Chapter 35

Darkness falls suddenly. Outside the ring of light from our conflagration the woods are black. There is a tremendous impression of isolation and lonesomeness in our situation. We are the prisoners of the night. The woods never seemed so vast and mysterious. The trees are gigantic. There are noises that we do not understand, --mysterious winds passing overhead, and rambling in the great galleries, tree-trunks grinding against each other, undefinable stirs and uneasinesses. The shapes of those who pass into the dimness are outlined in monstrous proportions. The spectres, seated about in the glare of the fire, talk about appearances and presentiments and religion. The guides cheer the night with bear-fights, and catamount encounters, and frozen-to-death experiences, and simple tales of great prolixity and no point, and jokes of primitive lucidity. We hear catamounts, and the stealthy tread of things in the leaves, and the hooting of owls, and, when the moon rises, the laughter of the loon. Everything is strange, spectral, fascinating.

By and by we get our positions in the shanty for the night, and arrange the row of sleepers. The shanty has become a smoke-house by this time: waves of smoke roll into it from the fire. It is only by lying down, and getting the head well under the eaves, that one can breathe. No one can find her "things"; nobody has a pillow. At length the row is laid out, with the solemn protestation of intention to sleep. The wind, shifting, drives away the smoke.

Good-night is said a hundred times; positions are readjusted, more last words, new shifting about, final remarks; it is all so comfortable and romantic; and then silence. Silence continues for a minute. The fire flashes up; all the row of heads is lifted up simultaneously to watch it; showers of sparks sail aloft into the blue night; the vast vault of greenery is a fairy spectacle. How the sparks mount and twinkle and disappear like tropical fireflies, and all the leaves murmur, and clap their hands! Some of the sparks do not go out: we see them flaming in the sky when the flame of the fire has died down. Well, good-night, goodnight. More folding of the arms to sleep; more grumbling about the hardness of a hand-bag, or the insufficiency of a pocket-handkerchief, for a pillow. Good-night. Was that a remark?--something about a root, a stub in the ground sticking into the back. "You couldn't lie along a hair?" ---"Well, no: here's another stub. It needs but a moment for the conversation to become general,--about roots under the shoulder, stubs in the back, a ridge on which it is impossible for the sleeper to balance, the non-elasticity of boughs, the hardness of the ground, the heat, the smoke, the chilly air. Subjects of remarks multiply. The whole camp is awake, and chattering like an aviary. The owl is also awake; but the guides who are asleep outside make more noise than the owls. Water is wanted, and is handed about in a dipper. Everybody is yawning; everybody is now determined to go to sleep in good earnest. A last good-night. There is an appalling silence. It is interrupted in the most natural way in the world. Somebody has got the start, and gone to sleep. He proclaims the fact. He seems to have been brought up on the seashore, and to know how to make all the deep-toned noises of the restless ocean. He is also like a war-horse; or, it is suggested, like a saw-horse. How malignantly he snorts, and breaks off short, and at once begins again in another key! One head is raised after another.

"Who is that?"

"Somebody punch him."

"Turn him over."

"Reason with him."

The sleeper is turned over. The turn was a mistake. He was before, it appears, on his most agreeable side. The camp rises in indignation. The sleeper sits up in bewilderment. Before he can go off again, two or three others have preceded him. They are all alike. You never can judge what a person is when he is awake. There are here half a dozen disturbers of the peace who should be put in solitary confinement. At midnight, when a philosopher crawls out to sit on a log by the fire, and smoke a pipe, a duet in tenor and mezzo-soprano is going on in the shanty, with a chorus always coming in at the wrong time. Those who are not asleep want to know why the smoker doesn't go to bed. He is requested to get some water, to throw on another log, to see what time it is, to note whether it looks like rain. A buzz of conversation arises. She is sure she heard something behind the shanty. He says it is all nonsense. "Perhaps, however, it might be a mouse."

"Mercy! Are there mice?"

"Plenty."

"Then that's what I heard nibbling by my head. I shan't sleep a wink! Do they bite?"

"No, they nibble; scarcely ever take a full bite out."

"It's horrid!"

Towards morning it grows chilly; the guides have let the fire go out; the blankets will slip down. Anxiety begins to be expressed about the dawn.

"What time does the sun rise?"

"Awful early. Did you sleep?

"Not a wink. And you?"

"In spots. I'm going to dig up this root as soon as it is light enough."

"See that mist on the lake, and the light just coming on the Gothics! I'd no idea it was so cold: all the first part of the night I was roasted."

"What were they talking about all night?"

When the party crawls out to the early breakfast, after it has washed its faces in the lake, it is disorganized, but cheerful. Nobody admits much sleep; but everybody is refreshed, and declares it delightful. It is the fresh air all night that invigorates; or maybe it is the tea, or the slap-jacks. The guides have erected a table of spruce bark, with benches at the sides; so that breakfast is taken in form. It is served on tin plates and oak chips. After breakfast begins the day's work. It may be a mountain-climbing expedition, or rowing and angling in the lake, or fishing for trout in some stream two or three miles distant. Nobody can stir far from camp without a guide. Hammocks are swung, bowers are built novel-reading begins, worsted work appears, cards are shuffled and dealt. The day passes in absolute freedom from responsibility to one's self. At night when the expeditions return, the camp resumes its animation. Adventures are recounted, every statement of the narrator being disputed and argued. Everybody has become an adept in woodcraft; but nobody credits his neighbor with like instinct. Society getting resolved into its elements, confidence is gone.

Whilst the hilarious party are at supper, a drop or two of rain falls. The head guide is appealed to. Is it going to rain? He says it does rain. But will it be a rainy night? The guide goes down to the lake, looks at the sky, and concludes that, if the wind shifts a p'int more, there is no telling what sort of weather we shall have. Meantime the drops patter thicker on the leaves overhead, and the leaves, in turn, pass the water down to the table; the sky darkens; the wind rises; there is a kind of shiver in the woods; and we scud away into the shanty, taking the remains of our supper, and eating it as best we can. The rain increases. The fire sputters and fumes. All the trees are dripping, dripping, and the ground is wet. We cannot step outdoors without getting a drenching. Like sheep, we are penned in the little hut, where no one can stand erect. The rain swirls into the open front, and wets the bottom of the blankets. The smoke drives in. We curl up, and enjoy ourselves. The guides at length conclude that it is going to be damp. The dismal situation sets us all into good spirits; and it is later than the night before when we crawl under our blankets, sure this time of a sound sleep, lulled by the storm and the rain resounding on the bark roof. How much better off we are than many a shelter-less wretch! We are as snug as dry herrings. At the moment, however, of dropping off to sleep, somebody unfortunately notes a drop of water on his face; this is followed by another drop; in an instant a stream is established. He moves his head to a dry place. Scarcely has he done so, when he feels a dampness in his back. Reaching his hand outside, he finds a puddle of water soaking through his blanket. By this time, somebody inquires if it is possible that the roof leaks. One man has a stream of water under him; another says it is coming into his ear. The roof appears to be a discriminating sieve. Those who are dry see no need of such a fuss. The man in the corner spreads his umbrella, and the protective measure is resented by his neighbor. In the darkness there is recrimination. One of the guides, who is summoned, suggests that the rubber blankets be passed out, and spread over the roof. The inmates dislike the proposal, saying that a shower-bath is no worse than a tub-bath. The rain continues to soak down. The fire is only half alive. The bedding is damp. Some sit up, if they can find a dry spot to sit on, and smoke. Heartless observations are made. A few sleep. And the night wears on. The morning opens cheerless. The sky is still leaking, and so is the shanty. The guides bring in a half-cooked breakfast. The roof is patched up. There are reviving signs of breaking away, delusive signs that create momentary exhilaration. Even if the storm clears, the woods are soaked. There is no chance of stirring. The world is only ten feet square.

This life, without responsibility or clean clothes, may continue as long as the reader desires. There are, those who would like to live in this free fashion forever, taking rain and sun as heaven pleases; and there are some souls so constituted that they cannot exist more than three days without their worldly--baggage. Taking the party altogether, from one cause or another it is likely to strike camp sooner than was intended. And the stricken camp is a melancholy sight. The woods have been despoiled; the stumps are ugly; the bushes are scorched; the pine-leaf-strewn earth is trodden into mire; the landing looks like a cattle-ford; the ground is littered with all the unsightly dibris of a hand-to-hand life; the dismantled shanty is a shabby object; the charred and blackened logs, where the fire blazed, suggest the extinction of family life. Man has wrought his usual wrong upon Nature, and he can save his self-respect only by moving to virgin forests.

And move to them he will, the next season, if not this. For he who has once experienced the fascination of the woods-life never escapes its enticement: in the memory nothing remains but its charm.

VII

A WILDERNESS ROMANCE

At the south end of Keene Valley, in the Adirondacks, stands Noon Mark, a shapely peak thirty-five hundred feet above the sea, which, with the aid of the sun, tells the Keene people when it is time to eat dinner. From its summit you look south into a vast wilderness basin, a great stretch of forest little trodden, and out of whose bosom you can hear from the heights on a still day the loud murmur of the Boquet. This basin of unbroken green rises away to the south and southeast into the rocky heights of Dix's Peak and Nipple Top,--the latter a local name which neither the mountain nor the fastidious tourist is able to shake off. Indeed, so long as the mountain keeps its present shape as seen from the southern lowlands, it cannot get on without this name.

These two mountains, which belong to the great system of which Marcy is the giant centre, and are in the neighborhood of five thousand feet high, on the southern outposts of the great mountains, form the gate-posts of the pass into the south country. This opening between them is called Hunter's Pass. It is the most elevated and one of the wildest of the mountain passes. Its summit is thirty-five hundred feet high. In former years it is presumed the hunters occasionally followed the game through; but latterly it is rare to find a guide who has been that way, and the tin-can and paper-collar tourists have not yet made it a runway. This seclusion is due not to any inherent difficulty of travel, but to the fact that it lies a little out of the way.

We went through it last summer; making our way into the jaws from the foot of the great slides on Dix, keeping along the ragged spurs of the mountain through the virgin forest. The pass is narrow, walled in on each side by precipices of granite, and blocked up with bowlders and fallen trees, and beset with pitfalls in the roads ingeniously covered with fair-seeming moss. When the climber occasionally loses sight of a leg in one of these treacherous holes, and feels a cold sensation in his foot, he learns that he has dipped into the sources of the Boquet, which emerges lower down into falls and rapids, and, recruited by creeping tributaries, goes brawling through the forest basin, and at last comes out an amiable and boat-bearing stream in the valley of Elizabeth Town. From the summit another rivulet trickles away to the south, and finds its way through a frightful tamarack swamp, and through woods scarred by ruthless lumbering, to Mud Pond, a quiet body of water, with a ghastly fringe of dead trees, upon which people of grand intentions and weak vocabulary are trying to fix the name of Elk Lake. The descent of the pass on that side is precipitous and exciting. The way is in the stream itself; and a considerable portion of the distance we swung ourselves down the faces of considerable falls, and tumbled down cascades. The descent, however, was made easy by the fact that it rained, and every footstep was yielding and slippery. Why sane people, often church-members respectably connected, will subject themselves to this sort of treatment,--be wet to the skin, bruised by the rocks, and flung about among the bushes and dead wood until the most necessary part of their apparel hangs in shreds,--is one of the delightful mysteries of these woods. I suspect that every man is at heart a roving animal, and likes, at intervals, to revert to the condition of the bear and the catamount.

There is no trail through Hunter's Pass, which, as I have intimated, is the least frequented portion of this wilderness. Yet we were surprised to find a well-beaten path a considerable portion of the way and wherever a path is possible. It was not a mere deer's runway: these are found everywhere in the mountains. It is trodden by other and larger animals, and is, no doubt, the highway of beasts. It bears marks of having been so for a long period, and probably a period long ago. Large animals are not common in these woods now, and you seldom meet anything fiercer than the timid deer and the gentle bear. But in days gone by, Hunter's Pass was the highway of the whole caravan of animals who were continually going backward; and forwards, in the aimless, roaming way that beasts have, between Mud Pond and the Boquet Basin. I think I can see now the procession of them between the heights of Dix and Nipple Top; the elk and the moose shambling along, cropping the twigs; the heavy bear lounging by with his exploring nose; the frightened deer trembling at every twig that snapped beneath his little hoofs, intent on the lily-pads of the pond; the raccoon and the hedgehog, sidling along; and the velvet-footed panther, insouciant and conscienceless, scenting the path with a curious glow in his eye, or crouching in an overhanging tree ready to drop into the procession at the right moment. Night and day, year after year, I see them going by, watched by the red fox and the comfortably clad sable, and grinned at by the black cat,--the innocent, the vicious, the timid and the savage, the shy and the bold, the chattering slanderer and the screaming prowler, the industrious and the peaceful, the tree-top critic and the crawling biter,--just as it is elsewhere. It makes me blush for my species when I think of it. This charming society is nearly extinct now: of the larger animals there only remain the bear, who minds his own business more thoroughly than any person I know, and the deer, who would like to be friendly with men, but whose winning face and gentle ways are no protection from the savageness of man, and who is treated with the same unpitying destruction as the snarling catamount. I have read in history that the amiable natives of Hispaniola fared no better at the hands of the brutal Spaniards than the fierce and warlike Caribs. As society is at present constituted in Christian countries, I would rather for my own security be a cougar than a fawn.

There is not much of romantic interest in the Adirondacks. Out of the books of daring travelers, nothing. I do not know that the Keene Valley has any history. The mountains always stood here, and the Au Sable, flowing now in shallows and now in rippling reaches over the sands and pebbles, has for ages filled the air with continuous and soothing sounds. Before the Vermonters broke into it some three-quarters of a century ago, and made meadows of its bottoms and sugar-camps of its fringing woods, I suppose the red Indian lived here in his usual discomfort, and was as restless as his successors, the summer boarders. But the streams were full of trout then, and the moose and the elk left their broad tracks on the sands of the river. But of the Indian there is no trace. There is a mound in the valley, much like a Tel in the country of Bashan beyond the Jordan, that may have been built by some pre-historic race, and may contain treasure and the seated figure of a preserved chieftain on his slow way to Paradise. What the gentle and accomplished race of the Mound-Builders should want in this savage region where the frost kills the early potatoes and stunts the scanty oats, I do not know. I have seen no trace of them, except this Tel, and one other slight relic, which came to light last summer, and is not enough to found the history of a race upon.

Some workingmen, getting stone from the hillside on one of the little plateaus, for a house-cellar, discovered, partly embedded, a piece of pottery unique in this region. With the unerring instinct of workmen in regard to antiquities, they thrust a crowbar through it, and broke the bowl into several pieces. The joint fragments, however, give us the form of the dish. It is a bowl about nine inches high and eight inches across, made of red clay, baked but not glazed. The bottom is round, the top flares into four comers, and the rim is rudely but rather artistically ornamented with criss-cross scratches made when the clay was soft. The vessel is made of clay not found about here, and it is one that the Indians formerly living here could not form. Was it brought here by roving Indians who may have made an expedition to the Ohio; was it passed from tribe to tribe; or did it belong to a race that occupied the country before the Indian, and who have left traces of their civilized skill in pottery scattered all over the continent?

If I could establish the fact that this jar was made by a prehistoric race, we should then have four generations in this lovely valley:-the amiable Pre-Historic people (whose gentle descendants were probably killed by the Spaniards in the West Indies); the Red Indians; the Keene Flaters (from Vermont); and the Summer Boarders, to say nothing of the various races of animals who have been unable to live here since the advent of the Summer Boarders, the valley being not productive enough to sustain both. This last incursion has been more destructive to the noble serenity of the forest than all the preceding.

But we are wandering from Hunter's Pass. The western walls of it are formed by the precipices of Nipple Top, not so striking nor so bare as the great slides of Dix which glisten in the sun like silver, but rough and repelling, and consequently alluring. I have a great desire to scale them. I have always had an unreasonable wish to explore the rough summit of this crabbed hill, which is too broken and jagged for pleasure and not high enough for glory. This desire was stimulated by a legend related by our guide that night in the Mud Pond cabin. The guide had never been through the pass before; although he was familiar with the region, and had ascended Nipple Top in the winter in pursuit of the sable. The story he told doesn't amount to much, none of the guides' stories do, faithfully reported, and I should not have believed it if I had not had a good deal of leisure on my hands at the time, and been of a willing mind, and I may say in rather of a starved condition as to any romance in this region.

The guide said then--and he mentioned it casually, in reply to our inquiries about ascending the mountain--that there was a cave high up among the precipices on the southeast side of Nipple Top. He scarcely volunteered the information, and with seeming reluctance gave us any particulars about it. I always admire this art by which the accomplished story-teller lets his listener drag the reluctant tale of the marvelous from him, and makes you in a manner responsible for its improbability. If this is well managed, the listener is always eager to believe a great deal more than the romancer seems willing to tell, and always resents the assumed reservations and doubts of the latter.

There were strange reports about this cave when the old guide was a boy, and even then its very existence had become legendary. Nobody knew exactly where it was, but there was no doubt that it had been inhabited. Hunters in the forests south of Dix had seen a light late at night twinkling through the trees high up the mountain, and now and then a ruddy glare as from the flaring-up of a furnace. Settlers were few in the wilderness then, and all the inhabitants were well known. If the cave was inhabited, it must be by strangers, and by men who had some secret purpose in seeking this seclusion and eluding observation. If suspicious characters were seen about Port Henry, or if any such landed from the steamers on the shore of Lake Champlain, it was impossible to identify them with these invaders who were never seen. Their not being seen did not, however, prevent the growth of the belief in their existence. Little indications and rumors, each trivial in itself, became a mass of testimony that could not be disposed of because of its very indefiniteness, but which appealed strongly to man's noblest faculty, his imagination, or credulity.