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IS en couleur D Bound with other vr irial / Relie avec d'autres >K //,^ ijRRARY %^ I ^:\ X.;-'' V; A«1^ 1 =•««• See Page 157 ,^/' /r SCHOOL or THE WOOD^ Some Life Shidies of Animal Instincts and Animal Training ik ^ % By WILUAMJ.LONG A^jl^f BEASTS OFTHE HEID ^pi FOWLS OF THE AIR WOOD FOLK SERIES ^^ "^P* "* " "^ ILLUSTRATED ny ^ a CMARL' s copela;^!, ^«m LmiTE, Toronto lORONTO 03 J r^^^ Entrhbd at Stationsks ( "<'I'N KlfiHT, f*>02 liv WILLIAM J l.OSC, S ded/cafe ffiis Aook of I. ^^^ ■^ '-?, ' >*»^ I I fell •^■^ i -:i 'i i-V ';?i •%i I'i' 'n n -iPlf^^^"^ _/• %^.; ^ ^il/^. ^'§^^^'" b°y - ^'^ tJi l«s of help and i i' '/WJ^' ^''^"*y <^" ^'s P'irt, and a great de; great deal more ^P/S^' ^P''''^^^"^ ^"d sputtering on mine, than ' 1 /y '^%U%''^'^ *^^ Progre^^ of the young otters. ^^ Onffiehby THE WOODS W That interesting little comedy by the (|uiet river, one of the thousands that pass every day unnoticed in the summer \vo(k1s, first ^oSr/iOo} opened my eyes to the fact that all wild creatures must learn most of what they know as we do; and to learn they must be taught. I have had that fact in mind in gathering together from my old notebooks and summer journals these sketches of animal life, whic ' up themselves naturally about one r- idea, namely, the large place which early lucation holds in the life of every creature. That animal education is like our own, and so depends chiefly upon teaching, may possibly be a new suggestion in the field of natural history. Most people think that the life of a wild animal is governed wholly by instinct. They are of *he same class who hold that the character of a child is largely predetermined by heredity. Personally, after many years of watching animals in their native haunts, I am con- vinced that insiinct plays a much smaller '^'> SCHOOL OF OnmcWay '"•^'•^ -^I'^-^'-^s („■ failure in tho r-.n i ii««^ ''"t upon ,IK. ld,Kl of tn,i„ini "hid: •"""'••• ^--^-^ '-" its .rnxlu:-. And ""■■e ' sec of cl,ildren. ,h, nK„v .s. r .„ latcd .md developed instincts) plavs but ■, . ^i^ior , tiiat J.o)oIa, with a profounH -scion, n, „,,,,, ,„„,,^,^ J^ ^ Taldl ;,:t/:c'i;:"^'f'"''-^''^ Usance . Cue me a chi d till he is -n years old. and it matters not nn,ch,: has him afterwards. He is mn. f and eternifv" q , ■ "^' ^^^^ ^"^^e acrn.t). Substitute seven weeks for --M--Sandyouhaveani„kli„,:,: onscious thought which govern^ ev y I'ttle mother in the wilderness ^ i o indicate the probable truth of this PosUion, there are certain facts and tr. casual observer in the woods and fields. r^l¥' :'-~'''^^«w*'i?w?,;'i?'t" ' ijcsspw^«3"4,^^:»^'' i>;i:{ifefc: 'i THE WOODS ® Those young birds and animals that are left by sad accident, or sadder willfulness, ^ without their mothers' training profit little H^ ^j}*^^ ^ by their instincts. They are always first to ^ ^^^^^' fall in the battle with the strong. Those alone that follow their natural leaders till they learn wisdom live to grow uj) in the big ^^ woods. Sometimes, in the course of a Ioul' summer, birds and animals that see their first offspring well trained produce a second brood V or litter. The latter are generally abandoned, •'i; at the approach of winter, before their ,,..' simple education is half completed. r^'ilfr Left with their instincts and their imperfect j i ^l^sinkn. training, they go to feed '^y nature's hungry prowl- ers; while the better trained broods live and thrive in the same woods, . amid the same dangers. More- over, domestic animals, which have all their wild instincts but none of the wild mother's ik m^msim.' n u 1=-. ^ SCHOOL OF .S training, far fron. profiting by their human Ji^^eWay a-"ciat,on, are ahm.st helpless when, by ^^f£2?^ 1\'"'"' '^''y ''^'■^^ '^'^t «'■ "^"st take up tMc ^"^^^^ old free h'fe of the woods again. Instinct profits them nothing; they can neither catch the.r food nor hide fro.n their enemies as well as the.r wilder kinsfolk, and they are the first o go down under the swoop or spring of hawK or wild-cat. In a more specific way one may find the •sar ,e u ea suggested every wl.ere in the woods I watched fi^•e or six mother caribou, one afternoon, teaching their little ones what seemed to me to be plain social regulations and rules of conduct. Up to that time the young had lived each one with its mother in lonely seclusion, as ah wild creatures do,- an excellent plan, by the way. with a suggestion >n -t, possibly, for human mothers. Now tlK^y were brought together for the first tir. •n preparation for their winter life on the barrens, when all caribou run in herds The niothers brought them to a natural open„.g ,„ the woods, pushed them all out -^.M^^' ■'■ -"■■■^m^' •"f^^^ iMi^ft^m:-: ^aweai^ \; V i.- TWe* WOODS ® into the center by themselves, and left them to get acquainted -a slow, cautious process J vmh much shyness and ucnder manifest on 9j^^f ^ the part of the little caribou. Meanwhile the ^""^^^^^^ mothers watched over them from the shadows encouraged the timid ones, and pushed apart or punished those that took to butting and bossing. Then, under guise of a frolic, they uere taught to run in groups and to juu.p fallen trees, — a necessary but still a very ■'- difficult lesson for woodland caribou. M ^ SCHOOL OF ,o perhaps, tliat fear is n(,t instinctive- that On/j^c Way 7'^"^ ^^''^1 creatures, if found early, before -^fo^S^hooi t'^'-'y Jiave been tauc^ht, have no fear but only bnght curiosity for one uho approaches them gently. A feu- weeks later, while prowling through the woods, you hear a sudden alarm blast and -see the same fawn bounding away as if for '1.S life. Vou have not changed; yourgentle- /^,ness Ks the same, your heart as kind to every i^^ --"ature. What then has come over the son K>sH. S.mplythis: that one dav, while tlie faun was following his mother, a ^V'p ^cent that was not of the ^-;t^^ ^" ^^^^^^ ^''^o^t; in through the i^K ""''^'■^•■"^li- At the first ^ head, thrust her nose into -X^, ^V,,;,.x.,V^ . "^^ ^'^"^ '^^"^^' snorted, and bounded ^.^^V^.^k\ <•■ away with a sharp call for the fawn to follow. Such a lesion rarelv needs to be repeated. From that moment acertam scent means danger to the fawn . and when the friendly wind brings it to his 1 ' <^-'^ ^ ^c^«i7:.«:^< .m^z^^jtissiSH^^ THE WOODS S nostrils again he will bound away, as he was taught to do. And of all deer that flee at '' our approach in the wilderness, not one in ten ?^4^f ^ has ever seen a man or suffered anx harm; ^""^^^^^ they are smiply obeying one of their early lessons. There is a simpler way still, in which vou may test the theory. Find a crow's nest in the spnng (I choose the crow because he is the wisest of birds, and his nest is not hard to find) and go there secretly when the young are almost ready to fly. One day yo'u will see the mother bird standing near the nest and stretching her wings oyer her little ones Presently the Ncung stand up and stretch their wings in imitation. That is the first lesson. Next day, perhaps, you will see the old bird lifting herself to tiptoe and holding herself there by vigorous flapping. Again the young imitate, and soon learn that their wings are a power to sustain them. Next day you may see both parent birds passing from branch to branch about the nest, aided by their wings in the long jumps. The little t^a^- k jAi Y^lSSl^^. fl & SCHOOL OF ,^ ones join the play, and lo ! tlicy have learned Onmc Way *" ^>' ^^itliout even knowing that they were ^fo^^hoo/ ^"-'i'lg taught. All this, of course, refers only to the higher forms of animal life, of which I am writing. The lower orders have no early training, sint ply because they need to know so little that instinct alone suffices. Each higher order, :£^h ,V *'■■ - 5i?4 i^ . 'lowever, must know not ^ ^S^^'^ ^ only itself but all about ' t^^^^l^^t^^^^ ■■ ^^^ ^^^^ ^'^'"^^'' °" ^,?-'^''''^*^Slu. <#!»& it depends Tfc if "^ '' .; '{^fiMM^^'^-' for food, and some- I- 1 1 it . ■' ' "■ -"......1^, anu mere is no ^ instmct sufficient for these things. Only a ^^;. careful mother training can supply the lack, .^ ^' and make the little wild things ready for ::, then- battle with the world. So far as I have observed, young fish receive no teaching whatever from their elders. Some of them follow the line of "^ THE WOODS 8 least resistance and gc, down stream to the sea. When the time for reproduction '^ arrives they find their way back from the ?^^f ^^ •sea to the same river -alu ays the same ^^^^^«^^' river — ,n which they were hatched. This ^^ double migration lias been supposed to be -^ purely a matter of instinct. I am not so ''"^^" sure. From studying trout and salmon jxar- ticularly.and from recent records of deep-sea trawling, I think that, instead of following instinct, they follow the larger fishes from the same river, which are f.aind in shoals at greater or less distances offshore. This is certainly true of the birds. With them the instinct to migrate is a mere im- pulse, hardly more intelligent than that of rats and squirrels and frogs, all of which have, at times, the same strong tendency to migrate. Left to themselves, the young birds would never find their northern or southern homes; but with the impulse to move IS another and stronger impulse, to go with the crowd. So the young birds join the migrating hosts, and from their wiser ^ SCHOOL OF ,^ ciders, not from instinct, learn the sure way, On me Way ''"''" *'i^' '^'''^'^ -'^"^1 "ver the seas and through "fo^ChooJ the unmapped wildernesses, to where food •Nv ''^"flq"'<-'t resting places are awaiting them. The plovers are the only jjossible excep- tion to this rule that I know. \'„img plov- ers start southward, over the immense reach from Labrador to Patagonia, some ten or twelve da\s earlier than their elders; but I have sometimes noticed, in a great flock of "pale-bellies" that a sudden southeaster had driven to a landing on our shores, two or three old "black-breasts"; and I have no doubt that these older birds are the guides, just as they seem to give the orders in the' endless wing drills that plover practice as regularly as a platoon of soldiers. Among the higher orders one can tread his ground more firmly. There, as with chil- dren, the first and strongest instinct of every creature is that of obedience. The essential difference between the two, between the human and the little wild animal, is this: the animal's one idea, born in him and .""^v V THE WOODS ® strcngtliencd by every day's training, is that, until he grows up and learns to take care of '^ ._ himself, his one business in the world is to be H^ slh^Af ^ u atchf ul for orders and to obey them i nstantly ; ^^^^^^ while the child, by endless pettings and indul- gences, by having every little cry attended to and fussed over as if it were a Cxsar's man- : date, too often loses the saving instinct of^"- obedience and grows up into the idea that his , . business in the world is to give orders for others to obey. So that at three or f^ve or twenty years, when the mischief is done, we must begin to teach the obedience which ^ should never have been lost, and without :^ ^ which life is a worse than use- ^ V-^'"'^^ less thing. ^^^^' W hen one turns to the animals, >/^^>i it is often with the wholesome, refresh-^ ^ ^^^^^K^ ing sense that here is a realm where the law ^ ^^ -\i ^ ^ itsr of life is known and obeyed. To tl^ wild creature obedience is everything. It is the deep, unconscious tribute' of ignorance to wisdom, of weakness to power. All the wil- derness mothers, from partridge to panther, >a .^ ^ ,^< N-. ^ U f if I ^ SCHOOL OF ,g seize upon this and through hmg summer On/he Way ''^^^^ ''^"*^^ <^l""-'t •''^-'^''''t "ights train and train ^^O^Chooi 't' till the young, jirofiting by their instinct of l-A^-afc^ obedience, grow wise and strong by careful teaching. This, in a word, seems to me to be h;.' whole secret of animal life. And one who watches the process with sympathetic eyes — this mother fishhawk, overcoming the young birds' natural instinct for hunt- ing the woods, and teaching them the better mysteries of going a-fishing; this mother otter, teaching her young their first confidence in the water, which they natu- rally distrust, and then how to swim deep and silent — can only wonder and grow thoughtful, and mend his crude theories of instinct and heredity by what he sees, with open eyes, going on in the world all about him. Therefore have I called this book the "School of the Woods"; for the summer wilderness is just one vast schoolhouse, of many rooms, in which a multitude of wise, patient mothers are teaching their little ones,' % 'W^^&T': 17 THE WOODS « and of which our kinclcrgartcris a.e crude and second-rate imitations. Here are prac- tical schools, technical schools. No supertl- ^^ ^^^A' cial polish of French or literature will do ^^ ^^^^^^ here. Obedience is life; that is the Hrst great lesson. Pity we men have not learned it better! Hvery wild mother knows it. lives by it. hammers it into her little ones. And then come other, secondary lessons.— uhen to hide and when to run; how to swoop and how to strike; how to sift and remember the many sights and sounds and smells of the world, and to suit action always and instantaneously to knowledge, — all of which, I repeat, are not so much matters of instinct as of careful training and imitation. I ife itself is the issue at stake in this forest education ; therefore is the discipline stern as death. One who watches lf)ng over any of the wood-folk broods must catch his breath at times at the savage earnestness underlying even the simplest lesson. Few wild mothers will tolerate any trifling or will- fulness in their little schools; and the more n I ^ SCHOOL OF ,j, intcllinrcnt. like the crows and wolves, mcrci- OnffhnWay '^''''>' '^■'" t'^^i'" ^vcak and wayward pupils. "f'O^S^hoo/ ^'et tenderness and patience 'are here too. and the youn- are never driven beyond their a powers. Once they haNe learned their les- 4; sons they are watched over for a few days by their teachers, and are then sent out into the world to put their education to the practical test of gettin- a living and of keeping alive. ^MmMi' One thing more: these interesting little wild kindergartens are. emphatically, happy gatherings. The n-ore I watch them, teach- ers and pupils, the more I long for some measure of their freedom, their strength of play, their joyful ness. This is the great ^J^^t^^ 19 THE WOODS 9 lesson whici. a man soon icarns. with ojx'n eyes and heart, in the school of the woods. There is a meadow lark out yonder— I ^^^^Jfby watched him for half an hour yesterday -. ^ ^''^''''^ "^ lyin^ flat in the bn.wn -ra>s, liis color hid- ing hnn from the great hawk that circles and circles overhead. Long ago that lark's " mother taught him the wisdom of lying still. Now his one thought, so far as I can judge It, IS how perfectly c(.l(;r and quietness hide him fn,m those keen eves that he has escaped so often. Ninetv-nine times out oi a hundred they do hide him perfectiv, and he goes his way rejoicing. If he had any con- ception of Nature (which he has not), he would give thanks for his wonderful color and for the fact that Nature, when she gave the hawk keen eyes, remembered her other little children, and so made those eyes incapable of seeing a thing unless it moves or has conspicuous coloring. As it is, the lark thinks he did it all himself 'and rejoices in himself, as every other wild creature does. ti'^ 20 r.¥. ^ .. >■ ^ SCHOOL OF ^Iktc can be no greater mistake, tliere- -a, than tc, inia^rine an animal's life to be f > 1 cf fr,glnful alanns and haunting terrors li-e IS no tenv , ;, .,,,,., watchfulness; ^" ^'^^ ''^"""''^^ ■— ^i'v.j.h ,he use of his u.M.sual powers, vt. the, oy and confidence hat the use of unusual powers always brings oammalsaswellasmen. The eagle watd.: -^^ f-- J^rey far above his high mountain t'.'P '-snot more, but rather less, joy in his -sum than the doe has in hers, uho sees 'lis sudden slantiu'r fli-du -mrl l-., • 'f3 '"ft"t and. kiujwuitr its ">-nM,g, hides Ik.,- fawns ami Wds , hem lie »t. 1 ; « h,le she runs away in plain sight, oake. he n,bbe,-s attention away f,„„,7,e; !■ tic ones, and j„n,ps for thick cover, a. last where the eagles broad wings cannot follow And she .s not terrified, bnt glad as a linnet and cxnltant as a kingbird, when she comes camenng back again, after the danger is over. Neither ,s there any terror, nsually, but rather an exultant sense of power and vic- tory .n running away. VX'atch the deer .<<"Kler, m his magnificent rush, light and "^■'■•m^;^- e- 's. s. is e THE WOODS Sf •'^wift as a hauk. ft'ct than hij f>^■<-'^ ground ulicre oth nuist halt and cr partridge ir, that cle c'-eep; watch the 21 : "' "' ^'<^pen in Nature' invita- e enter truly of that which made' hi> his own ',.n/-? >i-..^i,i ... see Jl tth o^^n sad world woes effects of wholesome, cheerful life and send him back to h >* lieart ache in "o tragedies or footlight and struggles, but rathe r a leeper wisdom and re to make one glad is own school with <^^f late many letters h newed cou rage. writer from ki ave come to the ai •0 troubled at the th "flly. s)mpathetic people who even of animal sufTi ought of suffe »'>u^^ have also seen their child imagined sorrows and ug- Some of them ren's tears at the woes of animals. ITS^WSffirXSA^ I I I : 0/9Me Way And thcsi all ask: Is it true? do animals „„^ suffer, and sorrow in secret, and die tragically '^fo^SchooI 'It the last ? It is partly m isuer to these troubled questions that two chapters, of more general interest, are added to th.se studies of indi- vidual animals, instead of awaiting their l)lace m a later volume of nature essays and addresses. They are The (Gladsome Life and How the Animals Die. They sum up, in a general way, what seems to me to be the truth concerning animal life and death, as it ajipcars to me now, after much watching and following the wild things of our woods and fields. And now, if a too long introduction has not wearied tl>j reader and kept his children waiting for animal stories, here is the school, and here are some of Nature's children that work and jjlay therein. P3f ^'.■W-V ClKTV^Uef 'JB ■•»■ !•'«> .'^ 23 :^^-^^.. - — »^-,~— - . ..-^^ -a^. A*»-.l«,-,^r( "TTT "»- '^'-^x£ C^^yj^at me FacOns \noar^ M^^ !^.'- O this day it is hard to understand ]iow an)- eyes could have found them, they \vere so perfectly hidden. I was follow- ing a little brook, which led me bv its sin- to a deep dingle in the very heart of the big woods. A great fallen tree lay across my path and made a bridge over the stream. Now bridges are fc. -rossing; that is plain to even the least of the wood folk; so I sat down on the mossy trunk to see who my neighbors might be, and what little feet were passing on the King's highwa\-. Here, beside mc, are claw marks in the moldy bark. Only a bear could leave that deep, strong imprint. And see! there is where the moss slipjx'd and broke beneath 25 26 Xllhat ihe Fawns JTfnst Know ® SCHOOL OF his wci-rht. A restless tramp is Moowcen, who scatters his records over forty miles of hillside on a summer day, when his lazy mood hai)peiis to leave him for a season. Here, on the other side, are the bronze-green petals of a s]Druce ct)ne, chips from a squir- rel's workshojj, scattered as if Meeko had brushed them hastily from his yellow ajiron when he rushed out to see Mooween as he passed. There, beyond, is a mini: sign, plain as daylight, where Cheokhes sat down a little while cifter his breakfast of frogs. And here, clinging to a stub, touching my elbow as I sit with heels dangling idly over the lazy brook, is a crinkly yellow hair, which tells me that Eleemos the Sly One, as Simmo calls him, hates to wet his feet, and so uses a fallen tree, or a stone in the brook, for a ._ . bridge, like his brother fox of the settltments. Just in front of me was another fallen tree, lying along- side the stream in such a way that no animal more dangerous THE WOODS ® than a rovinj; mink would ever think of using it. Under its roots, away from the brook, was a liidden and roomy little house, with hemlock tips drooping over its doorwa) for a curtain. " A pretty place for a den," I thought; "for no one could ever find you there." Then, as if to contradict me, a stray sunbeam k)und the spot and sent curious bright gh .tings of sheen and shadow dan- cing and playing under the fallen roots and trunk. " Beautiful ! " I cried, as the light fell on the brown mold and flecked it with white and yellow. The sunbeam went away again, but seemed to leave its brightness behind it; for there was still the gold-brown mold under the roots, and the flecks of white and yellow. I stooped down to see it better; I reached in my hand — then the brown mold changed suddenly to softest fur; the glintings of \vhite and yellow were the dappled sides of two little fawns, lying there very still and frightened, just where their mother had hidden them when she went away. - / "What Me Hwns Tiust J>^) Knoof 2S XjJhaf ihe F& uns ;i?^ ]*; M SCHOOL OF They were but a few clays old when I found them. Each had on his little Joseph's Coat, and each, I think, must have had also a magic cloak somewhere about him; for he had only to lie down anywhere to become invii^ible. The curious markings, like the play of light and shad;>w through the lea\es, hid the little owners perfectly, so long as they held themselves still and let the sunbeams ' , . dance over them. Their ■^ :-4.-^i'fJ??yv>*^>-'"4^^ beautiful heads were a study tor an artist, — deli- ■^^;< ■ cate, graceful, exciui- sitely colored. And their great sf)ft eyes had a c{uestioning i n n oce n ce, as they met yours, which went straight to your heart and made ou claim the beautiful creatures for yoiu- own instantly. There is nothing in all the woods that so takes your heart by storm as the face of a little fawn. :,i^;,,y- V i ^--' ^u^ ^ -?:$'■ \ ' ' \ i>C; THE WOODS ® Thev were timid at first, KiiiL; close, with- out motion of any kind. The instinct <»f ^ ., . j^ _, ... ., r . 1 . ... What me tawns obedience — the first and stronj^fcst mstnitt —^ . ^ , of every creature born into this world — kept j, <0A them loyal to the mother's command to stay "*** where they were and be still till she came back. .So e\en after the hemlock curtain was brushed aside, and my eyes saw and my liand touched them, they kei)t their heads flat to the jrround and j)retended that tliey were only parts of the br' nvn forest floor, and that the sjjots on their bright coats were but flecks of summer sunshine. I felt then that I was an intruder; that I ought to go straight away and leave them ; but the little things were too beautiful, lying there in their wonderful old den, with fear and wonder and questionings dancing in their soft eyes as they turned them back at me like a mischievous child inlaying peekaboo. It is a tri'oute to our higher nature that one can- not see a beautiful thing anywhere without wanting to draw near, to see, to touch, to possess it. And here was beauty such as one .v^ What fhe Fawns ^xist Knout ^ SCHOOL OF rarely finds, and, tliou<;li I was an intruder, I c-()uld not i^o awav. The hand that tou'hed the little wild thin^rs brou^dit no ser,sc of danger with it. It sean hed out the spots behind their vel- vet ears, where they love to he rubbed; it wandered down over their backs with a little \va\y caress in its motion; it curled its jxdm up softly under their moist muzzles and brou-rht their tongues out instantly for the faint suggestion of salt that was in it. Sud- denly their heads came up. Play was over now. They had forgotten their hiding, their first lesson; they turned and looked at me full with their great, innocent, questioning eyes. It was wonderful; I was undone. One must give his life, if need be, to defend the little things after they had looked at him just once like that. When I rose at last, after petting them to my heart's content, they staggered up to their feet and came out of their house. Their mother had told them to stay ; but here was another big kind animal, evidently, whom THE WOODS 9 they might safely trust. " Take the gifts the gods i)rovide thee" -.vas tlie thought in their little heads; and the taste in their tongues' ends, when the; licked my hand, was the nicest thing they had ever known. As 1 turned away they ran after me, with a plain- tive little cry to bring me back. When I stopped they came close, nestling against me, one on either side, and lifted their heads to be petted and rubbed again. Standmg so, all eagerness and wonder, they were a perfect study in first impressions of the world. Their ears had already caught the deer trek of twitching nervously and making tr mpets at every sound. A leaf rustled, a twig broke, the brook's song swelled as a floating stick iammed in the current, and instantly the fawns were all alert. Eyes, ears, '' noses questioned the phenomenon, f^^.^. Then they would raise their eyes slowly to mine. " This is a won- derful world. This big wood is full of music. We know not. Tell us all about "What Me Hwns Tiusf Jh , Knoiij ^\Kiiif wsetA ^;a#, Whal ffie thwns , ^T^pst Knou ^ \ ^ SCHOOL OF '■t."~that is uhat the l)cauliful ryes u-rc >ay.n^^ as they lifted up to niiiK^ h^V \i ■mmccncc and .khMht at the joy ,,, ]i.,n.r I I'c-n the hands that rested fondlv, one on uther soft .leek, niou d down fn.ni 'their ears with a caressino Mveep and brought up under thcnnH.,stnu.//.Ies. Instantly the wood and ■tsmusie vanishe'^^> all the unknown sounds were foprot- t-; -n the new sensation of lapping a nians Pahn. with a wond ^^,,1 ta-e hidden so-m.- ulK.-e under its friendly n.u-hnesses i ^vcre st.II lirkin;. my hands, nestli.i^r Hc,se against nn., when a twig .napped faintiv far Ix'huid us. Now twig snapping is the great index to all that passes in the wilderness. Curiously enough, no tu,. animals an break even a tw.g under their feet and give the same ^varnmg. The crack under a bear's foot , --Pt when he is stalking his game, iJ ;.^J.cavyand heedless. The hoof of a moose ^£hM:''j.M.. THE WOODH B before it can tdl its nK-ssa^efainv. When. t^v.g speaks under a deer in hi . ♦K- I . "'^ '"'^ passaLa- '""«'',""-■ -«l». 'he s„u„,l is .sharp r;; """ • ^- '^'^■- ^"'^ -I- -n,Kl W.„i, -.."v<..ul,l no, he mistaken. TIk- n,,,.!,.,- <■! ".)■ Iml. ,nn,«x„,s was c,m,i„.r Hiatal ,., fnVin.n la,-, and .".n.u^.l, |,,, '";l-.r"y,hn>nc.uc„nfidcncc.; s„", hu ..back to the clcn. the little ones rnnntn, s ;.',"?■"" '•--'"- '-""ay, a twi,: ■snapped sharjily again; there was a swift n'»tle „, the nnderbrush, and a doe sn„n.. ^ -' » "" bleat as .she saw .he hon,: "g. A, .sijjht of n,e she stopped short «ard ,, e two aceu.sin, fingers, an ' wful fear ,n her soft eyes as she saw her litiic one.s w„h her archenemy between then,, hi -ands resttng on their inno.cnt necks. H body swayed away, ev. ry n,„.scle tense for .ejun,p; „t her fee. .s..,ned rooted to the Nx>t. Slowly she swayed bark to her bal- ance, her eves holdin-min,.- fl„.„ 'tt'n'nc, tnen away;,irain 3,> WhaHfie •Ttusf Tin owns ^'' •> ■ ' V-*^ iffl= . ^^ n ll^a/ Me Fauns P^lisf Know ^ SCHOOL OF as the danger scent poured into licr nose. Hut still the feet stayed. She could not move; could not believe. Then, as I waited quietly and tried to make my eyes say all sorts of friendly things, the harsh, throaty K-a-a-a-/i! k-a-a-a-li! the danger cry of the deer, burst like a trumpet blast through the woods, and she leaped back to cover. ^ At the sound the little ones jumped as if ^M ^^""^'' '^"^' P'""^'ed into the brush in the opposite direction. But the strange place frightened them; the hoarse cry that went crashing through the startled woods filled them with nameless dread. In a moment they were back again, nestling close against me, growing quiet as the hands stroked their sides ' iw '^vithout tremor or hurry. •t'^ >l# Around us, out of sight, ran the fear- VJ'' haunted mother, calling, calling; now show- .' ing her head, with the terror deep in her eyes; now dashing away, with her white flag up, to show her little ones the way they must take. But the fawns gave no heed after the THE WOODS » first alarm. They felt the change; their ears were twitching nervously, and their eyes, which had not yet grown quick enough to' ^^^^ measure distances and find their mother in ^"^^ her hiding, were full of strange terror as they questioned mine. Still, under the alarm, they felt the kindness which the poor mother, dog-driven and waylaid by guns, had never known. And they stayed, with a deep wis- dom beyond all her cunning, where they knew they were safe. I led them slowly back to their hiding place, gave them a last lick at mv hands, and pushed them gently under the hemlock curtain. When they tried to come out I pushed them back again. "Stay there, and mmd your mother; sta^ there, and follow your mother," I kept whispering. And to this day I have a half belief that they under- stood, not the word but the feeling behind it; for they grew quiet after a time and looked out with wide-open, wondering eyes. Then I dodged out of sight, jumped the fallen log, to throw them off the scent should 35 "What Me Hwns Tiusf ■^M m f - .l.nK,gh ,„, g,,,„ ,7; ^'"-dc showed cli„,bocl, and looked 'kI h"" ^^ '■""' ll'c underbrush -.n 1 1 , "'°™""-"'^* ''n beyond d,ei:r!;. ":::,'';■''* «'*-■' '%'■ .She bleated .so I ■ ,1'? "I^' '■''™- tain „as thm.f , a ' ''enilcx:k cur- came ou A ,-2 ; T' ""-' '''* °"<-'s ward, a IreaT Z 'u'" '''"^ '^"P'<' f"'- ;". '"n. tiK,- were he,- or,i,M:' Z. ' -- -' handed, All .he wL^T Ma € i i5 ; *^.. ^ *^"V^n7' ' -J^ji' • "* i i "* ^WT r" < .I' ' fawns nestled close to her, as they had done a moment before to me, and lifted their heads to touch her sides with their noses, and ask in their own dumb way what it was all about aiK' why she had run away. Then, as the smell of the man came to her from the tainted underbrush, the absolute necessity of teaching them their neglected second lesson, before another danger should find them, swept over her in a flood. She sprang aside with a great bound, and the hoarse A'-lcj)t in the .same hemlock. Then, one dav when a flock of partridges i-l me out of the wild j'AiiS: .ir.jT-f^^'" ''^^s^^^ ■"i' .iJc'i^^T^ili^^ THE WOODS ® berry bushes into a co. d of the burned lands, I ran jjIu deer and her fawns lying all togeth^ . uior a fallen tree- top, dozing awav the heat of the dav. They did not see me, but were only scared into action as a branch, upon which I stood looking for my partridges, gave way beneath my feet and let me down with a great crash under the fallen tree. There, looking out, I could see them perfectly, while Kookooskoos himself could hardly have seen me. At the first crack they all jumped like Jack-in-a-box when you touch his s])ring. The mother jnit up her white flag— which is the snowy under- side of her useful tail, and shows like a bea- con by day or night — and bounded away with a hoarse Ka-a-a-a-h ! of warning. One of the little ones followed her on the instant, jum.ping squarely in his mother's tracks, his own little white flag flying to guide any that might come after him. Hut the second fawn ran oii at a tangent, and stoj^ped in a moment to st;ire and whistle and stamp his tiny foot in an odd mixture of curiosity and defiance. 45 J^ Crj^ in t/w (I yi Cry in the \^ ^ ^i/iOOL Of he- ha;' to ( in ,. I)a k twice before The ! he foP .c(l iti, .it •> tie k ea ' iini U'iggillV^ IKl i.-lN when yo'i set u. ttii' As she w IS d. iwn and tile SI re sign, vou h' anting it.- ai ni Hiu h. \-as sir..., her fo' 1 ,ii langu.iL,^ \ le. 1(1 [ mi le -he !)ei up, li i li; \vn, U in ♦ ^I'^n , ini .livh i >oi le s'X'nt ( 11. oods a.. . a nostrils. Iiite flag nig ll if ul ly I ace o n a :ny .V, he cakih 's . n i.,c ■ ^led i d I di when i h. 1 w >t( w ini, .rtani is iio ; »\\,-) afri; ■11, ! g ^'-Mci o( c rock^ nnderlirush ^' ind. I \vi h 'tlier .0 ti nu. iitl till Ion- afterwacls, he fawns many times, s latter suggt'stion. One ned deer and sees )r hears f nt breakneck jxice ()\er ii'o trees and tangled .g s\ !t on one .-^ide of a a ki .\\ing what lies on the he is already falling; driv- li an arrow o\er gmund where vou toil. V HI ■ a snail, lest you v iench a 47 J^ Crj^ in ihe THF WOODS W foot or break an ankle. — fiiuls himself asking with uiianswcrLcl wonder how any deer can live halt a s. son in the wilderness without hivakin-j all lis lc->. And when you run ii|)<)n a (liHT at night and hear him go smash- ing off in the darkness ... t'le .>ame reckless speed, o\rr a blow-down, perhaps, through uhiih \ou can barely force your way by day- light, then you reali/.e suddenly that the most wonderful \r.\xi of a deer's education shows itself, 1 it in keen eyes or trumpet ears, or in his finely trained nose, more sensitive a hui .red tiuics than any barometer, but in his for-otten feet, which seem to have eyes and ner\< >and brains packed into their hard shells, instead of the senseless matter you see there. Watch the doe yonder as she bounds away, ,' wigwagging her heedless little one to follow, j ', .She is thinking only of him; and now you li see her feet free to take care of themselves. ,' _ , As she ri.ses over the big windfall, they C^^^rife hang from the ankle joints, limp as a ,c A &-' w' glove out of which the iiand has been %i SCHOOL OF 48 ^ Cry in ihe drawn, waitinj^ and watching. One hoof touches a twig; Hke Hghtning it sjjreads and drops, after running for the smallest fraction of a second along the obstacle to know whether to relax or stiffen, or rise or fall to meet it. Just before she strikes the ground on the down plunge, see the wondei-ful hind hoofs sweep themsL'Kes forward, surveying the ground by touch, and bracing themselves, in a fraction of time so small that the eye cannot follow, for the shock of what lies beneath them, whether rock or rotten wood or yielding moss. The f> • ' feet have followed the quick eyes above, and shoot s"aight and sure to their landing; but the hind hoofs must find the spot for themselves as they come down and, almost ere they find it, brace themselves again for the push of the mighty muscles above. Once only I found where a fawn, with untrained feet, had broken its leg; and once I heard of a wounded buck, driven to death by clogs, that had fallen in the same way, never to rise again. Those were rare cases. THE WOODS B The marvel is that it docs not liappcn to every deer that fear drives through the wilderness. And that is another reason whv the fawns must learn to obey a wiser head than their own. Till their little feet are educated, the mother must choose the way for them; and a wise fawn will jump squarely in her tracks. That explains also why deer, e\en after they are full grown, will often walk in single file, a half-dozen of them sometimes following a wise leader, stepping in his tracks and leav- ing but a single trail. It is partly, perhaps, to fool their old enemy, the wolf, and their new enemy, the man, by hiding the weakling's trail in the stride and hoof mark of a big buck; but it shows also the old habit, and the training which begins when the fawns first learn to follow the flag. After that second discovery I used to go in the afternoon sometimes to a point on the lake nearest the fawns' hiding place, and wait in my canoe for the mother to come out and show me where she had left her little 49 J^ Cry in ihe -M V 4 '\ -l.d? 50 ^^23^ ^ SCHOOL OF ones. As they grew, and the drain upon her increased from their feetling, she seemed always half starvvd. Waiting in my canoe I would hear the crackle of brush, as she trotted straight down to the lake almost heedlessly, \ and see her plunge through tiie fringe of bushes that bordered the water. With scarcely a look or a sniff to be sure the coast was clear, slie would jump for the lily pads. Sometimes the canoe was in plain sight; Init she gave no heed as she tore up the juicy buds and stems, and swallowed them with the appetite of a famished wolf. Then I would paddle away and, taking my direction from her trail as she came, hunt dili- gertly for the fawns until I found them. This last happened only two or three times. The little ones were already wild; they had forgotten all about our first meet- ing, and when I showed myself, or cracked a twig too near tlieni, they would promptly bolt into the brush. One always ran straight away, his white Hag (lying to show that he remem- bered liis lesson ; the other went off zigzag. THE WOODS 13 slopijingat every an;rle of his run to look hack and question me with his eves and ears. I here was only one way in which such disobedience could end. I saw it })Iainly enou^rh one afternoon, when, had I been one of the fierte i)rowlers of the wilderness, the little fellow's history would have stopped short under the paw of Upweekis, the shadowy lyn v of the burned lands. It was late atr^Tnc.on when I can^.e over a rid-rc, followinjr a d -er path on my way to the lake, and looked (\<.<^-n into a lon-r narnjw valley filk-d with berry bushes, and a few fire-blasted trees standing here and there to jjoint ouL the perfect lone- liness and desolation of the jilace. Just below me a deer was feeding hungrily, only her hind quarters showing out of the underbrush. I watched her awhile, then dropped on all fours and began to creej) towards her. tt) see how near I could get and what new trait I might discover. Hut at the first motion (I had stood at Hrst like an ol ! stump on the ridge) a fawn that had evidently been watching me, among the bushes where 51 -^ Crj-' in ihe 52 yi Cry in fhe ^ SCHOOL Of I could not sec him, sj)ran Next mcmth, alas! the law will be off; then there will be hunters in these woods, some of whom leave their hearts, uJth their wives and children, behind them. You can't trust them, believe me, little chap. Your mother IS nVht; you can't tru>t them." ilie ni-ht was coming swiftU. The "^otlicr's call, growing ever more 'anxious '^i^"e msistent, swept over the darkening hill- s'de. " I'erhaps." I thought, with sudden THE WOODS ^ ^ _ _ ihe 56 yt Cry in Ihe -^ t.ry in tfn ^ SCHOOL OF she found him with her nose, thanks to the wood wires and the wind's message, and led him a way out of danm-r One who h'ves for a few weeks in the wilderness, with eyes and ears o|Kn. soon finds that, instead of tiie lawlessness and blind chance which seem to h.old sway there, he lives in the midst of law and order — an order of things much older than that to which he is accustomed, with which it is not well to intei-fere. I was uneasy, following the little deer path through the twilight stillness; and my uneasiness was not decreased when I found on a log, within fifty yards of the spot where the fawn first appeared, the signs of a big lucivee, with plenty of fawn's hair and fine-cracked bones to tell me what he had eaten for his midnight dinner. mx'^^^^^^^- THE WOODS H Down at the lower end of the same deer path, where it stopped ..t the lake to let the wild things drink, was a little brook. Out- side the mouth of this hrook, among the rocks, was a deep pool ; and in the pool lived somj big trout. I was there one night, some two weeks later, trying to catch some of the big trout for my breakfast. Those were u ise fish. It was of no use to angle for them by day any more. They knew all the flies in my book; could tell the new Jenny Lind from the old liumble IJee before it struck the water; and seemed to know perfectly, both by instinct and experi- cnce, that they were all frauds, which might as well be called Jenny Bee and Humble Lind for any sweet reasonableness that was i n them. Besides all this, the water was warm ; the trout were logy and would not rise. By night, however, the case was different. A few of the trout would leave the pool and prowl along the shores in shallow water, to see what tidbits the darkness might bring, in the shape of night bugs and careless piping ^1 •^ Crj' in ihe ■tSM ^ »*<«"& - SCHOOL OF ,,S ['"^^^ and sleepy .ninnou.. Th,,,, ,7 ,,^^, '-''^^'^;--thclK.aH, an.|.astauhitc- um.ul ly acro^s th. ,,a.l. of the- firdight ^t ^vas fascinating sp„rt aluavs. uluthcr fi^ u.thh,sc.a.s,anclhvpn..stofhisb.-ains ■n 1^^^ Kuul, ready ,0 .strike c,uic-k and hard uHcnthernomentca: K.. after an hour of. ast- "f /'; V'^^ ^■- >"—'<' not see vonr fi^H at all, In.t only hear the savage plu„., •>shesuu-leddounuithyourtlv. At other tinK-sas you struck sharply at' the phuva- >-ur fly ,,,uld come hack to you. or tangle' self up , n unseen snags; and far ou,, where '^e verge of the Hrelight rippled away into darkness, ycH>-.ou.dsee a sharp wave-ued.re •shootn^g away;whirh told you that vour trout ^va.onlyanulsc,uash. Swimming c,'uietlv hv ie had seen you and ^our fire, and slappc;! '^- tad cWn hard on tlKMvater to make -ou ;':-i;- r-tisauayMus^uashhasin'the n.gHt, so that he can make,, his mind what queer th.ng you are and ul, : you are doing .-.-i^ < Mf-^^*^ "*=•.=■ "■^ii^Ast THF WOODS 9 All the whik as yen fish, the jra-at dark wchhIs stand c\os. about y.u,, siknt, listcninjr. I I'.c air .s full of srcnts and odors that stc-al abroad only by ni-ht. while tlic air is deu- la^lfM. •Sfran.^v (Tie., calls, sciucaks.rustlin.rs nm alon^^ the hillside, or float in from the ^^ater, or dn.j, down from the air overhead to make you ;,n,ess and wonder what wcod f" k are abroad at such unseemly hours, and ^vbat they are about. So that it is good to fishl)ym- -^ Crjr in ihe V%M 60 JVight their u u- to drink by the KMcat wonder of tlic li-ht and the dan< ii.^r sl.adows, that rush lip at timid wild thin-s. a> if tofrijrhtcn them. but only jump over them and back again, as if inviting them to join the silent play. I kiult down quietly beside my fire, sh"i> ping on a great roll „f birch bark, which bla/ed up brightly, filling the woods with light. There, under a spruce, where a dark shadj)w had been a moment aide. !" moment only it lasted Th( n one fawn — I lew the heec'less one "-> the f.re- ]ight, by his face and by h !„; dappled J< -^eph's coat — rame straig! -:v.ards me. stopping to stare with flashing eyes when the f^re jumped up. and then to stamp his little foot at the shadows to show them that he was not afraid. Ig?f5 .5tJ WnwrfJrf^ *'-'- ABLAZE WITH T-'E WONDER OF THE LIGHT" 'VWrt.ST^m^'^m ■ The mother called him anxicnisly ; but still he came on, stamping prettily. She grew uneasy, trotting back and forth in a half cir- cle, warning, calling, pleading. Then, as he came between her and the fire, and his little shadow stretched a'vay up the hill where she was, showing how far away he was from her and how near the light, she broke away from i^s fascination with an immense effort: Ka- a-a-li! ka-a-a-h! the hoarse cry rang through the startled woods like a pistol shot ; and she bounded away, her white flag shining like a wave crest in the night to guide her little ones. The second fawn followed her instantly; but the heedless one barely swung his head to see where she was going, and then came on towards the light, staring and stamping in foolish wonder. I watched him a little while, fascinated myself by his beauty, his dainty motions, his soft ears with a bright oval of light about them, his wonderful eyes glowing like burn- ing rainbows, kindled by the firelight. Far 63 -^ Crj^ in the ^ Cry in me ^ SCHOOL OF Ix'hnul hin, the mothers cry ran back and forth alon^. the hillside. Suddenlv it ehan^eci- '? ^'''•;-7- '^"te leaped int., it; and a^ain l' ix'ard the call to foli.nv and the crash of brush as she leaped aua). I remendx-rcd ' *'''■ >"": '-^"^l ^'^^' -«1 little history written '•"t'H' I'^ahove. As the cjui.kest wav of savm^ the foolish youngster. I kicked 'my ^'v to p.eces and walked ont towards him' "HH as the wonder vanished in darkness and tin Mvnt of tlK. nun pomvd up to him "n the lakes b:vath, the little fellow bounded au ay -alas! strai^rht ..p the deer path, at n;^lU angles to the course his mother had taken a moment !)efore. iMVeminuteslaterHuard the mother call- '"K a stran^re note in the directior he had taken, and went up the deer path ^cTv quietly ;"'^vesf^.ate. Atthetop.,ftherid^:c..uhere the path droppc! away into a dark narrow J wdley wuh cle,i>e underbrush on .ither side ' l^^ard the- faun answerin^r l,,,- below me' 7^^''"K the iMK trc... and knew instantly tliat somethinnr haci happened. II.. called t THE WOODS ^ conti.UH.usly, a plaint^ ctn ..f distress, in the black darknc-ss „f the spruces. The .nothc-r ^"l ran an.unci hin, in a jrrcat circle. calMnir him ^ ^^C/fc to a.me; while he lay helpless in the san.e ^^^^ spot. telhnK iKT he conkl not. and that she /W^ •m.st ccnie to him. So the cries went back ^ '' .and f(,rth in the listenin^rni^ht. -//,,.;..,./. "-'me here." /^/W-., ^/,.;-.^ - , ,,„t . ,,„,; iH-re. ha-a-a-/i. ku-a-a-h ! " dan-er, fol|„u I " -and then the (rash of brush a> she rushed away, followed by the second fawn ; u ho,n sh.- "Hist save, thou-h she abandoned the heed- less ..ne to prowlers of the ni-ht. It uas riear enough uliat had liappened "h' cnes of the wilderness have all their mcanin- if one but knous |,ou ,o interpret f'^m. fto,,p,ng ever\ uiouKnt to listen to bis < ry ^luAk^Ji 66 V SCHOOL OF to guide inc. whc-n a heavy rustic came creep- ing cl(,wu the hill and passed close More me. Something, i)erhai)s, in the sound— a heavy though ahnost noiseless onward ])ush, which only one creature in the woods can possibly make — something, perhaps, in a faint new «'dor in the moi>t air told me instantly that keener ears than mine had heard the- cry; that M(K,ween the bear had left his blueberry l)atch, and was stalking the heedless fawn, whom he knew, by the hearing of his ears, to' have become separated from his watchful mother in the darkness. I regained the path silently — though Moowcen heeds nothing when his gamels afoot — and ran back to th.e canoe for my rifle. ( )rdinarily a bear is timid as a rab- bit; but I had never met one so late at night before, and knew not how he would act •should I take his game iway. Hesides, there is everything in the feeling with which one approaches an animal. If one comes timidly, doubtfully, the animal knows it; and if one' comes swift, silent, resolute, with his power \ 1 THE WOODS gripped tight, and tlic lianiiiKr back, and a forefinger resting lightly en the trigger guard, the annual knows it too you niav depend. Anyway, they always act as if they knew ; and you may safely follow the rule that, whatever your feeling is, whether fear or doubt or con- fidence, the large and dangerous animals will sense it instantly and adopt the opposite feeling for their rule of action. That is the way I have always found it in the wilderness. I met a bear once on a narrow path — but I must tell about that elsewhere. The cries had ceased; the wo(k1s were all dark and silent when I came back. I went as swiftly as possible — without heed or cau- tion; for whatever crackling I made the bear would attribute to the desperate mother — to the sp(;t where I had turned back. Thence I went on cautiously, taking my bearings from one great tree on the ridge 'that lifted its bulk against the sky; slower and slower, till, just this side a great windfall, a twig cracked sharply under mv foot. It was answered instantly by a grunt and a jump 67 ^ Crj^ in the iJ^ I r 6.S ^ Crj'/nihe V SCHOOL OF Ix'vond the uiiulfall— and then tb.c crash in- rush of a bear up the hill. earrvinv in the (alls that tloated down the ridge and at n.s. the water to my little tent. At tlavliglu I ucit hack to the ypot. I found uithout tn.uMe where the fawn had fallen; ihe in..s> i,,|d ,mitel\ of his stru I clinilKd tlu- last lid^r,.. „n „^y ^^.^^. back to the- lake. I hoard ru^tli^-s in thr underbrush, and then the umnistakahle ( ra. k of atui- under a deer'. f.H.t. XW mother had winded n,e ; she ua. now follouin- and circlin- down wind, to Inul out wheth.T he- lost fawn uere with ine, ,\s Net she knew not what had happenc-d. Tlu- hear h,id fri-htened lur into extra (are < .f the . >ne fawn of whom >he uas sure. 'IJu- other had Miuply vanished into the silen, ^ and mys- tery of the j^r-at wockIs. Where the path turned downward, in si^riu of the lake. I .av\ her lor a moment pl.nnle \ \, M.mdin- half hin^^ up the h.I! in my direction.' Near a thicket of eu-rniven that I had just passed, she .sounded her hoarse K-a-a-hJ^-a-a-fi ! and threw up her liaK. Theie was a rush within J^ Cry in the l^:. ^-^':ih%_ 5_i ■ 'J ■^^■^'i^L*. ^Q the thicket; a sharp k-a-a-li ! answered hers. ->/ CryinHte '"^'-''^ ^l^*-' second fawn burst out of the cover JMiptt <\yr^ where she had hidden him. and darted along ' '^« the ridge after her. junijjing Hke a big red lox from rock to nxk, ri>ing like a hawk over the windfalls, hitting her tracks wherever he could, and keeping his little nose hard do • n t,. !>•;., one needful lesson of following the white flag. 7' i%fc- Y theTishhawk \WW c/iicii'car ^ sliiill w ch () 7i' <'\vn into niy canoe, or behind me at the cold place among the rocks, to see if I vre catching anything. Th w th c pile of fish, — a blanket of sil black rocks, where I '«^'n, as he noted ver on the w for bear bait, — he would droi) I as stowing away chub ment to see how I did it. VVh P lower in amaze- were not rising, and his keen glance glearn of red and gold en the trout saw no circle off with a ch in my canoe, he would luck call of a brother fish eery ICwccc ! the go(xl- 11 emian. For there IS MICROCOPY RESOLUTION TEST CHART (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No 2l 1.0 I.I 1.25 2.8 i^ m t 1^ 1.4 2.5 2.2 2.0 1.8 1.6 _J APPLIED \hM G E Inc ^^ 1653 East Mjm Stfeet grJS Rochester, New -'urk 14609 USA '^aS (^16) 482 - 0500 - Phone ^SS (716) 288 - ')989 - Fa» imm^ 9 SCHOOL OF ^^ no envy nor malice nor any uncharitablcness IsmaQUes "'' ^^""''i<^l"^'-^- He lives in harmony with the ifte Fishhotak world, and seems glad when you land a big /;' one, though he is hungry himself, and the clamor from his nest, where his little ones are crying, is too keen for his heart's content. What is there in going a-fishing, ! wonder, that seems to change even the leopard's spots, and that puts a new heart into the man who hies him away to the brook when buds are swelling? There is Keeonekh the otter. Before he turned fisherman he was fierce, cruel, bloodthirsty, with a vile smell about him, like all the other weasels. Now he lives at peace with all the world and \z clean, \^7 gende, playful as a kitten and faithful as a dog when you make a pet of him. And there is Ismaques the fishhawk. Before he turned fisherman he was hated, like every other hawk, for his fierceness and his bandit ways. The shadow of his wings was the signal for hiding to all the timid ones. Jay and crow cried Thief! i/dcf! and kingbird ^•^^^ Wf "V^ sounded his war cry and rushed out to THE WOODS « battle. Now the little birds build their nests among the sticks of his great house, and the shadow of his wings is a sure protection. For owl and hawk and wild-cat have learned long since the wisdom of keeping well away from Ismaques' dwelling. Not only the birds, but men also, feel the change m Ismaques' disposition. I hardly know a hunter who will not go out of his way for a shot at a hawk; but they send a hearty good-luck after this winged fisherman of the same fierce family, even though they see him rising heavily out of the very pool where the big trout live, and where they expect to cast their flies at sundown. Along the southern New England shores his com- ing— regular as the calendar itself — is hailed with delight by the fishermen. One state, at least, where he is most abundant protects him by law; and even our Puritan forefathers, who seem to have neither made nor obeyed any game laws, looked upon him with a kindly eye, and made him an exception to the general license for killing. To their 75 ishhauk ^ SCHOOL OF credit, be it known, they once "publikly ^ i-ecijrimanded " one Master Eliphalet Bod- 1f»e Fishhauk "lan. ^ ^o" "^ J^^'''''^' evidently, for violently, A\ith jjowder and shot, doing away with one fishhawk, and wickedly destroying the nest and eggs of another. Whether this last were also done violently with powder and shot, by blowing the nest to pieces with an old gun, or in simple boy- fashion by shinning up the tree, the quaint old town record does nOt tell. But all this goes to show that our ancestors of the coast were kindly people at heart ; that they looked upon this brave, simple fisherman, who built his nest by their doors, much as the German village people look upon the stork that builds upon their chimneys, and regarded his com- ing as an omen of good luck and plenty to the fisher folk. Far back in the wilderness, where Ismaques builds his nest and goes a-fishing just as his ancestors did a thousand years ago, one finds the same honest bird, unspoiled alike by plenty or poverty, that excited our boyish ,J ."TJ^. ■•■?; THE WOODS » .1 imagination and won the friendly regard of our ancestors of the coast. Opposite my camp on the lake, where I tarried long one summer, charmed by the beauty of the place and the good fishing, a pair of fish hawks had built their nest in the top of a great spruce on the mountain side. It was this pair of birds that came daily to circle over my canoe, or over the rocks where I fished for chub, to see how I fared, and to send back a cheery CJiwcc ! chip, cliivcccc ! "good luck and good fishing," as they wheeled away. It would take a good deal of argument now to convince me that they did not at last r c- ognize me as a fellow-fisherman, and were not honestly interested in my methods and success. At first I went to the nest, not so much to study the fishhawks as to catch fleeting glimpses of a shy, wild life of the woods, which ^J, is hidden from most eyes. The fishing was ^^ good, and both birds were expert fishermen. While the young were growing, there was always an abundance in the big nest on the spruce top. The overflow of this abundance. n Ismatiues the Fishhanik ^mmm 78 9 SCHOOL OF in the shape of heads, bones, and unwanted IsmaQues ^^'""'"''^"ts, was cast over the sides of the nest ifte Fishhouk ^'">d furnished savory pickings for a score of hungry prowlers. Mink came over from frog hunting in the brook, drawn by the good smell in the air. Skunks lumbered Uuwn from the hill, with a curious, hollow, bumping sound to announce their coming. Weasels, and one grizzly old pine marten, too slow or rheumatic for successful tree hunting, g'' Jed out of the underbrush and helped themselves without asking leave. Wild-cats quarreled like fiends over the pickings; more than once I heard them tl "re screeching in the night. And one late afternoon, as I lingered in my hiding among ' the rocks while the shadows deepened, a big lucivee stole out of the bushes, as if ashamed of himself, and took to nosing daintily among the fish bones. It was his first appearance, evidently. He did not know that the feast was free, but thought all the while that he was stealing somebody's catch. One could see it all in THE WOODS 9 his attitudes, his starts and listenings, his low growlings to himself. He was bigger than anybody else there, and had no cause to be afraid; but there is a tremendous respect among all animals for the chase law and the rights of others ; and the big cat felt it. He was hungry for fish; but. big as he was, his every movement showed that he was ready to take to his heels before the first little crea- ture that should rise up and screech in his face : " This is mine ! " Later, when he grew accustomed to things and the fishhawks' generosity in providing a feast for all who might come in from the wilderness byways and hedges, he would come in boldly enough and claim his own ; but now, moving stealthily about, halting and listening timidly, he fur- nished a study in animal rights that repaid in itself all the long hours of watching. But the hawks themselves \v-ere more inter- esting than their unbidden guests. Ismaques, honest fellow that he is, mates for life, and comes back to the same nest year after year. The only exception to this rule that I 79 /^aciues the ^ishhaiak :l^^l 8o 9 SCHOOL Of know, is in the case of a fishhawk. whom I IsmaQues ^'^^'^^' ^""'^^^ ^^ ^ l^"}'- -'^^d who lost his mate ifte Fishhauk one summer by an accident. The accident ^ -i came from a gun in the hands of an unthink- ing sportsman. The grief of Ismaques was evident, even to the unthinking. One could hear it in the lonely, questioning cry t' t he sent out over the still summer woi and see it in the sweep of his wings as ,,e went far afield to other ponds — not to fish, for Ismaques never fishes on his neighbor's pre- serves, b t to search for his lost mate. For weeks he lingered in the old haunts, calling and searching everywhere ; but at last the lone- liness and the memories were too much for him. He left the place long before the time of migra- tion had come ; and the next spring a strange couple came to the spot, repaired the old nest, and went fishing in the pond. Ordinarily, the' birds respect each other's fishing grounds, and especially the old nests; but this pair came and took possession without hesitation, as if they had some understanding with the former owner, who never came back again. c^-'^ THE WOODS 9 The old spruce on the mountain side had beer occupied many years ly my fishing friends. As is usually the case, it had given up its hfe to its bird masters. The oil from their frequent feastings had soaked into the bark, following down and down, checking the sap's rising, till at last it grew discour- aged and ceased to climb. Then the tree died and gave up its branches, one by one, to repair the nest above. The jagged, broken ends showed everywhere how they had been broken off to supply the hawks' necessities. There is a curious bit of building lore suggested by these broken branches, that one may learn for himself any springtime by watching the birds at their nest build- mg. Large sticks are required for a founda- tion The ground is strewed with such ; but Isx • lever comes down to the ground if 11^ -i avoid it. Even when he drops an unusually heavy fish, in his flight above the trees, he looks after it regretfully, but never follows. He may be hungry, but he will not set his huge hooked talons on the earth. 8i t^QCiues the "^ishhatuk W" I 9 SCHOOL Op ^ 82 ^^ ^^r\x\o\. walk, and loses all his power istnoQues ^^^^^' ^" '^^ ^'^es .if and fishes patiently, ^ ^^'^Mtouk liours long, to replace his lost catch. When he needs sticks for his nest, he searches out a tree and breaks off the dead branches by his weight. If the stick be stub- born, he rises far above it and drops like a cannon ball, gripping it in his claws and snapping it short off at the same instant by the force of his blow. 'I wice I have been guided to where Ismaques and his mate were collecting material by reports like pistol shots ringing through the wood, as the great birds fell upon the dead branches and snapped them off. Once, when he came down too bard, I saw him fall almost to the ground, ,.,„^ flapping lustily, before he found his wings' " )l^l|^"^ ^^'^^'^^ ^^^■''^y ^^^^'^ '■''•'' four-foot stick tri- ^^ ^-^ umphantly. There is another curious bit of bird lore that I discovered here in the autumn, when, m much later than usual, I came back through ^<^J the lake. Ismaques, when he goes away for the long winter at the South, does not leave THE WOODS O his house to the mercy c.f the winter storms until he has first repaired it. Large fresh sticks are wedged in firmly across the to]} of the nest; doubtful ones are pulled out and carefully replaced, and the uhole structure made shipshape for stormy weather. This careful rejxiir, together with the fact that the nest is aluays well soaked in oil, which pre- serves it from the rain, saves a deal of trouble for Ismaques. He builds for life, and knows, when he goes away in the fall, that, barring untoward accidents, his house will be waiting for hin with the quiet welcome of ..Id asso- ciations when he comes back in the spring. Whether this is a habit of all ospreys, or only of the two on Big Squatuk Lake — who were very wise birds in other ways — I am unable to say. What becomes of the young birds is also, to me, a mystery. The home ties are very strong, and the little ones stay with the parents much longer than other birds do, as a rule; but when the spring comes you will see only the old birds at the home nest. The «3 -r£*s<-s,ii^ ! 9 SCHOOL OF 84 yoi^i'^g «>"it back to the same j^eneral neigh- IsmaQueS '^O'''^*"'^. I think; but where the hike is small ffte Fishhouk they never build nor trespass on the same '^ waters. As with the kingfishers, each pair of birds seem to have their own pond or por- tion ; but by what old law of the waters thev find and stake their claim is yet to be dis- co\ered. There were two little ones in the nest when I first found it; and I used to watch them in the intervals when nothing was stir- ring in the underbrush near my hiding place. They were happy, whistling little fellows, well fed and contented with the world. At times they would stand for hours on the edge of the nest, looking down over the slanting tree-tops to the lake, finding the great rust- ling green world, and the passing birds, and the glinting of light on the sparkling water, and the hazy blue of the distant mountains marvelously interesting, if one could ludge from their attitude and their pipings. Then a pair of broad wings would sweep into sight, and they would stretch their wings wide THE WOODS 9 and break into eager whistlings, — A^^, ^/)>, c/i'zaec^ chip, cliwcecccc? "did you get him? /^ is he a big one, niother? " And they would stand tiptoeing gingerly about the edge of the great nest, stretching their necks eagerly for a first glimpse of the catch. At times only one of the old birds would go a-fishing, while the other watched the nest. Hut when luck was poor both birds would seek the lake. At such times the mother bird, larger and stronger than the male, would fish along the shore, witliin sight and hearing of her little ones. The male, mean- while, would go sweeping down the lake to the trout pools at the outlet, where the big chub lived, in search of better fishing grounds. If the wind were strong, you would see a curious bit of sea lore as he came back with his fish. He would never fly strai^-ht '^^ "^'^ against the wind, but tack back and forth, as if he had learned the trie from watching the sailor fishermen of the coast beating back into har-_ bor. And, watching him through '^ishhaiak ^ SCHOOL OF 86 y°"^ S'^'^ss, you would see that he always car- IstnaQues "^'*^ '^'^ ^^^^ endwise and head first, so as to fAe Fishhouk present the least possible resistance to the breeze. While the young Mere being fed, you were certain to gain new respect for Isniaques by seeing how well he brought up his little ones. If the fish were large, it was torn into shreds and given piecemeal to the young, each of whom waited for his turn with exemplary patience. There .,as no crowding or push- ing for the first and biggest bite, such as you see in a nest of robins. If the fish were small, it was given entire to one of the young, who worried it down as best he could, while the mother bird swept back to the lake for another. The second nestling stood on the edge of the nest meanwhile, whistling good luck and waiting his turn, without a thought, apjjarently, of seizing a share from his mate beside him. Just under the hawks a pair of jays had built their nest among the sticks of Ismaques' dwelling, and raised their young on the THE WOODS e abundant crumbs which fell from the rich man's table. It was curious and intensely interesting to watch the change which seemed to be going on in the jays' disposition by reason of the unusual friendship. Deedee- askh the jay has not a friend among the wood folk. They all know he is a thief and a meddler, and hunt him away without mercy if they find him near their nests. But the great fishhawks welcomed him, trusted him ; and he responded nobly to the unusual confidence. He never tried to steal from the young, not even when the mother bird was away, but contented himself with picking up the stray bits that they had left. And he more than repaid Ismaques by the sharp watch which he kept over the nest, and indeed over all the mountain side. Nothing passes in the woods without the jay's knowl- edge; and here he seemed, for all the world, like a watchful terrier, knowing that he had only to bark to bring a power of wing and claw sufficient to repel any daiger. When prowlers came down from the mountain to 87 l^mariues the Yishhatak ss feast on the heads and bones scattered about / Jstnaoues ^'^^ ^^°* °^ *'^^' ^^^^' Deedeeaskh dropped ifte Fishhouk down among them and went dodging about, whistling his insatiable curiosity. So long as they took only what was their own, he made no fuss about it ; but he was there to watch, and he let them know sharply their mistake, if they showed any desire to cast evil eyes at the nest above. Once, as my canoe was gliding along the shore, I heard the jays' unmistakable cry of danger. The fishhawks were wheeling in great circles over the lake, watching for the glint of fish near the surface, when the cry came, and they darted away for the nest. Pushing out into the lake, I saw them sweep- ing above the tree-tops in swift circles, utter- ing short, sharp cries of anger. Presently they began to swoop fiercely at some animal — a fisher, probably — that was climbing the tree below. I stole up to see what it was; but ere I reached the place they had driven the intruder awa}'. I heard one of the jays far off in the woods, following the robber and ;"4«v -w;- *iE.*!« ■PRESENTLY THEY BEGAN TO SWOQP FIERCELY AT SOME ANIMAL" W "T, '*% :s:-i;^v:iijat\: .i 'ii screaming to let the fishhawks know just where he was. The other jay sat close by her own little ones, cowering under the shadow of the great dark wings above. And presently Deedeeaskh came back, bubbling over with the excitement, whistling to them in his own way that he had followed the ras- cal clear to his den, and would keep a sharp watch over him in future. When a big hawk came near, or when, on dark afternoons, a young owl took to hiinting in the neighbo'-hood, the jays sounded the alarm, and the fishhawks swept up from the lake on the instant. Whether Deedeeaskh were more concerned for his own young than for the young fishhawks I have no means of knowing. The fishermen's actions at such times showed a curious mixture of fear and defiance. The mother would sit on the nest while Ismaques circled over it, both birds uttering a shrill, whistling challenge. But they never attacked the feathered roobers, as they had done with the fisher, and, so far as I could see, there was no need. Kookoos- 91 ^ishhatak ■ i\ iHI 92 fsmaQues rne Fishhauk *Hj,,-. :.'j' ^ SCHOOL OF koos the oul and Hawahak the hawk might be very hungiy; but the sight of those great wings circling over the nest and the shrill cry of defiance in their ears sent them hur- riedly away to other hunting grounds. There was only one enemy that ever seri- ously troubled the fishhawks; and he did it in as decent a sort of way as was possible under the circumstances. That was Cheplahgan the eagle. When he was hungry and had found nothing himself, and his two eaglets, far away in their nest on the mountain, needed a bite of fish to vary their diet, he would set his wings to the breeze and mount up till he could see both ospreys at their fishing. There, sailing in slow circles, he would watch for hours till he saw Ismaques catch a big fish, when he would drop like a bolt and hold him up at the point of his talons, like any other highway- man. It was of no use trying to escape. Sometimes Ismaques would attempt it, but the greal dark wings would whirl around him and strike do^vn a sharp and K-p« THE WOODS B unmistakable warning. It always ended the same way. Ismaques, being wise, would drop his fish, and the eagle would swoop down after it. often F"izing it ere it reached the water. But he never injured the fishhawks, and he never disturbed the nest. So they got along well enough together. Cheplahgan had a bite of fish now and then in his own way; and honest Ismaques, who never went long hungry, made the best of a bad situation. Which shows that fishing has also taught him patience, and a wise philosophy of living. The jays took no part in these struggles. Occasionally they cried out a sharp warning as Cheplahgan came plunging down out of the blue, over the head of Ismaques; but they seemed to know perfectly how the unequal contest must end, and they always had a deal of jabber among themselves over it, the meaning of which I could never make out. As for myself, I am sure that Deedeeaskh could never make up his mind what to think of me. At first, when I came, he would cry out a danger note that brought the fishhawks ! 94 9 SCHOOL OF circling over their nest, looking down into IsmaQUes ^^^^ underbrush with wild yellow eyes to see ff»e Fishhouk what danger threatened. Hut after I had hidden myself away a few times, and made no motion to disturb either the nest or the hungry prowlers that came to feast on the fish- hawks' bounty, Deedeeaskh set me down as an idle, harmless creature who would, never- theless, bear watching. He never got over his curiosity to know what brought me there. Sometimes, when I thought him far away, I would find him suddenly on a branch just over my head, looking down at me intendy. When I went away he would follow me, whistling, to my canoe ; but he never called the fishhawks again, unless some unusual action of mine aroused his suspicion; and after one look they would circle away, as if they knew they had nothing to fear. They had seen me fishing so often that they thought they understood me, undoubtedly. There was one curious habit of these birds that I had never noticed before. Occasion- ally, when the weather threatened a change, THE WOODS » or when the birds and their little ones had fed full, Ismaqucs would mount up to an enor- mous altitude, where he would sail about in slow circles, his broad vans steady to the breeze, as if he were an ordinary hen hawk, enjoying himself and contemplating the world from an indifferent distance. Suddenly, with one clear, sharp whistle to announce his inten- tion, he would drop like a plummet for a thousand feet, catch himself in mid-air, and zigzag down to the nest in the spruce top, whirling, diving, tumbling, and crying aloud the while in wild, ecstatic exclamations, — just as a woodcock comes whirling, plunging, twittering down from a height to his brown mate in the alders below. Then Ismaques would mount up again and repeat his dizzy plunge, while his larger mate stood quiet in the spruce top, and the little fishhawks tip- toed about the edge of the n^=A, pip-pipping their wonder and delight at their own papa's dazzling performance. This is undoubtedly one of Lmaques' springtime habits, by which he tries to win 95 yshhatak 11 96 i an admiring look from the keen yellow eyes _ of his mate; but I noticed him using it more the Fishhoiak. ^'■^'/ " there he is! " P/p, pip! " here goes ! " like a boy with his first nibble. But a short, clear whistle from the mother stopped them ere they had begun to fall ; and they would flap up to her, protesting eagerly that they could catch that fellow, sure, if she would only let them try. As they wheeled in over me on their way down the lake, one of the youngsters caught the gleam of rry pile -^f chub among the rocks. Pip, ch\vccc! lie 'histled, and down they came, both of them, like rockets. They ^fS^€^-^ 0''^'^^m.-.MM^ THE WOODS W were hungry; here were fish galore; and they had not noticed me at all, sitting very ^ still among the rocks. Pip, pip, pip, hurrah ! they piped as they came down. But the mother bird, who had noted me and my pile of fish the first thing as she rounded the point, swept in swiftly ^^^ with a curious, half-angry, half- anxious chiding that I had never heard from her before, — Chip chip, chip! Chip! Chip! — growing sharper and shriller at each repetition, till they heeded it and swerved aside. As I looked up they were just over my head, looking down at me now with eager, wondering eyes. Then they were led aside in a wide circle and talked to with wise, quiet whistlings before they were sent back to their fishing again. And now as they sweep round and round over the edge of a shoal, one of th- 'ittle fellows sees a fish and drops lower to tollow it. The mother sees it too ; notee? that the fish is slanting up to the surface, and wisely lets the young fishemian alone. He is too 103 chool for ^shermen f L-.'C-wt'* 1 '-^^ w SCHOOL oe 104 "^^'" ^^"'^ ^^■''^*^'* "°^^' ; ^'■'^ g^-'irc and the dancing ^ School for ^y^^^'^ ^°^'^^'' ^''^: ^^c loses his gleam of ^ittie^^ silver in the flash of a whitecap. Mother n^ermefi bird mounts higher, and whistles him up ^^■'lere he can see better. But there is the fish again, and the youngster, hungry and heedless, sets his wings for a swoop. C/iip, chip! "wait, he's going down," cautions the mother; but the little fellow, too hungry to wait, shoots down like an arrow. He is a yard above the su'face when a big whitecap jumps up at him and frightens him. He hesitates, swerves, flaps lustily to save himself. Then under the whitecap is a gleam of silver again. Down he goes on the instant, — tigh ! <5^(?/ — likeaboy taking his first dive. He is out of sight for a full moment, while two waves race over him, and I hold my breath waiting for him to come up. Then he bursts out, sputtering and shaking him- ^self, and of course without his fish. As he rises heavily the mother, who has been circling over him whistling '■^' 1 /itf» : w KAV.-ir )vj : I05 ^^hool for THE WOODS H advice and comfort, stops short, with a single blow of her pinions against the air She has seen the same f^sh, watched him ^Z^HofNe shoot away under the plunge of her little S^ftshe rmen one, and now sees him glancing up to the '^^ '-^•-—'^ edge of the shoal where the minnows are playing. She knows that the young pupils are growing discouraged, and that the time has come to hearten them. C/iip, chip! "watch, I'll show you," she whistles — Cheeeep! with a sharp up-slide at the end, which I soon grow to recognize as the signal to strike. At the cry she sets her wings and shoots downward with strong, even plunge, strikes a wave squarely as it rises, passes under it, and is out on the other side, grip- ping a big chub. The little ones follow her, whistling their delight, and telling her that perhaps now they will go back to the nest and take a look at the fish before they go on with their fishing. Which means, of course, that they will eat it and go to sleep perfectly satisfied with the good fun of fishing; and then lessons are over for the day. 'PlP'lftWf^!*?-*! -^-•^— ' -"• io6 The mother, however hn« r.fi ■^ScAoo/ for '" ''- wise head. She kl lu" "'""«'"^ Kp^^'f^^ ones arc not yet t^'d T u"' """ ''"'' ^jps— that there is much to tearl, tl,„ i / ^usfarr^scd L:r.hr"'r"^'^"-'^ ^hen,outto,car "totlkeath ,'™"'"" '"= comes up; and to W t a L t""' "' *e front side, under ec;r"r"'^™ her fish tightly, she bends in h-s,o;:"flr';? ^•rugging" ;;t T ''' '' occasionally it not" r . '"'''"■ '^''""•'''?>' "trv L!r • ' "*"""• ^'>. /'// "here ■■" ''--mi^tiett r;:;^™:.^^^^^^^^^ »d example and pastl.perX' ' """■" is ^sa'tifn™'""""^"''™^ but there whLh" stX;';,^- "^er. .histlc that she sees him, and that ■GRIPPING HIS F,SH AND FfF-I'IPPfSG r:*i c.AuLTATJON " ^^^*^^^^^^^^^^^9^^ li m&^^ss.-^;^jp,j ■miea6e9Ka^Ts:t:x^yL'ig*^^a^ £rsfis:xitfir£i 'i-mTS SimiM^M^ he is doing well. In a again, with a great rush and moment he sputter, gripping his fish and ///-//>//,/^his exultation. Away ^-f"' he goes in low heavy flight to the nest. The mother circles over him a moment to be sure he is not overloaded; then she goes back with the other neophyte and ranges back and forth over the shoal's edge. It is clear now to even my eyes that there is a vast difference in the characters of young fishhawks. The first was eager, headstrong, mipatient; the second is calmer, stronger, more obedient. He watches the mother; he' heeds her signals. Five minutes later he makes a clean, beautiful swoop and comes up with his fish. The mother whistles her praise as she drops beside him. My eyes fol- low them as, gossiping like two old cronies, they v.in^ u,cii siow way over the dancing whitecaps and climb the slanting tree-tops to the nest The day's lessons are over now, and I go back to my bait catching with a new admiration for these winged members of the 109 ^School for fishermen 'JSKT ?i ■M,.lXK^mXKX' ' M* I lO ^ School for v^^ ^Lf}'sAermen II: ^ SCHOOL OF brotherhood. Perhaps there is also a bit of envy or regret in my meditation as I tie on a new hook to replace the one that an uneasy eel is trying to rid himself of, down in the mud. If I had only had some one to teach me like that, I should certainly now be a better fisherman. Next day, when the mother came up the lake to the shoal with her two little ones, there was a surprise awaiting them. For half an hour I had been watching from the point to anticipate their coming. There were some things that puzzled me, and that puzzle me still, in Ismaques' fishing. If he caught his fish in his beaV after the methods of mii k and otter, I could understand it better. But to catch a fish — whose dart is like lightning — under the water with his feet, when, after his plunge, he can see neither his fish nor his feet, must require some puzzling calcula- tion. And I had set a trap in my head to find out how it is done. When the fishermen hove into sight, and their eager pipings came faintly up the lake TM^^im. '-t^wmTMmimtNa^s^^^^^^^v^B^jsF^wm-^ THE WOODS 9 ahead of them, I jjaddled hastily out and turned loose a half-dozen chub in the shallow water. I had kept them alive as long as possible in a big pail, and they still had life enough to fin about near the surface. Whea *he fishermen arrived I was sitting among the rocks as usual, and turned to acknowledge the mother bird's Cliwcc? Hut my deep- laid scheme to find out their method accom- plished nothing; except, perhaps, to spoil the day's lesson. They saw my bait on the in- stant. One of the youngsters dove headlong without poising, went under, missed his fish, rose, plunged again. He got him that time and went away sputter- ing. The second tc ': his time, came down on a long swift slant, and got his fish without going , under. Almost before the ' lesson began it was over. The mother circled about for a few moments in a puzzled sort of way, watching the young 1 1 1 ^ ^hool for jQfNe i^shermen ' (Ha y If : I I 12 ^ School tor ijkfisherinen ^ ^ SCHOOL OF rishcniKn fl.ii)i)in;r up the .slope to their nest. Soinc-thin>*■ 77ff WOODS W whistled her pupils up to her, and went on to other fishini( Ljroupfis. ^ ^ . I, 1 r , ^ School fot 1 resently, above the next pouit, I heard /fj(jtile their |Mpin « I'' III ^ SCHOOL OF J 22 spruce when the sounds waked him, and he The^P^rMdges^ started oui instantly, not to hunt — it was AjRo//Ca// still tfK) bright — bi.t to locate his game and ^^j^ follow silently to the roosting place, near •*^ which he would hide and wait till the twi- light fell darkly. I could see it all in his attitude as he poised forward, swinging his round head to and fro, like a dog on an air trail, locating the flock accurately before he should take another flight. Up on the hillside the eager sounds had stopped for a moment, as if some strange sixth sense had warned the birds to be silent. .,,. . . ^ The owl was puzzled ; but I dared not move, Pr/' -^Z because he was looking straight over me. '^'r& Some faint sound, too faint for my ears, ■{,/p made him turn his head, and on the instant fjj I reached for the tiny rifle lying before me in the canoe. Just as he spread his wings to investigate the new sound, the little rifle spoke, and he tumbled heavily to the nore. "One robber the less," I was thinking, when the canoe swung slightly on the water. There was a heavy plunge, a vicious rush of :-#. ?&■) ^y 123 THE WOODS 9 my unheeded line, and I seized my rod to find myself fast to a big trout, which had jj^ a, , wii^ been watching my flies from his hiding ^ollSall'f among the lily pads till his suspicions were quieted, and the first slight movement brought him up with a rush. Ten minutes later he lay in my canoe, where I could sec him plainly to my heart's content. I was waiting for the pool to grow quiet again, when a new sound came from the underbrush, a rapid //^/, lop, lop, lop, lop, like the sound in a bottle as water is poured in and the air rushes out. There was a brook near the sounds, a lazy little stream, that had lost itself among the alders and forgotten all its music ; and my first thought was that some animal was standing in the water to drink, and waking the voice of the brook as the current rippled past his legs. The canoe glided over to find out what he was, when, in the midst of the sounds, came the unmistakable questioning Whit-kwit? of partridges — and there they were, just vanishing glimpses of alert forms 4 '■i^-f*»tji&^i*nmA ^ SCHOOL OF ,,^ and keen ryes glidin^r anionjr the tangled 7hey>arMdges^ '"''''"'•■ •"^^•'""- ^^''i^'" near the bi(,„k they had ^^^(^'i chan-ed the soft, gossipy chatter, by which a fes^ Hock holds itself together in the wild tangle of the bnrned lands, into a curious liquid «ouncI, so like the gurgling of water by a mossy stone that it would haxe deceiNed me completely, had I not seen the birds. It was as if they tried to remind the little alder brook of the music it had lost far back amon.r the hills. ^ _ Now I had been straitly charged, on leav- ing camp, to bring back three partridges for our Sunday dinner. My own little flock had grown a bi^ ti,-,.,! ^f trout and canned foods- and a t.-s of young broiled partridges,' which I had recently given them, had left them hungry for more. So I left the pool and my fishing rod, just as the trout began to rise, to glide into the alders with my pocket rifle. There were at least a dozen birds there full-grown and strong of wing, that had not yet decided to scatter to the four winds as ■11a •L^'fiSSffi THE WOODS ® had most of tli If covcvs which one mi^rli ht '25 "K-ct on the burned lands. All sunnner ^ I<•"^^ while berrie. are olentN", the flocks hold ^'//%ff ^^*' t.'^^ether, fuxlin^r t.n pairs cf c,uiet eves nuu h ''''"^''"■' better protection ajrainst surprises than ..ne fn-htened pair. I.:ach flock is then under the absolute authority of the mother bird' and one who follows them ^^.fs some curious and intensely interesting -Hnipses of a par- tridge's education. If the UK.ther bird is killed by owl or hawk or weasel, the . „ck still holds together, while berries last, under the leadership of one of their ,.un number more bold or cunning than the others. Hut with the ripening autumn, when the birds have learned or think thev have learned all the sights and sounds and dangers of the wilderness, the coxey scatters; partlv to cover a wider range in feeding as food gmuvs scarcer; partly in natural revolt at maternal authority, which no bird or animal likes to endure after he has once learned to take care of himself. ■-^\% r/^ )■' J-iir-'v'.' iff 126 AVfo/fCa/I ^ ^ SCHOOL OF I followed the flock rapidly, though cau- tiously, through an interminable tangle of alders that bordered V- little stream, and learned some things about them; though they gave me no chance whatever for a rifle shot. The mother was gone; their leader was a foxy bird, the smallest of the lot. who kept them moving in dense cover, running crouching, hiding, inquisitive about me and watchmg me. yet keeping themselves beyond reach of harm. All the while the leader talked to them, a curious language of cheep- ings and whistlings; and they answered back with questions or sharp exclamations as my head appeared in sight for a moment. Where the cover was densest they waited till I was almost upon them before they whisked out of sight; and where there was a bit of openincr they whirred up noisily on strong wings, o^ sailed swiftly away from a fallen log with the noiseless flight that a partridge knows so well how to use when the occasion comes. Already the instinct to scatter was at work among them. During the day they had MBi THE WOODS m probably been fecdinjr separately al, great hillside; but with I th -nLTth enn )ng the hadous 127 ey came together again to face tl ness night in the peace and .securitv of th old companionship. And 1 had fortunateh been quiet enough at my fishing to h when the leader be ., , The 'Por/r/d^' le nilder- AoZ/ra// ear om gan to call ti.em together and they had answered, here and there, fr their feeding, I gave up following fhem after a while — they were too quick for me in the alder tangle — and .me cut of the swamo to the ndgc. There I ran along a dee , . i and circled down ahead of them to a thicket of cedar where ^^^^ ^ I thought "^ they might pass the night Presently I heard them coming— /F////- I'wi^r pr-r-r, pr-r-> prut, pnit/ — :,nd saw f^ve or six of them runnir.g rapidly. The little leader saw me at the same instant and dodgtd back out of sight. Most of his flock followed him : but one bird, more inquisitive than the rest, jumped to a fallen log, drew fs \ 128 The IPa/'/r/dPes* ' Roll Can ^ SCHOOL OF '.imsclf up straight as a string, anr' eyed me steadily. The little rifle spoke omptly; and I stowed him away comfortaoly, a fine l)lump bird, minus his head, in a big pocket of my hunting shirt. At the report another jxartridge, cpiestion- ing the unknown sound, flew to a thick spruce, pressed close against the trunk to hide himself, and stood listening intently. Whether he was waiting to hear the .sound again, or was frightened and listening for ...^ ^ t'^^" call of the leader, I could not '^^\* t*^""- I fii'L'd quickly, and saw him sail down against the hillside, with a loud thump and a flutter of feathers behind him to tell me that he was hard hit. I followed him up the hill, hearing an occasional flutter of wings to guide my feet, till the sounds vanished into a great tangle' of underbrush and fallen trees. I searched here ten minutes or more in vain, then lis- tened in the vast silence for a longer period; but the bird had hidden himself awav and was watching me, no doubt, out of 'some I i 'W'W^' i I t 129 TWC WOODS ® covert, where an owl n.ight pass by with- out finding him. Reluctantly I turned away toward the swamp The T^arfr/d^es' Close beside me was 'a fallen log; on ''"''^"'^- n^y nght was another; and the two had fallen .0 as to make the sides of a great angle then- tops resting together against the ^■11. Between the two were several huge rees growing among the rocks a.xl under- brush. I climbed upon one of these fallen trees and moved along it cautiouslv, some e.ght or ten feet above the ground/looking down searchingly for a stray brown feather to guide me to mv lost partridge Suddenly the log under my feet began o rock gently. I .topped in astonishment, looking for the cause of the strange teeter- ing; but there was nothing on the log beside myself. After a moment I went on again, ooking agam for n.y partridge. Again the log rocked, heavily- this time, almost throw- >ng me off. Then I noticed that the tip of tf^c other log, which lay balanced across a great rock, was under the tip of mv log and WJPTT IP SCHOOL OF 130 The T^rlr/dges* \ lRo//Ca// ^^ was being pried up by something on the other end. Some animal was there, and it flashed upon me suddenly that he was heavy enough to lift my weight with his stout lever. I stole along so as to look behind a great tree — and there on the other log, not twenty feet away, a big bear was standing, twisting himself uneasily, trying to decide whether to go on or go back on his unstable footing. He discovered me at the instant that my face appeared behind the tree. Such surprise, such wonder I have seldom seen in an animal's face. For a long moment he met my eye? steadily with his. Then he began to iwist again, while the logs rocked up and down. Again he looked at the strange animal on the other log ; but the face behind the tree had not moved nor changed; the eyes looked steadily into his. With a startled movement he plunged off into the underbrush, and but for a swift grip on a branch the sudden lurch would have sent me off backward among the 7 / THE WOODS » 131 rocks. As he jumped I heard a swift flutter of wings. I followed it timidly, jj^ ^^^/^des' not knowing where the bear was, and in a HoIlS^all^ moment I had the second partridge stowed away comfortably with his brother in my hunting shirt. The rest of the flock had scattered widely by this time. I found one or two and fol- lowed them ; but they dodged away into the thick alders, where I could not find them quick enough with my rifle sight. After a vain, hasty shot or two I went back to my fishing. Woods and lake were soon quiet again. The trout had stopped rising, in one of their sudden moods. A vast silence brooded over the place, unbroken by any buzz of my noisy reel, and the twilight shadows were growing deeper and longer, when the soft, gliding, questioning chatter of partridges came float- ing out of the alders. The leader was there, in the thickest tangle — I had learned in an hour to recognize hi.>. peculiar Prut, prut — and from the hillside and the alder swamp 132 The T^rfrid^es' \ lRo//Ca/I ^ and the big evergreens his flock were answer- ing; here a ktoit, and there a prul, and beyond a swift burr of wings, all drawing closer and closer together. I had still a third partridge to get for my own hungry flock; so I stole swiftly back into the alder swamp. There I found a little game path and crept along it on hands and knees, drawing cautiously near to the leader's continued callinL^ In the midst of a thicket of low black alders, surrounded by a perfect hedge of bushes, I found him at last. He was on the lower end of a fallen log, gliding rapidly up and down, spreading wings and tail and bud- ding ruff, as if he were drumming, and send- ing out his peculiar call at every pause. Above him, in a long line on the same log, five other partridges were sitting perfectly quiet, save now and then, when an answer came to the leader's call, they would turn their heads and listen intently till the under- brush parted cautiously and another bird flitted up beside them. Then another call. '.! /, ■THEY WC'JLD TURN THEIR HEADS AND LISTEN INTENTLY" mmm and from the distant hillside a faint k-vit- kivit and a rush of winteninelf up abruptly at sight of my face peering out of the under- brush. F"or a long two minutes he never stirred so much as an eyelid. Then he glided swiftly back, with a faint, puzzled, ciuestioning kxvit-kivit? to where his flock were waiting. A low signal that I could barely hear, a swift movement — then the flock thundered away in scattered flight into the silent, friendly woods. Ten minutes later I was crouched in some tb'ck underbrush looking uj) into a great sjirice, when I could just mak-. ut the leader standing by an ui)right branch in sharp silhouette against the glowing west. 140 A IRollCaU V I had foil. -^ (I lis swift flight, and now lay listening .' 4.1111 'o his searching call as it went out tlirou-n ihe twilight, calling his little tlock to t'io roosting tree. From the swamp and the hillsid • and far down by the ciiiiet lake they :. w ed, tail tly .1'. first, then with clearer cal' d '!.o whirr of swift wings as they caiv.e i 1 But already • wA ..ei^ an' heard enough; t(H) nu'.ch, indec 1, fi : u ]>e. _c of mind. 1 crept away thr -ugh the ^Udinp, the eager calls following me » \en ti ;ny iiioe; first a plaint, as if something wei' ^acking to the placid lake and (|uiet W( > an> the oft beauty of twilight; and tlien a taint jUe tion. always heard in the kwit k{ a ])a!- tridge, as if a\\\- I couJtl explain uh -wo eager voices would never ni;. in answer to roll call when the shadows lei\,,thene'V 1^ :/^.(^ii[r 141 HERE are always two surprises when you meet a bear. You have one, and he has the other. On your tramps and camps in the bi., i, ,, , •f ' ^ .111 , c^g/> YouMeef if you are panic-stricken, he knows exactly what to do; if you are feai-ful, he has no fear; if you are inquisitive, he is instantly shy; and, like all other wild creatures, he has an almost uncanny way of understand- ing your thought. It is as if, in that intent, penetrating gaze of his, he saw your soul turned inside out for his inspection. The only exception is when you meet him with- out fear or curiosity, with the desire simply to attend to your own affairs, as if he were a stranger and an equal. That rare mental attitude he understands perfectly — for is it not his own ? — and he goes his way quietly, as if he had not seen you. For every chance meeting Mooween seems to have a plan of action ready, which he applies without a question or an instant's hesitation. Make an unknown sound behind him as he plods along the shore, and he hurls himself headlong into the cover of the Inishes, as if your voice had touched a button eTBeoi I — --'S>;.i^i i I ^ SCHOOL OF ^ „ that released a coiled spring beneath him. XOhenVou Meef ^^^^'•"^^'^•'^^^^ 'i^' "^''^y come back to find out .V'^/iS Bear ^^'-^t frightened him. Sit perfectly still, and he rises on his hind legs for a look and a long sniff to find out who you are. Jump at him with a yell and a flourish the instant he appears, and he will hurl chii)s and dirt back at you as he digs his toes into the hill- side for a better grip and scrambles away whimiJering like a scared pupjn'. Once in a way, as you steal through the ^.KJ^^M^J^Iv^ autumn woods or hurry over the trail, you will hear sudden loud rustlings and shakings on the hardwood ridge aboxe you, as if a small cyclone were perched there for a while, ■^ -C> o ^""'"^''^g \\^T^^:^i among the leaves before "^'^iJ^'^ blowing on. Tlien, if you steal up ^%^-i' toward the sound, you will find Moo- ^'F;^i ween standing on a big limb of a beech tree, grasping the narrowing trunk with his powerful forearms, tugging ^v:^;and pushing mightily to shake down the ,«-. ..- h ■. '■'P'-' beechnuts. The ratdc and dash of ■',^'^'-'l^^^^''i^'^',J)'[p^^i^r\ ^'^^ falling fruit is such music to 3 . ... '-S'';-^j/ tf' THE WOODS » Moowecn's cars that he will not hear the riistle of your approach, nor the twig that snaps under your careless foot. If you cry aloud now, under the hilarious impression that you have him sure at last, there i another surprise awaiting you. And that suggests a bit of advice, wh....i is most jXTtincnt : don't stand under the bear when you cry out. If he is a little fellow, he will shoot up tlic tree, faster than ever a jumping jack went up his stick, and hide in a cluster of leaves, as near the top as he can get. But if he is a big bear, he will tumble down on you before you know what has happened. No slow climbing for him; lie just lets go and comes down by gravitation. As Uncle Remus says — who has some keen knowledge of animal ways under his story-telling humor — "Brer Bar, he scramble 'bout half-way down de bee tree, en den he turn eve'ything loose en hit de groun' kerb iff ! Look like 't wuz nuff ter jolt de lite out'n 'im." Somehow it never does jolt the life out of him, notwithstanding his great weight; nor 149 Tti^n YouMeef ^ A.rtf'- «*) SCHOOL OF does it interfere in any way with liis speed XMenVou Meef "^ ^^^t'*'"- ^^'^'ch is like lightning, the instant Vrifa Sear 'i'-' touches the ground. Like the coon, who can fall from an incredible distance without hurting himself, Mooween comes down per- fectly limj). falling on himself like a great cushion ; but the moment he strikes, all his muscles seem to contract at once, and he bounds off like a rubber ball into the densest bit of cover at hand. Twice have I seen him come down in this way. The first time there were two cubs, nearly full-grow n. in a tree. (Jne went up at our shout ; the other came down with such startling suddenness that the man who stood ready with his rifle, to shoot the bear, jumped for his life to get out of the way ; and before he had blinked the astonishment out of his eyes Mooween was gone, leaving only a vio- lent nodding of the ground spruces to tell what had become of him. All these plans of ready action in Moo- ween's head, for the rare occasions when he meets you unexpectedly, are tlie result of THE WOODS O careful training by liis mother. If you should ever have the good fortune to watch a mother bear and her cubs when they have no idea that you are near them, you will note two characteristic things. First, when they are traveling — and Mooween is the most restless tramp in all the woods — you will see that the cubs follow the mother closely and imitate her every action with ludicrous exact- ness, — sniflfuig where she sniffs, jumping where she jumps, rising on their hind legs, with forearms hanging loosely and pointed noses thrust sharp up into the wind, on the instant that she rises, and then drawing silently away from the shore into the shelter of the friendly alders when some subtle warn- ing tells the mother's nose that the coast ahead is not jx'rfectly clear. So they learn to sift the sounds and smells of the wilder- ness, and to govern their actions accordingly. And second, when they are j)laying you will see that the mother watches the cubs' every action ps keenly as they watched hers an liour ago. She will sit flat on her 151 Ttihen You Meet eTBear '1 t. ili; W SCHOOL OF haundies, lur fore paws planted between her XOhenybu Meef out>tretchecl hind legs, her great head on one X^'-'ifa Sear side, noting every detail of their bt)xing and wre.tling and climbing, as if she had showed them once how it ought to be done and were watching now to see how well they remem- bered their lessons. And now and then one or the other of the cubs receives a sound cuffing; for which I am unable to account, excejit on the theory that he was doing some- thing contrary to his plain instructions. It is only when Mooween meets some new object, or some circumstance entirely outside of his training, that instinct and riative wit are set to work; and then yon see for the ,, ip first time some trace of hesitation on the - '^tV part of this self-confident prowler of the big \ woods. Once I startled him on the shore, ^T' whither he had come to get the fore quarters of a deer that had been left there. He t^) jumped for cover at the first alarm without even turning his head, just as he had seen his mother do a score of times when he was a cub. Then he stopped, and f ..'K. W..}^^^. THE WOODS O for three or four sei<»ncls coiisid«-'red the '53 danijer, in plain si.." ,, .. , seen any other bear imitate. I le wavered for a moment more, doubtful whether my canoe were swifter than he and more dangerous. Then satisfied that, ai least, he had a good chance, he jumped back, grabbed the deer, and dragged it away into the w(K)ds. Another timi 1 met !iim on a narrow path where he could not jkiss me, and where he did not want to turn ba(k, for something ahead was calling him strongly. That short meeting furnished me the best study in Itear nature and bear instinct that I have ever been allowed to make. And, at this tlistance, I have small desire to repeat the experience. It was on the Little Sou'west Mirimichi, a very wild river, in the heart of the wilder- ness. Just above my camp, not half a mile away, was a salmon jiool that, so far as I know, had never been fished. One bank of the river was an almost s' cer cliff, against which the current f; tted and hissed in a strong deep rush to le rapids and a great Jear r 154 . ;^ ¥ SCHOOL OF silent |. 1 lar below. 'Iht-rc were salmon v., ., ,^ , under 'lie cliff, plenty 01 them. balancin<' When You Meet . , .' ,- , . "^yx^a 'Bear tMemsel\es agai 1st llie airov. s run ot the current: but, so tar a- n.v liies were eon- cerned, they nii^ht as well have been in the Vukdii. One rould not fish from the oppo- site shore — there was no room for a back cast, and the current was too deej) and swift for wading — and on the shore where the salmon were there was no place to stand. If I had had a couple of gocKl Indians, I mijrht h.ive flrojjped down to the head of the swift water and fished, while they held the canoe with poK ^ braced on the bottom; but I had no two j^ood Indians, and the one I did have was unw'Ming to take the risk. So we went lutngry. ahnost within sight and sound of the i)lunge of lieavy fish, fresh run frtmi the sea. One day, in following a porcupine to see where he was going, I found a narrow path rimning for a few hundred yards along the side of the cliff, just over where the *'"i^5*?»^ salmon loved to lie, and not more ■^■:*^^'^*^r •■ 1 '» H A^iic* ^HWUPi^iSi* THE WOODS If than ;lurt\ feet above the sWiil iu>h of water. I we lit there with my n A and, witlioul attempt- ing to east, dropjX'cl my tly into the turn tit and paid out from m\ reel. When the Une straightened I raised the rod's tip and sft i.iv fly dancing and skittering across the surfate to an eddy behind a great ro( k. in a Hash I had raised and truck a twenty-five pound fish; and in another flash hi' had gone straight downstream in the current, where from my precarious seat I couUl not control 1 m. Down he went, Iea])ing wildly high out oi water, in a glorious rush, till all my line hu/.'.ed out of the reel, down to tlie vcy knot at the bottom, and the leader snapped .IS if it had been "'ide of spid< r's web. I reeled \w sadly, del)." 'ng \' 1th nv.self the ui. inswerable c| .estion < ■ ' shoulil e\er haw reached down th; to gaf? my salmon had T |)layed h,: ■• •.; a standstill. Then, because human nature is weak, I put on a stronger, double leader and dropped another fly into the current. I might n. > get my salmon; bu. t was wor 'he price cu 2^ You Meet i. I -i 156 9 SCHOOL OF the leader just to raise him from the deeps XMenYou Meef \ and see his terrific rush downstream, iump- "" 'i4o Seof '"K> jumping, as if the witch of Endor were astride of his tail in lieu of her broomstick A lively young grilse plunged headlong at my fly and, thanks to my strong leader, I played him out in the current and led him listlessly, all tlie jump and fight gone out of him, to the foot of the cliff. There was no apparent way to get down ; so, taking my line in hand, I began to lift him bodily up. He came easily enough till his tail cleared the water; ihen the wiggling, jerky strain was too much. The fly pulled out, and he van- ished with a final swirl and -lap of his broad tail to tell me how big he was. Just below me a bowlder lifted its head and shcjulders out of the suhiing current. With the canoe line I might easily let myself down to that rock and make sure of my next fish. Getting back would be harder; but salmon are worth some trouble; so I left my rod and started back to camp. It was late afternoon, and I was hurrying along the path. THE WOODS 9 giving chief hcccl to my feet in the ticklish walking, with the cliff above and the river below, when a loud Hoowuff ! brought me up with a shock. There at a turn in the path, not ten yards ahead, stood a huge bear, call- ing unmistakable halt, and blocking me in as completely as if the mountain had toppled over before me. There was no time to think; the shock and scare were too great. I just gasped Hoowujf ! instinctively, as the bear had shot it out of his deep lungs a moment before, and stood stock-still, as he was doing. He was startled as well as I. That was the only thing that I was sure about. I suppose that in each of our heads at first there was just one thought: " I 'm in a fix; how shall I get out.^" And in his training or mini there was absolutely noth- ing to suggest an immediate answer. He was anxious, evidently, to go on. Something, a mate perhaps, must be calling liim uj) river; else he would have whirled and vanished at the hrst alarm. iJut how far might he presume '57 Zcj^n YouMeef ■■■■ ■liiIWi I [i S IvS ZMe/f ybi/ Meef |j» SCHOOL OF on the big animal's timidity, who stood before him blocking the way, and whom he 'yi4a 'Beor ^^^'^ stopjjcd with his Hooxviiff ! before he should get t(X) near? That was his ques- tion, plainly enough. There was no snarl or growl, no savageness in hir> expression ; (Mily intense wonder and ciuestioning in the look which fastened \v^w\ my face anr' seemed to bore ^ way through, to find out just what I was thinking. I met his eyes sc|uarely with mine and held them, which was perhaps the most sensi- ble thing I could have done; though it was all unconscious on my |)art. In the brief moment that followed I did a lot of thinking. There was no escape, up or down ; I must go on or turn back. If I jumped forward with a yell, as I had done before under differ- ent circumstances, would he not rush at me savagely, as all wild creatures do when cor- nered? No, the time for that had passed with the fir>t instant of our meeting. The bluff would now be too apparent; it must be done without hesitation, or not at all. If I 'I THE WOODS H turned back, he would follow me to the end of the ledool below. A bear hates to be outdiHU- (|uite a^ much as a fox does. If you catch him in a trap, he never growls nor tights nor loi^ts, as lynx and otter and almost all oiIk r wild creature> do. Ik- has outwitted vou and shown hi'^ '^uix'rioritv so ofti'ii that he i> utterly- overwhelmed and (rushed uhenyu find him, at Lv-t. helpless and outdone, i le seems to forget all his great strength, all his frightful power of teeth and claws. He just lays hi,> heafl down between hl^ paws, turn> hi> eye> a>ide, and refuses to look at yo' or to let you see how ashamed he is. That is what \(.u are chiefly conscious of, nine times out of ten, when you fmd a bear ..^" ^•^-v... , 7^^ THE WOODS or a fox huld fast in your trap; and somo- I o '^ thing of that was certainly in Moowccn's ^ look and actions now, as I sat there in h j)ath enjoying his confusion. Near him a spruce tree sprang out of the rocks and reached uj)ward to a ledge far above. Slowly he raised himself against this, hut turned to look at me again sitting c|uietly in his own path — that he could no longer con- sider his — and smiling at his discomfiture as I remember how ashamed he is to be outdone. Then an electric shock seemed to hoist him out of the trail. He shot up the tree in a su(ce>si()n of nervous, jerky jumps, rising with astonishing sjK'ed for so huge a creature, snia^!iing the little branches, ripping the rough bark with his great claws, sending down a clattering slunver of chips and dust behind him. till he reached the level of the ledge above p'ld sprang out upon it ; wlicre he stopped and looked down to set' what I would do next. And there he stayed, his great head hanging over the edge of tlu' rock, looking at me intently till I rose and wer.: quietly down the trail. "Bear A i64 ^^ '^'^"^ ni()rnin«r when I came back to the XOhenVou Meef •'''^''"'*'' I""''- ^^''^I'l^^-' t'n' mossy forest floor, \y-ifo3eor t'l*-' '"''iisk/i Keen Eyed \ ^ SCHOOL OF 1 68 ^°" ^'^^' ^^ ^^ °"^y ''^ ^'"^' lieron, wakened out of his sleep on the shore by your noisy '^ approach, that you thought was still as the night itself. He circles over your head for a moment, seeing you perfectly, though you catch never a shadow of his broad wings; then he vanishes into the vast, dark silence, crying Qtioskh? qiwskh? as he goes. And the cry, with its strange, wild interrogation vanishing away into the outer darkness, has given him his most fascinating Indian name, Quoskh the Night's Question. To many, indeed, even to some Indians, he has no other name and no definite pres- ence. He rarely utters the cry by day his voice then is a harsh croak — and you never see him as he utters it out of the solemn upper darkness ; so that there is often a mystery about this voice of the night, which one never thinks of associating with the quiet, patient, long-legged fisherman that one may sec any summer day along the borders of lonely lake or stream. A score of times I have been asked by old campers, "What THE WOODS 9 is that?" as a sharp, questioning Quoskh- quoskh? seemed to tumble clown into the sleeping lake. Yet they knew the great blue heron perfectly — or thought they did. Quoskh has other names, however, which describe his attributes and doings. Some- times, when fishing alongshore with my Indian at the paddle, the canoe would push its nose silently around a point, and I would see the heron's heavy slanting flight, already halfway up to the tree-tops, long before our coming had been suspected by the watchful little mother sheldrake, or even by the deer feeding close at hand among the lily pads. Then Simmo, who could never surprise one of the great birds, however silently he pad- dled, would mutter something which sounded like Quoskh K'sobeqh, Quoskh the Keen Eyed. At other times, when we noticed him spearing frogs with his long bill, Simmo, who could not endure the sight of a frog's leg on my fry pan, would speak of him dis- dainfully in his own musical language as Quoskh the Frog Eater, for m) 169 Quoskh ffie "^ ^eenEy^ed 1 V i 170 9 SCHOOL OF especial benefit. Again, if I stopped casting n Irh'^/f. ^""^^^^'"'y ^'^ the deep trout pool opposite a Keenfyidi^ ^^'^^''^^ ''''°'''-^' ^"^ ^"^'"'^ '^'t'' "^X eyes a tall, gray-blue shadow on stilts moving dimly alongshore in seven-league-boot strides for the next bog, where frogs were plenty, Simmo would point with his paddle and say: "See, or Fader Longlcgs go catch-um more frogs for his babies. Funny kin' babies dat, eat-um bullfrog; don' chu tink so.? " Of all his names — and there were many more that I picked up irom watching him in a summer's outing— "Old Father Longlegs" seemed always the most appropriate. There is a suggestion of hoary antiquity about this solemn wader of our lakes and streams. Indeed, of all birds he is the nearest to those ancient, uncouth monsters which Nature made to people our earth in its uncouth infancy. Other herons and bitterns have grown smaller and more graceful, with shorter legs and necks, to suit our diminishing rivers and our changed landscape. Quoskh is also, undoubtedly, much smaller than he once V w - 3 Pi!} 1 i :' THE WOODS « was; but still his legs and neck are dispro- portionately long, when one thinks of the waters he wades and the nest he builds and the tracks he leaves in the mud are startlingly like those fossili/xxl footprints of giant birds that one finds in the rocks of the Pliocene era, deep under the earth's surface, to tell what sf^rt of creatures lived in the vast solitudes before man came to replenish the earth and subdue it. Closely associated with this suggestion of antiquity in Quoskh's demeanor is the oppo- site suggestion of perpetual youth which he carries with him. Agui has no apparent effect on him whatsoever. He is as old and young as the earth itself is ; he is a March day, with winter and spring in its sunset and sunrise. Who ever saw a blue heron with his jewel eye dimmed or his natural force abated? Who ever caught one sleeping, or saw him totter- ' ing weakly on his long legs, as one so often sees our common wild birds clinging feebly to a branch with their last grip.? A Cape Cod sailor once told me that, far out from 171 Qtioskh ffte Quoskh Keen Eyed «i SCHOOL OF land, his schooner had passed a blue heron lying dead on the sea with outstretched wings. That is the only heron that I have ever heard of who was found without all his wits about him. Possibly, if Quoskh ever dies, it may suggest a solution to the qu^ .tion of what becomes of him. With his last strength he may fly boldly out to explore that great ocean mystery, along the borders of which his .ancestors for untold centr-ies lived and moved, back and forth, back and forth, on their endless, unnecessary migrations, rest- less, unsatisfied, wandering, as if the voice of the sea were calling them whither -. they dared not follow. Just behind my tent on the big lake, one sunnncr, a faint, woodsy little trail wandered away into the woods, with endless turnings and twistings, and without the faintest .rmm^ THE WOODS S indication anywhere, till you reached the very end, whither it intended going. This little trail was always full of interesting surprises. Red squirrels peeked down at you over the edge of a limb, chattering volubly and get- ting into endless mischief along its borders. Moose birds flitted silently over it on their mysterious errands. Now a jumping, smash- ing, crackling rush through the underbrush halts you suddenly, v.ith quick beating heart, as you climb over one of the many windfalls across your path. A white flag followed by another little one, flashing, rising, sinking and rising again over the fallen timber, tells you that a doe and her fawn were lying behind the windfall, all unconscious of your quiet approach. Again, at a turn of the trail, something dark, gray, massive looms before you, blocking the faint path ; and as you stop short and shrink behind the nearest tree, a huge head and antlers swing toward you, with widespread nostrils and keen, dilating eyes, and ears like two trumpets pointing straight at your head — a bull moose, s/i/ Qjuoskh ffie it:mm-m:. ^ Quoskh Keen Eyed '-a- •:ii.,' .<-7( © SCHOOL OF For a long two minutes he stands ihere motionless, watching the new creature that he has never seen before ; and it will be well for* you to keep perfectly quiet and let him surrender the path when he is so disposed. Motion on your part may bring him nearer to investigate; and you can never know at what slight jirovocation the red danger ht will bla/x' into his eyes. At last he .ves away, quietly at first, turning often to look and to make trumpets of his ears at you. Then he hys his great antlers back on his shoulders, sticks his nose far up ahead of him, and with long, smooth strides' lunges av.-ay over the windfalls and is gone. So every day the little trail had some new surprise for you, — owl, or hare, or prickly porcupine rattling his quills like a quiver of arrows and proclaiming his Indian name, Unk-wunk! ^//Z'-ww;/)^'/ as he loafed along. When you had followed far, and were sure that the loitering trail had cer- tainly lost itself, it crept at last under a dark hemlock; and there, through an oval frame V THE WOODS » of rustling, whispering green, was the loneli- est, loveliest little deer-haunted Ijeaver pond in the world, where Quoskh li\cd with his mate and his little ones. The first time I came down the trail and peeked through the oval frame of bushes, I saw him ; and the very first glimpse made me jump at the thought of what a v/onderful discovery I had made, namely, that little herons play with dolls, as children do. But I was mistaken. Quoskh had been catching frogs and hiding them, one by one, as I came along. He heard me before I knew he was there, and jumped for his last frog, a big fat one, with which he slanted up her 'ily on broad vans — with a hump on his back and a crook in hip. neck and his long legs trailing below and behind — towards his nest in the hem- lock -^ the beaver pond. When I saw him , he was just crossing the oval frarrte inruugh which I looked. He had gripped the frog across the middle in his long beak, much as one would hold it with a pair of blunt shears, swelling it out at either 175 Quoskh ffte i wmmim wmmmm Ouoskh Keen Eyed ^ 9 SCHOOL OF side, like a string tied tight about a pillow, riic head and slioit ai ms were forced up at one side, the limp legs dangled down on the other, looking for all the world like a stuffed rag doll that Quoskh was carrying home for his babies to play with. Undoubtedly they liked the frog much better; but my curious thought about them, in that brief romantic instant, gave me an interest in the little fellows which was not satisfied till I climbed to the nest, long after- wards, and saw them, and how they lived. When I took to studying >^uoskh, so as to know iiim more intimately, I i found a fascinating subject; not simply '' because of his queer ways, but also because of his extreme wariness and the diflficulties I met in catching him doing things. Quoskh K'sobeqh was the name that at first seemed most appropriate, till I had learned his habits and how best to get the weather of him — which happened only two or three times in the course of a whole summer. u im THE WOODS « One morning I went early to the beaver ^n pond and sat down against a gray stump ^ ^.. ^^ on the shore, with berry bushes growing to ^(l^een ^ed my shoulders all about me. " Now I shall "^ ' keep still and see everything that comes," I thought, " and nothing, not even a blue jay, will see me." That wa^ almost true. Little birds, that had never ^een a man in the woods before, came for the berries, and billed them off within six feet of my face before they noticed anything unusual. When they did see me they would turn their heads so as to look at me, first with one eye, then with the other, a id shoot up at last, with a sharp burr! of their tiny wings, to a branch over my head. There they would watch me keenly, for a wink or a minute, according to their curi- osity, then swoop down and whirr their wings loudly in my face, so as to make me move and show what I was. Across a little arm of the pond, a stone's throw away, a fine buck came to the water, put his muzzle into it, then began to fidget Quoskh Keen Eyed \ ^ SCHOOL OF uneasily. Some vague, subtle flavor of me floated across and made him uneasy, though he knew not what I was. He kept tonguing his nostrils, as a cow does, so as to moisten them and catch the scent of me better. On my right, and nearer, a doe was feed- ing unconcernedly among the lily pads. A mink ran, hoj)ping and halting, along the shore at my feet, dodging in and out among roots and rocks. Cheokhcs always runs that - way. He knows how glistening black his coat is, how shining a mark he makes for owl and hawk against the sandy shore ; and so he never runs more than five feet without dodging out of sight; and he always pre- fers the roots and rocks that are blackest to travel on. A kingfisher dropped with his musical k'plop! into the shoal of minnows that were rippling the water in their play, just in front of me. Farther out, a fishhawk can e down heavily, sotise! and rose with a big chub. And none of these sharp-eyed wood folk saw me or knew that they were watched. Then I THE WOODS ^ a wide, wavy, blue line, like a •^xv-xt <" ipjd's bow, came gliding swiftly along the opposite bank of green, iiid Quoskh hove into sight for his morning's fishing. Opposite me, just where the buck had stood, he folded his great wings; hi^ neck crooked sharply; his long legs, which had been trailed graccially, straight out behind him in his swift flight, swung under him like two pendulums as he landed lightly on the muddy shore. He knew his ground perfectly ; knew every stream and frog-haunted bay in the pond, as one knows his own village; yet no amount of familiarity with his sur- roundings can ever sing lullaby to Quoskh's watchfulness. The instant he landed he drew himself up straight, standing almost as tall as a man, and let his keen glance run along ever)' shore just once. His head, w'ih its bright yellow eye and long yellow beak glistening in the morning light, . ered ai. i swung over his long neck like a gilded • weather-vane on a steeple. As the vane swung up the shore toward me I held my 170 duoskh ihe ^^^een Eyed Vf Quoskh Keen Eyed \ ^ SCHOOL OF breath, so as to be perfectly motionless, thinking I was hidden so well that no eye could find me at that distance. As it swung past me slowly I chuckled, thinking that Quoskh was deceived. I forgot altogether that a bird never sees straight ahead. When his bill had moved some thirty degrees off my nose, just enough so as to bring his left eye to bear, it stopped swinging instantly. He had seen me at the first glance, and knew that I did not belong there. For a long moment, while his keen eye seemed to look through and through me, he never moved a muscle. One could easily have passed over him, thinking him only one of the gray, wave-washed roots on the shore. Then he humped himself together, in that indescribably awkward way that all herons have at the beginning of their flight, slanted heavily up to the highest tree on the shore, and stopped for a longer period on a dead branch to look back at me. I had not moved so much as an eyelid ; nevertheless he saw me too plainly to trust me. Again he humped THE WOODS n himself, rose high over the tree-tops, and bore away in strong, even, graceful flight for a loneHer lake, where there was no man to watch or bother him. Far from disappointing me, this keenness of Quoskh only whetted my appetite to know more about him, and especially to watch him, close at hand, at his fishing. Near the head of the little bay, where frogs were plenty, I built a screen of boughs under the low thick branches of a spruce tree, and went away to watch other wood folk. Next morning he did not come back ; nor were there any fresh tracks of his on the shore. This was my first intimation that Quoskh knows well the rule of good fisher- men, and does not harry a pool or a place \ too frequently, however good the fishing The third morning he came back; and again I, ''''^ the sixth evening; and then the ninth morn- ing, alternating with great regularity as long as I kept tabs on him. At other times I would stumble upon him, far afield, fish- ing in other lakes and streams; or see him i8i Quoskh Keen /^e Eyed Quoskh Keen£yed\ ^ SCHOOL OF winging homeward, high over the woods, from waters far beyond my ken ; but these appear- ances were too irregular to count in a theory. I have no doubt, however, that he fished the near-by waters with as great regularity as he fished the l)eaver pond, and went wider afield only when he wanted a bit of variety, or bigger frogs, as all fishermen do; or when he had poor luck in satisfying the clamorous appetite of his growing brood. It was on the sixth afternoon that I had the best chance of studying his queer ways of fishing. I was sitting in my little blind at the beaver pond, waiting for a deer, when Quoskh came striding along the shore. He would swing his weather-vane head till he saw a frog ahead, then stalk him slowly, deliberately, with immense caution; as if he knew as well as I how watchful the frogs are at his approach, and how quickly they dive headlong for cover at the first glint of his stilt-like legs. Nearer and nearer he would glide, standing motionless as a gray root when he thought his game was watching -•\i(' THE WOODS « him ; then on again more cautiously, bending far forward and drawing his neck back to the angle of greatest speed and power for a blow. A quick start, a thrust like lightning — then you would see him shake his fmg savagely, beat it upon the nearest stone or root, glide to ii tuft of grass, hide his catch cunningly, and go on unincumbered for the next stalk, his weather-vane swinging, swing- ing in the ceaseless search for frogs, or pos- sible enemies. If the swirl of a fish among the sedges caught his keen eye, he would change his tactics, letting his game come to him instead of sialking it, as he did with the frogs. Whatever his position was, both feet down or one foot raised for a stride, when the fish appeared, he never changed it, knowing well that motion would only send his game hur- riedly into deeper water. He would stand, sometimes for a half hour, on one leg, letting his head sink slowly down on his shoulders, his neck curled back, his long sharp bill pointing always straight at the quivering 183 Qiioskh Me J(een Eyeef r neenfyed ^ SCHOOL OF 184 ^'"^ ^vhich marked the playing fish, his eyes half closed till the right moment came. Then you would see his long neck shoot down, hear the splash and, later, the whack of his catch against the nearest root, to kill it; and watch with curious feelings of sympathy as he hid it in the grass and covered it over, lest Hawahak should see, or Cheokhes smell it, and rob him while he fished. If he were near his last catch, he would stride back and hide the two together; if not, he covered it over in ; c nearest good place and went on. No danger of his ever forget- ting, however numerous the catch ! Whether he counts his frogs and fish, or simply remem- bers the different hirV g places, I have no means of knowing. Sometimes, when I surprised him on a muddy shore and he flew away without taking even one of his tidbits, I would follow his back track and uncover his hiding places to see what he had caught. Frogs, fish, pollywogs, mussels, a baby muskrat, — they were all there, each hidden cunningly under THE WOODS « a bit of dried grass and mud. And cnce I went away and hid on the opposite shore to see if he would come back. After an hour or more he appeared, looking first at mv tracks, then at all the shore with greater keenness than usual; then he went straight to three different hiding places that I had found, and two more thit I had not seen, and flew away to his nest, a fringe of frogs and fish hanging at either side of his long bill as he went. He had arrr.nged them on the ground like the spokes of a wheel, as a fox does, heads all out on either side, and one leg or the tail of each crossed in a common pile in the middle; so that he could bite down over the crossed members and carry the greatest number of little frogs and fish with the least likelihood of dropping any in his flight. The mussels which he found were invari- ably, I think, eaten as his own particular tid- bits; for I never saw him attempt lO carry them away, though once I found two or three where he had hidden them. Generally he i«5 Q/joskh ffte *" ^een Eyed ^ SCHOOL OF Qu€>skh Keen Eyed m could crack their shells easily by blows of his powerful beak, or by whacking them against a root ; and so he had no need (and probably no knowledge) of the trick, which evci-y gull knows, of mounting up to a height with some obstinate hardshell and dropping it on a rock to crack it. If Quoskh were fishing for his own din- ner, instead of for his hungry nestlings, he adopted different tactics. For them he was a hunter, sly, silent, crafty, stalking his game by approved still-hunting methods; for himself he was the true fisherman, quiet, observant, endlessly patient. He seemed to know that for himself he could afford to take his time and be comfortable, knowing that all things, especially fish, come to liim who waits long enough ; while for them he must hurry, else their croakings from too long fasting would surely bring hungry, unwelcome prowlers to the big i:est in the hemlock. Once I saw him fishing in a peculiar way, which reminded me instantly of the chum- ming process with which every mackerel THE WOODS » fisherman on the coast is familiar. He caught a pollywog for bait, with which he waded to a deep, cool placo under a shady bank. There he whacked his pollywog into small bits and tossed them into the water, where the chum speedily brought a shoal of little fish to f(;ed. Quoskh meanwhile stood ■n the shadow, where he would not be noticed, knee-deep in water, his head drawn down into his shoulders, and a friendly leafy branch bending over him to screen him from prying eyes. As a fish swam up to his chum he would spear it like lightning; throw his head back and wriggle it head-first down his long neck ; then settle down to watch for the next one. And there he stayed, alternately watch- ing and feasting, till he had enough ; when he drew his head farther down into his shoulders, shut his eyes, and went fast asleep in the cool shadows, — a perfect picture of fishing indolence and satisfaction. When I went to the nest and hid myself 'if^'i in the underbrush to watch day after day, I learned more of Quoskh 's fishing 187 Quoskh ^e Meen £yetf W SCHOOL OF Quoskh HeenEyed and hunting. The nest was in a great ever- green, in a gloomy swamp, — a villainous place of bogs and treacherous footing, with here and there a little island of large trees. On one of these islands a small colony of herons were nesting. During the day they trailed far afield, scattering widely, each pair to its own particular fishing grounds; but when the shadows grew long, and night prowlers stirred abroad, the herons came trailing back again, making curious, wavy, graceful lines athwart the sunset glow, to croak and be -^ sociable together, and help each ^^V other watch the long night out. Quoskh the Watchful — I '■■ could tell my great bird's mate by sight or hearing from all others, either by her greater size or a pecu- liar double croak she had — had hidden her nest in the top of ? great green hemlock. Near by, in the high crotch of a dead tree, was another nest, which she had built, evidently, years before and added to each successive spring, only to abandon it at last for the THE WOODS 9 evergreen. Both birds used to go to the old nest freely; and I have wondered since if it were not a bit of great shrewdness on their part to leave it there in plain sight, where any prowler might see and climb to it; while the young were securely hidden, meanwhile, in the top of the near-by hemlock, where they could see without being seen. Only at a distance could you find the nest. When under the hemlock, the mass of branches screened it perfectly, and your attention was wholly taken by the other nest, standing out in bold relief in the dead tree-top. Such wisdom, if wisdom it were and not chance, is gained only by experience. It took at least one brood of young herons, sacrificed to the appetite of lucivee or fisher, to teach Quoskh the advantage of that decoy nest to tempt hungry prowlers upon the bare tree bole, where she could have a clear field to spear them with her powerful bill and beat them dow^n with her great wings before they should discover their mistakv'^. 189 Quoskh Jfte ^^^een Eyed S" SCHOOL OF 190 Quoskh neenJSyed Hy watching the birds through my glass as they came to the young, I could generally tell what kind of game was afoot for their following. Once a long snake hung from the mother bird's bill; once it was a bird of some kind ; twice she brought small ani- mals, whose species I could not make out in the brief moment of alighting on the nest's edge, — all these besides the regular fare of fish and frogs, of which I took no account. And then, one day while I lay in my hiding, I saw the mother heron slide swiftly down from the nest, make a sharp wheel over the lake, and plunge into the fringe of berry bushes on the shore after some animal that her keen eyes had caught moving. There was a swift rustling in the bushes, a blow of her wing to head off a runaway, two or three lightning ihrusts of her jave'' beak; then she rose heavily, taking a leveret with her; and I saw her pulling it to pieces awkwardly on the nest to feed her hungry little ones. ^ was partly to see these little herons, the thought of which had fascinated me ever '."T;^'. THE WOODS W since I had seen Quoski, taking home what I th(ni;rht, at first glance, was a rag doll for them lo play with, and partly to find out more of Qiuskh's hunting habits by seeing what he brought home, that led me at last to undertake the difficult task of climbing the huge tree to the nest. One day, when the mother had brought home some unknown small animal — a mink, I thought — I came suddenly out of my hiding and crossed over to the nest. It had always fascinated me. Under it, at twilight, I had heard the mother heron croaking softly to her little ones — a husky lullaby, but sweet enough to them and then, as I paddled away, I would see the nest dark against the sunset, with Mother Quoskh standing over it, a tall, graceful silhouette against the glory of twilight, keeping sentinel watch over her little ones. Now I would solve the mystery of the high nest by looking into it. The mother, alarmed by my sudden appear- ance,— she had no idea that she had been watched, — shot silently away, hoping I would 191 Que>skh neenEyed\ W SCHOOL OF not notice her home through the dense screen of branches. I cHnibed up with difficuhy; hut not till I was within ten feet could I make out the mass of sticks above me. The surroundings were getting filthy and evil- smelling by this time; for Quoskh teaches the young herons to keep their nest j^erfectly clean by throwing all refuse over the sides of the great home. A dozen times I had watched the mother birds of the colony push their little ones to the edge of the nest to teach them this rule of cleanliness, so differ- ent from most other birds. As I hesitated about pushing through the filth-laden branches, something bright on the edge of the nest caught my attention. It was a young heron's eye, looking down at mc over a long bill, watching my approach with a keenness that was but thinly dis- guised by the half-drawn eyelids. I had to go round the tree at this point for a standing on a larger branch ; and when I looked up, there was another eye watching down over another long bill. So, however I turned. W^P^WSBt^^ THE WOODS » they watched me closely getting nearer and nearer, till I reached up my hand to touch the ne:st. Then there was a harsh croak. Three long necks reached doun suddenly over the edge of the nest on the side where I was ; three long bills ooened wide just over my ^d ; and three young herons grew suddenly seasick, as if they had swallowed ipecac. I never saw the inside of that home. At the moment I was in too much of a hurry to get down and wash in the lake; and after that, so large were the )oung birds, so keen and power- ful the beaks, that no man or beast might expect to look over the edge of the nest, with hands or paws engaged in holding on, and keep his eyes for a single instant. It is more dangerous to climb for young herons than for young eagles. A heron always strikes for the eye, and his blow means blindness, or death, unless you watch like a cat and ward it off. ' When I saw the young again they ' ^^'f'A H-ere taking their ^^W fi'^t lessons. A "'^i^^l' dismal croaking •^3 duoakh Jft^ ^^Xeen Eyed h-.-. 194 €lu€>skh Keen Eyed \ © SCHOOL OF in the tree-tops attracted me and I came over cautiously to see what my herons were doing. The young were standing up on the iMg nest, stretching necks and wings, and croaking hungrily; while the mother stood on a tree-top some distance away, showing them food and telling them plainly, in heron language, to come and get it. They tried it after much coaxing and croaking; but their long, awkward toes missed their hold upon the slender branch on which she was balan- cing delicately — just as she expected it to hajjpen. As they fell, flapping lustily, she shot down ahead of them and led them in a long, curving slant to an open spot on the shore. There she fed them with the morsels she held in her beak ; brought more food from a tuft of grass where she had hidden it, near at haiKl ; praised them with gurgling croaks till they felt some confidence on their awkward legs; then the whole family started up the shore on their first frogging expedition. ^ It was i'^tensely interesting for a man who, p, as a small boy, had often gone a-frogging ^'4 THE WOODS ® himself — to catch big ones for a woodsy corn roast, or little ones for pickerel bait — to sit now on a bog and watch the little herons try their luck. Mother Quoskh went ahead cautiously, searching the lily pads; the young trailed behind her awkwardly, lifting their feet like a Shanghai roosccr and setting them down with a sj^lash to scare every frog within hearing, exactly where the mother's foot had rested a moment before. So they went on, the mother's head swinging like a weather-vane to look far ahead, the little ones stretching their necks so as to peek by her on either side, full of wonder at the new world, full of hunger for the things that grew there, till a startled young frog said K'hing! from behind a lily bud, where they did not see him, and dove headlong into the mud, leaving a long, crinkly, brown trail to tell exactly how far he had gone. A frog is like an ostrich. When he sees nothing, because his head is hidden, he thinks nothing can see him. At the sudden alarm Mother Quoskh would stretch her neck, 195 Qjjosk/t ffte J^een Eyetf Quoskh Keen Eyed \ ^ SCHOOL OF jgg watching the frog's flight; then turn her head so that her long bill pointed directly at the bump on the smooth muddy bottom, which marked the hiding place of Chig- wooltz, and croak softly once. At the sound one of the young herons would hurry for- ward eagerly; follow his mother's bill, which remained motionless, pointing all the while; twist hi;; head till he saw the frog's back in the mud, and then lunge af it like lightning. Generally he got his frog, and through your glass you would see the unfortunate creature wriggling and kicking his way into Quoskh's yellow . beak. If the lunge missed, the nuither's keen eye followed the frog's frantic rush through the mud, with a longer 'V^- . trail this time behind him, till he hid again; whereupon she croaked the same youngster up for another try, and then the whole family moved jerkily along, like a row of boys on stilts, to the next clump of lily pads. THE WOODS © As the young grew older, and stronger on their legs, I noticed the rudiments, at least, of a curious habit of dancing, which seems to belong to most of our long-legged wading birds. Sometimes, sitting quietly in my canoe, I would see the young birds sail down in a long slant to the shore. Immediately on alighting, before they gave any thought to frogs or fish or carnal appetite, they would hop rp and down, balancing, swaying, spread- ing their wings, and hopping again round aliout each other, as if bewitched. A few- moments of this crazy performance, and then they would stalk sedately along the shore, as if ashamed of their ungainly levity ; but at any moment the ecst.isy might seize them and they would hop again, as if they simply could not help it. This occurred generally towards evening, when the birds had fc<; full and were ready for play or for stretch- ing their broad wings in preparation for the long autumn flight. Watching them one evening, I remembered suddenly a curious scene that I had stumbled 197 ^^Keen Eyed Quosk/i Keen Eyed, ^ SCHOOL OF upon when a boy. I had seen a great blue heron sail croaking, croaking, into an arm of the big pond where I was catching bullpouts, and crept down through dense woods to find out what he was croaking about. Instead of one, I found eight or ten of the great birds on an open shore, hopping ecstatically through, some kind of a crazy dance. A twig snapped as I crept nearer, and they scattered in instant flight. It was September, and the instinct to flock and to migrate was at work among them. When they came together for the first time some dim old remembrance of generations long gone by — the shreds of an ancient instinct, whose meaning we can only guess at — had set them to dancing wildly; though I doubted at the time whether they understood much what they were doing. Perhaps I was wrong in this. Watching the young birds at their ungainly hopping, the impulse to dance seemed uncontrollable ; yet they were immensely dignified about it at times; and again they appeared to get some fun out of it -as much, perhaps, as THE WOODS we do out of some of our peculiar dances, of which a visiting Chinaman once asked inno- cently : " Why don't you let your servants do it for you ? " I have seen little green herons do the same thing in the woods, at mating time ; and once, in the Zoological Gardens at Antwerp, I saw a magnificent hopping performance by some giant cranes from Africa. Our own sand-hill and whooping cranes are notorious dancers; and undoubtedly it is more or less instinctive with all the tribes of the Hcrodioncs, from the least to the greatest. But what the instinct means — unless, like our own dancing, it is a pure bit of pleasure-making, as crows play games and loons swim races — nobody can tell. Before the )oung were fully grown, and while yet they were following the mother to learn the ways of frogging and fishing, a startling thing occurred, which made me 199 Qtioskh ifte ^een Eyed i' I 'f- 9 SCHOOL OF 200 ^^^'"^ afterwards look up to Quoskh with ~^ honest admiration. I w ^ still-fishing in the K^fy^d^ "'^"^'^'"^ ^^ ^"^ ^''^' '''^^^'' o"^' '-'^te afternoon, LSx ^^.|^^,,^ Quoskh and her little ones sailed over the trees from the beaver jion-l and lit on a grassy shore. A shallow little brook stole into the lake there, and Mother Quoskh left her young to frog for themselves, while she went fishing up the brook under the alders. I was watching the young herons through my glass when I saw a sudden rush in the tall grass near them. All three humped themselves, heron fashion, on the instant. Two got away safely; the other had barely spread his wings when a black animal leaped out of the grass for his neck and pulled him down flapping and croaking desperately. I pulled up my killick on the instant and paddled over to see what was / going on, and what the creature ,/ was that had leaped out of the >I ^ L# grass. Before my pad- IfllP^ , die had swung a dozen > ' ' [* strokes I saw the alders ■V_>' THE WOODS «? by the brook open swiftly, and Mother Quoskh sailed out and drove like an arrow straight at the struggling wing tips, which still flapped spasmodically above the grass. Almost before her feet had dropped to a solid landing she struck two fierce, blinding, downward blows of her great wings. Her neck curved back and shot straight out, driving the keen six-inch bill before it, quicker than ever a Roman arm drove its javelin. Above the lap-lap of my canoe I heard a savage cry of pain ; the same black animal leaped up out of the tangled grass, snapping for the neck ; and a desperate battle began, with short gasping croaks and snarls that made caution unnecessary as I sped over to see who the robber was, and how Quoskh was faring in the good fight. The canoe shot up behind a point, where, looking over the low bank, I had the arena directly under my eye. The animal was a fisher— black-cat the trappers call him— the most savage and powerful fighter of his size in the whole world, I think. In the instant that I first saw him, quicker than thought 20I Qfiosk/i /j^e JCeen Ey^ed /-^ ! 1 '.k . , ill il 5 Quoskh HeenEyed ^ SCHOOL OF he liad hurled himself twice, like a catapult, at the towering bird's breast. Each time he was met by a li^irhtnin^ blow in the face from Ouoskh's stiffened winjr. His teeth ground the big cjuills into i)ul]); his claws tore them into shreds; but he got no grip in the feathery mass, and he slipped, clawing and snarling, into the grass, only to spring again like a flash. Again the stiff wing blow; but , I , this time his jump was higher; one claw gripped the shoulder, , tore its way through flying feathers to the bone, while his weight dragged the big bird down. ' Then Quoskh shortened her neck in 'Y ^ great curve. Like a snake it glided over the edge of her own wing for two short, sharp down-thrusts of the deadly javelin — so cpiick that my eye caught only the double yellow flash of it. With a sharp screech the black-cat leaped away and whirled towards me blindly. One eye was gone ; an angrv red welt showed just over the other, telling how narrowly the second thrust had THE WOODS «3 missed its mark, — Quoskh's frame seemed to swell, like a hero whose fight is won. A shiver ran over me as I remembered how nearly I had once come myself to the black-cat's condition, and from the same keen weapon, I was a small boy, following a big good-natured hunter that I met in the woods, from pure love of the wilds and for the glory of carrying the game bag. He shot a great blue heron, which fell with a broken wing into soft mud and water grass. Carelessly he sent me to fetch it, not caring to wet his own feet. As I ran up, the heron lay resting quietly, his neck drawn back, his long keen bill pointing always straight at my face, I had never seen so big a bird before, and bent over him, wondering at his long bill, admiring his intensely bright eye. I did not l-.now then — what I have since learned well — that you can always tell when the rush or spring or blow of any beast or bird — or of any man, for that matter — will surely come, by watching the eye closely. There is a fire that blazes in the eye before 203 Qt/osk/} Ae ^^Keen Eyed i u '^i ^ the blow comes, before ever a muscle has ^ — «^ stirred to do the brain's cjuick bidding. As JK^nfyedt^ ' '""^"^ ^'^*^'' ^''^^'^'"''^ted by the keen, bright look of the wounded bird, and reached down my hand, there was a flash deep in the eye, like the glint of sunshine from a mirror; and I dodged instinctively. Well for me that I did so. Something shot by my face like lightning, opening up a long red gash across my left temple from eyebrow to ear. As I jumped I heard a careless laugh — "Look out, Sonny, he may bite you — Gosh! what a t close call ! " And with a white, scared face, as he saw the scar, he dragged me away, as if there had been a bear in the water grass. The black-cat had not yet received jnniish- ment enough. He is one of the largest of the weasel family, and has a double measure of the weasel's savageness and tenacity. He darted about the heron in a (|uick, nervous, jumping circle,looking for an ojiening behind ; while Quoskh lifted her great torn wings as a shield and turned slowly on the defensive, so as always to face the danger. A dozen \ '-A A DOZEN TIMES THE FISHER JUmPFD FILI 'NG THE AIR WITH FEATHERS" ^^^ I times the fisher jumped, filling the air with featheis; a dozen times the stiffened wings struck down to intercept his spring, and every blow was followed by a swift javelin thrust. Then, as the fisher crouched snarl- ing in the grass. I saw Mother Quoskh take a sudden step forward, her first offensive move — just as I had seen her twenty times at the finish of a frog stalk— and her bill shot down with the whole power of her long neck behind it. There was a harsh screech of pain; then the fisher wobbled away with blind, uncertain jumps towards the shelter of the woods. By this time Quoskh had the fight well in hand. A fierce, hot anger seemed to flare within her, as her enemy staggered away, burning out all the previous cool, cal- culating defense. She started after the fisher, first on the run, then with heavy wing beats, till she headed him and with savage blows of wing and beak drove him back, seeing nothing, guided only by fear and instinct, towards the water. For five minutes more 207 Quoskh ffke I U '■ ■' ?. I'i Quoskh Keenfyed ^ SCHOOL OF slic clievied him hitlier and yon through the trampled ■■ -^^v ) fin ~ 1 iiiorcni; '/ what little -it undone. 209 ':^: When September came, and family cares were over, the colony be)'ond the beaver pond scattered widely, returning each one to the shy, wild, solitary life that Quoskh likes best. Almost anywhere, in the loneliest places, I might come ujDon a solitary heron stalking frogs, or chumming little fish, or treading the soft mud expectantly, like a clam digger, to find where the mussels were hidden by means of his long toes; or just standing still to enjoy the sleepy sunshine till the late after- noon came, when he likes best to go abroad. J^* li 1 1 Quoskh HeenEycd © SCHOOL OF They slept no more on the big nest, stand- ing like sentinels against the twilight glow '^ and the setting nioon ; but each one picked out a good spot on the shore and slept as best he could on one leg, waiting for the early fishing. It was astonishing how care- fully even the young birds picked out a safe position. By day they would stand like statues in the shade of a bank or among the tall grasses, where they were almost invisible by reason of their soft colors, and wait for hours for fish and frogs to come to them. B^' night each one picked out a spot on the clean open shore, off a point, generally, where he could see up and down, where there was no grass to hide an enemy, and where the bushes were far enough away so that he could hear the slight rustle of leaves before the creature that made it was within springing distance. And there he would sleep safe through the long night, unless disturbed by my canoe or by some other prowler. Herons see almost as well by night as by day ; so I could never get near II > ^amm. MP THE WOODS n enough to si prise them, however silently I paddled, i would hear only a startled rush of wings, and then a questioning call as they sailed over me before winging away to quieter beaches. If I were jacking, with a light bla/.ing brightly before me in my canoe, to see what night folk I might surprise on the shore, Quoskh was the only one for whom my jack had no fascination. Deer and moose, foxes and wild ducks, frogs and fish, — all seemed equally charmed by the great wonder of a light shining silently out of the vast darkness. I saw them all, at different times, and glided almost up to them before timidity drove them away from the strange bright marvel. But Quoskh was not to be watched in that way, nor to be caught by any such trick. I would see a vague form on the far edge of the light's pathway; catch the bright flash of either eye as he swung his weather-vane head; then the vague form would slide into the upper dark- ness. A moment's waiting; then, above me and behind, where the light did not dazzle 21 I Qf/oskA fhe ^^Keen Eyed ■i:^.'*;>>c- 'f-.v'il'V/ftij m M ^:?m. Quoskh Keen Eyed ^ SCHOOL OF his eyes, I would hear his niglu ery — with more of anger than of questioning in it — and as I turned the jack upward I would catch a single glimpse of his broad wings sailing over the lake. Nor would he ever come back, like the fox on the hnnk, for a second look, to be quite sure what I was. When the bright moonlit nights came, there was uneasiness in Quoskh's wild breast. The solitary life that he loxes best claimed him by day; but at night the old gregarious instinct drew him again to his fellows. Once, when drifting over the beaver jjond through the delicate witchery of the moonlight, I h<.'ard five or six of Hie great birds croaking excitedly at the heronry, which they had deserted weeks before. The lake, and espe- cially the lonely little pond at the end of the trail, was lovelier than ever before ; but some- thing in the south was calling him away. I think that Quoskh was also moonstruck, as so many wild creatures are; for, instead of sleeping quietly on the shore, he spent his time circling aimlessly over the lake and ft w^ ^ T/f£ WOODS ® woods, crying his name aloud, or calling wildly to his fellows. At midnight of the day before I broke camp, I was out on the lake for a last paddle in the moonlight. The night was perfect, — clear, cool, intensely still. Not a ripple broke the great burnished surface of the lake; a silver pathway stretched away and away over the bow of my gliding canoe, leading me on to where the great forest stood, silent, awake, expectant, and flooded through all its dim, mysterious arches with marvelous light. The wilderness never sleeps. If it grow silent, it is to listen. To-night the woods were tense as a waiting fox, watching to sec what new thing would come out of the lake, or what strange mystery would be born under their own soft shadows. Quoskh was abroad too, bewitched by the moonlight. I heard him calling and paddled down. He knew me long before he was any- thing more to me than a voice of the night, and swept up to meet me. For the first time after darkness fell I saw him — just a vague, 213 Quoskh /he ^ J(een ^ed Ki'nii Quoskh Keen Eyed \ 214 ^^^^^ shadow witli edges touched softly with silver light, which whirled once over my '^ canoe and looked down into it. Then he vanished; and from far over on the edge of the waiting woods, where the mystery was deepes, came a cry, a challenge, a riddle, the night's wild question which no man has ever yet answered — Quoskk? quoskh? •t^*^' !-M i 1 . i/^-~ lot jp^**^ ,y ^^ ([ f^^AV 1 o 1905 V. ^^ / ab^£; a»S U/ J RUSTLING in the brakes just out side my little tent roused me from a t V --/■- light slumber. There it was again ! j '• ■ * the push of some heavy animal trying to' j ,/ move noiselessly through the tangle close ^ ^ at hand ; while from the old lumber camp in the midst of the clearing a low gnaw- ing sound floated up through the still night. I sat up quickly to listen; but at the slight movement all wa juiet again. The night prowlers had heard me and were on their guard. One need have no fear of things that come round in the night. They are much shyer than you are, and can see you better; so 217 i^i^.^:) •l-..'::.£.'^-ffl!.li. (/nk Xdunk> \t» SCHOOL OF that, if you blunder towards them, they mis- take your blindness for courage, and take to their heels jjromjjtly. As I stepped out there was a double rush in some bushes behind my tent, and by the light of a halt-moon I caught one glimpse of a bear and her cub jumping away for the shelter of the woods. The gnawing still went on behind the old shanty by the river. "Another cub! " I thought — for I was new to the bic: woods — and stole down to peek by the corner of the camp, in whose yard I had pitched my tent, the first night out In the wilderness. There was ar 1 molasses hogshead lying just beyond, its mouth looking black as ink in the moonlight, and the scratching-gnawing sounds went on steadily within its shadow. " He 's inside," I thought with elation, "scrap- ing off the crusted sugar. Now to catch nim ! " I stole round the camp, so as to bring the closed end of the hogshead between me and the prize, crept up breathlessly, and with a ■> ., quick jerk hove the old tub up on end, v\ 219 0'*' THE WOODS « trapping the creature inside. There was a thump, a startled scratching and rustling, .. r.j t r, a violent rocking of the hogshead, which I oVte^OfCUmne tried to hold down ; then all was silent in the trap. " I 've got him ! " I thought, for- getting all about the old she-bear, and shouted for Simmo to brin^ the ax. \Vc drove a ring of stakes close about the hogshead, weighted it down with heavy logs, and turned in to sleep. In the morning, with cooler judgment, we decided that a bear cub was too troublesome a pet to keep in a tent ; so I stood by with a rifle while Simmo hove off the logs and cut the stakes, keeping a wary eye on me, meanv.hile, to see how far he might trust his life to my nerve. A stake fell ; the hogshead toppled over by a push from within ; Simmo sprang away with a yell ; and out wobbled a big porcu- pine, the biggest I ever saw, and tumbled away straight towards ni}- tent. After him went the Indian, making sweeping cuts at the stupid thing with his ax, and grunting his derision at my bear cub. r 220 i/nk > XjiJunk\\\ V SCHOOL OF Halfway to the tent Unk W'unk stumbled across a bit of pijrk riiul, aiu. stopped to nose it daintily. I caiii;ht Sinimo's arm and stayed the blow that would have made an end of my catth. Then, between us, Unk W'unk sat upon his haunches, took the j)ork in his fore paws, and sucked the salt out of it, as if he had never a concern and never an enemy in the wide world. A half hour later he loafed into my tent, where I sat rej^air- ing a favorite salmon fly that some hungry sea-trout had torn to tatters, and drove me unceremoniously out of my own bailiwick in his search for more salt. Such a philosopher, whom no prison can dispossess of his peace of mind, and whom no danger can deprive of his simjile pleasures, deserves more consideration than the natural- ists have ever given him. I resolved on the spot to study him more carefully. As if to discourage all such attempts and make him- self a target for my rifle, he nearly spoiled my canoe the next night by gnawing a hole through the bark and ribs for some iH THE WOODS « suggestion of salt that only his greedy nose could })()ssibly have found. Once I found him on the trail, some dis- tance from camp, and, having nothing better to do, I attempted to chive him home. My intention was to .share hospitality; to give liirn a bit of bacon, and then study him as I ale my own dinner. He turned at the first suir^restion of being driven, came straight at my legs, and by a vicious slap of his tail left some of his quiM ; in me before I could escape. Then I drove him in the op- '."' direction, whereupon he turned and bon . past me ; and when I arrived at camp he was busily engaged in gnawing the ,, ^ end from Simmo's ax handle. 221 l/nktJunk ^e Porcupine vnu,. However you take him, Unk Wunk is one of the m steties. He is a perpetual question scrawled across the forest floor, which nobody pretends to answer; a problem tliat grows only more puzzling as you study to solve it. Of all the wild creature > he is the only one that has no fear of man, and that never learns, %-y» i . i •I .. 2_2 l/nk ZJunk If fei SCHOOL OF either by instinct or experience, to a' i man's presence. He is everywhere in the wilderness, until he changes what he would call his mind; and then he is nowhere, and you cannot find him. He delights in soli- tude, and cares not for his own kind; yet now and then you will stumble ujjon a whole convention of porcupines at the base of some rocky hill, each one loafing around, rattling his quills, grunting his name Uuk IVunk ! i'uk IVunk ! and doing nothing else all day lt)ng. You meet him to-day, and he is as timid as a rabbit ; to-morrow he comes boldly into your tent and drives you out, if you happen to be caught without a club handy. He never has anything definite to do, nor any l)lace to go to; yet stop him at any moment and he will risk his life to go just a foot farther. Now try to drive or lead him another foot in the san-'c direction, and he will bolt back, as full of contrariness as two pigs on a road, and let himself be killed rather than go where he was heading a ■^^i:&- THE WOODS ® moment before. He is perfectly harmless to every creature ; yet he lies still and kills the savage fisher that attacks him, or even the big Canada lynx, that no other creature in the woods would dare to tackle. Above all these puzzling contradictions is the prime question of how Nature ever pro- duced such a creature, and what she intended doing with him ; for he seems to have no place nor use in the natural economy of things. Recently the Maine legislature has passed a bill forbidding the shooting of por- cupines, on the curious ground that he is the only wild animal that can easily be caught and killed without a gun; so that a man lost in the woods need not starve to death. This is the only suggestion ^;,^^ thus far, from a purely ^; f*^'-^,. utilitarian standpoint, that '| ';^'''l Unk Wunk is no mistake, ^'^^'jj^ but may have his uses. Once, to test the law and to provide for possible future contingencies, I added Unk Wunk to my bill of fare — a vile, malodorous 223 (/nkZJunk ^e Porcupine i i l/nk TJunk ^Porcup, ^ SCHOOL OF suffix that might delight a lover of strong cheese. It is undoubtedly a good law; but I cannot now imagine any one being grateful for it, unless the stern alternative were death or porcupine. The prowlers of the woods would eat him gladly enough, but that they are sternly for- bidden. They cannot even touch him with- out suffering the consequences. It would seem as if Nature, when she made this block of stupidity in a world of wits, provided for him tenderly, as she would for a half-witted or idiot child. He is the only wild creature for whom starvation has no terrors. All the forest is his storehouse. Huds and tenler shoots delight him in their season ; and when the cold becomes bitter in its intensity and the snow packs deep, and all other crea- tures grow gaunt and savage in their hunger, link Wunk has only to climb the nearest tree, chisel off the rough, outer shell with his powerful teeth, and then feed full on the soft inner layer of bark, which satisfies him per- fectly and leaves him as fat as an alderman. THE WOODS » Of hungry beasts link Wunk has no fear 225 whatever. Generally they let him severely i/nie7 1 ie alone, knowing that to touch him would be 3^e Porcupine more foolish than to mouth a sunfish or to "^"^ bite a peter-grunter. If, driven by hunger in the killing March days, they approach him savagely, he simply rolls up and lies still, protected by an armor that only a steel glove might safely explore, and that has no joint anywhere visible to the keenest eye. Now and then some cunning lynx or weasel, wise from experience but desperate with hunger, throws himself flat on the ground, close by Unk Wunk, and works his nose cautiously under the terrible bur, searciiing for the neck or the underside of the body, where there are no quills. One grip of the powerful jaws, one taste of blood in the famished throat — and that is the end of both animals. For Unk Wunk has a weap- n that no prowler of the woods ever cr' s ujion. His broad, heavy tail is ai A'ith hundreds of barb^. smaller but mo.o Mcadly than those on his back; and he 'I 226 swings this weapon with the vicious sweep of a rattlesnake. Sometimes, when attacked, Unk Wunk covers his face with this weapon. More often he sticks his head under a root or into a hollow log, leaving his tail out ready for action. At the first touch of his enemy the tail snaps right and left quicker than thought, driving head and sides full of the deadly {[uills, from which there is no escape; for every effort, every rub and writhe of pain, only drives them deeper and deeper, till they rest in heart or brain and finish their work. Mooween the bear is the only one of the wood folk who has learned the trick of attack- ing Unk Wunk without injury to himself. If, when very hungry, he finds a porcupine, he never attacks him directly, — he knows too well the deadly sting of the barbs for that, — but bothers and irritates the porcu- pine bv flipping earth at him, until at last he rolls all his (piills outward and lies still. Then Mooween, with immense caution, slides one paw under him. and with a quick flip [i c^--- — BOTHERS AND IRRITATES THE PORCUPINE BY FLIPPING EARTH AT HIM ■4 I I t im>* w^'j. rssss- Tr'sspsr //pif' hurls him against the nearest tree, again and again, till all the life is knocked out of him. If he find Unk Wunk in a tree, he will sometimes climb after him and, standing as near as the upper limbs allow, will push and tug mightily to shake him off. That is usually a vain attempt; for the creature that sleeps sound and secure through a gale in the tree-tops has no concern for the ponder- ous shakings of a bear. In that case Moo- ween, if he can get near enough without risking a fall from too delicate branches, will tear off the limb on which Unk Wunk is sleeping and throw it to the ground. That also is usually a vain proceeding; for before he can scramble down after it, Unk Wunk is already up another tree and sleeping, as if nothing had happened, on another branch. Other prowlers, with less strength and cunning than Mooween, fare badly when driven by famine to attack this useless crea- ture of the woods, for whom Nature neverthe- less cares so tenderly. Trappers have told me that in the late winter, when hunger is 229 C/nkZJunk d!he Porcupine ! & SCHOOL Of ^,Q sharpest, they sometimes catch a wild-cat or l/n/( '~>.1(tl^^ 1}'"^' f^'" fi^'her ill their trajxs with his mouth fi/unk \[^B^ ^^^^ sides full of j)or,.uj)ine quills, showing to (^^^. ^-^P. what straits he had been driven for food. / »' These rare trapped animals are but an indica- tion of many a silent struggle that only the trees and stars are witnesses of; and the trapper's deadfall, with its quick, sure blow, ds only a merciful ending to what else had been a long, slow, painful trail, ending at last under a hemlock tip with the snow for a covering. Last summer, in a little glade in the wilderness, I found two skeletons, one of a porcupine, the other of a large lynx, lying side by side. In the latter three quills lay where the throat had been ; the shaft of another stood firmly out of an empty eye orbit; a dozen more lay about in such away that one could not tell by what path they had entered. It needed no great help of imagination to read the story here of a starv- ing lynx, too famished to ri-member caution, and of a dinner that cost a life. isi^i^feto^^i 4.« P THE WOODS » • I Once also 1 >avv a curious bit of animal education in connection with Unk Wunk. 231 I 1 u J 1 1 . J (/nkZJunk 1 wo young owls had begun hunting, under ^^ff^ofCl/pM6 direction of the mother bird, along the foot j(K'^. of a ridge in the early twilight. I'Vom my canoe I saw one of the young birds swoop downward at something in the bushes on the shore. An instant later the big mother owl followed with a sharp, angry lioo-lioo-lioo- lioo ! of warning. The youngster dropped into the bushes ; but the mother fairly knocked him away from his game in her fierce rush, and led him away silently into the woods. I went over on the instant, and found a young porcupine in the bushes where the owl had swooped, while two more were eating lily stems farther along the shore. Evidently Kookooskoos, who swoops by instinct at everything that moves, must be taught by wiser heads the wisdom of letting certain things severely alone. That he needs this lesson was clearly shown by an owl that my friend once shot at twilight. There was a porcupine quill Ti/unk \» SCHOOL OF imbedded for nearly its entire IcnLjth in his leg. Two more were slowly working their way into his body; and the shaft of another |)rojected from the corner of his mouth. Whether he were a young owl and untaught, or whether, driven by hunger, he had thrown counsel to the winds and swooped at Unk Wunk, will never be known. That he should attack so large an animal as the porcupine would seem to indicate that, like the lynx, hunger had jjrobably driven him beyond all consideration for his mother's teaching. Unk Wunk, on his part, knows so very little that it may fairly be doubted whether he ever had the discipline of the school of the woods. Whether he rolls himself into a chestnut bur by instinct, as the possum plays dead, or whether that is a matter of slow learning is yet to be discovered. Whether his dense stupidity, which disarms his enemies and brings him safe out of a hundred dangers where wits would fail, is, like the possum's blank idiocy, only a mask for the deepest wisdom ; or whether he is THE WOODS W quite as stupid as he acts and looks is also ^ a question. More and more I incline to l/nlejjjunk the former jjossibility. He has learned 3^e SPorcupine unconsciously the strength of lying still. '*"^'*'" A thousand generations of fat and healthy porcupines have taught him the folly of trouble and rush and worry in a world that .somebody el.se has planned, and for which somebody else is plainly resj)onsible. So he makes no effort and lives in profound peace. ^ But this also leaves you with a question. ''-Wt, which may take vou overseas to explore _, . Hindu philosophy. Indeed, if you have ^'{}'t^'^ one question when you "' ' meet L'nk Wunk for the first time, you will have twenty after you have studied him for a season or two. His paragraph in the woods' jour- nal beg i.^s and ends with a question mark, and a dash for what is left unsaid. > ■ V ' « ri6. I J.r' 1 ' ."• ^ 2 34 UunkU . i M SCHOOL OF The only incK atie when 1 noticed a mother p cuj.iT': and two little ones, a prickly pa;i . al , on lo;^^ that reached out into the ake. Sh*- haec in ^BT 235 THt: \k0003 ^ tlic wat' Hilt \ hftiu r :liis crc a swim- ming le- 1, . ,i . >i(K (iireetioi to siiift and Jclihink brc) vsc T the !■- Ivc -^ U . qiu stion. 3^ie ^o^CUpine With the cxcti iiift' -oUtav old genius, who had ati asti- .^iuuL' va\ of amusin , him- scU uirl s( .rin;; '' ♦' ' ih wood f' ., this was oiil'' j)laii ' (1 h( and >>' 't ison iH"> ki f r foui . a p. / Kj IN :|! it ii6 M. iinu h n » 1 ■ f r I mmm mwmmm <,'■. 11'/ ,' /■; t*. . ^^ ^'i NEW sound, a purring rustle of leaves, stopped me instantly as I climbed the beech ridge, one late afternoon, to see v.hat wood folk I might surprise feed- ing on the rich mast. Pr-rr-r-ush, pr-r-r-r- ush ' a curious combination of the rustling of squirrels' feet and the soft, crackling purr of an eagle's wings, growing nearer, clearer every instant. I slipped quietly behind the nearest tree to watch and listen. Something was coming down the hill ; but what.? It was not an animal running. No 2J9 ^w^mmamsmm I.. » i jim i; I V SCHOOL OF anima^ that I knew, unless he had I'one «^ » ^ MZtfi v^"^^''''-'''')' •-'"azy, would ever make such a •^—-^rj^^ racket to tell everybody where he wis. It was not squirrels playing, nor grouse scratch- ing among th^ new-fallen leaves. Their alternate rustlings and silences are unmis- takable. It was not a bear shaking down the ripe beechnuts — not heavy enough for that, yet too heavy for the feet of any jjrowler of the woods to make on his stealthy hunt- ing. Pr-r-r-r-ush, sivish ! tlimnp ! Some- thing struck the stem uf a bush heavily and r-^ brought down a rustling shower of J leaves; then out from under the low _> branches rolled something that I had never seen before, — a heavy grayish ball, as big as a half-bushel basket, so covered over with leaves that one could not tell what was inside. It wa.s as if some one had covered a big kettle with glue and sent it rolling down the hill, picking up dead leaves as it went. So the queer thing tumbled past my feet, purring, crackling, growing bigger and more ragged every moment as it gathered up . I 241 THE WOODS H more leaves, till it reached the bottom of a sharp pitch and lay still. I stole after it cautiously. Suddenly it Z^ L.QZy moved, unrolled itself. Then out of the Fcilow^S Ftin ragged mass came a big porcujjine. Me shook himself, stretched, wobbled around a moment, as if his long roll had made him dizzy ; then he meandered aimlessly along the foot of the ridge, his quills stuck full of dead leaves, looking big and strange enough to frighten anything that might meet him in the woods. Here was a new trick, a new problem con- cerning one of the stupidest of all the wood folk. When you meet a porcupine and bother him, he usually tolls himself into a huge pincushion with all its points outward, covers his face with his thorny tail, and lies still, knowing well that you cannot touch him anywhere without getting the worst of it. Now had he been bothered by some animal and rolled himself up where it was so steep that he lost his balance, and so tumbled unwillingly down the long hill ; or, with his k \^\ r* ■ &■ ' ■ if^'v jafi ' -'i ' i I 242 t|}. ^ SCHOOL OF stomach full of sweet beechnuts, had he r<^ m B^rt ^^^^^^^ down lazily to avoid the trouble of ^^^^ Ik!? walking; or is Unk Wunk brighter than he looks to discover the joy of roller coasting and the fun of feeling diz/y afterwards? There was nothing on the hill above, no rustle or suggestion ot any hunting animal to answer the question ; so I followed Unk Wunk on his aimless wanderings alon^, the foot of the ridge. A slight movement far ahead caught my eye, and I saw a hare gliding and dodging among the brown ferns. He came slowly in our direction, hopping and halting and wig- gling his nose at every bush, till he heard our approach and rose on his hind legs to listen. He gave a great jump as Unk Wunk hove into sight, covered all over with the dead leaves that his barbed quills had picked u|) on his way downhill, and lay quiet where he thought the ferns wouiu hide him. The procession drew nearer. Moktaques, full of curiosity, lifted hi^ head cautiously out of the ferns and sat up straight on his rsfiTftj ^^ THt WOODS i I f 243 haunches again, his paws crossed, his eyes shining in fear and curiosity at the strange » animal rustling along and taking the leaves Z^ Z^QZy t^ with him. I'or a moment wonder held him JrC/iOWS r'UH as still as the stump beside him ; then he {: V bolted into the bu 'i in a series of high, scared jumps, and I heard him scurrying crazily in a half circle around us. Unk Wunk gave no heed to the interrup- tion, but yew-yawed hither and yon after his stupid nose. Like every other porcupine that I have followed, he seemed to have nothing whatever to do, and nowhere in the wide world to go. He loafed along lazily, ,!, too full to eat any of the beechnuts that he \J nosed daintily out of the leaves. He r\ tried a bit of bark here and there, only to V/l sjjit it out again. Once he started up the hill ; but it was too steep for a lazy fellow with a full stomach. Again he tried it; but it was not steep enough to roll down afterwards. Suddenlv he '■m -r, ;.».: ;i> r'h'i^-; mm 'ft I 244 71 Lazy I^IIowls ^ SCHOOL OF turned and came back to see who it was that followed him about. I kept very quiet, and he brushed two or three times past my legs, eyeing me sleepily. Then he took to nosing a beechnut from under my foot, as if I were no more interest- ing than Alexander was to Diogenes. I had never made friends with a porcupine, — he is too briery a fellow for intimacies, — but now with a small stick I began to search him gently, wondering if, under all that armor of spears and brambles, I might not find a place where it would please him to be scratched. At the first touch he rolled himself together, all his spears sticking straight out on every side, like a huge ~ • , chestnut bur. One could not touch him anywhere without being pierced by a dozen barbs. (Gradually, however, as the stick touched him gently and searched out the itching spots under his armor, he unrolled himself and put his nose under my foot again. He did not want the beechnut ; brt he did want to nose it out. Unk Wunk is like a pig. I ■K^ -z^M ^wmMiS F^'if^'- THE WOODS 19 He has very few things to do besides eating; but when he does start to go anywhere or do anything he always does it. Then I bent ^7 Lazy ^ 245 touch That was a mistake. Me felt the differ- ence in the touch instantly. Also he smclled the salt in my hand, for a taste of which Unk Wunk will put aside all his la/.iness and walk a mile, if need be. He tried to grasp the hand, first w ith his paws, then with his mouth ; but I had to'> much fear of his great cutting teeth to let him succeed. Instead I touched him behind the ears, feeling my way gingerly through the thick tangle of spines, testing them cautiously to see how easily they would pull out. The quills were very loosely set in, and every arrow-headed barb was as sharp as a needl.'. Anything that pressed against them roughly would surely be pierced ; the spines would pull out of the skin, and work their way rapidly into the unfortunate hand or paw or nose that touched them. Pitch spine was like a South Sea Islander'> sword, set Fellow"^ liin r^ij»3«T*.'i^ 246 9 SCHOOL OF for half its length with shark's teeth. Once ^37 / vrJ^//owk '" ^^^ ^*"'^^ '^ would work its own way, /t/ JPf/fj unless pulled out with a firm hand spite of No wonder pain and terrible laceration. Unk Wunk has no fear or anxiety when he rolls himself into a bail, protected at every point by such terrible weapons. The hand moved very cautiously as it went down his side, within reach of Unk Wunk's one swift weapon. There were thousands of the spines, rough as a saw's edge, crossing each other in every direc- tion, yet with every point outward. Unk $W'''i'!0/-- Wunk was irritated, probably, because he ^V, >r>^^ could not have the salt he wanted. .As the hand came within range, his tail snapped back like lightning. I was watching for the blow, but was not half quick enough. At the rustling snap, like the voice of a steel trap, I jerked my hand away. Two of his tail spines came with it ; and a dozen more were in my coat sleeve. I jumped away as he turned, and so escapcfl the quick double swing of his tail : K / THE WOODS W at my legs. Then he rolled into a chestnut 247 bur again, and proclaimed mockingly at every point; "Touch nu- if you dare!" y^' Zd^V _ I pulled the two quills with sharp jerks f^ciloWS Fiiri out of my hand. i)ushed all the others through my coat sleeve, and turned to Unk Wunk again, sucking my wounded hand, which pained me intensely. •■ All your own fault," I kept telling myself, to keep from whack- ing him across the no>e, his one vulnerable point, with my stick. Unk Wunk, on his part, seemed to have forgotten the incident. He unrolled himself slowly, and loafed along the foot of the ridge, his quills spreading and rustling as he went, as if there were net such a thing as an enemy or an inquisitive man in all the woods. He had an idea in his head by this time, and was looking for somethi ig. As I fol- lowed close behind him, he would raise him- self against a small tree, survey it olemnly for a moment or two, and go n unsatisfied. A breeze had come down froi the mountain and was swaying all the tree-tops above him. ¥ SCHOOL OF 24S ''*"' ^vould look 11]) steadily at the tossing ^Zszv/iv^w* '^'^'^"^ '^^'^' '^"'' ''""'" '""^'^^ ^*" ^*' ^'•'■^''-'y the >^27' adle. Wider and wilder he swung, now stretched out thin, like a rubber string, his quills lying hard and flat against his sides as the tree- ^?r^',, tops separated in the wind; now ;lfc jammed up against himself as they ;^^ ■; / came together again, pressing him \*Jf.\.-. "ifo a flat ring with spines stick- >'^^'^ • vi.!,, ( ing straight out, like a mk n <'- -j^.^ aV'i- 'C '^'-'f / : 9m^im»m s » I I 77f£ WOODS 9 chestnut bur that h.i^ be i. stt. ppccl upon. 240 /\ncl there he swayed for a full hour, till it grew too dark to see him, stretchinej, con- "j^ Z^QZ\ tracting, stretching;, contracting. a;> if he were fc//OW*S Fim an acrordioii ind the wind were j)layii\g him. Mis only note, meanwhile, was an occasional squealing grunt of satisfaction after some particularly good stretch, or when the motion changed and l)oth trees rocked together in a wide, wild, exhilarating .swihg. Now and then tin nc^e was answered, farther down the ridge, by another porcupine going to sleep in his lofty cradle. A storm was com- ing ; and Unk Wunk, who is one of the wood's best barometers ,as cryip"' it aloud where . ' might heai. So ni) question was aiiswv . \poct- edly. Unk Wunk was o it • : i that aften ton, and had 'oUed down :^ I.dl for fhe joy of the swift motion and the dizzy feeling afterwards as other wood folk do. I have watched young foxes, whose de^^ was on a steej) hillside, rolliiig . »wn one n . r the other, and sometimes varying the programme I i bv having one cub roll as fast as he could, 250 ' . r^ - r»f/ ^^^^''^''*'' another capered alongside, snapping '"~7'JC#/*j •^"^' worrying him in his brain-muddling tumble. That is all very well for foxes. One expects to find such an idea in wise little heads. Hut who taught Unk W'unk to roll downhill and stick his spines full of dry leaves to scare the wood folk "i ^\nd when did he learn to use the tree-tops for his swing and the wind for his motive power.!* Perhaps — since most of what the wood folk know is a matter of learning, not of ir.stinct — his mother teaches him some things that we have never yet ^een. If so, Unk W'unk has more in h - sleepy, stupid head than we have given him crcflit ^^r, and there is a very interesting lesson awaiting him who shall first find and enter the j)orcu- pine school. immtmTY J »5' J \^ '■* MQUKNAVVIS the Mighty is ^ . /fs'^;- lord of the wood lands. None '/ • ;■;/. ^df other amon 254 '"'^''*>' -^'^"^''^^''-^ wliilo the dead tree that jJf^WJgJIffWrs «PP<>^es him cracks and crashes dov n before ^^^yf/^Afy h.s rush, and the alders beat a ratthng. snap- Oh^.^ ping tattoo on his branching horns. — when you see him thus, something within you rises up. like a soldier at salute, and says: " Milord the Moose ! " And though the rifle is in your hand, Its deadly mu//.le never rises from the trail. That great head with its massive crown IS too big for any h(,use. I lung stupidly on a wall, m a room full of bric-a-brac, as you usually see it. with its shriveled ears that were once living trumpets, its bulging eyes that were once so small and keen, and its huge muzzle stretched out of all i)ro,x)rtion. it IS but misplaced, misshapen ugliness. It has IK. more, and scarcely any higher, signifi- cance than a scalp on the pole of a savage s wigwam. Only in the wilderness, with the irresistible push of his twelve-hundred pound force-packed ixKly behind it, the crackling underbrush beneath, and the lofty spruce aisles towering overhead, can it give the "Otatfip ■ PLUNGING LIKE A GREAT ENGINE THROUGH UNDERBRUSH AND OVER WINDFALLS ' i ft 257 tingling impression of magnificent power which belongs to Umquenawis the Mighty in his native wilds. There only is his V^ GjJ' head at home ; and only as you see it there, l/imiU'enBW/S whether looking out in quiet majesty from The/fiflhfy a lonely ix)int over a silent lake, or leading him in his terrific rush through the startled forest, will your heart ever jump and your nerves tingle in that swift thrill which stirs the sluggish blood to your very finger tips, and sends you quietly back to camp with your soul at peace — well satisfied to leave Umquenawis where he is, rather than pack him home to your admiring friends in a freight car. Though Umquenawis be lord of the wil- derness, there are two things, and two things only, which he sometimes fears: the smell of man, and the spiteful crack of a rifle. For Milord uie Moose has been hunted and has learned fear, which formerly he was stranger to. But when you go deep into the wilder- ness, where no hunter has ever gone, and where the roar of a birch-bark tnmiix't has gK, V SCHOOL OF 2 5<^ l/wQuenaw/s JM never broken the twilight stillness, there you may find him still, as he was before fear came; there he will come smashing down the mountain side at your call, and never circle to wind an enemy; and there, when the mood is on him, he will send you scram- bling up the nearest tree for your life, as a squirrel goes when the fox is after him. Once, in such a mcx)d, I saw him charge a little wiry guide, who went up a spruce tree with his snowshoes on — and never a Ix-ar did the trick quicker — spite of the four-foot webs in which his feet were tangled. We were pushing upstream, late one ," afternoon, to the big lake at the head- '/<; waters of a wilderness river. Above the J ',', roar of rapids far behind, and the fret of '*,' the current near at hand, the rhythmical .5:1 • ■' :-j', cluuk, dunk of the poles and the ia/>, lap .: of my little canoe as she breasted the vj('* ripples were the only sounds that broke r/* .J the forest stillness. We were silent, as ■^ * men always are to whom the woods have - .j^. spoken their deejx;st message, •^ THE WOODS 9 and to whom the next turn of the river may bring its thrill of unexpected things. Suddenly, as the bow of our canoe shot round a point, we ran plump \\\mw a big cow ^„„,^^^^„„,^ moose crossing the river. At Simmo's grunt TheJfi^hfy of surprise she stopjied short and whirled to face us. And there she stood, one huge quef-tion mark from nose to tail, while the canoe edged in to the lee of a great rock, and hung there quivering with ix)les braced firmly on the bottom. We were already late for camping, and the lake was hiill far ahead. I gave the word, at b^'t, ai»i r a few minutes' silent watch- ing, and till canoe shot upward. Hut the big mo(i ..-, instead of making off into the woods, as a well-behaved moose ought to do opL-i.cd straight toward us. Simmo, in the bow, gave w sweeping flourish of his pole, and we all yelled in unison; but the moose c^me on steadily, quietly, bound to find out what the f{ueer thing was that had just conie up river and broken the solemn stillness. 26o M SChlOL at " Ik's' kci'p ^till , bi^ moose iiiaki'-um trouble sonutii^ic," ;^nittcrcd Noci hchiiid I; 'enawis ^hfy "^<-'; '^"^ ^^«-' 'ln)|)|X'ci back silently into the Ice of the friendly ro( k, to watrh ! while lon^'er and let the big creature do as she would. l*"or ten minutes more we tried ivers kind of threat and persuasion to '^}\ the i:ioose out of the wa\, ending at last by sending a bullet 'ippi'ii; into the water under her body; l)ut Ix'yond an angry stamp of the foot there was no response, and no disposi- tion whatever to give us the stream. Then I bethought me of a trick that I had dis- covered long Ix'fore by accident. Dropping down to the nearest bank, I ( rept up behind the moose, hidden in the underbrush, and began to break twigs, softly at first, then more and more sharply, as if something were coming through the woods fearlessly. At the fn-t suspicious crack the moose whirled, hesitated, started nervouslv across the stream, twitching her nostrils and wigwagging her big ears to find out what the crackle meant, THE WOODS « aiul luirryinjr more and more as the sounds grated harshly upon hei sensitive nerves. Next moment the river was cle;;- and our cunoe was hreastin^r the rippHng shallows, Urifi^enaw/S while the moose watched us curiously, half The/fJ^hfy hidden in the alders. That is a good trick, for occasions. The animals all fear twig snapping. Only never try it at night, with a bull, in ihe calling season, as I did once unintentionally. Then he is ai)t to mistake you for his tantalizing mate, and come down on you like a tempest, giving you a big scare and a monkey sci-am- ble into the nearest tree before he is satisfied. Within the next hour I counted seven moose, old and young, from the canoe ; and when we ran ashore at twilight to the camp- ing ground on the big lake, the tracks of an ent)rmous bull were drawn sharply across our landing. The water was still trickling into them, showing that he had just vacated the spot at our approach. How do I know it was a bull.!* At this season the bulls travel constantlv, and the 4 MICROCOPY RESOLUTION TEST CHART (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No 2) 1.0 I.I 1.25 ■- IIIIIM m «36 140 1.4 2.5 2.2 2.0 1.8 1.6 ^ APPLIED IN/MGE Inc l^r 165 5 East Mam Slreet ^JZ Rochester, New >ofk 14609 US* i^S (716) 482 - 0300 ~ Phone ^B (716) 288 - 5989 - Fo« 262 IJmqnenawfs '!% 9 SCHOOL OF points of the hoofs are worn to a clean, even curve. The cows, which have been Hving Jidhfy 1" deep retirement all summer, teachmg their ungainly calves the sounds and smells and lessons of the woods, travel much less; and their hoofs, in consequence, are generally long and pointed. Two miles above our camp was a little brook, with an alder swale on one side and a dark, gloomy spruce tangle on the other — an ideal spot for a moose to keep her little school, I thought, when I discovered the place a few days later. There were tracks on the shore, plenty of them ; and I knew I had only to watch long enough to see the mother and her calf, and to catch a glimpse, perhaps, of what no man has ever yet seen clearly; that is, a moose teaching her little one how to hide his bulk; how to move noiselessly and undiscovered through under- brush where, one would think, a fox must make his presence known; how to take a windfall on the run; how to breast down a young birch or maple tree and keep it under mm. ^mmmm THE WOODS ^ his body while he feeds on the top, — and a ^^ score of other things that every moose must ,•.. know before he is fit to take care of himself ^^^^ in the big woods. UnfQUepaw/S I went there one afternoon in my canoe, 7Ae/fighfy grasped a few lily stems to hold the little craft steady, and snuggled down till only my head showed above the gunwales, so as to make canoe and man look as much like an old, wind-blown log as possible. It waf, get- ting toward the hour when I knew the cow would be hungry, but while it was yet too light to bring her little one to the open shore. After an hour's watching, the cow came cau- tiously down the brook. She stopped short } , at sight of the big log; watched it steadily y1| f /JV,; -'' / for two or three minutes, wigwagging her y^M^Sd '^^ ears ; then began to feed greedily on the lily ■|i|i pads that fringed all the shore. When ^^^Jf." she went back I followed, guided now fl^/^fMK^;'-. by the crack of a twig, now by a sway- Mr ^^''^'''^'•'^-^^''^- ■ ing of brush tops, now by the flip en! /; of a nervous ear or the push of a ™gff huge dark body, keeping carefully to iXfli ■'Wm h n I ' f 1 . f ' ' / i^;.'^fP Tt I EB ■r F 264 UnjQuenaw/s ^ SCHOOL OF leeward all the time, and making the big unconscious creature guide me to where she had hidden her little one. Just above me, and a hundred yards in from the shore, a tree had fallen, its bushy top bending down two small spruces and making a low den, so dark that an owl could scarcely have seen what was inside. " That 's the spot," I told myself instantly; but the mother passed well above it, without noting apparentb' how good a place it was. Fifty yards farther on she turned and circled back, below the spot, trying the wind with ears and nose as she came on straight towards me. "Aha! the old moose trick," I thought, remembering how a hunted moose never lies down to rest without first circling back for a long distance, parallel to his trail and to lee- ward, to find out from a safe distance whether anything is following him. When he lies down, at last, it will be close beside his trail, but hidden from it; so that he hears or smells you as you go by. And when you reach the place, far ahead, where he turned THE WOODS O back he will be miles away, plunging along down wind at a pace that makes your snow- shoe swing like a baby's toddle. So you camp where he lay down, and pick up the trail in the morning. When the big cow turned and came strid- ing back I knew that I should find her little one in the spruce den. But would she not find me, instead, and drive me out of her bailiwick,? You can never be sure what a moose will do if she finds you near her calf. Generally they run — always, in fact — ^ -v_:,.j. but sometimes they run your way. And besides, I had been trying for years o see a mother moose teaching in her little school Now I dropped on all fours and crawled away down wind, so as to get beyond ken of the mother's inquisitive nose if possible. She came on steadily, moving with aston- ishing silence through the tangle, till she stood where I had been a moment before, when she started violently and threw her head up into the wind. Some scent of me was there, clinging faintly to the leaves and Quenawia 7he/f/ghfy ^ SCHOOL OF 266 l/mQuenawIs .J- the moist earth. For a moment she stood like a rock, sifting the air in her nose; then, ^itfy finding nothing in the wind, she turned slowly in my direction to use her ears and eyes. I was lying vcv still behind a mossy log by this time, and she did not see me. Suddenly she turned and called, a low bleat. There was an instant stir in the spruce den. an answering bleat, and a moose calf scrambled out a.id ran straight to the mother. There was an unvoiced command to silence that no human sense could understand. The mother put her great head down to earth — " Sn 11 of that; mark that, and re- member," she was saying in her own way; and the calf put his little head down beside ^. hers, and I heard him sniff-sniffing the leaves. '^ 'J Then the mother swung her head savagely, V, '^' -■; bunted the little fellow out of his tracks, ^^^^ / and drove him hurriedly ahead of her away from the place — "Get out, hurry, 1" was what she was saying new, emphasizing her teaching with an - ^-. . occasional bunt from behind ''CO .^;^ii*» r*?; T't -4 !s is a n THE WOODS ® that lifted the calf over the hard places. So they went up the hill, the calf wonder- ing and curious, yet ever reminded by the hard head at his flank that obedience was his business just now, the mother turning occasionally to sniff and listen, till they van- ished silently among the dari: spruces. For a week or more I haunted the spot; but though I saw the pair occasionally, in the woods or on the shore, I learned no more of Umquenawis' secrets. The moose schools are kept in far-away, shady dingles, beyond reach of inquisitive eyes. Then, one morning at daylight as my canoe shot round a grassy point, there were the mother and her calf standing knee-deep among the lily pads. With a yell I drove the canoe straight at the little one. Now it takes a young moose or caribou a long time to learn that when sudden danger threatens he is to follow, not his own fright- ened head, but his mother's guiding tail. To young fawns this is practically tne first thing taught by the mothers; but caribou 267 l/mQuenawfa JlteWghfy i Ohe I I * SCHOOL OF „ are naturally stupid, cr trustful, or burningly l/mQUenaw/s '"4"^^^^'^'^'' according to their several dispc.-.i- \ftfy tions; and moose, with their great st.engih, are naturally fearless; so that this needful lesson is slowly learned. If you surprise a mother moose or caribou with her young at close quarters, and rus' it them instandy, with a whoop or two scatter their wits, the chances are that the mother will bolt into the brush, where safety lies, and the calf into the lake or along the shore, where the going is easiest. Several times I have caught young moose and caribou in this way, either swimming or stogged in the mud, and after turning them back to shore have watched the mother's • cautious return and her treatment of the lost one. Once I paddled up beside a young bull moose, half grown, and .'r«^i/^'! grasping the coarse hair on y^y- his back had him tow me a -, hundred yards, to the next point, while I studied his expression. _-':^ -si!.- THE WOODS « As my canoe shot up to the two moose, they did exactly \v!iat I had expected; the mother bolted for the woods in mighty, floundering jumps, niuu and water flying merrily about her; while the calf darted along the shore, got caught in the lily pads, and with a despairing bleat settled down in the mud of a soft place, up to his back, and turned his head to see what I was, I ran my canoe ashore and approached the little fellow quietly, without hurry or ex- citement. Nose, eyes, and ears questioned me; and his fear gradually changed to curi- osity as he saw how harmless a thing had frightened him. he even tried to pull his awkward little legs out of the mud in my direction. Meanwhile the big mother moose was thrashing around in the bushes in a ter- rible swither, calling her calf to come. I had almost reached the little fellow when the wind brought him the strong scent that he had learned in the woods a few days before, and he bleated sharply. There was an answering crash of brush, a pounding of TQi/e/iawia JAe/fighfy 270 i/mQuenaw/s 7/»e ^- S? SCHOOL OF hoofs f! It told one unmistakably to look out for his rear, and out of the bushes burst the ^My mother, her eyes red as a wild pig's, and the long hair standing straight up along lur back in a terrifying bristle. " Stand not upon the order of your mogging, Init mog at once — arunh ! unh ! " she grunted ; and I turned otter instantly and took to the lake, diving as soon as the depth allowed and swimming under water to escape the old fury's atten- tion. There was little need of fine tactics, however, as I found out when my head appear^^d again cautiously. An\thing in the way of an unceremonious retreat satisfied her as perfectly as if she had been a Boer general. She went straight to her calf, thrust her great head under his belly, hiked him roughly out of the mud, and then butted him ahead of her into the bushes. Y,4g3 It was stern, rough discipline; but the /il^ youngster needed it to teach him the wis- dom of the woods. From a distance I »* .: .-^ I 271 (\ THE WOODS • watched the quivering line of brush tops that marked their course, and then followed *h. ^.^ softly. When I found them again, in the ^, W^ twilight of the j^reat spruces, the mother wa^ U/nQUenaw/S licking the sides of her calf, lest he should JAe/f/ghfy grow cold too suddenly aft*'r his unwonted bath. All the fury and harshnes- were gone. Her great head lowered tenderly over the foolish, ungainly youngster, tonguing him, caressing him, drying and warming his poor sides, telling him in mother language that it was all right now, and that next time 1 e would do better. There were other moose on the lake, all of them as uncertain as the big cow and her calf. Probably most of them had never seen a man before our arrival, and it kept one's expectations on tiptoe to know what they would do when they saw the strange two-legged creature for the fir t time. If a moose smelled me before I saw him, he would make off quietly into the woods, as all wild creatures do, and watch from a safe distance. But if I stumbled upon him 9 SCHOOL OF uncxpcctcdK-, when tlic wind brought no l/mQUenaw/s ^^''^'""'"K to '»i.s nostrils, lie was fearless, SUhe^^^^ilfMy usually, and full of curiosity. The worst of them all was the big bull whose tracks were on the shore when we arrived. He was a morose, ugly old brute, living apart by himself, with his temper always on edge ready to bully anything that dared to cros^ his path or question his lord- ship. Whether he was an outcast, grown surly from living too murh alone, or whether he bore some old bullet wound to account for his hostility to man, I could never find out. Far down the river a hunter had been killed, ten years before, by a bull moose that he had wounded; and this may have been, as Noel declared, the same animal, cherishing his resentment with a memory as merciless as an Indian's. Before we had found .his out I stumbled upon the big bull one afternoon, and came near paying the penalty of my ignorance. I had been still-fishing for togue, and was on my way back to camp when, doubling a ^7i %uenawi3 THE WOODS s point, I ran plump upon bull moose feed- ing among the lily pads. My approach had been perfectly silent, — that is the only way to see things in the woods, — and he was quite unconscious that anybody but himself jVte/fi^hf^^ was near. lie would plunge his great head under water till only his antler tips showed, and nose around on the bottom till he found a lily root. Wi h a heave and a jerk he would drag it out, and stand chewing it endwise with huge satisfaction, while the muddy water trickled down over his face. When it was all eaten he would grope under the lily pads for another root in the same way. Without thinking much of the possible ^^ risk, I began to creep towards him. While , '" his head was under I would work ' canoe along silently, simply '- rolli. ^ the paddle " without lifting it m om the water. At the first .ft of hi.- ..ntlcrs I would stop and sit lovv in the canoe till he finished his juicy mor- sel and ducked for more. ^1^', ^ SCHOOL OF 274 UniQuenaw/s Then one could slip along easily again with- out being discovered. Two or th''ee times this was repeated suc- cessfully, and still the big, unconscious brute, facing away ''roni me fortunately, had no idea that he was being watched. His head went under water again — not so deep this time; but I was too absorbed in the pretty game to notice that he had found the end of a root abo\e the mud, and that his ears were out of water. A ripple from the bow of my canoe, or perhaps the faint brush of a lily leaf againsi the side, reached him. His head burst out of the pads unexpectedly; with a snort and a mighty flounder he whirled upon me ; and there he stood quivering, ears, eyes, nose — everything about him reaching out to me and sho(^ting questions at my head with an insistence that demanded instant answer. I kept quiet, though I was altogether too near the big brute for comfort, till an unfor- tunate breeze brushed the bow of my canoe still nearer to where he stood, threatening i^i mmmmmmm ■.T¥- r'Js^ir^" +-- % THE WOODS » now instead of questioning. The mane on his back began to bristle, and I knew that I had but a small second in which to act. To get speed I swung the bow of the canoe out- ward, instead of backing away. The move- ment brought me a trifle nearer, yet gave me a chance to shoot by him. At the first sud- den motion he leaped; the red fire blazed out in his eyes, and he plunged straight at the canoe — one, two splashing jumps, and the huge velvet antlers were shaking just over me and the deadly fore foot was raised for a blow. I rolled over on the instant, startling the brute with a yell as I did so, and upsetting the canoe between us. There was a splinter- ing crack behind me as I struck out for deep water. When I turned, at a safe distance, the bull had driven one sharp hoof through the bottom of the upturned canoe, and was now trying awkwardly to pull his leg out from the clinging cedar ribs. He seemed frightened at the queer, dumb thing that gripped his foot, for he grunted and jumped back, and UinQiienawi3 7AeWghfy # 9t\ m - 1 i' I 276 l/niQuenaw/s ^ SCHOOL OF thrashed his big antlers in excitement; but he was getting madder every minute. To save the canoe from being pounded to pieces was now the only pressing business on hand. All other considerations took to the winds in the thought that, if the bull's fury increased and he leaped upon the canoe, as he does when he means to kill, one jump would put the frail thing beyond repair, and we should have to face the dangerous river below in a spruce bark of our own building. I swam quickly to the shore and splashed and shouted and then ran away to attract the bull's attention. He came after me on the instant — 7mh ! nnh ! chock, chockety-clwck ! till he was close enough for discomfort, when I took to water again. The bull followed, deeper and deeper, till his sides were awash. The bottom was muddy, and he trod gin- gerly; but there was no fear of his swim- ming after me. He knows his limits, and they stop him shoulder deep. When he would follow no farther I swam to the canoe and tugged it out into deep 1-^ ;i' THE WOODS « I water. Umquenawis stood staring now in astonishment at the sight of this queer man- fish. The red Hght died out of his eyes for the first time, and his ears wigwagged Hke flags in the wind. He made no effort to follow, but stood as he was, shoulder deep, staring, wondering, till I landed on the point above, whipped the canoe over, and spilled the water out of it. The paddle was still fast to its cord — as it should always be in trying experiments — and I tossed it into the canoe. The rattle roused Umquenawis from his wonder, as if he had heard the challenging clack of antlers on the alder stems. He floundered out in mighty jumps and came swinging along the shore, chocking and grunting fiercely. He had seen the man again, and knew it was no fish — Unh! nnhf eceeeunh-unh ! he grunted, with a twisting, jerky wriggle of his neck and shoulders at the last squeal, as if he felt me already beneath ,^h,.^ ^ his hoofs. But before ^i^l he reached the point TQuenawis JAeW^hfy t/-»<. ■hh mmm 9 SCHOOL OF I had stuffed my flannel shirt into the hole ^^^! in the canoe and was safely afloat once more. i/^3!^»fj^% He followed along the shore till he heard :/Ae the sound of voices at camp, when he turned instantly and vanished into the woods. A few days later I saw the grumpy old brute again in a curious way. I was sweep- ing the lake with my field glasses when I saw what I thought was a pair of black ducks near a grassy shore. I pnddled over, watch- ing t:--m keenly, till a root seemed to rifc o\\i of the water between them. Before I could get my glasses adjusted again they had disappeared. I dropped the glasses and paddie^ faster; they were diving, perhaps — an unusual thing for black ducks — and I might surprise them. There they were again; and there again was the old root bobbing up unexpectedly between them. I whipped my glasses up — the mystery van- ished. The two ducks were the tips of Umquenawis' big antlers; the root that rose between them was his head, as he came up to breathe. 'ITIE WOODS It was a close, sultry afternoon; the flies and mosquitoes were out in myriads, and Umquenawis had taken a philosophical way of getting rid of them. He was lying in deep water, over a bed of mud, ..is body completely submerged. As the swarm of flies that pestered him rose to his head he sunk it slowly, Irowning them off. Through my glass, as I drew near, I could see a cloud of them hovering above the wavelets, or covering the exposed antlers. After a few- moments there would be a bubbling grumble down in the mud, as Umquenawis . . •.- , blew the air from his great lungs. His head would come up lazily, tw breathe among the popping bubbles; the flies would settle upon him like a cloud, and he would disappear again, blinking sleepily as he went down, j^"" with an air of immense satisfaction. ~~^ It seemed too bad to disturb such comfort, but I wanted to know mo.e abo it the surly old tyrant that had treated me w'ith such scant courtesy; so I stole near him again. 279 TQue/iaw/s JAe/Iighfy urn V SCHOOL OF running up when his head disappeared, and _■ " . Ivinji (luiet wlienever he came ui) to breathe. J^Ae^^^yfi^hfy He saw me at last, and leajK'd up with a tei - ril)le start. There was fear in Iiis eyes this time. Here was the man-fish again, the creature that lived on land or wat'.'r, and that could approach him so silently that the senses, in which he had always trusted, gave him no warning. He stared hard for a moment; then as the canoe glided rapidly straight towards him without fear or hesita- tion he waded out, stopping every insta.it to turn, and look, and try the wind, till he reached the fringe of woods beyond the grasses. There he thrust his nose up ahead of him, laid his big antlers back on his shoulders, and plowed straight through the tangle like a great engine, the alders snapping and crashing merrily about him as he went. In striking contrast was the next meeting. I was out at midnight, jacking, and passed close by a point where I had often seen the big bull's tracks. He was not there, and I closed the jack and went on along the shore. i 1 I 281 listening for any wood folk that might be abroad. When I came back a few minutes later, there was a suspicious ri|}ple on the ^'^^, poini. I opened the jack, and there was (/f^QuenawtS Umquenawis, my big bull, standing out huge The/fl^hfy and magnificent against the shadowy back- ground, his eyes glowing and flashing in fierce wonder at the sudden brightness. He had passed along the shore within twenty , yards of me, through dense underbrush, — as I found out from his tracks next morning, — yet so silently did he push his great bulk through the trees, halting, listening, trying the ground at every step for telltale twigs ere he put his weight down, that I had heard no sound, though I was listening for him intently in the deaa hush that was on the lake. ; ',,. ,. It may have been curiosity, or vhe uncom- fortable sense of being watched and followed by the man-fish, v/ho neither harmed | nor feared him, that brought Umque- nawis at last to our camp to investigate. One day Noel was washinj some clothes of mine in 9 SCHOOL OF o the lake when some subtle warninij made 28 2 . ° , ,, . him turn his liead. There stood the big