Outings At Odd Times

There are large birds also that frequent the springs habitually in winter, and the fact of their presence is of itself evidence that other active animal life must also abound. I refer to herons, bitterns, and I may add crows. The former two subsist almost exclusively upon frogs and fish, while the latter are content with anything not absolutely indigestible.

How vividly I can recall my astonishment when stooping once to drink from a bubbling spring at the base of the river bluff a dark shadow passed over me, and I sprang with such a sudden motion to my feet that I lost my balance! A great blue heron, unheeding my presence or ignoring it, was slowly settling down to the very spot where I stood, and had I remained quiet it would have perched upon me, I believe. As it was, it gave an impatient flirt to its whole body, showing annoyance and not fear, and flew slowly down the river. Before I had wholly regained my composure and had time to step aside, the huge bird returned, and at once took its stand in the shallow water, as silent, motionless, erect as a sentinel is supposed to be. This was many years ago, and I have seldom failed to see them, sometimes many together, winter after winter since. The moody bittern, on the other hand, is much more disposed to migrate in autumn; but at least a single one is likely to be found on sheltered hillsides, particularly where there are springs with marshy areas surrounding them. I have learned this recently of these birds, and either have overlooked them in years past, or it is a new departure for them. It is not unlikely that the latter should be true. Our familiar cat-bird is losing its migratory instinct very rapidly, judging from the numbers that winter in the valley of the Delaware River. I have seen several recently, and every one of them was in a green-brier thicket, and feeding on the berries of this troublesome vine.

But if there were no green things in or about the springs in winter they would be cheerless spots, after all, in spite of the many forms of animal life that we have seen frequent them. The fact that it is winter would constantly intrude if the water sparkled only among dead leaves. Happily this is not the case. At every spring I saw – and there were many of them – during a recent ramble there was an abundance of chickweed, bitter-dock, corydalis, and a species of forget-me-not; sometimes one or two of these only, and more often all of them; none in bloom, but all as fresh and bright as ever a plant in June. Then, too, in advance of the plant proper, we find the matured bloom of the skunk-cabbage – would that it had as pretty a name as the plant deserves! – with its sheath-like covering, bronze, crimson, golden, and light green, brightening many a dingy spot where dead leaves have been heaped by the winds all winter long. These fresh growths cause us to forget that the general outlook is so dreary, and give to the presence of the abundant animal life a naturalness that would otherwise be wanting.

And not only about the springs, but in them, often choking the channels until little lakes are formed, are found many plants that know no summer of growth and then a long interval of rest. The conditions of the season are too nearly alike, and while in winter there is less increase, growth never entirely ceases, and certainly the bright green of the delicate foliage is never dulled. Anacharis, or water-weed, I find in profusion at all the larger springs; if not, then callitriche, or water-starwort. The latter is as delicate as the finer ferns, and often conceals much of the water in which it grows, as it has both floating and submerged leaves.

In both these plants fish, frogs, and salamanders and large aquatic insects congregate, and are so effectually hidden that when standing on the side of the spring basin a person is not likely to see any living thing, and if the spirit of investigation does not move him he will go away thinking animal life is hibernating, for so indeed it is set down in many books. But it does not always do to plunge the hand in among the weeds, and so try to land whatever may be tangled in the mass you pull ashore. Some of the insects resent such interference by biting severely – the water-boatmen, or Notonectæ, for instance – and they have the advantage of seeing all that is going on in the world about them, for they swim upon their backs.

A delicate and beautifully marked sunfish that is silvery white with inky black bands across it is common in the Delaware tide-water meadows, and is found nowhere else. Recently in a spring pool, where the flow of water was almost stopped by aquatic mosses, Hypnum and Fontinalis, I found nearly a hundred of these fish gathered in a little space. All were active, and so vigorous that an abundant food supply can be presupposed; but I did not bring the microscope to bear upon this question, and it is upon minute forms of life such as would be readily overlooked by the casual observer that they subsist. But, as is everywhere the case, these fish are not free from molestation, although to the onlooker they seem to be dwelling in a paradise. There is a huge insect, murderous as a tiger, that singles them out, I have thought, from the hosts of more commonplace species which we can easily spare. It is known as a Belostoma, and has not, so far as I can learn, any common name. If they were better known they probably would have a dozen. They are “wide and flat-bodied aquatic insects, of more or less ovate outline, furnished with powerful flattened swimming legs,” and the front ones are “fitted for seizing and holding tightly the victims upon which they pounce.” When I found the timid banded sunfish huddled together in the water moss I thought of the savage Belostoma and hunted for them. None seemed to be lurking in the moss, but just beyond, in an open space where twigs had drifted and dead leaves lay about, I found two of them, and I doubt not they were lying in wait, knowing where the fish then were and that sooner or later some would pass that way. To determine by means of crude experiments how far a water-bug has intelligence is a difficult if not impracticable undertaking, but I can assure the reader that the many I have watched in aquaria seemed to be very cunning, and constantly planning how they might surprise the fish, for these, on the other hand, knew the danger of their presence, and shunned them in every possible way.

It is much to be regretted, I think, that aquaria have fallen into disrepute. They are not, as has been said, failures; but if the labor of their care can not be undertaken, let him who would know more of common aquatic life not fail to occasionally ramble round about the springs in winter.

A Bay-Side Outing

A cool, gray mist overspread the wide reach of meadows, and shut from view the still wider reach of water beyond. The clouds were sullen, and with each gusty sweep of sharp east wind were dashes of chilling rain. The outlook was dismal; the more so that my companions and myself had journeyed scores of miles to reach the Pleasantville meadows. Perhaps the village itself was pleasant, but now its suburbs were forbidding. Let me misquote Euripides:

What the morning is to beHuman wisdom never learns.

So it proved; the east wind was soon tempered to three shorn lambs, the sun peeped out upon us from time to time, and long before noon Nature was smiling and contentment reigned.

That which most impressed me as I neared the water was the painful silence that prevailed over all the scene. Not a sound save that of one’s own footsteps was to be heard. The impression of an absolutely deserted country, of a region that had been swept by a pestilence fatal even to insect life, took strong hold of me; but only for a moment. Presently, up from the tufts of tall grass rose, on every side, whistling meadow-larks, filling the air at once with sweet sounds. How my heart leaped, my cheeks tingled! With what eagerness I strove to catch their every note! for dear to me now as, when a boy, the world daily opened up a new scene of delights, is that old, ever-new refrain of the meadow-lark —I see you – you can’t see me.

But I did see them. To the few scattered, stunted trees they flew, and, perching at the very tops, were sharply limned against the pale-gray sky. Did I exert some subtle influence over them? Whether or not, they soon returned, and from hidden by-ways in the rank grass sang again and again, to cheer me, while at work. For not as a rambler merely, but to labor diligently, had I come so far.

Separated from the bay by a narrow strip of meadow, rises a little hillock that tall weeds would have hidden. This was one of our objective points; the other was an adjoining sand-ridge. Over the former we proposed to search for whatsoever the Indians had left behind; into the latter we proposed to dig, believing some of these people had been buried there; all this we did. The little hillock was a shell-heap, or “kitchen refuse-heap,” as they are called by European archæologists. Probably nothing tells so plainly the story of the past as do these great gatherings of burned and broken shells. So recent was every fire-mark, so fresh the bits of charcoal, so sharp the fragments of roasted shells, it would not have startled the relic-hunters had the Indians filed past on their way to the adjoining fishing grounds; and yet, when critically examined, this particular spot had evidently been long deserted. Careful and long-protracted search failed to bring to view any trace of other than most primitive Indian handiwork. One patient searcher, in fact, had to content himself with a few flint flakes and the tiniest bits of rude pottery; while another hunter was more fortunate and drew from the side of a deep and narrow path a pretty quartz knife; and later, two slender, shapely arrow-heads were found.

A beggarly show, perhaps, but what if our hands were not busy picking up relics; our fancies were up and doing. We had evidences and to spare that a primitive people had once dwelt here, and imagination supplied all deficiencies as to the matter of when and why and of the manner of their simple lives. Such ever is the charm of an outing like this. One has to deal so continually with stern facts in every-day life that fancy is the better company when out for a stroll. Nor need we deceive ourselves. A bit of burned clay in hand means the primitive potter in the near foreground. Given a single flake of stone, and the knife, spear, arrow, and all their belongings are in the hands of men who stand out boldly before us. Fancy within bounds is the twin-sister of fact, but mischief brews when she oversteps the mark. An hour with potsherds is monotonous. One longs for some more shapely trace of human handiwork, but among heaps of broken and burned shells, these are not frequent. Herein the kitchen-middens of the New Jersey coast differ, as a rule, from the former village sites in the river valleys. It would appear that the Indian’s life as a coast-dweller was simplicity itself. It meant the mere gathering of food from the shallow water. No contrivances were called for, so no specialized tools were left behind, and in their annual pilgrimages to the coast, the inland people either took but little with them, or were very careful to carry back everything they had brought. No wonder, then, we grow restive when a richer harvest is promised by the mere leaping of a fence. There, in a grassy field, it was reported, Indians had been buried, and how exciting it is to know that a skeleton may be brought to light by the mere turning of the sod. It has been cruelly said that he who removes from the ground a recently buried body is a ghoul, but if we wait until the flesh has decayed, then the collector of dry bones becomes an archæologist. It is not a fair statement; but whether true or not, we gave it no heed, but proceeded to dig. Scanning each spadeful of dirt for traces of bones, we soon found them, and all was excitement. Little by little, whole bones were exposed to view, and, following these up with the greatest care, that first of prizes to an archæologist, a skull, was secured. Later a second and a third were found. Our day was full. No, not quite full. We knew that often a bowl, trinkets, and a weapon or two were buried with the body, but nothing of the kind was found. It was a matter of dry bones only, unless we except the one instance where the upper shell of a large turtle rested on one of the skulls. This was a cap that would scarcely prove comfortable to a living person, although not without the merit of being quite water-proof.

The longest summer’s day is all too short for such eventful outings; so little wonder that the early setting of the sun in February prompted our discontent. Who was ever satisfied in this world? He is a half-hearted rambler, at best, that loves to quit such work; but the night came down upon us, nevertheless. Silence brooded over the broad meadows, and the larks that had cheered us until sunset ceased to sing. Could there have been a happier combination? Meadow-larks and Indian relics; aye, even the bones of the Indians themselves; to say nothing of a soft sea-breeze and a clear sky.

Laden with valued spoils, we at last reluctantly drew near the village, and would that it had been wrapped in Egyptian darkness! How the aged villagers scowled at us as we passed by! The lame, the halt, the blind, all came hobbling to the front windows of their homes and hurled silent imprecations after us. What a sad ending to our happy day! and why, forsooth? In our innocent zeal, we had disturbed the bones of a few Indian fishermen that for centuries had been resting in perfect peace. We, the irate villagers claimed, being in full possession of good health, could withstand the fury of the outraged spirits of departed red-skins, but not so the afflicted villagers. Every rheumatic crone averred that her pains had grown to agony since we broke the sod. Invisible arrows had whizzed by their ears, and more than one sufferer had been struck, as the red marks upon their persons proved. Vengeance had gone astray and sorely pressed the innocent; while the guilty walked without shame through the long village street. This was indeed adding insult to injury.

Speaking for myself, did I know the meaning of the word “impatience,” I should have been vexed. As it was, the day deserved to be recorded in red letters.

As a lover of quiet country strolls, I had been happy beyond measure, but the way of the archæologist, it would seem, is beset with thorns.

Free for the Day

Free for the day! I scarce need tell the rest:An aimless youth again, and Nature’s guest.

If magic lurks in any four words of the queen’s English, it is to be looked for here. Free for the day! Neither in books nor out of them have I met with a phrase more full of meaning, one more comprehensively suggestive. To me, eight weeks in the noisy city had seemed almost a year, and at last came a pause in my occupation and a day to myself. No decision could be reached in a reasonable time by calmly thinking the matter over, so, closing my eyes, I spun myself on one heel, determined to walk a good ten miles in whatever direction I faced when my whirling body came to rest. Fortune favored me, for I found myself looking directly toward the river. This put an end to my walking ten miles in a bee line, for the river was not one mile distant, and, except at a distant point, could not be crossed. With a light heart I made for the river, and, reaching the shore, sat in a cozy nook where driftwood had conveniently lodged. Walking is capital sport at all times, but a comfortable outlook never comes amiss, and resting at the end of one mile is as natural as at the end of a dozen. Thoreau speaks of looking seaward while at Cape Cod and having all America behind him. I took my cue from him, and, looking only down stream and not far beyond, saw only the rippling waters. Every ripple carried its atom of the town dust from my eyes, and in an hour I saw the world again with clear vision. Something of the old self thrilled my veins, but still I was loath to leave so sweet a spot. I had no promise of better things, and, though early February, the wild words of an ancient chronicler came to mind. Wrote a mendacious Englishman in 1648, of this river – the Delaware – that it was “scituate in the best and same temper as Italy,” and goes on to say, it “is freed from the extreme cold and barrennesse of the one [New England] and heat and aguish marshes of the other [Virginia]”; all of which is a (to put it mildly) mistake. And then the romancer adds, the Delaware Valley “is like Lombardy, … and partaketh of the healthiest aire and most excellent commodities of Europe.” Then follows a bit of nonsense about the wild beasts and agricultural capabilities. Why could not those old travelers be truthful? There is not one but deals in absurdities, and it would appear that they rounded off every paragraph with a flight of the imagination. If his account be true, reindeer and moose, as well as elk and deer, tramped these river shores but three centuries ago, and the buffalo roamed over the Crosswicks meadows. This is extremely improbable. Moose and reindeer bones have been found, it is true, and even traces of the musk-ox, but all goes to show that it was far longer ago than three centuries. That there are traces, too, of man found associated with them goes for nothing. Such association does not bring the now arctic animals down to a recent date in this river valley, but places man in an indefinitely long ago. If there is any one fact well established, it is the antiquity of man in America, and those who, even in scientific journals, say the evidences so far are not trustworthy, and all that, utter greater absurdities than the old chronicler I have quoted.

A word more. If the author quoted had in mind such a winter as this, perhaps he can not be held as intentionally wrong as to the climate; but why need he have exaggerated? As if the round of the seasons in Jersey could be better, when they are as they should be! The truth, two hundred and odd years ago, would not have frightened a would-be settler; but such a winter as this might. The present meteorological “flummux,” which plays the fool with all animate nature, is what the old-time Indians called niskelan– ugly weather; and they gave it the proper name.

But hang the whole crew of historians and scientists! this is my holiday! The water is very blue to-day, very ripply, and flaked here and there with a dainty bit of foam. This is running water at its best. It smells sweetest now. And what an odor that is which rises from a broad river! The essence of the mountains many a mile away, the ooze of the black-soiled meadows over which I have just passed, the dead leaves and brushwood, and, too, the grand old trees that line the river’s shore, all give up some subtle perfume, which, mingling over the river, is wafted to the shore. It intoxicates. Every breath indrawn thrills the nerves and cleanses the city-soiled fibers of our being. But let no more be said. As I stood, straight as a signal-light upon the shore, my eye caught a strange mound of bleached driftwood in the distance, and curiosity at once drew me toward it – a recently drowned cow that dogs had torn. Such possible drawbacks warn one against enthusiasm as to country odors. As for myself, I walked down stream, thinking new thoughts.

Having an odd fish in sight when by the river’s side, I am never lonely. Odd fish are too plentiful in town; never a glut of them – the proper sort – in the water. The average minnow is an endless source of amusement. Its rough and tumble existence is encouraging to striving mortals. The minnow’s ingenuity is hourly taxed to escape danger, yet never have I seen one in despair. To-day was a red-letter one in this respect. Off in a shallow pool, not two yards square, was a huge hump-backed minnow. Its spine was as twisted as a corkscrew, and its locomotion as erratic as lightning. How could such a fish secure its prey? was the question that puzzled me; and, failing to hit upon a solution, I tried to capture the fish for my aquarium. When one has neither net, line, nor other device, fishing is uncertain, except with the professional liars. I tried scooping with my hands, and have only to relate as a result that the hump-backed minnow appeared to make a springboard of its tail and leap over my hands with the grace and ease of a professional acrobat. After several attempts on my part to circumvent the minnow, it suddenly disappeared. I looked in vain for it all through the little pool. It had gone. At last I stepped back to turn to new scenes, when the hump-backed minnow leaped from a pebble on the water’s edge, with about the agility of a frog! Of course, this will go the way of all fish stories; but I do not mind telling it, for all that.

It is the unexpected that happens – a remark, by the way, that dates B. C. – when the rambler has no particular quest in mind. I had almost forgotten that birds were in existence, when a large one ran along the pebbly beach, not more than a rod before me. It was a king-rail. With the thoughtlessness characteristic of a half fool, I hurled a stone after it, with the usual result of frightening it and so losing a golden opportunity to observe a rather rare bird at a most unusual season. Why will people be such ninnies? If a companion had been with me and attempted this, I would have prevented him; yet, nine times in ten, I give way to the unfortunate impulse to capture, if not destroy, the rarer creatures I meet. Had I been born without arms, I would by this time have become a naturalist. This tendency is due, without doubt, to our non-human ancestry, but will we never outgrow it?

The king-rail is a noble bird, and a few haunt the marshes all summer long, nesting where the tall grass is too rank and tangled even to tempt a restless cow. Perhaps they have in mind the danger of meddlesome mankind, and dwell in such spots accordingly. Taking the whole range of bird life into consideration, it certainly would appear that birds give a good deal of attention to such matters. And, before leaving the subject, I will add that, to be intelligible in discussing birds’ ways, one must assume that they have minds akin to ours; and this leads to the suspicion on the part of some, and conviction in my own case, that the birds’ mind and that of man are too closely akin to warrant much distinction.

Birds, then, as usual, trooped to the fore as I rambled down the river. I saw nothing else, yet not a bird was in view. The old histories came to mind, and closed my eyes to other than an inner vision. “Greate stores of swannes, geese, and ducks, and huge cranes, both blue and white.” Is it not exasperating to think of the change wrought in two centuries? A mile-wide river, and banks of old-time wildness still remaining, yet not a feather rests upon the one or shadow of a walking bird falls upon the other. Far and near, up and down, and high overhead I scan the country for a glimpse of some one bird, but in vain. The crows nowadays have the river to themselves, and none of these were about to-day.

The day has been a marked one for its emptiness. Tracing the river’s shore for miles ought to yield rich results, but here, at my journey’s end, I am empty-handed. What little I have seen has but soured my temper. It is most unwise to be ever mourning over the unrecoverable past, but how can one avoid it? Such a walk, productive of nothing worth recording, may not, I hope, be in vain. It at least provokes me to say, Can not wild life, or what little remains of it, be effectually protected? Can not swans, geese, and ducks be induced to return? They can never prove an obstruction to navigation, so why should legislation on this point be, as at present, a mere farce? The day will never come, perhaps, when people who prefer a living to a dead bird will be acknowledged as having a claim to the wild life that would appear to be no man’s peculiar property. By an overwhelming majority, mankind hold, if a creature is good to eat, it must be killed. But the insignificant minority still feel they have a claim. I would walk twenty miles to see a wild swan on the Delaware; my neighbor would walk forty if sure of shooting it.

Water birds are safe on the Back Bay in Boston, and seem to know it. I have watched them with delight, morning after morning, while dressing; but here, miles from town, you may pass a week and see no trace of even a duck. A few come and go, but there are men with guns lying in wait, both day and night. Time was when there were wild fowl and to spare – not so now; and the day is quickly coming when geese even will rank with the great auk and the dodo.