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New Yofk U603 tjSA ■^S (716) 'ie2 - 0300 - Phone as (716) 288 - 5989 - fax '^^P^i'WianpVHini^l School of the Woods f*> //,^ 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^^^"^ </ ^/^^ follmoing sketches were ^ »i made in the woods, with the sub- jects themselves living just outside my tent door. They are all life studies, and include also some of the unusual life secrets of a score of animals and birds, — shy, 7cild crea- tures, mostly, that hide from the face of man and make tlwir nests or their lairs deep in the heart of the wilderness. So far as the sketches have any unity, they arc the result of an effort on the part of the zoriter to get at tlie heart of things and find vu if] j \%i ■ ''<.: ^ammp^m wahiu^ us»m vni (Ppeface^ the mcaiiiiio^ jf ccrtam pnzzliiii^ i^<ays of birds ami beasts. . I sii ingestion, at /cast, of that iiicaiiiiig and a/so an indication of tlic scope and object of this boolc, loi// be found in the first chapter, the Introduction to the " Schoo/ of the IVoods." As .n previous vo/nmes, the names liercin used for birds and anima/s are t/iose given b\< the Mi/ice te Indians. I use these names part/y for their happy memories ; part/y for tlic added touch of individua/ity icJiich they give to every creature; but chief/y because they have the trick of bringing the anima/ himse/f before you bv some sound or sugges- tion. IVheii you ca/l the /itt/e creature that /ives under your doorstep, that eats your crumbs and that comes ivhen you ivhist/e certain tunes, a common Toad, the zvord means nothing. But when Simmo speaks of K\/unk the Fat One, I knozo something of what tlie interesting /itt/e creature says, and just hozv he /oaks. Tivo or three of these studies have a/ready appeared in various magazines. A// the rest •::,.ijr. '^-- IX come dinct from my old notebooks and wii- derncss records to these newer pages, iv/iere ^ the skill/ill pencil of my friend Mr. Charles K}^^^^^^ Copelatid makes the animals live again and peep at me shyly from behind old mossy logs, or glide away into their leafy solitudes, halt- ing, listening, looking back at me inquisitively — just as they did in tlw '^derness. n-Il.UAM J. LOAG. Stamford, G September. ■A ^ .m"\ :^ On the Way to School What the Fawns must KNr)\v A Cry in the Night . ISMAQUES the TiSHHAWK A School for Little Fishermen The Partridges' Roll Call When you meet a Pear Quoskh the Keen Evkd Unk W^unk the PORCUriNE . A Lazy Fellow's Vvs . Umquenawis the Mighty At the Sound of the Trumpet Ihe Gladsome Life How THE Animals die . Glossary of Indian Names Nir "Thkrkat a Turn in i iik I'aih, ndi Tfn Yards ahkap, STOOO A nr<;E Hkar." .... Frontisficcc Page "The White Fi.ai; shuwing like a Heacon Licht as SHE JIMI'EI) away" "Her Eyes ai.i. ahi.aze with the Wonfier jf the Light" 6i " Presently they kecan to s' t iiekcely at .some Animal" ... 89 "(iRirriNc; his Fish and ///'-/;///«(,' his Fxi'ltation" 107 "They wouldtupn their Heads and listen inten ily" it,'^ "A Dozen Times the Fisher jimied, killing the .\ir WITH Feathers" 205 "Bothers and irritates the Porcupine iiy elii-i'ing Earth at him " 227 "! ;.UNGING like A (IrEAT ENGINE THR(JUGH L'NDER- BRUSH AND OYER WINDFALLS" .... 255 "A Mighty Spring itv hi.s Croiching Haunches fin- ished THE Work" 301 "Trots to the Brook and jumps from Slone to ■'^T<)NE" y.i '■A Little Woijd Warhi.er was siriiNc. on a Frond of Evergreen " xiii 349 ^A. ^ years ago the write av, for the second time, a - r otter teach her unsuspectin. ttlt ones to swim by carrying th her back into the water, as if r a there diving from under t i I realized what she was about. As t gled wildly in the unknown clemen near them and began to help - e, them on their erratic way back li- When they reached it, at last, they scr out, whimpered, shook themselves, looked at 3 rwg- ibkd 9 SCHOOL OF ^ the river fearfully, then glided into their den. On ^C Way ^'^^^"^ ^'^"-y ''^'•ipp^'ared cautiously; but no ^O^chool amount of gentle persuasion on the mother's l^'^""^ ^""'fl induce them to try for themselves another plunge into the water; nor, spite of her coaxing and playful rolling about in the dry leaves, would they climb again upon her tack that day, as I had seen them and ^ other young otters ao, twenty times before, ^5^"^ without hesitation. Now to me, as I went home through the twilight woods S:^^^^^-^'^-' through the twilight woods '^^^^^^^|*.?W thinking it all over, the most T •;f;S^^^ suggestive thing in the whole t^T^^^-Jv-:^ ,^ . '. . curious incident was this : that I had been taught to swim myself in exactly the same way by more of ■ >_/• %^.; ^ ^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. <!.<.- whose home is now in the biji —,.-.,, ^,. woods, but xN-hose muscles are so ■■^^^:^ modified by previous centuries on the open Arctic plains that jumping is unnatural, and so must be taught with much care and patience. Again, you find a little fawn hidden ^^ in the woods, as described in the next chapter and are much surprised that, instead of run- .-. nmg away, he comes to you feariessly, licks "i^ your hand and follows you, calling wistfully ^^ as you go away. You have yet to learn,' Jw^ ■ ..J> 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 : "' "' ^'<^<in, sure, curvin^r nl„n,r,. ^^ ^ehby ■"<-• .He safety a.ul shcl.e,- o, „„ ..:,.!:!;;;:«^ foScffoo^^ i'wamjx Hoof and at the danger behind, and . •splendid power and trainin< t' evergreen "1^ ah'ke seem to lau-h to J'ejoice in their Th IS sin to one who k world. tion~to ass l^lc fact, so glad in itself -cps h so ob IS ev \ious 'es this school of •s mentioned here by wa)- of i"-e the reader that, 'if h tlic woods, he will f>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<nnf>- 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<l: the c,, .stions ran auav '-•"f their eyes. Their ea^.r tongues uer^ "^'t- ^>'^^> 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'-<?-</-^-// / k-a-a-a-h ! crashed through the woods again. Her tail was straight up, the white flag showing like a beacon light as she jumped away. Behind her the fawns stood startled a moment, trembling with a new wonder. Then their f^ags went up too, and they wabbled away on slender legs through the tangles and over the rough places of the wo(k1, bravely following their leader. And I, watching from my hiding, with a vague regret that they could never again be mine, not even for a moment, saw only the crinkling lines of underbrush and 39 What Me Hmns Tiusf Knotty W-lKXafM r' 40 ll%ai ihe Fawns JTfnst Know here and there the flash (if a little white flag. So they went up the hill and out of sight. First, lie still ; and second, follow the white flag. When I saw them again it needed no danger cry of the mother to remind them of these two things that every fawn must know who would live to grow up in the big woods. P m^ b^^^ ^i^^B^^^^^v^^^ ,"•*-•(■■ ...■ I ^! 41 M M.C'C'^^P m.; ■k^ . .'"/cQ'isiJt i:^''''^mmmi^'^fit^mmm^msi^m^m i f I f IT J IIS is the rest of the story, just as I saw it, of the little fawns that I found under the mossy log by the brook. There were two of them, you remember; and though they looked alike at first glance. I soon found out that there is just as much difference in fawns as there is in f(,lks. Eyes, faces, dispositions, characters, — in all things they were as unlike as the virgins of the parable. One of them was wise, and the other was very foolish. The one was a follower, a learner; he never forgot his second lesson, to follow the white flag. The other followed from the first only his own willful head and feet, and discovered 43 44 yj Cry in the JMight V SCHOOL OF too late that obedience is life. I'ntil the bear found him, I have no doul^t he was thinking, in his own dumb, foolish way, that obedience is only for the weak and ignorant, and that government is only an unfair advan- tage which all the wilderness mothers take to keep little wild things from doing as they please. The wise old mother took them both away when she knew I had found them, and hid them in a deeiJer st)litude of the big woods, nearer the lake, where she could the sooner reach them from her feeding grounds. For days after the wonderful discovery I used to go in the early morning or the late afternoon, while mother deer are awav feedin-jr alon<r the watercourses, and search the dingle from one end to the other, hoping to find the little ones again and win their cf)nfidence. But they were not there; and I took to watching ip:-te;'cl a family of mink that lived in a (Kn under a roc.t, and a big owl that alwaw. .>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<r into sijrht with .1 sharp whistle of warnin- The doc threw lip her head, lookin^r strai^rht at nie, as if she had understood more from the sij^nal than I had thou-rht possible. There \\as not an instant's hesitation or searchin^r. \\^y ^^.^.^ went direct to me, as if the fawn's cry had said: "Behind you, mother, in the path by the second <rray rock!" Then she jumped away, shootin<r uj) the oi)posite hill over roots and rocks as if thrown by steel sjirin^rs, \^\o\\. in^r hoarsely at e\ery jump, and followed in .splendid style by her watchful littie one. At the first snort of danger there was a rush in the underbrush near where she had stood, and a second fawn s])ran|^r into si<rht. I knew him instantly — the heedless one — and that he had nejrlected too long the matter of following the flag. 1 le was confused, fright- ened, chuckle-headed now; he came darting UJ) the deer path in the wrong direction, straight towards me, to within two jumps,' before he noticed the man kneeling in the' path before him and watching him quietly. 53 THE WOODS 13 At the startlin- discovery he stopped short seeming to shrink smaller and smaller before' my eyes. Then he edged sidewise to a great stump, hid himself among the roots, and ^^^ stood stoek-still. - a beautiful picture of inno- /f ^^^ cence and curiosity, framed in the rough ^ ^ ^l . :- brown roots of the spruce stump. It was his first teaching, to hide and be still, fust as he needed it most, he had forgotten abso- lutely the second lesson. We watched each other full five minutes without mo;ing an eyelash. Then his first lesson ebbed away. He sidled out into the path again, came towards me two dainty, halt- ing steps, and stamped prettilv with his left fore foot. He was a young buck, and had that trick of stamping without any instruc- tion. It is an old. old ruse to make you move, to startle you by the sound and threat- ening motion into showing who you are and what are your intentions. Hut still the man did not move; the fawn grew frightened at his own boldness and ran away down the path. Far up the opposite V SCHOOL OF 54 liill I heard the mother caNin- him. Hut he needed not; he uanted to find oiu thin-s •<"• lMm.df. There he uas in the path a<.ah. uatching mc. I took out my handkcrchic-f and waved it <.ently; at which .r.at marvel he trotted hack, toppin- anon to look and stamp his h-ttlc foot, to show me that he was not afraid. " H'-ave htlle chap, f like von." I thou-ht my heart -o,n- out to him as he stood th-Me with h.s soft eyes and beautiful face, stamp- ■ng his little foot. "Hut what." mvthou.d/ts went on, " had happened to you eri now, had a bear or hicivee lifted his head over the ndjre.> 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-<rht,aswellasbyday.andgohome with heart and head full, even though your creel be em|)ty. I was stanciing xery .till by my fire, wait- nig for a big trout that hul risen twice to rogam his confide.ice, when I heard caution, rustlings in the brush behind me. I turned instantly, and there were two great glowing spots, the eyes of a deer, flashing out of the dark woods. A swift rustic, and tuo more coa.s gl(,w loner down, flashing and scintil- lating with strange colors; and then two mere; and I know that the doe and her fawns are there, stopjx'd and fascinated on 5*> -^ 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 a<j(me, stood the mother, her eyes all abla/e with the won.'er of tiie li'dU; now staring steadfastly into the fii-e; n<.^^ starting nervously, with low ques- tioning snorts, as a troop (,f sluuh.ws ran up to play hop-scotch with the little ones, who stood close behind h-- one on either >ide. !" 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. f<unninothr(n.-luhedarkwo.Kls his "-trauKd feet had nns.,c| tin ir landing., and he la) now under some rou^h windfall, with a broken le- to remind him of the lesson he liad ne^rjcvted so lon^^r. I uas stealin^r alon^r f.warrls bim, f,.din^r niy way amon^r ,1,.. trees „, ih,- darkness >to,,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. earrvin<r sonic- thinjr that cau^rht and swished loudly on the bushes as it passed, till the sounds vanished in a faint rustle far away, and the woods were still a;rain. All ni^dit lon^r, from my tent over beyond an arm of the bi- lake. 1 heard the mother callin^r at intervals. She seemed to be run- ning back and forth alonj; the ridoe, above when- the tragedy had occurred. Her nose t"!d lurof the bear and the man; but what •lufui thin- flHv were doing with her little one she knew not. I^ar and questioning \\'>v 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<r.de- and a -'am or tu.. sl„,u,d wlurr Mooween grabbed him. Th,- ,vsi u,,. a plain trail, of crushed mos. and Ixnt grass and stained leaves, and a tutt of s,,ft hair here and there on the jag-cd ^x^^X^ oi kiiMts in the old S- rut: WOODS « windfall.. S,, the trail Inirried up tlu- hil! into a wild nni;r|, (,M,ntrv. uhciv it uas cf no usf to follow. -\> 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 hi<l in th. unch-rhrush, lookin- ^%i nitently at mv old ean.u-. Si,e siw me ;U \' 7 (he same instant and l)oun<led awav, (|uarter- j [^jt >n^^ 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'<V /^////, W///, zt;////, vtr my head wnit the que; Look 'listlinjr, the hunting cry of I snia- UlL'' ■see the broad wings catch the bright gleam I,f \ up from my fishing. I c.nld sweeping over me, and looked d 'us eve a> <'\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. ^'■^'<iuently as the little fishhawks' wings spread to a wonderful length, and he was trying, with his mate, by every gentle means to induce them to leave the nest. And I have wondered — without being able at all to prove my theory — whether he were not trying in this remark- able way to make his little ones want to fly by showing them how wonderful a thing flying could be made to be. aS?" 97 ...i^^iiaBs •rssr .'•J^'^'-'-'^lS^i^'Zi- •^' •:4^.- HERE came a day when, as I sat fishing among the rocks, the cry of the mother osprey changed as she came sweeping up to my fishing grounds, — Chip, ch "wee ! Chip, chip, ch'weeeee? That was the fisherman's hail plainly enough ; but there was another note in it, a look-here cry of triumph and satisfac- tion. Before I could turn my head — for a fish was nibbling — there came other sounds behind it, — Pip, pip. pip. ch 'weee ! ^np, ch \vee ! pip ch 'weeee ! — a curious medley, a hail of good-luck cries ; and I knew without turning that two other fishermen had come to join the brotherhood. 99 lOO -/I School for fishermen © SCHOOL OF The mother bird — one can tell her instantly by her greater size and darker breast markings — veered in as I turned to greet the newcomers, and came directly over my head, her two little ones flapping lustily behind her. Tuo days before, when I went down to another lake on an excursion after bigger trout, the young fishhawks were still standing on the nest, turning a deaf ear to all the old birds' assurances that the time had come to use their big wings. The last glimpse I had of them through my glass showed me the mother bird in one tree, the father in another, each holding a fish, which they were showing the young across a tan- talizing short stretch of empty air, telling the young, in fishhawk language, to come across and get it; while the young birds, on their part, stretched wings and necks hungrily and tried to whistle the fish over to them, as one would call a dog across the street. ' In the short interval that I was absent, mother wiles and mother patience had done their good work. The young were already flying '1 ai i ii -^'^^j. THE WOODS « well. Now they were out for their first lesson in fishing, evidently; and I stopped fishing myself, letting my bait sink into the mud — where an eel presently tangled my hooks into an old root — to see how it was done. For fishing is not an instinct with Ismaques, but a simple matter of training. As with young otters, they know only from daily experience that fish, and not grouse and rabbits, are their legitimate food. Left to themselves, especially if one should bring them up on flesh and then turn them loose, they would go straight back to the old hawk habit of hunting the woods, which is much easier. To catch fish, therefore, they must be taught from the first day they leave the nest. And it is a fascinating experience for any man to watch the way they go about it. The young ospreys flew heavily in short irregular circles, scanning the water with their inexperienced eyes for their first strike. Over them wheeled the mother bird on broad, even wings, whistling directions to the young cz: neophytes, who would presently be initiated ^ lOI ^ ^hooi for . jGfile ^shertnen ^ SCHOOL OF I02 ^ School for I I ^^jFishermen \\ ^ into the old sweet mysteries of going a-fishing. Ush were plenty enough; but that means nothing to a fishhawk, who must see his game reasonably near the surface before mak- ing his swoop. There was a good jump on the lake, and the sun shone brightly into it. Between the glare and the motion on tlie surface the young fishermen were having a ha.u time of it. Their eyes were not yet quick enough to tell them when to swoop. At every gleam of silver in the depths below they would stop short and cry out: P//>/ " 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<r was wion^r. she had fished enou^di to know that success means sr)Pie- thin-r more than -rood hick; and this morning' success had come too easily. Slie wheeled slowl) over the shallows, notin^r the fish there, where thi'\- plainly did not belong, and drop- ping to examine with suspicion one big chub that was floating, bc'ly up, on the water. Then she went under with a rush, where I could n(,t see, came out again with a fish for her- self, and followed her little ones to the nest. ,^y-^ Next day I set the *^ trap again in the same way. Hut the mother, with her lesson well laid out before her, remembered yesterday's unearned success and came over to investigate, leaving her yuiiiig ones circling along the farther shore. There were the fish again, in shallow water; ar.d there — too easy altogether !— were two dead ones floating among the whitecaps. "^lie wheeled away in a sharp turn, as if she had not seen anvthin<r ~^ f I I \ AJr- <*>>*■ 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<rsand the sharp.up-slidinjrC//ivr<// V fishermen which, was the mother's si^Mial to swoo]). Paddling up under the point in my canoe, I found them all wheelint; and divinu; over a shoal, where I knew the fiNh were smaller and more nimble, and where there were lilv pads for a haven of refuge, whither no hawk could follow them. Twenty times I saw them swoop only to miss, while the mother circled above or beside them, whistling advice and encouragement. And when at last they struck their fish and bore av.ay towards the mountain, there was an exultation in their lusty wing beats, and in the whistling cry they sent brn k to me. which wa.-; not there the day before. The mother followed them at a distance, veering in when near mv shoal to take another look ut the fish there. Three were floating now instead of two; the others — what were left of them — struggled feebly at l^^f=ml''^<m<.4'^^^mMS^mi ■ 114 ^ School for "fishermen the surface. Chip, cJiwcee ! she whistled disdainfully; "plenty fish here, but mighty poor fishing." Then she swooped, passed under, came out with a big chub and was gone, leaving me only a blinding splash and a widening circle of laughing, dancing, tanta- lizing wavelets to tell me how she catches them. Il J I «»s I !W fM. tCpa^tridges -r RCLL CALL I\\ AS fishing, one September afternoon, in the pool at the foot of the lake, trying in twenty ways, as the dark evergreen shadows lengthened across the w ater, to beguile some wary old trout into taking my flies. They lived there, a score of them, in a dark well among the lily pads, where a cold spring bub- bled up from the bottom; and their moods and humors were a perpetual source of worry or amusement, according to the humor of the fisherma;. himself. For days at a time they would lie in the // deep shade of the lily pads in stupid or sullen ( if^''^ indifference. Then nothing tempted them. Flies, worms, crickets, redfins, bumblebees, — all at the end of dainty hair leaders, were drawn with crinkling wavelets over their heads or dropped gently beside them; but H7 rv.'vl ii8 The y^rlr/tf^es' w ^ SCHOOL OF they only swirled sullenly aside, grouty as King Ahab when he turned his face to the wall and would eat no bread. At such times scores of little fish swarmed out of the pads and ran riot in the pool. Chub, shiners, "punkin-seeds," perch, boiled up at your flies, or chased each other in sav- age warfare through the forbidden water, which seemed to intoxicate them by its cool freshness. You had only to swing your canoe up near the shadowy edge of the pool, among the lily pads, and draw your cast once across the open water to know whether or not you would eat trout for breakfast. If the small fish chased your flies, then you might as well go home or study nature ; you would certainly get no trout. But you could never tell when the change would come. With the smallest occasion sometimes — a coolness in the air, the run of a cats-paw breeze, a cloud shadow drifting over— a trans- formation would sweep over the speckled Ahabs lying deep under the lily pads. Some blind, unknown warning would run throujih THE WOODS W the pool before ever a trout had changed his position. Looking over the side of J.'^^ . . your canoe you would see the little fish noI/Cal?^' darting helter-skelter away among the pads, seeking safety in shallow water, leaving the pool to its tyrant masters. Now is the time to begin casting; your trout are ready to rise. A playful mood would often follow the testy humor. The plunge of a three-pound fish, the slap-dash of a dozen smaller ones would startle you into nervous casting. But again you might as well spare your efforts, which only served to acquaint the trout with the best frauds in your fly book. They would rush at Hackle or Coachman or Silver Doctor, swirl under it, jump over it, but never take it in. They played with floating leaves; their wonderful eyes caught the shadow of a passing mosquito across the silver mirror of their roof, and their broad tails flung them up to intercept it; but they wanted nothing more than play or exercise, and they would not touch your flies. -TP^ ^^^If^WSS? •! 1 If h II ^ SCHOOL Of 1 20 ^^"^'"' ''^ ''^ ^^■''^y *^^^'''^' would come a day TTteytarfrtdges' ^^'''"-''"' y^'"'' ^^^'^b' ''^'^^l patience found their ' yioNCall rich reward. The sHsh of a line, the flutter of a fly dropping softly on the farther edge of the pool — and then the sliriek of your r"el, buzzing up the quiet hillside, was ciHswered by a loud snort, as the deer that li\ed there bounded away in alarm, calling her two fawns to follow. But you scarcely noticed; your head and hands were too full, trying to keep the big trout away from the illy pads, where you would certainly lose him with your light tackle. On the afternoon of which I write the trout were neither playful nor sullen. No more were they hungry. The first cast of my midget flies across the pool brought no answer. That was good ; the little fish had been ordered out, evidently. Larger flics followed; but the big trout neither played with them nor let them alone. They fol- lowed cautiously, a foot astern, to the near edge of the lily pads, till they saw me and swirled down again to their cool haunts. THE WOODS n They were suspicious clearly, and with the lower orders, as with men, the best rule in '^' such a case is to act naturally, with more nolTcan''^^' quietness than usual, and give them time to *" * get over their suspicion. As I waited, my flies resting among the pads near the canoe, curious sounds came floating down the hillside — Pmt, prut, pr-r-r-rt! Wliit-kwit? whit-kwit? Pr-r-rf, pr-r-rt! Ooo-if, ooo-it? Pr-r-rcccc ! this' last with a swift burr of wings. And the curious sounds, half questioning, half muffled in extreme caution, gave a fleeting impres- sion of gliding in and out among the tan- gled underbrush. " A flock of partridges," I thought, and turned to listen more intently. The shadows had grown long, with a sug- gestion of coming night; and other ears than mine had heard the sounds with interest. A swifter shadow fell on the water, and I looked up quickly to see a big owl sail silently out from the opposite hill and perch on a blasted stub overlooking the pool. Kookooskoos had been sleeping in a big wmm ^> « 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 win<rs in answer, and ^^^ ( another partridge would shoot in on swift ^Zir^n'^^ pinions to pull himself up on the log beside iiis fellows. The line would open hospitably to let him in ; then the row grew quiet again, as the leader called, turning their heads from side to side for the faint answers. There were nine on the log at last. The calling g'-ew louder and louder; yet for several minutes now no answer came back. The flock grew uneasy; the leader ran from his log into the brush and back again, calling loudly, while a low chatter, the first bre V in their strange silence, ran back and forth through the family on the log. There were others to come; but where were they, and why did they tarry .^ It was growing late; already an owl had hooted, and the roost- ing place was still far away. Prut, pruf, pr-r-r-r-ccc ! called the leader,'and the chatter ceased as the whole flock listened. I turned my head to the hillside to listen also for the laggards; but there was no \1 136 \lRo//Ca/I ^^ «? SCHOOL OF answer. Save for the cry of a low'iying loon and the snap of a twig — too sharp and heavy for little feet to make — the woods were all silent. As I turned to the log again, something warm and heavy rested against my side. Then I knew; and with the knowledge came a swift thrill of regret that made me feel guilty and out of place in the silent woods. The leader was calling, the silent flock were waiting for two of their number who would never answer the call again. I lay scarcely ten yards from the log on which the sad little drama went on in the twilight shadows, while the great silence grew deep and deeper, as if the wilderness itself were in sym.pathy and ceased its cries to listen. Once, at the first glimpse of the group, I had raised my rifle and covered the head of the largest bird; but curiosity to know what they were doing held me back. Now a deeper feeling had taken its place; the rifle slid from my hand and lay unnoticed among the fallen leaves. I THE WOODS W Again the leader called. The flock drew itself up, like a row of gray-brown statues, '^^ every eye bright, every ear listening, till ^o//^i/"^^^' some vague sense of fear and danger dreu "" ' them together; and they huddled on the ground in a close group, all but the leader, who stood above them, counting theni over and over, apparently, and anon sending his cry out into the darkening woods. I took one of the birds out of my pocket and began to smooth the rumpled brown feathers. How beautiful he was, how per- fectly adapted in form and color for the wil- derness in which he had lived I And I had taken his life, the only thing he had. Its beauty and something deeper, which is the sad mystery of all life, were gone forever. All summer long he had run about on glad little feet, delighting in nature's abundance, calling brightly to his fellows as they glided in and out in eager search through the lights and shadows. Fear on the one hand, abso- lute obedience to his mother on the other had been the two great factors of his life. ^ SCHOOL OF y HctWL'L'ii tliuni he grew strong, keen, alert, TTteT^rMd^es" ^"^^^^''^K P<-'i"ft'ctly when to run and when to ^yfo//Ca/i <ly nnd when to crouch motionless, as danger ^^d^ passed close with blinded eyes. Then when •** his strength was ])erfect, and at last he glided alone through the wilderness coverts in watchful self-dejx'ndence — a moment's curi- osity, a c|uick eager glance at the strange animal standing so still under the cedar, a flash, a noise; and all was over. The call of the leader went searching, searching through the woods ; but he gave no heed any more. The hand had grown suddenly very tender as it stroked his feathers. I had taken his life; I must answer for him now. I raised my head and gave the clear xvliit-kivit of a running partridge. Instantly the leader answered ; the flock sprang to the log again and turned their heads in my direction to listen. Another call, and now the flock dropped to the ground and lay close, while the leader drew himself up straight on the log and became part of a dead stub beside him. THE WOODS n Something was wrong in my call; the 139 birds were suspicious, knowing not ^"^^^^ 7j,cPar/r/€/^es' danger had kept their fellows silent so UolI Cal/^ ^^ long, and now threatened them out of the black alders. A moment's intent li.>tenin<r: then the leader stepjied slowly down from his log and came towards me cautiously, halting, hiding, listening, glitling. swinging far out to one side and back again in stealthy advance, till he drew him>elf 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<T woods you may be on the look- out for Moov\ een ; you may be eager and even anxious to meet him; but when you double the point or push into the blueberry patch and, suddenly, there he is, blocking the path ahead, looking intently into your eyes to fathom at a glance your intentions, then, I fancy, the exix-rience is like that of people who have the inquisitive habit of looking under their beds nightly for a burglar, and at last find him there, stowed away snugly, just where they always expected him to be. M3 )%1 144 iMenYou Meef / \\ " ■■.V M iNT^t. ¥ SCHOOL Of Moowccn, on his part, is always looking for you, when once he has learned that you have moved into his wockIs. But not from any desire to see you I lie is like a lazy man looking for work, and hoping devoutly that he may not find it. A bear has very little curiosity — less than any other of the wood folk. He loves to be alone; and so, when he goes hunting for you, to find out just where you are, it is always with the creditable desire to leave you in as large a room as possible, while he himself goes quietly away into deeper solitudes. As this desire of his is much stronger than your mere idle curiosity to see something new, you rarely see Mooween even where he is most at home. And that is but another bit of the poetic justice which you stumble upon everywhere in the big woods. It is more and more evident, I think, that Nature adapts her gifts, not simply to the necessities, but more largely to the desires, of her creatures. The force and influence of that intense desire — more intense because J THE WOODS © • usually each animal has but one— we have not yet learned to measure. "Will the ^'^^ unicorn be willing to serve thee, or will he abide by thy crib?" would seem to be the secret of that free life " whose home is the wilderness," if one were quoting Scripture to prove an unprovable theory, as is some- times our pleasant and unanswerable theo- logical habit. The owl has a silent wing, not simply because he needs it — for his' need is no greater than that of the hawk, who has no silent wing — but, more prob- ably, because of his whole-hearted desire for silence as he glides through the silent twi- light. And so with the panther's foot; and so with the deer's eye, and the wolf's nose, vliose one idea of bliss is a good smell; and so with every other strongly marked gift which the wild things have won from nature, chiefly by wanting it, in the long years of their development. This theory may possibly account for some of Mooween's peculiarities. Nature, who measures her gifts according to the Tefien YouAfeef sTSeor 9 SCHOOL OF 146 *^^^'^''*^-^ ^'f Ji<-'»" creatures, renieinbers his love MenYou Meef "• 1''-'''^^'-' ''^"^^ solitude, and endows him ,Vj^«2S^'" accfM-d.ngly. He cares little to see you or nnjjody else; therefore his eyes are weak — his weakest point, in fact. He desires ardently to avoid your society and all soci- ety but his own ; therefore his nose and ears are marvelously alert to discover your com- ing. Often, when you think yourself quite alone in the woods, Mooween is there. The wind has told your story to his nose; the clatter of your heedless feet long ago reached his keen ears, and he vanishes at your approach, leaving you to your noise and inquisitiveness and the other things you like. His gifts of concealment are so much greater than your powers of detection that he has absolutely no thought of ever see- ing you. His surprise, therefore, when you do meet unexpectedly is ct)rrespondingly greater than yours. What he will do under the unusual cir- cumstances depends largely, not upon him- self, but upon you. With one exception, his M t THE WOODS 9 feelings are probably the reverse of your own. If you are bold, he is timid as a rabbit; >., 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<jht — a thin;f I have never >.." ,, .. , 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 led<re, growing bolder as he came on; and beyond that it was dangerous walking, where he had all the advantage and all the knowledge of his grovuid. besides, it was late, and I wanted a salmon for my supper. I have wondered since how much of this hesitation he understood; and how he came to the conclusion, which he certainly reached, that I meant him no harm, but only wanted to get on and was not disi)osed to give him the path. All the while I looked at him steadily, until his eyes began to lose their intentness. My hand slipped back and gripped the handle of my hu:.ting knife. Some slight confidence came with the motion; though I would certainly have gone over the cliff and taken mv chances in the current, rather than have closed with him, with all his enormous strength, in that nar- row place. Suddenly his eyes wavered from mine; he swung his head to look down and up; and I knew that I '59 YouMeef aTBear 9 SCHOOL OF 1 60 had won the first move — and the path also, xjz \y *^ ^ if I could kcei) inv nerve. \^^^0 'Beor ^ advanced a step or two very ''luietly, still looking at him steadily. There vas a sug- gestion of white teeth under his wrinkled chops; but he turned his head to look hack over the way he had come, and presently h(' disappeared. It was only for a moment; then his nose and eyes were poked cau- tiously by the corner of rock. He was peek- ing to see if I were still there. When the nose vanished again I stole forward to the turn and found him just ahead, l(K)king down the cliff to see if there were any other way below. He was uneasy now ; a low, whining growl came floating up the path. Then I sat down on a rock, squarely in the path, and for the first time some faint suggestion of the humor of the situation gave me a bit of consolation. I l^egan to talk to him, not humorously, but as if he were a Scotchman and open only to argu- ment. " You 're in a fix, Moowecn, a terrible fix," I kept saying to him softly; "but if you THE WOODS B had only stayed at home till twilight, as a bear ought to do, wo should be happy now, both of us. Vou have pur nie in a fix, tcx), you see; and now you've just got to get me out of it. I'm not going back. I don't know the path as well as you do. Besides, it will be dark soon, and I should probably break my neck. It's a shame, Mooween, to put any gentleman in such a fix as I am in this minute, just by your blundering carelessness. Why didn't you smell me, anvwav, as any but a f(«)l bear would have done, and take some other path o\er the mountain. =* Why don't you climb that spruce now and get out of the w a\- ? " I have noticed that all wild animals grow uneasy at the sound of the human voice, speaking however quietly. There is in it something deep, unknown, mysterious be- y(md all their jjowe; of comprehension; and they go away from it (piickly when they can. I have a theory also that all animals, wild and domestic, understand more of our men- tal attitude than we give them credit for; and i6i Zi^n YouMeef _ -i. i^.^- 9 SCHOOL OF j^^ the theory gains rather tl-.an loses strength XOhenYou Mcef ^^'^'-■'^'-■^^■'' ' ^'^''^I^ "^ Mooueen on that nar- • rifa Beor '""^^ P-'^^- I t'^'i see him now, turning, t\\isting unc-asily. and the half-limid look in his eyes as they met mine furtively, as if ashamed; and again the low, troubled whine comes floating up the j)ath and mingles with the rush and murmur of iJic salmon i>ool 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*-' '"''ii<l r')ck bore no sij^ns to tell me — what I was most curious to know — whether he came doun the tree or found some other way over the mountain. At the point where I had stood when his deej) Hoimniff ! first startled ivie I left a big salmon, for a taste of which any bear will go far out of his way. Next morning it was gone; and so it may be that Mooween, on his next jour- ney, found another and a pleasanter surprise awaiting him at the turn of the trail. -^W .65 k .OMK'riMKS. at ni^^ht. as you drift alou^ the y^horc in your caiuK*. sifting the night rounds and smells of the wilderness, ' when all harsher cries are hushed and the silence grows tense and nuisiral, like a great stretched chord over whi( h the w ind is thrum- ming low suggestive melodies, a sudden rush and fla|)i)ing in the grasses Ix side you breaks noisily into the gamut of lialf-heard primary tones and rising, vanishing harmonics. Then, as you listen, and before the silence has again stretched the chords of her Molian harp tight enough for the wind's fingers, another sound, a cry, comes floating down from the air — Qnoskli? quoslch-quoskh? a wild, cpiestioning call, as if the startled night were asking who 167 fel MICROCOPY RESOLUTION TEST CHART (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No 2) 1.0 I.I 1.25 1.4 2.5 2.2 2£ 1.8 1.6 ^ /1PPLIED IIVMGE Inc S^ 1653 fast Mam Strrrt r.S Rochesltr, Hfw York 14609 USA ■^S (716) «82 - 0300 - Phone ^B (716) 288 - 5989 - Fox FF Ou€>sk/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 <rrass, driving him from water to bush and back again, jabbing liim at every turn; till a rustle of leaves invited him, and he dashed blindly into thick underbrush, where her broad wings could not follow. Then with marvelous watchfulness she saw me standing near in my canoe; and without a thought, api)arently, for the young heron lying so still in the grass close beside her, she spread her torn wings and flapped away heavily in the jjath of her more fortunate younglings. ,\ I followed the fisher's trail into the woods A and found him curled up in a hollow stump. '^\ .... J^e made slight resistance as I pulled him out. All his ferocity was lulled to sleep in the vague, dreamy numbness which Nature always sends to her stricken creatures. He suffered nothing, t h o u g li he was fearfully ll THE WOODS ® wounded; he just wanted to be let alone. Both eyes were gone. There was nothing for m to do, except to >■■ -^^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 ati<r of fk-libcritc pl.m and effort that I have cvci n( led in Unk Wunk was in regard to tearhing two you!ig ones the simple art of swimmin/. — which p( leu- cines, by the way, n % 'v • c, and tor vhich there seems to be no r. cesity. I wu^ drift- ing along the shor in ov ear'>e 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*- ha<I brought them there to make her tasi of euning them more easy by giving tlieni ' taste of lily buds. When they had g lercd and eaten all the buds and stems thai they couk! p reach, she deliberately pushed both little ones into the wate-. When i uy nttcmpteci to scramble back she pushed them *^f again, and dropped in beside them and led lem to a lo<r farther down the shore, w ' ere there were more lily pads. The numerous hollow cjuills ll -a' 1 tltem high in the water, like so many coik-, and they paddled off with less effort than :iy other young animals that I ha e ever .>ec 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'</iOT '^'"''^ I'ttic tree Ik i..ct, witl ..as raised against the .runk and dull e)es following the motion overhcr.i!. At last he found what he wanted, two tall saplings growing close together and rubbing each other as the wind swayed them. He climbed one of these clumsily, hiirher and higher, till the slender top bent with his weight towards the other. Then he reached out to grasp the second top with his fore ' y^ V'/.f paws, hooked his hind claws firmly into the first, and lay there binding the tree-tops together, while the wind rose and began to rock him in his strange > 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<r the wood folk is ■r'!^'^'^ half so great as he ; none has senses so keen to detect a danger, nor |)owers so te'nble to defend himself against it. So he fears nothing, moving through the big woods like a master; and when you sec him for the first time in the wilderness pushing his stately, silent way among the giant trees, or plunging like a great engine through under- brush and over windfalls, his nose up to try the wind, his broad aritlers far back on his 253 > 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 <j^e^Wyf/^^fy '^"''' '^'^'' hidden by the dwarf spruces, watchinjr him intently. On the instant Noel left the duds where they were and bolted along the shore under the bushes, calling me loudly to come quick and bring my rifle. When we went back Umquenawis had trodden the clothes into the mud, and vanished as silently as he came. The Indians grew insistent at this, telling me of the hunter that had been killed, claim- ing now, beyond a doubt, that this was the same bull, and urging me to kill the ugly brute and rid the woods of a positive danger. __ But Umquenawis was already learning the fear of me, and I thought the lesson might be driven home before the summer was ended. So it was; but before that time there was almost a tragedy. One day a timber cruiser — a lonely, silent man with the instincts of an animal for find- ing his way in the woods, whose business it to go over timber lands to select the ifr.l '■sr^ 1 1 THE WOODS ® best sites for future cutting — came up to the „ lake and, not knowing that we were there, ^ pitched by a spring a mile or two below us. V^ I saw the smoke of his camp fire from the l/nfouenaw/S lake, where I was fishing, and wondered who jffte/fi^hfy had come into the great solitude. That was in the morning. Towards twilight I went down to bid the stranger welcome, and to invite him to share our camp, if he would. I found him stiff and sore by his fire, eating raw-pork sandwiches with the appetite of a wolf. Almost at the same glance I saw the ground about a tree torn up, and the hoof marks of a big bull moose all about. — "Hello! friend, what's up.?" I hailed him. " Got a rifle .? " he demanded, with a rich Irish burr in his voice, paying no heed to my question. When I nodded he bolted for my canoe, grabbed my rifle, and ran away into the woods. "Queer Dick! unbalanced, perhaps, by living too much alone in the woods," I thought, and took to examining the torn t^ _; _- " - ti'- 284 (JwQuenawts ^ SCHOOL OF ground and the bull's tracks lo find out for niysflf what had happened. But there was no cjueerness in the frank, kindly face that met mine when the stranger came out of the bush a half hour later. — " Til' ould baste 1 he "s had me perrched up in that three there, like a blackburrd, the last tin hours; an' divil th' song in me throat or a bite in me stomach. lie wint just as you came — I thought I could returrn his compliments wid a bullet," he said, apolo- getically, as he passed me back the rifle. Then, sitting by his fire, he told me his story. He had just lit his fire that morning, and was taking off his wet stockings to dry them, when there was a fierce crashing and grunting behind him, and a bull moose -^ charged ou of the bushes like a fury. Thj cruiser jumped and dodged; then, as the bull whirled again, he swung himself into a tree, and sat there astride a limb, while the bull grunted and pushed and hamniered the ground below with his sharp hoofs. All f/'. M-.n- THE WOODS W clay long the moose had kept up the siege, ^^_ now drawing off cunningly to hide in the b ishes, now charging out savagely as the timber cruiser made effort to come down l//Mliie/iOW/3 from his uncomfortablr perch. JAe/f/g/ify A few minutes before my approach a curious thing happened; which seems to indi- cate, as do many other things in the woods, that certain animals — perhaj^s all animals, including man — have at times an unknown sixth sense, for which there is no name and no explanation. I was still half a mile or more away, hidden by a point and paddling silently straight into the wind. No possible sight or sound or smell of me could have reached any known sense of any animal ; yet the big brute began to grow uneasy. Me left his stand under the tree and circled nervously around it, looking, listening, wig- wagging his big ears, trying the wind at every step, and setting his hoofs down as if he trod on dynamite. .Suddenly he turned and vanished silently into the brush. McGar- ven, the timber cruiser, who had no idea that ^ a. there was any man Init himself on the lake, i/mouenawi's ^^■''^^^''^'-'^' *'^^ ^"^' ^^'^^'^ growing wonder and C//»e^WyfigMy distrust, thinking him possessed of some evil (^1^ demon. In his long life in the woods he ^^'» had met hundreds of moose, but had never been molested before. With the rifle at full cock and his heart hot within him, h.e had followed the trail, which stole away, cautiousl) at first, then in a long swinging stride straight towards the mountain. — "Oh, 'tis the quare baste he is altogether ! " he said as he finished his story. ■M 28; <m Wk iu-'jL. Qm mmmm mmm |T was now near the calling . rj^: season, and the nights grew keen with excite- \ ment. Now and then as I fished, or followed the brooks, or prowled through the woods in the late afternoon, the sudden bellow of a cow moose would break upon the stillness, so strange and uncertain in the thick coverts that I could rarely describe, much less imitate, the sound, or even tell the direction whence it had come. Under the dusk of the lake shore I would 289 hi 2C)0 ^ SCHOOL OF sometimes come upon a pair of the huge Jlt^ ^ //fl/ ^""'T'^^''' the cow restless, wary, impatient, MeO^rumpef the bull now silent as a shadow, now ripping ,^<^p^ and rasping the torn velvet from his great A^^*^r antlers among the alders, and now threaten- ing and browbeating every living thing that crossed his trail, and even the unoffending bushes, in his testy humor. One night- I went to the landing just below my tent with Simmo and tried for the first time the long call of the cow moose. He and Noel refused absolutely to give it, unless I should agree to shoot the ugly old bull ai sight. Several times of late they had seen him near our camp, or had crossed his deep trail on the nearer shores, and they were grow ing superstitious as well as fearful. There \\as no answer to our calling for silence brooded like itchful thing over h' \ 1 1 "'t^. ' •, f ^*,V ;'i^^S-;,l(./ the space ci" an hour; silen ' \ nWiskd^ ^i:mt^ sk;epmg lake and forest, — a THE WOODS a silence that grew only deeper and deeper 2Q I after the last echoes of the bark t'"umpet had -j , rolled back on us from the distant mountain. ^T' Suddenly Simmo lowered the horn, just as ^f [fie Soun^of he had raised it to his lips for a call. 3^e C/^nimpet " Moose near ! " he whispered. " How do you know ? " I breathed ; for I had heard nothing. " Don' know how; just know," he said sul- lenly. An Indian hates to be questioned, as a wild animal hates to be watched. As if in confirmation of his opinion, there was a startling crash and plunge across the little bay o^'Ci' against us as a bull moose leaped the bank into the lake, within fifty yards of where we crouched on the shore. " Shoot ! sh(x*t-um quick ! " cried Simmo ; and the fear of the old bull was in his voice. There was a grunt from ti ■ moose — a ridiculously small, squeaking grunt, like the voice of a penny trumpet — as the huge creature swung rapidly along the shore in our direction. "Uh! young bull, lil fool moose," whispered Simmo, and breathed I 292 Mffie Sound of ^eJ^rumpet \ ■V . ^ SCHOOL OF a soft, questioning Whooowuh? through the bark horn to bring him nearer. He came close to where we were hidden, then entered the woods and circled silently about our camp to get our wind. In the morning his tracks, within five feet of my rear tent pole, showed how little he cared for the dwelling of man. Hut though he circled hick and forth for an hour, answer- intr Simmo's low call with his ridiculous little trrunt, he would not show himself again on the open shore. I stole up after a while to where I had heard the last twig snap under his hoofs. Simmo held me back, whispering of danger; but there was a question in my head which has never received a satisfactory answer: Why does a bull come to a call anyway? It is held generally — and with truth, I think — that he comes because he thinks the sound is made by a cow moose. But how his keen ears could mistake such a palpable fraud is the greatest mystery in the woods. I have heard a score of hunters and Indians call, all ^S^O^d^^. ■■r?8. ' ''TSST^WiP'^ 293 THE WOODS e differently, and have sometimes brought a bull into the open at the wail of n-y own bark trumpet; but I have never yet listened >^^.^-__ t-jk to a call that has any resemblance to the ^fj^e Sound of bellow of a cow moose as I have often heard 3ffke Orumpef it in the woods. Nor have I ever heard, or eviir met anybody who has heard, a cow- moose give forth any sound like the "long call " which is made by hunters, and which is used successfully to bring the bull from a distance. Others claim, and with some reason, that the bull, more fearless and careless at this season than at other times, comes merely to investigate the sound, as he and most other wild creatures do with every queer or unknown thing they hear. The Alaskan Indians stretch a skin into a kind of tam- bourine and beat it with a club to call a bull; which sound, how'ever, might not be unlike one of the many peculiar bellows that I have heard from cow moose in the wilderness. And I have twice known bulls to come to the chuck of an ax on a block ; which sound, ^.y--^',. : \()N DEp^^^ wmmm wmm fiiK ,1'H [«-. t. i'i 2C)4 ^ SCHOOL OF at a distaiv ■, has some resemblance to the >7/jW ^ //«/ peculiar cliock-chockitis; that the bulls use to 5fAel/rumpei' call their mates — just as a turkey cock gob- "^ bles, and a partridge drums, and a bull cari- bou pounds a stump or a hollow tree with the same foolish-fond expectations. From any point of view the thing has contradictions enough to make one wary of a too positive opinion. Here at hand was a " HI fool moose," who knew no fear, and who might, therefore, enlighten me on the obscure subject. I told Simmo to keep on calling softly, while I crept up into the woods to watch the effect. It was all as dark as a pocket beyond the open shore. One had to feel his way along, and imitate the moose himself in i)utting his feet down. Spite of my precaution, a bush swished sharply; a twig cracked. Instantly there was a swift answering rustle ahead as the bull glided towards me. ^'S, 295 THE WOODS W He had heard the motion and was coming to see if it were not his tantalizing mate, ready to whack her soundly, according to his wont, for causing him so much worry, and to ^f- ffne Sountf of beat her out ahead of him to the open, where ^^ C/mtnpef he could watch her closely and prevent any more of her hiding tricks. I stood motionless behind a tree, grasp- ing a branch above, ready to swing up out of reach when the bull charged. A vague black hulk thrust itself out of the dark woods, close in front of me, and stood still. Against the faint light, uhich showed from the lake through the fringe of trcs, the great head and antlers stood out like an upturned root; but I had never known that a living creature stood there were it not for a soft, clucking rumble that the bull kept going in his throat, — a ponderous kind of love note, intended, no doubt, to let his elusive mate know that he was near. He took another step in my direction, brushing the leaves softly, a low, whining grunt telling of his impatience. Two more !w) SCHOOL OF steps and ho must have discovered me, when ^ c- ^Tx fortunately an appealinjr gur^de and a meas- ^^yfSm/ef '-d /'"A /'»/■ /^•■/-'"^- '-V' ;^ ""7 {alUnii in shallow water — sounded from the shore below, where Simmo was concealed. Instantly the bull turned and glided away, a shadow among the shadows. A few minutes later I heard him running off m the direction whence he had first come. After that the twilight always found him near our camp. He was convinced that ^:^ there was a mate hiding somewhere near, and he was bound to find her. We had only to call a few times from our canoe, or from the shore, and presently we would hear him coming, blowing his penny trumpet, and at last see him break out upon the shore with a crashing plunge to waken all the echoes. Then, ■•i»t WSiSf^s^'^ --^ '~"' O ~ -- 297 THE WOODS e one night as we lay alongside a great rock in deep shadow, watching the puzzled young bull as he ranged along the shore in ^^ the moonlight, Simmo grunted softly to call Mffte Sound ^ him nearer. At the sound a large, bull, that S^eOTftimpef we had not suspected, leaped out of the bushes close beside us and splashed straight at the canoe. Only the quickest kind of work saved us. Simmo swung the bow off, with a startled grunt of his own, and I pad- dled away; while the bull, mistaking us in the dim light for the exasperating cow that had been calling and hiding herself for a week, followed after us into deep water. There was no doubt ^vhatever that this moose, at least, had come to what he thought was the call of a mate. Moonlight is decep- tive beyond a few feet, and when the low grunt sounded in the shadow of the great rock he was sure he had found the coy crea- ture at last, and broke out of his conceal- ment resolved to keep her in sight and not to let her get away again. That is why he swam after us. Had he been investigating }mm-~^^^^. 29H ^f^e Sound of 9 SCHOOL OF some new sound or possible danger, he would never have left the land, where alone his great power and his wonderful senses have full play. In the water he is harmless, as most other wild creatures arc. I paddled cautiously just ahead of him, so near that, looking over my shoulder, I could see the flash of his eye and the waves crink- ling away before the push of his great nose. After a short swim he grew suspicious of the queer thing that kept just so far ahead, whether he swam fast or slow, and turned in towards the shore, whining his impatience. I followed slowly, letting him get some dis- tance ahead, and just as his feet struck bot- tom whispered to Simmo for his most seduc- tive gurgle. At the call the bull whirled and plunged after us again recklessly, and I led him across to where the younger bull was still ranging up and down the shore, calling imploringly to his phantom mate. I expected a battle when the two rivals should meet; but they paid little attention to each other. The common misfortune, or 299 THE WOODS n the common misery, seemed to kill the fierce natural jealousy whose fury I had more than once been witness of. They had lost all fear by this time; they ranged up and down the //HheSoun^of shore, or smashed recklessly through the ^^e OTrumpef swamps, as the elusive smells and echoes called them hither and yon in their frantic search. Far up on the mountain side the sharp, challenging grunt of a ma3ter bull broke out of the startled woods in one of the lulls of our exciting play. Simmo heard, and turned in the bow to whisper excit- edly: " Nother bull 1 Fetch-um Ol' Dev'l this time, sa*-''n." Raising his horn, he gave the long, rolling bellow of a cow moose. A fiercer trumpet call <^rom the mountain side answered ; then the sound was lost in the crash-crash of the first two bulls, as they broke out upon the shore on opposite sides of the canoe. We gave little heed now to the nearer play ; '■ »ur whole -^^^^ •':iMi'ar ':'^*kb'tp» ^f me Sound of 3^e:/rumpei' attention uas fixed <.n a hoarse. •'runtinK' roar — lli^ult^nh! cnyuh! r-y-r-ruuhuvh ! — with a ratthn-r. Miappin-- cia>h of iuulerbru>h tor an accompaninKnt. Tlie younger l)ull heard it ; Ustened for a moment, hke a j^reat black >tatue under the moonii^dil; then he -rhded away into the sha(lo\\> under the bank. The lar^aT bull heard it and came swinging along the siiore, hurling a savage challenge back On the echoing woods at every stride. There was an ominous silence up on the rid^e where a moment Ix'fore all was fierce commotion. Simmo was silent too; tlie uproar had been appalling, with the sleeping lake below us, and the vast forest, where silence dwells at home, stretching u)) x\m\ away on every hand to the sky line. Uut the spirit of mischief was tingling all over me as I seized the horn and gave the low appealing grunt that a cow would have uttered under the same circumstances. Like a shot the answer was hurled back, and down came the great bull — smash, crack, r-y-rnnh ! till he burst like a tempest out ■r 1 ^ in- '.\^„ ■A MIGHTY SPRING OF HIS CROUCHING HAUNCHES FINISHED THE WORK mmm ^mM-'A^^:}-. i -.)■ on the open shore, where the second bull with a ch? 'longing roar leaped to meet him. Sin^ ; o v. a. o^r^.s^ing me to shoot, shoot, ___ telling .-: exci^e.'.y that " Ol' Dev'l," as he ^^^^'^f called -r. v/oulu be more dangerous now ^^^ ^ r^ than ever, if I let him get away ; but I only drove the canoe in closer to the splashing, grunting uproar among the shadows under the bank. There was a terrific duel under way when I swung the canoe alongside a moment later. The bulls crashed together with a shock to break their heads. Mud and water flew over them; their great antlers clashed and rang like metal blades as they pushed and tugged, grunting like demons in the fierce struggle. But the contest was too one-sided to last long, or Dev'l had smashed down from the mountain in a frightful rage, and with a power that nothing could resist. With a quick lunge he locked angers in the grip he wanted ; a twist of his massive neck and shoulders forced the opposing head aside, and a mighty spring of his crouching -.^^mmmmm^^ismmammfM ^ ^fifie Sound of ^e<7rump€f wi SCHOOL Of haunches finished the work. The second moose went over with a plunge like a bolt- struck pine. As he rolled up to his feet again the savage old bull jumped for him, and drove the brow antlers into his flanks. The next moment both bulls had crashed away into the woods, one swinging off in giant strides through the crackling under- brush for his life, the other close behind, charging like a battering-ram into his enemy's rear, grunting like a huge wild boar in his ratre and exultation. So the chase vanished over the ridge into the valley beyond ; and silence stole back, like a Chinese empress, into her dist rbed dominionr From behind a great windfall on the point above, the first young bull stole out, and came halting and listening along the shore to the scene of the conflict. " To the discreet belong the spoils" was written in every timorous step and stealthy movement. A low grunt from my horn reassured him ; he grew confident; now he would find the phantom mate that had occasioned so much THE WOODS ® trouble, and run away with her before the conqueror should return from his chase. He s\v mg along rapidly, rumbling the low ^-^-.^i^^j.^^^J^^^^^ call in his throat. Then up on the ridge MffteSound^ sounded agai: the crackle of brush and the ^Vie OTrumpet loar of a challenge. Ol' Dev'l was coming back for his reward. On the instant all ., ■; confidence vanished from the young bull's attitude. He slipped away into the woods. ^ ^■-;: ; ' ' There was no sound; scarcely a definite :..,.. / motion. A shadow seemed to glide away f / , ■.■■ . into the darker shadows. The underbrush ^ . , ■■■■■■ -p...^.. ■ ■■■-■■■ closed softly behind it, and he was gone. J ..; Next morning at daybreak I found my ■ V old bull on the shore, a mile below; and ■•. , " .....•;■".■■ with him was the great cow tiiat had v hunted me away from her little one, which , ; • • still followed her about obediently. I left them there undisturbed, with a thought of the mighty offspring that shall some day come smashing down from the moun- tain to delight 19! r^::.:^^'--^-- • Tjraii^^cj^; W^lWT'\ 3o6 A/Me Sound of S^e^rumpef the heart of camper or luinter and set his nerves a-tingle, when the lake shall again be visited, and the roar of a bark trumpet roll over the sleeping lake and the startled woods. Let them kill who will. 1 have seen Umque- nawis the Mighty as he was Ixfore fear eame, and am satisfied. }• i y /A .\,/-^% Ol, /v.. t^V^ VER my head soared an eagle one day, his broad vans set firm to the breeze that was doing his pleasure splendidly, keeping him afloat in the blue, just where he wanted to be. At my feet sprawled a turtle, enjoying himself in his own way. The two together taught me a lesson, which I am glad now to remember. The morning fishing was over. A couple of grilse, beautiful four-pound fish, fresh from the sea, lay snug together in my fish basket — enough for the day and to spare. 309 c: -»Vi. - 310 erne Gladsome ^ SCHOOL OF So I rravc up — with an effort, I niubt con- fuss — the bi<r sahiion that had plunged twice at my Jock Scott, and sat down on a stranded log to enjoy myself, as the wood folk were doing all about me. The river rippled past with strong, even sweep. Below was the deej) ])ool, with smiles and glintings of light on its dark face, where the salmon, after their lone run from the sea, rested awhile before taking up their positions in the swift water, in which they love to lie, balancing themselves against the rush and tremor of the current. Above were th- rififles, making white foam patches of the water, as if they were having a soap- l)ubble party all to themselves. The big white bubbles would come dancing, swing- ing down to the eddies behind the rocks, where a playful young grilse vould shoot ,, up through them, scattering them "; merrily, and adding a dozen more ' |<| bubbles and wimples to the running v,' troop as he fell back into his .:' eddy with a musical splash that THE WOODS H set all the warblers on the bank lo whistling. Now and then a big white i)atch would escape all this and enter sedately the swift run of 3 J' water along the great le^dge on the farther ^z^****^^ shore. My big salmon lived there; and just ^"t^^J^ as the fo.iH: patch dipped sharply into the ^^^^ quiet water below, he would swirl under it and knock it into smithereens with a blow of his tail. So the play went on, while I sat watching it — watching the shadows, watching the dabs and pencilings of light and the chan- ging reflections, watching the foam bubbles with special delight and anticipation, betting with myself how far they would run, whether to the second eddy or to the rim of the pool, before the sahnon would smash them in their play. Then a shadow fell on the water, and I looked up to watch the great eagle breast- ing, balancing, playing with the mighty air currents above, as the fishes played in the swift rush of water below. He set his wings square to the wind at first and slanted swiftly up, like a well hung .■;i ^5e O/aefsome M SCHOOL OF kite. Hut that was too fast for leisure hours. Hf had only dropped down to the pool in idle curiosity to see what was doing. Then, watching his wing tij)s keenly through my glass, I saw the quills turn ever so slightly, so as to spill the wind from their underside, as a skipper slacks sheets to deaden his boat's headway, and the wonderful upward spiral flight began. Just how he does it only the eagle himself knows ; and with him it is largely a matter of slow learning. The young birds make a sad bungle of it when they try it for the first ti following the mother eagle, who swings jusc above and in front of them to show them how it is done. Over me sweeps my eagle in slow, majestic circles; ever returning upon his course, yet ever higher than his last wheel, like a life with a great purpose in it; sliding evenly upward on the wind's endless stairway as it slips from under him. Without hurry, with- out exertion— just a twist of his wide-set wing quills, so slight that my eye can no \V ^^ THE WOODS ^ longer notice it — he swin-^s ii])\varcl ; while the earth ..prends wider and wider below '''''^ him, and rivers flash in the sun, like silver ribbons, across the tureen forest carpet that ^^fe^^^^"^ spreads away over mountain and valley to -^-l^^J^S* the farthest horizon. ^S^> Smaller and smaller i^row the circles now. till the vast spiral reaches its apex, and he han_t,'s there in the air, looking with quiet, kindling eyes over Isaiah's roy 1 land of "farnesses," like a tiny humming bird poised over the earth's great flower cuj). So high is he that one must think he glances over the brim of things, and sees our earth as a great bubble floating in the blue ether, with nothing whatever below it and only himself above. And there he stays, floating, balan- cmg, swaying in the purring currents of air that hold him fast in their soft arms and brush his great wings tenderly with a caress that never grows weary, like a great, strong mother holding her little child. He had fed ; he had drunk to the full from a mountain spring. Now he rested over the :.i. 3'4 Gladsome U/fe ^) SCHOOL OF world that r irishcd him and his little ones, with his keen ryes ^rrowing sleepy, and never a thou"-ht (if harm to himself or any crea- ture within his breast. I'or that is a splen- did thini; about all great creatures, even the fiercest of them : they are never cruel. They take only what they must to supply their necessities. When their wants are satisfied there is truce which they never break. They live at peace with all things, small and great, and, in their dumb uncon- scious way, answer to the deep harmony of the world which underlies all its superficial discords, as the music of the sea is never heard till one moves far away from the uproar along the shore. The little wild things all know this per- fectly. When an eagle, or any other bird or beast of prey, is not hunting — which is nine tenths of the lime — the timidest and most defenseless creature has no fear of him whatever. My eyes grow weary, at last, watching the noble bird, so small a speck on the infinite Ml THE WOODS ^ blue background; and tu'y blur suddenly, thinking of the joy of !u> grca^ free life, and the sadness of our unnatural humanity. 3'5 As I seek the pool agai 3Re Gladsome n, and rest my Jj/cV eyes on the soft, glininicring, color-washed ^-i^^^vL^ surface, there is a stir in the still water at ^^'"^ my feet. Life I'^ here too; and joy belongs, not only to the heaven>s but to the earth as well. A long twig from a fallen tree had thrust itself deep into the stream ; its outer end i'.'ayed, and rose ar. ' fell rhythmically in the current. While .' • ^ watching the eagle a little turtle found the twig and laid himself across it, one rti])per clinched into a knot to hold him steady, the others hang- ing listlessly and swinging to keep the bal- ance perfect as he teetered up and down, up and down, with the great, purring river to do his work for h'ln and join his silent play. And the'c he lav for half the morninir — as long as I stayed to watch him — swing- ing, swaying, rising, falling, glad of his little life, which was yet big enough to know a pleasure, glad of light and motion, and. %^ 3i6 GJbdsome ¥ SCHOOL OF for aught I know, glad of . music in the stream below, the faint echo of the rustling, rippling, fluting music that filled the air and the woods all around me. Life is a glad thing for the wood folk ; that is what the great eagle was saying, far overhead ; that is what the little turtle said, swaying up and down on his twig at my feet; that is what every singing bird and leaping salmon said, and every piping frog along the shore, and every insect buzzing about my ears in the warm sunshine. I remembered suddenly a curious fact, which till then had never come home to me with its true significance: in all my years of watching the wild things — watching, not to record, or to make a story, but only to see and understand for myself just what they were doing, and what they thought and felt — I had never yet met an unhappy bird or animal. Nor have I ever met one, before or since, in whom the dominant note was not gladness of living. I have met all sorts and conditions of beasts and birds at close •TSSS THE WOODS e quarters; some whose whole nature seemed bent into a question mark, like certain jays .^^ and turkeys and deer, and one moose that ^de_/2&^ I could not keep away fn^m my camp for ^/^V. any length of time ; some fond, like a cer- ^s^i.^^-^^ tain big green frog that attached himself to me with an affection that denied his cold blood ; some foolish, like the fawn that would never follow his leader ; some morose and ugly, like the big bull moose that first watched and then tried twice to kill me; but never a one, great or small, among them all, to whom life did not seem to offer a brimming cup, and who did not, even in times of danger and want, rejoice in his powers and live gladly, with an utter absence of that worry and anxiety which make wreck of our human life. I stood by a runway in the big woods one morning, watching for a deer that dogs were driving. From the lake I had listened to the whole story, — the first eager, sniffing yelps, the sharp, clear note that meant a fresh track, and then the deep-lunged, savage ® SCHOOL OF 3'S G/adsome chorus sweeping up the ridge, which told of a deer afoot and running for his Hfc. I knew something of the deer's habits in that region ; knew also that the hunters were over the ridge, watching by a lake that the deer had deserted week? ago ; and so I headed for a favorite runway, to ^et the deer slip by me and to club the dogs away as they came on. For deer hounding and deer coursing are detestable sports, whether the law allow them or not, and whether the dogs be mongrel curs that follow their noses or imported greyhounds with a pedigree ll/^t thai run by sight, followed by a field of thoroughbreds. ^V'/^^ On the way to the runway a curious ^^py^k?^ thing happened. A big hawk swooped into ^'jlpf'^'iV some berry bushes ahead of me with strong, even slant, and rose in a moment with the unmistakable air of disappointment showing all over him, from beak to tail tip. I stole up to the bushes cautiously to find out what he was after, and to match my eyes with his. There I saw, first one, then five or six 't THE WOODS 9 well-grown young partridges crouched in their hiding places among the brown leaves, rejoicing apparently in the wonderful color- ing which Nature gave them, and in their own power, learned from their mother, to lie still and so be safe till danger passed. There was no fear manifest whatever; no shadow of anxiety for any foolish youngster who might turn his head and so let the hawk see him. In a moment they were all gliding away with soft, inquisitive hoiZ-ha/Zs, turn- ing their heads to eye me curiously, and anon picking up the dried berries that lay about plentifully. Among them all there was no trace of a thought for the hawk that had just swooped. And why should there be.'' Had they not just fooled him perfectly, and were not their eyes as keen to do it again when the need should come ? I was thinking about it, wondering at this strange kind of fear that is merely watchful, with no trace of our terror or anxiety for the future in it, when twigs began to crackle and a big buck came bounding down the runway. 319 ^ SCHOOL OF 320 Gladsome I' I Near me he stopped and turned to listen, shaking his antlers indignantly, and stamp- ing his fore foot hard at such an uproar in his quiet woods. He trotted past me, his great muscles working like well oiled machinery under his velvet roat ; then, instead of keep- ing on to water, he leajx'd over a windfall — a magnificent exhibition of power, taken as gracefully as if he were but playing — and dashed away through the swamp, to kill the scent of his riving feet. An hour or two later I saw him enter the lake quietly from another runway and swim across with deep, powerful strokes. On the farther shore he stopped a moment to shake Q^P'--/ himself and to listen to the far-away ,' cry of the hounds. He had run as much as he wished, to stretch his big . muscles, and was indisposed now to -: run farther and tire himself, when he ^ could so easily get rid of the noisy par k. But there was no terror in the shake of his antlers, nor in the angry V- 'l wn^ THE WOODS stamp of his fore foot, and no sense save that of conscious power and ability to take care of himself in the mighty bounds that lifted him like a bird over the windfalls into the shelter and silence of the big woods. At times, I know, it happens differently, when a deer is fairly run down and killed by dogs or wolves ; but though I have seen them dog-driven many times, and once when the great gray timber wolves were running their trail, I have never yet seen a deer lose his perfect confidence in himself, and his splendid sense of superiority over those that follow him. Once, in deep snow, I saved a deer's life just as the dogs were closing in on him ; but up to the moment when he gave his last bound and laid his head down quietly on the crust to rest, I saw no evi- dence whatever of the wild terrors and frightful excitement that we have attributed to driven creatures. The same is true of foxes, and even of rabbits. The weak and foolish die young, under tiie talon or paw of stronger creatures. 321 322 G/adsome The rest have escaped so often, piiv/o^l and run so systematically till every ncvc iiirl muscle is trained to its perfect work, that they seem to have no thought whatever that the last danger may have its triumph. Watch the dogs yonder, driving a fox through the winter woods. Their feet, cut by briers and crust, leave red trails over the snow; their tails have all bloody stumps, where the ends have been whipped off m frantic wagg'ng. You cannot call, you can scarcely club them from the trail. They seem half crazy, half hypnotized by the scent in their noses. Their wild cry, especially if you be near them, is almost painful in its inten- sity as they run blindly through the woods. And it makes no difference to them, appar- ently, whether they get their fox or not. If he is shot before them, they sniff the body, wondering for a moment ; then they roll in the snow and go off to find another trail. If the fox runs all day, as usual, they follow till footsore and weary ; then sleep awhile, and come limping home in the morning. HHi w TROTS TO THE BROOK AND JUMPS FROM STONE TO STONE' i^=mim =' ..• < I. -1 -= I Now cut ahead of the dogs to the runway ^^5 and watch for the fox. Here is the hunted ^^ creature. He comes loping along, light as ^/^(jffyffsome a wind-blown feather, his brush floating out ^/c V^ like a great plume behind him. He stops '-^iQ^^^-^ to listen to his heavy-footed pursuers, capers a bit in self-satisfaction, chases his tail if he is a young fox, makes a crisscross of tracks, trots to the brook and jumps from stone to stone ; then he makes his way thoughtfully over dry places, which hold no scent, to the top of the ridge, where he can locate the danger perfectly, and curls himself up on a warm rock and takes a nap. When the cry comes too near he slips down on the other side of the ridge, where the breeze seems to blow him away to the next hill. There are exceptions here too ; exceptions that only prove the great rule of gladness in animal life, even when we would expect wild terrors. Of scores of foxes that have passed under my eyes, with a savage hunting cry behind them, I have never seen but one that did not give the impression of getting far "^T!^ mm ~^r'rw':'&^^yi,'^- 326 Gtodsome 9 SCHOOL OF more fun out of it than the dogs that were driving him. And that is why he so rarely takes to earth, where he could so easily and simply escape it all if he chose. When the weather is f^ne he keeps to his legs all day; but when the going is heavy, or his tail gets wet in mushy snow, he runs awhile to stretch his muscles, then slips into a den and lies down in peace. Let dogs bark ; the ground is frozen, and they cannot scratch him out. I have written these three things, of par- tridge and deer and fox — while twenty others come bubbling up to remembrance that one need not write — simply to suggest the great fact, so evident among all wild creatures,— from the tiniest warbler, lifting his sweet song to the sunrise amid a hundred enemies, to the great eagle, resting safe in air a thousand feet above the highest mountain peak ; and from the little wood mouse, pushing his snow tunnels bravely under the very feet of hungry fox and wild-cat, to the great moose, breast- ing down a birch tree to feed on its top when maple and wicopy twigs are buried deep THE WOODS « under the northern snows, — that life is a glad thing to Nature's children, so glad that cold cannot chill, nor danger overwhelm, nor even hunger deaden its gladness. I have seen deer, gaunt as pictures from an ^ndian famine district, so poor that all their ribs showed like barrel hoops across their col- lapsed sides; yet the yearlings played to- gether as they wandered in their search for food through the bare, hungry woods. And I have stood on the edge of the desolate northern barrens when the icy blasts roared over them and all comfort seemed buried so deep that only the advice of Job's wife seemed pertinent : to " curse God and die." And lo! in the midst of blasphemy, the flutter of tiny wings, light and laughter of little bright eyes, chatter of chickadees call- ing each other cheerily as they hunted the ice-bound twigs over and over for the morsel that Nature had hidden there, somewhere, in the fat autumn days; n J then one clear, sweet love note, as if an angel had blown a little flute, tinkling over the bleak desolation 327 ^fieGJbdsome 32« Gtodsome «i SCHOOL OF t., tell -e that spring was coming, and thnt even here, meanwhile, life was well worth the living. The fict i , Nature takes care of her crea- tures s . el. -gives then food without c .re. soft cr!.u> t.. hide, and nimble legs o rui away it'-, -that, ^o far as 1 have ever ob- serve.i. t!.. • ^cldori have a thought ' ^ their heads .ur /thing \^yv. the pUxiii .miort and giadne>^ o'' iixi!;^. It is onlywlvn u. looks at th anmal from above, studies him psychology all. for a moment, and . aemb rs what u .nderful provision Nature nas made u .eephimf'om all the evils of anxious forethought, that ore can understand thi- gladness. In the first plac . h- has ro .uch pams a^ Nve are accustomed tc tind i' ourselves and sympathize with '^ our ne^^hbors. Thre- fourths, at least, o' all our pain is mental ; .s born of an overurc _ht nervo.is on/; . _^ tion, or imagination. H our pain. ., f only those that actuall e.xis^ in ^ >ur or bai re w: s,? THE H OOnS ® couUl voriv . iont verv well to n ;ood ()1< .ijTc, > s ilu' l)cars a icl sc|uirrel> do. l-'oi ilit' .1 lim-^l ha- no u,rcat nu-ntalit\ certainly ni lou n< Y( ir Chi 4ian-Science 'riend would find ,1}; ,(.'1 subject, .ni)( 'h ., d 'fficult 'ie house to gci a grip r-') ^ , SfksGiadsome , I pk hi> pains th>'eby, ,Mid ^/tfVv^ imr. maiion \ hatevi • to Ix^ncr hnn. .«jrT__V_X^ -'®:'^ .on- hill. .St' ipii foes ' si' eeds 1 fi.i i: vs his -u.n t .se "is e ni iS 11 1 is i( k he knows it, uid . when he is w« ' he hin 'f the fact. 'e they are ■ ily bac. ni\ even iicie >s ,ani/ation i much oarser ^, and the pain less ^evere. V\ has 1, t excellent and wholesome di^posi- ) make as little, not as muc' hi^ as possible. ve notice I a score of times ; w( dcd animals that, when ■ ' vo their contidence so that h ve ? o icar of my hurting them willfully, i.iey let me bind up their .vounds and twist the broken bones into plai e, and even cut a ^o tion pii 330 GJbdsome Jt/fe 9 SCHOOL OF away the flesh ; and they show almost no evidence of suffering. That their pain is very slight compared with ours is absolutely certain. I have sometimes found animals in the woods, bruised, wounded, bleeding, from some of the savage battles that they wage among themselves in the mating season. The f^rst thought, naturally, is how keenly they must suffer as the ugly wounds grow cold. Now comes Nature, the wise physician. In ten minutes she has them well in hand. They sink into a aozy, dreamy slum.ber. as free from pain or care as an opium smoker. And there they stay, for hours or days, under the soft ana-sthetic until ready t- range the woods for food again, or till death comes gently and puts them to sleep. I have watched animals stricken sore by a bullet, feeding or resting quietly; have noted little trout with half their jaws torn away rising freely to the same fly that injured them ; have watched a muskrat cut- ti ig his own leg off with his teeth to free THE WOODS S himself from the trap that held him (all unwillingly. Gentle Reader ; for I hate such J.') ^ things, as you do), but I have never yet seen ^^Qfy^gQ/g^^ an animal that seemed to suffer a hundredth ^/c>v^ part of the paUi that an ordinary man would "^^^r^^^ suffer under the same circumstances. Children suffer far less than their elders with the same disease, and savage races less than civilized ones ; all of which points far down to the animal that, with none of our mentality or imagination or tense- strung nervous organization, escapes largely our aches and pains. This is only one mt r; of Nature's wise ways, in withhold- ing pain mc-tly from those least able to endure it. Of purely mental sufferings the animal has but one, the grief which comes from loss of the young or ihe mate. In this we have read only of the exceptional cases, — the rarely exceptional, — tinctured also with the inevitable human imagination, and so have come to accept grossly exaggerated concep- tions of animal grief. 1 n -^ GJfatisome W SCHOOL OF A mother bird's nest is destroyed. The storm beats it down ; or the black snake lays his coils around it; or the small boy robs it thoughtlessly ; or the professional egg-col- lector, whose name and whose business be anathema, puts it into his box of abomina- tions. The mother bird haunts the spot a few hours, — rarely longer than that, — then glides away into deeper solitudes. In a few days she has another nest, and is brooding eggs more wisely hidden. This is the great rule, not the exception, of the gladsome bird life. Happy for them and for us that it is so; else, instead of the glorious morning chorus, the woods would be filled always with lamentations. When the young birds or animals are taken away, or killed by hungry prowlers, the mother's grief endures a little longer. But even here Nature is kind. The mother love for helpless little ones, which makes the summer wilderness such a wonderful place to oi)en one's eyes in, is but a temporary instinct. At best it endures but a few weeks, mm THE WOODS ® after which the little ones go away to tak care of themselves, and the mother lets them go gladly, thinking that now she can lay on fat for herself against the cold winter. If the time be yet seasonable when acci- dent befalls, the mother wastes but few hours in useless mourning. She makes a new nest, or hollows out a better den, or drops her young in deeper seclusion, and forgets the loss, speedily and absolutely, in rearing and teaching the new brood, — hurry- ing the process and taking less care, because the time is short. It is a noteworthy fact — you can see it for yourself any late summer in the woods — that these late-coming off- spring arc less cared for than the earlier. The mother must have a certain period of leisure for herself to get ready for winter, and she takes it, usually, whether the young are fully prepared for life or not. It is from these second broods largely that birds and beasts of prey keep themselves .^^i^VViJ ^-p.^ i alive during times of >^^^V^^<\ 333 ^ReGiadsome hunger and scarcity. ^ -WK«!c.i?\V:f V>A^»«^ 3.34 GJbdstune 9 SCHOOL OF They arc less carefully taught, and so are caught more easily. This again is not the exception, but the great rule of animal life. And this is another of Mother Nature's wise ways. She must care for the deer and partridge; but she must also remember the owl and the panther that cry out to her in their hunger. And how could she accom- plish that miracle of contradiction without exciting our hate and utter abhorrence, if she gave to her wild creatures the human griefs and pains with which they are so often endowed by our sensitive imagination.? Of these small griefs and pains, such as they are, the mothers alone are the inheritors. The male birds and animals, almost without exception so far as I have observed, have no griefs, but rather welcome the loss of the /} young. This is partly because it leaves them // . free to shift and feed for themselves — your < male animal is essentially a selfish and happy '/-" creature — and partly because it otx-ns to them anew the joys of winning their mates over again. -.^c.^- ?%Ji \ \ v. THE WOODS « The second great reason for the gladness of animal Ufe is that the animal has no fears. The widespread animal fear, which is indeed the salvation of all the little wild things, is so utterly different from our " faithless fears and worldly anxieties" that another name — watchfulness, perhaps, or timidity, or distrust — should be given to it in strict truth. This animal fear, be it remembered, is not so much an instinctive thing a> a plain mat- ter of teaching. Indeed, inquisitiveness is a much stronger trait of all animals than fear. The world is so full of things the animal does not understand that he is always agog to find out a little more. 1 was sitting on a stump one day in the woods, plucking some partridges for my dinner. A slight UKjtion in the underbrush roused me from my absorption; and there was a big bull moose, half hid in the dwarf spruces, watching me and the fluttering feathers, with wonder and intense curiosity written all over his ugly black face. And I have caught bear and deer and crows and 335 ^/ieGJbdsonte i •hik;- ^- ^ii^»«iiJEsrs:r^'at^^iife»!^fi«if Gladsome V SCHOOL OF squirrels and little wwd warblers at the same inquisitive game, again and again. If you sit down in the woods anywhere, and do any ciueer or simple thing you will, the time will not be long before you find shy bright eyes, all roun(^ with wonder, watching you with delicious little waverings between the timidity which urges them away nnd the curiosity which always brings them ixick again, if you but know how to keep still and disguise your interest. If you find a young bird or animal, in nest or den young enough so that the mother's example has not yet produced its effect, you will probably note only two instincts. The first and greatest instinct, that of obedience, is not for you to command ; though you may get some strong hints of it, if you approach silently and utter some low, cautious sound in imitation of the mother creature. The two which you may surely find are: the instinct to eat. and the instinct to lie still and let nature's coloring do its good work of hiding. (There is another reason for ^^mM' ■MM THE WOODS « c|uietncss: a bird — and, to a less extent, an animal — gives forth no scent when he is still and his pores are closed. He lies quiet to cscajje the nose as well as the eyes of his enemy. That, however, is another matt' Hut JU will find no fear there. The lit thing will feed from your hand as readily as from its nK)ther, if you catch him soon enough. Afterwards come the lessons of watchful- ness and timidity, which we have called fear, to sort the sounds and sights and smells of the woods, and to act accordingly; now to lie still, and now to bristle your pinfeathers, so as to look big and scare an intruder; now to hiss, or growl, or scratch, or cry out for your ^-^ <" mother; and now, at last, to dive f^Y'^^- for cover or take to your legs in a straight- away run, — all of which are learned, not by instinct, but by teaching and example. And these are not fears at all, in our sense of the word, but rules of conduct ; as a car horse stops when the bell jingles; as a man 337 '■'mm^:wm:.:mmmi^ss7'^'^rh :.3S Gladsome 9 SCHOOL OF turns to the right, because he has learned to do so, or bends forward in running, or jumps forward when he hears an unknown noise ck'SC behind liini. To make a rough and of course inadequate generalization, all our human fears arise from three great sources : the thought of pain or bodily harm, the thought of future calamity, and the thought of death. Now Nature in mercy has kept all these things from the wild creatures, who have no way of making pro- vision against them, nor any capacity for faith, by which alone such fears are overcome. First, in the matter of bodily harm or pain : The animal has lived a natural life and, as a rule, knows no pain whatever. He likewise has never been harmed by any crea- ture — except perhaps an occasional nip by his mother, to teach him obedience. So he runs or flies through the big woods without any thought of the pains that he has never felt and does not know. Neither does ar/ thought of future calamity bother his little head, for he knows THE WOODS W no calamity and no future. I am not speak- - -g ing now of what we know, or think we know, -^^ concerning the animal's future; but only ^tgCfyffgnme of what he knows, and what he knows he -^^Xx^— , knows. With the exception of the few wild "vSh> creatures that lay up stores for winter — and they are the happiest — he lives wholly in the present. He feels well; his eyes are keen and his muscles ready; he has enough, or expects enough at the next turn of the trail. And that is his wisdom of experience. As for death, that is forever out of the animal's thinking. Not one in a thousand creatures ever sees death — except, of course, the insects or other wild things that they eat, and these are not death but good food, as we regard a beefsteak. If they do see it, they pass it by suspiciously, like a tent, or a canoe, or any other thing which they do not Mnderstand, and which they have not been taught by their mothers how to meet. Scores of times I have watched birds and animals by their own dead mates or little ones. Until the thing grows cold they treat yy 340 OAadsome 9 SCHOOL OF it as if it were sleeping. Then they grow suspicious, look at the body strangely, sniff it at a distance, never touching it with their noses. They glide away at last, wondering why it is so cold, why it does not move or come when it is called. Then, circling through the underbrush, you will hear them calling and searching elsewhere for the little one that they have just left. So far as I know, the ants, some tribes of which bury tl.eir dead, and the bees, which kill their drones at the proper season, are the only possible exception to this general rule of animal life. And these little creatures arc too unknown, too mysterious, too contra- dictory a mixture of dense stupidity and pro- found wisdom to allow a positive theory as to how clearly they think, how blindly they are instinctive, or how far they are con- scious of the meaning of what they do daily 3 all their lives. Bodily harm, future calamity, death, — these three things can never enter con- sciously into the animal's head ; and there is -ifk ' * THE WOOLS W nothing in his exjx'rieiice to clothe the last great enemy, or friend, with any meaning. Therefore are they glad, being mercifully delivered from the bondage of our fean^, I am still sitting on the old log by the salmon pool, with the great river purring by and the white foam patches floating down from the riffles. A second little turtle has joined the first on his teeter board ; they are swinging up and down, up and down, in the kindly current together. The river is full of insect life below them ; they will eat when they get ready. Meanwhile they swing and enjoy their little life. Far over the moun- tain soars the great eagle, resting on the winds. The earth has food and drink below; he will come down when he is hungry. Meanwhile he looks down o\er the brim of things and is satisfied. The birds have not yet hushed their moniing song in the woods behind me ; to^ happy to eat, they must sing a little longc Where the pool dimples and rolls lazily the salmon are leaping in 34' SfieGiadsome m^^mmm "^nm wmm GJfadso/ne their jtrent;tli; frogs pipe and blink on the lily paHs riding at ' hor; and over their cads in the nood of sunshine buzz the myriads of little things that cannot be still for gladnes- Nat ire above and beiow tin- gles with the joy of mere living — a joy that bubbles over, like a spring, so that all who will, even of the race of men who have lost or forgotten their birthright, may come back and drink of its abundance and be satisfied. BKHDa 34 J . V .Jt^W:.^E 'Howltie, Tuiimh Die/z, ^mf^^'inm^ X ■- ■^\ Imnv me An imals D ie HE scream of an eagle — a rare sound h __ in the summer wilderness — brought Syyj^^ me hurrying out of my commoosie to know <|^|^^ what had caused Chcplahgan to break the silence. He was poised over his mountain top at an enormous altitude, wheeling in small erratic circles, like an eaglet learning to use the wind under his broad wings, and anon sending his wild cry out over the startled woods. Clearly something was wrong with Chep- lahgan. This was no eaglet calling aloud to his unknown mate, or trying for the first time the eagle's wonderful spiral flight ; neither was it one of a pair of the royal birds that I had been watching and following for weeks, 345 346 ^ SCHOOL OF whose nest and little ones I had found at last on a distant crajr. Occasionally, as I followed them, I had -limpses of another 7/oU iA^^ eagle, a huge, solitary old fellow without Jlnimals Die^ .^ ^^^^ ^^■^^^^ ufe had been a puzzle and a nnstery to me all summer. It was he who was now crying aloud ov.r the high moun- tain where 1 had often seen him looking out with quiet eyes over the wide splendid domain that '^e ruled no longer, but had given over to younger eagles-his nestlings, perhaps- (,nly claiming for himself the right to stay and hunt where he and his vanished mate l,ad so long held sway. For most birds and beasts of prey have their own hunting grounds; -. ,. vnd. until they give them up, none other goes >t a-poaching there. It was this that had chiefly ' pu/xlcd me all summer. Now 1 ran to a point and sat down cjuietly against a weatherworn r(X)t that blended with the gray of my jacket, and focused my glasses steadily on Cheplah- gan to-see what be wovild do. Soon the erratic circles narrowed to a cen- ter, about which the great eagle turned a. on I» THE WOODS « a pivot ; the wild cry was hushed, and he spread his wings wide and stiff, as an eagle does when resting on the air. For several minutes I could see no motion; he seemed just a tiny dark line drawn across the infinite blue background. Then the line grew longer, heavier; and I knew that he was coming down straight towards me. Lower and lower he came, slanting slowly down in a long incline by imperceptible degrees, without a quiver of his wide-s t wings. Lower still and nearer, till I saw with wonder that his head, instead of being carried eagle fashion, in a perfect line with body and tail, droojied forward as if it were heavy. Straight over the point he sailed, so near that I heard the faint crackle of his j)inions, like the rustle ot heavy silk. The head drooped lower still ; the fierce, wild eyes were half closed as he passed. Only once did he veer slightly, to escape a tall stub that thrust its naked bulk above the woods athwart his path. Then with rigid wings he crossed the bay below the point, still slanting TnimalsDie p^aiiifii«''««r.'«M gently down to earth, and vanished silently S^^ into the drooping arms of the dark woods .i;^^^ beyond. 7/tHa MiP*T^ Clearly something was wrong with Chep- seen before. I marked the spot where he disappeared, between twQ -giant trees, and followed swiftly in my canoe. Just within the fringe of forest I found him, resting peacefully for the first time on mother eartli. his head lying across the moss-cushioned root of an old cedar, his wings outstretched among the cool green ferns — dead. Behind my tent in the wilderness, last summer, was a little spring. 1 used to go there often, not to drink, but just to sit beside it awhile and grow quiet, watching its cool waters bubble up out of the dark earth amid dancing pebbles to steal away among the ferns and mosses on its errand of unchan- ging mercy. Now and then, as 1 watched, the little wild things would hear the low tinkle of invitation to all who were athirst. A LITTLE WOOD WARBLER WAS SITTING ON A FROND OF EVERGREEN M. j>i:StMi'^ ami would come swiftly to drink. Sccin^^ mc they would draw back among the ferns to watch and listen ; but the little rivulet t kled '\Xcy/ou ff^e away unchanged, and they always canie back I jd^n/mals Dfe at last, taking me shyly for their friend because I sat beside their spring. One day when I came a little wockI war- bler was sitting on a frond of evergreen that hung over the spring as if to protect it. l^or several days I had noticed him there, resting or flitting silently about the underbrush. I le rarely drank, but seemed to be there. a> I was, just because he loved the place. 1 le was old and alone; the dark feathers of his head were streaked with gray, and his feet showed the wrinkled scales that age always brings to the birds. As if he had learned the gentleness of age, he seemed to have no fear, barelv moving aside as I approached, and at times coming close beside me as I looked into his spring. To-day he was quieter than usr.,i! ; w hen 1 stretched out my hand to take him he mad' ;io resistance, but settled down (.lUie tlv on n)v finger and cU)sed his eye? %•) SCHOOL OF I'\)r a half hour or more he sat there con- ^^' te ntedly. blinking' >loepily now and then, and ^\ openiiig his eyes wide when I brought him a 7/ou /6eTt chop of water on the tip of my finger. As yinimais Die^ twilight came on, and all the voices of the w(»od were hushed, I put him back on the i.\ergreen frond, where he nodded off to sleep before I went away. Next morning he was closer to the friendly spring, on a lower branch of the big ever- green. Again he nestled down in my hand and drank gratefully the drop from my finger tij). At twilight I found him hanging head down from a spruce root, his feet clinched in a hold that would never loosen, hi> bill just touching the life-giving water. He had fallen asleep there, in peace, by ihe spri: ^i that he had known and loved all his life, and whose waters welled up to his lips and held his image in their heart to the last mom<nt. How do the animals die ? — (juietly, peace- fully, nine tenths nf them, as the eagle died in his own free element, and the little wood THE WOODS W warbler by the spring he loved. For these two are but tyiK's of the death that goes on in the woods continually. The only excei> tion is in this: that they were seen by too inquisitive eyes. The vast majority steal away into the solitudes they love and lay them down unseen, where the leaves shall presently cover them from the sight of friends and enemies alike. We rarely discover them at such times, for the instinct of the animal is to go away as far as possible intt) the deepest coverts. We see only the exceptional cases, the quail in the hawk's grip, the squirrel limp and quiet under the paw of cat or weasel ; but the unnum- bered multitudes that choose their own plrce and close their eyes for the last time, as peace- fully as ever they lay down to sleep, are hidden i\om our sight. There is a curious animal trait which may account for this, and also explain why we have such curious, foolish conceptions of animal death as a tragic, violent thing. All animals and birds have a strong distrust and 353 .S\iK«i. 354 9 SCHOOL OF antipaih) for any quccrncss or irregularity an^ 'iig t' ''ir own kind. I.xcxpi in ran- ' ises, lo animals or birtls will tolerate any cripp ---" _:-,. or ckfornutl or sicklv nv nber among them. ^i I hey set ujjon \\\w\ fiercely and drive hnn away. So when an aiumal, grown uUl and feeble, feels the queerness «>t >onu' new thing stealing upon him he sli|is av.ay, in obedi- ence to a law of protection that he has noted all his life, and. knowing no such thing as death, thinks he is but escaping discomfort when he lies down in hiding for the last time. A score of times, with both wild aiul domestic animals, I have watched this and wondered. Sometimes it is entirely uncon- scious, as with an old bear that I found one summer, who had laid him down for his winter sleep under .i rot)t, as usual, but did not waken when the snows were gone and the spring sun called him c'- ily. Some- times it is a triumphant sense of cunning, as with c ertain ducks that, when wounded, dive and grasp a root under water, and die there, " m :*:^-4l! THE WOODS » thinking how perfectly they escajx? their 355 enemies. Sometimes it is a faint, unknown . y, instinct that cal's them they know not \jLCyjf^ whither, as with the caribou, many of whom IjU^j ^o far away to a sj)ot they have never seen Ij^UA where generations of their ancestors have | preceded them, and there He down with the hirches swaying above them gently, wonder- ing w hy they are so sleepy, and why they care not for gocKl moss anil water. And sometimes it is but a blind impulse to get away, as many birds fly straight out to sea, till they can go no farther, and fold their tired wings and slee|) ere the ocean touches them. One day you may see your canary flutter- ing his unused wings ceaselessly against the bars of his cage, where he lived so long con- tent. Were you wise, you would open the door ; for a call, stronger far than your arti- ficial relations, is bidding him come, — the call of his forgotten ancestors. Next day he lies dead on the floor of hi> cage, and there is left for him only a burial more artificial than his poor life. ^ftHj ifke MICROCOPY RESOLUTION TEST CHART (ANSI ond ISO TEST CHART No 2| 1^ m 111" 161 m III 2.2 "III 1- Ui tL. li£ ill 2.0 1.8 ^ /1PPLIED IM/^GE '65i tost Mam Street Rochester. New York 14609 USA (716) «82 - 0300 - Phone (716) 288 - 5989 - Fcx 9 SCHOOL OF 356 Tfota ffke 7r ^nimais Die " But," some reader objects, " what about the catastrophes, the tragedies ?" There may be a few, possibly, if you see with your imagi- nation rather than with your eyes ; but they are rarer far than human catastrophes. And as the vast majority of mankind die, not by earthquake or famine, but peacefully on their beds, so the vast majority of wild creatures die quietly in beds of their own choosing. Except where man steps in and interferes with the natural order of things, or brutally kills a brooding or nursing mother, Nature knows no tragedies. A partridge falls under the owl's swoop. That is bad for the par- tridge, — who is, however, almost invariably one of the weak or foolish ones who have not learned to be obedient with his brethren, — but there are two young owls up in the tree- top yonder, who will rejoice and be glad at the good dinner brought home to them by a careful and loving mother. As a rule Nature, as well as man, protects her brooding mothers, on whom helpless lives depend, with infinite care and cunning. Even I ( THE WOODS ® the fox cannot smell them at such times, though he pass close by. But should the mother fall — even here we have let our human imagination run away with us — the young do nc*: starve to death, as we imagine pitifully. They cry out for their dinner; the mother is not near to hush them, to tell them that silence is the law of the woods for help- less things. They cry again; the crow or the weasel hears, and there is a speedy end to the family without delay or suffering. This is the way of the woods. There are violent deaths, to be sure ; but these are usually the most painless and mer- ciful. A deer goes down under the spring of a panther watching above the runways. We imagine that to be a fearful death, and painters have depicted it in the colors of agony. As a matter of fact, there is prob- ably no pain whatever. Livingstone, who lay under the paw of a lion with his shoulder crushed and his arm gashed with seams whose scars he carried to his grave, felt no pain and did not even know that he was fT/oui the TnimalsDie / T Tfota ifie ,, .. ^^h//na/s Die ft? SCHOOL OF hurt. He was the first to call attention to the fact that the rush and spring of a savage animal brings a kind of merciful numbness _ that kills pain perfectly, and seems also to ^^ take away all feeling and volition; so that one is glad simply to lie still — his only hope, by the way, if he is to escape. If this is true of men, it is ten times more so of the animals, which have none of our nervousness or imagination. There arc many other things which point to the same comfortable conclusion. Soldiers in the rush of a charge or the run of a retreat are often mortally hurt without knowing it till they faint and fall an hour later. Every one has seen a mouse under, the cat's paw, and a toad in the jaws of a snake, and knows' that, so far as the stricken creatures are con- cerned, there is no suggestion there of death or suffering. And I have seen larger crea- tures—rabbits and grouse and deer — lying passive under the talon or claw that crushed them, and could only wonder at Nature's mercifulness. Death was not hard, but kind, s. THE WOODS W and covered over with a vague unreality that hid all meaning from the animals' eyes and made them wonder what was happening. Sometimes the animals die of cold. I have occasionally found, on bitter mornings, owls and crows and little birds hanging each by one claw to a branch, dead and frozen. That is also a merciful anrl painless ending. I have been lost in the woods in winter. I have felt the delicious languor of the cold, the soft infolding arms of the snow that l?eckoned |^ restfully as twilight fell, when the hush was ^ " on the woods and human muscles could act no longer. And that is a gentle way t. die when the time comes. Sometimes the animals die of hunger, when an ice storm covers all their ifeeding grounds. That also, as any one knows who has gone days without food, is far more merciful than any sickness. Long before pain comes, a dozy lassitude blunts the edge of all feeling. Sometimes it is fire or flood ; but in that case the creature runs away, with the confidence that he always feels in his legs or wings, till TminalsDte Ji, ^ ^o, 7/ou f/ie ^^ SCHOOL OF tiie end comes swift and sure. Those that escape huddle together in the safe spots, for- -j,.^ g^'tting natural enmities and all things else Animals DJe ''^''''^ ^ ^''''^^^ wonder at what has come to ^^3 pass. In short, unless the aniinls are to live always and become a nuisance or a danger by their increase, Nature is kind, even in her sterner moods, in taking care that death comes to all her creatures without pain or terror. And what is true jf the animals was true of man till he sought out many inven- tions to make sickness intolerable and death an enemy. All these latter case it is well to remem- ber, are the striking variations, not the rule of the woods. The vast majority of animals go away quietly when their time comes; and their death is not recorded because man has eyes only for exceptions. He desires a mira- cle, but overlooks the sunsets. Something calls the creature away from his daily round; age or natural disease touches him gently in a way that he has not felt before. He steals away, obeying the old warning instinct of his TIE WOODS S kind, and picks out a spot where they sliall not find him till he is well a^^iin. The brook sings on its way to the sea; the waters lajj and tinkle on the pebbles as the breeze rocks them; the wind is crooning in the pines, the old, sweet lullaby that he heard when liis ears first opened to the harmony of th.e world. The shadows lengthen ; the twilight deepens ; his eyes grow drowsy; he falls asleep. And his last conscious thought, since he knows no death, is that he will waken in the morn- ing when the light calls him. 361 luminals me \ A^ pwipi I ii Cheokhes, che-ok-lifs'. the mink. Cheplahgan, ilu-p-lah^an, the hald tajrle. Ch'geegee-lokh-sis, ciri^ce-.^a-'locksis, the chickadee. Chigwooltz, c/ug-7L'oo!f:', the bullfrog. Clote Scarpe, a k-endary hero, like Hiawatha, of the Northern Indian.s. Pronounced variously, Clote Scarpe. Oroscap, Gluscap, etc. Commoosie, cow-»,oo-.w\ a little shdter, or hut, of boughs and bark. Deedeeaskh, der-ihr'ask, the blue ja\-. Eleemos, cl-ee'inox, tiie fox. Hawahak, lui-wA-liM:' , tiie hawk. Hukweem, liuh-ivcn,,', the ^aeat northern diver, or loon. Ismaques, iM-inii-ques\ the fishhawk. T -x, kiyAx, the wea.sel. ios, kA-ka-i^ds\ the raven, a-nk, k'diink', the toad. lieeokuskh, kee-o-kusk\ the niuskrat. Kleeonekh, kee'o-nek, the otter. Killooleet, kil'loo-leet\ the white-throated sparrow. Kookooskoos, >t^r>-/tr;^-.vt,,,,.f', tlie great horned owl. Koskomenos, kds'kdm-e-nds', the kingfisher. Kupkawis, cup-ka';cis. the barred owl. 363 Kwaseekbo, k-Wi-tirJL-'/io, tlu- sheldrake. 3^M Lhoks, / . tlu- paiitlier. Malsun, DUi/'siin, thu wolf. Meeko, imckd, the red s(|uirrtl. Megaleep, nti-i;',i-/,;/>, tlic . aril)ou. Milicete, mi/'la-t,; the name of an Indian tribe; writtcr. also Malicete. Mitches, mit'ilu's, the birch partridge, or ruffed grouse. MokUques, niok-taqucs, the hare. Mooween, moo-icecn\ tiie black bear. Musquash, mus'quAsh, the muskrat. Nemox, //."///'ex, the fi.sher. Pekquam, pek-u^ani', the fislier. Quoskh, quoskli, the blue heron. Seksagadagee, sck'siUj;a-t/,i't;,y^ the Canada grouse, oi spruce partridge. Skooktum, skook'tiim. the troui Tookhees, /ok'/urs, the wood mouse. Umquenawis, uin-quc-na'wis, the moose. Unk Wunk, unk' -u<unk, th^ porcupine. Upweekis, up-wcck'iss, the Canada lynx. i 1J vnttcri L', or