation, the beaver that he may feed upon the bark of the trees or use them in the construction of his habitation. The action of brutes upon the material world is slow and gradual, and usually limited, in any given case, to a narrow extent of territory. Nature is allowed time and opportunity to set her restorative powers at work, and the destructive animal has hardly retired from the field of his ravages before nature has repaired the damages occasioned by his operations. In fact, he is expelled from the scene by the very efforts which she makes for the restoration of her dominion. Man, on the contrary, extends his action over vast spaces, his revolutions are swift and radical, and his devastations are, for an almost incalculable time after he has withdrawn the arm that gave the blow, irreparable. The form of geographical surface, and very probably the climate of a given country, depend much on the character of the vegetable life belonging to it. Man has, by domestication, greatly changed the habits and properties of the plants he rears; he has, by voluntary selection, immensely modified the forms and qualities of the animated creatures that serve him; and he has, at the same time, completely rooted out many forms of animal if not of vegetable being. [Footnote: Whatever may be thought of the modification of organic species by natural selection, there is certainly no evidence that animals have exerted upon any form of life an influence analogous to that of domestication upon plants, quadrupeds, and birds reared artificially by man; and this is as true of unforeseen as of purposely effected improvements accomplished by voluntary selection of breeding animals. It is true that nature employs birds and quadrupeds for the dissemination of vegetable and even of animal species. But when the bird drops the seed of a fruit it has swallowed, and when the sheep transports in its fleece the seed-vessel of a burdock from the plain to the mountain, its action is purely mechanical and unconscious, and does not differ from that of the wind in producing the same effect.] What is there, in the influence of brute life, that corresponds to this We have no reason to believe that, in that portion of the American continent which, though peopled by many tribes of quadruped and fowl, remained uninhabited by man or only thinly occupied by purely, savage tribes, any sensible geographical change had occurred within twenty centuries before the epoch of discovery and colonization, while, during the same period, man had changed millions of square miles, in the fairest and most fertile regions of the Old World, into the barrenest deserts. The ravages committed by man subvert the relations and destroy the balance which nature had established between her organized and her inorganic creations, and she avenges herself upon the intruder, by letting loose upon her defaced provinces destructive energies hitherto kept in check by organic forces destined to be his best auxiliaries, but which he has unwisely dispersed and driven from the field of action. When the forest is gone, the great reservoir of moisture stored up in its vegetable mould is evaporated, and returns only in deluges of rain to wash away the parched dust into which that mould has been converted. The well-wooded and humid hills are turned to ridges of dry rock, which encumbers the low grounds and chokes the watercourses with its debris, and--except in countries favored with an equable distribution of rain through the seasons, and a moderate and regular inclination of surface--the whole earth, unless rescued by human art from the physical degradation to which it tends, becomes an assemblage of bald mountains, of barren, turfless hills, and of swampy and malarious plains. There are parts of Asia Minor, of Northern Africa, of Greece, and even of Alpine Europe, where the operation of causes set in action by man has brought the face of the earth to a desolation almost as complete as that of the moon; and though, within that brief space of time which we call "the historical period," they are known to have been covered with luxuriant woods, verdant pastures, and fertile meadows, they are now too far deteriorated to be reclaimable by man, nor can they become again fitted for human use, except through great geological changes, or other mysterious influences or agencies of which we have no present knowledge, and over which we have no prospective control. The earth is fast becoming an unfit home for its noblest inhabitant, and another era of equal human crime and human improvidence, and of like duration with that through which traces of that crime and that improvidence extend, would reduce it to such a condition of impoverished productiveness, of shattered surface, of climatic excess, as to threaten the depravation, barbarism, and perhaps even extinction of the species. [Footnote: ---"And it may be remarked that, as the world has passed through these several stages of strife to produce a Christendom, so by relaxing in the enterprises it has learnt, does it tend downwards, through inverted steps, to wildness and the waste again. Let a people give up their contest with moral evil; disregard the injustice, the ignorance, the greediness, that may prevail among them, and part more and more with the Christian element of their civilization; and in declining this battle with sin, they will inevitably get embroiled with men. Threats of war and revolution punish their unfaithfulness; and if then, instead of retracing their steps, they yield again, and are driven before the storm, the very arts they had created, the structures they had raised, the usages they had established, are swept away; 'in that very day their thoughts perish.' The portion they had reclaimed from the young earth's ruggedness is lost; and failing to stand fast against man, they finally get embroiled with nature, and are thrust down beneath her ever-living hand .-Martineau's Sermon, "The Good Soldier of Jesus Christ."] Physical Improvement. True, there is a partial reverse to this picture. On narrow theatres, new forests have been planted; inundations of flowing streams restrained by heavy walls of masonry and other constructions; torrents compelled to aid, by depositing the slime with which they are charged, in filling up lowlands, and raising the level of morasses which their own overflows had created; ground submerged by the encroachments of the ocean, or exposed to be covered by its tides, has been rescued from its dominion by diking; swamps and even lakes have been drained, and their beds brought within the domain of agricultural industry; drifting coast dunes have been checked and made productive by plantation; seas and inland waters have been repeopled with fish, and even the sands of the Sahara have been fertilized by artesian fountains. These achievements are more glorious than the proudest triumphs of war, but, thus far, they give but faint hope that we shall yet make full atonement for our spendthrift waste of the bounties of nature. [Footnote: The wonderful success which has attended the measures for subduing torrents and preventing inundations employed in Southern France since 1863 and described in Chapter III., post, ought to be here noticed as a splendid and most encouraging example of well-directed effort in the way of physical restoration.] Limits Of Human Power. It is on the one hand, rash and unphilosophical to attempt to set limits to the ultimate power of man over inorganic nature, and it is unprofitable, on the other, to speculate on what may be accomplished by the discovery of now unknown and unimagined natural forces, or even by the invention of new arts and new processes. But since we have seen aerostation, the motive power of elastic vapors, the wonders of modern telegraphy, the destructive explosiveness of gunpowder, of nitro-glycerine, and even of a substance so harmless, unresisting, and inert as cotton, there is little in the way of mechanical achievement which seems hopelessly impossible, and it is hard to restrain the imagination from wandering forward a couple of generations to an epoch when our descendants shall have advanced as far beyond us in physical conquest, as we have marched beyond the trophies erected by our grandfathers. There are, nevertheless, in actual practice, limits to the efficiency of the forces which we are now able to bring into the field, and we must admit that, for the present, the agencies known to man and controlled by him are inadequate to the reducing of great Alpine precipices to such slopes as would enable them to support a vegetable clothing, or to the covering of large extents of denuded rock with earth, and planting upon them a forest growth. Yet among the mysteries which science is hereafter to reveal, there may be still undiscovered methods of accomplishing even grander wonders than these. Mechanical philosophers have suggested the possibility of accumulating and treasuring up for human use some of the greater natural forces, which the action of the elements puts forth with such astonishing energy. Could we gather, and bind, and make subservient to our control, the power which a West Indian hurricane exerts through a small area in one continuous blast, or the momentum expended by the waves in a tempestuous winter, upon the breakwater at Cherbourg, [Footnote: In heavy storms, the force of the waves as they strike against a sea-wall is from one and a half to two tons to the square foot, and Stevenson, in one instance at Skerryvore and in another at the Bell Rock lighthouse, found this force equal to nearly three tons per foot. The seaward front of the breakwater at Cherbourg exposes a surface about 2,500,000 square feet. In rough weather the waves beat against this whole face, though at the depth of twenty-two yards, which is the height of the breakwater, they exert a very much less violent motive force than at and near the surface of the sea, because this force diminishes in geometrical, and the distance below the surface increases in arithmetical, proportion. The shock of the waves is received several thousand times in the course of twenty four hours, and hence the sum of impulse which the breakwater resists in one stormy day amounts to many thousands of millions of tons. The breakwater is entirely an artificial construction. If then man could accumulate and control the forces which he is able effectually to resist, he might be said to be physically speaking, omnipotent.] or the lifting power of the tide, for a month, at the head of the Bay of Fundy, or the pressure of a square mile of sea water at the depth of five thousand fathoms, or a moment of the might of an earthquake or a volcano, our age--which moves no mountains and casts them into the sea by faith alone--might hope to scarp the ragged walls of the Alps and Pyrenees and Mount Taurus, robe them once more in a vegetation as rich as that of their pristine woods, and turn their wasting torrents into refreshing streams. [Footnote: Some well-known experiments show that it is quite possible to accumulate the solar heat by a simple apparatus, and thus to obtain a temperature which might be economically important even in the climate of Switzerland. Saussure, by receiving the sun's rays in a nest of boxes blackened within and covered with glass, raised a thermometer enclosed in the inner box to the boiling point; and under the more powerful sun of the Cape of Good Hope, Sir John Hershel cooked the materials for a family dinner by a similar process, using however, but at single box, surrounded with dry sand and covered with two glasses. Why should not so easy a method of economizing fuel be resorted to in Italy, in Spain, and even in more northerly climate The unfortunate John Davidson records in his journal that he saved fuel in Morocco by exposing his teakettle to the sun on the roof of his house, where the water rose to the temperature of one hundred and forty degrees, and, of course, needed little fire to bring it to boil. But this was the direct and simple, not the concentrated or accumulated heat of the sun. On the utilizing of the solar heat, simply as heat, see the work of Mouchot, La Chaleur solaire et ses applications industrielles. Paris, 1860. The reciprocal convertibility of the natural forces has suggested the possibility of advantageously converting the heat of the sun into mechanical power. Ericsson calculates that in all latitudes between the equator and 45 degrees, a hundred square feet of surface exposed to the solar rays develop continuously, for nine hours a day on an average, eight and one fifth horse-power. I do not know that any attempts have been made to accumulate and store up, for use at pleasure, force derived from this powerful source.] Could this old world, which man has overthrown, be rebuilded, could human cunning rescue its wasted hillsides and its deserted plains from solitude or mere nomade occupation, from barrenness, from nakedness, and from insalubrity, and restore the ancient fertility and healthfulness of the Etruscan sea coast, the Campagna and the Pontine marshes, of Calabria, of Sicily, of the Peloponnesus and insular and continental Greece, of Asia Minor, of the slopes of Lebanon and Hermon, of Palestine, of the Syrian desert, of Mesopotamia and the delta of the Euphrates, of the Cyrenaica, of Africa proper, Numidia, and Mauritania, the thronging millions of Europe might still find room on the Eastern continent, and the main current of emigration be turned towards the rising instead of the setting sun. But changes like these must await not only great political and moral revolutions in the governments and peoples by whom these regions are now possessed, but, especially, a command of pecuniary and of mechanical means not at present enjoyed by these nations, and a more advanced and generally diffused knowledge of the processes by which the amelioration of soil and climate is possible than now anywhere exists. Until such circumstances shall conspire to favor the work of geographical regeneration, the countries I have mentioned, with here and there a local exception, will continue to sink into yet deeper desolation, and in the meantime the American continent, Southern Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and the smaller oceanic islands, will be almost the only theatres where man is engaged, on a great scale, in transforming the face of nature. IMPORTANCE OF PHYSICAL CONSERVATION, AND RESTORATION. Comparatively short as is the period through which the colonization of foreign lands by European emigrants extends, great and, it is to be feared, sometimes irreparable injury has already been done in the various processes by which man seeks to subjugate the virgin earth; and many provinces, first trodden by the homo sapiens Europae within the last two centuries, begin to show signs of that melancholy dilapidation which is now driving so many of the peasantry of Europe from their native hearths. It is evidently a matter of great moment, not only to the population of the states where these symptoms are manifesting themselves, but to the general interests of humanity, that this decay should be arrested, and that the future operations of rural husbandry and of forest industry, in districts yet remaining substantially in their native condition, should be so conducted as to prevent the widespread mischiefs which have been elsewhere produced by thoughtless or wanton destruction of the natural safeguards of the soil. This can be done only by the diffusion of knowledge on this subject among the classes that, in earlier days, subdued and tilled ground in which they had no vested rights, but who, in our time, own their woods, their pastures, and their ploughlands as a perpetual possession for them and theirs, and have, therefore, a strong interest in the protection of their domain against deterioration. PHYSICAL RESTORATION. Many circumstances conspire to invest with great present interest the questions: how far man can permanently modify and ameliorate those physical conditions of terrestrial surface and climate on which his material welfare depends; how far he can compensate, arrest, or retard the deterioration which many of his agricultural and industrial processes tend to produce; and how far he can restore fertility and salubrity to soil which his follies or his crimes have made barren or pestilential. Among these circumstances, the most prominent, perhaps, is the necessity of providing new homes for a European population which is increasing more rapidly than its means of subsistence, new physical comforts for classes of the people that have now become too much enlightened and have imbibed too much culture to submit to a longer deprivation of a share in the material enjoyments which the privileged ranks have hitherto monopolized. To supply new hives for the emigrant swarms, there are, first, the vast unoccupied prairies and forests of America, of Australia, and of many other great oceanic islands, the sparsely inhabited and still unexhausted soils of Southern and even Central Africa, and, finally, the impoverished and half-depopulated shores of the Mediterranean, and the interior of Asia Minor and the farther East. To furnish to those who shall remain after emigration shall have conveniently reduced the too dense population of many European states, those means of sensuous and of intellectual well-being which are styled "artificial wants" when demanded by the humble and the poor, but are admitted to be "necessaries" when claimed by the noble and the rich, the soil must be stimulated to its highest powers of production, and man's utmost ingenuity and energy must be tasked to renovate a nature drained, by his improvidence, of fountains which a wise economy would have made plenteous and perennial sources of beauty, health, and wealth. In those yet virgin lands which the progress of modern discovery in both hemispheres has brought and is still bringing to the knowledge and control of civilized man, not much improvement of great physical conditions is to be looked for. The proportion of forest is indeed to be considerably reduced, superfluous waters to be drawn off, and routes of internal communication to be constructed; but the primitive geographical and climatic features of these countries ought to be, as far as possible, retained. In reclaiming and reoccupying lands laid waste by human improvidence or malice, and abandoned by man, or occupied only by a nomade or thinly scattered population, the task of the pioneer settler is of a very different character. He is to become a co-worker with nature in the reconstruction of the damaged fabric which the negligence or the wantonness of former lodgers has rendered untenantable. He must aid her in reclothing the mountain slopes with forests and vegetable mould, thereby restoring the fountains which she provided to water them; in checking the devastating fury of torrents, and bringing back the surface drainage to its primitive narrow channels; and in drying deadly morasses by opening the natural sluices which have been choked up, and cutting new canals for drawing off their stagnant waters. He must thus, on the one hand, create new reservoirs, and, on the other, remove mischievous accumulations of moisture, thereby equalizing and regulating the sources of atmospheric humidity and of flowing water, both which are so essential to all vegetable growth, and, of course, to human and lower animal life. I have remarked that the effects of human action on the forms of the earth's surface could not always be distinguished from those resulting from geological causes, and there is also much uncertainty in respect to the precise influence of the clearing and cultivating of the ground, and of other rural operations, upon climate. It is disputed whether either the mean or the extremes of temperature, the periods of the seasons, or the amount or distribution of precipitation and of evaporation, in any country whose annals are known, have undergone any change during the historical period. It is, indeed, as has been already observed, impossible to doubt that many of the operations of the pioneer settler TEND to produce great modifications in atmospheric humidity, temperature, and electricity; but we are at present unable to determine how far one set of effects is neutralized by another, or compensated by unknown agencies. This question scientific research is inadequate to solve, for want of the necessary data; but well conducted observation, in regions now first brought under the occupation of man, combined with such historical evidence as still exists, may be expected at no distant period to throw much light on this subject. Australia and New Zealand are, perhaps, the countries from which we have a right to expect the fullest elucidation of these difficult and disputable problems. Their colonization did not commence until the physical sciences had become matter of utmost universal attention, and is, indeed, so recent that the memory of living men embraces the principal epochs of their history; the peculiarities of their fauna, their flora, and their geology are such as to have excited for them the liveliest interest of the votaries of natural science; their mines have given their people the necessary wealth for procuring the means of instrumental observation, and the leisure required for the pursuit of scientific research; and large tracts of virgin forest and natural meadows are rapidly passing under the control of civilized man. Here, then, exist greater facilities and stronger motives for the careful study of the topics in question than have ever been found combined in any other theatre of European colonization. In North America, the change from the natural to the artificial condition of terrestrial surface began about the period when the most important instruments of meteorological observation were invented. The first settlers in the territory now constituting the United States and the British American provinces had other things to do than to tabulate barometrical and thermometrical readings, but there remain some interesting physical records from the early days of the colonies, [Footnote: The Travels of Dr. Dwight, president of Yale College, which embody the results of his personal observations, and of his inquiries among the early settlers, in his vacation excursions in the Northern States of the American Union, though presenting few instrumental measurements or tabulated results, are of value for the powers of observation they exhibit, and for the sound common sense with which many natural phenomena, such for instance as the formation of the river meadows, called "intervales," in New England, are explained. They present a true and interesting picture of physical conditions, many of which have long ceased to exist in the theatre of his researches, and of which few other records are extant.] and there is still an immense extent of North American soil where the industry and the folly of man have as yet produced little appreciable change. Here, too, with the present increased facilities for scientific observation, the future effects, direct a contingent, of man's labors, can be measured, and such precautions taken in those rural processes which we call improvements, as to mitigate evils, perhaps, in some degree, inseparable from every attempt to control the action of natural laws. In order to arrive at safe conclusions, we must first obtain a more exact knowledge of the topography, and of the present superficial and climatic condition of countries where the natural surface is as yet more or less unbroken. This can only be accomplished by accurate surveys, and by a great mutiplication of the points of meteorological registry, [Footnote: The general law of tempeture is that it decreases as we ascend. But in hilly areas the law is reversed in cold, still weather, the cold air descending, by reason of its greater gravity, into the valleys. If there be wind enough however, to produce a disturbance and intermixture of higher and lower atmospheric strata, this exception to the general law does not take place. These facts have long been familiar to the common people of Switzerland and of New England, but their importance has not been sufficiently taken into account in the discussion of meterological observations. The descent of the cold air and the rise of the warm effect the relative temperatures of hills and valleys to a much greater extent that has been usually supposed. A gentleman well known to me kept a thermometrical record for nearly a half century in a New England county town, at an elevation of at least 1,5000 feet above the sea. During these years his thermometer never fell lower that 26 degrees Farrenheit, while at the shire town of the county, situated in a basin thousand feet lower, and only tem miles distant, as well as at other points in similar positions, the mercury froze several times in the same period] already so numerous; and as, moreover, considerable changes in the proportion of forest and of cultivated land, or of dry and wholly or partially submerged surface, will often take place within brief periods, it is highly desirable that the attention of observers, in whose neighborhood the clearing of the soil, of the drainage of lakes and swamps, or other great works of rural improvement, are going on or meditated, should be especially drawn not only to revolutions in atmospheric tempeture and precipitation, but to the more easily ascertained and perhaps more important local changes produced by these operations in the temperature and the hygrometric state of the superficial strata of the earth, and in its spontaneous vegetable and animal products. The rapid extension of railroads, which now everywhere keep pace with, and sometimes even precede, the occupation of new soil for agricultural purposes, furnishes great facilities for enlarging our knowledge of the topography of the territory they traverse, because their cuttings reveal the composition and general structure of surface, and the inclination and elevation of their lines constitute known hypsometrical sections, which give numerous points of departure for the measurement of higher and lower stations, and of course for determining the relief and depression of surface, the slope of the beds of watercourses, and many other not less important questions. [Footnote: Railroad surveys must be received with great caution where any motive exists for COOKING them. Capitalists are shy of investments in roads with steep grades, and of course it is important to make a fair show of facilities in obtaining funds for new routes. Joint-stock companies have no souls; their managers, in general, no consciences. Cases can be cited where engineers and directors of railroads, with long grades above one hundred foot to the mile, have regularly sworn in their annual reports, for years in succession, that there were no grades upon their routes exceeding half that elevation. In fact, every person conversant with the history of these enterprises knows that in their public statements falsehood is the rule, truth the exception. What I am about to remark is not exactly relevant to my subject; but it is hard to "get the floor" in the world's great debating society, and when a speaker who has anything to say once finds access to the public ear, he must make the must of his opportunity, without inquiring too nicely whether his observations are "in order." I shall harm no honest man by endeavoring, as I have often done elsewhere, to excite the attention of thinking and conscientious men to the dangers which threaten the great moral and even political interests of Christendom, from the unscrupulousness of the private associations that now control the monetary affairs, and regulate the transit of persons and property, in almost every civilized country. More than one American State is literally governed by unprincipled corporations, which not only defy the legislative power, but have, too often, corrupted even the administration of justice. The tremendous power of these associations is due not merely to pecuniary corruption, but partly to an old legal superstition--fostered by the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the famous Dartmouth College case--in regard to the sacredness of corporate prerogatives. There is no good reason why private rights derived from God and the very constitution of society should be less respected than privileges granted by legislatures. It should never be forgotten that no privilege can be a right, and legislative bodies ought never to make a grant to a corporation, without express reservation of what many sound jurists now hold to be involved in the very nature of such grants, the power of revocation. Similar evils have become almost equally rife in England, and on the Continent; and I believe the decay of commercial morality, and of the sense of all higher obligations than those of a pecuniary nature, on both sides of the Atlantic, is to be ascribed more to the influence of joint-stock banks and manufacturing and railway companies, to the workings, in short, of what is called the principle of "associate action," than to any other one cause of demoralization. The apophthegm, "the world is governed too much," though unhappily too truly spoken of many countries--and perhaps, in some aspects, true of all--has done much mischief whenever it has been too unconditionally accepted as a political axiom. The popular apprehension of being over-governed, and, I am afraid, more emphatically the fear of being over-taxed, has had much to do with the general abandonment of certain governmental duties by the ruling powers of most modern states. It is theoretically the duty of government to provide all those public facilities of intercommunication and commerce, which are essential to the prosperity of civilized commonwealths, but which individual means are inadequate to furnish, and for the due administration of which individual guarantees are insufficient. Hence public roads, canals, railroads, postal communications, the circulating medium of exchange whether metallic or representative, armies, navies, being all matters in which the nation at large has a vastly deeper interest than any private association can have, ought legitimately to be constructed and provided only by that which is the visible personification and embodiment of the nation, namely, its legislative head. No doubt the organization and management of those insitutions by government are liable, as are all things human, to great abuses. The multiplication of public placeholders, which they imply, is a serious evil. But the corruption thus engendered, foul as it is, does not strike so deep as the rottenness of private corporations; and official rank, position, and duty have, in practice, proved better securities for fidelity and pecuniary integrity in the conduct of the interests in question, than the suretyships of private corporate agents, whose bondsmen so often fail or abscond before their principal is detected. Many theoretical statesmen have thought that voluntary associations for strictly pecuniary and industrial purposes, and for the construction and control of public works, might furnish, in democratic countries, a compensation for the small and doubtful advantages, and at the same time secure an exemption from the great and certain evils, of aristocratic institutions. The example of the American States shows that private corporations--whose rule of action is the interest of the association, not the conscience of the individual--though composed of ultra-democratic elements, may become most dangerous enemies to rational liberty, to the moral interests of the commonwealth, to the purity of legislation and of judicial action, and to the sacredness of private rights.] The geological, hydrographical, and topographical surveys, which almost every general and even local government of the civilized world is carrying on, are making yet more important contributions to our stock of geographical and general physical knowledge, and, within a comparatively short space, there will be an accumulation of well established constant and historical facts, from which we can safely reason upon all the relations of action and reaction between man and external nature. But we are, even now, breaking up the floor and wainscoting and doors and window frames of our dwelling, for fuel to warm our bodies and to seethe our pottage, and the world cannot afford to wait till the slow and sure progress of exact science has taught it a better economy. Many practical lessons have been learned by the common observation of unschooled men; and the teachings of simple experience, on topics where natural philosophy has scarcely yet spoken, are not to be despised. In these humble pages, which do not in the least aspire to rank among scientific expositions of the laws of nature, I shall attempt to give the most important practical conclusions suggested by the history of man's efforts to replenish the earth and subdue it; and I shall aim to support those conclusions by such facts and illustrations only as address themselves to the understanding of every intelligent reader, and as are to be found recorded in works capable of profitable perusal, or at least consultation, by persons who have not enjoyed a special scientific training. CHAPTER II. TRANSFER, MODIFICATION, AND EXTIRPATION OF VEGETABLE AND OF ANIMAL SPECIES. Modern geography takes account of organic life--Geographical importance of plants--Origin of domestic vegetables-Transfer of vegetable life--Objects of modern commerce-Foreign plants, how introduced--Vegetable power of accommodation--Agricultural products of the United States--Useful American plants grown in Europe--Extirpation of vegetables--Animal life as a geological and geographical agency--Origin and transfer of domestic quadrupeds--Extirpation of wild quadrupeds--Large marine animals relatively unimportant in geography--Introduction and breeding of fish--Destruction of fish--Geographical importance of birds--Introduction of birds--Destruction of birds--Utility and destruction of reptiles--Utility of insects and worms--Injury to the forest by insects--Introduction of insects--Destruction of insects--Minute organisms. MODERN GEOGRAPHY EMBRACES ORGANIC LIFE. It was a narrow view of geography which confined that science to delineation of terrestrial surface and outline, and to description of the relative position and magnitude of land and water. In its improved form it embraces not only the globe itself and the atmosphere which bathes it, but the living things which vegetate or move upon it, the varied influences they exert upon each other, the reciprocal action and reaction between them and the earth they inhabit. Even if the end of geographical studies were only to obtain a knowledge of the external forms of the mineral and fluid masses which constitute the globe, it would still be necessary to take into account the element of life; for every plant, every animal, is a geographical agency, man a destructive, vegetables, and in some cases even wild beasts, restorative powers. The rushing waters sweep down earth from the uplands; in the first moment of repose, vegetation seeks to reestablish itself on the bared surface, and, by the slow deposit of its decaying products, to raise again the soil which the torrent lhad lowered. So important an element of reconstruction in this, that it has been seriously questioned whether, upon the whole, vegetation does not contribute as much to elevate, as the waters to depress, the level of the surface. Whenever man has transported a plant from its native habitat to a new soil, he has introduced a new geographical force to act upon it, and this generally at the expense of some indigenous growth which the foreign vegetable has supplanted. The new and the old plants are rarely the equivalents of each other, and the substitution of an exotic for a native tree, shrub, or grass, increases or diminishes the relative importance of the vegetable element in thegeography of the country to which it is removed. Further, man sows that he may reap. The products of agricultural industry are not suffered to rot upon the ground, and thus raise it by an annual stratum of new mould. They are gathered, transported to greater or less distances, and after they have served their uses in human economy, they enter, on the final decomposition of their elements, into new combinations, and are only in smnall proportion returned to the soil on which they grew. The roots of the grasses, and of many other cultivated plants, however, usually remain and decay in the earth, and contribute to raise its surface, though certainly not in the same degree as the forest. The smaller vegetables which have taken the place of trees unquestionably perform many of the same functions. They radiate heat, they absorb gases, and exhale uncombined gases and watery vapor, and consequently act upon the chemical constitution and hygrometrical condition of the air, their roots penetrate the earth to greater depths than is commonly supposed, and form an inextricable labyrinth of filaments which bind the soil together and prevent its erosion by water. The broad-leaved annuals and perennials, too, shade the ground, and prevent the evaporation of moisture from its surface by wind and sun. [Footnote: It is impossible to say how far the abstraction of water from the earth by broad-leaved field and garden plants--such as maize, the gourd family, the cabbage, &c.--is compensated by the condensation of dew, which sometimes pours from them in a stream, by the exhalation of aqueous vapor from their leaves, which is directly absorbed by the ground, and by the shelter they afford the soil from sun and wind, thus preventing evaporation. American farmers often say that after the leaves of Indian corn are large enough to "shade the ground," there is little danger that the plants will suffer from drought; but it is probable that the comparative security of the fields from this evil is in port due to the fact that, at thin period of growth, the roots penetrate down to a permanently humid stratum of soil, and draw from it the moisture they require. Stirring the ground between the rows of maize with a light harrow or cultivator, in very dry seasons, is often recommended as a preventive of injury by drought. It would seem, indeed, that loosening and turning over the surface earth might aggravate the evil by promoting the evaporation of the little remaining moisture; but the practice is founded partly on the belief that the hygroscopicity of the soil is increased by it to such a degree that it gains more by absorption than it loses by evaporation, and partly on the doctrine that to admit air to the rootlets, or at least to the earth near them, is to supply directly elements of vegetable growth.] At a certain stage of growth, grass land is probably a more energetic evaporator and refrigerator than even the forest, but this powerful action is exerted, in its full intensity, for a comparatively short time only, while trees continue such functions, with unabated vigor, for many months in succession. Upon the whole, it seems quite certain, that no cultivated ground is as efficient in tempering climatic extremes, or in conservation of geographical surface and outline, as is the soil which nature herself has planted. ORIGIN OF DOMESTIC PLANTS. One of the most important questions connected with our subject is: how far we are to regard our cereal grains, our esculent bulbs and roots, and the multiplied tree fruits of our gardens, as artificially modified and improved forms of wild, self-propagating vegetation. The narratives of botanical travellers have often announced the discovery of the original form and habitat of domesticated plants, and scientific journals have described the experiments by which the identity of particular wild and cultivated vegetables has been thought to be established. It is confidently affirmed that maize and the potato--which we must suppose to have been first cultivated at a much later period than the breadstuffs and most other esculent vegetables of Europe and the East--are found wild and self-propagating in Spanish America, though in forms not recognizable by the common observer as identical with the familiar corn and tuber of modern agriculture. It was lately asserted, upon what seemed very strong evidence, that the Aegilops ovata, a plant growing wild in Southern France, had been actually converted into common wheat; but, upon a repetition of the experiments, later observers have declared that the apparent change was only a case of temporary hybridation or fecundation by the pollen of true wheat, and that the grass alleged to be transformed into wheat could not be perpetuated as such from its own seed. The very great modifications which cultivated plants are constantly undergoing under our eyes, and the numerous varieties and races which spring up among them, certainly countenance the doctrine, that every domesticated vegetable, however dependent upon human care for growth and propagation in its present form, may have been really derived, by a long Succession of changes, from some wild plant not now perhaps much resembling it. [Footnote: What is the possible limit of such changes, we do not know, but they may doubtless be carriad vastly beyond what experience has yet shown to be practicable. Civilized man has experimented little on wild plants, and especially on forest trees. He has indeed improved the fruit, and developed new varieties, of the chestnut, by cultivation, and it is observed that our American forest-tree nuts and berries, such as the butternut and thewild mulberry, become larger and better flavored in a single generation by planting and training. (Bryant, Forest Trees, 1871, pp. 99, 115.) Why should not the industry and ingenuity which have wrought such wonders in our horticulture produce analogous results when applied to the cultivation and amelioration of larger vegetables Might not, for instance, the ivory nut, the fruit of the Phytelephas macrocarpa, possibly be so increased in size as to serve nearly all the purposes of animal ivory now becoming so scarce Might not the various milk-producing trees become, by cultivation, a really important source of nutriment to the inhabitants of warm climates In short, there is room to hope incalculable advantage from the exercise of human skill in the improvement of yet untamed forms of vegetable life.] But it is, in every case, a question of evidence. The only satisfactory proof that a given wild plant is identical with a given garden or field vegetable, is the test of experiment, the actual growing of the one from the seed of the other, or the conversion of the one into the other by transplantation and change of conditions. [Footnote: The poisonous wild parsnip of New England has been often asserted to be convertible into the common garden parsnip by cultivation, or rather to be the same vegetable growing under different conditions, and it is said to be deprived of its deleterious qualities simply by an increased luxuriance of growth in rich, tilled earth. Wild medicinal plants, so important in the rustic materia medica of New England--such as pennyroyal, for example--are generally much less aromatic and powerful when cultivated in gardens than when self-sown on meagre soils. On the other hand, the cinchona, lately introduced from South America into British India and carefully cultivated there, is found to be richer in quinine than the American tree.] It is hardly contended that any of the cereals or other plants important as human aliment, or as objects of agricultural industry, exist and propagate themselves uncultivated in the same form and with the same properties as when sown and reared by human art. [Footnote: Some recent observations of Wetzatein are worthy of special notice. "The soil of the Hauran," he remarks, "produces, in its primitive condition, much wild rye, which is not known as a cultivated plant in Syria, and much wild barley and oats. These cereals precisely resemble the corresponding cultivated plants in leaf, ear, size, and height of straw, but their grains are sensibly flatter and poorer in flour."--Reisebericht uber Hauran und die Trachenen, p. 40. Some of the cereals are, to a certain extent, self-propagating in the soil and climate of California. "VOLUNTEER crops are grown from the seed which falls out in harvesting. Barley has been known to volunteer five crops in succession."--Prayer-Frowd, Six Months in California, p. 189.] In fact, the cases are rare where the identity of a wild with a domesticated plant is considered by the best authorities as conclusively established, and we are warranted in affirming of but few of the latter, as a historically known or experimentally proved fact, that they ever did exist, or could exist, independently of man. [Footnote: This remark is much less applicable to fruit trees than to garden vegetables and the cerealia. The wild orange of Florida, though once considered indigenous, is now generally thought by botanists to be descended from the European orange introduced by the early colonists. On the wild apple trees of Massachusetts see an interesting chapter in Thoreau, Excursions. The fig and the olive are found growing wild in every country where those trees are cultivated The wild fig differs from the domesticated in its habits, its season of fructification, and its insect population, but is, I believe, not specifically distinguishable from the garden fig, though I do not know that it is reclaimable by cultivation. The wild olive, which is so abundant in the Tuscan Maremma, produces good fruit without further care, when thinned out and freed from the shade of other trees, and is particularly suited for grafting. See Salvagnoli, Memorie sulle Maremme, pp. 63-73. The olive is indigenous in Syria and in the Punjaub, and forms vast forests in the Himalayas at from 1,400 to 2,100 feet above the level of the sea.--Cleghorn, Memoir on the Timber procured from the Indus, etc., pp. 8-15. Fraas, Klima und Pfanzenwelt in der Zeit, pp. 35-38, gives, upon the authority of Link and other botanical writers, a lift of the native habitats of most cereals and of many fruits, or at least of localities where those plants are said to be now found wild; but the data do not appear to rest, in general, upon very trustworthy evidence. Theoretically, there can be little doubt that all our cultivated plants are modified forms of spontaneous vegetation, though the connection is not historically shown, nor are we able to say that the originals of some domesticated vegetables may not be now extinct and unrepresented in the existing wild flora. See, on this subject, Humboldt, Ansichten der Natur, i., pp. 208, 209. The Adams of modern botany and zoology have been put to hard shifts in finding names for the multiplied organisms which the Creator has brought before them, "to see what they would call them;" and naturalists and philosophers have shown much moral courage in setting at naught the law of philology in the coinage of uncouth words to express scientific Ideas. It is much to be wished that some bold neologist would devise English technical equivalents for the German verwildert, run-wild, and veredelt, improved by cultivation.] Transfer of Vegetable Life. It belongs to vegetable and animal geography, which are almost sciences of themselves, to point out in detail what man has done to change the distribution of plants and of animated life and to revolutionize the aspect of organic nature; but some of the more important facts bearing on the first branch of this subject may pertinently be introduced here. Most of the cereal grains, the pulse, the edible roots, the tree fruits, and other important forms of esculent vegetation grown in Europe and the United States are believed, and--if the testimony of Pliny and other ancient naturalists is to be depended upon--many of them are historically known, to have originated in the temperate climates of Asia. The agriculture of even so old a country as Egypt has been almost completely revolutionized by the introduction of foreign plants, within the historical period. "With the exception of wheat," says Hehn, "the Nile valley now yields only new products, cotton, rice, sugar, indigo, sorghum, dates," being all unknown to its most ancient rural husbandry. [Footnote: On these points see the learned work of Hehn, Kultur. Pflanzen und Thiere in ihrem Uebergang aus Asien, 1870. On the migration of plants generally, see Lyell, Principles of Geology, 10th ed., vol. ii., c.] The wine grape has been thought to be truly indigenous only in the regions bordering on the eastern end of the Black Sea, where it now, particularly on the banks of the Rion, the ancient Phasis, propagates itself spontaneously, and grows with unexampled luxuriance. [Footnote: The vine-wood planks of the ancient great door of the cathedral at Ravenna, which measured thirteen feet in length by a foot and a quarter in width, are traditionally said to have boon brought from the Black Sea, by way of Constantinople, about the eleventh or twelfth century. Vines of such dimension are now very rarely found in any other part of the East, and, though I have taken some pains on the subject, I never found in Syria or in Turkey a vine stock exceeding six inches in diameter, bark excluded. Schulz, however, saw at Beitschin, near Ptolemais, a vine measuring eighteen inches in diameter. Strabo speaks of vine-stocks in Margiana (Khorasan) of such dimension that two men, with outstretched arms, could scarcely embrace them. See Strabo, ed. Casaubon, pp. 78, 516, 826. Statues of vine wood are mentioned by ancient writers. Very large vine-stems are not common in Italy, but the vine-wood panels of the door of the chapter-hall of the church of St. John at Saluzzo are not less than ten inches in width, and I observed not long since, in a garden at Pie di Mulera, a vine stock with a circumference of thirty inches.] But some species of the vine seem native to Europe, and many varieties of grape have been too long known as common to every part of the United States to admit of the supposition that they were introduced by European colonists. [Footnote: The Northmen who--as I think it has been indisputably established by Professor Rafn of Copenhagen--visited the coast of Massachusetts about theyear 1000, found grapes growing there in profusion, and the wild vine still flourishes in great variety and abundance in the southeastern counties of that State. The townships in the vicinity of the Dighton rock, supposed by many--with whom, however, I am sorry I cannot agree--to bear a Scandinavian inscription, abound in wild vines. According to Laudonniere, Histoire Notable de la Florida, reprint, Paris, 1853, p 5, the French navigators in 1562 found in that peninsula "wild vines which climb the trees and produce good grapes."] OBJECTS OF MODERN COMMERCE. It is an interesting fact that the commerce--or at least the maritime carrying trade--and the agricultural and mechanical industry of the world are, in very large proportion, dependent on vegetable and animal products little or not at all known to ancient Greek, Roman, and Jewish civilization. In many instances, the chief supply of these articles comes from countries to which they are probably indigenous, and where they are still almost exclusively grown; but in most cases, the plants or animals from which they are derived have been introduced by man into regions now remarkable for their successful cultivation, and that, too, in comparatively recent times, or, in other words, within two or three centuries. Something of detail on this subject cannot, I think, fail to prove interesting. Pliny mentions about thirty or forty oils as known to the ancients, of which only olive, sesame, rape seed and walnut oil--for except in one or two doubtful passages I find in this author no notice of linseed oil--appear to have been used in such quantities as to have had any serious importance in the carrying trade. At the present time, the new oils, linseed oil, the oil of the whale and other largeo marine animals, petroleum--of which the total consumption of the world in 1871 is estimated at 6,000,000 barrels, the port of Philadelphia alone exporting 56,000,000 gallons in that year--palm-oil recently introduced into commerce, and now imported into England from the coast of Africa at the rate of forty or fifty thousand tuns a year, these alone undoubtedly give employment to more shipping than the whole commerce of Italy--with the exception of wheat--at the most flourishing period of the Roman empire. [Footnote: A very few years since, the United States had more than six hundred large ships engaged in the whale fishery, and the number of American whalers, in spite of the introduction of many now sources of oils, still amounts to two hundred and fifty. The city of Rome imported from Sicily, from Africa, and from the Levant, enormous quantities of grain for gratuitous distribution among the lower classes of the capital. The pecuniary value of the gems, the spices, the unguents, the perfumes, the cosmetics and the tissues, which came principally from the East, was great, but these articles were neither heavy nor bulky and their transportation required but a small amount of shipping. The marbles, the obelisks, the statuary and other objects of art plundered in conquered provinces by Roman generals and governors, the wild animals, such as elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, camelopards and the larger beasts of prey imported for slaughter at the public games, and the prisoners captured in foreign wars and brought to Italy for sale as slaves or butchery as gladiators, furnished employment for much more tonnage than all the legitimate commerce of the empire, with the possible exception of wheat. Independently of the direct testimony of Latin authors, the Greek statuary, the Egyptian obelisks, and the vast quantities of foreign marbles, granite, parphyry, basalt, and other stones used in sculpture and in architecture, which have been found in the remains of ancient Rome, show that the Imperial capital must have employed an immense amount of tonnage in the importation of heavy articles for which there could have been no return freight, unless in the way of military transportation. Some of the Egyptian obelisks at Rome weigh upwards of four hundred tons, and many of the red granite columns from the same country must have exceeded one hundred tons. Greek and African marbles were largely used not only for columns, contablatures, and solid walls, but for casing the exterior and veneering the interior of public and private buildings. Scaurus imported, for the scene alone of a temporary theatre designed to stand scarcely for a month, three hundred and sixty columns, which were disposed in three tiers, the lower range being forty-two feet in height--See Pliny, Nat. Hist., Lib. xxxvi. Italy produced very little for export, and her importations, when not consisting of booty, were chiefly paid for in coin which was principally either the spoil of war or the fruit of official extortion.] England imports annually about 600,000 tons of sugar, 100,000 tons of jute, and about the same quantity of esparto, six million tons of cotton, of which the value of $30,000,000 is exported again in the form of manufactured, goods--including, by a strange industrial revolution, a large amount of cotton yarn and cotton tissues sent to India and directly or indirectly paid for by raw cotton to be manufactured in England--30,000 tons of tobacco, from 100,000 to 350,000 tons of guano, hundreds of thousands of tons of tea, coffee, cacao, caoutchone, gutta-percha and numerous other important articles of trade wholly unknown, as objects of commerce, to the ancient European world; and this immense importation is balanced by a corresponding amount of exportation, not consisting, however, by any means, exclusively of articles new to commerce. [Footnote: Many of these articles would undoubtedly have been made known to the Greeks and Romans and have figured in their commerce, but for the slowness and costliness of ancient navigation, which, in the seas familiar to them, was suspended for a full third of the year from the inability of their vessels to cope with winter weather. The present speed and economy of transportation have wrought and are still working strange commercial and industrial revolutions. Algeria now supplies Northern Germany with fresh cauliflowers, and in the early spring the market-gardeners of Naples find it more profitable to send their first fruits to St. Petersburg than to furnish them to Florence and Rome.] FOREIGN PLANTS, HOW INTRODUCED. Besides the vegetables I have mentioned, we know that many plants of smaller economical value have been the subjects of international exchange in very recent times. Busbequius, Austrian ambassador at Constantinople about the middle of the sixteenth century--whose letters contain one of the best accounts of Turkish life which have appeared down to the present day--brought home from the Ottoman capital the lilac and the tulip. The Belgian Clusius about the same time introduced from the East the horse chestnut, which has since wandered to America. The weeping willows of Europe and the United States are said to have sprung from a slip received from Smyrna by the poet Pope; and planted by him in an English garden; Drouyn de l'IIuys, in a discourse delivered before the French Societe d'Acclimatation, in 1860, claims for Rabelais the introduction of the melon, the artichoke and the Alexandria pink into France; and the Portuguese declare that the progenitor of all the European and American oranges was an Oriental tree transplanted to Lisbon, and still living in the last generation. [Footnote: The name portogallo, so generally applied to the orange in Italy, seems to favor this claim. The orange, however, was known in Europe before the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, and therefore, before the establishment of direct relations between Portugal and the East.--See Amari, Storia del Musulmani in Sicilia, vol ii., p. 445. The date-palms of eastern and southern Spain were certainly introduced by the Moors. Leo Von Rozmital, who visited Barcelona in 1476, says that the date-tree grew in great abundance in the environs of that city and ripened its fruit well. It is now scarcely cultivated further north than Valencia. It is singular that Ritter in his very full monograph on the palm does not mention those of Spain. On the introduction of conifera into England see an interesting article in the Edinburgh Review of October, 1864. Muller, Das Buch der Pfianzenrodt, p. 86, asserts that in 1802 the ancestor of all the mulberries in France, planted in 1500, was still standing in a garden in the village of Allan-Montelimart.] The present favorite flowers of the parterres of Europe have been imported from America, Japan and other remote Oriental countries, within a century and a half, and, in fine, there are few vegetables of any agricultural importance, few ornamental trees or decorative plants, which are not now common to the three civilized continents. The statistics of vegetable emigration exhibit numerical results quite surprising to those not familiar with the subject. The lonely island of St. Helena is described as producing, at the time of its discovery in the year 1501, about sixty vegetable species, including some three or four known to grow elsewhere also. [Footnote: It may be considered very highly probable, if not certain, that the undiscriminating herbalists of the sixteenth century must have overlooked many plants native to this island. An English botanist, in an hour's visit to Aden, discovered several species of plants on rocks always reported, even by scientific travellers, as absolutely barren. But after all, it appears to be well established that the original flora of St. Helena was extremely limited, though now counting hundreds of species.] At the present time its flora numbers seven hundred and fifty species--a natural result of the position of the island as the half-way house on the great ocean highway between Europe and the East. Humboldt and Bonpland found, among the unquestionably indigenous plants of tropical America, monocotyledons only, all the dicotyledons of those extensive regions having been probably introduced after the colonization of the New World by Spain. The seven hundred new species which have found their way to St. Helena within three centuries and a half, were certainly not all, or ever in the largest proportion, designedly planted there by human art, and if we were well acquainted with vegetable emigration, we should probably be able to show that man has intentionally transferred fewer plants than he has accidentally introduced into countries foreign to them. After the wheat, follow the tares that infest it. The woods that grow among the cereal grains, the pests of the kitchen garden, are the same in America as in Europe. [Footnote: Some years ago I made a collection of weeds in the wheatfields of Upper Egypt, and another in the gardens on the Bosphorus. Nearly all the plants were identical with those which grow under the same conditions in New England. I do not remember to have seen in America the scarlet wild poppy so common in European grainfields. I have heard, however, that it has lately crossed the Atlantic, and I am not sorry for it. With our abundant harvests of wheat, we can well afford to pay now and then a loaf of bread for the cheerful radiance of this brilliant flower.] The overturning of a wagon, or any of the thousand accidents which befall the emigrant in his journey across the Western plains, may scatter upon the ground the seeds he designed for his garden, and the herbs which fill so important a place in the rustic materia medica of the Eastern States, spring up along the prairie paths but just opened by the caravan of the settler. [Footnote: Josselyn, who wrote about fifty years after the foundation of the first British colony in New England, says that the settlers at Plymouth had observed more than twenty English plants springing up spontaneously near their improvements. Every country has many plants not now, if ever, made use of by man, and therefore not designedly propagated by him, but which cluster around his dwelling, and continue to grow luxuriantly on the ruins of his rural habitation after he has abandoned it. The site of a cottage, the very foundation stones of which have been carried off, may often be recognized, years afterwards, by the rank weeds which cover it, though no others of the same species are found for miles. "Mediaeval Catholicism," says Vaupell, "brought us the red horsehoof--whose reddish-brown flower buds shoot up from the ground when the snow melts, and are followed by the large leaves--comfrey and snake-root, which grow only where there were convents and other dwellings in the Middle Ages."--Bogens Indvandring & de Daneke Skove, pp. 1, 2. ] Introduction of Foreign Plants. "A negro slave of the great Cortez," says Humboldt, "was the first who sowed wheat in New Spain. He found three grains of it among the rice which had been brought from Spain as food for the soldiers." About twenty years ago, a Japanese forage plant, the Lesperadeza striata, whose seeds had been brought to the United States by some unknown accident made its appearance in one of the Southern States. It spread spontaneously in various directions, and in a few years was widely diffused. It grows upon poor and exhausted soils, where the formation of a turf or sward by the ordinary grasses would be impossible, and where consequently no regular pastures or meadows can exist. It makes excellent fodder for stock, and though its value is contested, it is nevertheless generally thought a very important addition to the agricultural resources of the South. [Footnote: Accidents sometimes limit, as well as promote the propagation of foreign vegetables in countries new to them. The Lombardy poplar is a deciduous tree, and is very easily grown from cuttings. In most of the countries into which it has been introduced the cuttings hare been taken from the male, and as, consequently, males only have grown from them, the poplar does not produce seed in those regions. This is a fortunate circumstance, for otherwise this most worthless and least ornamental of trees would spread with a rapidity that would make it an annoyance to the agriculturist.] In most of the Southern countries of Europe, the sheep and horned cattle winter on the plains, but in the summer are driven, sometimes many days' journey, to mountain pastures. Their coats and fleeces transport seeds in both directions. Hence we see Alpine plants in champaign districts, the plants of the plains on the borders of the glaciers, though in neither case do these vegetables ripen their seeds and propagate themselves. This explains the occurrence of tufts of common red clover with pallid and sickly flowers, on the flanks of the Alps at heights exceeding seven thousand feet. The hortus siccus of a botanist may accidentally sow seeds from the foot of the Himalayas on the plains that skirt the Alps; and it is a fact of very familiar observation, that exotics, transplanted to foreign climates suited to their growth, often escape from the flower garden and naturalize themselves among the spontaneous vegetation of the pastures. When the cases containing the artistic treasures of Thorvaldsen wore opened in the court of the museum where they are deposited, the straw and grass employed in packing them were scattered upon the ground, and the next season there sprang up from the seeds no less than twenty-five species of plants belonging to the Roman campagna, some of which were preserved and cultivated as a new tribute to the memory of the great Scandinavian sculptor, and at least four are said to have spontaneously naturalized themselves about Copenhagen. [Footnote: Vaupell, Bogens Indvandring i de Danske Skove, p. 2.] The Turkish armies, in their incursions into Europe, brought Eastern vegetables in their train, and left the seeds of Oriental wall plants to grow upon the ramparts of Buda and Vienna. [Footnote: I believe it is certain that the Turks introduced tobacco into Hungary, and probable that they in some measure compensated, the injury by introducing maize also, which, as well as tobacco, has been claimed as Hungarian by patriotic Magyars.] In the campaign of 1814, the Russian troops brought, in the stuffing of their saddles and by other accidental means, seeds from the banks of the Dnieper to the valley of the Rhine, and even introduced the plants of the steppes into the environs of Paris. The forage imported for the French army in the war of 1870-1871 has introduced numerous plants from Northern Africa and other countries into France, and this vegetable emigration is so extensive and so varied in character, that it will probably have an important botanical, and even economical, effect on the flora of that country. [Footnote: In a communication lately made to the French Academy, M. Vibraye gives numerous interesting details on this subject, and says the appearance of the many new plants observed in France in 1871, "results from forage supplied from abroad, the seeds of which had fallen upon the ground. At the present time, several Mediterranean plants, chiefly Algerian, having braved the cold of an exceptionally severe winter, are being largely propagated, forming extensive meadows, and changing soil that was formerly arid and produced no vegetable of importance into veritable oases." See Nature, Aug. 1, 1872, p. 263. We shall see on a following page that canals are efficient agencies in the unintentional interchange of organic life, vegetable as well as animal, between regions connected by such channels.] The Canada thistle, Erigeron Canadense, which is said to have accompanied the early French voyagers to Canada from Normandy, is reported to have been introduced into other parts of Europe two hundred years ago by a seed which dropped out of the stuffed skin of an American bird. VEGETABLE POWER OF ACCOMMODATION. The vegetables which, so far as we know their history, seem to have been longest objects of human care, can, by painstaking industry, be made to grow under a great variety of circumstances, and some of them prosper nearly equally well when planted and tended on soils of almost any geological character; but the seeds of most of them vegetate only in artificially prepared ground, they have little self-sustaining power, and they soon perish when the nursing hand of man is withdrawn from them. The vine genus is very catholic and cosmopolite in its habits, but particular varieties are extremely fastidious and exclusive in their requirements as to soil and climate. The stocks of many celebrated vineyards lose their peculiar qualities by transplantation, and the most famous wines are capable of production only in certain well-defined and for the most part narrow districts. The Ionian vine which bears the little stoneless grape known in commerce as the Zante currant, has resisted almost all efforts to naturalize it elsewhere, and is scarcely grown except in two or three of the Ionian islands and in a narrow territory on the northern shores of the Morea. The attempts to introduce European varieties of the vine into the United States have not been successful except in California, [Footnote: In 1869, a vine of a European variety planted in Sta. Barbara county in 1833 measured a foot in diameter four foot above the ground. Its ramifications covered ten thousand square feet of surface and it annually produces twelve thousand pounds of grapes. The bunches are sixteen or eighteen inches long, and weigh six or seven pounds.-Letter from Commissioner of Land-Office, dated May 13, 1860.] and it may be stated as a general rule that European forest and ornamental trees are not suited to the climate of North America, and that, at the same time, American garden vegetables are less luxuriant, productive and tasteful in Europe than in the United States. The saline atmosphere of the sea is specially injurious both to seeds and to very many young plants, and it is only recently that the transportation of some very important vegetables across the ocean lines been made practicable, through the invention of Ward's air-tight glass cases. By this means large numbers of the trees which produce the Jesuit's bark were successfully transplanted from America to the British possessions in the East, where this valuable plant may now be said to have become fully naturalized. [Footnote: See Cleghorn, Forests and Gardens of South India, Edinburgh, 1861, and The British Parliamentary return on the Chinchona Plant, 1866. It has been found that the seeds of several species of CINCHONA preserve their vitality long enough to be transported to distant regions. The swiftness of steam navigation render it possible to transport to foreign countries not only seeds but delicate living plants which could not have borne a long voyage by sailing vessels.] Vegetables, naturalized abroad either by accident or design, sometimes exhibit a greatly increased luxuriance of growth. The European cardoon, an esculent thistle, has broken out from the gardens of the Spanish colonies on the La Plata, acquired a gigantic stature, and propagated itself, in impenetrable thickets, over hundreds of leagues of the Pampas; and the Anacharis alsinastrum, a water plant not much inclined to spread in its native American habitat, has found its way into English rivers, and extended itself to such a degree as to form a serious obstruction to the flow of the current, and even to navigation. Not only do many wild plants exhibit a remarkable facility of accommodation, but their seeds usually possess great tenacity of life, and their germinating power resists very severe trials. Hence, while the seeds of many cultivated vegetables lose their vitality in two or three years, and can be transported safely to distant countries only with great precautions, the weeds that infest those vegetables, though not cared for by man, continue to accompany him in his migrations, and find a new home on every soil he colonizes. Nature fights in defence of her free children, but wars upon them when they have deserted her banners and tamely submitted to the domination of man. [Footnote: Tempests, violent enough to destroy all cultivated plants, frequently spare those of spontaneous growth. I have often seen in Northern Italy, vineyards, maize fields, mulberry and fruit trees completely stripped of their foliage by hail, while the forest trees scattered through the meadows, and the shrubs and brambles which sprang up by the wayslde, passed through the ordeal with scarcely the loss of a leaflet.] Indeed, the faculty of spontaneous reproduction and perpetuation necessarily supposes a greater power of accommodation, within a certain range, than we find in most domesticated plants, for it would rarely happen that the seed of a wild plant would fall into ground as nearly similar, in composition and condition, to that where its parent grew, as the soils of different fields artificially prepared for growing a particular vegetable are to each other. Accordingly, though every wild species affects a habitat of a particular character, it is found that, if accidentally or designedly sown elsewhere, it will grow under conditions extremely unlike those of its birthplace. Cooper says: "We cannot say positively that any plant is uncultivable ANYWHERE until it has been tried;" and this seems to be even more true of wild than of domesticated vegetation. The wild plant is much hardier than the domesticated vegetable, and the same law prevails in animated brute and even human life. The beasts of the chase are more capable of endurance and privation and more tenacious of life, than the domesticated animals which most nearly resemble them. The savage fights on, after he has received half a dozen mortal wounds, the least of which would have instantly paralyzed the strength of his civilized enemy, and, like the wild boar, he has been known to press forward along the shaft of the spear which was trans-piercing his vitals, and to deal a deathblow on the soldier who wielded it. True, domesticated plants can be gradually acclimatized to bear a degree of heat or of cold, which, in their wild state, they would not have supported; the trained English racer out-strips the swiftest horse of the pampas or prairies, perhaps even the less systematically educated courser of the Arab; the strength of the European, as tested by the dynamometer, is greater than that of the New Zealander. But all these are instances of excessive development of particular capacities and faculties at the expense of general vital power. Expose untamed and domesticated forms of life, together, to an entire set of physical conditions equally alien to the former habits of both, so that every power of resistance and accommodation shall be called into action, and the wild plant or animal will live, while the domesticated will perish. AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS OF THE UNITED STATES. According to the census of 1870, the United States had, on the first of June in that year, in round numbers, 189,000,000 acres of improved land, the quantity having been increased by 16,000,000 acres within the ten years next preceding. [Footnote: Ninth Census of the United States, 1872, p. 841. By "improved" land, in the reports on the census of the United States, is meant "cleared land" used for grazing, grass, or tillage, or which is now fallow, connected with or belonging to a farm."--Instructions to Marshals and Assistants, Census of 1870.] Not to mention less important crops, this land produced, in the year ending on the day last mentioned, in round numbers, 288,000,000 bushels of wheat, 17,000,000 bushels of rye, 282,000,000 bushels of oats, 6,000,000 bushels of peas and beans, 30,000,000 bushels of barley, orchard fruits to the value of $47,000,000, 640,000 bushels of cloverseed, 580,000 bushels of other grass seed, 13,000 tons of hemp, 27,000,000 pounds of flax, and 1,730,000 bushels of flaxseed. These vegetable growths were familiar to ancient European agriculture, but they were all introduced into North America after the close of the sixteenth century. Of the fruits of agricultural industry unknown to the Greeks and Romans, or too little employed by them to be of any commercial importance, the United States produced, in the same year, 74,000,000 pounds of rice, 10,000,000 bushels of buckwheat, 3,000,000 bales of cotton, [Footnote: Cotton, though cultivated in Asia from the remotest antiquity, and known as a rare and costly product to the Latins and the Greeks, was not used by them except as an article of luxury, nor did it enter into their commerce to any considerable extent as a regular object of importation. The early voyagers found it in common use in the West Indies and in the provinces first colonized by the Spaniards; but it was introduced into the territory of the United States by European settlers, and did not become of any importance until after the Revolution. Cottonseed was sown in Virginia as early as 1621, but was not cultivated with a view to profit for more than a century afterwards. Sea-island cotton was first grown on the coast of Georgia in 1786, the seed having been brought from the Bahamas, when it had been introduced from Anguilla--BIGELOW, Les Etats-Unis en 1868, p. 370]. 87,000 hogsheads of cane sugar, 6,600,000 gallons of cane molasses, 16,000,000 gallons of sorghum molasses, all yielded by vegetables introduced into that country within two hundred years, and--with the exception of buckwheat, the origin of which is uncertain, and of cotton--all, directly or indirectly, from the East Indies; besides, from indigenous plants unknown to ancient agriculture, 761,000,000 bushels of Indian corn, 263,000,000 pounds of tobacco, 143,000,000 bushels of potatoes, 22,000,000 bushels of sweet potatoes, 28,000,000 pounds of maple sugar, and 925,000 gallons of maple molasses. [Footnote: There is a falling off since 1860 of 11,000,000 pounds in the quantity of maple sugar and of more than a million gallons of maple molasses. The high price of cane sugar during and since the late civil war must have increased the product of maple sugar and molasses beyond what it otherwise would have been, but the domestic warfare on the woods has more than compensated this cause of increase.] To all this we are to add 27,000,000 tons of hay,--produced partly by new, partly by long known, partly by exotic and partly by native herbs and grasses, the value of $21,000,000 in garden vegetables chiefly of European or Asiatic origin, 3,000,000 gallons of wine, and many minor agricultural products. [Footnote: Raenie, Bochmeria tenacissima, a species of Chinese nettle producing a fibre which may be spun and woven, and which unites many of the properties of silk and of linen, has been completely naturalized in the United States, and results important to the industry of the country are expected from it.] The weight of this harvest of a year would be many times the tonnage of all the shipping of the United States at the close of the year 1870--and, with the exception of the maple sugar, the maple molasses, and the products of the Western prairie lands and of some small Indian clearings, it was all grown upon lands wrested from the forest by the European race within little more than two hundred years. The wants of Europe have introduced into the colonies of tropical America the sugar cane, [Footnote: The sugar cane was introduced by the Arabs into Sicily and Spain as early as the ninth century, and though it is now scarcely grown in those localities, I am not aware of any reason to doubt that its cultivation might be revived with advantage. From Spain it was carried to the West Indies, though different varieties have since been introduced into those Islands from other sources.] the coffee plant, the orange and the lemon, all of Oriental origin, have immensely stimulated the cultivation of the former two in the countries of which they are natives, and, of course, promoted agricultural operations which must have affected the geography of those regions to an extent proportionate to the scale on which they have been pursued. USEFUL AMERICAN PLANTS GROWN IN EUROPE. America has partially repaid her debt to the Eastern continent. Maize and the potato are very valuable additions to the field agriculture of Europe and the East, and the tomato is no mean gift to the kitchen gardens of the Old World, though certainly not an adequate return for the multitude of esculent roots and leguminous plants which the European colonists carried with them. [Footnote: John Smith mentions, In his Historie of Virginia, 1624, pease and beans as having been cultivated by the natives before the arrival of the whites, and there is no doubt, I believe, that several common cucurbitaceous plants are of American origin; but most, if not all the varieties of pease, beans, and other pod fruits now grown in American gardens, are from European and other foreign seed. Cartier, A.D. 1535-'6, mentions "vines, great melons, cucumbers, gourds [courges], pease, beans of various colors, but not like ours," as common among the Indians of the banks of the St. Lawrence--Bref Recit, etc., reprint. Paris, 1863, pp. 13, a; 14, b; 20, b; 31, a.] I wish I could believe, with some, that America is not alone responsible for the introduction of the filthy weed, tobacco, the use of which is the most vulgar and pernicious habit engrafted by the semi-barbarism of modern civilization upon the less multifarious sensualism of ancient life; but the alleged occurrence of pipe-like objects in old Sclavonic, and, it has been said, in Hungarian sepulchres, is hardly sufficient evidence to convict those races of complicity in this grave offence against the temperance and the refinement of modern society. EXTIRPATION OF VEGETABLES. Lamentable as are the evils produced by the too general felling of the woods in the Old World, I believe it does not appear that any species of native forest tree has yet been extirpated by man on the Eastern continent. The roots, stumps, trunks, and foliage found in bogs are recognized as belonging to still extant species. Except in some few cases where there is historical evidence that foreign material was employed, the timber of the oldest European buildings, and even of the lacustrine habitations of Switzerland, is evidently the product of trees still common in or near the countries where such architectural remains are found; nor have the Egyptian catacombs themselves revealed to us the former existence of any woods not now familiar to us as the growth of still living trees. [Footnote: Some botanists think that a species of water lily represented in many Egyptian tombs has become extinct, and the papyrus, which must have once been abundant in Egypt, is now found only in a very few localities near the mouth of the Nile. It grows very well and ripens its seeds in the waters of the Anapus near Syracuse, and I have seen it in garden ponds at Messina and in Malta. There is no apparent reason for believing that it could not be easily cultivated in Egypt, to any extent, if there were any special motive for encouraging its growth. Silphium, a famous medicinal plant of Lybia and of Persia, seems to have disappeared entirely. At any rate there is no proof that it now exists in either of those regions. The Silphium of Greek and Roman commerce appears to have come wholly from Cyrene, that from the Asiatic deserts being generally of less value, or, as Strabo says, perhaps of an inferior variety. The province near Cyrene which produced it was very limited, and according to Strabo (ed. Casaubon, p. 837), it was at one time almost entirely extirpated by the nomade Africans who invaded the province and rooted out the plant. The vegetable which produced the Balm of Gilead has not been found in modern times, although the localities in which it anciently grew have been carefully explored.] It is, however, said that the yew tree, Taxus baccata, formerly very common in England, Germany, and--as we are authorized to infer from Theophrastus--in Greece, has almost wholly disappeared from the latter country, and seems to be dying out in Germany. The wood of the yew surpasses that of almost any other European tree in closeness and fineness of grain, and it is well known for the elasticity which of old made it so great a favorite with the English archer. It is much in request among wood carvers and turners, and the demand for it explains, in part, its increasing scarcity. It is also asserted that no insect depends upon it for food or shelter, or aids in its fructification, and birds very rarely feed upon its berries: these are circumstances of no small importance, because the tree hence wants means of propagation or diffusion common to so many other plants. But it is alleged that the reproductive power of the yew is exhausted, and that it can no longer be readily propagated by the natural sowing of its seeds, or by artificial methods. If further investigation and careful experiment should establish this fact, it will go far to show that a climatic change, of a character unfavorable to the growth of the yew, has really taken place in Germany, though not yet proved by instrumental observation, and the most probable cause of such change would be found in the diminution of the area covered by the forests. The industry of man is said to have been so successful in the local extirpation of noxious or useless vegetables in China, that, with the exception of a few water plants in the rice grounds, it is sometimes impossible to find a single weed in an extensive district; and the late eminent agriculturist, Mr. Coke, is reported to have offered in vain a considerable reward for the detection of a weed in a large wheatfield on his estate in England. In these cases, however, there is no reason to suppose that diligent husbandry has done more than to eradicate the pests of agriculture within a comparatively limited area, and the cockle and the darnel will probably remain to plague the slovenly cultivator as long as the cereal grains continue to bless him. [Footnote: Although it is not known that man has absolutely extirpated any vegetable, the mysterious diseases which have, for the last twenty years, so injuriously affected the potato, the vine, the orange, the olive, and silk husbandry, are ascribed by some to a climatic deterioration produced by excessive destruction of the woods. As will be seen in the next chapter, a retardation in the period of spring has been observed in numerous localities in Southern Europe, as well as in the United States, and this change has been thought to favor the multiplication of the obscure parasites which causee the injury to the vegetables mentioned. Babinet supposes the parasites which attack the grape and the potato to be animal, not vegetable, and he ascribes their multiplication to excessive manuring and stimulation of the growth of the plants on which they live. They are now generally, it not universally, regarded as vegetable, and if they are so, Babinet's theory would be even more plausible than on his own supposition.--Etudes et lectures, ii, p. 269. It is a fact of some interest in agricultural economy, that the oidium, which is so destructive to the grape, has produced no pecuniary loss to the proprietors of the vineyards in France. "The price of wine," says Lavergne, "has quintupled, and as the product of the vintage has not diminished in the same proportion, the crisis has been, on the whole, rather advantageous than detrimental to the country."--Economie rurale de la France, pp. 263, 264. France produces a large surplus of wines for exportation, and the sales to foreign consumers are the principal source of profit to French vinegrowers. In Northern Italy, on the contrary, which exports little wine, there has been no such increase in the price of wine as to compensate the great diminution in the yield of the vines, and the loss of this harvest is severely felt. In Sicily, however, which exports much wine, prices have risen as rapidly as in France. Waltershausen informs us that in the years 1838-'42, the red wine of Mount Etna sold at the rate of one kreuzer and a half, or one cent the bottle, and sometimes even at but two thirds that price, but that at present it commands five or six times as much. The grape disease has operated severely on small cultivators whose vineyards only furnished a supply for domestic use, but Sicily has received a compensation in the immense increase which it has occasioned in both the product and the profits of the sulphur mines. Flour of sulphur is applied to the vine as a remedy against the disease, and the operation is repeated from two to three or four--and sometimes even eight or ten--times in a season. Hence there is a great demand for sulphur in all the vine-growing countries of Europe, and Waltershausen estimates the annual consumption of that mineral for this single purpose at 850,000 centner, or more than forty thousand tons. The price of sulphur has risen in about the same proportion as that of the wine.--Waltershausen, Ueber den Sicilianischen Ackerbau, pp. 19, 20.] All the operations of rural husbandry are destructive to spontaneous vegetation by the voluntary substitution of domestic for wild plants, and, as we have seen, the armies of the colonist are attended by troops of irregular and unrecognized camp-followers, which soon establish and propagate themselves over the new conquests. These unbidden and hungry guests--the gipsies of the vegetable world--often have great aptitude for accommodation and acclimation, and sometimes even crowd out the native growth to make room for themselves. The botanist Latham informs us that indigenous flowering plants, once abundant on the North-Western prairies, have been so nearly extirpated by the inroads of half-wild vegetables which have come in the train of the Eastern immigrant, that there is reason to fear that, in a few years, his herbarium will constitute the only evidence of their former existence. [Footnote: Report of Commissioner of Agriculture of the United States for 1870.] There are plants--themselves perhaps sometimes stragglers from their proper habitat--which are found only in small numbers and in few localities. These are eagerly sought by the botanist, and some such species are believed to be on the very verge of extinction, from the zeal of collectors. ANIMAL LIFE AS A GEOLOGICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL AGENCY. The quantitative value of animated life, as a geological agency, seems to be inversely as the volume of the individual organism; for nature supplies by numbers what is wanting in the bulk of the animal out of whose remains or structures she forms strata covering whole provinces, and builds up from the depths of the sea large islands, if not continents. There are, it is true, near the mouths of the great Siberian rivers which empty themselves into the Polar Sea, drift islands composed, in an incredibly large proportion, of the bones and tusks of elephants, mastodons, and other huge pachyderms, and many extensive caves in various parts of the world are half filled with the skeletons of quadrupeds, sometimes lying loose in the earth, sometimes cemented together into an osseous breccia by a calcareous deposit or other binding material. These remains of large animals, though found in comparatively late formations, generally belong to extinct species, and their modern congeners or representatives do not exist in sufficient numbers to be of sensible importance in geology or in geography by the mere mass of their skeletons. [Footnote: Could the bones and other relics of the domestic quadrupeds destroyed by disease or slaughtered for human use in civilized countries be collected into large deposits, as obscure causes have gathered together those of extinct animals, they would soon form aggregations which might almost be called mountains. There were in the United States, in 1870, as we shall see hereafter, nearly one hundred millions of horses, black cattle, sheep, and swine. There are great numbers of all the same animals in the British American Provinces and in Mexico, and there are large herds of wild horses on the plains, and of tamed among the independent Indian tribes of North America. It would perhaps not be extravagant to suppose that all these cattle may amount to two thirds as many as those of the United States, and thus we have in North America a total of 160,000,000 domestic quadrupeds belonging to species introduced by European colonization, besides dogs, cats, and other four-footed household pets and pests, also of foreign origin. If we allow half a solid foot to the skeleton and other slowly destructible parts of each animal, the remains of these herds would form a cubical mass measuring not much short of four hundred and fifty feet to the side, or a pyramid equal in dimensions to that of Cheops, and as the average life of these animals does not exceed six or seven years, the accumulations of their bones, horns, hoofs, and other durable remains would amount to at least fifteen times as great a volume in a single century. It is true that the actual mass of solid matter, left by the decay of dead domestic quadrupeds and permanently added to the crust of the earth, is not so great as this calculation makes it. The greatest proportion of the soft parts of domestic animals, and even of the bones, is soon decomposed, through direct consumption by man and other carnivora, industrial use, and employment as manure, and enters into new combinations in which its animal origin is scarcely traceable; there is, nevertheless, a large annual residuum, which, like decayed vegetable matter, becomes a part of the superficial mould; and in any event, brute life immensely changes the form and character of the superficial strata, if it does not sensibly augment the quantity of the matter composing them. The remains of man, too, add to the earthy coating that covers the face of the globe. The human bodies deposited in the catacombs during the long, long ages of Egyptian history, would perhaps build as large a pile as one generation of the quadrupeds of the United States. In the barbarous days of old Moslem warfare, the conquerors erected large pyramids of human skulls. The soil of cemeteries in the great cities of Europe has sometimes been raised several feet by the deposit of the dead during a few generations. In the East, Turks and Christians alike bury bodies but a cople of feet beneath the sculptures of the ignoble poor, and of those whose monuments time or accident has removed, are opened again and again to receive fresh occupants. Hence the ground in Oriental cemeteries is pervaded with relics of humanity, of not wholly composed of them; and an examination of the soil of the lower part of the Petit Champ des Morts, at Pera, by the naked eye alone, shows the observer that it consists almost exclusively of the comminuted bones of his fellow-man.] But the vegetable products found with them, and, in rare cases, in the stomachs of some of them, are those of yet extant plants; and besides this evidence, the discovery of works of human art, deposited in juxtaposition with fossil bones, and evidently at the same time and by the same agency which buried these latter--not to speak of human bones found in the same strata--proves that the animals whose former existence they testify were contemporaneous with man, and possibly even extirpated by him. [Footnote: The bones of mammoths and mastodons, in many instances, appear to have been grazed or cut by flint arrow-heads or other stone weapons, and the bones of animals now extinct are often wrought into arms and utensils, or split to extract the marrow. These accounts have often been discredited, because it has been assumed that the extinction of these animals was more ancient than the existence of man. Recent discoveries render it certain that this conclusion has been too hastily adopted. On page 143 of the Antiquity of Man, Lyell remarks that man "no doubt played his part in hastening the era of the extincion" of the large pachyderms and beasts of prey; but, as contemporaneous species of other animals, which man cannot be supposed to have extirpated, have also become extinct, he argues that the disappearance of the quadrupeds in question cannot be ascribed to human action alone. On this point it may be observed that, as we cannot know what precise physical conditions were necessary to the existence of a given extinct organism, we cannot say how far such conditions may have been modified by the action of man, and he may therefore have influenced the life of such organisms in ways, and to an extent, of which we can form no just idea.] I do not propose to enter upon the thorny question, whether the existing races of man are genealogically connected with these ancient types of humanity, and I advert to these facts only for the sake of the suggestion, that man, in his earliest known stages of existence, was probably a destructive power upon the earth, though perhaps not so emphatically as his present representatives. The larger wild animals are not now numerous enough in any one region to form extensive deposits by their remains; but they have, nevertheless, a certain geographical importance. If the myriads of large browsing and grazing quadrupeds which wander over the plains of Southern Africa--and the slaughter of which by thousands is the source of a ferocious pleasure and a brutal triumph to professedly civilized hunters--if the herds of the American bison, which are numbered by hundreds of thousands, do not produce visible changes in the forms of terrestrial surface, they have at least an immense influence on the growth and distribution of vegetable life, and, of course, indirectly upon all the physical conditions of soil and climate between which and vegetation a mutual interdependence exists. In the preceding chapter I referred to the agency of the beaver in the formation of bogs as producing sensible geographical effects. I am disposed to think that more bogs in the Northern States owe their origin to beavers than to accidental obstructions of rivulets by wind-fallen or naturally decayed trees; for there are few swamps in those States, at the outlets of which we may not, by careful search, find the remains of a beaver dam. The beaver sometimes inhabits natural lakelets and even large rivers like the Upper Mississippi, when the current is not too rapid, but he prefers to owe his pond to his own ingenuity and toil. The reservoir once constructed, its inhabitants rapidly multiply so long as the trees, and the harvests of pond lilies and other aquatic plants on which this quadruped feeds in winter, suffice for the supply of the growing population. But the extension of the water causes the death of the neighboring trees, and the annual growth of those which could be reached by canals and floated to the pond soon becomes insufficient for the wants of the community, and the beaver metropolis now sends out expeditions of discovery and colonization. The pond gradually fills up, by the operation of the same causes as when it owes its existence to an accidental obstruction, and when, at last, the original settlement is converted into a bog by the usual processes of vegetable life, the remaining inhabitants abandon it and build on some virgin brooklet a new city of the waters. [Footnote: I find confirmation of my own observations on this point (published in 1863) in the North-West Passage by Land of Milton and Cheadle, London, 1865. These travellers observed "a long chain of marshes formed by the damming up of a stream which had now ceased to exist," Chap. X. In Chap. XII, they state that "nearly every stream between the Pembina and the Athabasca--except the large river McLeod--appeared to have been destroyed by the agency of the beaver," and they question whether the vast extent of swampy ground in that region "has not been brought to this condition by the work of beavers who have thus destroyed, by their own labor, the streams necessary to their own existence." But even here nature provides a remedy, for when the process of "consolidation" referred to in treating of bogs in the first chapter shall have been completed, and the forest re-established upon the marshes, the water now diffused through them will be collected in the lower or more yielding portions, cut new channels for their flow, become running brooks, and thus restore the ancient aspect of the surface. The authors add the curious observation that the beavers of the present day seem to be a degenerate race, as they neither fell huge trees not construct great dams, while their progenitors cut down trees two feet in diameter and dammed up rivers a hundred feet in width. The change in the habits of the beaver is probably due to the diminution of their numbers since the introduction of fire-arms, and to the tact that their hydraulic operations are more frequently interrupted by the encroachments of man. In the valley of the Yellowstone, which has but lately been much visited by the white man, Hayden saw stumps of trees thirty inches in diameter which had been cut down by beavers. --Geological Survey of Wyoming, p. 135. The American beaver closely resembles his European congener, and I believe most naturalists now regard them as identical. A difference of speceies has been inferred from a difference in their modes of life, the European animal being solitary and not a builder, the American gregarious and constructive. But late careful researches in Germany have shown the former existence of numerous beaver dams in that country, though the animal, having becaome rare to form colonies, has of course ceased to attempt works which require the co-operation of numerous individuals.--Schleiden, Fur Baum und Wald Leipzig, 1870, p. 68. On the question of identity and on all others relating to this interesting animal, see L.H. Morgan's important monograph, The American Beaver and his Works, Philadelphia, 1868. Among the many new facts observed by this investigator is the construction of canals by the beaver to float trunks and branches of trees to his ponds. These canals are sometimes 600 to 700 feet long, with a width of two or three feet and a depth of one to one and a half.] INFLUENCE OF ANIMAL LIFE ON VEGETATION The influence of wild quadrupeds upon vegetable life have been little studied, and not many facts bearing upon it have been recorded, but, so far as it is known, it appears to be conservative rather than pernicious. Few wild animals depend for their subsistence on vegetable products obtainable only by the destruction of the plant, and they seem to confine their consumption almost exclusively to the annual harvest of leaf or twig, or at least of parts of the vegetable easily reproduced. If there are exceptions to this rule, they are in cases where the numbers of the animal are so proportioned to the abundance of the vegetable that there is no danger of the extermination of the plant from the voracity of the quadruped, or of the extinction of the quadruped from the scarcity of the plant. [Footnote: European foresters speak of the action of the squirrel as injurious to trees. Doubtless this is sometimes true in the case of artificial forests, but in woods of spontaneous growth, ordered and governed by nature, the squirrel does not attack trees, or at least the injury he may do is too trifling to be perceptible, but he is a formidable enemy to the plantation. "The squirrels bite the cones of the pine and consume the seed which might serve to restock the wood; they do still more mischief by gnawing off, near the leading shoot, a strip of bark, and thus often completely girdling the tree. Trees so injured must be felled, as they would never acquire a vigorous growth. The squirrel is especially destructive to the pine in Sologne, where he gnaws the bark of trees twenty or twenty-five years old." But even here, nature sometimes provides a compensation, by making the appetite of this quadruped serve to prevent an excessive production of seed cones, which tends to obstruct the due growth of the leading shoot. "In some of the pineries of Brittany which produce cones so abundantly as to strangle the development of the leading shoot of the maritime pine, it has been observed that the pines are most vigorous where the squirrels are most numerous, a result attributed to the repression of the cones by this rodent."--Boitel, Mise en valeur des Terres pauvres, p. 50. Very interesting observations, on the agency of the squirrel and other small animals in planting and in destroying nuts and other seeds of trees, may be found in a paper on the Succession of Forests in Thoreau's Excursions, pp. 135 et seqq. I once saw several quarts of beech-nuts taken from the winter quarters of a family of flying squirrels in a hollow tree. The kernels were neatly stripped of the shells and carefully stored in a dry cavity.] In diet and natural wants the bison resembles the ox, the ibex and the chamois assimilate themselves to the goat and the sheep; but while the wild animal does not appear to be a destructive agency in the garden of nature, his domestic congeners are eminently so. [Footnote: Evelyn thought the depasturing of grass by cattle serviceable to its growth. "The biting of cattle," he remarks, "gives a gentle loosening to the roots of the herbage, and makes it to grow fine and sweet, and their very breath and treading as well as soil, and the comfort of their warm bodies, is wholesome and marvellously cherishing."--Terra, or Philosophical Discourses of Earth, p. 86. In a note upon this passage, Hunter observes: "Nice farmers consider the lying of a beast upon the ground, for one night only, as a sufficient tilth for the year. The breath of graminivorous quadrupeds does certainly enrich the roots of grass; a circumstance worthy of the attention of the philosophical farmer."--Terra, same page. The "philosophical farmer" of the present day will not adopt these opinions without some qualification, and they certainly are not sustained by American observation. The Report of the Department of Agriculture for March and April, 1872, states that the native grasses are disappearing from the prairies of Texas, especially on the bottom-lands, depasturing of cattle being destructive to them.] This is partly from the change of habits resulting from domestication and association with man, partly from the fact that the number of reclaimed animals is not determined by the natural relation of demand and spontaneous supply which regulates the multiplication of wild creatures, but by the convenience of man, who is, in comparatively few things, amenable to the control of the merely physical arrangements of nature. When the domesticated animal escapes from human jurisdiction, as in the case of the ox, the horse, the goat, and perhaps the ass--which, so far as I know, are the only well-authenticated instances of the complete emancipation of household quadrupeds--he becomes again an unresisting subject of nature, and all his economy is governed by the same laws as that of his fellows which have never been enslaved by man; but, so long as he obeys a human lord, he is an auxiliary in the warfare his master is ever waging against all existences except those which he can tame to a willing servitude. ORIGIN AND TRANSFER OF DOMESTIC QUADRUPEDS. Civilization is so intimately associated with certain inferior forms of animal life, if not dependent on them, that cultivated man has never failed to accompany himself, in all his migrations, with some of these humble attendants. The ox, the horse, the sheep, and even the comparatively useless dog and cat, as well as several species of poultry, are voluntarily transferred by every emigrant colony, and they soon multiply to numbers far exceeding those of the wild genera most nearly corresponding to them. [Footnote: The rat and the mouse, though not voluntarily transported, are passengers by every ship that sails for a foreign port, and several species of these quadrupeds have, consequently, much extended their range and increased their numbers in modern times. From a story of Heliogabalus related by Lampridius, Hist. Aug. Scriptores, ed. Casaubon, 1690, p. 110, it would seem that mice at least were not very common in ancient Rome. Among the capricious freaks of that emperor, it is said that he undertook to investigate the statistics of the arachnoid population of the capital, and that 10,000 pounds of spiders (or spiders' webs--for aranea is equivocal) were readily collected; but when he got up a mouse-show, he thought ten thousand mice a very fair number. Rats are not less numerous in all great cities; and in Paris, where their skins are used for gloves, and their flesh, it is whispered, in some very complex and equivocal dishes, they are caught by legions. I have read of a manufacturer who contracted to buy of the rat-catchers, at a high price, all the rat-skins they could furnish before a certain date, and failed, within a week, for want of capital, when the stock of peltry had run up to 600,000. Civilization has not contented itself with the introduction of domestic animals alone. The English sportsman imports foxes from the continent, and Grimalkin-like turns them loose in order that he may have the pleasure of chasing them afterwards.] Of the origin of our domestic animals, we know historically nothing, because their domestication belongs to the ages which preceded written annals; but though they cannot all be specifically identified with now extant wild animals, it is presumable that they have been reclaimed from an originally wild state. Ancient writers have preserved to us fewer data respecting the introduction of domestic animals into new countries than respecting the transplantation of domestic vegetables. Ritter, in his learned essay on the camel, has shown that this animal was not employed by the Egyptians until a comparatively late period in their history; [Footnote: The horse and the ass were equally unknown to ancient Egypt, and do not appear in the sculptures before the XV. and XVI. dynasties. But even then, the horse was only known as a draught animal, and the only representation of a horseman yet found in the Egyptian tombs is on the blade of a battle axe of uncertain origin and period.] that he was unknown to the Carthaginians until after the downfall of their commonwealth; and that his first appearance in Western Africa is more recent still. The Bactrian camel was certainly brought from Asia Minor to the Northern shores of the Black Sea, by the Goths, in the third or fourth century, and the buffalo first appeared in Italy about A.D. 600, though it is unknown whence or by whom he was introduced. [Footnote: Erdkunde, viii., Asien, 1ste Abtheuung, pp. 660,758. Hehn, Kuttonpflanzen, p. 845.] The Arabian single-humped camel, or dromedary, has been carried to the Canary Islands, partially introduced into Australia, Greece, Spain, and even Tuscany, experimented upon to little purpose in Venezuela, and finally imported by the American Government into Texas and New Mexico, where it finds the climate and the vegetable products best suited to its wants, and promises to become a very useful agent in the promotion of the special civilization for which those regions are adapted. Quadrupeds, both domestic and wild, bear the privations and discomforts of long voyages better than would be supposed. The elephant, the giraffe, the rhinoceros, and even the hippopotamus, do not seem to suffer much at sea. Some of the camels imported by the U.S. government into Texas from the Crimea and Northern Africa were a whole year on shipboard. On the other hand, George Sand, in Un Hiver au Midi, gives an amusing description of the sea-sickness of swine in the short passage from the Baleares to Barcelona. America had no domestic quadruped but a species of dog, the lama tribe, and, to a certain extent, the bison or buffalo. [Footnote: See Chapter III., post; also Humboldt, Ansichten der Natur, i., p. 71. From the anatomical character of the bones of the urus, or auerochs, found among the relics of the lacustrine population of ancient Switzerland, and from other circumstances, it is inferred that this animal had been domesticated by that people; and it is stated, I know not upon what authority, in Le Alpi che cingono l'Italia, that it had been tamed by the Veneti also. See Lyell, Antiquity of Man, pp. 24, 25, and the last-named work, p. 480. This is a fact of much interest, because it is one of the very few HISTORICALLY known instances of the extinction of a domestic quadruped, and the extreme improbability of such an event gives some countenance to the theory of the identity of the domestic ox with, and its descent from, the urus.]Of course, it owes the horse, the ass, the ox, the sheep, the goat, and the swine, as does also Australia, to European colonization. Modern Europe has, thus far, not accomplished much in the way of importation of new animals, though some interesting essays have been made. The reindeer was successfully introduced into Iceland about a century ago, while similar attempts failed, about the same time, in Scotland. The Cashmere or Thibet goat was brought to France a generation since, and succeeds well. The same or an allied species and the Asiatic buffalo were carried to South Carolina about the year 1850, and the former, at least, is thought likely to prove of permanent value in the United States. [Footnote: The goat introduced into South Carolina was brought from the district of Angora, in Asia Minor, which has long been celebrated for flocks of this valuable animal. It is calculated that more than a million of these goats are raised in that district, and it is commonly believed that the Angora goat and its wool degenerate when transported. Probably this is only an invention of the shepherds to prevent rivals from attempting to interfere with so profitable a monopoly. But if the popular prejudice has any foundation, the degeneracy is doubtless to be attributed to ignorance of the special treatment which long experience has taught the Angora shepherds, and the consequent neglect of such precautions as are necessary to the proper care of the animal. Throughout nearly the whole territory of the United States the success of the Angora goat is perfect, and it would undoubtedly thrive equally well in Italy, though it is very doubtful whether in either country the value of its fleece would compensate the damage it would do to the woods.] The yak, or Tartary ox, seems to thrive in France, and it is hoped that success will attend the present efforts to introduce the South American alpaca into Europe. [Footnote: The reproductive powers of animals, as well as of plants, seem to be sometimes stimulated in an extraordinary way by transfer to a foreign clime. The common warren rabbit introduced by the early colonists into the island of Madeira multiplied to such a degree as to threaten the extirpation of vegetation, and in Australia the same quadruped has become so numerous as to be a very serious evil. The colonists are obliged to employ professional rabbit-hunters, and one planter has enclosed his grounds by four miles of solid wall, at an expense of $6,000, to protect his crops against those ravagers.--Revue des Eaux et Forets, 1870, p. 38.] According to the census of the United States for 1870, [Footnote: In the enumeration of farm stock, "sucking pigs, spring lambs, and calves," are omitted. I believe they are included in the numbers reported by the census of 1860. Horses and horned cattle in towns and cities were excluded from both enumerations, the law providing for returns on these points from rural districts only. On the whole, there is a diminution in the number of all farm stock, except sheep, since 1860. This is ascribed by the Report to the destruction of domestic quadrupeds during the civil war, but this hardly explains the reduction in the number of swine from 39,000,000 in 1800 to 25,000,000 in 1870.] the total number of horses in all the States of the American Union, was, in round numbers, 7,100,000; of asses and mules, 1,100,000; of the ox tribe, 25,000,000; of sheep, 28,000,000; and of swine, 25,000,000. The only indigenous North American quadruped sufficiently gregarious in habits, and sufficiently multiplied in numbers, to form really large herds, is the bison, or, as he is commonly called in America, the buffalo; and this animal is confined to the prairie region of the Mississippi basin, a small part of British America, and Northern Mexico. The engineers sent out to survey railroad routes to the Pacific estimated the number of a single herd of bisons seen within the last fifteen years on the great plains near the Upper Missouri, at not less than 200,000, and yet the range occupied by this animal is now very much smaller in area than it was when the whites first established themselves on the prairies. [Footnote: "About five miles from camp we ascended to the top of a high hill, and for a great distance ahead every square mile seemed to have a herd of buffalo upon it. Their number was variously estimated by the members of the party; by some as high as half a million. I do not think it any exaggeration to set it down at 200,000." Steven's Narrative and Final Report. Reports of Explorations and Surveys for Railroad to Pacific, vol xii, book i., 1860. The next day the party fell in with a "buffalo trail," where at least 100,000 were thought to have crossed a slough. As late as 1868, Sheridan's party estimated the number of bisons seen by them in a single day at 200,000.--Sheridan's Troopers on the Border, 1868, p. 41.] But it must be remarked that the American buffalo is a migratory animal, and that, at the season of his annual journeys, the whole stock of a vast extent of pasture-ground is collected into a single army, which is seen at or very near any one point only for a few days during the entire season. Hence there is risk of great error in estimating the numbers of the bison in a given district from the magnitude of the herds seen at or about the same time at a single place of observation; and, upon the whole, it is neither proved nor probable that the bison was ever, at any one time, as numerous in North America as the domestic bovine species is at present. The elk, the moose, the musk ox, the caribou, and the smaller quadrupeds popularly embraced under the general name of deer, though sufficient for the wants of a sparse savage population, were never numerically very abundant, and the carnivora which fed upon them were still less so. It is almost needless to add that the Rocky Mountain sheep and goat must always have been very rare. Summing up the whole, then, it is evident that the wild quadrupeds of North America, even when most numerous, were few compared with their domestic successors, that they required a much less supply of vegetable food, and consequently were far less important as geographical elements than the many millions of hoofed and horned cattle now fed by civilized man on the same continent. EXTIRPATION OF WILD QUADRUPEDS. Although man never fails greatly to diminish, and is perhaps destined ultimately to exterminate, such of the larger wild quadrupeds as he cannot profitably domesticate, yet their numbers often fluctuate, and oven after they seem almost extinct, they sometimes suddenly increase, without any intentional steps to promote such a result on his part. During the wars which followed the French Revolution, the wolf multiplied in many parts of Europe, partly because the hunters were withdrawn from the woods to chase a nobler game, and partly because the bodies of slain men and horses supplied this voracious quadraped with more abundant food. [Footnote: During the late civil war in America, deer and other animals of the chase multiplied rapidly in the regions of the Southern States which were partly depopulated and deprived of their sportsmen by the military operations of the contest, and the bear is said to have reappeared in districts where he had not been seen in the memory of living man.] The same animal became again more numerous in Poland after the general disarming of the rural population by the Russian Government. On the other hand, when the hunters pursue the wolf, the graminivorous wild quadrupeds increase, and thus in turn promote the multiplication of their great four-footed destroyer by augmenting the supply of his nourishment. So long as the fur of the beaver was extensively employed as a material for hats, it bore a very high price, and the chase of this quadruped was so keen that naturalists feared its speedy extinction. When a Parisian manufacturer invented the silk hat, which soon came into almost universal use, the demand for beavers' fur fell off, and the animal--whose habits are an important agency in the formation of bogs and other modifications of forest nature--immediately began to increase, reappeared in haunts which he had long abandoned, and can no longer be regarded as rare enough to be in immediate danger of extirpation. Thus the convenience or the caprice of Parisian fashion has unconsciously exercised an influence which may sensibly affect the physical geography of a distant continent. Since the invention of gunpowder, gome quadrupeds have completely disappeared from many European and Asiatic countries where they were formerly numerous. The last wolf was killed in Great Britain two hundred years ago, and the bear was extirpated from that island still earlier. The lion is believed to have inhabited Asia Minor and Syria, and probably Greece and Sicily also, long after the commencement of the historical period, and he is even said to have been not yet extinct in the first-named two of these countries at the time of the first Crusade. [Footnote: In maintaining the recent existence of the lion in the countries named in the text, naturalists have, perhaps, laid. too much weight on the frequent occurrence of representations of this animal in sculptures apparently of a historical character. It will not do to argue, twenty centuries hence, that the lion and the unicorn were common in Great Britain in Queen Victoria's time because they are often seen "fighting for the crown" in the carvings and paintings of that period. Many paleontolgists, however, identify the great cat-like animal, whose skeletons are frequently found in British bone-caves, with the lion of our times. The leopard (panthera), though already growing scarce, was found in Cilicia in Cicero's time. See his letter to Coelius, Epist. ad Diversos, Lib. II., Ep. 11. The British wild ox is extinct except in a few English and Scottish parks, while in Irish bogs of no great apparent antiquity are found antlers which testify to the former existence of a stag much larger than any extant European species. Two large graminivorous or browsing quadrupeds, the ur and the schelk, once common in Germany, have been utterly extirpated, the eland and the auerochs nearly so. The Nibelungen-Lied, which, in the oldest form preserved to us, dates from about the year 1200, though its original composition no doubt belongs to an earlier period, thus sings: Then slowe the dowghtie Sigfrid a wisent and an elk, he smote four stoute uroxen and a grim and sturdie schelk. [Footnote: Dar nach sluoger schiere, einen wisent unde elch. Starker ure viere, unt einen grimmen schelch. XVI. Aventiure. The testimony of the Nibelungen-Lied is not conclusive evidence that these quadrupeds existed in Germany at the time of the composition of that poem. It proves too much; for, a few lines above those just quoted, Sigfrid is said to have killed a lion, an animal which the most patriotic Teuton will hardly claim as a denizen of mediaeval Germany.] Modern naturalists identify the elk with the eland, the wisent with the auerochs. The period when the ur and the schelk became extinct is not known. The auerochs survived in Prussia until the middle of the last century, but unless it is identical with a similar quadruped said to be found on the Caucasus, it now exists only in the Russian imperial forest of Bialowitz where about a thousand are still preserved, and in some great menageries, as for example that at Schonbrunn, near Vienna, which, in 1852, had four specimens. The eland, which is closely allied to the American wapiti if not specifically the same animal, is still kept in the royal preserves of Prussia, to the number of four or five hundred individuals. The chamois is becoming rare, and the ibex or steinbock, once common in all the high Alps, is now believed to be confined to the Cogne mountains in Piedmont, between the valleys of the Dora Baltea and the Orco, though it is said that a few still linger about the Grandes Jorasses near Cormayeur. The chase, which in early stages of human life was a necessity, has become with advancing civilization not merely a passion but a dilettanteism, and the cruel records of this pastime are among the most discreditable pages in modern literature. It is true that in India and other tropical countries, the number and ferocity of the wild beasts not only justify but command a war of extermination against them, but the indiscriminate slaughter of many quadrupeds which are favorite objects of the chase can urge no such apology. Late official reports from India state the number of human victims of the tiger, the leopard, the wolf and other beasts of prey, in ten "districts," at more then twelve thousand within three years, and we are informed on like authority that within the last six years more than ten thousand men, women, and children have perished in the same way in the Presidency of Bengal alone. One tiger, we are told, had killed more than a hundred people, and finally stopped the travel on an important road, and another had caused the desertion of thirteen villages and thrown 250 square miles out of cultivation. In such facts we find abundant justification of the slaying of seven thousand tigers, nearly six thousand leopards, and twenty-five hundred other ravenous beasts in the Bengal Presidency, in the space of half a dozen years. But the humane reader will not think the value of the flesh, the skin, and other less important products of inoffensive quadrupeds a satisfactory excuse for the ravages committed upon them by amateur sportsmen as well as by professional hunters. In 1861, it was computed that the supply of the English market with ivory cost the lives of 8,000 elephants. Others make the number much larger and it is said that half as much ivory is consumed in the United States as in Great Britain. In Ceylon, where the elephants are numerous and destructive to the crops, as well as dangerous to travellers, while their tusks are small and of comparatively little value, the government pays a small reward for killing them. According to Sir Emerson Tennant, [Footnote: Natural History of Ceylon, chap. iv.] in three years prior to 1848, the premium was paid for 3,500 elephants in a part of the northern district, and between 1851 and 1856 for 2,000 in the southern district. Major Rogers, famous as an elephant shooter in Ceylon, ceased to count his victims after he had slain 1,300, and Cumming in South Africa sacrificed his hecatombs every month. In spite of the rarity of the chamois, his cautious shyness, and the comparative inaccessibility of his favorite haunts, Colani of Pontresina, who died in 1837, had killed not less than 2,000 of these animals; Kung, who is still living in the Upper Engadine, 1,500; Hitz, 1,300, and Zwichi an equal number; Soldani shot 1,100 or 1,200 in the mountains which enclose the Val Bregaglia, and there are many living hunters who can boast of having killed from 500 to 800 of these interesting quadrupeds. [Footnote: Although it is only in the severest cold of winter that the chamois descends to the vicinity of grounds occupied by man, its organization does not confine it to the mountains. In the royal park of Racconigi, on the plain a few miles from Turin, at a height of less than 1,000 feet, is kept a herd of thirty or forty chamois, which thrive and breed apparently as well as in the Alps.] In America, the chase of the larger quadrupeds is not less destructive. In a late number of the American Naturalist, the present annual slaughter of the bison is calculated at the enormous number of 500,000, and the elk, the moose, the caribou, and the more familiar species of deer furnish, perhaps, as many victims. The most fortunate deer-hunter I have personally known in New England had killed but 960; but in the northern part of the State of New York, a single sportsman is said to have shot 1,500, and this number has been doubtless exceeded by zealous Nimrods of the West. But so far as numbers are concerned, the statistics of the furtrade furnish the most surprising results. Russia sends annually to foreign markets not less than 20,000,000 squirrel skins, Great Britain has sometimes imported from South America 600,000 nutria skins in a year. The Leipzig market receives annually nearly 200,000 ermine, and the Hudson Bay Company is said to have occasionally burnt 20,000 ermine skins in order that the market might not be overstocked. Of course natural reproduction cannot keep pace with this enormous destruction, and many animals of much interest to natural science are in imminent danger of final extirpation. [Footnote: Objectionable as game laws are, they have done something to prevent the extinction of many quadrupeds, which naturalists would be loth to lose, and, as in the case of the British ox, private parks and preserves have saved other species from destruction. Some few wild aminals, such as the American mink, for example, have been protected and bred with profit, and in Pennsylvania an association of gentlemen has set apart, and is about enclosing, a park of 16,000 acres for the breeding of indigenous quadrupeds and fowls.] LARGE MARINE ANIMALS RELATIVELY UNIMPORTANT IN GEOGRAPHY. Vast as is the bulk of some of the higher orders of aquatic animals, their remains are generally so perishable that, even where most abundant, they do not appear to be now forming permanent deposits of any considerable magnitude; but it is quite otherwise with shell-fish, and, as we shall see hereafter, with many of the minute limeworkers of the sea. There are, on the southern coast of the United States, beds of shells so extensive that they were formerly supposed to have been naturally accumulated, and were appealed to as proofs of an elevation of the coast by geological causes; but they are now ascertained to have been derived chiefly from oysters and other shell-fish, consumed in the course of long ages by the inhabitants of Indian towns. The planting of a bed of oysters in a new locality might very probably lead, in time, to the formation of a bank, which, in connection with other deposits, might perceptibly affect the line of a coast, or, by changing the course of marine currents, or the outlet of a river, produce geographical changes of no small importance. INTRODUCTION AND BREEDING OF FISH. The introduction and successful breeding of fish or foreign species appears to have been long practised in China, and was not unknown to the Greeks and Romans. [Footnote: The observations of COLUMELLA, de Re Rustica, lib. viii., sixteenth and following chapters, on fish-breeding, are interesting. The Romans not only stocked natural but constructed artificial ponds, of both fresh and salt water, and cut off bays of the sea for this purpose. They also naturalized various species of sea-fish in fresh water.] This art has been revived in modern times, but thus far without any important results, economical or physical, though there seems to be good reason to believe it may be employed with advantage on an extended scale. As in the case of plants, man has sometimes undesignedly introduced now species of aquatic animals into countries distant from their birthplace. The accidental escape of the Chinese goldfish from ponds where they were bred as a garden ornament, has peopled some European, and it is said American streams with this species. Canals of navigation and irrigation interchange the fish of lakes and rivers widely separated by natural barriers, as well as the plants which drop their seeds into the waters. The Erie Canal, as measured by its own channel, has a length of about three hundred and sixty miles, and it has ascending and descending locks in both directions. By this route, the fresh-water fish of the Hudson and the Upper Lakes, and some of the indigenous vegetables of these respective basins, have intermixed, and the fauna and flora of the two regions have now more species common to both than before the canal was opened. [Footnote: The opening or rather the reconstruction of the Claudian emissary by Prince Torlonia, designed to drain the Lake Fucinus, or Celano, has introduced the fish of that lake into the Liri or Garigliano which received the discharge from the lake.--Dorotea, Sommario storico dell' Alieutica, p. 60.]The opening of the Suez Canal will, no doubt, produce very interesting revolutions in the animal and vegetable population of both basins. The Mediterranean, with some local exceptions--such as the bays of Calabria, and the coast of Sicily so picturesquely described by Quatrefages [Footnote: Souvenire d'un Naturaliste, i., pp. 204 et seqq.]-is comparatively poor in marine vegetation, and in shell as well as in fin fish. The scarcity of fish in some of its gulfs is proverbial, and you may scrutinize long stretches of beach on its northern shores, after every south wind for a whole winter, without finding a dozen shells to reward your search. But no one who has not looked down into tropical or subtropical seas can conceive the amazing wealth of the Red Sea in organic life. Its bottom is carpeted or paved with marine plants, with zoophytes and with shells, while its waters are teeming with infinitely varied forms of moving life. Most of its vegetables and its animals, no doubt, are confined by the laws of their organization to a warmer temperature than that of the Mediterranean, but among them there must be many whose habitat is of a wider range, many whose powers of accommodation would enable them to acclimate themselves in a colder sea. We may suppose the less numerous aquatic fauna and flora of the Mediterranean to be equally capable of climatic adaptation, and hence there will be a partial interchange of the organic population not already common to both seas. Destructive species, thus newly introduced, may diminish the numbers of their proper prey in either basin, and, on the other hand, the increased supply of appropriate food may greatly multiply the abundance of others, and at the same time add important contributions to the aliment of man in the countries bordering on the Mediterranean. [Footnote: The dissolution of the salts in the bed of the Bitter Lake impregnated the water admitted from the Red Sea so highly that for some time fish were not seen in that basin. The flow of the current through the canal has now reduced the proportion of saline matter to five per cent, and late travellers speak of fish as abundant in its waters.] Some accidental attraction not unfrequently induces fish to follow a vessel for days in succession, and they may thus be enticed into zones very distant from their native habitat. Several years ago, I was told at Constantinople, upon good authority, that a couple of fish, of a species wholly unknown to the natives had just been taken in the Bosphorus. They were alleged to have followed an English ship from the Thames, and to have been frequently observed by the crew during the passage; but I was unable to learn their specific character. [Footnote: Seven or eight years ago, the Italian government imported from France a dredging machine for use in the harbor of La Spezia. The dredge brought attached to its hull a shell-fish not known in Italian waters. The mollusk, finding the local circumstances favorable, established itself in this new habitat, multiplied rapidly, and is now found almost everywhere on the west coast of the Peninsula.] Many of the fish which pass the greater part of the year in salt water spawn in fresh, and some fresh-water species, the common brook-trout of New England for instance, which under ordinary circumstances never visit the sea, will, if transferred to brooks emptying directly into the ocean, go down into the salt water after spawning-time, and return again the next season. Some sea fish have been naturalized in fresh water, and naturalists have argued from the character of the fish of Lake Baikal, and especially from the existence of the seal in that locality, that all its inhabitants were originally marine species, and have changed their habits with the gradual conversion of the saline waters of the lake-once, as is assumed, a maritime bay-into fresh. [Footnote: Babinet, Etudes et Lectures, ii, pp. 108,110.] The presence of the seal is hardly conclusive on this point, for it is sometimes seen in Lake Champlain at the distance of some hundreds of miles from even brackish water. One of these animals was killed on the ice in that lake in February, 1810, another in February, 1846, [Footnote: Thompson, Natural History of Vermont, p. 38, and Appendix, p. 18. There is no reason to believe that the seal breeds in Lake Champlain, but the individual last taken there must have been some weeks, at least, in its waters. It was killed on the ice in the widest part of the lake, on the 23d of February, thirteen days after the surface was entirely frozen, except the usual small cracks, and a month or two after the ice closed at all points north of the place where the seal was found.] and remains of the seal have been found at other times in the same waters. The intentional naturalization of foreign fish, as I have said, has not thus far yielded important fruits; but though this particular branch of what is called, not very happily, pisciculture, has not yet established its claims to the attention of the physical geographer or the political economist, the artificial breeding of domestic fish, of the lobster and other crustacea, has already produced very valuable results, and is apparently destined to occupy an extremely conspicuous place in the history of man's efforts to compensate his prodigal waste of the gifts of nature. The arrangements for breeding fish in the Venetian lagoon of Comacchio date far back in the Middle Ages, but the example does not seem to have been followed elsewhere in Europe at that period, except in small ponds where the propagation of the fish was left to nature without much artificial aid. The transplantation of oysters to artificial ponds has long been common, and it appears to have recently succeeded well on a large scale in the open sea on the French coast. A great extension of this fishery is hoped for, and it is now proposed to introduce upon the same coast the American soft clam, which is so abundant in the tide-washed beach sands of Long Island Sound as to form an important article in the diet of the neighboring population. Experimental pisciculture has been highly successful in the United States, and will probably soon become a regular branch of rural industry, especially as Congress, at the session of 1871-2, made liberal provision for its promotion. The restoration of the primitive abundance of salt and fresh water fish, is perhaps the greatest material benefit that, with our present physical resources, governments can hope to confer upon their subjects. The rivers, lakes, and seacoasts once restocked, and protected by law from exhaustion by taking fish at improper seasons, by destructive methods, and in extravagant quantities, would continue indefinitely to furnish a very large supply of most healthful food, which, unlike all domestic and agricultural products, would spontaneously renew itself and cost nothing but the taking. There are many sterile or wornout soils in Europe so situated that they might, at no very formidable cost, be converted into permanent lakes, which would serve not only as reservoirs to retain the water of winter rains and snow, and give it out in the dry season for irrigation, but as breeding ponds for fish, and would thus, without further cost, yield a larger supply of human food than can at present be obtained from them even at a great expenditure of capital and labor in agricultural operations. [Footnote: See Ackerhof, Die Nutzung der Seiche und Gewasser. Quedlinburg, 1860.] The additions which might be made to the nutriment of the civilized world by a judicious administration of the resources of the waters, would allow some restriction of the amount of soil at present employed for agricultural purposes, and a corresponding extension of the area of the forest, and would thus facilitate a return to primitive geographical arrangements which it is important partially to restore. Destruction of Fish. The inhabitants of the waters seem comparatively secure from human pursuit or interference by the inaccessibility of their retreats, and by our ignorance of their habits--a natural result of the difficulty of observing the ways of creatures living in a medium in which we cannot exist. Human agency has, nevertheless, both directly and incidentally, produced great changes in the population of the sea, the lakes, and the rivers, and if the effects of such revolutions in aquatic life are apparently of small importance in general geography, they are still not wholly inappreciable. The great diminution in the abundance of the larger fish employed for food or pursued for products useful in the arts is familiar, and when we consider how the vegetable and animal life on which they feed must be effected by the reduction of their numbers, it is easy to see that their destruction may involve considerable modifications in many of the material arrangements of nature. The whale [Footnote: I use WHALE not in a technical sense, but as a generic term for all the large inhabitants of the sea popularly grouped under that name. The Greek kaetos and Latin Balaena, though sometimes, especially in later classical writers, specifically applied to true cetaceans, were generally much more comprehensive in their signification than the modern word whale. This appears abundantly from the enumeration of the marine animals embraced by Oppian under the name <Greek: kaetos>, in the first book of the Halieutica. There is some confusion in Oppian's account of the fishery of the <Greek: kaetos> in the fifth book of the Halieutica. Part of it is probably to be understood of cetaceans which have GROUNDED, as some species often do; but in general it evidently applies to the taking of large fish--sharks, for example, as appear by the description of the teeth--with hook and bait.] does not appear to have been an object of pursuit by the ancients, for any purpose, nor do we know when the whale fishery first commenced. It was, however, very actively prosecuted in the Middle Ages, and the Biscayans seem to have been particularly successful in this as indeed in other branches of nautical industry. [Footnote: From the narrative of Ohther, introduced by King Alfred into his translation of Orosius, it is clear that the Northmen pursued the whale fishery in the ninth century, and it appears, both from the poem called The Whale, in the Codex Exoniensis, and from the dialogue with the fisherman in the Colloquies of Aelfric, that the Anglo-Saxons followed this dangerous chore at a period not much later. I am not aware of any evidence to show that any of the Latin nationals engaged in this fishery until a century or two afterward, though it may not be easy to disprove their earlier participation in it. In mediaeval literature, Latin and Romance, very frequent mention is made of a species of vessel called in Latin baleneria, balenerium, balenerius, balaneria, etc.; in Catalan, balener; in French, balenier; all of which words occur the many other forms. The most obvious etymology of these words would suggest the meaning, whaler, baleinier; but some have supposed that the name was descriptive of the great size of the ships, and others have referred it to a different root. From the fourteenth century, the word occurs oftener, perhaps, in old Catalan, than in any other language; but Capmany does not notice the whale fishery as one of the maritime pursuits of the very enterprising Catalan people, nor do I find any of the products of the whale mentioned in the old Catalan tariffs. The WHALEBONE of the mediaeval writers, which is described as very white, is doubtless the ivory of the walrus or of the narwhale.] Five hundred years ago, whales abounded in every sea. They long since became so rare in the Mediterranean as not to afford encouragement for the fishery as a regular occupation; and the great demand for oil and whalebone for mechanical and manufacturing purposes, in the present century, has stimulated the pursuit of the "hugest of living creatures" to such activity, that he has now almost wholly disappeared from many favorite fishing grounds, and in others is greatly diminished in numbers. What special functions, besides his uses to man, are assigned to the whale in the economy of nature, wo do not know; but some considerations, suggested by the character of the food upon which certain species subsist, deserve to be specially noticed. None of the great mammals grouped under the general name of whale are rapacious. They all live upon small organisms, and the most numerous species feed almost wholly upon thesoft gelatinous mollusks in which the sea abounds in all latitudes. We cannot calculate even approximately the number of the whales, or the quantity of organic nutriment consumed by an individual, and of course we can form no estimate of the total amount of animal matter withdrawn by them, in a given period, from the waters of the sea. It is certain, however, that it must have been enormous when they were more abundant, and that it is still very considerable. In 1846 the United States had six hundred and seventy-eight whaling ships chiefly employed in the Pacific, and the product of the American whale fishery for the year ending June 1st, 1860, was seven millions and a half of dollars. [Footnote: In consequence of the great scarcity of the whale, the use of coal-gas for illumination, the substitution of other fatty and oleaginous substances, such as lard, palm-oil, and petroleum for right-whale oil and spermaceti, the whale fishery has rapidly fallen off within a few years. The great supply of petroleum, which is much used for lubricating machinery as well as for numerous other purposes, has produced a more perceptible effect on the whale fishery than any other single circumstance. According to Bigelow, Les Etats-Unis en 1863, p. 346, the American whaling fleet was diminished by 29 in 1858, 57 in 1860, 94 in 1861, and 65 in 1862. The number of American ships employed in that fishery in 1862 was 353. In 1868, the American whaling fleet was reduced to 223. The product of the whale fishery in that year was 1,485,000 gallons of sperm oil, 2,065,612 gallons of train oil, and 901,000 pounds of whalebone. The yield of the two species of whale is about the same, being estimated at from 4,000 to 5,000 gallons for each fish. Taking the average at 4,500 gallons, the American whalers must have captured 789 whales, besides, doubtless, many which were killed or mortally wounded and not secured. The returns for the year are valued at about five million and a half dollars. Mr. Cutts, from a report by whom most of the above facts are taken, estimates the annual value of the "products of the sea" at $90,000,000. According to the New Bedford Standard, the American whalers numbered 722, measuring 230,218 tons, in 1846. On the 31st December, 1872, the number was reduced to 204, with a tonnage of 47,787 tons, and the importation of whale and sperm oil amounted in that year to 79,000 barrels. Svend Foyn, an energetic Norwegian, now carries on the whale fishery in the Arctic Ocean in a steamer of 20 horse-power, accompanied by freight-ships for the oil. The whales are killed by explosive shells fired from a small cannon. The number usually killed by Foyn is from 35 to 45 per year.--The Commerce in the Products of the Sea, a report by Col. R. D. Cutts, communicated to the U. S. Senate. Washington, 1872.] The mere bulk of the whales destroyed in a single year by the American and the European vessels engaged in this fishery would form an island of no inconsiderable dimensions, and each one of those taken must have consumed, in the course of his growth, many times his own weight of mollusks. The destruction of the whales must have been followed by a proportional increase of the organisms they feed upon, and if we had the means of comparing the statistics of these humble forms of life, for even so short a period as that between the years 1760 and 1860, we should find a difference possibly sufficient to suggest an explanation of some phenomena at present unaccounted for. For instance, as I have observed in another work, [Footnote: The Origin and History of the English Language, &c., pp. 423, 424.] the phosphorescence of the sea was unknown to ancient writers, or at least scarcely noticed by them, and even Homer--who, blind as tradition makes him when he composed his epics, had seen, and marked, in earlier life, all that the glorious nature of the Mediterranean and its coasts discloses to unscientific observation--nowhere alludes to this most beautiful and striking of maritime wonders. In the passage just referred to, I have endeavored to explain the silence of ancient writers with respect to this as well as other remarkable phenomena on psychological grounds; but is it not possible that, in modern times, the animalculae which produce it may have immensely multiplied, from the destruction of their natural enemies by man, and hence that the gleam shot forth by their decomposition, or by their living processes, is both more frequent and more brilliant than in the days of classic antiquity? Although the whale does not prey upon smaller creatures resembling himself in form and habits, yet true fishes are extremely voracious, and almost every tribe devours unsparingly the feebler species, and even the spawn and young of its own. [Footnote: Two young pickerel, Gystes fasciatus, five inches long, ate 128 minnows, an inch long, the first day they were fed, 132 the second, and 150 the third.--Fifth Report of Commissioners of Massachusetts for Introduction of Fish. 1871. p. 17.] The enormous destruction of the shark [Footnote: The shark is pursued in all the tropical and subtropical seas for its fins--for which there is a great demand in China as an article of diet--its oil and other products. About 40,000 are taken annually in the Indian Ocean and the contiguous seas. In the North Sea and the Arctic Ocean large numbers are annually caught. See MERK. Waarenlexikon--a work of great accuracy and value (Leipzig, 1870), article Haifisch.] the pike, the trout family, and other ravenous fish, as well as of the fishing birds, the seal, and the otter, by man, would naturally have occasioned a great increase in the weaker and more defenceless fish on which they feed, had he not been as hostile to them also as to their persecutors. Destruction of Aquatic Animals. It does not seem probable that man, with all his rapacity and all his enginery, will succeed in totally extirpating any salt-water fish, but he has already exterminated at least one marine warm-blooded animal--Steller's sea cow--and the walrus, the sea lion, and other large amphibia, as well as the principal fishing quadrupeds, are in imminent danger of extinction. Steller's sea cow, Rhytina Stelleri, was first seen by Europeans in the year 1741, on Bering's Island. It was a huge amphibious mammal, weighing not less than eight thousand pounds, and appears to have been confined exclusively to the islands and coasts in the neighborhood of Bering's Strait. Its flesh was very palatable, and the localities it frequented were easily accessible from the Russian establishments in Kamtschatka. As soon as its existence and character, and the abundance of fur animals in the same waters, were made known to the occupants of those posts by the return of the survivors of Bering's expedition, so active a chase was commenced against the amphibia of that region, that, in the course of twenty-seven years, the sea cow, described by Steller as extremely numerous in 1741, is believed to have been completely extirpated, not a single individual having been seen since the year 1768. The various tribes of seals [Footnote: The most valuable variety of fur seal, formerly abundant in all cold latitudes, is stated to have been completely exterminated in the Southern hemisphere, and to be now found only on one or two small islands of the Aleutian group. In 1867 more than 700,000 seal skins were imported into Great Britain, and at least 600,000 seals are estimated to have been taken in 1870. These numbers do not include the seals killed by the Esquimaux and other rude tribes.] in the Northern and Southern Pacific, the walrus [Footnote: In 1868, a few American ships engaged in the North Pacific whale fishery turned their attention to the walrus, and took from 200 to 600 each. In 1869 other whalers engaged in the same pursuit, and in 1870 the American fleet is believed to have destroyed not less than fifty thousand of these animals. They yield about twenty gallons of oil and four or five pounds of ivory each.] and the sea otter, are already so reduced in numbers that they seem destined soon to follow the sea cow, unless protected by legislation stringent enough, and a police energetic enough, to repress the ardent cupidity of their pursuers. The seals, the otter tribe, and many other amphibia which feed almost exclusively upon fish, are extremely voracious, and of course their destruction or numerical reduction must have favored the multiplication of the species of fish principally preyed upon by them. I have been assured by the keeper of several young seals that, if supplied at frequent intervals, each seal would devour not less than fourteen pounds of fish, or about a quarter of his own weight, in a day. A very intelligent and observing hunter, who has passed a great part of his life in the forest, after carefully watching the habits of the fresh-water otter of the North American States, estimates their consumption of fish at about four pounds per day. Man has promoted the multiplication of fish by making war on their brute enemies, but he has by no means thereby compensated his own greater destructiveness. [Footnote: According to Hartwig, the United Provinces of Holland had, in 1618, three thousand herring busses, and nine thousand vessels engaged in the transport of these fish to market. The whole number of persons employed in the Dutch herring fishery was computed at 200,000. In the latter part of the eighteenth century, this fishery was most successfully prosecuted by the Swedes, and in 1781, the town of Gottenburg alone exported 136,649 barrels, each containing 1,200 herrings, making a total of about 164,000,000; but so rapid was the exhaustion of the fish, from this keen pursuit, that in 1799 it was found necessary to prohibit the exportation of them altogether.--Das Leben des Meeres, p. 182. In 1855, the British fisheries produced 900,000 barrels, or almost enough to supply a fish to every human inhabitant of the globe. On the shores of Long Island Sound, the white fish, a species of herring too bony to be easily eaten, is used as manure in very great quantities. Ten thousand are employed as a dressing for an acre, and a single net has sometimes taken 200,000 in a day.--Dwight's Travels, ii. pp. 512, 515. The London Times of May 11, 1872, informs us that 1,100 tons of mackerel estimated to weigh one pound each had recently been taken in a single night at a fishing station on the British coast. About ten million eels are sold annually in Billingsgate market, but vastly greater numbers of the young fry, when but three or four inches long, are taken. So abundant are they at the mouths of many French and English rivers, that they are carried into the country by cart-loads, and not only eaten, but given to swine or used as manure.] The bird and beast of prey, whether on land or in the water, hunt only as long as they feel the stimulus of hunger, their ravages are limited by the demands of present appetite, and they do not wastefully destroy what they cannot consume. Man, on the contrary, angles to-day that he may dine to-morrow; he takes and dries millions of fish on the banks of Newfoundland and the coast of Norway, that the fervent Catholic of the shores of the Mediterranean may have wherewithal to satisfy the cravings of the stomach during next year's Lent, without violating the discipline of the papal church; [Footnote: The fisheries of Sicily alone are said to yield 20,000 tons of tunny a year. The tunny is principally consumed in Italy during Lent, and a large proportion of the twenty millions of codfish taken annually at the Lofoden fishery on the coast of Norway is exported to the Mediterranean.] and all the arrangements of his fisheries are so organized as to involve the destruction of many more fish than are secured for human use, and the loss of a large proportion of the annual harvest of the sea in the process of curing, or in transportation to the places of its consumption. [Footnote According to Berthelote, in the Gulf of Lyons, between Marseilles and the easternmost spur of the Pyrenees, about 5,000,000 small fish ate taken annually with the drag-net, and not lees than twice as many more, not to spekak of spawn, are destroyed by the use of this act. Between 1861 and 1865 France imported from Norway, for use as bait in the Sardine fishery, cod-roes to the value of three million francs.--Cutts, Report on Commerce in the Products of the Sea, 1872, p. 82. The most reckless waste of aquatic life I remember to have seen noticed, if we except the destruction of herring and other fish with upawn, is that of the eggs of the turtle in the Amazon for the sake of the oil extracted from then. Bates estimates the eggs thus annually sacrificed at 48,000,000.-Naturalits inthe Amazon, 2d edition, 1864, p. 805.] Fish are more affected than quadrupeds by slight and even imperceptible differences in their breeding places and feeding grounds. Every river, every brook, every lake stamps a special character upon its salmon, its shad, and its trout, which is at once recognized by those who deal in or consume them. No skill can give the fish fattened by food selected and prepared by man the flavor of those which are nourished at the table of nature, and the trout of the artificial pouds in Germany and Switzerland are so inferior to the brook-fish of the same species and climate, that it is hard to believe them identical. The superior sapidity of the American trout and other fresh-water fishes to the most nearly corresponding European species, which is familiar to every one acquainted with both continents, is probably due less to specific difference than to the fact that, even in the parts of the New World which have been longest cultivated, wild nature is not yet tamed down to the character it has assumed in the Old, and which it will acquire in America also when her civilization shall be as ancient as is now that of Europe. [Footnote: It is possible that time may modify the habits of the fresh-water fish the North American States, and accommodate them to the new physical conditions of their native waters. Hence it may be hoped that nature, even unaided by art, will do something towards restoring the ancient plenty of our lakes and rivers. The decrease of our fresh-water fish cannot be alone to exhaustion by fishing, for in the waters of the valleys and flanks of the Alps, which have been inhabited and fished ten times as long by a denser population, fish are still very abundant, and they thrive and multiply under circumstances where no American species could live at all. On the southern slope of those mountains, trout are caught in great numbers, in the swift streams which rush from the glaciers, and where the water is of icy coldness, and so turbid with particles of fine-ground rock, that you cannot see an inch below the surface. The glacier streams of Switzerland, however, are less abundant in fish.] Man has hitherto hardly anywhere produced such climatic or other changes as would suffice of themselves totally to banish the wild inhabitants of the dry land, and thedisappearance of the native birds and quadrupeds from particular localities is to be ascribed quite as much to his direct persecutions as to the want of forest shelter, of appropriate food, or of other conditions indispensable to their existence. But almost all the processes of agriculture, and of mechanical and chemical industry, are fatally destructive to aquatic animals within reach of their influence. When, in consequence of clearing the woods, the changes already described as thereby produced in the beds and currents of rivers, are in progress, the spawning grounds of fish, are exposed from year to year to a succession of mechanical disturbances; the temperature of the water is higher in summer, colder in winter, than when it was shaded and protected by wood; the smaller organisms, which formed the sustenance of the young fry, disappear or are reduced in numbers, and new enemies are added to the old foes that preyed upon them; the increased turbidness of the water in the annual inundations chokes the fish; and, finally, the quickened velocity of its current sweeps them down into the larger rivers or into the sea, before they are yet strong enough to support so great a change of circumstances. [Footnote: A fact mentioned by Schubert--and which in its causes and many of its results corresponds almost precisely with those connected with the escape of Barton Pond in Vermont, so well known to geological students--is important, as showing that the diminution of the fish in rivers exposed to inundations is chiefly to be ascribed to the mechanical action of the current, and not mainly, as some have supposed, to changes of temperature occasioned by clearing. Our author states that, in 1796, a terrible inundation was produced in the Indalself, which rises in the Storsjo in Jemtland, by drawing off into it the waters of another lake near Ragunda. The flood destroyed houses and fields; much earth was swept into the channel, and the water made turbid and muddy; the salmon and the smaller fish forsook the river altogether, and never returned. The banks of the river have never regained their former solidity, and portions of their soil are still continually falling into the water and destroying its purity.--Resa genom Sverge, ii, p. 61.] Industrial operations are not less destructive to fish which live or spawn in fresh water. Mill-dams impede their migrations, if they do not absolutely prevent them, the sawdust from lumber mills clogs their gills, and the thousand deleterious mineral substances, discharged into rivers from metallurgical, chemical, and manufacturing establishments, poison them by shoals. [Footnote: The mineral water discharged from a colliery on the river Doon in Scotland discolored the stones in the bed of the river, and killed the fish for twenty miles below. The fish of the streams in which hemp is macerated in Italy are often poisoned by the juices thus extracted from the plant.-Dorotea, Sommario della storia dell' Alieutica, pp. 64, 65.] We have little evidence that any fish employed as human food has naturally multiplied in modern times, while all the more valuable tribes have been immensely reduced in numbers. This reduction must have affected the more voracious species not used as food by man, and accordingly the shark, and other fish of similar habits, even when not objects of systematic pursuit, are now comparatively rare in many waters where they formerly abounded. The result is, that man has greatly reduced thenumbers of all larger marine animals, and consequently indirectly favored the multiplication of the smaller aquatic organisms which entered into their nutriment. This change in the relations of the organic and inorganic matter of the sea must have excercised an influence on the latter. What that influence has been we cannot say, still less can we predict what it will be hereafter; but its action is not for that reason the less certain. [Footnote: Among the unexpected results of human action, the destruction or multiplication of fish, as well as of other animals, is a not unfrequent occurrence. Footnote: Williams, in his History of Vermont, i., p. 140, records such a case of the increase of trout. In a pond formed by damming a small stream to obtain water power for a sawmill, and covering one thousand acres of primitive forest, the increased supply of food brought within reach of the fish multiplied them to that degree, that, at the head of the pond, where, in the spring, they crowded together in the brook which supplied it, they were taken by the hands at pleasure, and swine caught them without difficulty. A single sweep of a small scoopnet would bring up half a bushel, carts were filled with them as fast as if picked up on dry land, and in the fishing season they were commonly sold at a shilling (eightpence halfpenny, or about seventeen cents) a bushel. The increase in the size of the trout was as remarkable as the multiplication of their numbers. The construction of dams and mills is destructive to many fish, but operates as a protection to their prey. The mills on Connecticut River greatly diminished the number of the salmon, but the striped bass, on which the salmon feeds, multiplied in proportion.--Dr. Dwight, Travels, vol. ii., p. 323.] Geographical Importance of Birds. Wild birds form of themselves a very conspicuous and interesting feature in the staffage, as painters call it, of the natural landscape, and they are important elements in the view we are taking of geography, whether we consider their immediate or their incidental influence. Birds affect vegetation directly by sowing seeds and by consuming them; they affect it indirectly by destroying insects injurious, or, in some cases, beneficial to vegetable life. Hence, when we kill a seed-sowing bird, we check the dissemination of a plant; when we kill a bird which digests the seed it swallows, we promote the increase of a vegetable. Nature protects the seeds of wild, much more effectually than those of domesticated plants. The cereal grains are completely digested when consumed by birds, but the germ of the smaller stone fruits and of very many other wild vegetables is uninjured, perhaps even stimulated to more vigorous growth, by the natural chemistry of the bird's stomach. The power of flight and the restless habits of the bird enable it to transport heavy seeds to far greater distances than they could be carried by the wind. A swift-winged bird may drop cherry stones a thousand miles from the tree they grow on; a hawk, in tearing a pigeon, may scatter from its crop the still fresh rice it had swallowed at a distance of ten degrees of latitude, and thus the occurrence of isolated plants in situations where their presence cannot otherwise well be explained, is easily accounted for. [Footnote: Pigeons were shot near Albany, in New York, a few years ago, with green rice in their crops, which it was thought must have been growing, a very few hours before, at the distance of seven or eight hundred miles. The efforts of the Dutch to confine the cultivation of the nutmeg to the island of Banda are said to have been defeated by the birds, which transported this heavy fruit to other islands.] There is a large class of seeds apparently specially fitted by nature for dissemination by animals. I refer to those which attach themselves, by means of hooks, or by viscous juices, to the coats of quadrupeds and the feathers of birds, and are thus transported wherever their living vehicles may chance to wander. Some birds, too, deliberately bury seeds in the earth, or in holes excavated by them in the bark of trees, not indeed with a foresight aiming directly at the propagation of the plant, but from apparently purposeless secretiveness, or as a mode of preserving food for future use. The tame fowls play a much less conspicuous part in rural life than the quadrupeds, and, in their relations to the economy of nature, they are of very much less moment than four-footed animals, or than the undomesticated birds. The domestic turkey [Footnote: The wild turkey takes readily to the water, and is able to cross rivers of very considerable width by swimming. By way of giving me an idea of the former abundance of this bird, an old and highly respectable gentleman who was among the early white settlers of the West, told me that he once counted, in walking down the northern bank of the Ohio River, within a distance of four miles, eighty-four turkeys as they landed singly, or at most in pairs, after swimming over from the Kentucky side.] is probably more numerous in the territory of the United States than the wild bird of the same species ever was, and the grouse cannot, at the period of their greatest abundance, have counted as many as we now number of the common hen. The dove, however, must fall greatly short of the wild pigeon in multitude, and it is hardly probable that the flocks of domestic geese and ducks are as numerous as once wore those of their wild congeners. The pigeon, indeed, seems to have multiplied immensely, for some years after the first clearings in the woods, because the settlers warred unsparingly upon the hawk, while the crops of grain and other vegetable growths increased the supply of food within the reach of the young birds, at the age when their power of flight is not yet great enough to enable them to seek it over a wide area. [Footnote: The wood-pigeon, as well as the domestic dove, has been observed to increase in numbers in Europe also, when pains have been taken to exterminate the hawk. The American pigeons, which migrated in flocks so numerous that they were whole days in passing a given point, were no doubt injurious to the grain, but probably less so than is generally supposed; for they did not confine themselves exclusively to the harvests for their nourishment. ] The pigeon is not described by the earliest white inhabitants of the American States as filling the air with such clouds of winged life as astonished naturalists in the descriptions of Audubon, and, at the present day, the net and the gun have so reduced its abundance, that its appearance in large numbers is recorded only at long intervals, and it is never seen in the great flocks remembered by many still living observers as formerly very common. INTRODUCTION OF BIRDS. Man has undesignedly introduced into now districts perhaps fewer species of birds than of quadrupeds; [Footnote: The first mention I have found of the naturalization of a wild bird in modern Europe is in the Menagiana, vol. iii., p. 174, edition of 1715, where it is stated that Rene, King of Sicily and Duke of Anjou, who died in 1480, introduced the red-legged partridge into the latter country. Attempts have been made, and I believe with success, to naturalize the European lark on Long Island, and the English sparrow has been introduced into various parts of the Northern States, where he is useful by destroying noxious insects and worms not preyed upon by native birds. The humming-bird has resisted all efforts to acclimate him in Europe, though they have not unfrequently survived the passage across the ocean. In Switzerland and some other parts of Europe the multiplication of insectivorous birds is encouraged by building nests for them, and it is alleged that both fruit and forest trees have been essentially benefited by the protection thus afforded them.] but the distribution of birds is very much influenced by the character of his industry, and the transplantation, of every object of agricultural production is, at a longer or shorter interval, followed by that of the birds which feed upon its seeds, or more frequently upon the insects it harbors. The vulture, the crow, and other winged scavengers, follow the march of armies as regularly as the wolf. Birds accompany ships on long voyages, for the sake of the offal which is thrown overboard, and, in such cases, it might often happen that they would breed and become naturalized in countries where they had been unknown before. [Footnote: Gulls hover about ships in port, and often far out at sea, diligently watching for the waste of the caboose. While the four great fleets, English, French, Turkish, and Egyptian, were lying in the Bosphorus, in the summer and autumn of 1853, a young lady of my family called my attention to the fact that the gulls were far more numerous about the ships of one of the fleets than about the others. This was verified by repeated observation, and the difference was owing no doubt to the greater abundance of the refuse from the cookrooms of the naval squadron most frequented by the birds. Persons acquainted with the economy of the navies of the states in question, will be able to conjecture which fleet was most favored with these delicate attentions. The American gull follows the steamers up the Mississippi, and has been shot 1,500 miles from the sea.] There is a familiar story of an English bird which built its nest in an unused block in the rigging of a ship, and made one or two short voyages with the vessel while hatching its eggs. Had the young become fledged while lying in a foreign harbor, they would of course have claimed the rights of citizenship in the country where they first took to the wing. [Footnote: Birds do not often voluntarily take passage on board ships bound for foreign countries, but I can testify to one such case. A stork, which had nested near one of the palaces on the Bosphorus, had, by some accident, injured a wing, and was unable to join his fellows when they commenced their winter migration to the banks of the Nile. Before he was able to fly again, he was caught, and the flag of the nation to which the palace belonged was tied to his leg, so that he was easily identified at a considerable distance. As his wing grew stronger, he made several unsatisfactory experiments at flight, and at last, by a vigorous effort, succeeded in reaching a passing ship bound southward, and perched himself on a topsail-yard. I happened to witness this movement, and observed him quietly maintaining his position as long as I could discern him with a spy-glass. I supposed he finished the voyage, for he certainly did not return to the palace.] An unfortunate popular error greatly magnifies the injury done to the crops of grain and leguminous vegetables by wild birds. Very many of those generally supposed to consume large quantities of the seeds of cultivated plants really feed almost exclusively upon insects, and frequent the wheatfields, not for the sake of the grain, but for the eggs, larvae, and fly of the multiplied tribes of insect life which are so destructive to the harvests. This fact has been so well established by the examination of the stomachs of great numbers of birds in Europe and the United States, at different seasons of the year, that it is no longer open to doubt, and it appears highly probable that even the species which consume more or less grain generally make amends by destroying insects whose ravages would have been still more injurious. [Footnote: Even the common crow has found apologists, and it has been asserted that he pays for the Indian corn he consumes by destroying the worms and larva which infest that plant. Professor Treadwell, of Massachusetts, found that a half-grown American robin in confinement ate in one day sixty-eight worms, weighing together nearly once and a half as much as the bird himself, and another had previously starved upon a daily allowance of eight or ten worms, or about twenty per cent. of his own weight. The largest of these numbers appeared, so far as could be judged by watching parent birds of the same species, as they brought food to their young, to be much greater than that supplied to them when fed in the nest; for the old birds did not return with worms or insects oftener than once in ten minutes on an average. It we suppose the parents to hunt for food twelve hours in a day, and a nest to contain four young, we should have seventy-two worms, or eighteen each, as the daily supply of the brood. It is probable enough that some of the food collected by the parents may be more nutritious than the earthworms, and consequently that a smaller quantity sufficed for the young in the nest than when reared under artificial conditions. The supply required by growing birds is not the measure of their wants after they have arrived at maturity, and it is not by any means certain that great muscular exertion always increases the demand for nourishment, either in the lower animals or in man. The members of the English Alpine Club are not distinguished for appetites which would make them unwelcome guests to Swiss landlords, and I think every man who has had the personal charge of field or railway hands, must have observed that laborers who spare their strength the least are not the most valiant trencher champions. During the period when imprisonment for debt was permitted in New England, persons confined in country jails had no specific allowance, and they were commonly fed without stint. I have often inquired concerning their diet, and been assured by the jailers that their prisoners, who were not provided with work or other means of exercise, consumed a considerably larger supply of food than common out-door laborers.] On this subject, we have much other evidence besides that derived from dissection. Direct observation has shown, in many instances, that the destruction of wild birds has been followed by a great multiplication of noxious insects, and, on the other hand, that these latter have been much reduced in numbers by the protection and increase of the birds that devour them. Many interesting facts of this nature have been collected by professed naturalists, but I shall content myself with a few taken from familiar and generally accessible sources. The following extract is from Michelet, L'Oiseau, pp. 169,170: "The STINGY farmer--an epithet justly and feelingly bestowed by Virgil. Avaricious, blind, indeed, who proscribes the birds--those destroyers of insects, those defenders of his harvests. Not a grain for the creature which, during the rains of winter, hunts the future insect, finds out the nests of the larvae, examines, turns over every leaf, and destroys, every day, thousands of incipient caterpillars. But sacks of corn for the mature insect, whole fields for the grasshoppers, which the bird would have made war upon. With eyes fixed upon his furrow, upon the present moment only, without seeing and without foreseeing, blind to the great harmony which is never broken with impunity, he has everywhere demanded or approved laws for the extermination of that necessary ally of his toil--the insectivorous bird. And the insect has well avenged the bird. It has become necessary to revoke in haste the proscription. In the Isle of Bourbon, for instance, a price was set on the head of the martin; it disappeared, and the grasshopper took possession of the island, devouring, withering, scorching with a biting drought all that they did not consume. In North America it has been the same with the starling, the protector of Indian corn. [Footnote: I hope Michelet has good authority for this statement, but I am unable to confirm it.] Even the sparrow, which really does attack grain, but which protects it still more, the pilferer, the outlaw, loaded with abuse and smitten with curses--it has been found in Hungary that they were likely to perish without him, that he alone could sustain the mighty war against the beetles and the thousand winged enemies that swarm in the lowlands; they have revoked the decree of banishment, recalled in haste this valiant militia, which, though deficient in discipline, is nevertheless the salvation of the country. [Footnote: Apropos of the sparrow--a single pair of which, according to Michelet, p. 315, carries to the nest four thousand and three hundred caterpillar or coleoptera in a week--I find in an English newspaper a report of a meeting of a "Sparrow Club," stating that the member who took the first prize had destroyed 1,467 of these birds within the year, and that the prowess of the other members had brought the total number up to 11,944 birds, besides 2,553 eggs. Every one of the fourteen thousand hatched and unhatched birds, thus sacrificed to puerile vanity and ignorant prejudice, would have saved his bushel of wheat by preying upon insects that destroy the grain.] "Not long since, in the neighborhood of Ronen and in the valley of Monville, the blackbird was for some time proscribed. The beetles profited well by this proscription; their larvae, infinitely multiplied, carried on their subterranean labors with such success, that a meadow was shown me, the surface of which was completely dried up, every herbaceous root was consumed, and the whole grassy mantle, easily loosened, might have been rolled up and carried away like a carpet." The general hostility of the European populace to the smaller birds is, in part, the remote effect of the reaction created by the game laws. When the restrictions imposed upon the chase by those laws were suddenly removed in France, the whole people at once commenced a destructive campaign against every species of wild animal. Arthur Young, writing in Provence, on the 30th of August, 1789, soon after the National Assembly had declared the chase free, thus complains of the annoyance he experienced from the use made by the peasantry of their newly-won liberty. "One would think that every rusty firelock in all Provence was at work in the indiscriminate destruction of all the birds. The wadding buzzed by my ears, or fell into my carriage, five or six times in the course of the day." ... "The declaration of the Assembly that every man is free to hunt on his own land ... has filled all France with an intolerable cloud of sportsmen. ... The declaration speaks of compensations and indemnities [to the seigneurs], but the ungovernable populace takes advantage of the abolition of the game laws and laughs at the obligation imposed by the decree." The contagious influence of the French Revolution occasioned the removal of similar restrictions, with similar results, in other countries. The habits then formed have become hereditary on the Continent, and though game laws still exist in England, there is little doubt that the blind prejudices of the ignorant and half-educated classes in that country against birds are, in some degree, at least, due to a legislation, which, by restricting the chase of game worth killing, drives the unprivileged sportsman to indemnify himself by slaughtering all wild life which is not reserved for the amusement of his betters. Hence the lord of the manor buys his partridges and his hares by sacrificing the bread of his tenants, and so long as the members of "Sparrow Clubs" are forbidden to follow higher game, they will suicidally revenge themselves by destroying the birds which protect their wheatfields. On the Continent, and especially in Italy, the comparative scarcity and dearness of animal food combine with the feeling I have just mentioned to stimulate still further the destructive passions of the fowler. In the Tuscan province of Grosseto, containing less than 2,000 square miles, nearly 300,000 thrushes and other small birds are annually brought to market. [Footnote: Salvagnoli, Memorie sulle Maremme Toscane, p. 143. The country about Naples is filled with slender towers fifteen or twenty feet high, which are a standing puzzle to strangers. They are the stations of the fowlers who watch from them the flocks of small birds and drive them down into the nets by throwing stones over them. In Northern and Central Italy, one often sees hillocks crowned with grove-like plantations of small trees, much resembling large arbors. These serve to collect birds, which are entrapped in nets in great numbers. These plantatious are called ragnaje, and the reader will find, in Bindi's edition of Davanzati, a very pleasant description of a ragnaja, though its authorship is not now ascribed to that eminent writer. Tschudi has collected in his little work, Ueber die Landwirthschaftliche Bedeutung der Vogel, many interesting facts respecting the utility of birds, and, the wanton destruction of them in Italy and elsewhere. Not only the owl, but many other birds more familiarly known as predacious in their habits, are useful by destroying great numbers of mice and moles. The importance of this last service becomes strikingly apparent when it is known that the burrows of the moles are among the most frequent causes of rupture in the dikes of the Po, and, consequently, of inundations which lay many square miles of land under water. See Annales des Ponts et Chaussees, 1847, 1 semestre, p. 150; VOGT, Nutzliche und schadliche Thiere; and particularly articles in the Giornale del Club Alpino, vol. iv., no. 15, and vol. v., no. 16. See also in Aus der Natur, vol. 54, p. 707, an article entitled Nutzen der Vogel fur die Landwirthschaft, where it is affirmed that "without birds no agriculture or even vegetation would be possible." In an interesting memoir by Rondani, published in the Bolletino del Comizio agrario di Parma for December, 1868, it is maintained that birds are often injurious to the agriculturist, by preying not only on noxious insects, but sometimes exclusively, or at least by preference, on entomophagous tribes which would otherwise destroy those injurious to cultivated plants. See also articles by Prof. Sabbioni in the Giornale di Agricoltura di Bologna, November and December, 1870, and other articles in the same journal of 15th and 30th April, 1870.] Birds are less hardy in constitution, they possess less facility of accommodation, [Footnote: Wild birds are very tenacious in their habits. The extension of particular branches of agriculture introduces new birds; but unless in the case of such changes in physical conditions, particular species seem indissolubly attached to particular localities. The migrating tribes follow almost undeviatingly the same precise line of flight in their annual journeys, and establish themselves in the same breeding-places from year to year. The stork is a strong-winged bird and roves far for food, but very rarely establishes new colonies. He is common in Holland, but unknown in England. Not above five or six pairs of storks commonly breed in the suburbs of Constantinople along the European shore of the narrow Bosphorous, while--much to the satisfaction of the Moslems, who are justly proud of the marked partiality of so orthodox a bird--dozens of chimneys of the true believers on the Asiatic side are crowned with his nests. The appearance of the dove-like grouse, Tetrao paradoxus, or Syrrhaptus Pallassi, in various parts of Europe, in 1850 and the following years, is a noticable exception to the law of regularity which seems to govern the movements and determine the habitat of birds. The proper home of this bird is the Steppes of Tartary, and it is no recorded to have been observed in Europe, or at least west of Russia, until the year above mentioned, when many flocks of twenty or thirty, and even a hundred individuals, were seen in Bohemia, Germany, Holland, Denmark, England, Ireland, and France. A considerable flock frequented the Frisian island of Borkum for more than five months. It was hoped that they would breed and remain permanently in the island but this expectation has now been disappointed, and the steppe-grouse seems to have disappeared again altogether.] and they are more severely affected by climatic excess than quadrupeds. Besides, they generally want the special means of shelter against the inclemency of the weather and against pursuit by their enemies, which holes and dens afford to burrowing animals and to some larger beasts of prey. The egg is exposed to many dangers before hatching, and the young bird is especially tender, defenceless, and helpless. Every cold rain, every violent wind, every hailstorm during the breeding season, destroys hundreds of nestlings, and the parent often perishes with her progeny while brooding over it in the vain effort to protect it. [Footnote: It is not the unfledged and the nursing bird alone that are exposed to destruction by severe weather. Whole flocks of adult and strong-winged tribes are killed by hail. Severe winters are usually followed by a sensible diminution in the numbers of the non-migrating birds, and a cold storm in summer often proves fatal to the more delicate species. On the 10th of June, 184-, five or six inches of snow fell in Northern Vermont. The next morning I found a hummingbird killed by the cold, and hanging by its claws just below a loose clapboard on the wall of a small wooden building where it had sought shelter.] The great proportional numbers of birds, their migratory habits, and the ease with which, by their power of flight they may escape most dangers that beset them, would seem to secure them from extirpation, and even from very great numerical reduction. But experience shows that when not protected by law, by popular favor or superstition, or by other special circumstances, they yield very readily to the hostile influences of civilization, and, though the first operations of the settler are favorable to the increase of many species, the great extension of rural and of mechanical industry is, in a variety of ways, destructive even to tribes not directly warred upon by man. [Footnote: Lyell, Antiquity of Man, p. 400, observes: "Of birds it is estimated that the number of those which die every year equals the aggregate number by which the species to which they respectively belong is, on the average, permanently represented." A remarkable instance of the influence of new circumstances upon birds was observed upon the establishment of a light-house on Cape Cod some years since. The morning after the lamps were lighted for the first time, more than a hundred dead birds of several different species, chiefly water-fowl, were found at the foot of the tower. They had been killed in the course of the night by flying against the thick glass or grating of the lantern. From an article by A. Esquiros, in the Revue des Deux Mondes for Sept. 1, 1864, entitled, La vie Anglaise, p. 110, it appears that such occurrences as that stated in the note have been not unfrequent on the British coast. Are the birds thus attracted by new lights, flocks in migration? Migrating birds, whether for greater security from eagles, hawks, and other enemies, or for some unknown reason, perform a great part of their annual journeys by night; and it is observed in the Alps that they follow the high roads in their passage across the mountains. This is partly because the food in search of which they must sometimes descend is principally found near the roads. It is, however, not altogether for the sake of consorting with man, or of profiting by his labors, that their line of flight conforms to the paths he has traced, but rather because the great roads are carried through the natural depressions in the chain, and hence the birds can cross the summit by these routes without rising to a height where at the seasons of migration the cold would be excessive. The instinct which guides migratory birds in their course is not in all cases infallible, and it seems to be confounded by changes in the condition of the surface. I am familiar with a village in New England, at the junction of two valleys, each drained by a mill-stream, where the flocks of wild geese which formerly passed, every spring and autumn, were very frequently lost, as it was popularly phrased, and I have often heard their screams in the night as they flew wildly about in perplexity as to the proper course. Perhaps the village lights embarrassed them, or perhaps the constant changes in the face of the country, from the clearings then going on, introduced into the landscape features not according with the ideal map handed down in the anserine family, and thus deranged its traditional geography.] Nature sets bounds to the disproportionate increase of birds, while at the same time, by the multitude of their resources, she secures them from extinction through her own spontaneous agencies. Man both preys upon them and wantonly destroys them. The delicious flavor of game-birds, and the skill implied in the various arts of the sportsman who devotes himself to fowling, make them favorite objects of the chase, while the beauty of their plumage, as a military and feminine decoration, threatens to involve the sacrifice of the last survivor of many once numerous species. Thus far, but few birds described by ancient or modern naturalists are known to have become absolutely extinct, though there are some cases in which they are ascertained to have utterly disappeared from the face of the earth in very recent times. The most familiar instances are those of the dodo, a large bird peculiar to the Mauritius or Isle of France, exterminated about the year 1690, and now known only by more or less fragmentary skeletons, and the solitary, which inhabited the islands of Bourbon and Rodriguez, but has not been seen for more than a century. A parrot and some other birds of the Norfolk Island group are said to have lately become extinct. The wingless auk, Alca impennis, a bird remarkable for its excessive fatness, was very abundant two or three hundred years ago in the Faroe Islands, and on the whole Scandinavian seaboard. The early voyagers found either the same or a closely allied species, in immense numbers, on all the coasts and islands of Newfoundland. The value of its flesh and its oil made it one of the most important resources of the inhabitants of those sterile regions, and it was naturally an object of keen pursuit. It is supposed to be now completely extinct, and few museums can show even its skeleton. There seems to be strong reason to believe that modern civilization is guiltless of one or two sins of extermination which have been committed in recent ages. Now Zealand formerly possessed several species of dinornis, one of which, called moa by the islanders, was larger than the ostrich. The condition in which the bones of these birds have been found and the traditions of the natives concur to prove that, though the aborigines had probably extirpated them before the discovery of New Zealand by the whites, they still existed at a comparatively late period. The same remarks apply to a winged giant the eggs of which have been brought from Madagascar. This bird must have much exceeded the dimensions of the moa, at least so far as we can judge from the egg, which is eight times as large as the average size of the ostrich egg, or about one hundred and fifty times that of the hen. But though we have no evidence that man has exterminated many species of birds, we know that his persecutions have caused their disappearance from many localities where they once were common, and greatly diminished their numbers in others. The cappercailzie, Tetrao urogallus, the finest of the grouse family, formerly abundant in Scotland, had become extinct in Great Britain, but has been reintroduced from Sweden. [Footnote: Thecappercailzie, or tjader, as he is called in Sweden, is a bird of singular habits, and seems to want some of the protective instincts which secure most other wild birds from destruction. The younger Laestadius frequently notices the tjader, in his very remarkable account of the Swedish Laplanders. The tjader, though not a bird of passage, is migratory, or rather wandering in domicile, and appears to undertake very purposeless and absurd journeys. "When he flits," says Laestadius, "he follows a straight course, and sometimes pursues it quite out of the country. It is said that, in foggy weather, he sometimes flies out to sea, and, when tired, falls into the water and is drowned. It is accordingly observed that, when he flies westwardly, towards the mountains, he soon comes back again; but when he takes an eastwardly course, he returns no more, and for a long time is very scarce in Lapland. From this it would seem that he turns back from the bald mountains, when he discovers that he has strayed from his proper home, the wood; but when he finds himself over the Baltic, where he cannot alight to rest and collect himself, he flies on until he is exhausted and falls into the sea."--Petrus Laestadius, Journal of forsta aret, etc., p. 325.] The ostrich is mentioned, by many old travellers, as common on the Isthmus of Suez down to the middle of the seventeenth century. It appears to have frequented Palestine, Syria, and even Asia Minor at earlier periods, but is now rarely found except in the seclusion of remoter deserts. [Footnote: Frescobaldi saw ostriches between Suez and Mt. Sinai. Viaggio in Terra Santa, p. 65. See also Vansler, Voyage d'Egypte, p. 103, and an article in Petermann, Mittheilungen, 1870, p. 880, entitled Die Verbreitung des Straussee in Asien.] The modern increased facilities of transportation have brought distant markets within reach of the professional hunter, and thereby given a new impulse to his destructive propensities. Not only do all Great Britain and Ireland contribute to the supply of game for the British capital, but the canvas-back duck of the Potomac, and even the prairie hen from the basin of the Mississippi, may be found at the stalls of the London poulterer. Kohl [Footnote: Die Herzogthumer Schleswig und Holstein, i., p. 203.] informs us that, on the coasts of the North Sea, twenty thousand wild ducks are usually taken in the course of the season in a single decoy, and sent to the large maritime towns for sale. The statistics of the great European cities show a prodigious consumption of game-birds, but the official returns fall far below the truth, because they do not include the rural districts, and because neither the poacher nor his customers report the number of his victims. Reproduction, in cultivated countries, cannot keep pace with this excessive destruction, and there is no doubt that all the wild birds which are chased for their flesh or their plumage are diminishing with a rapidity which justifies the fear that the last of them will soon follow the dodo and the wingless auk. Fortunately the larger birds which are pursued for their flesh or for their feathers, and those the eggs of which are used as food, are, so far as we know the functions appointed to them by nature, not otherwise specially useful to man, and, therefore, their wholesale destruction is an economical evil only in the same sense in which all waste of productive capital is an evil. [Footnote: The increased demand for animal oils for the use of the leather-dresses is now threatening the penguin with the fate of the wingless auk. According to the Report of the Agricultural Department of the U. S. for August and September, 1871, p. 840, small vessels are fitted out for the chase of this bird, and return from a six week's cruise with 25,000 or 30,000 gallons of oil. About eleven birds are required for a gallon, and consequently the vessels take upon an average 800,000 penguins each.] If it were possible to confine the consumption of game-fowl to a number equal to the annual increase, the world would be a gainer, but not to the same extent as it would be by checking the wanton sacrifice of millions of the smaller birds, which are of no real value as food, but which, as we have seen, render a most important service by battling, in our behalf, as well as in their own, against the countless legions of humming and of creeping things, with which the prolific powers of insect life would otherwise cover the earth. Utility and Destruction of Reptiles. The disgust and fear with which the serpent is so universally regarded expose him to constant persecution by man, and perhaps no other animal is so relentlessly sacrificed by him. Nevertheless, snakes as well as lizards and other reptiles are not wholly useless to their great enemy. The most formidable foes of the insect, and even of the small rodents, are the reptiles. The chameleon approaches the insect perched upon the twig of a tree, with an almost imperceptible slowness of motion, until, at the distance of a foot, he shoots out his long, slimy tongue, and rarely fails to secure the victim. Even the slow toad catches the swift and wary housefly in the same manner; and in the warm countries of Europe, the numerous lizards contribute very essentially to the reduction of the insect population, which they both surprise in the winged state upon walls and trees, and consume as egg, worm, and chrysalis, in their earlier metamorphoses. The serpents feed much upon insects, as well as upon mice, moles, and small reptiles, including also other snakes. In temperate climates, snakes are consumed by scarcely any beast or bird of prey except the stork, and they have few dangerous enemies but man, though in the tropics other animals prey upon them. [Footnote: It is very questionable whether there is any foundation for the popular belief in the hostility of swine and of deer to the rattlesnake, and careful experiments as to the former quadruped seem to show that the supposed enmity is wholly imaginary. It is however affirmed in an article in Nature, June 11, 1872, p. 215, that the pigs have exterminated the rattlesnake in some parts of Oregon, and that swine are destructive to the cobra de capello in India. Observing that the starlings, stornelli, which bred in an old tower in Piedmont, carried something from their nests and dropped it upon the ground about as often they brought food to their young, I watched their proceedings, and found every day lying near the tower numbers of dead or dying slowworms, and, in a few cases, small lizards, which had, in every Instance, lost about two inches of the tail. This part I believe the starlings gave to their nestlings, and threw away the remainder.] It is doubtful whether any species of serpent has been exterminated within the human period, and even the dense population of China has not been able completely to rid itself of the viper. They have, however, almost entirely disappeared from particular localities. The rattlesnake is now wholly unknown in many large districts where it was extremely common half a century ago, and Palestine has long been, if not absolutely free from venomous serpents, at least very nearly so. [Footnote: Russell denies the existence of poisonous snakes in Northern Syria, and states that the last instance of death known to have occurred from the bite of a serpent near Aleppo took place a hundred years before his time. In Palestine, the climate, the thinness of population, the multitude of insects and of lizards, all circumstances, in fact, seem very favorable to the multiplication of serpents, but the venomous species, at least, are extremely rare, if at all known, in that country. I have, however, been assured by persons very familiar with Mount Lebanon, that cases of poisoning from the bite of snakes had occurred within a few years, near Hasbeiyeh, and at other places on the southern declivities of Lebanon and Hermon. In Egypt, on the other hand, the cobra, the asp, and the cerastes are as numerous as ever, and are much dreaded by all the natives except the professional snake charmers. The recent great multiplication of vipers in some parts of France is a singular and startling fact. Toussenel, quoting from official documents, states, that upon the offer of a reward of fifty centimes, or ten cents, a head, TWELVE THOUSAND vipers were brought to the prefect of a single department, and that in 1850 fifteen hundred snakes and twenty quarts of snakes' eggs were found under a farm-house hearthstone. The granary, the stables, the roof, the very beds swarmed with serpents, and the family were obliged to abandon its habitation. Dr. Viaugrandmarais, of Nantes, reported to the prefect of his department more than two hundred recent cases of viper bites, twenty-four of which proved fatal.--Tristia, p. 176 et seqq. According to the Journal del Debats for Oct. 1st, 1867, the Department of the Cote d'Or paid in the year 1866 eighteen thousand francs for the destruction of vipers. The reward was thirty centimes a head, and consequently the number killed was about sixty thousand. A friend residing in that department informs me that it was strongly suspected that many of these snakes were imported from other departments for the sake of the premium. In Nature for 1870 and 1871 we are told that the number of deaths from the bites of venomous serpents in the Bengal Presidency, in the year 1869, was 11,416, and that in the whole of British India not less than 40,000 human lives are annually lost from this cause. In one small department, a reward of from three to six pence a head for poisonous serpents brought in 1,200 a day, and in two months the government paid L10,000 sterling for their destruction.] The serpent does not appear to have any natural limit of growth, and we are therefore not authorized wholly to discredit the evidence of ancient naturalists in regard to the extraordinary dimensions which those reptiles are said by them to have sometimes attained. The use of firearms has enabled man to reduce the numbers of the larger serpents, and they do not often escape him long enough to arrive at the size ascribed to them by travellers a century or two ago. Captain Speke, however, shot a serpent in Africa which measured fifty-one and a half feet in length. Some enthusiastic entomologist will, perhaps, by and by discover that insects and worms are as essential as the larger organisms to the proper working of the great terraqueous machine, and we shall have as eloquent pleas in defence of the mosquito, and perhaps oven of the tzetze-fly, as Toussenel and Michelet have framed in behalf of the bird. The silkworm, the lac insect, and the bee need no apologist; a gallnut produced by the puncture of a cynips on a Syrian oak is a necessary ingredient in the ink I am writing with, and from my windows I recognize the grain of the kermes and the cochineal in the gay habiliments of the holiday groups beneath them. These humble forms of being are seldom conspicuous by more mass, and though the winds and the waters sometimes sweep together large heaps of locusts and even of may-flies, their remains are speedily decomposed, their exuviae and their structures form no strata, and still less does nature use them, as she does the calcareous and silicious cases and dwellings of animalcular species, to build reefs and spread out submarine deposits, which subsequent geological action may convert into islands and even mountains. [Footnote: Although the remains of extant animals are rarely, if ever, gathered In sufficient quantities to possess any geographical importance by their mere mass, the decayed exuviae of even the smaller and humbler forms of life are sometimes abundant enough to exercise a perceptible influence on soil and atmosphere. "The plain of Cumana," saya Humboldt, "presents a remarkable phenomenon, after heavy rains. The moistened earth, when heated by the rays of the sun, diffuses the musky odor common in the torrid zone to animals of very different classes, to the jaguar, the small species of tiger-cat, the cabiai, the gallinazo vulture, the crocodile, the viper, and the rattlesnake. The gaseous emanations, the vehicles of this aroma, appear to be disengaged in proportion as the soil, which contains the remains of an innumerable multitude of reptiles, worms, and insects, begins to be impregnated with water. Wherever we stir the earth, we are struck with the mass of organic substances which in turn are developed and become transformed or decomposed. Nature in these climes seems more active, more prolific, and, so to speak, more prodigal of life."] But the action of the creeping and swarming things of the earth, though often passed unnoticed, is not without important effects in the general economy of nature. The geographical importance of insects proper, as well as of worms, depends principally on their connection with vegetable life as agents of its fecundation, and of its destruction. We learn from Darwin, "On Various Contrivances by which British and Foreign Orchids are Fertilized by Insects," that some six thousand species of orchids are absolutely dependent upon the agency of insects for their fertilization, and that consequently, were those plants unvisited by insects, they would all rapidly disappear. What is true of the orchids is more or less true of many other vegetable families. [Footnote: Later observations of Darwin and other naturalists have greatly raised former estimates of the importance of insect life in the fecundation of plants, and among other remarkable discoveries it has been found that, in many cases at least, insects are necessary even to monoecious vegetables, because the male flower does not impregnate the female growing on the same stem, and the latter can be fecundated only by pollen supplied to it by insects from another plant of the same species. "Who would ever have thought," says Preyer, "that the abundance and beauty of the pansy and of the clover were dependent upon the number of cats and owls But so it is. The clover and the pansy cannot exist without the bumble-bee, which, in search of his vegetable nectar, transports unconciously the pollen from the masculine to the feminine flower, a service which other insects perform only partially for these plants. Their existence therefore depends upon that of the bumble-bee. The mice make war upon this bee. In their fondness for honey they destroy the nest and at the same time the bee. The principal enemies of mice are cats and owls, and therefore the finest clovers and the most beautiful pansies are found near villages where cats and owls abound."--Preyer, Der Kampf um daas Dasein, p. 22. See also Delpino, Pensieri sulla biologia vegetale, and other works of the same able observer on vegetable physiology.] We do not know the limits of this agency, and many of the insects habitually regarded as unqualified pests, may directly or indirectly perform functions as important to the most valuable plants as the services rendered by certain tribes to the orchids. I say directly or indirectly, because, besides the other arrangements of nature for chocking the undue multiplication of particular species, she has established a police among insects themselves, by which some of them keep down or promote the increase of others; for there are insects, as well as birds and beasts, of prey. The existence of an insect which fertilizes a useful vegetable may depend on that of another insect which constitutes his food in some stage of his life, and this other again may be as injurious to some plant as his destroyer is to a different species. The ancients, according to Pliny, were accustomed to hang branches of the wild fig upon the domestic tree, in order that the insects which frequented the former might hasten the ripening of the cultivated fig by their punctures--or, as others suppose, might fructify it by transporting to it the pollen of the wild fruit--and this process, called caprification, is not yet entirely obsolete. [Footnote: The utility of caprification has been a good deal disputed, and it has, I believe, been generally abandoned in Italy, though still practised in Greece. See Browne, The Trees of America, p. 475, and on caprification in Kabylia, N. Bibesco, Les Kabyles du Djardjura, in Revue des Deux Mondes for April 1st, 1805, p. 580; also, Aus der Natur, vol. xxx., p. 684, and Phipson, Utilization of Minute Life, p. 50. In some parts of Sicily, sprigs of mint, mentha pulegium, are used instead of branches of the wild for caprification. Pitre, Usi popolari Siciliani, 1871, p. 18.] The perforations of the earthworms and of many insect larvae mechanically affect the texture of the soil and its permeability by water, and they therefore have a certain influence on the form and character of terrestrial surface. The earthworms long ago made good their title to the respect and gratitude of the farmer as well as of the angler. Their utility has been pointed out in many scientific as well as in many agricultural treatises. The following extract from an essay on this subject will answer my present purpose: "Worms are great assistants to the drainer, and valuable aids to the fanner in keeping up the fertility of the soil. They love moist, but not wet soils; they will bore down to, but not into water; they multiply rapidly on land after drainage, and prefer a deeply-dried soil. On examining part of a field which had been deeply drained, after long-previous shallow drainage, it was found that the worms had greatly increased in number, and that their bores descended quite to the level of the pipes. Many worm-bores were large enough to receive the little finger. A piece of land near the sea, in Lincolnshire, over which the sea had broken and killed all the worms, remained sterile until the worms again inhabited it. A piece of pasture land, in which worms were in such numbers that it was thought their casts interfered too much with its produce, was rolled at night in order to destroy the worms. The result was, that the fertility of the field greatly declined, nor was it restored until they had recruited their numbers, which was aided by collecting and transporting multitudes of worms from the fields. "The great depth into which worms will bore, and from which they push up fine fertile soil, and cast it on the surface, have been well shown by the fact that in a few years they have actually elevated the surface of fields by a largo layer of rich mould, several inches thick, thus affording nourishment to the roots of grasses, and increasing the productiveness of the soil." It should be added that the writer quoted, and all others who have discussed the subject, have, so far as I know, overlooked one very important element in the fertilization produced by earthworms. I refer to the enrichment of the soil by their excreta during life, and by the decomposition of their remains when they die. Themanure thus furnished is as valuable as the like amount of similar animal products derived from higher organisms, and when we consider the prodigious numbers of these worms found on a single square yard of some soils, we may easily see that they furnish no insignificant contribution to the nutritive material required for the growth of plants. [Footnote: I believe there is no foundation for the supposition that earthworms attack the tuber of the potato. Some of them, especially one or two species employed by anglers as bait, if natives of the woods, are at least rare in shaded grounds, but multiply very rapidly after the soil is brought under cultivation. Forty or fifty years ago they were so scarce in the newer parts of New England, that the rustic fishermen of every village kept secret the few places where they were to be found in their neighborhood, as a professional mystery, but at present one can hardly turn over a shovelfull of rich moist soil anywhere, without unearthing several of them. A very intelligent lady, born in the woods of Northern New England, told me that, in her childhood, these worms were almost unknown in that region, though anxiously sought for by the anglers, but that they increased as the country was cleared, and at last became so numerous in some places, that the water of springs, and even of shallow wells, which had formerly been excellent, was rendered undrinkable by the quantity of dead worms that fell into them. The increase of the robin and other small birds which follow the settler when he has prepared a suitable home for them, at last checked the excessive multiplication of the worms, and abated the nuisance.] The carnivorous and often herbivorous insects render another important service to man by consuming dead and decaying animal and vegetable matter, the decomposition of which would otherwise fill the air with effluvia noxious to health. Some of them, the grave-digger beetle, for instance, bury the small animals in which they lay their eggs, and thereby prevent the escape of the gases disengaged by putrefaction. The prodigious rapidity of development in insect life, the great numbers of the individuals in many species, and the voracity of most of them while in the larva state, justify the appellation of nature's scavengers which has been bestowed upon them, and there is very little doubt that, in warm countries, they consume a larger quantity of putrescent organic matter than the quadrupeds and birds which feed upon such aliment. INJURY TO THE FOREST BY INSECTS. The action of the insect on vegetation, as we have thus far described it, is principally exerted on smaller and less conspicuous plants, and it is therefore matter rather of agricultural than of geographical interest. But in the economy of the forest European writers ascribe to insect life an importance which it has not reached in America, where the spontaneous woods are protected by safeguards of nature's own devising. The insects which damage primitive forests by feeding upon products of trees essential to their growth, are not numerous, nor is their appearance, in destructive numbers, frequent, and those which perforate the stems and branches, to deposit and hatch their eggs, more commonly select dead trees for that purpose, though, unhappily, there are important exceptions to this latter remark. [Footnote: The locust Insect, Clitus pictus, which deposits its eggs in the American locust, Robinia pseudacacia, is one of these, and its ravages have been and still are more destructive to that very valuable tree, so remarkable for combining rapidity of growth with strength and durability of wood. This insect, I believe, has not yet appeared in Europe, where, since the so general employment of the Robinia to clothe and protect embankments and the scarps of deep cuts on railroads, it would do incalculable mischief. As a traveller, however, I should find some compensation for this evil in the destruction of these acacia hedges, which as completely obstruct the view on hundreds of miles of French and Italian railways, as do the garden walls of the same countries on the ordinary roads. The lignivorous insects that attack living trees almost uniformly confine their ravages to trees already unsound or diseased in growth from the depredations of leaf-eaters, such as caterpillars and the like, or from other causes. The decay of the tree, therefore, is the cause not the consequence of the invasions of the borer. This subject has been discussed by Perris in the Annales de la Societe Entomologique de la France for 1852, and his conclusions are confirmed by the observations of Samanos, who quotes, at some length, the views of Perris. "Having, for fifteen years," says the latter author, "incessantly studied the habits of lignivorous insects in one of the best wooded regions of France, I have observed facts enough to feel myself warranted in expressing my conclusions, which are: that insects in general--I am trees in sound health, and they assail those only whose normal conditions and functions have been by some cause impaired." See, more fully, Samanos, Traite de la Culture du Pin Maritime, Paris, 1864, pp. 140-145, and Siemoni, Manuale dell' Arte Forestale. 2d edition. Florence, 1872.] I do not know that we have any evidence of the destruction or serious injury of American forests by insects before or even soon after the period of colonization; but since the white man has laid bare a vast proportion of the earth's surface, and thereby produced changes favorable, perhaps, to the multiplication of these pests, they have greatly increased in numbers, and, apparently, in voracity also. Not many years ago, the pines on thousands of acres of land in North Carolina were destroyed by insects not known to have ever done serious injury to that tree before. In such cases as this and others of the like sort, there is good reason to believe that man is the indirect cause of an evil for which he pays so heavy a penalty. Insects increase whenever the birds which feed upon them disappear. Hence, in the wanton destruction of the robin and other insectivorous birds, the bipes implumis, the featherless biped, man, is not only exchanging the vocal orchestra which greets the rising sun for the drowny beetle's evening drone, and depriving his groves and his fields of their fairest ornament, but he is waging a treacherous warfare on his natural allies. [Footnote: In the artificial woods of Europe, insects are far more numerous and destructive to trees than in the primitive forests of America, and the same remark may be made of the smaller rodents, such as moles, mice, and squirrels. In the dense native wood, the ground and the air are too humid, the depth of shade too great, for many tribes of these creatures, while near the natural meadows and other open grounds, where circumstances are otherwise more favorable for their existence and multiplication, their numbers are kept down by birds, serpents, foxes, and smaller predacious quadrupeds. In civilized countries these natural enemies of the worm, the beetle, and the mole, are persecuted, sometimes almost exterminated, by man, who also removes from his plantations the decayed or wind-fallen trcea, the shrubs and underwood, which, in a state of nature, furnished food and shelter to the borer and the rodent, and often also to the animals that preyed upon them. Hence the insect and the gnawing quadruped are allowed to increase, from the expulsion of the police which, in the natural wood, prevent their excessive multiplication, and they become destructive to the forest because they are driven to the living tree for nutriment and cover. The forest of Fontainebleau is almost wholly without birds, and their absence is ascribed by some writers to the want of water, which, in the thirsty sands of that wood, does not gather into running brooks; but the want of undergrowth is perhaps an equally good reason for their scarcity. On the other hand, the thinning out of the forest and the removal of underwood and decayed timber, by which it is brought more nearly to the condition of an artificial wood, is often destructive to insect tribes which, though not injurious to trees, are noxious to man. Thus the troublesome woodtick, formerly very abundant in the North Eastern, as it unhappily still is in native forests in the Southern and Western States, has become nearly or quite extinct in the former region since the woods have been reduced in extent and laid more open to the sun and air.--Asa Fitch, in Report of New York Agricultural Society for 1870, pp. 868,864.] Introduction of Insects. The general tendency of man's encroachments upon spontaneous nature has been to increase insect life at the expense of vegetation and of the smaller quadrupeds and birds. Doubtless there are insects in all woods, but in temperate climates they are comparatively few and harmless, and the most numerous tribes which breed in the forest, or rather in its waters, and indeed in all solitudes, are those which little injure vegetation, such as mosquitoes, gnats, and the like. With the cultivated plants of man come the myriad tribes which feed or breed upon them, and agriculture not only introduces new speciss, but so multiplies the number of individuals as to defy calculation. Newly introduced vegetables frequently escape for years the insect plagues which had infested them in their native habitat; but the importation of other varieties of the plant, the exchange of seed, or some more accident, is sure in the long run to carry the egg, the larva, or the chrysalis to the most distant shores where the plant assigned to it by nature as its possession has preceded it. For many years after the colonization of the United States, few or none of the insects which attack wheat in its different stages of growth, were known in America. During the Revolutionary war, the Hessian fly, Cecidomyia destructrix, made its appearance, and it was so called because it was first observed in the year when the Hessian troops were brought over, and was popularly supposed to have been accidentally imported by those unwelcome strangers. Other destroyers of cereal grains have since found their way across the Atlantic, and a noxious European aphis has first attacked the American wheatfields within the last fifteen years. Unhappily, in these cases of migration, the natural corrective of excessive multiplication, the parasitic or voracious enemy of the noxious insect, does not always accompany the wanderings of its prey, and the bane long precedes the antidote. Hence, in the United States, the ravages of imported insects injurious to cultivated crops, not being checked by the counteracting influences which nature had provided to limit their devastations in the Old World, are more destructive than in Europe. It is not known that the wheat midge is preyed upon in America by any other insect, and in seasons favorable to it, it multiplies to a degree which would prove almost fatal to the entire harvest, were it not that, in the great territorial extent of the United States, there is room for such differences of soil and climate as, in a given year, to present in one State all the conditions favorable to the increase of a particular insect, while in another, the natural influences are hostile to it. The only apparent remedy for this evil is, to balance the disproportionate development of noxious foreign species by bringing from their native country the tribes which prey upon them. This, it seems, has been attempted. The United States Census Report for 1860, p. 82, states that the New York Agricultural Society "has introduced into this country from abroad certain parasites which Providence has created to counteract the destructive powers of some of these depredators." [Footnote: On parasitic and entomophagous insects, see a paper by Rondani referred to p. 119 ante.] This is, however, not the only purpose for which man has designedly introduced foreign forms of insect life. The eggs of the silkworm are known to have been brought from the farther East to Europe in the sixth century, and new silk-spinners which feed on the castor-oil bean and the ailanthus, have recently been reared in France and in South America with promising success. [Footnote: The silkworm which feeds on the ailanthus has naturalized itself in the United States, but also the promises of its utility have not been realized.] The cochineal, long regularly bred in aboriginal America, has been transplanted to Spain, and both the kermes insect and the cantharides have been transferred to other climates than their own. The honey--bee must be ranked next to the silkworm in economical importance. This useful creature was carried to the United States by European colonists, in the latter part of theseventeenth century; it did not cross the Mississippi till the close of the eighteenth, and it is only in 1853 that it was transported to California, where it was previously unknown. The Italian bee, which seldom stings, has lately been introduced into the United States. [Footnote: Bee husbandry, now very general in Switzerland and other Alpine regions, was formerly an important branch of industry in Italy. It has lately been revived and is now extensively prosecuted it that country. It is interesting to observe that many of the methods recently introduced into this art in England and United States, such for example as the removable honey--boxes, are reinventions of Italian systeams at least three hundred years old. See Gallo, Le Venti Giornate dell' Agricultura, cap. XV. The temporary decline of this industry in Italy was doubtless in great measure due to the use of sugar which had taken the place of honed, but perhaps also in part to the decrease of the wild vegetation from which the bee draws more or less of his nutriment. A new was-producing insect, a species of coccus, very abundant in China, where its annual produce is said to amount to the value of ten millions of francs, has recently attracted notice in France. The wax is white, resembling spermaceti, and is said to be superior to that of the bee.] The insects and worms intentionally transplanted by man bear but a small portion to those accidentally introduced by him. Plants and animals often carry their parasites with them, and the traffic of commercial countries, which exchange their products with every zone and every stage of social existence, cannot fail to transfer in both directions the minute organisms that are, in one way or another associated with almost every object important to the material interests of man. [Footnote: A few years ago, a laborer, employed at a North American port in discharging a cargo of hides from the opposite extremity of the continent, was fatally poisoned by the bite or the sting of an unknown insect, which ran out from a hide he was handling. The Phylloxera vastatrix, the most destructive pest which has ever attacked European vineyards--for its ravages are fatal not merely to the fruit, but to the vine itself--in said by many entomologists to be of American origin, but I have seen no account of the mode of its introduction.] The tenacity of life possessed by many insects, their prodigious fecundity, the length of time they often remain in the different phases of their existence, [Footnote: In many insects, some of the stages of life regularly continue for several years, and they may, under peculiar circumstances, be almost indefinitely prolonged. Dr. Dwight mentions the following remarkable case of this sort: "I saw here an insect, about an inch in length, of a brown color tinged with orange, with two antennae, not unlike a rosebug. This insect came out of a tea-table made of the boards of an apple-tree." Dr. Dwight found the "cavity whence the insect had emerged into the light," to be "about two inches in length. Between the hole, and the outside of the leaf of the table, there were forty grains of the wood." It was supposed that the sawyer and the cabinet-maker must have removed at least thirteen grains more, and the table had been in the possession of its proprietor for twenty years.] the security of the retreats into which their small dimensions enable them to retire, are all circumstances very favorable not only to the perpetuity of their species, but to their transportation to distant climates and their multiplication in their new homes. The teredo, so destructive to shipping, has been carried by the vessels whose wooden walls it mines to almost every part of the globe. The termite, or white ant, is said to have been brought to Rochefort by the commerce of that port a hundred years ago. [Footnote: It does not appear to be quite settled whether the termites of France are indigenous or imported. See Quatrefaces, Souvenirs d'un naturaliste, ii., pp. 400, 542, 543. The white ant has lately appeared at St. Helena and is in a high degree destructive, no wood but teak, and even that not always, resisting it.--Nature for March 2d, 1871, p. 362.] This creature is more injurious to wooden structures and implements than any other known insect. It eats out almost the entire substance of the wood, leaving only thin partitions between the galleries it excavates in it; but as it never gnaws through the surface to the air, a stick of timber may be almost wholly consumed without showing any external sign of the damage it has sustained. The termite is found also in other parts of France, and particularly at Rochelle, where, thus far, its ravages are confined to a single quarter of the city. A borer, of similar habits, is not uncommon in Italy, and you may see in that country handsome chairs and other furniture which have been reduced by this insect to a framework of powder of post, covered, and apparently held together, by nothing but the varnish. DESTRUCTION OF INSECTS. It is well known to naturalists, but less familiarly to common observers, that the aquatic larvae of some insects which in other stages of their existence inhabit the land, constitute, at certain seasons, a large part of the food of fresh-water fish, while other larvae, in their turn, prey upon the spawn and even the young of their persecutors. [Footnote: I have seen the larva of the dragon-fly in an aquarium bite off the head of a young fish as long as itself.] The larvae of the mosquito and the gnat are the favorite food of the trout in the wooded regions where those insects abound. [Footnote: Insects and fish--which prey upon and feed each other--are the only forms of animal life that are numerous in the native woods, and their range is, of course, limited by the extent of the waters. The great abundance of the trout, and of other more or less allied genera in the lakes of Lapland, seems to be due to the supply of food provided for them by the swarms of insects which in the larva state inhabit the waters, or, in other stages of their life, are accidentally swept into them. All travellers in the north of Europe speak of the gnat and the mosquito as very serious drawbacks upon the enjoyments of the summer tourist, who visits the head of the Gulf of Bothnia to see the midnight sun, and the brothers Laestadius regard them as one of the great plagues of sub-arctic life. "The persecutions of these insects," says Lars Levi Laestadius [Culex pipiens, Culex reptans, and Culex pulicaris], "leave not a moment's peace, by day or night, to any living creature. Not only man, but cattle, and even birds and wild beasts, suffer intolerably from their bite." He adds in a note, "I will not affirm that they have ever devoured a living man, but many young cattle, such as lambs and calves, have been worried out of their lives by them. All the people of Lapland declare that young birds are killed by them, and this is not improbable, for birds are scarce after seasons when the midge, the gnlat, and the mosquito are numerous."--Om Uppodlingar i Lappmarken, p. 50. Petrus Laestadius makes similar statements in his Journal for forsta urst, p. 283.] Earlier in the year the trout feeds on the larvae of the May fly, which is itself very destructive to the spawn of the salmon, and hence, by a sort of house-that-Jack-built, the destruction of the mosquito, that feeds the trout that preys on the May fly that destroys the eggs that hatch the salmon that pampers the epicure, may occasion a scarcity of this latter fish in waters where he would otherwise be abundant. Thus all nature is linked together by invisible bonds, and every organic creature, however low, however feeble, however dependent, is necessary to the well-being of some other among the myriad forms of life with which the Creator has peopled the earth. I have said that man has promoted the increase of the insect and the worm, by destroying the bird and the fish which feed upon them. Many insects, in the four different stages of their growth, inhabit in succession the earth, the water, and the air. In each of these elements they have their special enemies, and, deep and dark as are the minute recesses in which they hide themselves, they are pursued to the remotest, obscurest corners by the executioners that nature has appointed to punish their delinquencies, and furnished with cunning contrivances for ferreting out the offenders and dragging them into the light of day. One tribe of birds, the woodpeckers, seems to depend for subsistence almost wholly on those insects which breed in dead or dying trees, and it is, perhaps, needless to say that the injury these birds do the forest is imaginary. They do not cut holes in the trunk of the tree to prepare a lodgment for a future colony of boring larvae, but to extract the worm which has already begun his mining labors. Hence these birds are not found where the forester removes trees as fast as they become fit habitations for such insects. In clearing new lands in the United States, dead trees, especially of the spike-leaved kinds, too much decayed to serve for timber, and which, in that state, are worth little for fuel, are often allowed to stand until they fall of themselves. Such stubs, as they are popularly called, are filled with borers, and often deeply cut by the woodpeckers, whose strong bills enable them to penetrate to the very heart of the tree and drag out the lurking larvae. After a few years, the stubs fall, or, as wood becomes valuable, are cut and carried off for firewood, and, at the same time, the farmer selects for felling, in the forest he has reserved as a permanent source of supply of fuel and timber, the decaying trees which, like the dead stems in the fields, serve as a home for both the worm and his pursuer. We thus gradually extirpate this tribe of insects, and, with them, the species of birds which subsist principally upon them. Thus the fine, large, red-headed woodpecker, Picus erythrocephalus, formerly very common in New England, has almost entirely disappeared from those States, since the dead trees are gone, and the apples, his favorite vegetable food, are less abundant. There are even large quadrupeds which feed almost exclusively upon insects. The ant-bear is strong enough to pull down the clay houses built by the species of termites that constitute his ordinary diet, and the curious ai-ai, a climbing quadruped of Madagascar, is provided with a very slender, hook-nailed finger, long enough to reach far into a hole in the trunk of a tree, and extract the worm which bored it. [Footnote: On the destruction of insects by reptiles, see page 125 ante.] Minute Organisms. Besides the larger inhabitants of the land and of the sea, the quadrupeds, the reptiles, the birds, the amphibia, the crustacea, the fish, the insects, and the worms, there are other countless forms of vital being. Earth, water, the ducts and fluids of vegetable and of animal life, the very air we breathe, are peopled by minute organisms which perform most important functionsin both the living and the inanimate kingdoms of nature. Of the offices assigned to these creatures, the most familiar to common observation is the extraction of lime, and, more rarely, of silex, from the waters inhabited by them, and the deposit of these minerals in a solid form, either as the material of their habitations or as the exuviae of their bodies. The microscope and other means of scientific observation assure us that the chalk-beds of England and of France, the coral reefs of marine waters in warm climates, vast calcareous and silicious deposits in the sea and in many fresh-water ponds, the common polishing earths and slates, and many species of apparently dense and solid rock, are the work of the humble organisms of which I speak, often, indeed, of animaculae so small as to become visible only by the aid of lenses magnifying thousands of times the linear measures. It is popularly supposed that animalculae, or what are commonly embraced under the vague name of infusoria, inhabit the water alone, but naturalists have long known that the atmospheric dust transported by every wind and deposited by every calm is full of microscopic life or of its relics. The soil on which the city of Berlin stands, contains, at the depth of ten or fifteen feet below the surface, living elaborators of silex; [Footnote: Wittwer, Physikalische Geographie, p. 142.] and a microscopic examination of a handful of earth connected with the material evidences of guilt has enabled the naturalist to point out the very spot where a crime was committed. It has been computed that one-sixth part of the solid matter let fall by great rivers at their outlets consists of still recognizable infusory shells and shields, and, as the friction of rolling water must reduce many of these fragile structures to a state of comminution which even the microscope cannot resolve into distinct particles and identify as relics of animal or of vegetable life, we must conclude that a considerably larger proportion of river deposits is really the product of animalcules. [Footnote: To vary the phrase, I make occasional use of animaloule, which, as a popular designation, embraces all microscopic organisms. The name is founded on the now exploded supposition that all of them are animated, which was the general belief of naturalists when attention was first drawn to them. It was soon discovered that many of them were unquestionably vegetable, and there are numerous genera the true classification of which is a matter of dispute among the ablest observers. There are cases in which objects formerly taken for living animalcules turn out to be products of the decomposition of matter once animated, and it is admitted that neither spontaneous motion nor even apparent irritability are sure signs of animal life.] It is evident that the chemical, and in many cases mechanical, character of a great number of the objects important in the material economy of human life, must be affected by the presence of so large an organic element in their substance, and it is equally obvious that all agricultural and all industrial operations tend to disturb the natural arrangements of this element, to increase or to diminish the special adaptation of every medium in which it lives to the particular orders of being inhabited by it. The conversion of woodland into pasturage, of pasture into plough land, of swamp or of shallow sea into dry ground, the rotations of cultivated crops, must prove fatal to millions of living things upon every rood of surface thus deranged by man, and must, at the same time, more or less fully compensate this destruction of life by promoting the growth and multiplication of other tribes equally minute in dimensions. I do not know that man has yet endeavored to avail himself, by artificial contrivances, of the agency of these wonderful architects and manufacturers. We are hardly well enough acquainted with their natural economy to devise means to turn their industry to profitable account, and they are in very many cases too slow in producing visible results for an age so impatient as ours. The over-civilization of the nineteenth century cannot wait for wealth to be amassed by infinitesimal gains, and we are in haste to SPECULATE upon the powers of nature, as we do upon objects of bargain and sale in our trafficking one with another. But there are still some cases where the little we know of a life, whose workings are invisible to the naked eye, suggests the possibility of advantageously directing the efforts of troops of artisans that we cannot see. Upon coasts occupied by the corallines, the reef-building animalcule does not work near the mouth of rivers. Hence the change of the outlet of a stream, often a very busy matter, may promote the construction of a barrier to coast navigation at one point, and check the formation of a reef at another, by diverting a current of fresh water from the former and pouring it into the sea at the latter. Cases may probably be found, in tropical seas, where rivers have prevented the working of the coral animalcules in straits separating islands from each other or from the mainland. The diversion of such streams might remove this obstacle, and reefs consequently be formed which should convert an archipelago into a single large island, and finally join that to the neighboring continent. Quatrefages proposed to destroy the teredo in harbors by impregnating the water with a mineral solution fatal to them. Perhaps the labors of the coralline animals might be arrested over a considerable extent of sea-coast by similar means. The reef-builders are leisurely architects, but the precious coral is formed so rapidly that the beds may be refished advantageously as often as once in ten years. [Footnote: The smallest twig of the precious coral thrown back into the sea attaches itself to the bottom or a rock, and grows as well as on its native stem. See an interesting report on the coral fishery, by Sant' Agabio, Italian Consul-General at Algiers, in the Bollettino Consolare, published by the Department of Foreign Affairs, 1862, pp. 139, 151, and in the Annali di Agricoltura Industria e Commercio, No. ii., pp. 300, 373.] It does not seem impossible that branches of this coral might be attached to the keel of a ship and transplanted to the American coast, where the Gulf stream would furnish a suitable temperature beyond the climatic limits that otherwise confine its growth; and thus a new source of profit might perhaps be added to the scanty returns of the hardy fisherman. In certain geological formations, the diatomaceae deposit, at the bottom of fresh-water ponds, beds of silicious shields, valuable as a material for a species of very light firebrick, in the manufacture of water-glass and of hydraulic cement, and ultimately, doubtless, in many yet undiscovered industrial processes. An attentive study of the conditions favorable to the propagation of the diatomaceae might perhaps help us to profit directly by the productivity of this organism, and, at the same time, disclose secrets of nature capable of being turned to valuable account in dealing with silicious rocks, and the metal which is the base of them. Our acquaintance with the obscure and infinitesimal life of which I have now been treating is very recent, and still very imperfect. We know that it is of vast importance in geology, but we are so ambitious to grasp the great, so little accustomed to occupy ourselves with the minute, that we are not yet prepared to enter seriously upon the question how far we can control and utilize the operations, not of unembodied physical forces merely, but of beings, in popular apprehension, almost as immaterial as they. Disturbance of Natural Balances. It is highly probable that the reef-builders and other yet unstudied minute forms of vital existence have other functions in the economy of nature besides aiding in the architecture of the globe, and stand in important relations not only to man but to the plants and the larger sentient creatures over which he has dominion. The diminution or multiplication of these unseen friends or foes may be attended with the gravest consequences to all his material interests, and he is dealing with dangerous weapons whenever he interferes with arrangements pre-established by a power higher than his own. The equation of animal and vegetable life is too complicated a problem for human intelligence to solve, and we can never know how wide a circle of disturbance we produce in the harmonics of nature when we throw the smallest pebble into the ocean of organic being. This much, however, the facts I have hitherto presented authorize us to conclude: as often as we destroy the balance by deranging the original proportions between different orders of spontaneous life, the law of self-preservation requires us to restore the equilibrium, by either directly returning the weight abstracted from one scale, or removing a corresponding quantity from the other. In other words, destruction must be either repaired by reproduction, or compensated by new destruction in an opposite quarter. The parlor aquarium has taught even those to whom it is but an amusing toy, that the balance of animal and vegetable life must be preserved, and that the excess of either is fatal to the other, in the artificial tank as well as in natural waters. A few years ago, the water of the Cochituato aqueduct at Boston became so offensive in smell and taste as to be quite unfit for use. Scientific investigation found the cause in the too scrupulous care with which aquatic vegetation had been excluded from the reservoir, and the consequent death and decay of the animalculae, which could not be shut out, nor live in the water without the vegetable element. [Footnote: It is remarkable that Pulisay, to whose great merits as an acute observer I am happy to have frequent occasion to bear testimony, had noticed that vegetation was necessary to maintain the purity of water in artificial reservoirs, though he mistook the rationale of its influence, which he ascribed to the elemental "salt" supposed by him to play an important part in all the operations of nature. In his treatise upon Waters and Fountains, p. 174, of the reprint of 1844, he says: "And in special, thou shalt note one point, the which is understood of few: that is to say, that the leaves of the trees which fall upon the parterre, and the herbs growing beneath, and singularly the fruits, if any there be upon the trees, being decayed, the waters of the parterre shall draw onto them the salt of the said fruits, leaves, and herbs, the which shall greatly better the water of thy fountains, and hinder the putrefaction thereof."] Animalcular Life. Nature has no unit of magnitude by which she measures her works. Man takes his standards of dimension from himself. The hair's breadth was his minimum until the microscope told him that there are animated creatures to which one of the hairs of his head is a larger cylinder than is the trunk of the giant California sequoia to him. He borrows his inch from the breadth of his thumb, his palm and span from the width of his hand and the spread of his fingers, his foot from the length of the organ so named; his cubit is the distance from the tip of his middle finger to his elbow, and his fathom is the space he can measure with his outstretched arms. [Footnote: The French metrical system seems destined to be adopted throughout the civilized world. It is indeed recommended by great advantages, but it is very doubtful whether they are not more than counterbalanced by the selection of too large a unit of measure, and by the inherent intractability of all decimal systems with reference to fractional divisions. The experience of the whole world has established the superior convenience of a smaller unit, such as the braccio, the cubit, the foot, and the palm or span, and in practical life every man finds that he haa much more frequent occasion to use a fraction than a multiple of the metre. Of course, he must constantly employ numbers expressive of several centimetres or millimetres instend of the name of a single smaller unit than the metre. Besides, the metre is not divisible into twelfths, eighths, sixths, or thirds, or the multiples of any of these proportions, two of which at least--the eighth and the third--are of as frequent use as any other fractions. The adoption of a fourth of the earth's circumference as a base for the new measures was itself a departure from the decimal system. Had the Commissioners taken the entire circumference as a base, and divided it into 100,000,000 instead of 10,000,000 parts, we should have had a unit of about sixteen inches, which, as a compromise between the foot and the cubit, would have been much better adapted to universal use than so large a unit as the metre.] To a being who instinctively finds the standard of all magnitudes in his own material frame, all objects exceeding his own dimensions are absolutely great, all falling short of them absolutely small. Hence we habitually regard the whale and the elephant as essentially large and therefore important creatures, the animalcule as an essentially small and therefore unimportant organism. But no geological formation owes its origin to the labors or the remains of the huge mammal, while the animalcule composes, or has furnished, the substance of strata thousands of feet in thickness, and extending, in unbroken beds, over many degrees of terrestrial surface. If man is destined to inhabit the earth much longer, and to advance in natural knowledge with the rapidity which has marked his progress in physical science for the last two or three centuries, he will learn to put a wiser estimate on the works of creation, and will derive not only great instruction from studying the ways of nature in her obscurest, humblest walks, but great material advantage from stimulating her productive energies in provinces of her empire hitherto regarded as forever inaccessible, utterly barren. [Footnote: The fermentation of liquids, and in many cases the decomposition of semi-solids, formerly supposed to be owing purely to chemical action, are now ascribed by many chemists to vital processes of living minute organisms, both vegetable and animal, and consequently to physiological as well as to chemical forces. Even alcohol is stated to be an animal product. The whole subject of animalcular, or rather minute organic, life, has assumed a now and startling importance from the recent researches of naturalists and physiologists, in the agency of such life, vegetable or animal, in exciting and communicating contagious diseases, and it is extremely probable that what are vaguely called germs, to whichever of the organic kingdoms they may be assigned, creatures inhabiting various media, and capable of propagating their kind and rapidly multiplying, are the true seeds of infection and death in the maladies now called zymotic, as well perhaps as in many others. The literature of this subject is now very voluminous. For observations with high microscopic power on this subject, see Beale, Disease Germs, their supposed Nature, and Disease Germs, their real Nature, both published in London in 1870. The increased frequency of typhoidal, zymotic, and malarious diseases in some parts of the United States, and the now common occurrence of some of them in districts where they were unknown forty years ago, are startling facts, and it is a very interesting question how far man's acts or neglects may have occasioned the change. See Third Anual Report of Massachusetts State Board of Health for 1873. The causes and remedies of the insalubrity of Rome and its environs have been for some time the object of careful investigation, and many valuable reports have been published on the subject. Among the most recent of these are: Relazione sulle condizioni agrarie ed igieniche della Campagna di Roma, per Raffaele Pareto; Cenni Storici sulla questione dell' Agro Romano di G. Guerzoni; Cenni sulle condizioni Fisico-economiche di Roma per F. Giordano; and a very important paper in the journal Lo Sperimentale for 1870, by Dr. D. Pantaleoni. There are climates, parts of California, for instance, where the flesh of dead animals, freely exposed, shows no tendency to putrefaction but dries up and may be almost indefinitely preserved in this condition. Is this owing to the absence of destructive animalcular life in such localities, and has man any agency in the introduction and naturalization of these organisms in regions previously not infested by them ] CHAPTER III. THE WOODS. The habitable earth originally wooded--General meteorological influence of the forest--Electrical action of trees--Chemical influence of woods--Trees as protection against malaria--Trees as shelter to ground to the leeward--Influence of the forest as inorganic on temperature--Thermometrical action of trees as organic--Total influence of the forest on temperature--Influence of forests as inorganic on humidity of air and earth--Influence as organic--Balance of conflicting influences--Influence of woods on precipitation--Total climatic action of the forest--Influence of the forest on humidity of soil--The forest in winter--Summer rain, importance of--Influence of the forest on the flow of springs--Influence of the forest on inundations and torrents--Destructive action of torrents--Floods of the Ardeche--Excavation by torrents--Extinction of torrents--Crushing force of torrents--Transporting power of water--The Po and its deposits--Mountain slides--Forest as protection against avalanches--Minor uses of the forest--Small forest plants and vitality of seeds--Locusts do not breed in forests--General functions of forest--General consequences of destruction of--Due proportion of woodland--Proportion of woodland in European countries--Forests of Great Britain--Forests of France--Forests of Italy--Forests of Germany--Forests of United States--American forest trees--European and American forest trees compared--The forest does not furnish food for man--First removal of the forest--Principal causes of destruction of forest--Destruction and protection of forests by governments--Royal forests and game-laws--Effects of the French revolution--Increased demand for lumber--Effects of burning forest--Floating of timber--Restoration of the forest--Economy of the forest--Forest legislation--Plantation of forests in America--Financial results of forest plantations--Instability of American life. The Habitable Earth originally Wooded. There is good reason to believe that the surface of the habitable earth, in all the climates and regions which have been the abodes of dense and civilized populations, was, with few exceptions, already covered with a forest growth when it first became the home of man. This we infer from the extensive vegetable remains--trunks, branches, roots, fruits, seeds, and leaves of trees--so often found in conjunction with works of primitive art, in the boggy soil of districts where no forests appear to have existed within the eras through which written annals reach; from ancient historical records, which prove that large provinces, where the earth has long been wholly bare of trees, were clothed with vast and almost unbroken woods when first made known to Greek and Roman civilization; [Footnote: The recorded evidence in support of the proposition in the text has been collected by L. F. Alfred Maury, in his Histoire des grandes Forets de la Gauls et de l'ancienne France, and by Becquerel, in his important work, Des climats et de l'Influence qu'exercent les Sols boises et non boises, livre ii., chap. i. to iv. We may rank among historical evidences on this point, if not technically among historical records, old geographical names and terminations etymologically indicating forest or grove, which are so common in many parts of the Eastern Continent now entirely stripped of woods--such as, in Southern Europe, Breuil, Broglio, Brolio, Brolo; in Northern, Bruhl, and the endings -dean, -den, -don, -ham, -holt, -horst, -hurst, -lund, -shaw, -shot, -skog, -skov, -wald, -weald, -wold, -wood.] and from the state of much of North and of South America, as well as of many islands, when they were discovered and colonized by the European race. [Footnote: The island of Madeira, whose noble forests wore devastated by fire not Iong after its colonization by European settlors, takes its name from the Portuguese word tor wood.] These evidences are strengthened by observation of the natural economy of our time; for, whenever a tract of country once inhabited and cultivated by man, is abandoned by him and by domestic animals, and surrendered to the undisturbed influences of spontaneous nature, its soil sooner of later clothes itself with herbaceous and arborescent plants, and, at no long interval, with a dense forest growth. Indeed, upon surfaces of a certain stability and not absolutely precipitous inclination the special conditions required for the spontaneous propagation of trees may all be negatively expressed and reduced to these three: exemption from defect or excess of moisture, from perpetual frost, and from the depredations of man and browsing quadrupeds. Where these requisites are secured, the hardest rock is as certain to be overgrown with wood as the most fertile plain, though, for obvious reasons, the process is slower in the former than in the latter case. Lichens and mosses first prepare the way for a more highly organized vegetation. They retain the moisture of rains and dews, and bring it to act, in combination with the gases evolved by their organic processes, in decomposing the surface of the rocks they cover; they arrest and confine the dust which the wind scatters over them, and their final decay adds new material to the soil already half formed beneath and upon them. A very thin stratum of mould is sufficient for the germination of seeds of the hardy evergreens and birches, the roots of which are often found in immediate contact with the rock, supplying their trees with nourishment from a soil deepened and enriched by the decomposition of their own foliage, or sending out long rootlets into the surrounding earth in search of juices to feed them. The eruptive matter of volcanoes, forbidding as is its aspect, does not refuse nutriment to the woods. The refractory lava of Etna, it is true, remains long barren, and that of the great eruption of 1669 is still almost wholly devoid of vegetation. [Footnote: Even the volcanic dust of Etna remains very long unproductive. Near Nicolosi is a great extent of coarse black sand, thrown out in 1669, which, for almost two centuries, lay entirely bare, and can be made to grow plants only by artificial mixtures and much labor. The increase in the price of wines, in consequence of the diminution of the product from the grape disease, however, has brought even these ashes under cultivation. "I found," says Waltershausen, referring to the years 1861-62, "plains of volcanic sand and half-subdued lava streams, which twenty years ago lay utterly waste, now covered with fine vineyards. The ashfield of ten square miles above Nicolosi, created by the eruption of 1669, which was entirely barren in 1835, is now planted with vines almost to the summits of Monte Rosso, at a height of three thousand feet" Ueber den Sicilianischen Ackerbau, p. 19.] But the cactus is making inroads even here, while the volcanic sand and molten rock thrown out by Vesuvius soon become productive. Before the great eruption of 1631 even the interior of the crater was covered with vegetation. George Sandys, who visited Vesuvius in 1611, after it had reposed for several centuries, found the throat of the volcano at the bottom of the crater "almost choked with broken rocks and trees that are falne therein." "Next to this," he continues, "the matter thrown up is ruddy, light, and soft: more removed, blacke and ponderous: the uttermost brow, that declineth like the seates in a theater, flourishing with trees and excellent pasturage. The midst of the hill is shaded with chestnut trees, and others bearing sundry fruits." [Footnote: A Relation of a Journey Begun An. Dom. 1610, lib. 4, p. 260, edition of 1615. The testimony of Sandys on this point is confirmed by that of Pighio, Braccini, Magliocco, Salimbeni, and Nicola di Rubco, all cited by Roth, Der Vesuv., p. 9. There is some uncertainty about the date of the last eruption previous to the great one of 163l. Ashes, though not lava, appear to have been thrown out about the year 1500, and some chroniclers have recorded an eruption in the year 1306; but this seems to be an error for 1036, when a great quantity of lava was ejected. In 1130, ashes were thrown out for many days. I take these dates from the work of Roth just cited.] I am convinced that forests would soon cover many parts of the Arabian and African deserts, if man and domestic animals, especially the goat and the camel, were banished from them. The hard palate and tongue and strong teeth and jaws of this latter quadruped enable him to break off and masticate tough and thorny branches as large as the finger. He is particularly fond of the smaller twigs, leaves, and seed-pods of the sont and other acacias, which, like the American Robinia, thrive well on dry and sandy soils, and he spares no tree the branches of which are within his reach, except, if I remember right, the tamarisk that produces manna. Young trees sprout plentifully around the springs and along the winter water-courses of the desert, and these are just the halting stations of the caravans and their routes of travel. In the shade of these trees, annual grasses and perennial shrubs shoot up, but are mown down by the hungry cattle of the Bedouin, as fast as they grow. A few years of undisturbed vegetation would suffice to cover such points with groves, and these would gradually extend themselves over soils where now scarcely any green thing but the bitter colocynth and the poisonous foxglove is ever seen. General Meteorological Influence of the Forest. The physico-geographical influence of forests may be divided into two great classes, each having an important influence on vegetable and on animal life in all their manifestations, as well as on every branch of rural economy and productive industry, and, therefore, on all the material interests of man. The first respects the meteorology of the countries exposed to the action of these influences; the second, their superficial geography, or, in other words, the configuration, consistence, and clothing of their surface. For reasons assigned in the first chapter, and for others that will appear hereafter, the meteorological or climatic branch of the subject is the most obscure, and the conclusions of physicists respecting it are, in a great degree, inferential only, not founded on experiment or direct observation. They are, as might be expected, somewhat discordant, though one general result is almost universally accepted, and seems indeed too well supported to admit of serious question, and it may be considered as established that forests tend to mitigate, at least within their own precincts, extremes of temperature, humidity, and drought. By what precise agencies the meteorological effects of the forest are produced we cannot say, because elements of totally unknown value enter into its action, and because the relative intensity of better understood causes cannot be measured or compared. I shall not occupy much space in discussing questions which at present admit of no solution, but I propose to notice all the known forces whose concurrent or conflicting energies contribute to the general result, and to point out, in some detail, the value of those influeuces whose mode of action has been ascertained. Electrical Influence of Trees. The properties of trees, singly and in groups, as exciters or conductors of electricity, and their consequent influence upon the electrical state of the atmosphere, do not appear to have been much investigated; and the conditions of the forest itself are so variable and so complicated, that the solution of any general problem respecting its electrical influence would be a matter of extreme difficulty. It is, indeed, impossible to suppose that a dense cloud, a sea of vapor, can pass over miles of surface bristling with good conductors, without undergoing and producing some change of electrical condition. Hypothetical cases may be put in which the character of the change could be deduced from the known laws of electrical action. But in actual nature, the elements are too numerous for us to seize. The true electrical condition of neither cloud nor forest could be known, and it could seldom be predicted whether the vapors would be dissolved as they floated over the wood, or discharged upon it in a deluge of rain. With regard to possible electrical influences of the forest, wider still in their range of action, the uncertainty is even greater. The data which alone could lead to positive, or even probable, conclusions are wanting, and we should, therefore, only embarrass our argument by any attempt to discuss this meteorological element, important as it may be, in its relations of cause and effect to more familiar and bettor understood meteoric phenomena. It may, however, be observed that hail-storms--which were once generally supposed, and are still held by many, to be produced by a specific electrical action, and which, at least, appear to be always accompanied by electrical disturbances--are believed, in all countries particularly exposed to that scourge, to have become more frequent and destructive in proportion as the forests have been cleared. Caimi observes: "When the chains of the Alps and the Apennines had not yet been stripped of their magnificent crown of woods, the May hail, which now desolates the fertile plains of Lombardy, was much less frequent; but since the general prostration of the forest, these tempests are laying waste even the mountain-soils whose older inhabitants scarcely knew this plague. [Footnote: There are, in Northern Italy and in Switzerland, joint-stock companies which insure against damage by hail, as well as by fire and lightning. Between the years 1854 and 1861, a single one of these companies, La Riunione Adriatica, paid, for damage by hail in Piedmont, Venetian Lombardy, and the Duchy of Parma, above 6,500,000 francs, or nearly $200,000 per year.] The paragrandini, [Footnote: The paragrandine, or, as it is called in French, the paragrele, is a species of conductor by which it has been hoped to protect the harvests in countries particularly exposed to damage by hail. It was at first proposed to employ for this purpose poles supporting sheaves of straw connected with the ground by the same material; but the experiment was afterwards tried in Lombardy on a large scale, with more perfect electrical conductors, consisting of poles secured to the top of tall trees and provided with a pointed wire entering the ground and reaching above the top of the pole. It was at first thought that this apparatus, erected at numerous points over an extent of several miles, was of some service as a protection against hail, but this opinion was soon disputed, and does not appear to be supported by well-ascertained facts. The question of a repetition of the experiment over a wide area has been again agitated within a very few years in Lombardy; but the doubts expressed by very able physicists as to its efficacy, and as to the point whether hail is an electrical phenomenon, have discouraged its advocates from attempting it.] which the learned curate of Rivolta advised to erect, with sheaves of straw set up vertically, over a great extent of cultivated country, are but a Liliputian imago of the vast paragrandini, pines, larches, and fire, which nature had planted by millions on the crests and ridges of the Alps and the Apennines." [Footnote: Cenni sulla Importansa e Coltura dei Boschi, p. 6.] "Electrical action being diminished," says Meguscher, "and the rapid congelation of vapors by the abstraction of heat being impeded by the influence of the woods, it is rare that hail or waterspouts are produced within the precincts of a large forest when it is assailed by the tempest." [Footnote: Memoria sui Boschi, etc., p. 44.] Arthur Young was told that since the forests which covered the mountains between the Riviera and the county of Montferrat had disappeared, hail had become more destructive in the district of Acqui, [Footnote: Travels in Italy, chap. iii.] and a similar increase in the frequency and violence of hail-storms in the neighborhood of Saluzzo and Mondovi, the lower part of the Valtelline, and the territory of Verona and Vicenza, is probably to be ascribed to a similar cause. [Footnote: Le Alpi che cingono l'Italia, i., p. 377. See "On the Influence of the Forest in Preventing Hail-storms," a paper by Becquerel, in the Memoires de l'Academie des Sciences, vol. xxxv. The conclusion of this eminent physicist is, that woods do excercise, both within their own limits and in their vicinity, the influence popularly ascribed to them in this respect, and that the effect is probably produced partly by mechanical and partly by electrical action.] Chemical Influence of the Forest. We know that the air in a close apartment is appreciably affected through the inspiration and expiration of gases by plants growing in it. The same operations are performed on a gigantic scale by the forest, and it has even been supposed that the absorption of carbon, by the rank vegetation of earlier geological periods, occasioned a permanent change in the constitution of the terrestrial atmosphere. [Footnote: "Long before the appearance of man, ... they [the forests] had robbed the atmosphere of the enormous quantity of carbonic acid it contained, and thereby transformed it into respirable air. Trees heaped upon trees had already filled up the ponds and marshes, and buried with them in the bowels of the earth--to restore it to us, after thousands of ages, in the form of bituminous coal and of anthracite--the carbon which was destined to become, by this wonderful condensation, a precious store of future wealth."--Clave, Etudes sur l'Economie Forestiere, p. 13. This opinion of the modification of the atmosphere by vegetation is contested. Mossman ascribes the great luxuriance and special character of the Australian and New Zealand forests, as well as other peculiarities of the vegetation of the Southern hemisphere, to a supposed larger proportion of carbon in the atmosphere of that hemisphere, though the fact of such excess does not appear to have been established by chemical analysis. Mossman, Origin of the Seasons. Edinburgh, 1869. Chaps. xvi. and xvil.] To the effects thus produced are to be added those of the ultimate gaseous decomposition of the vast vegetable mass annually shed by trees, and of their trunks and branches when they fall a prey to time. But the quantity of gases thus abstracted from and restored to the atmosphere is inconsiderable--infinitesimal, one might almost say--in comparison with the ocean of air from which they are drawn and to which they return; and though the exhalations from bogs, and other low grounds covered with decaying vegetable matter, are highly deleterious to human health, yet, in general, the air of the forest is hardly chemically distinguishable from that of the sand plains, and we can as little trace the influence of the woods in the analysis of the atmosphere, as we can prove that the mineral ingredients of landsprings sensibly affect the chemistry of the sea. I may, then, properly dismiss the chemical, as I have done the electrical, influences of the forest, and treat them both alike, if not as unimportant agencies, at least as quantities of unknown value in our meteorological equation. [Footnote: Schacht ascribes to the forest a specific, if not a measurable, influence upon the constitution of the atmosphere. "Plants imbibe from the air carbonic acid and other gaseous or volatile products exhaled by animals or developed by the natural phenomena of decomposition. On the other hand, the vegetable pours into the atmosphere oxygen, which is taken up by animals and appropriated by them. The tree, by means of its leaves and its young herbaceous twigs, presents a considerable surface for absorption and evaporation; it abstracts the carbon of carbonic acid, and solidifies it in wood, fecula, and a multitude of other compounds. The result is that a forest withdraws from the air, by its great absorbent surface, much more gas than meadows or cultivated fields, and exhales proportionally a considerably greater quantity of oxygen. The influence of the forests on the chemical composition of the atmosphere is, in a word, of the highest importance."--Les Arbres, p. 111. See on this subject a paper by J. Jamin, in the Revue des Deux Mondes for Sept. 15, 1864; and, on the effects of human industry on the atmosphere, an article in Aus der Natur, vol. 29, 1864, pp. 443, 449, 465, et seq. See also Alfred Maury, Les Forete de la Gaule, p. 107.] Our inquiries upon this branch of the subject will accordingly be limited to the thermometrical and hygrometrical influences of the woods. There is, however, a special protective function of the forest, perhaps, in part, of a chemical nature, which may be noticed here. Trees as a Protection against Malaria. The influence of forests in preventing the diffusion of miasmatic vapors is not a matter of familiar observation, and perhaps it does not come strictly within the sphere of the present inquiry, but its importance will justify me in devoting some space to the subject. "It has been observed" (I quote from Becquerel) "that humid air, charged with miasmata, is deprived of them in passing through the forest. Rigaud de Lille observed localities in Italy where the interposition of a screen of trees preserved everything beyond it, while the unprotected grounds were subject to fevers." [Footnote: Becquerel, Des Climats, etc., p. 9.] Few European countries present better opportunities for observation on this point than Italy, because in that kingdom the localities exposed to miasmatic exhalations are numerous, and belts of trees, if not forests, are of so frequent occurrence that their efficacy in this respect can be easily tested. The belief that rows of trees afford an important protection against malarious influences is very general among Italians best qualified by intelligence and professional experience to judge upon the subject. The commissioners, appointed to report on the measures to be adopted for the improvement of the Tuscan Maremme, advised the planting of three or four rows of poplars, Populus alla, in such directions as to obstruct the currents of air from malarious localities, and thus intercept a great proportion of the pernicious exhalations." [Footnote: Salvagnoli, Rapporto sul Bonificamento delle Maremme Toscane, pp. xii., 124.] Maury believed that a few rows of sunflowers, planted between the Washington Observatory and the marshy banks of the Potomac, had saved the inmates of that establishment from the intermittent fevers to which they had been formerly liable. Maury's experiments have been repeated in Italy. Large plantations of sunflowers have been made upon the alluvial deposits of the Oglio, above its entrance into the Lake of Iseo, near Pisogne, and it is said with favorable results to the health of the neighborhood. [Footnote: Il Politecnico, Milano, Aprile e Maggio, 1863, p. 35.] In fact, the generally beneficial effects of a forest wall or other vegetable screen, as a protection against noxious exhalations from marshes or other sources of disease, situated to the windward of them, are very commonly admitted. It is argued that, in these cases, the foliage of trees and of other vegetables exercises a chemical as well as a mechanical effect upon the atmosphere, and some, who allow that forests may intercept the circulation of the miasmatic effluvia of swampy soils, or even render them harmless by decomposing them, contend, nevertheless, that they are themselves active causes of the production of malaria. The subject has been a good deal discussed in Italy, and there is some reason to think that under special circumstances the influence of the forest in this respect may be prejudicial rather than salutary, though this does not appear to be generally the case. [Footnote: Salvagnoli, Memorie sulle Maremme Toscane, pp. 213, 214. The sanitary action of the forest has been lately matter of much attention in Italy. See Rendiconti del Congresso Medico del 1869 a Firenze, and especially the important observations of Selmi, Il Miasma Palustre, Padua, 1870, pp. 100 et seq. This action is held by this able writer to be almost wholly chemical, and he earnestly recommends the plantation of groves, at least of belts of trees, as an effectual protection against the miasmatic influence of marshes. Very interesting observations on this point will be found in Ebermayer, Die Physikalischen Einwirkungen des Waldes, Aschaffenburg, 1873, B. I., pp. 237 et seq., where great importance is ascribed to the development of ozone by the chemical action of the forest. The beneficial influence of the ozone of the forest atmosphere on the human system is, however, questioned by some observers. See also the able memoir: Del Miasma vegetale e delle Malattis Miasmatiche of Dr D. Pantaleoni in Lo Sperimentale, vol. xxii., 1870. The necessity of such hygienic improvements as shall render the new capital of Italy a salubrious residence gives great present importance to this question, and it is much to be hoped that the Agro Romano, as well as more distant parts of the Campagna, will soon be dotted with groves and traversed by files of rapidly growing trees. Many forest trees grow with great luxuriance in Italy, and a moderate expense in plantation would in a very few years determine whether any amelioration of the sanitary condition of Rome can be expected from this measure. It is said by recent writers that in India the villages of the natives and the encampments of European troops, situated in the midst or in the neighborhood of groves and of forests, are exempt from cholera. Similar observations were also made in 18S4 in Germany when this terrible disease was raging there. It is hence inferred that forests prevent the spreading of this malady, or rather the development of those unknown influences of which cholera is the result. These influences, if we may believe certain able writers on medical subjects, are telluric rather than meteoric; and they regard it as probable that the uniform moisture of soil in forests may be the immediate cause of the immunity enjoyed by such localities. See an article by Pettenkofer in the Sud-Deutsche Presse, August, 1869; and the observations of Ebermayer in the work above quoted, pp. 246 et seq. In Australia and New Zealand, as well as generally in the Southern Hemisphere, the indigenous trees are all evergreens, and even deciduous trees introduced from the other side of the equator become evergreen. In those regions, even in the most swampy localities, malarious diseases are nearly, if not altogether, unknown. Is this most important fact due to the persistence of the foliage Mossman, Origin of Climates, pp. 374, 393, 410, 425, et seq.] It is, at all events, well known that the great swamps of Virginia and the Carolinas, in climates nearly similar to that of Italy, are healthy even to the white man, so long as the forests in and around them remain, but become very insalubrious when the woods are felled. [Footnote: Except in the seething marshes of northern tropical and subtropical regions, where vegetable decay is extremely rapid, the uniformity of temperature and of atmospheric humidity renders all forests eminently healthful. See Hohensten's observations on this subject, Der Wald, p. 41; also A. Maury, Les Forets de la Gaule, p. 7. The flat and marshy district of the Sologne in France was salubrious until its woods were felled. It then became pestilential, but within the last few years its healthfulness has been restored by forest plantations. Jules Clave in Revue des Deux Mondes for 1st March, 1866, p. 209. There is no question that open squares and parks conduce to the salubrity of cities, and many observers are of opinion that the trees and other vegetables with which such grounds are planted contribute essentially to their beneficial influence. See an article in Aus der Natur, xxii, p. 813.] Trees as Shelter to Ground to the Leeward. As a mechanical obstruction, trees impede the passage of air-currents over the ground, which, as is well known, is one of the most efficient agents in promoting evaporation and the refrigeration resulting from it. [Footnote: It is perhaps too much to say that the influence of trees upon the wind is strictly limited to the mechanical resistance of their trunks, branches, and foliage. So far as the forest, by dead or by living action, raises or lowers the temperature of the air within it, so far it creates upward or downward currents in the atmosphere above it, and, consequently, a flow of air towards or from itself. These air-streams have a certain, though doubtless a very small, influence on the force and direction of greater atmospheric movements.] In the forest, the air is almost quiescent, and moves only as local changes of temperature affect the specific gravity of its particles. Hence there is often a dead calm in the woods when a furious blast is raging in the open country at a few yards' distance. The denser the forest--as, for example, where it consists of spike-leaved trees, or is thickly intermixed with them--the more obvious is its effect, and no one can have passed from the field to the wood in cold, windy weather, without having remarked it. [Footnote: As a familiar illustration of the influence of the forest in checking the movement of winds, I may mention the well-known fact, that the sensible cold is never extreme in thick woods, where the motion of the air is little felt. The lumbermen in Canada and the Northern United States labor in the woods, without inconvenience, when the mercury stands many degrees below the zero of Fahrenheit, while in the open grounds, with only a moderate breeze, the same temperature is almost insupportable. The engineers and firemen of locomotives, employed on railways running through forests of any considerable extent, observe that, in very cold weather, it is much easier to keep up the steam while the engine is passing through the woods than in the open ground. As soon as the train emerges from the shelter of the trees the steam-gauge falls, and the stoker is obliged to throw in a liberal supply of fuel to bring it up again. Another less frequently noticed fact, due, no doubt, in a great measure to the immobility of the air, is, that sounds are transmitted to incredible distances in the unbroken forest. Many instances of this have fallen under my own observation, and others, yet more striking, have been related to me by credible and competent witnesses familiar with a more primitive condition of the Anglo-American world. An acute observer of natural phenomena, whose childhood and youth were spent in the interior of one of the newer New England States, has often told me that when he established his home in the forest, he always distinctly heard, in still weather, the plash of horses' feet, when they forded a small brook nearly seven-eighths of a mile from his house, though a portion of the wood that intervened consisted of a ridge seventy or eighty feet higher than either the house or the ford. I have no doubt that, in such cases, the stillness of the air is the most important element in the extraordinary transmissibilty of sound; but it must be admitted that the absence of the multiplied, and confused noises, which accompany human industry in countries thickly peopled by man, contributes to the same result. We become, by habit, almost insensible to the familiar and never-resting voices of civilization in cities and towns; but the indistinguishable drone, which sometimes escapes even the ear of him who listens for it, deadens and often quite obstructs the transmission of sounds which would otherwise be clearly audible. An observer, who wishes to appreciate that hum of civic life which he cannot analyze, will find an excellent opportunity by placing himself on the hill of Capo di Monte at Naples, in the line of prolongation of the street called Spaccanapoli. It is probably to the stillness of which I have spoken that we are to ascribe the transmission of sound to great distances at sea in calm weather. In June, 1853, I and my family were passengers on board a ship-of-war bound up the Aegean. On the evening of the 27th of that month, as we were discussing, at the tea-table, some observations of Humboldt on this subject, the captain of the ship told us that he had once heard a single gun at sea at the distance of ninety nautical miles. The next morning, though a light breeze had sprung up from the north, the sea was of glassy smoothness when we went on deck. As we came up, an officer told us that he had heard a gun at sunrise, and the conversation of the previous evening suggested the inquiry whether it could have been fired from the combined French and English fleet then lying at Beshika Bay. Upon examination of our position we were found to have been, at sunrise, ninety sea miles from that point. We continued beating up northwards, and between sunrise and twelve o'clock meridian of the 28th, we had made twelve miles northing, reducing our distance from Beshika Bay to seventy-eight sea miles. At noon we heard several guns so distinctly that we were able to count the number. On the 29th we came up with the fleet, and learned from an officer who came on board that a royal salute had been fired at noon on the 28th, in honor of the day as the anniversary of the Queen of England's coronation. The report at sunrise was evidently the morning gun, those at noon the salute. Such cases are rare, because the sea is seldom still, and the [word in Greek] rarely silent, over so great a space as ninety or even seventy-eight nautical miles. I apply the epithet silent to [word in Greek] advisedly. I am convinced that Aeschylus meant the audible laugh of the waves, which is indeed of COUNTLESS multiplicity, not the visible smile of the sea, which, belonging to the great expanse as one impersonation, is single, though, like the human smile, made up of the play of many features.] The action of the forest, considered merely as a mechanical shelter to grounds lying to the leeward of it, might seem to be an influence of too restricted a character to deserve much notice; but many facts concur to allow that it is a most important element in local climate. It is evident that the effect of the forest, as a mechanical impediment to the passage of the wind, would extend to a very considerable distance above its own height, and hence protect while standing, or lay open when felled, a much larger surface than might at first thought be supposed. The atmosphere, movable as are its particles, and light and elastic as are its masses, is nevertheless held together as a continuous whole by the gravitation of its atoms and their consequent pressure on each other, if not by attraction between them, and, therefore, an obstruction which mechanically impedes the movement of a given stratum of air will retard the passage of the strata above and below it. To this effect may often be added that of an ascending current from the forest itself, which must always exist when the atmosphere within the wood is warmer than the stratum of air above it, and must be of almost constant occurrence in the case of cold winds, from whatever quarter, because the still air in the forest is slow in taking up the temperature of the moving columns and currents around and above it. Experience, in fact, has shown that mere rows of trees, and even much lower obstructions, are of essential service in defending vegetation against the action of the wind. Hardy proposes planting, in Algeria, belts of trees at the distance of one hundred metres from each other, as a shelter which experience had proved to be useful in France. [Footnote: Becquerel, Des Climats, etc., p. 179.] "In the valley of the Rhone," says Becquerel, "a simple hedge, two metres in height, is a sufficient protection for a distance of twenty-two metres." [Footnote: Ibid., p. 116. Becquerel's views have been amply confirmed by recent extensive experiments on the bleak, stony, and desolate plain of the Cran in the Department of the Bouches-du-Rhone, which had remained a naked waste from the earliest ages of history. Belts of trees prove a secure protection even against the furious and chilly blasts of the Mistral, and in this shelter plantations of fruit-trees and vegetables, fertilized by the waters and the slime of the Durance, which are conducted and distributed over the Cran, thrive with the greatest luxuriance. [Footnote: Surrell, Etude sur les Torrents, 2d edition, 1872, ii, p. 85.] The mechanical shelter acts, no doubt, chiefly as a defence against the mechanical force of the wind, but its uses are by no means limited to this effect. If the current of air which it resists moves horizontally, it would prevent the access of cold or parching blasts to the ground for a great distance; and did the wind even descend at a large angle with the surface, still a considerable extent of ground would be protected by a forest to the windward of it. In the report of a committee appointed in 1836 to examine an article of the forest code of France, Arago observes; "If a curtain of forest on the coasts of Normandy and of Brittany were destroyed, these two provinces would become accessible to the winds from the west, to the mild breezes of the sea. Hence a decrease of the cold of winter. If a similar forest were to be cleared on the eastern border of France, the glacial east wind would prevail with greater strength, and the winters would become more severe. Thus the removal of a belt of wood would produce opposite effects in the two regions." [Footnote: Becquerel, Des Climats, etc., Discours Prelim., vi.] This opinion receives confirmation from an observation of Dr. Dwight, who remarks, in reference to the woods of New England: "Another effect of removing the forest will be the free passage of the winds, and among them of the southern winds, over the surface. This, I think, has been an increasing fact within my own remembrance. As the cultivation of the country has extended further to the north, the winds from the south have reached distances more remote from the ocean, and imparted their warmth frequently, and in such degrees as, forty years since, were in the same places very little known. This fact, also, contributes to lengthen the summer and to shorten the winter half of the year." [Footnote: Travels, i., p. 61.] It is thought in Italy that the clearing of the Apennines has very materially affected the climate of the valley of the Po. It is asserted in Le Alpi che cingono l'Italia that: "In consequence of the felling of the woods on the Apennines, the sirocco prevails greatly on the right bank of the Po, in the Parmesan territory, and in a part of Lombardy; it injures the harvests and the vineyards, and sometimes ruins the crops of the season. To the same cause many ascribe the meteorological changes in the precincts of Modena and of Reggio. In the communes of these districts, where formerly straw roofs resisted the force of the winds, tiles are now hardly sufficient; in others, where tiles answered for roofs, large slabs of stone are now ineffectual; and in many neighboring communes the grapes and the grain are swept off by the blasts of the south and south-west winds." According to the same authority, the pinery of Porto, near Ravenna--which is twenty miles long, and is one of the oldest pine woods in Italy--having been replanted with resinous trees after it was unfortunately cut, has relieved the city from the sirocco to which it had become exposed, and in a great degree restored its ancient climate. [Footnote: Le Alpi che cingono l'Italia, pp. 370, 371.] The felling of the woods on the Atlantic coast of Jutland has exposed the soil not only to drifting sands, but to sharp sea-winds, that have exerted a sensible deteriorating effect on the climate of that peninsula, which has no mountains to serve at once as a barrier to the force of the winds, and as a storehouse of moisture received by precipitation or condensed from atmospheric vapors. [Footnote: Bergsoe, Reventlovs Virksomhed, ii., p. 125. The following well-attested instance of a local change of climate is probably to be referred to the influence of the forest as a shelter against cold winds. To supply the extraordinary demand for Italian iron occasioned by the exclusion of English iron in the time of Napoleon I., the furnaces of the valleys of Bergamo were stimulated to great activity. "The ordinary production of charcoal not sufficing to feed the furnaces and the forges, the woods were felled, the copses cut before their time, and the whole economy of the forest was deranged. At Piazzatorre there was such a devastation of the woods, and consequently such an increased severity of climate, that maize no longer ripened. An association, formed for the purpose, effected the restoration of the forest, and maize flourishes again in the fields of Piazzatorre." --Report by G. Rosa, in Il Politecnico, Dicembre, 1861, p. 614. Similar ameliorations have been produced by plantations in Belgium. In an interesting series of articles by Bande, entitled, "Les Cotes de la Manche," in the Revue des Deux Mondes, I find this statement: "A spectator, placed on the famous bell-tower of the cathedral of Antwerp, saw, not long since, on the opposite side of the Schelde, only a vast desert plain; now he sees a forest, the limits of which are confounded with the horizon. Let him enter within its shade. The supposed forest is but a system of regular rows of trees, the oldest of which is not forty years of age. These plantations have ameliorated the climate which had doomed to sterility the soil where they are planted. While the tempest is violently agitating their tops, the air a little below is still, and sands far more barren than the plateau of La Hague have been transformed, under their protection, into fertile fields."--Revue des Deux Mondes, January, 1859, p. 277.] The local retardation of spring, so much complained of in Italy, France, and Switzerland, and the increased frequency of late frosts at that season, appear to be ascribable to the admission of cold blasts to the surface, by the felling of the forests which formerly both screened it as by a wall, and communicated the warmth of their soil to the air and earth to the leeward. Caimi states that since the cutting down of the woods of the Apennines, the cold winds destroy or stunt the vegetation, and that, in consequence of "the usurpation of winter on the domain of spring," the district of Mugello has lost all its mulberries, except the few which find in the lee of buildings a protection like that once furnished by the forest. [Footnote: Cenni sulla Importanza e Coltura dei Boschi, p. 31.] The department of Ardeche, which now contains not a single considerable wood, has experienced within thirty years a climatic disturbance, of which the late frosts, formerly unknown in the country, are one of the most melancholy effects. Similar results have been observed in the plain of Alsace, in consequence of the denudation of several of the crests of the Vosges. [Footnote: Clave, Etudes, p. 44.] [Footnote It has been observed in Sweden that the spring, in many districts where the forests have been cleared off, now comes on a fortnight later than in the last century.--Asbjornsen, Om Skovene i norge, p. 101.] Dussard, as quoted by Ribbe, [Footnote: La Provence au point de vue des Torrents et des Inondations, p. 10. Dussard is doubtless historically inaccurate in making the origin of the mistral so late as the time of Augustus. Diodorus Siculus, who was a contemporary of Julius Caesar, describes the north-west winds in Gaul as violent enough to hurl along stones as large as the fist with clouds of sand and gravel, to strip travellers of their arms and clothing, and to throw mounted men from their horses. Bibliotheca Historica, lib. v., c. xxvi. Diodorus, it is true, is speaking of the climate of Gaul in general, but his description can hardly refer to anything but the mistral of South-eastern France.] maintains that even the MISTRAL, or north-west wind, whose chilling blasts are so fatal to tender vegetation in the spring, "is the child of man, the result of his devastations." "Under the reign of Augustus," continues he, "the forests which protected the Cevennes were felled, or destroyed by fire, in mass. A vast country, before covered with impenetrable woods--powerful obstacles to the movement and even to the formation of hurricanes--was suddenly denuded, swept bare, stripped, and soon after, a scourge hitherto unknown, struck terror over the land from Avignon to the Bouches-du-Rhone, thence to Marseilles, and then extended its ravages, diminished indeed by a long career which had partially exhausted its force, over the whole maritime frontier. The people thought this wind a curse sent of God. They raised altars to it and offered sacrifices to appease its rage." It seems, however, that this plague was less destructive than at present, until the close of the sixteenth century, when further clearings had removed most of the remaining barriers to its course. Up to that time, the north-west wind appears not to have attained to the maximum of specific effect which now characterizes it as a local phenomenon. Extensive districts, from which the rigor of the seasons has now banished valuable crops, were not then exposed to the loss of their harvests by tempests, cold, or drought. The deterioration was rapid in its progress. Under the Consulate, the clearings had exerted so injurious an effect upon the climate, that the cultivation of the olive had retreated several leagues, and since the winters and springs of 1820 and 1836, this branch of rural industry has been abandoned in a great number of localities where it was advantageously pursued before. The orange now flourishes only at a few sheltered points of the coast, and it is threatened even at Hyeres, where the clearing of the hills near the town has proved very prejudicial to this valuable tree. Marchand informs us that, since the felling of the woods, late spring frosts are more frequent in many localities north of the Alps; that fruit-trees thrive no longer, and that it is difficult even to raise young fruit-trees. [Footnote: Ueber die Entwaldung der Gebirge, p. 28. Interesting facts and observations on this point will be found in the valuable Report on the Effects of the Destruction of the Forests in Wisconsin, by LAPHAM and others, pp. 6, 18, 20.] Influence of the Forest, considered as Inorganic Matter, on Temperature. The evaporation of fluids, and the condensation and expansion of vapors and gases, are attended with changes of temperature; and the quantity of moisture which the air is capable of containing, and of course, other things being equal, the evaporation, rise and fall with the thermometer. The hygroscopical and the thermoscopical conditions of the atmosphere are, therefore, inseparably connected as reciprocally dependent quantities, and neither can be fully discussed without taking notice of the other. The leaves of living trees exhale enormous quantities of gas and of aqueous vapor, and they largely absorb gases, and, under certain conditions, probably also water. Hence they affect more or less powerfully the temperature as well as the humidity of the air. But the forest, regarded purely as inorganic matter, and without reference to its living processes of absorption and exhalation of gases and of water, has, as an absorbent, a radiator and a conductor of heat, and as a mere covering of the ground, an influence on the temperature of the air and the earth, which may be considered by itself. Absorbing and Emitting Surface. A given area of ground, as estimated by the every-day rule of measurement in yards or acres, presents always the same apparent quantity of absorbing, radiating, and reflecting surface; but the real extent of that surface is very variable, depending, as it does, upon its configuration, and the bulk and form of the adventitious objects it bears upon it; and, besides, the true superficies remaining the same, its power of absorption, radiation, reflection, and conduction of heat will be much affected by its consistence, its greater or less humidity, and its color, as well as by its inclination of plane and exposure. An acre of clay, rolled hard and smooth, would have great reflecting power, but its radiation would be much increased by breaking it up into clods, because the actually exposed surface would be greater, though the outline of the field remained the same. The inequalities, natural or artificial, which always occur in the surface of ordinary earth, affect in the same way its quantity of superficies acting upon the temperature of the atmosphere, and acted on by it, though the amount of this action and reaction is not susceptible of measurement. Analogous effects are produced by other objects, of whatever form or character, standing or lying upon the earth, and no solid can be placed upon a flat piece of ground, without itself exposing a greater surface than it covers. This applies, of course, to forest trees and their leaves, and indeed to all vegetables, as well as to other prominent bodies. If we suppose forty trees to be planted on an acre, one being situated in the centre of every square of two rods the side, and to grow until their branches and leaves everywhere meet, it is evident that, when in full foliage, the trunks, branches, and leaves would present an amount of thermoscopic surface much greater than that of an acre of bare earth; and besides this, the fallen leaves lying scattered on the ground, would somewhat augment the sum-total. [Footnote: "The Washington elm at Cambridge--a tree of no extraordinary size--was some years ago estimated to produce a crop of seven millions of leaves, exposing a surface of two hundred thousand square feet, or about five acres of foliage."--Gray, First Lessons in Botany and Vegetable Physiology.] On the other hand, the growing leaves of trees generally form a succession of stages, or, loosely speaking, layers, corresponding to the annual growth of the branches, and more or less overlying each other. This disposition of the foliage interferes with that free communication between sun and sky above, and leaf-surface below, on which the amount of radiation and absorption of light depends. From all these considerations, it appears that though the effective thermoscopic surface of a forest in full leaf does not exceed that of bare ground in the same proportion as does its measured superficies, yet the actual quantity of area capable of receiving and emitting heat must be greater in the former than in the latter case. [Footnote: See, on this particular point, and on the general influence of the forest on temperature, Humboldt, Ansichten der Natur, i., 158.] It must further be remembered that the form and texture of a given surface are important elements in determining its thermoscopic character. Leaves are porous, and admit air and light more or less freely into their substance; they are generally smooth and even glazed on one surface; they are usually covered on one or both sides with spicula, and they very commonly present one or more acuminated points in their outline--all circumstances which tend to augment their power of emitting heat by reflection or radiation. Direct experiment on growing trees is very difficult, nor is it in any case practicable to distinguish how far a reduction of temperature produced by vegetation is due to radiation, and how far to exhalation of the gaseous and watery fluids of the plant; for both processes usually go on together. But the frigorific effect of leafy structure is well observed in the deposit of dew and the occurrence of hoarfrost on the foliage of grasses and other small vegetables, and on other objects of similar form and consistence, when the temperature of the air a few feet above has not been brought down to the dew-point, still less to 32 degrees, the degree of cold required to congeal dew to frost. [Footnote: The leaves and twigs of plants may be reduced by radiation to a temperature lower than that of the ambient atmosphere, and even be frozen when the air in contact with them is above 32 degrees. Their temperature may be communicated to the dew deposited on them and thus this dew be converted into frost when globules of watery fluid floating in the atmosphere near them, in the condition of fog or vapor, do not become congealed. It has long been known that vegetables can be protected against frost by diffusing smoke through the atmosphere above them. This method has been lately practised in France on a large scale: vineyards of forty or fifty acres have been protected by placing one or two rows of pots of burning coal-tar, or of naphtha, along the north side of the vineyard, and thus keeping up a cloud of smoke for two or three hours before and after sunrise. The expense is said to be small, and probably it might be reduced by mixing some less combustible substance, as earth, with the fluid, and thus checking its too rapid burning. The radiating and refrigerating power of objects by no means depends on their form alone. Melloni cut sheets of metal into the shape of leaves and grasses, and found that they produced little cooling effect, and were not moistened under atmospheric conditions which determined a plentiful deposit of dew on the leaves of vegetables.] We are also to take into account the action of the forest as a conductor of heat between the atmosphere and the earth. In the most important countries of America and Europe, and especially in those which have suffered most from the destruction of the woods, the superficial strata of the earth are colder in winter, and warmer in summer, than those a few inches lower, and their shifting temperature approximates to the atmospheric mean of the respective seasons. The roots of large trees penetrate beneath the superficial strata, and reach earth of a nearly constant temperature, corresponding to the mean for the entire year. As conductors, they convey the heat of the atmosphere to the earth when the earth is colder than the air, and transmit it in the contrary direction when the temperature of the earth is higher than that of the atmosphere. Of course, then, as conductors, they tend to equalize the temperature of the earth and the air. In countries where the questions I am considering have the greatest practical importance, a very large proportion, if not a majority, of the trees are of deciduous foliage, and their radiating as well as their shading surface is very much greater in summer than in winter. In the latter season, they little obstruct the reception of heat by the ground or the radiation from it; whereas, in the former, they often interpose a complete canopy between the ground and the sky, and materially interfere with both processes. Dead Products of Trees. Besides this various action of standing trees, considered as inorganic matter, the forest exercises, by the annual moulting of its foliage, still another influence on the temperature of the earth, and, consequently, of the atmosphere which rests upon it. If we examine the constitution of the superficial soil in a primitive or an old and undisturbed artificially planted wood, we find, first, a deposit of undecayed leaves, twigs, and seeds, lying in loose layers on the surface; then, more compact beds of the same materials in incipient, and, as we descend, more and more advanced, stages of decomposition; then, a mass of black mould, in which traces of organic structure are hardly discoverable except by microscopic examination; then, a stratum of mineral soil, more or less mixed with vegetable matter carried down into it by water, or resulting from the decay of roots; and, finally, the inorganic earth or rock itself. Without this deposit of the dead products of trees, this latter would be the superficial stratum, and as its powers of absorption, radiation, and conduction of heat would differ essentially from those of the layers with which it has been covered by the droppings of the forest, it would act upon the temperature of the atmosphere, and be acted on by it, in a very different way from the leaves and mould which rest upon it. Dead leaves, still entire, or partially decayed, are very indifferent conductors of light, and, therefore, though they diminish the warming influence of the summer sun on the soil below them, they, on the other hand, prevent the escape of heat from that soil in winter, and, consequently, in cold climates, even when the ground is not covered by a protecting mantle of snow, the earth does not freeze to as great a depth in the wood as in the open field. Specific Heat. Trees, considered as organisms, produce in themselves, or in the air, a certain amount of heat, by absorbing and condensing atmospheric gases, and they exert an opposite influence by absorbing water and exhaling it in the form of vapor; but there is still another mode by which their living processes may warm the air around them, independently of the thermometric effects of condensation and evaporation. The vital heat of a dozen persons raises the temperature of a room. If trees possess a specific temperature of their own, an organic power of generating heat like that with which the warm-blooded animals are gifted, though by a different process, a certain amount of weight is to be ascribed to this element in estimating the action of the forest upon atmospheric temperature. Boussingault remarks: "In many flowers there has been observed a very considerable evolution of heat, at the approach of fecundation. In certain arums the temperature rises to 40 degrees or 50 degrees Cent. [= 104 degrees or 122 degrees Fahr.] It is very probable that this phenomenon in general, and varies only in the intensity which it is manifested." [Footnote: Economie Rurale, i., p. 22.] If we suppose the fecundation of the flowers of forest trees to be attended with a tenth only of this calorific power, they could not fail to exert an important influence on the warmth of the atmospheric strata in contact with them. Experiments by Meguscher, in Lombardy, led that observer to conclude "that the wood of a living tree maintains a temperature of + 12 degrees or 18 degrees Cent. [= 54 degrees, 56 degrees Fahr.] when the temperature of the air stands at 3 degrees, 7 degrees, and 8 degrees [= 37 degrees, 46 degrees, 47 degrees F.] above zero, and that the internal warmth of the tree does not rise and fall in proportion to that of the atmosphere. So long as the latter is below 18 degrees [= 67 degrees Fahr.], that of the tree is always the highest; but if the temperature of the air rises to 18 degrees, that of the vegetable growth is the lowest. Since then, trees maintain at all seasons a constant mean temperature of 12 degrees [= 54 degrees Fahr.], it is easy to see why the air in contact with the forest must be warmer in winter, cooler in summer than in situations where it is deprived of that influence." [Footnote: Memoria Sur Boschi Della Lombardia, p. 45. The results of recent experiments by Becquerel do not accord with those obtained by Meguscher, and the former eminent physicist holds that "a tree is warmed in the air like any inert body." At the same time he asserts, as a fact well ascertained by experiment, that "vegetables possess in themselves the power or resisting extreme cold for a certain length of time,.... and hence it is believed that there may exist in the organism of plants a force, independent of the conduction of caloric, which resists a degree of cold above the freezing-point." In a following page he cites observations made by Bugeaud, under the parallel of 58 degrees N. L., between the months of November and June, during most of which time, of course, vegetable life was in its deepest lethargy. Bugeaud found that when the temperature of the air was at -34.60 degrees, that of a poplar was only at -29.70 degrees, which certainly confirms the doctrine that trees exercise a certain internal resistance against cold.] Professor Henry says: "As a general deduction from chemical and mechanical principles, we think no change of temperature is ever produced where the actions belonging to one or both of these principles are not present. Hence, in midwinter, when all vegetable functions are dormant, we do not believe that any heat is developed by a tree, or that its interior differs in temperature from its exterior further than it is protected from the external air. The experiments which have been made on this point, we think, have been directed by a false analogy. During the active circulation of the sap and the production of new tissue, variations of temperature belonging exclusively to the plant may be observed; but it is inconsistent with general principles that heat should be generated where no change is taking place." [Footnote: United States Patent Office Report for 1857, p. 504.] There can be no doubt that moisture is given, out by trees and evaporated in extremely cold winter weather, and unless new fluid were supplied from the roots by the exercise of some vital function, the tree would be exhausted of its juices before winter was over. But this is not observed to be the fact, and, though the point is disputed, respectable authorities declare that "wood felled in the depth of winter is the heaviest and fullest of sap." [Footnote: Rossmassler, Der Wald, p. 158.] Warm weather in winter, of too short continuance to affect the temperature of the ground sensibly, stimulates a free flow of sap in the maple. Thus, in the last week of December, 1862, and the first week of January, 1863, sugar was made from that tree in various parts of New England. "A single branch of a tree, admitted into a warm room in winter through an aperture in a window, opened its buds and developed its leaves, while the rest of the tree in the external air remained in its winter sleep." [Footnote: Ibid., p. 160.] Like facts are matter of every-day observation in graperies where the vine is often planted outside the wall, the stem passing through an aperture into the warm interior. The roots, of course, stand in ground of the ordinary winter temperature, but vegetation is developed in the branches at the pleasure of the gardener. The roots of forest trees in temperate climates remain, for the most part, in a moist soil, of a temperature not much below the annual mean, through the whole winter; and we cannot account for the uninterrupted moisture of the tree, unless we suppose that the roots furnish a constant supply of water. Atkinson describes a ravine in a valley in Siberia, which was filled with ice to the depth of twenty-five feet. Poplars were growing in this ice, which was thawed to the distance of some inches from the stem. But the surface of the soil beneath it must have remained still frozen, for the holes around the trees were full of water resulting from its melting, and this would have escaped below if the ground had been thawed. In this case, although the roots had not thawed the thick covering of earth above them, the trunks must have melted the ice in contact with them. The trees, when observed by Atkinson, were in full leaf, but it does not appear at what period the ice around their stems had melted. From these facts, and others of the like sort, it would seem that "all vegetable functions are" not absolutely "dormant in winter, and, therefore, that trees may give out SOME heat even at that season." [Footnote: All evergreens, even the broad-leaved trees, resist frosts of extraordinary severity better than the deciduous trees of the same climates. Is not this because the vital processes of trees of persistent foliage are less interrupted during winter than those of trees which annually shed their leaves, and that therefore more organic heat is developed? In crossing Mont Cenis in October, 1869, when the leaves of the larches on the northern slope and near the top of the mountain were entirely dead and turned brown, I observed that these trees were completely white with hoar-frost. It was a wonderful sight to see how every leaf was covered with a delicate deposit of frozen aqueous vapor, which gave the effect of the most brilliant silver. On the other band, the evergreen coniferae, which were growing among the larches, and therefore in the same conditions of exposure, were almost entirely free from frost. The contrast between the verdure of the leaves of the evergreens and the crystalline splendor of those of the larches was strikingly beautiful. Was this fact due to a difference in the color and structure of the leaves, or rather is it a proof of a vital force of resistance to cold in the living foliage of the evergreen tree The low temperature of air and soil at which, in the frigid zone, as well as in warmer latitudes under special circumstances, the processes of vegetation go on, seems to necessitate the supposition that all the manifestations of vegetable life are attended with an evolution of heat. In the United States it is common to protect ice, in ice-houses, by a covering of straw, which naturally sometimes contains kernels of grain. These often sprout, and even throw out roots and leaves to a considerable length, in a temperature very little above the freezing-point. Three or four years since I saw a lump of very clear and apparently solid ice, about eight inches long by six thick, on which a kernel of grain had sprouted in an ice-house, and sent half a dozen or more very slender roots into the pores of the ice and through the whole length of the lump. The young plant must have thrown out a considerable quantity of heat; for though the ice was, as I have said, otherwise solid, the pores through which the roots passed were enlarged to perhaps double the diameter of the fibres, but still not so much as to prevent the retention of water in them by capillary attraction.] It does not appear that observations have been made on the special point of the development of heat in forest trees during florification, or at any other period of intense vital action; and hence an important element in the argument remains undetermined. The "circulation of the sap" commences at a very early period in the spring, and the temperature of the air in contact with trees may then be sufficiently affected by heat evolved in the vital processes of vegetation, to raise the thermometric mean of wooded countries for that season, and, of course, for the year. The determination of this point is of much greater importance to vegetable physiology than the question of the winter temperature of trees, because a slight increment of heat in the trees of a forest might so affect the atmosphere in contact with them as to make possible the growing of many plants in or near the wood which could not otherwise he reared in that climate. The evaporation of the juices of trees and other plants is doubtless their most important thermoscopic function, and as recent observations lead to the conclusion that the quantity of moisture exhaled by vegetables has been hitherto underrated, we must ascribe to this element a higher value than has been usually assigned to it as a meteorological influence. The exhalation and evaporation of the juices of trees, by whatever process effected, take up atmospheric heat and produce a proportional refrigeration. This effect is not less real, though to common observation less sensible, in the forest than in meadow or pasture land, and it cannot be doubted that the local temperature is considerably affected by it. But the evaporation that cools the air diffuses through it, at the same time, a medium which powerfully resists the escape of heat from the earth by radiation. Visible vapors, fogs and clouds, it is well known, prevent frosts by obstructing radiation, or rather by reflecting back again the heat radiated by the earth, just as any mechanical screen would do. On the other hand, fogs and clouds intercept the rays of the sun also, and hinder its heat from reaching the earth. The invisible vapors given out by leaves impede the passage of heat reflected and radiated by the earth and by all terrestrial objects, bat oppose much less resistance to the transmission of direct solar heat, and indeed the beams of the sun seem more scorching when received through clear air charged with uncondensed moisture than after passing through a dry atmosphere. Hence the reduction of temperature by the evaporation of moisture from vegetation, though sensible, is less than it would be if water in the gaseous state were as impervious to heat given out by the sun as to that emitted by terrestrial objects. Total Influence of the Forest on Temperature. It has not yet been found practicable to measure, sum up, and equate the total influence of the forest, its processes and its products, dead and living, upon temperature, and investigators differ much in their conclusions on this subject. It seems probable that in every particular case the result is, if not determined, at least so much modified by local conditions which are infinitely varied, that no general formula is applicable to the question. In the report to which I referred on page 163, Gay-Lussac says; "In my opinion we have not yet any positive proof that the forest has, in itself, any real influence on the climate of a great country, or of a particular locality. By closely examining the effects of clearing off the woods, we should perhaps find that, far from being an evil, it is an advantage; but these questions are so complicated when they are examined in a climatological point of view, that the solution of them is very difficult, not to say impossible." Becquerel, on the other hand, considers it certain that in tropical climates the destruction of the forests is accompanied with an elevation of the mean temperature, and he thinks it highly probable that it has the same effect in the temperate zones. The following is the substance of his remarks on this subject: "Forests act as frigorific causes in three ways: "1. They shelter the ground against solar irradiation and maintain a greater humidity. "2. They produce a cutaneous transpiration by the leaves. "3. They multiply, by the expansion of their branches, the surfaces which are cooled by radiation. "These three causes acting with greater or less force, we must, in the study of the climatology of a country, take into account the proportion between the area of the forests and the surface which is bared of trees and covered with herbs and grasses. "We should be inclined to believe, a priori, according to the foregoing considerations, that the clearing of the woods, by raising the temperature and increasing the dryness of the air, ought to react on climate. There is no doubt that, if the vast desert of the Sahara were to become wooded in the course of ages, the sands would cease to be heated as much as at the present epoch, when the mean temperature is twenty-nine degrees [Centigrade, = 85 degrees Fahr.]. In that case, the ascending currents of warm air would cease, or be less warm, and would not contribute, by descending in our latitudes, to soften the climate of Western Europe. Thus the clearing of a great country may react on the climates of regions more or less remote from it. "The observations by Boussingault leave no doubt on this point. This writer determined the mean temperature of wooded and of cleared points, under the same latitude, and at the same elevation above the sea, in localities comprised between the eleventh degree of north and the fifth degree of south latitude, that is to say, in the portion of the tropics nearest to the equator, and where radiation tends powerfully during the night to lower the temperature under a sky without clouds." [Footnote: Becquerel, Des Climats, etc., pp. 139-141.] The result of these observations, which has been pretty generally adopted by physicists, is that the mean temperature of cleared land in the tropics appears to be about one degree Centigrade, or a little less than two degrees of Fahrenheit, above that of the forest. On page 147 of the volume just cited, Becquerel argues that, inasmuch as the same and sometimes a greater difference is found in favor of the open ground, at points within the tropics so elevated as to have a temperate or even a polar climate, we must conclude that theforests in Northern America exert a refrigerating influence equally powerful. But the conditions of the soil are so different in the two regions compared, that I think we cannot, with entire confidence, reason from the one to the other, and it is much to be desired that observations be made on the summer and winter temperature of both the air and the ground in the depths of the North American forests, before it is too late. Recent inquiries have introduced a new element into the problem of the influence of the forest on temperature, or rather into the question of the thermometrical effects of its destruction. I refer to the composition of the soil in respect to its hygroscopicity or aptitude to absorb humidity, whether in a liquid or a gaseous form, and to the conducting power of the particles of which it is composed. [Footnote: Composition, texture, and color of soil are important elements to be considered in estimating the effects of the removal of the forest upon its thermoscopic action. "Experience has proved," says Becquerel, "that when the soil is bared, it becomes more or less heated [by the rays of the sun] according to the nature and the color of the particles which compose it, and according to its humidity, and that, in the refrigeration resulting from radiation, we must take into the account the conducting power of those particles also. Other things being equal, siliceous and calcareous sands, compared in equal volumes with different argillaceous earths, with calcareous powder or dust, with humus, with arable and with garden earth, are the soils which least conduct heat. It is for this reason that sandy ground, in summer, maintains a high temperature even during the night. We may hence conclude that when a sandy soil is stripped of wood, the local temperature will be raised. After the sands follow successively argillaceous, arable, and garden ground, then humus, which occupies the lowest rank. "The retentive power of humus is but half as great as that of calcareous sand. We will add that the power or retaining heat is proportional to the density. It has also a relation to the magnitude of the particles. It is for this reason that ground covered with siliceous pebbles cools more slowly than siliceous sand, and that pebbly soils are best suited to the cultivation of the vine, because they advance the ripening of the grape more rapidly than chalky and clayey earths, which cool quickly. Hence we see that in examining the calorific effects of clearing forests, it is important to take into account the properties of the soil laid bare."--Becquerel, Des Climats et des Sols boises, p. 137.] The hygroscopicity of humus or vegetable earth is much greater than that of any mineral soil, and consequently forest ground, where humus abounds, absorbs the moisture of the atmosphere more rapidly and in larger proportion than common earth. The condensation of vapor by absorption develops heat, and consequently elevates the temperature of the soil which absorbs it, together with that of air in contact with the surface. Von Babo found the temperature of sandy ground thus raised from 68 degrees to 80 degrees F., that of soil rich in humus from 68 degrees to 88 degrees. The question of the influence of the woods on temperature does not, in the present state of our knowledge, admit of precise solution, and, unhappily, the primitive forests are disappearing so rapidly before the axe of the woodman, that we shall never be able to estimate with accuracy the climatological action of the natural wood, though all the physical functions of artificial plantations will, doubtless, one day be approximately known. But the value of trees as a mechanical screen to the soil they cover, and often to ground far to the leeward of them, is most abundantly established, and this agency alone is important enough to justify extensive plantation in all countries which do not enjoy this indispensable protection. Influence of Forests as Inorganic on the Humidity of the Air and the Earth. The most important hygroscopic as well as thermoscopic influence of the forest is, no doubt, that which it exercises on the humidity of the air and the earth, and this climatic action it exerts partly as dead, partly as living matter. By its interposition as a curtain between the sky and the ground it both checks evaporation from the earth, and mechanically intercepts a certain proportion of the dew and the lighter showers, which would otherwise moisten the surface of the soil, and restores it to the atmosphere by exhalation; [Footnote: Mangotti had observed and described, in his usual picturesque way, the retention of rain-water by the foliage and bark of trees, but I do not know that any attempts were made to measure the quantity thus intercepted before the experiments of Becquerel, communicated to the Academy of Sciences in 1866. These experiments embraced three series of observations continued respectively for periods of a year, a month, and two days. According to Becquerel's measurements, the quantity falling on bare and on wooded soil respectively was as 1 to 0.07; 1 to 0.5; and 1 to 0.6, or, in other words, he found that only from five-tenths to sixty-seven hundredths of the precipitation reached the ground.--Comptes Rendus de l'Academie des Sciences, 1866. It seemed, indeed, improbable that in rain-storms which last not hours but whole days in succession, so large a proportion of the downfall should continue to be intercepted by forest vegetation after the leaves, the bark, and the whole framework of the trees were thoroughly wet, but the conclusions of this eminent physicist appear to have been generally accepted until the very careful experiments of Mathieu at the Forest-School of Nancy were made known. The observations of Mathieu were made in a plantation of deciduous trees forty-two years old, and were continued through the entire years 1866, 1867, and 1868. The result was that the precipitation in the wood was to that in an open glade of several acres near the forest station as 043 to 1,000, and the proportion in each of the three years was nearly identical. According to Mathieu, then, only 57 thousandths or 5.7 per cent of the precipitation is intercepted by trees.--Surrell, Etude sur les Torrents, 2d ed., ii., p. 98. By order of the Direction of the Forests of the Canton of Berne, a series of experiments on this subject was commenced at the beginning of the year 1869. During the first seven months of the year (the reports for which alone I have seen), including, of course, the season when the foliage is most abundant, as well as that when it is thinnest, the pluviometers in the woods received only fifteen per cent less than those in the open grounds in the vicinity.--Risler, in Revue des Eaux et Forets, of 10th January, 1870.] while in heavier rains, the large drops which fall upon the leaves and branches are broken into smaller ones, and consequently strike the ground with less mechanical force, or are perhaps even dispersed into vapor without reaching it. [Footnote: We are not, indeed, to suppose that the condensation of vapor and the evaporation of water are going on in the same stratum of air at the same time, or, in other words, that vapor is condensed into rain-drops, and rain-drops evaporated, under the same conditions; but rain formed in one stratum may fall through another, where vapor would not be condensed. Two saturated strata of different temperatures may be brought into contact in the higher regions, and discharge large rain-drops, which, it not divided by some obstruction, will reach the ground, though passing through strata which would vaporize them if they were in a state of more minute division.] The vegetable mould, resulting from the decomposition of leaves and of wood, serves as a perpetual mulch to forest-soil by carpeting the ground with a spongy covering which obstructs the evaporation from the mineral earth below, [Footnote: The only direct experiments known to me on the evaporation from the SURFACE of the forest are those of Mathieu.--Surrell, Etude sur les Torrents, 2d ed., ii, p. 99. These experiments were continued from March to December, inclusive, of the year 1868. It was found that during those months the evaporation from a recipient placed on the ground in a plantation of deciduous trees sixty-two years old, was less than one-fifth of that from a recipient of like form and dimensions placed in the open country.] drinks up the rains and melting snows that would otherwise flow rapidly over the surface and perhaps be conveyed to the distant sea, and then slowly gives out, by evaporation, infiltration, and percolation, the moisture thus imbibed. The roots, too, penetrate far below the superficial soil, conduct water along their surface to the lower depths to which they reach, and thus by partially draining the superior strata, remove a certain quantity of moisture out of the reach of evaporation. The Forest as Organic. These are the principal modes in which the humidity of the atmosphere is affected by the forest regarded as lifeless matter. Let us inquire how its organic processes act upon this meteorological element. The commonest observation shows that the wood and bark of living trees are always more or less pervaded with watery and other fluids, one of which, the sap, is very abundant in trees of deciduous foliage when the buds begin to swell and the leaves to develop themselves in the spring. This fluid is drawn principally, if not entirely, from the ground by the absorbent action of the roots, for though Schacht and some other eminent botanical physiologists have maintained that water is absorbed by the leaves and bark of trees, yet most experiments lead to the contrary result, and it is now generally held that no water is taken in by the pores of vegetables. Late observations by Cailletet, in France, however, tend to the establishment of a new doctrine on this subject which solves many difficulties and will probably be accepted by botanists as definitive. Cailletet finds that under normal conditions, that is, when the soil is humid enough to supply sufficient moisture through the roots, no water is absorbed by the leaves, buds, or bark of plants, but when the roots are unable to draw from the earth the requisite quantity of this fluid, the vegetable pores in contact with the atmosphere absorb it from that source. Popular opinion, indeed, supposes that all the vegetable fluids, during the entire period of growth, are drawn from the bosom of the earth, and that the wood and other products of the tree are wholly formed from matter held in solution in the water abstracted by the roots from the ground. This is an error, for the solid matter of the tree, in a certain proportion not important to our present inquiry, is received from the atmosphere in a gaseous form, through the pores of the leaves and of the young shoots, and, as we have just seen, moisture is sometimes supplied to trees by the atmosphere. The amount of water taken up by the roots, however, is vastly greater than that imbibed through the leaves and bark, especially at the season when the sap is most abundant, and when the leaves are yet in embryo. The quantity of water thus received from the air and the earth, in a single year, even by a wood of only a hundred acres, is very great, though experiments are wanting to furnish the data for even an approximate estimate of its measure; for only the vaguest conclusions can be drawn from the observations which have been made on the imbibition and exhalation of water by trees and other plants reared in artificial conditions diverse from those of the natural forest. [Footnote: The experiments of Hales and others on the absorption and exhalation of vegetables are of high physiological interest; but observations on sunflowers, cabbages, hops, and single branches of isolated trees, growing in artificially prepared soils and under artificial conditions, furnish no trustworthy data for computing the quantity of water received and given off by the natural wood.] Flow of Sap. The amount of sap which can be withdrawn from living trees furnishes, not indeed a measure of the quantity of water sucked up by their roots from the ground--for we cannot extract from a tree its whole moisture--but numerical data which may aid the imagination to form a general notion of the powerful action of the forest as an absorbent of humidity from the earth. The only forest-tree known to Europe and North America, the sap of which is largely enough applied to economical uses to have made the amount of its flow a matter of practical importance and popular observation, is the sugar maple, Acer saccharinum, of the Anglo-American Provinces and States. In the course of a single "sugar season," which lasts ordinarily from twenty-five to thirty days, a sugar maple two feet in diameter will yield not less than twenty gallons of sap, and sometimes much more. [Footnote: Emerson (Trees of Massachusetts. p. 403) mentions a maple six feet in diameter, as having yielded a barrel, or thirty-one and a half gallons, of sap in twenty-four hours, and another, the dimensions of which are not stated, as having yielded one hundred and seventy-five gallons in the course of the season. The Cultivator, an American agricultural journal, for June, 1842, states that twenty gallons of sap were drawn in eighteen hours from a single maple, two and a half feet in diameter, in the town of Warner, New Hampshire, and the truth of this account has been verified by personal inquiry made in my behalf. This tree was of the original forest growth, and had been left standing when the ground around it was cleared. It was tapped only every other year, and then with six or eight incisions. Dr. Williams (History of Vermont, i., p. 01) says: "A man much employed in milking maple sugar, found that, for twenty-one days together, a maple-tree discharged seven and a half gallons per day." An intelligent correspondent, of much experience in the manufacture of maple sugar, writes me that a second-growth maple, of about two feet in diameter, standing in open ground, tapped with four incisions, has, for several seasons, generally run eight gallons per day in fair weather. He speaks of a very large tree, from which sixty gallons were drawn in the course of a season, and of another, something more than three feet through, which made forty-two pounds of wet sugar, and must have yielded not less than one hundred and fifty gallons.] This, however, is but a trifling proportion of the water abstracted from the earth by the roots during this season; for all this fluid runs from two or three incisions or auger-holes, so narrow as to intercept the current of comparatively few sap vessels, and besides, experience shows that large as is the quantity withdrawn from the circulation, it is relatively too small to affect very sensibly the growth of the tree. [Footnote: Tapping does not check the growth, but does injure the quality of the wood of maples. The wood of trees often tapped is lighter and less dense than that of trees which have not been tapped, and gives less heat in burning. No difference has been observed in the bursting of the buds of tapped and untapped trees.] The number of large maple-trees on an acre is frequently not less than fifty, [Footnote: Dr. Rush, in a letter to Jefferson, states the number of maples fit for tapping on an acre at from thirty to fifty. "This," observes my correspondent, "is correct with regard to the original growth, which is always more or less intermixed with other trees; but in second growth, composed of maples alone, the number greatly exceeds this. I have had the maples on a quarter of an acre, which I thought about an average of second-growth 'maple orchards,' counted. The number was found to be fifty-two, of which thirty-two were ten inches or more in diameter, and, of course, large enough to tap. This gives two hundred and eight trees to the acre, one hundred and twenty-eight of which were of proper size for tapping."] and of course the quantity of moisture abstracted from the soil by this tree alone is measured by thousands of gallons to the acre. The sugar orchards, as they are called, contain also many young maples too small for tapping, and numerous other trees--two of which, at least, the black birch, Betula lenta, and yellow birch, Betula excelsa, both very common in the same climate, are far more abundant in sap than the maple [Footnote: The correspondent already referred to informs me that a black birch, tapped about noon with two incisions, was found the next morning to have yielded sixteen gallons. Dr. Williams (History of Vermont, i., p. 91) says: "A large birch, tapped in the spring, ran at the rate of five gallons an hour when first tapped. Eight or nine days after, it was found to run at the rate of about two and a half gallons an hour, and at the end of fifteen days the discharge continued in nearly the same quantity. The sap continued to flow for four or five weeks, and it was the opinion of the observers that it must have yielded as much as sixty barrels [l,800 gallons]."]--are scattered among the sugar-trees; for the North American native forests are remarkable for the mixture of their crops. The sap of the maple, and of other trees with deciduous leaves which grow in the same climate, flows most freely in the early spring, and especially in clear weather, when the nights are frosty and the days warm; for it is then that the melting snows supply the earth with moisture in the justest proportion, and that the absorbent power of the roots is stimulated to its highest activity. When the buds are ready to burst, and the green leaves begin to show themselves beneath their scaly covering, the ground has become drier, the absorption by the roots is diminished, and the sap, being immediately employed in the formation of the foliage, can be extracted from the stem in only small quantities. Absorption and Exhalation by Foliage. The leaves now commence the process of absorption, and imbibe both uncombined gases and an unascertained but probably inconsiderable quantity of aqueous vapor from the humid atmosphere of spring which bathes them. The organic action of the tree, as thus far described, tends to the desiccation of air and earth; but when we consider what volumes of water are daily absorbed by a large tree, and how small a proportion of the weight of this fluid consists of matter which, at the period when the flow of sap is freest, enters into new combinations, and becomes a part of the solid framework of the vegetable, or a component of its deciduous products, it becomes evident that the superfluous moisture must somehow be carried back again almost as rapidly as it flows into the tree. At the very commencement of vegetation in spring, some of this fluid certainly escapes through the buds, the nascent foliage, and the pores of the bark, and vegetable physiology tells us that there is a current of sap towards the roots as well as from them. [Footnote: "The elaborated sap, passing out of the leaves, is received into the inner bark, . . . and a part of what descends finds its way even to the ends of the roots, and is all along diffused laterally into the stem, where it meets and mingles with the ascending crude sap or raw material. So there is no separate circulation of the two kinds of sap; and no crude sap exists separately in any part of the plant. Even in the root, where it enters, this mingles at once with some elaborated sap already there."--Gray, How Plants Grow, Section 273.] I do not know that the exudation of water into the earth, through the bark or at the extremities of these latter organs, has been proved, but the other known modes of carrying off the surplus do not seem adequate to dispose of it at the almost leafless period when it is most abundantly received, and it is possible that the roots may, to some extent, drain as well as flood the water-courses of their stem. Later in the season the roots absorb less, and the now developed leaves exhale an increased quantity of moisture into the air. In any event, all the water derived by the growing tree from the atmosphere and the ground is parted with by transpiration or exudation, after having surrendered to the plant the small proportion of matter required for vegetable growth which it held in solution or suspension. [Footnote: Ward's tight glazed cases for raising and especially for transporting plants, go far to prove that water only circulates through vegetables, and is again and again absorbed and transpired by organs appropriated to these functions. Seeds, growing grasses, shrubs, or trees planted in proper earth, moderately watered and covered with a glass bell or close frame of glass, live for months, and even years, with only the original store of air and water. In one of Ward's early experiments, a spire of grass and a fern, which sprang up in a corked bottle containing a little moist earth introduced as a bed for a snail, lived and flourished for eighteen years without a new supply of either fluid. In these boxes the plants grow till the enclosed air is exhausted of the gaseous constituents of vegetation, and till the water has yielded up the assimilable matter it held in solution, and dissolved and supplied to the roots the nutriment contained in the earth in which they are planted. After this, they continue for a long time in a state of vegetable sleep, but if fresh air and water be introduced into the cases, or the plants be transplanted into open ground, they rouse themselves to renewed life, and grow vigorously, without appearing to have suffered from their long imprisonment. The water transpired by the leaves is partly absorbed by the earth directly from the air, partly condensed on the glass, along which it trickles down to the earth, enters the roots again, and thus continually repeats the circuit. See Aus der Natur, 21, B. S. 537.] The hygrometrical equilibrium is then restored, so far as this: the tree yields up again the moisture it had drawn from the earth and the air, though it does not return it each to each; for the vapor carried off by transpiration greatly exceeds the quantity of water absorbed by the foliage from the atmosphere, and the amount, if any, carried back to the ground by the roots. The present estimates of some eminent vegetable physiologists in regard to the quantity of aqueous vapor exhaled by trees and taken up by the atmosphere are much greater than those of former inquirers. Direct and satisfactory experiments on this point are wanting, and it is not easy to imagine how they could be made on a sufficiently extensive and comprehensive scale. Our conclusions must therefore be drawn from observations on small plants, or separate branches of trees, and of course are subject to much uncertainty. Nevertheless, Schleiden, arguing from such analogies, comes to the surprising result, that a wood evaporates ten times as much water as it receives from atmospheric precipitation. [Footnote: Fur Baum und Wald, pp. 46, 47, notes. Pfaff, too, experimenting on branches of a living oak, weighed immediately after being cut from the tree, and again after an exposure to the air for three minutes, and computing the superficial measure of all the leaves of the tree, concludes that an oak-tree evaporates, during the season of growth, eight and a half times the mean amount of rain-fall on an area equal to that shaded by the tree.] In the Northern and Eastern States of the Union, the mean precipitation during the period of forest growth, that is from the swelling of the buds in the spring to the ripening of the fruit, the hardening of the young shoots, and the full perfection of the other annual products of the tree, exceeds on the average twenty-four inches. Taking this estimate, the evaporation from the forest would be equal to a precipitation of two hundred and forty inches, or very nearly one hundred and fifty standard gallons to the square foot of surface. The first questions which suggest themselves upon this statement are: what becomes of this immense quantity of water and from what source does the tree derive it We are told in reply that it is absorbed from the air by the humus and mineral soil of the wood, and supplied again to the tree through its roots, by a circulation analogous to that observed in Ward's air-tight cases. When we recall the effect produced on the soil even of a thick wood by a rain-fall of one inch, we find it hard to believe that two hundred and forty times that quantity, received by the ground between early spring and autumn, would not keep it in a state of perpetual saturation, and speedily convert the forest into a bog. No such power of absorption of moisture by the earth from the atmosphere, or anything approaching it, has ever been shown by experiment, and all scientific observation contradicts the supposition. Schubler found that in seventy-two hours thoroughly dried humus, which is capable of taking up twice its own weight of water in the liquid state, absorbed from the atmosphere only twelve per cent. of its weight of humidity; garden-earth five and one-fifth per cent. and ordinary cultivated soil two and one-third per cent. After seventy-two hours, and, in most of his experiments with thirteen different earths, after forty-eight hours, no further absorption took place. Wilhelm, experimenting with air-dried field-earth, exposed to air in contact with water and protected by a bell-glass, found that the absorption amounted in seventy-two hours to two per cent. and a very small fraction, nearly the whole of which was taken up in the first forty-eight hours. In other experiments with carefully heat-dried field-soil, the absorption was five per cent. in eighty-four hours, and when the water was first warmed to secure the complete saturation of the air, air-dried garden-earth absorbed five and one-tenth per cent. in seventy-two hours. In nature, the conditions are never so favorable to the absorption of vapor as in those experiments. The ground is more compact and of course offers less surface to the air, and, especially in the wood, it is already in a state approaching saturation. Hence, both these physicists conclude that the quantity of aqueous vapor absorbed by the earth from the air is so inconsiderable "that we can ascribe to it no important influence on vegetation." [Footnote: Wilhelm, Der Boden und das Wasser, pp. 14,20.] Besides this, trees often grow luxuriantly on narrow ridges, on steep declivities, on partially decayed stumps many feet above the ground, on walls of high buildings, and on rocks, in situations where the earth within reach of their roots could not possibly contain the tenth part of the water which, according to Schleiden and Pfaff, they evaporate in a day. There are, too, forests of great extent on high bluffs and well-drained table-lands, where there can exist, neither in the subsoil nor in infiltration from neighboring regions, an adequate source of supply for such consumption. It must be remembered, also, that in the wood the leaves of the trees shade each other, and only the highest stratum of foliage receives the full influence of heat and light; and besides, the air in the forest is almost stagnant, while in the experiments of Unger, Marshal, Vaillant, Pfaff and others, the branches were freely exposed to light, sun, and atmospheric currents. Such observations can authorize no conclusions respecting the quantitative action of leaves of forest trees in normal conditions. Further, allowing two hundred days for the period of forest vital action, the wood must, according to Schleiden's position, exhale a quantity of moisture equal to an inch and one-fifth of precipitation per day, and it is hardly conceivable that so large a volume of aqueous vapor, in addition to the supply from other sources, could be diffused through the ambient atmosphere without manifesting its presence by ordinary hygrometrical tests much more energetically than it has been proved to do, and in fact, the observations recorded by Ebermayer show that though the RELATIVE humidity of the atmosphere is considerably greater in the cooler temperature of the wood, its ABSOLUTE humidity does not sensibly differ from that of the air in open ground. [Footnote: Ebermeyer, Die Physikalischen, Einwirkungen des Waldes, i., pp. 150 et seqq. It may be well here to guard my readers against the common error which supposes that a humid condition of the AIR is necessarily indicated by the presence of fog or visible vapor. The air is rendered humid by containing INVISIBLE vapor, and it becomes drier by the condensation of such vapor into fog, composed of solid globules or of hollow vesicles of water--for it is a disputed point whether the particles of fog are solid or vesicular. Hence, though the ambient atmosphere may hold in suspension, in the form of fog, water enough to obscure its transparency, and to produce the sensation of moisture on the skin, the air, in which the finely divided water floats, may be charged with even less than an average proportion of humidity.] The daily discharge of a quantity of aqueous vapor corresponding to a rain-fall of one inch and a fifth into the cool air of the forest would produce a perpetual shower, or at least drizzle, unless, indeed, we suppose a rapidity of absorption and condensation by the ground, and of transmission through the soil to the roots and through them and the vessels of the tree to the leaves, much greater than has been shown by direct observation. Notwithstanding the high authority of Schleiden, therefore, it seems impossible to reconcile his estimates with facts commonly observed and well established by competent investigators. Hence the important question of the supply, demand, and expenditure of water by forest vegetation must remain undecided, until it can be determined by something approaching to satisfactory direct experiment. [Footnote: According to Cezanne, Surrell, Etude sur les Torrents, 2e edition, ii., p. 100, experiments reported in the Revue des Eaux et Forets for August, 1868, showed the evaporation from a living tree to be "almost insignificant." Details are not given.] Balance of Conflicting Influences of Forest on Atmospheric Heat and Humidity. We have shown that the forest, considered as dead matter, tends to diminish the moisture of the air, by preventing the sun's rays from reaching the ground and evaporating the water that falls upon the surface, and also by spreading over the earth a spongy mantle which sucks up and retains the humidity it receives from the atmosphere, while, at the same time, this covering acts in the contrary direction by accumulating, in a reservoir not wholly inaccessible to vaporizing influences, the water of precipitation which might otherwise suddenly sink deep into the bowels of the earth, or flow by superficial channels to other climatic regions. We now see that, as a living organism, it tends, on the one hand, to diminish the humidity of the air by sometimes absorbing moisture from it, and, on the other, to increase that humidity by pouring out into the atmosphere, in a vaporous form, the water it draws up through its roots. This last operation, at the same time, lowers the temperature of the air in contact with or proximity to the wood, by the same law as in other cases of the conversion of water into vapor. As I have repeatedly said, we cannot measure the value of any one of those elements of climatic disturbance, raising or lowering of temperature, increase or diminution of humidity, nor can we say that in any one season, any one year, or any one fixed cycle, however long or short, they balance and compensate each other. They are sometimes, but certainly not always, contemporaneous in their action, whether their tendency is in the same or in opposite directions, and, therefore, their influence is sometimes cumulative, sometimes conflicting; but, upon the whole, their general effect is to mitigate extremes of atmospheric heat and cold, moisture and drought. They serve as equalizers of temperature and humidity, and it is highly probable that, in analogy with most other works and workings of nature, they, at certain or uncertain periods, restore the equilibrium which, whether as lifeless masses or as living organisms, they may have temporarily disturbed. [Footnote: There is one fact which I have nowhere seen noticed, but which seems to me to have an important bearing on the question whether forests tend to maintain an equilibrium between the various causes of hygroscopic action, and consequently to keep the air within their precincts in an approximately constant condition, so far as this meteorological element is concerned. I refer to the absence of fog or visible vapor in thick woods in full leaf, even when the air of the neighboring open grounds is so heavily charged with condensed vapor as completely to obscure the sun. The temperature of the atmosphere in the forest is not subject to so sudden and extreme variations as that of cleared ground, but at the same time it is far from constant, and so large a supply of vapor as is poured out by the foliage of the trees could not fail to be sometimes condensed into fog by the same causes as in the case of the adjacent meadows, which are often covered with a dense mist while the forest-air remains clear, were there not some potent counteracting influence always in action. This influence, I believe, is to be found partly in the equalization of the temperature of the forest, and partly in the balance between the humidity exhaled by the trees and that absorbed and condensed invisibly by the earth.] When, therefore, man destroys these natural harmonizors of climatic discords, he sacrifices an important conservative power, though it is far from certain that he has thereby affected the mean, however much he may have exaggerated the extremes of atmospheric temperature and humidity, or, in other words, may have increased the range and lengthened the scale of thermometric and hygrometric variation. Special Influence of Woods on Precipitation. With the question of the action of forests upon temperature and upon atmospheric humidity is intimately connected that of their influence upon precipitation, which they may affect by increasing or diminishing the warmth of the air and by absorbing or exhaling uncombincd gas and aqueous vapor. The forest being a natural arrangement, the presumption is that it exercises a conservative action, or at least a compensating one, and consequently that its destruction must tend to produce pluviometrical disturbances as well as thermometrical variations. And this is the opinion of perhaps the greatest number of observers. Indeed, it is almost impossible to suppose that, under certain conditions of time and place, the quantity and the periods of rain should not depend, more or less, upon the presence or absence of forests; and without insisting that the removal of the forest has diminished the sum-total of snow and rain, we may well admit that it has lessened the quantity which annually falls within particular limits. Various theoretical considerations make this probable, the most obvious argument, perhaps, being that drawn from the generally admitted fact, that the summer and even the mean temperature of the forest is below that of the open country in the same latitude. If the air in a wood is cooler than that around it, it must reduce the temperature of the atmospheric stratum immediately above it, and, of course, whenever a saturated current sweeps over it, it must produce precipitation which would fall upon it, or at a greater or less distance from it. We must here take into the account a very important consideration. It is not universally or even generally true, that the atmosphere returns its condensed humidity to the local source from which it receives it. The air is constantly in motion, --howling tempests scour amain From sea to land, from land to sea; [Footnote: Und Sturme brausen um die Wette Vom Meer aufs Land, vom Land aufs Meer. Goethe, Faust, Song of the Archangels.] and, therefore, it is always probable that the evaporation drawn up by the atmosphere from a given river, or sea, or forest, or meadow, will be discharged by precipitation, not at or near the point where it rose, but at a distance of miles, leagues, or even degrees. The currents of the upper air are invisible, and they leave behind them no landmark to record their track. We know not whence they come, or whither they go. We have a certain rapidly increasing acquaintance with the laws of general atmospheric motion, but of the origin and limits, the beginning and end of that motion, as it manifests itself at any particular time and place, we know nothing. We cannot say where or when the vapor, exhaled to-day from the lake on which we float, will be condensed and fall; whether it will waste itself on a barren desert, refresh upland pastures, descend in snow on Alpine heights, or contribute to swell a distant torrent which shall lay waste square miles of fertile corn-land; nor do we know whether the rain which feeds our brooklets is due to the transpiration from a neighboring forest, or to the evaporation from a far-off sea. If, therefore, it were proved that the annual quantity of rain and dew is now as great on the plains of Castile, for example, as it was when they were covered with the native forest, it would by no means follow that those woods did not augment the amount of precipitation elsewhere. The whole problem of the pluviometrical influence of the forest, general or local, is so exceedingly complex and difficult that it cannot, with our present means of knowledge, be decided upon a priori grounds. It must now be regarded as a question of fact which would probably admit of scientific explanation if it were once established what the actual fact is. Unfortunately, the evidence is conflicting in tendency, and sometimes equivocal in interpretation, but I believe that a majority of the foresters and physicists who have studied the question are of opinion that in many, if not in all cases, the destruction of the woods has been followed by a diminution in the annual quantity of rain and dew. Indeed, it has long been a popularly settled belief that vegetation and the condensation and fall of atmospheric moisture are reciprocally necessary to each other, and even the poets sing of Afric's barren sand, Where nought can grow, because it raineth not, And where no rain can fall to bless the land, Because nought grows there. [Footnote: Det golde Strog i Afrika, Der Intet voxe kan, da ei det regner, Og, omvendt, ingen Regn kan falde, da Der Intet voxer. Paudan-Muller, Adam Hamo, ii., 408.] Before going further with the discussion, however, it is well to remark that the comparative rarity or frequency of inundations in earlier or later centuries is not necessarily, in most cases not probably, entitled to any weight whatever, as a proof that more or less rain fell formerly than now; because the accumulation of water in the channel of a river depends far less upon the quantity of precipitation in its valley, than upon the rapidity with which it is conducted, on or under the surface of the ground, to the central artery that drains the basin. But this point will be more fully discussed in a subsequent chapter. In writers on the subject we are discussing, we find many positive assertions about the diminution of rain in countries which have been stripped of wood within the historic period, but these assertions very rarely rest upon any other proof than the doubtful recollection of unscientific observers, and I am unable to refer to a single instance where the records of the rain-gauge, for a considerable period before and after the felling or planting of extensive woods, can be appealed to in support of either side of the question. The scientific reputation of many writers who have maintained that precipitation has been diminished in particular localities by the destruction of forests, or augmented by planting them, has led the public to suppose that their assertions rested on sufficient proof. We cannot affirm that in none of these cases did such proof exist, but I am not aware that it has ever been produced. [Footnote: Among recent writers, Clave, Schacht, Sir John F. W. Herschel, Hohenstein, Barth, Asbjornsen, Boussingault, and others, maintain that forests tend to produce rain and clearings to diminish it, and they refer to numerous facts of observation in support of this doctrine; but in none of these does it appear that these observations are supported by actual pluviometrical measure. So far as I know, the earliest expression of the opinion that forests promote precipitation is that attributed to Christopher Columbus, in the Historie del S. D. Fernando Colombo, Venetia, 157l, cap. lviii., where it is said that the Admiral ascribed the daily showers which fell in the West Indies about vespers to "the great forests and trees of those countries," and remarked that the same effect was formerly produced by the same cause in the Canary and Madeira Islands and in the Azores, but that "now that the many woods and trees that covered them have been felled, there are not produced so many clouds and rains as before." Mr. H. Harrisse, in his very learned and able critical essay, Fernand Colomb, sa Vie et ses Oeuvres, Paris, 1872, has made it at least extremely probable that the Historie is a spurious work. The compiler may have found this observation in some of the writings of Columbus now lost, but however that may be, the fact, which Humboldt mentions in Cosmos with much interest, still remains, that the doctrine in question was held, if not by the great discoverer himself, at least by one of his pretended biographers, as early as the year 1571.] The effect of the forest on precipitation, then, is by no means free from doubt, and we cannot positively affirm that the total annual quantity of rain is even locally diminished or increased by the destruction of the woods, though both theoretical considerations and the balance of testimony strongly favor the opinion that more rain falls in wooded than in open countries. One important conclusion, at least, upon the meteorological influence of forests is certain and undisputed: the proposition, namely, that, within their own limits, and near their own borders, they maintain a more uniform degree of humidity in the atmosphere than is observed in cleared grounds. Scarcely less can it be questioned that they tend to promote the frequency of showers, and, if they do not augment the amount of precipitation, they probably equalize its distribution through the different seasons. [Footnote: The strongest direct evidence which I am able to refer to in support of the proposition that the woods produce even a local augmentation of precipitation is furnished by the observations of Mathieu, sub-director of the Forest-School at Nancy. His pluviometrical measurements, continued for three years, 1866-1868, show that during that period the annual mean of rain-fall in the centre of the wooded district of Cinq-Tranchees, at Belle Fontaine on the borders of the forest, and at Amance, in an open cultivated territory in the same vicinity, was respectively as the numbers 1,000, 957, and 853. The alleged augmentation of rain-fall in Lower Egypt, in consequence of large plantations by Mehemet Ali, is very frequently appealed to as a proof of this influence of the forest, and this case has become a regular common-place in all discussions of the question. It is, however, open to the same objection as the alleged instances of the diminution of precipitation in consequence of the felling of the forest. This supposed increase in the frequency and quantity of rain in Lower Egypt is, I think, an error, or at least not an established fact. I have heard it disputed on the spot by intelligent Franks, whose residence in that country began before the plantations of Mehemet Ali and Ibrahim Pacha, and I have been assured by them that meterological observations, made at Alexandria about the begiuning of this century, show an annual fall of rain as great as is usual at this day. The mere fact that it did not rain during the French occupation is not conclusive. Having experienced a gentle shower of nearly twenty-four hours' duration in Upper Egypt, I inquired of the local governor in relation to the frequency of this phenomenon, and was told by him that not of drop of rain had fallen at that point for more than two years previous. The belief in the increase of rain in Egypt rests almost entirely on the observations of Marshal Marmont, and the evidence collected by him in 1836. His conclusions have been disputed, if not confuted, by Joinard and others, and are probably erroneous. See Foissac, Meteorologie, German translation, pp. 634-639. It certainly sometimes rains briskly at Cairo, but evaporation is exceedingly rapid in Egypt--as any one who ever saw a Fellah woman wash a napkin in the Nile, and dry it by shaking it a few moments in the air, can testify; and a heap of grain, wet a few inches below the surface, would probably dry again without injury. At any rate, the Egyptian Government often has vast quantities of wheat stored at Boulak in uncovered yards through the winter, though it must be admitted that the slovenliness and want of foresight in Oriental life, public and private, are such that we cannot infer the safety of any practice followed in the East merely from its long continuance. Grain, however, may be long kept in the open air in climates much less dry than that of Egypt, without injury, except to the superficial layers; for moisture does not penetrate to a great depth in a heap of grain once well dried and kept well aired. When Louis IX. was making his preparations for his campaign in the East, he had large quantities of wine and grain purchased in the Island of Cyprus, and stored up for two years to await his arrival. "When we were come to Cyprus," says Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis, Section 72, 73, "we found there greate foison of the Kynge's purveyance. . . The wheate and the barley they had piled up in greate heapes in the feeldes, and to looke vpon, they were like vnto mountaynes; for the raine, the whyche hadde beaten vpon the wheate now a longe whyle, had made it to sproute on the toppe, so that it seemed as greene grasse. And whanne they were mynded to carrie it to Egypte, they brake that sod of greene herbe, and dyd finde under the same the wheate and the barley, as freshe as yf menne hadde but nowe thrashed it."] Total Climatic Influence of the Forest. Aside from the question of local disturbances and their compensations, it does not seem probable that the forests sensibly affect the general mean of atmospheric temperature of the globe, or the total quantity of precipitation, or even that they had this influence when their extent was vastly greater than at present. The waters cover about three-fourths of the face of the earth, and if we deduct the frozen zones, the peaks and crests of lofty mountains and their craggy slopes, the Sahara and other great African and Asiatic deserts, and all such other portions of the solid surface as are permanently unfit for the growth of wood, we shall find that probably not one-tenth of the total superficies of our planet was ever, at any one time in the present geological period, covered with forests. Besides this, the distribution of forest land, of desert, and of water, is such as to reduce the possible influence of the woods to a low expression; for the forests are, in large proportion, situated in cold or temperate climates, where the action of the sun is comparatively feeble both in elevating temperature and in promoting evaporation; while, in the torrid zone, the desert and the sea--the latter of which always presents an evaporable surface--enormously preponderate. It is, upon the whole, not probable that so small an extent of forest, so situated, could produce a sensible influence on the general climate of the globe, though it might appreciably affect the local action of all climatic elements. The total annual amount of solar heat absorbed and radiated by the earth, and the sum of terrestrial evaporation and atmospheric precipitation, must be supposed constant; but the distribution of heat and of humidity is exposed to disturbance in both time and place by a multitude of local causes, among which the presence or absence of the forest is doubtless one. So far as we are able to sum up the results, it would appear that, in countries in the temperate zone still chiefly covered with wood, the summers would be cooler, moister, shorter, the winters milder, drier, longer, than in the same regions after the removal of the forest, and that the condensation and precipitation of atmospheric moisture would be, if not greater in total quantity, more frequent and less violent in discharge. The slender historical evidence we possess seems to point to the same conclusion, though there is some conflict of testimony and of opinion on this point. Among the many causes which, as we have seen, tend to influence the general result, the mechanical action of the forest, if not more important, is certainly more obvious and direct than the immediate effects of its organic processes. The felling of the woods involves the sacrifice of a valuable protection against the violence of chilling winds and the loss of the shelter afforded to the ground by the thick coating of leaves which the forest sheds upon it and by the snow which the woods prevent from blowing away, or from melting in the brief thaws of winter. I have already remarked that bare ground freezes much deeper than that which is covered by beds of leaves, and when the earth is thickly coated with snow, the strata frozen before it fell begin to thaw. It is not uncommon to find the ground in the woods, where the snow lies two or three feet deep, entirely free from frost, when the atmospheric temperature has been for several weeks below the freezing-point, and for some days even below the zero of Fahrenheit. When the ground is cleared and brought under cultivation, the leaves are ploughed into the soil and decomposed, and the snow, especially upon knolls and eminences, is blown off, or perhaps half thawed, several times during the winter. The water from the melting snow runs into the depressions, and when, after a day or two of warm sunshine or tepid rain, the cold returns, it is consolidated to ice, and the bared ridges and swells of earth are deeply frozen. [Footnote: I have seen, in Northern New England, the surface of the open ground frozen to the depth of twenty-two inches, in the month of November, when in the forest-earth no frost was discoverable; and later in the winter, I have known an exposed sand-knoll to remain frozen six feet deep, after the ground in the woods was completely thawed.] It requires many days of mild weather to raise the temperature of soil in this condition, and of the air in contact with it, to that of the earth in the forests of the same climatic region. Flora is already plaiting her sylvan wreath before the corn-flowers which are to deck the garland of Ceres have waked from their winter's sleep; and it is probably not a popular error to believe that, where man has substituted his artificial crops for the spontaneous harvest of nature, spring delays her coming. [Footnote: The conclusion arrived at by Noah Webster, in his very learned and able paper on the supposed change in the temperature of winter, read before the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1799, was as follows: "From a careful comparison of these facts, it appears that the weather, in modern winters, in the United States, is more inconstant than when the earth was covered with woods, at the first settlement of Europeans in the country; that the warm weather of autumn extends further into the winter months, and the cold weather of winter and spring encroaches upon the summer; that, the wind being more variable, snow is less permanent, and perhaps the same remark may be applicable to the ice of the rivers. These effects seem to result necessarily from the greater quantity of heat accumulated in the earth in summer since the ground has been cleared of wood and exposed to the rays of the sun, and to the greater depth of frost in the earth in winter by the exposure of its uncovered surface to the cold atmosphere."--Collection of Papers by Noah Webster, p. 162.] There are, in the constitution and action of the forest, many forces, organic and inorganic, which unquestionably tend powerfully to produce meteorological effects, and it may, therefore, be assumed as certain that they must and do produce such effects, UNLESS they compensate and balance each other, and herein lies the difficulty of solving the question. To some of these elements late observations give a new importance. For example, the exhalation of aqueous vapor by plants is now believed to be much greater, and the absorption of aqueous vapor by them much less, than was formerly supposed, and Tyndall's views on the relations of vapor to atmospheric heat give immense value to this factor in the problem. In like manner the low temperature of the surface of snow and the comparatively high temperature of its lower strata, and its consequent action on the soil beneath, and the great condensation of moisture by snow, are facts which seem to show that the forest, by protecting great surfaces of snow from melting, must inevitably exercise a great climatic influence. If to these influences we add the mechanical action of the woods in obstructing currents of wind, and diminishing the evaporation and refrigeration which such currents produce, we have an accumulation of forces which MUST manifest great climatic effects, unless--which is not proved and cannot be presumed--they neutralize each other. These are points hitherto little considered in the discussion, and it seems difficult to deny that as a question of ARGUMENT, the probabilities are strongly in favor of the meteorological influence of the woods. The EVIDENCE, indeed, is not satisfactory, or, to speak more accurately, it is non-existent, for there really is next to no trustworthy proof on the subject, but it appears to me a case where the burden of proof must be taken by those who maintain that, as a meteorological agent, the forest is inert. The question of a change in the climate of the Northern American States is examined in the able Meteorological Report of Mr. Draper, Director of the New York Central Park Observatory, for 1871. The result arrived at by Mr. Draper is, that there is no satisfactory evidence of a diminution in the rainfall, or of any other climatic change in the winter season, in consequence of clearing of the forests or other human action. The proof from meteorological registers is certainly insufficient to establish the fact of a change of climate, but, on the other hand, it is equally insufficient to establish the contrary. Meteorological stations are too few, their observations, in many cases, extend over a very short period, and, for reasons I have already given, the great majority of their records are entitled to little or no confidence. [Footnote: Since these pages were written, the subject of forest meteorology has received the most important contribution ever made to it, in several series of observations at numerous stations in Bavaria, from the year 1866 to 1871, published by Ebermayer, at Aschaffenburg, in 1873, under the title: Die Physikalischen Einwirkungen des Waldes auf Luft und Boden, und seine Klimatologische und Hygienische Bedeutung. I. Band. So far as observations of only five years' duration can prove anything, the following propositions, not to speak of many collateral and subsidiary conclusions, seem to be established, at least for the localities where the observations were made: 1. The yearly mean temperature of wooded soils, at all depths, is lower than that of open grounds, p. 85. This conclusion, it may be remarked, is of doubtful applicability in regions of excessive climate like the Northern United States and Canada, where the snow keeps the temperature of the soil in the forest above the freezing-point, for a large part and sometimes the whole of the winter, while in unwooded ground the earth remains deeply frozen. 2. The yearly mean atmospheric temperature, other things being equal, is lower in the forest than in cleared grounds, p. 84. 3. Climates become excessive in consequence of extensive clearings, p. 117. 4. The ABSOLUTE humidity of the air in the forest is about the same as in open ground, while the RELATIVE humidity is greater in the former than in the latter case, on account of the lower temperature of the atmosphere in the wood, p. 150. 5. The evaporation from an exposed surface of water in the forest is sixty-four per cent. less than in unwooded grounds, pp. 159,161. 6. About twenty-six per cent. of the precipitation is interrupted and prevented from reaching the ground by the foliage and branches of forest trees, p. 194. 7. In the interior of thick woods, the evaporation from water and from earth is much less than the precipitation, p. 210. 8. The loss of the water of precipitation intercepted by the trees in the forest is compensated by the smaller evaporation from the ground, p. 219. 9. In elevated regions and during the summer half of the year, woods tend to increase the precipitation, p. 202.] Influence of the Forest on the Humidity of the Soil. I have hitherto confined myself to the influence of the forest on meteorological conditions, a subject, as has been seen, full of difficulty and uncertainty. Its comparative effects on the temperature, the humidity, the texture and consistence, the configuration and distribution of the mould or arable soil, and, very often, of the mineral strata below, and on the permanence and regularity of springs and greater superficial water-courses, are much less disputable as well as more easily estimated and more important, than its possible value as a cause of strictly climatic equilibrium or disturbance. The action of the forest on the earth is chiefly mechanical, but the organic process of absorption of moisture by its roots affects the quantity of water contained in the vegetable mould and in the mineral strata near the surface, and, consequently, the consistency of the soil. In treating of the effects of trees on the moisture of the atmosphere, I have said that the forest, by interposing a canopy between the sky and the ground, and by covering the surface with a thick mantle of fallen leaves, at once obstructed insulation and prevented the radiation of heat from the earth. These influences go far to balance each other; but familiar observation shows that, in summer, the forest-soil is not raised to so high a temperature as open grounds exposed to irradiation. For this reason, and in consequence of the mechanical resistance opposed by the bed of dead leaves to the escape of moisture, we should expect that, except after recent rains, the superficial strata of woodland-soil would be more humid than that of cleared land. This agrees with experience. The soil of the natural forest is always moist, except in the extremest droughts, and it is exceedingly rare that a primitive wood suffers from want of humidity. How far this accumulation of water affects the condition of neighboring grounds by lateral infiltration, we do not know, but we shall see, in a subsequent chapter, that water is conveyed to great distances by this process, and we may hence infer that the influence in question is an important one. It is undoubtedly true that loose soils, stripped of vegetation and broken up by the plough or other processes of cultivation, may, until again carpeted by grasses or other plants, absorb more rain and snow-water than when they were covered by a natural growth; but it is also true that the evaporation from such soils is augmented in a still greater proportion. Rain scarcely penetrates beneath the sod of grass-ground, but runs off over the surface; and after the heaviest showers a ploughed field will often be dried by evaporation before the water can be carried off by infiltration, while the soil of a neighboring grove will remain half saturated for weeks together. Sandy soils frequently rest on a tenacious subsoil, at a moderate depth, as is usually seen in the pine plains of the United States, where pools of rain-water collect in slight depressions on the surface of earth the upper stratum of which is as porous as a sponge. In the open grounds such pools are very soon dried up by the sun and wind; in the woods they remain unevaporated long enough for the water to diffuse itself laterally until it finds, in the subsoil, crevices through which it may escape, or slopes which it may follow to their outcrop or descend along them to lower strata. Drainage by Roots of Trees. Becquerel notices a special function of the forest to which I have already alluded, but to which sufficient importance has not, until very recently, been generally ascribed. I refer to the mechanical action of the roots as conductors of the superfluous humidity of the superficial earth to lower strata. The roots of trees often penetrate through subsoil almost impervious to water, and in such cases the moisture, which would otherwise remain above the subsoil and convert the surface-earth into a bog, follows the roots downwards and escapes into more porous strata or is received by subterranean canals or reservoirs. [Footnote: "The roots of vegetables," says d'Hericourt, "perform the office of draining in a manner analogous to that artificially practised in parts of Holland and the British islands. This method consists in driving deeply down into the soil several hundred stakes to the acre; the water filters down along the stakes, and in some cases as favorable results have been obtained by this means as by horizontal drains."-Annales Forestieres, 1837, p. 312.] When the forest is felled, the roots perish and decay, the orifices opened by them are soon obstructed, and the water, after having saturated the vegetable earth, stagnates on the surface and transforms it into ponds and morasses. Thus in La Brenne, a tract of 200,000 acres resting on an impermeable subsoil of argillaceous earth, which ten centuries ago was covered with forests interspersed with fertile and salubrious meadows and pastures, has been converted, by the destruction of the woods, into a vast expanse of pestilential pools and marshes. In Sologne the same cause has withdrawn from cultivation and human inhabitation not less than 1,100,000 acres of ground once well wooded, well drained, and productive. It is an important observation that the desiccating action of trees, by way of drainage or external conduction by the roots, is greater in the artificial than in the natural wood, and hence that the surface of the ground in the former is not characterized by that approach to a state of saturation which it so generally manifests in the latter. In the spontaneous wood, the leaves, fruits, bark, branches, and dead trunks, by their decayed material and by the conversion of rock into loose earth through the solvent power of the gases they develop in decomposition, cover the ground with an easily penetrable stratum of mixed vegetable and mineral matter extremely favorable to the growth of trees, and at the same time too retentive of moisture to part with it readily to the capillary attraction of the roots. The trees, finding abundant nutriment near the surface, and so sheltered against the action of the wind by each other as not to need the support of deep and firmly fixed stays, send their roots but a moderate distance downwards, and indeed often spread them out like a horizontal network almost on the surface of the ground. In the artificial wood, on the contrary, the spaces between the trees are greater; they are obliged to send their roots deeper both for mechanical support and in search of nutriment, and they consequently serve much more effectually as conduits for perpendicular drainage. It is only under special circumstances, however, that this function of the forest is so essential a conservative agent as in the two cases just cited. In a champaign region insufficiently provided with natural channels for the discharge of the waters, and with a subsoil which, though penetrable by the roots of trees, is otherwise impervious to water, it is of cardinal importance; but though trees everywhere tend to carry off the moisture of the superficial strata by this mode of conduction, yet the precise condition of soil which I have described is not of sufficiently frequent occurrence to have drawn much attention to this office of the wood. In fact, in most soils, there are counteracting influences which neutralize, more or less effectually, the desiccative action of roots, and in general it is as true as it was in Seneca's time, that "the shadiest grounds are the moistest." [Footnote: Seneca, Questiones Naturales, iii. 11, 2.] It is always observed in the American States, that clearing the ground not only causes running springs to disappear, but dries up the stagnant pools and the spongy soils of the low grounds. The first roads in those States ran along the ridges, when practicable, because there only was the earth dry enough to allow of their construction, and, for the same reason, the cabins of the first settlers were perched upon the hills. As the forests have been from time to time removed, and the face of the earth laid open to the air and sun, the moisture has been evaporated, and the removal of the highways and of human habitations from the bleak hills to the sheltered valleys, is one of the most agreeable among the many improvements which later generations have witnessed in the interior of the Northern States. [Footnote: The Tuscan poet Ginati, who hod certainly had little opportunity of observing primitive conditions of nature and of man, was aware that such must have been the course of things in new countries. "You know," says he in a letter to a friend, "that the hills were first occupied by man, because stagnant waters, and afterwards continual wars, excluded men from the plains. But when tranquillity was established and means provided for the discharge of the waters, the low grounds were soon covered with human habitations."-- Letters, Firenze, 1864, p. 98.] Recent observers in France affirm that evergreen trees exercise a special desiccating action on the soil, and cases are cited where large tracts of land lately planted with pines have been almost completely drained of moisture by some unknown action of the trees. It is argued that the alleged drainage is not due to the conducting power of the roots, inasmuch as the roots of the pine do not descend lower than those of the oak and other deciduous trees which produce no such effect, and it is suggested that the foliage of the pine continues to exhale through the winter a sufficient quantity of moisture to account for the drying up of the soil. This explanation is improbable, and I know nothing in American experience of the forest which accords with the alleged facts. It is true that the pines, the firs, the hemlock, and all the spike-leaved evergreens prefer a dry soil, but it has not been observed that such soils become less dry after the felling of their trees. The cedars and other trees of allied families grow naturally in moist ground, and the white cedar of the Northern States, Thuya occidentalis, is chiefly found in swamps. The roots of this tree do not penetrate deeply into the earth, but are spread out near the surface, and of course do not carry off the waters of the swamp by perpendicular conduction. On the contrary, by their shade, the trees prevent the evaporation of the superficial water; but when the cedars are felled, the swamp--which sometimes rather resembles a pool filled with aquatic trees than a grove upon solid ground--often dries up so completely as to be fit for cultivation without any other artificial drainage than, in the ordinary course of cultivation, is given to other new soils. [Footnote: A special dessicative influence has long been ascribed to the maritime pine, which has been extensively planted on the dunes and sand-plains of western France, and it is well established that, under certain conditions, all trees, whether evergreen or deciduous, exercise this function, but there is no convincing proof that in the cases now referred to there is any difference in the mode of action of the two classes of trees. An article by D'Arbois de Jubainville in the Revue des Eaux et Forets for April, 1869, ascribing the same action to the Pinus sylvestris, has excited much attention in Europe, and the facts stated by this writer constitute the strongest evidence known to me in support of the alleged influence of evergreen trees, as distinguished from the draining by downward conduction, which is a function exercised by all trees, under ordinary circumstances, in proportion to their penetration of a bibulous subsoil by tap or other descending roots. The question has been ably discussed by Beraud in the Revue des Deux Mondes for April, 1870, the result being that the drying of the soil by pines is due simply to conduction by the roots, whatever may be the foliage of the tree. See post: Influence of the Forest on Flow of Springs. It is however certain, I believe, that evergreens exhale more moisture in winter than leafless deciduous trees, and consequently some weight is to be ascribed to this element.] The Forest in Winter. The influence of the woods on the flow of springs, and consequently on the supply for the larger water-courses, naturally connects itself with the general question of the action of the forest on the humidity of the ground. But the special condition of the woodlands, as affected by snow and frost in the winter of excessive climates, like that of the United States, has not been so much studied as it deserves; and as it has a most important bearing on the superficial hydrology of the earth, I shall make some observations upon it before I proceed to the direct discussion of the influence of the forest on the flow of springs. To estimate rightly the importance of the forest in our climate as a natural apparatus for accumulating the water that falls upon the surface and transmitting it to the subjacent strata, we must compare the condition and properties of its soil with those of cleared and cultivated earth, and examine the consequently different action of these soils at different seasons of the year. The disparity between them is greatest in climates where, as in the Northern American States and in the extreme North of Europe, the open ground freezes and remains impervious to water during a considerable part of the winter; though, even in climates where the earth does not freeze at all, the woods have still an important influence of the same character. The difference is yet greater in countries which have regular wet and dry seasons, rain being very frequent in the former period, while, in the latter, it scarcely occurs at all. These countries lie chiefly in or near the tropics, but they are not wanting in higher latitudes; for a large part of Asiatic and even of European Turkey is almost wholly deprived of summer rains. In the principal regions occupied by European cultivation, and where alone the questions discussed in this volume are recognized as having, at present, any practical importance, more or less rain falls at all seasons, and it is to these regions that, on this point as well as others, I chiefly confine my attention. Importance of Snow. Recent observations in Switzerland give a new importance to the hygrometrical functions of snow, and of course to the forest as its accumulator and protector. I refer to statements of the condensation of atmospheric vapor by the snows and glaciers of the Rhone basin, where it is estimated to be nearly equal to the entire precipitation of the valley. Whenever the humidity of the atmosphere in contact with snow is above the point of saturation at the temperature to which the air is cooled by such contact, the superfluous moisture is absorbed by the snow or condensed and frozen upon its surface, and of course adds so much to the winter supply of water received from the snow by the ground. This quantity, in all probability, much exceeds the loss by evaporation, for during the period when the ground is covered with snow, the proportion of clear dry weather favorable to evaporation is less than that of humid days with an atmosphere in a condition to yield up its moisture to any bibulous substance cold enough to condense it. [Footnote: The hard snow-crust, which in the early spring is a source of such keen enjoyment to the children and youth of the North--and to many older persons in whom the love of nature has kept awake a relish for the simple pleasures of rural life--is doubtless due to the congelation of the vapor condensed by the snow rather than to the thawing and freezing of the superficial stratum; for when the surface is melted by the sun, the water is taken up by the absorbent mass beneath before the temperature falls low enough to freeze it.] In our Northern States, irregular as is the climate, the first autumnal snows pretty constantly fall before the ground is frozen at all, or when the frost extends at most to the depth of only a few inches. [Footnote: The hard autumnal frosts are usually preceded by heavy rains which thoroughly moisten the soil, and it is a common saying in the North that "the ground will not freeze till the swamps are full."] In the woods, especially those situated upon the elevated ridges which supply the natural irrigation of the soil and feed the perennial fountains and streams, the ground remains covered with snow during the winter; for the trees protect the snow from blowing from the general surface into the depressions, and new accessions are received before the covering deposited by the first fall is melted. Snow is of a color unfavorable for radiation, but, even when it is of considerable thickness, it is not wholly impervious to the rays of the sun, and for this reason, as well as from the warmth of lower strata, the frozen crust of the soil, if one has been formed, is soon thawed, and does not again fall below the freezing-point during the winter. [Footnote: Dr. Williams, of Vermont, made some observations on the comparative temperature of the soil in open and in wooded ground In the years 1789 and 1791, but they generally belonged to the warmer months, and I do not know that any extensive series of comparisons between the temperature of the ground in the woods and in the fields has been attempted in America. Dr. Williams's thermometer was sunk to the depth of ten inches, and gave the following results: ---- | Temperature | Temperature | Time. | of ground in| of ground in| Difference. | pasture. | woods. | ---- May 23......................| 52 | 46 | 6 " 28......................| 57 | 48 | 9 June 15......................| 64 | 51 | 13 " 27......................| 62 | 51 | 11 July 16......................| 62 | 51 | 11 " 30......................| 65 1/2 | 55 1/2 | 10 Aug. 15......................| 68 | 58 | 10 " 31......................| 59 1/2 | 55 | 4 1/2 Sept.15......................| 59 1/2 | 55 | 4 1/2 Oct. 1......................| 59 1/2 | 55 | 4 1/2 " 15......................| 49 | 49 | 0 Nov. 1......................| 43 | 43 | 0 " 16......................| 43 1/2 | 43 1/2 | 0 On the 14th of January, 1791, in a winter remarkable for its extreme severity, he found the ground, on a plain open field where the snow had been blown away, frozen to the depth of three feet and five inches; in the woods where the snow was three feet deep, and where the soil had frozen to the depth of six inches before the snow fell, the thermometer, at six inches below the surface of the ground, stood at 39 degrees. In consequence of the covering of the snow, therefore, the previously frozen ground had been thawed and raised to seven degrees above the freezing-point.--William's Vermont, i., p. 74. Boussingault's observations are important. Employing three thermometers, one with the bulb an inch below the surface of powdery snow; one on the surface of the ground beneath the snow, then four inches deep; and one in the open air, forty feet above the ground, on the north side of a building, he found, at 5 P.M., the FIRST thermometer at -1.5 degrees Centigrade, the second at 0 degrees, and the THIRD at + 2.5 degrees; at 7 A.M. the next morning, the first stood at -12 degrees, the second at -3.5 degrees and the third at -3 degrees; at 5.30 the same evening No. 1 stood at -1.4 degrees, No. 2 at 0 degrees, and No. 3 at + 3 degrees. Other experiments were tried, and though the temperature was affected by the radiation, which varied with the hour of the day and the state of the sky, the upper surface of the snow was uniformly colder than the lower, or than the open air. According to the Report of the Department of Agriculture for May and June, 1872, Mr. C. G. Prindle, of Vermont, in the preceding winter, found, for four successive days, the temperature immediately above the snow at 13 degrees below zero; beneath the snow, which was but four inches deep, at 19 degrees above zero; and under a drift two feet deep, at 27 degrees above. On the borders and in the glades of the American forest, violets and other small plants begin to vegetate as soon as the snow has thawed the soil around their roots, and they are not unfrequently found in full flower under two or three feet of snow.--American Naturalist, May, 1869, pp. 155, 156. In very cold weather, when the ground is covered with light snow, flocks of the grouse of the Eastern States often plunge into the snow about sunset, and pass the night in this warm shelter. If the weather moderates before morning, a frozen crust is sometimes formed on the surface too strong to be broken by the birds, which consequently perish.] The snow in contact with the earth now begins to melt, with greater or less rapidity, according to the relative temperature of the earth and the air, while the water resulting from its dissolution is imbibed by the vegetable mould, and carried off by infiltration so fast that both the snow and the layers of leaves in contact with it often seem comparatively dry, when, in fact, the under-surface of the former is in a state of perpetual thaw. No doubt a certain proportion of the snow is given off to the atmosphere by direct evaporation, but in the woods, the protection against the sun by even leafless trees prevents much loss in this way, and besides, the snow receives much moisture from the air by absorption and condensation. Very little water runs off in the winter by superficial water-courses, except in rare cases of sudden thaw, and there can be no question that much the greater part of the snow deposited in the forest is slowly melted and absorbed by the earth. The immense importance of the forest, as a reservoir of this stock of moisture, becomes apparent, when we consider that a large proportion of the summer rain either flows into the valleys and the rivers, because it falls faster than the ground can imbibe it; or, if absorbed by the warm superficial strata, is evaporated from them without sinking deep enough to reach wells and springs, which, of course, depend much on winter rains and snows for their entire supply. This observation, though specially true of cleared and cultivated grounds, is not wholly inapplicable to the forest, particularly when, as is too often the case in Europe, the underwood and the decaying leaves are removed. The quantity of snow that falls in extensive forests, far from the open country, has seldom been ascertained by direct observation, because there are few meteorological stations in or near the forest. According to Thompson, [Footnote: Thompson's Vermont, Appendix, p. 8.] the proportion of water which falls in snow in the Northern States does not exceed one-fifth of the total precipitation, but the moisture derived from it is doubtless considerably increased by the atmospheric vapor absorbed by it, or condensed and frozen on its surface. I think I can say from experience--and I am confirmed in this opinion by the testimony of competent observers whose attention has been directed specially to the point--that though much snow is intercepted by the trees, and the quantity on the ground in the woods is consequently less than in open land in the first part of the winter, yet most of what reaches the ground at that season remains under the protection of the wood until melted, and as it occasionally receives new supplies the depth of snow in the forest in the latter half of winter is considerably greater than in the cleared fields. Careful measurements in a snowy region in New England, in the month of February, gave a mean of 38 inches in the open ground and 44 inches in the woods. [Footnote: As the loss of snow by evaporation has been probably exaggerated by popular opinion, an observation or two on the subject may not be amiss in this place. It is true that in the open grounds, in clear weather and with a dry atmosphere, snow and ice are evaporated with great rapidity even when the thermometer is much below the freezing-point; and Darwin informs us that the snow on the summit of Aconcagua, 23,000 feet high, and of course in a temperature of perpetual frost, is sometimes carried off by evaporation. The surface of the snow in our woods, however, does not indicate much loss in this way. Very small deposits of snow-flakes remain unevaporated in the forest, for many days after snow which fell at the same time in the cleared field has disappeared without either a thaw to melt it or a wind powerful enough to drift it away. Even when bared of their leaven, the trees of a wood obstruct, in an important degree, both the direct action of the sun's rays on the snow and the movement of drying and thawing winds. Dr. Piper (Trees of America, p. 48) records the following observations: "A body of snow, one foot in depth and sixteen feet square, was protected from the wind by a tight board fence about five feet high, while another body of snow, much more sheltered from the sun than the first, six feet in depth, and about sixteen feet square, was fully exposed to the wind. When the thaw came on, which lasted about a fortnight, the larger body of snow was entirely dissolved in less than a week, while the smaller body was not wholly gone at the end of the second week. "Equal quantities of snow were placed in vessels of the samekind and capacity, the temperature of the air being seventy degrees. In the one case, a constant current of air was kept passing over the open vessel, while the other was protected by a cover. The snow in the first was dissolved in sixteen minutes, while the latter had a small unthawed proportion remaining at the end of eighty-five minutes." The snow in the woods is protected in the same way, though not literally to the same extent, as by the fence in one of these cases and the cover in the other.] The general effect of the forest in cold climates is to assimilate the winter state of the ground to that of wooded regions under softer skies; and it is a circumstance well worth noting, that in Southern Europe, where Nature has denied to the earth a warm winter-garment of flocculent snow, she has, by one of those compensations in which her empire is so rich, clothed the hillsides with umbrella and other pines, ilexes, cork-oaks, bays and other trees of persistent foliage, whose evergreen leaves afford to the soil a protection analogous to that which it derives from snow in more northern climates. The water imbibed by the soil in winter sinks until it meets a more or less impermeable or a saturated stratum, and then, by unseen conduits, slowly finds its way to the channels springs, or oozes out of the ground in drops which unite in rills, and so all is conveyed to the larger streams, and by them finally to the sea. The water, in percolating through the vegetable and mineral layers, acquires their temperature, and is chemically affected by their action, but it carries very little matter in mechanical suspension. The process I have described is a slow one, and the supply of moisture derived from the snow, augmented by the rains of the following seasons, keeps the forest-ground, where the surface is level or but moderately inclined, in a state of approximate saturation throughout almost the whole year. [Footnote: The statements I have made, here and elsewhere, respecting the humidity of the soil in natural forests, have been, I understand, denied by Mr. T. Meehan, a distinguished American naturalist, in a paper which I have not seen He is quoted as maintaining, among other highly questionable propositions that no ground is "so dry in its subsoil as that which sustains a forest on its surface." In open, artificially planted woods, with a smooth and regular surface, and especially in forests where the fallen leaves and branches are annually burnt or carried off, both the superficial and the subjacent strata may under certain circumstances, become dry, but this rarely, if ever, happens in a wood of spontaneous growth, undeprived of the protection afforded by its own droppings, and of the natural accidents of surface which tend to the retention of water. See, on this point, a very able article by Mr. Henry Stewart, in the New York Tribune of November 23, 1873.] It may be proper to observe here that in Italy, and in many parts of Spain and France, the Alps, the Apennines, and the Pyrenees, not to speak of less important mountains, perform the functions which provident nature has in other regions assigned to the forest, that is, they act as reservoirs wherein is accumulated in winter a supply of moisture to nourish the parched plains during the droughts of summer. Hence, however enormous may be the evils which have accrued to the above-mentioned countries from the destruction of the woods, the absolute desolation which would otherwise have smitten them through the folly of man, has been partially prevented by those natural dispositions, by means of which there are stored up in the glaciers, in the snow-fields, and in the basins of mountains and valleys, vast deposits of condensed moisture which are afterwards distributed in a liquid form during the season in which the atmosphere furnishes a slender supply of the beneficent fluid so indispensable to vegetable and animal life. [Footnote: The accumulation of snow and ice upon the Alps and other mountains--which often fills up valleys to the height of hundreds of feet--is due not only to the fall or congealed and crystallized vapor in the form of snow, to the condensation of atmospheric vapor on the surface of snow-fields and glaciers, and to a temperature which prevents the rapid melting of snow, but also to the well-known fact that, at least up to the height of 10,000 feet, rain and snow are more abundant on the mountains than at lower levels. But another reason may be suggested for the increase of atmospheric humidity, and consequently of the precipitation of aqueous vapor on mountain chains. In discussing the influence of mountains on precipitation, meteorologists have generally treated the popular belief, that mountains "attract" to them clouds floating within a certain distance from them, as an ignorant prejudice, and they ascribe the appearance of clouds about high peaks solely to the condensation of the humidity of the air carried by atmospheric currents up the slopes of the mountain to a colder temperature. But if mountains do not really draw clouds and invisible vapors to them, they are an exception to the universal law of attraction. The attraction of the small Mount Shehallien was found sufficient to deflect from the perpendicular, by a measurable quantity, a plummet weighing but a few ounces. Why, then, should not greater masses attract to them volumes of vapor weighing many tons, and floating freely in the atmosphere within moderate distances of the mountains ] Summer Rains, Importance of. Babinet quotes a French proverb: "Summer rain wets nothing," and explains it by saying that at that season the rainwater is "almost entirely carried off by evaporation." "The rains of summer," he adds, "however abundant they may be, do not penetrate the soil beyond the depth of six or eight inches. In summer the evaporating power of the heat is five or six times greater than in winter, and this force is exerted by an atmosphere capable of containing five or six times as much vapor as in winter." "A stratum of snow which prevents evaporation [from the ground], causes almost all the water that composes it to filter into the earth, and forms a provision for fountains, wells, and streams which could not be furnished by any quantity whatever of summer rain. This latter, useful to vegetation like the dew, neither penetrates the soil nor accumulates a store to supply the springs and to be given out again into the open air." [Footnote: Etudes et Lectures, vol. vi., p. 118. The experiments or Johnstrup in the vicinity of Copenhagen, where the mean annual precipitation is 23 1/2 inches, and where the evaporation must be less than in the warmer and drier atmosphere of France, form the most careful series of observations on this subject which I have met with. Johnstrup found that at the depth at a metre and a half (50 inches) the effects of rain and evaporation were almost imperceptible, and became completely so at a depth of from two to three metres (6 1/2 to 10 feet). During the summer half of the year the evaporation rather exceeded the rainfall; during the winter half the entire precipitation was absorbed by the soil and transmitted to lower strata by infiltration. The stratum between one metre and a half (50 inches) and three metres (10 feet) from the surface was then permanently in the condition of a saturated sponge, neither receiving nor losing humidity during the summer half of the year, but receiving from superior, and giving off to lower, strata an equal amount of moisture during the winter half.--Johnstrup, Om Fugtighedens Bezagelse i den naturlige Jordbund. Kjobenhavn, 1866.] This conclusion, however applicable to the climate and to the soil of France, is too broadly stated to be received as a general truth; and in countries like the United States, where rain is comparatively rare during the winter and abundant during the summer half of the year, common observation shows that the quantity of water furnished by deep wells and by natural springs depends almost as much upon the rains of summer as upon those of the rest of the year, and consequently that a large portion of the rain of that season must find its way into strata too deep for the water to be wasted by evaporation. [Footnote: According to observations at one hundred military stations in the United States, the precipitation ranges from three and a quarter inches at Fort Yuma in California to about seventy-two inches at Fort Pike, Louisiana, the mean for the entire territory, not including Alaska, being thirty-six inches. In the different sections of the Union it is as follows: North-eastern States.................. 41 inches, New York.............................. 36 " Middle States......................... 40 1/2 " Ohio.................................. 40 " Southern States....................... 51 " S. W. States and Indian Territories... 39 1/2 " Western States and Territories........ 30 " Texas and New Mexico.................. 24 1/2 " California............................ 18 1/2 " Oregon and Washington Territory....... 50 " The mountainous regions, it appears, do not recieve the greatest amount of precipitation. The avenge downfall of the Southern States bordering on the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico exceeds the mean of the whole United States, being no less than fifty-one inches, while on the Pacific coast it ranges from fifty to fifty-six inches. As a general rule, it may be stated that at the stations on or near the sea-coast the precipitation is greatest in the spring months, though there are several exceptions to this remark, and at a large majority of the stations the downfall is considerably greater in the summer months than at any other season.] Dalton's experiments in the years 1796, 1797, and 1798 appeared to show that the mean absorption of the downfall by the earth in those years was twenty-nine per cent. Dickinson, employing the same apparatus for eight years, found the absorption to vary widely in different years, the mean being forty-seven per cent. Charnock's experiments in two years show an absorption of from seventeen to twenty-seven per cent.] Besides, even admitting that the water from summer rains is so completely evaporated as to contribute nothing directly to the supply of springs, it at least tends indirectly to maintain their flow, because it saturates in part the atmosphere, and at the same time it prevents the heat of the sun from drying the earth to still greater depths, and bringing within the reach of evaporation the moisture of strata which ordinarily do not feel the effects of solar irradiation. Influence of the Forest on the Flow of Springs. It is an almost universal and, I believe, well-founded opinion, that the protection afforded by the forest against the escape of moisture from its soil by superficial flow and evaporation insures the permanence and regularity of natural springs, not only within the limits of the wood, but at some distance beyond its borders, and thus contributes to the supply of an element essential to both vegetable and animal life. As the forests are destroyed, the springs which flowed from the woods, and, consequently, the greater water-courses fed by them, diminish both in number and in volume. This fact is so familiar throughout the American States and the British Provinces, that there are few old residents of the interior of those districts who are not able to testify to its truth as a matter of personal observation. My own recollection suggests to me many instances of this sort, and I remember one case where a small mountain spring, which disappeared soon after the clearing of the ground where it rose, was recovered about twenty years ago, by simply allowing the bushes and young trees to grow up on a rocky knoll, not more than half an acre in extent, immediately above the spring. The ground was hardly shaded before the water reappeared, and it has ever since continued to flow without interruption. The hills in the Atlantic States formerly abounded in springs and brooks, but in many parts of these States which were cleared a generation or two ago, the hill-pastures now suffer severely from drought, and in dry seasons furnish to cattle neither grass nor water. Almost every treatise on the economy of the forest adduces facts in support of the doctrine that the clearing of the woods tends to diminish the flow of springs and the humidity of the soil, and it might seem unnecessary to bring forward further evidence on this point. [Footnote: "Why go so far for the proof of a phenomenon that is repeated every day under our own eyes, and of which every Parisian may convince himself, without venturing beyond the Bois de Boulogne or the forest of Meudon Let him, after a few rainy days, pass alone the Chevreuse road, which is bordered on the right by the wood, on the left by cultivated fields. The fall of water and the continuance of the rain have been the same on both sides; but the ditch on the side of the forest will remain filled with water proceeding from the infiltration through the wooded soil, long after the other, contiguous to the open ground, has performed its office of drainage and become dry. The ditch on the left will have discharged in a few hours a quantity of water, which the ditch on the right requires several days to receive and carry down to the valley."--Clave, Etudes, etc., pp. 53, 54.] But the subject is of too much practical importance and of too great philosophical interest to be summarily disposed of; and it ought to be noticed that there is at least one case--that of some loose sandy soils which, as observed by Valles, [Footnote: Valles, Etudes sur les Inondations, p. 472.] when bared of wood very rapidly absorb and transmit to lower strata the water they receive from the atmosphere--where the removal of the forest may increase the flow of springs at levels below it, by exposing to the rain and melted snow a surface more bibulous, and at the same time less retentive, than its original covering. Under such circumstances, the water of precipitation, which had formerly been absorbed by the vegetable mould and retained until it was evaporated, might descend through porous earth until it meets an impermeable stratum, and then be conducted along it, until, finally, at the outcropping of this stratum, it bursts from a hillside as a running spring. But such instances are doubtless too rare to form a frequent or an important exception to the general law, because it is very seldom the case that such a soil as has just been supposed is covered by a layer of vegetable earth thick enough to retain, until it is evaporated, all the rain that falls upon it, without imparting any water to the strata below it. If we look at the point under discussion as purely a question of fact, to be determined by positive evidence and not by argument, the observations of Boussingault are, both in the circumstances they detail and in the weight to be attached to the testimony, among the most important yet recorded. The interest of the question will justify me in giving, nearly in Boussingault's own words, the facts and some of the remarks with which he accompanies the detail of them. "In many localities," he observes, [Footnote: Economie Rurale t. ii, p. 780.] "it has been thought that, within a certain number of years, a sensible diminution has been perceived in the volume of water of streams utilized as a motive-power; at other points, there are grounds for believing that rivers have become shallower, and the increasing breadth of the belt of pebbles along their banks seems to prove the loss of a part of their water; and, finally, abundant springs have almost dried up. These observations have been principally made in valleys bounded by high mountains, and it has been noticed that this diminution of the waters has immediately followed the epoch when the inhabitants have begun to destroy, unsparingly, the woods which were spread over the face of the land. "And here lies the practical point of the question; for if it is once established that clearing diminishes the volume of streams, it is less important to know to what special cause this effect is due. The rivers which rise within the valley of Aragua, having no outlet to the ocean, form, by their union, the Lake of Tacarigua or Valencia, having a length of about two leagues and a half [= 7 English miles]. At the time of Humboldt's visit to the valley of Aragua, the inhabitants were struck by the gradual diminution which the lake had been undergoing for thirty years. In fact, by comparing the descriptions given by historians with its actual condition, even making large allowance for exaggeration, it was easy to see that the level was considerably depressed. The facts spoke for themselves. Oviedo, who, toward the close of the sixteenth century, had often traversed the valley of Aragua, says positively that New Valencia was founded, in 1555, at half a league from the Lake of Tacarigua; in 1800, Humboldt found this city 5,260 metres [= 3 1/2 English miles] from the shore. "The aspect of the soil furnished new proofs. Many hillocks on the plain retain the name of islands, which they more justly bore when they were surrounded by water. The ground laid bare by the retreat of the lake was converted into admirable plantations; and buildings erected near the lake showed the sinking of the water from year to year. In 1796, new islands made their appearance. A fortress built in 1740 on the island of Cabrera, was now on a peninsula; and, finally, on two granitic islands, those of Cura and Cabo Blanco, Humboldt observed among the shrubs, somo metres above the water, fine sand filled with helicites. "These clear and positive facts suggested numerous explanations, all assuming a subterranean outlet, which permitted the discharge of the water to the ocean. Humboldt disposed of these hypotheses, and did not hesitate to ascribe the diminution of the waters of the lake to the numerous clearings which had been made in the valley of Aragua within half a century." Twenty-two years later, Boussingault explored the valley of Aragua. For some years previous, the inhabitants had observed that the waters of the lake were no longer retiring, but, on the contrary, were sensibly rising. Grounds, not long before occupied by plantations, were submerged. The islands of Nuevas Aparecidas, which appeared above the surface in 1796, had again become shoals dangerous to navigation. Cabrera, a tongue of land on the north side of the valley, was so narrow that the least rise of the water completely inundated it. A protracted north wind sufficed to flood the road between Maracay and New Valencia. The fears which the inhabitants of the shores had so long entertained were reversed. Those who had explained the diminution of the lake by the supposition of subterranean channels were suspected of blocking them up, to prove themselves in the right. During the twenty-two years which had elapsed, the valley of Aragua had been the theatre of bloody struggles, and war had desolated these smiling lands and decimated their population. At the first cry of independence a great number of slaves found their liberty by enlisting under the banners of the new republic; the great plantations were abandoned, and the forest, which in the tropics so rapidly encroaches, had soon recovered a large proportion of the soil which man had wrested from it by more than a century of constant and painful labor. Boussingault proceeds to state that two lakes near Ubate, in New Granada, had formed but one, a century before his visit; that the waters were gradually retiring, and the plantations extending over the abandoned bed; that, by inquiry of old hunters and by examination of parish records, he found that extensive clearings had been made and were still going on. He found, also, that the length of the Lake of Fuquene, in the same valley, had, within two centuries, been reduced from ten leagues to one and a half, its breadth from three leagues to one. At the former period, the neighboring mountains were well wooded, but at the time of his visit the mountains had been almost entirely stripped of their wood. Our author adds that other cases, similar to those already detailed, might be cited, and he proceeds to show, by several examples, that the waters of other lakes in the same regions, where the valleys had always been bare of wood, or where the forests had not been disturbed, had undergone no change of level. Boussingault further states that the lakes of Switzerland have sustained a depression of level since the too prevalent destruction of the woods, and arrives at the general conclusion that, "in countries where great clearings have been made, there has most probably been a diminution in the living waters which flow upon the surface of theground." This conclusion he further supports by two examples: one, where a fine spring, at the foot of a wooded mountain in the Island of Ascension, dried up when the mountain was cleared, but reappeared when the wood was replanted; the other at Marmato, in the province of Popayan, where the streams employed to drive machinery were much diminished in volume, within two years after the clearing of the heights from which they derived their supplies. This latter is an interesting case, because, although the rain-gauges, established as soon as the decrease of water began to excite alarm, showed a greater fall of rain for the second year of observation than the first, yet there was no appreciable increase in the flow of the mill-streams. From these cases, the distinguished physicist infers that very restricted local clearings may diminish and even suppress springs and brooks, without any reduction in the total quantity of rain. It will have been noticed that these observations, with the exception of the last two cases, do not bear directly upon the question of the diminution of springs by clearings, but they logically infer it from the subsidence of the natural reservoirs which springs once filled. There is, however, no want of positive evidence on this subject. Marchand cites the following instances: "Before the felling of the woods, within the last few years, in the valley of the Soulce, the Combe-es-Monnin and the Little Valley, the Sorne furnished a regular and sufficient supply of water for the ironworks of Unterwyl, which was almost unaffected by drought or by heavy rains. The Sorne has now become a torrent, every shower occasions a flood, and after a few days of fine weather, the current falls so low that it has been necessary to change the water-wheels, because those of the old construction are no longer able to drive the machinery, and at last to introduce a steam-engine to prevent the stoppage of the works for want of water. "When the factory of St. Ursanne was established, the river that furnished its power was abundant, and had, from time immemorial, sufficed for the machinery of a previous factory. Afterwards, the woods near its sources were cut. The supply of water fell off in consequence, the factory wanted water for half the year, and was at last obliged to stop altogether. "The spring of Combefoulat, in the commune of Seleate, was well known as one of the best in the country; it was remarkably abundant, and sufficient, in the severest droughts, to supply all the fountains of the town; but as soon as considerable forests were felled in Combe-de-pre Martin and in the valley of Combefoulat, the famous spring, which lies below these woods, has become a mere thread of water, and disappears altogether in times of drought. "The spring of Varieux, which formerly supplied the castle of Pruntrut, lost more than half its water after the clearing of Varieux and Rougeoles. These woods have been replanted, the young trees are growing well, and, with the woods, the waters of the spring are increasing. "The Dog Spring between Pruntrut and Bressancourt has entirely vanished since the surrounding forest-grounds were brought under cultivation. "The Wolf Spring, in the commune of Soubey, furnishes a remarkable example of the influence of the woods upon fountains. A few years ago this spring did not exist. At the place where it now rises, a small thread of water was observed after very long rains, but the stream disappeared with the rain. The spot is in the middle of a very steep pasture inclining to the south. Eighty years ago, the owner of the land, perceiving that young firs were shooting up in the upper part of it, determined to let them grow, and they soon formed a flourishing grove. As soon as they were well grown, a fine spring appeared in place of the occasional rill, and furnished abundant water in the longest droughts. For forty or fifty years this spring was considered the best in the Clos du Doubs. A few years since, the grove was felled, and the ground turned again to a pasture. The spring disappeared with the wood, and is now as dry as it was ninety years ago." [Footnote: Ueber Die Entwaldung Der Gebirge, pp. 20 et seqq.] Siemoni gives the following remarkable facts from his own personal observation: "In a rocky nook near the crest of a mountain in the Tuscan Apennines, there flowed a clear, cool, and perennial fountain, uniting three distinct springs in a single current. The ancient beeches around and particularly above the springs were felled. On the disappearance of the wood, the springs ceased to flow, except in a thread of water in rainy weather, greatly inferior in quality to that of the old fountain. The beeches were succeeded by firs, and as soon as they had grown sufficiently to shade the soil, the springs begun again to flow, and they gradually returned to their former abundance and quality." [Footnote: Manuale D'arte Forestale. 2me editione, p. 492.] This and the next preceding case are of great importance both as to the action of the wood in maintaining springs, and particularly as tending to prove that evergreens do not exercise the desiccative influence ascribed to them in France. The latter instance shows, too, that the protective influence of the wood extends far below the surface, for the quality of the water was determined, no doubt, by the depth from which it was drawn. The slender occasional supply after the beeches were cut was rain-water which soaked through the superficial humus and oozed out at the old orifices, carrying the taste and temperature of the vegetable soil with it; the more abundant and grateful water which flowed before the beeches were cut, and after the firs were well grown, came from a deeper source and had been purified, and cooled to the mean temperature of the locality, by filtering through strata of mineral earth. "The influence of the forest on springs," says Hummel, "is strikingly shown by an instance at Heilbronn. The woods on the hills surrounding the town are cut in regular succession every twentieth year. As the annual cuttings approach a certain point, the springs yield less water, some of them none at all; but as the young growth shoots up, they flow more and more freely, and at length bubble up again in all their original abundance." [Footnote: Physische Geographie, p. 32.] Dr. Piper states the following case: "Within about half a mile of my residence there is a pond upon which mills have been standing for a long time, dating back, I believe, to the first settlement of the town. These have been kept in constant operation until within some twenty or thirty years, when the supply of water began to fail. The pond owes its existence to a stream that has its source in the hills which stretch some miles to the south. Within the time mentioned, these hills, which were clothed with a dense forest, have been almost entirely stripped of trees; and to the wonder and loss of the mill-owners, the water in the pond has failed, except in the season of freshets; and, what was never heard of before, the stream itself has been entirely dry. Within the last ten years a new growth of wood has sprung up on most of the land formerly occupied by the old forest; and now the water runs through the year, notwithstanding the great droughts of the last few years, going back from 1856." Dr. Piper quotes from a letter of William C. Bryant the following remarks: "It is a common observation that our summers are becoming drier and our streams smaller. Take the Cuyahoga as an illustration. Fifty years ago large barges loaded with goods went up and down that river, and one of the vessels engaged in the battle of Lake Erie, in which the gallant Perry was victorious, was built at Old Portage, six miles north of Albion, and floated down to the lake. Now, in an ordinary stage of the water, a canoe or skiff can hardly pass down the stream. Many a boat of fifty tons burden has been built and loaded in the Tuscarawas, at New Portage, and sailed to New Orleans without breaking bulk. Now, the river hardly affords a supply of water at New Portage for the canal. The same may be said of other streams--they are drying up. And from the same cause--the destruction of our forests--our summers are growing drier and our winters colder." [Footnote: The Trees of America, pp. 50, 51.] No observer has more carefully studied the influence of the forest upon the flow of the waters, or reasoned more ably on the ascertained phenomena, than Cantegril. The facts presented in the following case, communicated by him to the Ami des Sciences for December, 1859, are as nearly conclusive as any single instance well can be: "In the territory of the commune of Labruguiere there is a forest of 1,834 hectares [4,530 acres], known by the name of the Forest of Montaut, and belonging to that commune. It extends along thenorthern slope of the Black Mountains. The soil is granitic, the maximum altitude 1,243 metres [4,140 feet], and the inclination ranges between 15 and 60 to 100. "A small current of water, the brook of Caunan, takes its rise in this forest, and receives the waters of two-thirds of its surface. At the lower extremity of the wood and on the stream are several fulleries, each requiring a force of eight horse-power to drive the water-wheels which work the stampers. The commune of Labruguiere had been for a long time famous for its opposition to forest laws. Trespasses and abuses of the right of pasturage had converted the wood into an immense waste, so that this vast property now scarcely sufficed to pay the expense of protecting it, and to furnish the inhabitants with a meagre supply of fuel. While the forest was thus ruined, and the soil thus bared, the water, after every abundant rain, made an eruption into the valley, bringing down a great quantity of pebbles which still clog the current of the Caunan. The violence of the floods was sometimes such that they were obliged to stop the machinery for some time. During the summer another inconvenience was felt. If the dry weather continued a little longer than usual, the delivery of water became insignificant. Each fullery could for the most part only employ a single set of stampers, and it was not unusual to see the work entirely suspended. "After 1840, the municipal authority succeeded in enlightening the population as to their true interests. Protected by a more watchful supervision, aided by well-managed replantation, the forest has continued to improve to the present day. In proportion to the restoration of the forest, the condition of the manufactories has become less and less precarious, and the action of the water is completely modified. For example, sudden and violent floods, which formerly made it necessary to stop the machinery, no longer occur. There is no increase in the delivery until six or eight hours after the beginning of the rain; the floods follow a regular progression till they reach their maximum, and decrease in the same manner. Finally, the fulleries are no longer forced to suspend work in summer; the water is always sufficiently abundant to allow the employment of two sets of stampere at least, and often even of three. "This example is remarkable in this respect, that, all other circumstances having remained the same, the changes in the action of the stream can be attributed only to the restoration of the forest--changes which may be thus summed up: diminution of flood-water during rains--increase of delivery at other seasons." Becquerel and other European writers adduce numerous other cases where the destruction of forests has caused the disappearance of springs, a diminution in the volume of rivers, and a lowering of the level of lakes, and in fact, the evidence in support of the doctrine I have been maintaining on this subject seems to be as conclusive as the nature of the case admits. [Footnote: See, in the Revue des Eaux et Forets for April, 1867, an article entitled De l'influence des Forets sur le Regime des Eaux, and the papers in previous numbers of the same journal therein referred to.] We cannot, it is true, arrive at the same certainty and precision of result in these inquiries as in those branches of physical research where exact quantitative appreciation is possible, and we must content ourselves with probabilities and approximations. We cannot positively affirm that the precipitation in a given locality is increased by the presence, or lessened by the destruction, of the forest, and from our ignorance of the subterranean circulation of the waters, we cannot predict, with certainty, the drying up of a particular spring as a consequence of the felling of the wood which shelters it; but the general truth, that the flow of springs and the normal volume of rivers rise and fall with the extension and the diminution of the woods where they originate and through which they run, is as well established as any proposition in the science of physical geography. [Footnote: Some years ago it was popularly believed that the volume of the Mississippi, like that of the Volga and other rivers of the Eastern Hemisphere, was diminished by the increased evaporation from its basin and the drying up of the springs in consequence of the felling of the forests in the vicinity of the source of its eastern affluents. The boatmen of this great river and other intelligent observers now assure us, however, that the mean and normal level of the Mississippi has risen within a few years, and that in consequence the river is navigable at low water for boats of greater draught and at higher points in its course than was the case twenty-five years ago. This supposed increase of volume has been attributed by some to the recent re-wooding of the prairies, but the plantations thus far made are not yet sufficiently extensive to produce an appreciable effect of this nature; and besides, while young trees have covered some of the prairies, the destruction of the forest has been continued perhaps in a greater proportion in other parts of the basin of the river. A more plausible opinion is that the substitution of ground that is cultivated, and consequently spongy and absorbent, for the natural soil of the prairies, has furnished a reservoir for the rains which are absorbed by the earth and carried gradually to the river by subterranean flow, instead of running off rapidly from the surface, or, as is more probable, instead of evaporating or being taken up by the vigorous herbaceous vegetation which covers the natural prairie. A phenomenon so contrary to common experience, as would be a permanent increase in the waters of a great river, will not be accepted without the most convincing proofs. The present greater facility of navigation may be attributed to improvements in the model of the boats, to the removing of sand-banks and other impediments to the flow of the waters, or to the confining of these waters in a narrower channel, by extending the embankments of the river, or to yet other causes. So remarkable a change could not have escaped the notice of Humphreys and Abbot, whose most able labors comprise the years 1850-1861, had it occurred during that period or at any former time within the knowledge of the many observers they consulted; but no such fact is noticed in their exhaustive report. However, even if an increase in the volume of the Mississippi, for a period of ten or twenty years, were certain, it would still be premature to consider this increase as normal and constant, since it might very well be produced by causes yet unknown and analogous to those which influence the mysterious advance and retreat of those Alpine ice-rivers, the glaciers. Among such causes we may suppose a long series of rainy seasons in regions where important tributaries have their far-off and almost unknown sources; and with no less probability, we may conceive of the opening of communications with great subterranean reservoirs, which may from year to year empty large quantities of water into the bed of the stream; or the closing up of orifices through which a considerable portion of the water of the river once made its way for the supply of such reservoirs.--See upon this point, Chap. IV., Of Subterranean Waters; post.] Of the converse proposition, namely, that the planting of new forests gives rise to new springs and restores the regular flow of rivers, I find less of positive proof, however probable it may be that such effects would follow. [Footnote: According to the Report of the Department of Agriculture for February, 1872, it is thought in the Far West that the young plantations have already influenced the water-courses in that region, and it is alleged that ancient river-beds, never known to contain water since the settlement of the country, have begun to flow since these plantations were commenced. See also Hayden, Report on Geological Survey of Wyoming, 1870, p. 104, and Bryant. Forest Trees, 1871, chap. iv. In the Voyage autour du Monde of the Comte da Beauvoir, chap. x., this passage occurs: Dr. Muller, Director of the Botanic Garden at Melbourne, "has distributed through the interior of Australia millions of seedling trees from his nursuries. Small rivulets are soon formed under the young wood; the results are superb, and the observation of every successive year confirms them. On bare soils he has created, at more than a hundred points, forests and water-courses."] A reason for the want of evidence on the subject may be, that, under ordinary circumstances, the process of conversion of bare ground to soil with a well-wooded surface is so gradual and slow, and the time required for a fair experiment is consequently so long, that many changes produced by the action of the new geographical element escape the notice and the memory of ordinary observers. The growth of a forest, including the formation of a thick stratum of vegetable mould beneath it, is the work of a generation, its destruction may be accomplished in a day; and hence, while the results of the one process may, for a considerable time, be doubtful if not imperceptible, those of the other are immediate and readily appreciable. Fortunately, the plantation of a wood produces other beneficial consequences which are both sooner realized and more easily estimated; and though he who drops the seed is sowing for a future generation as well as for his own, the planter of a grove may hope himself to reap a fair return for his expenditure and his labor. Influence of the Forest on Inundations and Torrents. Inasmuch as it is not yet proved that the forests augment or diminish the precipitation in the regions they principally cover, we cannot positively affirm that their presence or absence increases or lessens the total volume of the water annually delivered by great rivers or by mountain torrents. It is nevertheless certain that they exercise an action on the discharge of the water of rain and snow into the valleys, ravines, and other depressions of the surface, where it is gathered into brooks and finally larger currents, and consequently influence the character of floods, both in rivers and in torrents. For this reason, river inundations and the devastations of torrents, and the geographical effects resulting from them, so far as they are occasioned or modified by the action of forests or of the destruction of the woods, may properly be discussed in this chapter, though they might seem otherwise to belong more appropriately to another division of this work. Besides the climatic question, which I have already sufficiently discussed, and the obvious inconveniences of a scanty supply of charcoal, of fuel, and of timber for architectural and naval construction and for the thousand other uses to which wood is applied in rural and domestic economy, and in the various industrial processes of civilized life, the attention of European foresters and public economists has been specially drawn to three points, namely: the influence of the forests on the permanence and regular flow of springs or natural fountains; on inundations by the overflow of rivers; and on the abrasion of soil and the transportation of earth, gravel, pebbles, and even of considerable masses of rock, from higher to lower levels, by torrents. There are, however, connected with this general subject, several other topics of minor or strictly local interest, or of more uncertain character, which I shall have occasion more fully to speak of hereafter. The first of these three principal subjects--the influence of the woods on springs and other living waters--has been already considered; and if the facts stated in that discussion are well established, and the conclusions I have drawn from them are logically sound, it would seem to follow, as a necessary corollary, that the action of the forest is as important in diminishing the frequency and violence of river-floods as in securing the permanence and equability of natural fountains; for any cause which promotes the absorption and accumulation of the water of precipitation by the superficial strata of the soil, to be slowly given out by infiltration and percolation, must, by preventing the rapid flow of surface-water into the natural channels of drainage, tend to check the sudden rise of rivers, and, consequently, the overflow of their banks, which constitutes what is called inundation. The surface of a forest, in its natural condition, can never pour forth such deluges of water as flow from cultivated soil. Humus, or vegetable mould, is capable of absorbing almost twice its own weight of water. The soil in a forest of deciduous foliage is composed of humus, more or less unmixed, to the depth of several inches, sometimes even of feet, and this stratum is usually able to imbibe all the water possibly resulting from the snow which at any one time covers, or the rain which in any one shower falls upon it. But the vegetable mould does not cease to absorb water when it becomes saturated, for it then gives off a portion of its moisture to the mineral earth below, and thus is ready to receive a new supply; and, besides, the bed of leaves not yet converted to mould takes up and retains a very considerable proportion of snow-water, as well as of rain. The stems of trees, too, and of underwood, the trunks and stumps and roots of fallen timber, the mosses and fungi and the numerous inequalities of the ground observed in all forests, oppose a mechanical resistance to the flow of water over the surface, which sensibly retards the rapidity of its descent down declivities, and diverts and divides streams which may have already accumulated from smaller threads of water. [Footnote: In a letter addressed to the Minister of Public Works, after the terrible inundations of 1857, the late Emperor of France thus happily expressed himself: "Before we seek the remedy for an evil, we inquire into its cause. Whence come the sudden floods of our rivers From the water which falls on the mountains, not from that which falls on the plains. The waters which fall on our fields produce but few rivulets, but these which fall on our roofs and are collected in the gutters, form small streams at once. Now, the roofs are mountains--the gutters are valleys." "To continue the comparison," observes D'Hericourt, "roofs are smooth and impermeable, and the rain-water pours rapidly off from their surfaces; but this rapidity of flow would be greatly diminished if the roofs were carpeted with mosses and grasses; more still, if they were covered with dry leaves, little shrubs, strewn branches, and other impediments--in short, if they were wooded."--Annales Forestieres, Dec. 1857, p. 311. The mosses and fungi play a more important part in regulating the humidity of the air and of the soil than writers on the forest have usually assigned to them. They perish with the trees they grow on; but, in many situations, nature provides a compensation for the tree-mosses and fungi in ground species, which, on cold soils, especially those with a northern exposure, spring up abundantly both before the woods are felled, and when the land is cleared and employed for pasturage, or deserted. These humble plants discharge a portion of the functions appropriated to the wood, and while they render the soil of improved lands much less fit for agricultural use, they, at the same time, prepare it for the growth of a new harvest of trees, when the infertility they produce shall have driven man to abandon it and suffer it to relapse into the hands of nature. In primitive forests, when the ground is not too moist to admit of a dense growth of trees, the soil is generally so thickly covered with leaves that there is little room for ground mosses and mushrooms. In the more open artificial woods of Europe these forms of vegetation, as well as many more attractive plants, are more frequent than in the native groves of America. See, on cryptogamic and other wood plants, Rossmassler, Der Wald, pp. 82 et seqq., and on the importance of such vegetables in checking the flow of water, Mengotti, Idraulica Fisica e Sperimentale, chapters xvi. and xvii. No writer known to me has so well illustrated this function of forest vegetation as Mengotti, though both he and Rossmassler ascribe to plants a power of absorbing water from the atmosphere which they do not possess, or rather can only rarely exercise.] The value of the forest as a mechanical check to a too rapid discharge of rain-water was exemplified in numerous instances in the great floods of 1866 and 1868, in France and Switzerland, and I refer to the observations made on those occasions as of special importance because no previous inundations in those countries had been so carefully watched and so well described by competent investigators. In the French Department of Lozere, which was among those most severely injured by the inundation of 1866--an inundation caused by diluvial rains, not by melted snow--it was everywhere remarked that "grounds covered with wood sustained no damage even on the steepest slopes, while in cleared and cultivated fields the very soil was washed away and the rocks laid bare by the pouring rain." [Footnote: See, for other like observations, an article entitled Le Reboisement et les Inondations, in the Revue des Eaux et Forets of September, 1868] The Italian journals of the day state that the province of Brescia and a part of that of Bergamo, which have heretofore been exposed to enormous injury, after every heavy rain, from floods of the four principal streams which traverse them, in a great degree escaped damage in the terrible inundation of October, 1872, and their immunity is ascribed to the forestal improvements executed by the former province, within ten or twelve years, in the Val Camonica and in the upper basins of the other rivers which drain that territory. Similar facts were noticed in the extraordinary floods of September and October, 1868, in the valley of the Upper Rhine, and Coaz makes the interesting observation that not even dense greensward was so efficient a protection to the earth as trees, because the water soaked through the sod and burst it up by hydrostatic pressure. [Footnote: Die Hochwasser in 1868 im Bandnerischen Rheingebiet, pp. 12, 68. Observations of Forster, cited by Cezanne from the Annales Forestieres for 1859, p. 358, are not less important than those adduced in the text. The field of these observations was a slope of 45 degrees divided into three sections, one luxuriantly wooded from summit to base with oak and beech, one completely cleared through its whole extent, and one cleared in its upper portion, but retaining a wooded belt for a quarter of the height of the slope, which was from 1,360 to 1,800 feet above the brook at its foot. In the first section, comprising six-sevenths of the whole surface, the rains had not produced a single ravine; in the second, occupying about a tenth of the ground, were three ravines, increasing in width from the summit to the valley beneath, where they had, all together, a cross-section of 600 square feet; in the third section, of about the same extent as the second, four ravines had been formed, widening from the crest of the slope to the belt of wood, where they gradually narrowed and finally disappeared. For important observations to the same purpose, see Marchand, Les Torrents des Alpes, in Revue des Eaux et Forets for September, 1871.] The importance of the mechanical resistance of the wood to the flow of water OVER THE SURFACE has, however, been exaggerated by some writers. Rain-water is generally absorbed by the forest-soil as fast as it falls, and it is only in extreme cases that it gathers itself into a superficial sheet or current overflowing the ground. There is, nevertheless, besides the absorbent power of the soil, a very considerable mechanical resistance to the transmission of water BENEATH the surface through and along the superior strata of the ground. This resistance is exerted by the roots, which both convey the water along their surface downwards, and oppose a closely wattled barrier to its descent along the slope of the permeable strata which have absorbed it. [Footnote: In a valuable report on a bill for compelling the sale of waste communal lands, now pending in the Parliament of Italy, Senator Torelli, an eminent man of science, calculates that four-fifths of the precipitation in the forest are absorbed by the soil, or detained by the obstructions of the surface, only one-fifth being delivered to the rivers rapidly enough to create danger of floods, while in open grounds, in heavy rains, the proportions are reversed. Supposing a rain-fall of four inches, an area measuring 100,000 acres, or a little more than four American townships, would receive 53,777,777 cubic yards of water. Of this quantity it would retain, or rather detain, if wooded, 41,000,000 yards, if bare, only 11,000,000. The difference of discharge from wooded and unwooded soils is perhaps exaggerated in Col. Torelli's report, but there is no doubt that in very many cases it is great enough to prevent, or to cause, destructive inundations.] Rivers fed by springs and shaded by woods are comparatively uniform in volume, in temperature, and in chemical composition. [Footnote: Dumont gives an interesting extract from the Misopogon of the Emperor Julian, showing that, in the fourth century, the Seine--the level of which now varies to the extent of thirty feet between extreme high and extreme low water mark--was almost wholly exempt from inundations, and flowed with a uniform current through the whole year. "Ego olim eram in hibernis apud curam Lutetiam, [sic] enim Galli Parisiorum oppidum appellant, quae insula est non magna, in fluvio sita, qui eam omni ex parte cingit. Pontes sublicii utrinque ad eam ferunt, raroque fluvius minuitur ac crescit; sed qualis aestate talis esse solet hyeme."--Des Travaux Publics dans leur Rapports avec l'Agriculture, p. 361, note. As Julian was six years in Gaul, and his principal residence was at Paris, his testimony as to the habitual condition of the Seine, at a period when the provinces where its sources originate were well wooded, is very valuable.] Their banks are little abraded, nor are their courses much obstructed by fallen timber, or by earth and gravel washed down from the highlands. Their channels are subject only to slow and gradual changes, and they carry down to the lakes and the sea no accumulation of sand or silt to fill up their outlets, and, by raising their beds, to force them to spread over the low grounds near their mouth. [Footnote: Forest rivers seldom if ever form large sedimentary deposits at their points of discharge into lakes or larger streams, such accumulations beginning or at least advancing far more rapidly, after the valleys are cleared.] Causes of Inundations. The immediate cause of river inundations is the flow of superficial and subterranean waters into the beds of rivers faster than those channels can discharge them. The insufficiency of the channels is occasioned partly by their narrowness and partly by obstructions to their currents, the most frequent of which is the deposit of sand, gravel, and pebbles in their beds by torrential tributaries during the floods. [Footnote: The extent of the overflow and the violence of the current in river- floods are much affected by the amount of sedimentary matter let fall in their channels by their affluents, which have usually a swifter flow than the main stream, and consequently deposit more or less of their transported material when they join its more slowly-moving waters. Such deposits constitute barriers which at first check the current and raise its level, and of course its violence at lower points is augmented, both by increased volume and by the solid material it carries with it, when it acquires force enough to sweep away the obstruction.--Risler, Sur L influence des Forets sur les Cours d eau, in Revue des Eaux et Forets, 10th January, 1870. In the flood of 1868 the torrent Illgraben, which had formerly spread its water and its sediment over the surface of a vast cone of dejection, having been forced, by the injudicious confinement of its current to a single channel, to discharge itself more directly into the Rhone, carried down a quantity of gravel, sand, and mud, sufficient to dam that river for a whole hour, and in the same great inundation the flow of the Rhine at Thusis was completely arrested for twenty minutes by a similar discharge from the Nolla. Of course, when the dam yielded to the pressure of the accumulated water, the damage to the country below was far greater than it would have ben had the currents of the rivers not been thus obstructed.--Marchand, Les Torrents des Alpes, in Revue des Eaux et Forets, Sept., 1871.] In accordance with the usual economy of nature, we should presume that she had everywhere provided the means of discharging, without disturbance of her general arrangements or abnormal destruction of her products, the precipitation which she sheds upon the face of the earth. Observation confirms this presumption, at least in the countries to which I confine my inquiries; for, so far as we know the primitive conditions of the regions brought under human occupation within the historical period, it appears that the overflow of river-banks was much less frequent and destructive than at the present day, or, at least, that rivers rose and fell less suddenly, before man had removed the natural checks to the too rapid drainage of the basins in which their tributaries originate. The affluents of rivers draining wooded basins generally transport, and of course let fall, little or no sediment, and hence in such regions the special obstruction to the currents of water-courses to which I have just alluded does not occur. The banks of the rivers and smaller streams in the North American colonies were formerly little abraded by the currents. [Footnote: In primitive countries, running streams are very generally fringed by groves, for almost every river is, as Pliny, Nat. Hist., v. 10, says of the Upper Nile, an opifex silvarum, or, to use the quaint and picturesque language of Holland's translation, "makes shade of woods as he goeth."] Even now the trees come down almost to the water's edge along the rivers, in the larger forests of the United States, and the surface of the streams seems liable to no great change in level or in rapidity of current. [Footnote: A valuable memoir by G. Doni, in the Rivista Forestale for October, 1863, p. 438, is one of the best illustrations I can cite of the influence of forests in regulating and equalizing the flow of running water, and of the comparative action of water-courses which drain wooded valleys and valleys bared of trees, with regard to the erosion of their banks and the transportation of sediment. "The Sestajone," remarks this writer, "and the Lima, are two considerable torrents which collect the waters of two great valleys of the Tuscan Apennines, and empty them into the Serchio. At the junction of these two torrents, from which point the combined current takes the name of Lima, a curious phenomenon is observed, which is in part easily explained. In rainy weather the waters of the Sestajone are in volume only about one-half those of the Lima, and while the current of the Lima is turbid and muddy, that of the Sestajone appears limpid and I might almost say drinkable. In clear weather, on the contrary, the waters of the Sestajone are abundant and about double those of the Lima. Now the extent of the two valleys is nearly equal, but the Sestajone winds down between banks clothed with firs and beeches, while the Lima flows through a valley that has been stripped of trees, and in great part brought under cultivation." The Sestajone and the Lima are neither of them what is technically termed a torrent--a name strictly applicable only to streams whose current is not derived from springs and perennial, but is the temporary effect of a sudden accumulation of water from heavy rains or from a rapid melting of the snows, while their beds are dry, or nearly so, at other times. The Lima, however, in a large proportion of its course, has the erosive character of a torrent, for the amount of sediment which it carries down, even when it is only moderately swollen by rains, surpasses almost everything of the kind which I have observed, under analogous circumstances, in Italy. Still more striking is the contrast in the regime of the Saint-Phalez and the Combe-d'Yeuse in the Department of Vancluse, the latter of which became subject to the most violent torrential floods after the destruction of the woods of its basin between 1823 and 1833, but has now been completely subdued, and its waters brought to a peaceful flow, by replanting its valley. See Labussiere, Revue Agric. et Forestiere de Provence, 1866, and Revue des Eaux et Forets, 1866.] Inundations in Winter. In the Northern United States, although inundations are not very unfrequently produced by heavy rains in the height of summer, it will be found generally true that the most rapid rise of the waters, and, of course, the most destructive "freshets," as they are called in America, are occasioned by the sudden dissolution of the snow before the open ground is thawed in the spring. It frequently happens that a powerful thaw sets in after a long period of frost, and the snow which had been months in accumulating is dissolved and carried off in a few hours. When the snow is deep, it, to use a popular expression, "takes the frost out of the ground" in the woods, and, if it lies long enough, in the fields also. But the heaviest snows usually fall after midwinter, and are succeeded by warm rains or sunshine, which dissolve the snow on the cleared land before it has had time to act upon the frost-bound soil beneath it. In this case, the snow in the woods is absorbed as fast as it melts, by the soil it has protected from freezing, and does not materially contribute to swell the current of the rivers. If the mild weather, in which great snow-storms usually occur, does not continue and become a regular thaw, it is almost sure to be followed by drifting winds, and the inequality with which they distribute the snow over the cleared ground leaves the ridges of the surface-soil comparatively bare, while the depressions are often filled with drifts to the height of many feet. The knolls become frozen to a great depth; succeeding partial thaws melt the surface-snow, and the water runs down into the furrows of ploughed fields, and other artificial and natural hollows, and then often freezes to solid ice. In this state of things, almost the entire surface of the cleared land is impervious to water, and from the absence of trees and the general smoothness of the ground, it offers little mechanical resistance to superficial currents. If, under these circumstances, warm weather accompanied by rain occurs, the rain and melted snow are swiftly hurried to the bottom of the valleys and gathered to raging torrents. It ought further to be considered that, though the lighter ploughed soils readily imbibe a great deal of water, yet grass-lands, and all the heavy and tenacious earths, absorb it in much smaller quantities, and less rapidly than the vegetable mould of the forest. Pasture, meadow, and clayey soils, taken together, greatly predominate over sandy ploughed fields, in all large agricultural districts, and hence, even if, in the case we are supposing, the open ground chance to have boon thawed before the melting of the snow which covers it, it is already saturated with moisture, or very soon becomes so, and, of course, cannot relieve the pressure by absorbing more water. The consequence is that the face of the country is suddenly flooded with a quantity of melted snow and rain equivalent to a fall of six or eight inches of the latter, or even more. This runs unobstructed to rivers often still-bound with thick ice, and thus inundations of a fearfully devastating character are produced. The ice bursts, from the hydrostatic pressure from below, or is violently torn up by the current, and is swept by the impetuous stream, in large masses and with resistless fury, against banks, bridges, dams, and mills erected near them. The bark of the trees along the rivers is often abraded, at a height of many feet above the ordinary water-level, by cakes of floating ice, which are at last stranded by the receding flood on meadow or ploughland, to delay, by their chilling influence, the advent of the tardy spring. Another important effect of the removal of the forest shelter in cold climates may be noticed here. We have observed that the ground in the woods either does not freeze at all, or that if frozen it is thawed by the first considerable snow-fall. On the contrary, the open ground is usually frozen when the first spring freshet occurs, but is soon thawed by the warm rain and melting snow. Nothing more effectually disintegrates a cohesive soil than freezing and thawing, and the surface of earth which has just undergone those processes is more subject to erosion by running water than under any other circumstances. Hence more vegetable mould is washed away from cultivated grounds in such climates by the spring floods than by the heaviest rain at other seasons. In the warm climates of Southern Europe, as I have already said, the functions of the forest, so far as the disposal of the water of precipitation is concerned, are essentially the same at all seasons, and are analogous to those which it performs in the Northern United States in summer. Hence, in the former countries, the winter floods have not the characteristics which mark them in the latter, nor is the conservative influence of the woods in winter relatively so important, though it is equally unquestionable. If the summer floods in the United States are attended with less pecuniary damage than those of the Loire and other rivers of France, the Po and its tributaries in Italy, the Emme and her sister torrents which devastate the valleys of Switzerland, it is partly because the banks of American rivers are not yet lined with towns, their shores and the bottoms which skirt them not yet covered with improvements whose cost is counted by millions, and, consequently, a smaller amount of property is exposed to injury by inundation. But the comparative exemption of the American people from the terrible calamities which the overflow of rivers has brought on some of the fairest portions of the Old World, is, in a still greater degree, to be ascribed to the fact that, with all our thoughtless improvidence, we have not yet bared all the sources of our streams, not yet overthrown all the barriers which nature has erected to restrain her own destructive energies. Let us be wise in time, and profit by the errors of our older brethren! The influence of the forest in preventing inundations has been very generally recognized, both as a theoretical inference and as a fact of observation; but the eminent engineer Belgrand and his commentator Valles have deduced an opposite result from various facts of experience and from scientific considerations. They contend that the superficial drainage is more regular from cleared than from wooded ground, and that clearing diminishes rather than augments the intensity of inundations. Neither of these conclusions appears to be warranted by their data or their reasoning, and they rest partly upon facts, which, truly interpreted, are not inconsistent with the received opinions on these subjects, partly upon assumptions which are contradicted by experience. Two of these latter are, first, that the fallen leaves in the forest constitute an impermeable covering of the soil over, not through, which the water of rains and of melting snows flows off, and secondly, that the roots of trees penetrate and choke up the fissures in the rocks, so as to impede the passage of water through channels which nature has provided for its descent to lower strata. As to the first of those, we may appeal to familiar facts within the personal knowledge of every man acquainted with the operations of sylvan nature. Rain-water never, except in very trifling quantities, flows over the leaves in the woods in summer or autumn. Water runs over them only in the spring, in the rare cases when they have been pressed down smoothly and compactly by the weight of the snow--a state in which they remain only until they are dry, when shrinkage and the action of the wind soon roughen the surface so as effectually to stop, by absorption, all flow of water. I have observed that when a sudden frost succeeds a thaw at the close of the winter, after the snow has principally disappeared, the water in and between the layers of leaves sometimes freezes into a solid crust, which allows the flow of water over it. But this occurs only in depressions and on a very small scale; and the ice thus formed is so soon dissolved that no sensible effect is produced on the escape of water from the general surface. As to the influence of roots upon drainage, we have seen that there is no doubt that they, independently of their action as absorbents, mechanically promote it. Not only does the water of the soil follow them downwards, but their swelling growth powerfully tends to enlarge, not to obstruct, the crevices of rock into which they enter; and as the fissures in rocks are longitudinal, not mere circular orifices, every line of additional width gained by the growth of roots within them increases the area of the crevice in proportion to its length. Consequently, the widening of a fissure to the extent of one inch might give an additional drainage equal to a square foot of open tubing. The observations and reasonings of Belgrand and Valles, though their conclusions have not been accepted by many, are very important in one point of view. There writers insist much on the necessity of taking into account, in estimating the relations between precipitation and evaporation, the abstraction of water from the surface and surface-currents, by absorption and infiltration--an element unquestionably of great value, but hitherto much neglected by meteorological inquirers, who have very often reasoned as if the surface-earth were either impermeable to water or already saturated with it; whereas, in fact, it is a sponge, always imbibing humidity and always giving it off, not by evaporation only, but by infiltration and percolation. The remarkable historical notices of inundations in France in the Middle Ages collected by Champion [Footnote: Les Inondations en France depuis le VIe siecle jusqu'a nos jours, 6 vols, 8vo. Paris, 1858-64. See a very able review of this learned and important work by Prof. Messedaglia, read before the Academy of Agriculture at Verona in 1864.] are considered by many as furnishing proof, that when that country was much more generally covered with wood than it now is, destructive inundations of the French rivers were not less frequent than they are in modern days. But this evidence is subject to this among other objections: we know, it is true, that the forests of certain departments of France were anciently much more extensive than at the present day; but we know also that in many portions of that country the soil has been bared of its forests, and then, in consequence of the depopulation of great provinces, left to reclothe itself spontaneously with trees, many times during the historic period; and our acquaintance with the forest topography of ancient Gaul or of mediaeval France is neither sufficiently extensive nor sufficiently minute to permit us to say, with certainty, that the sources of this or that particular river were more or less sheltered by wood at any given time, ancient or mediaeval, than at present. [Footnote: Alfred Maury has, nevertheless, collected, in his erudite and able work, Les Forets de la Gaule et de l'ancienne France, Paris, 1867, an immense amount of statistical detail on the extent, the distribution, and the destruction of the forests of France, but it still remains true that we can very seldom pronounce on the forestal condition of the upper valley of a particular river at the time of a given inundation in the ancient or the mediaeval period.] I say the sources of the rivers, because the floods of great rivers are occasioned by heavy rains and snows which fall in the more elevated regions around the primal springs, and not by precipitation in the main valleys or on the plains bordering on the lower course. The destructive effects of inundations, considered simply as a mechanical power by which life is endangered, crops destroyed, and the artificial constructions of man overthrown, are very terrible. Thus far, however, the flood is a temporary and by no means an irreparable evil, for if its ravages end here, the prolific powers of nature and the industry of man soon restore what had been lost, and the face of the earth no longer shows traces of the deluge that had overwhelmed it. Inundations have even their compensations. The structures they destroy are replaced by better and more secure erections, and if they sweep off a crop of corn, they not unfrequently leave behind them, as they subside, a fertilizing deposit which enriches the exhausted field for a succession of seasons. [Footnote: The productiveness of Egypt has been attributed too exclusively to the fertilizing effects of the slime deposited by the inundations of the Nile; for in that climate a liberal supply of water would produce good crops on almost any ordinary sand, while, without water, the richest soil would yield nothing. The sediment deposited annually is but a very small fraction of an inch in thickness. It is alleged that in quantity it would be hardly sufficient for a good top-dressing, and that in quality it is not chemically distinguishable from the soil inches or feet below the surface. But to deny, as some writers have done, that the slime has any fertilizing properties at all, is as great a error as the opposite one of ascribing all the agricultural wealth of Egypt to that single cause of productiveness. Fine soils deposited by water are almost uniformly rich in all climates; those brought down by rivers, carried out into salt-water, and then returned again by the tide, seem to be more permanently fertile than any others. The polders of the Netherland coast are of this character, and the meadows in Lincolnshire, which have been covered with slime by warping, as it is called, or admitting water over them at high tide, are remarkably productive. Recent analysis is said to have detected in the water of the Nile a quantity of organic matter--derived mainly, no doubt, from the decayed vegetation it bears down from its tropical course--sufficiently large to furnish an important supply of fertilizing ingredients to the soil. It is computed that the Durance--a river fed chiefly by torrents, of great erosive power--carries down annually solid material enough to cover 272,000 acres of soil with a deposit of two-fifths of an inch in thickness, and that this deposit contains, in the combination most favorable to vegetation, more azote than 110,000 tons of guano, and more carbon than 121,000 acres of woodland would assimilate in a year. Elisee Reclus, La Terre, vol. i., p. 467. On the chemical composition, quantity, and value of the solid matter transported by river, see Herve Magnon, Sur l'Emploi des Eaux dans les Irrigations, 8vo. Paris, 1869, pp. 132 et seqq. Duponchel, Traite d'Hydraulique et de Geologie Agricoles. Paris, 1868, chap. i., xii., and xiii.] If, then, the too rapid flow of the surface-waters occasioned no other evil than to produce, once in ten years upon the average, an inundation which should destroy the harvest of the low grounds along the rivers, the damage would be too inconsiderable, and of too transitory a character, to warrant the inconveniences and the expense involved in the measures which the most competent judges in many parts of Europe believe the respective governments ought to take to obviate it. Destructive Action of Torrents. But the great, the irreparable, the appalling mischiefs which have already resulted, and which threaten to ensue on a still more extensive scale hereafter, from too rapid superficial drainage, are of a properly geographical, we may almost say geological, character, and consist primarily in erosion, displacement, and transportation of the superficial strata, vegetable and mineral--of the integuments, so to speak, with which nature has clothed the skeleton frame-work of the globe. It is difficult to convey by description an idea of the desolation of the regions most exposed to the ravages of torrent and of flood; and the thousands who, in these days of swift travel, are whirled by steam near or even through the theatres of these calamities, have but rare and imperfect opportunities of observing the destructive causes in action. Still more rarely can they compare the past with the actual condition of the provinces in question, and trace the progress of their conversion from forest-crowned hills, luxuriant pasture grounds, and abundant cornfields and vineyards well watered by springs and fertilizing rivulets, to bald mountain ridges, rocky declivities, and steep earth-banks furrowed by deep ravines with beds now dry, now filled by torrents of fluid mud and gravel hurrying down to spread themselves over the plain, and dooming to everlasting barrenness the once productive fields. In surveying such scenes, it is difficult to resist the impression that nature pronounced a primal curse of perpetual sterility and desolation upon these sublime but fearful wastes, difficult to believe that they wore once, and but for the folly of man might still be, blessed with all the natural advantages which Providence has bestowed upon the most favored climes. But the historical evidence is conclusive as to the destructive changes occasioned by the agency of man upon the flanks of the Alps, the Apennines, the Pyrenees, and other mountain ranges in Central and Southern Europe, and the progress of physical deterioration has been so rapid that, in some localities, a single generation has witnessed the beginning and the end of the melancholy revolution. I have stated, in a general way, the nature of the evils in question, and of the processes by which they are produced; but I shall make their precise character and magnitude better understood by presenting some descriptive and statistical details of facts of actual occurrence. I select for this purpose the south-eastern portion of France, not because that territory has suffered more severely than some others, but because its deterioration is comparatively recent, and has been watched and described by very competent and trustworthy observers, whose reports are more easily accessible than those published in other countries. [Footnote: Streffleur (Ueber die Natur und die Wirkungen der Wildbuche, p. 3) maintains that all the observations and speculations of French authors on the nature of torrents had been anticipated by Austrian writers. In proof of this assertion he refers to the works of Franz von Zallinger, 1778, Von Arretin, 1808, Franz Duile, 1826, all published at Innsbruck, and Hagenus Beschreibung neuerer Wasserbauwerke, Konigsberg, 1826, none of which works are known to me. It is evident, however, that the conclusions of Surell and other French writers whom I cite, are original results of personal investigation, and not borrowed opinions.] The provinces of Dauphiny and Provence comprise a territory of fourteen or fifteen thousand square miles, bounded north-west by the Isere, north-east and east by the Alps, south by the Mediterranean, west by the Rhone, and extending from 42 degrees to about 45 degrees of north latitude. The surface is generally hilly and even mountainous, and several of the peaks in Dauphiny rise above the limit of perpetual snow. Except upon the mountain ridges, the climate, as compared with that of the United States in the same latitude, is extremely mild. Little snow falls, except upon the higher mountains, the frosts are light, and the summers long, as might, indeed, be inferred from the vegetation; for in the cultivated districts, the vine and the fig everywhere flourish; the olive thrives as far north as 43 and one half degrees, and upon the coast grow the orange, the lemon, and the date-palm. The forest trees, too, are of southern type, umbrella pines, various species of evergreen oaks, and many other trees and shrubs of persistent broad-leaved foliage, characterizing the landscape. The rapid slope of the mountains naturally exposed these provinces to damage by torrents, and the Romans diminished their injurious effects by erecting, in the beds of ravines, barriers of rocks loosely piled up, which permitted a slow escape of the water, but compelled it to deposit above the dikes the earth and gravel with which it was charged. [Footnote: Whether Palissy was acquainted with this ancient practice, or whether it was one of those original suggestions of which his works are so full, I know not, but in his treatise, Des Eaux et Fontaines, he thus recommends it, by way of reply to the objections of "Theorique," who had expressed the fear that "the waters which rush violently down from the heights of the mountain would bring with them much earth, sand, and other things," and thus spoil the artificial fountain that "Practique" was teaching him to make: "And for hindrance of the mischiefs of great waters which may be gathered in a few hours by great storms, when thou shalt have made ready thy parterre to receive the water, thou must lay great atones athwart the deep channels which lead to thy parterre. And so the force of the rushing currents shall be deadened, and thy water shall flow peacefully into his cisterns."--Oeuvres Completes, p. 178.] At a later period the Crusaders brought home from Palestine, with much other knowledge gathered from the wiser Moslems, the art of securing the hillsides and making them productive by terracing and irrigation. The forests which covered the mountains secured an abundant flow of springs, and the process of clearing the soil went on so slowly that, for centuries, neither the want of timber and fuel, nor the other evils about to be depicted, were seriously felt. Indeed, throughout the Middle Ages, these provinces were well wooded, and famous for the fertility and abundance, not only of the low grounds, but of the hills. Such was the state of things at the close of the fifteenth century. The statistics of the seventeenth show that while there had been an increase of prosperity and population in Lower Provence, as well as in the correspondingly situated parts of the other two provinces I have mentioned, there was an alarming decrease both in the wealth and in the population of Upper Provence and Dauphiny, although, by the clearing of the forests, a great extent of plough-land and pasturage had been added to the soil before reduced to cultivation. It was found, in fact, that the augmented violence of the torrents had swept away, or buried in sand and gravel, more land than had been reclaimed by clearing; and the taxes computed by fires or habitations underwent several successive reductions in consequence of the gradual abandonment of the wasted soil by its starving occupants. The growth of the large towns on and near the Rhone and the coast, their advance in commerce and industry, and the consequently enlarged demand for agricultural products, ought naturally to have increased the rural population and the value of their lands; but the physical decay of the uplands was such that considerable tracts were deserted altogether, and in Upper Provence, the fires which, in 1471 counted 897, were reduced to 747 in 1699, to 728 in 1733, and to 635 in 1776. [Footnote: These facts I take from the La Provence au point de vue des Bois, des Torrents et des Inondations, of Charles de Ribbe, one of the highest authorities.] Surell--whose admirable work, Etude sur les Torrents des Hautes Alpes, first published in 1841, [Footnote: A second edition of this work, with an additional volume of great value by Ernest Cezanne, was published at Paris, in two 8vo volumes, in 1871-72.] presents a most appalling picture of the desolations of the torrent, and, at the same time, the most careful studies of the history and essential character of this great evil--in speaking of the valley of Devoluy, on page 152, says: "Everything concurs to show that it was anciently wooded. In its peat-bogs are found buried trunks of trees, monuments of its former vegetation. In the framework of old houses, one sees enormous timber, which is no longer to be found in the district. Many localities, now completely bare, still retain the name of 'wood,' and one of them is called, in old deeds, Comba nigra [Black forest or dell], on account of its dense woods. These and many other proofs confirm the local traditions which are unanimous on this point. "There, as everywhere in the Upper Alps, the clearings began on the flanks of the mountains, and were gradually extended into the valleys and then to the highest accessible peaks. Then followed the Revolution, and caused the destruction of the remainder of the trees which had thus far escaped the woodman's axe." In a note to this passage the writer says: "Several persons have told me that they had lost flocks of sheep, by straying, in the forests of Mont Auroux, which covered the flanks of the mountain from La Cluse to Agneres. These declivities are now as bare as the palm of the hand." The ground upon the steep mountains being once bared of trees, and the underwood killed by the grazing of horned cattle, sheep, and goats, every depression becomes a water-course. "Every storm," says Surell, page 153, "gives rise to a new torrent. [Footnote: No attentive observer can frequent the southern flank of the Piedmontese Alps or the French province of Dauphiny, for half a dozen years, without witnessing with his own eyes the formation and increase of new torrents. I can bear personal testimony to the conversion of more than one grassy slope into the bed of a furious torrent by baring the hills above of their woods.] Examples of such are shown, which, though not yet three years old, have laid waste the finest fields of their valleys, and whole villages have narrowly escaped being swept into ravines formed in the course of a few hours. Sometimes the flood pours in a sheet over the surface, without ravine or even bed, and ruins extensive grounds, which are abandoned forever." I cannot follow Surell in his description and classification of torrents, and I must refer the reader to his instructive work for a full exposition of the theory of the subject. In order, however, to show what a concentration of destructive energies may be effected by felling the woods that clothe and support the sides of mountain abysses, I cite his description of a valley descending from the Col Isoard, which he calls "a complete type of a basin of reception," that is, a gorge which serves as a common point of accumulation and discharge for the waters of several lateral torrents. "The aspect of the monstrous channel," says he, "is frightful. Within a distance of less than two English miles, more than sixty torrents hurl into the depths of the gorge the debris torn from its two flanks. The smallest of these secondary torrents, if transferred to a fertile valley, would be enough to ruin it." The eminent political economist Blanqui, in a memoir read before the Academy of Moral and Political Science on the 25th of November, 1843, thus expresses himself: "Important as are the causes of impoverishment already described, they are not to be compared to the consequences which have followed from the two inveterate evils of the Alpine provinces of France, the extension of clearing and the ravages of torrents. ... The most important result of this destruction is this; that the agricultural capital, or rather the ground itself--which, in a rapidly increasing degree, is daily swept away by the waters--is totally lost. Signs of unparalleled destitution are visible in all the mountain zone, and the solitudes of those districts are assuming an indescribable character of sterility and desolation. The gradual destruction of the woods has, in a thousand localities, annihilated at once the springs and the fuel. Between Grenoble and Briancon, in the valley of the Romanche, many villages are so destitute of wood that they are reduced to the necessity of baking their bread with sun-dried cow-dung, and even this they can afford to do but once a year. "Whoever has visited the valley of Barcelonette, those of Embrun, and of Verdun, and that Arabia Petraea of the department of the Upper Alps, called Devoluy, knows that there is no time to lose--that in fifty years from this date France will be separated from Savoy, as Egypt from Syria, by a desert." [Footnote: Ladoucette says the peasant of Devoluy "often goes a distance of five hours over rocks and precipices for a single [man's] load of wood;" and he remarks on another page, that "the justice of peace of that canton had, in the course of forty-three years, but once heard the voice of the nightingale."--Histoire, etc, des Hautes Alpes, pp. 220, 434.] It deserves to be specially noticed that the district here referred to, though now among the most hopelessly waste in France, was very productive even down to so late a period as the commencement of the French Revolution. Arthur Young, writing in 1789, says: "About Barcelonette and in the highest parts of the mountains, the hill-pastures feed a million of sheep, besides large herds of other cattle;" and he adds: "With such a soil and in such a climate, we are not to suppose a country barren because it is mountainous. The valleys I have visited are, in general, beautiful." [Footnote: The valley of Embrun, now almost completely devastated, was once remarkable for its fertility. In 1800, Hericart de Thury said of it: "In this magnificent valley nature had been prodigal of her gifts. Its inhabitants have blindly revelled in her favors, and fallen asleep in the midst of her profusion."--Becquerel, Des Climats, etc., p. 314.] He ascribes the same character to the provinces of Dauphiny, Provence, and Auvergne, and, though he visited, with the eye of an attentive and practised observer, many of the scenes since blasted with the wild desolation described by Blanqui, the Durance and a part of the course of the Loire are the only streams he mentions as inflicting serious injury by their floods. The ravages of the torrents had, indeed, as we have seen, commenced earlier in some other localities, but we are authorized to infer that they were, in Young's time, too limited in range, and relatively too insignificant, to require notice in a general view of the provinces where they have now ruined so large a proportion of the soil. But I resume my citations. "I do not exaggerate," says Blanqui. "When I shall have finished my description and designated localities by their names, there will rise, I am sure, more than one voice from the spots themselves, to attest the rigorous exactness of this picture of their wretchedness. I have never seen its equal even in the Kabyle villages of the province of Constantine; for there you can travel on horseback, and you find grass in the spring, whereas in more than fifty communes in the Alps there is absolutely nothing. "The clear, brilliant, Alpine sky of Embrun, of Gap, of Barcelonette, and of Digne, which for months is without a cloud, produces droughts interrupted only by diluvial rains like those of the tropics. The abuse of the right of pasturage and the felling of the woods have stripped the soil of all its grass and all its trees, and the scorching sun bakes it to the consistence of porphyry. When moistened by the rain, as it has neither support nor cohesion, it rolls down to the valleys, sometimes in floods resembling black, yellow, or reddish lava, sometimes in streams of pebbles, and over huge blocks of stone, which pour down with a frightful roar, and in their swift course exhibit the most convulsive movements. If you overlook from an eminence one of these landscapes furrowed with so many ravines, it presents only images of desolation and of death. Vast deposits of flinty pebbles, many feet in thickness, which have rolled down and spread far over the plain, surround large trees, bury even their tops, and rise above them, leaving to the husbandman no longer a ray of hope. One can imagine no sadder spectacle than the deep fissures in the flanks of the mountains, which seem to have burst forth in eruption to cover the plains with their ruins. Those gorges, under the influence of the sun which cracks and shivers to fragments the very rocks, and of the rain which sweeps them down, penetrate deeper and deeper into the heart of the mountain, while the beds of the torrents issuing from them are sometimes raised several feet in a single year, by the debris, so that they reach the level of the bridges, which, of course, are then carried off. The torrent-beds are recognized at a great distance, as they issue from the mountains, and they spread themselves over the low grounds, in fan-shaped expansions, like a mantle of stone, sometimes ten thousand feet wide, rising high at the centre, and curving towards the circumference till their lower edges meet the plain. "Such is their aspect in dry weather. But no tongue can give an adequate description of their devastations in one of those sudden floods winch resemble, in almost none of their phenomena, the action of ordinary river-water. They are now no longer overflowing brooks, but real seas, tumbling down in cataracts, and rolling before them blocks of stone, which are hurled forwards by the shock of the waves like balls shot out by the explosion of gunpowder. Sometimes ridges of pebbles are driven down when the transporting torrent does not rise high enough to show itself, and then the movement is accompanied with a roar louder than the crash of thunder. A furious wind precedes the rushing water and announces its approach. Then comes a violent eruption, followed by a flow of muddy waves, and after a few hours all returns to the dreary silence which at periods of rest marks these abodes of desolation. [Footnote: These explosive gushes of mud and rock appear to be occasioned by the caving-in of large masses of earth from the banks of the torrent, which dam up the stream and check its flow until it has acquired volume enough to burst the barrier and carry all before it. In 1827, such a sudden eruption of a torrent, after the current had appeared to have ceased, swept off forty-two houses and drowned twenty-eight persons in the village of Goncelin, near Grenoble, and buried with rubbish a great part of the remainder of the village." The French traveller, D'Abbadie, relates precisely similar occurrences as not unfrequent in the mountains of Abyssinia.--Surrell, Etudes, etc; 2d edition, pp. 224, 295.] "The elements of destruction are increasing in violence. The devastation advances in geometrical progression as the higher slopes are bared of their wood, and 'the ruin from above,' to use the words of a peasant, 'helps to hasten the desolation below.' "The Alps of Provence present a terrible aspect. In the more equable climate of Northern France, one can form no conception of those parched mountain gorges where not even a bush can be found to shelter a bird, where, at most, the wanderer sees in summer here and there a withered lavender, where all the springs are dried up, and where a dead silence, hardly broken by even the hum of an insect, prevails. But if a storm bursts forth, masses of water suddenly shoot from the mountain heights into the shattered gulfs, waste without irrigating, deluge without refreshing the soil they overflow in their swift descent, and leave it even more seared than it was from want of moisture. Man at last retires from the fearful desert, and I have, the present season, found not a living soul in districts where I remember to have enjoyed hospitality thirty years ago." In 1853, ten years after the date of Blanqui's memoir, M. de Bonville, prefect of the Lower Alps, addressed to the Government a report in which the following passages occur: "It is certain that the productive mould of the Alps, swept off by the increasing violence of that curse of the mountains, the torrents, is daily diminishing with fearful rapidity. All our Alps are wholly, or in large proportion, bared of wood. Their soil, scorched by the sun of Provence, cut up by the hoofs of the sheep, which, not finding on the surface the grass they require for their sustenance, gnaw and scratch the ground in search of roots to satisfy their hunger, is periodically washed and carried off by melting snows and summer storms. "I will not dwell on the effects of the torrents. For sixty years they have been too often depicted to require to be further discussed, but it is important to show that their ravages are daily extending the range of devastation. The bed of the Durance, which now in some places exceeds a mile and a quarter in width, and, at ordinary times, has a current of water less than eleven yards wide, shows something of the extent of the damage." [Footnote: In the days of the Roman Empire the Durance was a navigable, or at least a boatable, river, with a commerce so important that the boatmen upon it formed a distinct corporation.--Ladoucette, Histoire, etc., des Hautes Alpes, p. 354. Even as early as 1789 the Durance was computed to have already covered with gravel and pebbles not less than 130,000 acres, "which, but for its inundations, would have been the finest land in the province."--Arthur Young, Travels in France, vol i., ch. i.] Where, ten years ago, there were still woods and cultivated grounds to be seen, there is now but a vast torrent; there is not one of our mountains which has not at least one torrent, and new ones are daily forming. "An indirect proof of the diminution of the soil is to be found in the depopulation of the country. In 1852 I reported to the General Council that, according to the census of that year, the population of the department of the Lower Alps had fallen off no less than 5,000 souls in the five years between 1846 and 1851. "Unless prompt and energetic measures are taken, it is easy to fix the epoch when the French Alps will be but a desert. The interval between 1851 and 1856 will show a further decrease of population. In 1862 the ministry will announce a continued and progressive reduction, in the number of acres devoted to agriculture; every year will aggravate the evil and in half a century France will count more ruins, and a department the less." Time has verified the predictions of De Bonville. The later census returns show a progressive diminution in the population of the departments of the Lower Alps, the Isere, Drome, Ariege, the Upper and the Lower Pyrenees, Lozere, the Ardennes, Doubs, the Vosges, and, in short, in all the provinces formerly remarkable for their forests. This diminution is not to be ascribed to a passion for foreign emigration, as in Ireland, and in parts of Germany and of Italy; it is simply a transfer of population from one part of the empire to another, from soils which human folly has rendered uninhabitable, by ruthlessly depriving them of their natural advantages and securities, to provinces where the face of the earth was so formed by nature as to need no such safeguards, and where, consequently, she preserves her outlines in spite of the wasteful improvidence of man. [Footnote: Between 1851 and 1856 the population of Languedoc and Provence had increased by 101,000 souls. The augmentation, however, was wholly in the provinces of the plains, where all the principal cities are found. In these provinces the increase was 204,000, while in the mountain provinces there was a diminution of 103,000. The reduction of the area of arable land is perhaps even more striking. In 1842 the department of the Lower Alps possessed 90,000 hectares, or nearly 245,000 acres, of cultivated soil. In 1852 it had but 74,000 hectares. In other words, in ten years 25,000 hectares, or 61,000 acres, had been washed away, or rendered worthless for cultivation, by torrents and the abuses of pasturage.--Clave, Etudes, pp. 66, 67.] Floods of the Ardeche. The River Ardeche, in the French department of that name, has a perennial current in a considerable part of its course, and therefore is not, technically speaking, a torrent; but the peculiar character and violence of its floods is due to the action of the torrents which discharge themselves into it in its upper valley, and to the rapidity of the flow of the water of precipitation from the surface of a basin now almost bared of its once luxuriant woods. [Footnote: The original forests in which the basin of the Ardeche was rich have been rapidly disappearing for many years, and the terrific violence of the inundations which are now laying it waste is ascribed, by the ablest investigators, to that cause. In an article inserted in the Annales Forestieres for 1843, quoted by Hohenstein, Der Wald, p. 177, it is said that about one-third of the area of the department had already become absolutely barren, in consequence of clearing, and that the destruction of the woods was still going on with great rapidity. New torrents were constantly forming, and they were estimated to have covered more than 70,000 acres of good land, or one-eighth of the surface of the department, with sand and gravel.] A notice of these floods may therefore not inappropriately be introduced in this place. The floods of the Ardeche and other mountain streams are attended with greater immediate danger to life and property than those of rivers of less rapid flow, because their currents are more impetuous, and they rise more suddenly and with less previous warning. At the same time, their ravages are confined within narrower limits, the waters retire sooner to their accustomed channel, and the danger is more quickly over, than in the case of inundations of larger rivers. The Ardeche drains a basin of 600,238 acres, or a little less than nine hundred and thirty-eight square miles. Its remotest source is about seventy-five miles, in a straight line, from its junction with the Rhone, and springs at an elevation of four thousand feet above that point. At the lowest stage of the river, the bed of the Chassezac, its largest and longest tributary, is in many places completely dry on the surface--the water being sufficient only to supply the subterranean channels of infiltration--and the Ardeche itself is almost everywhere fordable, even below the mouth of the Chassezac. But in floods, the river has sometimes risen more than sixty feet at the Pont d'Arc, a natural arch of two hundred feet chord, which spans the stream below its junction with all its important affluents. At the height of the inundation of 1857, the quantity of water passing this point--after deducting thirty per cent. for material transported with the current and for irregularity of flow--was estimated at 8,845 cubic yards to the second, and between twelve o'clock at noon on the 10th of September of that year and ten o'clock the next morning, the water discharged through the passage in question amounted to more than 450,000,000 cubic yards. This quantity, distributed equally through the basin of the river, would cover its entire area to a depth of more than five inches. The Ardeche rises so suddenly that, in the inundation of 1846, the women who were washing in the bed of the river had not time to save their linen, and barely escaped with their lives, though they instantly fled upon hearing the roar of the approaching flood. Its waters and those of its affluents fall almost as rapidly, for in less than twenty-four hours after the rain has ceased in the Cevennes, where it rises, the Ardeche returns within its ordinary channel, even at its junction with the Rhone. In the flood of 1772, the water at La Beaume de Ruoms, on the Beaume, a tributary of the Ardeche, rose thirty-five feet above low water but the stream was again fordable on the evening of the same day. The inundation of 1827 was, in this respect, exceptional, for it continued three days, during which period the Ardeche poured into the Rhone 1,305,000,000 cubic yards of water. The Nile delivers into the sea 101,000 cubic feet or 3,741 cubic yards per second, on an average of the whole year. [Footnote: Sir John F. Herschel, citing Talabot as his authority, Physical Geography (24). In an elaborate paper on "Irrigation," printed in the United States Patent Report for 1860, p. 169, it is stated that the volume of water poured into the Mediterranean by the Nile in twenty-four hours, at low water, is 150,566,392,368 cubic meters; at high water, 705,514,667,440 cubic metres. Taking the mean of these two numbers, the average daily delivery of the Nile would be 428,081,059,808 cubic metres, or more than 550,000,000,000 cubic yards. There is some enormous mistake, probably a typographical error, in this statement, which makes the delivery of the Nile seventeen hundred times as great as computed by Talabot, and more than physical geographers have estimated the quantity supplied by all the rivers on the face of the globe.] This is equal to 323,222,400 cubic yards per day. In a single day of flood, then, the Ardeche, a river too insignificant to be known except in the local topography of France, contributed to the Rhone once and a half, and for three consecutive days once and one third, as much as the average delivery of the Nile during the same periods, though the basin of the latter river probably contains 1,000,000 square miles of surface, or more than one thousand times as much as that of the former. The average annual precipitation in the basin of the Ardeche is not greater titan in many other parts of Europe, but excessive quantities of rain frequently fall in that valley in the autumn. On the 9th. of October, 1827, there fell at Joyeuse, on the Beaume, no less than thirty-one inches between three o'clock in the morning and midnight. Such facts as this explain the extraordinary suddenness and violence of the floods of the Ardeche, and the basins of many other tributaries of the Rhone exhibit meteorological phenomena not less remarkable. [Footnote: The Drac, a torrent emptying into the Isere a little below Grenoble, has discharged 5,200, the Isere, which receives it, 7,800 cubic yards, and the Durance, above its junction with the Isere, an equal quantity, per second.--Montluisant, Note sur les Dessechements, etc., Annales des Ponts et Chaussees, 1833, 2me semestre p. 288. The Upper Rhone, which drains a basin of about 1,900 square miles, including seventy-one glaciers, receives many torrential affluents, and rain-storms and thaws are sometimes extensive enough to affect the whole tributary system of its narrow valley. In such cases its current swells to a great volume, but previously to the floods of the autumn of 1868 it was never known to reach a discharge of 2,600 cubic yards to the second. On the 28th of September in that year, however, its delivery amounted to 3,700 cubic yards to the second, which is about equal to the mean discharge of the Nile.--Berichte der Experten-Commission uber die Ueberschaeemmungen im Jahr 1868, pp. 174,175. The floods of some other French rivers, which have a more or less torrential character, scarcely fall behind those of the Rhone. The Loire, above Roanne, has a basin of 2,471 square miles, or about twice and a half the area of that of the Ardeche. In some of its inundations it has delivered above 9,500 cubic yards per second, or 400 times its low-water discharge.--Belgrand, De l'Influence des Forets, etc., Annales des Ponts et Chaussees, 1854, 1er semestre, p.15, note. The ordinary low-water discharge of the Seine at Paris is nearly 100 cubic yards per second. Belgrand gives a list of eight floods of that river within the last two centuries, in which it has delivered thirty times that quantity.] The Rhone, therefore, is naturally subject to great and sudden inundations, and the same remark may be applied to most of the principal rivers of France, because the geographical character of all of them is approximately the same. The volume of water in the floods of most great rivers is determined by the degree in which the inundations of the different tributaries are coincident in time. Were all the affluents of the Lower Rhone to pour their highest annual floods into its channel at once--as the smaller tributaries of the Upper Rhone sometimes do--were a dozen Niles to empty themselves into its bed at the same moment, its water would rise to a height and rush with an impetus that would sweep into the Mediterranean the entire population of its banks, and all the works that man has erected upon the plains which border it. But such a coincidence can never happen. The tributaries of this river run in very different directions, and some of them are swollen principally by the melting of the snows about their sources, others almost exclusively by heavy rains. When a damp southeast wind blows up the valley of the Ardeche, its moisture is condensed, and precipitated in a deluge upon the mountains which embosom the headwaters of that stream, thus producing a flood, while a neighboring basin, the axis of which lies transversely or obliquely to that of the Ardeche, is not at all affected. [Footnote: "There is no example of a coincidence between great floods of the Ardeche and of the Rhone, all the known inundations of the former having taken place when the latter was very low."--MARDIGNY, Memoire sur les Inondations des Rivieres de l'Ardeche, p. 26. The same observation may be applied to the tributaries of the Po, their floods being generally successive, not contemporaneous. The swelling of the affluents of the Amazon, and indeed of most large rivers, is regulated by a similar law. See Messedaglia, Analisi dell' opera di Champion, etc., p. 103. The floods of the affluents of the Tiber form an exception to this law, being generally coincident, and this is one of the explanations of the frequency of destructive inundations in that river.--Lombardini, Guida allo Studio dell' Idrologia, ff. 68; same author, Esame degli studi sul Tevere. I take this occasion to acknowledge myself indebted to Mardigny's interesting memoir just quoted for all the statements I make respecting the floods of the Ardeche, except the comparison of the volume of its water with that of the Nile.] It is easy to see that the damage occasioned by such floods as I have described must be almost incalculable, and it is by no means confined to the effects produced by overflow and the mechanical force of the superficial currents. In treating of the devastations of torrents, I have hitherto confined myself principally to the erosion of surface and the transportation of mineral matter to lower grounds by them. The general action of torrents, as thus fur shown, tends to the ultimate elevation of their beds by the deposit of the earth, gravel, and stone conveyed by them; but until they have thus raised their outlets so as sensibly to diminish the inclination of their channels--and sometimes when extraordinary floods give the torrents momentum enough to sweep away the accumulations which they have themselves heaped up--the swift flow of their currents, aided by the abrasion of the rolling rocks and gravel, scoops their beds constantly deeper, and they consequently not only undermine their banks, but frequently sap the most solid foundations which the art of man can build for the support of bridges and hydraulic structures. [Footnote: In some cases where the bed of rapid Alpine streams is composed of very hard rock--as is the case in many of the valleys once filled by ancient glaciers--and especially where they are fed by glaciers not overhung by crumbling cliffs, the channel may remain almost unchanged for centuries. This is observable in many of the tributaries of the Dora Baltea, which drains the valley of Aosta. Several of these small rivers are spanned by more or less perfect Roman bridges--one of which, that over the Lys at Pont St. Martin, is still in good repair and in constant use. An examination of the rocks on which the abutments of this and some other similar structures are founded, and of the channels of the rivers they cross, shows that the beds of the streams cannot have been much elevated or depressed since the bridges were built. In other cases, as at the outlet of the Val Tournanche at Chatillon, where a single rib of a Roman bridge still remains, there is nothing to forbid the supposition that the deep excavation of the channel may have been partly effected at much later period. The Roman aqueduct known as the Pont du Gard, near Nismes, was built, in all probability, nineteen centuries ago. The bed of the river Gardon, a rather swift stream, which flows beneath it, can have suffered but slight depression since the piers of the aqueduct were founded.] In the inundation of 1857, the Ardeche destroyed a stone bridge near La Beaume, which had been built about eighty years before. The resistance of the piers, which were erected on piles, the channel at that point being of gravel, produced an eddying current that washed away the bed of the river above them, and the foundation, thus deprived of lateral support, yielded to the weight of the bridge, and the piles and piers fell up-stream. By a curious law of compensation, the stream which, at flood, scoops out cavities in its bed, often fills them up again as soon as the diminished velocity of the current allows it to let fall the sand and gravel with which it is charged, so that when the waters return to their usual channel, the bottom shows no sign of having been disturbed. In a flood of the Escontay, a tributary of the Rhone, in 1846, piles driven sixteen feet into its gravelly bed for the foundation of a pier were torn up and carried off, and yet, when the river had fallen to low-water mark, the bottom at that point appeared to have been raised higher than it was before the flood, by new deposits of sand and gravel, while the cut stones of the half-built pier were found buried to a great depth in the excavation which the water had first washed out. The gravel with which rivers thus restore the level of their beds is principally derived from the crushing of the rocks brought down by the mountain torrents, and the destructive effects of inundations are immensely diminished by this reduction of large stones to minute fragments. If the blocks hurled down from the cliffs were transported unbroken to the channels of large rivers, the mechanical force of their movement would be irresistible. They would overthrow the strongest barriers, spread themselves over a surface as wide as the flow of the waters, and convert the most smiling valleys into scenes of the wildest desolation. As I have before remarked, I have taken my illustrations of the action of torrents and mountain streams principally from French authorities, because the facts recorded by them are chiefly of recent occurrence, and as they have been collected with much care and described with great fulness of detail, the information furnished by them is not only more trustworthy, but both more complete and more accessible than that which can be gathered from any other source. It is not to be supposed, however, that the countries adjacent to France have escaped the consequences of a like improvidence. The southern flanks of the Alps, and, in a less degree, the northern slope of these mountains and the whole chain of the Pyrenees, afford equally striking examples of the evils resulting from the wanton sacrifice of nature's safeguards. But I can afford space for few details, and as an illustration of the extent of these evils in Italy, I shall barely observe that it was calculated ten years ago that four-tenths of the area of the Ligurian provinces had been washed away or rendered incapable of cultivation in consequence of the felling of the woods. [Footnote: Annali di Agricoltura, Industria e Commercio, vol. i., p. 77. Similar instances of the erosive power of running water might be collected by hundreds from the narratives of travellers in warm countries. The energy of the torrents of the Himalayas is such that the brothers Schlagintweit believe that they will cut gorges through that lofty chain wide enough to admit the passage of currents of warm wind from the south, and thereby modify the climate of the countries lying to the north of the mountains.] Highly colored as these pictures seem, they are not exaggerated, although the hasty tourist through Southern France, Switzerland, the Tyrol, and Northern Italy, finding little in his high-road experiences to justify them, might suppose them so. The lines of communication by locomotive-train and diligence lead generally over safer ground, and it is only when they ascend the Alpine passes and traverse the mountain chains, that scenes somewhat resembling those just described fall under the eye of the ordinary traveller. But the extension of the sphere of devastation, by the degradation of the mountains and the transportation of their debris, is producing analogous effects upon the lower ridges of the Alps and the plains which skirt them; and even now one needs but an hour's departure from some great thoroughfares to reach sites where the genius of destruction revels as wildly as in the most frightful of the abysses which Blanqui has painted. [Footnote: The Skalara-Tobel, for instance, near Coire. See the description of this and other like scenes in Berlepsch, Die Alpen, pp. 169 et seqq., or in Stephen's English translation. About an hour from Thusis, on the Splagen road, "opens the awful chasm of the Nolla which a hundred years ago poured its peaceful waters through smiling meadows protected by the wooded slopes of the mountains. But the woods were cut down and with them departed the rich pastures, the pride of the valley, now covered with piles of rock and rubbish swept down from the mountains. This result is the more to be lamented as it was entirely compassed by the improvidence of man in thinning the forests."--Morell, Scientific Guide to Switzerland, p. 100. The recent change in the character of the Mella--a river anciently so remarkable for the gentleness of its current that it was specially noticed by Catullus as flowing molli flumine--deserves more than a passing remark. This river rises in the mountain-chain east of Lake Iseo, and traversing the district of Brescia, empties into the Oglio after a course of about seventy miles. The iron-works in the upper valley of the Mella had long created a considerable demand for wood, but their operations were not so extensive as to occasion any very sudden or general destruction of the forests, and the only evil experienced from the clearings was the gradual diminution of the volume of the river. Within the last thirty years, the superior quality of the arms manufactured at Brescia has greatly enlarged the sale of them, and very naturally stumulated the activity of both the forges and of the colliers who supply them, and the hillsides have been rapidly stripped of their timber. Up to 1850, no destructive inundation of the Mella had been recorded. Buildings in great numbers had been erected upon its margin, and its valley was conspicuous for its rural beauty and its fertility. But when the denudation of the mountains had reached a certain point, avenging nature began the work of retribution. In the spring and summer of 1850 several new torrents were suddenly formed in the upper tributary valleys, and on the 14th and 15th of August in that year a fall of rain, not heavier than had been often experienced, produced a flood which not only inundated much ground never before overflowed, but destroyed a great number of bridges, dams, factories, and other valuable structures, and, what was a far more serious evil, swept off from the rocks an incredible extent of soil, and converted one of the most beautiful valleys of the Italian Alps into a ravine almost us bare and as barren as the savagest gorge of Southern France. The pecuniary damage was estimated at many millions of francs, and the violence of the catastrophe was deemed so extraordinary, even in a country subject to similar visitations, that the sympathy excited for the sufferers produced, in five months, voluntary contributions for their relief to the amount of nearly $200,000.--Delle Inondazioni del Mella, etc., nella notte del 14 al 15 Agosto, 1850. The author of this pamphlet has chosen as a motto a passage from the Vulgate translation of Job, which is interesting as showing accurate observation of the action of the torrent: "Mons cadens definit, et saxum transfertur de loco suo; lapides excavant aquae et alluvione paullatim terra consumitur."--Job xiv. 18, 19. The English version is much less striking, and gives a different sense. The recent date of the change in the character of the Mella is contested, and it is possible that, though the extent of the revolution is not exaggerated, the rapidity with which it has taken place may have been.] There is one effect of the action of torrents which few travellers on the Continent are heedless enough to pass without notice. I refer to the elevation of the beds of mountain streams in consequence of the deposit of the debris with which they are charged. To prevent the spread of sand and gravel over the fields and the deluging overflow of the raging waters, the streams are confined by walls and embankments, which are gradually built higher and higher as the bed of the torrent is raised, so that, to reach a river, you ascend from the fields beside it; and sometimes the ordinary level of the stream is above the streets and even the roofs of the towns through which it passes. [Footnote: Streffleur quotes from Duile the following observations: "The channel of the Tyrelese brooks is often raised much above the valleys through which they flow. The bed of the Fersina is elevated high above the city of Trent, which lies near it. The Villerbach flows at a much more elevated level than that of the market-place of Neumarkt and Vill, and threatens to overwhelm both of them with its waters. The Talfer at Botzen is at least even with the roofs of the adjacent town, if not above them. The tower-steeples of the villages of Schlanders, Kortsch, and Laas, are lower than the surface of the Gadribach. The Saldurbach at Schluderus menaces the far lower village with destruction, and the chief town, Schwaz, is in similar danger from the Lahnbach."--Streffleur, Ueber die Wildbuche, etc., p. 7.] The traveller who visits the depths of an Alpine ravine, observes the length and width of the gorge and the great height and apparent solidity of the precipitous walls which bound it, and calculates the mass of rock required to fill the vacancy, can hardly believe that the humble brooklet which purls at his feet has been the principal agent in accomplishing this tremendous erosion. Closer observation will often teach him, that the seemingly unbroken rock which overhangs the valley is full of cracks and fissures, and really in such a state of disintegration that every frost must bring down tons of it. If he computes the area of the basin which finds here its only discharge, he will perceive that a sudden thaw of the winter's deposit of snow, or one of those terrible discharges of rain so common in the Alps, must send forth a deluge mighty enough to sweep down the largest masses of gravel and of rock. The simple measurement of the cubical contents of the semicircular hillock which he climbed before he entered the gorge, the structure and composition of which conclusively show that it must have been washed out of this latter by torrential action, will often account satisfactorily for the disposal of most of the matter which once filled the ravine. When a torrent escapes from the lateral confinement of its mountain walls and pours out of the gorge, it spreads and divides itself into numerous smaller streams which shoot out from the mouth of the ravine as from a centre, in different directions, like the ribs of a fan from the pivot, each carrying with it its quota of stones and gravel. The plain below the point of issue from the mountain is rapidly raised by newly-formed torrents, the elevation depending on the inclination of the bed and the form and weight of the matter transported. Every flood both increases the height of this central point and extends the entire circumference of the deposit. Other things being equal, the transporting power of the water is greatest where its flow is most rapid. This is usually in the direction of the axis of the ravine. The stream retaining most nearly this direction moves with the greatest momentum, and consequently transports the solid matter with which it is charged to the greatest distance. The untravelled reader will comprehend this the better when he is informed that the southern slope of the Alps generally rises suddenly out of the plain, with no intervening hill to break the abruptness of the transition, except those consisting of comparatively small heaps of its own debris brought down by ancient glaciers or recent torrents. The torrents do not wind down valleys gradually widening to the rivers or the sea, but leap at once from the flanks of the mountains upon the plains below. This arrangement of surfaces naturally facilitates the formation of vast deposits at their points of emergence, and the centre of the accumulation in the case of very small torrents is not unfrequently a hundred feet high, and sometimes very much more. The deposits of the torrent which has scooped out the Nantzen Thal, a couple of miles below Brieg in the Valais, have built up a semicircular hillock, which most travellers by the Simplon route pass over without even noticing it, though it is little inferior in dimensions to the great cones of dejection described by Blanqui. The principal course of the torrent having been--I know not whether spontaneously or artificially--diverted towards the west, the eastern part of the hill has been gradually brought under cultivation, and there are many trees, fields, and houses upon it; but the larger western part is furrowed with channels diverging from the summit of the deposit at the outlet of the Nantzen Thal, which serve as the beds of the water-courses into which the torrent has divided itself. All this portion of the hillock is subject to inundation after long and heavy rain, and as I saw it in the great flood of October, 1866, almost its whole surface seemed covered with an unbrokun sheet of rushing water. The semi-conical deposit of detritus at the mouth of the Litznerthal, a lateral branch of the valley of the Adige, at the point where the torrent pours out of the gorge, is a thousand feet high and, measuring along the axis of the principal current, two and a half miles long. [Footnote: Sonklar, Die Octzthaler Gebirgsgruppe, 1861, p. 231.] The solid material of this hillock--which it is hardly an exaggeration to call a mountain, the work of a single insignificant torrent and its tributaries--including what the river which washes its base has carried off in a comparatively few years, probably surpasses the mass of the stupendous pyramid of the Matterhorn. In valleys of ancient geological formation, which extend into the very heart of the mountains, the streams, though rapid, have often lost the true torrential character, if, indeed, they ever possessed it. Their beds have become approximately constant, and their walls no longer crumble and fall into the waters that wash their bases. The torrent-worn ravines, of which I have spoken, are of later date, and belong more properly to what may be called the crust of the Alps, consisting of loose rocks, of gravel, and of earth, strewed along the surface of the great declivities of the central ridge, and accumulated thickly between their solid buttresses. But it is on this crust that the mountaineer dwells. Here are his forests, here his pastures, and the ravages of the torrent both destroy his world, and convert it into a source of overwhelming desolation to the plains below. I do not mean to assert that all the rocky valleys of the Alps have been produced by the action of torrents resulting from the destruction of the forests. The greater, and many of the smaller channels, by which that chain is drained, owe their origin to higher causes. They are primitive fissures, ascribable to disruption in upheaval or other geological convulsion, widened and scarped, and often even polished, so to speak, by the action of glaciers during the ice period, and but little changed in form by running water in later eras. It has been contended that all rivers which take their rise in mountains originated in torrents. These, it is said, have lowered the summits by gradual erosion, and, with the material thus derived, have formed shoals in the sea which once beat against the cliffs; then, by successive deposits, gradually raised them above the surface, and finally expanded them into broad plains traversed by gently flowing streams. If we could get back to earlier geological periods, we should find this theory often verified, and we cannot fail to see that the torrents go on at the present hour, depressing still lower the ridges of the Alps and the Apennines, raising still higher the plains of Lombardy and Provence, extending the coast still farther into the Adriatic and the Mediterranean, reducing the inclination of their own beds and the rapidity of their flow, and thus tending to become river-like in character. We cannot measure the share which human action has had in augmenting the intensity of causes of mountain degradation, and of the formation of plains and marshes below, but we know that the clearing of the woods has, in some cases, produced, within two or three generations, effects as blasting as those generally ascribed to geological convulsions, and has laid waste the face of the earth more hopelessly than if it had been buried by a current of lava or a shower of volcanic sand. New torrents are forming every year in the Alps. Tradition, written records, and analogy concur to establish the belief that the ruin of most of the now desolate valleys in those mountains is to be ascribed to the same cause, and authentic descriptions of the irresistible force of the torrent show that, aided by frost and heat, it is adequate to level Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa themselves, unless new upheavals shall maintain their elevation. There are cases where torrents cease their ravages of themselves, in consequence of some change in the condition of the basin where they originate, or of the face of the mountain at a higher level, while the plain or the sea below remains in substantially the same state as before. If a torrent rises in a small valley containing no great amount of earth and of disintegrated or loose rock, it may, in the course of a certain period, wash out all the transportable material, and if the valley is then left with solid walls, it will cease to furnish debris to be carried down by floods. If, in this state of things, a new channel be formed at an elevation above the head of the valley, it may divert a part or even the whole of the rain-water and melted snow which would otherwise have flowed into it, and the once furious torrent now sinks to the rank of a humble and harmless brooklet. "In traversing this department," says Suroll, "one often sees, at the outlet of a gorge, a flattened hillock, with a fan-shaped outline and regular slopes; it is the bed of dejection of an ancient torrent. It sometimes requires long and careful study to detect the primitive form, masked as it is by groves of trees, by cultivated fields, and often by houses, but, when examined closely, and from different points of view, its characteristic figure manifestly appears, and its true history cannot be mistaken. Along the hillock flows a streamlet, issuing from the ravine, and quietly watering the fields. This was originally a torrent, and in the background may be discovered its mountain basin. Such EXTINGUISHED torrents, if I may use the expression, are numerous." [Footnote: Surrell, Les Torrents des Hautes Alpes, chap. xxiv. In such cases, the clearing of the ground, which, in consequence of a temporary diversion of the waters, or from some other cause, has become rewooded, sometimes renews the ravages of the torrent. Thus, on the left bank of the Durance, a wooded declivity had been formed by the debris brought down by torrents, which had extinguished themselves after having swept off much of the superficial strata of the mountain of Morgon. "All this district was covered with woods, which have now been thinned out and are perishing from day to day; consequently, the torrents have recommenced their devastations, and if the clearings continue, this declivity, now fertile, will he ruined, like so many others."--Ibid, p. 155.] But for the intervention of man and domestic animals, these latter beneficent revolutions would occur more frequently, proceed more rapidly. The new scarped mountains, the hillocks of debris, the plains elevated by sand and gravel spread over them, the shores freshly formed by fluviatile deposits, would clothe themselves with shrubs and trees, the intensity of the causes of degradation would be diminished, and nature would thus regain her ancient equilibrium. But these processes, under ordinary circumstances, demand, not years, generations, but centuries; [Footnote: Where a torrent has not been long in operation, and earth still remains mixed with the rocks and gravel it heaps up at its point of eruption, vegetation soon starts up and prospers, it protected from encroachment. In Provence, "several communes determined, about ten years ago, to reserve the soils thus wasted, that is, to abandon them for a certain time, to spontaneous vegetation, which was not slow in making its appearance."-Becquerel, Des Climats, p. 815.] and man, who even now finds scarce breathing-room on this vast globe, cannot retire from the Old World to some yet undiscovered continent, and wait for the slow action of such causes to replace, by a new creation, the Eden he has wasted. Crushing Force of Torrents. I must here notice a mechanical effect of the rapid flow of the torrent, which is of much importance in relation to the desolating action it exercises by covering large tracts of cultivated ground with infertile material. The torrent, as we have seen, shoots or rolls forwards, with great velocity, masses and fragments of rock, and sometimes rounded pebbles from more ancient formations. Every inch of this violent movement is accompanied with crushing concussion, or, at least, with great abrasion of the mineral material, and, as you follow it along the course of the waters which transport it, you find the stones gradually rounding off in form, and diminishing in size, until they pass successively into gravel, and, in the beds of the rivers to which the torrents convey it, sand, and lastly impalpable slime. There are few operations of nature where the effect seems more disproportioned to the cause than in the crushing and comminution of rock in the channel of swift waters. Igneous rocks are generally so hard as to be wrought with great difficulty, and they bear the weight of enormous superstructures without yielding to the pressure; but to the torrent they are as wheat to the millstone. The streams which pour down the southern scarp of the Mediterranean Alps along the Riviera di Ponente, near Genoa, have short courses, and a brisk walk of a couple of hours or even less takes you from the sea-beach to the headspring of many of them. In their heaviest floods, they bring rounded masses of serpentine quite down to the sea, but at ordinary high water their lower course is charged only with finely divided particles of that rock. Hence, while, near their sources, their channels are filled with pebbles and angular fragments, intermixed with a little gravel, the proportions are reversed near their months, and, just above the points where their outlets are partially choked by the rolling shingle of the beach, their beds are composed of sand and gravel to the almost total exclusion of pebbles. Guglielmini argued that the gravel and sand of the beds of running streams were derived from the trituration of rocks by the action of the currents, and inferred that this action was generally sufficient to reduce hard rock to sand in its passage from the source to the outlet of rivers. Frisi controverted this opinion, and maintained that river-sand was of more ancient origin, and he inferred from experiments in artificially grinding stones that the concussion, friction, and attrition of rock in the channel of running waters were inadequate to its comminution, though he admitted that these same causes might reduce silicious sand to a fine powder capable of transportation to the sea by the currents. [Footnote: Frisi, Del modo di regolare i Fiumi e i Torrenti, pp. 4-19. See in Lombardini, Sulle Inondazioni in Francia, p. 87, notices of the action of currents transporting only fine material in wearing down hard rock. In the sluices for gold-washing in California having a grade of 1 to 14 1/2, and paved with the hardest stones, the wear of the bottom is at the rate of two inches in three months.--Raymond, Mineral Statistics, 1870, p. 480.] Frisi's experiments were tried upon rounded and polished river-pebbles, and prove nothing with regard to the action of torrents upon the irregular, more or less weathered, and often cracked and shattered rocks which lie loose in the ground at the head of mountain valleys. The fury of the waters and of the wind which accompanies them in the floods of the French Alpine torrents is such, that large blocks of stone are hurled out of the bed of the stream to the height of twelve or thirteen feet. [Footnote: Surrell, Etude sur les Torrents, pp. 81-86.] The impulse of masses driven with such force overthrows the most solid masonry, and their concussion cannot fail to be attended with the crushing of the rocks themselves. The greatest depth of the basin of the Ardeche is seventy-five miles, but most of its tributaries have a much shorter course. "These affluents," says Mardigny, "hurl into the bed of the Ardeche enormous blocks of rock, which this river, in its turn bears onwards, and grinds down, at high water, so that its current rolls only gravel at its confluence with the Rhone." [Footnote: At Rinkenberg, on the right bank of the Vorder Rhein, in the flood of 1868, a block of stone computed to weigh nearly 9,000 cwt. was carried bodily forwards, not rolled, by a torrent, a distance of three-quarter of a mile.--Coaz, die Hochwasser im 1868, p. 54. Memoire sur les Inondations des Rivieres de l'Ardeche, p. 16. "The terrific roar, the thunder of the raging torrents proceeds principally from the stones which are rolled along in the bed of the stream. This movement is attended with such powerful attrition that, in the Southern Alps, the atmosphere of valleys where the limestone contains bitumen, has, at the time of floods, the marked bituminous smell produced by rubbing pieces of such limestone together."--Wessely, Die Oesterreichischen Alpenlander, i., p. 113.] Duponchel makes the following remarkable statement: "The river Herault rises in a granitic region, but soon reaches calcareous formations, which it traverses for more than sixty kilometres, rolling through deep and precipitous ravines, into which the torrents are constantly discharging enormous masses of pebbles belonging to the hardest rocks of the Jurassian period. These debris, continually renewed, compose, even below the exit of the gorge where the river enters into a regular channel cut in a tertiary deposit, broad beaches, prodigious accumulations of rolled pebbles, extending several kilometres down the stream, but they diminish in size and weight so rapidly that above the mouth of the river, which is at a distance of thirty or thirty-five kilometres from the gorge, every trace of calcareous matter has disappeared from the sands of the bottom, which are exclusively silicious." [Footnote: Avant-projet pour la creation d'un sol fertile, p. 20.] Similar effects of the rapid flow of water and the concussion of stones against each other in river-beds may be observed in almost every Alpine gorge which serves as the channel of a swift stream. The tremendous cleft through which the well-known Via Mala is carried receives, every year, from its own crumbling walls and from the Hinter Rhein and its mild tributaries, enormous quantities of rock, in blocks and boulders. In fact, the masses hurled into it in a single flood like those of 1868 would probably fill it up, at its narrow points, to the level of the road 400 feet above its bottom, were not the stones crushed and carried off by the force of the current. Yet below the outlet at Thusis only small rounded boulders, pebbles, and gravel, not rock, are found in the bed of the river. The Swiss glaciers bring down thousands of cubic yards of hard rock every season. Where the glacier ends in a plain or wide valley, the rocks are accumulated in a terminal moraine, but in numerous instances the water which pours from the ice-river has forces enough to carry down to larger streams the masses delivered by the glacier, and there they, with other stones washed out from the earth by the current, are ground down, so that few of the affluents of the Swiss lakes deliver into them anything but fine sand and slime. Great rivers carry no boulders to the sea, and, in fact, receive none from their tributaries. Lombardini found, twenty years ago, that the mineral matter brought down to the Po by its tributaries was, in general, comminuted to about the same degree of fineness as the sands of its bed at their points of discharge. In the case of the Trebbia, which rises high in the Apennines and empties into the Po at Piacenza, it was otherwise, that river rolling pebbles and coarse gravel into the channel of the principal stream. The banks of the other affluents--excepting some of those which discharge their waters into the great lakes--then either retained their woods, or had been so long clear of them that the torrents had removed most of the disintegrated and loose rock in their upper basins. The valley of the Trebbia had been recently cleared, and all the forces which tend to the degradation and transportation of rock were in full activity. [Footnote: Since the date of Lombardini's observations, many Alpine valleys have been stripped of their woods. It would be interesting to know whether any sensible change has been produced in the character or quantity of the matter transported by the rivers to the Po.--Notice sur les Rivieres de la Lombardie, Annales des Ponts et Chaussees, 1847, 1er semestre, p. 131.] Transporting Power of Water. But the geographical effects of the action of torrents are not confined to erosion of earth and comminution of rock; for they and the rivers to which they contribute transport the debris of the mountains to lower levels and spread them out over the dry land and the bed of the sea, thus forming alluvial deposits, sometimes of a beneficial, sometimes of an injurious, character, and of vast extent. [Footnote: Lorentz, in an official report quoted by Marchand, says: "The felling of the woods produces torrents which cover the cultivated soil with pebbles and fragments of rock, and they do not confine their ravages to the vicinity of the mountains, but extend them into the fertile fields of Provence and other departments, to the distance of forty or fifty leagues."--Entwaldung der Gebirge, p. 17.] A mountain rivulet swollen by rain or melted snow, when it escapes from its usual channel and floods the adjacent fields, naturally deposits pebbles and gravel upon them; but even at low water, if its course is long enough for its grinding action to have full scope, it transports the solid material with which it is charged to some larger stream, and there lets it fall in a state of minute division, and at last the spoil of the mountain is used to raise the level of the plains or carried down to the sea. An instance that fell under my own observation, in 1857, will serve to show something of the eroding and transporting power of streams which, in these respects, fall incalculably below the torrents of the Alps. In a flood of the Ottaquechee, a small river which flows through Woodstock, Vermont, a mill-dam on that stream burst, and the sediment with which the pond was filled, estimated after careful measurement at 13,000 cubic yards, was carried down by the current. Between this dam and the slackwater of another, four miles below, the bed of the stream, which is composed of pebbles interspersed in a few places with larger stones, is about sixty-five feet wide, though, at low water, the breadth of the current is considerably less. The sand and fine gravel were smoothly and evenly distributed over the bed to a width of fifty-five or sixty feet, and, for a distance of about two miles, except at two or three intervening rapids, filled up all the interstices between the stones, covering them to the depth of nine or ten inches, so as to present a regularly formed concave channel, lined with sand, and reducing the depth of water, in some places, from five or six feet to fifteen or eighteen inches. Observing this deposit after the river had subsided and become so clear that the bottom could be seen, I supposed that the next flood would produce an extraordinary erosion of the banks and some permanent changes in the channel of the stream, in consequence of the elevation of the bed and the filling up of the spaces between the stones through which formerly much water had flowed; but no such result followed. The spring freshet of the next year entirely washed out the sand its predecessor had left, deposited some of it in ponds and still-water reaches below, carried the residue beyond the reach of observation, and left the bed of the river almost precisely in its former condition, though, of course, with the displacement of the pebbles which every flood produces in the channels of such streams. The pond, though often previously discharged by the breakage of the dam, had then been undisturbed for about twenty-five years, and its contents consisted almost entirely of sand, the rapidity of the current in floods being such that it would let fall little lighter sediment, even above an obstruction like a dam. The quantity I have mentioned evidently bears a very inconsiderable proportion to the total erosion of the stream during that period, because the wash of the banks consists chiefly of fine earth rather than of sand, and after the pond was once filled, or nearly so, even this material could no longer be deposited in it. The fact of the complete removal of the deposit I have described between the two dams in a single freshet, shows that, in spite of considerable obstruction from roughness of bed, large quantities of sand may be taken up and carried off by streams of no great rapidity of inclination; for the whole descent of the bed of the river between the two dams--a distance of four miles--is but sixty feet, or fifteen feet to the mile. [Footnote: In a sheet-iron siphon, 1,000 feet long, with a diameter of four inches, having the entrance 18 feet, the orifice of discharge 40 feet below the summit of the curve, employed in draining a mine In California, the force of the current was such as to carry through the tube great quantities of sand and coarse gravel, some of the grains of which were as large as an English walnut. --Raymond, Mining Statistics, 1870, p. 602.] The facts which I have adduced may aid us in forming an idea of the origin and mode of transportation of the prodigious deposits at the mouth of great rivers like the Mississippi, the Nile, the Ganges, and the Hoang-Ho, the delta of which last river, composed entirely of river sediment, has a superficial extent of not less than 96,500 square miles. But we shall obtain a clearer conception of the character of this important geographical process by measuring, more in detail, the mass of earth and rock which a well--known river and its tributaries have washed from the mountains and transported to the plains or the sea, within the historic period. The Po and its Deposits. The current of the River Po, for a considerable distance after its volume of water is otherwise sufficient for continuous navigation, is too rapid for that purpose until near Cremona, where its velocity becomes too much reduced to transport great quantities of mineral matter, except in a state of minute division. Its southern affluents bring down from the Apennines a large quantity of fine earth from various geological formations, while its Alpine tributaries west of the Ticino are charged chiefly with rock ground down to sand or gravel. The bed of the river has been somewhat elevated by the deposits in its channel, though not by any means above the level of the adjacent plains as has been so often represented. The dikes, which confine the current at high water, at the same time augment its velocity and compel it to carry most of its sediment to the Adriatic. It has, therefore, raised neither its own channel nor its alluvial shores, as it would have done if it had remained unconfined. But, as the surface of the water in floods is above the general level of the plains through which it flows, the Po can, at that period, receive no contributions of earth from the washing of the fields of Lombardy, and there is no doubt that a large proportion of the sediment it now deposits at its mouth descended from the Alps in the form of rock, though reduced by the grinding action of the waters, in its passage seaward, to the condition of fine sand, and often of silt. We know little of the history of the Po, or of the geography of the coast near the point where it enters the Adriatic, at any period more than twenty centuries before our own. Still less can we say how much of the plains of Lombardy had been formed by its action, combined with other causes, before man accelerated its levelling operations by felling the first woods on the mountains whence its waters are derived. But we know that since the Roman conquest of Northern Italy, its deposits have amounted to a quantity which, if recemented into rock, recombined into gravel, common earth, and vegetable mould, and restored to the situations where eruption or upheaval originally placed or vegetation deposited it, would fill up hundreds of deep ravines in the Alps and Apennines, change the plan and profile of their chains, and give their southern and northern faces respectively a geographical aspect very different from that they now present. Ravenna, forty miles south of the principal mouth of the Po, was built like Venice, in a lagoon, and the Adriatic still washed its walls at the commencement of the Christian era. The mud of the Po has filled up the lagoon, and Ravenna is now four miles from the sea. The town of Adria, which lies between the Po and the Adige, at the distance of some four or five miles from each, was once a harbor famous enough to have given its name to the Adriatic Sea, and it was still accessible to large vessels, if not by the open sea at least by lagoons, in the time of Augustus. The combined action of the two rivers has so advanced the coast-line that Adria is now more than fourteen miles inland, and, in other places, the deposits made within the same period by these and other neighboring streams have a width of twenty miles. What proportion of the earth with which they are charged these rivers have borne out into deep water, during the last two thousand years, we do not know, but as they still transport enormous quantities, as the North Adriatic appears to have shoaled rapidly, and as long islands, composed in great part of fluviatile deposits, have formed opposite their mouths, it must evidently have been very great. The floods of the Po occur but once, or sometimes twice, in a year. [Footnote: In the earlier medieval centuries, when the declivities of the mountains still retained a much larger proportion of their woods, the moderate annual floods of the Po were occasioned by the melting of the snows on the lower slopes, and, according to a passage of Tasso quoted by Castellani (Dell' Influenza delle Selve, i., p. 58, note), they took place in May. The usually more violent inundations of later ages are due to rains, the waters of which are no longer retained by a forest-soil, but conveyed at once to the rivers--and they occur almost uniformly in the autumn or late summer. Castellani, on the page just quoted, says that even so late as about 1780, the Po required a heavy rain of a week to overflow its banks, but that forty years later it was sometimes raised to full flood in a single day. Pliny says: "The Po, which is inferior to no river in swiftness of current, is in flood about the rising of the dog-star, the snow then melting, and though so rapid in flow, it washes nothing from the soil, but leaves it increased in fertility."--Natural History, Book iii, 20. The first terrible inundation of the Po in 1872 took place in May, and appears to have been occasioned by heavy rains on the southern flank of the Alps, and to have received little accession from snow. The snow on the higher Alps does not usually thaw so as to occasion floods before August, and often considerably later. The more destructive flood of October, 1872, was caused both by thaws in the high mountains and by an extraordinary fall of rain. See River Embankments; post. Pliny's remark as to enrichment of the soil by the floods appear to be verified in the case of that of October, 1872, for it is found that the water has left very extensively a thick deposit of slime on the fields. See a list of the historically known great inundations of the Po by the engineer Zuccholli in Torelli, Progetto di Legge per la Vendita di Beni incolti. Roma, 1873.] At other times, its waters are comparatively limpid and seem to hold no great amount of mud or fine sand in mechanical suspension; but at high water it contains a large proportion of solid matter, and, according to Lombardini, it annually transports to the shores of the Adriatic not less than 42,760,000 cubic metres, or very nearly 55,000,000 cubic yards, which carries the coast-line out into the sea at the rate of more than 200 feet in a year. [Footnote: This change of coast-line cannot be ascribed to upheaval, for a comparison of the level of old buildings--as, for instance, the church of San Vitale and the tomb of Theodoric at Ravenna--with that of the sea, tends to prove a depression rather than an elevation of their foundations. A computation by a different method makes the deposits at the mouth of the Po 2,123,000 metres less; but as both of them omit the gravel and silt carried down at ordinary and low water, we are safe in assuming the larger quantity.] The depth of the annual deposit is stated at eighteen centimetres, or rather more than seven inches, and it would cover an area of not much less than ninety square miles with a layer of that thickness. The Adige, also, brings every year to the Adriatic many million cubic yards of Alpine detritus, and the contributions of the Brenta from the same source are far from inconsiderable. The Adriatic, however, receives but a small proportion of the soil and rock washed away from the Italian slope of the Alps and the northern declivity of the Apennines by torrents. Nearly the whole of the debris thus removed from the southern face of the Alps between Monte Rosa and the sources of the Adda--a length of watershed [Footnote: Sir John F. W. Herschel (Physical Geography, 137, and elsewhere) spells this word water-sched, because he considers it a translation, or rather an adoption, of the German "Wasser-scheide, separation of the waters, not water-SHED the slope DOWN WHICH the waters run." As a point of historical etymology, it is probable that the word in question was suggested to those who first used it by the German Wasserscheide; but the spelling WATER-SCHED, proposed by Herschel, is objectionable, both because SCH is a combination of letters wholly unknown to modern English orthography, and properly representing no sound recognized in English orthoepy, and for the still better reason that WATER-SHED, in the sense of DIVISION-OF-THE-WATERS, has a legitimate English etymology. The Anglo-Saxon sceadan meant both to separate or divide, and to shade or shelter. It is the root of the English verbs TO SHED and TO SHADE, and in the former meaning is the A. S. equivalent of the German verb scheiden. SHED in Old English had the meaning to SEPARATE or DISTINGUISH. It is so used in the Owl and the Nightingale, v. 107. Palsgrave (Lesclarcissement, etc., p. 717) defines I SHEDE, I departe thinges asonder; and the word still means TO DIVIDE in several English local dialects. Hence, watershed, the division or separation of the waters, is good English both in etymology and in spelling.] not less than one hundred and fifty miles--is arrested by the still waters of the Lakes Maggiore and Como, and some smaller lacustrine reservoirs, and never reaches the sea. The Po is not continuously embanked except for the lower half of its course. Above Cremona, therefore, it spreads and deposits sediment over a wide surface, and the water withdrawn from it for irrigation at lower points, as well as its inundations in the occasional ruptures of its banks, carry over the adjacent soil a large amount of slime. [Footnote: The quantity of sediment deposited by the Po on the plains which border it, before the construction of the continuous dikes and in the floods which occasionally burst through them, is vast, and the consequent elevation of those plains is very considerable. I do not know that this latter point has been made a subject of special investigation, but vineyards, with the vines still attached to the elms which supported them, have been found two or three yards below the present surface at various points on the plains of Lombardy.] If to the estimated annual deposits of the Po at its mouth, we add the earth and sand transported to the sea by the Adige, the Brenta, and other less important streams, the prodigious mass of detritus swept into Lago Maggioro by the Tosa, the Maggia, and the Ticino, into the lake of Como by the Maira and the Adda, into the lakes of Garda, Lugano, Iseo, and Idro, by their affluents, [Footnote: The Po receives about four-tenths of its waters from these lakes. See Lombardini, Dei cangiamenti nella condizione del Po, p. 29. All the sediment carried into the lakes by their tributaries is deposited in them, and the water which flows out of them is perfectly limpid. From their proximity to the Alps and the number of torrents which empty into them, they no doubt receive vastly more transported matter than is contributed to the Po by the six-tenths of its waters received from other sources.] and the yet vaster heaps of pebbles, gravel, and earth permanently deposited by the torrents near their points of eruption from mountain gorges, or spread over the wide plains at lower levels, we may safely assume that we have an aggregate of not less than ten times the quantity carried to the Adriatic by the Po, or 550,000,000 cubic yards of solid matter, abstracted every year from the Italian Alps and the Apennines, and removed out of their domain by the force of running water. [Footnote: Mengotti estimated the mass of solid matter annually "united to the waters of the Po" at 822,000,000 cubic metres, or nearly twenty times as much as, according to Lombardini, that river delivers into the Adriatic. Castellani supposes the computation of Mengotti to fall much below the truth, and there can be no doubt that a vastly larger quantity of earth and gravel is washed down from the Alps and the Apennines than is carried to the sea.--Castellani, Dell Immediata Influenza delle Salce sul corso delle Acqua, i., pp. 42,43. I have contented myself with assuming less than one-half of Mengotti's estimate.] The present rate of deposit at the mouth of the Po has continued since the year 1600, the previous advance of the coast, after the year 1200, having been only one-third as rapid. The great increase of erosion and transport is ascribed by Lombardini chiefly to the destruction of the forests in the basin of that river and the valleys of its tributaries, since the beginning of the seventeenth century. [Footnote: Baumgarten, An. des Ponts et Chaussees, 1847, 1er semestre, p. 175.] We have no data to show the rate of deposit in any given century before the year 1200, and it doubtless varied according to the progress of population and the consequent extension of clearing and cultivation. The transporting power of torrents is greatest soon after their formation, because at that time their points of delivery are lower, and, of course, their general slope and velocity more rapid, than after years of erosion above, and deposit below, have depressed the beds of their mountain valleys, and elevated the channels of their lower course. Their eroding action also is most powerful at the same period, both because their mechanical force is then greatest, and because the loose earth and stones of freshly cleared forest-ground are most easily removed. Many of the Alpine valleys west of the Ticino--that of the Dora Baltea, for instance--were nearly stripped of their forests in the days of the Roman Empire, others in the Middle Ages, and, of course, there must have been, at different periods before the year 1200, epochs when the erosion and transportation of solid matter from the Alps and the Apennines were at least as great as since the year 1600. Upon the whole, we shall not greatly err if we assume that, for a period of not less than two thousand years, the walls of the basin of the Po--the Italian slope of the Alps, and the northern and north-eastern declivities of the Apennines--have annually sent down into the lakes, the plains, and the Adriatic, not less than 375,000,000 cubic yards of earth and disintegrated rock. We have, then, an aggregate of 750,000,000,000 cubic yards of such material, which, allowing to the mountain surface in question an area of 50,000,000,000 square yards, would cover the whole to the depth of fifteen yards. [Footnote: The total superficies of the basin of the Po, down to Ponte Lagoscuro [Ferrara]--a point where it has received all its affluents--is 6,938,200 hectares, that is, 4,105,600 in mountain lands, 2,832,600 in plain lands.--Dumont, Travaux Publics, etc., p. 272. These latter two quantities are equal respectively to 10,145,348, and 6,999,638 acres, or 15,852 and 10,937 square miles.] There are very large portions of this area, where, as we know from ancient remains--roads, bridges, and the like--from other direct testimony, and from geological considerations, very little degradation has taken place within twenty centuries, and hence the quantity to be assigned to localities where the destructive causes have been most active is increased in proportion. If this vast mass of pulverized rock and earth were restored to the localities from which it was derived, it certainly would not obliterate valleys and gorges hollowed out by great geological causes, but it would reduce the length and diminish the depth of ravines of later formation, modify the inclination of their walls, reclothe with earth many bare mountain ridges, essentially change the line of junction between plain and mountain, and carry back a long reach of the Adriatic coast many miles to the west. [Footnote: I do not use these quantities as factors the value of which is precisely ascertained; nor, for the purposes of the present argument, is quantitative exactness important. I employ numerical statements simply as a means of aiding the imagination to form a general and certainly not extravagant idea of the extent of geographical revolutions which man has done much to accelerate, if not, strictly speaking, to produce. There is an old proverb, Dolus latet in generalibus, and Arthur Young in not the only public economist who has warned his readers against the deceitfulness of round numbers. I think, on the contrary, that vastly more error has been produced by the affectation of precision in cases where precision is impossible. In all the great operations of terrestrial nature, the elements are so numerous and so difficult of exact appreciation, that, until the means of scientific observation and measurement are much more perfected than they now are, we must content ourselves with general approximations. I say TERRESTRIAL nature, because in cosmical movements we have fewer elements to deal with, and may therefore arrive at much more rigorous proportional accuracy in determination of time and place than we can in fixing and predicting the quantities and the epochs of variable natural phenomena on the earth's surface. Travellers are often misled by local habits in the use of what may be called representative numbers, where a definite is put for an indefinite quantity. A Greek, who wished to express the notion of a great but undetermined number, "myriad, or ten thousand;" a Roman, "six hundred;" an Oriental, "forty," or, at present, very commonly, "fifteen thousand." Many a tourist has gravely repeated, as an ascertained fact; the vague statement of the Arabs and the monks of Mount Sinai, that the ascent from the convent of St. Catherine to the summit of Gebel Moosa counts "fifteen thousand" steps, though the difference of level is two thousand feet; and the "Forty" Thieves, the "forty" martyr-monks of the convent of El Arbain--not to speak of a similar use of this numeral in more important cases--have often been understood as expressions of a known number, when in fact they mean simply MANY. The number "fifteen thousand" has found its way to Rome, and De Quincey seriously informs us, on the authority of a lady who had been at much pains to ascertain the EXACT truth, that, including closets large enough for a bed, the Vatican contains fifteen thousand rooms. Any one who has observed the vast dimensions of most of the apartments of that structure will admit that we make a very small allowance of space when we assign a square rod, sixteen and a half feet square, to each room upon the average. On an acre, there might be one hundred and sixty such rooms, including partition walls; and, to contain fifteen thousand of them, a building must cover more than nine acres, and be ten stories high, or possess other equivalent dimensions, which, as every traveller knows, many times exceeds the truth. The value of a high standard of accuracy in scientific observation can hardly be overrated; but habits of rigorous exactness will never be formed by an investigator who allows himself to trust implicitly to the numerical precision or the results of a few experiments. The wonderful accuracy of geodetic measurements in modern times is, in general, attained by taking the mean of a great number of observations at every station, and this final precision is but the mutual balance and compensation of numerous errors. The pretended exactness of statistical tables is too often little better than an imposture; and those founded not on direct estimation by competent observers, but on the report of persons who have no particular interest in knowing the truth, but often have a motive for distorting it, are commonly to be regarded as but vague guesses at the actual fact.] It is, indeed, not to be supposed that all the degradation of the mountains is due to the destruction of the forests--that the flanks of every Alpine valley in Central Europe below the snow-line were once covered with earth and green with woods, but there are not many particular cases in which we can, with certainty, or even with strong probability, affirm the contrary. Mountain Slides. Terrible as are the ravages of the torrent and the river-flood, the destruction of the woods exposes human life and industry to calamities even more appalling than those which I have yet described. The slide in the Notch of the White Mountains, by which the Willey family lost their lives, is an instance of the sort I refer to, though I am not able to say that in this particular case the slip of the earth and rock was produced by the denudation of the surface. It may have been occasioned by this cause, or by the construction of the road through the Notch, the excavations for which, perhaps, cut through the natural buttresses that supported the sloping strata above. Not to speak of the fall of earth when the roots which held it together, and the bed of leaves and mould which sheltered it both from disintegrating frost and from sudden drenching and dissolution by heavy showers, are gone, it is easy to see that, in a climate with severe winters, the removal of the forest, and, consequently, of the soil it had contributed to form, might cause the displacement and descent of great masses of rock. The woods, the vegetable mould, and the soil beneath, protect the rocks they cover from the direct action of heat and cold, and from the expansion and contraction which accompany them. Most rocks, while covered with earth, contain a considerable quantity of water. [Footnote: Rock is permeable by water to a greater extent than is generally supposed. Freshly quarried marble, and even granite, as well as most other stones, are sensibly heavier, as well as softer and more easily wrought, than after they are dried and hardened by air-seasoning. Many sandstones are porous enough to serve as filters for liquids, and much of that of Upper Egypt and Nubia hisses audibly when thrown into water, from the escape of the air forced out of it by hydrostatic pressure and the capillary attraction of the pores for water. Even the denser silicious stones are penetrable by fluids and the coloring matter they contain, to such an extent that agates and other forms of silex may be artificially stained through their substance. The colors of the stones cut at Oberstein are generally produced, or at least heightened, by art. This art was known to and practised by the ancient lapidaries, and it has been revived in recent times.] A fragment of rock pervaded with moisture cracks and splits, if thrown into a furnace, and sometimes with a loud detonation; and it is a familiar observation that the fire, in burning over newly cleared lands, breaks up and sometimes almost pulverizes the stones. This effect is due partly to the unequal expansion of the stone, partly to the action of heat on the water it contains in its pores. The sun, suddenly let in upon rock which had been covered with moist earth for centuries, produces more or less disintegration in the same way, and the stone is also exposed to chemical influences from which it was sheltered before. But in the climate of the United States as well as of the Alps, frost is a still more powerful agent in breaking up mountain masses. The soil that protects the lime and sandstone, the slate and the granite from the influence of the sun, also prevents the water which filters into their crevices and between their strata from freezing in the hardest winters, and the moisture descends, in a liquid form, until it escapes in springs, or passes off by deep subterranean channels. But when the ridges are laid bare, the water of the autumnal rains fills the minutest pores and veins and fissures and lines of separation of the rocks, then suddenly freezes, and bursts asunder huge, and apparently solid blocks of adamantine stone. [Footnote: Palissy had observed the action of frost in disintegrating rock, and he thus describes it, in his essay on the formation of ice: "I know that the stones of the mountains of Ardennes be harder than marble. Nevertheless, the people of that country do not quarry the said stones in winter, for that they be subject to frost; and many times the rocks have been seen to fall without being cut, by means whereof many people have been killed, when the said rocks were thawing." Palissy was ignorant of the expansion of water in freezing--in fact, he supposed that the mechanical force exerted by freezing-water was due to compression, not dilatation--and therefore he ascribes to thawing alone effects resulting not less from congelation. Various forces combine to produce the stone avalanches of the higher Alps, the fall of which is one of the greatest dangers incurred by the adventurous explorers of those regions--the direct action of the sun upon the stone, the expansion of freezing-water, and the loosening of masses of rock by the thawing of the ice which supported them or held them together.] Where the strata are inclined at a considerable angle, the freezing of a thin film of water over a large interstratal area might occasion a slide that should cover miles with its ruins; and similar results might be produced by the simple hydrostatic pressure of a column of water, admitted, by the removal of the covering of earth, to flow into a crevice faster than it could escape through orifices below. Earth or rather mountain slides, compared to which the catastrophe that buried the Willey family in New Hampshire was but a pinch of dust, have often occurred in the Swiss, Italian, and French Alps. The land-slip, which overwhelmed, and covered to the depth of seventy feet, the town of Plurs in the valley of the Maira, on the night of the 4th of September, 1618, sparing not a soul of a population of 2,430 inhabitants, is one of the most memorable of these catastrophes, and the fall of the Rossberg or Rufiberg, which destroyed the little town of Goldan in Switzerland, and 450 of its people, on the 2d of September, 1806, is almost equally celebrated. In 1771, according to Wessely, the mountain-peak Piz, near Alleghe in the province of Belluno, slipped into the bed of the Cordevole, a tributary of the Piave, destroying in its fall three hamlets and sixty lives. The rubbish filled the valley for a distance of nearly two miles, and, by damming up the waters of the Cordevole, formed a lake about three miles long, and a hundred and fifty feet deep, which still subsists, though reduced to half its original length by the wearing down of its outlet. [Footnote: Wessely, Die Oesterreichischen Alpenlander und ihre Forste, pp. 125, 126. Wessely records several other more or less similar occurrences in the Austrian Alps. Some of them, certainly, are not to be ascribed to the removal of the woods, but in most cases they are clearly traceable to that cause. See Revue des Eaux et Forets for 1860, pp. 182, 205.] The important provincial town of Veleia, near Piacenza, where many interesting antiquities have been discovered within a few years, was buried by a vast land-slip, probably about the time of Probus, but no historical record of the event has survived to us. On the 14th of February, 1855, the hill of Belmonte, a little below the parish of San Stefano, in Tuscany, slid into the valley of the Tiber, which consequently flooded the village to the depth of fifty feet, and was finally drained off by a tunnel. The mass of debris is stated to have been about 3,500 feet long, 1,000 wide, and not less than 600 high. [Footnote: Bianchi, Appendix to the Italian translation of Mrs. Somerville'S Physical Geography, p. xxxvi.] Occurrences of this sort have been so numerous in the Alps and Apennines, that almost every Italian mountain commune has its tradition, its record, or its still visible traces of a great land-slip within its own limits. The old chroniclers contain frequent notices of such calamities, and Giovanni Villani even records the destruction of fifty houses and the loss of many lives by a slide of what seems to have been a spur of the hill of San Giorgio in the city of Florence, in the year 1284. [Footnote: Cronica di Giovani Villani, lib. vii., cap. 97. For descriptions of other slides in Italy, see same author, lib. xi, cap. 26; Fanfani, Antologia Italiana, parte ii., p. 95; Giuliani, Linguaggio vivente della Toscana, 1865, lettera 63.] Such displacements of earth and rocky strata rise to the magnitude of geological convulsions, but they are of so rare occurrence in countries still covered by the primitive forest, so common where the mountains have been stripped of their native covering, and, in many cases, so easily explicable by the drenching of incohesive earth from rain, or the free admission of water between the strata of rocks--both of which a coating of vegetation would have prevented--that we are justified in ascribing them for the most part to the same cause as that to which the destructive effects of mountain torrents are chiefly due--the felling of the woods. [Footnote: There is good reason for thinking that many of the earth and rock slides in the Alps occurred at an earlier period than the origin of the forest vegetation which, in later ages, covered the flanks of those mountains. See Bericht uber die Untersuchung der Schweizerischen Hochgebirgswaldungen, 1862, p. 61. Where more recent slides have been again clothed with woods, the trees, shrubs, and smaller plants which spontaneously grow upon them are usually of different species from those observed upon soil displaced at remote periods. This difference is so marked that the site of a slide can often be recognized at a great distance by the general color of the foliage of its vegetation.] In nearly every case of this sort the circumstances of which are known--except the rare instances attributable to earthquakes--the immediate cause of the slip has been the imbibition of water in large quantities by bare earth, or its introduction between or beneath solid strata. If water insinuates itself between the strata, it creates a sliding surface, or it may, by its expansion in freezing, separate beds of rock, which had been nearly continuous before, widely enough to allow the gravitation of the superincumbent mass to overcome the resistance afforded by inequalities of face and by friction; if it finds its way beneath hard earth or rock reposing on clay or other bedding of similar properties, it converts the supporting layer into a semi-fluid mud, which opposes no obstacle to the sliding of the strata above. The upper part of the mountain which buried Goldau was composed of a hard but brittle conglomerate, called nagelflue, resting on unctuous clay, and inclining rapidly towards the village. Much earth remained upon the rock, in irregular masses, but the woods had been felled, and the water had free access to the surface, and to the crevices which sun and frost had already produced in the rock, and, of course, to the slimy stratum beneath. The whole summer of 1806 had been very wet, and an almost incessant deluge of rain had fallen the day preceding the catastrophe, as well as on that of its occurrence. All conditions, then, were favorable to the sliding of the rock, and, in obedience to the laws of gravitation, it precipitated itself into the valley as soon as its adhesion to the earth beneath it was destroyed by the conversion of the latter into a viscous paste. The mass that fell measured between two and a half and three miles in length by one thousand feet in width, and its average thickness is thought to have been about a hundred feet. The highest portion of the mountain was more than three thousand feet above the village, and the momentum acquired by the rocks and earth in their descent carried huge blocks of stone far up the opposite slope of the Rigi. The Piz, which fell into the Cordevole, rested on a steeply inclined stratum of limestone, with a thin layer of calcareous marl intervening, which, by long exposure to frost and the infiltration of water, had lost its original consistence, and become a loose and slippery mass instead of a cohesive and tenacious bed. Protection against Avalanches. In Switzerland and other snowy and mountainous countries, forests render a most important service by preventing the formation and fall of destructive avalanches, and in many parts of the Alps exposed to this catastrophe, the woods are protected, though too often ineffectually, by law. No forest, indeed, could arrest a large avalanche once in full motion, but the mechanical resistance afforded by the trees prevents their formation, both by obstructing the wind, which gives to the dry snow of the Staub-Lawine, or dust-avalanche, its first impulse, and by checking the disposition of moist snow to gather itself into what is called the Rutsch-Lawine, or sliding avalanche. Marchand states that, the very first winter after the felling of the trees on the higher part of a declivity between Sannen and Gsteig where the snow had never been known to slide, an avalanche formed itself in the clearing, thundered down the mountain, and overthrew and carried with it a hitherto unviolated forest to the amount of nearly a million cubic feet of timber. [Footnote: Entwaldung der Gebirge, p. 41.] Elisee Reclus informs us in his remarkable work, La Terre, vol. i., p. 212, that a mountain, which rises to the south of the Pyrenaean village Araguanet in the upper valley of the Neste, having been partially stripped of its woods, a formidable avalanche rushed down from a plateau above in 1846, and swept off more than 15,000 pine-trees. The path once opened down the flanks of the mountain, the evil is almost beyond remedy. The snow sometimes carries off the earth from the face of the rock, or, if the soil is left, fresh slides every winter destroy the young plantations, and the restoration of the wood becomes impossible. The track widens with every new avalanche. Dwellings and their occupants are buried in the snow, or swept away by the rushing mass, or by the furious blasts it occasions through the displacement of the air; roads and bridges are destroyed; rivers blocked up, which swell till they overflow the valley above, and then, bursting their snowy barrier, flood the fields below with all the horrors of a winter inundation. [Footnote: The importance of the wood in preventing avalanches is well illustrated by the fact that, where the forest is wanting, the inhabitants of localities exposed to snow-slides often supply the place of the trees by driving stakes through the snow into the ground, and thus checking its propensity to slip. The woods themselves are sometimes thus protected against avalanches originating on slopes above them, and as a further security, small trees are cut down along the upper line of the forest, and laid against the trunks of larger trees, transversely to the path of the slide, to serve as a fence or dam to the motion of an incipient avalanche, which may by this means be arrested before it acquires a destructive velocity and force. In the volume cited in the text, Reclus informs us that "the village and the great thermal establishment of Bareges in the Pyrenees were threatened yearly by avalanches which precipitated themselves from a height of 1,200 metres and at an angle of 35 degrees; so that the inhabitants had been obliged to leave large spaces between the different quarters of the town for the free passage of the descending masses. Attempts have been recently made to prevent those avalanches by means similar to those employed by the Swiss mountaineers. They cut terraces three or four yards in width across the mountain slopes and supported these terraces by a row of iron piles. Wattled fences, with here and there a wall of stone, shelter the young shoots of trees, which grow up by degrees under the protection of these defences. Until natural trees are ready to arrest the snows, these artificial supports take their place and do their duty very well. The only avalanche which swept down the slope in the year 1860, when these works were completed, did not amount to 350 cubic yards, while the masses which fell before this work was undertaken contained from 75,000 to 80,000 cubic yards."--La Terre, vol. i., p. 233.] Minor Uses of the Forest. Besides the important conservative influences of the forest and its value as the source of supply of a material indispensable to all the arts and industries of human life, it renders other services of a less obvious and less generally recognized character. Woods often subserve a valuable purpose in preventing the fall of rocks, by mere mechanical resistance. Trees, as well as herbaceous vegetation, grow in the Alps upon declivities of surprising steepness of inclination, and the traveller sees both luxuriant grass and flourishing woods on slopes at which the soil, in the dry air of lower regions, would crumble and fall by the weight of its own particles. When loose rocks lie scattered on the face of these declivities, they are held in place by the trunks of the trees, and it is very common to observe a stone that weighs hundreds of pounds, perhaps even tons, resting against a tree which has stopped its progress just as it was beginning to slide down to a lower level. When a forest in such a position is cut, these blocks lose their support, and a single wet season is enough not only to bare the face of a considerable extent of rock, but to cover with earth and stone many acres of fertile soil below. [Footnote: See in Kohl, Alpenreisen, i., 120, an account of the ruin of fields and pastures, and even of the destruction of a broad belt of forest, by the fall of rocks in consequence of cutting a few large trees. Cattle are very often killed in Switzerland by rock-avalanches, and their owners secure themselves from loss by insurance against this risk as against damage by fire or hail.] In alluvial plains and on the banks of rivers trees are extremely useful as a check to the swift flow of the water in inundations, and the spread of the mineral material it transports; but this will be more appropriately considered in the chapter on the Waters; and another most important use of the woods, that of confining the loose sands of dunes and plains, will be treated of in the chapter on the Sands. Small Forest Plants, and Vitality of Seed. Another function of the woods, to which I have barely alluded, deserves a fuller notice than can be bestowed upon it in a treatise the scope of which is purely economical. The forest is the native habitat of a large number of humbler plants, to the growth and perpetuation of which its shade, its humidity, and its vegetable mould appear to be indispensable necessities. [Footnote: "A hundred and fifty paces from my house is a hill of drift-sand, on which stood a few scattered pines (Pinus sylvestris). Sempervivum tectorum in abundance, Statice armeria, Ammone vernalis, Dianthus carthusianorum, with other sand-plants, were growing there. I planted the hill with a few birches, and all the plants I have mentioned completely disappeared, though there were many naked spots of sand between the trees. It should be added, however, that the hillock is more thickly wooded than before. . . . It seems then that Sempervivum tectorum, etc., will not bear the neighborhood of the birch, though growing well near the Pinus sylvestris. I have found the large red variety of Agaricus deliciosus only among the roots of the pine; the greenish-blue Agaricus deliciosus among alder roots, but not near any other tree. Birds have their partialities among trees and shrubs. The Silvioe prefer the Pinus Larix to other trees. In my garden this Pinus is never without them, but I never saw a bird perch on Thuja occidentalis or Juniperus sabina, although the thick foliage of these latter trees affords birds a better shelter than the loose leafage of other trees. Not even a wren ever finds its way to one of them. Perhaps the scent of the Thuja and the Juniperus is offensive to them. I have spoiled one of my meadows by cutting away the bushes. It formerly bore grass four feet high, because many umbelliferous plants, such as Heracleum spondylium, Spiraea ulmaria, Laserpitium latifolia, etc., grew in it. Under the shelter of the bushes these plants ripened and bore seed, but they gradually disappeared as the shrubs wore extirpated, and the grass now does not grow to the height of more than two feet, because it is no longer obliged to keep pace with the umbellifera which flourished among it." See a paper by J.G. Buttner, of Kurland, in Berghaus s Geographicsches Jahrbuch, 1852, No. 4, pp. 14, 15. These facts are interesting as illustrating the multitude of often obscure conditions upon which the life or vigorous growth of smaller organisms depends. Particular species of truffles and of mushrooms are found associated with particular trees, without being, as is popularly supposed, parasites deriving their nutriment from the dying or dead roots of those trees. The success of Rousseau's experiments seem decisive on this point, for he obtains larger crops of truffles from ground covered with young seedling oaks than from that filled with roots of old trees. See an article on Mont Ventoux, by Charles Martins, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, Avril, 1863, p. 626. It ought to be much more generally known than it is, that most if not all mushrooms, even of the species reputed poisonous, may be rendered harmless and healthful as food by soaking them for two hours in acidulated or salt water. The water requires two or three spoonfuls of vinegar or two spoonful of gray salt to the quart, and a quart of water is enough for a pound of sliced mushrooms. After thus soaking, they are well washed in fresh water, thrown into cold water, which is raised to the boiling-point, and, after remaining half an hour, taken out and again washed, Gerard, to prove that "crumpets is wholesome," ate one hundred and seventy-five pounds of the most poisonous mushrooms thus prepared, in a single month, fed his family ad libitum with the same, and finally administered them, in heroic doses, to the members of a committee appointed by the Council of Health of the city of Paris. See Figuier, L'Annee Scientifique, 1862, pp. 353, 384. It should be observed that the venomous principle of poisonous mushrooms is not decomposed and rendered innocent by the process described in the note. It is merely extracted by the acidulated or saline water employed for soaking the plants, and care should be taken that this water be thrown away out of the reach of mischief. It has long been known that the Russian peasantry eat, with impunity, mushrooms of species everywhere else regarded as very poisonous. Is it not probable that the secret of rendering them harmless--which was known to Pliny, though since forgotten in Italy--is possessed by the rustic Muscovites ] We cannot positively say that the felling of the woods in a given vegetable province would involve the final extinction of the smaller plants which are found only within their precincts. Some of these, though not naturally propagating themselves in the open ground, may perhaps germinate and grow under artificial stimulation and protection, and finally become hardy enough to maintain an independent existence in very different circumstances from those which at present seem essential to their life. Besides this, although the accounts of the growth of seeds, which have lain for ages in the ashy dryness of Egyptian catacombs, are to be received with great caution, or, more probably, to be rejected altogether, yet their vitality seems almost imperishable while they remain in the situations in which nature deposits them. When a forest old enough to have witnessed the mysteries of the Druids is felled, trees of other species spring up in its place; and when they, in their turn, fall before the axe, sometimes even as soon as they have spread their protecting shade over the surface, the germs which their predecessors had shed years, perhaps centuries before, sprout up, and in due time, if not choked by other trees belonging to a later stage in the order of natural succession, restore again the original wood. In these cases, the seeds of the new crop may have been brought by the wind, by birds, by quadrupeds, or by other causes; but, in many instances, this explanation is not probable. When newly cleared ground is burnt over in the United States, the ashes are hardly cold before they are covered with a crop of fire-weed, Senecio hieracifolius, a tall, herbaceous plant, very seldom seen growing under other circumstances, and often not to be found for a distance of many miles from the clearing. Its seeds, whether the fruit of an ancient vegetation or newly sown by winds or birds, require either a quickening by a heat which raises to a certain high point the temperature of the stratum where they lie buried, or a special pabulum furnished only by the combustion of the vegetable remains that cover the ground in the woods. Earth brought up from wells or other excavations soon produces a harvest of plants often very unlike those of the local flora, and Hayden informs us that on our great Western desert plains, "wherever the earth is broken up, the wild sun-flower (Helianthus) and others of the taller-growing plants, though previously unknown in the vicinity, at once spring up, almost as if spontaneous generation had taken place." [Footnote: Geological Survey of Wyoming, p. 455.] Moritz Wagner, as quoted by Wittwer, [Footnote: Physikalische Geographie, p. 486.] remarks in his description of Mount Ararat: "A singular phenomenon to which my guide drew my attention is the appearance of several plants on the earth-heaps left by the last catastrophe [an earthquake], which grow nowhere else on the mountain, and had never been observed in this region before. The seeds of these plants were probably brought by birds, and found in the loose, clayey soil remaining from the streams of mud, the conditions of growth which the other soil of the mountain refused them." This is probable enough, but it is hardly less so that the flowing mud brought them up to the influence of air and sun, from depths where a previous convulsion had buried them ages before. Seeds of small sylvan plants, too deeply buried by successive layers of forest foliage and the mould resulting from its decomposition to be reached by the plough when the trees are gone and the ground brought under cultivation, may, if a wiser posterity replants the wood which sheltered their parent stems, germinate and grow, after lying for generations in a state of suspended animation. Darwin says: "On the estate of a relation there was a large and extremely barren heath, which had never been touched by the hand of man, but several hundred acres of exactly the same nature had been enclosed twenty-five years previously and planted with Scotch fir. The change in the native vegetation of the planted part of the heath was most remarkable--more than is generally seen in passing from one quite different soil to another; not only the proportional numbers of the heath-plants were wholly changed, but TWELVE SPECIES of plants (not counting grasses and sedges) flourished in the plantation which could not be found on the heath." [Footnote: Origin of Species, American edition, p. 60.] Had the author informed us that these twelve plants belonged to species whose seeds enter into the nutriment of the birds which appeared with the young wood, we could easily account for their presence in the soil; but he says distinctly that the birds were of insectivorous species, and it therefore seems more probable that the seeds had been deposited when an ancient forest protected the growth of the plants which bore them, and that they sprang up to new life when a return of favorable conditions awaked them from a sleep of centuries. Darwin indeed says that the heath "had never been touched by the hand of man." Perhaps not, after it became a heath; but what evidence is there to control the general presumption that this heath was preceded by a forest, in whose shade the vegetables which dropped the seeds in question might have grown [Footnote: Writers on vegetable physiology record numerous instances where seeds have grown after lying dormant for ages. The following cases are mentioned by Dr. Dwight (Travels, ii., pp. 438, 430). "The lands [in Panton, Vermont], which have here been once cultivated, and again permitted to lie waste for several years, yield a rich and fine growth of hickory [Carya Porcina]. Of this wood there is not, I believe, a single tree in any original forest within fifty miles from this spot. The native growth was here white pine, of which I did not see a single stem in a whole grove of hickory." The hickory is a walnut, bearing a fruit too heavy to be likely to be carried fifty miles by birds, and besides, I believe it is not eaten by any bird indigenous to Vermont. We have seen, however, on a former page, that birds transport the nutmeg, which when fresh is probably as heavy as the walnut, from one inland of the Indian archipelago to another. "A field, about five miles from Northampton, on an eminence called Rail Hill, was cultivated about a century ago. The native growth here, and in all the surrounding region, was wholly oak, chestnut, etc. As the field belonged to my grandfather, I had the best opportunity of learning its history. It contained about five acres, in the form of an irregular parallelogram. As the savages rendered the cultivation dangerous, it was given up. On this ground there sprang up a grove of white pines covering the field and retaining its figure exactly. So far as I remember, there was not in it a single oak or chestnut tree ... There was not a single pine whose seeds were, or, probably, had for ages been, sufficiently near to have been planted on this spot. The fact that these white pines covered this field exactly, go as to preserve both its extent and its figure, and that there were none in the neighborhood, are decisive proofs that cultivation brought up the seeds of a former forest within the limits of vegetation, and gave them an opportunity to germinate." See, on the Succession of the Forest, Thoreau, Excursions, p. l35 et seqq.] Although, therefore, the destruction of a wood and the reclaiming of the soil to agricultural uses suppose the death of its smaller dependent flora, these revolutions do not exclude the possibility of its resurrection. In a practical view of the subject, however, we must admit that when the woodman fells a tree he sacrifices the colony of humbler growths which had vegetated under its protection. Some wood-plants are known to possess valuable medicinal properties, and experiment may show that the number of these is greater than we now suppose. Few of them, however, have any other economical value than that of furnishing a slender pasturage to cattle allowed to roam in the woods; and even this small advantage is far more than compensated by the mischief done to the young trees by browsing animals. Upon the whole, the importance of this class of vegetables, as physic or as food, is not such as to furnish a very telling popular argument for the conservation of the forest as a necessary means of their perpetuation. More potent remedial agents may supply their place in the materia medica, and an acre of grass-land yields more nutriment for cattle than a range of a hundred acres of forest. But he whose sympathies with nature have taught him to feel that there is a fellowship between all God's creatures; to love the brilliant ore better than the dull ingot, iodic silver and crystallized red copper better than the shillings and the pennies forged from them by the coiner's cunning; a venerable oak-tree than the brandy-cask whose staves are split out from its heart-wood; a bed of anemones, hepaticas, or wood violets than the leeks and onions which he may grow on the soil they have enriched and in the air they made fragrant--he who has enjoyed that special training of the heart and intellect which can be acquired only in the unviolated sanctuaries of nature, "where man is distant, but God is near"--will not rashly assert his right to extirpate a tribe of harmless vegetables, barely because their products neither tickle his palate nor fill his pocket; and his regret at the dwindling area of the forest solitude will be augmented by the reflection that the nurselings of the woodland perish with the pines, the oaks, and the beeches that sheltered them. [Footnote: Quaint old Valvasor had observed the subduing influence of nature's solitudes. In describing the lonely Canker-Thal, which, though rocky, was in his time well wooded with "fir, larches, beeches and other trees," he says: "Gladsomeness and beauty, which dwell in many valleys, may not be looked for there. The journey through it is cheerless, melancholy, wearisome, and serveth to temper and mortify orer-joyousness of thought ... In sum it is a very desert, wherein the wildness of human pride doth grow tame."--Ehre der Crain, i., p. 186, b.] Although, as I have said in a former chapter, birds do not frequent the deeper recesses of the wood, yet a very large proportion of them build their nests in trees, and find in their foliage and branches a secure retreat from the inclemencies of the seasons and the pursuit of the reptiles and quadrupeds which prey upon them. The borders of the forests are vocal with song; and when the gray and dewy morning calls the creeping things of the earth out of their night-cells, it summons from the neighboring wood legions of their winged enemies, which swoop down upon the fields to save man's harvests by devouring the destroying worm, and surprising the lagging beetle in his tardy retreat to the dark cover where he lurks through the hours of daylight. The insects most injurious to the rural industry of the garden and the ploughland do not multiply in or near the woods. The locust, which ravages the East with its voracious armies, is bred in vast open plains which admit the full heat of the sun to hasten the hatching of the eggs, gather no moisture to destroy them, and harbor no bird to feed upon thelarvae. [Footnote: Smela, in the government of Kiew, has, for some years, not suffered at all from the locusts, which formerly came every year in vast swarms, and the curculio, so injurious to the turnip crops, is less destructive there than in other parts of the province. This improvement is owing partly to the more thorough cultivation of the soil, partly to the groves which are interspersed among the ploughlands. ... When in the midst of the plains woods shall be planted and filled with insectivorous birds, the locusts will cease to be a plague and a terror to the farmer.--Rentzsch, Der Wald, pp. 45, 46.] It is only since the felling of the forests of Asia Minor and Cyrene that the locust has become so fearfully destructive in those countries; and the grasshopper, which now threatens to be almost as great a pest to the agriculture of some North American soils, breeds in seriously injurious numbers only where a wide extent of surface is bare of woods. General Functions of Forests. In the preceding pages we have seen that the electrical and chemical action of the forest, though obscure, exercises probably a beneficial, certainly not an injurious, influence on the composition and condition of the atmosphere; that it serves as a protection against the diffusion of miasmatic exhalations and malarious poisons; that it performs a most important function as a mechanical shelter from blasting winds to grounds and crops in the lee of it; that, as a conductor of heat, it tends to equalize the temperature of the earth and the air; that its dead products form a mantle over the surface, which protects the earth from excessive heat and cold; that the evaporation from the leaves of living trees, while it cools the air around them, diffuses through the atmosphere a medium which resists the escape of warmth from the earth by radiation, and hence that its general effect is to equilibrate caloric influences and moderate extremes of temperature. We have seen, further, that the forest is equally useful as a regulator of terrestrial and of atmospheric humidity, preventing by its shade the drying up of the surface by parching winds and the scorching rays of the sun, intercepting a part of the precipitation, and pouring out a vast quantity of aqueous vapor into the atmosphere; that if it does not increase the amount of rain, it tends to equalize its distribution both in time and in place; that it preserves a hygrometric equilibrium in the superior strata of the earth's surface; that it maintains and regulates the flow of springs and rivulets; that it checks the superficial discharge of the waters of precipitation and consequently tends to prevent the sudden rise of rivers, the violence of floods, the formation of destructive torrents, and the abrasion of the surface by the action of running water; that it impedes the fall of avalanches and of rocks, and destructive slides of the superficial strata of mountains; that it is a safeguard against the breeding of locusts, and finally that it furnishes nutriment and shelter to many tribes of animal and of vegetable life which, if not necessary to man's existence, are conducive to his rational enjoyment. In fine, in well-wooded regions, and in inhabited countries where a due proportion of soil is devoted to the growth of judiciously distributed forests, natural destructive tendencies of all sorts are arrested or compensated, and man, bird, beast, fish, and vegetable alike find a constant uniformity of condition most favorable to the regular and harmonious coexistence of them all. General Consequences of the Destruction of the Forest. With the extirpation of the forest, all is changed. At one season, the earth parts with its warmth by radiation to an open sky--receives, at another, an immoderate heat from the unobstructed rays of the sun. Hence the climate becomes excessive, and the soil is alternately parched by the fervors of summer, and seared by the rigors of winter. Bleak winds sweep unresisted over its surface, drift away the snow that sheltered it from the frost, and dry up its scanty moisture. The precipitation becomes as irregular as the temperature; the melting snows and vernal rains, no longer absorbed by a loose and bibulous vegetable mould, rush over the frozen surface, and pour down the valleys seawards, instead of filling a retentive bed of absorbent earth, and storing up a supply of moisture to feed perennial springs. The soil is bared of its covering of leaves, broken and loosened by the plough, deprived of the fibrous rootlets which held it together, dried and pulverized by sun and wind, and at last exhausted by new combinations. The face of the earth is no longer a sponge, but a dust-heap, and the floods which the waters of the sky pour over it hurry swiftly along its slopes, carrying in suspension vast quantities of earthy particles which increase the abrading power and mechanical force of the current, and, augmented by the sand and gravel of falling banks, fill the beds of the streams, divert them into new channels, and obstruct their outlets. The rivulets, wanting their former regularity of supply and deprived of the protecting shade of the woods, are heated, evaporated, and thus reduced in their summer currents, but swollen to raging torrents in autumn and in spring. From these causes, there is a constant degradation of the uplands, and a consequent elevation of the beds of water-courses and of lakes by the deposition of the mineral and vegetable matter carried down by the waters. The channels of great rivers become unnavigable, their estuaries are choked up, and harbors which once sheltered large navies are shoaled by dangerous sand-bars. The earth, stripped of its vegetable glebe, grows less and less productive, and, consequently, less able to protect itself by weaving a new network of roots to bind its particles together, a new carpeting of turf to shield it from wind and sun and scouring rain. Gradually it becomes altogether barren. The washing of the soil from the mountains leaves bare ridges of sterile rock, and the rich organic mould which covered them, now swept down into the dank low grounds, promotes a luxuriance of aquatic vegetation, that breeds fever, and more insidious forms of mortal disease, by its decay, and thus the earth is rendered no longer fit for the habitation of man. [Footnote: Almost every narrative of travel in those countries which were the earliest seats of civilization, contains evidence of the truth of these general statements, and this evidence is presented with more or less detail in most of the special works on the forest which I have occasion to cite. I may refer particularly to Hohenstein, Der Wald, 1860, as full of important facts on this subject. See also Caimi, Cenni sulla Importanza dei Boschi, for some statistics, not readily found elsewhere, on this and other topics connected with the forest.] To the general truth of this sad picture there are many exceptions, even in countries of excessive climates. Some of these are due to favorable conditions of surface, of geological structure, and of the distribution of rain; in many others, the evil consequences of man's improvidence have not yet been experienced, only because a sufficient time has not elapsed, since the felling of the forest, to allow them to develop themselves. But the vengeance of nature for the violation of her harmonies, though slow, is sure, and the gradual deterioration of soil and climate in such exceptional regions is as certain to result from the destruction of the woods as is any natural effect to follow its cause. Due Proportion of Woodland. The proportion of woodland that ought to be permanently maintained for its geographical and atmospheric influences varies according to the character of soil, surface, and climate. In countries with a humid sky, or moderately undulating surface and an equable temperature, a small extent of forest, enough to serve as a mechanical screen against the action of the wind in localities where such protection is needed, suffices. But most of the territory occupied by civilized man is exposed, by the character of its surface and its climate, to a physical degradation which cannot be averted except by devoting a large amount of soil to the growth of the woods. From an economical point of view, the question of the due proportion of forest is not less complicated or less important than in its purely physical aspects. Of all the raw materials which nature supplies for elaboration by human art, wood is undoubtedly the most useful, and at the same time the most indispensable to social progress. [Footnote: In an imaginary dialogue in the Recepte Veritable, the author, Palissy, having expressed his indignation at the folly of men in destroying the woods, his interlocutor defends the policy of felling them, by citing the example of "divers bishops, cardinals, priors, abbots, monkeries and chapters, which, by cutting their woods, have made three profits, "the sale of the timber, the rent of the ground, and the "good portion" they received of the grain grown by the peasants upon it. To this argument Palissy replies: "I cannot enough detest this thing, and I call it not an error, but a curse and a calamity to all France; for when forests shall be cut, all arts shall cease, and they which practise them shall be driven out to eat grass with Nebuchadnezzar and the beasts of the field. I have divers times thought to set down in writing the arts which shall perish when there shall be no more wood; but when I had written down a great number, I did perceive that there could be no end of my writing, and having diligently considered, I found there was not any which could be followed without wood." ... "And truly I could well allege to thee a thousand reasons, but 'tis so cheap a philosophy, that the very chamber-wenches, it they do but think, may see that without wood, it is not possible to exercise any manner of human art or cunning."--Oeuvres de Bernard Pallisy . Paris, 1844, p. 89.] The demand for wood, and of course the quantity of forest required to furnish it, depend upon the supply of fuel from other sources, such as peat and coal, upon the extent to which stone, brick, or metal can advantageously be substituted for wood in building, upon the development of arts and industries employing wood and other forest products as materials, and upon the cost of obtaining them from other countries, or upon their commercial value as articles of export. Upon the whole, taking civilized Europe and America together, it is probable that from twenty to twenty-five per cent. of well-wooded surface is indispensable for the maintenance of normal physical conditions, and for the supply of materials so essential to every branch of human industry and every form of social life as those which compose the harvest of the woods. There is probably no country--there are few large farms even--where at least one-fourth of the soil is not either unfit for agricultural use, or so unproductive that, as pasture or as ploughland, it yields less pecuniary return than a thrifty wood. Every prairie has its sloughs where willows and poplars would find a fitting soil, every Eastern farm its rocky nooks and its barren hillsides suited to the growth of some species from our rich forest flora, and everywhere belts of trees might advantageously be planted along the roadsides and the boundaries and dividing fences. In most cases, it will be found that trees may be made to grow well where cultivated crops will not repay the outlay of tillage, and it is a very plain dictate of sound economy that if trees produce a better profit than the same ground would return if devoted to grass or grain, the wood should be substituted for the field. Woodland in European Countries. In 1862, Rentzsch calculated the proportions of woodland in different European countries as follows: [Footnote: Der Wald, pp. 123, 124.] Norway.................................. 66 per cent. Sweden.................................. 60 " Russia.................................. 30.00 " Germany................................. 26.58 " Belgium................................. 18.52 " France.................................. 16.79 " Switzerland............................. 15 " Sardinia................................. 12.29 Neapolitan States........................ 9.43 " Holland.................................. 7.10 " Spain.................................... 5.52 " Denmark.................................. 5.50 " Great Britain............................ 5 " Portugal................................. 4.40 " The large proportion of woodland in Norway and Sweden is in a great measure to be ascribed to the mountainous character of the surface, which renders the construction of roads difficult and expensive, and hence the forests are comparatively inaccessible, and transportation is too costly to tempt the inhabitants to sacrifice their woods for the sake of supplying distant markets. The industries which employ wood as a material have only lately been much developed in these countries, and though the climate requires the consumption of much wood as a fuel, the population is not numerous enough to create, for this purpose, a demand exceeding the annually produced supply, or to need any great extension of cleared ground for agricultural purposes. Besides this, in many places peat is generally employed as domestic fuel. Hence, though Norway has long exported a considerable quantity of lumber, [Footnote: Railway-ties, or, as they are called in England, sleepers, are largely exported from Norway to India, and sold at Calcutta at a lower price than timber of equal quality can be obtained from the native woods.--Reports on Forest Conservancy, vol. i., pt. ii., p. 1533. From 1861 to 1870 Norway exported annually, on the average, more than 60,000,000 cubic feet of lumber.--Wulfsberg, Norges Velstandskilder. Christiania, 1872.] and the iron and copper works of Sweden consume charcoal very largely, the forests have not diminished rapidly enough to produce very sensible climatic or even economic evils. At the opposite end of the scale we find Holland, Denmark, Great Britain, Spain, and Portugal. In the three first-named countries a cold and humid climate renders the almost constant maintenance of domestic fires a necessity, while in Great Britain especially the demand of the various industries which depend on wood as a material, or on mechanical power derived from heat, are very great. Coal and peat serve as a combustible instead of wood in them all, and England imports an immense quantity of timber from her foreign possessions. Fortunately, the character of soil, surface, and climate renders the forest of less importance as a geographical agent in these northern regions than in Spain and Portugal, where all physical conditions concur to make a large extent of forest an almost indispensable means of industrial progress and social advancement. Rentzsch, in fact, ascribes the political decadence of Spain almost wholly to the destruction of the forest. "Spain," observes he, "seemed destined by her position to hold dominion over the world, and this in fact she once possessed. But she has lost her political ascendancy, because, during the feeble administration of the successors of Philip II., her exhausted treasury could not furnish the means of creating new fleets, the destruction of the woods having raised the price of timber above the means of the state." [Footnote: Der Wald, p. 63. Antonio Ponz (Viage de Espana, i., prologo, p. lxiii.), says: "Nor would this be so great an evil, were not some of them declaimers against TREES, thereby proclaiming themselves, in some sort, enemies of the works of God, who gave us the leafy abode of Paradise to dwell in, where we should be even now sojourning, but for the first sin, which expelled us from it." I do not know at what period the two Castiles were bared of their woods, but the Spaniard's proverbial "hatred of a tree" is of long standing. Herrera combats this foolish prejudice; and Ponz, in the prologue to the ninth volume of his journey, says that many carried it so far as wantonly to destroy the shade and ornamental trees planted by the municipal authorities. "Trees," they contended, and still believe, "breed birds, and birds eat up the grain." Our author argues against the supposition of the "breeding of birds by trees," which, he says, is as absurd as to believe that an elm-tree can yield pears; and he charitably suggests that the expression is, perhaps, a maniere de dire, a popular phrase, signifying simply that trees harbor birds.] On the other hand, the same writer argues that the wealth and prosperity of modern England are in great part due to the supply of lumber, as well as of other material for ship-building, which she imports from her colonies and other countries with which she maintains commercial relations. Forests of Great Britain. The proportion of forest is very small in Great Britain, where, as I have said, on the one hand, a prodigious industrial activity requires a vast supply of ligneous material, but where, on the other, the abundance of coal, which furnishes a sufficiency of fuel, the facility of importation of timber from abroad, and the conditions of climate and surface combine to reduce the necessary quantity of woodland to its lowest expression. With the exception of Russia, Denmark, and parts of Germany, no European countries can so well dispense with the forests, in their capacity of conservative influences, as England and Ireland. Their insular position and latitude secure an abundance of atmospheric moisture; the general inclination of surface is not such as to expose it to special injury from torrents, and it is probable that the most important climatic action exercised by the forest in these portions of the British empire, is in its character of a mechanical screen against the effects of wind. The due proportion of woodland in England and Ireland is, therefore, a question not of geographical, but almost purely of economical, expediency, to be decided by the comparative direct pecuniary return from forest-growth, pasturage, and ploughland. Contrivances for economizing fuel came later into use in the British Islands than on the Continent. Before the introduction of a system of drainage, the soil, like the sky, was, in general, charged with humidity; its natural condition was unfavorable for the construction and maintenance of substantial common roads, and the transportation of so heavy a material as coal, by land, from the remote counties where alone it was mined in the Middle Ages, was costly and difficult. For all these reasons, the consumption of wood was large, and apprehensions of the exhaustion of the forests were excited at an early period. Legislation there, as elsewhere, proved ineffectual to protect them, and many authors of the sixteenth century express fears of serious evils from the wasteful economy of the people in this respect. Harrison, in his curious chapter "Of Woods and Marishes" in Holinshed's compilation, complains of the rapid decrease of the forests, and adds: "Howbeit thus much I dare affirme, that if woods go so fast to decaie in the next hundred yeere of Grace, as they haue doone and are like to doo in this, . . . it is to be feared that the fennie bote, broome, turfe, gall, heath, firze, brakes, whinnes, ling, dies, hassacks, flags, straw, sedge, reed, rush, and also seacole, will be good merchandize euen in the citie of London, whereunto some of them euen now haue gotten readie passage, and taken up their innes in the greatest merchants' parlours . . . . I would wish that I might liue no longer than to see foure things in this land reformed, that is: the want of discipline in the church: the couetous dealing of most of our merchants in the preferment of the commodities of other countries, and hinderance of their owne: the holding of faires and markets vpon the sundaie to be abolished and referred to the wednesdaies: and that euerie man, in whatsoeuer part of the champaine soile enioieth fortie acres of land, and vpwards, after that rate, either by free deed, copie hold, or fee farme, might plant one acre of wood, or sowe the same with oke mast, hasell, beech, and sufficient prouision be made that it may be cherished and kept. But I feare me that I should then liue too long, and so long, that I should either be wearie of the world, or the world of me." [Footnote: Holinshed, reprint of 1807, i., pp. 357, 358. It is evident from this passage, and from another on page 397 of the same volume, that, though seacoal was largely exported to the Continent, it had not yet come into general use in England. It is a question of much interest, when mineral coal was first employed in England for fuel. I can find no evidence that it was used as a combustible until more than a century after the Norman conquest. It has been said that it was known to the Anglo-Saxon population, but I am acquainted with no passage in the literature of that people which proves this. The dictionaries explain the Anglo-Saxon word grofa by sea-coal. I have met with this word in no Anglo-Saxon work, except in the Chronicle, A.D. 852, from a manuscript certainly not older than the 12th century, and in two citations from Anglo-Saxon charters, one published by Kemble in Codex Diplomaticus, the other by Thorpe in Diplomatarium Anglicum, in all which passages it more probably means peat than mineral coal. According to Way, Promptorium Parrulorum, p. 506, note, the Catholicon Anglicanum has "A turfe grafte, turbarium." Grafte is here evidently the same word as the A.-S. grafa, and the Danish Torvegraf, a turf-pit, confirms this opinion. Coal is not mentioned in King Alfred's Bede, in Neckam, in Glanville or in Robert of Gloucester, though the two latter writers speak of the allied mineral, jet, and are very full in their enumeration of the mineral productions of the island. In a Latin poem ascribed to Giraldus Cambrensis, who died after the year 1220, but found also in the manuesripts of Walter Mapes (see Camden Society edition, pp. 131 and 350), and introduced into Higden's Polychronicon (London, 1865, pp. 398, 399), carbo sub terra cortice, which can mean nothing but pit-coal, is enumerated among the natural commodities of England. Some of the translations of the 13th and 14th century render carbo by cool or col, some by gold, and some omit this line, as well as others unintelligible to the translators. Hence, although Giraldus was acquainted with coal, it certainly was not generally known to English writers until at least a century after the time of that author. The earliest mediaeval notice of mineral coal I have met with is in a passage cited by Ducange from a document of the year 1198, and it is an etymological observation of some interest, that carbones ferrei, as sea-coal is called in the document, are said by Ducange to have been known in France by the popular name of hulla, a word evidently identical with the modern French houille and the Cornish Huel, which in the form wheal is an element in the name of many mining localities. England was anciently remarkable for its forests, but Caesar says it wanted the fagus and the abies. There can be no doubt that fagus means the beech, which, as the remains in the Danish peat-mosses show, is a tree of late introduction into Denmark, where it succeeded the fir, a tree not now native to that country. The succession of forest crops seems to have been the same in England; for Harrison, p. 359, speaks of the "great store of firre" found lying "at their whole lengths" in the "fens and marises" of Lancashire and other counties, where not even bushes grew in his time. We cannot be sure what species of evergreen Caesar intended by abies. The popular designations of spike-leaved trees are always more vague and uncertain in their application than those of broad-leaved trees. PINUS, PINE, has been very loosely employed even in botanical nomenclature, and KIEFER, FICHTE, and TANNE are often confounded in German.--Rossmassler, Der Wald, pp. 256, 289, 324. A similar confusion in the names of this family of trees exists in India. Dr. Cleghorn, Inspector-General of the Indian Forests, informs us in his official Circular No. 2, that the name of deodar is applied in some provinces to a cypress, in some to a cedar, and in others to a juniper. If it were certain that the abies of Caesar was the fir formerly and still found in peat-mosses, and that he was right in denying the existence of the beech in England in his time, the observation would be very important, because it would fix a date at which the fir had become extinct, and the beech had not yet appeared in the island. The English oak, though strong and durable, was not considered generally suitable for finer work in the sixteenth century. There were, however, exceptions. "Of all in Essex," observes Harrison, Holinshed, i., p. 357, "that growing in Bardfield parke is the finest for ioiners craft; for oftentimes haue I seene of their workes made of that oke so fine and faire, as most of the wainescot that is brought hither out of Danske [Danzig]; for our wainescot is not made in England. Yet diuerse haue assaied to deale with our okes to that end, but not with so good successe as they haue hoped, bicause the ab or iuice will not so soone be removed and cleane drawne out, which some attribute to want of time in the salt water." This passage is also of interest as showing that soaking in salt-water, as a mode of seasoning, was practised in Harrison's time. But the importation of wainscot, or boards for ceiling, panelling, and otherwise finishing rooms, which was generally of oak, commenced at least three centuries before the time of Harrison. On page 204 of the Liber Albus mention is made of "squared oak timber," brought in from the country by carts, and of course of domestic growth, as free of city duty or octroi, and of "planks of oak" coming in in the same way as paying one plank a cart-load. But in the chapter on the "Customs of Billyngesgate," pp. 208, 209, relating to goods imported from foreign countries, an import duty of one halfpenny is imposed on every hundred of boards called "weynscotte"--a term formerly applied only to oak--and of one penny on every hundred of boards called "Rygholt." The editor explains "Rygholt" as "wood of Riga." This was doubtless pine or fir. The year in which these provisions were made does not appear, but they belong to the reign of Henry III.] Evelyn's "Silva," the first edition of which appeared in 1664, rendered an extremely important service to the cause of the woods, and there is no doubt that the ornamental plantations in which England far surpasses all other countries, are, in some measure, the fruit of Evelyn's enthusiasm. In England, however, arboriculture, the planting and nursing of single trees, has, until comparatively recent times, been better understood than sylviculture, the sowing and training of the forest. But this latter branch of rural improvement now receives great attention from private individuals, though, so far as I know, not from the National Government, except in the East Indian provinces, where the forestal department has assumed great importance. [Footnote: The improvidence of the population under the native and early foreign governments has produced great devastations in the forests of the British East Indian provinces, and the demands of the railways for fuel and timber have greatly augmented the consumption of lumber, and of course contributed to the destruction of the woods. The forests of British India are now, and for several years have been, under the control of an efficient governmental organization, with great advantage both to the government and to the general private interests of the people. The official Reports on Forest Conservancy from May, 1862, to August, 1871, in 4 vols. folio, contain much statistical and practical information on all subjects connected with the administration of the forest.] In fact, England is, I believe, the only European country where private enterprise has pursued sylviculture on a really great scale, though admirable examples have been set in many others. In England the law of primogeniture, and other institutions and national customs which tend to keep large estates long undivided and in the same line of inheritance, the wealth of the landholders, the special adaptation of the climate to the growth of forest-trees, and the difficulty of finding safe and profitable investments of capital, combine to afford encouragements for the plantation of forests, which scarcely exist elsewhere in the same degree. In Scotland, where the country is for the most part broken and mountainous, the general destruction of the forests has been attended with very serious evils, and it is in Scotland that many of the most extensive British forest plantations have now been formed. But although the inclination of surface in Scotland is rapid, the geological constitution of the soil is not of a character to promote such destructive degradation by running water as in Southern France, and it has not to contend with the parching droughts by which the devastations of the torrents are rendered more injurious in those provinces. It is difficult to understand how either law or public opinion, in a country occupied by a dense and intelligent population, and, comparatively speaking, with an infertile soil, can tolerate the continued withdrawal of a great portion of the territory from the cultivation of trees and from other kinds of rural economy, merely to allow wealthy individuals to amuse themselves with field-sports. In Scotland, 2,000,000 acres, as well suited to the growth of forests and for pasture as is the soil generally, are withheld from agriculture, that they may be given up to herds of deer protected by the game laws. A single nobleman, for example, thus appropriates for his own pleasures not less than 100,000 acres. [Footnote: Robertson, Our Deer Forests. London, 1867.] In this way one-tenth of all the land of Scotland is rendered valueless in an economical point of view--for the returns from the sale of the venison and other game scarcely suffice to pay the game-keepers and other incidental expenses--and in these so-called FORESTS there grows neither building timber nor fire-wood worth the cutting, as the animals destroy the young shoots. Forests of France. The preservation of the woods was one of the wise measures recommended to France by Sully, in the time of Henry IV., but the advice was little heeded, and the destruction of the forests went on with such alarming rapidity, that, two generations later, Colbert uttered the prediction: "France will perish for want of wood." Still, the extent of wooded soil was very great, and the evils attending its diminution were not so sensibly felt, that either the government or public opinion saw the necessity of authoritative interference, and in 1750 Mirabeau estimated the remaining forests of the kingdom at seventeen millions of hectares [42,000,000 acres]. In 1860 they were reduced to eight millions [19,769,000 acres], or at the rate of 82,000 hectares [202,600 acres] per year. Troy, from whose valuable pamphlet, Etude sur le Reboisement des Montagnes, I take these statistical details, supposes that Mirabeau's statement may have been an extravagant one, but it still remains certain that the waste has been enormous; for it is known that, in some departments, that of Ariege, for instance, clearing has gone on during the last half-century at the rate of three thousand acres a year, and in all parts of the empire trees have been felled faster than they have grown. [Footnote: Among the indirect proofs of the comparatively recent existence of extensive forests in France, may be mentioned the fact that wolves were abundant, not very long since, in parts of the empire where there are now neither wolves nor woods to shelter them. Arthur Young more than once speaks of the "innumerable multitudes" of these animals which infested France in 1789, and George Sand states, in the Histoire de ma Vie, that some years after the restoration of the Bourbons, they chased travellers on horseback in the southern provinces, and literally knocked at the doors of her father-in-law's country seat. Eugenie de Guerin, writing from Rayssac in Languedoc in 1831 speaks of hearing the wolves fighting with dogs in the night under her very windows. Lettres, 2d ed., p. 6. There seems to have been a tendency to excessive clearing in Central and Western, earlier than in South-eastern, France. Bernard Palissy, in the Recepte Veritable, first printed in 1563, thus complains: "When I consider the value of the least clump of trees, or even of thorns, I much marvel at the great ignorance of men, who, as it seemeth, do nowadays study only to break down, fell, and waste the fair forests which their forefathers did guard so choicely. I would think no evil of them for cutting down the woods, did they but replant again some part of them; but they care nought for the time to come, neither reck they of the great damage they do to their children which shall come after them."--Oeuvres Completes de Bernard Pallisy, 1844, p. 88.] The total area of France in Mirabeau's time, excluding Savoy, but including Alsace and Lorraine, was about one hundred and thirty-one millions of acres. The extent of forest supposed by Mirabeau would be about thirty-two per cent. of the whole territory. In a country and a climate where the conservative influences of the forest are so necessary as in France, trees must cover a large surface and be grouped in large masses, in order to discharge to the best advantage the various functions assigned to them by nature. The consumption of wood is rapidly increasing in that empire, and a large part of its territory is mountainous, sterile, and otherwise such in character or situation that it can be more profitably devoted to the growth of wood than to any agricultural use. Hence it is evident that the proportion of forest in 1750, taking even Mirabeau's large estimate, was not very much too great for permanent maintenance, though doubtless the distribution was so unequal that it would have been sound policy to fell the woods and clear land in some provinces, while large forests should have been planted in others. [Footnote: The view I have taken of this point is confirmed by the careful investigation of Rentzsch, who estimates the proper proportion of woodland to entire surface at twenty-three per cent. for the interior of Germany, and supposes that near the coast, where the air is supplied with humidity by evaporation from the sea, it might safely be reduced to twenty per cent. See Rentzsch's very valuable prize essay, Der Wald im Haushalt der Natur und der Volkswirthschaft. cap. viii. The due proportion in France would considerably exceed that for the German States, because France has relatively more surface unfit for any growth but that of wood, because the form and geological character of her mountains expose her territory to much greater injury from torrents, and beause at least her southern provinces are more frequently visited both by extreme droughts and by deluging rains.] During the period in question France neither exported manufactured wood or rough timber, nor derived important collateral advantages of any sort from the destruction of her forests. She is consequently impoverished and crippled to the extent of the difference between what she actually possesses of wooded surface and what she ought to have retained. [Footnote: In 1863, France imported lumber to the value of twenty-five and a half millions of dollars, and exported to the amount of six and a half millions of dollars. The annual consumption of France was estimated in 1866 at 212,000,000 cubic feet for building and manufacturing, and 1,588,300,000 for firewood and charcoal. The annual product of the forest-soil of France does not exceed 70,000,000 cubic feet of wood fit for industrial use, and 1,300,000,000 cubic feet consumed as fuel. This estimate does not include the product of scattered trees on private grounds, but the consumption is estimated to exceed the production of the forests by the amount of about twenty millions of dollars. It is worth noticing that the timber for building and manufacturing produced in France comes almost wholly from the forests of the state or of the communes.--Jules Clave, in Revue des Deux Mondes for March 1, 1866, p. 207.] The force of the various considerations which have been suggested in regard to the importance of the forest has been generally felt in France, and the subject has been amply debated special treatises, in scientific journals, and by the public press, as well as in the legislative body of that country. Perhaps no one point has been more prominent in the discussions than the influence of the forest in equalizing and regulating the flow of the water of precipitation. Opinion is still somewhat divided on this subject, but the value of the woods as a safeguard against the ravages of torrents is universally acknowledged, and it is hardly disputed that the rise of river-floods is, even if as great, at least less sudden in streams having their sources in well-wooded territory. Upon the whole, the conservative action of the woods in regard to torrents and to inundations has ben generally recognized by the public of France as a matter of prime importance, and the Government of the empire has made this principle the basis of a special system of legislation for the protection of existing forests, and for the formation of new. The clearing of woodland, and the organization and functions of a police for its protection, are regulated by a law bearing date June 18th, 1859, and provision was made for promoting the restoration of private woods by a statute adopted on the 28th of July, 1860. The former of these laws passed the legislative body by a vote of 246 against 4, the latter with but a single negative voice. The influence of the Government, in a country where the throne is as potent as in France, would account for a large majority, but when it is considered that both laws, the former especially, interfere very materially with the rights of private domain, the almost entire unanimity with which they were adopted is proof of a very general popular conviction, that the protection and extension of the forests is a measure more likely than any other to arrest the devastations of the torrents and check the violence, if not to prevent the recurrence, of destructive river inundations. The law of July 28th, 1860, appropriated 10,000,000 francs, to be expended, at the rate of 1,000,000 francs per year, in executing or aiding the replanting of woods. It is computed that this appropriation--which, considering the vast importance of the subject, does not seem extravagant for a nation rich enough to be able to expend annually six hundred times that sum in the maintenance of its military establishments in times of peace--will secure the creation of new forest to the extent of about 200,000 acres, or one fourteenth part of the soil, where the restoration of the woods is thought feasible, and, at the same time, specially important as a security against the evils ascribed, in a great measure, to its destruction. [Footnote: In 1848 the Government of the so-called French Republic sold to the Bank of France 187,000 acres of public forests, and notwithstanding the zeal with which the Imperial Government had pressed the protective Iegislation of 1860, it introduced, into the Legislative Assembly in 1865 a bill for the sale, and consequently destruction, of the forests of the state to the amount of one hundred million francs. The question was much debated in the Assembly, and public opinion manifested itself so energetically against the measure that the ministry felt itself compelled to withdraw it. See the discussions in D'Alienation des Forets de l'Etat. Paris, 1865. The late Imperial Government sold about 170,000 acres of woodland between 1852 and 1866, both inclusive. The other Governments, since the restoration of the Bourbons in 1814, alienated more than 700,000 acres of the public forests, exclusive of sales between 1836 and 1857, which are not reported.--Annuaire des Eaux et Forets, 1872, p. 9.] In 1865 the Legislative Assembly passed a bill amendatory of the law of 1860, providing, among other things, for securing the soil in exposed localities by grading, and by promoting the growth of grass and the formation of greensward over the surface. This has proved a most beneficial measure, and its adoption under corresponding conditions in the United States is most highly to be recommended. The leading features of the system are: 1. Marking out and securing from pasturage and all other encroachments a zone along the banks and around the head of ravines. 2. Turfing this zone, which in France accomplishes itself, if not spontaneously, at least with little aid from art. 3. Consolidation of the scarps of the ravines by grading and wattling and establishing barriers, sometimes of solid masonry, but generally of fascines or any other simple materials at hand, across the bed of the stream. 4. Cutting banquettes or narrow terraces along the scarps, and planting rows of small deciduous trees and arborescent shrubs upon them, alternating with belts of grass obtained by turfing with sods or sowing grass-seeds. Planting the banquettes and slopes with bushes, and sowing any other vegetables with tenacious roots, is also earnestly recommended. [Footnote: See a description of similar processes recommended and adopted by Mengotti, in his Idraulica, vol. ii., chap. xvii.] Remedies against Torrents. The rural population, which in France is generally hostile to all forest laws, soon acquiesced in the adoption of this system, and its success has far surpassed all expectation. At the end of the year 1868 about 190,000 acres had been planted with trees, [Footnote: Travellers spending the winter at Nice may have a good opportunity of studying the methods of forming and conducting the rewooding of mountain slopes, under the most unfavorable conditions, by visiting Mont Boron, in the immediate vicinity of that city, and other coast plantations in that province, where great difficulties have been completely overcome by the skill and perseverance of French foresters. See Les Forets des Maures, Revue des Eaux et Forets, January, 1869.] and nearly 7,000 acres well turfed over in the Department of the Hautes Alpes. Many hundred ravines, several of which had been the channels of formidable torrents, had been secured by barriers, grading and planting, and according to official reports the aspect of the mountains in the Department, wherever these methods were employed, had rapidly changed. The soil had acquired such stability that the violent rains of 1868, so destructive elsewhere, produced no damage in the districts which had been subjected to these operations, and numerous growing torrents which threatened irreparable mischief had been completely extinguished, or at least rendered altogether harmless. [Footnote: For ample details of processes and results, see the second volume of Surrell, Etudes sur les Torrents, Paris, 1872, and a Report by De La Grye, in the Revue des Eaux et Forets for January, 1869.] Besides the processes directed by the Government of France, various subsidiary measures of an easily and economically practicable character have been suggested. Among them is one which has long been favorably known in our Southern States under the name of circling, and the adoption of which in hilly regions in other States is to be strongly recommended. It is simply a method of preventing the wash of surface by rains, and at the same time of providing a substitute for irrigation of steep pasture-grounds, consisting in little more than in running horizontal furrows along the hillsides, thus converting the scarp of the hills into a succession of small terraces which, when once turfed over, are very permanent. Experience is said to have demonstrated that this simple process at least partially checks the too rapid flow of surface-water into the valleys, and, consequently, in a great measure obviates one of the most prominent causes of inundations, and that it suffices to retain the water of rains, of snows, and of small springs, long enough for the irrigation of the soil, thus increasing its product of herbage in a fivefold proportion. [Footnote: Troy, Etude sur le Reboisement des Montagnes, sections 6, 7, 21.] As a further recommendation, it may be observed that this process is an admirable preparation of the ground for forest plantations, as young trees planted on the terraces would derive a useful protection from the form of the surface and the coating of turf, and would also find a soil moist enough to secure their growth. Forests of Italy. According to the most recent statistics, Italy has 17.64 per cent. of woodland, [Footnote: Siemoni, Manuale d'Arte Forestale, 2 ediz., Firenze, 1872, p. 542.] a proportion which, considering the character of climate and surface, the great amount of soil which is fit for no other purpose than the growth of trees, and the fact that much of the land classed as forest is either very imperfectly wooded, or covered with groves badly administered, and not in a state of progressive improvement, might advantageously be doubled. Taking Italy as a whole, we may say that she is eminently fitted by climate, soil, and superficial formation, to the growth of a varied and luxuriant arboreal vegetation, and that in the interests of self-protection, the promotion of forestal industry is among the first duties of her people. There are in Western Piedmont valleys where the felling of the woods has produced consequences geographically and economically as disastrous as in South-eastern France, and there are many other districts in the Alps and the Apennines where human improvidence has been almost equally destructive. Some of these regions must be abandoned to absolute desolation, and for others the opportunity of physical restoration is rapidly passing away. But there are still millions of square miles which might profitably be planted with forest-trees, and thousands of acres of parched and barren hillside, within sight of almost every Italian provincial capital, which might easily and shortly be reclothed with verdant woods. [Footnote: To one accustomed to the slow vegetation of less favored climes, the rapidity of growth in young plantations in Italy seems almost magical. The trees planted along the new drives and avenues in Florence have attained in three or four years a development which would require at least ten in our Northern States. This, it is true, is a special case, for the trees have been planted and tended with a skill and care which cannot be bestowed upon a forest; but the growth of trees little cared for is still very rapid in Italy. According to Toscanelli, Economia rurale nella Provincia di Pisa, p. 8, note--one of the most complete, curious, and instructive pictures of rural life which exists in any literature--the white poplar, Populus alba, attains in the valley of the Serchio a great height, with a mean diameter of two feet, in twenty years. Solmi states in his Miasma Palustre, p. 115, that the linden reaches a diameter of sixteen inches in the same period. The growth of foreign trees is sometimes extremely luxuriant in Italy. Two Atlas cedars, at the well-known villa of Careggi, near Florence, grown from seed sown in 1850, measure twenty inches in diameter, above the swell of the roots, with an estimated height of sixty feet.] The denudation of the Central and Southern Apennines and of the Italian declivity of the Western Alps began at a period of unknown antiquity, but it does not seem to have been carried to a very dangerous length until the foreign conquests and extended commerce of Rome created a greatly increased demand for wood for the construction of ships and for military material. [Footnote: An interesting example of the collateral effects of the destruction of the forests in ancient Italy may be found in old Roman architecture. In the oldest brick constructions of Rome the bricks are very thin, very thoroughly burnt, and laid with a thick stratum of mortar between the courses. A few centuries later the bricks were thicker and less well burnt, and the layers of mortar were thinner. In the Imperial period the bricks were still thicker, generally soft-burnt, and with little mortar between the courses. This fact, I think, is due to the abundance and cheapness of fuel in earlier, and its growing scarceness and dearness in later, ages. When wood cost little, constructors could afford to burn their brick thoroughly, and to burn and use a great quantity of lime. As the price of fire-wood advanced, they were able to consume less fuel in brick- and lime-kilns, and the quality and quantity of brick and lime used in building were gradually reversed in proportion. The multitude of geographical designations in Italy which indicate the former existence of forests show that even in the Middle Ages there were woods where no forest-trees are now to be found. There are hundreds of names of mediaeval towns derived from abete, acero, carpino, castagno, faggio, frassino, pino, quercia, and other names of trees.] The Eastern Alps, the Western Apennines, and the Maritime Alps retained their forests much later; but even here the want of wood, and the injury to the plains and the nagivation of the rivers by sediment brought down by the torrents, led to legislation for the protection of the forests, by the Republic of Venice, at various periods between the fifteenth and the nineteenth centuries, [Footnote: See A. de Bereuger's valuable Saggio Storico della Legislazione Veneta Forestale. Venezia, 1863. We do not find in the Venetian forestal legislation much evidence that geographical arguments were taken into account by the lawgivers, who seem to have had an eye only to economical considerations. According to Hummel, the desolation of the Karst, the high plateau lying north of Trieste, now one of the most parched and barren districts in Europe, is owing to the felling of the woods, centuries ago, to build the navies of Venice. "Where the miserable peasant of the Karst now sees nothing but bare rock swept and scoured by the raging Bora, the fury of this wind was once subdued by mighty firs, which Venice recklessly cut down to build her fleets."--Physische Geographie, p. 32.] by that of Genoa as early at least as the seventeenth; and both these Governments, as well as several others, passed laws requiring the proprietors of mountain-lands to replant the woods. These, however, seem to have been little observed, and it is generally true that the present condition of the forest in Italy is much less due to the want of wise legislation for its protection than to the laxity of the Governments in enforcing their laws. It is very common in Italy to ascribe to the French occupation under the first Empire all the improvements and all the abuses of recent times, according to the political sympathies of the individual; and the French are often said to have prostrated every forest which has disappeared within this century. But, however this may be, no energetic system of repression or restoration was adopted by any of the Italian States after the downfall of the Empire, and the taxes on forest property in some of them were so burdensome that rural municipalities sometimes proposed to cede their common woods to the Government, without any other compensation than the remission of the taxes imposed on forest-lands. [Footnote: See the Politecnico for the month of May, 1862, p. 234.] Under such circumstances, woodlands would soon become disafforested, and where facilities of transportation and a good demand for timber have increased the inducements to fell it, as upon the borders of the Mediterranean, the destruction of the forest and all the evils which attend it have gone on at a seriously alarming rate. Gallenga gives a striking account of the wanton destruction of the forests in Northern Italy within his personal recollection, [Footnote: "Far away in the darkest recesses of the mountains a kind of universal conspiracy seems to have been got up among these Alpine people,--a destructive mania to hew and sweep down everything that stands on roots."--Country Life in Piedmont, p. 134. "There are huge pyramids of mountains now bare and bleak from base to summit, which men still living and still young remember seeing richly mantled with all but primeval forests."--Ibid., p. 135.] and there are few Italians past middle life whose own memory will not supply similar reminiscences. The clearing of the mountain valleys of the provinces of Bergamo and of Bescia is recent, and Lombardini informs us the felling of the woods in the Valtelline commenced little more than forty years ago. Although no country has produced more able writers on the value of the forest and the general consequences of its destruction than Italy, yet the specific geographical importance of the woods, except as a protection against inundations, has not been so clearly recognized in that country as in the States bordering it on the north and west. It is true that the face of nature has been as completely revolutionized by man, and that the action of torrents has created almost as wide and as hopeless devastation in Italy as in France; but in the French Empire the recent desolation produced by clearing the forests is more extensive, has been more suddenly effected, has occurred in less remote and obscure localities, and therefore, excites a livelier and more general interest than in Italy, where public opinion does not so readily connect the effect with its true cause. Italy, too, from ancient habit, employs little wood in architectural construction; for generations she has maintained no military or commercial marine large enough to require exhaustive quantities of timber, [Footnote: The great naval and commercial marines of Venice and of Genoa must have occasioned an immense consumption of lumber in the Middle Ages, and the centuries immediately succeeding those commonly embraced in that designation. The marine construction of that period employed larger timbers than the modern naval architecture of most commercial countries, but apparently without a proportional increase of strength. The old modes of ship-building have been, to a considerable extent, handed down to very recent times in the Mediterranean, and though better models and modes of construction are now employed in Italian shipyards, an American or an Englishman looks with astonishment at the huge beams and thick planks so often employed in the construction of very small vessels navigating that sea, and not yet old enough to be broken up as unseaworthy.] and the mildness of her climate makes small demands on the woods for fuel. Besides these circumstances, it must be remembered that the sciences of observation did not become knowledges of practical application till after the mischief was already mainly done and even forgotten in Alpine Italy, while its evils were just beginning to be sensibly felt in France when the claims of natural philosophy as a liberal study were first acknowledged in modern Europe. The former political condition of the Italian Peninsula would have effectually prevented the adoption of a general system of forest economy, however clearly the importance of a wise administration of this great public interest might have been understood. The woods which controlled and regulated the flow of the river-sources were very often in one jurisdiction, the plains to be irrigated, or to be inundated by floods and desolated by torrents, in another. Concert of action, on such a subject, between a multitude of jealous petty sovereignties, was obviously impossible, and nothing but the permanent union of all the Italian States under a single government can render practicable the establishment of such arrangements for the conservation and restoration of the forests, and the regulation of the flow of the waters, as are necessary for the full development of the yet unexhausted resources of that fairest of lands, and even for the maintenance of the present condition of its physical geography. The Forests of Germany. Germany, including a considerable part of the Austrian Empire, from character of surface and climate, and from the attention which has long been paid in all the German States to sylviculture, is in a far better condition in this respect than its more southern neighbors; and though in the Alpine provinces of Bavaria and Austria the corresponding districts of Switzerland, Italy, and France, has produced effects hardly less disastrous, [Footnote: As an instance of the scarcity of fuel in some parts of the territory of Bavaria, where, not long since, wood abounded, I may mention the fact that the water of salt-springs is, in some instances, conveyed to the distance of sixty miles, in iron pipes, to reach a supply of fuel for boiling it down. In France, the juice of the sugar-beet is sometimes carried three or four miles in pipes for the same reason. Many of my readers may remember that it was not long ago proposed to manufacture the gas for the supply of London at the mouths of the coal- mines, and convey it to the city in pipes, thus saving the transportation of the coal; but as the coke and mineral tar would still have remained to be disposed of, the operation would probably not have proved advantageous. Great economy in the production of petroleum has resulted from the application of cast-iron tubes to the wells instead of barrels; the oil is thus carried over the various inequalities of surface for three or four miles to the tanks on the railroads, and forced into them by steam-engines. The price of transport is thus reduced one-fifth.] yet, as a whole, the German States, as Siemoni well observes, must be considered as in this respect the model countries of Europe. Not only is the forest area in general maintained without diminution, but new woods are planted where they are specially needed, [Footnote: The Austrian Government is making energetic efforts for the propagation of forests on the desolate waste of the Karst. The difficulties from drought and from the violence of the winds, which might prove fatal to young and even to somewhat advanced plantations, are very serious, but in 1866 upwards of 400,000 trees had been planted and great quantities of seeds sown. Thus far, the results of this important experiment are said to be encouraging. See the Chronique Forestiere in the Revue des Eaux et Forets, Feb. 1870.] and, though the slow growth of forest-trees in those climates reduces the direct pecuniary returns of woodlands to a minimum, the governments wisely persevere in encouraging this industry. The exportation of sawn lumber from Trieste is large, and in fact the Turkish and Egyptian markets are in great part supplied from this source. [Footnote: For information respecting the forests of Germany, as well as other European countries, see, besides the works already cited, the very valuable Manuale d'Arts Forestale of Siemoni, 2de edizione, Firenze, 1872.] Forests of Russia. Russia, which we habitually consider as substantially a forest country--which has in fact a large proportion of woodland--is beginning to suffer seriously for want of wood. Jourdier observes: "Instead of a vast territory with immense forests, which we expect to meet, one sees only scattered groves thinned by the wind or by the axe of the moujik, grounds cut over and more or less recently cleared for cultivation. There is probably not a single district in Russia which has not to deplore the ravages of man or of fire, those two great enemies of Muscovite sylviculture. This is so true, that clear-sighted men already foresee a crisis which will become terrible, unless the discovery of great deposits of some new combustible, as pit-coal or anthracite, shall diminish its evils." [Footnote: Clave, Etudes sur l'Economie Forestiere, p. 261. Clave adds (p. 262): "The Russian forests are very unequally distributed through the territory of this vast empire. In the north they form immense masses, and cover whole provinces, while in the south they are so completely wanting that the inhabitants have no other fuel than straw, dung, rushes, and heath." ... "At Moscow, firewood costs thirty per cent. more than at Paris, while, at the distance of a few leagues, it sells for a tenth of that price." This state of things is partly due to the want of facilities of transportation, and some parts of the United States are in a similar condition. During a severe winter, ten or twelve years ago, the sudden freezing of the canals and rivers, before a large American town had received its usual supply of fuel, occasioned an enormous rise in the price of wood and coal, and the poor suffered severely for want of it. Within a few hours of the city were large forests and an abundant stock of firewood felled and prepared for burning. This might easily have been carried to town by the railroads which passed through the woods; but the managers of the roads refused to receive it as freight, because a rival market for wood might raise the price of the fuel they employed for their locomotives. Truly, our railways "want a master." Hohenstein, who was long professionally employed as a forester in Russia, describes the consequences of the general war upon the woods in that country as already most disastrous, and as threatening still more ruinous evils. The river Volga, the life artery of Russian internal commerce, is drying up from this cause, and the great Muscovite plains are fast advancing to a desolation like that of Persia.--Der Wald, p. 223. The level of the Caspian Sea is eighty-three feet lower than that of the Sea of Azoff, and the surface of Lake Aral is fast sinking. Von Baer maintains that the depression of the Caspian was produced by a sudden subsidence, from ecological causes, and not gradually by excess of evaporation over supply. See Kaspische Studien, p. 25. But this subsidence diminished the area and consequently the evaporation of that sea, and the rivers which once maintained its ancient equilibrium ought to have raised it to its former level, if their own flow had not been diminished. It is, indeed, not proved that the laying bare of a wooded country diminishes the total annual precipitation upon it; but it is certain that the summer delivery of water from the surface of a champaign region, like that through which the Volga, its tributaries, and the feeders of Lake Aral, flow, is lessened by the removal of its woods. Hence, though as much rain may still fall in the valleys of those rivers as when their whole surface was covered with forests, more moisture may be carried off by evaporation, and a less quantity of water be discharged by the rivers since their basins were cleared, and therefore the present condition of the inland waters in question may be due to the removal of the forests in their valleys and the adjacent plains.] Forests of United States. I greatly doubt whether any one of the American States, except, perhaps, Oregon, has, at this moment, more woodland than it ought permanently to preserve, though, no doubt, a different distribution of the forests in all of them might be highly advantageous. It is, perhaps, a misfortune to the American Union that the State Governments have so generally disposed of their original domain to private citizens. It is true that public property is not sufficiently respected in the United States; and within the memory of almost every man of mature age, timber was of so little value in the northernmost States that the owners of private woodlands submitted, almost without complaint, to what would be regarded elsewhere as very aggravated trespasses upon them. [Footnote: According to the maxims of English jurisprudence, the common law consists of general customs so long established that "the memory of man runneth not to the contrary." In other words, long custom makes law. In new countries, the change of circumstances creates new customs, and, in time, new law, without the aid of legislation. Had the American colonists observed a more sparing economy in the treatment of their woods, a new code of customary forest-law would have sprung up and acquired the force of a statute. Popular habit was fast elaborating the fundamental principles of such a code, when the rapid increase in the value of timber, in consequence of the reckless devastation of the woodlands, made it the interest of the proprietors to interfere with this incipient system of forest jurisprudence, and appeal to the rules of English law for the protection of their woods. The courts have sustained these appeals, and forest property is now legally as inviolable as any other, though common opinion still combats the course of judicial decision on such questions.] Persons in want of timber helped themselves to it wherever they could find it, and a claim for damages, for so insignificant a wrong as cutting down and carrying off a few pine or oak trees, was regarded as a mean-spirited act in a proprietor. The habits formed at this period are not altogether obsolete, and even now the notion of a common right of property in the woods still lingers, if not as an opinion at least as a sentiment. Under such circumstances it has been difficult to protect the forest, whether it belong to the State or to individuals. Property of this kind is subject to plunder, as well as to frequent damage by fire. The destruction from these causes would, indeed, considerably lessen, but would by no means wholly annihilate the climatic and geographical influences of the forest, or ruinously diminish its value as a regular source of supply of fuel and timber. It is evidently a matter of the utmost importance that the public, and especially land-owners, be roused to a sense of the dangers to which the indiscriminate clearing of the woods may expose not only future generations, but the very soil itself. Some of the American States, as well as the Governments of many European colonies, still retain the ownership of great tracts of primitive woodland. The State of New York, for example, has, in its north-eastern counties, a vast extent of territory in which the lumberman has only here and there established his camp, and where the forest, though interspersed with permanent settlements, robbed of some of its finest pine groves, and often ravaged by devastating fires, still covers far the largest proportion of the surface. Through this territory the soil is generally poor, and even the new clearings have little of the luxuriance of harvest which distinguishes them elsewhere. The value of the land for agricultural uses is therefore very small, and few purchases are made for any other purpose than to strip the soil of its timber. It has been often proposed that the State should declare the remaining forest the inalienable property of the commonwealth, but I believe the motive of the suggestion has originated rather in poetical than in economical views of the subject. Both these classes of considerations have a real worth. It is desirable that some large and easily accessible region of American soil should remain, as far as possible, in its primitive condition, at once a museum for the instruction of the student, a garden for the recreation of the lover of nature, and an asylum where indigenous tree, and humble plant that loves the shade, and fish and fowl and four-footed beast, may dwell and perpetuate their kind, in the enjoyment of such imperfect protection as the laws of a people jealous of restraint can afford them. The immediate loss to the public treasury from the adoption of this policy would be inconsiderable, for these lands are sold at low rates. The forest alone, economically managed, would, without injury, and even with benefit to its permanence and growth, soon yield a regular income larger than the present value of the fee. The collateral advantages of the preservation of these forests would be far greater. Nature threw up those mountains and clothed them with lofty woods, that they might serve as a reservoir to supply with perennial waters the thousand rivers and rills that are fed by the rains and snows of the Adirondacks, and as a screen for the fertile plains of the central counties against the chilling blasts of the north wind, which meet no other barrier in their sweep from the Arctic pole. The climate of Northern New York even now presents greater extremes of temperature than that of Southern France. The long-continued cold of winter is more intense, the short heats of summer even fiercer than in Provence, and hence the preservation of every influence that tends to maintain an equilibrium of temperature and humidity is of cardinal importance. The felling of the Adirondack woods would ultimately involve for Northern and Central New York consequences similar to those which have resulted from the laying bare of the southern and western declivities of the French Alps and the spurs, ridges, and detached peaks in front of them. It is true that the evils to be apprehended from the clearing of the mountains of New York may be less in degree than those which a similar cause has produced in Southern France, where the intensity of its action has been increased by the inclination of the mountain declivities, and by the peculiar geological constitution of the earth. The degradation of the soil is, perhaps, not equally promoted by a combination of the same circumstances, in any of the American Atlantic States, but still they have rapid slopes and loose and friable soils enough to render widespread desolation certain, if the further destruction of the woods is not soon arrested. The effects of clearing are already perceptible in the comparatively unviolated region of which I am speaking. The rivers which rise in it flow with diminished currents in dry seasons, and with augmented volumes of water after heavy rains. They bring down larger quantities of sediment, and the increasing obstructions to the navigation of the Hudson, which are extending themselves down the channel in proportion as the fields are encroaching upon the forest, give good grounds for the fear of irreparable injury to the commerce of the important towns on the upper waters of that river, unless measures are taken to prevent the expansion of "improvements" which have already been carried beyond the demands of a wise economy. In the Eastern United States the general character of the climate, soil, and surface is such, that for the formation of very destructive torrents a much longer time is required than would be necessary in the mountainous provinces of Italy or of France. But the work of desolation has begun even there, and wherever a rapid mountain-slope has been stripped of wood, incipient ravines already plough the surface, and collect the precipitation in channels which threaten serious mischief in the future. There is a peculiar action of this sort on the sandy surface of pine-forests and in other soils that unite readily with water, which has excited the attention of geographers and geologists. Soils of the first kind are found in all the Eastern States; those of the second are more frequent in the exhausted counties of Maryland, where tobacco is cultivated, and in the more southern territories of Georgia and Alabama. In these localities the ravines which appear after the cutting of the forest, through some accidental disturbance of the surface, or, in some formations, through the cracking of the soil in consequence of great drought or heat, enlarge and extend themselves with fearful rapidity. In Georgia and in Alabama, Lyell saw "the beginning of the formation of hundreds of valleys in places where the primitive forest had been recently cut down." One of these, in Georgia, in a soil composed of clay and sand produced by the decomposition in situ of hornblendic gneiss with layers and veins of quartz, "and which did not exist before the felling of the forest twenty years previous," he describes as more than 55 feet in depth, 300 yards in length, and from 20 to 180 feet in breadth. Our author refers to other cases in the same States, "where the cutting down of the trees, which had prevented the rain from collecting into torrents and running off in sudden land-floods, has given rise to ravines from 70 to 80 feet deep." [Footnote: Lyell, Principles of Geology, 10th ed., vol i., 345-6.] Similar results often follow in the North-eastern States from cutting the timber on the "pine plains," where the soil is usually of a sandy composition and loose texture. American Forest-Trees. The remaining forests of the Northern States and of Canada no longer boast the mighty pines which almost rivalled the gigantic sequoia and redwood of California; and the growth of the larger forest-trees is so slow, after they have attained to a certain size, that if every pine and oak were spared for two centuries, the largest now standing would not reach the stature of hundreds recorded to have been cut within two or three generations. [Footnote: The growth of the white pine, on good soil and in open ground, is rather rapid until it reaches the diameter of a couple of feet, after which it is much slower. The favorite habitat of this tree is light, sandy earth. On this soil, and in a dense wood, it requires a century to attain the diameter of a yard. Emerson (Trees of Massachusetts, p. 65), says that a pine of this species, near Paris, "thirty years planted, is eighty feet high, with a diameter of three feet." He also states that ten white pines planted at Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1809 or 1810, exhibited, in the winter of 1841 and 1842, an average of twenty inches diameter at the ground, the two largest measuring, at the height of three feet, four feet eight inches in circumference; and he mentions another pine growing in a rocky swamp, which at the age of thirty-two years, "gave seven feet in circumference at the but, with a height of sixty-two feet six inches." This latter I suppose to be a seedling, the others TRANSPLANTED trees, which might have been some years old when placed where they finally grew. The following case came under my own observation: In 1824 a pine-tree, so small that a young lady, with the help of a lad, took it up from the ground and carried it a quarter of a mile, was planted near a house in a town in Vermont. It was occasionally watered, but received no other special treatment. I measured this tree in 1860, and found it, at four feet from the ground, and entirely above the spread of the roots, two feet and four inches in diameter. A new measurement in 1871 gave a diameter of two feet eight inches, being an increase of four inches in eleven years, a slower rate than that of preceding years. It could not have been more than three inches through when transplanted, and up to 1860 must have increased its diameter at the rate of about seven-tenths of an inch per year, almost double its later growth. In 1871 the crown had a diameter of 63 feet. In the same neighborhood, elms transplanted in 1803, when they were not above three or four inches through, had attained, in 1871, a diameter of from four feet to four feet two inches, with a spread of crown of from 90 to 112 feet. Sugar-maples, transplanted in 1822, at about the same size, measured two feet three inches through. This growth undoubtedly considerably exceeds that of trees of the same species in the natural forest, though the transplanted trees had received no other fertilizing application than an unlimited supply of light and air.] Dr. Williams, who wrote about sixty years ago, states the following as the dimensions of "such trees as are esteemed large ones of their kind in that part of America" [Vermont], qualifying his account with the remark that his measurements "do not denote the greatest which nature has produced of their particular species, but the greatest which are to be found in most of our towns." Diameter. Height. Pine.......... 6 feet, 247 feet. Maple......... 5 " 9 inches \ Buttonwood.... 5 " 6 " | Elm........... 5 " | Hemlock....... 4 " 9 " | Oak........... 4 " > From 100 to 200 feet. Basswood...... 4 " | Ash........... 4 " | Birch......... 4 " / He adds a note saying that a white pine was cut in Dunstable, New Hampshire, in the year 1736, the diameter of which was seven feet and eight inches. Dr. Dwight says that a fallen pine in Connecticut was found to measure two hundred and forty-seven feet in height, and adds: "A few years since, such trees were in great numbers along the northern parts of Connecticut River." In another letter, he speaks of the white pine as "frequently six feet in diameter, and two hundred and fifty feet in height," and states that a pine had been cut in Lancaster, New Hampshire, which measured two hundred and sixty-four feet, Emerson wrote in 1846: "Fifty years ago, several trees growing on rather dry land in Blandford, Massachusetts, measured, after they were felled, two hundred and twenty-three feet." All these trees are surpassed by a pine felled at Hanover, New Hampshire, about a hundred years ago, and described as measuring two hundred and seventy-four feet. [Footnote: Williams, History of Vermont, ii., p. 53. Dwight s Travels, iv., p. 21, and iii, p. 36. Emerson, Trees of Massachusetts, p. 61. Parish, Life of President Wheelock, p. 56.] These descriptions, it will be noticed, apply to trees cut from seventy to one hundred and forty years since. Persons, whom observation has rendered familiar with the present character of the American forest, will be struck with the smallness of the diameter which Dr. Williams and Dr. Dwight ascribe to trees of such extraordinary height. Individuals of the several species mentioned in Dr. Williams's table are now hardly to be found in the same climate, exceeding one-half or at most two-thirds of the height which he assigns to them; but, except in the case of the oak and the pine, the diameter stated by him would not be thought very extraordinary in trees of far less height, now standing. Even in the species I have excepted, those diameters, with half the heights of Dr. Williams, might perhaps be paralleled at the present time; and many elms, transplanted, at a diameter of six inches, within the memory of persons still living, measure four and sometimes even five feet through. For this change in the growth of forest-trees there are two reasons: the one is, that the great commercial value of the pine and the oak have caused the destruction of all the best--that is, the tallest and straightest-- specimens of both; the other, that the thinning of the woods by the axe of the lumberman has allowed the access of light and heat and air to trees of humbler worth and lower stature, which have survived their more towering brethren. These, consequently, have been able to expand their crowns and swell their stems to a degree not possible so long as they were overshadowed and stifled by the lordly oak and pine. While, therefore, the New England forester must search long before he finds a pine fit to be the mast Of some great ammiral, beeches and elms and birches, as sturdy as the mightiest of their progenitors, are still no rarity. [Footnote: The forest-trees of the Northern States do not attain to extreme longevity in the dense woods. Dr. Williams found that none of the huge pines, the age of which he ascertained, exceeded three hundred and fifty or four hundred years, though he quotes a friend who thought he had noticed trees considerably older. The oak lives longer than the pine, and the hemlock-spruce is perhaps equally long lived. A tree of this latter species, cut within my knowledge in a thick wood, counted four hundred and eighty-six, or, according to another observer, five hundred annual circles. Great luxuriance of animal and vegetable production is not commonly accompanied by long duration of the individual. The oldest men are not found in the crowded city; and in the tropics, where life is prolific and precocious, it is also short. The most ancient forest-trees of which we have accounts have not been those growing in thick woods, but isolated specimens, with no taller neighbor to intercept the light and heat and air, and no rival to share the nutriment afforded by the soil. The more rapid growth and greater dimensions of trees standing near the boundary of the forest, are matters of familiar observation. "Long experience has shown that trees growing on the confines of the wood may be cut at sixty years of age as advantageously as others of the same species, reared in the depth of the forest, at a hundred and twenty. We have often remarked, in our Alps, that the trunk of trees upon the border of a grove is most developed or enlarged upon the outer or open side, where the branches extend themselves farthest, while the concentric circles of growth are most uniform in those entirely surrounded by other trees, or standing entirely alone."--A. and G. Villa, Necessita dei Boschi pp. 17, 18.] California fortunately still preserves her magnificent sequoias, which rise to the height of three hundred feet, and sometimes, as we are assured, even to three hundred and sixty and four hundred feet, and she has also pines and cedars of scarcely inferior dimensions. The public being now convinced of the importance of preserving these colossal trees, it is very probable that the fear of their total destruction may prove groundless, and we may still hope that some of them may survive even till that distant future when the skill of the forester shall have raised from their seeds a progeny as lofty and as majestic as those which now exist. [Footnote: California must surrender to Australia the glory of possessing the tallest trees. According to Dr. Mueller, Director of the Government Botanic Garden at Melbourne, a Eucalyptus, near Healesville, measured 480 feet in height. Later accounts speak of trees of the same species fully 500 feet in height. See Schleiden, Fur Baum und Wald, p. 21. If we may credit late reports, the growth of the eucalyptus is so rapid in California, that the child is perhaps now born who will see the tallest sequoia overtopped by this new vegetable emigrant from Australia.] European and American Trees compared. The woods of North America are strikingly distinguished from those of Europe by the vastly greater variety of species they contain. According to Clave, there are in "France and in most parts of Europe only about twenty forest-trees, five or six of which are spike-leaved and resinous, the remainder broad-leaved." [Footnote: Etudes Forestieres, p. 7.] Our author, however, doubtless means genera, though he uses the word especes. Rossmassler enumerates fifty-seven species of forest-trees as found in Germany, but some of these are mere shrubs, some are fruit and properly garden trees, and some others are only varieties of familiar species. The valuable manual of Parade describes about the same number, including, however, two of American origin--the locust, Robinia pseudacacia, and the Weymouth or white pine, Pinus Strobus--and the cedar of Lebanon from Asia, which, or at least a very closely allied species, is indigenous in Algeria also. We may then safely say that Europe does not possess above forty or fifty native trees of such economical value as to be worth the special care of the forester, while the oak alone numbers more than thirty species in the United States, [Footnote: For full catalogues of American forest-trees, and remarks on their geographical distribution, consult papers on the subject by Dr. J. G. Cooper, in the Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1858, and the Report of the United States Patent Office, Agricultural Division, for 1860.] and some other North American genera are almost equally diversified. [Footnote: Although Spenser's catalogue of trees occurs in the first canto of the first book of the "Faery Queene"--the only canto of that exquisite poem actually read by most students of English literature--it is not so generally familiar as to make the quotation of it altogether superfluous: VII. Enforst to seeke some covert nigh at hand, A shadic grove not farr away they spide, That promist ayde the tempest to withstand; Whose loftie trees, yclad with sommers pride, Did spred so broad, that heavens light did hide, Not perceable with power of any starr: And all within were pathes and alleies wide, With footing worne, and leading inward farr; Faire harbour that them seems; so in they entered ar. VIII. And foorth they passe, with pleasure forward led, Joying to heare the birdes sweete harmony. Which therein shrouded from the tempest dred, Seemd in their song to scorne the cruell sky. Much can they praise the trees so straight and hy, The sayling pine; the cedar stout and tall; The vine-propp elm; the poplar never dry; The builder oake, sole king of forrests all; The aspine good for staves; the cypresse funerall; IX. The laurell, meed of mightie conquerours And poets sage; the firre that weepeth still; The willow, worne of forlorn paramours; The eugh, obedient to the benders will; The birch for shaftes; the sallow for the mill; The mirrhe sweete-bleeding in the bitter wound; The warlike beech; the ash for nothing ill; The fruitfull olive; and the platane round; The carver holme; the maple seeldom inward sound. Although the number of SPECIES of American forest-trees is much larger than of European, yet the distinguishable VARIETIES are relatively more numerous in the Old World, even in the case of trees not generally receiving special care. This multiplication of varieties is no doubt a result, though not a foreseen or intended one, of human action; for the ordinary operations of European forest economy expose young trees to different conditions from those presented by nature, and new conditions produce new forms. All European woods, except in the remote North, even if not technically artificial forests, acquire a more or less artificial character from the governing hand of man, and the effect of this interference is seen in the constant deviation of trees from the original type. The holly, for example, even when growing as absolutely wild as any tree can ever grow in countries long occupied by man, produces numerous varieties, and twenty or thirty such, not to mention intermediate shades, are described and named as recognizably different, in treatises on the forest-trees of Europe.] While the American forest flora has made large contributions to that of Europe, comparatively few European trees have been naturalized in the United States, and as a general rule the indigenous trees of Europe do not succeed well in our climate. The European mountain-ash--which in beauty, dimensions, and healthfulness of growth is superior to our own [Footnote: In the Northern Tyrol mountain-ashes fifteen inches in diameter are not uncommon. The berries are distilled with grain to flavor the spirit.]--the horse-chestnut, and the abele, or silver poplar, are valuable additions to the ornamental trees of North America. The Swiss arve or zirbelkiefer, Pinus cembra, which yields a well-flavored edible seed and furnishes excellent wood for carving, the umbrella-pine, [Footnote: The mountain ranges of our extreme West produce a pine closely resembling the European umbrella-pine.] which also bears a seed agreeable to the taste, and which, from the color of its foliage and the beautiful form of its dome-like crown, is among the most elegant of trees, the white birch of Central Europe, with its pendulous branches almost rivalling those of the weeping willow in length, flexibility, and gracefulness of fall, and, especially, the "cypresse funerall," might be introduced into the United States with great advantage to the landscape. The European beech and chestnut furnish timber of far better quality than that of their American congeners. The fruit of the European chestnut, though inferior to the American in sweetness and flavor, is larger, and is an important article of diet among the French and Italian peasantry. The walnut of Europe, though not equal to some of the American species in beauty of growth or of wood, or to others in strength and elasticity of fibre, is valuable for its timber and its oil. [Footnote: The walnut is a more valuable tree than is generally supposed. It yields one-third of the oil produced in France, and in this respect occupies an intermediate position between the olive of the south and the oleaginous seeds of the north. A hectare (about two and a half acres) will produce nuts to the value of five hundred francs a year, which cost nothing but the gathering. Unfortunately, its maturity must be long waited for, and more nut-trees are felled than planted. The demand for its wood in cabinet-work is the principal cause of its destruction. See Lavergne, Economie Rurale de la France, p. 253. According to Cosimo Ridolfi (Lezioni Orali, ii., p. 424), France obtains three times as much oil from the walnut as from the olive, and nearly as much as from all oleaginous seeds together. He states that the walnut bears nuts at the age of twenty years, and yields its maximum product at seventy, and that a hectare of ground, with thirty trees, or twelve to the acre, is equal to a capital of twenty-five hundred francs. The nut of this tree is known in the United States as the "English walnut." The fruit and the wood much resemble those of the American black walnut, Juglans nigra, but for cabinet-work the American is the more beautiful material, especially when the large knots are employed. The timber or the European species, when straight-grained, and clear, or free from knots, is, for ordinary purposes, better than that of the American black walnut, but bears no comparison with the wood of the hickory, when strength combined with elasticity is required, and its nut is very inferior in taste to that of the shagbark, as well as to the butternut, which it somewhat resembles. "The chestnut is more valuable still, for it produces on a sterile soil, which, without it, would yield only ferns and heaths, an abundant nutriment for man."--Lavergne, Economie Rurale de la France, p. 253. I believe the varieties developed by cultivation are less numerous in the walnut than is the chestnut, which latter tree is often grafted in Southern Europe. The chestnut crop of France was estimated in 1848 at 3,478,000 hectolitres, or 9,877,520 Winchester bushels, and valued at 13,528,000 francs, or more than two million and a half dollars. In Tuscany the annual yield is computed at about 550,000 bushels. The Tuscan peasants think the flour of the dried chestnut not less nutritious than Indian cornmeal, and it sells at the same price, or about three cents per English pound, in the mountains, and four cents in the towns.] The maritime pine, which has proved of such immense use in fixing drifting sands in France, may perhaps be better adapted to this purpose than any of the pines of the New World, and it is of great importance for its turpentine, resin, and tar. The epicea, or common fir, Abies picea, Abies excelsa, Picea excelsa, abundant in the mountains of France and the contiguous country, is known for its product, Burgundy pitch, and, as it flourishes in a greater variety of soil and climate than almost any other spike-leaved tree, it might be well worth transplantation. [Footnote: This fir is remarkable for its tendency to cicatrize or heal over its stumps, a property which it possesses in common with some other firs, the maritime pine, and the European larch. When these trees grow in thick clumps, their roots are apt to unite by a species of natural grafting, and if one of them be felled, although its own proper rootlets die, the stump may continue, sometimes for a century, to receive nourishment from the radicles of the surrounding trees, and a dome of wood and bark of considerable thickness be formed over it. The healing is, however, only apparent, for the entire stump, except the outside ring of annual growth, soon dies, and even decays within its covering, without sending out new shoots. See Monthly Report, Department of Agriculture, for October, 1872.] The cork oak has been introduced into California and some other parts of the United States, I believe, and would undoubtedly thrive in the Southern section of the Union. [Footnote: At the age of twelve or fifteen years, the cork-tree is stripped of its outer bark for the first time. This first yield is of inferior quality, and it employed for floats for nets and buoys, or burnt for lampblack. After this, a new layer of cork, an inch or an inch and a quarter in thickness, is formed about one in ten years, and is removed in large sheets without injury to the tree, which lives a hundred and fifty years or more. According to Clave (p. 252), the annual product of a forest of cork oaks is calculated at about 660 kilogrammes, worth 150 frances, to the hectare, which, deducting expenses, leaves a profit of 100 francs. This is about equal to 250 pound weight, and eight dollars profit to the acre. The cork oaks of the national domain in Algeria cover about 500,000 acres, and are let to individuals at rates which are expected, when the whole is rented, to yield to the state revenue of about $2,000,000. George Sand, in the Histoire de ma Vie, speaks of the cork-forests in Southern France as among the most profitable of rural possessions, and states, what I do not remember to have seen noticed elsewhere, that Russia is the best customer for cork. The large sheets taken from the trees are slit into thin plates, and used to line the walls of apartments in that cold climate. On the cultivation and management of the cork oak, see Des Incendies et de la culture du Chene-liege, in Revue das Eaux et Forets for February, 1869.] the walnut, the chestnut, the cork oak, the mulberry, the olive, the orange, the lemon, the fig, and the multitude of other trees which, by their fruit, or by other products, yield an annual revenue, nature has provided Southern Europe with a partial compensation for the loss of the native forest. It is true that these trees, planted as most of them are at such distances as to admit of cultivation, or of the growth of grass among them, are but an inadequate substitute for the thick and shady wood; but they perform to a certain extent the same offices of absorption and transpiration, they shade the surface of the ground, they serve to break the force of the wind, and on many a steep declivity, many a bleak and barren hillside, the chestnut binds the soil together with its roots, and prevents tons of earth and gravel from washing down upon the fields and the gardens. Fruit-trees are not wanting, certainly, north of the Alps. The apple, the pear, and the prune are important in the economy both of man and of nature, but they are far less numerous in Switzerland and Northern France than are the trees I have mentioned in Southern Europe, both because they are in general less remunerative, and because the climate, in higher latitudes, does not permit the free introduction of shade trees into grounds occupied for agricultural purposes. [Footnote: The walnut, the chestnut, the apple, and the pear are common to the border between the countries I have mentioned, but the range of the other trees is bounded by the Alps, and by a well-defined and sharply drawn line to the west of those mountains. From some peculiarity in the sky of Europe, cultivated plants will thrive, in Northern Italy, in Southern France, and even in Switzerland, under a depth of shade where no crop, not even grass, worth harvesting, would grow in the United States with an equally high summer temperature. Hence the cultivation of all these trees is practicable in Europe to a greater extent than would be supposed reconcilable with the interests of agriculture. Some idea of the importance of the olive orchards may be formed from the fact that Sicily alone, an island scarcely exceeding 10,000 square miles in area, of which one-third at least is absolutely barren, has exported to the single port of Marseilles more than 2,000,000 pounds weight olive-oil per year, for the last thirty years. According to Cosimo Ridolfi, Lezioni Orali, vol. ii., p. 340, in a favorable soil and climate the average yield of oil from poorly manured trees, which compose the great majority, is six English pounds, while with the best cultivation it rises to twenty-three pounds. The annual production of olive-oil in the whole of Italy is estimated at upwards of 850,000,000 pounds, and if we allow twelve pounds to the tree, we have something more than 70,000,000 trees. The real number of trees is, however, much greater than this estimate, for in Tuscany and many other parts of Italy the average yield of oil per tree does not exceed two pounds, and there are many millions of young trees not yet in bearing. Probably we shall not exaggerate if we estimate the olive trees of Italy at 100,000,000, and as there are about a hundred trees to the acre, the quantity of land devoted to the cultivation of the olive may be taken at a million acres. Although olive-oil is much used in cookery in Italy, lard is preferred as more nutritious. Much American lard is exported to South-eastern Italy, and olive-oil is imported in return.] The multitude of species, intermixed as they are in their spontaneous growth, gives the American forest landscape a variety of aspect not often seen in the woods of Europe, and the gorgeous tints, which nature repeats from the dying dolphin to paint the falling leaf of the American maples, oaks, and ash trees, clothe the hillsides and fringe the water-courses with a rainbow splendor of foliage, unsurpassed by the brightest groupings of the tropical flora. It must be confessed, however, that both the northern and the southern declivities of the Alps exhibit a nearer approximation to this rich and multifarious coloring of autumnal vegetation than most American travellers in Europe are willing to allow; and, besides, the small deciduous shrubs which often carpet the forest-glades of these mountains are dyed with a ruddy and orange glow, which, in the distant landscape, is no mean substitute for the scarlet and crimson and gold and amber of the transatlantic woodland. [Footnote: The most gorgeous autumnal coloring I have observed in the vegetation of Europe has been in the valleys of the Durance and its tributaries in Dauphiny. I must admit that neither in variety nor in purity and brilliancy of tint, does this coloring fall much, if at all, short of that of the New England woods. But there is this difference: in Dauphiny, it is only in small shrubs that this rich painting is seen, while in North America the foliage of large trees is dyed in full splendor. Hence the American woodland has fewer broken lights and more of what painters call breadth of coloring. Besides this, the arrangement of the leafage in large globular or conical masses, affords a wider scale of light and shade, thus aiding now the gradation now the contrast of tints, and gives the American October landscape a softer and more harmonious tone than marks the humble shrubbery of the forest hillsides of Dauphiny. Thoreau--who was not, like some very celebrated landscape critics of the present day, an outside spectator of the action and products of natural forces, but, in the old religious sense, an OBSERVER of organic nature, living, more than almost any other descriptive writer, among and with her children--had a very eloquent paper on the "Autumnal Tints" of the New England landscape.--See his Excursions, pp. 215 et seqq. Few men have personally noticed so many facts in natural history accessible to unscientific observation as Thoreau, and yet he had never seen that very common and striking spectacle, the phosphorescence of decaying wood, until, in the latter years of his life, it caught his attention in a bivouac in the forests of Maine. He seems to have been more excited by this phenomenon than by any other described in his works. It must be a capacious eye that takes in all the visible facts in the history of the most familiar natural object.--The Maine Woods, p. 184.] I admit, though not without reluctance, that the forest-trees of Central and Southern Europe have a great advantage over our own in the corresponding latitudes, in density of foliage as well as in depth of color and persistence of the leaves in deciduous species. An American, who, after a long absence from the United States, returns in the full height of summer, is painfully surprised at the thinness and poverty of the leafage even of the trees which he had habitually regarded as specially umbrageous, and he must wait for the autumnal frosts before he can recover his partiality for the glories of his native woods. None of our north-eastern evergreens resemble the umbrella pine sufficiently to be a fair object of comparison with it. A cedar, very common above the Highlands on the Hudson, and elsewhere, is extremely like the cypress, straight, slender, with erect, compressed ramification, and feathered to the ground, but its foliage is neither so dark nor so dense, the tree does not attain the majestic height of the cypress, nor has it the lithe flexibility of that tree. [Footnote: The cold winter, or rather spring, of 1872 proved fatal to many cypresses as well as olive trees in the Val d'Arno. The cypress, therefore, could be introduced only into California and our Southern States.] In mere shape, the Lombardy poplar nearly resembles this latter, but it is almost a profanation to compare the two, especially when they are agitated by the wind; for under such circumstances, the one is the most majestic, the other the most ungraceful, or--if I may apply such an expression to anything but human affectation of movement--the most awkward of trees. The poplar trembles before the blast, flutters, struggles wildly, dishevels its foliage, gropes around with its feeble branches, and hisses as in impotent passion. The cypress gathers its limbs still more closely to its stem, bows a gracious salute rather than an humble obeisance to the tempest, bends to the wind with an elasticity that assures you of its prompt return to its regal attitude, and sends from its thick leaflets a murmur like the roar of the far-off ocean. The cypress and the umbrella-pine are not merely conventional types of the Italian landscape. They are essential elements in a field of rural beauty which can be seen in perfection only in the basin of the Mediterranean, and they are as characteristic of this class of scenery as is the date-palm of the oases of the Eastern desert. There is however, this difference: a single cypress or pine is often enough to shed beauty over a wide area; the palm is a social tree, and its beauty is not so much that of the individual as of the group. [Footnote: European poets, whose knowledge of the date-palm is not founded on personal observation, often describe its trunk as not only slender, but particularly STRAIGHT. Nothing can be farther from the truth. When the Orientals compare the form of a beautiful girl to the stem of the palm, they do not represent it as rigidly straight, but on the contrary as made up of graceful curves, which seem less like permanent outlines than like flowing motion. In a palm grove, the trunks, so far from standing planted upright like the candles of a chandelier, bend in a vast variety of curves, now leaning towards, now diverging from, now crossing, each other, and among a hundred you will hardly see two whose axes are parallel.] The frequency of the cypress and the pine--combined with the fact that the other trees of Southern Europe which most interest a stranger from the north, the orange and the lemon, the cork oak, the ilex, the myrtle, and the laurel, are evergreens--goes far to explain the beauty of the winter scenery of Italy. Indeed, it is only in the winter that a tourist who confines himself to wheel-carriages and high roads can acquire any notion of the face of the earth, and form any proper geographical image of that country. At other seasons, not high walls only, but equally impervious hedges, and now, unhappily, acacias thickly planted along the railway routes, confine the view so completely, that the arch of a tunnel, or a night-cap over the traveller's eyes, is scarcely a more effectual obstacle to the gratification of his curiosity. [Footnote: Besides this, in a country so diversified in surface as Italy, with the exception of the champaign region drained by the Po, every new field of view requires either an extraordinary coup d'oeil in the spectator, or a long study, in order to master its relief, its plans, its salient and retreating angles. In summer, except of course in the bare mountains, the universal greenery confounds light and shade, distance and foreground; and though the impression upon a traveller, who journeys for the sake of "sensations," may be strengthened by the mysterious annihilation of all standards for the measurement of space, yet the superior intelligibility of the winter scenery of Italy is more profitable to those who see with a view to analyze.] The Forest does not furnish Food for Man. In a region absolutely covered with trees, human life could not long be sustained, for want of animal and vegetable food. The depths of the forest seldom furnish either bulb or fruit suited to the nourishment of man; and the fowls and beasts on which he feeds are scarcely seen except upon the margin of the wood, for here only grow the shrubs and grasses, and here only are found the seeds and insects, which form the sustenance of the non-carnivorous birds and quadrupeds. [Footnote: Clave, as well as many earlier writers, supposes that primitive man derived his nutriment from the spontaneous productions of the wood. "It is to the forests," says he, "that man was first indebted for the means of subsistence. Exposed alone, without defence, to the rigor of the seasons, as well as to the attacks of animals stronger and swifter than himself, he found in them his first shelter, drew from them his first weapons. In the first period of humanity, they provided for all his wants: they furnished him wood for warmth, fruits for food, garments to cover his nakedness, arms for his defence."--Etudes sur l'Economie Forestiere, p. 13. But the history of savage life, as far as it is known to us, presents man in that condition as inhabiting only the borders of the forest and the open grounds that skirt the waters and the woods, and as finding only there the aliments which make up his daily bread. The villages of the North American Indians were upon the shores of rivers and lakes, and their weapons and other relics are found only in the narrow open grounds which they had burned over and cultivated, or in the margin of the woods around their hamlets. Except upon the banks of rivers or of lakes, the woods of the interior of North America, far from the habitations of man, are almost destitute of animal life. Dr. Newberry, describing the vast forests of the yellow pine of the West, Pinus ponderosa, remarks: "In the arid and desert regions of the interior basin, we made whole days' marches in forests of yellow pine, of which neither the monotony was broken by other forms of vegetation, nor its stillness by the flutter of a bird or the hum of an insect."--Pacific Railroad Report, vol. vi., 1857. Dr. Newberry's Report on Botany, p. 37. Cheadle and Milton's North-west Passage confirms these statements. Valvasor says, in a paragraph already quoted, "In my many journeys through this valley, I did never have sight of so much as a single bird." The wild fruit and nut trees, the Canada plum, the cherries, the many species of walnut, the butternut, the hazel, yield very little, frequently nothing, so long as they grow in the woods; and it is only when the trees around them are cut down, or when they grow in pastures, that they become productive. The berries, too--the strawberry, the blackberry, the raspberry, the whortleberry, scarcely bear fruit at all except in cleared ground. The rank forests of the tropics are as unproductive of human aliment as the less luxuriant woods of the temperate zone. In Strain's unfortunate expedition across the great American isthmus, where the journey lay principally through thick woods, several of the party died of starvation, and for many days the survivors were forced to subsist on the scantiest supplies of unnutritious vegetables perhaps never before employed for food by man. See the interesting account of that expedition in Harper's Magazine for March, April, and May, 1855.] First Removal of the Forest. When multiplying man had filled the open grounds along the margin of the rivers, the lakes, and the sea, and sufficiently peopled the natural meadows and savannas of the interior, where such existed, he could find room for expansion and further growth only by the removal of a portion of the forest that hemmed him in. The destruction of the woods, then, was man's first geographical conquest, his first violation of the harmonies of inanimate nature. Primitive man had little occasion to fell trees for fuel, or for the construction of dwellings, boats, and the implements of his rude agriculture and handicrafts. Windfalls would furnish a thin population with a sufficient supply of such material, and if occasionally a growing tree was cut, the injury to the forest would be too insignificant to be at all appreciable. The accidental escape and spread of fire or possibly, the combustion of forests by lightning, must have first suggested the advantages to be derived from the removal of too abundant and extensive woods, and at the same time, have pointed out a means by which a large tract of surface could readily be cleared of much of this natural incumbrance. As soon as agriculture had commenced at all, it would be observed that the growth of cultivated plants, as well as of many species of wild vegetation, was particularly rapid and luxuriant on soils which had been burned over, and thus a new stimulus would be given to the practice of destroying the woods by fire, as a means of both extending the open grounds, and making the acquisition of a yet more productive soil. After a few harvests had exhausted the first rank fertility of this virgin mould, or when weeds and briers and the sprouting roots of the trees had begun to choke the crops of the half-subdued soil, the ground would be abandoned for new fields won from the forest by the same means, and the deserted plain or hillock would soon clothe itself anew with shrubs and trees, to be again subjected to the same destructive process, and again surrendered to the restorative powers of vegetable nature. [Footnote: In many parts of the North American States, the first white settlers found extensive tracts of thin woods, of a very park-like character, called "oak-openings," from the predominance of different species of that tree upon them. These were the semi-artificial pasture-grounds of the Indians, brought into that state, and so kept, by partial clearing, and by the annual burning of the grass. The object of this operation was to attract the deer to the fresh herbage which sprang up after the fire. The oaks bore the annual scorching at least for a certain time; but if it had been indefinitely continued, they would very probably have been destroyed at last. The soil would have then been much in the prairie condition, and would have needed nothing but grazing for a long succession of years to make the resemblance perfect. That the annual fires alone occasioned the peculiar character of the oak-openings, is proved by the fact that as soon as the Indians had left the country, young trees of many species sprang up and grew luxuriantly upon them. See a very interesting account of the oak-openings in Dwight s Travels, iv., pp. 58-63. This rude economy would be continued for generations, and, wasteful as it is, is still largely pursued in Northern Sweden, Swedish Lapland, and sometimes even in France and the United States. [Footnote: The practice of burning over woodland, at once to clear and manure the ground, is called in Swedieh svedjande, a participial noun from the verb att svedja, to burn over. Though used in Sweden as a preparation for crops of rye or other grain, it is employed in Lapland more frequently to secure an abundant growth of pasturage, which follows in two or three years after the fire; and it is sometimes resorted to as a mode of driving the Laplanders and their reindeer from the vicinity of the Swedish backwoodsman's grass-grounds and hay-stacks, to which they are dangerous neighbors. The forest, indeed, rapidly recovers itself, but it is a generation or more before the reindeer-moss grows again. When the forest consists of pine, tall, the ground, instead of being rendered fertile by this process, becomes hopelessly barren, and for a long time afterwards produces nothing but weeds and briers.--Laestadius, Om Uppodlingar i Lappmarken, p. 15. See also Schubert, Resa i Sverge, ii., p. 375. In some parts of France this practice is so general that Clave says: "In the department of Ardennes it (le sartage) is the basis of agriculture."] Principal Causes of the Destruction of the Forest. The needs of agriculture are the most familiar cause of the destruction of the forest in new countries; for not only does an increasing population demand additional acres to grow the vegetables which feed it and its domestic animals, but the slovenly husbandry of the border settler soon exhausts the luxuriance of his first fields, and compels him to remove his household gods to a fresher soil. The extent of cleared ground required for agricultural use depends very much on the number and kinds of the cattle bred. We have seen, in a former chapter, that, in the United States, the domestic quadrupeds amount to more than a hundred millions, or nearly three times the number of the human population of the Union. In many of the Western States, the swine subsist more or less on acorns, nuts, and other products of the woods, and the prairies, or natural meadows of the Mississippi valley, yield a large amount of food for beast, as well as for man. With these exceptions, all this vast army of quadrupeds is fed wholly on grass, grain, pulse, and roots grown on soil reclaimed from the forest by European settlers. It is true that the flesh of domestic quadrupeds enters very largely into the aliment of the American people, and greatly reduces the quantity of vegetable nutriment which they would otherwise consume, so that a smaller amount of agricultural product is required for immediate human food, and, of course, a smaller extent of cleared land is needed for the growth of that product, than if no domestic animals existed. But the flesh of the horse, the ass, and the mule is not consumed by man, and the sheep is reared rather for its fleece than for food. Besides this, the ground required to produce the grass and grain consumed in rearing and fattening a grazing quadruped, would yield a far larger amount of nutriment, if devoted to the growing of breadstuffs, than is furnished by his flesh; and, upon the whole, whatever advantages may be reaped from the breeding of domestic cattle, it is plain that the cleared land devoted to their sustenance in the originally wooded part of the United States, after deducting a quantity sufficient to produce an amount of aliment equal to their flesh, still greatly exceeds that cultivated for vegetables, directly consumed by the people of the same regions; or, to express a nearly equivalent idea in other words, the meadow and the pasture, taken together, much exceed the ploughland. [Footnote: The two ideas expressed in the text are not exactly equivalent, because, though the consumption of animal food diminishes the amount of vegetable aliment required for human use, yet the animals themselves consume a great quantity of grain and roots grown on ground ploughed and cultivated as regularly and as laboriously as any other. The 280,000,000 bushels of oats raised in the United States in 1870, and fed to the 7,000,000 horses, the potatoes, the turnips, and the maize employed in fattening the oxen, the sheep, and the swine slaughtered the same year, occupied an extent of ground which, cultivated by hand-labor and with Chinese industry and skill, would probably have produced a quantity of vegetable food equal in alimentary power to the flesh of the quadrupeds killed for domestic use. Hence, so far as the naked question of AMOUNT of aliment is concerned, the meadows and the pastures might as well have remained in the forest condition. It must, however, be borne in mind that animal labor, if not a necessary, is probably an economical, force in agricultural occupations, and that without animal manure many branches of husbandry could hardly be carried on at all. At the same time, the introduction of machinery into rural industry, and of artificial, mineral, and fossil manures, is working great revolutions, and we may find at some future day that the ox is no longer necessary as a help to the farmer.] Governments and military commanders have at different periods deliberately destroyed forests by fire or the axe, because they afforded a retreat to robbers, outlaws, or enemies, and this was one of the hostile measures practised by both Julius Caesar and the Gauls in the Roman war of conquest against that people. It was also resorted to in the Mediterranean provinces of France, then much infested by robbers and deserters, as late as the reign of Napoleon I., and is said to have been employed by the early American colonists in their exterminating wars with the native Indians. [Footnote: For many instances of this sort, see Maury, Les Forets de la Gaule, pp. 3-5, and Becquerel, Des Climats, etc., pp. 301-303. In 1664 the Swedes made an incursion into Jutland and felled a considerable extent of forest. After they retired, a survey of the damage was had, and the report is still extant. The number of trees cut was found to be 120,000, and as an account was taken of the numbers of each species of tree, the document is of much interest in the history of the forest, as showing the relative proportions between the different trees which at that time composed the wood. See Vaupell, Bogens Indvandring, p. 35, and Notes, p. 55.] In the Middle Ages, as well as in earlier and later centuries, attempts have been made to protect the woods by law, [Footnote: Stanley, quoting Selden, De Jure Naturali, lib. vi., and Fabricius, Cod. Psedap., V. T., i. 874, mentions a noteworthy Hebrew tradition of uncertain date, but unquestionably very ancient, which is one of the oldest proofs of a public respect for the woods. "A Hebrew tradition attributes to Joshua ten statutes, containing precise regulations for the protection of the property of every tribe and of every head of a family against irregular depredations. Small quadrupeds were allowed to pasture in dense woods, not in thin ones; but no animal could feed in any forest without the consent of the proprietor of the soil. Every Hebrew might pick up fallen boughs and twigs, but was not permitted to cut them. Trees might be pruned for the trimmings, with the exception of the olive and other fruit-trees, and provided there was sufficient shade in the place."--Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church, part i., p. 271. Alfred Maury mentions several provisions taken from the laws of the Indian legislator Manu, on the same subject.--Les Forets de la Gaule, p. 9. The very ancient Tables of Heracles contain provisions for the protection of woods, but whether these referred only to sacred groves, to public forests, or to leased lands, is not clear.] as necessary for the breeding of deer, wild boars, and other game, or for the more reasonable purpose of furnishing a supply of building timber and fuel for future generations. It was reserved for more advanced ages to appreciate the geographical importance of the woods, and it is only in the most recent times, only in a few countries of Europe, that the general destruction of the forests has been recognized as the most potent among the many causes of the physical deterioration of the earth. [Footnote: We must perhaps make an exception in favor of the Emperor Constantine, who commenced the magnificent series of aqueducts and cisterns which still supply Constantinople with water, and enacted strict laws for the protection of the forest of Belgrade, in which rise the springs that feed the aqueducts. See an article by Mr. H. A. Homes on the Water-Supply of Constantinople in the Albany Argus of June 6, 1872.] Royal Forests and Game Laws. The French authors I have quoted, as well as many other writers of the same nation, refer to the French Revolution as having given a new impulse to destructive causes which were already threatening the total extermination of the woods. [Footnote: Religious intolerance had produced similar effects in France at an earlier period. "The revocation of the edict of Nantes and the dragonnades occasioned the sale of the forests of the unhappy Protestants, who fled to seek in foreign lands the liberty of conscience which was refused to them in France. The forests were soon felled by the purchasers, and the soil in part brought under cultivation."--Becquerel, Des Climats, etc, p. 303.] The general crusade against the forests, which accompanied that important event, is to be ascribed, in a considerable degree, to political resentments. The forest codes of the mediaeval kings, and the local "coutumes" of feudalism, contained many severe and even inhuman provisions, adopted rather for the preservation of game than from any enlightened views of the more important functions of the woods. Ordericus Vitalis informs us that William the Conqueror destroyed sixty parishes and drove out their inhabitants, in order that he might turn their lands into a forest, [Footnote: The American reader must be reminded that, in the language of the chase and of the English law, a "forest" is not necessarily a wood. Any large extent of ground, withdrawn from cultivation, reserved for the pleasures of the chase, and allowed to clothe itself with a spontaneous growth, serving as what is technically called "cover" for wild animals, is, in the dialects I have mentioned, a forest. When, therefore, the Norman kings afforested the grounds referred to in the text, it is not to be supposed that they planted them with trees, though the protection afforded to them by the game laws would, if cattle had been kept out, soon have converted them into real woods.] to be reserved as a hunting-ground for himself and his posterity, and he punished with death the killing of a deer, wild boar, or even a hare. His successor, William Rufus, according to the Histoire des Ducs de Normandie et des Rois d'Angleterre, p. 67, "was hunting one day in a new forest, which he had caused to be made out of eighteen parishes that he had destroyed, when, by mischance, he was killed by an arrow wherewith Tyreus de Rois [Sir Walter Tyrell] thought to slay a beast, but missed the beast, and slew the king, who was beyond it. And in this very same forest, his brother Richard ran so hard against a tree that he died of it. And men commonly said that these things were because they had so laid waste and taken the said parishes." These barbarous acts, as Bonnemere observes, [Footnote: Histoire des Paysans, ii., p. 190. The work of Bonnemere is of great value to those who study the history of mediaeval Europe from a desire to know its real character, and not in the hope of finding apparent facts to sustain a false and dangerous theory. Bonnemere is one of the few writers who, like Michelet, have been honest enough and bold enough to speak the truth with regard to the relations between the church and the people in the Middle Ages.] were simply the transfer of the customs of the French kings, of their vassals, and even of inferior gentlemen, to conquered England. "The death of a hare," says our author, "was a hanging matter, the murder of a plover a capital crime. Death was inflicted on those who spread nets for pigeons; wretches who had drawn a bow upon a stag were to be tied to the animal alive; and among the seigniors it was a standing excuse for having killed game on forbidden ground, that they aimed at a serf." The feudal lords enforced these codes with unrelenting rigor, and not unfrequently took the law into their own hands. In the time of Louis IX., according to William of Nangis, "three noble children, born in Flanders, who were sojourning at the abbey of St. Nicholas in the Wood, to learn the speech of France, went out into the forest of the abbey, with their bows and iron-headed arrows, to disport them in shooting hares, chased the game, which they had started in the wood of the abbey, into the forest of Enguerrand, lord of Coucy, and were taken by the sergeants which kept the wood. When the fell and pitiless Sir Enguerrand knew this, he had the children straightway hanged without any manner of trial." [Footnote: It is painful to add that a similar outrage was perpetrated a very few years ago, in one of the European states, by a prince of a family now dethroned. In this case, however, the prince killed the trespasser with his own hand, his sergeants refusing to execute his mandate.] The matter being brought to the notice of good King Louis, Sir Enguerrand was summoned to appear, and, finally, after many feudal shifts and dilatory pleas, brought to trial before Louis himself and a special council. Notwithstanding the opposition of the other seigniors, who, it is needless to say, spared no efforts to save a peer, probably not a greater criminal than themselves, the king was much inclined to inflict the punishment of death on the proud baron. "If he believed," said he, "that our Lord would be as well content with hanging as with pardoning, he would hang Sir Enguerrand in spite of all his barons;" but noble and clerical interests unfortunately prevailed. The king was persuaded to inflict a milder retribution, and the murderer was condemned to pay ten thousand livres in coin, and to "build for the souls of the three children two chapels wherein mass should be said every day." [Footnote: Guillame De Nangis, as quoted in the notes to Joinville, Nouvelle Collection des Memoires, etc., par Michaud et Poujoulat, premiere serie, i., p. 335. Persons acquainted with the character and influence of the mediaeval clergy will hardly need to be informed that the ten thousand livres never found their way to the royal exchequer. It was easy to prove to the simple-minded king that, as the profits of sin were a monopoly of the church, he ought not to derive advantage from the commission of a crime by one of his subjects; and the priests were cunning enough both to secure to themselves the amount of the fine, and to extort from Louis large additional grants to carry out the purposes to which they devoted the money. "And though the king did take the moneys," says the chronicler, "he put them not into his treasury, but turned them into good works; for he builded therewith the maison-Dieu of Pontoise, and endowed the same with rents and lands; also the schools and the dormitory of the friars preachers of Paris, and the monastery of the Minorite friars."] The hope of shortening the purgatorial term of the young persons, by the religious rites to be celebrated in the chapels, was doubtless the consideration which operated most powerfully on the mind of the king; and Europe lost a great example for the sake of a mass. The desolation and depopulation, resulting from the extension of the forest and the enforcement of the game laws, induced several of the French kings to consent to some relaxation of the severity of these latter. Francis I., however, revived their barbarous provisions, and, according to Bonnemere, even so good a monarch as Henry IV. re-enacted them, and "signed the sentence of death upon peasants guilty of having defended their fields against devastation by wild beasts." "A fine of twenty livres," he continues, "was imposed on every one shooting at pigeons, which, at that time, swooped down by thousands upon the new-sown fields and devoured the seed. But let us count even this a progress, for we have seen that the murder of a pigeon had been a capital crime." [Footnote: Histoire des Paysans, ii., p. 200.] Not only were the slightest trespasses on the forest domain--the cutting of an oxgoad, for instance--severely punished, but game animals were still sacred when they had wandered from their native precincts and were ravaging the fields of the peasantry. A herd of deer or of wild boars often consumed or trod down a harvest of grain, the sole hope of the year for a whole family; and the simple driving out of such animals from this costly pasturage brought dire vengeance on the head of the rustic, who had endeavored to save his children's bread from their voracity. "At all times," says Paul Louis Courier, speaking in the name of the peasants of Chambord, in the "Simple Discours," "the game has made war upon us. Paris was blockaded eight hundred years by the deer, and its environs, now so rich, so fertile, did not yield bread enough to support the gamekeepers." [Footnote: The following details from Bonnemere will serve to give a more complete idea of the vexatious and irritating nature of the game laws of France. The officers of the chase went so far as to forbid the pulling up of thistles and weeds, or the mowing of any unenclosed ground before St. John's day (24th June), in order that the nests of game birds might not be disturbed. It was unlawful to fence-in any grounds in the plains where royal residences were situated; thorns were ordered to be planted in all fields of wheat, barley, or oats, to prevent the use of ground-nets for catching the birds which consumed, or were believed to consume, the grain, and it was forbidden to cut or pull stubble before the first of October, lest the partridge and the quail might be deprived of their cover. For destroying the eggs of the quail, a fine of one hundred livres was imposed for the first offence, double that amount for the second, and for the third the culprit was flogged and banished for five years to a distance of six leagues from the forest.--Histoire des Paysans, ii., p. 202, text and notes. Neither these severe penalties, nor any provisions devised by the ingenuity of modern legislation, have been able effectually to repress poaching. "The game laws," says Clave, "have not delivered us from the poachers, who kill twenty times as much game as the sportsmen. In the forest of Fontainebleau, as in all those belonging to the state, poaching is a very common and a very profitable offence. It is in vain that the gamekeepers are on the alert night and day, they cannot prevent it. Those who follow the trade begin by carefully studying the habits of the game. They will lie motionless on the ground, by the roadside or in thickets, for whole days, watching the paths most frequented by the animals," etc.--Revue des Deux Mondes, Mai, 1863, p. 160. The writer adds many details on this subject, and it appears that, as there are "beggars on horseback" in South America, there are poachers in carriages in France.] The Tiers Etat declared, in 1789, "the most terrible scourge of agriculture is the abundance of wild game, a consequence of the privileges of the chase; the fields are wasted, the forests ruined, and the vines gnawed down to the roots." Effects of the French Revolution. The abrogation of the game laws and of the harsh provisions of the forestal code was one of the earliest measures of the revolutionary government; and the removal of the ancient restrictions on the chase and of the severe penalties imposed on trespassers upon the public forests, was immediately followed by unbridled license in the enjoyment of the newly conceded rights. In the popular mind the forest was associated with all the abuses of feudalism, and the evils the peasantry had suffered from the legislation which protected both it and the game it sheltered, blinded them to the still greater physical mischiefs which its destruction was to entail upon them. No longer under the safeguard of the law, the crown forests and those of the great lords were attacked with relentless fury, unscrupulously plundered and wantonly laid waste, and even the rights of property in small private woods ceased to be respected. [Footnote: "Whole trees were sacrificed for the most insignificant purposes; the peasants would cut down two firs to make a single pair of wooden shoes."--Michelet, as quoted by Clave. Etudes, p. 24. A similar wastefulness formerly prevailed in Russia, though not from the same cause. In St. Pierre's time, the planks brought to St. Petersburg were not sawn, but hewn with the axe, and a tree furnished but a single plank.] Various absurd theories, some of which are not even yet exploded, were propagated with regard to the economical advantages of converting the forest into pasture and plough-land, the injurious effects of the woods upon climate, health, facility of internal communication, and the like. Thus resentful memory of the wrongs associated with the forest, popular ignorance, and the cupidity of speculators cunning enough to turn these circumstances to profitable account, combined to hasten the sacrifice of the remaining woods, and a waste was produced which hundreds of years and millions of treasure will hardly repair. In the era of savage anarchy which followed the beneficent reforms of 1789, economical science was neglected, and statistical details upon the amount of the destruction of woods during that period are wanting. But it is known to have been almost incalculably rapid, and the climatic and financial evils, which elsewhere have been a more gradual effect of this cause, began to make themselves felt in France within three or four years after that memorable epoch. [Footnote: See Becquerel, Memoire sur les Forets, in the Mem. de l'Academie des Sciences, c. XXXV., p. 411 et seqq. Similar circumstances produced a like result, though on a far smaller scale, in Italy, at a very recent period. Gallenga says: "The destruction of the majestic timber [between the Vals Sesia and Sessera] dates no farther back than 1848, when, on the first proclamation of the Constitution, the ignorant boor had taken it for granted that all the old social ties would be loosened, and therefore the old forest-laws should be at once set at naught."--Country Life in Piedmont, p. 136.] Increased Demand for Lumber. With increasing population and the development of new industries, come new drains upon the forest from the many arts for which wood is the material. The demands of the near and the distant market for this product excite the cupidity of the hardy forester, and a few years of that wild industry of which Springer's "Forest Life and Forest Trees" so vividly depicts the dangers and the triumphs, suffice to rob the most inaccessible glens of their fairest ornaments. The value of timber increases with its dimensions in almost geometrical proportion, and the tallest, most vigorous, and most symmetrical trees fall the first sacrifice. This is a fortunate circuinritiinco for the remainder of the wood; for the impatient lumberman contents himself with felling a few of the best trees, and then hurries on to take his tithe of still virgin groves. The vast extension of railroads, of manufactures and the mechanical arts, of military armaments, and especially of the commercial fleets and navies of Christendom, within the present century, has incredibly augmented the demand for wood, [Footnote: Let us take the supply of timber for railroad-ties. According to Clave (p. 248), France had, in 1862, 9,000 kilometres of railway in operation, 7,000 in construction, half of which is built with a double track. Adding turn-outs and extra tracks at stations, the number of ties required for a single track is stated at 1,200 to the kilometre, or, as Clave computes, for the entire network of France, 58,000,000. This number is too large, for 16,000 + 8,000 for the double track halfway = 24,000, and 24,000 x 1,200 = 28,800,000. In an article in the Revue des Deux Mondes, July, 1863, Gandy states that 2,000,000 trees had been felled to furnish the ties for the French railroads, and as the ties must be occasionally renewed, and new railways have been constructed since 1863, we may probably double this number. The United States had in operation on the first of January, 1872, 61,000 miles, or about 97,000 kilometres, of railroad. Allowing the same proportion as in France, the American railroads required 116,400,000 ties. The Report of the Agricultural Department of the United States for November and December, 1869, estimates the number of ties annually required for our railways at 30,000,000, and supposes that 150,000 acres of the best woodland must be felled to supply this number. This is evidently an error, perhaps a misprint for 15,000. The same authority calculates the annual expenditure of the American railroads for lumber for buildings, repairs, and cars, at $38,000,000, and for locomotive fuel, at the rate of 10,000 cords of wood per day, at $50,000,000. The walnut trees cut in Italy and France to furnish gunstocks to the American army, during our late civil war, would alone have formed a considerable forest. A single establishment in Northern Italy used twenty-eight thousand large walnut trees for that purpose in the years 1862 and 1863. The consumption of wood for lucifer matches is enormous, and I have heard of several instances where tracts of pine forest, hundreds and even thousands of acres in extent, have been purchased and felled, solely to supply timber for this purpose. The United States government tax, at one cent per hundred, produces $2,000,000 per year, which shows a manufacture of 20,000,000,000 matches. Allowing nothing for waste, there are about fifty matches to the cubic inch of wood, or 86,400 to the cubic foot, making in all upwards of 230,000 cubic feet, and, as only straight-grained wood, free from knots, can be used for this purpose, the sacrifice of not less than three or four thousand well-grown pines is required for this purpose. If we add to all this the supply of wood for telegraph-posts, wooden pavements, wooden wall tapestry-paper, shoe-pegs, and even wooden nails, which have lately come into use--not to speak of numerous other recent applications of this material which American ingenuity has devised--we have an amount of consumption, for entirely new purposes, which is really appalling. Wooden field and garden fences are very generally used in America, and some have estimated the consumption of wood for this purpose as not less than that for architectural uses. Fully one-half our vast population is lodged in wooden houses, and barns and country out-houses of all descriptions are almost universally of the same material. The consumption of wood in the United States as fuel for domestic purposes, for charcoal, for brick and lime kilns, for breweries and distilleries, for steamboats, and many other uses, defies computation, and is vastly greater than is employed in Europe for the same ends. For instance, in rural Switzerland, cold as is the winter climate, the whole supply of wood for domestic fires, dairies, breweries, distilleries, brick and lime kilns, fences, furniture, tools, and even house-building and small smitheries, exclusive of the small quantity derived from the trimmings of fruit-trees, grape-vines, and hedges, and from decayed fences and buildings, does not exceed TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY CUBIC FEET, or less than two cords a year, per household.--See Bericht uber die Untersuchung der Schweiz Hochgebirgswaldungen, pp. 85-89. In 1789, Arthur Young estimated the annual consumption of firewood by single families in France at from two and a half to ten Paris cords of 134 cubic feet.--Travels, vol. ii., chap. xv. The report of the Commissioners on the Forests of Wisconsin, 1867, allows three cords of wood to each person for household fires alone. Taking families at an average of five persons, we have eight times the amount consumed by an equal number of persons in Switzerland for this and all other purposes to which this material in ordinarily applicable. I do not think the consumption in the North-eastern States is at all less than the calculation for Wisconsin. Evergreen trees are often destroyed in immense numbers in the United States for the purpose of decoration of churches and on other festive occasions. The New York city papers reported that 113,000 young evergreen trees, besides 20,000 yards of small branches twirled into festoons, were sold in the markets of that city, for this use, at Christmas, in 1869. At the Cincinnati Industrial Exhibition of 1873, three miles of evergreen festoons were hung upon the beams and rafters of the "Floral Hall." Important statistics on the consumption and supply of wood in the United States will be found in a valuable paper by the Rev. Frederick Starr, Jr., in the Transactions of the Agricultural Society for--. Of course, there is a vast consumption of ligneous material for all these uses in Europe, but it is greatly less than at earlier periods. The waste of wood in European carpentry was formerly enormous, the beams of houses being both larger and more numerous than permanence or stability required. In examining the construction of the houses occupied by the eighty families which inhabit the village of Faucigny, in Savoy, in 1854, the forest inspector found that FIFTY THOUSAND trees had been employed in building them. The builders "seemed," says Hudry-Menos, "to have tried to solve the problem of piling upon the walls the largest quantity of timber possible without crushing them."--Revue des Deux Mondes, 1st June, 1864, p. 601. European statistics present comparatively few facts on this subject, of special interest to American readers, but it is worth noting that France employs 1,500,000 cubic feet of oak per year for brandy and wine casks, which is about half her annual consumption of that material; and it is not a wholly insignificant fact that, according to Rentzach, the quantity of wood used in parts of Germany for small carvings and for children's toys is so largs, that the export of such objects from the town of Sonneberg alone, amounted, in 1853, to 60,000 centner, or three thousand tons' weight.--Der Wald, p. 68. In an article in the Revue des Eaux et Forets for November, 1868, it is stated that 200,000 dozens of drums for boys aro manufactured per month in Paris. This is equivalent to 28,800,000 per year, for which 56,000,000 drumsticks are required, and the writer supposes that the annual growth of 50,000 acres of woodland would not more than supply the material. In the same article the consumption of matches in France is given at 7,200,000,000, and the quantity of lumber annually required for this manufacture is computed at 80,000 steres, or cubic metres--evidently an erroneous calculation.] and but for improvements in metallurgy and the working of iron, which have facilitated the substitution of that metal for wood, the last twenty-five years would have almost stripped Europe of her last remaining tree fit for these uses. [Footnote: Besides the substitution of iron for wood, a great saving of consumption of this latter material has been effected by the revival of ancient methods of increasing its durability, and the invention of new processes for the same purpose. The most effectual preservative yet discovered for wood employed on land, is sulphate of copper, a solution of which is introduced into the pores of the wood while green, by soaking, by forcing-pumps, or, most economically, by the simple pressure of a column of the fluid in a small pipe connected with the end of the piece of timber subjected to the treatment. Clave (Etudes Forestieres, pp. 240-249) gives an interesting account of the various processes employed for rendering wood imperishable, and states that railroad-ties injected with sulphate of copper in 1846, were found absolutely unaltered in 1855; and telegraphic posts prepared two years earlier, are now in a state of perfect preservation. For many purposes, the method of injection is too expensive, and some simpler process is much to be desired. The question of the proper time of felling timber is not settled, and the best modes of air, water, and steam seasoning are not yet fully ascertained. Experiments on these subjects would be well worth the patronage of Governments in new countries, where they can be very easily made, without the necessity of much waste of valuable material, and without expensive arrangements for observation. The practice of stripping living trees of their bark some years before they are felled, is as old as the time of Vitruvius, but is much less followed than it deserves, partly because the timber of trees so treated inclines to crack and split, and partly because it becomes so hard as to be wrought with considerable difficulty. In America, economy in the consumption of fuel has been much promoted by the substitution of coal for wood, the general use of stoves both for wood and coal, and recently by the employment of anthracite in the furnaces of stationary and locomotive steam-engines. All the objections to the use of anthracite for this latter purpose appear to have been overcome, and the improvements in its combustion have been attended with a great pecuniary saving, and with much advantage to the preservation of the woods. The employment of coal has produced a great reduction in the consumption of firewood in Paris. In 1815, the supply of firewood for the city required 1,200,000 steres, or cubic metres; in 1859 it had fallen to 501,805, while, in the meantime, the consumption of coal had risen from 600,000 to 4,320,000 metrical quintals. See Clave, Etudes, p. 212. In 1869 Paris consumed 951,157 steres of firewood, 4,902,414 hectolitres, or more than 13,000,000 bushels, of charcoal, and 6,872,000 metrical quintals, or more than 7,000,000 tons of mineral coal.--Annuaire de la Revue des Eaux et Forets for 1872, p. 26. The increase in the price of firewood at Paris, within a century, has been comparatively small, while that of timber and of sawed lumber has increased enormously.] I have spoken of the foreign demand for American agricultural products as having occasioned an extension of cultivated ground, which had led to clearing land not required by the necessities of home consumption. But the forest itself has become, so to speak, an article of exportation. England, as we have seen, imported oak and pine from the Baltic ports more than six hundred years ago. She has since drawn largely on the forests of Norway, and for many years has received vast quantities of lumber from her American possessions. The unparalleled facilities for internal navigation, afforded by the numerous rivers of the present and former British colonial possessions in North America, have proved very fatal to the forests of that continent. Quebec became many years ago a centre for a lumber trade, which, in the bulk of its material, and, consequently, in the tonnage required for its transportation, rivalled the commerce of the greatest European cities. Immense rafts were collected at Quebec from the great Lakes, from the Ottawa, and from all the other tributaries which unite to swell the current of the St. Lawrence and help it to struggle against its mighty tides. [Footnote: The tide rises at Quebec to the height of twenty-five feet, and when it is aided by a north-east wind, it flows with almost irresistible violence. Rafts containing several hundred thousand cubic feet of timber are often caught by the flood-tide, torn to pieces, and dispersed for miles along the shores.] Ships, of burden formerly undreamed of, have been built to convey the timber to the markets of Europe, and during the summer months the St. Lawrence is almost as crowded with shipping as the Thames. [Footnote: One of these, the Baron of Renfrew--so named from one of the titles of the kings of England--built forty or fifty years ago, measured 5,000 tons. They were little else than rafts, being almost solid masses of timber designed to be taken to pieces and sold as lumber on arriving at their port of destination. The lumber trade at Quebec is still very large. According to an article in the Revue des Deux Mondes, that city exported, in 1860, 30,000,000 cubic feet of squared timber, and 400,000,000 square feet of "planches." The thickness of the boards is not stated, but I believe they are generally cut an inch and a quarter thick for the Quebec trade, and as they shrink somewhat in drying, we may estimate ten square for one cubic foot of boards. This gives a total of 70,000,000 cubic feet. The specific gravity of white pine is .554, and the weight of this quantity of lumber, very little of which is thoroughly seasoned, would exceed a million of tons, even supposing it to consist wholly of wood as light as pine. The London Times of Oct. 10, 1871, states the exportation of lumber from Canada to Europe, in 1870, at 200,000,000 cubic feet, and adds that more than three times that quantity was sent from the same province to the United States. A very large proportion of this latter quantity goes to Burlington, Vermont, whence it is distributed to other parts of the Union. There must, I think, be some error or exaggeration in these figures. Perhaps instead of cubic feet we should read square feet. Two hundred millions of cubic feet of timber would require more than half the entire tonnage of England for its transportation. I suppose the quantities in the following estimates, from a carefully prepared article in the St. Louis Republican, must be understood as meaning square or superficial feet, board measure, allowing a thickness of one inch: "The lumber trade of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, for the year 1869, shows the amount cut as being 2,029,372,255 feet for the State of Michigan, and 317,400,000 feet for the State of Minnesota, and 964,600,000 feet for the State of Wisconsin. This includes the lake shore and the whole State of Wisconsin, which heretofore has been difficult to get a report from. The total amount cut in these States was 3,311,372,255 feet, and that to obtain this quantity there have been shipped 883,032 acres, or 1,380 square miles of pine have been removed. It is calculated that 4,000,000 acres of land still remain unstripped in Michigan, which will yield 15,000,000,000 feet of lumber; while 3,000,000 acres arc still standing in Wisconsin, which will yield 11,250,000,000 feet, and that which remains in Minnesota, taking the estimate of a few years since of that which was surveyed and unexplored, after deducting the amount cut the past few years, we find 3,630,000 acres to be the proper estimate of trees now standing which will yield 32,362,500,000 feet of lumber. This makes a total of 15,630,000 acres of pine lands, which remain standing in the above States, that will yield 58,612,500,000 feet of lumber, and it is thought that fifteen or twenty years will be required to cut and send to market the trees now standing." See also Bryant, Forest Trees, chap. iv.] Effects of Forest Fires. The operations of the lumberman involve other dangers to the woods besides the loss of the trees felled by him. The narrow clearings around his shanties form openings which let in the wind, and thus sometimes occasion the overthrow of thousands of trees, the fall of which dams up small streams, and creates bogs by the spreading of the waters, while the decaying trunks facilitate the multiplication of the insects which breed in dead wood and are, some of them, injurious to living trees. The escape and spread of camp-fires, however, is the most devastating of all the causes of destruction that find their origin in the operations of the lumberman. The proportion of trees fit for industrial uses is small in all primitive woods. Only these fall before the forester's axe, but the fire destroys, almost indiscriminately, every age and every species of tree. [Footnote: Trees differ in their power of resisting the action of forest fires. Different woods vary greatly in combustibility, and even when the bark is scarcely scorched, trees are, partly in consequence of physiological character, and partly from the greater or less depth at which their roots habitually lie below the surface, differently affected by running fires. The white pine, Pinus strobus, as it is the most valuable, is also perhaps the most delicate tree of the American forest, while its congener, the Northern pitch-pine, Pinus rigida, is less injured by fire than any other tree of that country. I have heard experienced lumbermen maintain that the growth of this pine was even accelerated by a fire brisk enough to destroy all other trees, and I have myself seen it still flourishing after a conflagration which had left not a green leaf but its own in the wood, and actually throwing out fresh foliage, when the old had been quite burnt off and the bark almost converted into charcoal. The wood of the pitch-pine is of comparatively little value for the joiner, but it is useful for very many purposes. Its rapidity of growth in even poor soils, its hardihood, and its abundant yield of resinous products, entitle it to much more consideration, as a plantation tree, than it has hitherto received in Europe or America.] While, then, without fatal injury to the younger growths, the native forest will bear several "cuttings over" in a generation--for the increasing value of lumber brings into use, every four or five years, a quality of timber which had been before rejected as unmarketable--a fire may render the declivity of a mountain unproductive for a century. [Footnote: Between sixty and seventy years ago, a steep mountain with which I am familiar, composed of metamorphic rock, and at that time covered with a thick coating of soil and a dense primeval forest, was accidentally burnt over. The fire took place in a very dry season, the slope of the mountain was too rapid to retain much water, and the conflagration was of an extraordinarily fierce character, consuming the wood almost entirely, burning the leaves and combustible portion of the mould, and in the many places cracking and disintegrating the rock beneath. The rains of the following autumn carried off much of the remaining soil, and the mountain-side was nearly bare of wood for two or three years afterwards. At length a new crop of trees sprang up and grew vigorously, and the mountain is now thickly covered again. But the depth of mould and earth is too small to allow the trees to reach maturity. When they attain to the diameter of about six inches, they uniformly die, and this they will no doubt continue to do until the decay of leaves and wood on the surface, and the decomposition of the subjacent rock, shall have formed, perhaps hundreds of years hence, a stratum of soil thick enough to support a full-grown forest. Under favorable conditions, however, as in the case of the fire of Miramichi, a burnt forest renews itself rapidly and permanently.] Aside from the destruction of the trees and the laying bare of the soil, and consequently the freer admission of sun, rain, and air to the ground, the fire of itself exerts an important influence on its texture and condition. It cracks and sometimes even pulverizes the rocks and stones upon and near the surface; [Footnote: In the burning over of a hill-forest in the Lower Engadine, in September, 1865, the fire was intense as to shatter and calcine the rocks on the slope, and their fragments were precipitated into the valley below.--Ricista Firrestate del Regna d'Italia, Ottobro, 1865, 1865, p. 474.] it consumes a portion of the half-decayed vegetable mould which served to hold its mineral particles together and to retain the water of precipitation, and thus loosens, pulverizes, and dries the earth; it destroys reptiles, insects, and worms, with their eggs, and the seeds of trees and of smaller plants; it supplies, in the ashes which it deposits on the surface, important elements for the growth of a new forest clothing, as well as of the usual objects of agricultural industry; and by the changes thus produced, it fits the ground for the reception of a vegetation different in character from that which had spontaneously covered it. These new conditions help to explain the natural succession of forest crops, so generally observed in all woods cleared by fire and then abandoned. There is no doubt, however, that other influences contribute to the same result, because effects more or less analogous follow when the trees are destroyed by other causes, as by high winds, by the woodman's axe, and even by natural decay. [Footnote: The remarkable mounds and other earthworks constructed in the valley of the Ohio and elsewhere in the territory of the United States, by a people apparently more advanced in the culture than the modern Indian, were overgrown with a dense clothing of forest when first discovered by the whites. But though the ground where they were erected must have been occupied by a large population for a considerable leagth of time, and therefore entirely cleared, the trees which grew upon the ancient fortresses and the adjacent lands were not distinguishable in species, or even in dimensions and character of growth, from the neighboring forests, where the soil seemed never to have been disturbed. This apparent exception to the law of change of crop in natured forest growth was ingeniously explained by General Harrison's suggestion, that the lapse of time since the era of the mound-builders was so great as to have embraced several successive generations of trees, and occasioned, by their rotation, a return to the original vegetation. The succesive changes in the spontaneous growth of the forest, as proved by the character of the wood found in bogs, are such as to have suggested the theory of a considerable change of climate during the human period. But strobus, as it is the most valuable, is also perhaps the most delicate tree of the American forest, while its congener, the Northern pitch-pine, Pinus rigida, is less injured by fire than any other tree of that country. I have heard experienced lumbermen maintain that the growth of this pine was even accelerated by a fire brisk enough to destroy all other trees, and I have myself seen it still flourishing after a conflagration which had left not a green leaf but its own in the wood, and actually throwing out fresh foliage, when the old had been quite burnt off and the bark almost converted into charcoal. The wood of the pitch-pine is of comparatively little value for the joiner, but it is useful for very many purposes. Its rapidity of growth in even poor soils, its hardihood, and its abundant yield of resinous products, entitle it to much more consideration, as a plantation tree, than it has hitherto received in Europe or America.] without fatal injury to the younger growths, the native forest will hear several "cuttings over" in a generation--for the increasing value of lumber brings into use, every four or five years, a quality of timber which had been before rejected as unmarketable--a fire may render the declivity of a mountain unproductive for a century. [Footnote: Between sixty and seventy years ago, a steep mountain with which I am familiar, composed of metamorphic rock, and at that time covered with a thick coating of soil and a dense primeval forest, was accidentally burnt over. The fire took place in a very dry season, the slope of the mountain was too rapid to retain much water, and the conflagration was of an extraordinarily fierce character, consuming the wood almost entirely, burning the leaves and combustible portion of the mould, and in many places cracking and disintegrating the rock beneath. The rains of the following autumn carried off much of the remaining soil, and the mountain-side was nearly bare of wood for two or three years afterwards. At length a new crop of trees sprang up and grew vigorously, and the mountain is now thickly covered again. But the depth of mould and earth is too small to allow the trees to reach maturity. When they attain to the diameter of about six inches, they uniformly die, and this they will no doubt continue to do until the decay of leaves and wood on the surface, and the decomposition of the subjacent rock, shall have formed, perhaps hundreds of years hence, a stratum of soil thick enough to support a full-grown forest. Under favorable conditions, however, as in the case of the fire of Miramichi, a burnt forest renews itself rapidly and permanently.] Aside from the destruction of the trees and the laying bare of the soil, and consequently the freer admission of sun, rain, and air to the ground, the fire of itself exerts an important influence on its texture and condition. It cracks and sometimes even pulverizes the rocks and stones upon and near the surface; [Footnote: In the burning over of a hill-forest in the Lower Engadine, in September, 1865, the fire was so intense as to shatter and calcine the rocks on the slope, and their fragments were precipitated into the valley below.--Rivista Forestale del Regno d'Italia, Ottobre, 1865, p. 474.] it consumes a portion of the half-decayed vegetable mould which served to hold its mineral particles together and to retain the water of precipitation, and thus loosens, pulverizes, and dries the earth; it destroys reptiles, insects, and worms, with their eggs, and the seeds of trees and of smaller plants; it supplies, in the ashes which it deposits on the surface, important elements for the growth of a new forest clothing, as well as of the usual objects of agricultural industry; and by the changes thus produced, it fits the ground for the reception of a vegetation different in character from that which had spontaneously covered it. These new conditions help to explain the natural succession of forest crops, so generally observed in all woods cleared by fire and then abandoned. There is no doubt, however, that other influences contribute to the same result, because effects more or less analogous follow when the trees are destroyed by other causes, as by high winds, by the woodman's axe, and even by natural decay. [Footnote: The remarkable mounds and other earthworks constructed in the valley of the Ohio and elsewhere in the territory of the United States, by a people apparently more advanced in culture than the modern Indian, were overgrown with a dense clothing of forest when first discovered by the whites. But though the ground where they were erected must have been occupied by a large population for a considerable length of time, and therefore entirely cleared, the trees which grew upon the ancient fortresses and the adjacent lands were not distinguishable in species, or even in dimensions and character of growth, from the neighboring forests, where the soil seemed never to have been disturbed. This apparent exception to the law of change of crop in natural forest growth was ingeniously explained by General Harrison's suggestion, that the lapse of time since the era of the mound-builders were so great as to have embraced several successive generations of trees, and occasioned, by their rotation, a return to the original vegetation. The successive changes in the spontaneous growth of the forest, as proved by the character of a wood found in bogs, are such as to have suggested the theory of a considerable change of the climate during the human period. But this theory cannot be admitted upon the evidence in question. In fact, the order of succession--for a rotation or alternation is neither proved nor probable--may be made to move in opposite directions in different countries with the same climate and at the same time. Thus in Denmark and in Holland the spike-leaved firs have given place to the broad-leaved beech, while in Northern Germany the process has been reversed, and evergreens have supplanted the oaks and birches of deciduous foliage. The principal determining cause seems to be the influence of light upon the germination of the seeds and the growth of the young tree. In a forest of firs, for instance, the distribution of the light and shade, to the influence of which seeds and shoots are exposed, is by no means the same as in a wood of beeches or of oaks, and hence the growth of different species will be stimulated in the two forests. When ground is laid bare both of trees and of vegetable mould, and left to the action of unaided and unobstructed nature, she first propagates trees which germinate and grow only under the influence of a full supply of light and air, and then, in succession, other species, according to their ability to bear the shade and their demand for more abundant nutriment. In Northern Europe the large, the white birch, the aspen, first appear; then follow the maple, the alder, the ash, the fir; then the oak and the linden; and then the beech. The trees called by these respective names in the United States are not specifically the same as their European namesakes, nor are they always even the equivalents of these latter, and therefore the order of succession in America would not be precisely as indicated by the foregoing list, but, so far as is known, it nevertheless very nearly corresponds to it. It is thought important to encourage the growth of the beech in Denmark and Northern Germany, because it upon the whole yields better returns than other trees, and does not exhaust, but on the contrary enriches, the soil; for by shedding its leaves it returns to it most of the nutriment it has drawn from it, and at the same time furnishes a solvent which aids materially in the decomposition of its mineral constituents. When the forest is left to itself, the order of succession is constant, and its occasional inversion is always explicable by some human interference. It is curious that the trees which require most light are content with the poorest soils, and vice versa. The trees which first appear are also those which propagate themselves farthest to the north. The birch, the larch, and the fir bear a severer climate than the oak, the oak than the beech. "These parallelisms," says Vaupell, "are very interesting, because, though they are entirely independent of each other," they all prescribe the same order of succession.--Bogens Indvandring, p. 42. See alo Berg, Das Verdrangen der Laubralder im Nordlichen Deutschland, 1844. Heyer, Das Verhalten der Waldbaume gegen Licht und Schatten, 1852. Staring, De Bodem van Nederland, 1856, i., pp. 120-200. Vaupell, De Danske Skove, 1863. Knorr, Studien uber die Buchen-Wirthschaft, 1863. A. Maury, Les Forets de la Gaule, pp. 73, 74, 377, 384.] Another evil, sometimes of serious magnitude, which attends the operations of the lumberman, is the injury to the banks of rivers from the practice of floating. I do not here allude to rafts, which, being under the control of those who navigate them, may be so guided as to avoid damage to the shore, but to masts, logs, and other pieces of timber singly entrusted to the streams, to be conveyed by their currents to sawmill ponds, or to convenient places for collecting them into rafts. The lumbermen usually haul the timber to the banks of the rivers in the winter, and when the spring floods swell the streams and break up the ice, they roll the logs into the water, leaving them to float down to their destination. If the transporting stream is too small to furnish a sufficient channel for this rude navigation, it is sometimes dammed up, and the timber collected in the pond thus formed above the dam. When the pond is full, a sluice is opened, or the dam is blown up or otherwise suddenly broken, and the whole mass of lumber above it is hurried down with the rolling flood. Both of these modes of proceeding expose the banks of the rivers employed as channels of flotation to abrasion, [Footnote: Caimi states that "a single flotation in the Valtelline, in 1830, caused damages appraised at $250,000."--Cenni sulla Importanza e Coltura dei Boschi, p. 65.] and in some of the American States it has been found necessary to protect, by special legislation, the lands through which they flow from the serious injury sometimes received through the practices I have described. [Footnote: Many physicists who have investigated the laws of natural hydraulics maintain that, in consequence of direct obstruction and frictional resistance to the flow of the water of rivers along their banks, there is both an increased rapidity of current and an elevation of the water in the middle of the channel, so that a river presents always a convex surface. Others have thought that the acknowledged greater swiftness of the central current must produce a depression in that part of the stream. The lumbermen affirm that, while rivers are rising, the water is highest in the middle of the channel, and tends to throw floating objects shorewards; while they are falling, it is lowest in the middle, and floating objects incline towards the centre. Logs, they say, rolled into the water during the rise, are very apt to lodge on the banks, while those set afloat during the falling of the waters keep in the current, and are carried without hindrance to their destination, and this law, which has been a matter of familiar observation among woodmen for generations, is now admitted as a scientific truth. Foresters and lumbermen, like sailors and other persons whose daily occupations bring them into contact, and often into conflict, with great natural forces, have many peculiar opinions, not to say superstitious. In one of these categories we must rank the universal belief of lumbermen, that with a given head of water, and in a given number of hours, a sawmill cuts more lumber by night than by day. Having been personally interested in several sawmills, been assured by them that their uniform experiences established the fact that, other things being equal, the action of the machinery of sawmills is more rapid by night than by day. I am sorry--perhaps I ought to be ashamed--to say that my skepticism has been too strong to allow me to avail myself of my ooportunites of testing this question by passing a night, watch in hand, counting the strokes of a millisaw. More unprejudiced, and, I must add, very intelligent and credible persons have informed me that they have done so, and found the report of the sawyers abundantly confirmed. A land surveyor, who was also an experienced lumberman, sawyer, and machinist, a good mathematician, and an accurate observer, has repeatedly told me that he had very often "timed" sawmills, and before the difference in favor of night-work above thirty per cent. Sed quaere.] Restoration of the Forest. In most countries of Europe--and I fear in many parts of the United States--the woods are already so nearly extirpated, that the mere protection of those which now exist is by no means an adequate security against a great increase of the evils which have already resulted from the diminution of them. Besides this, experience has shown that where the destruction of the woods has been carried beyond a certain point, no coercive legislation can absolutely secure the permanence of the remainder, especially if it is held by private hands. The creation of new forests, therefore, is generally recognized, wherever the subject has received the attention it merits, as an indispensable measure of sound public economy. Enlightened individuals in some European states, the Governments in others, have made extensive plantations, and France, particularly, has now set herself energetically at work to restore the woods in her southern provinces, and thereby to prevent the utter depopulation and waste with which that once fertile soil and genial climate are threatened. The objects of the restoration of the forest are as multifarious as the motives that have led to its destruction, and as the evils which that destruction has occasioned. It is hoped that the replanting of the mountain slopes, and of bleak and infertile plains, will diminish the frequency and violence of river inundations, prevent the formation of new torrents and check the violence of those already existing, mitigate the extremes of atmospheric temperature, humidity, and precipitation, restore dried-up springs, rivulets, and sources of irrigation, shelter the fields from chilling and from parching winds, arrest the spread of miasmatic effluvia, and, finally, furnish a self-renewing and inexhaustible supply of a material indispensable to so many purposes of domestic comfort, and to the successful exercise of every art of peace, every destructive energy of war. [Footnote: The preservation of the woods on the former eastern frontier of France, as a kind of natural abattis, was recognized by the Government of that country as an important measure of military defence, though there have been conflicting opinions on the subject.] The Economy of the Forest. The legislation of European states upon sylviculture, and the practice of that art, divide themselves into two great branches--the preservation of existing forests, and the creation of new. Although there are in Europe many forests neither planted nor regularly trained by man, yet from the long operation of causes already set forth, what is understood in America and other new countries by the "primitive forest," no longer exists in the territories which were the seats of ancient civilization and empire, except upon a small scale, and in remote and almost inaccessible glens quite out of the reach of ordinary observation. The oldest European woods are indeed native, that is, sprung from self-sown seed, or from the roots of trees which have been felled for human purposes; but their growth has been controlled, in a variety of ways, by man and by domestic animals, and they almost uniformly present more or less of an artificial character and arrangement. Both they and planted forests--which, though certainly not few, are of comparatively recent date in Europe--demand, as well for protection as for promotion of growth, a treatment different in some respects from that which would be suited to the character and wants of the virgin wood. On this latter branch of the subject, the management of the primitive wood, experience and observation have not yet collected a sufficient stock of facts to serve for the construction of a complete system of this department of sylviculture; but the government of the forest as it exists in France--the different zones and climates of which country present many points of analogy with those of the United States and of some of the British colonies--has been carefully studied, and several manuals of practice have been prepared for the foresters of that empire. I believe the Cours Elementaire de Culture des Bois cree a l'Ecole Forestiere de Nancy, par M. Lorentz, complete et public par A. Parade, with a supplement under the title of Cours d'Amenagement des Forets, par Henri Nanquette, has been generally considered the best of these. The Etudes sur l'Economie Forestiere, par Jules Clave, which I have often quoted, presents a great number of interesting views on this subject, but it is not designed as a practical guide, and it does not profess to be sufficiently specific in its details to serve that purpose. [Footnote: Among more recent manuals may be mentioned: in French, Les Etudes de Maitre Pierre, Paris, 1864, 12mo; Bazelaire, Traite de Roboisement, 2d edition. Paris 1864; Paston, L'Amenagemend des Forets, Paris, 1867; in English, Gregor, Arboriculture, Edinburgh, 1868: in Italian, Siemoni 's very valuable Manuale teorico-pratico d'Arte Forestale, 2d ediz., Firenze, 1872; the excellent work of Cerini, Dei Vantaggi di Societe, por l'Impianto e Conservazione dei Boschi, Milano, 1844, 8vo; and the prize essay of Meguscher, Memoria sui Boschi, etc., 2d edizione, Milano, 1859, 8vo. Another very important treatise of the uses of the forest, though not a manual of sylviculture, is Schleiden, Fur Baum und Wald, Leipzig, 1870.]Notwithstanding the difference of conditions between the aboriginal and the trained forest, the judicious observer who aims at the preservation of the former will reap much instruction from the treatises I have cited, and I believe he will be convinced that the sooner a natural wood is brought into the state of an artificially regulated one, the better it is for all the multiplied interests which depend on the wise administration of this branch of public economy. One consideration bearing on this subject has received less attention than it merits, because most persons interested in such questions have not opportunities for the comparison I refer to. I mean the great general superiority of cultivated timber to that of strictly spontaneous growth. I say GENERAL superiority, because there are exceptions to the rule. The white pine, Pinus strobus, for instance, and other trees of similar character and uses, require, for their perfect growth and best ligneous texture, a density of forest vegetation around them, which protects them from too much agitation by wind, and from the persistence of the lateral branches which fill the wood with knots. A pine which has grown under those conditions possesses a tall, straight stem, admirably fitted for masts and spars, and, at the same time, its wood is almost wholly free from knots, is regular in annular structure, soft and uniform in texture, and, consequently, superior to almost all other timber for joinery. If, while a large pine is spared, the broad-leaved or other smaller trees around it are felled, the swaying of the tree from the action of the wind mechanically produces separations between the layers of annual growth, and greatly diminishes the value of the timber. The same defect is often observed in pines which, from some accident of growth, have much overtopped their fellows in the virgin forest. The white pine, growing in the fields, or in open glades in the woods, is totally different from the true forest-tree, both in general aspect and in quality of wood. Its stem is much shorter, its top less tapering, its foliage denser and more inclined to gather into tufts, its branches more numerous and of larger diameter, its wood shows much more distinctly the divisions of annual growth, is of coarser grain, harder and more difficult to work into mitre-joints. Intermixed with the most valuable pines in the American forests, are met many trees of the character I have just described. The lumbermen call them "saplings," and generally regard them as different in species from the true white pine, but botanists are unable to establish a distinction between them, and as they agree in almost all respects with trees grown in the open grounds from known white-pine seedlings, I believe their peculiar character is due to unfavorable circumstances in their early growth. The pine, then, is an exception to the general rule as to the inferiority of the forest to the open-ground tree. The pasture oak and pasture beech, on the contrary, are well known to produce far better timber than those grown in the woods, and there are few trees to which the remark is not equally applicable. [Footnote: It is often laid down as a universal law, that the wood of trees of slow vegetation is superior to that of quick growth. This is one of those commonplaces by which men love to shield themselves from the labor of painstaking observation. It has, in fact, so many exceptions, that it may be doubted in whether it is in any sense true. Most of the cedars are slow of growth; but while the timber of some of them is firm and durable, that of others is light, brittle, and perishable. The hemlock-spruce is slower of growth than the pines, but its wood is of very little value. The pasture oak and beech show a breadth of grain--and, of course, an annual increment--twice as great as trees of the same species grown in the woods; and the American locust, Robinia pseudacacia, the wood of which is of extreme toughness and durability, is, of all trees indigenous to North-eastern America, by far the most rapid in growth. Some of the species of the Australian Eucalyptus furnish wood of remarkable strength and durability, and yet the eucalyptus is surpassed by no known tree in rapidity of growth. As an illustration of the mutual interdependence of the mechanic arts, I may mention that in Italy, where stone, brick, and plaster are almost the only materials used in architecture, and where the "hollow ware" kitchen implements are of copper or of clay, the ordinary tools for working wood are of a very inferior description, and the locust timber is found too hard for their temper. At the same time the work of the Italian stipettai, or cabinet-makers, and carvers in wood, who take pains to provide themselves with tools of better metal, is wholly unsurpassed in finish and in accuracy of adjustment as well as in taste. When a small quantity of mahogany was brought to England, early in the last century, the cabinet-makers were unable to use it, from the defective temper of their tools, until the demand for furniture from the new wood compelled them to improve the quality of their implements. In America, the cheapness of wood long made it the preferable material for almost all purposes to which it could by any possibility be applied. The mechanical cutlery and artisans' tools of the United States are of admirable temper, finish, and convenience, and no wood is too hard, or otherwise too refractory, to be wrought with great facility, both by hand-tools and by the multitude of ingenious machines which the Americans have invented for this purpose.] Another advantage of the artificially regulated forest is, that it admits of such grading of the ground as to favor the retention or discharge of water at will, while the facilities it affords for selecting and duly proportioning, as well as properly spacing, and in felling and removing, from time to time, the trees which compose it, are too obvious to require to be more than hinted at. In conducting these operations, we must have a diligent eye to the requirements of nature, and must remember that a wood is not an arbitrary assemblage of trees to be selected and disposed according to the caprice of its owner. "A forest," says Clave, "is not, as is often supposed, a simple collection of trees succeeding each other in long perspective, without bond of union, and capable of isolation from each other; it is, on the contrary, a whole, the different parts of which are interdependent upon each other, and it constitutes, so to speak, a true individuality. Every forest has a special character, determined by the form of the surface it grows upon, the kinds of trees that compose it, and the manner in which they are grouped." The art, or, as the Continental foresters rather ambitiously call it, the science of sylviculture has been so little pursued in England and America, that its nomenclature has not been introduced into the English vocabulary, and it would not be possible to describe its processes with technical propriety of language, without occasionally borrowing a word from the forest literature of France and Germany. A full discussion of the methods of sylviculture would, indeed, be out of place in a work like the present, but the want of conveniently accessible means of information on the subject, in the United States, will justify me in presenting it with somewhat more of detail than would otherwise be pertinent. The two best known methods of treating already existing forests are those distinguished as the TAILLIS, copse or coppice treatment, [Footnote: COPSE, or COPPICE, from the French COUPER, to cut, means properly a wood, the trees of which are cut at certain periods of immature growth, and allowed to shoot up again from the roots; but it has come to signify, very commonly, a young wood, grove, or thicket, without reference to its origin, or to the character of a forest crop.] and the FUTAIE, for which I find no English equivalent, but which may not inappropriately be called the FULL-GROWTH system. A TAILLIS, copse, or coppice, is a wood composed of shoots from the roots of trees previously cut for fuel and timber. The shoots are thinned out from time to time, and finally cut, either after a fixed number of years, or after the young trees have attained to certain dimensions, their roots being then left to send out a new progeny as before. This is the cheapest method of management, and therefore the best whenever the price of labor and of capital bears a high proportion to that of land and of timber; but it is essentially a wasteful economy. [Footnote: "In America," says Clave (p. 124, 125), "where there is a vast extent of land almost without pecuniary value, but where labor is dear and the rate of interest high, it is profitable to till a large surface at the least possible cost. EXTENSIVE cultivation is there the most advantageous. In England, France, and Germany, where every corner of soil is occupied, and the least bit of ground is sold at a high price, but where labor and capital are comparatively cheap is wisest to employ INTENSIVE cultivation. ... All the efforts of the cultivator ought to be directed to the obtaining of a given result with the least sacrifice, and there is equally a loss to the commonwealth if the application of improved agricultural processes be neglected where they are advantageous, or if they be employed where they are not required. ... In this point of view, sylviculture must follow the same laws as agriculture, and, like it, be modified according to the economical conditions of different states. In countries abounding in good forests, and thinly peopled, elementary and cheap methods must be pursued; in civilized regions, where a dense population requires that the soil shall be made to produce all it can yield, the regular artificial forest, with all the processes that science teaches, should be cultivated. It would be absurd to apply to the endless woods of Brazil and of Canada the method of the Spessart by "double stages," but not less so in our country, where every yard of ground has a high value, to leave to nature the task of propagating trees, and to content ourselves with cutting, every twenty or twenty-five years, the meagre growths that chance may have produced."] If the woodland is, in the first place, completely cut over as is found most convenient in practice, the young shoots have neither the shade nor the protection from wind so important to forest growth, and their progress is comparatively slow, while at the same time, the thick clumps they form choke the seedlings that may have sprouted near them. [Footnote: In ordinary coppices, there are few or no seedlings, because the young shoots are cut before they are old enough to mature fertile seed, and this is one of the strongest objections to the system.] The evergreens, once cut do not shoot up again, [Footnote: It was not long ago stated, upon the evidence of the Government foresters of Greece, and of the queen's gardener, that a large wood has been discovered in Arcadia, consisting of a fir which has the property of sending up both vertical and lateral shoots from the stump of felled trees and forming a new crown. It was at first supposed that this forest grew only on the "mountains," of which the hero of About's most amusing story, Le Roi des Montagnes, was "king;" but stumps, with the shoots attached, have been sent to Germany, and recognized by able botanists as true natural products, and the fact must now be considered as established. Daubeny refers to Theophrastus as ascribing this faculty of reproduction to the 'Elate [word in greek] or fir, but he does not cite chapter and verse, and I have not been able to find the passage. The same writer mentions a case where an entire forest of the common fir in France had been renewed in this way.--Trees and Shrubs of the Ancients, 1865, pp. 27-28. The American Northern pitch possesses the same power in a certain degree. According to Charles Martins, the cedar of Mount Atlas--which, if not identical with the cedar of Lebanon, is closely allied to it--possesses the same power.--Revue des Deux Mondes, July 15, 1864, p. 315.] and the mixed character of the forest--in many respects an important advantage, if not an indispensable condition of growth--is lost; [Footnote: Natural forests are rarely, if ever, composed of trees of a single species, and experience has shown that oaks and other broad-leaved trees, planted as artificial woods, require to be mixed, or associated with others of different habits. In the forest of Fontainebleau, "oaks, mingled with beeches in due proportion," says Clave, "may arrive at the age of five or six hundred years in full vigor, and attain dimensions which I have never seen surpassed; when, however, they are wholly unmixed with other trees, they begin to decay and die at the top, at the age of forty or fifty years, like men, old before their time, weary of the world, and longing only to quit it. This has been observed in most of the oak plantations of which I have spoken, and they have not been able to attain to full growth. When the vegetation was perceived to languish, they were cut, in the hope that this operation would restore their vigor, and that the new shoots would succeed better than the original trees; and, in fact, they seemed to be recovering for the first few years. But the shoots were soon attacked by the same decay, and the operation had to be renewed at shorter and shorter intervals, until at last it was found necessary to treat as coppices plantations originally designed for the full-growth system. Nor was this all: the soil, periodically bared by these cuttings, became impoverished, and less and less suited to the growth of the oak. ... It was then proposed to introduce the pine and plant with it the vacancies and glades. "... By this means, the forest was saved from the ruin which threatened it, and now more than 10,000 acres of pines, from fifteen to thirty years old are disseminated at various points, sometimes intermixed with broad-leaved trees, sometimes forming groves by themselves"--Revue des Deux Mondes, Mai, 1863, pp. 153, 154.] and besides this, large wood of any species cannot be grown in this method because trees which shoot from decaying stumps and their dying roots, become hollow or otherwise unsound before they acquire their full dimensions. A more fatal objection still, is, that the roots of trees will not bear more than two or three, or at most four cuttings of their shoots before their vitality is exhausted, and the wood can then be restored only by replanting entirely. The period of cutting coppices varies in Europe from fifteen to forty years, according to soil, species, and rapidity of growth. In the futaie, or full-growth system, the trees are allowed to stand as long as they continue in healthy and vigorous growth. This is a shorter period than would be at first supposed, when we consider the advanced age and great dimensions to which, under favorable circumstances, many forest-trees attain in temperate climates. But, as every observing person familiar with the forest is aware, these are exceptional cases, just as are instances of great longevity or of gigantic stature among men. Able vegetable physiologists have maintained that the tree, like most fish and reptiles, has no natural limit of life or of growth, and that the only reason why our oaks and our pines do not reach the age of twenty centuries and the height of a hundred fathoms, is, that in the multitude of accidents to which they are exposed, the chances of their attaining to such a length of years and to such dimensions of growth are millions to one against them. But another explanation of this fact is possible. In trees affected by no discoverable external cause of death, decay begins at the topmost branches, which seem to wither and die for want of nutriment. The mysterious force by which the sap is carried from the roots to the utmost twigs, cannot be conceived to be unlimited in power, and it is probable that it differs in different species, so that while it may suffice to raise the fluid to the height of five hundred feet in the eucalyptus, it may not be able to carry it beyond one hundred and fifty in the oak. The limit may be different, too, in different trees of the same species, not from defective organization in those of inferior growth, but from more or less favorable conditions of soil, nourishment, and exposure. Whenever a tree attains to the limit beyond which its circulating fluids cannot rise, we may suppose that decay begins, and death follows from want of nutrition at the extremities, and from the same causes which bring about the same results in animals of limited size--such, for example, as the interruption of functions essential to life, in consequence of the clogging up of ducts by matter assimilable in the stage of growth, but no longer so when increment has ceased. In the natural woods we observe that, though, among the myriads of trees which grow upon a square mile, there are several vegetable giants, yet the great majority of them begin to decay long before they have attained their maximum of stature, and this seems to be still more emphatically true of the artificial forest. In France, according to Clave, "oaks, in a suitable soil, may stand, without exhibiting any sign of decay, for two or three hundred years; the pines hardly exceed one hundred and twenty, and the soft or white woods [bois blancs], in wet soils, languish, and die before reaching the fiftieth year." [Footnote: Etudes Forestieres, p. 80.] These ages are certainly below the average of those of American forest-trees, and are greatly exceeded in very numerous well-attested instances of isolated trees in Europe. The former mode of treating the futaie, called the garden system, was to cut the trees individually as they arrived at maturity, but, in the best regulated forests, this practice has been abandoned for the German method, which embraces not only the securing of the largest immediate profit, but the replanting of the forest, and the care of the young growth. This is effected in the case of a forest, whether natural or artificial, which is to be subjected to regular management, by three operations. The first of these consists in felling about one-third of the trees, in such way as to leave convenient spaces for the growth of seedlings. The remaining two-thirds are relied upon to replant the vacancies, by natural sowing, which they seldom or never fail to do. The seedlings are watched, are thinned out when too dense, and the ill-formed and sickly, as well as those of species of inferior value, and the shrubs and thorns which might otherwise choke or too closely shade them, are pulled up. When they have attained sufficient strength and development of foliage to require, or at least to bear, more light and air, the second step is taken, by removing a suitable proportion of the old trees which had been spared at the first cutting; and when, finally, the younger trees are hardened enough to bear frost and sun without other protection than that which they mutually give to each other, the remainder of the original forest is felled, and the wood now consists wholly of young and vigorous trees. This result is obtained after about twenty years. At convenient periods, the unhealthy stocks and those injured by wind or other accidents are removed, and in some instances the growth of the remainder is promoted by irrigation or by fertilizing applications. [Footnote: The grounds which it is most important to clothe with wood as a conservative influence, and which, also, can best be spared from agricultural use, are steep hillsides. But the performance of all the offices of the forester to the tree--seeding, planting, thinning, trimming, and finally felling and removing for consumption--is more laborious upon a rapid declivity than on a level soil, and at the same time it is difficult to apply irrigation or manures to trees so situated. Experience has shown that there in great advantage in terracing the face of a hill before planting it, both as preventing the wash of the earth by checking the flow of water down its slope, and as presenting a surface favorable for irrigation, as well as for manuring and cultivating the tree. But even without so expensive a process, very important results have been obtained by simply ditching declivities. "In order to hasten the growth of wood on the flanks of a mountain, Mr. Eugene Chevandier divided the slope into zones forty or fifty feet wide, by horizontal ditches closed at both ends, and thereby obtained, from firs of different ages, shoots double the dimensions of those which grew on a dry soil of the same character, where the water was allowed to run off without obstruction."--Dumont, Des Travaux Publics, etc., pp. 94-96. The ditches were about two feet and a half deep, and three feet and a half wide, and they cost about forty francs the hectare, or three dollars the acre. This extraordinary growth was produced wholly by the retention of the rain-water in the ditches, whence it filtered through the whole soil and supplied moisture to the roots of the trees. It may be doubted whether in a climate cold enough to freeze the entire contents of the ditches in winter, it would not be expedient to draw off the water in the autumn, as the presence of so large a quantity of ice in the soil might prove injurious to trees too young and small to shelter the ground effectually against frost. Chevandier computes that, if the annual growth of the pine in the marshy and too humid soil of the Vosges be represented by one, it will equal two in ordinary dry ground, four or five on slopes so ditched or graded as to retain the water flowing upon them from roads or steep declivities, and six where the earth is kept sufficiently moist by infiltration from running brooks.--Comptes Rendus a l'Academie des Sciences, t. xix., Juillet, Dec., 1844, p. 167. The effect of accidental irrigation in well shown in the growth of the trees planted along the canals of irrigation which traverse the fields in many parts of Italy. They nourish most luxuriantly, in spite of continual lopping, and yield a very important contribution to the stock of fuel for domestic use while trees, situated so far from canals as to be out of the reach of infiltration from them, are of much slower growth, under circumstances otherwise equally favorable. In other experiments of Chevandier, under better conditions, the yield of wood was increased, by judicious irrigation, in the ratio of seven to one, the profits in that of twelve to one. At the Exposition of 1855, Chambrelent exhibited young trees, which, in four years from the seed, had grown to the height of sixteen and twenty feet, and the circumference of ten and twelve inches. Chevandier experimented with various manures, and found that some of them might be profitably applied to young but not to old trees, the quantity required in the latter case being too great. Wood-ashes and the refuse of soda factories are particularly recommended. See, on the manuring of trees, Chevandier, Recherches sur l'emploi de divers amendements, etc., Paris, 1852, and Koderle, Grundsatze der Kunstlichen Dungung im Forstculturwesen. Wien, 1865. I have seen an extraordinary growth produced in fir-trees by the application of soapsuds; in a young and sickly cherry-tree, by heaping the chips and dust from a marble-quarry, to the height of two or three feet, over the roots and around the stem; and cases have come to my knowledge where like results followed the planting of vines and trees in holes half filled with fragments of plaster-castings, and mortar from old buildings. Chevandier's experiments in the irrigation of the forest would not have been a "new thing under the sun" to wise King Solomon, for that monarch saya: "I made me pools of water, to water therewith, the wood that bringeth forth trees." Eccles. ii. 6.] When the forest is approaching maturity, the original processes already described are repeated; and as, in different parts of an extensive forest, they would take place at different times in different zones, it would afford indefinitely an annual crop of small wood, fuel, and timber. The duties of the forester do not end here, for it sometimes happens that the glades left by felling the older trees are not sufficiently seeded, or that the species, or essences, as the French oddly call them, are not duly proportioned in the new crop. In this case, seed must be artificially sown, or young trees planted in the vacancies. Besides this, all trees, whether grown for fruit, for fuel, or for timber, require more or less training in order to yield the best returns. The experiments of the Vicomte de Courval in sylviculture throw much light on this subject, and show, in a most interesting way, the importance of pruning forest-trees. The principal feature of De Courval's very successful method is a systematical mode of trimming which compels the tree to develop the stem, by reducing the lateral ramification. Beginning with young trees, the buds are rubbed off from the stems, and superfluous lateral shoots are pruned down to the trunk. When large trees are taken in hand, branches which can be spared, and whose removal is necessary to obtain a proper length of stem, are very smoothly cut off quite close to the trunk, and the exposed surface is IMMEDIATELY brushed over with mineral-coal tar. When thus treated, it is said that the healing of the wound is perfect, and without any decay of the tree. Trees trained by De Courval's method, which is now universally approved and much practised in France, rapidly attained a great height. They grow with remarkable straightness of stem and of grain, and their timber commands the highest price. [Footnote: See De Courval, Taille et conduite des Arbres forestieres et autres arbres de grande dimension. Paris, 1861. The most important part of Viscount de Courval's system will be found in L'Elagage des Arbres, par le Comte A. Des Cars, an admirable little treatise, of which numerous editions, at the price of one franc, have been printed since the first, of 1864, and which ought to be translated and published without delay in the United States.] A system of plantation, specially though not exclusively suited to very moist soils, recommended by Duhamel a hundred years ago, has been revived in Germany, within about twenty years, with much success. It is called hill-planting, and consists in placing the young tree upright on the greensward with its roots properly spread out, and then covering the roots and supporting the trunk by thick sods cut so as to form a circular hillock around it. [Footnote: See Manteuffel, L'Art de Planter, traduit par Stumper. Paris, 1868.] By this method it is alleged trees can be grown advantageously both in dry ground and on humid soils, where they would not strike root if planted in holes after the usual mauner. If there is any truth in the theory of a desiccating action in evergreen trees, plantations of this sort might have a value as drainers of lands not easily laid dry by other processes. There is much ground on the great prairies of the West, where experiments with this method of planting are strongly to be recommended. It is common in Europe to permit the removal of the fallen leaves and fragments of bark and branches with which the forest-soil is covered, and sometimes the cutting of the lower twigs of evergreens. The leaves and twigs are principally used as litter for cattle, and finally as manure, the bark and wind-fallen branches as fuel. By long usage, sometimes by express grant, this privilege has become a vested right of the population in the neighborhood of many public and even large private forests; but it is generally regarded as a serious evil. To remove the leaves and fallen twigs is to withdraw much of the pabulum upon which the tree was destined to feed. The small branches and leaves are the parts of the tree which yield the largest proportion of ashes on combustion, and of course they supply a great amount of nutriment for the young shoots. "A cubic foot of twigs," says Vaupell, "yields four times as much ashes as a cubic foot of stem wood. ... For every hundred weight of dried leaves carried off from a beech forest, we sacrifice a hundred and sixty cubic feet of wood. The leaves and the mosses are a substitute, not only for manure, but for ploughing. The carbonic acid given out by decaying leaves, when taken up by water, serves to dissolve the mineral constituents of the soil, and is particularly active in disintegrating feldspar and the clay derived from its decomposition. ... The leaves belong to the soil. Without them it cannot preserve its fertility, and cannot furnish nutriment to the beech. The trees languish, produce seed incapable of germination, and the spontaneous self-sowing, which is an indispensable element in the best systems of sylviculture, fails altogether in the bared and impoverished soil." [Footnote: Vaupell, Bogens Indvandring i de Danske Skove, pp. 29, 46. Vaupell further observes, on the page last quoted: "The removal of leaves is injurious to the forest, not only because it retards the growth of trees, but still more because it disqualifies the soil for the production of particular species. When the beech languishes, and the development of its branches is less vigorous and its crown less spreading, it becomes unable to resist the encroachments of the fir. This latter tree thrives in an inferior soil, and being no longer stifled by the thick foliage of the beech, it spreads gradually through the wood, while the beech retreats before it and finally perishes." Schleiden confirms the opinion of Vaupell, and adds many important observations on this subject.--Fur Baum und Wald, pp. 64, 65.] Besides these evils, the removal of the leaves deprives the soil of much of that spongy character which gives it such immense value as a reservoir of moisture and a regulator of the flow of springs; and, finally, it exposes the surface-roots to the drying influence of sun and wind, to accidental mechanical injury from the tread of animals or men, and, in cold climates, to the destructive effects of frost. Protection against Wild Animals. It is often necessary to take measures for the protection of young trees against the rabbit, the mole, and other rodent quadrupeds, and of older ones against the damage done by the larvae of insects hatched upon the surface or in the tissues of the bark, or even in the wood itself. The much greater liability of the artificial than of the natural forest to injury from this cause is perhaps the only point in which the superiority of the former to the latter is not as marked as that of any domesticated vegetable to its wild representative. But the better quality of the wood and the much more rapid growth of the trained and regulated forest are abundant compensations for the loss thus occasioned, and the progress of entomological science will, perhaps, suggest new methods of preventing the ravages of insects. Thus far, however, the collection and destruction ofthe eggs, by simple but expensive means, has proved the most effectual remedy. [Footnote: I have remarked elsewhere that most insects which deposit and hatch their eggs in the wood of the natural forest confine themselves to dead trees. Not only is this the fact, but it is also true that many of the borers attack only freshly-cut timber. Their season of labor is a short one, and unless the tree is cut during this period, it is safe from them. In summer you may hear them plying their augers in the wood of a young pine with soft, green bark, as you sit upon its trunk, within a week after it has been felled, but the windfalls of the winter lie uninjured by the worm and even undecayed for centuries. In the pine woods of New England, after the regular lumberman has removed the standing trees, these old trunks are hauled out from the mosses and leaves which half cover them, and often furnish excellent timber. The slow decay of such timber in the woods, it may be remarked, furnishes another proof of the uniformity of temperature and humidity in the forest, for the trunk of a tree lying on grass or ploughland, and of course exposed to all the alternations of climate, hardly resists complete decomposition for a generation. The forests of Europe exhibit similar facts. Wessely, in a description of the primitive wood of Neuwald in Lower Austria, says that the windfalls required from 150 to 200 years for entire decay.--Die Oesterreichischen Alpenlander und ihre Forste, p. 312. The comparative immunity of the American native forests from attacks by insects is perhaps in some degree due to the fact that the European destructive tribes have not yet found their way across the ocean, and that our native species are less injurious to living trees. On the European lignivorous insects, see Siemoni, Manuale d'Arte Forestale, 2d edizione, pp. 369-379.] Exclusion of Domestic Quadrupeds. But probably the most important of all rules for the government of the forest, whether natural or artificial, is that which prescribes the absolute exclusion of all domestic quadrupeds, except swine, from every wood which is not destined to be cleared. No growth of young trees is possible where horned cattle, sheep, or goats, or even horses, are permitted to pasture at any season of the year, though they are doubtless most destructive when trees are in leaf. [Footnote: Although the economy of the forest has received little attention in the United States, no lover of American nature can have failed to observe a marked difference between a native wood from which cattle are excluded and one where they are permitted to browse. A few seasons suffice for the total extirpation of the "underbrush," including the young trees on which alone the reproduction of the forest depends, and all the branches of those of larger growth which hang within reach of the cattle are stripped of their buds and leaves, and soon wither and fall off. These effects are observable at a great distance, and a wood-pasture is recognized, almost as far as it can be seen, by the regularity with which its lower foliage terminates at what Ruskin somewhere calls the "cattle-line." This always runs parallel to the surface of the ground, and is determined by the height to which domestic quadrupeds can reach to feed upon the leaves. In describing a visit to the grand-ducal farm of San Rossore near Pisa, where a large herd of camels is kept, Chateauvieux says: "In passing through a wood of evergreen oaks, I observed that all the twigs and foliage of the trees were clipped up to the height of about twelve feet above the ground, without leaving a single spray below that level. I was informed that the browsing of the camels had trimmed the trees as high as they could reach." F. Lullin De Chateuvieux, Lettres sur l'Italie, p. 118. Browsing animals, and most of all the goat, are considered by foresters as more injurious to the growth of young trees, and, therefore, to the reproduction of the forest, than almost any other destructive cause. According to Beatson's Saint Helena, introductory chapter, and Darwin's Journal of Researches in Geology and Natural History, pp. 582, 583, it was the goats which destroyed the beautiful forests that, three hundred and fifty years ago, covered a continuous surface of not less than two thousand acres in the interior of the island [of St. Helena], not to mention scattered groups of trees. Darwin observes: "During our stay at Valparaiso, I was most positively assured that sandal-wood formerly grew in abundance on the island of Juan Fernandez, but that this tree had now become entirely extinct there, having been extirpated by the goats which early navigators had introduced. The neighboring islands, to which goats have not been carried, still abound in sandal-wood." In the winter, the deer tribe, especially the great American moose-deer, subsists much on the buds and young sprouts of trees; yet--though from the destruction of the wolves or from some not easily explained cause, these latter animals have recently multiplied so rapidly in some parts of North America, that, not long since, four hundred of them are said to have been killed, in one season, on a territory in Maine not comprising more than one hundred and fifty square miles--the wild browsing quadrupeds are rarely, if ever, numerous enough in regions uninhabited by man to produce any sensible effect on the condition of the forest. A reason why they are less injurious than the goat to young trees may be that they resort to this nutriment only in the winter, when the grasses and shrubs are leafless or covered with snow, whereas the goat feeds upon buds and young shoots principally in the season of growth. However this may be, the natural law of consumption and supply keeps the forest growth, and the wild animals which live on its products, in such a state of equilibrium as to insure the indefinite continuance of both, and the perpetuity of neither is endangered until man interferes and destroys the balance. When, however, deer are bred and protected in parks, they multiply like domestic cattle, and become equally injurious to trees. "A few years ago," says Clave, "there were not less than two thousand deer of different ages in the forest of Fontainebleau. For want of grass, they are driven to the trees, and they do not spare them ... It is calculated that the browsing of these animals, and the consequent retardation of the growth of the wood, diminishes the annual product of the forest to the amount of two hundred thousand cubic feet per year, ... and besides this, the trees thus mutilated are soon exhausted and die. The deer attack the pines, too, tearing off the bark in long strips, or rubbing theie heads against them when shedding their horns; and sometimes, in groves of more than a hundred hectares, not one pine is found uninjured by them."--Revue des Deux Mondes, Mai, 1863, p. 157. Vaupell, though agreeing with other writers as to the injury done to the forest by most domestic animals and by half-tamed deer--which he illustrates in an interesting way in his posthumous work, The Danish Woods--thinks, nonetheless, that at the season when the mast is falling, swine are rather useful than otherwise to forests of beech and oak, by treading into the ground and thus sowing beechnuts and acorns, and by destroying moles and mice.--De Danake Skore, p. 12. Meguschor is of the same opinion, and adds that swine destroy injurious insects and their larvae.--Memoria, etc., p. 233. Beckstein computes that a park of 2,500 acres, containing 250 acres of marsh, 250 of fields and meadows, and the remaining 2,000 of wood, mny keep 364 deer of different species, 47 wild boars, 200 hares, 100 rabbits, and an indefinite number of pheasants. These animals would require, in winter, 123,000 pounds of hay, and 22,000 pounds of potatoes, besides what they would pick up themselves. The natural forest most thickly peopled with wild animals would not, in temperate climates, contain, upon the average, one-tenth of these numbers to the same extent of surface.] These animals browse upon the terminal buds and the tender branches, thereby stunting, if they do not kill, the young trees, and depriving them of all beauty and vigor of growth. Forest Fires. The difficulty of protecting the woods against accidental or incendiary fires is one of the most discouraging circumstances attending the preservation of natural and the plantation of artificial forests. [Footnote: The disappearance of the forests of ancient Gaul and of mediaeval France has been ascribed by some writers as much to accidental fires as to the felling of the trees. All the treatises on sylviculture are full of narratives of forest fires. The woods of Corsica and Sardinia have suffered incalculable injury from this cause, and notwithstanding the resistance of the cork-tree to injury from common fires, the government forests of this valuable tree in Algeria have been lately often set on fire by the natives and have sustained immense damage. See an article by Ysabeau in the Annales Forestieres, t. iii., p. 439; Della Marmora, Voyage en Sardaigne, 2d edition, t. i., p. 426; Rivista Forestale del Regno d'Italia, October, 1865, p. 474. Five or six years ago I saw in Switzerland a considerable forest, chiefly of young trees, which had recently been burnt over. I was told that the poor of the commune had long enjoyed a customary privilege of carrying off dead wood and windfalls, and that they had set the forest on fire to kill the trees and so increase the supply of their lawful plunder. The customary rights of herdsmen, shepherds, and peasants in European forests are often an insuperable obstacle to the success of attempts to preserve the woods or to improve their condition. See, on this subject, Alfred Maury, Les anciens Forets de la Gaule, chap. xxix.] In the spontaneous wood the spread of fire is somewhat retarded by the general humidity of the soil and of the beds of leaves which cover it. But in long droughts the superficial layer of leaves and the dry fallen branches become as inflammable as tinder, and the fire spreads with fearful rapidity, until its further progress is arrested by want of material, or, more rarely, by heavy rains, sometimes caused, as many meteorologists suppose, by the conflagration itself. In the artificial forest the annual removal of fallen or half-dried trees and the leaves and other droppings of the wood, though otherwise a very injurious practice, much diminishes the rapid spread of fires; and the absence of combustible underwood and the greater distance between the trees are additional safeguards. But, on the other hand, the comparative dryness of the soil, and of any leaves or twigs which may remain upon it, and the greater facility for the passage of wind-currents through a regularly planted and more open wood, are circumstances unfavorable to the security of the trees against this formidable danger. The natural forest, unless isolated and of small extent, can be protected from fire only by a vigilance too costly to be systematically practised. But the artificial wood may be secured by a network of ditches and of paths or occasional open glades, which both check the running of the fire and furnish the means of approaching and combating it. [Footnote: It is stated that in the pine woods of the Landes of Gascony a fire has never been known to cross a railway-track or a common road. See Des Incendies, etc., dans la Region des Maures in the Revue des Eaux et Forets for February, 1869. Many other important articles on this subject will be found in other numbers of the same very valuable periodical.] The experience of 1871 ought not to be wholly without value as a lesson. It is not possible to estimate the damage by forest fires in that disastrous year, in what were lately the North-western States, and in Canada, but as the demand for lumber, and consequently, its market price, are rising at a rate higher than the interest on capital, in a geometrical ratio, one may almost say it is probable that ten years hence those fires will be thought to have diminished the national wealth by a larger amount than even the terrible conflagration at Chicago. There is no good reason why insurance companies should not guarantee the proprietor of a wood as well as the owner of a house against damage by fire. In Europe there is no conceivable liability to pecuniary loss which may not be insured against. The American companies might at first be embarrassed in estimating the risk, but the experience of a few years would suggest safe principles, and all parties would find advantage in this extension of security. Forest Legislation. I have alleged sufficient reasons for believing that a desolation, like that which has overwhelmed many once beautiful and fertile regions of Europe, awaits an important part of the territory of the United States, and of other comparatively new countries over which European civilization is now extending its sway, unless prompt measures are taken to check the action of destructive causes already in operation. It is almost in vain to expect that mere restrictive legislation can do anything effectual to arrest the progress of the evil in those countries, except so far as the state is still the proprietor of extensive forests. Woodlands which have passed into private hands will everywhere be managed, in spite of legal restrictions, upon the same economical principles as other possessions, and every proprietor will, as a general rule, fell his woods, unless he believes that it will be for his pecuniary interest to preserve them. Few of the new provinces which the last three centuries have brought under the control of the European race, would tolerate any interference by the law-making power with what they regard as the most sacred of civil rights--the right, namely, of every man to do what he will with his own. In the Old World, even in France, whose people, of all European nations, love best to be governed and are least annoyed by bureaucratic supervision, law has been found impotent to prevent the destruction, or wasteful economy, of private forests; and in many of the mountainous departments of that country, man is at this moment so fast laying waste the face of the earth, that the most serious fears are entertained, not only of the depopulation of those districts, but of enormous mischiefs to the provinces contiguous to them. [Footnote: "The laws against clearing have never been able to prevent these operations when the proprietor found his advantage in them, and the long series of royal ordinances and decrees of parliaments, proclaimed from the days of Charlemagne to our own, with a view of securing forest property against the improvidence of its owners, have served only to show the impotence of legislative action on this subject."--Clave, Etudes sur l'Economie Forestiere, p. 32. "A proprietor can always contrive to clear his woods, whatever may be done to prevent him; it is a mere question of time, and a few imprudent cuttings, a few abuses of the right of pasturage, suffice to destry a forest in spite of all regulations to the contrary."--Dunoyer, De la Liberte du Travail, ii., p. 452, as quoted by Clave, p. 353. Both authors agree that the preservation of the forests in France is practicable only by their transfer to the state, which alone can protect them and secure their proper treatment. It is much to be feared that even this measure would be inadequate to preserve the forests of the American Union. There is little respect for public property in America, and the Federal Government, certainly, would not be the proper agent of the nation for this purpose. It proved itself unable to protect the live-oak woods of Florida, which were intended to be preserved for the use of the navy, and it more than once paid contractors a high price for timber stolen from its own forests. The authorities of the individual States might be more efficient.] The only legal provisions from which anything is to be hoped, are such as shall make it a matter of private advantage to the landholder to spare the trees upon his grounds, and promote the growth of the young wood. Much may be done by exempting standing forests from taxation, and by imposing taxes on wood felled for fuel or for timber, something by more stringent provisions against trespasses on forest property, and something by premiums or honorary distinctions for judicious management of the woods; and, in short, in this matter rewards rather than punishments must be the incentives to obedience even to a policy of enlightened self-interest. It might be difficult to induce governments, general or local, to make the necessary appropriations for such purposes, but there can be no doubt that it would be sound economy in the end. In countries where there exist municipalities endowed with an intelligent public spirit, the purchase and control of forests by such corporations would often prove advantageous; and in some of the provinces of Northern Lombardy, experience has shown that such operations may be conducted with great benefit to all the interests connected with the proper management of the woods. In Switzerland, on the other hand, except in some few cases where woods have been preserved as a defence against avalanches, the forests of the communes have been of little advantage to the public interests, and have very generally gone to decay. [Footnote: A better economy has been of late introduced into the management of the forest in Switzerland. Excellent official reports on the subject have been published and important legal provisions adopted.] The rights of pasturage, everywhere destructive to trees, combined with toleration of trespasses, have so reduced their value, that there is, too often, nothing left that is worth protecting. In the canton of Ticino, the peasants have very frequently voted to sell the town-woods and divide the proceeds among the corporators. The sometimes considerable sums thus received are squandered in wild revelry, and the sacrifice of the forests brings not even a momentary benefit to the proprietors. [Footnote: See in Berlepscu, Die Alpen, chapter Holzschlager und Flosser, a lively account of the sale of a communal wood.] Fortunately for the immense economical and sanitary interests involved in this branch of rural and industrial husbandry, public opinion in many parts of the United States is thoroughly roused to the importance of the subject. In the Eastern States, plantations of a certain extent have been made, and a wiser system is pursued in the treatment of the remaining native woods. [Footnote: When the census of 1860 was taken, the States of Maine and New York produced and exported lumber in abundance. Neither of them now has timber enough for domestic use, and they are both compelled to draw much of their supply from Canada and the West.] Important experiments have been tried in Massachusetts on the propagation of forest-trees on seashore bluffs exposed to strong winds. This had been generally supposed to be impossible, but the experiments in question afford a gratifying proof that this is an erroneous opinion. Piper gives an interesting account of Mr. Tudor's success in planting trees on the bleak and barren shore of Nahant. "Mr. Tudor," observes he, "has planted more than ten thousand trees at Nahaut, and, by the results of his experiments, has fully demonstrated that trees, properly cared for in the beginning, may be made to grow up to the very bounds of the ocean, exposed to the biting of the wind and the spray of the sea. The only shelter they require is, at first, some interruption to break the current of the wind, such as fences, houses, or other trees." [Footnote: Trees of America, p. 10.] Young trees protected against the wind by a fence will somewhat overtop their shelter, and every tree will serve as a screen to a taller one behind it. Extensive groves have thus been formed in situations where an isolated tree would not grow at all. The people of the Far West have thrown themselves into the work, we cannot say of restoration, but rather of creation, of woodland, with much of the passionate energy which marks their action in reference to other modes of physical improvement. California has appointed a State forester with a liberal salary, and made such legal provisions and appropriations as to render the discharge of his duties effectual. The hands that built the Pacific Railroad at the rate of miles in a day are now busy in planting belts of trees to shelter the track from snow- drifts, and to supply, at a future day, timber for ties and fuel for the locomotives. The settlers on the open plains, too, are not less actively engaged in the propagation of the woods, and if we can put faith in the official statistics on the subject, not thousands but millions of trees are annually planted on the prairies. These experiments are of much scientific as well as economical interest. The prairies have never been wooded, so far as we know their history, and it has been contended that successful sylviculture would be impracticable in those regions from the want of rain. But we are acquainted with no soil and climate which favor the production of herbage and forbid the rearing of trees, and, as Bryant well observes, "it seems certain that where grass will grow trees may be made to grow also." [Footnote: The origin of our Western treeless prairies and plains, as of the Russian steppes, which much resemble them, is obscure, but the want of forests upon them, seems to be due to climatic conditions and especially to a want of spring and summer rains, which prevents the spontaneous formation of forests upon them, though not necessarily the growth of trees artificially planted and cared for. Climatic conditions more or less resembling those of our Western territories produce analogous effects in India. Much valuable information on the relations between climate and forest vegetation will be found in an article by Dr. Brandis, On the Distribution of Forests in India, in Ocean Highways for October, 1872. In the more eastwardly prairie region fires have done much to prevent the spread of the native groves, and throughout the whole woodless plains the pastorage of the buffalo alone would suffice to prevent a forest growth. The prairies were the proper feeding-grounds of the bison, and the vast number of those animals is connected, as cause or consequence, with the existence of these vast pastures. The bison, indeed, could not convert the forest into a pasture, but he would do much to prevent the pasture from becoming a forest. There is positive evidence that some of the American tribes possessed large herds of domesticated bisons. See Humboldt, Ansichten der Natur, i., pp. 71-73. What authorizes us to affirm that this was simply the wild bison reclaimed, and why may we not, with equal probability, believe that the migratory prairie-buffalo is the progeny of the domestic animal run wild? There are, both on the prairies, as in Wisconsin, and in deep forests, as in Ohio, extensive remains of a primitive people, who must have been more numerous and more advanced in art than the present Indian tribes. There can be no doubt that the woods where such earthworks are found in Ohio were cleared by them, and that the vicinity of these fortresses or temples was inhabited by a large population. Nothing forbids the supposition that the prairies were cleared by the same or a similar people, and that the growth of trees upon them has been prevented by fires and grazing, while the restoration of the woods in Ohio may be due to the abandonment of that region by its original inhabitants. The climatic conditions unfavorable to the spontaneous growth of trees on the prairies may possibly be an effect of too extensive clearings, rather than a cause of the want of woods. It is disputed whether the steppes of Russia were ever wooded. They were certainly bare of forest growth at a very remote period; for Herodotus describes the country of the Scythians between the Ister and the Tanais as woodless, with the exception of the small province of Xylaea between the Dnieper and the Gulf of Perekop. They are known to have been occupied by a large nomade and pastoral population down to the sixteenth century, though these tribes are now much reduced in numbers. The habits of such races are scarcely less destructive to the forest than those of civilized life. Pastoral tribes do not employ much wood for fuel or for construction, but they carelessly or recklessly burn down the forests, and their cattle effectually check the growth of young trees wherever their range extends. At present, the furious winds which sweep over the plains, the droughts of summer, and the rights and abuses of pasturage, constitute very formidable obstacles to the employment of measures which have been attended with so valuable results on the sand-wastes of France and Germany. The Russian Government has, however, attempted the wooding of the steppes, and there are thriving plantations in the neighborhood of Odessa, where the soil is of a particularly loose and sandy character. The tree best suited to this locality, and, as there is good reason to suppose, to sand plains in general, is the Ailanthus glandulosa, or Japan varnish-tree. The remarkable success which has crowned the experiments with the ailanthus at Odessa, will, no doubt, stimulate to similar trials elsewhere, and it seems not improbable that the arundo and the maritime pine, which have fixed so many thousand acres of drifting sands in Western Europe, will be, partially at leaat, superseded by the tamarisk and the varnish-tree. According to Hohenstein, Der Wald, pp. 228, 229, an extensive plantation of pines--a tree new to Southern Russia--was commenced in 1842, on the barren and sandy banks of the Ingula, near Elisabethgrod, and has met with very flattering success. Other experiments in sylviculture at different points on the steppes promise valuable results.] In any case the question will now be subjected to a practical test, and the plantations are so extensive, and, as is reported, so thrifty in growth, that one generation will suffice to determine with certainty and precision how far climate is affected by clothing with wood a vast territory naturally destitute of that protection. I have thus far spoken only of the preservation and training of existing woods, not of the planting of new forests, because European experience, to which alone we can appeal, is conversant only with conditions so different from those of our own climate, soil, and arboreal vegetation, that precedents drawn from it cannot be relied upon as entirely safe rules for our guidance in that branch of rural economy. [Footnote: Many valuable suggestions on this subject will be found in Bryant, Forest Trees, chap. vi. et seqq.] I apprehend that one rule, which is certainly alike applicable to both sides of the Atlantic--that, namely, of the absolute exclusion of domestic quadrupeds from all woods, old or young, not destined for the axe--would be least likely to be observed in our practice. The need of shade for cattle, and our inveterate habits in this respect, are much more serious obstacles to compliance with this precept than any inherent difficulty in the thing itself; for there is no good reason why our cattle may not be kept out of our woods as well as out of our wheatfields. When forest-planting is earnestly and perseveringly practised, means of overcoming this difficulty will be found, and our husbandry will be modified to meet the exigency. The best general advice that can be offered, in the want of an experimental code, is to make every plantation consist of a great variety of trees, and this not only because nature favors a diversified forest-crop, but because the chances of success among a multitude of species are far greater than if we confine ourselves to one or two. It will doubtless be found that in our scorching summer, especially on bare plains, shade for young plants is even more necessary than in most parts of Europe, and hence a fair proportion of rapidly growing trees and shrubs, even if themselves of little intrinsic value, ought to be regarded as an indispensable feature in every young plantation. These trees should be of species which bear a full supply of air and light, and therefore, in the order of nature, precede those which are of greater value for the permanent wood; and it would be a prudent measure to seed the ground with a stock of such plants, a year or two before sowing or transplanting the more valuable varieties. More specific rules than these cannot at present well be given, but very brief experiments, even if not in all respects wisely conducted, will suffice to determine the main question: whether in a given locality this or that particular tree can advantageously be propagated or introduced. The special processes of arboriculture suited to the ends of the planter may be gathered partly from cautious imitation of European practice, and partly from an experience which, though not pronouncing definitively in a single season, will, nevertheless, suggest appropriate methods of planting and training the wood within a period not disproportioned to the importance of the object. [Footnote: For very judicious suggestions on experiments in sylviculture, see the Rev. Frederick Starr's remarkable paper on the American Forests in the Transactions of the Agricultural Society for -.] The growth of arboreal vegetation is comparatively slow, and we are often told that, though he who buries an acorn may hope to see it shoot up to a miniature resemblance of the majestic tree which shall shade his remote descendants, yet the longest life hardly embraces the seedtime and the harvest of a forest. The planter of a wood, it is said, must be actuated by higher motives than those of an investment, the profits of which consist in direct pecuniary gain to himself or even to his posterity; for if, in rare cases, an artificial forest may, in a generation or two, more than repay its original cost, still, in general, the value of its timber will not return the capital expended and the interest accrued. [Footnote: According to Clave (Etudes, p. 159), the net revenue from the forests of the state in France, making no allowance for interest on the capital represented by the forest, is two dollars per acre. In Saxony it is about the same, though the cost of administration is twice as much as in France; in Wurtemberg it is about a dollar an acre; and in Prussia, where half the income is consumed in the expenses of administration, it sinks to less than half a dollar. This low rate in Prussia and other German states is partly explained by the fact that a considerable proportion of the annual product of the wood is either conceded to persons claiming prescriptive rights, or sold, at a very small price, to the poor. Taking into account the capital invested in forest-land, and adding interest upon it, Pressler calculates that a pine wood, managed with a view to felling it when eighty years old, would yield one-eighth of one per cent. annual profit; a fir wood, at one hundred years, one-sixth of one per cent.; a beech wood, at one hundred and twenty years, one-fourth of one per cent. The same author gives the net income of the New Forest in England, over and above expenses, interest not computed, at twenty-five cents per acre only. In America, where no expense is bestowed upon the woods, the value of the annual growth has generally been estimated much higher. Forest-trees are often planted in Europe for what may be called an early crop. Thus in Germany acorns are sown and the young seedlings cultivated like ordinary field-vegetables, and cut at the age of a very few years for the sake of the bark and young twigs used by tanners. In England, trees are grown at the rate of two thousand to the acre, and cut for props in the mines at the diameter of a few inches. Plantations for hoop-poles, and other special purposes requiring small timber, would, no doubt, often prove high remunerative.] But the modern improved methods of sylviculture show vastly more favorable financial results; and when we consider the immense collateral advantages derived from the presence of the forest, the terrible evils necessarily resulting from its destruction, we cannot but admit that the preservation of existing woods, and the more costly extension and creation of them where they have been unduly reduced or have never existed, are among the plainest dictates of self-interest and most obvious of the duties which this age owes to those that are to come after it. Financial Results of Forest Plantation. Upon the whole, I am persuaded that the financial statistics which are found in French and German authors, as the results of European experience in forest economy, present the question under a too unfavorable aspect; and therefore these calculations ought not to discourage landed proprietors from making experiments on this subject. These statistics apply to woods whose present condition is, in an eminent degree, the effect of previous long-continued mismanagement; and there is much reason to believe that in the propitious climate of the United States new plantations, regulated substantially according to the methods of De Courval, Chambrelent, and Chevandier, and accompanied with the introduction of exotic trees, as, for example, the Australian caruarina and eucalyptus [Footnote: Although the eucalyptus thrives admirably in Algeria--where it attains a height of from fifty to sixty feet, and a diameter of fifteen or sixteen inches, in six years from the seed--and in some restricted localities in Southern Europe, it will not bear the winters even of Florence, and consequently cannot be expected to flourish in any part of the United States except the extreme South and California. The writer of a somewhat enthusiastic article on this latter State, in Harper's Monthly for July, 1872, affirms that he saw a eucalyptus "eight years from a small cutting, which was seventy-five feet in height, and two feet and a half in diameter at the base." The paulownia, which thrives in Northern Italy, has a wood of little value, but the tree would serve well as a shelter for seedlings and young plants of more valuable species, and in other cases where a temporary shade is urgently needed. The young shoots, from a stem polled the previous season, almost surpass even the eucalyptus in rapidity of growth. Such a shoot from a tree not six inches in diameter, which I had an opportunity of daily observing, from the bursting out of the bud from the bark of the parent stem in April till November of the same year, acquired in that interval a diameter of between four and five inches and a height of above twenty feet.] which, latter, it is said, has a growth at least five, and, according to some, ten times more rapid than that of the oak--would prove good investments even in an economical aspect. [Footnote: The economical statistics of Grigor, Arboriculture, Edinburgh, 1868, are very encouraging. In the preface to that work the author says: "Having formed several large plantations nearly forty years ago, which are still standing, in the Highlands of Scotland, I can refer to them as, after paying every expense, yielding a revenue equal to that of the finest arable land in the country, where the ground previously to these formations was not worth a shilling an acre." See also Hartig, Ueber den Wachsthumsgang und Ertrag der Buche, Eiche und Kiefer, 1869, and especially Bryant, Forest Trees, chap. ix.] There is no doubt that they would pay the expenses of their planting at no distant period, at least in every case where irrigation is possible, and in very many situations, terraces, ditches, or even horizontal furrows upon the hillsides, would answer as a substitute for more artificial irrigation. Large proprietors would receive important indirect benefits from the shelter and the moisture which forests furnish for the lands in their neighborhood, and eventually from the accumulation of vegetable mould in the woods. [Footnote: The fertility of newly cleared land is by no means due entirely to the accumulation of decayed vegetable matter on its surface, and to the decomposition of the mineral constituents of the soil by the gases emitted by the fallen leaves. Sachs has shown that the roots of living plants exercise a most powerful solvent action on rocks, and hence stones are disintegrated and resolved into elements of vegetable nutrition, by the chemical agency of the forest, more rapidly than by frost, rain, and other meteorological influences.] The security of the investment, as in the case of all real-estate, is a strong argument for undertaking such plantations, and a moderate amount of government patronage and encouragement would be sufficient to render the creation of new forests an object of private interest as well as of public advantage, especially in a country where the necessity is so urgent and the climate so favorable as in the United States. Instability of American Life. All human institutions, associate arrangements, modes of life, have their characteristic imperfections. The natural, perhaps the necessary defect of ours, is their instability, their want of fixedness, not in form only, but even in spirit. The face of physical nature in the United States shares this incessant fluctuation, and the landscape is as variable as the habits of the population. It is time for some abatement in the restless love of change which characterizes us, and makes us almost a nomade rather than a sedentary people. [Footnote: It is rare that a middle-aged American dies in the house where he was born, or an old man even in that which he has built; and this is scarcely less true of the rural districts, where every man owns his habitation, than of the city, where the majority live hired houses. This life of incessant flitting is unfavorable for the execution of permanent improvements of every sort, and especially of those which, like the forest, are slow in repaying any part of the capital expended in them. It requires a very generous spirit in a landholder to plant a wood on a farm he expects to sell, or which he knows will pass out of the hands of his descendants at his death. But the very fact of having begun a plantation would attach the proprietor more strongly to the soil for which he had made such a sacrifice; and the paternal acres would have a greater value in the eyes of a succeeding generation, if thus improved and beautified by the labors of those from whom they were inherited. Landed property, therefore, the transfer of which is happily free from every legal impediment or restriction in the United States, would find, in the feelings thus prompted, a moral check against a too frequent change of owners, and would tend to remain long enough in one proprietor or one family to admit of gradual improvements which would increase its value both to the possessor and to the state.] We have now felled forest enough everywhere, in many districts far too much. Let us restore this one element of material life to its normal proportions, and devise means of maintaining the permanence of its relations to the fields, the meadows, and the pastures, to the rain and the dews of heaven, to the springs and rivulets with which it waters the earth. The establishment of an approximately fixed ratio between the two most broadly characterized distinctions of rural surface--woodland and ploughland--would involve a certain persistence of character in all the branches of industry, all the occupations and habits of life, which depend upon or are immediately connected with either, without implying a rigidity that should exclude flexibility of accommodation to the many changes of external circumstance which human wisdom can neither prevent nor foresee, and would thus help us to become, more emphatically, a well-ordered and stable commonwealth, and, not less conspicuously, a people of progress. CHAPTER IV. THE WATERS. Land Artificially won from the Waters--Great Works of Material Improvement--Draining of Lincolnshire Fens--Incursions of the Sea in the Netherlands--Origin of Sea-dikes--Gain and Loss of Land in the Netherlands--Marine Deposits on the Coast of Netherlands--Draining of Lake of Haarlem--Draining of the Zuiderzee--Geographical Effects of Improvements in the Netherlands--Ancient Hydraulic Works--Draining of Lake Celano by Prince Torlonia--Incidental Consequences of draining Lakes--Draining of Marshes--Agricultural Draining--Meteorological Effects of Draining--Geographical Effects of Draining--Geographical Effects of Aqueducts and Canals--Antiquity of Irrigation--Irrigation in Palestine, India, and Egypt--Irrigation in Europe--Meteorological Effects of Irrigation--Water withdrawn from Rivers for Irrigation--Injurious Effects of Rice-culture--Salts Deposited by Water of Irrigation--Subterranean Waters--Artesian Wells--Artificial Springs--Economizing Precipitation--Inundations in France--Basins of Reception--Diversion of Rivers--Glacier Lakes--River Embankments--Other Remedies against Inundations--Dikes of the Nile--Deposits of Tuscan Rivers--Improvements in Tuscan Maremma--Improvements in Val di Chiana--Coast of the Netherlands. Land artificially won from the Waters. Man, as we have seen, has done much to revolutionize the solid surface of the globe, and to change the distribution and proportions, if not the essential character, of the organisms which inhabit the land and even the waters. Besides the influence thus exerted upon the life which peoples the sea, his action upon the land has involved a certain amount of indirect encroachment upon the territorial jurisdiction of the ocean. So far as he has increased the erosion of running waters by the destruction of the forest or by other operations which lessen the cohesion of the soil, he has promoted the deposit of solid matter in the sea, thus reducing the depth of marine estuaries, advancing the coast-line, and diminishing the area covered by the waters. He has gone beyond this, and invaded the realm of the ocean by constructing within its borders wharves, piers, light-houses, breakwaters, fortresses, and other facilities for his commercial and military operations; and in some countries he has permanently rescued from tidal overflow, and even from the very bed of the deep, tracts of ground extensive enough to constitute valuable additions to his agricultural domain. The quantity of soil gained from the sea by these different modes of acquisition is, indeed, too inconsiderable to form an appreciable element in the comparison of the general proportion between the two great forms of terrestrial surface, land and water; but the results of such operations, considered in their physical and their moral bearings, are sufficiently important to entitle them to special notice in every comprehensive view of the relations between man and nature. There are cases, as on the western shores of the Baltic, where, in consequence of the secular elevation of the coast, the sea appears to be retiring; others, where, from the slow sinking of the land, it seems to be advancing. These movements depend upon geological causes wholly out of our reach, and man can neither advance nor retard them. [Footnote: It is possible that the weight of the sediment let fall at the mouths of great rivers, like the Ganges, the Mississippi, and the Po, may cause the depression of the strata on which they are deposited, and hence if man promotes the erosion and transport of earthy material by rivers, he augments the weight of the sediment they convey into their estuaries, and consequently his action tends to accelerate such depression. There are, however, cases where, in spite of great deposits of sediment by rivers, the coast is rising. Further, the manifestation of the internal heat of the earth at any given point is conditioned by the thickness of the crust at such point. The deposits of rivers tend to augment that thickness at their estuaries. The sediment of slowly-flowing rivers emptying into shallow seas is spread over so great a surface that we can hardly imagine the foot or two of slime they let fall over a wide area in a century to form an element among even the infinitesimal quantities which compose the terms of the equations of nature. But some swift rivers, rolling mountains of fine earth, discharge themselves into deeply scooped gulfs or bays, and in such cases the deposit amounts, in the course of a few years, to a mass the transfer of which from the surface of a large basin, and its accumulation at a single point, may be supposed to produce other effects than those measurable by the sounding-line. Now, almost all the operations of rural life, as I have abundantly shown, increase the liability of the soil to erosion by water. Hence, the clearing of the valley of the Ganges, for example, by man, must have much augmented the quantity of earth transported by that river to the sea, and of course have strengthened the effects, whatever they may be, of thickening the crust of the earth in the Bay of Bengal. In such cases, then, human action must rank among geological influences. To the geological effects of the thickening of the earth's crust in the Bay of Bengal, are to be added those of thinning it on the highlands where the Ganges rises. The same action may, as a learned friend suggests to me, even have a cosmical influence. The great rivers of the earth, taken as a whole, transport sediment from the polar regions in an equatorial direction, and hence tend to increase the equatorial diameter, and at the same time, by their inequality of action, to a continual displacement of the centre of gravity, of the earth. The motion of the globe, and of all bodies affected by its attraction, is modified by every change of its form, and in this case we are not authorized to say that such effects are in any way compensated.] There are also cases where similar apparent effects are produced by local oceanic currents, by river deposit or erosion, by tidal action, or by the influence of the wind upon the waves and the sands of the seabeach. A regular current may drift suspended earth and seaweed along a coast until they are caught by an eddy and finally deposited out of the reach of further disturbance, or it may scoop out the bed of the sea and undermine promontories and headlands; a powerful river, as the wind changes the direction of its flow at its outlet, may wash away shores and sandbanks at one point to deposit their material at another; the tide or waves, stirred to unusual depths by the wind, may gradually wear down the line of coast, or they may form shoals and coast-dunes by depositing the sand they have rolled up from the bottom of the ocean. These latter modes of action are slow in producing effects sufficiently important to be noticed in general geography, or even to be visible in the representations of coast-line laid down in ordinary maps; but they nevertheless form conspicuous features in local topography, and they are attended with consequences of great moment to the material and the moral interests of men. The forces which produce these limited results are all in a considerable degree subject to control, or rather to direction and resistance, by human power, and it is in guiding, combating, and compensating them that man has achieved some of his most remarkable and most honorable conquests over nature. The triumphs in question, or what we generally call harbor and coast improvements, whether we estimate their value by the money and labor expended upon them, or by their bearing upon the interests of commerce and the arts of civilization, must take a very high rank among the great works of man, and they are fast assuming a magnitude greatly exceeding their former relative importance. The extension of commerce and of the military marine, and especially the introduction of vessels of increased burden and deeper draught of water, have imposed upon engineers tasks of a character which a century ago would have been pronounced, and, in fact, would have been, impracticable; but necessity has stimulated au ingenuity which has contrived means of executing them, and which gives promise of yet greater performance in time to come. Indeed, although man, detached from the solid earth, is almost powerless to struggle against the sea, he is fast becoming invincible by it so long as his foot is planted on the shore, or even on the bottom of the rolling ocean; and though on some battle-fields between the waters and the land he is obliged slowly to yield his ground, yet he retreats still facing the foe, and will finally be able to say to the sea, "Thus far shalt thou come and no farther, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed!" [Footnote: It is, nevertheless, remarkable that in the particular branch of coast engineering where great improvements are most urgently needed, comparatively little has been accomplished. I refer to the creation of artificial harbors, and of facilities for loading and discharging ships. The whole coast of Italy is, one may almost say, harborless and even, wharfless, and there are many thousands of miles of coast in rich commercial countries in Europe, where vessels can neither lie in safety for a single day, nor even, in better protected heavens, ship or land their passengers or cargoes except by the help of lighters, and other not less clumsy contrivances. It is strange that such enormous inconveniences are borne with so little effort to remove them, and especially that break-waters are rarely constructed by Governments except for the benefit of the military marine.] Great Works of Material Improvement. Men have ceased to admire the vain exercise of power which heaped up the great pyramid to gratify the pride of a despot with a giant sepulchre; for many great harbors, many important lines of internal communication, in the civilized world, now exhibit works which in volume and weight of material surpass the vastest remains of ancient architectural art, and demand the exercise of far greater constructive skill and involve a much heavier pecuniary expenditure than would now be required for the building of the tomb of Cheops. It is computed that the great pyramid, the solid contents of which when complete were about 3,000,000 cubic yards, could be erected for a million of pounds sterling. The breakwater at Cherbourg, founded in rough water sixty feet deep, at an average distance of more than two miles from the shore, contains double the mass of the pyramid, and many a comparatively unimportant canal has been constructed at twice the cost which would now build that stupendous monument. The description of works of harbor and coast improvement which have only an economical value, not a true geographical importance, does not come within the plan of the present volume, and in treating this branch of my subject, I shall confine myself to such as are designed either to gain new soil by excluding the waters from grounds which they had permanently or occasionally covered, or to resist new encroachments of the sea upon the land. [Footnote: Some notice of great works executed by man in foreign lands, and probably not generally familiar to my readers, may, however, prove not uninteresting. The desaguadero, or canal constructed by the Viceroy Revillagigedo to prevent the inundation of the city of Mexico by the lakes in its vicinity, besides subsidiary works of great extent, has a cutting half a mile long, 1,000 feet wide, and from 150 to 200 feet deep.--Hoffmann, Encyclopaedie, art. Mexico. The adit which drains the mines of Gwennap in Cornwall, with its branches, is thirty miles long. Those of the silver mines of Saxony are scarcely less extensive, and the Ernst-August-Stollen, or great drain of the mines of the Harz, is fifteen miles long. The excavation for the Suez Canal were computed at 75,000,000 cubic metres, or about 100,000,000 cubic yards, and those of the Ganges Canal, which, with its branches, had a length of 3,000 miles, amount to nearly the same quantity. The quarries at Maestricht have undermined a space of sixteen miles by six, or more than two American townships, and the catacombs of Rome, in part, at least, originally quarries, have a lineal extent of five hundred and fifty miles. The catacombs of Paris required the excavation of 13,000,000 cubic yards of stone, or more than four times the volume of the great pyramid. The excavation for the Mt. Cenis tunnel, eight miles in length, wholly through solid rock, amounted to more than 900,000 cubic yards, and 16,000,000 of brick were employed for the lining. In an article on recent internal improvements in England, in the London Quarterly Review for January, 1858, it is stated that in a single rock-cutting on the Liverpool and Manchester railway, 480,000 cubic yards of stone were removed; that the earth excavated in the construction of English railways up to that date amounted to a hundred and fifty million cubic yards, and that at the Round Down Cliff, near Dover, a single blast of nineteen thousand pounds of powder blew down a thousand million tons of chalk, and covered fifteen acres of land with the fragments. In 1869, a mass of marble equal to one and a half times the cubical contents of the Duomo at Florence, or about 450,000 cubic yards, was thrown down at Carrara by one blast, and two hours after, another equal mass, which had been loosened by the explosion, fell of itself. Zolfanelli, La Lunigiana, p. 43. The coal yearly extracted from the mines of England averages not less than 100,000,000 tons. The specific gravity of British coal ranges from 1.20 to 1.35, and consequently we may allow a cubic yard to the ton. If we add the earth and rock removed in order to reach the coal, we shall have a yearly amount of excavation for this one object equal to more than thirty times the volume of the pyramid of Cheops. These are wonderful achievements of human industry; but the rebuilding of Chicago within a single year after the great fire--not to speak of the extraordinary material improvements previously executed at that city--surpasses them all, and it probably involved the expenditure of a sum of muscular and of moral energy which has never before been exerted in the accomplishment of a single material object, within a like period.] Draining of Lincolnshire Fens. The draining of the Lincolnshire fens in England, which has converted about 400,000 acres of marsh, pool, and tide-washed flat into ploughland and pasturage, is a work, or rather series of works, of great magnitude, and it possesses much economical, and, indeed, no trifling geographical, importance. Its plans and methods were, at least in part, borrowed from the example of like improvements in Holland, and it is, in difficulty and extent, inferior to works executed for the same purpose on the opposite coast of the North Sea, by Dutch, Frisie, and Low German engineers. The space I can devote to such operations will be better employed in describing the latter, and I content myself with the simple statement I have already made of the quantity of worthless and even pestilential land which has been rendered both productive and salubrious in Lincolnshire, by diking out the sea, and the rivers which traverse the fens of that country. The almost continued prevalence of west winds upon both coasts of the German Ocean occasions a constant set of the currents of that sea to the east, and both for this reason and on account of the greater violence of storms from the former quarter, the English shores of the North Sea are less exposed to invasion by the waves than those of the Netherlands and the provinces contiguous to them on the north. The old Netherlandish chronicles are filled with the most startling accounts of the damage done by the irruptions of the ocean, from west winds or extraordinarily high tides, at times long before any considerable extent of seacoast was diked. Several hundreds of those terrible inundations are recorded, and in many of them the loss of human lives is estimated as high as one hundred thousand. It is impossible to doubt that there must be enormous exaggeration in these numbers; for, with all the reckless hardihood shown by men in braving the dangers and privations attached by nature to their birthplace, it is inconceivable that so dense a population as such wholesale destruction of life supposes could find the means of subsistence, or content itself to dwell, on a territory liable, a dozen times in a century, to such fearful devastation. There can be no doubt, however, that the low continental shores of the German Ocean very frequently suffered immense injury from inundation by the sea, and it is natural, therefore, that the various arts of resistance to the encroachments of the ocean, and, finally, of aggressive warfare upon its domain, and of permanent conquest of its territory, should have been earlier studied and carried to higher perfection in the latter countries, than in England, which had less to lose or to gain by the incursions or the retreat of the waters. Indeed, although the confinement of swelling rivers by artificial embankments is of great antiquity, I do not know that the defence or acquisition of land from the sea by diking was ever practised on a large scale until systematically undertaken by the Netherlanders, a few centuries after the commencement of the Christian era. The silence of the Roman historians affords a strong presumption that this art was unknown to the inhabitants of the Netherlands at the time of the Roman invasion, and the elder Pliny's description of the mode of life along the coast which has now been long diked in, applies precisely to the habits of the people who live on the low islands and mainland flats lying outside of the chain of dikes, and wholly unprotected by embankments of any sort. Origin of Sea-dikes. It has been conjectured, and not without probability, that the causeways built by the Romans across the marshes of the Low Countries, in their campaigns against the Germanic tribes, gave the natives the first hint of the utility which might be derived from similar constructions applied to a different purpose. [Footnote: It has often been alleged by eminent writers that a part of the fens in Lincolnshire was reclaimed by sea-dikes under the government of the Romans. I have found no ancient authority in support of this assertion, nor can I refer to any passage in Roman literature in which sea-dikes are expressly mentioned otherwise than as walls or piers, except that in Pliny (Hist. Nat. xxxvi. 24), where it is said that the Tyrrhenian Sea was excluded from the Lucrino Lake by dikes. Dugdale, whose enthusiasm for his subject led him to believe that recovering from the sea land subject to be flooded by it, was of divine appointment, because God said: "Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place and let the dry land appear," unhesitatingly ascribes the reclamation of the Lincolnshire fens to the Romans, though he is able to cite but one authority, a passage in Tacitus's Life of Agricola which certainly has no such meaning, in support of the assertion.--History of Embankment and Drainage, 2d edition, 1772.] If this is so, it is one of the most interesting among the many instances in which the arts and enginery of war have been so modified as to be eminently promotive of the blessings of peace, thereby in some measure compensating the wrongs and sufferings they have inflicted on humanity. [Footnote: It is worth mentioning, as an illustration of the applicability of military instrumentalities to pacific art, that the sale of gunpowder in the United States was smaller during the late rebellion than before, because the war caused the suspension of many public and private improvements, in the execution of which great quantities of powder were used for blasting. The same observation was made in France during the Crimean war, and it is alleged that, in general, not ten per cent. of the powder manufactured on either either side of the Atlantic is employed for military purposes. The blasting for the Mount Cenis tunnel consumed gunpowder enough to fill more than 200,000,000 musket cartridges. It is a fact not creditable to the moral sense of modern civilization, that very many of the most important improvements in machinery and the working of metals have originated in the necessities of war, and that man's highest ingenuity has been shown, and many of his most remarkable triumphs over natural forces achieved, in the contrivance of engines for the destruction of his fellow-man. The military material employed by the first Napoleon has become, in less than two generations, nearly as obsolete as the sling and stone of the shepherd, and attack and defence now begin at distances to which, half a century ago, military reconnaissances hardly extended. Upon a partial view of the subject, the human race seems destined to become its own executioner--on the one hand, exhausting the capacity of the earth to furnish sustenance to her taskmaster; on the other, compensating diminished production by inventing more efficient methods of exterminating the consumer. At the present moment, at an epoch of universal peace, the whole civilized world with the happy exception of our own country, is devoting its utmost energies, applying the highest exercise of inventive genius, to the production of new engines of war; and the last extraordinary rise in the price of iron and copper is in great part due to the consumption of these metals in the fabrication of arms and armed vessels. The simple substitution of sheet-copper for paper and other materials in the manufacture of cartridges has increased the market-price of copper by a large percentage on its former cost. But war develops great civil virtues, and brings into action a degree and kind of physical energy which seldom fails to awaken a new intellectual life in a people that achieves great moral and political results through great heroism and endurance and perseverance. Domestic corruption has destroyed more nations than foreign invasion, and a people is rarely conquered till it has deserved subjugation.] The Lowlanders are believed to have secured some coast and bay islands by ring-dikes and to have embanked some fresh-water channels, as early as the eighth or ninth century; but it does not appear that sea-dikes, important enough to be noticed in historical records, were constructed on the mainland before the thirteenth century. The practice of draining inland accumulations of water, whether fresh or salt, for the purpose of bringing under cultivation the ground they cover, is of later origin, and is said not to have been adopted until after the middle of the fifteenth century. [Footnote: Staring, Voormaals en Thans, p. 150.] Gain and Loss of Land in the Netherlands. The total amount of surface gained to the agriculture of the Netherlands by diking out the sea and by draining shallow bays and lakes, is estimated by Staring at three hundred and fifty-five thousand bunder or hectares, equal to eight hundred and seventy-seven thousand two hundred and forty acres, which is one-tenth of the area of the kingdom. [Footnote: Idem, p. 163. Much the largest proportion of the lands so reclaimed, though for the most part lying above low-water tidemark, are at a lower level than the Lincolnshire fens, and more subject to inundation from the irruptions of the sea.] In very many instances the dikes have been partially, in some particularly exposed localities totally, destroyed by the violence of the sea, and the drained lands again flooded. In some cases the soil thus painfully won from the ocean has been entirely lost; in others it has been recovered by repairing or rebuilding the dikes and pumping out the water. Besides this, the weight of the dikes gradually sinks them into the soft soil beneath, and this loss of elevation must be compensated by raising the surface, while the increased burden thus added tends to sink them still lower. "Tetens declares," says Kohl, "that in some places the dikes have gradually sunk to the depth of sixty or even a hundred feet." [Footnote: Die Inseln und Marschen der Herzogthamer Schleswig und Holstein, iii., p. 151.] For these reasons, the processes of dike-building have been almost everywhere again and again repeated, and thus the total expenditure of money and of labor upon the works in question is much greater than would appear from an estimate of the actual cost of diking-in a given extent of coast-land and draining a given area of water-surface. [Footnote: The purely agricultural island of Pelworm, off the coast of Schleswig, containing about 10,000 acres, annually expends for the maintenance of its dikes not less than L6,000 sterling, or nearly $30,000.--J. G. Kohl, Inseln und Marschen Schleswig's und Holstein's, ii., p. 394. The original cost of the dikes of Pelworm is not stated. "The greatest part of the province of Zeeland is protected by dikes measuring 250 miles in length, the maintenance of which costs, in ordinary years, more than a million guilders [above $400,000] ... The annual expenditure for dikes and hydraulic works in Holland is from five to seven million guilders" [$2,000,000 to $2,800,000].--Wild, Die Niederlande, i., p. 62. One is not sorry to learn that the Spanish tyranny in the Netherlands had some compensations. The great chain of ring-dikes which surrounds a large part of Zeeland is due to the energy of Caspar de Robles, the Spanish governor of that province, who in 1570 ordered the construction of these works at the public expense, as a substitute for the private embankments which had previously partially served the same purpose.--Wild, Die Niederlande, i., p. 62.] Loss of Land by Incursions of Sea. On the other hand, by erosion of the coast-line, the drifting of sand-dunes into the interior, and the drowning of fens and morasses by incursions of the sea--all caused, or at least greatly aggravated, by human improvidence--the Netherlands have lost a far larger area of land since the commencement of the Christian era than they have gained by diking and draining. Staring despairs of the possibility of calculating the loss from the first-mentioned two causes of destruction, but he estimates that not less than six hundred and forty thousand bunder, or one million five hundred and eighty-one thousand acres, of fen and marsh have been washed away, or rather deprived of their vegetable surface and covered by water; and thirty-seven thousand bunder, or ninety-one thousand four hundred acres, of recovered land, have been lost by the destruction of the dikes which protected them. [Footnote: Staring, Voormaals en Thans, p. 163.] The average value of land gained from the sea is estimated at about nineteen pounds sterling, or ninety dollars, per acre; while the lost fen and morass was not worth more than one twenty-fifth part of the same price. The ground buried by the drifting of the dunes appears to have been almost entirely of this latter character, and, upon the whole, there is no doubt that the soil added by human industry to the territory of the Netherlands, within the historical period, greatly exceeds in pecuniary value that which has fallen a prey to the waves during the same era. Upon most low and shelving coasts, like those of the Netherlands, the maritime currents are constantly changing, in consequence of the variability of the winds, and the shifting of the sand-banks, which the currents themselves now form and now displace. While, therefore, at one point the sea is advancing landward, and requiring great effort to prevent the undermining and washing away of the dikes, it is shoaling at another by its own deposits, and exposing, at low water, a gradually widening belt of sands and ooze. The coast-lands selected for diking-in are always at points where the sea is depositing productive soil. The Eider, the Elbe, the Weser, the Ems, the Rhine, the Maas, and the Schelde bring down large quantities of fine earth. The prevalence of west winds prevents the waters from carrying this material far out from the coast, and it is at last deposited northward or southward from the mouth of the rivers which contribute it, according to the varying drift of the currents. Marine Deposits. The process of natural deposit which prepares the coast for diking-in is thus described by Staring: "All sea-deposited soil is composed of the same constituents. First comes a stratum of sand, with marine shells, or the shells of mollusks living in brackish water. If there be tides, and, of course, flowing and ebbing currents, mud is let fall upon the sand only after the latter has been raised above low-water mark; for then only, at the change from flood to ebb, is the water still enough to form a deposit of so light a material. Where mud is found at great depths, as, for example, in a large proportion of the Ij, it is a proof that at this point there was never any considerable tidal flow or other current. ... The powerful tidal currents, flowing and ebbing twice a day, drift sand with them. They scoop out the bottom at one point, raise it at another, and the sand-banks in the current are continually shifting. As soon as a bank raises itself above low-water mark, flags and reeds establish themselves upon it. The mechanical resistance of these plants checks the retreat of the high water and favors the deposit of the earth suspended in it, and the formation of land goes on with surprising rapidity. When it has risen to high-water level, it is soon covered with grasses, and becomes what is called schor in Zeeland, kwelder in Friesland. Such grounds are the foundation or starting-point of the process of diking. When they are once elevated to the flood-tide level, no more mud is deposited upon them except by extraordinary high tides. Their further rise is, accordingly, very slow, and it is seldom advantageous to delay longer the operation of diking." [Footnote: Voormaals en Thans, pp. 150, 151. According to Reventlov, confercae first appear at the bottom in shoal water, then, after the deposit has risen above the surface, Salicornia herbacea. The Salicornia is followed by various sand-plants, and so the ground rises, by Poa distans and Poa maritum, and finally common grasses establish themselves.--Om Markdannelsen poa Vestkyeten of Slesvig, pp. 7, 8.] Sea-dikes of the Netherlands. The formation of new banks by the sea is constantly going on at points favorable for the deposit of sand and earth, and hence opportunity is continually afforded for enclosure of new land outside of that already diked in, the coast is fast advancing seaward, and every new embankment increases the security of former enclosures. The province of Zeeland consists of islands washed by the sea on their western coasts, and separated by the many channels through which the Schelde and some other rivers find their way to the ocean. In the twelfth century these islands were much smaller and more numerous than at present. They have been gradually enlarged, and, in several instances, at last connected by the extension of their system of dikes. Walcheren is formed of ten islets united into one about the end of the fourteenth century. At the middle of the fifteenth century, Goeree and Overflakkee consisted of separate islands, containing altogether about ten thousand acres; by means of above sixty successive advances of the dikes, they have been brought to compose a single island, whose area is not less than sixty thousand acres. [Footnote: Staring, Voormaals en Thans, p, 152. Kohl states that the peninsula of Diksand on the coast of Holstein consisted, at the close of the last century, of several islands measuring together less than five thousand acres. In 1837 they had been connected with the mainland, and had nearly doubled in area.--Inseln u. Marschen Schlene, Holst., iii., p. 202] In the Netherlands--which the first Napoleon characterized as a deposit of the Rhine, and as, therefore, by natural law, rightfully the property of him who controlled the sources of that great river--and on the adjacent Frisie, Low German, and Danish shores and islands, sea and river dikes have been constructed on a grander and more imposing scale than in any other country. The whole economy of the art has been there most thoroughly studied, and the literature of the subject is very extensive. For my present aim, which is concerned with results rather than with processes, it is not worth while to refer to professional treatises, and I shall content myself with presenting such information as can be gathered from works of a more popular character. The superior strata of the lowlands upon and near the coast are, as we have seen, principally composed of soil brought down by the great rivers I have mentioned, and either directly deposited by them upon the sands of the bottom, or carried out to sea by their currents, and then, after a shorter or longer exposure to the chemical and mechanical action of salt-water and marine currents, restored again to the land by tidal overflow and subsidence from the waters in which it was suspended. At a very remote period the coast-flats were, at many points, raised so high by successive alluvious or tidal deposits as to be above ordinary high-water level, but they were still liable to occasional inundation from river-floods, and from the seawater also, when heavy or long-continued west winds drove it landwards. The extraordinary fertility of this soil and its security as a retreat from hostile violence attracted to it a considerable population, while its want of protection against inundation exposed it to the devastations of which the chroniclers of the Middle Ages have left such highly colored pictures. The first permanent dwellings on the coast-flats were erected upon artificial mounds, and many similar precarious habitations still exist on the unwalled islands and shores beyond the chain of dikes. River embankments, which, as is familiarly known, have from the earliest antiquity been employed in many countries where sea-dikes are unknown, were probably the first works of this character constructed in the Low Countries, and when two neighboring streams of fresh water had been embanked, the next step in the process would naturally be to connect the river-walls together by a transverse dike or raised causeway, which would serve as a means of communication between different hamlets and at the same time secure the intermediate ground both against the backwater of river-floods and against overflow by the sea. The oldest true sea-dikes described in historical records, however, are those enclosing islands in the estuaries of the great rivers, and it is not impossible that the double character they possess as a security against maritime floods and as a military rampart, led to their adoption upon those islands before similar constructions had been attempted upon the mainland. At some points of the coast, various contrivances, such as piers, piles, and, in fact, obstructions of all sorts to the ebb of the current, are employed to facilitate the deposit of slime, before a regular enclosure is commenced. Usually, however, the first step is to build low and cheap embankments, extending from an older dike, or from high ground, around the parcel of flat intended to be secured. These are called summer dikes. They are erected when a sufficient extent of ground to repay the cost has been elevated enough to be covered with coarse vegetation fit for pasturage. They serve both to secure the ground from overflow by the ordinary flood-tides of mild weather, and to retain the slime deposited by very high water, which would otherwise be partly carried off by the retreating ebb. The elevation of the soil goes on slowly after this; but when it has at last been sufficiently enriched, and raised high enough to justify the necessary outlay, permanent dikes are constructed by which the water is excluded at all seasons. These embankments are constructed of sand from the coast-dunes or from sand-banks, and of earth from the mainland or from flats outside the dikes, bound and strengthened by fascines, and provided with sluices, which are generally founded on piles and of very expensive construction, for drainage at low water. The outward slope of the sea-dikes is gentle, experience having shown that this form is least exposed to injury both from the waves and from floating ice, and the most modern dikes are even more moderate in the inclination of the seaward scarp than the older ones. [Footnote: The inclination varies from one foot rise in four of base to one foot in fourteen.--Kohl, iii., p. 210.] The crown of the dike, however, for the last three or four feet of its height, is much steeper, being intended rather as a protection against the spray than against the waves, and the inner slope is always comparatively abrupt. The height and thickness of dikes varies according to the elevation of the ground they enclose, the rise of the tides, the direction of the prevailing winds, and other special causes of exposure, but it may be said that they are, in general, raised from fifteen to twenty feet above ordinary high-water mark. The water-slopes of river-dikes are protected by plantations of willows or strong semi-aquatic shrubs or grasses, but as these will not grow upon banks exposed to salt-water, sea-dikes must be faced with stone, fascines, or some other revetement. [Footnote: The dikes are sometimes founded upon piles, and sometimes protected by one or more rows of piles driven deeply down into the bed of the sea in front of them. "Triple rows of piles of Scandinavian pine," says Wild, "have been driven down along the coast of Friesland, where there are no dunes, for a distance of one hundred and fifty miles. The piles are bound together by strong cross-timbers and iron clamps, and the interstices filled with stones. The ground adjacent to the piling is secured with fascines, and at exposed points heavy blocks of stone are heaped up as an additional protection. The earth-dike is built behind the mighty bulwark of this breakwater, and its foot also is fortified with stones." ... "The great Helder dike is about five miles long and forty feet wide at the top, along which runs a good road. It slopes down two hundred feet into the sea, at an angle of forty degrees. The highest waves do not reach the summit, the lowest always cover its base. At certain distances, immense buttresses, of a height and width proportioned to those of the dike, and even more strongly built, run several hundred feet out into the rolling sea. This gigantic artificial coast is entirely composed of Norwegian granite."--Wild, Die Niederlande, i., pp. 61, 62.] Upon the coast of Schleswig and Holstein, where the people have less capital at their command, they defend their embankments against ice and the waves by a coating of twisted straw or reeds, which must be renewed as often as once, sometimes twice a year. The inhabitants of these coasts call the chain of dikes "the golden border," a name it well deserves, whether we suppose it to refer to its enormous cost, or, as is more probable, to its immense value as a protection to their fields and their firesides. When outlying flats are enclosed by building new embankments the old interior dikes are suffered to remain, both as an additional security against the waves, and because the removal of them would be expensive. They serve, also, as roads or causeways, a purpose for which the embankments nearest the sea are seldom employed, because the whole structure might be endangered from the breaking of the turf by wheels and the hoofs of horses. Where successive rows of dikes have been thus constructed, it is observed that the ground defended by the more ancient embankments is lower than that embraced within the newer enclosures, and this depression of level has been ascribed to a general subsidence of the coast from geological causes; [Footnote: A similar subsidence of the surface is observed in the diked ground of the Lincolnshire fens, where there is no reason to suspect a general depression from geological causes.] but the better opinion seems to be that it is, in most cases, due merely to the consolidation and settling of the earth from being more effectually dried, from the weight of the dikes, from the tread of men and cattle, and from the movement of the heavy wagons which carry off the crops. [Footnote: The shaking of the ground, even when loaded with large buildings, by the passage of heavy carriages or artillery, or by the march of a body of cavalry or even infantry, shows that such causes may produce important mechanical effects on the condition of the soil. The bogs in the Netherlands, as in most other countries, contain large numbers of fallen trees, buried to a certain depth by earth and vegetable mould. When the bogs are dry enough to serve as pastures, it is observed that trunks of these ancient trees rise of themselves to the surface. Staring ascribes this singular phenomenon to the agitation of the ground by the tread of cattle. "When roadbeds," observes he, "are constructed of gravel and pebbles of different sizes, and these latter are placed at the bottom without being broken and rolled hard together, they are soon brought to the top by the effect of travel on the road. Lying loosely, they undergo some motion from the passage of every wagon-wheel and the tread of every horse that passes over them. This motion is an oscillation or partial rolling, and as one side of a pebble is raised, a little fine sand or earth is forced under it, and the frequent repetition of this process by cattle or carriages moving in opposite directions brings it at last to the surface. We may suppose that a similar effect is produced on the stems of trees in the bogs by the tread of animals."--De Bodem van Nederland, i., pp. 75, 76. It is observed in the Northern United States, that when soils containing pebbles are cleared and cultivated, and the stones removed from the surface, new pebbles, and even bowlders of many pounds weight, continue to show themselves above the ground, every spring, for a long series of years. In clayey soils the fence-posts are thrown up in a similar way, and it is not uncommon to see the lower rail of a fence thus gradually raised a foot or even two feet above the ground. This rising of stones and fences is popularly ascribed to the action of the severe frosts of that climate. The expansion of the ground, in freezing, it is said, raises its surface, and, with the surface, objects lying near or connected with it. When the soil thaws in the spring, it settles back again to its former level, while the pebbles and posts are prevented from sinking as low as before by loose earth which has fallen under them. The fact that the elevation spoken of is observed only in the spring gives countenance to this theory, which is perhaps applicable also to the cases stated by Staring, and it is probable that the two causes above assigned concur in producing the effect. The question of the subsidence of the Netherlandish coast has been much discussed. Not to mention earlier geologists, Venema, in several essays, and particularly in Het Dalen van de Noordelijke Kuststreken van ons Land, 1854, adduces many facts and arguments to prove a slow sinking of the northere provinces of Holland. Laveleye (Affaissement du sol at envasement des fleuves survenus dans les temps historiques, 1859), upon a still fuller investigation, arrives at the same conclusion. The eminent geologist Staring, however, who briefly refers to the subject in De Bodem van Nederland, i., p. 356 et seqq., does not consider the evidence sufficient to prove anything more than the sinking of the surface of the polders from drying and consolidation.--See Elisee Reclus, La Terre, vol. i., pp. 730, 732.] Notwithstanding this slow sinking, most of the land enclosed by dikes is still above low-water mark, and can, therefore, be wholly or partially freed from rain-water, and from that received by infiltration from higher ground, by sluices opened at the ebb of the tide. For this purpose the land is carefully ditched, and advantage is taken of every favorable occasion for discharging the water through the sluices. But the ground cannot be effectually drained by this means, unless it is elevated four or five feet, at least, above the level of the ebb-tide because the ditches would not otherwise have a sufficient descent to carry the water off in the short interval between ebb and flow, and because the moisture of the saturated sub-soil is always rising by capillary attraction. Whenever, therefore, the soil has sunk below the level I have mentioned, and in cases where its surface has never been raised above it, pumps, worked by wind or some other mechanical power, must be very frequently employed to keep the land dry enough for pasturage and cultivation. [Footnote: The elevation of the lands enclosed by dikes--or polders, as they are called in Holland--above low-water mark, depends upon the height of the tides or, in other words, upon the difference between ebb and flood. The tide cannot deposit earth higher than it flows, and after the ground is once enclosed, the decay of the vegetables grown upon it and the addition of manures do not compensate the depression occasional by drying and consolidation. On the coast of Zeeland and the islands of South Holland, the tides, and of course the surface of the lands deposited by them, are so high that the polders can be drained by ditching and sluices, but at other points, as in the enclosed grounds of North Holland on the Zuiderzee, where the tide rises but three feet or even less, pumping is necessary from the beginning.--Staring, Voormaals en Thans, p. 152] DRAINING OF THE LAKE OF HAARLEM. The substitution of steam-engines for the feeble and uncertain action of windmills, in driving pumps, has much facilitated the removal of water from the polders as well as the draining of lakes, marshes, and shallow bays, and thus given such an impulse to these enterprises, that not less than one hundred and ten thousand acres wore reclaimed from the waters, and added to the agricultural domain of the Netherlands, between 1815 and 1855. The most important of these undertaking was the draining of the Lake of Haarlem, and for this purpose some of the most powerful hydraulic engines over constructed were designed and executed. [Footnote: The principal engine, of 500 horse-power, drove eleven pumps with a total delivery of 31,000 cubic yards per hour.--Wild, Die Netherland, i., p. 87.] The origin of this lake is unknown. It is supposed by some geographers to be a part of an ancient bed of the Rhine, the channel of which, as there is good reason to believe, has undergone great changes since the Roman invasion of the Netherlands; by others it is thought to have once formed an inland marine channel, separated from the sea by a chain of low islands, which the sand washed up by the tides has since connected with the mainland and converted into a continuous line of coast. The best authorities, however, find geological evidence that the surface occupied by the lake was originally a marshy tract containing within its limits little solid ground, but many ponds and inlets, and much floating as well as fixed fen. In consequence of the cutting of turf for fuel, and the destruction of the few trees and shrubs which held the loose soil together with their roots, the ponds are supposed to have gradually extended themselves, until the action of the wind upon their enlarged surface gave their waves sufficient force to overcome the resistance of the feeble barriers which separated them, and to unite them all into a single lake. Popular tradition, it is true, ascribes the formation of the Lake of Haarlem to a single irruption of the sea, at a remote period, and connects it with one or another of the destructive inundations of which the Netherland chronicles describe so many; but on a map of the year 1531, a chain of four smaller waters occupies nearly the ground afterwards covered by the Lake of Haarlem, and they have most probably been united by gradual encroachments resulting from the improvident practices above referred to, though no doubt the consummation may have been hastened by floods, and by the neglect to maintain dikes, or the intentional destruction of them, in the long wars of the sixteenth century. The Lake of Haarlem was a body of water not far from fifteen miles in length, by seven in greatest width, lying between the cities of Amsterdam and Leyden, running parallel with the coast of Holland at the distance of about five miles from the sea, and covering an area of about 45,000 acres. By means of the Ij, it communicated with the Zuiderzee, the Mediterranean of the Netherlands, and its surface was little above the mean elevation of that of the sea. Whenever, therefore, the waters of the Zuiderzee were acted upon by strong north-west winds, those of the Lake of Haarlem were raised proportionally and driven southwards, while winds from the south tended to create a flow in the opposite direction. The shores of the lake were everywhere low, and though between the years 1767 and 1848 more than $1,700,000 had been expended in checking its encroachments, it often burst its barriers, and produced destructive inundations. In November, 1836, a south wind brought its waters to the very gates of Amsterdam, and in December of the same year, in a north-west gale, they overflowed twenty thousand acres of land at the southern extremity of the lake, and flooded a part of the city of Leyden. The depth of water in the lake did not, in general, exceed fourteen feet, but the bottom was a semi-fluid ooze or slime, which partook of the agitation of the waves, and added considerably to their mechanical force. Serious fears were entertained that the lake would form a junction with the inland waters of the Legmeer and Mijdrecht, swallow up a vast extent of valuable soil, and finally endanger the security of a large proportion of the land which the industry of Holland had gained in the course of centuries from the ocean. For this reason, and for the sake of the large addition the bottom of the lake would make to the cultivable soil of the state, it was resolved to drain it, and the preliminary steps for that purpose were commenced in the year 1840. The first operation was to surround the entire lake with a ring-canal and dike, in order to cut off the communication with the Ij, and to exclude the water of the streams and morasses which discharged themselves into it from the land side. The dike was composed of different materials, according to the means of supply at different points, such as sand from the coast-dunes, earth and turf excavated from the line of the ring-canal, and floating turf, [Footnote: In England and New England, where the marshes have been already drained or are of comparatively small extent, the existence of large floating islands seems incredible, and has sometimes been treated as a fable, but no geographical fact is better established. Kohl (Inseln und Marschen Schleswig-Holsteins, iii., p. 309) reminds us that Pliny mentions among the wonders of Germany the floating islands, covered with trees, which met the Roman fleets at the mouths of the Elbe and the Weser. Our author speaks also of having visited, in the territory of Bremen, floating moors, bearing not only houses but whole villages. At low stages of the water these moors rest upon a bed of sand, but are raised from six to ten feet by the high water of spring, and remain afloat until, in the course of the summer, the water beneath is exhausted by evaporation and drainage, when they sink down upon the sand again. Staring explains, in an interesting way, the whole growth, formation, and functions of floating fens or bogs, in his very valuable work, De Bodem van Nederland, i., pp. 36-43. The substance of his account is as follows: The turf and the surface of the fens, is stillness of the water. Hence they are not found in running streams, nor in pools so large as to be subject to frequent agitation by the wind. For example, not a single plant grew in the open part of the Lake of Haarlem, and fens cease to form in all pools as soon as, by the cutting of the turf for fuel or other purposes, their area is sufficiently enlarged to be much acted on by wind. When still water above a yard deep is left undisturbed, aquatic plants of various genera, such as Nuphar, Nymphaea, Limnanthemum, Stratiotes, Polygonum, and Potamogeton, fill the bottom with roots and cover the surface with leaves. Many of the plants die every year, and prepare at the bottom a soil fit for the growth of a higher order of vegetation, Phragmites, Acorus, Sparganium, Rumex, Lythrum, Pedicularis, Spiraea, Polystichum, Comarum, Caltha, etc., etc. In the course of twenty or thirty years the muddy bottom is filled with roots of aquatic and marsh plants, which are lighter than water, and if the depth is great enough to give room for detaching this vegetable network, a couple of yard for example, it rises to the surface, bearing with it, of course, the soil formed above it by decay of stems and leaves. New genera now appear upon the mass, such a Carex, Menyanthes, and others, and soon thicky cover it. The turf has now acquired a thickness of from two to four feet, and is called in Groningen lad; in Friesland, til, tilland, or drifftil; in Overijsse, krag; and in Holland, rietzod. It floats about as driven by the wind, gradually increasing in thickness by the decay of its annual crops of vegetation, and in about half a century reaches the bottom and becomes fixed. If it has not been invaded in the meantime by men or cattle, trees and arborescent plants, Alnus, Salix, Myrica, etc., appear, and these contribute to hasten the attachment of the turf to the bottom, both by their weight and by sending their roots quite through into the ground." This is the regular method employed by nature for the gradual filling up of shallow lakes and pools, and converting them first into morass and then into dry land. Whenever, therefore, man removes the peat or turf, he exerts an injurious geographical agency, and, as I have already said, there is no doubt that the immense extension of the inland seas of Holland in modern times is owing to this and other human imprudences. "Hundreds of hectares of floating pastures," says our author, "which have nothing in their appearance to distinguish them from grass-lands resting on solid bog, are found in Overijssel, in North Holland, and near Utrecht. In short, they occur in all deep bogs, and wherever deep water is left long undisturbed." In one case a floating island, which had attached itself to the shore, continued to float about for a long time after it was torn off by a flood, and was solid enough to keep a pond of fresh water upon it sweet, though the water in which it was swimming had become brackish from the irruption of the sea. After the hay is cut, cattle are pastured, and occasionally root-crops grown upon these islands, and they sometimes have large trees growing upon them. When the turf or peat has been cut, leaving water less than a yard deep, Equisetum limosum grows at once, and is followed by the second class of marsh plants mentioned above. Their roots do not become detached from the bottom in such shallow water, but form ordinary turf or peat. These processes are so rapid that a thickness of from three to six feet of turf is formed in half a century, and many men have lived to mow grass where they had fished in their boyhood, and to cut turf twice in the same spot. In Ireland the growth of peat is said to be much more rapid. Elisee Reclus, La Terre, i., 591, 592. But see Asbjornsen, Torv og Torvdrift, ii., 29, 30. Captain Gilliss says that before Lake Taguataga in Chili was drained, there were in it islands composed of dead plants matted together to a thickness of from four to six feet, and with trees of medium size growing upon them. These islands floated before the wind "with their trees and browsing cattle."--United States Naval Astronomical Expedition to the Southern Hemisphere, i., pp. 16, 17.] fascines being everywhere used to bind and compact the mass together. This operation was completed in 1848, and three steam-pumps were then employed for five years in discharging the water. The whole enterprise was conducted at the expense of the state, and in 1853 the recovered lands were offered for sale for its benefit. Up to 1858, forty-two thousand acres had been sold at not far from sixteen pounds sterling or seventy-seven dollars an acre, amounting altogether to L661,000 sterling or $3,200,000. The unsold lands were valued at more than L6,000 or nearly $30,000, and as the total cost was L764,500 or about $3,700,000, the direct loss to the state, exclusive of interest on the capital expended, may be stated at L100,000 or something less than $500,000. The success of this operation has encouraged others of like nature in Holland. The Zuid Plas, which covered 11,500 acres and was two feet deeper than the Lake of Haarlem, has been drained, and a similar work now in course of execution on an arm of the Scheld, will recover about 35,000 acres. In a country like the United States, of almost boundless extent of sparsely inhabited territory, such an expenditure for such an object would be poor economy. But Holland has a narrow domain, great pecuniary resources, an excessively crowded population, and a consequent need of enlarged room and opportunity for the exercise of industry. Under such circumstances, and especially with an exposure to dangers so formidable, there is no question of the wisdom of the measure. It has already provided homes and occupation for more than five thousand citizens, and furnished a profitable investment for a private capital of not less than L400,000 sterling or $2,000,000, which has been expended in improvements over and above the purchase money of the soil; and the greater part of this sum, as well as of the cost of drainage, has been paid as a compensation for labor. The excess of governmental expenditure over the receipts, if employed in constructing ships of war or fortifications, would have added little to the military strength of the kingdom; but the increase of territory, the multiplication of homes and firesides which the people have an interest in defending, and the augmentation of agricultural resources, constitute a stronger bulwark against foreign invasion than a ship of the line or a fortress armed with a hundred cannon. Draining of the Zuiderzee. I have referred to the draining of the Lake of Haarlem as an operation of great geographical as well as economical and mechanical interest. A much more gigantic project, of a similar character, is now engaging the attention of the Netherlandish engineers. It is proposed to drain the great salt-water basin called the Zuiderzee. This inland sea covers an area of not less than two thousand square miles, or about one million three hundred thousand acres. The seaward half, or that portion lying north-west of a line drawn from Enkhuizen to Stavoren, is believed to have been converted from a marsh to an open bay since the fifth century after Christ, and this change is ascribed, partly if not wholly, to the interference of man with the order of nature. The Zuiderzee communicates with the sea by at least six considerable channels, separated from each other by low islands, and the tide rises within the basin to the height of three feet. To drain the Zuiderzee, these channels must first be closed and the passage of the tidal flood through them cut off. If this be done, the coast currents will be restored approximately to the lines they followed fourteen or fifteen centuries ago, and thero can be little doubt that an appreciable effect will thus be produced upon all the tidal phenomena of that coast, and, of course, upon the maritime geography of Holland. A ring-dike and canal must then be constructed around the landward side of the basin, to exclude and carry off the freshwater streams which now empty into it. One of these, the Ijssel, a considerable river, has a course of eighty miles, and is, in fact, one of the outlets of the Rhine, though augmented by the waters of several independent tributaries. These preparations being made, and perhaps transverse dikes erected at convenient points for dividing the gulf into smaller portions, the water must be pumped out by machinery, in substantially the same way as in the case of the Lake of Haarlem. [Footnote: The dependence of man upon the aid of spontaneous nature, in his most arduous material works, is curiously illustrated by the fact that one of the most serious difficulties to be encountered in executing this gigantic scheme is that of procuring brushwood for the fascines to be employed in the embankments. See Diggelen's pamphlet, "Groote Werken in Nederland."] No safe calculations can be made as to the expenditure of time and money required for the execution of this stupendous enterprise, but I believe its practicability is not denied by competent judges, though doubts are entertained as to its financial expediency. [Footnote: The plan at present most in favor is that which proposes the drainage of only a portion of the southern half of the Zuiderzee, which covers not far from 400,000 acres. The project for the construction of a ship-canal directly from Amsterdam to the North Sea, now in course of execution, embraces the drainage of the Ij, a nearly land-locked basin communicating with the Zuiderzee and covering more than 12,000 acres. See official reports on these projects in Droogmaking vom het zuidelyk gedeelte der Zuiderzee, te s' Gravenhage, 1868, 4to.] The geographical results of this improvement would be analogous to those of the draining of the Lake of Haarlem, but many times multiplied in extent, and its meteorological effects, though perhaps not perceptible on the coast, could hardly fail to be appreciable in the interior of Holland. The bearing of the works I have noticed, and of others similar in character, upon the social and moral, as well as the purely economical, interests of the people of the Netherlands, has induced me to describe them more in detail than the general purpose of this volume may be thought to justify; but if we consider them simply from a geographical point of view, we shall find that they are possessed of no small importance as modifications of the natural condition of terrestrial surface. There is good reason to believe that before the establishment of a partially civilized race upon the territory now occupied by Dutch, Frisic, and Low German communities, the grounds not exposed to inundation were overgrown with dense woods; that the lowlands between these forests and the sea-coasts were marshes, covered and partially solidified by a thick matting of peat-plants and shrubs interspersed with trees; and that even the sand-dunes of the shore were protected by a vegetable growth which, in a great measure, prevented the drifting and translocation of them. The present causes of river and coast erosion existed, indeed, at the period in question; but some of them must have acted with less intensity, there were strong natural safeguards against the influence of marine and fresh-water currents, and the conflicting tendencies had arrived at a condition of approximate equilibrium, which permitted but slow and gradual changes in the face of nature. The destruction of the forests around the sources and along the valleys of the rivers by man gave them a more torrential character. The felling of the trees, and the extirpation of the shrubbery upon the fens by domestic cattle, deprived the surface of its cohesion and consistence, and the cutting of peat for fuel opened cavities in it, which, filling at once with water, rapidly extended themselves by abrasion of their borders, and finally enlarged to pools, lakes, and gulfs, like the Lake of Haarlem and the northern part of the Zuiderzee. The cutting of the wood and the depasturing of the grasses upon the sand-dunes converted them from solid bulwarks against the ocean to loose accumulations of dust, which every sea-breeze drove farther landward, burying, perhaps, fertile soil and choking up water-courses on one side, and exposing the coast to erosion by the sea upon the other. Geographical Effect of Physical Improvements in the Netherlands. The changes which human action has produced within twenty centuries in the Netherlands and the neighboring provinces, are, certainly of no small geographical importance, considered simply as a direct question of loss and gain of territory. They have also, as we shall see hereafter, undoubtedly been attended with some climatic consequences, they have exercised a great influence on the spontaneous animal and vegetable life of this region, and they cannot have failed to produce effects upon tidal and other oceanic currents, the range of which may be very extensive. The force of the tidal wave, the height to which it rises, the direction of its currents, and, in fact, all the phenomena which characterize it, as well as all the effects it produces, depend as much upon the configuration of the coast it washes, and the depth of water, and form of bottom near the shore, as upon the attraction which occasions it. Every one of the terrestrial conditions which affect the character of tidal and other marine currents has been very sensibly modified by the operations I have described, and on this coast, at least, man has acted almost as powerfully on the physical geography of the sea as on that of the land. [Footnote: See, on the influence of the artificial modification of the coast-line on tides and other marine currents, Staring, De Bodem van Nederland, i., p. 279.] Ancient Hydraulic Works. The hydraulic works of the Netherlands and of the neighboring states are of such magnitude that--with the exception of the dikes of the Mississippi--they quite throw into the shade all other known artificial arrangements for defending the land against the encroachments of the rivers and the sea, and for reclaiming to the domain of agriculture and civilization soil long covered by the waters. But although the recovery and protection of lands flooded by the sea seems to be an art wholly of Netherlandish origin, we have abundant evidence that, in ancient as well as in comparatively modern times, great enterprises more or less analogous in character have been successfully undertaken, both in inland Europe and in the less familiar countries of the East. In many cases no historical record remains to inform us when or by whom such works were constructed. The Greeks and Romans, the latter especially, were more inclined to undertake and carry out stupendous material enterprises than to boast of them; and many of the grandest and most important constructions of those nations are absolutely unnoticed by contemporary annalists, and are first mentioned by writers living after all knowledge of the epochs of the projectors of these works had perished. Thus the aqueduct known as the Pont du Gard, near Nimes, which, though not surpassing in volume or in probable cost other analogous constructions of ancient and of modern ages, is yet among the most majestic and imposing remains of ancient civil architecture, is not so much as spoken of by any Roman author, [Footnote: One reason for the silence of Roman writers in respect to great material improvements which had no immediate relation to military or political objects, is doubtless the contempt in which mechanical operations and mechanical contrivances were held by that nation of spoilers. Even the engineer, upon whose skill the attack or defence of a great city depended, was only praefectus fabrum, the master-artisan, and had no military rank or command. This prejudice continued to a late period in the Middle Ages, and the chiefs of artillery were equally without grade or title as soldiers. "The occupations of all artisans," says Cicero, "are base, and the shop can have nothing of the respectable." De Officiis, 1, i., 42. The position of the surgeon relatively to the physician, in England, is a remnant of the same prejudice, which still survives in full vigor in Italy, with regard to both trade and industry. See p. 6, ante.] and we are in absolute ignorance of the age or the construction of the remarkable tunnel cut to drain Lake Copais in Boeotia. This lake, now reduced by sedimentary deposit and the growth of aquatic and semi-aquatic vegetation to the condition of a marsh, was originally partially drained by natural subterranean outlets in the underlying limestone rock, many of which still exist. But these emissaries, or katavothra, as they are called in both ancient and modern Greek, were insufficient for the discharge of the water, and besides, they were constantly liable to be choked by earth and vegetables, and in such cases the lake rose to a height which produced much injury. To remedy this evil and secure a great accession of fertile soil, at some period anterior to the existence of a written literature in Greece and ages before the time of any prose author whose works have come down to us, two tunnels, one of them four miles long, and of course not inferior to the Torlonian emissary in length, were cut through the solid rock, and may still be followed throughout their whole extent. They were repaired in the time of Alexander the Great, in the fourth century before Christ, and their date was at that time traditionally referred to the reign of rulers who lived as early as the period of the Trojan war. One of the best known hydraulic works of the Romans is the tunnel which serves to discharge the surplus waters of the Lake of Albano, about fourteen miles from Rome. This lake, about six miles in circuit, occupies one of the craters of an extinct volcanic range, and the surface of its waters is about nine hundred feet above the sea. It is fed by rivulets and subterranean springs originating in the Alban Mount, or Monte Cavo, the most elevated peak of the volcanic group just mentioned, which rises to the height of about three thousand feet. At present the lake has no discoverable natural outlet, and it is not known that the water ever stood at such a height as to flow regularly over the lip of the crater. It seems that at the earliest period of which we have any authentic memorials, its level was usually kept by evaporation, or by discharge through subterranean channels, considerably below the rim of the basin which encompassed it, but in the year 397 B.C., the water, either from the obstruction of such channels, or in consequence of increased supplies from unknown sources, rose to such a height as to flow over the edge of the crater, and threaten inundation to the country below by bursting through its walls. To obviate this danger, a tunnel for carrying off the water was pierced at a level much below the height to which it had risen. This gallery, cut entirely with the chisel through the rock for a distance of six thousand feet, or nearly a mile and one-seventh, is still in so good condition as to serve its original purpose. The fact that this work was contemporaneous with the siege of Veii, has given to ancient annalists occasion to connect the two events, but modern critics are inclined to reject Livy's account of the matter, as one of the many improbable fables which disfigure the pages of that historian. It is, however, repeated by Cicero and by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and it is by no means impossible that, in an age when priests and soothsayers monopolized both the arts of natural magic and the little which yet existed of physical science, the Government of Rome, by their aid, availed itself at once of the superstition and of the military ardor of its citizens to obtain their sanction to an enterprise which sounder arguments might not have induced them to approve. Still more remarkable is the tunnel cut by the Emperor Claudius to drain the Lake Fucinus, now Lago di Celano, in the former Neapolitan territory, about fifty miles eastward of Rome. This lake, as far as its history is known, has varied very considerably in its dimensions at different periods, according to the character of the seasons. It lies 2,200 feet above the sea, and has no visible outlet, but was originally either drained by natural subterranean conduits, or kept within certain extreme limits by evaporation. In years of uncommon moisture it spread over the adjacent soil and destroyed the crops; in dry seasons it retreated, and produced epidemic disease by poisonous exhalations from the decay of vegetable and animal matter upon its exposed bed. Julius Caesar had proposed the construction of a tunnel to lower the bed of the lake and provide a regular discharge for its waters, but the enterprise was not actually undertaken until the reign of Claudius, when--after a temporary failure, from errors in levelling by the engineers, as was pretended at the time, or, as now appears certain, in consequence of frauds by the contractors in the execution of the work--it was at least partially completed. From this imperfect construction, it soon got out of repair, but was restored by Hadrian, and is said to have answered its design for some centuries. [Footnote: The fact alluded to in a note on p. 97, ante, that since the opening of a communication between Lake Celano and the Garigliano by the works noticed in the text, fish, of species common in the lake, but not previously found in the river, have become naturalized in the Garigliano, is a circumstance of some weight as evidence that the emissary was not actually open in ancient times; for if the waters had been really connected, the fish of the lake would naturally have followed the descending current and established themselves in the river as they have done now.] In the barbarism which followed the downfall of the empire, it again fell into decay, and though numerous attempts were made to repair it during the Middle Ages, no tolerable success seems to have attended any of these efforts until the present generation. Draining of Lake Celano by Prince Torlonia. Works have been some years in progress and are now substantially completed, at a cost of about six millions of dollars, for restoring, or rather enlarging and rebuilding, this ancient tunnel, upon a scale of grandeur which does infinite honor to the liberality and public spirit of the projectors, and with an ingenuity of design and a constructive skill which reflect the highest credit upon the professional ability of the engineers who have planned the works and directed their execution. The length of the Roman tunnel was 18,634 feet, or rather more than three miles and a half, but as the new emissary is designed to drain the lake to the bottom, it must be continued to the lowest part of the basin. It will consequently have a length of not less than 21,000 feet, and, of course, is among the longest subterranean galleries in Europe. Many curious particulars in the design and execution of the original work have been observed in the course of the restoration, but these cannot here be noticed. The difference between the lowest and highest known levels of the surface of the lake is rather more than forty feet and the difference between the areas covered by water at these levels is not less than nine thousand acres. The complete drainage of the lake, including the ground occasionally flooded, will recover, for agricultural occupation, and permanently secure from inundation, about forty-two thousand acres of as fertile soil as any in Italy. [Footnote: Springs rising in the bottom of the lake have materially impeded the process of drainage, and some engineers believe that they will render the complete discharge of the waters impossible. It appears that the earthy and rocky strata underlying the lake are extremely porous, and that the ground already laid dry on the surface absorbs an abnormally large proportion of the precipitation upon it. These strata, therefore, constitute a reservoir which contributes to maintain the spring fed chiefly, no doubt, by underground channels from the neighboring mountains. But it is highly probable that, after a certain time, the process of natural desiccation noticed in note to p. 20, ante, will drain this reservoir, and the entire removal of the surface-water will then become practicable.] The ground already dry enough for cultivation furnishes occupation and a livelihood for a population of 16,000 persons, and it is thought that this number will be augmented to 40,000 when the drainage shall be completely effected. The new tunnel follows the line of the Claudian emissary--which though badly executed was admirably engineered--but its axis is at a somewhat lower level than that of the old gallery, and its cross-section is about two hundred and fifteen square feet, allowing a discharge of about 2,400 cubic feet to the second, while the Roman work had a cross-section of only one hundred and two square feet, with a possible delivery of 424 cubic feet to the second. In consequence of the nature of the rock and of the soil, which had been loosened and shattered by the falling in of much of the crown and walls of the old tunnel--every stone of which it was necessary to remove in the progress of the work--and the great head of water in the lake from unusually wet seasons, the technical difficulties to be surmounted were most baffling and discouraging in character, and of such extreme gravity that it may well be doubted whether the art of engineering has anywhere triumphed over more serious obstacles. This great "victory of peace"--probably the grandest work of physical improvement ever effected by the means, the energy, and the munificence of a single individual--is of no small geographical and economical, as well as sanitary, importance, but it has a still higher moral value as an almost unique example of the exercise of public spirit, courage, and perseverance in the accomplishment of a noble and beneficent enterprise by a private citizen. [Footnote: The draining of Lake Celano was undertaken by a company, but Prince Alessandro Torlonia of Rome bought up the interest of all the shareholders and has executed the entire work at his own private expense. Montricher, the celebrated constructor of the great aqueduct of Marseilles, was the engineer who designed and partly carried out the plans, and after his lamentable death the work has been directed with equal ability by Bermont and Brisse.--See Leon De Rothou, Prosciugamento del Lago Fucino, 8vo. Firenza, 1871.] The crater-lake of Nemi, in the same volcanic region as that of Albano, is also drained by a subterranean tunnel probably of very ancient construction, and the Valle-Riccia appears to have once been the basin of a lake long since laid dry, but whether by the bursting of its banks or by human art we are unable to say. The success of the Lake Celano tunnel has suggested other like improvements in Italy. A gallery has been cut, under circumstances of great difficulty, to drain Lake Agnano near Naples, and a project for the execution of a similar operation on the Lake of Perugia, the ancient Trasimenus, which covers more than 40,000 acres, is under discussion. Many similar enterprises have been conceived and executed in modern times, both for the purpose of reclaiming land covered by water and for sanitary reasons. [Footnote: A considerable work of this character is mentioned by Captain Gilliss as having been executed in Chili, a country to which we should hardly have looked for an improvement of such a nature. The Lake Taguataga was partially drained by cutting through a narrow ridge of land, not at the natural outlet, but upon one side of the lake, and eight thousand acres of land covered by it were gained for cultivation.--U. S. Naval Astronomical Expedition to the Southern Hemisphere, i., pp. 16, 17. Lake Balaton and the Neusiedler Sea in Hungary have lately been, at least partially, drained. The lakes of Neuchatel, Bienne, and Morat, in Switzerland, have been connected and the common level of all of them lowered about four feet. The works now in operation will produce, in the course of the year 1874, a further depression of four feet, and recover for agricultural use more than twelve thousand acres of fertile soil.] They are sometimes attended with wholly unexpected evils, as, for example, in the case of Barton Pond, in Vermont, and in that of a lake near Ragunda in Sweden, already mentioned on a former page. Another still less obvious consequence of the withdrawal of the waters has occasionally been observed in these operations. The hydrostatic force with which the water, in virtue of its specific gravity, presses against the banks that confine it, has a tendency to sustain them whenever their composition and texture are not such as to expose them to softening and dissolution by the infiltration of the water. If, then, the slope of the banks is considerable, or if the earth of which they are composed rests on a smooth and slippery stratum inclining towards the bed of the lake, they are liable to fall or slide forward when the mechanical support of the water is removed, and this sometimes happens on a considerable scale. A few years ago the surface of the Lake of Lungern, in the Canton of Unterwalden, in Switzerland, was lowered by driving a tunnel about a quarter of a mile long through the narrow ridge, called the Kaiserstuhl, which forms a barrier at the north end of the basin. When the water was drawn off, the banks, which are steep, cracked and burst, several acres of ground slid down as low as the water receded, and even the whole village of Lungern was thought to be in no small danger. [Footnote: In the course of the year 1864 there were slides of the banks of the Lake of Como, and in one case the grounds of a villa near the water suffered a considerable displacement. More important slips occurred at Fesiolo on the shore of Lago Maggiore in 1867 and 1869, and on the Lake of Orta in 1868. These occurrences excited some apprehensions in regard to the possible effects of projects then under discussion for lowering the level of some of the Italian lakes, to obtain an increased supply of water for irrigation and as a mechanical power, but as it was not proposed to depress the surface below the lowest natural low-water level, there seems to have been little ground for the fears expressed. See, for important observations on the character and probable results of these projects, Tagliasecchi, Nostizie etc. del Canali dell' Alta Lombardia, Milano, 1871. Jacini says: "A large proportion of the water of the lakes, instead of discharging itself by the Ticino, the Adda, the Oglio, the Mincio, filters through the silicious strata which underlie the hills, and follows subterranean channels to the plain, where it collects in the fontanili, and being thence conducted into the canals of irrigation, becomes a source of great fertility."--La Proprieta Fondiaria, etc., p.144. The quantity of water escaping from the lakes by infiltration depends much on the hydrostatic pressure on the bottom and the walls of the lake-basins, and consequently the depression of the lake surface, diminishing this pressure, would diminish the infiltration. Hence it is possible that the lowering of the level of these lakes would manifest itself in a decreased supply of water for the springs, fontanili, and wells of Lombardy.] Mountain Lakes. Other inconveniences of a very serious character have often resulted from the natural wearing down, or, much more frequently, the imprudent destruction, of the barriers which confine mountain lakes. In their natural condition, such basins serve both to receive and retain the rocks and other detritus brought down by the torrents which empty into them, and to check the impetus of the rushing waters by bringing them to a temporary pause; but if the outlets are lowered so as to drain the reservoirs, the torrents continue their rapid flow through the ancient bed of the basins, and carry down with them the sand and gravel with which they are charged, instead of depositing their burden as before in the still waters of the lakes. It is a common opinion in America that the river meadows, bottoms, or intervales, as they are popularly called, are generally the beds of ancient lakes which have burst their barriers and left running currents in their place. It was shown by Dr. Dwight, many years ago, that this is very far from being universally true; but there is no doubt that mountain lakes were of much more frequent occurrence in primitive than in modern geography, and there are many chains of such still existing in regions where man has yet little disturbed the original features of the earth. In the long valleys of the Adirondack range in Northern New York, and in the mountainous parts of Maine, eight, ten, and even more lakes and lakelets are sometimes found in succession, each emptying into the next lower pool, and so all at last into some considerable river. When the mountain slopes which supply these basins shall be stripped of their woods, the augmented swelling of the lakes will break down their barriers, their waters will run off, and the valleys will present successions of flats with rivers running through them, instead of chains of lakes connected by natural canals. A similar state of things seems to have existed in the ancient geography of France. "Nature," says Lavergne, "has not excavated on the flanks of our Alps reservoirs as magnificent as those of Lombardy; she had, however, constructed smaller but more numerous lakes, which the improvidence of man has permitted to disappear. Auguste de Gasparin demonstrated more than thirty years ago that many natural dikes formerly existed in the mountain valleys, which have been swept away by the waters." [Footnote: Economie Rurale de la France, p. 289.] Many Alpine valleys in Switzerland and Italy present unquestionable evidence of the former existence of chains of lakes in their basins, and this may be regarded as a general fact in regard to the primitive topography of mountainous regions. Where the forests have not been destroyed, the lakes remain as characteristic features of the geographical surface. But when the woods are felled, these reservoirs are sooner or later filled up by wash from the shores, and of course disappear. Geologists have calculated the period when the bottom of the Lake of Geneva will be levelled up and its outlet worn down. The Rhone will then flow, in an unbroken current, from its source in the great Rhone glacier to the Mediterranean Sea. Draining of Swamps. The reclamation of bogs and swamps by draining off the surface-water is doubtless much more ancient than the draining of lakes. The beneficial results of the former mode of improvement are more unequivocal, and balanced by fewer disadvantages, and, at the same time, the processes by which it is effected are much simpler and more obvious. It has accordingly been practised through the whole historical period, and in recent times operations for this purpose have assumed a magnitude, and been attended with economical as well as sanitary and geographical effects, which entitle them to a high place in the efforts of man to ameliorate the natural conditions of the soil he occupies. The methods by which the draining of marshes is ordinarily accomplished are too familiar, and examples of their successful employment too frequent, to require description, and I shall content myself, for the moment, with a brief notice of some recent operations of this sort which are less generally known than their importance merits. Within the present century more than half a million acres of swamp-land have been drained and brought under cultivation in Hungary, and works are in progress which will ultimately recover a still larger area for human use. The most remarkable feature of these operations, and at the same time the process which has been most immediately successful and remunerative, is what is called in Europe the regulation of water-courses, and especially of the River Theiss, on the lower course of which stream alone not less than 250,000 acres of pestilential and wholly unproductive marsh have been converted into a healthful region of the most exuberant fertility. The regulation of a river consists in straightening its channel by cutting off bends, securing its banks from erosion by floods, and, where necessary, by constructing embankments to confine the waters and prevent them from overflowing and stagnating upon the low grounds which skirt their current. In the course of the Theiss about sixty bends, including some of considerable length, have been cut off, and dikes sufficient for securing the land along its banks against inundation have been constructed. Many thousand acres of land have been recently permanently improved in Italy by the draining of swamps, and extensive operations have been projected and commenced on the lower Rhone, and elsewhere in France, with the same object. [Footnote: Very interesting and important experiments, on the practicability of washing out the salt from seacoast lands too highly impregnated with that mineral to be fit for cultivation, are now in progress near the mouth of the Rhone, where millions of acres of marshy soil can easily be recovered, if these experiments are successful. See Duponchel, Traite d'Hydraulique et de Geologie agricoles. Paris, 1868, chap. xi. and xii. In the neighborhood of Ferrara are pools and marshes covering nearly two hundred square miles, or a surface more than equal to eight American townships. Centrifugal steam-pumps, of 2,000 horse-power, capable of discharging more than six hundred and fifty millions of gallons of water per day have lately been constructed in England for draining these marshes. This discharge is equal to an area of 640 acres, or a mile square, with nearly three feet of water.] But there is probably no country where greater improvements of this sort have either been lately effected, or are now in course of accomplishment, than in our own. Not to speak of well-known works on the New Jersey seacoast and the shores of Lake Michigan, the people of the new State of California are engaging in this mode of subduing nature with as much enterprise and energy as they have shown in the search for gold. The Report of the Agricultural Department of the United States for January, 1872, notices, with more or less detail, several highly successful experiments in California in the way of swamp-drainage and securing land from overflow, and it appears that not far from 200,000 acres have either very recently undergone or will soon be subjected to this method of improvement. Agricultural Draining. I have commenced this chapter with a description of the dikes and other hydraulic works of the Netherland engineers, because both the immediate and the remote results of such operations are more obvious and more easily measured, though certainly not more important, than those of much older and more widely diffused modes of resisting or directing the flow of waters, which have been practised from remote antiquity in the interior of all civilized countries. Draining and irrigation are habitually regarded as purely agricultural processes, having little or no relation to technical geography; but we shall find that they exert a powerful influence on soil, climate, and animal and vegetable life, and may, therefore, justly claim to be regarded as geographical elements. Superficial draining is a necessity in all lands newly reclaimed from the forest. The face of the ground in the woods is never so regularly inclined as to permit water to flow freely over it. There are, even on the hillsides, small ridges depressions, partly belonging to the original distribution of the soil, and partly occasioned by irregularities in the growth and deposit of vegetable matter. These, in the husbandry of nature, serve as dams and reservoirs to collect a larger supply of moisture than the spongy earth can at once imbibe. Besides this, the vegetable mould is, even under the most favorable circumstances, slow in parting with the humidity it has accumulated under the protection of the woods, and the infiltration from neighboring forests contributes to keep the soil of small clearings too wet for the advantageous cultivation of artificial crops. For these reasons, surface draining must have commenced with agriculture itself, and there is probably no cultivated district, one may almost say no single field, which is not provided with artificial arrangements for facilitating the escape of superficial water, and thus carrying off moisture which, in the natural condition of the earth, would have been imbibed by the soil. All these processes belong to the incipient civilization of the ante-historical periods, but the construction of subterranean channels for the removal of infiltrated water marks ages and countries distinguished by a great advance in agricultural theory and practice, a great accumulation of pecuniary capital and a density of population which creates a ready demand and a high price for all products of rural industry. Under draining, too, would be most advantageous in damp and cool climates, where evaporation is slow, and upon soils where the natural inclination of surface does not promote a very rapid flow of the surface-waters. All the conditions required to make this mode of rural improvement, if not absolutely necessary, at least profitable, exist in Great Britain, and it is, therefore, very natural that the wealthy and intelligent farmers of England should have carried this practice farther, and reaped a more abundant pecuniary return from it, than those of any other country. Besides superficial and subsoil drains, there is another method of disposing of superfluous surface-water, which, however, can rarely be practised, because the necessary conditions for its employment are not of frequent occurrence. Whenever a tenacious water-holding stratum rests on a loose, gravelly bed so situated as to admit of a free discharge of water from or through it by means of the outcropping of the bed at a lower level, or of deep-lying conduits leading to distant points of discharge, superficial waters may be carried off by opening a passage for them through the impervious into the permeable stratum. Thus, according to Bischof, as early as the time of King Rene, in the first half of the fifteenth century, when subsoil drainage was scarcely known, the plain of Paluns, near Marseilles, was laid dry by boring, and Wittwer informs us that drainage is effected at Munich by conducting the superfluous water into large excavations, from which it filters through into a lower stratum of pebble and gravel lying a little above the level of the river Isar. [Foonote: Physikalische Geographie, p. 288. This method is now frequently employed in France. Details as to the processes will be found in Mangon Pratique du Drainage, pp. 78 et seqq. Draining by driving down stakes mentioned in a note in the chapter on the Woods, ante, is a process of the same nature. In the United States, large tracts of marshy ground, and even shallow lakes of considerable extent, have been sufficiently drained not only for pasturage but for cultivation, without resort to any special measures for effecting that end. The ordinary processes of rural improvement in the vicinity, such as felling woods upon and around such grounds, and the construction of roads, the side ditches of which act as drains, over or near them, aided now and then by the removal of a fallen tree or other accidental obstruction in the beds of small streams which flow from them, often suffice to reclaim miles square of unproductive swamp and water. See notes on p. 20, and on cedar swamps, p. 208, ante.] So at Washington, in the western part of the city, which lies high above the rivers Potomac and Rock Creek, many houses are provided with dry wells for draining their cellars and foundations. These extend through hard, tenacious earth to the depth of thirty or forty feet, when they strike a stratum of gravel, through which the water readily passes off. This practice has been extensively employed at Paris, not merely for carrying off ordinary surface-water, but for the discharge of offensive and deleterious fluids from chemical and manufacturing establishments. A well of this sort received, in the winter of 1832-'33, twenty thousand gallons per day of the foul water from a starch factory, and the same process was largely used in other factories. The apprehension of injury to common and artesian wells and springs led to an investigation on this subject by Girard and Parent Duchatelet, in the latter year. The report of these gentlemen, published in the Annales des Ponts et Chaussees for 1833, second half-year, is full of curious and instructive facts respecting the position and distribution of the subterranean waters under and near Paris; but it must suffice to say that the report came to the conclusion that, in consequence of the absolute immobility of these waters, and the relatively small quantity of noxious fluid to be conveyed to them, there was no danger of the diffusion of such fluid if discharged into them. This result will not surprise those who know that, in another work, Duchatelet maintains analogous opinions as to the effect of the discharge of the city sewers into the Seine or the waters of that river. The quantity of matter delivered by them he holds to be so nearly infinitesimal, as compared with the volume of water of the river, that it cannot possibly affect it to a sensible degree, and therefore cannot render the Seine water unfit for drinking. [Foonote: Coste found, in his experiments on pisciculture, that the fermentation, which takes place in the water of the Seine in consequence of the discharge of the drains into the river, destroyed a large proportion of the eggs of fish in his breeding basins. Analysis of Seine water by Boussingault in 1855 detected a considerable quantity of ammonia.] Meteorological Effects of Draining. The draining of lakes diminishes the water-surface of the soil, and consequently, in many cases, the evaporation from it, as well as the refrigeration which attends all evaporation. [Footnote: The relative evaporating action of earth and water is a very complicated problem, and the results of observation on the subject are conflicting. Schubler found that at Geneva the evaporation from bare loose earth, in the months of December, January, and February, was from two and a half to nearly six times as great as from a like surface of water in the other months. The evaporation from water was from about once and a half to six times as great as from earth. Taking the whole year together, the evaporation from the two surfaces was 199 lines from earth and 536 lines from water. Experiments by Van der Steer, at the Helder, in the years 1861 and 1862, showed, for the former year, an evaporation of 602.9 millimetres from water, 1399.6 millimetres from ground covered with clover and other grasses; in 1862, the evaporation from water was 584.5 millimetres, from grassground, 875.5. --Wilhelm, Der Boden und das Wasser, p. 57; Krecke, Het Klimaat van Nederland, ii., p. 111. On the other hand, the evaporation from the Nile in Egypt and Nubia is stated to be three times as great as that from an equal surface of the soil which borders it.--Lombardini, Saggio Idrologico sul Nilo, Milano, 1864, and Appendix. The relative thermometrical conditions of land and water in the same vicinity are constantly varying, and the hygrometrical state of both is equally unstable. Consequently there is no general formula to express the proportionate evaporation from fluid and solid geographical surfaces.] On the other hand, if the volume of water abstracted is great, its removal deprives its basin of an equalizing and moderating influence; for large bodies of water take very slowly the temperature of the air in contact with their surface, and are almost constantly either sending off heat into the atmosphere or absorbing heat from it. Besides, as we have seen, lakes in elevated positions discharge more or less water by infiltration, and contribute it by the same process to other lakes, to springs, and to rivulets, at lower levels. Hence the draining of lakes, on a considerable scale, must modify both the humidity and the temperature of the atmosphere of the neighboring regions, and the permanent supply of ground-water for the lands lying below them. Meteorological Action of Marshes. The shallow water of marshes, indeed, performs this latter function, but, under ordinary circumstances, marshes exercise in but a very small degree the compensating meteorological action which I have ascribed to large expansions of deeper water. The direct rays of the sun and the warmth of the atmosphere penetrate to the soil beneath, and raise the temperature of the water which covers it; and there is usually a much greater evaporation from marshes than from lakes in the same region during the warmer half of the year. This evaporation implies refrigeration, and consequently the diminution of evaporation by the drainage of swamps tends to prevent the lowering of the atmospheric temperature, and to lessen the frequency and severity of frosts. Accordingly it is a fact of experience that, other things being equal, dry soils, and the air in contact with them, are perceptibly warmer during the season of vegetation, when evaporation is most rapid, than moist lands and the atmospheric stratum resting upon them. Instrumental observation on this special point has not yet been undertaken on a large scale, but still we have thermometric data sufficient to warrant the general conclusion, and the influence of drainage in diminishing the frequency of frost appears to be even better established than a direct increase of atmospheric temperature. The steep and dry uplands of the Green Mountain range in New England often escape frosts when the Indian-corn harvest on moister grounds, five hundred or even a thousand feet lower, is destroyed or greatly injured by them. The neighborhood of a marsh is sure to be exposed to late spring and early autumnal frosts, but they cease to be feared after it is drained, and this is particularly observable in very cold climates, as, for example, in Lapland. [Footnote: "The simplest backwoodsman knows by experiences that all cultivation is impossible in the neighborhood of bogs and marshes. Why is a crop near the borders of a marsh out off by frost, while a field upon a hillock, a few stone's throws from it, is spared "--Lars Levi Laestadius, Om Uppoldingar Lappmarrken, pp. 69, 74.] In England, under-drains are not generally laid below the reach of daily variations of temperature, or below a point from which moisture, if not carried off by the drains, might be brought to the surface by capillary attraction, and evaporated by the heat of the sun. They, therefore, like surface-drains, withdraw from local solar action much moisture which would otherwise be vaporized by it, and, at the same time, by drying the soil above them, they increase its effective hygroscopicity, and it consequently absorbs from the atmosphere a greater quantity of water than it did when, for want of under-drainage, the subsoil was always humid, if not saturated. [Footnote: Mangon thinks that the diminution of evaporation by agricultural drainage corresponds, in certain circumstances, to five per cent. of the heat received from the sun by the same surface in a year. He cites observations by Parkes, showing a difference in temperature of 5.5 degrees (centigrade ) in favor of drained, as compared with undrained, ground in the same vicinity.--Instructions pratiques sur le Drainage, pp. 227, 228. The diminution of evaporation is not the only mode in which under-draining affects the temperature. The increased effective hygroscopicity of the soil increases its absorbent action, and the condensation of atmospheric vapor thus produced is attended with the manifestation of heat.] Under-drains, then, contribute to the dryness as well as to the warmth of the atmosphere, and, as dry ground is more readily heated by the rays of the sun than wet, they tend also to raise the mean, and especially the summer, temperature of the soil. Effects of Draining Lake of Haarlem. The meteorological influence of the draining of lakes and of humid soils has not, so far as I know, received much attention from experimental physicists; but we are not altogether without direct proof in support of theoretical and a priori conclusions. Thermometrical observations have been regularly made at Zwanenburg, near the northern extremity of the Lake of Haarlem, for more than a century; and since 1845 a similiar registry has been kept at the Helder, forty or fifty miles more to the north. In comparing these two series of observations, it is found that towards the end of 1852, when the draining of the lake was finished, and the following summer had completely dried the newly exposed soil--and, of course, greatly diminished the water-surface--a change took place in the relative temperature of those two stations. Taking the mean of each successive period of five days, from 1845 to 1852, both inclusive, the temperature of Zwanenburg was thirty-three hundredths of a degree centigrade LOWER than at the Helder. From the end of 1852 the thermometer at Zwanenburg has stood, from the 11th of April to the 20th of September, twenty-two hundredths of a degree HIGHER than that at Helder; but from the 14th of October to the 17th of March, it has marked one-tenth of a degree LOWER than its mean between the same dates before 1853. [Footnote: Krecke, Het Klimaat van Nederland, ii., p. 64.] There is no reason to doubt that these differences are due to the draining of the lake. In summer, solar irradiation has acted more powerfully on the now exposed earth and of course on the air in contact with it; and there is no longer a large expanse of water still retaining and of course imparting something of the winter temperature; in winter, the earth has lost more heat by radiation than when covered by water and the influence of the lake, as a reservoir of warmth accumulated in summer and gradually given out in winter, was of course lost by its drainage. Doubtless the quantity of moisture contained in the atmosphere has been modified by the same cause, but it does not appear that observations have been made upon this point. Facts lately observed by Glaisher tend to prove an elevation of not far from two degrees in the mean temperature of England during the course of the last hundred years. For reasons which I have explained elsewhere, the early observations upon which these conclusions are founded do not deserve entire confidence; but admitting the fact of the alleged elevation, its most probable explanation would be found in the more thorough draining of the soil by superficial and by subterranean conduits. So far as respects the immediate improvement of soil and climate, and the increased abundance of the harvests, the English system of surface and subsoil drainage has fully justified the eulogiums of its advocates; but its extensive adoption appears to have been attended with some altogether unforeseen and undesirable consequences, very analogous to those which I have described as resulting from the clearing of the forests. The under-drains carry off very rapidly the water imbibed by the soil from precipitation, and through infiltration from neighboring springs or other sources of supply. Consequently, in wet seasons, or after heavy rains, a river bordered by artificially drained lands receives in a few hours, from superficial and from subterranean conduits, an accession of water which, in the natural state of the earth, would have reached it only by small instalments after percolating through hidden paths for weeks or even months, and would have furnished perennial and comparatively regular contributions, instead of swelling deluges, to its channel. Thus, when human impatience rashly substitutes swiftly acting artificial contrivances for the slow methods by which nature drains the surface and superficial strata of a river-basin, the original equilibrium is disturbed, the waters of the heavens are no longer stored up in the earth to be gradually given out again, but are hurried out of man's domain with wasteful haste; and while the inundations of the river are sudden and disastrous, its current, when the drains have run dry, is reduced to a rivulet, it ceases to supply the power to drive the machinery for which it was once amply sufficient, and scarcely even waters the herds that pasture upon its margin. The water of subterranean currents and reservoirs, as well as that of springs and common wells, is doubtless principally furnished by infiltration, and hence its quantity must vary with every change of natural surface which tends to accelerate or to retard the drainage of the surface-soil. The drainage of marshes, therefore, and all other methods of drying the superficial strata, whether by open ditches or by underground tubes or drains, has the same effect as clearing off the forest in depriving the subterranean waters of accessions which they would otherwise receive by infiltration, and in proportion as the sphere of such operation is extended, their influence will make itself felt in the diminished supply of water in springs and wells. [Footnote: Babinet condemns the general draining of marshes. "Draining," says he, "has been much in vogue for some years, and it has been a special object to dry and fertilize marshy grounds. I believe that excessive dryness is thus produced, and that other soils in the neighborhood are sterilized in proportion."--Etudes et Lectures, iv., p. 118. "The extent of soil artificially dried by drainage is constantly increasing, and the water received by the surface from precipitation flows off by new channels, and is in general carried off more rapidly than before. Must not this fact exercise an influence on the regime of springs whose basin of supply thus undergoes a more or less complete transformation "--Bernhard Cotta, Preface to Paramelle, Quellenkunde, p. vii., viii. The effects of agricultural drainage are perceptible at great depths. It has been observed in Cornwall that deep mines are more free from water in well-drained districts than in those where drainage is not generally practised.--Esquiros, Revue des Deux Mondes, 15 Nov., 1863, p. 430. See also Asbjornsen, Torv og Torvdrift, p. 31.] Geographical and Meteorological Effects of Aqueducts, Reservoirs, and Canals. Many of the great processes of internal improvement, such as aqueducts for the supply of great cities, railroad cuts and embankments, and the like, divert water from its natural channels and affect its distribution and ultimate discharge. The collecting of the waters of a considerable district into reservoirs, to be thence carried off by means of aqueducts, as, for example, in the forest of Belgrade, near Constantinople, deprives the grounds originally watered by the springs and rivulets of the necessary moisture, and reduces them to barrenness. [Footnote: See a very interesting paper on the Water-Supply of Constantinople, by Mr. Homes, of the New York State Library, in the Albany Argus of June 6, 1872. The system of aqueducts for the supply of water to that city was commenced by Constantine, and the great aqueduct, frequently ascribed to Justinian, which is 840 feet long and 112 feet high, is believed to have been constructed during the reign of the former emperor.] Similar effects must have followed from the construction of the numerous aqueducts which supplied ancient Rome with such a profuse abundance of water. [Footnote: The unhealthiness of the Roman Campagna is ascribed by many mediaeval as well as later writers to the escape of water from the ancient aqueducts, which had fallen out of repair from neglect, or been broken down by enemies in the sieges of Rome.] On the other hand, the filtration of water through the banks or walls of an aqueduct carried upon a high level across low ground, often injures the adjacent soil, and is prejudicial to the health of the neighboring population; and it has been observed in Switzerland and elsewhere, that fevers have been produced by the stagnation of the water in excavations from which earth had been taken to form embankments for railways. If we consider only the influence of physical improvements on civilized life, we shall perhaps ascribe to navigable canals a higher importance, or at least a more diversified influence, than to aqueducts or to any other works of man designed to control the waters of the earth, and to affect their distribution. They bind distant regions together by social ties, through the agency of the commerce they promote; they facilitate the transportation of military stores and engines, and of other heavy material connected with the discharge of the functions of government; they encourage industry by giving marketable value to raw material and to objects of artificial elaboration which would otherwise be worthless on account of the cost of conveyance; they supply from their surplus waters means of irrigation and of mechanical power; and, in many other ways, they contribute much to advance the prosperity and civilization of nations. Nor are they wholly without geographical importance. They sometimes drain lands by conveying off water which would otherwise stagnate on the surface, and, on the other hand, like aqueducts, they render the neighboring soil cold and moist by the percolation of water through their embankments; [Footnote: Sismondi, speaking of the Tuscan canals, observes: "But inundations are not the only damage caused by the waters to the plains of Tuscany. Raised, as the canals are, above the soil, the water percolates through their banks, penetrates every obstruction, and, in spite of all the efforts of industry, sterilizes and turns to morasses fields which nature and the richness of the soil seemed to have designed for the most abundant harvests. In ground thus pervaded with moisture, or rendered COLD, as the Tuscans express it, by the filtration of the canal-water, the vines and the mulberries, after having for a few years yielded fruit of a saltish taste, rot and perish. The wheat decays in the ground, or dies as soon as it sprouts. Winter crops are given up, and summer cultivation tried for a time; but the increasing humidity, and the saline matter communicated to the earth--which affects the taste of all its products, even to the grasses, which the cattle refuse to touch--at last compel the husbandman to abandon his fields and leave uncultivated a soil that no longer repays his labor."--Tableau de l'Agriculture Toscane, pp. 11, 12.] they dam up, check, and divert the course of natural currents, and deliver them at points opposite to, or distant from, their original outlets; they often require extensive reservoirs to feed them thus retaining through the year accumulations of water--which would otherwise run off, or evaporate in the dry season--and thereby enlarging the evaporable surface of the country; and we have already seen that they interchange the flora and the fauna of provinces widely separated by nature. All these modes of action certainly influence climate and the character of terrestrial surface, though our means of observation are not yet perfected enough to enable us to appreciate and measure their effects. Antiquity of Irrigation. We know little of the history of the extinct civilizations which preceded the culture of the classic ages, and no nation has, in modern times, spontaneously emerged from barbarian and created for itself the arts of social life. [Footnote: I ought perhaps to except the Mexicans and the Peruvians, whose arts and institutions are not yet shown to be historically connected with those of any more ancient people. The lamentable destruction of so many memorials of these tribes, by the ignorance and bigotry of the so-called Christian barbarians who conquered them, has left us much in the dark as to many points of their civilization; but they seem to have reached that stage where continued progress in knowledge and in power over nature is secure, and a few more centuries of independence might have brought them to originate for themselves most of the great inventions which the last four centuries have bestowed upon man.] The improvements of the savage races whose history we can distinctly trace are borrowed and imitative, and our theories as to the origin and natural development of industrial art are conjectural. Of course, the relative antiquity of particular branches of human industry depends much upon the natural character of soil, climate, and spontaneous vegetable and animal life in different countries; and while the geographical influence of man would, under given circumstances, be exerted in one direction, it would, under different conditions, act in an opposite or a diverging line. I have given some reasons for thinking that in the climates to which our attention has been chiefly directed, man's first interference with the natural arrangement and disposal of the waters was in the way of drainage of surface. But if we are to judge from existing remains alone, we should probably conclude that irrigation is older than drainage; for, in the regions regarded by general tradition as the cradle of the human race, we find traces of canals evidently constructed for the former purpose at a period long preceding the ages of which we have any written memorials. There are, in ancient Armenia, extensive districts which were already abandoned to desolation at the earliest historical epoch, but which, in a yet remoter antiquity, had been irrigated by a complicated and highly artificial system of canals, the lines of which can still be followed; and there are, in all the highlands where the sources of the Euphrates rise, in Persia, in Egypt, in India, and in China, works of this sort which must have been in existence before man had begun to record his own annals. In warm countries, such as most of those just mentioned, the effects I have described as usually resulting from the clearing of the forests would very soon follow. In such climates, the rains are inclined to be periodical; they are also violent, and for these reasons the soil would be parched in summer and liable to wash in winter. In these countries, therefore, the necessity for irrigation must soon have been felt, and its introduction into mountainous regions like Armenia must have been immediately followed by a system of terracing, or at least scarping the hillsides. Pasture and meadow, indeed, may be irrigated even when the surface is both steep and irregular, as may be observed abundantly on the Swiss as well as on the Piedmontese slope of the Alps; but in dry climates, ploughland and gardens on hilly grounds require terracing, both for supporting the soil and for administering water by irrigation, and it should be remembered that terracing, of itself, even without special arrangements for controlling the distribution of water, prevents or at least checks the flow of rain-water, and gives it time to sink into the ground instead of running off over the surface. The summers in Egypt, in Syria, and in Asia Minor and even Rumelia, are almost rainless. In such climates, the neccssity of irrigation is obvious, and the loss of the ancient means of furnishing it helps to explain the diminished fertility of most of the countries in question. [Footnote: In Egypt, evaporation and absorption by the earth are so rapid, that all annual crops require irrigation during the whole period of their growth. As fast as the water retires by the subsidence of the annual inundation, the seed is sown upon the still moist, uncovered soil, and irrigation begins at once. Upon the Nile, you hear the creaking of the water-wheels, and sometimes the movement of steam-pumps, through the whole night, while the poorer cultivators unceasingly ply the simple shadoof, or bucket-and-sweep, laboriously raising the water from trough to trough by as many as six or seven stages when the river is low. The bucket is of flexible leather, with a stiff rim, and is emptied into the trough, not by inverting it like a wooden bucket, but by putting the hand beneath and pushing the bottom up till the water all runs out over the brim, or, in other words, by turning the vessel inside out. The quantity of water thus withdrawn from the Nile is enormous. Most of this is evaporated directly from the surface or the superficial strata, but some moisture percolates down and oozes through the banks into the river again, while a larger quantity sinks till it joins the slow current of infiltration by which the Nile water pervades the earth of the valley to the distance, at some points, of not less than fifty miles.] The surface of Palestine, for example, is composed, in a great measure, of rounded limestone hills, once, no doubt, covered with forests. These were partially removed before the Jewish conquest. [Footnote: "Forests," "woods," and "groves," are frequently mentioned in the Old Testament as existing at particular places, and they are often referred to by way of illustration, as familiar objects. "Wood" is twice spoken of as a material in the New Testament, but otherwise--at least according to Cruden--not one of the above words occurs in that volume. In like manner, while the box, the cedar, the fir, the oak, the pine, "beams," and "timber," are very frequently mentioned in the Old Testament, not one of these words is found in the New, EXCEPT the case of the "beam in the eye," in the parable in Matthew and Luke. This interesting fact, were other evidence wanting, would go far to prove that a great change had taken place in this respect between the periods when the Old Testament and the New were respectively composed; for the scriptural writers, and the speakers introduced into their narratives, are remarkable for their frequent allusions to the natural objects and the social and industrial habits which characterized their ages and their country.] When the soil began to suffer from drought, reservoirs to retain the waters of winter were hewn in the rock near the tops of the hills, and the declivities were terraced. So long as the cisterns were in good order, and the terraces kept up, the fertility of Palestine was unsurpassed, but when misgovernment and foreign and intestine war occasioned the neglect or destruction of these works--traces of which still meet the traveller's eye at every step,--when the reservoirs were broken and the terrace walls had fallen down, there was no longer water for irrigation in summer, the rains of winter soon washed away most of the thin layer of earth upon the rocks, and Palestine was reduced almost to the condition of a desert. The course of events has been the same in Idumaea. The observing traveller discovers everywhere about Petra, particularly if he enters the city by the route of Wadi Ksheibeh, very extensive traces of ancient cultivation, and upon the neighboring ridges are the ruins of numerous cisterns evidently constructed to furnish a supply of water for irrigation. [Footnote: One of these on Mount Hor, two stories deep, is in such good preservation, although probably not repaired for many centuries, that I found ten feet of water in it in June, 1851.] In primitive ages, the precipitation of winter in these hilly countries was, in great part, retained for a time in the superficial soil, first by the vegetable mould of the forests, and then by the artificial arrangements I have described. The water imbibed by the earth was partly taken up by direct evaporation, partly absorbed by vegetation, and partly carried down by infiltration to subjacent strata which gave it out in springs at lower levels, and thus a fertility of soil and a condition of the atmosphere were maintained sufficient to admit of the dense population that once inhabited those now arid wastes. At present, the rain-water runs immediately off from the surface and is carried down to the sea, or is drunk up by the sands of the wadis, and the hillsides which once teemed with plenty are bare of vegetation, and seared by the scorching winds of the desert. In fact, climatic conditions render irrigation a necessity in all the oriental countries which have any importance in ancient or in modern history, and there can be no doubt that this diffusion of water over large surfaces has a certain reaction on climate. Some idea of the extent of artificially watered soil in India may be formed from the fact that in fourteen districts of the Presidency of Madras, not less than 43,000 reservoirs, constructed by the ancient native rulers for the purpose of irrigation, are now in use, and that there are in those districts at least 10,000 more which are in ruins and useless. These reservoirs are generally formed by damming the outlets of natural valleys; and the dams average half a mile in length, though some of them are thirty miles long and form ponds covering from 37,000 to 50,000 acres. The areas of these reservoirs alone considerably increase the water-surface, and each one of them irrigates an extent of cultivated ground much larger than itself. Hence there is a great augmentation of humid surface from those constructions. [Footnote: The present government of India obtains the same result more economically and advantageously by constructing in many provinces of that vast empire canals of great length and capacity, which not only furnish a greater supply of water than the old reservoirs, but so distribute it as to irrigate a larger area than could be watered by any system of artificial basins. The excavacations for the Ganges Canal were nearly equal to those for the Suez Canal, falling little short of 100,000 cubic yards, without counting feeders and accessory lines amounting to a length of 3,000 miles. This canal, according to a recent article in the London Times, waters a tract of land 320 miles long by 50 broad. The Jumna Canal, 130 miles long, with 608 miles of distributing branches, waters a territory 120 miles long with a breadth of 15 miles. Other statements estimate the amount of land actually under irrigation in British India at 6,000,000 acres, and add that canals now in construction will water as much more. The Indian irrigation canals are generally navigable, some of them by boats of large tonnage, and the canals return a net revenue of from five to twenty per cent. on their cost.] The cultivable area of Egypt, or the space between desert and desert where cultivation would be possible, is now estimated at ten thousand square statute miles. [Footnote: The area which the waters of the Nile, left to themselves, would now cover is greater than it would have been in ancient times, because the bed of the river has been elevated, and consequently the lateral spread of the inundation increased. See Smith's Dictionary of Geography, article "Aegyptus". But the industry of the Egyptians in the days of the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies carried the Nile-water to large provinces, which have now been long abandoned and have relapsed into the condition of desert. "Anciently," observes the writer of the article "Egypt" in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, "2,735 square miles more [about 3,700 square statute miles] may have been cultivated. In the best days of Egypt, probably all the land was cultivated that could be made available for agricultural purposes, and hence we may estimate the ancient arable area of that country at not less than 11,000 square statute miles, or fully double its present extent." According to an article in the Bollettino della Societa Geografica Italiana, vol. v., pt. iii., p. 210, the cultivated soil of Egypt in 1869 amounted to 4,500,000 acres, and the remaining soil capable of cultivation was estimated at 2,000,000 acres.] Much of the surface, though not out of the reach of irrigation, lies too high to be economically watered, and irrigation and cultivation are therefore at present confined to an area of seven thousand square miles, nearly the whole of which is regularly and constantly watered when not covered by the inundation, except in the short interval between the harvest and the rise of the waters. For nearly half of the year, then, irrigation adds seven thousand square miles to the humid surface of the Nile valley, or, in other words, more than decuples the area from which an appreciable quantity of moisture would otherwise be evaporated; for after the Nile has retired within its banks, its waters by no means cover one-tenth of the space just mentioned. The Nile receives not a single tributary in its course below Khartoum; there is not so much as one living spring in the whole land, [Footnote: The so-called spring at Heliopolis is only a thread of water infiltrated from the Nile or the canals.] and, with the exception of a narrow strip of coast, where the annual precipitation is said to amount to six inches, the fall of rain in the territory of the Pharaohs is not two inches in the year. The subsoil of the whole valley is pervaded with moisture by infiltration from the Nile, and water can everywhere be found at the depth of a few feet. Were irrigation suspended, and Egypt abandoned, as in that case it must be, to the operations of nature, there is no doubt that trees, the roots of which penetrate deeply, would in time establish themselves on the deserted soil, fill the valley with verdure, and perhaps at last temper the climate, and even call down abundant rain from the heavens. [Footnote: The date and the doum palm, the sont and many other acacias, the caroub, the sycamore and other trees grow in Egypt without irrigation, and would doubtless spread through the entire valley in a few years.] But the immediate effect of discontinuing irrigation would be, first, an immense reduction of the evaporation from the valley in the dry season, and then a greatly augmented dryness and heat of the atmosphere. Even the almost constant north wind--the strength of which would be increased in consequence of these changes--would little reduce the temperature of the narrow cleft between the burning mountains which hem in the channel of the Nile, so that a single year would transform the most fertile of soils to the most barren of deserts, and render uninhabitable a territory that irrigation makes capable of sustaining as dense a population as has ever existed in any part of the world. [Footnote: Wilkinson states that the total population, which, two hundred years ago, was estimated at 4,000,000, amounted till lately to only about 1,800,000 souls, having been reduced since the year 1800 from 2,500,000 to less than 2,000,000.--Handbook for Travellers in Egypt. p. 10. The population at the end of the year 1869 is computed at 5,215,000.--Bollettino della Soc. Geog. Ital., vol. v., pt. iii., p. 215. This estimate doubtless includes countries bordering on the upper Nile not embraced in Wilkinson's statistics.] Whether man found the valley of the Nile a forest, or such a waste as I have just described, we do not historically know. In either case, he has not simply converted a wilderness into a garden, but has unquestionably produced extensive climatic change. [Footnote: Ritter supposes Egypt to have been a sandy desert when it was first occupied by man. "The first inhabitant of the sandy valley of the Nile was a desert-dweller, as his neighbors right and left, the Libyan, the nomade Arab, still are. But the civilized people of Egypt transformed, by canals, the waste into the richest granary of the world; they liberated themselves from the shackles of the rock and sand desert, in the midst of which, by a wise distribution of the fluid through the solid geographical form, by irrigation in short, they created a region of culture most rich in historical monuments."--Einleitung zur allgemeinen vergleichenden Geographie, pp. 165, 166. This view seems to me highly improbable; for great rivers, in warm climates, are never bordered by sandy plains. A small stream may be swallowed up by sands, but if the volume of water is too large to be carried off by evaporation or drank up by absorption, it saturates its banks with moisture, and unless resisted by art, converts them into marshes covered with aquatio vegetation. By canals and embankments, man has done much to modify the natural distribution of the waters of the Nile; yet the annual inundation is not his work, and the river must have overflowed its banks and carried spontaneous vegetation with its waters, as well before as since Egypt was first occupied by the human family. There is, indeed, some reason to suppose that man lived upon the banks of the Nile when its channel was much lower, and the spread of its inundations much narrower, than at present; but wherever its flood reached, there the forest would propagate itself, and its shores would certainly have been morasses rather than sands. The opinions of Ritter on this subject are not only improbable, but they are contradictory to the little historical testimony we possess. Herodotus informs us in Euterpe that except the province of Thebes, all Egypt, that is to say, the whole of the Delta and of middle Egypt extending to Hemopolis Magna in N. L. 27 degrees 45 minutes, was originally a morass. This morass was doubtless in great part covered with trees, and hence, in the most ancient hieroglyphical records, a tree is the sign for the cultivated land between the desert and the channel of the Nile. In all probability, the real change effected by human art in the superficial geography of Egypt is the conversion of pools and marshes into dry land, by a system of transverse dikes, which compelled the flood-water to deposit its sediment on the banks of the river instead of carrying it to the sea. The colmate of modern Italy were thus anticipated in ancient Egypt.] The fields of Egypt are more regularly watered than those of any other country bordering on the Mediterranean, except the rice-grounds in Italy, and perhaps the marcite or winter meadows of Lombardy; but irrigation is more or less employed throughout almost the entire basin of that sea, and is everywhere attended with effects which, if less in degree, are analogous in character, to those resulting from it in Egypt. There are few things in European husbandry which surprise English or American observers so much as the extent to which irrigation is employed in agriculture, and that, too, on soils, and with a temperature, where their own experience would have led them to suppose it would be injurious to vegetation rather than beneficial to it. In Switzerland, for example, grass-grounds on the very borders of glaciers are freely irrigated, and on the Italian slope of the Alps water is applied to meadows at heights exceeding 6,000 feet. The summers in Northern Italy, though longer, are very often not warmer than in the Northern United States; and in ordinary years, the summer rains are as frequent and as abundant in the former country as in the latter. [Footnote: The mean annual precipitation in Lombardy is thirty-six inches, of which nearly two-thirds fall during the season of irrigation. The rain-fall is about the same in Piedmont, though the number of days in the year classed as "rainy" is said to be but twenty-four in the former province while it is seventy in the latter.--Baird Smith, Italian Irrigation, vol. i., p. 196. The necessity of irrigation in the great alluivial plain of Northern Italy is partly explained by the fact that the superficial stratum of fine earth and vegetable mould is very extensively underlaid by beds of pebbles and gravel brought down by mountain torrents at a remote epoch. The water of the surface-soil drains rapdily down into these loose beds, and passes off by subterranean channels to some unknown point of discharge; but this circumstance alone is not a sufficient solution. It is not possible that the habits of vegetables, grown in countries where irrigation has been immemorially employed, have been so changed that they require water under conditions of soil and climate where their congeners, which have not been thus indulgently treated, do not It is a remarkable fact that during the season of irrigation, when large tracts of surface are almost constantly saturated with water, there is an extraordinary dryness in the atmosphere of Lombardy, the hygrometer standing for days together a few degrees only above zero, while in winter the instrument indicates extreme humidity of the air, approaching to total saturation.--Baird Smith, Italian Irrigation, i., p. 189. There are some atmospheric phenomena in Northern Italy, which an American finds it hard to reconcile with what he has observed in the United States. To an American eye, for instance, the sky of Piedmont, Lombardy, and the northern coast of the Mediterranean, is always whitish and curdled, and it never has the intensity and fathomless depth of the blue of his native heavens. And yet the heat of the sun's rays, as measured by sensation, and, at the same time, the evaporation, are greater than they would be with the thermometer at the same point in America. I have frequently felt in Italy, with the mercury below 60 degrees Fahrenheit, and with a mottled and almost opaque sky, a heat of solar irradiation which I can compare to nothing but the scorching sensation experienced in America at a temperature twenty degrees higher, during the intervals between showers, or before a rain, when the clear blue of the sky seems infinite in depth and transparency. Such circumstances may create a necessity for irrigation where it would otherwise be superfluous, if not absolutely injurious. In speaking of the superior apparent clearness of the SKY in America, I confine myself to the concave vault of the heavens, and do not mean to assert that terrestrial objects are generally visible at greater distances in the United States than in Italy. Indeed, I am rather disposed to maintain the contrary; for though I know that the lower strata of the atmosphere in Europe never equal in transparency the air near the earth in New Mexico, Peru, and Chili, yet I think the accidents of the coast-line of the Riviera, as, for example, between Nice and La Spezia, and those of the incomparable Alpine panorama seen from Turin, are distinguishable at greater distances than they would be in the United States.] Yet in Piedmont and Lombardy irrigation is bestowed upon almost every crop, while in our Northern States it is never employed at all in farming husbandry, or indeed for any purpose except in kitchen-gardens, and possibly, in rare cases, in some other small branch of agricultural industry. [Footnote: In our comparatively rainless Western territory, irrigation is extensively and very beneficially employed. In the Salt Lake valley and in California, hundreds if not thousands of miles of irrigation canals have been constructed, and there is little doubt that artificially watering the soil will soon be largely resorted to in the older States. See valuable observations on this subject in Hayden, Preliminary Report on Geological Survey of Wyoming, 1870, pp. 194, 195, 258-261.] In general, it may be said that irrigation is employed only in the seasons when the evaporating power of the sun and the capacity of the air for absorbing humidity are greatest, or, in other words, that the soil is nowhere artificially watered except when it is so dry that little moisture would be evaporated from it, and, consequently, every acre of irrigated ground is so much added to the evaporable surface of the country. When the supply of water is unlimited, it is allowed, after serving its purpose on one field, to run into drains, canals, or rivers. But in most regions where irrigation is regularly employed, it is necessary to economize the water; after passing over or through one parcel of ground, it is conducted to another; no more is usually withdrawn from the canals at anyone point than is absorbed by the soil it irrigates, or evaporated from it, and, consequently, it is not restored to liquid circulation, except by infiltration or precipitation. We are safe, then, in saying that the humidity evaporated from any artificially watered soil is increased by a quantity bearing a large proportion to the whole amount distributed over it, for most even of that which is absorbed by the earth is immediately given out again either by vegetables or by evaporation; and the hygrometrical and thermometrical condition of the atmosphere in irrigated countries is modified proportionally to the extent of the practice. It is not easy to ascertain precisely either the extent of surface thus watered, or the amount of water supplied, in any given country, because these quantities vary with the character of the season; but there are not many districts in Southern Europe where the management of the arrangements for irrigation is not one of the most important branches of agricultural labor. The eminent engineer Lombardini describes the system of irrigation in Lombardy as, "every day in summer, diffusing over 550,000 hectares [1,375,000 acres] of land 45,000,000 cubic metres [nearly 600,000,000 cubic yards] of water, which is equal to the entire volume of the Seine, at an ordinary flood, or a rise of three metres above the hydrometer at the bridge of La Tournelle at Paris." [Footnote: Memorie sui progetti per Pestensions dell' Irrigazione, etc., il Politecniso, for January, 1868, p. 6.] Niel states the quantity of land irrigated in the former kingdom of Sardinia, including Savoy, in 1856, at 240,000 hectares, or not much Ices than 600,000 acres. This is about four-thirteenths of the cultivable soil of the kingdom. According to the same author, the irrigated lands in Franco did not exceed 100,000 hectares, or 247,000 acres, while those in Lombardy amounted to 450,000 hectares, more than 1,100,000 acres. [Footnote: Niel, L'Agriculture des Etats Sardes, p. 232. This estimate, it will be observed, is 275,000 acres less than that of Lombardini.] In these three states alone, then, there were more than three thousand square miles of artificially watered land, and if we add the irrigated soils of the rest of Italy, [Footnote: In 1865 the total quantity of irrigated lands in the kingdom of Italy was estimated at 1,357,677 hectares, or 2,000,000 acres, of which one-half is supplied with water by artificial canals. The Canal Cavour adds 250,000 acres to the above amount. The extent of artificially watered ground in Italy is consequently equal to the entire area of the States of Delaware and Rhode Island.--See the official report, Sulle Bonificazione, Risaie, ed Irrigazioni, 1865, p. 269.] of the Mediterranean islands, of the Spanish peninsula, of Turkey in Europe and in Asia Minor, of Syria, of Egypt and the remainder of Northern Africa, we shall see that irrigation increases the evaporable surface of the Mediterranean basin by a quantity bearing no inconsiderable proportion to the area naturally covered by water within it. Arrangements are concluded, and new plans proposed, for an immense increase of the lands fertilized by irrigation in France and in Belgium, as well as in Spain and Italy, and there is every reason to believe that the artificially watered soil of the latter country will be doubled, that of France quadrupled, before the end of this century. There can be no doubt that by these operations man is exercising a powerful influence on the soil, on vegetable and animal life, and on climate, and hence that in this, as in many other fields of industry, he is truly a geographical agency. [Footnote: It belongs rather to agriculture than to geography to discuss the quality of the crops obtained by irrigation, or the permanent effects produced by it on the productiveness of the soil. There is no doubt, however, that all crops which can be raised without watering are superior in flavor and in nutritive power to those grown by the aid of irrigation. Garden vegetables, particularly, profusely watered, are so insipid as to be hardly eatable. Wherever irrigation is practised, there is an almost irresistible tendency, especially among ignorant cultivators, to carry it to excess; and in Piedmont and Lombardy, if the supply of water is abundant, it is so liberally applied as sometimes not only to injure the quality of the product, but to drown the plants and diminish the actual weight of the crop. Grass-lands are perhaps an exception to this remark, as it seems almost impossible to apply too much water to them, provided it be kept in motion and not allowed to stagnate on the surface. Protestor Liebig, in his Modern Agriculture, says: "There is not to be found in chemistry a more wonderful phenomenon, one which more confounds all human wisdom, than is presented by the soil of a garden or field. By the simplest experiment, any one may satisfy himself that rain-water filtered through field or garden soil does not dissolve out a trace of potash, silicic acid, ammonia, or phosphoric acid. The soil does not give up to the water one particle of the food of plants which it contains. The most continuous rains cannot remove from the field, except mechanically, any of the essential constituents of ite fertility." "The soil not only retains firmly all the food of plants which is actually in it, but its power to preserve all that may be useful to them extends much farther. If rain or other water holding in solution ammonia, potash, and phosphoric and silicic acids, be brought in contact with soil, these substances disappear almost immediately from the solution; the soil withdraws them from the water. Only such substances are completely withdrawn by the soil as are indispensable articles of food for plants; all others remain wholly or in part in solution." These opinions were confirmed, soon after their promulgation, by the experimental researches of other chemists, but are now questioned, and they are not strictly in accordance with the alleged experience of agriculturists in those parts of Italy where irrigation is most successfully applied. They believe that the constituents of vegetable growth are washed out of the soil by excessive and long-continued watering. They consider it also established as a fact of observation, that water which has flowed through or over rich ground is more valuable for irrigation than water from the same source, which has not been impregnated with fertilizing substances by passing through soils containing them; and, on the other hand, that water, rich in the elements of vegetation, parts with them in serving to irrigate a poor soil, and is therefore less valuable as a fertilizer of lower grounds to which it may afterward be conducted. See Baird Smith, Italian Irrigation, i., p. 25; Scott Moncrieff, Irrigation in Southern Europe, pp. 34, 87, 89; Lombardini, Sulle Inondazioni etc., p. 73; Mangon, Les Irrigations, p. 48. The practice of irrigation--except in mountainous countries where springs and rivulets are numerous--is attended with very serious economical, social, and political evils. The construction of canals and their immensely ramified branches, and the grading and scarping of the ground to be watered, are always expensive operations, and they very often require an amount of capital which can be commanded only by the state, by moneyed corporations, or by very wealthy proprietors; the capacity of the canals must be calculated with reference to the area intended to be irrigated, and when they and their branches are once constructed, it in very difficult to extend them, or to accommodate any of their original arrangements to changes in the condition of the soil, or in the modes or objects of cultivation; the flow of the water being limited by the abundance of the source or the capacity of the canals, the individual proprietor cannot be allowed to withdraw water at will, according to his own private interest or convenience, but both the time and the quantity of supply must be regulated by a general system applicable, as far as may be, to the whole area irrigated by the same canal, and every cultivator must conform his industry to a plan which may be quite at variance with his special objects or with his views of good husbandry. The clashing interests and the jealousies of proprietors depending on the same means of supply are a source of incessant contention and litigation, and the caprices or partialities of the officers who control, or of contractors who farm, the canals, lead not unfrequently to ruinous injustice towards individual landholders. These circumstances discourage the division of the soil into small properties, and there is a constant tendency to the accumulation of large estates of irrigated land in the hands of great capitalists, and consequently to the dispossession of the small cultivators, who pass from the condition of owners of the land to that of hireling tillers. Though farmers are no longer yeomen, but peasants. Having no interest in the soil which composes their country, they are virtually expatriated, and the middle class, which ought to constitute the real physical and moral strength of the land, ceases to exist as a rural estate, and is found only among the professional, the mercantile, and the industrial population of the cities.--See, on the difficulty of regulating irrigation by law, Negri, Idea su una Legge in materia di Acqua, 1864; and Agmard, Irrigations du Midi de L'Europe' where curious and important remarks on the laws and usages of the Spanish Moors and the Spaniards, in respect to irrigation, will be found. The Moors were so careful in maintaining the details of their system, that they kept in publio offices bronze models of their dams and sluices, as guides for repairs and rebuilding. Some of these models are still preserved. --Ibidem, pp. 204, 205. For an account of recent irrigation works in Spain, see Spon, Dictionary of Engineering, article Irrigation. As near as can be ascertained, the amount of water applied to irrigated lands is scarcely anywhere less than the total precipitation during the season of vegetable growth, and in general it much exceeds that quantity. In grass-grounds and in field-culture it ranges from 27 or 28 to 60 inches, while in smaller crops, tilled by hand-labor, it is sometimes carried as high as 300 inches. [Footnote: Niel, Agriculture des Etata Sardes, p. 237. Lombardini's computation just given allows eighty-one cubic metres per day to the hectare [two hundred and sixty cubic yards to the acre], which, supposing the season of irrigation to be one hundred days, in equal to a precipitation of thirty-two inches. But in Lombardy, water in applied to some crops during a longer period than one hundred days; and in the marcite it flows over the ground even in winter. According to Boussingault (Economie Rurale, ii., p. 240), grass-grounds ought to receive, in Germany, twenty-one centimetres of water per week, and with less than half that quantity it is not advisable to incur the expense of supplying it. The ground is irrigated twenty-five or thirty times, and if the full quantity of twenty-one centimetres is applied, it receives more than two hundred inches of water, or six times the total amount of precipitation. Puvis, quoted by Boussingault, after much research comes to the conclusion that a proper quantity is twenty centimetres [eight inches] applied twenty-five or thirty times, which corresponds with the estimate just stated. Puvis adds--and, as our author thinks, with reason--that this amount might be doubled without disadvantage.--Ibidem, ii., p. 248, 249. In some parts of France this quantity is immensely exceeded, and it is very important to observe, with reference to the employment of irrigation in our Northern States, that water is most freely supplied in the COLDER provinces. Thus, in the Vosges, meadows are literally flooded for weeks together, and while in the department of Vancluse a meadow may receive, in five waterings of six and a half hours each, twenty-one inches of wnter, in the Vosges it might be deluged for twenty-four hundred hours in six applications, the enormous quantity of thirteen hundred feet of water flowing over it. See the important work of Herve Mangon, Sur l'emploi des eaux dans les Irrigations, chap. ix. Boussingault observes that rain-water is vastly more fertilizing than the water of irrigating canals, and therefore the supply of the latter must be greater. This is explained partly by the different character of the substances held in solution or suspension by the waters of the earth and of the sky, partly by the higher temperature of the latter, and, possibly, partly also by the mode of application--the rain being finely divided in its fall or by striking plants on the ground, river-water flowing in a continuous sheet. The temperature of the water is thought even more important than its composition. The sources which irrigate the marcite of Lombardy--meadows so fertile that less than an acre furnishes grass for a cow the whole year--are very warm. The ground watered by them never freezes, and a first crop, for soiling, is cut from it in January or February. The Canal Cavour--which takes its supply chiefly from the Po at Chivasso, fourteen or fifteen miles below Turin--furnishes water of much higher fertilizing power than that derived from the Dora Baltea and the Sesia, both because it is warmer, and because it transports a more abundant and a richer sediment than the latter streams, which are fed by Alpine ice-fields and melting snows, and which flow, for long distances, in channels ground smooth and bare by ancient glaciers and not now contributing much vegetable mould or fine slime to their waters.] The rice-grounds and the marcite of Lombardy are not included in these estimates of the amount of water applied. [Footnote: About one-seventh of the water which flows over the marcite is absorbed by the soil of those meadows or evaporated from their surface, and consequently six-sevenths of the supply remain for use on ground at lower levels.] The meteorological effect of irrigation on a large scale, which would seem prima facie most probable, would be an increase of precipitation in the region watered. [Footnote: On the pluviometric effect of irrigation, see Lombardini, Sulle Inondazioni, etc., p. 72, 74; the same author, Essai Hydrologique sur le Nil, p. 32; Messedaglia, Analisi dell' opera di Champion, pp. 96, 97, note; and Baird Smith, Italian Irrigation, i., pp. 189, 190. In an article in Aus der Natur, vol. 57, p. 443, it is stated that the rain on the Isthmus of Suez has increased since the opening of the canal, and has enlarged the evaporable surface of the country; but this cannot be accepted as an established fact without further evidence.] Hitherto scientific observation has recorded no such increase, but in a question of so purely local a character, we must ascribe very great importance to a consideration which I have noticed elsewhere, but which, has been frequently overlooked by meteorologists, namely, that vapors exhaled in one district may very probably be condensed and precipitated in another very distant from their source. If then it were proved that an extension of irrigated soil was not followed by an increase of rain-fall in the same territory, the probability that the precipitation was augmented SOMEWHERE would not be in the least diminished. But though we cannot show that in the irrigated portions of Italy the summer rain is more abundant than it was before irrigation was practised--for we know nothing of the meteorological conditions of that country at so remote a period--the fact that there is a very considerable precipitation in the summer months in Lombardy is a strong argument in favor of such increase. In the otherwise similar climate of Rumelia and of much of Asia Minor, irrigation is indeed practiced, but in a relatively small proportion. In those provinces there is little or no summer rain. Is it not highly probable that the difference between Italy and Turkey in this respect is to be ascribed, in part at least, to extensive irrigation in the former country, and the want of it in the latter It is true that, in its accessible strata, the atmosphere of Lombardy is extremely dry during the period of irrigation, but it receives an immense quantity of moisture by the evaporation from the watered soil, and the rapidity with which the aqueous vapor is carried up to higher regions--where, if not driven elsewhere by the wind, it would be condensed by the cold into drops of rain or at least visible clouds--is the reason why it is so little perceptible in the air near the ground. [Footnote: Is not the mottled appearance of the upper atmosphere in Italy, which I have already noticed, perhaps due in part to the condensation of the aqueous vapor exhaled by watered ground ] But the question of an influence on temperature rests on a different ground; for though the condensation of vapor may not take place within days of time and degrees of distance from the hour and the place where it was exhaled from the surface, a local refrigeration must necessarily accompany a local evaporation. Hence, though the summer temperature of Lombardy is high, we are warranted in affirming that it must have been still higher before the introduction of irrigation, and would again become so if that practice were discontinued. [Footnote: I do not know that observations have been made on the thermometric influence of irrigation, but I have often noticed that, on the irrigated plains of Piedmont ten miles south of Turin, the morning temperature in summer was several degrees below that marked at the Observatory in the city.] The quantity of water artificially withdrawn from running streams for the purpose of irrigation is such as very sensibly to affect their volume, and it is, therefore, an important element in the geography of rivers. Brooks of no trifling current are often wholly diverted from their natural channels to supply the canals, and their entire mass of water is completely absorbed or evaporated, so that only such proportion as is transmitted by infiltration reaches the river they originally fed. Irrigation, therefore, diminishes great rivers in warm countries by cutting off their sources of supply as well as by direct abstraction of water from their main channels. We have just seen that the system of irrigation in Lombardy deprives the Po of a quantity of water equal to the total delivery of the Seine at ordinary flood, or, in other words, of the equivalent of a tributary navigable for hundreds of miles by vessels of considerable burden. The new canals executed and projected will greatly increase the loss. The water required for irrigation in Egypt is less than would be supposed from the exceeding rapidity of evaporation in that arid climate; for the soil is thoroughly saturated during the inundation, and infiltration from the Nile continues to supply a considerable amount of humidity in the dryest season. Linant Bey computed that, in the Delta, fifteen and one-third cubic yards per day sufficed to irrigate an acre. If we suppose water to be applied for one hundred and fifty days during the season of growth, this would be equivalent to a total precipitation of about seventeen inches and one-third. Taking the area of actually cultivated soil in Egypt at the estimate of 4,500,000 acres, and the average amount of water daily applied in both Upper and Lower Egypt at twelve hundredths of an inch in depth, we have an abstraction of about 74,000,000 cubic yards, which--the mean daily delivery of the Nile being in round numbers 320,000,000 cubic yards--is twenty-three per cent of the average quantity of water contributed to the Mediterranean by that river. [Footnote: The proportion of the waters of the Nile withdrawn for irrigation is greater than this calculation makes it. The quantity required for an acre is less in the Delta than in Upper Egypt, both because the soil of the Delta, to which Linant Bey's estimate applies, lies little higher than the surface of the river, and is partly saturated by infiltration, and because near the sea, in N. L. 30 degrees, evaporation is much less rapid than it is several degrees southwards and in the vicinity of a parched desert.] In estimating the effect of this abstraction of water upon the volume of great rivers, especially in temperate climates and in countries with a hilly surface, we must remember that all the water thus withdrawn--except that which is absorbed by vegetation, that which enters into new inorganic compounds, and that which is carried off by evaporation--is finally restored to the original current by superficial flow or by infiltration. It is generally estimated that from one-third to one-half of the water applied to the fields is absorbed by the earth, and this, with the deductions just given, is returned to the river by direct infiltration, or descends through invisible channels to moisten lower grounds, and thence in part escapes again into the bed of the river, by similar conduits, or in the form of springs and rivulets. Interesting observations have lately been made on this subject in France and important practical results arrived at. It was maintained that mountain irrigation is not ultimately injurious to that of the plains below, because lands liberally watered in the spring, when the supply is abundant, act as reservoirs, storing up by absorption water which afterwards filters down to lower grounds or escapes into the channel of the river and keeps up its current in the dry summer months, so as to compensate for what, during those months, is withdrawn from it for upland irrigation. Careful investigation showed that though this proposition is not universally true, it is so in many cases, and there can be no doubt that the loss in the volume of rivers by the abstraction of water for irrigation is very considerably less than the measure of the quantity withdrawn. [Footnote: See Vigan, Etude sur les Irrigations, Paris, 1867; and Scott Moncrieff, Irrigation in Southern Europe, pp. 89, 90. The brook Ain Musa, which runs through the ruined city of Petra and finally disappears in the sands of Wadi el Araba, is a considerable stream in winter, and the inhabitants of that town were obliged to excavate a tunnel through the rock near the right bank, just above the upper entrance of the narrow Sik, to discharge a part of its swollen current. The sagacity of Dr. Robinson detected the necessity of this measure, though the tunnel, the mouth of which was hidden by brushwood, was not discovered till some time after his visit. I even noticed, near the arch that crosses the Sik, unequivocal remains of a sluice by which the water was diverted to the tunnel. Immense labor was also expended in widening the natural channel at several points below the town, to prevent the damming up and setting back of the water--a fact I believe not hitherto noticed by travellers. The Fellahheen above Petra still employ the waters of Ain Musa for irrigation, and in summer the superficial current is wholly diverted from its natural channel for that purpose. At this season, the bed of the brook, which is composed of pebbles, gravel, and sand, is dry in the Sik and through the town; but the infiltration is such that water is generally found by digging to a small depth in the channel. Observing these facts in a visit to Petra in the summer, I was curious to know whether the subterranean waters escaped again to daylight, and I followed the ravine below the town for a long distance. Not very far from the upper entrance of the ravine, arborescent vegetation appeared upon its bottom, and as soon as the ground was well shaded, a thread of water burst out. This was joined by others a little lower down, and, at the distance of a mile from the town, a strong current was formed and ran down towards Wadi el Araba. Similar facts are observed in all countries where the superficial current of water-courses is diverted from their bed for irrigation, but this case is of special interest because it shows the extent of absorption and infiltration even in the torrid climate of Arabia. See Baird Smith, Italian Irrigation, vol. i., pp. 172, 386 and 387.] Irrigation, as employed for certain special purposes in Europe and America, is productive of very prejudicial climatic effects. I refer particularly to the cultivation of rice in the Southern States of the American Union and in Italy. The climate of the Southern States is in general not necessarily unhealthy for the white man, but he can scarcely sleep a single night in the vicinity of the rice-grounds without being attacked by a dangerous fever. The neighborhood of the rice-fields is possibly less pestilential in Lombardy and Piedmont than in South Carolina and Georgia, but still very insalubrious to both man and beast. "Not only does the population decrease where rice is grown," says Escourron-Milliago, "but even the flocks are attacked by typhus. In the rice-grounds the soil is divided into compartments rising in gradual succession to the level of the irrigating canal, in order that the water, after having flowed one field, may be drawn off to another, and thus a single current serve for several compartments, the lowest field, of course, still being higher than the ditch which at last drains both it and the adjacent soil. This arrangement gives a certain force of hydrostatic pressure to the water with which the rice is irrigated, and the infiltration from these fields is said to extend through neighboring grounds, sometimes to the distance of not less than a myriametre, or six English miles, and to be destructive to crops and even trees reached by it. Land thus affected can no longer be employed for any purpose but growing rice, and when prepared for that crop, it propagates still further the evils under which it had itself suffered, and, of course, the mischief is a growing one." [Footnote: Escourrou-Milliago, D'Italie a propos de l'Exposition de Paris, 1856, p. 92. According to an article in the Gazzetto di Torino for the 17th of January, 1869, the deaths from malarious fever in the Canavese district--which is asserted to have been altogether free from this disease before the recent introduction of rice-culture--between the 1st of January and the 15th of October, 1868, were two thousand two hundred and fifty. The extent of the injurious influence of this very lucrative branch of rural industry in Italy is contested by the rice-growers. But see Secondo Laura, Le Risaje, Torino, 1869; Selmi, Il Miasma Palustre, p. 89; and especially Carlo Livi, Della coltivazione del Riso in Italia, in the Nuova Antologia for July, 1871, p. 599 et seqq. According to official statistics, the rice-grounds of Italy, including the islands, amounted in 1866 to 450,000 acres. It is an interesting fact in relation to geographical and climatic conditions, that while little rice is cultivated SOUTH of N. L. 44 degrees in Italy, little is grown in the United States NORTH of 35 degrees. To the southward of the great alluvial plain of the Po, the surface is in general too much broken to admit of the formation of level fields of much extent, and where the ground is suitable, the supply of water is often insufficient. The Moors introduced the cultivation of rice into Spain at an early period of their dominion in that country. The Spaniards sowed rice in Lombardy and in the Neapolitan territory in the 16th century; but besides the want of water and of level ground convenient for irrigation, rice-husbandry has proved so much more pestilential in Southern than in Northern Italy that it has long been discouraged by the Neapolitan government.] Salts deposited by Water of Irrigation. The attentive traveller in Egypt and Nubia cannot fail to notice many localities, generally of small extent, where the soil is rendered infertile by an excess of saline matter in its composition. In many cases, perhaps in all, these barren spots lie rather above the level usually flooded by the inundations of the Nile, and yet they exhibit traces of former cultivation. Observations in India suggest a possible explanation of this fact. A saline efflorescence called "Reh" and "Kuller" is gradually invading many of the most fertile districts of Northern and Western India, and changing them into sterile deserts. It consists principally of sulphate of soda (Glauber's salts), with varying proportions of common salt. These salts (which in small quantities are favorable to fertility of soil) are said to be the gradual result of concentration by evaporation of river and canal waters, which contain them in very minute quantities, and with which the lands are either irrigated or occasionally overflowed. The river inundations in hot countries usually take place but once in a year, and, though the banks remain submerged for days or even weeks, the water at that period, being derived principally from rains and snows, must be less highly charged with mineral matter than at lower stages, and besides, it is always in motion. The water of irrigation, on the other hand, is applied for many months in succession, it is drawn from rivers and canals at the seasons when the proportion of salts is greatest, and it either sinks into the superficial soil, carrying with it the saline substances it holds in solution, or is evaporated from the surface, leaving them upon it. Hence irrigation must impart to the soil more salts than natural inundation. The sterilized grounds in Egypt and Nubia lying above the reach of the floods, as I have said, we may suppose them to have been first cultivated in that remote antiquity when the Nile valley received its earliest inhabitants, and when its lower grounds were in the condition of morasses. They must have been artificially irrigated from the beginning; they may have been under cultivation many centuries before the soil at a lower level was invaded by man, and hence it is natural that they should be more strongly impregnated with saline matter than fields which are exposed every year, for some weeks, to the action of running water so nearly pure that it would be more likely to dissolve salts than to deposit them. SUBTERRANEAN WATERS. I have frequently alluded to a branch of physical geography, the importance of which is but recently adequately recognized--the subterranean waters of the earth considered as stationary reservoirs, as flowing currents, and as filtrating fluids. The earth drinks in moisture by direct absorption from the atmosphere, by the deposition of dew, by rain and snow, by percolation from rivers and other superficial bodies of water, and sometimes by currents flowing into caves or smaller visible apertures. [Footnote: The great limestone plateau of the Karst in Carniola is completely honey-combed by caves through which the drainage of that region is conducted. Rivers of considerable volume pour into some of these caves and can be traced underground to their exit. Thus the Recca has been satisfactorily identified with a stream flowing through the cave of Trebich, and with the Timavo--the Timavus of Virgil and the ancient geographers--which empties through several mouths into the Adriatic between Trieste and Aquileia. The city of Trieste is very insufficiently supplied with fresh water. It has been thought practicable to supply this want by tunnelling through the wall of the plateau, which rises abruptly in the rear of the town, until some subterranean stream is encountered, the current of which can be conducted to the city. More visionary projectors have gone further, and imagined that advantage might be taken of the natural tunnels under the Karst for the passage of roads, railways, and even navigable canals. But however chimerical these latter schemes may seem, there is every reason to believe that art might avail itself of these galleries for improving the imperfect drainage of the champaign country bounded by the Karst, and that stopping or opening the natural channels might very much modify the hydrography of an extensive region. See in Aus des Natur, xx., pp. 250-254, 263-266, two interesting articles founded on the researches of Schmidt. The cases are certainly not numerous where marine currents are known to pour continuously into cavities beneath the surface of the earth, but there is at least one well-authenticated instance of this sort--that of the mill-stream at Argostoli in the island of Cephalonia. It had been long observed that the sea-water flowed into several rifts and cavities in the limestone rocks of the coast, but the phenomenon has excited little attention until very recently. In 1833, three of the entrances were closed, and a regular channel, sixteen feet long and three feet wide, with a fall of three feet, was cut into the mouth of a larger cavity. The sea-water flowed into this canal, and could be followed eighteen or twenty feet beyond its inner terminus, when it disappeared in holes and clefts in the rock. In 1858 the canal had been enlarged to thewidth of five feet and a half, and a depth of a foot. The water pours rapidly through the canal into an irregular depression and forms a pool, the surface of which is three or four feet below the adjacent soil, and about two and a half or three feet below the level of the sea. From this pool it escapes through several holes and clefts in the rock, and has not yet been found to emerge elsewhere. There is a tide at Argostoli of about six inches in still weather, but it is considerably higher with a south wind. I do not find it stated whether water flows through the canal into the cavity at low tide, but it distinctly appears that there is no refluent current, as of course there could not be from a base so much below the sea. Mousson found the delivery through the canal to be at the rate of 24.88 cubic feet to the second; at what stage of the tide does not appear. Other mills of the same sort have been erected, and there appear to be several points on the coast where the sea flows into the land. Various hypotheses have been suggested to explain this phenomenon, some of which assume that the water descends to a great depth beneath the crust of the earth; but the supposition of a difference of level in the surface of the sea on the opposite sides of the island, which seems confirmed by other circumstances, is the most obvious method of explaining these singular facts. If we suppose the level of the water on one side of the island to be raised by the action of currents three or four feet higher than on the other, the existence of cavities and channels in the rock would easily account for a subterranean current beneath the island, and the apertures of escape might be so deep or so small as to elude observation. See Aus der Natur, vol. xix., pp. 129 et seqq. I have lately been informed by a resident of the Ionian Islands, who is familiar with the locality, that the sea flows uninterruptedly into the sub-insular cavities, at all stages of the tide.] Some of this humidity is exhaled again by the soil, some is taken up by organic growths and by inorganic compounds, some poured out upon the surface by springs and either immediately evaporated or carried down to larger streams and to the sea, some flows by subterranean courses into the bed of fresh-water rivers [Footnote: "The affluents received by the Seine below Rouen are so inconsiderable, that the augmentation of the volume of that river must be ascribed principally to springs rising in its bed. This is a point of which engineers now take notice, and M. Belgrand, the able officer charged with the improvement of the navigation of the Seine between Paris and Rouen, has devoted much attention to it."--Babinet, Etudes et Lectures, iii., p. 185. On page 232 of the volume just quoted, the same author observes: "In the lower part of its course, from the falls of the Oise, the Seine receives so few important affluents, that evaporation alone would suffice to exhaust all the water which passes under the bridges of Paris." This supposes a much greater amount of evaporation than has been usually computed, but I believe it is well settled that the Seine conveys to the sea much more water than is discharged into it by all its superficial branches. Babinet states the evaporation from the surface of water at Paris to be twice as great as the precipitation. Belgrand supposes that the floods of the Seine at Paris are not produced by the superficial flow of the water of precipitation into its channel, but from the augmented discharge of its remote mountain sources, when swollen by the rains and melted snows which percolate through the permeable strata in its upper course.--Annales des Ponts et Chaussees, 1851, vol. i.] or of the ocean, and some remains, though even here not in forever motionless repose, to fill deep cavities and underground channels. In every case the aqueous vapors of the air are the ultimate source of supply and all these hidden stores are again returned to the atmosphere by evaporation. The proportion of the water of precipitation taken up by direct evaporation from the surface of the ground seems to have been generally exaggerated, sufficient allowance not being made for moisture carried downwards or in a lateral direction by infiltration or by crevices in the superior rocky or earthy strata. According to Wittwer, Mariotte found that but one-sixth of the precipitation in the basin of the Seine was delivered into that sea by the river, "so that five-sixths remained for evaporation and consumption by the organic world." [Footnote: Physicalische Geographie, p. 286. It does not appear whether this inference is Mariotte's or Wittwer's. I suppose it is a conclusion of the latter. According to Valles, the Seine discharges into the sea thirty per cent. of the precipitation in its valley, while the Po delivers into the Adriatic two-thirds and perhaps even three-quarters of the total down-fall of its basin. The differences between the tributaries of the Mississippi in this respect are remarkable, the Missouri discharging only fifteen per cent., the Yazoo not less than ninety. The explanation of these facts is found in the geographical and geological character of the valleys of these rivers. The Missouri flows with a rapid current through an irregular country, the Yazoo has a very slow flow through a low, alluvial region which is kept constantly almost saturated by infiltration.] Maury estimates the annual amount of precipitation in the valley of the Mississippi at 620 cubic miles, the discharge of that river into the sea at 107 cubic miles, and concludes that "this would leave 513 cubic miles of water to be evaporated from this river-basin annually." [Footnote: Physical Geography of the Sea. Tenth edition. London, 1861, Section 274.] In these and other like computations, the water carried down into the earth by capillary and larger conduits is wholly lost sight of, and no thought is bestowed upon the supply for springs, for common and artesian wells, and for underground rivers, like those in the great caves of Kentucky, which may gush up in fresh-water currents at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea, or rise to the light of day in the far-off peninsula of Florida. [Footnote: In the low peninsula of Florida, rivers, which must have their sources in mountains hundreds of miles distant, pour forth from the earth with a volume sufficient to permit steamboats to ascend to their basins of eruption. In January, 1857, a submarine fresh-water river burst from the bottom of the sea not far from the southern extremity of the peninsula, and for a whole month discharged a current not inferior in volume to the river Mississippi, or eleven times the mean delivery of the Po, and more than six times that of the Nile. We can explain this phenomenon only by supposing that the bed of the sea was suddenly burst up by the hydrostatic upward pressure of the water in a deep reservoir communicating with some great subterranean river or receptacle in the mountains of Georgia or of Cuba, or perhaps even in the valley of the Mississippi.--Thomassy, Essai sur l'Hydrologie. Late southern journals inform us that the creek under the Natural Bridge in Virginia has suddenly disappeared, being swallowed up by newly formed fissures, of unknown depth, in its channel. It does not appear that an outlet for the waters thus absorbed has been discovered, and it is not improbable that they are filling some underground cavity like that which supplied the submarine river just mentioned.] The progress of the emphatically modern science of geology has corrected these erroneous views, because the observations on which it depends have demonstrated not only the existence, but the movement, of water in nearly all geological formations, have collected evidence of the presence of large reservoirs at greater or less depths beneath surfaces of almost every character, and have investigated the rationale of the attendant phenomena. [Footnote: See especially Stoppani, Corso di Geologia, i., pp. 270 et seqq.] The distribution of these waters has been minutely studied with reference to a great number of localities, and though the actual mode and rate of their vertical and horizontal transmission is still involved in much obscurity, the laws which determine their aggregation are so well understood, that, when the geology of a given district is known, it is not difficult to determine at what depth water will be reached by the borer, and to what height it will rise. The same principles have been successfully applied to the discovery of small subterranean collections or currents of water, and some persons have acquired, by a moderate knowledge of the superficial structure of the earth combined with long practice, a skill in the selection of favorable places for digging wells which seems to common observers little less than miraculous. The Abbe Paramelle--a French ecclesiastic who devoted himself for some years to this subject and was extensively employed as a well-finder--states, in his work on Fountains, that in the course of thirty-four years he had pointed out more than ten thousand subterranean springs; and though his geological speculations were often erroneous, high scientific authorities have testified to the great practical value of his methods, and the general accuracy of his predictions. [Footnote: Paramelle, Quellenkunde, mit einem Vorwort von B. Cotta. 1856.] Hydrographical researches have demonstrated the existence of subterranean currents and reservoirs in many regions where superficial geology had not indicated their probable presence. Thus, a much larger proportion of the precipitation in the valley of the Tiber suddenly disappears than can be accounted for by evaporation and visible flow into the channel of the river. Castelli suspected that the excess was received by underground caverns, and slowly conducted by percolation to the bed of the Tiber. Lombardini--than whom there is no higher authority--concludes that the quantity of water gradually discharged into the river by subterranean conduits, is not less than three-quarters of the total delivery of its basin. [Footnote: See Lombardini, Importanza degli studi sulla Statistica da Fiumi, p. 27; also, same author, Sulle Inondazioni avvenute in Francia, etc., p. 29.] What is true of the hydrology of the Tiber is doubtless more or less true of that of other rivers, and the immense value of natural arrangements which diminish the danger of sudden floods by retaining a large proportion of the precipitation, and of an excessive reduction of river currents in the droughts of summer, by slowly conducting into their beds water accumulated and stored up in subterranean reservoirs in rainy seasons, is too obvious to require to be dwelt upon. The readiness with which water not obstructed by impermeable strata diffuses itself through the earth in all directions--and consequently, the importance of keeping up the supply of subterranaean reservoirs--find a familiar illustration in the effect of paving the ground about the stems of vines and trees. The surface-earth around the trunk of a tree may be made almost impervious to water, by flagstones and cement, for a distance as great as the spread of the roots; and yet the tree will not suffer for want of moisture, except in droughts severe enough sensibly to affect the supply in deep wells and springs. Both forest and fruit trees attain a considerable age and size in cities where the streets and courts are closely paved, and where even the lateral access of water to the roots is more or less obstructed by deep cellars and foundation walls. The deep-lying veins and sheets of water, supplied by infiltration from often comparatively distant sources, send up moisture by capillary attraction, and the pavement prevents the soil beneath it from losing its humidity by evaporation. Hence, city-grown trees find moisture enough for their roots, and though plagued with smoke and dust, often retain their freshness, while those planted in the open fields, where sun and wind dry up the soil faster than the subterranean fountains can water it, are withering from drought. [Footnote: The roots of trees planted in towns do not depend exclusively on infiltration for their supply of water, for they receive a certain amount of both moisture and air through the interstices between the paving-stones; but where wide surfaces of streets and courts are paved with air and water tight asphaltum, as in Paris, trees suffer from the diminished supply of these necessary elements.] Without the help of artificial conduit or of water-carrier, the Thames and the Seine refresh the ornamental trees that shade the thoroughfares of London and of Paris, and beneath the hot and reeking mould of Egypt, the Nile sends currents to the extremest border of its valley. [Footnote: See the interesting observations of Krieck on this subject, Schriften zur allgemeinen Erdkunde, cap. iii., Section 6, and especially the passages in Ritter s Erdkunde, vol. i., there referred to. The tenacity with which the parched soil of Egypt retains the supply of moisture it receives from the Nile is well illustrated by observations of Girard cited by Lombardini from the Memoires de l'Academie des Sciences, t. ii., 1817. Girard dug wells at distances of 3,200, 1,800, and 1,200 metres from the Nile, and after three months of low water in the river, found water in the most remote well, at 4m. 97, in the next at 4m. 23, and in that nearest the bank at 3m. 44 above the surface of the Nile. The fact that the water was highest in the most distant well appears to show that it was derived from the inundation and not, by lateral infiltration, from the river. But water is found beneath the sands at points far above and beyond the reach of the inundations, and can be accounted for only by subterranean percolation from the Nile. At high flood, the hydrostatic pressure on the banks, combined with capillary attribution, sends water to great horizontal distances through the loose soil; at low water the current is reversed, and the moisture received from the river is partly returned, and may often be seen oozing from the banks into the river.--Clot Bey, Apercu sur l'Egypte, i., 128. Laurent (Memoires sur le Sahara Oriental, pp. 8, 9), in speaking of a river at El-Faid, "which, like all those of the desert, is, most of the time, without water," observes, that many wells are dug in the bed of the river in the dry season, and that the subterranean supply of water thus reached extends itself laterally, at about the same level, at least a kilometre from the river, as water is found by digging to the depth of twelve or fifteen metres at a village situated at that distance from the bank. Recent experiments, however, have shown that in the case of rivers flowing through thickly peopled regions, and especially where the refuse from industrial establishments is discharged into them, the finely comminuted material received from sewers and factories sometimes clogs up the interstices between the particles of sand and gravel which compose the bed and banks, and the water is consequently confined to the channel and no longer diffuses itself laterally through the adjacent soil. This obstruction of course acts in both directions, according to circumstances. In one case, it prevents the escape of river-water and tends to maintain a full flow of the current; in another it intercepts the supply the river might otherwise receive by infiltration from the land, and thus tends to reduce the volume of the stream. In some instances pits have been sunk along the banks of large rivers and the water which filters into them pumped up to supply aqueducts. This method often succeeds, but where the bed of the stream has been rendered impervious by the discharge of impurities into it, it cannot be depended upon. The tubular wells generally known as the American wells furnish another proof of the free diffusion and circulation of water through the soil. I do not know the date of the first employment of these tubes in the United States, but as early as 1861, the Chevalier Calandra used wooden tubes for this pose in Piedmont, with complete success. See the interesting pamphlet, Sulla Estrazione delle Acque Sotterrance, by C. Calandra. Torino, 1867. The most remarkable case of infiltration known to me by personal observation is the occurrence of fresh water in the beach-sand on the eastern side of the Gulf of Akaba, the eastern arm of the Red Sea. If you dig a cavity in the beach near the sea-level, it soon fills with water so fresh as not to be undrinkable, though the sea-water two or three yards from it contains even more than the average quantity of salt. It cannot be maintained that this is sea-water freshed by filtration through a few feet or inches of sand, for salt-water cannot be deprived of its salt by that process. It can only come from the highlands of Arabia, and it would seem that there must exist some large reservoir in the interior to furnish a supply which, in spite of evaporation, holds out for months after the last rains of winter, and perhaps even through the year. I observed the fact in the month of June. See Robinson, Biblical Researches, 1857, vol i., p. 167. The precipitation in the mountains that border the Red Sea is not known by pluviometric measurement, but the mass of debris brought down the ravines by the torrents proves that their volume must be large. The proportion of surface covered by sand and absorbent earth, in Arabia Petraea and the neighboring countries, is small, and the mountains drain themselves rapidly into the wadies or ravines where the torrents are formed; but the beds of earth and disintegrated rock at the bottom of the valleys are of so loose and porous texture, that a great quantity of water is absorbed in saturating them before a visible current is formed on their surface. In a heavy thunder-storm, accompanied by a deluging rain, which I witnessed at Mount Sinai in the month of May, a large stream of water poured, in an almost continuous cascade, down the steep ravine north of the convent, by which travellers sometimes descend from the plateau between the two peaks, but after reaching the foot of the mountain, it flowed but a few yards before it was swallowed up in the sands. Fresh-water wells are not unfrequently found upon the borders of ocean beaches. In the dry summer of 1870, drinkable water was procured in many places on the coast of Liguria by digging to the depth of a yard in the beach-sands. Tubular wells reach fresh water at twelve or fifteen feet below the surface on the sandy plains of Cape Cod. In this latter case, the supply is more probably derived directly from precipitation than from lateral infiltration.] Artesian Wells. The existence of artesian wells depends upon that of subterranean reservoirs and rivers, and the supply yielded by borings is regulated by the abundance of such sources. The waters of the earth are, in many cases, derived from superficial currents which are seen to pour into chasms opened, as it were, expressly for their reception; and in others, where no apertures in the crust of the earth have been detected, their existence is proved by the fact that artesian wells sometimes bring up from great depths seeds, leaves, and even living fish, which must have been carried down through channels large enough to admit a considerable stream. [Footnote: Charles Martins, Le Sahara, in Revue des Deux Mondes, Sept. 1, 1864, p. 619; Stoppani, Corso di Geologia, i., 281; Desor, Die Sahara, Basel, 1871, pp. 50, 51.] But in general, the sheet and currents of water reached by deep boring appear to be primarily due to infiltration from highlands where the water is first collected in superficial or subterranean reservoirs. By means of channels conforming to the dip of the strata, these reservoirs communicate with the lower basins, and exert upon them a fluid pressure sufficient to raise a column to the surface, whenever an orifice is opened. [Footnote: It is conceivable that in shallow subterranean basins superincumbered mineral strata may rest upon the water and be partly supported by it. In such case the weight of such strata would be an additional, if not the sole, cause of the ascent of the water through the tubes of artesian wells. The ascent of petroleum in the artesian oil-wells in Pennsylvania, and, in many cases, of salt-water in similar tubes, can hardly be ascribed to hydrostatic pressure, and there is much difficulty in accounting for the rise of water in artesian wells in many parts of the African desert on that principle. Perhaps the elasticity of gases, which probably aids in forcing up petroleum and saline waters, may be, not unfrequently, an agency in causing the flow of water in common artesian borings. It is said that artesian wells lately bored in Chicago, some to the depth of 1,600 feet, raise water to the height of 100 feet above the surface. What is the source of the pressure ] The water delivered by an artesian well is, therefore, often derived from distant sources, and may be wholly unaffected by geographical or meteorological changes in its immediate neighborhood, while the same changes may quite dry up common wells and springs which are fed only by the local infiltration of their own narrow basins. In most cases, artesian wells have been bored for purely economical or industrial purposes, such as to obtain good water for domestic use or for driving light machinery, to reach saline or other mineral springs, and recently, in America, to open fountains of petroleum or rock-oil. The geographical and geological effects of such abstraction of fluids from the bowels of the earth are too remote and uncertain to be here noticed; [Footnote: Many more or less probable conjectures have been made on this subject but thus far I am not aware that any of the apprehended results have been actually shown to have happened. In an article in the Annales des Ponts et Chaussees for July and August, 1839, p. 131, it was suggested that the sinking of the piers of a bridge at Tours in France was occasioned by the abstraction of water from the earth by artesian wells, and the consequent withdrawal of the mechanical support it had previously given to the strata containing it. A reply to this article will be found in Viollet, Theorie des Puits Artesiens, p. 217. In some instances the water has rushed up with a force which seemed to threaten the inundation of the neighborhood, and even the washing away of much soil; but in those cases the partial exhaustion of the supply, or the relief of hydrostatic or elastic pressure, has generally produced a diminution of theflow in a short time, and I do not know that any serious evil has everbeen occasioned in this way. In April, 1866, a case of this sort occurred in boring an artesian well near the church of St. Agnes at Venice. When the drill reached the depth of 160 feet, a jet of mud and water was shot up to the height of 130 feet above the surface, and continued to flow with gradually diminishing force for about eight hours.] but artesian wells have lately been employed in Algeria for a purpose which has even now a substantial, and may hereafter acquire a very great geographical importance. It was observed by many earlier as well as recent travellers in the East, among whom Shaw deserves special mention, that the Libyan desert, bordering upon the cultivated shores of the Mediterranean, appeared in many places to rest upon a subterranean lake at an accessible distance below the surface. The Moors are vaguely said to bore artesian wells down to this reservoir, to obtain water for domestic use and irrigation, and there is evidence that this art was practised in Northern Africa in the Middle Ages. But it had been lost by the modern Moors, and the universal astonishment and incredulity with which the native tribes viewed the operations of the French engineers sent into the desert for that purpose, are a sufficient proof that this mode of reaching the subterranean waters was new to them. They were, however, aware of the existence of water below the sands, and were dexterous in digging wells--square shafts lined with a framework of palm-tree stems--to the level of the sheet. The wells so constructed, though not technically artesian wells, answer the same purpose; for the water rises to the surface and flows over it as from a spring. [Footnote: See a very interesting account of these wells, and of the workmen who clean them out when obstructed by sand brought up with the water, in Laurent's memoir on the artesian wells recently bored by the French Government in the Algerian desert. Mimoire sur le Sahara Oriental, etc., pp. et seqq. Some of the men remained under water from two minutes to two minutes and forty seconds. Several officers are quoted as having observed immersions of three minutes' duration, and M. Berbrugger witnessed ona of six minutes and five seconds and another of five minutes and fifty-five seconds. The shortest of these periods is longer than the best pearl-diver can remain below the surface of salt-water. The wells of the Sahara are from twenty to eighty metres deep.-Desor, Die Sahara, Basel, 1871, p. 43. The ancient Egyptians were acquainted with the art of boring artesian wells. Ayme, a French engineer in the service of the Pacha of Egypt, found several of these old wells, a few years ago, in the oases. They differed little from modern artesian wells, but were provided with pear-shaped valves of stone for closing them when water was not needed. When freed from the sand and rubbish with which they were choked, they flowed freely and threw up fish large enough for the table. The fish were not blind, as cave-fish often are, but were provided with eyes, and belonged to species common in the Nile. The sand, too, brought up with them resembled that of the bed of that river. Hence it is probable that they were carried to the oases by subterranean channels from the Nile.--Desor, Die Sahara, Basel, 1871, p. 28; Stoppani, Corso di Geologia, i., p. 281. Barth speaks of common wells in Northern Africa from 200 to 360 feet deep.--Reisen in Africa, ii., p. 180. It is certain that artesian wells have been common in China from a very remote antiquity, and the simple method used by the Chinese--where the drill is raised and let fall by a rope, instead of a rigid rod--has lately been employed in Europe with advantage. Some of the Chinese wells are said to be 3,000 feet deep; that of Neusalzwerk in Silesia is 2,300. A well was bored at St. Louis, in Missouri, a few years ago, to supply a sugar refinery, to the depth of 2,199 feet. This was executed by a private firm in three years, at the expense of only $10,000. Four years since the boring was recommenced in this well and reached a depth of 3,150 feet, but without a satisfactory result. Another artesian well was sunk at Columbus, in Ohio, to the depth of 2,500 feet, but without obtaining the desired supply of water. Perhaps, however, the artesian well of the greatest depth ever executed until very recently, is that bored within the last six or seven years, for the use of an Insane Asylum near St. Louis. This well descends to the depth of three thousand eight hundred and forty-three feet, but the water which it furnishes is small in quantity and of a quality that cannot be used for ordinary domestic purposes. The bore has a diameter of six inches to the depth of 425 feet, and after that it is reduced to four inches. For about three thousand feet the strata penetrated were of carboniferous and magnesian limestone alternating with sandstone. The remainder of the well passes through igneous rock. At St. Louis the Missouri and Mississippi rivers are not more than twenty miles distant from each other, and it is worthy of note that the waters of neither of those two rivers appear to have opened for themselves a considerable subterranean passage through the rocky strata of the peninsula which separates them. When in boring an artesian well water is not reached at a moderate depth, it is not always certain that it will be found by driving the drill still lower. In certain formations, water diminshes as we descend, and it seems probable that, except in case of caverns and deep fissures, the weight of the superincumbent mineral strata so compresses the underlying ones, at no very great distance below the surface, as to render them impermeable to water and consequently altogether dry. See London Quarterly Journal of Science, No. xvii., Jan., 1868, p. 18, 19. In the silver mines of Nevada water is scarcely found at depths below 1,000 feet, and at 1,200 feet from the surface the earth is quite dry.--American Annual of Scientific Discovery for 1870, p. 75. Similar facts are observed in Australia. The Pleasant Creek News writes: "A singular and unaccountable feature in connection with our deep quartz mines is being developed daily, which must surprise those well experienced in mining matters. It is the decrease of water as the greater depths are reached. In the Magdala shaft at 950 ft. the water has decreased to a MINIMUM; in the Crown Cross Reef Company's shaft, at 800 ft., notwithstanding the two reefs recently struck, no extra water has been met with; and in the long drive of the Extended Cross Reef Company, at a depth of over 800 ft., the water is lighter than it was nearer the surface." Boring has been carried to a great depth at Sperenberg near Berlin, where, in 1871, the drill had descended 5,500 feet below the surface, passing through a stratum of salt for the last 3,200 feet; but the drilling was still in progress, the whole thickness of the salt-bed not having been penetrated.--Aus der Natur, vol. 55, p. 208. The facts that there are mines extending two miles under the bed of the sea, which are not particularly subject to inconvenience from water, that little water was encountered in the Mt. Cenis tunnel, 3500 feet below the surface, and that at Scarpa, not far from Tivoli, there is an ancient well 1700 feet deep with but eighteen feet of water, may also be cited as proofs that water is not universally diffused at great distances beneath the surface.] These wells, however, are too few and too scanty in supply to serve any other purposes than the domestic wells of other countries, and it is but recently that the transformation of desert into cultivable land by this means has been seriously attempted. The French Government has bored a large number of artesian wells in the Algerian desert within a few years, and the native sheikhs are beginning to avail themselves of the process. Every well becomes the nucleus of a settlement proportioned to the supply of water, and before the end of the year 1860, several nomade tribes had abandoned their wandering life, established themselves around the wells, and planted more than 30,000 palm trees, besides other perennial vegetables. [Footnote: "In the anticipation of our success at Oum-Thiour, everything had been prepared to take advantage of this new source of wealth without a moment's delay. A division of the tribe of the Selmia, and their sheikh, Aissa ben Sha, laid the foundation of a village as soon as the water flowed, and planted twelve hundred date-palms, renouncing their wandering life to attach themselves to the soil. In this arid spot, life had taken the place of solitude, and presented itself, with its smiling images, to the astonished traveller. Young girls were drawing water at the fountain; the flocks, the great dromedaries with their slow pace, the horses led by the halter, were moving to the watering trough; the hounds and the falcons enlivened the group of party-colored tents, and living voices and animated movement had succeeded to silence and desolation."--Laurent, Memoires sur le Sahara, p. 85. Between 1856 and 1864 the French engineers had bored 83 wells in the Hodna and the Sahara of the Province of Constantine, yielding, all together, 9,000 gallons a minute, and irrigating more than 125,000 date-palms. Reclus, La Terre, i., p. 110.] The water is found at a small depth, generally from 100 to 200 feet, and though containing too large a proportion of mineral matter to be acceptable to a European palate, it answers well for irrigation, and does not prove unwholesome to the natives. The most obvious use of artesian wells in the desert at present is that of creating stations for the establishment of military posts and halting-places for the desert traveller; but if the supply of water shall prove adequate for the indefinite extension of the system, it is probably destined to produce a greater geographical transformation than has ever been effected by any scheme of human improvement. The most striking contrast of landscape scenery that nature brings near together in time or place, is that between the greenery of the tropics, or of a northern summer, and the snowy pall of leafless winter. Next to this in startling novelty of effect, we must rank the sudden transition from the shady and verdant oasis of the desert to the bare and burning party-colored ocean of sand and rock which surrounds it. [Footnote: The variety of hues and tones in the local color of the desert is, I think, one of the phenomena which most surprise and interest a stranger to those regions. In England and the United States, rock is so generally covered with moss or earth, and earth with vegetation, that untravelled Englishmen and Americans are not very familiar with naked rock as a conspicuous element of landscape. Hence, in their conception of a bare cliff or precipice, they hardly ascribe definite color to it, but depict it to their imagination as wearing a neutral tint not assimilable to any of the hues with which nature tinges her atmospheric or paints her organic creations. There are certainly extensive desert ranges, chiefly limestone formations, where the surface is either white, or has weathered down to a dull uniformity of tone which can hardly be called color at all; and there are sand plains and drifting hills of wearisome monotony of tint. But the chemistry of the air, though it may tame the glitter of the limestone to a dusky gray, brings out the green and brown and purple of the igneous rocks, and the white and red and blue and violet and yellow of the sandstone. Many a cliff in Arabia Petraea is as manifold in color as the rainbow, and the veins are so variable in thickness and inclination, so contorted and involved in arrangement, as to bewilder the eye of the spectator like a disk of party-colored glass in rapid evolution. In the narrower wadies the mirage is not common; but on broad expanses, as at many points between Cairo and Suez, and in Wadi el Araba, it mocks you with lakes and land-locked bays, studded with inlands and fringed with trees, all painted with an illusory truth of representation absolutely indistinguishable from the reality. The checkered earth, too, is canopied with a heaven as variegated as itself. You see, high up in the sky, rosy clouds at noonday, colored probably by reflection from the ruddy mountains, while near the horizon float cumuli of a transparent, ethereal blue, seemingly balled up out of the clear cerulean substance of the firmament, and detached from the heavenly vault, not by color or consistence, but solely by the light and shade of their salient and retreating outlines.] The most sanguine believer in indefinite human progress hardly expects that man's cunning will accomplish the universal fulfilment of the prophecy, "the desert shall blossom as the rose," in its literal sense; but sober geographers have thought the future conversion of the sand plains of Northern Africa into fruitful gardens, by means of artesian wells, not an improbable expectation. They have gone farther, and argued that, if the soil were covered with fields and forests, vegetation would call down moisture from the Libyan sky, and that the showers which are now wasted on the sea, or so often deluge Southern Europe with destructive inundation, would in part be condensed over the arid wastes of Africa, and thus, without further aid from man, bestow abundance on regions which nature seems to have condemned to perpetual desolation. An equally bold speculation, founded on the well-known fact that the temperature of the earth and of its internal waters increases as we descend beneath the surface, has suggested that artesian wells might supply heat for industrial and domestic purposes, for hot-house cultivation, and even for the local amelioration of climate. The success with which Count Lardarel has employed natural hot springs for the evaporation of water charged with boracic acid, and other fortunate applications of the heat of thermal sources, lend some countenance to the latter project; but both must, for the present, be ranked among the vague possibilities of science, not regarded as probable future triumphs of man over nature. Artificial Springs A more plausible and inviting scheme is that of the creation of perennial springs by husbanding rain and snow water, storing it up in artificial reservoirs of earth, and filtering it through purifying strata, in analogy with the operations of nature. The sagacious Palissy--starting from the theory that all springs are primarily derived from precipitation, and reasoning justly on the accumulation and movement of water in the earth--proposed to reduce theory to practice, and to imitate the natural processes by which rain is absorbed by the earth and given out again in running fountains. "When I had long and diligently considered the cause of the springing of natural fountains and the places where they be wont to issue," says he, "I did plainly perceive, at last, that they do proceed and are engendered of nought but the rains. And it is this, look you, which hath moved me to enterprise the gathering together of rain-water after the manner of nature, and the most closely according to her fashion that I am able; and I am well assured that by following the formulary of the Supreme Contriver of fountains, I can make springs, the water whereof shall be as good and pure and clear as of such which be natural." [Footnote: Oeuvres de Palissy, Des Eaux et Fontaines, p. 157.] Palissy discusses the subject of the origin of springs at length and with much ability, dwelling specially on infiltration, and, among other things, thus explains the frequency of springs in mountainous regions: "Having well considered the which, thou mayest plainly see the reason why there be more springs and rivulets proceeding from the mountains than from the rest of the earth; which is for no other cause but that the rocks and mountains do retain the water of the rains like vessels of brass. And the said waters falling upon the said mountains descend continually through the earth, and through crevices, and stop not till they find some place that is bottomed with stone or close and thick rocks; and they rest upon such bottom until they find some channel or other manner of issue, and then they flow out in springs or brooks or rivers, according to the greatness of the reservoirs and of the outlets thereof." [Footnote: Id., p. 166. Palissy's method has recently been tried with good success in various parts of France.] After a full exposition of his theory, Palissy proceeds to describe his method of creating springs, which is substantially the same as that lately proposed by Babinet in the following terms: "Choose a piece of ground containing four or five acres, with a sandy soil, and with a gentle slope to determine the flow of the water. Along its upper line, dig a trench five or six feet deep and six feet wide. Level the bottom of the trench, and make it impermeable by paving, by macadamizing, by bitumen, or, more simply and cheaply, by a layer of clay. By the side of this trench dig another, and throw the earth from it into the first, and so on until you have rendered the subsoil of the whole parcel impermeable to rain-water. Build a wall along the lower line with an aperture in the middle for the water, and plant fruit or other low trees upon the whole, to shade the ground and check the currents of air which promote evaporation. This will infallibly give you a good spring which will flow without intermission, and supply the wants of a whole hamlet or a large chateau." [Footnote: Babinet, Etudes et Lectures sur les Sciences d'Observation, ii., p. 225. Our author precedes his account of his method with a complaint which most men who indulge in thinking have occasion to repeat many times in the course of their lives. "I will explain to my readers the construction of artificial fountains according to the plan of the famous Bernard de Palissy, who, a hundred and fifty [three hundred] years ago, came and took away from me, a humble academician of the nineteenth century, this discovery which I had taken a great deal of pains to make. It is enough to discourage all invention when one finds plagiarists in the past as well as in the future!" (P. 224.)] Babinet states that the whole amount of precipitation on a reservoir of the proposed area, in the climate of Paris, would be about 13,000 cubic yards, not above one half of which, he thinks, would be lost, and, of course, the other half would remain available to supply the spring. I much doubt whether this expectation would be realized in practice, in its whole extent; for if Babinet is right in supposing that the summer rain is wholly evaporated, the winter rains, being much less in quantity, would hardly suffice to keep the earth saturated and give off so large a surplus. The method of Palissy, though, as I have said, similar in principle to that of Babinet, would be cheaper of execution, and, at the same time, more efficient. He proposes the construction of relatively small filtering receptacles, into which he would conduct the rain falling upon a large area of rocky hillside, or other sloping ground not readily absorbing water. This process would, in all probability, be a very successful, as well as an inexpensive, mode of economizing atmospheric precipitation, and compelling the rain and snow to form perennial fountains at will. Economizing Precipitation. The methods suggested by Palissy and by Babinet are of limited application, and designed only to supply a sufficient quantity of water for the domestic use of small villages or large private establishments. Dumas has proposed a much more extensive system for collecting and retaining the whole precipitation in considerable valleys, and storing it in reservoirs, whence it is to be drawn for household and mechanical purposes, for irrigation, and, in short, for all the uses to which the water of natural springs and brooks is applicable. His plan consists in draining both surface and subsoil, by means of conduits differing in construction according to local circumstances, but in the main not unlike those employed in improved agriculture, collecting the water in a central channel, securing its proper filterage, checking its too rapid flow by barriers at convenient points, and finally receiving the whole in spacious, covered reservoirs, from which it may he discharged in a constant flow or at intervals as convenience may dictate. [Footnote: M. G. Dumas, La Science des Fontaines, 1857.] There is no reasonable doubt that a very wide employment of these various contrivances for economizing and supplying water is practicable, and the expediency of resorting to them is almost purely an economical question. There appears to be no serious reason to apprehend collateral evils from them, and in fact all of them, except artesian wells, are simply indirect methods of returning to the original arrangements of nature, or, in other words, of restoring the fluid circulation of the globe; for when the earth was covered with the forest, perennial springs gushed from the foot of every hill, brooks flowed down the bed of every valley. The partial recovery of the fountains and rivulets which once abundantly watered the face of the agricultural world seems practicable by such means, even without any general replanting of the forests; and the cost of one year's warfare--or in some countries of that armed peace which has been called "Platonic war"--if judiciously expended in a combination of both methods of improvement, would secure, to almost every country that man has exhausted, an amelioration of climate, a renovated fertility of soil, and a general physical improvement, which might almost be characterized as a new creation. Inundations and Torrents. In pointing out in a former chapter the evils which have resulted from the too extensive destruction of the forests, I dwelt at some length on the increased violence of river inundations, and especially on the devastations of torrents, in countries improvidently deprived of their woods, and I spoke of the replanting of the forests as probably the most effectual method of preventing the frequent recurrence of disastrous floods. There are many regions where, from the loss of the superficial soil, from financial considerations, and from other special causes, the general restoration of the woods is not, under present circumstances, either possible or desirable. In all inhabited countries, the necessities of agriculture and other considerations of human convenience will always require the occupation of much the largest proportion of the surface for purposes inconsistent with the growth of extensive forests. Even where large plantations are possible and in actual process of execution, many years must elapse before the action of the destructive causes in question can be arrested or perhaps even sensibly mitigated by their influence; and besides, floods will always occur in years of excessive precipitation, whether the surface of the soil be generally cleared or generally wooded. [Footnote: All the arrangements of rural husbandry, and we might say of civilised occupancy of the earth, are such as necessarily to increase the danger and the range of floods by promoting the rapid discharge of the waters of precipitation. Superficial, if not subterranean, drainage is a necessary condition of all agriculture. There is no field which has not some artificial disposition for this purpose, and even the furrows of ploughed land, if the surface is inclined, and especially when it if frozen, serve rather to carry off than to retain water. As Bacquerel has observed, common road and railway ditches are among the most efficient conduits for the discharge of surface-water which man has yet constructed, and of course they are powerful agents in causing river inundations. All these channels are, indeed, necessary for the convenience of man, but this convenience, like every other interference with the order of nature, must often be purchased at a heavy cost.] Physical improvement in this respect, then, cannot be confined to merely preventive measures, but, in countries subject to damage by inundation, means must be contrived to obviate dangers and diminish injuries to which human life and all the works of human industry will occasionally be exposed, in spite of every effort to lessen the frequency of their recurrence by acting directly on the causes that produce them. As every civilized country is, in some degree, subject to inundation by the overflow of rivers, the evil is a familiar one, and needs no general description. In discussing this branch of the subject, therefore, I may confine myself chiefly to the means that have been or may be employed to resist the force and limit the ravages of floods, which, left wholly unrestrained, would not only inflict immense injury upon the material interests of man, but produce geographical revolutions of no little magnitude. Inundations of 1856 in France. The month of May, 1856, was remarkable for violent and almost uninterrupted rains, and most of the river-basins of France were inundated to an extraordinary height. In the val-leys of the Loire and its aflluents, about a million of acres, including many towns and villages, were laid under water, and the amount of pecuniary damage was almost incalculable. [Footnote: Champion, Les Inondations en France, iii., p.156, note.] The flood was not less destructive in the valley of the Rhone, and in fact an invasion by a hostile army could hardly have been more disastrous to the inhabitants of the plains than was this terrible deluge. There had been a flood of this latter river in the year 1840, which, for height and quantity of water, was almost as remarkable as that of 1856, but it took place in the month of November, when the crops had all been harvested, and the injury inflicted by it upon agriculturists was, therefore, of a character to be less severely and less immediately felt than the consequences of the inundation of 1856. [Footnote: Notwithstanding this favorable circumstance, the damage done by the inundation of 1840 in the valley of the Rhone was estimated at seventy-two millions of francs.--Champion, Les Inondations en France, iv., p. 124. Several smaller floods of the Rhone, experienced at a somewhat earlier season of the year in 1846, occasioned a loss of forty-five millions of francs. "What if," says Dumont, "instead of happening in October, that is, between harvest and seedtime, they had occurred before the crops were secured The damage would have been counted by hundreds of millions."--Des Travaux Publics, p. 99, note.] In the fifteen years between these two great floods, the population and the rural improvements of the river valleys had much increased, common roads, bridges, and railways had been multiplied and extended, telegraph lines had been constructed, all of which shared in the general ruin, and hence greater and more diversified interests were affected by the catastrophe of 1856 than by any former like calamity. The great flood of 1840 had excited the attention and roused the sympathies of the French people, and the subject was invested with new interest by the still more formidable character of the inundations of 1856. It was felt that these scourges had ceased to be a matter of merely local concern, for, although they bore most heavily on those whose homes and fields were situated within the immediate reach of the swelling waters, yet they frequently destroyed harvests valuable enough to be a matter of national interest, endangered the personal security of the population of important political centres, interrupted communication for days and even weeks together on great lines of traffic and travel--thus severing, as it were, all South-western France from the rest of the empire--and finally threatened to produce great and permanent geographical changes. The well-being of the whole commonwealth was seen to be involved in preventing the recurrence and in limiting the range of such devastations. The Government encouraged scientific investigation of the phenomena and their laws. Their causes, their history, their immediate and remote consequences, and the possible safeguards to be employed against them, have been carefully studied by the most eminent physicists, as well as by the ablest theoretical and practical engineers of France. Many hitherto unobserved facts have been collected, many new hypotheses suggested, and many plans, more or less original in character, have been devised for combating the evil; but thus far, the most competent judges are not well agreed as to the mode, or even the possibility, of applying an effectual remedy. I have noticed in the next preceding chapter the recent legislation of France upon the preservation and restoration of the forests, with reference to their utility in subduing torrents and lessening the frequency and diminishing the violence of river inundations. The provisions of those laws are preventive rather than remedial, but most beneficial effects have already been experienced from the measures adopted in pursuance of them, though sufficient time has not yet elapsed for the complete execution of the greater operations of the system. Basins of Reception. Destructive inundations of large rivers are seldom, if ever, produced by precipitation within the limits of the principal valley, but almost uniformly by sudden thaws or excessive rains on the mountain ranges where the tributaries take their rise. It is therefore plain that any measures which shall check the flow of surface-waters into the channels of the affluents, or which shall retard the delivery of such waters into the principal stream by its tributaries, will diminish in the same proportion the dangers and the evils of inundation by great rivers. The retention of the surface-waters upon or in the soil can hardly be accomplished except by the methods already mentioned, replanting of forests, and furrowing or terracing. The current of mountain streams can be checked by various methods, among which the most familiar and obvious is the erection of barriers or dams across their channels, at points convenient for forming reservoirs large enough to retain the superfluous waters of great rains and thaws. [Footnote: On the construction of temporary and more permanent barriera to the curreuts of torrents and rivulets, see Marchand, Les Torrents des Alpes, in Recue des Eaux et Forets for October and November, 1871.] Besides the utility of such basins in preventing floods, the construction of them is recommended by very strong considerations, such as the furnishing of a constant supply of water for agricultural and mechanical purposes, and, also, their value as ponds for breeding and rearing fish, and, perhaps, for cultivating aquatic vegetables. [Footnote: In reference to the utilization of artificial as well as natural reservoirs, see Ackerhof, Die Nutruny der Teiche und Gewasser, Quadlinburg, 1869.] The objections to the general adoption of the system of reservoirs are these: the expense of their construction and maintenance; the reduction of cultivable area by the amount of surface they must cover; the interruption they would occasion to free communication; the probability that they would soon be filled up with sediment, and the obvious fact that when full of earth, or even water, they would no longer serve their principal purpose; the great danger to which they would expose the country below them in case of the bursting of their barriers; [Footnote: For accounts of damage from the bursting of reservoirs, see Vallee, Memoire sur les Reservoir d'Alimentation des Canaux, Annales des Ponts et Chaussees, 1833, 1er semestre, p.261. The dam of the reservoir of Puentes in Spain, which was one hundred and sixty feet high, after having discharged its functions for eleven years, burst, in 1802, in consequence of a defect in its foundations, and the eruption of the water destroyed or seriously injured eight hundred houses, and produced damage to the amount of more than a million dollars.--Aynard, Irrigations du Midi d l'Europe, pp. 257-259.] the evil consequences they would occasion by prolonging the flow of inundations in proportion as they diminished their height; the injurious effects it is supposed they would produce upon the salubrity of the neighbouring districts; and, lastly, the alleged impossibility of constructing artificial basins sufficient in capacity to prevent, or in any considerable measure to mitigate, the evils they are intended to guard against. The last argument is more easily reduced to a numerical question than the others. The mean and extreme annual precipitation of all the basins where the construction of such works would be seriously proposed is already approximately known by meteorological tables, and the quantity of water, delivered by the greatest floods which have occurred within the memory of man, may be roughly estimated from their visible traces. From these elements, or from meteorological records, the capacity of the necessary reservoirs can be calculated. Let us take the case of the Ardeche. In the inundation of 1857, that river poured into the Rhone 1,305,000,000 cubic yards of water in three days. If we suppose that half this quantity might have been suffered to flow down its channel without inconvenience, we shall have about 650,000,000 cubic yards to provide for by reservoirs. The Ardeche and its principal affluent, the Chassezae, have, together, about twelve considerable tributaries rising near the crest of the mountains which bound the basin. If reservoirs of equal capacity were constructed upon all of them, each reservoir must be able to contain 54,000,000 cubic yards, or, in other words, must be equal to a lake 3,000 yards long, 1,000 yards wide, and 18 yards deep, and besides, in order to render any effectual service, the reservoirs must all have been empty at the commencement of the rains which produced the inundation. Thus far I have supposed the swelling of the waters to be uniform throughout the whole basin; but such was by no means the fact in the inundation of 1857, for the rise of the Chassezae, which is as large as the Ardeche proper, did not exceed the limits of ordinary floods, and the dangerous excess came solely from the headwaters of the latter stream. Hence reservoirs of double the capacity I have supposed would have been necessary upon the tributaries of that river, to prevent the injurious effects of the inundation. It is evident that the construction of reservoirs of such magnitude for such a purpose is financially, if not physically, impracticable, and when we take into account a point I have just suggested, namely, that the reservoirs must be empty at all times of apprehended flood, and, of course, their utility limited almost solely to the single object of preventing inundations, the total inapplicability of such a measure in this particular case becomes still more glaringly manifest. Another not less conclusive fact is, that the valleys of all the upland tributaries of the Ardeche descend so rapidly, and have so little lateral expansion, as to render the construction of capacious reservoirs in them quite impracticable. Indeed, engineers have found but two points in the whole basin suitable for that purpose, and the reservoirs admissible at these would have only a joint capacity of about 70,000,000 cubic yards, or less than one-ninth part of what I suppose to be required. The case of the Ardeche is no doubt an extreme one, both in the topographical character of its basin and in its exposure to excessive rains; but all destructive inundations are, in a certain sense, extreme cases also, and this of the Ardeche serves to show that the construction of reservoirs is not by any means to be regarded as a universal panacea against floods. Nor, on the other hand, is this measure to be summarily rejected. Nature has adopted it on a great scale, on both flanks of the Alps, and on a smaller, on those of the Adirondacks and of many lower chains. The quantity of water which, in great rains or sudden thaws, rushes down the steep declivities of the Alps, is so vast that the channels of the Swiss and Italian rivers would be totally incompetent to carry it off as rapidly as it would pour into them, were it not absorbed by the capacious basins which nature has scooped out for its reception, freed from the transported material which adds immensely both to the volume and to the force of its current, and then, after some reduction by evaporation and infiltration, gradually discharged into the beds of the rivers. In the inundation of 1829 the water discharged into Lake Como from the 15th to the 20th of September amounted to 2,600 cubic yards the second, while the outflow from the lake during the same period was only at the rate of about 1,050 cubic yards to the second. In those five days, then, the lake accumulated 670,000,000 cubic yards of superfluous water, and of course diminished by so much the quantity to be disposed of by the Po. [Footnote: Baird Smith, Italian Irrigation, i., p. 176.] In the flood of October, 1868, the surface of Lago Maggiore was raised twenty-five feet above low-water mark in the course of a few hours. [Footnote: Bollettino della Societa Geog. Italiana, iii., p. 466.] There can be no doubt that without such detention of water by the Lakes Como, Maggiore, Garda, and other subalpine basins, almost the whole of Lombardy would have been irrecoverably desolated, or rather, its great plain would never have become anything but a vast expanse of river-beds and marshes; for the annual floods would always have prevented the possibility of its improvement by man. [Footnote: See, as to the probable effects of certain proposed hydraulic works at the outlet of Lake Maggiore on the action of the lake as a regulating reservoir, Tagliasecchi, Notizie sui Canali dell' Alta Lombardia, Milano, 1869.] Lake Bourget in Savoy, once much more extensive than it is at present, served, and indeed still serves, a similar purpose in the economy of nature. In a flood of the Rhone, in 1863, this lake received from the overflow of that river, which does not pass through it, 72,000,000 cubic yards of water, and of course moderated, to that extent, the effects of the inundation below. [Footnote: Elisee Recluse, La Terre, i., p. 460.] In fact, the alluvial plains which border the course of most considerable streams, and are overflowed in their inundations, either by the rise of the water to a higher level than that of their banks, or by the bursting of their dikes, serve as safety-valves for the escape of their superfluous waters. The current of the Po, spreading over the whole space between its widely separated embankments, takes up so much water in its inundations, that, while a little below the outlet of the Ticino the discharge of the channel is sometimes not less than 19,500 cubic yards to the second, it has never exceeded 6,730 yards at Ponte Lagoscuro, near Ferrara. The currents of the Mississippi, the Rhone, and of many other large rivers, are modified in the same way. In the flood of 1858, the delivery of the Mississippi, a little below the month of the Ohio, was 52,000 cubic yards to the second, but at Baton Rouge, though of course increased by the waters of the Arkansas, the Yazoo, and other smaller tributaries, the discharge was reduced to 46,760 cubic yards. We rarely err when we cautiously imitate the processes of nature, and there are doubtless many cases where artificial basins of reception and lateral expansions of river-beds might be employed with advantage. Many upland streams present points where none of the objections usually urged against artificial reservoirs, except those of expense and of danger from the breaking of dams, could have any application. Reservoirs may be so constructed as to retain the entire precipitation of the heaviest thaws and rains, leaving only the ordinary quantity to flow along the channel; they may be raised to such a height as only partially to obstruct the surface drainage; or they may be provided with sluices by means of which their whole contents can be discharged in the dry season and a summer crop be grown upon the ground they cover at high water. The expediency of employing them and the mode of construction depend on local conditions, and no rules of universal applicability can be laid down on the subject. [Footnote: The insufficiency of artificial basins of reception as a means of averting the evils resulting from the floods of great rivers has been conclusively shown, in reference to a most important particular case--that of the Mississippi--by Humphreys and Abbot, in their admirable monograph of that river.] It is remarkable that nations which we, in the inflated pride of our modern civilization, so generally regard as little less than barbarian, should have long preceded Christian Europe in the systematic employment of great artificial basins for the various purposes they are calculated to subserve. The ancient Peruvians built strong walls, of excellent workmanship, across the channels of the mountain sources of important streams, and the Arabs executed immense works of similar description, both in the great Arabian peninsula and in all the provinces of Spain which had the good fortune to fall under their sway. The Spaniards of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, who, in many points of true civilization and culture, were far inferior to the races they subdued, wantonly destroyed these noble monuments of social and political wisdom, or suffered them to perish, because they were too ignorant to appreciate their value, or too unskilful as practical engineers to be able to maintain them, and some of their most important territories were soon reduced to sterility and poverty in consequence. Diversion of Rivers. Another method of preventing or diminishing the evils of inundation by torrents and mountain rivers, analogous to that employed for the drainage of lakes, consists in the permanent or occasional diversion of their surplus waters, or of their entire currents, from their natural courses, by tunnels or open channels cut through their banks. Nature, in many cases, resorts to a similar process. Most great rivers divide themselves into several arms in their lower course, and enter the sea by different mouths. There are also cases where rivers send off lateral branches to convey a part of their waters into the channel of other streams. [Footnote: Some geographical writers apply the term bifurcation exclusively to this intercommunication of rivers; others, with more etymological propriety, use it to express the division of great rivers into branches at the head of their deltas. A technical word is wanting to designate the phenomenon mentioned in the text, and there is no valid objection to the employment of the anatomical term anastomosis for this purpose.] The most remarkable of these is the junction between the Amazon and the Orinoco by the natural canal of the Cassiquiare and the Rio Negro. In India, the Cambodja and the Menam are connected by the Anam; the Saluen and the Irawaddi by the Panlaun. There are similar examples, though on a much smaller scale, in Europe. The Tornea, and the Calix rivers in Lapland communicate by the Tarando, and in Westphalia, the Else, an arm of the Haase, falls into the Weser. [Footnote: The division of the currents of rivers, as a means of preventing the overflow of their banks, is by no means a remedy capable of general application, even when local conditions are favorable to the construction of an emissary. The velocity of a stream, and consequently its delivery in a given time, are frequently diminished in proportion to the diminution of the volume by diversion; and on the other hand, the increase of volume by the admission of a new tributary increases proportionally the velocity and the quantity of water delivered. Emissaries may, nevertheless, often be useful in carrying off water which has already escaped from the channel and which would otherwise become stagnant and prevent further lateral discharge from the main current, and it is upon this principle that Humphreys and Abbot think a canal of diversion at Lake Providence might be advisable. Emissaries serve an important purpose in the lower course of rivers where the bed is nearly a dead level and the water moves from previously acquired momentum and the pressure of the current above, rather than by the force of gravitation, and it is, in general, only under such circumstances, as for example in the deltas at the mouths of great rivers, that nature employs them.] The change of bed in rivers by gradual erosion of their banks is familiar to all, but instances of the sudden abandonment of a primitive channel are by no means wanting. At a period of unknown antiquity, the Ardeche pierced a tunnel 200 feet wide and 100 high, through a rock, and sent its whole current through it, deserting its former bed, which gradually filled up, though its course remained traceable. In the great inundation of 1827, the tunnel proved insufficient for the discharge of the water, and the river burst through the obstructions which had now choked up its ancient channel, and resumed its original course. [Footnote: Mardigny, Memoire sur les Inondations de l'Ardeche, p. 13.] It was probably such facts as these that suggested to ancient engineers the possibility of like artificial operations, and there are numerous instances of the execution of works for this purpose in very remote ages. The Bahr Jusef, the great stream which supplies the Fayoum with water from the Nile, has been supposed, by some writers, to be a natural channel; but both it and the Bahr el Wady are almost certainly artificial canals constructed to water that basin, to regulate the level of Lake Meeris, and possibly, also, to diminish the dangers resulting from excessive inundations of the Nile, by serving as waste-weirs to discharge a part of its overflowing waters. [Footnote: The starting-points of these anals were far up the Nile, and of course at a comparatively high level, and it is probable that they received water only during the inundation. Linant Bey calculates the capacity of Lake Moeris at 3,686,667 cubic yards and the water received by it at high Nile at 465 cubic yards the second.] Several of the seven ancient mouths of the Nile are believed to be artificial channels, and Herodotus even asserts that King Menes diverted the entire course of that river from the Libyan to the Arabian side of the valley. There are traces of an ancient river-bed along the western mountains, which give eome countenance to this statement. But it is much more probable that the works of Menes were designed rather to prevent a natural, than to produce an artificial, change in the channel of the river. Two of the most celebrated cascades in Europe, those of the Teverone at Tivoli and of the Velino at Terni, owe, if not their existence, at least their position and character, to the diversion of their waters from their natural beds into new channels, in order to obviate the evils produced by their frequent floods. Remarkable works of the same sort have been executed in Switzerland, in very recent times. Until the year 1714, the Kander, which drains several large Alpine valleys, ran, for a considerable distance, parallel with the Lake of Thun, and a few miles below the city of that name emptied into the river Aar. It frequently flooded the flats along the lower part of its course, and it was determined to divert it into the Lake of Thun. For this purpose, two parallel tunnels were cut through the intervening rock, and the river turned into them. The violence of the current burst up the roof of the tunnels, and, in a very short time, wore the new channel down not less than one hundred feet, and even deepened the former bed at least fifty feet, for a distance of two or three miles above the tunnel. The lake was two hundred feet deep at the point where the river was conducted into it, but the gravel and sand carried down by the Kander has formed at its mouth a delta containing more than a hundred acres, which is still advancing at the rate of several yards a year. The Linth, which formerly sent its waters directly to the Lake of Zurich, and often produced very destructive inundations, was turned into the Wallensee about fifty years ago, and in both these cases a great quantity of valuable land was rescued both from flood and from insalubrity. Glacier Lakes. In Switzerland, the most terrible inundations often result from the damming up of deep valleys by ice-slips or by the gradual advance of glaciers, and the accumulation of great masses of water above the obstructions. The ice is finally dissolved by the heat of summer or the flow of warm waters, and when it bursts, the lake formed above is discharged almost in an instant, and all below is swept down to certain destruction. In 1595, about a hundred and fifty lives and a great amount of property were lost by the eruption of a lake formed by the descent of a glacier into the valley of the Drance, and a similar calamity laid waste a considerable extent of soil in the year 1818. On this latter occasion, the barrier of ice and snow was 3,000 feet long, 600 thick, and 400 high, and the lake which had formed above it contained not less than 800,000,000 cubic feet. A tunnel was driven through the ice, and about 300,000,000 cubic feet of water safely drawn off by it, but the thawing of the walls of the tunnel rapidly enlarged it, and before the lake was half drained, the barrier gave way and the remaining 500,000,000 cubic feet of water were discharged in half an hour. The recurrence of these floods has since been prevented by directing streams of water, warmed by the sun, upon the ice in the bed of the valley, and thus thawing it before it accumulates in sufficient mass to form a new barrier and threaten serious danger. [Footnote: In 1845 a similar lake was formed by the extension of the Vernagt glacier. When the ice barrier gave way, 3,000,000 cubic yards of water were discharged in an hour.--Sonklar, Die Oetzthaler Gebirgsgruppe, section 167.] In the cases of diversion of streams above mentioned, important geographical changes have been directly produced by those operations. By the rarer process of draining glacier lakes, natural eruptions of water, which would have occasioned not less important changes in the face of the earth, have been prevented by human agency. River Embankments. The most obvious and doubtless earliest method of preventing the escape of river-waters from their natural channels, and the overflow of fields and towns by their spread, is that of raised embankments along their course. [Footnote: Riparian embankments are a real, if not a conscious, imitation of a natural process. The waters of rivers which flow down planes of gentle inclination deposit, in their inundations, the largest proportion of their sediment as soon as, by overflowing their banks, they escape from the swift current of the channel. The immediate borders of such rivers consequently become higher than the grounds lying further from the stream, and constitute, of themselves, a sort of natural dike of small elevation. In the "intervales" or "bottoms" of the great North American rivers the alluvial banks are elevated and dry, the flats more remote from the river lower and swampy. This is generally observable in Egypt (see Figari Bey, Studi Scientifici sull' Egitto, i, p. 87), though less so than in the valley of the Mississippi, where the alluvial banks form natural glacis, descending as you recede from the river, and in some places, as below Cape Girardeau, at the rate of seven feet in the first mile. Humphreys and Abbott, Report, pp. 96, 97. In fact, rivers, like mountain torrents, often run for a long distance on the summit of a ridge built up by their own deposits. The delta of the Mississippi is a regular cone, or rather mountain, of dejection, extending far out into the Gulf of Mexico, along the crest of which the river flows, sending off here and there, as it approaches the sea, a system of lateral streams resembling the fan-shaped discharge of a torrent.] The necessity of such embankments usually arises from the gradual elevation of the bed of running streams in consequence of the deposit of the earth and gravel they are charged with in high water; and, as we have seen, this elevation is rapidly accelerated when the highlands around the headwaters of rivers are cleared of their forests. When a river is embanked at a given point, and, consequently, the water of its floods, which would otherwise spread over a wide surface, is confined within narrow limits, the velocity of the current and its transporting power are augmented, and its burden of sand and gravel is deposited at some lower point, where the rapidity of its flow is checked by a dam or other artificial obstruction, by a diminution in the inclination of the bed, by a wider channel, or finally by a lacustrine or marine basin which receives its waters. Wherever it lets fall solid material, its channel is raised in consequence, and the declivity of the whole bed between the head of the embankment and the slack of the stream is reduced. Hence the current, at first accelerated by confinement, is afterwards checked by the mechanical resistance of the matter deposited, and by the diminished inclination of its channel, and then begins again to let fall the earth it holds in suspension, and to raise its bed at the point where its overflow had been before prevented by embankment. [Footnote: In proportion as the dikes are improved, and breaches and the escape of the water through them are less frequent, the height of the annual inundations is increased. Some towns on the banks of the Po, and of course within the system of parallel embankments, were formerly secure from flood by the height of the artificial mounds on which they were built; but they have recently been obliged to construct ring-dikes for their protection. Lombardini lays down the following general statement of the effects of river embankments: "The immediate effect of embanking a river is generally an increase in the height of its floods, but, at the same time, a depression of its bed, by reason of the increased force, and consequently excavating action, of the current. "It is true that coarser material may hence be carried further, and at the same time deposit itself on a reduced slope. "The embankment of the upper branches of a river increases the volume, and therefore the height of the floods in the lower course, in consequence of the more rapid discharge of its affluents into it. "When, in consequence of the flow of a river channel through an alluvial soil not yet REGULATED, or, in other words, which has not acquired its normal inclination, the course of the river has not become established, it is natural that its bed should rise more rapidly after its embankment. ... "The embankment of the lower course of a river, near its discharge into the sea, causes the elevation of the bed of the next reach above, both because the swelling of the current, in consequence of its lateral confinement, occasions eddies, and of course deposits, and because the prolongation of the course of the stream, or the advance of its delta into the sea, is accelerated."--Dei congiamenti cia soggiacque l'idraulica condizione del Po, etc., pp. 41, 42. Del Noce states that in the levellings for the proposed Leopolda railway, he found that the bed of the Sieue had been permanently elevated two yards between 1708 and 1844, and that of the Fosso di San Gaudenzio more than a yard and a half between 1752 and 1845. Those, indeed, are not rivers of the rank of the Po; but neither are they what are technically called torrents or mountain streams, whose flow is only an occasional effect of heavy rains or melting snow.--Trattato delle Macchie e Foreste di Tuscana, Firenze, 1857, p. 29.] The bank must now be raised in proportion, and these processes would be repeated and repeated indefinitely, had not nature provided a remedy in floods, which sweep out recent deposits, burst the bonds of the river and overwhelm the adjacent country with final desolation, or divert the current into a new channel, destined to become, in its turn, the scene of a similar struggle between man and the waters. [Footnote: The Noang-ho has repeatedly burst its dikes and changed the channel of its lower course, sometimes delivering its waters into the sea to the north, sometimes to the south of the peninsula of Chan-tung, thus varying its point of discharge by a distance of 220 miles.--Elisee Reclus, La Terre, t. i, p. 477. Sec interesting notices of the lower course of the Noang-ho in Nature, Nov. 25, 1869. The frequent changes of channel and mouth in the deltas of great rivers are by no means always an effect of diking. The mere accumulation of deposits in the beds of rivers which transport much sediment compels them continually to seek new outlets, and it is only by great effort that art can keep their points of discharge pproximately constant. The common delta of the Ganges and the Brahmapootra is in a state of incessant change, and the latter river is said to have shifted its main channel 200 miles to the west since 1785, the revolution having been principally accomplished between 1810 and 1830.] But here, as in so many other fields where nature is brought into conflict with man, she first resists his attempts at interference with her operations, then, finding him the stronger, quietly submits to his rule, and ends by contributing her aid to strengthen the walls and shackles by which he essays to confine her. If, by assiduous repair of his dikes, he, for a considerable time, restrains the floods of a river within new bounds, nature, by a series of ingenious compensations, brings the fluctuating bed of the stream to a substantially constant level, and when his ramparts have been, by his toil, raised to a certain height and widened to a certain thickness, she, by her laws of gravitation and cohesion, consolidates their material until it becomes almost as hard, as indissoluble, and as impervious as the rock. But, though man may press the forces of nature into his service, there is a limit to the extent of his dominion over them, and unless future generations shall discover new modes of controlling those forces, or new remedies against their action, he must at last succumb in the struggle. When the marine estuaries and other basins of reception shall be filled up with the sedimentary debris of the mountains, or when the lower course of the rivers shall be raised or prolonged by their own deposits until they have, no longer, such a descent that gravitation and the momentum of the current can overcome the frictional resistance of the bed and banks, the water will, in spite of all obstacles, diffuse itself laterally and for a time raise the level of the champaign land upon its borders, and at last convert it into morasses. It is for this reason that Lombardini advises that a considerable space along the lower course of rivers be left undiked, and the water allowed to spread itself over its banks and gradually raise them by its deposits. [Footnote: This method has been adopted on the lower course of the Lamone, and a considerable extent of low ground adjacent to that river has been raised by spontaneous deposit to a sufficient height to admit of profitable cultivation.] This would, indeed, be a palliative, but only a palliative. For the present, however, we have nothing better, and here, as often in political economy, we must content ourselves with "apres nous le deluge," allowing posterity to suffer the penalty of our improvidence and our ignorance, or to devise means for itself to ward off the consequences of them. The deposit of slime by rivers upon the flats along their banks not only contributes greatly to the fertility of the soil thus flowed, but it subserves a still more important purpose in the general economy of nature. All running streams begin with excavating channels for themselves, or deepening the natural depressions in which they flow; [Footnote: I do not mean to say that all rivers excavate their own valleys, for I have no doubt that in the majority of cases such depressions of the surface originate in higher geological causes, such as the fissures and other irregularities of surface which could not fail to accompany upheaval, and hence the valley makes the river, not the river the valley. But even if we suppose a basin of the hardest rock to be elevated at once, completely formed, from the submarine abyss where it was fashioned, the first shower of rain that falls upon it, after it rises to the air, will discharge its waters along the lowest lines of the surface, and cut those lines deeper, and so on with every successive rain. The disintegrated rock from the upper part of the basin forms the lower by alluvial deposit, which is constantly transported farther and farther until the resistance of gravitation and cohesion balances the mechanical force of the running water. Thus plains, more or less steeply inclined, are formed, in which the river is constantly changing its bed, according to the perpetually varying force and direction of its currents, modified as they are by ever-fluctuating conditions. Thus the Po is said to have long inclined to move its channel southwards, at certain points, in consequence of the mechanical force of its northern affluents. A diversion of these tributaries from their present beds, so that they should enter the main stream at other points and in different directions, might modify the whole course of that great river. But the mechanical force of the tributary is not the only element of its influence on the course of the principal stream. The deposits it lodges in the bed of the latter, acting as simple obstructions or causes of diversion, are not less important agents of change.] but in proportion as their outlets are raised by the solid material transported by their currents, their velocity is diminished, they deposit gravel and sand at constantly higher and higher points, and so at last elevate, in the middle and lower part of their course, the beds they had previously scooped out. [Footnote: The distance to which a new obstruction to the flow of a river, whether by a dam or by a deposit in its channel, will retard its current, or, in popular phrase, "set back the water," is a problem of more difficult practical solution than almost any other in hydraulics. The elements--such as straightness or crookedness of channel, character of bottom and banks, volume and previous velocity of current, mass of water far above the obstruction, extraordinary drought or humidity of seasons, relative extent to which the river may be affected by the precipitation in its own basin, and by supplies received through subterranean channels from sources so distant as to be exposed to very different meteorological influences, effects of clearing and other improvements always going on in new countries--are all extremely difficult, and some of them impossible, to be known and measured. In the American States, very numerous water-mills have been erected within a few years, and there is scarcely a stream in the settled portion of the country which has not several mill-dams upon it. When a dam is raised--a process which the gradual diminution of the summer currents renders frequently necessary--or when a new dam is built, it often happens that the meadows above are flowed, or that the retardation of the stream extends back to the dam next above. This leads to frequent law-suits. From the great uncertainty of the facts, the testimony is more conflicting in these than in any other class of cases, and the obstinacy with which "water causes" are disputed has become proverbial.] The raising of the channels is compensated in part by the simultaneous elevation of their banks and the flats adjoining them, from the deposit of the finer particles of earth and vegetable mould brought down from the mountains, without which elevation the low grounds bordering all rivers would be, as in many cases they in fact are, mere morasses. All arrangements which tend to obstruct this process of raising the flats adjacent to the channel, whether consisting in dikes which confine the waters, and, at the same time, augment the velocity of the current, or in other means of producing the last-mentioned effect, interfere with the restorative economy of nature, and at last occasion the formation of marshes where, if left to herself, she might have accumulated inexhaustible stores of the richest soil, and spread them out in plains above the reach of ordinary floods. [Footnote: The sediment of the Po has filled up some lagoons and swamps in its delta, and converted them into comparatively dry land; but, on the other hand, the retardation of the current from the lengthening of its course, and the diminution of its velocity by the deposits at its mouth, have forced its waters at some higher points to spread in spite of embankments, and thus fertile fields have been turned into unhealthy and unproductive marshes.--See Botter, Sulla condizione dei Terreni Maremmani nel Ferraress. Annali di Agricoltura, etc., Fasc. v., 1863.] Dikes, which, as we have seen, are the means most frequently employed to prevent damage by inundation, are generally parallel to each other and separated by a distance not very much greater than the natural width of the bed. [Footnote: In the case of rivers flowing through wide alluvial plains and much inclined to shift their beds, like the Po, the embankments often leave a very wide space between them. The dikes of the Po are sometimes three or four miles apart.] If such walls are high enough to confine the water and strong enough to resist its pressure, they secure the lands behind them from all the evils of inundation except those resulting from filtration; but such ramparts are enormously costly in original construction and in maintenance, and, as has been already shown, the filling up of the bed of the river in its lower course, by sand and gravel, often involves the necessity of incurring new expenditures in increasing the height of the banks. [Footnote: It appears from the investigations of Lombardini that the rate of elevation of the bed of the Po has been much exaggerated by earlier writers, and in some parts of its course the change is so slow that its level may be regarded as nearly constant. Observation has established a similar constancy in the bed of the Rhone and of many other important rivers, while, on the other hand, the beds of the Adige and the Brenta, streams of a more torrential character, are raised considerably above the level of the adjacent fields. The length of the lower course of the Po having been considerably increased by the filling up of the Adriatic with its deposits, the velocity of the current ought, prima facie, to have been diminished and its bed raised in proportion. There are abundant grounds for believing that this has happened in the case of the Nile, and one reason why the same effect has not been more sensibly perceptible in the Po is, that the confinement of the current by continuous embankements gives it a high-water velocity sufficient to sweep out deposits let fall at lower stages and slower movements of the water. Torrential streams tend to excavate or to raise their beds according to the inclination, and to the character of the material they transport. No general law on this point can be laid down in relation to the middle and lower courses of rivers. The conditions which determine the question of the depression or elevation of a river-bed are too multifarious, variable, and complex, to be subjected to formulae, and they can scarcely even be enumerated. The following observation, however, though apparently too unconditionally stated, is too important to be omitted. Rivers which transport sand, gravel, pebbles, heavy mineral matter in short, tend to raise their own beds; those charged only with fine, light earth, to cut them deeper. The prairie rivers of the western United States have deep channels, because the mineral matter they carry down is not heavy enough to resist the impulse of even a moderate current, and those tributaries of the Po which deposit their sediment in the lakes--the Ticino, the Adda, the Oglio, and the Mincio--flow in deep cuts, for the same reason.--Baumgarten, p. 132. In regard to the level of the bed of the Po, there is another weighty consideration which does not seem to have received the attention it deserves. refer to the secular depression of the western coast of the Adriatic, which is computed at the rate of fifteen or twenty centimetres in a century, and which of course increases the inclination of the bed, and the velocity and transporting power of the current of the Po, UNLESS we assume that the whole course of the river, from the sea to its sources, shares in the depression. Of this assumption there is no proof, and the probability is to the contrary. For the evidence, though not conclusive, perhaps, tends to show an elevation of the Tuscan coast, and even of the Ligurian shore at points lying farther west than the sources of the Po. The level of certain parts of the bed of the river referred to by Lombardini as constant, is not their elevation as compared with points nearer the sea, but relatively to the adjacent plains, and there is every reason to believe that the depression of the Adriatic coast, whether, as is conceivable, occasioned by the mere weight of the fluviatile deposits or by more general geological causes, has increased the slope of the bed of the river between the points in question and the sea. In this instance, then, the relative permanency of the river level at certain points may be, not the ordinary case of a natural equilibrium, but the negative effect of an increased velocity of current which prevents deposits where they would otherwise have happened.] They are attended, too, with some collateral disadvantages. They deprive the earth of the fertilizing deposits of the waters, which are powerful natural restoratives of soils exhausted by cultivation; they accelerate the rapidity and transporting power of the current at high water by confining it to a narrower channel, and it consequently conveys to the sea the earthy matter it holds in suspension, and chokes up harbors with a deposit which it would otherwise have spread over a wider surface; they interfere with roads and the convenience of river navigation, and no amount of cost or care can secure them from occasional rupture, in case of which the rush of the waters through the breach is more destructive than the natural flow of the highest inundation. [Footnote: To secure the city of Sacramento, in California, from the inundations to which it is subject, a dike or levee was built upon the bank of the river and raised to an elevation above that of the highest known floods, and it was connected, below the town, with grounds lying considerably above the river. On one occasion a breach in the dike occurred above the town at a very high stage of the flood. The water poured in behind it, and overflowed the lower part of the city, which remained submerged for some time after the river had retired to its ordinary level, because the dike, which had been built to keep the water OUT, now kept it IN. According to Arthur Young, on the lower Po, where the surface of the river at high water has been elevated considerably above the level of the adjacent fields by diking, the peasants in his time frequently endeavored to secure their grounds against threatened devastation through the bursting of the dikes, by crossing the river when the danger became imminent and opening a cut in the opposite bank, thus saving their own property by flooding their neighbors'. He adds, that at high water the navigation of the river was absolutely interdicted, except to mail and passenger boats, and that the guards fired upon all others; the object of the prohibition being to prevent the peasants from resorting to this measure of self-defence.--Travels in Italy and Spain, Nov. 7, 1789. In a flood of the Po in 1839, a breach of the embankment took place at Bonizzo. The water poured through and inundated 116,000 acres, or 181 square miles, of the plain to the depth of from twenty to twenty-three feet, in the lower parts. The inundation of May, 1872, a giant breach occurred in the dike near Ferrara, and 170,000 acres of cultivated land were overflowed, and a population of 30,000 souls driven from their homes. In the flood of October in the same year, in consequence of a breach of the dike at Revere, 250,000 acres of cultivated soil were overflowed, and 60,000 persons were made homeless. The dikes were seriously injured at more than forty points. See page 279, ante. In the flood of 1856, the Loire made seventy-three breaches in its dikes, and thus, instead of a comparatively gradual rise and gentle expansion of its waters, it created seventy-three impetuous torrents, which inflicted infinitely greater mischief than a simply natural overflow would have done. The dikes or levees of the Mississippi, being of more recent construction than those of the Po, are not yet well consolidated and fortified, and for this reason crevasses which occasion destructive inundations are of very frequent occurrence.] For these reasons, many experienced engineers are of opinion that the system of longitudinal dikes is fundamentally wrong, and it has been argued that if the Po, the Adige, and the Brenta had been left unconfined, as the Nile formerly was, and allowed to spread their muddy waters at will, according to the laws of nature, the sediment they have carried to the coast would have been chiefly distributed over the plains of Lombardy. Their banks, it is supposed, would have risen as fast as their beds, the coast-line would not have been extended so far into the Adriatic, and, the current of the streams being consequently shorter, the inclination of their channel and the rapidity of their flow would not have been so greatly diminished. Had man, too, spared a reasonable proportion of the forests of the Alps, and not attempted to control the natural drainage of the surface, the Po, it has been said, would resemble the Nile in all its essential characteristics, and, in spite of the difference of climate, perhaps be regarded as the friend and ally, not the enemy and the invader, of the population which dwells upon its banks. But it has been shown by Humphreys and Abbot that the system of longitudinal dikes is the only one susceptible of advantageous application to the Mississippi, and if we knew the primitive geography and hydrography of the basin of the Po as well as wo do those of the valley of the great American river, we should very probably find that the condemnation of the plan pursued by the ancient inhabitants of Lombardy is a too hasty generalization, and that the case of the Nile is an exception, not an example of the normal regime and condition of a great river. [Footnote: Embankments have been employed on the lower course of the Po for at least two thousand years, and for some centuries they have been connected in a continuous chain from the sea to the vicinity of Cremona. From early ages the Italian hydrographers have stood in the front rank of their profession, and the Italian literature of this branch of material improvement is exceedingly voluminous, exhaustive, and complete. "The science of rivers after the barbarous ages," says Mengotti, "may be said to have been born and perfected in Italy." The eminent Italian engineer Lombardini published in 1870, under the title of Guida allo studio dell' idrologia fluviale e dell' Idraulica practica, which serves both as a summary of the recent progress of that science and as an index to the literature of the subject. The professional student, therefore, as well as the geographer, will have very frequent occasion to consult Italian authorities, and in the very valuable Report of Humphreys and Abbot on the Mississippi, America has lately made a contribution to our potamological knowledge, which, in scientific interest and practical utility, does not fall short of the ablest European productions in the same branch of inquiry.] But in any event, these theoretical objections are counsels apres coup. The dikes of the Po and probably of some of its tributaries were begun before we have any trustworthy physical or political annals of the provinces they water. The civilization of the valley has accommodated itself to these arrangements, and the interests which might be sacrificed by a change of system are too vast to be hazarded by what, in the present state of our knowledge, can be only considered as a doubtful experiment. [Footnote: Dupenchel advised a resort to the "heroic remedy" of sacrificing, or converting into cellars, the lower storeys of houses in cities exposed to river inundation, filling up the streets, and admitting the water of floods freely over the adjacent country, and thus allowing it to raise the level of the soil to that of the highest inundations.--Traite d'Hydraulique et de Geologie Agricole, Paris, 1868, p. 241.] The embankments of the Po, though they are of vast extent and have employed centuries in their construction, are inferior in magnitude to the dikes or levees of the Mississippi, which are the work of scarcely a hundred years, and of a comparatively sparse population. On the right or western bank of the river, the levee extends, with only occasional interruptions from high bluffs and the mouths of rivers, for a distance of more than eleven hundred miles. The left bank is, in general, higher than the right, and upon that side a continuous embankment is not needed; but the total length of the dikes of the Mississippi, including those of the lower course of its tributaries and of its bayous or natural emissaries, is not less than 2,500 miles. They constitute, therefore, not only one of the greatest material achievements of the American people, but one of the most remarkable systems of physical improvement which has been anywhere accomplished in modern times. Those who condemn the system of longitudinal embankments have often advised that, in cases where that system cannot be abandoned without involving too great a sacrifice of existing interests, the elevation of the dikes should be much reduced, so as to present no obstruction to the lateral spread of extraordinary floods, and that they should be provided with sluices to admit the water without violence whenever they are likely to be overflowed. Where dikes have not been erected, or where they have been reduced in height, it is proposed to construct, at convenient intervals, transverse embankments of moderate height running from the banks of the river across the plains to the hills which bound them. These measures, it is argued, will diminish the violence of inundations by permitting the waters to extend themselves over a greater surface, and by thus retarding the flow of the river currents, will, at the same time, secure the deposit of fertilizing slime upon all the soil covered by the flood. [Footnote: The system described in the text is substantially the Egyptian method, the ancient Nile dikes having been constructed rather to retain than to exclude the water.] Rozet, an eminent French engineer, has proposed a method of diminishing the ravages of inundations, which aims to combine the advantages of all other systems, and at the same time to obviate the objections to which they are all more or less liable. [Footnote: Moyens de forcer les Torrents de rendre une partie du sol qu'ils ravagent, et d'empecher les grandes Inondations.] The plan of Rozet is recommended by its simplicity and cheapness as well as its facility and rapidity of execution, and is looked upon with favor by many persons very competent to judge in such matters. It is, however, by no means capable of universal application, though it would often doubtless prove highly useful in connection with the measures now employed in South-eastern France. He proposes to commence with the amphitheatres in which mountain torrents so often rise, by covering their slopes and filling their beds with loose blocks of rock, and by constructing at their outlets, and at other narrow points in the channels of the torrents, permeable barriers of the same material promiscuously heaped up, much according to the method employed by the ancient Romans in their northern provinces for a similar purpose. By this means, he supposes, the rapidity of the current would be checked, and the quantity of transported pebbles and gravel--which, by increasing the mechanical force of the water, greatly aggravate the damage by floods--much diminished. When the stream has reached that part of its course where it is bordered by soil capable of cultivation, and worth the expense of protection, he proposes to place along one or both banks, according to circumstances, a line of cubical blocks of stone or pillars of masonry three or four feet high and wide, and at the distance of about eleven yards from each other. The space between the two lines, or between a line and the opposite high bank, would, of course, be determined by observation of the width of the swift-water current at high floods. As an auxiliary measure, small ditches and banks, or low walls of pebbles, should be constructed from the line of blocks across the grounds to be protected, nearly at right angles to the current, but slightly inclining downwards, and at convenient distances from each other. Rozet thinks the proper interval would be 300 yards, and it is evident that, if he is right in his main principle, hedges, rows of trees, or even common fences, would in many cases answer as good a purpose as banks and trenches or low walls. The blocks or pillars of stone would, he contends, check the lateral currents so as to compel them to let fall all their pebbles and gravel in the main channel--where they would be rolled along until ground down to sand or silt--and the transverse obstructions would detain the water upon the soil long enough to secure the deposit of its fertilizing slime. Numerous facts are cited in support of the author's views, and I imagine there are few residents of rural districts whose own observation will not furnish testimony confirmatory of their soundness. [Footnote: The effect of trees and other detached obstructions in checking the flow of water is particularly noticed by Palissy in his essay on Waters and Fountains, p. 173, edition of 1844. "There be," says he, "in divers parts of France, and specially at Nantes, wooden bridges, where, to break the force of the waters and of the floating ice, which might endamage the piers of the said bridges, they have driven upright timbers into the bed of the rivers above the said piers, without the which they should abide but little. And in like wise, the trees which be planted along the mountains do much deaden the violence of the waters that flow from them." Lombardini attaches great importance to the planting of rows of trees transversely to the current on grounds subject to overflow.--Esame degli Studi sul Tevere, Section 53, and Appendice, Sections 33, 34.] Removal of Obstructions. The removal of obstructions in the beds of rivers dredging the bottom or blasting rocks, the washing out of deposits and locally increasing the depth of water by narrowing the channel by moans of spurs or other constructions projecting from the banks, and, finally, the cutting off of bends and thus shortening the course of the stream, diminishing the resistance of its shores and bottom and giving the bed a more rapid declivity, have all been employed not only to facilitate navigation, but as auxiliaries to more effectual modes of preventing inundations. But a bar removed from one point is almost sure to re-form at the same or another, spurs occasion injurious eddies and unforeseen diversions of the current, [Footnote: The introduction of a new system of spurs with parabolic curves has been attended with giant advantage in France.--Annales du Genie Civil, Mai, 1863.] and the cutting off of bends, though occasionally effected by nature herself, and sometimes advantageous in torrential streams whose banks are secured by solid walls of stone or other artificial constructions, seldom establishes a permanent channel, and besides, the increased rapidity of the flow through the new cut often injuriously affects the regime of the river for a considerable distance below. [Footnote: This practice has sometimes been resorted to on the Mississippi with advantage to navigation, but it is quite another question whether that advantage has not been too dearly purchased by the injury to the banks at lower points. If we suppose a river to have a navigable course of 1,600 miles as measured by its natural channel, with a descent of 800 feet, we shall have a fall of six inches to the mile. If the length of channel be reduced to 1,200 miles by cutting off bends, the fall is increased to eight inches per mile. The augmentation of velocity consequent upon this increase of inclination is not computable without taking into account other elements, such as depth and volume of water, diminution of direct resistance, and the like, but in almost any supposable case, it would be sufficient to produce great effects on the height of floods, the deposit of sediment in the channel, on the shores, and at the outlet, the erosion of banks and other points of much geographical importance. The Po, in those parts of its course where the embankments leave a wide space between, often cuts off bends in its channel and straightens its course. These short cuts are called salti, or leaps, and sometimes abridge the distance between their termini by several miles. In 1777, the salto of Cottaro shortened a distance of 7,000 metres by 5,000, or, in other words, reduced the length of the river by five kilometres, or about three miles, and in 1807 and 1810 the two salti of Mozzanone effected a still greater reduction.] Combination of Methods. Upon the whole, it is obvious that no one of the methods heretofore practised or proposed for averting the evils resulting from river inundations is capable of universal application. Each of them is specially suited to a special case. But the hydrography of almost every considerable river and its tributaries will be found to embrace most special cases, most known forms of superficial fluid circulation. For rivers, in general, begin in the mountains, traverse the plains, and end in the sea; they are torrents at their sources, swelling streams in their middle course, placid currents, flowing molli flumine, at their termination. Hence in the different parts of their course the different methods of controlling and utilizing them may successively find application, and there is every reason to believe that by a judicious application of all, every great river may, in a considerable degree, be deprived of its powers of evil and rendered subservient to the use, the convenience, and the dominion of man. [Footnote: On the remedies against inundation, see the valuable paper of Lombardini, Sulle Inondazioni avvenute in questi ultimi tempi in Francia. Milano, 1858. There can be no doubt that in the case of rivers which receive their supply in a large measure from mountain streams, the methods described in a former chapter as recently employed in South-eastern France to arrest the formation and lessen the force of torrents, would prove equally useful as a preventive remedy against inundations. They would both retard the delivery of surface-water and diminish the discharge of sediment into rivers, thus operating at once against the two most efficient causes of destructive floods. See Chapter III., pp. 316 at seqq.] Dikes of the Nile. "History tells us," says Mengotti, "that the Nile became terrible and destructive to ancient Egypt, in consequence of being confined within elevated dikes, from the borders of Nubia to the sea. It being impossible for these barriers to resist the pressure of its waters at such a height, its floods burst its ramparts, sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other, and deluged the plains, which lay far below the level of its current. . . . In one of its formidable inundations the Nile overwhelmed and drowned a large part of the population. The Egyptians then perceived that they were struggling against nature in vain, and they resolved to remove the dikes, and permit the river to expand itself laterally and raise by its deposits the surface of the fields which border its channel." [Footnote: Idraulica Fisica e Sperimentale. 2d edizione, vol. i., pp. 131, 133.] The original texts of the passages cited by Mengotti, from Latin translations of Diodorus Siculus and Plutarch and from Pliny the Elder, do not by any means confirm this statement, though the most important of them, that from Diodorus Siculus, is, perhaps, not irreconcilable with it. Not one of them speaks of the removal of the dikes, and I understand them all as relating to the mixed system of embankments, reservoirs, and canals which have been employed in Egypt through the whole period concerning which we have clear information. I suppose that the disastrous inundations referred to by the authors in question were simply extraordinary floods of the same character as those which have been frequent at later periods of Egyptian history, and I find nothing in support of the proposition that continuous embankments along the banks of the Nile ever existed until such were constructed by Mehemet Ali. [Footnote: The gradual elevation of the bed of the Nile from sedimentary deposit, from the prolongation of the Delta and consequent reduction of the inclination of the river-bed, or, as has been supposed by some, though without probability, from a secular rise of the coast, rendered necessary some change in the hydraulic arrangements of Egypt. Mehemet Ali was advised to adopt a system of longitudinal levees, and he embanked the river from Jebel Silsileh to the sea with dikes six or seven feet high and twenty feet thick. Similar embankments were made around the Delta. These dikes are provided with transverse embankments, with sluices for admitting and canals for distributing the water, and they serve rather to retain the water and control its flow than to exclude it. Clot Bey, Apercu sur l'Egypte, ii., 437.] The object of the dikes of the Po, and, with few exceptions, of those of other European rivers, has always been to confine the waters of floods and the solid material transported by them within as narrow a channel as possible, and entirely to prevent them from flowing over the adjacent plains. The object of the Egyptian dikes and canals is the reverse, namely, to diffuse the swelling waters and their sediment over as wide a surface as possible, to store them up until the soil they cover has them thoroughly saturated and enriched, and then to conduct them over other grounds requiring a longer or a second submersion, and, in general, to suffer none of the precious fluid to escape except by evaporation and infiltration. Lake Moeris, whether wholly an artificial excavation, or a natural basin converted by embankments into a reservoir, was designed chiefly for the same purpose as the barrage built by Mougel Bey across the two great arms which enclose the Delta, namely, as a magazine to furnish a perennial supply of water to the thirsty soil. But these artificial arrangements alone did not suffice. Canals were dug to receive the water at lower stages of the river and conduct it far into the interior, and as all this was still not enough, hundreds of thousands of wells were sunk to bring up from the subsoil, and spread over the surface, the water which, by means of infiltration from the river-bed, pervades the inferior strata of the whole valley. [Footnote: It is said that in the Delta alone 50,000 wells are employed for irrigation.] If a system of lofty continuous dikes, like those of the Po, had really been adopted in Egypt, in the early dynasties when the power and the will to undertake the most stupendous material enterprises were so eminently characteristic of the government of that country, and persevered in through later ages, and the waters of the annual inundation had thus been permanently prevented from flooding the land, it is conceivable that the productiveness of the small area of cultivable soil in the Nile valley might have been long kept up by artificial irrigation and the application of manures. But nature would have rebelled at last, and centuries before our time the mighty river would have burst the fetters by which impotent man had vainly striven to bind his swelling floods, the fertile fields of Egypt would have been converted into dank morasses, and then, perhaps, in some distant future, when the expulsion of man should have allowed the gradual restoration of the primitive equilibrium, would be again transformed into luxuriant garden and plough land. Fortunately, the sapientia AEgyptiorum, the wisdom of the Egyptians, taught them better things. They invited and welcomed, not repulsed, the slimy embraces of Nilus, and his favors have been, from the hoariest antiquity, the greatest material blessing that nature ever bestowed upon a people. [Footnote: Deep borings have not detected any essential difference in the quantity or quality of the deposits of the Nile for forty or fifty, or, as some compute, for a hundred centuries. From what vast store of rich earth does this river derive the three or four inches of fertilizing material which it spreads over the soil of Egypt every hundred years Not from the White Nile, for that river drops nearly all its suspended matter in the broad expansions and slow current of its channel south of the tenth degree of north latitude. Nor does it appear that much sediment is contributed by the Bahr-el-Azrek, which flows through forests for a great part of its course. I have been informed by an old European resident of Egypt who is very familiar with the Upper Nile, that almost the whole of the earth with which its waters are charged is brought down by the Takazze.] Deposits of the Nile. The Nile is larger than all the rivers of Lombardy together, [Footnote: From daily measurements during a period of fourteen years--1827 to 1840--the mean delivery of the Po at Ponte Lagoscuro, below the entrance of its last tributary, is found to be 1,720 cubic metres, or 60,745 cubic feet, per second. Its smallest delivery is 186 cubic metres, or 6,569 cubic feet, its greatest 5,156 cubic metres, or 152,094 cubic feet. The average delivery of the Nile being 101,000 cubic feet per second, it follows that the Po contributes to the Adriatic rather more than six-tenths as much water as the Nile to the Mediterranean--a result which will surprise most readers. It is worth remembering that the mean delivery of the Rhone is almost identical with that of the Po, and that of the Rhine is very nearly the same. Though the Po receives four-tenths of its water from lakes, in which the streams that empty into them let fall the solid material they bring down from the mountains, its deposits in the Adriatic are at least sixty or seventy per cent. greater than those transported to the Mediterranean by the Rhone, which derives most of its supply from mountain and torrential tributaries. Those tributaries lodge much sediment in the Lake of Geneva and the Lac de Bourget, but the total erosion of the Po and its affluents must be considerably greater than that of the Rhone system. The Rhine conveys to the sea much less sediment than either of the other two rivers.--Lombardini, Cargiamenti nella condizione del Po, pp. 29, 39. The mean discharge of the Mississippi is 675,000 cubic feet per second, and, accordingly, that river contributes to the sea about eleven times as much water as the Po, and more than six and a half times as much as the Nile. The discharge of the Mississippi is estimated at one-fourth of the precipitation in its basin--certainly a very large proportion, when we consider the rapidity of evaporation in many parts of the basin, and the probable loss by infiltration.--Humphreys and Abbott'S Report, p. 93. The basin of the Mississippi has an area forty-six times as large as that of the Po, with a mean annual precipitation of thirty inches, while that of the Po, at least according to official statistics, has a precipitation of forty inches. Hence the down-fall in the former is one-fourth less than in the latter. Besides this, the Mississippi loses little or nothing by the diversion of its waters for irrigation. Consequently the measured discharge of the Mississippi is proportionally much less than that of the Po, and we are authorized to conclude that the difference is partly due to the escape of water from the bed, or at least the basin of the Mississippi, by subterranean channels. These comparisons are interesting in reference to the supply received by the sea directly from great rivers, but they fail to give a true idea of the real volume of the latter. To take the case of the Nile and the Po: we have reason to suppose that comparatively little water is diverted from the tributaries of the former for irrigation, but enormous quantities are drawn from its main trunk for that purpose, below the point where it receives its last affluent. This quantity is now increasing in so rapid a proportion, that Elisee Reclus foresees the day when the entire low-water current will be absorbed by new arrangements to meet the needs of extended and improved agriculture. On the other hand, while the affluents of the Po send off a great quantity of water into canals of irrigation, the main trunk loses little or nothing in that way except at Chivasso. Trustworthy data are wanting to enable us to estimate how far these different modes of utilizing the water balance each other in the case under consideration. Perhaps the Canal Cavour, and other irrigating canals now proposed, may one day intercept as large a proportion of the supply of the lower Po as Egyptian dikes, canals, shadoofs, and steam-pumps do of that of the Nile. Another circumstance is important to be considered in comparing the character of these three rivers. The Po runs nearly east and west, and it and its tributaries are exposed to no other difference of meterological conditions than those which always subsist between the mountains and the plains. The course of the Nile and the Mississippi is mainly north and south. The sources of the Nile are in a very humid region, its lower course for many hundred miles in almost rainless latitudes with enormous evaporating power, while the precipitation is large throughout the Mississippi system, except in the basins of some of its western affluents.] it drains a basin fifty, possibly even a hundred, times as extensive, its banks have been occupied by man probably twice as long. But its geographical character has not been much changed in the whole period of recorded history, and, though its outlets have somewhat fluctuated in number and position, its historically known encroachments upon the sea are trifling compared with those of the Po and the neighboring streams. The deposits of the Nile are naturally greater in Upper than in Lower Egypt. They are found to have raised the soil at Thebes about seven feet within the last seventeen hundred years, and in the Delta the rise has been certainly more than half as great. We shall, therefore, probably not exceed the truth if we suppose the annually inundated surface of Egypt to have been elevated, upon an average, ten feet, [Footnote: Fraas and Eyth maintain that we have no trustworthy data for calculating the annual or secular elevation of the soil of Egypt by the sediment of the Nile. The deposit, they say, is variable from irregularity of current, and especially from the interference of man with the operations of nature, to a degree which renders any probable computation of the amount quite impossible.--Fraas, Aus dem Orient, pp. 212, 213. The sedimentary matter transported by the Nile might doubtless be estimated with approximate precision by careful observation of the proportion of suspended slime and water at different stations and seasons for a few successive years. Figari Bey states that at low stages the water of the Nile contains little or no sediment, and that the greatest proportion occurs about the end of July, and of course, while the river is still rising. Experiments at Khartum at that season showed solid matter in the proportion of one to a thousand by weight. The quantity is relatively greater at Cairo, a fact which shows that the river receives more earth from the erosion of its banks than it deposits at its own bottom, and it must consequently widen its channel unless we suppose a secular depression of the coast at the mouth of the Nile which produces an increased inclination of the bed of the river, and consequently an augmented velocity of flow sufficient to sweep out earth from the bottom and mix it with the current. Herschell states the Nile sediment at 1 in 633 by weight, and computes the entire annual quantity at 140 millions of tons.--Physical Geography, p. 231. The mean proportion of sedimentary material in the waters of the Mississippi is calculated at 1 to 1,500 by weight, and 1 to 2,900 in volume, and the total annual quantity at 812,500,000,000 pounds, which would cover one square mile to the depth of 214 feet.--Humphreys and Abbott, Report, p. 140.] within the last 5,000 years, or twice and a half the period during which the history of the Po is known to us. [Footnote: We are quite safe in supposing that the valley of the Nile has been occupied by man at least 5,000 years. The dates of Egyptian chronology are uncertain, but I believe no inquirer estimates the age of the great pyramids at less than forty centuries, and the construction of such works implies an already ancient civilization. It is an interesting fact that the old Egyptian system of embankments and canals is probably more ancient than the geological changes which have converted the Mississippi from a limpid to a turbid stream, and occasioned the formation of the vast delta at the mouth of that river. Humphreys and Abbot conclude that the delta of the Mississippi began its encroachments on the Gulf of Mexico not more than 4,400 years ago, before which period they suppose the Mississippi to have been "a comparatively clear stream," conveying very little sediment to the sea. The present rate of advance of the delta is 262 feet a year, and there are reasons for thinking that the amount of deposit has long been approximately constant.--Report, pp. 435, 436.] As I have observed, the area of cultivated soil is much less extensive now than under the dynasties of the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies; for--though, in consequence of the elevation of the river-bed, the inundations now have a wider NATURAL spread--the industry of the ancient Egyptians conducted the Nile water over a great surface which it does not now reach. Had the Nile been banked in, like the Po, all this deposit, except that contained in the water diverted by canals or otherwise drawn from the river for irrigation and other purposes, would have soon carried out to sea. This would have been a considerable quantity; for the Nile holds some earth in suspension at all seasons except at the very lowest water, a much larger proportion during the flood, and irrigation must have been carried on during the whole year. The precise amount of sediment which would have been thus distributed over the soil is matter of conjecture, but though large, it would have been much less than the inundations have deposited, and continuous longitudinal embankments would have compelled the Nile to transport to the Mediterranean an immense quantity over and above what it has actually deposited in that sea. The Mediterranean is shoal for some miles out to sea along the whole coast of the Delta, and the large bays or lagoons within the coast-line, which communicate both with the river and the sea, have little depth of water. These lagoons the river deposits would have filled up, and there would still have been surplus earth enough to extend the Delta far into the Mediterranean. [Footnote: The present annual extension of the Delta is, if perceptible, at all events very small. According to some authorities, a few hectares are added every year at each Nile mouth. Others, among whom I may mention Fraas, deny that there is any extension at all, the deposit being balanced by a secular depression of the coast. Elisee Reclus states that the Delta advances about 40 inches per year.--La Terre, i., p. 500.] Obstruction of River Mouths. The mouths of a large proportion of the streams known to ancient navigation are already blocked up by sand-bars or fluviatile deposits, and the maritime approaches to river harbors frequented by the ships of Phenicia and Carthage and Greece and Rome are shoaled to a considerable distance out to sea. The inclination of the lower course of almost every known river bed has been considerably reduced within the historical period, and nothing but great volume of water, or exceptional rapidity of flow, now enables a few large streams like the Amazon, the La Plata, the Ganges, and, in a loss degree, the Mississippi, to carry their own deposits far enough out into deep water to prevent the formation of serious obstructions to navigation. But the degradation of their banks, and the transportation of earthy matter to the sea by their currents, are gradually filling up the estuaries even of those mighty floods, and unless the threatened evil shall be averted by the action of geological forces, or by artificial contrivances more efficient than dredging-machines, the destruction of every harbor in the world which receives a considerable river must inevitably take place at no very distant date. This result would, perhaps, have followed in some incalculably distant future, if man had not come to inhabit the earth as soon as the natural forces which had formed its surface had arrived at such an approximate equilibrium that his existence on the globe was possible; but the general effect of his industrial operations has been to accelerate it immensely. Rivers, in countries planted by nature with forests and never inhabited by man, employ the little earth and gravel they transport chiefly to raise their own beds and to form plains in their basins. In their upper course, where the current is swiftest, they are most heavily charged with coarse rolled or suspended matter, and this, in floods, they deposit on their shores in the mountain valleys where they rise; in their middle course, a lighter earth is spread over the bottom of their widening basins, and forms plains of moderate extent; the fine silt which floats farther is deposited over a still broader area, or, if carried out to sea, is in great part quickly swept far off by marine currents and dropped at last in deep water. Man's "improvement" of the soil increased the erosion from its surface; his arrangements for confining the lateral spread of the water in floods compel the rivers to transport to their mouths the earth derived from that erosion even in their upper course; and, consequently, the sediment they deposit at their outlets is not only much larger in quantity, but composed of heavier materials, which sink more readily to the bottom of the sea and are less easily removed by marine currents. The tidal movement of the ocean, deep-sea currents, and the agitation of inland waters by the wind, lift up the sands strewn over the bottom by diluvial streams or sent down by mountain torrents, and throw them up on dry land, or deposit them in sheltered bays and nooks of the coast--for the flowing is stronger than the ebbing tide, the affluent than the refluent wave. This cause of injury to harbors it is not in man's power to resist by any means at present available; but, as we have seen, something can be done to prevent the degradation of high grounds, and to diminish the quantity of earth which is annually abstracted from the mountains, from table-lands, and from river-banks, to raise the bottom of the sea. This latter cause of harbor obstruction, though an active agent, is, nevertheless, in many cases, the less powerful of the two. The earth suspended in the lower course of fluviatile currents is lighter than sea-sand, river water lighter than sea water, and hence, if a land stream enters the sea with a considerable volume, its water flows over that of the sea, and bears its slime with it until it lets it fall far from shore, or, as is more frequently the case, mingles with some marine current and transports its sediment to a remote point of deposit. The earth borne out of the mouths of the Nile is in part carried over the waves which throw up sea-sand on the beach, and deposited in deep water, in part drifted by the current, which sweeps east and north along the coasts of Egypt and Syria, and lodged in every nook along the shore--and among others, to the great detriment of the Suez Canal, in the artificial harbor at its northern terminus--and in part borne along until it finds a final resting-place in the north-eastern angle of the Mediterranean. [Footnote: "The stream carries this mud, etc., at first farther to the east, and only lets it fall where the force of the current becomes weakened. This explains the continual advance of the land seaward along the Syrian coast, in consequence of which Tyre and Sideon no longer lie on the shore, but some distance inland. That the Nile contributes to this deposit may easily be seen, even by the unscientific observer, from the stained and turbid character of the water for many miles from its mouths. Ships often encounter floating masses of Nile mud, and Dr. Clarke thus describes a case of this sort: "While we were at table, we heard the sailors who were throwing the lead suddenly cry out: 'Three and a half!' The ship slackened her way, and veered about. As she came round, the whole surface of the water was seen to be covered with thick, black mud, which extended so far that it appeared like an island. At the same time, actual land was nowhere to be seen--not even from the mast-head--nor was any notice of such a shoal to be found or any chart on board. The fact is, as we learned afterwards, that a stratum of mud, stretching from the mouths of the Nile for many miles out into the open sea, forms a movable deposit along the Egyptian coast. If this deposit is driven forwards by powerful currents, it sometimes rises to the surface, and disturbs the mariner by the sudden appearance of shoals where the charts lead him to expect a considerable depth of water. But these strata of mud are, in reality, not in the least dangerous. As soon as a ship strikes them they break up at once, and a frigate may hold her course in perfect safety where an inexperienced pilot, misled by his soundings, would every moment expect to be stranded."--Bottger, Das Mittchneer, pp. 188, 189. This phenomenon is not peculiar to the locality in question, and it is frequently observed in the Gulf of Bengal, and other great marine estuaries.] Thus the earth loosened by the rude Abyssinian ploughshare, and washed down by the rain from the hills of Ethiopia which man has stripped of their protecting forests, contributes to raise the plains of Egypt, to shoal the maritime channels which lead to the city built by Alexander near the mouth of the Nile, to obstruct the artificial communication between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, and to fill up the harbors made famous by Phenician commerce. Deposits of the Tuscan Rivers. The Arno, and all the rivers rising on the western slopes and spurs of the Apennines, carry down immense quantities of mud to the Mediterranean. There can be no doubt that the volume of earth so transported is very much greater than it would have been had the soil about the headwaters of those rivers continued to be protected from wash by forests; and there is as little question that the quantity borne out to sea by the rivers of Western Italy is much increased by artificial embankments, because they are thereby prevented from spreading over the surface the sedimentary matter with which they are charged. The western coast of Tuscany has advanced some miles seawards within a very few centuries. The bed of the sea, for a long distance, has been raised, and of course the relative elevation of the land above it lessened; harbors have been filled up and destroyed; long lines of coast dunes have been formed, and the diminished inclination of the beds of the rivers near their outlets has caused their waters to overflow their banks and convert them into pestilential marshes. The territorial extent of Western Italy has thus been considerably increased, but the amount of soil habitable and cultivable by man has been, in a still higher proportion, diminished. The coast of ancient Etruria was filled with great commercial towns, and their rural environs were occupied by a large and prosperous population. But maritime Tuscany has long been one of the most unhealthy districts in Christendom; the famous Etruscan mart of Populonia has scarcely an inhabitant; the coast is almost absolutely depopulated, and the malarious fevers have extended their ravages far into the interior. These results are certainly not to be ascribed wholly to human action. They are, in a large proportion, due to geological causes over which man has no control. The soil of much of Tuscany becomes pasty, almost fluid even, as soon as it is moistened, and when thoroughly saturated with water, it flows like a river. Such a soil as this would not be completely protected by woods, and, indeed, it would now be difficult to confine it long enough to allow it to cover itself with forest vegetation. Nevertheless, it certainly was once chiefly wooded, and the rivers which flow through it must then have been much less charged with earthy matter than at present, and they must have carried into the sea a smaller proportion of their sediment when they were free to deposit it on their banks than since they have been confined by dikes. It is, in general, true, that the intervention of man has hitherto seemed to insure the final exhaustion, ruin, and desolation of every province of nature which he has reduced to his dominion. Attila was only giving an energetic and picturesque expression to the tendencies of human action, as personified in himself, when he said that "no grass grew where his horse's hoofs had trod." The instances are few, where a second civilization has flourished upon the ruins of an ancient culture, and lands once rendered uninhabitable by human acts or neglect have generally been forever abandoned as hopelessly irreclaimable. It is, as I have before remarked, a question of vast importance, how far it is practicable to restore the garden we have wasted, and it is a problem on which experience throws little light, because few deliberate attempts have yet been made at the work of physical regeneration, on a scale large enough to warrant general conclusions in any one class of cases. The valleys and shores of Tuscany form, however, a striking exception to this remark. The succcess with which human guidance has made the operations of nature herself available for the restoration of her disturbed harmonies, in the Val di Chiana and the Tuscan Maremma, is among the noblest, if not the most brilliant achievements of modern engineering, and, regarded in all its bearings on the great question of which I have just spoken, it is, as an example, of more importance to the general interests of humanity than the proudest work of internal improvement that mechanical means have yet constructed. The operations in the Val di Chiana have consisted chiefly in so regulating the flow of the surface-waters into and through it, as to compel them to deposit their sedimentary matter at the will of the engineers, and thereby to raise grounds rendered insalubrious and unfit for agricultural use by stagnating water; the improvements in the Maremma have embraced both this method of elevating the level of the soil, and the prevention of the mixture of salt-water with fresh in the coast marshes and shallow bays, which is regarded as a very active cause of the development of malarious influences. [Footnote: The fact that the mixing of salt and fresh water in coast marshes and lagoons is deleterious to the sanitary condition of the vicinity, has been generally admitted, though the precise reason why a mixture of both should be more injurious than either alone, is not altogether clear. It has been suggested that the admission of salt-water to the lagoons and rivers kills many fresh-water plants and animals, while the fresh water is equally fatal to many marine organisms, and that the decomposition of the remains originates poisonous minsmata. Other theories, however, have been proposed. The whole subject is fully and ably discussed by Dr. Salvagnoli Marchetti in the appendix to his valuable Rapporto aul Bonificamento delle Maremme Toscane. See also the Memorie Economico-Statistiche sulle Maremme Toscane, of the same author. A different view of this subject is taken by Raffanini and Orlandini in Analisi, Storico-Fisico-Economica sulli insolubrita nelle Maremme Toscane, Firenze, 1869. See also the important memoir of D. Pantaleoni, Del miasma vegetale e delle Malattie Miasmatiche, in which the views of Salvagnoli on this point are combated.] Improvements in the Tuscan Maremma. In the improvements of the Tuscan Maremma, formidable difficulties have been encountered. The territory to be reclaimed was extensive; the salubrious places of retreat for laborers and inspectors were remote; the courses of the rivers to be controlled were long and their natural inclination not rapid; some of them, rising in wooded regions, transported comparatively little earthy matter, [Footnote: This difficulty has been remedied--though with doubtful general advantage--as to one important river of the Maremma, the Pecora, by clearings recently executed along its upper course. "The condition of this marsh and of its affluents are now, November, 1859, much changed, and it is advisable to prosecute its improvement by deposits. In consequence of the extensive felling of the woods upon the plains, hills, and mountains of the territory of Massa and Scarlino, within the last ten years, the Pecora and other affluents of the marsh receive, during the rains, water abundantly charged with slime, so that the deposits within the first division of the marsh are already considerable, and we may now hope to see the whole marsh and pond filled up in a much shorter time than we had a right to expect before 1850. This circumstance totally changes the terms of the question, because the filling of the marsh and pond, which then seemed almost impossible on account of the small amount of sediment deposited by the Pecora, has now become practicable."--Salvagnoli, Rapporto sul Bonificamento delle Maremme Toscane, pp.li., lii. Between 1830 and 1859 more than 36,000,000 cubic yards of sediment were deposited in the marsh and shoal-water lake of Castiglione alone.--Salvagnoli, Raccolta di Documenti, pp. 74, 75.] and above all, the coast, which is a recent deposit of the waters, is little elevated above the sea, and admits into its lagoons and the mouths of its rivers floods of salt-water with every western wind, every rising tide. [Footnote: The tide rises ten inches on the coast of Tuscany. See Memoir by Fantoni, in the appendix to Salvagnoli, Rapporto, p. 189. On the tides of the Mediterranean, see Bottger, Das Mittelmeer, p. 190.] The western coast of Tuscany is not supposed to have been an unhealthy region before the conquest of Etruria by the Romans, but it certainly became so within a few centuries after that event. This was a natural consequence of the neglect or wanton destruction of the public improvements, and especially the hydraulic works in which the Etruscans were so skilful, and of the felling of the upland forests, to satisfy the demand for wood at Rome for domestic, industrial, and military purposes. After the downfall of the Roman empire, the incursions of the barbarians, and then feudalism, foreign domination, intestine wars, and temporal and spiritual tyrannies, aggravated still more cruelly the moral and physical evils which Tuscany and the other Italian States were doomed to suffer, and from which they have enjoyed but brief respites during the whole period of modern history. The Maremma was already proverbially unhealthy in the time of Dante, who refers to the fact in several familiar passages, and the petty tyrants upon its borders often sent criminals to places of confinement in its territory, as a slow but certain mode of execution. Ignorance of the causes of the insalubrity, and often the interference of private rights, [Footnote: In Catholic countries, the discipline of the church requires a meagre diet at certain seasons, and as fish is not flesh, there is a great demand for that article of food at those periods. For the convenience of monasteries and their patrons, and as a source of pecuniary emolument to ecclesiastical establishments and sometimes to lay proprietors, great numbers of artificial fish-ponds were created during the Middle Ages. They were generally shallow pools formed by damming up the outlet of marshes, and they were among the most fruitful sources of endemic disease, and of the peculiar malignity of the epidemics which so often ravaged Europe in those centuries. These ponds, in religious hands, were too sacred to be infringed upon for sanitary purposes, and when belonging to powerful lay lords they were almost an inviolable. The rights of fishery were a standing obstacle to every proposal of hydralic improvement, and to this day large and fertile districts in Southern Europe remain sickly and almost unimproved and uninhabited, because the draining of the ponds upon them would reduce the income of proprietors who derive large profits by supplying the faithful, in Lent, with fish, and with various species of waterfowl which, though very fat, are, ecclesiastically speaking, meagre.]prevented the adoption of measures to remove it, and the growing political and commercial importance of the large towns in more healthful localities absorbed the attention of Government, and deprived the Maremma of its just share in the systems of physical improvement which were successfully adopted in interior and Northern Italy. Before any serious attempts were made to drain or fill up the marshes of the Maremma, various other sanitary experiments were tried. It was generally believed that the insalubrity of the province was the consequence, not the cause, of its depopulation, and that, if it were once densely inhabited, the ordinary operations of agriculture, and especially the maintenance of numerous domestic fires, would restore it to its ancient healthfulness. [Footnote: Macchiavelli advised the Government of Tuscany "to provide that men should restore the wholesomeness of the soil by cultivation, and purify the air by fires."--Salvagnoli, Memorie, p. 111.] In accordance with these views, settlers were invited from various parts of Italy, from Greece, and, after the accession of the Lorraine princes, from that country also, and colonized in the Maremma. To strangers coming from soils and skies so unlike those of the Tuscan marshes, the climate was more fatal than to the inhabitants of the neighboring districts, whose constitutions had become in some degree inured to the local influences, or who at least knew better how to guard against them. The consequence very naturally was that the experiment totally failed to produce the desired effects, and was attended with a great sacrifice of life and a heavy loss to the treasury of the state. The territory known as the Tuscan Maremma, ora maritime, or Maremme--for the plural form is most generally used--lies upon and near the western coast of Tuscany, and comprises about 1,900 square miles English, of which 500 square miles, or 320,000 acres, are plain and marsh including 45,500 acres of water surface, and about 290,000 acres are forest. One of the mountain peaks, that of Mount Amiata, rises to the height of 6,280 feet. The mountains of the Maremma are healthy, the lower hills much less so, as the malaria is felt at some points at the height of 1,000 feet, and the plains, with the exception of a few localities favorably situated on the seacoast, are in a high degree pestilential. The fixed population is about 80,000, of whom one-sixth live on the plains in the winter and about one-tenth in the summer. Nine or ten thousand laborers come down from the mountains of the Maremma and the neighboring provinces into the plain, during the latter season, to cultivate and gather the crops. Out of this small number of inhabitants and strangers, 35,619 were ill enough to require medical treatment between the 1st of June, 1840, and the 1st of June, 1841, and more than one-half the cases were of intermittent, malignant, gastric, or catarrhal fever. Very few agricultural laborers escaped fever, though the disease did not always manifest itself until they had returned to the mountains. In the province of Grosseto, which embraces nearly the whole of the Maremma, the annual mortality was 3.92 per cent., the average duration of life but 23.18 years, and 75 per cent. of the deaths were among persons engaged in agriculture. The filling up of the low grounds and the partial separation of the waters of the sea and the land, which had been in progress since the year 1827, now began to show very decided effects upon the sanitary condition of the population. In the year ending June 1st, 1842, the number of the sick was reduced by more than 2,000, and the cases of fever by more than 4,000. The next year the cases of fever fell to 10,500, and in that ending June 1st, 1844, to 9,200. The political events of 1848, and the preceding and following years, occasioned the suspension of the works of improvement in the Maremma, but they were resumed after the revolution of 1859. I have spoken with some detail of the improvements in the Tuscan Maremma, because of their great relative importance, and because their history is well known; but like operations have been executed in the territory of Pisa and upon the coast of the duchy of Lucca. In the latter case they were confined principally to prevention of the intermixing of fresh water with that of the sea. In 1741 sluices or lock-gates were constructed for this purpose, and the following year the fevers, which had been destructive to the coast population for a long time previous, disappeared altogether. In 1768 and 1769, the works having fallen to decay, the fevers returned in a very malignant form, but the rebuilding of the gates again restored the healthfulness of the shore. Similar facts recurred in 1784 and 1785, and again from 1804 to 1821. This long and repeated experience has at last impressed upon the people the necessity of vigilant attention to the sluices, which are now kept in constant repair. The health of the coast is uninterrupted, and Viareggio, the capital town of the district, is now much frequented for its sea-baths and its general salubrity, at a season when formerly it was justly shunned as the abode of disease and death. [Footnote: Giorgini, Sur les causes de l'Insalubrite de l'air dans le voisinage des marais, etc., lue a l'Academie des Sciences a Paris, le 12 Juillet, 1825. Reprinted in Salvagnoli, Rapporto, etc., appendice, p. 5, et seqq.] Improvements in the Val di Chiana. For twenty miles or more after the remotest headwaters of the Arno have united to form a considerable stream, this river flows south-eastwards to the vicinity of Arezzo. It here sweeps round to the north-west, and follows that course to near its junction with the Sieve, a few miles above Florence, from which point its general direction is westward to the sea. From the bend at Arezzo, a depression called the Val di Chiana runs south-eastwards until it strikes into the valley of the Paglia, a tributary of the Tiber, and thus connects the basin of the latter river with that of the Arno. In the Middle Ages, and down to the eighteenth century, the Val di Chiana was often overflowed and devastated by the torrents which poured down from the highlands, transporting great quantities of slime with their currents, stagnating upon its surface, and gradually converting it into a marshy and unhealthy district, which was at last very greatly reduced in population and productiveness. It had, in fact, become so desolate that even the swallow had deserted it. [Footnote: This curious fact is thus stated in the preface to Fossombroni (Memorie sopra la Val di Chiana, edition of 1835, p. xiii.), from which also I borrow most of the data hereafter given with respect to that valley: "It is perhaps not universally known, that the swallows, which come from the north [south] to spend the summer in our climate, do not frequent marshy districts with a malarious atmosphere. A proof of the restoration of salubrity in the Val di Chiana is furnished by these aerial visitors, which had never before been seen in those low grounds, but which have appeared within a few years at Forano and other points similarly situated." Is the air of swamps destructive to the swallows, or is their absence in such localities merely due to the want of human habitations, near which this half-domestic bird loves to breed, perhaps because the house-fly and other insects which follow man are found only in the vicinity of his dwellings In almoust all European countries the swallow is protected, by popular opinion or superstition, from the persecution to which almost all other birds are subject. It is possible that this respect for the swallow is founded upon ancient observation of the fact just stated on the authority of Fossombroni. Ignorance mistakes the effect for the cause, and the absence of this bird may have been supposed to be the occasion, not the consequence, of the unhealthiness of particular localities. This opinion once adopted, the swallow would become a sacred bird, and in process of time fables and legends would be invented to give additional sanction to the prejudices which protected it. The Romans considered the swallow as consecrated to the Penates, or household gods, and according to Peretti (Le Serate del Villaggio, p. 168) the Lombard peasantry think it a sin to kill them, because they are le gallinelle del Signore, the chickens of the Lord.] The bed of the Arno near Arezzo and that of the Paglia at the southern extremity of the Val di Chiana did not differ much in level. The general inclination of the valley was therefore small; it does not appear to have ever been divided into opposite slopes by a true watershed, and the position of the summit seems to have shifted according to the varying amount and place of deposit of the sediment brought down by the lateral streams which emptied into it. The length of its principal channel of drainage, and even the direction of its flow at any given point, were therefore fluctuating. Hence, much difference of opinion was entertained at different times with regard to the normal course of this stream, and, consequently, to the question whether it was to be regarded as properly an affluent of the Tiber or of the Arno. The bed of the latter river at the bend has been eroded to the depth of thirty or forty feet, and that, apparently, at no very remote period. [Footnote: Able geologists infer from recent investigations, that, although the Arno flowed to the south within the pliocenic period, the direction of its course was changed at an earlier epoch than that supposed in the text.] If it were elevated to what was evidently original height, the current of the Arno would be so much above that of the Paglia as to allow of a regular flow from its channel to the latter stream, through the Val di Chiana, provided the bed of the valley had remained at the level which excavations prove it to have had a few centuries ago, before it was raised by the deposits I have mentioned. These facts, together with the testimony of ancient geographers which scarcely admits of any other explanation, are thought to prove that all the waters of the Upper Arno were originally discharged through the Val di Chiana into the Tiber, and that a part of them still continued to flow, at least occasionally, in that direction down to the days of the Roman empire, and perhaps for some time later. The depression of the bed of the Arno, and the raising of that of the valley by the deposits of the lateral torrents, finally cut off the branch of the river which had flowed to the Tiber, and all its waters were turned into its present channel, though the drainage of the principal part of the Val di Chiana appears to have been in a south-eastwardly direction until within a comparatively recent period. In the sixteenth century the elevation of the bed of the valley had become so considerable, that in 1551, at a point about ten miles south of the Arno, it was found to be not less than one hundred and thirty feet above that river; then followed a level of ten miles, and then a continuous descent to the Paglia. Along the level portion of the valley was a boatable channel, and lakes, sometimes a mile or even two miles in breadth, had formed at various points farther south. At this period the drainage of the summit level might easily have been determined in either direction, and the opposite descents of the valley made to culminate at the north or at the south end of the level. In the former case, the watershed would have been ten miles south of the Arno; in the latter, twenty miles, and the division of the valley into two opposite slopes would have been not very unequal. Various schemes were suggested at this time for drawing off the stagnant waters, as well as for the future regular drainage of the valley, and small operations for those purposes were undertaken with partial success; but it was feared that the discharge of the accumulated waters into the Tiber would produce a dangerous inundation, while the diversion of the drainage into the Arno would increase the violence of the floods to which that river was very subject, and no decisive steps were taken. In 1606 an engineer, whose name has not been preserved, proposed, as the only possible method of improvement, the piercing of a tunnel through the hills bounding the valley on the west to convey its waters to the Ombrone, but the expense and other objections prevented the adoption of this scheme. [Footnote: Morozzi, Dello stato dell' Arno, ii., pp. 39, 40.] The fears of the Roman Government for the safety of the basin of the Tiber had induced it to construct embankments across the portion of the valley lying within its territory, and these obstructions, though not specifically intended for that purpose, naturally promoted the deposit of sediment and the elevation of the bed of the valley in their neighborhood. The effect of this measure and of the continued spontaneous action of the torrents was, that the northern slope, which in 1551 had commenced at the distance of ten miles from the Arno, was found in 1605 to begin nearly thirty miles south of that river, and in 1645 it had been removed about six miles farther in the same direction. [Footnote: Morozzi, Dello stato, etc., dell' Arno, ii., pp. 39, 40.] In the seventeenth century the Tuscan and Papal Governments consulted Galileo, Torricelli, Castelli, Cassini, Viviani, and other distinguished philosophers and engineers, on the possibility of reclaiming the valley by a regular artificial drainage. Most of these eminent physicists were of opinion that the measure was impracticable, though not altogether for the same reasons; but they seem to have agreed in thinking that the opening of such channels, in either direction, as would give the current a flow sufficiently rapid to drain the lands properly, would dangerously augment the inundations of the river--whether the Tiber or the Arno--into which the waters should be turned. The general improvement of the valley was now for a long time abandoned, and the waters were allowed to spread and stagnate until carried off by partial drainage, infiltration, and evaporation. Torricelli had contended that the slope of a large part of the valley was too small to allow it to be drained by ordinary methods, and that no practicable depth and width of canal would suffice for that purpose. It could be laid dry, he thought, only by converting its surface into an inclined plane, and he suggested that this might be accomplished by controlling the flow of the numerous torrents which pour into it, so as to force them to deposit their sediment at the pleasure of the engineer, and, consequently, to elevate the level of the area over which it should be spread. [Footnote: Torricelli thus expressed himself on this point: "If we content ourselves with what nature has made practicable to human industry, we shall endeavor to control, as far as possible, the outlets of these streams, which, by raising the bed of the valley with their deposits, will realize the fable of the Tagus and the Pactolus, and truly roll golden sands for him that is wise enough to avail himself of them."--Fossombroni, Memoris sopra la Val di China, p. 219.] This plan did not meet with immediate general acceptance, but it was soon adopted for local purposes at some points in the southern part of the valley, and it gradually grew in public favor and was extended in application until its final triumph a hundred years later. In spite of these encouraging successes, however, the fear of danger to the valley of the Arno and the Tiber, and the difficulty of an agreement between Tuscany and Rome--the boundary between which states crossed the Val di Chiana not far from the half-way point between the two rivers--and of reconciling other conflicting interests, prevented the resumption of the projects for the general drainage of the valley until after the middle of the eighteenth century. In the meantime the science of hydraulics had become better understood, and the establishment of the natural law according to which the velocity of a current of water, and of course the proportional quantity discharged by it in a given time, are increased by increasing its mass, had diminished if not dissipated the fear of exposing the banks of the Arno to greater danger from inundations by draining the Val di China into it. The suggestion of Torricelli was finally adopted as the basis of a comprehensive system of improvement, and it was decided to continue and extend the inversion of the original flow of the waters, and to turn them into the Arno from a point as far to the south as should be found practicable. The conduct of the works was committed to a succession of able engineers who, for a long series of years, were under the general direction of the celebrated philosopher and statesman Fossombroni, and the success has fully justified the expectations of the most sanguine advocates of the scheme. The plan of improvement embraced two branches: the one, the removal of obstructions in the bed of the Arno, and, consequently, the further depression of the channel of that river, in certain places, with the view of increasing the rapidity of its current; the other, the gradual filling up of the ponds and swamps, and raising of the lower grounds of the Val di Chiana, by directing to convenient points the flow of the streams which pour down into it, and there confining their waters by temporary dams until the sediment was deposited where it was needed. The economical result of these operations has been, that in 1835 an area of more than four hundred and fifty square miles of pond, marsh, and damp, sickly low grounds had been converted into fertile, healthy, and well-drained soil, and, consequently, that so much territory has been added to the agricultural domain of Tuscany. But in our present view of the subject, the geographical revolution which has been accomplished is still more interesting. The climatic influence of the elevation and draining of the soil must have been considerable, though I do not know that an increase or a diminution of the mean temperature or precipitation in the valley has been established by meteorological observation. There is, however, in the improvement of the sanitary condition of the Val di Chiana, which was formerly extremely unhealthy, satisfactory proof of a beneficial climatic change. The fevers, which not only decimated the population of the low grounds but infested the adjacent hills, have ceased their ravages, and are now not more frequent than in other parts of Tuscany. The strictly topographical effect of the operations in question, besides the conversion of marsh into dry surface, has been the inversion of the inclination of the valley for a distance of thirty-five miles, so that this great plain which, within a comparatively short period, sloped and drained its waters to the south, now inclines and sends its drainage to the north. The reversal of the currents of the valley has added to the Arno a new tributary equal to the largest of its former affluents, and a most important circumstance connected with this latter fact is, that the increase of the volume of its waters has accelerated their velocity in a still greater proportion, and, instead of augmenting the danger from its inundations, has almost wholly obviated that source of apprehension. [Footnote: Arrian observes that at the junction of the Hydaspes and the Acesines, both of which are described as wide streams, "one very narrow river is formed of two confluents, and its current is very swift."--Arrian, Alex. Anab., vi., 4. A like example is observed in the Anapus near Syracuse, which, below the junction of its two branches, is narrower, though swifter than either of them, and such cases are by no means unfrequent. The immediate effect of the confluence of two rivers upon the current below depends upon local circumstances, and especially upon the angle of incidence. If the two nearly coincide in direction, so as to include a small angle, the join current will have a greater velocity than the slower confluent, perhaps even than either of them. If the two rivers run in transverse, still more if they flow in more or less opposite, directions, the velocity of the principal branch will be retarded both above and below the junction, and at high water it may even set back the current of the affluent. On the other hand, the diversion of a considerable branch from a river retards its velocity below the point of separation, and here a deposit of earth in its channel immediately begins, which has a tendency to turn the whole stream into the new bed. "Theory and the authority of all hydrographical writers combine to show that the channels of rivers undergo an elevation of bed below a canal of diversion."--Letter of Fossombroni, in Salvagnoli, Raccolta di Documenti, p. 32. See the early authorities and discussions on the principle stated in the text, in Frisi, Del modo di regolare i Fiumi e i Torrenti, libro iii., capit. i., and Mongotti, Idraulica, ii., pp. 88 et seqq., and see p. 498, note, ante. In my account of these improvements I have chiefly followed Fossombroni, under whose direction they were principally executed. Many of Fossombroni's statements and opinions have been controverted, and in comparatively unimportant particulars they have been shown to be erroneous.--See Lombardini, Guida allo studio dell' Idrologia, cap. xviii., and same author, Esame degli Studi sul Tevere, Section 33.] Between the beginning of the fifteenth century and the year 1761, thirty-one destructive floods of the Arno are recorded; between 1761, when the principal streams of the Val di Chiana were diverted into that river, and 1835, not one. [Footnote: Fossombroni, Memorie Idraulico-storiche, Introduzione, p. xvi. Between the years 1700 and 1799 the chroniclers record seventeen floods of the Arno, and twenty between 1800 and 1870, but none of these were of a properly destructive character except those in 1844, 1864, and 1870, and the ravages of this latter were chiefly confined to Pisa, and were occasioned by the bursting of a dike or wall. They are all three generally ascribed to extraordinary, if not unprecedented, rains and snows, but many inquirers attribute them to the felling of the woods in the valleys of the upper tributaries of the Arno since 1835. See a paper by Griffini, in the Italia Nuova, 18 Marzo, 1871.] Results of Operations. It is now a hundred years since the commencement of the improvements in the Val di Chiana, and those of the Maremma have been in more or less continued operation for above a generation. They have, as we have seen, produced important geographical changes in the surface of the earth and in the flow of considerable rivers, and their effects have been not less conspicuous in preventing other changes, of a more or less deleterious character, which would infallibly have taken place if they had not been arrested by the improvements in question. The sediment washed into the marshes of the Maremma is not less than 12,000,000 cubic yards per annum. The escape of this quantity into the sea, which, is now almost wholly prevented, would be sufficient to advance the coast-line fourteen yards per year, for a distance of forty miles, computing the mean depth of the sea near the shore at twelve yards. It is true that in this case, as well as in that of other rivers, the sedimentary matter would not be distributed equally along the shore, and much of it would be carried out into deep water, or perhaps transported by the currents to distant coasts. The immediate effects of the deposit in the sea, therefore, would not be so palpable as they appear in this numerical form, but they would be equally certain, and would infallibly manifest themselves, first, perhaps, at some remote point, and afterwards more energetically at or near the outlets of the rivers which produced them. The elevation of the bottom of the sea would diminish the inclination of the beds of the rivers discharging themselves into it on that coast, and of course their tendency to overflow their banks and extend still further the domain of the marshes which border them would be increased in proportion. It has been already stated that, in order to prevent the overflow of the valley of the Tiber by freely draining the Val di Chiana into it, the Papal authorities, long before the commencement of the Tuscan works, constructed strong barriers near the southern end of the valley, which detained the waters of the wet season until they could be gradually drawn off into the Paglia. They consequently deposited most of their sediment in the Val di Chiana and carried down comparatively little earth to the Tiber. The lateral streams contributing the largest quantities of sedimentary matter to the Val di Chiana originally flowed into that valley near its northern end; and the change of their channels and outlets in a southern direction, so as to raise that part of the valley by their deposits and thereby reverse its drainage, was one of the principal steps in the process of improvement. We have seen that the north end of the Val di Chiana near the Arno had been raised by spontaneous deposit of sediment to such a height as to interpose a sufficient obstacle to all flow in that direction. If, then, the Roman dam had not been erected, or the works of the Tuscan Government undertaken, the whole of the earth, which has been arrested by those works and employed to raise the bed and reverse the declivity of the valley, would have been carried down to the Tiber and thence into the sea. The deposit thus created would, of course, have contributed to increase the advance of the shore at the mouth of that river, which has long been going on at the rate of three metres and nine-tenths (twelve feet and nine inches) per annum. [Footnote: See the careful estimates of Rozet, Moyens de forcer les Torrents, etc., pp. 42, 44.] It is evident that a quantity of earth, sufficient to effect the immense changes I have described in a wide valley more than thirty miles long, if deposited at the outlet of the Tiber, would have very considerably modified the outline of the coast, and have exerted no unimportant influence on the flow of that river, by raising its point of discharge and lengthening its channel. The Coast of the Netherlands. It has been shown in a former section that the dikes of the Netherlands and the adjacent states have protected a considerable extent of coast from the encroachments of the sea, an have won a large tract of cultivable land from the dominion of the ocean waters. The immense results obtained from the operations of the Tuscan engineers in the Val di Chiana, and the Maremma have suggested the question, whether a different method of accomplishing these objects might not have been adopted with advantage. It has been argued, as in the case of the Po, that a system of transverse inland dikes and canals, upon the principle of those which have been so successfully employed in the Val di Chiana and in Egypt, might have elevated the low grounds above the ocean tides, by spreading over them the sediment brought down by the Rhine, the Maes, and the Scheld. If this process had been introduced in the Middle Ages, and constantly pursued to our times, the superficial and coast geography, as well as the hydrography of the countries in question, would undoubtedly have presented an aspect very different from their present condition; and by combining the process with a system of maritime dikes, which would have been necessary, both to resist the advance of the sea and to retain the slime deposited by river overflows, it is, indeed, possible that the territory of those states would have been as extensive as it now is, and, at the same time, somewhat elevated above its natural level. The argument in favor of that method rests on the assumption that all the sea-washed earth, which the tides have let fall upon the shallow coast of the Netherlands, has been brought down by the rivers which empty upon those shores, and could have been secured by allowing those rivers to spread over the flats and deposit their sediment in still-water pools formed by cross-dikes like those of Egypt. But we are ignorant of the proportions in which the marine deposits that form the soil of the polders have been derived from materials brought down by these rivers, or from other more remote sources. Much of the river slime has, no doubt, been transported by marine currents quite beyond the reach of returning streams, and it is uncertain how far this loss has been balanced by earth washed by the sea from distant shores and let fall on the coasts of the Netherlands and other neighboring countries. We know little or nothing of the quantity of solid matter brought down by the rivers of Western Europe in early ages, but, as the banks of those rivers are now generally better secured against wash and abrasion than in former centuries, the sediment transported by them must be less than at periods nearer the removal of the primitive forests of their valleys, though certainly greater than it was before those forests were felled. Kladen informs us that the sedimentary matter transported to the sea by the Rhine would amount to a cubic geographical mile in five thousand years. [Footnote: Erdhunde, vol. i, p. 384. The Mississippi--a river "undercharged with sediment"--with a mean discharge of about ten times that of the Rhine, deposits a cubic geographical mile in thirty-three years.] The proportion of this suspended matter which, with our present means, could be arrested and precipitated upon the ground, is almost infinitesimal, for only the surface-water, which carries much less sediment than that at the bottom of the channel, would flow over the banks, and as the movement of this water, if not checked altogether, would be greatly retarded by the proposed cross-dikes, the quantity of solid matter which would be conveyed to a given portion of land during a single inundation would be extremely small. Inundations of the Rhine occur but once or twice a year, and high water continues but a few days, or even hours; the flood-tide of the sea happens seven hundred times in a year, and at the turn of the tide the water is brought to almost absolute rest. Hence, small as is the proportion of suspended matter in the tide-water, the deposit probably amounts to far more in a year than would be let fall upon the same area by the Rhine. This argument, except as to the comparison between river and tide water, applies to the Mississippi, the Po, and most other great rivers. Hence, until that distant day when man shall devise means of extracting from rivers at flood, the whole volume of their suspended material and of depositing it at the same time on their banks, the system of cross-dikes and COLMATAGE must be limited to torrential streams transporting large proportions of sediment, and to the rivers of hot countries, like the Nile, where the saturation of the soil with water, and the securing of a supply for irrigation afterwards, are the main objects, while raising the level of the banks is a secondary consideration. CHAPTER V. THE SANDS. Origin of Sand--Sand now Carried to the Sea--Beach Sands of Northern Africa--Sands of Egypt--Sand Dunes and Sand Plains--Coast Dunes--Sand Banks--Character of Dune Sand--Interior Structure of Dunes--Geological Importance of Dunes--Dunes on American Coasts--Dunes of Western Europe--Age, Character, and Permanence of Dunes--Dunes as a Barrier against the Sea--Encroachments of the Sea--Liimfjord--Coasts of Schleswig-Holstein, Netherlands, and France--Movement of Dunes--Control of Dunes by Man--Inland Dunes--Inland Sand Plains. Origin of Sand. Sand, which is found in beds or strata at the bottom of the sea or in the channels of rivers, as well as in extensive deposits upon or beneath the surface of the dry land, appears to consist essentially of the detritus of rocks. It is not always by any means clear through what agency the solid rock has been reduced to a granular condition; for there are beds of quartzose sand, where the sharp, angular shape of the particles renders it highly improbable that they have been formed by gradual abrasion and attrition, and where the supposition of a crushing mechanical force seems equally inadmissible. In common sand, the quartz grains are the most numerous; but this is not a proof that the rocks from which these particles were derived were wholly, or even chiefly, quartzose in character; for, in many composite rocks, as, for example, in the granitic group, the mica, feldspar, and hornblende are more easily decomposed by chemical action, or disintegrated, comminuted, and reduced to an impalpable state by mechanical force, than the quartz. In the destruction of such rocks, therefore, the quartz would survive the other ingredients, and remain unmixed, when they had been decomposed and recomposed into new mineralogical or chemical combinations, or been ground to slime and washed away by water currents. The greater or less specific gravity of the different constituents of rock doubtless aids in separating them into distinct masses when once disintegrated, though there are veined and stratified beds of sand where the difference between the upper and lower layers, in this respect, is too slight to be supposed capable of effecting a complete separation. [Footnote: In the curiously variegated sandstone of Arabia Petraea--which is certainly a reaggregation of loose sand derived from disaggregation of older rocks--the continuous veins frequently differ very widely in color, but not sensibly in specific gravity or in texture; and the singular way in which they are now alternated, now confusedly intermixed, must be explained otherwise than by the weight of the respective grains which compose them. They seem, in fact, to have been let fall by water in violent ebullition or tumultuous mechanical agitation, or deposited by a succession of sudden aquatic or aerial currents flowing in different directions and charged with differently colored matter.] In cases where rock has been reduced to sandy fragments by heat, or by obscure chemical and other molecular forces, the sand-beds may remain undisturbed, and represent, in the series of geological strata, the solid formations from which they were derived. The large masses of sand not found in place have been transported and accumulated by water or by wind, the former being generally considered the most important of these agencies; for the extensive deposits of the Sahara, of the Arabian peninsulas, of the Llano Estacado and other North and South American deserts, of the deserts of Persia, and of that of Gobi, are supposed to have been swept together or distributed by marine currents, and to have been elevated above the ocean by the same means as other upheaved strata. Meteoric and mechanical influences are still active in the reduction of rocks to a fragmentary state; [Footnote: A good account of the agencies now operative in the reduction of rock to sand will be found in Winkler, Zand en Duinen, Dockarm, 1865, pp. 4-20. I take this occasion to acknowledge my obligations to this author for assuming the responsibility of many of the errors I may have committed in this chapter, by translating a large part of it from a former edition of the present work and publishing it as his own.] but the quantity of sand now transported to the sea seems to be comparatively inconsiderable, because--not to speak of the absence of diluvial action--the number of torrents emptying directly into the sea is much less than it was at earlier periods. The formation of alluvial plains in maritime bays, by the sedimentary matter brought down from the mountains, has lengthened the flow of such streams and converted them very generally into rivers, or rather affluents of rivers of later geographical origin than themselves. The filling up of the estuaries has so reduced the slope of all large and many small rivers, and, consequently, so checked the current of what the Germans call their Unterlauf, or lower course, that they are much less able to transport heavy material than at earlier epochs. The slime deposited by rivers at their junction with the sea, is usually found to be composed of material too finely ground and too light to be denominated sand, and it can be abundantly shown that the sand-banks at the outlet of most large streams are of tidal, not of fluviatile, accumulation, or, in lakes and tideless seas, a result of the concurrent action of waves and of wind. Large deposits of sand, therefore, must in general be considered as of ancient, not of recent formation, and many eminent geologists ascribe them to diluvial action. Staring has discussed this question very fully, with special reference to the sands of the North Sea, the Zuiderzee, and the bays and channels of the Dutch coast. [Footnote: De Bodem van Nederland, i., pp. 243, 246-377, et seqq. See also the arguments of Bremontier as to the origin of the dune-sands of Gascony, Annales des Ponts et Chaussees, 1833, 1er semestre, pp. 158, 161. Bremontier estimates the sand anually thrown up on that coast at five cubic toises and two feet to the running toise (ubi supra, p. 162), or rather more than two hundred and twenty cubic feet to the running foot. Laval, upon observations continued through seven years, found the quantity to be twenty-five metres per running metre, which is equal to two hundred and sixty-eight cubic feet to the running foot.--Annales des Ponts et Chaussees, 1842, 2me semestre, p. 229. These computations make the proportion of sand deposited on the coast of Gascony three or four times as great as that observed by Andresen on the shores of Jutland. Laval estimates the total quantity of sand annually thrown up on the coast of Gascony at 6,000,000 cubic metres, or more than 7,800,000 cubic yards.] His general conclusion is, that the rivers of the Netherlands "move sand only by a very slow displacement of sand-banks, and do not carry it with them as a suspended or floating material." The sands of the German Ocean he holds to be a product of the "great North German drift," deposited where they now lie before the commencement of the present geological period, and he maintains similar opinions with regard to the sands thrown up by the Mediterranean at the mouths of the Nile and on the Barbary coast. [Footnote: De Bodem van Nederland, i., p. 339.] Sand now carried to the Sea. There are, however, cases where mountain streams still bear to the sea perhaps relatively small, but certainly absolutely large, amounts of disintegrated rock. [Footnote: The conditions favorable to the production of sand from disintegrated rock, by causes now in action, are perhaps nowhere more perfectly realized than in the Sinaitic Peninsula. The mountains are steep and lofty, unprotected by vegetation or even by a coating of earth, and the rocks which compose them are in a shattered and fragmentary condition. They are furrowed by deep and precipitous ravines, with beds sufficiently inclined for the rapid flow of water, and generally without basins in which the larger blocks of stone rolled by the torrents can be dropped and left in repose; there are severe frosts and much snow on the higher summits and ridges, and the winter rains are abundant and heavy. The mountains are principally of igneous formation, but many of the less elevated peaks are capped with sandstone, and on the eastern slope of the peninsula you may sometimes see, at a single glance, several lofty pyramids of granite, separated by considerable intervals, and all surmounted by horizontally stratified deposits of sandstone often only a few yards square, which correspond to each other in height, are evidently contemporaneous in origin, and were once connected in continuous beds. The degradation of the rock on which this formation rests is constantly bringing down masses of it, and mingling them with the basaltic, porphyritic, granitic, and calcareous fragments which the torrents carry down to the valleys, and, through them, in a state of greater or less disintegration, to the sea. The quantity of sand annually washed into the Red Sea by the larger torrents of the Lesser Peninsula, is probably at least equal to that contributed to the ocean by any streams draining basins of no greater extent. Absolutely considered, then, the mass may be said to be large, but it is apparently very small as compared with the sand thrown up by the German Ocean and the Atlantic on the coasts of Denmark and of France. There are, indeed, in Arabia Petraea, many torrents with very short courses, for the sea-waves in many parts of the peninsular coast wash the base of the mountains. In these cases, the debris of the rocks do not reach the sea in a sufficiently comminuted condition to be entitled to the appellation of sand, or even in the form of well-rounded pebbles. The fragments retain their annular shape, and, at some points on the coast, they become cemented together by lime or other binding substances held in solution or mechanical suspension in the sea-water, and are so rapidly converted into a singularly heterogeneous conglomerate, that one deposit seems to be consolidated into a breccia before the next winter's torrents cover it with another. In the northern part of the peninsula there are extensive deposits of sand intermingled with agate pebbles and petrified wood, but these are evidently neither derived from the Sinaitic group, nor products of local causes known to be now in action. I may here notice the often repeated but mistaken assertion, that the petrified wood of the Western Arabian desert consists wholly of the stems of palms, or at least of endogenous vegetables. This is an error. I have myself picked up in that desert, within the space of a very few square yards, fragments apparently of fossil palms, and of at least two petrified trees distinctly marked as of exogenous growth both by annular structure and by knots. In ligneous character, one of these almost precisely resembles the grain of the extant beech, and this specimen was worm-eaten before it was converted into silex.] The quantity of sand and gravel carried into the Mediterranean by the torrents of the Maritime Alps, the Ligurian Apennines, the islands of Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily, and the mountains of Calabria, is apparently great. In mere mass, it is possible, if not probable, that as much rocky material, more or less comminuted, is contributed to the basin of the Mediterranean by Europe, even excluding the shores of the Adriatic and the Euxine, as is washed up from it upon the coasts of Northern Africa and Syria. A great part of this material is thrown out again by the waves on the European shores of that sea. The harbors of Luni, Albenga, San Remo, and Savona west of Genoa, and of Porto Fino on the other side, are filling up, and the coast near Carrara and Massa is said to have advanced upon the sea to a distance of 475 feet in thirty-three years. [Footnote: Bottger, Das Mittelmeer, p. 128.] Besides this, we have no evidence of the existence of deep-water currents in the Mediterranean, extensive enough and strong enough to transport quartzose sand across the sea. It may be added that much of the rock from which the torrent sands of Southern Europe are derived contains little quartz, and hence the general character of these sands is such that they must be decomposed or ground down to an impalpable slime, long before they could be swept over to the African shore. Sands of Northern Africa. The torrents of Europe, then, do not at present furnish the material which composes the beach sands of Northern Africa, and it is equally certain that those sands are not brought down by the rivers of the latter continent. They belong to a remote geological period, and have been accumulated by causes which we cannot at present assign. The wind does not stir water to great depths with sufficient force to disturb the bottom, [Footnote: The testimony of divers and of other observers on this point is conflicting, as might be expected from the infinite variety of conditions by which the movement of water is affected. It is generally believed that the action of the wind upon the water is not perceptible at greater depths than from fifteen feet in ordinary to eighty or ninety in extreme cases; but these estimates are probably very considerably below the truth. Andresen quotes Bremontier as stating that the movement of the waves sometimes extends to the depth of five hundred feet, and he adds that others think it may reach to six or even seven hundred feet below the surface.--Andresen, Om Klitformationen, p. 20. Many physicists now suppose that the undulations of great bodies of water reach even deeper. But a movement of undulation is not necessarily a movement of translation, and besides, there is very frequently an undertow, which tends to carry suspended bodies out to sea as powerfully as the superficial waves to throw them on shore. Sand-banks sometimes recede from the coast, instead of rolling towards it. Reclus informs us that the Mauvaise, a sand-bank near the Point de Grave, on the Atlantic coast of France, has moved five miles to the west in less than a century.--Revue des Deux Mondes for December, 1862, p. 905. The action of currents may, in some cases, have been confounded with that of the waves. Sea-currents, strong enough, possibly, to transport sand for some distance, flow far below the surface in parts of the open ocean, and in narrow straits they have great force and velocity. The divers employed at Constantinople in 1853 found in the Bosphorus, at the depth of twenty-five fathoms and at a point much exposed to the wash from Galata and Pera, a number of bronze guns supposed to have belonged to a ship-of-war blown up about a hundred and fifty years before. These guns were not covered by sand or slime, though a crust of earthy matter, an inch in thickness, adhered to their upper surfaces, and the bottom of the strait appeared to be wholly free from sediment. The current was so powerful at this depth that the divers were hardly able to stand, and a keg of nails, purposely dropped into the water, in order that its movements might serve as a guide in the search for a bag of coin accidentally lost overboard from a ship in the harbor, was rolled by the stream several hundred yards before it stopped.] and the sand thrown upon the coast in question must be derived from a narrow belt of sea. It must hence, in time, become exhausted, and the formation of new sand-banks and dunes upon the southern shores of the Mediterranean will cease at last for want of material. [Footnote: Few seas have thrown up so much sand as the shallow German Ocean; but there is some reason to think that the amount of this material now cast upon its northern shores is less than at some former periods, though no extensive series of observations on this subject has been recorded. On the Spit of Agger, at the present outlet of the Liimfjord, Andresen found the quantity during ten years, on a beach about five hundred and seventy feet broad, equal to an annual deposit of an inch and a half over the whole surface.--Om Klitformationen, p. 56. This gives seventy-one and a quarter cubic feet to the running foot--a quantity certainly much smaller than that cast up by the same sea on the shores of the Dano-German duchies and of Holland, and, as we have seen, scarcely one-fourth of that deposited by the Atlantic on the coast of Gascony.] But even in the cases where the accumulations of sand in extensive deserts appear to be of marine formation, or rather aggregation, and to have been brought to their present position by upheaval, they are not wholly composed of material collected or distributed by the currents of the sea; for, in all such regions, they continue to receive some small contributions from the disintegration of the rocks which underlie, or crop out through, the superficial deposits. [Footnote: See, on this subject, an article in Aus der Natur, vol. xxx., p. 590. The Florentine Frescobaldi, who visited the Sinaitic peninsula five hundred years ago, observed the powerful action of the solar heat in the disintegration of the desert rocks. "This place," says he, "was a ridge of rocks burnt to powder by the sun, and this powder is blown away from the rock by the wind and is the sand of the desert; and there be many hills which are pure bare rock, and when the sun parcheth them, the wind carries off the dust, and other sand is there none in that land,"--Viaggio, pp. 69, 70. In Arabia Petraea, when a wind, powerful enough to scour down below the ordinary surface of the desert and lay bare a fresh bed of stones, is followed by a sudden burst of sunshine, the dark agate pebbles are often cracked and broken by the heat; and this is the true explanation of the occurrence of the fragments in situations where the action of fire is not probable. If the fragments are small enough to be rolled by the winds, they are in time ground down to sand and contribute to the stock of that material which covers the face of the desert, though the sand thus formed is but an infinitesimal proportion of the whole.] In some instances, too, as in Northern Africa, additions are constantly made to the mass by the prevalence of sea-winds, which transport, or, to speak more precisely, roll the finer beach-sand to considerable distances into the interior. But this is a very slow process, and the exaggerations of travellers have diffused a vast deal of popular error on the subject. Sands of Egypt. In the narrow valley of the Nile--which, above its bifurcation near Cairo, is, throughout Egypt and Nubia, generally bounded by precipitous cliffs--wherever a ravine or other considerable depression occurs in the wall of rock, one sees what seems a stream of desert sand pouring down, and common observers have hence concluded that the whole valley is in danger of being buried under a stratum of infertile soil. The ancient Egyptians apprehended this, and erected walls, often of unburnt brick, across the outlet of gorges and lateral valleys, to check the flow of the sand-streams. In later ages, these walls have mostly fallen into decay, and no preventive measures against such encroachments are now resorted to. But the extent of the mischief to the soil of Egypt, and the future danger from this source, have been much overrated. The sand on the borders of the Nile is neither elevated so high by the wind, nor transported by that agency in so great masses, as is popularly supposed; and of that which is actually lifted or rolled and finally deposited by air-currents, a considerable proportion is either calcareous, and, therefore, readily decomposable, or in the state of a very fine dust, and so, in neither case, injurious to the soil. There are, indeed, both in Africa and in Arabia, considerable tracts of fine, silicious sand, which may be carried far by high winds, but these are exceptional cases, and in general the progress of the desert sand is by a rolling motion along the surface. [Footnote: Sand heaps, three and even six hundred feet high, are indeed formed by the wind, but this is effected by driving the particles up an inclined plane, not by lifting them. Bremontier, speaking of the sand-hills on the western coast of France, says: "The particles of sand composing them are not large enough to resist wind of a certain force, nor small enough to be taken up by it, like dust; they only roll along the surface from which they are detached, and, though moving with great velocity, they rarely rise to a greater height than three or four inches."--Memoirs sur les Dunes, Annales des Ponts et Chaussecs, 1833, ler semestre, p, 148. Andresen says that a wind, having a velocity of forty feet per second, is strong enough to raise particles of sand as high as the face and eyes of a man, but that, in general, it rolls along the ground, and is scarcely ever thrown more than to the height of a couple of yards from the surface. Even in these cases, it is carried forward by a hopping, not a continuous, motion; for a very narrow sheet or channel of water stops the drift entirely, all the sand dropping into it until it is filled up. Blake observes, Pacific Railroad Report, vol. v., p. 242, that the sand of the Colorado desert does not rise high in the air, but bounds along on the surface or only a few inches above it. The character of the motion of sand drifts is well illustrated by an interesting fact not much noticed hitherto by travellers in the East. In situations where the sand is driven through depressions in rock-beds, or over deposits of silicious pebbles, the surface of the stone is worn and smoothed much more effectually than it could be by running water, and I have picked up, in such localities, rounded, irregularly broken fragments of agate, which had received from the attrition of the sand as fine a polish as could be given them by the wheel of the lapidary. Very interesting observations, by Blake, on the polishing of hard stones by drifting sand will be found in the Pacific Railroad Report, vol. v., pp. 92, 230, 231. The grinding and polishing power of sand has lately received a new and most ingenious application in America. Jets of sand, and even of small particles of softer substances, thrown with a certain force, are found capable of cutting the hardest minerals and metals. A block of corundum, some inches thick, has been bored through in a few minutes by this process, and it promises to be highly useful in glass-cutting and other similar operations.] So little is it lifted, and so inconsiderable is the quantity yet remaining on the borders of Egypt, that a wall four or five feet high suffices for centuries to check its encroachments. This is obvious to the eye of every observer who prefers the true to the marvellous; but the old-world fable of the overwhelming of caravans by the fearful simoom--which even the Arabs no longer repeat, if indeed they are the authors of it--is so thoroughly rooted in the imagination of Christendom that most desert travellers, of the tourist class, think they shall disappoint the readers of their journals if they do not recount the particulars of their escape from being buried alive by a sand-storm, and the popular demand for a "sensation" must be gratified accordingly. [Footnote: Wilkinson says that, in much experience in the most sandy parts of the Libyan desert, and much inquiry of the best native sources, he never saw or heard of any instance of danger to man or beast from the mere accumulation of sand transported by the wind. Chesney's observations in Arabia, and the testimony of the Bedouins he consulted, are to the same purpose. The dangers of the simoom are of a different character, though they are certainly aggravated by the blinding effects of the light particles of dust and sand borne along by it, and by that of the inhalation of them upon the respiration. ] Another circumstance is necessary to be considered in estimating the danger to which the arable lands of Egypt are exposed. The prevailing wind in the valley of the Nile and its borders is from the north, and it may be said without exaggeration that the north wind blows for three-quarters of the year. [Footnote: In the narrow valley of the Nile, bounded as it is, above the Delta, by high cliffs, all air-currents from the northern quarter become north winds, though of course varying in partial direction, in conformity with the sinuosities of the valley. Upon the desert plateau they incline westwards, and have already borne into the valley the sands of the eastern banks, and driven those of the western quite out of the Egyptian portion of the Nile basin.] The effect of winds blowing up the valley is to drive the sands of the desert plateau which border it, in a direction parallel with the axis of the valley, not transversely to it; and if it ran in a straight line, the north wind would carry no desert sand into it. There are, however, both curves and angles in its course, and hence, wherever its direction deviates from that of the wind, it might receive sand-drifts from the desert plain through which it runs. But, in the course of ages, the winds have, in a great measure, bared the projecting points of their ancient deposits, and no great accumulations remain in situations from which either a north or a south wind would carry them into the valley. [Footnote: These considerations apply, with equal force, to the supposed danger of the obstruction of the Suez Canal by the drifting of the desert sands. The winds across the isthmus are almost uniformly from the north, and they swept it comparatively clean of flying sands long ages since. The traces of the ancient canal between the Red Sea and the Nile are easily followed for a considerable distance from Suez. Had the drifts upon the isthmus been as formidable as some have feared and others have hoped, those traces would have been obliterated, and Lake Timsah and the Bitter Lakes filled up, many centuries ago. The few particles driven by the rare east and west winds towards the line of the canal, will easily be arrested by plantations or other simple methods, or removed by dredging. The real dangers and difficulties of this magnificent enterprise--and they have been great--consisted in the nature of the soil to be removed in order to form the line, and especially in the constantly increasing accumulation of sea-sand at the southern terminus by the tides of the Red Sea, and of sand and Nile slime at the northern, by the action of the winds and currents. Both seas are shallow for miles from the shore, and the excavation and maintenance of deep channels, and of capacious harbors with easy and secure entrances, in such localities, is doubtless one of the hardest problems offered to modern engineers for practical solution. See post, Geological Importance of Dunes, note.] The sand let fall in Egypt by the north wind is derived, not from the desert, but from a very different source--the sea. Considerable quantities of sand are thrown up by the Mediterranean, at and between the mouths of the Nile, and indeed along almost the whole southern coast of that sea, and drifted into the interior to distances varying according to the force of the wind and the abundance and quality of the material. The sand so transported contributes to the gradual elevation of the Delta, and of the banks and bed of the river itself. But just in proportion as the bed of the stream is elevated, the height of the water in the annual inundations is increased also, and as the inclination of the channel is diminished, the rapidity of the current is checked, and the deposition of the slime it holds in suspension consequently promoted. Thus the winds and the water, moving in contrary directions, join in producing a common effect. The sand, blown over the Delta and the cultivated land higher up the stream during the inundation, is covered or mixed with the fertile earth brought down by the river, and no serious injury is sustained from it. That spread over the same ground after the water has subsided, and during the short period when the soil is not stirred by cultivation or covered by the flood, forms a thin pellicle over the surface as far as it extends, and serves to divide and distinguish the successive layers of slime deposited by the annual inundations. The particles taken up by the wind on the sea-beach are borne onward, by a hopping motion, or rolled along the surface, until they are arrested by the temporary cessation of the wind, by vegetation, or by some other obstruction, and they may, in process of time, accumulate in large masses, under the lee of rocky projections, buildings, or other barriers which break the force of the wind. In these facts we find an important element in the explanation of the sand drifts, which have half buried the Sphinx and so many other ancient monuments in that part of Egypt. These drifts, as I have said, are not wholly from the desert, but in largo proportion from the sea; and, as might be supposed from the distance they have travelled, they have been long in gathering. While Egypt was a great and flourishing kingdom, measures were taken to protect its territory against the encroachment of sand, whether from the desert or from the Mediterranean; but the foreign conquerors, who destroyed so many of its religious monuments, did not spare its public works, and the process of physical degradation undoubtedly began as early as the Persian invasion. The urgent necessity, which has compelled all the successive tyrannies of Egypt to keep up some of the canals and other arrangements for irrigation, was not felt with respect to the advancement of the sands; for their progress was so slow as hardly to be perceptible in the course of a single reign, and long experience has shown that, from the natural effect of the inundations, the cultivable soil of the valley is, on the whole, trenching upon the domain of the desert, not retreating before it. The oases of the Libyan, as well as of many Asiatic deserts, have no such safeguards. The sands are fast encroaching upon them, and threaten soon to engulf them, unless man shall resort to artesian wells and plantations, or to some other efficient means of checking the advance of this formidable enemy, in time to save these islands of the waste from final destruction. Accumulations of sand are, in certain cases, beneficial as a protection against the ravages of the sea; but, in general, the vicinity, and especially the shifting of bodies of this material, are destructive to human industry, and hence, in civilized countries, measures are taken to prevent its spread. This, however, can be done only where the population is large and enlightened, and the value of the soil, or of the artificial erections and improvements upon it, is considerable. Hence in the deserts of Africa and of Asia, and thee inhabited lands which border on them, no pains are usually taken to check the drifts, and when once the fields, the houses, the springs, or the canals of irrigation are covered or choked, the district is abandoned without a struggle, and surrendered to perpetual desolation. [Footnote: In parts of the Algerian desert, some efforts are made to retard the advance of sand dunes which threaten to overwhelm villages. "At Debila," says Laurent, "the lower parts of the lofty dunes are planted with palms, ... but they are constantly menaced with burial by the sands. The only remedy employed by the natives consists in little dry walls of crystallized gypsum, built on the crests of the dunes, together with hedges of dead palm-leaves. These defensive measures are aided by incessant labor; for every day the people take up in baskets the sand blown over to them the night before and carry it back to the other side of the dune."--Memoires sur le Sahara, p. 14.] Sand Dunes and Sand Plains. Two forms of sand deposit are specially important in European and American geography. The one is that of dune or shifting hillock upon the coast, the other that of barren plain in the interior. The coast-dunes are composed of sand washed up from the depths of the sea by the waves, and heaped in more or less rounded knolls and undulating ridges by the winds. The sand with which many plains are covered appears sometimes to have been deposited upon them while they were yet submerged beneath the sea, sometimes to have been drifted from the seacoast, and scattered over them by wind-currents, sometimes to have been washed upon them by running water. In these latter cases, the deposit, though in itself considerable, is comparatively narrow in extent and irregular in distribution, while, in the former, it is often evenly spread over a very wide surface. In all great bodies of either sort, the silicious grains are the principal constituent, though, when not resulting from the disintegration of silicious rock and still remaining in place, they are generally accompanied with a greater or less admixture of other mineral particles, and of animal and vegetable remains, [Footnote: Organic constituents, such as comminuted shells, and silicious and calcareous exuviae of infusorial animals and plants, are sometimes found mingled in considerable quantities with mineral sands. These are usually the remains of aquatic vegetables or animals, but not uniformly so, for the microscopic organisms, whose flinty cases enter so largely into the sand-beds of the Mark of Brandenburg, are still living and prolific in the dry earth. See Wittwer, Physikalische Geographic, p. 142. The desert on both sides of the Nile is inhabited by a land-snail--of which I have counted eighty, in estimation, on a single shrub barely a foot high--and thousands of its shells are swept along and finally buried in the drifts by every wind. Every handful of the sand contains fragments of them. Forchhammer, in Leonhard und Bronn s Jahrbuch, 1841, p. 8, says of the sand-hills of the Danish coast: "It is not rare to find, high in the knolls, marine shells, and especially those of the oyster. They are due to the oyster-eater [Haemalopus ostralegus], which carries his prey to the top of the dunes to devour it." See also Staring, De Bodem van Nederland, i., p. 821.] and they are also, usually somewhat changed in consistence by the ever-varying conditions of temperature and moisture to which they have been exposed since their deposit. Unless the proportion of these latter ingredients is so large as to create a considerable adhesiveness in the mass--in which case it can no longer properly be called sand--it is infertile, and, if not charged with water, partially agglutinated by iron, lime, or other cement, or confined by alluvion resting upon it, it is much inclined to drift, whenever, by any chance, the vegetable network which, in most cases, thinly clothes and at the same time confines it, is broken. Human industry has not only fixed the flying dunes by plantations, but, by mixing clay and other tenacious earths with the superficial stratum of extensive sand plains, and by the application of fertilizing substances, it has made them abundantly productive of vegetable life. These latter processes belong to agriculture and not to geography, and, therefore, are not embraced within the scope of the present subject. But the preliminary steps, whereby wastes of loose, drifting barren sands are transformed into wooded knolls and plains, and finally, through the accummulation of vegetable mould, into arable ground, constitute a conquest over nature which precedes agriculture--a geographical revolution--and, therefore, an account of the means by which the change has been effected belongs properly to the history of man's influence on the great features of terrestrial surface. I proceed, then, to examine the structure of dunes, and to describe the warfare man wages with the sand-hills, striving on the one hand to maintain and even extend them, as a natural barrier against encroachments of the sea, and, on the other, to check their moving and wandering propensities, and prevent them from trespassing upon the fields he has planted and the habitations in which he dwells. COAST DUNES. Coast dunes are oblong ridges or round hillocks, formed by the action of the wind upon sands thrown up by the waves on the low beaches of seas, and sometimes of fresh-water lakes. On most coasts, the supply of sand for the formation of dunes is derived from tidal waves. The flow of the tide is more rapid, and consequently its transporting power greater, than that of the ebb; the momentum, acquired by the heavy particles in rolling in with the water, tends to carry them even beyond the flow of the waves; and at the turn of the tide, the water is in a state of repose long enough to allow it to let fall much of the solid matter it holds in suspension. Hence, on all low, tide-washed coasts of seas with sandy bottoms, there exist several conditions favorable to the formation of sand deposits along high-water mark. [Footnote: There are various reasons why the formation of dunes is confined to low shores, and this law is so universal, that when bluffs are surmounted by them, there is always cause to suspect upheaval, or the removal of a sloping beach in front of the bluff, after the dunes were formed. Bold shores are usually without a sufficient beach for the accumulation of large deposits; they are commonly washed by a sea too deep to bring up sand from its bottom; their abrupt elevation, even if moderate in amount, would still be too great to allow ordinary winds to lift the sand above them; and their influence in deadening the wind which blows towards them would even more effectually prevent the raising of sand from the beach at their foot. Forchhammer, describing the coast of Jutland, says that, in high winds, "one can hardly stand upon the dunes, except when they are near the water line and have been cut down perpendicularly by the waves. Then the wind is little or not at all felt--a fact of experience very common on our coasts, observed on all the steep shore bluffs of 200 feet height, and, in the Faroe Islands, on precipices 2,000 feet high. In heavy gales in those islands, the cattle fly to the very edge of the cliffs for shelter, and frequently fall over. The wind, impinging against the vertical wall, creates an ascending current which shoots somewhat past the crest of the rock, and thus the observer or the animal is protected against the tempest by a barrier of air."-Leonhard und Bronn, Jahrbuch, 1841, p. 3. The calming, or rather diversion, of the wind by cliffs extends to a considerable distance in front of them, and no wind would have sufficient force to raise the sand vertically, parallel to the face of a bluff, even to the height of twenty feet.] If the land-winds are of greater frequency, duration, or strength than the sea-winds, the sands left by the retreating wave will be constantly blown back into the water; but if the prevailing air-currents are in the opposite direction, the sands will soon be carried out of the reach of the highest waves, and transported continually farther and farther into the interior of the land, unless obstructed by high grounds, vegetation, or other obstacles. The laws which govern the formation of dunes are substantially these. We have seen that, under certain conditions, sand is accumulated above high-water mark on low sea and lake shores. So long as the sand is kept wet by the spray or by capillary attraction, it is not disturbed by air-currents, but as soon as the waves retire sufficiently to allow it to dry, it becomes the sport of the wind, and is driven up the gently sloping beach until it is arrested by stones, vegetables, or other obstructions, and thus an accumulation is formed which constitutes the foundation of a dune. However slight the elevation thus created, it serves to stop or retard the progress of the sand-grains which are driven against its shoreward face, and to protect from the further influence of the wind the particles which are borne beyond it, or rolled over its crest, and fall down behind it. If the shore above the beach line were perfectly level and straight, the grass or bushes upon it of equal height, the sand thrown up by the waves uniform in size and weight of particles as well as in distribution, and if the action of the wind were steady and regular, a continuous bank would be formed, everywhere alike in height and cross section. But no such constant conditions anywhere exist. The banks are curved, broken, unequal in elevation; they are sometimes bare, sometimes clothed with vegetables of different structure and dimensions; the sand thrown up is variable in quantity and character; and the winds are shifting, gusty, vertical, and often blowing in very narrow currents. From all these causes, instead of uniform hills, there rise irregular rows of sand-heaps, and these, as would naturally be expected, are of a pyramidal, or rather conical shape, and connected at bottom by more or less continuous ridges of the same material. Elisee Reclus, in describing the coast dunes of Gascony, observes that when, as sometimes happens, the sands are not heaped in a continuous, irregular bulwark, but deposited in isolated hillocks, they have a tendency to assume a crescent shape, the convexity being turned seawards, or towards the direction from which the prevailing winds proceed. This fact, the geological bearing of which is obvious, is not noticed by previous French writers or even by Andresen, though a semi-lunar outline has been long generally ascribed to inland dunes. It is, however evident that such a form would naturally be produced by the action of a wind blowing long in a given direction upon a mass of loose sand with a fixed centre--such as is constituted by the shrub or stone around which the sand is first deposited--and free extremities. On a receding coast, dunes will not attain so great a height as on more secure shores, because they are undermined and carried off before they have time to reach their greatest dimensions. Hence, while at sheltered points in South-western France, there are dunes three hundred feet or more in height, those on the Frisic Islands and the exposed parts of the coast of Schleswig-Holstein range only from twenty to one hundred feet. On the western shores of Africa, it is said that they sometimes attain an elevation of six hundred feet. This is one of the very few points known to geographers where desert sands are advancing seawards, [Footnote: "On the west coast of Africa the dunes are drifting seawards, and always receiving new accessions from the Sahara. They are constantly advancing out into the sea."--Naumann, Geognosie, ii., p.1172.] and here they rise to the greatest altitude to which sand-grains can be carried by the wind. The hillocks, once deposited, are held together and kept in shape, partly by mere gravity, and partly by the slight cohesion of the lime, clay, and organic matter mixed with the sand; and it is observed that, from capillary attraction, evaporation from lower strata, and retention of rain-water, they are always moist a little below the surface. [Footnote: "Dunes are always full of water, from the action of capillary attraction. Upon the summits, one seldom needs to dig more than a foot to find the sand moist, and in the depressions, fresh water is met with near the surface."--Forchhammer, in Leonhard and Bronx, for 1841, p.5, note. On the other hand, Andresen, who has very carefully investigated this as well as all other dune phenomena, maintains that the humidity of the sand ridges cannot be derived from capillary attraction. He found by experiment that a heap of drift-sand was not moistened to a greater height than eight and a half inches, after standing with its base a whole night in water. He states the minimum of water contained by the sand of the dunes, one foot below the surface, after a long drought, at two per cent, the maximum, after a rainy month, at four per cent. At greater depths the quantity is larger. The hygroscopicity of the sand of the coast of Jutland he found to be thirty-three per cent, by measure, or 21.5 by weight. The annual precipitation on that coast is twenty-seven inches, and as the evaporation is about the same, he argues that rain-water does not penetrate far beneath the surface of the dunes, and concludes that their humidity can be explained only by evaporation from below.--Om Klitformationen, pp. 106-110. In the dunes of Algeria, water in so abundant that wells are constantly dug in them at high points on their surface. They are sunk to the depth of three or four inches only, and the water rises to the height of a metre in them.--Laurent, Memoire sur le Sahara, pp. 11, 12, 13. The same writer observes (p. 14) that the 'hollows in the dunes are planted with palms which find moisture enough a little below the surface. It would hence seem that proposal to fix the dunes which are supposed to threaten the Suez Canal, by planting the maratime pine and other trees upon them, is not altogether so absurd as it has been thought to be by some of those disinterested philanthropists of other nations who were distressed with fears that French capitalists would lose the money they had invested in that great undertaking. Ponds of water are often found in the depression between the sand-hills of the dune chains in the North American desert.] By successive accumulations, they gradually rise to the height of thirty, fifty, sixty, or a hundred feet, and sometimes even much higher. Strong winds, instead of adding to their elevation, sweep off loose particles from their surface, and these, with others blown over or between them, build up a second row of dunes, and so on according to the character of the wind, the supply and consistence of the sand, and the face of the country. In this way is formed a belt of sand-dunes, irregularly dispersed and varying much in height and dimensions, and sometimes many miles in breadth. On the Island of Sylt, in the German Sea, where there are several rows, the width of the belt is from half a mile to a mile. There are similar ranges on the coast of Holland, exceeding two miles in breadth, while at the mouths of the Nile they form a zone not less than ten miles wide. The base of some of the dunes in the Delta of the Nile is reached by the river during the annual inundation, and the infiltration of the water, which contains lime, has converted the lower strata into a silicious limestone, or rather a calcarous sandstone, and thus afforded an opportunity of studying the structure of that rock in a locality where its origin and mode of aggregation and solidification are known. The tide, though a usual, is by no means a necessary condition for the accumulations of sand out of which dunes are formed. The Baltic and the Mediterranean are almost tideless seas, but there are vast ranges of dunes on the Russian and Prussian coasts of the Baltic and at the mouths of the Nile and many other points on the shores of the Mediterranean. The vast shoals in the latter sea, known to the ancients as the Greater and Lesser Syrtis, are of marine origin. They are still filling up with sand, washed up from greater depths, or sometimes drifted from the coast in small quantities, and will probably be converted, at some future period, into dry land covered with sand-hills. There are also extensive ranges of dunes upon the eastern shores of the Caspian, and at the southern, or rather south-eastern, extremity of Lake Michigan. [Footnote: The careful observations of Colonel J. D. Graham, of the United States Army, show a tide of about three inches in Lake Michigan. See "A Lunar Tidal Wave in the North American Lakes," demonstrated by Lieut.-Colonel J. D. Graham, in the fourteenth volume of the Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.] There is no doubt that this latter lake formerly extended much farther in that direction, but its southern portion has gradually shoaled and at last been converted into solid land, in consequence of the prevalence of the north-west winds. These blow over the lake a large part of the year, and create a southwardly set of the currents, which wash up sand from the bed of the lake and throw it on shore. Sand is taken up from the beach at Michigan City by every wind from that quarter, and, after a heavy blow of some hours' duration, sand ridges may be observed on the north side of the fences, like the snow wreaths deposited by a drifting wind in winter. Some of the particles are carried back by contrary winds, but most of them lodge on or behind the dunes, or in the moist soil near the lake, or are entangled by vegetables, and tend permanently to elevate the level. Like effects are produced by constant sea-winds, and dunes will generally be formed on all low coasts where such prevail, whether in tideless or in tidal waters. Jobard thus describes the modus operandi, under ordinary circumstances, at the mouths of the Nile, where a tide can scarcely be detected: "When a wave breaks, it deposits an almost imperceptible line of fine sand. The next wave brings also its contribution, and shoves the preceding line a little higher. As soon as the particles are fairly out of the reach of the water they are dried by the heat of the burning sun, and immediately seized by the wind and rolled or borne farther inland. The gravel is not thrown out by the waves, but rolls backwards and forwards until it is worn down to the state of fine sand, when it, in its turn, is cast upon the land and taken up by the wind." [Footnote: Staring, De Bodun van Nederland, i., p. 327, note.] This description applies only to the common every-day action of wind and water; but just in proportion to the increasing force of the wind and the waves, there is an increase in the quantity of sand, and in the magnitude of the particles carried off from the beach by it, and, of course, every storm in a landward direction adds sensibly to the accumulation upon the shore. Sand Banks. Although dunes, properly so called, are found only on dry land and above ordinary high-water mark, and owe their elevation and structure to the action of the wind, yet, upon many shelving coasts, accumulations of sand much resembling dunes are formed under water at some distance from the shore by the oscillations of the waves, and are well known by the name of sand banks. They are usually rather ridges than banks, of moderate inclination, and with the steepest slope seawards, [Footnote: Kohl, Inseln und Marschen Schleswig Holsteins, ii., p. 33. From a drawing in Andresen, Om Klitformationen, p. 24, it would appear that on the Schleswig coast the surf-formed banks have the steepest slope landwards, those farther from the shore, as stated in the text.] and their form differs little from that of dunes except in this last particular and in being lower and more continuous. Upon the western coast of the island of Amrum, for example, there are three rows of such banks, the summits of which are at a distance of perhaps a couple of miles from each other; so that, including the width of the banks themselves, the spaces between them, and the breadth of the zone of dunes upon the land, the belt of moving sands on that coast is probably not less than eight miles wide. Under ordinary circumstances, sand banks are always rolling, landwards, and they compose the magazine from which the material for the dunes is derived. [Footnote: Sand banks sometimes connect themselves with the coast at both ends, and thus cut off a portion of the sea. In this case, as well as when salt water is enclosed by sea-dikes, the water thus separated from the ocean gradually becomes fresh, or at least brackish. The Haffs, or large expanses of fresh water in Eastern Prussia--which are divided from the Baltic by narrow sand banks called Nehrungen, or, at sheltered points of the coast, by fluviatile deposits called Werders--all have one or more open passages, through which the water of the rivers that supply them at last finds its way to the sea.] The dunes, in fact, are but aquatic sand banks transferred to dry land. The laws of their formation are closely analogous, because the action of the two fluids, by which they are respectively accumulated and built up, is very similar when brought to bear upon loose particles of solid matter. It would, indeed, seem that the slow and comparatively regular movements of the heavy, unelastic water ought to affect such particles very differently from the sudden and fitful impulses of the light and elastic air. But the velocity of the wind currents gives them a mechanical force approximating to that of the slower waves, and, however difficult it may be to explain all the phenomena that characterize the structure of the dunes, observation has proved that it is nearly identical with that of submerged sand banks. [Footnote: Forchhammer ascribes the resemblance between the furrowing of the dune sands and the beach ripples, not to the similarity of the effect of wind and water upon sand, but wholly to the action of the wind; in the first instance, directly, in the latter, through the water. "The wind-ripples on the surface of the dunes precisely resemble the water-ripples of sand flats occasionally overflowed by the sea; and with the closest scrutiny, I have never been able to detect the slightest difference between them. This is easily explained by the fact, that the water-ripples are produced by the action of light wind on the water which only transmits the air-waves to the sand."--Leonhard und Bronn, 1841, pp. 7, 8.] The differences of form are generally ascribable to the greater number and variety of surface accidents of the ground on which the sand hills of the land are built up, and to the more frequent changes, and wider variety of direction, in the courses of the wind. CHARACTER OF DUNE SAND. "Dune sand," says Staring, "consists of well-rounded grains of quartz, more or less colored by iron, and often mingled with fragments of shells, small indeed, but still visible to the naked eye. [Footnote: According to the French authorities, the dunes of France are not always composed of quartzose sand. "The dune sands" of different characters, says Bremontier, "partake of the nature of the different materials which compose them. At certain points on the coast of Normandy they are found to be purely calcareous; they are of mixed composition on the shores of Brittany and Saintonge, and generally quartzose between the mouth of the Gironde and that of the Adour."--Memoire sur les Dunes, Annales des Ponts et Chaussees, t. vii., 1833, 1er semestre, p. 146. In the dunes of Long Island and of Jutland, there are considerable veins composed almost wholly of garnet. For a very full examination of the mechanical and chemical composition of the dune sands of Jutland, see Andresen, Om Klitformationen, p. 110. Fraas informs us, Aus dem Orient, pp. 176, 177, that the dune sands of the Egyptian coast arise from the disintegration of the calcareous sandstone of the same region. This sandstone, composed in a large proportion of detritus of both land and sea shells mingled with quartz sand, appears to have been consolidated under water during an ancient period of subsidence. A later upheaval brought it to or near the surface, when it was more or less disintegrated by the action of the waves and by meteoric influences--a process still going on--and it is now again subsiding with the coast it rests on. The calcareous sand arising from the comminution of corals forms dunes on some of the West India Islands.--Agassiz, Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, vol. i.] These fragments are not constant constituents of dune sand. They are sometimes found at the very summits of the hillocks, as at Overveen; in the King's Dune, near Egmond, they form a coarse, calcareous gravel very largely distributed through the sand, while the interior dunes between Haarlem and Warmond exhibit no trace of them. It is yet undecided whether the presence or absence of these fragments is determined by the period of the formation of the dunes, or whether it depends on a difference in the process by which different dunes have been accumulated. Land shells, such as snails, for example, are found on the surface of the dunes in abundance, and many of the shelly fragments in the interior of the hillocks may be derived from the same source." [Footnote: De Bodem van Nederland, i., p. 323.] Sand concretions form within the dunes and especially in the depressions between them. These are sometimes so extensive and impervious as to retain a sufficient supply of water to feed perennial springs, and to form small permanent ponds, and they are a great impediment to the penetration of roots, and consequently to the growth of trees planted, or germinating from self-sown seeds, upon the dunes. [Footnote: Staring, De Bodem van Nederland, i., p.317. See also Bergsoe, Reventlov's Virksomhed, ii., p. 11. "In the sand-hill ponds mentioned in the text, there is a vigourous growth of bog plants accompanied with the formation of peat, which goes on regularly as long as the dune sand does not drift. But if the surface of the dunes is broken, the sand blows into the ponds, covers the peat, and puts and end to its formation. When, in the course of time, marine currents cut away the coast, the dunes move landwards and fill up the ponds and thus are formed the remarkable strata of fossile peat called Martorv, which appears to be unknown to the geologists of other parts of Europe." -- Forchhammer, in Leonhard und Bronn, 1841, p. 18. Martorv has a specific gravity thrice as great as that of ordinary peat in consequence of the pressure of the sand.--Asbjornsen, Torv og Torvdrift, p.26.] Interior Structure of Dunes. The interior structure of the dunes, the arrangement of their particles, is not, as might be expected, that of an unorganized, confused heap, but they show a strong tendency to stratification. This is a point of much geological interest, because it indicates that sandstone may owe its stratified character to the action of other forces as well as of water. The origin and peculiar character of these layers are due to a variety of causes. For example, a south-west wind and current may deposit upon a dune a stratum of a given color and mineral composition, and this may be succeeded by a north-west wind and current, bringing with them particles of a different hue, constitution, and origin. Again, if we suppose a violent tempest to strew the beach with sand-grains very different in magnitude and specific gravity, and, after the sand is dry, to be succeeded by a gentle breeze, it is evident that only the lighter particles will be taken up and carried to the dunes. If, after some time, the wind freshens, heavier grains will be transported and deposited on the former, and a still stronger succeeding gale will roll up yet larger kernels. Each of these deposits will form a stratum. If we suppose the tempest to be followed, after the sand is dry, not by a gentle breeze, but by a wind powerful enough to lift at the same time particles of very various magnitudes and weights, the heaviest will often lodge on the dune while the lighter will be carried farther. This would produce a stratum of coarse sand, and the same effect might result from the blowing away of light particles out of a mixed layer, while the heavier remained undisturbed. [Footnote: The lower strata must be older than the superficial layers, and the particles which compose them may in time become more disintegrated, and therefore finer than those deposited later and above them. Hull ingeniously suggests that, besides other changes, fine sand intermixed with or deposited above a coarser stratum, as well as the minute particles resulting from the disintegration of the grains of the latter, may be carried by rain in the case of dunes, or by the ordinary action or sea-water in that of sand-banks, down through the interstices in the coarser layer, and thus the relative position of sand and gravel may be changed.--Oorsprong der Hollandsche Duinen, p. 103.] Still another cause of apparent stratification may be found in the occasional interposition of a thin layer of leaves or other vegetable remains between successive deposits, and this I imagine to be more frequent than has been generally supposed. Some geologists have thought that the sand strata of dunes are of annual formation; [Footnote: Schomann, Geologische Wanderungen durch die Preussischen Ost-See Provinzen, 1869, p. 81.] but the autumnal deposit of foliage from neighboring trees and shrubs furnishes a more probable explanation of the division of the sand-heaps into regular layers. A late distinguished American admiral communicated to me an interesting observation made by him at San Francisco, which has an important bearing on the arrangement of the particles of sand in dunes and other irregular accumulations of that substance. In laying out a navy-yard at that port, a large quantity of earthy material was removed from the dunes and other hillocks and carted to a low piece of ground which required filling up. Sand of various characters, fine and coarse gravel, and common earth were dropped promiscuously by the carts as accident or convenience dictated, and of course they were all confusedly intermixed. Some time after, when the new ground was consolidated, various excavations were made in it, and the different materials of which the filling was composed were found to be stratified with considerable regularity, according to their specific gravity. Two explanations of this remarkable fact suggest themselves to me, which, however, do not perhaps exclude others. San Francisco is subject to earthquakes, and though violent or even sensible shocks are not very frequent, it is highly probable that, as is shown to be the case in many other countries, by late seismological observations, there are, in the course of the year, a great number of slight shocks which escape unscientific observation. A frequent repetition of slight tremblings of the earth would, like any other moderate mechanical agitation, probably produce the separation of a miscellaneous mass, like that described, into distinct layers. Again, the Pacific coast, like all others upon an open sea, is exposed to incessant concussion from the shock of the waves, which is repeated many thousand times a day. This concussion is often sensibly felt by the observer, and it seems not in the least improbable that the agitation may have tended to produce a stratified arrangement in the case at San Francisco, as well as in all coast dunes and other accumulations of loose mineral material in similar situations. Kohl observes that the shore on the landward side of the files of dunes often trembles from the shock of the waves on the beach, [Footnote: Inseln und Marschen, etc., ii., p. 34.] and Villeneuve established by careful experiment that at Dunkerque the ground is sensibly agitated by the same cause, in stormy weather, to a distance of more than a mile from the sea. The eddies of strong winds between the hillocks must also occasion disturbances and re-arrangements of the sand layers, and it seems possible that the irregular thickness and the strange contortions of the strata of the sandstone at Petra may be due to some such cause. A curious observation of Professor Forchhammer suggests an explanation of another peculiarity in the structure of the sandstone of Mount Seir. He describes dunes in Jutland, composed of yellow quartzose sand intermixed with black titanian iron. When the wind blows over the surface of the dunes, it furrows the sand with alternate ridges and depressions, ripples, in short, like those of water. The swells, the dividing ridges of the system of sand ripples, are composed of the light grains of quartz, while the heavier iron rolls into the depressions between, and thus the whole surface of the dune appears as if covered with a fine black network. The sea side of dunes, being more exposed to the caprices of the wind, is more irregular in form than the lee or land side, where the arrangement of the particles is affected by fewer disturbing and conflicting influences. Hence, the stratification of the windward slope is somewhat confused, while the sand on the lee side is found to be disposed in more regular beds, inclining landwards, and with the largest particles lowest, where their greater weight would naturally carry them. The lee side of the dunes, being thus formed of sand deposited according to the laws of gravity, is very uniform in its slope, which, according to Forchhammer, varies little from an angle of 30 degrees with the horizon, while the more exposed and irregular weather side lies at an inclination of from 5 degrees to 10 degrees. When, however, the outer tier of dunes is formed so near the waterline as to be exposed to the immediate action of the waves, it is undermined, and the face of the hill is very steep and sometimes nearly perpendicular. Geological Importance of Dunes. These observations, and other facts which a more attentive study on the spot would detect, might furnish the means of determining interesting and important questions concerning geological formations in localities very unlike those where dunes are now thrown up. For example, Studer supposes that the drifting sand-hills of the African desert were originally coast dunes, and that they have been transported to their present position far in the interior, by the rolling and shifting leeward movement to which all dunes not covered with vegetation are subject. The present general drift of the sands of that desert appears to be to the south-west and west, the prevailing winds blowing from the north-east and east; but it has been doubted whether the shoals of the western coast of Northern Africa, and the sands upon that shore, are derived from the bottom of the Atlantic, in the usual manner, or, by an inverse process, from those of the Sahara. The latter, as has been before remarked, is probably the truth, though observations are wanting to decide the question. [Footnote: "The North African desert falls into two divisions: the Sahel, or western, and the Sahar, or eastern. The sands of the Sahar were, at a remote period, drifted to the west. In the Sahel, the prevailing east winds drive the sand-ocean with a progressive westward motion. The eastern half of the desert is swept clean."--Naumann, Geognosie, ii., p. 1173.] There would be nothing violently improbable in the a priori supposition that they may have been in part first thrown up by the Mediterranean on its Libyan coast, and thence blown south and west over the vast space they now cover. But inasmuch as it is now geologically certain that the Sahara is an uplifted bed of an ancient sea, we may suppose that, while submerged, it was, like other sea-bottoms, strewn with sand, and that its present supply of that material was, in great proportion, brought up with it. Laurent observed, some years ago, that marine shells of still extinct species were found in the Sahara, far from the sea, and even at considerable depths below the surface. [Footnote: Memoires sur le Sahara Oriental p. 62] These observations have been confirmed past all question by Desor, Martins, and others, and the facts and the obvious conclusion they suggest are at present not disputed. But whatever has been the source and movement of these sands, they can hardly fail to have left on their route some sandstone monuments to mark their progress, such, for example, as we have seen are formed from the dune sand at the mouth of the Nile; and it is conceivable that the character of the drifting sands themselves, and of the conglomerates and sandstones to whose formation they have contributed, might furnish satisfactory evidence as to their origin, their starting-point, and the course by which they have wandered so far from the sea. [Footnote: Forchhammer, after pointing out the coincidence between the inclined stratification of dunes and the structure of ancient tilted rocks, says: "But I am not able to point out a sandstone formation corresponding to the dunes. Probably most ancient dunes have been destroyed by submersion before the loose sand became cemented to solid stone, but we may suppose that circumstances have existed somewhere which have preserved the characteristics of this formation."--Leonhard und Bronn, 1841, p. 8, 9. Such formations, however, certainly exist. Laurent (Memoire sur le Sahara, etc., p. 12) tells us that in the Algerian desert there are "sandstone formation" not only "corresponding to the dunes," but, actually consolidated within them. "A place called El-Mouia-Tadjer presents a repetition of what we saw at El-Baya; one of the funnels formed in the middle of the dunes contains wells from two metres to two and a half in depth, dug in a sand which pressure, and probably the presence of certain salts, have cemented so as to form true sandstone, soft indeed, but which does not yield except to the pickaxe. These sandstones exhibit an inclination which seems to be the effect of wind; for they conform to the direction of the sands which roll down a scarp occasioned by the primitive obstacle." "At New Quay the dune sands are converted to stone by an oxide of iron held in solution by the water which pervades them. This stone, which is formed, so to speak, under our eye, has been found solid enough to be employed for building."-Esquiros, L'Angleterre, etc., in Revue des Deux Mondes, 1864, pp. 44, 45. The dunes near the mouth of the Nile, the lower sands of which have been cemented together by the infiltration of Nile water, would probably show a similar stratification in the sandstone which now forms their base. Dana describes a laminated rook often formed by the infiltration of water into the sand dunes on the Hawaian islands.--Corals and Coral Islands, 1872, p.155.] If the sand of coast dunes is, as Staring describes it, composed chiefly of well-rounded, quartzose grains, fragments of shells, and other constant ingredients, it would often be recognizable as coast sand, in its agglutinate state of sandstone. The texture of this rock varies from an almost imperceptible fineness of grain to great coarseness, and affords good facilities for microscopic observation of its structure. There are sandstones, such, for example, as are used for grindstones, where the grit, as it is called, is of exceeding sharpness; others where the angles of the grains are so obtuse that they scarcely act at all on hard metals. The former may be composed of grains of rock, disintegrated indeed, and re-cemented together, but not, in the meanwhile, much rolled; the latter, of sands long washed by the sea, and drifted by land-winds. There is, indeed, so much resemblance between the effects of driving winds and of rolling water upon light bodies, that there might be difficulty in distinguishing them; but after all, it is not probable that sandstone, composed of grains thrown up from the salt sea, and long tossed by the winds, would be identical in its structure with that formed from fragments of rock crushed by mechanical force, or disintegrated by heat, and again agglutinated without much exposure to the action of moving water. Dunes of American Coasts. Upon the Atlantic coast of the United States, the prevalence of western or off-shore winds is unfavorable to the formation of dunes, and, though marine currents lodge vast quantities of sand, in the form of banks, on that coast, its shores are proportionally more free from sand-hills than some others of lesser extent. There are, however, very important exceptions. The action of the tide throws much sand upon some points of the New England coast, as well as upon the Beaches of Long Island and other more southern shores, and here dunes resembling those of Europe are formed. There are also extensive ranges of dunes on the Pacific coast of the United States, and at San Francisco they border some of the streets of the city. The dunes of America are far older than her civilization, and the soil they threaten or protect possesses, in general, too little value to justify any great expenditure in measures for arresting their progress or preventing their destruction. Hence, great as is their extent and their geographical importance, they have, at present, no such intimate relations to human life as to render them objects of special interest in the point of view I am taking, and I do not know that the laws of their formation and motion have been made a subject of original investigation by any American observer. Dunes of Western Europe. Upon the western coast of Europe, on the contrary, the ravages occasioned by the movement of sand dunes, and the serious consequences often resulting from the destruction of them, have long engaged the earnest attention of Governments and of scientific men, and for nearly a century persevering and systematic effort has been made to bring them under human control. The subject has been carefully studied in Denmark and the adjacent duchies, in Western Prussia, in the Netherlands, and in France; and the experiments in the way of arresting the drifting of the dunes, and of securing them, and the lands they shelter, from the encroachments of the sea, have resulted in the adoption of a system of coast improvement substantially the same in all these countries. The sands, like the forests, have now their special literature, and the volumes and memoirs, which describe them and the processes employed to subdue them, are full of scientific interest and of practical instruction. Dunes of Gascony. In the small kingdom of Denmark, inclusive of the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, the dunes cover an area of more than two hundred and sixty square miles. The breadth of the chain is very various, and in some places it consists only of a single row of sand-hills, while in others, it is more than six miles wide. [Footnote: Andersen, Om Klitformationen, pp. 78, 202, 275.] The dunes of the Prussian coast are vaguely estimated to cover from eighty-five to one hundred and ten thousand acres; those of Holland one hundred and forty thousand acres; and those of Gascony more than two hundred thousand acres. I do not find any estimate of their extent in other provinces of France, or in the Baltic provinces of Russia, but it is probable that the entire quantity of dune land upon the Atlantic and Baltic shores of Europe does not fall much short of a million of acres. [Footnote: In an article on the dunes of Europe, in vol. 29 (1864) of Aus der Natur, p. 590, the dunes are estimated to cover, on the islands and coasts of Schleswig Holstein, in North-west Germany, Denmark, Holland, and France, one hundred and eighty-one German, or nearly four thousand English square miles; in Scotland, about ten German, or two hundred and ten English miles; in Ireland, twenty German, or four hundred and twenty English miles; and in England, one hundred and twenty German, or more than twenty-five hundred English miles. Pannewitz (Anleitung zum Anbau der Sandfluchen), as cited by Andresen (Om Klitformationen, p. 45), states that the drifting sands of Europe, including, of course, sand plains as well as dunes, cover an extent of 21,000 square miles. This is, perhaps, an exaggeration, though there is, undoubtedly, much more desert-land of this description on the European continent than has been generally supposed. There is no question that most of this waste is capable of reclamation by simple planting, and no mode of physical improvement is better worth the attention of civilized Governments than this. There are often serious objections to extensive forest planting on soils capable of being otherwise made productive, but they do not apply to sand wastes, which, until covered by woods, are not only a useless incumbrance, but a source of serious danger to all human improvements in the neighborhood of them.] This vast deposit of sea-sand extends along the coasts for a distance of several hundred miles, and from the time of the destruction of the forests which covered it, to the year 1789, the whole line was rolling inwards and burying the soil beneath it, or rendering the fields unproductive by the sand which drifted from it. At the same time, as the sand-hills moved landwards, the ocean was closely following their retreat and swallowing up the ground they had covered, as fast as their movement left it bare. Age, Character, and Permanence of Dunes. The origin of most great lines of dunes goes back past all history. There are on many coasts several distinct ranges of sand-hills which seem to be of very different ages, and to have been formed under different relative conditions of land and water. [Footnote: Krause, speaking of the dunes on the coast of Prussia, says: "Their origin belongs to three different periods, in which important changes in the relative level of sea and land have unquestionably taken place.... Except in the deep depressions between them, the dunes are everywhere sprinkled, to a considerable height, with brown oxydulated iron, which has penetrated into the sand to the depth of from three to eighteen inches, and colored it red. ... Above the iron is a stratum of sand differing in composition from ordinary sea-sand, and on this, growing woods are always found.... The gradually accumulated forest soil occurs in beds of from one to three feet thick, and changes, proceeding upward, from gray sand to black humus." Even on the third or seaward range, the sand grasses appear and thrive luxuriantly, at least on the west coast, though Krause doubts whether the dunes of the east coast were ever thus protected.--Der Dunenbau, pp. 8, 11.] In some cases there has been an upheaval of the coast line since the formation of the oldest hillocks, and these have become inland dunes, while younger rows have been thrown up on the new beach laid bare by elevation of the sea-bed. Our knowledge of the mode of their first accumulation is derived from observation of the action of wind and water in the few instances where, with or without the aid of man, new coast dunes have been accumulated, and of the influence of wind alone in elevating new sand-heaps inland of the coast tier, when the outer rows are destroyed by the sea, as also when the sodded surface of ancient sands has been broken, and the subjacent strata laid open to the air. It is a question of much interest, in what degree the naked condition of most dunes is to be ascribed to the improvidence and indiscretion of man. There are, in Western France, extensive ranges of dunes covered with ancient and dense forests, while the recently formed sand-hills between them and the sea are bare of vegetation, and in some cases are rapidly advancing upon the wooded dunes, which they threaten to bury beneath their drifts. Between the old dunes and the new there is no discoverable difference in material or in structure; but the modern sand-hills are naked and shifting, the ancient, clothed with vegetation and fixed. It has been conjectured that artificial methods of confinement and plantation were employed by the primitive inhabitants of Gaul; and Laval, basing his calculations on the rate of annual movement of the shifting dunes, assigns the fifth century of the Christian era as the period when those processes wore abandoned. [Footnote: Laval, Memoire sur les Dunes de Gascogne, Annales des Ponts et Chaussees, 1847, 2me semestre, p. 231. The same opinion had been expressed by Bremontier, Annales des Ponts et Chaussees, 1833, 1er semestre, p. 185.] There is no historical evidence that the Gauls were acquainted with artificial methods of fixing the sands of the coast, and we have little reason to suppose that they were advanced enough in civilization to be likely to resort to such processes, especially at a period when land could have had but a moderate value. In other countries, dunes have spontaneously clothed themselves with forests, and the rapidity with which their surface is covered by various species of sand-plants, and finally by trees, where man and cattle and burrowing animals are excluded from them, renders it highly probable that they would, as a general rule, protect themselves, if left to the undisturbed action of natural causes. The sand-hills of the Frische Nehrung, on the coast of Prussia, were formerly wooded down to the water's edge, and it was only in the last century that, in consequence of the destruction of their forests, they became moving sands. [Footnote: "In the Middle Ages," says Willibald Alexis, as quoted by Muller, Das Buch der Pflanzenwelt, i., p. 16, "the Nebrung was extending itself further, and the narrow opening near Lochstadt had filled itself up with sand. A great pine forest bound with its roots the dune sand and the heath uninterruptedly from Danzig to Pillau. King Frederick William I. was once in want of money. A certain Herr von Korff promised to procure it for him, without loan or taxes, if he could be allowed to remove something quite useless. He thinned out the forests of Prussia, which then, indeed, possessed little pecuniary value; but he felled the entire woods of the Frische Nebrung, so far as they lay within the Prussian territory. The financial operation was a success. The king had money, but in the material effects which resulted from it, the state received irreparable injury. The sea-winds rush over the bared hills; the Frische Haff is half-choked with sand; the channel between Elbing, the sea, and Konigsberg is endangered, and the fisheries in the Haff injured. The operation of Herr von Korff brought the king 200,000 thalers. The state would now willingly expend millions to restore the forests again."] There is every reason to believe that the dunes of the Netherlands were clothed with trees until after the Roman invasion. The old geographers, in describing these countries, speak of vast forests extending to the very brink of the sea; but drifting coast dunes are first mentioned by the chroniclers of the Middle Ages, and so far as we know they have assumed a destructive character in consequence of the improvidence of man. [Footnote: Staring, Voormaals en Thans, p. 231. Had the dunes of the Netherlandish and French coasts, at the period of the Roman invasion, resembled the moving sand-hills of the present day, it is inconceivable that they could have escaped the notice of so acute a physical geographer as Strabo; and the absolute silence of Caesar, Ptolemy, and the encyclopaedic Pliny, respecting them, would be not less inexplicable.] The history of the dunes of Michigan, so far as I have been able to learn from my own observation, or that of others, is the same. Thirty years ago, when that region was scarcely inhabited, they were generally covered with a thick growth of trees, chiefly pines, and underwood, and there was little appearance of undermining and wash on the lake side, or of shifting of the sands, except where the trees had been cut or turned up by the roots. [Footnote: The sands of Cape Cod were partially, if not completely, covered with vegetation by nature. Dr. Dwight, describing the dunes as they were in 1800, says: "Some of them are covered with beach grass; some fringed with whortleberry bushes; and some tufted with a small and singular growth of oaks. ... The parts of this barrier which are covered with whortleberry bushes and with oaks, have been either not at all or very little blown. The oaks, particularly, appear to be the continuation of the forests originally formed on this spot. ... They wore all the marks of extreme age; were, in some instances, already decayed, and in others decaying; were hoary with moss and were deformed by branches, broken and wasted, not by violence, but by time."--Travels, iii., p. 91] Nature, as she builds up dunes for the protection of the seashore, provides, with similar conservatism, for the preservation of the dunes themselves; so that, without the interference of man, these hillocks would be, not perhaps absolutely perpetual, but very lasting in duration, and very slowly altered in form or position. When once covered with the trees, shrubs, and herbaceous growths adapted to such localities, dunes undergo no apparent change, except the slow occasional undermining of the outer tier, and accidental destruction by the exposure of the interior, from the burrowing of animals, or the upturning of trees with their roots, and all these causes of displacement are very much less destructive when a vegetable covering exists in the immediate neighborhood of the breach. Protection of Dunes. Before the occupation of the coasts by man, dunes, at all points where they have been observed, seem to have been protected in their rear by forests, which served to break the force of the winds in both directions, [Footnote: Bergsoe (Reventlovs Virksomhed, ii., 3) states that the dunes on the west coast of Jutland were stationary before the destruction of the forests to the east of them. The felling of the tall trees removed the resistance to the lower currents of the westerly winds, and the sands have since buried a great extent of fertile soil. See also same work, ii., p. 124.] and to have spontaneously clothed themselves with a dense growth of the various plants, grasses, shrubs, and trees, which nature has assigned to such soils. It is observed in Europe that dunes, though now without the shelter of a forest country behind them, begin to protect themselves as soon as human trespassers are excluded, and grazing animals denied access to them. Herbaceous and arborescent plants spring up almost at once, first in the depressions, and then upon the surface of the sand-hills. Every seed that sprouts, binds together a certain amount of sand by its roots, shades a little ground with its leaves, and furnishes food and shelter for still younger or smaller growths. A succession of a very few favorable seasons suffices to bind the whole surface together with a vegetable network, and the power of resistance possessed by the dunes themselves, and the protection they afford to the fields behind them, are just in proportion to the abundance and density of the plants they support. The growth of the vegetable covering can, of course, be much accelerated by judicious planting and watchful care, and this species of improvement is now carried on upon a vast scale on the sandy coasts of Western Europe, wherever the value of land is considerable and the population dense. Use of Dunes as a Barrier against the Sea. Although the sea throws up large quantities of sand on flat lee-shores, there are many cases where it continually encroaches on those same shores and washes them away. At all points of the shallow North Sea where the agitation of the waves extends to the bottom, banks are forming and rolling eastwards. Hence the sea-sand tends to accumulate upon the coast of Schleswig-Holstein and Jutland, and were there no conflicting influences, the shore would rapidly extend itself westwards. But the same waves which wash the sand to the coast undermine the beach they cover, and still more rapidly degrade the shore at points where it is too high to receive partial protection by the formation of dunes upon it. The earth of the coast is generally composed of particles finer, lighter, and more transportable by water than the sea-sand. While, therefore, the billows raised by a heavy west wind may roll up and deposit along the beach thousands of tons of sand, the same waves may swallow up even a larger quantity of fine shore-earth. This earth, with a portion of the sand, is swept off by northwardly and southwardly currents, and let fall at other points of the coast, or carried off, altogether, out of the reach of causes which might bring it back to its former position. Although, then, the eastern shore of the German Ocean here and there advances into the sea, it in general retreats before it, and but for the protection afforded it by natural arrangements seconded by the art and industry of man, whole provinces would soon be engulfed by the waters. This protection consists in an almost unbroken chain of sand banks and dunes, extending from the northernmost point of Jutland to the Elbe, a distance of not much less than three hundred miles, and from the Elbe again, though with more frequent and wider interruptions, to the Atlantic borders of France and Spain. So long as the dunes are maintained by nature or by human art, they serve, like any other embankment or dike, as a partial or a complete protection against the encroachments of the sea; and on the other hand, when their drifts are not checked by natural processes, or by the industry of man, they become a cause of as certain, if not of as sudden, destruction as the ocean itself whose advance they retard. On the whole, the dunes on the coast of the German Sea, notwithstanding the great quantity of often fertile land they cover, and the evils which result from their movement, are a protective and beneficial agent, and their maintenance is an object of solicitude with the Governments and people of the shores they defend. [Footnote: "We must, therefore, not be surprised to see the people here deal as gingerly with their dunes as if treading among eggs. He who is lucky enough to own a molehill of dune pets it affectionately, and spends his substance in cherishing and fattening it. That fair, fertile, rich province, the peninsula of Eiderstadt in the south of Friesland, has, on the point towards the sea, only a tiny row of dunes, some six miles long or so; but the people talk of their fringe of sand hills, as if it were a border set with pearls. They look upon it as their best defence against Neptune. They have connected it with their system of dikes, and for years have kept sentries posted to protect it against wanton injury."--J. G. Kohl, Die Inseln u. Marschen Schleswig-Holsteins, ii., p. 115.] The eastward progress of the sea on the Danish, Netherlandish, and French coasts depends so much on local geological structure, on the force and direction of tidal and other marine currents, on the volume and rapidity of coast rivers, on the contingencies of the weather and on other varying circumstances, that no general rate can be assigned to it. At Agger, near the western end of the Liimfjord, in Jutland, the coast was washed away, between the years 1815 and 1839, at the rate of more than eighteen feet a year. The advance of the sea appears to have been something less rapid for a century before; but from 1840 to 1857, it gained upon the land no less than thirty feet a year. At other points of the shore of Jutland the loss is smaller, but the sea is encroaching generally upon the whole line of the coast. [Footnote: Andersen, "Om Klitformationen," pp. 68-72.] The Liimfjord. The irruption of the sea into the fresh-water lagoon of Liimfjord in Jutland, in 1825--one of the most remarkable encroachments of the ocean in modern times--is expressly ascribed to "mismanagement of the dunes" on the narrow neck of land which separated the fjord from the North Sea. At earlier periods the sea had swept across the isthmus, and even burst through it, but the channel had been filled up again, sometimes by artificial means, sometimes by the operation of natural causes, and on all these occasions effects were produced very similar to those resulting from the formation of the new channel in 1825, which still remains open. [Footnote: Id., pp. 231, 232. Andresen's work, though printed in 1861, was finished in 1859. Lyell (Antiquity of Man, 1863, p. 14) says: "Even in the course of the present century, the salt-waters have made one eruption into the Baltic by the Liimfjord, although they have been now again excluded."] Within comparatively recent historical ages, the Liimfjord has thus been several times alternately filled with fresh and with salt water, and man has produced, by neglecting the dunes, or at least might have prevented by maintaining them, changes identical with those which are usually ascribed to the action of great geological causes, and sometimes supposed to have required vast periods of time for their accomplishment. "This breach," says Forchhammer, "which converted the Liimfjord into a sound, and the northern part of Jutland into an island, occasioned remarkable changes. The first and most striking phenomenon was the sudden destruction of almost all the fresh-water fish previously inhabiting this lagoon, which was famous for its abundant fisheries. Millions of fresh-water fish were thrown on shore, partly dead and partly dying, and were carted off by the people. A few only survived, and still frequent the shores at the mouth of the brooks. The eel, however, has gradually accommodated itself to the change of circumstances, and is found in all parts of the fjord, while to all other fresh-water fish, the salt-water of the ocean seems to have been fatal. It is more than probable that the sand washed in by the irruption covers, in many places, a layer of dead fish, and has thus prepared the way for a petrified stratum similar to those observed in so many older formations. "As it seems to be a law of nature that animals whose life is suddenly extinguished while yet in full vigor, are the most likely to be preserved by petrification, we find here one of the conditions favorable to the formation of such a petrified stratum. The bottom of the Liimfjord was covered with a vigorous growth of aquatic plants, belonging both to fresh and to salt water, especially Zostera marina. This vegetation totally disappeared after the irruption, and, in some instances, was buried by the sand; and here again we have a familiar phenomenon often observed in ancient strata--the indication of a given formation by a particular vegetable species--and when the strata deposited at the time of the breach shall be accessible by upheaval, the period of eruption will be marked by a stratum of Zostera, and probably by impressions of fresh-water fishes. "It is very remarkable that the Zostera marina, a sea-plant, was destroyed even where no sand was deposited. This was probably in consequence of the sudden change from brackish to salt water ... It is well established that the Liimfjord communicated with the German Ocean at some former period. To that era belong the deep beds of oyster shells and Cardium edule, which are still found at the bottom of the fjord. And now, after an interval of centuries, during which the lagoon contained no salt-water shell fish, it again produces great numbers of Mytilus edulis. Could we obtain a deep section of the bottom, we should find beds of Ostrea edulis and Cardium edule, then a layer of Zostera marina with fresh-water fish, and then a bed of Mytilus edulis. If, in course of time, the new channel should be closed, the brooks would fill the lagoon again with fresh water; fresh-water fish and shell fish would reappear, and thus we should have a repeated alternation of organic inhabitants of the sea and of the waters of the land. "These events have been accompanied with but a comparatively insignificant change of land surface, while the formations in the bed of this inland sea have been totally revolutionized in character." [Footnote: Forchhammer, Geognostiche Studien am Meeres-Ufer, Leonhard und Bronn, Jahrbuch, 1841, pp. 11, 13.] Coasts of Schleswig-Holstein, Holland, and France. On the islands on the coast of Schleswig-Holstein, the advance of the sea has been more unequivocal and more rapid. Near the beginning of the last century, the dunes which had protected the western coast of the island of Sylt began to roll to the east, and the sea followed closely as they retired. In 1757, the church of Rantum, a village upon that island, was obliged to be taken down in consequence of the advance of the sand-hills; in 1791, these hills had passed beyond its site, the waves had swallowed up its foundations, and the sea gained so rapidly, that, fifty years later, the spot where they lay was seven hundred feet from the shore. [Footnote: Andresen, Om Klitformationen, pp. 68, 72.] The most prominent geological landmark on the coast of Holland is the Huis te Britten, Arx Britannica, a fortress built by the Romans, in the time of Caligula, on the main land near the mouth of the Rhine. At the close of the seventeenth century, the sea had advanced sixteen hundred paces beyond it. The older Dutch annalists record, with much parade of numerical accuracy, frequent encroachments of the sea upon many parts of the Netherlandish coast. But though the general fact of an advance of the ocean upon the land is established beyond dispute, the precision of the measurements which have been given is open to question. Staring, however, who thinks the erosion of the coast much exaggerated by popular geographers, admits a loss of more than a million and a half acres, chiefly worthless morass; [Footnote: Voormaals en Thans, pp. 126, 170.] and it is certain that but for the resistance of man, but for his erection of dikes and protection of dunes, there would now be left of Holland little but the name. It is, as has been already seen, still a debated question among geologists whether the coast of Holland now is, and for centuries has been, subsiding. I believe most investigators maintain the affirmative; and if the fact is so, the advance of the sea upon the land is, in part, due to this cause. But the rate of subsidence is at all events very small, and therefore the encroachments of the ocean upon the coast are mainly to be ascribed to the erosion and transportation of the soil by marine waves and currents. The sea is fast advancing at several points of the western coast of France, and unknown causes have given a new impulse to its ravages since the commencement of the present century. Between 1830 and 1842, the Point de Grave, on the north side of the Girondo, retreated one hundred and eighty metres, or fifty feet per year; from the latter year to 1846, the rate was increased to more than three times that quantity, and the loss in those four years was about six hundred feet. All the buildings at the extremity of the peninsula have been taken down and rebuilt farther landwards, and the lighthouse of the Grave now occupies its third position. The sea attacked the base of the peninsula also, and the Point de Grave and the adjacent coasts have been for thirty years the scene of one of the most obstinately contested struggles between man and the ocean recorded in the annals of modern engineering. Movement of Dunes. Besides their importance as a barrier against the inroads of the ocean, dunes are useful by sheltering the cultivated ground behind them from the violence of the sea-wind, from salt spray, and from the drifts of beach sand which would otherwise overwhelm them. But the dunes themselves, unless their surface sands are kept moist, and confined by the growth of plants, or at least by a crust of vegetable earth, are constantly rolling inwards, and thus, while, on one side, they lay bare the traces of ancient human habitations or other evidences of the social life of primitive man, they are, on the other, burying fields, houses, churches, and converting populous districts into barren and deserted wastes. Especially destructive are they when, by any accident, a cavity is opened into them to a considerable depth, thereby giving the wind access to the interior, where the sand is thus first dried, and then scooped out and scattered far over the neighboring soil. The dune is now a magazine of sand, no longer a rampart against it, and mischief from this source seems more difficult to resist than from almost any other drift, because the supply of material at the command of the wind is more abundant and more concentrated than in its original thin and widespread deposits on the beach. The burrowing of conies in the dunes is, in this way, not unfreqnently a cause of their destruction and of great injury to the fields behind them. Drifts, and even inland sand-hills, sometimes result from breaking the surface of more level sand deposits, far within the range of the coast dunes. Thus we learn from Staring, that one of the highest inland dunes in Friesland owes its origin to the opening of the drift sand by the uprooting of a large Oak. [Footnote: De Bodem van Nederland, i. p. 425.] Great as are the ravages produced by the encroachment of the sea upon the western shores of continental Europe, they have been in some degree compensated by spontaneous marine deposits at other points of the coast, and we have seen in a former chapter that the industry of man has reclaimed a large territory from the bosom of the ocean. These latter triumphs are not of recent origin, and the incipient victories which paved the way for them date back perhaps as far as ten centuries. In the meantime, the dunes had been left to the operation of the laws of nature, or rather freed, by human imprudence, from the fetters with which nature had bound them, and it is scarcely three generations since man first attempted to check their destructive movements. As they advanced, he unresistingly yielded and retreated before them, and they have buried under their sandy billows many hundreds of square miles of luxuriant cornfields and vineyards and forests. On the west coast of France a belt of dunes, varying in width from a quarter of a mile to five miles, extends from the Adour to the estuary of the Gironde, and covers an area of nine hundred and seventy square kilometres, or two hundred and forty thousand acres. When not fixed by vegetable growths, these dunes advance eastwards at a mean rate of about one rod, or sixteen and a half feet, a year. Wo do not know historically when they began to drift, but if we suppose their motion to have been always the same as at present, they would have passed over the space between the sea coast and their present eastern border, and covered the large area above mentioned, in fourteen hundred years. We know, from written records, that they have buried extensive fields and forests and thriving villages, and changed the courses of rivers, and that the lighter particles carried from them by the winds, even where not transported in sufficient quantities to form sand-hills, have rendered sterile much land formerly fertile. [Footnote: The movement of the dunes has been hardly less destructive on the north side of the Gironde. See the valuable articles of Elisee Reclus in the Revue des Deux Mondes for December 1862, and several later numbers, entitled "Le Littoral de la France."] They have also injuriously obstructed the natural drainage of the maritime districts by choking up the beds of the streams, and forming lakes and pestilential swamps of no inconsiderable extent. In fact, so completely do they embank the coast, that between the Gironde and the village of Mimizan, a distance of one hundred miles, there are but two outlets for the discharge of all the waters which flow from the land to the sea; and the eastern front of the dunes is bordered by a succession of stagnant pools, some of which are more than six miles in length and breadth. [Footnote: Laval, Memoire sur les Dunes du Golfe de Gascongne, Annales des Ponte et Chaussees, 1847, p. 223. The author adds, as a curious and unexplained fact, that some of these pools, though evidently not original formations but mere accumulations of water dammed up by the dunes, have, along their western shore, near the base of the sand-hills, a depth of more than one hundred and thirty feet, and hence their bottoms are not less than eighty feet below the level of the lowest tides. Their western banks descend steeply, conforming nearly to the slope of the dunes, while on the north-east and south the inclination of their beds is very gradual. The greatest depth of these pools corresponds to that of the sea ten miles from the shore. Is it possible that the weight of the sands has pressed together the soil on which they rest, and thus occasioned a subsidence of the surface extending beyond their base? A more probable explanation of the fact stated in the note is suggested by Elisee Reclus, in an article entitled Le Littoral de la France, in the Revue des Deux Mondes for September 1, 1864, pp. 193, 194. This able writer believes such pools to be the remains of ancient maritime bays, which have been cut off from the ocean by gradually accumulated sand banks raised by the waves and winds to the character of dunes.] A range of dunes extends along the whole western coast of Jutland and Schleswig-Holstein, and the movement of these sand-hills was formerly, and at some points still is, very destructive. The rate of eastward movement of the drifting dunes varies from three to twenty-four feet per annum. If we adopt the mean of thirteen feet and a half for the annual motion, these dunes have traversed the widest part of the belt in about twenty-five hundred years. Historical data are wanting as to the period of the formation of these dunes and of the commencement of their drifting; but there is recorded evidence that they have buried a vast extent of valuable land within three or four centuries, and further proof is found in the fact that the movement of the sands is constantly uncovering ruins of ancient buildings, and other evidences of human occupation, at points far within the present limits of the uninhabitable desert. Andresen estimates the average depth of the sand deposited over this area at thirty feet, which would give a cubic mile and a half for the total quantity. [Footnote: Andresen, On Klitformationen, pp. 56, 79, 82] The drifting of the dunes on the coast of Prussia commenced not much more than a hundred years ago. The Frische Nehrung is separated from the mainland by the Frische Haff, and there is but a narrow strip of arable land along its eastern borders. Hence its rolling sands have covered a comparatively small extent of dry land, but fields and villages have been buried and valuable forests laid waste by them. The loose coast-row has drifted over the inland ranges, which, as was noticed in the description of these dunes on a former page, were protected by a surface of different composition, and the sand has thus been raised to a height which it could not have reached upon level ground. This elevation has enabled it to advance upon and overwhelm woods, which, upon a plain, would have checked its progress, and, in one instance, a forest of many hundred acres of tall pines was destroyed by the drifts between 1804 and 1827. Control of Dunes by Man. There are three principal modes in which the industry of man is brought to bear upon the dunes. First, the creation of them, at points where, from changes in the currents or other causes, new encroachments of the sea are threatened; second, the maintenance and protection of them where they have been naturally formed; and third, the removal of the inner rows where the belt is so broad that no danger is to be apprehended from the loss of them. In describing the natural formation of dunes, it was said that they began with an accumulation of sand around some vegetable or other accidental obstruction to the drifting of the particles. A high, perpendicular cliff, which deadens the wind altogether, prevents all accumulation of sand; but, up to a certain point, the higher and broader the obstruction, the more sand will heap up in front of it, and the more will that which falls behind it be protected from drifting further. This familiar observation has taught the inhabitants of the coast that an artificial wall or dike will, in many situations, give rise to a broad belt of dunes. Thus a sand dike or wall, of three or four miles in length, thrown in 1610 across the Koegras, a tide-washed flat between the Zuiderzee and the North Sea, has occasioned the formation of rows of dunes a mile in breadth, and thus excluded the sea altogether from the Koegras. A similar dike, called the Zijperzeedijk, has produced another scarcely less extensive belt in the course of two centuries. A few years since, the sea was threatening to cut through the island of Ameland, and, by encroachment on the southern side and the blowing off of the sand from a low flat which connected the two higher parts of the island, it had made such progress, that in heavy storms the waves sometimes rolled quite across the isthmus. The construction of a breakwater and a sand dike have already checked the advance of the sea, and a large number of sand-hills has been formed, the rapid growth of which promises complete future security against both wind and wave. Similar effects have been produced by the erection of plank fences, and even of simple screens of wattling and reeds. [Footnote: Staring, De Bodem van Nederland, i., pp. 329-331. Id., Voormaals en Thans, p. 163. Andresen, Om Klitformationen, pp. 280, 295. The creation of new dunes, by the processes mentioned in the text, seems to be much older in Europe than the adoption of measures for securing them by planting. Dr. Dwight mentions a case in Massachusetts, where a beach was restored, and new dunes formed, by planting beach grass. "Within the memory of my informant, the sea broke over the beach which connects Truro with Province Town, and swept the body of it away for some distance. The beach grass was immediately planted on the spot; in consequence of which the beach was again raised to a sufficient height, and in various places into hills."--Travels, iii., p. 93.] The dunes of Holland are sometimes protected from the dashing of the waves by a revetement of stone, or by piles; and the lateral high-water currents, which wash away their base, are occasionally checked by transverse walls running from the foot of the dunes to low-water mark; but the great expense of such constructions has prevented their adoption on a large scale. [Footnote: Staring, i., pp. 310, 332.] The principal means relied on for the protection of the sand-hills are the planting of their surfaces and the exclusion of burrowing and grazing animals. There are grasses, creeping plants, and shrubs of spontaneous growth, which flourish in loose sand, and, if protected, spread over considerable tracts, and finally convert their face into a soil capable of cultivation, or, at least, of producing forest trees. Krause enumerates one hundred and seventy-one plants as native to the coast sands of Prussia, and the observations of Andresen in Jutland carry the number of these vegetables up to two hundred and thirty-four. Some of these plants, especially the Arundo arenaria or arenosa, or Psamma or Psammophila arenaria--Klittetag, or Hjelme in Danish, helm in Dutch, Dunenhalm, Sandschilf, or Hugelrohr in German, gourbet in French, and marram in English--are exclusively confined to sandy soils, and thrive well only in a saline atmosphere. [Footnote: There is some confusion in the popular use of these names, and in the scientific designations of sand-plants, and they are possibly applied to different plants in different places. Some writers style the gourbet Calamagrostis arenaria, and distinguish it from the Danish Klittetag or Hjelme.] The arundo grows to the height of about twenty-four inches, but sends its strong roots with their many rootlets to a distance of forty or fifty feet. It has the peculiar property of flourishing best in the loosest soil, and a sand-shower seems to refresh it as the rain revives the thirsty plants of the common earth. Its roots bind together the dunes, and its leaves protect their surface. When the sand ceases to drift, the arundo dies, its decaying roots fertilizing the sand, and the decomposition of its leaves forming a layer of vegetable earth over it. Then follows a succession of other plants which gradually fit the sand-hills by growth and decay, for forest planting, for pasturage, and sometimes for ordinary agricultural use. But the protection and gradual transformation of the dunes is not the only service rendered by this valuable plant. Its leaves are nutritious food for sheep and cattle, its seeds for poultry; [Footnote: Bread, not indeed very palatable, has been made of the seeds of the arundo, but the quantity which can be gathered is not sufficient to form an important economical resource.--Andresen, Om Klitformationen, p. 160.] cordage and netting twine are manufactured from its fibres, it makes a good material for thatching, and its dried roots furnish excellent fuel. These useful qualities, unfortunately, are too often prejudicial to its growth. The peasants feed it down with their cattle, cut it for rope-making, or dig if up for fuel, and it has been found necessary to resort to severe legislation to prevent them from bringing ruin upon themselves by thus improvidently sacrificing their most effectual safeguard against the drifting of the sands. [Footnote: Bergsoe, Reventlovs Virksomhed, ii., p. 4.] In 1539 a decree of Christian III., king of Denmark, imposed a fine upon persons convicted of destroying certain species of sand-plants upon the west coast of Jutland. This ordinance was renewed and made more comprehensive in 1558, and in 1569 the inhabitants of several districts were required, by royal rescript, to do their best to check the sand-drifts, though the specific measures to be adopted for that purpose are not indicated. Various laws against stripping the dunes of their vegetation were enacted in the following century, but no active measures were taken for the subjugation of the sand-drifts until 1779, when a preliminary system of operation for that purpose was adopted. This consisted in little more than the planting of the Arundo arenaria, and other sand-plants, and the exclusion of animals destructive to those vegetables. [Footnote: Measures were taken for the protection of the dunes of Cape Cod, in Massachusetts, during the colonial period, though I believe they are now substantially abandoned. A hundred years ago, before the valley of the Mississippi, or even the rich plains of Central and Western New York, were opened to the white settler, the value of land was relatively much greater in New England than it is at present, and consequently some rural improvements were then worth making, which would not now yield sufficient returns to tempt the investment of capital. The money and the time required to subdue and render productive twenty acres of sea-sand on Cape Cod, would buy a "section" and rear a family in Illinois. The son of the Pilgrim, therefore, abandons the sea-hills, and seeks a better fortune on the fertile prairies of the West. See Dwight, Travels, i., pp. 92, 93.] Ten years later, plantations of forest trees, which have since proved so valuable a means of fixing the dunes and rendering them productive, were commenced, and have been continued ever since. [Footnote: Andresen, Om Klitformationen, pp. 237, 240.] During this latter period, Bremontier, without any knowledge of what was doing in Denmark, experimented upon the cultivation of forest trees on the dunes of Gascony, and perfected a system, which, with some improvements in matters of detail, is still largely pursued on those shores. The example of Denmark was soon followed in the neighboring kingdom of Prussia, and in the Netherlands; and, as we shall see hereafter, these improvements have been everywhere crowned with most flattering success. Under the administration of Reventlov, a little before the close of the last century, the Danish Government organized a regular system of improvement in the economy of the dunes. They were planted with the arundo and other vegetables of similar habits, protected against trespassers, and at last partly covered with forest trees. By these means much waste soil has been converted into arable ground, a large growth of valuable timber obtained, and the further spread of the drifts, which threatened to lay waste the whole peninsula of Jutland, to a considerable extent arrested. In France, the operations for fixing and reclaiming the dunes--which began under the direction of Bremontier about the same time as in Denmark, and which are, in principle and in many of their details, similar to those employed in the latter kingdom--have been conducted on a far larger scale, and with greater success, than in any other country. This is partly owing to a climate more favorable to the growth of suitable forest trees than that of Northern Europe, and partly to the liberality of the Government, which, having more important landed interests to protect, has put larger means at the disposal of the engineers than Denmark and Prussia have found it convenient to appropriate to that purpose. The area of the dunes already secured from drifting, and planted by the processes invented by Bremontier and perfected by his successors, is about 100,000 acres. [Footnote: "These plantations, perseveringly continued from the time of Bremontier, now cover more than 40,000 hectares, and compose forests which are not only the salvation of the department, but constitute its wealth." --Clave, Etudes Forestieres, p. 254. Other authors have stated the plantations of the French dunes to be much more extensive.] This amount of productive soil, then, has been added to the resources of France, and a still greater quantity of valuable land has been thereby rescued from the otherwise certain destruction with which it was threatened by the advance of the rolling sand-hills. The improvements of the dunes on the coast of West Prussia began in 1795, under Soren Bjorn, a native of Denmark, and, with the exception of the ten years between 1807 and 1817, they have been prosecuted ever since. The methods do not differ essentially from those employed in Denmark and France, though they are modified by local circumstances, and, with respect to the trees selected for planting, by climate. In 1850, between the mouth of the Vistula and Kahlberg, 6,300 acres, including about 1,900 acres planted with pines and birches, had been secured from drifting; between Kahlberg and the eastern boundary of West Prussia, 8,000 acres; and important preliminary operations had been carried on for subduing the dunes on the west coast. [Footnote: Kruse, Dunenbau, pp. 34, 38, 40.] The tree which has been fonnd to thrive best upon the sand-hills of the French coast, and at the same time to confine the sand most firmly and yield the largest pecuniary returns, is the maritime pine, Pinus maritima, a species valuable both for its timber and for its resinous products. It is always grown from seed, and the young shoots require to be protected for several seasons, by the branches of other trees, planted in rows, or spread over the surface and staked down, by the growth of the Arundo arenaria and other small sand-plants, or by wattled hedges. The beach, from which the sand is derived, has been generally planted with the arundo, because the pine does not thrive well so near the sea; but it is thought that a species of tamarisk is likely to succeed in that latitude even better than the arundo. The shade and the protection offered by the branching top of this pine are favorable to the growth of deciduous trees, and, while still young, of shrubs and smaller plants, which contribute more rapidly to the formation of vegetable mould, and thus, when the pine has once taken root, the redemption of the waste is considered as effectually secured. In France, the maritime pine is planted on the sands of the interior as well as on the dunes of the seacoast, and with equal advantage. This tree resembles the pitch pine of the Southern American States in its habits, and is applied to the same uses. The extraction of turpentine from it begins at the age of about twenty years, or when it has attained a diameter of from nine to twelve inches. Incisions are made up and down the trunk, to the depth of about half an inch in the wood, and it is insisted that if not more than two such slits are cut, the tree is not sensibly injured by the process. The growth, indeed, is somewhat checked, but the wood becomes superior to that of trees from which the turpentine is not extracted. Thus treated, the pine continues to flourish to the age of one hundred or one hundred and twenty years, and up to this age the trees on an acre yield annually 300 pounds of essence of turpentine, and 250 pounds of resin, worth together not far from ten dollars. The expense of extraction and distillation is calculated at about four dollars, and a clear profit of more than five dollars per acre is left. [Footnote: These processes are substantially similar to those employed in the pineries of the Carolinas, but they are better systematized and more economically conducted in France. In the latter country, all the products of the pine, even to the cones, find a remunerating market, while, in America, the price of resin is so low, that in the fierce steamboat races on the great rivers, large quantities of it are thrown into the furnaces to increase the intensity of the fires. In a carefully prepared article on the Southern pineries published in an American magazine--I think Harper's--a few years ago, it was stated that the resin from the turpentine distilleries was sometimes allowed to run to waste; and the writer, in one instance, observed a mass, thus rejected as rubbish, which was estimated to amount to two thousand barrels. Olmsted saw, near a distillery which had been in operation but a single year, a pool of resin estimated to contain three thousand barrels, which had been allowed to run off as waste.--A Journey in the seaboard Slave States, 1863, p. 345.] This is exclusive of the value of the timber, when finally cut, which, of course, amounts to a very considerable sum. In Denmark, where the climate is much colder, hardier conifers, as well as the birch and other northern trees, are found to answer a better purpose than the maritime pine, and it is doubtful whether this tree would be able to resist the winter on the dunes of Massachusetts. Probably the pitch-pine of the Northern States, in conjunction with some of the American oaks, birches, and poplars, and especially the robinia or locust, would prove very suitable to be employed on the sand-hills of Cape Cod and Long Island. The ailanthus, now coming into notice as a sand-loving tree, some species of tamarisk, and perhaps the Aspressus macrocarpa, already found useful on the dunes in California, may prove valuable auxiliaries in resisting the encroachment of drifting sands, whether in America or in Europe, and the intermixing of different species would doubtless be attended with as valuable results in this as in other branches of forest economy. It cannot, indeed, be affirmed that human power is able to arrest altogether the incursions of the waves on sandy coasts, by planting the beach, and clothing the dunes with wood. On the contrary, both in Holland and on the French coast, it has been found necessary to protect the dunes themselves by piling and by piers and sea-walls of heavy masonry. But experience has amply shown that the processes referred to are entirely successful in preventing the movement of the dunes, and the drifting of their sands over cultivated lands behind them; and that, at the same time, the plantations very much retard the landward progress of the waters. [Footnote: See a very interesting article entitled "Le Littoral de la France," by Elisee Reclus, in the Revue des Deux Mondes for December, 1862, pp. 901, 936.] Besides the special office of dune plantations already noticed, these forests have the same general uses as other woods, and they have sometimes formed by their droppings so thick a layer of vegetable mould that the sand beneath has become sufficiently secured to allow the wood to be felled, and the surface to be ploughed and cultivated with ordinary field crops. In some cases it has been found possible to confine and cultivate coast sand-hills, even without preliminary forestal plantation. Thus, in the vicinity of Cap Breton in France, a peculiar process is successfully employed, both for preventing the drifting of dunes, and for rendering the sands themselves immediately productive; but this method is applicable only in exceptional cases of favorable climate and exposure. It consists in planting vineyards upon the dunes, and protecting them by hedges of broom, Erica scoparia, so disposed as to form rectangles about thirty feet by forty. The vines planted in these enclosures thrive admirably, and the grapes produced by them are among the best grown in France. The dunes are so far from being an unfavorable soil for the vine, that fresh sea-sand is regularly employed as a fertilizer for it, alternating every other season with ordinary manure. The quantity of sand thus applied every second year, raises the surface of the vineyard about four or five inches. The vines are cut down every year to three or four shoots, and the raising of the soil rapidly covers the old stocks. As fast as buried, they send out new roots near the surface, and thus the vineyard is constantly renewed, and has always a youthful appearance, though it may have been already planted a couple of generations. This practice is ascertained to have been followed for two centuries, and is among the oldest well-authenticated attempts of man to resist and vanquish the dunes. [Footnote: Boitel, Mise en valeur des Terres pauvres, pp. 212, 218.] The artificial removal of dunes, no longer necessary as a protection, does not appear to have been practiced upon a large scale except in the Netherlands, where the numerous canals furnish an easy and economical means of transporting the sand, and where the construction and maintenance of sea and river dikes, and of causeways and other embankments and fillings, create a great demand for that material. Sand is also employed in Holland, in large quantities, for improving the consistence of the tough clay bordering upon or underlying diluvial deposits, and for forming an artificial soil for the growth of certain garden and ornamental vegetables. When the dunes are removed, the ground they covered is restored to the domain of industry; and the quantity of land recovered in the Netherlands by the removal of the barren sands which encumbered it, amounts to hundreds and perhaps thousands of acres. Inland Dunes. Vast deposits of sand, both in the form of dunes and of plains, are found far in the interior of continents, in the Old World and in the New. The deserts of Gobi, of Arabia, and of Africa have been rendered familiar by the narratives of travellers, but the sandy wilderness of America, and even of Europe, have not yet been generally recognized as important elements in the geography of the regions where they occur. There are immense wastes of drifting sands in Poland and other interior parts of Europe, in Peru, and in the less known regions of our own Western territory, where their extent is greater than that of all the coast dunes together which have hitherto been described by European and American geographers. [Footnote: On the Niobrara river alone, the dunes cover a surface of twenty thousand square miles.--Hayden, Report on Geological Survey of Wyoming, 1870, p. 108.] The inland sand-hills of both hemispheres are composed of substantially the same material and aggregated by the action of the same natural forces as the dunes of the coast. There is, therefore, a general resemblance between them, but they appear, nevertheless, to be distinguished by certain differences which a more attentive study may perhaps enable geologists to recognize in the sandstone formed by them. The sand of which they are composed comes in both principally from the bed of the sea being brought to the surface in one case by the action of the wind and the waves, in the other by geological upheaval. [Footnote: American observers do not agree in their descriptions of the form and character of the sand-grains which compose the interior dunes of the North American desert. C. C. Parry, geologist to the Mexican Boundary Commission, in describing the dunes near the station at a spring thirty-two miles west from the Rio Grande at El Paso, says: "The separate grains of the sand composing the sand-hills are seen under a lens to be angular, and not rounded, as would be the case in regular beach deposits."--U. S. Mexican Boundary Survey, Report of, vol i., Geological Report of C. C. Parry, p. 10. In the general description of the country traversed, same volume, p. 47, Colonel Emory says that on an "examination of the sand with a microscope of sufficient power," the grains are seen to be angular, not rounded by rolling in water. On the other hand, Blake, in Geological Report, Pacific Railroad Rep., vol. v., p. 119, observes that the grains of the dune sand, consisting of quartz, chalcedony, carnelian, agate, rose quartz, and probably chrysolite, were much rounded; and on page 241, he says that many of the sand grains of the Colorado desert are perfect spheres. On page 20 of a report in vol. ii. of the Pacific Railroad Report, by the same observer, it is said that an examination of dunes brought from the Llano Estacado by Captain Pope, showed the grains to be "much rounded by attrition." The sands described by Mr. Parry and Colonel Emory are not from the same localities as those examined by Mr. Blake, and the difference in their character may be due to a difference of origin or of age. In New Mexico, sixty miles south of Fort Stanton, there are island dunes composed of finely granulated gypsum.--American Naturalist, Jan. 1871, p. 695.] The sand of the coast dunes is rendered, to a certain extent, cohesive by moisture and by the saline and other binding ingredients of sea-water, while long exposure to meteoric influences has in a great measure deprived the inland sands of these constituents, though there are not wanting examples of large accumulations of sand far from the sea, and yet agglutinated by saline material. Hence, as might be expected, inland dunes, when not confined by a fixed nucleus, are generally more movable than those of the coast, and the form of such dunes is more or less modified by their want of consistence. Thus, the crescent or falciform shape is described by all observers as more constant and conspicuous in these sandhills than in those of littoral origin; they tend less to unite in continuous ridges, and they rarely attain the height or other dimensions of the dunes of the seashore. Meyer describes the sand-hills of the Peruvian desert as perfectly falciform in shape and from seven to fifteen feet high, the chord of their arc measuring from twenty to seventy paces. The slope of the convex face is described as very small, that of the concave as high as 70 degrees or 80 degrees, and their surfaces were rippled. No smaller dunes were observed, nor any in the process of formation. The concave side uniformly faced the north-west, except towards the centre of the desert, where, for a distance of one or two hundred paces, they gradually opened to the west, and then again gradually resumed the former position. Tschudi observed, in the same desert, two species of dunes, fixed and movable, and he ascribes a falciform shape to the movable, a conical to the fixed dunes, or medanos. "The medanos," he observes, "are hillock-like elevations of sand, some having a firm, others a loose base. The former [latter], which are always crescent-shaped, are from ten to twenty feet high, and have an acute crest. The inner side is perpendicular, and the outer or bow side forms an angle with a steep inclination downwards. [Footnote: The dunes of the plains between Bokhara and the Oxus are all horse-shoe shaped, convex towards the north, from which the prevailing wind blows. On this side they are sloping, inside precipitous, and from fifteen to twenty feet high.--Burnes, Journal in Bokhara, ii., pp. 1, 2.] When driven by violent winds, the medanos pass rapidly over the plains. The smaller and lighter ones move quickly forward, before the larger; but the latter soon overtake and crush them, whilst they are themselves shivered by the collision. These medanos assume all sorts of extraordinary figures, and sometimes move along the plain in rows forming most intricate labyrinths.... A plain often appears to be covered with a row of medanos, and some days afterwards it is again restored to its level and uniform aspect.... "The medanos with immovable bases are formed on the blocks of rocks which are scattered about the plain. The sand is driven against them by the wind, and as soon as it reaches the top point, it descends on the other side until that is likewise covered; thus gradually arises a conical-formed hill. [Footnote: The sand-hills observed by Desor in the Algerian desert were fixed, changing their form only on the surface as sand was blown to and from them.--Sahara und Atlas, 1865, p. 21.] Entire hillock chains with acute crests are formed in a similar manner.... On their southern declivities are found vast masses of sand, drifted thither by the mid-day gales. The northern declivity, though not steeper than the southern, is only sparingly covered with sand. If a hillock chain somewhat distant from the sea extends in a line parallel with the Andes, namely, from S. S. E. to N. N. W., the western declivity is almost entirely free of sand, as it is driven to the plain below by the south-east wind, which constantly alternates with the wind from the south." [Footnote: Travels in Peru, New York, 1848, chap. ix.] It is difficult to reconcile this description with that of Meyen, but if confidence is to be reposed in the accuracy of either observer, the formation of the sand-hills in question must be governed by very different laws from those which determine the structure of coast dunes. Captain Gilliss, of the American navy, found the sand-hills of the Peruvian desert to be in general crescent-shaped, as described by Meyen, and a similar structure is said to characterize the inland dunes of the Llano Estacado and other plateaus of the North American desert, though those latter are of greater height and other dimensions than those described by Meyen. There is no very obvious explanation of this difference in form between maritime and inland sand-hills, and the subject merits investigation. It is, however, probable that the great mobility of the flying dunes of the Peruvian desert is an effect of their dryness, no rain falling in that desert, and of the want of salt or other binding material to hold their particles together. Inland Sand Plains. The inland sand plains of Europe are either derived from the drifting of dunes or other beach sands, or consist of diluvial deposits, or are ancient sea-beds uplifted by geological upheaval. As we have seen, when once the interior of a dune is laid open to the wind, its contents ars soon scattered far and wide over the adjacent country, and the beach sands, no longer checked by the rampart which nature had constrained them to build against their own encroachments, are also carried to considerable distances from the coast. Few regions have suffered so much from this cause, in proportion to their extent, as the peninsula of Jutland. So long as the woods, with which nature had planted the Danish dunes, were spared, they seem to have been stationary, and we have no historical evidence, of an earlier date than the sixteenth century, that they had become in any way injurious. From that period there are frequent notices of the invasions of cultivated grounds by the sands; and excavations are constantly bringing to light proof of human habitation and of agricultural industry, in former ages, on soils now buried beneath deep drifts from the dunes and beaches of the seacoast. [Footnote: For details, consult Andresen, Om Klitformationen, pp. 223, 236.] Extensive tracts of valuable plain land in the Netherlands and in France have been covered in the same way with a layer of sand deep enough to render them infertile, and they can be restored to cultivation only by processes analogous to those employed for fixing and improving the dunes. [Footnote: When the deposit is not very deep, and the adjacent land lying to the leeward of the prevailing winds is covered with water, or otherwise worthless, the surface is sometimes freed from the drifts by repeated harrowings, which loosen the sand, so that the wind takes it up and transports it to grounds where accumulations of it are less injurious.] Diluvial sand plains, also, have been reclaimed by these methods in the Duchy of Austria, between Vienna and the Semmering ridge, in Jutland, and in the great champaign country of Northern Germany, especially the Mark Brandenburg, where artificial forests can be propagated with great ease, and where, consequently, this branch of industry has been pursued on a great scale, and with highly beneficial results, both as respects the supply of forest products and the preparation of the soil for agricultural use. As has been already observed, inland sands are generally looser, dryer, and more inclined to drift, than those of the seacoast, where the moist and saline atmosphere of the ocean keeps them always more or less humid and cohesive. The sands of the valley of the Lower Euphrates--themselves probably of submarine origin, and not derived from dunes are advancing to the north-west with a rapidity which seems fabulous when compared with the slow movement of the sand-hills of Gascony and the Low German coasts. Loftus, speaking of Niliyya, an old Arab town a few miles east of the ruins of Babylon, says that, "in 1848, the sand began to accumulate around it, and in six years, the desert, within a radius of six miles, was covered with little, undulating domes, while the ruins of the city were so buried that it is now impossible to trace their original form or extent." [Footnote: Travels and Researchs in Chaldaea, chap. ix. Dwight mentions (Travels, vol. iii, p. 101) an instance of great mischief from the depasturing of the beach grass which had been planted on a sand plain in Cape Cod: "Here, about one thousand acres were entirely blown away to the depth, in many places, of ten feet.... Not a green thing was visible except the whortleberries, which tufted a few lonely hillocks rising to the height of the original surface and prevented by this defence from being blown away also. These, although they varied the prospect, added to the gloom by their strongly picturesque appearance, by marking exactly the original level of the plain, and by showing us in this manner the immensity of the mass which had been thus carried away by the wind. The beach grass had been planted here, and the ground had been formerly enclosed; but the gates had been left open, and the cattle had destroyed this invaluable plant."] Loftus considers this sand-flood as the "vanguard of those vast drifts which advancing from the south-east, threaten eventually to overwhelm Babylon and Baghdad." An observation of Layard, cited by Loftus, appears to me to furnish a possible explanation of this irruption. He "passed two or three places where the sand, issuing from the earth like water, is called 'Aioun-er-rummal,' sand springs." These "springs" are very probably merely the drifting of sand from the ancient subsoil, where the protecting crust of aquatic deposit and vegetable earth has been broken through, as in the case of the drift which arose from the upturning of an oak mentioned on a former page. When the valley of the Euphrates was regularly irrigated and cultivated, the underlying sands were bound by moisture, alluvial slime, and vegetation; but now, that all improvement is neglected, and the surface, no longer watered, has become parched, powdery, and naked, a mere accidental fissure in the superficial stratum may soon be enlarged to a wide opening, that will let loose sand enongh to overwhelm a province. The Landes of Gascony. The most remarkable sand plain of France lies at the south-western extremity of the empire, and is generally known as the Landes, or heaths, of Gascony. Clave thus describes it: "Composed of pure sand, resting on an impermeable stratum called alios, the soil of the Landes was, for centuries, considered incapable of cultivation. [Footnote: The alios, which from its color and consistence was supposed to be a ferruginous formation, appears from recent observations to contain little iron and to owe most of its peculiar properties to vegetable elements carried down into the soil by the percolation of rain-water. See Revue des Eaux et Forets for 1870, p. 801.] Parched in summer, drowned in winter, it produced only ferns, rushes, and heath, and scarcely furnished pasturage for a few half-starved flocks. To crown its miseries, this plain was continually threatened by the encroachments of the dunes. Vast ridges of sand, thrown up by the waves, for a distance of more than fifty leagues along the coast, and continually renewed, were driven inland by the west wind, and, as they rolled over the plain, they buried the soil and the hamlets, overcame all resistance, and advanced with fearful regularity. The whole province seemed devoted to certain destruction, when Bremontier invented his method of fixing the dunes by plantations of the maritime pine." [Footnote: Etudes Forestieres, p. 250. See, also, Reclus, La Terre, i., 105, 106.] Although the Landes had been almost abandoned for ages, they show numerous traces of ancient cultivation and prosperity, and it is principally by means of the encroachments of the sands that they have become reduced to their present desolate condition. The destruction of the coast towns and harbors, which furnished markets for the products of the plains, the damming up of the rivers, and the obstruction of the smaller channels of natural drainage by the advance of the dunes, were no doubt very influential causes; and if we add the drifting of the sea-sand over the soil, we have at least a partial explanation of the decayed agriculture and diminished population of this great waste. When the dunes were once arrested, and the soil to the east of them was felt to be secure against invasion by them, experiments, in the way of agricultural improvement, by drainage and plantation, were commenced, and they have been attended with such signal success, that the complete recovery of one of the dreariest and most extensive wastes in Europe may be considered as both a probable and a near event. [Footnote: Lavergne, Economie Rurale de la France, p. 300, estimates the area of the Landes of Gascony at 700,000 hectares, or about 1,700,000 acres. The same author states (p. 301), that when the Moors were driven from Spain by the blind cupidity and brutal intolerance of the age, they demanded permission to establish themselves in this desert; but political and religious prejudices prevented the granting of this liberty. At this period the Moors were a far more cultivated people than their Christian persecutors, and they had carried many arts, that of agriculttire especially, to a higher pitch than any other European nation. But France was not wise enough to accept what Spain had cast out, and the Landes remained a waste for three centuries longer. For a brilliant account of the improvement of the Landes, see Edmond About, Le Progres, chap. vii. The forest of Fontainebleau, which contains above 40,000 acres, is not a plain, but its soil is composed almost wholly of sand, interspersed with ledges of rock. The sand forms not less than ninety-eight per cent of the earth, and, as it is almost without water, it would be a drifting desert but for the artificial propagation of forest trees upon it. The Landes of Sologne and of Brenne are less known than those of Gascony, because they are not upon the old great lines of communication. They once compoaed a forest of 1,200,000 acres, but by clearing the woods have relapsed into their primitive condition of a barren sand waste. Active efforts are now in progress to reclaim them.] In the northern part of Belgium, and extending across the confines of Holland, is another very similar heath plain, called the Campine. This is a vast sand flat, interspersed with marshes and inland dunes, and, until recently, considered almost wholly incapable of cultivation. Enormous sums had been expended in reclaiming it by draining and other familiar agricultural processes, but without results at all proportional to the capital invested. In 1849, the unimproved portion of the Campine was estimated at little less than three hundred and fifty thousand acres. The example of France prompted experiments in the planting of trees, especially the maritime pine, upon this barren waste, and the results have now been such as to show that its sands may both be fixed and made productive, not only without loss, but with positive pecuniary advantage. [Footnote: Economie Rurale de la Belgique, par Emile De Laveleye, Revue des Deux Mondes, Juin, 1861, pp. 6l7-644. The quantity of land annually reclaimed on the Campine is stated at about 4,000 acres. Canals for navigation and irrigation have been constructed through the Campine, and it is said that its barren sands, improved at an expense of one hundred dollars per acre, yield, from the second year, a return of twenty-five dollars to the acre.] There are still unsubdued sand wastes in many parts of interior Europe not familiarly known to tourists or even geographers. "Olkuez and Schiewier in Poland," says Naumann, "lie in true sand deserts, and a boundless plain of sand stretches around Ozenstockau, on which there grows neither tree nor shrub. In heavy winds, this plain resembles a rolling sea, and the sand-hills rise and disappear like the waves of the ocean. The heaps of waste from the Olkuez mines are covered with sand to the depth of four fathoms." [Footnote: Geognosie, ii., p. 1173.] No attempts have yet been made to subdue the sands of Poland, but when peace and prosperity shall be restored to that unhappy country, there is no reasonable doubt that the measures, which have proved so successful on similar formations in Germany and near Odessa, may be employed with advantage in the Polish deserts. [Footnote: "Sixteen years ago," says an Odessa landholder, "I attempted to fix the sand of the steppes, which covers the rocky ground to the depth of a foot, and forms moving hillocks with every change of wind. I tried acacias and pines in vain; nothing would grow in such a soil. At length I planted the varnish tree, or ailanthus, which succeeded completely in binding the sand." This result encouraged the proprietor to extend his plantations over both dunes and sand steppes, and in the course ot sixteen years this rapidly growing tree had formed real forests. Other landholders have imitated his example with great advantage.--Rentsch, Der Wald, pp. 44, 45.] CHAPTER VI. GREAT PROJECTS OF PHYSICAL CHANGE ACCOMPLISHED OR PROPOSED BY MAN. Cutting of Isthmuses--Canal of Suez--Maritime Canals in Greece--Canals to Dead Sea--Canals to Libyan Desert--Maritime Canals in Europe--Cape Cod Canal--Changes in Caspian--Diversion of the Nile--Diversion of the Rhine--Improvements in North American Hydrography--Soil below Rock--Covering Rock with Earth--Desert Valleys--Effects of Mining--Duponchel's Plans of Improvement--Action of Man on the Weather--Resistance to Great Natural Forces--Incidental Effects of Human Action--Nothing small in Nature. In a former chapter I spoke of the influence of human action on the surface of the globe as immensely superior in degree to that exerted by brute animals, if not essentially different from it in kind. The eminent Italian geologist, Stoppani, goes further than I had ventured to do, and treats the action of man as a new physical clement altogether sui generis. According to him, the existence of man constitutes a geological period which he designates as the ANTHROPOZOIC ERA. "The creation of man," says he, "was the introduction of a new element into nature, of a force wholly unknown to earlier periods." "It is a new telluric force which in power and universality may be compared to the greater forces of the earth." [Foonote: Corso Di Geologia, Milano, 1873, vol ii., cap. xxxi., section 1327.] It has already been abundantly shown that, though the undesigned and unforeseen results of man's action on the geographical conditions of the earth have perhaps been hitherto greater and more revolutionary than the effects specially aimed at by him, yet there is scarcely any assignable limit to his present and prospective voluntary controlling power over terrestrial nature. Cutting of Marine Isthmuses. Besides the great enterprises of physical transformation of which I have already spoken, other works of internal improvement or change have been projected in ancient and modern times, the execution of which would produce considerable, and, in some cases, extremely important, revolutions in the face of the earth. Some of the schemes to which I refer are evidently chimerical; others are difficult, indeed, but cannot be said to be impracticable, though discouraged by the apprehension of disastrous consequences from the disturbance of existing natural or artificial arrangements; and there are still others, the accomplishment of which is ultimately certain, though for the present forbidden by economical considerations. Nature sometimes mocks the cunning and the power of man by spontaneously performing, for his benefit, works which he shrinks from undertaking, and the execution of which by him she would resist with unconquerable obstinacy. A dangerous sand bank, that all the enginery of the world could not dredge out in a generation, may be carried off in a night by a strong river-flood, or by a current impelled by a violent wind from an unusual quarter, and a passage scarcely navigable by fishing-boats may be thus converted into a commodious channel for the largest ship that floats upon the ocean. In the remarkable gulf of Liimfjord in Jutland, referred to in the preceding chapter, nature has given a singular example of a canal which she alternately opens as a marine strait, and, by abutting again, converts into a fresh-water lagoon. The Liimfjord was doubtless originally an open channel from the Atlantic to the Baltic between two islands, but the sand washed up by the sea blocked up the western entrance, and built a wall of dunes to close it more firmly. This natural dike, as we have seen, has been more than once broken through, and it is perhaps in the power of man, either permanently to maintain the barrier, or to remove it and keep a navigable channel constantly open. If the Liimfjord becomes an open strait, the washing of sea-sand through it would perhaps block some of the belts and small channels now important for the navigation of the Baltic, and the direct introduction of a tidal current might produce very perceptible effects on the hydrography of the Cattegat. When we consider the number of narrow necks or isthmuses which separate gulfs and bays of the sea from each other, or from the main ocean, and take into account the time and cost, and risks of navigation which would be saved by executing channels to connect such waters, and thus avoiding the necessity of doubling long capes and promontories, or even continents, it seems strange that more of the enterprise and money which have been so lavishly expended in forming artificial rivers for internal navigation should not have been bestowed upon the construction of maritime canals. Many such have been projected in early and in recent ages, and some trifling cuts between marine waters had been actually made; but before the construction of the Suez Canal, no work of this sort, possessing real geographical or even commercial importance, had been effected. These enterprises are attended with difficulties and open to objections which are not, at first sight, obvious. Nature guards well the chains by which she connects promontories with mainlands, and binds continents together. Isthmuses are usually composed of adamantine rock or of shifting sands--the latter being much the more refractory material to deal with. In all such works there is a necessity for deep excavation below low-water mark--always a matter of great difficulty; the dimensions of channels for sea-going ships must be much greater than those of canals of inland navigation; the height of the masts or smokepipes of that class of vessels would often render bridging impossible, and thus a ship-canal might obstruct a communication more important than that which it was intended to promote; the securing of the entrances of marine canals and the construction of ports at their termini would in general be difficult and expensive, and the harbors and the channel which connected them would be extremely liable to fill up by deposits washed in from sea and shore. Besides all this there is, in many cases, an alarming uncertainty as to the effects of joining together waters which nature has put asunder. A new channel may deflect strong currents from safe courses, and thus occasion destructive erosion of shores otherwise secure, or promote the transportation of sand or slime to block up important harbors, or it may furnish a powerful enemy with dangerous facilities for hostile operations along the coast. The most colossal project of canalization ever suggested, whether we consider the physical difficulties of its execution, the magnitude and importance of the waters proposed to be united, or the distance which would be saved in navigation, is that of a channel between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific, across the Isthmus of Darien. I do not now speak of a lock-canal, by way of the Lake of Nicaragua or any other route--for such a work would not differ essentially from other canals, and would scarcely possess a geographical character--but of an open cut between the two seas. The late survey by Captain Selfridge, showing that the lowest point on the dividing ridge is 763 feet above the sea-level, must be considered as determining in the negative the question of the possibility of such a cut, by any means now at the control of man; and both the sanguine expectations of benefits, and the dreary suggestions of danger, from the realization of this great dream, may now be dismissed as equally chimerical. Suez Canal. The cutting of the Isthmus of Suez--the grandest and most truly cosmopolite physical improvement ever undertaken by man--threatens none of these dangers, and its only immediate geographical effect will probably be that interchange between the aquatic animal and vegetable life of two seas and two zones to which I alluded in a former chapter. [Footnote: According to an article by Ascherson, in Petermann's Mitthielungen, vol. xvii., p. 247, the sea-grass floras of the opposite sides of the Isthmus of Suez are as different as possible. It does not appear whether they have yet intermixed.] A collateral feature of this great enterprise deserves notice as possessing no inconsiderable geographical importance. I refer to the conduit or conduits constructed from the Nile to the isthmus, primarily to supply fresh water to the laborers on the great canal, and ultimately to serve as aqueducts for the city of Suez and other towns on the line of the canal, and for the irrigation and reclamation of a large extent of desert soil. In the flourishing days of the Egyptian empire, the waters of the Nile were carried over important districts cast of the river. In later ages, most of this territory relapsed into a desert, from the decay of the canals which once fertilized it. There is no difficulty in restoring the ancient channels, or in constructing new, and thus watering not only all the soil that the wisdom of the Pharaohs had improved, but much additional land. Hundreds of square miles of arid sand waste would thus be converted into fields of perennial verdure, and the geography of Lower Egypt would be thereby sensibly changed. Considerable towns are growing up at both ends of the channel, and at intermediate points, all depending on the maintenance of aqueducts from the Nile, both for water and for the irrigation of the neighboring fields which are to supply them with bread. Important interests will thus be created, which will secure the permanence of the hydraulic works and of the geographical changes produced by them, and Suez, or Port Said, or Ismailieh, may become the capital of the government which has been so long established at Cairo. Maritime Canals in Greece. A maritime canal executed and another projected in ancient times, the latter of which is again beginning to excite attention, deserve some notice, though their importance is of a commercial rather than a geographical character. The first of those is the cut made by Xerxes through the rock which connects the promontory of Mount Athos with the mainland; the other, a navigable canal through the Isthmus of Corinth. In spite of the testimony of Herodotus and Thucydides, the Romans classed the canal of Xerxes among the fables of "mendacious Greece," and yet traces of it are perfectly distinct at the present day through its whole extent, except at a single point where, after it had become so choked as to be no longer navigable, it was probably filled up to facilitate communication by land between the promontory and the country in the rear of it. The emperor Nero commenced the construction of a canal across the Isthmus of Corinth, solely to facilitate the importation of grain from the East for distribution among the citizens of Rome--for the encouragement of general commerce was no part of the policy either of the republic or the empire, and though the avidity of traders, chiefly foreigners, secured to the luxury of the imperial city an abundant supply of far-fetched wares, yet Rome had nothing to export in return. The line of Nero's excavations is still traceable for three-quarters of a mile, or more than a fifth of the total distance between gulf and gulf. If the fancy kingdom of Greece shall ever become a sober reality, escape from its tutelage and acquire such a moral as well as political status that its own capitalists--who now prefer to establish themselves and employ their funds anywhere else rather than in their native land--have any confidence in the permanency of its institutions, a navigable channel may be opened between the gulfs of Lepanto and AEgina. The annexation of the Ionian Islands to Greece will make such a work almost a political necessity, and it would not only furnish valuable facilities for domestic intercourse, but become an important channel of communication between the Levant and the countries bordering on the Adriatic, or conducting their trade through that sea. SHort as is the distance, the work would be a somewhat formidable undertaking, for the lowest point of the summit ridge of the isthmus is stated to be 246 feet above the water, and consequently the depth of excavation must be not less than 275 feet. As I have said, the importance of this latter canal and of a navigable channel between Mount Athos and the continent would be chiefly commercial, but both of them would be conspicuous instances of the control of man over nature in a field where he has thus far done little to interfere with her spontaneous arrangements. If they were constructed upon such a scale as to admit of the free passage of the water through them, in either direction, as the prevailing winds should impel it, they would exercise a certain influence on the coast currents, which are important as hydrographical elements, and also as producing abrasion of the coast and a drift at the bottom of seas, and hence they would be entitled to rank higher than simply as artificial means of transit. It has been thought practicable to cut a canal across the peninsula of Gallipoli from the outlet of the Sea of Marmora into the Gulf of Saros. It may be doubted whether the mechanical difficulties of such a work would not be found insuperable; but when Constantinople shall recover the important political and commercial rank which naturally belongs to her, the execution of such a canal will be recommended by strong reasons of military expediency, as well as by the interests of trade. An open channel across the peninsula would divert a portion of the water which now flows through the Dardanelles, diminishing the rapidity of that powerful current, and thus in part remove the difficulties which obstruct the navigation of the strait. It would considerably abridge the distance by water between Constantinople and the northern coast of the AEgean, and it would have the important advantage of obliging an enemy to maintain two blockading fleets instead of one. Canals Communicating with Dead Sea. The project of Captain Allen for opening a new route to India by cuts between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea, and between the Dead Sea and the Red Sea, presents many interesting considerations. [Footnote: The Dead Sea a new Route to India. 2 vols. 12mo, London, 1855.] The hypsometrical observations of Bertou, Roth, and others, render it highly probable, if not certain, that the watershed in the Wadi-el-Araba between the Dead Sea and the Red Sea is not less than three hundred feet above the main level of the latter, and if this is so, the execution of a canal from the one sea to the other is quite out of the question. But the summit level between the Mediterranean and the Jordan, near Jezreel, is believed to be little, if at all, more than one hundred feet above the sea, and the distance is so short that the cutting of a channel through the dividing ridge would probably be found by no means an impracticable undertaking. Although, therefore, we have no reason to believe it possible to open a navigable channel to India by way of the Dead Sea, there is not much doubt that the basin of the latter might be made accessible from the Mediterranean. The level of the Dead Sea lies 1,316.7 feet below that of the ocean. It is bounded east and west by mountain ridges, rising to the height of from 2,000 to 4,000 feet above the ocean. From its southern end, a depression called the Wadi-el-Araba extends to the Gulf of Akaba, the eastern arm of the Red Sea. The Jordan empties into the northern extremity of the Dead Sea, after having passed through the Lake of Tiberias at an elevation of 663.4 feet above the Dead Sea, or 653.3 below the Mediterranean, and drains a considerable valley north of the lake, as well as the plain of Jericho, which lies between the lake and the sea. If the waters of the Mediterranean were admitted freely into the basin of the Dead Sea, they would raise its surface to the general level of the ocean, and consequently flood all the dry land below that level within the basin. I do not know that accurate levels have been taken in the valley of the Jordan above the Lake of Tiberias, and our information is very vague as to the hypsometry of the northern part of the Wadi-el-Araba. As little do we know where a contour line, carried around the basin at the level of the Mediterranean, would strike its eastern and western borders. We cannot, therefore, accurately compute the extent of now dry land which would be covered by the admission of the waters of the Mediterranean, or the area of the inland sea which would be thus created. Its length, however, would certainly exceed one hundred and fifty miles, and its mean breadth, including its gulfs and bays, could scarcely be less than fifteen, perhaps even twenty. It would cover very little ground now occupied by civilized or even uncivilized man, though some of the soil which would be submerged--for instance, that watered by the Fountain of Elisha and other neighboring sources--is of great fertility, and, under a wiser government and better civil institutions, might rise to importance, because, from its depression, it possesses a very warm climate, and might supply South-eastern Europe with tropical products more readily than they can be obtained from any other source. Such a canal and sea would be of no present commercial importance, because they would give access to no new markets or sources of supply; but when the fertile valleys and the deserted plains cast of the Jordan shall be reclaimed to agriculture and civilization, these waters would furnish a channel of communication which might become the medium of a very extensive trade. Whatever might be the economical results of the opening and filling of the Dead Sea basin, the creation of a new evaporable area, adding not less than 2,000 or perhaps 3,000 square miles to the present fluid surface of Syria, could not fail to produce important meteorological effects. The climate of Syria would probably be tempered, its precipitation and its fertility increased, the courses of its winds and the electrical condition of its atmosphere modified. The present organic life of the valley would be extinguished, and many tribes of plants and animals would emigrate from the Mediterranean to the new home which human art had prepared for them. It is possible, too, that the addition of 1,300 feet, or forty atmospheres, of hydrostatic pressure upon the bottom of the basin might disturb the equilibrium between the internal and the external forces of the crust of the earth at this point of abnormal configuration, and thus produce geological convulsions the intensity of which cannot be even conjectured. It is now established by the observations of Rohlf and others that Strabo was right in asserting that a considerable part of the Libyan desert, or Sahara, lay below the level of the Mediterranean. At some points the depression exceeds 325 feet, and at Siwah, in the oasis of Jupiter Ammon, it is not less than 130 feet. It has been proposed to cut a canal through the coast dunes, on the shore south of the Syrtis Major, or Dschnn el Kebrit of the Arabs, and another project is to reopen the communication which appears to have once existed between the Palus Tritonis, or Sebcha el Nandid, and the Syrtis Parva. As we do not know the southern or eastern limits of this depression, we cannot determine the area which would thus be covered with water, but it would certainly be many thousands of square miles in extent, and the climatic effects would doubtless be sensible through a considerable part of Northern Africa, and possibly even in Europe. The rapid evaporation would require a constant influx of water from the Mediterranean, which might perhaps perceptibly influence the current through the Straits of Gibraltar. Maritime Canals in Europe. A great navigable cut across the peninsula of Jutland, forming a new and short route between the North Sea and the Baltic, if not actually commenced, is determined upon. The motives for opening such a communication are perhaps rather to be found in political than in geographical or even commercial considerations, but it will not be without an important bearing on the material interests of all the countries to whose peoples it will furnish new facilities for communication and traffic. The North Holland canal between the Helder and the port of Amsterdam, a distance of fifty miles, executed a few years since at a cost of $5,000,000, and with dimensions admitting the passage of a frigate, was a magnificent enterprise, but it is thrown quite into the shade by the shorter channel now in process of construction for bringing that important city into almost direct communication with the North Sea, and thus restoring to it something at least of its ancient commercial importance. The work involves some of the heaviest hydraulic operations yet undertaken, including the construction of great dams, locks, dikes, embankments, and the execution of draining works and deep cutting under circumstances of extreme difficulty. In the course of these labors many novel problems have presented themselves for practical solution by the ingenuity of modern engineers, and the now inventions and processes thus necessitated are valuable contributions to our means of physical improvement. Cape Cod Canal. The opening of a navigable cut through the narrow neck which separates the southern part of Cape Cod Bay in Massachusetts from the Atlantic, was long ago suggested, and there are few coast improvements on the Atlantic shores of the United States which are recommended by higher considerations of utility. It would save the most important coasting trade of the United States the long and dangerous navigation around Cape Cod, afford a new and safer entrance to Boston harbor for vessels from Southern ports, secure a choice of passages, thus permitting arrivals upon the coast and departures from it at periods when wind and weather might otherwise prevent them, and furnish a most valuable internal communication in case of coast blockade by a foreign power. The difficulties of the undertaking are no doubt formidable, but the expense of maintenance and the uncertainty of the effects of currents getting through the new strait are still more serious objections. [Footnote: The opening of a channel across Cape Cod would have, though perhaps to a smaller extent, the same effects in interchanging the animal life of the southern and northern shores of the isthmus, as in the case of the Suez Canal; for although the breadth of Cape Cod does not anywhere exceed twenty miles, and is in some places reduced to one, it appears from the official reports on the Natural History of Massachusetts, that the population of the opposite waters differs widely in species. Not having the original documents at hand, I quote an extract from the Report on the Invertebrate Animals of Mass., given by Thoreau, Excursions, p. 69: "The distribution of the marine shells is well worthy of notice as a geological fact. Cape Cod, the right arm of the Commonwealth, reaches out into the ocean some fifty or sixty miles. It is nowhere many miles wide; but this narrow point of land has hitherto proved a barrier to the migration of many species of mollusca. Several genera and numerous species, which are separated by the intervention of only a few miles of land, are effectually prevented from mingling by the Cape, and do not pass from one side to the other. ... Of the one hundred and ninety-seven marine species, eighty-three do not pass to the south shore, and fifty are not found on the north shore of the Cape." Probably the distribution of the species of mollusks is affected by unknown local conditions, and therefore an open canal across the Cape might not make every species that inhabits the waters on one side common to those of the other; but there can be no doubt that there would be a considerable migration in both directions. The fact stated in the report may suggest an important caution in drawing conclusions upon the relative age of formations from the character of their fossils. Had a geological movement or movements upheaved to different levels the bottoms of waters thus separated by a narrow isthmus, and dislocated the connection between those bottoms, naturalists, in after ages, reasoning from the character of the fossil faunas, might have assigned them to different, and perhaps very widely distant, periods.] Changes in the Caspian. The Russian Government has contemplated the establishment of a nearly direct water communication between the Caspian Sea and the Sea of Azoff, partly by natural and partly by artificial channels, and there are now navigable canals between the Don and the Volga; but these works, though not wanting in commercial and political interest, do not possess any geographical importance. It is, however, very possible to produce appreciable geographical changes in the basin of the Caspian by the diversion of the great rivers which flow from Central Russia. The surface of the Caspian is eighty-three feet below the level of the Sea of Azoff, and its depression has been explained upon the hypothesis that the evaporation exceeds the supply derived, directly and indirectly, from precipitation, though able physicists now maintain that the sinking of this sea is due to a subsidence of its bottom from geological causes. At Tsaritsin, the Don, which empties into the Sea of Azoff, and the Volga, which pours into the Caspian, approach each other within ten miles. Near this point, by means of open or subterranean canals, the Don might be turned into the Volga, or the Volga into the Don. If we suppose the whole or a large proportion of the waters of the Don to be thus diverted from their natural outlet and sent down to the Caspian, the equilibrium between the evaporation from that sea and its supply of water might be restored, or its level even raised above its ancient limits. If the Volga were turned into the Sea of Azoff, the Caspian would be reduced in dimensions until the balance between loss and gain should be re-established, and it would occupy a much smaller area than at present. Such changes in the proportion of solid and fluid surface would have some climatic effects in the territory which drains into the Caspian, and on the other hand, the introduction of a greater quantity of fresh water into the Sea of Azoff would render that gulf less saline, affect the character and numbers of its fish, and perhaps be not wholly without sensible influence on the water of the Black Sea. Diversion of the Nile. Perhaps the most remarkable project of great physical change, proposed or threatened in earlier ages, is that of the diversion of the Nile from its natural channel, and the turning of its current into either the Libyan Desert or the Red Sea. The Ethiopian or Abyssinian princes more than once menaced the Memlouk sultans with the execution of this alarming project, and the fear of so serious an evil is said to have induced the Moslems to conciliate the Abyssinian kings by large presents, and by some concessions to the oppressed Christians of Egypt. Indeed, Arabian historians affirm that in the tenth century the Ethiopians dammed the river, and, for a whole year, cut off its waters from Egypt. [Footnote: "Some haue writte, that by certain kings inhabiting aboue, the Nilus should there be stopped; & at a time prefixt, let loose vpon a certaine tribute payd them by the Aegyptians. The error springing perhaps fro a truth (as all wandring reports for the most part doe) in that the Sultan doth pay a certaine annuall summe to the Abissin Emperour for not diuerting the course of the Riuer, which (they say) he may, or impouerish it at the least."--George Sandys, A Relation of a Journey, etc., p. 98. See, also, Vansles, Voyage en Egypte, p. 61.] The probable explanation of this story is to be found in a season of extreme drought, such as have sometimes occurred in the valley of the Nile. The Libyan Desert, above the junction of the two principal branches of the Nile at Khartum, is so much higher than the level of the river below that point, that there is no reason to believe a new channel for the united waters of the two streams could be found in that direction; but the Bahr-el-Abiad flows through, if it does not rise in, a great table-land, and some of its tributaries are supposed to communicate in the rainy season with branches of great rivers flowing in quite another direction. Hence it is probable that a portion at least of the waters of this great arm of the Nile--and perhaps a quantity the abstraction of which would be sensibly felt in Egypt--might be sent to the Atlantic by the Congo or Niger, lost in inland lakes and marshes in Central Africa, or employed to fertilize the Libyan sand wastes. About the beginning of the sixteenth century, Albuquerque the "Terrible" revived the scheme of turning the Nile into the Red Sea, with the hope of destroying the transit trade through Egypt by way of Kosseir. In 1525 the King of Portugal was requested by the Emperor of Abyssinia to send him engineers for that purpose; a successor of that prince threatened to attempt the project about the year 1700, and even as late as the French occupation of Egypt, the possibility of driving out the intruder by this means was suggested in England. It cannot be positively affirmed that the diversion of the waters of the Nile to the Red Sea is impossible. In the chain of mountains which separates the two valleys, Brown found a deep depression or wadi, extending from the one to the other, apparently at no great elevation above the bed of the river, but the height of the summit level was not measured. Admitting the possibility of turning the whole river into the Red Sea, let us consider the probable effect of the change. First and most obvious is the total destruction of the fertility of Middle and Lower Egypt, the conversion of that part of the valley into a desert, and the extinction of its imperfect civilization, if not the absolute extirpation of its inhabitants. This is the calamity threatened by the Abyssinian princes and the ferocious Portuguese warrior, and feared by the Sultans of Egypt. Beyond these immediate and palpable consequences neither party then looked; but a far wider geographical area, and far more extensive and various human interests, would be affected by the measure. The spread of the Nile during the annual inundation covers, for many weeks, several thousand square miles with water, and at other seasons of the year pervades the same and even a larger area with moisture by infiltration. The abstraction of so large an evaporating surface from the southern shores of the Mediterranean could not but produce important effects on many meteorological phenomena, and the humidity, the temperature, the electrical condition and the atmospheric currents of North-eastern Africa might be modified to a degree that would sensibly affect the climate of Europe. The Mediterranean, deprived of the contributions of the Nile, would require a larger supply, and of course a stronger current, of water from the Atlantic through the Straits of Gibraltar; the proportion of salt it contains would be increased, and the animal life of at least its southern borders would be consequently modified; the current which winds along its southern, eastern, and north-eastern shores would be diminished in force and volume, if not destroyed altogether, and its basin and its harbors would be shoaled by no new deposits from the highlands of inner Africa. In the much smaller Red Sea, more immediately perceptible, if not greater, effects, would be produced. The deposits of slime would reduce its depth, and perhaps, in the course of ages, divide it into an inland and an open sea, the former of which, receiving no supply from rivers, would, as in the case of the northern part of the Gulf of California, soon be dried up by evaporation, and its whole area added to the Africo-Arabian desert; the waters of the latter would be more or less freshened, and their immensely rich marine fauna and flora changed in character and proportion, and, near the mouth of the river, perhaps even destroyed altogether; its navigable channels would be altered in position and often quite obstructed; the flow of its tides would be modified by the new geographical conditions; the sediment of the river would form new coast-lines and lowlands, which would be covered with vegetation, and probably thereby produce sensible climatic changes. Diversion of the Rhine. The interference of physical improvements with vested rights and ancient arrangements, is a more formidable obstacle in old countries than in new, to enterprises involving anything approaching to a geographical revolution. Hence such projects meet with stronger opposition in Europe than in America, and the number of probable changes in the face of nature in the former continent is proportionally less. I have noticed some important hydraulic improvements as already executed or in progress in Europe, and I may refer to some others as contemplated or suggested. One of these is the diversion of the Rhine from its present channel below Ragatz, by a cut through the narrow ridge near Sargans, and the consequent turning of its current into the Lake of Wallenstadt. This would be an extremely easy undertaking, for the ridge is but twenty feet above the level of the Rhine, and hardly two hundred yards wide. There is no present adequate motive for this diversion, but it is easy to suppose that it may become advisable within no long period. The navigation of the Lake of Constance is rapidly increasing in importance, and the shoaling of the eastern end of that lake by the deposits of the Rhine may require a remedy which can be found by no other so ready means as the discharge of that river into the Lake of Wallenstadt. The navigation of this latter lake is not important, nor is it ever likely to become so, because the rocky and precipitous character of its shores renders their cultivation impossible. It is of great depth, and its basin is capacious enough to receive and retain all the sediment which the Rhine would carry into it for thousands of years. [Footnote: Many geographers suppose that the dividing ridge between the Lake of Wallenstadt and the bed of the Rhine at Sargans is a fluviatile deposit, which has closed a channel through which the Rhine anciently discharged a part or the whole of its waters into the lake. In the flood of 1868, the water of the Rhine rose to the level of the railway station at Sargans, and for some days there was fear of the giving way of the barrier and the diversion of the current of the river into the lake.] Improvements in North American Hydrography. We are not yet well enough acquainted with the geography of Central Africa, or of the interior of South America, to conjecture what hydrographical revolutions might there be wrought; but from the fact that many important rivers in both continents drain extensive table-lands, of moderate elevation and inclination, there is reason to suppose that important changes in the course of those rivers might be accomplished. Our knowledge of the drainage of North America is much more complete, and it is certain that there are numerous points within our territory where the courses of great rivers, or the discharge of considerable lakes, might be completely diverted, or at least partially directed into different channels. The surface of Lake Erie is 565 feet above that of the Hudson at Albany, and it is so near the level of the great plain lying east of it, that it was found practicable to supply the western section of the canal, which unites it with the Hudson, with water from the lake, or rather from the Niagara which flows out of it. The greatest depth of water yet sounded in Lake Erie is but two hundred and seventy feet, the mean depth one hundred and twenty. Open canals parallel with the Niagara, or directly towards the Genesee, might be executed upon a scale which would exercise an important influence on the drainage of the lake, if there were any adequate motive for such an undertaking. Still easier would it be to enlarge the outlet for the waters of Lake Superior at the Saut St. Mary--where the river which drains the lake descends twenty-two feet in a single mile--and thus to produce incalculable effects, both upon that lake and upon the great chain of inland waters which communicate with it. The summit level between the surface of Lake Michigan at its mean height and that of the River Des Plaines, a tributary of the Illinois, at a point some ten miles west of Chicago, is but ten and a half feet above the lake. The lake once discharged a part or the whole of its waters into the valley of the Des Plaines. A slight upheaval, at an unknown period, elevated the bed of the Des Plaines, and the prairie between it and the lake, to their present level, and the outflow of the lake was turned into a new direction. The bed of the Des Plaines is higher than the surface of the lake, and in recent times the Des Plaines, when at flood, has sent more or less of its waters across the ridge into the bed of the South Branch of Chicago River, and so into Lake Michigan. A navigable channel has now been cut, admitting a constant flow of water from the lake, by the valley of the Des Plaines, into the Illinois. The mean discharge by this channel does not much exceed 23,000 cubic feet per minute, but it would be quite practicable to enlarge its cross-section indefinitely, and the flow through it might be so regulated as to keep the Illinois and the Mississippi at flood at all seasons of the year. The increase in the volume of these rivers would augment their velocity and their transporting power, and, consequently, the erosion of their banks and the deposit of slime in the Gulf of Mexico, while the opening of a communication between the lake and the affluents of the Mississippi, unobstructed except by locks, and the introduction of a large body of colder water into the latter, would very probably produce a considerable effect on the animal life that peoples them. The diversion of water from the common basin of the great lakes through a new channel, in a direction opposite to their present discharge, would not be absolutely without influence on the St. Lawrence, though probably this effect might be too small to be readily perceptible. [Footnote: From Reports of the Canal Commissioners of the State of Illinois, and especially from a very interesting private letter from William Gooding, Esq., an eminent engineer, which I regret I have not space to print in full, I learn that the length of the present canal, from the lake to the River Illinois, is 101 miles, with a total descent of a trifle more than 145 feet, and that it is proposed to enlarge this channel to the width of one hundred and sixty feet, with a minimum depth of seven, and to create a slack-water navigation in the Illinois by the construction of five dams, one of which is already completed. The descent for the outlet of the canal at La Salle on the Illinois to the Mississippi is twenty-eight feet, the distance being 230 miles. The canal thus enlarged would cost about $16,000,000, and it would establish a navigation for vessels of 1,200 to 1,500 tons burden between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi, and consequently, by means of the great lakes and the Welland canal, between the St. Lawrence and the Gulf of Mexico.] In an able and interesting article in a California magazine, Dr. Widney has suggested a probable cause and a possible remedy for the desiccation of south-eastern California referred to in a former chapter. The Colorado Desert which lies considerably below the level of the waters of the Gulf of California, and has an area of about 4,000 square miles, evidently once formed a part of that gulf. This northern extension of the gulf appears to have been cut off from the main body by deposits brought down by the great river Colorado, at no very distant period. These deposits at the same time turned the course of the river to the south, and it now enters the gulf at a point twenty miles distant from its original outlet. When this northern arm of the gulf was cut off from the sea, and the river which once discharged itself into it was diverted, it was speedily laid dry by evaporation, and now yields no vapor to be condensed into fog, rain, and snow on the neighboring mountains, which are now parched and almost bare of vegetation. The ancient bed of the river may still be traced, and in floods the Colorado still sends a part of its overflowing supply into its old channel, and for a time waters a portion of the desert. It is believed that the river might easily be turned back into its original course, and indeed nature herself seems to be now tending, by various spontaneous processes, to accomplish that object. The waters of the Colorado, though perhaps not sufficient to fill the basin and keep it at the sea-level in spite of the rapid evaporation in that climate, [Footnote: The thermometer sometimes rises to 120 degrees F. at Fort Yuma, at the S. E. angle of California in N. L. 33 degrees.] would at least create a permanent lake in the lower part of the depression, the evaporation from which, Dr. Widney suggests, might sensibly increase the humidity and lower the temperature of an extensive region which is now an arid and desolate wilderness. Soil below Rock. One of the most singular changes of natural surface effected by man is that observed by Beechey and by Barth at Lin Tefla, and near Gebel Genunes, in the district of Ben Gasi, in Northern Africa. In this region the superficial stratum originally consisted of a thin sheet of rock covering a layer of fertile earth. This rock has been broken up, and, when not practicable to find use for it in fences, fortresses, or dwellings, heaped together in high piles, and the soil, thus bared of its stony shell, has been employed for agricultural purposes. [Footnote: Barth, Wanderungen durch die Kusten des Mittelmeeres, i., p. 853. In a note on page 380, of the same volume, Barth cites Strabo as asserting that a similar practice prevailed in Iapygia; but the epithet [word in Greek: traxeia], applied by Strabo to the original surface, does not neceasarily imply that it was covered with a continuous stratum of rock.] If we remember that gunpowder was unknown at the period when these remarkable improvements were executed, and of course that the rock could have been broken only with the chisel and wedge, we must infer that land had at that time a very great pecuniary value, and, of course, that the province, though now exhausted, and almost entirely deserted by man, had once a dense population. Covering Rock with Earth. If man has, in some cases, broken up rock to reach productive ground beneath, he has, in many other instances, covered bare ledges, and sometimes extensive surfaces of solid stone, with fruitful earth, brought from no inconsiderable distance. Not to speak of the Campo Santo at Pisa, filled, or at least coated, with earth from the Holy Land, for quite a different purpose, it is affirmed that the garden of the monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai is composed of Nile mud, transported on the backs of camels from the banks of that river. Parthey and older authors state that all the productive soil of the Island of Malta was brought over from Sicily. [Footnote: Parthey, Wanderungen durch Sicilen und die Levante, i., p. 404.] The accuracy of the information may be questioned in both cases, but similar practices, on a smaller scale, are matter of daily observation in many parts of Southern Europe. Much of the wine of the Moselle is derived from grapes grown on earth carried high up the cliffs on the shoulders of men, and the steep terraced slopes of the Island of Teneriffe are covered with soil painfully scooped out from fissures in and between the rocks which have been laid bare by the destruction of the native forests. [Footnote: Mantegazza, Rio de la Plata e Teneriffa, p. 567.] In China, too, rock has been artificially covered with earth to an extent which gives such operations a real geographical importance, and the accounts of the importation of earth at Malta, and the fertilization of the rocks on Mount Sinai with slime from the Nile, may be not wholly without foundation. Valleys in Deserts. In the latter case, indeed, river sediment might be very useful as a manure, but it could hardly be needed as a soil; for the growth of vegetation in the wadies of the Sinaitic Peninsula shows that the disintegrated rock of its mountains requires only water to stimulate it to considerable productiveness. The wadies present, not unfrequently, narrow gorges, which might easily be closed, and thus accumulations of earth, and reservoirs of water to irrigate it, might be formed which would convert many a square mile of desert into flourishing date gardens and cornfields. For example, not far from Wadi Feiran, on the most direct route to Wadi Esh-Sheikh, is a very narrow pass called by the Arabs El Bueb (El Bab) or, The Gate, which might be securely closed to a very considerable height, with little labor or expense. Above this pass is a wide and nearly level expanse, filled up to a certain regular level with deposits brought down by torrents before the Gate, or Bueb, was broken through, and they have now worn down a channel in the deposits to the bed of the wadi. If a dam were constructed at the pass, and reservoirs built to retain the winter rains, a great extent of valley might be rendered cultivable. Effects of Mining. The excavations made by man, for mining and other purposes, may occasion disturbance of the surface by the subsidence of the strata above them, as in the case of the mine of Fahlun, in Sweden, but such accidents have generally been too inconsiderable in extent to deserve notice in a geographical point of view. [Footnote: In March, 1873, the imprudent extension of the excavations in a slate mine near Morzine, in Savoy, occasioned the fall of a mass of rock measuring more than 700,000 yards in cubical contents. A forest of firs was destroyed, and a hamlet of twelve houses crushed and buried by the slide.] It is said, however, that in many places in the mining regions of England alarming indications of a tendency to a wide dislocation of the superficial strata have manifested themselves. Indeed, when we consider the measure of the underground cavities which miners have excavated, we cannot but be surprised that grave catastrophes have not often resulted from the removal of the foundations on which the crust of our earth is laid. The 100,000,000 tons of coal yearly extracted from British mines require the withdrawal of subterranean strata equal to an area of 20,000 acres one yard deep, or 2,000 acres ten yards deep. These excavations have gone on for several years at this rate, and in smaller proportions for centuries. Hence, it cannot be doubted that by these and other like operations the earth has been undermined and honey-combed in many countries to an extent that may well excite serious apprehensions as to the stability of the surface. In any event such excavations may interfere materially with the course of subterranean waters, and it has even been conjectured that the removal of large bodies of metallic ore from their original deposits might, at least locally, affect in a sensible degree the magnetic and electrical condition of the earth's crust. [Footnote: The exhaustion of the more accessible deposits of coal and other minerals has compelled the miners in Belgium, England, and other countries, to carry their operations to great depths below the surface. At the colliery Des Viviers, at Cilly near Charleroi, in Belgium, coal is worked at the depth of 2,820 feet, and one pit has been sunk to the depth of 3,411 feet. It is supposed that the internal heat of the earth will render mining impossible below 4,000 feet. At Clifford Amalgamated Mines, in Cornwall, the temperature at 1,590 feet stood at 100 degrees, but after the shaft had remained a year open it fell to 83 degrees. In another Cornish mine men work at from 110 degrees to 120 degrees, but only twenty minutes at a time, and with cold water thrown frequently over them.--The last Thirty Years in Mining Districts, p. 95. Stopponi mentions an abandoned mine at Huttenberg, in Bohemia, of the depth of 3,775 feet.--Corso di Geologia, i., p. 258.] Hydraulic Mining. What is called hydraulic mining--a system substantially identical with that described in an interesting way by Pliny the elder, in Book XXXV. of his Natural History, as practised in his time in the gold mines of Spain [Footnote: I have little doubt that the hydraulic mining in Gaul, alluded to by Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica, v. 27, as merely a mode of utilizing the effects of water flowing in its natural channels, was really the artificial method described by Pliny.]--is producing important geographical effects in California. Artificially directed currents of water have been long employed for washing down and removing masses of earth, but in the Californian mining the process is resorted to on a vastly greater scale than in any other modern engineering operations, and with results proportioned to the means. Brooks of considerable volume are diverted from their natural channels and conducted to great distances in canals or wooden aqueducts, [Footnote: In 1867 there were 6,000 miles (including branches) of artificial water-courses employed for mining purposes in California. The flumes of these canals are often of sheet-iron, and in some places are carried considerable distances at a height of 250 feet above the ground.--Raymond, Mineral Statistics west of the Rocky Mountains, 1870, p. 476.] and then directed against hills and large level surfaces of ground which it is necessary to remove to reach the gold-bearing strata, or which themselves contain deposits of the precious mineral. [Footnote: The water is sometimes driven through iron tubes under a hydrostatic pressure of several hundred feet, with a force which cuts away rock of considerable solidity almost as easily as hard earth. In this way of using water, the cutting force might, doubtless, be greatly augmented by introducing sand or gravel into the current.] Naked hills and fertile soils are alike washed away by the artificial torrent, and the material removed--vegetable mould, sand, gravel, pebbles--is carried down by the current and often spread over ground lying quite out of the reach of natural inundations, and burying it to the depth sometimes of twenty-five feet. An orchard valued at $60,000, and another estimated at not less than $200,000, are stated to have been thus sacrificed, and a report from the Agricultural Bureau at Washington computes the annual damage done by this mode of mining at the incredible sum of $12,000,000. Accidental fires in mines of coal or lignite sometimes lead to consequences not only destructive to large quantities of valuable material, but which may, directly or indirectly, produce results important in geography. The coal is occasionally ignited by the miners' lights or other fires used by them, and certain kinds of this mineral, if long exposed to air in deserted galleries, may be spontaneously kindled. Under favorable circumstances, a stratum of coal will burn until it is exhausted, and a cavity may be burnt out in a few months which human labor could not excavate in many years. Wittwer informs us that a coal mine at St. Etienne in Dauphiny has been burning ever since the fourteenth century, and that a mine near Duttweiler, another near Epterode, and a third at Zwickau, have been on fire for two hundred years. Such conflagrations not only produce cavities in the earth, but communicate a perceptible degree of heat to the surface, and the author just quoted cites cases where this heat has ben advantageously employed in forcing vegetation. Projects of Agricultural Improvements by Duponchel. Duponchel's schemes of agricultural improvement are so grandiose in their nature, so vast in their sphere of operation, and so important in their possible effects upon immense tracts of the earth's surface, that they must be considered as projects of geographical revolution, and they therefore merit more than a passing notice. In a memoir already quoted, and in a later work, [Footnote: Traite d'Hydraulique et de Geologie Agricole, 1868.] this engineer proposes to construct artificial torrents for the purpose of grinding up calcareous rock, by rolling and attrition along their beds, and thus reducing it into a fine slime; and at the same time these torrents are to transport an argillaceous deposit which is to be mingled with the calcareous slime, and distributed over the Landes by watercourses constructed for the purpose. By this means, he supposes that a very fertile soil may be formed, and so graded in depositing as to secure for it a good drainage. In order that nothing may be wanting to recommend the project, Duponchel suggests that, as some rivers of Western France are gold-bearing, it is probable that gold enough may be collected by washing the sands to reduce materially the expense of such operations. In the Landes of Gascony alone, he believes that 3,000,000 acres, now barren, might be made productive at a moderate expense, and that similar methods might be advantageously employed in France over an extent of not less than 30,000,000 acres now almost wholly valueless. The successful execution of the plan would increase the fertile territory of France by an area of four or five times the extent of Sicily or of Sardinia. There seems to be no reason why the same method, applied for such different purposes, should necessarily be destructive in the one case while it is so advantageous in the other. A wiser economy might bring about a harmony of action between the miners and the agriculturists of California, and the soil which is removed by the former as an incumbrance, judiciously deposited, might become for the latter a source of wealth more solid and enduring than the gold now obtained by such a sacrifice of agricultural interests. Action of Man on the Weather. Espy's well-known suggestion of the possibility of causing rain artificially, by kindling great fires, is not likely to be turned to practical account, but the speculations of this able meteorologist are not, for that reason, to be rejected as worthless. His labors exhibit great industry in the collection of facts, much ingenuity in dealing with them, remarkable insight into the laws of nature, and a ready perception of analogies and relations not obvious to minds less philosophically constituted. They have unquestionably contributed essentially to the advancement of meteorological science. The possibility that the distribution and action of electricity may be considerably modified by long lines of iron railways and telegraph wires, is a kindred thought, and in fact rests much on the same foundation as the belief in the utility of lightning-rods, but such influence is too obscure and too uncertain to have been yet demonstrated, though many intelligent observers believe that sensible meteorological effects have been produced by it. It is affirmed that battles and heavy cannonades are generally followed by rain and thunder-storms, and Powers has collected much evidence on this subject, [Footnote: War and the Weather, or the Artificial Production of Rain, Chicago, 1871. Paifer proposed, as early as 1814, arrangements for producing rain by firing cannon and exploding shells in the air. Ein wunderbarer Traum die Frucht, barkeit durch willkurlichen Regen zu befordern, Metz, 1814. See, on the question of the possibility of influencing the weather by artificial means, London Quarterly Journal of Science, xxix., p. 126, and Nature, Feb. 16, 1871, p. 306.] but the proposition does not seem to be by any means established. Resistance to Great Natural Forces. I have often spoken of the greater and more subtile natural forces, and especially of geological agencies, as powers beyond human guidance or resistance. This is no doubt at present true in the main, but man has shown that he is not altogether impotent to struggle with even these mighty servants of nature, and his unconscious as well as his deliberate action may in some cases have increased or diminished the intensity of their energies. It is a very ancient belief that earthquakes are more destructive in districts where the crust of the earth is solid and homogeneous, than where it is of a looser and more interrupted structure. Aristotle, Pliny the elder, and Seneca believed that not only natural ravines and caves, but quarries, wells, and other human excavations, which break the continuity of the terrestrial strata and facilitate the escape of elastic vapors, have a sensible influence in diminishing the violence and preventing the propagation of the earth-waves. In all countries subject to earthquakes this opinion is still maintained, and it is asserted that, both in ancient and in modern times, buildings protected by deep wells under or near them have suffered less from earthquakes than those the architects of which have neglected this precaution. [Footnote: Landgrebe, Geschichte der Vulkane, ii., pp. 19, 20.] If the commonly received theory of the cause of earthquakes is true--that, namely, which ascribes them to the elastic force of gases accumulated or generated in subterranean reservoirs--it is evident that open channels of communication between such reservoirs and the atmosphere might serve as a harmless discharge of gases that would otherwise acquire destructive energy. The doubt is whether artificial excavations can be carried deep enough to reach the laboratory where the elastic fluids are distilled. There are, in many places, small natural crevices through which such fluids escape, and the source of them sometimes lies at so moderate a depth that they pervade the superficial soil and, as it were, transpire from it, over a considerable area. When the borer of an ordinary artesian well strikes into a cavity in the earth, imprisoned air often rushes out with great violence, and this has been still more frequently observed, in sinking mineral-oil wells. In this latter case, the discharge of a vehement current of inflammable fluid sometimes continues for hours and even longer periods. These facts seem to render it not wholly improbable that the popular belief of the efficacy of deep wells in mitigating the violence of earthquakes is well founded. In general, light, wooden buildings are less injured by earthquakes than more solid structures of stone or brick, and it is commonly supposed that the power put forth by the earth-wave is too great to be resisted by any amount of weight or solidity of mass that man can pile up upon the surface. But the fact that in countries subject to earthquakes many very large and strongly constructed palaces, temples, and other monuments have stood for centuries, comparatively uninjured, suggests a doubt whether this opinion is sound. The earthquake of the first of November, 1755, which is asserted, though upon doubtful evidence, to have been felt over a twelfth part of the earth's surface, was among the most violent of which we have any clear and distinct account, and it seems to have exerted its most destructive force at Lisbon. It has often been noticed as a remarkable fact, that the mint, a building of great solidity, was almost wholly unaffected by the shock which shattered every house and church in the city, and its escape from the common ruin can hardly be accounted for except upon the supposition that its weight, compactness, and strength of material enabled it to resist an agitation of the earth which overthrew all weaker structures. On the other hand, a stone pier in the harbor of Lisbon, on which thousands of people had taken refuge, sank with its foundations to a great depth during the same earthquake; and it is plain that where subterranean cavities exist, at moderate depths, the erection of heavy masses upon them would tend to promote the breaking down of the strata which roof them over. No physicist, I believe, has supposed that man can avert the eruption of a volcano or diminish the quantity of melted rock which it pours out of the bowels of the earth; but it is not always impossible to divert the course of even a large current of lava. "The smaller streams of lava near Catania," says Ferrara, in describing the great eruption of 1669, "were turned from their course by building dry walls of stone as a barrier against them. ... It was proposed to divert the main current from Catania, and fifty men, protected by hides, were sent with hooks and iron bars to break the flank of the stream near Belpasso. [Footnote: Soon after the current issues from the volcano, it is covered above and at its sides, and finally in front, with scoriae, formed by the cooling of the exposed surface, which bury and conceal the fluid mass. The stream rolls on under the coating, and between the walls of scoriae, and it was the lateral crust which was broken through by the workmen mentioned in the text. The distance to which lava flows, before its surface begns to solidify, depends on its volume, its composition, its temperature and that of the air, the force with which it is ejected, and the inclination of the declivity over which it runs. In most cases it is difficult to approach the current at points where it is still entirely fluid, and hence opportunities of observing it in that condition are not very frequent. In the eruption of February, 1850, on the east side of Vesuvius, I went quite up to one of the outlets. The lava shot out of the orifice upwards with great velocity, like the water from a fountain, in a stream eight or ten feet in diameter, throwing up occasionally volcanic bombs three or four feet in diameter, which exploded at the height of eight or ten yards, but it immediately spread out on the declivity down which it flowed, to the width of several yards. It continued red-hot in broad daylight, and without a particle of scoriae on its surface, for a course of at least one hundred yards. At this distance, the suffocating, sulphurous vapors became so dense that I could follow the current no farther. The undulations of the surface were like those of a brook swollen by rain. I estimated the height of the waves at five or six inches by a breadth of eighteen or twenty. To the eye, the fluidity of the lava seemed as perfect as that of water, but masses of cold lava weighing ten or fifteen pounds floated upon it like cork. The heat emitted by lava currents seems extremely small when we consider the temperature required to fuse such materials and the great length of time they take in cooling. I saw at Nicolosi ancient oil-jars, holding a hundred gallons or more, which had been dug out from under a stream of old lava above that town. They had been very slightly covered with volcanic ashes before the lava flowed over them, but the lead with which holes in them had been plugged was not melted. The current that buried Mompiliere in 1669 was thirty-five feet thick, but marble statues, in a church over which the lava formed an arch, were found uncalcined and uninjured in 1704, See Scrope, Volcanoes, chap. vi. Section 6.] When the opening was made, fluid lava poured forth and flowed rapidly towards Paterno; but the inhabitants of that place, not caring to sacrifice their own town to save Catania, rushed out in arms and put a stop to the operation." [Footnote: Ferrara, Descrizione dell' Etna, p. 108.] In the eruption of Vesuvius in 1794, the viceroy saved from impending destruction the town of Portici, and the valuable collection of antiquities then deposited there but since removed to Naples, by employing several thousand men to dig a ditch above the town, by which the lava current was carried off in another direction. [Footnote: Landgrebe, Naturgeschichte der Vulkane, ii., p. 82.] Incidental Effects of Human Action. I have more than once alluded to the collateral and unsought consequences of human action as being often more momentous than the direct and desired results. There are cases where such incidental, or, in popular speech, accidental, consequences, though of minor importance in themselves, serve to illustrate natural processes; others, where, by the magnitude and character of the material traces they leave behind them, they prove that man, in primary or in more advanced stages of social life, must have occupied particular districts for a longer period than has been supposed by popular chronology. "On the coast of Jutland," says Forchhammer, "wherever a bolt from a wreck or any other fragment of iron is deposited in the beach sand, the particles are cemented together, and form a very solid mass around the iron. A remarkable formation of this sort was observed a few years ago in constructing the sea-wall of the harbor of Elsineur. This stratum, which seldom exceeded a foot in thickness, rested upon common beach sand, and was found at various depths, less near the shore, greater at some distance from it. It was composed of pebbles and sand, and contained a great quantity of pins, and some coins of the reign of Christian IV., between the beginning and the middle of the seventeenth century. Here and there, a coating of metallic copper had been deposited by galvanic action, and the presence of completely oxydized metallic iron was often detected. Investigation made it in the highest degree probable that this formation owed its origin to the street sweepings of the town, which had been thrown upon the beach, and carried off and distributed by the waves over the bottom of the harbor." [Footnote: Geognostische Studien am Meeres Ufer, Leonhard und Bronn, 1841, pp. 25, 26.] These and other familiar observations of the like sort show that a sandstone reef, of no inconsiderable magnitude, might originate from the stranding of a ship with a cargo of iron, [Footnote: Kohl, Schleswig-Holstein, ii., p. 45.] or from throwing the waste of an establishment for working metals into running water which might carry it to the sea. Parthey records a singular instance of unforeseen mischief from an interference with the arrangements of nature. A landowner at Malta possessed a rocky plateau sloping gradually towards the sea, and terminating in a precipice forty or fifty feet high, through natural openings in which the sea-water flowed into a large cave under the rock. The proprietor attempted to establish salt-works on the surface, and cut shallow pools in the rock for the evaporation of the water. In order to fill the salt-pans more readily, he sank a well down to the cave beneath, through which he drew up water by a windlass and buckets. The speculation proved a failure, because the water filtered through the porous bottom of the pans, leaving little salt behind. But this was a small evil, compared with other destructive consequences that followed. When the sea was driven into the cave by violent west or north-west winds, it shot a jet d'eau through the well to the height of sixty feet, the spray of which was scattered far and wide over the neighboring gardens and blasted the crops. The well was now closed with stones, but the next winter's storms hurled them out again, and spread the salt spray over the grounds in the vicinity as before. Repeated attempts were made to stop the orifice, but at the time of Parthey's visit the sea had thrice burst through, and it was feared that the evil was without remedy. [Footnote: Wanderungen durch Sicilien und die Levante, i., p. 406.] I have mentioned the great extent of the heaps of oyster and other shells left by the American Indians on the Atlantic coast of the United States. Some of the Danish kitchen-middens, which closely resemble them, are a thousand feet long, from one hundred and fifty to two hundred wide, and from six to ten high. These piles have an importance as geological witnesses, independent of their bearing upon human history. Wherever the coast line appears, from other evidence, to have remained unchanged in outline and elevation since they were accumulated, they are found near the sea, and not more than about ten feet above its level. In some cases they are at a considerable distance from the beach, and in these instances, so far as yet examined, there are proofs that the coast has advanced in consequence of upheaval or of fluviatile or marine deposit. Where they are altogether wanting, the coast seems to have sunk or been washed away by the sea. The constancy of these observations justifies geologists in arguing, where other evidence is wanting, the advance of land or sea respectively, or the elevation or depression of the former, from the position or the absence of these heaps alone. Every traveller in Italy is familiar with Monte Testaccio, the mountain of potsherds, at Rome; [Footnote: Untill recently this hillock was supposed to consist of shards of household pottery broken in using, but it now appears to be ascertained that it is composed of fragments of earthenware broken in transportation from the place of manufacture to the emporium on the Tiber where such articles were landed.] but this deposit, large as it is, shrinks into insignificance when compared with masses of similar origin in the neighborhood of older cities. The castaway pottery of ancient towns in Magna Grecia composes strata of such extent and thickness that they have been dignified with the appellation of the ceramic formation. The Nile, as it slowly changes its bed, exposes in its banks masses of the same material, so vast that the population of the world during the whole historical period would seem to have chosen this valley as a general deposit for its broken vessels. The fertility imparted to the banks of the Nile by the water and the slime of the inundations, is such that manures are little employed. Hence much domestic waste, which would elsewhere be employed to enrich the soil, is thrown out into vacant places near the town. Hills of rubbish are thus piled up which astonish the traveller almost as much as the solid pyramids themselves. The heaps of ashes and other household refuse collected on the borders and within the limits of Cairo were so large, that the removal of them by Ibrahim Pacha has been looked upon as one of the great works of the age. These heaps formed almost a complete rampart around the city, and impeded both the circulation of the air and the communication between Cairo and its suburbs. At two points these accumulations are said to have risen to the incredible height of between six and seven hundred feet; and these two heaps covered two hundred and fifty acres. [Footnote: Clot Bey, Egypte, i., p. 277.] During the occupation of Cairo by the French, the invaders constructed redoubts on these hillocks which commanded the city. They were removed by Mehemet Ali, and the material was employed in raising the level of low grounds in the environs. [Footnote: Egypt manufactures annually about 1,200,000 pounds of nitre, by lixiviating the ancient and modern rubbish-heaps around the towns.] In European and American cities, street sweepings and other town refuse are used as manure and spread over the neighboring fields, the surface of which is perceptibly raised by them, by vegetable deposit, and by other effects of human industry, and in spite of all efforts to remove the waste, the level of the ground on which large towns stand is constantly elevated. The present streets of Rome are twenty feet, and in many places much more, above those of the ancient city. The Appian Way between Rome and Albano, when cleared out a few years ago, was found buried four or five feet deep, and the fields along the road were elevated nearly or quite as much. The floors of many churches in Italy, not more than six or seven centuries old, are now three or four feet below the adjacent streets, though it is proved by excavations that they were built as many feet above them. [Footnote: Rafinesque maintained many years ago that there was a continual deposition of dust on the surface of the earth from the atmosphere, or from cosmical space, sufficient in quantity to explain no small part of the elevation referred to in the text. Observations during the eclipse of Dec. 22, 1870, led some astronomers to believe that the appearance of the corona was dependent upon or modified by cosmical dust or matter in a very attenuated form diffused through space. Tyndall has shown by optical tests that the proportion of solid matter suspended or floating in common air is very considerable, and there is abundant other evidence to the name purpose. Ehrenberg has found African and even American infusoria in dust transplanted by winds and let fall in Europe, and Schliemann offers that the quantity of dust brought by the scirocco from Africa is so great, that by cutting holes in the naked rocks of Malta enough of Libyan transported earth can be caught and retained, in the course of fourteen years, to form a soil fit for cultivation.--Beilage zur Allgemeinen Zeitung, Mar. 24, 1870.] Nothing Small in Nature. It is a legal maxim that "the law concerneth not itself with trifles," de minimis non curat lex; but in the vocabulary of nature, little and great are terms of comparison only; she knows no trifles, and her laws are as inflexible in dealing with an atom as with a continent or a planet. [Footnote: One of the sublimest, and at the same time most fearful suggestions that have been prompted by the researches of modern science, was made by Babbage in the ninth chapter of his Ninth Bridgewater Treatise. I have not the volume at hand, but the following explanation will recall to the reader, if it does not otherwise make intelligible, the suggestion I refer to: No atom can be disturbed in place, or undergo any change of temperature, of electrical state, or other material condition, without affecting, by attraction or repulsion or other communication, the surrounding atoms. These, again, by the same law, transmit the influence to other atoms, and the impulse thus given extends through the whole material universe. Every human movement, every organic act, every volition, passion, or emotion, every intellectual process, is accompanied with atomic disturbance, and hence every such movement, every such act or process, affects all the atoms of universal matter. Though action and reaction are equal, yet reaction does not restore disturbed atoms to their former place and condition, and consequently the effects of the least material change are never cancelled, but in some way perpetuated, so that no action can take place in physical, moral, or intellectual nature, without leaving all matter in a different state from what it would have been if such action had not occurred. Hence, to use language which I have employed on another occasion: there exists, not alone in the human conscience or in the omniscience of the Creator, but in external nature, an ineffaceable, imperishable record, possibly legible even to created intelligence, of every act done, every word uttered, nay, of every wish and purpose and thought conceived, by mortal man, from the birth of our first parent to the final extinction of our race; so that the physical traces of our most secret sins shall last until time shall be merged in that eternity of which not science, but religion alone assumes to take cognisance.] The human operations mentioned in the last few paragraphs, therefore, do act in the ways ascribed to them, though our limited faculties are at present, perhaps forever, incapable of weighing their immediate, still more their ultimate consequences. But our inability to assign definite values to these causes of the disturbance of natural arrangements is not a reason for ignoring the existence of such causes in any general view of the relations between man and nature, and we are never justified in assuming a force to be insignificant because its measure is unknown, or even because no physical effect can now be traced to it as its origin. The collection of phenomena must precede the analysis of them, and every new fact, illustrative of the action and reaction between humanity and the material world around it, is another step towards the determination of the great question, whether man is of material nature or above her. THE END