Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“

much larger than a large rat. Its head and shoulders were so large in proportion to the body as to give it a comical look. It could not walk about yet, and had never before been above ground. Every moment or two it would whistle cheerily, as the old one does when safe in its den and the farm dog is fiercely baying outside. We took the youngster home, and my little boy was delighted over the prospect of a tame woodchuck. Not till the next day would it eat. Then, getting a taste of the milk, it clutched the spoon that held it with great eagerness, and sucked away like a little pig. We were all immensely diverted by it. It ate eagerly, grew rapidly, and was soon able to run about. As the old one had been killed, we became curious as to the fate of the rest of her family, for no doubt there were more. Had she moved them, or had we intercepted her on her first trip? We knew where the old den was, but not the new. So we would keep a lookout. Near the end of the week, on passing by the old den, there were three young ones creeping about a few feet from its mouth. They were starved out, and had come forth to see what could be found. We captured them all, and the young family was again united. How these poor half- famished creatures did lay hold of the spoon when they got a taste of the milk! One could not help laughing. Their little shining black paws were so handy and so smooth; they seemed as if incased in kid gloves. They throve well upon milk, and then upon milk and clover. But after the novelty of the thing had worn off, the boy found he had encumbered himself with serious duties in assuming the position of foster-mother to this large family; so he gave them all away but one, the first one captured, which had outstripped all the others in growth. This soon became a very amusing pet, but it always protested when handled, and always objected to confinement. I should mention that the cat had a kitten about the age of the chuck, and as she had more milk than the kitten could dispose of, the chuck, when we first got him, was often placed in the nest with the kitten, and was regarded by the cat as tenderly as her own, and allowed to nurse freely. Thus a friendship sprang up between the kitten and the woodchuck, which lasted as long as the latter lived. They would play together precisely like two kittens; clinch and tumble about and roll upon the grass in a very amusing way. Finally the woodchuck took up his abode under the floor of the kit chen, and gradually relapsed into a half-wild state. He would permit no familiarities from any one save the kitten, but each day they would have a turn or two at their old games of rough-and-tumble. The chuck was now over half-grown, and procured his own living. One

day the dog, who had all along looked upon him with a jealous eye, encountered him too far from cover, and his career ended then and there.

In July the woodchuck was forgotten in our interest in a little gray rabbit which we found nearly famished. It was so small that it could sit in the hollow of one's hand. Some accident had probably befallen its mother. The tiny creature looked spiritless and forlorn. We had to force the milk into its mouth. But in a day or two it began to revive, and would lap the milk eagerly. Soon it took to grass and clover, and then to nibbling sweet apples and early pears. It grew rapidly, and was one of the softest and most harmless-looking pets I had ever seen. As my family was away for a month or more, the little rabbit was the only company I had, and it helped to beguile the time immensely. In coming in from the field or from my work, I seldom failed to bring it a handful of red clover blossoms, of which it became very fond. One day it fell slyly to licking my hand, and I discovered it wanted salt. I would then moisten my fingers, dip them into the salt, and offer them to the rabbit. How rapidly the delicate little tongue would play upon them, darting out to the right and left of the large front incisors, the slender paws being pressed against my hand as if to detain it! But the rabbit proved really untamable; its wild nature could not be overcome. In its large box-cage or prison, where it could see nothing but the tree above it, it was tame, and would at times frisk playfully about my hand and strike it gently with its fore feet; but the moment it was liberated in a room or let down in the grass with a string about its neck, all its wild nature came forth. In the room it would run and hide; in the open it would make desperate efforts to escape, and leap and bound as you drew in the string that held it. At night, too, it never failed to try to make its escape from the cage, and finally, when two thirds grown, succeeded, and we saw it no more.

III.

How completely the life of a bird revolves about its nest, its home! In the case of the wood-thrush, its life and joy seem to mount higher and higher as the nest prospers. The male becomes a fountain of melody; his happiness waxes day by day; he makes little triumphal tours about the neighborhood, and pours out his pride and gladness in the ears of all. How sweet, how well-bred, is his demonstration! But let any accident befall that precious nest, and what a sudden silence falls upon him! Last summer a pair of wood-thrushes built their nest within a few rods of my house, and wh the enterprise was fairly launched and

mother-bird was sitting upon her four blue eggs, the male was in the height of his song. How he poured forth his rich melody, never in the immediate vicinity of the nest, but always within easy hearing-distance! Every morning, as promptly as the morning came, between five and six, he would sing for half an hour from the top of a locust-tree that shaded my roof. I came to expect him as much as I expected my breakfast, and I was not disappointed till one morning I seemed to miss something. What was it? Oh, the thrush has not sung this morning. Something is the matter; and recollecting that yesterday I had seen a red squirrel in the trees not far from the nest, I at once inferred that the nest had been harried. Going to the spot, I found my fears were well grounded; every egg was gone. The joy of the thrush was laid low. No more songs from the tree-top, and no more songs from any point, till nearly a week had elapsed, when I heard him again under the hill, where the pair had started a new nest, cautiously tuning up, and apparently with his recent bitter experience still weighing upon him.

After a pair of birds have been broken up once or twice during the season, they become almost desperate, and will make great efforts to outwit their enemies. The past season my attention was attracted by a pair of brown thrashers. They first built their nest in a pasture-field under a low, scrubby apple-tree which the cattle had browsed down till it spread a thick, wide mass of thorny twigs only a few inches above the ground. Some blackberry briers had also grown there, so that the screen was perfect. My dog first started the bird, as I was passing by. By stooping low and peering intently I could make out the nest and eggs. Two or three times a week, as I passed by, I would pause to see how the nest was prospering. The mother-bird would keep her place, her yellow eyes never blinking. One morning as I looked into her tent I found the nest empty. Some night-prowler, probably a skunk or fox, or maybe a black snake or red squirrel by day, had plundered it. It would seem as if it was too well screened: it was in such a spot as any depredator would be apt to explore. "Surely,"

he would say, "this is a likely place for a nest." The birds then moved over the hill a hundred rods or more, much nearer the house, and in some rather open bushes tried again. But again they came to grief. Then, after some delay, the mother-bird made a bold stroke. She seemed to reason with herself thus: "Since I have fared so disastrously in seeking seclusion for my nest, I will now adopt the opposite tactics, and come out fairly in the open. What hides me hides my enemies: let us try greater publicity." So she came out and built her nest by a few small shoots that grew beside the path that divides the two vineyards, and where we passed to and fro many times daily. I discovered her by chance early in the morning as I proceeded to my work. She started up at my feet and flitted quickly along above the plowed ground, almost as red as the soil. I admired her audacity. Surely no prowler by night or day would suspect a nest in this open and exposed place. There was no cover by which they could approach, and no concealment anywhere. The nest was a hasty affair, as if the birds' patience at nest-building had been about exhausted. Presently an egg appeared, and then the next day another, and on the fourth day a third. No doubt the bird would have succeeded this time had not man interfered. In cultivating the vineyards the horse and cultivator had to pass over this very spot. Upon this the bird had not calculated. I determined to assist her. I called my man, and told him there was one spot in that vineyard, no bigger than his hand, where the horse's foot must not be allowed to fall, nor tooth of cultivator to touch. Then I showed him the nest, and charged him to avoid it. Probably if I had kept the secret to myself and let the bird run her own risk the nest would have escaped. But the result was that the man, in elaborately trying to avoid the nest, overdid the matter; the horse plunged, and set his foot squarely upon it. Such a little spot, the chances were few that the horse's foot would fall exactly there; and yet it did, and the birds' hopes were again dashed. The pair then disappeared from my vicinity, and I saw them no more.

John Burroughs.

[graphic]

THE GREAT PLAINS OF CANADA.

T

WITH PICTURES BY FREDERIC REMINGTON.

HE northern portions of the two great continents which make up the non-insular land surface of the globe afford room for great plain areas wholly unlike, in extent at least, any similar areas in other latitudes. On both continents these broad tracts are very much alike in general features. They lie well toward the Arctic Ocean; they slope gradually toward the northern sea; their river-systems converge toward the pole; and they are scantily wooded and mostly covered with nutritious grasses. Marshes of great extent abound, and such lakes and inland seas as exist are shallow and more or less brackish in character. At the northern edge of the continents the surfaces sink more and more to the sea-level; the streams grow sluggish and broad; and the frozen sea invades the land in countless inlets, bays, and channels, leaving above the surface many low, swampy islands, which are little more than mud-banks.

No one, I think, who is acquainted with the great plains of our own western continent lying north of the great lakes can read the narratives of the expeditions sent out in search of the Jeannette explorers, or Mr. George Kennan's accounts of Siberian travel, without being impressed with the likeness suggested between the Asiatic steppes and the "Great Lone Land" of the western hemisphere. Many of Mr. Kennan's descriptions of the country through which he passed on his memorable journey to the penal colonies and the prison mines of eastern Siberia are equally well suited to the almost boundless tracts west of Hudson's Bay, and northward to the region of the Great Slave Lake. Indeed, I know of no more graphic and truthful portraitures of many parts of what used to be marked on the maps as British North America, and is now more commonly known as the British Northwest, or the Canadian Northwest, than these same narratives; but I am sure no words or pictures can adequately convey to the mind the real impressions which these regions make upon one who lives among and travels over them in long journeys in summer and winter. It is one thing to talk of vast ness and solitude and silence, of transparent air VOL. XLIV.-74.

and illimitable sunshine in summer, or of fierce, howling winter tempests shutting down about the lonely traveler as he struggles forward, the only spot of color in the weltering waste of snow, with no friendly shrub or tree or sheltering hill greeting his tired senses, only to find an enforced halting-place where darkness overtakes him, from whose frozen torpor and death no morning may arouse him-it is quite another to have experienced these things in one's own person.

Among the mountains there are grandeur and solitude: mists wreathe the lofty summits, and lie along the valleys where the rivers run; morning and evening bathe the snowy, ice-clad peaks in floods of golden and crimson glory; from moment to moment shadows, tints, and tones of color come and go to mark the passing hours; and climb where you will, the prospect is always limited, bounded, varied. Even the barren, unsociable sea is not without changing aspects and motions, fraught indeed, at times with danger and terror; but the traveler who has passed many seasons in the grandest mountain scenery, or has sailed on many a sea, has yet to find, in an acquaintance with the great plains, a new set of novel and strange experiences.

Perhaps the first thing which will impress him will be the absence of what Mr. John Burroughs calls an atmosphere. For the first time. in his life he will feel that he is out of doors, or that his eyes have been suddenly opened. Objects which under other circumstances would have tempered and softened outlines, or would be altogether invisible, now seem as sharply defined as the shadows of houses or trees in the glare of the electric light. There is no toning of the light, and between the blades of grass on the ridge of some slope many rods away from him, he sees with utmost distinctness to unimaginable distances. The sky rises like a wall about him, and through the limitless air the sun shines like a resplendent disk of burnished metal. Upward, if he look long and steadfastly, he will lose the illusion of blueness, and will seem to be looking into blue-black depths, which will convey to his mind with a new meaning the notion of space. The distant forests, where they exist, and the low, tumbled hills, grassy and rounded to their summits, are seen without disguise or softening; and moving animals or trains of carts show every detail

[graphic]

565

with the distinctness of close proximity. Perchance a herd of white-tailed deer, of antelope, or possibly of elk, challenges him to a feat of arms, and he is chagrined to find that he has underrated the distance of the game, and that his shot has only served to startle his quarry. In the morning he looks out over the landscape far beyond the spot where he will take his midday meal, beyond even his next night's camp. As this experience is repeated from day to day with unvarying monotony, his spirits begin to flag, and a depression comes over him that may verge toward hopelessness. If the surface of the country is flat for many miles, as is often the case, this effect is intensified, and the horizon appears to be rising all about him and approaching nearer and nearer to swallow up the sky and overwhelm him. He longs for a tree or the slope of a hill to break the unvarying sameness of level horizon and to suggest to him new vistas. Even clouds and storm are welcome, for they at least bring shadows and changing lights and movement.

I shall never forget the peculiar sensation of being challenged which I experienced when, after a long railway journey from St. Paul, Minnesota, one day in April, some years ago, I arrived at the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba, and, as the clear morning sun rose above the level horizon unbroken by hill or tree, I went out to the edge of the town and looked away over the brown grass, now faintly flushed with the first tender green of early spring. It was easy to imagine that an almost audible voice invited me to penetrate the untraversed regions toward the north and west, and to discover the mysteries of the wilderness where almost unknown rivers ran, where vagrant, unbreathed winds were ever blowing, where wild animals and water-fowl lived unmolested; and it was with impatience that the necessary delay of preparation for a long journey far from civilization, with unknown perils and hardships to be encountered, was endured. This sense of challenge, which is not less an invitation to meet nature at first hand, without the conventionalities and the expedients of long use, is, I presume, one of the peculiar experiences of the pioneer and the explorer in every clime, whether by land or sea; and it must be practically unknown to the dweller in old communities, and not less to the ordinary tourist, to whom the thought of absence from his usual associates and the conveniences of mails and telegraphs and daily papers seems only painful.

We speak of darkness which can be felt. Similarly we may speak of silence which can be heard, and this is another impressive element of an experience of the plains. On the sea, except in calm, and in the forest and among the places of human habitation, there is always

sound, even at night; but on the treeless plains, in the midst of normal activity, there is silence as of the grave. Even a hurricane is comparatively inaudible, for there are no waters to dash, no forests to roar, no surfaces to resound, while the short grasses give forth no perceptible rustle; and there is something awful in the titanic rush of contending natural forces which you can feel, but cannot see or hear. The wind may sweep away your breath on a current of sixty miles an hour, and the clouds may rush through the sky as in a tornado, but no sounds confound the ear. A winter blizzard, which carries on its frigid breath destruction to life, which blinds the eyes, and which drives the particles of ice and snow with cutting force against the frozen cheek and through all but the heaviest fur clothing, is comparatively inaudible, and the traveler appears to himself to struggle vainly with an implacable, ghostly force which fills the whole creation. When, also, nature is undisturbed in tranquil summer mood, and the sky is blue and flecked with fleecy clouds floating far aloft, all sound seems to have died out of the world, and a mantle of silence enfolds everything. Partaking of the predominant natural sentiment, man becomes silent also; he ceases to talk to his mates and becomes moody and taciturn. The merry song of the voyager, reechoing between wooded shores, the shout, the joke of the cheerful traveler here are stilledstifled you might almost say—by the immeasurable muffle of silence. Here are no woods to give back the answering shout, and the crack of the rifle is insignificant. The cry of the passing wild-fowl in the darkness, as you lie awake in your tent at midnight, comes to you with a weird, faint, far-away sound as if heard in a dream, and even the rare thunder breaks impotently on the continent of silence. If a comrade is lost, and you wish to make some sign to direct him to the camp, no noise which you can make with voice or firearms will be of any avail, for such noises will penetrate only a few rods at farthest. By day the only resource is a flag on some elevation or a smoke of burning grass; by night rockets must be sent up as at sea, or, if these have not been provided, firebrands from the camp-fire may be thrown up with some hope of success. No one can know, until he has experienced it, the longing which takes possession of one who has been for weeks practically separated from speaking men, once more to hear the sounds of common life, the roar of the city streets, the sound of bells, and even the crowing of the cock in the early dawn.

The Red River of the North, as it used to be called on the maps of our boyhood, when Green Bay was an obscure trading-post, and the Mississippi River, except by name, was

familiar to few, rises in the State of Minnesota in the same divide which sends a portion of its waters southward on their long journey to the Gulf of Mexico. By a short portage it is easy to pass from the head-waters of the Mississippi to those of the Red River, whence a continuous passage is open northward through Lake Winnipeg, the Sea or Nelson's River, and Hudson's Bay even to the Arctic Ocean. The river flows westward at first, but, presently turning, it forms the boundary line between Minnesota and Dakota. It drains a broad, level valley, and winds tortuously between clay banks like an irregular canal, fringed with a sparse growth of oak, ash, and box-elder, which nowhere spreads out into a forest. The valley is so broad and flat that only from the appearance of low elevations at a great distance to the east and the west can you correct your impression that the surface is that of an upland plain. Here are great areas of a heavy, fertile soil, which within a few years have become celebrated for the immense crops of wheat grown on them. Flowing away from the sun, the river suffers from disastrous floods, for while the advancing season thaws the snows along its upper course, the lower portions are yet locked in ice. At such times the valley is covered for miles with water to a depth of several feet, and as late as the month of April or May the city of Winnipeg, lying at the junction of the Assiniboin with the Red River, about sixty miles north of the international boundary line, is liable to be overflowed. During a part of the year small steamers navigate the river from a point in Minnesota to Winnipeg, and thence to Lake Winnipeg; but, below the city named, the channel, nowhere deep, is obstructed with shallows and rapids at the few places where the underlying rock approaches the surface; while, nearer the lake, the stream becomes so broad and shallow as to be of small commercial importance. The Assiniboin, rising about 450 miles west of its junction with the Red River, flows through a level or rolling plain to the eastward with many short turns, receiving no important tributaries. At favorable seasons of the year steamboats of small size and light draft can go as far west as Portage la Prairie, a distance of about 70 miles, and occasionally they push their way even up to the Hudson's Bay trading-post of Fort Ellice, about 350 miles from Winnipeg. Here the river lies in a deep valley between precipitous bluffs more than one hundred feet in height. In this portion of its course it affords a striking illustration of the action of streams in working over the materials along their courses. From the bluffs on which the post is situated you look down into the valley where the stream, now only a narrow creek fringed with willows and poplars, winds with

countless turns, swinging in the course of centuries from one side of the flood-plain to the other, obliterating old curves and forming new ones, but never moving in a straight line for a dozen rods, until the whole alluvial deposit has been worked over time and again.

The general aspect of the Great Lone Land of the Canadian Northwest is that of a broad plain lying inclined at a low angle of elevation against the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains, sloping both eastward toward Hudson's Bay and northward toward the Arctic Ocean. There may be said to be no rock-exposures throughout the whole area, and rarely does the surface rise even into low, rounded hills. In two expeditions of nearly a thousand miles each, in a direct line northwest from Winnipeg, my notes, made daily, show that rock in situ was seen only once, and that at Stony Mountain, not more than fifty or sixty miles from the city named. Here is an outcrop of blue limestone of excellent quality for building purposes. It is perhaps fifty feet in height, and it covers an area of not more than a square mile. In a few places on the head-waters of the Red Deer, the Battle, and the two Saskatchewan rivers, a few layers of a yellowish sandstone were observed in the cut banks of the streams adjacent to strata of a poor quality of bituminous coal. The surface of the country is, however, in many places thickly strewn with granite boulders, generally of rounded form, sometimes abounding in the shallow marshes, the surrounding hills being destitute of them; or again, the slopes and the tops of the elevations are covered with them, while none appear in the depressions, the disposition of them appearing to be entirely capricious. For hundreds of miles at a stretch it is possible to go without finding a stone as large as the fist, and, along the beds of the rivers, the fragments of limestone brought down from the mountains in the annual freshets are carefully gathered by the few inhabitants as a source of the lime used for making the mortar with which they daub the spaces between the logs of their poor cabins. There are some hilly tracts, but the highest elevations are less than two hundred feet, and the summits are smoothly rounded and covered with grass, like the more level surfaces below. Occasionally sand-hills are met with, consisting of loose white sand, in which a few stunted poplars find a precarious foothold. The prevailing winds are constantly changing the contours of these hills, and they are at all times, except when covered deep in snow, extremely difficult to traverse with vehicles or animals. Blinding sand-storms frequently occur in their vicinity, against which it is difficult to advance. Shallow marshes and shallow lakes are numerous, the latter often having neither inlet nor outlet, and varying in size from small

« AnkstesnisTęsti »