In the Catskills: Selections from the Writings of John Burroughs

of August, and the festival of the season neared its close. We were belated guests, but perhaps all the more eager on that account, especially as th

eavy streaks in it, and will not be uniformly sweet; or we can seek nearer woods, and content ourselves with one week instead of four, with the prospect of a keen relish to the last. Four s

lenty of primitive woods. No doubt we should find good browsin

d ourselves, with our packs on our backs, entering upon a

wept by a tornado of stone. Stone avalanches hung suspended on their sides, or had shot down into the chasm

seemed to have accumulated, and to have formed what migh

pse of the unknown stream. I stood upon rocks and looked many feet down into a still, sunlit pool and saw the trout disporting themselves in the transparent water, and I was ready to encamp at once; but my companion, who had not been tempted by the view, insisted upon holding to our original purpos

we suited ourselves

top of the rock, spread out and flowing over that thick, dark green moss that is found only in the coldest streams; then drawn into a narrow canal only four or five feet wide, through which it shoots, black and rigid, to be presently caught in a deep basin with shelving, overhanging rocks, beneath which the ph?be-bird builds in security, and upon which

ate that looks like Shawangunk grits, and when this latter is reached by the water it

and drank or dipped the water up in your cup, and found it just the right degree of refreshing coldness. One is never prepared for the clearness of the water in these streams. It is always a surprise. See them every year for a dozen years, and yet, when you first come upon one, you will utter an exclamation. I saw nothing like it in the Adirondacks, nor in Canada.

hat retreats under the rocks, what paved or flagged courts and areas, what crystal depths where no net or snare can reach them

t, the green lining is unbroken. It sweeps down under the stream and up again on the other side, like some firmly woven texture. It softens every outline an

forming a high winding gallery, along which the fisherman passes and makes his long casts with scarcely an interruption from branch or twig

n open court, or what you will. An obsolete wood or bark road conducted us to it, and disappeared up the hill in the woods beyond. A loose boulder lay in the middle, and on the edge next the stream were three or four large natural wash-basins scooped out of the

very object and feature about the place take on a new i

afforded us a daily dessert of most delicious blackberries,-an important item in the woods

ere out of season, and only palatable to a woodman's keen appetite. What is this about trout spawning in October and November, and in some cases not till March? These trout had all spawned in August, every one of them. The coldness and purity

en of a pound or pound and a half weight. I remember one such, as black as night, that ran under a bla

s, and actually got my thumb in

of the sportsman. I imagined

his own element, but I knew the slack, thus sure to occur, would probably free him; so I peered down upon the beautiful creature and enjoyed my triumph as far as it went. He was caught very lightly through his upper jaw, and I expected every struggle and somersault would break the hold. Presently I saw a place in the rocks where I thought it possible, with such an incentive, to get down within reach of the water: by careful man?uvring I slipped my pole behind me and got hold of the line, which I cut and wound around my finger; then I made my way toward the end of the log and the place in the rocks, leading my fish along much exhaus

the fish, and only miss the pleasure of eatin

oldier, "is in triumphing, and

ng that string of thirty. To see a big fish after days of small fry is an event; to have a jump from one is a glimpse of the sportsman's

ll the woods. At one point we looked through and along a valley of deep shadow upon a broad sweep of mountain quite near and densely clothed with woods, flooded from base to summit by the setting sun. It was a wild, memorable scene. What power and effectiveness in Nature, I thought, and how rarely an artist catches her touch! Looking dow

ght yet lingered on the

parleys with t

uoting Wo

east, though it has not the grit and virility of the more primitive bard. What triumph an

jocu

on the misty m

in t

glorious morni

untain tops wi

here, the quality that Wordsworth an

icance that the cultivated man has in the presence of mountains, and the burden of solemn emotion they give rise to. Then there is something much more wild and merciless, much more remote from human interests and ends, in our long, high, wooded ranges than is expressed by the peaks and scarred groups of the lake country of Britain. These mountains we behold and cross are not picturesque,-they are wild and inhuman as the sea. In them you are

, and hover about! Light and darkness are in perpetual tilt and warfare, with first the one unhorsed, then the other. The friendly and cheering fire, what acquaintance we make with it! We had almost forgotten there was such an element, we had so long known only its dark offspring, heat. Now we see the wild beauty uncaged and note its manner and temper. How surely it creates its own draugh

birch, its partially cast-off bark h

," we said, "and shall have

e whole tree and its main branches stood wrapped in a sheet of roaring flame. It was a wild and

ows whether it is the past or the present that possesses him. Certain it is, he feels the hush and solitude of the great forest, and, whether he will or not, all his musings are in some way cast upon that huge background of the night. Unless he is an old camper-out, there will be an undercurrent of dread or half fear. My companion said he could not help but feel all the time that there ought to be a sentinel out the

s come through these open doors and windows of the woods. It is our partial isolation from

read, he seldom reads it; it does no

tle that is woody and wild as this scene is. I recall a Canadian poem by the late C.D. Shanly-the only one, I believe, the author ever wrote-that fits well the distende

speed on,

p lies

oss the ha

he close

sound," said Aaron;

now-blight

ell you

of the sh

the midnig

umbs the traveler in the great Canadian forests in winter. This stanza brings out the

ailing of th

intive not

ating of t

e froze

f the poem

, Though dar

the camp

t it would

d but c

I sang an

measure

-twang of t

ng beneath

r into t

pped upo

sky figur

puchin

upon the

g and limb

ed the dus

veled sid

token of

by word

ar-chill f

ossing of

by the sickl

owed, ben

alking of

ot-marks o

ar-chill gath

roud arou

upon the

shadow hun

tter-trappe

he break

hair blanched

ow in whi

oke not as th

new that i

n the sha

thered in

Maria s

is fal

s lies t

lker of t

birch-logs; I feel both the 'fear-chill' and the 'cold-chill'

four hours' marc

no haunted val

e wilderness. The tradition runs that her lover, who was a bark-peeler and wielded the spud, was killed by his rival, who felled a tree upon him while they were at work. The girl, who helped her mother cook for the 'hands,' was crazed by th

it, and the only answering cry I heard was the shrill voice of the screech owl off yonder against the mountain. But maybe

r cook for the hands, a slip of a girl twelve or thirteen years old, with eyes as beautiful and bewitching as the waters that flowed by her cabin? I was w

ondout, and set out to cross the mount

, I fear,-a shriveled stream brawling along ov

stream to avoid the gauntlet of the underbrush, skipping up the mountain from boulder to boulder. Up and up we went, with frequent pauses and copious quaffing of the cold water. My soldier declared a "haunted valley" would be a godsend; anything but endless dragging of one's self up such an Alpine stairway. The winter wren, common all through the woods, peeped and scolded at us as we sat blowing near the summit, and the oven-bird, not quite sure as to what manner of creatures w

k, more or less depressed, which the hunter aims to bestride; rising rapidly from this is pretty sure to be a rough, curving ridge that carries the forest up to some highest p

e must strike out boldly, and not be disturbed by the curveting and shying; the valley you want lies squarely behind them, but f

f decision till it emptied into a larger stream which we knew must be the East Branch. An abandoned fishpole lay on the stones, marking the farthest point

ned, the season with them being a little later than on the stream we had left, perhaps because the water was less cold. Neither had the creek here any such eventful and startling career. It led, indeed, qui

had to be caught in the morning and was not served early, so that it was nine o'clock before we were in motion. A little bird, the red-eyed vireo, warbl

nd lumber men. The prospect for trout was so good in the stream hereabouts, and the scene so peaceful and inviting, shone upon by the dreamy August sun, that we concluded to tarry here until the next day. It was a page of pioneer history opened to quite unexpectedly. A dim footpath led us a few

abitations, and the report of the lumberman's mallet, like the hammering of a great woodpecker, was music to the ear and news to the mind. The air was still and dense, and the silence such as alone broods over these little openings in the primitive woo

ig." How the frisking red rogue seemed to enjoy what he had found! He looked in at the door and snickered, then in at the window, then peeked down from between the rafters and cachinnated till his sides must have ached; then struck an attitude upon the chimney, and fairly squeal

hily by a good square tramp to the railroad station, twenty-three miles distant, as it proved. Two miles brought us to stumpy field

, getting Tennyson a little mixed, "than

began to come down, and I hesi

a reminiscence of an old couplet in his mind, and so it proved, for

s not hair) was tipped with red. My reader doubtless knows that the common rat is an importation, and that there is a native American rat, usually found much farther south than the locality of which I am writing, that lives in the woods,-a sylvan rat, very wild and nocturnal in his habits, and seldom seen even by hunters or woodmen

questions. The children dart behind their parents when you look at them. As we sat on a bridge resting,-for our packs still weighed fifteen or t

LE OF THE

sweetened by blackberries and a fine prospect. The snowbird was common along the way, and a solitary wild pigeon shot through the wo

, stumpy fields, log fences, log houses and barns. A boy twelve or thirteen years old came out of a house ahead of us eating a piece of bread and butter. We soon overtook him and held converse with him. He knew the land well, and what there was in the woods a

heads?" I inquired

hat gets into your eye

ou thread the streams, and you are forever vaguely brushing at it under the delusion that it is a little spider suspended from your hat-brim; and just

xpect to find. The milk was indeed so good that Aaron went down to the little log house under the hill a mile farther on and asked for more; and being told they had no cow, he lingered five minutes on the do

on after me, "but I got something

s," replied I; "I

didn't experience something of the same pleasure in hearing this young girl speak after a week in the woods. She had evidently been out in the world and was h

ouse looked to

ere," said I, "unles

aid my facetious comp

had the good fortune to find both the milk and the young lady. A mother and her daughter were again t

fore since its mother left. Come to

sit and cool myself, and seemed glad of a stranger to talk with. They had come from an adj

head and built the house right among the big

tone of his entire being is not a little elevated, and all his perceptions and susceptibilities quickened. I feel that some such statement is necessary to just

What were the agencies that had given it its fine lines and its gracious intelligence amid these simple, primitive scenes? What did my heroine

my inquiry; "only an occasional fisherma

than the exhilaration of a journey on foot could have made it seem the interesting object it was. Two of the little girls had been to the spring after a pail of

eacher's name?"

ated, bewildered, when the bright, dark-eyed one cut her short

holars from above

tie," and they hast

ugh road, and during the last half of it we had blisters on the bottoms of our feet. It is one of the rewards of the pedestrian that, however tired he may be, he is always more or less refreshed by his journey. His physical tenement has taken an airing. His respiration has been deepened,