Winter Sunshine / Burroughs, John, 1837-1921

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Title: Winter Sunshine

Author: John Burroughs

Release Date: July, 2003 [Etext# 4279]
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THE WRITINGS OF JOHN BURROUGHS
WITH PORTRAITS AND MANY ILLUSTRATIONS


VOLUME II

WINTER SUNSHINE




PREFATORY

The only part of my book I wish to preface is the last part,--the
foreign sketches,--and it is not much matter about these, since if they
do not contain their own proof, I shall not attempt to supply it here.

I have been told that De Lolme, who wrote a notable book on the English
Constitution, said that after he had been in England a few weeks, he
fully made up his mind to write a book on that country; after he had
lived there a year, he still thought of writing a book, but was not so
certain about it, but that after a residence of ten years he abandoned
his first design altogether. Instead of furnishing an argument against
writing out one's first impressions of a country, I think the
experience of the Frenchman shows the importance of doing it at once.
The sensations of the first day are what we want,--the first flush of
the traveler's thought and feeling, before his perception and
sensibilities become cloyed or blunted, or before he in any way becomes
a part of that which he would observe and describe. Then the American
in England is just enough at home to enable him to discriminate subtle
shades and differences at first sight which might escape a traveler of
another and antagonistic race. He has brought with him, but little
modified or impaired, his whole inheritance of English ideas and
predilections, and much of what he sees affects him like a memory. It
is his own past, his ante-natal life, and his long-buried ancestors
look through his eyes and perceive with his sense.

I have attempted only the surface, and to express my own first day's
uncloyed and unalloyed satisfaction. Of course, I have put these things
through my own processes and given them my own coloring, (as who would
not), and if other travelers do not find what I did, it is no fault of
mine; or if the "Britishers" do not deserve all the pleasant things I
say of them, why then so much the worse for them.

In fact, if it shall appear that I have treated this part in the same
spirit that I have the themes in the other chapters, reporting only
such things as impressed me and stuck to me and tasted good, I shall be
satisfied.

   ESOPUS-ON-HUDSON, November, 1875.



CONTENTS
    I. WINTER SUNSHINE
   II. THE EXHILARATIONS OF THE ROAD
  III. THE SNOW-WALKERS
   IV. THE FOX
    V. A MARCH CHRONICLE
   VI. AUTUMN TIDES
  VII. THE APPLE
 VIII. AN OCTOBER ABROAD:
             I. MELLOW ENGLAND
            II. ENGLISH CHARACTERISTICS
           III. A GLIMPSE OF FRANCE
            IV. FROM LONDON TO NEW YORK
        INDEX



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
 AN ENGLISH LANE
     From a photograph by Walmsley Brothers
 DRIFTS ABOUT A STONE WALL
     From a photograph by Herbert W.  Gleason
 DOWNY WOODPECKER
     From drawing by L.  A.  Fuertes
 COWS IN AN ENGLISH LANDSCAPE
     From a photograph by Walmsley Brothers
 St. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL
     From a photograph by Clifton Johnson
 IRISH COTTAGES
     From a photograph by Clifton Johnson




WINTER SUNSHINE

I. WINTER SUNSHINE

An American resident in England is reported as saying that the English
have an atmosphere but no climate. The reverse of this remark would
apply pretty accurately to our own case. We certainly have a climate, a
two-edged one that cuts both ways, threatening us with sun-stroke on
the one hand and with frost-stroke on the other; but we have no
atmosphere to speak of in New York and New England, except now and then
during the dog-days, or the fitful and uncertain Indian Summer. An
atmosphere, the quality of tone and mellowness in the near distance, is
the product of a more humid climate. Hence, as we go south from New
York,the atmospheric effects become more rich and varied, until on
reaching the Potomac you find an atmosphere as well as a climate. The
latter is still on the vehement American scale, full of sharp and
violent changes and contrasts, baking and blistering in summer, and
nipping and blighting in winter, but the spaces are not so purged and
bare; the horizon wall does not so often have the appearance of having
just been washed and scrubbed down. There is more depth and visibility
to the open air, a stronger infusion of the Indian Summer element
throughout the year, than is found farther north. The days are softer
and more brooding, and the nights more enchanting. It is here that Walt
Whitman saw the full moon

       "Pour down Night's nimbus floods,"

as any one may see her, during the full, from October to May.  There is
more haze and vapor in the atmosphere during that period, and every
pariticle seems to collect and hold the pure radiance until the world
swims with the lunar outpouring. Is not the full moon always on the
side of fair weather? I think it is Sir William Herschel who says her
influence tends to dispel the clouds. Certain it is her beauty is
seldom lost or even veiled in this southern or semi-southern clime.

       "Floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous,
       Indolent sinking sun, burning, expanding the air,"

a description that would not apply with the same force farther north,
where the air seems thinner and less capable of absorbing and holding
the sunlight. Indeed, the opulence and splendor of our climate, at
least the climate of the Atlantic seaboard, cannot be fully appreciated
by the dweller north of the thirty-ninth parallel. It seemed as if I
had never seen but a second-rate article of sunlight or moonlight until
I had taken up my abode in the National Capital. It may be, perhaps,
because we have such splendid specimens of both at the period of the
year when one values such things highest, namely, in the fall and
winter and early spring. Sunlight is good any time, but a bright,
evenly tempered day is certainly more engrossing to the attention in
winter than in summer, and such days seem the rule, and not the
exception, in the Washington winter. The deep snows keep to the north,
the heavy rains to the south, leaving a blue space central over the
border States. And there is not one of the winter months but wears this
blue zone as a girdle.

I am not thinking especially of the Indian summer, that charming but
uncertain second youth of the New England year, but of regularly
recurring lucid intervals in the weather system of Virginia fall and
winter, when the best our climate is capable of stand
revealed,--southern days with northern blood in their veins,
exhilarating, elastic, full of action, the hyperborean oxygen of the
North tempered by the dazzling sun of the South, a little bitter in
winter to all travelers but the pedestrian,--to him sweet and
warming,--but in autumn a vintage that intoxicates all lovers of the
open air.

It is impossible not to dilate and expand under such skies.  One
breathes deeply and steps proudly, and if he have any of the eagle
nature in him, it comes to the surface then. There is a sense of
altitude about these dazzling November and December days, of
mountain-tops and pure ether. The earth in passing through the fire of
summer seems to have lost all its dross, and life all its impediments.

But what does not the dweller in the National Capital endure in
reaching these days! Think of the agonies of the heated term, the
ragings of the dog-star, the purgatory of heat and dust, of baking,
blistering pavements, of cracked and powdered fields, of dead, stifling
night air, from which every tonic and antiseptic quality seems
eliminated, leaving a residuum of sultry malaria and all-diffusing
privy and sewer gases, that lasts from the first of July to near the
middle of September! But when October is reached, the memory of these
things is afar off, and the glory of the days is a perpetual surprise.

I sally out in the morning with the ostensible purpose of gathering
chestnuts, or autumn leaves, or persimmons, or exploring some run or
branch. It is, say, the last of October or the first of November. The
air is not balmy, but tart and pungent, like the flavor of the
red-cheeked apples by the roadside. In the sky not a cloud, not a
speck; a vast dome of blue ether lightly suspended above the world. The
woods are heaped with color like a painter's palette,--great splashes
of red and orange and gold. The ponds and streams bear upon their
bosoms leaves of all tints, from the deep maroon of the oak to the pale
yellow of the chestnut. In the glens and nooks it is so still that the
chirp of a solitary cricket is noticeable. The red berries of the
dogwood and spice-bush and other shrubs shine in the sun like rubies
and coral. The crows fly high above the earth, as they do only on such
days, forms of ebony floating across the azure, and the buzzards look
like kingly birds, sailing round and round.

Or it may be later in the season, well into December.  The days are
equally bright, but a little more rugged. The mornings are ushered in
by an immense spectrum thrown upon the eastern sky. A broad bar of red
and orange lies along the low horizon, surmounted by an expanse of
color in which green struggles with yellow and blue with green half the
way to the zenith. By and by the red and orange spread upward and grow
dim, the spectrum fades, and the sky becomes suffused with yellow white
light, and in a moment the fiery scintillations of the sun begin to
break across the Maryland hills. Then before long the mists and vapors
uprise like the breath of a giant army, and for an hour or two, one is
reminded of a November morning in England. But by mid-forenoon the only
trace of the obscurity that remains is a slight haze, and the day is
indeed a summons and a challenge to come forth. If the October days
were a cordial like the sub-acids of a fruit, these are a tonic like
the wine of iron. Drink deep, or be careful how you taste this December
vintage. The first sip may chill, but a full draught warms and
invigorates. No loitering by the brooks or in the woods now, but
spirited, rugged walking along the public highway. The sunbeams are
welcome now. They seem like pure electricity,--like a friendly and
recuperating lightning. Are we led to think electricity abounds only in
the summer when we see storm-clouds, as it were, the veins and ore-beds
of it? I imagine it is equally abundant in winter, and more equable and
better tempered. Who ever breasted a snowstorm without being excited
and exhilarated, as if this meteor had come charged with latent aurorae
of the North, as doubtless it has? It is like being pelted with sparks
from a battery. Behold the frost-work on the pane,--the wild, fantastic
limnings and etchings! can there be any doubt but this subtle agent has
been here? Where is it not? It is the life of the crystal, the
architect of the flake, the fire of the frost, the soul of the sunbeam.
This crisp winter air is full of it. When I come in at night after an
all-day tramp I am charged like a Leyden jar; my hair crackles and
snaps beneath the comb like a cat's back, and a strange, new glow
diffuses itself through my system.

It is a spur that one feels at this season more than at any other.  How
nimbly you step forth! The woods roar, the waters shine, and the hills
look invitingly near. You do not miss the flowers and the songsters, or
wish the trees or the fields any different, or the heavens any nearer.
Every object pleases. A rail fence, running athwart the hills, now in
sunshine and now in shadow,--how the eye lingers upon it! Or the
strait, light-gray trunks of the trees, where the woods have recently
been laid open by a road or clearing,--how curious they look, and as if
surprised in undress! Next year they will begin to shoot out branches
and make themselves a screen. Or the farm scenes,--the winter barnyards
littered with husks and straw, the rough-coated horses, the cattle
sunning themselves or walking down to the spring to drink, the domestic
fowls moving about,--there is a touch of sweet, homely life in these
things that the winter sun enhances and brings out. Every sign of life
is welcome at this season. I love to hear dogs bark, hens cackle, and
boys shout; one has no privacy with nature now, and does not wish to
seek her in nooks and hidden ways. She is not at home if he goes there;
her house is shut up and her hearth cold; only the sun and sky, and
perchance the waters, wear the old look, and to-day we will make love
to them, and they shall abundantly return it.

Even the crows and the buzzards draw the eye fondly.  The National
Capital is a great place for buzzards, and I make the remark in no
double or allegorical sense either, for the buzzards I mean are black
and harmless as doves, though perhaps hardly dovelike in their tastes.
My vulture is also a bird of leisure, and sails through the ether on
long flexible pinions, as if that was the one delight of his life. Some
birds have wings, others have "pinions." The buzzard enjoys this latter
distinctions. There is something in the sound of the word that suggests
that easy, dignified, undulatory movement. He does not propel himself
along by sheer force of muscle, after the plebeian fashion of the crow,
for instance, but progresses by a kind of royal indirection that
puzzles the eye. Even on a windy winter day he rides the vast aerial
billows as placidly as ever, rising and falling as he comes up toward
you, carving his way through the resisting currents by a slight
oscillation to the right and left, but never once beating the air
openly.

This superabundance of wing power is very unequally distributed among
the feathered races, the hawks and vultures having by far the greater
share of it. They cannot command the most speed, but their apparatus
seems the most delicate and consummate. Apparently a fine play of
muscle, a subtle shifting of the power along the outstretched wings, a
perpetual loss and a perpetual recovery of the equipoise, sustains them
and bears them along. With them flying is a luxury, a fine art; not
merely a quicker and safer means of transit from one point to another,
but a gift so free and spontaneous that work becomes leisure and
movement rest. They are not so much going somewhere, from this perch to
that, as they are abandoning themselves to the mere pleasure of riding
upon the air.

And it is beneath such grace and high-bred leisure that Nature hides in
her creatures the occupation of scavenger and carrion-eater!

But the worst thing about the buzzard is his silence.  The crow caws,
the hawk screams, the eagle barks, but the buzzard says not a word. So
far as I have observed, he has no vocal powers whatever. Nature dare
not trust him to speak. In his case she preserves discreet silence.

The crow may not have the sweet voice which the fox in his flattery
attributed to him, but he has a good, strong, native speech,
nevertheless. How much character there is in it! How much thrift and
independence! Of course his plumage is firm, his color decided, his wit
quick. He understands you at once and tells you so; so does the hawk by
his scornful, defiant whir-r-r-r-r. Hardy, happy outlaws, the crows,
how I love them! Alert, social, republican, always able to look out for
himself, not afraid of the cold and the snow, fishing when flesh is
scarce, and stealing when other resources fail, the crow is a character
I would not willingly miss from the landscape. I love to see his track
in the snow or the mud, and his graceful pedestrianism about the brown
fields.

He is no interloper, but has the air and manner of being thoroughly at
home, and in rightful possession of the land. He is no sentimentalist
like some of the plaining, disconsolate song-birds, but apparently is
always in good health and good spirits. No matter who is sick, or
dejected, or unsatisfied, or what the weather is, or what the price of
corn, the crow is well and finds life sweet. He is the dusky embodiment
of worldly wisdom and prudence. Then he is one of Nature's
self-appointed constables and greatly magnifies his office. He would
fain arrest every hawk or owl or grimalkin that ventures abroad. I have
known a posse of them to beset the fox and cry "Thief!" till Reynard
hid himself for shame. Do I say the fox flattered the crow when he told
him he had a sweet voice? Yet one of the most musical sounds in nature
proceeds from the crow. All the crow tribe, from the blue jay up, are
capable of certain low ventriloquial notes that have peculiar cadence
and charm. I often hear the crow indulging in his in winter, and am
reminded of the sound of the dulcimer. The bird stretches up and exerts
himself like a cock in the act of crowing, and gives forth a peculiarly
clear, vitreous sound that is sure to arrest and reward your attention.
This is no doubt the song the fox begged to be favored with, as in
delivering it the crow must inevitably let drop the piece of meat.

The crow in his purity, I believe, is seen and heard only in the North.
Before you reach the Potomac there is an infusion of a weaker element,
the fish crow, whose helpless feminine call contrasts strongly with the
hearty masculine caw of the original Simon.

In passing from crows to colored men, I hope I am not guilty of any
disrespect toward the latter. In my walks about Washington, both winter
and summer, colored men are about the only pedestrians I meet; and I
meet them everywhere, in the fields and in the woods and in the public
road, swinging along with that peculiar, rambling, elastic gait, taking
advantage of the short cuts and threading the country with paths and
byways. I doubt if the colored man can compete with his white brother
as a walker; his foot is too flat and the calves of his legs too small,
but he is certainly the most picturesque traveler to be seen on the
road. He bends his knees more than the white man, and oscillates more
to and fro, or from side to side. The imaginary line which his head
describes is full of deep and long undulations. Even the boys and young
men sway as if bearing a burden.

Along the fences and by the woods I come upon their snares, dead-falls,
and rud box-traps. The freedman is a successful trapper and hunter, and
has by nature an insight into these things. I frequently see him in
market or on his way thither with a tame 'possum clinging timidly to
his shoulders, or a young coon or fox led by a chain. Indeed, the
colored man behaves precisely like the rude unsophisticated peasant
that he is, and there is fully as much virtue in him, using the word in
its true sense, as in the white peasant; indeed, much more than in the
poor whites who grew up by his side; while there is often a benignity
and a depth of human experience and sympathy about some of these dark
faces that comes home to one like the best one sees in art or reads in
books.

One touch of nature makes all the world akin, and there is certainly a
touch of nature about the colored man; indeed, I had almost said, of
Anglo-Saxon nature. They have the quaintness and homeliness of the
simple English stock. I seem to see my grandfather and grandmother in
the ways and doings of these old "uncles" and "aunties;" indeed, the
lesson comes nearer home than even that, for I seem to see myself in
them, and, what is more, I see that they see themselves in me, and that
neither party has much to boast of.

The negro is a plastic human creature, and is thoroughly domesticated
and thoroughly anglicized. The same cannot be said of the Indian, for
instance, between whom and us there can never exist any fellowship, any
community of feeling or interest; or is there any doubt but the
Chinaman will always remain to us the same impenetrable mystery he has
been from the first?

But there is no mystery about the negro, and he touches the Anglo-Saxon
at more points than the latter is always willing to own, taking as
kindly and naturally to all his customs and usages, yea, to all his
prejudices and superstitions, as if to the manner born. The colored
population in very many respects occupies the same position as that
occupied by our rural populations a generation or two ago, seeing signs
and wonders, haunted by the fear of ghosts and hobgoblins, believing in
witchcraft, charms, the evil eye, etc. In religious matters, also, they
are on the same level, and about the only genuine shouting Methodists
that remain are to be found in the colored churches. Indeed, I fear the
negro tries to ignore or forget himself as far as possible, and that he
would deem it felicity enough to play second fiddle to the white man
all his days. He liked his master, but he likes the Yankee better, not
because he regards him as his deliverer, but mainly because the
two-handed thrift of the Northerner, his varied and wonderful ability,
completely captivates the imagination of the black man, just learning
to shift for himself.

How far he has caught or is capable of being imbued with the Yankee
spirit of enterprise and industry, remains to be seen. In some things
he has already shown himself an apt scholar. I notice, for instance,
that he is about as industrious an office-seeker as the most patriotic
among us, and that he learns with amazing ease and rapidity all the
arts and wiles of the politicians. He is versed in parades, mass
meetings, caucuses, and will soon shine on the stump. I observe, also,
that he is not far behind us in the observance of the fashions, and
that he is as good a church-goer, theatre-goer, and pleasure-seeker
generally, as his means will allow.

As a bootblack or newsboy, he is an adept in all the tricks of the
trade; and as a fast young man about town among his kind, he is worthy
his white prototype: the swagger, the impertinent look, the coarse
remark, the loud laugh, are all in the best style. As a lounger and
starer also, on the street corners of a Sunday afternoon, he has taken
his degree.

On the other hand, I know cases among our colored brethren, plenty of
them, of conscientious and well-directed effort and industry in the
worthiest fields, in agriculture, in trade, in the mechanic arts, that
show the colored man has in him all the best rudiments of a citizen of
the States.

Lest my winter sunshine appear to have too many dark rays in
it,--buzzards, crows, and colored men,--I hasten to add the brown and
neutral tints; and maybe a red ray can be extracted from some of these
hard, smooth, sharp-gritted roads that radiate from the National
Capital. Leading out of Washington there are several good roads that
invite the pedestrian. There is the road that leads west or northwest
from Georgetown, the Tenallytown road, the very sight of which, on a
sharp, lustrous winter Sunday, makes the feet tingle. Where it cuts
through a hill or high knoll, it is so red it fairly glows in the
sunlight. I'll warrant you will kindle, and your own color will mount,
if you resign yourself to it. It will conduct you to the wild and rocky
scenery of the upper Potomac, to Great Falls, and on to Harper's Ferry,
if your courage holds out. Then there is the road that leads north over
Meridian Hill, across Piny Branch, and on through the wood of Crystal
Springs to Fort Stevens, and so into Maryland. This is the proper route
for an excursion in the spring to gather wild flowers, or in the fall
for a nutting expedition, as it lays open some noble woods and a great
variety of charming scenery; or for a musing moonlight saunter, say in
December, when the Enchantress has folded and folded the world in her
web, it is by all means the course to take. Your staff rings on the
hard ground; the road, a misty white belt, gleams and vanishes before
you; the woods are cavernous and still; the fields lie in a lunar
trance, and you will yourself return fairly mesmerized by the beauty of
the scene.

Or you can bend your steps eastward over the Eastern Branch, up Good
Hope Hill, and on till you strike the Marlborough pike, as a trio of us
did that cold February Sunday we walked from Washington to Pumpkintown
and back.

A short sketch of this pilgrimage is a fair sample of these winter
walks.

The delight I experienced in making this new acquisition to my
geography was of itself sufficient to atone for any aches or weariness
I may have felt. The mere fact that one may walk from Washington to
Pumpkintown was a discovery I had been all these years in making. I had
walked to Sligo, and to the Northwest Branch, and had made the Falls of
the Potomac in a circuitous route of ten miles, coming suddenly upon
the river in one of its wildest passes; but I little dreamed all the
while that there, in a wrinkle (or shall I say furrow?) of the Maryland
hills, almost visible from the outlook of the bronze squaw on the dome
of the Capitol, and just around the head of Oxen Run, lay Pumpkintown.

The day was cold but the sun was bright, and the foot took hold of
those hard, dry, gritty Maryland roads with the keenest relish. How the
leaves of the laurel glistened! The distant oak woods suggested
gray-blue smoke, while the recesses of the pines looked like the lair
of Night. Beyond the District limits we struck the Marlborough pike,
which, round and hard and white, held squarely to the east and was
visible a mile ahead. Its friction brought up the temperature amazingly
and spurred the pedestrians into their best time. As I trudged along,
Thoreau's lines came naturally to mind:--

       "When the spring stirs my blood
         With the instinct of travel,

       I can get enough gravel
         On the old Marlborough road."

Cold as the day was (many degrees below freezing), I heard and saw
bluebirds, and as we passed along, every sheltered tangle and overgrown
field or lane swarmed with snowbirds and sparrows,--the latter mainly
Canada or tree sparrows, with a sprinkling of the song, and, maybe, one
or two other varieties. The birds are all social and gregarious in
winter, and seem drawn together by common instinct. Where you find one,
you will not only find others of the same kind, but also several
different kinds. The regular winter residents go in little bands, like
a well-organized pioneer corps,--the jays and woodpeckers in advance,
doing the heavier work; the nuthatches next, more lightly armed; and
the creepers and kinglets, with their slender beaks and microscopic
eyes, last of all. [Footnote: It seems to me this is a borrowed
observation, but I do not know to whom to credit it.]

Now and then, among the gray and brown tints, there was a dash of
scarlet,--the cardinal grosbeak, whose presence was sufficient to
enliven any scene. In the leafless trees, as a ray of sunshine fell
upon him, he was visible a long way off, glowing like a crimson
spar,--the only bit of color in the whole landscape.

Maryland is here rather a level, unpicturesque country,--the gaze of
the traveler bounded, at no great distance, by oak woods, with here and
there a dark line of pine. We saw few travelers, passed a ragged squad
or two of colored boys and girls, and met some colored women on their
way to or from church, perhaps. Never ask a colored person--at least
the crude, rustic specimens--any question that involves a memory of
names, or any arbitrary signs; you will rarely get a satisfactory
answer. If you could speak to them in their own dialect, or touch the
right spring in their minds, you would, no doubt, get the desired
information. They are as local in their notions and habits as the
animals, and go on much the same principles, as no doubt we all do,
more or less. I saw a colored boy come into a public office one day,
and ask to see a man with red hair; the name was utterly gone from him.
The man had red whiskers, which was as near as he had come to the mark.
Ask your washerwoman what street she lives on, or where such a one has
moved to, and the chances are that she cannot tell you, except that it
is a "right smart distance" this way or that, or near Mr. So-and-so, or
by such and such a place, describing some local feature. I love to
amuse myself, when walking through the market, by asking the old
aunties, and the young aunties, too, the names of their various
"yarbs." It seems as if they must trip on the simplest names. Bloodroot
they generally call "grubroot;" trailing arbutus goes by the names of
"troling" arbutus, "training arbuty-flower," and ground "ivory;" in
Virginia they call woodchucks "moonacks."

On entering Pumpkintown--a cluster of five or six small, whitewashed
blockhouses, toeing squarely on the highway--the only inhabitant we saw
was a small boy, who was as frank and simple as if he had lived on
pumpkins and marrow squashes all his days.

Half a mile farther on, we turned to the right into a characteristic
Southern road,--a way entirely unkempt, and wandering free as the wind;
now fading out into a broad field; now contracting into a narrow track
between hedges; anon roaming with delightful abandon through swamps and
woods, asking no leave and keeping no bounds. About two o'clock we
stopped in an opening in a pine wood and ate our lunch. We had the good
fortune to hit upon a charming place. A wood-chopper had been there,
and let in the sunlight full and strong; and the white chips, the
newly-piled wood, and the mounds of green boughs, were welcome
features, and helped also to keep off the wind that would creep through
under the pines. The ground was soft and dry, with a carpet an inch
thick of pine-needles; and with a fire, less for warmth than to make
the picture complete, we ate our bread and beans with the keenest
satisfaction, and with a relish that only the open air can give.

A fire, of course,--an encampment in the woods at this season without a
fire would be like leaving Hamlet out of the play. A smoke is your
standard, your flag; it defines and locates your camp at once; you are
an interloper until you have made a fire; then you take possession;
then the trees and rocks seem to look upon you more kindly, and you
look more kindly upon them. As one opens his budget, so he opens his
heart by a fire. Already something has gone out from you, and comes
back as a faint reminiscence and home feeling in the air and place. One
looks out upon the crow or the buzzard that sails by as from his own
fireside. It is not I that am a wanderer and a stranger now; it is the
crow and the buzzard. The chickadees were silent at first, but now they
approach by little journeys, as if to make our acquaintance. The
nuthatches, also, cry "Yank! yank!" in no inhospitable tones; and those
purple finches there in the cedars,--are they not stealing our
berries?

How one lingers about a fire under such circumstances, loath to leave
it, poking up the sticks, throwing in the burnt ends, adding another
branch and yet another, and looking back as he turns to go to catch one
more glimpse of the smoke going up through the trees! I reckon it is
some remnant of the primitive man, which we all carry about with us. He
has not yet forgotten his wild, free life, his arboreal habitations,
and the sweet-bitter times he had in those long-gone ages. With me, he
wakes up directly at the smell of smoke, of burning branches in the
open air; and all his old love of fire and his dependence upon it, in
the camp or the cave, come freshly to mind.

On resuming our march, we filed off along a charming wood-path,--a
regular little tunnel through the dense pines, carpeted with silence,
and allowing us to look nearly the whole length of it through its soft
green twilight out into the open sunshine of the fields beyond. A pine
wood in Maryland or in Virginia is quite a different thing from a pine
wood in Maine or Minnesota,--the difference, in fact, between yellow
pine and white. The former, as it grows hereabout, is short and
scrubby, with branches nearly to the ground, and looks like the
dwindling remnant of a greater race.

Beyond the woods, the path led us by a colored man's habitation,--a
little, low frame house, on a knoll, surrounded by the quaint devices
and rude makeshifts of these quaint and rude people. A few poles stuck
in the ground, clapboarded with cedar-boughs and cornstalks, and
supporting a roof of the same, gave shelter to a rickety one-horse
wagon and some farm implements. Near this there was a large, compact
tent, made entirely of cornstalks, with, for door, a bundle of the
same, in the dry, warm, nest-like interior of which the husking of the
corn crop seemed to have taken place. A few rods farther on, we passed
through another humble dooryard, musical with dogs and dusky with
children. We crossed here the outlying fields of a large, thrifty,
well-kept-looking farm with a showy, highly ornamental frame house in
the centre. There was even a park with deer, and among the gayly
painted outbuildings I noticed a fancy dovecote, with an immense flock
of doves circling aboxe it; some whiskey-dealer from the city, we were
told, trying to take the poison out of his money by agriculture.

We next passed through some woods, when we emerged into a broad,
sunlit, fertile-looking valley, called Oxen Run. We stooped down and
drank of its clear white-pebbled stream, in the veritable spot, I
suspect, where the oxen do. There were clouds of birds here on the warm
slopes, with the usual sprinkling along the bushy margin of the stream
of scarlet grosbeaks. The valley of Oxen Run has many good-looking
farms, with old picturesque houses, and loose rambling barns, such as
artists love to put into pictures.

But it is a little awkward to go east.  It always seems left-handed.  I
think this is the feeling of all walkers, and that Thoreau's experience
in this respect was not singular. The great magnet is the sun, and we
follow him. I notice that people lost in the woods work to the
westward. When one comes out of his house and asks himself, "Which way
shall I walk?" and looks up and down and around for a sign or a token,
does he not nine times out of ten turn to the west? He inclines this
way as surely as the willow wand bends toward the water. There is
something more genial and friendly in this direction.

Occasionally in winter I experience a southern inclination, and cross
Long Bridge and rendezvous for the day in some old earthwork on the
Virginia hills. The roads are not so inviting in this direction, but
the line of old forts with rabbits burrowing in the bomb-proofs, and a
magazine, or officers' quarters turned into a cow stable by colored
squatters, form an interesting feature. But, whichever way I go, I am
glad I came. All roads lead up to the Jerusalem the walker seeks. There
is everywhere the vigorous and masculine winter air, and the impalpable
sustenance the mind draws from all natural forms.



II. THE EXHILARATIONS OF THE ROAD

       Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road.
                                               WALT WHITMAN.

Ocasionally on the sidewalk, amid the dapper, swiftly moving,
high-heeled boots and gaiters, I catch a glimpse of the naked human
foot. Nimbly it scuffs along, the toes spread, the sides flatten, the
heel protrudes; it grasps the curbing, or bends to the form of the
uneven surfaces,--a thing sensuous and alive, that seems to take
cognizance of whatever it touches or passes. How primitive and uncivil
it looks in such company,--a real barbarian in the parlor! We are so
unused to the human anatomy, to simple, unadorned nature, that it looks
a little repulsive; but it is beautiful for all that. Though it be a
black foot and an unwashed foot, it shall be exalted. It is a thing of
life amid leather, a free spirit amid cramped, a wild bird amid caged,
an athlete amid consumptives. It is the symbol of my order, the Order
of Walkers. That unhampered, vitally playing piece of anatomy is the
type of the pedestrian, man returned to first principles, in direct
contact and intercourse with the earth and the elements, his faculties
unsheathed, his mind plastic, his body toughened, his heart light, his
soul dilated; while those cramped and distorted members in the calf and
kid are the unfortunate wretches doomed to carriages and cushions.

I am not going to advocate the disuse of boots and shoes, or the
abandoning of the improved modes of travel; but I am going to brag as
lustily as I can on behalf of the pedestrian, and show how all the
shining angels second and accompany the man who goes afoot, while all
the dark spirits are ever looking out for a chance to ride.

When I see the discomforts that able-bodied American men will put up
with rather than go a mile or half a mile on foot, the abuses they will
tolerate and encourage, crowding the street car on a little fall in the
temperature or the appearance of an inch or two of snow, packing up to
overflowing, dangling to the straps, treading on each other's toes,
breathing each other's breaths, crushing the women and children,
hanging by tooth and nail to a square inch of the platform, imperiling
their limbs and killing the horses,--I think the commonest tramp in the
street has good reason to felicitate himself on his rare privilege of
going afoot. Indeed, a race that neglects or despises this primitive
gift, that fears the touch of the soil, that has no footpaths, no
community of ownership in the land which they imply, that warns off the
walker as a trespasser, that knows no way but the highway, the
carriage-way, that forgets the stile, the foot-bridge, that even
ignores the rights of the pedestrian in the public road, providing no
escape for him but in the ditch or up the bank, is in a fair way to far
more serious degeneracy.

Shakespeare makes the chief qualification of the walker a merry
heart:--

       "Jog on, jog on, the footpath way,
          And merrily hent the stile-a;

       A merry heart goes all the day,
          Your sad tires in a mile-a."

The human body is a steed that goes freest and longest under a light
rider, and the lightest of all riders is a cheerful heart. Your sad, or
morose, or embittered, or preoccupied heart settles heavily into the
saddle, and the poor beast, the body, breaks down the first mile.
Indeed, the heaviest thing in the world is a heavy heart. Next to that,
the most burdensome to the walker is a heart not in perfect sympathy
and accord with the body,--a reluctant or unwilling heart. The horse
and rider must not only both be willing to go the same way, but the
rider must lead the way and infuse his own lightness and eagerness into
the steed. Herein is no doubt our trouble, and one reason of the decay
of the noble art in this country. We are unwilling walkers. We are not
innocent and simple-hearted enough to enjoy a walk. We have fallen from
that state of grace which capacity to enjoy a walk implies. It cannot
be said that as a people we are so positively sad, or morose, or
melancholic as that we are vacant of that sportiveness and surplusage
of animal spirits that characterized our ancestors, and that springs
from full and harmonious life,--a sound heart in accord with a sound
body. A man must invest himself near at hand and in common things, and
be content with a steady and moderate return, if he would know the
blessedness of a cheerful heart and the sweetness of a walk over the
round earth. This is a lesson the American has yet to
learn,--capability of amusement on a low key. He expects rapid and
extraordinary returns. He would make the very elemental laws pay usury.
He has nothing to invest in a walk; it is too slow, too cheap. We crave
the astonishing, the exciting, the far away, and do not know the
highways of the gods when we see them,--always a sign of the decay of
the faith and simplicity of man.

If I say to my neighbor, "Come with me, I have great wonders to show
you," he pricks up his ears and comes forthwith; but when I take him on
the hills under the full blaze of the sun, or along the country road,
our footsteps lighted by the moon and stars, and say to him, "Behold,
these are the wonders, these are the circuits of the gods, this we now
tread is a morning star," he feels defrauded, and as if I had played
him a trick. And yet nothing less than dilatation and enthusiasm like
this is the badge of the master walker.

If we are not sad, we are careworn, hurried, discontented, mortgaging
the present for the promise of the future. If we take a walk, it is as
we take a prescription, with about the same relish and with about the
same purpose; and the more the fatigue, the greater our faith in the
virtue of the medicine.

Of those gleesome saunters over the hills in spring, or those sallies
of the body in winter, those excursions into space when the foot
strikes fire at every step, when the air tastes like a new and finer
mixture, when we accumulate force and gladness as we go along, when the
sight of objects by the roadside and of the fields and woods pleases
more than pictures or than all the art in the world,--those ten or
twelve mile dashes that are but the wit and effluence of the corporeal
powers,--of such diversion and open road entertainment, I say, most of
us know very little.

I notice with astonishment that at our fashionable watering-places
nobody walks; that, of all those vast crowds of health-seekers and
lovers of country air, you can never catch one in the fields or woods,
or guilty of trudging along the country road with dust on his shoes and
sun-tan on his hands and face. The sole amusement seems to be to eat
and dress and sit about the hotels and glare at each other. The men
look bored, the women look tired, and all seem to sigh, "O Lord! what
shall we do to be happy and not be vulgar?" Quite different from our
British cousins across the water, who have plenty of amusement and
hilarity, spending most of the time at their watering-places in the
open air, strolling, picnicking, boating, climbing, briskly walking,
apparently with little fear of sun-tan or of compromising their
"gentility."

It is indeed astonishing with what ease and hilarity the English walk.
To an American it seems a kind of infatuation. When Dickens was in this
country, I imagine the aspirants to the honor of a walk with him were
not numerous. In a pedestrian tour of England by an American, I read
that, "after breakfast with the Independent minister, he walked with us
for six miles out of town upon our road. Three little boys and girls,
the youngest six years old, also accompanied us. They were romping and
rambling about all the while, and their morning walk must have been as
much as fifteen miles; but they thought nothing of it, and when we
parted were apparently as fresh as when they started, and very loath to
return."

I fear, also, the American is becoming disqualified for the manly art
of walking by a falling off in the size of his foot. He cherishes and
cultivates this part of his anatomy, and apparently thinks his taste
and good breeding are to be inferred from its diminutive size. A small,
trim foot, well booted or gaitered, is the national vanity. How we
stare at the big feet of foreigners, and wonder what may be the price
of leather in those countries, and where all the aristocratic blood is,
that these plebeian extremities so predominate! If we were admitted to
the confidences of the shoemaker to Her Majesty or to His Royal
Highness, no doubt we should modify our views upon this latter point,
for a truly large and royal nature is never stunted in the extremities;
a little foot never yet supported a great character.

It is said that Englishmen, when they first come to this country, are
for some time under the impression that American women all have
deformed feet, they are so coy of them and so studiously careful to
keep them hid. That there is an astonishing difference between the
women of the two countries in this respect, every traveler can testify;
and that there is a difference equally astonishing between the
pedestrian habits and capabilities of the rival sisters, is also
certain.

The English pedestrian, no doubt, has the advantage of us in the matter
of climate; for, notwithstanding the traditional gloom and moroseness
of English skies, they have in that country none of those relaxing,
sinking, enervating days, of which we have so many here, and which seem
especially trying to the female constitution,--days which withdraw all
support from the back and loins, and render walking of all things
burdensome. Theirs is a climate of which it has been said that "it
invites men abroad more days in the year and more hours in the day than
that of any other country."

Then their land is threaded with paths which invite the walker, and
which are scarcely less important than the highways. I heard of a surly
nobleman near London who took it into his head to close a footpath that
passed through his estate near his house, and open another a little
farther off. The pedestrians objected; the matter got into the courts,
and after protracted litigation the aristocrat was beaten. The path
could not be closed or moved. The memory of man ran not to the time
when there was not a footpath there, and every pedestrian should have
the right of way there still.

I remember the pleasure I had in the path that connects
Stratford-on-Avon with Shottery, Shakespeare's path when he went
courting Anne Hathaway. By the king's highway the distance is some
farther, so there is a well-worn path along the hedgerows and through
the meadows and turnip patches. The traveler in it has the privilege of
crossing the railroad track, an unusual privilege in England, and one
denied to the lord in his carriage, who must either go over or under
it. (It is a privilege, is it not, to be allowed the forbidden, even if
it be the privilege of being run over by the engine?) In strolling over
the South Downs, too, I was delighted to find that where the hill was
steepest some benefactor of the order of walkers had made notches in
the sward, so that the foot could bite the better and firmer; the path
became a kind of stairway, which I have no doubt the plowman respected.

When you see an English country church withdrawn, secluded, out of the
reach of wheels, standing amid grassy graves and surrounded by noble
trees, approached by paths and shaded lanes, you appreciate more than
ever this beautiful habit of the people. Only a race that knows how to
use its feet, and holds footpaths sacred, could put such a charm of
privacy and humility into such a structure. I think I should be tempted
to go to church myself if I saw all my neighbors starting off across
the fields or along paths that led to such charmed spots, and were sure
I should not be jostled or run over by the rival chariots of the
worshipers at the temple doors. I think that is what ails our religion;
humility and devoutness of heart leave one when he lays by his walking
shoes and walking clothes, and sets out for church drawn by something.

Indeed, I think it would be tantamount to an astonishing revival of
religion if the people would all walk to church on Sunday and walk home
again. Think how the stones would preach to them by the wayside; how
their benumbed minds would warm up beneath the friction of the gravel;
how their vain and foolish thoughts, their desponding thoughts, their
besetting demons of one kind and another, would drop behind them,
unable to keep up or to endure the fresh air! They would walk away from
their ennui, their worldly cares, their uncharitableness, their pride
of dress; for these devils always want to ride, while the simple
virtues are never so happy as when on foot. Let us walk by all means;
but if we will ride, get an ass.

Then the English claim that they are a more hearty and robust people
than we are. It is certain they are a plainer people, have plainer
tastes, dress plainer, build plainer, speak plainer, keep closer to
facts, wear broader shoes and coarser clothes, and place a lower
estimate on themselves,--all of which traits favor pedestrian habits.
The English grandee is not confined to his carriage; but if the
American aristocrat leaves his, he is ruined. Oh the weariness, the
emptiness, the plotting, the seeking rest and finding none, that go by
in the carriages! while your pedestrian is always cheerful, alert,
refreshed, with his heart in his hand and his hand free to all. He
looks down upon nobody; he is on the common level. His pores are all
open, his circulation is active, his digestion good. His heart is not
cold, nor are his faculties asleep. He is the only real traveler; he
alone tastes the "gay, fresh sentiment of the road." He is not
isolated, but is at one with things, with the farms and the industries
on either hand. The vital, universal currents play through him. He
knows the ground is alive; he feels the pulses of the wind, and reads
the mute language of things. His sympathies are all aroused; his senses
are continually reporting messages to his mind. Wind, frost, rain,
heat, cold, are something to him. He is not merely a spectator of the
panorama of nature, but a participator in it. He experiences the
country he passes through,--tastes it, feels it, absorbs it; the
traveler in his fine carriage sees it merely. This gives the fresh
charm to that class of books that may be called "Views Afoot," and to
the narratives of hunters, naturalists, exploring parties, etc. The
walker does not need a large territory. When you get into a railway car
you want a continent, the man in his carriage requires a township; but
a walker like Thoreau finds as much and more along the shores of Walden
Pond. The former, as it were, has merely time to glance at the headings
of the chapters, while the latter need not miss a line, and Thoreau
reads between the lines. Then the walker has the privilege of the
fields, the woods, the hills, the byways. The apples by the roadside
are for him, and the berries, and the spring of water, and the friendly
shelter; and if the weather is cold, he eats the frost grapes and the
persimmons, or even the white-meated turnip, snatched from the field he
passed through, with incredible relish.

Afoot and in the open road, one has a fair start in life at last.
There is no hindrance now. Let him put his best foot forward. He is on
the broadest human plane. This is on the level of all the great laws
and heroic deeds. From this platform he is eligible to any good
fortune. He was sighing for the golden age; let him walk to it. Every
step brings him nearer. The youth of the world is but a few days'
journey distant. Indeed, I know persons who think they have walked back
to that fresh aforetime of a single bright Sunday in autumn or early
spring. Before noon they felt its airs upon their cheeks, and by
nightfall, on the banks of some quiet stream, or along some path in the
wood, or on some hilltop, aver they have heard the voices and felt the
wonder and the mystery that so enchanted the early races of men.

I think if I could walk through a country, I should not only see many
things and have adventures that I should otherwise miss, but that I
should come into relations with that country at first hand, and with
the men and women in it, in a way that would afford the deepest
satisfaction. Hence I envy the good fortune of all walkers, and feel
like joining myself to every tramp that comes along. I am jealous of
the clergyman I read about the other day, who footed it from Edinburgh
to London, as poor Effie Deans did, carrying her shoes in her hand most
of the way, and over the ground that rugged Ben Jonson strode, larking
it to Scotland, so long ago. I read with longing of the pedestrian
feats of college youths, so gay and light-hearted, with their coarse
shoes on their feet and their knapsacks on their backs. It would have
been a good draught of the rugged cup to have walked with Wilson the
ornithologist, deserted by his companions, from Niagara to Philadelphia
through the snows of winter. I almost wish that I had been born to the
career of a German mechanic, that I might have had that delicious
adventurous year of wandering over my country before I settled down to
work. I think how much richer and firmer-grained life would be to me if
I could journey afoot through Florida and Texas, or follow the windings
of the Platte or the Yellowstone, or stroll through Oregon, or browse
for a season about Canada. In the bright, inspiring days of autumn I
only want the time and the companion to walk back to the natal spot,
the family nest, across two States and into the mountains of a third.
What adventures we would have by the way, what hard pulls, what
prospects from hills, what spectacles we would behold of night and day,
what passages with dogs, what glances, what peeps into windows, what
characters we should fall in with, and how seasoned and hardy we should
arrive at our destination!

For companion I should want a veteran of the war!  Those marches put
something into him I like. Even at this distance his mettle is but
little softened. As soon as he gets warmed up, it all comes back to
him. He catches your step and away you go, a gay, adventurous,
half-predatory couple. How quickly he falls into the old ways of jest
and anecdote and song! You may have known him for years without having
heard him hum an air, or more than casually revert to the subject of
his experience during the war. You have even questioned and
cross-questioned him without firing the train you wished. But get him
out on a vacation tramp, and you can walk it all out of him. By the
camp-fire at night, or swinging along the streams by day, song,
anecdote, adventure, come to the surface, and you wonder how your
companion has kept silent so long.

It is another proof of how walking brings out the true character of a
man. The devil never yet asked his victims to take a walk with him. You
will not be long in finding your companion out. All disguises will fall
away from him. As his pores open his character is laid bare. His
deepest and most private self will come to the top. It matters little
with whom you ride, so he be not a pickpocket; for both of you will,
very likely, settle down closer and firmer in your reserve, shaken down
like a measure of corn by the jolting as the journey proceeds. But
walking is a more vital copartnership; the relation is a closer and
more sympathetic one, and you do not feel like walking ten paces with a
stranger without speaking to him.

Hence the fastidiousness of the professional walker in choosing or
admitting a companion, and hence the truth of a remark of Emerson, that
you will generally fare better to take your dog than to invite your
neighbor. Your cur-dog is a true pedestrian, and your neighbor is very
likely a small politician. The dog enters thoroughly into the spirit of
the enterprise; he is not indifferent or preoccupied; he is constantly
sniffing adventure, laps at every spring, looks upon every field and
wood as a new world to be explored, is ever on some fresh trail, knows
something important will happen a little farther on, gazes with the
true wonder-seeing eyes, whatever the spot or whatever the road finds
it good to be there,--in short, is just that happy, delicious,
excursive vagabond that touches one at so many points, and whose human
prototype in a companion robs miles and leagues of half their power to
fatigue.

Persons who find themselves spent in a short walk to the market or the
post-office, or to do a little shopping, wonder how it is that their
pedestrian friends can compass so many weary miles and not fall down
from sheer exhaustion; ignorant of the fact that the walker is a kind
of projectile that drops far or near according to the expansive force
of the motive that set it in motion, and that it is easy enough to
regulate the charge according to the distance to be traversed. If I am
loaded to carry only one mile and am compelled to walk three, I
generally feel more fatigue than if I had walked six under the proper
impetus of preadjusted resolution. In other words, the will or
corporeal mainspring, whatever it be, is capable of being wound up to
different degrees of tension, so that one may walk all day nearly as
easy as half that time, if he is prepared beforehand. He knows his
task, and he measures and distributes his powers accordingly. It is for
this reason that an unknown road is always a long road. We cannot cast
the mental eye along it and see the end from the beginning. We are
fighting in the dark, and cannot take the measure of our foe. Every
step must be preordained and provided for in the mind. Hence also the
fact that to vanquish one mile in the woods seems equal to compassing
three in the open country. The furlongs are ambushed, and we magnify
them.

Then, again, how annoying to be told it is only five miles to the next
place when it is really eight or ten! We fall short nearly half the
distance, and are compelled to urge and roll the spent ball the rest of
the way. In such a case walking degenerates from a fine art to a
mechanic art; we walk merely; to get over the ground becomes the one
serious and engrossing thought; whereas success in walking is not to
let your right foot know what your left foot doeth. Your heart must
furnish such music that in keeping time to it your feet will carry you
around the globe without knowing it. The walker I would describe takes
no note of distance; his walk is a sally, a bonmot, an unspoken jeu
d'esprit; the ground is his butt, his provocation; it furnishes him the
resistance his body craves; he rebounds upon it, he glances off and
returns again, and uses it gayly as his tool.

I do not think I exaggerate the importance or the charms of
pedestrianism, or our need as a people to cultivate the art. I think it
would tend to soften the national manners, to teach us the meaning of
leisure, to acquaint us with the charms of the open air, to strengthen
and foster the tie between the race and the land. No one else looks out
upon the world so kindly and charitably as the pedestrian; no one else
gives and takes so much from the country he passes through. Next to the
laborer in the fields, the walker holds the closest relation to the
soil; and he holds a closer and more vital relation to nature because
he is freer and his mind more at leisure.

Man takes root at his feet, and at best he is no more than a potted
plant in his house or carriage till he has established communication
with the soil by the loving and magnetic touch of his soles to it. Then
the tie of association is born; then spring those invisible fibres and
rootlets through which character comes to smack of the soil, and which
make a man kindred to the spot of earth he inhabits.

The roads and paths you have walked along in summer and winter weather,
the fields and hills which you have looked upon in lightness and
gladness of heart, where fresh thoughts have come into your mind, or
some noble prospect has opened before you, and especially the quiet
ways where you have walked in sweet converse with your friend, pausing
under the trees, drinking at the spring,--henceforth they are not the
same; a new charm is added; those thoughts spring there perennial, your
friend walks there forever.

We have produced some good walkers and saunderers, and some noted
climbers; but as a staple recreation, as a daily practice, the mass of
the people dislike and despise walking. Thoreau said he was a good
horse, but a poor roadster. I chant the virtues of the roadster as
well. I sing of the sweetness of gravel, good sharp quartz-grit. It is
the proper condiment for the sterner seasons, and many a human gizzard
would be cured of half its ills by a suitable daily allowance of it. I
think Thoreau himself would have profited immensely by it. His diet was
too exclusively vegetable. A man cannot live on grass alone. If one has
been a lotus-eater all summer, he must turn gravel-eater in the fall
and winter. Those who have tried it know that gravel possesses an equal
though an opposite charm.

It spurs to action.  The foot tastes it and henceforth rests not.  The
joy of moving and surmounting, of attrition and progression, the thirst
for space, for miles and leagues of distance, for sights and prospects,
to cross mountains and thread rivers, and defy frost, heat, snow,
danger, difficulties, seizes it; and from that day forth its possessor
is enrolled in the noble army of walkers.



III. THE SNOW-WALKERS

He who marvels at the beauty of the world in summer will find equal
cause for wonder and admiration in winter. It is true the pomp and the
pageantry are swept away, but the essential elements remain,--the day
and the night, the mountain and the valley, the elemental play and
succession and the perpetual presence of the infinite sky. In winter
the stars seem to have rekindled their fires, the moon achieves a
fuller triumph, and the heavens wear a look of a more exalted
simplicity. Summer is more wooing and seductive, more versatile and
human, appeals to the affections and the sentiments, and fosters
inquiry and the art impulse. Winter is of a more heroic cast, and
addresses the intellect. The severe studies and disciplines come easier
in winter. One imposes larger tasks upon himself, and is less tolerant
of his own weaknesses.

The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in
winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone
and sinew to Literature, summer the tissues and blood.

The simplicity of winter has a deep moral.  The return of nature, after
such a career of splendor and prodigality, to habits so simple and
austere, is not lost upon either the head or the heart. It is the
philosopher coming back from the banquet and the wine to a cup of water
and a crust of bread.

And then this beautiful masquerade of the elements,--the novel
disguises our nearest friends put on! Here is another rain and another
dew, water that will not flow, nor spill, nor receive the taint of an
unclean vessel. And if we see truly, the same old beneficence and
willingness to serve lurk beneath all.

Look up at the miracle of the falling snow,--the air a dizzy maze of
whirling, eddying flakes, noiselessly transforming the world, the
exquisite crystals dropping in ditch and gutter, and disguising in the
same suit of spotless livery all objects upon which they fall. How
novel and fine the first drifts! The old, dilapidated fence is suddenly
set off with the most fantastic ruffles, scalloped and fluted after an
unheard-of fashion! Looking down a long line of decrepit stone wall, in
the trimming of which the wind had fairly run riot, I saw, as for the
first time, what a severe yet master artist old Winter is. Ah, a severe
artist! How stern the woods look, dark and cold and as rigid against
the horizon as iron!

All life and action upon the snow have an added emphasis and
significance. Every expression is underscored. Summer has few finer
pictures than this winter one of the farmer foddering his cattle from a
stack upon the clean snow,--the movement, the sharply defined figures,
the great green flakes of hay, the long file of patient cows, the
advance just arriving and pressing eagerly for the choicest
morsels,--and the bounty and providence it suggests. Or the chopper in
the woods,--the prostrate tree, the white new chips scattered about,
his easy triumph over the cold, his coat hanging to a limb, and the
clear, sharp ring of his axe. The woods are rigid and tense, keyed up
by the frost, and resound like a stringed instrument. Or the
road-breakers, sallying forth with oxen and sleds in the still, white
world, the day after the storm, to restore the lost track and demolish
the beleaguering drifts.

All sounds are sharper in winter; the air transmits better.  At night I
hear more distinctly the steady roar of the North Mountain. In summer
it is a sort of complacent purr, as the breezes stroke down its sides;
but in winter always the same low, sullen growl.

A severe artist!  No longer the canvas and the pigments, but the marble
and the chisel. When the nights are calm and the moon full, I go out to
gaze upon the wonderful purity of the moonlight and the snow. The air
is full of latent fire, and the cold warms me--after a different
fashion from that of the kitchen stove. The world lies about me in a
"trance of snow." The clouds are pearly and iridescent, and seem the
farthest possible remove from the condition of a storm,--the ghosts of
clouds, the indwelling beauty freed from all dross. I see the hills,
bulging with great drifts, lift themselves up cold and white against
the sky, the black lines of fences here and there obliterated by the
depth of the snow. Presently a fox barks away up next the mountain, and
I imagine I can almost see him sitting there, in his furs, upon the
illuminated surface, and looking down in my direction. As I listen, one
answers him from behind the woods in the valley. What a wild winter
sound, wild and weird, up among the ghostly hills! Since the wolf has
ceased to howl upon these mountains, and the panther to scream, there
is nothing to be compared with it. So wild! I get up in the middle of
the night to hear it. It is refreshing to the ear, and one delights to
know that such wild creatures are among us. At this season Nature makes
the most of every throb of life that can withstand her severity. How
heartily she indorses this fox! In what bold relief stand out the lives
of all walkers of the snow! The snow is a great tell-tale, and blabs as
effectually as it obliterates. I go into the woods, and know all that
has happened. I cross the fields, and if only a mouse has visited his
neighbor, the fact is chronicled.

The red fox is the only species that abounds in my locality; the little
gray fox seems to prefer a more rocky and precipitous country, and a
less rigorous climate; the cross fox is occasionally seen, and there
are traditions of the silver gray among the oldest hunters. But the red
fox is the sportsman's prize, and the only fur-bearer worthy of note in
these mountains.
[Footnote: A spur of the catskills.]

I go out in the morning, after a fresh fall of snow, and see at all
points where he has crossed the road. Here he has leisurely passed
within rifle-range of the house, evidently reconnoitring the premises
with an eye to the hen-roost. That clear, sharp track,--there is no
mistaking it for the clumsy footprint of a little dog. All his wildness
and agility are photographed in it. Here he has taken fright, or
suddenly recollected an engagement, and in long, graceful leaps, barely
touching the fence, has gone careering up the hill as fleet as the
wind.

The wild, buoyant creature, how beautiful he is!  I had often seen his
dead carcass, and at a distance had witnessed the hounds drive him
across the upper fields; but the thrill and excitement of meeting him
in his wild freedom in the woods were unknown to me till, one cold
winter day, drawn thither by the baying of a hound, I stood near the
summit of the mountain, waiting a renewal of the sound, that I might
determine the course of the dog and choose my position,--stimulated by
the ambition of all young Nimrods to bag some notable game. Long I
waited, and patiently, till, chilled and benumbed, I was about to turn
back, when, hearing a slight noise, I looked up and beheld a most
superb fox, loping along with inimitable grace and ease, evidently
disturbed, but not pursued by the hound, and so absorbed in his private
meditations that he failed to see me, though I stood transfixed with
amazement and admiration, not ten yards distant. I took his measure at
a glance,--a large male, with dark legs, and massive tail tipped with
white,--a most magnificent creature; but so astonished and fascinated
was I by this sudden appearance and matchless beauty, that not till I
had caught the last glimpse of him, as he disappeared over a knoll, did
I awake to my duty as a sportsman, and realize what an opportunity to
distinguish myself I had unconsciously let slip. I clutched my gun,
half angrily, as if it was to blame, and went home out, of humor with
myself and all fox-kind. But I have since thought better of the
experience, and concluded that I bagged the game after all, the best
part of it, and fleeced Reynard of something more valuable than his
fur, without his knowledge.

This is thoroughly a winter sound,--this voice of the hound upon the
mountain,--and one that is music to many ears. The long trumpet-like
bay, heard for a mile or more,--now faintly back in the deep recesses
of the mountain,--now distinct, but still faint, as the hound comes
over some prominent point and the wind favors,--anon entirely lost in
the gully,--then breaking out again much nearer, and growing more and
more pronounced as the dog approaches, till, when he comes around the
brow of the mountain, directly above you, the barking is loud and
sharp. On he goes along the northern spur, his voice rising and sinking
as the wind and the lay of the ground modify it, till lost to hearing.

The fox usually keeps half a mile ahead, regulating his speed by that
of the hound, occasionally pausing a moment to divert himself with a
mouse, or to contemplate the landscape, or to listen for his pursuer.
If the hound press him too closely, he leads off from mountain to
mountain, and so generally escapes the hunter; but if the pursuit be
slow, he plays about some ridge or peak, and falls a prey, though not
an easy one, to the experienced sportsman.

A most spirited and exciting chase occurs when the farm-dog gets close
upon one in the open field, as sometimes happens in the early morning.
The fox relies so confidently upon his superior speed, that I imagine
he half tempts the dog to the race. But if the dog be a smart one, and
their course lie downhill, over smooth ground, Reynard must put his
best foot forward, and then sometimes suffer the ignominy of being run
over by his pursuer, who, however, is quite unable to pick him up,
owing to the speed. But when they mount the hill, or enter the woods,
the superior nimbleness and agility of the fox tell at once, and he
easily leaves the dog far in his rear. For a cur less than his own size
he manifests little fear, especially if the two meet alone, remote from
the house. In such cases, I have seen first one turn tail, then the
other.

A novel spectacle often occurs in summer, when the female has young.
You are rambling on the mountain, accompanied by your dog, when you are
startled by that wild, half-threatening squall, and in a moment
perceive your dog, with inverted tail, and shame and confusion in his
looks, sneaking toward you, the old fox but a few rods in his rear. You
speak to him sharply, when he bristles up, turns about, and, barking,
starts off vigorously, as if to wipe out the dishonor; but in a moment
comes sneaking back more abashed than ever, and owns himself unworthy
to be called a dog. The fox fairly shames him out of the woods. The
secret of the matter is her sex, though her conduct, for the honor of
the fox be it said, seems to be prompted only by solicitude for the
safety of her young.

One of the most notable features of the fox is his large and massive
tail. Seen running on the snow at a distance, his tail is quite as
conspicuous as his body; and, so far from appearing a burden, seems to
contribute to his lightness and buoyancy. It softens the outline of his
movements, and repeats or continues to the eye the ease and poise of
his carriage. But, pursued by the hound on a wet, thawy day, it often
becomes so heavy and bedraggled as to prove a serious inconvenience,
and compels him to take refuge in his den. He is very loath to do this;
both his pride and the traditions of his race stimulate him to run it
out, and win by fair superiority of wind and speed; and only a wound or
a heavy and moppish tail will drive him to avoid the issue in this
manner.

To learn his surpassing shrewdness and cunning, attempt to take him
with a trap. Rogue that he is, he always suspects some trick, and one
must be more of a fox than he is himself to overreach him. At first
sight it would appear easy enough. With apparent indifference he
crosses your path, or walks in your footsteps in the field, or travels
along the beaten highway, or lingers in the vicinity of stacks and
remote barns. Carry the carcass of a pig, or a fowl, or a dog, to a
distant field in midwinter, and in a few nights his tracks cover the
snow about it.

The inexperienced country youth, misled by this seeming carelessness of
Reynard, suddenly conceives a project to enrich himself with fur, and
wonders that the idea has not occurred to him before, and to others. I
knew a youthful yeoman of this kind, who imagined he had found a mine
of wealth on discovering on a remote side-hill, between two woods, a
dead porker, upon which it appeared all the foxes of the neighborhood
had nightly banqueted. The clouds were burdened with snow; and as the
first flakes commenced to eddy down, he set out, trap and broom in
hand, already counting over in imagination the silver quarters he would
receive for his first fox-skin. With the utmost care, and with a
palpitating heart, he removed enough of the trodden snow to allow the
trap to sink below the surface. Then, carefully sifting the light
element over it and sweeping his tracks full, he quickly withdrew,
laughing exultingly over the little surprise he had prepared for the
cunning rogue. The elements conspired to aid him, and the falling snow
rapidly obliterated all vestiges of his work. The next morning at dawn
he was on his way to bring in his fur. The snow had done its work
effectually, and, he believed, had kept his secret well. Arrived in
sight of the locality, he strained his vision to make out his prize
lodged against the fence at the foot of the hill. Approaching nearer,
the surface was unbroken, and doubt usurped the place of certainty in
his mind. A slight mound marked the site of the porker, but there was
no footprint near it. Looking up the hill, he saw where Reynard had
walked leisurely down toward his wonted bacon till within a few yards
of it, when he had wheeled, and with prodigious strides disappeared in
the woods. The young trapper saw at a glance what a comment this was
upon his skill in the art, and, indignantly exhuming the iron, he
walked home with it, the stream of silver quarters suddenly setting in
another direction.

The successful trapper commences in the fall, or before the first deep
snow. In a field not too remote, with an old axe he cuts a small place,
say ten inches by fourteen, in the frozen ground, and removes the earth
to the depth of three or four inches, then fills the cavity with dry
ashes, in which are placed bits of roasted cheese. Reynard is very
suspicious at first, and gives the place a wide berth. It looks like
design, and he will see how the thing behaves before he approaches too
near. But the cheese is savory and the cold severe. He ventures a
little closer every night, until he can reach and pick a piece from the
surface. Emboldened by success, like other mortals, he presently digs
freely among the ashes, and, finding a fresh supply of the delectable
morsels every night, is soon thrown off his guard and his suspicions
quite lulled. After a week of baiting in this manner, and on the eve of
a light fall of snow, the trapper carefully conceals his trap in the
bed, first smoking it thoroughly with hemlock boughs to kill or
neutralize the smell of the iron. If the weather favors and the proper
precautions have been taken, he may succeed, though the chances are
still greatly against him.

Reynard is usually caught very lightly, seldom more than the ends of
his toes being between the jaws. He sometimes works so cautiously as to
spring the trap without injury even to his toes, or may remove the
cheese night after night without even springing it. I knew an old
trapper who, on finding himself outwitted in this manner, tied a bit of
cheese to the pan, and next morning had poor Reynard by the jaw. The
trap is not fastened, but only encumbered with a clog, and is all the
more sure in its hold by yielding to every effort of the animal to
extricate himself.

When Reynard sees his captor approaching, he would fain drop into a
mouse-hole to render himself invisible. He crouches to the ground and
remains perfectly motionless until he perceives himself discovered,
when he makes one desperate and final effort to escape, but ceases all
struggling as you come up, and behaves in a manner that stamps him a
very timid warrior,--cowering to the earth with a mingled look of
shame, guilt, and abject fear. A young farmer told me of tracing one
with his trap to the border of a wood, where he discovered the cunning
rogue trying to hide by embracing a small tree. Most animals, when
taken in a trap, show fight; but Reynard has more faith in the
nimbleness of his feet than in the terror of his teeth.

Entering the woods, the number and variety of the tracks contrast
strongly with the rigid, frozen aspect of things. Warm jets of life
still shoot and I play amid this snowy desolation. Fox-tracks are far
less numerous than in the fields; but those of hares, skunks,
partridges, squirrels, and mice abound. The mice tracks are very
pretty, and look like a sort of fantastic stitching on the coverlid of
the snow. One is curious to know what brings these tiny creatures from
their retreats; they do not seem to be in quest of food, but rather to
be traveling about for pleasure or sociability, though always going
post-haste, and linking stump with stump and tree with tree by fine,
hurried strides. That is when they travel openly; but they have hidden
passages and winding galleries under the snow, which undoubtedly are
their main avenues of communication. Here and there these passages rise
so near the surface as to be covered by only a frail arch of snow, and
a slight ridge betrays their course to the eye. I know him well. He is
known to the farmer as the "deer mouse," to the naturalist as the
white-footed mouse,--a very beautiful creature, nocturnal in his
habits, with large ears, and large, fine eyes full of a wild, harmless
look. He is daintily marked, with white feet and a white belly. When
disturbed by day he is very easily captured, having none of the cunning
or viciousness of the common Old World mouse.

It is he who, high in the hollow trunk of some tree, lays by a store of
beechnuts for winter use. Every nut is carefully shelled, and the
cavity that serves as storehouse lined with grass and leaves. The
wood-chopper frequently squanders this precious store. I have seen half
a peck taken from one tree, as clean and white as if put up by the most
delicate hands,--as they were. How long it must have taken the little
creature to collect this quantity, to hull them one by one, and convey
them up to his fifth-story chamber! He is not confined to the woods,
but is quite as common in the fields, particularly in the fall, amid
the corn and potatoes. When routed by the plow, I have seen the old one
take flight with half a dozen young hanging to her teats, and with such
reckless speed that some of the young would lose their hold and fly off
amid the weeds. Taking refuge in a stump with the rest of her family,
the anxious mother would presently come back and hunt up the missing
ones.

The snow-walkers are mostly night-walkers also, and the record they
leave upon the snow is the main clew one has to their life and doings.
The hare is nocturnal in its habits, and though a very lively creature
at night, with regular courses and run-ways through the wood, is
entirely quiet by day. Timid as he is, he makes little effort to
conceal himself, usually squatting beside a log, stump, or tree, and
seeming to avoid rocks and ledges, where he might be partially housed
from the cold and the snow, but where also--and this consideration
undoubtedly determines his choice--he would be more apt fall a prey to
his enemies. In this, as well as in many other respects, he differs
from the rabbit proper: he never burrows in the ground, or takes refuge
in a den or hole, when pursued. If caught in the open fields, he is
much confused and easily overtaken by the dog; but in the woods, he
leaves him at a bound. In summer, when first disturbed, he beats the
ground violently with his feet, by which means he would express to you
his surprise or displeasure; it is a dumb way he has of scolding. After
leaping a few yards, he pauses an instant, as if to determine the
degree of danger, and then hurries away with a much lighter tread.

His feet are like great pads, and his track has little of the sharp,
articulated expression of Reynard's, or of animals that climb or dig.
Yet it is very pretty like all the rest, and tells its own tale. There
is nothing bold or vicious or vulpine in it, and his timid, harmless
character is published at every leap. He abounds in dense woods,
preferring localities filled with a small undergrowth of beech and
birch, upon the bark of which he feeds. Nature is rather partial to
him, and matches his extreme local habits and character with a suit
that corresponds with his surroundings,--reddish gray in summer and
white in winter.

The sharp-rayed track of the partridge adds another figure to this
fantastic embroidery upon the winter snow. Her course is a clear,
strong line, sometimes quite wayward, but generally very direct,
steering for the densest, most impenetrable places,--leading you over
logs and through brush, alert and expectant, till, suddenly, she bursts
up a few yards from you, and goes humming through the trees,--the
complete triumph of endurance and vigor. Hardy native bird, may your
tracks never be fewer, or your visits to the birch-tree less frequent!

The squirrel tracks--sharp, nervous, and wiry--have their histories
also. But how rarely we see squirrels in winter! The naturalists say
they are mostly torpid; yet evidently that little pocket-faced
depredator, the chipmunk, was not carrying buckwheat for so many days
to his hole for nothing: was he anticipating a state of torpidity, or
providing against the demands of a very active appetite? Red and gray
squirrels are more or less active all winter, though very shy, and, I
am inclined to think, partially nocturnal in their habits. Here a gray
one has just passed,--came down that tree and went up this; there he
dug for a beechnut, and left the burr on the snow. How did he know
where to dig? During an unusually severe winter I have known him to
make long journeys to a barn, in a remote field, where wheat was
stored. How did he know there was wheat there? In attempting to return,
the adventurous creature was frequently run down and caught in the deep
snow.

His home is in the trunk of some old birch or maple, with an entrance
far up amid the branches. In the spring he builds himself a
summer-house of small leafy twigs in the top of a neighboring beech,
where the young are reared and much of the time is passed. But the
safer retreat in the maple is not abandoned, and both old and young
resort thither in the fall, or when danger threatens. Whether this
temporary residence amid the branches is for elegance or pleasure, or
for sanitary reasons or domestic convenience, the naturalist has
forgotten to mention.

The elegant creature, so cleanly in its habits, so graceful in its
carriage, so nimble and daring in its movements, excites feelings of
admiration akin to those awakened by the birds and the fairer forms of
nature. His passage through the trees is almost a flight. Indeed, the
flying squirrel has little or no advantage over him, and in speed and
nimbleness cannot compare with him at all. If he miss his footing and
fall, he is sure to catch on the next branch; if the connection be
broken, he leaps recklessly for the nearest spray or limb, and secures
his hold, even if it be by the aid of his teeth.

His career of frolic and festivity begins in the fall, after the birds
have left us and the holiday spirit of nature has commenced to subside.
How absorbing the pastime of the sportsman who goes to the woods in the
still October morning in quest of him! You step lightly across the
threshold of the forest, and sit down upon the first log or rock to
await the signals. It is so still that the ear suddenly seems to have
acquired new powers, and there is no movement to confuse the eye.
Presently you hear the rustling of a branch, and see it sway or spring
as the squirrel leaps from or to it; or else you hear a disturbance in
the dry leaves, and mark one running upon the ground. He has probably
seen the intruder, and, not liking his stealthy movements, desires to
avoid a nearer acquaintance. Now he mounts a stump to see if the way is
clear, then pauses a moment at the foot of a tree to take his bearings,
his tail, as he skims along, undulating behind him, and adding to the
easy grace and dignity of his movements. Or else you are first advised
of his proximity by the dropping of a false nut, or the fragments of
the shucks rattling upon the leaves. Or, again, after contemplating you
awhile unobserved, and making up his mind that you are not dangerous,
he strikes an attitude on a branch, and commences to quack and bark,
with an accompanying movement of his tail. Late in the afternoon, when
the same stillness reigns, the same scenes are repeated. There is a
black variety, quite rare, but mating freely with the gray, from which
he seems to be distinguished only in color.

The track of the red squirrel may be known by its smaller size.  He is
more common and less dignified than the gray, and oftener guilty of
petty larceny about the barns and grain-fields. He is most abundant in
old barkpeelings, and low, dilapidated hemlocks, from which he makes
excursions to the fields and orchards, spinning along the tops of the
fences, which afford not only convenient lines of communication, but a
safe retreat if danger threatens. He loves to linger about the orchard;
and, sitting upright on the topmost stone in the wall, or on the
tallest stake in the fence, chipping up an apple for the seeds, his
tail conforming to the curve of his back, his paws shifting and turning
the apple, he is a pretty sight, and his bright, pert appearance atones
for all the mischief he does. At home, in the woods, he is the most
frolicsome and loquacious. The appearance of anything unusual, if,
after contemplating it a moment, he concludes it not dangerous, excites
his unbounded mirth and ridicule, and he snickers and chatters, hardly
able to contain himself; now darting up the trunk of a tree and
squealing in derision, then hopping into position on a limb and dancing
to the music of his own cackle, and all for your special benefit.

There is something very human in this apparent mirth and mockery of the
squirrels. It seems to be a sort of ironical laughter, and implies
self-conscious pride and exultation in the laugher. "What a ridiculous
thing you are, to be sure!" he seems to say; "how clumsy and awkward,
and what a poor show for a tail! Look at me, look at me!"--and he
capers about in his best style. Again, he would seem to tease you and
provoke your attention; then suddenly assumes a tone of good-natured,
childlike defiance and derision. That pretty little imp, the chipmunk,
will sit on the stone above his den and defy you, as plainly as if he
said so, to catch him before he can get into his hole if you can. You
hurl a stone at him, and "No you didn't!" comes up from the depth of
his retreat.

In February another track appears upon the snow, slender and delicate,
about a third larger than that of the gray squirrel, indicating no
haste or speed, but, on the contrary, denoting the most imperturbable
ease and leisure, the footprints so close together that the trail
appears like a chain of curiously carved links. Sir Mephitis mephitica,
or, in plain English, the skunk, has awakened from his six weeks' nap,
and come out into society again. He is a nocturnal traveler, very bold
and impudent, coming quite up to the barn and outbuildings, and
sometimes taking up his quarters for the season under the haymow. There
is no such word as hurry in his dictionary, as you may see by his path
upon the snow. He has a very sneaking, insinuating way, and goes
creeping about the fields and woods, never once in a perceptible degree
altering his gait, and, if a fence crosses his course, steers for a
break or opening to avoid climbing. He is too indolent even to dig his
own hole, but appropriates that of a woodchuck, or hunts out a crevice
in the rocks, from which he extends his rambling in all directions,
preferring damp, thawy weather. He has very little discretion or
cunning, and holds a trap in utter contempt, stepping into it as soon
as beside it, relying implicitly for defense against all forms of
danger upon the unsavory punishment he is capable of inflicting. He is
quite indifferent to both man and beast, and will not hurry himself to
get out of the way of either. Walking through the summer fields at
twilight, I have come near stepping upon him, and was much the more
disturbed of the two. When attacked in the open field he confounds the
plans of his enemies by the unheard-of tactics of exposing his rear
rather than his front. "Come if you dare," he says, and his attitude
makes even the farm-dog pause. After a few encounters of this kind, and
if you entertain the usual hostility towards him, your mode of attack
will speedily resolve itself into moving about him in a circle, the
radius of which will be the exact distance at which you can hurl a
stone with accuracy and effect.

He has a secret to keep and knows it, and is careful not to betray
himself until he can do so with the most telling effect. I have known
him to preserve his serenity even when caught in a steel trap, and look
the very picture of injured innocence, manoeuvring carefully and
deliberately to extricate his foot from the grasp of the naughty jaws.
Do not by any means take pity on him, and lend a helping hand!

How pretty his face and head!  How fine and delicate his teeth, like a
weasel's or a cat's! When about a third grown, he looks so well that
one covets him for a pet. He is quite precocious, however, and capable,
even at this tender age, of making a very strong appeal to your sense
of smell.

No animal is more cleanly in his habits than he.  He is not an awkward
boy who cuts his own face with his whip; and neither his flesh nor his
fur hints the weapon with which he is armed. The most silent creature
known to me, he makes no sound, so far as I have observed, save a
diffuse, impatient noise, like that produced by beating your hand with
a whisk-broom, when the farm-dog has discovered his retreat in the
stone fence. He renders himself obnoxious to the farmer by his
partiality for hens' eggs and young poultry. He is a confirmed epicure,
and at plundering hen-roosts an expert. Not the full-grown fowls are
his victims, but the youngest and most tender. At night Mother Hen
receives under her maternal wings a dozen newly hatched chickens, and
with much pride and satisfaction feels them all safely tucked away in
her feathers. In the morning she is walking about disconsolately,
attended by only two or three of all that pretty brood. What has
happened?  Where are they gone?  That pickpocket, Sir Mephitis, could
solve the mystery. Quietly has he approached, under cover of darkness,
and one by one relieved her of her precious charge. Look closely and
you will see their little yellow legs and beaks, or part of a mangled
form, lying about on the ground. Or, before the hen has hatched, he may
find her out, and, by the same sleight of hand, remove every egg,
leaving only the empty blood-stained shells to witness against him. The
birds, especially the ground-builders, suffer in like manner from his
plundering propensities.

The secretion upon which he relies for defense, and which is the chief
source of his unpopularity, while it affords good reasons against
cultivating him as a pet, and mars his attractiveness as game, is by no
means the greatest indignity that can be offered to a nose. It is a
rank, living smell, and has none of the sickening qualities of disease
or putrefaction. Indeed, I think a good smeller will enjoy its most
refined intensity. It approaches the sublime, and makes the nose
tingle. It is tonic and bracing, and, I can readily believe, has rare
medicinal qualities. I do not recommend its use as eyewater, though an
old farmer assures me it has undoubted virtues when thus applied.
Hearing, one night, a disturbance among his hens, he rushed suddenly
out to catch the thief, when Sir Mephitis, taken by surprise, and no
doubt much annoyed at being interrupted, discharged the vials of his
wrath full in the farmers face, and with such admirable effect that,
for a few minutes, he was completely blinded, and powerless to revenge
himself upon the rogue, who embraced the opportunity to make good his
escape; but he declared that afterwards his eyes felt as if purged by
fire, and his sight was much clearer.

In March that brief summary of a bear, the raccoon, comes out of his
den in the ledges, and leaves his sharp digitigrade track upon the
snow,--traveling not unfrequently in pairs,--a lean, hungry couple,
bent on pillage and plunder. They have an unenviable time of
it,--feasting in the summer and fall, hibernating in winter, and
starving in spring. In April I have found the young of the previous
year creeping around the fields, so reduced by starvation as to be
quite helpless, and offering no resistance to my taking them up by the
tail and carrying them home.

The old ones also become very much emaciated, and come boldly up to the
barn or other outbuildings in quest of food. I remember, one morning in
early spring, of hearing old Cuff, the farm-dog, barking vociferously
before it was yet light. When we got up we discovered him, at the foot
of an ash-tree standing about thirty rods from the house, looking up at
some gray objects in the leafless branches, and by his manners and his
voice evincing great impatience that we were so tardy in coming to his
assistance. Arrived on the spot, we saw in the tree a coon of unusual
size. One bold climber proposed to go up and shake him down. This was
what old Cuff wanted, and he fairly bounded with delight as he saw his
young master shinning up the tree. Approaching within eight or ten feet
of the coon, he seized the branch to which it clung and shook long and
fiercely. But the coon was in no danger of losing its hold, and, when
the climber paused to renew his hold, it turned toward him with a
growl, and showed very clearly a purpose to advance to the attack. This
caused his pursuer to descend to the ground with all speed. When the
coon was finally brought down with a gun, he fought the dog, which was
a large, powerful animal, with great fury, returning bite for bite for
some moments; and after a quarter of an hour had elapsed and his
unequal antagonist had shaken him as a terrier does a rat, making his
teeth meet through the small of his back, the coon still showed fight.

They are very tenacious of life, and like the badger will always whip a
dog of their own size and weight. A woodchuck can bite severely, having
teeth that cut like chisels, but a coon has agility and power of limb
as well.

They are considered game only in the fall, or towards the close of
summer, when they become fat. and their flesh sweet. At this time,
cooning in the remote interior is a famous pastime. As this animal is
entirely nocturnal in its habits, it is hunted only at night. A piece
of corn on some remote side-hill near the mountain, or between two
pieces of woods, is most apt to be frequented by them. While the corn
is yet green they pull the ears down like hogs, and, tearing open the
sheathing of husks, eat the tender, succulent kernels, bruising and
destroying much more than they devour. Sometimes their ravages are a
matter of serious concern to the farmer. But every such neighborhood
has its coon-dog, and the boys and young men dearly love the sport. The
party sets out about eight or nine o'clock of a dark, moonless night,
and stealthily approaches the cornfield. The dog knows his business,
and when he is put into a patch of corn and told to "hunt them up" he
makes a thorough search, and will not be misled by any other scent. You
hear him rattling through the corn, hither and yon, with great speed.
The coons prick up their ears, and leave on the opposite side of the
field. In the stillness you may sometimes hear a single stone rattle on
the wall as they hurry toward the woods. If the dog finds nothing, he
comes back to his master in a short time, and says in his dumb way, "No
coon there." But if he strikes a trail, you presently hear a louder
rattling on the stone wall, and then a hurried bark as he enters the
woods, followed in a few minutes by loud and repeated barking as he
reaches the foot of the tree in which the coon has taken refuge. Then
follows a pellmell rush of the cooning party up the hill, into the
woods, through the brush and the darkness, falling over prostrate
trees, pitching into gullies and hollows, losing hats and tearing
clothes, till finally, guided by the baying of the faithful dog, the
tree is reached. The first thing now in order is to kindle a fire, and,
if its light reveals the coon, to shoot him; if not, to fell the tree
with an axe. If this happens to be too great a sacrifice of timber and
of strength, to sit down at the foot of the tree till morning.

But with March our interest in these phases of animal life, which
winter has so emphasized and brought out, begins to decline. Vague
rumors are afloat in the air of a great and coming change. We are eager
for Winter to be gone, since he, too, is fugitive and cannot keep his
place. Invisible hands deface his icy statuary; his chisel has lost its
cunning. The drifts, so pure and exquisite, are now earth-stained and
weather-worn,--the flutes and scallops, and fine, firm lines, all gone;
and what was a grace and an ornament to the hills is now a
disfiguration. Like worn and unwashed linen appear the remains of that
spotless robe with which he clothed the world as his bride.

But he will not abdicate without a struggle.  Day after day he rallies
his scattered forces, and night after night pitches his white tents on
the hills, and would fain regain his lost ground; but the young prince
in every encounter prevails. Slowly and reluctantly the gray old hero
retreats up the mountain, till finally the south rain comes in earnest,
and in a night he is dead.



IV. THE FOX

I have already spoken of the fox at some length, but it will take a
chapter by itself to do half justice to his portrait.

He furnishes, perhaps, the only instance that can be cited of a
fur-bearing animal that not only holds its own, but that actually
increases in the face of the means that are used for its extermination.
The beaver, for instance, was gone before the earliest settlers could
get a sight of him; and even the mink and marten are now only rarely
seen, or not seen at all, in places where they were once abundant.

But the fox has survived civilization, and in some localities is no
doubt more abundant now than in the time of the Revolution. For half a
century at least he has been almost the only prize, in the way of fur,
that was to be found on our mountains, and he has been hunted and
trapped and waylaid, sought for as game and pursued in enmity, taken by
fair means and by foul, and yet there seems not the slightest danger of
the species becoming extinct.

One would think that a single hound in a neighborhood, filling the
mountains with his bayings, and leaving no nook or byway of them
unexplored, was enough to drive and scare every fox from the country.
But not so. Indeed, I am almost tempted to say, the more hounds, the
more foxes.

I recently spent a summer month in a mountainous district in the State
of New York, where, from its earliest settlement, the red fox has been
the standing prize for skill in the use of the trap and gun. At the
house where I was staying were two foxhounds, and a neighbor half a
mile distant had a third. There were many others in the township, and
in season they were well employed, too; but the three spoken of,
attended by their owners, held high carnival on the mountains in the
immediate vicinity. And many were the foxes that, winter after winter,
fell before them, twenty-five having been shot, the season before my
visit, on one small range alone. And yet the foxes were apparently
never more abundant than they were that summer, and never bolder,
coming at night within a few rods of the house, and of the unchained
alert hounds, and making havoc among the poultry.

One morning a large, fat goose was found minus her head and otherwise
mangled. Both hounds had disappeared, and, as they did not come back
till near night, it was inferred that they had cut short Reynard's
repast, and given him a good chase into the bargain. But next night he
was back again, and this time got safely off with the goose. A couple
of nights after he must have come with recruits, for next morning three
large goslings were reported missing. The silly geese now got it
through their noddles that there was danger about, and every night
thereafter came close up to the house to roost.

A brood of turkeys, the old one tied to a tree a few rods to the rear
of the house, were the next objects of attack. The predaceous rascal
came, as usual, in the latter half of the night. I happened to be
awake, and heard the helpless turkey cry "quit," "quit," with great
emphasis. Another sleeper, on the floor above me, who, it seems, had
been sleeping with one ear awake for several nights in apprehension for
the safety of his turkeys, heard the sound also, and instantly divined
its cause. I heard the window open and a voice summon the dogs. A loud
bellow was the response, which caused Reynard to take himself off in a
hurry. A moment more, and the mother turkey would have shared the fate
of the geese. There she lay at the end of her tether, with extended
wings, bitten and rumpled. The young ones, roosting in a row on the
fence near by, had taken flight on the first alarm.

Turkeys, retaining many of their wild instincts, are less easily
captured by the fox than any other of our domestic fowls. On the
slightest show of danger they take to wing, and it is not unusual, in
the locality of which I speak, to find them in the morning perched in
the most unwonted places, as on the peak of the barn or hay-shed, or on
the tops of the apple-trees, their tails spread and their manners
showing much excitement. Perchance one turkey is minus her tail, the
fox having succeeded in getting only a mouthful of quills.

As the brood grows and their wings develop, they wander far from the
house in quest of grasshoppers. At such times they are all watchfulness
and suspicion. Crossing the fields one day, attended by a dog that much
resembled a fox, I came suddenly upon a brood about one third grown,
which were feeding in a pasture just beyond a wood. It so happened that
they caught sight of the dog without seeing me, when instantly, with
the celerity of wild game, they launched into the air, and, while the
old one perched upon a treetop, as if to keep an eye on the supposed
enemy, the young went sailing over the trees toward home.

The two hounds above referred to, accompanied by a cur-dog, whose
business it was to mind the farm, but who took as much delight in
running away from prosy duty as if he had been a schoolboy, would
frequently steal off and have a good hunt all by themselves, just for
the fun of the thing, I suppose. I more than half suspect that it was
as a kind of taunt or retaliation, that Reynard came and took the geese
from under their very noses. One morning they went off and stayed till
the afternoon of the next day; they ran the fox all day and all night,
the hounds baying at every jump, the cur-dog silent and tenacious. When
the trio returned, they came dragging themselves along, stiff,
footsore, gaunt, and hungry. For a day or two afterward they lay about
the kennels, seeming to dread nothing so much as the having to move.
The stolen hunt was their "spree," their "bender," and of course they
must take time to get over it.

Some old hunters think the fox enjoys the chase as much as the hound,
especially when the latter runs slow, as the best hounds do. The fox
will wait for the hound, will sit down and listen, or play about,
crossing and recrossing and doubling upon his track, as if enjoying a
mischievous consciousness of the perplexity he would presently cause
his pursuer. It is evident, however, that the fox does not always have
his share of the fun: before a swift dog, or in a deep snow, or on a
wet day, when his tail gets heavy, he must put his best foot forward.
As a last resort he "holes up." Sometimes he resorts to numerous
devices to mislead and escape the dog altogether. He will walk in the
bed of a small creek, or on a rail-fence. I heard of an instance of a
fox, hard and long pressed, that took to a rail-fence, and, after
walking some distance, made a leap to one side to a hollow stump, in
the cavity of which he snugly stowed himself. The ruse succeeded, and
the dogs lost the trail; but the hunter, coming up, passed by chance
near the stump, when out bounded the fox, his cunning availing him less
than he deserved. On another occasion the fox took to the public road,
and stepped with great care and precision into a sleigh-track. The
hard, polished snow took no imprint of the light foot, and the scent
was no doubt less than it would have been on a rougher surface. Maybe,
also, the rogue had considered the chances of another sleigh coming
along, before the hound, and obliterating the trail entirely.

Audubon tells us of a certain fox, which, when started by the hounds,
always managed to elude them at a certain point. Finally the hunter
concealed himself in the locality, to discover, if possible, the trick.
Presently along came the fox, and, making a leap to one side, ran up
the trunk of a fallen tree which had lodged some feet from the ground,
and concealed himself in the top. In a few minutes the hounds came up,
and in their eagerness passed some distance beyond the point, and then
went still farther, looking for the lost trail. Then the fox hastened
down, and, taking his back-track, fooled the dogs completely.

I was told of a silver-gray fox in northern New York, which, when
pursued by the hounds, would run till it had hunted up another fox, or
the fresh trail of one, when it would so manoeuvre that the hound would
invariably be switched off on the second track.

In cold, dry weather the fox will sometimes elude the hound, at least
delay him much, by taking to a bare, plowed field. The hard dry earth
seems not to retain a particle of the scent, and the hound gives a
loud, long, peculiar bark, to signify he has trouble. It is now his
turn to show his wit, which he often does by passing completely around
the field, and resuming the trail again where it crosses the fence or a
strip of snow.

The fact that any dry, hard surface is unfavorable to the hound
suggests, in a measure, the explanation of the wonderful faculty that
all dogs in a degree possess to track an animal by the scent of the
foot alone. Did you ever think why a dog's nose is always wet? Examine
the nose of a foxhound, for instance; how very moist and sensitive!
Cause this moisture to dry up, and the dog would be as powerless to
track an animal as you are! The nose of the cat, you may observe, is
but a little moist, and, as you know, her sense of smell is far
inferior to that of the dog. Moisten your own nostrils and lips, and
this sense is plainly sharpened. The sweat of a dog's nose, therefore,
is no doubt a vital element in its power, and, without taking a very
long logical stride, we may infer how much a damp, rough surface aids
him in tracking game.

A fox hunt in this country is, of course, quite a different thing from
what it is in England, where all the squires and noblemen of a borough,
superbly mounted, go riding over the country, guided by the yelling
hounds, till the fox is literally run down and murdered. Here the
hunter prefers a rough, mountainous country, and, as probably most
persons know, takes advantage of the disposition of the fox, when
pursued by the hound, to play or circle around a ridge or bold point,
and, taking his stand near the run-way, shoots him down.

I recently had the pleasure of a turn with some experienced hunters.
As we ascended the ridge toward the mountain, keeping in our ears the
uncertain baying of the hounds as they slowly unraveled an old trail,
my companions pointed out to me the different run-ways,--a gap in the
fence here, a rock just below the brow of the hill there, that tree
yonder near the corner of the woods, or the end of that stone wall
looking down the side-hill, or commanding a cow-path, or the outlet of
a wood-road. A half-wild apple orchard near a cross-road was pointed
out as an invariable run-way, where the fox turned toward the mountain
again, after having been driven down the ridge. There appeared to be no
reason why the foxes should habitually pass any particular point, yet
the hunters told me that year after year they took about the same
turns, each generation of foxes running through the upper corner of
that field, or crossing the valley near yonder stone wall, when pursued
by the dog. It seems the fox when he finds himself followed is
perpetually tempted to turn in his course, to deflect from a right
line, as a person would undoubtedly be under similar circumstances. If
he is on this side of the ridge, when he hears the dog break around on
his trail he speedily crosses to the other side; if he is in the
fields, he takes again to the woods; if in the valley, he hastens to
the high land, and evidently enjoys running along the ridge and
listening to the dogs, slowly tracing out his course in the fields
below. At such times he appears to have but one sense, hearing, and
that seems to be reverted toward his pursuers. He is constantly
pausing, looking back and listening, and will almost run over the
hunter if he stands still, even though not at all concealed.

Animals of this class depend far less upon their sight than upon their
hearing and sense of smell. Neither the fox nor the dog is capable of
much discrimination with the eye; they seem to see things only in the
mass; but with the nose they can analyze and define, and get at the
most subtle shades of difference. The fox will not read a man from a
stump or a rock, unless he gets his scent, and the dog does not know
his master in a crowd until he has smelled him.

On the occasion to which I refer, it was not many minutes after the
dogs entered the woods on the side of the mountain before they gave out
sharp and eager, and we knew at once that the fox was started. We were
then near a point that had been designated as a sure run-way, and
hastened to get into position with all speed. For my part I was so
taken with the music of the hounds, as it swelled up over the ridge,
that I quite forgot the game. I saw one of my companions leveling his
gun, and, looking a few rods to the right, saw the fox coming right on
to us. I had barely time to note the silly and abashed expression that
came over him as he saw us in his path, when he was cut down as by a
flash of lightning. The rogue did not appear frightened, but ashamed
and out of countenance, as one does when some trick has been played
upon him, or when detected in some mischief.

Late in the afternoon, as we were passing through a piece of woods in
the valley below, another fox, the third that day, broke from his cover
in an old treetop, under our very noses, and drew the fire of three of
our party, myself among the number, but, thanks to the interposing
trees and limbs, escaped unhurt. Then the dogs took up the trail a