"Welcome!" the wood god murmured through the leaves, 45" Welcome, though late, unknowing, yet known 30 to me." Evening drew on; stars peeped through maple boughs, Which o'erhung, like a cloud, our camping fire. Ten scholars, wonted to lie warm and soft Made them to boys again. Happier that they No placard on these rocks warned to the polls, 65 No door-bell heralded a visitor, No courier waits, no letter came or went, Nothing was ploughed, or reaped, or bought, or sold; The frost might glitter, it would blight no crop, 70 We were made freemen of the forest laws, In Adirondac lakes, At morn or noon, the guide rows bareheaded; 75 Shoes, flannel shirt, and kersey trousers make His brief toilette at night, or in the rain, He dons a surcoat which he doffs at morn : A paddle in the right hand, or an oar, And in the left, a gun, his needful arms. 80 By turns we praised the stature of our guides, Their rival strength and suppleness, their skill To row, to swim, to shoot, to build a camp, To climb a lofty stem, clean without boughs Full fifty feet, and bring the eaglet down : 85 Temper to face wolf, bear, or catamount, And wit to trap or take him in his lair. Sound, ruddy men, frolic and innocent, In winter, lumberers; in summer, guides; Their sinewy arms pull at the oar untired 90 Three times ten thousand strokes, from morn to eve. Look to yourselves, ye polished gentlemen! 95 They are the doctors of the wilderness, In sooth, red flannel is a saucy test What make you, master, fumbling at the oar? 100 Will you catch crabs? Truth tries pretension here. The sallow knows the basket-maker's thumb; The oar, the guide's. Dare you accept the tasks 105 Or stumbling on through vast sclf-similar woods To thread by night the nearest way to camp? Ask you, how went the hours? All day we swept the lake, searched every cove, North from Camp Maple, south to Osprey Bay, 110 Watching when the loud dogs should drive in deer, Or whipping its rough surface for a trout; Or bathers, diving from the rock at noon; Challenging Echo by our guns and cries; Or listening to the laughter of the loon ; 115 Or, in the evening twilight's latest red, Beholding the procession of the pines ; Or, later yet, beneath a lighted jack, In the boat's bows, a silent night-hunter Stealing with paddle to the feeding-grounds 120 Of the red deer, to aim at a square mist. Hark to that muffled roar a tree in the woods Is fallen but hush! it has not scared the buck 114. Thoreau, in Walden, has an admirable account of the loon and its habits. "His usual note was this demoniac laughter, yet somewhat like that of a water-fowl; but occasionally, when he had balked me most successfully and come up a long way off, he uttered a long drawn, unearthly howl, probably more like that of a wolf than any bird; as when a beast puts his muzzle to the ground and deliberately howls. This was his looning, perhaps the wildest sound that is ever heard here, making the woods ring far and wide. I concluded that he laughed in derision at my efforts, confident of his own resources." Page 254. 116. One of Mr. Emerson's companions in this excursion, Stillman the artist, painted The Procession of the Pines, the aspect, so familiar to the woodman, of a line of pines upon a hilltop outlined against the evening sky, and seeming to be marching solemnly. 125 Who stands astonished at the meteor light, Sometimes we tried our rifles at a mark, Two Doctors in the camp Dissected the slain deer, weighed the trout's brain, 135 Captured the lizard, salamander, shrew, Crab, mice, snail, dragon-fly, minnow, and moth Waved the scoop-net, and nothing came amiss; 140 Gave an impartial tomb to all the kinds. Not less the ambitious botanist sought plants, Hypnum and hydnum, mushroom, sponge, and moss, '45 Or harebell nodding in the gorge of falls. Above, the eagle flew, the osprey screamed, The raven croaked, owls hooted, the woodpecker Loud hammered, and the heron rose in the swamp As water poured through hollows of the hills 150 To feed this wealth of lakes and rivulets, So Nature shed all beauty lavishly From her redundant horn 132. See Hawthorne's story of The Great Carbuncle. Lords of this realm, Bounded by dawn and sunset, and the day We seemed the dwellers of the zodiac, So pure the Alpine element we breathed, So light, so lofty pictures came and went. 160 We trode on air, contemned the distant town, Its timorous ways, big trifles, and we planned That we should build, hard-by, a spacious lodge, And how we should come hither with our sons, Hereafter, willing they, and more adroit. 165 Hard fare, hard bed, and comic misery, 170 Whom earlier we had chid with spiteful names. For who defends our leafy tabernacle From bold intrusion of the travelling crowd, - Our foaming ale we drank from hunters' pans, Ale, and a sup of wine. Our steward gave Venison and trout, potatoes, beans, wheat-bread; 180 All ate like abbots, and, if any missed Their wonted convenance, cheerly hid the loss With hunter's appetite and peals of mirth. And Stillman, our guides' guide, and Commodore, 183. Stillman left his own record of this excursion in a prose |