OIIjF i. 1. BtU ICtbrars Nnrtli (Earolina ^tatf Iniopraitg G82 lllllll' 800677723^ THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE DATE INDICATED BELOW AND IS SUB- JECT TO AN OVERDUE FINE AS POSTED AT THE CIRCULATION DESK. MUSINGS FIRE AND BY CAMP- WAYSIDE North Caroli^^^it&re Library -^il^ Raleigh MUSINGS BY CAMP- FIRE AND WAYSIDE By WILLIAM CUNNINGHAM GRAY Editor of the Interior FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY CHICAGO NEW YORK TORONTO MCMII COPYRIGHT MCMII BY FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 00 9 PRINTED BY R. R. DONNELLEY & SONS CO., AT THE LAKESIDE PRESS, CHICAGO, ILL., MCMII puiacz THE papers inclosed in these covers were, with the exceptions indicated, written in the Northern woods, and drawn from the surroundings. Having there acquired resources of health which have made old age so far the pleasant- est period of my life, I desire here to enter a plea for our own country. It is to be regretted that our deluded people pour in a dizzy tide across the sea in quest of pleasures which are only to be found at home; enjoyments and benefits incomparably supe- rior to any that can be found elsewhere left un- tasted and unaccepted. There are two American gulf streams flowing across the Atlantic to Europe, the one marine, the other social. They both irrigate those otherwise unhappy lands with rains and gold, but both of them are headed for the melancholy Arctics. The country boy knows that when he drives his cows to a fresh clover-field they will rush all over it, and from side to side, in quest of pasture as good as what they are trampling: the same with the American man or woman turned loose upon the world. Such Americans reserve the ample room and fresh air allotted to them by their own generous country, for their future state of existence in a cemetery. The only reservation they make is, that 3 4 Preface they shall not be pushed and jammed and crowded after they are dead. We Americans stand for liberty, and have wasted no end of windy rhetoric in extolling our quality and quantity of it, and then journey for our pleas- ure to where we are hedged about with customs and manners, limitations and restrictions, which are as absurd as they are annoying. Fortunately, the best things in life are not purchasable; they would not be best things if they were. Among them are vaca- tions, which are sweetened and spiced with a little money, such as one can afford, but gravied by a great deal. Discontent is a good thing. It makes us go, as fuel does the locomotive ; but overcharged with it, we do nothing but sizzle and smoke. Our Atlantic mountain ranges are replete with lovely scenery and a most interesting people. Our northern frontiers and Canada are jeweled with lakes as beautiful as the sun shines on, shadowed with noble forests and laced with lovely streams. The Pacific ranges, from our southern borders to the Arctics, are made up of clusters of peaks, cas- cades, interlocked lakes, glaciers, and forests which have no rivals in Europe. The canons of the Yellowstone, Colorado, and Yosemite need not be described. For uniqueness, brilliancy of colors, and grandeur, they have no rivals that are known or accessible. Nor need I speak of the astonishing beauty and strangeness of the Yellowstone National Park. To Alaska no description can do justice. It Preface 5 contains no less than sixty-five active volcanoes, and thousands of extinct craters which are either the cups of cerulean lakes or the birthplaces of magnificent glaciers. The Muir is most accessible and best known, but one which issues from Redoubt Mountain leaps from a cliff of a thousand feet, in huge emeralds, which whirl and flash as they fall. It is admitted that nowhere else can so delightsome a voyage be found as that between Seattle and Juneau. There is nowhere a more beautiful island than Kadiac ; nor is there any coast where mount- ains, snow-clad from head to heels, rise sheer thir- teen thousand feet out of the sea — spectacles of incredible and appalling grandeur. More quietly delightful and yet as health-giving is an outing of tent-camping, easily accessible and small of expense. Better, however, is a log cabin and a camp-fire in some locality chosen for its waters, wildness, and beauty. Such outings are supposed to be appropriate only for men, but women should go. More than men they need to break the monotony of life squarely off, and make a summary riddance of it. Let them make wood-nymphs of themselves. Whoever heard of a Diana suffering from nervous prostration, or a naiad sending a satyr post-haste for Hippocrates? A woman can never fully appreciate the refine- ments of her home till she have an opportunity to contrast them with their opposites — not the oppo- sites found in poverty, overcrowding, and squalor, 6 Preface but those which make the contrast between nature and artificiality. Nothing under the sky is so pure and sweet as virgin forests and waters, nor is there anywhere such beauty and refinement in art as that which pervades them. Solitude brightens society, and society sweetens solitude. The monotony of the home gives exhilaration to the tent, and the tent gives appreciation for the home. We are not to seek contrasts between things that are desirable and those which are offensive, but find restful vari- ety rather in that which is pleasing both in nature and in art. We shall find in the wilderness not only new objects of interest, but we will discover in our- selves, both in mind and in body, new powers and new capacities for activity and enjoyment. Note, — Some years ago, at the solicitation of friends, I gathered a bunch of my Camp-Fire Musings and published them in a small volume. It was well received, and ran to a sale of a few thousands, but being unsatisfactory to myself, it was withdrawn. Some of the contents of that volume have been recast for this, a notice that is due to any into whose hands a copy of the former book may have fallen. W.C.G. a moth 3IntroDuctori? T/iese musings were selected for publication by Dr. Gray during the few months immediately preceding the time of his home-calling. Had his beloved hand, his warm heart, and his ever-progressive mind given them final preparation, doubtless there would have been some revision — the necessity for which must be left to the individual judgment of the reader. It has been deemed best to leave the volume just as it came from his hand, and if occasionally there be a diamofid in the rough, the discerning will properly estimate it at its polished value. The illustrations are reproductions from photographs taken by Dr. Gray — a further tribute to his artistic sense. Contend CAMP-FIRE MUSINGS ^^^^ I. The Camp-fire - - - - 15 II. Nature and the Supernatural - 25 III. Nature and Culture - - - 39 IV. Nature's Music, Art, and Industry 62 V. The Tragical in Nature - - 71 VI. The Music of the Spheres - - 81 VII. Hunting ----- gz VIII. Nature's Intelligence - - - 99 IX. Refreshing Rain - - - 114 X. This Paradise of Ours - - - 124 XI. Through a Forest - - - 134 MUSINGS OF THE SOUTH XII. Wayside Musings - - - - 143 XIII. Wayside Musings - - - 152 XIV. Wayside Musings - - - - 160 XV. Aspects of Southern Prosperity - 167 XVI. The South— Scenic and Educational 177 ALASKAN MUSINGS XVII. Snoqualmie Falls - - - - 187 XVIII. Along the Northern Line - - 195 XIX. Aboard the "Bear" - - - 203 XX. Alaskan Volcanoes - - - 211 9 Contents PAGE XXI. Dutch Harbor - - - - 222 XXII. Among the Islands - - - 231 XXIII. Scenic Grandeur of Alaska - - 242 XXIV. At Orca 248 XXV. The Alaskan Mines - - - 254 WHAT ADAM DID IN EDEN XXVI. The Realms of Mystery - - 267 XXVII. The Adam of Genesis - - 277 XXVIII. Adam's Conquests - - - - 290 XXIX. Adam's Wife - - - - 300 XXX. Adam the Hunter - - - 3" AT EVENTIDE XXXI. Expiring Embers— A Study of Death 327 mt of 3iiimtxatiom W. C. Gray Frontispiece FACING PAGE The Island from Iron River Trail - - 15 Clear Lake ---... The Trout Stream .... 25 - 39 Double Vista Looking Toward the Mainland 62 The Dining-Room - . . - .81 An Hour's Sport ..... ^2 The Boathouse - - . . The Library - . . . . The Landing . - - . , - 124 Iron River Trail 99 114 134 Island Lake --.... 327 CAMP-FIRE MUSINGS MUSINGS BY CAMP- FIRE AND WAYSIDE The Camp-Fire MANKIND has never willingly relinquished the camp-fire. It is not preference, but necessity, that has driven him indoors. Even there he carried and rekindled its embers, and it became the hearth-fire: a flame, sister to the flame of love. So much he rescued from the loss of Para- dise. It is not till the overcrowding of his own kind has exterminated the game and ravaged the forests with steel and fire, and not till the increase of com- peting herds has exhausted the pastures, that man will fence in for himself a patch of the wilderness, domesticate for himself a few of its birds and quad- rupeds, and build for himself a castle. Civilization is to him a choice of evils, and he has never forgot- ten nor ceased to long for Paradise, with its unlim- ited breadth and freedom — with its camp-fires glim- mering on distant hill or mountain-side or stream; their rays telling of fellowship, hospitality, and lib- erty. Civilization is tyranny. At its best it is the 15 1 6 Musings by Camp-Fire a?id Wayside most tyrannical. Its limitations and restrictions follow us and harass us wherever we are and what- ever we do, and remind us at every turn that we are slaves. It intrudes upon us in most unreasonable and capricious particulars. We may not wear com- fortable clothing, must swelter in the heat, be sod-, den in the rain, and pinched and frozen in the cold. It follows us with its requisitions from the cradle to the grave, and snatches at our fleeing spirits for a further dole. Our little boys do not forget. They are epit- omes of the early life of the race, as their whole lives will, in old age, be handbooks of the history of man, each individual volume complete in itself. The charming little barbarians do not forget. In no way can they be more delighted than by permit- ting them to build a mimic camp-fire, a thing which has no attraction except curiosity for any other creature that creeps or flies. To the boy it is a resistless attraction and an unfailing delight. Wordsworth finds expression for this fact in the higher realms of being when he says: "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath elsewhere had its setting, And Cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness. And not in utter nakedness. But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home." Norfh Cai-' -^ f ;l ^^>vs,. '^ Library The Camp-Fire 17 Nature is a munificent mistress, but slie is a sulky slave. We may grow plants under glass, but their flowers are without perfume and their fruit without flavor. We may bring in the roots of the . cranberry and strawberry, and be sure from the growth in form and color that we have effected a capture, only to find that the exquisite tang, the spirit of the fruit, has fled back to the woods. We do not know whether nature weeps or laughs at our blackberries and raspberries, backed stiffly up against the garden fence, and fettered with pieces of lath; but seek out those of her own growing, in some secluded nook, the hooked vines bending with ebon or ruddy clusters, hidden away under canopies of dewy leaves, while a saucy bird scolds at you from a twig above. We have domesticated the duck, but we have failed to domesticate its beautiful plumage and its matchless flavor. The speckled beauty which cuts the foam of the cascade with your line is nature's; hers the bass which makes it sing like a harp; hers the muskallonge which puts such an ache in your fingers, as you handle the reel, that you think you can stand it no longer. Compare a quarter of beef, hung at the door of a marketman's shop, with the sudden apparition of a crowned stag, in his new uniform of blue, upon the shore of a lonely lake; or a roast of pork in a basket to a bear shambling along a hillside. Nature's birds of plumage and song are not for your prison. The poor canary does his 1 8 Mtisings by Camp- Fire and Wayside best to remember the music of his tribe, but how can he? How can he sing the songs of Teneriffe in a strange land? What, indeed, are his best efforts to the mellifluous ring of the thrush in our own woods? Your love at a summer resort is sweet — there is no denying it; but you are not to her what you would be in a ramble with her alone in a soli- tary wilderness. It is as chivalrous as the circum- stances will permit to pick up her purposely dropped glove; but what is that to gathering her in your arms, and wading the swirling rapids or the treacher- ous swamp, letting her rest timidly yet securely upon your stalwart manhood, endurance, and courage. There is an impalpable, invisible, softly stepping delight in the camp-fire which escapes analysis. Enumerate all its charms, and still there is some- thing not in your catalogue. There are paths of light which it cuts through the darkness; there are elfish forms winking and twisting their faces in the glowing ash-veiled embers ; there are black dragons' heads with red eyes, and jaws grinning to show their fiery teeth; the pines whisper to the silence; the sentinel trees seem to advance and retire; you may hear the distant scream of the wolf, or the trumpet of the moose, or the note of a solitary night bird, or the more familiar note of the loon. All these surround and conceal some other delight, as the body veils while it reveals the soul. Our birth is a sleep and a forgetting, and yet a remembering. It is the memory of the wide, wide The Camp-Fire world that has come down to us in our blood, and of the camp-fire of our tribal ancestors, and of their and our original ancestor who built his camp- fire under the trees of the garden, eastward in Eden. Sitting in its glow we are home again, though we know it not, nor can tell whence cometh the delight. It is rest and freedom from care. The sheltering trees look down upon us with calm pleasure, and soothe us to sleep with their whispered lullaby — a song which the mother yet sings to the baby cradled upon her breast, without knowing who composed it or whence it came. There was a rush for home, a tumbling together, and away we flew, two hundred and fifty miles due north, the last dozen of it in a caboose of an iron- ore train, which slacked up for us far out in the trackless forest. The tumbling Brule in front, the charming Chicagoan Lake back of us in the woods, a spring of the sweetest, coldest water at the root of an old hemlock; pines, birches, cedars, maples, all around. The first question that is asked me at home is, "How about the mosquitoes?" — a question which displays ignorance of this high-spirited siren. She is a stickler for etiquette. She demands pre- cedence in the procession and attention to her music. She bites you because you invade her urban temples before she has finished her oratorios. You must wait till she has concluded her outing, sung her last madrigal, and gone over to bite the angels. There is nothing mean about her. She does not, 20 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside like her human counterpart at Newport or Saratoga, seek to monopolize everything. She leaves all her possessions to you for the most delightful months of the year, August, September, and October. "Charlie's" ax is ringing, and down comes a hemlock. What's that for? Your bed, of course. The tent is spread. The corner selected for sleep- ing is piled with hemlock twigs, and a sweeter bed, or one more springy, is not to be had for love or money. First a rubber blanket, then a sheet, and then a woolen blanket, and sleep needs no wooing. Everything here that is found is in unbounded opulence. Amid thousands of square miles of vir- gin forests, and with good axes in hand, why should we not have imperial camp-fires? The knack of the axman, when acquired in boyhood, is never lost. The blow that will go deepest and throw out the encumbering chip is an achievement of high art. And such fires as rewarded a half-hour's labor! The logs, cut from twelve to fifteen feet long, and piled high, have the promise and potency of three splendid fires, one, and the first, from the middle portion, and one more to be taken as required from each end. Three cords of good wood for an even- ing is no waste, and the air is cold enough to make the heat as agreeable as the flame is inspiring. While no desolation is so sad as a fire-swept forest or city, yet the destructive agent is the source and the revealer of all material beauty and glory. The Camp- Fire 21 Nothing that was known to primitive men was so worthy an object of worship. It awakens a sense of dangerous power like the lion; of lithe beauty like the leopard ; of whelming mastery like the flood. Yet it delighted the eyes, warmed the heart as well as the hands, was a warrior against the cold, a signal for the lost, a sentinel which drove off beasts of prey. The spirit of the fire was the spirit of a man, as kindly and as fierce — a thing of human contradictions. "Fire that is kept closest burns most of all"; and whether in the passions or in literal coals, is wedded to bitter ashes and smirch. But our camp-fire waves banners of joy and fires volleys of victory. With savage imprecations Cali- ban resented his task of bringing in the logs, and Ferdinand posed as a martyr of love when Prospero put upon him the same burdens. " My sweet mistress Weeps when she sees me work, and says such baseness Had never like executor." Miranda was sure the burning logs would weep for having wearied him, and woman-like, wanted to carry them herself. " If you'll sit down I'll bear the logs the while: pray give me that; I'll carry it to the pile" — and more of that exquisite story of love and logs. There was this difference between the two scenes: our girls were all married ; Miranda wanted to be. I will not say that our girls would not have helped 22 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside us carry the logs if there had been any occasion for it. The specific evidence of this love-loyalty on their part was that they insisted on punching the fire. The campers in these solitudes are not solitary. In the daytime the trees are trees. Very beauti- fully and loftily the spires of pine and hemlock rise out of the valley, and the birch and maple over- shadow us, but they are only trees. At night, when the torch is applied to the wealth of accumu- lated fuel, they are trees no longer. They leave their places and come out of the darkness to join our company. They say not a word, and yet not even to man is given such a variety of character and so much of the mystery of the spiritual world. We catch the thought of that white and stately birch — calmness, purity, and dignity. And so of that mighty pine, somber and lofty. This rustling maple is an old friend. We understand him. He is no mystic, no poet. He talks about sweetness, shade, and beauty — familiar topics. That keen but musical and somewhat plaintive note which sounds so far and clear through the forest is that of the white-throated sparrow. There is a tramping heard in the silence of the night, the cause of which' is revealed by deer-tracks in the morning near the tents. A few squirrels invite themselves to breakfast, one little chap taking his piece of cracker in his right hand. The crossbills and moose-birds soon establish confidential rela- The Camp- Fire 23 tions with us. The sweetly plaintive song of the sparrow suggested an interpreter — that its "fancies into fancies linking" should be transferred from the leaves of the forest to the leaves of memory — that the bird should be asked to confess all that was in its little overful heart; therefore: the poet and the white-throated sparrow. The Poet : Sweet sprite of the forest unseen 'Mid its canopies somber and green, Art thou Love that is baffled and crossed ? Is the cry that we hear, So plaintive and clear, Sweet Love in the wilderness lost ? Ah me — me — me ! The Sparrow : And dost thou not know, my sweet swain, That Love's the twin brother of Pain, And reaches the heart through a wound ? I'm not Love that is crossed, I'm not Love that is lost, I am Love in the wilderness found. Ah me — me — me ! The Poet : Aphrodite was born of the sea. And so it has happened for me — My white lily bloomed on the tide; Her sweet-breathed charms Floated up to my arms — Fate must have decreed her my bride. Blest me— me — me ! 24 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside The Sparrow : But nymphs who are bom of the sea You know are capricious and free, And sometimes defiant of fate. Remember, sweet swain, Like Rapture and Pain, That Love is the brother of Hate. Ah me — me — me ! The Poet: Sad sprite of the forest, thy song Is omen of pitiless wrong, And sweetly bemoaneth my fate. Too oft, as with you. The false wins the true — Love's arrows are stolen by Hate. Ah me — me— me ! CLEAR LAKE. Nature and the Supernatural IT has been a day of rain — the pines are sighing in the wind and tossing their plumy branches as if flurried and disturbed. The pine is a sensible tree. When the wind is so strong as to endanger its hold in the earth, it casts off limb after limb, until its strength of root and bole are adequate to hold the remainder of its foliage against the gale. It strips itself to the conflict, and yet sacrifices not a twig that it can safely retain. The evening camp-fire burns low. One by one the brands have dissolved into coals, and one by one the little circle has retired into the cabins and gone to sleep. I take from a pile of the skeleton of a dead pine one of its huge resinous bones and cast it on the coals. The surrounding trees have all retired into the silent darkness to repose from the toils of the stormy day — now with its wrestling winds also gone into the darkness of the past. Im- mediately the yellow flames shoot up high, and the trees step out of the darkness on silent feet, with a surprised expression, as if to say, as they look down upon me, "Why, we did not expect you to call for us again." And there they stand waiting, with the stars glittering in their tangled hair. 25 26 Musi7igs by Camp- Fire and Wayside The pine is a prime soldier in the army of the forest, rising tall and straight to a gracefully droop- ing crown of sprays, which in blooming-time is set with resinous diamonds. Swayed by the breeze in the sunbeams, they flash and sparkle, disappearing and reappearing at an angle of the light. He unites his strength with his fellows to resist the tempest and toss it skyward — and it must be a tornado of very great power that is able to lay that Mace- donian phalanx low. The soft breathing of the pines in the wind high overhead appears to have been attributed by primitive men to the wings of flying spirits. The word employed by them to designate spirit or soul was breath. When Jehovah came to reinforce the army of Saul, his movement was heard as "a going in the tops of the mulberry trees." The balsam gave to church architecture the fretted and pinnacled spire pointing to heaven as the source of its sanctity. The maple, antici- pating the night of winter, borrows its colors from the setting sun. Moses received a revelation from God from a tree which, while it was burning, was unconsumed, waving its branches of brilliant colors as if the tints of heaven had descended upon the earth. Bryant describes the arches of the forest as God's first temples, which they were, as they were man's, and to them he resorted to find sanctity for his worship. When he would build a temple, he sought in the forest forms which would most nearly conform to the ideals of the divine, and which he Nature and the Supernatural 27 therefore thought would be most pleasing and attractive to his God, He copied his pointed arch from the aisles of the forest, and it became a sacred form, and yet everywhere signifies worship. His foliated pillars he took from the palms, his spires from the balsams, his gargoyles from super- natural creatures which he imagined to inhabit the woods. When he had finished his temple, the more nearly it represented, in its groined arches, pillars, and lights, what he saw while looking up and around him in the forest, the more fully it satisfied his worshipful spirit. He would tempt God to come out of his dwelling-place in the wilderness and live with him in the city, therefore he built for him a forest of stone. In these temples religion reached its highest and purest conception of the divine — conceptions which it did not and never could have reached in treeless lands. The Oriental, who went to the cliffs and caves for models for his sacred architecture, worshiped a god stony of heart and of hands. When this god was carried over into forested Europe, ages were required to rehumanize him, and this work of divine transformation the trees had not fully accomplished before they were hewn down to make room for the husbandman. The civilized man of the woods also further sought to please God and beguile him into living with him in the city, by reproducing the music of the forest, which he knew God preferred. In his chants and anthems and intoned prayers he sought 28 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside to repeat the long-drawn, solemn sounds which the winds drew from the trees, and he built his organs of pipes and reeds, carefully feeling his way back to the melodies of Paradise. When the great mas- ters, Mozart, Beethoven, and Wagner, rose and began to fill their higher octaves with bird-song and the flutter of wings, the human soul was enrapt- ured. When the lost chord of Paradise had been found again, it was immediately recognized by all the finer souls which heard it, for the human spirit, passing down from form to form and from life to life, does not forget, though it may not have had a reminder for a thousand years. A soul that is open to the influences of nature feels the presence of the divine in the forests. When the clamor and jar and discordant noises of the city are shut out, one feels that he has passed into another world, which contains no point of resemblance or reminder of the one he has left; that he is in another atmosphere, not only in its superior freshness and purity, but also that infused into it is a purer element, a spiritual pervasion, which the soul breathes as the nostrils do the material atmosphere. There is an uplift, an inspi- ration, a joy which he never experiences in the city. This is not an individual, but a common, experi- ence. There is a reason, therefore, in nature and in the constitution of man, why trees should have always been associated with imaginings of the super- natural, and why these aisles, or cathedrals, built Nature and the Supernatural 29 in imitation of them, should have always been regarded as accessories necessary in divine worship. The all-pervasiveness of the spiritual has always been instinctively recognized by man. While it is an atmosphere, it is also a component part of fixed organisms. As there is no clear line of division in the range of life, none between the organic and inorganic, none between the vegetable and animal kingdoms, and none between the simpler and more complex, the lower and the higher forms of life, as the ascending gradations are formed by added com- plexities of function and action, so also there is no sharp separation between the material and the spiritual. Trees have souls; into their organiza- tion the spiritual enters, as it does in all other forms of life, with differing and ascending degrees of capacity and endowment. On the shore of the lake a graceful little hen- snipe fluttered out and pretended to be badly hurt. I knew she was lying to me — telling me a justifiable white lie, and besides that was casting reflections upon my character — saying that she thought I was both cruel and mean enough to destroy the lives of her innocent children. I saw one of the chicks, saw exactly where it stopped under the side of a decaying log, and went to pick it up. I knelt down close and looked a good while. At last I saw one bright eye, and then the whole form of the before invisible chick, which was open to plain view not two feet from my nose all the time, was seen. 30 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside I took it in my hand and it lay perfectly motionless. It knew that resistance would be vain. Then I took out a pocket-lens to look at its suit of clothes. There is no use for any one to say, or to try to explain, that that coat of feathers, which looked so much like rotten wood that you could not distin- guish it two feet from your eyes, and which also was a perfect invention for lightness, dryness, and warmth — no use to say that that coat of feathers was not made on purpose, and with wonderful in- genuity and skill. What the young bird needed was a coat that should be light, dry, warm, and of the color of the driftwood that floated in and decayed upon the shore. The color was not diffi- cult, but the texture was a triumph of inventive genius. A tiny feather-stem was made to grow straight out from the broodling's skin. At the height of a sixteenth of an inch it threw out a top of branches like the top of a little pine. These were closely woven and intertwined with the tops of other feather-stems, making a surface impervious to air or water, enclosing between it and the skin a stratum of air, the best non-conductor of heat (or cold) in existence. Who invented and made this admirable robe for the little chick-snipe? Did God? I do not think he did. Creative work is the most delightful occupation for mind or hands. The child shows it by the avidity with which it seizes upon and tries to employ tools. Every one longs for skill, and for leisure to Nature and the Supernatural 3 1 enjoy it. The artist with his brush, the author with his pen, the architect with his air castles — into every avenue of imagination and skill men and women enter if they can. If they cannot, they look with longing; if they can, and succeed, they are filled with joy and triumph. Next to creating, the pleasure of looking upon its beautiful wonders is the highest. This passion fills galleries with paint- ings, libraries with books, streets with noble archi- tecture, parks with labyrinths and fountains, avenues with carriages; and on the sea displaces wide hulks with those graceful leviathans, which are neither bird nor fish, but which swim while they fly, and fly while they float. The infinite Creator has as much to do as an infinite Creator can do in infinite time. He has infinite space to fill with forms of beauty and glory — and infinitudes are equal. He is the joy-giver to all his creatures. Shall we hesitate to say that he imparts to those whom he loves the powers and possibilities necessary to the sharing with him of this purest and highest of pleasures, the pleasure of creating? He who is companion and friend to all who seek him — would he deny to them the delight of helping him in this charming task? He does not. Men and women paint birds and flowers, but they cannot make them live. They possess and control chemical and mechanical forces, but the vital force is beyond their grasp — detained from them because they have as yet neither mental 32 Musi7i^s by Camp- Fire and Wayside nor moral qualifications for using such a power wisely, just as we restrain children from handling the delicate appliances of the laboratory or studio. But as men and women rise toward God's moral and spiritual perfections, they will rise in the pos- session of his powers. "He withholdeth no good thing from those who walk uprightly." Two lovely twin children were born upon the earth, a boy and a girl. The little girl as child and woman was passionately fond of birds and flowers, the boy was never so happy as when permitted to wander alone in the forests or push his canoe up the difficult rapids or over the mirror-bosom of the lake. They lived lives of faith and beneficent serv- ice to God and their fellow-creatures — and died. Their first emotion on opening their eyes in the spiritual world was inexpressible gratitude and love. When they saw the Lord Christ they ran to him — not even his glorious majesty and dignity could daunt their love — fell at his feet and bathed them with tears of overflowing joy. "What would you have me do for you, my little ones?" he said, tenderly, as he stroked and lifted them up. "Give us some new power for serving and prais- ing you," they replied, with one voice. He smiled with a peculiar expression of pleasure. Even God likes to indulge in pleasant surprises for his children. "Do you see yonder white star?" he said, point- Nature and the Supernatural 33 ing out into the blue. "The third world in its train is new. Go you and make and paint me some flow- ers for its adornment, and weave me some robes for my birdlings there. And you — make me some forests for its hills and plains." How they thanked him, and how they flew! They found that others had preceded them. One dashing spirit with a taste for curiosity and color had formed an orchid to grow in the ground. Another still more daring had formed one which would grow, rootless, in the air. Our earth-born spirit pondered long how she might best please the Lord; and when her first work was completed — lo, the passion-flower! Her brother found an aspiring genius building up a forest of towering redwood, another, an artist, trimming and draping a tree, which, when he had finished it, proved to be something like the cut- leaved birch. Remembering that his Lord had compared himself to a vine, he applied himself to the production of one which should be lovely of aspect, sweet of bloom, and of unmatched flavor and aroma and color of fruit. Time? There is no time in eternity! We traced ecclesiastical architecture to its sources in the forests — mentioning the spire, the arch, the gothic pillar, and the gargoyle. This last and much of the grotesquery which art employs to emphasize and set off its harmonies is found in a 34 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside camp-fire, which, shining in a forest, is always highly picturesque. It gives different spectacular results with different qualities of fuel. If the wood be new, partly seasoned, and sound, the flame is of pink and white, with shadings of purple, red, and of other colors, and rises vigorously, while the brands crum- ble in large, solid coals of luminous gold. I am inclined to think that the attractiveness of gold is due to the inherited memory of the camp-fire. Should there be an admixture of dozed, damp, slow-burning, and partly decayed wood, then we have a display of everything possible to grotesque fancy. It yields black as a background, and upon this, partly obscured by black smoke whirling in little eddies, we have a veritable inferno, filled with every imaginable and unimaginable demon and monster. I had seen the shapes which dwell and writhe and gleam and wink their fiery eyes in a camp-fire of dozed wood somewhere sculptured in stone — was familiar with their forms and countenances — where was it? Ah! I remember: masks and gargoyles in the architecture of the old cathedrals — those of York Minster I remember most clearly. They poke their reptilian heads out from the angles of the towers, show their heavy faces and grinning teeth in the relievo friezes. Those which had been exposed to three centuries of rain, sunshine, and wind had been partly decerebralized — the tops of their heads had been worn off, which made them Nahire and the Supernatural 35 more reptilian in aspect than the sculptor intended, but they are dull of color, solid, immovable, dead — having but a single impression to communicate, that of form, and that not a pleasing one, nor in- tended to be. The camp-fire gargoyles, on the contrary, are of every conceivable grotesqueness in form and action, every ferocity of eye, absurdity of nose, curious lifting of the lips as of an angry beast, constantly changing and reforming — living pictures of the outr^ done in ash, black, and fire. If one is musing on absent friends, he will see their initials in the fire: the old man those of his absent com- panions, living or dead, the young man those of his sweetheart, the young girl those of the coming prince. Though the wind may have been blowing all day, and even though it may have developed into a hurricane, with the setting sun and the gathering shades the air becomes still. "The wind will go down in the evening," we always say. And so the winds should go down around us amid the falling dews and gathering shadows of death. This came to mind to-day when a letter was brought in an- nouncing the death of a friend, a minister, who had literally died of harassing persecution. It filled my eyes with tears and my tongue with maledictions. But the storm that buffeted him is past, and he sleeps well. As I sit under the sleeping trees, an evening is recalled which lies farthest back in my 36 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside memory. The scene is dim in the distance of threescore years. I was seated with my father in the open farm-wagon going home. The evening had closed down and the road lay through stretches of the original forest. He told me a story of perse- cution which filled my young heart with indignation and revenge. "That was years ago, my son," he said, "and I have watched the whip of God as the years went by. I saw its blows falling and falling continually, and it never ceased till the last man of them was lashed out of the world." My father's words are, in my memory, like a torch illumining the immediately surrounding scene. What went before and what followed after are in oblivion. The whip of God! And I, too, have seen it falling and falling. "With what measure ye mete it shall be measured to you again." Stripe for stripe, blow for blow, measure for measure. Whether God's whip shall be a rod of chastisement, wielded in love, or a scourge of scorpions lashing men out of the world, it is for those to choose upon whom it falls. When God marked Cain, he did not throw the brand away. In solitude one becomes absorbed in the small things around him. No phenomenon, however trivial, fails to attract his attention — the wind, weather, clouds, and all forms of animal and vege- table life — these are his companions, and he invests them, or rather he discovers that they are invested and permeated, with something above the material. Nature and the Supernatural 37 A tree is not more obvious to the physical eye than the spirit of the tree is apparent to the vision of the spirit. There is a spiritual atmosphere pervading the woods which the soul breathes as really as his nostrils do the pure air. There are spiritual pres- ences, both bodied and unembodied, and they are all friendly and wish to be companionable. These trees have souls, and they are pure in heart, with- out a malevolent trait — most gentle and accessible and desirous to be serviceable. It is an inspiration to gain access to their society and to their confi- dence. I suppose that this presence, this pervading spiritual atmosphere, is God, and am glad to so believe, because it is so gentle and kind, uplifting and inspiring. God is not to be found by intro- spection, by searching our hearts. There is prob- ably less of him there than there is in one of these apple-blossoms. We are a good deal more liable to find self there than God. I do not know whether this beautiful tree, in its new spring robes, is spiritu- ally individualized, or whether it is a transparent medium through which God shines — each tree revealing something of him that is peculiar to itself, and therefore having a semblance of individuality — but I am inclined to think that it has its individual soul. There are gentle murmurs and whisperings coming in from the surrounding waters and forests; sometimes voices which one can hear if he will listen. Though I do not know with certainty from whom or what they come, I believe them to be the 38 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside voices of God, either direct or through friendly spirits. I know by their tones and their gentleness that they are friendly. The voices appear to come as vibrations of the atmosphere of universal kind- ness — an atmosphere which is to the wings of angels what our material atmosphere is to the wings of doves and bees. These voices take on at times a plaintiveness and an anxiety, like that of a mother searching here for a lost child. I suppose these callings from the spiritual world, of which the material world is a part, as the root is part of the tree, and the foundation of the fagade — I suppose they may be heard at any time of life if one incline to listen, but I hear them more distinctly now than when I was young; yet Bryant, in his youth, wrote: " When thoughts of the last bitter hour come Over thy spirit, and sad images Of the stern agony and shroud and pall Make thee to shudder and grow sick at heart, Go forth, under the open sky, and list To nature's teachings." S&mm ti^e m)ith Nature and Culture THE sun set clear one evening, and we were up at dawn the next morning for an ex- cursion to Ox Creek, eleven miles away. It is fine to be on a forest trail at sunrise. It is fine anywhere to be up and off at the first color of dawn. Thedewdropson the tree-tops glitter when the sun- beams reach them ; the birds are more animated than at any other time; there is hope and expectancy all abroad, and in ourselves. It is the nearest return to the jubilance of youth that one can make in life. I can hear across sixty years the ringing echoes of the wood-thrush as I rode through the forest to carry the butter to the market-town before sun-up. It is like an echo in a cathedral, only infinitely softer and sweeter. Oh, those days of barefoot freedom! All the world a glorious and charming mystery! It never occurred to me that there were limitations. It would not have surprised me had the thrush flut- tered down to my shoulder and whispered some delightful secret in my ear, nor if the trees had bidden me a happy good morning. But Nature has her little hells. They are a necessity to her, as they are to human and divine society. One of these in the midst of Paradise is a tamarack swamp. 39 40 Musing;s by Camp-Fire and Wayside I had a pair of dry moccasins, each with a shaker sock in it, fastened to my belt, my camera and plate- holder strapped to my shoulders, and the tripod in hand, and right into the clear swift stream I went, in ordinary shoes and stockings. Might as well — I never went trouting in boots that I did not get them full of water the first two minutes — and the higher they came the worse they were, because they would hold more. The clear stream came up to my knees. Why not go along the margin? I hardly believe a rabbit could have done it. Get into a tangle of those alders and swamp-willows, and one is about as helpless as a fly in a spider's web. Then it is such beautiful walking on the pebbly bottom! One does not have to step — just lift a foot and the swift cur- rent carries it forward; but undertake to wade up! — two feet of unbroken snow would be easy com- pared with it. The darting trout were as clearly visible as if they were swimming in the air. An enormous pickerel did me the honor not to be afraid of me, but swam around, the embodiment of lithe- ness. Wherever he went there was a scatterment. He is the shark of fresh waters. On and on I went, taking an occasional photograph, and at last noti- cing a sunny hillside, left the stream, wrung out my clothes, and put on dry socks and moccasins and started on the return. There was a ravine ahead, and I foolishly sup- posed it to be narrow — a not uncommon mistake in those who are tempted into evil ways. The precept, Nature and Culture 41 "Avoid the very appearance of evil," does not apply to a tamarack swamp, because it appears to be very good and pretty. For example, that beautiful hammock of moss will stand you on your head if it get a chance. That solid bit of turf will take in a whole leg, making a tripod of you. The lovely glade is made up of deception and lies, from side to side and from end to end. And then there is such ruffianly rudeness in the behavior of the tamaracks. They strike you a blow on one side of the head, and immediately brace you up by hitting you on the other. They pull off your hat and toss it a rod, and as for your shins, I had to bathe one of mine for a week in Pond's Extract of Hamamelis. One needs as many eyes as a fly — that can look at the heavens above, and the earth beneath, and the waters under the earth, at the same glance — and as he has but two, and the two good only for one ray at a time, while one thing is making injurious reflections upon him, a dozen others are assaulting him. The tamarack is the devil's own tree. It is no good for building, and if you try to use it for firewood, it will burst your stove, or if in a grate, will send firebrands all over the house, with reports like rifles. I am down on the tamarack, or at least I was that day, about a dozen times. Not even the shaking ague can live in a tamarack swamp. The trees greedily eat up the microbes, which shows, in addition to their Other evil qualities, what a depraved appetite they 42 M2isings by Camp-Fire and Wayside have. But then one can always get a drink of per- fectly pure cold water at a tamarack root — and usually he needs it. And thus it is with the gehen- nas of society, whether in this world or life, or in any other. We estimate the sky by what it covers, and the land by what it contains, because man creates for himself both the earth and the sky, and the invisible heavens also. The world, its scenery, skies, and people, is but the material out of which each indi- vidual constructs a world for himself, which he enjoys if it be enjoyable, or which gives him only misery if it be miserable. We are each of us indi- vidual color-screens, and our characters are known by what we absorb or eliminate, and by what we receive and reflect. Where hateful people are, there everything is hateful. The sky above them repels us, the landscape in which they dwell has no beauty. We call it a God-forsaken place — the devil's country. The very memory of it is repug- nant to us. We desire to get away from it and to forget it. One mean man will contaminate a whole village by his presence, and one powerful rascal curse a state and smirch its fair fame. Nature possesses all the qualities, in the highest perfection, which make people charming. She is herself the ideal of perfect culture. But she has a gentle dig- nity and a kindly but positive reserve. She with- draws herself from the view of the coarse, the cruel. Nature and Culiure 43 and the depraved. They never obtain the smallest glimpse of her form or face, or have a suspicion of her presence. She might condescend to teach them, but she knows it would be in vain. She is, therefore, exclusive, and is accessible only to those who partake of her own refined and beautiful spirit. Nature has not the exclusiveness of what we call "society." She reveals herself to the gladdened eyes of the child. There could be no more pathetic examples of baffled sympathy than are seen in the rows of poor and struggling plants set in the win- dows of a crowded tenement. Nature tries amid the poisoned and sulphurous air to carry a smile to the poor, and the poor thus reach out longing hands to Nature. It is a joy to believe that each shall yet be fully satisfied. Nature is the only university. Her teaching is free, with a generous and delightful freedom, and her splendid doors are ever open with a welcoming hospitality. She takes the dimpled hand and leads the toddling feet of the little child into her charmed circle of beauty and mystery. The growing boy rejoices in what he does not yet understand, and the sage, having spent a life in her school, knows that he has only begun to appreciate the infinite opulence of her knowledge and the inexhaustible kindness of her maternal heart toward her studious sons and daughters. There is no better argument for design than that the Creator ideally projected, built, and endowed this celestial institution and 44 Musings by Carnp-Fire and Wayside filled it with learners; nor is there any better attestation of immortality than the extreme im- probability that he should have lavished so much time, care, wisdom, and wealth upon it if he had no use for the students after their graduation. Nature is the sole subject and source of all litera- ture, all art, all science, and of all worthy religion. She is the great astronomical observatory, a wheel- ing cyclorama of the stars, and her laboratories are filled with instruments both for celestial and terres- trial research. The majestic pines have great loftiness and dig- nity, but no airs of condescension. Nature does not stoop to us, but lifts us up to herself. We are as lofty as the trees, as pleasing as the lakes, and as tranquil as the hills. If one intelligently study Nature he will need no other monitor in self-culture and refinement, and as it often appears to me, no other priest in religion. As we enter these primi- tive forests and float upon these unsullied waters, what is it in them which fills us with delight? First, it is the all-comprehending personal freedom, espe- cially the moral freedom. Everything about us is so friendly. There is not an envious eye, nor a critical nor a venomous tongue, anywhere in the all abroad. Everything is benevolent as well as beautiful. Not one of these trees, flowers, lakes, streams, birds, or wild animals will do us harm, or seek to tyrannize over one's person, property, or opinions; but all of them, in earth, water, or sky, Nature and Culture 45 are seeking to give us pleasure; and it is not a passive but an active service which they are render- ing to each other and to us. It was a true inspira- tion which led the Puritans and the Pilgrims to go to the American wilderness in search of religious liberty. There was no inquisitor, heresy-hunter, or persecutor in the cathedrals of the forests. There were no slave-hunters, carrying in their hands man- acles for the mind. Nature is free and munificent in her offers of knowledge. Her book is unclasped, plainly printed, and open to the light of the sun. We have but to learn to read. When God would make the great human race, he cradled it under the trees; when he would make a nation great, he led it out into the unroofed wilderness. All about me is a carpet of brown, touched here and there with the scarlet of wintergreen and pigeon-berries and the purple of blueberries. As I walk upon it my footfalls cannot be heard. The pines are rough barked and stalwart; but listen to their breathing — how softly strong it is! Notice that bending frond of goldenrod. A bee is tram- pling over it with great haste, thrusting her tongue hurriedly into this yellow gold-chased cup, and then into that. She springs into the air, and after a moment of wavering and angular flight, finds her bearings, and goes straight and swiftly, circles a moment over the hive, and then alights on its bal- cony. Her wings are scarcely folded when her 46 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside honey-laden legs are in full play, and she runs with all her energy toward the portal. A sentinel brushes her face with her antenna, but she does not pause to return the salutation. Apply your ear to the roof of a hive. There is a low hum of industry so soft that it would lull one to sleep. One can hear a sharper note occasionally — some word of direction or command, probably. This, too, is a society — a human society on a different scale of being, of thought, of animating purpose. Among the thousands of individuals in that com- munity there is not a trace of selfishness. The whole of life is given to the whole; and of the war- riors who go forth to battle for the defense of the realm, not one returns alive. Beyond this, self- sacrifice and heroism cannot go, because there is no moral land either farther or higher. I pass over what was a noble forest here, of living trees, majes- tic and sublime, to find it a sandy desert broken by fire-blackened stumps. But that bee did not destroy the goldenrod, she fructified it. She was not met on the balcony by another bee full of envy and avarice, who tried to sting her and rob her of her hard-won honey, and of the credit of winning it. The busy, soothing hum is the voice of harmony, of good-will, of kindly thrift. There is no discord either of voice or work in the beehive. The com- munity has enemies which it is armed to resist. It has only one species of friends, man. But men care no more for the bees than for the hornets. Nature and CulttLre 47 They are friends for a consideration, just as they are among themselves. The bee workers are bee women. Possibly God, who likes to paint in con- trasts, did this to set off a vain, selfish, rapacious woman, and show what a hateful thing she can make of herself. But there are true love and friendship in the world, nevertheless. Under ordinary circumstances they are not readily isolated and distinguished. Cut a piece of brass freshly across, and you will not separate it from gold. But apply a drop of acid to it, and instantly the green envy and the poison ver- digris of a base nature appear. Touch a seeming friendship with a drop of adversity, and you have the same result. Apply the acid to the pure quality, and it eats away the grime only, leaving the virtue shining with a purer luster. God's friendship and the bee's friendship are not liable to adulteration and debasement. But we must not allow our pride to flatter us that the hands of nature are our servants and our ministers. They will not listen to nor obey a single one of our commands. Neither God nor Nature turns aside for us. We must go with them, not they with us. We must bring ourselves into harmony with them, and not presume that they will conde- scend to humor our whims and caprices. It is a high and heavenly and an enrapturing harmony that we reach in becoming a part of the harmony of God and of Nature. We come into fellowship with 48 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside the noble trees, with the sparkling waters, with the flowers, the music, the white piles of clouds, with the flashing borealis, with the sparkling stars. It is an exhilarating and a sublime uplift that they give us. Only the friendly can make friends. One who would have Nature friendly and serviceable must extend friendship to her. He must approach her with kindness and respect, or she will have nothing to say to him. But let him seat himself in that forest and listen, let him learn to interpret her sign- language, and she will communicate to him a thou- sand pleasant thoughts and tell him the secret of her charms. She is calm, unobtrusive, not vain of her exquisite beauty, nor haughty in her grandeur, nor disposed to monopolize the conversation. She prepares everywhere charming surprises, distills fresh and original flavors and perfumes, exhibits her touches of grace and harmony in art. If it be warm she will lift your hair with a gentle and refreshing breeze. If the wind be cold she will build a screen of trees to shelter you. She will offer you a delicious bath, pile a bed of fragrant leaves or mosses for you — is always gentle, suggestive, and kindly. The various elements of Nature are friendly and helpful to each other. The sun gives glory to the sublime pile of clouds, the clouds give to the waters, and the waters give to us and to the landscape. Each receives and passes it along. Each receives only that it may give; and if we do Nature and Culture 49 not give what we receive, we are not in harmony with God and Nature. We are aside from them, and they leave us out. We are only black pools of brine which Nature sets as examples of sterility, bitterness, and desolation. Looking down perpen- dicularly into the sea from a ship's side we find absolute blackness; no gleam of the sun is returned from the bottomless abyss. Nature is ceaselessly industrious. The cool and delightful breeze which blows across this island rises and falls, lulls and increases, now sinks to so soft a movement that by watching our opportunity, though it is rare, we may obtain photographs of the foliage and of the watery mirror— and now rising till the trees sway and some fall — but it is never idle, neither night nor day. The lake is never listless. When it is not rippling in the sun or in the moonlight, or making music on its beaches, it is reflecting the scenery of the shores and of the clouds. It never ceases its contribu- tions either to activity or to beauty. Like a sweet face, its gifts, in smiles, or in placidity, or in tears, or in repose, or in the calmness of slumber, keep the heart of the loving beholder ever full. A moment ago I was attracted out upon the balcony by some music in the tree-tops. There were four of the songsters, each of differing variety and song. I sought out one of them with my eyes and watched him. No sooner was his song ended than he changed his position quickly, then flew down and busied himself here and there for a little time, and 50 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside then down to the lake and took a fluttering bath. There was not a lazy bone in his little body. One cannot look anywhere without seeing this. There are titanic shoulders forever lifting higher the mountains and the continents to make good to them the losses they incur from the busy winds, frosts, and rains. Everywhere is useful and benefi- cent activity. Nature's exclusiveness is an imitable grace, for it is but a higher kind of purity. All day long the wind was blowing and the water on the beach was clouded. The next morning, accustomed as I am to crystal waters here, I was surprised at the spark- ling purity of what was opaque the evening before. "The water has washed its hands overnight," I said. "Nay," said another, "but the water has been taking a bath." It had reached up on the beach for "scourine," and with this it had purified itself of all organic particles, animal or vegetable. The birds would be frowsy as a hoydenish girl if they did not prune every feather and lay it neatly and smoothly in its place. They, too, take up the scourine, then the bath; and then, having done their washing, hang their clothes out to dry, and then do their ironing. The neatest thing I ever saw was a deer in his new coat of blue — not a par- ticle of dust or of soil, from the tips of his new horns to the tips of his sharp, transparent hoofs. Every- thing in Nature is daintily exclusive. She abhors a slouch. It is esteemed unpleasant work, this clear- Natui'e and Culttire ing away of dirt, litter, and garbage; but Nature, like a spunky woman, goes at it with a high spirit and cheerful resolve. Even plants will not take up their ammonia and phosphates and other fertilizers in the rough. The roots demand clean cooking, as the leaves demand pure air. The love of Nature for purity is exhibited on every hand. Sunshine will kill the germs of smallpox in a few hours; pestilence lurks only where man has debarred her. As I was fishing on a lake I noticed an animal with white bars on black, moving along the shore toward me, and I quietly pulled out farther and went around him. I knew he had both the capacity and dispo- sition for making himself disagreeable. And yet he could make himself unpleasant only in a shallow way. The discomfort which he could inflict upon the nostrils would be a small matter compared with the painful repugnance produced by a human moral counterpart. I suppose if that really handsome animal had noticed that I went out of my way to avoid meeting with him, he might have said I was exclusive and proud; and that, the dear knows, he had no desire for my company! Nature utilizes everything in her wide domains for the benefit of everything else; makes all helpful to all, and each to each. This region of sand is now covered with a bountiful crop of whortleberries in their two varieties of black and blue, tens of thousands of bushels of them, which freely offer a six weeks' festival to all who choose to partake of 52 Musings by Camp-Fire and Way side the delicious bounty. For richness and flavor the whortleberry is second only to the strawberry, but much of both is lost in transporting and marketing. So nature utilizes this sand land for an abundance of this nutritive and pleasant food. Not far away is a moss-covered marsh, which one would think was good for nothing but variety in the landscape, but here is the home of the cranberries, much milder and finer of flavor than those which are cultivated. The marsh deepens into a shallow lake, the home of the wild rice, which again has a flavor more pro- nounced and pleasant than the rice of commerce. The curculio made war on the wild plum and drove it from the hills, but the plum took refuge by the streams, where it could cast its larva-infected fruit into the water and drown the pests, or upon water- soaked soil, where they could not live. It must have been a hard struggle for the plum to win foot- ing against the vigorous swamp alder, but it suc- ceeded, and in its season offers freely to all comers its scarlet and delicious clusters. There is a cour- tesy and a mutual helpfulness between those vari- eties of plants whose wants are so different that they do not have to struggle for the occupancy of the same soil. The whortleberry goes with the pines, because the pines preserve the snow till late in the spring, and the snow prevents the plants from blooming until danger of frost is past. The pines serve the cranberry also, but in a different way. The slowly melting snow keeps the marsh Nature ajid Ctilture 53 flooded and covers the young plants with water till frost is past. Cultivated cranberries are protected by placing a dam or dike so as to imitate nature. The deciduous or hard woods protect the pines from fire by covering their resinous, fallen foliage with water-retaining leaves. The friendship be- tween animals and trees and plants of all kinds is well known. But for the squirrels and other rodents there could be no forests of hickory, wal- nut, beech, and chestnut, and but for these trees there could be no climbing rodents. The trees furnish warm, sheltered homes for the squirrels, in their hollow limbs, and the squirrels carry off their nuts and plant them nicely. It is not necessary to mention that bees and other winged honey-seekers are as essential to the lives of plants and trees as the latter are to the insects. The arrangements made for the prosperity of the birds and animals are equally marked. If the hibernating animals were compelled to eat in winter they would starve to death, but they lay by enough carbon in fat to last them over. They are not torpid, only sleepy. The bear will waken up enough to close a chink if there be too much air, or to open one if there be not enough. When they wake in the spring they find a breakfast of cranberries and wintergreen berries ready, which are as fresh and fine when the blanket of snow is withdrawn in the spring as they were when it covered them in November. Country boys know how it is with apples hidden in the long 54 Musmgs by Camp- Fire and Wayside grass under the trees, when the snow goes off. A cranberry marsh spreads a feast of mellowed and sweetened fruit, the edge of its acid gone, its nutritious qualities perfected, its flavor delightful, for all the hungry sleepers and for the oncoming fluttering clouds of birds, while yet the trees are bare, and not a bud has broken in upon the winter's desolation. Take a company of trees living socially together in a forest and notice how courteously they respect each other's tastes, rights, and interests. Here is a pine. He sends his tap-roots straight down, ten feet or more, to make sure of a supply of water in all seasons, and he never tries to monopolize the sunlight and the air, but runs up straight, a hun- dred feet or more, and then throws out a small plumy top. He can afford to do this because he has a whole year of foliage and sunlight, while the birch and the maple have but six months. Then he takes sparingly of the kind of food necessary for his neighbors, just a little starch for his seeds. Then he mulches the ground around his neighbors' roots with his undecaying foliage, so that they may have plenty of moisture. The maple and the birch must have richer food than the pine, and more of it. They each have a sweet tooth for sugar. Therefore their roots seek the richer soil of the surface, and they each want all the sunlight they can get during the short summer. When one of them has selected a plat of ground, the Nature and Culture 55 other does not encroach. He goes off far enough so that there will be plenty for both, but either of them will grow up between the big wind-roots of a pine. Now go to the lake shore. Out there in deep water are the lilies, next, shoreward, comes a line of wild rice, next a line of rushes, next a line of wire-grass, and last a line of blue-joint. All these lines surround the whole lake. None are trespass- ers on the territory of the others. But you may reply that none of these kinds could live in the place occupied by the others, so that invasion would be impossible; that the lily must have its roots below the reach of the ice, or the ice would pull them out, uproot them ; that the ice cannot get hold of the rice roots, so that they are at liberty to occupy the rich, mucky soil in shallow water; that the wire-grass likes to have its feet in the water, and the blue-joint does not, and so on. What is this but the self-adaptation of the plant to its con- ditions? What is it but an agreement among themselves to divide fair, the agreement enforced afterward by constitution and habit? One man is a blacksmith, another a tailor. They divide fairly. Because the one cannot invade the territory of the other after they have learned their trades is not saying that there was not a fair division when they began. Out there in the lake is a loon or two, and a flock of ducks. The loon lives on fish exclusively, 56 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside which he runs down and captures in a fair foot-race, so to speak, under water. The duck lets the loon's fish alone, and eats first the lily seeds, then the wild rice, and last the rush-corn. Now comes the deer from the land. He is some- thing of a poacher on the duck's preserves, but there is plenty for all. And yet his principal living is the acorns and the browse. He only tops off with rush-corn, rice, and a lily root. Now comes the fox, with the badger and some more of them. He wants nothing that the other members of the society want. He will take turtle eggs — and alas, here is a discord in my symphony! — duck eggs, and young ducklings, too, I must leave him out! Now come the beaver and the porcupine. They want nothing that any of the others like. All they ask is plenty of birch leaves and popple bark. As for Brother Otter, he meddles with nobody's kitchen, not even with the loon's, though his exclu- sive diet is fish. But he eats no fish that is the right size for the loon. He goes for from two to ten pounders. Brother Bear likes venison, but he cannot have any, excepting very rarely. He fattens up on ber- ries and frog-legs and speckled trout, though the latter are a luxury. He has to stand in the rocky run- ways and toss them out when they run over his paws. Of course there are some abominably mean people in this society, just to set the social virtues Nature and Culture 57 in a good contrast. There is the wolf. Everybody hates him. He is an outlaw and a robber, and they all wish he were dead. The fox, whom we had to rule out of our good society, is a cousin of the wolf, and that was the reason. He does not belong to a respectable family. Mr. Fox is one of the four hundred. He pretends that his family is exclusive, but it is just the other way. All animals which are not natural enemies help each other. I will not mention well-known exam- ples, but give a new one. I noticed a deer feeding on the margin of a lake, and a loon floating out on it. I approached so that I could not be seen or scented by the deer, but could be seen by the loon, who was guarding his mate, which was hatching her eggs on the margin. He set up a wild clamor. The deer was at once on the alert, ran up and down the sand to discover the danger, then dashed up hill, sounding his alarm. All these animals enjoy perfect health. There are no measles, smallpox, cholera, diphtheria, or pulmonary diseases among them. When that tre- mendous thunder-storm and roaring rain was going on the other night, we thought of them. A crash of lightning close by must be startling to them, but the rain does them no injury. They have all the conditions of health. They are scrupulously clean in person. From the tip of his horns to the edge of his sharp hoof the stag is as pure as the most scrupulous lady. 58 Musings by Camp-Fh^e and Wayside They all take their baths regularly. They have untainted air, uncontaminated water, the alchemy of the sun, and the electric currents of the earth. Nobody ever saw a wild animal in the condition of an illy groomed cow or horse. Their food is im- mediately fresh, and they take food and exercise in proper proportions. Precisely these are the con- ditions of human health. But we live artificial and unnatural, and therefore unhappy, lives, and we are bond-slaves to our unnatural and unwholesome cus- toms, wants, and ambitions. These fetters pinch and gall us at every point, from a corned toe to a sleepless brain. To write a catalogue of them would require pages. Take a household occupying a handsome home. The husband is a business man. He must win wealth or be regarded by his fellows as of a poor order of mind. He must dis- play his wealth by an elaborate and complicated style of living, in which he meets one and all of the petty annoyances, restraints, and disappointments and frustrations which are as pertinacious and venomous as mosquitoes in a swamp. In business he meets others like them, to which is added a burden of anxious cares which never lifts, day nor night. Do you call this happiness? It is terrestrial hell, all the way through. And his wife — the most pitiable creature alive. There is not a day in which she is not wrought into a passion by the perversity, meanness, or senselessness of servants, and by the total depravity of all inanimate things around her. Nature and Culture 59 Has she a piece of cherished porcelain, it will be smashed; a lace, it will be scorched; and her rivals know right well how to thrust a wasp's sting into her pride. She goes to pieces, and the doctors, who in former times would have bled her, now bleed her husband for her benefit. Husband and wife ought to be in such physical health that they would be ever as ready for the occasion of exuberant spirits as a fine bell is to give forth its music. But is there any way out of this complicated and unnatural to a natural and healthful way of living? Can we return to the conditions which make our forest friends so hearty and hardy? We have found it for part of the year in these cabins and by this camp-fire. But there is an easier way out of it for young people starting in life. Let them first abandon the prevailing philosophy and construct a simpler one. Let them resolve to be satisfied with such distinction and admiration as they can win by conduct and character, and make no effort to win it by equipage or any kind of dis- play. What others spend for show let them spend in hospitality, benevolence, and outings. If the husband is employed in the city there is no need of the family living there. For a few hundred dollars he can purchase as many acres near the railway — a half-mile away is near enough. Then build a neat but modest cottage, not to cost over a couple of thousand dollars. Gratify the love of beauty out- side of the house with trees and flowers, and inside, 6o Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside leave that to the womanly skill and taste of the wife. Here is outdoor work for all odd hours, of the most delightful and healthful kind; every stroke of it is capital invested in beauty or beautified util- ity. In a few years the cottage will be a gem on which the pleased eye of the passer-by will rest. This is exercise for body and rest for the mind. Here are the conditions of health and vigor for both. I console myself in my sympathy for these clean and healthy, and according to their light, right- doing wild animals, by looking up at the stars. The Creator has made so many suns that are now active, to say nothing of those which have died, that there must be worlds adapted to animal life, which in numbers are quite beyond the limits of our computation. In many, perhaps most of those worlds, the intellectual king-race is not a race of carnivorous animals, like man. Such a race would not be the enemies but the friends of the peaceful, inferior tribes. What a delightful time the camp- fire muser and his wife in the earth-world of Alpha Cassiopeia must have! The doe brings her sweet and innocent fawns, and leaves them under the protection of Crusoe's rifle. The squirrel comes down the tree with her little ones, and lays them in the lap of Mrs. Crusoe, for her to fondle and admire. Wherever men dwell the singing-birds come for protection from the hawk. In that world man is the only granivorous and frugivorous animal Nature and Culture 6i who does not fear the enemies of peaceful tribes like himself, but who, on the contrary, delights in offering them combat. He is the universal knight- errant, the defender of the innocent and the defense- less. Crusoe of Alpha Cassiopeia! I am gazing up at the sun which bathes your enchanted and solitary island, and I am fully resolved to pay you a visit as soon as I receive my spiritual body. I think you will like me, as I know I shall love you. You will find me a good shot at wolf, and an expert fisherman for sharks and devil-fish, and a good, hearty hater of all persecutors of the innocent. We will gather blueberries and wild rice together. Ah! your sun is dipping behind our pines. Good night, old fellow! Auf wiedersehen! £©U)Sing ti^e fourti^ Nature's Music, Art, and Industry NATURE demands silence in the presence of beauty. She gave these solitary lakes their burnished sheen, their crystal depths, framed them in forests, girdled them with vines and flowers, besprinkled them with lilies, caused them to duplicate their brilliant autumnal shores, to reflect the passing cloud, and in many a silent and solitary night cast bridges across them of shimmering moonbeams. And this display of natural beauty, to which no description could do justice, has unfailingly been repeated day and night for many centuries, unseen by man, unap- preciated, unknown. Wherever natural beauty is, there is silence also. And this is a law. A noisy person in the presence of a great painting would be invited by the guard to leave the room; or if in the midst of the rendering of a fine piece of music, would be regarded by all present as possessing neither decency nor sense. Even the rivulets, clear and cold, seem to steal their way into such a scene cautious as the foot of a hunter. Back in the hills they plash and leap under their veils of overhanging foliage. But as they approach this gem of Nature's art they leave their merriment behind. The boom of a falling tree comes over the wooded ridge, and 62 Nature s Music, Art, and Industry 63 the guide pricks up his ears and says, "The beavers are at work." So these carpenters of the wilder- ness ply their vocation with no sound of ax or saw. A crow made his appearance and appeared ambitious of the distinction of being the noisiest crow that ever cawed. There was not a note of which his throat was capable on which he did not perform all the variations; then with a petulant and querulous complaint he rose from the dead pine and flew away across the hills. But even the crow only made the silence more silent, as his black plumage increased the whiteness of the gray pine on which he was perched. When, however. Nature would exhibit that form of beauty called grandeur, she does not always regard it inappropriate to call for noble music. We admire the ocean, but only where it breaks upon the shore, and where, with a massive rush, the waves leap at and partly climb the cliffs, and perse- veringly return after each rebuff to try again. All this would not be perfect art in silence; or without the boom of the smiting waters and the liquid roar of a billion of bursting bubbles. The love of beauty will not give us the pleasure of which we are capable without close and habitual attention. We are walking along the paths of a very beautiful world. It is a perpetual panorama, passing by us every day; and we shall add greatly to the happiness of life, and to the elevation and purification of all our faculties, if we acquire the 64 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside habit of looking for its beauties. We do not always catch them at a glance. We must individualize a scene and study it as we do a picture. Below my bedroom window, at home, stand some cut-leaf birches, some wild cherries, and a variety of shrubs. Beyond are tall elms and popples. One would say at a glance that they are pretty. But as they come so often into view, morning and evening, I have become familiar with them, and they have had time to make their impression on me, so that I now see that they are not only pretty, they are beautiful, full of beauty which reveals itself in many ways. They nearly always have something new to exhibit, the dew in the morning, the varying colors of the evening, the gentle fluttering, the periods of quiet. I had noticed before the wild excitement of the trees in a violent wind storm — how they frown at its approach and become frightened when it strikes, swaying and dashing hither and yon as if they would escape. Those elms, one evening late, in a sudden wind, showed agitation and alarm in their conflict with a foe which too often lays the forest low. There are beauties in nature which are so strik- ing that we see them at a glance. There are others which come out coyly, and with a kind of surprise. If we do not recognize them immediately we shall not find them by search. They are modest and shrink from a stare. They come upon us like an unexpected party of friends when one is out for a walk, or like a burst of thrush-song from a leafy Nature s Music, Art, mid Industry 65 tree. One of the pleasures they give is that of unexpectedness. All that is asked of us is, that we shall be prepared for them with eyes quick to recog- nize and sensibilities to appreciate. This requires training and exercise, and where one can have it, instruction. It is not enough to be told that a natural spectacle is beautiful; it is of advantage to have the particular shade or phase of beauty pointed out. The eye must be cultivated for form and color as the ear is for music. Thus we may walk all our lives along the aisles of galleries hung with scenes far beyond the powers of the great masters. And indeed, it is the same in religion as in art, the same in the spiritual as in the natural. "They have eyes but they see not, ears but they hear not." To appreciate spiritual or moral beauty one must strengthen the faculty by exercise. As in nature there are beauties which arrest the attention at a glance, so there are pure, noble, and generous acts which do; but there are finer, more delicate, more exquisite moral and spiritual beauties, a full appreci- ation of which is not always given. If we were to analyze the culture of the best society, the graces which make it charming, we would find that they are either genuine or simulated spiritual beauty. Beauty is from God. We may paint a flower, but it will only be attractive in the degree that it is true to the model which God made. All of nature is not art. The ocean itself is so drearily monotonous that the voyager counts the 66 Musings by Ca^np-Fire and Wayside miles and the hours till his sight shall be rid of it. There is nothing in a plain of snow but its cold and its winds. A flood of light forever dazzles the hot sands of Sahara; and yet it is a desolation that overwhelms and prostrates the soul. There must be shadows before that which is light can be light. Truth is beauty, and beauty is truth. They are introconvertible forms of moral energy, as are elec- tricity and light. They walk hand in hand among the stars, and in the fields, and in all the realms of being. They are but different expressions of the same thought. Falsehood, however painted, is ugly, and ugliness is false. No man or woman has an ugly face who has a loving and faithful heart. The features may be plain and irregular, and the complexion not clear, and yet the person may pos- sess the highest elements of beauty, and express them. An angry or malicious face is not comely; a kindly beaming and gracious face always is — it is in harmony with us and with its surroundings, and therefore it satisfies the desire for the beautiful. It is one of the experiences which people remark, that a face which at first view appears to be homely, may on acquaintance lose all those lines, and become in the highest degree attractive and charming. Nature understands well how to set off her beau- ties with foils of ugliness, and when she sets about creating an ugly thing she leaves no room for com- petition. On a projecting spike of a pine above me sits a squirrel, and at the root of the same squats a Nature s Music, Art, and Industry 67 toad, and yet the toad is a beauty compared with some of the reptilian and aquatic forms. Leaning over the guards of a sub-arctic ship, I saw leaping salmon showing their yellow sides, and glossy fur- seals making their curving leaps in the air, while a cold, clammy, horrible devil-fish rose to the surface near the ship's side. Saint John had a poet's idea of distances and perspectives. His glassy sea was wide. He had to listen for the voices. His strong angels would not have flown had the space they traversed been narrow. His river diminished in its vista of ever- blooming and ever-fruiting trees, and reappeared far away, its silver toned by the blue. The notes of the harp were borne to him on waves of voices, so softened that he compared the music to the sound of breakers on a distant shore. The near-by crash startles and shocks; far away, it soothes. A near-by thunder-crash is not thunder. It is the sharp "crack" of a rifle multiplied a hundred times; and the sound is gone as instantly. To hear the thunder we must wait for the return of the echoes. If the situation be favorable, we shall learn into what music Nature will convert that deafening and shocking explosion. From side to side of the ravine or valley, from cloud to cloud, and from cloud to forest, it strikes the keys of continually diminishing and softening notes, till at last it is no more than the sough of a gentle breeze in the top of a pine. 68 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside One must be at a distance from the band before he can hear the music. The voice of a friend, properly modulated and near, is pleasant; but let that friend call from a distance, and it gathers a charm as it comes. It is kindlier, softer, and it may be sweeter. It implies interest, regard, and a welcome. It is the language of fellowship, and friendship spoken in music. In this pleasure we share with all our fellow-occupants of the earth. Observe any bird or quadruped when a sound from a strange source comes to him. He does not hear it. But let a call come from a mate or a rival or a fledgling, and he is at once all attention. We think bird song is sweet, but to other birds of the same species it is the most welcome experience in their little lives. A woman's song in a parlor is a per- formance; in the woods it is an inspiration. The most inspiring strains heard on the earth were two — when the morning stars sang the hymn of creation, and when the angels sang the hymn of redemption. The voice of a singing congregation may be fine, and even noble, within the walls and roof of the church, but let it float out of the open summer win- dows, across gardens and fields, and among the trees, and it becomes sublime. It brings God very near to us. Life is not noisy. It has its voices in infinite variety, but they are gentle. The soughing of the pines, the rustle of the growing corn, the mooing of the cows, even the strong wind making flutes of the eaves, are not noisy. They do not jar Nature s Mtistc, Art, and Industry 69 or disturb, nor grate upon the nerves. It is not work or weariness that breaks down and prostrates, it is noise, the assaults of discordance; continued and unrelieved it kills. The physician must guard his patient from it if he would save his life. Women, with their more delicate sensibilities, fur- nish the most victims. Their own unrestrained children may bring them to an early grave, or if they survive, so toughen and harden their fine fiber as to make them termagants. Thunder will sour sweet cream. The filing of a saw tends to make a demoniac. We submit to the storm of noises in a city because we cannot help ourselves, as we do when caught out in a storm of rain or hail, but when we retire it is as if the sun were shining plac- idly once more. Purity is Nature's most marked characteristic. She is a tidy housekeeper with an antipathy for dirt. She is not afraid to wash her ceilings with rains and her carpets with dews, for her colors do not run. She would be regarded as extravagant were she not so rich, for she refits her house from dome to cellar at least three times each year, and she does it so quietly that nobody tries to get away. She likes to begin with tender pea-greens, changes to dark or olive greens, clears out everything, and breaks out in gorgeous colors. The festivity over, she takes to white and crystal. Nature, in special cases, makes much litter in her work, but she always sweeps it away when her task is accomplished. If 70 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside she is up to her elbows in suds at times, it is that she may hang out pure linens. If she raise a dust in water or air, it is only that she may lay it down in some more useful form and place. From what I had read of the Alpine streams leaping down from the snow-fields, I supposed them to be clear as crystal and cold as ice. But the Reuss was mud- dier than the Missouri at its muddiest, and its con- fluents were of the same color. Then I expected to see the same in the Alaskan mountain streams, but they were as pure as a spring, and delicious for drinking. If one would look farther along in the Alps he would find the vale of Chamouni or Lake Leman, These emerge, ever new, from her dusty and slushy factories, in which she works with a passion derived from the sun, and with an eagerness and a rush. In Alaska she has about finished up her volcanic and glacial preparations, and is sitting down in the cool for a rest. Her streams there are bedded in porphyry and ice. If one should ask her, in Alaska, "How is business?" she would answer, "Rather quiet — not much doing." The mud in the Alpine streams comes of heat and obstruction, of melted snow-water in conflict with stubborn old rocks. It is a battle-ground between progress and conservatism. The former wishes to arrive at Chamouni or Leman. The latter wishes to have things remain as they are in undi- gested chunks of barren basalt and somber gneiss. a^uistng tlfte mt^ The Tragical in Nature WE are all superstitious, and it is a fact not to be ashamed of. Superstition is an adumbration of religion — though not infrequently the shadow falls the other way. It is not the fact of superstition, but its character, which may be the source of terror and misery. It is when we fill the darkness and the unknown with malevo- lence, cruelty, hate, selfishness, and deify other ferocious passions, that we produce a baleful super- stition. Superstition came into being in the woods, and there, in her original amiability, she is still dwelling. What starts and thrills along the nerves she sends by her weird sounds and her ghostly shapes! What omens there are in yonder black ravine, into which sifts just enough of the rays of the full moon to set off the darkness ! If you should have to cross it alone you would descend all ready and expectant of a fright; but the innocent and honest brook, dancing and laughing along like a pure little child, makes you smile at your fears. Tragical superstitions are inherited memories of real tragedies. For example, fear of the darkness is an inherited memory of the time when rapacious beasts were abroad at night, and men were in dan- 71 72 Mtisings by Camp- Fire and Wayside ger of being torn by them. Fear of a graveyard at night is an inherited memory of the belief that the shades of the dead were liable to be malevolent and dangerous. Thus all tragical superstitions are traceable to the tragical in human experience, and they so permeate the human organism that no degree of enlightenment will wholly remove them. The higher animals are superstitious, notably the horse and the dog. If the impressions made upon the mind of man by the tragical in nature are not the original source of what are called the "religious instincts," they are invariably an integral part of them. No religion has ever existed which did not make these superstitions the exclusive source of its power. No system of religion, if we except Chris- tianity in its higher attainments, could exist for a day without them. There are what we may call the benign or harm- less superstitions, which add to the picturesqueness and pleasure of life. These usually come under the classification of folk-lore, and are as well established in the minds of the peasantry as any of their more serious beliefs. One would suppose that the stories of rabbit lore among the Southern negroes were to them only amusing fables. Not so. They believe as fully in the wisdom and the magical powers of the rabbit as they do in anything. These harmless superstitions are in endless variety in all parts of the world, and relate to everything in life. Another class consists of the fictions and fancies of the poets The Tragical in Nature ji) taken as literal facts. The Greeks afforded the finest example of artistic superstition built up into a racial religion. In accordance with the universal rule that the worst is always proximate to the best, the tragical superstitions interwoven with Christianity are the most ferocious, cruel, and deadly of any that ever found access to the mind of man. It might be diffi- cult to account for this were it not that Christianity early fell under the control of an eccfesiastical organization, which, dealing with a universal mass of ignorance, was constantly led to increase its superstitious terrors, and to burn them into the minds of the masses by exhibition of cruelties as dreadful as they could devise. It was to the inter- est of this organization to keep the fires about the stake well ablaze, and not finding a sufficient num- ber of "heretics" to meet the requirements, found an inexhaustible supply in "witches." This may be regarded by the reader as outside of the subject of the "Tragical in Nature," and yet it found its power in the natural superstitions which grew out of the tragical experiences of mankind. As civilized society became more settled and secure, the tendency naturally was for superstition in its more savage manifestations to pass away ; and such was the effect. But priestcraft, seeing its powers departing, seemed desperately bent upon increasing the terrors of the unknown, and as in the example of Jonathan Edwards and his school, 74 MtLsings by Camp-Fire and Wayside ran to such excesses of doctrinal savagery as to break the back of credulity, and thus cleared the way for more rational and humane types of religious thought. I will now return to my musing mood, and relate some examples of the tragical in nature which have come under my personal observation, I heard an owl as I sat late in my study-cabin, which is secluded and away from the haunts of the campers, and went to the door to look out at the play of the full moonbeams among the trees and on the lake. An owl, in a clump of pines on the main- land, repeated his call, and it was peculiar — never heard an owl hoot that way before. His first note was given with energy, the second was a trill, a shudder of sound, and the third keyed high, after the manner of the great northern owl. I had heard the first and last many a time, but not the second. I was alone, and a little wave of superstition came over the water, like a fresh breeze when one is warm — just a little chilly; but I said: "What a ridicu- lous fellow he is — a bunch of yellow-gray feathers, staring eyes, opening his sickle beak to let out a noise that is out of all proportion to the size and to the inconsequentiality of him; and now his mate has responded, and come to him. Likely enough that owl-talk is a courtship under the witchery of the moon — he can't kiss her, though. He snaps his beak — I suppose that is his way of telling her that she is sweet enough to eat." I was about to retire into my cabin, when right The Tragical 171 Nature 75 below me in the lake a wild duck gave a cry louder than I supposed a duck could make. "He has seen me by the lamplight through the open door," I thought, "and is giving the alarm." But the duck kept on crying. That is no note of warning — that is a shriek of mortal agony. There was some splashing in the water, and the duck's cries began to grow feebler, feebler, diminishing, and ending at last in a sound as nearly a groan as one could im- agine from a bird — the last shudder of pain and of life. Really it was horrible, much more so than if the tragedy had been visible: and I went back into my cabin out of the wild and frightful realm of superstition. So that was the meaning of the pecu- liar cry of the owl. He was calling on his mate for reinforcement. The duck had evidently taken alarm, and swam, perhaps diving, too near the shore of the island; but death had followed on noiseless wing. It was nothing but a wild duck; true, and yet it was a cruel murder. I will hunt for that owl to-morrow, and kill him if I find him. It is a satis- faction to avenge a crime, even if the victim be only a harmless water-fowl. Did you ever examine atten- tively a living quail, pheasant, duck, or other game- bird, or even a domestic fowl? If so, you admired the beauty and perfection of the organism, the bright eye, the exquisitely modeled and penciled plumage, the perfect adaptation of the form to swimming or flying. It is really a marvel of com- plex design, much more so than that of a rose or a 76 Mtisin^s by Camp-Fire and Wayside simple flower. Then imagine yourself — though you need not imagine what you do yourself or by proxy. You strike and kill the innocent thing, tear off its plumage, eat its flesh, and pick its bones — but do not be alarmed! I have not sworn to hunt and kill you to-morrow. Men and women men, and men and women owls, are the same — savage all. Now come with me and let us take our pails and gather some blueberries. We shall have to walk a mile or more, for though the vines are growing everywhere, it is only where they escaped the fire or frost that any fruit is to be found. Notice how the plant lifts two or three berries on its topmost spray to attract your attention. Put your hand down among the ferns, under a bunch, and they will drop into your palm. There is a docility and willingness that needs no force. All the sweetness and fragrance of the sapphires are intended to tempt you to gather them and carry them away; so that you not only respect the life of the plant, but com- ply with its wishes — neither hurt nor wrong anything. We shall probably start a deer on the way. It will give one startled gaze, and then go bounding high over brush and thicket. He knows we are carnivor- ous, and would kill and eat him if we could catch him. As we came through the forest of Wolf Lake, some one exclaimed, "There is a tragedy!" It was a hawk chasing a small bird, and an exciting chase it was. The bird could turn the quicker, and the hawk had much to do in checking his rushes. Up The Tragical 171 Nature j'j and down, around and about they went, each doing its best, the bird for its life, the hawk for its din- ner. The bird was taking advantage of the limbs and foliage of a large balsam. He could go through holes in the sheety foliage that baffled the hawk and blinded his aim. But that bird was foolish for once. It left the balsam and flew across toward another tree a hundred feet away. The last we could see of the chase the hawk was right on the heels of the bird as they crossed the open space. It was the opinion that the hawk had won his murderous race, but the bird evidently made a correct calculation. The hawk rose in the air and flew over our heads, but he had no bird in his talons. He alighted on the topmost limb of a tall pine which stood out alone, choosing a place which would give him an unobstructed view. It is curious to notice the nonchalance of birds, and even of minnows, in the near presence of deadly enemies. They appear to have confidence in their skill in dodging. The prettiest example of a chase between a rapacious and a gallinaceous bird, not infrequent in my boyhood, was that between a hawk and a domesticated pigeon. It was not unusual to see a hawk coming on a swift and level flight from his eyrie on some tall forest tree, straight for the covey which were sunning themselves and cooing on the roof of the barn. The pigeons immediately took wing and scattered, but rose in the air. The hawk would select the one that was lowest, and presum- 78 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside ably the weakest flyer, and the chase began. The pigeon moved in a spiral circle, about two hundred feet in diameter, and a remarkably true circle it was. Constantly ascending as around and around he flew in his spiral and graceful upward movement, the hawk following as closely as he could, the pigeon at every circle would be seen to have in- creased his advantage in height. His motive in this ascent is that he instinctively knows he can outfly his enemy in making it. The motive of the hawk is his knowledge that he is swifter than any bird in pouncing from above. In some instances the parties to the chase would become mere specks in the sky, with constantly increasing advantage in the rarer atmosphere to the pursued, because the hawk is built for battle, like an ironclad. He would finally give up the chase as hopeless, and descend as he went up, in circles, though much wider. The pigeon, after soaring till he thought he could descend in safety, came directly down in graceful stoops. I never saw a hawk succeed in catching a pigeon in the air. He must confine his attention to young and undeveloped birds, which though they would always make the attempt to rise, were quickly frustrated by the enemy. I witnessed a startling tragedy to-day. Passing along the shore of the North Twin, I heard pound- ing feet, and looking along the wide and thinly brushed slope from the north, saw a large doe coming down in splendid style at the top of her The Tragical in Nature 79 speed, and knowing that wolves were in pursuit, held my rifle for a quick shot, and awaited the event. Of the deer's safety I had no doubt. In a moment she would take a flying leap into deep water, disappear, and rise in safety some rods away from shore. But from a little brushy cape two wolves, which were lying in wait, rushed out, and the deer briefly but fatally hesitated. Had she kept on she would have easily leaped over and cleared them. Instantly three more closed in from behind, and she then tried, but too late, to make her flying bound, though she dragged one of them clear of the ground in her effort. I was astonished and startled by the sudden and wholly unexpected denouement. Such an infernal din of screams and growls I never heard before, and the deer cried out piteously. But I quickly recovered from agitation sufficiently to hold my arm steady, and more than once changed it to make sure of one of the tum- bling pack — fired, after which the firing must be rapid and less surely aimed. The wolves now made the mistake which the deer had first made, of hesi- tating. I got in two more telling shots and a flying one. Of the five I had killed two and wounded one. I was highly elated over my part of the tragedy. What was particularly noticeable was the quick- ness with which the wolves had torn and killed the deer. In another moment their powerful jaws and muscular necks would have made fragments of the carcass. The deer had been reduced to uncon- 8o Musings by Canip-Fire and Wayside sciousness almost immediately after she was dragged down. This startling incident gave me new light on the character of Nature's tragedies. Across a high ridge from our home Island Lake lies a beautiful round pool, scarcely over eighty rods in diameter, but sixty feet deep, fringed with white birches, a little emerald beauty. We noticed, when exploring here, that it was teeming with small bass not over six inches in length, all of a size and all adults. The explanation was not far to find. This lake has been isolated from other waters for centuries, and its inhabitants were reduced to dwarfs by overcrowding and starvation. There can scarcely be said to be room for choice between a sudden — and if painful, for the briefest moment painful, death— and a lingering and miser- able decay from slow disease or starvation. It is true that the prayer-book has among its petitions this one: "From sudden death, good Lord, deliver us." But that was put in to keep in repair the idea that time in which to secure the ministrations of the priest is desirable. The conclusions from these facts are, that the tragedies of Nature are benign; that they reduce to a minimum the sum total of pain; and that con- versely they greatly increase the possibilities and the great aggregate of happiness. They are also essential to the development of the high orders of life, including man, with his splendid possibilities of joy in the higher planes of knowledge. a^u^ing tl^e ^ixtl) The Music of the Spheres LIVING under the shade of trees by day and under the stars at night, with a roof over one's head only when it rains or when asleep, it is natural that one should gaze at the stars, see many splendid meteors, and take much note of the coming and going of the moon, and the rising and setting of the constellations. There is no such dial for marking the time as that of which the polar star is the pivot. There glitter the constellations of Ursa Major, or as it has been called, the "Dipper," the "Chariot of Arthur," the "Chariot of David," "King Charles's Wain," and the "Plow," the con- stellations also of the Lyre, Ursa Minor, the Dragon, and those brilliant queens of the North, Cassiopeia and Andromeda, and the "demon" star Algol. These revolve majestically around Stella Polaris, and one can mark the hours as they pass by observing them. Among them is Arcturus, mentioned by Job, though it is probable that he referred to Ursa Major, the constellation. The plain moon in a clear sky is beautiful, but like a beautiful woman, its charms are heightened by drapery. This one may have at times anywhere by the clouds, but always here by the tall pines, of 8i 82 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside the fleecy foliage of which Luna makes an aureole and a veil for herself, while she lets fall her train of silver across the dimpling lake. When the August meteors come on, about the nth of the month, we betake ourselves to the boats for an unobstructed view of the sky, and count them as they come. One of the most curious things about astronomy is the vast number of these dimiiju- tive planets, some flying singly and some in long trains. The stellar orbs are of all sizes, from that of a minute grain of sand up to the gigantic Sirius, twelve hundred times larger than our enormous sun; their diameters a sand grain, a pea, an apple, a boulder, a half-mile, a mile, twenty miles, a hun- dred. Vesta, diameter 250 miles; the moon, 2,160; Mercury, 3,000; the earth, 8,000; Jupiter, 88,000; the sun, 866,000; Sirius, 3,000,000 miles. Imagine little toy worlds, with moons not bigger than wal- nuts, as seriously moving in their orbits around the sun as does our own earth, their days and nights only a minute, or an hour long! and then worlds so large that they grapple on nearly equal terms with Algol and Sirius, and swing them untiringly around in space forever and ever! Persons who do not live by lakes have little idea of the great variety of beauties which they display. I have mentioned, in previous years, our Fourth of July celebrations. We go to considerable expense in fire-works, and it is always a regret to me that our readers cannot see them. Fire-works on the The Music of the Spheres 83 land are tame in their beauty compared with those on smooth water. All preparations are completed during the day. We make some bombs of tough paper and glue, wrapping the paper in long strips about a nucleus of a few ounces of gunpowder. The glue, with which the paper is saturated, makes the bomb as hard and almost as tough as iron. TJiese are fired for the sake of the echoes, which crash back and forth from the shores, and end in long-drawn, far-away diminuendoes. The point of land at the north end of the island is selected for the display of fire-works. All but the operator betake themselves to boats, or seat themselves on the opposite shore. There is but little difference between the brilliance of the rocket or wheel and that of its reflection on the water. Now you can understand that one standing with a roman candle in each hand can describe ellipses, circles, figure 8's, and so on, of the red, blue, green, and other colors of the balls of fire which they shoot out, one- half of the lines oeing in the air and the other half in the water. A rocket makes a great {\ ) bracket. There is great enthusiasm all day among the little folks in preparing for the evening. We always have a sumptuous dinner served in courses, the fish and roasts and partridges taken freshly in the woods and lakes the day previous. When the fire-works are over, the day's festivities are concluded with a two-gallon pail of lemonade, garnished with birch- bark bowls piled high with snowflake crackers, 84 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside snaps, and other curiosities of the bakery. Lemon- ade is no sort of lemonade anywhere but in the woods. The absence of tart fruits gives a keen appreciation of the lemon, its acidulous soul reduced to docility by the persuasion of sugar, and by the way, not clarified sugar. The white granulated sugar gives you nothing but sweet. Take the light- est brown ; we bought a two hundred and fifty-pound barrel of it at four cents per pound. It does not have the strong molassesy tang of the sugar-cane, but a suggestion of it only. Light brown sugar in lemonade is a tropical reminiscence. It is a dream of the live-oak, of the gold-orange glistening in the green, of the trailing mosses and blooms of the Antilles. . The patriotic rite of the lemonade and cakes, the union of the wheat-fields of Dakota with the fruits and sweets of Georgia, esto perpetual duly observed — the boys so tired they could scarcely drag themselves off to bed — I retired with the rest, but soon found that it was not my night for sleep- ing. Now, if there is any sensation unmitigated in its meanness it is staring wakefulness when you know you ought to be asleep. I positively will not have anything to do with it. I know of nothing meaner or more humiliating to human dignity, unless it be a heresy trial. So after seeing that my bedfellow, one of the Wills, was sleeping cool and sweetly, I rose, dressed, waked up the camp- fire, and watched the stars. The moon was setting The Music of the spheres 85 in the pines. There were a number of little mete- ors, and one splendid one, which came perpen- dicular with a great train of light, and so swiftly, disappearing only on the horizon, that I am sure it was an aerolite, and reached the earth not very far away. I concluded to listen, to discover if I could hear the music of the spheres. That the celestial spheres do make audible music it were heresy to doubt. There is no tradition better established, nor one that can show an equal array of great names and high authorities, reaching from Pythag- oras to Kepler, over two thousand years of unques- tioned acceptance by the greatest theologians, philosophers, and poets of the world. No straight- away, thorough-going traditionalist like myself can ever doubt it. This celestial choir, according to Timsus, commenting on Pythagoras, spans the octave thus: The siren who sings between the earth and the first vitreous firmament has one tone; she who sings between the firmament of the moon and that of Mercury, half a tone; a half-tone thence to Venus; one and a half to the sun (the Ptolemaic system, mind you) ; one and a half from the sun to Mars; one and a half from Mars to Jupiter; and so on out to the sphere into the inner surface of which the spangle-nails of the fixed stars are driven. A tone stands for 14,286 miles. The sun is distant 500,000 miles, and the firmament of the fixed stars 500,000 miles farther, the whole radius of the universe being 1,000,000 miles, and its diameter 86 Mtisings by Camp-Fire and Wayside 2,000,000. After Pythagoras and Timaeus, the next most distinguished name is that of Plato. The crystalline spheres, each separated from but inclosed by and inclosing others, are by their very nature resonant. Anybody can test this fact for himself by listening to the boom which sounds after a crash of thunder. That is caused by the jar which the thunder gives to the moon-firmament. It sounds precisely as a great bell does when set to vibrating. The greatest name in support of the music of the celestial spheres is Aristotle, not to mention Democritus, Lucretius, and others. Fol- lowing Aristotle, all the theologians of the Christian church taught it, and a man who should deny it would be a heretic to be abhorred, as he ought to be. Such a man hath no music in his soul, and a priori, according to Shakespeare, is fit for treason, stratagems, and spoils. In such a case there is no use in waiting for the overt act, but much harm. By burning him we save, first, the damage to others by the overt act, and second, we save the man him- self from actual commission of deadly sin. The spheres, being in constant and harmonious motion, give off the music. I spoke of the sirens. That was the notion of Cicero. It is not orthodox. Cicero was a festive sort of a philosopher, with a predilection for sirens. He said they were infatu- ated of their own divine voices and songs, and danced to the music on the polished surfaces of the spheres, waving their white arms in the ether, and The Music of the spheres 87 weaving in and out on the starry floor. But as I said, that is a pagan interpolation by Cicero of the true doctrine. The celibate popes and monks would have none of it. St. Thomas Aquinas improved upon Cicero, without wholly rejecting his ideas, by turning the music over to St. Cecilia, by whom it was rendered more decorous and appropriate. St. Cecilia was a decided improvement upon the sirens of Cicero, though not so poetical nor so good- looking. [Inasmuch as this treatise on the music of the spheres was written in the woods, and away from my books, it is proper, with the authorities of my library at hand, that I should make some correc- tions, and also further fortify my position. I find that Cicero did not originate the siren theory. Plato sets it forth (Republic, x. 14), but he quotes it, with his indorsement, from some still more ancient authority, some philosophic school which existed before his time (450 B. C). It is greatly to the credit of Plato's fidelity to ancient tradition that he did not give up the sirens, even though Xantippe pitched hot water on him and his master as he sat at the feet of Socrates. Any less resolute philosopher than Plato would have taken revenge on Xantippe by taking the sirens out of the ranks of her sex, and making satyrs of them. So much by way of correction. Now, a word to the modern astronomers and philosophers, who have abandoned the old paths, and are teaching the strange doc- 88 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside trines of one Galileo, a crazy Italian; and those of a dreamy Dutchman, of whom it is enough to say that he forsook the honest and homely name of his shop-keeping father, and Latinized himself as Coper- nicus! "Copernicus," forsooth! His name was Koppernicht, or in plain English, "Nary-a-copper. " His mother was a "Watzelrode," which shows that she tended geese, or at least lived on an obscure trail. That is the kind of a man whom these mod- ern philosophers are running after. They profess to know more than the peerless Plato, disciple of Socrates, and master of Aristotle, and follow Koppernicht, an impecunious, ignorant, Cracowan goose-herd! No wonder we high-souled Platonians regard their philosophy as mere goose-gabble. They come honestly by it. Now, what does my great Plato say? What did he say to Socrates, his master? He said that the eight spheres were like casks, fitted one within another, and that a great spindle, like a distaff, was thrust through the mid- dle, and on this they revolve; that there is an open- ing, after the manner of Astarte's lips when she is laughing, through each crystalline sphere, by which access is gained from one to another. The outer or eighth sphere is variegated in color, the seventh is brightest, the second and fifth yellow, and the third bright white. They revolve with differing speeds. The distaff, or spindle, is sustained on the knees of Necessity. Each sphere has its siren sit- ting on the outside of her sphere, and all sing in The Music of the Spheres harmony, though in diverse modulations. "There are," Plato says, "the three daughters of Necessity, Lachesis, Clotho, and Atropos, singing to the har- mony of the sirens; Lachesis sings of the past [she is my girl], Clotho of the present, and Atropos of the future." There you have it! Plato against Koppernicht!] Now, I hope I have said enough to convince all true traditionalists of the truth that the celestial spheres are musical. The only reason why our modern philosophers do not hear the music is be- cause they are making an eternal racket themselves. It was past midnight as I sat by the great crum- bling coals of the camp-fire and listened. The con- ditions, after all the advantages, were not wholly favorable. There was still much to take my atten- tion. The glowing coals would crumble and fall, and a new flame flash up. The aerolite fell and set me to thinking about the meteors. A whippoorwill started up so far away that I set myself to distin- guish his articulations. Then an owl, one of the great northern screamers, and with his first note I was sure he was a wolf, as almost anybody would be, and I rose to my feet to listen to the plunge of a pursued deer in the lake, thinking he would swim across to the island ; and then those noisy rascals, the l(X)ns. They were calling to each other across miles of forest. I heard one on Deer Lake, five miles away, and that reminded me of the day I took my young New York friends over there hunting. go Miisings by Canip-Fire and Wayside There came a lull in the voices of Nature, excepting only the breathing of the pines, and so I looked steadily up and listened, scarcely breathing myself. Yes, there it was, something like a very distant chime of bells, only softer than any expanse of water could make sound which floated across it, soft, dreamy, far-away. It was not like a distant bell-chime in this, that the bell starts off with its largest volume of sound, and then diminishes; while this music of the celestial spheres rose softly and fell away softly, the tones sometimes simultaneous and blending, and sometimes melodiously rising and falling. How long I listened and heard I do not know, for the music passed into a vision, and I was talk- ing to my father and mother. Both of them were sitting near each other and talking to me. The vision also passed, and there was a glow over the water and over the land, and I turned to the north- east to see that the sky was all ashes of roses above, deepening in color down to the horizon. Yes, I know as well as anybody else that one can hear anything he listens for. I have waited in the woods for a coming wagon, and could plainly hear the rattle of its wheels before it had started. I have heard the unmistakable plash of a deer's feet in the water when no deer was near. I have heard the plantigrade tread of a bear, and turned with a throbbing heart to catch a shot when no bear was near. I have heard my name called, and started to The Music of the Spheres 9 1 answer, when the quick thought came, with a sad disappointment, that the voice I heard calling me had been silent half as many years as I have lived. We can hear what we listen for, believe what we wish were true, expect what we desire, anticipate and dwell in a better future. My body is this cabin- camp where I sleep and rest. My soul is myself, free to wander where it will, to see lands not lit by the sun, and to hear music which comes not in the chariots of the air. Hunting A PARTY of us, including ladies, the girls and boys, and Georgie, our young Indian, some walking, some in the wagon, made an ex- cursion one afternoon to Four Mile Lake, a sheet of water which lies among high hills. We descended to it, and were sitting under the trees on its margin when a finely antlered deer was seen feeding along the shore and coming toward us. The conversation was dropped to whispers as the beautiful creature came on. My attention was attracted to Georgie. I never saw a richer and clearer complexion than his — a light bronze, better to my eye than brunette. He is straight as an arrow, fine eyes, regular feat- ures, a model for a Phidias. Georgie was in a quiver of excitement, his eyes glistening, and he shouting in whispers: '*0h, isn't he a beauty! Oh, what a pretty shot! Just look at him! Just see him! Oh! oh!" But Georgie was familiar with deer, saw them every day, had been raised chiefly on venison, and had successfully hunted all kinds of game, so the deer was no novelty to him, and yet he "went wild" at the sight of this one. It was the hunting instinct awakened by the sight of the game. In the white man it is modified, though never 93 Hunting 93 extinguished. In the Indian it is a passion. Rather than forego its gratification he will turn his back upon all the comforts and pleasures of civilized life. White men do the same, in large numbers, when they have the opportunity ; and when the pleasures of such a life have once been tasted, they are not re- linquished willingly. Nothing but famine will drive man from the chase and compel him to the dull toil of agriculture. The deer came on till it was within a few yards of the two Wills. They clapped their hands and shouted, and away it went like a shot. Last year a deer swam across to our island and made a pleasant call upon the Lady of the Lake, and then swam in safety back to the mainland. The cook seized his rifle, but was directed to set it aside. She was charmed with the deer's innocent face, its gaze of wonder anci surprise, and decided that as it had given her so much pleasure by the visit, it should retire as securely as it came. Two or three years ago, while camping on the Sturgeon, in Michigan, I expressed my indignation at a large party who came in with packs of hounds, and I then avowed my determination in all cases where I saw a race between a hound and a deer to stop the hound. A hound makes as pretty a shot as. a hunter could ask for. I was much gratified to learn that last year all the hounds brought into that region stayed there. The still hunters passed the word, and a fine dog-hunt occurred. The only lack of fitness was that the Indians did not do it. They 94 Musings by Cainp-Fire and Wayside are partial to barbecued dog. A dog can be trained to track down a wounded deer, which is the only proper use for dogs in the chase. It is barbarous to employ them for coursing deer, and it is stupid meanness and pot-hunting vagabondage to drive them into the water with dogs. A man who would do that is by instinct a butcher, and ought to hire out as a pig-sticker in the Chicago stock-yards. He has neither the instinct, skill, nor spirit to be a still hunter. Your still hunter puts on his moccasins and goes over the crumply fern and pine spikes and dry twigs as softly as he can. The deer hears him and starts with a flying bound. The hunter now has his choice, as short a shot on the fly as he can get, or a long shot when the deer turns to gaze. One successful half-breed hunter, whom I know, always shoots on the wing. Another always chooses the long standing shot. In either case the chances are in favor of the deer, and that is fair. Now, contrast this with a lazy lout, standing on a runway by a lake or river and cooly murdering a deer with a shot-gun or club when the dogs have driven him to the water! I had taken a stroll with my canoe on my back to a distant lake for an evening's fishing. This canoe was built and arranged with kubs for the oars, and fishing-rods, and other supplies. When I wished to portage it I would grasp the sides near one end, whirl it over on the other point, raise it to near the perpendicular, back into it, and adjust the Hunting 95 pack straps to my shoulders, tilt it free from the ground, and walk away at ease. By this boat I expected to test my declining strength in the old age that was upon me. The last time I carried it, it was borne as lightly as ever before; but my stal- wart frame has been smitten down, and I shall carry it no more. On that evening the bass were dull, and I took a stroll into the forest, expecting a call from a deer, and was not disappointed. Soon he came, bounding like a rubber ball, the very embodiment of suppleness and elasticity. He drank, made a fling or two with his heels, and then plunged over- head into the cool water. I laughed in sympathy with his pleasure. After a while I began to whistle. He threw up his head, flashing his ears this way and that. Then I made a conch-shell of my hands and blew a horn blast. He sprang ashore and sought with eyes and ears for the source of the unwonted sound. Then I showed myself and he answered! Such a snort! He would bound a few rods and then blow his alarm with an energy that was exceed- ingly comical. He was determined that every deer within a mile should be aware of the presence of a natural enemy, but in this instance of a sympathiz- ing friend, who would not hurt a hair of his red hide. But he did not know that. It was nearly dark when I entered my boat to cross to the island, and I saw what I took to be a Newfoundland dog swimming for the same goal. 96 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside As we have no dog of any kind, I wondered thereat, but when nearly across, he threw up his head, paused, then turned and started back. I saw the water splash behind him and before him, and then came the roar of forty-five rifles. Zip, splash, bang, bang, bang! and I yelled to him: "Good luck to you, old fellow! Go it! Dive, you old fool! Why don't you dive? They'll knock the top of your head off if you don't dive!" But the bear — for such he was — just put in his biggest licks at swim- ming, and though they pumped their guns empty at him, they never touched him, and he went over the bushes like a deer when he struck land. When I sat down to my late supper, I kept yelling at the cook to bring me up some bear steaks! "Georgie," said Johnny, "we'd better be dead. The doctor will never let up on us for missing that bear." I confess that I once hunted for sport, but now I never take a life without the pressure of neces- sity. I have never stood over a dying victim with- out sharp pangs of conscience. It is awful to have innocent eyes turned upon one in mortal agony, a harmless creature dying at one's hands. The pain it gives to one's sensibilities far overreaches the pleasurable excitement of the chase. This is espe- cially so where there is an outcry. It is pitiful even to see a bear dying in the woods, and to hear his protests. So now, though when I am compelled to hunt deer for the camp I am usually successful, I turn the task over to others when I can. The Hunting 97 wolf, or the hound in pursuit of a deer, I shoot with pleasure. And yet no one can see even a fangy, cruel wolf in a trap without pitying him. He puts his head down, and if he have a loose paw, covers his eyes with it, and is silent. The sense of blood-guiltiness in killing those harmless and beautiful creatures, and of wrong in taking advantage of the very human instincts of the bears, grew upon me so that I could no longer endure it. My last deer-hunt was in the middle of the 90's. The cook notified me that the meat was out. I took my rifle and went to the woods for a supply, started a deer which ran behind a large pine and put his head out to watch me. I made the shot, a long one, missed, and went on. On the summit of the next hill, pausing to look, I was astonished to see a splendid buck not over thirty yards distant, standing and gazing right at me. I had already stopped, but was carrying my rifle by the middle in my right hand. I was in black, from hat to moccasins, and stood motionless. How was I to bring my gun to bear? On the least movement on my part, he would have been out of sight in the dense thicket at a single bound. I began to lift the gun so slowly as to show no motion, and thus very gradually brought it up, and then with a quick movement fired. He was helplessly wounded, not killed. As I advanced upon him, he fixed his large, lustrous, frightened eyes upon me, and I ended his life with q8 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside another shot. There he lay in all his purity and beauty. I was smitten to the heart with remorse. I considered that he had lived the pure and inno- cent life of Nature, had never harmed any one or anything, and there he lay, the victim of an invader and murderer. This ended my hunting, a favorite sport of more than half a century, and which had the double attraction that it led me deep into the solitudes of Nature, with their unfading freshness and unfailing charms. THE BOATHOUSE Nature's Intelligence THE Mississippi reaches out the Desplaines River to dispute with Lake Michigan for the rainfall that is due to the lake — parallels the lake shore. When at home I spend many Sun- day afternoons in the woods and glades which lie along this river. There is nothing merry or musical in this prairie stream. It is small enough to be young, rash, and happy; but it is slow and solemn as a Sabbath afternoon of my boyhood. It flows without a ripple or a dimple between its banks of black loam, and really does not appear sufficiently spirited to kiss a pebbly margin, even if one ran down fresh and sweet out of the woods to meet it. The scenery has no points. It lies down flat, with a dogged determination to cast no reflections on the character of the river. But it is better for a Sunday afternoon than that wild city down there on the lake, where they squeeze the juice out of men as if they were lemons, and toss the rinds away. And then I find no end of pleasant companions in walks otherwise solitary. They are not as avari- cious, original, and fresh in their ideas as my com- panions here in the wilderness, but they are the best substitute that is to be had. There are birds, 99 100 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside flowers, trees, minnows, horses, honest-faced cattle, all of them sympathetic and talkative; and this is no poetic or figurative sense, but really and truly. Sometimes the pleasure of an opportunity to requite their hospitality offers. One Sunday I found a sick horse lying upon the cold, wet ground. When he saw me he called for help at once, lifted his head, touched his side with his nose, and groaned. I told him I was very sorry for him, and that he must not lie there, but get up and go home, and that he should have a warm bed and some medi- cine. He was too weak and benumbed to rise alone, but he and I combined our forces, and he was soon on his feet, and he led the way with feeble steps. I did not know where his home was, but he showed me. I do not say that the man who owned him had no soul. I only say that the fact of the existence of his soul had to be reached by an abstract mental process, as we determine the exist- ence of the ultimate atom. In my musings I everywhere assume the intel- lectual and moral capacities of animals below men in the ascending scale, because there is no other way of accounting for the mental and moral phe- nomena which they exhibit. I purpose here to exhibit a few philosophical considerations and facts in justification of the view. The first consideration which I will offer is this, that the Creator adheres to simple, but great prac- tical ideas, each one of which is extended to every Nature s Intelligence loi kind of his work, in all the departments of exist- ence. Take the simple idea of the vertebra in the construction of animals. It was brought in at an appropriate stage of the development of life, and thereafter employed in every one of the infinite varieties of the higher forms. In physics it is now believed by all the authorities that every kind of energy is the manifestation of but a single and simple force, which is transformed by the exigen- cies of its work into heat, light, electricity, chemical affinity, adhesion, gravitation, motion, and what- ever other manifestations there may be. Back of this is a very simple law or motive, which the old Greeks gave, and I am not sure mistakenly, a men- tal and moral character when they said that "Nature abhors a vacuum. " This motive is a determination to compel all forces into equilibrium. That is a very simple idea, and yet how sublime in its magni- tude, omnipotent in its effects, and omnipresent in its operations! It rules with equal energy all spirit- ual existences, from the lowest up to the Creator himself. It drives the sun's rays out into space, lashes the storms forward in their headlong career, causes the rivers to flow, toils at leveling the mount- ains. It projected The Interior ovX upon the literary and religious world. The editor and his contribu- tors, having evolved ideas in their minds, were irre- sistibly impelled to supply the vacuity in other minds with those ideas, and to exchange them for other people's ideas, and thus equalize the general I02 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside intelligence. Knowledge rushes out to fill the empty voids of ignorance as unfailingly as light and heat rush to fill the empty voids of space, and in consequence of the operation of the same law. This it is which inspires the orator, drives the pen, the press, and the telegram in more senses than one. The village gossip, in her humble way, is charged with the same divine energy. What she knows she must tell or perish. In the field of morals, the action of this law is scarcely less vigorous. Virtuous men will make great sacrifices and incur great toil to extend the domain of morals. In the spiritual realm, it be- comes one of the mightiest incentives that stirs the heart of man. The cross, the dungeon, the rack, the stake, cannot hinder the kingdom of heaven from extending over the globe, and filling the earth level with righteousness as the waters fill the sea. We may say that the shining and circling universe came into existence because God would fill empty space with his embodied thoughts. Here, then, we find a universal law which operates with equal energy in every sphere of existence, which per- meates and is the chief characteristic of every type and form of life and activity — physical, mental, moral, and spiritual. If we affirm the existence of such an elemental force as the spiritual, we must admit that it has this same permeating and diffusive motive, and that it will enter into all forms and types of life whatever. Its manifestation every- Nature s Intelligence 103 where and in all things is the only scientific or philo- sophical evidence we have that there is such a thing as spirit. My next consideration, therefore, is this: That while we are thus able to trace the identity of a great law which dominates the physical universe, upward until it is lost in height beyond the range of our intellectual vision, we may fairly infer that the law of spiritual life is equally simple, omnipo- tent, and omnipresent, reaching through all grades and forms of living things, even to the sweet flowers which bloom along our way. In attempting to verify this view by an appeal to facts, I should sim- ply be overwhelmed by their number, cogency, and conclusiveness. Indeed, I cannot hope to adduce a fresh idea or argument bearing on the truth that the lower animals are possessed of moral as well as intellectual faculties, differing from man's, not in kind, but only in degree. And yet I can scarcely hope to state a fresh idea in a topic so familiar to thoughtful and observant minds. One no sooner ■enters this field than he finds himself in the midst of intellectual and moral phenomena as varied, pro- fuse, and beautiful as the flowers and birds in a tropical land. And yet, as I have intimated, moral- ists, metaphysicians, and theologians have lived, and yet live, in the midst of all this interest and beauty, blind to its appeals and deaf to its music. They seem to fear that the facts might in some way impeach the dignity or discredit the immortality of 104 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside man. If this last, then they are endeavoring to establish the hope of immortal life on foundations that will not sustain it. There is absolutely no basis for such a hope other than that of participa- tion in the divine life brought to light by Jesus Christ. If this be illusory, then Paul well exclaimed, "We are of all men most miserable." The fact that it has pleased God to endow the animals below us with intellectual and moral natures, and the pleasures derived from them, is only a further illus- tration of his all-embracing benevolence. The evidences that the lower animals are think- ers, that they are endowed with intellectual faculties, are too many and too obvious to require argument. Do they possess moral natures? The phenomena of moral existence are love, benevolence, gratitude, fidelity; with their opposites — hatred, revenge, cruelty, malice, and such complex passions as grief, remorse, shame, hope, and despair. Most of these phenomena aire as obvious to the casual observer in the lower animals as they are in man; while all are perceived by those who are more interested in the study of the habits and characters of our humble friends. It would extend this paper beyond the brief limits intended to cite and describe specific illustrations; nor, as I have said, is it necessary. Personal observations have found their way into literature until they have become the most plentiful as well as the most pleasing illustrations of a topic in which every reader takes great interest. Suffice Nature s Intelligence 105 it to refer, in a general way, to the unmistakable indications of a sense of guilt and shame; of forbearance and magnanimity; of chivalrous de- fense of the weak; of generosity to each other and to man; of integrity in the discharge of their trusts; to their long remembrance of and dispo- sition to avenge ill treatment which they have received, and to reward kindness by confidence, affection, and service; their grief over the loss of human friends, so poignant as in some instances to result in death ; their wailing and tears on the death of their kindred; their pride, love of admiration, delight at approbation from each other and from man; their clear ideas of a right of property in their homes. No definition of moral faculties can be framed that will not include the faculties in the lower animals which manifest themselves in such phenomena. The moral faculties of the lower animals voice themselves in language and tones as nearly identi- fied with the language and tones of man as the physical conformation of the organs of speech will permit. Anger, defiance, alarm, fear, affection, sorrow, pain, joy, exultation, triumph, derision, are heard in all their modulations in the voices and modes of expression of birds and quadrupeds; lan- guage well understood by man, and better under- stood among the several tribes, each of which speaks an idiom of its own. The most of the passions and emotions named io6 M2isi7igs by Cainp-Fire and Wayside are also expressed in the soft beaming or the flash of the eye, the pose of the body, the exhibition of weapons, the tremors of the muscles, the lofty, sup- pliant, or shamed carriage of the head. Indeed, if we indicate an emotion and its expression in man, the same emotion and its expression, in a manner so closely resembling that of man as to be instantly recognizable, will be proved in all the species of the higher vertebrates, and in a number of the insects, such as bees and ants. When we see a dog, himself hungry, carry food safely to his mas- ter, or die bravely in that master's defense, how shall we escape the conviction that noble moral qualities are present in the phenomena? Indeed, the companionship and mutual esteem between man on the one side, and the dog, horse, or elephant on the other, can only be accounted for by the fact of the presence of a moral nature in each in sympathy with that of the other, the endowment of each differing only in degree. We have thus traced, by mere mention, the ex- tension of moral existence and its laws down through the ranks of intelligences to the animal kingdom below man, and find them everywhere so nearly identical as to be readily recognizable. Can we find indication of them still lower in the vegetable kingdom? Not so easily, it is true, and yet pos- sibly. The flowers at our feet look up into our faces with expressions so sweet and benign that our imaginations will persist in investing them with Nature s Intelligence 107 spirits kindred to our own, or at least kindred to the sweetest and purest of those whom we love. From Lucretius to Wordsworth, the poets have ever been the avant-couriers of philosophy. They love Nature, and are loved by Nature in return, and there are secrets whispered in this intercourse for which colder and coarser, though stronger, minds must toilfully labor in the mines of thought. The intelligence and morality of which I think traces may be found in the vegetable kingdom, while sufficient for the purposes for which they were bestowed, are not only limited in degree, but limited in their functions. All that is claimed is, that some elements existing in the higher are found in the lower forms of life. It would not do to say that a pyrite, an oxide, and a carbonate of iron are identical. The one is a tawny stone, the other a red dust, and the third a polished, lithe, glittering sword-blade. And I would compare the morality and intelligence of spiritual beings above man to the sunbeams which bear in themselves intelligence of iron incandescent in the sun; the same entities in man to the sword-blade; in animals to the pyrite; and in the vegetable kingdom to the red dust; but down through all runs the same essential idea, the same basis — iron. In like manner I would say that spirit, the essential basis of the spiritual realm, runs down through all forms of life to the lowest, manifesting everywhere, in some way, its attributes of intelligence and morality. io8 Musings by Camp- Fire mid Wayside The contest between materialism and spiritual- ism has been narrowed down to the question whether the combination and interaction of material forces produce the phenomena of mind, or whether mind co-ordinates both matter and its forces and laws to its own service in building up and sustaining the soul's material habitation. It is impossible for us to sustain our positions against materialism unless we are prepared to prove that something of the same nature as the soul, and which exercises some of the soul's functions, dwells in the plant's beauty and activity. The phenomena are all on our side of the question. Two wild grape-vines, planted at short distances from and on opposite sides of a tree, will, each moving in opposite directions, make straight for the tree. The sunflower will gaze at the sun all day, and turn its face eastward in the night to catch the first beams of sunrise. The vine will throw its tendrils straight out, and when a sup- port is reached it will seize upon it. The elm sends its roots toward the watercourse. The sensitive plant takes alarm and pretends to be dead. Car- nivorous plants show quite as much intelligence as the lower orders of carnivorous animals. The dis- tance, indeed, between vegetables and the lower animals in the degrees of intelligence is not greater than between the lower animals and man, or be- tween man and the probable intelligence of the order of beings next higher above him. I never take the life of a flower without feeling that it is a Nature s Intellzge?ice 109 violation of moral right, unless the act is justified, as in the taking of the life of an animal for use, or because the plant destroyed is hurtful to the inter- ests of the lower animals or of man. That plants find pleasure in existence is as obvious as that ani- mals do. That the sensitive plant has a nervous system, and that carnivorous plants take pleasure in food, goes without question. Thus much briefly in regard to the intelligence of plants. The reader can extend the illustrations indefinitely. Traces of moral character are not less recogniz- able. But we must remember that to identify vege- table morality we must not require of it all the qualities of morality in man. Because red colored clay, tinted with iron oxide, is not a polished sword- blade is no reason why we should deny the presence of iron. Let us analyze, ethically, any beautiful fiower. We find first a gentle, candid, innocent aspect, which reaches quite beyond our sense of physical harmony and stirs the sense of moral beauty. How is that fact to be accounted for? Next we find the plant appealing to our sense of physical beauty. So far as the plant's individual interests are to be conserved, there is no necessity for this. Its immaculate coloring, tracery, shad- ing, are all beyond the plant's individual necessities. A rude and flashy splotch of color would attract the eyes of the bees and butterflies quite as well as all this exquisite beauty, unless we suppose an aesthetic faculty in those insects, which supposition, while it 1 1 o Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside might weaken the argument for the existence of morality in flowers, would by so much strengthen the argument for morality in the bees. But as the bees have sufficient inducement in the honey, there is no necessity for this array of beauty. The beauty of the flower has for its purpose the giving of pleasure. It is the plant's benevolence. It is an act of love, having in it no taint of self-interest. Will is shown to exist in plants by the same tests that show its existence in the lower animals or in man. There is no reason why the Creator should not make the plant a center of moral forces. However limited, meager, or inferior they may be in degree and manifestation, it is an organism, perfect in its kind. It sleeps, wakes, labors, rests, seeks its food, and performs all the functions of individual life. Mr. R. L. Garner has recently undertaken to investigate this subject by scientific methods. After studying domesticated apes for some years he visited Africa and remained in the jungle a number of months to study the originals. The following is a summary of his conclusions: "Briefly stated, the speech of monkeys and human speech resemble each other in all essential points. The speech sounds of monkeys are voluntary, deliberate, and articulate. They are addressed to others with the evident purpose of being understood. The speaker shows that he is conscious of the meaning he desires to convey through the medium of speech. He waits and expects a reply. If Nature s Intelligence it is not given the sound is repeated. The speaker usually looks at the one addressed. Monkeys do not habitually utter these sounds when alone. They understand the sounds made by others of their own kind. They understand the sounds when made by a human being or a phonograph. They understand the sounds without the aid of signs or gestures. They interpret the same sound in the same way at all times. The sounds are made by the vocal organs, and are modulated by the teeth, the tongue, the palate, and the lips. Their speech is shaped into dialects, and the higher forms of animals have higher types of speech than the lower ones. The higher types are slightly more complex, and somewhat more exact in meaning than the lower ones." Mr. Garner lived for three months in a cage in a jungle, hoping to get closer observation of the chimpanzees. He learned that they are nomadic, sleeping on the ground, and not two nights in the same place; that the family consists of one male and several females; that the male exercises author- ity; that the young remain in the family till mature; that different families assemble and engage in some- thing corresponding to dancing, while one of them beats on a drum — sort of a drum — made by spread- ing clay on porous earth and allowing it to dry. He tested their ability to count, and found that it reached at least four, which we may remark is equal to the Australians. He makes no extravagant claims. The total number of words used by them that he acquired was about one hundred; of these he learned the meaning of thirty. He demonstrated that they can acquire new speech sounds. He gives 1 1 2 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside some examples of their reasoning out and solving problems. There are touching instances of sym- pathy and affection recorded in the book. The advent of the white man has started a war upon them by the natives, which will result in their ex- tinction. The white man offers large pay for "specimens," which leads the natives to hunt and kill them. Mr. Garner has therefore not entered upon an investigation of this subject any too soon. He regards his work so far as preliminary. Recognition of the facts in regard to the minds and sensibilities of the lower animals is necessary to enlightened morality, even if we take only the selfish view of its effect upon men's conduct in deal- ing with each other. The old apothegm that a merciful man is merciful to his beast is a principle of general application. It applies to the whole code. The teaching of metaphysical theorists and dogmaticians is responsible for no end of cruelty to beings which are subject not only to physical pain, but to all the varieties of mental suffering of which man is capable. They die of homesickness. They experience depression and despair. They find exit from an intolerable life by suicide. They have a keen sense of wrong done to them, and some of them seek satisfaction in revenge. They are pos- sessed of domestic virtues, and of affection for each other and for their young, and where they are gre- garious, a patriotism for their tribe. The war upon the wild birds and animals is Nature s Intelligence 1 1 3 rapidly driving them out of existence as species, and thus the larger part of the beauty and attract- iveness of the world is wantonly destroyed. There is no basis in morals, no appeal to the better senti- ments of mankind left, if we deny that the lower animals have moral rights. If they are not exter- minated it will be because good men and women will be found willing to inform themselves of the facts, and who will stand up for the defenseless creatures as witnesses, and as advocates and cham- pions, and who will employ the moral principles brought into exercise in our relations with them, in training up the boys and girls to manhood and womanhood of noble and beautiful character. Have I succeeded in establishing the claims of my beloved companions and friends to a hearing? Let the reader learn their language and cultivate their acquaintance. Their thoughts will be found sweet as their perfumes; their teachings as beauti- ful as their colors; their companionship soothing and cheering as exquisite music. " Farewell, farewell, but this I tell To thee, thou wedding guest; He prayeth well who loveth well Both man and bird and beast. He prayeth best who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear Lord, who loveth us. He made and loveth all." Refreshing Rain I WAS standing on the broad, red-sandstone steps of a Chicago residence, waiting the answer to the bell, when a shower of rain began to fall. Each drop made a crimson mark on the stone, and it was surprising how evenly they fell. First the stone was dotted over, all parts alike. Then drops struck in between where the others had fallen, and so on till every part of the stone had been touched. The work was beautifully done, and so softly and gently! Every upturned cup of bloom, and every blade of grass on the lawn had received its share, and all were refreshed. It is a study to know how this is accomplished. The source of rain is air full of moisture. The atmosphere does not fill up and overflow, like a cup set under a little waterfall, but when it has absorbed all the water it will hold, it refuses to take any more, retains what it has, and floats away with its burden. Like the honey-bee which takes as much of honey in his pouch, and as much wax on his pack-saddle legs as he can carry, and no more, so the loaded atmosphere, when it has enough, starts off, looking for an arid field which lies waiting — its parched lips open, longing for the rain-cloud to give it a drink. The water- 114 Refreshing Rain 1 1 5 drops are squeezed out of the humid air by a cold current. The water-bearing air rises because it is warm. The icy air from the high altitudes descends to take its place; the two meet and interpenetrate, and there is a rain — a gentle, even rain, or a down- pour, depending on the coldness of the descending, and the humidity of the ascending currents. When the humid air rises very high, its moisture is con- verted into snow, and if it be dense, the snow- flakes, as they fall, gather others, and when they reach the lower stratum of rain-pouring mist, they become filled with it, congeal it, and come swiftly to the earth as hail. But in the summer-time, especially, the cold and warm currents often meet on a level, and then there is a slender cataract along the line of contact, which moves forward against the current of cold air, or goes the other way against the current of humid air — depending upon which blows the stronger. This is our passing summer shower, and when the line of contact is directly overhead we are in the heaviest part of the rain. But sometimes, though rarely, an ascending column of fully ladened air is caught between two or more currents of cold wind coming from various directions to fill the vacuum. They crowd in upon it, drive it upward till it extends like a huge pillar black and high, and, in their conflict, set it to whirl- ing like a spindle. If this conflict take place near the surface, we have a whirlwind, and if it be very strong we call it a cyclone. But if it occur above ii6 Musmgs by Camp- Fire and Wayside the surface, then the whole content of the tall pillar of water-laden air is precipitated upon a small area of the earth, and it is called a "cloud-burst" or a "water-spout." The rain, which was intended for hundreds of square miles, may come down upon a few acres, and in a very short time. From what is known of the storm which preceded the Conemaugh disaster, it is probable that such a cataract fell in the valley above the fateful lake. If the sky cloud over evenly and gradually, then we may know that the cold air of the higher altitudes is slowly perco- lating the humid air below. If a long sheet of shower drift over the landscape, then we may know that the two currents have met on a level and one is pushing the other before it. I saw a very inter- esting theory, not long since, to account for the generation of electricity in a rain-storm — to the effect that it came of the dissolution and reunion of the component elements of water. I do not remember how the writer accounted for the process. But the simpler theory is sufficient. The heat of the warm air is converted into electricity by the friction of the contending currents, just as the heat of the furnace is converted into electricity by friction in the "dynamo." The thunder-crashes in a cyclone are terrific — as they must be where the dynamo is a half mile in diameter and two or three miles high, and whirling with a velocity sufficient to pick bowl- ders off the ground and toss them about like tennis- balls. Refreshing Rain We have beautiful rains here in this forest coun- try— not long drizzles, but frequent, sunny showers. It was not intended that people should be injured by a wetting in a summer rain. It spoils fine bon- nets and silk hats, and starched frills and collars, and other inventions of the devil, but it does not hurt flannels, and is decidedly good for the human skin. This thing of making a dry-nurse of one's self for one's self is a miserably poor use to make of life. You fine city people are composed of two classes. Part of you get up late, mince over a fine breakfast, and then loll around and watch for your favorite ailments — and dote on your doctor. I am beginning to despise doctors — not the country doc- tor, be he in country or city, who is sent for only in emergencies, and then administers remedies which attend strictly to business, be the remedy emetic, cathartic, astringent, or emollient; but the city fashionable doctor — the doctor who is a luxury, not a necessity. It may be said that the doctor is not to blame — that he only meets a demand. But he encourages and helps to create the demand. He pets and coddles and alarms those whose only ail- ments are rich diet and laziness, combined with a craving for sympathy. I know some doctors who will not have anything to do with such business — who will tell the patients to stop their medicine- swallowing, and give some attention to the laws of health. The other class of city people to whom I am by 1 1 8 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside these presents preaching includes the men who eat a hasty breakfast, and then plunge into money-mak- ing — and drag their employes into it along with them. They come home from business fagged out. They eat and sleep and go back to the everlasting money-getting grind. So years come and go — they get money, build fine houses, get more money, grow sickly, or old, and die. What good is there in it? Their young people never have any real young life. They cram, cram, cram their poor heads with edu- cation. It is day school and Sunday school and high school and college and reading and preaching till they are old enough to marry, then they marry because that is a part of the business of life, and go on getting money. Now I have no money to speak of — never had — I have had to work hard, and yet have had a very happy life; and I will venture to say that I now get more pleasure out of the little wages which my readers of The Interior pay me for writing for them, than any rich man in the city gets out of his tens of thousands or millions. It is not in the way of so- ciability, though. There is none of the genuine article there — no time for it. I would as soon expect to go to Jeremiah's valley of dry bones and sit down on a pile of skulls, and have a sociable time with the osseous remains of the dead, as to expect it in Chicago. A happy life is to be had by making rational enjoyment one of the objects of life. And that is not in money-getting. It is not Refreshing Rain 1 1 9 in fashion or display. It is in trying to make one's self and others happy. I go fishing and camping and strolling — and do not care a continental either for wealth, or for wealthy people because they are wealthy. I wear loose and comfortable clothes, take plenty of exercise, refuse to let my mind dwell on unpleasant things, never worry about lost oppor- tunities or money losses, keep out of the way of cranks and quarrelsome people, and try to see the bright or the humorous side of things, cultivate love for my kindred, and crack my little chestnut of a joke. I never read any of the crimes or scandal columns of the dailies, choose cheerful books, and get out of the way of whiners and growlers and scandal-mongers. One can have a happy life — happy as the day is long, by making happiness one of the main purposes of living. The foundation of this is good health — and anybody can have good health by starting out in time for it. It is to be had by the moderate eating of simple and whole- some food, which soon becomes a luxury to the palate; a clean skin; out-door exercise everyday, without regard to the weather, except in the way of warm and dry clothing; keeping the mind cheerful- keeping the heart kindly; avoiding anxiety and longing about business affairs, contentment with one's lot. It is orthodox theology to say that what God seeks for his creatures is holiness, not happiness — that holiness is not a means, but an end — that it is I20 Musings by Cainp-Fire and Wayside to be sought for itself, not for any of its adjuncts or consequences. But I cannot think of God as a being of one idea. He is holy and loves holiness, but he is also benevolent and delights in joy-giving. When two things are as inseparably interlaced and interdependent as holiness and happiness, and when God is equally holy and loving, I see no extra orthodoxy in metaphysically separating the practi- cally inseparable, and in putting one before the other — much less in saying that God is devoted to the one and indifferent to the other. It is not good Scripture and it is poor philosophy. Indeed, it seems to me that the idea of the divine sovereignty received a false coloring from taking kingly sover- eignty — which everywhere prevailed on the earth in the times when the doctrine was formulated — as its type and illustration. Napoleon Bonaparte sought his own glory with utter indifference to the consequences to his fellow-men. He was a Corsi- can nobody. His object was to concentrate upon himself the effulgence of all the crowns and all the power of Europe. Napoleon was not a type of God. He was the reverse and the opposite in every particular. The. only difference which need here be emphasized is in regard to glory-seeking. Napo- leon sought to bring the rays of glory upon himself, for his own magnificent illumination. God seeks to extend the rays of his glory to his creatures. The one was concentration, the other is its exact opposite, diffusion. The one was selfishness, the Refreshing Rain 1 2 1 other is beneficence. The idea is absurd, anyway. How could God, the fountain of all that is good and lovely and splendid, increase his own personal glory? He cannot tolerate rebellion, nor suffer contumely to be heaped upon his name and his providences, because hatred of God constitutes the essence of sin, and sin is destructive of all that is good and beautiful and desirable. I wonder what a learned theologian would call this line of thinking? Some one, possibly many, have been over it before, and it, or something re- sembling it, has been named after one of them. A man cannot follow any line of religious thought now without finding, if he inquire, that he is only following after a procession who have beaten the path dusty and trodden out all the fresh grass and flowers that may ever have grown on it. But I was speaking of our beautiful and refresh- ing rains. I can remember when they were as timely and abundant in southern Ohio and Ken- tucky, and all that region. The forest streams were as full and cool, and the growing seasons always fresh and verdant. Now they are either flooded or parched — flooded at times, destructively in the early spring, when much rain is not needed, and parched the rest of the growing season. Well, men deserve it, and they have not begun to have the worst of it. Within a period of fifty years they have destroyed all the trees, and they may take the consequences; for rain and trees are inseparable 12 2 Mzisings by Camp- Fire and Wayside friends. You can have neither without the other. France, Ireland, Great Britain, and the Scandi- navian peninsula are exceptions, because they have westerly winds off three thousand miles of evapo- rating surface, part of it the Gulf Stream. But we cannot have it in the Mississippi Valley without forests. The people of Nebraska, finding a treeless region, are the best tree-planters in America, and already they are having more abundant as well as more seasonable rains. The mosquitoes are an object of unusual vindic- tiveness; but I have been studying their habits, and must say that ours improve on acquaintance. They are regular and temperate in their habits. During the day they sleep in various sheltered nooks among the leaves and grasses. At sunset they go out for supper, and retire at nine o'clock. Just at daylight they present their bills of fare again. But the conditions for mosquito good morals are favor- able here. Our island is high, long, and windy; almost always a good stiff breeze blowing. When the mosquitoes essay to take a vestal or matutinal flight, the wind carries them into the lake, and there the festal minnow awaits them expectantly. The minnow grows to be a fine bass, and then we eat him. It is thus that poetic justice comes to the sanguinary insect. But his life is short. By the middle of July only a few feeble, discouraged strag- glers remain. He has not at any time been as Refresh mg Ra in \ 2 3 pertinacious here as where we left him in the suburbs of Chicago. I have thus far hauled and distributed over two hundred fine, large bass. How is that, ye pulpit- worn and fagged preachers? Don't you wish you had been along? Are you not sorry that you were not called to be a poor old pious printer? This Paradise of Ours WE had a dish of red raspberries found growing wild on this sand, but as close to the margin of the lake as they could get without danger of drowning in a rainy year. This brought up around the camp-fire the subject of wild native fruits in America, and the bill of fare which nature had filled before the white man came was found to be varied and inviting. Of nuts, the largest and most abundant in the region between the lakes and the south line of Tennessee, was the black wal- nut. This was the fruit of one of the noblest and most valuable of American trees. I have seen them towering up to a height of one hundred and fifty feet — straight, massive, and majestic, and then reaching their giant limbs out above the great oaks and maples. Their value was not then known. They fell vic- tims to the ignoble purpose of the zigzag fence. The Britannica and other English books speak dis- paragingly of the walnut itself as unfit to eat — which shows that none of them had ever tasted a fresh one. The walnut soon becomes rancid, if exposed to dry warmth. The nut is at its best as soon as it is dry, after removing the thick, bitter, protecting hull. I have never known any one who did not 124 This Paradise of Ours 1 2 5 relish the flavor of a fresh walnut. We used to keep them sweet by leaving them in their hulls, piled away in a fence corner, and taking them out and drying them as they were wanted. They will thus keep perfectly fresh all winter. By the time they were hulled, dried, shipped to England, and had lain around a month or two in a fruit store or grocery, they would be just a little worse than creamery butter if it were treated in the same way. The black-walnut crop used to be unfailing and enormous, and as an article of food they were equal to any other for the supply of carbon. They were capable of a variety of uses in baking and other cooking, for flavor and enrichment. The white walnut or butternut had a different but very agree- able flavor. The hickory-nut was also very abun- dant — and preferable, as being neater and sweeter. They were in variety. Large and strong-shelled, smaller, and smaller till we came to the little white- shell, which we could crack with our strong, young teeth. The chestnut, hazelnut, and chincopin are species of the same genus — all with their peculiar charms. The pecan, which is very abundant farther south, is a species of the hickory-nut. All these varieties are still employed as table food. In the beech forests the ground was brown with their sweet and nutritious product — which is nearer to a cereal than to a nut — the favorite food of the wild pigeon. Nor were some varieties of the acorn to be despised. The line of fruits was more extended 126 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside and varied. At the top was the Catawba grape — having no superior in any part of the world. The Isabella came next. Then followed the fox-grape and the small "wild grape." This last is eagerly sought by every kind of fruit-eating bird. There is no more agreeable tart. We have a large vine at home, and if we want any grapes have to take them immature. The birds congregate from all parts of the village, and make short work of the two or three bushels the vine produces. The squirrels, raccoons, opossums, bears, and other wild animals were equally fond of them. I have seen a vine which was five inches in diameter two feet above the roots, climbing to the height of one hundred feet, and hanging a giant honey-locust tree blue with its drapery of clusters. This grape mixed with the sweet elderberry made a royal pie — the sweet of the one toning up the acid of the other to a flavor most delicious, and each supplying a superabundance of wine, which had to be eaten from the pie-dish with a spoon. No sugar was required. No fruit is more wholesome, or a better general tonic. Then we had wild plums — superior to any of the imported varieties; mulberries, sweet but not very digestible; blackberries fully ripe and properly treated, which make the most delicious pie ever eaten. Those we get in the city markets are not fit to eat. When unripe the core is hard and indigestible, and very irritating to the stomach. But a fully ripe black- berry — if Adam could have had a supply of them This Paradise of Ours 127 he never would have meddled with the forbidden fruit. They were very abundant when there was sufficient rain. Then come the dewberry, a variety of the blackberry, the red and black raspberry, strawberry, gooseberry, whortleberry, sarvisberry, and others, among them the hackberry. It seems strange that nobody seems to know about this last. It is the fruit of a large tree of that name. The berry is about the size of swan-shot, with a large seed in proportion to its size, and a thin but very sweet pulp. A single hackberry does not amount to anything. The way to eat them is to fill the mouth full, and then attriturate the pulp. The kernel is sweet, but its shell is too jagged, when crushed, for human eating. Sheep, pigs, raccoons, and other animals are very fond of them. The largest of the wild fruits was the paw-paw, or cus- tard-apple. Those who are not familiar with this fruit do not like it, and it will not bear marketing. To be at their best, paw-paws must be black-ripe. The rank pumpkiny taste is then gone, and a mild, rich flavor abides, which is agreeable to almost every one. As a food they are both nutritious and healthful. Some varieties hang upon the stem all winter and retain their sweetness. The bark makes famous whistles and specially fine whips. We used to make whips, the "snap" of which could be heard a mile, and would echo like a rifle-shot. Then there was the persimmon, golden and sweet — a variety of the plum — the black-haw and red-haw, 128 Musings by Camp-Fir e and Wayside the former especially desirable, which are species of apples. The wild cherry was sought for a pur- pose now considered off color. When the whisky barrel was rolled into the cellar, enough of it was drawn off to allow room for a couple of gallons of wild cherries, which were religiously put through the bung-hole. And this reminds me that I heard a Presbyterian divine say that pure wines were not, properly speak- ing, an intoxicating liquor. I never heard the sug- gestion before, and did not believe it. He said there was a chemical combination of the various elements constituting the grape which neutralized the alcoholic elements, and left it harmless, just as prussic acid, the deadliest of poisons, is one of the essential elements of a good beefsteak. But when I remember the quantities of cherry-bounce drunk by men of those days, who lived to their four-score, some of them adding the ten to it, I have wondered if there were not something in the Doctor of Divin- ity's theory, which is so soothing to the conscience of the wine-drinker. For the present I must hold on to the old theory that "wine is a mocker." The best bread-food growing spontaneously is the wild rice, which is superior for soups to the cultivated variety. I have not enumerated all the wild nuts and fruits which were so abundant in the American wilderness, and which supported a teeming population of animal life, and which made the living of the red men so easy to obtain. There This Paradise of Ours 129 were squirrels by the million, and pigeons by the billion, and no end to wild turkeys, partridges, quails, ducks, raccoons, opossums, bear, deer, elk, buffaloes, and the rivers were teeming with fish. I have caught bass in a virgin lake as fast as I could throw in my spoon and lift them out — and this was the condition of all lakes and rivers. My father was a skillful turkey-hunter. I remember one win- ter when we grew so tired of them that my mother asked him not to bring home any more. Others, when they came on the trail of turkey, would pursue them, but the bird, like other hunted animals, keeps a specially sharp lookout backwards. My father went on horseback, and getting the general direction a flock was taking, would ride around, get before them, and wait for them. Buffalo were everywhere. Their trails were like broad wagon-roads. They beat down the young trees and made meadows for themselves in the forests. At the salt-licks they crowded and trampled each other to death. An old hunter said he had known deer to escape the jam by leaping up and running upon the solid mass of buffalo backs. These wild animals were but little shy of man. The Indian was not dangerous to them, with his bow and arrows, except at very close range. Until the white man came, with his iron weapons and his gunpowder, the bear and the panther, the bull elk and moose did not hesitate to attack him — the latter stupid brute has scarcely yet learned that he is no match for a rifleman. The 1 30 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside Indian took what he got more by stealth and strata- gem than by force; but with the superabundance of animal life, and of wild fruits and nuts and grains, the life of the Indian was that of the happy and improvident loafer, who had no need to care for the morrow. It is one of the most striking illustrations of the law of heredity that this improvidence, com- ing down to him through uncounted generations, can scarcely be eradicated. Even when fire- arms came into his hands he employed them in the old way, and used so little powder that they were not much more effective than his bow. He stalked his game until he could burn their hair with the fire of his gun. Carr, in his "Early Times in the Middle Tennessee," tells an anecdote of Kasper Mansker, one of the most noted of the early hunt- ers of that region, showing how he took advantage of an Indian by employing his knowledge of this habit. His red foe tried to call him out into the thickets by a very perfect imitation of a wild gob- bler. Mansker listened until he was satisfied that the call was not genuine, then coolly shouldering his rifle he walked past the Indian, but out of his short range, pretending to look for the turkey, and went on to an open glade, his enemy stealthily fol- lowing him. As soon as Mansker had thus lured his enemy away from the trees, he suddenly turned and shot him. Such was the paradise of four millions of square miles which the white man found between the crests This Paradise of Ours 1 3 1 of the eastern and the western mountains. The Indian had been in it before him, long before his ancestors had entered Europe — for the red man was contemporary with the extinct mammoth. The ruin of the Indian was the lap of luxury in which he found himself. But little of his energy was re- quired to clothe himself in the best of mantles — that of the buffalo hide. He did not scruple to sit at the second table of the panther, and skin and eat what the great cat had slain. His forest trees and the ground were covered with fruits and nuts in wasting profusion. He could imitate the bear by tossing fish out of the stream with his hands. And so needing not to do any good work he found evil to do, and waged incessant wars of extermination against his fellow-man. He turned the conditions which would have given a teeming population and a high grade of civilization, into the conditions for paucity and savagery of human life. But he sought his pleasure in things most congenial to him. He fought for revenge and glory, and scalped for trophies. He lived for the present, and died with unquailing courage. I know of no stoicism in his- tory so near to the sublime as the conduct of Old Tassel and the friendly Cherokee chiefs. They had been invited to a friendly conference, and seated themselves in a cabin. Gilmore, in his "John Sevier," describes the entering into this friendly circle of the leader of the white conspira- tors: 132 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside Instantly raising the tomahawk, he buried it in the brain of the nearest Indian, as he sat on the ground at the extremity of the half-circle in which they had formed them- selves. The others, seeing from this the fate which awaited them, cast their eyes to the ground, and without a word, bowed their heads to the stroke which had slaughtered their comrade. Thus ingloriously perished the peace-loving Rayetayah, known among the whites as Old Tassel — and by far the best king who, within historic times, had ruled over the Cherokees. I was saying the Indian lived for the present, and sought his pleasure in what was most congenial to him. I do not see much difference, at the core, between him and the civilized man. The latter stalks his victims as stealthily as the red warrior, and he scalps and fleeces and robs and carries off the plunder, and hangs his trophies in his brown- stone wigwam. When the inevitable hour comes, the red man shows the better and sublimer stuff that is in him. He meets his fate with unmoved countenance and unsinking heart. I need not describe what the white man does. Mortal terror and frantic grasping at the straws of possibili- ties for escape do not form a proper scene for derision. Did any of the earth's rulers have a retinue of such noble servants? Was there ever a living equal to that of my star-spangled pines? Was there ever such august silence in the circle of one's compan- ions? And then I think that this is the ideal life — that there is no life of such calm happiness to be This Paradise of Ours 133 found in the world. The oppressor's scorn, the proud man's contumely, the fawning sycophant — all things that offend are far away. Could I know that these have ceased to be, then this would be heaven. And so will heaven be. apujsing tl^e Cletcnti^ Through a Forest I DO not think there is a songster that for deli- cacy, plaintiveness, and sweetness of note com- pares with the white-throated sparrow. The first time I heard him was some years ago in the otherwise utter silence of a dense forest. Before that I preferred the wood-thrush, but he is only a clear, strong singer, without emotion or passion in his voice, but this new musician appealed to the heart. He is as plaintive, without any of the sadness of the dove. He sings on a high key, calling his first note the lowest of the octave, the four notes follow- ing are on the sixth above. But the bird is both rare and shy, and I was not aware of the exquisite perfection of his song till recently. At the dis- tance at which he is usually heard, the notes are simple, but very sweet. As I was sitting silent in my canoe a few days ago, one flew into a birch over my head and began to sing, and then I heard the trill of each of his higher notes; and one just now regaled me with a song, sitting in a tree above my cabin. It is not a mere trill, but a peculiarity of the trill which has not, I think, ever been intro- duced into music. It is perfectly charming. They are not visible when singing, keeping themselves 134 IRON RIVER T RAI Through a Forest 135 hidden in the foliage. The songs of all other noted singers are thoughtless triviality compared with that of this yearning and yet wonderfully artistic sprite of the northern woods. In form he is grace- ful, in color a light bluish gray, with a round spot of pure white about as large as a dime, on the throat. I heard fawns bleating in a jack-pine thicket one of the few hot afternoons that we had in July, and the next day took Georgie, hoping to drive one of them into a lake and capture it for a pet, but the cunning little fellows lay close, and we were not able to start them out, or find them. On our way home we came to a deep, shady basin with a plot of grass in it, saw a large, fresh bear trail with water splashed upon the grass, show- ing that a bear had just run out from wallowing in the water. Then the white muzzles of two cubs came up out of the grass, and we both started for them, Georgie taking one and I one, for a chase. We shouted at our best, trying to frighten them into climbing trees. I gained on mine and expected him to stop and get up and fight, but he got into a boggy thicket and was gone. Georgie had on shoes and so was at a disadvantage. When the chase was over, Georgie bewailed the loss. "It is too bad, too bad," said he, with a rueful face. "We could 'a' got twenty-five dollars for them." Then I asked if we had caught one, what the old bear, who was chucking and snorting on the hill above, 136 Musings by Camp-Fire arid Wayside would probably have had to say about it, "The cub would have squealed, and she'd 'a' gone for us, sure," said Georgie. "But," I said, "we have no gun, and not even a knife; and what would we have done then?" "We'd 'a' had to let the cubs go and climbed trees ourselves," said Georgie. But "It is too bad," was his refrain, "we'd 'a' got mebby twenty dollars apiece for them." While chasing the cub, which was large enough to make an ugly fight on his own account, I did not think of the necessity of asking leave of his mother. As for themselves, the cubs probably thought they each knew more than their mother. That is the way with cubs in these times. I feel sorry for the bears this year. Last year the whole country was covered with blackberries and whortleberries. (The blackberry gets its name from its color. The whortleberry, a different va- riety of the same species, is black and sweeter.) The late frost, which killed the first planting of our garden, killed them all, so that the bears must live by rooting, frogging, and fishing. The isolated lakes in this region have been a mystery to me, and I find no adequate explanation proposed in the works on geology. These lakes are all essentially alike — depressions in the sand, without visible outlet or inlet — as indeed they need none, the water flowing freely through the hills from one to the other. Wherever a depression goes down to the water level there is a lake, from two Through a Forest 137 feet to two miles in diameter. There are about fifty of them within the range of my excursions. Island Lake is in places one hundred feet deep, or one hundred and forty feet below the top of the island. I think I have come upon the process of the formation of these bowls. This sand is rock ground up by glacial action upon a rough, moun- tainous country. The ice, estimated to have been from one to two thousand feet thick, would make for itself a level road-bed, filling the depressions in the rocks with ice, the glacier sliding over the thus rock-locked ice masses. Now if we suppose that this lake has, by the action of wind-drifted and rain- washed sand, filled up one-half, then we should have the original depression to be at least two hun- dred and forty feet. When the ice-sheet slowly retreated northward, we should have here a mass of ice reaching that depth below the general level, and while it lasted, prevented the water from filling with silt the depression which it occupied. These rock-locked masses of ice would be the last to melt, and by the time they were gone, the glacial flood would have subsided, leaving the further modifica- tion of the surface to the slow action of wind, rain, and vegetation. The nonchalance of wild animals on their escape from danger is a prominent element in their happi- ness. When the danger is past, immediately they give themselves no more concern about it. We had an illustration of this one bright moonlight 138 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside night. We were sitting around the camp-fire ready to retire, and in silence, when on the mainland we heard two dashes into the water, one quickly follow- ing the other, and in a moment such a fierce and angry howling of wolves as we have seldom heard. The pack had been in chase of two deer, which took to the lake, and the hungry wolves were giving voice to their baffled hunger and rage. One of the deer came over to the island and one swam across to the further shore. They were no sooner on land again than they quietly began feeding, and we sat and listened for an hour to the plash of their feet as they waded along the margins, cropping the succulent shoots and lily-pads. So soon as they struck water their danger was over, and they gave it no further thought. A human being in such peril would have brooded over it for hours, and have recalled it with shuddering for years. Any one can see the above trait on approaching a bird's nest. The little parents are in great distress for the time, but retire beyond their view, and in a moment they are calm. Only men and women brood over the dis- tressful past, or look forward with apprehension to the future. They cherish the memory of past pleasures of every kind, and look forward with such joyous anticipations as to exceed in the pleasure of anticipation the pleasure of the reality, if happily the reality do not vanish like a mirage as they approach it. If they have more pleasure, they have Throiigh a Forest 139 also more pain — and with them both are more enduring. Where little is given, little is required. But the deer are in this wiser than we. The whippoorwill regales us every evening with his call, always cheerful because of its vigor. The nesting habits of this bird are peculiar. I do not know whether the female changes her nest before the young are hatched — probably she does, as her large mouth is adequate to picking up and carrying off her eggs, but after the hatching she has a new nest for every day, at least if disturbed, though she does not carry her young very far — a few rods usually. She places them under a sheltering shrub, on the bare ground, and when once they are found it is not difficult to find them again. They grow very rapidly, and are gray-colored, like a piece of bark or a last year's leaf, and show no signs of life when picked up and handled. An orphan wood-duck offered himself for adop- tion to one of our hens which had chicks about his size. She looked at him askance at first, but he got under her wings, and soon won her maternal regard. He could not run as fast as the chicks, and the hen would wait for him and go after him. He would make little excursions on the water, and bade fair to become one of our favorite pets, but he disappeared as mysteriously as he came. The probability is that his mother brought him to the lake in the vicinity of the hen-coop, where he went I40 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside astray after strange gods, and that she found him and carried him off on her back, as is her wont with her ducklings. She had the best right to him, and yet we were sorry to give him up. MUSINGS OF THE SOUTH JVayside Musings SPEAKING of hospitality, I could illustrate by the lovely treatment I received from Mrs. Booker T. Washington, at Tuskegee; how I had a room with an old-fashioned fireplace, with the old-fashioned dog-irons, and splendid with the flame of Alabama pine; how when I came from the evening meetings, I found a neat tray on my writing-table, garnished with a glass of Jersey milk and slices of bread ; how I was awakened in the morning by the snapping and the indescribably com- fortable sooing of the hearth-fire. The priestess of the domestic altar had sent a messenger who per- formed his sacred rite and retired so silently that I was unconscious of his presence. When I opened my eyes upon the glory that filled the room I knew of the visitant only by the blessing he had left, as he had softly closed the door and gone away. And now I write beside a similar hearth, some forty miles from Tuskegee, in the heart of the "Black Belt." It happened in this way: There was a fine-looking and gifted young minister at the con- ference, the Rev, Charles Morris. A pleasing and well-educated young man. Mr, William Benson was persuading Mr. Morris to go home with him. They 143 144 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside spoke of the road, the distance, the teams — some forty miles to Kowaliga — of the conditions of the creeks — it made my ears tingle, and to some purpose, for I secured an invitation, and here I am, pros- pecting for gold, and for literature. Yesterday we washed gold out of a gully with an ordinary frying- pan, and found quartz with the metal shining in it, I will reserve Kowaliga for another Musing, and devote this to Tuskegee. But I ought to speak of another instance of hos- pitality. We zigzagged about on the railways, chang- ing cars and [roads three times to make half the distance to Kowaliga, and then drove eighteen miles across the country and through the hills. At Talla- hassee, where we left the railroad, Mr. Key, a Bos- ton journalist, and myself went into a large general store to ask for some bread and cheese. Mr. Pat- terson, a gentleman of means and culture, after having what we asked for sold to us, took us into his private office, and with his own hands, toasted our bread and cheese, and actually, with the aid of a little butter, set us an appetizing luncn on his writing-table. We were entire strangers to Mr. Patterson. It was an act of practical courtesy and hospitality that was unique. How many men are there in his position who would go to that trouble for strangers? who would not consider it beneath their dignity? There is a sort of manliness in such virtues which pertains to the soldier or explorer or the camper. Musings of the South 145 I scarcely know how to handle so large a subject as Tuskegee in brief space. Mr. Booker Washing- ton, now the most celebrated man of his race, was a pupil of General Armstrong at Hampton. He found his way to the little village of Tuskegee — pronounced Tus->^^-gy — as a teacher, in the year 1881. Beginning with a school in a log shanty, he has built up this great institution, in which thirteen hundred negro boys and girls-, young men and women, are taught. The property consists of two thousand three hundred acres of land, and twelve buildings, the largest of which, the auditorium, seats two thousand five hundred, and is really a solid and noble building. There are some ninety teachers. Tuskegee is chiefly an industrial school. Mr. Washington's system of education is for the colored people as they are. Especial attention is given to farming, stock-breeding, fruit-raising, carpentry, brick-making, blacksmithing, cooking, sewing — all the trades which pertain to or aid in agriculture. Upon this solid, practical basis is built the academic instruction. This conference is an annual convention of negro farmers, who impart and receive the benefits of each other's experience, and discuss questions of interest to themselves and to their race. The speeches were brief, pointed, emphatic, and enthu- siastic. Farming in this section of the country is wasteful. The farmers purchase the fertilizers of commerce instead of making it for themselves. 146 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside They raise cotton and buy corn and pork. Above all the things that curse the farmer is the credit system. I notice everywhere that a discount of from fifty to two hundred per cent is made for cash. They mortgage their crops for the year, before they are planted, the result of all of which is miserable poverty. The cotton states can never be anything else but poor until there is a thorough reformation of farming and business methods. Tuskegee is the oracle of these reforms for the negroes. It is wonderful to see how keenly the negro farmers are interested, and to notice their pride in their success. Of course there is a vast inert mass of shiftlessness and stupidity and degra- dation. Bishop Turner, of the African Methodist Church, is pessimistic. He sees no hope for the negro in America. He asserts that the repressive legislation, disfranchisement, deprival of the civil rights guaranteed by the constitution, the massa- cres and lynching, and the fact that the negro has but little or no protection under the laws in many localities, leaves him in a worse condition than he was in slavery, and he advocates what he calls "repatriation," but which is really expatriation — the return of the negroes to Africa; and he argues that it is practicable to carry over five or six mil- lions of them. The bishop is bitter, as I notice that our Dr. Grimke of Washington is. But the sentiments of Tuskegee are most conciliatory. Booker Washington is the second great emancipa- Musings of the South 147 tor. He believes that the way to liberation from present oppression is through virtue and manhood. He begins, therefore, at the bottom, with charac- ter. The way for the negro to win his civil rights from the white man is to win his confidence. He must show to the white man that he is a good citi- zen, a desirable member of society, an honest and thrifty producer, whose industry enlarges the wealth and well-being of the whole community — a man to be relied on, both for faithful service and honesty in trade. He must show to the white man that he is indispensable to the prosperity of the country. I cannot go into the details of the training in Tuskegee. I will only say that the best farmer of the South is at the head of that department of the institution; that the improvement and care of live- stock is here perfect in system and in principles; and that just so far as the negro follows the teach- ings of Mr. Washington and his aids, to that extent he becomes a prosperous and respected citi- zen. The most gratifying fact about this whole movement is its rapid extension. We had present the apostle of the reform in Texas, Mr. R. L. Smith, of Oakland. Mr. Smith is a man of brains, the best kind of shrewdness, and of education. He organized among the negro farmers the "Farmers' Improvement Society of Texas." The motto of this organization is "The abolition of the credit system; better methods of farming; co-operation; proper care of the sick and dead; and the improve- 1 48 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside ment and beautifying of our homes." In brief, they devote themselves to the purification and ele- vation of home life and the success of their business interests. The society has a system of honorary degrees. The first of these relates to the avoidance of debt. The farmer who finishes his year clear of debt is awarded a diploma. If he have saved twenty-five dollars he receives a more honorable recognition. There are degrees for crops, stock, house-building, and the education of children. Mr. Smith will mail me photographs showing the new houses built under this system, compared with the old. Co-operation is carried on in the style of the Northern grange. An annex to this society is the "Woman's Barn- yard Auxiliary," devoted to the rearing and market- ing of poultry and pigs, the feeding of calves, the making of butter and cheese, curing meats, market- ing, etc. Societies at a distance send delegates to the annual conferences. The second day of the conference in Tuskegee was a meeting of the teachers and heads of schools. There was the one man, always present at a meeting, who imagines himself an orator, but is a cruel bore. In this case our specimen was president of some sort of an agricultural college in South Carolina. Inflated to bursting with egotism, this man paraded up and down the platform, never speaking to the subject, consuming the time of other speakers, posturing and strutting, a platform nuisance of the most Musings of the South 149 aggravating kind. The subject of this conference was the cultivation of better relations between the two races — the causes of the present conditions, so far as they were unfavorable, and the remedies. Booker Washington walked on dangerous ground. He said the black man went to the white man for employment, food, clothing, and shelter. Their economic interests were identical. But when it came to politics, a subject upon which all Southern white men are sensitive, the black men were arrayed solidly against them. There are only as many white Republicans in any county or city as there are fed- eral offices to distribute. It is because the negroes are solidly Republican in politics, and are in a majority in many districts, that the white man dis- franchises them, or throws out their vote. No man ought to violate his convictions at the polls, but the division of the races on political lines was most unfortunate. It was not believed by some of the speakers that anything could be gained by a shift- ing of political grounds; that white men intend that the negro shall ever be a subject race, as nearly in the relation of slavery as the laws of the United States will permit. The only way out of this is that surveyed by Booker Washington, the moral eleva- tion of the black men, and the establishment of confidence and respect between the two races for each other. In answer to my questions a very favorable view came out. The white men place no obstructions in 1 50 Musings by Camp-Fir e and Wayside the way of the negroes in the accumulation of prop- erty. In the mechanical arts and in trade, while the preference is given to the white mechanic or mer- chant, the black man will get the work if he can do it better, and he will get the trade, if a merchant, if he render more satisfactory service. There is a great difference in the relations of the two races in different localities. The better com- munities of the white people are more favorable to the negroes than the more ignorant communities. That is to be expected. The poor whites, the waste class of the population, having no inherent superiority, make the most of their color as a badge of dominance over the blacks. I took every opportunity in Montgomery, and elsewhere, to enter into conversation with white men of superior position. I found them genuinely friendly to the negroes. For example, in conver- sation with a distinguished judge, I drew him out by attacking the general character of the negroes, saying that they were, I was informed, both vicious and worthless. He warmly resented it. "They are neither vicious nor worthless. White men who treat them fairly," he said, "have no trouble with them. You have a more serious problem with your Polacks, Italians, and Huns than we have with our negroes. We do not have to call out the federal troops to keep them from destroying our railroads and factories." The old aristocracy likes the negroes. The Musings of the South 1 5 1 better class feel a paternal responsibility for the subject race, and honestly desire their best inter- ests. But they are making a serious mistake in disfranchising them indiscriminately, and in not rigorously punishing outrages upon them. There is no mistaking the fact that the negroes are devel- oping examples of first-rate patriotism and states- manship. Booker Washington does not stand alone. Smith, of Texas, is a man of exceptional political sagacity, and of organizing and executive ability. In the end I do not think the present loss of the ballot will do the negroes permanent harm. It is driving them into the only real road to success, that of bettering their own condition, both moral and material. Mr. Morris spoke to me of the claim that it is the white blood in the negro that elevates him, and said it was not true ; that he could match a pure black against any mulatto for equal ability. A few weeks ago I wrote an editorial giving the pessi- mistic views of some negro physicians in regard to the destructive effects of miscegenation upon the black population. I am assured here that this only relates to the cities, that the negro blood in the country is clean and sound. JVayside Musings BISHOP TURNER, in an address at the last evening meeting of the conference, de- nounced the Southern newspapers in un- measured terms. It had frequently been mentioned before that the Northern and general public ob- tained their views from the Southern press. As the political press of the section wishes to justify the disfranchisement of the negro, which is now complete in most of the Southern states, it can only do so by attacking their characters, indi- vidually and as a race. I was not aware that there was complaint on this score, but when attention is called to it, it is immediately seen that there is sufficient motive. Bishop Turner said to me, in reply to an expostulation, "If you want to know the truth, black your face, and pass yourself off for a negro. All doubts in your mind will be fully cleared up." By chance I obtained a view of that which so embittered the bishop. I met a Methodist minister of the southern branch, and fell into con- versation. He and a chance acquaintance, a North- ern man, began to talk of the "negro problem." I interposed to say that by the very fact that the white men had disfranchised the negroes, they were 152 Musings of the South 1 5 3 in honor bound to give them the protection of the law; to guarantee to every one accused of crime a fair trial. "If a man should foully attack your wife or child, what would you do?" he asked. "I would kill him, if I could get at him," I replied. "Very well, then, what are you complaining about?" "I am complaining that you kill men who are accused of such offenses without knowing whether they are guilty or not. Make your law as severe as you like, but take lawful precautions that the innocent may not suffer its penalties." And now came out the point made by Bishop Turner: "Have you read accounts of the shootings at Wilmington, and do you know why those negroes were shot?" I replied, "Only generally." "Well, the 'H&vj York Journal says it was because the men elected by the negro vote intended to legalize rape. That was true, and that was why the whites rose up and lynched them. " There it was! There was a Methodist minister going about and filling the minds of the people with that murderous lie — filling their minds with the only motive by which civilized man justifies murder; and this not against an individual, but against a race. I have said that the old masters, the old aristoc- racy of the South, with some of whom I have con- versed, have the kindliest feeling toward the colored people, and the feeling was, and is, affectionately reciprocated. It is true that they did, and do, grant them favors and help in preference to white 154 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside men. But the old masters are dying, and the new- Pharaoh knows not Joseph. I said that I had been among the Appalachian Highlanders, and found myself among my racial kindred. "Among the moonshiners?" he said. "Yes, among the moonshiners, and really I do not blame them so much. They are living in the period in which I lived when a boy, when there were more little still-houses around us than school- houses, and nobody ever thought of attaching wrong to the business." "I would not want that fire under my boiler in the next world." My ministerial chance acquaintance further asked: "Do you know what the negroes want? They want social equality," and he looked at me with wide-eyed horror. I had to be polite, and not tell him what amused me. It was the spectacle, a fancy, of a man who had to call in his neighbors, with shot-guns, to keep him from marrying a colored individual. "There is that negro, Booker Washington," he said; "now if you were going to a hotel and had to choose between him and a white man for a room- mate, which would you choose?" I replied that I would choose neither, but if it were a matter of compulsion, I could not decide the question on general principles. It would be a ques- tion to be decided on sanitary inspection. This matter came up in a conversation with Mr. Washing- Musings of the South 1 5 5 ton in connection with Frederick Douglass. He said that much as Douglass was revered, he did his race great harm by his last marriage, gave occasion for the charge that they aspired to the possession of white wives. Douglass himself saw his mistake and regretted it, not because of his wife, however. There are the same two classes in the South that there are in the North, and the world over. There is an intelligent and far-seeing patriotism here, and it is in the class which in the long run molds and controls public sentiment. This is supplemented by the Anglo-Saxon, not the Spanish, sense of honor, and is further supplemented by Christian sentiment and principles. These men do not underrate the seriousness of the problem before them, but they face it courageously. It affords them great hope to witness the elements of self-help so powerfully at work among the colored people, and they express the deepest interest, and afford active encourage- ment. I spoke in my last Musing of happening here at Kowaliga by overhearing a conversation between two attractive young men, Mr. Benson and Mr. Morris. The latter is an orator of considerable power. I dissuaded him from going to Liberia, by saying that he was needed at home, and cited the instance of Mr. Briar, who went to Gaboon — the useless sacrifice of a valuable life. Mr. Morris replied, "Institutions must have graves for their foundations." Young Mr. Benson is finely edu- 156 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside cated, and is actuated by high principles and ideals. He has turned his back upon the allurements of the cities, and devoted his life to the elevation of his people in this chance place, in the heart of the "Black Belt." Mr. John J. Benson, his father, was fourteen years old when emancipated on the advice given generally by General Lee on his surrender. Mr. Benson's father was his master. He had died before the emancipation, and John and four full brothers and sisters were divided up among the heirs as slaves. His mother, still living, recovered all her children but one, who was sold away on his father's death, and could not be traced. Another child, a little girl of six, was recovered by young John. He found her painted over with tar, as she was otherwise indistinguishable from a white child, carried her the most of the way of fourteen miles at night in his arms; but she soon died. John set resolutely to work with one special resolve: never to go in debt. He has succeeded so well that he now owns three thousand acres of land, sixty head of horses and mules, as many cows, a saw-mill and a grist-mill, and sufificient farming utensils for his plantations. Something over two hundred people are supported on his property — tenants, or laborers and their families. On returning from Howard University three years ago, young Benson built and set up a store at an investment of four thousand dollars. The insurance underwriters would not Musings of the South 1 5 7 take the risk, and wisely, as it was soon fired by an incendiary and proved a total loss. This was prob- ably not so unfortunate, as it turned his attention to benevolent work. A lady who was clearing a plantation furnished the pine logs, Mr. Benson sawed them, the people contributed their labor, and the result is a large school-building, forty by sixty feet, with rooms for one hundred and twenty stu- dents. The attendance for the year amounts to two hundred and fifty pupils. The training is in- dustrial. Young Benson obtained a scholarship in a technical school in Boston for a young white man who is now there preparing himself to teach mechan- ical industry in this school. One of his sisters is teaching in the school, and one is at Tuskegee, preparing for the same work. The purpose of the Bensons, father and son, is to set up a model negro settlement, and demon- strate the possibility of success for their people in intelligent industry. As an example of what is possible, one of Benson's tenants selected a patch of three measured acres, from which last year he harvested 137 bushels of oats, 52 bushels of corn, 25 bushels of potatoes, and 35 bushels of peas. The oats were the first crop, and the other crops followed. The total value at prices here was $119.50. There are four traditional drags upon the people, white and black. The first is the large investment each year in commercial fertilizers. 158 Mzisings by Camp- Fire and Wayside They do not think they can make a cotton crop without guano. Mr. Benson has demonstrated the fact that he can make more cotton to the acre with- out it than they can with it. He makes his own. When the cotton crop is harvested, and all others are idle, during the months intervening, he rakes leaves in the woods, and makes compost by using his cotton seed, which others sell at ten cents per bushel. This compost, with the savings of his stock barns and yards, gives him a fertilizer superior to the adulterated guano, without cost other than labor which would otherwise be unemployed. The second traditional drag is the credit system. This is an inheritance from the remotest past of cotton planting in this country. The small planter or farmer never sees money. He is furnished with a living for himself and his help, and his mules, mortgaging his crop for the same, is charged what- ever prices the store-keeper likes to charge, and takes him his receipts for his cotton, which usually leaves him in debt, and he begins to borrow on the next crop. The third traditional drag is that he raises cot- ton exclusively, and buys his corn and meat, paying high prices. They are just now paying fifty-five cents per bushel for their corn. This was always so. I remember that the Ohio farmers depended upon a good cotton crop to give them a market for their pork. The fourth traditional drag is laziness. When Musings of the South 1 59 the cotton crop is picked no work is done till plant- ing time comes again. The way Mr. Benson made his handsome home was by reversing every one of these customs. He is bringing his people to his view of things. The consequence is that those of his tenants who follow his example and advice are getting ahead. apujsing tt)t foutteentl^ JVayside Musings I HASTILY took a picture of the great falls of the Tallahassee as I stopped at Tallahassee to take a team across the country to Kowaliga, but marked the scenery, intending to spend a day there when I came out, and fill my case with fine negatives. But there had been a heavy rain and the tumbling water was of the same color with the rocks, and I saw that good pictures were impossi- ble, still I took a half-dozen, having nothing else to do. As I look at these monotonous negatives and see how splendid those up-flying columns of spray would have been had they been clear water instead of red mud, it gives me that sinking of heart with which all photographers, amateur or professional, are familiar. Allow me to say that there is no finer set of lenses than mine — the Zeiss. The price was above my purse, but I received the outfit as a Christmas present. An exposure of one- fiftieth of one second, so quick that the eye can hardly recognize it, gives me details as sharp as those of a magnifying glass. But I looked at the leaping and foaming water, which here makes a descent of fifty feet, and then thought of the train-loads of cotton which I saw 1 60 Musings of the South going upon the cars at Montgomery to be shipped to England, and wondered why the immense cotton- mill, which is now ready for its roof at the foot of the falls, had not been built there long ago. For fifty or more years the planters have been hauling their heavy bales right by this splendid water-power to be shipped to New England or abroad. By the time the next crop is ready this great mill will be ready for it. It is built of stone, quarried out of its basement. The planters for thirty miles around — an area of three thousand five hundred square miles — will haul their cotton straight to the mill — not a cent of cost for transportation. They will raft it down the Tallahassee from a hundred miles above; the mill will get all its cotton direct from the fields and gins. The market for the product will be, in part, right here. They can float the surplus down the Alabama River to the gulf. How are the New England mills going to compete with such advantages against them? They cannot do it. Some of these Southern rivers are so rapid that they would furnish a mill-site every ten miles. The French Broad falls a thousand feet in a little over a hundred miles. The time is not far off when our cotton states will sell no more raw cotton. They will ship it out in sheetings, prints, ginghams, duck-canvas, and other weaves and fabrics. Everybody has heard of Birmingham. The de- velopment of iron manufacture there is only in its beginning. One great source of wealth has been 1 62 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside wasted — the forests. One is astonished to see great pine forests of the finest timber deadened and set on fire to clear land, one good tree of which is worth more than the whole acre on which it and a dozen others like it grew. Still this Southland is the seat of future enormous wealth. It contains nearly all the elements of the wealth of the world, and eager hands are reaching out from the North and from England to develop it. Dig the Nicara- guan Canal! Keep the Oriental doors open, that the golden tide may flow in and flow out of this peerless empire! The Southern renter, be he white or black, is a peon, who is allowed a bare living by his landlord. He lives mostly upon corn-meal, for which he is in debt, and be his crop of cotton large or small makes no great difference to him, as it all goes any- way at the end of the year, to pay for the year's living. As for the landlord, he is not much better off, because the cotton will barely pay his debt tor the year's supplies for his land and tenants, his fertilizers, pork, meal, and mule feed. The Ben- sons, father and son, have set themselves, as I said previously, to build up a thriving neighborhood. John J., the father, simply in the way of business, and to get the most out of his large landed estate, has been trying to bring up the character of his tenants — to teach them the value of intelligent planting, and of industry. Finding a desirable man he offers to sell him land, and show him how Musings of the South 163 to pay for it. He very soon saw that his land-hold- ings would be unprofitable to him if he could not make them profitable to his tenants. All he wants is the right kind of a man. He need not have any- thing but a few ragged clothes. Benson will furnish him mules, a cow, a pig, seed, farming utensils, everything, and give him half he raises. That is the business side of it, and there is a weighty hint to landholders how to make their lands pay inter- est. Young Benson wants good society. He wants a cultivated wife, and people around her who will make her contented in this out-of-the-way place. Therefore he is pushing for the right kind of a school. "Here is this timber going to waste," he says. "We want to teach our people how to make wagons, ax-handles, plow-stocks, houses, furniture, every useful thing that is wooden, out of it. Here is this water-power going to waste. We want to put it to work for the people. Here is the school-house. We want to make the people intelligent, and we want an educated, but sensible, minister. We want to get rid of cock-fighting, gambling, drinking, loafing, and every sort of meanness, and have a neighborhood that is fit for a man to live comfort- ably and happily in." It is plain to be seen that the elder Benson is on the right track for doubling the price of his land, and getting his pay for his goods. And it is equally plain that the younger Benson is on the right track for himself as a cultured man, for his neigh- 1 64 Mtisings by Camp-Fire and Wayside bors and their children, and for his race in this country. These two, without any knowledge of theoretic sociology, are getting at the kernel of it as instinctively as a squirrel gets at the kernel of a nut. They are solving the "negro problem" in the only way it ever can be solved. By the way, this problem is as much of a poor white, as it is of a rich white, problem — as much of an Anglo-Saxon as an African problem. It was imagined that the negro could be elevated to intelligent citizenship by constitutional law — a favorite idea in moral reform with many. But he is no exception. All must " Wait beneath the furnace blast The pangs of transformation." The transition period is for him what it ever has been for man — a period of suffering. The downfall of slavery was the downfall of feudalism — history repeating itself. The dependents of the baron's castle, his retainers and serfs, were turned out upon the world without experience in self-help or self-control, to beg, steal, or starve, the alternative being between starvation and the gibbet. Thou- sands died of one or the other. The unfit were weeded out, and only sturdiness and character sur- vived to constitute the stalwart Teutonic nations of to-day. The Southern negro has no protection in life or person but that which comes of public senti- ment. Any white man, and especially any white woman, can have a negro lynched, and as they are Musings of the South 165 not allowed to sit upon juries, if there be not locally a high sense of justice among the white men, there is no redress. This was really the subject of the second day's conference in Tuskegee: "How shall better rela- tions be brought about between the two races?" The relations of the white man to the negro are already satisfactory to him, as he establishes them by public sentiment and by law. The question really, then, was, "How shall the negro win the con- fidence and good-will of the white man?" Booker Washington is right in believing that the negro can win this confidence and good-will, and hence legal protection, by the elevation of his own character. Washington, Benson, and Smith of Texas, know that he can only do it by making himself an indus- trious, reliable, and valuable member of the com- munity. If I had the ear of the public of the South, I would say that they could do nothing better for themselves than to give full recognition to merit by insisting upon the civil rights of intelligent and worthy negroes. This would put a high reward and inducement before worthy colored people, and before the unworthy, to rise. It would also satisfy public Northern sentiment — a sentiment which, though the South may not be aware of it, will as surely culminate in drastic action as slavery did. While a Georgia cracker, who can neither read nor write, the lowest white man in America, can go to the polls and counterbalance two white votes of the 1 66 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside best element in the country, and this in violation of the constitution and laws of the United States, it would be very foolish in a Southern politician to imagine that the Northern voter will long submit. The forty-eight congressmen who are there in vio- lation of the equal rights of the Northern voter will be compelled to retire, unless there is a change. This is not the negro's question, it is the white man's question, and he is no friend of the Southern white voter who leads him to suppose that the white man can thus be half disfranchised from his share in the control of the government of the United States, and this disability be maintained. We put it to the intelligent Southern voter himself. Would you stand it? Not if you had the power to right it. If the negro is not fit to vote, he is not fit to be voted. But if it be made apparent that the dis- franchisement of the negro is not for partisan political purposes, that it is solely for the protec- tion of good government — and this undoubtedly is the reason for the assent of enlightened and patri- otic Southern citizens to present restrictions — that fact can be demonstrated by giving equal political rights to negroes who are fit to exercise the fran- chise intelligently. This would go far toward the reconciliation of the Northern voter to the existing basis of representation. ^mim t\it fffteenti^ Asi)ects of Southern Prosperity ASIDE from ethical questions involved, which were so long agitated, this finest belt of the '- continent, it is now manifest, was seriously harmed by slavery — a harm which continued long because it was not realized. It hindered progress of every kind, concentrated labor in a single path, im- poverished the soil, and excluded the new population which vitalized the North. No matter how good a stock of people may be at the beginning, it needs the circulation of the blood of the best races to maintain it at its best. But for the excluding influence of slavery this Southland would now be the Eden of the earth. Time is required to change old traditions and habits. The change is here, and the South is on the highway to great prosperity. If exported cotton was King, manufactured cotton is Kaiser. Hard as it may be on New and Old England, the South will cease to be a cotton exporting country, and appear with finished products, without a rival in the markets of the world. So long as the home supply is sufficient to furnish the raw material for another mill, it will pay to plant that mill. There is not a required item lacking. The coal in my grate here I find to be of very superior quality. 167 1 68 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside This same quality is laid down at the mills for one dollar and fifty cents per ton. Abundance of cheap food, wood, iron, stone, water-power, a docile labor, give unapproachable advantages. The chief expense of old-time production, labor, is practically canceled. An acre of automatic looms, every one running with incredible celerity, gives a powerful impression of the suppression of operative skill and muscle. The docile negro is here, and he has the Oriental aptitude for manipulation in a given line. The South will get all there is in cotton, from start to finish, and she does not intend to be shut out of the market. If the "door" is closed it will only be necessary to let the contract for opening it to the Southern state that will take the job at the lowest bid. It was comical to see these fiery fel- lows playing Quaker last summer. In the "good old slavery times" — and there were good times for both the slaves and masters in old Kentucky and Virginia, not so good in the cot- ton and rice fields — when a master cared nothing for his slaves but for what he could get out of them, he would employ either a Yankee or a "nigger" overseer. They were about on a par, but the Yankee generally was the worst. We may say, with limitations, that the Yankee and negro over- seers abolished slavery. A gentleman — I forget names in a minute, and I did not have his card — invited me to visit his cot- ton-mill. I took the invitation as good for the first Musings of the South i6q mill I came to, and applied at the office. An elderly man sitting at a desk said I would have to apply to the superintendent, and pointed him out to me. "Who invited you here?" he growled. "He ought to have asked me. But go," and he waved his hand toward a side door. I hesitated, not knowing exactly whether he was putting me in or putting me out. "There!" he said, roughly, pointing to the side door. My first impulse was to express my personal opinion of him and retire — but there came a gleam of recognition. I knew him of old — that is, I knew the breed. One does not need to know each indi- vidual specimen when he knows the breed. "Oh!" I thought, "so you are the Yankee overseer!" and I looked him over. Yes, there was no mistaking his class identity. Fifty years ago I noticed that any two of them were as alike in disposition, and nearly as much in looks, as two bears. Now I wanted to see whether any change had come in two genera- tions, for better or worse, over the Yankee over- seer. The "negro," I knew, had improved. Had the Yankee? That was the sociological problem before me. I had noticed the bellowing of the steam bull at 4:30 A. M. At first I thought it a fire-alarm. Then it woke the echoes again at 5 a. m., then at 5 : 40, and once more at 6 a. m. I was curious to know what all this threatening was about. A hungry lion could not have been more impatient. 1 70 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside I went out at that side door and into the huge building with my wrath submerged in scientific en- thusiasm. Acres of looms — about eight hundred of them, they tell me. Every one driven at the top of its speed. The shuttles flew like shot. Thirty per cent per annum, net, on the capital, was what they were going for and getting. The air was full of roar and of cotton fibers. Little boys and girls, young women and men, were hovering and flitting about in the din and dust like ghosts — which the children soon will be. After looking over the various processes I went to the power-house. There was a bright, gentle- manly young man in charge, plainly a well-bred young man. I took his name, Mr. Messer, possibly a relative of Wilbur Messer, head of our Y. M. C. A. His engine was ten hundred horse-power, he had to make it pull for twelve hundred; but a new fifteen hundred was going in which would take on another eight hundred looms. Returning along the dusty road, a negro came over the hill on a galloping mule. He was licking the mule to make it go faster. Coming opposite me he reined up strongly with a "Whoa!" "Say, Mister, did ye see anything of a plow-pint as ye come along?" I had not seen any plow-point. "How did you happen to lose it?" "Dat mule," he answered, looking down fiercely at the long ears, and hitting him a cut he was galloping again. Just so. It is always "dat mule. " Musings of the South 1 7 1 "How much time is a day's work over there?" pointing to the Dallas mill, I inquired of a passing white man. "From six till six-twenty." "They have an hour at noon, I suppose?" "No, sir, a half hour." "Do you mean to say they work those children twelve hours a day?" "No, sir, eleven, and fifty minutes. They have a half hour off, as I told you." "Sundays?" "No, sir, the mills are not run on Sundays." John Calvin, wherever you are, do you hear that? You see that wherever God comes in he comes to save. It is only the devil, the overseer, and the absentee proprietor who would damn people for their own glory. The next morning when the last bellow was blown I looked out upon the eastern dawn. It was roseate with hope and promise. From the tall stack a long streamer of soot trailed the sky, stain- ing the brow of the day. "And the smoke of their torment ascendeth forages and ages"; not "for- ever and ever, " thank God. He did not write it that way. Not forever and ever, because the legis- lature of Alabama may come to the knowledge that "the powers that be are of God," and in his name, and in the interest of his salvation, put a stop to the Yankee overseer. Fifty years ago God was deal- ing with blacks, now it is with whites. The color makes no difference to him. He makes the white children whiter, just as he used to make the black children blacker. It took some blood to wipe him 172 Musings by Camp-Fire mid Wayside out before. A bottle of ink will do it now. It would be wholly unjust to construe what I have said of a particular instance to all the mill owners and superintendents. Some of them are men of benevolence and Christian character, who do the best they can for the health, moral elevation, and happiness of their operatives. I could point to such establishments and name the men. The evil comes largely to the South, as it went to Ireland, from non-resident proprietary. That word largely explains it. And these non-resident interests set the pace and give character to the system. It must be placed under legal regulation, or it will continu- ally grow worse. Like all wrongs which arise out of greed, this evil of child slavery is strongly entrenched and will be found to be very difficult of suppression. Like the old black slavery it is a "domestic institu- tion" — that is, it falls under the reserved rights of the states, and the constitution gives the general government no power to interfere. But the various cotton states are just now competing strongly with each other for the new manufactories. The capi- talists let it be understood that any limitations put upon child labor will be regarded by them as "un- friendly legislation" — same old thing, you see — and they will build mills only in states which are friendly to them. Mr. Bitzer told me of an effort that had been made recently for the suppression of white slavery in Alabama. A bill was drawn with Musings of the Sotith 173 the following moderate provisions : Forbidding the employment of children under twelve years of age in the factories; requiring that children up to the age of fourteen years should not be employed unless they could show a certificate of three months' school attendance each year; reducing the day's labor to eleven hours by giving one hour of rest at noon; making a week's work consist of sixty working hours, which if they ran eleven hours per day, would give the children Saturday afternoons. An exception was made of poor widows' children who supported their mothers, and were not thus pro- tected. Lobbyists came from all over the state and succeeded in defeating the bill. Alabama will not place herself at a disadvantage in competing with other states for cotton factories. I have said that the item of labor wage does not count so high, com- paratively, as in other lines of manufacture, and it is becoming less. An invention has just been intro- duced which makes the loom a perfect automaton. When the bobbin in the shuttle is exhausted, the device flings the stick out and replaces it with a new bobbin. One attendant, to whom sixty cents a day is paid, will run twelve of these looms — give one hundred and forty-four hours of machine work for sixty cents — one loom twelve hours for five cents. This is practically eliminating wages from the cost of manufacture. There is no economic necessity for child labor. The advantages which the manufacturer in the 174 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside South has over his competitors elsewhere, places him out of reach, above, and ahead of them. It is all right for him to keep his machinery moving twenty-four hours to the day if the market demands it, but he can afford to run three shifts of eight hours each. We would like to see him work up every ounce of cotton raised on this side of the water. The Tennessee here is a noble looking river, although along the low valley, which overflows in the spring freshets, there is malaria. We drove up to a dilapidated house where the children were so plenty it seemed like a school. The air was chill, and Mr. Bitzer, like all these Southerners, found it too bracing for comfort, so we went in for a warm. There was a low fire, but no wood cut, so I swung an ax on a dry elm log — you know how that chops — and got a piece off it, kind of "chawed" it off with the ax. "How many children have you?" the pater was asked. "Six or seven, so fur," he answered. It seems he had not kept tally on a notched stick, so he was not exactly sure. One of the boys out- side asked, "How much do you charge for takin' pictures?" "Nothing." That boy slid into the house quickly to his mother. She came out and said she had been saving and hoping for money enough to have pictures of her children, but it seemed as if she never could get it. She wanted seven copies, one for each child, so that if any of them should die there would be a remembrancer. Mtismgs of the South 175 I thought of the father's "so fur" and have made an extra copy for future contingencies. The South is making future trouble for herself with these new manufactories. The various locali- ties are competing for them, and submitting to extortionate and unreasonable demands. I have not time to investigate and verify the statements I hear made, but have no reason to doubt them. Take the Dallas mill here in Huntsville, which I visited. They have acquired large land property in the edge of the city, on which to erect their mills and villages. They are exempted from taxation for ten years. They are furnished free, at the expense of the city, with water pumped from the great spring. They are indifferent to the welfare of their employes. For example, an epidemic of measles broke out among them, and the benevolent citizens had to donate money for the care of the company's employes, to which relief the latter refused to contribute a cent. On being appealed to, the superintendent would look over his roll, and say, "Not in our employment." They were not in the employment of the company while they were sick or dying, or to be buried, because as soon as they fell ill their names were stricken off the roll. The rise of real estate and the presence of a market for produce are good things, but it is not all good. Mr. Bitzer is working with constant energy to bring up the schools, and to establish better ones. Miss House is giving her life and talents to settlement 1 76 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside work among the mill employes, and with most satis- factory success. I hear of one hopeful sign — that the mill employes encourage her work, because they say it improves the service. That is the only streak of humanity I discovered there. The South — Scenic and Educational STATISTICS carry but little impression. Some twenty years ago, visiting the Pacific slope, I was deeply conscious that the descriptions and appeals of the Board of Home Missions, even the letters constantly received by The Interior from the field, gave but a feeble idea of the conditions and the possibilities — at least they had not im- pressed me adequately. I said that if all our membership could see what I saw, and feel what was forced upon me, the treasury of the Board would be filled to overflowing. It was even more affecting to visit the Southern Highlanders two or three years ago. It makes one's heart ache to see immortal treasures going to waste, when the rescue would come swiftly and strongly if our people could see for themselves. But it is impossible to carry the facts to the mind by pen or speech — wholly impossible. One must see those boys and girls through the eyes of his heart before he can know. In the first place, they are very handsome — with pleasant, bright faces, sleeping intelligence gleaming in their eyes like a misty star, shapely brown bare legs and feet, agile limbs and minds — they are altogether lovely. And what a moral and 177 178 Musings by Camp-Fir e and Wayside religious power for church and country lies there awaiting the touch! Colonel Minnis, of Knoxville, insisted strongly upon my visiting Maryville college, though I needed rest and ability to sleep much more than college history. I must deal very briefly with the problem which besets Maryville. Mr. Than and Mr. Dodge, and perhaps some others, made donations to Mary- ville, on the understanding that the institution should become white and black, co-educational. I see that it is claimed that it always was so, though it must have been only nominally. There are now some three hundred and fifty students, of whom only five are colored, and these not resident in the college buildings. But these five — about the aver- age — give repute to the institution; students refuse to carry its diplomas, go elsewhere to graduate, or conceal their abna mater. If a single colored girl were admitted it would be the signal for a general dispersion, so I was assured. I was told, when about to sail for Europe, that it was of no use for me to try to reconstruct the continent — that I must adapt myself to it as it is, and make myself as comfortable as possible with things as they are. We must recognize traditions, habits, and prejudices, the growth of centuries in the South, if we would not be useless there and impracticable. I said to the brethren that it was not a matter of other principle than the principle Musings of the South 1 79 of common sense; that a principle misapplied defeats itself, and becomes no principle in that par- ticular case. The trustees, directors, and faculty are men of strictest honor, and would not violate an obligation to save the college from failure. They are determined to execute the wishes and intentions of the donors to the very best of their ability and possibility, but it is very literally impos- sible to follow lines that are projected into the future, where a knowledge of its conditions and developments cannot be foreseen. The donors had in mind a co-educational work similar to that of Berea. That cannot be made successful in Tennessee. The college, to exist, must be practically one or the other. It cannot be both. Any attempt to make it the latter would defeat the intentions of the donors, both for whites and blacks. Whatever we may think of the facts, neither sound judgment nor principle ignores them. Southern families will not send their sons and daughters to an institution where colored girls are admitted. The negroes are receiving no benefit from Maryville college. I particularly noticed the few colored boys there — and saw that they felt their isolation, and were not comfortable, much less happy. There is a fine negro school near by, Knoxville College, where they are doing excel- lent work. The trustees will most scrupulously see that the negroes get full benefit; and they can best i8o Musings by Camp-Fir e and Wayside do it, and it is their duty to do the best, by sending those five boys over to Knoxville College and pro- viding for them there or elsewhere. I called on the president, Dr. Boardman— a delightful call. He resigns because of age and health. A refined, scholarly, urbane personality and character of the highest type — and Professor Wilson. Here was a son of an old friend of my boyhood. We took a stroll on the noble campus — a forest of two hundred and fifty acres. In a little clearing lay the ruins of an old cabin, and that cabin has a history. It was full of a degraded, marriageless family. The young men took hold of them with Christian hands and helped them not only to a higher life, but to high careers of honor and of usefulness. That is a sample of what can be done on an unlimited scale. I had heard of a narrow gauge railway which ran out of Johnson City up the canon of Watauga, and was soon in that "city." They say it had a "boom," which left the people disconsolate. The "hotels" had a horrible look, but a colored boy took me to a private boarding-house, where I found every appointment neat, though humble. Next morning rose clear and cool. The conductor kindly stopped his train at the most favorable point, and advised me to signal him on his return in the even- ing, from an up-grade or level, as he could not stop at a steep descent. The tumbling river was partly frozen. Ice cascades hung on the huge Musings of the South walls. The sun was brilliant — just the scenes and conditions I Jiad been longing for. On opening my camera — my beautiful, precious camera — it looked like a wreck. I had a chest made for my instru- ments and plates that was supposed to be wrecker- proof. The chest must have been dropped from a height on a rock. The lock and hinges were twisted ofif, and I supposed that I was defeated. But it was not hopeless after all, and I soon got it into working condition, then began to climb and crawl and tug for position. I had nothing to eat, and the air was cold on those heights, but I was enthusiastic every minute. The next day I hunted up Mr. Cory, our Sunday-school missionary, and Mr. Moore, a recent McCormick graduate, pastor there, and with a large lunch basket, Mr. Cory bringing another, returned to the canon. Glorious day! I came away with two dozen eight-by-ten exposed plates, skinned shins, briar-raked hands, knees blue with bruises, the happiest old man in Tennessee. I taught Cory and Moore the art of mountain climbing. Cory was directed to get secure footing, Moore to stand in hand reach below him, and I below Moore. Then the camera was passed up, "Now, gentlemen, we are to take double wrist grips and all pull. " It worked beautifully, but Cory thought it might be well to reverse the posi- tion. He could not see exactly how my pulling helped the rest of the chain, but I did. I was giv- ing the rest my "moral support." 1 82 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside At the mouth of the canon lie the Sycamore Shoals, rendered famous by the assemblage and mobilization there of Sevier's six hundred for the King's Mountain campaign. Each had a good horse, a powder-horn, a buck-skin sack of bullets, greased patches, and a block of parched corn, cemented with maple sugar. Thus equipped, they crossed the mountain and won the most glorious victory of the Revolutionary war. Sevier's tactics were simple. "When the redcoats charge bayo- nets, run your best, but don't run away. " That won the battle. After running away, the buck-skins would reload and rush back in a fury of wrath. Their losses almost all came from refusal to run. A clubbed rifle was no match for a bayonet. The handling of baggage on the Southern roads is about where it was in the North twenty years ago. A merchant told me it was the same with freight. His boxes were roughly used, and his goods not infrequently damaged. The fixtures in my camera were wrenched, the mahogany split, and it looked hopeless. I have never had any harm done to my chest of tools or its contents before. As for glass plates, none were broken. I pack them in a manner that makes them secure, unless the chest itself be broken in pieces. It would be well if the railroad authorities would hold their employes in this regard to a strict responsibility. I have not found any more beautiful scenery than this. It has not the massiveness and grandeur Musings of the South 183 of the Alaskan mountains, but there are sufficient of these, and a beauty possessed by none of the great ranges. There is another canon reachable from Johnson which rivals the Watauga. I had no idea that such scenery was within such convenient reach. ALASKAN MUSI NGS fl^ujsing tl^e ^etenteenti^ Snoqualmie Falls MY friend, Dr. Ramsay, arranged an excur- sion for me to the Falls of Snoqualmie. I was fortunate in finding that the presi- dent of the Power Company is a son of the Mr. Baker who was one of the men who made the World's Fair a success — president of the Board of Trade, and of the Civic Federation. Mr. Baker, Jr., did everything that generous hospitality could do to make my visit pleasant. I never heard of Snoqualmie Falls till Dr. Ram- say invited me to visit them. I undertake to say that not one intelligent person in a thousand east of the Rockies ever heard of them. What we hear is rather of the petty Lanterbrunnen in the Alps. The falls are twenty-two miles distant from Seattle. To get there one has to make a detour by rail of fifty-two miles. Approaching the canon one can locate the cataract by the cloud of mist rising above the trees. It is not easy to give an idea of the size of a river, excepting by comparing it to some other river mutually known. The Snoqualmie is from one hundred and fifty to three hundred feet wide and flows in a deep channel. Where it takes its bend to plunge two hundred and sixty-eight feet 187 1 88 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside sheer and clear down into the canon, I estimated the depth on the edge of the precipice to be about eight feet. The downward curve, like that of Niagara, is a calm, swift, smooth movement, which one would describe as majestic. Precisely as with the plunge of the Yellowstone into the Grand Canon, a rock parts the current, which unites again a few feet below. I remember to have described the effect on the Yellowstone Falls as that of an emerald pin fastening a veil. It is of no use to employ eloquent generalities in describing such a scene. It is better to try to convey as clear an impression as one can by a description. The water is of a light olive-green in color. The momentum of the current, before leaving the cliff, carries it out in a curve. The rock above makes a deep fissure in the water as it falls, and in this fissure its green color is preserved, while on both sides it is more white and dazzling than snow. At a point about fifty feet below, the rockets begin to shoot out from the main current, a white glistening nuclei followed by fan-shaped trails. Further down the rockets increase in number. At the bottom of the falls they shoot out in great numbers in every direction, some of them rising a hundred feet and striking the main falls. The bottom of the chasm is a boiling cauldron, of a turbulence and of a whiteness that is impossible to describe. It is whiter than snow, which always reflects the blue or the leaden light of the sky above. Those leaping waves and volcanoes Snoqualmie Falls of foam take their light from the sun alone, and are therefore as white as the sun, and of a brilliance to be seen only in the sun. There is one other feature which is peculiar to this fall. It appears about twenty feet below the top and before the water has changed from all green to all white — bars of white and green across the side of the cataract. These bars are about two feet wide and four feet apart. The nearest comparison I can make is of silken curtains, shading off from bright green at top into snow-white at the fringe. The fall produces a strong wind, which drives the rockets and other spray before it. The canon is just like that of Niagara, only narrower and very nearly twice as deep. By observing the movement of the mist one perceives that the air in the chasm is converted into a "breast-wheel." It is driven down with great force by the friction of the fall, moves down stream below, curves up to a height above the level of the top of the fall, and then descends again. The air is thus a wheel four hundred feet in diameter, revolving, as I have said, precisely as, and upon the same principle with, a breast-wheel, as distinguished from an overshot. The impression one receives, except in the descending curve at the top of the fall, is not of power but of beauty and grace, and I may say, by association of gentleness. One thinks as he gazes long at the scene that he is looking upon immacu- late and unimaginable beauty and grace. As I said. iQO Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside the idea of power is wholly excluded by that of beauty. We cannot put the two qualities together very readily in our minds. There is always an ele- ment of delicacy and fragility in our observations and conceptions of beauty. What a tremendous contrast, therefore, to descend the deep, black shaft down through the flinty basaltic rock, two hundred and seventy feet to the chamber below. This chamber is the power-room, thirty feet high and fifty feet wide, excavated out of the rock, with a gallery running hundreds of feet till it reaches the air at the bottom of the chasm. In this shaft is set a steel tube eight feet in diameter which is to carry the water down to the motors. At the foot of this tube the water pressure is one hundred and twenty- five pounds to the square inch. The motors are upon an entirely new principle which has never before been applied. The principle is of two inter- locked turnstiles set in a circular steel box. The water cannot pass at the sides, nor above nor below; it must turn the turnstiles to get through. Each of these wheels, which I compare to turnstiles, weighs twenty-four thousand pounds, and they are to revolve at the speed of three hundred and sixty revolutions per minute. Now here is the contrast. That graceful and most beautiful drapery of jeweled lace is here to put forth the strength of a hundred thousand horses and drive those wheels, weighing twelve tons each, at the incredible velocity of three hundred and Snoqualmie Falls 191 sixty revolutions per minute. The falls reveal noth- ing but beauty and glory, dwelling in sparkling mist and wreathed with double rainbows — such they are out there in the sun. Fettered down in that black obsidian cavern, forced to plant their white feet on cyclopean steps of steel, they exert the energy of a hundred thousand Vulcans. We do not associate qualities so different from each other, not because they are logically exclusive, but because either of them absorbs us for the time. The black wheels in the black cavern I looked at briefly, but I could sit and gaze at the falls for days. The energy received from the water by those wheels is sent along wires of aluminum to the cities of Tacoma, Seattle, and Everett. There it will light up homes and churches, whirl cars smoothly along the streets, weld iron, grind flour, and in a hundred ways relieve aching backs and arms of severe toil. In one of the freshets, some years ago, a two- story frame boarding-house came floating down the river and went over the falls. It was the greatest drop in prunes and salt mackerel ever known on this coast. My friend, Mr. Davies, an enthusiastic trouter, dressed me in oiled water-proof, put boots and hel- met on me, took me down the power-shaft, and out through the long tail-race tunnel to the foamy pool under the falls, to catch trout. The wind nearly lifted me off my feet, the deluging storm of rain — the rain-drops big as walnuts — roared on my helmet 192 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside and back, blinded my eyes, and made me gasp for breath. That's what Davies calls good trout-fish- ing! Davies kept hold of me so I should not fall on the green, slimy, and slippery rocks and led me out to the water. I made a cast and the snell danced away in the swirl, caught on something, and I pulled it off — hook, leader, and sinkers, all went. Then I began to edge off to some stairs I saw farther down along the shore and slowly climbed out — two hundred feet perpendicular of stairs, twisting out and in among the rocks for a quarter of a mile. At the top I turned to look for Davies. There he stood, serene as Patience on a monument, pulling trout out of the swirl. I am something of a fishing crank myself, but I take off my hat to Davies. He told me a story about Dr. William C. Rob- erts which I had not heard before. His father and mother came from Wales, bringing a young family of six children, of whom William C. was the eldest, a lad of fourteen. The mother was stricken down and died of cholera in New York, a day or two after they landed. The father came down, and calling William to his bedside, told him that in a few hours he would be left in a strange land to care for his little brothers and sisters. The heart-broken but sturdy boy took the load on his young shoulders, and carried it successfully. "Like boy, like man." In talking of Dr. Roberts we agreed that this manly beginning was worthy of the manly and highly use- ful life that has followed. Snoqualmie Falls 193 Mr. Baker gave us a beautiful and elegantly fur- nished little cottage — his own. We dined in the rough board shack where the workmen and officers took their meals. There was a bright and hand- some young lady sitting next to me at table — was raised in Dr. Hoge's church in Richmond. Won- dering much how the young lady could have found her way from Richmond to Seattle, and then up the Snoqualmie Canon, I made free to inquire. "I am electrician to the Snoqualmie Power Company," she answered, modestly. Her name? — bless me, I never thought to ask her. Pluck and talent are not all north of the Potomac. Here is a Richmond girl proving clear out here that "Old Virginia never tires." I wanted to get a picture of the snow-capped "Mount Si" (I wonder if that is not short for Mount Zion), and walked down the railroad track two or three miles with my picture outfit strapped on my back. Coming upon a party of ladies who appeared to be entomologizing, I thought to amuse them by asking if I could sell them some "needles, pins, hooks and eyes, real lace, shoe-ties, chewing- gum, curling-irons, bear grease for the hair, jockey- club, Brandreth's pills, sewing silk — " "No," said one, glancing at my pack, "we do not wish to buy anything," and they went on chattering about some unfortunate bug that had arrested their attention. I sighed to think how much fun I have wasted dur- ing a long life upon an unappreciative world. 1 94 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside I wish to make acknowledgment to the Rev. Dr. A. L. Hutchison, of the First Church, and Rev. W. A. Major, of the Second, for their great kindness to me. From Dr. S. Hall Young, Dr. Samuel Ram- say, and Elder Davies I received the most brotherly interest and hospitality. I was glad to find that my friend, Mr. Baker, of Chicago, had here a son so worthy of him in the important position of the presidency of the Power Company. I have had fine rooms and attention at the Occidental Hotel at a moderate cost. Along the Northern Line ONE'S attention is forcibly seized upon by the undergrowth in the forests of the North- ern Pacific slope, into which he is lured by trout and the natural scenery. One who is ac- customed to the willows and alders and jack-pine which line a Wisconsin or Michigan stream, with many an open glade or meadow between, makes here his usual confident dash at a thicket, but finds himself detained. I did not attempt to classify the score or two of specimens which united their per- suasions, but in regard to their general character- istics there is no room for difference of opinion, though there is variety in the way of expressing it. Slender and tough as belt-lacing and spikey as cactus, they first throw one down and then jag him! There is a variety which I have heard variously spoken of as "devil's club" and "devil's cabbage." I looked curiously at a specimen, but did not be- come intimate with it. It is said to be a vegetable scorpion. One thinks of cedars as fence-posts or paving blocks. I never saw a large tree of this species before. Here they grow from four to six feet in diameter, and the firs easily reach the height of 195 196 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside from two hundred to two hundred and fifty feet. The largest of these trees are not now to be found near to the railways, having been sent to the saw- mills. But I found a good specimen not far from the city. It is forty-four feet in circumference, measured ten feet above the roots. I desired to obtain a good photograph of it, but as usual had no sunlight. However, I stood Dr. Jackson near it, and did the best I could under a cloudy sky, I think likely it will make a pretty good engraving, after all. The bark is most massive and deeply creased. They are, therefore, not so easily killed by forest fires as our northern pines. The woods are as white with dog-wood now as in Virginia. A man who had developed horny hoofs in Wisconsin would be regarded as an infantile pink-toe here. They know him by his look of astonishment at the size of the firs, and of the fish- lies. A native said he had crossed a river by riding through a hollow tree that had fallen athwart the stream. When asked if it had been conveniently broken off on the far side, he said no, that he rode out through a knot-hole. This was not told for a big story, it was told for a big fact. There is a stream up in the mountains from which a trout has never been landed. They bite like the — well, you know the favorite comparison of a Rock Mountain- eer — but they smash every kind of tackle that can be brought against them. Rods, reels, lines, snells, and religion go to flinders. Fish-consecrated per- Along the Northern Line 197 sons who desire to be sent as missionaries to civilize these trout, are not allowed to take collections in the churches, unless they be ministers. There is a noticeable absence of song-birds here, probably because of the density of the original for- ests, and because of the scarcity of trees which bear edible seed. I have not heard a chirrup nor a song except from caged canaries. They are said to be plentiful in the eastern side of the ranges. I have thought, also, that there was too much rain here to suit the birds, but it is insisted that the precipita- tion is but little in excess of what it is on Lake Michigan. I have scarcely had a glimpse of the sun in ten days, though I have watched for oppor- tunities with my camera. Puget Sound is said to be surrounded with snowy mountains in May, a fact which must be taken upon faith, if one stays in one locality. I heard of a Chicago man who took a Seattle friend down to the shore of Michigan to show him the Alpine peaks at Evanston, Hyde Park, and across the lake, but told him he could not see them till the weather cleared up! The annual rainfall here is shown by the tables to be an average of only about forty inches. It is not much short of that in Illinois. But when it rains with us, it rains. To find out if it be raining here, one holds his bare hand out from under his umbrella. There was an exception the day when the Rev. Drs. Hutchison and Major took me out about a dozen miles to catch trout in a fine, large lake. All I 198 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside caught was a ducking. They assure me, however, that this month of May, 1899, is exceptional. The very, very old people here are Indians. The oldest Indian says there has been no such cloudy May in the last twelve hundred moons. I was wondering whether that old Indian made his living by telling that story to strangers. He appeared to be well fed and fat. But there is the weather bureau with its exact records. Dr. Ramsay stands by the Italian skies of Seattle, and proves it by the incon- testable history in the meteorological records. Indeed, that is what the weather bureau in Seattle is for. There is not enough weather out of doors to meet the demand, so they keep a supply of it in cold storage. The city of Seattle is built on a ridge which rises from the Sound to a height of nearly five hundred feet and descends to Lake Washington, a body of deep water twenty-eight miles long and from one to three miles broad. There are about three thousand acres of salt marsh, flooded by the tide, which can be filled at small comparative cost and occupied for business purposes. Lake Washington offers the finest residence district in the country. It is reached by cable, and is plied by small steamers. A ship canal utilizing another deep lake — Lake Union — which nearly unites the fresh water harbor with the salt, will soon be built, and the lake will be the resting-place for ships of the navy. It would be difficult to imagine a more inviting place for Along the Northern Line 199 summer residences than the wooded slopes and islands of Lalce Washington. I regret that the uncertainty about the sailing of the Bear, which has already had three set days for leaving, extending over a waiting period of two weeks, has kept me too close here. I wished to visit Tacoma, the rival city of Seattle. A great city, ranking with our largest, will be built on this Sound, and the site lies between these two cities. The latter city had the good fortune to be the first to report the Alaskan mines, and the result has been that the miners rushed to Seattle, and thus it won the distinction, in the public mind, of being the shipping point for the North. The Salvation Army is here. I have a soft spot in my heart for the Salvationists. They preach a crude but a genuine gospel. I always follow them and listen to their music and exhortations with sympathy; one often hears gospel truth preached by them in tenderness, cogency, and even with true eloquence. It is impossible that such preaching should not do vast good. There is a coarse and barren talk mixed up with it sometimes; but as a rule it is true and winsome gospel preaching; and it has the advantage of genuine feeling and convic- tion back of it. I think it is a kind of preaching that is good for anybody. Anyway I would rather listen to it than to some of the "first-class" preach- ing of the day. I remarked to a friend that the best preaching is heard in the "country churches." 200 Musi7igs by Camp- Fire ajid Wayside With much earnestness he said that it was true. "The very best preaching is in the country churches." And yet, while this is true, it is from the country pulpit that the best of the city preach- ers are drafted. A professor once told his students when they were called on to preach in the country, to take their best sermons with them; if in the city, to put on their best coats. My friend. Dr. Young, the good physician, showed me his relics and curios. Some of them one will look upon with mysterious interest, as hav- ing unknown tragedies back of them. One was a fusee — a "smooth-bore rifle" we used to call them — which he found on the top of a mountain. It was made in 1831, a flint-lock. It was loaded, the fusee was sprung, but the upper jaw of the hammer and the flint were gone. It lay in a natural citadel and the weather-worn stock showed that it had been exposed for thirty or forty years. Its owner had tried to fire it before he dropped it. What tragedy lay back of that old gun? A still more tragical relic is a chain, made of hemlock-root bark, which hung over a precipice one hundred and fifty feet, where it was broken. The bottom of the chasm was far below the reach of the fragment of the chain. The doctor thinks it was made by one of the early gold prospectors who, with the breaking of the chain, lost his life. It was made by twisting and wrapping pieces two and three feet long and joining them with loops. The Along" the Northern Line 201 making of the chain involved a great deal of patient labor and it was skillfully done. He has also a French sword-blade, of fine temper, plowed up in Minnesota; a sixty-dollar piece of Continental money, paid to his grandfather for service in the Revolution; and a number of such heirlooms. Mrs. Young has some very old chinaware, which she prizes highly. Most of us have little memories of sad or of tender events in our own lives, which mean much to us as husbands, wives, children, or parents, but which mean nothing to others. To me they are evidence of an instinctive knowledge of immortality. Why would we cling to such mementoes but because we instinctively refuse to believe that anything human can perish — why but because they are re- minders of the absent and inaccessible but living? In stepping out of the elevator, which was a little too high for the door, I struck my head pretty severely, on the lintel above. A pretty miss, of ten, perhaps, was greatly concerned for me. She fol- lowed me out, saying she was sorry for me. She told me to take a silver dollar and bind it on the hurt, and that would prevent it from swelling. "But where shall I get the dollar?" "Oh, I have one; I will run and get it for you." I said "Wait a minute," while I searched my pockets, finding one. "Now," I said, "I think I know an improvement on this dollar cure." "Oh, if you do I wish you would tell me." 202 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside "Why, it would be to tie the dollar on the place where you are going to get bumped, before you get bumped, to keep off the bump." "Oh, yes, if one only knew, ' ' and she laughed like bird-song. "Tie the dollar on before one gets bumped; oh, my!" and she laughed again. "But it must pain you dreadfully, and I am so sorry for you." "It would pain you dreadfully to get such a knock, but old people are not so sensitive," and I thanked the pretty and innocent little thing for her sympathy and kindness. It was prophetic. How charming it was, and how promising in days to come of a mature and lovely womanly character. Aboard the "Bear'' ON Friday, May 26th, we finally got away from Seattle, though I did not feel sure of the voyage till we were securely out of sight of land. There was no knowing whether some department clerk in Washington might not accidentally be stricken with an idea and wish to hold the ship till he could have time to turn it over in his mind. It is admitted by all who know the conditions that the Bear should have been pawing her way northwestward by May ist. The season is short enough at longest for the season's work. It was refreshing to find one man who knew the value of time in the arctic empire. When Lieu- tenant Jarvis, the heroic leader of the rescue of the whalers, was notified that the command of this expedition was assigned to him, he took the cars and made the trip across the continent in four days. Instead of taking time for personal conve- nience and preparations he immediately put to sea, and has pushed everything right along. There is business in that man. Arriving at Port Townsend in the afternoon, some time was required for aligning the compasses, which is done by sailing the ship experimentally till 203 204 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside all the compasses are correctly adjusted. A squall from the west came up and the ship waited till it should abate somewhat. On Saturday afternoon we were passing out beyond the cape, and I went below for a nap. On awakening everything was still, and on going up on deck, what was my aston- ishment to see that we were back at Port Town- send! The word passed that we were ordered back to Seattle, and I began to get my effects ready to go ashore there and give it up. We had been hailed by some ship with a message. It was soon attended to, and again we started. This time I stood on deck to see whether we would again be brought down by a wing-shot from Washington. But we escaped this time, a fact which would, if they knew it, bring great rejoicing to the govern- ment creditors who loaned the deer which were used in the rescue of the whalers a year ago. Port Townsend is the saddest example of a city failure I have seen. It is situated on a fine bay, which forms an ample and well-protected harbor, and is on the shore also of the ocean, the peninsula on which the city is built extending from the bay to the sea. A large brick building, five stories high, which occupies full half a square, and fronts on three streets, is under roof, the partitions studded, the floors partly laid, and there it has stood for years, unfinished and abandoned. Another very fine store block appears to be untenanted. The street car tracks have been taken up. We went to the parson- Aboard the '' Bear'' 205 age, and found the grass growing through the steps, and some lonely flowers blooming along the walks. Still there is a good church building and parsonage, fully paid for, and a membership of about one hun- dred and fifty. The city was projected upon the expectation that it would become the great western entrepot. A very handsome custom-house and post- office building, large enough for a city of a quarter of a million, was erected. The mistake was in sup- posing that it would be reached by the transconti- nental railways, which are shut off from it by the great and practically unexplored Olympic range, and by the Sound. The railroads went to Tacoma and Seattle, and between these two cities the contest began for the occidental crown, which, from present appearances, will be won by Seattle. Port Town- send has no railway connections. As we passed out of Puget Sound, May 27th, we noticed that a snow-storm was prevailing in the mountains. Then came those long Pacific swells possible to this vast ocean alone. There was a stiff breeze, of which advantage was taken to reinforce the steam-power with the sails, and the slow old cutter bowled along ten knots per hour, which is her fastest. It was some consolation to know that some of the officers and crew were seasick. It took away the reproach of being a web-footed tenderfoot. I imagined that soup and a squall would not pull in harness together. I obtained that impression on the Atlantic when one got the soup in his lap and 2o6 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside put his spoon to his ear; but I watched Dr. Jackson and Captain Jarvis, and took notes. Manifestly- great progress has been made in this important department of human activity in the past eighteen years. Jackson was nicely balancing his tureen in his hand. When the ship had made her dive and was balancing for an instant, then Jackson made his. At each dive of the Bear I noticed a marked subsidence of the soup in Jackson's tureen, until, at last, dry land appeared in the whole concavity of crockery. I am not going to theorize whether this concurrent action of ship and soup was coincidence, or cause and effect; nor, if the latter, which was which; but the result was satisfactory to all con- cerned. This revenue cutter Bear is the most famous ship now in the service, excepting the Oregon, though for very different reasons. She was built in Green- ock, Scotland, in 1881, for private parties in the Labrador sealing fishery, and bought by the United States for use in the rescue of the Greeley arctic explorers, which she accomplished. Originally built with a view to conflict with the ice, she has been further strongly protected with iron and teak. After rescuing Greeley she was sent to the Pacific to protect the seals and rescue whalers, and do general police duty. Her second heroic act of res- cue was last year, when the present Captain Jarvis led the rescuing party across the ice — of which more anon. Aboard the '' Bear'' 207 Now a word about the reindeer. The American whalers had killed off the sea amphibians on which the Alaskan natives subsisted, and in 1890 Dr. Sheldon Jackson, who was among them on his mis- sionary and educational duties, found that they were starving. It was proposed to ask the govern- ment to feed them, but Jackson was opposed to that, having seen enough of the pauperizing of the Indians in the Dakotas and farther west. He pro- posed the importation of reindeer, and then began the constant opposition and obstruction against which he has had to make slow but sure headway. The scientific men of the departments in Washing- ton brought forth "facts" to show that the plan was impracticable, i. The Russian Finns would not, for superstitious reasons, sell them. 2. The deer were so tender that they would not bear trans- portation. 3. The American natives and their dogs would kill them off. 4. The whole scheme was that of a visionary missionary. Jackson had raised the sum of two thousand dollars in the spring of 1891, and the treasury department gave him leave to go with the Bear on her cruise. He bought six- teen head, and landed seven at Dutch Harbor, on the island of Unalaska, and turned them loose. The Aleuts, Thlinkits, and Eskimo prize the deer so highly that they will almost starve before they will kill one for food. Seasickness is not favorable to literary work. One's head very soon goes off. So I went up on 2o8 Musings by Canip-Fire and Wayside deck for fresh air. Such a splendid scene! There was the sun shining clear, and such a blue as no colorist ever could imagine. It was as pure as the clearest blue sky, but much deeper in color. The reflection of the sun was not a glaring shimmer, but millions of points of brilliant white were flashing upon the lustrous and majestic robe which enfolded the gentle, heaving bosom of the sea. Both the whiteness of the sun and the azure of the sky were intensified in that noblest of fabrics. Verily, the Draper of the heavens has resources for clothing and adorning those whom he loves in colors and in grace worthy of the court of Almighty God. At Seattle Mrs. Young, the happy wife of a worthy husband, and the happy mother of sons who are an honor to the name, noticing that I was some- what faint, advised her husband, the doctor, to suggest to me that I had not sufficient vitality to endure so rough a trip. That first night of buffet- ing and tossing, and of unendurable noises! — I said the lady was right. I never could survive two months of such horrors, and was disposed to com- plain of providence for inflicting a fine of five hundred dollars and two or more months of such imprisonment upon a man for being so foolish; but glorious as this day is, smoothly as the ship glides over the peaceful and cerulean sea, that pounding, sick, noisy, and horribly discordant night was needed to bring out to the full, by contrast, the glory of such a day. Aboard the ''Bear'' 209 Those noises are worthy of study to one who wishes to describe the horrible. The propeller is two-bladed, and they are not far from my berth. These United States vessels all have the captain's quarters at the stern, close over the wheel. Those blades, when lifted out by the pitching of the ship, struck the water with a singularly energetic swish and smash, a loud and tearing sound. Then there was a gurgling and strangling and coughing of water in pipes. Then there was a truly infernal tambourine somewhere, that responded to each blow with a crash, followed by a long trill, just like a tambourine which one could imagine that the devil invented, not for the enjoyment of the music, but for the torture which it would inflict on every one else. I made search for that tambourine next day, and found it. It was a sheet of zinc fastened upon a wooden frame four feet square, and which the "boy" had put out of the way by setting it behind the steam-heating pipes. I also drove the plug in the wash-basin and stopped that gurgling and chok- ing. The wheel is now keeping below the surface where it belongs, and is attending to its business in a respectable manner. That horribly noisy, seasick, tempestuous, and despairing night, I was led, as a last resort, to put some Christian Science into practice, against the whole situation. I had fallen into an uneasy sleep and imagined that I was trying to ride a sorrel horse. That horse would go like the mischief a 2IO Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside little way, then stop suddenly and buck. At last he threw me, and when I struck the ground I found myself jammed against the berth-rail. There! The glorious truths of Mrs. Eddy flashed upon me like a red-fire-raining sky-rocket. There wasn't any sorrel horse. The sorrel horse didn't buck. The whole thing was a seasick phantasm, or would have been if I had been seasick — which I wasn't — it was all a delusion, a sort of diabolical mirage, a phosphorescent deglutition of the // by a tenuous and sublimated vacuity. I grabbed the berth-rail on one side, and the hat-peg on the other, and rose to the occasion. "Avaunt!" I cried, "thou odylic bedevilment, thou exsufflated banshee, thou shriek- ing pandemonium, get out! Scat! Take thy beak from out my heart and take thy form from off my door!" It must have been my fault; every truly scien- tific Scientist will say that it was, but the exorcism did not work worth a cent. "Swish-whack!" went the propeller with a force that made the ship resound. "Whang-ze-ze-e-e-e!" went that cross between a gong and a tambourine. "Uggle-uggle- ach-whee!" went the water-pipe. Each of all three was putting in its best licks in the devil's oratorio, and paid not the least attention to my Christian Science. ^Win^ tl^e Ctoentjetl^ Alaskan Volcanoes THE wind was dead ahead all the way for five or six days, and the Bear, not built for speed, pounded her way along against it, bumping into the swells, making only five knots per hour part of the time. But on the third there Was sunlight, and I was up early to see whether I could recognize the sun, whether it had grown old and wrinkled since I last saw it east of the Rockies. There were whales sporting here and there, among them two fin-backs, which were going with great energy, their black spikes rising three or four feet above the water. I had taken the gomie gulls under my care, and counted them over and over for fear I should lose some of them. There were twenty-seven in all who called faithfully for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I had been reading up what I could find about soar- ing birds, and now had an opportunity to observe closely, for these great brown gulls, with long, nar- row, saber-like wings, became very tame, and would pass me at a distance of only fifteen or twenty feet. There was one large fellow with a slight fray in his right wing, by which I could distinguish him. The wind blew pretty strong, but he would move against 211 2 1 2 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside it for half an hour, circling around and keeping pace with the ship without making a stroke with his wings. He disproved every theory I had read. The nearest I could come to a theory was by notic- ing that when he turned away from the wind he lay on one side, one wing nearly perpendicular below and the other on a line with it above, and both flat against the wind. He would be driven leeward with the full speed of the wind, and then turn upon a level keel and shoot on a down incline faster than the wind. When he faced it again, his wings, thin and sharp, cut it like blades, and he would hold his course as long as he made progress against it. I noticed him very close to me when his momentum was nearly exhausted. There was a quiver or tremor of his wings, then he would throw himself flatly against the wind again and fall off. Now, while this explains acquisition and economy of energy, and shows that he could sustain himself with the minimum of muscular exertion, it does not solve the problem, which appears to me inexplic- able. On the 3d the sun set at 8:28, and the afterglow continued for something over two hours. The sea became very smooth, the sun found room among the clouds. There was a fine sunset and the sea was highly phosphorescent — that pale, luminous, ghostly glow which Coleridge so weirdly described in his Ancient Mariner. On the evening of the 4th there was a line of clear sky along the western Alaskan Volcanoes 213 horizon, from which the sun illuminated the under side of the clouds, which gave us another exhibition of the wonders of color in the sea. It was of an indescribably lustrous purple, with more of red than of blue in the color. At a certain angle of the waves this purple changed instantly to a brilliant green. Near the ship, covering from fifty to one hundred feet wide, and many times as long, over this billowy robe was thrown a lace-work more than snowy in whiteness of foam, not in masses, but thin and fleecy as lace; one might compare it to lace over silk, if the finest colors and surfaces possible to human skill could bear any comparison to this, but to use such fine fabrics for illustration is only to cheapen the scene described. On the morning of the 5th I was awakened at five o'clock to see the Alaskan volcanoes. Shishal- don rose nine thousand feet, apparently right out of the sea, his snowy robe trailing in the waves — really he is considerably inland. The mountain is a sharp and perfectly symmetrical cone, with a black cap and a white plume. East of it were twin cones, close together, and sharp as snow crystals. West were another pair, and these shining in the sun seemed to be pyramids with flat sides. One of them had a tall pillar at its top, like a white monu- ment, both were sharp topped, and as symmetrical as crystals. All the long forenoon, from five o'clock till one, we were passing these objects, in which beauty surpassed grandeur. The last spe- 214 Mtisings by Camp-Fzi^e and Wayside cially striking beauty that we saw was an "ice castle" at the summit of one of the mountains, the perpen- dicular sides of which were, we judged, not less than five hundred feet — possibly more than twice that. It was suggested that the sides were of icicles from the melting snow on its table-like top. Nearer view also brought out the vast snow-fields on the lower levels of the mountains. All admitted that they had never seen any object so strangely beautiful as that ice castle, or vast altar, or what- ever the fancy chose to associate with it. The precipitous form of the sea-cliffs attracts attention. One of these displayed a long mountain with its end cut off sharply and perpendicularly, leaving a cliff not less than two thousand feet high. There is no talus, no beach under them. The explanation of all this came to us as we approached the straits through which we were to pass to the north of the Aleutian chain of islands. We had been floating in a peaceful sea, which was dimpling and wrinkling in the bright sunlight, when as we approached the pass, the heavy ship rolled till she dipped her boats. This long chain of islands, as you know, reaches nearly across the Pacific. There is a long west- ward trend of the continent, ending in the Alaskan peninsula, from the point of which the sea has cut these islands. Thus when the tide rises, it piles up along the peninsular coast, rushes westward, and attempting to break through into Bering Sea, there is tremendous uproar and turmoil even in calmest Alaskan Volcaitoes 215 weather. It is this that has undercut the moun- tains and left the cliffs, breaking off like bergs from a glacier, a sheer perpendicular. We came quite near to a second volcano — I forgot to inquire its name — which is not of much importance when we remember that there are sixty-five volcanoes in Alaska and its islands. The black patch on the summit, from which smoke was issuing, was not so large as the black hood of Shishaldon, nor is it so sharp and striking in form. I have been describing only the terminal range of the unequaled scenery of the east Alaskan coast, of which I have only yet seen this much. Now there is nothing in Europe comparable to the scenes I have been describing. Mont Blanc is a huge, round pile of snow. It is higher than Shi- shaldon, but it does not appear to be half as high, for the reason that it rises from an elevated table- land, while of this mountain is seen its whole height from sea level. Another element of apparent great height is the clearly cut outline rising at a sharp angle to a sharp point. These volcanoes, built from the top, are at an angle more acute than one could make of a pile of earth or sand, for the rea- son that they are eternally frozen. The detritus thrown out by the crater is locked securely and for- ever where it falls. So the whole effect is peculiar and unique. "Now we'll catch it!" some one sang out, and then the ship was balancing on the top of a huge 2 1 6 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside swell, parallel with its crest, while to the right was a yawning chasm. We did catch it. I was sitting on a cannon and holding fast to the guard-rail. The sky-lights of the officers' cabin had been lifted. There was a great crash down there, followed by shouts of laughter. The gentlemen in the room had no notice of what was coming, as we on deck had, and I suppose they were all mixed up with chairs and other movables, and the compound piled up on the port side of the cabin. Passing the maelstrom strait we came into smoother water. To the left lay "English Bay," a small cove, so named because Captain Cook win- tered there in 1774. If he had gone around to the headland he would have found a harbor than which none could be better protected from both winds and waves. First we passed up a bay protected by the sheer mountains on all sides but the north; some two miles farther in a dyke of sand runs nearly across the bay, long, narrow, and straight, a work of natural engineering. This closes out the sea-waves effectually. A mountain spur then divides the bay into two close harbors, Unalaska and Dutch Harbor. The former connects by a deep channel into a third harbor, and this is con- nected with the sea two or three miles west of the main entrance. What a natural Gibraltar is here! It has been said that sub-arctic flowers have no perfume. But the hills around Dutch Harbor are as fragrant of blooms as an apple orchard in May. Alaskan Volcanoes 217 Even the violets have their peculiarly delicate per- fume in richer measure than those farther south. The day following our arrival was one of sunshine in its perfection. The low mountains all around us were flecked with snow. The air was cool but inspiring, and of perfect clearness. The soil is as deep as the best in Dakota— three feet of rich, black loam. This is covered with a blanket of mosses and grasses, compact as the fur on a reindeer's back. Lie down upon it and you sink into the soft- est of beds. There were about a dozen quite fat porkers wallowing in a slough. I noticed one which was more fastidious in his taste, rooting out for himself a cool, moist bed, and stretching him- self in it with a comfortable sigh. This, mind you, on one of the "barren, bleak, inhospitable Aleutian Islands" on June 6th. "Of course these islands will be populated," said Dr. Jackson. And of course they will be. And he is the pathfinder for a happy people — made their existence inevitable when he turned loose here his first cargo of rein- deer. There is too much fury for trade and gold for attention to the resources in subsistence, just now, but they are here. Just beyond the sand- dyke, yonder, you can go and pull out a cutter-load of codfish and halibut, weighing up to twenty pounds, the meat white, tender, and about equal to the Lake Superior whitefish. The bottom appears to be paved with sole-fish. This soil would, I should think, yield potatoes and all the root crops. 2i8 Musings by Camp-Fir e and Wayside and small fruits, bunch beans, peas, and other quick producers. I notice some gardening already among the natives. Then the reindeer for milk, meat, and the best of clothing for such a climate — of course these islands will be populated. I was looking about for a stake-claim, and openly proclaiming my purpose to settle on this mossy, sunny, and noble chain of sub-arctic islands, and "grow up with the country." They laughed at that and asked me to wait a bit — not to jump to conclu- sions. The next day, the wind coming from the same quarter and bringing oceans of sunlight on its cerulean back, there came a cold, penetrating drizzle. Over my vest I drew a sweater, over that my coat, then an overcoat, and over all a blue mackintosh, buttoning to my ankles, also shaker socks, winter shoes of double soles and double uppers, a pair of fleece-lined mittens, and a plush cap. The whole outfit was not too much for this land of sunshine and of perfume! Then I began to suspect why they laughed. When one wants the facts let him ask an unsophisticated boy or girl. "How much such weather as yesterday do you have here?" The youth looked down reflectively, and answered, "Well, I think three or four days in a month; that is, in summer." "Well, if I should ask you what kind of a day this is, what would you say?" Glancing around at the sky, he said, "Oh, I'd call it fairish — as good as the most that we get. ' ' Alaskan Volcanoes 219 As we steamed along in the sunlight, and espe- cially when looking at the superbAleutian pano- rama, Captain Jarvis frequently remarked, "This is rare. I have been along this coast many times in the past dozen years, but I never saw the air as clear as it is now. " Others who had come that way before had never seen the snowy volcanoes at all. "Too much rain, not enough sunlight," is the answer to my agricultural enthusiasm. I recalled those Sahara-like great plains of the Columbia, too arid even for sage-brush, but fertile under irriga- tion, and thought that if we could discover some way of averaging the two, we should make homes for another fifty millions. The vast evaporating surface of the Pacific, especially of the north tropic, loads the air with water, which is carried northward on its upper currents and precipitated here and farther north. The North Pole is the tent-pole of the earth. The rain and snow poured upon the white canvas of the arctic are sufficient to fill that great sea-river upon which icebergs are floated down the Atlantic coast. They have carried enough of rocks and detritus from the arctic shores to fill the sea and create the wide shallows of New- foundland, and will in time pile the banks as high as bergs can float. I asked an Aleut what was the word in his lan- guage for his child, a little girl, "Gedawter." I made him say it over, putting my ear near his mouth to catch the exact articulation. I asked if he had 2 20 Mtistngs by Camp- Fire and Wayside not taken that from the Russian or the English. No, it was Aryan. Those people once milked cows, and then, perhaps, reindeer — if there are other such words, and this one only an accidental occurrence. There is no doubt whatever of their ethnical type. They are Mongol-Tartars. If the gospel had been given to them before a mixture of priestcraft and Russian barbarism, they would now be fit citizens of the United States. The cruelty of the Russians was quite equal to that of the Spaniards. It was a favorite sport with them to set a line of Aleuts close together for the trial of their rifles, to see how many of them one bullet would shoot through — how many they could kill at one shot. As for the women, they would take them on their ships, and when through with them, pitch them overboard. And yet, the Aleuts here are the most priest-ridden churchmen. The fine and exquisitely built Greek church here pays a surplus of four thousand dollars a year to the patriarch in Moscow. There is a Methodist mission here, the "Mary Lee Home." They have only an average of eighteen to twenty children in their schools. I suppose they do some good. The Greek priest speaks no English, but he was very accommodating, allowing me to take a picture of the interior of the church. The Aleuts revere the name of George Washington — are taught that he was a high dignitary in the Greek church. He was a soldier-priest who whipped the hated English. They are taught to believe in the devil, Alaskan Volcanoes and that he comes here twice a year in the form of a Presbyterian who calls himself, when in human form, Sheldon Jackson! He comes here to pick up all the souls not enfolded in the church and carry them away with him to hell. Poor Jackson! No man in this century has endured more hardship for Christ than he, and no American minister will leave so enduring a fame as he. ja^ujsing ti^e Ctnent^-fitjst Dutch Harbor MY time had been cut into by the delays in sailing, which extended, one after an- other, from May 8th to 26th. I could not go on with the Bear with any certainty of being able to take the most interesting part of the voyage, that along the Alaskan coast. Be- sides I knew that the warm ocean-current which streams up along the Asian coast and meets the trade-winds which come from the polar ice, must make that part of the Pacific steam like a boiling pot. The sailors who had been there said the fog is eternal. As between the Kamchatkan coast and the Alaskan, between which I had to choose, the interest was largely with the latter. I could not have both. The mail-boat reaches Dutch Harbor once a month, and I decided to wait and take passage on her. She would poke her nose into every nook of the coast from Unalaska to Juneau. Having the best part of a month for the run she would take her time. Then I could have the White Pass into the gold diggings, hundreds of glaciers, including the Muir, and the famous inside passage home. So I deserted Jackson. He said he felt like an Dutch Harbor 223 orphan. At Juneau I heard of the attacks made upon him by the gang against whose evil purposes he has stood all these years like a rock. He can well afford the hatred of such men. Every new attack that they make upon him is a further evi- dence of his courage and fidelity. Their rage only makes his usefulness to the country conspicuous, as the surf marks the granite. Now permit me to recur to Dutch Harbor and its surroundings. These little experiences do not amount to anything in themselves. They are not worth relating except that they give impressions of the country. One gets but little variety in journeying along a line of latitude. For contrasts he must go to the arctics or to the tropics. For brilliance and gran- deur one must go north. This is not denying the attractions of the sultry lands south of us; but if one desire to enjoy his life let him take the cool, bracing ozonic air of the north. A goodly part of the time, in June and July, I dressed more warmly than I do in Chicago in January. Heavy under- clothing, coat, overcoat, and on top of these a wind- and-rain-proof mackintosh. When I left the Aleu- tian Islands they were white and purple with bloom, and fragrant as an orchard. I gathered and pho- tographed a bunch of the flowers which whiten the islands. There is a great variety in reds and purples, but as those colors take black in the camera I did not try to reproduce them. Such 2 24 Mtisings by Camp- Five and Wayside water can be found to drink nowhere else. It does not have the harsh coldness of ice-water, but it is ice-cold. One who is not very thirsty will drink it for the deliciousness of it. I think its peculiarly invigorating qualities are absorbed as it lies months and even years on the snowy summits, drinking in sunshine. It comes leaping and singing down from the snow everywhere, and is as full of vigor as it is of beauty. I never tasted such water before. That great, green mountain which reaches out from Dutch Harbor three miles to the sea ought to be named Reindeer Mountain, for there is where they are. While looking at them, a white satin ribbon was visible across the western bay, dropping from the side of that extinct volcano into the sea. I think that huge crater holds a lake, and that the white stream is its outlet; and wished much to cross over and take a closer look at its course. So I persuaded an Aleutian fisherman to take me in his rowboat, for which he had a very ragged sail. It was a long pull down the harbor. As we passed some Aleut fishermen, who were catching cod, some conversation in Aleut passed. I asked him what they said. "They said, 'Be careful about the whales.' " While strolling along that coast I noticed many whales spouting and rolling in their dignified way. As we approached the open sea the Aleut went ashore and put about two hundred pounds of stones into the bottom of the boat for ballast. The sea was rather rough for a rowboat Dutch Harbor 225 like ours, but I like rough water. He tried to get far enough out to tack and use his old sail, but had to give it up and pull away. The end of the big mountain is cut squarely off, and I tried to interest myself in the tremendous cliff. I told him to go nearer shore so that I could see it better. He said the surf would swamp us. At last we were near the bay. Then I asked what the fishermen meant by telling him to be careful about the whales. "Why, they will smash our boat if they see us. " Here was a pretty pickle! Surf, sea, and whales: take your choice; no extra charge. "But," he continued, "if you come near a whale you must lay down your oars and remain as still as a log. He thinks your paddle is a whale's arm raised to strike him, and that makes him want to fight. If he rises close to you, reach out your hand and lay it upon him gently. He likes that, and he will blow water all over you and then sink. It is a shame! it is a shame!" he con- cluded, in a loud voice. "What is a shame?" "Look there! thousands of them! Damn the whales!" I began to feel a little chilly. The sea breeze was pretty strong and cool. There was a long reef ahead with a gap in it, and I asked him if we had not better try to go through it. "Ah, ha!" he yelled; "there is a fight!" and the boatman's eyes sparkled. "That's good! Hit him again!" he shouted. I had noticed that the boatman's favor- ite expression of disapproval or dislike was, "It is 2 26 M^isings by Camp- Fire and Wayside a shame !" but whenever he alluded to whales it was with cuss words. I did not hear him swear once in the two or three days I had him, and he never cussed unless something came up about the whales. They had smashed a boat for him and had given him a close call for his life, and he was exceedingly wroth at them. There was a fight, sure enough. Now it is curi- ous that no one, so far as I know, has so much as alluded to the battles between male whales, whether in books of biology, travel, or general literature. They are not fish. They are mammals, and as with all other mammals, including man, the males f^^ht each other. "Let us get closer," I said. "They will pay no attention to us now," and so we pulled for the scene of conflict, keeping, however, at a prudent distance. I believe the blows the comba- tants gave could have been heard two miles away. One would dive so as to give full swing to his tail — ten or fifteen feet of it — in the air, and bring it down on his opponent with a resounding smash. The other would catch the diver rising, and lifting his arm high in the air, deal him a tremendous blow. Both kept spouting and emitting a sound not so loud as that of a locomotive whistle, but in the same key. They made the sea boil into foam. They kept it up about twenty minutes. We gave up the idea of crossing the sound to the waterfall, but lifting the ragged sail, scudded down along the coast till we found a cove, and there spread out on Dutch Harbor 227 the clean rocks a lunch, enough for half a dozen. They believe in good eating and plenty of it — do Mr. Brown and Captain Nice of Dutch Harbor. It was rash to go out into the open sea along a precipi- tous and surfy shore in a rowboat, especially such a one, when white-caps were blowing, and I prom- ised myself to be more prudent; but it required a sharper lesson to teach me that I am neither young nor a mountaineer. I have been looking for a memorandum of the name of the captain of that new Yukon River steamboat which was making trial trips at Dutch Harbor, but have lost it. He was very kind, and took me with him on his fine new boat whenever I wished to go. He was going up the channel five or six miles to the temporary ship- yard, and I went along. A fine, foamy river ran out of the mountains there, and some one told me there was a waterfall three-quarters of a mile back, and that a trail led to it. With my camera strapped to my back I started off at once. I heard after- ward that some one said, "That old man will have a bad time of it," as I disappeared in the ravine. He ought to have called me back. The trail was a narrow and thin path. I followed it till it came to where the river had curved and cut into the moun- tain, and I thought I saw the trail along the side of the precipice from twenty to fifty feet above the stream. The fact was it was a low-water trail and at that point descended into the river. Intent on reaching the waterfall, I went ahead. I thought 2 28 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside with every cautious step the path would appear and become safer. There was no path — nothing but pre- cipitous rock and treacherous marl, and the roaring river in its rocky bed fifty feet below me. I could not even turn and go back, for what I had passed was certainly more dangerous than anything ahead. Well, I made it, and was glad of a chance to descend, and jump into the water where it was not too strong for me. The chasm was dark, but I managed, by resting one side of the camera on the cliff and the other on my knee, to take two pictures. Now how to get out, that was the question. Not the way I came. With nerves not at their freshest, and with full knowledge of the peril, the chances would be against me. Looking around, I noticed the ogress of the place. She was built apparently of porphyry, with a singularly contrasting white or light-colored death's-head and cavernous eyes, and was leering right at me. She was seated upon her throne, with four squarely cut stair-steps leading down to a platform of rock, which was partly lost in the spray. "Old lady," I said, "I didn't come here to make love to you, not by a long shot; and I'm not going down your steps, either. I'm going to climb out; and I'm never, never going to honor you with my presence again, never, never." There was a sardonic grin on her cheeks, as if she thought I couldn't do it. There was nothing for it but to climb. It has made me shudder to think of it since. I took a photograph of the chasm. The climb was Dutch Harbor 229 some four hundred feet. I think that I shall have more sense hereafter. There was a pretty badly de- moralized old man lying panting on the top of that cliff when all was over. It did not teach me any sense, though. Later, at Juneau, the Fairy left me on the wrong side of the sound, and I applied to an Aleut to row me across. After many grimaces he consented, and he and his boy launched his boat, a picturesque-looking dugout. I never rode in a wooden kyack before, and don't think I shall again. I did not notice that it was as tippy as a foot-wide board set on edge, till we had left the beach. I judge it was about two miles to the dock on the other side, but less than a mile straight across. I winked both eyes at once. I said, in a very level and evenly balanced tone, "Go straight across — straight over. " "But the tide won't let you walk," he said. "Never mind the tide; put me straight over." He was very willing for that. I kept watching the distance, and calculating how far I could swim with my clothes on. I did not know why he hesitated to take me. It was probably because he did not like to trust himself with a white man in an Aleut boat. These be petty adventures. They would be nothing to a mountaineer, a whaler, or an Aleut. But to a "cheechecho" (a tender- foot) maybe they will serve as warnings not to trust to one's own ignorance — not to be too self-confi- dent while touring in these strangely attractive regions. 230 Musmgs by Camp- Fire and Wayside The mail-boat, the Excelsior, came up the har- bor at last. I was watching for her. That was coal-smoke, I was sure, rising behind the moun- tains. *'No, it is old Shishaldon smoking his pipe," said one. Volcano smoke is mostly steam and white. This was black. As soon as she rounded "the Priest," though she was a mere speck on the water, Captain Nice said, "That is the Excelsior." These seamen know every \oat on the Pacific. I asked him what he could see from the distant, almost invisible, ship that made him so sure. He said that every boat had its features as men have. The mark of the Excelsior which he immediately recognized is the way she wears her main spar across her mainmast. The Roanoke, a vessel over three hundred feet long, came in swarming with prospectors bound for Cape Nome. When we left I had to cross two ships to get to the Excelsior. That beautiful, but usually solitary, harbor had suddenly become a crowded seaport. Adventurers swarm up that way toward the gold-fields. One meets more ships than he would on the highway between New York and Liverpool. I left that flowery island, with its smooth, round mountains, its encompassing volcanoes, its springs and waterfalls, and its snowy peaks, with regret. Those few delightful days will be one of my pleas- ant memories. Among the Islands WE sailed out of Unalaska harbor and from the verdant and blooming hills into a gloomy sea. Of all that splen- did scenery which we beheld when going west there was only the tip of one peak dimly visible through the mist. As we passed along the leaden shores that were so splendid before, I recalled and thought of the effects which, in their glory, they produced upon the beholder. One of those snowy volcanoes, rising to an incredible height from the sea, uplifts one and fills him with a noble pleasure. It awakens something in one that has been sleeping for years — for always, if one have never beheld such a scene. Does not this teach us that we do not know what we are? That we are unfolded flowers, unconscious of what is hidden in ourselves? The dazzling majesty of the mountain does not overawe us. On the contrary, we rise to its height and to its grandeur, and are enraptured by communications with it. We understand what it says, though we cannot translate it into words. We apprehend perfectly what we can neither describe nor explain. In such a presence one does not wish to speak nor to be spoken to. It is said, and 231 232 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside truly, that we think in words. The silence one preserves and desires is wished for because language is irrelevant and becomes an annoyance. At its best it is not only an understatement, but we may say a misstatement, because it does not and cannot represent the mind. Does not this show that we underrate our own capacities? That we are consti- tuted and constructed in a larger mold than is usual in this world and in this state of existence? That we are much greater beings than we are accustomed to estimate ourselves and others? I remember to have heard my father say that a redeemed soul would be a great and glorious being. As we can rise to the height of the beauty and majesty of the mountain, easily, naturally, and without effort, we may infer that there is no limit to our capacity for the appreciation and enjoyment of the glories of God and of the works of his hand. I knew so little of the outlines of our continent that I was surprised to learn that we were sailing northeast, and that we would ascend some three hundred and fifty miles in latitude beyond the Alaskan peninsula. This comes of observing the map as it appears on a globe or globular projec- tion. The western coast, then, seems to ascend in a northwesterly direction, whereas it sweeps far to the north and descends again at the west. I spoke in my last of the delightsomeness of the drinking- water. In developing my plates at random, I came upon the "Silver Bow." I tried to get closer to Among the Islands 233 it, but found a thicket of "devil's club," four feet high, in my way. It is a delicate thread as seen high up on the mountain, and at a distance, but at the foot is seen to be a strong stream. I saw every day scenes which I longed to photograph, but could not, either because the air was thick or because of the vibrations of the ship. A roll or a pitch would not hinder, but those vibrations were fifty to the second. I will have something more to say of the Silver Bow hereafter. As I look back upon the two weeks of winding in and out along that coast, and at the procession of villages under the cliffs, I fear that I did not take sufficiently particular memoranda, and that I shall get them mixed. An Alaskan coast village is always a thin line of houses along thebeach, with a snowy mountain back of it, from which a river emerges. The river attracts the salmon and the salmon attract the natives, and both attract the Russians. Wherever, therefore, a river or a con- siderable stream issues out of the mountain, there you will find a village, and a Russian church with its Muscovite dome, triple cross, and chime of bells. The church is always by far the most showy and conspicuous building in the place, and it is always given the advantage of an elevated site. The Rus- sians are remarkable for their fondness for bells. Their "Kol-o-kol" in Moscow is one of the wonders of the world. These are no cheap chimes which send music out among the cliffs and snow. On Saturday — their Sunday — they ring out very sweet 234 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside and solemn harmonies, and the devout Aleut will make sacrifices rather than be absent from a ser- vice. Some of these churches are wealthy. That at Sitka has sacred jewels costing many thousand dollars. All of them are very showy in pictures, gilt, banners, and colors. When the priest appears from his holy and secluded recess, back of the altar, he is artfully careful to allow you to peep into his purple and golden wonderland. Then his mysterious movements and his intonations, his bowing and kneeling this way and that, and his smoking incense, powerfully impress and excite the imagination of the native worshiper. The Russian beats the Roman in fine spectacles. The latter was long under the tutelage of Greek culture. He asks for fine art and chaste architecture. But the Muscovite revels in color, and it must be admit- ted that he handles it well. The interiors of these churches are fine, any artist must say so. They employ a background of pure white, and upon this their gilt and crimsons, rich browns and yellows make a harmonious and pleasing display. While we missed the scenery of Unimak Island, of which I have spoken, and the next day remained foggy, yet the captain fired at it with his fog-horn, and a section of it, six hours wide, broke loose and fell into the sea, where it water-logged and sank. We knew from the bases of the mountains, and especially from the volcanic scoria which slid from them, and which we could see under the low-lying Among- the Islands 235 clouds, that we were passing fine scenery. When the fog fell, what a sight! There was Pobloff and his bride — the higher peak rising twelve thousand feet, wearing his black cap and plume, and his bride, their white robes meeting and mingling. She was exactly like him, only smaller, and her plume was not of smoke, but of snow, dropping over like a white ostrich plume. As I write I do not know whether I took their photographs success- fully on the jarring boat, but I hope, when I get where I can develop my plates, to find them there in their beauty. Our first stop east of the pass out of Bering Sea was Bellkorky, the usual thin line of houses on the beach, with a Russian church. This was once the prosperous seat of the sea-otter fur fishery. As many as thirty thousand of the otters were taken in a single season, and the spoils were divided about equally between the church and the traders in rum — par nobile fratrum. Now the sea-otter is nearly extinct, and as a single skin is worth four hundred dollars, the remnant is pursued to the uttermost. When an otter is sighted, all hope for him to escape is gone. Out of the ship, or off the shore from which he is seen, come the long, slim, swift kyacks, which the natives, with their sharp paddles and strong arms, drive forward, swift as the wind. The otter makes a long dive and rises a half-mile or a mile away, for he is swift also, but the kyack nearest him compels him to dive again. The chase in some instances extends 236 Musings by Camp-Fh^e and Wayside a distance of fifty miles, but at last the poor otter can dive no more, and amid great shouts and slap- ping of paddles he is slain. We glided along between the islands and the shore — Deer Island, Dolgoi Island, Gold Bay, with innumerable rocks standing like pillars high out of the water — and reached Unga on Unga Island. Here is another low-grade-ore gold mine like the Treadwell. The approach was higher, picturesque — on either hand high cliffs surmounted with light green verdure, the cliffs themselves so swarming with millions of birds that in the distance, in moun- tain-climbing in Unalaska, I was always looking at cliffs and mountains to see where I could best climb them. There was one near the entrance of the harbor of Unga that particularly interested me. It was three or four hundred feet high, its fiat top about an acre in extent, deep with verdure, and it overhung its base on all sides like a mushroom, under which the white wings of the kittiwakes flash like fire-flies. How could anybody ever get to the mossy top of that rock? There were two ladies on board, besides Major Clarke, of the United States seal island service, and they found rich spoils of milk and cream for their children. I was inter- ested in the cattle and asked the store-keeper about them. They live well in winter, but with little feed-bran to enrich the milk. I asked him why he did not go into cattle-raising for a business. Surely it would be highly profitable with competition fif- Among the Islands 237 teen hundred miles away. He said it was because the cattle were killed by falling from the cliffs. The grass grows freshest and earliest on the warm edges of the cliffs which it overhangs, and the cows go out for it, fall, and are killed. For the same reason untethered horses cannot be risked out in pasture. He said the only way to keep cattle would be to set fences at the top of the cliffs. Now, observe that Unga is one hundred and twenty-five miles farther north than Unalaska, in the "frozen desert." At Unga we noticed a very good-look- ing, apparently young, couple preparing to come aboard, whereat we were glad, for there were only four or five passengers. These proved to be Dr. and Mrs. MulhoUan, of Juneau, a charming couple. There had been some competition between the Major and myself in the way of "telling stories." I think, and the Major was inclined to concede, that I carried the larger variety of them, and of superior size. I had an assortment of them that were fifty-year-old "chestnuts," novel because they were so old, while Clarke disdained anything that was not fresh and new. Dr. Mulhollan and his wife laughed very well indeed as we displayed our stocks. He kept quiet, but there was a twinkle in his eye. He then turned to and beat us out so com- pletely, and filled us with such envy, that we threat- ened to rob him if he told another one. From Unga we wound our way farther northeast to Chic-chic, which is back at the end of a crooked 238 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside inlet, then to Port (not Fort) Wrangel, at the foot of the tremendous peak of Mount Chiquinaquak, then into the great island of Kadiak, stopping at Kenluk; then winding through the straits of Kad- iak, now called Saint Paul; then on to Afognak ; thence to Marmot, the United States fishery resi- dence, and thence due north to Cape Elizabeth at the eastern entrance of Cook's Inlet. If I had not said so much about volcanoes, I would say that Iliamna Peak and Redoubt Vol- cano, and especially that most picturesque pile farther north, formed a trinity which, as we saw them, were unapproachable anywhere in the round world. There was a special reason for their splen- dor at that time. It was the shortest day of the year. I could read ordinary print out of doors at any time of night. The sun set a little west of north, and his globe, as it decreased there, increased a little east of north, so there was clear daylight all night. The northern sky was strewn with cumu- lous clouds. These, displaying more than the usual beauty and variety of color, were reflected by the three vast mountains. It is impossible for one who did not see it even to imagine the effect. I re- mained up till one o'clock marking the changes in that vast kaleidoscope. The pile farthest north — I did not hear its name, if it had any — was an enormous basin, the lowest side of which is, perhaps, ten thousand feet high. It opens toward the sea, and thus in plain view was Among the Islands 239 the origin and course of three glaciers reaching down to the brine. The rim of this basin is a ser- rated picket of peaks. The largest of the three glaciers which it sends out, at one place in its course, goes over a sheer cliff that must be fifteen hundred feet high. It beats the Muir in its tre- mendous crashes by five times the fall. The "cities" in Cook's Inlet are, in order beginning at the south, Port Graham, Soldovia, Homer, Seward, Fort Kenai, Kurtatan, Tyonik, Chuitna, Hope City, and Sunrise City. These latter, as may be inferred, are goldbugs. A prospector just out from one of those rivers says that Cook's Inlet will astonish the world before the year is out. There was a detach- ment of infantry at Soldovia, sent to try to find a trail north from the source of Sushitna River to the Yukon. It is not very far, but I do not believe any mortal can make it. No man can carry enough provisions to take him half way. It is one mass of bottomless chasms and saw-teeth peaks. A mile a day would be good traveling for him. The military had a little, slim wheeler in which to ascend the river, but there they are bound to stop. I made a picture of Soldovia, in Cook's Inlet. It differs from any other that I saw in that there is a high bluff instead of a snow-peak back of it. The tents of a detachment of United States soldiery are seen on the right, sent to find a way between the head of the Sushitna and the Yukon, which they will never find, or I miss my guess, I could not 240 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside think what the sod cut on the very steep side of the bluff meant. It proved to be garden lots. They told me they tied the onions fast to sticks to keep them from sliding. As I went ashore a little Irish- man insisted upon carrying me on his back. I told him that if he tried it he must stand up to the work or drown. He landed me all right. As usual Soldovia is at the mouth of a river, and has two salmon canneries. We tarried too long at Soldovia, I felt that this was so. The tide runs up the inlet at a speed of six miles per hour. It was running up at its best rate when a boat started back from the landing to the ship. The oarsman could not hold against it, and we merrily waved good-bye to the party aboard as they drifted up the inlet. A buoy was thrown out with a next to endless rope attached, and by hard exertion the rowers held the boat so far against the tide that the buoy floated to them and they were hauled in. The ship had to make its way out against that swift current and went very slowly. The next day was clear until four o'clock, as we sailed along a coast of low peaks as thickly set as the teeth of a rasp. Then the fog fell suddenly and black. Two hours more would have put us into Natchek harbor, but those two hours we left behind us in Cook's Inlet. Once before, I failed to mention, the fog came down on us, and we drifted pretty close in to the rocks, backed off when we saw them, and anchored. Among- the Islands 241 Out came the fishing-tackle, and very soon the deck was strewn with piles of cod, halibut, butterfly fish — or Irish lords as the sailors comically called them— enough to feed a ship's crew for a month. But where we were now there was "no bottom," and we could not anchor; I threw a line overboard to find out which way we were drifting. I thought we were going toward Montague Island. They said we were drifting out to sea, but I was sure we were not, and I spent the only uneasy night I had in thirty-two days of sailing. The fog lasted sixteen hours. They were trying to determine whether we were near land by blowing the whistle. "No echo," was the verdict. One gentleman said there was an echo. A sea captain who was aboard said: "I have sailed these waters for thirty years, and I say there was no echo." "And I say there was," retorted the landsman, "and you will hear rocks on the keel in less than half an hour." The captain took the benefit of the doubt and backed the ship a little from the direction of the supposed echo. Suddenly the fog lifted, and there we were, right on top, so to speak, of the point of some cape. I readily understood why the question of the echo was disputed. The cliff was so close that the echo blended with the sound of the whistle and could not be distinguished from it. A rifle-shot would have told the story quickly enough. Scenic Grandeur of Alaska [Two of my letters descriptive of Alaskan scenery were misplaced, and afterward gave way to Camp-Fire Musings, written subsequently. I notice in looking them over that I had tried, with more than usual care, to make the scenery visible to the imagination of the reader, who, 1 think, will find them more vivid than any of my other attempts to por- tray what I saw. The scene lay between Cook's Inlet and Orca.] THERE is a glacier on the west side of Cook's Inlet which I hesitate to describe, for two or three reasons. First, I was no nearer to it than the muddy channel, which, though some thirty miles wide is all the time as full of mud as the Missouri in a freshet. The tide rushes up and down it at a seven-mile-per-hour gait, the mud- laden water boiling up as one sees it in a rapid stream. I was no nearer to the glacier than this distance, twenty miles, probably; secondly, if I saw it correctly, it is the most wonderful ice cataract in the world, far and away a greater wonder than the Muir glacier; and thirdly, why has it not been investigated and described by others? The scene is a mountain basin, perhaps thirty miles wide, tilted toward the sea. On all but parts of the seaward side it is set about with a picket of sharp peaks; that is to say, the sides of the basin 242 Scenic Grandetir of Alaska 243 break into a sierra of peaks of nearly the same height. The ravines between these peaks carry tributary ice-streams into the basin. The sea of ice spills over at two places in small glaciers, but the main channel of its exit is toward the south, not proceeding far before it reaches a precipice. The icebergs are pushed out till they break off of their own weight, and fall two thousand feet. The cataract is, I judged, over a mile long, and less than a mile and a half wide. That is rather an astonishing story, isn't it? Well, if I were ten years younger, I would be there on or before the first day of June next, not- withstanding the horrible tangle of thicket and swamp which lies between the shore and the glacier. It would be a cheap way of earning the finest monu- ment in North America. I had noticed a singular premonition of a coming fog on the mountains of the Aleutian Islands. The peak puts on a wig — every peak's wig of the same pattern, round and smoothly combed at the top, and curling out and up and away from the peak on all sides. There is nothing of the woolly and capri- cious cloud-form about these wigs. They are smooth, perfect curves, breaking into graceful up-curls. About two o'clock of the next day after leaving Cook's Inlet we could see the point of Montague Island about twelve miles ahead of us, and the mainland five miles to the left, but the out- at-sea rocks, which everywhere characterize the 244 Musings by Cajup-Fire and Wayside Alaskan coast, all of a sudden put on their wigs — very curious and interesting to look at, but both unwelcome and ominous. I quote from my journal: "2 p.m. Line of fog visible across the mouth of Resur- rection Bay, and the great rocks which stand in the sea are putting on white night-caps — that means a heavy fog. 3 p.m. A circle of it bends around the northeastern horizon. The engine is set at half-speed. We are into it. The wheel stops. We are gently rocking on the sea. The sun shines down through the cloud, but everything is invisible 100 feet away. It is a chilly and a very wet fog. We expected a fine sight in entering Prince William's Sound— could see high snowy mountains on Montague and the mainland. 6 p.m. Everything about the ship is dripping. Casting the sound line continually and blowing the fog-horn. 11 p.m. This is the first time I have felt timid at sea. I know that we are drifting, and we are close upon a rocky and dangerous coast, of which there is no chart." That night Major Clarke and myself were sitting with our backs against the smoke-stack, when sud- denly we both sprang to our feet, exclaiming, "A reef! We are on a reef!" "No, not a reef — whales," came an answer. Two big fellows had risen within twenty feet of the ship's side and were making the sea boil. The fog-horn was sounded for echoes. After a time of investigation the ship was turned about and went off at full speed. We had drifted into a pocket, leaving the cape back of us. There was a fog bank back of us, but the ship turned confidently into it, passed through it, and into sunshine beyond. We rounded Cape Cleare, and one could see that it was easily recognizable. We had a lively sea, a stiff breeze, and a bright sun the rest of that day. The Scenic Grmtdeur of Alaska 245 next morning I awakened at four o'clock, and look- ing out saw that we were running close to land that was covered with trees — so close that I could have thrown a biscuit into the woods. It was a very pleasant sight. These were the first trees I had seen since leaving the Puget Sound. One does not appreciate trees till he has been without them for a month or two. I have all the time a sub-consciousness that I am not conveying to the reader an idea of the novelty and peculiarity of this Alaskan coast. Let me begin at the top of the scenery and try. The top is snow. Wherever you look you will see snowy mountains, not monotonous white, but white snow and black rocks in every conceivable variation of outline. On that mountain-side you can see "$X" plain as you could write it — that is "ten dollars." There is a line of hieroglyphics beginning with a Gibsonian F, I try to spell it out, but it has too many of the letters w, v, y, and x. There is a capital C very well drawn. I will anticipate another, seen later, which I photographed, and which I hope will come out well when I get home to develop and print it. It is one of Gibson's New York belles, dressed in the height of fashion, and putting on Broadway airs. My friends will have a laugh at it, as we did, if only I have succeeded. She was about a quarter of a mile tall, but a good way off. Always back of and among these moun- tains of mixed snow and black rock, one will see a 246 Mti sings by Camp- Fire and Wayside snow-white peak rising spotless and dazzling in the sun. This is the top of the scenery. Of course we saw the rougher side of the land from the sea — rocks, precipices, sea-worn caverns, etc. But the lower half of the scenery, inland, is always of high, but gracefully rounded, hills, smooth in outline as eggs, and of a fresh, spring-like green. They are usually broken somewhere by precipices — are now as thick with flowers as a clover-field. They are deceptive, however, as to steepness. You cannot walk up one of them, but must climb with hands and feet out of the ravine. The hill rounds more to a level higher up. Another feature. The moss will grow on a precipice that has a slight incline, and with its strong roots hold the soil from sliding off the rocks, though sometimes an acre or two will let go and fall. The final feature is everywhere great beauty, the white streams from the snow threading their way with many a bend, and leaping and splashing down along their margins of green moss. One can see the stream emerging from the snow and follow its whole course at a glance to where it takes its final leap into the sea. Coming into the timber region we leave the smooth, high, mossy, and flowery hills, and now have the vast and seemingly inexhaustible forests of spruce, chiefly, but with beginnings of fir, cedar, and birch. The timber line between trees and snow now becomes conspicuous on the mountain-sides. It is not sharp. The trees thin out in the snow, Scenic Grandeur of Alaska 247 and the snow disappears gradually in the forest below. I said I awakened to see the trees. We were now approaching "the prettiest place in Alaska," formerly called Kadiak, same as the large island, but now called St. Paul. The whole scene of cav- erned shores, island-studded waters, and overhang- ing trees was indeed very pretty, and it was on a wide amplitude of view. I made a close study of the rock at the left of the harbor as one goes in, to see if I could climb it, not that I would try it, for after my experience in Unalaska I have become a theoretical mountain-climber. The top is flat and green and about an acre in extent. It is about three hundred feet high. The table with its moss overhangs the perpendicular wall on all sides like a mushroom. Millions of kittiwakes are flashing in and out of the shadow of the rock and of the over- hanging top. No, I will venture to say that nobody's foot ever pressed the verdure on the top of that rock. Back in the hills is a low-grade-ore mill of the Treadwell type, turning out a thirty- thousand-dollar brick per month. Out around the cape is a rock-dotted bay, and beyond is "Wooded Island," the one we sheered so closely to in the early morning. There is a Baptist mission with pretty white buildings nestling on the light green grass and among the dark green trees. It is true, one would have to travel far to find a prettier place than St. Paul, on Kadiak Island, Alaska. fllpujsmg tl^e Ctoentt^fourtl^ At Orca WE now rounded the northern end of Kad- iak, passing the United States fishery residence, but stopping long enough to send our letters in a boat. The wind was pretty strong, and an officer remarked that we would have some sea outside. There was a remarkable ob- ject ahead which became more and more odd as we approached it, a solitary rock rising out of the sea. It is just the shape of a tall haystack, about five hundred feet high and four hundred feet in diameter at the base. Its singularity, large- ness, and graceful outlines made it quite an imposing spectacle as it stood outlined high against the sky. The birds drifted past it in swarms that obscured the view like a cloud as they passed. Could I climb it? Well, I thought I found a place that would give a climbing chance, and traced the way to the top. At two points of the climb I had to arrange to get up by a stretch of the imagination. I will anticipate to say that there is another such rock standing a mile or two from the point of Cape St, Elias. It is the more remarkable looking of the two, for the reason that it appears to be square- walled and perpendicular. The line of the top is a 248 At Orca 249 downward curve dropped from the two corners, which thus become pinnacles. These two rocks are so much like human architecture, and they are so enormous, that the first glance startles one. As I looked at them I thought of the pother that is made over the little pyramid of Cheops in Egypt. Why, if Cheops were stuck against the side of the pyramid of Shishaldon or of Pobloff one would want to get at it to brush it off with a feather duster. Now we were heading for Orca in Prince Wil- liam's Sound. I thought the approach to Orca, though not so pretty as that to St. Paul, to be quite as interesting. We were sailing up a wide bay, very noble looking and leading far inland. We were heading for the middle of a mountain at the end of the bay. Where was Orca? I could see all sides of the sound now, but there was no sign of a cabin, much less of a town. I sighted along the mast to see the ship turning, but straight ahead she went, right up to that mountain. Then she turned sharply, went around it, and there was Orca, snug- gled up in the safest nook, where neither wind nor wave could reach her — a big cannery, not much else. A great surprise awaited us. At one side of the dock lay a splendid ship, with every mark of the highest finish and luxury, a beautiful object. Ele- gant launches in spick-and-span-new linens were moving here and there. Finely dressed ladies flit- ted along the corridors. There were absurd canvas 250 Musings by Canip-Fire and Wayside canoes, which some city crank had invented, brand- new, on the beach, with dudes dressed in the fashionable dude outing suits — getting into the can- vas boats and pawing on both sides — just as a city canoeist does, you know. But as we drifted slowly up to the dock a different type appeared. There were men walking about, grizzled old veterans so full of learning that it exuded from their pores, and gave the atmosphere — or would if it had not been for the terrible offal of that monster cannery — the odor of a college class-room. And there stood that idol of every lover of nature and of charming litera- ture, John Burroughs. Naturally we felt abashed; we with our old tub of a mail-boat in the presence of that sumptuous ship, the John W. Ellis, and in the presence of the pick and choice of the science and scholarship of the United States — for it was the famous scientific expedition that we had so suddenly run upon in the hid-away cave of Orca. They ran out a great gramophone with a wide and glistening silver trum- pet, and began to grind out stories, some of them chestnuts, and songs, and comic dialogues. We took our places appropriately with the other Aleuts and applauded. The Ellis had broken her propeller — how, I did not inquire — and had backed up against the beach, so that low tide would clear it, and they could get at it to make repairs. Orca is beached against such a cliff as I have At Orca 25 described. The sight of it would make a poet tune his lyre. First, one of those silver ribbons was seen gathering up a bunch of lesser ones in the snow two thousand feet above, and sliding down, now a veil, now a silver wire, down the mossy cliff to the sea. Next came a larger one bounding and leaping like a white antlered stag and taking a grand leap into the brine. But from the woods beyond came the sound of a cataract. There was a river zigzagging, leaping in spray which curved high in the air, over huge black rocks. It came down through a dense growth of trees, and looking up, just as far as the eye could penetrate, it was seen, now hidden, now revealed, roaring down and filling the air with flying water-drops. They had drawn off enough of it below to turn the machinery of that huge cannery, where they take in a dozen tons of salmon at a load. Remember that this background of Orca is not a steep hillside, it is a tremendous cliff, which you could no more scale than you could a Corinthian pillar. The party that met regularly around the smoke- stack consisted of all the passengers, namely, Mrs. M. L. Claiborne, of Seattle, and two children; Mrs. Charles H. Harper and her little daughter, also of Seattle; Dr. and Mrs. Mulhollan; after we arrived at Unga and until we arrived at Kadiak, Mr. M. L. Washburn, Major Clarke, and myself. But at Orca we met a disaster. The smoke-stack had been our social hall. There was where Dr. Mulhollan laid 252 Musinis by Canzp-Fzre and Wayside Clarke and myself out in story-telling. It was the only comfortable place on the ship out of our state- rooms, and half a dozen of us had it all to ourselves. But at Orca thirty disconsolate prospectors from Copper River came on board and took possession. They had been eighteen months in those swamps. They had scurvy, some of them, but no gold. The smoke-stack with all its delightful associations went glimmering back to take its receding place among the things that were, but are not. We had had glaciers galore, scores of them, some of them as wide as the Muir, and volcanoes, but now we looked forward to Mount St. Elias, the highest in America, and the Fairweather range. We were going to sail close up to every one of them, and we did, but we did not get the faintest glimpse of any of them. As I sat gazing at the leaden sky I borrowed the objurgation of my Aleut boatman against the whales, "It is a shame! It is a shame! Hang the fog! I'd rather be in a hurri- cane than in a fog!" The barometer seemed to promise both. It began blowing dead ahead in the forenoon, and by two o'clock we were in a first-rate gale, driving the rain like bird-shot; in short, in a storm at sea. With full steam on, we could not force the ship forward perceptibly. The ship pitched and rolled and creaked. The gale blew tTie top off every high wave and sent it flying. The wheel was out of the water, going like mad, half the time. All through the storm the ship kept repeat- Ai Orca 253 ing her roll. In the midst of tremendous waves she would lie an instant upon a level keel, motion- less, then came a moderate pitch, the next deeper, the plunge increasing till she seemed diving head- first like a whale, then the level keel and quiet again. We were in for twelve hours of this at the shortest; possibly twenty, possibly a week. I retired and was waked up by the stillness of the ship, and waited for her to resume her regular round of pitches, but she did not. The storm was still going on, but we were under shelter of some kind. The captain had found a lee-shore to creep under. We stopped at Yukatat, but were somewhat glum over missing St, Elias, Fairweather, and the gla- ciers. However, we looked ahead. As evening came on we were trying to get into Cross Sound. It was a race between us and a visible fog bank. If we got there first, then farewell to the ocean and its fogs. We would see them no more. If the fog got there first, then we would drift up and down on the ocean for a day and a night probably, waiting for it to lift. But we entered the narrow strait with the fog close on our heels. &^mm t\)t ctDcntr-fifti^ T/ie Alaskajz Mines MY last concluded with our escape from the fog into Cross Sound, the northernmost channel out of the wonderful labyrinth into the ocean. As between a fog and a storm I would take the storm any time, either on the dangerous Alaskan coast or on the highway be- tween New York and Liverpool. A strong ship will ride the waves and defy the gale; but drift- ing in a black fog, she is subject to invisible enemies, sinuous and slimy, whose bite is fatal. The mouth of Cross Sound is narrow and rocky, which accounted for the captain's refusal to try it without a clear view, but it widens grandly. To the left was the Glacier Bay, at the head of it the celebrated Muir, dimly visible. Passing this the sound narrows somewhat and is called Icy Strait, because of the many icebergs which float out from Glacier Bay. We counted thirty of them, all in view at the same time. The top surface of the ice- bergs seemed to be thickly covered with moss, an impression which a good glass only confirmed. But as we neared one the steam-whistle was blown, and instantly the moss became a cloud! The sea-birds had been sitting with their bare, webbed feet on the 254 The Alaskan Mines 255 ice, as closely together as they could squat. They circled about a little and then drifted back to their heel-cooling perches. Such a winding way as that ship pursued! east, northeast, north, southeast, north again, and finally west. The sound of blast- ing came down the strait from the Treadwell mines. To the left emerged the long lines of stamp-mills in which eight hundred and eighty huge pestles pound away night and day every day in the year but two, the Fourth of July and Christmas. There is no cessation in the attempt to supply the insa- tiable and universal hunger for gold. Farther along, the pretty little city of Juneau could be seen, like a patch of snow newly fallen from one of the two mountains, in a small angle of which it climbs. They tell me they have plenty of room for a city, but the way in which the little houses are set upon ledges, like hatching sea-birds, does not seem to imply much room. Juneau presents the singular exception of a city well ordered, well improved, well kept, without municipal government, without tax- ation, without police. The money needed for muni- cipal purposes is voluntarily paid by the property- holders. It was ten o'clock and raining when we drew up to the wharf, but I was bound to sleep in a full-sized bed that night. I had said that as soon as I could get ashore I would take a room in the hotel, that contained two wide beds, and change from one to the other frequently during the night. Still, the bed I had on the Excelsior had its advan- 256 MzLsin^s by Camp- Fire and Wayside tages, I touched at both ends, so when the ship rolled in that storm I neither rasped a hole through the mattress nor had to go to a cobbler to get my- self half-soled. At the hotel, on the counter, a nickel-plated pipe came up, bent over, and poured a constant stream of the unequaled Alaskan water into an always overflowing tumbler. Now I would immediately reach home by telegraph, but was surprised to learn that no part of Alaska is connected with the States by wire. I had not received a word from home since I left the front door two months before. As long as one can speak to his friends at any time, he does not feel that he is away from them. At the Treadwell mines labor-saving is brought to its perfection. The low-grade ores are treated at a cost of one dollar per ton. The mills in the States charge ten dollars per ton. This economy in extracting the precious metal will soon make gold over-abundant, reduce its value so as to make it inconvenient to carry. There is no limit to the amount of gold that is accessible; its costliness arises from the labor required to concentrate it. One can dig a spadeful of earth almost anywhere in Alaska, and wash gold out of it. It is so in all the country around Cook's Inlet and the tributary rivers in the Cape Nome country. The prospec- tors who starved out on the Copper River said they could get gold anywhere in the whole region. Alaska is dusted over with it. The insuperable The Alaskan Mines 257 difficulty has been to concentrate it economically. I saw thin seams of gold quartz cutting through the great stratas of slate all along the Silver Bow Canon. But gold is worth what it costs in labor, like every other commodity. Where the quartz or the ore will not pay good wages to the man who would work it, he lets it alone. The Treadwell lode is four hundred and fifty feet thick and set on edge. Its extent is not known, but there is enough in sight to keep ten hundred stamps busy day and night for one hundred years. The situation allows ore extraction with the mini- mum of labor. First a tunnel was driven into the lode some four hundred feet. Then a shaft was driven down to meet it, not perpendicular to the tunnel, but so as to allow a cork-screw slide of some fifty feet to reach it; this to break the force of the ore falling to the cars. The ore is blasted off the sides of the shaft, falls to the slide, which empties it into the cars. The cars are on a slight incline, so that the only labor is to regulate the brakes. They dump themselves into a hopper, which feeds the ore to the crusher. From the crusher it falls into the hopper four hundred feet long, which feeds it to the stamps. From the stamps it falls into the separators, which wash out all uninineralized dust. This leaves the "concentrates" which contain gold, silver, and base metals. These are put in one-hun- dred-pound sacks and sent, mostly as ballast, to the reduction works in the States. 258 Musings by Cajup-Fire and Wayside It is perfectly surprising to walk through those enormous mills, thunderous with the blows of the stamps, and perhaps not see a human being; and to see those separators — which are Fourdrinier paper-machines slightly adapted to a new use — working away, six lines of them occupying acres of space, with nobody to regulate them. Yes, step- ping around a corner one will see a man quietly walking about with an oiler in his hand. A large amount of power is required to do all this heavy work. If it were derived from steam the Treadwell mine would be less of a financial success. But one can see a surplus of unused energy leaping down the mountain-side in a water- fall — not a small one. Pressure of one hundred and seventy pounds to the square inch is delivered to the turbines, which furnish the force to drive the drills, lift the stamps, and illuminate the whole work with electric light. By the way, I see that the new water-motor put in at Snoqualmie Falls is pronounced a success. As I explained, the motor is a pair of interlocked turn- stiles inclosed in a box. Each one of the pair weighs twelve tons. They are so closely fitted to each other and to the inclosing steel box that almost no water is allowed to pass without sur- rendering its energy. I had my doubts about the practicability of the invention. I could not see why the pressure would not be as great against the advancing as against the receding blade; and I The Alaskan Mines 259 shall wish to know yet that the motor delivers the calculable amount of force, less friction, before it can be a demonstrated success. Major Clarke and I received invitations to a party of four, from Mrs, Dr. Mulhollan. As we sat around the smoke-stack of the Excelsior, not infre- quently memories of strawberries and cream broke into the routine of ship's fare. There was a great tureen of them on the lady's table that evening — about a peck — and a water-pitcher full of real cream, and angel-food cake, light and white enough to buoy one up to the skies like a balloon. Now I am not going to give Major Clarke away, I am not going to tell what he did to those beautiful berries and to that pitcher of molten gold. The Major was on Winfield Hancock's staff during the war, and in consideration of his patriotic services my lips are sealed — his weren't, and there's the difference. Juneau is a wedge driven in between two moun- tains, the liveliest little city in Alaska. There are, as I have said, no taxes — no law by which they can be levied, no fund for supporting anything, and yet the streets are well planked, well kept, and the community is as orderly and safe and tidy as if there were a mayor and all the municipal machin- ery. The funds needed are scheduled and appor- tioned to the property-holders, who pay voluntarily to a committee appointed by the town meeting. There can be no suspicion about Juneau's water supply. There it is. Every citizen can see for 26o Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside himself its origin and its channel. What reinforce- ments the stream receives after leaving the snow is from springs which find their way out from reser- voirs in the porphyry. Another stream gives them their electric lights. I was interested in knowing what lay behind that steep little mountain which shuts off a view of the water supply. So I buckled on my camera and started. On the way I met Mrs. James WoUaston Kirk, of Philadelphia, thus far on her way, with her husband, to the Yukon as a mis- sionary. I told Mrs. Kirk that Silver Bow Canon lay just beyond that little mountain, and that I was going to explore it; would she go with me? The road lay around the cliff, was built of poles which were supported on the outside by beams and long posts. At various places there were spaces made where teams could pass. The river which foamed along below implied a pretty sharp and long ascent. Passing beyond the little mountain a stream of some width and impetuosity crossed the road. It did not discourage the lady. She balanced on the stone, and chunks thrown in, and came to shore with a flying bound. A gentleman we met said we would find some good views by passing around a spur seen in the distance; "but it is quite a walk," he added. So I found a nice shady place from which the beau- tiful tangle of water on the mountain-side was visible, and fixed a seat for Mrs. Kirk, and said I would go on up the mountain, and so strode away. The precipice below that spur was more than a The Alaskan Mines 261 thousand feet deep. Beyond it was a ravine filled with snow clear up to the top of a high mountain. There were ice bridges, beneath which the streams were flowing. There were here and there great tresses of sparkling water from the cliffs, and far down below the river was leaping from ledge to ledge — not little ripples, but sheer plunges of from fifty to a hundred feet. It was a most animated scene, and I became absorbed in studying how I could get a picture of it, when looking up, there stood Mrs, Kirk, perfectly charmed by the lofty and splendid surroundings. "Your husband will hold me responsible for this, because you will be ill to-morrow." She smiled, but thought not, I now understood how the popu- lar wife of a popular pastor in the fine old city of Philadelphia could forsake a fine circle and a wide range of influence to brave the loneliness and priva- tions of Yukon. It must be a work of discourage- ment as well as of hardship. They might as well try to organize a society of gomies or kittiwakes as to build a church of that gold-fevered and mer- curial population. As for brief impressions, a single sermon, with no instruction before, and no pastoral care afterward, I do not believe much in its value. The church is an orchard, a vineyard, which must have constant and laborious attention or it will grow up to brambles and weeds. There is need of missionary work in the British Northwest colony, sure enough. There is nowhere 262 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside on this continent such another organized band of thieves and pirates as have there seized upon gov- ernmental authority. Claims are going in constantly to the ofifice of the secretary of state in Washington for redress, and it will be given. I do not purpose going into detail, but in order to show the serious international character of the conflict, I will mention one line of their perfidious and infamous operations. Prospectors are required to take out licenses, for which they are charged a high price. When a prospector strikes a valuable claim he is approached by an official who demands to see his license. It is handed to him, and he immediately stamps across the face of it "Good for quartz only." There is no quartz yet discovered on the upper Yukon. The miner is ousted and his claim seized upon. Another method, not so obviously within the purview of international law, which has become so flagrant that redress is being asked of our govern- ment, is this: When an American prospector finds "pay dirt" his claim is jumped and an injunction issued to stop his working it till the case is decided. The case is never decided, but is postponed from time to time, till the prospector is starved out and leaves. There are enough of such instances to show that it is a system. The judiciary is as cor- rupt as the other departments of the government. It must not be supposed that the Klondike pirates victimize Americans alone. A Canadian told me The Alaskan Mines 263 there was no discrimination. If a British subject, a poor man, discover a good claim he is robbed of it as unscrupulously as if he were an alien; but the Canadian victim is at a disadvantage as compared with the American. He can have no hope of justice from the courts, even if he have the means to prosecute, while the American has only to file his evidence with the state department in Washington. Now how could such a band of men obtain power in a British colony? How did Boss Tweed obtain power in New York city? The situation is entirely favorable. The very sparse population of British subjects is widely scattered, with small opportunity to vote, and it would do them no good if they did. The returns are in the hands of the conspirators. There will be no cessation of these proceedings, unless the imperial government should interfere, until the syndicate, in which there may be some Americans, have seized upon all the valu- able claims. British and Canadian journals should not give their approval to these proceedings. As just men they should inform themselves of the fact. They should not foster prejudice in favor of wrong-doing. All the facts and the evidences will be spread before the people of both nations in the international nego- tiations which must ensue. I hear that Sir Wilfred Laurier threatens war. I heard the same from an Englishman at Skagway. Sir Wilfred cannot im- agine the delight which his words give to the Ameri- 264 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside cans in Alaska. News of hostilities would be re- ceived with the wildest yell of savage joy that ever echoed in those mountains. If there should be a collision the Canadian premier will be responsible for it. The state of feeling is dangerously bitter already, and a spark will ignite tinder. It is his place to appeal to British justice and order, and assure all of protection under it, in their property and in their persons. The situation in the British Northwest is abnormal and temporary. It is bound to attract the attention of the Canadian govern- ment, which, composed of Englishmen, may be trusted to maintain British liberties and rights, for their own people and for ours. WHAT ADAM DID IN EDEN The Realms of Mystery MYSTERY inspires fear, as children are afraid in the dark, and fear is an incen- tive to knowledge. Fear, not fright, awakens keen and serious curiosity, desire to know. The most timid animals are the most curious. A bulldog never investigates. He is firm in his con- victions. No hunted animal can be so alarmed by the presence or suspicion of danger that it will not pause to inquire. There is no knowledge so essen- tial to life as the knowledge of good and evil. Those who know, survive; those who do not, perish. An ancient sage urged this thought in an immortal maxim: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." Mind, as well as nature, "abhors a vacuum." Man and the higher animals below him people mys- tery with creatures of the imagination, and these, because mystery is in itself fearful, are always more or less so. Man also wishes to vindicate his cour- age by justifying his fears. For these reasons all primitive superstitions and religions are filled with images both grotesque and dreadful; and these, when he would represent them pictorially or in wood or stone, are esteemed to have merit in pro- 267 268 Mtishigs by Cmnp-Fire and Wayside portion to their monstrosity. The uglier the idol the more devout the worshiper. Nor is this prin- ciple lost when it rises into the wider ranges of religion. The more shocking a dogma be to the moral or intellectual sense, the more it is admired and cherished by its devotees. The love of the horrible is an earlier passion in the human heart than the love of the beautiful, therefore ignorance and curiosity revel in scenes that are revolting to a cultured mind and heart. Nor can they be dissi- pated by evidence or reason. They are beyond the range of the one and above the level of the other. Natural outgrowths of the mind in a lower stage of development, they never wholly disappear, but are like a disused and atrophied physical organ, which, while diminished, persists, and sometimes makes trouble. The most enlightened man will at times shudder with a superstitious fear that came into his blood a thousand years ago. His reason laughs in vain while his heart quails. It is probable that the gruesome in superstition arose out of man's experiences in his perilous strug- gle for existence — experiences which were for the most part both miserable and dangerous. The deer or the bird does not for a moment forget to lift its head suspiciously and search its surroundings for the approach of an enemy. Though its eyes may be employed in looking for food, its ears and its nostrils are sleepless sentinels, always on guard. Not otherwise was the situation of primitive man, The Realms of Mystery 269 and therefore he could only project into the unseen and mysterious the knowledge he had of the visible and real. But when his situation improved, and life became less painful and perilous and his prospects and hopes more cheering, they were mirrored in his religious conceptions. Song is the expression of gladness, and with joy came the singer. A man, like a bird, sings when he is happy. Here also came in the conditions and the possibilities of art. Upon the black background of primitive supersti- tion the poet-artist could cast the colors of victory, confidence, hope, and good-will. Mystery was en- lightened by the emergence of heroes, who warred upon the monsters, and therefore became objects of man's gratitude and worship. It was a chief object of his thought to win their friendship. He built shrines and piled altars with votive offerings. Paul, with the genuine sympathy which comes of a large and generous nature, spoke of this as "seeking after God, if haply they might find him." The prophets of this search were poets. The true poet is always a prophet, and the true prophet a poet. These prophet-poets, in every country, infused a spirit of joy and hope into the gloomy superstitions in which they were born. The early Greeks sang of an age of gold, the age of their ancestors, to which their descendants might hope to return. So it was with the early Egyptians. They extolled the long reign of the god Ra, and said that no good thing had been seen on the earth since he departed. 270 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside So, also, our Aryan kindred of India depicted the blessedness of men under the earliest Manu — and the Persians the reign of their creator-God Ahura- madz before the devil-god Ahiram appeared; and the Semite saw Paradise and man emerge in celes- tial beauty when the Divine Spirit brooded upon chaos. The periods of these ages of gold varied among the various peoples. The eastern Aryans gave a million of years to theirs, the Hebrew Tal- mudists only seven, while the grim Saint Augustine, in his parsimony of joy, would allow Adam and Eve only six years of Eden, and thus economized one year to be added to the already over-ample sum of human misery, in the conservation of which he was largely interested. Archaeology has in recent years brought large light to the study of the story of Adam — its origins, variations, and parallels. Those lost libraries of clay and stone have lain buried for two and a half thousand years. They were inscribed in unknown characters, and recorded the words of unknown tongues. They were as dead and apparently as unrestorable as the scattered dust of lips that had last spoken them. It was a miracle of perseverance, acumen, and learning — a breathing upon dry frag- ments of bones, causing them to arise, lift the curtains of oblivion, and discourse to us of a litera- ture and civilization of which history had small suspicion. There has been, in recent years, much polemic The Realms of Mystery 2 7 1 conflict over the authorship of the Pentateuch, and the dates of its various parts. In these questions I take little interest, and with them, in this writing, have nothing to do. My purpose is to take the writing as I find it, "asking no questions for con- science' sake," and impartially study it for the intent and meaning of its author. To put it on its lowest ground, a decent respect for an author re- quires that he shall be read for what he says and means, and not, in the interest of any philosophy, dogma, sect, or other motive, be subjected to con- structions and glosses that were foreign to his mind. It has been otherwise inexplicable to me, that of the thousands of volumes, and I may say millions of sermons, that have traversed the story of Adam, not one, so far as I am aware, has perceived the thought most obvious on the page of Moses; nor has seen the picture of Adam in Eden which he drew in lines simple, striking, and beautiful, and full, nevertheless, of the profoundest thought con- cerning man. It is not questioned that the materials employed by Moses are very ancient; that dealing with the beginnings, he went back to the beginnings as they were. He even seems to have, of design, left the marks of great antiquity on his page, in order that the thoughtful scholar might be assured. Why else should the brief song of Lamech be left lying on the surface of his narrative, though foreign to it, like a granite bowlder on a green meadow, dropped 272 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside by the receding ice. Lamech's song is the sudden war-whoop of a savage, an outbreak of exultant ferocity: "Cain slew one young man of his kindred; I will slay threescore and fifteen!" It was as if he were fingering the edge of a newly acquired weapon, eager for a revel of murder. He took his two wives into his confidence, who appear from this to have been in sympathy with him. Such a song as that would not have been preserved by a people who were much above his own moral level. The song, therefore, antedates the oldest civilization, and has its value as an evidence of the authenticity of the writings. I assume the authorship of Moses as a matter of convenience, and to say the least, of unstudied probability. In creating a new nation, a new mill-, tary power, out of the material of Egyptian slaves, he would wish to inspire them with patriotism and pride in an heroic ancestry. The popular conception of Adam in Eden is at an opposite extreme from that of Moses. This we owe to the genius of Mil- ton chiefly, though it was not original with him; and all the poets and artists since have followed his path. It will be remembered that Milton's con- ception of Adam was of an opulent English gentle- man in peculiar circumstances, dwelling in a highly artificial English park in fine weather. Milton's Eden was a not very congruous combination of Anglican and Oriental landscapes. It was a mound protected from intrusion by triple barriers — a wall, The Realms of Mystery 273 a forest, and an impenetrable thicket. An Ameri- can poet, familiar with native wilderness scenery, would have set this paradise-mound for security in the center of a tamarack swamp, and omitted the forest and the wall as superfluous. For the sake of artistic variety, after the manner of Milton a native poet might have intermingled a few cypress trees with his tamaracks, decorated his sloughs with patches of everglade, filled the waters with a mixed population of muskallonge and alligators, and thus have combined the charms of Florida with those of northern Wisconsin, both of them dear to the vaca- tioner's heart. Within the encircling wall, on the summit of Milton's mound, were the trees of the Edenic gar- den. His puritanic ideas of propriety prevented him from doing justice to the scene. Frivolous poets and artists among the cavaliers have improved the opportunity thus offered, so that the resultant popular conception is a mosaic which would have astonished Moses. Thus the Edenic trees lifted their glistening and freighted branches above and extended them over the high protecting wall, prob- ably as a temptation to a frugivorous devil. Their twigs bent low with crimson-streaked apples, which had forgotten neither the colors nor the perfume of their lovely ancestress, the rose. The golden gleam of oranges shone in a foliage of glossy green, and all abroad was the multitudinous sisterhood of the flowers, rising from the humble violet to the lofty 2 74 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside magnolia. Amid the recesses and paths of this opulent scenery wandered Eve, sweeter than the nectarines and fairer than the flowers. Now, what was Paradise? I was born in it my- self, and am, therefore, prepared both to admire and vindicate the fidelity of Moses in his descrip- tions of Adam and nature. Eden was, as he well and truly as well as poetically says, God's garden. It owed nothing of its beauty to man. All city- living men — women not so much — who were fortu- nate in a similar nativity, in their retrospective moments sympathize with Eve in her lament, *'Must I thus leave thee, Paradise!" and look with grief upon the circling sword of fire which turns every way to make recovery impossible. Magnificent were the fruit-bearing trees of Para- dise, in stature of trunk and arm, and in cloudy gracefulness of crown: the walnut, hickory, mul- berry, hackberry, chestnut, coffee-nut, beech, cherry, hawthorn, persimmon, pawpaw, and en- tangled in their lofty tops, the mighty grape-vine, hanging its shining and multitudinous clusters in the scarlet and golden foliage of October. There arose the sweet-hearted maple, its bole pitted by the bills of sipping birds and black with sugar charred in the sun. The ground below, wherever the trees allowed light to penetrate, was woven over with vines of the dewberry, the blackberry, the whortle- berry, the strawberry — the feast garnished with goldenrod and aster, while the lakes were fields of The Realms of Mystery 275 nutritious rice. The inhabitants which Adam found in Paradise were wild pigeons, myriads of them fly- ing in clouds that darkened the sky, the brown quail with its little captain's plume and its musical call, the wild turkey strutting in its pride, the wild goose flying en echelon across the sky, the arrowy wild duck, the swan floating like a white cloud, the wood-thrush filling the forest with a tide of exquis- ite melody, the painted humming-bird and butter- fly — a noble paradise it was, dignified in its grandeur, brilliant in its floral and animated beauty, melodious with all sweet song, redolent of all delightful odors. Adam could not direct his steps anywhere, could not cast his eye toward the earth to the scenes im- mediately about him, nor to the distant view of the snow-draped mountains, without having them filled with curious beauty or distant grandeur, nor could he look up without beholding the splendor of cloud, or rainbow, or auroral flame, or sparkling star. But Adam was neither to be palled with beauty nor enervated by ease. The machserodus was there, bearing two serrated sabers, the crouching panther, the huge cave-bear, the striped hyena, the tawny hair-clad elephant. Adam must sharpen his wits to circumvent the rapacious strength which he could not directly resist; he must tax his invention for better weapons than nature had furnished to his rivals. He must devise means for striking those foes at a distance which he dared not meet in im- mediate grapple. He must put his soft hand and 276 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside his busy brain in the lists against tooth and claw. Therefore, he borrowed the resilient strength of ash and yew for his bow. He tipped his arrows and his spears with edges and points of chert and flint. He learned to concentrate his strength and the whole energy of his body upon a piercing point. Soft as were his hands, unarmed as were his feet, symmetri- cal and harmless as were the white arches of his teeth, he introduced a new tactic into defensive warfare and became the Napoleon of the forest. The spies of his keen senses anticipated an ap- proaching enemy. He knew what he could not know nor explain. He could not be lost in unfamil- iar surroundings, nor his judgment be confused by a scenic surprise — a range of intuitive perception which his descendants have lost, and left to the homing-dove and the listening caribou. The great cat, however well padded his feet and cautious his step, could not approach him unknown, but while waving his tail in anticipation of a man-feast, and gazing with his wide yellow eyes, would hear the sudden twang of a string and the whiz of a shaft, which if it did not kill him, warned him to be con- tent with less toothsome prey, The Adam of Genesis IN pursuing the story of Adam, we should bear in mind some considerations that have been excluded by popular and poetic conceptions; the most important of which is the truth that a wide intellectual, spiritual, and moral range of knowledge is not necessary to a true and genuine faith in God. Our Lord thought it necessary to emphasize this truth more than once, and in the most impressive manner. He thanked the Father that while the wise and prudent were blind to the highest spiritual truth, it had been revealed unto babes. He literally held them up in his arms as models of what a true faith must be, and said that unless we should become as one of them we could in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven. That this is law in the spiritual kingdom is also seen in the mention of the Psalmist, who said that God ordained his praise in the mouths of infants. With this truth before us, we shall not be dis- turbed, though possibly somewhat surprised, at the description given of Adam by Moses. In this par- ticular Milton's noble absurdities are a wide and wild departure from the original — directly contrary to it, in fact. Considered simply from the stand- 277 278 Mtisings by Camp- Fire a?id Wayside point of art, Moses is immeasurably superior to Milton. The Paradise of Moses was a broad country, diversified by mountains and plains in which great rivers rose and flowed to the sea. Of those rivers only one retains its ancient name, the Euphrates. His Hiddekel, east of Assyria, is probably the Tigris, and that which encompassed Ethiopia, the Nile. The Pison is probably the Indus. Eastward in this broad fertile belt Moses located the birth- place of man. We now come to what is so remark- able, the misconceptions in the traditional, poetic, theological, and popular portraitures of Adam. It would be interesting, but it is not convenient, to draw these conceptions out in a third parallel col- umn over against both the results of anthropological investigation and the Adam of Moses in Genesis. It will be seen that science gives Moses a wonder- fully specific, particular, and thorough vindication. The two are here set side by side for close and im- mediate comparison. The Primitive man: The Adam of Moses: 1. Wears no clothing, and i. Wore no clothing. "He is unconscious of any phys- was naked and was not ical or moral need of it. ashamed." 2. Subsists on the spon- 2. Subsisted upon the spon- taneous products of nature, taneous products of the primarily and chiefly, as his garden. "I give you," said dentition shows, upon fruits, Elohim, "every plant bear- seeds, and nuts. ing seed and every tree pro- ducing fruit. That shall be food fo r you. The Ada7n of Geiiesis 279 3. The primitive man is devoid of moral perceptions. He does not know the differ- ence between good and evil. 4. His intellectual powers are undeveloped. He has but little knowledge. 5. He builds no home, but lives in caves and in the rudest shelters. 6. He has but a few rude tools, and they cutting instru- ments made of flint or chert. 7. He plans nothing; does not till the soil. 8. His first speech is in giving names to the animals around him. He must be able to communicate concerning the animals he would eat, and those that would eat him. g. He has a religion. He believes in mysterious per- sonal powers superior to himself, to which he is sub- ject. 10. His religion is anthro- pomorphic. His gods are powerful men. II. The first moral senti- ment to appear in primitive man is modesty. He makes a covering, at first of leaves. 3. Adam did not know the difference between good and evil. 4. Adam had not eaten of the tree of knowledge. 5. Adam built no home. Milton says he slept under a bower of roses. 6. MosesimpliesthatAdam had cutting implements. "He dressed the trees." 7. "There was not a man to till the ground." 8. Adam's first recorded ut- terance was in giving names to animals. 9. Adam recognized the existence of God, a being superior to himself, to whom he was subject. 10. He conceived of God as a powerful man, who was accustomed to avoid the trop- ical heat, and walk in the garden in the cool of the day. 11. Adam's first act of moral consciousness was prompted by modesty. He made for himself an apron of leaves. 28o Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside 12. His first permanent 12. Adam's first perma- clothing is the skins of ani- nent clothing was of the mals. skins of animals. "Unto Adam and also to his wife did Elohim make coats of skins and clothed them." 13. Primitive man is an 13. Adam was an arboreal arboreal animal. He finds individual, finding his habi- his habitat, food, and refuge tat and food in and among in or among the trees. the trees of the garden. Here we have thirteen points of description by which anthropological science identifies and de- scribes the primitive man, not one of which is omit- ted by Moses. Whatever the theories of the way in which the writer in Genesis came into possession of the knowledge of the primitive conditions of the human race, it is demonstrated that he possessed it without an error, and anticipated the conclusions of modern research. The descriptions of the original man found in every cult that was in existence when Genesis was written, or which the poets have since created, are from every point of view in wide con- trast with and inferior to that of Moses. Coarse of material, low of ideal, crude in structure, and as barren ethically as a stone, they are only foils which heighten the conception of the Hebrew bard, lawgiver, and prophet. His is asthe veil of a bride, which heightens a beauty which it seems to conceal. A blue mist softens, but does not obscure, a rugged landscape. It brings into view and evidence the otherwise invisible atmosphere. Thus while Moses The Adam of Genesis 281 does not spiritualize materiality, a task attempted by many modern cults and philosophies, he lets fall upon it the mist of spiritual allegory. The clouds were the first notice to man that there was a world higher than the earth upon which he trod. They reflected the light of the sun, and analyzed its beauty as rock and tree could not. Thus appro- priately did Moses bring the spiritual world into view, and so blended it with the earth that thinkers are even now questioning whether nature is not the supernatural, and the supernatural, nature. Let us examine one of these blending statements — the most important of them: It is the author's description of the creation of man. It was not a fiat, but a proceeding In three stages. First: "Jehovah Elohim made man of the dust of the earth." He formed his material body of that to which it should return. Secondly: "He breathed into him the breath of life." Had the creative process been arrested there, man would have been but one species of animals among many, in no wise differing from them except in form. Thus far in the process the work is represented as acts of cre- ative activity — creative, however executed, by what- ever expenditure of time and forces. But the final statement is in contrast so marked with the two pre- ceding it as to attract attention: "And he became a living soul." We would not, like the systematic theologian, erect an inverted pyramid of dogmatism upon the apex of a Hebrew vowel-point; but this 282 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside change of expression is noticeable because it brings the statement of the origin of man into harmony with many and all other references made in the Scrip- ture to the source of spiritual life. It is spoken of as an impartation, not as a creation. The divine man sprang from the loins of God, and is as endur- ing as he — was planted, not as a finished statue is set up, but as the potentiality of manhood imparted to material forms, where it began the process of "be- coming" stated by Moses; began to unfold, and continued, and now continues, and will until the divine creative ideal is perfected. Adam attained the divine image because his life was thenceforth of the divine essence. He possessed to the full meas- ure of his capacity all the attributes of his Father. There appeared One upon the earth of such spiritual receptivity that he possessed in himself "the full- ness of the godhead bodily." There is no differ- ence between the divinity of man and of God but this of degree, and in this consists the relation of fatherhood, and sonship, which is the essential and elemental fact of the Christian religion. The denial of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man is a more specific and destructive atheism than that which refuses to recognize the divine existence. In addition to the denial of the one essential predi- cate of monotheistic religion, it is necessarily and equally a denial of the one essential predicate of character and morals. It is a proposition to return to the ethical status of the solitary saurians, upon The Adam of Genesis 283 which God found it necessary to pile the hills. Take away from us the divine fatherhood and human brotherhood, and every man would be to every other man a rapacious enemy. Better Saturn, who appeased his appetite by devouring his chil- dren, than the god of the traditional theologians, who consigns them to endless torture for the grati- fication of his passion for personal glory. Saturn was a beast; this last conception is of a demon. The worst is always proximate to the best in morals and religion, as extremes are proximate in mathe- matics. It was not till Christianity, in its benign and heavenly glory, rose upon the world, that paganism itself paled into morning light when com- pared with the rayless and infinite abysm of divine iniquity which traditional theologians presented as representing the character of Our Father in Heaven. Libel therein did its worst, and never can be exceeded. Nay, verily, that paternal voice pursues every child of Adam from the cradle to the grave: "Where art thou, Adam? What doest thou? Return to me, my child." The Divine Father has never forgotten the hour or the trysting-place where, as the Edenic sun bends low, and the shadows of the night fall upon the world, he desires to meet and commune with his children. With magnificent prophetic per- ception the divine bard witnessed the rejoicing of the starry ranks over the birth of a new order of the sons of God. They had long, in silent wonder, 284 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside beheld suns slowly wheeling in trackless space, and planets unfolding in the eternal calm; but broke into glad acclaim when these new avenues and receptacles of love appeared, Adam was an infant. He did not know his moral or physical right hand from the left; did not distinguish between the paths of rectitude and of wrong; did not know the difference between good and evil; had not eaten of the tree of knowledge. He was, therefore, innocent. This is the sound ethic of Moses, the lawgiver as well as the poet and prophet — and it is fundamental to every principle of justice. Sin was as impossible to Adam as to a bird or flower, or to any creature that has not risen to moral consciousness. The infant of the race, his was the innocency of the babe. Moses does not credit him with positive and aggressive righteous- ness. He had to rise before he could fall; had to climb before he could descend. He could not know the difference between good and evil till he had tasted both the mellow and nutritive sweet of the one, and the bitter and poisonous sweet of the other. His theology was also that of a child, a simple anthropomorphism. God was his father, in form identical with himself in body, mind, and being — living in the garden, and walking abroad, as Adam did, in the evening. What Adam's child was to him, such was he to God. Now, let us see what Adam did in Eden during that epoch of his progress which Moses describes. The Adam of Genesis 285 He had no clothing, but on arriving at manhood began to provide himself with it. This was his first step forward into the panoply of a man. He had few tools — his life in Eden not requiring them. The representation is that bountiful nature supplied him with all that he had learned to desire; and that he was as happy as he was innocent of the knowl- edge of civilization and its sins. It is probable that his first great discovery was of the use of fire — his first conquest over the elemental forces of nature; and in all the inventions and discoveries of man since, there was none which approached this in importance. It is to-day the master discovery of time. The garden eastward in Eden lay in the poet's zone. The dwellers there knew what were the treasures of the hail and the snow. The rain is for the refreshment of the plants and the replen- ishment of springs and streams; but the hail and the snow and the biting north wind are for the nur- ture of mankind. True manhood is not a plant of the tropics, where the native sleeps at the foot of the artocarpus tree, and wakens to eat of the fallen fruit. Man to come to manhood must fight, like Hiawatha, with Kwasind. He must turn upon the assailing storm and defy it. He must wrest his rights from nature during her winter reign of frown and austerity. If his children are not to perish, and his tribe to become extinct, he must shelter them in a home. It required the frost and the storm to make the family, and it requires the family 286 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside to make the state and the church, and to bring God out of heaven to associate with man. We should here notice the location of the birth- place of man, as stated by the author or authors of Genesis, as at least a coincidence of philosophical interest. It was eastward in Eden, a country which we must recognize as bounded on the north and east by the Caucasian range of mountains and their southward trend beyond the valley of the Euphrates. It is within that arc the ethnographers have found the cradle of the Aryan races — an elevated land which was familiar with the rigors of winter, and in which human life required the exercise of thought and forecast, endurance and hardihood. The dis- tinction between the children of the garden and contiguous races is emphasized with racial pride. He notices, as part of the penalty of Cain's crime, that he was an exile, marrying a wife and building a city of a different people and in a distant country. The commingling of better with the inferior races he speaks of as the marriage of the sons of God with the daughters of men. We are not justified in re- garding this as a mythological statement. It is plainly an historical fact in poetic form. The union of one man with one woman in a true and faithful bond marked the moral and intellectual metamor- phosis of Adam out of the earth earthy. It is to be observed that the story of Adam by Moses teaches monogamy and chastity; that all other descriptions of the origin of man teach polygamy. The Adam of Genesis 287 Eve was a part of Adam's life and being, with him- self constituting the unit called man; while all others represent the wife as an instrument and a chattel. Monogamy constitutes perfect manhood, while polygamy represents a monstrosity, a hydra. When I see a pair of birds, each bearing its part in sheltering and rearing their young, I say they are no longer of the lower animals. They have risen above a large portion of the human race in the scale of moral being, and have a better claim on the boon of immortality. The knowledge of good and evil is the summa- tion of all knowledge — the one knowledge to which every discovery of fact, truth, or their inter-rela- tions is a contribution. Of the highest value, it demands the greatest price. The author of the story of Adam depicts very clearly the consequences of the eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam could no longer dwell in Paradise. The boughs of the trees of the garden refused to bend down to his hand with fruits adequate to his increasing wants and desires. Nature nurtured him as a babe, but cast him off when he became a man, not in wrath, but in love; not in disgust, but with a mother's wisdom and pride in her wonderful child. She had been looking forward to and pre- paring for this "far-off divine event" through many toilsome and patient ages. She had tamed the earth of its rocky savagery, and reduced it to undu- lating hills and fertile and lovely valleys. She had 288 Musmgs by Camp- Fire and Wayside arrested the broods of chaos, the reptilian giants of old, and locked them up in fetters and prisons of stone beneath the hills. Having done for man what he could not do for himself, that and nothing more, she left the balance of forces between him and his competitors in his favor, but not in his favor without strenuous and disciplinary effort. I have said Nature, but when we contemplate this design, this wisdom, this perfection of processes and means to the accomplishment of a high and benevolent purpose, we cannot, without doing violence to our reason, fail to bow our heads and substitute, with voiceless homage, the holy name of God. Adam the man must thenceforth win his way with the strength of his arms and the sweat of his face. The discontent, which came of his eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil precipitated the long battle for the conquest of the earth. It was a huge and apparently a hopeless task. The serried hosts of thorns and thistles, in numbers that no arithmetic could tell, lifted their swords and spears against him. He was the sworn enemy of them all, and they of him. It was a war for the possession of the earth, which they held by title of immemorial possession, and which they would yield only to force. Nor was there any prospect that it would ever cease. Beaten down by stalwart blows and swept from the field, they returned to renew the attack. He never acquired a square foot of soil which the thorns and thistles did not inces- The Adam of Genesis 289 santly invade and attempt to reclaim. He cannot have even a small patch of lawn without standing guard over it. He cannot have a rose or lily, a cherry, nor a grain of wheat without a fight for it. In sorrow and in toil must he eat bread all the days of his life. That was a momentous commis- sion which Elohim put into the hands of Adam: "Subdue the earth and have dominion over it." It was against the plainest dictates of reason to com- mit such an enterprise to the hands of a soft-fin- gered child. It was the ultimate of unreason, and with a million chances that he would fail to one that he would succeed; but Elohim knew and did not hesitate. "Subdue the earth and have dominion over it," both a great commission and a wise com- mand. Adam's Conquests THERE was sometimes music in the usually- silent forest. The wind blew mournful notes on the flutes of hollow trees. There was a breathing of the pines and a foamy sound in the aspens; and more marked than all, a great violin. This was formed of a cavernous and sea- soned gum tree, dead and dry, but still stand- ing, which was crossed by the resinous arm of a pine. All these gave tongue to the fury of the storm, which with the pattering roar of the rain, the flying of broken branches, the downward crash of fallen trees, the stunning shocks of thunder and the quivering lances of lightning, was not only the most awe-inspiring and terrifying, but the most dangerous display of nature in Paradise. Adam, crouching in the security of his rocky cave, peering out upon the scene, beheld war in heaven, heard the shouts of the furious gods, beheld his friends and protectors, the trees, bending with frowning brows before the wrathful and tremendous onset, and then striking back with their gnarled and knotty arms. As the storm subsided he heard the great violin, whose piercing notes had risen con- tinually above the roar of the storm, now playing 290 Adams Conquests 291 a mournful requiem. This instrument was to him something special, new, and highly mysterious — an invisible creature which crooned in the calm and gave out shrieks of terror and rage in the tempest. He crouched and listened to its weird cries in the night. When the morning dawned he emerged from his lair and scanned the surrounding forest for sign of life or motion; stole a few steps softly, and tested the air with ear and nostril; his quick eyes glanced up the trees, from their roots to their tops, and rested with piercing gaze upon the shadows. Then came a subdued moan: surely the object of his search, whether a god or beast, had been wounded in the battle and was complaining of its pain. The tone assured him, at least, that it was grieved, not angry. On he stole again, keeping now the bole of one great tree and now that of another, and then a clump of bushes, between him and the object of his search. He was startled now with the snort and rush and pounding gallop of a fleeing moose, and amused again at the imperti- nence of an inquisitive squirrel, and interested in the whirring flight of a pheasant, whose descent he marked with his eye. His courage rose. The object of his quest was wounded and must be dying, and he advanced upon it with confidence. He could hear it, but it was invisible — surely it was one of the gods left by his companions alone there to die. He had no sympathy with the wounded god; on the contrary, he was possessed of a keen desire to take 2Q2 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside advantage of his misfortune and slay him. Hearing his fitful moaning by day and night, the search had a fascination, mingled with wonder and fear, such as Adam had never felt before. He was about to break into the realms of mystery and see for him- self what was there. He hoped to look upon one of the warriors that had taken part in the night battle in the skies. At last he located the mysteri- ous thing at the crossing of the tops of two trees, one of which had fallen into the arms of the other; but he could not see it — verily, it was a god! As the sun rose over the trees the breeze grew stronger and the mysterious being uttered growls and shrieks of defiance. Smoke issued from between the inter- locking arms. Suddenly flames leaped up and curled and seethed through the piny foliage. Adam fled precipitously to his cave. When the night again came down he saw a huge yellow ser- pent writhing along the mountain-side. It cast its coils around dry trees and mounted to their tops. Every bird and every living thing fled from this monstrous thing. The tiger and the cave-bear, which feared nothing on earth but each other, raced away in terror, heedless of the galloping urus and bounding stags, and plunging herds of stampeded elephants. Why should this dragon, which could clasp the mountains in its wrath, have whimpered and moaned in the tops of the trees? It was plain that every living thing knew his power and dreaded it, the lion no less than the hare, the eagle no less Adam s Conquests 293 than the sparrow. Nothing on earth dared him in open combat. Adam had abundant time for reflection. His range of thought was narrow, but concentrated. There were other musical trees, as he discovered, in the forest, and he observed them closely. They only sang when the wind blew and the trees swayed; and sometimes fire leaped out. It was his habit to warm his hands when they were cold by rubbing them together. He would warm himself by the fire of a prostrate burning tree. His inquisitive eye was fixed closely on the source of the music and the fire, and at last the great scientific truth dawned dimly in his mind. He had no word for friction, but he had the thought. He had no name for a scientific experiment, but he had the idea. Select- ing two dry sticks, one of them resinous, he fixed the one firmly, and grasping the other with a hand at each end, he drew it with all his strength and pressure back and forth across the other. They smoked as he had seen the trees do, and a shining spark fell from between them. Adam had now made the master discovery, had won the crowning achievement. He had conquered and enslaved the fire-god, and entered into posses- sion of his resistless power. He soon observed that while the rapacious animals fled from it, the grazing and browsing animals were curious and inquisitive in regard to it. The tiger and the wolf fled, while the deer approached to gaze and wonder. Adam 2Q4 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside utilized this knowledge to capture those he would eat and frighten off those that would eat him. Now he could command, when and where he chose, the terrible serpent which devastated the forest and mountain. He could turn it loose in fury upon his enemies or domicile it tamely in his cave. He was master of the elements, and could create summer in the midst of winter. He was lord of the beasts, because the king of them all was his slave — a pas- sionate and dangerous servant at times, liable to break away from his control, and from which in his wrath he must hide in his cave; a slave-god to be circumvented with cunning and placated with food. It prepared his nuts and acorns, his fish and veni- son, and made them sweet and tender. It stood sentinel at the door of his cave and kept his ene- mies at bay while he slept. Restrained by water, it hollowed out the trunk of a tree for him and gave him his first boat, from which, when he was afloat in it, his torch would show him the fish deep down in the water, and the beasts roaming on the shores, but would not let them see him; so he could steal upon them with his flint-barbed spear. By laying one log across another, the fire-god would cut both of them almost squarely in two, and enable him to utilize them in building a shelter; and at last — for Adam lived very long — he learned to compel iron out of tawny dust with fire, and fashioned it into tools and weapons with which he could go forth armed for his unceasing battle with elemental Adams Conquests 295 nature. Ever since man has marched, his fiery sword in hand: sword, winged steed, domestic ser- vant, whatever he willed it to be. On the wings of fire he flies across the continent. With hands of fire he beats down the waves of the ocean and triumphs over them. With his hammer of fire he smashes rocks beneath the sea, and in the heart of the moun- tain, and in the depths of the mine; with his hand of fire he hurls missiles upon his enemies miles away. All came of Adam's listening to the bass- viol of the forest. If Adam had been armed with claws and fangs like the tiger, he never would have risen above the moral and intellectual plane of the tiger. Com- pelled to rely upon intelligence and reason, these faculties distinguished him and set him at the top of the scale of life. The lion needs no leonine friends and has none. He has no need for protec- tion by the united force of a society, so he has no social instincts. Out of man's weakness came his strength; out of his dependence came his self-reli- ance; out of his dangers came his safety; out of his hatreds came his loves. Adam lived long, but not so long as Israel, for both were more than individuals, and their time far exceeded the life of a man. Their names, origi- nally personal, became ethnical, and they lived in their descendants. This was the only perpetuity and immortality that they knew. It was not till their family, their gens, perished, or were merged 2q6 Mtisings by Camp- Fire and Wayside and lost, that they were said to die. Ten of the sons of Jacob are dead, two, Judah and Benjamin, are still living, marvels of youth in hoary age. Adam knew that though he was master of fire, king of beasts, and lord of the world, he was him- self dependent; that he and they were creatures of an over-all Ruler. Standing highest in the ranks of life, could he not aspire to a knowledge of and communion with the Highest? His soul heard the word of the Lord God in the garden; heard it as he looked up into the over-arching stars; heard it call- ing to him, "Where art thou, Adam?" — a voice that is heard, and often heard, by every son and daugh- ter of man: "Where art thou? What doest thou?" The great apostle took Adam, the primitive man, when he was of the earth earthy, as described by the author of Genesis, and contrasted him with the One divine and perfect man who was filled with the Spirit of God to the exclusion of all else. The earthy Adam, and all that were such as he, died and re- turned to the dust of which they were constituted. The spiritual Adam from heaven brought and bestowed eternal life. This was simple of state- ment and easy to be understood before the fictions of poets and the vanity of theologians had wholly perverted and obscured the plain and true descrip- tion of Adam, the primitive man, by Moses. Thus dogmas were invented, as unreasonable as they were immoral, which were supposed to be consistent and logical with the character of the divine being Adams Cojiqtiests 297 they had set up: which consistency no one will be disposed to deny. The Adam of Eden was a prototype of the Adam of Galilee, so marked by similarities, and so set off against each other, that the spiritual phenomenon attracted the attention of the Sage of Tarsus. The Edenic Adam was homeless, except for the cave in which he was born, clad in the simplest of known garments; in hunger often, and in peril always. He was contending for the supremacy of the earth. The Adam of Nazareth was also born in a cave; was homeless, shelterless; clad in the poorest of raiment; in hunger often, and in peril always. The one was contending for supremacy over rapacious beasts, the other for the conquest and transforma- tion of rapacious men ; the one establishing the king- dom of man, the other founding the kingdom of heaven. Between the two there was an indissol- uble unity; and here let us consider the alignment between the spiritual and the material. When the mathematician announced that the universe was without limits — infinite as space, and ruled everywhere by the same laws — and when this was followed by the spectroscope, which demon- strated that it is a unit in materials as well as in forces, then science had reached the broadest generalization, and philosophy the highest concep- tion that is possible to the mind of man. Such, also, is the unity of the spiritual with the material. Our Lord possessed a true human body. 2q8 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside He ate, drank, slept, awoke, partook of human joys, endured human pain, and in all points was as we are. Yet he was Lord over all and blessed forever. There was no seam in his robe, none between the human and the divine, no inharmony, no violence of construction. The divine and the human met as two rivers of water meet and blend into a homo- geneous and inseparable flood. He announced, as he exemplified, the sublime truth of the spiritual unity and identity of God and man. He was one with God and one with his brethren. Here it is that the sublimity of the Mosaic-Pauline conception dawns upon the mind. It is as when sailing along the misty Alaskan coast the cloudy curtain parts, and Shishaldon, or St. Elias, stands revealed. The universe, spiritual and material, is one, because the Creator is one. Man, partaking of the Spirit of Christ, is one with Him, and while Christ lives he shall live also. Thus was life and immortality brought to light. It has been my highly prized privilege to return to the Adamic conditions of existence, to live in the paradise of God, to taste the exquisite and exhilarating joys of primitive life. For delight- someness there is nothing on the earth like it. To walk abroad free in the boundless and virgin forest, to listen to the solemn spiritual breathing of the pines, to be stirred with the melody of the wood- thrush, and gladdened with the sight and sound of sparkling streams, to breathe the crystal air sweet- Adam s Conquests 299 ened with the odors of the woods and spiced with the fragrance of balsam and birch — compared with this the highest artificial pleasures that wealth can furnish are a weariness. Adam was under disad- vantages, but after all he was the happiest man of his race. Let us return to Paradise. Let us forsake the vapid follies of fashion and display and dissipation, and return to a life as simple and unostentatious, as benevolent and unselfish, as that of our Lord. Let us return to simple faith in God as our Heav- enly Father, and in our fellow-man as our brother. Let us free ourselves from the vain complexities of theology, philosophy, and of living, and rise to the pure, free air, and to the simple dignity and worth of true manhood and womanhood. Let us go back and dwell with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Adam's IVife MAN is like a forest lake. He reflects the sky above him, the clouds that pass over him, the trees which grow along his shores. He dimples in the rain, ripples in the wind, is somber in the darkness, sparkling in the light, placid in the calm, and angry in the storm. While woman is also a reflector, often the man both bounds and fills her horizon, so that she is but a re-reflection; a re-echo, diminished and soft- ened. Adam's wife was not made for herself, but for the solace of Adam — so runs the Hebrew legend. Eve never was a little girl; had no mother, brother, sister, or father — was simply made and married out of hand. As a child, though of woman's stature, she was trustful, as a woman she was confiding and easily influenced by a stronger nature. She did not know much, not even so much as a knowledge of the difference between good and evil. This newly made child-woman was placed in the near vicinity of a very beautiful fruit tree, the tree of wisdom and of knowledge, the fruit of which the author of the Proverbs extols in endless repe- titions and variations. As most temptingly dis- played before the eyes of the child-wife, it was 300 Adams Wife 301 attractive to the eye, delightful to the taste, and good for food: both wholesome and nutritious; but she was forbidden to touch or taste it. Why? Because it would be morally wrong to do so? No; for Eve, not knowing the difference between moral right or wrong until she had eaten of the fruit, could not be influenced by such a consideration. The reason given for the prohibition is "lest ye die" — not as Satan lyingly perverted it, "ye shall surely die," and which perversion is largely em- ployed in the construction of "systematic" theol- ogy. Elvah did not say that Eve would cer- tainly die if she ate of the fruit, but that the new relation to moral responsibility to which it would bring her was full of danger. She would be liable to die. Eve very naturally, we may say inevitably, which is the Calvinistic position, confided in the tempter, plucked and ate, and with wifely devotion shared it with her husband. Eve appears at a moral advan- tage over all the other parties to this transaction. She acted naturally, trustfully, affectionately, and confidingly, as an innocent and guileless child-wife would. But she was surrounded by a bad lot, among them a cowardly husband. It is really a very pretty antique, which neither literature nor art has thus far cleared of theological and scholastic dust and soot. I take it to be an allegory of in- nocence and trustful inexperience, surrounded by superior knowledge and by guile, misled, betrayed, 3o2 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside and then made to suffer the penalty of others' sins. This is no unusual incident in the tragedy of life. This pretty story of Eve has been made the sub- ject of scrutiny by spectacled owls who had not the least capacity for appreciating either its simple naivete or its significance. Upon it these commen- tators and exegetes have built a system of woman slavery which is as hoary with iniquity as with antiquity. Now, if Eve had been driven out of the garden for killing and eating the tanagers, the thrushes, the song-sparrows, vireos, bobolinks, and other birds of paradise, or for pouncing upon the wood-ducks, which gave color and charm to the shimmering Gihon, there might have been some show of justice in putting her out. But for eating of a fruit that was temptingly held to her hand by the bending bough, the color of which gladdened her eye, the fragrance of which breathed upon her face, and the flavor of which was a delight — to heap her with accusations and contumely, to lay upon her, for this, the blame for all the meanness and cruelty which afterward appeared in the world, shows what an unfilial, unjust, unreasonable, and generally mean parcel of her descendants they were who afterward took up the business of philosophy and theology; men who would even make a type of super-orthodoxy out of the disparagement and degradation of women. Those who have observed pretty closely notice that men who do it are trying to get credit with the Lord and the church out of Adam s Wife 303 their meanness. A man who has no genuine hom- age for woman, though many have for her influence or money, is the most fitting mark for the contempt of mankind. We have idealized and made pretty rites out of the customs and laws of the old sav- agery. The wedding-ring is a survival of the fetter which fastened her wrist when she was first cap- tured. The bridegroom's "best man" represents the stout warrior who went with the groom to help him steal her and get safely away with her. It is not so very long since all women were owned, sold, traded in, like cattle. The husband was not only privileged, but required by custom, to whip her. An old Welsh law, still existent, provides that three blows with a broomstick on any part of her person except her head is necessary and sufficient; or he might use a stick no longer than his arm nor thicker than his middle finger. It was the custom in Russia for the father to strike the bride gently with a new whip and then hand it over to the groom. In Cro- atia the bridegroom now boxes the bride's ears, and in Hungary he kicks her, after the marriage cere- mony. That is nice company for a manly man and a gentleman to be associated with, theologically or otherwise, isn't it? They are not up to the moral standard of the stags and bears. No wild animal will offer violence to his female. The Americans have led in the emancipation of woman, securing for her the rights of a human being, and of a citizen 304 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside in her person and property; and no one has done so much to inspire and lead this advance as Susan B. Anthony; and yet she was, until within a quar- ter of a century, the butt of general ridicule. Eve walked in advance of Adam in the path which led to moral consciousness: to manhood and womanhood. This is clearly implied in the mosaic story of Eve, and was verified in his usual happy and convincing way by the late Henry Drummond. She rose above his moral plane and led him in the ascent. She was the first to eat of the tree of ethi- cal knowledge. She was the first to become discon- tent with a homeless life under the trees of Paradise, and to ask for permanent and secure shelter for herself and her little ones. Her absorbing passion was child-love, a fierce and jealous affection, which is no longer, in the highest civilizations, necessary for the protection of children, and which has con- sequently become softened and modified. She could not be content with carrying the youngest out of danger to the tops of the trees; she must protect her whole brood. Hence the stone-barri- caded cave, at once a fortress and a home, the hearth-fire, the family, and the most elevating and refining influence that ever fell upon men — mother love. It has frequently been said by ecclesiasticians that women have nothing to complain of against the church; that they owe all the emancipation they now enjoy to Christianity. That is true, if by Adam s Wife 305 Christianity be meant the example and teachings of Christ, the tenderest and gentlest respecter of the rights of womanhood who ever lived; but it is not true, if by Christianity is meant the mass of dogmas and customs which the ecclesiastician regards as constituting Christianity. There really has not been so much change in the usurpations of women as some conservative theo- logians seem to think. There was the Puritan Captain Underhill — 1637. He says in his "Newes from America": "It were strange to nature to think a man should be bound to fulfil the humor of a woman, what arms he should carry, and so forth; but you see God will have it so, that a woman should overcome a man. Therefore let the clamor be quenched I daily hear in my ears, that New England men usurp over their wives and keep them in servile subjection"; and the captain, to be sure that he had Scripture for submitting to his wife, says, "Instance Abraham." But the captain did not want to be misunderstood. There were to be limits to feminine government. "Yet mistake not," he says, "I say not that we are bound to call our wives in council; but we are bound to take their private advice." Now, you will see how nicely the captain got around it. What a man is bound to do, that is law and necessity for him. He was not afraid of his wife — not he. He did not make a sentinel of him- self to guard his private demesne from her inva- 3o6 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside sions. He took his medicine like the good and brave warrior that he was. There was a good deal of alarm when missionary societies, and other organizations of women, began to show strength. One learned divine said to me: "They will not be allowed to usurp authority, no matter what they accomplish. " He said it with a great deal of firmness and resolution. I could see from his eye that though he was scared, he had the courage of his convictions, and was ready to hurl theological defiance at "one and all" of the gentle missionary and temperance women; but it is not necessary to quote the language of James Fitz James to Roderick Dhu. Every man who has a good wife ought to obey her — that is all there is to it. When Captain Underhill referred to the subject condition of Father Abraham, he clinched the argu- ment; and he didn't want to hear any more "clamor" on the subject. Two hundred and sixty years ago in New England, a thousand years ago in Palmyra, four thousand years ago on the Jordan, it has always been the same — and there is no use in making any more fuss about it. I have in memory a daughter of Eve who must have been very much like her mother in appearance, vivacity, and freedom. The little girl was a sprite of the Alleghany Mountains — flying flaxen hair, blue eyes, small, white teeth, perfect health, and perfect freedom. I went over that scenery a few years ago, and could imagine what it must have Adam s Wife 307 been in its prime. Nowhere such a spring as that which is now called the "Pearl of the Park." Clearer or cooler streams could nowhere steal from the roots of the mountains, ever running and ever singing, to the river in the valley. There were yet remnants of the forest of chestnut and pine. The clouds yet hung, of a spring morning, along the mountain-sides. The blue haze was still there, softening the distance. It was in this, then fresh, paradise that the new little Eve was born, and in which she was as free as a bird. Her father was superintendent of new and extensive iron mines then opened in the mountain. Among other duties he looked after the wood-choppers and charcoal- burners in the mountains, and thus was much on horseback, often with his little Eve as his favorite companion. Vacation days he went hunting or fishing, always taking the little girl along. Thus she came to know the country all about, and as every one knew the superintendent's daughter — the proprietors of the works, the miners, foresters, coal- burners, teamsters, Sunday-school teachers, and all — she received kindness wherever she went, and thus was without fear. She did not even fear the rattle- snakes — great shiny, mottled fellows which sounded their alarm to warn her to keep out of danger. She must have been quite young the day when she went up the mountain to gather dewberries, and was noticed by a passing teamster as she stood looking at a great "rattler." He led her out of danger. 3o8 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside killed the snake, and went away. When she had filled her small pail, she lifted the venomous reptile, hung it upon her shoulder, and carried it home! If one of its exposed fangs had come in contact with her tender skin, little Eve would have had an ex- perience even more tragical than that which befell her first ancestress. I first saw the young girl when she had not reached the age of fifteen, was just emerging from little-girlhood into young-womanhood. It was at a reception party given to me as "the new editor." There was much merriment in a little circle in one corner of the parlors, and I heard a young lady addressed as "Kitty Clover," and noticed that the one so spoken to was very young, and as I thought, very pretty. Near three years drifted by, when, as Bayard Taylor says, the lightest heart made heavi- est mourning. Her father died. Her adored mother was fast following him. It could not be long till the young girl would be alone in the world. So the death that had so recently been, and the death that was so soon to be, hastened us. I often carried that dear and most saintly mother about in my arms, and she was very happy — a happier death could not be. Her child was not parted from her. That was a blessed day when I lifted her into our first cottage home. It is not possible that a decline to the end could have had more light in it. Her last words were : ' ' My sweet child, I am very, very happy. " The half of one short year brought such trans- Adant s Wife 309 formations as rarely come so suddenly into life — father, mother, and the old home gone, and the new home established. "I have almost lost my identity," said the so lately light-hearted and care- free young girl. Her path led abruptly down into a very dark and cloudy valley, and its clouds drifted after her as she ascended the mountain beyond, but they were illuminated by the sunrise of both this world and of that to which we are now hastening. It verily seems that that mother and daughter are not yet parted. Last summer, one night, the lady dreamed that she saw her mother walk slowly down to the margin of the lake and stand beckoning to her to come over. Now, call it superstition if you will, still I believe in the verity of such visions with as much simplicity of faith as Paul or John did — and nearly every one does, whether he confess it or not — marking, however, the great difference between them and the forms and shadows cast upon earthly clouds of sleep by the dim light of half-conscious- ness. This, she thought, might be a real revela- tion of the narrowness and nearness of the voyage, but I said it was probably nothing more than a sig- nal of longing and impatience to have her come. I think they do get tired waiting, over there. Why shouldn't they? I reckon the cottage over there will be better than the one we three moved into forty-five years ago, but I don't believe we will be much happier people than we were that day. 3IO Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside Looking up from my paper, and out of the open door, I see that the air is sparkling. The opposite shore of the lake appears to have come half-way to meet me. The leaves are fluttering in the crisp breeze, and I am reminded that wife and I are to go to Clear Lake fishing — and some way it appears to me that we will drift on its secluded and shaded waters for the last time. Many the day that we have together gazed down at the tangled forest of water-ferns in its clear depths, watched the rise of the loons, listened to the birds on its shores, and admired the wild deer which came down to drink. But once more: We will drift, as we have drifted, down the winding River Time, From the spring-lake of the morning till the ocean rolls sublime, Just beyond yon veiling forest. Hear its thunder in the breeze ! See its breakers through the vistas 'mid the branches of the trees ! Nor have cared we what should wait us, hidden by the river's bend. Rocky rapids, or calm waters, or the winding journey's end; For we knew we two together would be happy while afloat, And be merry at a portage while we lifted at our boat. And we shall be, dearest, ever, when we pass yon moaning sea We will find another river somewhere waiting you and me. Where the valleys are enchanting and the mountains rise sublime. We will find a better river than the winding River Time. Adam the Hunter ADAM had no sooner learned to convert his floating log into a canoe by the use of fire, than it silently bore him into a before unknown pleasure of Paradise. He had no other projectile than his flint-bladed spear, hurled by his sinewy arm. To bring him within reach of his quarry the greatest stealth and patience were re- quired, and he was often disappointed. Now, with his lovely Eve propelling his canoe, and his torch held aloft, he could approach, unsuspected, what- ever living thing might be frequenting the shores of river or lake. Adam always chose a night on the dark of the moon, when the wind was still and the atmosphere clear of fog. It remained for one of his sons, who was also his devoted disciple and admirer, some twenty thousand or two millions of years later, to make the discovery that in a lighter and swifter canoe livelier sport was to be had in the full light of the moon. We watched the sun descending with the impa- tience of school-boys, as we were to go that night to make the experiment of a moonlight fire-hunt, a thing that Adam would have said to be fatuous and impossible. I polished the reflector of my lamp till 3" 3 1 2 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside it shone like molten silver, polished the tube of my gun till, held against the light, it looked as if it were loaded to the muzzle with sunbeams. A dark night fire-hunt is intensely exciting. Some years ago some kind of a cat, a wolverine or lynx, went bounding down the shore, turning its big balls of fire on my lamp for a glance, and then leaping away and looking again. I tried to bring my gun to bear, but it was too quick, and when it leaped into the woods I was panting as if my breath were about to leave me. The crimson moon was looking through the eastern trees, and the afterglow through the west- ern, when Gordon and I, in moccasined feet, started on a stealthy tramp. It was at once one of the brightest and stillest of nights, not a breath of air, not a ripple, not the faintest whisper in the pines, nothing but the big moon and the flecks of light through the shadows of the forests on the shores. Two hoot-owls took advantage of the vacancy and had the whole landscape for their audience. There was the difference of three notes of the octave in their voices, a pair, I suppose, serenading each other. When they were satisfied with their ex- changes of compliments, they sped away on their noiseless wings, flying in the shadow where they could, but crossing in white flashes the bars of moonlight. We paused on the first lake we came to and listened. One's heart makes a great deal of noise at such a time, and for a moment we Adam the Hunter 3 1 3 thought we heard the thump, thump, of a deer run- ning over the hill. There were splashings at a distance which must be analyzed by the ear. "Frogs," finally Gordon decided in a whisper, and we went on, picking each step on which to plant our feet. There was a small, sleek boat hidden near another lake beyond us. We reached it, launched it, letting it down into the water slowly, slipped cartridges into our guns, lit the lamp, and tightened its straps about my head. I consider myself a good boatman, but he is ahead of any man, white or red, I ever was with. The boat appeared to be stationary, though I knew we were moving, and tried to determine the rate of motion by look- ing at the black walls of the forests on the shores, but they gave no sign. Then I turned the ray of my lamp upon the water, and was surprised to see how swiftly we passed the floating bonnet of a lily. The boat paused in the very middle of the lake, to which it had made its silent and ghostly way. Though sitting in the prow of a boat with an oars- man propelling it, one can scarcely dissipate the delusion that he is alone. The perfect boatman gives no indication of his presence or his work. There is no rustle in his unstarched black cotton shirt, there is no twist of his hands on the oar, there is no dip or tinkle in the water. I closed my eyes so as to give undivided attention to listening, but now that the owls were silent, all was silent as a dream. 314 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside It must be admitted that the best night for suc- cessful fire-hunting is dark, warm, and still. If there be a breeze, the ripples rattle against the sides of the boat. If the air be colder than the water, the fog curls up and reflects back the rays of the lamp into the hunter's eyes, blinding him. The boat must carefully avoid rushes, water-weeds, or lilies. One would not perceive the noise they make under any other conditions, but the slender stem of a rush will strike the prow with a thump and be drawn along its side with a resonance of a bass- viol. On the dark night the oarsman listens while the gunman watches, expecting the always startling apparition of two great greenish yellow balls of fire. But in the moonlight fire-hunt the ears must do all the seeking, and they must be able to detect a small sound at a long distance. Any kind of a boat or raft will do for the dark night, but for the moonlight the boat must be small, light, polished, and swift. The two requirements are silence and celerity. The paddle must be short, four feet long, broad, and sharp of edges. The oarsman must know the speed at which the boat is going, and draw his paddle back as it touches the water, so that it will enter as if both were stationary. He must send it straight down till his hand touches the water. Then he puts all the strength he has on his stroke, and there is no noise. With a strong arm and a light, smooth boat, the stroke sends it like a bird. Adam the Hunter 3 1 5 I had closed my eyes to listen more intently, when a whispered "Oh!" — a sigh — came from behind me, and looking up, there soared another of those rare, weird, strange messengers — a fire-ball! the second I have seen — the same moon-faced nu- cleus nearly as large as the moon, the same short, thick, writhing tail, but not the whip-like snapping which we heard when one passed over the island four years before. This one was flying southwest, and seemed to be describing a curve which would bring it to the earth about a mile away; but of course any calculation of its orbit would be guesswork. The other one, alluded to above, was more striking. My wife and sister were seated at the camp-fire while I was about to enter my study-cabin at the far end of the island. The night was dark but clear, when suddenly the ground was illuminated, and the shadows of the pines began wheeling past. Looking up, there the apparition came, from the southwest. Com- pared with the speed of a meteor, it moved quite slowly. It was round, about the size of the moon, but much brighter. Its train about five diameters of the nucleus in length, writhed and twisted like a flame, and showed colors of blue and yellow. The flame ended quite abruptly, and left no train of sparks. It gave forth sounds almost identical with that of a flag snapping in the wind. It ap- peared to be no more than four or five tree-top heights above the lake, and disappeared in the for- 3i6 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside ests northeast. The next day I wrote to Ashland, east, and Duluth, west, each forty miles away, inquiring if it had been seen, expecting from the two angles which could be approximately remem- bered to be able to triangulate its height when it passed over us; but it had not been noticed at either city. From this I concluded that its orbit was what it appeared to us to be, quite near the earth. These fire-balls have not been explained by the meteorologists. They are very rare, and I was quite fortunate to have seen two of them. Let us now return to Adam's hunting. Motionless and silent we waited for a time, when I noticed by a bit of brass on the point of the prow that the boat was turning. This was evidence that Gordon's ear, quicker than mine, had caught the splash of a foot. The little boat fairly shot through the water, and sharp as her cutter is, made a tinkle at her prow. On and on we went, a half-mile, when a splash and whirr of wings ten feet in front of us. "Pshaw!" whispered Gordon, "nothing but a duck" ; and he turned and went back to our position in the middle of the lake. About a quarter of an hour passed. I could not lay my hands on the side of the boat because they showed white in the moon- light. The ache of the strained position was becom- ing intolerable, and I was about to change position regardless of consequences, when again the shining bit of brass at the point was seen to be changing its direction. That banished all thought of the pain. Adam the Hzmter 3 1 7 Again the boat shot like an arrow — no wild duck this time. As soon as the shore was approached sufficiently to determine its character, it was seen to be a mass of rushes reaching well out into the lake. We were darting right at the breast of the rush bank, but nothing else was to be seen, and to prevent plunging into them Gordon was holding hard with his paddle to arrest the motion of the boat, when a flash-light picture, really the most beautiful thing I ever saw, was printed on my mem- ory. A reflecting hunting-lamp makes a round disk on which everything appears light colored. A dead tree is a ghastly white, green is a light yellow, red is gray, all the colors are changed. A deer was behind the rushes with his head down, feeding, and therefore invisible. Suddenly raising it, there he stood, his blue coat shining above the yellow rushes, his large, lustrous eye black as a coal, his crown of antlers white as ivory — spirited, startled, splendid, in a nimbus of unearthly light — and I not fifteen feet away! That one instant would have been worth ten thousand dollars to Rosa Bonheur. A ministerial friend from Chicago, Dr. W. T. Meloy, visited me in Paradise one bright summer day. I desired to give him an experience of the sport Adam took his delight in, carried him to the North Twin, seated him in the prow of a light canoe, bound a reflecting lamp over his forehead, and with a few deft strokes of the paddle cleared the lily-shingled waters of the shore, leaving a 31 8 Musings by Cainp-Fire and Wayside lighted lantern on the margin to guide us back. A wolf took umbrage at this proceeding, and chal- lenged it with two or three of his high-keyed half- howling barks. That ended the hunt on the North Twin. Not a deer would show himself. The canoe was carried, the next day, to a fine large double lake, called Sand-bar. We were only fairly launched, the following night, when a peculiar glow was seen upon the wavelets, the distant shores came out in full view, and looking up, the sky was overarched, from north to south and from horizon to horizon, by a spectacle of indescribable magnifi- cence — one which is familiar enough, no doubt, in the sub-polar regions, but certainly very rarely seen in this latitude. It was a curtain, falling perhaps the distance of a mile, supported from either side by flitting rafters of light, and waving as if blown by the wind. The color was what we may call a luminous ashes of roses, touched here and there with pink and yellow. The line of the curtain was not straight, but curved either way, and while con- stantly varying, kept to the general direction of north and south. The scene changed as if the cur- tain were rolled up, leaving a bar of the same color of light across the sky. This began to break and divide, and soon faded from view. The rafters of light also became feebler and shorter, and vanished. Descriptions of displays like these are given in the literature of the Arctics, but always in general terms, conveying no idea of the utter strangeness Adam the Hunter 319 and splendor of the phenomenon. The waving of the great curtain, as if wind-blown, was especially impressive. Camping at Rocky Cut, on the Michigan Brule, we were first introduced to the mysteries and charms of a fire-hunt by old Adam himself, in the person of a Chippewa chief. He had made advances on the original Adam, in that he wore clothing and lived in a log house, which, however, contained no furniture. The women were engaged in sewing birch bark with threads made of the roots of the dwarf-pine, into those fine forms of canoes in the building of which the Chippewas had no rivals among the American Indians. The finished boat was decorated with dyes extracted from the sumac, the blood-root, the walnut, the bark of the black oak, and other such sources, the wild artistic values of which the artists did not appreciate, but which were, in fact, what art at its best would have selected. The little Cains and Abels of the families were practicing with their bows and arrows, and the young Eves were learning to prepare thread and to sew the bark. It was noticed that the garments of the children were sewed fast upon them, and were not to be changed or laundered so long as they would hold together. Probably this economic cus- tom originated with the Eve of Moses. When she wished to do her week's washing, all she had to do was to pitch the children into the river Gihon, souse and churn them, and thus laundry both the child 320 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside and its clothing at a single operation. Adam — he said his name was Edward — seated us in a beautiful new canoe, took his place at the stern, and began the voyage with rapid strokes. We were to go about four miles — to the farther end of the lake. There was not a ripple on all the surface of that splendid mirror. It was autumn, and the lake was set in a double frame of green and gold and crim- son, the outer frame real, the inner one reflection. Adam handled his light paddle swiftly and with skill. The oar took the water at right angles with the line of motion, but before the stroke was finished it was turned a little obliquely, which threw the handle against the side of the boat, and thus coun- teracted the tendency to move in a circle. There was a loon party that evening. They came with weird laughter from far down the lake, half flying, half swimming, their wings dashing the water at every stroke, and leaving long trails of dimples behind — and then such a ridiculous and cantanker- ous performance ! One must be very crazy to merit being called "crazy as a loon." Though in loon country for twenty summers, I have witnessed but one other fashionable party of loons. The birds stuck their heads and long necks straight up, then sprang clear of the water, uttering the wildest shrieks, repeating the exercise till they were tired. There were about a dozen of the performers, while as many more were demurely looking on. Whether Adam the Hunter 321 it were a loon wedding — for loons are faithful wed- ded pairs — or whether it were a "social function" of the best aristocratic society of loondom, it was not given us to know. As the sun sank down behind the encompassing forests of that solitary and charming gem, a jewel of aqueous pearl set in green for the pleasure of God and his angels, the frail boat moved swiftly in a straight line, leaving an arrow-shaped trail of shimmering ripples in its wake. The sky seemed so clear that we did not encumber ourselves with rain-coats; but when a mile out, a sweeping shower soaked us thoroughly. Three or four strokes brought us to a landing in the universal forest, and a quick fire set our garments to steaming. As we passed down, a young buck raised his graceful head from the reeds where he was feeding, gazed at us a moment, and then with a few swift bounds dis- appeared in his covert. At our landing-place we could see how these denizens of the wilds are pro- vided for. The rain was sufficient, one would have supposed, to have saturated the ground, and yet beneath the overarching pines, whose shelter we sought, the thick carpet of leaves was perfectly dry. In winter, with the added clothing of snow on the branches, this little nook would be as comfortable as the best barn, and very much pleasanter. When we set out on our return, the Chippewa wanted us to have a view of his cattle — the dependence for 322 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside himself and his children, which the white man is rapidly driving away and exterminating. He brought out his hunting-lamp, lighted it, and set out for the return. The bottom of the lake is of silvery sand, and we seemed to be floating in a sea of milk. The next thing that attracted attention was that we were moving in absolute silence. There was not so much as the tinkle of a drop of water from the oar. The shadow of a cloud passing over the lake could not have been more noiseless. The lamp threw a cone of nebulous light into the reeds and woods — what a stealthy ghost was that red man and his canoe! We passed the usual haunts of the deer, and were homeward bound when the searching cone of light suddenly turned back and paused, and at the same time the ghostly canoe changed its course. And what a striking and fasci- nating sight! The leafy shore as black as ink, a graceful form in outline upon it, and a pair of dia- monds tinged with green color shining as carbon diamonds have never shone. It would be difificult to imagine that these brilliant, green-tinged lights were the eyes of a harmless deer, but very easy to believe that they were those of a tiger. Adam gave the signal to fire by a jar of the boat, and the flame shot out, a fierce and intense burst of fire, and the roar in those silences was like that of a cannon. It echoed from the capes and came reverberating from the forests across the lake as if it had filled all Adam the Htmier 323 space. The sound of such an explosion, relatively small as it may be, is magnified many times in the otherwise absolute stillness of such a scene. When the echoes subsided the perfect silence returned. The victim had sunk to the earth without a struggle. AT EVENTIDE Expiring Embers — A Study of Death THE evening camp-fire of our lives burns low, and the shadows, with stealthy approach, close around us. We dispel them with a bit of the crystallized sunshine of other days, a memory which blazes up, as does this resinous rib of an ancient and forgotten pine; but it, too, dims to a coal, and fades to ashes. There is a sigh of a passing breeze in the pines, the note of a distant night bird — whatever is heard amid the prevailing silence is gentle and soothing, as if Nature were fearful of disturbing our decline into slumber. We shall not know when light and thought have passed away. It will only be a con- sciousness of balmy restfulness that will soften as it deepens, till it is gone. Why, then, should we long to sit awake by the expiring embers? No, let us not live in the light of the past. Let us rather go and sleep with our loved ones. The shadows may have their victory over us and over all that is ours. When we awaken it will be in the sunlight of another day and in the warmth and gladness of an unknown sun. When the little boys were to retire to-night they lingered to talk over their plans for to-morrow. To 327 328 Musings by Camp- Fire ajid Wayside them there is no evening; it is all morning. Their drowsy eyelids closed over visions of coming pleas- ures, which were more real to them than the memo- ries of the day. Sleep drew a transparent veil before their gaze, leaving what they saw, not obscured, but only softened and dimmed in their dreams. We must shut off the sunlight with cur- tains in the morning, and thus prolong the night, that they may have sufficient rest. They are too eager for the future. It is so bright and so charm- ing that they will not so much as turn to glance at the past. And thus it was in the morning of life: looking to the future, to delightsome things to come; the most of which never came, or coming, were not what they appeared to be when viewed from the distance. But we now look back on what has been as things that are secure. Those best days of the past are eternal days. The sun will never set upon them. The clouds pass over them, and the rain, and veil them from our view, but when we look again, there they are, serene and sweet in the distance. They were made immortal by a good deed given or received, by an act of love and of service, by a bonfire of friendship, by a triumph over temptation, by a smile or a tear, or a wedding or a birth. They are treasures which neither moth nor rust can corrupt, nor thieves break through and steal. Each one of their rising suns was a new golden coin from the mint of God. He who takes his journey into the beyond with his Expiring Embers 329 scrip filled with them will forever remain a patrician in the city of pearl. A woodsman brought us a present of a little fawn. We cared for it tenderly, but to-day I found it sleeping, and when I thought to waken it, it slept on. Its slender limbs were cold, and I sought to warm them. Placing my hand to its side, its little heart was fluttering like a bird. Its sleep was deep and painless. Why, even this child of the forest, nameless, aimless, with no higher object in living than to live, is so cared for that its life goes out in peaceful repose. Is this what men call the King of Terrors? Is this drifting away that which men look forward to with dread? For indeed, it shall come to us in no other way than it came to this innocent fawn — a fluttering heart, benumbing limbs, fading light, voices, however near, seeming to come from afar, and at last silence and perfect repose. We need not regard Death as a personage of much conse- quence. Who is he? Nobody but the Lord's liveried servant, standing at the door to swing it open. There is no more reason why we should fear him than his prototype at the door of the home of a friend. There we do not think of the usher. We see the light in the broad windows, forms behind the lace curtains, and catch a strain of music, a whiff of flowers, and hear the continuous sound of many voices, and we feel by anticipation the clasp of greeting, and see smiling faces of welcome. 330 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside What has the black-plumed porter to do with us but to open the door? The days are so bright, cool, and happy that I part regretfully with each one as it fades away into the zodiacal light which is pinned against the west- ern sky with a peculiarly white star. This light continues till near midnight, when ocasionally it is replaced by the rosy borealis. The moon will deprive us of these pale lights, but she is wel- come — looking down at us through her green veil of pines, and springing bridges of dimpling gold across the water. I part with the day that has now closed, regretfully, because it can never come again. It is an expended part of my inheritance of the joy of life — and I am by that much poorer. We cannot live upon the income of time. Faith never can attain to the certainty of sight. Shall I have an eternity of such days, beginning with the morning when I shall awake from the long, deep sleep of life? If so, shall we not fling them care- lessly behind us, like prodigals, because we shall have an inexhaustible and ever-infinite store of them before us? If so, may we not doubt whether we shall prize them and enjoy them as we do the few blessed hours that are allotted to us here? If the lake below me beat upon and laved sands of gold, if the shores glittered with precious stones, and all the rivers washed and drifted them, and the glacial moraines were heaps of them, would they not be- come a weariness? Would we not ask rather the Expiring Embers 331 fading grass and the falling leaves? Nay, the very brevity of life, the fewness and precariousness of our days, render them more precious. The bee may be drowned in honey. We may have as happy days here as it is possible for any one to have in heaven. We cannot have here a view of the whole starry hemisphere: to obtain it we must take a boat and row out into the lake; but there are vistas large and small through the foliage, which possess some of the properties of the telescope. Through one of these the rising Mars alternately flashes and is hidden by the wind-blown foliage, his brilliance enhanced by his solitariness and his fitfulness, and by the green-blackness of the leafy robe upon which he appears to be set. Through a larger vista over- head four bright stars are visible. The emerald is a lovely gem. It has the color which the eye, trained to the beauty of verdure, loves best to rest upon, therefore we pardon the emerald's lack of the brilliance of the diamond, but in one of these stars I perceive the sparkle of an emerald sun. It has the serenity of the one stone with the emphasis of the other. A star near it is white, with the slight- est trace of yellow, and another, near the two, is for a star of rather a dull red. The color of the green sun is light, but positive, and its ray is pecu- liarly beautiful. Each of the three stars throws the color of its neighbor into contrast. I do not re- 332 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside member what other metals, if any, beside copper, burn with a green light, but I wondered if it were not that metal in the photosphere of the emerald star which gave its beautiful color. If the sun be a copper sun, then its planets must be copper plan- ets. May not the whole system, of which the cop- per sun is a center, be a sort of verdigris hell for cheeky people! This new idea is respectfully sub- mitted to theologians, with the suggestion that in making out their eschatological system I will con- tribute my copper sun, with its copper worlds, as a place where moral brassiness may be eliminated by attrition. One is almost always led by the contemplation of the clear heavens at night to think of the future state of existence. In such a presence one does not like to think of his life as a phosphorescent bubble, rising out of a marsh, glowing and floating a moment on the surface or drifting a little way on the air, and then vanishing out of being. One would like to live and have something of the higher starry life. The astronomer spoils the skies by his measurements and his thermometers, especially when he describes the zero of cold supposed to exist in the interplanetary spaces, and when he tells us that he has to employ a line a hundred million of miles long for his foot-rule. The stars do not look so. They are, to all appearances, very soci- able, and shine as closely together as a church choir. While they are sociable they do not appear Expiring Embers 333 to be in rivalry or envious of each other. There is a faint little twinkler near my splendid emerald star, which just keeps on shining as calmly as if it were the only star in the skies. And then they are quiet, and self-possessed, and kindly. Star society would seem to be a very agreeable social circle in which to live. As the sun descended this evening I was not sur- prised, nor when it became dark, nor when my loved ones retired to their rest, nor when the camp-fire burned low; nor shall I be when, a little later, I shall drowsily retire to my own repose. And yet it is the common experience for people to be startled and saddened by the first full conviction that they are old. It comes like death, suddenly, however ample and oft-repeated the warning. The habit of regarding one's self as young becomes a fixed habit, and it continues till rudely broken by some irresist- ible evidence that it has outlasted its time. But the conviction once admitted to its place, one be- comes accustomed to the new situation, and begins to enjoy the prerogatives of old age. There is usu- ally, strange to say, greater confidence in the stabil- ity and security of life than when young. This comes of experience. The aging person has seen so many around him die — his kindred passing away one by one, his old acquaintances going or gone — that he unconsciously loses the instinctive sense of personal danger. He acquires a feeling of exemp- 334 Mtisings by Camp- Fire and Wayside tion from the common fate. Possibly this is a providential preparation, so that our last years may not be marred by fear of that which is inevitable and not distant — that clouds and premature dark- ness and chilly and dismal rains may not overshadow our setting sun. This freedom from care about death is not the result of an intellectual condition, but only a placid habit of mind. Intellectually one becomes accustomed to the idea of the approaching end, and here again death itself is obscured, almost hidden, from the mind, by solicitude for the inter- ests which will be affected by it. It becomes the center of business ramifications. One tries to put his affairs in shape so that they will suffer no harm from his perpetual absence. This is in part, habit. Men will do it who have no family to pro- vide for, or whose sons and daughters are each richer than they. But it has usually the leading motive of love, the interests of children, which come to be more highly prized and solicitously looked after than one's own interests. All these things surround the coming event and hide its out- lines. The fear of death is a panoply of life, which falls away when its uses are gone. Very few people, as they come near to the change, experience any fear of it. In youth I was very much terrified by the descriptions of the horrors of the death-bed, painted by revivalist preachers; but though I have seen many die, I never saw any such scene of physi- cal distress and mental agony. It is a process of Expiring Embers 335 nature, and is gradual, gentle, and painless. If there be any acute disease of local parts, the phy- sician stills its clamor of pain. "Do not let me suffer," said General Grant to his physicians, as he found his strength for communicating with them fading out. There was but little danger of his suffering. If a man's self-culture have been in the divine directions, his faith, hope, and charity ripen and sweeten. He is kindlier in his convictions, more tolerant in his differences. Most old people be- come liberal in their theological views, unless they have sedulously cultivated bigotry — in which case they are liable to lose all semblance to Christ. Your hotspur theologian is always a boy. I have seen some amusing examples of a sweet-spirited old Christian trying to keep up his youthful religious rancor. He uses the old phrases, but the vitriol has been all washed out of them, and he puts some softening qualification into his uncertain certainties. His love is not so consuming, but it is tenderer and has a wider range. But on the other hand, if he have cultivated evil passions, so do they ripen and concentrate in malignity. It is an ominous fact that the unrestrained worse side of human nature intensifies with the fading away of physical vitality. The most venomous souls I have ever known in- habited bodies which were worn out and falling to pieces. I step out from my cabin door upon a path where 336 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside for fifteen years I have walked and returned, con- structing a thought and then pausing to write it down. The trees are dappled like fawns by the sifting light of the morning sun. The whole high island is the work of Nature undisturbed, except by the occupancy of the cabins and the trails connect- ing them — and above these she has flung arches of sprays. Shall we find anything better in any other or future life? I cannot imagine it. I do not believe anything prettier or more refreshing ever was or will be. In the old time of river navigation, when the Mississippi and her confluences were the only ave- nues of access to her vast and magnificent valley, we were accustomed to loiter at the roughly built log tavern of the period, or walk up and down the land- ing, waiting the coming steamboat. The shores of the stream were covered with forests, and the wind- ing channel gave but short vistas of its waters. But while yet miles away the boat would blow its hoarse blast, which coming through the trees was softened into solemnity, and we could sometimes see her pillars of smoke rising against the horizon. Then all was busy excitement, a hurrying to and fro of stevedores, truckmen, and passengers. When she had landed and made her exchanges, and turned her prow again into the streajn, there was fluttering of handkerchiefs from decks to shore, and not infrequently some tears. ^. ^ Expiring Embers 337 It seems to me that I hear the sound of the coming ship more distinctly as it approaches. She is past due, and cannot delay much longer. Already I see her plumes of smoke and hear the plash of her wheels, and I step upon her decks for a journey into the Unknown, from which there is no return. 500.9 G783m Gray Musings by camp-fire and wayside ISSUED TO 500.9 G783m Gray Musings by camp-fire and Wciyside