Travels in a Tree-top

It was a strange coincidence. A farmer living near by employed an Indian from the school at Carlisle, and now that the work of the summer was over, this taciturn youth walked daily over a hill to a school-house more than a mile away, and the path leading to it was an Indian trail.

Not long since I met the lad on this very path returning from school, and when he passed I stood by an old oak and watched him until lost among the trees, walking where centuries ago his people had walked when going from the mountain village and rock shelters along an inland creek to the distant town by the river.

As you looked about from the old oak there was no public road or house in sight; nothing but trees and bushes, huge rocks, and one curious jutting ledge that tradition holds is a veritable relic of prehistoric time,—a place where council fires were lit and midnight meetings held.

Whether tradition is true or not, the place was a fitting one whereat to tarry and fall a-thinking. Happy, indeed, could the old oak have spoken.

Many a public road of recent date has been built on the line of an old trail, as many a town and even city have replaced Indian villages; but take the long-settled regions generally, the ancient landmarks are all gone, and a stray potsherd or flint arrow-point in the fields is all that is left to recall the days of the dusky aborigines.

Only in the rough, rocky, irreclaimable hills are we likely now to be successful, if such traces as a trail are sought for.

It was so here. Bald-top Hill is of little use to the white man except for the firewood that grows upon its sides and the scattered game that still linger in its thickets. As seen from the nearest road, not far off, there is nothing now to suggest that an Indian ever clambered about it. The undergrowth hides every trace of the surface; but after the leaves drop and a light snow has fallen, a curious white line can be traced from the base of the summit; this is the old trail.

It is a narrow path, but for so long a time had it been used by the Indians that, when once pointed out, it can still be followed without difficulty. It leads now from one little intervale to another: from farmer A to farmer B; but originally it was part of their long highway leading from Philadelphia to Easton, perhaps. It matters not. Enough to know that then, as now, there were towns almost wherever there was land fit for dwellings, and paths that led from one to the other. It is clear that the Indians knew the whole country well. The routes they finally chose resulted from long experience, and were as direct as the nature of the ground made possible.

The study of trails opens up to us a broader view of ancient Indian life than we are apt to entertain.

We find the sites of villages on the banks of the rivers and larger inflowing streams; travel by canoes was universal. No locality was so favorable as the open valley, and here the greater number of Indians doubtless dwelt. But the river and its fertile shores could not yield all that this people needed: they had to draw from the resources of the hills behind them. They soon marked the whole region with a net-work of trails leading to the various points whence they drew the necessities of life. The conditions of the present day are laid down on essentially the same lines as then.

An Indian town was not a temporary tent site, or mere cluster of wigwams, here to-day and miles away to-morrow; nor did these people depend solely upon the chase. Beside the trail over which I recently passed was a great clearing that had been an orchard. We can yet find many a barren spot that is rightly known to the people of to-day as an Indian field. So persistently were their cornfields cropped that at last the soil was absolutely exhausted, and has not yet recovered its fertility.

There was systematic bartering, too, as the red pipe-stone or catlinite from Minnesota and obsidian from the more distant Northwest, found on the Atlantic coast, as well as ocean shells picked up in the far interior, all testify. There was also periodical journeying in autumn from inland to the sea-coast to gather supplies of oysters, clams, and other “sea food,” which were dried by smoking and then “strung as beads and carried as great coils of rope” back to the hills to be consumed during the winter.

Many small colonies, too, passed the winters on the coast in the shelter of the great pine forests that extended to the very ocean beach. It was no hap-hazard threading of a wilderness to reach these distant points. The paths were well defined, well used. For how long we can only conjecture, but the vast accumulations of shells on the coast, often now beneath the water, point to a time so distant that the country wore a different aspect from what it now does; a time when the land rose far higher above the tide and extended seaward where now the ocean rolls resistlessly.

Returning inland, let us trace another of these old-time paths from the river-shore whereon the Indians had long dwelt, over hill and dale until we reach a valley hemmed in by low, rolling hills.

It is a pretty spot still, although marred by the white man’s work; but why was it the goal of many a weary journey?

Here is found the coveted jasper, varied in hue as autumn leaves or a summer sunset. The quick eye of some wandering hunter, it may be, found a chance fragment, and, looking closer, saw that the ground on which he stood was filled with it; or a freshet may have washed the soil from an outcropping of the mineral. Who can tell? It must suffice to know that the discovery was made in time, and a new industry arose. No other material so admirably met the Indian’s need for arrow-points, for the blades of spears, for knives, drills, scrapers, and the whole range of tools and weapons in daily use.

So it came that mining camps were established. To this day, in these lonely hills, we can trace out the great pits the Indians dug, find the tools with which they toiled, and even the ashes of their camp-fires, where they slept by night. So deeply did the Indian work the land wheresoever he toiled that even the paths that led from the mines to the distant village have not been wholly blotted out.

The story of the jasper mines has yet to be told, and it may be long before the full details are learned concerning the various processes through which the mineral passed before it came into use as a finished product. Much vain speculation has been indulged in; the fancied method of reducing a thick blade to a thin one has been elaborately described, although never carried out by any human being; in short, the impossible has been boldly asserted as a fact beyond question.

The Indian’s history can be read but in small part from the handiwork that he has left behind.

One phase of it, in the valley of the Delaware, is more clearly told than all else,—the advance from a primitive to a more cultured status. There were centuries during which jasper was known only as river-pebbles, and its discovery in abundance had an influence upon Indians akin to that upon Europe’s stone-age people when they discovered the use of metals. At least here in the valley of the Delaware this is true.

It is vain to ask for the beginning of man’s career in this region; what we find but hints at it. But he came when there were no trails over the hills, no path but the icy river’s edge; only as the centuries rolled by was the country developed to the extent of knowing every nook and corner of the land, and highways and by-ways became common, like the roads that now reach out in every direction.

A “trail,” then, has a wealth of meaning, and those who made it were no “mere savages,” as we so glibly speak of the Indians, thanks to the average school-books.

The haughty Delawares had fields and orchards; they had permanent towns; they mined such minerals as were valuable to them; they had weapons of many patterns; they were jewellers in a crude way, and finished many a stone ornament in a manner that still excites admiration. They were travellers and tradesmen as well as hunters and warriors.

Although my day’s search for relics of these people had yielded but a few arrow-points, potsherds, and a stone axe, when I saw the Indian on his way from school, walking in the very path his people had made long centuries ago, the story of their ancient sojourn here came vividly to mind in the dim light of an autumn afternoon, when a golden mist wrapped the hills and veiled the valleys beyond, and I had a glimpse of pre-Columbian America.

A ponderous geologist, with weighty tread and weightier manner, brought his foot down upon the unoffending sod and declared, “These meadows are sinking at a rapid rate; something over two feet a century.” We all knew it, but Sir Oracle had spoken, and we little dogs did not dare to bark.

Not long after I returned alone to these ill-fated meadows and began a leisurely, all-day ramble. They were very beautiful. There was a wealth of purple and of white boneset and iron-weed of royal dye. Sunflower and primrose gilded the hidden brooks, and every knoll was banked with rose-pink centaury. Nor was this all. Feathery reeds towered above the marsh, and every pond was empurpled with pontederia and starred with lilies. Afar off, acres of nut-brown sedge made fitting background for those meadow tracts that were still green, while close at hand, more beautiful than all, were struggling growths held down by the golden-dodder’s net that overspread them.

It does not need trees or rank shrubbery to make a wilderness. This low-lying tract to-day, with but a summer’s growth above it, is as wild and lonely as are the Western plains. Lonely, that is, as man thinks, but not forsaken. The wily mink, the pert weasel, the musk-rat, and the meadow-mouse ramble in safety through it. The great blue heron, its stately cousin, the snowy egret, and the dainty least bittern find it a congenial home.

The fiery dragon-fly darts and lazy butterflies drift across the blooming waste; bees buzz angrily as you approach; basking snakes bid you defiance. Verily, this is wild life’s domain and man is out of place.

It was not always so. The land is sinking, and what now of that older time when it was far above its present level,—a high, dry, upland tract, along which flowed a clear and rapid stream? The tell-tale arrow-point is our guide, and wherever the sod is broken we have an inkling of Indian history. The soil, as we dig a little deeper, is almost black with charcoal—dust, and it is evident that centuries ago the Indians were content to dwell here, and well they might be. Even in colonial days the place had merit, and escaped not the eager eyes of Penn’s grasping followers. It was meadow then, and not fitted for his house, but the white man built his barn above the ruins of his dusky predecessor’s home. All trace of human habitation is now gone, but the words of the geologist kept ringing in my ears, and of late I have been digging. It is a little strange that so few traces of the white man are found as compared with relics of the Indian. From the barn that once stood here and was long ago destroyed by a flood one might expect to find at least a rusty nail.

The ground held nothing telling of a recent past, but was eloquent of the long ago. Dull indeed must be the imagination that cannot recall what has been here brought to light by the aid of such an implement as the spade. Not only were the bow and spear proved to be the common weapons of the time, but there were in even greater abundance, and of many patterns, knives to flay the game. It is not enough to merely glance at a trimmed flake of flint or carefully-chipped splinter of argillite, and say to yourself, “A knife.” Their great variety has a significance that should not be overlooked. The same implement could not be put to every use for which a knife was needed; hence the range in size from several inches to tiny flakes that will likely remain a puzzle as to their purpose.

Besides home products, articles are found that have come from a long distance, and no class of objects is more suggestive than those that prove the widely-extended system of barter that prevailed at one time among the Indians of North America. There are shells and shell ornaments found in Wisconsin which must have been taken there from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico; catlinite or red pipe-stone ornaments and pipes found in New Jersey that could only have come from Minnesota. Shell beads are often found in graves in the Mississippi Valley that were brought from the Pacific coast, and the late Dr. Leidy has described a shell bead, concerning which he states that it is the Conus ternatus, a shell which belongs to the west coast of Central America. This was found, with other Indian relics, in Hartman’s Cave, near Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. Two small arrow-points found in New Jersey a year or more ago proved to be made of obsidian. These specimens could only have come from the far South-west or from Oregon, and the probabilities are in favor of the latter locality. It is not unlikely that objects like the above should find their way inland to the Great Lakes, and so across the continent and down the Atlantic coast. On the other hand, arrow-points could have had so little intrinsic value in the eyes of an Indian that we are naturally surprised that they should have been found so far from their place of origin. Obsidian has occurred but very rarely east of the Alleghanies, so far as I am aware. In the Sharples collection, at West Chester, Pennsylvania, is a single specimen, reported to have been found near that place, and a few traces have since been discovered in the uplands immediately adjoining these Delaware meadows, and really there is no reason to suppose that objects of value should not have passed quite across the continent, or been carried from Mexico to Canada. There were no vast areas absolutely uninhabited and across which no Indian ever ventured.

It has been suggested that, as iron was manufactured in the valley of the Delaware as early as 1728, the supposed obsidian arrow-points are really made of slag from the furnaces, but a close examination of the specimens proves, it is claimed, this not to have been the case, and at this comparatively late date the making of stone arrow-points had probably ceased. Just when, however, the use of the bow as a weapon was discarded has not been determined, but fire-arms were certainly common in 1728 and earlier.

A careful study, too, of copper implements, which are comparatively rare, seems to point to the conclusion that very few were made of the native copper found in New Jersey, Maryland, and elsewhere along the Atlantic coast, but that they were made in the Lake Superior region and thence gradually dispersed over the Eastern States. The large copper spear from Betterton, Maryland, recently found, and another from New Jersey, bear a striking resemblance to the spear-heads from the North-west, where unquestionably the most expert of aboriginal coppersmiths lived. Of course, the many small beads of this metal occasionally found in Indian graves in the Delaware Valley might have been made of copper found near by, but large masses are very seldom met with.

Speaking of copper beads recalls the fact that a necklace comprising more than one hundred was recently found on the site of an old Dutch trader’s house, on an island in the Delaware. They were of Indian manufacture, and had been in the fur trader’s possession, if we may judge from the fact that they were found with hundreds of other relics that betokened not merely European, but Dutch occupation of the spot. This trader got into trouble and doubtless deserved his summary taking off.

It is not “a most absurd untruth,” as was stated not long ago in the Critic in a review of a New York history, that the Indians were “a people of taste and industry, and in morals quite the peers of their Dutch neighbors.” They had just as keen a sense of right and wrong. There never was a handful of colonists in North America whose whole history their descendants would care to have known. The truth is, we know very little of the Indian prior to European contact. Carpet-knight archæologists and kid-gloved explorers crowd the pages of periodical literature, it is true, but we are little, if any, the wiser.

It is supposed, and is even asserted, that the Indian knew nothing of forks; but that he plunged his fingers into the boiling pot or held in his bare hands the steaming joints of bear or venison is quite improbable. Now, the archæologist talks glibly of bone awls whenever a sharpened splinter of bone is presented him, as if such instruments were only intended to perforate leather. They doubtless had other uses, and I am sure that more than one split and sharpened bone which has been found would have served excellently well as a one-tined fork wherewith to lift from the pot a bit of meat. Whether or not such forks were in use, there were wooden spoons, as a bit of the bowl and a mere splinter of the handle serve to show. Kalm tells us that they used the laurel for making this utensil, but I fancied my fragment was hickory. Potsherds everywhere spoke of the Indians’ feasting, and it is now known that, besides bowls and shallow dishes of ordinary sizes, they also had vessels of several gallons’ capacity. All these are broken now, but, happily, fragments of the same dish are often found together, and so we can reconstruct them.

But what did the Indians eat? Quaint old Gabriel Thomas, writing about 1696, tells us that “they live chiefly on Maze or Indian Corn rosted in the Ashes, sometimes beaten boyl’d with Water, called Homine. They have cakes, not unpleasant; also Beans and Pease, which nourish much, but the Woods and Rivers afford them their provision; they eat morning and evening, their Seats and Tables on the ground.”

In a great measure this same story of The Indians’ food supply was told by the scattered bits found mingled with the ashes of an ancient hearth. Such fireplaces or cooking sites were simple in construction, but none the less readily recognized as to their purpose. A few flat pebbles had been brought from the bed of the river near by, and a small paved area some two feet square was placed upon or very near the surface of the ground. Upon this the fire was built, and in time a thick bed of ashes accumulated. Just how they cooked can only be conjectured, but the discovery of very thick clay vessels and great quantities of fire-cracked quartzite pebbles leads to the conclusion that water was brought to the boiling-point by heating the stones to a red heat and dropping them into the vessel holding the water. Thomas, as we have seen, says corn was “boyl’d with Water.” Meat also was, I think, prepared in the same manner. Their pottery probably was poorly able to stand this harsh treatment, which would explain the presence of such vast quantities of fragments of clay vessels. Traces of vegetable food are now very rarely found. A few burnt nuts, a grain or two of corn, and, in one instance, what appeared to be a charred crab-apple, complete the list of what, as yet, have been picked from the mingled earth and ashes. This is not surprising, and what we know of vegetable food in use among the Delaware Indians is almost wholly derived from those early writers who were present at their feasts. Kalm mentions the roots of the golden-club, arrow-leaf, and ground-nut, besides various berries and nuts. It is well known that extensive orchards were planted by these people. It may be added that, in all probability, the tubers of that noble plant, the lotus, were used as food. Not about these meadows, but elsewhere in New Jersey, this plant has been growing luxuriantly since Indian times.

Turning now to the consideration of what animal food they consumed, one can speak with absolute certainty. It is clear that the Delawares were meat-eaters. It needs but little digging on any village site to prove this, and from a single fireplace deep down in the stiff soil of this sinking meadow have been taken bones of the elk, deer, bear, beaver, raccoon, musk-rat, and gray squirrel. Of these, the remains of deer were largely in excess, and as this holds good of every village site I have examined, doubtless the Indians depended more largely upon this animal than upon all the others. Of the list, only the elk is extinct in the Delaware Valley, and it was probably rare even at the time of the European settlement of the country, except in the mountain regions. If individual tastes varied as they do among us, we have certainly sufficient variety here to have met every fancy.

With a food supply as varied as this, an ordinary meal or an extraordinary feast can readily be recalled, so far as its essential features are concerned. It is now September, and, save where the ground has been ruthlessly uptorn, everywhere is a wealth of early autumn bloom. A soothing quiet rests upon the scene, bidding us to retrospective thought. Not a bit of stone, of pottery, or of burned and blackened fragment of bone but stands out in the mellow sunshine as the feature of a long-forgotten feast. As I dreamily gaze upon the gatherings of half a day, I seem to see the ancient folk that once dwelt in this neglected spot; seem to be a guest at a pre-Columbian dinner in New Jersey.

As long ago as November, 1679, two Dutchmen, Jasper Dankers and Peter Sluyter, worked their way laboriously across New Jersey from Manhattan Island, and reached South River, as the Delaware was then called, at least by the Hollanders. They were all agog to see the falls at the head of tide-water, and spent a miserable night in a rickety shanty, which was cold as Greenland, except in the fireplace, and there they roasted. All this was not calculated to put them in excellent humor, and so the next day, when they stood on the river-bank and saw only a trivial rapid where they had expected a second Niagara, their disgust knew no bounds. These travel-tired Dutchmen quickly departed, rowing a small boat down-stream, and growling whenever the tide turned and they had to row against it.

When they reached Burlington, they recorded of an island nearly in front of the village, that it “formerly belonged to the Dutch Governor, who had made it a pleasure ground or garden, built good houses upon it, and sowed and planted it. He also dyked and cultivated a large piece of meadow or marsh.” The English held it at the time of their visit, and it was occupied by “some Quakers,” as the authors quoted called them.

One of these Dutch houses, built in part of yellow bricks, and with a red tiled roof, I found traces of years ago, and ever since have been poking about the spot, for the very excellent reasons that it is a pretty one, a secluded one, and as full of natural history attractions now as it was of human interest when a Dutch beer-garden.

Had no one who saw the place in its palmy days left a record concerning the beer, I could, at this late day, have given testimony that if there was no beer, there were beer mugs, and schnapps bottles, and wineglasses, for I have been digging again and found them all; and then the pipes and pipe-stems! I have a pile of over five hundred. The Dutch travellers were correct as to the place having been a pleasure-garden. It certainly was, and probably the very first on the Delaware River. But there was “pleasure,” too, on the main shore, for the men who referred to the island stayed one night in Burlington, and, the next day being Sunday, attended Quaker meeting, and wrote afterwards, “What they uttered was mostly in one tone and the same thing, and so it continued until we were tired out and went away.” Doubtless they were prejudiced, and so nothing suited them, not even what they found to drink, for they said, “We tasted here, for the first time, peach brandy or spirits, which was very good, but would have been better if more carefully made.” They did not like the English, evidently, for the next day they went to Takanij (Tacony), a village of Swedes and Finns, and there drank their fill of “very good beer” brewed by these people, and expressed themselves as much pleased to find that, because they had come to a new country, they had not left behind them their old customs.

The house that once stood where now is but a reach of abandoned and wasting meadow was erected in 1668 or possibly a little earlier. Its nearest neighbor was across a narrow creek, and a portion of the old building is said to be still standing. Armed with the few facts that are on record, it is easy to picture the place as it was in the days of the Dutch, and it was vastly prettier then than it is now. The public of to-day are not interested in a useless marsh, particularly when there is better ground about it in abundance, and whoever wanders to such uncanny places is quite sure to be left severely alone. This was my experience, and, being undisturbed, I enjoyed the more my resurrective work. I could enthuse, without being laughed at, over what to others was but meaningless rubbish, and I found very much that, to me, possessed greater interest than usual, because of a mingling of late Indian and early European objects. With a handful of glass, porcelain, and amber beads were more than one hundred of copper; the former from Venice, the latter the handiwork of a Delaware Indian. With a white clay pipe, made in Holland in the seventeenth century, was found a rude brown clay one, made here in the river valley. Mingled with fragments of blue and white Delft plates, bowls, and platters, were sundried mud dishes made by women hereabouts during, who can say how many centuries? How completely history and pre-history here overlapped! We know pretty much everything about Dutchmen, but how much do we really know of the native American? After nearly thirty years’ digging, he has been traced from the days of the great glaciers to the beginnings of American history; but we cannot say how long a time that comprises. The winter of 1892-1893 was, so far as appearances went, a return to glacial times. Ice was piled up fifty feet in height, and the water turned from the old channel of the river. The cutting of another one opened up new territory for the relic hunter when the ice was gone and the stream had returned to its old bed. Many an Indian wigwam site that had been covered deep with soil was again warmed by the springtide sun, and those were rare days when, from the ashes of forgotten camps, I raked the broken weapons and rude dishes that the red men had discarded. It was reading history at first hands, without other commentary than your own. The ice-scored gravel-beds told even an older story; but no one day’s digging was so full of meaning, or brought me so closely in touch with the past, as when I uncovered what remained of the old Dutch trader’s house; traced the boundaries of the one-time pleasure-garden, hearing in the songs of birds the clinking of glasses, and then, in fancy, adding to the now deserted landscape the fur-laden canoes of the Indians who once gathered here to exchange for the coveted gaudy beads the skins of the many animals which at that time roamed the forests.

Make an early start if you wish an eventful outing. Why know the world only when the day is middle-aged or old? A wise German has said, “The morning hour has gold in its mouth.” For many a rod after leaving the wharf the river still “smoked,” and the scanty glimpses between the rolling clouds of mist spurred the imagination. There was nothing certain beyond the gunwales. The pale-yellow color of the water near at hand and the deep-green and even black of that in the distance had no daytime suggestiveness. It was not yet the familiar river with its noonday glitter of blue and silver.

It is not strange that the initial adventure to which the above-mentioned conditions naturally gave rise occurred while this state of uncertainty continued. Very soon I ran upon a snag. To strike such an object in mid-river was rather startling. Was I not in or near the channel? Steamboats come puffing and plowing here and sailing craft pass up and down, so my only care had been to avoid them; but now there came in my path the twisted trunk of an old forest tree and held me fast. All the while the mist rose and fell, giving no inkling of my whereabouts. In the dim, misty light what a strange sea-monster this resurrected tree-trunk seemed to be! Its thick green coat of silky threads lay closely as the shining fur of the otter, a mane of eel-grass floated on the water, the gnarly growths where branches once had been glistened as huge eyes, and broken limbs were horns that threatened quick destruction. There was motion, too. Slowly it rose above the water and then as slowly sunk from view. Could it be possible that some long-necked saurian of the Jersey marls had come to life? Nonsense; and yet so real did it seem that I was ready for the river-horse to rise

With such an uncanny keeper, I was held a prisoner. At last I struck it with an oar to beat it back, and rocked the frail boat until I feared plunging into the deep water and deeper mud beneath. Deep water? It suddenly occurred to me to try its depth, and the truth was plain. I was far from the channel, and might with safety have waded to the shore. As usual, I had rashly jumped at conclusions. The mouth of an inflowing creek was near at hand, and this sunken tree, a relic of some forgotten freshet, had been lying here in the mud for several years. The tide lifted and let fall the trunk, but the root-mass was still strongly embedded. I knew the spot of old, and now, fearing nothing, was rational again.

Such sunken trees, however, are well calculated to alarm the unthinking. It is said of one yet lying in the mud of Crosswicks Creek, that it rose so quickly once as to overturn a boat. This is not improbable. That occurrence, if true, happened a century ago, and the same tree has since badly frightened more than one old farmer. I am told this of one of them who had anchored his boat here one frosty October morning and commenced fishing. While half asleep, or but half sober, the tree slowly raised up and tilted the boat so that its occupant felt compelled to swim. His view of the offending monster was much like my own fevered vision of to-day. He not only swam ashore, but ran a mile over a soft marsh. To him the sea-serpent was a reality, although he saw it in the creek.

It is of interest to note that among the early settlers of this region, for at least three generations, the impression was prevalent that there might be some monster lurking in the deep holes of the creek or in the river. The last of the old hunters and fishermen of this region, who had spent all his life in a boat or prowling along shore, was ever talking of a “king tortle” that for forty years had defied all his efforts to capture it. “Mostly, it only shows its top shell, but I have seen it fair and square, head and legs, and I don’t know as I care to get very close, neither.” This was his unvaried remark whenever I broached the subject. To have suggested that it was a sunken log, or in some other way tried to explain the matter, would only have brought about his ill will. I once attempted it, very cautiously, but he effectually shut me up by remarking, “When this here creek runs dry and you can walk over its bottom, you’ll larn a thing or two that ain’t down in your books yet, and ain’t goin’ to be.” The old man was right. I do not believe in “king tortles,” but there certainly is “a thing or two” not yet in the books. Stay! How big do our snappers grow? Is the father of them all still hiding in the channel of Crosswicks Creek?

A description in an old manuscript journal, of the general aspect of the country as seen from the river, bears upon this subject of strange wild beasts and monsters of the deep, as well as on that of sunken trees that endangered passing shallops.

“As we pass up the river,” this observant writer records, "we are so shut in by the great trees that grow even to the edge of the water, that what may lye in the interior is not to be known. That there be fertile land, the Indians tell us, but their narrow paths are toilsome to travel and there are none [of these people] now that seem willing to guide us. As we approached ffarnsworth’s the channel was often very close to the shore, and at one time we were held by the great trees that overhung the bank and by one that had been fallen a long time and was now lodged in the water. As I looked towards the shore, I exclaimed, ‘Here we are indeed in a great wilderness. What strangeness is concealed in this boundless wood? what wonder may at any time issue from it, or fierce monster not be lurking in the waters beneath us?’ Through the day the cries of both birds and beasts were heard, but not always. It was often so strangely quiet that we were more affected thereby than by the sounds that at times issued forth. At night there was great howling, as we were told, of wolves, and the hooting of owls, and often there plunged into the stream wild stags that swam near to our boat. But greater than all else, to our discomfort, were the great sunken trunks of trees that were across the channel, where the water was of no great depth."

What a change! and would that this old traveller could revisit the Delaware to-day. My boat is free again and the mists are gone. Through the trees are sifted the level sunbeams. There is at least a chance now to compare notes. The forest is now a field, the trackless marsh a meadow; wild life is largely a thing of the past; silence, both day and night, replaces sound. No, not that; but only the minor sounds are left. There are still the cry of the fish-hawk and the sweet song of the thrush. No stags now swim the river, but there remain the mink and the musk-rat. It has not been long since I saw a migration of meadow-mice, and at night, I am sure, many an animal dares to breast the stream, a mile wide though it be. Too cunning to expose itself by day, it risks its life at night; and how tragic the result when, nearly at the journey’s end, it is seized by a lurking foe; dragged down, it may be, by a snake or a turtle!

The world is just as full of tragedy as ever, and, let us hope, as full of comedy. In a bit of yonder marsh, above which bends the tall wild rice, there is daily enacted scene after scene as full of import as those which caused the very forest to tremble when the wolf and panther quarrelled over the elk or deer that had fallen.

It has been insisted upon that a goal-less journey is necessarily a waste of time. If on foot, we must keep forever on the go; if in a boat, we must keep bending to the oars. It is this miserable fallacy that makes so many an out-door man and woman lose more than half of that for which they went into the fields. Who cares if you did see a chippy at every turn and flushed a bittern at the edge of the marsh? If you had been there before them, and these birds did the walking, you would have gone home the wiser. It is not the mere fact that there are birds that concerns us, but what are they doing? why are they doing it? This the town-pent people are ever anxious to know, and the facts cannot be gathered if you are forever on the move. Suppose I rush across the river and back, what have I seen? The bottom of the boat. I came to see the river and the sky above, and if this is of no interest to the reader, let him turn the leaf.

Does every storm follow the track of the sun? As the sun rose there were clouds in the east and south and a haziness over the western sky. Had I asked a farmer as to the weather probabilities, he would have looked everywhere but due north. Why does he always ignore that quarter? There may be great banks of cloud there, but they go for nothing. “Sou-east” and “sou-west” are forever rung in your ears, but never a word of the north. Sometimes I have thought it may be for this reason that about half the time the farmer is all wrong, and the heaviest rains come when he is most sure that the day will be clear.

Looking upward, for the sky was clear in that direction now, I saw that there were birds so far above me that they appeared as mere specks. Very black when first seen, but occasionally they flashed as stars seen by day from the bottom of a well. They could not be followed, except one that swept swiftly earthward, and the spreading tail and curve of wings told me it was a fish-hawk. What a glorious outlook from its ever-changing point of view! From its height, it could have seen the mountains and the ocean, and the long reach of river valley as well. If the mists obscure it all, why should a bird linger in the upper air? The prosy matter of food-getting has nothing to do with it. While in camp on Chesapeake Bay, I noticed that the fish-hawks were not always fishing, and often the air rang with their strange cries while soaring so far overhead as to be plainly seen only with a field-glass. Every movement suggested freedom from care as they romped in the fields of space. It is not strange that they scream, or laugh, shall we say? when speeding along at such rate and in no danger of collision. If I mistake not, the cry of exultation is coincident with the downward swoop, and I thought of old-time yelling when dashing down a snow-clad hill-side; but how sober was the work of dragging the sled up-hill! The hawks, I thought, were silent when upward bound. If so, there is something akin to humanity in the hawk nature.

I have called the cry of the fish-hawk a “laugh,” but, from a human stand-point, do birds laugh? It is extremely doubtful, though I recall a pet sparrow-hawk that was given to playing tricks, as I called them, and the whole family believed that this bird actually laughed. Muggins, as we named him, had a fancy for pouncing upon the top of my head and, leaning forward, snapping his beak in my face. Once an old uncle came into the room and was treated in this fashion. Never having seen the bird before, he was greatly astonished, and indignant beyond measure when the hawk, being rudely brushed off, carried away his wig. Now the bird was no less astonished than the man, and when he saw the wig dangling from his claws he gave a loud cackle, unlike anything we had ever heard before, and which was, I imagine, more an expression of amusement than of surprise. I think this, because afterwards I often played the game of wig with him, to the bird’s delight, and he always “laughed” as he carried off the prize. On the contrary, the unsuccessful attempt to remove natural hair elicited no such expression, but sometimes a squeal of disgust.

In the Spectator of October 1, 1892, page 444, I find a most thoughtful article, entitled “The Animal Sense of Humor,” and I quote as follows: “The power of laughter is peculiar to man, and the sense of humor may be said, generally speaking, to be also his special property.” Again, “We never saw the slightest approach to amusement in one animal at the mistakes of another, though dogs, so far as we can venture to interpret their thoughts, do really feel amusement at the mistakes of men.” Possibly the author is right, but do not cats show a sense of humor at the rough-and-tumble gambols of their kittens? Is not the sly cuff on the ear that sends a kitten sprawling indicative of a sense of fun on the part of tabby? Our author says, “so far as we can venture to interpret their thoughts.” "Ay, there’s the rub." No one can tell how far it is safe to venture, but I go a great deal beyond my neighbors. Our author concludes, “In animals, as in man, humor is the result of civilization, and not as we understand it, a natural and spontaneous development.” I cannot subscribe to this. I know little of domestic animals, but have got the idea of an animal’s sense of humor from wild life, and confirmed it by what I have seen of cats and dogs.

While I have been drifting, and using my eyes and ears instead of legs and arms, as is advocated, the clouds, too, have been creeping this way, and, while the morning is yet fresh, it is certainly going to rain. Had I consulted the barometer, I would have known this; but then, knowing it, might I not have stayed at home? Why not enjoy part of a day? That the rain will soon be here does not diminish one’s pleasure, unless there is a fear of getting wet, and this is all too common. I hope that it does not mean that you have but one suit of clothes.

The approaching rain, the increasing cloudiness, the shut-in appearance, made the river exceedingly attractive. With the down-dropping clouds dropped down the birds, and the swallows now skimmed the water as they had been skimming the sky. The fish-hawks departed, but a host of land-birds crossed the stream, as if comparing the shelter afforded by the cedars on one side and pines on the other. These birds chattered as they flew by, and turned their heads up- and downstream, as if curious as to all that might be going on. Suddenly the water ceased to be rippled, and far down-stream a cloud appeared to have reached the river. It was the rain. It seemed to march very slowly, and every drop made a dimple on the river’s breast. Then I could hear the on-coming host, the sound having a distinct bell-like tinkle as each drop touched the surface and disappeared. A curious effect, too, was produced by the wind or the varying density of the cloud above, in that the drops were very near together where I happened to be, and much farther apart and larger some distance beyond the boat. I could of course make no measurements, but appearances suggested that in the middle of the river the drops were less numerous in the proportion of one to five. Does it usually rain harder over land than over water? Heretofore I had seen the rain upon the river while on shore, and was now very glad to have been caught adrift, so as to observe it from a new point of view. It was a beautiful sight, well worth the thorough wetting that I got and which drove me home soon after with pleasant thoughts of my goalless journey.