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The Heart Of The Southern Catskills
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On looking at the southern and more distant Catskills from the Hudson
River on the east, or on looking at them from the west from some
point of vantage in Delaware County, you see, amid the group of
mountains, one that looks like the back and shoulders of a gigantic
horse. The horse has got his head down grazing; the shoulders are
high, and the descent from them down his neck very steep; if he were
to lift up his head, one sees that it would be carried far above all
other peaks, and that the noble beast might gaze straight to his
peers in the Adirondacks or the White Mountains. But the lowered head
never comes up; some spell or enchantment keeps it down there amid
the mighty herd; and the high round shoulders and the smooth strong
back of the steed are alone visible. The peak to which I refer is
Slide Mountain, the highest of the Catskills by some two hundred
feet; and probably the most inaccessible; certainly the hardest to
get a view of, it is hedged about so completely by other peaks,-the
greatest mountain of them all, and apparently the least willing to be
seen; only at a distance of thirty or forty miles is it seen to stand
up above all other peaks. It takes its name from a landslide which
occurred many years ago down its steep northern side, or down the
neck of the grazing steed. The mane of spruce and balsam fir was
stripped away for many hundred feet, leaving a long gray streak
visible from afar.
Slide Mountain is the centre and the chief of the southern Catskills.
Streams flow from its base, and from the base of its subordinates, to
all points of the compass,-the Rondout and the Neversink to the
south; the Beaverkill to the west; the Esopus to the north; and
several lesser streams to the east. With its summit as the centre, a
radius of ten miles would include within the circle described but
very little cultivated land; only a few poor, wild farms in some of
the numerous valleys. The soil is poor, a mixture of gravel and clay,
and is subject to slides. It lies in the valleys in ridges and small
hillocks, as if dumped there from a huge cart. The tops of the
southern Catskills are all capped with a kind of conglomerate, or
"pudden stone,"-a rock of cemented quartz pebbles which
underlies the coal measures. This rock disintegrates under the action
of the elements, and the sand and gravel which result are carried
into the valleys and make up the most of the soil. From the northern
Catskills, so far as I know them, this rock has been swept clean. Low
down in the valleys the old red sandstone crops out, and, as you go
west into Delaware County, in many places it alone remains and makes
up most of the soil, all the superincumbent rock having been carried away.
Slide Mountain had been a summons and a challenge to me for many
years. I had fished every stream that it nourished, and had camped in
the wilderness on all sides of it, and whenever I had caught a
glimpse of its summit I had promised myself to set foot there before
another season should pass. But the seasons came and went, and my
feet got no nimbler, and Slide Mountain no lower, until finally, one
July, seconded by an energetic friend, we thought to bring Slide to
terms by approaching him through the mountains on the east. With a
farmer's son for guide we struck in by way of Weaver Hollow, and,
after a long and desperate climb, contented ourselves with the
Wittenberg, instead of Slide. |
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The view from the Wittenberg is in many respects more striking,
as you are perched immediately above a broader and more distant sweep
of country, and are only about two hundred feet lower. You are here
on the eastern brink of the southern Catskills, and the earth falls
away at your feet and curves down through an immense stretch of
forest till it joins the plain of Shokan, and thence sweeps away to
the Hudson and beyond. Slide is southwest of you, six or seven miles
distant, but is visible only when you climb into a treetop. I climbed
and saluted him, and promised to call next time. |
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We passed the night on the Wittenberg, sleeping on the moss, between
two decayed logs, with balsam boughs thrust into the ground and
meeting and forming a canopy over us. In coming off the mountain in
the morning we ran upon a huge porcupine, and I learned for the first
time that the tail of a porcupine goes with a spring like a trap. It
seems to be a set-lock; and you no sooner touch with the weight of a
hair one of the quills than the tail leaps up in a most surprising
manner, and the laugh is not on your side. The beast cantered along
the path in my front, and I threw myself upon him, shielded by my
roll of blankets. He submitted quietly to the indignity, and lay very
still under my blankets, with his broad tail pressed close to the
ground. This I proceeded to investigate, but had not fairly made a
beginning when it went off like a trap, and my hand and wrist were
full of quills. This caused me to let up on the creature, when it
lumbered away till it tumbled down a precipice. The quills were
quickly removed from my hand, when we gave chase. When we came up to
him, he had wedged himself in between the rocks so that he presented
only a back bristling with quills, with the tail lying in ambush
below. He had chosen his position well, and seemed to defy us. After
amusing ourselves by repeatedly springing his tail and receiving the
quills in a rotten stick, we made a slip-noose out of a spruce root,
and, after much maneuvering, got it over his head and led him forth.
In what a peevish, injured tone the creature did complain of our
unfair tactics! He protested and protested, and whimpered and scolded
like some infirm old man tormented by boys. His game after we led him
forth was to keep himself as much as possible in the shape of a ball,
but with two sticks and the cord we finally threw him over on his
back and exposed his quill-less and vulnerable under side, when he
fairly surrendered and seemed to say, "Now you may do with me as
you like." His great chisel-like teeth, which are quite as
formidable as those of the woodchuck, he does not appear to use at
all in his defense, but relies entirely upon his quills, and when
those fail him he is done for.
After amusing ourselves with him awhile longer, we released him and
went on our way. The trail to which we had committed ourselves led us
down into Woodland Valley, a retreat which so took my eye by its fine
trout brook, its superb mountain scenery, and its sweet seclusion,
that I marked it for my own, and promised myself a return to it at no
distant day. This promise I kept, and pitched my tent there twice
during that season. Both occasions were a sort of laying siege to
Slide, but we only skirmished with him at a distance; the actual
assault was not undertaken. But the following year, reinforced by two
other brave climbers, we determined upon the assault, and upon making
it from this the most difficult side. The regular way is by Big
Indian Valley, where the climb is comparatively easy, and where it is
often made by women. But from Woodland valley only men may essay the
ascent. Larkins is the upper inhabitant, and from our camping-ground
near his clearing we set out early one June morning.
One would think nothing could be easier to find than a big mountain,
especially when one is encamped upon a stream which he knows springs
out of its very loins. But for some reason or other we had got an
idea that Slide Mountain was a very slippery customer and must be
approached cautiously. We had tried from several points in the valley
to get a view of it, but were not quite sure we had seen its very
head. When on the Wittenberg, a neighboring peak, the year before, I
had caught a brief glimpse of it only by climbing a dead tree and
craning up for a moment from its topmost branch. It would seem as if
the mountain had taken every precaution to shut itself off from a
near view. It was a shy mountain, and we were about to stalk it
through six or seven miles of primitive woods, and we seemed to have
some unreasonable fear that it might elude us. We had been told of
parties who had essayed the ascent from this side, and had returned
baffled and bewildered. In a tangle of primitive woods, the very
bigness of the mountain baffles one. It is all mountain; whichever
way you turn-and one turns sometimes in such cases before he knows it-the
foot finds a steep and rugged ascent.
The eye is of little service; one must be sure of his bearings and
push boldly on and up. One is not unlike a flea upon a great shaggy
beast, looking for the animal's head; or even like a much smaller and
much less nimble creature,-he may waste his time and steps, and think
he has reached the head when he is only upon the rump. Hence I
questioned our host, who had several times made the ascent, closely.
Larkins laid his old felt hat upon the table, and, placing one hand
upon one side of it and the other upon the other, said: "There
Slide lies, between the two forks of the stream, just as my hat lies
between my two hands. David will go with you to the forks, and then
you will push right on up." But Larkins was not right, though he
had traversed all those mountains many times over. The peak we were
about to set out for did not lie between the forks, but exactly at
the head of one of them; the beginnings of the stream are in the very
path of the slide, as we afterward found. We broke camp early in the
morning, and with our blankets strapped to our backs and rations in
our pockets for two days, set out along an ancient and in places an
obliterated park road that followed and crossed and recrossed the
stream. The morning was bright and warm, but the wind was fitful and
petulant, and I predicted rain. What a forest solitude our obstructed
and dilapidated wood-road led us through! five miles of primitive
woods before we came to the forks, three miles before we came to the
"burnt shanty," a name merely,-no shanty there now for twenty-five
years past. The ravages of the barkpeelers were still visible, now
in a space thickly strewn with the soft and decayed trunks of
hemlock-trees, and overgrown with wild cherry, then in huge mossy
logs scattered through the beech and maple woods. Some of these logs
were so soft and mossy that one could sit or recline upon them as
upon a sofa.
But the prettiest thing was the stream soliloquizing in such musical
tones there amid the moss-covered rocks and boulders. How clean it
looked, what purity! Civilization corrupts the streams as it corrupts
the Indian; only in such remote woods can you now see a brook in all
its original freshness and beauty. Only the sea and the mountain
forest brook are pure; all between is contaminated more or less by
the work of man. An ideal trout brook was this, now hurrying, now
loitering, now deepening around a great boulder, now gliding evenly
over a pavement of green-gray stone and pebbles; no sediment or stain
of any kind, but white and sparkling as snow-water, and nearly as
cool. Indeed, the water of all this Catskill region is the best in
the world. For the first few days, one feels as if he could almost
live on the water alone; he cannot drink enough of it. In this
particular it is indeed the good Bible land, "a land of brooks
of water, fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills."
Near the forks we caught, or thought we caught, through an opening, a
glimpse of Slide. Was it Slide? was it the head, or the rump, or the
shoulder of the shaggy monster we were in quest of? At the forks
there was a bewildering maze of underbrush and great trees, and the
way did not seem at all certain; nor was David, who was then at the
end of his reckoning, able to reassure us. But in assaulting a
mountain, as in assaulting a fort, boldness is the watchword. We
pressed forward, following a line of blazed trees for nearly a mile,
then, turning to the left, began the ascent of the mountain. It was
steep, hard climbing. We saw numerous marks of both bears and deer;
but no birds, save at long intervals the winter wren flitting here
and there, and darting under logs and rubbish like a mouse.
Occasionally its gushing, lyrical song would break the silence. After
we had climbed an hour or two, the clouds began to gather, and
presently the rain began to come down. This was discouraging; but we
put our backs up against trees and rocks, and waited for the shower
to pass.
"They were wet with the showers of the mountain, and embraced
the rocks for want of shelter," as they did in Job's time. But
the shower was light and brief, and we were soon under way again.
Three hours from the forks brought us out on the broad level back of
the mountain upon which Slide, considered as an isolated peak, is
reared. After a time we entered a dense growth of spruce which
covered a slight depression in the table of the mountain. The moss
was deep, the ground spongy, the light dim, the air hushed. The
transition from the open, leafy woods to this dim, silent, weird
grove was very marked. It was like the passage from the street into
the temple. Here we paused awhile and ate our lunch, and refreshed
ourselves with water gathered from a little well sunk in the moss.
The quite and repose of this spruce grove proved to be the calm that
goes before the storm. As we passed out of it, we came plump upon the
almost perpendicular battlements of Slide. The mountain rose like a
huge, rock-bound fortress from this plain-like expanse. It was ledge
upon ledge, precipice upon precipice, up which and over which we made
our way slowly and with great labor, now pulling ourselves up by our
hands, then cautiously finding niches for our feet and zigzagging
right and left from shelf to shelf. This northern side of the
mountain was thickly covered with moss and lichens, like the north
side or a tree. This made it soft to the foot, and broke many a slip
and fall. Everywhere a stunted growth of yellow birch, mountain-ash,
and spruce and fir opposed our progress. The ascent at such an angle
with a roll of blankets on your back is not unlike climbing a tree:
every limb resists your progress and pushes you back; so that when we
at last reached the summit, after twelve or fifteen hundred feet of
this sort of work, the fight was about all out of the best of us. It
was then nearly two o'clock, so that we had been about seven hours in
coming seven miles.
Here on the top of the mountain we overtook spring, which had been
gone from the valley nearly a month. Red clover was opening in the
valley below, and wild strawberries just ripening; on the summit the
yellow birch was just hanging out its catkins, and the claytonia, or
spring-beauty, was in bloom. The leaf-buds of the trees were just
bursting, making a faint mist of green, which, as the eye swept
downward, gradually deepened until it became a dense, massive cloud
in the valleys. At the foot of the mountain the clintonia, or
northern green lily, and the low shadbush were showing their berries,
but long before the top was reached they were found in bloom. I had
never before stood amid blooming claytonia, a flower of April, and
looked down upon a field that held ripening strawberries. Every
thousand feet elevation seemed to make about ten days difference in
the vegetation, so that the season was a month or more later on the
top of the mountain than at its base. A very pretty flower which we
began to meet with well up on the mountain-side was the painted
trillium, the petals white, veined with pink.
The low, stunted growth of spruce and fir which clothes the top of
Slide has been cut away over a small space on the highest point,
laying open the view on nearly all sides. Here we sat down and
enjoyed our triumph. We saw the world as the hawk or the balloonist
sees it when he is three thousand feet in the air. How soft and
flowing all the outlines of the hills and mountains beneath us
looked! The forests dropped down and undulated away over them,
covering them like a carpet. To the east we looked over the near-by
Wittenberg range to the Hudson and beyond; to the south,
Peak-o'-Moose, with its sharp crest, and Table Mountain, with its
long level top, were the two conspicuous objects; in the west, Mt.
Graham and Double Top, about three thousand eight hundred feet each,
arrested the eye; while in our front to the north we looked over the
top of Panther Mountain to the multitudinous peaks of the northern
Catskills. All was mountain and forest on every hand. Civilization
seemed to have done little more than to have scratched this rough,
shaggy surface of the earth here and there. In any such view, the
wild, the aboriginal, the geographical greatly predominate. The works
of man dwindle, and the original features of the huge globe come out.
Every single object or point is dwarfed; the valley of the Hudson is
only a wrinkle in the earth's surface. You discover with a feeling of
surprise that the great thing is the earth itself, which stretches
away on every hand so far beyond your ken.
The Arabs believe that the mountains steady the earth and hold it
together; but they have only to get on the top of a high one to see
how insignificant mountains are, and how adequate the earth looks to
get along without them. To the imaginative Oriental people, mountains
seemed to mean much more than they do to us. They were sacred; they
were the abodes of their divinities. They offered their sacrifices
upon them. In the Bible, mountains are used as a symbol of that which
is great and holy. Jerusalem is spoken of as a holy mountain. The
Syrians were beaten by the Children of Israel because, said they,
"their gods are gods of the hills; therefore were they stronger
than we." It was on Mount Horeb that God appeared to Moses in
the burning bush, and on Sinai that He delivered to him the law.
Josephus says that the Hebrew shepherds never pasture their flocks on
Sinai, believing it to be the abode of Jehovah. The solitude of
mountain-tops is peculiarly impressive, and it is certainly easier to
believe the Deity appeared in a burning bush there than in the valley
below. When the clouds of heaven, too, come down and envelop the top
of the mountain,-how such a circumstance must have impressed the old
God-fearing Hebrews! Moses knew well how to surround the law with the
pomp and circumstance that would inspire the deepest awe and reverence.
But when the clouds came down and enveloped us on Slide Mountain, the
grandeur, the solemnity, were gone in a twinkling; the
portentous-looking clouds proved to be nothing but base fog that wet
us and extinguished the world for us. How tame, and prosy, and
humdrum the scene instantly became! But when the fog lifted, and we
looked from under it as from under a just-raised lid, and the eye
plunged again like an escaped bird into those vast gulfs of space
that opened at our feet, the feeling of grandeur and solemnity
quickly came back.
The first want we felt on the top of Slide, after we had got some
rest, was a want of water. Several of us cast about, right and left,
but no sign of water was found. But water must be had, so we all
started off deliberately to hunt it up. We had not gone many hundred
yards before we chanced upon an ice-cave beneath some rocks,-vast
masses of ice, with crystal pools of water near. This was good luck,
indeed, and put a new and a brighter face on the situation.
Slide Mountain enjoys a distinction which no other mountain in the
State, so far as is known, does, -it has a thrush peculiar to itself.
This thrush was discovered and described by Eugene P. Bicknell, of
New York, in 1880, and has been named Bicknell's thrush. A better
name would have been Slide Mountain thrush, as the bird so far has
been found only on this mountain. 1 I did not see or hear it upon the
Wittenberg, which is only a few miles distant, and only two hundred
feet lower. In its appearance to the eye among the trees, one would
not distinguish it from the gray-checked thrush of Baird, or the
olive-backed thrush, but its song is totally different. The moment I
heard it I said, " There is a new bird, a new thrush," for
the quality of all thrush song is the same. A moment more, and I knew
it was Bicknell's thrush. The song is in a minor key, finer, more
attenuated, and more under the breath than that of any other thrush.
It seemed as if the bird was blowing in a delicate, slender, golden
tube, so fine and yet so flute-like and resonant the song appeared.
At times it was like a musical whisper of great sweetness and power.
The birds were numerous about the summit, but we saw them nowhere
else. No other thrush was seen, though a few times during our stay I
caught a mere echo of the hermit's song far down the mountain-side. A
bird I was not prepared to see or to hear was the black-poll warbler,
a bird usually found much farther north, but here it was, amid the
balsam firs, uttering its simple, lisping song.
1 Bicknell's thrush turns out to be the more southern form of the
gray-checked thrush, and is found on the higher mountains of New York
and New England.
The rocks on the top of these mountains are quite sure to attract
one's attention, even if he have no eye for such things. They are
masses of light reddish conglomerate, composed of round wave-worn
quartz pebbles. Every pebble has been shaped and polished upon some
ancient seacoast, probably the Devonian. The rock disintegrates where
it is most exposed to the weather, and forms a loose sandy and pebbly
soil. These rocks form the floor of the coal formation, but in the
Catskill region only the floor remains; the superstructure has never
existed, or has been swept away; hence one would look for a coal mine
here over his head in the air, rather than under his feet.
This rock did not have to climb up here as we did; the mountain
stooped and took it upon its back in the bottom of the old seas, and
then got lifted up again. This happened so long ago that the memory
of the oldest inhabitants of these parts yields no clew to the time.
A pleasant task we had in reflooring and reroofing the log-hut with
balsam boughs against the night. Plenty of small balsams grew all
about, and we soon had a huge pile of their branches in the old hut.
What a transformation, this fresh green carpet and our fragrant bed,
like the deep-furred robe of some huge animal, wrought in that dingy
interior! Two or three things disturbed our sleep. A cup of strong
beef-tea taken for supper disturbed mine; then the porcupines kept up
such a grunting and chattering near our heads, just on the other side
of the log, that sleep was difficult. In my wakeful mood I was a good
deal annoyed by a little rabbit that kept whipping in at our
dilapidated door and nibbling at our bread and hardtack. He persisted
even after the gray of the morning appeared. Then about four o'clock
it began gently to rain. I think I heard the first drop that fell. My
companions were all in sound sleep. The rain increased, and gradually
the sleepers awoke. It was like the tread of an advancing enemy which
every ear had been expecting. The roof over us was of the poorest,
and we had no confidence in it. It was made of the thin bark of
spruce and balsam, and was full of hollows and depressions. Presently
these hollows got full of water, when there was a simultaneous
downpour of bigger and lesser rills upon the sleepers beneath. Said
sleepers, as one man, sprang up, each taking his blanket with him;
but by the time some of the party had got themselves stowed away
under the adjacent rock, the rain ceased. It was little more than the
dissolving of the nightcap of fog which so often hangs about these
heights. With the first appearance of the dawn I had heard the new
thrush in the scattered trees near the hut,-a strain as fine as if
blown upon a fairy flute, a suppressed musical whisper from out the
tops of the dark spruces. Probably never did there go up from the top
of a great mountain a smaller song to greet the day, albeit it was of
the purest harmony. It seemed to have in a more marked degree the
quality of interior reverberation than any other thrush song I had
ever heard. Would the altitude or the situation account for its minor
key? Loudness would avail little in such a place. Sounds are not far
heard on a mountain-top; they are lost in the abyss of vacant air.
But amid these low, dense, dark spruces, which make a sort of
canopied privacy of every square rod of ground, what could be more in
keeping than this delicate musical whisper? It was but the soft hum
of the balsams, interpreted and embodied in a bird's voice. |
It was the plan of two of our companions to go from Slide over into
the head of the Rondout, and thence out to the railroad at the little
village of Shokan, an unknown way to them, involving nearly an
all-day pull the first day through a pathless wilderness. We ascended
to the topmost floor of the tower, and from my knowledge of the
topography of the country I pointed out to them their course, and
where the valley of the Rondout must lie. The vast stretch of woods,
when it came into view from under the foot of Slide, seemed from our
point of view very uniform. It swept away to the southeast, rising
gently toward the ridge that separates Lone Mountain from Peak-o'-Moose,
and presented a comparatively easy problem. As a clew to the course,
the line where the dark belt or saddle-cloth of spruce, which covered
the top of the ridge they were to skirt, ended, and the deciduous
woods began, a sharp well-defined line was pointed out as the course
to be followed. It led straight to the top of the broad level-backed
ridge which connected two higher peaks, and immediately behind which
lay the headwaters of the Rondout. Having studied the map thoroughly,
and possessed themselves of the points, they rolled up their blankets
about nine o'clock, and were off, my friend and I purposing to spend
yet another day and night on Slide. As our friends plunged down into
that fearful abyss, we shouted to them the old classic caution,
"Be bold, be bold, be not too bold." It required courage to
make such a leap into the unknown, as I knew those young men were
making, and it required prudence. A faint heart or a bewildered head,
and serious consequences might have resulted. The theory of a thing
is so much easier than the practice! The theory is in the air, the
practice is in the woods; the eye, the thought, travel easily where
the foot halts and stumbles. However, our friends made the theory and
the fact coincide; they kept the dividing line between the spruce and
the birches, and passed over the ridge into the valley safely; but
they were torn and bruised and wet by the showers, and made the last
few miles of their journey on will and pluck alone, their last pound
of positive strength having been exhausted in making the descent
through the chaos of rocks and logs into the head of the valley. In
such emergencies one overdraws his account; he travels on the credit
of the strength he expects to gain when he gets his dinner and some
sleep. Unless one has made such a trip himself (and I have several
times in my life), he can form but a faint idea what it is like,-what
a trial it is to the body, and what a trial it is to the mind. You
are fighting a battle with an enemy in ambush. How those miles and
leagues which your feet must compass lie hidden there in that
wilderness; how they seem to multiply themselves; how they are
fortified with logs, and rocks, and fallen trees; how they take
refuge in deep gullies, and skulk behind unexpected eminences! Your
body not only feels the fatigue of the battle, your mind feels the
strain of the undertaking; you may miss your mark; the mountains may
outmaneuver you. All that day, whenever I looked upon that
treacherous wilderness, I thought with misgivings of those two
friends groping their way there, and would have given much to know
how it fared with them. Their concern was probably less than my own,
because they were more ignorant of what was before them. Then there
was just a slight shadow of a fear in my mind that I might have been
in error about some points of the geography I had pointed out to
them. But all was well, and the victory was won according to the
campaign which I had planned. When we saluted our friends upon their
own doorstep a week afterward, the wounds were nearly healed and the
rents all mended.
When one is on a mountain-top, he spends most of the time in looking
at the show he has been at such pains to see. About every hour we
would ascend the rude lookout to take a fresh observation. With a
glass I could see my native hills forty miles away to the northwest.
I was now upon the back of the horse, yes, upon the highest point of
his shoulders, which had so many times attracted my attention as a
boy. We could look along his balsam-covered back to his rump, from
which the eye glanced away down into the forests of the Neversink,
and on the other hand plump down into the gulf where his head was
grazing or drinking. During the day there was a grand procession of
thunder-clouds filing along over the northern Catskills, and letting
down veils of rain and enveloping them. From such an elevation one
has the same view of the clouds that he does from the prairie or the
ocean. They do not seem to rest across and to be upborne by the
hills, but they emerge out of the dim west, thin and vague, and grow
and stand up as they get nearer and roll by him, on a level but
invisible highway, huge chariots of wind and storm.
In the afternoon a thick cloud threatened us, but it proved to be the
condensation of vapor that announces a cold wave. There was soon a
marked fall in the temperature, and as night drew near it became
pretty certain that we were going to have a cold time of it. The wind
rose, the vapor above us thickened and came nearer, until it began to
drive across the summit in slender wraiths, which curled over the
brink and shut out the view. We became very diligent in getting in
our night wood and in gathering more boughs to calk up the openings
in the hut. The wood we scraped together was a sorry lot, roots and
stumps and branches of decayed spruce, such as we could collect
without an axe, and some rags and tags of birch bark. The fire was
built in one corner of the shanty, the smoke finding easy egress
through large openings on the east side and in the roof over it. We
doubled up the bed, making it thicker and more nest-like, and as
darkness set in, stowed ourselves into it beneath our blankets. The
searching wind found out every crevice about our heads and shoulders,
and it was icy cold. Yet we fell asleep, and had slept about an hour
when my companion sprang up in an unwonted state of excitement for so
placid a man. His excitement was occasioned by the sudden discovery
that what appeared to be a bar of ice was fast taking the place of
his backbone. His teeth chattered, and he was convulsed with ague. I
advised him to replenish the fire, and to wrap himself in his blanket
and cut the liveliest capers he was capable of in so circumscribed a
place. This he promptly did, and the thought of his wild and
desperate dance there in the dim light, his tall form, his blanket
flapping, his teeth chattering, the porcupines outside marking time
with their squeals and grunts, still provokes a smile, though it was
a serious enough matter at the time. After a while, the warmth came
back to him, but he dared not trust himself again to the boughs; he
fought the cold all night as one might fight a besieging foe. By
carefully husbanding the fuel, the beleaguering enemy was kept at bay
till morning came; but when morning did not come, even the huge root
he had used as a chair was consumed. Rolled in my blanket beneath a
foot or more of balsam boughs, I had got some fairly good sleep, and
was most of the time oblivious of the melancholy vigil of my friend.
As we had but a few morsels of food left, and had been on rather
short rations the day before, hunger was added to his other
discomforts. At that time a letter was on the way to him from his
wife, which contained this prophetic sentence: "I hope thee is
not suffering with cold and hunger on some lone mountain-top."
Mr. Bicknell's thrush struck up again at the first signs of dawn,
notwithstanding the cold. I could hear his penetrating and melodious
whisper as I lay buried beneath the boughs. Presently I arose and
invited my friend to turn in for a brief nap, while I gathered some
wood and set the coffee brewing. With a brisk, roaring fire on, I
left for the spring to fetch some water, and to make my toilet. The
leaves of the mountain goldenrod, which everywhere covered the ground
in the opening, were covered with frozen particles of vapor, and the
scene, shut in by fog, was chill and dreary enough.
We were now not long in squaring an account with Slide, and making
ready to leave. Round pellets of snow began to fall, and we came off
the mountain on the 10th of June in a November storm and temperature.
Our purpose was to return by the same valley we had come. A well-defined
trail led off the summit to the north; to this we committed
ourselves. In a few minutes we emerged at the head of the slide that
had given the mountain its name. This was the path made by visitors
to the scene; when it ended, the track of the avalanche began; no
bigger than your hand, apparently, had it been at first, but it
rapidly grew, until it became several rods in width. It dropped down
from our feet straight as an arrow until it was lost in the fog, and
looked perilously steep. The dark forms of the spruce were clinging
to the edge of it, as if reaching out to their fellows to save them.
We hesitated on the brink, but finally cautiously began the descent.
The rock was quite naked and slippery, and only on the margin of the
slide were there any boulders to stay the foot, or bushy growths to
aid the hand. As we paused, after some minutes, to select our course,
one of the finest surprises of the trip awaited us: the fog in our
front was swiftly whirled up by the breeze, like the drop-curtain at
the theatre, only much more rapidly, and in a twinkling the vast gulf
opened before us. It was so sudden as to be almost bewildering. The
world opened like a book, and there were the pictures the spaces were
without a film, the forests and mountains looked surprisingly near;
in the heart of the northern Catskills a wild valley was seen flooded
with sunlight. Then the curtain ran down again, and nothing was left
but the gray strip of rock to which we clung, plunging down into the
obscurity. Down and down we made our way. Then the fog lifted again.
It was Jack and his beanstalk renewed; new wonders, new views,
awaited us every few moments, till at last the whole valley below us
stood in the clear sunshine. We passed down a precipice, and there
was a rill of water, the beginning of the creek that wound through
the valley below; farther on, in a deep depression, lay the remains
of an old snow-bank; Winter had made his last stand here, and April
flowers were springing up almost amid his very bones. We did not find
a palace, and a hungry giant, and a princess, at the end of our
beanstalk, but we found a humble roof and the hospitable heart of
Mrs. Larkins, which answered our purpose better. And we were in the
mood, too, to have undertaken an eating-bout with any giant Jack ever discovered. |
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Of all the retreats I have found amid the Catskills, there is no
other that possesses quite so many charms for me as this valley,
wherein stands Larkins's humble dwelling; it is so wild, so quiet,
and has such superb mountain views. In coming up the valley, you have
apparently reached the head of civilization of mile or more lower
down; here the rude little houses end, and you turn to the left into
the woods. Presently you emerge into a clearing again, and before you
rises the rugged and indented crest of Panther Mountain, and near at
hand, on a low plateau, rises the humble roof of Larkins,-you get a
picture of the Panther and of the homestead at one glance. Above the
house hangs a high, bold cliff covered with forest, with a broad
fringe of blackened and blasted tree-trunks, where the cackling of
the great pileated woodpecker may be heard; on the left a dense
forest sweeps up to the sharp spruce-covered cone of the Wittenberg,
nearly four thousand feet high, while at the head of the valley rises
Slide over all.
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From a meadow just back of Larkins's barn, a view may
be had of all these mountains, while the terraced side of Cross
Mountain bounds the view immediately to the east. Running from the
top of Panther toward Slide one sees a gigantic wall of rock, crowned
with a dark line of fir. The forest abruptly ends, and in its stead
rises the face of this colossal rocky escarpment, like some barrier
built by the mountain gods. Eagles might nest here. It breaks the
monotony of the world of woods very impressively.
I delight in sitting on a rock in one of these upper fields, and
seeing the sun go down behind Panther. The rapid-flowing brook below
me fills all the valley with a soft murmur. There is no breeze, but
the great atmospheric tide flows slowly in toward the cooling forest;
one can see it by the motes in the air illuminated by the setting
sun: presently, as the air cools a little, the tide turns and flows
slowly out. The long, winding valley up to the foot of Slide, five
miles of primitive woods, how wild and cool it looks, its one voice
the murmur of the creek! On the Wittenberg the sunshine lingers long;
now it stands up like an island in a sea of shadows, then slowly
sinks beneath the wave. The evening call of a robin or a veery at his
vespers makes a marked impression on the silence and the solitude.
The following day my friend and I pitched our tent in the woods
beside the stream where I had pitched it twice before, and passed
several delightful days, with trout in abundance and wild
strawberries at intervals. Mrs. Larkins's cream-pot, butter-jar, and
bread-box were within easy reach. Near the camp was an unusually
large spring, of icy coldness, which served as our refrigerator.
Trout or milk immersed in this spring in a tin pail would keep sweet
four or five days. One night some creature, probably a lynx or a
raccoon, came and lifted the stone from the pail that held the trout
and took out a fine string of them, and ate them up on the spot,
leaving only the string and one head. In August bears come down to an
ancient and now brushy bark-peeling near by for blackberries. But the
creature that most infests these backwoods is the porcupine. He is as
stupid and indifferent as the skunk; his broad, blunt nose points a
witless head. They are great gnawers, and will gnaw your house down
if you do not look out. Of a summer evening they will walk coolly
into your open door if not prevented. The most annoying animal to the
camper-out in this region, and the one he needs to be most on the
lookout for, is the cow. Backwoods cows and young cattle seem, always
to be famished for salt, and they will fairly lick the fisherman's
clothes off his back, and his tent and equipage out of existence, if
you give them a chance. On one occasion some woodranging heifers and
steers that had been hovering around our camp for some days made a
raid upon it when we were absent. The tent was shut and everything
snugged up, but they ran their long tongues under the tent, and,
tasting something savory, hooked out John Stuart Mill's "Essays
on Religion," which one of us had brought along, thinking to
read in the woods. They mouthed the volume around a good deal, but
its logic was too tough for them, and they contented themselves with
devouring the paper in which it was wrapped. If the cattle had not
been surprised at just that point, it is probable the tent have gone
down before their eager curiosity and thirst for salt.
The raid which Larkins's dog made upon our camp was amusing rather
than annoying. He was a very friendly and intelligent shepherd dog,
probably a collie. Hardly had we sat down to our first lunch in camp
before he called on us. But as he was disposed to be too friendly,
and to claim too large a share of the lunch, we rather gave him the
cold shoulder. He did not come again; but a few evenings afterward,
as we sauntered over to the house on some trifling errand, the dog
suddenly conceived a bright little project. He seemed to say to
himself, on seeing us, "There come both of them now, just as I
have been hoping they would; now, while they are away, I will run
quickly over and know what they have got that a dog can eat." My
companion saw the dog get up on our arrival, and go quickly in the
direction of our camp, and he said something in the cur's manner
suggested to him the object of his hurried departure. He called my
attention to the fact, and we hastened back. On cautiously nearing
camp, the dog was seen amid the pails in the shallow water of the
creek investigating them. He had uncovered the butter, and was about
to taste it, when we shouted, and he made quick steps for home, with
a very "kill-sheep" look. When we again met him at the
house next day, he could not look us in the face, but sneaked off,
utterly crest-fallen. This was a clear case of reasoning on the part
of the dog, and afterward a clear case of a sense of guilt from
wrong-doing. The dog will probably be a man before any other animal. |
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