NORTH CAROLINA

A WORLD OF GREEN HILLS

A DAY’S DRIVE IN THREE STATES

In a day and a night I had come from early May to middle June; from a world of bare boughs to a forest clad in all the verdure of summer. Such a shine as the big, lusty leaves of the black-jack oaks had put on! I could have raised a shout. In the day when “all the trees of the field shall clap their hands,” may I be somewhere in the black-jack’s neighborhood. Hour after hour we sped along, out of North Carolina into South Carolina: now through miles and miles of forest; now past a lonely cabin, with roses before the door, white honeysuckle covering the fence, and acres of sunny ploughed land on either side. Here a river ran between close green hills, and there the hills parted and disclosed the revolving horizon set with blue mountains. Then, at a little past noon, the porter appeared with his brush. “Seneca is next,” he said. I alighted in lonely state, was escorted to the hotel, did my best with a luncheon,—gleaned bit by bit out of an outlying wilderness of small dishes,—and at the earliest moment took my seat in a “buggy” beside a colored boy who was to drive me to Walhalla, nine miles away. At that point I was to be met, the next morning, by the carriage that should convey me into the mountains.

Seneca is a smallish place, but my colored driver was no countryman. “Boston?” Yes, yes; he had lived there once himself. He had been a Pullman porter. “But you don’t get to learn anything in that way,” he added, a little disdainfully; “just running back and forth.” He had “waited” in Florida, and had been to Jamaica and I forget where else, though he was only twenty-three years old. He liked to go round and see the world. “Married?” No; a man who didn’t live anywhere had no business with a wife and children. Still he was not oblivious to feminine charms, as became evident when we passed a pair of dusky beauties. “Oh, I will look at ’em,” he said, with the tone of a man who had broken his full share of hearts. He was one of the fortunates who are born with their eyes open. I quizzed him about birds. Yes, he had noticed them; he had been hunting a good deal. This and the other were named,—partridges, pheasants, doves, meadow larks, chewinks, chats, night-hawks. Yes, he knew them; if not by the names I called them by, then from my descriptions, to which in most cases he proceeded to add some convincing touches of his own. The chat he did not recognize under that title, but when I tried to hit off some of the bird’s odd characteristics he began to laugh. “Oh yes, sir, I know that fellow.” As for whippoorwills, the whole country was full of them. “You can’t hear your ears for ’em at night,” he declared. “No, sir, you can’t hear your ears.” With all the rest he was a “silverite.” At the end of the drive I handed him a dollar bill, one of Uncle Sam’s handsomest, as it happened, fresh from the bank. He looked at it dubiously, fumbled it a moment, and passed it back. “Say, boss,” he said, “can’t you give me a silver dollar? It might rain.” In a land of thunder-showers and thin clothing, he meant to say, what we need is an insoluble currency. That, as such things go, was a pretty substantial argument for “free silver,” or so it seemed to me; and I spoke of it, accordingly, a week or two afterward, to an advocate of the “white metal.” He was impressed by it just as I had been, and begged me to make use of the argument when I got back to Boston; as I now do, with all cheerfulness, feeling that, whatever a man’s own opinions may be, he is bound to keep an ear open for the best that can be put forward against them. At the same time, I am constrained to add that I have never been quite sure whether my driver’s plea was anything better than a polite subterfuge. It would have been nothing wonderful, surely, if he had questioned the genuineness of a kind of money to which he was so little accustomed. Small bills—“ones and twos,” as we familiarly call them—have but a limited circulation at the South, as all travelers must have noticed. On my present trip, for instance, I bought a railway ticket at a rural station, and proffered the agent a two-dollar bill. He gave it a glance of surprise, looked at me,—“Ah, a Northern man,” so I read his thoughts,—and incontinently slipped the bill into his pocket. A rarity like that was not for the cash drawer and the daily course of business. I might almost as well have given him a two-dollar gold coin; like the pious heroine of a Sunday-school story I was reading the other day, who dropped into the contribution-box a “fifty-dollar gold piece”!

The rain, concerning whose destructive power my colored boy had been so apprehensive, very soon set in, and left me nothing to do but to make the best of an afternoon upon the hotel piazza, with its outlook up and down the village street, and its gossip and politics. As to the latter I played the part of listener, in spite of sundry courteous attempts to draw me out. Tillman and the silver question were discussed with a welcome coolness of spirit, while I looked at an occasional passing horseman (it is the one advantage of poor roads that they keep an entire community in the saddle), or admired the evolutions of the chimney swifts and the martins. Roses and honeysuckles would have made the dooryards beautiful, had that result fallen within the bounds of possibility, and a chinaberry-tree, full of purple blossoms, was not only a thing of beauty in itself, but to me was also a sweet remembrancer of Florida.

My only other recollection of the afternoon seems almost too trivial for record. Yet who knows? What has interested one man may perchance do as much for another. In the midst of the talk, a man with an axe came along, and said to the proprietor of the hotel, “Have you got a grinding-rock here?” “Yes, round behind the house,” was the answer. “Grinding-rock”!—that was a new name for my old back-breaking acquaintance of the haying season, and good as it was new. I adopted it on the instant. With its rasping, gritty sound, it seemed a plain case of onomatopoetic justice. No more “grindstone” for me, if I live a thousand years.

I mentioned the subject some days afterward to a citizen of Highlands. “Oh yes,” he answered, “they always say ‘rock;’ not only ‘grinding-rock,’ but ‘whet-rock.’” Then he added something that pleased me still more. He had just been to the county seat as a member of the grand jury, and among the cases before him and his colleagues was one of alleged assault by “rocking,” that word being used in the legal document, whatever its name, in which the complaint was set forth. This point was of special interest to me, I say. In my boyhood, which, so far as I know, was not exceptionally belligerent, it was an every-day occurrence to “fire rocks” at an enemy, or “rock him;” whereas an editorial brother, himself of New England birth, with whom it is often my privilege to compare notes, affirms that he never heard such expressions, though he has sometimes met with them—and presumably corrected them—in manuscript stories. It was no small satisfaction to find this bit of my own Massachusetts—Old Colony—dialect still surviving, and in common use, in the Carolinas.

Walhalla itself, with an elevation of a thousand feet, and mountains visible not far off, lays some not unnatural claims to a “climate,” and in a small way is a health resort, I believe, in spite of its rather sinister name, both summer and winter. To me, indeed, it seemed a place to stop at rather than to stay in; but, as the reader knows, I saw it only from the main street on a muddy afternoon, and was likely to do it but foul-weather justice. Even its merits as a necessary lodging station were lightly appreciated, till on my return I made my exit from the mountains on the other side of them, and put up for the night in another village, and especially at another hotel. Compared with that, Walhalla was, in deed as in name, a kind of heavenly place. Is it well, or not, that what is worse makes us half contented with what is simply bad? I was more than ready, at any rate, when a Walhalla boy brought me word the next morning, “Your carriage has done come.”[1]

The sky was fair, and shortly after seven o’clock we were on the road, the driver and his one passenger, in a heavy three-seated mountain wagon, locally known as a “hack,” drawn by two horses. Our destination was said to be thirty-two miles distant,—so much I knew; but the figures had given me little idea of the length of the journey. It was an agreeable surprise, also, when the driver informed me that we were not only going from South Carolina to North Carolina, but on the way were to spend some hours in Georgia, the mountainous northeastern corner of that State being wedged in between the two Carolinas. In short, to accomplish our ascent of twenty-eight hundred feet we were out for a day’s ride in three States and over four mountains,—an exhilarating prospect in that perfect May weather.

My recollections of the day run together, as it were, till the route, as memory tries to picture it forth, turns all to one hopeless blur: an interminable alternation of ups and downs, largely over shaded forest roads, but with occasional sunny stretches, especially, as it seemed, whenever I essayed to take the cramp out of my legs by a half-hour’s climb on foot. A turn or two in the road, and we had left the village behind us, and then, almost before I knew it, we were among the hills: now aloft on the shoulder of one of them, with innumerable mountains crowding the horizon; now shut in some narrow, winding valley, our “distance and horizon gone,” with a bird singing from the bushes, and likely enough a stream playing hide-and-seek behind a tangle of rhododendron and laurel. Wild as the country was, we never traveled many miles without coming in sight of a building of some kind: a rude mill, it might be, or more probably a cabin. Once at least, in a very wilderness of a place, we passed a schoolhouse; as to which it puzzled me to guess, first where the pupils came from, and then how they got light to read by, unless, happy children, they took their books out of doors and studied their lessons under the trees, and so went to school with the birds.

Little by little—very little—we continued to ascend, gaining something more than we lost as the road seesawed from valley to hill, and from hill to valley. So it finally appeared, I mean to say; the changes in the vegetation serving eventually to establish a point which for hours together had been mainly an article of faith. As to another point, the four mountains over which our course was supposed to run, that remains a question of faith to this day. There might have been two, or thrice two, for aught I could tell. The road avoided summits, as a matter of course, and, if I can make myself understood, we were so lost in the hills that we could not see them. When we had left one and had come to another, I knew it only as the driver told me. So far as any sense of upward progress was concerned, we might almost as well have been marking time.

“What mountain are we on now?” This was a stock question with me.

“Stumphouse.”

“And why is it called Stumphouse?”

“Because a good many years ago a man lived here in a hollow stump.”

“And in what State are we?”

“South Car’lina.”

“But aren’t we near the North Carolina line?”

“No, sir; we have to go through Georgy first.”

Till now I had been quite unaware of what I may call the interstate character of our day’s ride.

“Indeed! And how soon shall we get into Georgia?”

“When we cross the Chattoogy River.”

“The Chattooga? What is that? A branch of the Savannah?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How do you spell it?”

“I do not know, sir.”

My driver had certain verbal niceties of his own; he never said “don’t.” As for his inability to spell “Chattooga,” or “Chatuga,” he was little to be blamed for that. The atlas-makers are no better off.

By and by we forded a sizeable stream.

“Now, then, we are crossing into Georgia?” I began again.

“No, sir; this is not the Chattoogy, but one of its prongs.”

Finally, at high noon, we dropped into a hot and breezeless valley, with the Chattooga running through it in the sun. Here was a farm. Mr. —— lived here, and kept a kind of half-way house for travelers. But we would not stop at it, the driver said, if it was all the same to me. There was another house just across the river. He had given the people notice of our coming, on his way down the day before, and the woman would have dinner ready for me. Both houses were very nice places to eat at, he added for my encouragement. So it happened that I breakfasted in South Carolina, dined in Georgia, and supped in North Carolina. The dinner, to which I sat down alone, was bountiful after its kind. If the table did not “groan,” it must have been because it was ignorant of a table’s duty; and if I did not make a feast, let the failure be laid to the idiosyncrasy of a man who once cut short his stay at one of the most inviting places in all Virginia because he was pampered monotonously for five consecutive meals with nothing but fried ham, fried eggs, and soda biscuits. “It is never too late to give up our prejudices,” says Thoreau, in one of his lofty moods. Wisdom uttered in that tone is not to be disputed; but if it is never “too late,” I for one have sometimes found it too early. My bill of fare here in Georgia was by no means confined to the three Southern staples just now enumerated (let so much be said in simple justice), but they held the place of honor, as a matter of course, and for the rest—well, there is a kind of variety that is only another kind of sameness. “An excellent dinner,” said a facetious fellow-traveler of mine on a similar occasion, as, knife and fork in hand, he hovered doubtfully over the table, and, like Emerson’s snowflake, “seemed nowhere to alight,”—“a most excellent dinner; but then, you see, it is nothing but ham and eggs with variations.” If this sounds like grumbling, it is only against a “system,” as we say in these days, not against a person. My generous hostess had spared no pains, and from any point of view had given me far more than my money’s worth; stinting herself only when it came to setting a price upon her bounty. That unavoidable business she approached, in response to the usual overtures on my part, with all manner of delicate indirections, holding back the decisive word till the very last moment, as if her tongue could not bring itself to utter a figure so extortionate. The truth was, she said, she had made nothing by giving dinners the year previous, and so felt obliged to charge five cents more the present season![2]

The noon hour brought a sudden change in the day’s programme. All the forenoon I had been asking questions, presuming upon my double right as a traveler and a Yankee; now I was to take my turn in the witness-box. My landlady’s brother sat on the veranda mending a fishing-tackle, and we had hardly passed the time of day before it became apparent that he possessed one of nature’s best intellectual gifts, an appetite for knowledge. With admirable civility, yet with no waste of time or breath, he went about his work, and long before dinner was announced I had given him my name, my residence (my age, perhaps, but here recollection becomes hazy), my occupation, the object of my present journey and its probable duration, some account of my previous visits South, my notion of New England weather, my impressions of Washington, especially of the height of the Washington monument as compared with other similar structures (a question of peculiar moment to him, for some reason now past recall), and Heaven knows what else; while on a thousand or two of other topics I had confessed ignorance. I had never been to Chautauqua; that was perhaps my examiner’s most serious disappointment. He was at present engaged on a Chautauquan course of reading, as it appeared,—the best course of reading that he had ever seen, he was inclined to think. Here again he had me playing second fiddle, or rather no fiddle at all.

His was a wholesome catholicity of mind, but it pleased me to notice that he too had felt the touch of the modern spirit, and was something of a specialist. Geography, or perhaps I should say climatology, seemed to lie uppermost in his thoughts. Once, I remember, he brought out a ponderous atlas of the world, a book of really astonishing proportions when the size of the house was taken into account, though it may not have been absolutely necessary for him to bring it out of doors in order to open it. On the subject of comparative climatology, be it said without reserve, it did not take him long to come to the end of my resources. It is possible, of course, that his own concern about it was but temporary,—the result of his before-mentioned course of reading. There is no better—nor better understood—rule for conversation than to choose the subject of the book you happen to have had last in hand. Two to one the other man will know less about it than you do. Then you are in clover. But should it turn out that he is at home where you have but recently peeped in at the window, and so is bound to have you at a disadvantage, you have only to be beforehand with him by acknowledging with becoming modesty that you really know nothing about the matter, but happen to have just been looking over with some interest Mr. So-and-So’s recent book. In other words, you may pass for a special student or a discursive reader, honorable characters both of them, according as the way opens.

I am not saying that my noonday acquaintance had practiced any such stratagem. His attitude throughout was that of a learner; nor did he set himself to shine even in that humble capacity, as one may easily do (and there are few safer methods) in this day of multifarious discovery, when the ability to ask intelligent questions has become of itself a badge of scholarship. His inquiries followed one another with perfect naturalness and simplicity; he simply wanted to know. As for the more strictly personal among them, they were only such as the most conventional of us instinctively feel like asking. “As soon as a stranger is introduced into any company,” says Emerson, “one of the first questions which all wish to have answered is, ‘How does that man get his living?’” There was no thought of taking offense. On the contrary, it was a pleasure to be angled for by so true an artist. If any newspaper should be in want of an “interviewer,”—a remote contingency so far as any newspaper that I know anything about is concerned,—I could recommend a likely hand. A candidate for the presidency might balk him, but nobody else. My own conversation with him is still an agreeable memory; a man’s mind is like a well, all the better for being once in a while pumped dry. And yet, while I speak of him in this tone of sincere appreciation, it must be acknowledged that in one respect he did me an ill turn. He robbed me of an illusion. The Yankee is second where I had supposed him an undisputed first.

Though we were at the half-way house, and in fact had made more than half of our day’s journey, the valley of the Chattooga at this point lay so warmly in the sun that the aspect of things remained decidedly southern. Roses and snowballs were in bloom in the dooryard, and as I came out from dinner a blue-gray gnatcatcher, the only one seen on my entire trip, was complaining from a persimmon-tree beside the gate. My attention to it, and to sundry other birds of the smaller sorts,—a blue golden-winged warbler, for example,—was matter of surprise to the men of the house, both of whom were now on the veranda. My seeker after knowledge, indeed, asked me plainly, but not without a word of apology, what object I had in view in such studies; in short,—when I stumbled a bit in my explanation,—whether there was “any money in them.” In that form the question presented less difficulty, and in my turn I asked him and his brother-in-law how often they were accustomed to see ravens thereabout. Their reply was little to the comfort of an enthusiast who had come a thousand miles, more or less, with ravens in his eye. Neither of them had seen one in the last five years. Something had happened to the birds, they could not say what. Formerly it was nothing uncommon to notice one or two flying over. Alas, this was not the first time it had been borne in upon me that, ornithologically, my portion was among the belated.

I have said nothing about it hitherto, but I had not driven five or six hours through strange woods and into the midst of strange hills without an ear open for bird notes. Even the rumbling of the heavy wagon and the uneasy creaking of the harness could not drown such music altogether, and once in a while, as I have said, I spelled myself on foot. At short intervals, too, when we came to some promising spot,—a swampy thicket, perhaps, or a patch of evergreens,—I called a halt to listen; the driver making no objection, and the horses less than none. The voices, to my regret rather than to my surprise, were every one familiar, and the single unexpected thing about it all was the dearth of northern species. The date was May 6, and the woods might properly enough have been alive with homeward-bound migrants; but the only bird that I could positively rank under that head was a Swainson thrush,—a free-hearted singer, whose cheery White Mountain tune I never hear at the South without an inward refreshment. From the evergreens, none too common, and mostly too far from the road, came the voices of a pine warbler and one or two black-throated greens; and once, as we skirted a bushy hillside, I caught the sliding ditty of a prairie warbler. Here, too, I think it was that I heard the distinctive, loquacious call of a summer tanager,—four happy chances, as but for them, and the single gnatcatcher by the half-way house gate, my vacation bird list would have been shorter by five species.

After all, the principal ornithological event of the forenoon was, not the singing of the Swainson thrush, but the discovery of a humming-bird’s nest. This happened on the side of Stumphouse Mountain. I had taken a short cut by myself, and had come out of the woods into the road again some distance ahead of the wagon, when suddenly I heard the buzz and squeak of a hummer, and, glancing upward, put my eye instantly upon the nest, which might have been two thirds done from its appearance, and then upon its owner, whose reiterated squeakings, I have no doubt, expressed her annoyance at my intrusion. In truth, both owners were present, and in that lay the exceptional interest of the story.

Some years ago I had proved, as I thought, that the male ruby-throat habitually takes no part in the hatching and rearing of its young, and, for that matter, is never to be seen about the nest in the five or six weeks during which that most laborious and nerve-trying work is going on. As to why this should be I could only confess ignorance; and subsequent observations, both by myself and by others,[3] while confirming the fact of the male’s absence, had done nothing to bring to light the reason for it. Is the female herself responsible for such a state of things? I should hate to believe, as I have heard it maintained, that female birds in general cherish little or no real affection for their mates, regarding them simply as necessities of the hour; but it is certain that widows among them waste no time in mourning, and it appears to me likely enough, if I am to say what I think, that the lady hummer, a fussy and capable body (we all know the human type), having her nest done and the eggs laid, prefers her mate’s room to his company, and gives him his walking ticket.

So much for a bit of half-serious speculation. The interest of the nest found here on Stumphouse Mountain lay, as I have said, in the fact that it was unfinished, and the male owner of it—if he is to be called an owner—was still present. Whether he was actually assisting in the construction of the family house, I am unable to tell. For the few minutes that I remained the female alone entered it, doing something or other to the wall or rim, and then flying away. With so long a journey before us there was no tarrying for further investigations, glad as I should have been to see the ruby-throat for once conducting himself with something like Christian propriety. For to-day, at all events, he was neither a deserter nor an exile.

We rested for an hour or more at the half-way house, and then resumed our journey: the morning story over again,—upward and downward and roundabout, with woods and hills everywhere, and two mountains still to put behind us. We should be in Highlands before dark, the driver said; but one contingency had been left out of his calculation. When we had been under way an hour, or some such matter, he began to worry about one of the horses. My own eyes had been occupied elsewhere, but now it was plain enough, my attention having been called to it, that “Doc” was leaving his mate to do the work. And Doc was never known to play the shirk, the driver said, with a jealousy for his favorite’s reputation pleasant to see and honorable to both parties. The poor fellow must be sick. “Didn’t he eat his dinner?” I asked. “Yes; there was no sign of anything wrong at that time.” Then it could be no very killing matter, I said to myself; a touch of laziness, probably; who could blame him?—and I continued to enjoy the sights and sounds of the forest. But my seatmate, better experienced and more charitable, was not to be misled. Little by little his anxiety increased, till he could do nothing but talk about it (so it happened that we crossed the North Carolina line, and I was none the wiser); and before long it became evident, even to me, that whatever ailed the horse, sickness, laziness, discouragement, or exhaustion, he must be carefully humored, or we should find ourselves stranded for the night on a lonesome mountain road. Slower and slower we went,—both men on foot, of course, up all the ascents,—and worse and worse grew Doc’s behavior. I was sorry for him, and sorrier still for the driver, who was thinking not only of his horse and his passenger, but of himself and his own standing with the owner of the team. He was sure it was none of his fault, he kept protesting; nothing of the kind had ever happened to him before. Finally, seeing him so miserably depressed (for the time being every misfortune is as bad as it looks), so quite at the end of his wit, and almost at the end of his courage, I said, “Why not take advice at the next house we come to? Two heads are better than one.” That was a word in season. To take advice would be a kind of division of responsibility. It is what doctors do when the patient is dying on their hands. The man brightened at once.

A mile or two more of halting and painful progress, then, and we approached a clearing, on the farther side of which two men were busy with a plough. The driver hailed one of them by name, and made known our difficulty. Wouldn’t he please come to the road and see if he could make out what was the matter? He responded in the most neighborly spirit (he would have been a queer farmer, neighborly or not, not to feel interested in a question about a horse); but after looking into the animal’s mouth, and disclaiming any special right to speak in such a case, he could only say that he saw no sign of anything worse than fatigue. Hadn’t the horse been worked hard lately? Yes, the driver answered, he had been in the harness pretty steadily for some time past. At this I put in my oar. Couldn’t another horse be borrowed somewhere, and the tired one left to rest?—a suggestion, I need hardly say, that squinted hard toward the horse in sight before us across the field. The farmer approved of the idea; only where was the horse to come from? Mountain farmers, as I was to learn afterward,—and a strange state of things it seemed to a pilgrim from Yankee land,—are mostly too poor to support a horse, or even a mule. The man would let us have his, of course, but it was a young thing that had never been hitched up. “But I tell you,” he broke out, after a minute’s reflection. “You know So-and-So, don’t you? He has a pair of mules. Perhaps you could get one of them.” “Good!” said I, and we drove on a mile or two farther,—and by this time it was driving,—till we came to a cross-road, the only one that I recall on the whole day’s route, though there must have been others, I suppose. The owner of the mules—whose exceptional opulence should have kept his name remembered—lived down that road a piece, the driver said. If I would stay by the wagon, he would go down there, and be back as quickly as possible.

He was gone half an hour or more, while the horses browsed upon the bushes (if a good appetite signified anything, Doc was not yet on his way to the buzzards), and I, after listening awhile to the masterly improvisations of a brown thrasher, went spying about to see what birds might be hiding in the underbrush. The hobbyist, say what you please about him, is a lucky fellow. All sorts of untoward accidents bring grist to his mill; and so it was this time. I heard a sparrow’s tseep, and soon called into sight two or three white-throats,—ordinary birds enough, but of value here as being the only ones found on the whole journey. I should have missed them infallibly but for Doc’s misadventure.

The driver returned at last, and with him came a mountain farmer,—another good neighbor, I was glad to see,—leading a mule, which was quickly put into Doc’s harness. But what to do with Doc? “Leave him,” said I. “Lead him at the tail of the wagon,” said the farmer; and the latter advice prevailed. And very good advice it seemed till we came to the first steepish piece of road. Then the horse began to hold back. “Look at him!” exclaimed the driver in despairing tones; and all our tribulations were begun over again.

From this point there was only one way of getting on, and that at a snail’s pace and with continual interruptions. The passenger took the reins, and the driver walked behind with his whip, and so, using as much kindness as might be, forced the unwilling horse to follow. Even that cruel resource threatened before long to fail us; for it began to look as if the unsteady creature would drop in his tracks. There it was, as I now suspect, that he played his best card. “You must leave him at the next house, if there is another,” I said. “Yes, there is another,” the driver answered, “and only one.” We came to it presently,—a cabin far below us in a deep, wood-encircled valley, out of which rose pleasant evening sounds of a banjo and singing. The driver lifted his voice, and a woman appeared upon the piazza. The man of the house was not at home, she said; but the driver took down the Virginia fence, and with much patient coaxing and pulling got the horse down the long, steep slope and into a shed. Then, leaving word for him to be fed and cared for, he climbed back to the road, and, freed at last from our incumbrance, we quickened our pace.

By this time it was growing dark. Bird songs had ceased, and flowers had long been invisible. But indeed, for the greater part of the afternoon, we had been so taken up with working our passage that I had found small opportunity for natural history comment. I recall a lovely rose-acacia shrub, an endless display of pink azalea,—set off here and there with the flat snowy clusters of the dogwood,—thickets fringed with drooping, white, sickly sweet Leucothoë racemes (which at the time I mistook for some kind of Andromeda), the shouts of two pileated woodpeckers,—always rememberable,—a hooded warbler’s song out of a rhododendron thicket, and the sight of two or three rough-winged swallows. These last are worth mentioning, because in connection with them there came out the astonishing fact that the driver did not know what I meant by swallows. Apparently he had never heard the word,—which may help readers to understand what a scarcity of these airy birds there is in all that Alleghanian country. I should almost as soon have expected to find a man who had never heard of sparrows!

It was after eight o’clock when we turned a sharp corner in the road and saw the lights of the village shining through the forest ahead of us. In fifteen minutes more I was at supper. I had come a long way by faith,—faith in a guidebook star; and my faith had not been vain.

IN QUEST OF RAVENS

“Every pursuit takes its reality and worth from the ardor of the pursuer.”—Keats.

While M. Sylvestre Bonnard, Member of the Institute, was in Sicily prosecuting his memorable search for the Alexandrian manuscript of the Golden Legend, he fell in unexpectedly with his old acquaintances, M. and Mme. Trépof, collectors of match-boxes. Their specialty, as may be supposed, was not exactly to M. Bonnard’s liking. Being a scholar and an antiquary, he would rather have seen their affections bestowed upon something more strictly in the line of the fine arts,—upon antique marbles, perhaps, or painted vases; but after all, he said to himself, it made no very great difference. A collector is a collector; and, besides, Mme. Trépof always spoke of their pursuit (she and her husband were traveling round the world in furtherance of it) with a mixture of enthusiasm and irony that made the whole business truly delightful.

There we have the shrewd collector’s secret. Whatever the objects of his choice,—postage-stamps, first editions, butterflies, or match-boxes,—they become for the time being the only objects worthy of a man’s desire; but in talking about them, as of course he cannot altogether avoid doing, he keeps in mind the old caution about the pearls and the swine, and veils his seriousness under a happy lightness of speech. This is the better course for all concerned; and something like this is the course I mean to adopt in narrating my raven-hunt amid the North Carolina mountains, in May, 1896. The work was absorbing enough in the doing, but at this distance, and out of consideration for the scholarly reader,—who may feel about ravens as M. Bonnard felt about match-boxes,—I hope to be able to treat it with a becoming degree of disinterestedness.

My collecting, be it said in parenthesis, was in one respect quite unlike M. Bonnard’s and Mme. Trépof’s. It was concerned, not with the objects themselves, but with the sight of them. I wanted, not cured bird-skins in a cabinet, but bits of first-hand knowledge in the memory and the notebook. Here at Highlands, this little hamlet perched far up in a mountain wilderness, ravens were common,—so I had read; and as I purposed remaining in the place for two or three weeks, I should no doubt see much of them, and so be able not only to “check the name,” thus adding the species to my set of the Corvidæ, but to acquire some real familiarity with the bird’s voice and ways. Such was my dream; but certainty began to fade into uncertainty from the day I drove into the mountains.

One of my first village calls, after a day’s ramble in the country round about, was upon the apothecary, who sat sunning himself on the stoop in front of his shop,—a cheerful example of how idyllic a life “tending store” may become under favorable conditions. To begin with, as was natural, not to say obligatory, between a newcomer and an old resident, the altitude and climate of the place were discussed. Then, as soon as I could do so with politeness, I asked about ravens.

“Ravens?” said the doctor. “Ravens?” Surely the inflection was not encouraging. There were no ravens, so far as he knew.

“But the books say they are common here.”

“Well, I am perfectly acquainted with the bird, and I have never seen one in Highlands in all my twelve years.”

This might have seemed to end the matter, once for all; but as I walked away I remembered how often birds had proved to be common where old residents had never seen them, and I said to myself that the present would be only another repetition of the familiar story. There must be ravens here. Mr. —— and Mr. —— could not have been mistaken.

Let that be as it might, this was my third day in the mountains,—the long ride from Walhalla counting for one,—and when I returned to the village, at noon, my first glimpse of a raven was yet to be had. However, a wide-awake farmer assured me that, as he expressed it, something must be the matter with Dr. ——’s eyes. He had seen ravens many a time; in fact he had seen one within two days. Of course he had. The affair was turning out just as I had foreseen. It is a poor naturalist who has not learned to beware of negative testimony. The apothecary might sit on his stoop and shake his head; before many days I would shake a black wing in his face.

That afternoon I took another road, and though I found no ravens I brought back a lively expectation. I had stopped beside a pond, and was pulling down a small halesia-tree to break off a branch of its snowy bells, when a horseman rode up. We spoke to each other (it is one advantage of out-of-the-way places that they encourage human intercourse, as poverty helps people to be generous), and in answer to my inquiry he told me that the tree I was holding down was a “box elder.” The road was the Hamburg road, or the Shortoff road,—one name being for a town, the other for a mountain,—and the body of water was Stewart’s Pond. Then I came to the point. Did he often see ravens in this country? He answered promptly in the affirmative; and when I told him of my want of success and of Dr. ——’s twelve-year failure, he assured me that if I would come out to Turtlepond, where he lived, I could see them easily enough. He saw them often, and just now they were particularly noisy; he thought they must be teaching their young to fly.

How far was it to Turtlepond? I asked. “Seven or eight miles.” And the road? Could he tell me how to get there? Oh, yes; and he began. But I was soon quite lost. He knew the way too well, and I gave over trying to follow him, saying to myself that I would procure directions, when the time came, from some one in the village. The man was very neighborly and kind, invited me to get up behind him and ride, gave me his name, answered all my questions, and rode away. Here, then, were ravens with something like certainty and well within reach (“ra-vĕns,” my new acquaintance had been careful to say, with no slurring of the second vowel), and, Dr. —— to the contrary notwithstanding, I would yet see them.

The next morning, with a luncheon in my pocket and a minute itinerary in my notebook, I set out for Turtlepond. Important things must be attended to promptly. “You will be lucky if you find it,” said the man who had laid out my route, by way of a godspeed; and I half believed him. He did not add, what I knew was on his tongue, “You will be luckier still if you find a raven;” as to that, also, he was welcome to his opinion. Ravens or no ravens, I meant to enjoy myself. What could a man want better than a long, unhurried day in those romantic mountain roads, with a bird singing from every bush, and new and lovely flowers inviting his hand at every turn? With fair weather and in a fair country, walking is its own reward.

To put the town behind me was the work of a few minutes. After that my way ran through the woods, although for the first half of the distance, at least, there was never more than a mile or two without a clearing and a house. This part of the road grew familiar to me afterward, I traveled it so often; and now, as I take it once more in my mind, I can see it in all its windings. Here, as the land begins to decline from the plateau, or mountain shoulder, on which the village nestles, stands a line of towering conical hemlocks,—a hundred and fifty feet tall, at a moderate guess. Out of them came the nasal, high-pitched, highly characteristic ank, ank, ank of my first Canadian nuthatch,—my first one in North Carolina, I mean. That, by the bye, was on this very trip to Turtlepond. I had been on the watch for him, and put him into my bird list with peculiar satisfaction. He was like a fellow Yankee, as was also the brown creeper that dwelt near by. This same row of hemlocks—beside a brook, as Southern hemlocks always are, with a thicket of laurel and rhododendron underneath—was also one of the haunts of the olive-sided flycatcher, another Northerner, who chooses the loftiest perch he can find from which to deliver his wild quit-quequeeo. Should this Carolinian representative of a boreal species ever be promoted to the dignity of subspecific rank, as has happened to some of his neighbors, I should bid for the honor of naming him,—the hemlock flycatcher.

By the time I reached this point, on a sultry morning, I was commonly ready for a breathing-spell, and by good luck here was a most convenient log, on which I used to sit, listening to the bird chorus, and waylaying any socially disposed mountaineer who might chance to come along on his way to the town; for Highlands, whatever an outsider may think of it, is in its own measure and degree a veritable metropolis.[4] The only man who ever failed to halt in response to my greeting was a very canonical-looking parson. He was traveling up to Zion in a “buggy,” and not unlikely was meditating his next Sunday’s sermon.

If the religious condition of a community is to be estimated by the number of its meeting-houses, let me say in passing, then Highlands ought to be a very suburb of the New Jerusalem. Its population cannot be more than three or four hundred, but its churches are legion. “Yes,” said a sprightly young lady, to whom the subject was mentioned, “if there were only one or two more, we might all have one apiece.” Baptists, Methodists (of different sorts,—species and subspecies), Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Adventists, Unitarians,—all the sects seemed to be provided for, though I am not sure about the Catholics and the Swedenborgians. It is queer how conscientiously particular, and almost private, the worship of God is made. The Almighty must be a great lover of mint, anise, and cummin, one would say. I was reminded again and again of that sweet old Scripture: “Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!”

This digression, though suggested by the recollection of my serious-faced clergyman, is not to be taken as reflecting in any wise upon him or upon his calling. He was trying to do his duty, I have no question. If he felt obliged to have a pulpit and a uniform of his own, it was not that he differed from other people, but that other people differed from him. May his work prosper, and his days be long! He was traveling in a buggy, as I have said. Had he been on foot, no doubt he might have been readier to stop a minute to chat with an inquisitive stranger,—as ready, perhaps, as a more venerable pilgrim who happened along a few minutes later, and who not only stopped, but sat down, and, so to speak, paid me a visit: a little man, bent with his seventy-three years (he told me his age almost at once), who had come ten miles on foot that morning. In one hand he carried a live turkey,—with its legs tied, of course,—and in the other a chicken. Poor things, they were making their last journey. It was a “very hot day,” the old man thought. His cotton shirt was flung wide open for coolness, and as he mopped his face, having put down his burdens and taken off his hat, he talked in a cheerful, honest voice, most agreeable to listen to. Life was still a pleasant experience to him, as it seemed. I doubt whether he had ever tired of it for a day. He would sell the turkey and the chicken, buy a little tobacco and perhaps one or two other necessaries, and then trudge the ten miles home again. It is a great thing to have a market for one’s produce, and a greater thing to be contented with one’s lot.

Not far beyond this favorite resting-place—tempting even in the retrospect, as the reader perceives—is a house with a good-sized clearing, through which meanders a trout-stream, to the endless comfort of one of the younger boys of the family. I saw him angling there, one day, with shining success. What a good time he was having! He could hardly bait the hook fast enough. I leaned over the fence and watched him out of pure sympathy (he did not see me, I think, though there was nothing in the world between us—except the fish), and afterward I mentioned the circumstance to his father. “Oh, he is a great fisherman,” was the proud response. For a boy that is a boy a trout-brook is better than all the toy-shops. The good man and his wife (New York State people, who had moved here twelve years before) treated me most hospitably when I came to know them, but on this first morning, having far to go, I went by without calling, pausing only to note the chebec of a least flycatcher, which seemed to be at home in their orchard trees. Its name is still Number 60 in my North Carolina list.

Another bend in the road, and I came within sight of the first of two mills. These had figured at considerable length in my chart of directions, and near them, as I now remember, I fell into some uncertainty as to how this chart was to be interpreted. I turned aside, therefore, to inquire of the second miller; but before I could reach him a blue yellow-backed warbler began singing from a treetop; and as he was my first specimen here, I must out with my opera-glass and find him. The miller surveyed my proceedings with unashamed curiosity, but he answered my questions, none the less, and for still another stage I kept on with the comfortable assurance that I was headed for Turtlepond.

If I failed to arrive there, it should not be for want of using my tongue. From the time I left Highlands I had inquired my way of every man I met. For one thing, I relish natural country talk; and if there is to be conversation, it must somehow be opened. I kept in mind, too, the skepticism of my Highlands informant, and by unhappy experience I had learned how easy it is, in cases of this kind, to go astray through some misunderstanding of question or answer.

So I sauntered along, with frequent interruptions, of course (that was part of the game),—here for a bird, there for a flower, a tree, or a bit of landscape. I recall especially great numbers of the tiny yellow lady’s-slipper and beds of the white-flowered clintonia—the latter a novelty to me—just coming into bloom. Then, by and by, the road began a long, sidelong ascent of a mountain; but at the last moment, when I seemed to have left human habitations behind me for good, I saw across the narrow valley through the forest—the branches at this height being still in the bud—two men at work in a ploughed field. Here was one more opportunity to assure myself against contingencies, and with a loud “hullo” I gained their attention. Was this the road to Turtlepond? I shouted. Yes, they shouted back (a man who could not lift up his voice would be poorly off in that country); I was to keep on and on as far as the schoolhouse, just beyond which I must be sure to turn to the right. Very good, said I to myself, here is something definite; and again I faced the mountain road.

That was a master stroke of precaution. But for it I might have walked till night, and should never have found myself at Turtlepond. I passed one more house, it is true, but there was no one visible about it, and when at last I reached the log schoolhouse, standing all by itself deep in the woods, it was locked and empty, and the “road to the right” was so obscure, so utterly unlike a road, that only for my last man’s emphatic warning (how I blessed him for his good sense!) I should have passed it without a suspicion that it was or ever had been a thoroughfare. As it was, I looked at it and wondered. Could that be my course? There was no sign that horse or wheel had turned that corner for an indefinite period. Still, my instructions were explicit. This was certainly the schoolhouse, and at the schoolhouse I was to turn to the right. Lest I should be interpreting a preposition too strictly, nevertheless, I kept on for a piece in the way I had been traveling. No, there was no other cross-road, and I came back to the schoolhouse, rested awhile under a big tree, and then took the blind trail. Happily, it very soon became more distinct, more evidently a road in use; and being now on a downward grade, I jogged along in good spirits.

It was drawing near noon, and unless my jaunt was to measure more than eight miles I must be somewhere near the end of it. The mountain forest was especially inviting here, with a brook now and then and a profusion of ground flowers, beside the laurel and the azaleas; but I must not linger, I said to myself, as I might be obliged to spend an hour or two at Turtlepond. It was hardly to be assumed that the ravens would be waiting for me, to greet me on the instant. Meanwhile, a pileated woodpecker set up a lusty shout just in advance, and in another moment went dashing off among the trees, still shouting as he flew. He was no rarity in these parts, but it did me good to see his flaming crest and the flash of his white wing-spots. Then, when I had gone a little farther and could already discern the open valley, a kingfisher rattled and showed himself. He was the first of his kind, and went down straightway as Number 62. Perhaps Number 63 would be the raven!

Well, I emerged from the forest, the road turning rather sharply at the last and making down the valley with a brook on its left hand; and here I pretty soon approached a house. The two opposite doors were open (mosquitoes are unknown in this happy country), and inside, looking out of the back door in the direction of the brook, stood a woman and a brood of children. They were talking pretty loudly, as people may who live so far from human neighbors, and a hound stood silent behind them. I drew near, but they did not hear me. Then, rather than startle them rudely with a strange voice, I touched the fence-rail with my umbrella. Instantly the hound turned and began baying, and the woman, bidding him be quiet, came to the front door and answered my good-morning. Could she tell me where Zeb McKinney lived? I inquired. Yes, it was the next house down the road, “about a quarter.” Hereabouts, as I knew, a “quarter” means a quarter of a mile. In Yankee land it means twenty-five cents. The character of a people may be judged in part by the ellipses of their daily speech,—the things that are taken for granted by every one as present in the minds of others.

I believe I did not raise the question of ravens at this first house. For the instant it was enough to know that I had arrived at Turtlepond. But my eye was open and my ear alert. And surely this was a place for ravens and every wild thing: a narrow valley, tightly shut in, with nothing in sight but the crowding walls and a patch of sky. Aloft in the distance, in the direction of Hickory Gap (so I heard it called afterward, and wished that all place-names were equally euphonious), some large bird, hawk or eagle, was sailing out of sight. What a groveling creature is man, in the comparison! Along the brookside grew splendid halesia-trees, full of white bells, and a more splendid crab-apple tree,—one of the glories of America,—just now a perfect cloud of pink buds and blooms and tender green leaves. Here sang catbirds, thrashers, wood thrushes, robins, rose-breasted grosbeaks, a blue golden-winged warbler, and I forget what else. I had not traveled so far, half disabled as I was, to listen to birds of their quality. And the ravens? Well, at that moment they must have an engagement elsewhere. Perhaps they were still instructing their young in the art of volitation.

And now, having walked “about a quarter,” I was at Zeb McKinney’s. There was no need to inquire if he were at home. Through the open door I could see that the only occupants of the house were two women: one young, one very old and stiff. The latter, as was meet, came to speak to the stranger. No, Mr. McKinney was not at home; he had gone down to the sawmill. Ravens? Yes, they saw them once in a while, but she did not remember noticing any for some time back. The spring was just below the house; I should find a gourd to drink from.

I drank from the spring, pondered the woman’s “once in a while,” took a look about me, and then retraced my steps, having in mind a comfortable nooning-place, out of sight of the houses, where I would eat my luncheon, and observe the ravens at my leisure as they crossed from one mountain to another above my head. For all the unexpectedness of the old woman’s dubious phrase, I was not discouraged. Why should I be? Mr. Burroughs did not find the English nightingale all at once, nor did M. Tartarin kill a lion on his first day in the Algerian desert; and if these men had exercised patience, so could I.

At the right spot, therefore, where the shade fell upon a handy stump, I took my seat. First a line or two in my notebook, and then I would dispose of my luncheon. At that instant, however, two boys came down the road; and when I spoke to them, they waited for no more explicit invitation, but planted themselves on the ground, one on each side of me. If I asked them a question, they answered it; if I kept silence, they sat and looked at me. For aught that appeared, they meant to spend the afternoon thus engaged. Pleasant as popularity is, its manifestations were just now a trouble. The ravens might fly over at any moment, and it was important that I should be undisturbed,—to say nothing of my dinner. I remembered the saying of Poor Richard,—“Love your neighbor, but don’t pull down your hedge;” and at last, seeing that something must be done, I rose, moved a few rods, and then, dropping suddenly upon the grass, said, “Good-by.” The boys took the hint, and ten minutes later I saw them beside the brook, trying their luck with the fish. The quality of selfishness had proved itself twice blest, as happens oftener than we think, it may be, in this “unintelligible world.”

This part of the story need not be prolonged. The reader has already foreseen that my luncheon was finished without interruption. No raven’s wing darkened the air. I lingered till the case began to seem hopeless. Then I loitered as slowly as possible up the valley, and at last took the ascending road through the mountain woods toward the log schoolhouse. By this time there were signs of rain, but with a three-hour jaunt before me it was useless to hurry. So at the schoolhouse corner I rested again,—partly to enjoy the sight of Rabun Bald, a noble Georgia peak, which showed grandly from this point,—and then, all at once, thinking of nothing but the landscape, I heard a far-away cry, hoarse, loud, utterly strange, utterly unlike a crow’s, and yet unmistakably coracious! That surely was a raven’s voice. It could be nothing else. If I were out of the woods, where I could look about me! The bird, whatever it was, was evidently on the wing; the sound was now here, now there; but alas, it was receding. Fainter and fainter it became at each repetition, and then all was silent, till a heavy clap of thunder and a sudden blackness recalled me to myself, and I resumed the march homeward. Soon it rained. Then came a general pother of the elements,—wind, hail, lightning and thunder. Not far beyond me, as I now called to mind, there was a house, the only one I had seen on the mountain. I hastened forward, therefore, and took shelter on the piazza. A dog was cowering inside, too badly frightened to resent my intrusion or to bid me welcome. And there we stayed till the clouds broke. Then, refreshing myself with big hailstones, which lay white in the grass, I took the road again for the long diagonal descent to the valley.

I was well fagged by the time I reached Highlands; but I had been to Turtlepond, and in my memory were some confused recollections of a few distant notes, probably a bird’s, and possibly a raven’s. To that complexion had the matter already come. It is marvelous how quickly certainty loses its color when once the breath of doubt touches it.

Two days afterward, finding myself not yet acclimated, I joined a company who were making a day’s wagon-trip to Whiteside, the highest peak in the immediate vicinity of Highlands; a real mountain, said to be five thousand feet in height, but looking considerably lower to my eye, its surroundings being all so elevated, and the southern latitude, as I suppose, giving to it a more richly wooded, and consequently less rugged and alpine appearance than belongs to New England mountains of a corresponding rank. On the southerly side it breaks off into a huge perpendicular light-colored cliff, said to be eighteen hundred feet in depth, from which it derives its name and much of its local distinction. Above this cliff rises its knob of a summit, with the sight of which I had grown familiar as one of the principal points in the landscape from the hotel veranda.

The wagon carried us by a roundabout course to the base of this rocky knob, and there the majority of the party remained, while two ladies and myself clambered up a steep pitch to the summit, to take the prospect and to feel that we had been there,—and perhaps to see a raven; for Whiteside had from the beginning been held up to me as one of that bird’s particular resorts. “Wait till you go to Whiteside,” I had been told again and again.

What had looked like a pyramidal rock turned out to be the end of a long ridge, over which we marched in Indian file for a mile or more, picking flowers (the nodding Trillium stylosum, especially, of which each new specimen seemed pinker and prettier than the last) and admiring the landscape,—a boundless woodland panorama, with clearings and houses in Whiteside valley, and innumerable hazy mountains rising one beyond another in every direction. The world of new leafage below us, now darkened by cloud shadows, now shining in the sun, was beautiful far beyond any skill of mine to picture it.

We were still walking and quietly enjoying—my fellow tourists being, fortunately, of the non-exclamatory type—when the silence was broken by loud screams. “Ravens!” I thought,—for when the mind is full it is liable to spill over at any sudden jar,—and, dropping my umbrella, I sprang to the edge of the cliff. The bird was only a hawk, soaring and screaming, too far away to be made out; a duck-hawk, perhaps, but certainly not a raven. “How you frightened me!” said one of the ladies. “I thought you were going to throw yourself over the precipice.” My hobby-horse amused her,—as it did me also,—but she was herself too sound an enthusiast to be really unsympathetic. A New Jersey grandmother, she made nothing of a thirteen-mile tramp, a thorough drenching, and a pedestrian’s blister, when rare flowers were in question, and the next morning would be off again before breakfast, scouring the country for new trophies. Like Mme. Trépof, she would have gone to Sweden in search of a match-box, had the notion taken her. As for ravens, she had already seen one, only a few days before my arrival. It flew directly over the hotel, and she recognized it at once, not as a raven, to be sure, but as “the blackest crow she had ever seen.” A man who happened to be doing some carpenter’s work about the house heard her exclamation, and told her what it was, and by good luck he was to-day our driver. It was wonderful how much encouragement I received in my amusing pursuit. If only there were fewer stories and more ravens! I was ready to say.

Yet if I said so, it was only in a fit of impatience. In point of fact, I received with thankfulness every such bit of evidence that Dr. ——’s gloomy prognostications were ill founded. On the very morning after this expedition to Whiteside, for example, I was on my way to the summit of Satulah,—an easy jaunt, and a capital observatory,—when I met a young man carrying a gun, and proposed to him the inevitable inquiry. Oh yes, he saw ravens pretty often; he had seen some within a month, he thought. They never flew over without calling out; which, as I interpreted it, might mean only that when they kept silence he failed to notice them. Here was more proof of the birds’ presence; but the words “within a month” kept down any tendency to undue exhilaration.

That noon, at the hotel, I had an interesting ornithological conference with two residents of the town, both of them already well informed as to the nature of my crotchet. For a beginning, one of them told me that he had seen a raven that very forenoon,—and as usual it was “flying over.” Then the talk somehow turned upon the whippoorwill, of which I had thus far found no trace hereabout, and they agreed that it was not uncommon at certain seasons. It was often called the bullbat, they added. They had seen it, both of them, I think, flying far up in the air in broad daylight, and crying whippoorwill! “Good!” said I. “I would rather have seen that than all the ravens in North Carolina.” Here was a really novel addition to the familiar legend about the identity of the whippoorwill and the night-hawk,—a legend whose distribution is perhaps almost as wide as that of the birds themselves.

But wonders were not to stop here. One of the men, the one who had that forenoon seen a raven, proceeded to inform me that catbirds passed the winter in the mud, in a state of hibernation. William —— had dug them up, and they had come to and flown away. He himself had never seen this, but he knew, as everybody else did, that catbirds disappeared in the autumn, there was no telling how or when, and reappeared in the spring in a manner equally mysterious. I hinted some incredulity, to his great surprise, intimating for one thing that it was well known that catbirds migrated farther south; whereupon he appealed to his companion. “Wouldn’t you believe it, if William —— told you he had seen it?” he asked; and there was a shout of laughter from the bystanders when the second man, after a minute’s reflection, answered bluntly, “No.”

It would be too long a story to set down all the answers I received from the many persons whom I questioned here and there in my daily peregrinations. One man was sorry he had not heard of me sooner. A cow had been killed by lightning somewhere on the mountains, a week or two before. That would have been my opportunity. Ravens are sure to be on hand at such a time. But it was too late now, as they never touch flesh after it has begun to spoil. Another man, a German, living some miles out of the village, said, “Well, in my country we call them ravens, but here they call them crows.” They were a nuisance; he had to kill them. He knew smaller black birds, in flocks, but no larger ones. He and the apothecary—who now and then laughed good-humoredly at my continued failure, as I stopped to pass the time of day with him, or to ask him about the way to some waterfall—were, as well as I remember, the only witnesses for the negative; so that the question was no longer as to the presence of the birds, but as to the degree of their commonness and the probability of my seeing them. It would be too much to say that the whole town was excited over the matter, but at least my few fellow boarders at the hotel either felt or simulated a pretty constant interest. “Well,” one or another of them would say, as I dragged my weary steps up the hill to the door, at the end of a day’s outing, “well, have you seen any ravĕns yet?”

One day there appeared at the dinner-table a bright, rosy-faced, clear-eyed, wholesome-looking boy of nine or ten years, and the gentleman who had brought him in as his guest presently introduced him to me, with the remark that perhaps “Bob” could give me information upon my favorite topic. Bob smiled bashfully, and I began my examination. Yes, he said, he had seen ravens. How often, should he say? Why, almost every day. When did he see them last? Yesterday. How many were there? One. It was flying over. Did it call? Yes, they always did. How much bigger than a crow was it? Not much, but the voice was very different. This last was a model answer,—not at all the answer of a dishonest witness, or of an honest witness ambitious to make out a story. It was impossible to doubt him (his father and his older brother confirmed his testimony afterward), and yet I had been out of doors almost constantly for more than two weeks, and so far had not obtained the first glimpse of a large, wide-ranging, high-flying bird which this boy—who lived a few miles out of the village, it is true—saw nearly every day. Verily, as the unsuccessful man’s text has it (and a comfortable text it is), “the race is not to the swift, ... nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”

I speak unadvisedly. I had seen ravens; I had seen them here at Highlands. But it was in a dream of the night. There were two, and they were “flying over,”—yes, and calling as they flew. One of them was partly white, an albinistic peculiarity at which I do not remember to have felt the least surprise. But indeed, if I may trust my own experience, nothing surprises us in dreamland. There, as in fairyland, everything is natural. Perhaps the same will be true in a world after this.

Meantime, if my eyes were holden from some things, I saw many others as I traveled hither and thither, now to a mountain top, now down one of the roads into the warm lower country, now to some far-away woodland waterfall. The days were all too short and all too few. Like a sensible man, to whom years had brought the philosophic mind, I had more than one string to my bow, and toward the end of my three weeks the very thought of ravens had mostly ceased to trouble me. Then, on my last day in the village, I met a barefooted boy near the hotel. “Howdy?” said I. “Howdy?” he answered; and then he asked, “Did you git to see your ravĕns?” Who is this, I thought, and how does he know me? For I am not used to being famous. But I answered No, I had seen no ravens. How did he know I wanted to see any? “I saw you at Turtlepond,” he said. He was out there with his cousin, Cling Cabe. With that it all came back to me. He was one of the boys who had paid me such flattering noonday attentions, and of whom I had taken so shabby a leave. I was glad to see him again. But he was not yet done with his story. Probably he had carried the burden of it for the last fortnight. “Two ravens flew over just after you left,” he said. Was he sure they were ravens? Yes, his uncle Zeb[5] saw them, and said they were. Well, it was plainer and plainer that I had mistaken my game. I must leave it for younger eyes to see ravens,—in the flesh, at least. “Your old men shall dream dreams,” said the prophet.

It was May 27 when, after an early breakfast, I left Highlands in a big mountain wagon, bound for Boston by the way of Dillsboro and Asheville. I had come into the mountains from the south, and was going out in a northerly direction. The road was not highly recommended; it would be a rough, all-day drive, but it would take me through a new piece of country; and as for the jolting, I fancied that by this time I had become hardened to all that the steepest and stoniest of roads could inflict upon a passenger. On that point, I may as well confess, though it does not concern the present story, I was insufficiently informed.

It had been agreed that I should take my own time, making the trip as natural-historical as I pleased. “It fares better with sentiments not to be in a hurry with them,” says Sterne, and the same is true of sciences and other pleasures. Again and again I ordered the horses stopped as we came to some likely piece of cover, but little or nothing resulted. There were singers in plenty, but no new voices. After all, I said to myself, one does not study ornithology to any great advantage from a wagon-seat. Yet I remember one lesson—an old one rehearsed—that the morning brought me.

Soon after getting out of the village we passed Stewart’s Pond. This had been one of my most frequent resorts. A considerable part of several half-days had been idled away beside it, and more than once I had commented upon the singular fact that its shores, birdy as they were, harbored no water thrushes, while in several similar places I had heard them singing for more than a fortnight. There was something really mysterious about it, I was inclined to think. The place seemed made for them, unless, perhaps, the damming of the stream had rendered the current too sluggish to suit their taste. Now, however, as we drove past, and just as I was bidding the place good-by, a water thrush struck up his simple, lazily emphatic tune. “Here I am, stranger,” he might have been saying. Had he been there all the time? I did not know. One’s investigations are never complete, even in the most limited area.

We had not gone many miles farther before we took what was for me a new road, which turned out presently to be like all the others: a road running mostly through the forest, uphill and downhill by turns, with here and there, at long distances, a solitary cabin, unpainted, perhaps unwindowed, yet pretty certainly with a patch of sweet-william and other old-fashioned flowers in the “front yard.” The rudest one of all, in the very lonesomest of clearings, had before the door a magnificent eglantine bush that would have made the fortune of any Northern gardener. The mountain side might be all aflame with azalea and laurel, but the woman’s heart must have a bit of garden, something planted and tended, to make the cabin more like a home.

For some hours we had been traveling thus, and were now come to an open place in the town of Hamburg, so the driver told me. Here, all at once, I nudged him with a quick command to stop. “There it is!” I cried, as I whipped out my opera-glass. “There’s a raven!” “Yes,” said the driver, “that’s the bird.” He was flying from us in a diagonal course, making toward a hill or mountain,—at a comfortable distance, in the best of lights, and most admirably disposed to show us his dimensions; but he was silent and in tremendous haste.

“Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he.”

If you would only say something! I thought. But he did not “call out,” perhaps because he was not “flying over.” I held the glass on him till he passed out of sight,—a really good look, as time counts under such circumstances. Yes, at the last moment I had seen a raven! Would the driver, when he got back to Highlands to-morrow evening, have the goodness so to inform Dr. —— for his comfort?

Another thing I had accomplished: I had supplied three male Hamburgers with abundant material for a week’s gossip; for even in my excitement I had been aware that we had halted almost directly in front of a house,—the only one for some miles, I think,—in the yard of which three men were lounging. I looked at the bird, and the men looked at me. It gave me pleasure afterward to think what a story it must have made. “Yes, sir, it’s gospel truth: he pulled out a spy-glass and sat there looking at a raven. I reckon he never see one before.”

I speak of excitement, but it was a wonder to me how temperate my emotions were, and how quickly they subsided. Within a half-mile our progress was blocked by a large oak-tree, which the wind had twisted partly off and thrown squarely across the road. The driver had brought no axe along, and was obliged to go back to the house for help, leaving me to care for the team. Straight before me loomed the Balsam Mountains, a dozen peaks, gloriously high and mountainous; not too far away, yet far enough to be blue, with white clouds veiling their lower slopes and so lifting the tops skyward. I looked at them and looked at them, and between the looks I put the raven into my notebook.

For the day it kept its place unquestioned. Then, long before I reached Massachusetts, I punctuated the entry with a question mark. The bird had been silent; its apparent size might have been an illusion; and my assurance of the moment, absolute though it was, would not bear the test of time and cold blood.

Here ended my raven-hunt. I had enjoyed it, and would gladly have made it longer,—in that respect it had been successful; but the “collection” I was to have made, my little store of “first-hand knowledge,” had fared but poorly. As far as ravens were concerned, I was bringing home a lean bag,—a brace of interrogation points.

A MOUNTAIN POND

Stewart’s Pond, on the Hamburg road a mile or so from the village of Highlands, served me, a visiting bird-gazer, more than one good turn: selfishly considered, it was something to be thankful for; but I never passed it, for all that, without feeling that it was a defacement of the landscape. The Cullasajah River is here only four or five miles from its source, near the summit of Whiteside Mountain; and already a land-owner, taking advantage of a level space and what passes among men as a legal title, has dammed it (the reader may spell the word as he chooses—“dammed” or “damned,” it is all one to a mountain stream) for uses of his own. The water backs up between a wooded hill on one side and a rounded grassy knoll on the other, narrows where the road crosses it by a rude bridge, and immediately broadens again, as best it can, against the base of a steeper, forest-covered hill just beyond. The shapelessness of the pond and its romantic surroundings will in the course of years give it beauty, but for the present everything is unpleasantly new. The tall old trees and the ancient rhododendron bushes, which have been drowned by the brook they meant only to drink from, are too recently dead. Nature must have time to trim the ragged edges of man’s work and fit it into her own plan. And she will do it, though it may take her longer than to absorb the man himself.

When I came in sight of the pond for the first time, in the midst of my second day’s explorations, my first thought, it must be confessed, was not of its beauty or want of beauty, but of sandpipers, and in a minute more I was leaning over the fence to sweep the water-line with my opera-glass. Yes, there they were, five or six in number, one here, another there; solitary sandpipers, so called with only a moderate degree of appropriateness, breaking their long northward journey beside this mountain lake, which might have been made for their express convenience. I was glad to see them. Without being rare, they make themselves uncommon enough to be always interesting; and they have, besides, one really famous trait,—the extraordinary secrecy of their breeding operations. Well known as they are, and wide as is their distribution, their eggs, so far as I am aware, are still unrepresented in scientific collections except by a single specimen found almost twenty years ago in Vermont; a “record,” as we say in these days, of which Totanus solitarius may rightfully be proud.

About another part of the pond, on this same afternoon (May 8), were two sandpipers of a more ordinary sort: spotted sandpipers, familiar objects, we may fairly say, the whole country over. Few American schoolboys but have laughed at their absurd teetering motions. In this respect the solitary sandpiper is better behaved. It does not teeter—it bobs; standing still, as if in deep thought, and then dipping forward quickly (a fanciful observer might take the movement for an affirmative gesticulation, an involuntary “Yes, yes, now I have it!”) and instantly recovering itself, exactly in the manner of a plover. This is partly what Mr. Chapman means, I suppose, when he speaks of the solitary sandpiper’s superior quietness and dignity; two fine attributes, which may have much to do with their possessor’s almost unparalleled success in eluding the researches of oölogical collectors. Nervousness and loquacity are poor hands at preserving a secret.

Although my first brief visit to Stewart’s Pond made three additions to my local bird list (the third being a pair of brown creepers), I did not go that way again for almost a fortnight. Then (May 21) my feet were barely on the bridge before a barn swallow skimmed past me. Swallows of any kind in the mountains of North Carolina are like hen-hawks in Massachusetts,—rare enough to be worth following out of sight. As for barn swallows, I had not expected to see them here at all. I kept my eye upon this fellow, therefore, with the more jealousy, and happily for me he seemed to have found the spot very much to his mind. If he was a straggler, as I judged likely in spite of the lateness of the season, he was perhaps all the readier to stay for an hour or two on so favorable a hunting-ground. With him were half a dozen rough-wings,—probably not stragglers,—hawking over the water; feeding, bathing, and now and then, by way of variety, engaging in some pretty spirited lovers’ quarrels. In one such encounter, I remember, one of the contestants received so heavy a blow that she quite lost her balance (the sex was matter of guesswork) and dropped plump into the water; and more than once the fun was interrupted by an irate phœbe, who dashed out upon the makers of it with an ugly snap of his beak, as much as to say, “Come, now, this is my bridge.” Mr. Stewart himself could hardly have held stricter notions about the rights of property. The rough-wings frequently perched in the dead trees, and once, at least, the barn swallow did likewise; something which I never saw a bird of his kind do before, to the best of my recollection. For to-day he was in Rome, and had fallen in with the Roman customs.

As I have said already, his presence was unexpected. His name is not included in Mr. Brewster’s North Carolina list, and I saw no other bird like him till I was approaching Asheville, a week later, in a railway train. Then I was struck almost at the same moment by two things—a brick chimney and a barn swallow. My start at the sight of red bricks made me freshly aware with what quickness the mind puts away the past and accustoms itself to new and strange surroundings. Man is the slave of habit, we say; but how many of us, even in middle age, have altered our modes of living, our controlling opinions, or our daily occupations, and in the shortest while have forgotten the old order of things, till it has become all like a dream,—a story heard long ago and now dimly remembered. Was it indeed we who lived there, and believed thus, and spent our days so? This capacity for change augurs well for the future of the race, and not less for the future of the individual, whether in this world or in another.

In a previous chapter I have mentioned as provocative of astonishment the ignorance of a North Carolina man, my driver from Walhalla, who had no idea of what I meant by “swallows.” His case turned out to be less singular than I thought, however, for when I spoke of it to an exceptionally bright, well-informed farmer in the vicinity of Highlands, he answered that he saw nothing surprising about it; he didn’t know what swallows were, neither. Martins he knew,—purple martins,—though there were none hereabout, so far as I could discover, but “swallow,” as a bird’s name, was a novelty he had never heard of. Here on Stewart’s bridge I might have tested the condition of another resident’s mind upon the same point, but unfortunately the experiment did not occur to me. He came along on horseback, and I called his attention to the swallows shooting to and fro over the water, a pretty spectacle anywhere, but doubly so in this swallow-poor country. He manifested no very lively interest in the subject; but he made me a civil answer,—which is perhaps more than a hobby-horsical catechist, who travels up and down the world cross-examining his busy fellow mortals, has any good reason for counting upon in such a case. With so many things to be seen and done in this short life, it is obvious that all men’s tastes cannot run to ornithology. “Yes,” the stranger said, glancing at the swallows, “I expect they have their nests under the bridge.” A civil answer I called it, but it was better than that; indicating, as it did, some acquaintance with the rough-wing’s habits, or a shrewd knack at guessing. But the man knew nothing about a bird that nested in barns.

A short distance beyond the bridge, in a clearing over which lay scattered the remains of a house that had formerly stood in it (for even this new country is not destitute of ruins), a pair of snowbirds were chipping nervously, and near the same spot my ear caught the lisping call of my first North Carolina brown creeper. No doubt it was breeding somewhere close by, and my imagination at once fastened upon a loose clump of water-killed trees, from the trunks of which the dry bark was peeling in big sun-warped flakes, as the site of its probable habitation. This was on my first jaunt over the road, and during the busy days that followed I planned more than once to spend an hour here in spying upon the birds. A brown creeper’s nest would be something new for me. Now, therefore, on this bright morning, when I was done with the swallows, I walked on to the right point and waited. A long time passed, or what seemed a long time. With so many invitations pressing upon one from all sides in a vacation country, it is hard sometimes to be leisurely enough for the best naturalistic results. Then, suddenly, I heard the expected tseep, and soon the bird made its appearance. Sure enough, it flew against one of the very trees that my imagination had settled upon, ducked under a strip of dead bark, between it and the bole, remained within for half a minute, and came out again. By this time the second bird had appeared, and was waiting its turn for admission. They were feeding their young; and so long as I remained they continued their work, going and coming at longer or shorter intervals. I made no attempt to inspect their operations more nearly; the tree stood in rather deep water, and the nest was situated at an altitude of perhaps twenty feet; but I was glad to see for myself, even at arm’s length, as it were, this curious and highly characteristic abode of a bird which in general I meet with only in its idle season. I was surprised to notice that the pair had chosen a strip of bark which was fastened to the trunk at the upper end and hung loose below. The nest was the better protected from the weather, of course, but it must have been wedged pretty tightly into place, it seemed to me, unless it had some means of support not to be guessed at from the ground. The owners entered invariably at the same point,—in the upper corner. The brown creeper has been flattening itself against the bark of trees for so many thousand years that a very narrow slit suffices it for a doorway.

While I was occupied with this interesting bit of household economy, I heard a clatter of wheels mingled with youthful shouts. Two boys were coming round a bend in the road and bearing down upon me, seated upon an axle-tree between a pair of wheels drawn by a single steer, which was headed for the town at a lively trot, urged on by the cries of the boys, one of whom held the single driving-rope and the other a whip. “How fast can he go?” I asked, as they drew near. I hoped to detain them for a few minutes of talk, but they had no notion of stopping. They had never timed him, the older one—not the driver—answered, with the merriest of grins. I expressed wonder that they could manage him with a single rein. “Oh, I can drive him without any line at all.” “But how do you steer him?” said I. “I yank him and I pull him,” was the laconic reply, which by this time had to be shouted over the boy’s shoulder; and away the crazy trap went, the wobbling wheels describing all manner of eccentric and nameless curves with every revolution; and the next minute I heard it rattling over the bridge. Undoubtedly the young fellows thought me a green one, not to know that a yank and a steady pull are equivalent to a gee and a haw. “Live and learn,” said I to myself. It was a jolly mode of traveling, at all events, as good as a circus, both for the boys and for me.

On my way through the village, at noon, I passed the steer turned out to grass by the roadside, and had a better look at the harness, a simple, home-made affair, including a pair of hames. The driving-rope, which in its original estate might have been part of a clothes-line or a bed-cord, was attached to a chain which went round or over the creature’s head at the base of the horns. The lads themselves were farther down the street, and the younger one nudged the other’s elbow with a nod in my direction as I passed on the opposite sidewalk. They seemed to have sobered down at a wonderful rate since their arrival in the “city.” I should hardly have known them for the same boys; but no doubt they would wake the echoes again on the road homeward. I hoped so, surely, for I liked them best as I saw them first.

As far as the pleasure of life goes, boys brought up in this primitive mountain country have little to complain of. They may lack certain advantages; in this imperfect world, where two bodies cannot occupy the same space at once, the presence of some things necessitates the absence of others; but most certainly they have their full quota of what in youthful phrase are known as “good times.” The very prettiest sight that I saw in North Carolina, not excepting any landscape or flower,—and I saw floral displays of a splendor to bankrupt all description,—was a boy whom I met one Sunday morning in a steep, disused road outside of the town. I was descending the hill, picking my steps, and he was coming up. Eleven or twelve years old he might have been, cleanly dressed, fit for any company, but bare-legged to the knee. I wished him good-morning, and he responded with the easiest grace imaginable. “You are going to church?” said I. “Yes, sir,” and on he went up the hill, “progressing by his own brave steps;” a boy, as Thoreau says, who was “never drawn in a willow wagon;” straight as an arrow, and with motions so elastic, so full of the very spirit of youth and health, that I stood still and gazed after him for pure delight. His face, his speech, his manner, his carriage, all were in keeping. If he does not make a good and happy man, it will be an awful tragedy.

This boy was not a “cracker’s” child, I think. Probably he belonged to one of the Northern families, that make up the village for the most part, and have settled the country sparsely for a few miles round about. The lot of the native mountaineers is hard and pinched, and although flocks of children were playing happily enough about the cabin doors, it was impossible not to look upon them as born to a narrow and cheerless existence. Possibly the fault was partly in myself, since I have no very easy gift with strangers, but I found them, young and old alike, rather uncommunicative.

I recall a family group that I overtook toward the end of an afternoon; a father and mother, both surprisingly young-looking, hardly out of their teens, it seemed to me, with a boy of perhaps six years. They were resting by the roadside as I came up, the father poring over some written document. “You must have been to the city,” said I; but all the man could answer was “Howdy.” The woman smiled and murmured something, it was impossible to tell what. They started on again at that moment, the grown people each with a heavy bag, which looked as if it might contain meal or flour, and the little fellow with a big bundle. They had four miles still to go, they said; and the road, as I could see for myself, was of the very worst, steep and rugged to the last degree. Partly to see if I could conquer the man, and partly to please myself, I beckoned the youngster to my side and put a coin into his hand. The shot took effect at once. Father and mother found their voices, and said in the same breath, “Say thank you!” How natural that sounded! It is part of the universal language. Every parent will have his child polite. But the boy, poor thing, was utterly tongue-tied, and could only smile; which, after all, was about the best thing he could have done. The father, too, was still inclined to silence, finding nothing in particular to say, though I did my best to encourage him; but he took pains to keep along with me, halting whenever I did so, and making it manifest that he meant to be with me at the turn in the road, about which I had inquired (needlessly, there is no harm in my now confessing), so that I should by no possibility go astray. Nothing could have been more friendly, and at the corner both he and his wife bade me good-by with simple heartiness. “Good-by, little boy,” said I. “Tell him good-by,” called both father and mother; but the boy couldn’t, and there was an end of it. “He’s just as I was at his age; bashful, that’s all.” This little speech set matters right. The parents smiled, the boy did likewise, and we went our different ways, I still pitying the woman, with that heavy bag under her arm, having to make a packhorse of herself on that tiresome mountain road.